Michael Dell is usually right about that kind of thing. That's not because I'm any kind of fangirl, or because I used to work for him, just that he's historically been pretty good at predicting market trends. You said it yourself... it's a good replacement to a *second* computer, but you still need a real computer to type documents and actually create content for. Especially at a school.
What I'd like is a modern version of the "tablet" computers that Lenovo was selling 8 years ago. The kind where you could flip the screen around and use the thing as a tablet, or you could open it up and have a working laptop? Couple that with an ultraportable 13" laptop that tips the scales around 3lbs, and they could make a ton of money on it. Wouldn't even be that hard, they'd just have to rearrange the hinge design on the laptop I have right now (a Dell Vostro V130), and replace the LCD with a touchscreen. I'd even be willing to accept one that requires a stylus instead of finger input. It would be hugely useful. I would be willing to accept the extra bulk inherent in that kind of design in exchange for the increased usability, and I'd still have something that's more portable than the heavier 15" or 16" laptops most people buy.
Yes, but why not? For any given movie, at a given cinema, at a given time, there's an optimal price that maximizes profit: charge a little more, and you discourage enough people that you end up with less profit; charge a little less, and while you may get more customers, you still end up with less profit.
Because the bulk of your ticket price is actually the movie theatre. They make their biggest profit on concessions (do you *seriously* think there's $5 worth of syrup in your super-ultra-mega-size coke (that's 3x the size of the average human stomach)? More like $0.05 and another $0.05 worth of soda water. Throw in $0.01 for the cup, lid, and straw, and the rest is profit), but they still have to ensure that they make a profit on the ticket price alone, because of the number of people who either don't buy concessions, or who sneak their own snacks into the theatre.
The projection rights for the movie are actually a very small part of the ticket price, which is why a small indie film will usually have the same ticket price as a big budget blockbuster. That, and as you say, policing which theatres people go in at multiplexes.
You said your neck had been broken, not that your spine was fused. There is a *very* big difference between the two states, and any misunderstanding on that part is entirely your fault for not sharing extra information. The *normal* result of a badly broken neck (not counting death) is not a fused spine, it's damaged muscles and nerves in the neck, which limit muscle control. Immobilized and treated properly, the vertebra in the neck can actually heal quite well, with near full range of motion eventually being recovered. Perhaps you should have been clearer, as your problem is not that your neck had been broken, but that it didn't heal properly.
Actually, I still don't think you should be driving. That has nothing to do with your physical state, however, it's your mental state. You make too many assumptions about the information other people have, and that's dangerous behind the wheel of a car. You should always work under the assumption that everybody else on the road has no clue what's going on, and doesn't have any extra information that you didn't give them.
Either you have the muscle strength needed to hold your head up and look around, or you don't. If you have that strength, you shouldn't need to be sitting in order to look around. More than that, if you need to prop your head up against the head restraint, then you're completely oblivious to the point of having a head restraint on the driver's seat. That is there to keep your head from jerking back and breaking your neck in a car accident, not to keep your head up so you can look around and drive safely. If you're leaning your head against the restraint in order to be able to drive, then you're not safe. I have nothing against handicapped people driving. I know several who do drive, with varying physical handicaps from people missing a leg or an arm all the way up to full paraplegics, and have nothing against these people driving, as long as they can do it safely, but the one thing that they all have in common is that they're able to hold their head up, unaided.
So again, either you have the strength to hold your own head up, in which case I'm at a loss as to why you can't see more than 4 feet ahead of you when on foot, or you shouldn't be driving. That has nothing to do with ignorance. It may seem a little callous to you, because I'd stoop to try to deny you your "right" to drive, but I'm concerned about everybody else on the road. Actually, I'd cite ignorance on your part, if you seriously believe that you can drive safely and get the situational awareness needed to drive safely when you don't have the strength to hold your own head up.
Now, if someone if found to be parked where he doesn't belong, this is what happens. The car is towed right away as a rush job (double the cost which the offender has to pay), a 24 hour lockout period at the impound lot (the car has to sit there minimum 24 hours before it can be released), a storage fee calculated on the number of 24 hours days, which means that violators have to pay for at least two days. Add to this a hefty fine, and last but not least a penalty mark, which means that for a period (6-12 months perhaps?) this car is only allowed to park in the penalty spaces or the regular spaces nearest the penalty spaces if they're all full.
Having had to fight a parking ticket for parking in the handicapped spot when I had a permit, because the cop was blind, or didn't feel like wiping the snow off the windshield to get a view of the permit which was on display on the dash (in a jurisdiction where they don't issue special license plates, only permits that you display in your windshield)... how about not? Fix the system so that stupid cops can't "accidentally" fill their quota by issuing incorrect citations, and maybe I'd support your draconian measures. But as long as there's room for that kind of human error, absolutely not. I refuse to be penalized for the stupidity of others.
On the flip side, there's a restaurant that I go to that has one male and one female bathroom. I've never been in the female one, but the male one is so small that, as an able-bodied person, _I_ can barely get in there. To get my dad in, I need to park his wheelchair out in front of the short, narrow hallway that leads to them, shimmy him down the hall, turn the knob on the door (ball handle, not a bar), and somehow manage to pull him in, turn him around, pull down his pants and sit him on the toilet. If I had to guess, I'd say the bathroom is about 4 feet by 4 feet (you can reach the opposite wall and the door to the left from the toilet).
