Since the race is close there, it would be a risk for Taco to vote for a 3rd party candidate.
Bingo. This election is really scary close overall, and it's amazing how many states are within +/- 4%, which is a statistical dead heat. You can look up state by state poll results at Hotline scoop.
My home state is a total one-party lock, so I can safely vote for whatever Nth party candidate I feel like. I recently considered doing a write-in for the arch-conservative dream team of Alan Keyes and David Duke -- fun fun! But I'll probably vote Nader so the Greens can reach the magical 5% funding threshold.
If only the Debate Commission allowed 5% candidates instead of 15%...
the publisher of penthouse would be more then happy to give free copies to every library in the US.
Even if the subscriptions were free, storage space is a non-negligible cost for libraries. I have offered to donate MacWorld subscriptions to a few of my local libraries, but they declined with regrets. Now if porn mags were donating archives on microfiche...it would be weird, but doable.
I recently got a spam (sent by a temporary AOL account, now disabled) that directed me to a web site hosted on http://12.45.166.9, a generic NT4/IIS box. DNSLookup revealed no domain name for anything in 12.45.166.* where *=0 through 16. Without a domain name I can't do a WHOIS. Without a WHOIS I can't make their lives miserable by calling them at home in the middle of the night (or whatever I decide to do).
A TraceRT revealed that the router immediately upstream from them is 12.124.217.10, but neither it nor its relatives have domain names either. So I can't WHOIS on their ISP, which is even more important since I want to get them shut down.
I guess the main problem is that I only know how to Whois based on a domain name, not an IP address. Suggestions?
"Progressive" = Communist/Socialist. The term was co-opted by the American Communists after the crimes of Stalin
Oh man. Do you realize what this means?
Back in college, when my friends and I travelled from room to room and there was a different drink served in each location, we were participating in a Communist Party!
When I listen to 80's alterna-pop like The Cure, it is actually Socialist Rock!
Thank you, Coward, for exposing this terrible Red Menace!
At what point did our country change from electing our officials based on the quality of their policies to electing our officials based on the number of fireworks and shiny things in their parades?
Umm...the 19th century. I wasn't there (obviously), but it's arguable that Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt were elected more on personality than issues. And every election since the dawn of radio has been more about media manipulation than about platform stances.
One major concern I've seen among potential protest voters is that they'd like to support an Nth party candidate instead of "the usual guy", but don't want to risk "the other guy" becoming president because of their lack of support. The main example I've heard is "I like Nader, but a vote for him is a vote for Bush, and I'd feel awful if that happened".
My friend Justin Boyan sent me the answer. http://hotlinescoop.com/ . If your state favors either Bush or Gore by at least 10 percentage points, then feel free to vote however you want. Statitically, your one vote is not going to change the outcome.
The only places that can affect the final tally now are the "swing states", with a 5% margin or less. Your chances of moving the electoral count are well above epsilon, although still less likely than winning Ben Stein's money.
Some states will decide what happens the next four years. Other states can decide what happens after that. Vote! (but not for Bush).
Aha. <sarcasm> That must explain why all those european countries with socialized medicine have such low lifespans, low vaccination rates, and high infant moratility. </sarcasm>
There are certain things, such as infrastructure, that often work better under public control than private. Nationalizing the cable lines might not be a bad idea.
This is a non-issue. I read the whole silly flamewar on Bugtraq, and I agree with Theo. The point of OpenBSD is that they repair the source IN ADVANCE, even before they know what the potential problems are.
People found an exploit for a version that's two months out of date, and they're having sour grapes because they only got to bask in the H4X0R spotlight for negative sixty days.
More CFC's are released from one single volcanic eruption than you can dream
Interesting. I have never heard this claim before. Do you have a URL for any peer-reviewed evidence to support this? I see a lot of people throwing out very specific statements with no documentation.
Same question for Maynard -- could you provide a URL for a scientific article worried about global cooling in the 1970s?
possibility that Apple will finally get the hint and drop their hardware prices a bit
You know, Apple has dropped their prices considerably. I get all the usual mail order catalogs, and when you compare specs on Apple stuff to equivalent models from major label PC vendors (like IBM or Dell), they're pretty damn similar. Laptop prices are pretty close to a dead heat.
