ID is for YOU, to learn and study on your own accord. Take your children to church to show them what you believe, and than let them discover their own faith. Send them to school to learn what is KNOWN and what other Possibilties there are.
You post is the rantings of a bigot who hates Christians.
Schools should teach what the majority of people in the district want taught. If one parent does not like what 1000 other parents want in the curriculum, than the 1 parent should educate their child on their own. The rights of the majority are being attacked.
There should be freedom to discuss anything in the classroom. I find it absurd that liberal groups want to give academic freedom to ideas they believe in, but will deprive others of the right to speak their mind.
Prove to me there is no God. Prove to me that everything science measures and describes was not created by God.
People have believed in God since the start of time. What makes scientists today so much more certain than scientists of 100 years ago?
Science is all about theories. There are no facts when it comes to how the universe was created. Why can't a teacher tell his students that many people believe God created the universe?
This is not like telling students some new theory that someone thought up 5 minutes ago. People have believed in Christ for over 2000 years. It seems like it should be mentioned in the biology class.
Many people believe God created everything, and as people, we're doing our best to describe and measure what he created. I'm not advocating replacing science text books with the bible. But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong.
Imagine if AOL decided to block all porn. People would be outraged. The ACLU would sue.
I wonder if more than 2 ISP's blocked the same website, if the people could sue claiming the ISP's are violating anti-trust by working together to kill a third party?
The three PowerPC cores are identical, except that they are physically reflected through the X and Y axis. Each of the CPU cores is a specialized PowerPC chip
I thought Power PC was the mac? Why did Microsoft pick apple CPU's for their Xbox? Is Intel falling out of favor?
Now, if MS is running linux in their new game machine, that will be news. It reminds me of when Windows NT was being sold as the OS for buisness, but a story leaded that Microsoft used Unix for their servers.
This reminds me of something that happened at the local university. The Gap gave FREE clothing to some better looking people, and PAID these people money to wear the clothing and talk it up...
There's even a term for this practice. It's called "modeling."
Seriously, other than the fact that you weren't offered money/clothes, what's your real beef here? That people wear clothes because they think it will confer some level of coolness to them? Surely you can't just be noticing this now?
No, it's not modeling. Everyone knows a model was paid to promote a product.
This was deceitful. It would be no different than if Microsoft gave the smartest guy in the computer science program on campus a laptop with Windows, and paid him to tell everyone how GREAT Microsoft is. Meanwhile, the guy is running linux at home and keeping it a secret. So what happens here? 5 or 10 people who don't know much about computers trust the smart guy as an honest person, and buy Windows based on bad information. 1 month later, when their system is crashing from all the spyware, they ask the smart guy why his system doesn't have any problems. The smart guy shrugs, and walks away, leaving everyone who trusted him screwed.
I'm not against people being paid to promote a product. But the consumer should know when they are getting information form someone who was paid to promote a product.
Take the example above. But this time, the smart computer guy tells people "I have a laptop with windows which I like. Microsoft gave me Windows for free so I can tell others about how good their product is". That would be fair and honest. I would know the smart computer guy isn't going to tell me "get linux" because he has an obligation to sell MS.
The problem I have with companies is when they hide how they are advertising to me. I want to know when I am hearing a selling pitch. I don't want to be tricked.
return results based on the amount the retailers they link to have paid for a higher position.
We should know IF a review website is giving a review based on compensation. Congress should pass a law requiring these websites to disclose how much they were paid for giving search results.
One website I use is Eopinions dot com. They are a place where anyone can write a review of a product. When I want advice on how good a product is, I don't want to hear from the manufacturer. I don't want to be lied to, I don't want them puffing their product up.
This reminds me of something that happened at the local university. The Gap gave FREE clothing to some better looking people, and PAID these people money to wear the clothing and talk it up. They wanted to create buzz for their product, and get people shopping in their stores. So what happens? You get 4 very attractive people to wear your product and tell everyone how much they like the product. Then the store gets flooded with 100 sheep all wanting the same product. One month later, when the contract between the attractive people and the store has expired, the attractive people stop wearing the product. The attractive people NEVER liked the product. They did it for money, it was dishonest.
If politicians have to disclose where they get money from, I think stores should disclose where they spend advertising. I want to know if I'm getting honest advice from a third party, or if someone is selling me because of a relationship with the company.
Someone had put up for auction on eBay the details of an exploit in Microsoft Excel
I'll buy that one as soon as I buy the product which tells me how to remove all spyware by formatting my hard drive. It's only $7.95, and he sends the PDF file as soon as payment is recieved. Now if only I knew how to open a PDF file.:(
Maybe I'll search ebay, and someone can sell me a product which tells me how to open a PDF file.:):)
But first, I need to bid on this guy who claims he can teach me how to get Plasma TV's for free from the manufacturers. He says in his ebay auction that manufacturers don't have enough people to test their product and they want me to help them!
Ebay is more good than bad, but how can these people sell garbage?
If the guy is selling information on how to exploit software, doesn't that violate the DCMA?
I guess I should not complain. Ebay is the only place I know of that has everything, the worlds largest flea market.
Godel, Escher and Bach is a damned good book, and any self-respecting geek should have read it. Twice.