The laws may be different in your neck of the woods, but in your situation I'd be asking a few pointed questions to the accessibility ombudsman, human rights commission, or whatever the equivalent is... I'd stop short of launching a lawsuit, but I know that around here there's laws in place that would require them to at least install rails and widen the door so his wheelchair could get in. Most building codes specify minimum width of doorways, too, and they may be in violation there, too.
What I cannot do, though, is see more than 4 feet away when walking
Not to be a complete and total heartless bitch, but if you're impaired in that way (be it due to poor eyesight or broken neck or whatever), then should you be driving in the first place? The ability to look around and do a shoulder check is an important part to being able to drive safely....
I agree with your point about people suck, stealing handicapped spaces, and that people won't understand how important those spaces are until they need them for themselves, but it seems to me that you shouldn't be driving at all, and that the ability to remember where your parking space is should be mitigated by the fact that in order to park there you'd need somebody with you who should be able to remember that kind of information.
"Breaking the leg" doesn't make it legal or OK for them to be parked there.
To go a step further, around here a broken leg doesn't usually qualify you for a handicapped permit around here, either. It's something that will heal on its own, usually within a couple of months, and usually without any intervention beyond immobilization. If it requires surgery of some sort, you may or may not get a permit, but probably won't as that kind of surgery is usually done on an emergency basis, rather than on a waitlist.
I had a permit when I was waiting for knee surgery, but that was for a torn mcl, torn meniscus, and fractured patella... while that last bit qualifies as a "broken" leg, there was no immediate danger, nor danger of it healing improperly without getting the surgery earlier, so I was put on a wait list, and got a temporary handicapped permit (1 year). Still had to fill out the paperwork and get a letter from my doctor though.
The simple answer is just to use fines. No really. Violations of this really aren't a huge problem for instance in Canada, they do happen but ask yourself. If you get caught, is a $5k first offence worth it? Is a $10k second offence worth it? That includes using fake, and placards that are not for the person. In most places that I've seen across the US, and other places the fines are pathetic. $100, 200, and so on.
Not sure what part of Canada you're in, but in Ontario the fine for parking in a handicapped spot without a permit is $305. I know, because my mother has a permit, and has had to go to city hall on several occasions to fight the fine when some idiot cop "didn't see" it or thought it was a fake. For that reason alone, I hope that this proposed system works... the permits are international, so it'll still create hassle for international travellers, but if it gives the locals an ability to have a transponder or RFID installed in their car in order to avoid that kind of hassle, then it's a good thing. That being said, the reason that we have permits tied to the person and not to the car in Ontario is that I occasionally drive my mother around, and we use her permit. If it was a transponder installed in the car, I'd have to borrow my dad's car and let him drive mine if I'm going to be driving my mother around and want to use the handicapped spaces.
$300 is not insignificant, and will serve as a deterrent to most people. But it's also small enough that most people are not going to go out of their way to fight it in court if they get caught... on the other hand, if you have $5000 on the line, you can bet that most people would hire a lawyer and take it to court.
It's a DB query, from the same DB, and comes up on the same display form, so aside from the extra time typing the VIN versus the plate, it shouldn't take any longer to actually get the information.:)
The point was it was legal to park in the spot during the grace period, before your plates are applied for and issued.
That seems like a bit of a stupid loophole... around here (Ontario, Canada), no plates = not on the road, and a very expensive fine + impounding of your car if you get caught without plates. You can get a 10-day permit from the ministry of transport while waiting for custom plates, but that needs to be on display in your windshield for the duration that you're using it. Most dealers will do the paperwork for new plates or transferring your existing plates as part of the purchase, and will have your plates installed on your car the day you pick it up. (or be ready with a screwdriver to transfer the plates from your old car to your new one if you're trading in an old car).
The 10-day permits are for people ordering custom plates, and for people doing a private sale, and you still need to have the temporary permit the day you buy the new car if you're going to have it on the road. You can have it towed wherever you want to go, but if it's moving under its own power, you must have a number plate.
My understanding was that most of the world works like this... correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but I have never owned a car in a jurisdiction that didn't work like that.
On the other hand... it's stupidly easy to get a handicap permit. I have one in my car because I occasionally drive my mother and grandmother around... my mother has bad knees (botched surgery) and can barely walk, and my grandmother is 89. So the family doctor issued a 5-year handicap parking permit for me to put in my car, even though I'm able-bodied. I'm honest about it, and only park in the spot when I'm driving one of those two, but wouldn't it have been a lot easier for Jobs to simply get a handicap permit? Especially considering his health problems later in life....
If they were not concerned with technical details, why was the touchscreen operated by a stylus? Isn't a finger a superior pointing device?
It is now. But even as late as the mid-1990's, capacitive touchscreens were nowhere near as accurate as resistive touch screens, and resistive touch screens were a lot cheaper. That's why the early Palm Pilots, the Apple Newton, and other similar devices all used a stylus instead of a capacitive touch screen. It's really only quite recently that the capacitive touch screen has been accurate and cheap enough to be used in a device like a phone.
