Since there are a few companies coming out with devices that track the location of items with an RFID tag on them, you could do almost the same thing. Sure, you probably wouldn't have a website to go to, but, you could certainly drive around with one of the base station thingies looking for a signal.
It needs to be observant and smart. It should know what I'm thinking and make it's best effort to help me. It needs to be intuitive, buttons should be very pronounced and easy to press. It needs to have some slots to plug things in.
It definitely should weigh under 115 pounds. Also, brunette would be nice.
Buy an Optima Blue Top. It's a gel cell, and they are indestructable. The Blue Top is a Marine Battery, and optima recommends them over the Deep Cycle Yellow top for UPS usage.
I had a Red Top in my 83 GTI that was 12 years old (the battery, car was older). It started my car (which sat outside all night) on a -45 degree morning (actual -45, without wind chill). Any battery that can go 12 years and still do that is amazing. The military puts them in everything from Hummers to helicopters.
Not true. With rebates and discounts found through sites like dealnews.com, you can get them for much less. My friend got 2 dell dimensions with 15" lcd's for $450 each. That's dirt cheap.
But, you are correct, a dell with comparable specs is more than the imac. Plus, it's probably not nearly the quality.
Isn't this designed by the same guy that designs that SHIT sold at target? All I wanted was a damn broom, not some purple thing with a big sex toy lookin' handle that looks like it came from Alice in Wonderland.
Honestly, who wants a toaster or a teapot with purple knobs on it? I don't know what the Target people were smoking when the contracted with that guy, but they obviously smoked it all.
Last night, I went with a friend to some Materials Science Industry conference dinner thing at the Science Museum of Minnesota. We were walking around the museum, and there was a kiosk which said "Why should we have women in Science and Technology?"
Below it, was a laminated photo album with notes from schoolchildren in it. Most of the responses were insightful. However, one of them read:
So they can get the male scientists a sandwich or something.
Donna
It was written in bubbly little girl handwriting too. Obviously someone didn't want to be on that field trip.
Really, if you think about it, you probably only spend one or two hours a day in your car, but you probably paid an obscene amount of money for it. Spending $1000 on something you spend half your life sitting in seems cheap to me.
In any case, I was going to pick up an Aeron, but I came across a Herman Miller Ergon made in 1975 for $40. It's pimpin' 70's orange, and it's super comfy. I've heard that they have lifetime warranties and will actually send someone out to fix it if it breaks, but I haven't had to use that yet.
Recently I've been seeing some Aeron knockoffs. I'm not sure who makes them, but they seem fairly good. Not nearly as well built, but the one or two hours I sat in one, it was decent. All of the chairs they sell at Office Max/etc are crap. Don't waste your money.
I'm still probably going to buy an Aeron. The mesh on them is great for keeping you cool if your office/room is warm. Plus, no one can do that Tabasco trick on you if you have the mesh (where you put tabasco on their chair, and it wicks up when their ass sweats and gives them an ass rash).
Newegg has a PQI Intelligent stick USB key, 1 gig, for $97. It's the size of two pennies, and it's fast. Smallest drive you can get, and the price is right.
I don't have a link now, just type it into the search. I paid $103 for mine a week ago, and they've dropped the price by $6.
I'm all for trying to look busy and impress the boss, but IMO there's too much slacking going on.
I work my ass off, I'm trying to get somewhere and do a good job at what I do. When you are surrounded by lazy people who do just enough work not to get fired, it makes it hard to get my stuff done when I am relying on other people to finish their portion of it, and it also makes others pissed at you for making them look bad.
The job I have now is fine, but a previous job was a nightmare. 60 hour workweeks could have been 30 if others had done the job they were paid to do. Not to mention, there are a ton of incompetent people out there that should not be in the positions that they are in.
I'm definitely not a model employee, but I want to get my work done and have a life outside of work. I make an extra effort to learn things that are useful to my job, and I expect my co-workers to do the same. Being the bad guy because you have a deeper understanding of a particular product or concept sucks.
