There is a flaw in VOIP (lame 911 support). They're working on fixing it.
In the meantime, for the saftey of its users, the FCC requires the customer to *acknowledge* they understand the limitations.
I have Vonage and received an e-mail (or it appears when you log in) and you click a checkbox and you're done.
What's so hard about this?
If it requires Vonage to shut your phone service off to get your attention and all you have to do is click a checkbox to turn it back on, I don't see the harm.
Extending the deadline is silly. If they would just shut the service off, you'd have people responding a lot faster than hoping they respond to something they've clearly not already responded to.
You have a point but both posts only refer to part of the problem. The other part, which is probably equally as confusing on both platforms, is:
1. How does the average user even know that they *should* upgrade their video driver?
2. How does the average user know where to even *go* to download the latest driver?
3. How does the average user know which file to download once they've found the location of the latest driver?
etc...
Yes, finally, there is the issue of installation and rebooting but once you've got the file, that seems like the easy part, even if it is two command line entries.
This really isn't a direct-sale market...[snip]... So I don't think there's really a need to become well known outside the computing industry.
Then how come nearly every consumer PC buyer knows what a "Pentium Processor" is?
I think the point is that yes, while they sell to the people that make the things you buy (sorry, BASF), if the consumer were aware of the advantages of the underlying technology and demanded products that used it, then marketing to them might go a long way.
Start with Windows, add the.Net Framework or the SDK, download and install Sharp Develop and you've got everything you need to develop console apps, WinForms apps, Libraries, etc... For free.
SharpDevelop is basically "Visual Studio.Net Lite" and it costs nothing.
I think a key step is being overlooked here. Before a rescue mission is considered and planned, you have to have something to rescue. Remember, nobody at the time knew for a fact that there was a problem.
From what I understood, even if the foam issue had been investigated, no damage would have been seen. Missing tiles could not have been seen by a telescope or any other long-range imaging mechanism.
The *only* way they could have determined there was a problem was with a space walk and that wasn't possible because they didn't have the equipment.
We're now talking about sending an entire shuttle up just to *check* to see if some foam hit the wing, not to rescue a shuttle with a known problem.
Is there really any doubt that yes, *something* could have been done if the outcome we now are aware of was known? Of course NASA would have tried to prevent it. But the fact remains that there was no known problem. We shouldn't be worried about whether a rescue mission could have been created, we should be worried about how could the actual damage have been more accurately assessed!
Hrm... I think that yes, in fact, you do get 9000000 challenges from everybody on the list. The sender's e-mail address is not whitelisted at the Earthlink mail server, it is whitelisted at each e-mail account.
Otherwise, a spammer just sends one message from an address, responds to the challenge, and then spams away.
Remember, though, that the $1 million was generated from less than 5% of the computer-using population in the U.S. (i.e. the set of Macintosh users UNION the set users that are willing to buy music online).
A version 2 of iTunes that addresses some of the minor complaints coupled with a version for Windows has the potential to expand that percentage to 10%? 20%? 40%?
At 40% that's $8 million in a week. That's $416 million in a year.
Again, not billions of dollars but it is important to note that this really is a "testing grounds" (according to a recording industry exec). It's safe because the population capable of taking advantage of it is low. If it proves profitable, they expand.
Re:Are you even on the IRS's Radar? Is it a hobby?
on
Tax Tips For Small Folks?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Unless I'm missing some huge loophole, it's not a hobby if he told the IRS (and countless other local and state agencies) that he wanted to create a C-Corp, regardless of revenue, which is what should have happened when he created the corporation (all kinds of paper work needs to be filed like articles of incorporation, etc...).
There are all kinds of fees, dues and taxes that get paid out to multiple groups (IRS, state department of labor, city government, etc....) at various times during the year just by having a corporation, regardless of revenue. Having employees, etc... obviously complicates this, and often the officers of the company are also employees and there are legal guidelines for this as well.
It's actually a pretty good reason not to start a corporation when another business entity would have been far more appropriate. The IRS is not the only agency one has to deal with and there are very specific rules, guidelines and laws surrounding the operation of a corporation.
