... was the lack of notification that this change was taking place. The Register article I read about this social networking "feature" stated that users had been notified by email on June 23rd. Since I hadn't cleaned up my email for a couple of months, I decided to see if there was an email from LinkedIn telling me about this that I might not have paid close enough attention to. Nope. Nothing on 06/23 or anything for several days on either side of that date. I had the typical emails about updates to the groups I am a member of but nothing from LinkedIn telling me that there had been any changes made that would make me want to check my profile settings. That is the sort of activity by a web site that really pisses me off. It'll be a cold day in Hell before I set up ticklers to remind me to go to each and every web site where I have a user ID to see if the legalese in the Term of Service have changed recently. I'll delete the accounts before I do that.
"That, and perhaps the fact that he's no threat - his personal best on any distance (100m, 200m, 400m) is about 2 seconds behind the World Record."
I saw him run a race on TV a few weeks ago and was underwhelmed. He finished 6th or 7th (in an 8-man field) -- and over a second behind the winner -- against a field that all seemed to have had a bad day.
... hardly seems to have anyone playing in it. When my daughters were still small enough to want to play in playgrounds, they never wanted to go there very often. I thought the equipment there was a little on the boring side and there wasn't much of it. It was very padded so that, I suppose, you would be a little less likely to get a bad bump.
The playgrounds at the schools in the neighborhoods where I grew up were not much more than some swings and a set of metal pipes bolted together to form monkey bars , etc., and some other structures that I don't recall the name of any more. The sort of things that, nowadays, would probably make a school administrator run away screaming due the insurance liability exposure. But in those days, if a kid banged his head on the monkey bars he went home, got patched up, and learned a lesson ("Well, that's something I shouldn't do again".) I never once heard about anyone getting seriously hurt -- not anything worse than a bang on the head or a bloody nose -- from playing on that equipment.
Now we don't send our kid out on their bike unless they are wearing enough safety gear to pass the safety inspection at a motorcycle race even though the biggest risk to a kid on a bike is likely the housewife roaring down the street on her way to the supermarket with a cellphone glued to her ear and not anything that the kid would come in contact with should they fall.
I've noticed that there seem to be more bad drivers out on the roads since there were airbags, antilock brakes, and all the other so-called safety devices in the cars. I still get a little bit of a kick out seeing all the cars stuck off the side of the road in the winter after their drivers thought that antilock brakes would let them drive 10 MPH over the speed limit on slippery roads. (And I get more than a little nervous when these same bozos tailgate me on those slippery roads.)
I was thinking the same thing. Hoss wasn't, after all, the Cartwright most likely to be admitted to Mensa.
But to get back on-topic... One wonders what selection process that went into the decision to buy software that doesn't quite do what is going to be needed when the shooting starts. Maybe the Marine brass thinks that computers work like they did in Star Trek TNG: just write a quick subroutine to perform a miracle when the mortar shells and RPGs start falling?
"I can't find their terms of service, but would be surprised if they don't specify that the system is not to be manipulated or removed until it is paid in full."
I doubt there's anything in the ToS that prevents you from taking a small piece of duct or electrician's tape and covering the damned webcam lens. Voila! No webcam spying possible. If they want to complain that all the webcam pictures are coming out black I'd just tell 'em that "Yeah, I always work with the lights turned out."
I think we've all done some sort of work on napkins (or envelopes). It's pretty much inevitable unless you or your coworkers are in the habit of carrying a notebook with you at all times.
The worst thing I ever had to deal with where napkins were an important form of documentation was a large commercial database server whose administration I inherited many years ago. The "official" documentation consisted of a very badly formatted -- and largely incomplete --- document. It could actually barely even be called documentation; more like an outline that the author never finished fleshing out. The real documentation was a manilla folder full of scraps of paper --- cafeteria napkins, phone message pad sheets, even cash register receipts --- with little snippets of info scrawled on them. Whenever someone decided to rag on me about late documentation, I'd whip out that folder and threaten to give them something like I originally received. (That shut 'em up fast.)
"I read the labels because I want to avoid high fructose corn syrup. , . .
