Cingular has been working for years to phase out these technologies in favor of GSM (Global System of Mobile Communications), a newer technology that is the world's most popular wireless standard.
I didn't get the memo. When did the acronym GSM get hijacked by illiterate Americans? I always thought it stood for "Groupe Spéciale Mobile"?
I don't think I made my point very well. He's a senior developer, and his wife is a V.P. at a bank. They've got money coming out of their orifices, they're just being too cheap to spend it.:-)
Anyway, he's a gadget freak and they're both convenience freaks -- hooking up an antenna is soooo third millenial. They'll get a repeater soon enough.
My son's high school had a math teacher who took on the AP Computer Science course, even though her previous computer experience had been Pascal 20 years prior. During the summer, she took one of the training courses from the College Board, and that was it -- she was an AP teacher.
Out of about 1100 juniors and seniors, 19 took the AP CSci course. She seemed to do well with the kids. My son liked her, anyway, and came home and asked pretty insightful questions. I believe all but two of her students passed their AP exams with 3s or above. So, I'd say their training does a pretty good job of prepping teachers with a lot less experience than you seem to have.
(I confess I grilled her quite a bit at the start of the course, mostly to find out how much help I'd have to provide.)
What I don't know is who picked up the bill for her AP training. The 5-day course I linked to above cost $695, not counting travel to Pennsylvania; and I doubt that covered room and board.
Of course, that teacher just left for a great opportunity in her home state, leaving another math teacher to fill the void.:-( I hope he can go through the AP training, especially if he has no Java or OO experience.
Wilson Cellular sells "boosters". They have mobile and fixed, both wired and wireless repeaters. But they're a touch spendy -- I think between $400 and $500.
A buddy of mine who lives in BFE Wisconsin has looking to buy one for his house for about six months now -- he only gets cell reception while standing on his western porch (presumably on one leg, with the opposite arm raised high into the air.) The price has been a bit of an issue with him; but this weekend his wife was out there making a call and she got stung by yellow jackets. I bet she makes him buy one now!
I found this FCC site which allows you to search for registered towers. After you find towers (in a particular city, for example) you can click on the individual tower (lat/lon data is provided here) then the "map registration" button will bring you to a Tiger map of the tower.
Then I found out that someone has a google maps interface to the same data. Screw that FCC site!:-)
Have you ever tried to sell something that was of marginal-to-dubious value to begin with? If you don't have some kind of dramatic scare tactics, you won't sell a thing. And you can't have scare tactics without a few scares.
I've run a hardware firewall ever since I got high speed net access. The only spyware I ever got was from a CD-ROM Borland game in 1998 just as the ideas for spyware were being developed. And I've never gotten a virus at home (laptop users at work are a different nightmare.) "Not being stupid" is all it really takes to avoid the damned things.
This whole "'OMG, virus!!1!' spiel kind of reminds me of an employee at a local auto-body company. We had a very snow-free winter one year (meaning no accidents and slow business) so this jerk took a "beater car" and bounced it off a bunch of parked cars one night. If all else fails, manufacture the need.
VMs don't share the "real" hard drive with the host OS. There is just a file on the host that represents their hard drive. If the virus wants to partion it, hey, it's just bits in a file.
Yes, virus and spyware researchers use VMs all the time. They keep a disk image of a known clean machine. When a new suspicious program comes along, they copy their disk image, boot it up, run the virus program, and look for the deltas. It's much easier than keeping a "clean-room" PC around and reghosting the disk every time.
Well, then the GP poster hit it exactly right: lots of CYA memos, document who deserves to burn should the building go up in smoke, the whole nine yards.:-)
That all ignores something in his original statement: "our local IT staff managed to fumble the political ball." If we're talking "three desktop systems == server farm", you can bet "our local staff" is pretty small, and I'm betting it translates directly into "BenEnglishAtHome".
[ It's kind of like asking questions that start with, "I know this guy with herpes..." ]
A memo filled with finger pointing and blame throwing will be a fine document for the new IT guy to use to justify a new server room, but won't help Ben keep his job for another minute.
