Fortunately, there has been a working alternative to GPS in military aircraft, and it's been around for quite a few decades now.
While accuracy can drift wildly over time (unless it has *huge* gyros, like the monster set that the B-52 carries), for short and medium-duration sorties they're quite serviceable as a backup - especially when chained to terrain-mapping/recognition.
You do have to wonder how you could 'loose track' of your employees in this day and age...
Depends on the job, I guess.
In a given project, if I (as the sysadmin) "hid", then the environments wouldn't be set (or would simply break), and I'd have a PM and up to 2 dozen developers screaming at management for my presence. If one of those developers "hid", he or she would immediately be zeroed in on for not doing their end of the work, or not cleaning up defects assigned to them. If the PM "hid", the client would, well, go apeshit because the PM is the client's point of contact.
A lot of people (thought granted not everybody) find that after spending some time in a collaborative environment the background conversations move from being a distraction to an undercurrent of information. It becomes possible to tune it out but still hear keywords that might be relevant and allow for better teamwork.
Dude, seriously? No - it's a distraction. Hearing certain keywords when dragging together scripts or code only pulls your brain away from what you're busy trying to construct in your mind. Unless what you do for a living is rote or repetitive, conversations that you're not actively participating in are distractions.
Conversations happen much faster.
...and also rely on memory. Interesting IMs and email threads can be saved off for later contemplation, and don't degrade as easily as a multitasking human mind.
...which leads to a point for those of us who are childless:
I get a *shitload* more work done here at home (no kids, just dogs) than I do in an office full of people yapping, project managers who love to stop by unannounced to slip in extra things to do (at home I can conveniently ignore IM and email until you have time to deal with them), and other team members who want their particular ancillary crap done right now! (and hey, since you're right there...)
Yeah - much prefer working at home.
Recently (as in, Friday), some executive in my company decided that telecommuting must die. Probably read it in some shiny CxO magazine or something. In one fell swoop, he has managed to force those of us who work remotely to take a pay cut (the money now goes into the gas tank), waste hours otherwise spent tidying up things a little late (because now we're commuting), and in general shoving morale into the toilet. Mind you, my commute is 80 miles long in each direction.
Maybe I'm bitching, but I average 2-3 (FT, not contract) offers each month from headhunters. I usually turn them down immediately since none to date had telecommuting as an option. If I have to make the drive anyway, I may as well get a bigger paycheck out of the deal, so the next offers that come down the pike...
Small point of order: If a resource becomes overconsumed (as you put it), then the price for accessing (and using) it rises to the point where it is no longer consumed as heavily.
The only exception to this rule involves intervention by government via actions such as price controls.
Err, no - the phrase "dead lay" pops up mentally too much when I think of doing so.
I live out here in the sticks. Damned near half the county uses boosters, because, well, we have to. Between the abundance of mountains and the twisty roads, it's a given that if you want a signal, you get a booster.
Hell, the carriers should be grateful we do, since w/o the boosters, they'd get to hear about how their coverage sucks, and they'd either have to put in more towers ($$$!), or have to do some shrinkage on their cute little coverage maps. (Yes, on the latter they would pretty much have to. Here in Tillamook county, residents aren't afraid to give the sales droid a good loud "bullshit!" when shown a carrier's local coverage map - especially if that carrier is AT&T.)
Urgh. Why did they have to go and screw it up like that with excess computerization?
What the hell ever happened to good ol' KY-58? It worked, could take a beating, was a NATO standard, and was drop-easy to maintain. It couldn't have taken too much to update its crypto strength...:/
Honey is one of the few foods to have a shelf life that approaches the half-life of uranium. There's honey dug up out of ancient Egyptian tombs that is/was still considered edible.
OTOH, the taste apparently degrades with time, which may explain GP's assertion.
The man rakes in way north of $400k a year from just his paycheck and subsequent pension... do you seriously think he's going to quibble over a $300 ETF?
...seriously - even if it got 500,000 signatures, I doubt the White house will do a damned thing about it. The law would have to be reversed by Congress, and right now, even if Obama wanted to, he's going to save his political capital for those fights which advance his own goals
That's easy, and all in how the media reports it on the local evening news:
1) "Child porn was downloaded repeatedly at a local Starbucks" - Translation? Viewer thinks that some pervert went to a Starbucks and downloaded CP, thus Starbucks is not to blame.
2) "Child porn was downloaded repeatedly at the home of a local resident" - Translation? Viewer thinks that *you*, the homeowner, are the pervert. Enough said, no?
I have never paid for MS Office in my entire life (and never used MS Office on my home machinery ever since OpenOffice was first released.)
