I liked Webvan, but after a few months stopped using them. I don't buy a lot of packaged food, and when they started upping the minimum free delivery amount, even monthly shopping couldn't come up with enough, despite using them to get my $45 transit pass. When I found someplace else for that, the incentive went away entirely. I liked it because I had just bought a house in a neighborhood with no local supermarket. Most delivery services do not come to my inner-city neighborhood, although this is changing.
The grocery market runs on almost no margin, and consumers are very price-conscious. People regularly go to several stores on a weekly shopping tour to get the lowest price on as many items as possible (despite the time and effort and gas involved.) Even my socially conscious affluent organic-food-eating neighbors have the choice of a farmers market, large chain supermarket and good-sized co-op within ten miles, and those are just the stores with large selections of, or exclusively carry, organic items. They regularly go to all of them. Value-added stuff has to be pretty damn good to even get anyone's attention, and there were still not enough takers to make it viable.
They did try to group deliveries, but they didn't seem to do a good job. My development was at one point getting nearly a dozen deliveries a week, but attempts to find out how to consolidate that into maybe two or three went nowhere. All you got was that little icon saying "In your neighborhood!" on the schedule, whatever that meant. I think it meant they were in Dekalb county, myself.
And transportation kills them. Here in Atlanta they were running their entire operation out of a warehouse in Suwanee, on the edge of the metro area.
Yes, land costs were lower, but it takes 45 minutes to drive to my area from there, and that is with absolutely no traffic. Also, they had to pay a lot to get employees, because the largest group of low-wage, low-skill employees are in the city and have no cars. Low-wage employees cannot afford to live in the northern suburbs, and you can be sure all those soccer moms weren't going to have their precious affluent offspring working in warehouses packing meat.
They did run busses from the train to their facility, but even so that is pushing a two-hour commute for the typical line employee from South Fulton or Dekalb. People will do it, but it has to be worth it.
They are building a Publix across the street from me here in East Lake. I can't wait. Publix is a large regional chain based in Florida and now one of the big players in the Atlanta market, despite being here only about ten years. I like their stores, and they are bringing them back to the city now that non-poor people are starting to live there again. I shopped with them for decades in Florida and it will be nice to have one within walking distance again.
They have announced some kind of Internet shopping arrangement, but I don't have any details. I think the whole Webvan thing has them scared, as well it should. I would be happy if they would package up my order and have it ready for me to pick up; if they can accurately fill the order, that right there would be a major improvement.
As it it with most things the Legislative branch of the US government these days, it was the best that money could buy.
It would be bad for business if they actually had to care what their customers thought. It's much easier to throw some money around and get Congress to agree that it is an unreasonably burden to expect that companies follow ethical practices concerning privacy. After all, data is money, particularly your name, address, phone number, social security number, mother's maiden name, shoe size and the number of times you've charged online pr0n to your Visa card.
Yes, none of 813 was listed so I'm not on the list.:( I was up for five years. Of course, now I can't remember my telephone number, but I do still have my nifty-keen 14.4 modem from 1990...
And they didn't even actually pay for it. It is a loan.
"You promise us your firstborn child, and we promise to not charge you an astronomical interest rate on your loan. Maybe, if we are feeling nice. But since you can't afford to pay it back anyway, we own you, but we will be nice and give you a few months before we decide to move your offices to a basement in Tulsa."
Re:This isn't always the way the world ends....
on
Coder on the Cross
·
· Score: 2
>It's a total crapshoot.
Which is why, even now, people get sucked into a good line if they are not careful. And even some who are. There are just enough "overnight successes" to make people believe it could happen to them. It's like the lottery that way, and without the benefit of clear and overwhelming mathematical evidence to the contrary.
Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But since nearly all companies have long since stopped having the slightest concern for employees beyond ROI, I have exactly the same position when it comes to my personal life. Professional pride spurred me to many a late night, but when it becomes a regular and expected occurrence, there has to be more in it for me than some assumed loyalty that never goes both ways. And I'm not even as mercenary as some people I know. (You included, Mr. Nobody-Knows-Me AC, despite occasional comments to the contrary.)
