[really, really fast non-understandable disclaimer voice] Offer valid until 6/30/07. Save up to $1000 off of standards rates when you subscribe to and keep all services for 12 months. Offer valid to new residential customers only. To be considered a new Microsoft customer, customer must not have subscribed to Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Server or Microsoft Live within the previous 300 years and customer must have no outstanding obligation to Microsoft. Customers must subscribe to and maintain all services for the promotional period to receive promotional price. Standard rates apply after promotional period expires and vary depending on location and will need to be paid for ever and ever. Installation extra. Additional fees may apply for complex installation, pirated installation or multiple installations. A mouse, keyboard, screen, network card, NVIDIA Quadro Plex 1000 (IV) and 100MBps internet connection are required at installation. Equipment charges may apply if hardware is not Windows Vista Certified. Taxes, fees and surcharges extra and will vary depending on location. Possibility to install software may vary by market. Microsoft reserves the right to determine the level of service to which this offer applies. Speeds and experience may vary by computer, even if the computer is exactly the same hardware as the other one. Mandatory DRM checks when plugging in hardware, software or media include U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico and is also mandatory where law prohibits. Open standards and open software not included nor supported. Microsoft reserves the right to review and terminate service for residential use, non-residential use, abuse of service or whenever we feel like it. Activation of service may be subject to credit approval, deposit or prepayment and requires a valid address, social security number, major credit card, your first born, an arm and a leg. All programming, packages, pricing and services provided are subject to the terms and conditions of subscriber agreement and are subject to change without notice. Visit microsoft.com for full details on No Money Back Guarantee and We Will Empty Your Bank Account Guarantee. Extra services not available on any computer. Other restrictions may apply. Call 1-800-BENDOVER for full details.
Hah: The only thing remotely related to computers that I haven't seen Microsoft try to dominate is CAD software.
They have Paint, Publisher and Visio... all trying to be CAD software, now if everyone was as needy about their Operating, Office or Server systems as Architects about their CAD systems...
... but I think, if women are running from such jobs, they shouldn't have taken those jobs in the first place OR should have thought about not having kids when pursuing said career.
For either male or female it's unreasonable to sit in the 24/7 support cycle AND have an 8 hour job AND try to start a family with kids and all. The males can afford it better, although it's not healthy for personal or family life, females are meant to have the children and thus have to nurture and feed them. So do fathers but they are not as involved in that process as are the mothers (both biologically and psychologically).
I think it would be a courtesy to the kids for businesses and schools not to offer child daycare at all and cut females (and responsible fathers) with children off from responsibilities which suck a lot of energy that should be spent towards the kids like 24/7 on-call. That you get paid less because you don't have 2 hours extra overtime is something that you calculate before you decide to stop birth control. On the other hand, flex-hours and remote offices should become more common and accepted (younger management starts to understand it) than it is now, that would relieve a burden from families and improve work performance at the same time.
1) It's easy to do (just as you can blame kiddie-porn for all the rapes and teenage mothers in the world) 2) It makes him look smart (hey, you have something to say and it sounds reasonable, he must have a PhD) 3) He's actually a moron (no contest on that I guess, he is just like any other shrink: explaining what you already know in words you don't understand) 4) It appeals to the masses
is abstinence. Really, don't screw around until all HIV patients are dead. Hah, it is the ultimate cure, the only problem is implementing outside a public like Slashdot.
Adding storage space to a single system shouldn't be a problem, since you take your system down for that anyway (or put it in spare mode or so) even if it's a hotplug-always-on-superfast-resizing-raid-with-aut omatic-failover-and-d2d2t2brain system. That it takes the whole network down, is a problem.
Well, what's the matter with research? Are we going to kill scientist next for saying there is global warming caused by man? Or are we going to round up the law enforcement in this investigation since they saw or had contact with child porn?
It's true in some states. Contesting tickets worked for me numerous times (7 so far), I got off with either 'failure to obey traffic control device' or nothing at all and once with a 'well, you'll have to take a NY Safety Program course and then we'll reduce it' (NYSP takes off 10% on your insurance costs and 6 points off your license)
Still, if you're developing a system only YOU as developer should have access to it. I have seen few such projects where that is the case and you still need Stored Procedures, Triggers or the like. It is nice to have if you (need to) let others have access to your database and you have a very archaic structure, but if your datastore is well thought out from the beginning and your programming not too complex, I would not fiddle around with it.
