So you turn to fancy pants science stuff to explain why it's ok to breed cows and whales. Bravo. Well, did you know that pound for pound the wolverine is the most fiercest mammal? And pound for pound the great white shark is the most fiercest animal in the ocean! Not too far apart now, are they!?
It's not like I'm dusting Matthew Broderick with horse musk to attract Sarah Jessica Parker for some sort of equine sapien hybrid! Talk about a violation of ethics through inter species mating!
I really am torn on these experiments, I mean I could seriously question the motive and nature:
Of all the animals you had to pick from you went with cows and whales? Cows and wales? What's next? Sloths and sea sponges? You had the chance to go Island of Doctor Moreau and you tried to recreate a manatee (hello? already exists!) instead of... oh I don't know... hybridizing wolverines and great white sharks?
On the other hand, I could also defend it with other logic, just as solid:
I don't see anything wrong with it. It was all a matter of time before this happened naturally anyways. Interspecies mating happens all the time between donkeys and horses resulting in a mule or hinny. Occasionally squash and pumpkin plants cross fertilize. It's common. Really, it was only a matter of time before a heard of cattle near the ocean resulted in a particularly rowdy bull wandering into the Ross Sea or Pacific Ocean to jump the bones of a minke whale thus creating a hybrid. Who knows, maybe these would be as useful as mules are? I'm sure the poor of third world countries could use another pack animal--now for oceanic voyages!
At first I though, hey, their stock is at $25.54, $26 a share is not so generous. Then I went on to see that before the $2 billion bid it was bouncing between $16 & $18 for months. In fact, it hadn't seen $26/share since 1999. I can only assume the $2 billion bid was what caused it to spike, nothing else indicates that.
So the reason it's so generous is because EA is paying their own price that was the result of them inflating Take Two's stock prices. They want this company. Badly. Desperation or good business move? I'm not sure. Maybe it's just the big dog gobbling up the competition or EA expanding to other types of games and gamers? In my eyes, it's a shame for the sake of diversity though. EA would never take the risks Take Two has.
Ok, so I tried to go to OneStat which was the site mentioned in the article. The article referenced an "internet population" statistic from OneStat:
Netscape users accounted for 0.14 percent of the Internet population in February, according to OneStat.com, which offers Web monitoring services. That is a tiny fraction of the market, but still represents more than a million users, many who use aging versions of Netscape. But when I went to OneStat, I found it was merely a paid service offered to monitor statistics on your website. I would really like to see that report. Who's website (or group of websites) did they choose? How did they compile this information? The article shows stats grouping all IEs into one and all Firefoxes into one but what are their statistics for IE6, IE7, Lynx, Firefox 2 & Firefox 3? Surely early adopter rates are just as interesting as late adopter rates and surely obscure browsers are what this story is interested in. Why aren't you asking Lynx users why they stick with a text interface?
Which leads me to a motive I did not find in the article, the motive of the company I work for that employs several hundred thousand employees. There is no push to go to Vista or IE7 so they don't do it. They're late adopters in almost the same sense as no one's asking for it, Microsoft has not yet found a way to force the enterprise community into this pigeonhole and so none of them will do it. On an enterprise level, there's no such thing as 'early adopter' as companies are too busy taking financial and strategic risks to welcome technological risks or 1/10 of their employees failing to have a computer for a couple days.
IFPI Turning To Lawsuits To say the IFPI is turning to lawsuits is like saying Bob Dylan is turning to drugs. It's an organization of lawyers! What else do they do?!
You might be able to convince me that the IFPI is getting smarter (or stupider, depending on your views) at stopping file sharing by targeting ISPs with lawsuits but to say they're only now with litigating to stop these losses is ignorant.
Now can I get my Optimus Keyboard for less than $1,299? Well, I didn't see a price. I saw that it was 'green' as it was making organic LEDs but how was it any greener than the old procedure for making OLEDs? Nor did they state it was faster or cheaper. They said it took four years to do this, how long did it take to make the strip pictured? What raw materials went into that (or what were the costs for that strip)?
I would be excited... if there were more details convincing me this is a 'breakthrough.' That word gets thrown around a lot these days.
From CNet:
Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the joint venture owned by Sony and singer Michael Jackson, has thrown cold water over reports coming out of London that the Beatles catalog would soon be available on iTunes. A spokeswoman for Sony/ATV Music Publishing told CNET News.com that the reports are "untrue."