Other favourites include Capital by Marx, Crime & Punishment by Dostoeyevsky, Also Spracht Zarathustra (Nietzsche), The Fountainhead (Rand), The heart of a dog (Bulgakov) and Dubliners (Joyce).
Those books are a little heavy to digest. I don't know about most people, but I would not want work as a gift, then to feel obligated to read 700 pages. I've read a few books by Dostoevsky, and they are not christmas books! Christmas should be about having fun, not getting a headache reading.
If you're a programmer, the last thing you're going to want to read are code books
I agree. It is like giving your mom a skillet for christmas because she cooks for you.
Picking the right gift requires knowing your friend. One of the BEST gifts I ever recieved was from a neighbors wife. She is an awesome baker. She filled up a tin with homemade cookies, her daughters helped decorate the tin. It was a gift they put their hearts into. They spent a few hours at my place, it was nice to talk, to listen about their year, and what they were planning for the new year. Fellowship is the best gift.
I also love getting christmas cards from friends who have moved away. It is a nice way to keep in touch with people.
Remember, it is the thought that counts. The gift is not important. What is important is someone cares about you.
With christmas just round the corner I have been looking for gifts for my geek friends. But what book?
Just because your friend is a geek does not mean a book is the best gift! Picking tech books can be difficult. You need to know what your friend is interested in. If your friend knows the topic a book covers, it won't be useful. If the book is outside the scope of what your friend does, the book won't get used. Even within a language, there are so many topics that just because you hit the right language, does not mean the book would be useful. If you want to get a book, but a cheap $7 trashy novel that will be filled with laughs, and add a $50 gift card at your local bookstore. That will probably be cheaper than some of the $70 books out there. The cool thing about giving the $7 novel is you're giving a piece of yourself. It should be a book that made you laugh and think. I'd suggest Catch-22. It will provide lots of laugh out loud moments. You should pick a book you liked and want to share with your friend.
Christmas is not about gifts or materialism. Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ. Spend time with your friends, listen to how their life is, their year. Celebrate with them. Be happy. That is the greatest gift you can give. People don't need more objects. People need to feel loved.
Since the link between science and the technology of war or peace, depending on your perspective, are entwined why can't it be used for alternative purpose? The fact my microwave oven had it's roots in defense does not stop me from using it.
Think of it as stealing someone elses work and ambition, and then using the result of that work for some evil purpose the original inventor never would have approved of. For example, say you wrote code for a program that helped cure cancer, and then some insurance company stole your code and tweaked it to predict who would get cancer and denined those people coverage.
There is a battle between people who want to do good, who have an alturistic motive, and those who want to profit. Can someone do a good dead without another wishing to take advantage?
Re:Have you ever missed meals or been hungry?
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You haven't known many people without money, have you?
Ideally, yes, they would live within their means, and use the $25k to help with their standard of living.
In the real world, that $25k would be gone in a week, but probably less. It may go to pay back bills, but more than likely it will put the biggest TV they can fit in their house (usually not well), some new furnature, a couple nice dinners, and maybe the down payment on a new car. Unfortunately, they'll still be living in a crappy place in a bad part of town. The car will get repossessed within months, and their 'nice' stuff that they just bought will end up as crappy as the stuff they already have. Generally, they treat their stuff just as badly as they treat themselves, which is why they're usually in that situation.
I won't say everyone who is down on their luck is like that. Hell, I've been there. But, most people wouldn't use cash like that to ensure that they will thrive in the future.
I don't know why they marked you troll, you're right about some poor people. They do get in debt, and it is a real problem. I am not sure about the status of the new bankrupcy laws, but I hear it is more difficult to declare bankrupcy. The courts will not discharge debts.
If a family took a $25,000 pay check, and the first thing they did was buy a $5,000 plasma TV, that family is in trouble. I doubt the TV will make their lives that much better.
Truth be told, for some people, I don't know how $25,000 could be invested for a better future. Not everyone has the ability to finish college, it takes good reading skills, reasoning skills, and math. Some people just can't get over the hump of a college education. It is a sad fact, and it does not make the person any less valuable to society. But 30 years ago, that person could get a good union job, buy a house, and live a normal life. Today, that person will have a very difficult time making ends meet.
What would you recommed for a guy with an IQ of 87 to do with $25,000? Spend $2,000 at the community college learning a trade which one day might offer a $10 hour job? Keep training in boxing, and hope for the 1 in a 1,000,000 shot of making good money?
I don't know what the solution is. I wonder what suggestions others would give that family? And we should not criticize them for being human and wanting items like big TV's. That is the job of marketing, and they do a good job of making people spend their money on junk. There are whole forums dedicated to sneaking information on what DVD's will be 2 for $20 at the local electronics store next week.
Have you ever missed meals or been hungry?
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How the heck is tattooing GoldenPalace.com on your forehead for $25,000 a great idea???????
