hell people are willing to pay stupid amounts of money for hybrid cars with dubious evnironmental benefits
I guess you don't own a hybrid car. I do. I bought one not because it is "environmentally clean", whatever it means, but because it's a very good car to drive, both from the smoothness of the transmission POV and from the low cost of use. Price-wise, while we may argue that Volt is overpriced at some $40K, Priuses were sold for $21K new, and that is a reasonable price for a good new car.
From what I understand, the sensors in the road work based on sensing distortions in a magnetic field.
The loop sensors are sensing magnetic cores that are close to the loop. That changes the inductance of the loop, and the device nearby (the loop detector) flips a relay.
Static magnets are useless. You need to have some good amount of material with high permeability.
do you seriously think there are no usability studies involved in Windows design, or ribbon in general?
I know that MS did usability studies. But I don't know what audience they were using. Clearly a bunch of toddlers would have done better with ribbons than a bunch of gray-haired managers. Everyone would agree that if you start with zero knowledge of Office and zero skills then ribbon is better. Problems begin when you try to do complex work that needs actions from multiple ribbons.
when you have both around, you have to test both, support both, fix bugs in both etc. At some cut-off point it is simply not cost-effective.
That is of course true. MS sells their products on such a thin margin that it barely can afford to keep the lights on in their offices. Besides, the simple menu code that is nearly bug-free certainly now requires active, aggressive maintenance, as opposed to brand new and barely tested ribbon code. Note that WIN32 API still has the menu support because it is required by millions of applications.
Ribbon is mostly reviled among the geeks
One of my friends is an MBA, as non-technical as they come. He despises ribbons and can't find anything in them. He is just not graphically oriented (just like me.) I can't find an icon on a busy desktop even if it is there; but I can easily find an item in the menu because I remember how to get to it. Different people have different ways of remembering things.
The funny thing about those is that we don't really know until someone comes out and makes the next breakthrough in UI (for which another nine has to come out and make mistakes first, so that we all can learn).
I completely agree and I'm all for that. However it is criminally stupid to cram the innovation down people's throats. As I said, there would be no contention if only MS made the ribbon optional. A forced marriage is wrong even if in the end the couple was correctly matched by parents.
But in this case users' opinion was of interest - where do you think all the statistics on command usage and such come from?
For all I know, it was user's cats walking on the keyboard and pushing the mouse. The fact is that no user was ever asked what they think about this or that. User's opinion and user's actions are very different things. We act because we have to; but we love or hate things because of things themselves. A donkey may walk in circles around the well, pumping water, but this action doesn't reflect his love for this job.
There is also another flaw in this argument - the rule by majority. If 55% of Office users are secretaries that only type simple documents, does it make just and proper to make Office unusable to remaining 45% of users, scientists who create complex documents? Remember, the ribbon is not removable in the Office. Making it optional would have stopped the ribbon hatefest in an instant.
Are you seriously claiming that desktop UI as of, say, mid-2000s, was as completely evolved and perfect as a wheel or a hammer?
There are only few changes that are accepted as positive by majority of users. There were many attempts at changes that ended up in disaster. Generally, Win2K GUI was functional and usable back in 2000. I can't think of any major, conceptual improvement done since then. I'm looking at my Vista screen (and Win7 next to it) and I don't see anything that would be much different from the 2000 state of the art. Or, to put it another way, what features of the current UI are limiting your activity?
The ribbon is actually one such thing that many users are complaining about. But do we have anything else that is so widely despised since Microsoft Bob?
And we can't stick to the old interfaces solely on the basis that everyone is used to them - if that is strictly followed, there wouldn't be any evolution in UI at all.
I think your motorbike needs some evolutioning. So I decree - and force you to obey - that starting tomorrow your motorbike transforms into a Pogo stick. I have my reasons to believe that you will benefit from this change; your own opinion on the matter is of no interest to me.
As a home assignment, while you are hopping to work perhaps, you can think of how to evolve the wheel, the hammer, and the brick. They are so old that clearly we can't afford to use them anymore. Once you are done with those, develop new spoon and new knife and new fork.
The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.
It isn't, though it's a change indeed. The reason is that the menus and the ribbon use different methods to locate the necessary action.
Menus are static. The "Edit" menu is always where it was before, and you don't need to think when you open it. Similarly, items within that menu are static as well (except when the most stupid option is enabled to make it into a surprise.) As result, menus can be operated mechanistically, without thinking at all.
This is not the case with ribbons. Ribbons change all the time, and when you need a function you need to realize first what ribbon are you seeing right now - and then what ribbon to activate instead of this one. This requires stopping thinking about your document and starting thinking about the UI.
On top of that, ribbons are pictograms - images that need to be actively recognized to be usable. Menus are words that can be read much faster. Nobody in the USA argues for writing menu text in Chinese, but why do we allow that in ribbons? Those chicken scratches that they sell as ribbon buttons are less recognizable than many Chinese glyphs. Menus are instantly discoverable; ribbons are not - you can't figure out what the ribbon element is going to do just by seeing it.
