Its just a way for eco-freaks to start yelling that we are killing the earth as they drive off in their new Hummer as they go for a friendly Sunday drive to observe nature.
That's not true...We take the Lexus to the environmental rally on Sundays, Saturday is Hummer day.
You might want to call Joe's Diploma Emporium and ask for your money back: magnetic force (and thus acceleration) is always perpendicular to the velocity of a charge. No amount of magnetic fields can increase or decrease the speed of a charged particle (and certainly not an uncharged one).
As a side point, I'd like to ask this question, why does so much bullshit science involve the usage of magnets or the explanation of "magnetic fields"?
Admittedly not everybody cares about polar bears drowning or European climate becoming too cold to make Champagne or low-lying island states in the Indian Ocean being obliterated.
Indeed, here in America, it was actually part of the plan. *rubs hands together*
Google's move could once more significantly change compensation for employees in many industries, including tech.
Nice try Google, I mean you can try to change compensation for tech employees but in the end, as the saying goes: The bubble-era vision of a Utopian Internet is dented and dirty... The Lexus has collided with the olive tree, and its crumpled hulk spins in a ditch as the orchard smolders.
You are offered two choices:
A lifetime in prison with no possibility of parole.
Twelve years in prison and twenty years of close supervision after.
Which do you choose?
I can see "If you're a rapist, then no MySpace", but I can't see "no Facebook for dumb drunks who streak in the dead of night".
That depends, are these "rapists" free? If you committed a crime and are released from prison, it's my position that you've paid your debt to society. If you haven't, then shouldn't you still be in prison? If we are pushing this once a criminal always a criminal mantra then why even let convicts out of jail in the first place if we are just gonna let the free world become another prison cell, gradually restricting their access to resources.
Either sentence them for longer, clean up the system, or do something that works. Don't punish them after they've already been punished. It's bad enough that they won't ever be able to vote or get a job better than grocery bagger, you have to start restricting their online rights to save "children" from "potential risks." How about _not_ scaremongering about children and saving our rights instead?
It's a slippery slope, first, restrict rights for convicts. Then, outlaw things to make everyone a potential convict. Bang...restricted rights. With the way people talk about online piracy, it's only a matter of time before that's criminal, and then after that's criminal maybe restricting the rights of those who have been convicted upon release.
I hate to be paranoid, but in Philadelphia they've installed security cameras on the streets. It's not long before you pick your nose and it's on the evening news.
...corporate types wonder why there are so many lawsuits. To effectively drop the ball on the security of almost a million students and then what you get as far as service is a letter saying "oops," it makes me glad that Bush couldn't get his "frivolous lawsuit" legislation through.
Maybe when companies/organizations trusted with information that leak it start getting sued by the people they are "protecting."
At my school they used the last 4 numbers of your social security number as part of your email. Organizations need to pay the price for being so lax on the security of their clients.
Pricing Scheme:
Other online music services offer alternative pricing schemes that might be eating into Apple's business. Rhapsody has an 'all you can eat' service for $15 / month.
Can you imagine if a major player offered wireless downloading from any internet access point with this $15 per month all you can eat price point? It would almost be worth it not to own any music if you could download any song you wanted to hear on demand wirelessly.
Big indicators have been the outsourcing of work from India to China! The fact that customer service companies in India cannot communicate with the average person in western English speaking countries on a level that is equitable. The high turnover rates have always been there as a problem that was politely ignored in favor of lower initial labor costs.
When I bought my last computer, I was offered a service package and the package contained in no uncertain terms, explicitly "non-outsourced customer support." At least some companies (save for the telecommunications companies) are finding they are losing customers when they have a person who can barely speak the language on the other end of the phone. The customers get irritated and go looking elsewhere for support. For computer resellers, at least, service is a big part of their profit. So when people go third party for help or upgrades and no longer are buying their stuff, that's a hit. In the end the market determines that outsourcing is a bad idea in most cases. And that's before you factor in this fact, putting companies in will raise the average salary level. Then they need to find a new country to run through. After a while maybe they'll just go through the complete cycle and have to come back to the US.
Goes to show that the market will solve some things on its own. That doesn't mean that we should give tax breaks to those outsourcing, as some in government like to do, but I digress.
