You've pretty much hit the nail on the head for me, in your own comments.
As far as the Outlook is concerned, it bogs down with large amounts of mail (especially in the one folder) and is god awful at searching large volumes of mail (and if you can't search it easily and quickly, it's rather pointless holding on to mail) - it's Outlook (rather than Exchange) that I've found poor to be dealing with large amounts of mail in one folder (e.g. an archive folder for a mailing list, or group of related lists). I tried using the Mac OS X Exchange client, I like the project management features it has, but I discovered it's just as crappy as the Window version if you have an sizable amount of mail. The application developers don't seem to understand how to do threading, just bad software design.
Exchange has been an issue because it's replication is poor, replicated systems are quite capable eating themselves which takes ages to repair and that should really never happen. Microsoft does not make tools to repair them though (beyond trivial issues), you have to buy third party software to do that, which I think is a good indication of how big a problem it is. Using a database like that to store the data (not just index information) is a really dumb idea if the database engine is not completely reliable.
Our 2 million + customers are on systems with Exim and Courier at least - so they get a decent service that doesn't have any of those issues. Their maildir isn't going to get 'corrupt' and lose all their messages, you can get a copy of their mailbox from the past easily using the file system and snapshots. Replication and scaling is trivial.
That's not to say that Exchange is unsuitable for use in a corporate environment (there still really isn't a better integrated Windows solution for most users) but that's not a reason not to open up services like IMAP on it.
The following is almost always possible in any corporate IT environment because systems are only very rarely configured to disallow it:
o) Users can dump an Outlook mail archive to a USB drive and take that with them. o) Users can dump it to their desktop and upload it somewhere. o) Users can print out sensitive emails and take them with them. o) Users can plug in any PC on to the network and use their account to connect to the local exchange server, as long it's running Windows and Outlook. *
* Amusingly, if when computers need to be added to the domain before users can login to the domain from the desktop, you can commonly log in to Exchange anyway, by just pointing Outlook at the servers IP address (which you can get from looking up it's name from Outlook and resolving that in a cmd box). Most IT staff don't seem to understand that.
Active Directory and Exchange Server work very well for many, many companies out there. They get support from the vendors, and they work seamlessly with the client software (usually Windows with Exchange). LDAP is great, but IMAP doesn't offer the same functionality as Exchange does. LDAP and IMAP are supposed by Active Directory and Exchange Server, all you have to is enable them (or, "not disable them", depending on what means was used to set the system up in the first place). It's not an either or scenario, and that's true in a lot of cases.
Exchange isn't "poorer quality" - it's very good at what it does. Exchange and Outlook are really, really bad at dealing with large amounts of mail (compare with Mail.app, which manages several gigs worth of mail seamlessly). It's pretty poor quality mail server and client combination really. The calendaring support is good, but that's it's only redeeming feature.
The point I was making about using poor quality products was directed more at say, using things like Remedy, Chordiant, Veritas and Infovista (none of which ever work well), who think all DB's should be Oracle, or that the right language to write something in is always Java.
This is why I say it all boils down to people margin the decisions not understanding what they are doing - not knowing what they should be doing, and what they shouldn't be doing. Everywhere that has apps like Remedy and Chordiant has other web based apps developed to work around it's flaws, and they end up building their business around the software. Pretty much everywhere that has Infovista has other monitoring software that actually tells them what they want to know, and that's what they use when they want to get meaningful data out.
Managers tell more senior mangers that everything is done in Remedy/Chordiant/Infovista though. They say that outages caused by over hyped (and overly expensive) Veritas are 'unavoidable', when the real problem is the system design is lousy because they chose the wrong hardware/software.
A set list of systems should surely include an email system, and that should support IMAP/POP + SMTP.
IT budgets spiral because most people running IT departments and teams are not very good at it (and the result is that solutions take too long to implement, cost too much and don't work well). I don't think a case can really be made that it's because "they try to support too much", I've not known many IT departments that have a problem saying "that software is unsupported".
Because if they want something that's not available in the open-source world that is available in the closed-source world, even if that's a support contract, software, whatever, then as a business the temptation is to go for the closed-source alternative just to maintain a competitive edge. I don't think that's the whole picture, as business make crazy decisions even without good cause.
They use Active Directory and Exchange, but not LDAP and IMAP - even when it's easy to enable them and when there are lots of people in the company who would love to have even read-only access to some of the data so they could build and run an integrated platform. They choose poorer quality more expensive software, rather than hiring someone competent to develop something superior (and at less cost) using open source tools.
I think the problem is that most managers have absolutely no idea about technology they are working with, and make very bad decisions but because it's common place for IT projects and the quality of systems integration to be so lousy, expectations are very low to begin with.
Even the technology they do have is rarely implemented. Exchange user information is rarely up to date in most companies (with extensions / mobile numbers often being out of whack), departments not really bothering with fully roaming profiles, users not having offline folders enabled on their laptops, systems that could easily sync with PDA's / phones but don't.
