Pizza Slut's run by idiots. They haven't been able to deliver pizza to me since I switched exclusively to a cell phone. Neither my old prefix nor my new one are listed in their database so they can't take my order. Doesn't matter that they're local calls or that I live less than a mile from the restaurant.
Too bad because I liked those first couple of New Yorkers I got before switching. (That should give you an idea how long I've been cellular-only.)
Yes, I know I can make up a number, use the number for the office fax machine, etc. But I shouldn't have to do that. Round Table has no trouble with my cell phone. Neither do the other two places I call from time to time. If Pizza Hut wants my business back, they'll have to pull their heads out first.
Re:Cell phone not a satisfactory alternative
on
VoIP for the Masses!
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· Score: 1
It may not be an alternative for you but it works great for me. And I knew it would work before making a commitment. Want to know how I did it? Simple. I explained that I wanted to test the phone before making a commitment. If they won't loan you a phone or give you the option to terminate the contract without penalty within a few days, go somewhere else.
The entire country is pissed because they have to pay their entire bill? They're being raped because they have to pay for the services that they use?
If that's the case, I'd better call the police right now. I get raped several times a month. Rent, gas, electricity, phone, cable, water, sewer, internet, etc. I have to pay the full amount every month. Oh, the humanity!
First off, why would such a thing need to be limited to open source software?
Second, it's one of the worst ideas I've heard in a long, long, long, long time. What about the software that works perfectly and doesn't _need_ an update? I used the same backup software from '97 until last month. I didn't need to upgrade because the original product worked fine. (I have to switch now because we're changing platforms.) I still use Excel 4.0a because it does everything I need a spreadsheet to do and it needs a fraction of the resources that the current version uses. I just checked the copyright on Excel 4.0a and it's 1985-1992. That means my decade-old software is still functioning perfectly.
And why should people with offline systems need to worry about network security patches? If I've got a standalone system controlling a production line with no connection to any other computer, why should I have to worry about keeping out l33t hackers? "Gotta schedule some downtime because the software is expiring. No, sir, it's the new fashion. We're being forced to upgrade. Yes, the upgrade will work. We spent the last 3 months doing nothing but testing the new software. No, there's nothing wrong with the old software but it will stop working in 3 weeks. No, it's not a licensing problem."
If your admins aren't patching systems that need to be patched, fire them and tell their replacements what happened to the previous admins. Don't try to make me upgrade everything in sight with no regard for the context in which the machine or software is being used just because a small number of people aren't doing their jobs.
You missed the point. Sony cannot release information just because someone asks. They have a responsibility to protect the privacy of their users. I wouldn't expect them to do any less. In order to get past the privacy agreement, they need a court order. Therefore, the mother must sue them.
"...the service - employing some 800 birds - has become redundant..."
Isn't that the whole point? What kind of wide area communications backup system is going to cost less than $10k/year? The system obviously isn't obsolete since it was used as recently as 1999. I don't know 'bout y'all but I _want_ some redundancy in my government emergency communications network.
One particular food service company's been "sending" me stuff for two days. Stuff that, if the names are accurate, contains all kinds of top secret stuff. Formulas for drink flavorings, "CANCEL VISA CARD", saction by the board of health, pricing proposals, container proposals, a personal document that appears to have something to do with UCLA, reports on competitors, etc. And I got all that just from reading the file names. I'm sure there's plenty of juicy stuff tucked away in the 100+ files that have come from their machine. And that's just one company.
I've just left it all locked in quarrantine for now and have no intention of ever cleaning any of it up or reading it. I want to keep it there to remind people why we have virus scanning software that automatically updantes and cannot be disabled. And why it's important to never, ever, ever open an email attachment that seems suspicious. Even if it's from someone you know.
A thin CRT is neat and all but are they any more efficient than the current monitors? Part of the LCD appeal, to me, is the fact that they use very little energy and don't put out much heat. Making a CRT thin is only half the battle. It's also gotta be efficient to get my $$$. Especially with $400 LCDs all over the place. Heck, that's less than I paid for my last 17" CRT back in the late 90s.