$25,000 is a LOT of money for someone who's never had more than the $121.45 which food stamps pays per month. To someone in IT, $25,000 might be a 2 month contract, and not very much money. Buy a top notch digital camera to play with, maybe a new plasma TV, eat at a fancy restaurant all month, and your $25K is gone. But for someone who is poor, that $25K might last 2 or 3 years. It is enough to buy a 7 year old Honda Civic with 110,000 miles for $1700. That should be solid transportation for another 5 years. That 25K will buy lots of chicken at the grocery store at $0.79 cents a pound. Add the 10 pound bag of potatoes that is $1.99, and that will last a month. For someone who has been poor, you would be surprised how easy it is to stretch $25 into a weeks worth of good eats. There isn't any steaks, but there is plenty of roasted chicken, rice, oven baked potatoe wedges, and hearty soups made from the left over bones of the chicken with some veggies. I sometimes get a kick out of fancy resturants that use peasant recipes to make meals they charge $40 per plate. The original purpose of these recipes was to conserve and be frugal. For example, there is an Italian resturant near my home that has a $7 soup which is made from olive oil, garlic, basil, water, and lots of day old crusty bread cut in cubes. It is a creamy soup, very tastey, and something that $1 could make a big pot with 20 servings. The bread breaks apart and thickens the flavorfull water.
For someone who is poor, that $25,000 extra cash might be reason enough to buy a case of two buck chuck and stock the wine cabinet.
I know we all live in the USA, but there is a gap growing between the rich and the poor. $25,000 is a lot of money no matter who you are! Those guys who box are often poor, and come from homes where the needs were far greater than the wants.
Having said all that, I hate the blatant advertising. People should not use their body or uniform to advertise. It is a shame, because that $25,000 might be more money than the boxer could make any other way. It is one guaranteed payout.
I'd be interested to know what you like about MapQuest? I know they are number one, but it just seems like they offer close to nothing over Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and even Virtual Earth. Since I have only tired-kicked them, maybe if I used them more I'd find they had better directions.
I like mapquest for a few reasons. I use their directions feature often. If I've never driven to a place, it has become habit to look at mapquest to see what roads they recommend. I like how they show the milage per road, and the trips total milage.
I guess mapquest was the first service I used for maps and directions. I checked out google maps (or maybe it was yahoo). I surf with javascript and active x off, and google maps would not load the picture of the map. Mapquest works with my IE settings at a very restrictive level.
Maybe I am lazy. When I find something that works, I tend to stick with it. Other services have not given me a reason to switch. And I can't think of anything else that could be offered to make mapquest better. I am happy with them.
I seem to always go to yahoo.com when ever I search for something and rarely use any other search engine like google. I have no idea though because personally I don't care what search engine Im using but I do usually default to yahoo first
I've been a Google user for years, but I am starting to use Yahoo more often. At first it started because I was at Yahoo for a different reason, and the search was there, so I did it. Boom, less spam results. I went to Google to compare and there is more spam in the rankings.
Try searching for a review of a commerical product like a TV by model number. Google will fill the search with places selling the product, not with reviews. If Eopinions or Amazon does not have a review, you're screwed. You'll be buying blind.
Google to me was most usefull as a NON-COMMERCIAL tool, to find information, not sellers. There are plenty of places to buy, and I know their websites. I don't need google to show me electronic stores.
How did real networks get so high. I never have visited their website. But I use Google, Ebay, and Mapquest often. I can't think of any reason a user would need to use real networks on a daily basis, or even weekly basis.
if you leave you wireless network unprotected and people use it for doing something illegal, you are likely going to be in trouble in some form
The law needs to pass the Corkey test. What happens when someone of a low IQ decides to follow the instructions of "plug and play". I would suspect the manufacturers to be more responsible that the end user. For example, what about when grandma decides to take home a wireless router and she does not secure it and someone uses it for an illegal purpose? How will the court convict someone who can't program a VCR? Where is the Mens Rea (guilty mind)? Sure, the act might be there, but was the intent?
The only other option is to force everyone to get a special license to use this kind of equipment. If wi-fi is that dangerous, then govenment might do that. And I'm sure they could think of a nice name for the tax... "Defending on-line liberty act".
If cable companies are moving to digital content with television, it is only one step away from securing their whole network, so that nobody unauthorized can get on. Everything will be DRM'ed, and the network will be closed.
Good luck securing all the open wireless access points by law enforcement.
Government might not be interested in those who lawfully use the internet. I suspect what government is trying to do is frustrate the terrorists/bad guys by taking away one more place they can do buisness. You know the bad detective movie sayings "Lets shake the branches and see what falls out of the tree". Or Tzu "If your enemy is angry, irritate them". What they are trying to do is make the enemy snap, and make a bad choice based on emotion rather than logic.
I would not be surprised if government had open wi-fi honeypots, places these terrorists felt more safe because of the percieved anonymity. Think of government making their own alleys, with no lighting, that is inviting to a mugger. But in reality, it's a trap!
But probably the ones with open WLANs wil be 'guilty' of anything accused. Someone simply *has* to go to jail!
And I can see which way this will go... after the ones with the deepest pockets. Government will probably not go after individuals for having open wi-fi spots. Government will go after manufacturers. Expect some kind of DRM to be added to wi-fi or any PC that connects to the internet. Now that i'm thinking about it, didn't Intel add some kinds of unique Id on every P4 chip it sells? It is more difficult to spoof than a MAC on a NIC.
