One way to get out of this 'funny' circle is to find a bank employee that doesn't take the rules too seriously. Or you find one that follows the law. I know it does not work that way, but under European legislation you can open a bank account in any European country. A utility bill is *not* required. Sometimes I feel like suing just to show them what they should do.
But the best thing about the utility bill is that phone companies are ok. So if you get a paper bill for your VoIP account, that usually does the trick. A classic case of security by obscurity. Or fraudsters being to stupid to get a VoIP account?
I am not advocating doing that, just pointing out that I recently took over our neighbours account because British Gas f***ed up and didn't get the address right... If there is a computer involved, it will go wrong:-(
> Well, at this point, you don't have to give out your SS number, or have it scanned for travelling by airplane. Or soon...to be scanned when buying booze, or entering a bar...or maybe after that, for any CC transaction to validate identity.
Since you say social security number, I assume that you are an American citizen. You do know what the USA do with every foreigner entering the country, I assume? Taking 10 (!) fingerprints! Plus a scan of your passport, storing your credit card number, plus any other information in a related computer system. This gives the "land of freedom" quite a new interpretation.
An ID card would not make a big difference, because there are already so many databases: the election register, credit ratings, banks, phone companies (including the connection logs), tax files, national insurance, health care... and just about any government institution has access to these. That is the real issue, while the ID discussion is only a smoke screen. I mean, private companies can find out how you use your bank account, even if you are in credit. Why do they need that information?
As to the ID card, I have to say that this move is long overdue, for several reasons. Firstly, it should get rid of using utility bills to prove your identity, which does not prevent identity fraud in any way. The same applies for more than dubious "citizen cards" (issued by private companies) to prove your age.
Secondly, the UK already has a database of all foreigners, and of everybody getting into or out of the country. Including British citizens is only fair.
> because neither popular argument (ID/evolution) is proven (although evolution makes FAR more sense, dont you think?)
Where did you get that idea from? Evolution has been proven time after time, from Darwin's finches over selective breeding, resistant strains of diseases all the way to artificial intelligence programs. Evolution is no fact, but it is a good explanations for fact we can see all around us.
Whereas intelligent design does not explain anything, very much like the Homunculus argument.
> To the yuppies and the technically competent this is probably a relatively small inconvenience. But I wonder about the poor and older generation, who are essentially having a perfectly acceptable analog service taken away from them.
Indeed, the good is the enemy of the better. With analog TV, you may have color, but you are limited to one or two handful of channels. With DVB-T you get several times as many programs - I am sure that everybody will appreciate that.
Keeping the analog stations running would just be a waste of money, energy and perfectly good bandwidth.
> Office is 10x worse. The "ribbon" interface is horrible. It went from usable and known to clunky and confusing. I hate it. It would be a good package otherwise.
I actually like the ribbon interface. And if they had used it to replace the short cut bar, not the menu bar, everything would be fine.
Interviewer: So as a 9am creationist, you believe that the world was created this morning, just after breakfast? me: Basically yes, expect that I believe the world will be created tomorrow morning, 9am.
I think you have to separate your question into server and client. Because if you look at what the Exchange server does, it is virtually nothing. All the scheduling functionality is in the client (Outlook), and to be honest, apart from that it is a pretty bad calendar program.
Evolution is pretty similar to Outlook, but I don't like either. The KDE approach of having several applications for different purposes seems nice, but I couldn't really get it all to work. Plus there is no Windows version, which is often a no-go.
I for myself prefer Google Calendar. Obviously it does a lot more on the server, but in the end you get nearly the same functions. You can send invitation, and you can respond to them either by email (it talks to Outlook) or with a web interface, which also shows you a discussion page for each appointment. The two advantages over Outlook is that it works with any email client, and that you can seamlessly integrate several calendars. Scheduling is possible, but only via shared calendars, so it only works for a small group of people working together.
If all you are missing is a scheduling function, it should be possible to integrate it.
> "Like you don't open a double-A battery, you just plug [the reactor] in and it does its chemical thing inside of it. You don't ever open it or mess with it."