I absolutely think the problem is management who don't understand current technology.
Now I am supposed to allow him vent time because he had a hard day at school before he does his homework? Err, yes. I don't know about you, but I had to do a hell of a lot more tedious grind at school than I do now (I'm in my mid to late 20's, earning a fairly average IT wage of 85k USD a year, I've been working since I was 16.). If being in work isn't a lot more enjoyable than being at school was, then you are doing it wrong.
Your son almost certainly has a much harder time of it at school than you do at work, assuming you have a decent job in software / computing / networking. I didn't get to work from home 3 days a week while I was at school, I didn't get to stroll in at 10 AM, I didn't get to take my pick of fancy restaurants for lunch, I didn't get to work on a subject that interested me, or spend hours a web surfing...
If I got a much crap from an employer as I got a school from teachers, I'd quit within the week - and homework is a huge WTF (aka "unpaid overtime" for meaningless work you hate err, no thanks). It's not like kids are getting paid to go to school, or that it's actually rewarding. It's just a poorly run baby-sitting service *mostly* staffed by people who couldn't think of anything better to do with their lives than "become a maths teacher because they were good at maths in school". The exceptions being private schools and teachers on second careers (who are teaching because they enjoy it).
So, I have plenty of disposable income, I am respected at work, I do work I enjoy doing, I can choose to quit if I want (and easily get another job at the drop of a hat) I own my own time, I enjoy a far better quality of life - like most/.'ers I expect. If your life isn't better than your son's right now then that's your problem, not his and it's incredibly short sighted of you not to appreciate how tedious the work he has to do is. Kids today get enough crap if you ask me, it's no wonder so many of them are nuts.
For some reason a lot of parents live in a fantasy land when it comes to remembering what being a school was actually like.
Oh, and there are some really choice quotes from the (understandably) distraught parents that make a big deal of how "evil" the killer was and how he was specifically evil because he was deceptive and that was the "worst kind of evil". Considering they committed perjury by making false statements in court (in addition to reciting them to the press) that strikes me as a bit rich.
Yep, and both parents of the murdered 14 year old said they used to play it together (which the police said was not true and went out of their way to state very clearly it wasn't a factor as the killer had never played it, that newspaper reports to the contrary were incorrect and that the motive was robbery).
Yet still both parents of the victim hold the game responsible - even though the only person involved who owned or had played a copy was the victim! They have not explained why their 14 year old child was allowed this 18 certificate game when they thought it was so deplorable - however they have the nerve to accuse Rockstar of being irresponsible. Given by their own admission, they were blatantly aware their 14 year old had this 18 certificate game and used to let him play it, that's somewhat ironic. I fully expect they even bought it for him.
Of course, the press (The Sun, The Mirror, GMTV, The BBC) didn't bother to correct their stories when it transpired they had been grossly misreporting the story for months (even after the police had been very clear in saying what the press was reporting was incorrect).
Two parts to it: when the shipper shows up, you have to accept it. Period. That's just plain wrong. In fact, many states (and regions) have explicit legislation that allows deliveries to be refused and details the coint
Organizations that have strict security policies (where deliveries must be confirmed in advance) often point blank refusing entry to the premises at the gate if an order (so anything that might be left, would have to be illegally dumped on the street, and delivery company would not only still be responsible for it, they'd be open to prosecution by the local authority). You can choose to do the same as a private citizen (though it's not always practical).
If delivery is refused (and the only legal options you have are to accept or refuse - in most place you don't have the right to inspect it first) then it goes back to the sender, and legal obligation of the private delivery company is fulfilled. They are as liable as an airline or shipping company is when it comes to internationally shipped goods (or people) - if delivery (or entry) is refused, the carrier is liable to return them, at their initial expense (and it's up to them to try and re-coup expenses incurred from their customer, who can in turn hold the recipient accountable if it's the recipient who's in the wrong).
The upshot is that the shipper has the right to unload the goods on your sidewalk and walk away if you are being difficult. Sidewalks are public property and dumping goods on it would be a criminal offense pretty much everywhere (and likely break more than one bylaw - e.g. causing an obstruction). They would not be immune from criminal prosecution if they'd dumped something you didn't order in front of your house, so no, they wouldn't have the right to do that (they still *could*, but they'd be committing a criminal offense nonetheless). It's not likely they'd ever be charged of course (unless they were dumping huge amounts of stuff, e.g. a delivery from a builders yard), you could make life difficult for them and report them to the local authority though.
If it is on your private properly in some states you can quite legally physically attempt to remove the person trying to unload goods on to your property if you've explicitly told them you want them to leave, and you are permitted to use reasonable force to get them to comply if they refuse to leave when instructed (which even extends to pulling a gun on them, in some southern states) as it's straightforward trespass (obviously that does not apply everywhere however, as it's not a universally recognized concept).
Thanks for that. That's what I was thinking (that it's not really what I would have thought as being a 'cross site scripting vulnerability' - which I've always considered reserved for flaws in the way a browser lets frames/iframes/windows from different sites interact) and it was just a regular stupid-developer instance of allowing people to embed their code in the site.
