Sadly this is true. I used to think as mangu did so one day about 15 years ago I decided to test the theory. Within a couple of hours I'd discovered USENET and found it. I was disappointed it was so easy.
At least with/b/ 99% of the people looking for that kind of thing will be stupid enough to click a link and find their computer infected with more malware than a teenager's limewire PC.
Very thin:( I stopped buying Wired a long time ago because the signal to noise ratio dropped too low. Whenever I see it in the shops now it's 1/2 to 2/3 the thickness of what it was before and if anything, the signal:noise ration is even worse.
For a while I though having adverts for expensive cars, watches and single-malts was pretty cool, a mark that business leaders are finally get a little more tech savvy. But when adverts are 2/3 of the magazines and 1/2 the remaining 1/3 are multi-page foldouts with an arty picture and a graph of arguable value, well, I didn't care to pay good money any longer to be advertised at.
Under Australian law I believe the answer is still "yes". As our law sees (or at least saw, I doubt it's been updated), hearing and enjoying a broadcast are one thing. Recording something so you can play it back is another. If you want that privilege, you can pay for a copy of the media.
No, next time, stay up for another 30 mins reading a book with the light angled so it doesn't reflect straight into your eyes:-)
Funny coincidence, I use the handle "Pappa Ratzi" on another web forum:-)
Unless of course you have tinnitus then there's nothing but the polyphonic whistling to listen to. I prefer having a quiet fan or two to listen to. What irritates me though is the beat caused by the 6 drives in my server! A slow and very noticable whummmm.... whummmmm..... whummmmmm....
The OP is saying that our sleep is disturbed by shining bright lights directly into our eyes right up until we go to bed. Not that we're trying to sleep with the light on. By going to bed so soon after looking into the light, our body thinks we're trying to sleep during the day.
Perhaps a simple solution would be to enforce 'screens off' 30 mins before we want to go to bed? Catch up on a little reading of hardcopy, take care of a few chores or walk the cat and then hit the sack. The body might then have time to realise it's no longer midday.
It's not a simple case of the telcos raking in more cash, it's a complex arrangement of supply and demand. Businesses will charge what they can get away with and people will only pay as much as they're prepared to pay.
At the end of the day, it costs money to install and maintain the internet infrastructure. That money must come from *somewhere*. Just like higher prices for bigger pipes, consumption charges put a market driven limiter on the demand which helps the existing infrastructure last longer thus reducing the need to raise more money to build ever-bigger infrastructure.
For those that argue cheap, fast internet is a "Right" and say the govt should pay, then the infrastructure costs come out of taxes and either taxes go up to compensate or more likely other services will suffer so that the politicians don't get seen hiking taxes again.
For those who say the ISP wears the cost, well they're businesses, not charities so we'll skip over that. So if the costs are spread across the whole user base, light users are subsidizing the heavy users. And if you think that's only right and fair, perhaps I can interest you in this Communist Manifesto I have here. Why should I pay $3 for "access to bananas" if I only want 3 when this other guy also pays $3 for "access to bananas" but takes 40?
The only way that's fair to all is to charge by usage. The light users only pay a bit, the heavy users pay more. Wouldn't you agree it's more fair that bananas are priced per banana and you pay for what you consume?
The concept of the bottomless cup of coffee only works when your profit margins for the donuts cover the cost of water and coffee grounds. It doesn't scale to international infrastructure. North Americans have been spoiled by so many years drinking a bottomless cup of internet but it simply is not a sustainable business model. It's the reason we have a net neutrality debate at all.
One further thought: North American users are blessed with a high population density that permits economies of scale that we can only dream of in other nations. I'm currently paying $100/month for an ADSL2+ connection with 70GB/month. The idea of 200GB via a 5Mbit connection for $23/m is pretty appealing from where I surf! Look at the bigger picture and realise how blessed you are and enjoy the blessing. No one likes a spoiled rich kid crying because he hasn't had his daily foot massage!
OK then... let's say YOU accidentally kill (that is after all, the definition of *manslaughter*) someone's kid. In a moment of distraction, your kid hurls something at the back of your head when you're driving at the same time a kid runs onto the road. The kid dies. The kid belongs to a family of very vengeful people. They don't see it as an accident. They're all upset despite whatever facts are presented because their precious child has died. You go to jail, you get released a few years later. The vengeful family haven't calmed down and now they're all agitated again because you're on the street again.
Shall we just let you out and let the situation take care of itself?
How about a little less knee jerking and a little more thinking?
You can buy USB audio input devices like that on ebay easily and/or from various white goods retailers that have a computer section too (though they tend to be overpriced from such vendors IMO).
