I think you've hit on most of the major points. I'm not quite sure I'd go quite so far as to claim MS plans on re-incarnating the telephone with a new X-Box that everyone will buy just to chat with their friends/relatives.
More likely, they realize X-Box gaming will be one step ahead of everyone else's gaming offerings if the players can yell at each other through a headset and/or type to each other. By merely offering this capability, a 3rd. party will surely come along and say "Hey, I can make this thing work as a voice over IP free telephone device too!" and add that functionality. (Following usual MS trends, they'll wait and see how well it works, and if it's promising - buy it out from whoever developed it.)
In the end, you'll have just one more tool for communication - but nothing earth-shattering. At the end of the day, the X-Box is really just one more attempt to sell an inexpensive computer to people who might not own one otherwise. Those who already do own computers won't find the X-Box much more attractive than, say, owning another spare computer.
That's pretty incredible, but not exactly unbelievable - considering the track record of "stop piracy at all costs", followed by the commerical software industry.
Honestly though, it sounds like the folks in charge of this "Head Start" program sat back and accepted everything they were told without enough of a fight. Considering the nature of their program, it would seem a little media publicity plus a plea for MS to donate some licensing for the cause would have gotten them what they wanted.
After all, Micro$oft has done quite a bit of charity work in recent years. (It's important to get those tax breaks, if nothing else.) A program like this would surely seem to qualify. By contrast, the local news stories about a program going bankrupt over some Win '95 licenses on old 486's due to a Microsoft audit wouldn't exactly help MS's reputation.
Correct, although none of this would be an issue if the artists didn't desire to apply for copyright and work through existing distribution channels. Government has never forced an artist to "lock down" their work via copyright. If this were so, Linux wouldn't exist at all - since you'd be required to place it under some form of copyright, and retain exclusive rights to the OS.
I'm no more pleased with the state of the "music industry" than anyone else here is -- but there are still plenty of options for artists to bypass the established system. Most don't due to greed.
Bleah.... Dragging out the old "you should be in control of your own vehicle at all times" excuse doesn't cut it in my book.
The problem is, legislators have gone off the deep end trying to pass any law related to the safety of kids in school. They know that this gives them "brownie points" towards their re-election, since it makes them look like they care - and makes them popular with parents.
Where I live, there are all sorts of designated "school zones" where the speed limit suddenly drops to something ridiculously slow simply because the road goes past a school. They don't even do this with flashing lights that come on during the times school is letting out or starting... They simply tell you it's the law from 8AM to 5PM or something like that.
Why in the world would school kids be out playing in a public street when they're supposed to be *in class*??
A law regulating stopping on both sides of any school bus is almost as crazy. School buses shouldn't be turned into some sort of mobile traffic-blocker that everyone wants to avoid at all costs! Any kid that hasn't learned enough to not run out into the street when traffic is approaching is going to get him/herself hit eventually anyway. "Underdeveloped peripheral vision" and "easily distracted"?? Sounds like you're grasping at straws to find excuses.... I remember being a kid and sure I was easily distracted. I never got hit by a car though, and this was before all of this legislation about stopping anyplace near a school bus. I was simply scared into being careful by my parents, who taught me to always look both ways before crossing a street.
Despite what the MPAA might hope to accomplish, it'll backfire as long as there are sufficient numbers of independents who desire to create content. As you said, you can now buy a DVD buner for under $400. This was absolutely unheard of until the end of last year. It doesn't burn in the DVD "authoring" format? So what? If the resulting disc plays your recorded work on people's DVD player, that's all the end user cares about. (If it doesn't always work due to compatibility problems, that'll resolve itself as the general public applies pressure for compatibility. People don't just sit back and accept it when products don't work "as advertised" -- and there's an understanding that the DVDs you make can be played back on typical DVD players.)
To put it quite simply, the MPAA has no way to ultimately control what types of equipment fall into the hands of the public. If they manage to get laws passed that outlaw use of their proprietary equipment, it will instantly become irrelevant. People use formats that they have access to - not ones that they don't.
No, I think sometimes you need to know when "enough is enough" and put an end to something before it dies off of its own stagnation.
Carter has been working on several other projects, so it's not like X-Files is his only bread and butter. He could have been respected as one of the great sci-fi TV writers of all time if he had the common sense to bring X-Files to an exciting conclusion after it ran for 3 or 4 seasons.
