There is a technology available called UMA (Unified Mobile Access) which, with the right handsets, will seamlessly switch from cellular to VOIP over WiFi. It is what is used by the T-Mobile "Hotspot @ Home" plans in the US. The phones have cell and WiFi, and if you are at home or on another WiFi connections your calls (in and out) are VOIP and don't count against your cell minutes if you pay the $10 or $20/month. I use it because our building at work seems to block GSM cell signals, so I use WiFi to get signal at work. I also use it at home where the cell signal is a bit iffy.
The iPhone seems to have all the hardware required, but you can bet your life that AT&T won't be offering this any time soon, because their customers might actually like it...
The 1.x series of this is free, and just 'wraps' the Cisco installation in a much nicer GUI, with a menu bar entry and some useful added functionality. Version 2.x is $20, but works with Cisco, OpenVPN, and all sorts of other stuff natively.
As a transplant from the UK to the US, with high school/college age kids, I think it's about time that we stopped mollycoddling and pandering to the kids here, and started getting them thinking that they cannot just drift through high school and college, they need a direction, which making a choice starts to prepare them for.
When I was at school in the UK in the early 1980's, at age 14 we had to narrow our courses to about eight subjects in total (English, Maths and a couple of others mandatory, leaving quite a bit of choice) and we studied for national exams ("O" levels) at age 16. We then chose three or four subjects usually from the eight, to take to an advanced level ("A" level), leading to national exams at the age of 18. When it cam to university time, there was no such thing as this "undeclared major" rubbish that my son is doing at an American university starting this fall. Our university admission was into a particular course, based on prerequisite courses at "A" level at required grades. This allowed the universities to know the minimum level and rely on the expected knowledge of all the students in a given course, and there was no need for foundation years, or spending the first term or two catching everyone up. This is why we could have three year Bachelor's courses instead of the four year ones here in the US.
Today's kids are not being properly prepared for the work environment. I've lost count of the number of confident, self assured, broadly educated US Bachelors or Masters graduates I have interviewed for jobs in electronics who don't understand Ohm's Law or basic op-amp theory after graduating from between four and six years of study. It's time to stop the madness, and start preparing the kids for the new world, where they are competing against low wage earning graduates based in India or China, and if you think the UK system was harsh in making people choose, you should see the focus and emphasis on academics and career preparation in Asia...
I signed up in Feb 2000, and in July it worked...
99% of the issues were down to the ridiculous three-way relationship forced on the DSL providers, with an ISP (Phoenix), a CLEC (Rhythms) and a local Telco (Bell Atlunatic, now Veriscum). The main issues were getting Bell to do something. They were either incompetent or deliberately obstructive (after all, they sell DSL too, although not to me, not now, not ever if I have anything to do with it!) Phoenix were very helpful once I got a relationship going with a techie who is now a very senior manager there, and eventually it worked.
They have static IPs, and will allow residential use servers, etc. They don't block ports, they don't care if you use Linux/IPmasq, they just supply connectivity.
I think Phoenix serve Phoenix AZ, but you can find out for yourself at http://www.phoenixdsl.com/
I don't know if the 6502 is the best way to teach programming (although I learnt that way...), but the students of today are not generally taught *any* low-level programming. Case in point - a co-op student of mine entered a Motorola embedded microcontroller design competition last year. After he had spent a week wondering why his compiled C++ "Hello World" program would not fit in the 32K of memory he had available, I printed out the assembly language manual for the CPU, gave him a few basic lessons, and he went off and won second place. Given the fact that almost no-one really understands the low-level stuff any more, is it any wonder we get stuck with 10M of bloated executable to play Solitaire... The 6502 might not be the best way, but any way is better than none!
There are several reasons why people would want this: 1) You are on a trip using your Linux laptop, and don't want to drop $1000 for a portable DVD player 2) You don't have space in your room for a TV and a monitor (like my kids for example) and you want to use your computer as an occasional DVD player 3) Because you can...
