Actually, that last is going down because I don't have to deal with web screens that are more garbage than anything else. I've seen what the web looks like on non-blocked computers, how can people stand it, and how can the data overages not destroy them from the ads being 90+% of the page data?
Ad blocking is just simple security practice. Aside from ads being a form of fraud in and of themselves, ad networks are infested with malware to an insane degree. If I service a computer, an ad blocker is mandatory, you are getting at least one, or I will not waste my time trying to fix your system.
Since Google has placed their revenue over the security of their users, root your Android device, find F-Droid, get Ad-Away, update every now and then.
I have been using Xfce on Slackware for the past decade or three. The infestation is felt even there as the clutter level goes up with each new release.
For all the faults of Windows 7 (a complete description of which would consume more storage than there is mass in the universe), it is at least usable (for very forgiving uses of the term) for several things at once, if given absurd quantities of resources.
I will push any device or system to the edge, but the previews of Windows 8 were so utterly useless that I actually gave up on it completely. I can get more productivity out of 3.1. Heck, I can get more productivity out of DOS 5.whatever and a copy of DESQview. I actually did that back in the day.
While they've given up this time, I expect that the issue of pay-us-forever will continue to to creep along until there is no pay-once software from Microsoft.
One of many reasons why I use Linux for most of my doings, and only use Windows (carefully locked away in virtual machines for my own system) for device synchronization or when people pay me to work with it.
Thanks. I've actually told the author that there was some overlap on the Sniglets audience into his sort of craziness. He thinks this is a totally different target. We'll see.
The title is:
Goofilinguage - A Collection of Very Silly Words by Bruce Jaffe.
At the moment, only on Amazon, other outlets being worked on.
A friend of mine has gone on an extreme kick of making up silly words with sillier definitions and has even published them in an e-book dictionary. He's trying the tactic of promoting on Facebook with iffy results.
I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to name it here (I'll check back later for comments) but I will say that if you are curious, visiting a popular sales site named for a large river and searching on "very silly words" makes it easy to find. Getting it on other e-book sites is being worked on, but if nothing has gone wrong, there is no DRM to interfere with migrating it to your choice of reader. I was able to convince the author that irritating your customer base was not a great idea.
So far the CwF is going well, the RtB, not so much, but this is an experiment. Whether it works or not, we'll find out.
Also, the point addressed in your last sentence is the ultimate goal of all industries based on the fiction known as IP. While you specify patents, copyright is in there also.
The position held by the industries is: We own it forever, you owe us when you use it, every time you use it, there is no safe level of remove to escape owing us.
UV curing is very old technology, my dentist has been curing fillings with UV for well over a decade. Either these guys own the patent on the fillings in my teeth, they are infringing on another patent, or someone screwed up somewhere because there should only be one patent for UV curing, the rest should have been dumped.
Well, he can always adapt this experience into a Mallworld story...
Irritating a music director who is also a successful science-fiction writer is kind of like donning a red shirt and walking into a phaser fight.
I wondered why I hadn't heard of him for a decade or two. This has to be a lot more interesting than leaving warped messages on my answering machine. (Yes, it was really that far back the last time I spoke to him.)
I saw the name and had to DuckDuckGo it because I figured the odds of there being two of that name were rather long, and yes, it's the same guy.
I keep telling people that they need to vote for who they think is best suited for the job, and I always get that they don't want to waste their vote. How is it not a waste if you vote for someone you don't think is qualified just so that you voted for the winner?
As far as I am concerned, any vote for the two big parties is the wasted vote. Unless the big boys feel threatened, the overall condition of the US will continue to deteriorate, because there are no differences of any significance between the parties.
I say, if you can't figure out someone from lesser parties based on what you can learn, which the big players also make as difficult as possible, then pick some smaller party candidate at random and vote for them. If the entrenched players are not deprived of political oxygen, they will continue to screw things up.
Makes me wish I still lived in a house with a fireplace...
Then I could get some use out of all this rubbish that ends up on my doorstep or in my mailbox. about 98% of what I get in the mail, or on the porch, never gets into the house, I just drop it in the yellow bin and haul the bin to the curb when full.
Fortunately I don't think that subverting an expectation is prosecutable. Unless Hollywood has managed to copyright it, which, given some of the heavily-promoted turkeys that have come out over the years, might just be possible.
Pre-9/11 airport security destroyed air travel as far as I'm concerned, I hadn't flown for several years before 9/11 precisely because the level of nonsense was intolerable back then.
Deeds and Titles are just unnecessarily complex lease/rental agreements. We do not own the things covered by these pieces of paper, they just describe what we pay rent on in order to use them. And then, to really confuse things, the rents are imposed under separate procedures with no input form the renters and limited options for escape. In order to escape home rent you have to get someone else to agree to pay the rent, you cannot simply move out and stop payment. (You can, but they eventually send armed thugs after you if they cannot get someone to agree to pay all past rent in order to move in.)
