If you haven't seen the Wallace & Gromit shorts, please don't judge the W&G movie based on the dreadful and boring Chicken Run. The Wrong Trousers is one of the all-time great short films, and it and the other shorts are well worth the rental fees.
Let's hope the W&G feature has more in common with Trousers than Chicken.
I'm not sure why this has to be a good guys vs. bad guys thing. It seems to me that both Google and Yahoo are good guys, focused on delivering good services to their customers rather than screwing over their customers -- especially compared to Microsoft, AOL, Verizon, SBC, Comcast, etc.
I remember when an old AT&T "Merlin" PBX system was first installed in an office where I worked.
After a dumbfounding demonstration of its many features, a colleage muttered under his breath, "They call it 'Merlin,' because you have to be a wizard to figure it out."
The monopoly mentality in hardware lived long past Western Electric's demise.
I remember working at a convention in NYC in 1992. The convention contracted with NYNEX to supply telephones. The NYNEX/CWA phone techs broke the ends off the release tabs on the RJ-45 wiring after plugging them in, under the misconception that this would keep "civicians" from moving "their" telephones.
Oh, and there really weren't proprietary connetors. While there was a big, clunky 4-prong plug for some phones, most were hard wired into the wall in those days.
And those rental phones were built to last. Made of heavy Bakelite plastic (or something similar), they probably could survive a 30-foot drop. And if anything ever went bad, you just called for a free replacement.
The jury is still out about whether this business model can be profitable in the long run, but Zipcar and Flexcar are selling easy access to loaner cars for people who only need wheels a few times a month.
Right now, they're not offering large vehicles to owners of small vehicles. They're offering small vehicles to people who primarily use public transportation -- or to single-car families who occasionally need a second vehicle. But if they succeed, it makes sense that they would branch out into a wider variety of vehicle sizes.
These sorts of things are commerically available. This thing incorporates a small amplifier, so that you don't need to be right next to the internal antenna.
They're not renewing anything. Keep in mind that there are two "Palm" companies now.
PalmSource, the company that develops the PalmOS operating system, will no longer incorporate Mac support into the core OS and desktop PIM. This has not changed since they announced it, and it probably never will.
PalmOne, the company that manufactures "Palm" hardware has never shipped a Palm without Mac support and has never intended to. Now that they can't get Mac support from PalmSource, they will bundle third-party tools, just like they do with MP3 players and MSOffice editors, which also aren't incorporated in the OS. I'm sure Sony and the other PalmOS licensees will do likewise.
Macheads need not get their panties in a bunch here. PalmSource simply wants to focus on their core competency of handheld operating systems. PalmOne wants to put together the best bundle of software and hardware they can. None of this should be news.
The content of the article may be "the same old," but it is important that this is running in Business Week, which is probably the most read magazine among corporate executives and wannabes.
It's articles like this that prod CEOs and CIOs to ask their staffs, "Why aren't we using Linux more?" Or they at least make executives more receptive to staff proposals that incorporate OSS.
If we're ever going to get to a tipping point where OSS is the first choice and MS "standards" are a second choice, more articles like this are needed in BW, Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Forbes.
In addition to that, the data from the black box was available because the driver caused an accident.
If it's a slippery slope, random trawling for speeders is a long way down the slope from collecting all available data at the scene of an accident.
Why not draw the line at probable cause, just like we do with other sorts of data collection? If you cause an accident, I don't see any reason why the police should limit the kinds of evidence they collect about the cause of that accident. I don't see that as a slippery slope to anything, other than locking up more homocidal maniacs.
Righto. I've bought two Microtels boxes over the last year. They're nicely put together in a steel case that gives you easy access to RAM, disk bays, etc. (unlike the plastic Rubik's Cube of an HP they sit next to). Peformance has been better than expected for the price -- with the exception of that danged noisy fan.
And just how are these necessary for manned space flight, but not unmanned space flight. There is no extra scientific or economic benefit to sending humans along for the ride during space exploration.
A) Inspiration is no reason to spend a trillion dollars, when there are plenty of competing priorities for those resources.
B) Paving the way for more space exploration is a circular argument. If we don't need manned space exploration now, why do we need more in the future?
