President Bush and Senator Kerry, both of you talk a lot about the importance of promoting democracy in other countries. However, I have never heard either of you take on the issue of election reform in our own country. The current presidential system seems to have several shortcomings, including two-party duopoly and the ability to win the Election even after losing the popular vote. This hardly seems democratic. What are your positions on instant-runoff voting and proportional representation? Do you currently, and would you in the future, support any reforms to encourage a greater diversity in our political system?
Sarasota and Manatee Counties here in Florida are begging for teachers, with or without educational certification. Basically, if you have a 4-year degree and no felony convictions or record of abusing children, they are likely to hire you.
My wife (BS, Psych) has been thinking of working for one of the school districts either as a teacher or as a counselor, another job classification with more openings than applicants.
The pay isn't huge, but a teacher's salary here will rent a decent apartment or buy a modest house, pay for a passable car, and still leave enough $ for entertainment, clothes, savings, etc.
I'm sure there are other school districts that are also hiring, especially is states with growing populations.
Oh - while you're waiting for your teaching job to come through here you can go do day-job construction work fixing hurricane damage down in Charlotte County or over toward Orlando. There is *lots* of cleanup/fixup work available in those areas!
Time for a Joe Hill song...
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Union organizer (and convicted murderer) Joe Hill was a friend of Woody Guthrie's and a frequent inspiration to him. Of course, we're all supposed to recoil in horror from these guys today, seeing as they believed in working people banding together and trying to get welfare-type benefits like paid vacations, health care, retirement, and even a workweek shorter than 60 hours. In any case, Hill wrote a nice little song about religion being used as a political tool by the kind of plutocrats that Republicans like T. Roosevelt felt were a danger to America....
Long haired preachers come out ev'ry night, Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right; But when asked, how 'bout something to eat, (Let us eat) They will answer with voices so sweet; (Oh so sweet) You will eat, (You will eat) Bye and bye, (Bye and bye) in that glorious land above the sky; (way up high) work and pray, (work and pray) live on hay, (Live on hay) you'll get pie in the sky when you die. (That's a lie)
And the starvation army they play, And they sing and they clap and they pray. Till they get all your coin on the drum, Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum:
-Chorus-
Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out, And they holler, they jump and they shout "Give your money to Jesus," they say, "He will cure all diseases today."
-Chorus-
If you fight hard for children and wife- Try to get something good in this life- You're a sinner and bad man, they tell, When you die you will sure go to hell.
-Chorus-
Workingmen of all countries unite, Side by side we for freedom will fight! When the world and its wealth we have gained, To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:
-Final Chorus-
You will eat, bye and bye, When you've learned how to cook and to fry. Chop some wood, 'twill do you good, And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.
We said no. We have many editorial links in stories on all our sites, so having paid links mixed in wouldn't be right. Advertising is one thing. Mixing it with the actual news content is another. IMO it's simply wrong.
Part of Intellitext's pitch was that plenty of "respected" news sites are doing this. My response: "Didn't your mother ever ask, 'If all the other kids were jumping off a cliff, would that mean you'd have to jump, too?'"
I was born in 1952, and I remember many of these images when they were new.
A couple of weeks ago I waited for a late plane, then got jammed into one of those just-too-small Airbus middle seats for six hours. I couldn't help thinking that what I really wanted, right then, was one of the self-piloting flying cars we were all going to have by the year 2000.
Computers and the Internet are okay, but not much of the really good stuff futurists promised we'd have by the beginning of the next century is in common use yet.
I guess I might as well give up on that Moon vacation. Not going to happen in my lifetime at this rate.:(
"I agree, everybody (with the exception of the really clueless moron) is as smart as the Linux developer, many people are just lazy."
Often they're just busy. Or have other things on their minds. I'd really have my doctor remembering drug interactions than trying to remember a bunch of arcane text commands for his computer, and I'd rather have him spend his time reading the latest medical studies than learning a new set of commands for every new piece of software he gets.
A basic barrier to involving end users early in the development process is that most Linux-based OSS projects release their early versions only as tarballs, not as easily-installed binary packages, and often take a lot of command-line tweaking to work at all. Most desktop end users don't have the expertise to deal with command-line installs, and those who can do it are often unwilling because they're too busy to go through a stack of READMEs to figure out a lot of different switches every time they install a new build of the program under development.