> Uh huh... Nuclear reactions are not chemical in nature... spokesperson without a clue.
Exactly. The main difference is of course that if you do open an AA battery by mistake, nothing bad happens. The more recent designs aren't even chemically toxic, so there is really nothing to worry about. Whereas when you open the "nuclear battery", you are immediately greeted by a toxic dose of plutonium, heat that would kill anything, a high amount of radiation and other dangerous things. It is all very nice to put a marketing spin on it, but it will still kill you.
> Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music?
I thought this should be obvious: people like music, so they buy music. But they don't like CDs, so they don't by them. Most people I know have a CD player somewhere, but it is collecting a layer of dust. They listen to music on the iPod, the mobile phone and the computer.
The problem with stores is that they are not very good in selling virtual goods. I think that web stores do a much better job for this.
> So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose?
The record industry already went the way of the Dodo, and the CD industry will follow soon. As usual, content survives, media don't.
As to the rest of your post: time to chill out, dude!
Sometimes a full set of tests may take longer, but I think 2 working days is a reasonable time frame for an emergency fix. Now 48 hours obviously require some kind of 24h support, and especially if the issue is more complicated, it may not be able to fix it without consulting colleagues etc.
And the full fix should be available within a week or two. If you need more than a months, than your procedures are too complicated, and/or the parts of the software are not properly separated.
Now I have not been *everywhere*, but I have been to enough places to say that this sounds entirely plausible. And in fact I think it is inevitable if you consider education as a commercial commodity.
Think about it: the lecturer is grading the student, the student is paying the university (for good grades), the university is paying the lecturer (for making the students happy). It is a perfectly circular situation, and it strongly encourages grade inflation, easier courses and more students (some of them of doubtful qualification). And I think we begin to see the "fruit" of a wide spread neo-liberal approach to education.
The only solution is to introduce independent evaluations, but in academia that is very difficult. An the SAT scores are not exactly a prime example of such an evaluation working well.
> I think it is only fair to allow GP to respond to their critics rather than accuse them of deliberate misinformation based on the response from the affected industry's lobby group.
Fair maybe, but you are being very optimistic. GP has been caught so many times basically inventing an analysis that suits there goals, that their credibility is pretty low to start with. You might even get the feeling that they get it wrong on purpose...
> Vista's XAML and core WPF technologies are a graphic designer/developers wet dream in terms of abilities, performance and moving from basic UI constructs.
I agree that WPF is the most interesting feature in Vista, and indeed a great step forward. Unfortuantely, it will remain a dream for a long time until Microsoft provides some form of compatibility to XP. Windows is all about compatibility, and even the greatest API is useless if it shuts out 90% of your customer base.
Microsoft should release a basic WPF interface for XP, and keep the advanced features for Vista. That would persuade software companies to target WPF, and then customers had a reason to upgrade to Vista.
> What's really changed with Vista is that people are not willing to be shepherded along from release to release by Microsoft.
I also has to do with the fact that Windows users usually settle for "good enough". And XP is good enough, certainly with SP2, so there is no reason to jump through hoops just to get shiny Vista. At the release of XP, the situation was completely different: the current consumer Windows was ME (pile of crap), and the professional release was 2000, which was very compatible to XP in many ways. And BTW, remember how long NT4 was still around, even after 2000 and XP were released?
So the problem is that Vista is (in many ways) incompatible to XP, but XP is good enough. Exactly the same trap that Linux was in for so long...
> Where are all the linux developers making nice stable non 'flair' programs?
"apt-cache search ipod" returns a nice list of programs, some of which are marked as command line:
python-gpod - a library to read and write songs and artwork to an iPod gnupod-tools - command-line tools for the iPod family of portable music players libipod-cil - CLI library for accessing iPods
Where are all the linux users that do a basic search of the documentation before whining on slashdot?
> You pay the early termination fee if you terminate early.
> It's that simple, bitches.
