Check out PacSafe luggage. They carry a large variety of baggage that is designed to be locked and secured while you aren't tending to the bag. Their main compartments are usually an aircraft-cable mesh bag with "drawstring" made of thicker,studier cable. The drawstring can be pulled tight, padlocked closed, and the extra length of cable can be looped back to be padlocked to a light pole, secure railing, or even just something heavy to prevent it being stolen without bolt cutters. The cable mesh is covered in fabric and even padded to look discreet and protect belongings. I've used one for a couple of years, and it provides me peace of mind when I travel to places like Brazil.
I am really looking forward to 4K TV becoming popular, and I don't watch much TV...
I am so sick of having my computer monitors restricted in vertical resolution by the TV industry. Ten years ago, we used to have lovely 1600x1200 laptop screens, and now you can hardly find a screen that is larger 1366x768, and if you do, it's a 27" external monitor that only gets you to 1080...
This is a small step toward actually having an upgrade in "standard" screen resolutions.
Which version of Android is most preferred by users?
How would anyone know? The decision is made by the service provider, not the user.
This is no less true with Apple, who is the "service provider" for iOS, and pushes updates to users just the same. If you looked at Tim Cook's "adoption rate" chart, it followed a natural log curve almost identical to that of a capacitor charging, rather than something that relied on pure sociological factors...most everyone simply tapped "OK".
In auto racing, cars are often taken to vibration rigs to analyze damping and suspension packages. There are a LOT of numbers spit out, and ultimately reduced to: Pitch and Heave coefficients, Hub Natural Frequencies, and something called CPL, or Contact Patch Load (Variation), which is a number that defines how much the tire is working or "being worked" for grip. Those numbers can be EASILY be reduced by a defined value (like 60%) if proper active tuning is applied.
Active systems were banned from motorsport in the 90's in order to reduce cost and prevent computer failures that could be catastrophic, but I'm sure by now active suspensions would be cheaper in annual cost than the amount of vibration testing and damper development that is done today by every team...
Think back to the TV shows of the '50's and '60's. We had an Astronaut/physics guy as the main character in I dream of Jeanie, A senior marketing executive as the husband of a witch in Bewitched, and many many others. The key factor was, they were all intelligent.
The 50's and 60's also had TV shows about a bus driver (Ralph Kramden, "Honeymooners"), a night club singer's wife (Lucy Ricardo, "I Love Lucy"), and the owner of a talking horse (Wilbur, "Mr. Ed"). The main characters were often in encounters that exemplified their stupidity or naivete.
Today, we have popular TV shows about theoretical physicists ("Big Bang Theory") and electro-mechanical designers that build clever, working projects ("Mythbusters").
Hindsight may be 20/20, but it is often rose-tinted as well...
Be careful how you use the term "American Baptists". The American Baptist Churches of the USA are a fairly liberal and ecumenical bunch that believe in religious freedom (and humility) better than Richard Stallman believes in software freedom (and humility).
There are other baptists sects in America that are considered stricter groups and might be more likely to fit your stereotype, so beware how you capitalize "American".
Sure we believe in God, and I won't deny there are some zealots among our ranks, but as a denomination, we believe in autonomy, and the members certainly cannot be categorized the way it's being used here.
The normal Hulu isn't going anywhere. Not with a lackluster deal like that!
Ah, this deal is NOT lackluster...you will suddenly see the quality of available shows on ""free" Hulu drop dramatically.
Everything of any worthwhile value to Hulu viewers (full episodes, latest episodes) will go to the "pay" side and the "free" side will be random short clips of "Differ'nt Strokes" and the episodes of "Punky Brewster" where the old man has another heart attack.
It reminds me of when our local grocery store started a "Discount Card" program that is now ubiquitous. Literally overnight as the program was implemented, prices around the store on many items TRIPLED without the Card!
Your savings was simply paying regular price, but now you add the privilege of being tracked by their database.
The "Old" Hulu will now be the "Pay" Hulu, so I think "Goodbye" is a fair term to use here.
