I'm not so sure in this case. I read the whole thing. There's nothing particularly bad in there. Bear in mind this is not the disclaimer for the general website, but for the AAdvantage club thingy. There's a 'no linking' clause, but in the circum stances that seems fine - it's annoying to have links into the middle of what is basically a web based application.
The rest is just tediously explicit - "Don't say libelous things on forums" "Don't use our logo" "We are not liable for damages resulting from typos on this site" etc. etc. ad nauseam.
It's sad that this stuff has to take the place of common sense, but in the end it's a two way street. If you didn't have idiots claiming they own the 'rights' to their bulleting board postings, you wouldn't have these discaimers pointing out in legalese that you forfeit those 'rights'.
Just what is a 'real-time mission-critical response'? Last I checked 'mission-critical' didn't _actually_ mean anything.
Also, I suppose it is just possible that Win2K has a _theoretical_ unlimited interrupt latency, but I don't think it is _effectively_ unlimited, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to do anything on my computer, would I?
Also, who gives a shit? Did anyone say Win2K was a real-time system? Did they? Is anyone claiming that Linux makes a good kernel for a real-time OS?
Finally, last I checked, boats need computers about as much as computers need, oh, I dunno, boats probably. Funnily enough navigating a boat isn't actually a 'real-time' operation, and while I daresay firing a guided AA missile is, I don't think anyone is really interested in whether Windows or Linux is a better OS for missile guidance systems, since they are both obviously not going to be used for it.
This is the second time we've had someone asking 'My boss is stupid, what can I do?'. Look, it's really simple.
1. Management's idea is either good or bad. 2. If it's bad, and you know why, you can explain that to management. 3. If it's good, but for some reason you don't want to do it, because, say, it involves language X that you think sucks or OS Y that you think sucks, then just f***ing grow up, eh?
Now, it may be that you explain why it's a bad idea, but management don't change their minds. This could be:
1. There are arguments supporting the idea that you do not understand (maybe they are financial or business related, not technical). 2. Management do not understand your (technical) arguments against the idea. 3. There are arguments supporting the idea that you have not been told about, because management does not think it relevant.
In case 1, that's kind of tough. If you are interested in other aspects of the business, then generally managers will be thrilled and will be happy to spend time explaining these things. but, if you don't care, then don't be surprised when someone says "OK, maybe the technology isn't ideal, but with this balance sheet, we ARE going down this route"
In case 2, that's also kind of tough. Try to find someone who is good at making technical issues comprehensible to managers. Every team should have a person able to to do this. Find them and get them on your side.
In case 3, guess what, that's kind of tough. Maybe managment figure that it's not your job to care about non-technical aspects of the idea. Personally I don't like this approach - I always let the geeks see the profit/loss sheet even if I'm pretty certain they won't understand it. That way they might let me see the database schema, and I will understand that:).
So, this knee jerk "Whoa, my PHB is so dumb, he said this [...]" is really an attitude I expect from junior members of my team. Senior members can either shut up and code, or they can make a proper job of presenting a case supporting why the idea is so dumb.
I don't get it. They guy wants to map some zip codes to congressional districts. What on earth is the problem with that? Maybe he has a database with the zip codes of people earning over 60K per year. He wants to do a statistical analysis of how those people are distributed according to congressional district, and draw some conclusions about income and voter habits. I fail completely to see the problem with this.
Maybe the database of zip codes has been bought from acme-evil-spam-company, but, oh shit, maybe just maybe it hasn't!! Maybe those people all happily gave their zipcodes and salaries in return for the chance to win a new car. Maybe they gave that information because it only took them 10 seconds to do and they felt like helping out some research company.
I've spent the last 6 months looking at online learning technology. It's a mess. We ended up with Vuepoint (http://www.vuepoint.com/) because they have a tolerable unlimited user license fee, and they have both content creation/management and course deliver/management tools. Many companies offer only one or the other.
There are a couple of 'standards' in this area, namely AICC (old) and SCORM (current). The latter stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model, and is theoretically a way of encapsulating bits of an online class to allow, well, reuse and sharing.
