If you use Twitteriffic (iOS), you'll find you have the ability to "muffle" tweets that contain particular phrases or words. It's been my client of choice for years. (Not sure if other clients on Android offer this functionality). Whilst that doesn't censor hate-speech, it does give you freedom over what you want to read.
Say, what a lovely, environmentally sound idea. In fact, why don't we just tarmac the entire state?
When the US is considering building quarter-mile wide highways, it really is no surprise they're dragging their heels on the Kyoto agreement. It would have been more radical and forward thinking to spend the money on a state of the art public transportation system, but not to worry, I'm sure you'll learn - eventually.
>>Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?
Naaah, it's not green transportation, as echoed by previous posters.
If these were replacing cars, yes, I would agree. However, cyclists use legs to power themselves. It also requires energy to make batteries, which also need charging somehow.
Battery production is notoriously chemical intensive and I should think Chinese industry isn't so tight on it's environmental controls.
In addition, instead of cycling to work, they're being electric-scootered to work. Sounds like a loss of exercise here too. It will take a severe toll on the health of the nation too, I should think. Give it time... watch them get fatter, like the rest of the western world...
Get an iPod and one of those nice little widgets that you plug into it that broadcasts the music to anyone listening on a particular FM radio frequency. There seem to be a host of derivatives, but one particular one of note is the iTrip.
As a person who likes to travel, I've only found them useful to send e-mails home whilst away. I wouldn't see the point of going to one locally when I can sup my own coffee and have WiFi broadband from the comfort of my own sofa...:)
That said, EasyEverything (http://www.easyeverything.com/), seems to run this venture rather well - although whether Stelios makes much of a profit from it is another thing. He has a shedload of the bright orange public net-access points all through Europe - and they're all pretty huge. Access is usually very cheap, at the equivalent of 1ukp/hr, but rates vary according to demand.
This is a spin-off from the "easy" group, of which EasyJet is the main money earner....
It does seem a bit weird, that on the day Apple releases an update to make your battery last longer, it then releases an OS update which will probably make your battery last for less time because the fan is always on.
I've been a Nokia bunnie for the last 5 years (I've been using mobiles for 8 years) and upgraded to a T68i instead.
When I decided to upgrade, I wanted infra-red, bluetooth, colour screen, GPRS, etc and good battery life - the camera bit is nice, but not essential. I was deliberating upon a 7650 or the T68i. The T68i has miles better battery life (I get about 5 - 6 days out of it), it's smaller, and the interface I find is quite usable. Sure, it's not the 7650, but that won't fit in my pocket so nicely and was 100ukp more expensive for the upgrade.
When you start using bluetooth more, you realise how cool it really is. I now exchange images/date with people often. It seems to have caught on.
In my mind, Nokia has brought out a deluge of new phones too late. By announcing 30 (as some articles say) new phones in the course of the year, are they not running the risk of severe problems ? I would have thought that the idea of keeping a fairly small product range was the way to keep brand identity and profits up. In this situation the distinction between the 72xx and the 76xx and the 8xxx range, etc.. gets lost. They used to have distinct target audiences - I've sorta lost the plot now. Over diversification, I believe is the term, isn't it ?
I'm happy with my T68i. Some people have niggles, but I can only go on experience.... I'd recommend it, apart from the fact that all my mates have one now...:-)
In the UK recently, a controversial idea was made of electronically tagging young offenders.
Looking at the specs for this device, it doesn't actually seem to be much different, except that your child would have of course never gone on trial to wear the damn thing.
I would say that if you feel your child has to wear one of these awful devices, then you've probably failed as a parent already. I actually felt pretty sad when I saw the company website for this device. It's basically a tracing device and I'd like to think that I trusted my children a little more than that.
I think that some of the basic reasons for this device are based around paranoia... "Where is your child now ?"
Take care everyone, and have an excellent easter...