This reminds me that people universally hated VI for its stateful interface. But now people laud ribbons that are just as stateful! Does it mean that pretty pictures are more important than usability?
Note also that not every human is equally adept in recognizing images. Some do it with ease, other can't do it if their life depends on that. Why does MS force me to play "Where is Waldo?" each time I need to insert a footnote in the document? Some people are specifically procedure-oriented; it's easier for them to click on "Insert" - "Reference" - "Footnote" than to stare at the ribbon in vain attempt to understand what they are seeing there. It doesn't help that ribbons are context-dependent and tabs get added or removed while you aren't looking.
Ribbons also take far more space on the screen. They can be minimized, though, at expense of another delay.
Ribbons have no hierarchy beyond the two levels. If you need "Edit" - "Table" - Insert Row" you can't do that. You have to have a ribbon for "Table" and within that ribbon you cram everything else.
What if you run out of space? Well, then there is another horrific feature of ribbons. You click on a teeny-weeny pixel in a corner of one specific ribbon button, and then it drops down to expand that button and perhaps list there the function that you are so desperately seeking. Wasn't the whole idea of ribbons to make it easy to click? How many people have eyesight sharp enough to see that little down arrow, and hands steady enough to click on that arrow?
IMO, ribbons add nothing to the user's experience. They are an improvement in the area that required no improvement. Worst of all, MS pushes ribbons as the only UI of their wares, regardless of your opinion. MS does that only because it can, because the customer is locked into their product. There are other software houses, like Autodesk, that took a more careful approach. Their Inventor, for example, comes with ribbons by default, but a single checkbox in settings reverts it back to the traditional menu system. This proves that UI can be customized, and it's not a rocket science - and MS would be the most qualified team to do it. They force ribbons upon us just because they can.
Are there email services out there folks would recommend?
I'm using my own email server since I own a domain anyway (for business purposes.) It is as trouble-free as it can be. You can have as many throwaway aliases as you want. I have a dozen aliases that only receive email from certain senders (such as mailing lists.) They are long and largely meaningless, so an automated spambot will never randomly hit any of them. If the owner of the mailing list sells the address to spammers I simply pull it. I haven't seen any spam, though.
The service is encrypted, of course, using certificates issued by my own CA. However I allow SMTP transfer over unencrypted connections; it doesn't really matter because you can't be assured of security of the whole path. Many connections are secure, though.
I don't run a Web-based front-end on this server, just because I don't need one, but I do run OpenXchange on another server that I administer, and that OpenXchange is pretty good. Installation only required careful reading of instructions.
My server runs Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Postfix, Cyrus, and probably spamassassin and amavisd (I don't recall which server runs what set.) The server - a small Atom-based Compaq box - sits in a closet and draws 28W of power.
Your current system is, in itself, threatening and/or harassing, without providing any benefit at all. The bullies will quickly figure out which words are on your concern list, and stop using those words
Or quite the opposite, they will use those words to forward their messages to the administration. For example, "Hey, do you remember what happened to the knife that you used to cut up that gay faggot three days ago?"
If the attack indeed happened, the school will forward this email to the police, and the recipient of this hit piece will have a lot of explaining to do, regardless of whether he was involved or not. A perfect swatting at zero risk to the perp who uses a throwaway email account.
One time-zone means that *some* of us will need to be sleeping at 3pm.
Don't worry, the next proposal will be for everyone to go to sleep at 00:00Z regardless of the position of the Sun. Of course a few people, like farmers, may have to work night shifts...
if any computer or disk drive of mine is stolen or seized, my data will be safe.
Being a true geek, you value safety of your data above safety of yourself and your family. What do you think will happen if the LEO can't decrypt your data?
There are valid business and personal reasons to maintain encrypted volumes. Pretty much any corporate laptop has PGPdisk on it (or should have.) However it's hard to imagine a situation where a corporation refuses to decrypt the contents after being ordered to do so by a judge. Such precedents do exist, but they usually involve jail time for someone; often it's an unconstrained jail time without the trial.
Courier services do not claim ownership of the package, they only act as a carrier. You declare the contents when you send internationally, and then the package can be opened by customs to verify that and to charge the duty if required. The courier service is not responsible for the contents; they present all packages for inspection.
Similarly, if the airline agent asks you "did anyone ask you to carry anything for them?" and you answer "yes" the worst that should happen is that the package will be inspected. Everything else in your luggage and in your pockets belongs to you and you are assumed to know about it; so if a contraband is found at that time it has to belong to you.
You can remove Russian troops from Abkhazia and Osettia, one way or another. But what will you do with Abkhazians and Osettians themselves, who hate Georgia and don't want to have anything to do with it?
As far as they are concerned, US is still the global enemy #1
That is so much not so... The USA wasn't seen as a global enemy for a very long time. Today it is seen as a waning empire, due for a major collapse, whereas Russia's own future for nearest 50-100 years is quite safe, thanks to Europe switching to Russian energy.
E.g. the conflict with Georgia in 2008 was widely seen as instigated by US, and Georgian army equipped and trained by US.
