Translation: Momma needs a new pair of Gucci shoes and I've lawyered up ready to sue this bastard.
There's enough legal shows on TV now that everyone has down the language to ensure they can sue someone.
Bad taste yes. Pathetic yes. Free speech yes....unless of course it was the city's wifi ap that was hacked. And by hacked I mean they left the manufacturer default password enabled.
Unless something has changed in the last year that I've been living abroad, you can go to some of the big auto parts stores. Murray's and Autozone I've personally done this at. Go in there and slap down a $75 deposit on your credit card and they will loan you an OBDII sensor for free. Return the sensor and you'll get your deposit back.
Simple as that. I've done it on a couple occasions. Like I said it may have changed or you may not have either of those that I know for sure do it in your neighborhood, but for those that do it works out great.
It's essentially dead. It died in Chicago (even though there's still rumblings to restart it)for a couple reasons. The first was that the investment required by the ISP to provide it did not yield enough of a profit. Second, as usual once the aldermen and the mayor and their cronies start putting all kinds of external demands on it nobody wants to touch it. Then add that you're in Ameritech/AT&T's backyard who can pay enough to make any politician take notice and you want to give away their territory for free?
There's miles and miles and miles of unused fiber all over the city and county all "owned" by different organizations and suborganization and each holding on to it. The problem is the only way to get them to work together would be with some form of regional authority to manage the infrastructure but as soon as they would try to do that the Bell's would jump in and pay off some politicians to convince them that it's in the City/County/State's best interest to just keep paying them to use their services.
I'm sure this is the case in most metropolitan areas. Giving stuff away is un-American you damn socialists!
I don't think it caught on until they started the iPhone for Everyone campaign. (0 Yen for the 8GB) Oh and you need to have established credit in Japan. I had to pay mine up front and then they refund a little every month.
Living in Japan and walking around with my iPhone I find that many Japanese I run into want to check out my iPhone. They'll play with it for a while and tell me they want one. Usually they're waiting to get out of the current contract.
A couple other things that slowed the adoption:
1) Softbank is not known as the best provider. People complain about their customer service quite often. The coverage isn't exactly the best either. It is more the new kid on the block here.
2) The way the phone charges work, your cell phone plan only counts towards calling people on the same network. With Softbank not having the largest market share this keeps a lot of Japanese loyal to their provider because that's what their friends have. If you call AU or a land line, you incur charges over and above your plan. At least you don't pay usually for incoming calls. But if you want to call your friends who don't have an iPhone, you're going to pay so keep it brief.
3) Before they introduced the packet rate discount your bill could be well over $100. That's close to the base rate I had with my iPhone in the states but the Japanese are used to paying a lot less.
4) Emoji! Definitely it lacking originally was a big drawback. See the above charges for using your actual phone and you'll see why they spend a lot of time texting and Emoji are a big part of that.
Now on the plus side:
1) The majority of Japanese do not have home computers. This country is a deadzone for Wi-fi and most of their Internet browsing and other activities is done on their phones. My wife has one of the fancy phones here with TV and all and the web browser sucks compared with an iPhone and Safari. Many of them are looking forward to being able to surf the web with something decent.
2)Games. Many hours on the train everyone is glued to their phones or PSP's playing away. If you combine the gaming of the PSP with Internet and phone the marriage is made for the commutes.
3)As mentioned above, the GS came out just as the marketing push really started taking hold.
Hehe... I like the comment about not caring about the voice control. The Japanese cover their mouths when they speak in public so as not to disturb others around them. I really don't see them embracing voice commands...
btw... just in case anyone thinks about bringing a foreign iPhone over, Softbank in June started cracking down on "foreign" iPhones on their network. Even though you buy the packet discount and all the iPhone packages, Softbank will charge you per packet. I unlocked my old AT&T iPhone 3G for my wife to use because she wasn't happy with the "gadget filled" phone she originally got from Softbank. Well it worked fine for the first couple months, then out of the blue we got a bill for $1600 and another for $400. This has happened to a number of other people as well. They eventually refunded much of it with the promise that we wouldn't do it again.
How else can you be trained so thoroughly to ignore evidence right before eyes? It's the thing science fiction writers have dreamt about and the Catholic church has perfected in their indoctrination rituals. So complete is the brainwashing that people are willing to hand over their very last penny to an elected official wearing custom made Italian shoes, a pointy hat and living in a great white palace.
`Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous,' he told the meeting. `If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.'
- L. Ron Hubbard
"But I have always thought there might be a lot of cash in starting a new religion...".
- George Orwell
...jumped the shark when the changed to the "cute" logo. Now this is just them introducing a smart mouthed kid to make us chuckle until they end up in re-run hell.
