OK, I've owned enough fast cars to understand that faster is always better, but in practical terms just how much download speed does anyone really need?
We're using Shaw Cable in Canada, the budget plan, and thus far it does everything we want, including downloading distros and (surely paid for, not pirated) movies in a reasonable amount of time, and streaming video via our Sony BluRay player.
Maybe I'm just an old fart that remembers 300 baud, and the amazing jump to 56k, but really folks, what in God's name are you doing that requires more than cable Internet speed?
(awful rich for Netflix to pretend to be looking out for consumers when their own service rips off Canada customers by offering 1/4 the choices at the same price)
I too made the jump from Pegasus - remember Pegasus! - to Gmail years ago, and have been more or less happy, aside from some oddball missing features like the ability to resend a message in the "Sent" mailbox. But I digress...
I probably access e-mail more from my Android phone than from my desktop machine, but still want to have the same experience on both platforms. That really does seem to limit you to a web-based platform from a mega-corporation. Which means I'm stuck with whatever interface they choose to give me.
I've considered moving back to a desktop client, for all of the usual reasons - security, privacy, local backup of messages - but the last time I looked at Thunderbird it just looked like too much work to try and set up what I already have in Gmail, plus I have to assume that getting archived mail out of Google and into a new client would be a nightmare.
There really is a strong argument for taking e-mail back from the Googles and Microsofts, but in practical terms I just don't know if I'm up to the size of that task, or the restraints it might place on me. (Part of the problem being that the last time I made a radical shift in e-mail I had a back history of a hundred megs. Now Google tells me it's up to 1.5 gigs.)
Is it really practical to develop a standalone e-mail client that works happily in the dual mobile/desktop environemnt?
I only pay $30 a month for "unlimited" data (up top 5 gigs at "4g") and 100 minutes of talk time
Wow. In Canada, with Telus, $50 gets 1 gig of data, with the "option" of paying $25 for an extra 2 gigs. And Voicemail is an add-on for another $8 a month.
Whew, thank God it's the 30th anniversary of AIDS. Now that it's trendy again we don't have to worry about losing Aspergers. For a minute I thought we would have to start worrying about "ordinary" medical conditions.
Although I still hope for the day when People will cover star studded fundraisers for corns and calluses.
The total number of entries for Canada is currently 2687 movies/shows . The total number of entries for USA is currently 10407 movies/shows. Same price, one quarter the movies.
When I can get the same choice, at the same price, I'll be more than happy to pay my $8 a month. Until then the media corps can suck eggs.
Yes! At the same time that lawyers and courts have discovered on-line calendars, many offices have adopted word processors instead of using IBM Selectrics!
Seriously, this is hardly news. What has changed in divorce is that most jurisdictions have abandoned most of the moralistic old garbage surrounding it, and now make it (reasonably) painless for intelligent adults to dissolve a marriage. Even when there are kids.
Not that there aren't still enough idiots out there to keep the lawyers busy.....
My God. I don't know what's more sad - that we live in an age where some people feel the need to police the use of "Reply All", or where some corporation will actually go to the expense to remove it.
In days of yore there would have been a pretty simple solution: if you misused it your boss would sit you down and tell you never to do it again. Case closed.
Now, can someone tell Gmail that it would be handy to be able "Resend" a Sent message that bounced or was deleted at the other end by mistake?
When I was a youngun' in Canada - say in the 70's of the last century, all personal banking was free. Banks operated on the crazy notion that profit = interest collected on loans - interest paid on deposits. (OK, probably more complex than that, but that was the story)
Anyhow, that all changed when Canadian banks loaned a truckload of money to some Central American countries that went broke and defaulted on the loans. Rather than see their shareholders suffer for the bad decisions, user charges started to appear.
They have of course become a profit center of their own.
I stopped worrying about battery life when I finally made the mental leap from "it's a phone with lots of features" to "it's cool little computer that also makes phone calls."
Considering all that I use it for, sixteen to twenty hours on a charge is pretty damned good for a computer that fits in my pocket.
FWIW - Nexus S Android GB, ICS, JB: No really crashes or serious problems. CM9 on the same phone - lots of wierdness.