He only gets re-elected because he passes such laws, which inherently appeal to parents of children and old people or he passes other laws which are good for certain business. In the mean time small business (like mine) and young professionals do get undermined by a lot of fees to get anything done in NYS.
Another thing is the harsher laws on DWI (and DWAI) only account for more 'poor' people that get caught to lose their jobs and life. I know a guy, that has been re-applying for his license for years. The DMV in NYS doesn't (have to) give him any honest process, just denies all claims (did you know the initial claim is ALWAYS denied) which they collect $50 for each time, his license is still revoked. The guy didn't have that much (cable guy, installing boxes) with no prior history, so a lawyer wasn't in it, he isn't a drunk (only got caught once, barely over the limit, never hit or hurt anyone). In the mean time, I know of another guy, that went in debt to shill out 10-20k for a lawyer, he DID hit somebody and he only got suspended for 6 months.
Taxes keep on rising upon residents as do the price of the utilities. Now the market in NYS is finally 'open' for utilities, still providers are allowed to raise an extra fee on top of the other providers costs for 'using their network' (gas and electric, not phone or anything fancy). Where I live, such surcharge would be $10/month, thus killing off any savings that I would get using an alternative or 'green' provider.
Try to get ANYTHING done in NYS, you'll see that for any form that you want to file to the State, there is on average an instant $10 'administrative fee' not even to mention the 'processing fee' ($30-60) if it was a claim that needs to be approved and then processed.
Do you have anything to back that claim up? I thought money had to be backed to be of any value. The government can't just start printing notes without backing it up (with gold or something else like property, land...) to be valued on the international market. And who decides what the dollar is valued today/tomorrow. I thought the market decided that, depending on how much companies and the people in the companies are worth.
It's a complicated issue, but I wouldn't just say that it was to take money out of circulation, because then as your dollar value drops (or rises), so do products in the store (given the price stays the same) so the companies would get the same relative value no matter what the dollar stands and there would never be any inflation anyway.
Remember, if what you say is true, and everybody pays their taxes equally, then the 'artificial' value is relative to everybody (also products and companies), and it doesn't matter whether that would be $100/$100 or $1/$1 then.
What I understand is that taxes pay for our roads and wars and government, if the government doesn't have enough money, they go lend some (as they have a huge debt now), they can't just print out some money and say: hey, we paid off all our debts.
A bunch of American and European companies have locations in China (either factory or research) with many people working there and they don't have an interest in pirating a Windows CD, just because of the possible risk of infected images or litigation in their home countries.
You could say it was due to pirating if their projected sales are down by 1-5%, you can't say it if you didn't sell ANYTHING AT ALL. Let's be serious, 250 copies is not really a pirating problem (especially with the draconian DRM/WGA and the buggy/infected patches), it's a resale problem, people don't want your product, not even Chinese Americans that adore Microsoft or first adopters that want the latest and greatest. People don't even want it when they BUY a computer and get Vista for FREE (Vista OEM price = XP OEM price) and don't tell me that a country with over a billion people didn't buy more than 250 computers the last 2 weeks, even though a lot of people are poorer than their westerner counterparts, there are a bunch of companies, a bunch of gadget freaks (more than the US I think) as well as a bunch of filthy rich (richer than you and me). China is not the 3rd world country, the west wants us to believe. Sure it's a poorer country, more mining accidents and their government sucks, but it may be a 2nd world (like us during and right after the industrial revolution or the world wars), but I wouldn't call it 3rd world (as in massive amounts of people dying of malnutrition and no hospitals or massive internal wars).
Our legal system is so bad, it's not even worth going through the trouble, a single person won't make a difference, we have to band together. The problem is once again, money involved. Everybody earns their share by letting cases drag on, meanwhile choking up the legal process for legitimate cases. Now if this person would pay a lawyer, all of a sudden you would see that it goes much better (of course you'll have to know the expense of it). If lawyers would win such a case big time (as in 1000's of dollars), all of a sudden there would be bunches of ambulance-chasers advertising on TV that they will get money for YOU if you receive spam (hey first consultation is free too!)