Re:And the universe begins to look more electric
on
Predicting Space Weather
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Take the red pill and learn about Electric Universe Theory.
I took the so-called "red pill", and discovered the following: "Suffice to say for now that if science is what you are looking for, you will find none where the electric sun is concerned, save that which shows it to be an untenable hypothesis."
Please don't push your misguided psuedo-science off as something grounded in reality. Remember, scientists look for facts and work them into theory, quacks make up a "theory" and then try to find facts to fit it. The electric sun is as much science as "creation science" or "intelligent design," and should be met with the same contempt by anyone logical enough to read a science book.
Keeping your vital data physically disconnected from the outside Internet. I know it'll cut off people who work remotely, but if it's that important, it's worth it.
Not only that, but if you think about it, providing remote access allows another point of entry for attack. All employees that use the remote access, even if trustworthy, can't be trusted to follow all security precautions when they aren't even at the office to begin with. If you are allowed full control over files remotely, you are basically exposing inside information to outside security risks, as even the neighbor kid could potentially delete your files if your employee is too sloppy security wise at home.
Why is that a plus? Seems to me having more energy stored in my battery is a good thing. Shoddy manufacturing, exploding batteries and class action lawsuits notwithstanding.
It's a plus because they hold less and they are more expensive, so Sony can sell you more expensive backup batteries which run out more frequently! Remember, someone has to pay for the price of exploding laptops...
You know, fair use has pretty much gone down the toilet. With the modernization of copyright law things have changed without real public consent. The truth of the matter is that music used to be a free trade type of deal, spread mainly by spoken word. Now the RIAA has taken even the ability to make tabs based on listening to albums and make those tabs public. The RIAA essentially wants to kill word of mouth or folk style passage of music.
When I began writing a bit of a book I'd been working on, I was tempted, like James Joyce does to include modern song lyrics in the book itself. James Joyce did this with old Irish songs, but if you think about it, in Ireland, around the time the book takes place, those were the time and place's defining anthems. Nowadays, if I want to include lyrics to a song as being something played in an establishment the character is in, I'd probably have to pay a licensing fee for the lyrics. Songs have become corporate only entities, and the joy of music has truly been passed without anyone looking to stop and see what they missed.
What ever happend to 'serving your time and paying your debt to society for your mistake'. When did that become a life long repayment?
The government hasn't been able to properly reform criminals who go to jail and are released, and most of these criminals re-commit crimes when they emerge from prison. Instead of evaluating our methods of rehabilitation, we just assume that everyone who commits a crime will continue to do so and in effect make it more likely that this will be the case.
If you are an out of jail "sex offender" being tracked wherever you go, let's say you do still have some or any urge to commit other crimes: when you have no chance of ever getting a real job, your neighbors know you as an offender, you can't even register on certain websites and everyone in the neighborhood looks at you like a criminal, suddenly you are forever a criminal and committing another crime...well that's just following expectations.
If the government is having problems keeping criminals from re-committing crimes then perhaps the jailtime or the punishment isn't working and should be re-evaluated. However, they'd rather just push this lifelong criminal mantra, because it allows them a little lee-way to take away some rights.
Ford or toyota do not place warnings on the stering wheel or fuel tank's cap warning about driving too fast for conditions or speeding or having a valid drivers license or even insurance before operating.
Of course they don't, you are, however, missing the point. Let's face it: Kazaa is designed with a specific intention of breaking the law. Choosing to ignore that fact by using metaphors about cars to get around the point isn't going to do much to sidestep this fact. To an unsuspecting user, that doesn't know that Kazaa is breaking the law, this just looks like an incredible free service. The entire service industry is at odds with the content industry on this one, and the person in between (the consumer) pays on both accounts.
Let's face facts: companies like kazaa thrive off of illegal downloads. No matter what they are saying they are doing to be legitimate, or what other services they offer, the network is set up and utilized for illegal filesharing. ISPs advertise based on the ability to download MP3s faster specifically in some literature. Now, they of course only mean ones from emusic, right?
