They were improved in practice in Chimera with quick key shortcuts to navigate from tab to tab and Safar has inherited these. Try Command-Shift-Left, Command-Shift-Right, they will cycle right and left through your open tabs.
Umm, AFAIK this feature was in Mozilla before Chimera existed. Try Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn.
Wah wah wah, Apple apologist, someone might not buy my favorite brand,
Lindows is to be attacked for putting facts in a table.
Pathetic that you trot out the old "MHz myth" whine. I was actually
intrigued earlier in the discussion when someone pointed out that the
price shown was that for a low-end PowerBook. That was something
legitimate issue can be taken with (and Lindows is responding). Your
cringing and moaning is old hat.
Everyone knows by now that PPC performs differently than x86. What's
the big deal? When I'm comparing 2 products based on different
technologies I take that into account. Are Mac zealots too lazy to
just multiply in a fudge factor when comparing specs?
Lindows cannot be flamed for listing the specs of their product, then
listing the corresponding specs of competing products. If you'll
notice, they even list that the Apple laptop has a CD-R and theirs
doesn't. And a bigger hard drive. And a modem in the base model.
What, do you expect them to go on a Apple marketing spree in the
middle of their site? "Please note that PPC is really cool and you
should go buy an Apple laptop because Apple is really fast, somehow,
even though they are based off of Mach microkernel (deprecated by CMU
due to efficiency concerns), don't release SPEC results to back up
their claims, and are based off of sludgy dying Motorola PPC instead
of delicious fast IBM PPC."
And comparing a laptop to a PDA???
This is pathetic. Lindows lists the reasons for such a comparison
right on the page:
Are You Considering a PDA? The Lindows Mobile PC beats a
PDA or Pocket PC hands-down. Now (for only a few dollars more), you
can have extreme mobility with the power and versatility of a PC in
one affordable computer!
Mobility, power, and versatility. When I worked for a
software/hosting company, I had a small Sony Vaio laptop. Very light,
very easy to carry. I loved it, and I used my Visor quite a bit less
because the Vaio was so convenient to have around. When I got laid
off and I had to give the Vaio back, I started using the Visor more
because my Dell Latitude is more of a pain to haul out.
I worked retail for a while. There were quite a few people who said
"I'd like to get a laptop but they're heavy and expensive." and "Will
this PalmOS/PocketPC unit run desktop software?". I steered a number
of people to tiny units like the Sony PictureBook because of these
concerns. Also don't forget that HP had that long Jornada with the
flip screen and the keyboard. These are competitors that they need to
address.
I love my Visor, but there are things (coding, writing long documents,
etc) that a laptop is more handy for. Many people would jump at the
opportunity to merge both into a single unit. Lindows doesn't beat
you over the head. "BUY OUR L33T LAPTOP tO SURF TEH INTARWEB, WE ARE
COOL3R THAN MAC AND MICRO$OFT. IF YOU GET A PALM YOU MUST GO DOWN THE
STAIRS!!!!!!!!!@" No, it's "Are you considering...?" and they leave
it at that. Get over yourself.
If you'd rather have a PDA, go for it. Just keep renaming your
contact list to be a fake MP3 track and storing it on your iPod, Apple
Boy. Keep holding your breath for the hack that will let you enter
text on the jog wheel. I remember entering text that way. In the
1980s. On a Nintendo console. 20 years later I expect to be able to
handwrite or type my text.
And for the record, I'm sitting on an iMac to type this right now,
that I paid good money for. I don't despise Apple hardware (although
the CD-ROM drive decided to crap out and take my ability to read many
CDs and any CD-Rs with it). It's somewhat more efficient for the
tasks I tend to do, and I leave it at that. But posts like yours are
the reason I'm running a Linux-based OS on it and have no interest in
going to OS X.
