Perhaps it was just a local ad, but the best one I saw was the Smirnoff vodka commercial (I'm probably misspelling the vodka's name). It's a re-hash of all the recent bear-attacks-campsite commercials that Toyota and Wendy's (to name two) are making, but far more hilarious.
Yes, it is funny when the one guy hoses the other guy with honey and then takes the drinks and the women.
The Snicker's commercials were also pretty good. Those damn car alarms have to go. And all those little dolls, priceless.
. . . that this monstrosity (or perhaps atrocity) is thoroughly reviewed from the source up. I fear that it will just get the rubber stamp from Congress (whose members have used "soft funds" to include backdoors in the software making it impossible to vote them out of office).
Personally, I'll keep using a mail-in vote so I can vote weeks in advance and not stand in line. I mean, I use computers and other technology for just about everything, but I just can't trust this particular troika when it comes to my vote. Call it a vote of no confidence.
Recently, I applied for a home loan so that I could stop pissing my money into someone else's pocket. I had a copy of my credit report, and had shown it to my mortgage broker, who said it was one of the cleaner credit reports he'd seen (maybe he was blowing smoke up my arse, who knows). Never mind that I got this credit report for free because I was turned down for a credit card (the Dilbert card if you must know).
Here's the rub: my broker, thinking that I had pretty damn good credit, waited to check things out a final time before applying for the mortgage. Of course, to do this, one has to check with every agency that might have given me a loan in the past, etc. Turns out a federal agency in charge of student loans said that I had an outstanding, unpaid student loan of some largish amount. What?!? I starved in college. I never had any loan. So I called them up. Turns out that is was just my SS#. The name, birthdate, etc. attached to the loan didn't match any of my information. To prove it, I sent them copies of my passport, birth certificate, a letter from my current employer about yadda yadda. Sure, they got it cleared up. It was pretty cut and dried.
But . . .
Could someone please explain to me why a federal agency couldn't have checked my federal tax number and have seen that Joe Public, who went to (I kid you not) beauty school on a student loan, isn't me?
Just think. Anyone can make up a SS# to get a student loan. And no one will check.
Sure, I put a lot of personal information on my web page. Information I want you to know. But that does not include my tax numbers, my credit card numbers, or my early experimentation with drug culture and the resulting arrest 8 years ago! Funny, when I say it's my personal information, that phrase implies ownership. I guess it's not really true.
Whose dollars put those folks up there in the first place?
Not yours. You're paying for another Osprey VTOL experimental plane. Not mine. I'm paying for the S&L bailout. Still. And about 75% of the rest of the/. community is paying interest on the National Debt. The entire NASA busget is being supported by a small village in Ottumwa, Idaho.
Anyway, last I checked, the Voyager program is costing every man, woman and child about $1.87. So let's not start complaining about NASA's use of our money.
Having also (alsø alsø wik) worked for a NP, I know first-hand that talented network admins are extraordinarily hard to hold on to. The turn over is massive. I stuck it out longer than most and I was only there for a year. At less than 30K a year, someone was bound to outbid the NP for me.
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind volunteering my time to work on a NP's network. Of course, it has to be a Mac network. Or a Linux network. Either so easy to set up, you can show someone else, or so bullet-proof, you set it up once and forget about it (Set it and forget it, Ron!). Windows networks are designed to keep sub-par network admins employed.
The Acela is actually derived from TGV technology, and not the Japanese Bullet Train, making the title of the article a little bit . . . misleading.
Having flown the TGV from Geneva to Paris, I must say that it is very comfortable. I hope the idea takes off here in the US as it has in Europe (there are several different TGV lines now operating between many major cities in Europe, including the Eurostar London-Paris Chunnel train). Too bad I moved back West before Amtrak got the line done.