I want to believe that my employer actually lives by the platitudes they dispense about how their people are their greatest resource. I pretend to believe, when necessary, but I cannot in truth. And almost all the tech professionals I know think the same. Anybody who doesn't is suspected of being incredibly naive or stupid.
Someone told me that if my employer discovered they could make fifty cents more by digging potatoes, we would all be issued shovels. Every time someone tries to give me a line of hype about how, as a competent Professional, I need to sacrifice my personal life to someone else's cause, I think of that. And I don't take on other people's causes lightly.
Maybe that means that you should go off on your own. You certainly won't be working any fewer hours, but at least it will be for your project and not so someone else can go to Bali every year while you sit home and write code until 3am.
I'm a computer professional who hangs out with 2600 (404), and I consider myself a hacker. Not in the 31337 c001 d00dz sense, which many people assume thanks to various sensationalist media PR. I play with computers and other interesting technical stuff, for both work and fun. I enjoy understanding the most obscure guts of technology.
I learn things that improve my skills in both my professional and personal life, and hang out with cool people. Yes, it's a bit like a "biker gang user group" and there are people I know are doing questionable things. There always are, at least there everyone is (mostly) out in the open about it and there is just as much talk about how to close security holes as how to exploit them. You can't have knowledge of one without the other.
After many years of picking up the occasional print copy at the bookstore, I finally live someplace I can go to meetings. You could say that I've been "in telecom" since high school when a buddy showed me this cool new toy he built, called a "Blue Box." Breaking into things just to be able to say so was never my thing, but it got me interested in how the telephone network works. Combine that with computers, and I found a lifelong interest and successful career.
And I do get a few cool points for being able to say that I make phone bills for a living. I've gotten more useful information out of 2600 than my years of ACM membership, another more respected professional organization in my industry. And it sure is a lot less boring
>People in my neighborhood deal with calls by
>subscribing to a service with the phone company
>to only let phone calls through that are
>identifiable
Yes, I have caller id. I was forced to get it last time I moved and was assigned a recycled phone number. Every telemarketer on the planet has it. I get 10 or 12 calls a day and they are all junk. And this is *after* subscribing to Private Citizen's anti-telemarketer service. Of the calls I have answered, nearly all are actionable under federal law for automated messages (always with no identification) or outside approved time period.
I pay a lot of money every month for caller id just so I can identify the one call per week from someone I want to talk to. It's like a protection racket.
The only reason I have a phone line is for outgoing calls and to be able to get DSL. I don't answer it unless I happen to be sitting next to the phone and I can see that it is someone I want to talk to. That happens about once every other month at most. If not for DSL, I would not have a wireline phone. If more of my friends would actually respond to their email, I might not even have any phone at all.
Email makes the 'net go round. Kill email, and you kill the Internet. Spam is killing email.
I have a cd set for the Mozart opera Cosi fan tutte that includes a multimedia presentation of the history of the work, the historical setting of it's composition and a read-along play feature. It is very well done and comprehensive.
Like most complete opera sets, it is not cheap. Maybe you can get it from a library. Along with the multimedia part, the production is highly recommended.
Cosi fan Tutte
Our Price: $52.97
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conductor: René Jacobs
Performer: Marcel Boone, Bernarda Fink, et al.
Ensemble: Cologne Chamber Choir, Concerto Cologne
Harmonia Mundi (Fra) - #951663 / March 9, 1999
Audio CD / DDD / Number of Discs: 3
I find it interesting that Ohio is implementing a way for regular people to pay "use tax" on out of state purchases.
I live in Georgia. Some time ago, I was going to buy a new computer from an out-of-state mail order company that does not collect Georgia sales tax. (Some do.) In the interest of finding out exactly how this system works, I enquired about how I would go about paying my tax to Georgia on this purchase. I called several state offices and talked to a number of befuddled people who had no idea how a private, non-business-owning individual would pay this tax.
Basically what they told me was that not only am I not required to pay use tax to the state of Georgia, there is not even a method of doing so for private individuals.