I had a problem getting xpdf to work the other day; I emailed the
author and he helped me get it working. With Apple it would be "Oh
that firmware update we released disabled your system because you
didn't buy your RAM from Apple", or "Sorry, that über cool Web browser
that uses KHTML ohhhh hohhhhhhhhhh so sexy technology we released did
rm -rf on your home directory", or a deluge of insults from the fanboy
peanut gallery saying that my workflow isn't properly merged into the
Apple Document Model Reality Field Editing Mode. And the Apple world
nickel-and-dimes you on shareware stuff. People release attractive
software into the rest of the Unix world for free; I participate in
this ecosystem myself. Meanwhile Apple users are like "pay $5 for
this utility to make menus come up with
control-alt-meta-double-bucky-on-the-one-mouse-but ton when you click
here".
One benefit from this exercise is that I've been disabused
of the idea that things would be systematically better were I to ditch
Linux and switch to MacOSX. Macs seem to be approximately as finicky
and fragile as real Unix systems, except that they like to fail
silently instead of giving you obscure error messages. I've already
developed a deep and abiding hate for that hidious little spinning
rainbow disc that means "something has probably gone horribly wrong,
but I'm going to protect you from knowing what."
I think I'll stick to systems that don't continue to charge premium
prices while cheapening out at the same time (IDE instead of SCSI,
etc), and operating systems that may waste my time, but at least don't
charge for the privilege, thanks.
And yes, Lindows is vile for that trade show thing. I don't think
there are many people who actually believe Michael Robertson is in it
for altruism or because he feels community spirit.
The other day I was copying a large file (Mozilla 1.3b source, repacked as.bz2 to save space) from a remote machine. The machine I was copying it to locally crashed (likely due to bad power; LINE-R is mandated), so I just symlinked it into my remote ~/public_html/ directory and used wget to finish the job.
I still cringe every time I have to do wget -c; I have bad memories from extremely poor Win32 download restarters. Invariably the download would be corrupted. I have never had a problem with wget.
And I've noticed personally that FTP connections tend to be more stable and faster once they get going (although it does take longer to establish the connection). I don't know if this is because of something in the protocol, or just because it seems more FTP sites than HTTP sites implement a strict max-users limit, but I tend to prefer FTP for downloads when available.
Usually I just use Mozilla to find the link on the page that says "current version here" or whatever and then wget that.
I don't think it's that my wife can't learn how to do this. She doesn't want to.
She doesn't deserve pretty pictures.
If she gets delivered an unexpected heavy package with wires sticking out, a ticking sound, and a strange chemical smell, does she just automatically open that too?
Additionally, we occasionally get emails w/attachments from friends who want to show us pictures of their kids. So blocking all attachments won't work. What should be done?
Use some common sense. I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that if a friend/relative of mine sends me an email saying "Hey, how are you doing, here are some pics from our vacation", etc, that the attachment is okay to open. Conversely, if the email is from some random person and says "I think you are hot and I like to screw horses... Want to see a pic?" then that attachment is likely not going to make my day.
I understand the problem of receiving obscene propositions textually, but any time I hear a complaint about "I got sent nasty pictures on teh Interweb!" I lose all sympathy. I really don't see the difficulty in giving the text of the message a quick scan before opening whatever's attached.
What if a developer creates a skin filter. This filter will alter the skin tone of selected characters. Suddenly black actors are white and vice-versa.
You mean like that version of Othello with Patrick Stewart?
Good for a laugh maybe but still wrong.
Yes, clearly Shakespeare is spinning in his grave.
I mentioned the FCRA, and the likelihood of small claims, in my original letter. Maybe they use that as a key to know what to toss in the trash. "Oh, that letter? Didn't read it... Must have gotten, um, lost."
And small claims is out if I agreed to arbitration. And I don't have the original paperwork I signed (Funny thing: a CC contract I saw the other day said "alteration to the terms of this contract have no effect". So what if I strike out that clause, then make my changes?) and I don't want to imagine the pain getting a copy of that. Regardless, won't I have to go to their jurisdiction? I really don't want to fly to Boca Raton, especially if their arbitrator is bought and paid for and I'm out the travel expense as well as the bill. Or what if the judge just says "I don't believe you. You lose.".
