The company used remote-controlled robots to lay fiber through sewer lines and actually created sewer-based networks in Albuquerque and Indianapolis before merging with Universal Access in 2003.
And oddly enough, those robots also found Robin Miller's career while they were down there. </localjoke>
This has to be bogus. For one thing, the sewers in a lot of midwestern cities (like, say, Indy) were built before high-rise buildings, so the buildings have these things called "holding tanks" that, well, let's just say those pipes better be able to withstand a sudden, massive increase in external pressure.
Fidel's point is that everything ethanol is bad if land that could be used to produce food is used to produce fuel.
Hm, so would land dedicated to timber also be put to better use if it was put to food?
Pardon my cynicism, but this smacks of him setting up a call for central planning and control, which has worked so well in Cuba and Eastern Europe.
Maybe in Cuba there is a need for more food production. However, in the US, we are doing okay. The only Americans starving are Hollywood actresses and people who prefer to use their assets on drugs. We export a lot of food from here, and Americans could stand to cut back on their consumption, according to people in other countries. In fact, since a lot of the central planning (aka USDA subsidies and programs) have been reduced, America's agricultural production has increased.
But there is more to it than that. A free market allows people to better respond to demands and needs than central planning ever could. I don't know the latest statistics on these facts, but consider this data on the US from the end of World War II to 1990. In those 55 years, the amount of forest acreage in the United States east of the Mississippi River quadrupled. Yes, quadrupled, and it did this in the most densely populated part of the country during a time of rapid population increase and unprecedented urban sprawl. How? Agriculture became MUCH more efficient through technology and improvements in knowledge and technique. (Example: guano, aka bat crap, is now used on cotton fields because of its high mineral content, so cotton can be grown with less crop rotation.) Also, much of the farmland that became forest was the land that made for lower quality farmland: kind swampy, or poor soil, or on a bit of a slope, etc. Market forces responded to changes in demand, price, soil quality, etc. The system worked, particularly when the government didn't tell farmers what to do (either expressly or through subsidies).
In contrast, in Fidel's Cuba, where they boil stones for soup, there has been tremendous environmental damage to meet the bureaucratic goals of production which are based more on political theory and political wrangling than the needs and desires of the Cuban citizens. You know, the world would be a far, far better place today if that wanker had learned to hit a curve ball.
Uh, the high end Video iPods have an 80GB capacity (as of today), whereas the iPhone goes up to 8GB. The iPhone will eventually replace the high-end Video iPod, but not until flash memory gets cheaper and increases to that sort of capacity. That won't happen any time soon (where "soon" is defined to be in technology terms).
AT&T's ability to deliver smooth service will be the largest potential downfall of the device.
s/ability/in\1/;
As I told my wife, "They lost me at Cingular." I know cell companies' performance varies from place to place, but Cingular/AT&T here (Indianapolis) sucks dead donkey d*cks. A more reliable, less frustrating network could be built with carrier pigeons, if not carrier snails. Based on the sound quality, the only cell tower is in pit row at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and can only be used if 33 ladies and gentlement are starting their engines. And that's if the call works. If I go five calls in a row without a drop, we have an impromptu celebration involving roasting a fatted calf and sacrificing an alleged virgin. It's bad enough that, when I've called to complain about all the drops, my calls drop half the time. In fact, I used to work at Ameritech/SBC (now AT&T), and many of my friends there are dropping Cingular for Sprint or TMobile. Yes, their own employees refuse to use it; it's that bad. All I can say is, if I drove by a Toyota factory and saw that all the people working there owned GMC cars, I wouldn't buy a Toyota.
As sweet as the iPhone seems to be in many ways, and as happy as I've been as a Mac/iPod customer lo these many years, the deal with Cingular means I wouldn't touch one with a ten foot barge pole.
We used Drupal to create a new site within two months. My boss and I did All Things Drupal, let the designers work their magic, then integrated the two. It was pretty nice, I have to say. Not perfect, of course, but this old Perl monk had to re-examine his opinion of what PHP could do.
Glad to hear it. (Pulls out deer rifle) Now, hand me your money. Or do you take the Soviet approach that all property belongs to the state, to be doled out like largesse distributed by a nobleman.
Seriously, you sound like that dormroom anarchist at Cornell who was going to call the police because I reached out and snagged his car keys.
Rights exist naturally: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, etc. Rights are not granted by the government; those are privileges. If the government didn't have to grant them, it wouldn't be an issue in the first place.
You gave no good reason for this. Well, you would like to do it, but that doesn't make it right. I would like to punch politicians in the face and hit baseballs through the windows at CNN headquarters, but that doesn't make it right.