Basically, this is similar to XFoil, which is the standard 2-D CFD software for beginning Aeronautical Engineers (after they made us write our own...in FORTRAN77).
Since it is not 3-D, it runs MUCH faster and lets them discover the basics of pressure over an airfoil, which is the important part of wing design. The details of taper, sweep, tip shape, twist, and such are a bit too much for a high-school project. Surface area and aspect ratio are the simplest and most important criteria for airplane design. These values can be calculated on paper after coefficients of lift and drag are generated.
Javafoil can be run stand-alone or in an applet. It's free, and fairly straightforward to use.
Best of luck. I'd be interested to hear how quickly they catch on to the concepts.
My guess is that pulsar timing is similar in concept to what happened when John Harrison when he tried making an accurate clock for determining longitude.
His early clocks just kept getting larger and more complex, but they were never able to achieve the needed accuracy on a moving, rocking ship for weeks on end.
His solution? He made an very SMALL clock, what amounts to a pocket watch, and was able to achieve accuracy in a variable environment.
Atoms are always going to be more consistent than a celestial object, because electrons can be less susceptible to external forces like aerodynamic drag, object imperfections and inconsistencies, impact bombardment, proximity of other similar objects, and the myriad other things that can affect rotation of an object larger than, say, a cat.
Sure, our "man-made" clocks are more accurate, but that is only because nature has better oscillators that we are capable of observing.
The largest challenge to openness stares us in the face every day, and nobody seems to notice: Much of our data is stored in proprietary servers controlled by private companies, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
While I cannot speak for Facebook and Twitter (nor do I speak through them because of my mistrust), but I do know that people at Google have noticed, which is why a team there has developed the Data Liberation Front.
I do have a couple of small problems with your comments, let's begin:
here we have a nugget of scientific observation
Well, we actually have TWO scientific observations that form a single inference, which if you remember your scientific method, is still capable of being fallible. I'm not making a statement either way on this one, just reminding you that this article is about an inference, not an observation.
political recrimination gets us nowhere. its cold in the house because someone left the window open? ok, so you're going to sit there and scream at each other over who opened the window? here's a new idea: how about someone demonstrating actual responsibility and instead actually stand the fuck up, walk over, and close the fucking window: NO MATTER WHO LEFT IT OPEN
OK, there's something here with which I agree, and something that bothers me about the current political climate. What the recent Copenhagen conference taught us was that, if we are all living in the same house, then it's OK for the "kids" to leave windows open because the "adults" are going to be adjusting the thermostat to compensate. The adults will also pay the now much higher utility bill, because the kids don't make as much money, and they do get chores done around the house the adults don't have time to get done, or are beneath them. The problem is, the adults don't like the fact that, because the kids' bedroom window is open, it's raining in the house and the carpet is getting ruined. But the adults still won't make the kids close their bedroom window, which is causing most of the thermostat problem anyway. Which leaves the adults going deep into debt to add expensive and complex add-ons to the adults' rooms in order to save on their utility bills...but it'll cost 10 years worth of utility bills to install the add-ons, and only saves 10% a month. Did I mention that the kids are complaining about the smell from the carpet, and that they'd like to sleep in the adults' room?
commence with the retarded partisan bickering anyway. meanwhile, us engineers will roll up our sleeves and will actually go and fix your fucking problem while you political assholes do nothing but bicker
more action, less "hot air"
Engineers will never be able to truly fix the problem, because a design can only work if it's implemented, and we have to convince the money man who, by the way, is VERY political, to make it happen. It's why communication is such an important part of the engineering curriculum...we have to be able to talk to various and diverse types of people to solve a problem. Think about how many "Ask Slashdot" articles involve how to properly provide the "hot air" to get the boss to sign off on an action...
It can't be Indiana...our government is so afraid of being different anymore they now only pass legislation that is requested or approved by the federal government. It's why we adopted Daylight Saving despite lack of public support. (The deciding vote came from a border-county representative whose constituency explicitly preferred year-round standard time. He was cajoled into changing his vote because of party politics, rather than respecting his choice to represent the people who elected him.)