It really is just my word against theirs. I have a letter which I claim is identical to one I sent. I say that I said certain things on the phone to them. They say "you owe us money".
The X-men certainly are "likenesses" of human beings, in the same way that Superman, Ultraman, Spiderman, and Ryoko are all "likenesses" of human beings.
I would like to be able to do something. Voicestream and Cross Country Bank ignored my change of address and sent all my bills to the old address. (I had just cancelled both accounts, so I didn't think it unusual that I wasn't getting bills.)
Voicestream had told me that they were crediting me for the month I was out of the service area and that my account was free and clear when my fianceé was listening to the speakerphone with me. Now they claim I owe them for 1 month of service. They also told me they were suspending my account for 3 months instead of cancelling it, as a courtesy. Now they want me to pay $10/month for that. In this call they also assured me that I would never have to deat with them again unless I wanted to reactivate or transfer my service. Since I didn't act on the bill (which I didn't get) they sent it to collections. Now they are all "talk to the collection agency" and the collection agency is all like "we just have this bill, see, and you have to pay it".
Cross Country Bank was supposed to cancel my card. They didn't. I had forgotten to move my EMusic subscription to another card, so they autobilled this one (I think a day after my last payment went in, which was supposed to nuke the account completely, never mind that transactions were supposed to be denied on the account even before that). Then (once again, because I didn't get the bills) they started tacking on late fees. I paid the transaction plus $5 to cover any interest, and sent them a dispute letter regarding the late fees, which they ignored, and they are actively reporting me as delinquent. I called them and they just told me "you should send a dispute letter to {address I sent it to}". I have a dated copy of the letter, which I showed several people before sending, although sadly I did not get delivery confirmation (it was to a PO Box, also).
I really would like to have some recourse, since I'm currently refusing to pay the ~$200 I "owe" and my credit rating is now trashed for quite some time.
There's a lot of advantages to a properly legitimate service. If I could download music for ten cents a track, from servers that were always up, never served truncated files or lied about their contents, provided a database of content searchable on a variety of fields (track name, album name, producer, &c.), without DRM or any other restrictions on redistribution, and with a decent cut going to the artist, here's what would happen:
What, you mean like EMusic? $10/month, basically unlimited downloads, lots of lesser-known artists and genres, blazingly fast servers, and high quality rips (MP3s are only 128kb/s though). The first month's free...
First, having a 'master code' would be dumb. The master code would get out quickly and then you would have people shutting down equipment remotely. Even having a password based on the serial number of a specific peice of equipment would create a logistical nightmare.
Well, I'm 99% sure your parent isn't talking about a "master code". As far as the "logistical nightmare", Honda did it with the stereo in my car ('95 Civic EX Coupe). There's a code burned into the stereo's ROM. If the power is disconnected, as I did today, you have to re-enter the code. Since I bought it used, I had to Google to find out they usually stick a white card with the code in the glovebox. If I didn't have it, though, I would just have to call Honda and have them look it up.
Now, if the code is generated from the serial number (which it might be, because there is a Web site that tries to charge $24.95 to get it for you; I don't know if they generate the code or call Honda for you), that would be bad in terms of preventing stereo theft. I'm hoping it's randomly generated and just stored in a big database somewhere. For routers it might not be so bad, though, because without the password how are you going to get the serial number anyway? (Social engineering? Anyone who will read the router's serial number to a random caller will probably give them any passwords they have anyway...)
That strikes me as either plain dumb or pointlessly philanthropic. Unless it would have required onerous licensing, why not take a little pay for your work? I know I would, but then again I'm not exactly rolling in cash at the moment...
Supporting it for her is easier as well--"Hi mom, turned SSH on for me? Great--remember that green piece of paper with instructions on how to give me your IP?"
