THESE SEARCHES are why I drive everywhere. I haven't flown a plane since the year 1999. When you drive, you have everything you need in your trunk.... and really, driving is not that much longer than flying. Last time I went from Oklahoma to Minneapolis:
- my coworkers left their homes at 5 a.m. and did not get into their hotel until 3 p.m. - I drove from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m.
So yeah it took me an hour longer, but I didn't have to deal with nosy security, rude passengers, squeezing all my stuff into a tiny suitcase, et cetera, et cetera. I had a nice scenic drive across the prairie, through beautiful Kansas City, and with pleasing music/sports/comedy routines coming out of my XM radio. (And I got paid for it! 50 cents a mile plus my regular salary.)
given the choice between saving several thousand people in a skyscraper, and saving a hundred-or-so in an airplane, I'd save the skyscraper filled with people......the airplane would be shot-down. It's one of those situations where people WILL die no matter what happens, and it's better that a hundred die than several thousand. If the american people are too pussy to deal with death, well then, they can fire me as president and elect a different guy who would do nothing & let the skyscraper be destroyed.
Are we going to start arresting nudists because they took family photos of their children? How about married couples who take videos of themselves in the bedroom, and those married couples are aged 16 or 17? I prefer another phrase, one that has far more priority than the child porn phrase:
"freedom of individuality"
When the government officials start harassing/arresting innocent individuals, then it is the *government officials* who have become the true criminals.
>>>So your saying that a librarian can and should tell people who might be doing something illegal and using public resources to accomplish that illegality that the FBI might be on their trail? This isn't just a matter of if you don't have anything to hide, it is a matter of good guys verses bad guys. >>>
How successful would the American Revolution have been if Washington, Jefferson, and so forth had librarians telling the British Secret Service about the American colonists activities? We'd all be drinking tea and complaining about a $300-a-year tv tax.
In order to have TRUE freedom, you sometimes have to keep the government blind to individual's activities, and that requires librarians who will keep silent & protect the right to privacy and freedom of though. Otherwise, as Jefferson pointed-out, a government large enough to protect you from everything.... is also a government large enough to TAKE everything from you.
I agree. The library is a GOVERNMENT entity, and the government doesn't really need a warrant to access its own records. (Granted we're talking about state versus national government, which are separate entities, but one government tends to cooperate with another government... so in effect your library is open season for the FBI to take records.)
The only true security is to obtain your books, videos, whatever from a private source that is not government-owned... and said private source works to protect its customers from searches.
Or just go black market where no records are kept.
Nobody forced you to sign-up. If you are too lazy to follow the unsubscribe procedure, then you never should have signed onto "This Is True" in the first place.
As for spamlists:
You're wasting your time filling-out unsubscribe requests. Even if they honor your request, they still sell your information as a "confirmed valid" address to other companies, thereby tripling or quadrupling your spam. Better to just keep silent and leave them wondering if you're real or fake.
Just turn-off the spam filtering. It doesn't take that long to scan one's subject list and click the little checkbox next to the obvious spam subjects. Then click delete.
That's better than having important mail disappear. I received email from an amazon customer that disappeared into Yahoo's spam filtering. The customer was angry because I responded to his first email, but none of this later replies, but I explained it was not my fault (I never saw the replies). Now I have the spam filtering turned off.
One way to fix this problem is for legitimate readers of this list (like me), to go into their spam folders and mark these maillist messages as "not spam", which will tell Yahoo to pass the messages to the Inbox. If I were the owner of this list, I would instruct my readers to do exactly that:
"To ensure continued delivery of this mailing list, please click 'not spam' in your email program. Thank you."
I don't understand why people say "we have no choice".
When Cellular One/Cingular/Verizon (they have multiple names) told me they had discontinued my $10 a month low-use rate, and were replacing it with a $30 a month standard rate, and that I had no choice but to pay-up..... I was extremely angry. For years I had used their service, and now suddenly they want to TRIPLE my rate??? Heck no. I told them "I do have a choice; cancel me now."
Now I use Virgin at approximately $5 a month.