Sony/ATV is a pretty good source. While EMI Group owns the recording rights to the Beatles catalog, Sony and Jackson own the rights to the vast majority of the catalog's publishing rights. Had a deal been cut, Sony/ATV would "absolutely be informed," the Sony/ATV spokeswoman said. So, somebody's probably not telling the truth here. We're probably being toyed with. In the Name of all that is Noodley and Good, I hate greed.
If you want to repurchase any of the Beatles catalog in a restrictive format that you can't do anything with, I suggest going with vinyl. Well, I know people that still listen to The Beatles on vinyl. Especially The Beatles. If you read on Wikipedia:
The Beatles UK discography was released on CD in the late 1980s. However, the sound of the digital transfers of the current discs, produced by George Martin in 1987 and 1988 using the best equipment available during the early days of the format, no longer meet standards achievable using current techniques in Direct Stream Digital, HDCD, and others. The sound on the remastered catalogues of Bob Dylan, the Bee Gees, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones, among other heavyweights from the 1960s, have been greatly enhanced using technological developments that have occurred since Martin's initial digital mastering, and as of 2007, similar work for the Beatles is long overdue. In addition, many Beatles enthusiasts feel that the CD releases of the albums are inferior because the recordings were originally mastered to be played on vinyl, which, when played back, arguably possess a warm sound which CDs are not able to reproduce. Many purists today still listen to Beatles albums only on vinyl. So while you may claim that records are an inferior format, there is still a reason to listen to them on vinyl. Sadly, I listened to Revolver a little too much and it does not play well, it is muffled and worn. I will honestly say that the remasterings of bands like The Who do sound different than the late 80's CDs that I also own. Unfortunately, I cannot say this for many of my Beatles CDs. They do actually sound different on CD than vinyl. I have grown used to it though.
Also, it's evident that you have hundreds of hours of takes by The Beatles in your vaults. I know it takes time to master them but doesn't greed and insane fans willing to pile money at your feet dictate that you should continue with the releases of music similar to the Anthologies? I mean, you could distribute this stuff on iTunes or (preferably) Amazon too without ever having to do the physical packaging and I would probably have to buy it.
You seem to be greedy as all hell so I thought I'd throw that out there and hope you publish everything recorded by what is considered by many to be the greatest musical group to ever live.
Valley Wag does. The twitter feeds are basically asses calling her stupid and what not. She reportedly replied that she hates everyone on the twitter feed. Oh well, another attention whoring soap opera to avoid in my eyes.
Understand that judging groups of people is as a rule wrong. It is called bigotry. No, it's only wrong when the person being judged can't control it. In all other cases, it could be construed as strange but is commonly known as 'preference.'
If a woman chooses to enjoy astrology, it is within your right to make that an identifying characteristic of someone you wouldn't want as a mate. Although this summary reads like the person writing it is a bigot, I do agree that there are some things that cause me to flat out not date a woman.
For example, I will not date a woman who takes psychiatric medication and also drinks alcohol. Bad experiences in the past with that. It is within her power not to drink alcohol. Yes, I do think less of people who do that.
I won't, however, say I will not date a blind woman. I do not think less of people who have that disability.
The author might be too hasty, I know many women who find astrology fun and must confess I even enjoy reading the Onion's horoscopes. But I have met a woman who asked me for my birth order and then proceeded to judge everything I talked about or did on that and bring it up in conversation. I have also dated a woman who was Wicca and very very cool. Laid back, didn't push it on anybody and only spoke about it when asked about it. Which would you want to be with?
Will you forgive him? Why does he need forgiveness, that was a brilliant business move!
I still don't see what he regrets, Novell only paid the low low price of $350 million and what do they have to show for that? They can put "Microsoft won't sue us and we'll be interoperable with Windows" on their asset sheet. Buyer's remorse? How could that possibly be! Their investors must be please as punch!
The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin. And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe's total. Plait's comment on the age result: 'Some people might say it doesn't look a day over 6000 years. They're wrong.'" This was already spelled out in the bible, the answers are all there. Recall that the number of towns and villages in Joshua concatenated with the number of sons Abraham's brother had concatenated with how many days old Isaac was when he was circumcised concatenated with the number of sons Noah had concatenated with Jesus' age when he died is (by no mere coincidence) 2288333 1/3! Which proves that one year to God is like 2,288,333 and 1/3 years to humans.