Apple almost certainly thought of their users wanting to use a finger. And finger touch screens did exists (mostly using infra-red), but they either weren't as accurate, or weren't as cheap as resistive screens.:) It's most likely a compromise that's been made to keep costs down.
sweetie, darling, I'm not a son of anything or anybody... and I can guarantee you that I know enough about how IT does their job, because I got my start doing IT. I moved on from it, and into management, by consistently being a top performer, by having social skills, and by going to University and getting a degree that was applicable to people management. That got me into a low management position doing training, and my performance there (and the performance of the people I trained) is what got me to where I am today. The sheepskin that's on my wall is for an arts degree, but it doesn't show you the 20+ years spent tinkering in the innards of computers and other electronic devices, the hundreds of different distros and operating systems that I've used over the years, the numerous computer networks I have designed/built, the cellular and POTS networks I was involved in setting up when I was in the army (to any Canadians in the audience, I was a Jimmy), or any of the other myriad experience that I have in technology.
Just because I now have a different job does not mean that I don't know what I am doing, or that I can't do your job. I can't code for the life of me... I can understand the logic, but I don't know the specific function calls and syntax for most languages because I have never had to do it. But hardware, software, and other stuff that IT is actually there to support? Yeah. Try me. If I'm calling IT, it's because there's something that's actually wrong, or because I need a tool installed and don't have admin rights on my PC (not stupid enough to ask for admin rights on a work system... especially not at a company that forces me to use internet exploder 6 to access internal web-based tools). Your conviction that just because somebody's in management, it automatically means that they don't know what they're doing? That's going to cost you in the long run, in the form of hurting your eligibility for promotion.
I'm going to try to save you time, and let you in on something that was a very hard lesson for me to learn. Whether you choose to internalize it or not is up to you, but I can honestly tell you that until I absorbed it, my chances of ever advancing beyond IT were basically nil: the person you're helping isn't an idiot. They may have a different skill set, and different knowledge, but that does not make them dumb. Every time I hear some nitwit in IT complaining that you should have to have a license to own a computer, I pity them. How much do you know about brain surgery, out of curiosity? Would you feel comfortable operating on your own skull? So why do you assume that the person you're talking to on the other end of the phone is a moron because they don't have that level of skill? I can guarantee you that they have some skills that are completely beyond your ability. Empathy is an important skill in life, probably the most important skill you can have.
because managers often don't have a clue how computers work, IT can bullshit their way out of any disaster and create a level of job security for themselves that many other professions can only dream of.
Heh... except when your manager has done your job before, and proven him (or her) self in order to get that managerial position. Unless you know that manager's background, tread very carefully when trying to bullshit them, because I can guarantee you that I know enough about your job to see through it (I was a trainer for third line helpdesk before I moved into my current position), and if you try that crap with me your job will be at far more risk than if you simply tell me the truth. Everybody screws up from time to time, even me, but I have no tolerance for people who think they can slack off and lie their way through life. And the real bitch of it? You probably won't know why you lost your job, because if you tried bullshitting me, I would smile and nod and act like I believed you, and then post the opening for your replacement as soon as you left my office.
When travelling in Europe, I find that the most consistently clean toilets are at McDonald's restaurants... when you *really* gotta go and can't get back to your hotel, it's worth the cost of a small coke.
If you don't use Tomato or DD-WRT on your router you obviously don't really care about security anyway so who cares? The OOB ROMs on most consumer routers are full of more holes than a breadboard.
BS. I can't speak to some brands, but the main reason to install Tomato or DD-WRT is *not* security, it's features. If you're not using one of those firmwares, then it's because you don't need the added features that they offer (or perhaps, you have a router which came with every single one of those features out of the box, and see no point in installing them). There is absolutely nothing that Tomato can do which can't be done with the default firmware on my TP-Link router, because the default firmware is that good. It literally does everything that Tomato does, and even provides a well-documented way to replace the firmware with Tomato if you still think it's better. (Tomato is mentionned specifically in the manual, as an example of why you'd use that feature in the firmware).
Tomato/DD-WRT are great for adding features like advanced QoS rules to an older router, or a router from a company that doesn't think that consumers need stuff like that, but they really don't improve the *security* at all. And that's largely because the *security* is all relying on the same protocols, and need to comply with standards like WPA2/PSK in order to play friendly with the computers you're trying to connect to it. If you're seriously worried about exploits to gain admin access to the firmware (assuming they even exist...), then you've already lost the battle, because it means that somebody you don't trust has already gotten access to your internal network.
In can be difficult when you use a sufficiently long WPA2 passkey, but that's largely due to how well you can type a password that could be 60+ characters.
That being said, I have never had a problem typing my passkey, and have never had a need to use WPS to set up my router. Mine does support the pushbutton authentication mode, as well as the pre-generated PIN mode, but the PIN is disabled by default, which is exactly how it should be... and I think (I'd have to check the documentation) that if you enable the pre-generated PIN mode, it only works for 5 minutes before it disables itself.
CUPS. For all their evil, I would have a *real* bitch of a time getting my two network laser printers to work in Linux without Apple's support....
