I know that I shouldn't be surprised, and in fact I'm not. However, our AT&T rep has been telling us that AT&T would be rolling out LTE in my market "soon" for over a year. According to this map, we're not even on the "soon" list.
We switched to AT&T because they had the iPhone. Apple tech is a big part of our inudstry, and our President and CEO especially are big fans, and they decided that we couldn't do without. At this point though, 90% of our phones have gone out of contract in the past year and a half, and we've held off on upgrading with the assumption that the next iPhone will have LTE technology. Verizon already has excellent LTE service in our area, and I have always felt that they represented better customer service. I really wonder what AT&T can do to keep us from jumping ship. Probably nothing...
While I'm all for promoting gender and sexual orientation equality, a post on Slashdot attached to a thread about ISPs refusing to comply with an order is not the place for such promotion. If this were an article about how HUD is working to decrease discrimination against LGBTQ persons, then sure. Promote the parent comment.
But it's not. So why the fuck was the way off topic parent promoted?
(No offense to parent. You make a good point, just it doesn't need to be promoted here.) (Also, posting sans Karma bonus since my comment doesn't need to be promoted either.)
Of all the places I've been, Little Rock is actually one of the best places to drive. It's generally pretty good. My only complaint is the people who slow down to 15 MPH below the speed limit a good half mile before their exit ramp. That's what the exit ramp is for, guys!
By far the worst place I've ever lived was Atlanta. I would have at least one close call a week when I lived there. I really think it was the worst place I've had to drive.
Actually, properly adjusting your side mirrors can eliminate 90% of a car's blind spot. Every time I get in my mom's car, I have to wonder why half of the side mirrors are filled with the side of the car. I don't need to look down the side of the car. If there's something that close to me, I sure as hell hope I know it. I need to see what's actually in the lane beside me and behind me.
It's yet another artificial means of extending the gameplay of a game. Kind of like the "find this stuff" types of missions in a lot of modern games. Sure, I'd like to get 100% on a game, but am I going to bore myself to tears to do it? No.
But, that's modern multi-player FPS games for you...
And of course "Persuade" half the town, arm them and run the mob at the target.
And don't forget, packing them all into one car like it's some kind of clown car. The mob approach was really one of my favorite ways to complete a mission. I can remember being extremely anal retentive on a couple of missions and persuading the entire town since you got money for each citizen you persuaded.
But you're definitely right. The game did provide numerous ways to complete a mission, and on more than one occasion I would split my team up to accomplish multiple objectives at once.
The premise of your second paragraph, that the majority of the country is far away from cities, which means no good chance at public transit, is incorrect: As of 2000, a majority of Americans live in communities of at least 200,000 people, and approximately 70% live in communities larger than 50,000 people.
Ah, but you are assuming that, just because you live in a community of that size, you naturally have good public transit. in my experience, that's not necessarily the case.
To give but one anecdotal example, I'll point out the transportation problem I experienced when I lived in Atlanta area. I lived and worked in the north suburbs of Atlanta and would have loved to be able to take public transportation to and from work, but it simply wasn't viable. I would have had to drive to the train station in my own suburb. We'll call that about five minute. Then I would have to take a train south into the center of the city. I would guess that to be a 30 - 45 minute ride. I'd then have to change trains and take a new train back north into the suburb I worked in. We'll call that another 30 - 45 minutes. I'd then be at a train station a good 3 or 4 miles from the office complex where I worked. With the closest bus stop being 1.5 - 2 miles away from the office. In an area where most of the roads don't even have sidewalks and so aren't pedestrian friendly. All of this to cover a distance that's only 18 miles when I drive it direct.
Public transportation from home to work in New Orleans was just as inconvenient. Not to mention, I wasn't really comfortable with riding the buses in New Orleans.
This is the point that I'm trying to make: just because you live in a population center of 200,000 or more, that doesn't mean that public transportation is available or viable. America has grown up as a car culture, and as such the majority of population centers are very car centric where transportation is concerned.
The less dense the development, the worse the problem seems to be in my experience. Not everybody lives and works in the dense urban developments that public transportation seems to be mostly designed around.
All I'm saying is: if you want Americans to drive less and take public transportation more, give us the egg before you take away the chicken.
I already moderated, but screw that. I feel the need to point out that this bill doesn't take into account that the US on the whole lacks viable public transportation systems in all but the largest and densest metropolitan areas.