Such stepping on each other's foot is to be expected in affairs of countries. Use of proxies is also commonplace. Nobody is surprised. There are just too many cold warriors still in power, on both sides. Give them a decade to retire, they are old already.
if you don't mind the 2 or 3 weeks that you'd spend sitting in a rail car.
Sleeping on the train is quite relaxing compared to any attempts to sleep in the airplane. On the train you get a complete bed, you eat at a restaurant, and you watch the scenery. A passenger train can also have Internet access (via satellite.)
But you would want to travel this way only once, as a novelty. Most railways are for freight.
Container ships are dirt cheap compared to rail, about 3x more efficient.
Seems like Wikipedia doesn't agree with you. In the USA railroad burns 341 BTU/(ton*mile) whereas a ship burns 510 BTU/(ton*mile).
But there are other advantages of railroads. First, railroads are largely weather-independent, but ships aren't. Northern seas also tend to freeze, but the cold air doesn't affect the railroad much.
Second, a railroad can be powered by electric energy - from a hydro plant or from a nuclear plant or from any number of renewable sources. This means it's future-proof. Most ships burn dinosaurs, and the supply of those is limited (not even counting the CO(2) release into the atmosphere.)
Third, a railroad is a low-tech project. Very few things can break, and when they sometimes do it's easy to repair. On the other hand, if a container ship loses power in the ocean, it's bad news.
Fourth, a railroad is a cheap thing to use. Sure, you need to spend some coin on laying the tracks. But once it's done your trains are cheap and the crew of each train is just a couple of guys, compared to tens of sailors that are required to maintain the ship. And don't even compare a train - which is a simple welding job, mostly - to the capital expense of a container ship.
Fifth, a train can move much faster than a ship. Water is viscous, as any swimmer will tell. Wheels have very little rolling resistance, so a relatively small engine can pull a very long and heavy train.
Sixth, trains are packet-switched networks. You can load a railcar at your factory and it will be routed to the destination. Your content on the car will not be disturbed. Ships require packing in sea containers, which is not convenient or even possible for many types of loads, thus requiring special ships to carry liquids, gases, ores, fruits etc. In a train all you need is a special car; the train doesn't care what your car is doing, as long as it can be hitched. A ship requires loading and unloading which ain't free.
I'm sure there are many other advantages and disadvantages, but your "3x cheaper" argument doesn't fly, unless you can cite something at least as reliable as Wikipedia.
But they surely aren't adults, and applying adult rules to them is just ridiculous.
That's exactly what I was trying to point out. As you recall, this thread is about uniformed police enforcing laws and regulations and unwritten rules that even adults would consider overreaching and oppressive. Can you imagine an adult being arrested for having Tylenol? This means that harsher rules are applied to children, just because schools are unwilling to deal with children being children; they'd rather have them as Play-Doh, obedient and unquestioning zombies.
So my point was simple: either you treat children as immature humans - and then you don't arrest them for anything short of murder - or you treat them as adults and then they have the choice of not setting foot into your school. You can't force them to go to school because they are immature and at the same time require them to obey everything as if they are mature. My personal opinion is, of course, in agreement with yours - children aren't adults.
The subject of school violence also is a big problem. Teachers are well known for not intervening in disputes. Children are allowed to develop as a wild pack, with all the attributes of animals - dependence on physical prowess, fight for the leadership of the pack, establishing the pecking order. Many students are swept into this melee against their will because they are different. But they have no choice, and often they are unable to escape the "zero tolerance" policies that are applied. Again children are unfairly persecuted here. Would you allow a rape victim to be hanged alongside her rapist just because your town has zero tolerance for rape? (That is close to what happens in Muslim countries.) In this thread several examples were given where someone was attacked *and* judged guilty without due process that any adult is entitled for.
You are forcing children to perform hard work for no compensation (that's what the school is.) Doesn't it make you a proponent of slavery?
Oh, but you say "it's for their own good!" - yes, that line had been tried before, more than once. It's the favorite quote of every dictator. Oh, but you say "They are getting education!" - yes, and cotton pickers also got a nice free training on how to pick cotton.
In context of this thread, you need to decide if children are humans or not. If they are, then they should have freedom of choice. If they aren't then they shouldn't be held responsible for any mischief that they do while being confined against their will at school.
The school must be open only to willing students. I saw too many students in my school days that were not receptive to much of education. If a student has IQ of 50, will he grok limits? Some students are good at poetry but bad at physics; or the other way around. Those courses should be all optional. There is no reason to teach music to a student who can't tell the difference between 440 Hz and 880 Hz. But perhaps the same student can build a frequency counter.
if it were optional, many children just wouldn't go, and their parents wouldn't force them. The result would be an overall decrease in average education level, pushing the US even further down that curve.
The problem with this reasoning is that those who don't want to learn will not learn anything anyway. You can lead the horse to the water, as they say. The overall decrease in the education level is caused not by truancy but by unwillingness to learn, whether in school or outside of it. Some of those reasons are cultural, some are just due to random distribution of "smart" genes, or whatever. When I was in school I was always amazed that the teachers expect you to be a genius in all areas of human knowledge - and they punish you if you aren't.
