"Vice President Joe Biden lauded Hollywood at a gala dinner in Washington, assailed movie piracy, and promised film executives that the Obama administration would pick "the right person" as its copyright czar."
----- The right person for *who*? THAT is the real question people should be asking.
The 'right person' for the people, or the RIAA and MPAA?
I guess my father's old comic books weren't so far fetched, with the generic evil super-villain surrounded by evil minions in some super-duper-secret lair trying to control the weather in some overly grandiose "destroy the world" plan.
BUT, instead of the stereotypical grotesque super-villain, we have a corporate CEO hiding behind his army of evil hairy Patent Lawyer minions......not that they don't exist already, but they now have the 'Weather Control' element.
Now, we have to REALLY put into Social Security, as our aging baby boomers have a wealth of knowledge gleaned from 1950's-era comics. THEY ARE OUR ONLY HOPE!!1!
ERROR: This device is protected by DRM. Please contact your dealer or reseller, call Apple directly at 1-800-APL-CARE, or you can visit our knowledge base on the World Wide Web at www.apple.com/support/ipodtouch/.
My coding 'Happy Place' is any place the doctor ISN'T.....
Unless, of course, the doctor happens to be that hottie petite urologist with the massive server rack...I mean, 'chest'.
I'd love to 'patch' her 'software' with my 'hardware' and 'compile' with her any day of the week. She's particularly skilled when it comes to 'Logarithmic Functions' and helping me 'come' up with answers she is pleased with......someone help me get my brain out of the gutter.....
Bingo. The 'municipal monopolies' that providers are allowed to enjoy *definitely* harm the taxpayer in two ways:
1. They allow providers to charge rates at will. Just enough to generate massive profits without being flagrantly exploitative. They know just how much they can get away with and when taxpayers will start calling them on exploitative practices. Like movie theaters, they know they can charge *a lot* of money for a Coke and popcorn, but know where the point is where people will simply stop buying concessions and/or stop going to the theater altogether, since they (customers) can wait and rent the film for much cheaper. When the public starts calling them on abuse of their monopolies, laws may be enacted that may end their current monopolies. So, they charge as much as they can without the taxpayers getting wise or pissed off enough to start changing things for them.
2. They guarantee a captive market where they won't have to worry about being underbid by a competitor offering lower rates and/or better services. Other providers may be just as expensive, but may offer a 'better bang for the buck' by offering better customer service, quicker speeds, no bandwidth caps, better privacy, etc. This keeps taxpayers from getting a cheaper or better quality deal. (Theaters are already pretty lax on outside beverages.... Ahhh..... All the beer we smuggled in for the opening of 'Beerfest'!)
I can't believe I left out the "No Municipal Monopolies" part of my rant.....
""Time Warner Cable had said at the time that it believed that consumers who download the most content need to pay more to cover infrastructure upgrades.""
-----And by 'Infrastructure Upgrades" they mean 'Advertising Campaigns'. Honestly, does ANYONE out there believe that the extra money would go towards upgrading infrastructure. The idea of throttling is more rooted in the fact that ISPs oversell their bandwidth far in excess of their capacity, and now want to 'upgrade' so they can accommodate traffic they should have accommodated long ago instead of spending those dollars on ad campaigns. I am by no means fooled about the true intentions of the money they hoped to generate. They *will* simply continue to advertise services (which they lack sufficient capacity to offer), recruit new customers, and spend the money internally on executive pay. They have been doing this for YEARS and there is nothing in the forseable future that will stop them.
A good rule the FCC could lay down would be:
1. Advertising must stop when the ISP is unable to accomodate the load of 90% of customers on at the same time, and revenue (profit, not gross) generated during that period must be spent increasing capacity, or refunded to the customer base, but cannot be saved for later use, allocated for advertising, or spent on executive pay.
This would have the effect of making sure they retain customers, and upgrade their capacity, since they would not be allowed to stockpile funds for times when they would be allowed to spend them advertising. No company would want to refund massive amounts of money to their customers.