Industries and companies basically sidestep copyright law in furthering their own interests, advertising faster and better copyright violations as an added benefit of using their services and then their users are the ones that suffer. If we were to be consistent, we'd shut down all Kazaa servers immediately, along with anything else. I understand it's not centralized like Napster, but the point remains. If Napster was illegal and misleading then Kazaa is too. Kazaa does nothing to inform its users that they might be violating copyright. I'm sure there are a number of users that wouldn't care because they are breaking the law willingly deeming it a low risk venture. If that's the case, well then that can't be prevented. But if it's a grandmom being duped into believing it's legal to download Beatles albums being sued by the RIAA because Kazaa didn't inform her that what she was doing was patently illegal, and that in fact the service itself is setup around grey areas of the law, well then I think it's not a terrible thing if they are held accountable as well.
You take advantage of the fact that you know you are breaking the law. There are people out there that think Kazaa is a reputable company to use for things. They don't know they are breaking the law and then get sued for it. When a business thrives off allowing illegality and then has the consumer pay the price for its success, I'm sorry, but the end user isn't the only one who should be responsible. It's basically a business plan based on thievery and entrapment, and should be treated as such.
My confidence in smooth Linux migrations for ordinary users took a pretty good hit over thanksgiving, when (for kicks mostly) I booted my mother's machine with Austrumi.
If you are talking education, however, you aren't talking "ordinary users." What you are instead talking about is the youth. To be honest, these are two different things.
The modern generation isn't simply exposed to Windows, people quickly forget this fact. The new generation has been exposed to the idea of an abstract interface. They know what an interface is because a computer isn't the only one they use. They are used to having to read a little bit and then making obvious choices within a GUI. Which is the basic skill required to use a computer (read and look before you act). The new generation of kids are used to using abstract interfaces in web email composition, in MP3 players, in cell phones and PDAs. The new generation is used to the *idea* of a GUI, not just the Windows GUI. So if they are asked to use a system other than the one they are accustomed to, in most cases, they will be amply prepared to carry out the task. As a teenager, I was used to these things as well. That's why even though I was never exposed to MacOS except in school, I was able to easily move around in the interface even if I didn't like it at the time.
A great personal example I have is that my girlfriend didn't have a computer and I had an older Linux box that I had no real space to use. I brought it over her apartment and put some tunes on it and setup an account for her to use. She was able to navigate the computer just as she could a windows PC, because if you are used to a computer interface, the fact that the file menu might be a little different doesn't make that big of a difference. To her it's a computer, and it really doesn't matter what it's running.
People need to realize that the main problem with Linux integration isn't the GUI itself, it's the fact that you can't find it pre-installed on any boxes, and that all the random crap you download and get from the store doesn't work with it. These are the real things that end users notice for the most part. There's always going to be someone's grandma who if you move an icon to the other side of the screen will be completely lost, but especially in the up and coming tech savvy generation, this happens less and less.
I want a feature rich system, I want my computer to be everything, do everything. Well for that I need hardware, and I'm willing to pay for it.
It's understandable that you would want new and better features. But the fact remains that a lot of software companies are somehow purposelessly bloating their code. Microsoft is a fine example of this phenomenon. The parent wasn't making a point about text vs. GUI which is obvious a great software (and therefore requires a great hardware) leap forward. The parent is talking about insignificant or non-existent leaps forward in functionality or features that still require significant hardware upgrades. Abode, IMHO fits into this category as well. It seems that every subsequent version of Photoshop eats your CPU more and more while the functionality remains roughly the same. There have been leaps forward in the software, but in some version numbers there was hardly any difference between versions except pretty much for performance.
A good example of this is how I can run linux with a full on 3d desktop (XGL) perfectly smoothly, however, if I want to run Windows Vista I'll need a new video card for the same thing. It's bloat for bloat's sake or laziness. Those who believe in conspiracy theories would have a case in saying that it's purposeful for Windows to become more bloated everytime to chew up hardware and keep people upgrading. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some sort of agreement of this nature between software and hardware makers. A word document shouldn't require a 3ghz dual core processor to open but you know that with MS being the way they are, it will soon become that way.
Yes, of course we'll see the few exceptions, to prove a point, but generally musicians are interested in the chord progression, melody, rhythm, instrumentation, etc. The recording quality is the last thing we care about when listening to a song.