So you see competition DOES work. You just have to grow a pair and tell the corporations the same thing you tell the policitians: "You're getting neither my money nor my vote." (Oh and if I was stuck in a contract, I'd just wait the few months until it expired, and then go find some better company.) Worst case: I dump my cell phone. I never had a cellphone prior to age 25, and I certainly don't "need" one now. I'd rather go back to using wired phones & email rather than let the Greedy corporations raid my wallet. They can go diddle themselves.
Anybody who hits ME with a brick is not going to live to see another day.
Because I'm going to hit that _____ with a bullet. And that would be justified self-defense, as a means to avoid death by brick-bashing. (The U.S. Supreme Court declared: "that the operative clause of the Second Amendment--"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"--is controlling and refers to a pre-existing right of individuals to possess and carry personal weapons for SELF-DFENSE and intrinsically for defense against tyranny")
And I agree with another poster than charging more IS fueling piracy. If Europeans feel they are being ripped-off, they'll simply get a cracked copy from a local pirate group. (All the best Commodore=64 and Amiga games come from European pirate groups.)
The worst battery gauge I've ever seen is in the Honda Insight (hybrid). From time-to-time, after lots of charging & discharging (braking and accelerating), the computer will see the battery voltage suddenly drop (indicating it's almost empty). When that happens the battery gauge instantly plummets from 3/4 full or 1/2 full to completely empty.
In other words, the computer has "lost track" of the Battery's State of Charge. Going to empty is how it recalibrates the faulty meter to the battery's actual state. You'd think a $20,000 car would have a decent gauge, but no.
Fortunately the battery meter in the Honda Civic and Accord Hybrids operate far, far better. I guess Honda learned from the insight's flaws & designed a better meter.
That's fine. I'll drive 30 through the snowstorm; you can pass in one of the other 3 lanes. Then a few miles down the road, when you're laying in the ditch, I'll gladly give you a ride to the local garage so you can beg for a tow-truck.
That is if you don't mind riding in my "unsafe" compact car.;-)
(This is an actual experience from about three years ago. Guy passed me at 60-70 miles an hour; then I passed him as he chewed-up dirt, trying to get his SUV unstuck from the center median. He turned-down my offer of a ride. Oh well.)
>>>What I insinuated is that relying on the agility of a car to always evade a collision instead of driving a vehicle capable of withstanding an impact is folly
Well everyone is entitled to your opinion. In your opinion my compact cars (Dodge Shadow, Dodge Avenger, and Honda insight) are going to be smashed to pieces. In my opinion, I don't have to worry about a gust of wind catching my top-heavy vehicle, rolling over, and getting crushed (like I saw happen to an SUV in Michigan).
I have been gaming since circa 1977, and I have ALWAYS hated puzzle games. There is nothing more frustrating for me than to sit & stare at the same screen for hour-after-hour-after-hour. That's not video. That's a picture. (Example: Myst. Beautiful graphics of a non-moving nature impress me little.)
Although I have enjoyed SOME puzzle games like Adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pitfall 2, and Super Metroid, I have always preferred the simple eye-hand coordination tests of Missile Command, Pac-man, Super Monkey Ball, and so on. I also enjoy strategy games like Chess or Populous.
The point: I like movement, not stagnation.
I've been that way the last twenty years. Not a new phenomenon in my case.
"You can vote" is the biggest lie there is. Yeah sure you can stuff a paper in the ballot box, but what does it really get you? ANSWER: A corporate puppet who serves the companies that provided his reelection money. (Hence the passing of the pro-credit card bill that blocks consumers from declaring bankruptcy..... I'm not aware of ANY voter who would have supported that bill. And yet, that's what we got.)
Today you vote.
Tomorrow you get a deaf politician who doesn't hear you. I'm far more afraid of government (who can take my money by force of gun)(or jail), than I am of a corporation which I can happily ignore & tell "go away". (What I did to Comcast.)
I took time to RTFA, and I see Usenet is supposedly a harbor for child porn, and therefore it must be stopped. Okay.
Now define that.
"Child": Somebody who is not an adult. Obvious. But what about teenagers? They are capable of reproduction, so biologically speaking they are adults (as proved by the teen moms holding babies of their own). Perhaps what we REALLY mean is "Minor porn" which is pornography of those 17 and younger.
"Porn" is obviously a photo or video of sex. What about nudity? Is that considered pornographic? If mon & dad take a picture of their son & daughter while at a nudist beach, is that considered porn? Will nudist sites be censored by ISPs?