This sounds like a house painter shouldn't even remotely consider taking up watercolors as a hobby.
Programmers are professionals. Professionals must maintain and improve skills to survive. I don't know anybody who reasonably expects a professional programmer to not have computers at home because it might be a "conflict of interest." Bullshit.
I agree completely. I don't have a problem with ads, generally. Somebody has to pay for all this stuff and I try not to let it be me any more than I am willing to participate in. And sometimes I find interesting things in ads.
I do have a rather large problem with ads that cause my page to reload constantly, set a million cookies, complain that I don't have XyzPlugin installed, pop up windows over what I am trying to read or make me ill with shiny flashy things.
So I don't load images at all so I don't have to look at annoying shiny flashy things, and turn off javascript so I can read without annoying popups filling up my screen.
You would think that with all the possible browers and configurations, web advertisers would at least consider alt text, in the same way that tv ad folks think about how it will look with the sound off and soforth.
On this very page I am writing this message in right now, there is a banner ad. And it has alt text! That is amazing. But what does it say? "Please click here." Now *that* makes me want to take a look, oh yes.
I couldn't make up my mind, so I decided to go with the double major. I was pushed in that direction somewhat by my university, who considered computer engineering to be engineering and computer science to be... well... something not engineering.
I actually enjoyed some of the core engineering courses, because I like physics. But the hardcore EE stuff made my head hurt. Having that background does help. But the most important thing was that I learned that I like software. I stuck out the rest of the engineering program, and it's on my resume, but that was the end of it.
I've certainly had my run-ins with the postal service on the subject of weird packages. One of my non-computer hobbies is textiles. Every few years I order a big batch of sheep's wool for me and my friends. Now, this is pretty nice and clean, considering it just came off a sheep, but still has a distinct sheepy smell.
It typically comes in one or two burlap feed sacks, with a large amount of Australian postage affixed, looking pretty sad after being kicked around a ship for a few months. (You don't want to think what it costs for air!)
One time I went to pick up my wool, I handed over the yellow delivery notice and got "Oh. That." Seems my shipment had been the talk of the office.
Another time I was home and I think the carrier was disappointed because he wasn't too happy about having to go back to the truck to get my package. Later, I was chatting with one of my textile friends, who had some wool in this order, and she said her father (a postal carrier) had complained about some idiot who received this big smelly package from Australia. Knowing the city her father lived in (mine) and the general whereabouts of his delivery area, she was very happy to know that her wool had arrived!
I lived at that address for about five years and got three orders, much more than usual for me. My postal carriers didn't like me too much.
And then there was my friend who ordered some poorer quality wool that smelled of manure through the package...
I guess this explains why the Alumni Association is sending me so much junk, despite having sworn to secrecy anybody who would be in a position to give them my address.
At least they are doing something, Engineering is probably still the only college in the whole place that can get grants.
>If you own a piece of land, there's a public
>record of it somewhere that's accessible by
>everyone.
Yes, and now that I am a happy homeowner, I get
vast quantities of paper spam from everyone who
has bought my county's property records. At least
they don't have my (unpublished) phone number. I already get phone spam because I got a recycled
number.
I want to register a domain. I am looking at that right now. But I don't want to open myself up to
spammers, junkmail, telemarketers, stalkers, or any other lowlife who knows how to use whois.
I don't give a rat's ass about games, but I can see all kinds of other applications. I am a fiber artist when I'm not being a geek, and if you think game graphics are lousy, you should see the ones in the sewing or weaving pattern generation software.
But this is a very large problem, I can't even predict how fabric will behave all the time and I work with it live and in person.
If this could work, then you could shop for clothes online and see what they look like yourself. There were some attempts at this a while back, but it looked like the child's toy where you mix and match heads and bodies.
Palm Beach County does not use a paper ballot, as defined in the guidelines. They didn't when I lived there years ago, and they don't now. It is a stylus and punchcard voting machine. A "paper ballot" is one where the voter actually takes a pen in hand and marks a box. I think one county in Florida does that, and I am not even sure about that. It certainly isn't Palm Beach.