I strongly suspect that most other folks can say the same - that they either use FOSS by now, or just use a copy 'borrowed' from work, the local torrent warehouse, or wherever.
Serious question - who on Earth actually pays for the thing for home use?
You have to go in to pay... IIRC that's for any transaction, unless you want them to only put in exactly what you hand 'em in cash ($10, $20, etc). Been awhile since I've been to one though; I moved to the coast a year ago.
(for everyone else - Oregon won't let you pump your own gas, so most folks just stay in the car.)
My credit union reimburses me for any ATM fees charged in their networks, so I don't look too deeply, but yes - if you use your own bank's ATM machines, you're good to go. OTOH, unless you have a rather large bank (or an arrangement such as that which my CU has).
OTOH, "one of the bazillion ATMs" really wasn't specific about that.;)
"Stealing implies that you don't keep your copy. You still do." is that the same for downloading music?
No, but a better music analogy is at hand: some no-name band writes and sings an excellent but little-known song, then Justin Bieber hears it, and shortly after sings/releases the same song (with a few small changes) as if he wrote it.
I've already swiped my credit card while the clerk is still scanning the first item. When they finish scanning everything, I might not even have to sign the screen (for a small enough transaction). For cash, you can't do anything until you get the total.
Not sure about other places, but at least here in Oregon most stores have you confirm the total amount, and there is still the delay while the charge is authorized. This authorization lag can be fractions of a second for the big boys, up to a full minute for the small shops (while the modem dials and does the transaction one at a time).
There is also one big, fat disadvantage of using a card: The phrase "I'm sorry, but your card was declined". I live in a rural area where tourists often don't keep track of their purchases during their stay out here. As a result, I've waited in line behind quite a few folks who have had that phrase spoken to them. Usually the card is first re-run to rule out some error, then they try and remove items to some guessed amount of credit remaining, re-run the transaction again, maybe do it one or two other times, then finally everything goes through (or not). That, or they just sigh and pay with cash for whatever items their on-hand cash will buy.
The logic is (almost) sound. I see a few points of failure here...
* A typical register will have something like $50 in change sitting in there, with maybe $50 as backup for every two registers or so. A typical large local grocery store with 20 registers would barely need $1500 in change money sitting around, with maybe $500 more for the customer service desk. Way short of your $10k figure, and the excess gets deposited nightly at the nearest bank anyway as income, where it gets put to use for the business. Even on a macro scale (say, Wal-Mart), $10k would easily cover change for 3 or 4 supercenters, or what you'd find in a typical city. Compared to the hundreds of thousands of bucks that those 3-4 supercenters suck in each day, $10k is chump change.
* If you have a bank branch for your business' bank close by and it's during most of the business' open hours, you just go get more change - takes a few minutes, tops (you notice it's running low, you go get more...)
* CC transactions often take just as long, if not longer than cash. The transaction has to be authorized before you're done, grocery purchases can be half-and-half (say, half debit, half EBT), etc.
* What if the buyer doesn't have enough to pay for the complete purchase? Any time the cashier turns and says "I'm sorry, your card was declined", everyone in line waits while a guessing game is played: how much does the declined shopper have in his/her account, as transactions are re-run multiple times to find out? With cash, both parties know on the spot how much the buyer is short, and can adjust accordingly.
...or hit one of the bazillion ATMs in town and not get stuck with the fees...
Point of order: ATMs usually charge around a set fee (around $3.00) or a set percentage in fees (with few exceptions) per transaction, so unless you drag out $200.00 or more in each go, you're pretty much paying the same to the ATM that you would to VISA, Mastercard, et al.
I understand and empathize with your point, but would suggest that you may want to hit your local bank branch and get that cash from the teller.
That depends... to the typical person who is poor, they're going to use cash and checks (and maybe debit) anyway. Why? Because most will have cashed their paychecks at the grocery store, Wal-Mart, and suchlike. The advertised discount is a bonus to 'em.
We have something similar here in Oregon; the "am/pm" (Arco) gas stations. You pay a surcharge if you use plastic (debit or credit) to buy your gas. The stations are usually packed to the rafters - they're often sited in the less prosperous areas of town. The average price per tankful (say, 15 gallons) works out to around 10 cents less per gallon if you pay cash.
Not defending it or suchlike, but take it as you will.
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Fortunately, there has been a working alternative to GPS in military aircraft, and it's been around for quite a few decades now.
While accuracy can drift wildly over time (unless it has *huge* gyros, like the monster set that the B-52 carries), for short and medium-duration sorties they're quite serviceable as a backup - especially when chained to terrain-mapping/recognition.