All this extra sweet corn syrup is a major contributor to the obesity epidemic in the US. It is most likely worse then cane sugar for health, although the lobbyists and TV propaganda commercials denying any problems are now in full swing."
Good luck with that. I've been trying to avoid HFCS for several years and find that it's in everything... not just sodas. Hell, it's in stuff that you would think even needed any additional sweetener or any sweetener at all. It's almost as though it's added by default. (I've seen stuff with HFCS and salt in it. Geez, make up your mind. Is it supposed to be sweet? Or salty?) Lately it seems that, if it comes in a box, it's got HFCS in it.
IMHO (caveat: I'm no dietitian), a good idea for a diet would be to avoid everything that contains HFCS in it. Could be a good start on tackling that obesity epidemic. If the public schools were to reintroduce Home-Ec classes -- for everyone, not just the girls -- so that people knew how to cook their own food and stay away from the pre-packaged crap.
(The use of HFCS reminds me of the time when I consulted for major food manufacturer -- you've heard of them, I guarantee it -- doing a conversion of a huge number of files that contained the recipes that they used in all their product. You wouldn't believe the number of them that contained "hydrogenated vegetable oil" as a basic ingredient; and a lot of it. Seeing that really grossed me out and while I haven't gone all "slow food" -- at least not yet -- I definitely started eating healthier.)
"That's cake over all but really awful copper. And they don't have THAT yet."
Hmm... I seem to recall seeing, for the past decade or so, a charge on my monthly phone bill so that the phone company could be installing that rural broadband. Where did that money go? (Probably to aid in the reconsolidation of the former Baby Bells.)
"Frankly, for the price in the article, somebody was being robbed blind."
Right. Just who was doing the installation? Halliburton?
Yeah... I find it interesting that I had to scroll down this far in the comments to find someone who thought that maybe taking a whole week off from being connected to the internet would be that terrible. I mean, really, how freaking egotistical (or, hopefully, merely insecure) do you have to be to think that the world wouldn't be able to survive without reading this your blog posts. Tell the world you'll be away for a week. The world will understand.
"Does such a tool exist or does the RIAA seriously expect me to sift through 60 GB of music, remember which are pirated, and delete them by hand?"
No. The RIAA expects you to delete all 60GB of music and purchase new copies that have received their official blessing. That's the only way they can be sure your music collection is legal. (And they're the only ones who matter, after all.)
"Why do we need to test each device? GSM devices only emit in specific frequency ranges. All of them emit in the same set of frequency ranges in the same way. Same with any other class of device.
Planes are allowed to fly over populated areas where digital and analogue TV signals are being broadcast, CB radio, digital radio, FM, and AM radio, electricity substations, telephone masts, as well as signals from satellites above, not to mention lightning, all kicking out EM noise. Surely those all interfere with the sensors.
Planes are allowed to fly over populated areas? Heh heh.
Most broadcast antennae are not transmitting vertically. To do so would be a waste of transmitter power. So those antennae are not radiating much power into a place where they would interfere with avionics.
Plus, it is not necessary for something to be transmitting in a frequency band that is reserved for aviation. The combination of signals in space can generate harmonics in the front end of navigation and landing system receivers that can create havoc with those systems. (At this point the plane is low enough where it is completely immersed in the signals being radiated by the radio station antennae sprinkled around the city you're landing in.) I worked on a project back in the '80s that neatly demonstrated that and resulted in a way to predict whether or not existing and/or proposed FM transmitters would create interference that would disrupt the landing system receivers (ILS). (I was the one who turned the software into something that would fit on a floppy and run on a PC. So don't ask me about all the math involved. I do have a few choice words about what a pain it was to work with MS FORTRAN, though. [grin]) The FAA was enthusiastic about the resulting software tool. The broadcasters? As you can easily imagine, not so much when they were told that their request to increase transmitter power or to build a new tower was rejected due to the interference to protected airspace. I strongly suspect that those who are so quick to pooh pooh the effect that PEDs have on avionics have a big financial interest in their not being banned. (Just like the cellular industry will never accept that their products could be causing brain cancer.)