I donated a computer to the local university's satellite project and I think the launch was some time earlier this year. If so, there's a bird with my name on it out there. Or one that says Hugh Jass. I don't remember which was the final submission.
I just checked the specs on that case. 14.5x7.5x14. The mid-tower AT case under my desk is 15x7x16.5 with 3 exposed 5.25" bays and 2 exposed [and normal] 3.5" bays. (Not to mention the 250 watt standard form factor power supply.) The mini-tower I have at home is shorter (1 less 5.25" bay), just as narrow, and no deeper. I also ran across one that should be even _smaller_ with just one 5.25" bay. Pretty much the same volume overall with a full compliment of expansion slots and room for any standard power supply.
With the size of the cases matched by standard mini-towers, there's really no point in going with mATX.
mATX is a joke. And a bad one. check the specs on every mATX case you can find and you'll see that they're not very small. In fact, I've got an old AT mini tower that's shorter, narrower, and shallower than any mATX case I've been able to find.
I learned this when I bought a cheap mATX motherboard then tried to find a small case for it. No dice. While I eventually did end up with something that was acceptable (good airflow, low noise, decent construction), it's larger than my AT mini tower in every dimension. And for that extra size, I gave up half my expansion slots, lost a drive bay, and had a 145 watt power supply.
The only choices I've found for small, somewhat standard wintel systems are NLX and LPX. Unfortunately, they've both got their limitations, don't support bleeding edge CPUs, and they're very hard to find. There's always the BookPC line. Of course, with all three, you're generally stuck with onboard video using shared memory and other performance-limiting stuff. If you want to go beyond 500Mhz and/or have high end video support, these systems aren't for you.
If you want a ready-built sysem, try and track down one of those Qrium boxes. Tigerdirect had the 566 Celery model for $350 for a while but I don't see it any longer. There are a couple on Ebay. The 566 Celery and a 600 P3. Unfortunately, I have a feeling the Qrium line is going to die on the vine. Their web site is "under construction" and you have to follow the link thru Daewoo's Korean site (click on "English") to find specs on the machines. If anyone can find a reliable source for these...
I've been an avid reader since grade school so I'm quite familiar with the issues of storing and transporting large amounts of printed matter. My book cases (yes, cases) are stuffed top to bottom, two rows deep, extra shelves added, books laying on top of the rows, etc.
At first blush, the ebook thing looks like the perfect answer to the hassles of packing and transporting the collection. However, once one _tries_ to delve into the world of ebooks, it quickly becomes apparent that it's not all shits and giggles. The most grating issue is control, followed quickly by compatibility. Very few ebook publishers allow the reader to control the presentation of the data. I've got the glassbook reader, the adobe reader, the MS reader, etc., etc., etc. Then there are the standalone systems like the one FatBrain used to use (tho I received an email last year telling me to hurry up and unlock my books before the new system went live) which writes a license key to the registry of your Windoze machine. Control, control, control. It didn't take long for me to figure out that I was no longer purchasing a book. I was purchasing a license.
Can you imagine if you bought a book from B&N only to discover that you need to use a special light bulb from Random House in order to read the book? And that it will only let you read books that _you_ purchased. You can no longer borrow a book from a friend. If a friend stops by, he'd better bring his own bulb if he wants to show you his new art book. And what if your bulb breaks? You're screwed unless you've got receipts for your entire library and can convince the publisher that your old bulb really was destroyed. Upgrade your lamp? Better keep the old one around so you can read books from the "old lamp" era. Nevermind the fact that each publisher uses a different bulb. And God help you if your electrical system runs at 220.
Until publishers get over their control issues and pick a standard format, there's no way ebooks will be anything more than a niche market.
Take one of those old CD-ROM towers and make a cluster. Seriously, tho, get one of those 7-bay towers, load it up, sticky-tape an 8-port switch in there, hook the uplink to a jack on the back and you've got 7 fairly powerful machines in the space of mid size tower case. Takes up less space than 7 1-U rack systems.