In practice the standard appears highly complex and unhelpful. It comes from the aviation world (don't ask) and is geared towards courses like 'how to troubleshoot a Bowing 747 hydraulic system'. I.E., big, fact based piles of knowledge. This makes it not very helpful for all sorts of other courses, like 'What to expect from chemotherapy'.
Nonetheless, in corporate world being SCORM compliant is a vital feature for many companies that want to sell elearning products. But, SCORM is a highest common factor, and everyone ends up sinking to that level if they go with it. There are companies that simply sell SCORM compliant classes for you to plug into your SCORM compliant LMS (learnign management system), but that's a pretty blunt approach.
The academic world is better - there are a number of products (like blackboard) that derive from universities' internal elearning projects. These products are often technically kind of a mess and pretty crufty, but they are often more functional and cheaper.
You think blackboard is costly?!?!?! It's practically free compared to Docent, Saba, click2learn, IBM's thing, Sun's thing, everything else. Most learning software has per-user licenses with no realistic option of unlimited use. Blackboard is very attractive if you expect large numbers of people to take the course.
And, although it is not open source, it is written largely in Perl, and the source is available when you buy it. When I spoke to Blackboard they did not officially tolerate customers modifying the source, but the acknowledged that it went on pretty widely.
I think here in the UK the Open University (http://www.open.ac.uk/) is pretty well regarded. It has been around for a long time doing remote degrees.
The Open University generally caters for those who have regular jobs and want to study for a degree in their spare time. Needless to say, that takes a long time and a great deal of motivation and self discipline. Accordingly, as an employer I'd have a lot of respect for anyone who managed to do it successfully.
If the RV situation is similar to the boat situation, then the existing DC system is fine. The issue is getting appliances that expect DC input from the wall rather than from their own little transformer. I would be wary of taking 'normal' appliances and chopping the transformer off and sticking the wires into your DC system.
You can buy power tools, radios, even microwaves designed specifically for use with boat (and, I assume, RV) DC power systems. I'm sure the range is restrictive and maybe they are expensive, but they work.
However, an RV has a big old engine, right? So you aren't likely to be short of power, really, right? So why not just use the AC system and forget about the inefficiency:-)?
It's something, but it's far from complete. This part of the constitution appears to only cover 'searches and seizures'. It does not cover observation, for instance.
I would say that having someone photograph me with a long lense camera while I'm in my back garden is an invasion of privacy. It's not however an unconstitutional act, so far as I'm aware.
If you are a kernel hacker (I'm not....), and you want to use chinese characters as variable names, why should you not be able to do that? Is that what you meant? Just which parts of a computer should only ever be referred to using glyphs from the Roman empire, and why?
I can't think of any reason for any part of a computer system being ascii only, except the reason:
"It's quite hard to change, and there's not much demand". Which is fine, but given that most people in the world can't communicate using ASCII, it's surely only a temporary excuse....
As others have said, ACE/SecurID is basically closed source software. If they don't release it for a given platform, you're stuck.
However, bear in mind it's effectively a client/server type system. The server end (the database) has limited platform support, but the clients (or agents as RSA call them) are pretty widely available.
Even so, you are right in that I don't think there are agents for many free unixes. Your best bet is probably to create your own 'agent' that basically forward the PIN/passcode combo to a box running the SecurID API (yes, they do have an agent API (or did circa 1999)), and then sends back an 'OK' or 'notOK'. Of course the insecurity of this proxying mechanism is another issue.
Another possibility is to run iPlanet on a commercial unix, together with the SecurID plugin for it. You could then write your own 'agent' that made HTTP requests with the passcode/PIN and authenticated against the iPlanet plugin (which in turn authenticates against the ACE server of your choice).
Anyway, I did a load of SecurID stuff a few years ago, and even got 90% through writing a Perl API ontop of their C API. The product then was pretty stable and basically worked well, and the API worked too.
No chair is going to be fun for hours at a stretch. I don't think you should ever sit in a chair for more than an hour without a minute or two's break to walk around, stand up, sit on the floor, lie down, whatever.
I have always found that the more adjustments there are, the less comfortable the chair is. I have what is probably a 'normal' office chair with the usual foam padding, adjustable up/down/back stiffness etc, etc. It's fairly uncomfortable, and annoys me after a couple of hours.
