In my opinion, the best explanation of what Thanksgiving is comes from U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's proclamation, copied from today's Salt Lake Tribune, of all places:
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
Didn't realize anyone considered a $94 widget that won't be allowed through the security check at U.S. airports a "stocking stuffer." (I'm talking about the Swiss Army Knife + USB)
In my household, items of that size and price are wrapped in progressively larger boxes to draw attention to their, well, size and price. (Still talking about the Swiss Army Knife + USB here.)
The Yahoo printing of the press release is not a bad thing. It's clearly marked as a press release. If you want to pay your $600 to BusinessWire, you too can post a press release announcing that "monkeys will shoot out of my nether eye in my office at midnight tonight." Yahoo will pick it up and run it in its financial news section, because that's what it does with press releases as they come along the wire.
This is a good thing - pre-Web, getting your hands on a company's press releases was more time consuming and sometimes expensive. I prefer being able to research what a company says about itself. Of course, believing what a company says about itself is another matter, but why would a person read something marked "press release" without a skeptical eye?
Did you know, for example, that the people quoted in press releases generally don't say what they're quoted as saying? No indeed, even if multiple companies are involved, a marcom person wrote the thing, ran it by someone else's marcom person, got approval, and put it out on the wire. In some cases, the quoted person doesn't even know they've been quoted. "I'm very excited about the prospect of monkeys flying out of UrgleHoth's nether eye," said Dr. Dew. "I'm just glad they're not going to fly out of mine."
And I'm puzzled what your problem is with the Wired piece. The writer clearly states the claims as "claims" - so carefully, in fact, that I was more skeptical after reading it than I was before.
That said, I wouldn't complain if news sources did a better job aggregating related stories so that it's as easy to find out that someone's a pathological liar as it is to find out whatever they said before it was verified as a lie.
or smelling people's armpits as deordorant testers
Why on earth would anyone take a job as a deodorant taster? What possible good could tasting deodorant do? And why would it be tasted in the armpit? Why not from the dispenser? That's just an appalling career, and it sickens me. That's even worse than my career as an IT Manager.
But as both the company behind this TDA, Novinit, and myself are French, I decided to investigate and contacted the company. And I spent several hours with the CEO and the CTO.
Right. This is July! There aren't any French people in France. Just Germans. The French are in Spain, half-or-more-naked, overturning tomato trucks.
...or at least, that's how it looks from here in 'murrica, where we milk our two weeks of vacation and wonder why Europe doesn't return our phone calls all summer.;-)
I ordered a motherboard on a Monday to replace a dead one. That Wednesday, I got a call from a person with a thick Indian accent, who attempted to upsell me to the retail version rather than the cheaper OEM version I'd ordered. I still didn't have a UPS tracking number by Friday, so I contacted them via their live chat.
This is classic, and unedited except to get past the lameness filter and that I've taken out the company name and my order number to protect the clueless and the obnoxious. (You get to decide which is which):
CHAT TRANSCRIPT ---------------
Please wait for a site operator to respond. All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly. All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly. You are now chatting with 'steve' steve: xyz.Com Welcome to xyz.Com Live Chat Support. It will be my pleasure if I can be helpful to you.
Computer Peripherals at xyz
you: Hi, I'm looking for status on order xxxx, to be shipped by UPS. I don't have a tracking number yet.
steve: Just hold on please let me check the details steve: I have check status of your order. Your order has been authorized and scheduled for picking. Means it is in inventory for picking and then off to shipping department. In case of no delays in inventory department (Like back log or order reaches there past cut off time), your order will be processed and sent to shipping department. We would send you the tracking number as soon as your order is shipped. In case if it does not show any result, you may try to track your order from our website.
you: So what you're saying is that someday someone might get around to sending the item....
steve: As soon it would be send to the shipping department you will receive it in steve: about to 24-48 hours
you: But you can't tell me how long it will take to get to the shipping department.
steve: It will go to the shipping department today itself
you: So I should expect the motherboard on Monday?
steve: It will be soon in your hands after 24-48 hours after it is sent to the shipping department
you: Which you said will happen today.
