Don't you all see that the point of the obscence software harassment (a better term then copy protection or DRM) is to push you to NOT buy the software, but to use their on-line model. No physicial product to deliver. No more friends sharing the expenses for the software. Once they go you locked in they could charge per print out or charge for "extras" like deduction finder. There are many monatary reasons for this, and they would be quite happy chaging as much as HR block-heads. They know they are by FAR the leader in their field (even though TaxCut is quite good).
Other than the root contraversy about the convoluted tax code, the *REAL* contraversy is WHY, oh WHY, doesn't the IRS have this software online. This reminds me of the building code that most of us have to live with, but it not "owned" by the people. ARGH!!
As a psych undergrad, I've read everyone of Frankl's books for my research. It's a shame that current psychology doesn't wish to listen to him. If you want the executive summary of his "third school of vienesse psychology": logotherapy, it goes something like this. Freud (and by some extention, Skinner) was all about the "will to pleasure" - the first school. Man's primary source of modivation for behavior is the pursuit of pleasure. The second school was Alder with a "will to power". Man's drive was to have power over himself, others, enviroment, etc. Frankl's third school was the "will to meaning". Humanity's most driving need and modivation has to do with finding meaning - and a person will manifest certian kinds of mental symptoms, pathologies and psychosis with out it.
That's the summary - discuss amongst yourselves. It's no unification theory or psych or perfect, but very interesting and instantly applicable. I know it might sound like a bunch of psychobabble, but it is an interesting debate. Frankl's assertions come from his treatment of tuboculosis patients in concentration camps. Those who had a reason to survive, more often did. Those who felt they had no reason to go on, always died first.
The most notable point here (and a possible reason it's ignored) is this concept effectively turns Maslow's triangle upside down. Essentially, a person will not breathe, unless they have a reson to.
Did anyone actually *read* this article?!?!!! It's supposedly designed to intercept (spy) on local email, spoof email (propaganda) and last destroy communications.
"In the cab of the truck are housed a 3-D mapping system and a communications system that Fuller described as "hacker in a box." It includes a computer program linked with surveillance equipment to monitor what people in the area around the vehicle are saying in e-mail. SmarTruckII could just sit and listen, send bogus e-mails to confuse an enemy, or, if it is not amused, kill the enemy communications system altogether."
I'm surprised not to see the typicial out-of-control, knee-jerk reaction from the slashdot crowd to this.
An overwhelming majority of the transactions online are credit card. If you open a merchant account and get setup for credit card authentication, you'll find out why micropayments on the web STILL don't work. First, if you're average transation is less than $20, they take more money. Instead of paying 2% of your income in CC fees, it will go up to 3%. Given that micropayments are usally targeted for markets with very small margins, this is not acceptable and the powers that be, don't care. But don't forget to add insult to injury. Telephone sales are charged more for CC authentication b/c there's more trouble with those transactions. But if there's trouble with telephone, the internet must be twice as troublesome, thus a yet higher charge. For micropayments, or just for keeping the average joe form doing business, the costs are to high for the CC companies to be bothered with the business of the serfs. If they were more cooperative and helpful for non-profits, I'd be more understanding.
None the less, work out all the other issues, and you'll still have this one to work through. The idea of a syndicate has been mentioned, and that's one great approach - one charge, many members. I just don't have hope that any of these ideas will gain critial mass.
Alas, after a run on the comedy channel and then on the sci-fi channel, production of new shows has been cancelled. They still show reruns Saturday mornings, in fact make sure and check out "Space Mutiny" playing on Jan. 11th. It the funniest one of this last season.
Mst3k - Thank you for all the laughs and bad movies. May you rest in peace.
"continuous consumption of datareduced audio could possibly lead to fatal consequences"
I always knew the Britney Spears, boy band crap stuffed into every p2p and newsgroup would be the end of me. I guess Metallica wins in the end with "Kill 'em All."