Compare this with any number of restaurants where I have happily sat through a 3 hour meal in a simple old wooden chair with a seat cushion and a straight back. Sure, sometimes these old wooden chairs are uncomfortable, but usually I find the standard Georgian/Victorian kitchen chair with wide, curved wooden seat and nearly straight back to be remarkably comfortable.
At university I sat 3 hour finals exams sitting on a moulded plastic stacking chair without any back pain problems.
There are plenty of placebos that a doctor can describe, and they look exactly like antibiotics to the patient, right down to the patient information leaflet inside.
I would hope that doctors who need to give patients a prescription to keep them happy are giving them a placebo and not an antibiotic.
The idea is to clear out the private traffic to make the roads better for commercial traffic. This will _encourage_ business to stay in central London rather than moving out to the suburbs. This is a _good_ thing.
It will, you are right, make life easier for the rich - since the rich in London travel via taxi (not Roller or Bentley...). It will of course make life easier for the poor to, who travel by bus.
The only large group of people who will suffer, are the very lazy, and the kids who like to cruise around in cars thumping out the music and whistling at girls.
You make a good point that London is so dense, putting up toll booths is not practical. But please leave out the Marxist economics, it doesn't make any sense at all. Are you suggesting that the entire 10,000 year old concept of cities is now out of date because Marx says so and you've got a modem??
London's industrys are financial services, tourism, and other service industry, all of which benefit from high density of population and services.
The reason for the dominance of London has nothing to do with house prices or civil servants. The reason for the high prices and the existance of civil servants has something to do with the dominance of London. Try to get your causes and effects sorted out. Remember - demand leads to price increase, not vice versa (except for Stella Artois, ha ha ha).
Anyway, since technology means there's no need to live in big cities, why do you care if you have to pay a fiver to drive your car into London? Can't you just move to Penrith and work from home or something? Or take the tube? Jeez, lighten up.
Most parking in London is on-street, meaning that you need to police it with people to enforce it. That's very expensive, you basically have to walk down each street seeing if people have paid.
A lot of the central London traffic problem is not people coming in to work in the city or go shopping in the city or whatever - it is people going _through_ the city from one non-central location to another, via the center.
I saw someone else say the same thing, but can't hunt back to their post to reply. Oh Well.
Anyway, I first used POV in 1993, and it got me hooked on the whole computer thing. I'd never have learned Perl except to auto-generate my POV scripts. I'd never have learned Unix except so I could run POV on the university RS6000's instead of the 386DX's. Gee, I owe my career to POV!
Comp.graphics.raytracing, and later comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing were the two best newgroups I ever read, and epitomised all that was (note the past tense!) good about usenet. I wrote a tutorial for POV 2.0 when it came out, and helped set up a web competition still going today (http://www.irtc.org/).
The people were friendly and helpful, flame wars were almost unheared of and religious technology wars were rare. People joined the community, stayed in the community, and helped others enter the community.
People wrote a plethora of supporting utilities, and it really was an application that brought an otherwise inaccessible area of computing within reach of anyone.
Today, CGI is so common in film and TV that POV-Ray's images have little wow factor. Low-end commercial tools like strata 3D are much more affordable and accessible.
Nonetheless, raytracing still produces images with a unique feel, and I'm sure people still get enormous pleasure (and excellent spatial reasoning practice!!) from using POV-Ray. Unless they've changed it radically, the Scene Description Language used by POV was one of the most elegant and well designed declaritive languages I've ever come across in computing. XML and every configuration file I've seen is an ugly hack in comparison. And don't even mention VRML;-)
Cluestick: Wine, anything else? You can't just say 'strong supporter of the Open Source Community.' Hell, I'm sitting here drinking a soda, I think of myself as a strong supporter too. Compare this with, let's say Redhat: Off the top of my head. Gnome, Apache, Mozilla, and gcc.
I don't see why a pretty good windows emulator is less worthy than a not-very-good bloatware browser (that's Mozilla).
Once again, if I get stuck with these contstraints, (let's call this, non-free), then why am I using Lindows? Linux is about freedom (speech, not beer), why am I tying myself down like this? This is Caldera-think. If my enterprise runs Linux, I just want to pay $X a year to Suse/Redhat/IBM for support. Sitting there counting boxes to figure out how many licenses you should pay for is a big reason to avoid close source software in the first place.