What do you do when you're at the top of your market share and can't innovate to come up with something else and you've bought up every home market vendor?
Crash in on a new commodity market with an overpriced product; while maybe considered a caddilac, sell it at Mercedes prices.
All the while Juniper's chomping at your heals in your traditional space with a rock solid product and chipping away.
Actually. OEMC uses software technology to identify "suspicious" activity or people on their camera system to reduce the number of people who need to watch it. It basically looks for people who walk back and forth in front of the camera too many times (maybe a hooker or drug dealer). Or you can do search parameters on suspect descriptions. Obviously not a perfect science but it works well enough that Daley and OEMC are willing to spend as much money in a time of hundred million dollar deficits.
Anyways, the police will tell you it's pretty much just forced the criminals to move away from the cameras to do there business. That is why he needs to put them on every corner.
btw... This program is actually mostly your homeland security grant money at work. OEMC is the only department that can go after those grants and they do like gang-busters.
Daley has pretty much lost control over the City. He has admitted as much in the audio tied to the clockwatchers comment where he says the City doesn't know how to run facilities like the airports, skyway, and parking meters. Yet he forgets that he appoints the commissioners who run the departments each in their own empires.
And yes. Cameras, just like police are reactive measures. They can only respond to crimes.
Unfortunately, the only proactive solution is allowing guns back in the City. Daley's gun ban hasn't worked out so well. The crime rate has really been dropping since then and nobody ever gets shot in the City. He's already said he's going to waste as many tax payer dollars as it takes to fight the supreme court until his last breath.
This Chinese polution... brought to you by America.
Do you really think the only reason they shipped a large portion of manufacturing to China from the states is because labor is cheaper?
It because it's cheaper to manufacture things when you don't need to follow EPA regulations no matter how week they are. Scrubbers on smokestacks cost money. Dumping of toxic chemicals safely costs money.
China is desperate enough to break in to the world economy that they and other countries around it are willing to look the other way. When China does finally start catching on that the western world has shipped their dirty laundry to them the factories will just move to Africa or South America. Other emerging companies looking to look the other way to bring their countries into modern times.
We're even so kind as to ship them our used computer components for kids to burn in open fire pits in order to extract the precious metals. Meanwhile they're dumping burned plastics and mercury into the atmosphere.
Computrace is recommended by our local police department. They have had very good luck with recovering laptops with it installed and so we made it a city standard.
You should also consider a hard drive encryption software package. While Computrace might aid you in recovering your device encryption will prevent keep the data safe until you get it back.
I was in Tokyo this summer and met a woman from Hong Kong who was giving a presentation at the university on how polluted areas of China are getting because of all the computer trash. The United States and Japan are the two worst offenders of this.
China's idea of "recycling" is having lower income people burn the old parts in open drums to reclaim the metals. This process dumps tons of burned plastic residue, PCB's and metals such as mercury all over the local landscape. There are areas of China that are becoming almost inhabitable. Birth defects are increasing. The study she did went so far as to measure the significant increase in these chemicals in breast milk.
For most of these chemicals they were tracking, the only places in the world that higher concentrations in the environment were in areas of Taiwan where a lot of this is manufactured.
From a financial perspective US companies that are moving manufacturing to China are not really saving any money on the manufacturing costs. (My wife worked in the finance department for a major power tool manufacturer and others have shared similar stories) Where they are saving money is in not having to provide all the controls and filters that the EPA is requiring at their facilities. The Chinese government has been willing to sell the future health of the country in the name of economic progress. And American companies are all too willing to oblige.
- Novell - well if you are a Novell shop, you will use NDS. You will use everything else Novell has. It is sort of like joining a secret cult.
My oh my. Thank you for the laugh. And yes our Novell boys do tend to want to at least try to run everything Novell makes.... "Yes let's make everyone home drives accessible from the Internet and through a web browser"
Oddly your comment would explain the shaved heads and flowers I keep seeing them walk around with.
I'm in a similar situation. I went to school for 8 years and had nothing to show for it except an impressive liver. I parlayed my time working(haha?) and playing the school's computer and engineering labs into an internship which eventually led to a career and eventually ended my degree pursuit. Well here I am another 8 years later and back in school. Just started back to finish my undergrad in my mid-thirties. I did decide to stay working though and just to get it done I've been taking 3-4 classes.
Some observations I've had so far.
- Work experience does help. I've actually had 3-4 classes waived due to my current career. Yes, it helps to be going back to school in the same field. When you actually learn something new it's easier to relate to it.
- I find myself a lot more focused. I put more time in studying this quarter than in all my previous years.