Just a little something to show it's not all bad...
I am a UK citizen, and spent 3 years in Canada as a landed immigrant (almost identical to Green Card status from what I understand). I came to the US towards the end of 1998 on an H1-B on a salary in the $70k's. During the next year we: - bought a house with a mortgage - got a 10% rise - got a 5 year car loan - changed jobs for a *substantial* pay rise, on a new (or transferred, I'm not quite sure what the actual process is) H1-B - sold the first house - bought another house (again with a mortgage) - got a 3 year car lease
My current company is actively working on a Reduction In Recruitment filing for me, which should speed up the Green Card process a bit. I have the best part of five years left on my H1-B, and am reasonably confident I'll get a Green Card in time.
If you work for good companies, for people of good character with whom you build trust *before* signing, then you will get treated like any other employee. I have never knowingly come across any instance of "discrimination" against my status. In the industry I am in companies cannot afford to do anything to upset their good people, as the shortage of labour is particularly intense.
I can imagine most of the problems are in the "pure" programming arena, where people's skills age much more quickly, there is more local talent available, and it may seem cheaper to the company to write up a new H1-B and get rid of the current job holder by dragging it's corporate feet on the Green Card process. That way they get someone whose skills are up to date without investing in training and Green Card lawyer's fees. This is of course a false economy, but the bean-counters don't always get that...
As far as quick citizenship goes, for me it is no solution. A Green Card gives me all I need, i.e. right to reside, right to change jobs, etc. As things stand, I have no intention to retire in the US. If I took US citizenship I would have to give up my UK citizenship, as dual nationality is not allowed. This would make it more difficult for me to return to the UK at a future date. In Canada we would have been allowed dual nationality, but the cold and the taxes got to me before I applied!
Slashdot Mirror
There is a technology available called UMA (Unified Mobile Access) which, with the right handsets, will seamlessly switch from cellular to VOIP over WiFi. It is what is used by the T-Mobile "Hotspot @ Home" plans in the US. The phones have cell and WiFi, and if you are at home or on another WiFi connections your calls (in and out) are VOIP and don't count against your cell minutes if you pay the $10 or $20/month. I use it because our building at work seems to block GSM cell signals, so I use WiFi to get signal at work. I also use it at home where the cell signal is a bit iffy.
The iPhone seems to have all the hardware required, but you can bet your life that AT&T won't be offering this any time soon, because their customers might actually like it...
Shimo is your friend here: http://www.nexumoja.org/projects/Shimo/
The 1.x series of this is free, and just 'wraps' the Cisco installation in a much nicer GUI, with a menu bar entry and some useful added functionality. Version 2.x is $20, but works with Cisco, OpenVPN, and all sorts of other stuff natively.
As a transplant from the UK to the US, with high school/college age kids, I think it's about time that we stopped mollycoddling and pandering to the kids here, and started getting them thinking that they cannot just drift through high school and college, they need a direction, which making a choice starts to prepare them for.
When I was at school in the UK in the early 1980's, at age 14 we had to narrow our courses to about eight subjects in total (English, Maths and a couple of others mandatory, leaving quite a bit of choice) and we studied for national exams ("O" levels) at age 16. We then chose three or four subjects usually from the eight, to take to an advanced level ("A" level), leading to national exams at the age of 18. When it cam to university time, there was no such thing as this "undeclared major" rubbish that my son is doing at an American university starting this fall. Our university admission was into a particular course, based on prerequisite courses at "A" level at required grades. This allowed the universities to know the minimum level and rely on the expected knowledge of all the students in a given course, and there was no need for foundation years, or spending the first term or two catching everyone up. This is why we could have three year Bachelor's courses instead of the four year ones here in the US.