I have a lovely sailing photo as my KDE background, but I rarely see it. I have a Quicklauncher applet with 18 application buttons on my control panel an control my apps almost entirely from the panel. I typically have between 6 and 12 apps open plus a terminal window -- on the 15" monitor that's the biggest that does me any good through the near-vision area of my bifocals.
In my Mexican travels, I've found that hotels want $6/hour+ for dialup net access in your room or for high speed access in their "business centers" that are usually open only during the business day, and that "computer centers" in American-style malls charge $1 - $3/hour for Net access and/or general computer rental, but that I can *always* find a nearby "ma and pa" Net cafe that charges $.60/hour or less for a high-speed connection ) by asking cabbies, hotel employees, and other working-class locals where *they* go. I've also found that I am almost automatically offered a lower rate at the cafe if I bring my own laptop (which I do), and that if I buy food or drink the time is calculated in my favor or some of it is simply forgotten.
The best one I've been to was in Veracruz, run by Dad the computer repair guy, Mom the cook, and a son and daughter waiting tables and running the cashbox. Wonderful coffee (as is common in Veracruz; best city in the world for coffee IMO), home-baked pan dulces and excellent food, interesting patrons who wanted to try out their English on the "American writer" (Veracruz is not popular with American tourists), and generally a fine time all around, all in a small, brightly-painted stucco building just off the main drag along the water S. of downtown. Rickety non-matched chairs and tables, old workstations, air conditioning a fan that squeaked, electrical wiring you didn't want to look at closely...
And then the son noticed I was running Linux and he had a million questions. (All the desktops were running -- pirated, of course -- Windows), and I ended up making him a copy of SUSE from a set of CDs I had brought with me, and helping him install it on one of the desktops, using his bad English and my bad Spanish plus lots of hand gestures and laughter. Then he and dad didn't want to charge me, which was sweet of them, but I insisted on paying. After all, I *am* a rich American, and these people were obviously barely making it in their little family business, and I didn't think it was fair to accept their generosity beyond a "couldn't refuse" flan dessert from Mom (which I made up for by tipping generously, anyway).
I hope to get back to Veracruz, and I hope that same Internet cafe is still around. Not that there aren't good ones in other Mexican cities, too.
Call them admin assistants or office managers or whatever, but I believe every engineering or programming group should have a "detail person" (what the Army calls a "company clerk") to handle things like expense reports, travel reservations, filling out purchase orders, and the 200,000 other items that need to be done but take away from productive time.
Look at the original post - the guy doesn't want to be management because he'd become a full-time paper-pusher.
What if his company hired a department administrator to handle the paperwork, and made him boss tech? I suspect this would be a far better use of resources, especially since the administrator would not get paid anywhere near as much as a programmer or engineer.
At one point I told my wife she'd be the perfect "office mom" for a tech company. She would, too. She's good at handling admin details and remembering things like birthdays, knows how to shop for things like hotel and airline deals and is good at setting up events, and would never let the place run out of vital supplies or let the timesheets get behind. Not only that, but from hanging around with my friends, she's used to dealing with what we might politely call "unusual people."
A group of engineers or programmers with an "office mom" like Debbie around -- and she's old enough to be mother to the typical under-30 programmer -- would certainly be enough more productive with her there to justify a secretary-level salary.
Debbie's not looking, but there are plenty of women (and men) who don't mind handling paperwork and making others' jobs easier, and are happy to work for a modest wage as long as they are treated with a little respect.
Too often, bosses end up buried in paperwork and don't have time for strategic planning or doing their other *real* work. No wonder so many tear at their hair until it has points!
I suspect that bringing back secretaries instead of trying to automate the visible parts of their jobs would be a good move for many companies, although I doubt that many are likely to take this wise step.
Actually, we ran an article on (OSDN owned) IT Managers Journal a few weeks back about hiring open source developers that mentioned checking a candidate's posts on Slashdot and other community sites.
(A link to that article was on Slashdot, come to think of it.)
As of the time stamp shown on this post, questions for Mr. Godwin have been selected and will be emailed to him within the next hour. Questions posted after this will not be considered.
I'd like to thank everyone who submitted questions. If yours didn't "make the cut" this time, we'll have plenty of future interviews for you.
