I remember as a small boy seeing an IMAX short about astronauts. When they started tossing M&Ms in zero-g everyone grabbed at them. Most dramatic though was a helicopter shot. I actually reeled around in my chair. It seemed like the whole place was the chopper.
Why do businesses have to owe anything? Why can't we have: a) A flat tax on income, or b) A flat tax on consumption? It seems to blindingly simple. Even if you have two or three (Federal, State, Local) it would be so much simpler. And as far as fairness goes, you can't get much fairer than a flat percentage.
Some say it would decrease revenues be lowering taxes on the rich and big businesses, but after seeing all the headache my workplace goes through for taxes I think revenues would actually increase just because we'll make more to be taxed on without all the extra cruft in the business processes.
I don't see why a business pays taxes. Just charge people on one end or the other. It also makes government forecasting vastly simpler and encourages wiser money management (I can do what's smart rather than what's non-taxable).
Ability to shoulder risk? Stability? How many billions have we had to throw away on bailouts
Hold it right there. There was no such thing as "had to." We could have just sat back and let them feel the consequences of their risks. Our elected officials chose to do something to try and look heroic and seize more control. Who elected them? We, the people, who get exactly the government we deserve.
I've got my own little theory about economic ideas being a circle. If you go far enough in any direction you'll get something totalitarian that doesn't work.
Disclaimer: I'm a tech at a work a computer repair shop.
Let me guess: she was running as root. This scareware deleted mbam.exe as soon as the installer unpacked it, and/or had a little icon by the clock that popped a notification balloon every time you started a process saying that it (even taskman) was infected with $SCARY_VIRUS_NAME and killed the process.
Since the middle of October, we've had a wave of clients with this stuff, many whom are running the best AV's (we sell NOD32) and have no idea how they got infected.
Different techs have different favorite ways of removing it, but my personal technique is to create another (limited) use account and start the MBAM installer from there with elevated permissions (using Run As). TADA!
I don't know why the scareware runs with your account permissions, but it sure makes it easy to defeat.
"That's probably because you don't pay much attention to the world. If you had, you may have heard of this African country called Sudan, and a particularly a region in it called Darfur..." I've been glued to world news...
I don't mean to be rude, but that there is your problem. The "news" that arrives on your television or radio is highly manipulated and filtered to tailor your thinking. I highly recommend reading the blogs of ordinary citizens or "citizen journalists" in the target area along with your mainstream media. It's quite revealing.
The Storm is the only BB that can use its GPS chip on Verizon's firmware. RIM hyped the GPS feature and the Storm was mostly marketed to tech-savvy people (as opposed to the "businesslike" Curve), and they screamed loud enough that Verizon finally enabled the chip.
they don't really lock down the BB devices, so I don't need Google Voice, or Android
Really? Can the Curve use its GPS chip yet? Last time I tried Google Maps I was forced to use tower triangulation and it was worthless. VZW wanted me to buy their overpriced navigation software to use the GPS chip for anything but e911. And, last I checked, other carriers let me use the GPS chip normally.
Note: this post is not designed to defend Google, just to bash Verizon.
The truth is in the middle. No, a truly open phone isn't going to wreck anything. But the carriers won't sell it, because that would endanger their nickle-and-dime model. They do NOT want people to see them as just a mobile ISP.
Yeah, a handset maker could sell them directly to the customer, but that market is simply too small. Almost everybody leases their phone directly from the carrier. What we need is an Android-type device running on a WiMAX network that realizes it's just a dumb pipe...then we'll get some progress.
Surely warrants have some kind of identifier on them, even if it's just the title. Seems easy enough to require the police to fill in another field with the warrant ID. The defense lawyers can then sort through it all and blow things up at their convenience.
It has been my internet experience that anyone who has used Photoshop will not like GIMP, but people who haven't learned Photoshop love it. I am one of the latter. Yeah, it's interface is arcane, and maybe it could use a makeover, but I'm very settled in the current wacky ways and I like it. Weird as it is, it's actually pretty fast to work with.