Do the math, the earth really is 6,000 god years x 2288333 1/3 human yr/god yr = 13.73 billion human years old!
It all fits, the answers were already right before your eyes in the good book. Who needs a scientician or "NASA" to tell us this when we already know it?!
Normally I wouldn't really care, but I think this is interesting because eBay is so dominant in their field, that there is no real alternative. Watching how things like this play out is interesting to me because I want to believe that the internet will require everyone to be more responsible or lose. But the real question for me is at what point does total marketplace dominance trump that. Let's rephrase that last part to "When does competitive capitalism and greed cause a company to push its ethical and moral responsibilities to their absolute limits?" and the answer is: Always.
Right now eBay's board is having a few analysts go through this list of "power sellers" and derive some nice little numbers. (A) What percentage of income on listings come from these people? (B) What is the approximate dollar value in having those auctions available to our users (probably pretty small)? (C) What's it going to cost us to retroactively fix these erroneous auctions, restore the forums and send out apologies to every eBay user? (D) What are is the probability that the FCC will act on the user's complaints? (E) What's the maximum fine we could receive from the FCC?
Now here's the math, if A + B > C then eBay will probably send out apologies and make a good effort to please these power sellers. However, if D*E < C then I'll bet there's no chance in hell they're taking action on this.
Now look at it from the other side of the issue, the power sellers on eBay. What dollar (or percent) value do you assign using eBay to your sales (probably pretty high considering the exposure they offer you). There are competitors however small, you could go to them but it's going to hurt your sales. So the question now becomes whether or not you've lost enough on these fake auctions and censored forums. The answer is obviously no. A young idealist might blindly stick it to the man and suffer in the name of ethics and against censorship. But the businessman would not.
So what Taco is interested in is whether or not eBay is going to do the moral and ethically correct thing and take action C regardless of price or if the sellers are going to move to another site out of respect for free speech and standing up against shadey listings. The answer is "no" thanks to the effect of symbiotic profit experienced on both sides.
Clinton and Obama continue to fight over who's winning the Democratic nomination and meanwhile they become uglier as they turn on each other. Reminds me of Nash equilibrium:
In game theory, the Nash equilibrium (named after John Forbes Nash, who proposed it) is a solution concept of a game involving two or more players, in which no player has anything to gain by changing only his or her own strategy unilaterally. If each player has chosen a strategy and no player can benefit by changing his or her strategy while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices and the corresponding payoffs constitute a Nash equilibrium. I cringe every time I hear either of them say something even mildly attacking the other--couldn't they agree to just stick to their own personal views and rely on those to win the nomination? But I guess that's politics.
It never ceases to amuse me how McCain supporters will paint Clinton & Obama as hardcore Democrats and call McCain a moderate conservative while Clinton & Obama supporters paint McCain as a hardcore Republican and argue their candidate being a moderate liberal. Because they know the moderate will garner the most votes. I guess one thing they're split on should be the war though if McCain's smart, he'll promise to remain strong in our fight yet distance himself from Bush's attitude towards it (somehow).
I keep hearing people telling me that I shouldn't worry, that everyone's fed up with the war and it's time for a change--there's no way the Democrats could lose this one! Unfortunately, it's shaping up to be all too much like the last election which left me pretty dissappointed, especially in retrospect. Well, at least Clinton & Obama aren't as stoic, wealthy and lifeless as Kerry was. One thing's for sure, I would gladly welcome McCain over Bush as president any day even if people call him a maverick senator.
I found this review to be logical and informative and therefore boring. So I decided to let a few key individuals weigh in on this and tell us exactly how this mesh network works.
Senator Ted Stevens: "This here larptop isn't an intersection for trucks to just... DRIVE over, no, it's a junction for that internet and also your own personal internets. See, just the other day, I got on this here thing and it sent out what I call a "searcher tube" looking for other laptops... up to 1.5 km away. That's right, once a searcher tube finds another larptop or 'junction tube' then it connects to that and the series of tubes continues to grow. Unfortunately, this series of searcher tubes and junction tubes makes it highly probable that my messages get backed up in those tubes. Therefore, this will provide an own personal internet for poor children in countries we either need to invade or ignore but it will not, however, suffice for bridging islands in Alaska."