All I can comment on is my experiences, namely those being that OS X is more likely to be a nail in the coffin to the likes of Linux PPC, than traditional Linux on x86 machines.
For me, OS X was a bit of a godsend, as I was using Linux PPC for a while prior to installing OS X. Basically, I've got what I want... a *nix derivative with a good front end. I can use command line if I want, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I want to use it for everything - there's sufficient there to mean that you never need to open a terminal window if you don't want to.
If anything, the figures are likely to be good news for web server software such as Apache, which is going to quickly settle in to the new Mac market, as well as the x86 market.
The fact that Adams didn't publish any of this, because he thought it wasn't right, says a lot, I think. This just seems like a way of cashing in .
I personally, think that it shouldn't be published. If Adams wasn't happy with it, then his wish should have been respected.
This reminds me of when Freddie Mercury died, and all of a sudden a whole pile of Queen records got released. Most of them were pants. If they hadn't been released, it was for a good reason.
Very sad indeed. This shouldn't just be an excuse to cash in.
How the addition of a new feature, like a calendar fits in with their recent discussion about not adding any new features and trying to get a stable product out for version 1.00 ?
Thanks ColGraff, you are the first one (so far) to acknowledge that the US is *not* doing all this alone.
Most of the US coverage so far that I've seen (including/.'s headline text) seems to largely neglect the fact that British troops are committed to this too.
I do not want to make Britain sound more important than it is. To be honest, in the grand scale of things, it isn't (speaking as a Brit who sees their country as on the decline). However, I think that the US's stance to everything would have been considerably different if Britain hadn't done the shuttle diplomacy between nearby countries, along with the supply of forces. Diplomacy should always come before loss of life.
I personally do not agree with the action that is being taken. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and the majority of this action will only go towards running it into the ground even more. I think that financial support of the Northern alliance so that they can depose the Taliban would have been a much better option. We can't go in and just "make things right". Finally, is this a war against terrorism or a war against the Taliban ? If it's a war against Terrorism, then what about ETA, the IRA ? etc.. etc.. All of a sudden, Britain is in no place to criticise.
...and as we know, if you kill one militant fanatic, they have all the more reason to let another militant fanatic step in their shoes. You can use technology to monitor these things, but several guys sitting around a campfire discussing the matter is going to bypass all this technology. The operation needs to be a lot more close to the ground. Technology isn't going to win this. Ultimately, we need to help the Afghans sort this out in the right way for them.
Thanks Colgraff. It's good to see someone who recognises the external support of other nations. Bush should not take that support for granted.
Remember the Gulf War. The biggest loss of Allied life was British - by friendly fire.
In the UK, the IT job market seems to be pretty dire, but it's been recently publicised that a lot of companies are making their contract IT staff unemployed in favour of programmers from India, who are obviously going to be a lot cheaper.
All I can seem to get at the moment are odd jobs for a few weeks at a time, and as far as my home area is concerned, there's just no IT work whatsoever.
There isn't a skill shortage at all. It's just that UK employees are considered as too expensive for UK businesses. (I know it's not the US, but let's be honest, most UK offices are just regional satellites of US companies)
OK, I'll add a bit more now. Good to see I stimulated some replies.
If it's available as a download, that's great, although I have the distinct impression that this could be a biggie, which may just be totally unfeasable with a 56k modem. We'll have see. It might be an overnighter...
Luckily, things have changed slightly in the UK, in that we don't all have to pay by the minute for our downloads.
I was never expecting Apple to give the CD away for nowt. They have a business, just like I do. I was just expecting a nominal fee to cover the cost of production.
I was one of the early adopters of OS X. I bought it on the first day, put up with the bugs and crappy performance, downloaded the updates and provided the feedback. I was cut at the bleeding edge.
So, to get a version that does what it should, we're going to have to pay to get the update CD. (Basically, $20 for you US guys, dunno what it'll be for us brits, probably 15ukp).