Unfortunately, having a corporation that makes no money is not free.
My advice (and I, too, am the President of a very small C-Corp not quite yet generating a great deal of revenue) would have to be to get an accountant. There isn't just one form to put zeros on. There are a lot. And all kinds of other things. And penalties for messing it up.
Skip the lawyers if you have to, but don't skip the accountant.
Wouldn't running the tests twice be a better way to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen?
With ECC RAM, you're just eliminating that *known* unlikely event. What about other *unknown* unlikely events? Those may have just as high a liklihood as a flipped memory bit.
Running the tests twice should eliminate the vast majority of these kinds of known and unknown rare glitches, no?
I remember when people, instead of bothering the rest of us with their moaning, just used their preferences to turn off the sections they didn't want to read about.
Hrm... I don't know much about motorcycle accidents but the ones I've seen on TV (reality shows, etc...) seem to indicate pretty clearly that in accidents where this device might go off, the rider is in *no way* in control of the path he or she takes off the bike. Appendage control and tuck and roll are not something one can control in the mere seconds (or less!) it takes for somebody to be ejected from a bike and slam into any number of things.
The assumption that this device is a publicity stunt or ineffective based on 3 pictures on some site in another country seems awfully uninformed.
Yes, a majority of the time is spent in debugging and support. An inappropriate amount of time. And, arguably, one of the reasons modern software is so buggy!
The more design and the more engineering that goes into the process *before* coding is what reduces the time spent in debugging and support. That's the whole idea of software engineering, and I believe that was the original posters intended point.
For most purposes, yes, no contest. Until the first camera that uses an 11 megapixel foveon chip.
You'll be getting far better sharpness and color representation at that point. Only then will it simply be a megapixel race. We may have high megapixels nowadays but that isn't the whole battle. The interpolation algorithms are still sitting between reality and digital storage.
Foveon is solving that cheaply. Their sample images are amazing:
What one needs to be careful about is using a single (or even several) anecdotal experience(s) to judge the quality of anything, including a company's customer service or related aspects of the business.
Replace "Dell" in your story with "Sony" and you've got the next guy's experience. Do it again with "Gateway" and so on.
In addition, for each story you have like this, there is a story about how a phone call to Dell resulted in a replacement hard drive showing up a mere 2 hours later, no hassle, no problem.
The issue is, after surveying users and aggregating the statistics, etc... where do the companies rank? Dell doesn't rank bad because of one person's experience and Apple doesn't rank well because of one person's experience.
Your experience was unfortunate and I know you are not doing this, but I wouldn't jump from your situation to "everyone who buys a computer from Dell will experience a similar hassle."
Another idea based on the IR beam sensor would be to do this entire procedure with a Palm Pilot (or [insert your favorite PDA here].
Write a simple application that sends out IR pulses on a semi-frequent basis. The program is placed in an aparatus that contains the wife's hand.
Her finger is just outside the path between the palm pilot and a small mirror. The palm pilot sends out a signal and senses it come back: it stays quiet. The wife blocks the path with her finger: it sounds an alarm.
By day it's a regular Palm Pilot - By night it's a life saving device.
Microsoft has a Not Invented Here syndrome? Are you crazy? They buy 90% of their technology (FrontPage, Windows Media, Visio, etc...). They don't have a Not Invented Here syndrome, they have a "We want to do it our own way" syndrome but that doesn't preclude them from purchasing technology.
That's exactly what Citrix was and still is. The change is that because Terminal Services is part of Windows 2000 now, the need for Citrix was lost - they add several things on "top" of base Terminal Services, however:
1. The ability to just share individual applications instead of the entier user session.
2. Clients for alternative platforms (Linux, Unix, Macintosh, etc...)
Both Terminal Services and Ctrix's software fairly mature and well-performing. They've come a long way from the NT 3.51 days.
I think the notion people are missing is the fundamental difference between VNC and Terminal Services.
