My doctor uses his PDA all the time (Handspring Visor Deluxe). He has the prescription drug database springboard module. Every time I see him he has it on him, and whenever he prescribes me something, he whips it out and starts writing on it just about as fast and accurate as on paper. Looks up drug he wants to prescribe, looks at side effects and all that stuff, gives me an overview. He commented that he wished it had a little reciept like printer he could print the prescription on and then simply sign it. So yes, he uses his.
Me on the other hand. I do try to use it, and it seems every time I start getting data into it and finding it useful, something happens. Like my harddrive crashed that I hotsync to, and the batteries died and I lost everything. Then it went into the drawer for about 6 months. I've recently pulled it out and started using this app on it called FreeCoins. It's pretty slick, I use it to manage my monthly budget.
I think they're pretty useful. The biggest drawback I think everyone can agree on is the size and storage issue. It's just a pain in the ass to carry on your person. I mean I've already got a wallet, cell phone and keys. I bought one of those PalmWallets or whatever to keep my visor in, but well, it just buldges out of my pocket. When someone makes a PDA thats about as thick as a few credit cards and just as durable and flexable, then they'll be extremely useful.
One more thing too. Given everything said above, of course you have the freedom to protest it in the game if you'd like, just like I have the freedom to call your protest stupid and then march my SimFatAss into the SimMcDonalds and eat myself a dozen SimEggMcMuffins, but I'm not going to shed a tear about it.
We need to put things into perspective here.
on
Organizing Sim Protests
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's been reported that eating virtual McDonald's hamburgers will positively affect your "Fun" and "Hunger" game stats. But what if you're a vegetarian? What if you're an eco-activist? What if you think it's more Fun dining at Biff's Family Restaurant? Although the game hasn't hit the stores yet, the free public beta is open. The time to act is now. Log in, Revolutionary, and fight the good fight:
What. The. Hell.
Seriously. What if you're a vegetarian? What?? Ok. I'm morally opposed to murdering people, but I don't have a problem with Quake 3, GTA3, Hitman 2, Dead to Rights. Heck I even enjoy playing those games. Why? It's a damn video game, and it's not real.
With EA touting such egalitarian rhetoric, it follows to reason that freedom of speech is as alive in The Sims Online as it is in the real world. Test this theory by standing up and shouting for what you believe in, my Revolutionaries! If the thought of being force-fed Big Macs makes you sick, you'd better start giving this advertising model a serious case of indigestion.
Alright. First off it says you have the option of opening up a McDonalds. Let me guess to, you also have the option of eating at said McDonalds. Seems like real life to me. No where does it say you have to open a McDonalds and have to eat at them. McDonalds just happens to be the only company EA made a deal with to use their image in the game. I wouldn't be surprised if in future Sim games we see Burger King, Chick-Fil-A, TGI Fridays, Bennigans, all those places. So what the hell is the problem?
And dare I say it, some people like McDonalds. I like the occastional French Fry from McDonalds or the occastional Quarter Pounder with cheese. I don't live off the stuff, I don't consider it high quality food. It's funny how these guys go on to say how we all hate McDonalds, and how we all 'know' McDonalds food is terrible, yet somehow, McDonalds continues to be the worlds largest fast food chain.
Then we get the people who believe McDonalds and other fast food places are the cause of obsesity in the world. I'm no underwear model myself, but seriously, Ronald McDonald didn't come to my house and force feed me Big Macs until I couldn't see my feet anymore. There are no bad foods, there are only food abuses. But I digress. The point is, it's a video game people. A video game simulating every day life. McDonalds for many people, is a part of every day life. So are other things. I don't think EA can afford to pay all the popular fast food places to use their likeness in the game, nor do they have the time to program the game to handle them all.
Seriously. Repeat after me. It's a video game, it's not real.
Yet another nail in the coffin that is e-commerce. Now I don't have any advantage to purchasing my DVDs or electronics online anymore. Why bother ordering from Amazon when its just going to cost the same or more, and then have to wait days for it to arrive.
I live about 10 minutes outside of DC. So now any advantage to buying online has disappeared. I can still see people in rural areas buying online out of necessity because they can't find an item locally. I do however understand that they don't care about the Internet as much as they do mail order catalogs though. You'd think they'd wait until the economy would start showing signs of recovery, last thing the government needs to be doing is taking money out of the economy. It's going to hurt the consumer and the business in this case.