Also, I think GIMP compares quite favorably to photo editing software like Paint Shop and Paint.NET. The only major feature that keeps it from rivaling Photoshop is CYMK coloring. For example, take a look at this image I touched up for a friend: http://bsgprogrammers.com/temp/recital/ It was taken with a really lame point-and-shoot digital camera (not me!), but I think the result is very usable. She (the subject) asked what I did to the image, and here's a clip of my response:
1. Used Filter Pack to increase saturation. IIRC I also played with the contrast at this point. 2. Used a clone brush to clone out all the bright patches on the trees. I used the main image and one other shot as source. Used a paintbrush in Hue mode to correct the colors to make it uniform. 3. Cloned out the car or whatever that was by the tree. 4. Used intelligent edge select tool to select your head. Blurred selection by 20 pixels. Used Retinex filter to boost contrast on your head and hair. Did more tweaking with the Levels dialog. 5. Used intelligent edge select to select your whole body. Blurred selection by 15 pixels and inverted. Used Defocus plugin to blur the background with the flat method. 6. Converted to black and white with the Black and White Conversion plugin using a profile for a certain B&W film I can't recall at this moment. 7. Used a paintbrush to fix a few hot spots on the trees.
I posted a different edit of something else on Facebook just for fun, and some time later got this email:
I was really really trying to fix a picture in gimp ( that’s actually where the other 40% of my battery went), and I didn’t get anywhere—I just can’t figure that program out. I tried, and tried, and TRIED. And, now I’ve given up. I was just trying everything, from enhancing, to blurring, to painting, to balances—everything. But, I think I wound up making it worse—not better. Your picture of Rudy was really motivating—that was absolutely amazing—how did you do it?
I think this is an excellent example of why the average person doesn't like GIMP. I first started playing with GIMP when I was maybe 14-15, and I took me a couple years of casual messing around and making pointless stuff to get to where I can actually do what I need to with no stumbling around. I like the way it is, but I agree that a major UI redesign wouldn't hurt a bit in its mass appeal. I also think it's pretty reasonable to leave this out of the default installation. Nobody else I'v met personally can use it, but it's indispensable to me as a tool. I sure hope it has better days ahead.
Hmm, I just tried the same program with Steve Pettit's For the Beauty of the Earth in WAV and 256kbps MP3 (ripped with WMP). I'm using a $14 sound card, some sorta-decent Yamaha desk speakers but connecting a $15 pair of Altec-Lansing headphones to the jack on the speakers. My actual results were 8/10 with a 5.5% chance that I was guessing. To me, the cello background sounds "softer" in the original than in the MP3 version, and the stereo positioning of the instruments is kinda muddled in the MP3.
How about Oogle? Everone will think Google when they hear it, and it's memorable enough. And you could even come up with a nice acronym, like Object-Oriented Google LanguagE (disclaimer: I didn't RTA, so I don't even know if it's OO).
I vote "no" on that subject. Kids can find no-cost ways to talk to another, like email or local phone calls, like we did when we were kids. They don't need to be wasting my money on trivial bullshit (aka gossip).
Personally, I used cheap walkie-talkies. If you live in a city you've got an excellent chance of reaching your friends with an FRS/GMRS radio from Wal-Mart. (I even got a HAM license, but none of my friends did...)
Important! I noticed the other day that one of those fake AV programs (Windows Enterprise Suite), also hijacked the HOSTS files and messed with the permissions on it. I just deleted it and made a default file.
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I remember as a small boy seeing an IMAX short about astronauts. When they started tossing M&Ms in zero-g everyone grabbed at them. Most dramatic though was a helicopter shot. I actually reeled around in my chair. It seemed like the whole place was the chopper.
Lol, the government is anything but interested in deporting people here unlawfully. That's quite obvious.
Why is this modded flamebait?? It's written caustically, but it's technically correct.
Why do businesses have to owe anything? Why can't we have:
a) A flat tax on income, or
b) A flat tax on consumption?