Don't forget: You can suggest interview candidates by emailing robin at roblimo.com. Please make sure you include current contact information for the person you'd like to see interviewed.
Plenty of companies already sell code analyzers and code interpretation charts. You'd be moving into a crowded market.
The problem is that *very recently* some carmakers are starting to keep the codes secret instead of releasing them to manual publishers -- or to companies like Snap-On that make automotive diagnostic equipment.
I'm sure all the diagnostic equipment vendors, from the ones that sell consumer-level ones people like me buy for home use up to Snap-On and others that make PC diagnostic interfaces sophisticated professional shops buy, would have the new codes in their databases days after they are released.
"OpenOffice.org appears to lack the ability to track changes - essential for multiple people working on a project. Compare document is not enough. You need to be able to identify changes, and add comment bubbles for the development and review process. Additionally OOo needs to have a basic project management tool, drawing tool, and even a note taking tool a la MS Project, Visio and OneNote. That would cover most business needs."
OpenOffice.org has all of these features. I've used OOo to write one book and edit a couple of others. Now I'm using it to write another one for a major publisher (Addison-Wesley), and will need to go through at least a couple of rounds of edits by several different people, complete with comment bubbles and the rest, not to mention handling a whole bunch of illustrations that include screenshots, photos, and charts/graphs. For note-taking I have a whole raft of open source alternatives.
I'll be interacting with MS Office users all the way, too, and I expect no problems since I've done this before and it worked out fine.
I'd like a car with easily removable/exchangable seat cushions myself. I could have a plush set for regular/city use, and a vinyl set for when we go to the beach, head out to sail, going camping, or anything else that tends to get the interior dirty.
Except sooner or later I'll probably moot this whole idea and replace my Cherokee with a Wrangler or old CJ with a totally washable "interior" and use it as our beach/tow/camping vehicle, with my wife's Hyundai reserved for "civilized" driving.
(BTW, my wife checks oil and other necessary fluids often. I don't think she'd want a car where she couldn't do that easily.)
If a car manufacturer makes a hood that takes a special tool to open, knockoffs of those tools will be available from aftermarket resellers in two weeks, and every independent shop will have one within a month, as will most home mechanics who own that make of car.
1) I did not question the irony because I knew *you* would without my help.
2) I did *not* stay in the hotel. I wandered all over Riyadh, and I met quietly with several social dissidents, but writing about them by name would not be safe -- for them. Sometimes it's better to leave a U.S. reader thinking less of me than to put someone's life in danger. At least *I* think so. You are free to disagree.
3) I'm sure I'll eventually write other stories about Saudi Arabia that will go more deeply into the social/religious/political situation there, but not for NewsForge or Slashdot. There are other media where those stories would be more appropriate.
Years ago a cab company I worked with evaluated in-car dispatch terminals. We piloted them in 20 cabs (out of ~350) and decided that they were enough of an accident risk not to install them fleet-wide. A competing company got them, and sure enough, their accident rate, especially rear-ends, went up, and there was no evidence that they were able to handle radio calls more efficiently than with traditional voice dispatching.
In fact, the only two supposed advantages of the computer system were that dispatching through it didn't take as much skill as radio dispatch so dispatchers could get paid less; and drivers who didn't speak English well enough for fast radio conversation could supposedly take radio calls more easily, but in the end everyone we knew who installed the systems found that these advantages never really materialized, because drivers who had trouble with English had trouble reading onscreen maps, and dispatchers still needed strong radio skills for emergency situations.
We heard that local police departments (this was in Maryland) that installed mobile dispatch terminals also had higher accident rates, although for both cops and cabbies the increases leveled off as drivers got used to splitting their attention.
I feel using a computer while driving is far more distracting than using a cell phone or other audio communication device. Most sensory input needed to drive safely is visual. But I don't think laws against computers in the front seat make sense. I've had both friends and cab/limo passengers use laptops in the front seat while I was driving, and found that this was lots less distracting than female passengers getting naked in the rear seat and shoving their breasts out the windows or over the seat onto my neck.
It's a lot cheaper for a bar or restaurant to provide free WiFi than to subscribe to a commercial cable TV or satellite sports provider, but I've never had the owner of a sports bar try to charge me to watch a Bucs game.
