Yes we have a lot more forests because of the automobile, you have 1 forest, so you need to put a street through it and now you have 2 forests, make a cross street and you now have 4 forests. Where I live, we have a whole jungle already.
It is said that the comet always precedes them - these world enders. The Coalsack planets are gone. Eight million settlers missing. The entire Aquilan system is gone too.
As you say, there are always going to be civilian casualties unless you go back to the old days, pick an open field as battleground and charge at each other. That doesn't make the military forces on either side "Terrorists"
Terrorists are a group people that routinely attack civilian targets in order to further their (ideological) cause by causing fear in the civilian population - they usually do not have a flag or even a state. The attacks on the Twin Towers was terrorism, it was intentionally planned to target civilians by a stateless group of people. The attack on the Pentagon is more grey since the Pentagon is a military building, you could consider it an act or unspoken declaration of war by the Al-Qaeda military but since they also targeted civilians I guess you could consider it terrorism.
The current war in Iraq is not a "War on Terrorism" because the people attacking the US military there are not "Terrorists", they are merely defending their country and their ideology from invaders. After all Nazi Germany was not a terrorist group but a military force but the Nazi's were also mass-murderers. Their primary goal was not to have the people live in fear, they just wanted to get rid of a certain group of people so that their country would be better off. Neither were the Allies or the resistance considered terrorists. The issue with Al-Qaeda is that they are both a military organization and a terrorist organization. If the US wanted to punish the "Terrorists" responsible for 9/11, they should just arrest them whenever they have the chance or send a crack team of Special Forces to assassinate the leadership (CIA would've done it without blinking). That, however, is not the reason the US invaded Iraq.
The issue on the market right now is that there is no affordable, unified, high-quality, *legal* way of getting your favorite tv shows or tv channels on your iPod, iTunes, Mac/PC.
The main issue seems to be that content providers don't want people to 'own' or control the show so they can watch it over and over again with limited/no commercials. IPTV in the US is as good as dead and it is a market waiting to be tapped. If Apple can lean it's weight against this and be the first to have a somewhat decent way of providing TV channels over IP (similar to how they were the first to have a decent, unified, affordable way of buying music online).
Apple already has the AppleTV but without all my favorite TV shows either streaming or affordable (not $30-60/season), I'm not going out to buy it because right now all it is is a glorified iTunes interface. And I've looked and looked and there is no way I can cancel out my cable tv subscription these days and have an affordable (less than 150% or $100/month) to get a selection of channels (I don't want all of them, only the interesting ones) on all my electronic devices similar to how I can get my music on all my devices.
They probably didn't generate all that through time-metered services (usually subscriptions) but every call does get metered no matter what (even if it's $0.00). $3 Billion is only 3% of their revenue so it might well be that GP is correct. Unfortunately for the GP, the billing services are most likely distributed and probably not even on the same software although if a single software glitch would suspend all meters for a few seconds - eg. due to the Unixtime overflowing (say 2 minutes to reboot) they would lose a huge chunk of money.
The issue is that anyone can legally bribe lawmakers without a problem. Whether or not that 'person' is a corporation, there are individuals (meatbags) that are worth many small/midsize corporations (Gates, Buffet, Jobs...).
Our lawmakers should be 1) given a modest wage out of the taxpayers money and not be allowed to receive any type of donation that would benefit them either personally or politically. 2) They should get a modest amount that they themselves cannot vote over to increase to fund their personal campaigns. 3) They should not be allowed to pool this money in order to benefit others (this would decrease the notion that there are only 2-3 candidates). 4) They should not be allowed to use resources not paid for by the public while holding an office 5) They should not be allowed to pass laws that benefit themselves in any way shape or form
These days, if a politician can afford enough airtime (say 10-20 minutes in prime time on all major channels) they have virtually won the election whether that be locally or nationally.
Actually, I have done the calculations and the difference between ink/toner is only about 1 or 2c per page (especially once you get to color).