For that majority of Americans who don't live in New York, Chicago, DC, etc., public transportation is simply not an option. Taking into account that most of us are probably living at our means or just below it, any sort of significant increase in our transportation costs would most likely have a dire impact on the economy on the whole as people begin to reach the point that they can no longer afford to drive our cars. We're already seeing some of that now with the price of gas as high as it is.
Lastly, this is America dammit. The roadtrip is practically as American as Baseball and Apple Pie. We've grown up with a culture that glorifies the cross country road trip. I for one don't want to give that up.:-P
I'm actually curious as to where said cameras are placed. I only make it down to New Orleans once or twice a year now, but would like to make sure that I'm not fined for speeding when I am down there.
On a side note, you just reminded me of the time that I got photographed blowing through a toll booth while getting on to the Crescent City Connection on the west bank side. I had a toll tag, but as I was blowing through the booth, I noticed that the green light never came on. Maybe I was going too fast? Either way, I never got that ticket in the mail. Maybe because I still had the temp tags on my car. LOL.
Although I've got to say that I find her more attractive these days on The Cape than I ever did on Firefly. Maybe she's like a fine wine and gets better with age?
Funny story. At a previous employer, one of the UPS nodes (I can't seem to recall the technical term here) was so close to capacity that if you attempted to bring up all devices on that node, you'd end up popping the breaker on that node, and would have to reset the breaker in the UPS. Long story short, because of that we couldn't rely on all services to return after an outage, so somebody would have to stick around to bring up all devices in the proper order, lest we lose 1/3 of our servers due to a popped breaker.
After Hurricane Katrina, I along with several other co-workers from New Orleans had been moved out to our Atlanta office. One day, one of my fellow transfers (I always hated being called a victim) called me up all flustered. She had just gotten internet installed at her place, but her computer hadn't survived the move and they really needed it so that her husband could try to find a new job. I tell her to bring it by my apartment, and I'll take a look at it.
As soon as I open it up, I can see that the plastic retaining clip for the heat sink had broken off and the heat sink was rolling around in the bottom of the case. A quick call to Dell and I was told (surprise, surprise), that they didn't sell the retaining clip and the only fix was to purchase a new motherboard from them. Knowing that, like me, her financial situation had taken a hit due to the hurricane, I said "no thanks, hung up the phone, looked at the motherboard, and noticed that the heat sink was significantly larger than the processor and overlapped onto a plastic base on all 4 sides of the processor. It looked like I could "glue" the processor down, but I wasn't sure what kind of glue would withstand the temperatures required.
Then I remembered that I still had a tube of RTV sealant in my trunk from a water pump job we'd done on one of my friend's cars a month or so before. So, I carefully applied the sealant to the edges of the heat sink, seated it in place, and stuck a heavy weight on top and left it over night. The next morning, I powered up the computer and ran it through some operations meant to stress the processor to make sure that once it got hot, it wouldn't overheat. Everything worked like a charm and a year later when I left that job, she was still using the computer with the RTV'd heat sink.
I once had a similar problem, but in the reverse. One of our local area hospitals has lost all of their technical staff, so the IT department was reduced to one AS/400 operator who we gave access to the ticketing system and AD privileges to reset passwords. Then I would come in after lunch and work on as many tickets as possible.
I got a page while at lunch one day that they had an emergency -- the entire radiology department had no network access. So I come on in and proceed right to the networking closet, finding the radiology department head and some GE technician standing there looking at "my" equipment. They had apparently gotten building services to let them into the closet instead of putting in a ticket with IT. Apparently the GE guy was there to install the hospitals new digital imaging system, but had no network access, so he took it upon himself to get into the closet and "make it work". In the process he'd somehow decided to plug a patch cable in to two different ports on the same switch, causing a loopback situation on the switch and downing the entire department. I took one look at the rack, saw the problem immediately and had service restored in 5 seconds. I then spent 5 minutes scolding the department head in the privacy of his own office.
I actually once "bump started" a computer whose hard drive was on the verge of dying. I just smacked it really hard on the side of the case right after applying power and heard the hard drive spin right up.
It was the only case in my career where percussive maintenance actually worked. The machine was non-critical and I was surprised that it actually worked. I just told the user not to shut it down again, and we'd replace it sooner or later.