You're reading more into it than it says.
It says "we support/effective/ (emphasis theirs) action [to ensure a safe experience]". By implication, they feel that that Sen. Conroy's proposal is not effective. It does not in any way state "we support a filter". It goes on to say that the filter as proposed is broken by design and proposes a combination of user education, more effective policing of detected problems and the implementation of voluntary filtering.
When you have a chance to donate time, effort and money to someone in need, a choice is made as to how that donation will be realised. Whatever choice is made, there is an opportunity cost. Thus they could've sent medicines and food or they could've sent bibles. Ergo, the bibles have potentially displaced aid.
It's possible that the donors had no spare cash and a stash of unused audio bibles intended for the missionary market and decided to donate those as their way of helping.
I stand partially corrected with the Matt 4:4 quote, thank you. I feel the word of god remains in 5th+ place after food, water, shelter and medicine though. Hard to hear the word of god when you died of starvation, dissentry or malaria.
Jesus allegedly preached things like helping your fellow man. At their time of most need, this bunch of whackos is giving them dogma instead of things they need like food, water and blankets. If ever there was a defining example of blasphemy, this is it. Reminds me of the comment I read once about middle class people driving 1/4 mile in their SUVs, past homeless and disadvantaged to get to the gilded house where a gilded man tells them how to be more like Jesus.
- Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Give a man religion and watch him starve to death, praying for a fish.
The simple fact of the matter is, all ethical views aside, that most people need money to survive and thus do most programmers code for applications that pay money. FOSS eschews money and thus is only going to attract programmers willing and able to contribute without financial reward.
The point of linux-adoption-by-any-means is to get more people using it. Unless more people use it, it will remain a geeky niche, derided by many and ignored by or invisible to most.
Apps attract users and users attract developers. Developers pay programmers and more programmers are now on the scene and some will find themselves with the skills to program for the platform, money from their day job and an altruistic spirit.
It becomes a Positive Cycle of Reinforcement that will promote your precious FOSS ethic and will result in a greater range of choice for consumers and help destruct the current monopoly and remove the Microsoft Tax. It's a win-win situation.
As soon as you get quality games like WoW, LotRO, EVE, Portal, C&C etc running natively under linux, you'll get people using linux as their primary platform and wow, wider adoption of the platform.
There is no chicken-egg situation. It's the developers that need to take the first step.
Well guess what this is a democracy (representative in most) and if you don't make yourself heard then it is your FAULT, not the politicians, nor the "clueless" voters who do vote and make themselves heard.
I resent the fact that my 'peer group' for the purposes of voting in an election are the kind of people that hang on the edge of their seat while watching Big Brother and YourNationHere Idol. They're the kind of people that don't watch shows like Firely because it's too cerebral.
They're the kind of people for whom knee-jerking is their main form of exercise. Ask them if they think an internet filter is a good idea because it'll stop the paedos, pinkos and poofos from corrupting their kids, they'll say yes before you've finished answering the question.
These people spent all their lives having their thoughts thunk for them thus they do indeed vote for the guy with the nicest hair or whatever.
As an employee, a person has a contractual obligation to perform all reasonable tasks as set out in the employment contract. In addition, every member of society has a moral/social obligation (and very possibly a legal obligation (duty of care)) to ensure that they take reasonable measures to ensure that their colleagues (which includes their supervisors) do not expose the company to unreasonable risk nor act in an illegal or unethical manner.
By advising the OP to shaddup and lump it, you're advising an unethical course of action.
I think the OP has done the right thing by consulting the peer group for advice. That advice seems to be "Present your boss with a list of all the reasons against spamming and suggest the plan is cancelled." By doing so the OP would A. be acting responsibly and ethically and B. covering their backside in case the boss foolishly goes ahead with the plan.
Yeah you're old:) I remember.mod files from the Amiga days of my youth but TBH when I saw the headline I clicked expecting some neato case mods and was rather disappointed with the FPS junk!
The humour wasn't lost on me; just overshadowed. I guess I'll just have to deal with being called a grumpy old fart who doesn't like the way the world is changing:)
I know what the 'current' generation means when they say something is "gay" or "ghey". The trouble is it's equating gay with bad. As much as I'm not one who "likes bum-sex with other boys", I believe vilification should be fought wherever it is found.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry. For some reason I always considered it an acronym. Dunno why.