I don't see this as a 'thank you' for putting up with the stunted functionality. I still can't print, and my CD RW drive isn't fully supported yet. I'm still rebooting into 9.1 to get what I need done. It's still an incomplete OS.
I just feel this is a slightly Micro$oftesque trick. I know $20 isn't much, but when you paid the full whack for the product in the first place (before they installed it for nothing on all subsequent machines from about June-ish onwards), it feels like a slap in the face.
...unless you had a Mac, in which case you still had to shell out 50ukp (70 USD?) for an adapter to the adapter and some really lame software, that was very badly supported.
Meanwhile, Palm support was integrated into the Mac OS. I still love my Psion, but it really narks me that I had to pay nearly 450ukp for my Psion 5 at the time, and the desktop integration *still* wasn't there....
I'm not entirely sure why this article states it's a 'Growing Trend'.
In the UK, diesel cars tend to be just as popular as petrol. The old Diesel Peugeot 205 I had used to get at least 55 to the gallon.
I think this just goes to show how insular the States is when it comes to seeing viable alternatives to problems.
Another fuel on the increase is LPG (gas). My Dad, over 20 years ago, had an LPG car. The conversion was fairly cheap and easy. Effectively, you had a duel fuel car (petrol/ LPG), but LPG was half the price of petrol for more or less the same economy. After successive Tory goverments, the LPG stations disappeared (the Tories didn't care about viable fuel alternatives or public transport), but recently, they've started to come back, because the price of a gallon of petrol is now so expensive in this country. The quantity of LPG stations is on the increase.
Petrol, like everything, is a finite resource. No doubt, US automobile manufacturers will only consider an alternative until the last oil well dries up.
Of course, if anyone should put a good electric vehicle my way, I certainly won't object...:-)
Without wanting to jump on the "I agree" bandwagon, I will.:-)
Having worked in a tech support environment, certain truths come to light.
1) Nobody usually lasts more than 18 months.
2) The "chuck 'em in a room with a phone" philosophy seems to be on the increase.
3) Training for tech support people is on the decrease.
4) Stress and depression amongst tech support people is on the increase.
5) Tech support work is viewed as a career dead-end. I've actually seen a new trend, of which I became a victim.
I did a sandwich degree, which means you have to do 1 yrs professional work somewhere. It's supposed to add value to the degree (sorry for the PHB buzz-word).
The reality was that I was given a tech support role, in an area of computing that demands good quality support. (Real time EDI processing)
If this had been a normal position, I would have quit in the first few weeks, but because I couldn't risk dropping out of my degree, I had to keep going.
The company in question now puts most of their "nearly graduated" placement students in tech support, which is really lousy for the users, because they don't actually get someone with any product experience, just a starter training course in their first week.
Arrogance it most certainly is. If customers were to realise that their mission critical support was being run by people who had zero experience, they'd refused to pay their maintenance contracts.
M.
P.S. I ended up lasting three years. When I left, my tension levels immediate rose just on the sound of the home phone ringing....
Slashdot Mirror
Errr, nope. Just downloaded and running it. Seems fine on Mac OS.
If you use Twitteriffic (iOS), you'll find you have the ability to "muffle" tweets that contain particular phrases or words. It's been my client of choice for years. (Not sure if other clients on Android offer this functionality). Whilst that doesn't censor hate-speech, it does give you freedom over what you want to read.
...a Beowulf cluster of those.
*coat*
Say, what a lovely, environmentally sound idea. In fact, why don't we just tarmac the entire state?
When the US is considering building quarter-mile wide highways, it really is no surprise they're dragging their heels on the Kyoto agreement. It would have been more radical and forward thinking to spend the money on a state of the art public transportation system, but not to worry, I'm sure you'll learn - eventually.
M.
Or using a Bluetooth headset in conjunction with my phone? (As it's illegal to drive in the UK whilst holding/operating a phone in your hand ?)
