The phone is a little different, since there's only 1 line in the house. So there's a bit of privacy if my daughter wants to talk on the phone from her room with the door shut, but then she knows that if someone else picks up the receiver in another room they can still listen in.
I'm not about to start listening in on phone conversations or stand over my kid's shoulder while they surf the Web, but there's an inherent feeling that comes into play when you know that your communications device is in the "public."
How many times at NASA over the years did a non-management engineer raise his voice in concern over and over for something he was having "nightmares" only to find the shuttle (or capsule) return to earth safely?
"Who will be the first large group of employees to be completely automated out of their jobs by robots? Chances are that it will be pilots."
Uh, uh. No way, no how. In case of an emergency onboard an aircraft I will literally bet my life on the instincts of a human being over the computational prowess of machine.
Once you have a child, and she looks up at you with her big brown eyes, and you know that you are center of her universe, then you'll begin to realize that the kind of articles being discussed in this posting are just plain ridiculous.
"A lot of software developers are seduced by the old '80/20' rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies. Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%."
Here's the kicker: Google figured out the "20%"! My God, can you think of anyone else who acheived this?
If I posted an ad to sell my car at $12,000 and the newspaper printed it as $1,200 -- and I was the owner of the newspaper too -- then I would honor the error.
It's not like HP has to sell the unit at the low price, it's Amazon. They already bought the units from HP at wholesale. They, in turn, sell them to the public at retail. If they err on their site then they should honor that.
It's great that you've embraced the Web and have your own website. But it's even better that you have a weblog.
Weblogs, by their nature, are meant to be updated all the time. And while your articles and books are great there's something special when a celebrity such as yourself (and others, like the singer Moby and the actor Wil Wheaton), is willing to take on a project that really allows the fan to see you as one of us; as if we're holding a conversation.
We also wrote an article that basically says, "put out good quality music and fans will more likely buy it." It's not just the responsibility of the music industry execs but also the artists themselves.
In Israel my wife and I just moved from a 56K dial-up connection to the (theoretical) 750K cable connection. In the end this saved us money.
In Israel, you are charged by the minute for all phone calls, unlike the U.S. where it's a flat fee for all local calls per month. (Our ISP charge was set at a fixed rate.) So what this meant was that the more we were online the more we paid each month to our phone carrier (Bezeq). What's more local calls are considerably more expensive between the hours of 7:00 - 19:00 than from 19:00 - 7:00. So we'd wait until the evening to get online. And as you know using dial-up would tie-up our phone line too.
By signing up for broadband all the flat fees come out to less than the average phone and ISP fees we were once paying. The download times are better, the phone-line is free, and we don't have to wait for specific periods of time during the day to logon.
"People suck" should be better defined. I agree. But that would take up too many pages.
If we look at a generalized history of the world, we'll see that before the advent of the Internet, people enslaved one another and committed acts of genocide -- such as the African slave trade and Holocaust to name but a few.
If we look at what's happened after the advent of the Internet, and even the WWW, the biggest case-in-point is Rwanada.
The point is: humanity is brutal, and it's naive to think that just because we're "all connected" anything's different. As Paul Simon says, "after changes upon changes we are more or less the same."
It's not the hullabaloo about the Internet connecting all of us that makes us realize that we hate each other, but the fact that we're growing up and realizing that our parents were correct: people suck, and if you can count the number of your friends on two hands consider yourself lucky.
Slashdot Mirror
We should all be so lucky as to live through another bubble, identify it when it happens, and get out while we still have the time.
The phone is a little different, since there's only 1 line in the house. So there's a bit of privacy if my daughter wants to talk on the phone from her room with the door shut, but then she knows that if someone else picks up the receiver in another room they can still listen in.
I'm not about to start listening in on phone conversations or stand over my kid's shoulder while they surf the Web, but there's an inherent feeling that comes into play when you know that your communications device is in the "public."
I'd put the computer in the family room. That's all you need to do.
How many times at NASA over the years did a non-management engineer raise his voice in concern over and over for something he was having "nightmares" only to find the shuttle (or capsule) return to earth safely?
"Who will be the first large group of employees to be completely automated out of their jobs by robots? Chances are that it will be pilots."
Uh, uh. No way, no how. In case of an emergency onboard an aircraft I will literally bet my life on the instincts of a human being over the computational prowess of machine.
