I don't believe that 805 is a toll-free number. IIRC, inbound WATTS lines are 800, 888, 877, and 866.
From 411.com reverse lookup:
(805) 214-4801 is a land line based in Newbury Park, CA The registered service provider is Pacific Bell**. Detailed listing information is not available.
**Due to number portability, some numbers have been transferred to a new service provider
I'm glad to see this one. I hope that it is a sign of increasing popularity of this alternative fuel.
Biodiesel has actually been around for some time now. For about $4K, you can buy a home biodiesel plant that is capable of producing 40 gallons a week of the stuff, with about 2 hours of effort, 50 cents/gallon worth of chemicals, plus whatever you have to pay for vegetable oil (waste vegetable oil can still be obtained for free, but I expect that will change as it gets more popular).
And unlike ethanol, electric, or hydrogen, biodiesel can be used right now without the need for inventing entirely new technologies.
Actually, there are many people who are discovering that the alternatives to ebay ARE viable. For instance, I sell about 1/3rd as much stuff on www.Blujay.com as I do on Ebay, but because of all the fees, I get to keep more of what I make on Blujay.com. Not only that, but listing on Blujay is a lot less work! Other sellers have reported similar results with OnlineAuction.com, which now has about 20% as many listings as ebay, according to the auction listings count on www.powersellersunite.com
Both www.Blujay.com and www.OnlineAuction.com are growing steadily, while ebay appears to be shrinking slowly. With the latest announcements from Google, that shrinking may speed up.
I doubt that a boycott against **AA will accomplish much. On the other hand, a better business model might just wipe them out completely. There ARE companies out there that use a better business model. For instance http://www.magnatune.com/ -- check them out! You can listen any number of times for free before you buy, you can decide how much to pay (within limits), half of the price goes to the artist (unheard of in **AA labels!!!), and the TOS allows you to share your download with up to two of your friends. Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Magnatune.com, although I wish they had an affiliate program (they don't), so I get no monetary reward for mentioning them. But I think they are the wave of the future.
There is no way I would ever leave any more than absolutely necessary in my PayPal account. 4.7% is nowhere near enough to offset the risk. With their history of arbitrary and random screwing of accountholders (with no recourse, since they are an unregulated 'bank'), I simply don't leave any more money in that account than I can afford to lose. I also back it with a separate bank account, which I also sweep on a regular basis, since they can just go into that bank account whenever they feel like it.
100 sales/wk is pretty big volume, and very few ebay sellers come anywhere close to that. However, if the new Google CheckOut is combined with with something like Froogle or Googlebase (or your own website), the savings over ebay/paypal are substantially higher. That's because most ebay sellers have nowhere near a 100% sell-through rate, and ebay gets its cut whether you sell or not. There are already two other listing services that I like, OnlineAuction.com (no listing or FV fees, and now more than 10% the size of ebay and still growing), and Blujay.com (free listings, and I have sold several items there). Now, with the addition of other services of Google (GoogleBase and Froogle... and perhaps more in the future), it looks like it may be viable to reduce my presence on ebay to just a few higher-demand items, and do most of my selling elsewhere. Multiply that by a few hundred thousand people with approximately my ebay volume, and you will see a huge dip in ebay over the next few months.
There's nothing wrong with either Ebay or PayPal... that a dose of viable competition wouldn't cure in a heartbeat. PayPal has pissed off enough people that CheckOut is virtually guaranteed to be an immediate success, but probably won't kill PayPal immediately. PayPal will simply clean up its act, which is long overdue. (Thanks, Google!!) As for ebay, they are on the downhill slide anyway. They have grown too big to effectively manage, they have become a fraud magnet, and they are chasing a business model that has some curious shortcomings (most of what is currently sold on Ebay is not really well-suited to the auction format). A combination of GoogleBase and CheckOut will eventually reduce ebay to a footnote in internet history (Something along the lines of, "For those of you that don't remember Ebay, it was once the largest auction/ecommerce site by a factor of more than 10").
I will be checking out the new CheckOut, with some initial testing in my violin business, and if the results are good, I may move all of my business away from Ebay.
"By comparison, 500 GHz is more than 250 times faster than today's cell phones, which typically operate at approximately 2 GHz, according to the organizations."
And in other news, apples and oranges usually taste different.
The only question about computer speed that is important is, "Is it fast enough?" Of course, "fast enough" may change over time, and anytime you come up with a faster processor, some company like Microsoft will succeed in loading it down with bloatware. But I've got a customer who runs his company on software that I wrote for him 15 years ago, and the only reason he ever upgrades his hardware is because something breaks that is no longer available. Otherwise, the 8MHz 286 system would have been perfectly adequate.