Why are you using Lindows? Because you are a home user who doesn't give a shit about Stallman and Linus and GPL vs BSD, but who does want an easy to use system that lets them run their old windows apps.
And, no, Linux is not about freedom as in speech. It's about freedom as in being able to run Unix without spending money on a sun/ibm/hp/sgi machine. That's what it's always been about. Just what we need, users hosing their own system because their distributor not only gave them a loaded gun, but put it in their mouth for them.
Whereas if we _just_ gave them a loaded gun, that would be fine? Oh I forgot, all users are stupid. That's why windows is such a failure of an OS - the users keep accidentally dragging their c: drive into the wastebin and hosing their system.
" I am interested in getting usenet access greater than 1 GB and am willing to pay for it"
I suggest you consult a medical professional, as your mental health problems _can_ be treated if identified in time! There's no need to suffer in silence. Doctors realise that your problem, often called "alt.binaries" syndrome can be treated by counselling sessions, where highly trained advisors will help you understand that downloading 700 MIME encoded messages is not really the best way either to obtain software, or to make yourself happy.
You are a developer. You are not responsible for Network Security. It's not your job. How would you like it if this MCSE person can emailed your boss saying she was concerned about the unmaintainability of your code?
By the sound of your own report, you've not even discussed this (or tried to discuss this) with the Network Admin woman, and instead have gone straight to your boss. That, I'm afraid, is both foolish and rude. No two ways about it.
I've no idea if there even is a problem here. To be honest, it sounds like there's a developer who reckons they are the mutts nuts and is pissed off about this MCSE girl because she's got more root passwords than he does, even though he is the l33t unix haxxor and she is some lam3a55 windoze type. If you see what I mean.
So, basically, I'd just forget about it, because your position in this argument is already fatally damaged by not having deigned to talk to the network admin.
But, let's assume that there is a reall security problem here, and that this MCSE person really is not doing their job properly. Well, yes, you have a responsibility to make sure your concerns are known. In fact, it should be your job to make sure your concerns are known. AND THAT'S IT. IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO FIX THEM.
Go and talk to your boss. Give your boss a calm, reasonable assessment of the situation. Explain in simple but thorough terms what you think the issues are. Suggest some ways you think they could be addressed. Say how you'd be happy to help the network team fix the problems.
And then leave it. It is your boss's responsibility to take the issue further if they see fit.
Tell me about it. I've had crap from Experian too.
What really sucks is some of the algorithms they use to determine your credit references. This includes the credit references of people who live / lived in the same house as you - even flat mates who you hardly knew - even flat mates who _moved in after you moved out_.
I don't know whether it's commendable or not, but they actually named the people who'd lived at the addresses I'd lived at in my copy of my credit report. Weird.
So, yeah, credit reference agencies suck. They are the bad guys. I've never defaulted on a payment in my life, and I got turned down for credit cards because I'd lived at the same address as people with debts. It's just weird.
OK, so smart cards are not tamper resistant. I don't see that any attack based around stealing a smart card is anything to worry about, assuming the card itself only stores dumb information like a sum of money or an id number.
Guess what?! Criminals can read the information from a credit card using nothing more sophisticated than their eyes! Does this render credit cards an appalling security risk? No, because when it gets stolen you report it and cancel the card.
Now, if someone figures out a way to _write_ to the smart card to people can top up sums of money or whatever, that's a problem. Also, if the smartcard stores data that's useful in itself - say your real naem and address, or other bank account numbers, or what have you, then you certainly don't want that being read by someone else.
Actually, that's true of most games. None of the old C64 games that used to enthrall me are worth 5 minutes of my time now. Stuff like Elite that seemed incredible in 1985 is just utterly dull now.
But, some games are starting to last the distance now. I still play PC games that are up to 5 years old, and not even the graphics look particularly dated. Apart from games that just hurl workload at the 3D accelerator, there's little advancement now that taxes computer technology that much from generation to generation. Check out the minimum PC specs on the side of games these days - they just aren't changing much.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not so sure in this case. I read the whole thing. There's nothing particularly bad in there. Bear in mind this is not the disclaimer for the general website, but for the AAdvantage club thingy. There's a 'no linking' clause, but in the circum stances that seems fine - it's annoying to have links into the middle of what is basically a web based application.
