I grew up a short distance away in Cheadle Hulme. It would have been useful to have Google Maps before the last visit since I would have known ahead of time that my childhood home no longer existed. (where the wavy little road full of yuppie houses starts)
You have to watch the ad. You cannot skip it, you cannot fast forward it. You are stuck watching that same flipping spot for a car sitting in a waterfall which I for one will never buy.
That's the trade off. Your time. As valuable as you make it.
The house we bought in the nicest part of Vancouver last year came with security bars on the 1st floor windows, an alarm system and triple locks on the doors. Maybe the previous owner was a bit paranoid, but a private security firm has just started patrolling the area near us due to a rash of break-ins.
Vancouver has the highest rate of car theft in North America hence the arguably successful bait car program.
You might argue that we don't lock our doors in the daytime when we're home, but the number of home invasions is making that less common.
How many times have you gone to the rental store brought home a DVD and had to sit through the parts where the previous lender put the mucky fingerprints or scratched the surface. Your DVD player madly searches for some data it can recognize all the while giving you a stuck picture or some weird blocky digital effect when it can painfully extract partial data for a frame.
With VHS tapes you may get some fuzz but the program as a whole remain watchable. The same applies for watching broadcast TV or listening to a radio, there may be interference but your brain can learn to ignore it. A bad DVD or digital signal is unwatchable.
This ruling has little to do with technology and more to do with business and competition. Skype, FWD et. al. will still be able to offer their free services (which are actually financed by advertising and other means).
This will allow new companies to start offering value-added, non-PSTN phone service without being shut out by the two current major phone service providers using artifically low prices.
Basically, a Good Thing because competition is good.
I can't see too many of our clients agreeing to let the confidential contents of their documents be sent to Microsft to figure out why our PCs crashed.
Since the API is really open and can call your own little procedures in just about whatever script language you want makes for some really wild features being added to the Asterisk world that mystify traditional PBX people. Things like quick routing to voicemail or somewhere else based upon your AIM logged-in status.
They would make taking a turn as the Doctor into something all well-known actors would aspire to, just like the guest spot on the Muppet Show used to be.
This would set off raging discussions online about who the next Doctor will be, who the next Doctor should be, who the best Doctor was, etc.
Note that the first golden age of superheroes was in the second world war. Very evil people were about and the average joe needed some measure of hope that good would triumph. The comic-book all-American flag-waving superhero provided that outlet.
Now we see another resurgence in the superhero in our movies and popular culture. Is it not surprising that this is occurring during a new wartime. There are evil people about and the general population feels powerless.
It doesn't help that the government feeds the fear of the average citizen with color-coded threat levels and dire warnings of cooperation between separate terrorists.
Had 9/11 not happened would we still be looking for our superheroes?
That 1% might be OO. This is from a question that compared only Word and Wordperfect use and illustrated the rapid decline in Wordperfect use amongst law firms in the past three years. It will be interesting to see if that 1% disparity grows in coming years.
The survey is verbatim from the International Legal Technology Association that represents the majority of law firms in North America. The survey covers all aspects of technology use, not just Word Processors and is the most accurate source of technology trends in the legal profession.
We are very typical of the standard mid-size firm these days (65 lawyers):
- We stopped using Wordperfect as our primary word processor in 2000. - We finally got rid of WP completely just this past year after we upgraded our accounting system. - Law firms hang onto technology for a very long time and don't change that often, thus the impression that lawyers like WordPerfect when the actuality is that a lot of firms just haven't gotten around to upgrading. - Our phone system is 20 years old (ROLM) and the partnership still isn't convinced of the need to change as the phones work fine and they don't need any of the fancy stuff like caller id. (let alone integrated messaging) - We use workstations for five years instead of the industry typical three.
Results of last Lawnet (now ILTA) Technology Survey:
Primary Word Processor:
2004: Word 91% WordPerfect 9% 2003: Word 86% WordPerfect 13% 2001: Word 79% WordPerfect 20%
Functioning but not practical...
on
Build Your Own PBX
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Maintenance is the problem on older ROLM boxes. We once lost phone service for an entire day when one card in teh switch died. They had to fly the part from Toronto because there was no local supply here in Vancouver.
There may be no shortage of ROLM parts floating around on eBay, but the know-how to install and configure these switches is what is in short supply these days.
Single cabinet 9751 Model 40. Saw one on eBay the other day for $200 so your 10,000 line unit probably isn't worth much more than 2 grand. Mostly scrap value.
I love showing people the industrial-refrigerator-size ROLM PBX and the OS/2-based Octel voicemail PC and then the 1U Asterisk pizzabox server that will replace both of them.
Slashdot Mirror
No need for long descriptions. Just show people this.
Here.
I grew up a short distance away in Cheadle Hulme. It would have been useful to have Google Maps before the last visit since I would have known ahead of time that my childhood home no longer existed. (where the wavy little road full of yuppie houses starts)
You have to watch the ad. You cannot skip it, you cannot fast forward it. You are stuck watching that same flipping spot for a car sitting in a waterfall which I for one will never buy.
That's the trade off. Your time. As valuable as you make it.
Which idyllic part of Canada do you live in?