As to the alternatives, flight is lousy because you can't get right in to NYC via air travel, whereas the train takes you straight to the heart of the city. Boston and DC have airports inside the city limits, but not nearly as convenient as the train stations. And let's not even consider driving. I-95 has got to be the worst roadway in the country for construction (no two states can agree on when work should be done, so it all gets done in fits and starts all over the place) and congestion (even with 5 lanes in some places). The Acela not only rivals travel time via air, but trims off just that much more time since you don't need to then find your way to the city proper from the airport. Only DC has a Metro line meeting an airport (National, now called Ronald Reagan, presumably because he fired all the air traffic controllers).
I work for a government agency. We have a cell phone that is passed around ostensibly weekly. If one has the phone at all, that person gets 2 hours of comp time. If one gets called, one gets another 2 hours, plus whatever time that person has to spend fixing the problem.
Myself, I rather enjoy picking up the phone on weeks when I know I am not going out of town and nothing that can't be interrupted is happening. Two hours of comp time for me is about $45, so it seems I am being underpaid.:)
I find this to be reasonably fair, since ringing me up in the middle of the night does indeed deprive me of two hours of sleep, even if it's a 5 minute problem. Of course, I value my time a lot more than money, so I'd rather be paid in time anyway. I pick up the phone for 4 weeks and get to take an extra Friday off during those long stretches of no holidays. I know many people would rather see some cash flow for wearing the company's leash, but in my specific instance, anything I get called on is truly my problem, as the phone is for support on a very specific range of problems.
If I was getting called every time some user couldn't find the Send button, I'd be asking for cold, hard (under-the-table) cash, though. Fixing a bug in one's code is far different from dealing with a semi-computer-literate user who wants to make Toy Story 3 using his e-mail client.
Remember, the point of the political conventions is not to be democratic, it is to confirm and celebrate a decision already made.
Was it always this way? I seem to recall my mother telling me that she used to watch the political conventions to see who the nominee would be, not to just watch some bland cheerleading ceremony for a done-deal. This might be why the Academy Awards are more attention-getting: the answer isn't known yet.
On top of that, neither candidate this time around is really firing me up to vote (I will, because it is my right, and rights, like muscles, tend to atrophy if not used). So why would I watch a media circus celebrating someone I'm not particularly interested in, with little or no suspense to keep me from switching over to Simpsons reruns? The simple fact of the matter is that there is really very little to do between the time the candidate is annointed and election day except hear them speak about issues, or better yet, defend their platform to people outside their party. You won't see that at a convention. Best to wait until MTV has some Rock The Vote forum, or an actual debate. The Clinton/Bush/Perot debate, now there was a debate.
My last job was working for a company that will remain nameless because it might embarass the American Association of Physics Teachers. It might please you to know that their SQL install most likely still has the default sa password.
Did I know it was the default until today? No, I just assumed that some PHB set it to be blank to not have to remember. On the other hand, the Linux boxen that I set up for the company, they all had reasonably complex root passwords (which have changed, yes I checked). Red Hat Linux prompts you for a root password during install. Did I ever install SQL? No, so I don't know one way or another whether it prompts you or not. Whose fault is it? Everyone shares some blame here, but . . .
The issue at hand is not who is to blame, rather it is the corporate agenda of news agencies. In two nearly identical situations, Red Hat was broiled over the flames of righteousness, and Microsoft shunted the blame onto their users. Red Hat fixed the problem, making it abundantly clear that the default password is dangerous to go live with, and Microsoft will continue to blame the people who pay money to them for having such a deplorable lack of vision.
Blame the user, blame the company. Who's responding to their users, and who's making the users respond to them?
Alas, again I digress. The point is, the media has said that one thing that looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck is a rabid rhino in one case and a demure kitten in another.
But I just saw brought up the issue of Apple not porting Quicktime to *x. Perhaps OS X (stop sniggering, it's coming, it's coming) will solve all this? Presumably Apple will port their own apps (AppleWorks, iMovie, Quicktime) to OS X. Perhaps only a few more tweaks to getting these running on other *x flavors?