C) If you can name one incalculably valuable spinoff the manned space program has given us in the last 30 years, I'll give you my next paycheck. People like to trot out this old chestnut, but when asked for specifics, they come up with BS that doesn't survive any level of scrutiny. Spending billions so that humans can watch ant farms in zero gravity is a waste. About the only useful thing the Space Shuttle has done in the entire program was repairing the Hubble. In my book that one benefit does not justify the cost of the program.
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots would be impratical in many U.S. states that use long ballots.
I'm not sure what offices you vote for in Canada, but in many states down here, voters may select candidates for several dozen offices in one election. When I lived in North Carolina, I was asked to vote for legislators, judges, at-large offices, school board members, county clerks and things like soil and water conservation district supervisor.
There are a lot of reasons why long ballots are a bad idea, but flaws in the voting system are the wrong reason to shorten them.
The parent post has got to be a troll. In daily use of PalmOS 3, 4 and 5 for over five years, I have never once had to do a hard reset. Versions 3 and 4 requred a soft reset (reboot) about once a year for me. I probably did a dozen soft resets on OS5 until I identified the applications that had compatibility problems.
PalmOS has a well-earned reputation for rock-solid reliability everywhere except for on Slashdot. Not sure why there are so many Palm haters here.
Instead of Mozilla, I prefer the leaner Firebird for browsing and Eudora for email. If you take the time to learn how to use the Filters feature, Eudora's pretty good at filtering spam. Especially if you crank up the size of the History of addresses you sent to and store your contacts in the address book. You can then filter messages whose sender "doesn't intersect" your address book or history into a spam folder.
Instead of WS FTP, I prefer Filezilla, which is truly free (you have to pretend to be a student or a non-profit to use WS FTP for free) and does sftp as well.
TTSSH is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.
Also:
If you use a Palm, PalmEudora Sync keeps your addressbooks synchronized (which will help with those Eudora spam filters).
Mark's Adding Machine is much better than the Windows calculator for balancing checkbooks.
According to the Washington City Paper, the Segway can also run away from "stupid users" who step off of it without powering it off. This led to a dangerous situation in Washington's subway, which has led to a ban on the devices in the Metrorail system:
Unlike, say, a power lawnmower, a Segway doesn't have an automatic kill switch that activates if you stop holding the controls. "I sat down, didn't shut it off, and let go of it," Kinkella recalls. The machine took off on its own and flopped onto the subway's track bed. Metro safety official Ron Keele says service had to be temporarily shut down until the HT could be retrieved.
Congress now needs to make a law authorizing the FTC to implement a Do-Not-Call registry.
According to the Washington Post, there is activity on the House side to do just that:
Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), the committee's ranking minority member, issued a joint statement this morning saying they "will take whatever legislative action is necessary to ensure consumers can stop intrusive calls from unwanted telemarketers."
I've listed the members of Energy & Commerce below. Members of Congress do care what their constituents think, and if they hear from enough of them, they are less likely to listen to lobbyists for the direct marketing industry. If you are a constituent of one of the members below, please do one of the following (in decreasing order of impact):
Write a snail mail letter c/o U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515.
Place a telephone call to 202-224-3121 and ask for your congressman's office.
Send an email.
If you're not sure who represents you, go here and type in your Zip code where it says "Find Your Representative."
If they don't hear from you, they will think you don't care.
If you live in the Washington, DC, area, there is a very good local survey in Washington Consumers' Checkbook, which is sort of a local Consumer Reports.
Non-subscribers have to pay about $5 for the report, and it's almost a year old now, but I have read it and found it very thoroughly researched and informative.
... has an excellent back archive of jazz -- over a thousand albums worth downloading. For $120 you can subscribe to eMusic for a year and sample freely to learn what you do and don't like.
Slashdot Mirror
If you haven't seen the Wallace & Gromit shorts, please don't judge the W&G movie based on the dreadful and boring Chicken Run. The Wrong Trousers is one of the all-time great short films, and it and the other shorts are well worth the rental fees.
Let's hope the W&G feature has more in common with Trousers than Chicken.
Because I used to work in the magazine business. 2-4% response is what you get when you pay good money for a well targeted list.
I'd say 1% is very, very high. A good response rate for "legitimate" direct mail marketing is in the 2-4% range.
but why does google engender a warm fuzzy feeling
I'm not sure why this has to be a good guys vs. bad guys thing. It seems to me that both Google and Yahoo are good guys, focused on delivering good services to their customers rather than screwing over their customers -- especially compared to Microsoft, AOL, Verizon, SBC, Comcast, etc.