What a concise and convincing argument. Luckily it is not that simple. I think there are three main problems:
1. A contract is the agreed result of a negotiation. Ever tried to negotiate with T-mobile for a lower termination fee? The thought alone is quite funny. So this fee is actually part of the terms of sale or terms of service, not of the contract.
2. No contract in the world can prevent you from exercising your legal options. If the law says you can go to court, then you can go to court. A contract saying otherwise is just wrong.
3. Say you are a month short of you contract duration, and for some reason you want to terminate it early. Is it then reasonable to pay 200 bucks? No, obviously not, but that is what the conditions say. Together with point 1, this is a legal problem, because T-mobile has (ab)used their superior "negotiation" position to push obviously flawed conditions.
> Actually, a research satellite in orbit around Jupiter would be useful for studying atmospheric processes there
Ok, but who is going to listing to the Jupiter weather forecast? I would much rather have a reliable prediction for the weather right here during the week to come.
> Yes, I know this is slashdot, but you could try reading the article. There's a whole section called "But Windows only constitutes a mere 10% of the price of a PC, right?" which might interest you.
Unfortunately it is just perpetuating lies. Just because some guy got back 50% of the price in a French court, it does not follow that Acer payed 50% for it. In fact I am pretty certain that they assumed retain prices, because Acer would not disclose the real cost. And these 50% included MS Office!
So the whole article is apples and oranges (if believe in the benefit of the doubt) or pure lies (otherwise).
> but it's been developed for more than 18 months now and is fairly usable.
I don't know. When I tried it, it just seemed full of annoying bugs. You may be able to get it usable, but I did not have the patience for it.
And what other options are there? I did not find any calendar program that integrates in a reasonable way with thunderbird. I need something that works on Linux and on Windows, so the whole KDE set of programs does not work.
Slashdot Mirror
But the best thing about the utility bill is that phone companies are ok. So if you get a paper bill for your VoIP account, that usually does the trick. A classic case of security by obscurity. Or fraudsters being to stupid to get a VoIP account? I am not advocating doing that, just pointing out that I recently took over our neighbours account because British Gas f***ed up and didn't get the address right... If there is a computer involved, it will go wrong
> Well, at this point, you don't have to give out your SS number, or have it scanned for travelling by airplane. Or soon...to be scanned when buying booze, or entering a bar...or maybe after that, for any CC transaction to validate identity.
Since you say social security number, I assume that you are an American citizen. You do know what the USA do with every foreigner entering the country, I assume? Taking 10 (!) fingerprints! Plus a scan of your passport, storing your credit card number, plus any other information in a related computer system. This gives the "land of freedom" quite a new interpretation.
An ID card would not make a big difference, because there are already so many databases: the election register, credit ratings, banks, phone companies (including the connection logs), tax files, national insurance, health care... and just about any government institution has access to these. That is the real issue, while the ID discussion is only a smoke screen. I mean, private companies can find out how you use your bank account, even if you are in credit. Why do they need that information?
As to the ID card, I have to say that this move is long overdue, for several reasons. Firstly, it should get rid of using utility bills to prove your identity, which does not prevent identity fraud in any way. The same applies for more than dubious "citizen cards" (issued by private companies) to prove your age.
Secondly, the UK already has a database of all foreigners, and of everybody getting into or out of the country. Including British citizens is only fair.
> because neither popular argument (ID/evolution) is proven (although evolution makes FAR more sense, dont you think?)
Where did you get that idea from? Evolution has been proven time after time, from Darwin's finches over selective breeding, resistant strains of diseases all the way to artificial intelligence programs. Evolution is no fact, but it is a good explanations for fact we can see all around us.
Whereas intelligent design does not explain anything, very much like the Homunculus argument.
> YYYY-DD-MM. Not to be confused with the ISO format of YYYY-MM-DD. Please do not get confused.
..., or rather like this ... ?
Master, please tell us: how shall we not get confused? Shall we not get confused like this
> To the yuppies and the technically competent this is probably a relatively small inconvenience. But I wonder about the poor and older generation, who are essentially having a perfectly acceptable analog service taken away from them.