As far as turning SSH on/off, I get the feeling that you want to provide your mother a rock-solid impenetrable stand-alone workstation, which is admirable, but wouldn't it be easier to make sure that SSH/OpenSSL are up-to-date and leave them running? (If you're paranoid, set up iptables to only allow your IP to ssh in, or to look for some bizarre TCP flag, or something.) Less hassle for her, you can do regular maintainence when she's not home, and in that singular random case that her X server crashes and she has important stuff she hasn't saved yet, you can be the heroine of the day.
Tell that to the pilots of United who have just seen their entire retirement go up in smoke with the bankruptcy of that company.
And whose fault is it that those pilots didn't take a few minutes every once in a while to wonder if their employer's finances were healthy and if they were going to be around for a while? Whose fault is it that they put all their savings and investment eggs in one basket?
I used to have a nice programming job. I spent most of my money on rent and the rest on toys, food, and airplane tickets. When the tech industry stumbled, the investors got spooked and didn't go for a 3rd round, and most of us got laid off. I was forced into working for painful corporate chain retail under dehumanizing conditions. But I took the responsibility for that. Yes, external circumstances were the catalyst, but had I gotten a cheaper apartment and saved more, I would probably have had an extra year or so (living with my parents, which is what I did while working retail) to try to find a job I liked.
I managed to get a job as a night auditor for a hotel. I like the work and the people I work with, but I make less than half of what I did programming. I'm very close to the edge financially, and I'm still paying off some credit card debt. I'm staying with others rather than getting my own house or apartment in order to save money. I will say, though, that I'm twice as happy with half the money than I was in the programming job.
Your failure to plan for your future is not my responsibility. Go get another job and work like the rest of us, and don't come complaining to me, of all people, about the bad economy. Yes, it sucks. But I, for one, have learned my lesson from this arguably minor recession, and I'm doing my best to ensure that I'm financially stable and have a little bit of a cushion should things get bad for me again.
As far as the environment goes, it's not that difficult to be somewhat conscious of the consequences of your actions, even without a lot of available cash. Where I live now (northwest Colorado), there is no viable regional mass transit, so I drive a car. But it's a Civic, which runs very reliably, is fairly fuel efficient, and handles extremely well. I'm pretty sure my payments are quite a bit less than those of the SUVs and giant trucks that are popular around here, and it costs me less to fill up my tank from empty with the highest-octane gas I can find than it does for them to top off their tanks with crappy gas, and I get farther.
I'm hoping to tie this rambling into a coherent conclusion. I've
had people tell me that it doesn't matter what data collection is
being undertaken by the government; if you have nothing to hide you
have nothing to fear. If my slowing down for a stopped vehicle is
suspicious enough to warrant following, what happens when they have a
list of the books I read, the sites I visit on the Internet, and the
people I send mail to (even if I use PGP, you think there aren't honeypot remailers out
there?)?
Howard Rheingold pointed out
on the radio the other night that once all this data is collected
(note that They doesn't have
to gather the information, just collect
it from private
companies), the potential for data mining is enormous. What
happens when whatever AI
and heuristics they have scanning our lives flags a particular
coincidence, and the person writing the report is lazy or is
ideologically prejudiced? Remember, once it's typed up in a report
with a nice abstract by someone told by the computer that you're
"suspicious", things look a lot more airtight than they are.
Sadly, I am incorrect. I just tried it, and middle-clicking into a tab loads the URL into the current tab, not the one clicked on. I wish they'd fix this.
Middle-clicking should not close a tabbed window. It used to, and I considered it a bug. Thankfully, it now loads a URL into a tab when you middle-click on it, just as middle-clicking in the document window loads whatever URL is the current selection.
Slashdot Mirror
Pathetic that you trot out the old "MHz myth" whine. I was actually intrigued earlier in the discussion when someone pointed out that the price shown was that for a low-end PowerBook. That was something legitimate issue can be taken with (and Lindows is responding). Your cringing and moaning is old hat.