"Marriage": What if the couple taking the sex video is a married 15, 16, or 17 year old man and woman. Is that illegal too? Will they be tried in court because they filmed themselves partaking in "marital duties"? Is the government going to start policing the bedroom too???
.
Perhap the best solution is to DEFINE WHAT WE MEAN before we have a fit & try to ban it.
(1) I'm not aware of any subsidies going to my local Bell company.
(2) If there are subsidies, then I think we should stop giving the Telcos free money. I hate corporate welfare. Let them pay their own bills. (Same applies for free stadiums for Sports Mega-corps; let them buy their own stadiums.)
The government doesn't pay for the upkeep of roads.
The DRIVERS pay for the upkeep. If you don't drive, you pay the gasoline tax. (In fact, drivers also pay part of the ticket for subway riders as well. So drivers are actually subsidizing not just their own rides, but also subway/metro rides. How unfair. Oh well.)
Point is: Roads operate on a user fee. Use the roads; pay. Don't use the raods; don't pay.
Internet should operate on the same principle. My parents, who don't own a computer, should not have to pay for internet upgrades.
Correction: CORPORATIONS are only interested in money; corporations are soulless entities with no morals & pure greed as motivator.
Smaller companies owned by a single individual tend to be interested in other things like honesty, morality, and service to their neighbors. (Which is one of the reasons I think limited-liability corporations should be eliminated and replaced with single owner companies.) (We need the "soul" restored to the companies, to provide balance between service and pure greed)
I have traveled all over the country (even Alaska), and I have never found a place where my laptop could not dial-in to the internet. Please don't spread the false claims that wired services are not available. When telegraph and telephone companies first started stringing the nation in the 1800s, they did not do it because the government told them to. They did it for profit. They did it because the free market rewards initiative.
Slashdot Mirror
THESE SEARCHES are why I drive everywhere. I haven't flown a plane since the year 1999. When you drive, you have everything you need in your trunk.... and really, driving is not that much longer than flying. Last time I went from Oklahoma to Minneapolis:
- my coworkers left their homes at 5 a.m. and did not get into their hotel until 3 p.m.
- I drove from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m.
So yeah it took me an hour longer, but I didn't have to deal with nosy security, rude passengers, squeezing all my stuff into a tiny suitcase, et cetera, et cetera. I had a nice scenic drive across the prairie, through beautiful Kansas City, and with pleasing music/sports/comedy routines coming out of my XM radio. (And I got paid for it! 50 cents a mile plus my regular salary.)
I'd rather drive.
If I were president.....
given the choice between saving several thousand people in a skyscraper, ...the airplane would be shot-down. It's one of those situations where people WILL die no matter what happens, and it's better that a hundred die than several thousand. If the american people are too pussy to deal with death, well then, they can fire me as president and elect a different guy who would do nothing & let the skyscraper be destroyed.
and saving a hundred-or-so in an airplane,
I'd save the skyscraper filled with people...
Define "child porn"
Are we going to start arresting nudists because they took family photos of their children? How about married couples who take videos of themselves in the bedroom, and those married couples are aged 16 or 17? I prefer another phrase, one that has far more priority than the child porn phrase:
"freedom of individuality"
When the government officials start harassing/arresting innocent individuals, then it is the *government officials* who have become the true criminals.
>>>So your saying that a librarian can and should tell people who might be doing something illegal and using public resources to accomplish that illegality that the FBI might be on their trail? This isn't just a matter of if you don't have anything to hide, it is a matter of good guys verses bad guys.
>>>
How successful would the American Revolution have been if Washington, Jefferson, and so forth had librarians telling the British Secret Service about the American colonists activities? We'd all be drinking tea and complaining about a $300-a-year tv tax.
In order to have TRUE freedom, you sometimes have to keep the government blind to individual's activities, and that requires librarians who will keep silent & protect the right to privacy and freedom of though. Otherwise, as Jefferson pointed-out, a government large enough to protect you from everything.... is also a government large enough to TAKE everything from you.
I agree. The library is a GOVERNMENT entity, and the government doesn't really need a warrant to access its own records. (Granted we're talking about state versus national government, which are separate entities, but one government tends to cooperate with another government... so in effect your library is open season for the FBI to take records.)