It's interesting that you mention that. I have a Dell machine here that I purchased in 2003, and when the PSU died in 2006 I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Dell now used standard plug wiring on their PSUs and motherboards. However, it wasn't just a drop and replace deal. The PSU came with an on/off switch on the back, and the Dell case was constructed with a solid back except for the vent and the cut-out for the plug. I had to perform a bit of surgery on my case and cut away some sheet metal in order to get the PSU to fit. I'd call their machines "mostly" standards compliant.
Actually, no. The PS3 fails because it was only the early model PS3's that had that ability. Furthermore, it wasn't really clear which models of PS3 had the compatibility or didn't have it. So, what ended up happening was that people like me who bought the PS3 later in it's life found out the hard way that it wouldn't play their old PS2 games. Thanks Sony for confusing your customers.
And I would postulate that people running OSX are even easier to fool into running a trojan. Good thing for them, OSX isn't a very large target for trojan writers.
Actually, the last time our corp went to war, we bought a stock of cheap frigs, ECM skill books, and the necessary fittings for an ECM frig in order to hand out to the many new players we had in our corp. You get enough frigs jamming the target ship, and it won't be able to target even the largest battleships in a fleet. 1 day of training ECM, and they were just as useful in a fleet engagement as anybody else.
Actually, these days the Make a Wish foundation will also handle requests from patients who have contracted conditions that are usually terminal but from which they may make a recovery.
I have a 2nd or 3rd cousin (I can never remember how it works past 1st cousin) who took a trip to Disney World but who was also predicted to make a recovery from her cancer.
So, best case scenario, this kid recovers and gets to live out the rest of his childhood with the coolest fort that any kid could ask for. I hope that's what happens, anyway.
Actually, we use Google mail for our mail services but with an on-site SMTP server for our multi-function scanners which don't support SSL. I do subscribe to Postini, and until we made the switch to Google Mail I did have a filter in place to drop anything from *@mydomain.com, but after switching to Google mail, the result was that any emails from the SMTP server on our LAN were dropped by Postini since they traverse outside of our Google mail domain. If our bloody multi-functions would support connecting via SSL to Google's mail servers I could reapply that rule, but as it is I'm stuck with what we've got.
Slashdot Mirror
I know that I shouldn't be surprised, and in fact I'm not. However, our AT&T rep has been telling us that AT&T would be rolling out LTE in my market "soon" for over a year. According to this map, we're not even on the "soon" list.
We switched to AT&T because they had the iPhone. Apple tech is a big part of our inudstry, and our President and CEO especially are big fans, and they decided that we couldn't do without. At this point though, 90% of our phones have gone out of contract in the past year and a half, and we've held off on upgrading with the assumption that the next iPhone will have LTE technology. Verizon already has excellent LTE service in our area, and I have always felt that they represented better customer service. I really wonder what AT&T can do to keep us from jumping ship. Probably nothing...
While I'm all for promoting gender and sexual orientation equality, a post on Slashdot attached to a thread about ISPs refusing to comply with an order is not the place for such promotion. If this were an article about how HUD is working to decrease discrimination against LGBTQ persons, then sure. Promote the parent comment.
But it's not. So why the fuck was the way off topic parent promoted?
(No offense to parent. You make a good point, just it doesn't need to be promoted here.)
(Also, posting sans Karma bonus since my comment doesn't need to be promoted either.)
Of all the places I've been, Little Rock is actually one of the best places to drive. It's generally pretty good. My only complaint is the people who slow down to 15 MPH below the speed limit a good half mile before their exit ramp. That's what the exit ramp is for, guys!
By far the worst place I've ever lived was Atlanta. I would have at least one close call a week when I lived there. I really think it was the worst place I've had to drive.
Actually, properly adjusting your side mirrors can eliminate 90% of a car's blind spot. Every time I get in my mom's car, I have to wonder why half of the side mirrors are filled with the side of the car. I don't need to look down the side of the car. If there's something that close to me, I sure as hell hope I know it. I need to see what's actually in the lane beside me and behind me.
It's yet another artificial means of extending the gameplay of a game. Kind of like the "find this stuff" types of missions in a lot of modern games. Sure, I'd like to get 100% on a game, but am I going to bore myself to tears to do it? No.
But, that's modern multi-player FPS games for you...
And of course "Persuade" half the town, arm them and run the mob at the target.
And don't forget, packing them all into one car like it's some kind of clown car. The mob approach was really one of my favorite ways to complete a mission. I can remember being extremely anal retentive on a couple of missions and persuading the entire town since you got money for each citizen you persuaded.