Everyone knows by now that PPC performs differently than x86. What's the big deal? When I'm comparing 2 products based on different technologies I take that into account. Are Mac zealots too lazy to just multiply in a fudge factor when comparing specs?
Lindows cannot be flamed for listing the specs of their product, then listing the corresponding specs of competing products. If you'll notice, they even list that the Apple laptop has a CD-R and theirs doesn't. And a bigger hard drive. And a modem in the base model. What, do you expect them to go on a Apple marketing spree in the middle of their site? "Please note that PPC is really cool and you should go buy an Apple laptop because Apple is really fast, somehow, even though they are based off of Mach microkernel (deprecated by CMU due to efficiency concerns), don't release SPEC results to back up their claims, and are based off of sludgy dying Motorola PPC instead of delicious fast IBM PPC."
This is pathetic. Lindows lists the reasons for such a comparison right on the page:
Mobility, power, and versatility. When I worked for a software/hosting company, I had a small Sony Vaio laptop. Very light, very easy to carry. I loved it, and I used my Visor quite a bit less because the Vaio was so convenient to have around. When I got laid off and I had to give the Vaio back, I started using the Visor more because my Dell Latitude is more of a pain to haul out.
I worked retail for a while. There were quite a few people who said "I'd like to get a laptop but they're heavy and expensive." and "Will this PalmOS/PocketPC unit run desktop software?". I steered a number of people to tiny units like the Sony PictureBook because of these concerns. Also don't forget that HP had that long Jornada with the flip screen and the keyboard. These are competitors that they need to address.
I love my Visor, but there are things (coding, writing long documents, etc) that a laptop is more handy for. Many people would jump at the opportunity to merge both into a single unit. Lindows doesn't beat you over the head. "BUY OUR L33T LAPTOP tO SURF TEH INTARWEB, WE ARE COOL3R THAN MAC AND MICRO$OFT. IF YOU GET A PALM YOU MUST GO DOWN THE STAIRS!!!!!!!!!@" No, it's "Are you considering...?" and they leave it at that. Get over yourself.
If you'd rather have a PDA, go for it. Just keep renaming your contact list to be a fake MP3 track and storing it on your iPod, Apple Boy. Keep holding your breath for the hack that will let you enter text on the jog wheel. I remember entering text that way. In the 1980s. On a Nintendo console. 20 years later I expect to be able to handwrite or type my text.
And for the record, I'm sitting on an iMac to type this right now, that I paid good money for. I don't despise Apple hardware (although the CD-ROM drive decided to crap out and take my ability to read many CDs and any CD-Rs with it). It's somewhat more efficient for the tasks I tend to do, and I leave it at that. But posts like yours are the reason I'm running a Linux-based OS on it and have no interest in going to OS X.
I had a problem getting xpdf to work the other day; I emailed the author and he helped me get it working. With Apple it would be "Oh that firmware update we released disabled your system because you didn't buy your RAM from Apple", or "Sorry, that über cool Web browser that uses KHTML ohhhh hohhhhhhhhhh so sexy technology we released did rm -rf on your home directory", or a deluge of insults from the fanboy peanut gallery saying that my workflow isn't properly merged into the Apple Document Model Reality Field Editing Mode. And the Apple world nickel-and-dimes you on shareware stuff. People release attractive software into the rest of the Unix world for free; I participate in this ecosystem myself. Meanwhile Apple users are like "pay $5 for this utility to make menus come up with control-alt-meta-double-bucky-on-the-one-mouse-but ton when you click
here".
Here's a quote:
I think I'll stick to systems that don't continue to charge premium prices while cheapening out at the same time (IDE instead of SCSI, etc), and operating systems that may waste my time, but at least don't charge for the privilege, thanks.
And yes, Lindows is vile for that trade show thing. I don't think there are many people who actually believe Michael Robertson is in it for altruism or because he feels community spirit.