steve: yes
you: I'm sorry, I don't understand then why it's uncertain when the product, which I'm paying to have sent overnight, will arrive.
steve: sorry for the inconvenience that may caused to you
you: Can you help me understand what could keep the product from arriving on Monday?
steve: We regret for the inconvenience
you: Does that mean, "no?"
steve: Sorry,as we don't ship the orders on weekends you would get your order by monday
you: Did you mean to say I *won't* get the order on Monday?
steve: It would be soon shipped to you by monday
you: Okay, we're closer to a real answer. But when you say, "by Monday," do you really mean "on Monday?"
steve: Yes steve: We deeply regret for the inconvenience
you: Please don't say that again. you: So as I understand our conversation, you expect the product to reach shipping today, be shipped on Monday, and thus I should expect receive it on Tuesday?
steve: No, it would be shipped to you on monday
you: When you say "it would be shipped to you on Monday," do you mean that UPS will pick it up from you on Monday or that it will reach me on Monday?
steve: No, it would be shipped to you on monday
you: I desperately hope you are a computer and not a person. Could you rephrase your answer in a way that actually answers my question?
steve: I am not a computer steve: I am a person
you: I'm sorry if I offended you, but I'm having a difficult time figuring out when I should expect to receive the product. Since I'm paying to have UPS overnight it, and since you seem to know when it's being shipped, could you tell me what day it will arrive?
perhaps I am not educated or tasteful enough to appreciate it but please... stop posting anymore LOTR stories on/.
I have no comment on your education or your taste, both of which are your own affair.
However, rather than asking for Slashdot not to cover articles on a topic of obvious interest, perhaps you could go to your Preferences tab, then to the Homepage subtab, where you can mark the checkbox to exclude the LotR articles.
This is how thousands of users survived the Jon Katz Experience. Like Saddam Hussein, nobody could prove he was alive anymore. (If Jon reposts one of his articles from the woods, and everybody has him excluded, is he still annoying?)
If SPARC is to survive, someone outside Sun will have to make it so. After the development of the original UltraSPARC, many (most?) of the talent that made it happen went bye-bye. There's been an ongoing brain drain from the design groups since then. Some people who used to be thought of as a waste of air are now considered top contributors.
In the meantime, successor projects (to UltraSPARC) have spent too much time redesigning and precious little time getting a competitive product out the door.
The performance of the software running on my server farm's fastest Intel/AMD machines is far superior to the performance of the same products running on the fastest SPARC boxes. On the other hand, every SPARC box we've ever purchased is still running in some capacity. I can't say that for the PC-platform servers.
I'd like to see Sun get its in-house design process straightened away and become competitive again. But somebody high up is going to have to take ownership of that process and make some major changes if it's going to happen, IMO. And since things have languished this long, it's hard to figure how somebody's going to wake up at this late date and put full effort into fixing what's gone wrong. I sure hope it happens, for some of the same reasons you shared!
For future reference, I didn't make WordStar painful, I merely used it and found it painful.
Well, being a bonehead may have been involved, but that's a whole separate issue. And the documentation said *nothing* about needing to save the file to the same disk I started on.
Not that I'm at all defensive about this.;-)
Besides, I'm sure part of the Navy's budget goes to seeing that the Navy's users get to use fresh new 360K floppy disks for each file, just to avoid this type of situation.
I still vividly recall being a high school student working on the family's first IBM PC (no hard drive, just two hard-working, 360K, full-height, black-faced, metal floppy drives). It was a History paper, and I was done. I went to save it...no dice. Out of space on my data diskette.
I substituted another diskette, and I think that's the precise moment I became an IT person. Because that's when I realized that a WordStar "Document" (as opposed to "Non-document," which IIRC was ASCII) file is opened when you create the document, not when you save it. So there was a little stub file on my (otherwise full) diskette that WordStar expected to see.
Could I print the paper? No, not without saving it first. Could I copy the contents into a buffer, exit the document and paste them somewhere? Please.
So I wrote that $$#@$%%$@ paper twice. And whenever I pull a boneheaded stunt by not thinking something through, I get a little taste of that sweet WordStar pain, and I can't say I'm sorry they're gone.