The Reverend Billy Graham: "And lo, I did with God's good graces ask for power to be restored and replenished throughout the XO's motherboard thereby bringing the only free BIOS to life... and it was good! Upon God's recognition of my authentication of that which you call "the login screen" a hand descended from the heavens. This hand stretched 3 km end to end and it was then clear to me then that this hand was intended not for me... not for the rich... not for the privileged but for the poor and pathetic chillun' of the world that need God's help. Now I have a method by which to contact them and teach them about God and ask them for weekly tithes! And when I realized that a TCP/IP connection had been made, I fell down on my knees and prayed to the Lord God for He is Good and Holy and brings life to these innate objects you call the XO laptop, Amen."
Bob Dylan: "Yeah, ok so like, I got this laptop and it was pretty groovy but I had to put my Mac down because it was like I couldn't use two laptops at once... so anyway the laptop like wanted to be alive so I hit the power switch, man, and then it was like *wham* *whiz* *whazzle* and suddenly like the thing could 'talk' to other things like 1.5 km away and I wasn't sure if it was the uppers I had just taken or if I really was connectin' to another machine or network that far away.
Mitch Bainwol: "We have discovered that a new technology exists that is a threat to your safety & the economy and will further destroy our income in the near future. It allows criminals, drugs users and child molesters to contact each other freely and unmonitored up to 1.5 km away. They can trade... no steal music at their leisure from a vast expanse of 1.5 km. They may already be using these laptops to steal your diamonds and moneys. Putting an XO laptop into your child's hands is only a gateway to crime and an early death. It's cheap price makes it easy to manufacture and distribute, we are here to warn you about the looming threat of a solid network of these devices stretching out across our free country. Thousands of children in other countries have received them already and their quality of life has plummeted. These laptops are sturdy and brightly colored, they are easily identifiable. Find people that have them and report them to the RIAA."
From the site where this is hosted:
This music arrived unexpectedly as the result of an experiment. The rules were as follows: 10 weeks, no clear agenda, no overthinking, everything driven by impulse. Whatever happens during that time gets released as... something.
The team: Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder and myself with some help from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew and Brian Viglione. Rob Sheridan collaborated with Artist in Residence (A+R) to create the accompanying visual and physical aesthetic.
We began improvising and let the music decide the direction. Eyes were closed, hands played instruments and it began. Within a matter of days it became clear we were on to something, and a lot of material began appearing. What we thought could be a five song EP became much more. I invited some friends over to join in and we all enjoyed the process of collaborating on this.
The end result is a wildly varied body of music that we're able to present to the world in ways the confines of a major record label would never have allowed - from a 100% DRM-free, high-quality download, to the most luxurious physical package we've ever created.
More volumes of Ghosts are likely to appear in the future.
- Trent Reznor, March 2, 2008 For those of you that don't like the same sounding music on an album or the yelling vocals, I heavily recommend downloading this and listening to it for free. I emphasized the "wildly varied" as some of this music is very cool calm and collected easy listening with very orchestral sounding builds.
I'm glad to see an artist as respected as Reznor do this. It kind of makes sense though, as you see this music only took him 10 weeks to do and doesn't have any vocals--lowering the number of takes and the difficulty of quality lyrics.
With the digital age and the ability to produce easily and quickly accessible DRM free music, we may see the beginning of a whole lot more material coming from artists with either an ad-based revenue or charging for particular tracks that required more studio time and refinement.
In fact, you can get on a plane... Woh woh woh... woh. Slow down. Are you actually suggesting I leave the basement and expose myself to natural light?
You must be new here. I know that that's right when the government satellites will get me, why do you think the planes fly at such a huge altitude when they don't have to?! Duh, so that its easier for the satellites to brain scan you!
But in all seriousness, I believe most of that movie (The Gladiator) was fabricated. Yes, there was a 'Maximus' (if that was his name) but the events surely did not transpire as they did in the movie. It's not like I'm making fun of "I Claudius" or actual documentaries on Rome.