Re:Everyone always overlooks the real root motive
on
Still More RIAA News
·
· Score: 1
Their income isn't dependant on the sucess of the record labels. Currently, they are marketing fear to the labels, and they are the solution... and they need more lawyers, guns and money. Think of it as a sort of union for corporations.
Everyone always overlooks the real root motive
on
Still More RIAA News
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Here is my email to the author...
You have posted a great article. It's very informative and insightful and missing a couple important things.
First, I appreciate your promotion of independent artists and justly compensating them, but I disagree with you're numbers. Let me humbly suggest a different split. 16% for production costs. 34% marketing and bribes (we can dream that clear channel and mtv are with in budget). 16% for the label, 16% for investors and 17% for the band. I don't think anyone would disagree with their cut, but what I'm really trying to express is the rule that you spend twice as much on marketing as you do on R&D. And in this case, the world's demonstrated that marketing often counts more for sales than product quality.
Second, as the above somewhat illustrates, the real enemy of both the consumer AND the labels is radio consolidation and the evil empire of clear channel and the event venue lackies it holds. They limit our choice and variety. For the artist and labels, they charge too much money. At one time, music was often the program that pulled people in to listen to adds. Because of extravagently high payola.. er, I mean, "promoter" costs through elimination of competition, the radio stations have really become NOTHING BUT ADVERTISING. Ads are paid for, programs are paid for, automate and underpay local talent, buy out the competition and then print your own money. The Conrad Burns '96 telecommunications act did good things, but it brought more harm than good and needs to be corrected. The record labels have much much more to gain from investing in policial bribery to bring back competition than they have from making all their consumers and benifactors criminals.
Last, that leads to what the REAL issue with RIAA is. The RIAA's end consumer, the people who pay them, are the records labels. The RIAA has to justify thier high costs to the labels every year. Every year, they have to justify the existence of this perpetual parasitic beauracracy. The labels feel that they get good benifits from the current payola system; they just don't like today's prices. If they didn't like it, the lables have plentry of shills to create politicial winds of change. The RIAA's consumer is the labels, NOT THE CONSUMER. They don't care about us; we aren't even the corn in Rosen's shit. They are paid by the labels. What this whole piracy thing is about marketing themselves as relevent to the labels. Let me repeat; the RIAA's emphasis on piracy is their effort to keep getting money from the labels and to start asking them for more money. Yes, of course it's all about money. The RIAA and the labels know the numbers and reasons you cited. They are pursuing what they feel is a safer, more profitable route. The labels are culpable in all of this of course. I just think you need to cite and remember the root motive to all of this non-sense.
- Design the system so that it requires change controls
- Take daily md5 snap shots of systems
- Always keep off site duplicates of your monthly full back ups. It's not just for DR; it's also for versioning.
- Sue him out of existence and make sure EVERY employer in the area knows about it - not just for vengence, but also as a heads up to other rouge sysadmins.
In other words, follow best practices and procedures.
I don't watch movies - too expensive for too little return. I barely watch tv - 50,000 channels of bad programming. I only have cable b/c it's the only broadband I have access too. I hardly listen to radio - it's all value-removed repackaging and advertising. As such, I buy one cd a year now (a HUGE change for an ex-dj). Print media is ok from time to time b/c of of pricing and depth and choice. I get most of my news, information and entertainment from the net, libraries and books. I'm a pop-culture hermit.
I've been doing this for years now, after having worked in the media. And you know what, they don't care and wouldn't notice if we all did it. Why? They never do an actually random sample when they do ratings. People such as my self are consider an anomoly and are automatically dropped - you can't even fill out the forms. They argue dropping the extremes makes for a better sample (like in some olympic judging), but they seem to always leave in the guy who has colostomy bag so he doesn't have to miss his show.
The important word here is that they are a cartell. In a monopoly, you have no choice. With a cartell, you have very very little choice. Boycotts do not work against monopolys, cartells, utilities and commodities. Sadly, it may be time for regulation - the ultimate vengence. However, after having read about their accounting practices, I don't see why they couldn't be taken down through the RICO laws.:)
If it's critial, YES! When's some is life or death, such as a hospital, it is worth it to be prepared. N+1 redundancy.