Sure, there are also cheaper PC makers. You get what you pay for. My former boss bought a small-brand laptop and found that the DVD-ROM drive didn't include DVD movie capability. And of course it didn't have ethernet. Caveat Emptor.
I'm surprised that no one mentioned this yet, but it reminds me of the MCI Friends and Family fiasco. Remember that one? People signed up for cheap long distance to certain numbers, but MCI conveniently neglected to mention that they would call each of these people at dinner time and say "well, your friend so-and-so gave us your number and said that you should switch to MCI".
My extended family has boycotted MCI ever since. Too bad none of us use MSN right now -- we can't get indignant and drop their service.
endorsing the current decline of our democracy into a cesspool of big-money corruption.
The system is of course corrupt, but... I dispute your use of the word "decline". When in history was our leadership not heavily stacked towards the wealthy? Ever since the founding fathers, the USA has felt that the rich were the only ones "created equal".
Would you prefer returning to the 19th Century? When party favorites on the Electoral College ignored the popular vote and chose who they wanted? I suppose Andrew Jackson was something of a populist, but that's 170 years ago, and he had a huge system of cronyism that wasn't any less corrupt than the usual plutocracy. Oh yeah, and there was that stuff with slavery and no women's rights.
Perhaps you yearn for the early 20th century? When the business elite directly abused their control of the media by printing boldfaced lies and slander of their enemies? When union organizers were beaten by police? Lynchings? Blacklists?
We may not be any better, but we're not any worse either.
Do we vote for Nader and send a message to our government, but risk putting Bush in office instead?
It depends on where you live. Pay close attention to your state's presidential polls.
If your state is heavily weighted (like 50% to 35%) towards either Bush or Gore, then your handful of votes probably won't change that. Vote for Nader (or Buchanan, or Brown, etc). If the minor party gets at least 5% of the US total vote, then they get bonus funding next time.
However, if your state is waffling and the race is close, there's a slim outside chance you'll make the difference. Vote for Big Al.
Another option -- some of my friends recently decided to vote-swap. Nader fans in swing states (California) will trade their choices with Gore fans in runaway states (Massachusetts). The straight totals work out the same, but the Electrical College is weighted in the desired direction.
Maybe there should be a back page for/. What about all that news that is submitted but never posted?
Actually, there is a back page for/. If you submit a story to a specific subtopic (such as Apache) they'll sometimes post it only to the subtopic and not to the front page. You'll be lucky if the story gets 10 comments total. Quite possibly a fate worse than being rejected.
But...if this article had been back-paged, the signal to noise ratio would probably be a bit higher. People don't bother slinging flames when they know that no one is reading.
how much is that tiny percentage of your audience worth to you
If your site is based in the USA, then avoiding a lawsuit has some positive value. If your site belongs to an organization that receives any government funds, then complying withthe ADA is worth at least that much to you.
I can easily see Steve Jobs doing that. He probably got the license for a trivial cost -- my guess is zero dollars and a sweet mention at Steve's next public webcast. Think about what Amazon gets in return -- an air of legitimacy for the patent. Apple is a media darling these days, so when they do something unusual people pay attention.
I'm sure Jeff Bezos expects that other companies will now come forward asking to buy rights too. A few good contracts could put Amazon within striking distance of not going bankrupt next year.
Debate topics will include whether there should be a prescription drug benefit as part of medicare, or whether medicare should pay for prescription drugs.
A real problem with the Mac OS of old is that it's waaay to easy to scatter installed software all over the place. And I'd like a dollar for every *extra* copy of telnet or Word I've seen installed on a publicly available Mac
Oh God yes. There was a time when just about every commercial app would also install Simple Text, just to be sure that you can read their "Read Me". What's the largest number of different versions of Simple Text that you've seen on one drive? Computer lab Macs can easily reach dozens.