I'll still order from ThinkGeek though out of loyality and well, I don't think Wal-Mart is going to carry caffeinated soap.
Lisa: My name's Lisa Simpson. I think your protest was incredibly brave. Jesse: Thank you. This planet needs every friend it can get. Lisa: Oh, the earth is the best! That's why I'm a vegetarian. Jesse: Heh. Well, that's a start. Lisa: Uh, well, I was thinking of going vegan. Jesse: [chuckles] I'm a level 5 vegan -- I won't eat anything that casts a
shadow. Lisa: Wow. Um... I started an organic compost pile at home. Jesse: Only at home? You mean you don't pocket-mulch? [takes out pocket
stuff for Lisa to feel]
Sure its one thing to report something you casually spot, but to run around like some kind of environmental super-hero, without reguards for peoples privacy.. come on seriously. Maybe that golf course has a permit? Now you're going around badmouthing them when they've obtained legal means to build that wall. Asshole.
Currently, there is a massive online campaign going on to save Farscape. You can view it here at Save Farscape and sometimes here due to DNS problems, Save Farscape.
Essentially the current working theory on why Farscape was canceled boils down to this. In Part, Michael Jackson (not the singer obviously) and the head of USA Networks don't like Space shows. The other part, Stargate SG1 only costs around $500,000 per episode to make, where-as Farscape costs around $1,200,000 to make (yes, 1.2 million) per episode. This is why they moved Farscape to 10pm on Friday nights from their original 9pm slot, and put Farscape into the 9pm slot. They ended up losing a good part of their younger audience due to bedtimes. Why? They wanted to get the Farscape fanbase interested in Stargate while intentionally dropping ratings for Farscape. This way they could issue a statement that they are cancelling Farscape due to a slip in ratings, and actually keep the overall ratings with Stargate, all while saving $700,000.
From a business standpoint sure it looks good. But people watch the network, not robots. They get upset and angry when favorite shows of theirs are canceled, especially when there was an announcement they were picking up season 5 and it was in a contract, little be knowns to the public there was a huge out loophole in the contract. So anyhow, if you are a fan of Farscape, head over to those links and see what you can do.
While working at my company during the dot-com bust, I've had plenty of benefits taken away from me. Quarterly 5% bonuses, subsidized vending machines that only cost 25 cents for anything (including Ice Cream), free parties every friday night at a local club, and 20 - 30% off most local stores. One by one those benefits were taken away. I understand why, these things cost money. But requiring your entire staff to wear a suit and tie doesn't cost you anything unless it is a customer facing department. Myself, the lowly programmer that never sees a a customer should be able to wear something casual. At the very least just some nice pants and a nice shirt, like a polo shirt or something similar. It makes me feel comfortable, work more relaxed, doesn't cost you anything, and you can call it a benefit.
No, I meant read it until you understand it. I don't want anyone working for me that doesn't think understanding documentation is a good thing or doing something the correct way rather than "it works so I might be doing it right."
And there's a difference between not being able to code and understanding a particular function. I may read a function's man page 2 or 3 times to make sure I understand correctly what is going on. Not nessesarly because I'm incompetent, but because the wording my be confusing (wow, confusing wording in a manpage? Who would have thought..). That doesn't mean every single function for a particular language requires you to read the documentation for it multiple times. I assume nothing. Assuming something leads to bugs and insecurity. I've been programming in C for many, many, many years. When I do a little PHP programming to create some web interfaces I don't assume that just because both C and PHP have a function called strlen, and the general documentation says it returns the length of a string, that they work identically. So I read the entire strlen documentation for PHP to understand exactly whats happening. It only took less than a minute, but now I'm not assuming. I know. This goes for lots of things. The more complex functions you use, the more important it is to fully understand them.
The point is coding correctly is the most important skill to learn. I have friends that hack together scripts and programs from examples and snipits of other code and a little bit of their own code to glue it together, with little to no understanding of what they are actually doing. Then months later something breaks they can't fix and they act as if it was the author who wrote the example code's problem.