The sad thing is I've seen this so many times before in different medical environments I've been in. They usally aren't very modivated to spend money on *any* infrustucture costs. Hospitals may spend some, but it's usally with the modivation to increase donations; "Oh look! It's shiny!"
Just like any other critical service, it costs big bucks to be prepared. How much you want to bet they 1) didn't have version control, 2) didn't have change control and... I could go on. The point is everyone plans for system redundancy and recovery, but just assumes the network is resilent. The network is the comptuer - i.e., the system is the network.
I am proud of them for one thing in particular. IMHO, your last line of redudancy, backups and recovery, etc. should ALWAYS be tangible. When you are involved with something life, death or riches, dead tree backups are the most reliable form I know. I am glad not everyone has lost their common sense to electron envy.
Remember, a capitialist will never turn down a situation to make money. What will happen is this will be required on small aircrafts, not by law of the land, but by the para-governmental, judicial precedence of quasi-civil insurance law. Thus, since there is little competition, there is no modivation to compete on prices, as such, the cost of the plane goes up, and the cost of insurance stays about the same unless you have one of these. If you don't have one, expect to pay 20 times more than others.
As such and admin, let me summarize the market condidtions: Admins: 4 for a $1 Programmers: $2.49/lb
Seriously, there's not that many people left that *need* admins any more. They are either huge and already well staffed, or they are small and have their programmers do the admin work. Putting people out of work by automating their job is ALWAYS in season; it's computing's promise to the capitalist. This includes automating IT, and as such, IT IMHO is a doomed career choice. Think of all of the "computer operator" positions that used to exist. That has almost disappeared, and very soon, so will the network/system/database administrator positions. So ignore his advice about being a sysadmin. Let me add my advice; it's not what you know, it's who you know. Trusted human networks are far more profitable than trusted computer networks.
This is simply a result of thousands of schools foolishly believing that teaching people how to use a browser, word processor and spreadsheet are computer literacy. De-evolution in action.
The study was 95-97... Let me tell you, sitting in front of a 256 color, 12", 60 hz refresh, in an oak chair on a bad desk soaking in the florescent flicker... YES things ***WERE*** bad. (but that ol' IBM keyboard was nice)
Where has this guy been? While he's been sitting and wasting time in his lazy job, I now have a 19", gabillion color, flat screen crt (er... excuse me VDT - heaven forbid I use the venacular of the plebian masses; may academia save us all), at 100hz, with nice task lighting, split keyboard and ergo chair.
What this study tells me is that he doesn't have the connections to get published, and finally someone gave him a break - perhaps just to humiliate him. I don't need any further research; I need a job like this guy has, where I {ahem} work for two years and they expected the results five years later. I'll take, even if I have to use his bad "VDT".
I think I'll just automate this guy out of existence -- and I'll do it in 23 lines - of csh (just to be a bastard!)
Yup, Al Gore invented the term "Information Superhighway" in order to explain to his politicial peers the importance of the internet from a legislatures point of view. See, all congressmen love highway projects; take a whiff and smell the pork. This turn of phrase was very clever.
However, I have to take issue this comment in the assumption that these bills are partisan and party driven. Not so. Since, in the eyes of washington, these are minor issues that registered voters don't care enough about to swing their vote, these bills and actions are up to the highest bidder. True, you will find certain types of people, committees and companies tend to have a favorite flavor of congress critter, but that doesn't really make this partisan.
What I'm really saying is, don't vote with your party; vote with your mind. Do your research about what you care about. Look up who their legislative advisor is - get to know him/her. Drop a $1,000 donation to the ones you like, and I your voice with DEFINATELY get heard, and you WILL get to actually talk to the congressman or any memeber of their staff. Ya, I know it's all corrupt and wrong, but politicial donations can be a good insurance policy sometimes.
Freedom by obscurity?!? Ya that's the ticket, we'll all go underground and that way we can practice our freedoms in secret with out the problems for governments or corporate cheiftons. Great plan there Chester.