I suspect terrorists don't even bother with the internet. Who knows, maybe they place ad's in newspapers. Cell 1 tells Cell 2, if you see "Charming 2 bedroom 1.5 Bath on upper west side with view of Allah", that means to set off your bombs. For all you know the ad could be "Ugly dog for sale. $30,000. He stinks too" or "Sally, we met at the cafe, please call Arby".
For terrorism to work, there needs to be enough of them motivated. And so far in the USA, there have not been any since 9/11. Some might argue those in 9/11 are as isolated as Timothy McVeigh or the Columbine shootings, that it was one group and a one time deal.
Now, can government do something usefull and ban mail in rebates please?
Where do I sign up for the $1 billion government grant to study this new "ocean"? Since it's going to take a while, I should build a nice palace -- uh, research station -- to observe this natural event.
That is not too far from the truth. There is so much grant money, and it is so easy to get. There is a lot of red tape, and paperwork, but once you learn the system, you can have a nice stream of never-ending cash for whatever research you wish.
After seeing others get grants, I think I want to go back to university and get a Ph.D. in sociology. I'll do my Ph.D. on the effects of having a million dollar trust fund and driving a ferrari. Now I just need to fill out that application for the grant.
splitting at about 0.8 inches per year, would eventually lead to Ethiopia eastern portions becoming an island in a million years or so
And by then the sun might supernova because someone else got a grant before yours. They wanted to fly a nuclear powered research starship into the center of the sun. *KABOOM*.
The only cool thing about this new water source is, will it create land that can support growing food? If the anwser is yes, then it will be a blessing, even if all we get today is a river a few meters wide.
What made google so appealing to people was the interface, there was no advertising. There was one blank page with an input box to do a search from. Google seperated advertising from searching at a time when other engines like Excite were filled with junk that distracted.
Today, Google seems to be going in the other direction. Offering more services, integrating more advertising.
Just the past 6 months, I have noticed a new form of advertising by Google. In the past, there would be the advertising on the right of the page, and the advertising on top in the blue or green box. But now they sneak in 3 or 4 searches on the first page mixed in with the regular searches as advertising. Google is tempted to make money, and it will burn thier support.
Who knows, maybe someone else will start a search engine. Google came around at a time when Yahoo and Excite dominated, but Google made a product easier to use. I remember my first time using Google... I was at Yahoo to search for something when someone said "Why don't you try google, check it out". I was hooked.
The past few months I have been using Yahoo more for a few reasons. Maybe reason #1 is I got tired of Google having so many websites listed so high that was spam.
The other thing which turned me off to Google was I started a website and wanted to add it to the listings. Google would not add my listings for six months. And mine is NOT spam. Why is spam listed so high, but legitimate websites are not?
how many of us computer-savvy are guilty of doing this for our login accounts, web banking, Email, etc? I know i am.
I am not a cracker or hacker. But I know a guy who uses password trading websites for porn. According to him, once you get a password for one porn website, that same password will work for others. According to him, these porn members use the same password for all sites they subscribe to.
Once companies start losing money to crackers/hackers, then they will start issuing more complex security.
All applications have got pre-defined passwords that never change.
Are they sure about that?
So where is this wide open back door? In every one of your applications.
These guys are paranoid.
Tell me that Apache/Tomcat has some secret passwords that will give a cracker access to my server. Or MySQL has a secret password that gives root access. Every app I can think of can have passwords changed, and none have hard coded passwords.
Why not have a second IE window open? At the bottom of windows you have the taskbar, you can tab from there. And when you hold the pointer over the application taskbar in windows, it will tell you what website that tab is. With Firefox browser tabs, do you get that same function, where you can put the arrow over the tab and it expands to tell you the website?
There is one reason I will not use Firefox, and that is because zonealarm has started going nuts since about Firefox 1.3. Before, it just wanted permission to access the internet. Now it wants to access the trusted zone too. Something stinks to me, why the extra permission?
Plus, with windows IE, I have a billion dollar company standing behind my product. Who can I complain to if Firefox screws me. I know the open source people will rip me a new one and mod me down, but I trust money and closed code. Firefox is getting large enough that hackers will start targeting them as much as IE.
But what happens if AOL users still go to Google despite the default search site is MSN?
The people I know who use AOL, and this is a small number of people with dial up, they use AOL to search. They don't open up a second IE window to use google.
MS still commands about 80% of the browser market, and its browser defaults searches to MSN, if this cannot help it, I doubt a deal with AOL could.
Does MS still do this from IE? I thought there was a setting where the user can select what search engine to use, or to disable searching from the address bar. I never search from the address bar, so I don't know.
So the deal is that AOL would drop Google as its main Internet search provider and switch to Microsoft's MSN service
On the surface, this might look like a good deal for MS. But I remember how everyone thought MSNBC would become bigger than CNN. Correct me if I am wrong, but is MSNBC even #3? What happened with marrying the largest computer/tech comany with NBC?
MS is marrying with a dying company. How much longer will dial up be a market? How will AOL continue to stay alive, how much impact will their search website have?
MS should be looking forward. I see this as a short term deal, to get more of a market share in search engines. But that advantage will be gone in a few years. I think MS is trembling that google will dominate all searches, and MS will be about as popular as dogpile.