For a b/w Brother laser printer the cost is 2c/p with remanufactured cartridges, 3c/p with high-capacity cartridges and 4c/p with the standard cartridges For a color Brother laser printer the cost is 4c/p black, 4c/p color with new cartridges For a Canon Pixma inkjet printer the cost is 3c/p black, 5c/p color with new cartridges
So if you're a very low volume printer, then lasers are probably not worth the investments. Especially since the very cheap ($99 OkiData color laser for Cyber Monday) have more expensive cartridges ($120/cartridge = $480 to replace all) Off course once you get to HP printers, the costs shoot up (as the cartridges are 3-6x more expensive than the Canon Pixma's). Lasers also print infinitely faster than the inkjets.
How do you think it currently works? In areas where there is still classic POTS, there are massive battery banks (lead acid) that are being continuously powered. However ever since Ma Bell was disbanded and the government didn't have oversight on the Baby Bells, they have been discontinuing this practice in order to save money and thus in new areas (10y old) you usually have lines that do not work when there is a power outage. Granted, the disbandment of Ma Bell was a good idea but the execution lacked and now we have instead of a single monolithic market, a bunch of splintered monolithic markets (you're lucky if you have a choice between operators in your area) which are generally ruled by the original companies Ma Bell consisted off.
Since they are classified as a religion (thanks to infiltration of CoS into the IRS) wouldn't his service be considered 'worship' and 'volunteering'. However it wouldn't surprise me if they actually were actually doing much worse than just killing people.
Or they'll be able to invest that money somewhere else and become a better business. The things SOX 'protects' against are 1) outdated and 2) remotely plausible which doesn't actually protect anything. So business will still not protect anything however they won't have to invest in lawyers and consultants to implement rules that only bother the sysadmins and general productivity.
I though there was a UN convention that prohibited extradition to countries that practice torture or won't give a person due process. Given the US recent track record on torture and the probability that he will be tried in a military court it should be fairly easy to get his extradition cancelled. But then again, the US and the UK are not all that much different and if closer together would probably become a single country. Maybe he should appeal to the EU court for the protection of Human Rights in Geneva and he probably will. This dude will be in prison for a very long time.
Underpopulation? That's not really a problem. Worst case would be that we have to *gasp* import workers from other countries to maintain our lawns, homes and what children we do have. Sure that would never happen. Can you imagine calling a help desk or walking into a Kwik-E-Mart and getting some Indian (from India, not native american) guy that barely speaks English.
If you're good at statistics you can probably figure out what the future would bring if everyone had 1-1.5 kids.
The energy company doesn't have to come out and read the meter. Great, saves them a few jobs, gets some people unemployed. But you don't need a continuous monitoring of the meter for that. Just a once-a-month dial-in at the end of the month (every other month in my area) from the device to the company. There is no need to require traffic the other way around.
The energy company can tell your house when it is a good time to use a lot of power (eg. dishwashers etc.). Again, a single command from the utility company to the meters to switch and enable specific meters. European countries have done it for years without the need of a full two-way communication grid. It works similar to an X10 signal, in the 0-cross some digital data is inserted that switched between 2 electricity meters. The end user will want to decide anyway whether or not they want to use a heavy device in the middle of a peak period so it's not really a good idea to turn on/off specific outlets because people are stupid and will find a way to abuse it and if they're smart enough, sue for money (hang an old person that needs an oxygen tank to that outlet that gets switched off in the morning).
The energy company wants to turn off your electricity remotely. That might require some more authentication to prevent abuse but as soon as something goes systematically wrong with it (wrong house id gets sent through or any random issue that spring up with these types of companies and their software) things are going to get ugly and the government as well as the end-user will require somebody to physically disconnect the system.
No. NVIDIA's binary blob as well as the open source versions still work better than the ATi cards in any machine. Heck, I would say the ATi drivers don't work very well in Windows.
It's not really news. Bing is just a rebranding of MSN Search. In June 2007, MSN had a spike of 16% market share (http://blog.compete.com/2007/07/09/june-search-share-msn-live-google-yahoo-ask/). Given the huge marketing behind Bing as well as the conversion of practically all search engines on every site that has anything to do with Microsoft, I would say, meh, no big deal.