No, it's there fault. Not because they hacked together examples, but because they didn't take to the time to make sure they knew what the examples were doing, that the examples were implemented correctly, and that they understood exactly how the code in the examples worked.
Take a look at OpenBSD's philosphy.. You can learn a lot from it.
Not a specific example, but a big mistake is to assume that just because when you use a function in a certain way that works means it's suppose to work that way. I've seen so many people fail to read any documentation on the functions they are using. Whenever I program, I make sure every function, operand, everything I use I understand what they do exactly. I don't just assume, I make absolutely certain. Read, Read, Read, and then Read some more.
That would lead me to believe that a critical flaw in Kerberos itself was discovered, as in a flaw in the design. Critical Kerberos Exploit Revealed might have been more suitable, but at first I thought Kerberos was essentially broken.
Are they comparing what is allowed at the government or corporate level? The key is in the US if an event happens, I can report it on without fear of prosecution. That is to say I report the truth. If I twist the truth or flat out lie it can be considered libel.
Now if I work for a major news reporting corporation, and I want to report on an event, but my boss won't allow it, that's not violating freedom of the press. That's just the corporation deciding that they don't to want report an event. But there isn't anything stopping me from reporting it myself to the local paper, on the Internet, by giving out handouts on street corners, etc and no government, local, state or federal can prevent me from disemenating that information.
Where are all the flying cars?? I was promised Flying Cars!
I don't trust any future predictions. You think the US government will allow personal helicopers anytime soon after what happened 9/11? I think not. We're going to be dependent on ground transportation until theres no more ground to travel on.
Being involved in the Aquaria community for years, I've heard essentially that this is one of those guys that liked to sue people (obviously). But he's one of those guys if you give him any critism he thinks its slander or liable, and sues. Apparently he is entirely unaware of freedom of speech and the difference between critism and slander. If he provides bad service, and people tell about it, thats critism. If he provides excellent service, and people lie to say he provided poor service, thats slander. I sure hope some of these people counter-sue, and get lawyers to do it.
I agree. Thats why I said "VeriSign is suppose to" and not "VeriSign does". Obviously they don't, remember the whole fiasco with them giving out a cert to someone posing as Microsoft? I'm just saying, thats the idea. I don't agree with it.:)
Sure we all hate VeriSign for all kinds of reasons.
However when you get an SSL Certificate from VeriSign and some of the other Cert signers out there, you are getting two things.
The most commonly understood thing you are getting is the encryption thats automatically accepted by just about any modern browser. However, the reason it's automatically accepted is because VeriSign is suppose to verify the identity of the business. This is why they require a Duns and Bradstreet # (It's a business credit identifier). This way you know when you're going to https://secure.yourdomain.com to enter your credit card information, that you are indeed still on yourdomain.com and that your information is encrypted, and verified to be sent to the company you intend to send it to.
So if all you are concerned about is encryption, just generate your own. It will however throw a warning in just about any browser that the identity of the site can't be verified. Other than that, cost of this service isn't going to drop very dramatically without losing its verification services.
I understand though, that browser warning annoys me too.
Where does it stop then? If the RIAA can break into my computer to verify I "stole" copyrighted materials, and disable my computer (but not damage it) then where will it end? Can I say then if i suspect someone stole my property, can I break into their house to verify it was stolen? And then render their house unusable until my stolen items are returned?
This essentially allows the RIAA to take justice into their own hands, by-passing due process, and presuming suspects guilty rather than innocent. I highly doubt this will fly, and if it does, it just confirms who's lining who's pockets with cash.
Where the hell did he get all these Operating Systems from? Not even getting into how does he have licenses for them all, but Windows 1.01? All the versions of QNX? I'm asking a serious question too, anyone know where?
Slashdot Mirror
My doctor uses his PDA all the time (Handspring Visor Deluxe). He has the prescription drug database springboard module. Every time I see him he has it on him, and whenever he prescribes me something, he whips it out and starts writing on it just about as fast and accurate as on paper. Looks up drug he wants to prescribe, looks at side effects and all that stuff, gives me an overview. He commented that he wished it had a little reciept like printer he could print the prescription on and then simply sign it. So yes, he uses his.