I have memorized the 20/20 line of the standard eye exam chart. It's D-E-F-P-O-T-E-C. Does that mean they should hide it from the public so people like me can't "game" the system?
I believe id is using the web browser/plugin for a couple of reasons. First, they want to efficiently simplify the updating system. Once you login, it always checks and updates files in the plugin to make sure they're up to date. It will also update in-game ads use. Today, this is often done by yet another program to run in the background of your computer (jusched.exe comes to mind).
The second purpose is to unify the user experience. Since Quake Live is designed to be an on-line "community", they want the forums, chat boxes, user profiles/stats, and game searches to be in a single interface. Even if you play the game in full-screen, once your match is completed it takes you back to the "lobby" which is just a nice web page, complete with ads and instant updates.
It does seem silly on the face of it to think that the plugin is large enough to be a stand-alone download, but there are some legitimate business and technological reasons for making it the way they did.
A clever group at H-P made a scanner that when powered up while holding the "Scan" button and the SCSI address at zero would play Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". The motor's drive speed determined the pitch of the note played. I loved showing that one off to my friends that were lucky enough to own one, especially because I didn't.
I wonder why, after all these years, [Verizon] do[es]n't at least have a list of local LUGs to which they could direct Linux users. Had someone at least got her in touch with them, I bet the problems could have been resolved.
Wow, what a wonderful idea for a community/national non-profit; create a LUG technical support system that is approved or recommended by businesses. Buy a gOS machine from Wal-Mart? Call the enclosed 800 number to contact your nearest LUG, or call Wal-Mart and get the direct line in your area. "Operators are standing by!" I know much of the Linux community is either; (a)fixing their own machine, or (b)writing/updating software for everyone else's, but I'm sure there are some volunteers available to get folks like this at least STARTED on the right path.
I know there are for-profit systems like Shuttleworth's, but there MUST be room/money for this type of "pro-bono" work.
The mandated cut-off was also created to "encourage" stations to build on the new digital infrastructure. It's costing them millions per station for the transition, and they likely wouldn't do it if they knew they didn't have to.
The FCC knew more stations could fit into a smaller section of radio spectrum, so to move everyone over to digital would free up more frequencies. There is considerable pressure to find long-range spectra for new wireless technologies, and this is a major step in that direction.
Personally, I like my analog TV. No buffering, elegant failure mode, and less technology to interpret the signal. I do understand what they are trying to do, however, and I was impressed with reception in rural areas.
This is a very valid point, and one which I've been casually warning people about since I saw the movie Gattaca. Since then, I've developed a new saying:
Since when did farmers abide by a "work day" or a "work week"? Daylight Saving doesn't magically SAVE any amount of daylight, it doesn't change when the animals stir (like the rooster crow or the cows milking), nor the crop growing season.
DST is quite the opposite of a "stone age" concept, because DST requires a CLOCK.
Can you imagine shifting all the rocks at Stonehenge 15 degrees, twice a year?
For at least half the year, you cannot have it culminate at noon, as we lie to everyone with Daylight "Saving", telling them that 11:00 am is supposed to be noon, and you didn't REALLY go to work at 7am, because it's stupid to ask someone to go to work at 7am. It's 8am, because that what the government decided to call 7am during the summer (and spring, and most of fall, now).
But I digress. At one point, every town had a different time zone, because they WOULD set their clocks to solar noon, and since they were off by minutes, trains had a hard time creating and keeping track of schedules, so the government simplified everything by creating the standard time "zones" in which a single solar noon was sufficient for every location. Only the VERY few places now have the sun culminate at noon anymore, because we've associated an arbitrary designation of time.
In conclusion, keep UTC, and keep leap seconds, for all it matters. Time has nothing to do with our place in the universe anymore. It's as arbitrary as the lengths of the months.
(I do what my Standard Time back, though. I hate Daylight Saving in Indiana. We're between two time zones, so it was the BEST compromise for relating to the rest of the world. We could be two hours from PDT during the summer, putting us in much better touch with the West, but we're too far east to have the sun "set" at 4pm CST in the winter.)