The thing is, not all of the tax collectors do accept electronic forms to pay the taxes and not all of them are uniform. I know Warren, PA a few years ago still required forms that you need to send back with USPS. In Rochester, NY you have 3 different tax rates depending on the zip code.
I did once try to collect sales tax on a website I was writing but I gave up on it after finding out how much work it requires on the backend. That was before USPS and other sites provided a dependable service for zip codes etc.
Interesting that only Fox claims that they were excluded from interviewing a politician. The other news organizations would have had a field day if the White House actually censored Fox News from participating.
Fox News is not a newscast, it's an opinion network that they misrepresent as news. They misuse and misquote sources, they use fake footage, they instigate crowds, host fake 'tea parties', misrepresent laws etc. etc.
I believe any organization would be right to exclude Fox from press conferences and interviews because they are not reporters, they are not neutral, they are not a newscast.
Actually, these companies didn't even ask the vendors for it. In the beginning of this whole debacle the shop you buy from used a piece of software that handled the credit card transactions (as they should) similar to the PayPal gateway.
However, the unscrupulous owners of that gateway forwarded the credit card details to shops like WebLoyalty which would start charging you $10/month while they got a kickback. That's when they charged me $10. After enough people complained about it to VISA and the like (I found out after the first charge and cancelled all purchases from said vendor), they changed it to include a 'confirmation screen' which was a simple: would you like to get a 10% coupon next time you shop (Yes/No). Later they added the small letters (first you had to scroll down to it since it was conveniently located outside the visible area) which said they could charge you $10 or more per month.
I was included in a class action suit against WebLoyalty and they settled but after lawyers fees nothing was left (literally, I think it was a $10M settlement, lawyers fees were $9.5M and the rest was donated to charity).
It's Microsoft, they can have $58 Billion + $15 Billion and they still won't be able to make any good products. Microsoft management still believes that 9 women can make a baby in a month, all you have to do is spend a few millions in advertising afterwards to make everybody believe the fetus is a full-grown baby.
Don't worry, we'll amend the secret ACTA treaty or a new DMCA law to fix this loophole. We'll probably put it as a rider to a 'save the children' act or 'don't kill puppies' law. After all, you're not a stone-cold puppy-killing, child-raping pervert are you?
Don't worry writing about it to me, I can't read it, I'll be at a Palm Island resort courtesy of Sony/BMG. I'm taking a private jet provided to me by some family with the last name Warner, you know so I can catch up on verifying the funds I got to run for office next year. I really don't know where all those bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H donations keep coming from.
Ok, so here goes my reduction in tech support calls:
1) Switched the parents to Ubuntu. They loved it, eventually (once they figured out how to install software from the repositories themselves) the calls stopped. My parents are now living out the country and I hear them only once a month or so and usually it's: the computer still works! When they need tech support I guide them to whatsmyip.net and SSH into the box.
2) Switched the in-law parents to Mac OS X. Got an old PowerMac G4 from work and I installed all the goodies they need. That box hasn't had a single problem.
3) Gave my wife a Mac Mini and I have 3 PowerBook G4's (15" and 2 12", very cheap on E-Bay) laying around the house. Haven't had a single issue.
4) Aunt: Re-installed Windows XP, put an Antivirus, Spybot, Firefox w/ AdBlock etc. on it. Installed OpenDNS updater and put the OpenDNS servers in their routers, then blocked Adware sites, Malware and Porn from their DNS services. This has been holding up for a good month or so now.
I don't know, if you want to monitor 1000's of ATM machines for certain patterns in order to catch something like this, you probably end up paying more than $9M on it. The software/hardware alone would probably cost $10M and maintenance, wages, service centers etc. only go up from there.
The simplicity of this hack and the gaping hole in the system suggest that this 'feature' was entirely thought up and created by middle-to-upper management and a grunt working for HR or Accounting to implement it in Excel.
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Yes we have a lot more forests because of the automobile, you have 1 forest, so you need to put a street through it and now you have 2 forests, make a cross street and you now have 4 forests. Where I live, we have a whole jungle already.