A current bad one is Netscape Communicator. For unknown reasons the installer is NOT labeled "installer"; it just says "Netscape Communicator". This summer my dad asked me to fix his iMac. I found SIX copies of Communicator all over the place, including one installed directly to the Desktop Folder (components and folders were scattered everywhere). Ugh. Deleted all his installers that day to save myself future headaches.
The man is literally a rocket scientist (designs chips and components for satellites), but he still can't program a VCR. I wouldn't want him to deal with a home computer that came with a compiler preinstalled.
death penalty isn't supposed to be a deterent, it's a safety measure.
Life without parole would be an equally good safety measure, and it avoids the small drawback of killing innocent people.
Given the treatment of "hackers" in the US media, we should be almost as worried about unjust ramrod prosecutions as underprivileged murder suspects are now.
Uh oh, my SpiderKatz Sense is tingling. Jon could easily turn this topic into another epic, so I better stop now...
there is a perception that you cannot own and use tools in a responsible manner. You cannot outlaw a screwdriver because someone in Timbuktu used one to commit murder
Be careful when you say "you cannot outlaw" something when you mean "you should not outlaw". I'm pretty sure that slim jims are illegal in Maryland -- not the beef jerky stuff, but a thin metal strip with a hook that can open car doors by sliding it into the window jamb. (Not including cops and state-licensed locksmiths, though). Outlawing bent metal sounds absurd, yet it happens.
Except that Google's page ranking algorithm (based on links to and from other relevant pages) would be useless for ranking Usenet posts. There is no Usenet equivalent of the hyperlink, only threading and article references. For that sort of data, all you need is a very fast text search.
Ronfar, I apologize for my earlier redundant posts (at least I turned off my +1 after the first one, but it's still wrong). I had a bad morning doing software support and needed catharsis. Hmm...kinda like blasting people in a video game to vent anger. However, this legality thread is a different topic than that other stuff.
There is nothing in US law that forces stores to sell anything to children. If the supermarket decides to card people who are buying toothpaste, that's their decision. It would be economic suicide, but it's not illegal.
When stores put age limits on video games, it still just comes down to money. K-Mart is betting they can make more money by appearing "parent friendly" than they might lose by appearing censorious. In America today, that's probably a good bet for them.
Because children do not have full legal rights. Period. Whether you consider that good or bad, it's the law. Stores can set arbitrary limits on what they will sell to children.
I've seen hardware stores that don't let kids buy spray paint. The Lechter's chain of kitchen stores won't let kids buy nitrous oxide cannisters (I think they're used in automatic whipped cream makers or something). This is not a new issue.
Just don't tell my kid he can't read, watch, and play whatever he wants
So, Sir Winston, are you saying that you in fact have a real world child? You don't? Then what exactly are you talking about?
I am a real world parent, so this isn't just some abstract political debate for me. This isn't censorship, it's just respecting a parent's right to parent.
Slashdot Mirror
Bingo. This election is really scary close overall, and it's amazing how many states are within +/- 4%, which is a statistical dead heat. You can look up state by state poll results at Hotline scoop.
My home state is a total one-party lock, so I can safely vote for whatever Nth party candidate I feel like. I recently considered doing a write-in for the arch-conservative dream team of Alan Keyes and David Duke -- fun fun! But I'll probably vote Nader so the Greens can reach the magical 5% funding threshold.
If only the Debate Commission allowed 5% candidates instead of 15%...Even if the subscriptions were free, storage space is a non-negligible cost for libraries. I have offered to donate MacWorld subscriptions to a few of my local libraries, but they declined with regrets. Now if porn mags were donating archives on microfiche...it would be weird, but doable.
I recently got a spam (sent by a temporary AOL account, now disabled) that directed me to a web site hosted on http://12.45.166.9, a generic NT4/IIS box. DNSLookup revealed no domain name for anything in 12.45.166.* where *=0 through 16. Without a domain name I can't do a WHOIS. Without a WHOIS I can't make their lives miserable by calling them at home in the middle of the night (or whatever I decide to do).
A TraceRT revealed that the router immediately upstream from them is 12.124.217.10, but neither it nor its relatives have domain names either. So I can't WHOIS on their ISP, which is even more important since I want to get them shut down.