[bmongar] Wow, who uses lines of code as a metric.
This brought back a memory of an event that I still find amusing after all of these years. Back in 1978, I was working for a defense contractor. I remember a department meeting in which one of the managers brought in a stack of graybar printout and proudly held a ruler next to it. He proclaimed that his group had produced 9 "side-inches" (the depth of the paper stack) of software, and outlined several items that were to be given to his group as a reward for such an outstanding accomplishment. Next meeting, all the managers brought stack of graybar and rulers. And surprise! surprise! surprise!, every one of those stacks was even more than 9 inches deep.
Within a year, over half of the projects represented by those stacks of graybar had been cancelled, unfinished. Today, that company is no longer in business.
As has been pointed out by many authors on the subject, you get what you measure.
I'm left with managing over 14 machines here (and it's pro bono) for a few kids centers here, and Win98 is about the only thing that runs decently on these machines.
You read (and post on) Slashdot, and you don't know about Linux?
Without the 2nd amendment, the rest of the document is only wishful thinking. As soon as the 2nd amendment is repealed (as it already has been in states like NY, MA, and CA), we can kiss the rest of our freedoms goodbye, too.
One of the most promising ebay alternatives that I've seen is onlineauction.com, which is currently the #2 auction site (in terms of listings). Unfortunately, onlineauction sellers still appear to rely heavily on PayPal. I've heard that WagglePop.com is back -- but they rely exclusively on PayPal, which pretty much kills it for me. What we really need is a viable PayPal alternative. I wish Google would hurry up with Google-Pay or whatever they end up calling it.
The auction format is not really very well suited to the stuff that I sell, and I have been having fairly good luck with Blujay.com.
Remember MS Bob? That's the sort-of PIM that MS was offering a few years back. If you entered your password into MS Bob wrong 3 times, you would get a messagebox suggesting that you choose a different password that is easier to remember/type. If you entered a new password into the dialog at that point, it would accept it without any further authentification.
Is this this company you want running PayPal? Isn't PayPal screwed up enough already?
Algae farming actually has the potential of replacing all diesel and gasoline usage in the US using only a tiny fraction of the land area available. There are several cost/benefit analyses of this on the 'net, such as this one. Estimates of algae-biodiesel yield range from 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre/year. Soy-diesel has a lower yield, but has some other economically beneficial by-products. Biodiesel is the most promising energy technology I have seen to date. Compare biodiesel to ethanol -- the producers of ethanol find it more economical to burn fossil fuels in ethanol production than the ethanol -- DOH! With the current price of dinofuel around $3/gal, biodiesel is also suddenly cost-competitive, and for about $3000, you can buy a home biodiesel production facility that can manufacture 40 gallons/week at a cost of about 50 cents per gallon plus whatever you have to pay for the oil, and about 2 hours/week in ongoing labor.
Close. The 1st priority of any union's leadership is to make sure that the union members are unhappy. Happy workers don't want a union. Whatever problems exist in tech employment, unionization is not the answer.
In any case, the government has been bought off on this one. With the current government-encouraged abuse of the H1-b system, programming will be a McJob by the end of the decade, and that isn't very far off. My solution to the problem is to build a business that I hope will support me before that happens. Best part of that is that I enjoy teaching young children how to play the violin a lot better than I like putting up with the attitude that all programmers are fungible.
This is just another organization that believes that if they throw enough money at a problem it will fix anything.
Well maybe, just maybe, I can finally get a job at MS...
Ok, just kidding. I would not fit in there anyway. I have way too much experience. The interview would be kinda like the one I had with Amazon -- when I saw that the interview team was composed entirely of children, I knew I did not have a chance.
The cellphone manufacturers, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that everyone wants a damned camera attached to the cellphone. That is certainly not true in my case! I have no use for a cellphone camera, and some places where I have worked recently don't allow them on site, which means that I have to check my cellphone at the front desk.
If the cellphone makers would just offer each model sans camera, maybe a couple of dollars cheaper, they might just be surprized at how few people actually want one. The only cellphones I have found without a camera anymore are also lacking other features, such as bluetooth.
I'd be willing to bet real money that these turkeys will either radically change their approach, or be out of business in 6 months. Maybe I'm not a representative user of the 'Net, but I don't know of ANYBODY who would consider a one-way surfing experience to be an adequate substitute for the real internet. The real internet is a two-way medium. You want one-way? Watch a DVD movie on your laptop during the time you are separated from the 'Net. Generally, I prefer to read a book or listen to classical music, so maybe I am in a tiny minority.
But to me, without two-way content, the internet is utterly effing useless.