It is said that the comet always precedes them - these world enders. The Coalsack planets are gone. Eight million settlers missing. The entire Aquilan system is gone too.
As you say, there are always going to be civilian casualties unless you go back to the old days, pick an open field as battleground and charge at each other. That doesn't make the military forces on either side "Terrorists"
Terrorists are a group people that routinely attack civilian targets in order to further their (ideological) cause by causing fear in the civilian population - they usually do not have a flag or even a state. The attacks on the Twin Towers was terrorism, it was intentionally planned to target civilians by a stateless group of people. The attack on the Pentagon is more grey since the Pentagon is a military building, you could consider it an act or unspoken declaration of war by the Al-Qaeda military but since they also targeted civilians I guess you could consider it terrorism.
The current war in Iraq is not a "War on Terrorism" because the people attacking the US military there are not "Terrorists", they are merely defending their country and their ideology from invaders. After all Nazi Germany was not a terrorist group but a military force but the Nazi's were also mass-murderers. Their primary goal was not to have the people live in fear, they just wanted to get rid of a certain group of people so that their country would be better off. Neither were the Allies or the resistance considered terrorists. The issue with Al-Qaeda is that they are both a military organization and a terrorist organization. If the US wanted to punish the "Terrorists" responsible for 9/11, they should just arrest them whenever they have the chance or send a crack team of Special Forces to assassinate the leadership (CIA would've done it without blinking). That, however, is not the reason the US invaded Iraq.
The issue on the market right now is that there is no affordable, unified, high-quality, *legal* way of getting your favorite tv shows or tv channels on your iPod, iTunes, Mac/PC.
The main issue seems to be that content providers don't want people to 'own' or control the show so they can watch it over and over again with limited/no commercials. IPTV in the US is as good as dead and it is a market waiting to be tapped. If Apple can lean it's weight against this and be the first to have a somewhat decent way of providing TV channels over IP (similar to how they were the first to have a decent, unified, affordable way of buying music online).
Apple already has the AppleTV but without all my favorite TV shows either streaming or affordable (not $30-60/season), I'm not going out to buy it because right now all it is is a glorified iTunes interface. And I've looked and looked and there is no way I can cancel out my cable tv subscription these days and have an affordable (less than 150% or $100/month) to get a selection of channels (I don't want all of them, only the interesting ones) on all my electronic devices similar to how I can get my music on all my devices.
3.1 Billion dollars is not all that much for a phone company:
AT&T:
Revenue: USD 119.3 Billion (2008)
Operating income: USD 18.165 Billion (2008)
Net income: USD $10.463 Billion (2008)
They probably didn't generate all that through time-metered services (usually subscriptions) but every call does get metered no matter what (even if it's $0.00). $3 Billion is only 3% of their revenue so it might well be that GP is correct. Unfortunately for the GP, the billing services are most likely distributed and probably not even on the same software although if a single software glitch would suspend all meters for a few seconds - eg. due to the Unixtime overflowing (say 2 minutes to reboot) they would lose a huge chunk of money.
The issue is that anyone can legally bribe lawmakers without a problem. Whether or not that 'person' is a corporation, there are individuals (meatbags) that are worth many small/midsize corporations (Gates, Buffet, Jobs...).
Our lawmakers should be
1) given a modest wage out of the taxpayers money and not be allowed to receive any type of donation that would benefit them either personally or politically.
2) They should get a modest amount that they themselves cannot vote over to increase to fund their personal campaigns.
3) They should not be allowed to pool this money in order to benefit others (this would decrease the notion that there are only 2-3 candidates).
4) They should not be allowed to use resources not paid for by the public while holding an office
5) They should not be allowed to pass laws that benefit themselves in any way shape or form
These days, if a politician can afford enough airtime (say 10-20 minutes in prime time on all major channels) they have virtually won the election whether that be locally or nationally.
Actually, I have done the calculations and the difference between ink/toner is only about 1 or 2c per page (especially once you get to color).