Terminal Services is not "computer sharing" - it is allowing multiple users to use the *same* computer independent of each other. There is an instance of Word running for each user running it. There is an instanece of Windows running for every user... etc...
VNC is just "screen viewer" equivalent to nothing other than "looking over the other user's shoulder." There is only one instance of Word running. There is only one version of Windows. Only one user can really be "doing" anything at the same instant, etc...
Can Terminal Services be used as screen viewing? Yes, but that's not the question at hand.
It looks like the license is talking about writing one's own true "serving-RDP" server for Windows and the ability it provides the user "run executable software".
Screen viewing software is not included but it is confusing because "NetMeeting" was included in the list, despite its inclusion being erroneous.
I hate to use the same old argument but do you go to the grocery store and only actually pay for what you think is reasonable and just kindly ask the cashier to let you walk out with the rest?
A silly game is one thing, but software people use for profit is another ballgame.
Perhaps the reason for the code-rewrite is because everyone is being fired.
There's your business value. The current group is not cutting it, but their code is crap. They need to go, but the code is useless without them. An idea: get them to clean it up and then fire them and bring in a new team that now has nice, new, clean code.
Exactly - "parsing" HTML is not rocket science. "Rendering" it certainly is. Otherwise, why has 0.9.6 taken so very long just to get to this point? Is the assumption to be made that the Mozilla team is a bunch of wahoo's? I don't think they are.
Dream come true because it is all services in one (and on one bill) and ideally the price goes down for bundled services. I used to live in MD where RCN/Erols provides all three services plus cable - local phone service, long distance, cable and high speed Internet.
If you get all the services, the cost of each one is discounted. Local phone service becomes about 5% cheaper than Verizon, Long Distance is 7 cents a minute all the time, Basic Cable is less than $30 and cable Internet is around $40/month. The cable service is 1-2MBps (burst higher) and about 500-800kbps up.
All the services come in on the cable line. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a flaw in VOIP (lame 911 support). They're working on fixing it.
In the meantime, for the saftey of its users, the FCC requires the customer to *acknowledge* they understand the limitations.
I have Vonage and received an e-mail (or it appears when you log in) and you click a checkbox and you're done.
What's so hard about this?
If it requires Vonage to shut your phone service off to get your attention and all you have to do is click a checkbox to turn it back on, I don't see the harm.
Extending the deadline is silly. If they would just shut the service off, you'd have people responding a lot faster than hoping they respond to something they've clearly not already responded to.
You have a point but both posts only refer to part of the problem. The other part, which is probably equally as confusing on both platforms, is:
1. How does the average user even know that they *should* upgrade their video driver?
2. How does the average user know where to even *go* to download the latest driver?
3. How does the average user know which file to download once they've found the location of the latest driver?
etc...
Yes, finally, there is the issue of installation and rebooting but once you've got the file, that seems like the easy part, even if it is two command line entries.
I expected them to have more than 512K of memory by now! Sheesh!
This really isn't a direct-sale market ...[snip]... So I don't think there's really a need to become well known outside the computing industry.
Then how come nearly every consumer PC buyer knows what a "Pentium Processor" is?
I think the point is that yes, while they sell to the people that make the things you buy (sorry, BASF), if the consumer were aware of the advantages of the underlying technology and demanded products that used it, then marketing to them might go a long way.
they certainly weren't a government granted monopoly like AT&T once was.
No, but they're a government granted monopoly now!
Start with Windows, add the .Net Framework or the SDK, download and install Sharp Develop and you've got everything you need to develop console apps, WinForms apps, Libraries, etc... For free.
.Net Lite" and it costs nothing.
.Net but they're free and really quite functional.
SharpDevelop is basically "Visual Studio
For ASP.Net applications, grab the WebMatrix tool from ASP.Net.
Neither one is perfect or can fully replace Visual Studio
I think a key step is being overlooked here. Before a rescue mission is considered and planned, you have to have something to rescue. Remember, nobody at the time knew for a fact that there was a problem.
From what I understood, even if the foam issue had been investigated, no damage would have been seen. Missing tiles could not have been seen by a telescope or any other long-range imaging mechanism.
