is on whatever Gmail uses. I've not yet seen a spam message in my inbox, nor have I missed any mail, even from auto-mailing scripts at websites I'm building... I will agree that it's great for spam; but when it comes to 419 emails, it sucks. Badly. I'm not sure how I got on the 419ers lists, but I get at least 10-12 of them a day, none of which are caught by gmail filters. On the other hand, the 50-60 regular spam emails are correctly filtered.
If only I could perform regex filtering in gmail, I could catch the 419 emails myself very easily, as they all have very common attributes.
This is true; however, the end result is that an agreement was reached that the US is complying with. This tends to indicate that the US does indeed respect the WTO arbitration process.
Is it too much to ask for examples (beyond the GP's, which was ultimately decided by the WTO in favor of the US).
As far as I can see both the Canadian softwood lumber issue and the Antigua gambling issue have been repeatedly decided against the USA - do you know of some more recent WTO or NAFTA decisions supporting the USA's position? I am also unaware of any action on the part of the USA to bring them in compliance with the decision.
I am also unaware of any WTO decisions against Canada or Antigua which have not resulted in changes in their behavior to bring them in line with the WTO decisions.
Re Antigua gambling -- you're correct, and I was unfamiliar with that instance. As of April 2 or so, WTO did rule that US was not in compliance with 2005 ruling, and now requires US to allow Antigua remote gambling sites the same rights as any other remote gambling site. It is a bit early to say whether US is complying with that order; though it should be clear within a couple of months.
. The US uses these organisations when it suits them, then ignores their verdicts when brought against the US Is it too much to ask for examples (beyond the GP's, which was ultimately decided by the WTO in favor of the US).
A good captcha has a non-sense string of characters in various cases, all skewed and distorted, with extra geometric elements obscuring the characters. This renders unavailable somewhere around half of the clues that an OCR uses. Hell, if we obscure it enough it can be practically buried under geometric noise; and once we do that, we've solved the AC problem on/.!
What pushed me to adblock isn't ads, it's ANNOYING ads. It's ads that make noise, that flash, that move around the screen, that pop up, etc. Regular simple ads were not annoying to me. Now all content providers suffer because of the behavior of some advertisers. I have to agree. Flash ads, graphical ads, animated ads, all of them are things that make it harder to focus on the article at hand. If ads were textual, small (ref: adsense), and unobtrusive then I would not block them.
i would much rather have the person next to me talking to whomever on their cellphone instead of trying to hold a conversation with me. small talk with someone you'll never have to see again is the worst exercise in tedium. The benefits of networking can turn up in odd and unexpected places. You never know when that person you're talking to might know someone who knows somebody that would be interested in the work that you do. Not to mention that sitting next to people and pretending they don't exist just so that you can remain undisturbed in your own little world is obnoxious.
In less than 5 years (2012), there will be 4 workers retireing/leaving the US workforce for every new one entering. Those leaving will be the most knowlegeable/experienced and those entering will be the novices.
That experienced labor shortage bodes well for USA based workers.
Outsourcing or importing H1B won't fix that shortage. Which has precisely what to do with my question?
In fairness, I think there's a difference between invasive DRM such as installed by Sony; and DRM on downloadable music. As you point out, consumers are much more likely to notice and be affected by the former.
That's only when you look at distributed music in the way that the RIAA wants you to look at it: as a tangible good instead of what it really should be: an advertisement for their live music performances. Right. I was reminded of that at the Beatles concert I went to the other day.
For some reason allofmp3.com worked just fucking fine for everyone (streaming and/or downloading) without the DRM. You must have a weird definition of "everyone". allofmp3 works fine for the consumers; it works fine for the owners. It does not work fine for... oh, I don't know, the artists. You see, they don't get any of the money. At all. (And let's not start with "well, allofmp3 pays licensing" -- because they pay licensing to an organization that doesn't hold any licenses to most of the music they're distributing.)
Ironically as a short-sighted response to this the record companies are making cotracts even more restrictive and making their products less desireable by adding DRM. For some reason they think us consumers are too stupid to spot or be concerned about the DRM. Newsflash: once you get out of slashdot-land, most consumers DON'T care about DRM. It's not that they're stupid, it's that it doesn't affect them, so they don't care. My wife gets her music from itunes. She can listen to it in her car, on her 'pod, and on her computer. While I've certainly made her aware of how evil DRM is, she doesn't actually care. And why should she? As far as she is concerned, there is no DRM that affects her: she is not prevented in any way from doing the things she wants to do. And millions upon millions of itunes sales says that this is not an uncommon belief.
"What was the reason for this not happening before again?"