Forcing them to license their product is a violation of their property rights, which is a slippery slope. It also creates more government interference and regulation, which is the last thing we need.
Depends on the kid. I have one I would trust unless he gave me a reason to look. The other one, however, requires Argus, a pack of bloodhounds, and the previous three graduating classes of The Citadel to keep within the bounds of acceptable behavior. He's going to be hell on wheels when he gets into kindergarten.
The are a few reasons why XP has so many security holes. One reason is the language used to create it is C/C++ and is very easy to mess up (forgetting to release memory, bad error handling, string handling etc).
Um, isn't Unix and Linux based on C/C++? Don't blame the language; as my dad used to say, any idiot can trump any great tool.
I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I think there is a reason Apple gets a free pass while MS doesn't. I think it comes down to this: there seems to be a fundamental difference between Apple and Microsoft's desktop development. It's not just innovation or who came up with the idea first or what have you.
I've used Windows 3.1-XP in a work environment and every version of the Mac OS from 7.5 to X 10.4 at home. I think the fundamental difference is this: Apple approaches things with the mindset of "this seems cool, how can we make it useful and easy to use?" Microsoft seems to take the approach of "something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done and you have to use it the way we say". Or something close to that, I can never quite nail down the essence of the Microsoft approach.
Still, I think that is the key difference. If you compare OS X 10.1 to 10.4 (since Leopard isn't officially available yet) you will notice a LOT of things that are different. There are a ton of improvements under the hood (Core Audio, Core Image, Core Video, etc etc etc) that show up in the desktop. God, Expose' alone was worth the price of moving from 10.2 to 10.3; how did I live without that before? Just one hit of a never-used function key and I can get to all the windows on the desktop (F9), or all the windows in the foremost application (F10), or anything on the desktop(F11). It's something that seems very simple and "kinda neat", but once you start using it, and then can't use it (by, say, having to use XP at work), you REALLY appreciate it. Granted, that's only one thing, but OS X has a lot of those "only one thing"s, and they add up.
(As an aside, the only complaint I had about Expose' is that it was so great and felt so natural that, when it came out, I started doing it on the Win2K box at work... and those keys were pre-defined for our Oracle forms. And you can hardly blame Apple for that, or Oracle, or the people at my former employers. Still, it did make for a couple odd "What the hell did I just do?" moments on our development database.)
Microsoft, on the other hand, seems to take a more ham-handed approach, or at least gets a more ham-handed result. Everything feels clunky and duct-taped on. Using some new whizzy feature from Microsoft, it often requires two or three steps to do it, often involving moving a hand from one device to another, or in such a way that it stalls my workflow. It feels like you're driving down the interstate, cruising along at, say, 75 MPH, then suddenly you have to downshift for a two mile stretch of construction, and nothing's going on in the construction zone. Normally when this happens while driving, I think "Damn, I wish the DOT for this state would get more organized". The difference, though, is that in a month or three, the construction is probably done, the road is improved (or prevented from getting worse), and soon you even forget it ever existed. But once MS does something in a cumbersome way, it's there until the Cubs win the World Series, so you'd better get used to it, fella.
And that, I think, is the difference. Apple gives us an "'oh, that's kinda cool" that you can ignore if you don't like it. Microsoft puts a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade float in your bedroom. Your trying to get work done, but Bullwinkle's nose is in your ear.
Unlike Microsoft and tobacco companies which are only trying to create a revenue stream for life
Say what you want about the tobacco companies, but you have to admire the business acumen of anyone who can kill off their 20,000 best customers a year and still make a profit.
, but you can't really argue with Gates's way of using his riches
Yes I can. The primary, if not sole, purpose of philanthropy is to whitewash someone's reputation so that people will think "Gosh, what a nice person that wealthy Mr. X is. He surely didn't lie/cheat/steal his way to wealth." This has been true for a century at least (read Twain, Bierce, and Mencken's comments about dealing with this as magazine/newspaper editors), and was probably old then. Notice the example given below:
Jeanie Cummins, a survey respondent and homemaker in Olive Hill, Ky., says Mr. Gates's philanthropy made her a much bigger fan of Microsoft.
Now, if the primary purpose of philanthropy were to solve the problems they claim to solve, would the money that the philanthropic organization spends on trumpeting its own horn to the masses be better spent on solving the problem instead of buying tv and print time by disguising it as a news story?
So, I proffer that this story is late by about a decade.
Sounds about the right timescale for journalists.
Seriously, who didn't see this when the iMac came out? When MP3s became the hot new thing and wouldn't fit on a floppy? When DVD drives became standard about five years ago?