I have sympathy for the cases where there are obscure workarounds developed which let people do this sort of thing despite the developer(s) taking reasonable steps to prevent it, but often (and I'm not commenting on this case specifically) developers don't even seem to try to code defensively.
The culture in companies that allows this sort of thing to happen can be a frustrating one for good developers, as when companies fail to see the value in high quality software and perceive mediocre quality software as being roughly the same suitability, the efforts of good developers are often not rewarded any better than those of less capable developers (and the companies themselves often unwittingly end up reinforcing the perception that poorly written software is just as valuable as well written software, and not realising what they are missing out on).
I have three Mac's in front of me right now (one with an Apple wired keyboard, one with an Apple wireless keyboard and a macbook) and it's on all of them, just to the left of the 1 key (above the QWERTY row, not the numeric pad).
All are from the UK (which I think use an "International English" layout that isn't quite US but not quite traditional British layout either).
Contrary to previous posts, I've found the answer is "YMMV".
Yes in Parallels and VMWare with their drivers installed, and it can work in Bootcamp, but that depends on the version of Windows you are running it seems.
No problems in XP, but no joy in Vista for me (I had to hunt around for an alternative wireless driver for Vista too).
Oh, thanks for the correction. Although I called it a 'section sign' (based on what a search result from Google told me) I actually thought it was refered to as a 'paragraph' delimiter, and that the odd P symbol was an alinea (which it turns out it is, but that's just as synonym).
I wonder if the confusion stems from the way it's been used in some typesetting software (presumabily because while Apple keyboards have a 'section sign' key on then, but not a key with a 'paragraph symbol' printed on it, that they presumably use that for marking paragraphs - that or lots of designers are marking them the most obvious way/the only way they know how).
As I've just learned from Wikipedia not only does the 'section sign' have it's own key on Apple Keyboards, but Alt-6 / Opt-6 does it as well! Madness. About time a petition was started to get rid of the damn key and replace it with something sane. 8.
as for 'section', maybe you mean "paragraph" symbol ? Yeah, thanks, that's the name I was looking for. I couldn't remember the name (though I knew what it was for) so I Googled for it but 'section character' was all came up (on some page explaining character codes).
IIRC I think some typesetting / layout software (like Quark) uses it as special character, or at least used to, but it surely must be used by only small percentage of Mac users these days. Like you though, it's been over 10 years since I saw it used last (though it's also been 10 years since I used something like Quark or did any print work)!
Alt-3 (aka Option-3) does indeed give you a hash symbol on a UK Apple keyboard.
I've always assumed this is a pun on it also being refered to as a 'pound' symbol - as in the imperial measurement for weight (used particularly in the US, and in days gone by in the UK). I assume it's a pun of sorts as shift-3 gives you the pound symbol, as for the GBP (the currency) - although it's also a good place as it's easy to remember, as long as you are familer with the anachronistic terminology (which is outdated in the UK at any rate).
It's always interesting to watch all the new Mac converts in the office try to write a shell script on their new Mac for the first time... "WTF, where is the # key on my laptop? Aarg!"
As marginally useful for some media types as ± / " " is on the top right, frankly I think it's nowhere near as useful as say having ` there (and putting # where that is). The current waste of space by the ±/" " is just retarded, given so few people use it (or even know what the hell " " is for).
NB: If you can't see " ", it's the "Section" symbol (like an S, with a circle in the middle).
In your scenario, you can come in serious shit in case of a job loss, unexpected high expenses, etc.... I can confirm thats true, in fairness. Not long I bought my first PowerBook G4 (in 2000/2001, and mentioned above I think - it cost me 3,000 UKP then - and that was on top of 2,000 on another card) I ended up working for some incredibly sketchy small company (the only dodgy company I've worked for) and quit in the first three months (and to avoid making the same mistake again I spent time looking and it was a couple of months before I started somewhere else).
Because I wasn't made unemployed (through redundancy), I didn't quality for my credit card repayment cover and ended up having to convert it into a loan with the bank (which was the only place I could get a loan really quickly at the time). The process was a total pain and I didn't really want that (becuase of ways in which that effected my credit rating and my ability to be able to borrow other money from the bank - even for this like to cover really short term things like rental deposits).
Your right in that you can really get in a mess if you over extend yourself and something bad happens, and it can be a PITA.
Taking what you've said about only applying it to credit cards into account, it's still not good advice I believe.
Going for more modest examples:
You may be happy to wait a few months months with - for examle - no TV (or perhaps a cheap short term substitute) when you buy the one you want with a credit card on the spot, just and pay it back with a little interest over a few months, but many would find that silly to wait needlessly - especially when the excess payment only represents one or two additional monthly payments.
This is especially true for white goods, like a refrigerator, a washing machine or a microwave, or even something as mundane as a new chair for the home office. Even if you just want two items in the same month, but can only afford one that month but would rather not wait, because it's really inconvenient.