The rest is just tediously explicit - "Don't say libelous things on forums" "Don't use our logo" "We are not liable for damages resulting from typos on this site" etc. etc. ad nauseam.
It's sad that this stuff has to take the place of common sense, but in the end it's a two way street. If you didn't have idiots claiming they own the 'rights' to their bulleting board postings, you wouldn't have these discaimers pointing out in legalese that you forfeit those 'rights'.
Whoa, dude, it's time for your medicine.
Just what is a 'real-time mission-critical response'? Last I checked 'mission-critical' didn't _actually_ mean anything.
Also, I suppose it is just possible that Win2K has a _theoretical_ unlimited interrupt latency, but I don't think it is _effectively_ unlimited, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to do anything on my computer, would I?
Also, who gives a shit? Did anyone say Win2K was a real-time system? Did they? Is anyone claiming that Linux makes a good kernel for a real-time OS?
Finally, last I checked, boats need computers about as much as computers need, oh, I dunno, boats probably. Funnily enough navigating a boat isn't actually a 'real-time' operation, and while I daresay firing a guided AA missile is, I don't think anyone is really interested in whether Windows or Linux is a better OS for missile guidance systems, since they are both obviously not going to be used for it.
end rant.
*waves goodbye to some karma*
I like your RHAT vs MSFT link. Try this one:
RHAT vs MSFT
This is the second time we've had someone asking 'My boss is stupid, what can I do?'. Look, it's really simple.
:).
1. Management's idea is either good or bad.
2. If it's bad, and you know why, you can explain that to management.
3. If it's good, but for some reason you don't want to do it, because, say, it involves language X that you think sucks or OS Y that you think sucks, then just f***ing grow up, eh?
Now, it may be that you explain why it's a bad idea, but management don't change their minds. This could be:
1. There are arguments supporting the idea that you do not understand (maybe they are financial or business related, not technical).
2. Management do not understand your (technical) arguments against the idea.
3. There are arguments supporting the idea that you have not been told about, because management does not think it relevant.
In case 1, that's kind of tough. If you are interested in other aspects of the business, then generally managers will be thrilled and will be happy to spend time explaining these things. but, if you don't care, then don't be surprised when someone says "OK, maybe the technology isn't ideal, but with this balance sheet, we ARE going down this route"
In case 2, that's also kind of tough. Try to find someone who is good at making technical issues comprehensible to managers. Every team should have a person able to to do this. Find them and get them on your side.
In case 3, guess what, that's kind of tough. Maybe managment figure that it's not your job to care about non-technical aspects of the idea. Personally I don't like this approach - I always let the geeks see the profit/loss sheet even if I'm pretty certain they won't understand it. That way they might let me see the database schema, and I will understand that
So, this knee jerk "Whoa, my PHB is so dumb, he said this [...]" is really an attitude I expect from junior members of my team. Senior members can either shut up and code, or they can make a proper job of presenting a case supporting why the idea is so dumb.
I don't get it. They guy wants to map some zip codes to congressional districts. What on earth is the problem with that? Maybe he has a database with the zip codes of people earning over 60K per year. He wants to do a statistical analysis of how those people are distributed according to congressional district, and draw some conclusions about income and voter habits. I fail completely to see the problem with this.
Maybe the database of zip codes has been bought from acme-evil-spam-company, but, oh shit, maybe just maybe it hasn't!! Maybe those people all happily gave their zipcodes and salaries in return for the chance to win a new car. Maybe they gave that information because it only took them 10 seconds to do and they felt like helping out some research company.
Jeez, lighten up will you.
I've spent the last 6 months looking at online learning technology. It's a mess. We ended up with Vuepoint (http://www.vuepoint.com/) because they have a tolerable unlimited user license fee, and they have both content creation/management and course deliver/management tools. Many companies offer only one or the other.
There are a couple of 'standards' in this area, namely AICC (old) and SCORM (current). The latter stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model, and is theoretically a way of encapsulating bits of an online class to allow, well, reuse and sharing.