Me on the other hand. I do try to use it, and it seems every time I start getting data into it and finding it useful, something happens. Like my harddrive crashed that I hotsync to, and the batteries died and I lost everything. Then it went into the drawer for about 6 months. I've recently pulled it out and started using this app on it called FreeCoins. It's pretty slick, I use it to manage my monthly budget.
I think they're pretty useful. The biggest drawback I think everyone can agree on is the size and storage issue. It's just a pain in the ass to carry on your person. I mean I've already got a wallet, cell phone and keys. I bought one of those PalmWallets or whatever to keep my visor in, but well, it just buldges out of my pocket. When someone makes a PDA thats about as thick as a few credit cards and just as durable and flexable, then they'll be extremely useful.
Exactly. Just like if I stole some twinkies from my local store so the police create a dragnet and shut down 12 city blocks.
Its called Excessive Force.
One more thing too. Given everything said above, of course you have the freedom to protest it in the game if you'd like, just like I have the freedom to call your protest stupid and then march my SimFatAss into the SimMcDonalds and eat myself a dozen SimEggMcMuffins, but I'm not going to shed a tear about it.
It's been reported that eating virtual McDonald's hamburgers will positively affect your "Fun" and "Hunger" game stats. But what if you're a vegetarian? What if you're an eco-activist? What if you think it's more Fun dining at Biff's Family Restaurant? Although the game hasn't hit the stores yet, the free public beta is open. The time to act is now. Log in, Revolutionary, and fight the good fight:
What. The. Hell.
Seriously. What if you're a vegetarian? What?? Ok. I'm morally opposed to murdering people, but I don't have a problem with Quake 3, GTA3, Hitman 2, Dead to Rights. Heck I even enjoy playing those games. Why? It's a damn video game, and it's not real.
With EA touting such egalitarian rhetoric, it follows to reason that freedom of speech is as alive in The Sims Online as it is in the real world. Test this theory by standing up and shouting for what you believe in, my Revolutionaries! If the thought of being force-fed Big Macs makes you sick, you'd better start giving this advertising model a serious case of indigestion.
Alright. First off it says you have the option of opening up a McDonalds. Let me guess to, you also have the option of eating at said McDonalds. Seems like real life to me. No where does it say you have to open a McDonalds and have to eat at them. McDonalds just happens to be the only company EA made a deal with to use their image in the game. I wouldn't be surprised if in future Sim games we see Burger King, Chick-Fil-A, TGI Fridays, Bennigans, all those places. So what the hell is the problem?
And dare I say it, some people like McDonalds. I like the occastional French Fry from McDonalds or the occastional Quarter Pounder with cheese. I don't live off the stuff, I don't consider it high quality food. It's funny how these guys go on to say how we all hate McDonalds, and how we all 'know' McDonalds food is terrible, yet somehow, McDonalds continues to be the worlds largest fast food chain.
Then we get the people who believe McDonalds and other fast food places are the cause of obsesity in the world. I'm no underwear model myself, but seriously, Ronald McDonald didn't come to my house and force feed me Big Macs until I couldn't see my feet anymore. There are no bad foods, there are only food abuses. But I digress. The point is, it's a video game people. A video game simulating every day life. McDonalds for many people, is a part of every day life. So are other things. I don't think EA can afford to pay all the popular fast food places to use their likeness in the game, nor do they have the time to program the game to handle them all.
Seriously. Repeat after me. It's a video game, it's not real.
The benefits of this transaction are considerable, the potential harms negligible.
The benefits of this transaction are considerable to us, the potential harms that many come to you, we don't give a damn about.
Yet another nail in the coffin that is e-commerce. Now I don't have any advantage to purchasing my DVDs or electronics online anymore. Why bother ordering from Amazon when its just going to cost the same or more, and then have to wait days for it to arrive.
I live about 10 minutes outside of DC. So now any advantage to buying online has disappeared. I can still see people in rural areas buying online out of necessity because they can't find an item locally. I do however understand that they don't care about the Internet as much as they do mail order catalogs though. You'd think they'd wait until the economy would start showing signs of recovery, last thing the government needs to be doing is taking money out of the economy. It's going to hurt the consumer and the business in this case.
I'll still order from ThinkGeek though out of loyality and well, I don't think Wal-Mart is going to carry caffeinated soap.
Lisa: My name's Lisa Simpson. I think your protest was incredibly brave. ... I started an organic compost pile at home.