I'd say that was useful.
>>Who would have guessed that China would lead the way in green transportation?
Naaah, it's not green transportation, as echoed by previous posters.
If these were replacing cars, yes, I would agree. However, cyclists use legs to power themselves. It also requires energy to make batteries, which also need charging somehow.
Battery production is notoriously chemical intensive and I should think Chinese industry isn't so tight on it's environmental controls.
In addition, instead of cycling to work, they're being electric-scootered to work. Sounds like a loss of exercise here too. It will take a severe toll on the health of the nation too, I should think. Give it time... watch them get fatter, like the rest of the western world...
M.
...don't use any programs at all.
p /)
Get an iPod and one of those nice little widgets that you plug into it that broadcasts the music to anyone listening on a particular FM radio frequency. There seem to be a host of derivatives, but one particular one of note is the iTrip.
(http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/itri
It needs no batteries, can vary frequency... and it needs no additional software on your network, so that everyone in the room can "tune in".
M.
As a person who likes to travel, I've only found them useful to send e-mails home whilst away. I wouldn't see the point of going to one locally when I can sup my own coffee and have WiFi broadband from the comfort of my own sofa... :)
That said, EasyEverything (http://www.easyeverything.com/), seems to run this venture rather well - although whether Stelios makes much of a profit from it is another thing. He has a shedload of the bright orange public net-access points all through Europe - and they're all pretty huge. Access is usually very cheap, at the equivalent of 1ukp/hr, but rates vary according to demand.
This is a spin-off from the "easy" group, of which EasyJet is the main money earner....
M.
It does seem a bit weird, that on the day Apple releases an update to make your battery last longer, it then releases an OS update which will probably make your battery last for less time because the fan is always on.
One step forwards, two steps back.
M.
I've been a Nokia bunnie for the last 5 years (I've been using mobiles for 8 years) and upgraded to a T68i instead.
:-)
When I decided to upgrade, I wanted infra-red, bluetooth, colour screen, GPRS, etc and good battery life - the camera bit is nice, but not essential. I was deliberating upon a 7650 or the T68i. The T68i has miles better battery life (I get about 5 - 6 days out of it), it's smaller, and the interface I find is quite usable. Sure, it's not the 7650, but that won't fit in my pocket so nicely and was 100ukp more expensive for the upgrade.
When you start using bluetooth more, you realise how cool it really is. I now exchange images/date with people often. It seems to have caught on.
In my mind, Nokia has brought out a deluge of new phones too late. By announcing 30 (as some articles say) new phones in the course of the year, are they not running the risk of severe problems ? I would have thought that the idea of keeping a fairly small product range was the way to keep brand identity and profits up. In this situation the distinction between the 72xx and the 76xx and the 8xxx range, etc.. gets lost. They used to have distinct target audiences - I've sorta lost the plot now. Over diversification, I believe is the term, isn't it ?
I'm happy with my T68i. Some people have niggles, but I can only go on experience.... I'd recommend it, apart from the fact that all my mates have one now...
M.
In the UK recently, a controversial idea was made of electronically tagging young offenders.
Looking at the specs for this device, it doesn't actually seem to be much different, except that your child would have of course never gone on trial to wear the damn thing.
I would say that if you feel your child has to wear one of these awful devices, then you've probably failed as a parent already. I actually felt pretty sad when I saw the company website for this device. It's basically a tracing device and I'd like to think that I trusted my children a little more than that.
I think that some of the basic reasons for this device are based around paranoia... "Where is your child now ?"
Take care everyone, and have an excellent easter...
M.
All I can comment on is my experiences, namely those being that OS X is more likely to be a nail in the coffin to the likes of Linux PPC, than traditional Linux on x86 machines.
For me, OS X was a bit of a godsend, as I was using Linux PPC for a while prior to installing OS X. Basically, I've got what I want... a *nix derivative with a good front end. I can use command line if I want, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I want to use it for everything - there's sufficient there to mean that you never need to open a terminal window if you don't want to.