But that said, I still don't like Apple's behaviour towards their competition. Me participating in a boycott is rather moot, though, because I wouldn't buy an Apple product to begin with. Too expensive. I was considering spending my xmas bonus this year on the 2012 24" iMac, and still might, but I have been "considering" that option for several years and never acted on it... every year it's turned out to not be a good economic decision. 2 years ago, I ended up buying a 16" Dell XPS laptop w/ 4GB of RAM and a Core i7 Quad, and it still ended up costing less than the iMac... when I'm ready to switch to a desktop for real, I'll probably just build my own, as I already have a 24" OLED display that I use for dual head with the Dell....
No, that's economics. You don't need a new car every 3 years, no (you can take the bus), but 4 bedrooms would be 3 kids, maximum. (try doubling up a pair of teenagers in the same room without their killing each other, I dare you....). But the cost of the house is the big one... in a city like Dayton, OH, you can rent a 2BR apartment for about $500/mo. You can expect to spend more than $2000/mo for the same 2BR apartment in the Bronx, NY, and that's one of the cheapest neighbourhoods in the entire city. And there's other commodities that are more expensive in bigger cities, too... food is more expensive, utilities are usually more expensive, the list goes on. On the whole, you *need* a much higher income level in an area like Long Island than you do in other areas in order to maintain the same quality of life. That is simple economics and supply/demand.
And 65k/year in LI? You can expect to spend $1500/mo in rent in Long Island, for a one bedroom apartment. $1500 * 12 comes out to $18k/year just in rent, not counting the sales tax, condo fees, and insurance. Add food and other expenses on top of that, and subtract the government's share from the 65k/year, and a single person might be able to live comfortably in LI for $65k/year, as long as he's not saving that much money, but a family of four? Not a chance.
I'm no historian, but I seem to recall that in WWII, when the Allies bombed Germany, the targets generally were the factories; and the Germans deliberately put their factories in the middle of populated areas. (Were they relying on us being less willing to bomb them for fear of collateral damage?)
The allies carpet-bombed Hamburg, and fire-bombed Dresden. Between the two campaigns, both cities were almost completely destroyed, and about 100,000 victims. Only about 40,000 civilians were killed during the German bombing of England. It wasn't because the Germans deliberately put their factories in civilian areas (the English did the same), it was because the allies were bombing from very high altitude and there was a great deal of luck involved in actually hitting your target from that altitude.
And in preparation for D-Day, they completely levelled some cities in northern France. (seriously... the ground is now more than 1m higher in Caen than it was before WWII, and the cathedral was the only building left standing in that city following the allied bombardment... and even the cathedral was partly destroyed... they even destroyed the citadel of William the Conqueror, because of the risk that it could be used by German soldiers to hide out... and Caen had no industrial complex to speak of, it was just a military stronghold).
Bombs, at least the kind of bombs they were using in WWII, were not a precision instrument. The primary targets were factories, railroads, things like that. But the standing order for most aircrews was "drop any remaining ordnance wherever you want before coming home".
But it wasn't until the Industrial revolution in the 1850's, that the use of punched cards for storing instructions and input data that made mathematical calculating machines possible. That's one important factor. The other one is the use of mathematical notation for expressing algebra that can be converted into instructions.
What if he had got both these engines working by 1849? Would he have moved onto more advanced calculations or extended the use of mechanical computation to commerce like Hollerith punched cards did in 1889? If so, that would have advanced computing by 40 years.
Yes, it would have advanced computing by about 40 years. But computing had reached a plateau in the 1940's (and arguably before then, there just wasn't any impetus to make a digital computer before WWII), and couldn't really advance any further than it had at that point until the invention of the transistor... the transistor itself arose from a chance discovery in late 1947, and wasn't readily available until the mid 1950's. Similarly, the integrated circuit wasn't available until the mid 1950's, either. In the absence of those technologies, it's arguable how far computing could have advanced beyond how far it had already advanced by the late 1940's, and neither IC's nor the transistor arose from people researching how to improve computers.
It really is debatable how far computing could have gone if Babbage had succeeded, considering that the computer revolution really didn't take off until integrated circuits made miniaturization possible in the 1960's.
It's the ridiculous redefining of "a middle class standard of living". I make $16.50 an hour, and my wife stays home with our four children. We're not hurting financially. We don't own any Apple products, but that's really not a problem.
That depends in large part on where you're living, though... $16.50/hr is a very good wage in some parts of the US (where the minimum wage is $7/hr). It's barely enough to make do as a single person living in a bachelor apartment in other parts of the country, and it's less than minimum wage in Australia. The fact is that in different areas, the cost of living is different. I'm making more than $16.50/hr here, and it's barely enough to cover rent, food, utilities, and my car payments, and I'm single. My balance of payments is such that I don't have a home phone (cellular only), and I don't have TV... I wouldn't be able to afford them while staying in the black. I could not support a family on that wage while maintaining my current balance of payments, and would have to get rid of the car to break even if my spouse wasn't working.
There's also nothing to stop the spammers from forging the credentials of some other organization. Then we'd be hearing about Anonymous sending billions of spam messages, pretending to be BoA...
With few exceptions, yes. And I think it's telling that the most prominent of those few exceptions is one of the only 24hr News channels that you can't get in the US: Al-Jazeera.
