Yeah, after 4 months he got bored and decided to throw in the towel. Oh, wait! No, I'm wrong! He got injured 3 times, in engagements which earned him bronze and silver stars, before being sent home.
Actually there are only two reports of Kerry's departure from Vietnam that I can find anything about. If he had truly been sent home due to valor or injury or whatever, that documentation would absolutely be in the collection of military records that appears on Kerry's website. It's obvious to anyone who has served (I was in the Personnel Records business when I served) that the records on his site are not complete. He's just offered the flattering highlights.
The first theory is that the other officers in his unit requested that he be sent home after his third Purple Heart, mainly because of his attitude and the fact that he was a loose cannon. That medal was not considered a very honorable thing to have by the SWIFT boat guys, because it meant they had made a mistake. Most minor injuries were never turned into Purple Heart citations.
The other theory about his departure from Vietnam is that he used the "three-and-out" policy. There was an informal Navy "instruction", numbered 1300.39, that allowed an officer to request transfer out of Vietnam after 3 injuries. He apparently requested this transfer on March 17, 1969. It's interesting that this request is missing from his military records on his website, since his request to go to Vietnam is included, you would think his request to return home, or especially orders to return home if he did not request it, would be included. Interestingly, there is no mention of his departure from Vietnam in the records posted.
You should read this recollection from the doctor who treated Kerry the day after he was "wounded". His injuries were not severe enough to be treated by a medic or evacuated by helicopter, by the way... he showed up the next day at sick call and the shrapnel, which apparently did not come from enemy fire, was removed without anesthesia and the "wound" was covered with a band-aid.
I heard part of the decoration citation for his Silver Star medal on TV last night, and the question posed was something along the lines of "why would the Navy write such a thing if it wasn't true?". Well that answer is obvious to anybody who was ever in the military. Most officers write their own citations and they get rubber-stamped by their chain of command. Most decorations are just things you get to enhance your career. When I was in the Air Force, for example, if you didn't have an Achievement Medal by the time you had been in about 2 years and a Commendation Medal by the time you had been in about 5 years, you had pissed somebody off. And the Meritorious Service Medal was the traditional award for a Senior NCO either retiring or transferring to another duty station.
Purple Hearts and the various Star medals require combat action, which is the only reason they're not handed out in the same way, and the only things which keep them from being just as worthless as the medals I mentioned before.
I also knew of a guy at my duty station who had gotten a Bronze Star for service he had rendered during an action (excuse the vagueness... the situation was so weird that I would give away who it was to some with ANY more detail), and everybody who knew anything about the incident knew it was BS. He had gotten cut or scraped or something, which qualified it as a "wound" during non-flight enemy engagement.
Don't get me wrong -- as a veteran, I have the highest respect for those who have served, particular those who have been in the line of fire, as Kerry was. But when people read citations and take them as something exceptional when they happen all the time and they're usually written by the recipient, I have to respond.
OK, so now this guy will be identified as the scapegoat for the whole thing... next will be the Slashdot Interview while he's awaiting trial (go ahead and post your questions now) and the Legal Defense Fund from the EFF.
I see that freesvenjaschan.com is available (and org and net) so go ahead and get a site up now to avoid the rush.
Start working on your Bush and Ashcroft one-liners, since they have absolutely nothing to do with this and that's never stopped you before.
Linux Today used to be one of my favorite magazines. Well, I guess is still is, but it doesn't hold a candle to MacWorld. Just like I have little interest in Linux on my desktop (I use it a great deal for servers), now that OS X is as good as it is, my magazine tastes have changed accordingly.
Unrelated completely, but I recommend Consumer Reports every chance I get. Not just the magazine, but the online subscription to see past reports. You will never have a better consumer advocate that Consumer Reports and their publisher, Consumers Union.
Back to tech, If I haven't already let my Wired subscription go, I will next time I get a chance. Fluff.