Sometimes I like to go to a bar to watch games that aren't being shown where I live; I'm not such a big fan that I want to watch out-of-area teams often enough to pay for one of those expensive "sports pass" satellite deals, and besides, it's often nice to sit with other people who enjoy the game instead of with my wife, who leaves the room when I put on a football game and barely tolerates baseball.
Obvously bar owners figure sports TV is worth the cost. There's no question that it brings in business -- including mine now and then. I'm not sure enough people have wireless-equipped laptops or PDAs for free wireless to pay off quite yet in most parts of the world for establishments that put it in, but that day will come.
You have the wrong credit card, my friend. The one I use for travel expenses (BofA Visa) is prime + 2%.
And any wage earner and/or homeowner who's not totally buried in debt gets constant offers of 0% "introductory offer" credit cards where the introductory rate last 6 months or more. If you have a card or two with high interest, get one of those and transfer the balance *with this caveat*: If you are even one day late on one of those special offer deals, you will suddenly stop paying interest and start paying what used to be called "vigorish" back when the government still regulated financial institutions. To me 22% or 24% interest is nothing but loansharking, even if it's done by a a supposedly resepctable bank or other financial firm.
If that happens to you, your best option (if you're not so buried that you should seek help from one of the credit counseling agencies that make deals with creditors for you) is to get another low-interest card or two... and watch yourself from then on.
Of course, if you're really deep in debt, you can always answer one of those friendly Nigerian emails. $20 million or $30 million ought to help you get a fresh financial start, right?
Slashdot Mirror
President Bush and Senator Kerry, both of you talk a lot about the importance of promoting democracy in other countries. However, I have never heard either of you take on the issue of election reform in our own country. The current presidential system seems to have several shortcomings, including two-party duopoly and the ability to win the Election even after losing the popular vote. This hardly seems democratic. What are your positions on instant-runoff voting and proportional representation? Do you currently, and would you in the future, support any reforms to encourage a greater diversity in our political system?
Sarasota and Manatee Counties here in Florida are begging for teachers, with or without educational certification. Basically, if you have a 4-year degree and no felony convictions or record of abusing children, they are likely to hire you.
My wife (BS, Psych) has been thinking of working for one of the school districts either as a teacher or as a counselor, another job classification with more openings than applicants.
The pay isn't huge, but a teacher's salary here will rent a decent apartment or buy a modest house, pay for a passable car, and still leave enough $ for entertainment, clothes, savings, etc.
I'm sure there are other school districts that are also hiring, especially is states with growing populations.
Oh - while you're waiting for your teaching job to come through here you can go do day-job construction work fixing hurricane damage down in Charlotte County or over toward Orlando. There is *lots* of cleanup/fixup work available in those areas!
Union organizer (and convicted murderer) Joe Hill was a friend of Woody Guthrie's and a frequent inspiration to him. Of course, we're all supposed to recoil in horror from these guys today, seeing as they believed in working people banding together and trying to get welfare-type benefits like paid vacations, health care, retirement, and even a workweek shorter than 60 hours. In any case, Hill wrote a nice little song about religion being used as a political tool by the kind of plutocrats that Republicans like T. Roosevelt felt were a danger to America....
Long haired preachers come out ev'ry night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked, how 'bout something to eat, (Let us eat)
They will answer with voices so sweet; (Oh so sweet)
You will eat, (You will eat)
Bye and bye, (Bye and bye) in that glorious land above the sky;
(way up high)
work and pray, (work and pray) live on hay, (Live on hay)
you'll get pie in the sky when you die. (That's a lie)
And the starvation army they play,
And they sing and they clap and they pray.
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum:
-Chorus-
Holy Rollers and Jumpers come out,
And they holler, they jump and they shout
"Give your money to Jesus," they say,
"He will cure all diseases today."
-Chorus-
If you fight hard for children and wife-
Try to get something good in this life-
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.
-Chorus-
Workingmen of all countries unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight!
When the world and its wealth we have gained,
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:
-Final Chorus-
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good,
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.
We said no. We have many editorial links in stories on all our sites, so having paid links mixed in wouldn't be right. Advertising is one thing. Mixing it with the actual news content is another. IMO it's simply wrong.