The moral of the story is "never throw stones at the crane operator in a quarry."
An old friend of mine would choose the "favorite historical figure" option, if available, and he would answer "Hitler." He said you wouldn't expect it of a black Jewish guy, and that's what was so great. It's not likely to be guessed.
Since there are exactly seven black Jewish guys in existence today, I now know your friend's password! Ha!
They'll stop a bot, but they won't stop a human. That's about the best that can be said for user-defined security questions.
Most people don't have enough imagination to come up with a secure password, let alone a unique question that's answerable twelve months from now. I bet if you were to look at some of the "write-your-own" question sites currently out there, the majority of the 'questions' you'd find will be "your password is 'xyzzy'". At least "city of birth" or "elementary school name" require a spot of digging by an attacker.
I'm not a professional grocery clerk, so don't bitch about my speed.
And I'm not talking about self-checkout at grocery stores, but specifically the ones at the Home Depot. Onions aren't in their item database. Everything they sell (apart from custom cut products such as wire) gets a barcode, and those custom products get a tag that I've never tried to take through self-checkout. AFAIK they don't even have a place to enter an item number manually -- if it's not a simple scan, it goes through the attendant cashier.
Besides, this is America. I'll bitch about everyone and anyone, whenever I want and wherever I want.:-)
I really don't know what these systems are trying to prevent. If you wanted to steal something then why would you scan it?
Yes, the bagging area is a giant scale that's supposed to read bags of concrete with milligram precision.
The problem is there's no limit to the items that you can take through self-checkout. If you had three tiny $50 carbide tipped router bits in your hand, waved your hand over the scanner and dropped them all in the bag, you'd be stealing $100 worth of stuff, and to the casual observer it looks like you just did a normal thing -- you waved your hands, the scanner beeped, you dropped something in the bag, $50 rang up, everything looks cool. But the scale can detect the overage.
It also prevents you from peeling the barcode from an $0.89 plumbing fitting and pasting it on a $40.00 gate valve. Again, you scan a plumbing item and a plumbing-like line appears on the display. From a distance, it all looks above-board. But the scale knows the difference between an elbow and a valve.
You could take a boxed package like a toilet tank, hide all the plumbing fittings inside the box, and scan just the box. But now the box is overweight, and the scale detects it.
The problem as far as the honest customer is concerned is that same scale that has to detect 50 pound bags of concrete has to also detect when you've dropped a tiny poly bag with three rubber O-rings in it. It's very difficult to build a scale with that kind of precision over that kind of range.
Why not just RFID everything and just let us walk out?
Despite the IBM commercials, RFID isn't ready for prime-time yet. They're still having issues with agressive readers reading the next customer in line's merchandise. They can't read through certain metals or liquids. And CASPIAN is still all over their big brotherish butts. Not that they're very relevant to the industry, but they've got Consumer Reports telling their subscriber base that "RFID is teh debbil!"
That, and the tags are still too pricey for items that cost under a dollar.
we weigh them on the fruit and veggie department and get a stick on barcode label that they read on the counter.
That used to be commonplace here in the U.S. as well. Believe it or not, it's now cheaper to buy a thousand dollar scanner/scale for each cash register than it is to have several self-weighing stations in the produce aisle. Here's why:
Reduced theft. It eliminates a temptation for people who might otherwise try to cheat the scales. Not only is theft expensive, but investigation and prosecution are also expensive, and they engender hard feelings amongst everyone involved -- both the alleged thief and any other store patrons who witness store security having to confront a little old lady trying to shave a dollar off the price of grapes.
Reduced operational costs. Those stickers that print out are expensive! Thermal stickers can cost over ten cents each for the blank stock. No stickers are needed if the register weighs the merchandise.
Reduced maintenance costs. The scales cost almost as much per year to cover on a maintenance contract as a whole cash register. The scanner/scales at the register only add incrementally to the cost of a register's maintenance contract; it's not nearly as much as maintaining a parts depot for a completely different machine. Don't ask me why the service companies price things the way they do, we just take advantage of it when we can.