If anything, the figures are likely to be good news for web server software such as Apache, which is going to quickly settle in to the new Mac market, as well as the x86 market.
M.
Whilst I'm aware this is obviously good news for Apple, is this newsworthy ?
:-)
Don't get me wrong, I've got an iBook too, and I love it, but I'm just wondering what "better" news is out there.
Or, are we going to encounter such a bad recession that soon the sale of bic biro gets into the news ?
M.
The fact that Adams didn't publish any of this, because he thought it wasn't right, says a lot, I think. This just seems like a way of cashing in .
I personally, think that it shouldn't be published. If Adams wasn't happy with it, then his wish should have been respected.
This reminds me of when Freddie Mercury died, and all of a sudden a whole pile of Queen records got released. Most of them were pants. If they hadn't been released, it was for a good reason.
Very sad indeed. This shouldn't just be an excuse to cash in.
How the addition of a new feature, like a calendar fits in with their recent discussion about not adding any new features and trying to get a stable product out for version 1.00 ?
The two seem mutually exclusive, if you ask me.
M.
Thanks ColGraff, you are the first one (so far) to acknowledge that the US is *not* doing all this alone.
/.'s headline text) seems to largely neglect the fact that British troops are committed to this too.
0 00 /1584763.stm
Most of the US coverage so far that I've seen (including
Here's a link to get us all started.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1584
I do not want to make Britain sound more important than it is. To be honest, in the grand scale of things, it isn't (speaking as a Brit who sees their country as on the decline). However, I think that the US's stance to everything would have been considerably different if Britain hadn't done the shuttle diplomacy between nearby countries, along with the supply of forces. Diplomacy should always come before loss of life.
I personally do not agree with the action that is being taken. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and the majority of this action will only go towards running it into the ground even more. I think that financial support of the Northern alliance so that they can depose the Taliban would have been a much better option. We can't go in and just "make things right". Finally, is this a war against terrorism or a war against the Taliban ? If it's a war against Terrorism, then what about ETA, the IRA ? etc.. etc.. All of a sudden, Britain is in no place to criticise.
...and as we know, if you kill one militant fanatic, they have all the more reason to let another militant fanatic step in their shoes. You can use technology to monitor these things, but several guys sitting around a campfire discussing the matter is going to bypass all this technology. The operation needs to be a lot more close to the ground. Technology isn't going to win this. Ultimately, we need to help the Afghans sort this out in the right way for them.
Thanks Colgraff. It's good to see someone who recognises the external support of other nations. Bush should not take that support for granted.
Remember the Gulf War. The biggest loss of Allied life was British - by friendly fire.
I'll leave you on that one.
M.
In the UK, the IT job market seems to be pretty dire, but it's been recently publicised that a lot of companies are making their contract IT staff unemployed in favour of programmers from India, who are obviously going to be a lot cheaper.
All I can seem to get at the moment are odd jobs for a few weeks at a time, and as far as my home area is concerned, there's just no IT work whatsoever.
There isn't a skill shortage at all. It's just that UK employees are considered as too expensive for UK businesses. (I know it's not the US, but let's be honest, most UK offices are just regional satellites of US companies)
M.
OK, I'll add a bit more now. Good to see I stimulated some replies.
If it's available as a download, that's great, although I have the distinct impression that this could be a biggie, which may just be totally unfeasable with a 56k modem. We'll have see. It might be an overnighter...
Luckily, things have changed slightly in the UK, in that we don't all have to pay by the minute for our downloads.
I was never expecting Apple to give the CD away for nowt. They have a business, just like I do. I was just expecting a nominal fee to cover the cost of production.
M.
As you may have guessed, I'm not happy.
I was one of the early adopters of OS X. I bought it on the first day, put up with the bugs and crappy performance, downloaded the updates and provided the feedback. I was cut at the bleeding edge.