Part of Intellitext's pitch was that plenty of "respected" news sites are doing this. My response: "Didn't your mother ever ask, 'If all the other kids were jumping off a cliff, would that mean you'd have to jump, too?'"
Fah.
- Robin 'Roblimo' Miller
Editor in Chief, OSTG
I was born in 1952, and I remember many of these images when they were new.
:(
A couple of weeks ago I waited for a late plane, then got jammed into one of those just-too-small Airbus middle seats for six hours. I couldn't help thinking that what I really wanted, right then, was one of the self-piloting flying cars we were all going to have by the year 2000.
Computers and the Internet are okay, but not much of the really good stuff futurists promised we'd have by the beginning of the next century is in common use yet.
I guess I might as well give up on that Moon vacation. Not going to happen in my lifetime at this rate.
"I agree, everybody (with the exception of the really clueless moron) is as smart as the Linux developer, many people are just lazy."
Often they're just busy. Or have other things on their minds. I'd really have my doctor remembering drug interactions than trying to remember a bunch of arcane text commands for his computer, and I'd rather have him spend his time reading the latest medical studies than learning a new set of commands for every new piece of software he gets.
- Robin
A basic barrier to involving end users early in the development process is that most Linux-based OSS projects release their early versions only as tarballs, not as easily-installed binary packages, and often take a lot of command-line tweaking to work at all. Most desktop end users don't have the expertise to deal with command-line installs, and those who can do it are often unwilling because they're too busy to go through a stack of READMEs to figure out a lot of different switches every time they install a new build of the program under development.
- Robin
I have a lovely sailing photo as my KDE background, but I rarely see it. I have a Quicklauncher applet with 18 application buttons on my control panel an control my apps almost entirely from the panel. I typically have between 6 and 12 apps open plus a terminal window -- on the 15" monitor that's the biggest that does me any good through the near-vision area of my bifocals.
- Robin
In my Mexican travels, I've found that hotels want $6/hour+ for dialup net access in your room or for high speed access in their "business centers" that are usually open only during the business day, and that "computer centers" in American-style malls charge $1 - $3/hour for Net access and/or general computer rental, but that I can *always* find a nearby "ma and pa" Net cafe that charges $.60/hour or less for a high-speed connection ) by asking cabbies, hotel employees, and other working-class locals where *they* go. I've also found that I am almost automatically offered a lower rate at the cafe if I bring my own laptop (which I do), and that if I buy food or drink the time is calculated in my favor or some of it is simply forgotten.
The best one I've been to was in Veracruz, run by Dad the computer repair guy, Mom the cook, and a son and daughter waiting tables and running the cashbox. Wonderful coffee (as is common in Veracruz; best city in the world for coffee IMO), home-baked pan dulces and excellent food, interesting patrons who wanted to try out their English on the "American writer" (Veracruz is not popular with American tourists), and generally a fine time all around, all in a small, brightly-painted stucco building just off the main drag along the water S. of downtown. Rickety non-matched chairs and tables, old workstations, air conditioning a fan that squeaked, electrical wiring you didn't want to look at closely...
And then the son noticed I was running Linux and he had a million questions. (All the desktops were running -- pirated, of course -- Windows), and I ended up making him a copy of SUSE from a set of CDs I had brought with me, and helping him install it on one of the desktops, using his bad English and my bad Spanish plus lots of hand gestures and laughter. Then he and dad didn't want to charge me, which was sweet of them, but I insisted on paying. After all, I *am* a rich American, and these people were obviously barely making it in their little family business, and I didn't think it was fair to accept their generosity beyond a "couldn't refuse" flan dessert from Mom (which I made up for by tipping generously, anyway).
I hope to get back to Veracruz, and I hope that same Internet cafe is still around. Not that there aren't good ones in other Mexican cities, too.
Call them admin assistants or office managers or whatever, but I believe every engineering or programming group should have a "detail person" (what the Army calls a "company clerk") to handle things like expense reports, travel reservations, filling out purchase orders, and the 200,000 other items that need to be done but take away from productive time.
Look at the original post - the guy doesn't want to be management because he'd become a full-time paper-pusher.
What if his company hired a department administrator to handle the paperwork, and made him boss tech? I suspect this would be a far better use of resources, especially since the administrator would not get paid anywhere near as much as a programmer or engineer.
