The last time I had to enter a "secret answer", the site prevented me from using non-alphabetic characters in the answer. That meant no symbols, numbers, or even spaces.
So, it seems your solution is not universally applicable:(
I bought a Civic Hybrid (we need a back seat for the baby's car seat). It gets pretty good mileage - 37 city, 42 highway, in my experience (not quite what the EPA estimates were, at 40 city, 45 highway, but who expects that?).
Unfortunately, Washington State will not let me register the car (which I purchased in Utah last month before I moved) as a Hybrid. Why? Because, according to the representative I spoke with on the phone, they only consider cars that get 50 mpg city to be hybrids, regardless of whether said car is actually a hybrid.
According to the Toyota website, not even the Prius qualifies under that requirement (getting 48 city, 51 highway), but Washington's DMV lists the Prius and the Honda Insight as eligible hybrids. (Note that the Honda Insight doesn't meet that requirement either, getting 40 city, 43 highway.)
I look forward to when most cars on the road get better gas mileage than me, too; but in the meantime, I would appreciate it if states got their act together.
How easy is it to edit, publish and print photographs from a camera without needing to buy some expensive, hard to learn software, if it exists at all to run under Linux?
Google's Picasa does this quite well, and is freely available for Linux. My wife uses it (in its Windows flavor) for posting pictures from our digital camera to the Internet.
As for video, it's not something I've looked in to very much. Brasero will burn movie files to DVD; if all that is required is copying a video file from a digital video camera to a DVD, then the functionality is there, and Brasero is pretty intuitive. If editing is necessary, I'm unaware of any video editors.
Yes, any Mac will do this out of the box. Keep in mind that you're paying a significant amount more than you would for equivalent hardware from somewhere else; go ahead and claim that Mac buyers get the capabilities "without having to purchase additional software", but that several hundred dollar price hike is paying for something...
I agree, but I think we should be careful to place blame where blame belongs (and in this case, the blame lies with the developers of that particular quilting software, not with Linux).
I'm not saying Linux doesn't have shortcomings; I'm simply saying that "Linux can't run this obscure Windows-only quilting program" is not one of them.
What kind of thing would I consider a shortcoming? "Linux doesn't have office software." Or maybe, "Linux has serious issues with sound cards" (that one's true as often as not).
Edge cases do not make shortcomings. It might be a shortcoming if a statistically significant number of users needed that quilting program; however, I doubt that is the case.
You may as well say that one shortcoming of a Geo Metro is that its engine can't be used to drive a Chevy Suburban. The Geo Metro may have shortcomings, but "its engine cannot push an SUV" is not one of them - that would be an edge case, something that very, very few people would try to do.
Edge cases aren't good examples of shortcomings, they're good examples of edge cases.
I use the "Tree Style Tab" firefox extension, which allows me to put the tab list on the side of the window, and optionally supports grouping tabs in a heirarchy based on how I opened those tabs. For example, clicking a link in this article would open a tab "below" (as a child to) the tab containing this article.
Basically there's no reason for them to waste time doing this, as it has already been done.
I'm reminded of a time in high school when, while eating lunch with my friend Clint, the following occurred within a 20-second span:
*Steve C walks by* Me: "Hey Steve." *Steve F walks by* Me: "Hey Steve." *Steve S walks by* Me: "Hey Steve." *Clint stares at me with an eyebrow raised*
I have noticed that with few exceptions, the people who would make good politicians - that is, the people who actually know things about relevant issues - are drawn to professions that would actually earn real money. For example, how many computer programmers do you know who have run for office?
Almost any programmer worth his salt is going to be earning a lot more money programming than he could in public office - it's irrelevant whether his knowledge would be directly applicable to laws that would be passed during his term.
If we want smart people in office examining our laws, we need to pay them what they're worth.
Incidentally, my wife watched that movie yesterday (it somehow ended up at the top of our Netflix queue).
There is one particular graph (generated from Antarctic ice cores) that covers tens of thousands of years, and shows temperature and CO2 content during that time. There is an obvious and definite cycle on that graph, as he points out.
Anyway, "tens of thousands of years" is a little more than 300 years...
Given that, I still think his conclusions aren't supported by the data.
If you compare the cost of "buy the DNC list" with the cost of "buy a fancy scanner with a suitable feeder, scan and ocr the spineless phone book, and write software to take the OCR'd text and properly insert the data into a database", I'm guessing the first option turns out to be cheaper.
When I took inbound calls for DirecTV, our raises were based on average call time and calls per hour, among other things. I had a better-than-average call time, but it would have been lower without the people who took five or six minutes to run downstairs to see if they were getting a signal in the basement yet. Sometimes I wondered if they forgot they were on the phone and started watching TV...
Anyway, that's inbound, not outbound, but I'd assume raises (or at least not-getting-fired) would be based on the same thing in the outbound calling world.
I'm reminded of the episode of Stargate: SG-1 I watched this morning. It's the fourth- or third-to-last episode of season 10. Vala's dad had tickets to something "really hard to get tickets for", so when he disappeared, Teal'c took the tickets and went. When he entered, the room was a small movie theater completely filled with women.
