I absolutely hate the phone and will do nearly anything to avoid talking on one.
That said, I love shiny things. I have had a series of phones over the years and a series of carriers.
I started in '99 with a Nokia - I think it was a 6590 or something like that - it seemed cool at the time. It was with Sprint in Boston/Cambridge. There were small, but frequent dead zones and when I walked into one while on a call, it would drop out. Frustrating. I called Sprint about it and they actually said "yeah, we aren't planning on upgrading out networks at all"... so I told them I would be leaving their service, which I did.
I then got a Nokia 8860 - the shiny mirrored girly phone that Christina Aguilara had on one of her MTV interviews. That phone scratched easily and had terrible reception - but I was worshipped like a god whenever I pulled that out of my pocket. It was also excellent for finding nose hair issues. The reception on that phone was so bad that it is hard to fault AT&T for any of that. That said, AT&T fucked up the billing on my phone and my cable service about 4 times in a row and led to a several month series of events that made me decided to never use them again. They were incredibly annoying to deal with - one person would say the situation was resolved, then I would get a letter from a collection agency - for something that I never needed to pay in the first place according to AT&T. Finally, the last straw was when the woman (many supervisors up) said to me "I understand that you aren't supposed to have this charge, but you do, and I can't fix it, so how about you just pay $10 of it and then I will write off the rest (of a $100 charge)". I was so pissed that I had to pay anything at all since I wasn't supposed to - but at that point, I saw the $10 fee as my way of getting out of their fucking phone annoyance hell - and I was sick of getting collection notices for things that weren't my problem.
So I will never go with them again. I later got some mail telling me that I was part of a class action suit against them and would in the end get like $1 off of my cable service if I upgraded - right.
Then I switched to VoiceStream, and they then renamed to T-Mobile. I have the Nokia 8890 with them. GSM - works in other countries and many cities. Great service, great customer service - no billing errors - great phone. Was very happy with them - they would upgrade my service for free as things came along - great stuff.
Then I moved to Bermuda and had to cancel that. I can still use the same phone here, and the service is decent enough, considering I didn't want to get it in the first place (work made me get it, but then refused to pay for it, so as a result, I don't answer it much). The customer service here is non-existant - but so far haven't had to deal with that yet. Have had a rude person and a nice person when signing up. That is pretty normal here - usually more rude.
In the end, the only way I would change phones is if I get one of the new Treo phones from Handspring/Palm, or if Nokia's upgrade to the 8890 comes here (I think it is the 8910 and 8910i - nice looking phones).
the users at our company can barely use Windows. If they ever did something like install Linux on their systems, I'd fight for them to get an increase in pay.
so much of our software is vital to what we do, and it has to be on MS. I have repeatedly requested that I have permission to just port it all over to a Unix system - and they are all for it, they just don't want to have to pay for it... so I basically would have to do it all at home in my free time. Can't say I really want to give up my own interests to then just do it at home.
It isn't that this new one that I saw was all that amazing an idea, I just hadn't seen it until recently. It is such an obvious idea that I don't know why I haven't seen it until more recently.
They send the mail as you. Fake the headers and make it look like it is from you. To you. From you.
I had our local setup here allowing in anything that was from our domain. Now I have to stop that.
I suppose the spammers saw that people were allowing their own domains and set it up that way.
On a side note and not all that related, I've noticed that I am getting (about once a week) an e-mail from a bank - citibank, or wells fargo, telling me that my loan application has not been approved, see details attached. Now, I haven't been applying for loans, and the file attached is a *.pif file... which are notorious for being viruses, and not a format that a bank will send you. Not to mention that looking at the headers, they usually come from attbi.com which is cable modems, and I have seen through Compuserve as well - which aren't exactly how banks usually do business.
I'm a competetive runner. Or rather, I was, and then I purposely lifted weights to get big, and now I am trying to get small again to compete in running again.
In order to beat free radicals, one can do any number of things. the proper ratios of omega-3,6, and 9s are a start. then supplement with at least 200mg of ALA (alpha lipoic acid) a day. CLA doesn't curt either, but it is less for the free radicals. to some extent vitamin C as well.