If this is truly a management problem that isn't going to change, don't become a martyr. I've been faced with a similar situation and I eventually realized that the company's problems were not my fault and I was just using the "but it'll hurt so many people" thing as an excuse to avoid the risk of changing jobs. If the company's as bad off as you say it is, your friends will be screwed anyway. If they're as talented as you say, they'll have new jobs in a week. Probably with better pay and bennies. And, if they're really your friends, they'll get over it even if they do fall on hard times.
Also, nobody is indispensable. To think that is extremely arrogant. The world won't end if you quit, no matter how important you think you are. Better turn the ego down a couple notches.
Hah! I've been on the receiving end of a "Don't worry about it. We just have that there for the lawyers" line of bull. Happened with my cablemodem service. Back when the beta started I told the local engineer exactly what I wanted to do. Run my own web/ftp/mail servers. "No problem. We don't have static IPs available yet but they should be here in a few weeks." Several _months_ later I finally got my static IP. I expressed my relief that I could finally migrate my servers from ISDN to the cablemodem. 6 months later, the cable company started blocking mail/ftp/http ports. I got a lot of, "Gee. I'm so sorry this happened. I'll see what I can do about it." from the local top dog but the ports were never opened. He did, however, confirm that this was not a targetted action. _Every_ customer now has those ports blocked. (Tho only from outside the segment. People on the same segment can still access each others' machines on those ports.)
I know I'm not alone. There was a group of local geeks (I was one of them) running a private ISP with all sorts of goodies like 24/7, private connection on the other end, ISDN, etc. When cable/DSL rolled out virtually simultaneously, we realized we could get the same 24/7 connectivity with 10 times the speed at half the price. Some moved to cable, some to DSL. Those of us who went to cable were expecting to be able to run our servers since we'd made our intentions clear from the start. No dice. I know of several local companies who ended up in the same boat. The cable company made them all sorts of promises about how they'll "never actually enforce that" only to have their email servers go dark.
As for having better things to do than snoop, you must be dealing with a different company than I am. Most of the reported scans on my gateway (discounting Windoze people who don't know how to configure their networks) come from "sniffers" at the cable company.
Turning a computer on and off every day is _bad_ for it. No two ways about it. Back in the olden days the manuals even warned you not to turn off the computer unnecessarily. All those heating/cooling cycles will take a toll.
If you've got heat problems, I suggest you clear out the rat's nest and make sure your system has adequate airflow. Having a bunch of fans is useless if they're just stirring around the same old air. They need to pull in fresh air and exhaust the hot air. As for the 450W power supply "issue", you don't seem to understand how these things work. A 450W power supply puts out _up to_ 450 watts, not a _continuous_ 450 watts.
Sounds like someone's got a case of cell envy.:) Some of us have put two and two together and realized that it's cheaper to have a cell phone with a good calling plan than it is to have a cell phone _and_ a land line.
The last time I moved, it took the phone company over a week to tell me why they failed to install my phone line. Apparently they had to dig a trench. Somewhere. Not sure where but it would definately take at least a month (this was from the person in charge of scheduling the area's work crews). I told 'em to get bent, traded in my old analog phone for digital, and haven't missed PacBell for a second. That was 1.5 years ago.
I'm not the only one doing this. My grandfather uses his cell phone exclusively when calling me because what's local on his cell phone is long distance on the land line. My dad's considering making the change as well. Several friends have decided it'll be part of their next move just for the simplicity if nothing else. When I got my phone, I was in and out in half an hour. When's the last time you had a "traditional" phone up and running that fast?:)
About the only reasons to keep a phone line these days are for internet access (assuming you can't/won't get a cablemodem) and fax machines.
After over a decade of owning PCs and even longer with consoles, I have to say I prefer consoles for gaming. If I want to play the latest games on my PC, it's almost a given that I'll need to upgrade if I want to get the most out of the game. It's been that way since my first 286. When I got it I was stoked to find games that said things like, "enhanced for AT computers". Barely a year went by and games were saying "386/25 or better recommended" and my $2000 beast was obsolete. By the time I was ready to upgrade, I'd missed the 386 craze altogether and jumped into 486 with both feet. Again, it only seemed like I'd hardly blinked before the games were labeled "pentium CPU recommended". I dutifully upgraded, once again throwing out video card, memory, hard drive, etc. I've been thru another generation since then and my current PC does a pretty good job but in a few months it'll be struggling.
