Paper vs. electronic airline tickets
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Add-Ons Add Up
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Airline costs have "risen rather dramatically" over the past two years, and paper tickets are "more costly to administer than electronic tickets," American Airlines spokeswoman Sonja Whitemon said in explaining the airline's decision to impose a $20 fee on customers who insist on old-fashioned tickets. Fewer than one-third of American's passengers opt for them, she said.
And "since there is only so much space and weight an aircraft can accommodate," there's "an additional fee for passengers who require more than the average."
This is bullshit. What they should say is that it's more costly to offer the same level of service/guarantee that they offer with a paper ticket -- which they don't.
There's a lot more to the ticket fee issue than meets the eye. The public is aware of it, and it's why they still insist on paper tickets. What's the deal? Well, if you read the fine print, you'll see that an electronic ticket is a completely different class of ticket. It's a different contract. Basically, they have the right to bump you first if the plane is overbooked, or even if someone shows up at the last minute and is willing to pay full pop. With an electronic ticket, you're the low man on the totem pole. Of course airlines are pushing these, because it gives them carte blanche to do what they want with you, overbook flights, etc. Some e-tickets even have fine print about not being responsible for delivering checked luggage, etc.
Be really careful with e-tickets. Read the fine print. I do, and I've always found it well worth it to pay the difference, and even to wait in line.
Sorry if this is politically incorrect, but...
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Add-Ons Add Up
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· Score: 2
...outside the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe, the police and other government officials generally *are* massively corrupt. I've travelled all over the world, and this is what I've found. Others I know report similar experiences. Sorry if you're offended, but that's the way it is. It's *you* that's naive. Travel a bit, do business in other countries, and you'll see.
I find these programs indespensible, with no Linux substitutes. I use other databases for myself, but the rest of the world is addicted to *.mdb files and applications.
I work on an IBM T20, which has a really neat scroll feature on the Trackpoint (joystick) pointing device. There's a third "mouse" button that you hold down, and it makes the little joystick into a mousewheel scroller. This is so ergonomically perfect that I've become totally addicted to it. Unfortunately, it only works with Windows, and even then not with all apps. I wish someone would add this feature to Linux desktops for the T20. The other Thinkpad stuff, like the volume buttons, swappable drives, etc., all works with Linux, but not the scroll button.
Other than that, I use Linux on my servers, and I run Knoppix to use some Linux tools I really like.
A lof of spammers *do* use these HTML mail tricks. However, a lot of plain users send HTML mail, often without knowing it, because Microsoft mail programs send HTML by default. So if you want to read HTML mail safely, do this: block your network connection while opening it. You can unplug the cable, take the mail program "offline", hit the "stop" button on ZoneAlarm, whatever. This won't cause problems with legit HTML mail, because the HTML is usually just for fonts and stuff. But it keeps the spam messages from "phoning home" successfully to get their graphics.
You're forgetting the other half of the cable biz, which is selling advertising, and bundling and packaging channels. Cable companies are ultimately the brokers between advertisers and viewers. So they have a powerful affect on advertising markets. Plus, how cable channels are packaged, and their content, is also controlled by cable companies. If you're HBO and you only have to satisfy one buyer instead of two, that buyer can pretty much dictate what he wants. Even if it's five buyers instead of six, putting so much influence in the hands of so few is not healthy. Think about all this next time your "national network" station is replaced by infomercials on a Sunday afternoon.
If your state is losing money to out of state businesses, then perhaps you should lobby your state government to lower its taxes and lower the cost of doing business there, in order to remain competitive. Just as with anything else, competition between locales is the only thing that will keep costs under control, and instill efficiency in government.
The real key is to get out of the house, go to shows, and buy the bands' CDs. The problem with record labels, websites, or whatver, even if they're free, is that they can't help but filter out a lot of stuff you'd like. There's no way to expect someone else to find this stuff for you, and hand it to you. It's like getting an education or learning a craft -- at some point you have to participate actively. If you want someone else to find this stuff for you and feed it to you, you'll get what you deserve. If you really cared about music, you'd be going to local shows, checking out what's new, and seeing local and travelling bands when they're in town. Do them a favor -- instead of blowing all your money at the bar, buy a CD, or maybe a T-shirt. That way, the money goes right to the source. The CDs are usually burned on a band member's computer, and T-shirts printed on their kitchen tables. Most unsigned bands tour at great personal expense -- what they make at a show hardly covers the gas money, let alone food, hotels, van repairs, or that big one, the cost of not working for several weeks. Show some appreciation. Get off your fat geek ass, get out of the house, and participate in life. Who knows, you might even meet some girls...