(On the other hand, given my very brief experience as an ROTC midshipman, I'm surprised that they're not still relying on punch cards for everything but Aegis.)
...as long as IE remains part of the OS. If they have to unbundle it...well, they'd reluctantly have to pass along their significant, mean-old-government-imposed, patent costs.
Ad hominem aside, I think you're right about the computer business being different (for the majority of consumers) from the clothing business.
I also think the article is pretty optimistic about how well non-computer retailers "get it." For example, Mrs. Dew is with child now, and I made the mistake of ordering some clothes from A Pea in the Pod's online presence. Handy tip to online retailers: if *you* send the wrong merchandise, you'd better fall all over yourself to make it right, because otherwise, we won't be buying your overpriced swag again.
On the other hand, I've dealt with a few small businesses whose web sites weren't exemplary, but were adequate to get me engaged, and whose customer service made me a very happy customer. These include non-computer businesses such as Sunburst Shades and computer businesses such as Delta Marketing Group.
While Jon seems to be claiming that peddlers of general merchandise are doing better than peddlers of computers/software, I don't think this conclusion is at all borne out in my experience. The industry or vertical market a business is in seems to have little bearing on how positive they make their web shopping experience.
The current difficulties with air travel are already sparking interest in more telecommuting options.
I had just set a guy up to commute (not tele-) from Pennsylvania to California, starting next week. It remains to be seen how viable that will be. And we've had several training classes cancelled or shrunk as customers can't make it out here.
In both those cases, while having their bodies in our office is the ideal scenario, we could function just fine moving data, voice, and images back and forth as needed. From talking with other folks, I'm getting the impression that remote working is high on their priority lists, too.
So perhaps you'll have to combine the painful commute with some work-at-home. But in general, there's impulse out there that should result in better infrastructure (both technological and in corporate thinking and procedures) for doing exactly what you want to do.
and this non-sentunce is ungramtikal and filled with bad spelled words, but I bet you understand what I am commmunicatin!
Yes, I understand you, and now I understand you to be a moron. That's undoubtedly an unfair assessment, but it's a view you cultivate in that last sentence.
Richard Feynman was scientist and a teacher of science. He used communication skills well - while his science would not have been different without them, his impact would.
Another side of the coin would be Wolfgang Goethe, most heralded and remembered as a poet, but whose work in the area of science was significant as well. To Goethe, literature and science were part of the same whole.
Most people, obviously, aren't Goethe or Feynman. And perhaps I shouldn't bite on trolling like this. But studying literature isn't any more useless than studying calculus - no subject is inherently valuable. What use you make of either one is what's important.
Bringing this back on-topic, my wife is an elementary school teacher. She has an engineering degree and a degree in education. Parents of the children she has taught over the past four years tell me she's great, and I'm not surprised.
The engineering degree doesn't make her a good teacher. The education degree doesn't make her a good teacher. She has math and science aptitude, as well as a passion for reading and history, and those things help. But what helps most of all is that she cares about the kids, and she does what she can to help them individually - to understand their interests, skills, and weaknesses enough to tailor the presentation of the material so they can absorb it.
Those soft skills are what have a "vast impact" on the society around us, because they're what connect those kids with the subjects they're supposed to be learning. Science is useful, and it's one of many things she wishes to teach, but IMO, her "liberal arts" skills are what ensure that the science gets learned.
At first I thought he was kidding about the slide rule club - I guess we're this generation's equivalent.
It's a little sobering to think of these engineering problems in their human context - even ignoring the fact that he's talking about bombers, it's striking to think that they had enough data to calculate 70-to-1 fighter-to-B29 kill ratios on rear attacks and 3-to-1 kill ratios on front attacks.
The opportunity to make adjustments to decisions as theoretical data are replaced by empirical data is exciting and rewarding. But I'm glad my adjustments don't have an immediate impact with respect to people living and dying.
He Who Controls The Pipes...
on
Taming the Web
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
As long as you don't own the pipes, you can't rely on being able to pump anything you want through them. The bad news is that with many smaller ISPs having been failed, abandoned, and made obsolete by the bigger/higher bandwidth players, many of us don't even have the ability to vote with dollars, except to forego Internet connection entirely. As if.