The Journal said that, under negotiations between Time Warner and Microsoft, AOL would drop Google as its main Internet search provider and switch to Microsoft's MSN service.
How much of googles searches does AOL account for? How will this affect Google Adsense? Less views = less money for those in the program?
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who has been critical of Time Warner's strategy, has also said that he would hold Time Warner board members personally responsible if they forged a deal for AOL that valued the Internet provider too cheaply.
How will Carl Icahn do this? Is this one very rich man trying to kill a deal?
Why would Time Warner want to screw AOL? Hmmm... what is going on behind the scenes? Or is this a sign that AOL is changing its strategy?
Or maybe Microsoft is scared of google, and is doing everything they can to prevent their search services from going the direction of excite.com.
Wait, is/. for protecting intellectual property or against it, I'm confused!
Protecting intellectual property is good. Going after old women because someone downloaded a mp3 on thier cable line is bad. Having fees which do not match the crime are bad.
The problem is everyone has become so greedy. It is a cycle. The software companies got greedy, so they pushed the end users around with absurd EULA's. The users got ticked off and pushed back copying and distributing protected materials on P2P networks. Software companies cripled their software and made it call home. Hackers got ticked off and wrote hacks.
My advice to software companies is this: Treat the end user with respect. Why shouldn't an end user be allowed to make one back up copy of their software (for example)?
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You post is the rantings of a bigot who hates Christians.
Schools should teach what the majority of people in the district want taught. If one parent does not like what 1000 other parents want in the curriculum, than the 1 parent should educate their child on their own. The rights of the majority are being attacked.
There should be freedom to discuss anything in the classroom. I find it absurd that liberal groups want to give academic freedom to ideas they believe in, but will deprive others of the right to speak their mind.
Prove to me there is no God. Prove to me that everything science measures and describes was not created by God.
People have believed in God since the start of time. What makes scientists today so much more certain than scientists of 100 years ago?
This is not like telling students some new theory that someone thought up 5 minutes ago. People have believed in Christ for over 2000 years. It seems like it should be mentioned in the biology class.
Many people believe God created everything, and as people, we're doing our best to describe and measure what he created. I'm not advocating replacing science text books with the bible. But to leave out something that a majority of people in the USA believe is wrong.
I don't understand how they can block Skype.
Imagine if AOL decided to block all porn. People would be outraged. The ACLU would sue.
I wonder if more than 2 ISP's blocked the same website, if the people could sue claiming the ISP's are violating anti-trust by working together to kill a third party?
I thought Power PC was the mac? Why did Microsoft pick apple CPU's for their Xbox? Is Intel falling out of favor?
Now, if MS is running linux in their new game machine, that will be news. It reminds me of when Windows NT was being sold as the OS for buisness, but a story leaded that Microsoft used Unix for their servers.
There's even a term for this practice. It's called "modeling."
Seriously, other than the fact that you weren't offered money/clothes, what's your real beef here? That people wear clothes because they think it will confer some level of coolness to them? Surely you can't just be noticing this now?
No, it's not modeling. Everyone knows a model was paid to promote a product.
This was deceitful. It would be no different than if Microsoft gave the smartest guy in the computer science program on campus a laptop with Windows, and paid him to tell everyone how GREAT Microsoft is. Meanwhile, the guy is running linux at home and keeping it a secret. So what happens here? 5 or 10 people who don't know much about computers trust the smart guy as an honest person, and buy Windows based on bad information. 1 month later, when their system is crashing from all the spyware, they ask the smart guy why his system doesn't have any problems. The smart guy shrugs, and walks away, leaving everyone who trusted him screwed.
I'm not against people being paid to promote a product. But the consumer should know when they are getting information form someone who was paid to promote a product.
Take the example above. But this time, the smart computer guy tells people "I have a laptop with windows which I like. Microsoft gave me Windows for free so I can tell others about how good their product is". That would be fair and honest. I would know the smart computer guy isn't going to tell me "get linux" because he has an obligation to sell MS.
The problem I have with companies is when they hide how they are advertising to me. I want to know when I am hearing a selling pitch. I don't want to be tricked.
We should know IF a review website is giving a review based on compensation. Congress should pass a law requiring these websites to disclose how much they were paid for giving search results.
One website I use is Eopinions dot com. They are a place where anyone can write a review of a product. When I want advice on how good a product is, I don't want to hear from the manufacturer. I don't want to be lied to, I don't want them puffing their product up.
This reminds me of something that happened at the local university. The Gap gave FREE clothing to some better looking people, and PAID these people money to wear the clothing and talk it up. They wanted to create buzz for their product, and get people shopping in their stores. So what happens? You get 4 very attractive people to wear your product and tell everyone how much they like the product. Then the store gets flooded with 100 sheep all wanting the same product. One month later, when the contract between the attractive people and the store has expired, the attractive people stop wearing the product. The attractive people NEVER liked the product. They did it for money, it was dishonest.
If politicians have to disclose where they get money from, I think stores should disclose where they spend advertising. I want to know if I'm getting honest advice from a third party, or if someone is selling me because of a relationship with the company.