Hmm... I didn't even bother to watch it (yet). I guess I'll get around to it, since I'm sure someone I know taped it. The last few seasons have gone downhill to the point where I lost interest in the whole show.
This series went from "the best thing on TV!" to completely lame. Personally, I think Chris Carter just started running out of ideas after the first 3 seasons. The things that made X-Files great started slipping away, and things weren't revealed because Carter himself wasn't even sure how he was going to explain some of it yet.
It used to be, every "mystery" ended up with a scientific explanation, or at least tied into the deep UFO conspiracy web somehow. When episodes started talking about astrology, psychics, devil worshippers, and so on - it fell into the abyss of B-rated horror films. I mean, anyone can create a show where people get eaten alive by some gruesome "half man, half monster". It's only really interesting if they come up with good reasons why the guy got that way. X-Files started failing to do this half the time. Episodes where these things tied into a complex, larger picture became scarce.
In any case, I didn't see the mention of "agnostic" anyplace in this discussion, which is why I brought this up in the first place.
I think some people tend to use atheist interchangeably with agnostic, hence all the confusion.
This must be why I got the terms backwards. I've known people who said they were "atheist", yet when cornered - admitted that they didn't feel there was anything in the universe proving god didn't exist. They merely didn't choose to worship one, because they felt no compelling reason to "pick a god" and do so.
I guess these folks should really be calling themselves agnostics then.
I posted another message about this very topic....
I've tried to use OpenOffice here and it's nearly perfect at dealing with plain old documents.
Where it falls flat on its face is dealing with complex macros and VB code embedded in spreadsheets.
If your users aren't doing extremely complex things with Excel, it'll probably be fine - but we've got some monster spreadsheets that act more like stand-alone applications (a user login is required, and then it auto-calculates and graphs a lot of data based on user input in customized forms).
OpenOffice doesn't even have a database (yet), so it won't help you with Access files at all. StarOffice has "adabase" but I've never really thrown any of our databases at it to see how it did with them.
This is a great idea in theory, but I've been trying and trying to switch our company away from MS Office and Linux still offers nothing that can do the job for us.
In our case, the big issues are two-fold:
1. We have quite a few databases built and maintained by individuals or departments, all made with MS Access. Linux still doesn't have a 100% compatible MS Access clone.
2. We use a number of extremely complex Excel spreadsheets with VB code and macros integrated into them. They're practically stand-alone applications running as.XLS files. I've never made any of these work correctly under OpenOffice 1.0 or Star Office.
I know these two examples are prime illustrations of why it's important to use open solutions wherever possible... But that's not always realistic in a world where businesses already spent many thousands on MS solutions. It's only logical that people would actually *use* them after paying for them.
My current Linux migration strategy centers around the DIET-PC project on Sourceforge. This project, based loosely on the much better known LTSP project, allows turning old PCs into pseudo thin-clients that remote boot via tftp protocol and run either an RDP or Citrix ICA client in X.
(We already have Citrix Metaframe in-house, so it makes sense to quit using NT 4.0 or 2000 on as many workstations as possible, and let those users work on a desktop served via Citrix to a Linux-based PC.)
I'm with you on this one, more or less. But still, I think there are perfectly logical reasons why a person might feel that "displacing millions of other life-forms for their own comfort" is not equivalent to protecting unborn children. (Of course, lots of people will simply quote the bible and claim that the animals were put here for our benefit - making it all ok.)
The reason this debate has raged on for so long with no sign of ever letting up is because there are good, logical arguments made on both sides. If it was as simple as saying "Pro-Lifers are all a bunch of illogical religious fanatics, doing what they do only because they think god told them to do it!" - things would be much more clear-cut.
Sure, I think the creators of this type of web site could be held legally liable as accomplices to the crime - but only if you could prove that there was a direct connection.
The problem I see is that a fanatic crazy enough to murder a doctor based on a web site suggesting it is going to deny ever seeing that web site. (He'll probably want to protect them to ensure they stay online to continue carrying out their mission.)
It'd be tough to prove in court that the web site motivated the person to kill.
Exactly! The other part of the "freedom" equation has always been "responsibility". You get one with the other. Those who choose to ignore this and demand freedom while acting irresponsibily, eventually impede the rights and freedom of others.
This is exactly the conclusion I came to. This smacks of an inside job.... How in the world could they know that test calls were being carried out for several days, and make sure those test calls went through fine? Well, gee... if you're one of the employees, you'd know about it, wouldn't you?
