"Well established"? Smartphones were a niche market before the iPhone, and only exploded in popularity (and continue to grow dramatically) after the iPhone was introduced in 2007.
One word: Blackberry.
Maybe the iPhone established smartphones in the consumer market. Smartphones were well-established in the business market before the iPhone and the Blackberry to this day owns that market.
I consistently get the worst telephone lines when I call the customer service of my phone companies: Bell Canada (POTS) and Fido (GSM - alias Microcell, now owned by Rogers): The voice of the rep cuts out, first and last syllables get lost, or there's half a second of lag. Very annoying - I always have to spell my name three times before they get it right. Quite ironic that my VoIP line has never had any of these problems - and that one's talking to a provider on the other side of the Atlantic...
I don't want to be disconnected at every jurisdictional and regulatory boundary such as state lines and city limits.
it's been a while since i was on a road trip in the US but at least here in Canada, roads don't end at municipal, privincial or even the southern border. apparently municipalities and provinces and even countries are able to communicate with each other about connecting their traffic grids seamlessly, so why should it not work for a communications network? since telcos are in it for the money, they will cover exclusively areas that make them money - densly populated areas or areas with rich customers. that's why utilities in many places are still public and where they aren't, they are heavily regulated - to provide fair and guaranteed access for all (or most) people. that said, no politician would take the responsibility for spending 95% of the money to reach the last 5% of the population either...
nothing really decays in a landfill; there is basically no oxygen in a landfill and that prevents pretty much everything from decaying. throw an apple into the garbage, it will not biodegrade. whoever puts that label on anything seems to keep their garbage on their patio.
or, if you're John Grisham, you write the second half of the title (the first half invariably being "the") and the neat tool writes a book and a movie script...
anti-immigration sentiment
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
did anybody read the article or is this just about comiserating about unemployment?
American trade policy has been pro-"free trade" without requiring that the trading partner have equivalent environmental or employee protections. These blind spots have, for example, caused the export of almost all American non-ferrous metals processing jobs to Mexico and Canada.
while "made in china" might mean this, i can't believe how this article tries to take a shot at the NAFTA countries. Mexico might not live up to US standards (but i want to see the American consumers pay the prices for "made in USA" DVD players etc....), but it certainly does not apply to Canada. yes, i'm sure, you can always find one or the other rule where Canada's rules are looser but the next thing you look at, it will be the other way.
immigrants are an important economic factor in the western world. -look at Europe: europe is struggeling because of its aging population which causes health and old age pension costs to skyrocket; not so the US. the birth rates are no higher in the US but immigration keeps the average age at bay because young people enter the country. -immigrants are not only workers; they are also consumers. so they don't take jobs away from americans, they simply increase the population. -legal immigration should be simpler because legal immigration is much better than illegal immigration - legal immigrants work under the same labour and health standards as Americans and they pay taxes. none of this can be said of illegal immigrants. they are at high danger of abuse in many ways by their "employers" (or slave drivers) and they have no way of defending themselves because any legal action would cause them to be kicked out.
in my opinion, this article is full of xenophobia and uses the current anxiety about jobs to try to convince people that immigration and immigrants (clearly one of the weakest groups of society who have little or no political voice) are the root of all evil. this is simply disgusting.
My company is one of America's largest beef and pork producers
Hmm... Did you consider the disservice you'd do to your employer by posting the link to the rendering plant? I, for my part, am considering going vegan after reading that - and it was not the part about pesticides and the like, believe me...
I don't know how popular that's going to be, something like that. Twenty-five cents is a really significant amount to add to everybody's phone bill.
oh yeah? so what does Bell Canada call the Touch-Tone Service (tm) charge of $2.80 i.e. more than 11 times as much that is on every one of their customers' phone bills every month?
blessed are those who have a quasi-monopoly.
don't get me wrong, i hate the idea of paying for that but their argument is plain ridiculous given their own completely arbitrary charges (i haven't tried but it would be interesting to see if a pulse (i.e. non touch tone) dial phone would work on a new bell line at all. plus, i sure couldn't opt out of that charge then).
However, Gates said the controversy has exposed a fundamental weakness of Linux--that the General Public License (GPL) makes it difficult for companies to engage in the cross-licensing deals that have become standard in the software industry.
what Gates doesn't get is that linux doesn't need cross-licensing - OSS is big enough that OSS projects can get their technology from other OSS projects without having to cross-license it. OSS is not a single company (like microsoft) that can't afford to spend money on reinventing the wheel. or if you want to see it as a company, then plenty technology is available within.
so i can call my geo a "corvette full-speed" now if i refer to the car formerly known as a corvette as a "corvette high-speed". well, given the speed limits around here it should more likely be called "high-accelleration" or "even-more-expensive-tickets" anyway.
well, the problem is really that gas prices have actually reduced in recent years (after correction for inflation) and current gas prices are effectively the same as before the first oil crisis. rate stays the same -> tax revenue goes down. of course you're correct pointing out that that's not what the article says.