I still have fond memories of the time I loaded Windows 1.0 on a Zenith PC that someone at work wasn't using any more. Once the installation floppies had all been loaded, I called in my boss and we laughed and laughed. I still recall how much my sides hurt from all that laughing.
It's also why so many people buy and eat food that is bad for them. Why so many think they have to spend upwards of $70 for television or a similar amount for phone service. It's new! It's cool! You must have it! Now! Don't be the last one on your block to get it!
Most U.S. corporations that are big enough to hire decent accounting firms and lawyers are already paying far less than 35% in taxes. By some accounts, the average U.S. corporation is paying taxes in the area of 7%. I sure as hell wouldn't mind being taxed at that rate.
Taxes have been lowered on the so-called job creators for ten years now. Where are all the jobs that those lowered taxes were supposed to have created? Any why were there more jobs when taxes were much higher? (Fifty years or so ago, the top tax rate was around 90% and you'd have to work really hard to say that American manufacturing was suffering under those tax rates.) To bring manufacturing jobs back into the U.S., something has to be done to make it economically undesirable to move them overseas. High oil prices do that to some degree but tariffs would do a much better job of that.
My question would be, why aren't these things in digital form?
Maybe because it's much more impressive on the evening news for viewers to see pallets of bound printed government reports, statistics, and budget proposals being shipped to eagerly awaiting citizens and legislators. Seeing a box of CD-ROMs schlepped around would be boring. Showing a video of the government website and the link where you can download the documents would be even less impressive.
I don't think your scenario of a bunch of requests aimed at a particular area of the stacks is even necessary to cause bottlenecks and delays in patrons getting materials from the stacks. There will never be enough robotic book pullers to match the amount of material that can be obtained by individuals walking through the stacks.
I am guessing the UofC has closed stacks otherwise this robotic system wouldn't make sense. Closed stacks, IMHO, suck like a tornado. They eliminate the serendipidous finds that you would only discover when you're looking at a bunch of texts sitting on the shelves. I spent a year at a university that had closed stacks. Doing research for a class assignment sucked when you had to submit a request for a library assistant to fetch the book for you. And you were limited to a small number of books to fetch for each request; If what you wanted from the stacks wasn't there you were out of luck.; the library assistants didn't -- and, not being knowledgable in your field, wouldn't have been able to -- select a reasonable alternate for any of the books that were checked out. When you discovered that the books you requested weren't what you needed you returned to square one. The whole experience reminded me of the early days of computing when one submitted punch cards to the data processing priests who would execute your program for you and, if you were lucky, you'd get 2-3 chances per day to get your code debugged and running.
There is such a thing as too much natural light. I'd bet that there are days when the glare in that library would make attempting to read anything nearly impossible. And moving enough air through that greenhouse^Wreading room to keep it cooled on a sunny day would cause enough noise to be one hell of a distraction. The architect probably has never spent much time in a library.
I suspect I'm roughly at the same level of experience as you (who knows, maybe more) and I would have wondered what the heck a "+" meant in relation to a clock. Would it have killed Apple to make that button read "Alarm" or "Alarms"? I'm guessing that using an actual word would have violated some official Apple Elegance Guide.
I have the same complaint with Apple's interfaces as I grew to have about Windows: they're not nearly as intuitive as they seem to think they are. Years ago, I had the misfortune of having to work with some Mac plotting software (can't remember the name) and you had no menu to work with. You were expected to blindly click on things to see if a dialog box would pop up that allowed you modify axis settings, etc. (And there was no way to predefine the settings for a group of plots that had to have the same axes ranges, tick marks, etc. I never used it again and decided it would be far better and faster to brush up on my Calcomp programming instead.) Nowadays I'd would liken the experience to playing Myst.
... I've ever resorted to rebuilding a UNIX system from scratch was a system that I inherited from a previous admin when I took over his job. The broken system was a member of a cluster and, after running checks of all the files on both members, could not figure out just which files had gotten corrupted that were preventing the system from believing it was a member of the cluster. Luckily, support for the OS version was about to be sunsetted and it made sense to reinstall the OS on both members. This was about a dozen years ago. Except for that one instance of doing a reinstallation, I haven't resorted to that means of solving a UNIX problem. Ever.
