I'm more sympathetic than this because I was forced to take a job I didn't like (at echostar) doing tech support in order to avoid losing my house. It was 2002, and about 40% of programmers in my area had been laid off. When the ax finally fell on my job, I spent 6 months looking for a job, steadily lowering my standards, until I was left with literally no choice.
I tried my best to be honest and polite with customers, and many of them said that if echostar had more employees like me they wouldn't hate the company so much. I felt that I made a difference, even though the company itself was fairly evil.
I'm working in a good job now with a company I like, but I have a different perspective. It's easier to understand that not everyone is working in a job they love that they chose freely. I also tend to be nicer to tech support people, and know how the system works so my support calls go much better than they used to.
I ran into a DVD that wouldn't rip. Sony, naturally. I had to install a few apps and it wound up taking about an hour. Very labor-intensive and flaky process. It reminded me of old days, copying protected disks on my commodore 64. It's the same method, too. Bad sectors on the disc.
It was Capote and I'll never buy a Sony DVD again.
DVD players also play CDs. So you can buy a fancy DVD-audio rig and play your 1000 cds in it, plus any new DVD audio discs you buy. In fact, I blu-ray/HD-DVD players (the next thing after DVD) will play audio CDs just fine. I suspect that any new format after the HD stuff will also play audio CDs, probably for decades.
It's not like vinyl at all, where there is no backward compatibility.
Me? I'm staying far far away from this crap. I've got enough DRM in my life.
I have friends that work for Sun. If you don't believe me, you can always look it up.
I personally like snow, so living in Denver is a real disappointment. We get maybe 3 big storms every decade. Most winters are warm, dry, sunny. Every so often a dusting of snow or a cold snap. It's disgusting.
I'm in Colorado too. I think many of them moved here because the cost of living was so much lower, and they fully intended to make it just like home. It's creepy to visit California and see identical cookie-cutter houses in identical layouts. Weird deja-vu.
My brother moved to San Diego and they paid 500k for a shitty condo. I can understand wanting out of that.
It's sad to see Colorado fade to homogeneity. I liked the no-helmet law, smoke em if you got em, rip-roaring, no seatbelt law Colorado. And don't get me started on the drivers!
I once wired a momentary switch to my brake lights so that I could "stomp the brakes" for tailgaters while accelerating. It was pretty effective.
Wow, that's hilarious! Much safer than my idea of locking up the emergency brake without the courtesy of brake lights. I've been tempted, but never done it. I fear it would also be effective.
It is a several point moving violation, so it'd affect insurance rates. The tickets are generally given to people going at or under the speed limit. It's already been tested in court, going the speed limit in the left lane is illegal if people are passing you on the right. I think the law was passed to placate speeders, but it also may have safety benefits. Passing on the right is more dangerous than passing on the left, especially when truckers are involved.
Anyway, drivers here are truly horrible. And I've driven in California, Texas, and Chicago. It's a nightmare of 25 over the speed limit, swerving, no turn signals, tailgating, impossibly rude actions, all done while on the phone. Oh, and regular beatings/killings of people who get so worked up they take it outside the car. I guess they forgot why they're so uptight in the first place, which is getting there fast. People are idiots, sorry for the rant!
It's funny every winter to see the hundreds of upside-down SUVs in Colorado. It is helpful to have clearance in seldom-plowed mountain roads, but the locals often drive normal cars after watching too many SUVs flip and roll.
Strangely, in Colorado it is against the law to stay left. They passed a law that vehicles must stay right except to pass. You'll see "Slower traffic keep right" and "keep right except to pass" signs around. They actually ticket for this, a friend found out personally. He was going 60 in a 55 in the left lane and got a ticket for blocking traffic. The officer said they give out hundreds of these tickets every month.
I'm simply pointing out that politicians have always been killed. In a world where they cannot be killed, it seems hubris might become a problem. Our cultural obsession with safety has many downsides, and having world leaders feel invincible cannot be good for anyone but them.
As far as what I personally advocate, I think America would be a finer place if all the politicians were gone, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with their policies. I'm not going to do anything about it, but it's a nice dream.