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Michael Dell is usually right about that kind of thing. That's not because I'm any kind of fangirl, or because I used to work for him, just that he's historically been pretty good at predicting market trends. You said it yourself... it's a good replacement to a *second* computer, but you still need a real computer to type documents and actually create content for. Especially at a school.
What I'd like is a modern version of the "tablet" computers that Lenovo was selling 8 years ago. The kind where you could flip the screen around and use the thing as a tablet, or you could open it up and have a working laptop? Couple that with an ultraportable 13" laptop that tips the scales around 3lbs, and they could make a ton of money on it. Wouldn't even be that hard, they'd just have to rearrange the hinge design on the laptop I have right now (a Dell Vostro V130), and replace the LCD with a touchscreen. I'd even be willing to accept one that requires a stylus instead of finger input. It would be hugely useful. I would be willing to accept the extra bulk inherent in that kind of design in exchange for the increased usability, and I'd still have something that's more portable than the heavier 15" or 16" laptops most people buy.
Yes, but why not? For any given movie, at a given cinema, at a given time, there's an optimal price that maximizes profit: charge a little more, and you discourage enough people that you end up with less profit; charge a little less, and while you may get more customers, you still end up with less profit.
Because the bulk of your ticket price is actually the movie theatre. They make their biggest profit on concessions (do you *seriously* think there's $5 worth of syrup in your super-ultra-mega-size coke (that's 3x the size of the average human stomach)? More like $0.05 and another $0.05 worth of soda water. Throw in $0.01 for the cup, lid, and straw, and the rest is profit), but they still have to ensure that they make a profit on the ticket price alone, because of the number of people who either don't buy concessions, or who sneak their own snacks into the theatre.
The projection rights for the movie are actually a very small part of the ticket price, which is why a small indie film will usually have the same ticket price as a big budget blockbuster. That, and as you say, policing which theatres people go in at multiplexes.
You said your neck had been broken, not that your spine was fused. There is a *very* big difference between the two states, and any misunderstanding on that part is entirely your fault for not sharing extra information. The *normal* result of a badly broken neck (not counting death) is not a fused spine, it's damaged muscles and nerves in the neck, which limit muscle control. Immobilized and treated properly, the vertebra in the neck can actually heal quite well, with near full range of motion eventually being recovered. Perhaps you should have been clearer, as your problem is not that your neck had been broken, but that it didn't heal properly.
Actually, I still don't think you should be driving. That has nothing to do with your physical state, however, it's your mental state. You make too many assumptions about the information other people have, and that's dangerous behind the wheel of a car. You should always work under the assumption that everybody else on the road has no clue what's going on, and doesn't have any extra information that you didn't give them.
Either you have the muscle strength needed to hold your head up and look around, or you don't. If you have that strength, you shouldn't need to be sitting in order to look around. More than that, if you need to prop your head up against the head restraint, then you're completely oblivious to the point of having a head restraint on the driver's seat. That is there to keep your head from jerking back and breaking your neck in a car accident, not to keep your head up so you can look around and drive safely. If you're leaning your head against the restraint in order to be able to drive, then you're not safe. I have nothing against handicapped people driving. I know several who do drive, with varying physical handicaps from people missing a leg or an arm all the way up to full paraplegics, and have nothing against these people driving, as long as they can do it safely, but the one thing that they all have in common is that they're able to hold their head up, unaided.
So again, either you have the strength to hold your own head up, in which case I'm at a loss as to why you can't see more than 4 feet ahead of you when on foot, or you shouldn't be driving. That has nothing to do with ignorance. It may seem a little callous to you, because I'd stoop to try to deny you your "right" to drive, but I'm concerned about everybody else on the road. Actually, I'd cite ignorance on your part, if you seriously believe that you can drive safely and get the situational awareness needed to drive safely when you don't have the strength to hold your own head up.
Now, if someone if found to be parked where he doesn't belong, this is what happens. The car is towed right away as a rush job (double the cost which the offender has to pay), a 24 hour lockout period at the impound lot (the car has to sit there minimum 24 hours before it can be released), a storage fee calculated on the number of 24 hours days, which means that violators have to pay for at least two days. Add to this a hefty fine, and last but not least a penalty mark, which means that for a period (6-12 months perhaps?) this car is only allowed to park in the penalty spaces or the regular spaces nearest the penalty spaces if they're all full.
Having had to fight a parking ticket for parking in the handicapped spot when I had a permit, because the cop was blind, or didn't feel like wiping the snow off the windshield to get a view of the permit which was on display on the dash (in a jurisdiction where they don't issue special license plates, only permits that you display in your windshield)... how about not? Fix the system so that stupid cops can't "accidentally" fill their quota by issuing incorrect citations, and maybe I'd support your draconian measures. But as long as there's room for that kind of human error, absolutely not. I refuse to be penalized for the stupidity of others.
On the flip side, there's a restaurant that I go to that has one male and one female bathroom. I've never been in the female one, but the male one is so small that, as an able-bodied person, _I_ can barely get in there. To get my dad in, I need to park his wheelchair out in front of the short, narrow hallway that leads to them, shimmy him down the hall, turn the knob on the door (ball handle, not a bar), and somehow manage to pull him in, turn him around, pull down his pants and sit him on the toilet. If I had to guess, I'd say the bathroom is about 4 feet by 4 feet (you can reach the opposite wall and the door to the left from the toilet).