Oh boy is this one going to get talked about back home...
Yes, if Nader wasn't in the race, it would be over by now. And Florida does have a long history of
"irregularities" and not just the dietary variety.
Too many people outside the state assumed that because ole brother Jeb was guv'nr, that everything would go along just fine. Anybody who has a clue knows how wrong that is. Florida is always a contest, and is not a reliable outcome for any election.
The latest governor's race was a popularity contest, and Jeb had that hands down. This was his second attempt, recall, and was no match for Chiles who was not eligible for another term, even if he had not untimely expired a short time after the election. Bush's opponent was, well, lame. "The Democrats went to Tallahassee and all I got was a lousy Lieutenant Governor." MacKay just wasn't able to keep up. So there ended up a Bush in Tallahassee, and many of my friends still there are none too happy about it.
Maybe *you* can read the article... I don't get the Digital Library subscription and I doubt many others reading this do either. Otherwise, it costs $5.
I have seen several articles that report that IT professionals are leaving the industry. One article reported that something like 40% would not have gone into it if they knew then what they know now.
I often think of what I could do other than be a grunt programmer small cog in a big wheel. I love computers. But I hate the industry that chews 'em up and spits 'em out.
I think all the time that if I just save all those big bucks, I can afford the 75% pay cut that would put me in a sane industry. One where it is not assumed that a complex project with a short deadline can be accomplished for some extra pizzas, or that unrealistic goals can be achieved with cries of "More Productivity!" and corporate pep-rallies.
Since Babelfish does tend to make amusing translation errors, I asked a German co-worker. The last sentance does roughly translate as "Trust no statistic you did not fake yourself."
Slashdot Mirror
I liked Webvan, but after a few months stopped using them. I don't buy a lot of packaged food, and when they started upping the minimum free delivery amount, even monthly shopping couldn't come up with enough, despite using them to get my $45 transit pass. When I found someplace else for that, the incentive went away entirely. I liked it because I had just bought a house in a neighborhood with no local supermarket. Most delivery services do not come to my inner-city neighborhood, although this is changing.
The grocery market runs on almost no margin, and consumers are very price-conscious. People regularly go to several stores on a weekly shopping tour to get the lowest price on as many items as possible (despite the time and effort and gas involved.) Even my socially conscious affluent organic-food-eating neighbors have the choice of a farmers market, large chain supermarket and good-sized co-op within ten miles, and those are just the stores with large selections of, or exclusively carry, organic items. They regularly go to all of them. Value-added stuff has to be pretty damn good to even get anyone's attention, and there were still not enough takers to make it viable.
They did try to group deliveries, but they didn't seem to do a good job. My development was at one point getting nearly a dozen deliveries a week, but attempts to find out how to consolidate that into maybe two or three went nowhere. All you got was that little icon saying "In your neighborhood!" on the schedule, whatever that meant. I think it meant they were in Dekalb county, myself.
And transportation kills them. Here in Atlanta they were running their entire operation out of a warehouse in Suwanee, on the edge of the metro area.
Yes, land costs were lower, but it takes 45 minutes to drive to my area from there, and that is with absolutely no traffic. Also, they had to pay a lot to get employees, because the largest group of low-wage, low-skill employees are in the city and have no cars. Low-wage employees cannot afford to live in the northern suburbs, and you can be sure all those soccer moms weren't going to have their precious affluent offspring working in warehouses packing meat.
They did run busses from the train to their facility, but even so that is pushing a two-hour commute for the typical line employee from South Fulton or Dekalb. People will do it, but it has to be worth it.
They are building a Publix across the street from me here in East Lake. I can't wait. Publix is a large regional chain based in Florida and now one of the big players in the Atlanta market, despite being here only about ten years. I like their stores, and they are bringing them back to the city now that non-poor people are starting to live there again. I shopped with them for decades in Florida and it will be nice to have one within walking distance again.
They have announced some kind of Internet shopping arrangement, but I don't have any details. I think the whole Webvan thing has them scared, as well it should. I would be happy if they would package up my order and have it ready for me to pick up; if they can accurately fill the order, that right there would be a major improvement.