If you need 5 years to pay off a simple consumer item, then you cannot afford it. Plain and simple. Besides, you're going to pay it over 5 times due to the interest rates! With credit you can afford it, more over you can choose how you handle your repayments (either taking a big hit all at once or paying a bit more, but over a longer period of time). Of course, no one said anything about needing 5 years to pay something off, it's about choice - what's most appropriate for the lender, in their view. That is, do they hate waiting more than they hate spending money.
Of course, it doesn't take "5 times the amount" to pay it back. If I borrowed 1000 USD took 5 years to pay it back (which is a very exessive loan period for that amount, even for someone on a modest income) and the interest rate was 250% then yeah, you would be paing back about 5x the amount. However, in reality Interest rates are more like 16-26%. So, for example, with Capital One, my provider, I'd be repaying back just an additional 82 USD if I'd borrowed that over a more sane and realistic 12 months.
As a real world example:
I have about 1000 UKP (~2000 USD) on my Capital One card right now, it's a very modest amount for my income and I pay it off and put debt on as it's suits me (I've just bought a MacBook on it last month). Now, I could easily pay that all back over a couple of months without effecting my fun money pool too badly, but last month, for example, I chose to repay just 100 a month on the CC and to spend that amount over next two months on some new furniture. That gives me a lot more freedom with my money.
If I hadn't use credit I would have ended up waiting till next month to get the laptop and would have missed out on the furniture completely (because it was the last day of the sale). Of course I could have got some other furniture (that wasn't what I really wanted) but I would have had to have waited 4 months to get both items (or realistically 6 - as it was a special half price sale for the furniture). Instead with a little credit, I was easily able afford it all on the spot (and get he benifit of it sooner, rather than later).
Interest charges for 2000 UKP on Capital One saved me a bundle (in getting the furniture so much more cheaply that I would have otherwise been able to).
The more money you have (up to a point - obviously not at the level of wealth Bill and Steve have) the more useful a credit is, when the borrowing is not excessive and done reasonably.
Black Amex cars are what mega-bucks celebrities carry. Elton John had his taken off him for over spending on flowers and not sort it out, if you believe the papers.
I used to work for (who runs a small company, 20-30 people) who has one - he used to work for a big city firm and he bought company several cars with is personal Amex card one month - and paid it back when the company processed his expenses (he made sure he did it before that months cut-off period I guess!). He did the same thing shorly after when it came to booking holidays to a ski lodge (as part of some company shin-dig / client smoocher-upper). Amex must have thought he was printing money (or based it on his credit rating, which must have been through the roof - as I'm sure he was no stranger to expenses as an IT headhunter in the.com boom), so they upgraded his card.
An excellent way of picking up vapid totty I'm sure (wasted as he's married now), though he's not short of a bob or too from what I can tell!
Saving is always superior to debt... I just wish most people got to understand that. I know a few people who belive that, but it is not so.
By taking a loan you can have things you can't afford right now, but can over time, without having to wait the amount of time (possibly years) it would take you to save up.
The most expensive examples are a good car or a place to live, but it applies equally well to other things like home extensions (depending upon market condiditons, they can pay for themselves in terms of added value (when it comes to selling or renting) quicker than if you'd waited and paid to have it done once you'd spent the 5 years scrimping to pay for it) as well as to less expensive things like a new computer or a big screen TV, which you can pay off a big chunk of when you get that annual bonus.
Working out if it's better to have it now, and pay the premium to have it for the period you would have had to wait is essentially matter of personal preference. Waiting 5 years to buy a car is rarely a good idea (and, in somewhere like the UK, waiting to buy a house is *never* a good idea as prices will rise faster than 80-90% of people can hope to save - it is in fact cheaper to buy a smaller place with a 100% mortage, and live in it for 2 years, then sell it and use the money for a deposit on a better place, than to spend 5 years saving up that same amount for a deposit).
Small and medium sized companies often take out loans for similar reasons - it's a better pay off in the long run. Though typically for individuals, they pay off is in personal satisfaction rather than pure financial gain (property excepted).
No, I do have the track pad driver installed. The problem is the latest version of the a few of the drivers don't actually work in Vista for me (like a lot of the drivers that ship with Boot Camp, I had to go hunting on the web to get a Wireless Drivers that actually worked in Vista too).
NB: It's not actually "in Boot Camp", as Boot Camp is just a bundle consisting of disk partitioning utlity, what appears to be a bootstapper (iterated into the EFI) and a collection of drivers for Windows - I draw that distinction as it's not an applicatior or virtual envionment other operating systems can run in (like Parallels or VMWare) in any sense.
About 25 years ago in the UK, it was common for wall outlets to have a switch built in to them. Don't know if they still do that. Yep, we still have that. Over-engineered monstrosities, solid 3 (rectangular, not round) pins and an on/off switch at every socket (but not typically on 4/8/12 bar extensions you buy at retail - some do, some don't) - with the exception of bathrooms which may only have the universal 12 volt 2 pin adapter in them.