Look, the cable companies enjoy their quasi-monopoly status and they seem quite happy to abuse their position, and with the law makers pockets lined well, they will have no worries. What worries me is the lack of FULL disclosure. If I'm going to be screwed in such a way, I think you should at LEAST know what's going on. I want a legal form that people read with glazed over eyes and initial parts to show them EXACTLY what information will be collected and used against them. However, as long as Michael "nepotisim" Powell is the chairman of the FCC to serve interests of the greatest donors and not the people, we might as well get used to saying, "Thank you sir! May I have another!"
> Remember, MS is about one and only one thing, > maximizing the profit of the shareholders. PERIOD. >
Whoa whoa whoa there cheif! I hate to point this out, but you're wrong. Seriously. I know we all have the little capitialist mantra in our heads about profit. However, MS has constantly and routinely screwed their shareholders out of divedens they rightly deserve. The majority stock holders aren't interested in giving anything back and sharing their gains with the rest. Instead, any and all profit goes to continue lining their 40 billion dollar treasure chest. At this point, MS could buy and sell the world if they'd like - hell, they could stop wars, yet they're to frugal to give a penny back to their investors. And this is the REAL reason why MS will be in the very bottom of hell -- Malice toward benifactors.
Sorry, I forgot something else. These solutions are an all-in-one scanner and OCR. So, if you want to scan in tiny 15 point sized (my guess) images, I imagine it would be possible if you wrote the software for it. However, this is a tidy, easy solution for working with and remembering text, not pictures.
It should also be noted that there is a small learning curve. It takes some getting used to making a straight line. You'll also see that it tries it's best to turn frames or boxes around text into characters (like |) and it's sometimes hard to aim for starting and stopping of scanning. Like all OCRs there are occasional mistakes that will need to be corrected, and they occur more frequently if there isn't much contrast (light print, colored paper, colored text, etc). Last, don't even THINK of trying to scan handwriting. Cursive or printing will turn into complete garbage. As I've said, it is a niche market item, but what it does, it does suprisingly well. Now go and buy me one!:)
I forgot to mention, I believe both of them have memory upgrades available. However, you're hand may wear out before you use up all the memory. Also, don't get intimidated by the ebay prices; they are not accurate. I picked up both of them in SoCal stores like Fry's and Office Depot for around $100. However, they are hard to find. It's been about a year since I lost my job and access to the device. I've been casually checking out computer sales to pick up one, but haven't had much luck yet.
I understand and appreciate your problem. I have tried many solutions, and I believe the c-pen800c is the best solution I've tried for my research needs. There is another pen based solution, WizComQuickLink SuperPen which I've also tried. I did not like the wizcom because it was not as comfortable to use or as accurate. It also actually had a moving part.:) Both have SDKs to write your own software, however, the only one I could get access to was the c-pen, which made it even more of a favorite of mine. The cpen can also act as a mouse and can do some gestures in addition to being able to input text through "writing" (in big letters) on the page. Both companies are barely alive it seems, but it's a niche market, and I hope they survive. They both have some fantastic functionality, such as translation and barcodes. Of course c|net did the normal bribed review, but I guess the cpen wasn't out at the time. Both are upgradeable and can load extra programs or dictionaries and such. I wouldn't want to go back to college with out one.
Hey, if this has at all been useful, please feel free to buy me one! I miss having it around.
My little FM station, with one less than desirable antenna location reached 5 to 7 miles with a 100 watt transmitter and had an effective radiated power of 100 watts. Pay attention to that. It's not how much power, but how well it's radiated (er, some spelling like that). As a comparison, a commercial radio staion I worked for had a 25kW transmitter and four antenna elements, all of which were well tuned, with the highest antenna line of sight place in the area. They reached 100kW of effecitve radiated power with a range what was HUGE and clear. But that's FM. AM, is much much smaller. The commercial AM I was with was something like 10kW durning the day and 1kW at night. Oh ya, don't forget unless it's really low power AM (traffic radios), there are two set of paper work headaches to suffer through, b/c of the nature of the signal. Take my adivse - never start a new AM station (but buying an existing one wouldn't be so bad).