I remember when an old AT&T "Merlin" PBX system was first installed in an office where I worked.
After a dumbfounding demonstration of its many features, a colleage muttered under his breath, "They call it 'Merlin,' because you have to be a wizard to figure it out."
The monopoly mentality in hardware lived long past Western Electric's demise. I remember working at a convention in NYC in 1992. The convention contracted with NYNEX to supply telephones. The NYNEX/CWA phone techs broke the ends off the release tabs on the RJ-45 wiring after plugging them in, under the misconception that this would keep "civicians" from moving "their" telephones. Oh, and there really weren't proprietary connetors. While there was a big, clunky 4-prong plug for some phones, most were hard wired into the wall in those days. And those rental phones were built to last. Made of heavy Bakelite plastic (or something similar), they probably could survive a 30-foot drop. And if anything ever went bad, you just called for a free replacement.
The jury is still out about whether this business model can be profitable in the long run, but Zipcar and Flexcar are selling easy access to loaner cars for people who only need wheels a few times a month.
Right now, they're not offering large vehicles to owners of small vehicles. They're offering small vehicles to people who primarily use public transportation -- or to single-car families who occasionally need a second vehicle. But if they succeed, it makes sense that they would branch out into a wider variety of vehicle sizes.
These sorts of things are commerically available. This thing incorporates a small amplifier, so that you don't need to be right next to the internal antenna.
It is a little pricey at $500, though.
More precisely, Time Warner's pre-merger shareholders were, and AOL's pre-merger shareholders got a massive gift.
They're not renewing anything. Keep in mind that there are two "Palm" companies now.
PalmSource, the company that develops the PalmOS operating system, will no longer incorporate Mac support into the core OS and desktop PIM. This has not changed since they announced it, and it probably never will.
PalmOne, the company that manufactures "Palm" hardware has never shipped a Palm without Mac support and has never intended to. Now that they can't get Mac support from PalmSource, they will bundle third-party tools, just like they do with MP3 players and MSOffice editors, which also aren't incorporated in the OS. I'm sure Sony and the other PalmOS licensees will do likewise.
Macheads need not get their panties in a bunch here. PalmSource simply wants to focus on their core competency of handheld operating systems. PalmOne wants to put together the best bundle of software and hardware they can. None of this should be news.
The content of the article may be "the same old," but it is important that this is running in Business Week, which is probably the most read magazine among corporate executives and wannabes.
It's articles like this that prod CEOs and CIOs to ask their staffs, "Why aren't we using Linux more?" Or they at least make executives more receptive to staff proposals that incorporate OSS.
If we're ever going to get to a tipping point where OSS is the first choice and MS "standards" are a second choice, more articles like this are needed in BW, Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Forbes.
In addition to that, the data from the black box was available because the driver caused an accident.
If it's a slippery slope, random trawling for speeders is a long way down the slope from collecting all available data at the scene of an accident.
Why not draw the line at probable cause, just like we do with other sorts of data collection? If you cause an accident, I don't see any reason why the police should limit the kinds of evidence they collect about the cause of that accident. I don't see that as a slippery slope to anything, other than locking up more homocidal maniacs.
Righto. I've bought two Microtels boxes over the last year. They're nicely put together in a steel case that gives you easy access to RAM, disk bays, etc. (unlike the plastic Rubik's Cube of an HP they sit next to). Peformance has been better than expected for the price -- with the exception of that danged noisy fan.
Overall, a lot of bang for 300 bucks.
And just how are these necessary for manned space flight, but not unmanned space flight. There is no extra scientific or economic benefit to sending humans along for the ride during space exploration.
A) Inspiration is no reason to spend a trillion dollars, when there are plenty of competing priorities for those resources.
B) Paving the way for more space exploration is a circular argument. If we don't need manned space exploration now, why do we need more in the future?
C) If you can name one incalculably valuable spinoff the manned space program has given us in the last 30 years, I'll give you my next paycheck. People like to trot out this old chestnut, but when asked for specifics, they come up with BS that doesn't survive any level of scrutiny. Spending billions so that humans can watch ant farms in zero gravity is a waste. About the only useful thing the Space Shuttle has done in the entire program was repairing the Hubble. In my book that one benefit does not justify the cost of the program.
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots would be impratical in many U.S. states that use long ballots.
