Hi there Californians! I live in your neighboring state of Oregon, where not only can we buy any television we damn well please, but also there is no sales tax. For a nominal fee equivalent to the CA sales tax, I would be more than happy to purchase an energy guzzling television for you and deliver it to you. Just one question -- will the fruit check stations on the border now also ask me to declare if I'm carrying any large screen TVs?
Call me paranoid, but that is one of the reasons I refuse to subscribe to the local newspaper -- not only do papers piling up in the driveway make it obvious no one is home, but there are also documented incidents of paper carriers working in collusion with burglars to identify homes where occupants are on vacation. I even had a running battle with the local paper because they insisted on leaving free newspapers in my driveway despite my repeated attempts to "opt out". (Apparently every six months or so they delete the information and require everyone to opt out again. However, the third time they started leaving papers after I told them not to I threatened to have them arrested for offensive littering and criminal trespass, and I haven't had any problems since.)
It's not completely harmless, but harmless enough that it doesn't warrant the prejudice that it gets. While I agree with your statements and believe they are true, on balance I'd like to say that 1) Cannabis does cause psychological, but not physical addiction (I had a friend who used to start smashing things if he went too long without a joint), 2) unlike alcohol which is quickly removed from the system, THC can be stored in your fatty tissues for weeks, and 3) Any device used as a crutch to avoid confronting your problems prevents you from maturing and achieving your true purpose as a human (but this applies equally as well to alcohol, TV, etc.) I choose not to imbibe because my profession requires logical thought, but for people like writers or musicians it actually seems to be beneficial in that it stimulates creativity. On balance, I think it would be best if we tried to honestly educate people to all the pros and cons of cannabis use and let them make their own decision. The "reefer madness" approach currently used to "educate" children only teaches them to distrust authority when they later discover that 90% of what they have been told is pure bullshit intentionally designed to scare them into specific behavior.
Sure, it's bomb-proof, but what I really want to know is, is it kid-proof? I've got a child that has done several hundred dollars worth of drywall damage just be playing in the house...
The "Joint and Several Liability" legal principle states that even if you are found to be 1% liable for an injury, you can be made to pay 100% of the actual and punitive damages in a lawsuit. This is more commonly known as the "Deep Pockets" principle: always sue the entity with the most money, not the entity most responsible. Yes, I believe it would apply to the provider of free WiFi as well, should the MPAA decide to file a lawsuit.
You mean the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Gang Violence" are not covered by the Geneva Conventions?!? Perhaps we should refer to it as something like the "Civilian Police Effort against Drugs" instead...
Great, but I've got a credit for which the website checks for a cookie everytime you log in, and if it doesn't find it, requires you to revalidate the machine by responding to an email!!! My credit union account forces me to answer security question every time it doesn't find a cookie saying I've logged in from that machine before. Which, since I delete all cookies every time I exit FireFox, is really kind of a pain in the ass! Restoring back to a know good save point would be fine if so many websites didn't rely on cookies for normal operation. (Any idea how to separate the cookies that need to be preserved from all the rest?)
My daughter is currently on a kick where she installs every web game she can find. She called me up and asked if it was ok if she installed something called "zwinkies" -- like an idiot, I told her "yes" without googling it first. Again, reinstalling a game from scratch every time you want to play it is probably not a viable option.
Yes, but so does Publicly stating that your company's stock is overvalued, and 10 years later Ballmer still has his job! (In both cases, the fact that they were speaking the truth is no defense -- they have a fiduciary responsibility to the company they work for to not damage it's market value.)
I think it is obvious to most observers that Windows and Mac OSX copy features from each other. I'll leave it to the Windows and Mac fan boyz to argue about which direction the majority of copying occurs in, but the original design of Windows including many of the APIs does appear to have borrowed from the Mac.
PowerPoint doesn't make bad presenters any worse, or good presenters any better. I used PowerPoint when I taught a Java programming class, and basically had to spend more time preparing the slides than actually giving the lectures. I also posted the slides on the college web site after every lecture. Whiteboards were still used to illustrate the answers to questions from students -- and there were a lot of questions. There are a lot of reasons I sucked as a teacher (talking in a monotone, trying to teach both students who already know C and those who had no programming experience whatsoever, having a really crappy textbook forced on us by the college, etc.) But I don't think PowerPoint made me any worse. If anything, it was much easier to read than my handwriting on a whiteboard, as well as allowing me to cover more material.
Back in the day, we had a Calculus professor who would write with his right hand while erasing with his left -- making it virtually impossible to simultaneously take notes and understand what he what talking about. Personally, I think canned lectures are an improvement.