Definitely the case with me as well. I don't like little blips or weird sounds from compression in tracks, but for the most part even 128kbit really doesn't bug me to the point where I want to scream. Some of my favorite music is low-fi stuff and one of my favorite songs for a while was some Radiohead song from a webcast that had the worst quality I've ever heard. Doesn't ruin the music itself. I'm also somewhat of a musician in my spare time.
Once I've mastered the game mechanics, I want to move faster; I've found very few RPGs that allow me to do so, since the artificial wall of gaining levels still exists.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Honestly, does anyone enjoy having to kill the same type of creature 100x to gain a level? It would be nice if they had things like QFG used to have, where there are different ways to beat certain battles depending upon character type, etc. That was one game that didn't require too much grinding on a regular basis (course it was half adventure game too).
But honestly, I do think that game makers need to re-evaluate the "your party is attacked" way of doing RPG games. Nothing is more irritating than having to backtrack through a game and continually getting attacked by creatures so insignificant you can kill them easily with one hit unarmed, but are still forced into the battle screen. I know there have been some improvements with this in some games, but the overall mindset IMHO needs to change if they want anyone normal to play these.
Slashdot Mirror
Definitely, and being as he's such a fine musician, I really can't wait for the live performance. Oh wait.
And given these facts, I would like to make my own "final prediction": no one will care.
Dammit, you just blew my whole thesis.
That's not true...We take the Lexus to the environmental rally on Sundays, Saturday is Hummer day.
I don't know, I for one was persuaded by their guarantee that 50% of the time it works, everytime.
As a side point, I'd like to ask this question, why does so much bullshit science involve the usage of magnets or the explanation of "magnetic fields"?
Indeed, here in America, it was actually part of the plan. *rubs hands together*
Nice try Google, I mean you can try to change compensation for tech employees but in the end, as the saying goes: The bubble-era vision of a Utopian Internet is dented and dirty... The Lexus has collided with the olive tree, and its crumpled hulk spins in a ditch as the orchard smolders.
I shouldn't have a choice.
That depends, are these "rapists" free? If you committed a crime and are released from prison, it's my position that you've paid your debt to society. If you haven't, then shouldn't you still be in prison? If we are pushing this once a criminal always a criminal mantra then why even let convicts out of jail in the first place if we are just gonna let the free world become another prison cell, gradually restricting their access to resources.
Either sentence them for longer, clean up the system, or do something that works. Don't punish them after they've already been punished. It's bad enough that they won't ever be able to vote or get a job better than grocery bagger, you have to start restricting their online rights to save "children" from "potential risks." How about _not_ scaremongering about children and saving our rights instead?
It's a slippery slope, first, restrict rights for convicts. Then, outlaw things to make everyone a potential convict. Bang...restricted rights. With the way people talk about online piracy, it's only a matter of time before that's criminal, and then after that's criminal maybe restricting the rights of those who have been convicted upon release.
I hate to be paranoid, but in Philadelphia they've installed security cameras on the streets. It's not long before you pick your nose and it's on the evening news.
...corporate types wonder why there are so many lawsuits. To effectively drop the ball on the security of almost a million students and then what you get as far as service is a letter saying "oops," it makes me glad that Bush couldn't get his "frivolous lawsuit" legislation through.
Maybe when companies/organizations trusted with information that leak it start getting sued by the people they are "protecting."
At my school they used the last 4 numbers of your social security number as part of your email. Organizations need to pay the price for being so lax on the security of their clients.
Can you imagine if a major player offered wireless downloading from any internet access point with this $15 per month all you can eat price point? It would almost be worth it not to own any music if you could download any song you wanted to hear on demand wirelessly.
When I bought my last computer, I was offered a service package and the package contained in no uncertain terms, explicitly "non-outsourced customer support." At least some companies (save for the telecommunications companies) are finding they are losing customers when they have a person who can barely speak the language on the other end of the phone. The customers get irritated and go looking elsewhere for support. For computer resellers, at least, service is a big part of their profit. So when people go third party for help or upgrades and no longer are buying their stuff, that's a hit. In the end the market determines that outsourcing is a bad idea in most cases. And that's before you factor in this fact, putting companies in will raise the average salary level. Then they need to find a new country to run through. After a while maybe they'll just go through the complete cycle and have to come back to the US.
