Where I used to live, a little town in southern Oregon, with about 45,000 people in the area around the town, Sprint was the ONLY one of the 4 major carriers to offer service. The other 3 allowed you to be covered under their regional or national plans there, but did not offer actual phone numbers or sign up customers in that area. In fact, AT$T's service contract stated that if a certain percentage of your calls were outside of a "home area" for a certain amount of time, they would drop your contract, AND charge you an early termination fee, even if you have a nation-wide plan. (I had friends that brought their cingular phones with them to college, right at the time they merged, and they actually enforced that)
So, I've been a big fan of US Cellular ever since.. (and free incoming calls and texts is kinda nice!)
Sad thing is, the contract is there to subsidize the cost of the phone. (because the price of the phone is built into the plan)
yet, if you take your own phone with you, you might not need to sign the 2 year contract, but your still paying the same price for your plan as someone who is getting a subsidized phone.
I find it funny that they have to break out the cost of fees and taxes and stuff on the bill, but they can just not disclose the cost of the phone subsidy.. By hiding the true cost of the phone you got for "free", they eliminate any incentive for your to get your own phone, or get one that better matches your needs. This also greatly increases churn in phones, which adds lots of nice electronics and batteries to landfills every year.
Of course, the idea of trying to break your local Cell tower is kinda like trying to take out your cable modem while your using it.
Its something a hacker might be dumb enough to try once..
The thing is, it has been happening, quietly in the background. I think it speaks well of may technologies that they are so hidden, and just work..
The US has the production capacity of over 2.5Billion gallons a year of BioDiesel with another half billion gallons a year coming online in the next year.
So, if you pay attention, you are frustrated, because it doesn't seem to be coming fast enough, and if you go away for a few years and come back, you don't notice the differences, because they are baked into the system by then.
Why not convert the numbers in the summary to how many barrels per acre/year, or how much money per gallon. When did adding the important units of measurement (and converting them all to the same base) become so difficult?
Produces 20,000 gallons per acre, at $50/barrel. I got a car with a 18Gallon tank that gets 3.5L/100km. Oh, wait.. that makes no sense..
I would be a fan of just making the current tax rates stick. I would love to see our tax laws dropped to no more than 10 pages of text, written at the 8th grade reading level. While we currently have a progressive tax system, at least in theory, there are so many loopholes, that the people that can afford to hire teams of proffesionals can take deductions that you and I cannot possibly even know about. (really, its impossible for a single person to sit down and read the complete tax code in one year, before it changes) It seems silly that you have to hire a professional to tell you how much you owe! Could you imagine what would happen if you got to the checkout at wal-mart, and they told you to make an estimated payment, and their lawyers would later decide if that was accurate or not?
Sure, make the couple of basic brackets, or hell, go with the fair-tax (which I think is brilliant, btw), but get rid of every loophole that could possibly be added, and make it so congress can only change tax code with a 75% vote!
btw, i'm posting this at work, at an accounting firm. My view isn't shared by my co-workers, whose jobs depend on the code being confusing..
And they also explicity told the companies that they were "too big to fail" and that here is some money, I know your not even asking yet, but please, take it, your too important to our economy, which lets them know that they can gain all the profit they want, without any of the risks. (unlimited upside, no downside). It would have been best to let a large percentage fail, and then bail out the others, or automatically break up any bank that had to be bailed out into smaller banks.
I'm kinda looking forward to the firmware update the gets installed on all iPods.. and bricks devices that say they are ipods, and get their firmware overwritten.. Don't put it past apple.. "Sorry, we checked the ID and assumed it was one of our devices.. oops"
Its really easy to shop at wal-mart. the only trick is, that after you purchase your goods, you have to load your groceries into an approved Chevy automobile. Then, after you leave their parking lot, you can stop anywhere, and load your groceries into a vehicle of your choice. I don't know what all the hubub is, its easy enough to make sure you have a chevy, or borrow one, i mean they are pretty cheap used these days, and who doesn't have at least 2 cars!? If you don't like wal-marts policies, you should just choose not to shop there. If Ford was a decent company, they would either build their own stores, or partner with Target to be the exclusive vehicle allowed in their parking lots.
Except for that pesky transition period, when they have hundreds of Kwh's of power flowing, in the same general area as extremely flamable vapors, that can be ignited by a spark.
Do you expect Mechanics to sniff through everything in every cubby-hole of your car, because you didn't bother to learn how to replace a transmission yourself? Its just swapping out a part...
When you hire a professional, or someone claiming to be one, you expect professional behavior.
Couldn't agree more.. The best way to defend against a "dirty bomb" is to start refining the low level waste for recycling. I wish the terrorists luck assembling dirty bombs made of Plutonium. In reality, a very large portion of our current nuclear fuel comes from "recycled' warheads from Russia. I can't help but smile at the fact that the cold war is powering my AC on a hot day;).