At one point I told my wife she'd be the perfect "office mom" for a tech company. She would, too. She's good at handling admin details and remembering things like birthdays, knows how to shop for things like hotel and airline deals and is good at setting up events, and would never let the place run out of vital supplies or let the timesheets get behind. Not only that, but from hanging around with my friends, she's used to dealing with what we might politely call "unusual people."
A group of engineers or programmers with an "office mom" like Debbie around -- and she's old enough to be mother to the typical under-30 programmer -- would certainly be enough more productive with her there to justify a secretary-level salary.
Debbie's not looking, but there are plenty of women (and men) who don't mind handling paperwork and making others' jobs easier, and are happy to work for a modest wage as long as they are treated with a little respect.
Too often, bosses end up buried in paperwork and don't have time for strategic planning or doing their other *real* work. No wonder so many tear at their hair until it has points!
I suspect that bringing back secretaries instead of trying to automate the visible parts of their jobs would be a good move for many companies, although I doubt that many are likely to take this wise step.
"If he is sincere in wanting to get along better maybe Slashdot could send him the 10 highest moderated questions."
Good idea. I'll ask him.
- Robin
They've had Seqway tours of Sarasota, Florida, for quite a while now.
:)
And yes, a line of turistas on Segways looks just as idiotic as you're imagining it does. See?
Actually, we ran an article on (OSDN owned) IT Managers Journal a few weeks back about hiring open source developers that mentioned checking a candidate's posts on Slashdot and other community sites.
(A link to that article was on Slashdot, come to think of it.)
- Robin
As of the time stamp shown on this post, questions for Mr. Godwin have been selected and will be emailed to him within the next hour. Questions posted after this will not be considered.
I'd like to thank everyone who submitted questions. If yours didn't "make the cut" this time, we'll have plenty of future interviews for you.
Don't forget: You can suggest interview candidates by emailing robin at roblimo.com. Please make sure you include current contact information for the person you'd like to see interviewed.
- Robin 'Roblimo' Miller
Plenty of companies already sell code analyzers and code interpretation charts. You'd be moving into a crowded market.
The problem is that *very recently* some carmakers are starting to keep the codes secret instead of releasing them to manual publishers -- or to companies like Snap-On that make automotive diagnostic equipment.
I'm sure all the diagnostic equipment vendors, from the ones that sell consumer-level ones people like me buy for home use up to Snap-On and others that make PC diagnostic interfaces sophisticated professional shops buy, would have the new codes in their databases days after they are released.
- Robin
"OpenOffice.org appears to lack the ability to track changes - essential for multiple people working on a project. Compare document is not enough. You need to be able to identify changes, and add comment bubbles for the development and review process. Additionally OOo needs to have a basic project management tool, drawing tool, and even a note taking tool a la MS Project, Visio and OneNote. That would cover most business needs."
OpenOffice.org has all of these features. I've used OOo to write one book and edit a couple of others. Now I'm using it to write another one for a major publisher (Addison-Wesley), and will need to go through at least a couple of rounds of edits by several different people, complete with comment bubbles and the rest, not to mention handling a whole bunch of illustrations that include screenshots, photos, and charts/graphs. For note-taking I have a whole raft of open source alternatives.
I'll be interacting with MS Office users all the way, too, and I expect no problems since I've done this before and it worked out fine.
- Robin
I *had* changeable seat covers in that limo, Lee.
:)
You don't think I wasted the *good* ones on you, did you?
(Seriously, removable and washable seat covers are a great things to have, but I bet Volvo would charge way too much for them.)
- Robin
I'd like a car with easily removable/exchangable seat cushions myself. I could have a plush set for regular/city use, and a vinyl set for when we go to the beach, head out to sail, going camping, or anything else that tends to get the interior dirty.
Except sooner or later I'll probably moot this whole idea and replace my Cherokee with a Wrangler or old CJ with a totally washable "interior" and use it as our beach/tow/camping vehicle, with my wife's Hyundai reserved for "civilized" driving.
(BTW, my wife checks oil and other necessary fluids often. I don't think she'd want a car where she couldn't do that easily.)
- Robin
If a car manufacturer makes a hood that takes a special tool to open, knockoffs of those tools will be available from aftermarket resellers in two weeks, and every independent shop will have one within a month, as will most home mechanics who own that make of car.