I'll buy that one as soon as I buy the product which tells me how to remove all spyware by formatting my hard drive. It's only $7.95, and he sends the PDF file as soon as payment is recieved. Now if only I knew how to open a PDF file. :(
Maybe I'll search ebay, and someone can sell me a product which tells me how to open a PDF file. :) :)
But first, I need to bid on this guy who claims he can teach me how to get Plasma TV's for free from the manufacturers. He says in his ebay auction that manufacturers don't have enough people to test their product and they want me to help them!
Ebay is more good than bad, but how can these people sell garbage?
If the guy is selling information on how to exploit software, doesn't that violate the DCMA?
I guess I should not complain. Ebay is the only place I know of that has everything, the worlds largest flea market.
Other favourites include Capital by Marx, Crime & Punishment by Dostoeyevsky, Also Spracht Zarathustra (Nietzsche), The Fountainhead (Rand), The heart of a dog (Bulgakov) and Dubliners (Joyce).
Those books are a little heavy to digest. I don't know about most people, but I would not want work as a gift, then to feel obligated to read 700 pages. I've read a few books by Dostoevsky, and they are not christmas books! Christmas should be about having fun, not getting a headache reading.
If you're a programmer, the last thing you're going to want to read are code books
I agree. It is like giving your mom a skillet for christmas because she cooks for you.
Picking the right gift requires knowing your friend. One of the BEST gifts I ever recieved was from a neighbors wife. She is an awesome baker. She filled up a tin with homemade cookies, her daughters helped decorate the tin. It was a gift they put their hearts into. They spent a few hours at my place, it was nice to talk, to listen about their year, and what they were planning for the new year. Fellowship is the best gift.
I also love getting christmas cards from friends who have moved away. It is a nice way to keep in touch with people.
Remember, it is the thought that counts. The gift is not important. What is important is someone cares about you.
Just because your friend is a geek does not mean a book is the best gift! Picking tech books can be difficult. You need to know what your friend is interested in. If your friend knows the topic a book covers, it won't be useful. If the book is outside the scope of what your friend does, the book won't get used. Even within a language, there are so many topics that just because you hit the right language, does not mean the book would be useful. If you want to get a book, but a cheap $7 trashy novel that will be filled with laughs, and add a $50 gift card at your local bookstore. That will probably be cheaper than some of the $70 books out there. The cool thing about giving the $7 novel is you're giving a piece of yourself. It should be a book that made you laugh and think. I'd suggest Catch-22. It will provide lots of laugh out loud moments. You should pick a book you liked and want to share with your friend.
Christmas is not about gifts or materialism. Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Christ. Spend time with your friends, listen to how their life is, their year. Celebrate with them. Be happy. That is the greatest gift you can give. People don't need more objects. People need to feel loved.
Think of it as stealing someone elses work and ambition, and then using the result of that work for some evil purpose the original inventor never would have approved of. For example, say you wrote code for a program that helped cure cancer, and then some insurance company stole your code and tweaked it to predict who would get cancer and denined those people coverage.
There is a battle between people who want to do good, who have an alturistic motive, and those who want to profit. Can someone do a good dead without another wishing to take advantage?
Ideally, yes, they would live within their means, and use the $25k to help with their standard of living.
In the real world, that $25k would be gone in a week, but probably less. It may go to pay back bills, but more than likely it will put the biggest TV they can fit in their house (usually not well), some new furnature, a couple nice dinners, and maybe the down payment on a new car. Unfortunately, they'll still be living in a crappy place in a bad part of town. The car will get repossessed within months, and their 'nice' stuff that they just bought will end up as crappy as the stuff they already have. Generally, they treat their stuff just as badly as they treat themselves, which is why they're usually in that situation.
I won't say everyone who is down on their luck is like that. Hell, I've been there. But, most people wouldn't use cash like that to ensure that they will thrive in the future.
I don't know why they marked you troll, you're right about some poor people. They do get in debt, and it is a real problem. I am not sure about the status of the new bankrupcy laws, but I hear it is more difficult to declare bankrupcy. The courts will not discharge debts.
If a family took a $25,000 pay check, and the first thing they did was buy a $5,000 plasma TV, that family is in trouble. I doubt the TV will make their lives that much better.
Truth be told, for some people, I don't know how $25,000 could be invested for a better future. Not everyone has the ability to finish college, it takes good reading skills, reasoning skills, and math. Some people just can't get over the hump of a college education. It is a sad fact, and it does not make the person any less valuable to society. But 30 years ago, that person could get a good union job, buy a house, and live a normal life. Today, that person will have a very difficult time making ends meet.
What would you recommed for a guy with an IQ of 87 to do with $25,000? Spend $2,000 at the community college learning a trade which one day might offer a $10 hour job? Keep training in boxing, and hope for the 1 in a 1,000,000 shot of making good money?
I don't know what the solution is. I wonder what suggestions others would give that family? And we should not criticize them for being human and wanting items like big TV's. That is the job of marketing, and they do a good job of making people spend their money on junk. There are whole forums dedicated to sneaking information on what DVD's will be 2 for $20 at the local electronics store next week.