I've often wondered what would happen if they changed that.. A recent Newsweek article was talking about how at the very end of the Clinton Administration, they ruled Fly Ash a hazardous waste, but it was via Executive order (just like we complained that bush did the last few weeks of office) and was undone by the next administration. I wonder what would have happened if that designation was passed "properly" and allowed to stand the last 9 years or so.
Only embeds itself in the BIOS of "supported models".. Also, just for the curious.. All the BIOS part does is try to re-install the agent in windows. I was very disappointed to find that out, they sure make it sound like its a chip on the MB. I was really hoping they would have something on there that would actually communicate out my NIC and Wireless card without the OS, at the hardware level.. But no. And since I run linux, it would never be tracked. (note to self.. If I ever steal a laptop, load Linux on it.. ) However, some of that coolness seems to be coming in the form of a poison pill feature for the Intel VPro tech.
No, things like siding would just have to be torn off, to make sure the inside structure was still sound. You don't want to cover up the core structure for cosmetic reasons.. Also, that stuff does not really add much weight, and would be more likely to suffer damage, (ie, windows cracking, siding torn, Kitchen cabinets damaged, etc) that would not damage the integrity of the building, IE, they don't care if they have to replace the windows, the key is that the building doesn't collapse.
My inital Sync with the Amazon S3 storage cloud (I'm a very happy JungleDisk owner.. Only Linux app I've happily paid for so far) took about a week, to upload my 10GB of photos. Now, its almost nothing, a few docs here and there, maybe an hour or two when I dump a bunch of pictures from my memory card.. Cable modem's have limited upload, but most of your data is usually pretty static.
Sad thing is, every router made in the last many years has had all sorts of traffic management that is fair, impersonal, and doesn't violate privacy, or single any one person, or one protocol or technology out.
I would have no problems with an ISP implementing something like WFQ, or even FIFO when their main pipe is clogged.. its when they decide that my particular choice is not one of the selected ones..
Which is funny, since pretty much every Chip design package ran only on big iron UNIX back in the day, and companies had to re-write their software for NT4, because business was screaming for it.. NT4 was a fraction the price for OS/hardware as big UNIX, Now, with linux being even cheaper, they want the UNIX like software again.. Ahh, the days of a HPUX workstation and NT4 machine on every desk...
I can't help but think about all those little domes in the ceiling at my local big box retailer, yet they still have a crapload of theft. Its really not much of a deterrent, it just keeps honest people honest.. (and usually doesn't record the backrooms, where the employees steal stuff left and right)....
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Where I used to live, a little town in southern Oregon, with about 45,000 people in the area around the town, Sprint was the ONLY one of the 4 major carriers to offer service. The other 3 allowed you to be covered under their regional or national plans there, but did not offer actual phone numbers or sign up customers in that area. In fact, AT$T's service contract stated that if a certain percentage of your calls were outside of a "home area" for a certain amount of time, they would drop your contract, AND charge you an early termination fee, even if you have a nation-wide plan. (I had friends that brought their cingular phones with them to college, right at the time they merged, and they actually enforced that)
So, I've been a big fan of US Cellular ever since.. (and free incoming calls and texts is kinda nice!)
Sad thing is, the contract is there to subsidize the cost of the phone. (because the price of the phone is built into the plan) yet, if you take your own phone with you, you might not need to sign the 2 year contract, but your still paying the same price for your plan as someone who is getting a subsidized phone. I find it funny that they have to break out the cost of fees and taxes and stuff on the bill, but they can just not disclose the cost of the phone subsidy.. By hiding the true cost of the phone you got for "free", they eliminate any incentive for your to get your own phone, or get one that better matches your needs. This also greatly increases churn in phones, which adds lots of nice electronics and batteries to landfills every year.
Of course, the idea of trying to break your local Cell tower is kinda like trying to take out your cable modem while your using it. Its something a hacker might be dumb enough to try once..
Only when they run DJB DNS on their macbooks...
Why pick on us? I just want to look different, just like all my friends...
The US has the production capacity of over 2.5Billion gallons a year of BioDiesel with another half billion gallons a year coming online in the next year.
So, if you pay attention, you are frustrated, because it doesn't seem to be coming fast enough, and if you go away for a few years and come back, you don't notice the differences, because they are baked into the system by then.
Why not convert the numbers in the summary to how many barrels per acre/year, or how much money per gallon. When did adding the important units of measurement (and converting them all to the same base) become so difficult?
Produces 20,000 gallons per acre, at $50/barrel.
I got a car with a 18Gallon tank that gets 3.5L/100km. Oh, wait.. that makes no sense..
I would be a fan of just making the current tax rates stick. I would love to see our tax laws dropped to no more than 10 pages of text, written at the 8th grade reading level. While we currently have a progressive tax system, at least in theory, there are so many loopholes, that the people that can afford to hire teams of proffesionals can take deductions that you and I cannot possibly even know about. (really, its impossible for a single person to sit down and read the complete tax code in one year, before it changes) It seems silly that you have to hire a professional to tell you how much you owe! Could you imagine what would happen if you got to the checkout at wal-mart, and they told you to make an estimated payment, and their lawyers would later decide if that was accurate or not?