I only watch the NFL (American Football) and the Indy Racing League (an American open-wheel racing series). As I've gotten older, I've become less in the target audience for American TV shows. I've also become busier, so I have less time to find the smaller number of shows I might be interested in. I like the highlights that iTunes provides, but I'd like the whole game/race, not just highlights, and all the races, not just the Indy 500.
Plus I'm a season ticket holder for an NFL team (Colts), so half of the Sundays I'm tailgating and at the game instead of in front of the tv, and I usually attend two IRL races each year, the Indy 500 and whatever else strikes my whim.
Slashdot Mirror
All taxation is a hindrance to the flow of goods and services. Kill the politicians and their tax monkey bureaucrats.
And oddly enough, those robots also found Robin Miller's career while they were down there. </localjoke>
This has to be bogus. For one thing, the sewers in a lot of midwestern cities (like, say, Indy) were built before high-rise buildings, so the buildings have these things called "holding tanks" that, well, let's just say those pipes better be able to withstand a sudden, massive increase in external pressure.
Hm, so would land dedicated to timber also be put to better use if it was put to food?
Pardon my cynicism, but this smacks of him setting up a call for central planning and control, which has worked so well in Cuba and Eastern Europe.
Maybe in Cuba there is a need for more food production. However, in the US, we are doing okay. The only Americans starving are Hollywood actresses and people who prefer to use their assets on drugs. We export a lot of food from here, and Americans could stand to cut back on their consumption, according to people in other countries. In fact, since a lot of the central planning (aka USDA subsidies and programs) have been reduced, America's agricultural production has increased.
But there is more to it than that. A free market allows people to better respond to demands and needs than central planning ever could. I don't know the latest statistics on these facts, but consider this data on the US from the end of World War II to 1990. In those 55 years, the amount of forest acreage in the United States east of the Mississippi River quadrupled. Yes, quadrupled, and it did this in the most densely populated part of the country during a time of rapid population increase and unprecedented urban sprawl. How? Agriculture became MUCH more efficient through technology and improvements in knowledge and technique. (Example: guano, aka bat crap, is now used on cotton fields because of its high mineral content, so cotton can be grown with less crop rotation.) Also, much of the farmland that became forest was the land that made for lower quality farmland: kind swampy, or poor soil, or on a bit of a slope, etc. Market forces responded to changes in demand, price, soil quality, etc. The system worked, particularly when the government didn't tell farmers what to do (either expressly or through subsidies).
In contrast, in Fidel's Cuba, where they boil stones for soup, there has been tremendous environmental damage to meet the bureaucratic goals of production which are based more on political theory and political wrangling than the needs and desires of the Cuban citizens. You know, the world would be a far, far better place today if that wanker had learned to hit a curve ball.
Uh, the high end Video iPods have an 80GB capacity (as of today), whereas the iPhone goes up to 8GB. The iPhone will eventually replace the high-end Video iPod, but not until flash memory gets cheaper and increases to that sort of capacity. That won't happen any time soon (where "soon" is defined to be in technology terms).
Anyone who's nailed an El-Ed major understands it.
Sincerely,
Herb Atological, CEO of Accenture
s/ability/in\1/;
As I told my wife, "They lost me at Cingular." I know cell companies' performance varies from place to place, but Cingular/AT&T here (Indianapolis) sucks dead donkey d*cks. A more reliable, less frustrating network could be built with carrier pigeons, if not carrier snails. Based on the sound quality, the only cell tower is in pit row at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and can only be used if 33 ladies and gentlement are starting their engines. And that's if the call works. If I go five calls in a row without a drop, we have an impromptu celebration involving roasting a fatted calf and sacrificing an alleged virgin. It's bad enough that, when I've called to complain about all the drops, my calls drop half the time. In fact, I used to work at Ameritech/SBC (now AT&T), and many of my friends there are dropping Cingular for Sprint or TMobile. Yes, their own employees refuse to use it; it's that bad. All I can say is, if I drove by a Toyota factory and saw that all the people working there owned GMC cars, I wouldn't buy a Toyota.
As sweet as the iPhone seems to be in many ways, and as happy as I've been as a Mac/iPod customer lo these many years, the deal with Cingular means I wouldn't touch one with a ten foot barge pole .
Bwahahahahahaha!!!! Oh, and me without modpoints for a Funny +1.
Glad to hear it. (Pulls out deer rifle) Now, hand me your money. Or do you take the Soviet approach that all property belongs to the state, to be doled out like largesse distributed by a nobleman.
Seriously, you sound like that dormroom anarchist at Cornell who was going to call the police because I reached out and snagged his car keys.
And remember, kids, don't drink and drive. Use a seven iron.