The only true security is to obtain your books, videos, whatever from a private source that is not government-owned... and said private source works to protect its customers from searches.
Or just go black market where no records are kept.
Nobody forced you to sign-up. If you are too lazy to follow the unsubscribe procedure, then you never should have signed onto "This Is True" in the first place.
As for spamlists:
You're wasting your time filling-out unsubscribe requests. Even if they honor your request, they still sell your information as a "confirmed valid" address to other companies, thereby tripling or quadrupling your spam. Better to just keep silent and leave them wondering if you're real or fake.
Or:
Just turn-off the spam filtering. It doesn't take that long to scan one's subject list and click the little checkbox next to the obvious spam subjects. Then click delete.
That's better than having important mail disappear. I received email from an amazon customer that disappeared into Yahoo's spam filtering. The customer was angry because I responded to his first email, but none of this later replies, but I explained it was not my fault (I never saw the replies). Now I have the spam filtering turned off.
One way to fix this problem is for legitimate readers of this list (like me), to go into their spam folders and mark these maillist messages as "not spam", which will tell Yahoo to pass the messages to the Inbox. If I were the owner of this list, I would instruct my readers to do exactly that:
"To ensure continued delivery of this mailing list, please click 'not spam' in your email program. Thank you."
What kind of computer has email, but no web access?
This isn't 1995 anymore. All modern computers have some kind of web browser.
If you can't read the print, then it has no force of law.
It is null and void.
I don't understand why people say "we have no choice".
When Cellular One/Cingular/Verizon (they have multiple names) told me they had discontinued my $10 a month low-use rate, and were replacing it with a $30 a month standard rate, and that I had no choice but to pay-up..... I was extremely angry. For years I had used their service, and now suddenly they want to TRIPLE my rate??? Heck no. I told them "I do have a choice; cancel me now."
Now I use Virgin at approximately $5 a month.
So you see competition DOES work. You just have to grow a pair and tell the corporations the same thing you tell the policitians: "You're getting neither my money nor my vote." (Oh and if I was stuck in a contract, I'd just wait the few months until it expired, and then go find some better company.) Worst case: I dump my cell phone. I never had a cellphone prior to age 25, and I certainly don't "need" one now. I'd rather go back to using wired phones & email rather than let the Greedy corporations raid my wallet. They can go diddle themselves.
Anybody who hits ME with a brick is not going to live to see another day.
Because I'm going to hit that _____ with a bullet. And that would be justified self-defense, as a means to avoid death by brick-bashing. (The U.S. Supreme Court declared: "that the operative clause of the Second Amendment--"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"--is controlling and refers to a pre-existing right of individuals to possess and carry personal weapons for SELF-DFENSE and intrinsically for defense against tyranny")
Give the program to the average secretary & watch where she stumbles or otherwise looks confused.
ZORK - text based puzzle game. Also called "interactive fiction".
GRUE - a creature that steals from you. Sometimes they steal an important object making the game unsolvable; end of game. Sometimes they kill.
Yes.
And I agree with another poster than charging more IS fueling piracy. If Europeans feel they are being ripped-off, they'll simply get a cracked copy from a local pirate group. (All the best Commodore=64 and Amiga games come from European pirate groups.)
The worst battery gauge I've ever seen is in the Honda Insight (hybrid). From time-to-time, after lots of charging & discharging (braking and accelerating), the computer will see the battery voltage suddenly drop (indicating it's almost empty). When that happens the battery gauge instantly plummets from 3/4 full or 1/2 full to completely empty.
In other words, the computer has "lost track" of the Battery's State of Charge.
Going to empty is how it recalibrates the faulty meter to the battery's actual state.
You'd think a $20,000 car would have a decent gauge, but no.
Fortunately the battery meter in the Honda Civic and Accord Hybrids operate far, far better. I guess Honda learned from the insight's flaws & designed a better meter.
That's fine. I'll drive 30 through the snowstorm; you can pass in one of the other 3 lanes. Then a few miles down the road, when you're laying in the ditch, I'll gladly give you a ride to the local garage so you can beg for a tow-truck.