The laws may be different in your neck of the woods, but in your situation I'd be asking a few pointed questions to the accessibility ombudsman, human rights commission, or whatever the equivalent is... I'd stop short of launching a lawsuit, but I know that around here there's laws in place that would require them to at least install rails and widen the door so his wheelchair could get in. Most building codes specify minimum width of doorways, too, and they may be in violation there, too.
What I cannot do, though, is see more than 4 feet away when walking
Not to be a complete and total heartless bitch, but if you're impaired in that way (be it due to poor eyesight or broken neck or whatever), then should you be driving in the first place? The ability to look around and do a shoulder check is an important part to being able to drive safely....
I agree with your point about people suck, stealing handicapped spaces, and that people won't understand how important those spaces are until they need them for themselves, but it seems to me that you shouldn't be driving at all, and that the ability to remember where your parking space is should be mitigated by the fact that in order to park there you'd need somebody with you who should be able to remember that kind of information.
"Breaking the leg" doesn't make it legal or OK for them to be parked there.
To go a step further, around here a broken leg doesn't usually qualify you for a handicapped permit around here, either. It's something that will heal on its own, usually within a couple of months, and usually without any intervention beyond immobilization. If it requires surgery of some sort, you may or may not get a permit, but probably won't as that kind of surgery is usually done on an emergency basis, rather than on a waitlist.
I had a permit when I was waiting for knee surgery, but that was for a torn mcl, torn meniscus, and fractured patella... while that last bit qualifies as a "broken" leg, there was no immediate danger, nor danger of it healing improperly without getting the surgery earlier, so I was put on a wait list, and got a temporary handicapped permit (1 year). Still had to fill out the paperwork and get a letter from my doctor though.
The simple answer is just to use fines. No really. Violations of this really aren't a huge problem for instance in Canada, they do happen but ask yourself. If you get caught, is a $5k first offence worth it? Is a $10k second offence worth it? That includes using fake, and placards that are not for the person. In most places that I've seen across the US, and other places the fines are pathetic. $100, 200, and so on.
Not sure what part of Canada you're in, but in Ontario the fine for parking in a handicapped spot without a permit is $305. I know, because my mother has a permit, and has had to go to city hall on several occasions to fight the fine when some idiot cop "didn't see" it or thought it was a fake. For that reason alone, I hope that this proposed system works... the permits are international, so it'll still create hassle for international travellers, but if it gives the locals an ability to have a transponder or RFID installed in their car in order to avoid that kind of hassle, then it's a good thing. That being said, the reason that we have permits tied to the person and not to the car in Ontario is that I occasionally drive my mother around, and we use her permit. If it was a transponder installed in the car, I'd have to borrow my dad's car and let him drive mine if I'm going to be driving my mother around and want to use the handicapped spaces.
$300 is not insignificant, and will serve as a deterrent to most people. But it's also small enough that most people are not going to go out of their way to fight it in court if they get caught... on the other hand, if you have $5000 on the line, you can bet that most people would hire a lawyer and take it to court.
It's a DB query, from the same DB, and comes up on the same display form, so aside from the extra time typing the VIN versus the plate, it shouldn't take any longer to actually get the information. :)
The point was it was legal to park in the spot during the grace period, before your plates are applied for and issued.
That seems like a bit of a stupid loophole... around here (Ontario, Canada), no plates = not on the road, and a very expensive fine + impounding of your car if you get caught without plates. You can get a 10-day permit from the ministry of transport while waiting for custom plates, but that needs to be on display in your windshield for the duration that you're using it. Most dealers will do the paperwork for new plates or transferring your existing plates as part of the purchase, and will have your plates installed on your car the day you pick it up. (or be ready with a screwdriver to transfer the plates from your old car to your new one if you're trading in an old car).
The 10-day permits are for people ordering custom plates, and for people doing a private sale, and you still need to have the temporary permit the day you buy the new car if you're going to have it on the road. You can have it towed wherever you want to go, but if it's moving under its own power, you must have a number plate.
My understanding was that most of the world works like this... correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but I have never owned a car in a jurisdiction that didn't work like that.
On the other hand... it's stupidly easy to get a handicap permit. I have one in my car because I occasionally drive my mother and grandmother around... my mother has bad knees (botched surgery) and can barely walk, and my grandmother is 89. So the family doctor issued a 5-year handicap parking permit for me to put in my car, even though I'm able-bodied. I'm honest about it, and only park in the spot when I'm driving one of those two, but wouldn't it have been a lot easier for Jobs to simply get a handicap permit? Especially considering his health problems later in life....
If they were not concerned with technical details, why was the touchscreen operated by a stylus? Isn't a finger a superior pointing device?
It is now. But even as late as the mid-1990's, capacitive touchscreens were nowhere near as accurate as resistive touch screens, and resistive touch screens were a lot cheaper. That's why the early Palm Pilots, the Apple Newton, and other similar devices all used a stylus instead of a capacitive touch screen. It's really only quite recently that the capacitive touch screen has been accurate and cheap enough to be used in a device like a phone.