Get a pitch pipe for tuning. Never needs batteries or re-booting. Costs less than $10 even with shipping (I'd be happy to sell you one). Once you become able to tune in fifths by ear, get a tuning fork tuned to A440.
If you don't have a teacher, get one. Take a portable cassette recorder with you to your lessons, and record them for playback during the week. Develop good practice habits: 30 minutes/day consistently is better than 8 hours on Saturdays.
For computer stuff, the only thing I use is a collection of music in PDF files; for about $80, I was able to replace a $10,000 collection of sheet music and etude books. Otherwise, I haven't bothered with computer stuff, but that may be because I was a professional violinist long before there were any personal computers.
No images and compression on the text would probably change that quite a bit.
Not enough so's you'd notice. What's the difference between one thimbleful of ocean and 100 thimblefuls of ocean? Besides trying to solve the wrong problem to begin with?
Actually between 10^-10 and zero percent. Probably much closer to zero. But nobody really knows just how big the WWW is, or even how fast it's growing. Even the mighty Google doesn't index more than a small percentage.
FTFA: There's a fine line between crazy and audacious -- we'll know soon enough which side Webaroo falls on.
I can already tell you which side of the line it falls on. In addition to 80g being a thimbleful of ocean, websurfing is not my main use of the internet. How, for instance, are they going to support reading blogs, or even/.? My main use of the internet is to send and receive mail. Followed by participating in several blogs and fora (like/.). My home page is Google/ig, set up to monitor several RSS feeds, email, and news. This idea is so bad it isn't even wrong. It's pathetic.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't believe that 805 is a toll-free number. IIRC, inbound WATTS lines are 800, 888, 877, and 866.
From 411.com reverse lookup:
(805) 214-4801 is a land line based in Newbury Park, CA
The registered service provider is Pacific Bell**.
Detailed listing information is not available.
**Due to number portability, some numbers have been transferred to a new service provider
I'm glad to see this one. I hope that it is a sign of increasing popularity of this alternative fuel. Biodiesel has actually been around for some time now. For about $4K, you can buy a home biodiesel plant that is capable of producing 40 gallons a week of the stuff, with about 2 hours of effort, 50 cents/gallon worth of chemicals, plus whatever you have to pay for vegetable oil (waste vegetable oil can still be obtained for free, but I expect that will change as it gets more popular). And unlike ethanol, electric, or hydrogen, biodiesel can be used right now without the need for inventing entirely new technologies.
Both www.Blujay.com and www.OnlineAuction.com are growing steadily, while ebay appears to be shrinking slowly. With the latest announcements from Google, that shrinking may speed up.
I doubt that a boycott against **AA will accomplish much. On the other hand, a better business model might just wipe them out completely. There ARE companies out there that use a better business model. For instance http://www.magnatune.com/ -- check them out! You can listen any number of times for free before you buy, you can decide how much to pay (within limits), half of the price goes to the artist (unheard of in **AA labels!!!), and the TOS allows you to share your download with up to two of your friends. Disclaimer: I have no relationship with Magnatune.com, although I wish they had an affiliate program (they don't), so I get no monetary reward for mentioning them. But I think they are the wave of the future.
There is no way I would ever leave any more than absolutely necessary in my PayPal account. 4.7% is nowhere near enough to offset the risk. With their history of arbitrary and random screwing of accountholders (with no recourse, since they are an unregulated 'bank'), I simply don't leave any more money in that account than I can afford to lose. I also back it with a separate bank account, which I also sweep on a regular basis, since they can just go into that bank account whenever they feel like it.
100 sales/wk is pretty big volume, and very few ebay sellers come anywhere close to that. However, if the new Google CheckOut is combined with with something like Froogle or Googlebase (or your own website), the savings over ebay/paypal are substantially higher. That's because most ebay sellers have nowhere near a 100% sell-through rate, and ebay gets its cut whether you sell or not. There are already two other listing services that I like, OnlineAuction.com (no listing or FV fees, and now more than 10% the size of ebay and still growing), and Blujay.com (free listings, and I have sold several items there). Now, with the addition of other services of Google (GoogleBase and Froogle... and perhaps more in the future), it looks like it may be viable to reduce my presence on ebay to just a few higher-demand items, and do most of my selling elsewhere. Multiply that by a few hundred thousand people with approximately my ebay volume, and you will see a huge dip in ebay over the next few months.
I will be checking out the new CheckOut, with some initial testing in my violin business, and if the results are good, I may move all of my business away from Ebay.
And in other news, apples and oranges usually taste different.