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you all see that the point of the obscence software harassment (a better term then copy protection or DRM) is to push you to NOT buy the software, but to use their on-line model. No physicial product to deliver. No more friends sharing the expenses for the software. Once they go you locked in they could charge per print out or charge for "extras" like deduction finder. There are many monatary reasons for this, and they would be quite happy chaging as much as HR block-heads. They know they are by FAR the leader in their field (even though TaxCut is quite good).
Other than the root contraversy about the convoluted tax code, the *REAL* contraversy is WHY, oh WHY, doesn't the IRS have this software online. This reminds me of the building code that most of us have to live with, but it not "owned" by the people. ARGH!!
As a psych undergrad, I've read everyone of Frankl's books for my research. It's a shame that current psychology doesn't wish to listen to him. If you want the executive summary of his "third school of vienesse psychology": logotherapy, it goes something like this. Freud (and by some extention, Skinner) was all about the "will to pleasure" - the first school. Man's primary source of modivation for behavior is the pursuit of pleasure. The second school was Alder with a "will to power". Man's drive was to have power over himself, others, enviroment, etc. Frankl's third school was the "will to meaning". Humanity's most driving need and modivation has to do with finding meaning - and a person will manifest certian kinds of mental symptoms, pathologies and psychosis with out it.
That's the summary - discuss amongst yourselves. It's no unification theory or psych or perfect, but very interesting and instantly applicable. I know it might sound like a bunch of psychobabble, but it is an interesting debate. Frankl's assertions come from his treatment of tuboculosis patients in concentration camps. Those who had a reason to survive, more often did. Those who felt they had no reason to go on, always died first.
The most notable point here (and a possible reason it's ignored) is this concept effectively turns Maslow's triangle upside down. Essentially, a person will not breathe, unless they have a reson to.
Ironic this post comes at the same time of Cringely's comments on the subject. Now, not only am I a solaris admin, I guess I'm also a Forth admin!
Did anyone actually *read* this article?!?!!! It's supposedly designed to intercept (spy) on local email, spoof email (propaganda) and last destroy communications.
"In the cab of the truck are housed a 3-D mapping system and a communications system that Fuller described as "hacker in a box." It includes a computer program linked with surveillance equipment to monitor what people in the area around the vehicle are saying in e-mail. SmarTruckII could just sit and listen, send bogus e-mails to confuse an enemy, or, if it is not amused, kill the enemy communications system altogether."
I'm surprised not to see the typicial out-of-control, knee-jerk reaction from the slashdot crowd to this.
1) Write "Ask Slashdot" asking a question that references what you want to promote.
2) ?????
3) Profit!!
An overwhelming majority of the transactions online are credit card. If you open a merchant account and get setup for credit card authentication, you'll find out why micropayments on the web STILL don't work. First, if you're average transation is less than $20, they take more money. Instead of paying 2% of your income in CC fees, it will go up to 3%. Given that micropayments are usally targeted for markets with very small margins, this is not acceptable and the powers that be, don't care. But don't forget to add insult to injury. Telephone sales are charged more for CC authentication b/c there's more trouble with those transactions. But if there's trouble with telephone, the internet must be twice as troublesome, thus a yet higher charge. For micropayments, or just for keeping the average joe form doing business, the costs are to high for the CC companies to be bothered with the business of the serfs. If they were more cooperative and helpful for non-profits, I'd be more understanding.
None the less, work out all the other issues, and you'll still have this one to work through. The idea of a syndicate has been mentioned, and that's one great approach - one charge, many members. I just don't have hope that any of these ideas will gain critial mass.
I don't know if this was the inspiration, but Exeter is the lead uhh... villan who has a change of heart the end of the bad 50's sci-fi movie This Island Earth - which I only know because Mystery Science Theater 3000 focused their wit on this movie, when they made their Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Movie.