Increased shelf space. Setting aside 6 square feet for a scanner and small work table removes 6 feet of shelf space that could otherwise be offering merchandise for sale. Stores figure their sales on a square foot basis, and those six feet could theoretically be generating something like a thousand dollars per year or more if they held products instead of a scale.
It's all economics. Someone did the math, so that's where it ended up.
Marginally increase the time between the self checkout's stages, such that customers will spend, on average, a few seconds more while checking out
Uhh...no. Even with only one cashier per four lanes, it's in the stores best interersts to push people through the lines faster, not slower. First, cashiers have a per-hour cost. Dividing it by four allows a store to be a bit slower, but not much. Besides, "slower checkout" just pisses people off these days, and they're likely to drop their purchase on the floor and walk out if they have to wait too long. Those former-customers are tough to get to come back, too. While it might work fine at a Bose speaker store, intentionally slowing down the checkout process is not a good business practice in a high-volume chain-store.
That, or it could have something to do with the fact that there usually aren't any impulse items right next to (or in front of) the self check-out registers. Just maybe.
Well, you do have stuff in the end caps. And our local store has a folding table set up in the aisle approaching the self-checkouts with clearance merchandise (things like returned circular saws for $15) that I like to look at. I suppose if I were waiting in line for a self-checkout lane I might browse the goods, but like I said, that isn't going to happen with me. I'm much happier waiting for someone who knows what he or she is doing than to take my chances behind a line full of J. Random Lusers.
Now that they mention it, I know I've never made an impulse purchase at the self-checkout lanes at Home Depot (but I have at the regular checkout lines.) That's the only store I regularly shop at that uses self-checkout.
However, I refuse to use self-checkout if I have to wait behind any customers. The cashier lanes are always faster, even when they have a line. I can't believe how stupid most people become once they enter the self-checkout lanes. It's scan-scan-swipe, people; in-and-out in about 45 seconds or less; how frickin' hard is that to understand?!? I'm not talking about the people who get stalled because their credit card was rejected, I'm talking about the ones who have to stop and read the full screen after scanning every damn packet of washers in their cart; or who don't seem to understand that the barcodes have to be presented to the lasers, and that no matter how long you stare at a barcode, the scanner won't pick it up. Morons.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
The story on the web is that a senior Microsoft employee in their marketing department acknowledged producing it after it was released. He was fed up with their crappy package designs, and by releasing the video publicly he intended to embarrass them into a reaction.
I don't know if things have improved in their marketing department yet. But that video did shake them up, especially when they started viewing the public reaction to it. (Unfortunately, all my Microsoft resources are techies, and don't know what's going on in their marketing department any more than I know what goes on in ours.)
I take exception to only one sentence you wrote: It was a do-gooder, "for the sake of the children", witch hunt.
The witch hunters were not do-gooders. They were witch hunters, pure, simple and 100% evil. There was nothing good in what they did, there were no children "protected", there were no parents enlightened. They grabbed their immoral viewpoint (hey, I have morals and they're nothing like what these idiots espouse) and dragged it into a courtroom, where they confused a judge into agreeing with them.
You need to read deeper into the article. Different publishers are accepting source materials in different formats. Blurb has their composer on a web site, Picaboo gives you a free download of their software, and Lulu takes PDFs. Shop around, and find the one willing to work with you. They all seem comparably priced for the end product, which isn't much more than you'd pay for an ordinary hardbound edition from a well respected author.
Re:Couldn't be worse than some that I've had...
on
The Robot Professor
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Um, they have teachers like this. It's called a "book on tape", or equiv. Skip the Disney rubber face BS.
Or if it makes you more comfortable, play the book on tape through a Teddy Ruxpin. Same difference.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, I hope the French are pissed. :-)
Anyway, he's a gadget freak and they're both convenience freaks -- hooking up an antenna is soooo third millenial. They'll get a repeater soon enough.