Legislatures, especially state legislatures, pass some crazy bad laws. Some of them are inherently bogus, some of them conflict with other laws, some are plainly unconstitutional. Judges rule all the time on this insane hodgepodge of bullshit streaming out of legislature. I don't see any other way to do it. The alternative would be hundreds of conflicting laws, varying by city, regarding things like gay marriage, abortion, guns, etc.
I think we'd have better presidents if they thought about how their policies affect people. If they live in a bulletproof world they don't have the final accountability that assassination has always provided since Roman days.
If people dropped $20k on a computer, paid $1k/year insurance (covers spamware, etc), and paid thousands if anything serious went wrong with it, had it serviced 4x/year and took it in for a quick "fill-up" of patches and antivirus every week I bet they'd "just work."
Disabling auto-update in Firefox 1.5 is easy enough to disable.
Actually, you want to enable disabling auto-updates. Disabling auto-update is disabled by default.
It doesn't bug me much. At least it asks if you want to restart firefox. It could easily be worse, especially with me having 15 tabs open and no autorestore extension installed (yet!)
It's not a bad idea exactly. Most movie studios sell their DVDs for say $10, the retailer will sell them for $15.
Amazon can sell their DVDs for $15, which makes it much more profitable. They also can plug it for "free" and know a lot about their customers, which can really affect sales.
Hell, I would have voted for it. Otherwise, I could look forward to "Congressman LunaticTippy supports Child Molestation" in my next campaign. Stupid campaign laws. Complete bullshit.
I know an actual hippie who lives "off grid" with a bizarre assortment of solar, wind, marine batteries, inverters, and 12v appliances. He also has an electric guitar that runs on his hippie-power.
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I'm more sympathetic than this because I was forced to take a job I didn't like (at echostar) doing tech support in order to avoid losing my house. It was 2002, and about 40% of programmers in my area had been laid off. When the ax finally fell on my job, I spent 6 months looking for a job, steadily lowering my standards, until I was left with literally no choice.
I tried my best to be honest and polite with customers, and many of them said that if echostar had more employees like me they wouldn't hate the company so much. I felt that I made a difference, even though the company itself was fairly evil.
I'm working in a good job now with a company I like, but I have a different perspective. It's easier to understand that not everyone is working in a job they love that they chose freely. I also tend to be nicer to tech support people, and know how the system works so my support calls go much better than they used to.
It doesn't work on CP/M either. GP is a filthy liar!
I ran into a DVD that wouldn't rip. Sony, naturally. I had to install a few apps and it wound up taking about an hour. Very labor-intensive and flaky process. It reminded me of old days, copying protected disks on my commodore 64. It's the same method, too. Bad sectors on the disc.
It was Capote and I'll never buy a Sony DVD again.
DVD players also play CDs. So you can buy a fancy DVD-audio rig and play your 1000 cds in it, plus any new DVD audio discs you buy. In fact, I blu-ray/HD-DVD players (the next thing after DVD) will play audio CDs just fine. I suspect that any new format after the HD stuff will also play audio CDs, probably for decades.
It's not like vinyl at all, where there is no backward compatibility.
Me? I'm staying far far away from this crap. I've got enough DRM in my life.
I have friends that work for Sun. If you don't believe me, you can always look it up.
I personally like snow, so living in Denver is a real disappointment. We get maybe 3 big storms every decade. Most winters are warm, dry, sunny. Every so often a dusting of snow or a cold snap. It's disgusting.
Don't you know that acronyms make people even stupider than usual?
ATM machine, PIN number, USA PATRIOT Act, etc.
Oh, btw, nice correction there fader.
I'm in Colorado too. I think many of them moved here because the cost of living was so much lower, and they fully intended to make it just like home. It's creepy to visit California and see identical cookie-cutter houses in identical layouts. Weird deja-vu.
My brother moved to San Diego and they paid 500k for a shitty condo. I can understand wanting out of that.
It's sad to see Colorado fade to homogeneity. I liked the no-helmet law, smoke em if you got em, rip-roaring, no seatbelt law Colorado. And don't get me started on the drivers!