With vehicles, you can, in some areas, escape rent by ceasing to use them for their intended purposes and keeping them in storage somewhere.
As a practical matter, you do not own anything you have to report the existence of.
I went off all forms of broadcast video years ago...
Cut to minimum TV service on Comcast, only kept that much, which I never watched except for weather emergencies, because it cost more for internet-only, and on U-Verse I don't even have any TV service. All the programs I watch either arrive on plastic discs (Netflix) or are downloaded (Pioneer One, anybody?). The commercials were bad enough, but when all channels became all-ads-all-the-time (those {censored} logos count, I simply cannot tolerate them} I left and am better off for it.
Before TV elected to cease to exist for me, I had not watched a real-time show for years. My primary use of the VCR was commercial-skipping. I would tape shows, then blow past the ads when watching them.
Every now and then I'll be visiting friends and see the horrible cesspit that TV has become. I expect that my current tube-display TV will never die because it gets so little use. The only reason I have a digital broadcast converter is for news and weather emergencies. I think I used it once last june when my U-Verse went out for an hour due to severe weather and I wanted to see how bad things were.
I simply do not put up with ads any more. I stopped listening to radio and now burn CDs for my car CD player (no easy way to interface an MP3 player, but the book lied when it said burned discs wouldn't work). I've let my various magazine subscriptions lapse. I've got Trueblock Plus installed (Adblock Plus went to the dark side in allowing "unobtrusive" ads, {no such thing} while you can change this, it is reset with each update, at least it was when I gave up on it), and I even have an ad-blocker installed on my Android phone.
I don't put up with the rubbish on DVDs, either. After some tinkering, I can skip anything, no matter what the disc wants.
Make things annoying and I'll work around the annoyance. Make it too hard to avoid the annoyance and I just stop dealing with the things entirely.
If you want my money, make it worth my while. I can always find somewhere else to spend it, or I can not spend at all in some categories.
Unless another company starts driving around cars with panoramic cameras on top, you won't see street view anywhere soon.
Provided that they could deal with the data traffic, OSM could crowdsource the streetview process. I could easily take pictures of both sides of the street that I am on, for the whole block, in about 10 minutes. The full panoramic process might not be manageable, but I could easily do a series of 8-compass-point shots of streets in my area.
How someone could stitch all this together, that I'm not sure about, but getting a reasonable amount of data should not be that difficult.
On the post: Recording Industry Lobbyists Accuse Pandora Of Deliberately Not Selling Ads To Plead Poverty To Congress
Raises hand.
Actually, that last is going down because I don't have to deal with web screens that are more garbage than anything else. I've seen what the web looks like on non-blocked computers, how can people stand it, and how can the data overages not destroy them from the ads being 90+% of the page data?
Ad blocking is just simple security practice. Aside from ads being a form of fraud in and of themselves, ad networks are infested with malware to an insane degree. If I service a computer, an ad blocker is mandatory, you are getting at least one, or I will not waste my time trying to fix your system.
Since Google has placed their revenue over the security of their users, root your Android device, find F-Droid, get Ad-Away, update every now and then.
On the post: Microsoft: Just Kidding, You Can Transfer Licenses For Your Retail Versions Of Office
Interface choices
For all the faults of Windows 7 (a complete description of which would consume more storage than there is mass in the universe), it is at least usable (for very forgiving uses of the term) for several things at once, if given absurd quantities of resources.
I will push any device or system to the edge, but the previews of Windows 8 were so utterly useless that I actually gave up on it completely. I can get more productivity out of 3.1. Heck, I can get more productivity out of DOS 5.whatever and a copy of DESQview. I actually did that back in the day.
While they've given up this time, I expect that the issue of pay-us-forever will continue to to creep along until there is no pay-once software from Microsoft.
One of many reasons why I use Linux for most of my doings, and only use Windows (carefully locked away in virtual machines for my own system) for device synchronization or when people pay me to work with it.
On the post: Do We Really Want EU Bureaucrats Deciding What Google Search Results 'Should' Look Like?
The definition of "Unfair Competition"
On the post: DailyDirt: Making Up Words
Re: Re: Extreme Making Up Words.
The title is:
Goofilinguage - A Collection of Very Silly Words by Bruce Jaffe.
At the moment, only on Amazon, other outlets being worked on.
On the post: DailyDirt: Making Up Words
Extreme Making Up Words.
I'm not sure if it would be appropriate to name it here (I'll check back later for comments) but I will say that if you are curious, visiting a popular sales site named for a large river and searching on "very silly words" makes it easy to find. Getting it on other e-book sites is being worked on, but if nothing has gone wrong, there is no DRM to interfere with migrating it to your choice of reader. I was able to convince the author that irritating your customer base was not a great idea.
So far the CwF is going well, the RtB, not so much, but this is an experiment. Whether it works or not, we'll find out.
On the post: Company Sues Kickstarter Over 3D Printer Patent, Maligns 'Hackers And Makers'
Re: Re: Wat?