- Stress levels are significantly increased though. You need to have a rediculously supportive spouse.
- And in response to My Advice (Score:4, Funny) by Dagny Taggert (785517)
1. Start drinking now to build up a tolerance.
You work in IT and don't already have an iron liver? How do you get to sleep at night?
2. If you're married, get divorced; your marriage will not survivce.
See above.... did I happen to mention she likes computer games? I get her some adventure game and let her burry herself in it for hours and she never notices I'm there studying. Of course I'm also not about to get her Evercrack or anything like that...
3. Lot's O' Condoms.
Well if I wasn't married... I guess these ladies might be impressed with a decent bank account... oh wait... we're talking girls in Comp Sci programs?!?!? I'll pass.
4. Did I mention drinking?
Yeah.... That and 1/2 a valium and I might settle my brain down enough to get to sleep.
5. ???
Forget about sleep? How's that for a fill in the blank?
*sigh* Sadly the days of free rides on the company's dollar for training are dwindling. After 10 years of getting at least one class a year and usually the travel bill picked up. The training budgets have been squeezed nice and tight.
I will no longer shop at best buy for two main reasons.
1) My wife went in to buy me a digital camera as a suprise gift just before we went to Japan last year. The sales guy sold her a returned Nikon camera (nice camera btw) but it was without the power cable to charge the rechargeable battery. The worst part was that he ended up selling it to her for $10 less than the store originally wanted as an "Open box item" and it was still $20 more then we could have bought it for online. (she now knows not to buy me tech toys without consulting first;-) ) But either way after our trip it was of course too late to return it.
2) Their stinking rebate policy! It just absolutely sucks to have to fill out a rebate every time I want to buy something from there and the only reason they have it is that's how they keep their price competitive. ugh! And don't get me started on the price matching policy which of course doesn't include other stores rebates.
Slashdot Mirror
Thousands of miles of public dark fiber exists in Cook County.
This same thing was discussed but never gained any traction as it's ATT's backyard and they would have crushed it before it got out the door.
Yes we do Dave Watson 123 Anywhere Ln. Sunnyvale, CA 95014
Ph# 408.123.4567
Spouse: Miss Michigan
Kids: Dave Jr and Susie
“I was shocked, hurt. I felt harassed."
Translation: Momma needs a new pair of Gucci shoes and I've lawyered up ready to sue this bastard.
There's enough legal shows on TV now that everyone has down the language to ensure they can sue someone.
Bad taste yes. Pathetic yes. Free speech yes. ...unless of course it was the city's wifi ap that was hacked. And by hacked I mean they left the manufacturer default password enabled.
Seems the university, being a public institution could have at least a transcript of the debate subject to a FReedom of Information Act Request.
Unless something has changed in the last year that I've been living abroad, you can go to some of the big auto parts stores. Murray's and Autozone I've personally done this at. Go in there and slap down a $75 deposit on your credit card and they will loan you an OBDII sensor for free. Return the sensor and you'll get your deposit back.
Simple as that. I've done it on a couple occasions. Like I said it may have changed or you may not have either of those that I know for sure do it in your neighborhood, but for those that do it works out great.
It's essentially dead. It died in Chicago (even though there's still rumblings to restart it)for a couple reasons. The first was that the investment required by the ISP to provide it did not yield enough of a profit. Second, as usual once the aldermen and the mayor and their cronies start putting all kinds of external demands on it nobody wants to touch it. Then add that you're in Ameritech/AT&T's backyard who can pay enough to make any politician take notice and you want to give away their territory for free?
There's miles and miles and miles of unused fiber all over the city and county all "owned" by different organizations and suborganization and each holding on to it. The problem is the only way to get them to work together would be with some form of regional authority to manage the infrastructure but as soon as they would try to do that the Bell's would jump in and pay off some politicians to convince them that it's in the City/County/State's best interest to just keep paying them to use their services.
I'm sure this is the case in most metropolitan areas. Giving stuff away is un-American you damn socialists!
Good luck.
I'm not suprised it's number one now either.
I don't think it caught on until they started the iPhone for Everyone campaign. (0 Yen for the 8GB) Oh and you need to have established credit in Japan. I had to pay mine up front and then they refund a little every month.
Living in Japan and walking around with my iPhone I find that many Japanese I run into want to check out my iPhone. They'll play with it for a while and tell me they want one. Usually they're waiting to get out of the current contract.
A couple other things that slowed the adoption:
1) Softbank is not known as the best provider. People complain about their customer service quite often. The coverage isn't exactly the best either. It is more the new kid on the block here.