Re:fvwm allowed me to make my perfect linux deskto
on
fvwm Turns Ten
·
· Score: 1
two empty 3x3 desktops (except for a sticky xconsole). all important applications have keybindings. my idea of a minimal desktop. i just hate to have to take my hands off the keyboard to reach for the mouse.
First, naturally, there is the question of "Who do you sue" when things go wrong
seriously, with scientific hardware, you sue noone. i've seen so many instruments that do not meet their specifications (and likewise drivers that do not either) and the manufacturers don't give a damn 'cause the competitors' products don't meet their specs either. try looking at the crosstalk between the channels on a analog io cards of well known and respected manufacturers - the 8 or so adc inputs are all multiplexed to one adc chip. if you sequentially read several of them, each reading will be influenced by the reading before. surprisingly, if you use the full valtage range, the crosstalk is significantly more than one lsb (which is the promised accuracy of the inputs). who do you sue? noone 'cause you'll never get anywhere and you have better things to do with your time (at least that seems to be the philosophy of researchers at universities).
so what is it when the american government favours american firms over foreign firms for contracts or decides to buy american-made stuff for all their needs? even if this was not a technical decision, how would this be different?
what's your point? these are nothing but unique ids on your cash; and they've been there for a long time - unique serial numbers. for all i know, us$ bills have them as well (can't check since my us cash is at home and i'm at work), canada certainly has them. the only difference is that rfid tags will be somewhat easier to read for a machine (note that it's not impossible with the serial numbers, though, banks routinely record them already).
while i agree that tracking of cash might become more widespread, it's not really a new thing.
The bright side: the students who are enrolling are doing so because they love computers. Not like a few years ago when students were enrolling because they wanted to make a quick buck. I'll take quality over quantity.
what about this: the universities have much less applicants to choose from so less smart people (assuming that there's a correlation between smartness and grades) will get into the program. i wonder how this will affect the quality.
well, maybe something like this finally gets the people from nature, science, europhysics journal (successor of several older european journals) etc. to do what they should have done long ago - make all their old issues available electronically and not only the ones from the 90s and later; the AIP did this years ago and it's absolutely awesome to be able to look up stuff in, say, physical review from 1920 or so without having to leave my desk.
wrong guess. but i can tell you that the freshmen i TA-ed last year in a physics 100 level class knew a hell of a lot more about electromagnetism than the guy who wrote that article.
Slashdot Mirror
"Well established"? Smartphones were a niche market before the iPhone, and only exploded in popularity (and continue to grow dramatically) after the iPhone was introduced in 2007.
One word: Blackberry.
Maybe the iPhone established smartphones in the consumer market. Smartphones were well-established in the business market before the iPhone and the Blackberry to this day owns that market.
...I wear my sunglasses at night...
I consistently get the worst telephone lines when I call the customer service of my phone companies: Bell Canada (POTS) and Fido (GSM - alias Microcell, now owned by Rogers): The voice of the rep cuts out, first and last syllables get lost, or there's half a second of lag. Very annoying - I always have to spell my name three times before they get it right. Quite ironic that my VoIP line has never had any of these problems - and that one's talking to a provider on the other side of the Atlantic...
I don't want to be disconnected at every jurisdictional and regulatory boundary such as state lines and city limits.
it's been a while since i was on a road trip in the US but at least here in Canada, roads don't end at municipal, privincial or even the southern border. apparently municipalities and provinces and even countries are able to communicate with each other about connecting their traffic grids seamlessly, so why should it not work for a communications network?
since telcos are in it for the money, they will cover exclusively areas that make them money - densly populated areas or areas with rich customers. that's why utilities in many places are still public and where they aren't, they are heavily regulated - to provide fair and guaranteed access for all (or most) people. that said, no politician would take the responsibility for spending 95% of the money to reach the last 5% of the population either...
check it out here.
that must be the lamest cgi script i've seen in my life...
nothing really decays in a landfill; there is basically no oxygen in a landfill and that prevents pretty much everything from decaying. throw an apple into the garbage, it will not biodegrade. whoever puts that label on anything seems to keep their garbage on their patio.
or, if you're John Grisham, you write the second half of the title (the first half invariably being "the") and the neat tool writes a book and a movie script...
did anybody read the article or is this just about comiserating about unemployment?
American trade policy has been pro-"free trade" without requiring that the trading partner have equivalent environmental or employee protections. These blind spots have, for example, caused the export of almost all American non-ferrous metals processing jobs to Mexico and Canada.
while "made in china" might mean this, i can't believe how this article tries to take a shot at the NAFTA countries. Mexico might not live up to US standards (but i want to see the American consumers pay the prices for "made in USA" DVD players etc.
immigrants are an important economic factor in the western world.
-look at Europe: europe is struggeling because of its aging population which causes health and old age pension costs to skyrocket; not so the US. the birth rates are no higher in the US but immigration keeps the average age at bay because young people enter the country.
