replace incandescent bulbs with CFs. Its the biggest-easiest win.
My wife likes our old quaint crappy windows, so I've installed Smith&Noble insulated shades, which I keep closed on the north side of the house as much as possible, and keep open on the south side from 8:30 - 4 p.m., which really helps keep the furnace off on sunny days.
I telecommute two days a week and carpool 48 of my 60 mile roundtrip to work the other three days. On the way home from carpooling I do the shopping to keep my wife from having to make the 12 mile roundtrip to town.
For our farm-stuff and lumber-store trips we've got a big diesel pickup we run on biodiesel made with good old Virginia soybeans. Its a bit of a PITA but makes having 1.3 vehicles per person livable.
I have been using it for a year or so too but the same Perl, DBD::Pg and HTML::Mason code that ran for hundreds of days of uptime in 1.3 now have major memory leaks that freeze the machine unless I reboot daily. Luckily I have 9-5 East Coast users so I can get away with it.
If we catch the bad guys paying off or kidnaping the babies of each person who's vote they want to change, then we know they are having trouble cracking the e-voting system. I agree these are valid issues compared to the current systems that hide your vote as you crank the lever to swing the curtains open, but it may come down to which is the lesser evil in America. There are countries where I'd be worried about thugs with billybats standing outside the polling place but not right now in America.
-Greg
extra credit question: What would you choose, beating up old ladies outside a polling place or going duck hunting with Justice Scalia?
Someone tell me what the holes in this scheme are:
You vote. Out pops a slip of paper with a random unique number on it and your vote and a URL http:/e-votingsomething.gov . If your guy (or gal) wins, you through the paper out. If your guy loses unexpectedly, you go to the library and bring up the URL on a browser, which asks you to type in the random number and tells you what vote(s) were associated with it. If it matches, you throw the paper out> If it doesn't you press the big red button on the bottom of the screen and mail photocopies to your party headquarters and the Washington Post. Presumably the number can be made with a checkdigit or encrypted signature such that you can't fake your answer. As Bob Cringely says, most of the companies making voting machines also make ATM's - so how hard can it be tomake them spit out a piece of paper?
Hey, Pisan! Madison County, close but no such luck
Aren't there some folks starting a new WIFI service near you?
Verizon won't even call me back about T1 prices. The owner of my dialup ISP was going to check with them for me too and it looks like they won't call him back either. Like I said: Cavalier. "No broadband for you, you silly muck-strewn peasant!"
A) In the city you don't have a ring of trees around you house so you have to see the rednecks.
B) Latency of satellite would really quash my ssh connections. With dial-up I don't have to wait 2 seconds for my characters to come back. I could conceivably use my Linux box to route ssh connections through the modem and everything else through the satellite but a secondary purpose of getting broadband is to go to voip to punish Verizon for their cavalier attitude so I'd rather not go with options that make me keep my phone lines.
I am replying to your post over my 26.4 modem connection, 7 miles of copper from the CO. The cable operator in my country is the bankrupt Adelphia, they laugh and hang up when I call about timelines for getting service. Verizon would probably not provide even phone service to the farmers out here unless someone made them.
BPL is my only hope for broadband. There cannot be enough articles about it.
Perhaps the Centers for Disease Control could step in at this point and test the water coming out of SCO's water coolers for heavy metals and whatnot. This whole shenanigan might be shut down by making them drink bottled water instead.
I was under the impression that lawyers and doctors didn't use email due to the confidentiality issues surrounding its insecurity (I guess the ISP's SysAdmin or your boss is the third party that messes up the lawyer - client priviledge)
But, they will pay for it anyway. Its a great marketing angle and its not like $300/year will be noticed passed on to anybody's Doctor or Lawyer bill.
Or find software to throttle down all ports but email, ftp and http - Teachers might complain about completely blocked P2P access but will they complain about horrible speed?
I have been telecommuting since September, 1999. I've got business phone and data lines. Last year somebody put a leaking airconditioner right over the PBX at Verizon's CO and there was no service in my exchange for a day. IMHO, getting satisfaction from the phone company is an after the fact thing.