You do have to wonder how you could 'loose track' of your employees in this day and age...
Depends on the job, I guess.
In a given project, if I (as the sysadmin) "hid", then the environments wouldn't be set (or would simply break), and I'd have a PM and up to 2 dozen developers screaming at management for my presence. If one of those developers "hid", he or she would immediately be zeroed in on for not doing their end of the work, or not cleaning up defects assigned to them. If the PM "hid", the client would, well, go apeshit because the PM is the client's point of contact.
A lot of people (thought granted not everybody) find that after spending some time in a collaborative environment the background conversations move from being a distraction to an undercurrent of information. It becomes possible to tune it out but still hear keywords that might be relevant and allow for better teamwork.
Dude, seriously? No - it's a distraction. Hearing certain keywords when dragging together scripts or code only pulls your brain away from what you're busy trying to construct in your mind. Unless what you do for a living is rote or repetitive, conversations that you're not actively participating in are distractions.
Conversations happen much faster.
...and also rely on memory. Interesting IMs and email threads can be saved off for later contemplation, and don't degrade as easily as a multitasking human mind.
Yeah - worked in one of those once. I'd rather masturbate with a fistful of broken glass than do that ever again... even cubes are preferable.
...which leads to a point for those of us who are childless:
I get a *shitload* more work done here at home (no kids, just dogs) than I do in an office full of people yapping, project managers who love to stop by unannounced to slip in extra things to do (at home I can conveniently ignore IM and email until you have time to deal with them), and other team members who want their particular ancillary crap done right now! (and hey, since you're right there...)
Yeah - much prefer working at home.
Recently (as in, Friday), some executive in my company decided that telecommuting must die. Probably read it in some shiny CxO magazine or something. In one fell swoop, he has managed to force those of us who work remotely to take a pay cut (the money now goes into the gas tank), waste hours otherwise spent tidying up things a little late (because now we're commuting), and in general shoving morale into the toilet. Mind you, my commute is 80 miles long in each direction.
Maybe I'm bitching, but I average 2-3 (FT, not contract) offers each month from headhunters. I usually turn them down immediately since none to date had telecommuting as an option. If I have to make the drive anyway, I may as well get a bigger paycheck out of the deal, so the next offers that come down the pike...
Small point of order: If a resource becomes overconsumed (as you put it), then the price for accessing (and using) it rises to the point where it is no longer consumed as heavily.
The only exception to this rule involves intervention by government via actions such as price controls.
Err, no - the phrase "dead lay" pops up mentally too much when I think of doing so.
I live out here in the sticks. Damned near half the county uses boosters, because, well, we have to. Between the abundance of mountains and the twisty roads, it's a given that if you want a signal, you get a booster.
Hell, the carriers should be grateful we do, since w/o the boosters, they'd get to hear about how their coverage sucks, and they'd either have to put in more towers ($$$!), or have to do some shrinkage on their cute little coverage maps. (Yes, on the latter they would pretty much have to. Here in Tillamook county, residents aren't afraid to give the sales droid a good loud "bullshit!" when shown a carrier's local coverage map - especially if that carrier is AT&T.)
Urgh. Why did they have to go and screw it up like that with excess computerization?
What the hell ever happened to good ol' KY-58? It worked, could take a beating, was a NATO standard, and was drop-easy to maintain. It couldn't have taken too much to update its crypto strength... :/
Honey is one of the few foods to have a shelf life that approaches the half-life of uranium. There's honey dug up out of ancient Egyptian tombs that is/was still considered edible.
OTOH, the taste apparently degrades with time, which may explain GP's assertion.
Damn. Why do I now get the mental image of a cat dressed in tinfoil?
pigs (in space) ...
Been done before, in the 1970s
The man rakes in way north of $400k a year from just his paycheck and subsequent pension... do you seriously think he's going to quibble over a $300 ETF?
...seriously - even if it got 500,000 signatures, I doubt the White house will do a damned thing about it. The law would have to be reversed by Congress, and right now, even if Obama wanted to, he's going to save his political capital for those fights which advance his own goals
That's easy, and all in how the media reports it on the local evening news:
1) "Child porn was downloaded repeatedly at a local Starbucks" - Translation? Viewer thinks that some pervert went to a Starbucks and downloaded CP, thus Starbucks is not to blame.
2) "Child porn was downloaded repeatedly at the home of a local resident" - Translation? Viewer thinks that *you*, the homeowner, are the pervert. Enough said, no?
I have never paid for MS Office in my entire life (and never used MS Office on my home machinery ever since OpenOffice was first released.)