The house we bought in the nicest part of Vancouver last year came with security bars on the 1st floor windows, an alarm system and triple locks on the doors. Maybe the previous owner was a bit paranoid, but a private security firm has just started patrolling the area near us due to a rash of break-ins.
Vancouver has the highest rate of car theft in North America hence the arguably successful bait car program.
You might argue that we don't lock our doors in the daytime when we're home, but the number of home invasions is making that less common.
How many times have you gone to the rental store brought home a DVD and had to sit through the parts where the previous lender put the mucky fingerprints or scratched the surface. Your DVD player madly searches for some data it can recognize all the while giving you a stuck picture or some weird blocky digital effect when it can painfully extract partial data for a frame.
With VHS tapes you may get some fuzz but the program as a whole remain watchable. The same applies for watching broadcast TV or listening to a radio, there may be interference but your brain can learn to ignore it. A bad DVD or digital signal is unwatchable.
And region-free DVD players are $40 at your local Best Buy/Future Shop.
Substitute "spammers" for "terrorists" and you've just described SPEWS.
This ruling has little to do with technology and more to do with business and competition. Skype, FWD et. al. will still be able to offer their free services (which are actually financed by advertising and other means).
This will allow new companies to start offering value-added, non-PSTN phone service without being shut out by the two current major phone service providers using artifically low prices.
Basically, a Good Thing because competition is good.
Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) expressely forbids the external transmission of client data, which would no doubt include the documents on our firm's computers, without their consent.
I can't see too many of our clients agreeing to let the confidential contents of their documents be sent to Microsft to figure out why our PCs crashed.
Since the API is really open and can call your own little procedures in just about whatever script language you want makes for some really wild features being added to the Asterisk world that mystify traditional PBX people. Things like quick routing to voicemail or somewhere else based upon your AIM logged-in status.
The possibilities are huge.
I've just started cataloguing some of the more creative ones.
They would make taking a turn as the Doctor into something all well-known actors would aspire to, just like the guest spot on the Muppet Show used to be.
This would set off raging discussions online about who the next Doctor will be, who the next Doctor should be, who the best Doctor was, etc.
Built-in buzz. C'mon BBC get with it.
Now I'm going to have "Tie me kangaroo down" going through my head all evening along with a digeridoo and a wobble board.
The guy's gotta be 100 by now.
Until they try to view today's news video on msnbc.com and are told they don't have the right software installed.
Far too many recreational user sites are this way as well.
Between that and the banana seat, I was too cool for school.
Why do spinners scream to me: "playing card in the spokes!"
Note that the first golden age of superheroes was in the second world war. Very evil people were about and the average joe needed some measure of hope that good would triumph. The comic-book all-American flag-waving superhero provided that outlet.
Now we see another resurgence in the superhero in our movies and popular culture. Is it not surprising that this is occurring during a new wartime. There are evil people about and the general population feels powerless.
It doesn't help that the government feeds the fear of the average citizen with color-coded threat levels and dire warnings of cooperation between separate terrorists.
Had 9/11 not happened would we still be looking for our superheroes?
In this film.
That 1% might be OO. This is from a question that compared only Word and Wordperfect use and illustrated the rapid decline in Wordperfect use amongst law firms in the past three years. It will be interesting to see if that 1% disparity grows in coming years.
The survey is verbatim from the International Legal Technology Association that represents the majority of law firms in North America. The survey covers all aspects of technology use, not just Word Processors and is the most accurate source of technology trends in the legal profession.
We are very typical of the standard mid-size firm these days (65 lawyers):
- We stopped using Wordperfect as our primary word processor in 2000.
- We finally got rid of WP completely just this past year after we upgraded our accounting system.
- Law firms hang onto technology for a very long time and don't change that often, thus the impression that lawyers like WordPerfect when the actuality is that a lot of firms just haven't gotten around to upgrading.
- Our phone system is 20 years old (ROLM) and the partnership still isn't convinced of the need to change as the phones work fine and they don't need any of the fancy stuff like caller id. (let alone integrated messaging)
- We use workstations for five years instead of the industry typical three.
Results of last Lawnet (now ILTA) Technology Survey:
Primary Word Processor:
2004: Word 91% WordPerfect 9%
2003: Word 86% WordPerfect 13%
2001: Word 79% WordPerfect 20%
Maintenance is the problem on older ROLM boxes. We once lost phone service for an entire day when one card in teh switch died. They had to fly the part from Toronto because there was no local supply here in Vancouver.
There may be no shortage of ROLM parts floating around on eBay, but the know-how to install and configure these switches is what is in short supply these days.
Single cabinet 9751 Model 40. Saw one on eBay the other day for $200 so your 10,000 line unit probably isn't worth much more than 2 grand. Mostly scrap value.
I love showing people the industrial-refrigerator-size ROLM PBX and the OS/2-based Octel voicemail PC and then the 1U Asterisk pizzabox server that will replace both of them.
Oh man that was funny! I looked once quickly then looked again and almost squirted my seaweed tea out of my nose.
I haven't lived in England for a very long time but that was exactly the thought that struck me after seeing this guy.
I would have thought a serial burgler wouldn't try so HARD to look like a serial burgler.
Shades of Benny Hill.
Yes, and it's marked with a US-style highway sign.
This one.