Although a completely shaved head (on a white guy, anyway) is a dead giveaway as well, and gaining in popularity as an alternative to the baseball cap.
I can't understand why you would pick on that? It's a perfectly reasonable choice, not the result of over-played vanity.
There's only two options for guys who are going bald: some hair or no hair. And since 'some hair' tends to result in a comedy hairstyle which is unattractive to look at, and no hair is both distinguished and masculine, who the fuck wouldn't choose to do the latter?
I just can't agree with this. When something is timeless that means that it does not age. But information does age. Virtually all information ages; all information relating to human affairs certainly does. The aging of information can be measured not merely in whether it is forgotten, or known, but in how it is considered. Remember: we can still watch the original series of Knight Rider on re-run channels. This does not mean it is 'timeless'. It would be too polite to call it anachronistic.
Even for example the information we have about the collapse of Lehman.
Two weeks ago that information would have been worth billions.
Now it is common knowledge, and the details must be investigated, after the fact.
In twenty years it will be of historical interest, taught in economics classes.
In a thousand years it may have been forgotten.
The very fact that we have already seen different states of this information over two weeks means that it is not timeless.
The problem with VISTA is that it was launched it BETA.
This is an exaggeration!
Missing drivers, big footprint hardware requirements, and horrible power management (which drained many a laptop battery) caused the early demise of VISTA.
Hm. Alright. It's not much of an exaggeration.
I gave up on VISTA, but I understand that MS is slowly working out the problems.
This is true. What I really what to comment on here is the state of the FUD surrounding Vista. There were many negative reviews of Vista at time of release, which were deserved, if a little hyperbolic - I know, because I ran Vista and tested it.
When SP1 came out the reviews were similarly negative. I didn't test it for several months. Most broken things had not been fixed, the reviews said, and I did not go back for seconds.
Recently, I did test Vista with SP1. As it happens, I'm still running it. And whilst I'm not ready to recommend Vista yet, I'll say this gladly: most of the problems were fixed. And most of the articles bashing SP1 were just inaccurate FUD.
It really irritates me when things are reported innaccurately in this way. I don't mind if you have a negative opinion of something, even if it's something I really like. But I can't abhor being LIED to, simply because you're a zealot.
You see, what you say is funny, but it's really the employers biggest reason for not investing. They're scared that you'd sit at home and do fuck all.
In fact, in my experience, the people that matter work wherever they are, and the people that don't matter are never going to put in an honest day.
A good work ethic does not differentiate based on environment.
What has a far more negative effect is being treated like shit in the workplace. I've seen so many devoted, committed, hard working employees let their work go south because they finally realised that there is no fucking point; they can spend all year making a difference for one stupid ill informed management decision to put them back way before where they started.
The saddest thing is it's these fucking managers who go home and 'telecommute', and sit around doing no work, who think that must therefore apply to the rest of us.
But the truth is that a bad manager can do fuck all wherever he is, and the worst thing about that is that sometimes that's better for the organisation than them getting their fingers into the pies and fucking everything up.
'going out of its way to do more than it's required to do under the law to protect free expression.'
AKA
'going out of its way to do more than it's required to do under the law to protect their image.'
I'll take what I can get. You act like one of these choices is a bad thing!
For example, you take the old Pentium II you have and install DSL on it, and the kid learns Linux. Knowing Linux, he saves money on technology throughout his life and gets a good job as a sysadmin.
I wouldn't wish sysadmin on my worst enemy, let alone my kid. I'd rather he got typhus.
You know how those mafia types always want to keep their kids out of the family business? Because they feel like they deserve better? Because they know the horrible truth? Yeah.
Microsoft has reacted to this security exposure by launching a new version that puts the OS out of reach and is guaranteed attack-proof: Vista for Vacuums.
Unfortunately, code can be injected by causing a buffer overflow in passing cosmic rays.
I would treat this 'news' with a healthy dose of scepticism for now. It looks like the standard shit-talking that goes ahead of all major black-hat conferences.
Save your Microsoft bashing for the unlikely possibility that this is even half the exploit as Dowd and Sotirov are claiming.