If I have a DVD that's going to stop working in a matter of hours, the last thing I have time to do it WATCH it. I'm going to have to go straight to the computer and rip that baby first. Probably not exactly what they were going for.
Yeah, I noticed this in Shrek. I was much more willing to believe Shrek as a green ogre with hair all over him, dousing himself with a mud shower, then I was the humans that came running after him 30 seconds later. They tried to make the humans look real and normal and my brain didn't buy it.
Lord Farquaad, on the other hand, was very believable, because they stopped short of trying to make him look real. It was more like a caricature. The same with Shrek as a human in Shrek 2.
Not only are they completely unaware that they're bad photographers, they don't care. Their objectives when taking pictures are completely different than those who strive to take good pictures.
You said that #2 is true as long as your employer is not a part of the government. That's another part of the misconception. The governement, in its capacity as an employer, has every right to fire or otherwise punish its employees for their behaviors and speech, just as any other employer does. But that's all they can do. They can fire you but then you're just a citizen and they can't kill you or throw you in prison. Unless you broke the law, of course, which is also not a free speech issue.
An example. Let's say I work for the Department of Agriculture and I say that Bush is a monkey. Most people I work with will probably say, "yeah, and a deserter", but let's just say I said it either publicly enough or to a high enough official that they decided this was inconsistent with my future employment and that it should be immediately reconsidered. They have every right to do that. Because, as an employee of a department in the executive branch of government, I do not have the right to criticize the CEO of the government (the President) any more than I have the right to criticize Steve Jobs as an employee of Apple.
Now, once fired, it's done. They can't persecute me as a citizen for my speech. Like I said in the original comment, this is where a lot of westerners get hung up, because we have very little capacity to grasp real persecution. Unfortunately, many people around the world are all too familiar with persection.
Here we go again. Let's review what Freedom of Speech is not:
1) The right to say something offensive to somebody before they beat your ass. You're protected under the law as a victim of the crime of battery, but the perp didn't violate your free speech rights. 2) The right to say something at work that gets you fired. Your employer has no obligation to let you say anything you want. They have the right to put their own best interests first with regard to your speech. 3) And yes, the right to broadcast on radio and television. It's not a right, it's a privilege. More about that in a moment.
So, what is this mysterious freedom of speech that people talk about all the time? Well, it's hard for many Americans (most westerners, actually) to understand what it really means, because we've never known anything else. Well, like calling President Bush an idiot, for example. You're allowed to do that. You won't get shot or thrown in jail for saying it. You're allowed to say basicaly anything you want to and the federal government can't come after you for it, with some obvious exceptions:
1) If you suggest that you're going to harm the President or anybody else under Secret Service protection. 2) If you call in a bomb threat or any other kind of threat. 3) If you lie to an investigator or in a court of law
...things like that. It's understandable that, since most westerners have never experienced anything that comes close to a free speech violation, we have a way of making them up. Things like this are a good example.
Now, back to the topic at hand. It's probably a great idea, now that radios are getting good enough to distinguish the signal they want from the signal they don't want. Of course, you can't really expect the government to jump on this development immediately. One great thing about radio is that it's really backward compatible. You can still use radios from many decades ago and they work just fine.
The part where I get upset is when people get upset about evil corporations buying the airwaves. Yes, the FCC has had some pretty crappy decisions in the last 15 years or so about their ownership rules, allowing companies like Clear Channel and Cox to reallly build major empires. But it's not a free speech violation. We do not and have never had any right to broadcast on public airwaves within certain frequencies. The reason for this is that those frequences are not unlimited. In fact, they're quite limited. So they are a public trust and must be regulated by the government. Don't like it? Go invent something better.
It's interesting that this story mentions that this gamer's fingers are insured for $60,000. That has the immediate effect of making all who read it suddenly realize how valuable his fingers are to his livelihood. If you're like me, you then quickly realized how valuable YOUR fingers are to YOUR livelihood. Not that I haven't considered this before... I sometimes think about the future of my career (computers... duh) if I were to lose a hand or some fingers.