2) The way the phone charges work, your cell phone plan only counts towards calling people on the same network. With Softbank not having the largest market share this keeps a lot of Japanese loyal to their provider because that's what their friends have. If you call AU or a land line, you incur charges over and above your plan. At least you don't pay usually for incoming calls. But if you want to call your friends who don't have an iPhone, you're going to pay so keep it brief.
3) Before they introduced the packet rate discount your bill could be well over $100. That's close to the base rate I had with my iPhone in the states but the Japanese are used to paying a lot less.
4) Emoji! Definitely it lacking originally was a big drawback. See the above charges for using your actual phone and you'll see why they spend a lot of time texting and Emoji are a big part of that.
Now on the plus side:
1) The majority of Japanese do not have home computers. This country is a deadzone for Wi-fi and most of their Internet browsing and other activities is done on their phones. My wife has one of the fancy phones here with TV and all and the web browser sucks compared with an iPhone and Safari. Many of them are looking forward to being able to surf the web with something decent.
2)Games. Many hours on the train everyone is glued to their phones or PSP's playing away. If you combine the gaming of the PSP with Internet and phone the marriage is made for the commutes.
3)As mentioned above, the GS came out just as the marketing push really started taking hold.
Hehe... I like the comment about not caring about the voice control. The Japanese cover their mouths when they speak in public so as not to disturb others around them. I really don't see them embracing voice commands...
btw... just in case anyone thinks about bringing a foreign iPhone over, Softbank in June started cracking down on "foreign" iPhones on their network. Even though you buy the packet discount and all the iPhone packages, Softbank will charge you per packet. I unlocked my old AT&T iPhone 3G for my wife to use because she wasn't happy with the "gadget filled" phone she originally got from Softbank. Well it worked fine for the first couple months, then out of the blue we got a bill for $1600 and another for $400. This has happened to a number of other people as well. They eventually refunded much of it with the promise that we wouldn't do it again.
Unix as well...
How else can you be trained so thoroughly to ignore evidence right before eyes? It's the thing science fiction writers have dreamt about and the Catholic church has perfected in their indoctrination rituals. So complete is the brainwashing that people are willing to hand over their very last penny to an elected official wearing custom made Italian shoes, a pointy hat and living in a great white palace.
`Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous,' he told the meeting. `If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.'
- L. Ron Hubbard
"But I have always thought there might be a lot of cash in starting a new religion...".
- George Orwell
What do you do when you're at the top of your market share and can't innovate to come up with something else and you've bought up every home market vendor?
Crash in on a new commodity market with an overpriced product; while maybe considered a caddilac, sell it at Mercedes prices.
All the while Juniper's chomping at your heals in your traditional space with a rock solid product and chipping away.
Daley wouldn't trust his employees to watch the cameras. They're too busy watching the clock!
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/1413399,mayor-daley-city-workers-customers-020409.article
Actually. OEMC uses software technology to identify "suspicious" activity or people on their camera system to reduce the number of people who need to watch it. It basically looks for people who walk back and forth in front of the camera too many times (maybe a hooker or drug dealer). Or you can do search parameters on suspect descriptions. Obviously not a perfect science but it works well enough that Daley and OEMC are willing to spend as much money in a time of hundred million dollar deficits.
Anyways, the police will tell you it's pretty much just forced the criminals to move away from the cameras to do there business. That is why he needs to put them on every corner.
btw... This program is actually mostly your homeland security grant money at work. OEMC is the only department that can go after those grants and they do like gang-busters.
Daley has pretty much lost control over the City. He has admitted as much in the audio tied to the clockwatchers comment where he says the City doesn't know how to run facilities like the airports, skyway, and parking meters. Yet he forgets that he appoints the commissioners who run the departments each in their own empires.
And yes. Cameras, just like police are reactive measures. They can only respond to crimes.
Unfortunately, the only proactive solution is allowing guns back in the City. Daley's gun ban hasn't worked out so well. The crime rate has really been dropping since then and nobody ever gets shot in the City. He's already said he's going to waste as many tax payer dollars as it takes to fight the supreme court until his last breath.
This Chinese polution... brought to you by America.
Do you really think the only reason they shipped a large portion of manufacturing to China from the states is because labor is cheaper?
It because it's cheaper to manufacture things when you don't need to follow EPA regulations no matter how week they are. Scrubbers on smokestacks cost money. Dumping of toxic chemicals safely costs money.
China is desperate enough to break in to the world economy that they and other countries around it are willing to look the other way. When China does finally start catching on that the western world has shipped their dirty laundry to them the factories will just move to Africa or South America. Other emerging companies looking to look the other way to bring their countries into modern times.