I'll give you another example: Traffic cops:
Ok, you're speeding or doing something else bad (broken taillight, loud muffler). You get a ticket. You claim "not guilty" and actually go to court. -You let a lawyer handle it (I do), it takes at least 2 appearances and you'll get a great discount. You'll also see some discrepancies, the lawyer actually never goes to court, but you'll receive a letter from your lawyer 2 days before the appearance date that he made a good deal (2 points instead of 4). -You do it yourself (I tried), it takes the first appearance which you'll have to be there and you'll get either the full fine, or some minor discount, depending on the mood of the judge. The eyewitness of the cop that pulled you over apparently has more weight as a witness than 2 persons that were in the car and saw what happened.
Another thing you can confirm with any police officer: He goes to court on his off-time (because they're almost always either in the early morning or late night), gets an hour or more paid overtime (2x or 3x, sometimes up to $100), even if he was there only for 5-15 minutes. The cost of the ticket is somewhere close to $150 in NYS, the judge has to be paid, the cop has to be paid, the court building, the clerk etc. etc.. Actually, the state is LOSING money on your ticket, even if you're guilty as charged.
In the mean time, that officer could be on the streets doing his work or while he pulls you over for some minor traffic infraction (oops, you're going over 10 mph on a highway with a 35mph zone) he could be doing his work. I got pulled over near a school, because the cop thought I might be going too fast (I wasn't). In the mean time school kids (6th-8th grade) were walking by with CIGARETTES, spitting on the pavement right next to my car. I mean, come on, the cop looked at them and just sighed...
I got pulled over in Buffalo, NY, I wasn't doing ANYTHING wrong (just checking if I had been drinking, I hadn't, and then they just kept on looking to find a problem with my paperwork), in the mean time, not even 10 yards away, people were obviously dealing drugs in front of a convenience store. I made a remark on it, because they already kept me busy for 15-20 minutes, they said something like: "well, we do our job the way we see fit, you just sit there and shut up". They drove off, never even checked on the drug dealers.
Actually, Microsoft just announced (today or yesterday) to come with a similar offering. They have copied^W developed^W... whatever, they come out with a new Flash 'killer'.
Some of the greatest features that Adobe doesn't have in Flash is DRM and forced ads for their consumers (that's literally what the post on another news site said). It's also slightly cheaper (if you don't count the licensing costs for Longhorn and SQL Server (required)).
Go work for an 'accredited' registrar, you can initiate transfers and depending on THEIR registrar, or you can go work for their registrar. It will even go automatically (even though the 'protection' might be enabled), we used to have a system that even would aggressively try to register domains that would expire that day (around 23.50, it would iterate through the list very, very fast). We once had a skew with our clock and we got blocked since we tried registering 1000's of domains in the middle of the day.
way back, with C64 there were some good games but the stuff was too expensive to share, but I remember best when networked games started to come out for HOURS of fun with each other.
Everybody had some kind of computer, and we installed our NE2000's, ran a coax to each other, terminated it and installed Red Alert, RA Counterstrike and Aftermath on everybody's computer, fired up our IPX/SPX network and we had tons of fun building and destroying using weapons and techniques everybody thought were possible during the cold war. Or Warcraft I, II and Starcraft. We would cry out hell as soon as we heard *pssh* Ghost Reporting from one of the players speakers. Fun for everybody in the family, even the little ones. The games weren't overly complex but they were based on simple mathematic models and they required you to create a little LAN-party in your house, since internet was slow and not available everywhere.
If you were a single player, you could have fun with Carmageddon, Duke Nukem 3D (also fun multiplayer), Unreal (not the Tournament, although they were also fun), Thief and other such games that had simple yet innovating gameplay. In Unreal for example, we had our first example of 'translucent water' instead of a shocking blue plate, fog as well as 'AI' (monsters would run off, turn off the lights and then attack) and ambient music. Thief had water arrows to darken the places, and with the music up high in a dark room really scary (shackles, guards around the corner).
Nowadays, I think most developers try to reiterate on past titles but can't get there or focus too much on multiplayer capabilities. They're trying to put all kinds of goodies in to make it look better, but the gameplay isn't the same. Unreal Tournament for example was good multiplayer since it was simple enough to develop extensions, the 2004 version is just the same ol' shoot everybody up, and since the games get more complex, so does creating levels so people don't develop as much.