My biggest complaint with most word processors is their default behaviour to change e-mail addresses and web addresses into blue, underlined hyperlinks.
I actually use word processors to create stuff that gets printed on paper. Hyperlinking, blueifying, and underlining words is useless to me, and wastes my time. I can think of no good reason why MS or anyone else should assume that every user of their word processor is creating web pages.
And while I'm at it, I can't think of a single time when I wanted the formatting from a web page to be carried into a printed document when I copied and pasted a block of text. Surely the sensible default should be to paste in plain text and pick up formatting from the destination document? At the very least this should be an optional default.
I've quite happily settled into Mint Cinnamon for the last year. That followed a year or two of Ubuntu - pre-Unity, Windows of various vintages, and a MAc G4.
Mint "Just Works". Installs easy, does everything that I want without headaches.
And with Vista in a Virtual machine I can even run Quickbooks, the single program that forced to boot into Windows once a month for bookkeeping and invoicing.
I've got enough years of computers behind me that I really want easy, reliable, and stable. Mint does all of those things.
Anyone else note "although his biggest piece of advice for you (at the end of the video) " in the original post, and wonder where in hell the video is located?
I'm coming at this after twenty+ years on non-profits, including time as a consultant, and time working with technology.
Your'e new. Too new to be suggesting anything dramatic unless you have been explicitly drafted to do so. If you're not 100% sure that is the case, then it's not. All that you'll do is piss people off.
You're new. It will take you at least 18 to 24 months to really understand how the organization works. And that much longer until you know the history behind the way things work. Now's the time to sit tight, keep your mouth shut, and listen and watch.
Ignore Bob's stuff. Almost certainly 95% of anything really important exists on paper - primarily minutes and budget docs. The rest is historical stuff that's nice to have, but not mission critical. I once stepped into a non-profit which, after twenty years, had exactly one banker's box of records. Someone had purged everything else in the place. We survived.
Start from scratch. Seriously, just start creating records in a new organised format. Leave the old stuff on the (virtual) shelf. If you really need it, there will be a back-up somewhere, or someone will have printed a copy.
Finally, You're brand new. Two seats are open. Records are in a mess. I'll wager that there a lot more pressing problems than just record-keeping.
Finally again, the stuff that really, really matters - minutes, budgets, grant and funding documents - should exist on paper, in a file cabinet. As much as a I love e-docs, some things are just better in a permanent, uneditable form.
The absolute worst thing about the installation of smart meters in these parts is the endless string of "news stories" by our local community "newspaper"* about the significant health risks posed by smart meters.
It finally reached the point where, lacking any scientific evidence, they're now resorting to trying to outlaw Smart Meters, WIFI, and cel towers because of "electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). Patients with EHS suffer a variety of symptoms from heart palpitations to migraines they claim are caused by radio frequency radiation.
"You know that western medicine doctors don't know anything about EHS and my naturopath actually tested me. On the sole of the foot on the inside there is a point where he tests the sensitivity to electromagnetic fields. It was very painful and he found out that I am very sensitive," Nemetzade says.
* scare quotes used because, well, the rag is actually pretty scary.
Yeah, but the point is that ANY power generation scheme has some impact somewhere. Once you rule out nuclear which I don't) hydro is the technology which had the least objectionable impacts.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I've owned enough fast cars to understand that faster is always better, but in practical terms just how much download speed does anyone really need?
We're using Shaw Cable in Canada, the budget plan, and thus far it does everything we want, including downloading distros and (surely paid for, not pirated) movies in a reasonable amount of time, and streaming video via our Sony BluRay player.
Maybe I'm just an old fart that remembers 300 baud, and the amazing jump to 56k, but really folks, what in God's name are you doing that requires more than cable Internet speed?
(awful rich for Netflix to pretend to be looking out for consumers when their own service rips off Canada customers by offering 1/4 the choices at the same price)
This story originated on PLOS ( The public library of science ), my number one fave science site. Peer reviewed! http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2012/12/06/prowling-catfish-catch-pigeons-on-land/
T-Bird, MUTT, Kmail, Evolution... interesting choices.