There's some degree of truth in that, but since most people have essentially similar minds it makes sense to assume that certain types of operation make sense to the vast majority of people. Past experience can lock people into a certain conceptual mindset, there's no denying it. But the holy grail of usability is that which most closely reflects the way in which we have evolved to think.
All computers are essentially tools to enable us to do things we otherwise would not be capable of, or would take much longer without. The best computer systems are the ones which interface as organically as possible with that which we are capable of. It's common sense.
(2) "Designers" who can't code have absolutely no business "working" in software.
That's ridiculous. If it weren't so absurd it would be offensive. Look at the credits for any major software release from the commercial realm. Let's take games, for example - in the entertainment industry, where if something is not 'usable' it is not fun, coders are outnumbered somthing like 20 to 1 by other types of developer, be they writers, artists, testers, etc. Hell, let's take the credits from GTA IV, the video game. They take HALF AN HOUR to scroll, when you complete the game. What percentage of those HUNDREDS of people do you think can code? Even to a reasonable level? Five to fifteen percent at the outside.
When you need a job doing, you hire the person with the skills to do that job. You DON'T hire someone with the skills to do that job AND the skills to code. Sometimes that's not even desirable, and at best it's overkill.
concerned parents began sending angry letters to JV Games and Nintendo... until JV Games agreed to change the title of the game to Pong Toss and fill its pixelated cups with water.
Well then let's just hope that nobody finds excessive urination offensive.
Or stimulating for that matter.
Honestly, when water isn't safe, where do you turn?
If you RTFA, Red Hat is planning on getting it's revenue from selling support. I'm not sure I see this happening.
I'm pretty sure that's a good part of what they've been doing for a decade.
Wikipedia agrees with me: Red Hat partly operates on a professional open-source business model based on open code, community development, professional quality assurance services, and subscription-based customer support.
It could widely open the door for such clauses in regular ISPs contracts...
Two points:
1) This is actually a very different thing to a regular ISP contract, and is not related to copyright law. They're banning P2P because their network cannot handle P2P. That may be their own damn fault, but it's not an argument about users rights so much as an argument about their network infrastructure and QoS management.
2) Blanket banning P2P simply would not work at this stage for regular ISPs. Honestly, it's too late for that. It's already embedded in what consumers do, and you can't just turn it off any more. There are already too many legitimate consumer-oriented applications that make use of P2P; including that $100 million a month cash-cow, world of warcraft. (Sure, you can http if you have bad/no p2p access, but it would be a real degradation of patch-download time if you tried.)
Also streaming TV (see Joost, BBC iPlayer, etc) is starting to make use of it.
He did the crime, so he should pay the time.
I don't care if he goes to prison in the US or in the UK, but he shouldn't be free.
In the UK, he was likely to recieve six months of community service. I think that's fair. Six months of jail time, also seems reasonable.
In the USA, he is to be made an example of, and has been told to expect 60 years in prison.
That's sixty years for logging into a computer with a blank password. He's forty. That's a life sentence, meaning life. His sentence up to the point where he is eligable for parole is likely to be longer than most murderers serving their full term.
And this is compared to the sensible slap on the wrist he should be getting in his home country.
Do you guys not fucking get this or something? Hacking
We're not searching Google, we're searching the Internet. Google is a tool that can be used (and often is used) to facilitate this search.
Nitpickers are the worst, particularly when they're wrong.
Google searches the internet, but we don't, whilst using it. We search Google, because all the results we want are stored at Google, within Google, and we hopefully find the result we want. Only then are we directed to a site on the internet outside of Google containing the information we searched for.
It is not entirely innaccurate to say that 'We search the internet using Google', but this assumes a logical progession: We search google > because Google searches the internet > so that we cand find what we want on the internet = We used google to search the internet.
However, contrary to your misconceptions, it is MORE not LESS accurate to say 'We search Google (to find what we want on the internet).
Not long ago I only knew VIA as a chipset maker and a maker of chips for some other devices/things that weren't really "brand name" items.
Methinks you are a young man, sir. VIA used to be much more relevant than they have been in the last few years. However, it is very pleasing to see them picking up again and standing against the competition.
The saying generally means you will be charged the highest price that they think you'd pay for it, not whatever price you actually want to pay for it.