What I'm playing now is Wesnoth (open source) and the gameplay is simple enough, there are numerous extension that change everything and add more units (for example Under the Burning Suns has 2 suns and a darkness in rotation like the planet in Pitch Black) and creating levels and extensions is simple enough.
Still I miss the IPX/SPX functionality where you were forced to get together to play. Now, you just fire up your internet connection and you play against god-knows-who.
Funny, let them try though. First of all, I'm not a US Citizen, second of all, I have my own lawyer and I can rely on my employers' lawyer firm if necessary, third of all, I didn't even do anything wrong.
Solution to telemarketing: My phone is on one of those do-not-call lists, so if a tele-racketeer calls me, I have a little script (http://www.junkbusters.com/script.html) that, if they are persistent, might get them sued.
Solution to junk mail: Scrap the address in the addressing box, send it back. It will add to their confusion and paperwork, maybe the USPS wants to do something about it if everybody would do it.
Solution to SPAM: SpamAssassin, Postfix, RBL etc... the works, very little spam in my inbox, I do have it coming in though, sorted in a separate folder so I don't miss any important mails.
Doesn't matter, you can't listen to them all at the same time (well you could, but it would be kakafonie of sounds) and I think you would have restrictions as towards use in commercial environments (DJ's, bars) and as for distribution through P2P: if it costs you $10/month to get a fast, free download of any music without any risk whatsoever, I think I would take that instead of the slow BT search-and-wait game which might get you caught/cut off if they do simple fingerprinting for example.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot something:
[really, really fast non-understandable disclaimer voice]
Offer valid until 6/30/07. Save up to $1000 off of standards rates when you subscribe to and keep all services for 12 months. Offer valid to new residential customers only. To be considered a new Microsoft customer, customer must not have subscribed to Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Server or Microsoft Live within the previous 300 years and customer must have no outstanding obligation to Microsoft. Customers must subscribe to and maintain all services for the promotional period to receive promotional price. Standard rates apply after promotional period expires and vary depending on location and will need to be paid for ever and ever. Installation extra. Additional fees may apply for complex installation, pirated installation or multiple installations. A mouse, keyboard, screen, network card, NVIDIA Quadro Plex 1000 (IV) and 100MBps internet connection are required at installation. Equipment charges may apply if hardware is not Windows Vista Certified. Taxes, fees and surcharges extra and will vary depending on location. Possibility to install software may vary by market. Microsoft reserves the right to determine the level of service to which this offer applies. Speeds and experience may vary by computer, even if the computer is exactly the same hardware as the other one. Mandatory DRM checks when plugging in hardware, software or media include U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico and is also mandatory where law prohibits. Open standards and open software not included nor supported. Microsoft reserves the right to review and terminate service for residential use, non-residential use, abuse of service or whenever we feel like it. Activation of service may be subject to credit approval, deposit or prepayment and requires a valid address, social security number, major credit card, your first born, an arm and a leg. All programming, packages, pricing and services provided are subject to the terms and conditions of subscriber agreement and are subject to change without notice. Visit microsoft.com for full details on No Money Back Guarantee and We Will Empty Your Bank Account Guarantee. Extra services not available on any computer. Other restrictions may apply. Call 1-800-BENDOVER for full details.
Bah! My neighbour has had this service through TWC for years, and I don't have to pay.
He is one of the two guys that are running Vista.
Well, this comment has been posted since 2005 on Slashdot. Exactly the same in 2 other /. news posts:
r e+owner,+my+business+faces+ruin.+CD+sales+have+dro pped+through+the+floor.+People+aren't+buying+half+ as+many+CDs+as+they+did+just+a+year+ago.%22&hl=en& client=safari&rls=en&filter=0
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22As+a+record+sto
Well, you cold have at least updated your 12 year old record store and 'last year'.
Next to you being an RIAA shill, if you DO have a store, you deserve to be out of business. Or bring some Dimmu Borgir into your 'christian' store.
Hah: The only thing remotely related to computers that I haven't seen Microsoft try to dominate is CAD software.
They have Paint, Publisher and Visio... all trying to be CAD software, now if everyone was as needy about their Operating, Office or Server systems as Architects about their CAD systems...