So it's not as easy as switching providers. And unless you live in a cell block or a row house, connecting your system via your own pipes isn't much of an option. Okay, not even in the cell block. Maybe wireless technologies will help ameliorate this, but at the moment, I wouldn't want to transmit anything to my buddies using the high-speed wireless data transmission technologies readily available to me.
But I disagree that geeks should stop fighting "rules" and restrictive legislation out of fear of causing a clamp-down effect. Those who are skilled and interested should work toward sensible legislation (if such a thing exists). The demise of technocrat.net is one indication to me that such skills are rare in the geek community. The average R&D meeting is another such indication.
I have more hope that as geeks continue to occupy influential positions in Corporate America and other industrialized nations, that the geek ethic will get a voice that matters to someone besides geeks. With due respect to Richard Stallman, the CTO at any company I've worked for has far more influence on the corporate direction - and the limits of corporate expectations - than any outside voice.
But hey, I could be wrong, and I'm sure I'll find doubleplusgood travel arrangements on WorldOnline2010 (a wholly-owned subsidiary of AOL/Time-Warner/Daimler-Chrysler/Philip Morris/Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati).
The RIAA and Microsoft may not have the world's most impressive understanding of technology, but what they do know is how to make money.
The RIAA doesn't want a sensible approach to ensuring its materials aren't illegally distributed, not per se; that's just one approach that they believe will make them more money.
It wouldn't surprise me at all to see the two become close bedfellows, given how much they both want to control the data we access.
You want to share files? We've got that.NET service right here, for a nominal fee.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems that Manutius is still in operation!
I'm not arguing the accuracy of this description, but it's an odd turn of phrase. "Look at the way he presses that Apple command key! Astonishing!"
Imagine instead "renowned spoon user Dr. Dew."
"Renowned telephone user Mrs. Dew."
Pithy enough to fit on a headstone, too.
Didn't realize anyone considered a $94 widget that won't be allowed through the security check at U.S. airports a "stocking stuffer." (I'm talking about the Swiss Army Knife + USB)
In my household, items of that size and price are wrapped in progressively larger boxes to draw attention to their, well, size and price. (Still talking about the Swiss Army Knife + USB here.)
The Yahoo printing of the press release is not a bad thing. It's clearly marked as a press release. If you want to pay your $600 to BusinessWire, you too can post a press release announcing that "monkeys will shoot out of my nether eye in my office at midnight tonight." Yahoo will pick it up and run it in its financial news section, because that's what it does with press releases as they come along the wire.
This is a good thing - pre-Web, getting your hands on a company's press releases was more time consuming and sometimes expensive. I prefer being able to research what a company says about itself. Of course, believing what a company says about itself is another matter, but why would a person read something marked "press release" without a skeptical eye?
Did you know, for example, that the people quoted in press releases generally don't say what they're quoted as saying? No indeed, even if multiple companies are involved, a marcom person wrote the thing, ran it by someone else's marcom person, got approval, and put it out on the wire. In some cases, the quoted person doesn't even know they've been quoted. "I'm very excited about the prospect of monkeys flying out of UrgleHoth's nether eye," said Dr. Dew. "I'm just glad they're not going to fly out of mine."
And I'm puzzled what your problem is with the Wired piece. The writer clearly states the claims as "claims" - so carefully, in fact, that I was more skeptical after reading it than I was before.
That said, I wouldn't complain if news sources did a better job aggregating related stories so that it's as easy to find out that someone's a pathological liar as it is to find out whatever they said before it was verified as a lie.
Why on earth would anyone take a job as a deodorant taster? What possible good could tasting deodorant do? And why would it be tasted in the armpit? Why not from the dispenser? That's just an appalling career, and it sickens me. That's even worse than my career as an IT Manager.
Hmmm?
Oh.
Never mind!
Right. This is July! There aren't any French people in France. Just Germans. The French are in Spain, half-or-more-naked, overturning tomato trucks.
...or at least, that's how it looks from here in 'murrica, where we milk our two weeks of vacation and wonder why Europe doesn't return our phone calls all summer. ;-)
Depending on what he would be dunked in, I might find a way to pony up $699.