Yes, obviously. But what I'm saying is that there IS a choice, (different countries, different prices) but that we are artificially being kept from making that choice. That somewhat removes the 'willingness' from the equation. If you need it, you have to pay it. They're offsetting costs against how much it would cost you to cope without it, not how much you would pay in order to have it in a free market.
One thing often forgotten (which doesn't explain the examples, but many others) is that in Europe, prices are always (AFAIK) given with taxes, while in the US they are (AFAIK) without. Since sales tax in Germany is 19%, that explains quite a bit of difference already.
Ah, yes. The 'rock band' excuse.
TCO rock band video game USA: 85 UK pounds.
TCO rock band video game UK: 185 pounds.
Explanation? Value Added Tax (17.5%) and 'shipping'.
Shipping?!? Whip out your bullshit detectors now folks, because these things are made in CHINA.
Thou wilt be charged what thou art willing to pay for it.
That's not quite true of course. Anyone who had the choice of paying $1 or $100 dollars for the exact same product would pay the lower price.
However, we are allowing ourselves to be trapped legally. It costs the same to make product X in the US, as it does in the UK, as it does in Russia - if that product is intangible. But we are not allowed to buy software from Russia at 1/10th of the cost. Global companies are allowed to go there and sell, but we cannot go there, as consumers, and buy.
If we could buy from any market, we would buy from the cheapest. So this is not truly 'charging what the market will bear'. This is 'forcing the highest possible price for (sometimes necessary) products in every market we can reach, and tying the hands of the consumer on that.
It's another example of the disproportionate price fixing that we face in the digital age.
I AM against telco immunity. I'm against domestic wiretapping. I'm against an administration that blatantly disregards the Constitution and regards everything they do as legal, simply because they are doing it. However, hard experience has taught me that contributing to ANY cause gets me on mailing lists for "similar" causes - whether I want to be or not.
I no longer give to charity for an extension of those same reasons. Charities are now run like businesses, with salaried fund raisers, and wage slaver collectors on the streets. They pay to make money, and they make more money this way. Since making money is their primary cause, they see it as a good thing.
In the same way, although they are aware that they bother, irritate, or even outrage former givers by sending out reminder after reminder about all the giving opportunities available to previous donaters, they know that they will receive more money, overall, by doing this.
Unfortunately, some gut part of me reacts objectionably to this, and I cannot in good conscience send money their way.
I've watched the Ad referenced in TFA, and frankly it's not very good. The 'pay to get your political ad on tv' is also not some kind of new initiative driven by the getFISAright crew, either. They've just bought into a political ad networking scheme set up at SaysMe.TV
Frankly it's hard to call this news in any sense, when it can just as easily be summarised as 'Another bad home-made political advert added to a pay-to-play-on-TV youtube.'
These are important issues folks, but let's not wet our pants every time someone mentions wiretapping.
I know it may not sound all that "nice", but, if you could make some kind of a gismo that could detect camcorders and then jam them, and have it in a movie theater, I bet you could get stinking rich.
The way the entertainment world works at the moment, the way to do that would be to lobby for a law that forces manufacturers to put a proprietary protection chip in every camcorder, and pass the cost onto the consumers.
It sounds like a stupid idea, because it is. But that's basically how all DRM works: force something costly and inconvenient into an otherwise working product, in a way that makes little to no sense from any practical standpoint.
When something like that happens go ask for either a refund or tickets to a later showing.
They do want repeat business and more than likely will attempt to make you happy.
You are correct in that this is the sensible course of action. However, since the climax of the movie was already ruined, they were unable to offer reshowings, and unwilling to offer full refunds since 'it was only a problem for ten minutes out of two hours', most people just ate the shit they got fed.
I got free tickets for another show because I am capable of holding my corner, but I do dislike being bolshy, and I despise being put into a position where I feel like I either have to be an arrogant, know-it-all ass, or go home empty handed. I know a lot of other were turned away.
The saddest thing of all is that when the screen went out of focus, for the first minute or two I wondered if this was an anti-piracy measure being put into effect to stop cammers getting the whole movie. That's when I shed a silent tear, because in a world where you believe that is possible, and are accepting of it, you've already lost the battle.
My ability to appreciate fidelity has improved leaps and bounds with some of the innovations we've been seeing in quality, and I don't specifically mean Blu Ray or HDTV broadcasts, although those have certainly had an impact, but even high quality high resolution screens and DVD players that can output the image properly, and really make a difference. I couldn't watch a cam job if you paid me.