I guess the main problem is that I only know how to Whois based on a domain name, not an IP address. Suggestions?
Oh man. Do you realize what this means?
Thank you, Coward, for exposing this terrible Red Menace!
Umm...the 19th century. I wasn't there (obviously), but it's arguable that Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt were elected more on personality than issues. And every election since the dawn of radio has been more about media manipulation than about platform stances.
One major concern I've seen among potential protest voters is that they'd like to support an Nth party candidate instead of "the usual guy", but don't want to risk "the other guy" becoming president because of their lack of support. The main example I've heard is "I like Nader, but a vote for him is a vote for Bush, and I'd feel awful if that happened".
My friend Justin Boyan sent me the answer. http://hotlinescoop.com/ . If your state favors either Bush or Gore by at least 10 percentage points, then feel free to vote however you want. Statitically, your one vote is not going to change the outcome.
The only places that can affect the final tally now are the "swing states", with a 5% margin or less. Your chances of moving the electoral count are well above epsilon, although still less likely than winning Ben Stein's money.
Some states will decide what happens the next four years. Other states can decide what happens after that. Vote! (but not for Bush).
Aha. <sarcasm> That must explain why all those european countries with socialized medicine have such low lifespans, low vaccination rates, and high infant moratility. </sarcasm>
There are certain things, such as infrastructure, that often work better under public control than private. Nationalizing the cable lines might not be a bad idea.
This is a non-issue. I read the whole silly flamewar on Bugtraq, and I agree with Theo. The point of OpenBSD is that they repair the source IN ADVANCE, even before they know what the potential problems are.
People found an exploit for a version that's two months out of date, and they're having sour grapes because they only got to bask in the H4X0R spotlight for negative sixty days.
Interesting. I have never heard this claim before. Do you have a URL for any peer-reviewed evidence to support this? I see a lot of people throwing out very specific statements with no documentation.
Same question for Maynard -- could you provide a URL for a scientific article worried about global cooling in the 1970s?
Show me the money!
You know, Apple has dropped their prices considerably. I get all the usual mail order catalogs, and when you compare specs on Apple stuff to equivalent models from major label PC vendors (like IBM or Dell), they're pretty damn similar. Laptop prices are pretty close to a dead heat.
Sure, there are also cheaper PC makers. You get what you pay for. My former boss bought a small-brand laptop and found that the DVD-ROM drive didn't include DVD movie capability. And of course it didn't have ethernet. Caveat Emptor.
I'm surprised that no one mentioned this yet, but it reminds me of the MCI Friends and Family fiasco. Remember that one? People signed up for cheap long distance to certain numbers, but MCI conveniently neglected to mention that they would call each of these people at dinner time and say "well, your friend so-and-so gave us your number and said that you should switch to MCI".
My extended family has boycotted MCI ever since. Too bad none of us use MSN right now -- we can't get indignant and drop their service.
The system is of course corrupt, but ... I dispute your use of the word "decline". When in history was our leadership not heavily stacked towards the wealthy? Ever since the founding fathers, the USA has felt that the rich were the only ones "created equal".
Would you prefer returning to the 19th Century? When party favorites on the Electoral College ignored the popular vote and chose who they wanted? I suppose Andrew Jackson was something of a populist, but that's 170 years ago, and he had a huge system of cronyism that wasn't any less corrupt than the usual plutocracy. Oh yeah, and there was that stuff with slavery and no women's rights.
Perhaps you yearn for the early 20th century? When the business elite directly abused their control of the media by printing boldfaced lies and slander of their enemies? When union organizers were beaten by police? Lynchings? Blacklists?
We may not be any better, but we're not any worse either.
It depends on where you live. Pay close attention to your state's presidential polls.
If your state is heavily weighted (like 50% to 35%) towards either Bush or Gore, then your handful of votes probably won't change that. Vote for Nader (or Buchanan, or Brown, etc). If the minor party gets at least 5% of the US total vote, then they get bonus funding next time.
However, if your state is waffling and the race is close, there's a slim outside chance you'll make the difference. Vote for Big Al.