The only question about computer speed that is important is, "Is it fast enough?" Of course, "fast enough" may change over time, and anytime you come up with a faster processor, some company like Microsoft will succeed in loading it down with bloatware. But I've got a customer who runs his company on software that I wrote for him 15 years ago, and the only reason he ever upgrades his hardware is because something breaks that is no longer available. Otherwise, the 8MHz 286 system would have been perfectly adequate.
This brought back a memory of an event that I still find amusing after all of these years. Back in 1978, I was working for a defense contractor. I remember a department meeting in which one of the managers brought in a stack of graybar printout and proudly held a ruler next to it. He proclaimed that his group had produced 9 "side-inches" (the depth of the paper stack) of software, and outlined several items that were to be given to his group as a reward for such an outstanding accomplishment. Next meeting, all the managers brought stack of graybar and rulers. And surprise! surprise! surprise!, every one of those stacks was even more than 9 inches deep.
Within a year, over half of the projects represented by those stacks of graybar had been cancelled, unfinished. Today, that company is no longer in business.
As has been pointed out by many authors on the subject, you get what you measure.
You read (and post on) Slashdot, and you don't know about Linux?
Without the 2nd amendment, the rest of the document is only wishful thinking. As soon as the 2nd amendment is repealed (as it already has been in states like NY, MA, and CA), we can kiss the rest of our freedoms goodbye, too.
The parent post is too true to be funny.
The auction format is not really very well suited to the stuff that I sell, and I have been having fairly good luck with Blujay.com.
Is this this company you want running PayPal? Isn't PayPal screwed up enough already?
The company where I have my current day-job is in the process of moving from Lotus Notes to MS Outlook. This is being presented as a Big Leap Forward.
Algae farming actually has the potential of replacing all diesel and gasoline usage in the US using only a tiny fraction of the land area available. There are several cost/benefit analyses of this on the 'net, such as this one. Estimates of algae-biodiesel yield range from 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre/year. Soy-diesel has a lower yield, but has some other economically beneficial by-products. Biodiesel is the most promising energy technology I have seen to date. Compare biodiesel to ethanol -- the producers of ethanol find it more economical to burn fossil fuels in ethanol production than the ethanol -- DOH! With the current price of dinofuel around $3/gal, biodiesel is also suddenly cost-competitive, and for about $3000, you can buy a home biodiesel production facility that can manufacture 40 gallons/week at a cost of about 50 cents per gallon plus whatever you have to pay for the oil, and about 2 hours/week in ongoing labor.
Close. The 1st priority of any union's leadership is to make sure that the union members are unhappy. Happy workers don't want a union. Whatever problems exist in tech employment, unionization is not the answer.
In any case, the government has been bought off on this one. With the current government-encouraged abuse of the H1-b system, programming will be a McJob by the end of the decade, and that isn't very far off. My solution to the problem is to build a business that I hope will support me before that happens. Best part of that is that I enjoy teaching young children how to play the violin a lot better than I like putting up with the attitude that all programmers are fungible.
Well maybe, just maybe, I can finally get a job at MS...
Ok, just kidding. I would not fit in there anyway. I have way too much experience. The interview would be kinda like the one I had with Amazon -- when I saw that the interview team was composed entirely of children, I knew I did not have a chance.
If the cellphone makers would just offer each model sans camera, maybe a couple of dollars cheaper, they might just be surprized at how few people actually want one. The only cellphones I have found without a camera anymore are also lacking other features, such as bluetooth.
But to me, without two-way content, the internet is utterly effing useless.
If you don't have a teacher, get one. Take a portable cassette recorder with you to your lessons, and record them for playback during the week. Develop good practice habits: 30 minutes/day consistently is better than 8 hours on Saturdays.
For computer stuff, the only thing I use is a collection of music in PDF files; for about $80, I was able to replace a $10,000 collection of sheet music and etude books. Otherwise, I haven't bothered with computer stuff, but that may be because I was a professional violinist long before there were any personal computers.
Not enough so's you'd notice. What's the difference between one thimbleful of ocean and 100 thimblefuls of ocean? Besides trying to solve the wrong problem to begin with?
Actually between 10^-10 and zero percent. Probably much closer to zero. But nobody really knows just how big the WWW is, or even how fast it's growing. Even the mighty Google doesn't index more than a small percentage.
I can already tell you which side of the line it falls on. In addition to 80g being a thimbleful of ocean, websurfing is not my main use of the internet. How, for instance, are they going to support reading blogs, or even /.? My main use of the internet is to send and receive mail. Followed by participating in several blogs and fora (like /.). My home page is Google/ig, set up to monitor several RSS feeds, email, and news. This idea is so bad it isn't even wrong. It's pathetic.
That would cover about 0.0000000001% of the web, give or take a few dozen orders of magitude.