I ordered a motherboard on a Monday to replace a dead one. That Wednesday, I got a call from a person with a thick Indian accent, who attempted to upsell me to the retail version rather than the cheaper OEM version I'd ordered. I still didn't have a UPS tracking number by Friday, so I contacted them via their live chat.
This is classic, and unedited except to get past the lameness filter and that I've taken out the company name and my order number to protect the clueless and the obnoxious. (You get to decide which is which):
CHAT TRANSCRIPT
---------------
Please wait for a site operator to respond.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
All operators are currently assisting others. Thanks for your patience. An operator will be with you shortly.
You are now chatting with 'steve'
steve: xyz.Com Welcome to xyz.Com Live Chat Support. It will be my pleasure if I can be helpful to you.
Computer Peripherals at xyz
you: Hi, I'm looking for status on order xxxx, to be shipped by UPS. I don't have a tracking number yet.
steve: Just hold on please let me check the details
steve: I have check status of your order. Your order has been authorized and scheduled for picking. Means it is in inventory for picking and then off to shipping department. In case of no delays in inventory department (Like back log or order reaches there past cut off time), your order will be processed and sent to shipping department. We would send you the tracking number as soon as your order is shipped. In case if it does not show any result, you may try to track your order from our website.
you: So what you're saying is that someday someone might get around to sending the item....
steve: As soon it would be send to the shipping department you will receive it in
steve: about to 24-48 hours
you: But you can't tell me how long it will take to get to the shipping department.
steve: It will go to the shipping department today itself
you: So I should expect the motherboard on Monday?
steve: It will be soon in your hands after 24-48 hours after it is sent to the shipping department
you: Which you said will happen today.
steve: yes
you: I'm sorry, I don't understand then why it's uncertain when the product, which I'm paying to have sent overnight, will arrive.
steve: sorry for the inconvenience that may caused to you
you: Can you help me understand what could keep the product from arriving on Monday?
steve: We regret for the inconvenience
you: Does that mean, "no?"
steve: Sorry,as we don't ship the orders on weekends you would get your order by monday
you: Did you mean to say I *won't* get the order on Monday?
steve: It would be soon shipped to you by monday
you: Okay, we're closer to a real answer. But when you say, "by Monday," do you really mean "on Monday?"
steve: Yes steve: We deeply regret for the inconvenience
you: Please don't say that again.
you: So as I understand our conversation, you expect the product to reach shipping today, be shipped on Monday, and thus I should expect receive it on Tuesday?
steve: No, it would be shipped to you on monday
you: When you say "it would be shipped to you on Monday," do you mean that UPS will pick it up from you on Monday or that it will reach me on Monday?
steve: No, it would be shipped to you on monday
you: I desperately hope you are a computer and not a person. Could you rephrase your answer in a way that actually answers my question?
steve: I am not a computer
steve: I am a person
you: I'm sorry if I offended you, but I'm having a difficult time figuring out when I should expect to receive the product. Since I'm paying to have UPS overnight it, and since you seem to know when it's being shipped, could you tell me what day it will arrive?
steve: Never mind steve: Our aim
perhaps I am not educated or tasteful enough to appreciate it but please ... stop posting anymore LOTR stories on /.
I have no comment on your education or your taste, both of which are your own affair.
However, rather than asking for Slashdot not to cover articles on a topic of obvious interest, perhaps you could go to your Preferences tab, then to the Homepage subtab, where you can mark the checkbox to exclude the LotR articles.
This is how thousands of users survived the Jon Katz Experience. Like Saddam Hussein, nobody could prove he was alive anymore. (If Jon reposts one of his articles from the woods, and everybody has him excluded, is he still annoying?)
If SPARC is to survive, someone outside Sun will have to make it so. After the development of the original UltraSPARC, many (most?) of the talent that made it happen went bye-bye. There's been an ongoing brain drain from the design groups since then. Some people who used to be thought of as a waste of air are now considered top contributors.
In the meantime, successor projects (to UltraSPARC) have spent too much time redesigning and precious little time getting a competitive product out the door.