You gave no good reason for this. Well, you would like to do it, but that doesn't make it right. I would like to punch politicians in the face and hit baseballs through the windows at CNN headquarters, but that doesn't make it right.
Forcing them to license their product is a violation of their property rights, which is a slippery slope. It also creates more government interference and regulation, which is the last thing we need.
Depends on the kid. I have one I would trust unless he gave me a reason to look. The other one, however, requires Argus, a pack of bloodhounds, and the previous three graduating classes of The Citadel to keep within the bounds of acceptable behavior. He's going to be hell on wheels when he gets into kindergarten.
Ah, kids these days with their fax machines and hula hoops and GUIs.
Um, isn't Unix and Linux based on C/C++? Don't blame the language; as my dad used to say, any idiot can trump any great tool.
I've used Windows 3.1-XP in a work environment and every version of the Mac OS from 7.5 to X 10.4 at home. I think the fundamental difference is this: Apple approaches things with the mindset of "this seems cool, how can we make it useful and easy to use?" Microsoft seems to take the approach of "something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done and you have to use it the way we say". Or something close to that, I can never quite nail down the essence of the Microsoft approach.
Still, I think that is the key difference. If you compare OS X 10.1 to 10.4 (since Leopard isn't officially available yet) you will notice a LOT of things that are different. There are a ton of improvements under the hood (Core Audio, Core Image, Core Video, etc etc etc) that show up in the desktop. God, Expose' alone was worth the price of moving from 10.2 to 10.3; how did I live without that before? Just one hit of a never-used function key and I can get to all the windows on the desktop (F9), or all the windows in the foremost application (F10), or anything on the desktop(F11). It's something that seems very simple and "kinda neat", but once you start using it, and then can't use it (by, say, having to use XP at work), you REALLY appreciate it. Granted, that's only one thing, but OS X has a lot of those "only one thing"s, and they add up.
(As an aside, the only complaint I had about Expose' is that it was so great and felt so natural that, when it came out, I started doing it on the Win2K box at work ... and those keys were pre-defined for our Oracle forms. And you can hardly blame Apple for that, or Oracle, or the people at my former employers. Still, it did make for a couple odd "What the hell did I just do?" moments on our development database.)
Microsoft, on the other hand, seems to take a more ham-handed approach, or at least gets a more ham-handed result. Everything feels clunky and duct-taped on. Using some new whizzy feature from Microsoft, it often requires two or three steps to do it, often involving moving a hand from one device to another, or in such a way that it stalls my workflow. It feels like you're driving down the interstate, cruising along at, say, 75 MPH, then suddenly you have to downshift for a two mile stretch of construction, and nothing's going on in the construction zone. Normally when this happens while driving, I think "Damn, I wish the DOT for this state would get more organized". The difference, though, is that in a month or three, the construction is probably done, the road is improved (or prevented from getting worse), and soon you even forget it ever existed. But once MS does something in a cumbersome way, it's there until the Cubs win the World Series, so you'd better get used to it, fella.
And that, I think, is the difference. Apple gives us an "'oh, that's kinda cool" that you can ignore if you don't like it. Microsoft puts a Macy's Thanksgiving Parade float in your bedroom. Your trying to get work done, but Bullwinkle's nose is in your ear.
Say what you want about the tobacco companies, but you have to admire the business acumen of anyone who can kill off their 20,000 best customers a year and still make a profit.
Yes I can. The primary, if not sole, purpose of philanthropy is to whitewash someone's reputation so that people will think "Gosh, what a nice person that wealthy Mr. X is. He surely didn't lie/cheat/steal his way to wealth." This has been true for a century at least (read Twain, Bierce, and Mencken's comments about dealing with this as magazine/newspaper editors), and was probably old then. Notice the example given below:
Jeanie Cummins, a survey respondent and homemaker in Olive Hill, Ky., says Mr. Gates's philanthropy made her a much bigger fan of Microsoft.
Now, if the primary purpose of philanthropy were to solve the problems they claim to solve, would the money that the philanthropic organization spends on trumpeting its own horn to the masses be better spent on solving the problem instead of buying tv and print time by disguising it as a news story?
Sounds about the right timescale for journalists.
Seriously, who didn't see this when the iMac came out? When MP3s became the hot new thing and wouldn't fit on a floppy? When DVD drives became standard about five years ago?
Oh, right, PC journalists.
Plus I'm a season ticket holder for an NFL team (Colts), so half of the Sundays I'm tailgating and at the game instead of in front of the tv, and I usually attend two IRL races each year, the Indy 500 and whatever else strikes my whim.
And speaking for all Americans with a modicum of taste, I apologize as well.