# .bashrc
export PS1="\h[\u]:\w$ "
Result:
machinename[username]:~/bin$
I have to be practical when I'm at work, using multiple machines with bizarre huge filesystems. Sometimes the prompt does get rather long...
As it it with most things the Legislative branch of the US government these days, it was the best that money could buy.
It would be bad for business if they actually had to care what their customers thought. It's much easier to throw some money around and get Congress to agree that it is an unreasonably burden to expect that companies follow ethical practices concerning privacy. After all, data is money, particularly your name, address, phone number, social security number, mother's maiden name, shoe size and the number of times you've charged online pr0n to your Visa card.
Yes, none of 813 was listed so I'm not on the list. :( I was up for five years. Of course, now I can't remember my telephone number, but I do still have my nifty-keen 14.4 modem from 1990...
And they didn't even actually pay for it. It is a loan.
"You promise us your firstborn child, and we promise to not charge you an astronomical interest rate on your loan. Maybe, if we are feeling nice. But since you can't afford to pay it back anyway, we own you, but we will be nice and give you a few months before we decide to move your offices to a basement in Tulsa."
>It's a total crapshoot.
Which is why, even now, people get sucked into a good line if they are not careful. And even some who are. There are just enough "overnight successes" to make people believe it could happen to them. It's like the lottery that way, and without the benefit of clear and overwhelming mathematical evidence to the contrary.
Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But since nearly all companies have long since stopped having the slightest concern for employees beyond ROI, I have exactly the same position when it comes to my personal life. Professional pride spurred me to many a late night, but when it becomes a regular and expected occurrence, there has to be more in it for me than some assumed loyalty that never goes both ways. And I'm not even as mercenary as some people I know. (You included, Mr. Nobody-Knows-Me AC, despite occasional comments to the contrary.)
I want to believe that my employer actually lives by the platitudes they dispense about how their people are their greatest resource. I pretend to believe, when necessary, but I cannot in truth. And almost all the tech professionals I know think the same. Anybody who doesn't is suspected of being incredibly naive or stupid.
Someone told me that if my employer discovered they could make fifty cents more by digging potatoes, we would all be issued shovels. Every time someone tries to give me a line of hype about how, as a competent Professional, I need to sacrifice my personal life to someone else's cause, I think of that. And I don't take on other people's causes lightly.
Maybe that means that you should go off on your own. You certainly won't be working any fewer hours, but at least it will be for your project and not so someone else can go to Bali every year while you sit home and write code until 3am.
I'm a computer professional who hangs out with 2600 (404), and I consider myself a hacker. Not in the 31337 c001 d00dz sense, which many people assume thanks to various sensationalist media PR. I play with computers and other interesting technical stuff, for both work and fun. I enjoy understanding the most obscure guts of technology.
I learn things that improve my skills in both my professional and personal life, and hang out with cool people. Yes, it's a bit like a "biker gang user group" and there are people I know are doing questionable things. There always are, at least there everyone is (mostly) out in the open about it and there is just as much talk about how to close security holes as how to exploit them. You can't have knowledge of one without the other.
After many years of picking up the occasional print copy at the bookstore, I finally live someplace I can go to meetings. You could say that I've been "in telecom" since high school when a buddy showed me this cool new toy he built, called a "Blue Box." Breaking into things just to be able to say so was never my thing, but it got me interested in how the telephone network works. Combine that with computers, and I found a lifelong interest and successful career.
And I do get a few cool points for being able to say that I make phone bills for a living. I've gotten more useful information out of 2600 than my years of ACM membership, another more respected professional organization in my industry. And it sure is a lot less boring
>People in my neighborhood deal with calls by
>subscribing to a service with the phone company
>to only let phone calls through that are
>identifiable
Yes, I have caller id. I was forced to get it last time I moved and was assigned a recycled phone number. Every telemarketer on the planet has it. I get 10 or 12 calls a day and they are all junk. And this is *after* subscribing to Private Citizen's anti-telemarketer service. Of the calls I have answered, nearly all are actionable under federal law for automated messages (always with no identification) or outside approved time period.