It's even more important to have broadband in rural areas if any internet access at all is important. The reason is that phone lines generally suck once you get out of major population centers. No 56k connections out here -- 28k or 19.2k is more like it. And with the way web sites are built these days, that's totally unacceptable, as the web is almost useless at that speed. Plus, dialup POPs tend to be woefully inadequate and horribly overloaded, so you get kicked off all the time. It's like 1994 all over again. The scary thing is that much of the US is still like this.
Power generation is always discussed in TCO...
on
Tidal Power a Reality
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· Score: 3, Informative
When quoting figures for the cost of power generation, it's always discussed with respect to, in units of kW/hr. And this article states the cost very clearly -- 30 to 35 cents, or about three times typical for Norway.
In the last year I've bought hundreds of CD-Rs, but I haven't burned a single music CD. Most of them were for general archiving of stuff on my computer, my photos, downloaded software (mostly free/GPL), software and documentation I've created, and plain old backups.
Though I'm a big music lover, I'm not a big consumer of CDs. I have bought a few in the last year. It's easier to just go out and buy them than spend hours and hours looking for the stuff I want, none of which is mainstream anyway. Who has that kind of time except high school kids? Who, with that kind of time, has the money to buy CDs in the first place?
The bottom line is that they're "losing" a lot less business than they claim. Not all of us buying CD-Rs are putting music on them, and people "pirating" music probably weren't paying customers to begin with.
Adelphia doesn't advertise speeds anymore, probably for this reason. Also, even "slow" cable modem speeds are much, much faster than any dialup, and plenty fast for most users. Most servers and websites can't deliver more than a certain amount anyway. So even throttled back, most users would be perfectly happy with the service they're getting. So why make claims the company has trouble delivering?
I was getting around 12-1300 kb/s last spring. Because of some DHCP server issues in my region, Adelphia has throttled this back to about half that. I can't say it's affected me at all. A couple of times, I've managed to pull down Linux ISOs at 7-800, and on *one* occasion, around 1M. But that was only once. Most of the time, the sites I connect to can only deliver 50-150, with a few streaming video sites doing better than that.
So, the 6-800 I'm getting now is just fine, and I'm sure it is for most other users too. And if mosr users would be happy with the speeds they're getting, why shoot yourself in the foot by bringing it up?
I just discovered Knoppix a few weeks ago, and I must say I'm impressed. I've never had a Linux distribution install so cleanly and easily, self-configuring everything. So many apps are included, and the KDE desktop looks great. Other distributions have a long way to go to catch up to this piece of work, which is even more impressive considering it runs live from a CD. Knoppix is the perfect introdution to Linux for someone who just wants to check it out, but you can get real work done with it too. I've been using it to run my favorite Linux apps on my Windows laptop. It's been really handy. Now I want to give a copy to all my friends who have been wondering about Linux. Great work!
The real problem is that cars being sold in the US today are too big and heavy. Part of this is safety requirements, but it's also because carmakers keep moving their cars "upmarket." A Honda Civic of today is a much bigger, heavier car than an Accord was back in the 80s.
There were many cars 15-20 years ago that got great gas mileage, better than most cars today. And this is with engines that were much cruder. The main reason is weight. A late 70s Volkswagen Scirocco got around 40 MPG on the highway, yet still had decent performance. This is because it was small, aerodynamic, and weighed only 1950 LB. My '79 Rabbit Diesel weighed about the same, and got 50 MPG all around, with occasional spurts over 70 MPG under the right conditions. So it doesn't surprise me at all that the Insight gets 70 MPG. It's probably the lightest and aerodynamically sleekest car being sold in the US today, in addition to having a very efficient drivetrain. The thing is, all cars would get surpisingly goo mileage if they weren't so damned big and heavy. And unfortunately, the trend continues. The new Saturn ION weighs 400 LB more than the SL it replaces.