I'm not sure what offices you vote for in Canada, but in many states down here, voters may select candidates for several dozen offices in one election. When I lived in North Carolina, I was asked to vote for legislators, judges, at-large offices, school board members, county clerks and things like soil and water conservation district supervisor.
There are a lot of reasons why long ballots are a bad idea, but flaws in the voting system are the wrong reason to shorten them.
The parent post has got to be a troll. In daily use of PalmOS 3, 4 and 5 for over five years, I have never once had to do a hard reset. Versions 3 and 4 requred a soft reset (reboot) about once a year for me. I probably did a dozen soft resets on OS5 until I identified the applications that had compatibility problems.
PalmOS has a well-earned reputation for rock-solid reliability everywhere except for on Slashdot. Not sure why there are so many Palm haters here.
- Instead of Mozilla, I prefer the leaner Firebird for browsing and Eudora for email. If you take the time to learn how to use the Filters feature, Eudora's pretty good at filtering spam. Especially if you crank up the size of the History of addresses you sent to and store your contacts in the address book. You can then filter messages whose sender "doesn't intersect" your address book or history into a spam folder.
- Instead of WS FTP, I prefer Filezilla, which is truly free (you have to pretend to be a student or a non-profit to use WS FTP for free) and does sftp as well.
- TTSSH is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.
Also:According to the Washington City Paper , the Segway can also run away from "stupid users" who step off of it without powering it off. This led to a dangerous situation in Washington's subway, which has led to a ban on the devices in the Metrorail system:
I'd call that a pretty serious design problem.
Congress now needs to make a law authorizing the FTC to implement a Do-Not-Call registry.
According to the Washington Post , there is activity on the House side to do just that:
I've listed the members of Energy & Commerce below. Members of Congress do care what their constituents think, and if they hear from enough of them, they are less likely to listen to lobbyists for the direct marketing industry. If you are a constituent of one of the members below, please do one of the following (in decreasing order of impact):
If you're not sure who represents you, go here and type in your Zip code where it says "Find Your Representative."
If they don't hear from you, they will think you don't care.
Here are the members of this committee (as listed in The Almanac of American Politics ):
Majority (31 R): Tauzin (LA), Chmn.; Bilirakis (FL), Barton (TX), Upton (MI), Stearns (FL), Gillmor (OH), Greenwood (PA), Cox (CA), Deal (GA), Burr (NC), Vice Chmn.; Whitfield (KY), Norwood (GA), Cubin (WY), Shimkus (IL), Wilson (NM), Shadegg (AZ), Pickering (MS), Fossella (NY), Blunt (MO), Buyer (IN), Radanovich (CA), Bass (NH), Pitts (PA), Bono (CA), Walden (OR), Terry (NE), Fletcher (KY), Ferguson (NJ), Rogers (MI), Issa (CA), Otter (ID).
Minority (26 D): Dingell (MI), RMM; Waxman (CA), Markey (MA), Hall (TX), Boucher (VA), Towns (NY), Pallone (NJ), Brown (OH), Gordon (TN), Deutsch (FL), Rush (IL), Eshoo (CA), Stupak (MI), Engel (NY), Wynn (MD), Green (TX), McCarthy (MO), Strickland (OH), DeGette (CO), Capps (CA), Doyle (PA), John (LA), Allen (ME), Davis (FL), Schakowsky (IL), Solis (CA).
If you live in the Washington, DC, area, there is a very good local survey in Washington Consumers' Checkbook , which is sort of a local Consumer Reports.
Non-subscribers have to pay about $5 for the report, and it's almost a year old now, but I have read it and found it very thoroughly researched and informative.
This bogus story (does any of you "promise to read" anything emailed to you?) reminds me of the following Clinton-era joke.
Q: If Bill Clinton is now president@whitehouse.gov, then where do I send email to Hillary?
A: root@whitehouse.gov.
It would be nice if the gov't dropped the campaign donations in favor of legislation requiring compatible hardware on all networks.
No it wouldn't, comrade.
If we had to wait for government approvals for technological changes, we'd all still be using AMPS.
One of those old Motorola bricks would solve your universal compatibility problems, after all.
Strange choice of words. Wasn't Dr. Mengele a dentist?
... has an excellent back archive of jazz -- over a thousand albums worth downloading. For $120 you can subscribe to eMusic for a year and sample freely to learn what you do and don't like.