""a call center or bank would simply use a device on their telephone to produce a brief series of clicks in the recipient's ear to confirm the person is who they say they are.""
-----Not if Comcast's VOIP still sounds like shit.....
The term "Clean Coal" is the same in meaning as the term "Smart Car".
They are using the terms to basically mean 'better' or 'new and improved, or in relation to coal, coal that does not produce the massive quantities of soot and sulfur emissions as older coal-burning methods.
'Clean Coal' will still leave soot, albeit a very small amount. A 'Smart Car' can't perform quantum physics equations, but can calculate your gas mileage.
However, coal IS technically clean, since it is washed before it is sold for use.....Ok ok ok, bad joke. I know.
What would make the whole setup complete would be to develop a camera that can take spherical images. They can buy an unmanned drone ( or better yet, build their own) and take flying spherical video!
I would definitely line up to pay $$$ for a 10 minute "flight" over the Midwest or Sierra Nevada.
Oh I didn't believe him at all. Doesn't matter what politician is making them.
Promises from politicians are like 'Silent-But-Deadly' farts: You know they are there because something smells rotten, but you never see anything happen, except people leaving and complaining loudly. Obama, being the one who discharged the foul stench, is the only one left in the room, because people's own gas doesn't bother them nearly as much as it bothers everybody else. The only people who don't mind the foul odor are people you probably don't want to know.
"Politicians are like diapers: They need to be changed often and for the same reasons". Apparently, Uncle Sam wasted no time in soiling this one so soon.
""It's also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It's the safest and most secure OS on the planet today.""
"That doesn't matter, what's important is that he's the first black US president. Corruption? What about it? We need Obama!"
-----It doesn't matter?! What the fuck are you smoking?! Being the first black US President doesn't mean ANYTHING when it comes to governing a nation. Corrupt? Damn straight. Getting elected on a platform of promises and then abandoning it is as corrupt as one could get.
If you think that Obama is a good president because he's black, then it really doesn't say much for other black politicians. Oh, and please stop voting if you are going to make you decisions thinking with your ass instead of your brain. The Republicans handed the Democrats a golden opportunity to build a massive voter base, and they instead nominate Tweedle Ditz (Clinton) and Tweedle Dumb (Obama) as their two candidates.
George Bush's crappy decisions were at least understandable as his IQ measured just north of an office plant. Obama isn't technically that stupid, so he has NO excuse for his lies, deception, and double-talk, other than he just wants power, which is a slimy motive for politics.
We *need* Obama about as much as we need a shot in the foot., seeing as how he just turned out to be W's bastard son.
I don't think that the engineers of this clock truly realize just how long 10,000 years is. Sure, "10,000" is a nice, round number, but is far, FAR, longer than they can anticipate, especially if they expect it to power itself, with purely mechanical functions, and using only the brass weights to power it?
Also, showing that they might not be fully understanding what they are trying to do, they are using solar components on something that will be sealed inside a limestone cliff. Do I really need to explain the problem there?
True, it may run for a VERY LONG TIME, but it is definitely NOT going to run for as long as they claim it will.
Wow..... Obama, the precious little thing of the Democratic Party, has changed masks and broken SEVERAL firm campaign promises in the first 3 months of being in office.
He has broken his promises and shown the country the hard on he has for Big Brother that he managed to hide the whole election.
Where's the change?! It's still the same corrupt, two-faced, lying, promise-breaking, Orwellian bullshit that we had to put up with during the Bush years.
"What amazes me is not that there are so many that fall for scams, but that people seem to admire those that perpetrate them. Otherwise, how does one explain that this kind of saying is used so widely?"
-----People do NOT admire the bottom-feeders that perpetrate such scams. The saying has stuck around for as long as it has because people seem to fall for just about the most obvious scams that can be developed, and lose not just a couple of dollars, but sometimes MILLIONS of dollars, and those of us who are not stupid enough to fall for them are left wondering how this can happen over and over and over again. It happens over and over so many times, that one *has* to believe that there is a sucker born every minute.