The battery packs were about $1800 when these cars came out, they're priced at $1000 now, and they'll get much cheaper than that. One of the big advantages of the current hybrid designs is that they use common, commodity battery tachnology, unlike all-electric cars like the EV-1. How's this for commodity -- the Prius and Insight actually use regular, NiMH "D" flashlight cells. I'm not kidding. So not only will there be aftermarket suppliers, replacement packs may even be within reach of the home DIY'er.
I really like Mozilla now compared to IE. Phoenix is even faster, and therefore that much better. But there's one thing I really hate about Mozilla/Phoenix -- Bookmark management. It's clunky, slow, and tedious, and just plain sucks. To be fair, IE's Favorites is a pain these days too. My favorite system was IE's from a couple of generations ago -- where it gave you a simple explorer window, and you managed your bookmarks by drag 'n drop, and/or sorting, like with any other file browser. IIRC, Konquerer still does it this way, and IMO it's the way to go. Phoenix/Mozilla is still a nicer, faster browser overall, but this legacy-Netscape Bookmarks thing has got to go!
If a state government can't keep the cost of doing business low, they get what they deserve. Hopefully, their constituents will do something about it, vote them out of office, and vote in leaders who can keep their state competitive.
Online merchants don't win customers on lack of sales tax. Any savings there would usually be lost to shipping charges anyway. People shop online or from catalogs because of better selection, service, and overwhelming savings due to things other than tax. So quit yer complaining. If you want to compete, do it on selection, quality, service.
These banks will learn their lesson with the first ADA lawsuit. Some blind guy will sue them because he can't use the website because it doesn't work with his text reader.
This is just nonsense. The only reason there are incompatibilities is because they're using non-standard, proprietary HTML extensions, and they rely too much on stuff like Javascript. If they'd just stick to standards-compliant HTML, they wouldn't have any of these problems. All platforms would be supported, and there would probably be fewer security problems.
Now, if you say "Wait! 3 Media Companies control 80% of the US Internet usage", I say 'Duh!' Like AOL, Compuserve, GEnie, controlled the dialup networks back in the day.
Yes, but AOL(then), Compuserve, and Genie didn't own the rights to most entertainment content, as do the parent companies of today's internet providers.
...contrary to Eve's delusional rant, the company wouldn't have survived... AD was riding the dotcom boom, pure and simple -- even before the company took VC funding, it was heavily dependent on VC dollars that had been put into other companies that were its clients.
I don't know how you can claim to know this. It's pure conjecture. We have no way of knowing what other clients AD might or might not have had. Besides, last time I looked, Siemens was still around.
OpenACS is based on a version of the TCL ACS that was developed *after* Philip had been mostly kicked out, and that clearly violates several of the software design principles he preached. It's also not such a great product, though it's certainly better than the old ACS 3.x that was built on Philip's watch.
The only real difference between ACS and OpenACS is that the original ACS runs on top of Oracle, while OpenACS runs with Postgres. It's simply a port to a free, open source database. There's no other difference. I use/build/maintain both systems every day. The new OpenACS 4.x is a natural progression of ACS/TCL. The main difference between 4.x and 3.x is that 4.x is modular, with a package manager to add/remove modules. This required a bit of rewriting, but it's still basically the same thing.
As far as violating Greenspun's principles is concerned, I have no idea what you're referring to. But who cares whether some nebbish thinks a product strays from his own vision of the "one true path," as long as it works for the people who are using it. ACS/OpenACS is still as good as it ever was, for all the same reasons.
CCM is alive and well. The division of Redhat that consists of former AD people is profitable, and client sites are being delivered using CCM. Maybe it isn't "finished", but only in the sense that no software product is ever truly "finished".
Client sites have indeed been built using Redhat's CCM (a Java rewrite of ACS/TCL), but the software hasn't been republished, so the changes have not made it back to the original toolkit. The current release is still missing a lot compared to the TCL versions, and is nowhere near as well tested. Until whoever is building with CCM republishes with their additions, you're on your own developing with it. Plus, you need Oracle to run it.