-immigrants are not only workers; they are also consumers. so they don't take jobs away from americans, they simply increase the population.
-legal immigration should be simpler because legal immigration is much better than illegal immigration - legal immigrants work under the same labour and health standards as Americans and they pay taxes. none of this can be said of illegal immigrants. they are at high danger of abuse in many ways by their "employers" (or slave drivers) and they have no way of defending themselves because any legal action would cause them to be kicked out.
in my opinion, this article is full of xenophobia and uses the current anxiety about jobs to try to convince people that immigration and immigrants (clearly one of the weakest groups of society who have little or no political voice) are the root of all evil. this is simply disgusting.
My company is one of America's largest beef and pork producers
Hmm... Did you consider the disservice you'd do to your employer by posting the link to the rendering plant? I, for my part, am considering going vegan after reading that - and it was not the part about pesticides and the like, believe me...
get isopropanol, hplc (or spectroscopic) grade - it's about $10 canadian here. that should be clean enough.
I don't know how popular that's going to be, something like that. Twenty-five cents is a really significant amount to add to everybody's phone bill.
oh yeah? so what does Bell Canada call the Touch-Tone Service (tm) charge of $2.80 i.e. more than 11 times as much that is on every one of their customers' phone bills every month?
blessed are those who have a quasi-monopoly.
don't get me wrong, i hate the idea of paying for that but their argument is plain ridiculous given their own completely arbitrary charges (i haven't tried but it would be interesting to see if a pulse (i.e. non touch tone) dial phone would work on a new bell line at all. plus, i sure couldn't opt out of that charge then).
i guess they didn't have off-site backups back then...
nope. they just decided that they had to tape delay that message till after the games - for ip addresses from europe, the article is still there.
...or even civilians for that matter because the person using the radar will not be able to tell the difference.
However, Gates said the controversy has exposed a fundamental weakness of Linux--that the General Public License (GPL) makes it difficult for companies to engage in the cross-licensing deals that have become standard in the software industry.
what Gates doesn't get is that linux doesn't need cross-licensing - OSS is big enough that OSS projects can get their technology from other OSS projects without having to cross-license it. OSS is not a single company (like microsoft) that can't afford to spend money on reinventing the wheel. or if you want to see it as a company, then plenty technology is available within.
so i can call my geo a "corvette full-speed" now if i refer to the car formerly known as a corvette as a "corvette high-speed". well, given the speed limits around here it should more likely be called "high-accelleration" or "even-more-expensive-tickets" anyway.
well, the problem is really that gas prices have actually reduced in recent years (after correction for inflation) and current gas prices are effectively the same as before the first oil crisis. rate stays the same -> tax revenue goes down. of course you're correct pointing out that that's not what the article says.
two empty 3x3 desktops (except for a sticky xconsole). all important applications have keybindings. my idea of a minimal desktop. i just hate to have to take my hands off the keyboard to reach for the mouse.
First, naturally, there is the question of "Who do you sue" when things go wrong
seriously, with scientific hardware, you sue noone. i've seen so many instruments that do not meet their specifications (and likewise drivers that do not either) and the manufacturers don't give a damn 'cause the competitors' products don't meet their specs either. try looking at the crosstalk between the channels on a analog io cards of well known and respected manufacturers - the 8 or so adc inputs are all multiplexed to one adc chip. if you sequentially read several of them, each reading will be influenced by the reading before. surprisingly, if you use the full valtage range, the crosstalk is significantly more than one lsb (which is the promised accuracy of the inputs). who do you sue? noone 'cause you'll never get anywhere and you have better things to do with your time (at least that seems to be the philosophy of researchers at universities).
so what is it when the american government favours american firms over foreign firms for contracts or decides to buy american-made stuff for all their needs? even if this was not a technical decision, how would this be different?
i suppose it also filters out all emails containing the word enis.
what's your point? these are nothing but unique ids on your cash; and they've been there for a long time - unique serial numbers. for all i know, us$ bills have them as well (can't check since my us cash is at home and i'm at work), canada certainly has them. the only difference is that rfid tags will be somewhat easier to read for a machine (note that it's not impossible with the serial numbers, though, banks routinely record them already).
while i agree that tracking of cash might become more widespread, it's not really a new thing.
The bright side: the students who are enrolling are doing so because they love computers. Not like a few years ago when students were enrolling because they wanted to make a quick buck. I'll take quality over quantity.
what about this: the universities have much less applicants to choose from so less smart people (assuming that there's a correlation between smartness and grades) will get into the program. i wonder how this will affect the quality.
well, maybe something like this finally gets the people from nature, science, europhysics journal (successor of several older european journals) etc. to do what they should have done long ago - make all their old issues available electronically and not only the ones from the 90s and later; the AIP did this years ago and it's absolutely awesome to be able to look up stuff in, say, physical review from 1920 or so without having to leave my desk.
wrong guess. but i can tell you that the freshmen i TA-ed last year in a physics 100 level class knew a hell of a lot more about electromagnetism than the guy who wrote that article.