Jesse: Thank you. This planet needs every friend it can get.
Lisa: Oh, the earth is the best! That's why I'm a vegetarian.
Jesse: Heh. Well, that's a start.
Lisa: Uh, well, I was thinking of going vegan.
Jesse: [chuckles] I'm a level 5 vegan -- I won't eat anything that casts a
shadow.
Lisa: Wow. Um
Jesse: Only at home? You mean you don't pocket-mulch? [takes out pocket
stuff for Lisa to feel]
how much do people need Solaris laptops?
Choice. Sure we balk at Microsoft people asking why anyone needs to run Linux, then we turn around and balk at someone for creating a Solaris laptop.
I think its cool, I'd like to get one for work, we use a number of Solaris only apps.
Sure its one thing to report something you casually spot, but to run around like some kind of environmental super-hero, without reguards for peoples privacy .. come on seriously. Maybe that golf course has a permit? Now you're going around badmouthing them when they've obtained legal means to build that wall. Asshole.
Wood is a tad bit more difficult to work with, and requires a good array of tools to polish it up nicely.
That, and wood is highly combustable. PC's generate great amounts of heat. Excessive Heat insulated even more by a Combusatble Wood Case. hmm...
Currently, there is a massive online campaign going on to save Farscape. You can view it here at Save Farscape and sometimes here due to DNS problems, Save Farscape.
Essentially the current working theory on why Farscape was canceled boils down to this. In Part, Michael Jackson (not the singer obviously) and the head of USA Networks don't like Space shows. The other part, Stargate SG1 only costs around $500,000 per episode to make, where-as Farscape costs around $1,200,000 to make (yes, 1.2 million) per episode. This is why they moved Farscape to 10pm on Friday nights from their original 9pm slot, and put Farscape into the 9pm slot. They ended up losing a good part of their younger audience due to bedtimes. Why? They wanted to get the Farscape fanbase interested in Stargate while intentionally dropping ratings for Farscape. This way they could issue a statement that they are cancelling Farscape due to a slip in ratings, and actually keep the overall ratings with Stargate, all while saving $700,000.
From a business standpoint sure it looks good. But people watch the network, not robots. They get upset and angry when favorite shows of theirs are canceled, especially when there was an announcement they were picking up season 5 and it was in a contract, little be knowns to the public there was a huge out loophole in the contract. So anyhow, if you are a fan of Farscape, head over to those links and see what you can do.
Cable and Wireless West? ;)
Appeal to Employers:
While working at my company during the dot-com bust, I've had plenty of benefits taken away from me. Quarterly 5% bonuses, subsidized vending machines that only cost 25 cents for anything (including Ice Cream), free parties every friday night at a local club, and 20 - 30% off most local stores. One by one those benefits were taken away. I understand why, these things cost money. But requiring your entire staff to wear a suit and tie doesn't cost you anything unless it is a customer facing department. Myself, the lowly programmer that never sees a a customer should be able to wear something casual. At the very least just some nice pants and a nice shirt, like a polo shirt or something similar. It makes me feel comfortable, work more relaxed, doesn't cost you anything, and you can call it a benefit.
No, I meant read it until you understand it. I don't want anyone working for me that doesn't think understanding documentation is a good thing or doing something the correct way rather than "it works so I might be doing it right."
And there's a difference between not being able to code and understanding a particular function. I may read a function's man page 2 or 3 times to make sure I understand correctly what is going on. Not nessesarly because I'm incompetent, but because the wording my be confusing (wow, confusing wording in a manpage? Who would have thought..). That doesn't mean every single function for a particular language requires you to read the documentation for it multiple times. I assume nothing. Assuming something leads to bugs and insecurity. I've been programming in C for many, many, many years. When I do a little PHP programming to create some web interfaces I don't assume that just because both C and PHP have a function called strlen, and the general documentation says it returns the length of a string, that they work identically. So I read the entire strlen documentation for PHP to understand exactly whats happening. It only took less than a minute, but now I'm not assuming. I know. This goes for lots of things. The more complex functions you use, the more important it is to fully understand them.
