And for another horrible decision, consider how they handle keywords.
The Keyword functionality is a great idea in Firefox, but it feels like the devs hate it - they hide it away in the UI, it's underfeatured, and it doesn't work with Awful Bar. If I type "wp Sasquatch" to get to the wikipedia page for Sasquatch, that doesn't get saved in the history - and the Great Bar doesn't realize that what you're typing may be using a keyword. So when I again type "wp Sasq", odds are I just get no results at all from the Bar. Instead, Firefox locks up for a few seconds while churning away finding irrelevant pages I haven't been to in months.
You forget that even the most ignorant of computer users recognizes that software becomes obsolete. If anything, it'll keep people away because they are going to think of it as an old program among a bunch of new, more up-to-date ones.
Right, that's why no one trusts "Windows", "Office", "Internet Explorer", "Photoshop"... all of these shitty obsolete brands. Ignorant computer users are racing toward Ubuntu and OpenOffice because they're never heard of them, so they must be good!
Not every business enterprise has to be glorious. Napster piggybacked off of an existing brand, and it was probably at least a decent move for them.
They seem to be doing okay. Just a few wikipedia quotes, take them or leave them...
On April 3, 2007 Napster reported it had over 830,000 paid subscribers.
September 15, 2008 - Napster is purchased by Best Buy for $121 million.
So what if Kazaa-pay is not as nearly big as Kazaa-free was? If you're going to have a pay music service, it's still probably beneficial to call it Kazaa, just to have some name recognition.
Look at it this way: assume for a moment that he wants to be altruistic. The technologies available to him to do this the way he wants are Silverlight and Flash.
And avi, mpg, mp4, mkv, wmv, mov, ogm... posting it on youtube... distributing via bittorrent...
But yeah, Silverlight was the only reasonable option.
There's other stuff you can drink besides beer. I know, I didn't believe it at first either, but it's true! You can turn Coca-cola into pee. Or Powerade!
The phone's purpose is making phone calls. If a phone is low on battery power, and I'm making a call, by all means, ALWAYS cut power to non-essential components.
I'd imagine most people don't do this, but if there really are people giving 10% of their gross income to a church... that is not an insignificant sum of money.
If you lose your money because a Christian church, promising happiness and afterlife, convinces you to donate... not only is it legal, it's encouraged (tax-deductible).
I think ponzi schemes, like gambling, are illegal because they provide competition against the government-run version (social security).
This is why I added "effectively", although I'm sorry it wasn't a strong enough qualifier for you. But yes, in the long run, Verizon makes less money by enabling service for free upon special requests than if they stick to their fairly reasonable policy of charging service. By "out $20" I don't mean that they lose $20 - I mean they don't receive the $20 that is due.
Regardless, while it may be Verizon's responsibility to cooperate with police, it isn't Verizon's job to give anyone free phone service upon police request.
But to further be the devil's advocate, I'll agree that in this situation, Verizon would have been better off being helpful. Then maybe they'd get a small favorable mention in the news, instead of this sort of negative press. $20 is negligible enough that I'd say both parties fucked up on this one.
If turning this guy's cell phone on was worth $20, doing it effectively means somebody is going to be out $20. Why should Verizon be the one to foot that bill? The police required this man's phone service to be on, so they should have paid to turn his phone service on. Why the hell not?
I believe I said torrents are particularly useful for more popular content. Pirate Bay seems to support this notion. This does not mean that it is impossible, or even uncommon, to torrent indie music.
One problem is that you're examining bittorrent - designed for distributing large chunks of data (like long-lived band's discography) amongst a large number of peers (the bigger the swarm, the better - not so good for obscure, low-demand content). So... yeah, of course torrent sites are naturally geared toward already-popular content.
Maybe we can compromise - a simple and cheap tech input device that's also reliable. Mouse/keyboard. Has no one considered this?
When did we decide that touch screens are easier? They aren't. They're a pain in the ass for everyone. Unless, maybe, you're an amputee, and you're depending on being able to touch the screen with your nubs, or if your arthritis prevents you from gripping a mouse. In those cases, maybe we should think about what we did in paper/pencil days (someone needs to help you, I'm guessing).
Spoken like a true idealist problem solver. Two of my favorite CS classes dealt with circuit design, and we depended heavily on a simulator (LogicWorks - not great, but it does the trick) instead of breadboards. I had to use the computer lab because its were the only computers available that could boot into Windows. Are you really saying that these courses should ditch the simulator, on principle, because classes shouldn't require specific software? Or that any student who finds a different simulator should be able to use it (which introduces all manner of hell for graders)?
I agree mostly with you, but I think you're doing your argument a disservice by intentionally missing the point of these sorts of bans. The intent isn't to make it impossible for people to kill other people. The intent of gun legislation is to introduce hidrances which tend to result in less crime. There must be plenty of incidents which are mostly impulsive, not a case of "a human being really wants to kill another human being", wherein maybe the guy wouldn't have killed if it hadn't been so quick and easy. Obviously gun bans don't eliminated crime - but surely you can't claim they don't help at all. The question is how much they help, weighed against the loss of liberty imposed by the ban.
time chromium WARNING: could not read config file (/home/chris/.chromium) WARNING: could not read score file (/home/chris/.chromium-score) randomizing. SDL initialized. X Error of failed request: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 143 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 19 (X_GLXQueryServerString)
Serial number of failed request: 11
Current serial number in output stream: 11
real 0m0.221s user 0m0.088s sys 0m0.012s
That's SO FAST! I've never had a browser run less than a second before!
Slashdot Mirror
And for another horrible decision, consider how they handle keywords.