Well, I'll admit that it was 15 or so years ago when I was buying Wired semi-regularly. I blame youth :)
Sadly this is true. I used to think as mangu did so one day about 15 years ago I decided to test the theory. Within a couple of hours I'd discovered USENET and found it. I was disappointed it was so easy. At least with /b/ 99% of the people looking for that kind of thing will be stupid enough to click a link and find their computer infected with more malware than a teenager's limewire PC.
Very thin :( I stopped buying Wired a long time ago because the signal to noise ratio dropped too low. Whenever I see it in the shops now it's 1/2 to 2/3 the thickness of what it was before and if anything, the signal:noise ration is even worse.
For a while I though having adverts for expensive cars, watches and single-malts was pretty cool, a mark that business leaders are finally get a little more tech savvy. But when adverts are 2/3 of the magazines and 1/2 the remaining 1/3 are multi-page foldouts with an arty picture and a graph of arguable value, well, I didn't care to pay good money any longer to be advertised at.
Under Australian law I believe the answer is still "yes". As our law sees (or at least saw, I doubt it's been updated), hearing and enjoying a broadcast are one thing. Recording something so you can play it back is another. If you want that privilege, you can pay for a copy of the media.
No, next time, stay up for another 30 mins reading a book with the light angled so it doesn't reflect straight into your eyes :-)
Funny coincidence, I use the handle "Pappa Ratzi" on another web forum :-)
Unless of course you have tinnitus then there's nothing but the polyphonic whistling to listen to. I prefer having a quiet fan or two to listen to. What irritates me though is the beat caused by the 6 drives in my server! A slow and very noticable whummmm.... whummmmm..... whummmmmm....
The OP is saying that our sleep is disturbed by shining bright lights directly into our eyes right up until we go to bed. Not that we're trying to sleep with the light on. By going to bed so soon after looking into the light, our body thinks we're trying to sleep during the day. Perhaps a simple solution would be to enforce 'screens off' 30 mins before we want to go to bed? Catch up on a little reading of hardcopy, take care of a few chores or walk the cat and then hit the sack. The body might then have time to realise it's no longer midday.
It's not a simple case of the telcos raking in more cash, it's a complex arrangement of supply and demand. Businesses will charge what they can get away with and people will only pay as much as they're prepared to pay.
At the end of the day, it costs money to install and maintain the internet infrastructure. That money must come from *somewhere*. Just like higher prices for bigger pipes, consumption charges put a market driven limiter on the demand which helps the existing infrastructure last longer thus reducing the need to raise more money to build ever-bigger infrastructure.
For those that argue cheap, fast internet is a "Right" and say the govt should pay, then the infrastructure costs come out of taxes and either taxes go up to compensate or more likely other services will suffer so that the politicians don't get seen hiking taxes again.
For those who say the ISP wears the cost, well they're businesses, not charities so we'll skip over that. So if the costs are spread across the whole user base, light users are subsidizing the heavy users. And if you think that's only right and fair, perhaps I can interest you in this Communist Manifesto I have here. Why should I pay $3 for "access to bananas" if I only want 3 when this other guy also pays $3 for "access to bananas" but takes 40?
The only way that's fair to all is to charge by usage. The light users only pay a bit, the heavy users pay more. Wouldn't you agree it's more fair that bananas are priced per banana and you pay for what you consume?
The concept of the bottomless cup of coffee only works when your profit margins for the donuts cover the cost of water and coffee grounds. It doesn't scale to international infrastructure. North Americans have been spoiled by so many years drinking a bottomless cup of internet but it simply is not a sustainable business model. It's the reason we have a net neutrality debate at all.
One further thought: North American users are blessed with a high population density that permits economies of scale that we can only dream of in other nations. I'm currently paying $100/month for an ADSL2+ connection with 70GB/month. The idea of 200GB via a 5Mbit connection for $23/m is pretty appealing from where I surf! Look at the bigger picture and realise how blessed you are and enjoy the blessing. No one likes a spoiled rich kid crying because he hasn't had his daily foot massage!
Surely it'd be less costly to build a chain link fence around the site than dig a giant moat? Perhaps the Dutch just have a thing about dykes!
OK then... let's say YOU accidentally kill (that is after all, the definition of *manslaughter*) someone's kid. In a moment of distraction, your kid hurls something at the back of your head when you're driving at the same time a kid runs onto the road. The kid dies. The kid belongs to a family of very vengeful people. They don't see it as an accident. They're all upset despite whatever facts are presented because their precious child has died. You go to jail, you get released a few years later. The vengeful family haven't calmed down and now they're all agitated again because you're on the street again. Shall we just let you out and let the situation take care of itself? How about a little less knee jerking and a little more thinking?