I left Verizon and went with my wife's T-Mobile account for two reasons: the one you mentioned about Verizon closing out everything they can to squeeze money out of their customers, and T-Mobile's founding support of the Open Handset Alliance.
I completely agree. Any lawyer worth his or her salt, and any judge with a reasonable respect for Due Process, would have this evidence thrown out, along with evidence that was obtained as a result of the information obtained on the library's computers. This isn't "trash left on the curb" by someone, this is information that should have an expectation of privacy (unless, of course, there is an Agreement signed to use the computers in the Library that states any information can be saved and shared with the Authorities/used against you in a court of law). Our local library has a Policy Statement that must be agreed upon before you can use the computers and wireless access. I didn't even want to read what the terms were, as I fully expected it to not read in my favor.
Never trust "recommendations" from an "AI" that wants something from you (e.g. money). It will always recommend something that's beneficial for THEM, rather than yourself. The system, or at least the criteria upon which it is based, is there to sell more product to the customer with the least cost to them.
It's far cheaper to get the impulse purchase from an under-informed Pratchett fan by simply throwing out something from the "Pratchett" search engine than it is to actually maintain a carefully crafted database and weighted scale of your browsing (which is also difficult to build, because as soon as it becomes too good, we all think it's violating our privacy).
A responsible Capitalist would try to sell something from their current high-inventory stock, like the latest DVD releases, wouldn't they? The marketing has already been done for them...you're just looking for the outlet.
When it comes to advertising and marketing, all bets are off as to whether the "Intelligence" is adapting to you or controlling you.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out PacSafe luggage. They carry a large variety of baggage that is designed to be locked and secured while you aren't tending to the bag. Their main compartments are usually an aircraft-cable mesh bag with "drawstring" made of thicker,studier cable. The drawstring can be pulled tight, padlocked closed, and the extra length of cable can be looped back to be padlocked to a light pole, secure railing, or even just something heavy to prevent it being stolen without bolt cutters. The cable mesh is covered in fabric and even padded to look discreet and protect belongings. I've used one for a couple of years, and it provides me peace of mind when I travel to places like Brazil.
http://pacsafe.com/
I am really looking forward to 4K TV becoming popular, and I don't watch much TV...
I am so sick of having my computer monitors restricted in vertical resolution by the TV industry. Ten years ago, we used to have lovely 1600x1200 laptop screens, and now you can hardly find a screen that is larger 1366x768, and if you do, it's a 27" external monitor that only gets you to 1080...
This is a small step toward actually having an upgrade in "standard" screen resolutions.
Which version of Android is most preferred by users?
How would anyone know? The decision is made by the service provider, not the user.
This is no less true with Apple, who is the "service provider" for iOS, and pushes updates to users just the same. If you looked at Tim Cook's "adoption rate" chart, it followed a natural log curve almost identical to that of a capacitor charging, rather than something that relied on pure sociological factors...most everyone simply tapped "OK".
In auto racing, cars are often taken to vibration rigs to analyze damping and suspension packages. There are a LOT of numbers spit out, and ultimately reduced to: Pitch and Heave coefficients, Hub Natural Frequencies, and something called CPL, or Contact Patch Load (Variation), which is a number that defines how much the tire is working or "being worked" for grip. Those numbers can be EASILY be reduced by a defined value (like 60%) if proper active tuning is applied.
Active systems were banned from motorsport in the 90's in order to reduce cost and prevent computer failures that could be catastrophic, but I'm sure by now active suspensions would be cheaper in annual cost than the amount of vibration testing and damper development that is done today by every team...
Think back to the TV shows of the '50's and '60's. We had an Astronaut/physics guy as the main character in I dream of Jeanie, A senior marketing executive as the husband of a witch in Bewitched, and many many others. The key factor was, they were all intelligent.
