Considering that one of the things it seems the article's computer *can't* do is handle a slashdotting without crashing and going up in flames, I would hardly consider linking to them being a reward.
I love that someone used that "going up in flames after being Slashdotted" cliche on an article about things computers don't actually do.
In Terminator 3, the Terminator T-X is able to take over complete control of automobiles simply by sending a virus to their onboard computers. Forget that none of these cars (most of them older ones at that) have any way for the onboard computer to access steering, acceleration or brakes; the real kicker is when the movie shows one of them actually shifting into gear on its own. And not ONE of them was even a Toyota!
I assumed she quickly installed servos for all that stuff before setting off after the gang.;)
On my Nikon D70, switch to Shutter priority mode (or full manual mode) on the main dial if you're not already there, then the thumbwheel by the shutter release button lets me select the shutter speed I want. It's actually pretty easy. My Nikon N65 was similar. The fact that you don't know how to operate the camera quickly doesn't mean it can't be operated quickly. (And, yes, I've used some all-manual classic cameras... I have a Graflex 35mm laying around here somewhere. I forget the exact model, but I definitely learned shutter speeds and f-stops using it, because it's all manually operated.)
It's pair.com's "Advanced" plan. Bandwidth isn't an issue. Disk space usage is growing, though. I'm about two-thirds of the way to the limit for the plan. Their overage costs are reasonable, and I'll be able to handle a reasonable overage without a problem, but at some point it'll be more than I'm willing to spend on it.
But as others said, getting donations are probably not a problem with this group. I didn't mean to say they would be - people have already sent some even without my request. I was thinking in a more general sense; I've seen site owners run into problems.
I wish I could afford to run it on vBulletin, though. PHP-Nuke is a PITA.
It's less than that - some of those RVs are now in junkyards for various reasons.:) The good news is that the site can't really grow a certain point, since it is such a small market. Hopefully the max size will be within my means.:)
I run a site for owners of a certain model of RV (of which only about 1000 were made, so the market for my site really isn't that large). Fortunately for me and my users, I can afford to run it out of my own pocket, without any ads. In fact, other than the domain name, it didn't cost me any additional money over what I was already paying for web hosting anyway. But, it's slowly growing to the point where it will cost me extra. I can absorb some of that, but at some point I'm going to have to ask for donations or put some ads on it... I'm certain most of my users will understand, but I've seen other sites where the users just don't get it - "This has been free in the past so it should continue to be free!" And that's on sites where people spend thousands of dollars modifying their cars, but are insulted when the site owner asks for $12/yearly toward maintaining the site where they got the info on how to modify their cars...
Four cylinder engines with automatics do suck almost universally (I drove a Toyota Corrolla once that was actually pretty decent about it, but most of the rest...ugh). A 6 or 8 cylinder engine with an automatic is usually far, far better.
I'm a statistician, and as an undergrad I went to a smaller school that only had one or two stats professors, so I got to take about 7 classes with one professor... fortunately, he was a VERY good one. He would spend a class period each semester talking about ethics in statistics. Certain companies may pay you a lot of money, and he acknowledged that's hard to resist coming out of college, but what you may be doing there just isn't morally right. It was a lecture that really made you think. Even though I was never offered one of those jobs, the ethics of what I'm doing each day does cross my mind - am I doing what's best for the results we're trying to produce? Is this the most statistically sound approach I can take? Am I violating a basic assumption of this statistic? And so on. I'm sure a lot of his students just blew off that lecture (it wasn't on the test), and I'm sure he knew that, but I'm glad he gave it anyway.
Your arguments (which I agree with) remind me of the anti-digital camera crowd. They say, "I'll never lose my pictures to a failed hard drive!!!!!!" Obviously, they can lose them to fire, water, etc. And of course, with a decent offsite backup plan, digital photos are far more resistant to disaster.