The other day I was copying a large file (Mozilla 1.3b source, repacked as .bz2 to save space) from a remote machine. The machine I was copying it to locally crashed (likely due to bad power; LINE-R is mandated), so I just symlinked it into my remote ~/public_html/ directory and used wget to finish the job.
I still cringe every time I have to do wget -c; I have bad memories from extremely poor Win32 download restarters. Invariably the download would be corrupted. I have never had a problem with wget.
And I've noticed personally that FTP connections tend to be more stable and faster once they get going (although it does take longer to establish the connection). I don't know if this is because of something in the protocol, or just because it seems more FTP sites than HTTP sites implement a strict max-users limit, but I tend to prefer FTP for downloads when available.
Usually I just use Mozilla to find the link on the page that says "current version here" or whatever and then wget that.
If she gets delivered an unexpected heavy package with wires sticking out, a ticking sound, and a strange chemical smell, does she just automatically open that too?
I understand the problem of receiving obscene propositions textually, but any time I hear a complaint about "I got sent nasty pictures on teh Interweb!" I lose all sympathy. I really don't see the difficulty in giving the text of the message a quick scan before opening whatever's attached.
You mean like that version of Othello with Patrick Stewart?
Yes, clearly Shakespeare is spinning in his grave.
And small claims is out if I agreed to arbitration. And I don't have the original paperwork I signed (Funny thing: a CC contract I saw the other day said "alteration to the terms of this contract have no effect". So what if I strike out that clause, then make my changes?) and I don't want to imagine the pain getting a copy of that. Regardless, won't I have to go to their jurisdiction? I really don't want to fly to Boca Raton, especially if their arbitrator is bought and paid for and I'm out the travel expense as well as the bill. Or what if the judge just says "I don't believe you. You lose.".
It really is just my word against theirs. I have a letter which I claim is identical to one I sent. I say that I said certain things on the phone to them. They say "you owe us money".
But she was old. Lots of people turn really really stupid when they get old. Many of them seem to do it on purpose.
Superman's not. He's from Krypton.
- The comics and movies are sold only because it makes them money.
- Fiction. FIC. TION.
kthx.Voicestream had told me that they were crediting me for the month I was out of the service area and that my account was free and clear when my fianceé was listening to the speakerphone with me. Now they claim I owe them for 1 month of service. They also told me they were suspending my account for 3 months instead of cancelling it, as a courtesy. Now they want me to pay $10/month for that. In this call they also assured me that I would never have to deat with them again unless I wanted to reactivate or transfer my service. Since I didn't act on the bill (which I didn't get) they sent it to collections. Now they are all "talk to the collection agency" and the collection agency is all like "we just have this bill, see, and you have to pay it".
Cross Country Bank was supposed to cancel my card. They didn't. I had forgotten to move my EMusic subscription to another card, so they autobilled this one (I think a day after my last payment went in, which was supposed to nuke the account completely, never mind that transactions were supposed to be denied on the account even before that). Then (once again, because I didn't get the bills) they started tacking on late fees. I paid the transaction plus $5 to cover any interest, and sent them a dispute letter regarding the late fees, which they ignored, and they are actively reporting me as delinquent. I called them and they just told me "you should send a dispute letter to {address I sent it to}". I have a dated copy of the letter, which I showed several people before sending, although sadly I did not get delivery confirmation (it was to a PO Box, also).
I really would like to have some recourse, since I'm currently refusing to pay the ~$200 I "owe" and my credit rating is now trashed for quite some time.
Reformat? Why not just restore from backup? I can't imagine not dumping the entire filesystem when performing admin tasks at the enterprise level.
Well, I'm 99% sure your parent isn't talking about a "master code". As far as the "logistical nightmare", Honda did it with the stereo in my car ('95 Civic EX Coupe). There's a code burned into the stereo's ROM. If the power is disconnected, as I did today, you have to re-enter the code. Since I bought it used, I had to Google to find out they usually stick a white card with the code in the glovebox. If I didn't have it, though, I would just have to call Honda and have them look it up.