MS needs to look around. *x is all that's going to be left soon.
I really can't imagine anyone who uses Linux for Office-type apps running a pig like this. The point of running Linux as a desktop replacement is to *get away* from MS.
Will MS be using it as an entry point to Windows? Perhaps. I run Macs at home, and I use AppleWorks on them. Office for Mac opens a firehose full of system extensions, presumably to deal with all those proprietary system calls. Installing a theoretical MS Office RPM on Linux will probably include a similar firehose of mslibc files. StarOffice might not be as feature-rich (neither is AppleWorks), but I don't need "features" that allow some student with 5 minutes on his hands to infect the known world with a worm.
This is just MS Hubris again. I just hope no one falls for it this time.
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Yes, it is funny when the one guy hoses the other guy with honey and then takes the drinks and the women.
The Snicker's commercials were also pretty good. Those damn car alarms have to go. And all those little dolls, priceless.
Personally, I'll keep using a mail-in vote so I can vote weeks in advance and not stand in line. I mean, I use computers and other technology for just about everything, but I just can't trust this particular troika when it comes to my vote. Call it a vote of no confidence.
Recently, I applied for a home loan so that I could stop pissing my money into someone else's pocket. I had a copy of my credit report, and had shown it to my mortgage broker, who said it was one of the cleaner credit reports he'd seen (maybe he was blowing smoke up my arse, who knows). Never mind that I got this credit report for free because I was turned down for a credit card (the Dilbert card if you must know).
Here's the rub: my broker, thinking that I had pretty damn good credit, waited to check things out a final time before applying for the mortgage. Of course, to do this, one has to check with every agency that might have given me a loan in the past, etc. Turns out a federal agency in charge of student loans said that I had an outstanding, unpaid student loan of some largish amount. What?!? I starved in college. I never had any loan. So I called them up. Turns out that is was just my SS#. The name, birthdate, etc. attached to the loan didn't match any of my information. To prove it, I sent them copies of my passport, birth certificate, a letter from my current employer about yadda yadda. Sure, they got it cleared up. It was pretty cut and dried.
But . . .
Could someone please explain to me why a federal agency couldn't have checked my federal tax number and have seen that Joe Public, who went to (I kid you not) beauty school on a student loan, isn't me?
Just think. Anyone can make up a SS# to get a student loan. And no one will check.
Sure, I put a lot of personal information on my web page. Information I want you to know. But that does not include my tax numbers, my credit card numbers, or my early experimentation with drug culture and the resulting arrest 8 years ago! Funny, when I say it's my personal information, that phrase implies ownership. I guess it's not really true.
Not yours. You're paying for another Osprey VTOL experimental plane. Not mine. I'm paying for the S&L bailout. Still. And about 75% of the rest of the /. community is paying interest on the National Debt. The entire NASA busget is being supported by a small village in Ottumwa, Idaho.
Anyway, last I checked, the Voyager program is costing every man, woman and child about $1.87. So let's not start complaining about NASA's use of our money.
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind volunteering my time to work on a NP's network. Of course, it has to be a Mac network. Or a Linux network. Either so easy to set up, you can show someone else, or so bullet-proof, you set it up once and forget about it (Set it and forget it, Ron!). Windows networks are designed to keep sub-par network admins employed.
Having flown the TGV from Geneva to Paris, I must say that it is very comfortable. I hope the idea takes off here in the US as it has in Europe (there are several different TGV lines now operating between many major cities in Europe, including the Eurostar London-Paris Chunnel train). Too bad I moved back West before Amtrak got the line done.
As to the alternatives, flight is lousy because you can't get right in to NYC via air travel, whereas the train takes you straight to the heart of the city. Boston and DC have airports inside the city limits, but not nearly as convenient as the train stations. And let's not even consider driving. I-95 has got to be the worst roadway in the country for construction (no two states can agree on when work should be done, so it all gets done in fits and starts all over the place) and congestion (even with 5 lanes in some places). The Acela not only rivals travel time via air, but trims off just that much more time since you don't need to then find your way to the city proper from the airport. Only DC has a Metro line meeting an airport (National, now called Ronald Reagan, presumably because he fired all the air traffic controllers).