Actually, my first impression was that his fingers aren't insured for enough (and neither are mine, by the same standard). I would think that you should insure anything you need to keep your job for about five years' worth of your salary, to give you time to get trained and up to speed on your new career, or in the case of a computer person who becomes a disabled computer person, to purchase and come up to speed on whatever devices will make it possible to do the same job.
Come to think of it, I'm sure there are disabled IT professionals out there already doing these things that I imagine. For example, are there people who code in C, perl, or java without the use of their hands? Maybe I should submit this as an Ask Slashdot or something.
First of all, I enjoyed the description of "once the laughing stock of the internet". That's an interesting way to put it. Obviously a bit of a stretch, but not too far from the truth. It's just always been a weird market (pun noted). The local grocery stores can only get so much business online and the central guys (like NetGrocer has always tried to be) can't stock heavy stuff (due to shipping costs) or perishables.
I've been kind of watching developments in this sector recently, mainly because I'm interested in the data that could be made available on grocery chains' websites. You could build your shopping list on what the store actually carries, exact sizes and brands and everything. Then print it out and go buy. Better yet, pay for your order online and have pullers at the store go pull your groceries and have a cart waiting for you when you get to the store. That right there would be tremendously convenient, even without delivery.
It's also useful to have the inventory data online, just to see how much things cost. Comparison between stores and making sure you know how much you'll be spending before you get there.
I wish the grocery sector an exciting next five years or so online while they find their online identity.
That's a good point. If there was a story today about a fantastic new computer that does in 10 minutes what previously took 7 hours, and it only costs a couple of thousand dollars, we would all be waiting in line to get it.
Don't get me wrong... I'm a cheap bastard also. But it's funny that people would actually go through this process. Emulation of x86 on a PPC makes more sense than the other way around, because if you were running both a Mac and Windows, you would certainly want to run the Mac as the HOST and the Windows as the DOG. The main reason emulation is needed is because there are hoards of Windows-only programs that Mac and Unix users have to use. Not so in reverse.
I appreciate the whole "because it's there" thing, but I don't think I'll be rushing to install OS X on an x86 machine when I have a perfectly good PowerBook (mine) and dual G5 (my employer's).
He's also in the Toy Story video games and the 2005 Pixar feature, Cars, which is about a group of classic cars who take a trip on Route 66. That one sounds interesting.
Oh, and he's also in The Incredibles, which I guess was implied in the parent post.
I think this is an extremely interesting topic and test. I'd be interested in a bigger version of the same thing. A long list of questions and an entire day to get the answers, judged on both time an accuracy.
It's also great that they seemed to have put pretty good people to the test, which proves that whether you're on the Internet, in the Library, or on the phone, the best information miners will always be the most highly skilled people working with their most effective tools.
The library and phone guys seemed to really be great, and the Google guy wasn't bad. He pointed out Google quoted phrase searching, which is something the general searching public should be more aware of. But I was still not terribly impressed with him. I quizzed myself on the same questions. I'm not British, so I had a bit of a cultural disadvantage (not much of one, though). I blew their Google guy out of the water.
Again, it's not the tools... it's the person using them. Still an extremely interesting experiment.
I strongly recommend Consumer Reports, both the print version (monthly) and the online searchable database. Neither are free, because they don't accept any advertising. They don't even accept free stuff from manufacturers to test. They go out and pay retail for everything that they rate. They're a non-profit organization and they do an excellent job. They not only tell you the best of a given category, but they also tell you the best value, which is not necessarily the best.
My only problem with Consumer Reports is that there are a lot of geeky things that I'm interested in that they don't touch, because they're geared towards the mainstream consumer. Understandable. All in all, some of the best money I've ever spent is on Consumer Reports.