Out of about 1100 juniors and seniors, 19 took the AP CSci course. She seemed to do well with the kids. My son liked her, anyway, and came home and asked pretty insightful questions. I believe all but two of her students passed their AP exams with 3s or above. So, I'd say their training does a pretty good job of prepping teachers with a lot less experience than you seem to have.
(I confess I grilled her quite a bit at the start of the course, mostly to find out how much help I'd have to provide.)
What I don't know is who picked up the bill for her AP training. The 5-day course I linked to above cost $695, not counting travel to Pennsylvania; and I doubt that covered room and board.
Of course, that teacher just left for a great opportunity in her home state, leaving another math teacher to fill the void. :-( I hope he can go through the AP training, especially if he has no Java or OO experience.
A buddy of mine who lives in BFE Wisconsin has looking to buy one for his house for about six months now -- he only gets cell reception while standing on his western porch (presumably on one leg, with the opposite arm raised high into the air.) The price has been a bit of an issue with him; but this weekend his wife was out there making a call and she got stung by yellow jackets. I bet she makes him buy one now!
Then I found out that someone has a google maps interface to the same data. Screw that FCC site! :-)
I've run a hardware firewall ever since I got high speed net access. The only spyware I ever got was from a CD-ROM Borland game in 1998 just as the ideas for spyware were being developed. And I've never gotten a virus at home (laptop users at work are a different nightmare.) "Not being stupid" is all it really takes to avoid the damned things.
This whole "'OMG, virus!!1!' spiel kind of reminds me of an employee at a local auto-body company. We had a very snow-free winter one year (meaning no accidents and slow business) so this jerk took a "beater car" and bounced it off a bunch of parked cars one night. If all else fails, manufacture the need.
Yes, virus and spyware researchers use VMs all the time. They keep a disk image of a known clean machine. When a new suspicious program comes along, they copy their disk image, boot it up, run the virus program, and look for the deltas. It's much easier than keeping a "clean-room" PC around and reghosting the disk every time.
Well, then the GP poster hit it exactly right: lots of CYA memos, document who deserves to burn should the building go up in smoke, the whole nine yards. :-)
[ It's kind of like asking questions that start with, "I know this guy with herpes..." ]
A memo filled with finger pointing and blame throwing will be a fine document for the new IT guy to use to justify a new server room, but won't help Ben keep his job for another minute.
The moral of the story is "never throw stones at the crane operator in a quarry."
No, they decided it was easier just to give him back his stapler.
Since there are exactly seven black Jewish guys in existence today, I now know your friend's password! Ha!
Most people don't have enough imagination to come up with a secure password, let alone a unique question that's answerable twelve months from now. I bet if you were to look at some of the "write-your-own" question sites currently out there, the majority of the 'questions' you'd find will be "your password is 'xyzzy'". At least "city of birth" or "elementary school name" require a spot of digging by an attacker.
Besides, this is America. I'll bitch about everyone and anyone, whenever I want and wherever I want. :-)
The problem is there's no limit to the items that you can take through self-checkout. If you had three tiny $50 carbide tipped router bits in your hand, waved your hand over the scanner and dropped them all in the bag, you'd be stealing $100 worth of stuff, and to the casual observer it looks like you just did a normal thing -- you waved your hands, the scanner beeped, you dropped something in the bag, $50 rang up, everything looks cool. But the scale can detect the overage.
It also prevents you from peeling the barcode from an $0.89 plumbing fitting and pasting it on a $40.00 gate valve. Again, you scan a plumbing item and a plumbing-like line appears on the display. From a distance, it all looks above-board. But the scale knows the difference between an elbow and a valve.
You could take a boxed package like a toilet tank, hide all the plumbing fittings inside the box, and scan just the box. But now the box is overweight, and the scale detects it.
The problem as far as the honest customer is concerned is that same scale that has to detect 50 pound bags of concrete has to also detect when you've dropped a tiny poly bag with three rubber O-rings in it. It's very difficult to build a scale with that kind of precision over that kind of range.