For a b/w Brother laser printer the cost is 2c/p with remanufactured cartridges, 3c/p with high-capacity cartridges and 4c/p with the standard cartridges
For a color Brother laser printer the cost is 4c/p black, 4c/p color with new cartridges
For a Canon Pixma inkjet printer the cost is 3c/p black, 5c/p color with new cartridges
So if you're a very low volume printer, then lasers are probably not worth the investments. Especially since the very cheap ($99 OkiData color laser for Cyber Monday) have more expensive cartridges ($120/cartridge = $480 to replace all) Off course once you get to HP printers, the costs shoot up (as the cartridges are 3-6x more expensive than the Canon Pixma's). Lasers also print infinitely faster than the inkjets.
How do you think it currently works? In areas where there is still classic POTS, there are massive battery banks (lead acid) that are being continuously powered. However ever since Ma Bell was disbanded and the government didn't have oversight on the Baby Bells, they have been discontinuing this practice in order to save money and thus in new areas (10y old) you usually have lines that do not work when there is a power outage. Granted, the disbandment of Ma Bell was a good idea but the execution lacked and now we have instead of a single monolithic market, a bunch of splintered monolithic markets (you're lucky if you have a choice between operators in your area) which are generally ruled by the original companies Ma Bell consisted off.
Since they are classified as a religion (thanks to infiltration of CoS into the IRS) wouldn't his service be considered 'worship' and 'volunteering'. However it wouldn't surprise me if they actually were actually doing much worse than just killing people.
Or they'll be able to invest that money somewhere else and become a better business. The things SOX 'protects' against are 1) outdated and 2) remotely plausible which doesn't actually protect anything. So business will still not protect anything however they won't have to invest in lawyers and consultants to implement rules that only bother the sysadmins and general productivity.
You sir, have never seen a bar fight in a seaport city.
I though there was a UN convention that prohibited extradition to countries that practice torture or won't give a person due process. Given the US recent track record on torture and the probability that he will be tried in a military court it should be fairly easy to get his extradition cancelled. But then again, the US and the UK are not all that much different and if closer together would probably become a single country. Maybe he should appeal to the EU court for the protection of Human Rights in Geneva and he probably will. This dude will be in prison for a very long time.
Underpopulation? That's not really a problem. Worst case would be that we have to *gasp* import workers from other countries to maintain our lawns, homes and what children we do have. Sure that would never happen. Can you imagine calling a help desk or walking into a Kwik-E-Mart and getting some Indian (from India, not native american) guy that barely speaks English.
If you're good at statistics you can probably figure out what the future would bring if everyone had 1-1.5 kids.
Here are some possible positives:
The energy company doesn't have to come out and read the meter. Great, saves them a few jobs, gets some people unemployed. But you don't need a continuous monitoring of the meter for that. Just a once-a-month dial-in at the end of the month (every other month in my area) from the device to the company. There is no need to require traffic the other way around.
The energy company can tell your house when it is a good time to use a lot of power (eg. dishwashers etc.). Again, a single command from the utility company to the meters to switch and enable specific meters. European countries have done it for years without the need of a full two-way communication grid. It works similar to an X10 signal, in the 0-cross some digital data is inserted that switched between 2 electricity meters. The end user will want to decide anyway whether or not they want to use a heavy device in the middle of a peak period so it's not really a good idea to turn on/off specific outlets because people are stupid and will find a way to abuse it and if they're smart enough, sue for money (hang an old person that needs an oxygen tank to that outlet that gets switched off in the morning).
The energy company wants to turn off your electricity remotely. That might require some more authentication to prevent abuse but as soon as something goes systematically wrong with it (wrong house id gets sent through or any random issue that spring up with these types of companies and their software) things are going to get ugly and the government as well as the end-user will require somebody to physically disconnect the system.
No. NVIDIA's binary blob as well as the open source versions still work better than the ATi cards in any machine. Heck, I would say the ATi drivers don't work very well in Windows.
It's not really news. Bing is just a rebranding of MSN Search. In June 2007, MSN had a spike of 16% market share (http://blog.compete.com/2007/07/09/june-search-share-msn-live-google-yahoo-ask/). Given the huge marketing behind Bing as well as the conversion of practically all search engines on every site that has anything to do with Microsoft, I would say, meh, no big deal.