The performance of the software running on my server farm's fastest Intel/AMD machines is far superior to the performance of the same products running on the fastest SPARC boxes. On the other hand, every SPARC box we've ever purchased is still running in some capacity. I can't say that for the PC-platform servers.
I'd like to see Sun get its in-house design process straightened away and become competitive again. But somebody high up is going to have to take ownership of that process and make some major changes if it's going to happen, IMO. And since things have languished this long, it's hard to figure how somebody's going to wake up at this late date and put full effort into fixing what's gone wrong. I sure hope it happens, for some of the same reasons you shared!
For future reference, I didn't make WordStar painful, I merely used it and found it painful.
;-)
Well, being a bonehead may have been involved, but that's a whole separate issue. And the documentation said *nothing* about needing to save the file to the same disk I started on.
Not that I'm at all defensive about this.
Besides, I'm sure part of the Navy's budget goes to seeing that the Navy's users get to use fresh new 360K floppy disks for each file, just to avoid this type of situation.
I still vividly recall being a high school student working on the family's first IBM PC (no hard drive, just two hard-working, 360K, full-height, black-faced, metal floppy drives). It was a History paper, and I was done. I went to save it...no dice. Out of space on my data diskette.
I substituted another diskette, and I think that's the precise moment I became an IT person. Because that's when I realized that a WordStar "Document" (as opposed to "Non-document," which IIRC was ASCII) file is opened when you create the document, not when you save it. So there was a little stub file on my (otherwise full) diskette that WordStar expected to see.
Could I print the paper? No, not without saving it first. Could I copy the contents into a buffer, exit the document and paste them somewhere? Please.
So I wrote that $$#@$%%$@ paper twice. And whenever I pull a boneheaded stunt by not thinking something through, I get a little taste of that sweet WordStar pain, and I can't say I'm sorry they're gone.
(On the other hand, given my very brief experience as an ROTC midshipman, I'm surprised that they're not still relying on punch cards for everything but Aegis.)
...as long as IE remains part of the OS. If they have to unbundle it...well, they'd reluctantly have to pass along their significant, mean-old-government-imposed, patent costs.
Begone, Philosophy Major!
<brings up die-rolling program, and rolls to hit>
Ad hominem aside, I think you're right about the computer business being different (for the majority of consumers) from the clothing business.
I also think the article is pretty optimistic about how well non-computer retailers "get it." For example, Mrs. Dew is with child now, and I made the mistake of ordering some clothes from A Pea in the Pod's online presence. Handy tip to online retailers: if *you* send the wrong merchandise, you'd better fall all over yourself to make it right, because otherwise, we won't be buying your overpriced swag again.
On the other hand, I've dealt with a few small businesses whose web sites weren't exemplary, but were adequate to get me engaged, and whose customer service made me a very happy customer. These include non-computer businesses such as Sunburst Shades and computer businesses such as Delta Marketing Group.
While Jon seems to be claiming that peddlers of general merchandise are doing better than peddlers of computers/software, I don't think this conclusion is at all borne out in my experience. The industry or vertical market a business is in seems to have little bearing on how positive they make their web shopping experience.
One Way to rule them all
One Way to find them
One Way to squeeze them all
Of all the dough inside them.
I'm doing a marathon viewing of the BBC series I, Claudius. Great performance throughout by Derek Jacobi, and I love Patrick Stewart's little wig.
It's not Mrs. Dew's favorite thing, but she tolerates "Clavdivs" once a year. See also this fact or fiction site.
The current difficulties with air travel are already sparking interest in more telecommuting options.
I had just set a guy up to commute (not tele-) from Pennsylvania to California, starting next week. It remains to be seen how viable that will be. And we've had several training classes cancelled or shrunk as customers can't make it out here.
In both those cases, while having their bodies in our office is the ideal scenario, we could function just fine moving data, voice, and images back and forth as needed. From talking with other folks, I'm getting the impression that remote working is high on their priority lists, too.
So perhaps you'll have to combine the painful commute with some work-at-home. But in general, there's impulse out there that should result in better infrastructure (both technological and in corporate thinking and procedures) for doing exactly what you want to do.
Good luck to you.