You're totally right. I actually hired someone to live my life for me. It's working out pretty nice!
I loved that movie. The poor robots! I cried when they suffered. I think I was about 8.
I even watched it again a few years back, and it held up OK except for the hairstyles.
It is a several point moving violation, so it'd affect insurance rates. The tickets are generally given to people going at or under the speed limit. It's already been tested in court, going the speed limit in the left lane is illegal if people are passing you on the right. I think the law was passed to placate speeders, but it also may have safety benefits. Passing on the right is more dangerous than passing on the left, especially when truckers are involved.
Anyway, drivers here are truly horrible. And I've driven in California, Texas, and Chicago. It's a nightmare of 25 over the speed limit, swerving, no turn signals, tailgating, impossibly rude actions, all done while on the phone. Oh, and regular beatings/killings of people who get so worked up they take it outside the car. I guess they forgot why they're so uptight in the first place, which is getting there fast. People are idiots, sorry for the rant!
It's funny every winter to see the hundreds of upside-down SUVs in Colorado. It is helpful to have clearance in seldom-plowed mountain roads, but the locals often drive normal cars after watching too many SUVs flip and roll.
Strangely, in Colorado it is against the law to stay left. They passed a law that vehicles must stay right except to pass. You'll see "Slower traffic keep right" and "keep right except to pass" signs around. They actually ticket for this, a friend found out personally. He was going 60 in a 55 in the left lane and got a ticket for blocking traffic. The officer said they give out hundreds of these tickets every month.
I'm simply pointing out that politicians have always been killed. In a world where they cannot be killed, it seems hubris might become a problem. Our cultural obsession with safety has many downsides, and having world leaders feel invincible cannot be good for anyone but them.
As far as what I personally advocate, I think America would be a finer place if all the politicians were gone, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with their policies. I'm not going to do anything about it, but it's a nice dream.
Legislatures, especially state legislatures, pass some crazy bad laws. Some of them are inherently bogus, some of them conflict with other laws, some are plainly unconstitutional. Judges rule all the time on this insane hodgepodge of bullshit streaming out of legislature. I don't see any other way to do it. The alternative would be hundreds of conflicting laws, varying by city, regarding things like gay marriage, abortion, guns, etc.
Depending on the type, it could be used as a still. Moonshine is still made, believe it or not, and it is still a priority to crack down on stills.
A distillation rig might also be used for drug manufacture. Perhaps they check on any above a certain size.
You're wrong.
Cecil Adams addressed this over 30 years ago. You need to eat 50-70 apricot kernels to kill an adult.
I think we'd have better presidents if they thought about how their policies affect people. If they live in a bulletproof world they don't have the final accountability that assassination has always provided since Roman days.
If people dropped $20k on a computer, paid $1k/year insurance (covers spamware, etc), and paid thousands if anything serious went wrong with it, had it serviced 4x/year and took it in for a quick "fill-up" of patches and antivirus every week I bet they'd "just work."
Oof, that is deep hurting. I was making fun of the GP who talked about "disabling blahblah is easy enough to disable."
Actually, you want to enable disabling auto-updates. Disabling auto-update is disabled by default.
It doesn't bug me much. At least it asks if you want to restart firefox. It could easily be worse, especially with me having 15 tabs open and no autorestore extension installed (yet!)
It's not a bad idea exactly. Most movie studios sell their DVDs for say $10, the retailer will sell them for $15.
Amazon can sell their DVDs for $15, which makes it much more profitable. They also can plug it for "free" and know a lot about their customers, which can really affect sales.
Hell, I would have voted for it. Otherwise, I could look forward to "Congressman LunaticTippy supports Child Molestation" in my next campaign. Stupid campaign laws. Complete bullshit.
I'm glad! Now someone needs to figure out how to have it play the "eaten by ghost" sound when your battery dies.
I know an actual hippie who lives "off grid" with a bizarre assortment of solar, wind, marine batteries, inverters, and 12v appliances. He also has an electric guitar that runs on his hippie-power.