Requires extra strength for keypresses, so unsuitable for typing more than a few minutes. Assistant: Every student in the school's grades are still failing. Principal: Well, what about all the super resistant Optimus Maximus keyboards we gave them to repress internet usage? Assistant: That backfired and merely created a generation of hackers with super strong fingers. We've got them trapped in the gymnasium but you can only approach them in specialized suits with extra padding so they can't get their fingers around your limbs or any part of your body. Several teachers have had their arms and wrists broken after attempting to block all gaming ports... things have gone from bad to worse, sir. Principal: Damnit, I was hoping it wouldn't come to this... *sigh*... increase the creatine dosage in the locker room drinking fountains. And then... release the jocks into the gym. Kill all power and lights to the gym and pipe loud Metallica through the speakers to hasten the process. Assistant: But... but... sir how will we stop the overpowered jocks once they are done? Principal: Simple, we just increase the depressants being injected into the goth kids and the problem will eventually take care of itself, we might even be on the news!
Naturally as humans, we are very capable of memorizing lyrics, poems, quotes & the like from our favorite media. I've suggested this before and I'll suggest it again. Pick something that your little sister loves, like pokemon, Harry Pothead, Celine Dion or whatever the devil kids are watching/reading/listening to these days. And simply have her pick the most memorable quote or verse from that thing. Then you simply strip down to the first letters of each word (punctuation and capitalization included) and you have something that is easily memorized but fairly random.
For instance, in high school I listened to Tomorrow Never Knows off of the Revolver record by The Beatles nonstop. Since I know every lyric of that song, I might pick the opening line:
Turn off your mind, relax and flow downstream Which would render the password:
Toym,rafd Not a bad password, in my opinion. You could do the same with the opening line of a book, quote from a movie, TV show or even a line from a poem. All of these things are very memorable and produce hard to break passwords.
Yeah, we always fall back on the government to help us out when us nerds aren't satisfied with how capitalism is driving the technological trends that need to happen.
But let's not forget those that went before us. Jun-ichiro Hagino, better known as Itojun, was one of the first researchers that was pushing for IPv6 since as long as I can remember (at least 2001). On top of that he was developing specifications for it and working through the BSD code to make it one of the first operating systems fully capable of being IPv6 compliant--starting a trend that needs to happen in more operating systems sooner. He even started documenting draft APIs to get developers thinking about how this would work inside software.
Although many still carry on his work, the saddest part is that all his efforts to bring awareness to everyone about IPv6 may fall into the responsibilities of the government or, worse, capitalism.
I have some C to write. While we may have had our differences in the past, what with my resource greedy garbage collector and your platform specific releases, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that one day you and I might end up in the same place--management.
So while we may not be able to reconcile our differences now, I realize that at the end of the day we might find ourselves in the same spot of alienation and place of decay.
In a different reality, I might have called you friend...
Slashdot Mirror
So you turn to fancy pants science stuff to explain why it's ok to breed cows and whales. Bravo. Well, did you know that pound for pound the wolverine is the most fiercest mammal? And pound for pound the great white shark is the most fiercest animal in the ocean! Not too far apart now, are they!?
It's not like I'm dusting Matthew Broderick with horse musk to attract Sarah Jessica Parker for some sort of equine sapien hybrid! Talk about a violation of ethics through inter species mating!
I really am torn on these experiments, I mean I could seriously question the motive and nature:
... oh I don't know ... hybridizing wolverines and great white sharks?
Of all the animals you had to pick from you went with cows and whales? Cows and wales? What's next? Sloths and sea sponges? You had the chance to go Island of Doctor Moreau and you tried to recreate a manatee (hello? already exists!) instead of
On the other hand, I could also defend it with other logic, just as solid:
I don't see anything wrong with it. It was all a matter of time before this happened naturally anyways. Interspecies mating happens all the time between donkeys and horses resulting in a mule or hinny. Occasionally squash and pumpkin plants cross fertilize. It's common. Really, it was only a matter of time before a heard of cattle near the ocean resulted in a particularly rowdy bull wandering into the Ross Sea or Pacific Ocean to jump the bones of a minke whale thus creating a hybrid. Who knows, maybe these would be as useful as mules are? I'm sure the poor of third world countries could use another pack animal--now for oceanic voyages!
You're right about EA wanting a piece of the next release but I don't think it has to do with GTA, it has to do with the upcoming BioShock 2.