In practice the standard appears highly complex and unhelpful. It comes from the aviation world (don't ask) and is geared towards courses like 'how to troubleshoot a Bowing 747 hydraulic system'. I.E., big, fact based piles of knowledge. This makes it not very helpful for all sorts of other courses, like 'What to expect from chemotherapy'.
Nonetheless, in corporate world being SCORM compliant is a vital feature for many companies that want to sell elearning products. But, SCORM is a highest common factor, and everyone ends up sinking to that level if they go with it. There are companies that simply sell SCORM compliant classes for you to plug into your SCORM compliant LMS (learnign management system), but that's a pretty blunt approach.
The academic world is better - there are a number of products (like blackboard) that derive from universities' internal elearning projects. These products are often technically kind of a mess and pretty crufty, but they are often more functional and cheaper.
You think blackboard is costly?!?!?! It's practically free compared to Docent, Saba, click2learn, IBM's thing, Sun's thing, everything else. Most learning software has per-user licenses with no realistic option of unlimited use. Blackboard is very attractive if you expect large numbers of people to take the course.
And, although it is not open source, it is written largely in Perl, and the source is available when you buy it. When I spoke to Blackboard they did not officially tolerate customers modifying the source, but the acknowledged that it went on pretty widely.
It's hard to take seriously a text editor named after a sink cleaning product.
Vim
I think here in the UK the Open University (http://www.open.ac.uk/) is pretty well regarded. It has been around for a long time doing remote degrees.
The Open University generally caters for those who have regular jobs and want to study for a degree in their spare time. Needless to say, that takes a long time and a great deal of motivation and self discipline. Accordingly, as an employer I'd have a lot of respect for anyone who managed to do it successfully.
Hi,
:-)?
If the RV situation is similar to the boat situation, then the existing DC system is fine. The issue is getting appliances that expect DC input from the wall rather than from their own little transformer. I would be wary of taking 'normal' appliances and chopping the transformer off and sticking the wires into your DC system.
You can buy power tools, radios, even microwaves designed specifically for use with boat (and, I assume, RV) DC power systems. I'm sure the range is restrictive and maybe they are expensive, but they work.
However, an RV has a big old engine, right? So you aren't likely to be short of power, really, right? So why not just use the AC system and forget about the inefficiency
It's something, but it's far from complete. This part of the constitution appears to only cover 'searches and seizures'. It does not cover observation, for instance.
I would say that having someone photograph me with a long lense camera while I'm in my back garden is an invasion of privacy. It's not however an unconstitutional act, so far as I'm aware.
I don't understand.
If you are a kernel hacker (I'm not....), and you want to use chinese characters as variable names, why should you not be able to do that? Is that what you meant? Just which parts of a computer should only ever be referred to using glyphs from the Roman empire, and why?
I can't think of any reason for any part of a computer system being ascii only, except the reason:
"It's quite hard to change, and there's not much demand". Which is fine, but given that most people in the world can't communicate using ASCII, it's surely only a temporary excuse....
Hi,
As others have said, ACE/SecurID is basically closed source software. If they don't release it for a given platform, you're stuck.
However, bear in mind it's effectively a client/server type system. The server end (the database) has limited platform support, but the clients (or agents as RSA call them) are pretty widely available.
Even so, you are right in that I don't think there are agents for many free unixes. Your best bet is probably to create your own 'agent' that basically forward the PIN/passcode combo to a box running the SecurID API (yes, they do have an agent API (or did circa 1999)), and then sends back an 'OK' or 'notOK'. Of course the insecurity of this proxying mechanism is another issue.
Another possibility is to run iPlanet on a commercial unix, together with the SecurID plugin for it. You could then write your own 'agent' that made HTTP requests with the passcode/PIN and authenticated against the iPlanet plugin (which in turn authenticates against the ACE server of your choice).
Anyway, I did a load of SecurID stuff a few years ago, and even got 90% through writing a Perl API ontop of their C API. The product then was pretty stable and basically worked well, and the API worked too.
Exactly.
No chair is going to be fun for hours at a stretch. I don't think you should ever sit in a chair for more than an hour without a minute or two's break to walk around, stand up, sit on the floor, lie down, whatever.