Earth on all of them, except certain devices - the exact criteria for which I'm sure of (typically applies to lightweight things like xmas tree decoration lights), they often just have a plastic pin where earth would be - AFAIK this is required to push back some gubbins inside the socket - without which you won't get any power I gather (i.e. even if you are retarded enough to stick a fork in a socket AND turn it on it won't kill you, although I've never confirmed that).
They look like this (that one is apparently Irish, same thing though). You can find them on trains too, switches and all (so you can plug your gadget stuff in while you travel).
It's all very safety conscious, and there is quite strict legislation governing the fitting of sockets and rings in a house, and power cabling and the selling of goods with plugs (i.e. if they must be molded plugs or not, if a device is required to be earthed, etc etc.).
Personally I love the plugs and sockets here. You always know when they are in, and they don't dick you around by falling out unexpectedly and you don't have to unplug something to turn it off. The downside of the design is they are more bulky, and that is a nuisance with portable devices (e.g. if you just want to take a small laptop or PDA wall socket recharger the damn plugs don't fold down so always stick out irritatingly if you have a slim line case/bag).
I am always worried by using US sockets, I've seen them spark, cables almost always wiggle and I can't help but wonder how many electrical accidents there are as a result of what seems a flimsy design. I've less experience of european sockets, which seem similar but not quite as flimsy. I don't know if the quality of US sockets varies.
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You've pretty much hit the nail on the head for me, in your own comments.
As far as the Outlook is concerned, it bogs down with large amounts of mail (especially in the one folder) and is god awful at searching large volumes of mail (and if you can't search it easily and quickly, it's rather pointless holding on to mail) - it's Outlook (rather than Exchange) that I've found poor to be dealing with large amounts of mail in one folder (e.g. an archive folder for a mailing list, or group of related lists). I tried using the Mac OS X Exchange client, I like the project management features it has, but I discovered it's just as crappy as the Window version if you have an sizable amount of mail. The application developers don't seem to understand how to do threading, just bad software design.
Exchange has been an issue because it's replication is poor, replicated systems are quite capable eating themselves which takes ages to repair and that should really never happen. Microsoft does not make tools to repair them though (beyond trivial issues), you have to buy third party software to do that, which I think is a good indication of how big a problem it is. Using a database like that to store the data (not just index information) is a really dumb idea if the database engine is not completely reliable.
Our 2 million + customers are on systems with Exim and Courier at least - so they get a decent service that doesn't have any of those issues. Their maildir isn't going to get 'corrupt' and lose all their messages, you can get a copy of their mailbox from the past easily using the file system and snapshots. Replication and scaling is trivial.
That's not to say that Exchange is unsuitable for use in a corporate environment (there still really isn't a better integrated Windows solution for most users) but that's not a reason not to open up services like IMAP on it.
The following is almost always possible in any corporate IT environment because systems are only very rarely configured to disallow it:
o) Users can dump an Outlook mail archive to a USB drive and take that with them.
o) Users can dump it to their desktop and upload it somewhere.
o) Users can print out sensitive emails and take them with them.
o) Users can plug in any PC on to the network and use their account to connect to the local exchange server, as long it's running Windows and Outlook. *
* Amusingly, if when computers need to be added to the domain before users can login to the domain from the desktop, you can commonly log in to Exchange anyway, by just pointing Outlook at the servers IP address (which you can get from looking up it's name from Outlook and resolving that in a cmd box). Most IT staff don't seem to understand that.
Your reasoning is the sort Mordac The Preventer of Information Services relies on.
The point I was making about using poor quality products was directed more at say, using things like Remedy, Chordiant, Veritas and Infovista (none of which ever work well), who think all DB's should be Oracle, or that the right language to write something in is always Java.
This is why I say it all boils down to people margin the decisions not understanding what they are doing - not knowing what they should be doing, and what they shouldn't be doing. Everywhere that has apps like Remedy and Chordiant has other web based apps developed to work around it's flaws, and they end up building their business around the software. Pretty much everywhere that has Infovista has other monitoring software that actually tells them what they want to know, and that's what they use when they want to get meaningful data out.
Managers tell more senior mangers that everything is done in Remedy/Chordiant/Infovista though. They say that outages caused by over hyped (and overly expensive) Veritas are 'unavoidable', when the real problem is the system design is lousy because they chose the wrong hardware/software.
A set list of systems should surely include an email system, and that should support IMAP/POP + SMTP.
IT budgets spiral because most people running IT departments and teams are not very good at it (and the result is that solutions take too long to implement, cost too much and don't work well). I don't think a case can really be made that it's because "they try to support too much", I've not known many IT departments that have a problem saying "that software is unsupported".
They use Active Directory and Exchange, but not LDAP and IMAP - even when it's easy to enable them and when there are lots of people in the company who would love to have even read-only access to some of the data so they could build and run an integrated platform. They choose poorer quality more expensive software, rather than hiring someone competent to develop something superior (and at less cost) using open source tools.