It's pretty smart on the part of the Sprint employees involved, too. If you pit these shady businesses against each other, ultimately, who is going to care enough to get you in trouble for it? They're probably counting on the majority of people saying "My heart bleeds for you... You can't make millions off of your porn anymore because someone's keeping some of your calls from going through. Cry me a river...." Meanwhile, they're getting a nice kick-back off the top of all those big profits - plus keeping a respectable day job.
Great message.... and I, for one, appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences.
I'm probably in a similar situation myself in many ways. I went to a local community college for a few years (part-time, working towards an Associates degress) before getting completely burnt out on it and dropping out of the program.
I've been working in the computer industry ever since, starting out with PC technician and sales type jobs and working my way up to a decent job in I.T./systems administration today.
To this day, I still believe in many ways, college is a big ripoff. You pay out huge sums of money to get a random mix of good, bad and useless teaching, and when it's all said and done, the need to pay back that student loan is guaranteed but a good paying job isn't.
On the other hand, reality and perception are two completely different things, and as long as the "work world" believes in the perception that a college degree means a better employee - you're at a disadvantage without one.
I've always been stubborn, so I insist on plowing ahead without going back to school. (I'm still doing plenty of learning, but on my own as opposed to in a classroom.) Nonethless, do I recommend this to anyone else? No, not really - unless you're just as stubborn about school as I am. I spent a long time struggling to get by and trying like crazy to get a good career job. I was turned down by quite a few places I'd really like to have worked at - and I'm sure the lack of the degree was the primary reason. (I definitely had the skills they required, and could do the job well for them.)
Nice try, but I'm not buying into this whole "dual existance" concept. You physically exist as a human being, period. The data gathered about you and your actions is not a part of you, nor does it constitute some sort of "cyber-existance" that is automatically considered your "property".
To illustrate, say you choose to dress in a green shirt and blue jeans with Nike tennis-shoes. I observe you and make note of what you're wearing. Well, I can now punch that info into a database and do whatever I like with it. It's not *your* data; it's a description of *my* observations of what you wore when I saw you.
You may find it extremely unpleasant if I proceed to construct a profile that includes you as a "likely candidate to purchase Nike running shoes in the next 2 years", or add you to a list of "known people who dress casually" - but I could do it, and you really have no basic human right to prevent it.
I, for one, think you're absolutely right. Good message, BTW.
Unfortunately, at least in the United States, the majority seems to feel differently. For example, a number of gas stations took advantage of the paranoia right after the war started, and jacked up prices to $4.50 per gallon or more. What happened? They got slapped with huge fines by the government!
IMHO, if you're a gas station owner, you should be able to sell your product for whatever price you wish. In cases like this, where all the stations were still paying much less than the inflated prices *some* chose to charge, the problem would resolve itself. (Obviously, a number of stations would realize they could steal 99% of the competition's customers by keeping their prices reasonable. Not only that, but think of all the marketing material this situation would create. "Unlike Joe's Mobil down the street, *we're* patriotic enough to hold down prices for you, the U.S. consumer!")
It's too bad the majority still feels government is needed to barge in and interrupt the free market economy on a regular basis....
From someone who just upgraded to on-board EIDE RAID a couple days ago, and pulled out *lots* of hair on it - I can give you a hot tip or two.
It seems that the Promise on-board IDE RAID (found on motherboards like the MSI 845 Ultra ARU) has serious issues with EIDE zip drives.
If you connect a zip drive to your system anyplace (not necessarily to the RAID IDE ports, but on *any* IDE channel), the system won't let you create a bootable drive array. You can install Windows 2000 or XP or what-have-you, load the Promise drivers during boot, and it'll let you get as far as partitioning and formatting the RAID array. Upon reboot though, you'll get the "no valid boot device" message.
To successfully get your OS installed, remove the zip drive first. Do the entire install, and add back the zip drive later. (It'll be fine after everything's installed.)
I did all the BIOS flash upgrades and everything, and nothing resolved this issue. The support sites don't mention it either. You just see misc. posts from people frustrated because they can't get it working.
Yeah, I still don't quite understand why IDE drives top out at 7200RPM. If the technology exists to build SCSI drives at 15K RPM, then you'd think it would easily translate over to IDE drives. (Just use the same motors, spindle and bearing assemblies, etc.)