One of my old roomie's books from college on business management said that you can't motivate employees with more money, but you can certainly demotivate them with not enough. Maybe that's the problem, I don't know. But, in any case, if I was in a position of power at a company, slackers would be scared. Slacking off not only hurts the company's bottom line (which most people could care less about), but more importantly, you are making more work for your co-workers, hurting morale, and possibly providing the company with ammo to get rid of your lazy ass.
Personally, I find it harder to stare at a cubicle wall than to actually just do my work that needs to get done. I've been at quite a few different jobs, and now that I think about it, the jobs that were very strict on hours were the ones that I saw the most slacking. If it takes one 2 hours to finish their work for the day, they should have the freedom to go home, go to training, etc. If they are making you be there 8 hours, and you are done with all of your work, it really doesn't give one an incentive to get it done. I guess if you treat your employees like children, they will act like it.
Playboy magazine had a horrifying story about what can happen to you when you are an organ donor. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. But scary nonetheless.
The basic idea of it is that they don't work as hard to save you if you are an organ donor and are involved in an accident. One of the quotes in there is from a woman paramedic who arrives on the scene of an accident. The guy is pretty bad, but she thinks he'll make it. The organ donor team comes in, says, there's no way he'll make it, and starts cutting the guys organs out with him laying there bleeding on the ground.
Anyway, it was from last year sometime. Maybe it's available on their website. This will give you a good excuse to go there and look.:)
I have played with one of these locks, and they are not made well. I assume the guts of them are not machined to very close tolerances. Locks that are not machined well are vulnerable to picking much easier.
If you look at the lock, you'll see a center thing that rotates. Open the scissors slightly, put one end into the notch on the center thingy, and the other end somewhere into the circular groove surrounding the center. Inside the groove are tiny pins... Apply a slight turning force on the scissors, and then use the Bic pen to poke each pin until they snap into place. You may have to poke each one multiple times because only one will be able to fall into place at a time, and you won't know which one because each lock has different tolerances due to they quality of manufacturing.
You can actually buy devices that do this all for you through lockpicking sites. However, I think the kensington lock is a bit smaller, and the commercial ones probably will not fit.
In any case, the lock is still a deterrent. I used to work in downtown minneapolis. Around christmas time, laptop thefts in our office would go up dramatically. Theives would get dressed up, and walk into the office like they were supposed to be there, and then just grab one and leave. Because there were people everywhere, spending 30 seconds doing something shady to a laptop lock is probably not something they would want to do. Especially since there were plenty of non-locked machines laying around.
I get 5-6 hours out of my ibook if I turn the screen brightness down. If it's doing nothing but playing mp3's with the screen blanked, it lasts for about 10.
Apple laptops aren't much, if any, more expensive than a PC laptop, and the battery life issue alone makes it worth the investment. Toss Virtual PC on it if you need windows stuff, but I've found that it does everything that my PC did, only better. Except for one thing, Visio VSD files. Hassle the Omni group to add VSD functionality. They already support VSX, but Visio saves in VSD by default, so you won't be able to read/edit pre-existing visio docs.
I looked at this awhile back. It was cheaper and seemed more robust than the SecureID stuff. Plus, it's event based, not time based. You don't have to wait a minute before logging into another device, you just hit the button and take the next code. If it gets out of sync, just enter the next 5 codes in, and it syncs back up, no calling the IT dept or messing around with timing.
Slashdot Mirror
Since there are a few companies coming out with devices that track the location of items with an RFID tag on them, you could do almost the same thing. Sure, you probably wouldn't have a website to go to, but, you could certainly drive around with one of the base station thingies looking for a signal.
Then you don't have to replace batteries either.
Get a job hippie!
Also, a colorblind person can supposedly see better in the dark than a non-colorblind person, due to there being more rods in their eye.
I'm horribly colorblind, but I can see fine when others think it's pitch black.
It needs to be observant and smart. It should know what I'm thinking and make it's best effort to help me. It needs to be intuitive, buttons should be very pronounced and easy to press. It needs to have some slots to plug things in.