Is there a single, original idea at Microsoft? Can't they come up with *anything* themselves? You know you suck when you're looking to IBM for "hip" inspiration...
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And "since there is only so much space and weight an aircraft can accommodate," there's "an additional fee for passengers who require more than the average."
This is bullshit. What they should say is that it's more costly to offer the same level of service/guarantee that they offer with a paper ticket -- which they don't.
There's a lot more to the ticket fee issue than meets the eye. The public is aware of it, and it's why they still insist on paper tickets. What's the deal? Well, if you read the fine print, you'll see that an electronic ticket is a completely different class of ticket. It's a different contract. Basically, they have the right to bump you first if the plane is overbooked, or even if someone shows up at the last minute and is willing to pay full pop. With an electronic ticket, you're the low man on the totem pole. Of course airlines are pushing these, because it gives them carte blanche to do what they want with you, overbook flights, etc. Some e-tickets even have fine print about not being responsible for delivering checked luggage, etc.
Be really careful with e-tickets. Read the fine print. I do, and I've always found it well worth it to pay the difference, and even to wait in line.
...outside the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe, the police and other government officials generally *are* massively corrupt. I've travelled all over the world, and this is what I've found. Others I know report similar experiences. Sorry if you're offended, but that's the way it is. It's *you* that's naive. Travel a bit, do business in other countries, and you'll see.
I find these programs indespensible, with no Linux substitutes. I use other databases for myself, but the rest of the world is addicted to *.mdb files and applications.
I work on an IBM T20, which has a really neat scroll feature on the Trackpoint (joystick) pointing device. There's a third "mouse" button that you hold down, and it makes the little joystick into a mousewheel scroller. This is so ergonomically perfect that I've become totally addicted to it. Unfortunately, it only works with Windows, and even then not with all apps. I wish someone would add this feature to Linux desktops for the T20. The other Thinkpad stuff, like the volume buttons, swappable drives, etc., all works with Linux, but not the scroll button.
Other than that, I use Linux on my servers, and I run Knoppix to use some Linux tools I really like.
A lof of spammers *do* use these HTML mail tricks. However, a lot of plain users send HTML mail, often without knowing it, because Microsoft mail programs send HTML by default. So if you want to read HTML mail safely, do this: block your network connection while opening it. You can unplug the cable, take the mail program "offline", hit the "stop" button on ZoneAlarm, whatever. This won't cause problems with legit HTML mail, because the HTML is usually just for fonts and stuff. But it keeps the spam messages from "phoning home" successfully to get their graphics.
You're forgetting the other half of the cable biz, which is selling advertising, and bundling and packaging channels. Cable companies are ultimately the brokers between advertisers and viewers. So they have a powerful affect on advertising markets. Plus, how cable channels are packaged, and their content, is also controlled by cable companies. If you're HBO and you only have to satisfy one buyer instead of two, that buyer can pretty much dictate what he wants. Even if it's five buyers instead of six, putting so much influence in the hands of so few is not healthy. Think about all this next time your "national network" station is replaced by infomercials on a Sunday afternoon.
If your state is losing money to out of state businesses, then perhaps you should lobby your state government to lower its taxes and lower the cost of doing business there, in order to remain competitive. Just as with anything else, competition between locales is the only thing that will keep costs under control, and instill efficiency in government.
The real key is to get out of the house, go to shows, and buy the bands' CDs. The problem with record labels, websites, or whatver, even if they're free, is that they can't help but filter out a lot of stuff you'd like. There's no way to expect someone else to find this stuff for you, and hand it to you. It's like getting an education or learning a craft -- at some point you have to participate actively. If you want someone else to find this stuff for you and feed it to you, you'll get what you deserve. If you really cared about music, you'd be going to local shows, checking out what's new, and seeing local and travelling bands when they're in town. Do them a favor -- instead of blowing all your money at the bar, buy a CD, or maybe a T-shirt. That way, the money goes right to the source. The CDs are usually burned on a band member's computer, and T-shirts printed on their kitchen tables. Most unsigned bands tour at great personal expense -- what they make at a show hardly covers the gas money, let alone food, hotels, van repairs, or that big one, the cost of not working for several weeks. Show some appreciation. Get off your fat geek ass, get out of the house, and participate in life. Who knows, you might even meet some girls...