... but I think, if women are running from such jobs, they shouldn't have taken those jobs in the first place OR should have thought about not having kids when pursuing said career.
For either male or female it's unreasonable to sit in the 24/7 support cycle AND have an 8 hour job AND try to start a family with kids and all. The males can afford it better, although it's not healthy for personal or family life, females are meant to have the children and thus have to nurture and feed them. So do fathers but they are not as involved in that process as are the mothers (both biologically and psychologically).
I think it would be a courtesy to the kids for businesses and schools not to offer child daycare at all and cut females (and responsible fathers) with children off from responsibilities which suck a lot of energy that should be spent towards the kids like 24/7 on-call. That you get paid less because you don't have 2 hours extra overtime is something that you calculate before you decide to stop birth control. On the other hand, flex-hours and remote offices should become more common and accepted (younger management starts to understand it) than it is now, that would relieve a burden from families and improve work performance at the same time.
1) It's easy to do (just as you can blame kiddie-porn for all the rapes and teenage mothers in the world)
2) It makes him look smart (hey, you have something to say and it sounds reasonable, he must have a PhD)
3) He's actually a moron (no contest on that I guess, he is just like any other shrink: explaining what you already know in words you don't understand)
4) It appeals to the masses
is abstinence. Really, don't screw around until all HIV patients are dead. Hah, it is the ultimate cure, the only problem is implementing outside a public like Slashdot.
...somebody forgot the ~ in rm -rf ~/
t omatic-failover-and-d2d2t2brain system. That it takes the whole network down, is a problem.
Adding storage space to a single system shouldn't be a problem, since you take your system down for that anyway (or put it in spare mode or so) even if it's a hotplug-always-on-superfast-resizing-raid-with-au
Well, what's the matter with research? Are we going to kill scientist next for saying there is global warming caused by man? Or are we going to round up the law enforcement in this investigation since they saw or had contact with child porn?
It's true in some states. Contesting tickets worked for me numerous times (7 so far), I got off with either 'failure to obey traffic control device' or nothing at all and once with a 'well, you'll have to take a NY Safety Program course and then we'll reduce it' (NYSP takes off 10% on your insurance costs and 6 points off your license)
Still, if you're developing a system only YOU as developer should have access to it. I have seen few such projects where that is the case and you still need Stored Procedures, Triggers or the like. It is nice to have if you (need to) let others have access to your database and you have a very archaic structure, but if your datastore is well thought out from the beginning and your programming not too complex, I would not fiddle around with it.
He only gets re-elected because he passes such laws, which inherently appeal to parents of children and old people or he passes other laws which are good for certain business. In the mean time small business (like mine) and young professionals do get undermined by a lot of fees to get anything done in NYS.
Another thing is the harsher laws on DWI (and DWAI) only account for more 'poor' people that get caught to lose their jobs and life. I know a guy, that has been re-applying for his license for years. The DMV in NYS doesn't (have to) give him any honest process, just denies all claims (did you know the initial claim is ALWAYS denied) which they collect $50 for each time, his license is still revoked. The guy didn't have that much (cable guy, installing boxes) with no prior history, so a lawyer wasn't in it, he isn't a drunk (only got caught once, barely over the limit, never hit or hurt anyone). In the mean time, I know of another guy, that went in debt to shill out 10-20k for a lawyer, he DID hit somebody and he only got suspended for 6 months.
Taxes keep on rising upon residents as do the price of the utilities. Now the market in NYS is finally 'open' for utilities, still providers are allowed to raise an extra fee on top of the other providers costs for 'using their network' (gas and electric, not phone or anything fancy). Where I live, such surcharge would be $10/month, thus killing off any savings that I would get using an alternative or 'green' provider.
Try to get ANYTHING done in NYS, you'll see that for any form that you want to file to the State, there is on average an instant $10 'administrative fee' not even to mention the 'processing fee' ($30-60) if it was a claim that needs to be approved and then processed.
Jack Thompson already did blame it on video games: http://kotaku.com/gaming/virginia-tech/breaking-id iot-blames-va-shooting-on-games-252702.php
Do you have anything to back that claim up? I thought money had to be backed to be of any value. The government can't just start printing notes without backing it up (with gold or something else like property, land...) to be valued on the international market. And who decides what the dollar is valued today/tomorrow. I thought the market decided that, depending on how much companies and the people in the companies are worth.