But you're definitely right. The game did provide numerous ways to complete a mission, and on more than one occasion I would split my team up to accomplish multiple objectives at once.
The premise of your second paragraph, that the majority of the country is far away from cities, which means no good chance at public transit, is incorrect: As of 2000, a majority of Americans live in communities of at least 200,000 people, and approximately 70% live in communities larger than 50,000 people.
Ah, but you are assuming that, just because you live in a community of that size, you naturally have good public transit. in my experience, that's not necessarily the case.
To give but one anecdotal example, I'll point out the transportation problem I experienced when I lived in Atlanta area. I lived and worked in the north suburbs of Atlanta and would have loved to be able to take public transportation to and from work, but it simply wasn't viable. I would have had to drive to the train station in my own suburb. We'll call that about five minute. Then I would have to take a train south into the center of the city. I would guess that to be a 30 - 45 minute ride. I'd then have to change trains and take a new train back north into the suburb I worked in. We'll call that another 30 - 45 minutes. I'd then be at a train station a good 3 or 4 miles from the office complex where I worked. With the closest bus stop being 1.5 - 2 miles away from the office. In an area where most of the roads don't even have sidewalks and so aren't pedestrian friendly. All of this to cover a distance that's only 18 miles when I drive it direct.
Public transportation from home to work in New Orleans was just as inconvenient. Not to mention, I wasn't really comfortable with riding the buses in New Orleans.
This is the point that I'm trying to make: just because you live in a population center of 200,000 or more, that doesn't mean that public transportation is available or viable. America has grown up as a car culture, and as such the majority of population centers are very car centric where transportation is concerned.
The less dense the development, the worse the problem seems to be in my experience. Not everybody lives and works in the dense urban developments that public transportation seems to be mostly designed around.
All I'm saying is: if you want Americans to drive less and take public transportation more, give us the egg before you take away the chicken.
I already moderated, but screw that. I feel the need to point out that this bill doesn't take into account that the US on the whole lacks viable public transportation systems in all but the largest and densest metropolitan areas.
For that majority of Americans who don't live in New York, Chicago, DC, etc., public transportation is simply not an option. Taking into account that most of us are probably living at our means or just below it, any sort of significant increase in our transportation costs would most likely have a dire impact on the economy on the whole as people begin to reach the point that they can no longer afford to drive our cars. We're already seeing some of that now with the price of gas as high as it is.
Lastly, this is America dammit. The roadtrip is practically as American as Baseball and Apple Pie. We've grown up with a culture that glorifies the cross country road trip. I for one don't want to give that up. :-P
I'm actually curious as to where said cameras are placed. I only make it down to New Orleans once or twice a year now, but would like to make sure that I'm not fined for speeding when I am down there.
On a side note, you just reminded me of the time that I got photographed blowing through a toll booth while getting on to the Crescent City Connection on the west bank side. I had a toll tag, but as I was blowing through the booth, I noticed that the green light never came on. Maybe I was going too fast? Either way, I never got that ticket in the mail. Maybe because I still had the temp tags on my car. LOL.
Although I've got to say that I find her more attractive these days on The Cape than I ever did on Firefly. Maybe she's like a fine wine and gets better with age?
Funny story. At a previous employer, one of the UPS nodes (I can't seem to recall the technical term here) was so close to capacity that if you attempted to bring up all devices on that node, you'd end up popping the breaker on that node, and would have to reset the breaker in the UPS. Long story short, because of that we couldn't rely on all services to return after an outage, so somebody would have to stick around to bring up all devices in the proper order, lest we lose 1/3 of our servers due to a popped breaker.
He can't drive 55!
After Hurricane Katrina, I along with several other co-workers from New Orleans had been moved out to our Atlanta office. One day, one of my fellow transfers (I always hated being called a victim) called me up all flustered. She had just gotten internet installed at her place, but her computer hadn't survived the move and they really needed it so that her husband could try to find a new job. I tell her to bring it by my apartment, and I'll take a look at it.
As soon as I open it up, I can see that the plastic retaining clip for the heat sink had broken off and the heat sink was rolling around in the bottom of the case. A quick call to Dell and I was told (surprise, surprise), that they didn't sell the retaining clip and the only fix was to purchase a new motherboard from them. Knowing that, like me, her financial situation had taken a hit due to the hurricane, I said "no thanks, hung up the phone, looked at the motherboard, and noticed that the heat sink was significantly larger than the processor and overlapped onto a plastic base on all 4 sides of the processor. It looked like I could "glue" the processor down, but I wasn't sure what kind of glue would withstand the temperatures required.