It definitely should weigh under 115 pounds. Also, brunette would be nice.
Buy an Optima Blue Top. It's a gel cell, and they are indestructable. The Blue Top is a Marine Battery, and optima recommends them over the Deep Cycle Yellow top for UPS usage.
http://www.optimabatteries.com
I had a Red Top in my 83 GTI that was 12 years old (the battery, car was older). It started my car (which sat outside all night) on a -45 degree morning (actual -45, without wind chill). Any battery that can go 12 years and still do that is amazing. The military puts them in everything from Hummers to helicopters.
What alternate theories of cometary composition have there been?"
They are not rock and ice, they are alien spacecraft coming to take us home!
Hey, drink this.
And buy Nike.
Not true. With rebates and discounts found through sites like dealnews.com, you can get them for much less. My friend got 2 dell dimensions with 15" lcd's for $450 each. That's dirt cheap.
But, you are correct, a dell with comparable specs is more than the imac. Plus, it's probably not nearly the quality.
XM is 60% owned by ClearChannel anyway. Why would you want to give your money to them?
Buy a Sirius tuner and suck it up. Sirius plays better music too.
Why doesn't anyone make a usb/serial -> DIN adapter for receivers? It can't be that hard, and would allow one to use any receiver on their computers.
But temporary. I suggest drinking wood alcohol. Still cheap and effective, but permanent.
Pulp Fiction style... You buy an apple, your soul is placed into the box and sent to steve jobs.
This was a previous Ask Slashdot question at least once, probably twice.
Isn't this designed by the same guy that designs that SHIT sold at target? All I wanted was a damn broom, not some purple thing with a big sex toy lookin' handle that looks like it came from Alice in Wonderland.
Honestly, who wants a toaster or a teapot with purple knobs on it? I don't know what the Target people were smoking when the contracted with that guy, but they obviously smoked it all.
Last night, I went with a friend to some Materials Science Industry conference dinner thing at the Science Museum of Minnesota. We were walking around the museum, and there was a kiosk which said "Why should we have women in Science and Technology?"
Below it, was a laminated photo album with notes from schoolchildren in it. Most of the responses were insightful. However, one of them read:
So they can get the male scientists a sandwich or something.
Donna
It was written in bubbly little girl handwriting too. Obviously someone didn't want to be on that field trip.
Really, if you think about it, you probably only spend one or two hours a day in your car, but you probably paid an obscene amount of money for it. Spending $1000 on something you spend half your life sitting in seems cheap to me.
In any case, I was going to pick up an Aeron, but I came across a Herman Miller Ergon made in 1975 for $40. It's pimpin' 70's orange, and it's super comfy. I've heard that they have lifetime warranties and will actually send someone out to fix it if it breaks, but I haven't had to use that yet.
Recently I've been seeing some Aeron knockoffs. I'm not sure who makes them, but they seem fairly good. Not nearly as well built, but the one or two hours I sat in one, it was decent. All of the chairs they sell at Office Max/etc are crap. Don't waste your money.
I'm still probably going to buy an Aeron. The mesh on them is great for keeping you cool if your office/room is warm. Plus, no one can do that Tabasco trick on you if you have the mesh (where you put tabasco on their chair, and it wicks up when their ass sweats and gives them an ass rash).
Newegg has a PQI Intelligent stick USB key, 1 gig, for $97. It's the size of two pennies, and it's fast. Smallest drive you can get, and the price is right.
I don't have a link now, just type it into the search. I paid $103 for mine a week ago, and they've dropped the price by $6.
I've found that disabling the delayed ACK on Windows servers generally fixes all problems I've had with Windows->unix communication.
MS even has a technet article on it, actually a few.
I'm all for trying to look busy and impress the boss, but IMO there's too much slacking going on.
I work my ass off, I'm trying to get somewhere and do a good job at what I do. When you are surrounded by lazy people who do just enough work not to get fired, it makes it hard to get my stuff done when I am relying on other people to finish their portion of it, and it also makes others pissed at you for making them look bad.