After a while, spending a $500-1000 a year on PC upgrades gets old if it's only being done to play the latest games. (And the upgrading is obviously a side-effect of gaming as my office PC is still a blazing 233Mhz beast with 64 megs of RAM and would still be a 133Mhz ball of fire if I hadn't needed to replace a fried CPU with one from the parts pile.) I've already decided that my next gaming upgrade will be a PS2 (after Christmas). For $300, it'll play lots of games, has nearly the same expansion potential as a PC, and plays DVDs. All my entertainment needs in a simple package. I'll leave the comptuers for getting work done and find something else to do with the extra cash.
My first reaction when I read this was, "The less privacy you have at work, the lower you are on the ladder."
Not entirely true but that's still a common perception. The big bosses have big offices with windows and doors. The next level down is smaller offices with doors but no (or smaller) windows. Then there's cubes. Then there's people who sit at a table wherever a few feet of floor space open up. In the corporate world, the amount of space set aside for you as an individual is your status symbol.
If a company wants to move to this kind of environment for day-to-day work, I think they should take great care to make sure that the employees understand that they are still just as valuable as they always were. That could even require retaining individual office space so that the employees have a bolt hole - someplace they can go to work on those things that require privacy and concentration. A place to take calls from the wife/doctor/financial planner that don't work well in public. A place to hang pictures and stick dilbert strips to the door.
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Is this a trick question? They get charged for a long distance call to whatever area code you picked.
Pizza Slut's run by idiots. They haven't been able to deliver pizza to me since I switched exclusively to a cell phone. Neither my old prefix nor my new one are listed in their database so they can't take my order. Doesn't matter that they're local calls or that I live less than a mile from the restaurant.
Too bad because I liked those first couple of New Yorkers I got before switching. (That should give you an idea how long I've been cellular-only.)
Yes, I know I can make up a number, use the number for the office fax machine, etc. But I shouldn't have to do that. Round Table has no trouble with my cell phone. Neither do the other two places I call from time to time. If Pizza Hut wants my business back, they'll have to pull their heads out first.
It may not be an alternative for you but it works great for me. And I knew it would work before making a commitment. Want to know how I did it? Simple. I explained that I wanted to test the phone before making a commitment. If they won't loan you a phone or give you the option to terminate the contract without penalty within a few days, go somewhere else.
Oh...they can't give me a number in my area code, let alone guarantee that my number is local to friends/family/work.
Try explaining the new area code to Aunt Hortence. "Why did you move to New Jersey, dear?"
The entire country is pissed because they have to pay their entire bill? They're being raped because they have to pay for the services that they use?
If that's the case, I'd better call the police right now. I get raped several times a month. Rent, gas, electricity, phone, cable, water, sewer, internet, etc. I have to pay the full amount every month. Oh, the humanity!
First off, why would such a thing need to be limited to open source software?
Second, it's one of the worst ideas I've heard in a long, long, long, long time. What about the software that works perfectly and doesn't _need_ an update? I used the same backup software from '97 until last month. I didn't need to upgrade because the original product worked fine. (I have to switch now because we're changing platforms.) I still use Excel 4.0a because it does everything I need a spreadsheet to do and it needs a fraction of the resources that the current version uses. I just checked the copyright on Excel 4.0a and it's 1985-1992. That means my decade-old software is still functioning perfectly.
And why should people with offline systems need to worry about network security patches? If I've got a standalone system controlling a production line with no connection to any other computer, why should I have to worry about keeping out l33t hackers? "Gotta schedule some downtime because the software is expiring. No, sir, it's the new fashion. We're being forced to upgrade. Yes, the upgrade will work. We spent the last 3 months doing nothing but testing the new software. No, there's nothing wrong with the old software but it will stop working in 3 weeks. No, it's not a licensing problem."