Now, if the code is generated from the serial number (which it might be, because there is a Web site that tries to charge $24.95 to get it for you; I don't know if they generate the code or call Honda for you), that would be bad in terms of preventing stereo theft. I'm hoping it's randomly generated and just stored in a big database somewhere. For routers it might not be so bad, though, because without the password how are you going to get the serial number anyway? (Social engineering? Anyone who will read the router's serial number to a random caller will probably give them any passwords they have anyway...)
That strikes me as either plain dumb or pointlessly philanthropic. Unless it would have required onerous licensing, why not take a little pay for your work? I know I would, but then again I'm not exactly rolling in cash at the moment...
Why not just get her a hostname?
As far as turning SSH on/off, I get the feeling that you want to provide your mother a rock-solid impenetrable stand-alone workstation, which is admirable, but wouldn't it be easier to make sure that SSH/OpenSSL are up-to-date and leave them running? (If you're paranoid, set up iptables to only allow your IP to ssh in, or to look for some bizarre TCP flag, or something.) Less hassle for her, you can do regular maintainence when she's not home, and in that singular random case that her X server crashes and she has important stuff she hasn't saved yet, you can be the heroine of the day.
Kibbutzim.
Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee hee *giggle* HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!
Ahem. Sorry.
And whose fault is it that those pilots didn't take a few minutes every once in a while to wonder if their employer's finances were healthy and if they were going to be around for a while? Whose fault is it that they put all their savings and investment eggs in one basket?
I used to have a nice programming job. I spent most of my money on rent and the rest on toys, food, and airplane tickets. When the tech industry stumbled, the investors got spooked and didn't go for a 3rd round, and most of us got laid off. I was forced into working for painful corporate chain retail under dehumanizing conditions. But I took the responsibility for that. Yes, external circumstances were the catalyst, but had I gotten a cheaper apartment and saved more, I would probably have had an extra year or so (living with my parents, which is what I did while working retail) to try to find a job I liked.
I managed to get a job as a night auditor for a hotel. I like the work and the people I work with, but I make less than half of what I did programming. I'm very close to the edge financially, and I'm still paying off some credit card debt. I'm staying with others rather than getting my own house or apartment in order to save money. I will say, though, that I'm twice as happy with half the money than I was in the programming job.
Your failure to plan for your future is not my responsibility. Go get another job and work like the rest of us, and don't come complaining to me, of all people, about the bad economy. Yes, it sucks. But I, for one, have learned my lesson from this arguably minor recession, and I'm doing my best to ensure that I'm financially stable and have a little bit of a cushion should things get bad for me again.
As far as the environment goes, it's not that difficult to be somewhat conscious of the consequences of your actions, even without a lot of available cash. Where I live now (northwest Colorado), there is no viable regional mass transit, so I drive a car. But it's a Civic, which runs very reliably, is fairly fuel efficient, and handles extremely well. I'm pretty sure my payments are quite a bit less than those of the SUVs and giant trucks that are popular around here, and it costs me less to fill up my tank from empty with the highest-octane gas I can find than it does for them to top off their tanks with crappy gas, and I get farther.
"Shipped", past tense? Doesn't the Windows Scripting Host support VBScript?
I've written about this in varying detail on my Web site. Here's an excerpt from one of the more pertinent entries:
Sadly, I am incorrect. I just tried it, and middle-clicking into a tab loads the URL into the current tab, not the one clicked on. I wish they'd fix this.
I said this elsewhere. I also pasted a tangentially related rant about Smart Tags.
Middle-clicking should not close a tabbed window. It used to, and I considered it a bug. Thankfully, it now loads a URL into a tab when you middle-click on it, just as middle-clicking in the document window loads whatever URL is the current selection.