Once you have a child, and she looks up at you with her big brown eyes, and you know that you are center of her universe, then you'll begin to realize that the kind of articles being discussed in this posting are just plain ridiculous.
Hello, Sprint? This is Telus. You stole our idea you son-of-a-bit....
Hi, mom? How're you doing? All is well wi....
I wonder what Norah Jones has to say about this.
Who here can honestly say that anytime you see the Warner Bros. logo, you don't think of an old, powerful movie studio but a Saturday morning?
This was once discussed at /. in a facinating archived article at the Economist entitled, "Electronic Abacus."
Joel Spolsky once said:
"A lot of software developers are seduced by the old '80/20' rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies. Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%."
Here's the kicker: Google figured out the "20%"! My God, can you think of anyone else who acheived this?
If I posted an ad to sell my car at $12,000 and the newspaper printed it as $1,200 -- and I was the owner of the newspaper too -- then I would honor the error.
It's not like HP has to sell the unit at the low price, it's Amazon. They already bought the units from HP at wholesale. They, in turn, sell them to the public at retail. If they err on their site then they should honor that.
Amazon.com should honor any sale that was made while the price was still up. Yeah, right....
But still, it would be a very cool gesture.
In Israel, if you have dial-up this is how your fees get assessed:
1. Pay about $15.00/month to your ISP (ex. Netvision)
2. Pay per-minute charges to your telephone carrier (Bezeq)
In Israel you don't pay a flat rate for local calls per month. You pay per minute:
1. Between 7:00am - 7:00pm it's about $0.03/minute
2. Between 7:00pm - 7:00am (including weekends) it's about $0.006/minute
Yes! A collection of the best responses would be a good idea.
And I agree that the response "PROOF THAT NEWTON IS THE DEVIL" is the best I ever read. (I even linked to it directly from my website.)
It's great that you've embraced the Web and have your own website. But it's even better that you have a weblog.
Weblogs, by their nature, are meant to be updated all the time. And while your articles and books are great there's something special when a celebrity such as yourself (and others, like the singer Moby and the actor Wil Wheaton), is willing to take on a project that really allows the fan to see you as one of us; as if we're holding a conversation.
Thus, do you recommend to your other high-profile friends, such as Rock Bottom Remainders band-mate Stephen King, to start a weblog instead of the rarely updated-type website?
>> Why do people have to be such whining little babies these days?
You're asking that here?
What's so special about computers?
Most college students in the US are not members of fraternities or sororities.
I guess most Americans are independent and secure. I guess we should all be like Thoreau.
A university degree does not guarantee the graduate anything ... but it helps get him into-the-door.
A degree from an known* Ivy-League school, therefore, will only help him get into some more doors.
*Harvard and Princeton. How many people have heard of Brown and Dartmouth in Europe?
We also wrote an article that basically says, "put out good quality music and fans will more likely buy it." It's not just the responsibility of the music industry execs but also the artists themselves.
http://www.poochkiss.com/blog.asp?Link=126
In Israel my wife and I just moved from a 56K dial-up connection to the (theoretical) 750K cable connection. In the end this saved us money.
In Israel, you are charged by the minute for all phone calls, unlike the U.S. where it's a flat fee for all local calls per month. (Our ISP charge was set at a fixed rate.) So what this meant was that the more we were online the more we paid each month to our phone carrier (Bezeq). What's more local calls are considerably more expensive between the hours of 7:00 - 19:00 than from 19:00 - 7:00. So we'd wait until the evening to get online. And as you know using dial-up would tie-up our phone line too.
By signing up for broadband all the flat fees come out to less than the average phone and ISP fees we were once paying. The download times are better, the phone-line is free, and we don't have to wait for specific periods of time during the day to logon.
"People suck" should be better defined. I agree. But that would take up too many pages.
If we look at a generalized history of the world, we'll see that before the advent of the Internet, people enslaved one another and committed acts of genocide -- such as the African slave trade and Holocaust to name but a few.
If we look at what's happened after the advent of the Internet, and even the WWW, the biggest case-in-point is Rwanada.
The point is: humanity is brutal, and it's naive to think that just because we're "all connected" anything's different. As Paul Simon says, "after changes upon changes we are more or less the same."
It's not the hullabaloo about the Internet connecting all of us that makes us realize that we hate each other, but the fact that we're growing up and realizing that our parents were correct: people suck, and if you can count the number of your friends on two hands consider yourself lucky.