$25,000 is a LOT of money for someone who's never had more than the $121.45 which food stamps pays per month. To someone in IT, $25,000 might be a 2 month contract, and not very much money. Buy a top notch digital camera to play with, maybe a new plasma TV, eat at a fancy restaurant all month, and your $25K is gone. But for someone who is poor, that $25K might last 2 or 3 years. It is enough to buy a 7 year old Honda Civic with 110,000 miles for $1700. That should be solid transportation for another 5 years. That 25K will buy lots of chicken at the grocery store at $0.79 cents a pound. Add the 10 pound bag of potatoes that is $1.99, and that will last a month. For someone who has been poor, you would be surprised how easy it is to stretch $25 into a weeks worth of good eats. There isn't any steaks, but there is plenty of roasted chicken, rice, oven baked potatoe wedges, and hearty soups made from the left over bones of the chicken with some veggies. I sometimes get a kick out of fancy resturants that use peasant recipes to make meals they charge $40 per plate. The original purpose of these recipes was to conserve and be frugal. For example, there is an Italian resturant near my home that has a $7 soup which is made from olive oil, garlic, basil, water, and lots of day old crusty bread cut in cubes. It is a creamy soup, very tastey, and something that $1 could make a big pot with 20 servings. The bread breaks apart and thickens the flavorfull water.
For someone who is poor, that $25,000 extra cash might be reason enough to buy a case of two buck chuck and stock the wine cabinet.
I know we all live in the USA, but there is a gap growing between the rich and the poor. $25,000 is a lot of money no matter who you are! Those guys who box are often poor, and come from homes where the needs were far greater than the wants.
Having said all that, I hate the blatant advertising. People should not use their body or uniform to advertise. It is a shame, because that $25,000 might be more money than the boxer could make any other way. It is one guaranteed payout.
I like mapquest for a few reasons. I use their directions feature often. If I've never driven to a place, it has become habit to look at mapquest to see what roads they recommend. I like how they show the milage per road, and the trips total milage.
I guess mapquest was the first service I used for maps and directions. I checked out google maps (or maybe it was yahoo). I surf with javascript and active x off, and google maps would not load the picture of the map. Mapquest works with my IE settings at a very restrictive level.
Maybe I am lazy. When I find something that works, I tend to stick with it. Other services have not given me a reason to switch. And I can't think of anything else that could be offered to make mapquest better. I am happy with them.
I've been a Google user for years, but I am starting to use Yahoo more often. At first it started because I was at Yahoo for a different reason, and the search was there, so I did it. Boom, less spam results. I went to Google to compare and there is more spam in the rankings.
Try searching for a review of a commerical product like a TV by model number. Google will fill the search with places selling the product, not with reviews. If Eopinions or Amazon does not have a review, you're screwed. You'll be buying blind.
Google to me was most usefull as a NON-COMMERCIAL tool, to find information, not sellers. There are plenty of places to buy, and I know their websites. I don't need google to show me electronic stores.
How did real networks get so high. I never have visited their website. But I use Google, Ebay, and Mapquest often. I can't think of any reason a user would need to use real networks on a daily basis, or even weekly basis.
The law needs to pass the Corkey test. What happens when someone of a low IQ decides to follow the instructions of "plug and play". I would suspect the manufacturers to be more responsible that the end user. For example, what about when grandma decides to take home a wireless router and she does not secure it and someone uses it for an illegal purpose? How will the court convict someone who can't program a VCR? Where is the Mens Rea (guilty mind)? Sure, the act might be there, but was the intent?
The only other option is to force everyone to get a special license to use this kind of equipment. If wi-fi is that dangerous, then govenment might do that. And I'm sure they could think of a nice name for the tax... "Defending on-line liberty act".
If cable companies are moving to digital content with television, it is only one step away from securing their whole network, so that nobody unauthorized can get on. Everything will be DRM'ed, and the network will be closed.
Government might not be interested in those who lawfully use the internet. I suspect what government is trying to do is frustrate the terrorists/bad guys by taking away one more place they can do buisness. You know the bad detective movie sayings "Lets shake the branches and see what falls out of the tree". Or Tzu "If your enemy is angry, irritate them". What they are trying to do is make the enemy snap, and make a bad choice based on emotion rather than logic.
I would not be surprised if government had open wi-fi honeypots, places these terrorists felt more safe because of the percieved anonymity. Think of government making their own alleys, with no lighting, that is inviting to a mugger. But in reality, it's a trap!
But probably the ones with open WLANs wil be 'guilty' of anything accused. Someone simply *has* to go to jail!
And I can see which way this will go... after the ones with the deepest pockets. Government will probably not go after individuals for having open wi-fi spots. Government will go after manufacturers. Expect some kind of DRM to be added to wi-fi or any PC that connects to the internet. Now that i'm thinking about it, didn't Intel add some kinds of unique Id on every P4 chip it sells? It is more difficult to spoof than a MAC on a NIC.
I suspect terrorists don't even bother with the internet. Who knows, maybe they place ad's in newspapers. Cell 1 tells Cell 2, if you see "Charming 2 bedroom 1.5 Bath on upper west side with view of Allah", that means to set off your bombs. For all you know the ad could be "Ugly dog for sale. $30,000. He stinks too" or "Sally, we met at the cafe, please call Arby".