I pay a lot of money every month for caller id just so I can identify the one call per week from someone I want to talk to. It's like a protection racket.
The only reason I have a phone line is for outgoing calls and to be able to get DSL. I don't answer it unless I happen to be sitting next to the phone and I can see that it is someone I want to talk to. That happens about once every other month at most. If not for DSL, I would not have a wireline phone. If more of my friends would actually respond to their email, I might not even have any phone at all.
Email makes the 'net go round. Kill email, and you kill the Internet. Spam is killing email.
I have a cd set for the Mozart opera Cosi fan tutte that includes a multimedia presentation of the history of the work, the historical setting of it's composition and a read-along play feature. It is very well done and comprehensive.
D Y/ 002-7805834-8918463
Like most complete opera sets, it is not cheap. Maybe you can get it from a library. Along with the multimedia part, the production is highly recommended.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000I8
Cosi fan Tutte
Our Price: $52.97
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Conductor: René Jacobs
Performer: Marcel Boone, Bernarda Fink, et al.
Ensemble: Cologne Chamber Choir, Concerto Cologne
Harmonia Mundi (Fra) - #951663 / March 9, 1999
Audio CD / DDD / Number of Discs: 3
I find it interesting that Ohio is implementing a way for regular people to pay "use tax" on out of state purchases.
I live in Georgia. Some time ago, I was going to buy a new computer from an out-of-state mail order company that does not collect Georgia sales tax. (Some do.) In the interest of finding out exactly how this system works, I enquired about how I would go about paying my tax to Georgia on this purchase. I called several state offices and talked to a number of befuddled people who had no idea how a private, non-business-owning individual would pay this tax.
Basically what they told me was that not only am I not required to pay use tax to the state of Georgia, there is not even a method of doing so for private individuals.
"I see no fan here."
Funny you should gripe about this in an Apple topic...
Perhaps I need to buy an Intel box after all, I could use someplace to grill the hotdogs this summer.
This sounds like a house painter shouldn't even remotely consider taking up watercolors as a hobby.
Programmers are professionals. Professionals must maintain and improve skills to survive. I don't know anybody who reasonably expects a professional programmer to not have computers at home because it might be a "conflict of interest." Bullshit.
The really stupid part? It will actually display the page, and *then* redirects you to the "Get a Real Browser" notice. Stupid.
I agree completely. I don't have a problem with ads, generally. Somebody has to pay for all this stuff and I try not to let it be me any more than I am willing to participate in. And sometimes I find interesting things in ads.
I do have a rather large problem with ads that cause my page to reload constantly, set a million cookies, complain that I don't have XyzPlugin installed, pop up windows over what I am trying to read or make me ill with shiny flashy things.
So I don't load images at all so I don't have to look at annoying shiny flashy things, and turn off javascript so I can read without annoying popups filling up my screen.
You would think that with all the possible browers and configurations, web advertisers would at least consider alt text, in the same way that tv ad folks think about how it will look with the sound off and soforth.
On this very page I am writing this message in right now, there is a banner ad. And it has alt text! That is amazing. But what does it say? "Please click here." Now *that* makes me want to take a look, oh yes.
I couldn't make up my mind, so I decided to go with the double major. I was pushed in that direction somewhat by my university, who considered computer engineering to be engineering and computer science to be ... well... something not engineering.
I actually enjoyed some of the core engineering courses, because I like physics. But the hardcore EE stuff made my head hurt. Having that background does help. But the most important thing was that I learned that I like software. I stuck out the rest of the engineering program, and it's on my resume, but that was the end of it.
I've certainly had my run-ins with the postal service on the subject of weird packages. One of my non-computer hobbies is textiles. Every few years I order a big batch of sheep's wool for me and my friends. Now, this is pretty nice and clean, considering it just came off a sheep, but still has a distinct sheepy smell.
It typically comes in one or two burlap feed sacks, with a large amount of Australian postage affixed, looking pretty sad after being kicked around a ship for a few months. (You don't want to think what it costs for air!)