I work in a relatively new building - it was opened and we moved in in August, 2006. Unfortunately, we've had a number of problems with it, and in particular I know of a couple people who had pipes burst above their desk (in separate incidents, in different parts of the building). They lost pretty much every piece of paper at their desk, but fortunately most of their documents were digital and could be reprinted. Sure, they lost some time getting organized after the cleanup was finished, but they didn't lose anything irreplaceable.
They do look better, but it's not just the wide screen (and most TVs will let you watch it in the standard 4:3 mode). It's also because they've made the lines finer or something.
... and take all of the difficult, but doable steps necessary for identity theft.
If we're talking about the US: Now, yes. But up until fairly recently, there were no "difficult but doable steps" for identity theft. Even in the mid-90s, victims were in hell because no one would believe that they didn't run up the debts themselves, few businesses planned for the possibility, and they victims no way to resolve it.
I mention this because he said, "his uncle" - the problem could have happened long before there really was any recourse for victims of identity theft.
I use online bill payment for most things, but there is one check I write every month for the electric bill, because the company's online bill payment setup is horrendous, so I don't want to use it. If they ever ask me why, I'll explain the problems with their site and that I use plenty of other sites without a problem.
I'm glad they're doing this. I've been a subscriber for a long time and had quite a few back issues. Recently I decided that it wasn't worth keeping them (along with a couple other magazines) and have been slowly recycling them. It's freeing up a lot of space for books and just reducing general clutter.
I'll add to the Pair.com chorus. I had an account with them, then went with another provider that was slightly cheaper, but it wasn't worth it - the site would be slow to load or sometimes not load at all. I got a couple complaints from users about it. After a few months I switched back to Pair and was happy to pay slightly more to get better quality. (And, frankly, Pair ended up being cheaper in my case - the other company required a separate account for each domain you wanted, but with Pair I could have just one account with multiple domains. So, with two domains Pair.com actually became cheaper.) I think the other company was phpwebhosting.com, but I don't remember for certain.
Which brings me to a pet peeve of mine: poorly thought out landscaping on street-corner properties. I know you think your ugly bush looks cool and all, and the tree next to it really hides the street sign you placed them around, but street signs are there for a reason, and blocking drivers' view of oncoming traffic is just plain mean. Stop doing it.
I'll second that. I deal with that in several local parking lots. I don't know what these shopping centers are thinking - I guess they expect everyone will be driving SUVs.
Lately we've had snow piles that effectively do the same thing.
Yeah, but what would the service cost without the phone? If AT&T split out the "phone subsidy" from the monthly price so you could see what it was, I think you'd discover that most of that $1800 is actually what you'd be paying anyway for the service. And it's not like the competing cell phone companies here have very different rate plans - they seem about equivalent to me, last time I checked a couple weeks ago.
For example, let's use T-Mobile, and pretend they offer the iPhone. They discount the price $10/month if you're not subsidizing a phone, I've heard. So the subsidy fee is actually $10*24 months = $240. The other part of the $(monthly fee*24 months) is the service that actually makes the phone useful as a phone/web browser/text message device. You would have to pay that (or a similar amount) at any carrier, regardless of the phone.
I'm not sure why Slashdot has so much trouble understanding this. Slashdotters seem to think that cellular networks, phone networks, and internet bandwidth are free to install and maintain, and that $1800 several people quoted is entirely going to pay for the phone. Last time I checked, $240+$99 or whatever is still far less than the unsubsidized price of $599. (Actually, the subsidy is really less than that in today's dollars, because the monthly fee is worth less and less over time.)
If your real beef is with the two year contract then don't get one. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to sign a contract or buy an iPhone. It's their product, they can offer it on their terms; if you don't like it, you don't have to accept it. And, frankly, two years isn't really that much time. Wait until you buy a house and are "locked in" for 15 or 30 years (Heard over on Housedot: "There are fees to sell a house! OMG! It's a tarp!").
Actually, that would be awesome. A grocery store with products people want subsidised by Google for data mining to sell ads. Imagine searching online and seeing things like Lettuce, Carrots, Croutons and Salad dressing in your targeted advertising because you buy a lot of salad ingredients at Google Grocery.