Use a cell or drive to a phone and let one or more people at work know what's going on.
Get an estimate of downtime from the phone company
Review the amount of critical work you have to do
Decide whether to catch some rays or drive to work or to a Kinkos or a friend's house in another exchange (a good arrangement to make beforehand).
That's what I do, anyway. Usually work is understanding and I get to goof off. Since they run Microsoft and I don't they have TONS more downtime than I do out in the sticks with my 26K modem connection so they don't begrudge me a little downtime.
For those of us out in the boonies this technology might be the fastest way to get a decent modem connection rolled out to us. Right now I pay $30 phone and $15 ISP a month for a 26.4K connection.
I don't recall who came after me. Anyway system administrators chosen in such manner have achieved enlightenment are beyond such worldly cares as who succeeds us.
True Story: At my small accounting software company Marlon hated hardware the least so he ended up being the one that called when the/var/spool filled up or the SCO refused to talk to the HP 9000. When Marlon left it was decided that Jay had been most seen in the vicinity of Marlon so he started getting the calls, got his name in HP's and UUNET's support databases, etc. When Jay left, well, I had been Jay's roommate for a year... The rest is history.
For management style think 'Lord of the Flies', not Harvard MBA.
First I'll echo a previous post:
So, I guess if you're priceless to them they'll let you. If you're a slacker, like most people are, you're lucky you have a job, so don't push it.
Given that you suspect you're not viewed as a slacker, here's what I did:
I moved from the hellhole commutes of N. Va. to out near the mountains. During my house search I also did a job search. When I had a house and an offer lined up I went back to my employer and said, "I would love to telecommute, I love this job, but if you don't want that here's my two week's notice." Once they're reeling from that (and if they are NOT snickering) start in on the standard productivity enhancements that come with being away from football pools, 3:00 p.m. beer parties and people dropping by your office so you can figure out their lives for them.
It will cost $10K to $20K to get solar electric providing most or all or your household electricity. RealGoods.com is the best source of practical info. Lately the advancements seem to be in making "plug-and-play" on-the-grid equipment, i.e. you don't have to have an EE degree to set it up or pay a top dollar electrician to figure it out. Most states have net-metering laws which require your electric company to reduce your bill to at-most $0 (at least in Virginia) based on how much electricity you produce. There are links under doe.gov that detail your state's laws.
The low-cost intro to saving money with solar is through hot-water heating or pre-heating. Search the web or try the library - I have found books from the '40's with solar hot-water heating plans!
Also if you are building a house now there are a few simple rules that will drastically effect you heating/cooling bills such as facing the windowed side of your house south instead of towards the $%^&&^&* street.
For my first year renewal a company tired to get sign a noncompete saying I wouldn't have as a client anyone in the same sector concurrently and for six months after I left off with them. So
I got the want-ads out and some prospects in order and then
I figured out what I could potentially make from the theoritical other clients in the time period specified in the addendum and then
I politely told them to piss off and the reasons why. I offered that they could tighten up their confidentiality clause all they wanted but that all my job contacts were in this sector and I couldn't let them muck with that.
They withdrew the non-compete clause so I didn't have to counter with a huge salary increase.
Keep in mind that they gain by you signing it and have nothing to loose by asking you to but they might be fine with you not signing it.
Remember that your brain is still working when you leave it at home. The most important thing I learned from taking theory classes in school (proofs and whatnot) is that you need to study a problem and then GO AWAY, preferable sleep until you wake up - not until your alarm goes off, and let your subconscious work on the problem. Let's note that I think my subconscious is smarter than I am - YMMV. Brainwave studies have shown that the same areas of the brain involved in problem solving are used in dreaming. I infer from this that if you get up a 5 a.m. to get on the Beltway before the traffic starts you are really robbing your intellect of a vital tool.
might be to have all the authors agree write a new version of their software using your lib and then in that new version release the lib as LGPL and the rest as GPL. Good luck finding them in the mood to do all that work so you can get rich. -Greg Go n-ithe na péisteoga do thóin bheagmhaitheasach.