The thing is, not all of the tax collectors do accept electronic forms to pay the taxes and not all of them are uniform. I know Warren, PA a few years ago still required forms that you need to send back with USPS. In Rochester, NY you have 3 different tax rates depending on the zip code.
I did once try to collect sales tax on a website I was writing but I gave up on it after finding out how much work it requires on the backend. That was before USPS and other sites provided a dependable service for zip codes etc.
Interesting that only Fox claims that they were excluded from interviewing a politician. The other news organizations would have had a field day if the White House actually censored Fox News from participating.
Fox News is not a newscast, it's an opinion network that they misrepresent as news. They misuse and misquote sources, they use fake footage, they instigate crowds, host fake 'tea parties', misrepresent laws etc. etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rqdtZlec0s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS1NWYV1i_E
I believe any organization would be right to exclude Fox from press conferences and interviews because they are not reporters, they are not neutral, they are not a newscast.
Actually, these companies didn't even ask the vendors for it. In the beginning of this whole debacle the shop you buy from used a piece of software that handled the credit card transactions (as they should) similar to the PayPal gateway.
However, the unscrupulous owners of that gateway forwarded the credit card details to shops like WebLoyalty which would start charging you $10/month while they got a kickback. That's when they charged me $10. After enough people complained about it to VISA and the like (I found out after the first charge and cancelled all purchases from said vendor), they changed it to include a 'confirmation screen' which was a simple: would you like to get a 10% coupon next time you shop (Yes/No). Later they added the small letters (first you had to scroll down to it since it was conveniently located outside the visible area) which said they could charge you $10 or more per month.
I was included in a class action suit against WebLoyalty and they settled but after lawyers fees nothing was left (literally, I think it was a $10M settlement, lawyers fees were $9.5M and the rest was donated to charity).
To do .NET development well, you'll need to get licenses for VS(.NET), Windows, SourceSafe, Windows Server, Sybase SQL, ...
It's Microsoft, they can have $58 Billion + $15 Billion and they still won't be able to make any good products. Microsoft management still believes that 9 women can make a baby in a month, all you have to do is spend a few millions in advertising afterwards to make everybody believe the fetus is a full-grown baby.
Don't worry, we'll amend the secret ACTA treaty or a new DMCA law to fix this loophole. We'll probably put it as a rider to a 'save the children' act or 'don't kill puppies' law. After all, you're not a stone-cold puppy-killing, child-raping pervert are you?
Don't worry writing about it to me, I can't read it, I'll be at a Palm Island resort courtesy of Sony/BMG. I'm taking a private jet provided to me by some family with the last name Warner, you know so I can catch up on verifying the funds I got to run for office next year. I really don't know where all those bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H donations keep coming from.
Sincerely,
Your state representative.
Ok, so here goes my reduction in tech support calls:
1) Switched the parents to Ubuntu. They loved it, eventually (once they figured out how to install software from the repositories themselves) the calls stopped. My parents are now living out the country and I hear them only once a month or so and usually it's: the computer still works! When they need tech support I guide them to whatsmyip.net and SSH into the box.
2) Switched the in-law parents to Mac OS X. Got an old PowerMac G4 from work and I installed all the goodies they need. That box hasn't had a single problem.
3) Gave my wife a Mac Mini and I have 3 PowerBook G4's (15" and 2 12", very cheap on E-Bay) laying around the house. Haven't had a single issue.
4) Aunt: Re-installed Windows XP, put an Antivirus, Spybot, Firefox w/ AdBlock etc. on it. Installed OpenDNS updater and put the OpenDNS servers in their routers, then blocked Adware sites, Malware and Porn from their DNS services. This has been holding up for a good month or so now.
I don't know, if you want to monitor 1000's of ATM machines for certain patterns in order to catch something like this, you probably end up paying more than $9M on it. The software/hardware alone would probably cost $10M and maintenance, wages, service centers etc. only go up from there.
The simplicity of this hack and the gaping hole in the system suggest that this 'feature' was entirely thought up and created by middle-to-upper management and a grunt working for HR or Accounting to implement it in Excel.