*THAT* is why the saying has been around for so long. That, and the fact that it explains why there are so many gullible idiots in a way that is simple, yet the stone-cold truth.
Why is it that conspiracy theorists love to believe that:
1. All unidentifiable flying objects are of extraterrestrial origin?
2. Highly-Secure (as opposed to 'secret') military installations have alien bodies and extraterrestrial spacecraft?
3. Mysterious animals in the Pacific Northwest are all Sasquatches.
4. Unexplained technologies are of extraterrestrial origin.
It's amazing how people sometimes refuse to acknowledge that there is an EXTREMELY SLIM CHANCE that any of these have actually occurred, yet continue to claim that they happen all the time.
Just because something cannot be explained in now way validates the fantasies of conspiracy theorists.
Slashdot Mirror
"Vice President Joe Biden lauded Hollywood at a gala dinner in Washington, assailed movie piracy, and promised film executives that the Obama administration would pick "the right person" as its copyright czar."
----- The right person for *who*? THAT is the real question people should be asking.
The 'right person' for the people, or the RIAA and MPAA?
Sounds like an article written by the BOFH.....
Only he, The Great One, could come up with a scheme like this!
I guess my father's old comic books weren't so far fetched, with the generic evil super-villain surrounded by evil minions in some super-duper-secret lair trying to control the weather in some overly grandiose "destroy the world" plan.
BUT, instead of the stereotypical grotesque super-villain, we have a corporate CEO hiding behind his army of evil hairy Patent Lawyer minions. .....not that they don't exist already, but they now have the 'Weather Control' element.
Now, we have to REALLY put into Social Security, as our aging baby boomers have a wealth of knowledge gleaned from 1950's-era comics. THEY ARE OUR ONLY HOPE!!1!
DEVICE SELECT: DRONE='predator1'
DRONESTATUS=predator1: >IN RANGEONLINEINVENTORY>WEAPONS>AVAIL
WEAPONSAVAIL>MISSILE=0,1,2,3
SELECT MISSILE=3
MISSILE=3> TARGET=2
MISSILE3/TARGET2: 'fire'
ERROR: This device is protected by DRM. Please contact your dealer or reseller, call Apple directly at 1-800-APL-CARE, or you can visit our knowledge base on the World Wide Web at www.apple.com/support/ipodtouch/.
My coding 'Happy Place' is any place the doctor ISN'T.....
Unless, of course, the doctor happens to be that hottie petite urologist with the massive server rack...I mean, 'chest'.
I'd love to 'patch' her 'software' with my 'hardware' and 'compile' with her any day of the week. She's particularly skilled when it comes to 'Logarithmic Functions' and helping me 'come' up with answers she is pleased with. .....someone help me get my brain out of the gutter.....
So what?! These ideas are nothing new, as Thermal Generators have been around for a *very* long time.
I remember using a tea candle to power my TV remote control. Add a bowl of delicious ice cream to the device, and you could crank out even more power.
Yet *ANOTHER* case of someone discovering something that has already been discovered, and making a big deal out of it.
Cost is still lower than Microsoft. Therefore, the value per dollar spent (if at all) is greater.
If the software is free, and does the same things, then it DEFINITELY has a higher value.
All M$ really did was give OpenSource more ammo to use against them. Now, OS can use both cost AND value in comparisons to Microsoft bugpacks.
Sigh..... Another shot to the foot.
Bingo. The 'municipal monopolies' that providers are allowed to enjoy *definitely* harm the taxpayer in two ways:
1. They allow providers to charge rates at will. Just enough to generate massive profits without being flagrantly exploitative. They know just how much they can get away with and when taxpayers will start calling them on exploitative practices. Like movie theaters, they know they can charge *a lot* of money for a Coke and popcorn, but know where the point is where people will simply stop buying concessions and/or stop going to the theater altogether, since they (customers) can wait and rent the film for much cheaper. When the public starts calling them on abuse of their monopolies, laws may be enacted that may end their current monopolies. So, they charge as much as they can without the taxpayers getting wise or pissed off enough to start changing things for them.