System disk failures are another story. I have had to do a couple of those on Linux systems when the system disk failed. That's over the 15-16 years I've been running Linux.
So that's three UNIX/Linux reinstallations over more than a couple of decades. I know Windows admins who've done that many reinstalls in a week.
Slashdot Mirror
... was the lack of notification that this change was taking place. The Register article I read about this social networking "feature" stated that users had been notified by email on June 23rd. Since I hadn't cleaned up my email for a couple of months, I decided to see if there was an email from LinkedIn telling me about this that I might not have paid close enough attention to. Nope. Nothing on 06/23 or anything for several days on either side of that date. I had the typical emails about updates to the groups I am a member of but nothing from LinkedIn telling me that there had been any changes made that would make me want to check my profile settings. That is the sort of activity by a web site that really pisses me off. It'll be a cold day in Hell before I set up ticklers to remind me to go to each and every web site where I have a user ID to see if the legalese in the Term of Service have changed recently. I'll delete the accounts before I do that.
I saw him run a race on TV a few weeks ago and was underwhelmed. He finished 6th or 7th (in an 8-man field) -- and over a second behind the winner -- against a field that all seemed to have had a bad day.
... hardly seems to have anyone playing in it. When my daughters were still small enough to want to play in playgrounds, they never wanted to go there very often. I thought the equipment there was a little on the boring side and there wasn't much of it. It was very padded so that, I suppose, you would be a little less likely to get a bad bump.
The playgrounds at the schools in the neighborhoods where I grew up were not much more than some swings and a set of metal pipes bolted together to form monkey bars , etc., and some other structures that I don't recall the name of any more. The sort of things that, nowadays, would probably make a school administrator run away screaming due the insurance liability exposure. But in those days, if a kid banged his head on the monkey bars he went home, got patched up, and learned a lesson ("Well, that's something I shouldn't do again".) I never once heard about anyone getting seriously hurt -- not anything worse than a bang on the head or a bloody nose -- from playing on that equipment.
Now we don't send our kid out on their bike unless they are wearing enough safety gear to pass the safety inspection at a motorcycle race even though the biggest risk to a kid on a bike is likely the housewife roaring down the street on her way to the supermarket with a cellphone glued to her ear and not anything that the kid would come in contact with should they fall.
I've noticed that there seem to be more bad drivers out on the roads since there were airbags, antilock brakes, and all the other so-called safety devices in the cars. I still get a little bit of a kick out seeing all the cars stuck off the side of the road in the winter after their drivers thought that antilock brakes would let them drive 10 MPH over the speed limit on slippery roads. (And I get more than a little nervous when these same bozos tailgate me on those slippery roads.)
I was thinking the same thing. Hoss wasn't, after all, the Cartwright most likely to be admitted to Mensa.
But to get back on-topic... One wonders what selection process that went into the decision to buy software that doesn't quite do what is going to be needed when the shooting starts. Maybe the Marine brass thinks that computers work like they did in Star Trek TNG: just write a quick subroutine to perform a miracle when the mortar shells and RPGs start falling?
I doubt there's anything in the ToS that prevents you from taking a small piece of duct or electrician's tape and covering the damned webcam lens. Voila! No webcam spying possible. If they want to complain that all the webcam pictures are coming out black I'd just tell 'em that "Yeah, I always work with the lights turned out."
I think we've all done some sort of work on napkins (or envelopes). It's pretty much inevitable unless you or your coworkers are in the habit of carrying a notebook with you at all times.
The worst thing I ever had to deal with where napkins were an important form of documentation was a large commercial database server whose administration I inherited many years ago. The "official" documentation consisted of a very badly formatted -- and largely incomplete --- document. It could actually barely even be called documentation; more like an outline that the author never finished fleshing out. The real documentation was a manilla folder full of scraps of paper --- cafeteria napkins, phone message pad sheets, even cash register receipts --- with little snippets of info scrawled on them. Whenever someone decided to rag on me about late documentation, I'd whip out that folder and threaten to give them something like I originally received. (That shut 'em up fast.)