Another option -- some of my friends recently decided to vote-swap. Nader fans in swing states (California) will trade their choices with Gore fans in runaway states (Massachusetts). The straight totals work out the same, but the Electrical College is weighted in the desired direction.
A vote for Dubya is a vote for Microsoft.Actually, there is a back page for /. If you submit a story to a specific subtopic (such as Apache) they'll sometimes post it only to the subtopic and not to the front page. You'll be lucky if the story gets 10 comments total. Quite possibly a fate worse than being rejected.
But...if this article had been back-paged, the signal to noise ratio would probably be a bit higher. People don't bother slinging flames when they know that no one is reading.If your site is based in the USA, then avoiding a lawsuit has some positive value. If your site belongs to an organization that receives any government funds, then complying with the ADA is worth at least that much to you.
I'm sure Jeff Bezos expects that other companies will now come forward asking to buy rights too. A few good contracts could put Amazon within striking distance of not going bankrupt next year.
Yep. For a nice comparison of our two candidates, visit Billionaires for Bush (or Gore).
But I'm still voting anti-Bush.Oh God yes. There was a time when just about every commercial app would also install Simple Text, just to be sure that you can read their "Read Me". What's the largest number of different versions of Simple Text that you've seen on one drive? Computer lab Macs can easily reach dozens.
A current bad one is Netscape Communicator. For unknown reasons the installer is NOT labeled "installer"; it just says "Netscape Communicator". This summer my dad asked me to fix his iMac. I found SIX copies of Communicator all over the place, including one installed directly to the Desktop Folder (components and folders were scattered everywhere). Ugh. Deleted all his installers that day to save myself future headaches.
The man is literally a rocket scientist (designs chips and components for satellites), but he still can't program a VCR. I wouldn't want him to deal with a home computer that came with a compiler preinstalled.
Life without parole would be an equally good safety measure, and it avoids the small drawback of killing innocent people.
Given the treatment of "hackers" in the US media, we should be almost as worried about unjust ramrod prosecutions as underprivileged murder suspects are now.
Uh oh, my SpiderKatz Sense is tingling. Jon could easily turn this topic into another epic, so I better stop now...
Be careful when you say "you cannot outlaw" something when you mean "you should not outlaw". I'm pretty sure that slim jims are illegal in Maryland -- not the beef jerky stuff, but a thin metal strip with a hook that can open car doors by sliding it into the window jamb. (Not including cops and state-licensed locksmiths, though). Outlawing bent metal sounds absurd, yet it happens.
Except that Google's page ranking algorithm (based on links to and from other relevant pages) would be useless for ranking Usenet posts. There is no Usenet equivalent of the hyperlink, only threading and article references. For that sort of data, all you need is a very fast text search.
Ronfar, I apologize for my earlier redundant posts (at least I turned off my +1 after the first one, but it's still wrong). I had a bad morning doing software support and needed catharsis. Hmm...kinda like blasting people in a video game to vent anger. However, this legality thread is a different topic than that other stuff.
There is nothing in US law that forces stores to sell anything to children. If the supermarket decides to card people who are buying toothpaste, that's their decision. It would be economic suicide, but it's not illegal.
When stores put age limits on video games, it still just comes down to money. K-Mart is betting they can make more money by appearing "parent friendly" than they might lose by appearing censorious. In America today, that's probably a good bet for them.
Because children do not have full legal rights. Period. Whether you consider that good or bad, it's the law. Stores can set arbitrary limits on what they will sell to children.
I've seen hardware stores that don't let kids buy spray paint. The Lechter's chain of kitchen stores won't let kids buy nitrous oxide cannisters (I think they're used in automatic whipped cream makers or something). This is not a new issue.
So, Sir Winston, are you saying that you in fact have a real world child? You don't? Then what exactly are you talking about?
I am a real world parent, so this isn't just some abstract political debate for me. This isn't censorship, it's just respecting a parent's right to parent.
Do you plan to have kids some day? If you do, please come back and tell us about the day that your views on this being censorship suddenly change.