Or just add some fresh berries to your diet and you get a lot of that and save the supplement costs which are usually far more than fresh fruit.
this is true. there are many other exercises that would work as a substitute and be easier on the joints. rowing, biking, and even yoga (but that is a factor of intensity and duration - the low end stuff is mainly just for flexibility).
as for the smokers, the point of aerobic exercise is... well, I suppose lost on smokers.:)
like I said before, I should have clarified that I am a runner that likes to compete and win. I ran in college and I'm fairly good. I wouldn't recommend anyone jump into the 70 miles a week deal. 10-15 a week is enough to enjoy it and yet still burn some extra calories.
I use a heart rate monitor as well, but that isn't really something you have to have unless you are worried about overtraining.
if you are fat/obese, you want to start of carefully. the fattest I've ever been was *maybe* at 20% bf, but that is just a guess - I am very used to being under 10% bodyfat, so anything over that feels fat to me.
If you want to be an efficient geek, you can check out fitday.com and they have a free database that lets you track your workouts and your caloric intake.
I used it when I was weightlifting and got up to 220 lbs (at less than 10% bodyfat). In college I was a runner and I'm trying to get back into it, as a result, I'm purposely losing muscle (and fat) mass in order to raise my VO2 max more quickly.
Flash has been able to do that for a few versions now.
Flash is moving more and more towards what Shockwave used to be. Flash doesn't support OpenGL or anything the way Shockwave does, but it is a very good tool for certain things - making dynamic/interactive graphs is certainly one of the things that it is good for.
I am certainly not against Sony, I bought a Vaio for my fiancee. But I personally have no idea how anyone can use one of these things on a daily basis.
If you have a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse to plug into it so that it is essentially a mobile station that you move about, then that makes sense.
Of if you have that setup at work for all your uses, but if you travel to a client site you can then bring the little thing with you and use it to do a presentation - you can woo them with the little shiny thing that you brought with you to do it all.
But I just can't imagine using it, sitting there typing on it and the screen... ugh. It would drive me absolutely nuts.
I have my 15" screen at 1400Xwhatever and a nearly full keyboard on mine and it still is a bit confining for my tastes, but is at least usable.
I use this at work and at home (at work I have a desktop that I do most of my work on, the laptop is for work that goes with me all the time). When I get a new one, I will either get one of the Dells that can do 1600x1200 and has a brighter screen, or I will go to powernotebooks.com and see what I can setup there.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around why someone would seek out a smaller laptop. Easy to carry, lighter, less screen to drive means longer battery life to some extent... but to actually use the damn thing... Shows I'm narrow minded I guess.
I first learned about genetic algorithms back when I was working to break the Poe Cipher (I did break it, but wasn't the first, I think my submission was 6th - I was using Perl and the winner was using C - if that matters). I was fascinated by them and have always read up all that I could about them. Then moved on to neural networks, and then thought of genetic programming (I'm certainly not the first of course to think of that, and I'm not claiming I am).
These are great for getting through non-linear solutions faster than with linear attempts at the problem space. The main issue is that you tend to find local max/min (in theory which you are shooting for depends on what you are using it to find - I'm pretty sure everything I've ever used it for was looking for maxes) and you want to ideally find the global max/min - the thinking being that for the given problem space. In many cases, and this walk cycle sounds like it is perhaps one of them, a "pretty good" local max/min is sufficient and you don't in fact need THE global max/min.
I have thought of ways of using them for voice recognition, face recognition, stock market prediciton, etc etc - again, I'm not the first person to think of this - it is likely just a logical progression as you think of areas with huge problem surfaces and you want a non-linear solution.
In terms of game UI, or at least games in the sense of what we play on our computers, FPS and the like, they aren't used all that often. They require a pretty large lifetime in terms of how they learn (many repetitions and attempts). What is usually more prevalent in game UI is Bayesian learning via hidden Markov Matricies. Those are imprefect as well, but give the illusion of learning fairly well. Those can learn slightly faster, and can also be pre-taught when put into the game (trained on a wide range of users) and then learn more to the specifics of their new owner once they play.
I have a lot of code now for stock market prediciton because I find that to be the most interesting field for using this. I am actually in the process of starting up a company using it - I need to finish the UI for the end users, and I need to work out the legal side of it and where the company will be loccated in terms of the legal side for taxes.
In terms of predictive ability, neural nets trend towards making more predicitons, but some of those will be wrong. Genetic algorithms will make fewer predicitons because they will "try" harder to be right instead of just making a prediciton. "Try" being relative here because the bulk of that is in how they are programmed.