Well, one of many advantages, I would say. But their biggest one was that they plugged a music store into a player that tons of people were already using. We just had to upgrade our regular MP3 player to version 4 and there was another playlist called Music Store.
I think this is better than the web-based interfaces of Wal-mart and others, and it's certainly better than making your customers download a brand new piece of software and expect them to use it to manage their music.
I have to jump in here and say that 10.2 was definitely a great upgrade. With 10.1, the PR that Apple was putting out was that they were still "at the beginning of their performance opportunities," or something like that. This was their way of saying OS X was a dog on much of their hardware. Some of that hardware was mine. I had a PowerBook 550 with 512 MB of RAM and it was not nearly as snappy as I felt it could have been.
Many of us felt that 10.2 took it from being sort of a very public and non-free beta to a viable user experience, and I agree with that. The 10.3 upgrade then took a viable user experience and did some very grand things with it to make it better. But 10.2 was not what I would call a neglible upgrade by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway with Mac OS X you won't have to worry about duel booting, if you want to run Windows 98SE/Linux or whatever else, VPC does a great job.
I respectfully disagree. I have a PowerBook 550 with 512 MB of RAM and Virtual PC runs XP hideously and 98 disappointingly.
I also happen to have a dual G5, on which Virtual PC doesn't run at all. Good show, Microsoft. My only hope right now is Bochs and I haven't had much time to play around with it.
I couldn't agree with you more. I posted it and I distinctly remember remarking IN THE POST how uninteresting it was. I was very surprised to see modded up to 5.
No, it really IS timely. I just happened to have installed Win98SE last night. I have an old Presario that was tri-booting between Linux, Win98 and Windows 2000 for several years, but actually only ever running Windows 2000. I finally decided the registry just couldn't hack it anymore and it needed a clean swipe. If it was my work machine it would have been reinstalled a long time ago, but it's the family computer and it hasn't been a big priority.
Anyway, as if this story had any chance of getting interesting, I'll continue. Something happened to my Windows 2000 disk and it won't install. Call it karma, since my Windows 98 disk is one I actually bought off the shelf, believe it or not. So here I am actually bringing Windows 98 as up-to-date as is possible. Scary. I'm thinking of going out to buy XP later in the week to upgrade it, but it's only a K6 266 (with 384 MB of RAM... maxed-out, baby). I might actually need to buy the family a new computer.
Interestingly (yes, I'm actually continuing this drivel), I remembered last night what a hassle Windows can be, now that I've been a Mac OS X user for a couple of years. Motherboard video driver, monitor driver, oh yeah -- ethernet driver before anything else. This and that and the other. Hundreds of MB of downloads and a couple of dozen reboots so far, I guess. Yee-hah. Yes, it's my fault for still running an old computer with Windows 98. Anyway, worth a mention....or not:)
Yes, folks, this is still a bad idea. I use computers for absolutely everything, but that doesn't mean secondary school students should. They need to learn how to use textbooks. They need to learn how to WRITE... yes, with a PENCIL. They need to learn how to do math without a calculator. And they certainly aren't ready for the school system to just hand them a $1000-1500 pr0n and war3z machine.
Yes, computer literacy is important. But so is LITERACY. Take away my computer today and ask me to do math or write or research a topic in a Library the old fashioned way, and I won't be happy, but I'll get by. These kids won't if you cover them with electrons at this age.
Always remember Pee Wee Herman. Yes, he was in a porno theater, which is an interesting bit of irony since there are only a couple of things one can imagine doing in a porno theater besides "watching" (yeah right) the movie, and what he did was the least offensive of them.
Anyway, the point is... how many times have you taken certain liberties in a darkened theater? Night vision goggles really turn those tables around, don't they? It's a point to ponder before doing something in the theater you wouldn't do in church.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, after 4 months he got bored and decided to throw in the towel. Oh, wait! No, I'm wrong! He got injured 3 times, in engagements which earned him bronze and silver stars, before being sent home.