This the US, you should know better.
Also, the point addressed in your last sentence is the ultimate goal of all industries based on the fiction known as IP. While you specify patents, copyright is in there also.
The position held by the industries is: We own it forever, you owe us when you use it, every time you use it, there is no safe level of remove to escape owing us.
On the post: Company Sues Kickstarter Over 3D Printer Patent, Maligns 'Hackers And Makers'
Re: Re: Infringing on gobbledygook
On the post: Harry Fox Agency Claims Copyright Over Public Domain Work By Johann Strauss
Well, he can always adapt this experience into a Mallworld story...
I wondered why I hadn't heard of him for a decade or two. This has to be a lot more interesting than leaving warped messages on my answering machine. (Yes, it was really that far back the last time I spoke to him.)
I saw the name and had to DuckDuckGo it because I figured the odds of there being two of that name were rather long, and yes, it's the same guy.
On the post: Organizations Try To Shame People Into Voting By Revealing How Often They & Their Neighbors Voted
More electoral clutter...
As far as I am concerned, any vote for the two big parties is the wasted vote. Unless the big boys feel threatened, the overall condition of the US will continue to deteriorate, because there are no differences of any significance between the parties.
I say, if you can't figure out someone from lesser parties based on what you can learn, which the big players also make as difficult as possible, then pick some smaller party candidate at random and vote for them. If the entrenched players are not deprived of political oxygen, they will continue to screw things up.
On the post: Court Rules Yellow Pages Are Protected Speech
Makes me wish I still lived in a house with a fireplace...
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
So I'm a subversive influence now...
On the post: LEAKED! Here's The White House's Draft Cybersecurity Executive Order
Typo pointer.
On the post: The TSA's Infamous 'Behavior Detection' In Action: Mandatory 'Chats' About Every Detail Of Your Trip
Airport "Security"
On the post: Why Tragedies Result In Overreactions: 'Our Brains Aren't Very Good At Risk Analysis'
Re: Good God, Man. Punctuate!
why it's so easy for everyone, from the general public to earnest politicians, to draw the wrong conclusions after major tragedies
On the post: Do We Need A 'Circle Section' Registry To Prove Digital Ownership?
Re: Deeds and Titles
With vehicles, you can, in some areas, escape rent by ceasing to use them for their intended purposes and keeping them in storage somewhere.
As a practical matter, you do not own anything you have to report the existence of.
On the post: Funnyjunk's Lawyer, Charles Carreon, Continues To Lash Out: Accuses Matt Inman Of 'Instigating Security Attacks'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Finally, we'll answer the old question
On the post: Judge In Grooveshark Lawsuit Orders Blog To 'Preserve' Logs That Had Already Been Deleted
Amazing how quickly some stories have practical examples provided...
On the post: TV Network Execs Contemplate Going To Court To Say Skipping Commercials Is Illegal
I went off all forms of broadcast video years ago...
Before TV elected to cease to exist for me, I had not watched a real-time show for years. My primary use of the VCR was commercial-skipping. I would tape shows, then blow past the ads when watching them.
Every now and then I'll be visiting friends and see the horrible cesspit that TV has become. I expect that my current tube-display TV will never die because it gets so little use. The only reason I have a digital broadcast converter is for news and weather emergencies. I think I used it once last june when my U-Verse went out for an hour due to severe weather and I wanted to see how bad things were.
I simply do not put up with ads any more. I stopped listening to radio and now burn CDs for my car CD player (no easy way to interface an MP3 player, but the book lied when it said burned discs wouldn't work). I've let my various magazine subscriptions lapse. I've got Trueblock Plus installed (Adblock Plus went to the dark side in allowing "unobtrusive" ads, {no such thing} while you can change this, it is reset with each update, at least it was when I gave up on it), and I even have an ad-blocker installed on my Android phone.
I don't put up with the rubbish on DVDs, either. After some tinkering, I can skip anything, no matter what the disc wants.
Make things annoying and I'll work around the annoyance. Make it too hard to avoid the annoyance and I just stop dealing with the things entirely.
If you want my money, make it worth my while. I can always find somewhere else to spend it, or I can not spend at all in some categories.
On the post: Google Maps Exodus Continues As Wikipedia Mobile Apps Switch To OpenStreetMap
Re: Streetview
Provided that they could deal with the data traffic, OSM could crowdsource the streetview process. I could easily take pictures of both sides of the street that I am on, for the whole block, in about 10 minutes. The full panoramic process might not be manageable, but I could easily do a series of 8-compass-point shots of streets in my area.
How someone could stitch all this together, that I'm not sure about, but getting a reasonable amount of data should not be that difficult.
On the post: Captain's Prerogative: CBS Suddenly Decides To Block Fan-Created Star Trek Show Despite Past Support
Math is hard, isn't it?
To be 60 years old, it would have to have been written 14 years before I was born, and I watched Star Trek in first run.
Next >>