Genetic programming is intersting since you don't really write the code for the end problem, but instead define what the problem is, and then you write code that writes code to solve that problem. The downside of that is that it doesn't make fast and efficient code, it usually makes code with lots of conditions and branches. In the end, you are usually going to need to go over the code that it writes and then rewrite it yourself so that it does the same thing, but more efficiently - using the genetic programmed code as the guideline. (I'm 99% sure that in the recent article about GridWars and how the 2nd place guy used a "genetic algorithm" to determine his code - I think they were actually referring to genetic programming, which is slightly different - and judging by the fact that his code was very thick, and the fact that was likely why it lost in the end - too slow - also makes me think that was the case)
Fun stuff - I sure hope my company idea takes off so that I can just work on that and be done with the whole IT thing that is essentially really boring compared to all of this.
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I absolutely hate the phone and will do nearly anything to avoid talking on one.
That said, I love shiny things. I have had a series of phones over the years and a series of carriers.
I started in '99 with a Nokia - I think it was a 6590 or something like that - it seemed cool at the time. It was with Sprint in Boston/Cambridge.
There were small, but frequent dead zones and when I walked into one while on a call, it would drop out. Frustrating.
I called Sprint about it and they actually said "yeah, we aren't planning on upgrading out networks at all"... so I told them I would be leaving their service, which I did.
I then got a Nokia 8860 - the shiny mirrored girly phone that Christina Aguilara had on one of her MTV interviews. That phone scratched easily and had terrible reception - but I was worshipped like a god whenever I pulled that out of my pocket. It was also excellent for finding nose hair issues.
The reception on that phone was so bad that it is hard to fault AT&T for any of that. That said, AT&T fucked up the billing on my phone and my cable service about 4 times in a row and led to a several month series of events that made me decided to never use them again. They were incredibly annoying to deal with - one person would say the situation was resolved, then I would get a letter from a collection agency - for something that I never needed to pay in the first place according to AT&T.
Finally, the last straw was when the woman (many supervisors up) said to me "I understand that you aren't supposed to have this charge, but you do, and I can't fix it, so how about you just pay $10 of it and then I will write off the rest (of a $100 charge)".
I was so pissed that I had to pay anything at all since I wasn't supposed to - but at that point, I saw the $10 fee as my way of getting out of their fucking phone annoyance hell - and I was sick of getting collection notices for things that weren't my problem.
So I will never go with them again. I later got some mail telling me that I was part of a class action suit against them and would in the end get like $1 off of my cable service if I upgraded - right.
Then I switched to VoiceStream, and they then renamed to T-Mobile. I have the Nokia 8890 with them. GSM - works in other countries and many cities.
Great service, great customer service - no billing errors - great phone.
Was very happy with them - they would upgrade my service for free as things came along - great stuff.
Then I moved to Bermuda and had to cancel that.
I can still use the same phone here, and the service is decent enough, considering I didn't want to get it in the first place (work made me get it, but then refused to pay for it, so as a result, I don't answer it much).
The customer service here is non-existant - but so far haven't had to deal with that yet. Have had a rude person and a nice person when signing up. That is pretty normal here - usually more rude.
In the end, the only way I would change phones is if I get one of the new Treo phones from Handspring/Palm, or if Nokia's upgrade to the 8890 comes here (I think it is the 8910 and 8910i - nice looking phones).
the users at our company can barely use Windows. If they ever did something like install Linux on their systems, I'd fight for them to get an increase in pay.
so much of our software is vital to what we do, and it has to be on MS. I have repeatedly requested that I have permission to just port it all over to a Unix system - and they are all for it, they just don't want to have to pay for it... so I basically would have to do it all at home in my free time.
Can't say I really want to give up my own interests to then just do it at home.
When my system is running hot, I'll toss a couple of ice cubes onto my video card.
Totally silent.
Usually then my system crashes and goes down for a day or so and during that time it almost never overheats.
Pretty efficient if you ask me.
nothing brought clarity of vision and mental focus to my life like killing a hooker.
don't wuss out and just beat them though, that never works and you waste twice as much time in the end.
score! *pumps fist*
I'd rather have lapdances.
in some really bad races - many runners just focus on the next step :)
amazing that it comes out so even like that. so many zeros and only that little 7.
All this time I thought there were 147. I was way off.
LOL - are there really people out there that have the job title of "Mail Admin"??
I can only dream that someday I reach that level.