The 50's and 60's also had TV shows about a bus driver (Ralph Kramden, "Honeymooners"), a night club singer's wife (Lucy Ricardo, "I Love Lucy"), and the owner of a talking horse (Wilbur, "Mr. Ed"). The main characters were often in encounters that exemplified their stupidity or naivete.
Today, we have popular TV shows about theoretical physicists ("Big Bang Theory") and electro-mechanical designers that build clever, working projects ("Mythbusters").
Hindsight may be 20/20, but it is often rose-tinted as well...
Be careful how you use the term "American Baptists". The American Baptist Churches of the USA are a fairly liberal and ecumenical bunch that believe in religious freedom (and humility) better than Richard Stallman believes in software freedom (and humility).
There are other baptists sects in America that are considered stricter groups and might be more likely to fit your stereotype, so beware how you capitalize "American".
Sure we believe in God, and I won't deny there are some zealots among our ranks, but as a denomination, we believe in autonomy, and the members certainly cannot be categorized the way it's being used here.
www.abc-usa.org ...if you're interested.
The normal Hulu isn't going anywhere. Not with a lackluster deal like that!
Ah, this deal is NOT lackluster...you will suddenly see the quality of available shows on ""free" Hulu drop dramatically.
Everything of any worthwhile value to Hulu viewers (full episodes, latest episodes) will go to the "pay" side and the "free" side will be random short clips of "Differ'nt Strokes" and the episodes of "Punky Brewster" where the old man has another heart attack.
It reminds me of when our local grocery store started a "Discount Card" program that is now ubiquitous. Literally overnight as the program was implemented, prices around the store on many items TRIPLED without the Card!
Your savings was simply paying regular price, but now you add the privilege of being tracked by their database.
The "Old" Hulu will now be the "Pay" Hulu, so I think "Goodbye" is a fair term to use here.
Basically, this is similar to XFoil, which is the standard 2-D CFD software for beginning Aeronautical Engineers (after they made us write our own...in FORTRAN77).
Since it is not 3-D, it runs MUCH faster and lets them discover the basics of pressure over an airfoil, which is the important part of wing design. The details of taper, sweep, tip shape, twist, and such are a bit too much for a high-school project. Surface area and aspect ratio are the simplest and most important criteria for airplane design. These values can be calculated on paper after coefficients of lift and drag are generated.
Javafoil can be run stand-alone or in an applet. It's free, and fairly straightforward to use.
Best of luck. I'd be interested to hear how quickly they catch on to the concepts.
http://www.mh-aerotools.de/airfoils/javafoil.htm
My guess is that pulsar timing is similar in concept to what happened when John Harrison when he tried making an accurate clock for determining longitude.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison
His early clocks just kept getting larger and more complex, but they were never able to achieve the needed accuracy on a moving, rocking ship for weeks on end.
His solution? He made an very SMALL clock, what amounts to a pocket watch, and was able to achieve accuracy in a variable environment.
Atoms are always going to be more consistent than a celestial object, because electrons can be less susceptible to external forces like aerodynamic drag, object imperfections and inconsistencies, impact bombardment, proximity of other similar objects, and the myriad other things that can affect rotation of an object larger than, say, a cat.
Sure, our "man-made" clocks are more accurate, but that is only because nature has better oscillators that we are capable of observing.
The largest challenge to openness stares us in the face every day, and nobody seems to notice: Much of our data is stored in proprietary servers controlled by private companies, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
While I cannot speak for Facebook and Twitter (nor do I speak through them because of my mistrust), but I do know that people at Google have noticed, which is why a team there has developed the Data Liberation Front.
Please check them out at: http://dataliberation.org/
To get you started, here is their mission statement:
Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.
