Well, seeing as I easily use 1000+ text messages a month, I'm not a sucker. That would be $150+ a month if I paid the outrageous 15 cents per text fee.
I really hope alot of people make noise about these "no paper trail" electronic voting machines. I hope enough noise is made that the government finally realizes it needs to do something about them.
Here's a sample:
(From Jurassic Park) A custom system with millions of lines of code
controlling a multimillion dollar theme park can be operated by a 13 year
old who has seen a Unix system before. Seeing an operating system means you
know how to run any application on that system, even custom apps.
Note: What OS was it really running?
(1) "These are super computers". A CrayOS?
(2) "Quicktime movie, Apple logo, trash can." MacOS?
(3) "Reboot. System ready. C:\" DOS?
(4) "Hey, this is Unix. I know this" Unix?
The computers in Jurassic Park were Cray supercomputers running the MacOS
as a graphical shell of DOS all layered on top of a Unix base.
The LACK of security in these voting machines makes me sick. I can't believe the US Government is using them. With a voting system this easy to compromise, it looks like votes don't matter anymore...
I used to have AOL back in the stone age days of the internet. When we canceled our account they kept on billing our credit card even though our account stopped working.
As a Senior in college, I have had a lot of experience with college textbooks. Every semester buying textbooks pisses me off. They are outrageously expensive and half the time you don't really need them for the class! To make matters worse, publishers come out with "new editions" just so that next year everyone will have to buy the book new. (Oh look, they put in a few new pictures and fixed some spelling errors!) The best part: at the end of the semester when you try to sell your $120 book back that was new 5 months ago they offer you $5 because "a new edition is coming out".
Please people, quit letting publishers get away with this. Don't support their products. Buy your books online and if you can get the international edition. It's much cheaper.
I have to say thank you to slashdot for the article about how books on amazon.co.uk were much cheaper than on amazon.com. This is what got me into buying my books online and it has saved me $100s.
(Yes, I know I am replying to my own comment. But other college students out there will thank me.)
1) Buy books at campus bookstore.
2) Get pissed about how much money I just wasted on books.
3) Go online and find the same book for much cheaper. http://www.campusi.com/ is a GREAT site to get books for cheap.
4) Once the books I ordered come, I return the originals to the campus bookstore. (Ours has like a 30 day return policy.)
This way I make sure I have the book the first day of class. I know its the correct book / edition / etc and I don't waste a ton of money buying them. I highly suggest this to everyone.
Sometimes I have to put up with the "international" edition. This is the same book page for page but usually has a soft cover and cheaper printing style. I really don't care when I paid $30 for the book and everyone else in the class paid $120. (Thats one expensive cover!)
You have to pay full price for ethanol gas? Ethanol is much cheaper than regular 87 octane.
If you ran E85 (which is 85% ethanol... compared to your 15% ethanol) you are supposed to see a drop in mileage of about 10-15%. I doubt a 15% mix does that much to your mileage. Everyone gets worse mileage in the winter. Think of all the idling your car does while you clean it off, etc. Idling = 0 MPG.
Make sure you read the second article listed before you go witch hunting ethanol production. It looks like it all depends on which study you listen to.
"One persistent myth about biomass is that it takes more energy to produce fuels from biomass than the fuels themselves contain. In other words, that it is a net energy loser. In fact, current ethanol production uses corn, one of the most energy-intensive crops, and then uses just the kernels from the corn plant, and not even the entire kernel. Even so, this process yields 50 percent more energy than it takes to make the ethanol, so it is a net gainer.
Nonetheless, we could do much better. By making ethanol from energy crops, we could obtain between four and five times the energy that we put in, and by making electricity we could get perhaps 10 times or more."
This story is very interesting. I didn't think in this "modern day world" it was possible for something like this to happen. It really scares me since in the US it seems like the power grid gets more and more overloaded all the time.
do you know how many people I know bought one for the sole purpose of modifying them?
I did, and I'm very happy with my Xbox.
Microsoft sold the xbox consoles at a loss to get them out there. They planned to make that money back on game sales. The last I heard Microsoft still hasn't profited a dime on the xbox.
Microsoft doesn't make any money if you buy an Xbox and then mod it to play games you copy over from a friend. So why would they allow it?
What I meant was that I can't believe something like this is even an issue. We're talking about basic ideas on how to play music, sort music, transfer music to a mobile player, etc. It doesn't seem like these things should be patentable.
"Contois documented 19 interface aspects of the iTunes software that it claims are in direct violation of Contois' patent. These areas include iTunes' menu selection process to allow the user to select music to be played, the ability of the software to transfer music tracks to a portable music player, and search capabilities such as sorting music tracks by their genre, artist and album attributes."
Is there anything they won't offer a patent for these days? Can I patent turning on and off a machine by use of a "power control button"? Or maybe selecting what document to print by use of a "Print" dialog box. This is a joke if I've ever seen one...
Please read the article before saying, "OMG! I don't need college!"