It isn't that this new one that I saw was all that amazing an idea, I just hadn't seen it until recently. It is such an obvious idea that I don't know why I haven't seen it until more recently.
They send the mail as you. Fake the headers and make it look like it is from you. To you. From you.
I had our local setup here allowing in anything that was from our domain. Now I have to stop that.
I suppose the spammers saw that people were allowing their own domains and set it up that way.
On a side note and not all that related, I've noticed that I am getting (about once a week) an e-mail from a bank - citibank, or wells fargo, telling me that my loan application has not been approved, see details attached.
Now, I haven't been applying for loans, and the file attached is a *.pif file... which are notorious for being viruses, and not a format that a bank will send you.
Not to mention that looking at the headers, they usually come from attbi.com which is cable modems, and I have seen through Compuserve as well - which aren't exactly how banks usually do business.
I'm a competetive runner. Or rather, I was, and then I purposely lifted weights to get big, and now I am trying to get small again to compete in running again.
In order to beat free radicals, one can do any number of things. the proper ratios of omega-3,6, and 9s are a start. then supplement with at least 200mg of ALA (alpha lipoic acid) a day. CLA doesn't curt either, but it is less for the free radicals.
to some extent vitamin C as well.
Or just add some fresh berries to your diet and you get a lot of that and save the supplement costs which are usually far more than fresh fruit.
this is true. there are many other exercises that would work as a substitute and be easier on the joints. rowing, biking, and even yoga (but that is a factor of intensity and duration - the low end stuff is mainly just for flexibility).
:)
as for the smokers, the point of aerobic exercise is... well, I suppose lost on smokers.
like I said before, I should have clarified that I am a runner that likes to compete and win. I ran in college and I'm fairly good.
I wouldn't recommend anyone jump into the 70 miles a week deal.
10-15 a week is enough to enjoy it and yet still burn some extra calories.
I use a heart rate monitor as well, but that isn't really something you have to have unless you are worried about overtraining.
if you are fat/obese, you want to start of carefully. the fattest I've ever been was *maybe* at 20% bf, but that is just a guess - I am very used to being under 10% bodyfat, so anything over that feels fat to me.
If you want to be an efficient geek, you can check out fitday.com and they have a free database that lets you track your workouts and your caloric intake.
I used it when I was weightlifting and got up to 220 lbs (at less than 10% bodyfat).
In college I was a runner and I'm trying to get back into it, as a result, I'm purposely losing muscle (and fat) mass in order to raise my VO2 max more quickly.
I hope I didn't imply that 70 miles was somehow ideal. I used to run in college and I'm trying to compete again.
there is no way anyone "needs" to run that much at all - you could run only a few miles a week and still burn a lot of calories that way.
incidentally, slow running burns fat while you are doing it, but fast running builds more muscle which burns more calories while you are not running.
I can go on and on about nutrition and weightlifting and running - but for the most part, I'm not sure anyone would read it.
you are right to watch what you eat - especially simple sugars. and get the good fats - omega-3, 6, and 9 in the proper ratios.
there is no secret to losing weight.
you have to burn more calories than you take in.
so either take in less calories (stop drinking all the beer) or burn more (run).
I run in the mornings and am working my way back up to 70 miles a week.
I'm in shape.
funny how those go hand in hand.
The mice are just bored.
If you want to give them something to do, just put a housecat in there with them.
QED
Flash has been able to do that for a few versions now.
Flash is moving more and more towards what Shockwave used to be.
Flash doesn't support OpenGL or anything the way Shockwave does, but it is a very good tool for certain things - making dynamic/interactive graphs is certainly one of the things that it is good for.
he says that he needs interactivity and therefore that won't work
the 17" screen laptop at powernotebooks.com has a camera in the same place as the Sony as an option.
I haven't used on though, so I haven't any opinion of it, aside from thinking that I don't really think I'd want/use it on mine.
I can't possibly imagine using one of these.
I am certainly not against Sony, I bought a Vaio for my fiancee. But I personally have no idea how anyone can use one of these things on a daily basis.
If you have a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse to plug into it so that it is essentially a mobile station that you move about, then that makes sense.
Of if you have that setup at work for all your uses, but if you travel to a client site you can then bring the little thing with you and use it to do a presentation - you can woo them with the little shiny thing that you brought with you to do it all.
But I just can't imagine using it, sitting there typing on it and the screen... ugh.