If your admins aren't patching systems that need to be patched, fire them and tell their replacements what happened to the previous admins. Don't try to make me upgrade everything in sight with no regard for the context in which the machine or software is being used just because a small number of people aren't doing their jobs.
Of course, my machines do just fine at 200-550Mhz.
You missed the point. Sony cannot release information just because someone asks. They have a responsibility to protect the privacy of their users. I wouldn't expect them to do any less. In order to get past the privacy agreement, they need a court order. Therefore, the mother must sue them.
"...the service - employing some 800 birds - has become redundant..."
Isn't that the whole point? What kind of wide area communications backup system is going to cost less than $10k/year? The system obviously isn't obsolete since it was used as recently as 1999. I don't know 'bout y'all but I _want_ some redundancy in my government emergency communications network.
WTF is up with removing anonymous posting capability? Gotta collect that personal information to sell to your advertisers?
I sent in this story months ago.
I've just left it all locked in quarrantine for now and have no intention of ever cleaning any of it up or reading it. I want to keep it there to remind people why we have virus scanning software that automatically updantes and cannot be disabled. And why it's important to never, ever, ever open an email attachment that seems suspicious. Even if it's from someone you know.
A thin CRT is neat and all but are they any more efficient than the current monitors? Part of the LCD appeal, to me, is the fact that they use very little energy and don't put out much heat. Making a CRT thin is only half the battle. It's also gotta be efficient to get my $$$. Especially with $400 LCDs all over the place. Heck, that's less than I paid for my last 17" CRT back in the late 90s.
I donated a computer to the local university's satellite project and I think the launch was some time earlier this year. If so, there's a bird with my name on it out there. Or one that says Hugh Jass. I don't remember which was the final submission.
With the size of the cases matched by standard mini-towers, there's really no point in going with mATX.
I learned this when I bought a cheap mATX motherboard then tried to find a small case for it. No dice. While I eventually did end up with something that was acceptable (good airflow, low noise, decent construction), it's larger than my AT mini tower in every dimension. And for that extra size, I gave up half my expansion slots, lost a drive bay, and had a 145 watt power supply.
The only choices I've found for small, somewhat standard wintel systems are NLX and LPX. Unfortunately, they've both got their limitations, don't support bleeding edge CPUs, and they're very hard to find. There's always the BookPC line. Of course, with all three, you're generally stuck with onboard video using shared memory and other performance-limiting stuff. If you want to go beyond 500Mhz and/or have high end video support, these systems aren't for you.
If you want a ready-built sysem, try and track down one of those Qrium boxes. Tigerdirect had the 566 Celery model for $350 for a while but I don't see it any longer. There are a couple on Ebay. The 566 Celery and a 600 P3. Unfortunately, I have a feeling the Qrium line is going to die on the vine. Their web site is "under construction" and you have to follow the link thru Daewoo's Korean site (click on "English") to find specs on the machines. If anyone can find a reliable source for these...
At first blush, the ebook thing looks like the perfect answer to the hassles of packing and transporting the collection. However, once one _tries_ to delve into the world of ebooks, it quickly becomes apparent that it's not all shits and giggles. The most grating issue is control, followed quickly by compatibility. Very few ebook publishers allow the reader to control the presentation of the data. I've got the glassbook reader, the adobe reader, the MS reader, etc., etc., etc. Then there are the standalone systems like the one FatBrain used to use (tho I received an email last year telling me to hurry up and unlock my books before the new system went live) which writes a license key to the registry of your Windoze machine. Control, control, control. It didn't take long for me to figure out that I was no longer purchasing a book. I was purchasing a license.
Can you imagine if you bought a book from B&N only to discover that you need to use a special light bulb from Random House in order to read the book? And that it will only let you read books that _you_ purchased. You can no longer borrow a book from a friend. If a friend stops by, he'd better bring his own bulb if he wants to show you his new art book. And what if your bulb breaks? You're screwed unless you've got receipts for your entire library and can convince the publisher that your old bulb really was destroyed. Upgrade your lamp? Better keep the old one around so you can read books from the "old lamp" era. Nevermind the fact that each publisher uses a different bulb. And God help you if your electrical system runs at 220.