I have always found that the more adjustments there are, the less comfortable the chair is. I have what is probably a 'normal' office chair with the usual foam padding, adjustable up/down/back stiffness etc, etc. It's fairly uncomfortable, and annoys me after a couple of hours.
Compare this with any number of restaurants where I have happily sat through a 3 hour meal in a simple old wooden chair with a seat cushion and a straight back. Sure, sometimes these old wooden chairs are uncomfortable, but usually I find the standard Georgian/Victorian kitchen chair with wide, curved wooden seat and nearly straight back
to be remarkably comfortable.
At university I sat 3 hour finals exams sitting on a moulded plastic stacking chair without any back pain problems.
Are you sure those are really antibiotics??
There are plenty of placebos that a doctor can describe, and they look exactly like antibiotics to the patient, right down to the patient information leaflet inside.
I would hope that doctors who need to give patients a prescription to keep them happy are giving them a placebo and not an antibiotic.
No, quite the opposite.
The idea is to clear out the private traffic to make the roads better for commercial traffic. This will _encourage_ business to stay in central London rather than moving out to the suburbs. This is a _good_ thing.
It will, you are right, make life easier for the rich - since the rich in London travel via taxi (not Roller or Bentley...). It will of course make life easier for the poor to, who travel by bus.
The only large group of people who will suffer, are the very lazy, and the kids who like to cruise around in cars thumping out the music and whistling at girls.
Sounds good to me.
What _are_ you on about??
You make a good point that London is so dense, putting up toll booths is not practical. But please leave out the Marxist economics, it doesn't make any sense at all. Are you suggesting that the entire 10,000 year old concept of cities is now out of date because Marx says so and you've got a modem??
London's industrys are financial services, tourism, and other service industry, all of which benefit from high density of population and services.
The reason for the dominance of London has nothing to do with house prices or civil servants. The reason for the high prices and the existance of civil servants has something to do with the dominance of London. Try to get your causes and effects sorted out. Remember - demand leads to price increase, not vice versa (except for Stella Artois, ha ha ha).
Anyway, since technology means there's no need to live in big cities, why do you care if you have to pay a fiver to drive your car into London? Can't you just move to Penrith and work from home or something? Or take the tube? Jeez, lighten up.
Couple of things:
Most parking in London is on-street, meaning that you need to police it with people to enforce it. That's very expensive, you basically have to walk down each street seeing if people have paid.
A lot of the central London traffic problem is not people coming in to work in the city or go shopping in the city or whatever - it is people going _through_ the city from one non-central location to another, via the center.
I saw someone else say the same thing, but can't hunt back to their post to reply. Oh Well.
;-)
Anyway, I first used POV in 1993, and it got me hooked on the whole computer thing. I'd never have learned Perl except to auto-generate my POV scripts. I'd never have learned Unix except so I could run POV on the university RS6000's instead of the 386DX's. Gee, I owe my career to POV!
Comp.graphics.raytracing, and later comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing were the two best newgroups I ever read, and epitomised all that was (note the past tense!) good about usenet. I wrote a tutorial for POV 2.0 when it came out, and helped set up a web competition still going today (http://www.irtc.org/).
The people were friendly and helpful, flame wars were almost unheared of and religious technology wars were rare. People joined the community, stayed in the community, and helped others enter the community.
People wrote a plethora of supporting utilities, and it really was an application that brought an otherwise inaccessible area of computing within reach of anyone.
Today, CGI is so common in film and TV that POV-Ray's images have little wow factor. Low-end commercial tools like strata 3D are much more affordable and accessible.
Nonetheless, raytracing still produces images with a unique feel, and I'm sure people still get enormous pleasure (and excellent spatial reasoning practice!!) from using POV-Ray. Unless they've changed it radically, the Scene Description Language used by POV was one of the most elegant and well designed declaritive languages I've ever come across in computing. XML and every configuration file I've seen is an ugly hack in comparison. And don't even mention VRML
Go go POV team!!!!
I don't see why a pretty good windows emulator is less worthy than a not-very-good bloatware browser (that's Mozilla).
Once again, if I get stuck with these contstraints, (let's call this, non-free), then why am I using Lindows? Linux is about freedom (speech, not beer), why am I tying myself down like this? This is Caldera-think. If my enterprise runs Linux, I just want to pay $X a year to Suse/Redhat/IBM for support. Sitting there counting boxes to figure out how many licenses you should pay for is a big reason to avoid close source software in the first place.