The down side is that the cinema I went to watch this movie at let the movie slip out of focus and completely ruined the whole thing for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Although a completely shaved head (on a white guy, anyway) is a dead giveaway as well, and gaining in popularity as an alternative to the baseball cap.
I can't understand why you would pick on that? It's a perfectly reasonable choice, not the result of over-played vanity.
There's only two options for guys who are going bald: some hair or no hair. And since 'some hair' tends to result in a comedy hairstyle which is unattractive to look at, and no hair is both distinguished and masculine, who the fuck wouldn't choose to do the latter?
Information is timeless and valuable.
I just can't agree with this. When something is timeless that means that it does not age. But information does age. Virtually all information ages; all information relating to human affairs certainly does. The aging of information can be measured not merely in whether it is forgotten, or known, but in how it is considered. Remember: we can still watch the original series of Knight Rider on re-run channels. This does not mean it is 'timeless'. It would be too polite to call it anachronistic.
Even for example the information we have about the collapse of Lehman.
Two weeks ago that information would have been worth billions.
Now it is common knowledge, and the details must be investigated, after the fact.
In twenty years it will be of historical interest, taught in economics classes.
In a thousand years it may have been forgotten.
The very fact that we have already seen different states of this information over two weeks means that it is not timeless.
Joking aside, the article is puzzling and it reeks of FUD:
Apple FUD on slashdot? Maybe the LHC is gearing up for armageddon after all.
The problem with VISTA is that it was launched it BETA.
This is an exaggeration!
Missing drivers, big footprint hardware requirements, and horrible power management (which drained many a laptop battery) caused the early demise of VISTA.
Hm. Alright. It's not much of an exaggeration.
I gave up on VISTA, but I understand that MS is slowly working out the problems.
This is true. What I really what to comment on here is the state of the FUD surrounding Vista. There were many negative reviews of Vista at time of release, which were deserved, if a little hyperbolic - I know, because I ran Vista and tested it.
When SP1 came out the reviews were similarly negative. I didn't test it for several months. Most broken things had not been fixed, the reviews said, and I did not go back for seconds.
Recently, I did test Vista with SP1. As it happens, I'm still running it. And whilst I'm not ready to recommend Vista yet, I'll say this gladly: most of the problems were fixed. And most of the articles bashing SP1 were just inaccurate FUD.
It really irritates me when things are reported innaccurately in this way. I don't mind if you have a negative opinion of something, even if it's something I really like. But I can't abhor being LIED to, simply because you're a zealot.
In fact, in my experience, the people that matter work wherever they are, and the people that don't matter are never going to put in an honest day.
A good work ethic does not differentiate based on environment.
What has a far more negative effect is being treated like shit in the workplace. I've seen so many devoted, committed, hard working employees let their work go south because they finally realised that there is no fucking point; they can spend all year making a difference for one stupid ill informed management decision to put them back way before where they started.
The saddest thing is it's these fucking managers who go home and 'telecommute', and sit around doing no work, who think that must therefore apply to the rest of us.
But the truth is that a bad manager can do fuck all wherever he is, and the worst thing about that is that sometimes that's better for the organisation than them getting their fingers into the pies and fucking everything up.
'going out of its way to do more than it's required to do under the law to protect free expression.' AKA 'going out of its way to do more than it's required to do under the law to protect their image.'
I'll take what I can get. You act like one of these choices is a bad thing!
For example, you take the old Pentium II you have and install DSL on it, and the kid learns Linux. Knowing Linux, he saves money on technology throughout his life and gets a good job as a sysadmin.
I wouldn't wish sysadmin on my worst enemy, let alone my kid. I'd rather he got typhus.
You know how those mafia types always want to keep their kids out of the family business? Because they feel like they deserve better? Because they know the horrible truth? Yeah.
Microsoft has reacted to this security exposure by launching a new version that puts the OS out of reach and is guaranteed attack-proof: Vista for Vacuums.
Unfortunately, code can be injected by causing a buffer overflow in passing cosmic rays.
Save your Microsoft bashing for the unlikely possibility that this is even half the exploit as Dowd and Sotirov are claiming.