I think the problem is that most managers have absolutely no idea about technology they are working with, and make very bad decisions but because it's common place for IT projects and the quality of systems integration to be so lousy, expectations are very low to begin with.
Even the technology they do have is rarely implemented. Exchange user information is rarely up to date in most companies (with extensions / mobile numbers often being out of whack), departments not really bothering with fully roaming profiles, users not having offline folders enabled on their laptops, systems that could easily sync with PDA's / phones but don't.
I absolutely think the problem is management who don't understand current technology.
Your son almost certainly has a much harder time of it at school than you do at work, assuming you have a decent job in software / computing / networking. I didn't get to work from home 3 days a week while I was at school, I didn't get to stroll in at 10 AM, I didn't get to take my pick of fancy restaurants for lunch, I didn't get to work on a subject that interested me, or spend hours a web surfing...
If I got a much crap from an employer as I got a school from teachers, I'd quit within the week - and homework is a huge WTF (aka "unpaid overtime" for meaningless work you hate err, no thanks). It's not like kids are getting paid to go to school, or that it's actually rewarding. It's just a poorly run baby-sitting service *mostly* staffed by people who couldn't think of anything better to do with their lives than "become a maths teacher because they were good at maths in school". The exceptions being private schools and teachers on second careers (who are teaching because they enjoy it).
So, I have plenty of disposable income, I am respected at work, I do work I enjoy doing, I can choose to quit if I want (and easily get another job at the drop of a hat) I own my own time, I enjoy a far better quality of life - like most
For some reason a lot of parents live in a fantasy land when it comes to remembering what being a school was actually like.
Oh, and there are some really choice quotes from the (understandably) distraught parents that make a big deal of how "evil" the killer was and how he was specifically evil because he was deceptive and that was the "worst kind of evil". Considering they committed perjury by making false statements in court (in addition to reciting them to the press) that strikes me as a bit rich.
Yep, and both parents of the murdered 14 year old said they used to play it together (which the police said was not true and went out of their way to state very clearly it wasn't a factor as the killer had never played it, that newspaper reports to the contrary were incorrect and that the motive was robbery).
Yet still both parents of the victim hold the game responsible - even though the only person involved who owned or had played a copy was the victim! They have not explained why their 14 year old child was allowed this 18 certificate game when they thought it was so deplorable - however they have the nerve to accuse Rockstar of being irresponsible. Given by their own admission, they were blatantly aware their 14 year old had this 18 certificate game and used to let him play it, that's somewhat ironic. I fully expect they even bought it for him.
Of course, the press (The Sun, The Mirror, GMTV, The BBC) didn't bother to correct their stories when it transpired they had been grossly misreporting the story for months (even after the police had been very clear in saying what the press was reporting was incorrect).
Organizations that have strict security policies (where deliveries must be confirmed in advance) often point blank refusing entry to the premises at the gate if an order (so anything that might be left, would have to be illegally dumped on the street, and delivery company would not only still be responsible for it, they'd be open to prosecution by the local authority). You can choose to do the same as a private citizen (though it's not always practical).
If delivery is refused (and the only legal options you have are to accept or refuse - in most place you don't have the right to inspect it first) then it goes back to the sender, and legal obligation of the private delivery company is fulfilled. They are as liable as an airline or shipping company is when it comes to internationally shipped goods (or people) - if delivery (or entry) is refused, the carrier is liable to return them, at their initial expense (and it's up to them to try and re-coup expenses incurred from their customer, who can in turn hold the recipient accountable if it's the recipient who's in the wrong). The upshot is that the shipper has the right to unload the goods on your sidewalk and walk away if you are being difficult. Sidewalks are public property and dumping goods on it would be a criminal offense pretty much everywhere (and likely break more than one bylaw - e.g. causing an obstruction). They would not be immune from criminal prosecution if they'd dumped something you didn't order in front of your house, so no, they wouldn't have the right to do that (they still *could*, but they'd be committing a criminal offense nonetheless). It's not likely they'd ever be charged of course (unless they were dumping huge amounts of stuff, e.g. a delivery from a builders yard), you could make life difficult for them and report them to the local authority though.
If it is on your private properly in some states you can quite legally physically attempt to remove the person trying to unload goods on to your property if you've explicitly told them you want them to leave, and you are permitted to use reasonable force to get them to comply if they refuse to leave when instructed (which even extends to pulling a gun on them, in some southern states) as it's straightforward trespass (obviously that does not apply everywhere however, as it's not a universally recognized concept).
Thanks for that. That's what I was thinking (that it's not really what I would have thought as being a 'cross site scripting vulnerability' - which I've always considered reserved for flaws in the way a browser lets frames/iframes/windows from different sites interact) and it was just a regular stupid-developer instance of allowing people to embed their code in the site.
I have sympathy for the cases where there are obscure workarounds developed which let people do this sort of thing despite the developer(s) taking reasonable steps to prevent it, but often (and I'm not commenting on this case specifically) developers don't even seem to try to code defensively.