That, and the tags are still too pricey for items that cost under a dollar.
- Reduced theft. It eliminates a temptation for people who might otherwise try to cheat the scales. Not only is theft expensive, but investigation and prosecution are also expensive, and they engender hard feelings amongst everyone involved -- both the alleged thief and any other store patrons who witness store security having to confront a little old lady trying to shave a dollar off the price of grapes.
- Reduced operational costs. Those stickers that print out are expensive! Thermal stickers can cost over ten cents each for the blank stock. No stickers are needed if the register weighs the merchandise.
- Reduced maintenance costs. The scales cost almost as much per year to cover on a maintenance contract as a whole cash register. The scanner/scales at the register only add incrementally to the cost of a register's maintenance contract; it's not nearly as much as maintaining a parts depot for a completely different machine. Don't ask me why the service companies price things the way they do, we just take advantage of it when we can.
- Increased shelf space. Setting aside 6 square feet for a scanner and small work table removes 6 feet of shelf space that could otherwise be offering merchandise for sale. Stores figure their sales on a square foot basis, and those six feet could theoretically be generating something like a thousand dollars per year or more if they held products instead of a scale.
It's all economics. Someone did the math, so that's where it ended up.Uhh...no. Even with only one cashier per four lanes, it's in the stores best interersts to push people through the lines faster, not slower. First, cashiers have a per-hour cost. Dividing it by four allows a store to be a bit slower, but not much. Besides, "slower checkout" just pisses people off these days, and they're likely to drop their purchase on the floor and walk out if they have to wait too long. Those former-customers are tough to get to come back, too. While it might work fine at a Bose speaker store, intentionally slowing down the checkout process is not a good business practice in a high-volume chain-store.
Well, you do have stuff in the end caps. And our local store has a folding table set up in the aisle approaching the self-checkouts with clearance merchandise (things like returned circular saws for $15) that I like to look at. I suppose if I were waiting in line for a self-checkout lane I might browse the goods, but like I said, that isn't going to happen with me. I'm much happier waiting for someone who knows what he or she is doing than to take my chances behind a line full of J. Random Lusers.
However, I refuse to use self-checkout if I have to wait behind any customers. The cashier lanes are always faster, even when they have a line. I can't believe how stupid most people become once they enter the self-checkout lanes. It's scan-scan-swipe, people; in-and-out in about 45 seconds or less; how frickin' hard is that to understand?!? I'm not talking about the people who get stalled because their credit card was rejected, I'm talking about the ones who have to stop and read the full screen after scanning every damn packet of washers in their cart; or who don't seem to understand that the barcodes have to be presented to the lasers, and that no matter how long you stare at a barcode, the scanner won't pick it up. Morons.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
I don't know if things have improved in their marketing department yet. But that video did shake them up, especially when they started viewing the public reaction to it. (Unfortunately, all my Microsoft resources are techies, and don't know what's going on in their marketing department any more than I know what goes on in ours.)
They needed a name that would fit on this box.
In suspiciously coincidental news, Steve Jobs has been seen taking chair-throwing lessons.
I take exception to only one sentence you wrote: It was a do-gooder, "for the sake of the children", witch hunt.
The witch hunters were not do-gooders. They were witch hunters, pure, simple and 100% evil. There was nothing good in what they did, there were no children "protected", there were no parents enlightened. They grabbed their immoral viewpoint (hey, I have morals and they're nothing like what these idiots espouse) and dragged it into a courtroom, where they confused a judge into agreeing with them.
You need to read deeper into the article. Different publishers are accepting source materials in different formats. Blurb has their composer on a web site, Picaboo gives you a free download of their software, and Lulu takes PDFs. Shop around, and find the one willing to work with you. They all seem comparably priced for the end product, which isn't much more than you'd pay for an ordinary hardbound edition from a well respected author.
Or if it makes you more comfortable, play the book on tape through a Teddy Ruxpin. Same difference.