It's a complicated issue, but I wouldn't just say that it was to take money out of circulation, because then as your dollar value drops (or rises), so do products in the store (given the price stays the same) so the companies would get the same relative value no matter what the dollar stands and there would never be any inflation anyway.
Remember, if what you say is true, and everybody pays their taxes equally, then the 'artificial' value is relative to everybody (also products and companies), and it doesn't matter whether that would be $100/$100 or $1/$1 then.
What I understand is that taxes pay for our roads and wars and government, if the government doesn't have enough money, they go lend some (as they have a huge debt now), they can't just print out some money and say: hey, we paid off all our debts.
A bunch of American and European companies have locations in China (either factory or research) with many people working there and they don't have an interest in pirating a Windows CD, just because of the possible risk of infected images or litigation in their home countries.
You could say it was due to pirating if their projected sales are down by 1-5%, you can't say it if you didn't sell ANYTHING AT ALL. Let's be serious, 250 copies is not really a pirating problem (especially with the draconian DRM/WGA and the buggy/infected patches), it's a resale problem, people don't want your product, not even Chinese Americans that adore Microsoft or first adopters that want the latest and greatest. People don't even want it when they BUY a computer and get Vista for FREE (Vista OEM price = XP OEM price) and don't tell me that a country with over a billion people didn't buy more than 250 computers the last 2 weeks, even though a lot of people are poorer than their westerner counterparts, there are a bunch of companies, a bunch of gadget freaks (more than the US I think) as well as a bunch of filthy rich (richer than you and me). China is not the 3rd world country, the west wants us to believe. Sure it's a poorer country, more mining accidents and their government sucks, but it may be a 2nd world (like us during and right after the industrial revolution or the world wars), but I wouldn't call it 3rd world (as in massive amounts of people dying of malnutrition and no hospitals or massive internal wars).
Our legal system is so bad, it's not even worth going through the trouble, a single person won't make a difference, we have to band together. The problem is once again, money involved. Everybody earns their share by letting cases drag on, meanwhile choking up the legal process for legitimate cases. Now if this person would pay a lawyer, all of a sudden you would see that it goes much better (of course you'll have to know the expense of it). If lawyers would win such a case big time (as in 1000's of dollars), all of a sudden there would be bunches of ambulance-chasers advertising on TV that they will get money for YOU if you receive spam (hey first consultation is free too!)
I'll give you another example: Traffic cops:
Ok, you're speeding or doing something else bad (broken taillight, loud muffler). You get a ticket.
You claim "not guilty" and actually go to court.
-You let a lawyer handle it (I do), it takes at least 2 appearances and you'll get a great discount. You'll also see some discrepancies, the lawyer actually never goes to court, but you'll receive a letter from your lawyer 2 days before the appearance date that he made a good deal (2 points instead of 4).
-You do it yourself (I tried), it takes the first appearance which you'll have to be there and you'll get either the full fine, or some minor discount, depending on the mood of the judge. The eyewitness of the cop that pulled you over apparently has more weight as a witness than 2 persons that were in the car and saw what happened.
Another thing you can confirm with any police officer: He goes to court on his off-time (because they're almost always either in the early morning or late night), gets an hour or more paid overtime (2x or 3x, sometimes up to $100), even if he was there only for 5-15 minutes. The cost of the ticket is somewhere close to $150 in NYS, the judge has to be paid, the cop has to be paid, the court building, the clerk etc. etc.. Actually, the state is LOSING money on your ticket, even if you're guilty as charged.
In the mean time, that officer could be on the streets doing his work or while he pulls you over for some minor traffic infraction (oops, you're going over 10 mph on a highway with a 35mph zone) he could be doing his work. I got pulled over near a school, because the cop thought I might be going too fast (I wasn't). In the mean time school kids (6th-8th grade) were walking by with CIGARETTES, spitting on the pavement right next to my car. I mean, come on, the cop looked at them and just sighed...
I got pulled over in Buffalo, NY, I wasn't doing ANYTHING wrong (just checking if I had been drinking, I hadn't, and then they just kept on looking to find a problem with my paperwork), in the mean time, not even 10 yards away, people were obviously dealing drugs in front of a convenience store. I made a remark on it, because they already kept me busy for 15-20 minutes, they said something like: "well, we do our job the way we see fit, you just sit there and shut up". They drove off, never even checked on the drug dealers.