One time I went to pick up my wool, I handed over the yellow delivery notice and got "Oh. That." Seems my shipment had been the talk of the office.
Another time I was home and I think the carrier was disappointed because he wasn't too happy about having to go back to the truck to get my package. Later, I was chatting with one of my textile friends, who had some wool in this order, and she said her father (a postal carrier) had complained about some idiot who received this big smelly package from Australia. Knowing the city her father lived in (mine) and the general whereabouts of his delivery area, she was very happy to know that her wool had arrived!
I lived at that address for about five years and got three orders, much more than usual for me. My postal carriers didn't like me too much.
And then there was my friend who ordered some poorer quality wool that smelled of manure through the package...
I guess this explains why the Alumni Association is sending me so much junk, despite having sworn to secrecy anybody who would be in a position to give them my address.
At least they are doing something, Engineering is probably still the only college in the whole place that can get grants.
And, as usual, the MEs get all the attention.
>If you own a piece of land, there's a public
>record of it somewhere that's accessible by
>everyone.
Yes, and now that I am a happy homeowner, I get
vast quantities of paper spam from everyone who
has bought my county's property records. At least
they don't have my (unpublished) phone number. I already get phone spam because I got a recycled
number.
I want to register a domain. I am looking at that right now. But I don't want to open myself up to
spammers, junkmail, telemarketers, stalkers, or any other lowlife who knows how to use whois.
I don't give a rat's ass about games, but I can see all kinds of other applications. I am a fiber artist when I'm not being a geek, and if you think game graphics are lousy, you should see the ones in the sewing or weaving pattern generation software.
But this is a very large problem, I can't even predict how fabric will behave all the time and I work with it live and in person.
If this could work, then you could shop for clothes online and see what they look like yourself. There were some attempts at this a while back, but it looked like the child's toy where you mix and match heads and bodies.
>101.011. Voting by paper ballot
Palm Beach County does not use a paper ballot, as defined in the guidelines. They didn't when I lived there years ago, and they don't now. It is a stylus and punchcard voting machine. A "paper ballot" is one where the voter actually takes a pen in hand and marks a box. I think one county in Florida does that, and I am not even sure about that. It certainly isn't Palm Beach.
Oh boy is this one going to get talked about back home...
Yes, if Nader wasn't in the race, it would be over by now. And Florida does have a long history of
"irregularities" and not just the dietary variety.
Too many people outside the state assumed that because ole brother Jeb was guv'nr, that everything would go along just fine. Anybody who has a clue knows how wrong that is. Florida is always a contest, and is not a reliable outcome for any election.
The latest governor's race was a popularity contest, and Jeb had that hands down. This was his second attempt, recall, and was no match for Chiles who was not eligible for another term, even if he had not untimely expired a short time after the election. Bush's opponent was, well, lame. "The Democrats went to Tallahassee and all I got was a lousy Lieutenant Governor." MacKay just wasn't able to keep up. So there ended up a Bush in Tallahassee, and many of my friends still there are none too happy about it.
Maybe *you* can read the article... I don't get the Digital Library subscription and I doubt many others reading this do either. Otherwise, it costs $5.
I have seen several articles that report that IT professionals are leaving the industry. One article reported that something like 40% would not have gone into it if they knew then what they know now.
I often think of what I could do other than be a grunt programmer small cog in a big wheel. I love computers. But I hate the industry that chews 'em up and spits 'em out.
I think all the time that if I just save all those big bucks, I can afford the 75% pay cut that would put me in a sane industry. One where it is not assumed that a complex project with a short deadline can be accomplished for some extra pizzas, or that unrealistic goals can be achieved with cries of "More Productivity!" and corporate pep-rallies.
The "respectable universities" refused to participate in the government-sponsored charade, as well they should.
No audit can be meaningful if they are only allowed to view limited areas that the FBI deems "appropriate" for investigation.
Since Babelfish does tend to make amusing translation errors, I asked a German co-worker. The last sentance does roughly translate as "Trust no statistic you did not fake yourself."