Actually there are only two reports of Kerry's departure from Vietnam that I can find anything about. If he had truly been sent home due to valor or injury or whatever, that documentation would absolutely be in the collection of military records that appears on Kerry's website. It's obvious to anyone who has served (I was in the Personnel Records business when I served) that the records on his site are not complete. He's just offered the flattering highlights.
The first theory is that the other officers in his unit requested that he be sent home after his third Purple Heart, mainly because of his attitude and the fact that he was a loose cannon. That medal was not considered a very honorable thing to have by the SWIFT boat guys, because it meant they had made a mistake. Most minor injuries were never turned into Purple Heart citations.
The other theory about his departure from Vietnam is that he used the "three-and-out" policy. There was an informal Navy "instruction", numbered 1300.39, that allowed an officer to request transfer out of Vietnam after 3 injuries. He apparently requested this transfer on March 17, 1969. It's interesting that this request is missing from his military records on his website, since his request to go to Vietnam is included, you would think his request to return home, or especially orders to return home if he did not request it, would be included. Interestingly, there is no mention of his departure from Vietnam in the records posted.
You should read this recollection from the doctor who treated Kerry the day after he was "wounded". His injuries were not severe enough to be treated by a medic or evacuated by helicopter, by the way... he showed up the next day at sick call and the shrapnel, which apparently did not come from enemy fire, was removed without anesthesia and the "wound" was covered with a band-aid.
I heard part of the decoration citation for his Silver Star medal on TV last night, and the question posed was something along the lines of "why would the Navy write such a thing if it wasn't true?". Well that answer is obvious to anybody who was ever in the military. Most officers write their own citations and they get rubber-stamped by their chain of command. Most decorations are just things you get to enhance your career. When I was in the Air Force, for example, if you didn't have an Achievement Medal by the time you had been in about 2 years and a Commendation Medal by the time you had been in about 5 years, you had pissed somebody off. And the Meritorious Service Medal was the traditional award for a Senior NCO either retiring or transferring to another duty station.
Purple Hearts and the various Star medals require combat action, which is the only reason they're not handed out in the same way, and the only things which keep them from being just as worthless as the medals I mentioned before.
I also knew of a guy at my duty station who had gotten a Bronze Star for service he had rendered during an action (excuse the vagueness... the situation was so weird that I would give away who it was to some with ANY more detail), and everybody who knew anything about the incident knew it was BS. He had gotten cut or scraped or something, which qualified it as a "wound" during non-flight enemy engagement.
Don't get me wrong -- as a veteran, I have the highest respect for those who have served, particular those who have been in the line of fire, as Kerry was. But when people read citations and take them as something exceptional when they happen all the time and they're usually written by the recipient, I have to respond.
RP
Yeah, I thought they meant software wallpaper... like a JPG covering my desktop. "How the hell would THAT work?" I wondered. Feeling silly now.
RP
OK, so now this guy will be identified as the scapegoat for the whole thing... next will be the Slashdot Interview while he's awaiting trial (go ahead and post your questions now) and the Legal Defense Fund from the EFF.
I see that freesvenjaschan.com is available (and org and net) so go ahead and get a site up now to avoid the rush.
Start working on your Bush and Ashcroft one-liners, since they have absolutely nothing to do with this and that's never stopped you before.
RP
Linux Today used to be one of my favorite magazines. Well, I guess is still is, but it doesn't hold a candle to MacWorld. Just like I have little interest in Linux on my desktop (I use it a great deal for servers), now that OS X is as good as it is, my magazine tastes have changed accordingly.
Unrelated completely, but I recommend Consumer Reports every chance I get. Not just the magazine, but the online subscription to see past reports. You will never have a better consumer advocate that Consumer Reports and their publisher, Consumers Union.
Back to tech, If I haven't already let my Wired subscription go, I will next time I get a chance. Fluff.