Then I remembered that I still had a tube of RTV sealant in my trunk from a water pump job we'd done on one of my friend's cars a month or so before. So, I carefully applied the sealant to the edges of the heat sink, seated it in place, and stuck a heavy weight on top and left it over night. The next morning, I powered up the computer and ran it through some operations meant to stress the processor to make sure that once it got hot, it wouldn't overheat. Everything worked like a charm and a year later when I left that job, she was still using the computer with the RTV'd heat sink.
I once had a similar problem, but in the reverse. One of our local area hospitals has lost all of their technical staff, so the IT department was reduced to one AS/400 operator who we gave access to the ticketing system and AD privileges to reset passwords. Then I would come in after lunch and work on as many tickets as possible.
I got a page while at lunch one day that they had an emergency -- the entire radiology department had no network access. So I come on in and proceed right to the networking closet, finding the radiology department head and some GE technician standing there looking at "my" equipment. They had apparently gotten building services to let them into the closet instead of putting in a ticket with IT. Apparently the GE guy was there to install the hospitals new digital imaging system, but had no network access, so he took it upon himself to get into the closet and "make it work". In the process he'd somehow decided to plug a patch cable in to two different ports on the same switch, causing a loopback situation on the switch and downing the entire department. I took one look at the rack, saw the problem immediately and had service restored in 5 seconds. I then spent 5 minutes scolding the department head in the privacy of his own office.
I actually once "bump started" a computer whose hard drive was on the verge of dying. I just smacked it really hard on the side of the case right after applying power and heard the hard drive spin right up.
It was the only case in my career where percussive maintenance actually worked. The machine was non-critical and I was surprised that it actually worked. I just told the user not to shut it down again, and we'd replace it sooner or later.
Hey, just think. It could be worse: you could be an IT manager for an ad agency. Try blocking ads at one of [i]those[/i] places!
I suspect that the iPad was named after the iPod to achieve some sort of marketing synnergy. Not the NewsPad.
It's interesting that you mention that. I have a Dell machine here that I purchased in 2003, and when the PSU died in 2006 I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Dell now used standard plug wiring on their PSUs and motherboards. However, it wasn't just a drop and replace deal. The PSU came with an on/off switch on the back, and the Dell case was constructed with a solid back except for the vent and the cut-out for the plug. I had to perform a bit of surgery on my case and cut away some sheet metal in order to get the PSU to fit. I'd call their machines "mostly" standards compliant.
Actually, no. The PS3 fails because it was only the early model PS3's that had that ability. Furthermore, it wasn't really clear which models of PS3 had the compatibility or didn't have it. So, what ended up happening was that people like me who bought the PS3 later in it's life found out the hard way that it wouldn't play their old PS2 games. Thanks Sony for confusing your customers.
And I would postulate that people running OSX are even easier to fool into running a trojan. Good thing for them, OSX isn't a very large target for trojan writers.
Actually, the last time our corp went to war, we bought a stock of cheap frigs, ECM skill books, and the necessary fittings for an ECM frig in order to hand out to the many new players we had in our corp. You get enough frigs jamming the target ship, and it won't be able to target even the largest battleships in a fleet. 1 day of training ECM, and they were just as useful in a fleet engagement as anybody else.
I think you've just pointed out one of the major reasons I enjoy EVE. It's one of the few MMO's where a 1 week old player can be effective.
Actually, these days the Make a Wish foundation will also handle requests from patients who have contracted conditions that are usually terminal but from which they may make a recovery.
I have a 2nd or 3rd cousin (I can never remember how it works past 1st cousin) who took a trip to Disney World but who was also predicted to make a recovery from her cancer.
So, best case scenario, this kid recovers and gets to live out the rest of his childhood with the coolest fort that any kid could ask for. I hope that's what happens, anyway.
We see how well that system works for slashdot...
Actually, we use Google mail for our mail services but with an on-site SMTP server for our multi-function scanners which don't support SSL. I do subscribe to Postini, and until we made the switch to Google Mail I did have a filter in place to drop anything from *@mydomain.com, but after switching to Google mail, the result was that any emails from the SMTP server on our LAN were dropped by Postini since they traverse outside of our Google mail domain. If our bloody multi-functions would support connecting via SSL to Google's mail servers I could reapply that rule, but as it is I'm stuck with what we've got.