Personally, I've always suspected they've withheld performance on EIDE drives because they're scared that otherwise, their much more profitable SCSI drive sales will evaporate.
As I recall, they didn't even start building 7200RPM EIDE drives until right after SCSI drives got the boost to 10K RPM speeds.
Right. One of my good friends is an opthamologist and she says she's shocked at all the LASIK surgery advertisements running on the radio these days. They never come out and tell you all of the facts, such as the 1% risk of going totally blind from the procedure.
1% may not sound like much, but that's hardly worse than your odds of winning $5 or $10 in one of those McDonalds peel-and-win games on the french-fry boxes....
I would definitely think twice before gambling with my vision like that.
#1, it's *very* debatable if Microsoft truly is a monopoly. I understand that Judge Jackson deemed it so, and so under the letter of the law that makes it "fact". Still, this is the same guy who made it obvious that he was biased against MS and probably big businesses in general. Courts and judges do occasionally make mistakes. I think the biggest reason people are so willing to accept the claim that MS is, indeed, a monopoly is because they've done plenty of things to anger everyone. (Sort of the "I would never hit someone over the head with a baseball bat just because they called me names, but if someone else does it - I'm gonna cheer them on." scenario.)
#2, a Microsoft API is only an "application interface" to *their* OS. Ultimately, they have every right to release an OS where nobody but them has any clue how to interface with it. Right? This might be a bad marketing decision, and people who want to write code for it might hate it -- but so what? It's not *your* OS/code, it's *their* OS/code!
As it stands, MS has chosen to give out a considerable amount of information and assistance on how to code for their OS. Most of the items they won't release (the bones of contention, so to speak) are APIs that let you develop alternatives to key software products and core componenets of their OS. I don't know how familiar you are with other commercial operating systems, but as far back as I can remember, this sort of thing has been happening. (Back on the C-64, Apple//e, and Tandy Color Computers, people were busy writing "unauthorized system calls" type of books, with "peek" and "poke" commands to manipulate registers to do things the manufacturers wouldn't disclose on their own (but often used in their own software packages anyway).
It's commonly seen in I.T. also, where nobody wants to accept the blame for the results of their poor management or software development decisions.
AKA. "The price of software licensing will go up by 30% next year." instead of "Microsoft will raise our prices on software licensing by 30% next year."
Uh, you're kidding right? Or well, probably not - but you're certainly luckier than most.
I don't know anyone who's used the Gnutella network and felt it was a good experience. I got tired of all the spyware B.S. and re-installed GNUcleus, after dabbling in Morpheus, BearShare, and others. After only 3 days, I couldn't deal with it anymore. It often had problems making an initial connection for *long* periods of time, as it cycled through non-responding IPs. Then, you'd do a search and find maybe 1 or 2 people offering what you wanted. You'd go to d/l it, only to be told the download wasn't available. If you did get a download started, it never failed to trickle in at under 2K per second. I didn't order DSL so I could download files at 14.4K modem speeds!
I just don't think it has the popularity of the other networks, at least with people who are sharing out large numbers of files with decent bandwidth.
As frustrating as it might be that they don't always release the specs on such things as their network protocols and file formats, I fail to see why government should be able to force them to do so?
They developed all of that on their own, using their own development dollars. Of course the competition would love to get a free handout so they can stop expending energy reverse-engineering things for MS compatibility. That doesn't mean it's the right/just thing to do.
Honestly, I've got plenty of issues with Microsoft and their business tactics - but from the start, govt. has royally screwed up this entire "monopoly" case against them. Until every computer sold today is incapable of running any code that's not provided by MS, I just don't think it's provable that they're a monopoly.
You want reasonable things to attack Microsoft over? How about "false advertising" when their OS's promise such things as "stable, reliable, and faster than before!" when they're so often not any of these? How about challenging the enforcability of their rules preventing end users from reselling OEM editions of MS software, even if they've never broken the shrink-wrap? Perhaps even investigate the legality of their artificial inflation of their "net worth" by partially paying their employees in Microsoft stock?
To me, these types of issues are much more concrete and "to the point" than battling over whether or not including Internet Explorer with the OS and choosing not to let other companies throw some default icons on the desktop at start-up makes them a "monopoly".
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I think you've hit on most of the major points. I'm not quite sure I'd go quite so far as to claim MS plans on re-incarnating the telephone with a new X-Box that everyone will buy just to chat with their friends/relatives.