It's even more important to have broadband in rural areas if any internet access at all is important. The reason is that phone lines generally suck once you get out of major population centers. No 56k connections out here -- 28k or 19.2k is more like it. And with the way web sites are built these days, that's totally unacceptable, as the web is almost useless at that speed. Plus, dialup POPs tend to be woefully inadequate and horribly overloaded, so you get kicked off all the time. It's like 1994 all over again. The scary thing is that much of the US is still like this.
When quoting figures for the cost of power generation, it's always discussed with respect to, in units of kW/hr. And this article states the cost very clearly -- 30 to 35 cents, or about three times typical for Norway.
In the last year I've bought hundreds of CD-Rs, but I haven't burned a single music CD. Most of them were for general archiving of stuff on my computer, my photos, downloaded software (mostly free/GPL), software and documentation I've created, and plain old backups.
Though I'm a big music lover, I'm not a big consumer of CDs. I have bought a few in the last year. It's easier to just go out and buy them than spend hours and hours looking for the stuff I want, none of which is mainstream anyway. Who has that kind of time except high school kids? Who, with that kind of time, has the money to buy CDs in the first place?
The bottom line is that they're "losing" a lot less business than they claim. Not all of us buying CD-Rs are putting music on them, and people "pirating" music probably weren't paying customers to begin with.
Adelphia doesn't advertise speeds anymore, probably for this reason. Also, even "slow" cable modem speeds are much, much faster than any dialup, and plenty fast for most users. Most servers and websites can't deliver more than a certain amount anyway. So even throttled back, most users would be perfectly happy with the service they're getting. So why make claims the company has trouble delivering?
I was getting around 12-1300 kb/s last spring. Because of some DHCP server issues in my region, Adelphia has throttled this back to about half that. I can't say it's affected me at all. A couple of times, I've managed to pull down Linux ISOs at 7-800, and on *one* occasion, around 1M. But that was only once. Most of the time, the sites I connect to can only deliver 50-150, with a few streaming video sites doing better than that.
So, the 6-800 I'm getting now is just fine, and I'm sure it is for most other users too. And if mosr users would be happy with the speeds they're getting, why shoot yourself in the foot by bringing it up?
I just discovered Knoppix a few weeks ago, and I must say I'm impressed. I've never had a Linux distribution install so cleanly and easily, self-configuring everything. So many apps are included, and the KDE desktop looks great. Other distributions have a long way to go to catch up to this piece of work, which is even more impressive considering it runs live from a CD. Knoppix is the perfect introdution to Linux for someone who just wants to check it out, but you can get real work done with it too. I've been using it to run my favorite Linux apps on my Windows laptop. It's been really handy. Now I want to give a copy to all my friends who have been wondering about Linux. Great work!
...how long will it take you to configure the software, and test everything? Are all the big security holes plugged?
The real problem is that cars being sold in the US today are too big and heavy. Part of this is safety requirements, but it's also because carmakers keep moving their cars "upmarket." A Honda Civic of today is a much bigger, heavier car than an Accord was back in the 80s.
There were many cars 15-20 years ago that got great gas mileage, better than most cars today. And this is with engines that were much cruder. The main reason is weight. A late 70s Volkswagen Scirocco got around 40 MPG on the highway, yet still had decent performance. This is because it was small, aerodynamic, and weighed only 1950 LB. My '79 Rabbit Diesel weighed about the same, and got 50 MPG all around, with occasional spurts over 70 MPG under the right conditions. So it doesn't surprise me at all that the Insight gets 70 MPG. It's probably the lightest and aerodynamically sleekest car being sold in the US today, in addition to having a very efficient drivetrain. The thing is, all cars would get surpisingly goo mileage if they weren't so damned big and heavy. And unfortunately, the trend continues. The new Saturn ION weighs 400 LB more than the SL it replaces.