I believe the reason this will never catch has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with legal liability. Who is going to want to be the front car of the train, when they will obviously be responsible for any accidents? What company is going to want to supply this system and open themselves up to massive lawsuits whenever somebody finds a way to defeat the system and cause an accident?
I've written subroutines called "ReadByte" several times, so obviously both the Microsoft code and the GPL code is in violation of my company's copyright! (BTW, if the ReadBytes routine doesn't have a buffer size parameter and return the actual number of bytes read, it is bad code.)
On reflection, a slight modification to the above stated position: if the crimes are committed as part of a concerted effort to intimidate members of a certain class and deny them their freedoms, then there should be additional penalties. But that should not require the spelling out of any specific "protected classes".
they'll build a mediocre knock-off of what's now an old idea and act like they invented it. A business model that has worked exceptionally well for both Microsoft and Disney (who is releasing yet another remake of "A Christmas Carol" -- talk about originality!)
machines that will respond to gestures through new natural user interfaces This is just what I've been waiting for -- a computer that actually understands when I'm flipping it off!
The real problem is, you've got to keep hitting them on a regular basis for several weeks before their ingrained habits change. And some of them figure out effective ways to avoid being hit before then.
One of the true ironies of the tech world: Microsoft, by definition a software company, usually sells pretty good hardware; it is their software that leaves much to be desired. I really like their keyboards and mice, people say this phone was good, and even the Timex/Microsoft watch worked.
Except for the DVD-player part -- it seems like it would be more reliable and easier to update if you just streamed video off of a hard drive. Some airlines are using Linux-based LCD terminals in every seat back for in-flight entertainment so it is definitely doable. What you want to do sounds pretty similar, just with slightly larger displays.
Old people don't want a netbook for the exact same reason they don't want a touchscreen phone -- we can't see the f'ing screen! (The prediction that the iPhone will become the new vehicle for reading e-books continues to astound me.)
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Hi there Californians! I live in your neighboring state of Oregon, where not only can we buy any television we damn well please, but also there is no sales tax. For a nominal fee equivalent to the CA sales tax, I would be more than happy to purchase an energy guzzling television for you and deliver it to you. Just one question -- will the fruit check stations on the border now also ask me to declare if I'm carrying any large screen TVs?
Sure, there are 100,000 apps, but to be fair, 90,000 of those apps are designed solely to compete for the "best farting noise" market...
Call me paranoid, but that is one of the reasons I refuse to subscribe to the local newspaper -- not only do papers piling up in the driveway make it obvious no one is home, but there are also documented incidents of paper carriers working in collusion with burglars to identify homes where occupants are on vacation. I even had a running battle with the local paper because they insisted on leaving free newspapers in my driveway despite my repeated attempts to "opt out". (Apparently every six months or so they delete the information and require everyone to opt out again. However, the third time they started leaving papers after I told them not to I threatened to have them arrested for offensive littering and criminal trespass, and I haven't had any problems since.)
It's not completely harmless, but harmless enough that it doesn't warrant the prejudice that it gets. While I agree with your statements and believe they are true, on balance I'd like to say that 1) Cannabis does cause psychological, but not physical addiction (I had a friend who used to start smashing things if he went too long without a joint), 2) unlike alcohol which is quickly removed from the system, THC can be stored in your fatty tissues for weeks, and 3) Any device used as a crutch to avoid confronting your problems prevents you from maturing and achieving your true purpose as a human (but this applies equally as well to alcohol, TV, etc.) I choose not to imbibe because my profession requires logical thought, but for people like writers or musicians it actually seems to be beneficial in that it stimulates creativity.
On balance, I think it would be best if we tried to honestly educate people to all the pros and cons of cannabis use and let them make their own decision. The "reefer madness" approach currently used to "educate" children only teaches them to distrust authority when they later discover that 90% of what they have been told is pure bullshit intentionally designed to scare them into specific behavior.
Sure, it's bomb-proof, but what I really want to know is, is it kid-proof? I've got a child that has done several hundred dollars worth of drywall damage just be playing in the house...
The "Joint and Several Liability" legal principle states that even if you are found to be 1% liable for an injury, you can be made to pay 100% of the actual and punitive damages in a lawsuit. This is more commonly known as the "Deep Pockets" principle: always sue the entity with the most money, not the entity most responsible. Yes, I believe it would apply to the provider of free WiFi as well, should the MPAA decide to file a lawsuit.