Apple almost certainly thought of their users wanting to use a finger. And finger touch screens did exists (mostly using infra-red), but they either weren't as accurate, or weren't as cheap as resistive screens. :) It's most likely a compromise that's been made to keep costs down.
Indeed. It's certainly worthy of the Bras D'Honneur....
sweetie, darling, I'm not a son of anything or anybody... and I can guarantee you that I know enough about how IT does their job, because I got my start doing IT. I moved on from it, and into management, by consistently being a top performer, by having social skills, and by going to University and getting a degree that was applicable to people management. That got me into a low management position doing training, and my performance there (and the performance of the people I trained) is what got me to where I am today. The sheepskin that's on my wall is for an arts degree, but it doesn't show you the 20+ years spent tinkering in the innards of computers and other electronic devices, the hundreds of different distros and operating systems that I've used over the years, the numerous computer networks I have designed/built, the cellular and POTS networks I was involved in setting up when I was in the army (to any Canadians in the audience, I was a Jimmy), or any of the other myriad experience that I have in technology.
Just because I now have a different job does not mean that I don't know what I am doing, or that I can't do your job. I can't code for the life of me... I can understand the logic, but I don't know the specific function calls and syntax for most languages because I have never had to do it. But hardware, software, and other stuff that IT is actually there to support? Yeah. Try me. If I'm calling IT, it's because there's something that's actually wrong, or because I need a tool installed and don't have admin rights on my PC (not stupid enough to ask for admin rights on a work system... especially not at a company that forces me to use internet exploder 6 to access internal web-based tools). Your conviction that just because somebody's in management, it automatically means that they don't know what they're doing? That's going to cost you in the long run, in the form of hurting your eligibility for promotion.
I'm going to try to save you time, and let you in on something that was a very hard lesson for me to learn. Whether you choose to internalize it or not is up to you, but I can honestly tell you that until I absorbed it, my chances of ever advancing beyond IT were basically nil: the person you're helping isn't an idiot. They may have a different skill set, and different knowledge, but that does not make them dumb. Every time I hear some nitwit in IT complaining that you should have to have a license to own a computer, I pity them. How much do you know about brain surgery, out of curiosity? Would you feel comfortable operating on your own skull? So why do you assume that the person you're talking to on the other end of the phone is a moron because they don't have that level of skill? I can guarantee you that they have some skills that are completely beyond your ability. Empathy is an important skill in life, probably the most important skill you can have.
because managers often don't have a clue how computers work, IT can bullshit their way out of any disaster and create a level of job security for themselves that many other professions can only dream of.
Heh... except when your manager has done your job before, and proven him (or her) self in order to get that managerial position. Unless you know that manager's background, tread very carefully when trying to bullshit them, because I can guarantee you that I know enough about your job to see through it (I was a trainer for third line helpdesk before I moved into my current position), and if you try that crap with me your job will be at far more risk than if you simply tell me the truth. Everybody screws up from time to time, even me, but I have no tolerance for people who think they can slack off and lie their way through life. And the real bitch of it? You probably won't know why you lost your job, because if you tried bullshitting me, I would smile and nod and act like I believed you, and then post the opening for your replacement as soon as you left my office.
When travelling in Europe, I find that the most consistently clean toilets are at McDonald's restaurants... when you *really* gotta go and can't get back to your hotel, it's worth the cost of a small coke.
If you don't use Tomato or DD-WRT on your router you obviously don't really care about security anyway so who cares? The OOB ROMs on most consumer routers are full of more holes than a breadboard.
BS. I can't speak to some brands, but the main reason to install Tomato or DD-WRT is *not* security, it's features. If you're not using one of those firmwares, then it's because you don't need the added features that they offer (or perhaps, you have a router which came with every single one of those features out of the box, and see no point in installing them). There is absolutely nothing that Tomato can do which can't be done with the default firmware on my TP-Link router, because the default firmware is that good. It literally does everything that Tomato does, and even provides a well-documented way to replace the firmware with Tomato if you still think it's better. (Tomato is mentionned specifically in the manual, as an example of why you'd use that feature in the firmware).
Tomato/DD-WRT are great for adding features like advanced QoS rules to an older router, or a router from a company that doesn't think that consumers need stuff like that, but they really don't improve the *security* at all. And that's largely because the *security* is all relying on the same protocols, and need to comply with standards like WPA2/PSK in order to play friendly with the computers you're trying to connect to it. If you're seriously worried about exploits to gain admin access to the firmware (assuming they even exist...), then you've already lost the battle, because it means that somebody you don't trust has already gotten access to your internal network.
In can be difficult when you use a sufficiently long WPA2 passkey, but that's largely due to how well you can type a password that could be 60+ characters.
That being said, I have never had a problem typing my passkey, and have never had a need to use WPS to set up my router. Mine does support the pushbutton authentication mode, as well as the pre-generated PIN mode, but the PIN is disabled by default, which is exactly how it should be... and I think (I'd have to check the documentation) that if you enable the pre-generated PIN mode, it only works for 5 minutes before it disables itself.
CUPS. For all their evil, I would have a *real* bitch of a time getting my two network laser printers to work in Linux without Apple's support....