Today's gangbangers are all school graduates. Does it solve any problem? Does it reduce the crime rate? I would say it is counterproductive. First, children are alienated in school, told that they are stupid - and some eventually believe that. Even if they aren't told anything, it's obvious if they can't add or subtract integers but their peers can. They then seek others like them, and so a social class of least educated is formed. It would be far more efficient to find out what those children can do, and focus on that.
But you don't inspire children to learn under a harsh regime of terror.
And that is exactly my point. The school terrorizes the student with impossible requirements. Nobody can equally well comprehend everything - even teachers don't know each other's subject. But a student must know it all. You'd be a torturer if you punish your dog for his inability to fly like a bird. For some strange reason this is a noble endeavor when applied to children.
When my school days were over I left the building the very same minute and never looked back. I have no fond memories of the place that forced me to memorize poems or to run fast or to discuss nonexistent feelings of fictional literary protagonists. Since then I have better things to do; I learn still, but I learn what I want to learn; the rest can go to hell and beyond.
For instance you are willing to use PGP. That *VERY* PGP signature ties it back to you.
The PGP/GPG signature does no such thing, even if you *choose* to sign your outgoing messages. The signature only says that the message is signed with a certain private key. The name and email fields of the key contain whatever you choose to put into them, nothing more and nothing less. The key doesn't have to be signed by anyone, and your identity doesn't have to be verified - even if you choose to post your public key on a keyserver.
You are willing to stand up and say who you are just by the very fact you use that service.
PGP is not a service.
With a little bit of work you can usually figure out within a couple of houses were someone is just by using IP
Geolocation on my own IP is off by about 100 miles. I'm not surprised because that's where my ISP is located. I doubt they even know my exact geographical coordinates, unless they ask the phone company or use my address on Google Earth.
You had a very decent ratio of car/bike time, so obviously you had a reason to choose the bike whenever possible.
The [large] company that I worked for in last year had showers, and bicycle riders used them all the time. I don't know how uncomfortable would that be without showers; myself, I'd get a heat stroke first, before even reaching work:-)
But a bunch of people were living near work, for one reason or another, so it was viable for them. Some were using good bikes, other were riding any junk that you can pick up at Wal-Mart. I was living 15 miles away horizontally and about 1,500 ft. vertically, so a bike was not an option.
Perhaps one day I will get an electric bike that can climb the hill; not even all cars can make it here; a common "junk car" usually overheats. There are some electric bikes that probably can do it, but they cost too much. In my current car the battery goes from "full" to "empty" as I ascend (and recharges on the way down.)
In the future, I fully expect to own a vehicle more permanently to be able to handle child-related emergencies and other parent-type requirements more easily
I did what I could in that department about 6 years ago, and so far it's worth every cent. A bicycle is just not an option for me, the terrain is too hilly. People who do ride bicycles are either commuting strictly on the valley floor, or they are certified masoch^W^W just playing in traffic:-)
I know that rain is tolerable when you have proper gear. I used to ride a motorbike some long time ago, and rain was part of the deal. Still, I can't say that it was convenient or particularly safe; I replaced it with a car as soon as I could. You are happy where you are, that's good too.
assuming you have a lawn, though it seems more likely you're in dense urban center from your descriptions, even if you then talk about living in the hills where one would expect the air is quite clean
I didn't try to explain the specifics, but since you are wondering, I indeed live in the hills, but the densely populated valley is just minutes away, and I go there every day to work, to buy things, etc.
I don't believe that anyone would complain if you take your bicycle onto a bike path or somewhere else where it is safe to ride, where there are few cars, and where the scenery is pleasant. That's where bikes belong.
My comment was directed at an opinion that a bike is all nice and proper for a 30-minute twice per day commute in rush hour traffic on city streets. I see those riders down in the valley, and they are a sorry bunch. Conditions outside are usually unfavorable. Today it's hot and sunny, then it becomes dark, then it will be raining for whole winter (in CA) etc. etc. Commuting, by its nature, doesn't allow you to decide if you want to go to work today or you'd rather skip a rainy week. A car gives you independence from weather and from the time of day. This is essential for any man in the position of the "head of the household" who has responsibilities and must travel whenever it is required. I can't hop onto a bike and ride 50 miles to SFO where I pick up two relatives, they hop onto the same bike and we happily ride back, with luggage and all. A bicycle is a vehicle fit for a child.
In the future, I fully expect to own a vehicle more permanently to be able to handle child-related emergencies and other parent-type requirements more easily
Expect to buy a minivan, and that will be only one of two vehicles that you will have to have. Having a family today is very bad environmentally.
Slashdot Mirror
hell people are willing to pay stupid amounts of money for hybrid cars with dubious evnironmental benefits
I guess you don't own a hybrid car. I do. I bought one not because it is "environmentally clean", whatever it means, but because it's a very good car to drive, both from the smoothness of the transmission POV and from the low cost of use. Price-wise, while we may argue that Volt is overpriced at some $40K, Priuses were sold for $21K new, and that is a reasonable price for a good new car.