More likely, they realize X-Box gaming will be one step ahead of everyone else's gaming offerings if the players can yell at each other through a headset and/or type to each other. By merely offering this capability, a 3rd. party will surely come along and say "Hey, I can make this thing work as a voice over IP free telephone device too!" and add that functionality. (Following usual MS trends, they'll wait and see how well it works, and if it's promising - buy it out from whoever developed it.)
In the end, you'll have just one more tool for communication - but nothing earth-shattering. At the end of the day, the X-Box is really just one more attempt to sell an inexpensive computer to people who might not own one otherwise. Those who already do own computers won't find the X-Box much more attractive than, say, owning another spare computer.
That's pretty incredible, but not exactly unbelievable - considering the track record of "stop piracy at all costs", followed by the commerical software industry.
Honestly though, it sounds like the folks in charge of this "Head Start" program sat back and accepted everything they were told without enough of a fight. Considering the nature of their program, it would seem a little media publicity plus a plea for MS to donate some licensing for the cause would have gotten them what they wanted.
After all, Micro$oft has done quite a bit of charity work in recent years. (It's important to get those tax breaks, if nothing else.) A program like this would surely seem to qualify. By contrast, the local news stories about a program going bankrupt over some Win '95 licenses on old 486's due to a Microsoft audit wouldn't exactly help MS's reputation.
Correct, although none of this would be an issue if the artists didn't desire to apply for copyright and work through existing distribution channels. Government has never forced an artist to "lock down" their work via copyright. If this were so, Linux wouldn't exist at all - since you'd be required to place it under some form of copyright, and retain exclusive rights to the OS.
I'm no more pleased with the state of the "music industry" than anyone else here is -- but there are still plenty of options for artists to bypass the established system. Most don't due to greed.
Bleah.... Dragging out the old "you should be in control of your own vehicle at all times" excuse doesn't cut it in my book.
The problem is, legislators have gone off the deep end trying to pass any law related to the safety of kids in school. They know that this gives them "brownie points" towards their re-election, since it makes them look like they care - and makes them popular with parents.
Where I live, there are all sorts of designated "school zones" where the speed limit suddenly drops to something ridiculously slow simply because the road goes past a school. They don't even do this with flashing lights that come on during the times school is letting out or starting... They simply tell you it's the law from 8AM to 5PM or something like that.
Why in the world would school kids be out playing in a public street when they're supposed to be *in class*??
A law regulating stopping on both sides of any school bus is almost as crazy. School buses shouldn't be turned into some sort of mobile traffic-blocker that everyone wants to avoid at all costs! Any kid that hasn't learned enough to not run out into the street when traffic is approaching is going to get him/herself hit eventually anyway. "Underdeveloped peripheral vision" and "easily distracted"?? Sounds like you're grasping at straws to find excuses.... I remember being a kid and sure I was easily distracted. I never got hit by a car though, and this was before all of this legislation about stopping anyplace near a school bus. I was simply scared into being careful by my parents, who taught me to always look both ways before crossing a street.
Despite what the MPAA might hope to accomplish, it'll backfire as long as there are sufficient numbers of independents who desire to create content. As you said, you can now buy a DVD buner for under $400. This was absolutely unheard of until the end of last year. It doesn't burn in the DVD "authoring" format? So what? If the resulting disc plays your recorded work on people's DVD player, that's all the end user cares about. (If it doesn't always work due to compatibility problems, that'll resolve itself as the general public applies pressure for compatibility. People don't just sit back and accept it when products don't work "as advertised" -- and there's an understanding that the DVDs you make can be played back on typical DVD players.)
To put it quite simply, the MPAA has no way to ultimately control what types of equipment fall into the hands of the public. If they manage to get laws passed that outlaw use of their proprietary equipment, it will instantly become irrelevant. People use formats that they have access to - not ones that they don't.
No, I think sometimes you need to know when "enough is enough" and put an end to something before it dies off of its own stagnation.
Carter has been working on several other projects, so it's not like X-Files is his only bread and butter. He could have been respected as one of the great sci-fi TV writers of all time if he had the common sense to bring X-Files to an exciting conclusion after it ran for 3 or 4 seasons.
Hmm... I didn't even bother to watch it (yet).
I guess I'll get around to it, since I'm sure someone I know taped it. The last few seasons have gone downhill to the point where I lost interest in the whole show.