I too made the jump from Pegasus - remember Pegasus! - to Gmail years ago, and have been more or less happy, aside from some oddball missing features like the ability to resend a message in the "Sent" mailbox. But I digress...
I probably access e-mail more from my Android phone than from my desktop machine, but still want to have the same experience on both platforms. That really does seem to limit you to a web-based platform from a mega-corporation. Which means I'm stuck with whatever interface they choose to give me.
I've considered moving back to a desktop client, for all of the usual reasons - security, privacy, local backup of messages - but the last time I looked at Thunderbird it just looked like too much work to try and set up what I already have in Gmail, plus I have to assume that getting archived mail out of Google and into a new client would be a nightmare.
There really is a strong argument for taking e-mail back from the Googles and Microsofts, but in practical terms I just don't know if I'm up to the size of that task, or the restraints it might place on me. (Part of the problem being that the last time I made a radical shift in e-mail I had a back history of a hundred megs. Now Google tells me it's up to 1.5 gigs.)
Is it really practical to develop a standalone e-mail client that works happily in the dual mobile/desktop environemnt?
Looked at Wind, but the limited coverage area makes it a no-go for me. Otherwise I'd be gone in a flash.
I only pay $30 a month for "unlimited" data (up top 5 gigs at "4g") and 100 minutes of talk time
Wow. In Canada, with Telus, $50 gets 1 gig of data, with the "option" of paying $25 for an extra 2 gigs. And Voicemail is an add-on for another $8 a month.
Whew, thank God it's the 30th anniversary of AIDS. Now that it's trendy again we don't have to worry about losing Aspergers. For a minute I thought we would have to start worrying about "ordinary" medical conditions.
Although I still hope for the day when People will cover star studded fundraisers for corns and calluses.
I'll stick with my good old analogue television. I just don't like the brittle, compressed pictures on these new "digital" TVs.
Of course I'm still trying to figure out where to find some of that good, old, warm, analog TV signal to feed it.
My Lord! If they've done this, what could be next? National socialized health care?
Which, according The Reg, will now allow a 10 gig attachment.
Google vs MPAA??
Cause in a real emergency they ALWAYS work. And are fast.
Why this really pisses me off: just bought a new Sony Blu-Ray player, and especially chose one with WIFI and NetFlix built in.
I now discover that because I'm in Canada I can only choose from one quarter of the movies and shows available in the US.
The total number of entries for Canada is currently 2687 movies/shows . The total number of entries for USA is currently 10407 movies/shows. Same price, one quarter the movies.
When I can get the same choice, at the same price, I'll be more than happy to pay my $8 a month. Until then the media corps can suck eggs.
Yes! At the same time that lawyers and courts have discovered on-line calendars, many offices have adopted word processors instead of using IBM Selectrics!
Seriously, this is hardly news. What has changed in divorce is that most jurisdictions have abandoned most of the moralistic old garbage surrounding it, and now make it (reasonably) painless for intelligent adults to dissolve a marriage. Even when there are kids.
Not that there aren't still enough idiots out there to keep the lawyers busy.....
My God. I don't know what's more sad - that we live in an age where some people feel the need to police the use of "Reply All", or where some corporation will actually go to the expense to remove it.
In days of yore there would have been a pretty simple solution: if you misused it your boss would sit you down and tell you never to do it again. Case closed.
Now, can someone tell Gmail that it would be handy to be able "Resend" a Sent message that bounced or was deleted at the other end by mistake?
When I was a youngun' in Canada - say in the 70's of the last century, all personal banking was free. Banks operated on the crazy notion that profit = interest collected on loans - interest paid on deposits. (OK, probably more complex than that, but that was the story)
Anyhow, that all changed when Canadian banks loaned a truckload of money to some Central American countries that went broke and defaulted on the loans. Rather than see their shareholders suffer for the bad decisions, user charges started to appear.
They have of course become a profit center of their own.
I stopped worrying about battery life when I finally made the mental leap from "it's a phone with lots of features" to "it's cool little computer that also makes phone calls."