2. They guarantee a captive market where they won't have to worry about being underbid by a competitor offering lower rates and/or better services. Other providers may be just as expensive, but may offer a 'better bang for the buck' by offering better customer service, quicker speeds, no bandwidth caps, better privacy, etc. This keeps taxpayers from getting a cheaper or better quality deal. (Theaters are already pretty lax on outside beverages.... Ahhh..... All the beer we smuggled in for the opening of 'Beerfest'!)
I can't believe I left out the "No Municipal Monopolies" part of my rant.....
""Time Warner Cable had said at the time that it believed that consumers who download the most content need to pay more to cover infrastructure upgrades.""
-----And by 'Infrastructure Upgrades" they mean 'Advertising Campaigns'. Honestly, does ANYONE out there believe that the extra money would go towards upgrading infrastructure. The idea of throttling is more rooted in the fact that ISPs oversell their bandwidth far in excess of their capacity, and now want to 'upgrade' so they can accommodate traffic they should have accommodated long ago instead of spending those dollars on ad campaigns. I am by no means fooled about the true intentions of the money they hoped to generate. They *will* simply continue to advertise services (which they lack sufficient capacity to offer), recruit new customers, and spend the money internally on executive pay. They have been doing this for YEARS and there is nothing in the forseable future that will stop them.
A good rule the FCC could lay down would be:
1. Advertising must stop when the ISP is unable to accomodate the load of 90% of customers on at the same time, and revenue (profit, not gross) generated during that period must be spent increasing capacity, or refunded to the customer base, but cannot be saved for later use, allocated for advertising, or spent on executive pay.
This would have the effect of making sure they retain customers, and upgrade their capacity, since they would not be allowed to stockpile funds for times when they would be allowed to spend them advertising. No company would want to refund massive amounts of money to their customers.
""a call center or bank would simply use a device on their telephone to produce a brief series of clicks in the recipient's ear to confirm the person is who they say they are."" -----Not if Comcast's VOIP still sounds like shit.....
Two words:
Nanoitching powder.
It practically sells itself!
The term "Clean Coal" is the same in meaning as the term "Smart Car".
They are using the terms to basically mean 'better' or 'new and improved, or in relation to coal, coal that does not produce the massive quantities of soot and sulfur emissions as older coal-burning methods.
'Clean Coal' will still leave soot, albeit a very small amount. A 'Smart Car' can't perform quantum physics equations, but can calculate your gas mileage.
However, coal IS technically clean, since it is washed before it is sold for use.....Ok ok ok, bad joke. I know.
Now *THIS* sounds cool!
What would make the whole setup complete would be to develop a camera that can take spherical images. They can buy an unmanned drone ( or better yet, build their own) and take flying spherical video!
I would definitely line up to pay $$$ for a 10 minute "flight" over the Midwest or Sierra Nevada.
Oh I didn't believe him at all. Doesn't matter what politician is making them.
Promises from politicians are like 'Silent-But-Deadly' farts: You know they are there because something smells rotten, but you never see anything happen, except people leaving and complaining loudly. Obama, being the one who discharged the foul stench, is the only one left in the room, because people's own gas doesn't bother them nearly as much as it bothers everybody else. The only people who don't mind the foul odor are people you probably don't want to know.
"Politicians are like diapers: They need to be changed often and for the same reasons". Apparently, Uncle Sam wasted no time in soiling this one so soon.
""It's also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It's the safest and most secure OS on the planet today.""
-----Translation: "The key is under the mat."
Should I expect a shortage on CAT-5 cable?
Obama's definitions:
Change: Verb - His new home address.
Noun - What he has more of in his pockets.
Hope: Verb - What will prevent the press from showing the world who he really is.