The *only* way they could have determined there was a problem was with a space walk and that wasn't possible because they didn't have the equipment.
We're now talking about sending an entire shuttle up just to *check* to see if some foam hit the wing, not to rescue a shuttle with a known problem.
Is there really any doubt that yes, *something* could have been done if the outcome we now are aware of was known? Of course NASA would have tried to prevent it. But the fact remains that there was no known problem. We shouldn't be worried about whether a rescue mission could have been created, we should be worried about how could the actual damage have been more accurately assessed!
Hrm... I think that yes, in fact, you do get 9000000 challenges from everybody on the list. The sender's e-mail address is not whitelisted at the Earthlink mail server, it is whitelisted at each e-mail account.
Otherwise, a spammer just sends one message from an address, responds to the challenge, and then spams away.
Or am I misunderstanding it?
Remember, though, that the $1 million was generated from less than 5% of the computer-using population in the U.S. (i.e. the set of Macintosh users UNION the set users that are willing to buy music online).
A version 2 of iTunes that addresses some of the minor complaints coupled with a version for Windows has the potential to expand that percentage to 10%? 20%? 40%?
At 40% that's $8 million in a week. That's $416 million in a year.
Again, not billions of dollars but it is important to note that this really is a "testing grounds" (according to a recording industry exec). It's safe because the population capable of taking advantage of it is low. If it proves profitable, they expand.
Unless I'm missing some huge loophole, it's not a hobby if he told the IRS (and countless other local and state agencies) that he wanted to create a C-Corp, regardless of revenue, which is what should have happened when he created the corporation (all kinds of paper work needs to be filed like articles of incorporation, etc...).
There are all kinds of fees, dues and taxes that get paid out to multiple groups (IRS, state department of labor, city government, etc....) at various times during the year just by having a corporation, regardless of revenue. Having employees, etc... obviously complicates this, and often the officers of the company are also employees and there are legal guidelines for this as well.
It's actually a pretty good reason not to start a corporation when another business entity would have been far more appropriate. The IRS is not the only agency one has to deal with and there are very specific rules, guidelines and laws surrounding the operation of a corporation.
Unfortunately, having a corporation that makes no money is not free.
My advice (and I, too, am the President of a very small C-Corp not quite yet generating a great deal of revenue) would have to be to get an accountant. There isn't just one form to put zeros on. There are a lot. And all kinds of other things. And penalties for messing it up.
Skip the lawyers if you have to, but don't skip the accountant.
Wouldn't running the tests twice be a better way to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen?
With ECC RAM, you're just eliminating that *known* unlikely event. What about other *unknown* unlikely events? Those may have just as high a liklihood as a flipped memory bit.
Running the tests twice should eliminate the vast majority of these kinds of known and unknown rare glitches, no?
I remember when people, instead of bothering the rest of us with their moaning, just used their preferences to turn off the sections they didn't want to read about.
Hrm... I don't know much about motorcycle accidents but the ones I've seen on TV (reality shows, etc...) seem to indicate pretty clearly that in accidents where this device might go off, the rider is in *no way* in control of the path he or she takes off the bike. Appendage control and tuck and roll are not something one can control in the mere seconds (or less!) it takes for somebody to be ejected from a bike and slam into any number of things.
The assumption that this device is a publicity stunt or ineffective based on 3 pictures on some site in another country seems awfully uninformed.
Yes, a majority of the time is spent in debugging and support. An inappropriate amount of time. And, arguably, one of the reasons modern software is so buggy!
The more design and the more engineering that goes into the process *before* coding is what reduces the time spent in debugging and support. That's the whole idea of software engineering, and I believe that was the original posters intended point.
For most purposes, yes, no contest. Until the first camera that uses an 11 megapixel foveon chip.
You'll be getting far better sharpness and color representation at that point. Only then will it simply be a megapixel race. We may have high megapixels nowadays but that isn't the whole battle. The interpolation algorithms are still sitting between reality and digital storage.