The culture in companies that allows this sort of thing to happen can be a frustrating one for good developers, as when companies fail to see the value in high quality software and perceive mediocre quality software as being roughly the same suitability, the efforts of good developers are often not rewarded any better than those of less capable developers (and the companies themselves often unwittingly end up reinforcing the perception that poorly written software is just as valuable as well written software, and not realising what they are missing out on).
I have three Mac's in front of me right now (one with an Apple wired keyboard, one with an Apple wireless keyboard and a macbook) and it's on all of them, just to the left of the 1 key (above the QWERTY row, not the numeric pad).
All are from the UK (which I think use an "International English" layout that isn't quite US but not quite traditional British layout either).
Parent modded Troll, grant parent modded Insightful.
/. moderation...
And to to think people complain about
Contrary to previous posts, I've found the answer is "YMMV".
Yes in Parallels and VMWare with their drivers installed, and it can work in Bootcamp, but that depends on the version of Windows you are running it seems.
No problems in XP, but no joy in Vista for me (I had to hunt around for an alternative wireless driver for Vista too).
Oh, thanks for the correction. Although I called it a 'section sign' (based on what a search result from Google told me) I actually thought it was refered to as a 'paragraph' delimiter, and that the odd P symbol was an alinea (which it turns out it is, but that's just as synonym).
I wonder if the confusion stems from the way it's been used in some typesetting software (presumabily because while Apple keyboards have a 'section sign' key on then, but not a key with a 'paragraph symbol' printed on it, that they presumably use that for marking paragraphs - that or lots of designers are marking them the most obvious way/the only way they know how).
As I've just learned from Wikipedia not only does the 'section sign' have it's own key on Apple Keyboards, but Alt-6 / Opt-6 does it as well! Madness. About time a petition was started to get rid of the damn key and replace it with something sane. 8.
IIRC I think some typesetting / layout software (like Quark) uses it as special character, or at least used to, but it surely must be used by only small percentage of Mac users these days. Like you though, it's been over 10 years since I saw it used last (though it's also been 10 years since I used something like Quark or did any print work)!
Alt-3 (aka Option-3) does indeed give you a hash symbol on a UK Apple keyboard.
I've always assumed this is a pun on it also being refered to as a 'pound' symbol - as in the imperial measurement for weight (used particularly in the US, and in days gone by in the UK). I assume it's a pun of sorts as shift-3 gives you the pound symbol, as for the GBP (the currency) - although it's also a good place as it's easy to remember, as long as you are familer with the anachronistic terminology (which is outdated in the UK at any rate).
It's always interesting to watch all the new Mac converts in the office try to write a shell script on their new Mac for the first time... "WTF, where is the # key on my laptop? Aarg!"
As marginally useful for some media types as ± / " " is on the top right, frankly I think it's nowhere near as useful as say having ` there (and putting # where that is). The current waste of space by the ±/" " is just retarded, given so few people use it (or even know what the hell " " is for).
NB: If you can't see " ", it's the "Section" symbol (like an S, with a circle in the middle).
Because I wasn't made unemployed (through redundancy), I didn't quality for my credit card repayment cover and ended up having to convert it into a loan with the bank (which was the only place I could get a loan really quickly at the time). The process was a total pain and I didn't really want that (becuase of ways in which that effected my credit rating and my ability to be able to borrow other money from the bank - even for this like to cover really short term things like rental deposits).
Your right in that you can really get in a mess if you over extend yourself and something bad happens, and it can be a PITA.
Going for more modest examples:
You may be happy to wait a few months months with - for examle - no TV (or perhaps a cheap short term substitute) when you buy the one you want with a credit card on the spot, just and pay it back with a little interest over a few months, but many would find that silly to wait needlessly - especially when the excess payment only represents one or two additional monthly payments.
This is especially true for white goods, like a refrigerator, a washing machine or a microwave, or even something as mundane as a new chair for the home office. Even if you just want two items in the same month, but can only afford one that month but would rather not wait, because it's really inconvenient. If you need 5 years to pay off a simple consumer item, then you cannot afford it. Plain and simple. Besides, you're going to pay it over 5 times due to the interest rates! With credit you can afford it, more over you can choose how you handle your repayments (either taking a big hit all at once or paying a bit more, but over a longer period of time). Of course, no one said anything about needing 5 years to pay something off, it's about choice - what's most appropriate for the lender, in their view. That is, do they hate waiting more than they hate spending money.
Of course, it doesn't take "5 times the amount" to pay it back. If I borrowed 1000 USD took 5 years to pay it back (which is a very exessive loan period for that amount, even for someone on a modest income) and the interest rate was 250% then yeah, you would be paing back about 5x the amount. However, in reality Interest rates are more like 16-26%. So, for example, with Capital One, my provider, I'd be repaying back just an additional 82 USD if I'd borrowed that over a more sane and realistic 12 months.