Alas, after a run on the comedy channel and then on the sci-fi channel, production of new shows has been cancelled. They still show reruns Saturday mornings, in fact make sure and check out "Space Mutiny" playing on Jan. 11th. It the funniest one of this last season.
Mst3k - Thank you for all the laughs and bad movies. May you rest in peace.
"continuous consumption of datareduced audio could possibly lead to fatal consequences"
I always knew the Britney Spears, boy band crap stuffed into every p2p and newsgroup would be the end of me. I guess Metallica wins in the end with "Kill 'em All."
Their income isn't dependant on the sucess of the record labels. Currently, they are marketing fear to the labels, and they are the solution... and they need more lawyers, guns and money. Think of it as a sort of union for corporations.
Here is my email to the author...
You have posted a great article. It's very informative and insightful and missing a couple important things.
First, I appreciate your promotion of independent artists and justly compensating them, but I disagree with you're numbers. Let me humbly suggest a different split. 16% for production costs. 34% marketing and bribes (we can dream that clear channel and mtv are with in budget). 16% for the label, 16% for investors and 17% for the band. I don't think anyone would disagree with their cut, but what I'm really trying to express is the rule that you spend twice as much on marketing as you do on R&D. And in this case, the world's demonstrated that marketing often counts more for sales than product quality.
Second, as the above somewhat illustrates, the real enemy of both the consumer AND the labels is radio consolidation and the evil empire of clear channel and the event venue lackies it holds. They limit our choice and variety. For the artist and labels, they charge too much money. At one time, music was often the program that pulled people in to listen to adds. Because of extravagently high payola.. er, I mean, "promoter" costs through elimination of competition, the radio stations have really become NOTHING BUT ADVERTISING. Ads are paid for, programs are paid for, automate and underpay local talent, buy out the competition and then print your own money. The Conrad Burns '96 telecommunications act did good things, but it brought more harm than good and needs to be corrected. The record labels have much much more to gain from investing in policial bribery to bring back competition than they have from making all their consumers and benifactors criminals.
Last, that leads to what the REAL issue with RIAA is. The RIAA's end consumer, the people who pay them, are the records labels. The RIAA has to justify thier high costs to the labels every year. Every year, they have to justify the existence of this perpetual parasitic beauracracy. The labels feel that they get good benifits from the current payola system; they just don't like today's prices. If they didn't like it, the lables have plentry of shills to create politicial winds of change. The RIAA's consumer is the labels, NOT THE CONSUMER. They don't care about us; we aren't even the corn in Rosen's shit. They are paid by the labels. What this whole piracy thing is about marketing themselves as relevent to the labels. Let me repeat; the RIAA's emphasis on piracy is their effort to keep getting money from the labels and to start asking them for more money. Yes, of course it's all about money. The RIAA and the labels know the numbers and reasons you cited. They are pursuing what they feel is a safer, more profitable route. The labels are culpable in all of this of course. I just think you need to cite and remember the root motive to all of this non-sense.
Good Luck!
- Design the system so that it requires change controls
- Take daily md5 snap shots of systems
- Always keep off site duplicates of your monthly full back ups. It's not just for DR; it's also for versioning.
- Sue him out of existence and make sure EVERY employer in the area knows about it - not just for vengence, but also as a heads up to other rouge sysadmins.
In other words, follow best practices and procedures.
I don't watch movies - too expensive for too little return. I barely watch tv - 50,000 channels of bad programming. I only have cable b/c it's the only broadband I have access too. I hardly listen to radio - it's all value-removed repackaging and advertising. As such, I buy one cd a year now (a HUGE change for an ex-dj). Print media is ok from time to time b/c of of pricing and depth and choice. I get most of my news, information and entertainment from the net, libraries and books. I'm a pop-culture hermit.
:)
I've been doing this for years now, after having worked in the media. And you know what, they don't care and wouldn't notice if we all did it. Why? They never do an actually random sample when they do ratings. People such as my self are consider an anomoly and are automatically dropped - you can't even fill out the forms. They argue dropping the extremes makes for a better sample (like in some olympic judging), but they seem to always leave in the guy who has colostomy bag so he doesn't have to miss his show.