Good luck with that. I've been trying to avoid HFCS for several years and find that it's in everything... not just sodas. Hell, it's in stuff that you would think even needed any additional sweetener or any sweetener at all. It's almost as though it's added by default. (I've seen stuff with HFCS and salt in it. Geez, make up your mind. Is it supposed to be sweet? Or salty?) Lately it seems that, if it comes in a box, it's got HFCS in it.
IMHO (caveat: I'm no dietitian), a good idea for a diet would be to avoid everything that contains HFCS in it. Could be a good start on tackling that obesity epidemic. If the public schools were to reintroduce Home-Ec classes -- for everyone, not just the girls -- so that people knew how to cook their own food and stay away from the pre-packaged crap.
(The use of HFCS reminds me of the time when I consulted for major food manufacturer -- you've heard of them, I guarantee it -- doing a conversion of a huge number of files that contained the recipes that they used in all their product. You wouldn't believe the number of them that contained "hydrogenated vegetable oil" as a basic ingredient; and a lot of it. Seeing that really grossed me out and while I haven't gone all "slow food" -- at least not yet -- I definitely started eating healthier.)
Hmm... I seem to recall seeing, for the past decade or so, a charge on my monthly phone bill so that the phone company could be installing that rural broadband. Where did that money go? (Probably to aid in the reconsolidation of the former Baby Bells.)
Right. Just who was doing the installation? Halliburton?
Yeah... I find it interesting that I had to scroll down this far in the comments to find someone who thought that maybe taking a whole week off from being connected to the internet would be that terrible. I mean, really, how freaking egotistical (or, hopefully, merely insecure) do you have to be to think that the world wouldn't be able to survive without reading this your blog posts. Tell the world you'll be away for a week. The world will understand.
No. The RIAA expects you to delete all 60GB of music and purchase new copies that have received their official blessing. That's the only way they can be sure your music collection is legal. (And they're the only ones who matter, after all.)
Planes are allowed to fly over populated areas? Heh heh.
Most broadcast antennae are not transmitting vertically. To do so would be a waste of transmitter power. So those antennae are not radiating much power into a place where they would interfere with avionics.
Plus, it is not necessary for something to be transmitting in a frequency band that is reserved for aviation. The combination of signals in space can generate harmonics in the front end of navigation and landing system receivers that can create havoc with those systems. (At this point the plane is low enough where it is completely immersed in the signals being radiated by the radio station antennae sprinkled around the city you're landing in.) I worked on a project back in the '80s that neatly demonstrated that and resulted in a way to predict whether or not existing and/or proposed FM transmitters would create interference that would disrupt the landing system receivers (ILS). (I was the one who turned the software into something that would fit on a floppy and run on a PC. So don't ask me about all the math involved. I do have a few choice words about what a pain it was to work with MS FORTRAN, though. [grin]) The FAA was enthusiastic about the resulting software tool. The broadcasters? As you can easily imagine, not so much when they were told that their request to increase transmitter power or to build a new tower was rejected due to the interference to protected airspace. I strongly suspect that those who are so quick to pooh pooh the effect that PEDs have on avionics have a big financial interest in their not being banned. (Just like the cellular industry will never accept that their products could be causing brain cancer.)
I still have fond memories of the time I loaded Windows 1.0 on a Zenith PC that someone at work wasn't using any more. Once the installation floppies had all been loaded, I called in my boss and we laughed and laughed. I still recall how much my sides hurt from all that laughing.
Oh how I wish I could use my mod points for this post.
Marketing.
It's also why so many people buy and eat food that is bad for them. Why so many think they have to spend upwards of $70 for television or a similar amount for phone service. It's new! It's cool! You must have it! Now! Don't be the last one on your block to get it!
Most U.S. corporations that are big enough to hire decent accounting firms and lawyers are already paying far less than 35% in taxes. By some accounts, the average U.S. corporation is paying taxes in the area of 7%. I sure as hell wouldn't mind being taxed at that rate.