Goes to show that the market will solve some things on its own. That doesn't mean that we should give tax breaks to those outsourcing, as some in government like to do, but I digress.
I took the so-called "red pill", and discovered the following: "Suffice to say for now that if science is what you are looking for, you will find none where the electric sun is concerned, save that which shows it to be an untenable hypothesis."
Please don't push your misguided psuedo-science off as something grounded in reality. Remember, scientists look for facts and work them into theory, quacks make up a "theory" and then try to find facts to fit it. The electric sun is as much science as "creation science" or "intelligent design," and should be met with the same contempt by anyone logical enough to read a science book.
Because...50% of the time it works, everytime!
Not only that, but if you think about it, providing remote access allows another point of entry for attack. All employees that use the remote access, even if trustworthy, can't be trusted to follow all security precautions when they aren't even at the office to begin with. If you are allowed full control over files remotely, you are basically exposing inside information to outside security risks, as even the neighbor kid could potentially delete your files if your employee is too sloppy security wise at home.
It's a plus because they hold less and they are more expensive, so Sony can sell you more expensive backup batteries which run out more frequently! Remember, someone has to pay for the price of exploding laptops...
You know, fair use has pretty much gone down the toilet. With the modernization of copyright law things have changed without real public consent. The truth of the matter is that music used to be a free trade type of deal, spread mainly by spoken word. Now the RIAA has taken even the ability to make tabs based on listening to albums and make those tabs public. The RIAA essentially wants to kill word of mouth or folk style passage of music.
When I began writing a bit of a book I'd been working on, I was tempted, like James Joyce does to include modern song lyrics in the book itself. James Joyce did this with old Irish songs, but if you think about it, in Ireland, around the time the book takes place, those were the time and place's defining anthems. Nowadays, if I want to include lyrics to a song as being something played in an establishment the character is in, I'd probably have to pay a licensing fee for the lyrics. Songs have become corporate only entities, and the joy of music has truly been passed without anyone looking to stop and see what they missed.
The government hasn't been able to properly reform criminals who go to jail and are released, and most of these criminals re-commit crimes when they emerge from prison. Instead of evaluating our methods of rehabilitation, we just assume that everyone who commits a crime will continue to do so and in effect make it more likely that this will be the case.
If you are an out of jail "sex offender" being tracked wherever you go, let's say you do still have some or any urge to commit other crimes: when you have no chance of ever getting a real job, your neighbors know you as an offender, you can't even register on certain websites and everyone in the neighborhood looks at you like a criminal, suddenly you are forever a criminal and committing another crime...well that's just following expectations.
If the government is having problems keeping criminals from re-committing crimes then perhaps the jailtime or the punishment isn't working and should be re-evaluated. However, they'd rather just push this lifelong criminal mantra, because it allows them a little lee-way to take away some rights.
Of course they don't, you are, however, missing the point. Let's face it: Kazaa is designed with a specific intention of breaking the law. Choosing to ignore that fact by using metaphors about cars to get around the point isn't going to do much to sidestep this fact. To an unsuspecting user, that doesn't know that Kazaa is breaking the law, this just looks like an incredible free service. The entire service industry is at odds with the content industry on this one, and the person in between (the consumer) pays on both accounts.
Let's face facts: companies like kazaa thrive off of illegal downloads. No matter what they are saying they are doing to be legitimate, or what other services they offer, the network is set up and utilized for illegal filesharing. ISPs advertise based on the ability to download MP3s faster specifically in some literature. Now, they of course only mean ones from emusic, right?
Industries and companies basically sidestep copyright law in furthering their own interests, advertising faster and better copyright violations as an added benefit of using their services and then their users are the ones that suffer. If we were to be consistent, we'd shut down all Kazaa servers immediately, along with anything else. I understand it's not centralized like Napster, but the point remains. If Napster was illegal and misleading then Kazaa is too. Kazaa does nothing to inform its users that they might be violating copyright. I'm sure there are a number of users that wouldn't care because they are breaking the law willingly deeming it a low risk venture. If that's the case, well then that can't be prevented. But if it's a grandmom being duped into believing it's legal to download Beatles albums being sued by the RIAA because Kazaa didn't inform her that what she was doing was patently illegal, and that in fact the service itself is setup around grey areas of the law, well then I think it's not a terrible thing if they are held accountable as well.