This series went from "the best thing on TV!" to completely lame. Personally, I think Chris Carter just started running out of ideas after the first 3 seasons. The things that made X-Files great started slipping away, and things weren't revealed because Carter himself wasn't even sure how he was going to explain some of it yet.
It used to be, every "mystery" ended up with a scientific explanation, or at least tied into the deep UFO conspiracy web somehow. When episodes started talking about astrology, psychics, devil worshippers, and so on - it fell into the abyss of B-rated horror films. I mean, anyone can create a show where people get eaten alive by some gruesome "half man, half monster". It's only really interesting if they come up with good reasons why the guy got that way. X-Files started failing to do this half the time. Episodes where these things tied into a complex, larger picture became scarce.
Interesting....
In any case, I didn't see the mention of "agnostic" anyplace in this discussion, which is why I brought this up in the first place.
I think some people tend to use atheist interchangeably with agnostic, hence all the confusion.
This must be why I got the terms backwards. I've known people who said they were "atheist", yet when cornered - admitted that they didn't feel there was anything in the universe proving god didn't exist. They merely didn't choose to worship one, because they felt no compelling reason to "pick a god" and do so.
I guess these folks should really be calling themselves agnostics then.
I posted another message about this very topic....
I've tried to use OpenOffice here and it's nearly perfect at dealing with plain old documents.
Where it falls flat on its face is dealing with complex macros and VB code embedded in spreadsheets.
If your users aren't doing extremely complex things with Excel, it'll probably be fine - but we've got some monster spreadsheets that act more like stand-alone applications (a user login is required, and then it auto-calculates and graphs a lot of data based on user input in customized forms).
OpenOffice doesn't even have a database (yet), so it won't help you with Access files at all. StarOffice has "adabase" but I've never really thrown any of our databases at it to see how it did with them.
This is a great idea in theory, but I've been trying and trying to switch our company away from MS Office and Linux still offers nothing that can do the job for us.
.XLS files. I've never made any of these work correctly under OpenOffice 1.0 or Star Office.
In our case, the big issues are two-fold:
1. We have quite a few databases built and maintained by individuals or departments, all made with MS Access. Linux still doesn't have a 100% compatible MS Access clone.
2. We use a number of extremely complex Excel spreadsheets with VB code and macros integrated into them. They're practically stand-alone applications running as
I know these two examples are prime illustrations of why it's important to use open solutions wherever possible... But that's not always realistic in a world where businesses already spent many thousands on MS solutions. It's only logical that people would actually *use* them after paying for them.
My current Linux migration strategy centers around the DIET-PC project on Sourceforge. This project, based loosely on the much better known LTSP project, allows turning old PCs into pseudo thin-clients that remote boot via tftp protocol and run either an RDP or Citrix ICA client in X.
(We already have Citrix Metaframe in-house, so it makes sense to quit using NT 4.0 or 2000 on as many workstations as possible, and let those users work on a desktop served via Citrix to a Linux-based PC.)
It sounds to me like some of you are confusing athiesm with being an agnostic.
Agnostics firmly believe that there is no god.
Athiests simply say they have no reason to believe there is or there isn't a god.
I'm with you on this one, more or less. But still, I think there are perfectly logical reasons why a person might feel that "displacing millions of other life-forms for their own comfort" is not equivalent to protecting unborn children. (Of course, lots of people will simply quote the bible and claim that the animals were put here for our benefit - making it all ok.)
The reason this debate has raged on for so long with no sign of ever letting up is because there are good, logical arguments made on both sides.
If it was as simple as saying "Pro-Lifers are all a bunch of illogical religious fanatics, doing what they do only because they think god told them to do it!" - things would be much more clear-cut.
Sure, I think the creators of this type of web site could be held legally liable as accomplices to the crime - but only if you could prove that there was a direct connection.
The problem I see is that a fanatic crazy enough to murder a doctor based on a web site suggesting it is going to deny ever seeing that web site. (He'll probably want to protect them to ensure they stay online to continue carrying out their mission.)
It'd be tough to prove in court that the web site motivated the person to kill.
Exactly! The other part of the "freedom" equation has always been "responsibility". You get one with the other. Those who choose to ignore this and demand freedom while acting irresponsibily, eventually impede the rights and freedom of others.
This is exactly the conclusion I came to.