We're even so kind as to ship them our used computer components for kids to burn in open fire pits in order to extract the precious metals. Meanwhile they're dumping burned plastics and mercury into the atmosphere.
Computrace is recommended by our local police department. They have had very good luck with recovering laptops with it installed and so we made it a city standard.
You should also consider a hard drive encryption software package. While Computrace might aid you in recovering your device encryption will prevent keep the data safe until you get it back.
I was in Tokyo this summer and met a woman from Hong Kong who was giving a presentation at the university on how polluted areas of China are getting because of all the computer trash. The United States and Japan are the two worst offenders of this.
China's idea of "recycling" is having lower income people burn the old parts in open drums to reclaim the metals. This process dumps tons of burned plastic residue, PCB's and metals such as mercury all over the local landscape. There are areas of China that are becoming almost inhabitable. Birth defects are increasing. The study she did went so far as to measure the significant increase in these chemicals in breast milk.
For most of these chemicals they were tracking, the only places in the world that higher concentrations in the environment were in areas of Taiwan where a lot of this is manufactured.
From a financial perspective US companies that are moving manufacturing to China are not really saving any money on the manufacturing costs. (My wife worked in the finance department for a major power tool manufacturer and others have shared similar stories) Where they are saving money is in not having to provide all the controls and filters that the EPA is requiring at their facilities. The Chinese government has been willing to sell the future health of the country in the name of economic progress. And American companies are all too willing to oblige.
Why not take the opportunity for him to respond to a moderated question forum from the Slashdot audience?
Glad to see the US ISPs joining the ranks of Chinese ISP
At least that's what my subject heading was... hopefully the spam filter sucks..
- Novell - well if you are a Novell shop, you will use NDS. You will use everything else Novell has. It is sort of like joining a secret cult.
My oh my. Thank you for the laugh. And yes our Novell boys do tend to want to at least try to run everything Novell makes.... "Yes let's make everyone home drives accessible from the Internet and through a web browser"
Oddly your comment would explain the shaved heads and flowers I keep seeing them walk around with.
I'm in a similar situation. I went to school for 8 years and had nothing to show for it except an impressive liver. I parlayed my time working(haha?) and playing the school's computer and engineering labs into an internship which eventually led to a career and eventually ended my degree pursuit. Well here I am another 8 years later and back in school. Just started back to finish my undergrad in my mid-thirties. I did decide to stay working though and just to get it done I've been taking 3-4 classes.
Some observations I've had so far.
- Work experience does help. I've actually had 3-4 classes waived due to my current career. Yes, it helps to be going back to school in the same field. When you actually learn something new it's easier to relate to it.
- I find myself a lot more focused. I put more time in studying this quarter than in all my previous years.
- Stress levels are significantly increased though. You need to have a rediculously supportive spouse.
- And in response to
My Advice (Score:4, Funny)
by Dagny Taggert (785517)
1. Start drinking now to build up a tolerance.
You work in IT and don't already have an iron liver? How do you get to sleep at night?
2. If you're married, get divorced; your marriage will not survivce.
See above.... did I happen to mention she likes computer games? I get her some adventure game and let her burry herself in it for hours and she never notices I'm there studying. Of course I'm also not about to get her Evercrack or anything like that...
3. Lot's O' Condoms.
Well if I wasn't married... I guess these ladies might be impressed with a decent bank account... oh wait... we're talking girls in Comp Sci programs?!?!? I'll pass.
4. Did I mention drinking?
Yeah.... That and 1/2 a valium and I might settle my brain down enough to get to sleep.
5. ???
Forget about sleep? How's that for a fill in the blank?
6. Profit!
I'll get back to you on that.
*sigh* Sadly the days of free rides on the company's dollar for training are dwindling. After 10 years of getting at least one class a year and usually the travel bill picked up. The training budgets have been squeezed nice and tight.
I will no longer shop at best buy for two main reasons.
1) My wife went in to buy me a digital camera as a suprise gift just before we went to Japan last year. The sales guy sold her a returned Nikon camera (nice camera btw) but it was without the power cable to charge the rechargeable battery. The worst part was that he ended up selling it to her for $10 less than the store originally wanted as an "Open box item" and it was still $20 more then we could have bought it for online. (she now knows not to buy me tech toys without consulting first
2) Their stinking rebate policy! It just absolutely sucks to have to fill out a rebate every time I want to buy something from there and the only reason they have it is that's how they keep their price competitive. ugh! And don't get me started on the price matching policy which of course doesn't include other stores rebates.
Only if you're a garden gnome.
There is no "scientific" diagnosis of ADD/ADHD. The "professional diagnosis" is just based on an opinion.