You mean the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Gang Violence" are not covered by the Geneva Conventions?!? Perhaps we should refer to it as something like the "Civilian Police Effort against Drugs" instead...
Great, but I've got a credit for which the website checks for a cookie everytime you log in, and if it doesn't find it, requires you to revalidate the machine by responding to an email!!! My credit union account forces me to answer security question every time it doesn't find a cookie saying I've logged in from that machine before. Which, since I delete all cookies every time I exit FireFox, is really kind of a pain in the ass! Restoring back to a know good save point would be fine if so many websites didn't rely on cookies for normal operation. (Any idea how to separate the cookies that need to be preserved from all the rest?)
My daughter is currently on a kick where she installs every web game she can find. She called me up and asked if it was ok if she installed something called "zwinkies" -- like an idiot, I told her "yes" without googling it first. Again, reinstalling a game from scratch every time you want to play it is probably not a viable option.
Yes, but so does Publicly stating that your company's stock is overvalued, and 10 years later Ballmer still has his job! (In both cases, the fact that they were speaking the truth is no defense -- they have a fiduciary responsibility to the company they work for to not damage it's market value.)
I think it is obvious to most observers that Windows and Mac OSX copy features from each other. I'll leave it to the Windows and Mac fan boyz to argue about which direction the majority of copying occurs in, but the original design of Windows including many of the APIs does appear to have borrowed from the Mac.
Here's one they missed
PowerPoint doesn't make bad presenters any worse, or good presenters any better. I used PowerPoint when I taught a Java programming class, and basically had to spend more time preparing the slides than actually giving the lectures. I also posted the slides on the college web site after every lecture. Whiteboards were still used to illustrate the answers to questions from students -- and there were a lot of questions. There are a lot of reasons I sucked as a teacher (talking in a monotone, trying to teach both students who already know C and those who had no programming experience whatsoever, having a really crappy textbook forced on us by the college, etc.) But I don't think PowerPoint made me any worse. If anything, it was much easier to read than my handwriting on a whiteboard, as well as allowing me to cover more material.
Back in the day, we had a Calculus professor who would write with his right hand while erasing with his left -- making it virtually impossible to simultaneously take notes and understand what he what talking about. Personally, I think canned lectures are an improvement.
we all know who's the world's wealthiest self-produced amateur porn star, which is only important because we all know it. Now I don't... who?
I believe the reason this will never catch has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with legal liability. Who is going to want to be the front car of the train, when they will obviously be responsible for any accidents? What company is going to want to supply this system and open themselves up to massive lawsuits whenever somebody finds a way to defeat the system and cause an accident?
I've written subroutines called "ReadByte" several times, so obviously both the Microsoft code and the GPL code is in violation of my company's copyright! (BTW, if the ReadBytes routine doesn't have a buffer size parameter and return the actual number of bytes read, it is bad code.)
On reflection, a slight modification to the above stated position: if the crimes are committed as part of a concerted effort to intimidate members of a certain class and deny them their freedoms, then there should be additional penalties. But that should not require the spelling out of any specific "protected classes".
they'll build a mediocre knock-off of what's now an old idea and act like they invented it. A business model that has worked exceptionally well for both Microsoft and Disney (who is releasing yet another remake of "A Christmas Carol" -- talk about originality!)
Excuse me, but isn't simultaneously spending time and money recruiting new employees and laying off over 5000 people just a tad bit schizophrenic?
machines that will respond to gestures through new natural user interfaces This is just what I've been waiting for -- a computer that actually understands when I'm flipping it off!
The real problem is, you've got to keep hitting them on a regular basis for several weeks before their ingrained habits change. And some of them figure out effective ways to avoid being hit before then.
You don't need to get breast implants -- just retrain your customers to prefer smaller breasts!
One of the true ironies of the tech world: Microsoft, by definition a software company, usually sells pretty good hardware; it is their software that leaves much to be desired. I really like their keyboards and mice, people say this phone was good, and even the Timex/Microsoft watch worked.
Except for the DVD-player part -- it seems like it would be more reliable and easier to update if you just streamed video off of a hard drive. Some airlines are using Linux-based LCD terminals in every seat back for in-flight entertainment so it is definitely doable. What you want to do sounds pretty similar, just with slightly larger displays.
Old people don't want a netbook for the exact same reason they don't want a touchscreen phone -- we can't see the f'ing screen! (The prediction that the iPhone will become the new vehicle for reading e-books continues to astound me.)
They paid in opportunity cost. Imagine how much they could have made by selling x.com!