That particular scene was maybe 20 seconds long. I'm pretty sure the word "vagina" was repeated 15 times...
Anyway, it's not necessary that "penis" or "vagina" be obscene; it's enough that they're words that make many people uncomfortable.
Caller ID is *not* standard for cell phones. It should be, but it's not.
All cell phones do is tell you the incoming number, or "Withheld" if the number was blocked by the dialer (as with *69).
(Obviously if the number is in your address book most cell phones will display the name you've entered, but that's completely independent of the Caller ID system.)
As mentioned by others, there are legitimate reasons for the caller ID to show a number other than the originating number.
For example, DirecTV (to use a company I've worked for as an example) would want 800-DIRECTV to show up on Caller ID rather than whatever the outbound number of their call center is - because outbound numbers at the call center don't take incoming calls, and that could cause confusion.
A simple solution would be to require phone companies to prevent caller ID spoofing, as you describe, but allow legitimate companies to pay to register alternate numbers to show up on the caller ID; however, this puts a serious burden on phone companies to verify the legitimacy of applicants, and they probably wouldn't want to do it unless the price were sufficiently high. That price might be high enough to be a significant burden to smaller businesses.
We were sort of off-topic, talking about telemarketers in general rather than the car warranty scam that the FTC is taking out.
I received several calls from this car warranty scammer. The message goes something like this:
"This is your second and final warning that your car's warranty is about to expire. If you want to renew the warranty, press 1 to speak with a customer service agent."
I pressed 1 on two separate occasions (deliberately, to figure out the source of the scam; note that my car is 1 month old and cannot possibly be out of warranty). The first time, someone answered but hung up before I could say anything. The second time nobody answered.
I was one of the 30,000 people who reported the scam to the FCC; I noted on my report that I know of at least four cell phones that had received one or more calls from the scammer (remember, cold-calling a cell phone is illegal in the United States).
So... I'm familiar with the scam in question, I was just being a bit more general in my comments regarding the Do Not Call registry.
No, you have a valid point. However, the DNC list is already provided in an easy-to-use database format. The phone book, as far as I am aware, is only provided as a hard copy. Good luck getting someone to enter all the numbers for you. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)
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The last time I had to enter a "secret answer", the site prevented me from using non-alphabetic characters in the answer. That meant no symbols, numbers, or even spaces.
So, it seems your solution is not universally applicable :(
I bought a Civic Hybrid (we need a back seat for the baby's car seat). It gets pretty good mileage - 37 city, 42 highway, in my experience (not quite what the EPA estimates were, at 40 city, 45 highway, but who expects that?).
Unfortunately, Washington State will not let me register the car (which I purchased in Utah last month before I moved) as a Hybrid. Why? Because, according to the representative I spoke with on the phone, they only consider cars that get 50 mpg city to be hybrids, regardless of whether said car is actually a hybrid.
According to the Toyota website, not even the Prius qualifies under that requirement (getting 48 city, 51 highway), but Washington's DMV lists the Prius and the Honda Insight as eligible hybrids. (Note that the Honda Insight doesn't meet that requirement either, getting 40 city, 43 highway.)
I look forward to when most cars on the road get better gas mileage than me, too; but in the meantime, I would appreciate it if states got their act together.
How easy is it to edit, publish and print photographs from a camera without needing to buy some expensive, hard to learn software, if it exists at all to run under Linux?
Google's Picasa does this quite well, and is freely available for Linux. My wife uses it (in its Windows flavor) for posting pictures from our digital camera to the Internet.
As for video, it's not something I've looked in to very much. Brasero will burn movie files to DVD; if all that is required is copying a video file from a digital video camera to a DVD, then the functionality is there, and Brasero is pretty intuitive. If editing is necessary, I'm unaware of any video editors.
Yes, any Mac will do this out of the box. Keep in mind that you're paying a significant amount more than you would for equivalent hardware from somewhere else; go ahead and claim that Mac buyers get the capabilities "without having to purchase additional software", but that several hundred dollar price hike is paying for something...
I agree, but I think we should be careful to place blame where blame belongs (and in this case, the blame lies with the developers of that particular quilting software, not with Linux).
I'm not saying Linux doesn't have shortcomings; I'm simply saying that "Linux can't run this obscure Windows-only quilting program" is not one of them.
What kind of thing would I consider a shortcoming? "Linux doesn't have office software." Or maybe, "Linux has serious issues with sound cards" (that one's true as often as not).
Edge cases do not make shortcomings. It might be a shortcoming if a statistically significant number of users needed that quilting program; however, I doubt that is the case.
You may as well say that one shortcoming of a Geo Metro is that its engine can't be used to drive a Chevy Suburban. The Geo Metro may have shortcomings, but "its engine cannot push an SUV" is not one of them - that would be an edge case, something that very, very few people would try to do.
Edge cases aren't good examples of shortcomings, they're good examples of edge cases.
I would hardly call "needing Windows to run an obscure quilting application" a shortcoming of Linux.