For terrorism to work, there needs to be enough of them motivated. And so far in the USA, there have not been any since 9/11. Some might argue those in 9/11 are as isolated as Timothy McVeigh or the Columbine shootings, that it was one group and a one time deal.
Now, can government do something usefull and ban mail in rebates please?
That is not too far from the truth. There is so much grant money, and it is so easy to get. There is a lot of red tape, and paperwork, but once you learn the system, you can have a nice stream of never-ending cash for whatever research you wish.
After seeing others get grants, I think I want to go back to university and get a Ph.D. in sociology. I'll do my Ph.D. on the effects of having a million dollar trust fund and driving a ferrari. Now I just need to fill out that application for the grant.
splitting at about 0.8 inches per year, would eventually lead to Ethiopia eastern portions becoming an island in a million years or so
And by then the sun might supernova because someone else got a grant before yours. They wanted to fly a nuclear powered research starship into the center of the sun. *KABOOM*.
The only cool thing about this new water source is, will it create land that can support growing food? If the anwser is yes, then it will be a blessing, even if all we get today is a river a few meters wide.
Today, Google seems to be going in the other direction. Offering more services, integrating more advertising.
Just the past 6 months, I have noticed a new form of advertising by Google. In the past, there would be the advertising on the right of the page, and the advertising on top in the blue or green box. But now they sneak in 3 or 4 searches on the first page mixed in with the regular searches as advertising. Google is tempted to make money, and it will burn thier support.
Who knows, maybe someone else will start a search engine. Google came around at a time when Yahoo and Excite dominated, but Google made a product easier to use. I remember my first time using Google... I was at Yahoo to search for something when someone said "Why don't you try google, check it out". I was hooked.
The past few months I have been using Yahoo more for a few reasons. Maybe reason #1 is I got tired of Google having so many websites listed so high that was spam.
The other thing which turned me off to Google was I started a website and wanted to add it to the listings. Google would not add my listings for six months. And mine is NOT spam. Why is spam listed so high, but legitimate websites are not?
I am not a cracker or hacker. But I know a guy who uses password trading websites for porn. According to him, once you get a password for one porn website, that same password will work for others. According to him, these porn members use the same password for all sites they subscribe to.
Once companies start losing money to crackers/hackers, then they will start issuing more complex security.
Are they sure about that?
So where is this wide open back door? In every one of your applications.
These guys are paranoid.
Tell me that Apache/Tomcat has some secret passwords that will give a cracker access to my server. Or MySQL has a secret password that gives root access. Every app I can think of can have passwords changed, and none have hard coded passwords.
This is much ado about nothing.
There is one reason I will not use Firefox, and that is because zonealarm has started going nuts since about Firefox 1.3. Before, it just wanted permission to access the internet. Now it wants to access the trusted zone too. Something stinks to me, why the extra permission?
Plus, with windows IE, I have a billion dollar company standing behind my product. Who can I complain to if Firefox screws me. I know the open source people will rip me a new one and mod me down, but I trust money and closed code. Firefox is getting large enough that hackers will start targeting them as much as IE.
The people I know who use AOL, and this is a small number of people with dial up, they use AOL to search. They don't open up a second IE window to use google.
MS still commands about 80% of the browser market, and its browser defaults searches to MSN, if this cannot help it, I doubt a deal with AOL could.
Does MS still do this from IE? I thought there was a setting where the user can select what search engine to use, or to disable searching from the address bar. I never search from the address bar, so I don't know.
So the deal is that AOL would drop Google as its main Internet search provider and switch to Microsoft's MSN service
On the surface, this might look like a good deal for MS. But I remember how everyone thought MSNBC would become bigger than CNN. Correct me if I am wrong, but is MSNBC even #3? What happened with marrying the largest computer/tech comany with NBC?
MS is marrying with a dying company. How much longer will dial up be a market? How will AOL continue to stay alive, how much impact will their search website have?
MS should be looking forward. I see this as a short term deal, to get more of a market share in search engines. But that advantage will be gone in a few years. I think MS is trembling that google will dominate all searches, and MS will be about as popular as dogpile.
How much of googles searches does AOL account for? How will this affect Google Adsense? Less views = less money for those in the program?
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who has been critical of Time Warner's strategy, has also said that he would hold Time Warner board members personally responsible if they forged a deal for AOL that valued the Internet provider too cheaply.
How will Carl Icahn do this? Is this one very rich man trying to kill a deal?
Why would Time Warner want to screw AOL? Hmmm... what is going on behind the scenes? Or is this a sign that AOL is changing its strategy?
Or maybe Microsoft is scared of google, and is doing everything they can to prevent their search services from going the direction of excite.com.
Protecting intellectual property is good. Going after old women because someone downloaded a mp3 on thier cable line is bad. Having fees which do not match the crime are bad.
The problem is everyone has become so greedy. It is a cycle. The software companies got greedy, so they pushed the end users around with absurd EULA's. The users got ticked off and pushed back copying and distributing protected materials on P2P networks. Software companies cripled their software and made it call home. Hackers got ticked off and wrote hacks.
My advice to software companies is this: Treat the end user with respect. Why shouldn't an end user be allowed to make one back up copy of their software (for example)?