It seems to blindingly simple. Even if you have two or three (Federal, State, Local) it would be so much simpler. And as far as fairness goes, you can't get much fairer than a flat percentage.
Some say it would decrease revenues be lowering taxes on the rich and big businesses, but after seeing all the headache my workplace goes through for taxes I think revenues would actually increase just because we'll make more to be taxed on without all the extra cruft in the business processes.
I don't see why a business pays taxes. Just charge people on one end or the other. It also makes government forecasting vastly simpler and encourages wiser money management (I can do what's smart rather than what's non-taxable).
Ability to shoulder risk? Stability? How many billions have we had to throw away on bailouts
Hold it right there. There was no such thing as "had to." We could have just sat back and let them feel the consequences of their risks. Our elected officials chose to do something to try and look heroic and seize more control. Who elected them? We, the people, who get exactly the government we deserve.
Steve Balmer
Wrong, because Steve Balmer doesn't exist either! You walked right into the real Steve Ballmer's trap!
I've got my own little theory about economic ideas being a circle. If you go far enough in any direction you'll get something totalitarian that doesn't work.
Disclaimer: I'm a tech at a work a computer repair shop.
Let me guess: she was running as root. This scareware deleted mbam.exe as soon as the installer unpacked it, and/or had a little icon by the clock that popped a notification balloon every time you started a process saying that it (even taskman) was infected with $SCARY_VIRUS_NAME and killed the process.
Since the middle of October, we've had a wave of clients with this stuff, many whom are running the best AV's (we sell NOD32) and have no idea how they got infected.
Different techs have different favorite ways of removing it, but my personal technique is to create another (limited) use account and start the MBAM installer from there with elevated permissions (using Run As). TADA!
I don't know why the scareware runs with your account permissions, but it sure makes it easy to defeat.
Actually, I think Fox News has more real news than the others. But they're still MSM.
"That's probably because you don't pay much attention to the world. If you had, you may have heard of this African country called Sudan, and a particularly a region in it called Darfur..."
I've been glued to world news...
I don't mean to be rude, but that there is your problem. The "news" that arrives on your television or radio is highly manipulated and filtered to tailor your thinking. I highly recommend reading the blogs of ordinary citizens or "citizen journalists" in the target area along with your mainstream media. It's quite revealing.
The Storm is the only BB that can use its GPS chip on Verizon's firmware. RIM hyped the GPS feature and the Storm was mostly marketed to tech-savvy people (as opposed to the "businesslike" Curve), and they screamed loud enough that Verizon finally enabled the chip.
they don't really lock down the BB devices, so I don't need Google Voice, or Android
Really? Can the Curve use its GPS chip yet? Last time I tried Google Maps I was forced to use tower triangulation and it was worthless. VZW wanted me to buy their overpriced navigation software to use the GPS chip for anything but e911. And, last I checked, other carriers let me use the GPS chip normally.
Note: this post is not designed to defend Google, just to bash Verizon.
The truth is in the middle. No, a truly open phone isn't going to wreck anything. But the carriers won't sell it, because that would endanger their nickle-and-dime model. They do NOT want people to see them as just a mobile ISP.
Yeah, a handset maker could sell them directly to the customer, but that market is simply too small. Almost everybody leases their phone directly from the carrier. What we need is an Android-type device running on a WiMAX network that realizes it's just a dumb pipe...then we'll get some progress.
They don't much care how they look, but I'm sure no/slow Internet is hurting their economy. That involves money, which is much more serious than PR.
It's obviously not rule of law. You're trying an implied attack on the United States' economic model, which is heavily dependent on the rule of law.
Surely warrants have some kind of identifier on them, even if it's just the title. Seems easy enough to require the police to fill in another field with the warrant ID. The defense lawyers can then sort through it all and blow things up at their convenience.
I also highly recommend CrossLoop. It's just Tight VNC with a idiot-proof GUI and a web service that manages everything seamlessly.