But that said, I still don't like Apple's behaviour towards their competition. Me participating in a boycott is rather moot, though, because I wouldn't buy an Apple product to begin with. Too expensive. I was considering spending my xmas bonus this year on the 2012 24" iMac, and still might, but I have been "considering" that option for several years and never acted on it... every year it's turned out to not be a good economic decision. 2 years ago, I ended up buying a 16" Dell XPS laptop w/ 4GB of RAM and a Core i7 Quad, and it still ended up costing less than the iMac... when I'm ready to switch to a desktop for real, I'll probably just build my own, as I already have a 24" OLED display that I use for dual head with the Dell....
This is a problem of expectations, not economics.
No, that's economics. You don't need a new car every 3 years, no (you can take the bus), but 4 bedrooms would be 3 kids, maximum. (try doubling up a pair of teenagers in the same room without their killing each other, I dare you....). But the cost of the house is the big one... in a city like Dayton, OH, you can rent a 2BR apartment for about $500/mo. You can expect to spend more than $2000/mo for the same 2BR apartment in the Bronx, NY, and that's one of the cheapest neighbourhoods in the entire city. And there's other commodities that are more expensive in bigger cities, too... food is more expensive, utilities are usually more expensive, the list goes on. On the whole, you *need* a much higher income level in an area like Long Island than you do in other areas in order to maintain the same quality of life. That is simple economics and supply/demand.
And 65k/year in LI? You can expect to spend $1500/mo in rent in Long Island, for a one bedroom apartment. $1500 * 12 comes out to $18k/year just in rent, not counting the sales tax, condo fees, and insurance. Add food and other expenses on top of that, and subtract the government's share from the 65k/year, and a single person might be able to live comfortably in LI for $65k/year, as long as he's not saving that much money, but a family of four? Not a chance.
I'm no historian, but I seem to recall that in WWII, when the Allies bombed Germany, the targets generally were the factories; and the Germans deliberately put their factories in the middle of populated areas. (Were they relying on us being less willing to bomb them for fear of collateral damage?)
The allies carpet-bombed Hamburg, and fire-bombed Dresden. Between the two campaigns, both cities were almost completely destroyed, and about 100,000 victims. Only about 40,000 civilians were killed during the German bombing of England. It wasn't because the Germans deliberately put their factories in civilian areas (the English did the same), it was because the allies were bombing from very high altitude and there was a great deal of luck involved in actually hitting your target from that altitude.
And in preparation for D-Day, they completely levelled some cities in northern France. (seriously... the ground is now more than 1m higher in Caen than it was before WWII, and the cathedral was the only building left standing in that city following the allied bombardment... and even the cathedral was partly destroyed... they even destroyed the citadel of William the Conqueror, because of the risk that it could be used by German soldiers to hide out... and Caen had no industrial complex to speak of, it was just a military stronghold).
Bombs, at least the kind of bombs they were using in WWII, were not a precision instrument. The primary targets were factories, railroads, things like that. But the standing order for most aircrews was "drop any remaining ordnance wherever you want before coming home".
But it wasn't until the Industrial revolution in the 1850's, that the use of punched cards for storing instructions and input data that made mathematical calculating machines possible. That's one important factor. The other one is the use of mathematical notation for expressing algebra that can be converted into instructions.
What if he had got both these engines working by 1849? Would he have moved onto more advanced calculations or extended the use of mechanical computation to commerce like Hollerith punched cards did in 1889? If so, that would have advanced computing by 40 years.
Yes, it would have advanced computing by about 40 years. But computing had reached a plateau in the 1940's (and arguably before then, there just wasn't any impetus to make a digital computer before WWII), and couldn't really advance any further than it had at that point until the invention of the transistor... the transistor itself arose from a chance discovery in late 1947, and wasn't readily available until the mid 1950's. Similarly, the integrated circuit wasn't available until the mid 1950's, either. In the absence of those technologies, it's arguable how far computing could have advanced beyond how far it had already advanced by the late 1940's, and neither IC's nor the transistor arose from people researching how to improve computers.
It really is debatable how far computing could have gone if Babbage had succeeded, considering that the computer revolution really didn't take off until integrated circuits made miniaturization possible in the 1960's.
It's the ridiculous redefining of "a middle class standard of living".
I make $16.50 an hour, and my wife stays home with our four children. We're not hurting financially.
We don't own any Apple products, but that's really not a problem.
That depends in large part on where you're living, though... $16.50/hr is a very good wage in some parts of the US (where the minimum wage is $7/hr). It's barely enough to make do as a single person living in a bachelor apartment in other parts of the country, and it's less than minimum wage in Australia. The fact is that in different areas, the cost of living is different. I'm making more than $16.50/hr here, and it's barely enough to cover rent, food, utilities, and my car payments, and I'm single. My balance of payments is such that I don't have a home phone (cellular only), and I don't have TV... I wouldn't be able to afford them while staying in the black. I could not support a family on that wage while maintaining my current balance of payments, and would have to get rid of the car to break even if my spouse wasn't working.
There's also nothing to stop the spammers from forging the credentials of some other organization. Then we'd be hearing about Anonymous sending billions of spam messages, pretending to be BoA...
With few exceptions, yes. And I think it's telling that the most prominent of those few exceptions is one of the only 24hr News channels that you can't get in the US: Al-Jazeera.