Slashdot Mirror
replace incandescent bulbs with CFs. Its the biggest-easiest win.
My wife likes our old quaint crappy windows, so I've installed Smith&Noble insulated shades, which I keep closed on the north side of the house as much as possible, and keep open on the south side from 8:30 - 4 p.m., which really helps keep the furnace off on sunny days.
I telecommute two days a week and carpool 48 of my 60 mile roundtrip to work the other three days. On the way home from carpooling I do the shopping to keep my wife from having to make the 12 mile roundtrip to town.
For our farm-stuff and lumber-store trips we've got a big diesel pickup we run on biodiesel made with good old Virginia soybeans. Its a bit of a PITA but makes having 1.3 vehicles per person livable.
I have been using it for a year or so too but the same Perl, DBD::Pg and HTML::Mason code that ran for hundreds of days of uptime in 1.3 now have major memory leaks that freeze the machine unless I reboot daily. Luckily I have 9-5 East Coast users so I can get away with it.
If we catch the bad guys paying off or kidnaping the babies of each person who's vote they want to change, then we know they are having trouble cracking the e-voting system. I agree these are valid issues compared to the current systems that hide your vote as you crank the lever to swing the curtains open, but it may come down to which is the lesser evil in America. There are countries where I'd be worried about thugs with billybats standing outside the polling place but not right now in America.
-Greg
extra credit question: What would you choose, beating up old ladies outside a polling place or going duck hunting with Justice Scalia?
Someone tell me what the holes in this scheme are:
You vote. Out pops a slip of paper with a random unique number on it and your vote and a URL http:/e-votingsomething.gov . If your guy (or gal) wins, you through the paper out. If your guy loses unexpectedly, you go to the library and bring up the URL on a browser, which asks you to type in the random number and tells you what vote(s) were associated with it. If it matches, you throw the paper out> If it doesn't you press the big red button on the bottom of the screen and mail photocopies to your party headquarters and the Washington Post.
Presumably the number can be made with a checkdigit or encrypted signature such that you can't fake your answer.
As Bob Cringely says, most of the companies making voting machines also make ATM's - so how hard can it be tomake them spit out a piece of paper?
-Greg
Hey, Pisan! Madison County, close but no such luck
Aren't there some folks starting a new WIFI service near you?
Verizon won't even call me back about T1 prices. The owner of my dialup ISP was going to check with them for me too and it looks like they won't call him back either. Like I said: Cavalier. "No broadband for you, you silly muck-strewn peasant!"
A) In the city you don't have a ring of trees around you house so you have to see the rednecks.
B) Latency of satellite would really quash my ssh connections. With dial-up I don't have to wait 2 seconds for my characters to come back. I could conceivably use my Linux box to route ssh connections through the modem and everything else through the satellite but a secondary purpose of getting broadband is to go to voip to punish Verizon for their cavalier attitude so I'd rather not go with options that make me keep my phone lines.
I am replying to your post over my 26.4 modem connection, 7 miles of copper from the CO. The cable operator in my country is the bankrupt Adelphia, they laugh and hang up when I call about timelines for getting service. Verizon would probably not provide even phone service to the farmers out here unless someone made them. BPL is my only hope for broadband. There cannot be enough articles about it.
http://www.copper.net
$99 a year
Very stable.
Perhaps the Centers for Disease Control could step in at this point and test the water coming out of SCO's water coolers for heavy metals and whatnot. This whole shenanigan might be shut down by making them drink bottled water instead.
I was under the impression that lawyers and doctors didn't use email due to the confidentiality issues surrounding its insecurity (I guess the ISP's SysAdmin or your boss is the third party that messes up the lawyer - client priviledge)
But, they will pay for it anyway. Its a great marketing angle and its not like $300/year will be noticed passed on to anybody's Doctor or Lawyer bill.
Or find software to throttle down all ports but email, ftp and http - Teachers might complain about completely blocked P2P access but will they complain about horrible speed?