RP
If I have a DVD that's going to stop working in a matter of hours, the last thing I have time to do it WATCH it. I'm going to have to go straight to the computer and rip that baby first. Probably not exactly what they were going for.
RP
Hang on to your hats, the article links to slashdot... we're gonna get TIME'd! Save the logs!
RP
Yeah, I noticed this in Shrek. I was much more willing to believe Shrek as a green ogre with hair all over him, dousing himself with a mud shower, then I was the humans that came running after him 30 seconds later. They tried to make the humans look real and normal and my brain didn't buy it.
Lord Farquaad, on the other hand, was very believable, because they stopped short of trying to make him look real. It was more like a caricature. The same with Shrek as a human in Shrek 2.
RP
Not only are they completely unaware that they're bad photographers, they don't care. Their objectives when taking pictures are completely different than those who strive to take good pictures.
RP
You said that #2 is true as long as your employer is not a part of the government. That's another part of the misconception. The governement, in its capacity as an employer, has every right to fire or otherwise punish its employees for their behaviors and speech, just as any other employer does. But that's all they can do. They can fire you but then you're just a citizen and they can't kill you or throw you in prison. Unless you broke the law, of course, which is also not a free speech issue.
An example. Let's say I work for the Department of Agriculture and I say that Bush is a monkey. Most people I work with will probably say, "yeah, and a deserter", but let's just say I said it either publicly enough or to a high enough official that they decided this was inconsistent with my future employment and that it should be immediately reconsidered. They have every right to do that. Because, as an employee of a department in the executive branch of government, I do not have the right to criticize the CEO of the government (the President) any more than I have the right to criticize Steve Jobs as an employee of Apple.
Now, once fired, it's done. They can't persecute me as a citizen for my speech. Like I said in the original comment, this is where a lot of westerners get hung up, because we have very little capacity to grasp real persecution. Unfortunately, many people around the world are all too familiar with persection.
RP
1) The right to say something offensive to somebody before they beat your ass. You're protected under the law as a victim of the crime of battery, but the perp didn't violate your free speech rights.
2) The right to say something at work that gets you fired. Your employer has no obligation to let you say anything you want. They have the right to put their own best interests first with regard to your speech.
3) And yes, the right to broadcast on radio and television. It's not a right, it's a privilege. More about that in a moment.
So, what is this mysterious freedom of speech that people talk about all the time? Well, it's hard for many Americans (most westerners, actually) to understand what it really means, because we've never known anything else. Well, like calling President Bush an idiot, for example. You're allowed to do that. You won't get shot or thrown in jail for saying it. You're allowed to say basicaly anything you want to and the federal government can't come after you for it, with some obvious exceptions:
1) If you suggest that you're going to harm the President or anybody else under Secret Service protection.
2) If you call in a bomb threat or any other kind of threat.
3) If you lie to an investigator or in a court of law
Now, back to the topic at hand. It's probably a great idea, now that radios are getting good enough to distinguish the signal they want from the signal they don't want. Of course, you can't really expect the government to jump on this development immediately. One great thing about radio is that it's really backward compatible. You can still use radios from many decades ago and they work just fine.
The part where I get upset is when people get upset about evil corporations buying the airwaves. Yes, the FCC has had some pretty crappy decisions in the last 15 years or so about their ownership rules, allowing companies like Clear Channel and Cox to reallly build major empires. But it's not a free speech violation. We do not and have never had any right to broadcast on public airwaves within certain frequencies. The reason for this is that those frequences are not unlimited. In fact, they're quite limited. So they are a public trust and must be regulated by the government. Don't like it? Go invent something better.
RP
It's interesting that this story mentions that this gamer's fingers are insured for $60,000. That has the immediate effect of making all who read it suddenly realize how valuable his fingers are to his livelihood. If you're like me, you then quickly realized how valuable YOUR fingers are to YOUR livelihood. Not that I haven't considered this before... I sometimes think about the future of my career (computers... duh) if I were to lose a hand or some fingers.