Since when did cookies go wireless? I though the FDA might look into issues with cookies... those darn girl scouts!
Actually, Microsoft just announced (today or yesterday) to come with a similar offering. They have copied^W developed^W ... whatever, they come out with a new Flash 'killer'.
Some of the greatest features that Adobe doesn't have in Flash is DRM and forced ads for their consumers (that's literally what the post on another news site said). It's also slightly cheaper (if you don't count the licensing costs for Longhorn and SQL Server (required)).
Really, who's not waiting for MORE DRM?
Go work for an 'accredited' registrar, you can initiate transfers and depending on THEIR registrar, or you can go work for their registrar. It will even go automatically (even though the 'protection' might be enabled), we used to have a system that even would aggressively try to register domains that would expire that day (around 23.50, it would iterate through the list very, very fast). We once had a skew with our clock and we got blocked since we tried registering 1000's of domains in the middle of the day.
Did they use computers, the internet or any other geek method to kill? No? Freakin' lasers on their heads?
way back, with C64 there were some good games but the stuff was too expensive to share, but I remember best when networked games started to come out for HOURS of fun with each other.
Everybody had some kind of computer, and we installed our NE2000's, ran a coax to each other, terminated it and installed Red Alert, RA Counterstrike and Aftermath on everybody's computer, fired up our IPX/SPX network and we had tons of fun building and destroying using weapons and techniques everybody thought were possible during the cold war.
Or Warcraft I, II and Starcraft. We would cry out hell as soon as we heard *pssh* Ghost Reporting from one of the players speakers. Fun for everybody in the family, even the little ones. The games weren't overly complex but they were based on simple mathematic models and they required you to create a little LAN-party in your house, since internet was slow and not available everywhere.
If you were a single player, you could have fun with Carmageddon, Duke Nukem 3D (also fun multiplayer), Unreal (not the Tournament, although they were also fun), Thief and other such games that had simple yet innovating gameplay. In Unreal for example, we had our first example of 'translucent water' instead of a shocking blue plate, fog as well as 'AI' (monsters would run off, turn off the lights and then attack) and ambient music. Thief had water arrows to darken the places, and with the music up high in a dark room really scary (shackles, guards around the corner).
Nowadays, I think most developers try to reiterate on past titles but can't get there or focus too much on multiplayer capabilities. They're trying to put all kinds of goodies in to make it look better, but the gameplay isn't the same. Unreal Tournament for example was good multiplayer since it was simple enough to develop extensions, the 2004 version is just the same ol' shoot everybody up, and since the games get more complex, so does creating levels so people don't develop as much.
What I'm playing now is Wesnoth (open source) and the gameplay is simple enough, there are numerous extension that change everything and add more units (for example Under the Burning Suns has 2 suns and a darkness in rotation like the planet in Pitch Black) and creating levels and extensions is simple enough.
Still I miss the IPX/SPX functionality where you were forced to get together to play. Now, you just fire up your internet connection and you play against god-knows-who.
Funny, let them try though. First of all, I'm not a US Citizen, second of all, I have my own lawyer and I can rely on my employers' lawyer firm if necessary, third of all, I didn't even do anything wrong.
Solution to telemarketing:
... the works, very little spam in my inbox, I do have it coming in though, sorted in a separate folder so I don't miss any important mails.
My phone is on one of those do-not-call lists, so if a tele-racketeer calls me, I have a little script (http://www.junkbusters.com/script.html) that, if they are persistent, might get them sued.
Solution to junk mail:
Scrap the address in the addressing box, send it back. It will add to their confusion and paperwork, maybe the USPS wants to do something about it if everybody would do it.
Solution to SPAM:
SpamAssassin, Postfix, RBL etc
Doesn't matter, you can't listen to them all at the same time (well you could, but it would be kakafonie of sounds) and I think you would have restrictions as towards use in commercial environments (DJ's, bars) and as for distribution through P2P: if it costs you $10/month to get a fast, free download of any music without any risk whatsoever, I think I would take that instead of the slow BT search-and-wait game which might get you caught/cut off if they do simple fingerprinting for example.