A perceived lack of ROI, I would guess. Whether that perception was accurate will be determined once they've been offering the Linux PC's for a while and can weigh their profits against support costs. Exactly it -- and I think that the very real result will be lackluster sales, causing them to turn around and say, "See? There's no market for this." I love linux - I run it on three home servers, one home desktop, and on a VM here at work (not allowed to run it on my desktop). However, I won't rush out to buy a preloaded system -- why bother? I build all my own PCs, and I suspect most people who use linux workstations do the same.
And the people who we want to get linux to -- those poor, unaware Windows users -- will continue to be unaware of the offering. For them, the operating system doesn't exist; a computer/is/ Windows to them. Unless Dell actively markets it not as Linux, but as an easy-to-use desktop system for the average home user, these folks will remain happily oblivious. Anyone want to bet those odds?
Eh? did you even read my post? I specifically said I have chosen/not/ to upgrade at this time because of this issue (and a few others, to be honest). Whether Microsoft is reliable or not is not the point either -- the point is that no paying customer "deserves" headache for expecting a quality product for their money. Whether or not MS delivers that is a completely different story -- but I don't "deserve" anything for/expecting/ them to.
IMHO the only reason this would really effect anyone is if they're using vista as a server of some sort, in which case they deserve any headaches they get for not waiting until vista proves itself for server reliability I regularly copy large files (300-400 mb) around on my hard drive in the process of backing up work that I do. I did not know about this issue; and now that I do, I will not be installing the vista upgrade CD that I've already purchased because of it -- at least not until the hot fix becomes part of a supported patch. You might want to be a bit more careful with the rash generalizations, because they are seldom true. And I'm not even going to touch the statement about 'deserving headaches' for wanting to use an OS in a reasonable manner.
. But knowing that record companies use(d) die-hard fans like me to pay for such offensively vapid fare as fills the top 40 charts goes a long way toward easing my conscience about downloading files. This is your justification for ensuring that the artist gets NO money instead of merely minimal money? That's pretty weak.
This reminds me of over a decade ago when we all rushed to get Windows 95 the day it came out, only to pummel our PC's into dust with all the problems it caused I do not understand this "we" you speak of, billcopc-san.
Slashdot Mirror
My cat took over the keyboard. I meant to ignore everything you wrote and go off on a tangent, but now it's too late.
Yikes - I concede to superior familiarity with & knowledge of the situation :) Clearly I have a bit of reading to do when I get home.
This is true; however, the end result is that an agreement was reached that the US is complying with. This tends to indicate that the US does indeed respect the WTO arbitration process.
As far as I can see both the Canadian softwood lumber issue and the Antigua gambling issue have been repeatedly decided against the USA - do you know of some more recent WTO or NAFTA decisions supporting the USA's position? I am also unaware of any action on the part of the USA to bring them in compliance with the decision.
I am also unaware of any WTO decisions against Canada or Antigua which have not resulted in changes in their behavior to bring them in line with the WTO decisions.
The most recent I could find re: softwood lumber issue: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/04/wto- rules-for-us-in-canada-softwood.php
Re Antigua gambling -- you're correct, and I was unfamiliar with that instance. As of April 2 or so, WTO did rule that US was not in compliance with 2005 ruling, and now requires US to allow Antigua remote gambling sites the same rights as any other remote gambling site. It is a bit early to say whether US is complying with that order; though it should be clear within a couple of months.
You mean this dispute in which the WTO ultimately ruled in favor of the US?
Wouldn't we have to wait until 2610 to confirm that?
That experienced labor shortage bodes well for USA based workers.
Outsourcing or importing H1B won't fix that shortage. Which has precisely what to do with my question?
In fairness, I think there's a difference between invasive DRM such as installed by Sony; and DRM on downloadable music. As you point out, consumers are much more likely to notice and be affected by the former.
A perceived lack of ROI, I would guess. Whether that perception was accurate will be determined once they've been offering the Linux PC's for a while and can weigh their profits against support costs. Exactly it -- and I think that the very real result will be lackluster sales, causing them to turn around and say, "See? There's no market for this." I love linux - I run it on three home servers, one home desktop, and on a VM here at work (not allowed to run it on my desktop). However, I won't rush out to buy a preloaded system -- why bother? I build all my own PCs, and I suspect most people who use linux workstations do the same. And the people who we want to get linux to -- those poor, unaware Windows users -- will continue to be unaware of the offering. For them, the operating system doesn't exist; a computer
Uh... the 'screen grab' is the original article...
There's no point in continuing this conversation; you are clearly not reading my posts, and I have no desire to waste further time or words.
Eh? did you even read my post? I specifically said I have chosen /not/ to upgrade at this time because of this issue (and a few others, to be honest). Whether Microsoft is reliable or not is not the point either -- the point is that no paying customer "deserves" headache for expecting a quality product for their money. Whether or not MS delivers that is a completely different story -- but I don't "deserve" anything for /expecting/ them to.
It seems that the better comparison would be to Windows XP licenses sold in the year-ago quarter, not at the release of the XP product...