The important word here is that they are a cartell. In a monopoly, you have no choice. With a cartell, you have very very little choice. Boycotts do not work against monopolys, cartells, utilities and commodities. Sadly, it may be time for regulation - the ultimate vengence. However, after having read about their accounting practices, I don't see why they couldn't be taken down through the RICO laws.
The sad thing is I've seen this so many times before in different medical environments I've been in. They usally aren't very modivated to spend money on *any* infrustucture costs. Hospitals may spend some, but it's usally with the modivation to increase donations; "Oh look! It's shiny!"
Just like any other critical service, it costs big bucks to be prepared. How much you want to bet they 1) didn't have version control, 2) didn't have change control and
I am proud of them for one thing in particular. IMHO, your last line of redudancy, backups and recovery, etc. should ALWAYS be tangible. When you are involved with something life, death or riches, dead tree backups are the most reliable form I know. I am glad not everyone has lost their common sense to electron envy.
Remember, a capitialist will never turn down a situation to make money. What will happen is this will be required on small aircrafts, not by law of the land, but by the para-governmental, judicial precedence of quasi-civil insurance law. Thus, since there is little competition, there is no modivation to compete on prices, as such, the cost of the plane goes up, and the cost of insurance stays about the same unless you have one of these. If you don't have one, expect to pay 20 times more than others.
Ah yes son, you get to learn the way I did - only then will you truely learn to love cut & paste.
As such and admin, let me summarize the market condidtions:
Admins: 4 for a $1
Programmers: $2.49/lb
Seriously, there's not that many people left that *need* admins any more. They are either huge and already well staffed, or they are small and have their programmers do the admin work. Putting people out of work by automating their job is ALWAYS in season; it's computing's promise to the capitalist. This includes automating IT, and as such, IT IMHO is a doomed career choice. Think of all of the "computer operator" positions that used to exist. That has almost disappeared, and very soon, so will the network/system/database administrator positions.
So ignore his advice about being a sysadmin. Let me add my advice; it's not what you know, it's who you know. Trusted human networks are far more profitable than trusted computer networks.
This is simply a result of thousands of schools foolishly believing that teaching people how to use a browser, word processor and spreadsheet are computer literacy. De-evolution in action.
Where has this guy been? While he's been sitting and wasting time in his lazy job, I now have a 19", gabillion color, flat screen crt (er... excuse me VDT - heaven forbid I use the venacular of the plebian masses; may academia save us all), at 100hz, with nice task lighting, split keyboard and ergo chair.
What this study tells me is that he doesn't have the connections to get published, and finally someone gave him a break - perhaps just to humiliate him. I don't need any further research; I need a job like this guy has, where I {ahem} work for two years and they expected the results five years later. I'll take, even if I have to use his bad "VDT".
I think I'll just automate this guy out of existence -- and I'll do it in 23 lines - of csh (just to be a bastard!)
However, I have to take issue this comment in the assumption that these bills are partisan and party driven. Not so. Since, in the eyes of washington, these are minor issues that registered voters don't care enough about to swing their vote, these bills and actions are up to the highest bidder. True, you will find certain types of people, committees and companies tend to have a favorite flavor of congress critter, but that doesn't really make this partisan.
What I'm really saying is, don't vote with your party; vote with your mind. Do your research about what you care about. Look up who their legislative advisor is - get to know him/her. Drop a $1,000 donation to the ones you like, and I your voice with DEFINATELY get heard, and you WILL get to actually talk to the congressman or any memeber of their staff. Ya, I know it's all corrupt and wrong, but politicial donations can be a good insurance policy sometimes.
Freedom by obscurity?!? Ya that's the ticket, we'll all go underground and that way we can practice our freedoms in secret with out the problems for governments or corporate cheiftons. Great plan there Chester.