The battery packs were about $1800 when these cars came out, they're priced at $1000 now, and they'll get much cheaper than that. One of the big advantages of the current hybrid designs is that they use common, commodity battery tachnology, unlike all-electric cars like the EV-1. How's this for commodity -- the Prius and Insight actually use regular, NiMH "D" flashlight cells. I'm not kidding. So not only will there be aftermarket suppliers, replacement packs may even be within reach of the home DIY'er.
I really like Mozilla now compared to IE. Phoenix is even faster, and therefore that much better. But there's one thing I really hate about Mozilla/Phoenix -- Bookmark management. It's clunky, slow, and tedious, and just plain sucks. To be fair, IE's Favorites is a pain these days too. My favorite system was IE's from a couple of generations ago -- where it gave you a simple explorer window, and you managed your bookmarks by drag 'n drop, and/or sorting, like with any other file browser. IIRC, Konquerer still does it this way, and IMO it's the way to go. Phoenix/Mozilla is still a nicer, faster browser overall, but this legacy-Netscape Bookmarks thing has got to go!
If a state government can't keep the cost of doing business low, they get what they deserve. Hopefully, their constituents will do something about it, vote them out of office, and vote in leaders who can keep their state competitive.
Online merchants don't win customers on lack of sales tax. Any savings there would usually be lost to shipping charges anyway. People shop online or from catalogs because of better selection, service, and overwhelming savings due to things other than tax. So quit yer complaining. If you want to compete, do it on selection, quality, service.
These banks will learn their lesson with the first ADA lawsuit. Some blind guy will sue them because he can't use the website because it doesn't work with his text reader.
This is just nonsense. The only reason there are incompatibilities is because they're using non-standard, proprietary HTML extensions, and they rely too much on stuff like Javascript. If they'd just stick to standards-compliant HTML, they wouldn't have any of these problems. All platforms would be supported, and there would probably be fewer security problems.
Now, if you say "Wait! 3 Media Companies control 80% of the US Internet usage", I say 'Duh!' Like AOL, Compuserve, GEnie, controlled the dialup networks back in the day.
Yes, but AOL(then), Compuserve, and Genie didn't own the rights to most entertainment content, as do the parent companies of today's internet providers.
...contrary to Eve's delusional rant, the company wouldn't have survived... AD was riding the dotcom boom, pure and simple -- even before the company took VC funding, it was heavily dependent on VC dollars that had been put into other companies that were its clients.
I don't know how you can claim to know this. It's pure conjecture. We have no way of knowing what other clients AD might or might not have had. Besides, last time I looked, Siemens was still around.
OpenACS is based on a version of the TCL ACS that was developed *after* Philip had been mostly kicked out, and that clearly violates several of the software design principles he preached. It's also not such a great product, though it's certainly better than the old ACS 3.x that was built on Philip's watch.
The only real difference between ACS and OpenACS is that the original ACS runs on top of Oracle, while OpenACS runs with Postgres. It's simply a port to a free, open source database. There's no other difference. I use/build/maintain both systems every day. The new OpenACS 4.x is a natural progression of ACS/TCL. The main difference between 4.x and 3.x is that 4.x is modular, with a package manager to add/remove modules. This required a bit of rewriting, but it's still basically the same thing.
As far as violating Greenspun's principles is concerned, I have no idea what you're referring to. But who cares whether some nebbish thinks a product strays from his own vision of the "one true path," as long as it works for the people who are using it. ACS/OpenACS is still as good as it ever was, for all the same reasons.
CCM is alive and well. The division of Redhat that consists of former AD people is profitable, and client sites are being delivered using CCM. Maybe it isn't "finished", but only in the sense that no software product is ever truly "finished".
Client sites have indeed been built using Redhat's CCM (a Java rewrite of ACS/TCL), but the software hasn't been republished, so the changes have not made it back to the original toolkit. The current release is still missing a lot compared to the TCL versions, and is nowhere near as well tested. Until whoever is building with CCM republishes with their additions, you're on your own developing with it. Plus, you need Oracle to run it.
If your programs are written in Java, then Java Web Start is unbeatable.
Is there a single, original idea at Microsoft? Can't they come up with *anything* themselves? You know you suck when you're looking to IBM for "hip" inspiration...