- Robin
Read the story, read the ruling. IBM is supposed to show SCO some code, too.
- Robin
So true. I'd say the percentage of wiseasses among Indian geeks is about the same as the percentage of wiseasses among American geeks.
I cut this question because the story was getting too long: "How does it feel to be reviled by American programmers?"
The first answer I got to it was, "I have no idea. I've never *met* an American programmer."
Trust me: There's usually more than one know-it-all in almost any randomly-selected geek crowd, no matter where you go.
Scary, isn't it?
- Robin
1) I did not question the irony because I knew *you* would without my help.
2) I did *not* stay in the hotel. I wandered all over Riyadh, and I met quietly with several social dissidents, but writing about them by name would not be safe -- for them. Sometimes it's better to leave a U.S. reader thinking less of me than to put someone's life in danger. At least *I* think so. You are free to disagree.
3) I'm sure I'll eventually write other stories about Saudi Arabia that will go more deeply into the social/religious/political situation there, but not for NewsForge or Slashdot. There are other media where those stories would be more appropriate.
- Robin
Years ago a cab company I worked with evaluated in-car dispatch terminals. We piloted them in 20 cabs (out of ~350) and decided that they were enough of an accident risk not to install them fleet-wide. A competing company got them, and sure enough, their accident rate, especially rear-ends, went up, and there was no evidence that they were able to handle radio calls more efficiently than with traditional voice dispatching.
In fact, the only two supposed advantages of the computer system were that dispatching through it didn't take as much skill as radio dispatch so dispatchers could get paid less; and drivers who didn't speak English well enough for fast radio conversation could supposedly take radio calls more easily, but in the end everyone we knew who installed the systems found that these advantages never really materialized, because drivers who had trouble with English had trouble reading onscreen maps, and dispatchers still needed strong radio skills for emergency situations.
We heard that local police departments (this was in Maryland) that installed mobile dispatch terminals also had higher accident rates, although for both cops and cabbies the increases leveled off as drivers got used to splitting their attention.
I feel using a computer while driving is far more distracting than using a cell phone or other audio communication device. Most sensory input needed to drive safely is visual. But I don't think laws against computers in the front seat make sense. I've had both friends and cab/limo passengers use laptops in the front seat while I was driving, and found that this was lots less distracting than female passengers getting naked in the rear seat and shoving their breasts out the windows or over the seat onto my neck.
- Robin
It's a lot cheaper for a bar or restaurant to provide free WiFi than to subscribe to a commercial cable TV or satellite sports provider, but I've never had the owner of a sports bar try to charge me to watch a Bucs game.
Sometimes I like to go to a bar to watch games that aren't being shown where I live; I'm not such a big fan that I want to watch out-of-area teams often enough to pay for one of those expensive "sports pass" satellite deals, and besides, it's often nice to sit with other people who enjoy the game instead of with my wife, who leaves the room when I put on a football game and barely tolerates baseball.
Obvously bar owners figure sports TV is worth the cost. There's no question that it brings in business -- including mine now and then. I'm not sure enough people have wireless-equipped laptops or PDAs for free wireless to pay off quite yet in most parts of the world for establishments that put it in, but that day will come.
I said all of this in a NewsForge article last May, BTW.
- Robin
You have the wrong credit card, my friend. The one I use for travel expenses (BofA Visa) is prime + 2%.
And any wage earner and/or homeowner who's not totally buried in debt gets constant offers of 0% "introductory offer" credit cards where the introductory rate last 6 months or more. If you have a card or two with high interest, get one of those and transfer the balance *with this caveat*: If you are even one day late on one of those special offer deals, you will suddenly stop paying interest and start paying what used to be called "vigorish" back when the government still regulated financial institutions. To me 22% or 24% interest is nothing but loansharking, even if it's done by a a supposedly resepctable bank or other financial firm.
If that happens to you, your best option (if you're not so buried that you should seek help from one of the credit counseling agencies that make deals with creditors for you) is to get another low-interest card or two... and watch yourself from then on.
Of course, if you're really deep in debt, you can always answer one of those friendly Nigerian emails. $20 million or $30 million ought to help you get a fresh financial start, right?
- Robin