I do have a couple of small problems with your comments, let's begin:
here we have a nugget of scientific observation
Well, we actually have TWO scientific observations that form a single inference, which if you remember your scientific method, is still capable of being fallible. I'm not making a statement either way on this one, just reminding you that this article is about an inference, not an observation.
political recrimination gets us nowhere. its cold in the house because someone left the window open? ok, so you're going to sit there and scream at each other over who opened the window? here's a new idea: how about someone demonstrating actual responsibility and instead actually stand the fuck up, walk over, and close the fucking window: NO MATTER WHO LEFT IT OPEN
OK, there's something here with which I agree, and something that bothers me about the current political climate. What the recent Copenhagen conference taught us was that, if we are all living in the same house, then it's OK for the "kids" to leave windows open because the "adults" are going to be adjusting the thermostat to compensate. The adults will also pay the now much higher utility bill, because the kids don't make as much money, and they do get chores done around the house the adults don't have time to get done, or are beneath them. The problem is, the adults don't like the fact that, because the kids' bedroom window is open, it's raining in the house and the carpet is getting ruined. But the adults still won't make the kids close their bedroom window, which is causing most of the thermostat problem anyway. Which leaves the adults going deep into debt to add expensive and complex add-ons to the adults' rooms in order to save on their utility bills...but it'll cost 10 years worth of utility bills to install the add-ons, and only saves 10% a month. Did I mention that the kids are complaining about the smell from the carpet, and that they'd like to sleep in the adults' room?
commence with the retarded partisan bickering anyway. meanwhile, us engineers will roll up our sleeves and will actually go and fix your fucking problem while you political assholes do nothing but bicker
more action, less "hot air"
Engineers will never be able to truly fix the problem, because a design can only work if it's implemented, and we have to convince the money man who, by the way, is VERY political, to make it happen. It's why communication is such an important part of the engineering curriculum...we have to be able to talk to various and diverse types of people to solve a problem. Think about how many "Ask Slashdot" articles involve how to properly provide the "hot air" to get the boss to sign off on an action...
It can't be Indiana...our government is so afraid of being different anymore they now only pass legislation that is requested or approved by the federal government. It's why we adopted Daylight Saving despite lack of public support. (The deciding vote came from a border-county representative whose constituency explicitly preferred year-round standard time. He was cajoled into changing his vote because of party politics, rather than respecting his choice to represent the people who elected him.)
Which is worse; pi=4, or 7am=8am?
I have memorized the 20/20 line of the standard eye exam chart. It's D-E-F-P-O-T-E-C. Does that mean they should hide it from the public so people like me can't "game" the system?
I believe id is using the web browser/plugin for a couple of reasons. First, they want to efficiently simplify the updating system. Once you login, it always checks and updates files in the plugin to make sure they're up to date. It will also update in-game ads use. Today, this is often done by yet another program to run in the background of your computer (jusched.exe comes to mind).
The second purpose is to unify the user experience. Since Quake Live is designed to be an on-line "community", they want the forums, chat boxes, user profiles/stats, and game searches to be in a single interface. Even if you play the game in full-screen, once your match is completed it takes you back to the "lobby" which is just a nice web page, complete with ads and instant updates.
It does seem silly on the face of it to think that the plugin is large enough to be a stand-alone download, but there are some legitimate business and technological reasons for making it the way they did.
A clever group at H-P made a scanner that when powered up while holding the "Scan" button and the SCSI address at zero would play Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". The motor's drive speed determined the pitch of the note played. I loved showing that one off to my friends that were lucky enough to own one, especially because I didn't.
I wonder why, after all these years, [Verizon] do[es]n't at least have a list of local LUGs to which they could direct Linux users. Had someone at least got her in touch with them, I bet the problems could have been resolved.
Wow, what a wonderful idea for a community/national non-profit; create a LUG technical support system that is approved or recommended by businesses. Buy a gOS machine from Wal-Mart? Call the enclosed 800 number to contact your nearest LUG, or call Wal-Mart and get the direct line in your area. "Operators are standing by!" I know much of the Linux community is either; (a)fixing their own machine, or (b)writing/updating software for everyone else's, but I'm sure there are some volunteers available to get folks like this at least STARTED on the right path.
I know there are for-profit systems like Shuttleworth's, but there MUST be room/money for this type of "pro-bono" work.
The mandated cut-off was also created to "encourage" stations to build on the new digital infrastructure. It's costing them millions per station for the transition, and they likely wouldn't do it if they knew they didn't have to.