It would drive me absolutely nuts.
I have my 15" screen at 1400Xwhatever and a nearly full keyboard on mine and it still is a bit confining for my tastes, but is at least usable.
I use this at work and at home (at work I have a desktop that I do most of my work on, the laptop is for work that goes with me all the time).
When I get a new one, I will either get one of the Dells that can do 1600x1200 and has a brighter screen, or I will go to powernotebooks.com and see what I can setup there.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around why someone would seek out a smaller laptop.
Easy to carry, lighter, less screen to drive means longer battery life to some extent... but to actually use the damn thing...
Shows I'm narrow minded I guess.
Yes, and Vermont is moving that way too.
I currently live in Bermuda, and they too are quite good.
Other areas are Gournsey (sp?), the Brit Virgin Islands, the Caymans (sp?), even Dublin isn't too bad. And of course the Swiss bastards.
I'm leaning towards Bermuda right now - I just need to know what their laws are for the equivalent of the sole proprietorship in the States.
I first learned about genetic algorithms back when I was working to break the Poe Cipher (I did break it, but wasn't the first, I think my submission was 6th - I was using Perl and the winner was using C - if that matters).
I was fascinated by them and have always read up all that I could about them.
Then moved on to neural networks, and then thought of genetic programming (I'm certainly not the first of course to think of that, and I'm not claiming I am).
These are great for getting through non-linear solutions faster than with linear attempts at the problem space. The main issue is that you tend to find local max/min (in theory which you are shooting for depends on what you are using it to find - I'm pretty sure everything I've ever used it for was looking for maxes) and you want to ideally find the global max/min - the thinking being that for the given problem space.
In many cases, and this walk cycle sounds like it is perhaps one of them, a "pretty good" local max/min is sufficient and you don't in fact need THE global max/min.
I have thought of ways of using them for voice recognition, face recognition, stock market prediciton, etc etc - again, I'm not the first person to think of this - it is likely just a logical progression as you think of areas with huge problem surfaces and you want a non-linear solution.
In terms of game UI, or at least games in the sense of what we play on our computers, FPS and the like, they aren't used all that often. They require a pretty large lifetime in terms of how they learn (many repetitions and attempts).
What is usually more prevalent in game UI is Bayesian learning via hidden Markov Matricies. Those are imprefect as well, but give the illusion of learning fairly well. Those can learn slightly faster, and can also be pre-taught when put into the game (trained on a wide range of users) and then learn more to the specifics of their new owner once they play.
I have a lot of code now for stock market prediciton because I find that to be the most interesting field for using this. I am actually in the process of starting up a company using it - I need to finish the UI for the end users, and I need to work out the legal side of it and where the company will be loccated in terms of the legal side for taxes.
In terms of predictive ability, neural nets trend towards making more predicitons, but some of those will be wrong. Genetic algorithms will make fewer predicitons because they will "try" harder to be right instead of just making a prediciton. "Try" being relative here because the bulk of that is in how they are programmed.
Genetic programming is intersting since you don't really write the code for the end problem, but instead define what the problem is, and then you write code that writes code to solve that problem.
The downside of that is that it doesn't make fast and efficient code, it usually makes code with lots of conditions and branches.
In the end, you are usually going to need to go over the code that it writes and then rewrite it yourself so that it does the same thing, but more efficiently - using the genetic programmed code as the guideline.
(I'm 99% sure that in the recent article about GridWars and how the 2nd place guy used a "genetic algorithm" to determine his code - I think they were actually referring to genetic programming, which is slightly different - and judging by the fact that his code was very thick, and the fact that was likely why it lost in the end - too slow - also makes me think that was the case)
Fun stuff - I sure hope my company idea takes off so that I can just work on that and be done with the whole IT thing that is essentially really boring compared to all of this.
Interesting! Thanks.
I have done that in the past, but for whatever reason (stupidity on my part?), I haven't seen the Export functionality. Very useful.
I will have to play with it to see about font size, weight, and positioning - but that looks like that would be quite nice.
Thanks again.
Oooo, I'd like it if he would get one of those. I also might be able to sell him on that since he wants a keyboard.
That is a good idea, I will run that by him.
I can see it now, he is going to have some reason why he doesn't trust Linux... hell, I won't even mention the Linux side of things.
I'll just point out how shiny it is and that it has sliding parts and many buttons. That should thrill him.