That is if you don't mind riding in my "unsafe" compact car. ;-)
(This is an actual experience from about three years ago. Guy passed me at 60-70 miles an hour; then I passed him as he chewed-up dirt, trying to get his SUV unstuck from the center median. He turned-down my offer of a ride. Oh well.)
>>>What I insinuated is that relying on the agility of a car to always evade a collision instead of driving a vehicle capable of withstanding an impact is folly
Well everyone is entitled to your opinion. In your opinion my compact cars (Dodge Shadow, Dodge Avenger, and Honda insight) are going to be smashed to pieces. In my opinion, I don't have to worry about a gust of wind catching my top-heavy vehicle, rolling over, and getting crushed (like I saw happen to an SUV in Michigan).
I have been gaming since circa 1977, and I have ALWAYS hated puzzle games. There is nothing more frustrating for me than to sit & stare at the same screen for hour-after-hour-after-hour. That's not video. That's a picture. (Example: Myst. Beautiful graphics of a non-moving nature impress me little.)
Although I have enjoyed SOME puzzle games like Adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pitfall 2, and Super Metroid, I have always preferred the simple eye-hand coordination tests of Missile Command, Pac-man, Super Monkey Ball, and so on. I also enjoy strategy games like Chess or Populous.
The point: I like movement, not stagnation.
I've been that way the last twenty years. Not a new phenomenon in my case.
"You can vote" is the biggest lie there is. Yeah sure you can stuff a paper in the ballot box, but what does it really get you? ANSWER: A corporate puppet who serves the companies that provided his reelection money. (Hence the passing of the pro-credit card bill that blocks consumers from declaring bankruptcy..... I'm not aware of ANY voter who would have supported that bill. And yet, that's what we got.)
Today you vote.
Tomorrow you get a deaf politician who doesn't hear you. I'm far more afraid of government (who can take my money by force of gun)(or jail), than I am of a corporation which I can happily ignore & tell "go away". (What I did to Comcast.)
I took time to RTFA, and I see Usenet is supposedly a harbor for child porn, and therefore it must be stopped. Okay.
Now define that.
"Child": Somebody who is not an adult. Obvious. But what about teenagers? They are capable of reproduction, so biologically speaking they are adults (as proved by the teen moms holding babies of their own). Perhaps what we REALLY mean is "Minor porn" which is pornography of those 17 and younger.
"Porn" is obviously a photo or video of sex. What about nudity? Is that considered pornographic? If mon & dad take a picture of their son & daughter while at a nudist beach, is that considered porn? Will nudist sites be censored by ISPs?
"Marriage": What if the couple taking the sex video is a married 15, 16, or 17 year old man and woman. Is that illegal too? Will they be tried in court because they filmed themselves partaking in "marital duties"? Is the government going to start policing the bedroom too???
.
Perhap the best solution is to DEFINE WHAT WE MEAN before we have a fit & try to ban it.
(1) I'm not aware of any subsidies going to my local Bell company.
(2) If there are subsidies, then I think we should stop giving the Telcos free money. I hate corporate welfare. Let them pay their own bills. (Same applies for free stadiums for Sports Mega-corps; let them buy their own stadiums.)
The government doesn't pay for the upkeep of roads.
The DRIVERS pay for the upkeep. If you don't drive, you pay the gasoline tax. (In fact, drivers also pay part of the ticket for subway riders as well. So drivers are actually subsidizing not just their own rides, but also subway/metro rides. How unfair. Oh well.)
Point is: Roads operate on a user fee. Use the roads; pay. Don't use the raods; don't pay.
Internet should operate on the same principle.
My parents, who don't own a computer,
should not have to pay for internet upgrades.
>>>Markets are interested in is money, period.
Correction: CORPORATIONS are only interested in money; corporations are soulless entities with no morals & pure greed as motivator.
Smaller companies owned by a single individual tend to be interested in other things like honesty, morality, and service to their neighbors. (Which is one of the reasons I think limited-liability corporations should be eliminated and replaced with single owner companies.) (We need the "soul" restored to the companies, to provide balance between service and pure greed)
False.
I have traveled all over the country (even Alaska), and I have never found a place where my laptop could not dial-in to the internet. Please don't spread the false claims that wired services are not available. When telegraph and telephone companies first started stringing the nation in the 1800s, they did not do it because the government told them to. They did it for profit. They did it because the free market rewards initiative.