Foveon is solving that cheaply. Their sample images are amazing:
What one needs to be careful about is using a single (or even several) anecdotal experience(s) to judge the quality of anything, including a company's customer service or related aspects of the business.
Replace "Dell" in your story with "Sony" and you've got the next guy's experience. Do it again with "Gateway" and so on.
In addition, for each story you have like this, there is a story about how a phone call to Dell resulted in a replacement hard drive showing up a mere 2 hours later, no hassle, no problem.
The issue is, after surveying users and aggregating the statistics, etc... where do the companies rank? Dell doesn't rank bad because of one person's experience and Apple doesn't rank well because of one person's experience.
Your experience was unfortunate and I know you are not doing this, but I wouldn't jump from your situation to "everyone who buys a computer from Dell will experience a similar hassle."
Another idea based on the IR beam sensor would be to do this entire procedure with a Palm Pilot (or [insert your favorite PDA here].
Write a simple application that sends out IR pulses on a semi-frequent basis. The program is placed in an aparatus that contains the wife's hand.
Her finger is just outside the path between the palm pilot and a small mirror. The palm pilot sends out a signal and senses it come back: it stays quiet. The wife blocks the path with her finger: it sounds an alarm.
By day it's a regular Palm Pilot - By night it's a life saving device.
Microsoft has a Not Invented Here syndrome? Are you crazy? They buy 90% of their technology (FrontPage, Windows Media, Visio, etc...). They don't have a Not Invented Here syndrome, they have a "We want to do it our own way" syndrome but that doesn't preclude them from purchasing technology.
That's exactly what Citrix was and still is. The change is that because Terminal Services is part of Windows 2000 now, the need for Citrix was lost - they add several things on "top" of base Terminal Services, however:
1. The ability to just share individual applications instead of the entier user session.
2. Clients for alternative platforms (Linux, Unix, Macintosh, etc...)
Both Terminal Services and Ctrix's software fairly mature and well-performing. They've come a long way from the NT 3.51 days.
Coming back on topic: VNC is nothing like this.
I think the notion people are missing is the fundamental difference between VNC and Terminal Services.
Terminal Services is not "computer sharing" - it is allowing multiple users to use the *same* computer independent of each other. There is an instance of Word running for each user running it. There is an instanece of Windows running for every user... etc...
VNC is just "screen viewer" equivalent to nothing other than "looking over the other user's shoulder." There is only one instance of Word running. There is only one version of Windows. Only one user can really be "doing" anything at the same instant, etc...
Can Terminal Services be used as screen viewing? Yes, but that's not the question at hand.
It looks like the license is talking about writing one's own true "serving-RDP" server for Windows and the ability it provides the user "run executable software".
Screen viewing software is not included but it is confusing because "NetMeeting" was included in the list, despite its inclusion being erroneous.
I hate to use the same old argument but do you go to the grocery store and only actually pay for what you think is reasonable and just kindly ask the cashier to let you walk out with the rest?
A silly game is one thing, but software people use for profit is another ballgame.
Perhaps the reason for the code-rewrite is because everyone is being fired.
There's your business value. The current group is not cutting it, but their code is crap. They need to go, but the code is useless without them. An idea: get them to clean it up and then fire them and bring in a new team that now has nice, new, clean code.
Conspiracy theory, perhaps. Possibility, definitely.
Exactly - "parsing" HTML is not rocket science. "Rendering" it certainly is. Otherwise, why has 0.9.6 taken so very long just to get to this point? Is the assumption to be made that the Mozilla team is a bunch of wahoo's? I don't think they are.
Dream come true because it is all services in one (and on one bill) and ideally the price goes down for bundled services. I used to live in MD where RCN/Erols provides all three services plus cable - local phone service, long distance, cable and high speed Internet.
If you get all the services, the cost of each one is discounted. Local phone service becomes about 5% cheaper than Verizon, Long Distance is 7 cents a minute all the time, Basic Cable is less than $30 and cable Internet is around $40/month. The cable service is 1-2MBps (burst higher) and about 500-800kbps up.
All the services come in on the cable line. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.