So, to get a version that does what it should, we're going to have to pay to get the update CD. (Basically, $20 for you US guys, dunno what it'll be for us brits, probably 15ukp).
I don't see this as a 'thank you' for putting up with the stunted functionality. I still can't print, and my CD RW drive isn't fully supported yet. I'm still rebooting into 9.1 to get what I need done. It's still an incomplete OS.
I just feel this is a slightly Micro$oftesque trick. I know $20 isn't much, but when you paid the full whack for the product in the first place (before they installed it for nothing on all subsequent machines from about June-ish onwards), it feels like a slap in the face.
M.
...unless you had a Mac, in which case you still had to shell out 50ukp (70 USD?) for an adapter to the adapter and some really lame software, that was very badly supported.
Meanwhile, Palm support was integrated into the Mac OS. I still love my Psion, but it really narks me that I had to pay nearly 450ukp for my Psion 5 at the time, and the desktop integration *still* wasn't there....
It's not a surprise....
M.
..would be if Canada had a successful first Mars Mission.
Based on NASA's success rate (?!) with recent missions, that would really wipe their faces in it.....
It's good to see that NASA won't have a total monopoly on space exploration. Remember, in a capitalist society, competition is good!
:-)
M.
I'm not entirely sure why this article states it's a 'Growing Trend'.
:-)
In the UK, diesel cars tend to be just as popular as petrol. The old Diesel Peugeot 205 I had used to get at least 55 to the gallon.
I think this just goes to show how insular the States is when it comes to seeing viable alternatives to problems.
Another fuel on the increase is LPG (gas). My Dad, over 20 years ago, had an LPG car. The conversion was fairly cheap and easy. Effectively, you had a duel fuel car (petrol/ LPG), but LPG was half the price of petrol for more or less the same economy. After successive Tory goverments, the LPG stations disappeared (the Tories didn't care about viable fuel alternatives or public transport), but recently, they've started to come back, because the price of a gallon of petrol is now so expensive in this country. The quantity of LPG stations is on the increase.
Petrol, like everything, is a finite resource. No doubt, US automobile manufacturers will only consider an alternative until the last oil well dries up.
Of course, if anyone should put a good electric vehicle my way, I certainly won't object...
M.
A table - great idea.
Let's just hope they don't progress to the spice rack or bookshelves, as nailing them to the wall may prove a bit of a liability....
M.
Indeed, I used to run a BBS in the UK.
:-)
Apparently, I wasn't the only one.
I fail to see how this can be the "all the BBSes there ever were" if we don't look outside the US too.
It would have been more accurate to say it was a definitive US list.
M.
Without wanting to jump on the "I agree" bandwagon, I will. :-)
Having worked in a tech support environment, certain truths come to light.
1) Nobody usually lasts more than 18 months.
2) The "chuck 'em in a room with a phone" philosophy seems to be on the increase.
3) Training for tech support people is on the decrease.
4) Stress and depression amongst tech support people is on the increase.
5) Tech support work is viewed as a career dead-end. I've actually seen a new trend, of which I became a victim.
I did a sandwich degree, which means you have to do 1 yrs professional work somewhere. It's supposed to add value to the degree (sorry for the PHB buzz-word).
The reality was that I was given a tech support role, in an area of computing that demands good quality support. (Real time EDI processing)
If this had been a normal position, I would have quit in the first few weeks, but because I couldn't risk dropping out of my degree, I had to keep going.
The company in question now puts most of their "nearly graduated" placement students in tech support, which is really lousy for the users, because they don't actually get someone with any product experience, just a starter training course in their first week.
Arrogance it most certainly is. If customers were to realise that their mission critical support was being run by people who had zero experience, they'd refused to pay their maintenance contracts.
M.
P.S. I ended up lasting three years. When I left, my tension levels immediate rose just on the sound of the home phone ringing....