The job I have now is fine, but a previous job was a nightmare. 60 hour workweeks could have been 30 if others had done the job they were paid to do. Not to mention, there are a ton of incompetent people out there that should not be in the positions that they are in.
I'm definitely not a model employee, but I want to get my work done and have a life outside of work. I make an extra effort to learn things that are useful to my job, and I expect my co-workers to do the same. Being the bad guy because you have a deeper understanding of a particular product or concept sucks.
One of my old roomie's books from college on business management said that you can't motivate employees with more money, but you can certainly demotivate them with not enough. Maybe that's the problem, I don't know. But, in any case, if I was in a position of power at a company, slackers would be scared. Slacking off not only hurts the company's bottom line (which most people could care less about), but more importantly, you are making more work for your co-workers, hurting morale, and possibly providing the company with ammo to get rid of your lazy ass.
Personally, I find it harder to stare at a cubicle wall than to actually just do my work that needs to get done. I've been at quite a few different jobs, and now that I think about it, the jobs that were very strict on hours were the ones that I saw the most slacking. If it takes one 2 hours to finish their work for the day, they should have the freedom to go home, go to training, etc. If they are making you be there 8 hours, and you are done with all of your work, it really doesn't give one an incentive to get it done. I guess if you treat your employees like children, they will act like it.
If they are smart, they will use something like this for encryption. The page hints at where it's used.
Playboy magazine had a horrifying story about what can happen to you when you are an organ donor. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. But scary nonetheless.
:)
The basic idea of it is that they don't work as hard to save you if you are an organ donor and are involved in an accident. One of the quotes in there is from a woman paramedic who arrives on the scene of an accident. The guy is pretty bad, but she thinks he'll make it. The organ donor team comes in, says, there's no way he'll make it, and starts cutting the guys organs out with him laying there bleeding on the ground.
Anyway, it was from last year sometime. Maybe it's available on their website. This will give you a good excuse to go there and look.
I have played with one of these locks, and they are not made well. I assume the guts of them are not machined to very close tolerances. Locks that are not machined well are vulnerable to picking much easier.
If you look at the lock, you'll see a center thing that rotates. Open the scissors slightly, put one end into the notch on the center thingy, and the other end somewhere into the circular groove surrounding the center. Inside the groove are tiny pins... Apply a slight turning force on the scissors, and then use the Bic pen to poke each pin until they snap into place. You may have to poke each one multiple times because only one will be able to fall into place at a time, and you won't know which one because each lock has different tolerances due to they quality of manufacturing.
You can actually buy devices that do this all for you through lockpicking sites. However, I think the kensington lock is a bit smaller, and the commercial ones probably will not fit.
In any case, the lock is still a deterrent. I used to work in downtown minneapolis. Around christmas time, laptop thefts in our office would go up dramatically. Theives would get dressed up, and walk into the office like they were supposed to be there, and then just grab one and leave. Because there were people everywhere, spending 30 seconds doing something shady to a laptop lock is probably not something they would want to do. Especially since there were plenty of non-locked machines laying around.
hacky da router
I get 5-6 hours out of my ibook if I turn the screen brightness down. If it's doing nothing but playing mp3's with the screen blanked, it lasts for about 10.
Apple laptops aren't much, if any, more expensive than a PC laptop, and the battery life issue alone makes it worth the investment. Toss Virtual PC on it if you need windows stuff, but I've found that it does everything that my PC did, only better. Except for one thing, Visio VSD files. Hassle the Omni group to add VSD functionality. They already support VSX, but Visio saves in VSD by default, so you won't be able to read/edit pre-existing visio docs.
Here.
I looked at this awhile back. It was cheaper and seemed more robust than the SecureID stuff. Plus, it's event based, not time based. You don't have to wait a minute before logging into another device, you just hit the button and take the next code. If it gets out of sync, just enter the next 5 codes in, and it syncs back up, no calling the IT dept or messing around with timing.
How does it do in low light situations?