Can someone with "media credentials" get that high-res image and post it somewhere we can see?
It has been my internet experience that anyone who has used Photoshop will not like GIMP, but people who haven't learned Photoshop love it. I am one of the latter. Yeah, it's interface is arcane, and maybe it could use a makeover, but I'm very settled in the current wacky ways and I like it. Weird as it is, it's actually pretty fast to work with.
Also, I think GIMP compares quite favorably to photo editing software like Paint Shop and Paint.NET. The only major feature that keeps it from rivaling Photoshop is CYMK coloring. For example, take a look at this image I touched up for a friend: http://bsgprogrammers.com/temp/recital/
It was taken with a really lame point-and-shoot digital camera (not me!), but I think the result is very usable. She (the subject) asked what I did to the image, and here's a clip of my response:
1. Used Filter Pack to increase saturation. IIRC I also played with the contrast at this point.
2. Used a clone brush to clone out all the bright patches on the trees. I used the main image and one other shot as source. Used a paintbrush in Hue mode to correct the colors to make it uniform.
3. Cloned out the car or whatever that was by the tree.
4. Used intelligent edge select tool to select your head. Blurred selection by 20 pixels. Used Retinex filter to boost contrast on your head and hair. Did more tweaking with the Levels dialog.
5. Used intelligent edge select to select your whole body. Blurred selection by 15 pixels and inverted. Used Defocus plugin to blur the background with the flat method.
6. Converted to black and white with the Black and White Conversion plugin using a profile for a certain B&W film I can't recall at this moment.
7. Used a paintbrush to fix a few hot spots on the trees.
I posted a different edit of something else on Facebook just for fun, and some time later got this email:
I was really really trying to fix a picture in gimp ( that’s actually where the other 40% of my battery went), and I didn’t get anywhere—I just can’t figure that program out. I tried, and tried, and TRIED. And, now I’ve given up. I was just trying everything, from enhancing, to blurring, to painting, to balances—everything. But, I think I wound up making it worse—not better. Your picture of Rudy was really motivating—that was absolutely amazing—how did you do it?
I think this is an excellent example of why the average person doesn't like GIMP. I first started playing with GIMP when I was maybe 14-15, and I took me a couple years of casual messing around and making pointless stuff to get to where I can actually do what I need to with no stumbling around. I like the way it is, but I agree that a major UI redesign wouldn't hurt a bit in its mass appeal. I also think it's pretty reasonable to leave this out of the default installation. Nobody else I'v met personally can use it, but it's indispensable to me as a tool. I sure hope it has better days ahead.
Hmm, I just tried the same program with Steve Pettit's For the Beauty of the Earth in WAV and 256kbps MP3 (ripped with WMP). I'm using a $14 sound card, some sorta-decent Yamaha desk speakers but connecting a $15 pair of Altec-Lansing headphones to the jack on the speakers. My actual results were 8/10 with a 5.5% chance that I was guessing. To me, the cello background sounds "softer" in the original than in the MP3 version, and the stereo positioning of the instruments is kinda muddled in the MP3.
How about Oogle? Everone will think Google when they hear it, and it's memorable enough. And you could even come up with a nice acronym, like Object-Oriented Google LanguagE (disclaimer: I didn't RTA, so I don't even know if it's OO).
No, that just punishes the honest ones and makes the rest wealthy tax cheats.
I vote "no" on that subject. Kids can find no-cost ways to talk to another, like email or local phone calls, like we did when we were kids. They don't need to be wasting my money on trivial bullshit (aka gossip).
Personally, I used cheap walkie-talkies. If you live in a city you've got an excellent chance of reaching your friends with an FRS/GMRS radio from Wal-Mart. (I even got a HAM license, but none of my friends did...)
That's a pretty big claim. Let's have some citations, please.
Important! I noticed the other day that one of those fake AV programs (Windows Enterprise Suite), also hijacked the HOSTS files and messed with the permissions on it. I just deleted it and made a default file.