I find it hard to believe that nothing is manufactured in North America anymore given that the US is the largest manufacturer in the world
Who is the manufacturer of iPhones? Apple, a US company.
Who actually manufactures iPhones? Foxconn, a Chinese company.
You see the problem?
if you have gold-plated wenches, you end up with a James Bond movie.
The sad fact is that you don't even have to buy them gold-plated. They happily do that on their own, at your expense.
From what I understand, the sensors in the road work based on sensing distortions in a magnetic field.
The loop sensors are sensing magnetic cores that are close to the loop. That changes the inductance of the loop, and the device nearby (the loop detector) flips a relay.
Static magnets are useless. You need to have some good amount of material with high permeability.
do you seriously think there are no usability studies involved in Windows design, or ribbon in general?
I know that MS did usability studies. But I don't know what audience they were using. Clearly a bunch of toddlers would have done better with ribbons than a bunch of gray-haired managers. Everyone would agree that if you start with zero knowledge of Office and zero skills then ribbon is better. Problems begin when you try to do complex work that needs actions from multiple ribbons.
when you have both around, you have to test both, support both, fix bugs in both etc. At some cut-off point it is simply not cost-effective.
That is of course true. MS sells their products on such a thin margin that it barely can afford to keep the lights on in their offices. Besides, the simple menu code that is nearly bug-free certainly now requires active, aggressive maintenance, as opposed to brand new and barely tested ribbon code. Note that WIN32 API still has the menu support because it is required by millions of applications.
Ribbon is mostly reviled among the geeks
One of my friends is an MBA, as non-technical as they come. He despises ribbons and can't find anything in them. He is just not graphically oriented (just like me.) I can't find an icon on a busy desktop even if it is there; but I can easily find an item in the menu because I remember how to get to it. Different people have different ways of remembering things.
The funny thing about those is that we don't really know until someone comes out and makes the next breakthrough in UI (for which another nine has to come out and make mistakes first, so that we all can learn).
I completely agree and I'm all for that. However it is criminally stupid to cram the innovation down people's throats. As I said, there would be no contention if only MS made the ribbon optional. A forced marriage is wrong even if in the end the couple was correctly matched by parents.
But in this case users' opinion was of interest - where do you think all the statistics on command usage and such come from?
For all I know, it was user's cats walking on the keyboard and pushing the mouse. The fact is that no user was ever asked what they think about this or that. User's opinion and user's actions are very different things. We act because we have to; but we love or hate things because of things themselves. A donkey may walk in circles around the well, pumping water, but this action doesn't reflect his love for this job.
There is also another flaw in this argument - the rule by majority. If 55% of Office users are secretaries that only type simple documents, does it make just and proper to make Office unusable to remaining 45% of users, scientists who create complex documents? Remember, the ribbon is not removable in the Office. Making it optional would have stopped the ribbon hatefest in an instant.
Are you seriously claiming that desktop UI as of, say, mid-2000s, was as completely evolved and perfect as a wheel or a hammer?
There are only few changes that are accepted as positive by majority of users. There were many attempts at changes that ended up in disaster. Generally, Win2K GUI was functional and usable back in 2000. I can't think of any major, conceptual improvement done since then. I'm looking at my Vista screen (and Win7 next to it) and I don't see anything that would be much different from the 2000 state of the art. Or, to put it another way, what features of the current UI are limiting your activity?
The ribbon is actually one such thing that many users are complaining about. But do we have anything else that is so widely despised since Microsoft Bob?
And we can't stick to the old interfaces solely on the basis that everyone is used to them - if that is strictly followed, there wouldn't be any evolution in UI at all.
I think your motorbike needs some evolutioning. So I decree - and force you to obey - that starting tomorrow your motorbike transforms into a Pogo stick. I have my reasons to believe that you will benefit from this change; your own opinion on the matter is of no interest to me.
As a home assignment, while you are hopping to work perhaps, you can think of how to evolve the wheel, the hammer, and the brick. They are so old that clearly we can't afford to use them anymore. Once you are done with those, develop new spoon and new knife and new fork.
The ribbon is an improvement in user interface design, even if you don't personally like it.
It isn't, though it's a change indeed. The reason is that the menus and the ribbon use different methods to locate the necessary action.
Menus are static. The "Edit" menu is always where it was before, and you don't need to think when you open it. Similarly, items within that menu are static as well (except when the most stupid option is enabled to make it into a surprise.) As result, menus can be operated mechanistically, without thinking at all.
This is not the case with ribbons. Ribbons change all the time, and when you need a function you need to realize first what ribbon are you seeing right now - and then what ribbon to activate instead of this one. This requires stopping thinking about your document and starting thinking about the UI.
On top of that, ribbons are pictograms - images that need to be actively recognized to be usable. Menus are words that can be read much faster. Nobody in the USA argues for writing menu text in Chinese, but why do we allow that in ribbons? Those chicken scratches that they sell as ribbon buttons are less recognizable than many Chinese glyphs. Menus are instantly discoverable; ribbons are not - you can't figure out what the ribbon element is going to do just by seeing it.