Why are you using Lindows? Because you are a home user who doesn't give a shit about Stallman and Linus and GPL vs BSD, but who does want an easy to use system that lets them run their old windows apps.
And, no, Linux is not about freedom as in speech. It's about freedom as in being able to run Unix without spending money on a sun/ibm/hp/sgi machine. That's what it's always been about.
Just what we need, users hosing their own system because their distributor not only gave them a loaded gun, but put it in their mouth for them.
Whereas if we _just_ gave them a loaded gun, that would be fine? Oh I forgot, all users are stupid. That's why windows is such a failure of an OS - the users keep accidentally dragging their c: drive into the wastebin and hosing their system.
" I am interested in getting usenet access greater than 1 GB and am willing to pay for it"
I suggest you consult a medical professional, as your mental health problems _can_ be treated if identified in time! There's no need to suffer in silence. Doctors realise that your problem, often called "alt.binaries" syndrome can be treated by counselling sessions, where highly trained advisors will help you understand that downloading 700 MIME encoded messages is not really the best way either to obtain software, or to make yourself happy.
I suggest you get out more.
You are a developer. You are not responsible for Network Security. It's not your job. How would you like it if this MCSE person can emailed your boss saying she was concerned about the unmaintainability of your code?
By the sound of your own report, you've not even discussed this (or tried to discuss this) with the Network Admin woman, and instead have gone straight to your boss. That, I'm afraid, is both foolish and rude. No two ways about it.
I've no idea if there even is a problem here. To be honest, it sounds like there's a developer who reckons they are the mutts nuts and is pissed off about this MCSE girl because she's got more root passwords than he does, even though he is the l33t unix haxxor and she is some lam3a55 windoze type. If you see what I mean.
So, basically, I'd just forget about it, because your position in this argument is already fatally damaged by not having deigned to talk to the network admin.
But, let's assume that there is a reall security problem here, and that this MCSE person really is not doing their job properly. Well, yes, you have a responsibility to make sure your concerns are known. In fact, it should be your job to make sure your concerns are known. AND THAT'S IT. IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO FIX THEM.
Go and talk to your boss. Give your boss a calm, reasonable assessment of the situation. Explain in simple but thorough terms what you think the issues are. Suggest some ways you think they could be addressed. Say how you'd be happy to help the network team fix the problems.
And then leave it. It is your boss's responsibility to take the issue further if they see fit.
Tell me about it. I've had crap from Experian too.
What really sucks is some of the algorithms they use to determine your credit references. This includes the credit references of people who live / lived in the same house as you - even flat mates who you hardly knew - even flat mates who _moved in after you moved out_.
I don't know whether it's commendable or not, but they actually named the people who'd lived at the addresses I'd lived at in my copy of my credit report. Weird.
So, yeah, credit reference agencies suck. They are the bad guys. I've never defaulted on a payment in my life, and I got turned down for credit cards because I'd lived at the same address as people with debts. It's just weird.
OK, so smart cards are not tamper resistant. I don't see that any attack based around stealing a smart card is anything to worry about, assuming the card itself only stores dumb information like a sum of money or an id number.
Guess what?! Criminals can read the information from a credit card using nothing more sophisticated than their eyes! Does this render credit cards an appalling security risk? No, because when it gets stolen you report it and cancel the card.
Now, if someone figures out a way to _write_ to the smart card to people can top up sums of money or whatever, that's a problem. Also, if the smartcard stores data that's useful in itself - say your real naem and address, or other bank account numbers, or what have you, then you certainly don't want that being read by someone else.
Actually, that's true of most games. None of the old C64 games that used to enthrall me are worth 5 minutes of my time now. Stuff like Elite that seemed incredible in 1985 is just utterly dull now.
But, some games are starting to last the distance now. I still play PC games that are up to 5 years old, and not even the graphics look particularly dated. Apart from games that just hurl workload at the 3D accelerator, there's little advancement now that taxes computer technology that much from generation to generation. Check out the minimum PC specs on the side of games these days - they just aren't changing much.