As a real world example:
I have about 1000 UKP (~2000 USD) on my Capital One card right now, it's a very modest amount for my income and I pay it off and put debt on as it's suits me (I've just bought a MacBook on it last month). Now, I could easily pay that all back over a couple of months without effecting my fun money pool too badly, but last month, for example, I chose to repay just 100 a month on the CC and to spend that amount over next two months on some new furniture. That gives me a lot more freedom with my money.
If I hadn't use credit I would have ended up waiting till next month to get the laptop and would have missed out on the furniture completely (because it was the last day of the sale). Of course I could have got some other furniture (that wasn't what I really wanted) but I would have had to have waited 4 months to get both items (or realistically 6 - as it was a special half price sale for the furniture). Instead with a little credit, I was easily able afford it all on the spot (and get he benifit of it sooner, rather than later).
Interest charges for 2000 UKP on Capital One saved me a bundle (in getting the furniture so much more cheaply that I would have otherwise been able to).
The more money you have (up to a point - obviously not at the level of wealth Bill and Steve have) the more useful a credit is, when the borrowing is not excessive and done reasonably.
The problem for Britian these days is in following America's lead (in many ways), not in following Canada's.
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head.
.com boom), so they upgraded his card.
Black Amex cars are what mega-bucks celebrities carry. Elton John had his taken off him for over spending on flowers and not sort it out, if you believe the papers.
I used to work for (who runs a small company, 20-30 people) who has one - he used to work for a big city firm and he bought company several cars with is personal Amex card one month - and paid it back when the company processed his expenses (he made sure he did it before that months cut-off period I guess!). He did the same thing shorly after when it came to booking holidays to a ski lodge (as part of some company shin-dig / client smoocher-upper). Amex must have thought he was printing money (or based it on his credit rating, which must have been through the roof - as I'm sure he was no stranger to expenses as an IT headhunter in the
An excellent way of picking up vapid totty I'm sure (wasted as he's married now), though he's not short of a bob or too from what I can tell!
By taking a loan you can have things you can't afford right now, but can over time, without having to wait the amount of time (possibly years) it would take you to save up.
The most expensive examples are a good car or a place to live, but it applies equally well to other things like home extensions (depending upon market condiditons, they can pay for themselves in terms of added value (when it comes to selling or renting) quicker than if you'd waited and paid to have it done once you'd spent the 5 years scrimping to pay for it) as well as to less expensive things like a new computer or a big screen TV, which you can pay off a big chunk of when you get that annual bonus.
Working out if it's better to have it now, and pay the premium to have it for the period you would have had to wait is essentially matter of personal preference. Waiting 5 years to buy a car is rarely a good idea (and, in somewhere like the UK, waiting to buy a house is *never* a good idea as prices will rise faster than 80-90% of people can hope to save - it is in fact cheaper to buy a smaller place with a 100% mortage, and live in it for 2 years, then sell it and use the money for a deposit on a better place, than to spend 5 years saving up that same amount for a deposit).
Small and medium sized companies often take out loans for similar reasons - it's a better pay off in the long run. Though typically for individuals, they pay off is in personal satisfaction rather than pure financial gain (property excepted).
No, I do have the track pad driver installed. The problem is the latest version of the a few of the drivers don't actually work in Vista for me (like a lot of the drivers that ship with Boot Camp, I had to go hunting on the web to get a Wireless Drivers that actually worked in Vista too).
Not in my copy of Windows it doesn't. YMMV.
NB: It's not actually "in Boot Camp", as Boot Camp is just a bundle consisting of disk partitioning utlity, what appears to be a bootstapper (iterated into the EFI) and a collection of drivers for Windows - I draw that distinction as it's not an applicatior or virtual envionment other operating systems can run in (like Parallels or VMWare) in any sense.
Earth on all of them, except certain devices - the exact criteria for which I'm sure of (typically applies to lightweight things like xmas tree decoration lights), they often just have a plastic pin where earth would be - AFAIK this is required to push back some gubbins inside the socket - without which you won't get any power I gather (i.e. even if you are retarded enough to stick a fork in a socket AND turn it on it won't kill you, although I've never confirmed that).
They look like this (that one is apparently Irish, same thing though). You can find them on trains too, switches and all (so you can plug your gadget stuff in while you travel).
It's all very safety conscious, and there is quite strict legislation governing the fitting of sockets and rings in a house, and power cabling and the selling of goods with plugs (i.e. if they must be molded plugs or not, if a device is required to be earthed, etc etc.).
Personally I love the plugs and sockets here. You always know when they are in, and they don't dick you around by falling out unexpectedly and you don't have to unplug something to turn it off. The downside of the design is they are more bulky, and that is a nuisance with portable devices (e.g. if you just want to take a small laptop or PDA wall socket recharger the damn plugs don't fold down so always stick out irritatingly if you have a slim line case/bag).
I am always worried by using US sockets, I've seen them spark, cables almost always wiggle and I can't help but wonder how many electrical accidents there are as a result of what seems a flimsy design. I've less experience of european sockets, which seem similar but not quite as flimsy. I don't know if the quality of US sockets varies.
Plugs > DNS