1) "Usability" is in the mind of the user.
There's some degree of truth in that, but since most people have essentially similar minds it makes sense to assume that certain types of operation make sense to the vast majority of people. Past experience can lock people into a certain conceptual mindset, there's no denying it. But the holy grail of usability is that which most closely reflects the way in which we have evolved to think.
All computers are essentially tools to enable us to do things we otherwise would not be capable of, or would take much longer without. The best computer systems are the ones which interface as organically as possible with that which we are capable of. It's common sense.
(2) "Designers" who can't code have absolutely no business "working" in software.
That's ridiculous. If it weren't so absurd it would be offensive. Look at the credits for any major software release from the commercial realm. Let's take games, for example - in the entertainment industry, where if something is not 'usable' it is not fun, coders are outnumbered somthing like 20 to 1 by other types of developer, be they writers, artists, testers, etc. Hell, let's take the credits from GTA IV, the video game. They take HALF AN HOUR to scroll, when you complete the game. What percentage of those HUNDREDS of people do you think can code? Even to a reasonable level? Five to fifteen percent at the outside.
When you need a job doing, you hire the person with the skills to do that job. You DON'T hire someone with the skills to do that job AND the skills to code. Sometimes that's not even desirable, and at best it's overkill.
concerned parents began sending angry letters to JV Games and Nintendo... until JV Games agreed to change the title of the game to Pong Toss and fill its pixelated cups with water.
Well then let's just hope that nobody finds excessive urination offensive.
Or stimulating for that matter.
Honestly, when water isn't safe, where do you turn?
If you RTFA, Red Hat is planning on getting it's revenue from selling support. I'm not sure I see this happening.
I'm pretty sure that's a good part of what they've been doing for a decade.
Wikipedia agrees with me: Red Hat partly operates on a professional open-source business model based on open code, community development, professional quality assurance services, and subscription-based customer support.
It could widely open the door for such clauses in regular ISPs contracts...
Two points:
1) This is actually a very different thing to a regular ISP contract, and is not related to copyright law. They're banning P2P because their network cannot handle P2P. That may be their own damn fault, but it's not an argument about users rights so much as an argument about their network infrastructure and QoS management.
2) Blanket banning P2P simply would not work at this stage for regular ISPs. Honestly, it's too late for that. It's already embedded in what consumers do, and you can't just turn it off any more. There are already too many legitimate consumer-oriented applications that make use of P2P; including that $100 million a month cash-cow, world of warcraft. (Sure, you can http if you have bad/no p2p access, but it would be a real degradation of patch-download time if you tried.)
Also streaming TV (see Joost, BBC iPlayer, etc) is starting to make use of it.
He did the crime, so he should pay the time. I don't care if he goes to prison in the US or in the UK, but he shouldn't be free.
In the UK, he was likely to recieve six months of community service. I think that's fair. Six months of jail time, also seems reasonable.
In the USA, he is to be made an example of, and has been told to expect 60 years in prison.
That's sixty years for logging into a computer with a blank password. He's forty. That's a life sentence, meaning life. His sentence up to the point where he is eligable for parole is likely to be longer than most murderers serving their full term.
And this is compared to the sensible slap on the wrist he should be getting in his home country.
Do you guys not fucking get this or something? Hacking
We're not searching Google, we're searching the Internet. Google is a tool that can be used (and often is used) to facilitate this search.
Nitpickers are the worst, particularly when they're wrong.
Google searches the internet, but we don't, whilst using it. We search Google, because all the results we want are stored at Google, within Google, and we hopefully find the result we want. Only then are we directed to a site on the internet outside of Google containing the information we searched for.
It is not entirely innaccurate to say that 'We search the internet using Google', but this assumes a logical progession: We search google > because Google searches the internet > so that we cand find what we want on the internet = We used google to search the internet. However, contrary to your misconceptions, it is MORE not LESS accurate to say 'We search Google (to find what we want on the internet).
Not long ago I only knew VIA as a chipset maker and a maker of chips for some other devices/things that weren't really "brand name" items.
Methinks you are a young man, sir. VIA used to be much more relevant than they have been in the last few years. However, it is very pleasing to see them picking up again and standing against the competition.