Noun - What the country is supposed to run on.
New Tomorrow: Noun - Where the only thing that changes is the date on the calendar.
"That doesn't matter, what's important is that he's the first black US president. Corruption? What about it? We need Obama!"
-----It doesn't matter?! What the fuck are you smoking?! Being the first black US President doesn't mean ANYTHING when it comes to governing a nation. Corrupt? Damn straight. Getting elected on a platform of promises and then abandoning it is as corrupt as one could get.
If you think that Obama is a good president because he's black, then it really doesn't say much for other black politicians. Oh, and please stop voting if you are going to make you decisions thinking with your ass instead of your brain. The Republicans handed the Democrats a golden opportunity to build a massive voter base, and they instead nominate Tweedle Ditz (Clinton) and Tweedle Dumb (Obama) as their two candidates.
George Bush's crappy decisions were at least understandable as his IQ measured just north of an office plant. Obama isn't technically that stupid, so he has NO excuse for his lies, deception, and double-talk, other than he just wants power, which is a slimy motive for politics.
We *need* Obama about as much as we need a shot in the foot., seeing as how he just turned out to be W's bastard son.
E P I C F A I L
I don't think that the engineers of this clock truly realize just how long 10,000 years is. Sure, "10,000" is a nice, round number, but is far, FAR, longer than they can anticipate, especially if they expect it to power itself, with purely mechanical functions, and using only the brass weights to power it?
Also, showing that they might not be fully understanding what they are trying to do, they are using solar components on something that will be sealed inside a limestone cliff. Do I really need to explain the problem there?
True, it may run for a VERY LONG TIME, but it is definitely NOT going to run for as long as they claim it will.
Wow..... Obama, the precious little thing of the Democratic Party, has changed masks and broken SEVERAL firm campaign promises in the first 3 months of being in office.
He has broken his promises and shown the country the hard on he has for Big Brother that he managed to hide the whole election.
Where's the change?! It's still the same corrupt, two-faced, lying, promise-breaking, Orwellian bullshit that we had to put up with during the Bush years.
Obama: What a fucking joke.
Fragmentation problems?
It's like playing "52 Card Pick Up", except instead of using 52 cards, you're using 80 BILLION bits!
If his comments were targeted with the intent of creating dischord in the markets, then yes, he should be punished.
Being able to distinguish "Creating market volatility" from "Informing about possible future problems" is not that difficult.
Personally, this sounds like he wanted to make some cash off of shorting stocks using a "Reverse Pump And Dump" scheme to drive the prices down.
"What amazes me is not that there are so many that fall for scams, but that people seem to admire those that perpetrate them. Otherwise, how does one explain that this kind of saying is used so widely?"
-----People do NOT admire the bottom-feeders that perpetrate such scams. The saying has stuck around for as long as it has because people seem to fall for just about the most obvious scams that can be developed, and lose not just a couple of dollars, but sometimes MILLIONS of dollars, and those of us who are not stupid enough to fall for them are left wondering how this can happen over and over and over again. It happens over and over so many times, that one *has* to believe that there is a sucker born every minute.
*THAT* is why the saying has been around for so long. That, and the fact that it explains why there are so many gullible idiots in a way that is simple, yet the stone-cold truth.
So wiretapping is illegal but re-directing traffic is not?
Wow. Simply WOW.
Why is it that conspiracy theorists love to believe that:
1. All unidentifiable flying objects are of extraterrestrial origin?
2. Highly-Secure (as opposed to 'secret') military installations have alien bodies and extraterrestrial spacecraft?
3. Mysterious animals in the Pacific Northwest are all Sasquatches.
4. Unexplained technologies are of extraterrestrial origin.
It's amazing how people sometimes refuse to acknowledge that there is an EXTREMELY SLIM CHANCE that any of these have actually occurred, yet continue to claim that they happen all the time.
Just because something cannot be explained in now way validates the fantasies of conspiracy theorists.