Myself, I rather enjoy picking up the phone on weeks when I know I am not going out of town and nothing that can't be interrupted is happening. Two hours of comp time for me is about $45, so it seems I am being underpaid. :)
I find this to be reasonably fair, since ringing me up in the middle of the night does indeed deprive me of two hours of sleep, even if it's a 5 minute problem. Of course, I value my time a lot more than money, so I'd rather be paid in time anyway. I pick up the phone for 4 weeks and get to take an extra Friday off during those long stretches of no holidays. I know many people would rather see some cash flow for wearing the company's leash, but in my specific instance, anything I get called on is truly my problem, as the phone is for support on a very specific range of problems.
If I was getting called every time some user couldn't find the Send button, I'd be asking for cold, hard (under-the-table) cash, though. Fixing a bug in one's code is far different from dealing with a semi-computer-literate user who wants to make Toy Story 3 using his e-mail client.
Was it always this way? I seem to recall my mother telling me that she used to watch the political conventions to see who the nominee would be, not to just watch some bland cheerleading ceremony for a done-deal. This might be why the Academy Awards are more attention-getting: the answer isn't known yet.
On top of that, neither candidate this time around is really firing me up to vote (I will, because it is my right, and rights, like muscles, tend to atrophy if not used). So why would I watch a media circus celebrating someone I'm not particularly interested in, with little or no suspense to keep me from switching over to Simpsons reruns? The simple fact of the matter is that there is really very little to do between the time the candidate is annointed and election day except hear them speak about issues, or better yet, defend their platform to people outside their party. You won't see that at a convention. Best to wait until MTV has some Rock The Vote forum, or an actual debate. The Clinton/Bush/Perot debate, now there was a debate.
Did I know it was the default until today? No, I just assumed that some PHB set it to be blank to not have to remember. On the other hand, the Linux boxen that I set up for the company, they all had reasonably complex root passwords (which have changed, yes I checked). Red Hat Linux prompts you for a root password during install. Did I ever install SQL? No, so I don't know one way or another whether it prompts you or not. Whose fault is it? Everyone shares some blame here, but . . .
The issue at hand is not who is to blame, rather it is the corporate agenda of news agencies. In two nearly identical situations, Red Hat was broiled over the flames of righteousness, and Microsoft shunted the blame onto their users. Red Hat fixed the problem, making it abundantly clear that the default password is dangerous to go live with, and Microsoft will continue to blame the people who pay money to them for having such a deplorable lack of vision.
Blame the user, blame the company. Who's responding to their users, and who's making the users respond to them?
Alas, again I digress. The point is, the media has said that one thing that looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck is a rabid rhino in one case and a demure kitten in another.
But I just saw brought up the issue of Apple not porting Quicktime to *x. Perhaps OS X (stop sniggering, it's coming, it's coming) will solve all this? Presumably Apple will port their own apps (AppleWorks, iMovie, Quicktime) to OS X. Perhaps only a few more tweaks to getting these running on other *x flavors?
MS needs to look around. *x is all that's going to be left soon.
I really can't imagine anyone who uses Linux for Office-type apps running a pig like this. The point of running Linux as a desktop replacement is to *get away* from MS. Will MS be using it as an entry point to Windows? Perhaps. I run Macs at home, and I use AppleWorks on them. Office for Mac opens a firehose full of system extensions, presumably to deal with all those proprietary system calls. Installing a theoretical MS Office RPM on Linux will probably include a similar firehose of mslibc files. StarOffice might not be as feature-rich (neither is AppleWorks), but I don't need "features" that allow some student with 5 minutes on his hands to infect the known world with a worm. This is just MS Hubris again. I just hope no one falls for it this time.