This reminds me that people universally hated VI for its stateful interface. But now people laud ribbons that are just as stateful! Does it mean that pretty pictures are more important than usability?
Note also that not every human is equally adept in recognizing images. Some do it with ease, other can't do it if their life depends on that. Why does MS force me to play "Where is Waldo?" each time I need to insert a footnote in the document? Some people are specifically procedure-oriented; it's easier for them to click on "Insert" - "Reference" - "Footnote" than to stare at the ribbon in vain attempt to understand what they are seeing there. It doesn't help that ribbons are context-dependent and tabs get added or removed while you aren't looking.
Ribbons also take far more space on the screen. They can be minimized, though, at expense of another delay.
Ribbons have no hierarchy beyond the two levels. If you need "Edit" - "Table" - Insert Row" you can't do that. You have to have a ribbon for "Table" and within that ribbon you cram everything else.
What if you run out of space? Well, then there is another horrific feature of ribbons. You click on a teeny-weeny pixel in a corner of one specific ribbon button, and then it drops down to expand that button and perhaps list there the function that you are so desperately seeking. Wasn't the whole idea of ribbons to make it easy to click? How many people have eyesight sharp enough to see that little down arrow, and hands steady enough to click on that arrow?
IMO, ribbons add nothing to the user's experience. They are an improvement in the area that required no improvement. Worst of all, MS pushes ribbons as the only UI of their wares, regardless of your opinion. MS does that only because it can, because the customer is locked into their product. There are other software houses, like Autodesk, that took a more careful approach. Their Inventor, for example, comes with ribbons by default, but a single checkbox in settings reverts it back to the traditional menu system. This proves that UI can be customized, and it's not a rocket science - and MS would be the most qualified team to do it. They force ribbons upon us just because they can.
Are there email services out there folks would recommend?
I'm using my own email server since I own a domain anyway (for business purposes.) It is as trouble-free as it can be. You can have as many throwaway aliases as you want. I have a dozen aliases that only receive email from certain senders (such as mailing lists.) They are long and largely meaningless, so an automated spambot will never randomly hit any of them. If the owner of the mailing list sells the address to spammers I simply pull it. I haven't seen any spam, though.
The service is encrypted, of course, using certificates issued by my own CA. However I allow SMTP transfer over unencrypted connections; it doesn't really matter because you can't be assured of security of the whole path. Many connections are secure, though.
I don't run a Web-based front-end on this server, just because I don't need one, but I do run OpenXchange on another server that I administer, and that OpenXchange is pretty good. Installation only required careful reading of instructions.
My server runs Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Postfix, Cyrus, and probably spamassassin and amavisd (I don't recall which server runs what set.) The server - a small Atom-based Compaq box - sits in a closet and draws 28W of power.
Your current system is, in itself, threatening and/or harassing, without providing any benefit at all. The bullies will quickly figure out which words are on your concern list, and stop using those words
Or quite the opposite, they will use those words to forward their messages to the administration. For example, "Hey, do you remember what happened to the knife that you used to cut up that gay faggot three days ago?"
If the attack indeed happened, the school will forward this email to the police, and the recipient of this hit piece will have a lot of explaining to do, regardless of whether he was involved or not. A perfect swatting at zero risk to the perp who uses a throwaway email account.
One time-zone means that *some* of us will need to be sleeping at 3pm.
Don't worry, the next proposal will be for everyone to go to sleep at 00:00Z regardless of the position of the Sun. Of course a few people, like farmers, may have to work night shifts...
if any computer or disk drive of mine is stolen or seized, my data will be safe.
Being a true geek, you value safety of your data above safety of yourself and your family. What do you think will happen if the LEO can't decrypt your data?
There are valid business and personal reasons to maintain encrypted volumes. Pretty much any corporate laptop has PGPdisk on it (or should have.) However it's hard to imagine a situation where a corporation refuses to decrypt the contents after being ordered to do so by a judge. Such precedents do exist, but they usually involve jail time for someone; often it's an unconstrained jail time without the trial.
Courier services do not claim ownership of the package, they only act as a carrier. You declare the contents when you send internationally, and then the package can be opened by customs to verify that and to charge the duty if required. The courier service is not responsible for the contents; they present all packages for inspection.
Similarly, if the airline agent asks you "did anyone ask you to carry anything for them?" and you answer "yes" the worst that should happen is that the package will be inspected. Everything else in your luggage and in your pockets belongs to you and you are assumed to know about it; so if a contraband is found at that time it has to belong to you.
considering that they occupy Georgia
You can remove Russian troops from Abkhazia and Osettia, one way or another. But what will you do with Abkhazians and Osettians themselves, who hate Georgia and don't want to have anything to do with it?
As far as they are concerned, US is still the global enemy #1
That is so much not so... The USA wasn't seen as a global enemy for a very long time. Today it is seen as a waning empire, due for a major collapse, whereas Russia's own future for nearest 50-100 years is quite safe, thanks to Europe switching to Russian energy.