You can buy USB audio input devices like that on ebay easily and/or from various white goods retailers that have a computer section too (though they tend to be overpriced from such vendors IMO).
You're reading more into it than it says. It says "we support /effective/ (emphasis theirs) action [to ensure a safe experience]". By implication, they feel that that Sen. Conroy's proposal is not effective. It does not in any way state "we support a filter". It goes on to say that the filter as proposed is broken by design and proposes a combination of user education, more effective policing of detected problems and the implementation of voluntary filtering.
Epic Win :)
When you have a chance to donate time, effort and money to someone in need, a choice is made as to how that donation will be realised. Whatever choice is made, there is an opportunity cost. Thus they could've sent medicines and food or they could've sent bibles. Ergo, the bibles have potentially displaced aid. It's possible that the donors had no spare cash and a stash of unused audio bibles intended for the missionary market and decided to donate those as their way of helping. I stand partially corrected with the Matt 4:4 quote, thank you. I feel the word of god remains in 5th+ place after food, water, shelter and medicine though. Hard to hear the word of god when you died of starvation, dissentry or malaria.
Jesus allegedly preached things like helping your fellow man. At their time of most need, this bunch of whackos is giving them dogma instead of things they need like food, water and blankets. If ever there was a defining example of blasphemy, this is it. Reminds me of the comment I read once about middle class people driving 1/4 mile in their SUVs, past homeless and disadvantaged to get to the gilded house where a gilded man tells them how to be more like Jesus. - Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Give a man religion and watch him starve to death, praying for a fish.
but I'll always have a soft spot for Reason. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash#Reason
The simple fact of the matter is, all ethical views aside, that most people need money to survive and thus do most programmers code for applications that pay money. FOSS eschews money and thus is only going to attract programmers willing and able to contribute without financial reward. The point of linux-adoption-by-any-means is to get more people using it. Unless more people use it, it will remain a geeky niche, derided by many and ignored by or invisible to most. Apps attract users and users attract developers. Developers pay programmers and more programmers are now on the scene and some will find themselves with the skills to program for the platform, money from their day job and an altruistic spirit. It becomes a Positive Cycle of Reinforcement that will promote your precious FOSS ethic and will result in a greater range of choice for consumers and help destruct the current monopoly and remove the Microsoft Tax. It's a win-win situation.
As soon as you get quality games like WoW, LotRO, EVE, Portal, C&C etc running natively under linux, you'll get people using linux as their primary platform and wow, wider adoption of the platform. There is no chicken-egg situation. It's the developers that need to take the first step.
Well guess what this is a democracy (representative in most) and if you don't make yourself heard then it is your FAULT, not the politicians, nor the "clueless" voters who do vote and make themselves heard.
I resent the fact that my 'peer group' for the purposes of voting in an election are the kind of people that hang on the edge of their seat while watching Big Brother and YourNationHere Idol. They're the kind of people that don't watch shows like Firely because it's too cerebral. They're the kind of people for whom knee-jerking is their main form of exercise. Ask them if they think an internet filter is a good idea because it'll stop the paedos, pinkos and poofos from corrupting their kids, they'll say yes before you've finished answering the question. These people spent all their lives having their thoughts thunk for them thus they do indeed vote for the guy with the nicest hair or whatever.
Your advice is unethical, jacquesm.
As an employee, a person has a contractual obligation to perform all reasonable tasks as set out in the employment contract. In addition, every member of society has a moral/social obligation (and very possibly a legal obligation (duty of care)) to ensure that they take reasonable measures to ensure that their colleagues (which includes their supervisors) do not expose the company to unreasonable risk nor act in an illegal or unethical manner.
By advising the OP to shaddup and lump it, you're advising an unethical course of action.
I think the OP has done the right thing by consulting the peer group for advice. That advice seems to be "Present your boss with a list of all the reasons against spamming and suggest the plan is cancelled." By doing so the OP would A. be acting responsibly and ethically and B. covering their backside in case the boss foolishly goes ahead with the plan.
More likely, someone posted something interesting on a root server and they got slashdotted :)
Yeah you're old :) I remember .mod files from the Amiga days of my youth but TBH when I saw the headline I clicked expecting some neato case mods and was rather disappointed with the FPS junk!
Bring on the CaseModoftheYear compo!
The humour wasn't lost on me; just overshadowed. I guess I'll just have to deal with being called a grumpy old fart who doesn't like the way the world is changing :)
I know what the 'current' generation means when they say something is "gay" or "ghey". The trouble is it's equating gay with bad. As much as I'm not one who "likes bum-sex with other boys", I believe vilification should be fought wherever it is found.