The point is coding correctly is the most important skill to learn. I have friends that hack together scripts and programs from examples and snipits of other code and a little bit of their own code to glue it together, with little to no understanding of what they are actually doing. Then months later something breaks they can't fix and they act as if it was the author who wrote the example code's problem.
No, it's there fault. Not because they hacked together examples, but because they didn't take to the time to make sure they knew what the examples were doing, that the examples were implemented correctly, and that they understood exactly how the code in the examples worked.
Take a look at OpenBSD's philosphy.. You can learn a lot from it.
Not a specific example, but a big mistake is to assume that just because when you use a function in a certain way that works means it's suppose to work that way. I've seen so many people fail to read any documentation on the functions they are using. Whenever I program, I make sure every function, operand, everything I use I understand what they do exactly. I don't just assume, I make absolutely certain. Read, Read, Read, and then Read some more.
Critical Kerberos Flaw Revealed
That would lead me to believe that a critical flaw in Kerberos itself was discovered, as in a flaw in the design. Critical Kerberos Exploit Revealed might have been more suitable, but at first I thought Kerberos was essentially broken.
Whew.
Are they comparing what is allowed at the government or corporate level? The key is in the US if an event happens, I can report it on without fear of prosecution. That is to say I report the truth. If I twist the truth or flat out lie it can be considered libel.
/. so grain of salt and all.
Now if I work for a major news reporting corporation, and I want to report on an event, but my boss won't allow it, that's not violating freedom of the press. That's just the corporation deciding that they don't to want report an event. But there isn't anything stopping me from reporting it myself to the local paper, on the Internet, by giving out handouts on street corners, etc and no government, local, state or federal can prevent me from disemenating that information.
Then again, this is
Where are all the flying cars?? I was promised Flying Cars!
I don't trust any future predictions. You think the US government will allow personal helicopers anytime soon after what happened 9/11? I think not. We're going to be dependent on ground transportation until theres no more ground to travel on.
Being involved in the Aquaria community for years, I've heard essentially that this is one of those guys that liked to sue people (obviously). But he's one of those guys if you give him any critism he thinks its slander or liable, and sues. Apparently he is entirely unaware of freedom of speech and the difference between critism and slander. If he provides bad service, and people tell about it, thats critism. If he provides excellent service, and people lie to say he provided poor service, thats slander. I sure hope some of these people counter-sue, and get lawyers to do it.
He's just milking settlements, its digusting.
I agree. Thats why I said "VeriSign is suppose to" and not "VeriSign does". Obviously they don't, remember the whole fiasco with them giving out a cert to someone posing as Microsoft? I'm just saying, thats the idea. I don't agree with it. :)
Sure we all hate VeriSign for all kinds of reasons.
However when you get an SSL Certificate from VeriSign and some of the other Cert signers out there, you are getting two things.
The most commonly understood thing you are getting is the encryption thats automatically accepted by just about any modern browser. However, the reason it's automatically accepted is because VeriSign is suppose to verify the identity of the business. This is why they require a Duns and Bradstreet # (It's a business credit identifier). This way you know when you're going to https://secure.yourdomain.com to enter your credit card information, that you are indeed still on yourdomain.com and that your information is encrypted, and verified to be sent to the company you intend to send it to.
So if all you are concerned about is encryption, just generate your own. It will however throw a warning in just about any browser that the identity of the site can't be verified. Other than that, cost of this service isn't going to drop very dramatically without losing its verification services.
I understand though, that browser warning annoys me too.
Yep, Attack and Humanitarian Aid rolled up into one.
Where does it stop then? If the RIAA can break into my computer to verify I "stole" copyrighted materials, and disable my computer (but not damage it) then where will it end? Can I say then if i suspect someone stole my property, can I break into their house to verify it was stolen? And then render their house unusable until my stolen items are returned?
This essentially allows the RIAA to take justice into their own hands, by-passing due process, and presuming suspects guilty rather than innocent. I highly doubt this will fly, and if it does, it just confirms who's lining who's pockets with cash.
America - Land of the tightly controlled free.
No, the future is Digital Pants ... a so called, Smarty Pants.
DIGITAL PANTS ACTIVATE
For those who don't get it.
Where the hell did he get all these Operating Systems from? Not even getting into how does he have licenses for them all, but Windows 1.01? All the versions of QNX? I'm asking a serious question too, anyone know where?