The Keyword functionality is a great idea in Firefox, but it feels like the devs hate it - they hide it away in the UI, it's underfeatured, and it doesn't work with Awful Bar. If I type "wp Sasquatch" to get to the wikipedia page for Sasquatch, that doesn't get saved in the history - and the Great Bar doesn't realize that what you're typing may be using a keyword. So when I again type "wp Sasq", odds are I just get no results at all from the Bar. Instead, Firefox locks up for a few seconds while churning away finding irrelevant pages I haven't been to in months.
A very good guide to the thermite solution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EVJFg4dxVA
As you can see, it takes a lot of care and finesse to pull of this laptop mod :)
Right, that's why no one trusts "Windows", "Office", "Internet Explorer", "Photoshop"... all of these shitty obsolete brands. Ignorant computer users are racing toward Ubuntu and OpenOffice because they're never heard of them, so they must be good!
Not every business enterprise has to be glorious. Napster piggybacked off of an existing brand, and it was probably at least a decent move for them.
They seem to be doing okay. Just a few wikipedia quotes, take them or leave them...
So what if Kazaa-pay is not as nearly big as Kazaa-free was? If you're going to have a pay music service, it's still probably beneficial to call it Kazaa, just to have some name recognition.
And avi, mpg, mp4, mkv, wmv, mov, ogm... posting it on youtube... distributing via bittorrent...
But yeah, Silverlight was the only reasonable option.
There's other stuff you can drink besides beer. I know, I didn't believe it at first either, but it's true! You can turn Coca-cola into pee. Or Powerade!
Reinstalling your entire computer seems easy... just carry it out of the room, then set put it back???
Some are born with Internet, some pay a lot for Internet, and others have Internet thrust upon them.
Absolutely - use noscript, and adblock any offending images.
I have noticed virtually no change.
The phone's purpose is making phone calls. If a phone is low on battery power, and I'm making a call, by all means, ALWAYS cut power to non-essential components.
[citation needed]
Can't argue with that. Scientology is definitely a much better scam than Christianity.
Loss is loss, petty or otherwise. $10 of fraud is still fraud. I will point you to a Wikipedia article, but a relevant one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe#Modern-day_teachings
I'd imagine most people don't do this, but if there really are people giving 10% of their gross income to a church... that is not an insignificant sum of money.
If you lose your money because a Christian church, promising happiness and afterlife, convinces you to donate... not only is it legal, it's encouraged (tax-deductible).
I think ponzi schemes, like gambling, are illegal because they provide competition against the government-run version (social security).
This is why I added "effectively", although I'm sorry it wasn't a strong enough qualifier for you. But yes, in the long run, Verizon makes less money by enabling service for free upon special requests than if they stick to their fairly reasonable policy of charging service. By "out $20" I don't mean that they lose $20 - I mean they don't receive the $20 that is due.
Regardless, while it may be Verizon's responsibility to cooperate with police, it isn't Verizon's job to give anyone free phone service upon police request.
But to further be the devil's advocate, I'll agree that in this situation, Verizon would have been better off being helpful. Then maybe they'd get a small favorable mention in the news, instead of this sort of negative press. $20 is negligible enough that I'd say both parties fucked up on this one.
If turning this guy's cell phone on was worth $20, doing it effectively means somebody is going to be out $20. Why should Verizon be the one to foot that bill? The police required this man's phone service to be on, so they should have paid to turn his phone service on. Why the hell not?
I believe I said torrents are particularly useful for more popular content. Pirate Bay seems to support this notion. This does not mean that it is impossible, or even uncommon, to torrent indie music.
One problem is that you're examining bittorrent - designed for distributing large chunks of data (like long-lived band's discography) amongst a large number of peers (the bigger the swarm, the better - not so good for obscure, low-demand content). So... yeah, of course torrent sites are naturally geared toward already-popular content.
Maybe we can compromise - a simple and cheap tech input device that's also reliable. Mouse/keyboard. Has no one considered this?
When did we decide that touch screens are easier? They aren't. They're a pain in the ass for everyone. Unless, maybe, you're an amputee, and you're depending on being able to touch the screen with your nubs, or if your arthritis prevents you from gripping a mouse. In those cases, maybe we should think about what we did in paper/pencil days (someone needs to help you, I'm guessing).
Some days, I don't even take a lunch.
Spoken like a true idealist problem solver. Two of my favorite CS classes dealt with circuit design, and we depended heavily on a simulator (LogicWorks - not great, but it does the trick) instead of breadboards. I had to use the computer lab because its were the only computers available that could boot into Windows. Are you really saying that these courses should ditch the simulator, on principle, because classes shouldn't require specific software? Or that any student who finds a different simulator should be able to use it (which introduces all manner of hell for graders)?
I agree mostly with you, but I think you're doing your argument a disservice by intentionally missing the point of these sorts of bans. The intent isn't to make it impossible for people to kill other people. The intent of gun legislation is to introduce hidrances which tend to result in less crime. There must be plenty of incidents which are mostly impulsive, not a case of "a human being really wants to kill another human being", wherein maybe the guy wouldn't have killed if it hadn't been so quick and easy. Obviously gun bans don't eliminated crime - but surely you can't claim they don't help at all. The question is how much they help, weighed against the loss of liberty imposed by the ban.
Good call!
time chromium
WARNING: could not read config file (/home/chris/.chromium)
WARNING: could not read score file (/home/chris/.chromium-score)
randomizing.
SDL initialized.
X Error of failed request: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 143 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 19 (X_GLXQueryServerString)
Serial number of failed request: 11
Current serial number in output stream: 11
real 0m0.221s
user 0m0.088s
sys 0m0.012s
That's SO FAST! I've never had a browser run less than a second before!
Were you trying to disagree? I think 2/3 of the passengers counts as a lot of people.