The saying generally means you will be charged the highest price that they think you'd pay for it, not whatever price you actually want to pay for it.
Yes, obviously. But what I'm saying is that there IS a choice, (different countries, different prices) but that we are artificially being kept from making that choice. That somewhat removes the 'willingness' from the equation. If you need it, you have to pay it. They're offsetting costs against how much it would cost you to cope without it, not how much you would pay in order to have it in a free market.
One thing often forgotten (which doesn't explain the examples, but many others) is that in Europe, prices are always (AFAIK) given with taxes, while in the US they are (AFAIK) without. Since sales tax in Germany is 19%, that explains quite a bit of difference already.
Ah, yes. The 'rock band' excuse.
TCO rock band video game USA: 85 UK pounds.
TCO rock band video game UK: 185 pounds.
Explanation? Value Added Tax (17.5%) and 'shipping'.
Shipping?!? Whip out your bullshit detectors now folks, because these things are made in CHINA.
Thou wilt be charged what thou art willing to pay for it.
That's not quite true of course. Anyone who had the choice of paying $1 or $100 dollars for the exact same product would pay the lower price.
However, we are allowing ourselves to be trapped legally. It costs the same to make product X in the US, as it does in the UK, as it does in Russia - if that product is intangible. But we are not allowed to buy software from Russia at 1/10th of the cost. Global companies are allowed to go there and sell, but we cannot go there, as consumers, and buy.
If we could buy from any market, we would buy from the cheapest. So this is not truly 'charging what the market will bear'. This is 'forcing the highest possible price for (sometimes necessary) products in every market we can reach, and tying the hands of the consumer on that.
It's another example of the disproportionate price fixing that we face in the digital age.
I AM against telco immunity. I'm against domestic wiretapping. I'm against an administration that blatantly disregards the Constitution and regards everything they do as legal, simply because they are doing it. However, hard experience has taught me that contributing to ANY cause gets me on mailing lists for "similar" causes - whether I want to be or not.
I no longer give to charity for an extension of those same reasons. Charities are now run like businesses, with salaried fund raisers, and wage slaver collectors on the streets. They pay to make money, and they make more money this way. Since making money is their primary cause, they see it as a good thing.
In the same way, although they are aware that they bother, irritate, or even outrage former givers by sending out reminder after reminder about all the giving opportunities available to previous donaters, they know that they will receive more money, overall, by doing this.
Unfortunately, some gut part of me reacts objectionably to this, and I cannot in good conscience send money their way.
Frankly it's hard to call this news in any sense, when it can just as easily be summarised as 'Another bad home-made political advert added to a pay-to-play-on-TV youtube.'
These are important issues folks, but let's not wet our pants every time someone mentions wiretapping.
I shudder to think what would happen if the MPAA hooked up with the Army.
Major public works would get busted down to private.
I know it may not sound all that "nice", but, if you could make some kind of a gismo that could detect camcorders and then jam them, and have it in a movie theater, I bet you could get stinking rich.
The way the entertainment world works at the moment, the way to do that would be to lobby for a law that forces manufacturers to put a proprietary protection chip in every camcorder, and pass the cost onto the consumers.
It sounds like a stupid idea, because it is. But that's basically how all DRM works: force something costly and inconvenient into an otherwise working product, in a way that makes little to no sense from any practical standpoint.
When something like that happens go ask for either a refund or tickets to a later showing. They do want repeat business and more than likely will attempt to make you happy.
You are correct in that this is the sensible course of action. However, since the climax of the movie was already ruined, they were unable to offer reshowings, and unwilling to offer full refunds since 'it was only a problem for ten minutes out of two hours', most people just ate the shit they got fed.
I got free tickets for another show because I am capable of holding my corner, but I do dislike being bolshy, and I despise being put into a position where I feel like I either have to be an arrogant, know-it-all ass, or go home empty handed. I know a lot of other were turned away.
The saddest thing of all is that when the screen went out of focus, for the first minute or two I wondered if this was an anti-piracy measure being put into effect to stop cammers getting the whole movie. That's when I shed a silent tear, because in a world where you believe that is possible, and are accepting of it, you've already lost the battle.
The down side is that the cinema I went to watch this movie at let the movie slip out of focus and completely ruined the whole thing for me.