I strongly suspect that most other folks can say the same - that they either use FOSS by now, or just use a copy 'borrowed' from work, the local torrent warehouse, or wherever.
Serious question - who on Earth actually pays for the thing for home use?
I suspect that most new Windows 8 devices remain intact only as long as it takes to pop in a pirated copy of Windows 7...
Never said that - just that the preponderance of cash-only customers are going to be on the low end of the wealth scale.
You have to go in to pay... IIRC that's for any transaction, unless you want them to only put in exactly what you hand 'em in cash ($10, $20, etc). Been awhile since I've been to one though; I moved to the coast a year ago.
(for everyone else - Oregon won't let you pump your own gas, so most folks just stay in the car.)
My credit union reimburses me for any ATM fees charged in their networks, so I don't look too deeply, but yes - if you use your own bank's ATM machines, you're good to go. OTOH, unless you have a rather large bank (or an arrangement such as that which my CU has).
OTOH, "one of the bazillion ATMs" really wasn't specific about that. ;)
"Stealing implies that you don't keep your copy. You still do." is that the same for downloading music?
No, but a better music analogy is at hand: some no-name band writes and sings an excellent but little-known song, then Justin Bieber hears it, and shortly after sings/releases the same song (with a few small changes) as if he wrote it.
I've already swiped my credit card while the clerk is still scanning the first item. When they finish scanning everything, I might not even have to sign the screen (for a small enough transaction). For cash, you can't do anything until you get the total.
Not sure about other places, but at least here in Oregon most stores have you confirm the total amount, and there is still the delay while the charge is authorized. This authorization lag can be fractions of a second for the big boys, up to a full minute for the small shops (while the modem dials and does the transaction one at a time).
There is also one big, fat disadvantage of using a card: The phrase "I'm sorry, but your card was declined". I live in a rural area where tourists often don't keep track of their purchases during their stay out here. As a result, I've waited in line behind quite a few folks who have had that phrase spoken to them. Usually the card is first re-run to rule out some error, then they try and remove items to some guessed amount of credit remaining, re-run the transaction again, maybe do it one or two other times, then finally everything goes through (or not). That, or they just sigh and pay with cash for whatever items their on-hand cash will buy.
The logic is (almost) sound. I see a few points of failure here...
* A typical register will have something like $50 in change sitting in there, with maybe $50 as backup for every two registers or so. A typical large local grocery store with 20 registers would barely need $1500 in change money sitting around, with maybe $500 more for the customer service desk. Way short of your $10k figure, and the excess gets deposited nightly at the nearest bank anyway as income, where it gets put to use for the business. Even on a macro scale (say, Wal-Mart), $10k would easily cover change for 3 or 4 supercenters, or what you'd find in a typical city. Compared to the hundreds of thousands of bucks that those 3-4 supercenters suck in each day, $10k is chump change.
* If you have a bank branch for your business' bank close by and it's during most of the business' open hours, you just go get more change - takes a few minutes, tops (you notice it's running low, you go get more...)
* CC transactions often take just as long, if not longer than cash. The transaction has to be authorized before you're done, grocery purchases can be half-and-half (say, half debit, half EBT), etc.
* What if the buyer doesn't have enough to pay for the complete purchase? Any time the cashier turns and says "I'm sorry, your card was declined", everyone in line waits while a guessing game is played: how much does the declined shopper have in his/her account, as transactions are re-run multiple times to find out? With cash, both parties know on the spot how much the buyer is short, and can adjust accordingly.
...or hit one of the bazillion ATMs in town and not get stuck with the fees...
Point of order: ATMs usually charge around a set fee (around $3.00) or a set percentage in fees (with few exceptions) per transaction, so unless you drag out $200.00 or more in each go, you're pretty much paying the same to the ATM that you would to VISA, Mastercard, et al.
I understand and empathize with your point, but would suggest that you may want to hit your local bank branch and get that cash from the teller.
That depends... to the typical person who is poor, they're going to use cash and checks (and maybe debit) anyway. Why? Because most will have cashed their paychecks at the grocery store, Wal-Mart, and suchlike. The advertised discount is a bonus to 'em.
We have something similar here in Oregon; the "am/pm" (Arco) gas stations. You pay a surcharge if you use plastic (debit or credit) to buy your gas. The stations are usually packed to the rafters - they're often sited in the less prosperous areas of town. The average price per tankful (say, 15 gallons) works out to around 10 cents less per gallon if you pay cash.
Not defending it or suchlike, but take it as you will.
Actually, VMWare View does a lot of what you suggested already. ;)