At first I though, hey, their stock is at $25.54, $26 a share is not so generous. Then I went on to see that before the $2 billion bid it was bouncing between $16 & $18 for months. In fact, it hadn't seen $26/share since 1999. I can only assume the $2 billion bid was what caused it to spike, nothing else indicates that.
So the reason it's so generous is because EA is paying their own price that was the result of them inflating Take Two's stock prices. They want this company. Badly. Desperation or good business move? I'm not sure. Maybe it's just the big dog gobbling up the competition or EA expanding to other types of games and gamers? In my eyes, it's a shame for the sake of diversity though. EA would never take the risks Take Two has.
Which leads me to a motive I did not find in the article, the motive of the company I work for that employs several hundred thousand employees. There is no push to go to Vista or IE7 so they don't do it. They're late adopters in almost the same sense as no one's asking for it, Microsoft has not yet found a way to force the enterprise community into this pigeonhole and so none of them will do it. On an enterprise level, there's no such thing as 'early adopter' as companies are too busy taking financial and strategic risks to welcome technological risks or 1/10 of their employees failing to have a computer for a couple days.
I recall them dishing out 2100 lawsuits at once in 2005 and 8000 lawsuits at once in 2006! And evidence that it's been going on since 2004.
You might be able to convince me that the IFPI is getting smarter (or stupider, depending on your views) at stopping file sharing by targeting ISPs with lawsuits but to say they're only now with litigating to stop these losses is ignorant.
I would be excited
Sony/ATV is a pretty good source. While EMI Group owns the recording rights to the Beatles catalog, Sony and Jackson own the rights to the vast majority of the catalog's publishing rights. Had a deal been cut, Sony/ATV would "absolutely be informed," the Sony/ATV spokeswoman said. So, somebody's probably not telling the truth here. We're probably being toyed with. In the Name of all that is Noodley and Good, I hate greed.
Uh, while you're at it, could you re-release their their Christmas Albums on something that's not flexi-disc? You know, so I don't have to pay some bootlegger for a piece of crap copy? I have one track from that legally off of the Free As A Bird (track 04) single.
Also, it's evident that you have hundreds of hours of takes by The Beatles in your vaults. I know it takes time to master them but doesn't greed and insane fans willing to pile money at your feet dictate that you should continue with the releases of music similar to the Anthologies? I mean, you could distribute this stuff on iTunes or (preferably) Amazon too without ever having to do the physical packaging and I would probably have to buy it.
You seem to be greedy as all hell so I thought I'd throw that out there and hope you publish everything recorded by what is considered by many to be the greatest musical group to ever live.
Like the Mickey Mouse Act, this bill has the informal title of "Tim Couch's 14 Year Old Daughter Just Clicked on a Goatse Link Bill."
Valley Wag does. The twitter feeds are basically asses calling her stupid and what not. She reportedly replied that she hates everyone on the twitter feed. Oh well, another attention whoring soap opera to avoid in my eyes.
If a woman chooses to enjoy astrology, it is within your right to make that an identifying characteristic of someone you wouldn't want as a mate. Although this summary reads like the person writing it is a bigot, I do agree that there are some things that cause me to flat out not date a woman.
For example, I will not date a woman who takes psychiatric medication and also drinks alcohol. Bad experiences in the past with that. It is within her power not to drink alcohol. Yes, I do think less of people who do that.
I won't, however, say I will not date a blind woman. I do not think less of people who have that disability.
The author might be too hasty, I know many women who find astrology fun and must confess I even enjoy reading the Onion's horoscopes. But I have met a woman who asked me for my birth order and then proceeded to judge everything I talked about or did on that and bring it up in conversation. I have also dated a woman who was Wicca and very very cool. Laid back, didn't push it on anybody and only spoke about it when asked about it. Which would you want to be with?
I still don't see what he regrets, Novell only paid the low low price of $350 million and what do they have to show for that? They can put "Microsoft won't sue us and we'll be interoperable with Windows" on their asset sheet. Buyer's remorse? How could that possibly be! Their investors must be please as punch!
Do the math, the earth really is 6,000 god years x 2288333 1/3 human yr/god yr = 13.73 billion human years old!
It all fits, the answers were already right before your eyes in the good book. Who needs a scientician or "NASA" to tell us this when we already know it?!