You take advantage of the fact that you know you are breaking the law. There are people out there that think Kazaa is a reputable company to use for things. They don't know they are breaking the law and then get sued for it. When a business thrives off allowing illegality and then has the consumer pay the price for its success, I'm sorry, but the end user isn't the only one who should be responsible. It's basically a business plan based on thievery and entrapment, and should be treated as such.
If you are talking education, however, you aren't talking "ordinary users." What you are instead talking about is the youth. To be honest, these are two different things.
The modern generation isn't simply exposed to Windows, people quickly forget this fact. The new generation has been exposed to the idea of an abstract interface. They know what an interface is because a computer isn't the only one they use. They are used to having to read a little bit and then making obvious choices within a GUI. Which is the basic skill required to use a computer (read and look before you act). The new generation of kids are used to using abstract interfaces in web email composition, in MP3 players, in cell phones and PDAs. The new generation is used to the *idea* of a GUI, not just the Windows GUI. So if they are asked to use a system other than the one they are accustomed to, in most cases, they will be amply prepared to carry out the task. As a teenager, I was used to these things as well. That's why even though I was never exposed to MacOS except in school, I was able to easily move around in the interface even if I didn't like it at the time.
A great personal example I have is that my girlfriend didn't have a computer and I had an older Linux box that I had no real space to use. I brought it over her apartment and put some tunes on it and setup an account for her to use. She was able to navigate the computer just as she could a windows PC, because if you are used to a computer interface, the fact that the file menu might be a little different doesn't make that big of a difference. To her it's a computer, and it really doesn't matter what it's running.
People need to realize that the main problem with Linux integration isn't the GUI itself, it's the fact that you can't find it pre-installed on any boxes, and that all the random crap you download and get from the store doesn't work with it. These are the real things that end users notice for the most part. There's always going to be someone's grandma who if you move an icon to the other side of the screen will be completely lost, but especially in the up and coming tech savvy generation, this happens less and less.
It's understandable that you would want new and better features. But the fact remains that a lot of software companies are somehow purposelessly bloating their code. Microsoft is a fine example of this phenomenon. The parent wasn't making a point about text vs. GUI which is obvious a great software (and therefore requires a great hardware) leap forward. The parent is talking about insignificant or non-existent leaps forward in functionality or features that still require significant hardware upgrades. Abode, IMHO fits into this category as well. It seems that every subsequent version of Photoshop eats your CPU more and more while the functionality remains roughly the same. There have been leaps forward in the software, but in some version numbers there was hardly any difference between versions except pretty much for performance.
A good example of this is how I can run linux with a full on 3d desktop (XGL) perfectly smoothly, however, if I want to run Windows Vista I'll need a new video card for the same thing. It's bloat for bloat's sake or laziness. Those who believe in conspiracy theories would have a case in saying that it's purposeful for Windows to become more bloated everytime to chew up hardware and keep people upgrading. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some sort of agreement of this nature between software and hardware makers. A word document shouldn't require a 3ghz dual core processor to open but you know that with MS being the way they are, it will soon become that way.
Definitely the case with me as well. I don't like little blips or weird sounds from compression in tracks, but for the most part even 128kbit really doesn't bug me to the point where I want to scream. Some of my favorite music is low-fi stuff and one of my favorite songs for a while was some Radiohead song from a webcast that had the worst quality I've ever heard. Doesn't ruin the music itself. I'm also somewhat of a musician in my spare time.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Honestly, does anyone enjoy having to kill the same type of creature 100x to gain a level? It would be nice if they had things like QFG used to have, where there are different ways to beat certain battles depending upon character type, etc. That was one game that didn't require too much grinding on a regular basis (course it was half adventure game too).
But honestly, I do think that game makers need to re-evaluate the "your party is attacked" way of doing RPG games. Nothing is more irritating than having to backtrack through a game and continually getting attacked by creatures so insignificant you can kill them easily with one hit unarmed, but are still forced into the battle screen. I know there have been some improvements with this in some games, but the overall mindset IMHO needs to change if they want anyone normal to play these.
Well, I'm so glad you are here to save us, with rambling 1000-word rants without a point or a press of the enter key.