The FCC knew more stations could fit into a smaller section of radio spectrum, so to move everyone over to digital would free up more frequencies. There is considerable pressure to find long-range spectra for new wireless technologies, and this is a major step in that direction.
Personally, I like my analog TV. No buffering, elegant failure mode, and less technology to interpret the signal. I do understand what they are trying to do, however, and I was impressed with reception in rural areas.
This is a very valid point, and one which I've been casually warning people about since I saw the movie Gattaca. Since then, I've developed a new saying:
Guns don't kill people, databases do.
Since when did farmers abide by a "work day" or a "work week"? Daylight Saving doesn't magically SAVE any amount of daylight, it doesn't change when the animals stir (like the rooster crow or the cows milking), nor the crop growing season.
DST is quite the opposite of a "stone age" concept, because DST requires a CLOCK.
Can you imagine shifting all the rocks at Stonehenge 15 degrees, twice a year?
There are many different products that base their name on the amount of development time, rather than the release version. This is why we have:
Formula 409
WD 40
Heinz 57
Nylon 66
Basing the release version on the number of internal revisions has been appropriate for a long time.
For at least half the year, you cannot have it culminate at noon, as we lie to everyone with Daylight "Saving", telling them that 11:00 am is supposed to be noon, and you didn't REALLY go to work at 7am, because it's stupid to ask someone to go to work at 7am. It's 8am, because that what the government decided to call 7am during the summer (and spring, and most of fall, now).
But I digress. At one point, every town had a different time zone, because they WOULD set their clocks to solar noon, and since they were off by minutes, trains had a hard time creating and keeping track of schedules, so the government simplified everything by creating the standard time "zones" in which a single solar noon was sufficient for every location. Only the VERY few places now have the sun culminate at noon anymore, because we've associated an arbitrary designation of time.
In conclusion, keep UTC, and keep leap seconds, for all it matters. Time has nothing to do with our place in the universe anymore. It's as arbitrary as the lengths of the months.
(I do what my Standard Time back, though. I hate Daylight Saving in Indiana. We're between two time zones, so it was the BEST compromise for relating to the rest of the world. We could be two hours from PDT during the summer, putting us in much better touch with the West, but we're too far east to have the sun "set" at 4pm CST in the winter.)
On the contrary, Verizon has intentionally shunned Android and went with the LiMo Foundation.
References?
Here.
The other articles you likely read are now old.
I left Verizon and went with my wife's T-Mobile account for two reasons: the one you mentioned about Verizon closing out everything they can to squeeze money out of their customers, and T-Mobile's founding support of the Open Handset Alliance.
I completely agree. Any lawyer worth his or her salt, and any judge with a reasonable respect for Due Process, would have this evidence thrown out, along with evidence that was obtained as a result of the information obtained on the library's computers.
This isn't "trash left on the curb" by someone, this is information that should have an expectation of privacy (unless, of course, there is an Agreement signed to use the computers in the Library that states any information can be saved and shared with the Authorities/used against you in a court of law).
Our local library has a Policy Statement that must be agreed upon before you can use the computers and wireless access. I didn't even want to read what the terms were, as I fully expected it to not read in my favor.
Never trust "recommendations" from an "AI" that wants something from you (e.g. money). It will always recommend something that's beneficial for THEM, rather than yourself. The system, or at least the criteria upon which it is based, is there to sell more product to the customer with the least cost to them.
It's far cheaper to get the impulse purchase from an under-informed Pratchett fan by simply throwing out something from the "Pratchett" search engine than it is to actually maintain a carefully crafted database and weighted scale of your browsing (which is also difficult to build, because as soon as it becomes too good, we all think it's violating our privacy).
A responsible Capitalist would try to sell something from their current high-inventory stock, like the latest DVD releases, wouldn't they? The marketing has already been done for them...you're just looking for the outlet.
When it comes to advertising and marketing, all bets are off as to whether the "Intelligence" is adapting to you or controlling you.
Done and done.