It says, "Steve Jobs told Stanford University graduates Sunday that dropping out of college was one of the best decisions he ever made because it forced him to be innovative "
Also, if you are looking for cheap college, goto NDSU. Thats what I am doing...
Slashdot Mirror
Comcast by far.
Well, seeing as I easily use 1000+ text messages a month, I'm not a sucker. That would be $150+ a month if I paid the outrageous 15 cents per text fee.
I pay Sprint $10/month for unlimited text messages. Problem solved.
I really hope alot of people make noise about these "no paper trail" electronic voting machines. I hope enough noise is made that the government finally realizes it needs to do something about them.
http://slightparanoia.blogspot.com/2006/10/congres sman-calls-for-my-arrest.html
Would someone explain to me why you can be sued over an opinion you write in a message board post?
You've got my vote. What party are you a member of? I'm guessing the "common sense" party. Where can I sign up?
http://nand.net/~demaria/hollywood.txt
Here's a sample: (From Jurassic Park) A custom system with millions of lines of code controlling a multimillion dollar theme park can be operated by a 13 year old who has seen a Unix system before. Seeing an operating system means you know how to run any application on that system, even custom apps.
Note: What OS was it really running?
(1) "These are super computers". A CrayOS?
(2) "Quicktime movie, Apple logo, trash can." MacOS?
(3) "Reboot. System ready. C:\" DOS?
(4) "Hey, this is Unix. I know this" Unix?
The computers in Jurassic Park were Cray supercomputers running the MacOS as a graphical shell of DOS all layered on top of a Unix base.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZVaFAEtVec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZVaFAEtVec
The LACK of security in these voting machines makes me sick. I can't believe the US Government is using them. With a voting system this easy to compromise, it looks like votes don't matter anymore...
Who wears the pants in this relationship?
All your ebay are belong to us!
Quit your bitching. You can get an ipod replacement battery WITH tools to open the ipod for like $40. Google it once.
Sounds like a fair deal to me.
Please people, quit letting publishers get away with this. Don't support their products. Buy your books online and if you can get the international edition. It's much cheaper.
I have to say thank you to slashdot for the article about how books on amazon.co.uk were much cheaper than on amazon.com. This is what got me into buying my books online and it has saved me $100s.
(Yes, I know I am replying to my own comment. But other college students out there will thank me.)
1) Buy books at campus bookstore.
2) Get pissed about how much money I just wasted on books.
3) Go online and find the same book for much cheaper. http://www.campusi.com/ is a GREAT site to get books for cheap.
4) Once the books I ordered come, I return the originals to the campus bookstore. (Ours has like a 30 day return policy.)
This way I make sure I have the book the first day of class. I know its the correct book / edition / etc and I don't waste a ton of money buying them. I highly suggest this to everyone.
Sometimes I have to put up with the "international" edition. This is the same book page for page but usually has a soft cover and cheaper printing style. I really don't care when I paid $30 for the book and everyone else in the class paid $120. (Thats one expensive cover!)
If you ran E85 (which is 85% ethanol... compared to your 15% ethanol) you are supposed to see a drop in mileage of about 10-15%. I doubt a 15% mix does that much to your mileage. Everyone gets worse mileage in the winter. Think of all the idling your car does while you clean it off, etc. Idling = 0 MPG.
Make sure you read the second article listed before you go witch hunting ethanol production. It looks like it all depends on which study you listen to.
To quote the study from the "Union of Concerned Scientists" http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energ y/page.cfm?pageID=78
"One persistent myth about biomass is that it takes more energy to produce fuels from biomass than the fuels themselves contain. In other words, that it is a net energy loser. In fact, current ethanol production uses corn, one of the most energy-intensive crops, and then uses just the kernels from the corn plant, and not even the entire kernel. Even so, this process yields 50 percent more energy than it takes to make the ethanol, so it is a net gainer.
Nonetheless, we could do much better. By making ethanol from energy crops, we could obtain between four and five times the energy that we put in, and by making electricity we could get perhaps 10 times or more."
This story is very interesting. I didn't think in this "modern day world" it was possible for something like this to happen. It really scares me since in the US it seems like the power grid gets more and more overloaded all the time.
Microsoft sold the xbox consoles at a loss to get them out there. They planned to make that money back on game sales. The last I heard Microsoft still hasn't profited a dime on the xbox.
Microsoft doesn't make any money if you buy an Xbox and then mod it to play games you copy over from a friend. So why would they allow it?
What I meant was that I can't believe something like this is even an issue. We're talking about basic ideas on how to play music, sort music, transfer music to a mobile player, etc. It doesn't seem like these things should be patentable.
Is there anything they won't offer a patent for these days? Can I patent turning on and off a machine by use of a "power control button"? Or maybe selecting what document to print by use of a "Print" dialog box. This is a joke if I've ever seen one...
http://www.marketingmetrixgroup.com/
It says, "Steve Jobs told Stanford University graduates Sunday that dropping out of college was one of the best decisions he ever made because it forced him to be innovative "
Also, if you are looking for cheap college, goto NDSU. Thats what I am doing...