Right now eBay's board is having a few analysts go through this list of "power sellers" and derive some nice little numbers. (A) What percentage of income on listings come from these people? (B) What is the approximate dollar value in having those auctions available to our users (probably pretty small)? (C) What's it going to cost us to retroactively fix these erroneous auctions, restore the forums and send out apologies to every eBay user? (D) What are is the probability that the FCC will act on the user's complaints? (E) What's the maximum fine we could receive from the FCC?
Now here's the math, if A + B > C then eBay will probably send out apologies and make a good effort to please these power sellers. However, if D*E < C then I'll bet there's no chance in hell they're taking action on this.
Now look at it from the other side of the issue, the power sellers on eBay. What dollar (or percent) value do you assign using eBay to your sales (probably pretty high considering the exposure they offer you). There are competitors however small, you could go to them but it's going to hurt your sales. So the question now becomes whether or not you've lost enough on these fake auctions and censored forums. The answer is obviously no. A young idealist might blindly stick it to the man and suffer in the name of ethics and against censorship. But the businessman would not.
So what Taco is interested in is whether or not eBay is going to do the moral and ethically correct thing and take action C regardless of price or if the sellers are going to move to another site out of respect for free speech and standing up against shadey listings. The answer is "no" thanks to the effect of symbiotic profit experienced on both sides.
It never ceases to amuse me how McCain supporters will paint Clinton & Obama as hardcore Democrats and call McCain a moderate conservative while Clinton & Obama supporters paint McCain as a hardcore Republican and argue their candidate being a moderate liberal. Because they know the moderate will garner the most votes. I guess one thing they're split on should be the war though if McCain's smart, he'll promise to remain strong in our fight yet distance himself from Bush's attitude towards it (somehow).
I keep hearing people telling me that I shouldn't worry, that everyone's fed up with the war and it's time for a change--there's no way the Democrats could lose this one! Unfortunately, it's shaping up to be all too much like the last election which left me pretty dissappointed, especially in retrospect. Well, at least Clinton & Obama aren't as stoic, wealthy and lifeless as Kerry was. One thing's for sure, I would gladly welcome McCain over Bush as president any day even if people call him a maverick senator.
I found this review to be logical and informative and therefore boring. So I decided to let a few key individuals weigh in on this and tell us exactly how this mesh network works.
... DRIVE over, no, it's a junction for that internet and also your own personal internets. See, just the other day, I got on this here thing and it sent out what I call a "searcher tube" looking for other laptops ... up to 1.5 km away. That's right, once a searcher tube finds another larptop or 'junction tube' then it connects to that and the series of tubes continues to grow. Unfortunately, this series of searcher tubes and junction tubes makes it highly probable that my messages get backed up in those tubes. Therefore, this will provide an own personal internet for poor children in countries we either need to invade or ignore but it will not, however, suffice for bridging islands in Alaska."
... and it was good! Upon God's recognition of my authentication of that which you call "the login screen" a hand descended from the heavens. This hand stretched 3 km end to end and it was then clear to me then that this hand was intended not for me ... not for the rich ... not for the privileged but for the poor and pathetic chillun' of the world that need God's help. Now I have a method by which to contact them and teach them about God and ask them for weekly tithes! And when I realized that a TCP/IP connection had been made, I fell down on my knees and prayed to the Lord God for He is Good and Holy and brings life to these innate objects you call the XO laptop, Amen."
... so anyway the laptop like wanted to be alive so I hit the power switch, man, and then it was like *wham* *whiz* *whazzle* and suddenly like the thing could 'talk' to other things like 1.5 km away and I wasn't sure if it was the uppers I had just taken or if I really was connectin' to another machine or network that far away.
... no steal music at their leisure from a vast expanse of 1.5 km. They may already be using these laptops to steal your diamonds and moneys. Putting an XO laptop into your child's hands is only a gateway to crime and an early death. It's cheap price makes it easy to manufacture and distribute, we are here to warn you about the looming threat of a solid network of these devices stretching out across our free country. Thousands of children in other countries have received them already and their quality of life has plummeted. These laptops are sturdy and brightly colored, they are easily identifiable. Find people that have them and report them to the RIAA."