This smacks of an inside job.... How in the world could they know that test calls were being carried out for several days, and make sure those test calls went through fine? Well, gee... if you're one of the employees, you'd know about it, wouldn't you?
It's pretty smart on the part of the Sprint employees involved, too. If you pit these shady businesses against each other, ultimately, who is going to care enough to get you in trouble for it? They're probably counting on the majority of people saying "My heart bleeds for you... You can't make millions off of your porn anymore because someone's keeping some of your calls from going through. Cry me a river...." Meanwhile, they're getting a nice kick-back off the top of all those big profits - plus keeping a respectable day job.
Great message.... and I, for one, appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences.
I'm probably in a similar situation myself in many ways. I went to a local community college for a few years (part-time, working towards an Associates degress) before getting completely burnt out on it and dropping out of the program.
I've been working in the computer industry ever since, starting out with PC technician and sales type jobs and working my way up to a decent job in I.T./systems administration today.
To this day, I still believe in many ways, college is a big ripoff. You pay out huge sums of money to get a random mix of good, bad and useless teaching, and when it's all said and done, the need to pay back that student loan is guaranteed but a good paying job isn't.
On the other hand, reality and perception are two completely different things, and as long as the "work world" believes in the perception that a college degree means a better employee - you're at a disadvantage without one.
I've always been stubborn, so I insist on plowing ahead without going back to school. (I'm still doing plenty of learning, but on my own as opposed to in a classroom.) Nonethless, do I recommend this to anyone else? No, not really - unless you're just as stubborn about school as I am. I spent a long time struggling to get by and trying like crazy to get a good career job. I was turned down by quite a few places I'd really like to have worked at - and I'm sure the lack of the degree was the primary reason. (I definitely had the skills they required, and could do the job well for them.)
Nice try, but I'm not buying into this whole "dual existance" concept. You physically exist as a human being, period. The data gathered about you and your actions is not a part of you, nor does it constitute some sort of "cyber-existance" that is automatically considered your "property".
To illustrate, say you choose to dress in a green shirt and blue jeans with Nike tennis-shoes. I observe you and make note of what you're wearing. Well, I can now punch that info into a database and do whatever I like with it. It's not *your* data; it's a description of *my* observations of what you wore when I saw you.
You may find it extremely unpleasant if I proceed to construct a profile that includes you as a "likely candidate to purchase Nike running shoes in the next 2 years", or add you to a list of "known people who dress casually" - but I could do it, and you really have no basic human right to prevent it.
I, for one, think you're absolutely right. Good message, BTW.
Unfortunately, at least in the United States, the majority seems to feel differently. For example, a number of gas stations took advantage of the paranoia right after the war started, and jacked up prices to $4.50 per gallon or more. What happened? They got slapped with huge fines by the government!
IMHO, if you're a gas station owner, you should be able to sell your product for whatever price you wish. In cases like this, where all the stations were still paying much less than the inflated prices *some* chose to charge, the problem would resolve itself. (Obviously, a number of stations would realize they could steal 99% of the competition's customers by keeping their prices reasonable. Not only that, but think of all the marketing material this situation would create. "Unlike Joe's Mobil down the street, *we're* patriotic enough to hold down prices for you, the U.S. consumer!")
It's too bad the majority still feels government is needed to barge in and interrupt the free market economy on a regular basis....
From someone who just upgraded to on-board EIDE RAID a couple days ago, and pulled out *lots* of hair on it - I can give you a hot tip or two.
It seems that the Promise on-board IDE RAID (found on motherboards like the MSI 845 Ultra ARU) has serious issues with EIDE zip drives.
If you connect a zip drive to your system anyplace (not necessarily to the RAID IDE ports, but on *any* IDE channel), the system won't let you create a bootable drive array. You can install Windows 2000 or XP or what-have-you, load the Promise drivers during boot, and it'll let you get as far as partitioning and formatting the RAID array. Upon reboot though, you'll get the "no valid boot device" message.
To successfully get your OS installed, remove the zip drive first. Do the entire install, and add back the zip drive later. (It'll be fine after everything's installed.)
I did all the BIOS flash upgrades and everything, and nothing resolved this issue. The support sites don't mention it either. You just see misc. posts from people frustrated because they can't get it working.
Yeah, I still don't quite understand why IDE drives top out at 7200RPM. If the technology exists to build SCSI drives at 15K RPM, then you'd think it would easily translate over to IDE drives. (Just use the same motors, spindle and bearing assemblies, etc.)