Actually, my first impression was that his fingers aren't insured for enough (and neither are mine, by the same standard). I would think that you should insure anything you need to keep your job for about five years' worth of your salary, to give you time to get trained and up to speed on your new career, or in the case of a computer person who becomes a disabled computer person, to purchase and come up to speed on whatever devices will make it possible to do the same job.
Come to think of it, I'm sure there are disabled IT professionals out there already doing these things that I imagine. For example, are there people who code in C, perl, or java without the use of their hands? Maybe I should submit this as an Ask Slashdot or something.
RP
First of all, I enjoyed the description of "once the laughing stock of the internet". That's an interesting way to put it. Obviously a bit of a stretch, but not too far from the truth. It's just always been a weird market (pun noted). The local grocery stores can only get so much business online and the central guys (like NetGrocer has always tried to be) can't stock heavy stuff (due to shipping costs) or perishables.
I've been kind of watching developments in this sector recently, mainly because I'm interested in the data that could be made available on grocery chains' websites. You could build your shopping list on what the store actually carries, exact sizes and brands and everything. Then print it out and go buy. Better yet, pay for your order online and have pullers at the store go pull your groceries and have a cart waiting for you when you get to the store. That right there would be tremendously convenient, even without delivery.
It's also useful to have the inventory data online, just to see how much things cost. Comparison between stores and making sure you know how much you'll be spending before you get there.
I wish the grocery sector an exciting next five years or so online while they find their online identity.
RP
something I can run under bochs :)
That's a good point. If there was a story today about a fantastic new computer that does in 10 minutes what previously took 7 hours, and it only costs a couple of thousand dollars, we would all be waiting in line to get it.
Don't get me wrong... I'm a cheap bastard also. But it's funny that people would actually go through this process. Emulation of x86 on a PPC makes more sense than the other way around, because if you were running both a Mac and Windows, you would certainly want to run the Mac as the HOST and the Windows as the DOG. The main reason emulation is needed is because there are hoards of Windows-only programs that Mac and Unix users have to use. Not so in reverse.
I appreciate the whole "because it's there" thing, but I don't think I'll be rushing to install OS X on an x86 machine when I have a perfectly good PowerBook (mine) and dual G5 (my employer's).
RP
I wonder if this is the first time in Slashdot history that the word "dutch" has been used in two consecutive stories.
RP
He's also in the Toy Story video games and the 2005 Pixar feature, Cars, which is about a group of classic cars who take a trip on Route 66. That one sounds interesting.
Oh, and he's also in The Incredibles, which I guess was implied in the parent post.
RP
I think this is an extremely interesting topic and test. I'd be interested in a bigger version of the same thing. A long list of questions and an entire day to get the answers, judged on both time an accuracy.
It's also great that they seemed to have put pretty good people to the test, which proves that whether you're on the Internet, in the Library, or on the phone, the best information miners will always be the most highly skilled people working with their most effective tools.
The library and phone guys seemed to really be great, and the Google guy wasn't bad. He pointed out Google quoted phrase searching, which is something the general searching public should be more aware of. But I was still not terribly impressed with him. I quizzed myself on the same questions. I'm not British, so I had a bit of a cultural disadvantage (not much of one, though). I blew their Google guy out of the water.
Again, it's not the tools... it's the person using them. Still an extremely interesting experiment.
RP
I strongly recommend Consumer Reports, both the print version (monthly) and the online searchable database. Neither are free, because they don't accept any advertising. They don't even accept free stuff from manufacturers to test. They go out and pay retail for everything that they rate. They're a non-profit organization and they do an excellent job. They not only tell you the best of a given category, but they also tell you the best value, which is not necessarily the best.
My only problem with Consumer Reports is that there are a lot of geeky things that I'm interested in that they don't touch, because they're geared towards the mainstream consumer. Understandable. All in all, some of the best money I've ever spent is on Consumer Reports.