Indeed, the good is the enemy of the better. With analog TV, you may have color, but you are limited to one or two handful of channels. With DVB-T you get several times as many programs - I am sure that everybody will appreciate that.
Keeping the analog stations running would just be a waste of money, energy and perfectly good bandwidth.
> Since 4GB is Vista's supposed "sweet spot"
As the article says, 4 GB is the maximum that Vista supports. Calling that the sweet spot is like saying that it needs more memory than it supports.
> Office is 10x worse. The "ribbon" interface is horrible. It went from usable and known to clunky and confusing. I hate it. It would be a good package otherwise.
I actually like the ribbon interface. And if they had used it to replace the short cut bar, not the menu bar, everything would be fine.
> I hate to break it to this reporter, but on the ISS, a pound is a large number of kilograms,
:-)
I hate to break the news to you, but on the ISS, even a kilogram is not a kilogram heavy
Interviewer: So as a 9am creationist, you believe that the world was created this morning, just after breakfast?
me: Basically yes, expect that I believe the world will be created tomorrow morning, 9am.
I think you have to separate your question into server and client. Because if you look at what the Exchange server does, it is virtually nothing. All the scheduling functionality is in the client (Outlook), and to be honest, apart from that it is a pretty bad calendar program.
Evolution is pretty similar to Outlook, but I don't like either. The KDE approach of having several applications for different purposes seems nice, but I couldn't really get it all to work. Plus there is no Windows version, which is often a no-go.
I for myself prefer Google Calendar. Obviously it does a lot more on the server, but in the end you get nearly the same functions. You can send invitation, and you can respond to them either by email (it talks to Outlook) or with a web interface, which also shows you a discussion page for each appointment. The two advantages over Outlook is that it works with any email client, and that you can seamlessly integrate several calendars. Scheduling is possible, but only via shared calendars, so it only works for a small group of people working together.
If all you are missing is a scheduling function, it should be possible to integrate it.
> "Like you don't open a double-A battery, you just plug [the reactor] in and it does its chemical thing inside of it. You don't ever open it or mess with it."
> Uh huh... Nuclear reactions are not chemical in nature... spokesperson without a clue.
Exactly. The main difference is of course that if you do open an AA battery by mistake, nothing bad happens. The more recent designs aren't even chemically toxic, so there is really nothing to worry about. Whereas when you open the "nuclear battery", you are immediately greeted by a toxic dose of plutonium, heat that would kill anything, a high amount of radiation and other dangerous things. It is all very nice to put a marketing spin on it, but it will still kill you.
> Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music?
I thought this should be obvious: people like music, so they buy music. But they don't like CDs, so they don't by them. Most people I know have a CD player somewhere, but it is collecting a layer of dust. They listen to music on the iPod, the mobile phone and the computer.
The problem with stores is that they are not very good in selling virtual goods. I think that web stores do a much better job for this.
> So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose?
The record industry already went the way of the Dodo, and the CD industry will follow soon. As usual, content survives, media don't.
As to the rest of your post: time to chill out, dude!
Sometimes a full set of tests may take longer, but I think 2 working days is a reasonable time frame for an emergency fix. Now 48 hours obviously require some kind of 24h support, and especially if the issue is more complicated, it may not be able to fix it without consulting colleagues etc.
And the full fix should be available within a week or two. If you need more than a months, than your procedures are too complicated, and/or the parts of the software are not properly separated.
> 1. Students ARE getting dumber everywhere.
Now I have not been *everywhere*, but I have been to enough places to say that this sounds entirely plausible. And in fact I think it is inevitable if you consider education as a commercial commodity.
Think about it: the lecturer is grading the student, the student is paying the university (for good grades), the university is paying the lecturer (for making the students happy). It is a perfectly circular situation, and it strongly encourages grade inflation, easier courses and more students (some of them of doubtful qualification). And I think we begin to see the "fruit" of a wide spread neo-liberal approach to education.
The only solution is to introduce independent evaluations, but in academia that is very difficult. An the SAT scores are not exactly a prime example of such an evaluation working well.