Senator Ted Stevens: "This here larptop isn't an intersection for trucks to just
The Reverend Billy Graham: "And lo, I did with God's good graces ask for power to be restored and replenished throughout the XO's motherboard thereby bringing the only free BIOS to life
Bob Dylan: "Yeah, ok so like, I got this laptop and it was pretty groovy but I had to put my Mac down because it was like I couldn't use two laptops at once
Mitch Bainwol: "We have discovered that a new technology exists that is a threat to your safety & the economy and will further destroy our income in the near future. It allows criminals, drugs users and child molesters to contact each other freely and unmonitored up to 1.5 km away. They can trade
The team: Atticus Ross, Alan Moulder and myself with some help from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew and Brian Viglione. Rob Sheridan collaborated with Artist in Residence (A+R) to create the accompanying visual and physical aesthetic.
We began improvising and let the music decide the direction. Eyes were closed, hands played instruments and it began. Within a matter of days it became clear we were on to something, and a lot of material began appearing. What we thought could be a five song EP became much more. I invited some friends over to join in and we all enjoyed the process of collaborating on this.
The end result is a wildly varied body of music that we're able to present to the world in ways the confines of a major record label would never have allowed - from a 100% DRM-free, high-quality download, to the most luxurious physical package we've ever created.
More volumes of Ghosts are likely to appear in the future.
- Trent Reznor, March 2, 2008 For those of you that don't like the same sounding music on an album or the yelling vocals, I heavily recommend downloading this and listening to it for free. I emphasized the "wildly varied" as some of this music is very cool calm and collected easy listening with very orchestral sounding builds.
I'm glad to see an artist as respected as Reznor do this. It kind of makes sense though, as you see this music only took him 10 weeks to do and doesn't have any vocals--lowering the number of takes and the difficulty of quality lyrics.
With the digital age and the ability to produce easily and quickly accessible DRM free music, we may see the beginning of a whole lot more material coming from artists with either an ad-based revenue or charging for particular tracks that required more studio time and refinement.
You must be new here. I know that that's right when the government satellites will get me, why do you think the planes fly at such a huge altitude when they don't have to?! Duh, so that its easier for the satellites to brain scan you!
But in all seriousness, I believe most of that movie (The Gladiator) was fabricated. Yes, there was a 'Maximus' (if that was his name) but the events surely did not transpire as they did in the movie. It's not like I'm making fun of "I Claudius" or actual documentaries on Rome.
Principal: Well, what about all the super resistant Optimus Maximus keyboards we gave them to repress internet usage?
Assistant: That backfired and merely created a generation of hackers with super strong fingers. We've got them trapped in the gymnasium but you can only approach them in specialized suits with extra padding so they can't get their fingers around your limbs or any part of your body. Several teachers have had their arms and wrists broken after attempting to block all gaming ports
Principal: Damnit, I was hoping it wouldn't come to this
Assistant: But
Principal: Simple, we just increase the depressants being injected into the goth kids and the problem will eventually take care of itself, we might even be on the news!
... Maximus keyboards was sold for $2750 And then when Russel Crow saw it, he went and got Litigiosus Andronicus and did the same.I think I have some good ideas for some more keyboard names:
For instance, in high school I listened to Tomorrow Never Knows off of the Revolver record by The Beatles nonstop. Since I know every lyric of that song, I might pick the opening line: Turn off your mind, relax and flow downstream Which would render the password: Toym,rafd Not a bad password, in my opinion. You could do the same with the opening line of a book, quote from a movie, TV show or even a line from a poem. All of these things are very memorable and produce hard to break passwords.
Yeah, we always fall back on the government to help us out when us nerds aren't satisfied with how capitalism is driving the technological trends that need to happen.
But let's not forget those that went before us. Jun-ichiro Hagino, better known as Itojun, was one of the first researchers that was pushing for IPv6 since as long as I can remember (at least 2001). On top of that he was developing specifications for it and working through the BSD code to make it one of the first operating systems fully capable of being IPv6 compliant--starting a trend that needs to happen in more operating systems sooner. He even started documenting draft APIs to get developers thinking about how this would work inside software.
And then he died in a car accident at age 37. It's funny how you don't appreciate their work until they're dead. Almost like a painter or author.
Although many still carry on his work, the saddest part is that all his efforts to bring awareness to everyone about IPv6 may fall into the responsibilities of the government or, worse, capitalism.
So while we may not be able to reconcile our differences now, I realize that at the end of the day we might find ourselves in the same spot of alienation and place of decay.
In a different reality, I might have called you friend