Until publishers get over their control issues and pick a standard format, there's no way ebooks will be anything more than a niche market.
Take one of those old CD-ROM towers and make a cluster. Seriously, tho, get one of those 7-bay towers, load it up, sticky-tape an 8-port switch in there, hook the uplink to a jack on the back and you've got 7 fairly powerful machines in the space of mid size tower case. Takes up less space than 7 1-U rack systems.
Also, nobody is indispensable. To think that is extremely arrogant. The world won't end if you quit, no matter how important you think you are. Better turn the ego down a couple notches.
That would just become part of the Mystery. :)
I know I'm not alone. There was a group of local geeks (I was one of them) running a private ISP with all sorts of goodies like 24/7, private connection on the other end, ISDN, etc. When cable/DSL rolled out virtually simultaneously, we realized we could get the same 24/7 connectivity with 10 times the speed at half the price. Some moved to cable, some to DSL. Those of us who went to cable were expecting to be able to run our servers since we'd made our intentions clear from the start. No dice. I know of several local companies who ended up in the same boat. The cable company made them all sorts of promises about how they'll "never actually enforce that" only to have their email servers go dark.
As for having better things to do than snoop, you must be dealing with a different company than I am. Most of the reported scans on my gateway (discounting Windoze people who don't know how to configure their networks) come from "sniffers" at the cable company.
Turning a computer on and off every day is _bad_ for it. No two ways about it. Back in the olden days the manuals even warned you not to turn off the computer unnecessarily. All those heating/cooling cycles will take a toll.
If you've got heat problems, I suggest you clear out the rat's nest and make sure your system has adequate airflow. Having a bunch of fans is useless if they're just stirring around the same old air. They need to pull in fresh air and exhaust the hot air. As for the 450W power supply "issue", you don't seem to understand how these things work. A 450W power supply puts out _up to_ 450 watts, not a _continuous_ 450 watts.
The last time I moved, it took the phone company over a week to tell me why they failed to install my phone line. Apparently they had to dig a trench. Somewhere. Not sure where but it would definately take at least a month (this was from the person in charge of scheduling the area's work crews). I told 'em to get bent, traded in my old analog phone for digital, and haven't missed PacBell for a second. That was 1.5 years ago.
I'm not the only one doing this. My grandfather uses his cell phone exclusively when calling me because what's local on his cell phone is long distance on the land line. My dad's considering making the change as well. Several friends have decided it'll be part of their next move just for the simplicity if nothing else. When I got my phone, I was in and out in half an hour. When's the last time you had a "traditional" phone up and running that fast? :)
About the only reasons to keep a phone line these days are for internet access (assuming you can't/won't get a cablemodem) and fax machines.
After a while, spending a $500-1000 a year on PC upgrades gets old if it's only being done to play the latest games. (And the upgrading is obviously a side-effect of gaming as my office PC is still a blazing 233Mhz beast with 64 megs of RAM and would still be a 133Mhz ball of fire if I hadn't needed to replace a fried CPU with one from the parts pile.) I've already decided that my next gaming upgrade will be a PS2 (after Christmas). For $300, it'll play lots of games, has nearly the same expansion potential as a PC, and plays DVDs. All my entertainment needs in a simple package. I'll leave the comptuers for getting work done and find something else to do with the extra cash.
Not entirely true but that's still a common perception. The big bosses have big offices with windows and doors. The next level down is smaller offices with doors but no (or smaller) windows. Then there's cubes. Then there's people who sit at a table wherever a few feet of floor space open up. In the corporate world, the amount of space set aside for you as an individual is your status symbol.
If a company wants to move to this kind of environment for day-to-day work, I think they should take great care to make sure that the employees understand that they are still just as valuable as they always were. That could even require retaining individual office space so that the employees have a bolt hole - someplace they can go to work on those things that require privacy and concentration. A place to take calls from the wife/doctor/financial planner that don't work well in public. A place to hang pictures and stick dilbert strips to the door.