Today's kids are not being properly prepared for the work environment. I've lost count of the number of confident, self assured, broadly educated US Bachelors or Masters graduates I have interviewed for jobs in electronics who don't understand Ohm's Law or basic op-amp theory after graduating from between four and six years of study. It's time to stop the madness, and start preparing the kids for the new world, where they are competing against low wage earning graduates based in India or China, and if you think the UK system was harsh in making people choose, you should see the focus and emphasis on academics and career preparation in Asia...
I signed up in Feb 2000, and in July it worked...
.sig?
99% of the issues were down to the ridiculous three-way relationship forced on the DSL providers, with an ISP (Phoenix), a CLEC (Rhythms) and a local Telco (Bell Atlunatic, now Veriscum). The main issues were getting Bell to do something. They were either incompetent or deliberately obstructive (after all, they sell DSL too, although not to me, not now, not ever if I have anything to do with it!) Phoenix were very helpful once I got a relationship going with a techie who is now a very senior manager there, and eventually it worked.
They have static IPs, and will allow residential use servers, etc. They don't block ports, they don't care if you use Linux/IPmasq, they just supply connectivity.
I think Phoenix serve Phoenix AZ, but you can find out for yourself at http://www.phoenixdsl.com/
What's a
Q: What do toilet bowls and Microsoft have in common?
A: They're both full of s$%*!
I don't know if the 6502 is the best way to teach programming (although I learnt that way...), but the students of today are not generally taught *any* low-level programming. Case in point - a co-op student of mine entered a Motorola embedded microcontroller design competition last year. After he had spent a week wondering why his compiled C++ "Hello World" program would not fit in the 32K of memory he had available, I printed out the assembly language manual for the CPU, gave him a few basic lessons, and he went off and won second place.
Given the fact that almost no-one really understands the low-level stuff any more, is it any wonder we get stuck with 10M of bloated executable to play Solitaire...
The 6502 might not be the best way, but any way is better than none!
There are several reasons why people would want this:
1) You are on a trip using your Linux laptop, and don't want to drop $1000 for a portable DVD player
2) You don't have space in your room for a TV and a monitor (like my kids for example) and you want to use your computer as an occasional DVD player
3) Because you can...
It's really simple actually. Give us a way to pay a fair price for a modifiable unit, with no bundled Internet service, and we'll buy the thing.
Just a little something to show it's not all bad...
.sig?
I am a UK citizen, and spent 3 years in Canada as a landed immigrant (almost identical to Green Card status from what I understand). I came to the US towards the end of 1998 on an H1-B on a salary in the $70k's. During the next year we:
- bought a house with a mortgage
- got a 10% rise
- got a 5 year car loan
- changed jobs for a *substantial* pay rise, on a new (or transferred, I'm not quite sure what the actual process is) H1-B
- sold the first house
- bought another house (again with a mortgage)
- got a 3 year car lease
My current company is actively working on a Reduction In Recruitment filing for me, which should speed up the Green Card process a bit. I have the best part of five years left on my H1-B, and am reasonably confident I'll get a Green Card in time.
If you work for good companies, for people of good character with whom you build trust *before* signing, then you will get treated like any other employee. I have never knowingly come across any instance of "discrimination" against my status. In the industry I am in companies cannot afford to do anything to upset their good people, as the shortage of labour is particularly intense.
I can imagine most of the problems are in the "pure" programming arena, where people's skills age much more quickly, there is more local talent available, and it may seem cheaper to the company to write up a new H1-B and get rid of the current job holder by dragging it's corporate feet on the Green Card process. That way they get someone whose skills are up to date without investing in training and Green Card lawyer's fees. This is of course a false economy, but the bean-counters don't always get that...
As far as quick citizenship goes, for me it is no solution. A Green Card gives me all I need, i.e. right to reside, right to change jobs, etc. As things stand, I have no intention to retire in the US. If I took US citizenship I would have to give up my UK citizenship, as dual nationality is not allowed. This would make it more difficult for me to return to the UK at a future date. In Canada we would have been allowed dual nationality, but the cold and the taxes got to me before I applied!
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Wot no