RP
Well, one of many advantages, I would say. But their biggest one was that they plugged a music store into a player that tons of people were already using. We just had to upgrade our regular MP3 player to version 4 and there was another playlist called Music Store.
I think this is better than the web-based interfaces of Wal-mart and others, and it's certainly better than making your customers download a brand new piece of software and expect them to use it to manage their music.
RP
I have to jump in here and say that 10.2 was definitely a great upgrade. With 10.1, the PR that Apple was putting out was that they were still "at the beginning of their performance opportunities," or something like that. This was their way of saying OS X was a dog on much of their hardware. Some of that hardware was mine. I had a PowerBook 550 with 512 MB of RAM and it was not nearly as snappy as I felt it could have been.
Many of us felt that 10.2 took it from being sort of a very public and non-free beta to a viable user experience, and I agree with that. The 10.3 upgrade then took a viable user experience and did some very grand things with it to make it better. But 10.2 was not what I would call a neglible upgrade by any stretch of the imagination.
RP
Anyway with Mac OS X you won't have to worry about duel booting, if you want to run Windows 98SE/Linux or whatever else, VPC does a great job.
I respectfully disagree. I have a PowerBook 550 with 512 MB of RAM and Virtual PC runs XP hideously and 98 disappointingly.
I also happen to have a dual G5, on which Virtual PC doesn't run at all. Good show, Microsoft. My only hope right now is Bochs and I haven't had much time to play around with it.
The moral... software processor emulation sucks.
RP
I couldn't agree with you more. I posted it and I distinctly remember remarking IN THE POST how uninteresting it was. I was very surprised to see modded up to 5.
RP
No, it really IS timely. I just happened to have installed Win98SE last night. I have an old Presario that was tri-booting between Linux, Win98 and Windows 2000 for several years, but actually only ever running Windows 2000. I finally decided the registry just couldn't hack it anymore and it needed a clean swipe. If it was my work machine it would have been reinstalled a long time ago, but it's the family computer and it hasn't been a big priority.
...or not :)
Anyway, as if this story had any chance of getting interesting, I'll continue. Something happened to my Windows 2000 disk and it won't install. Call it karma, since my Windows 98 disk is one I actually bought off the shelf, believe it or not. So here I am actually bringing Windows 98 as up-to-date as is possible. Scary. I'm thinking of going out to buy XP later in the week to upgrade it, but it's only a K6 266 (with 384 MB of RAM... maxed-out, baby). I might actually need to buy the family a new computer.
Interestingly (yes, I'm actually continuing this drivel), I remembered last night what a hassle Windows can be, now that I've been a Mac OS X user for a couple of years. Motherboard video driver, monitor driver, oh yeah -- ethernet driver before anything else. This and that and the other. Hundreds of MB of downloads and a couple of dozen reboots so far, I guess. Yee-hah. Yes, it's my fault for still running an old computer with Windows 98. Anyway, worth a mention.
RP
Yes, folks, this is still a bad idea. I use computers for absolutely everything, but that doesn't mean secondary school students should. They need to learn how to use textbooks. They need to learn how to WRITE... yes, with a PENCIL. They need to learn how to do math without a calculator. And they certainly aren't ready for the school system to just hand them a $1000-1500 pr0n and war3z machine.
Yes, computer literacy is important. But so is LITERACY. Take away my computer today and ask me to do math or write or research a topic in a Library the old fashioned way, and I won't be happy, but I'll get by. These kids won't if you cover them with electrons at this age.
RP
Always remember Pee Wee Herman. Yes, he was in a porno theater, which is an interesting bit of irony since there are only a couple of things one can imagine doing in a porno theater besides "watching" (yeah right) the movie, and what he did was the least offensive of them.
Anyway, the point is... how many times have you taken certain liberties in a darkened theater? Night vision goggles really turn those tables around, don't they? It's a point to ponder before doing something in the theater you wouldn't do in church.
RP