Taxes have been lowered on the so-called job creators for ten years now. Where are all the jobs that those lowered taxes were supposed to have created? Any why were there more jobs when taxes were much higher? (Fifty years or so ago, the top tax rate was around 90% and you'd have to work really hard to say that American manufacturing was suffering under those tax rates.) To bring manufacturing jobs back into the U.S., something has to be done to make it economically undesirable to move them overseas. High oil prices do that to some degree but tariffs would do a much better job of that.
Maybe because it's much more impressive on the evening news for viewers to see pallets of bound printed government reports, statistics, and budget proposals being shipped to eagerly awaiting citizens and legislators. Seeing a box of CD-ROMs schlepped around would be boring. Showing a video of the government website and the link where you can download the documents would be even less impressive.
I don't think your scenario of a bunch of requests aimed at a particular area of the stacks is even necessary to cause bottlenecks and delays in patrons getting materials from the stacks. There will never be enough robotic book pullers to match the amount of material that can be obtained by individuals walking through the stacks.
I am guessing the UofC has closed stacks otherwise this robotic system wouldn't make sense. Closed stacks, IMHO, suck like a tornado. They eliminate the serendipidous finds that you would only discover when you're looking at a bunch of texts sitting on the shelves. I spent a year at a university that had closed stacks. Doing research for a class assignment sucked when you had to submit a request for a library assistant to fetch the book for you. And you were limited to a small number of books to fetch for each request; If what you wanted from the stacks wasn't there you were out of luck.; the library assistants didn't -- and, not being knowledgable in your field, wouldn't have been able to -- select a reasonable alternate for any of the books that were checked out. When you discovered that the books you requested weren't what you needed you returned to square one. The whole experience reminded me of the early days of computing when one submitted punch cards to the data processing priests who would execute your program for you and, if you were lucky, you'd get 2-3 chances per day to get your code debugged and running.
There is such a thing as too much natural light. I'd bet that there are days when the glare in that library would make attempting to read anything nearly impossible. And moving enough air through that greenhouse^Wreading room to keep it cooled on a sunny day would cause enough noise to be one hell of a distraction. The architect probably has never spent much time in a library.
1.) Get a haircut
2.) Mow the lawn
3.) Go to the gym
After that, I'm free.
I suspect I'm roughly at the same level of experience as you (who knows, maybe more) and I would have wondered what the heck a "+" meant in relation to a clock. Would it have killed Apple to make that button read "Alarm" or "Alarms"? I'm guessing that using an actual word would have violated some official Apple Elegance Guide.
I have the same complaint with Apple's interfaces as I grew to have about Windows: they're not nearly as intuitive as they seem to think they are. Years ago, I had the misfortune of having to work with some Mac plotting software (can't remember the name) and you had no menu to work with. You were expected to blindly click on things to see if a dialog box would pop up that allowed you modify axis settings, etc. (And there was no way to predefine the settings for a group of plots that had to have the same axes ranges, tick marks, etc. I never used it again and decided it would be far better and faster to brush up on my Calcomp programming instead.) Nowadays I'd would liken the experience to playing Myst.
... whether Sturgeon's Law applies to that business data. (Yeah... it probably does and it's likely an underestimation.)
Are you thinking of Steve Jobs? I'm pretty sure he was the one who saw the graphical interface work being done -- and wasted -- at Xerox.
Good grief I couldn't imagine watching that many installs/upgrades of Microsoft products at one sitting unless it was sped up considerably.
BTW: How many reboots were required (total) along the way?
... I've ever resorted to rebuilding a UNIX system from scratch was a system that I inherited from a previous admin when I took over his job. The broken system was a member of a cluster and, after running checks of all the files on both members, could not figure out just which files had gotten corrupted that were preventing the system from believing it was a member of the cluster. Luckily, support for the OS version was about to be sunsetted and it made sense to reinstall the OS on both members. This was about a dozen years ago. Except for that one instance of doing a reinstallation, I haven't resorted to that means of solving a UNIX problem. Ever.
System disk failures are another story. I have had to do a couple of those on Linux systems when the system disk failed. That's over the 15-16 years I've been running Linux.
So that's three UNIX/Linux reinstallations over more than a couple of decades. I know Windows admins who've done that many reinstalls in a week.