"...no, I told him I thought the latest Palm designs were cheesy!"
Ahem.
and this non-sentunce is ungramtikal and filled with bad spelled words, but I bet you understand what I am commmunicatin!
Yes, I understand you, and now I understand you to be a moron. That's undoubtedly an unfair assessment, but it's a view you cultivate in that last sentence.
Richard Feynman was scientist and a teacher of science. He used communication skills well - while his science would not have been different without them, his impact would.
Another side of the coin would be Wolfgang Goethe, most heralded and remembered as a poet, but whose work in the area of science was significant as well. To Goethe, literature and science were part of the same whole.
Most people, obviously, aren't Goethe or Feynman. And perhaps I shouldn't bite on trolling like this. But studying literature isn't any more useless than studying calculus - no subject is inherently valuable. What use you make of either one is what's important.
Bringing this back on-topic, my wife is an elementary school teacher. She has an engineering degree and a degree in education. Parents of the children she has taught over the past four years tell me she's great, and I'm not surprised.
The engineering degree doesn't make her a good teacher. The education degree doesn't make her a good teacher. She has math and science aptitude, as well as a passion for reading and history, and those things help. But what helps most of all is that she cares about the kids, and she does what she can to help them individually - to understand their interests, skills, and weaknesses enough to tailor the presentation of the material so they can absorb it.
Those soft skills are what have a "vast impact" on the society around us, because they're what connect those kids with the subjects they're supposed to be learning. Science is useful, and it's one of many things she wishes to teach, but IMO, her "liberal arts" skills are what ensure that the science gets learned.
At first I thought he was kidding about the slide rule club - I guess we're this generation's equivalent.
It's a little sobering to think of these engineering problems in their human context - even ignoring the fact that he's talking about bombers, it's striking to think that they had enough data to calculate 70-to-1 fighter-to-B29 kill ratios on rear attacks and 3-to-1 kill ratios on front attacks.
The opportunity to make adjustments to decisions as theoretical data are replaced by empirical data is exciting and rewarding. But I'm glad my adjustments don't have an immediate impact with respect to people living and dying.
As long as you don't own the pipes, you can't rely on being able to pump anything you want through them. The bad news is that with many smaller ISPs having been failed, abandoned, and made obsolete by the bigger/higher bandwidth players, many of us don't even have the ability to vote with dollars, except to forego Internet connection entirely. As if.
So it's not as easy as switching providers. And unless you live in a cell block or a row house, connecting your system via your own pipes isn't much of an option. Okay, not even in the cell block. Maybe wireless technologies will help ameliorate this, but at the moment, I wouldn't want to transmit anything to my buddies using the high-speed wireless data transmission technologies readily available to me.
But I disagree that geeks should stop fighting "rules" and restrictive legislation out of fear of causing a clamp-down effect. Those who are skilled and interested should work toward sensible legislation (if such a thing exists). The demise of technocrat.net is one indication to me that such skills are rare in the geek community. The average R&D meeting is another such indication.
I have more hope that as geeks continue to occupy influential positions in Corporate America and other industrialized nations, that the geek ethic will get a voice that matters to someone besides geeks. With due respect to Richard Stallman, the CTO at any company I've worked for has far more influence on the corporate direction - and the limits of corporate expectations - than any outside voice.
But hey, I could be wrong, and I'm sure I'll find doubleplusgood travel arrangements on WorldOnline2010 (a wholly-owned subsidiary of AOL/Time-Warner/Daimler-Chrysler/Philip Morris/Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati).
The RIAA and Microsoft may not have the world's most impressive understanding of technology, but what they do know is how to make money.
The RIAA doesn't want a sensible approach to ensuring its materials aren't illegally distributed, not per se; that's just one approach that they believe will make them more money.
It wouldn't surprise me at all to see the two become close bedfellows, given how much they both want to control the data we access.
You want to share files? We've got that .NET service right here, for a nominal fee.
Sign me up for the smell-tested Slashdot. A cadre of brave Nasalteers can prevaluate the articles in the submission queue and categorize them by odor.
This article, for example, might rate as "olidous, with a mildly mephitic aftertaste."