E.g. the conflict with Georgia in 2008 was widely seen as instigated by US, and Georgian army equipped and trained by US.
Such stepping on each other's foot is to be expected in affairs of countries. Use of proxies is also commonplace. Nobody is surprised. There are just too many cold warriors still in power, on both sides. Give them a decade to retire, they are old already.
if you don't mind the 2 or 3 weeks that you'd spend sitting in a rail car.
Sleeping on the train is quite relaxing compared to any attempts to sleep in the airplane. On the train you get a complete bed, you eat at a restaurant, and you watch the scenery. A passenger train can also have Internet access (via satellite.)
But you would want to travel this way only once, as a novelty. Most railways are for freight.
Container ships are dirt cheap compared to rail, about 3x more efficient.
Seems like Wikipedia doesn't agree with you. In the USA railroad burns 341 BTU/(ton*mile) whereas a ship burns 510 BTU/(ton*mile).
But there are other advantages of railroads. First, railroads are largely weather-independent, but ships aren't. Northern seas also tend to freeze, but the cold air doesn't affect the railroad much.
Second, a railroad can be powered by electric energy - from a hydro plant or from a nuclear plant or from any number of renewable sources. This means it's future-proof. Most ships burn dinosaurs, and the supply of those is limited (not even counting the CO(2) release into the atmosphere.)
Third, a railroad is a low-tech project. Very few things can break, and when they sometimes do it's easy to repair. On the other hand, if a container ship loses power in the ocean, it's bad news.
Fourth, a railroad is a cheap thing to use. Sure, you need to spend some coin on laying the tracks. But once it's done your trains are cheap and the crew of each train is just a couple of guys, compared to tens of sailors that are required to maintain the ship. And don't even compare a train - which is a simple welding job, mostly - to the capital expense of a container ship.
Fifth, a train can move much faster than a ship. Water is viscous, as any swimmer will tell. Wheels have very little rolling resistance, so a relatively small engine can pull a very long and heavy train.
Sixth, trains are packet-switched networks. You can load a railcar at your factory and it will be routed to the destination. Your content on the car will not be disturbed. Ships require packing in sea containers, which is not convenient or even possible for many types of loads, thus requiring special ships to carry liquids, gases, ores, fruits etc. In a train all you need is a special car; the train doesn't care what your car is doing, as long as it can be hitched. A ship requires loading and unloading which ain't free.
I'm sure there are many other advantages and disadvantages, but your "3x cheaper" argument doesn't fly, unless you can cite something at least as reliable as Wikipedia.
sounds like a neat new way for Russian spies to get in the country and back again
What's wrong with the Mexican border - is it watched now, for some reason?
But they surely aren't adults, and applying adult rules to them is just ridiculous.
That's exactly what I was trying to point out. As you recall, this thread is about uniformed police enforcing laws and regulations and unwritten rules that even adults would consider overreaching and oppressive. Can you imagine an adult being arrested for having Tylenol? This means that harsher rules are applied to children, just because schools are unwilling to deal with children being children; they'd rather have them as Play-Doh, obedient and unquestioning zombies.
So my point was simple: either you treat children as immature humans - and then you don't arrest them for anything short of murder - or you treat them as adults and then they have the choice of not setting foot into your school. You can't force them to go to school because they are immature and at the same time require them to obey everything as if they are mature. My personal opinion is, of course, in agreement with yours - children aren't adults.
The subject of school violence also is a big problem. Teachers are well known for not intervening in disputes. Children are allowed to develop as a wild pack, with all the attributes of animals - dependence on physical prowess, fight for the leadership of the pack, establishing the pecking order. Many students are swept into this melee against their will because they are different. But they have no choice, and often they are unable to escape the "zero tolerance" policies that are applied. Again children are unfairly persecuted here. Would you allow a rape victim to be hanged alongside her rapist just because your town has zero tolerance for rape? (That is close to what happens in Muslim countries.) In this thread several examples were given where someone was attacked *and* judged guilty without due process that any adult is entitled for.
Please let me know where you went so I can look into sending my kids there.
Here you are. But don't forget your time machine, things change.
The reason school is mandatory is because
You are forcing children to perform hard work for no compensation (that's what the school is.) Doesn't it make you a proponent of slavery?
Oh, but you say "it's for their own good!" - yes, that line had been tried before, more than once. It's the favorite quote of every dictator. Oh, but you say "They are getting education!" - yes, and cotton pickers also got a nice free training on how to pick cotton.
In context of this thread, you need to decide if children are humans or not. If they are, then they should have freedom of choice. If they aren't then they shouldn't be held responsible for any mischief that they do while being confined against their will at school.
The school must be open only to willing students. I saw too many students in my school days that were not receptive to much of education. If a student has IQ of 50, will he grok limits? Some students are good at poetry but bad at physics; or the other way around. Those courses should be all optional. There is no reason to teach music to a student who can't tell the difference between 440 Hz and 880 Hz. But perhaps the same student can build a frequency counter.
if it were optional, many children just wouldn't go, and their parents wouldn't force them. The result would be an overall decrease in average education level, pushing the US even further down that curve.