I have been telecommuting since September, 1999. I've got business phone and data lines. Last year somebody put a leaking airconditioner right over the PBX at Verizon's CO and there was no service in my exchange for a day. IMHO, getting satisfaction from the phone company is an after the fact thing.
That's what I do, anyway. Usually work is understanding and I get to goof off. Since they run Microsoft and I don't they have TONS more downtime than I do out in the sticks with my 26K modem connection so they don't begrudge me a little downtime.
-Greg
Has anyone emailed this link to the email address for comments at the Justice Department?
-Greg
Such a thing exists for woodstoves but it doesn't
start moving until its at a coupla hundred Farenheit.
-Greg
For those of us out in the boonies this technology might be the fastest way to get a decent modem connection rolled out to us. Right now I pay $30 phone and $15 ISP a month for a 26.4K connection.
-Greg
I don't recall who came after me. Anyway system administrators chosen in such manner have achieved enlightenment are beyond such worldly cares as who succeeds us.
Hiya,
/var/spool filled up or the SCO refused to talk to the HP 9000. When Marlon left it was decided that Jay had been most seen in the vicinity of Marlon so he started getting the calls, got his name in HP's and UUNET's support databases, etc. When Jay left, well, I had been Jay's roommate for a year... The rest is history.
True Story: At my small accounting software company Marlon hated hardware the least so he ended up being the one that called when the
For management style think 'Lord of the Flies', not Harvard MBA.
-Greg
First I'll echo a previous post:
So, I guess if you're priceless to them they'll let you. If you're a slacker, like most people are, you're lucky you have a job, so don't push it.
Given that you suspect you're not viewed as a slacker, here's what I did:
I moved from the hellhole commutes of N. Va. to out near the mountains. During my house search I also did a job search. When I had a house and an offer lined up I went back to my employer and said, "I would love to telecommute, I love this job, but if you don't want that here's my two week's notice." Once they're reeling from that (and if they are NOT snickering) start in on the standard productivity enhancements that come with being away from football pools, 3:00 p.m. beer parties and people dropping by your office so you can figure out their lives for them.
Good Luck at either job!.
It will cost $10K to $20K to get solar electric providing most or all or your household electricity. RealGoods.com is the best source of practical info. Lately the advancements seem to be in making "plug-and-play" on-the-grid equipment, i.e. you don't have to have an EE degree to set it up or pay a top dollar electrician to figure it out. Most states have net-metering laws which require your electric company to reduce your bill to at-most $0 (at least in Virginia) based on how much electricity you produce. There are links under doe.gov that detail your state's laws.
The low-cost intro to saving money with solar is through hot-water heating or pre-heating. Search the web or try the library - I have found books from the '40's with solar hot-water heating plans!
Also if you are building a house now there are a few simple rules that will drastically effect you heating/cooling bills such as facing the windowed side of your house south instead of towards the $%^&&^&* street.
Good luck.
- I got the want-ads out and some prospects in order and then
- I figured out what I could potentially make from the theoritical other clients in the time period specified in the addendum and then
- I politely told them to piss off and the reasons why. I offered that they could tighten up their confidentiality clause all they wanted but that all my job contacts were in this sector and I couldn't let them muck with that.
They withdrew the non-compete clause so I didn't have to counter with a huge salary increase. Keep in mind that they gain by you signing it and have nothing to loose by asking you to but they might be fine with you not signing it.Remember that your brain is still working when you leave it at home. The most important thing I learned from taking theory classes in school (proofs and whatnot) is that you need to study a problem and then GO AWAY, preferable sleep until you wake up - not until your alarm goes off, and let your subconscious work on the problem. Let's note that I think my subconscious is smarter than I am - YMMV. Brainwave studies have shown that the same areas of the brain involved in problem solving are used in dreaming. I infer from this that if you get up a 5 a.m. to get on the Beltway before the traffic starts you are really robbing your intellect of a vital tool.
might be to have all the authors agree write a new version of their software using your lib and then in that new version release the lib as LGPL and the rest as GPL. Good luck finding them in the mood to do all that work so you can get rich. -Greg Go n-ithe na péisteoga do thóin bheagmhaitheasach.