> I think it is only fair to allow GP to respond to their critics rather than accuse them of deliberate misinformation based on the response from the affected industry's lobby group.
Fair maybe, but you are being very optimistic. GP has been caught so many times basically inventing an analysis that suits there goals, that their credibility is pretty low to start with. You might even get the feeling that they get it wrong on purpose...
> Vista's XAML and core WPF technologies are a graphic designer/developers wet dream in terms of abilities, performance and moving from basic UI constructs.
I agree that WPF is the most interesting feature in Vista, and indeed a great step forward. Unfortuantely, it will remain a dream for a long time until Microsoft provides some form of compatibility to XP. Windows is all about compatibility, and even the greatest API is useless if it shuts out 90% of your customer base.
Microsoft should release a basic WPF interface for XP, and keep the advanced features for Vista. That would persuade software companies to target WPF, and then customers had a reason to upgrade to Vista.
> What's really changed with Vista is that people are not willing to be shepherded along from release to release by Microsoft.
I also has to do with the fact that Windows users usually settle for "good enough". And XP is good enough, certainly with SP2, so there is no reason to jump through hoops just to get shiny Vista. At the release of XP, the situation was completely different: the current consumer Windows was ME (pile of crap), and the professional release was 2000, which was very compatible to XP in many ways. And BTW, remember how long NT4 was still around, even after 2000 and XP were released?
So the problem is that Vista is (in many ways) incompatible to XP, but XP is good enough. Exactly the same trap that Linux was in for so long...
> Where are all the linux developers making nice stable non 'flair' programs?
"apt-cache search ipod" returns a nice list of programs, some of which are marked as command line:
python-gpod - a library to read and write songs and artwork to an iPod
gnupod-tools - command-line tools for the iPod family of portable music players
libipod-cil - CLI library for accessing iPods
Where are all the linux users that do a basic search of the documentation before whining on slashdot?
> So, how many chairs will Ballmer throw?
I think this calls for a three seater leather couch.
> You pay the early termination fee if you terminate early.
> It's that simple, bitches.
What a concise and convincing argument. Luckily it is not that simple. I think there are three main problems:
1. A contract is the agreed result of a negotiation. Ever tried to negotiate with T-mobile for a lower termination fee? The thought alone is quite funny. So this fee is actually part of the terms of sale or terms of service, not of the contract.
2. No contract in the world can prevent you from exercising your legal options. If the law says you can go to court, then you can go to court. A contract saying otherwise is just wrong.
3. Say you are a month short of you contract duration, and for some reason you want to terminate it early. Is it then reasonable to pay 200 bucks? No, obviously not, but that is what the conditions say. Together with point 1, this is a legal problem, because T-mobile has (ab)used their superior "negotiation" position to push obviously flawed conditions.
So I think this is going to be interesting.
> Actually, a research satellite in orbit around Jupiter would be useful for studying atmospheric processes there
Ok, but who is going to listing to the Jupiter weather forecast? I would much rather have a reliable prediction for the weather right here during the week to come.
> Yes, I know this is slashdot, but you could try reading the article. There's a whole section called "But Windows only constitutes a mere 10% of the price of a PC, right?" which might interest you.
Unfortunately it is just perpetuating lies. Just because some guy got back 50% of the price in a French court, it does not follow that Acer payed 50% for it. In fact I am pretty certain that they assumed retain prices, because Acer would not disclose the real cost. And these 50% included MS Office!
So the whole article is apples and oranges (if believe in the benefit of the doubt) or pure lies (otherwise).
> but it's been developed for more than 18 months now and is fairly usable.
I don't know. When I tried it, it just seemed full of annoying bugs. You may be able to get it usable, but I did not have the patience for it.
And what other options are there? I did not find any calendar program that integrates in a reasonable way with thunderbird. I need something that works on Linux and on Windows, so the whole KDE set of programs does not work.
> Never mind. I should get on with work I suppose.
Work? Didn't you get the memo that Sunday is off?