The problem with this reasoning is that those who don't want to learn will not learn anything anyway. You can lead the horse to the water, as they say. The overall decrease in the education level is caused not by truancy but by unwillingness to learn, whether in school or outside of it. Some of those reasons are cultural, some are just due to random distribution of "smart" genes, or whatever. When I was in school I was always amazed that the teachers expect you to be a genius in all areas of human knowledge - and they punish you if you aren't.
Today's gangbangers are all school graduates. Does it solve any problem? Does it reduce the crime rate? I would say it is counterproductive. First, children are alienated in school, told that they are stupid - and some eventually believe that. Even if they aren't told anything, it's obvious if they can't add or subtract integers but their peers can. They then seek others like them, and so a social class of least educated is formed. It would be far more efficient to find out what those children can do, and focus on that.
But you don't inspire children to learn under a harsh regime of terror.
And that is exactly my point. The school terrorizes the student with impossible requirements. Nobody can equally well comprehend everything - even teachers don't know each other's subject. But a student must know it all. You'd be a torturer if you punish your dog for his inability to fly like a bird. For some strange reason this is a noble endeavor when applied to children.
When my school days were over I left the building the very same minute and never looked back. I have no fond memories of the place that forced me to memorize poems or to run fast or to discuss nonexistent feelings of fictional literary protagonists. Since then I have better things to do; I learn still, but I learn what I want to learn; the rest can go to hell and beyond.
For instance you are willing to use PGP. That *VERY* PGP signature ties it back to you.
The PGP/GPG signature does no such thing, even if you *choose* to sign your outgoing messages. The signature only says that the message is signed with a certain private key. The name and email fields of the key contain whatever you choose to put into them, nothing more and nothing less. The key doesn't have to be signed by anyone, and your identity doesn't have to be verified - even if you choose to post your public key on a keyserver.
You are willing to stand up and say who you are just by the very fact you use that service.
PGP is not a service.
With a little bit of work you can usually figure out within a couple of houses were someone is just by using IP
Geolocation on my own IP is off by about 100 miles. I'm not surprised because that's where my ISP is located. I doubt they even know my exact geographical coordinates, unless they ask the phone company or use my address on Google Earth.
You had a very decent ratio of car/bike time, so obviously you had a reason to choose the bike whenever possible.
The [large] company that I worked for in last year had showers, and bicycle riders used them all the time. I don't know how uncomfortable would that be without showers; myself, I'd get a heat stroke first, before even reaching work :-)
But a bunch of people were living near work, for one reason or another, so it was viable for them. Some were using good bikes, other were riding any junk that you can pick up at Wal-Mart. I was living 15 miles away horizontally and about 1,500 ft. vertically, so a bike was not an option.
Perhaps one day I will get an electric bike that can climb the hill; not even all cars can make it here; a common "junk car" usually overheats. There are some electric bikes that probably can do it, but they cost too much. In my current car the battery goes from "full" to "empty" as I ascend (and recharges on the way down.)
In the future, I fully expect to own a vehicle more permanently to be able to handle child-related emergencies and other parent-type requirements more easily
I did what I could in that department about 6 years ago, and so far it's worth every cent. A bicycle is just not an option for me, the terrain is too hilly. People who do ride bicycles are either commuting strictly on the valley floor, or they are certified masoch^W^W just playing in traffic :-)
I know that rain is tolerable when you have proper gear. I used to ride a motorbike some long time ago, and rain was part of the deal. Still, I can't say that it was convenient or particularly safe; I replaced it with a car as soon as I could. You are happy where you are, that's good too.
assuming you have a lawn, though it seems more likely you're in dense urban center from your descriptions, even if you then talk about living in the hills where one would expect the air is quite clean
I didn't try to explain the specifics, but since you are wondering, I indeed live in the hills, but the densely populated valley is just minutes away, and I go there every day to work, to buy things, etc.
I don't believe that anyone would complain if you take your bicycle onto a bike path or somewhere else where it is safe to ride, where there are few cars, and where the scenery is pleasant. That's where bikes belong.
My comment was directed at an opinion that a bike is all nice and proper for a 30-minute twice per day commute in rush hour traffic on city streets. I see those riders down in the valley, and they are a sorry bunch. Conditions outside are usually unfavorable. Today it's hot and sunny, then it becomes dark, then it will be raining for whole winter (in CA) etc. etc. Commuting, by its nature, doesn't allow you to decide if you want to go to work today or you'd rather skip a rainy week. A car gives you independence from weather and from the time of day. This is essential for any man in the position of the "head of the household" who has responsibilities and must travel whenever it is required. I can't hop onto a bike and ride 50 miles to SFO where I pick up two relatives, they hop onto the same bike and we happily ride back, with luggage and all. A bicycle is a vehicle fit for a child.
In the future, I fully expect to own a vehicle more permanently to be able to handle child-related emergencies and other parent-type requirements more easily
Expect to buy a minivan, and that will be only one of two vehicles that you will have to have. Having a family today is very bad environmentally.