Look, the cable companies enjoy their quasi-monopoly status and they seem quite happy to abuse their position, and with the law makers pockets lined well, they will have no worries. What worries me is the lack of FULL disclosure. If I'm going to be screwed in such a way, I think you should at LEAST know what's going on. I want a legal form that people read with glazed over eyes and initial parts to show them EXACTLY what information will be collected and used against them. However, as long as Michael "nepotisim" Powell is the chairman of the FCC to serve interests of the greatest donors and not the people, we might as well get used to saying, "Thank you sir! May I have another!"
> Remember, MS is about one and only one thing,
> maximizing the profit of the shareholders. PERIOD.
>
Whoa whoa whoa there cheif! I hate to point this out, but you're wrong. Seriously. I know we all have the little capitialist mantra in our heads about profit. However, MS has constantly and routinely screwed their shareholders out of divedens they rightly deserve. The majority stock holders aren't interested in giving anything back and sharing their gains with the rest. Instead, any and all profit goes to continue lining their 40 billion dollar treasure chest. At this point, MS could buy and sell the world if they'd like - hell, they could stop wars, yet they're to frugal to give a penny back to their investors. And this is the REAL reason why MS will be in the very bottom of hell -- Malice toward benifactors.
Sorry, I forgot something else. These solutions are an all-in-one scanner and OCR. So, if you want to scan in tiny 15 point sized (my guess) images, I imagine it would be possible if you wrote the software for it. However, this is a tidy, easy solution for working with and remembering text, not pictures.
:)
It should also be noted that there is a small learning curve. It takes some getting used to making a straight line. You'll also see that it tries it's best to turn frames or boxes around text into characters (like |) and it's sometimes hard to aim for starting and stopping of scanning. Like all OCRs there are occasional mistakes that will need to be corrected, and they occur more frequently if there isn't much contrast (light print, colored paper, colored text, etc). Last, don't even THINK of trying to scan handwriting. Cursive or printing will turn into complete garbage. As I've said, it is a niche market item, but what it does, it does suprisingly well. Now go and buy me one!
I forgot to mention, I believe both of them have memory upgrades available. However, you're hand may wear out before you use up all the memory. Also, don't get intimidated by the ebay prices; they are not accurate. I picked up both of them in SoCal stores like Fry's and Office Depot for around $100. However, they are hard to find. It's been about a year since I lost my job and access to the device. I've been casually checking out computer sales to pick up one, but haven't had much luck yet.
I understand and appreciate your problem. I have tried many solutions, and I believe the c-pen 800c is the best solution I've tried for my research needs. There is another pen based solution, WizCom QuickLink SuperPen which I've also tried. I did not like the wizcom because it was not as comfortable to use or as accurate. It also actually had a moving part. :) Both have SDKs to write your own software, however, the only one I could get access to was the c-pen, which made it even more of a favorite of mine. The cpen can also act as a mouse and can do some gestures in addition to being able to input text through "writing" (in big letters) on the page. Both companies are barely alive it seems, but it's a niche market, and I hope they survive. They both have some fantastic functionality, such as translation and barcodes. Of course c|net did the normal bribed review, but I guess the cpen wasn't out at the time. Both are upgradeable and can load extra programs or dictionaries and such. I wouldn't want to go back to college with out one.
Hey, if this has at all been useful, please feel free to buy me one! I miss having it around.
My little FM station, with one less than desirable antenna location reached 5 to 7 miles with a 100 watt transmitter and had an effective radiated power of 100 watts. Pay attention to that. It's not how much power, but how well it's radiated (er, some spelling like that). As a comparison, a commercial radio staion I worked for had a 25kW transmitter and four antenna elements, all of which were well tuned, with the highest antenna line of sight place in the area. They reached 100kW of effecitve radiated power with a range what was HUGE and clear. But that's FM. AM, is much much smaller. The commercial AM I was with was something like 10kW durning the day and 1kW at night. Oh ya, don't forget unless it's really low power AM (traffic radios), there are two set of paper work headaches to suffer through, b/c of the nature of the signal. Take my adivse - never start a new AM station (but buying an existing one wouldn't be so bad).