I use the "Tree Style Tab" firefox extension, which allows me to put the tab list on the side of the window, and optionally supports grouping tabs in a heirarchy based on how I opened those tabs. For example, clicking a link in this article would open a tab "below" (as a child to) the tab containing this article.
Basically there's no reason for them to waste time doing this, as it has already been done.
I'm reminded of a time in high school when, while eating lunch with my friend Clint, the following occurred within a 20-second span:
*Steve C walks by*
Me: "Hey Steve."
*Steve F walks by*
Me: "Hey Steve."
*Steve S walks by*
Me: "Hey Steve."
*Clint stares at me with an eyebrow raised*
I half expected my uncle Steve to walk by next.
I guess Steve was a poor choice for my example.
I have noticed that with few exceptions, the people who would make good politicians - that is, the people who actually know things about relevant issues - are drawn to professions that would actually earn real money. For example, how many computer programmers do you know who have run for office?
Almost any programmer worth his salt is going to be earning a lot more money programming than he could in public office - it's irrelevant whether his knowledge would be directly applicable to laws that would be passed during his term.
If we want smart people in office examining our laws, we need to pay them what they're worth.
Incidentally, my wife watched that movie yesterday (it somehow ended up at the top of our Netflix queue).
There is one particular graph (generated from Antarctic ice cores) that covers tens of thousands of years, and shows temperature and CO2 content during that time. There is an obvious and definite cycle on that graph, as he points out.
Anyway, "tens of thousands of years" is a little more than 300 years...
Given that, I still think his conclusions aren't supported by the data.
If you compare the cost of "buy the DNC list" with the cost of "buy a fancy scanner with a suitable feeder, scan and ocr the spineless phone book, and write software to take the OCR'd text and properly insert the data into a database", I'm guessing the first option turns out to be cheaper.
For me it was always the second and final warning.
When I took inbound calls for DirecTV, our raises were based on average call time and calls per hour, among other things. I had a better-than-average call time, but it would have been lower without the people who took five or six minutes to run downstairs to see if they were getting a signal in the basement yet. Sometimes I wondered if they forgot they were on the phone and started watching TV...
Anyway, that's inbound, not outbound, but I'd assume raises (or at least not-getting-fired) would be based on the same thing in the outbound calling world.
I'd do this myself, except we don't have a landline, only cell phones.
That happened to the US's Do Not Call list as well, so it's not just Canada.
I filed electronically and got a reply from the FCC both electronically and via snail-mail. I don't know why.
I'm reminded of the episode of Stargate: SG-1 I watched this morning. It's the fourth- or third-to-last episode of season 10. Vala's dad had tickets to something "really hard to get tickets for", so when he disappeared, Teal'c took the tickets and went. When he entered, the room was a small movie theater completely filled with women.
That particular scene was maybe 20 seconds long. I'm pretty sure the word "vagina" was repeated 15 times...
Anyway, it's not necessary that "penis" or "vagina" be obscene; it's enough that they're words that make many people uncomfortable.
, or if your TV just turned on by itself to show a commercial.
I *really* hope Comcast and friends aren't reading this.
Something tells me that scammers will not remove your number from their robodialers just because you were rude to them...
Caller ID is *not* standard for cell phones. It should be, but it's not.
All cell phones do is tell you the incoming number, or "Withheld" if the number was blocked by the dialer (as with *69).
(Obviously if the number is in your address book most cell phones will display the name you've entered, but that's completely independent of the Caller ID system.)
Right... *that* could never be abused.
*ring*
You: "Hello?"
Caller: "Hey, it's Steve"
You: 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
As mentioned by others, there are legitimate reasons for the caller ID to show a number other than the originating number.
For example, DirecTV (to use a company I've worked for as an example) would want 800-DIRECTV to show up on Caller ID rather than whatever the outbound number of their call center is - because outbound numbers at the call center don't take incoming calls, and that could cause confusion.
A simple solution would be to require phone companies to prevent caller ID spoofing, as you describe, but allow legitimate companies to pay to register alternate numbers to show up on the caller ID; however, this puts a serious burden on phone companies to verify the legitimacy of applicants, and they probably wouldn't want to do it unless the price were sufficiently high. That price might be high enough to be a significant burden to smaller businesses.
We were sort of off-topic, talking about telemarketers in general rather than the car warranty scam that the FTC is taking out.
I received several calls from this car warranty scammer. The message goes something like this:
"This is your second and final warning that your car's warranty is about to expire. If you want to renew the warranty, press 1 to speak with a customer service agent."
I pressed 1 on two separate occasions (deliberately, to figure out the source of the scam; note that my car is 1 month old and cannot possibly be out of warranty). The first time, someone answered but hung up before I could say anything. The second time nobody answered.
I was one of the 30,000 people who reported the scam to the FCC; I noted on my report that I know of at least four cell phones that had received one or more calls from the scammer (remember, cold-calling a cell phone is illegal in the United States).
So... I'm familiar with the scam in question, I was just being a bit more general in my comments regarding the Do Not Call registry.
No, you have a valid point. However, the DNC list is already provided in an easy-to-use database format. The phone book, as far as I am aware, is only provided as a hard copy. Good luck getting someone to enter all the numbers for you. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)