Considering all that I use it for, sixteen to twenty hours on a charge is pretty damned good for a computer that fits in my pocket.
FWIW - Nexus S Android GB, ICS, JB: No really crashes or serious problems. CM9 on the same phone - lots of wierdness.
You're looking for Paste and Match Style, shift-option-command-V.
Wow - that's super intuitive! Why the fuck does it matter if a printed URL is blue and underlined or black and unstyled?
Because professional design matters, and non-functioning formatting doesn't fucking enhance anything.
My biggest complaint with most word processors is their default behaviour to change e-mail addresses and web addresses into blue, underlined hyperlinks.
I actually use word processors to create stuff that gets printed on paper. Hyperlinking, blueifying, and underlining words is useless to me, and wastes my time. I can think of no good reason why MS or anyone else should assume that every user of their word processor is creating web pages.
And while I'm at it, I can't think of a single time when I wanted the formatting from a web page to be carried into a printed document when I copied and pasted a block of text. Surely the sensible default should be to paste in plain text and pick up formatting from the destination document? At the very least this should be an optional default.
Processor : 2x AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5600+ Memory : 3082MB (2354MB used) Operating System : Linux Mint 13 Maya Oracle V 4.1.12 Base memory 700 megs Video memory 21 megs SATA Drive: Virtual Size 25 gigs
I've quite happily settled into Mint Cinnamon for the last year. That followed a year or two of Ubuntu - pre-Unity, Windows of various vintages, and a MAc G4.
Mint "Just Works". Installs easy, does everything that I want without headaches.
And with Vista in a Virtual machine I can even run Quickbooks, the single program that forced to boot into Windows once a month for bookkeeping and invoicing.
I've got enough years of computers behind me that I really want easy, reliable, and stable. Mint does all of those things.
a student member of a popular graphing calculator hacking site
yeah, that my kind of crowd!
Anyone else note "although his biggest piece of advice for you (at the end of the video) " in the original post, and wonder where in hell the video is located?
Yeah, like we even need that stuff....
I'm coming at this after twenty+ years on non-profits, including time as a consultant, and time working with technology.
Your'e new. Too new to be suggesting anything dramatic unless you have been explicitly drafted to do so. If you're not 100% sure that is the case, then it's not. All that you'll do is piss people off.
You're new. It will take you at least 18 to 24 months to really understand how the organization works. And that much longer until you know the history behind the way things work. Now's the time to sit tight, keep your mouth shut, and listen and watch.
Ignore Bob's stuff. Almost certainly 95% of anything really important exists on paper - primarily minutes and budget docs. The rest is historical stuff that's nice to have, but not mission critical. I once stepped into a non-profit which, after twenty years, had exactly one banker's box of records. Someone had purged everything else in the place. We survived.
Start from scratch. Seriously, just start creating records in a new organised format. Leave the old stuff on the (virtual) shelf. If you really need it, there will be a back-up somewhere, or someone will have printed a copy.
Finally, You're brand new. Two seats are open. Records are in a mess. I'll wager that there a lot more pressing problems than just record-keeping.
Finally again, the stuff that really, really matters - minutes, budgets, grant and funding documents - should exist on paper, in a file cabinet. As much as a I love e-docs, some things are just better in a permanent, uneditable form.
The absolute worst thing about the installation of smart meters in these parts is the endless string of "news stories" by our local community "newspaper"* about the significant health risks posed by smart meters.
It finally reached the point where, lacking any scientific evidence, they're now resorting to trying to outlaw Smart Meters, WIFI, and cel towers because of "electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). Patients with EHS suffer a variety of symptoms from heart palpitations to migraines they claim are caused by radio frequency radiation.
"You know that western medicine doctors don't know anything about EHS and my naturopath actually tested me. On the sole of the foot on the inside there is a point where he tests the sensitivity to electromagnetic fields. It was very painful and he found out that I am very sensitive," Nemetzade says.
* scare quotes used because, well, the rag is actually pretty scary.
Yeah, but the point is that ANY power generation scheme has some impact somewhere. Once you rule out nuclear which I don't) hydro is the technology which had the least objectionable impacts.