Sure, make the couple of basic brackets, or hell, go with the fair-tax (which I think is brilliant, btw), but get rid of every loophole that could possibly be added, and make it so congress can only change tax code with a 75% vote!
btw, i'm posting this at work, at an accounting firm. My view isn't shared by my co-workers, whose jobs depend on the code being confusing..
And they also explicity told the companies that they were "too big to fail" and that here is some money, I know your not even asking yet, but please, take it, your too important to our economy, which lets them know that they can gain all the profit they want, without any of the risks. (unlimited upside, no downside). It would have been best to let a large percentage fail, and then bail out the others, or automatically break up any bank that had to be bailed out into smaller banks.
I'm kinda looking forward to the firmware update the gets installed on all iPods.. and bricks devices that say they are ipods, and get their firmware overwritten.. Don't put it past apple.. "Sorry, we checked the ID and assumed it was one of our devices.. oops"
Its really easy to shop at wal-mart. the only trick is, that after you purchase your goods, you have to load your groceries into an approved Chevy automobile. Then, after you leave their parking lot, you can stop anywhere, and load your groceries into a vehicle of your choice. I don't know what all the hubub is, its easy enough to make sure you have a chevy, or borrow one, i mean they are pretty cheap used these days, and who doesn't have at least 2 cars!? If you don't like wal-marts policies, you should just choose not to shop there. If Ford was a decent company, they would either build their own stores, or partner with Target to be the exclusive vehicle allowed in their parking lots.
Except for that pesky transition period, when they have hundreds of Kwh's of power flowing, in the same general area as extremely flamable vapors, that can be ignited by a spark.
Unfortunately, some of us are still trying, unsuccessfully. Damn those pink ponies.
Do you expect Mechanics to sniff through everything in every cubby-hole of your car, because you didn't bother to learn how to replace a transmission yourself? Its just swapping out a part...
When you hire a professional, or someone claiming to be one, you expect professional behavior.
Couldn't agree more.. The best way to defend against a "dirty bomb" is to start refining the low level waste for recycling. I wish the terrorists luck assembling dirty bombs made of Plutonium. In reality, a very large portion of our current nuclear fuel comes from "recycled' warheads from Russia. I can't help but smile at the fact that the cold war is powering my AC on a hot day ;).
I've often wondered what would happen if they changed that.. A recent Newsweek article was talking about how at the very end of the Clinton Administration, they ruled Fly Ash a hazardous waste, but it was via Executive order (just like we complained that bush did the last few weeks of office) and was undone by the next administration. I wonder what would have happened if that designation was passed "properly" and allowed to stand the last 9 years or so.
Only embeds itself in the BIOS of "supported models"..
Also, just for the curious.. All the BIOS part does is try to re-install the agent in windows. I was very disappointed to find that out, they sure make it sound like its a chip on the MB. I was really hoping they would have something on there that would actually communicate out my NIC and Wireless card without the OS, at the hardware level.. But no. And since I run linux, it would never be tracked. (note to self.. If I ever steal a laptop, load Linux on it.. ) However, some of that coolness seems to be coming in the form of a poison pill feature for the Intel VPro tech.
Screw the wireless part! I want to see a drive that can dump 5GB in 3min, within the constraints of a phone's power capabilities!
No, things like siding would just have to be torn off, to make sure the inside structure was still sound. You don't want to cover up the core structure for cosmetic reasons.. Also, that stuff does not really add much weight, and would be more likely to suffer damage, (ie, windows cracking, siding torn, Kitchen cabinets damaged, etc) that would not damage the integrity of the building, IE, they don't care if they have to replace the windows, the key is that the building doesn't collapse.
My inital Sync with the Amazon S3 storage cloud (I'm a very happy JungleDisk owner.. Only Linux app I've happily paid for so far) took about a week, to upload my 10GB of photos. Now, its almost nothing, a few docs here and there, maybe an hour or two when I dump a bunch of pictures from my memory card.. Cable modem's have limited upload, but most of your data is usually pretty static.
and you're not required to have any of them to live in the u.s. Yet.
There, fixed that for ya
Sad thing is, every router made in the last many years has had all sorts of traffic management that is fair, impersonal, and doesn't violate privacy, or single any one person, or one protocol or technology out.
I would have no problems with an ISP implementing something like WFQ, or even FIFO when their main pipe is clogged.. its when they decide that my particular choice is not one of the selected ones..
Which is funny, since pretty much every Chip design package ran only on big iron UNIX back in the day, and companies had to re-write their software for NT4, because business was screaming for it.. NT4 was a fraction the price for OS/hardware as big UNIX, Now, with linux being even cheaper, they want the UNIX like software again.. Ahh, the days of a HPUX workstation and NT4 machine on every desk...
I can't help but think about all those little domes in the ceiling at my local big box retailer, yet they still have a crapload of theft. Its really not much of a deterrent, it just keeps honest people honest.. (and usually doesn't record the backrooms, where the employees steal stuff left and right)....
Wouldn't the south Korean computers be using Unicode though and not ascii?