Personally, I've always suspected they've withheld performance on EIDE drives because they're scared that otherwise, their much more profitable SCSI drive sales will evaporate.
As I recall, they didn't even start building 7200RPM EIDE drives until right after SCSI drives got the boost to 10K RPM speeds.
Right. One of my good friends is an opthamologist and she says she's shocked at all the LASIK surgery advertisements running on the radio these days. They never come out and tell you all of the facts, such as the 1% risk of going totally blind from the procedure.
1% may not sound like much, but that's hardly worse than your odds of winning $5 or $10 in one of those McDonalds peel-and-win games on the french-fry boxes....
I would definitely think twice before gambling with my vision like that.
Wrong, wrong wrong!
//e, and Tandy Color Computers, people were busy writing "unauthorized system calls" type of books, with "peek" and "poke" commands to manipulate registers to do things the manufacturers wouldn't disclose on their own (but often used in their own software packages anyway).
#1, it's *very* debatable if Microsoft truly is a monopoly. I understand that Judge Jackson deemed it so, and so under the letter of the law that makes it "fact". Still, this is the same guy who made it obvious that he was biased against MS and probably big businesses in general. Courts and judges do occasionally make mistakes. I think the biggest reason people are so willing to accept the claim that MS is, indeed, a monopoly is because they've done plenty of things to anger everyone. (Sort of the "I would never hit someone over the head with a baseball bat just because they called me names, but if someone else does it - I'm gonna cheer them on." scenario.)
#2, a Microsoft API is only an "application interface" to *their* OS. Ultimately, they have every right to release an OS where nobody but them has any clue how to interface with it. Right? This might be a bad marketing decision, and people who want to write code for it might hate it -- but so what? It's not *your* OS/code, it's *their* OS/code!
As it stands, MS has chosen to give out a considerable amount of information and assistance on how to code for their OS. Most of the items they won't release (the bones of contention, so to speak) are APIs that let you develop alternatives to key software products and core componenets of their OS. I don't know how familiar you are with other commercial operating systems, but as far back as I can remember, this sort of thing has been happening. (Back on the C-64, Apple
It's commonly seen in I.T. also, where nobody wants to accept the blame for the results of their poor management or software development decisions.
AKA. "The price of software licensing will go up by 30% next year." instead of "Microsoft will raise our prices on software licensing by 30% next year."
Uh, you're kidding right? Or well, probably not - but you're certainly luckier than most.
I don't know anyone who's used the Gnutella network and felt it was a good experience. I got tired of all the spyware B.S. and re-installed GNUcleus, after dabbling in Morpheus, BearShare, and others. After only 3 days, I couldn't deal with it anymore. It often had problems making an initial connection for *long* periods of time, as it cycled through non-responding IPs. Then, you'd do a search and find maybe 1 or 2 people offering what you wanted. You'd go to d/l it, only to be told the download wasn't available. If you did get a download started, it never failed to trickle in at under 2K per second. I didn't order DSL so I could download files at 14.4K modem speeds!
I just don't think it has the popularity of the other networks, at least with people who are sharing out large numbers of files with decent bandwidth.
As frustrating as it might be that they don't always release the specs on such things as their network protocols and file formats, I fail to see why government should be able to force them to do so?
They developed all of that on their own, using their own development dollars. Of course the competition would love to get a free handout so they can stop expending energy reverse-engineering things for MS compatibility. That doesn't mean it's the right/just thing to do.
Honestly, I've got plenty of issues with Microsoft and their business tactics - but from the start, govt. has royally screwed up this entire "monopoly" case against them. Until every computer sold today is incapable of running any code that's not provided by MS, I just don't think it's provable that they're a monopoly.
You want reasonable things to attack Microsoft over? How about "false advertising" when their OS's promise such things as "stable, reliable, and faster than before!" when they're so often not any of these? How about challenging the enforcability of their rules preventing end users from reselling OEM editions of MS software, even if they've never broken the shrink-wrap? Perhaps even investigate the legality of their artificial inflation of their "net worth" by partially paying their employees in Microsoft stock?
To me, these types of issues are much more concrete and "to the point" than battling over whether or not including Internet Explorer with the OS and choosing not to let other companies throw some default icons on the desktop at start-up makes them a "monopoly".