That already exists. My local grocery store has scanners you can carry around that you use to scan the barcode of items you're buying. Go to the register, give them (or it) any coupons, pay, and you're on your way. But while you're walking around it will occasionally make old-fashioned cash register noises and show you coupons for stuff you happen to be near and stuff you buy a lot (you have to scan your shopper's card to get a scanner in the first place).
I have an LJ 4M+, which works fairly well, but it draws so much current in my house that the lights dim and the UPSs switch over to battery. So, I don't use it much. The house was built in the 60s and has a total of 7 circuits supplying a 3 bedroom/2 bath ranch - and that includes a dedicated circuit for the fridge. One of the eventual upgrades for the house is to get better service (I have 100 amp service now) and a breaker panel that has the room to let me split some circuits.
I remember one that had me laughing pretty hard. I had a description of it typed out here, but then I found it available on the web, so I'll just link to it. I promise, this really is a C&H cartoon.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering that one of the things it seems the article's computer *can't* do is handle a slashdotting without crashing and going up in flames, I would hardly consider linking to them being a reward.
I love that someone used that "going up in flames after being Slashdotted" cliche on an article about things computers don't actually do.
In Terminator 3, the Terminator T-X is able to take over complete control of automobiles simply by sending a virus to their onboard computers. Forget that none of these cars (most of them older ones at that) have any way for the onboard computer to access steering, acceleration or brakes; the real kicker is when the movie shows one of them actually shifting into gear on its own. And not ONE of them was even a Toyota!
I assumed she quickly installed servos for all that stuff before setting off after the gang. ;)
On my Nikon D70, switch to Shutter priority mode (or full manual mode) on the main dial if you're not already there, then the thumbwheel by the shutter release button lets me select the shutter speed I want. It's actually pretty easy. My Nikon N65 was similar. The fact that you don't know how to operate the camera quickly doesn't mean it can't be operated quickly. (And, yes, I've used some all-manual classic cameras... I have a Graflex 35mm laying around here somewhere. I forget the exact model, but I definitely learned shutter speeds and f-stops using it, because it's all manually operated.)
It's pair.com's "Advanced" plan. Bandwidth isn't an issue. Disk space usage is growing, though. I'm about two-thirds of the way to the limit for the plan. Their overage costs are reasonable, and I'll be able to handle a reasonable overage without a problem, but at some point it'll be more than I'm willing to spend on it.
But as others said, getting donations are probably not a problem with this group. I didn't mean to say they would be - people have already sent some even without my request. I was thinking in a more general sense; I've seen site owners run into problems.
I wish I could afford to run it on vBulletin, though. PHP-Nuke is a PITA.
You don't.
It's less than that - some of those RVs are now in junkyards for various reasons. :) The good news is that the site can't really grow a certain point, since it is such a small market. Hopefully the max size will be within my means. :)
I run a site for owners of a certain model of RV (of which only about 1000 were made, so the market for my site really isn't that large). Fortunately for me and my users, I can afford to run it out of my own pocket, without any ads. In fact, other than the domain name, it didn't cost me any additional money over what I was already paying for web hosting anyway. But, it's slowly growing to the point where it will cost me extra. I can absorb some of that, but at some point I'm going to have to ask for donations or put some ads on it... I'm certain most of my users will understand, but I've seen other sites where the users just don't get it - "This has been free in the past so it should continue to be free!" And that's on sites where people spend thousands of dollars modifying their cars, but are insulted when the site owner asks for $12/yearly toward maintaining the site where they got the info on how to modify their cars...
Clearly, you haven't tried getting $500 million from Congress for something.
Four cylinder engines with automatics do suck almost universally (I drove a Toyota Corrolla once that was actually pretty decent about it, but most of the rest...ugh). A 6 or 8 cylinder engine with an automatic is usually far, far better.
I'm a statistician, and as an undergrad I went to a smaller school that only had one or two stats professors, so I got to take about 7 classes with one professor... fortunately, he was a VERY good one. He would spend a class period each semester talking about ethics in statistics. Certain companies may pay you a lot of money, and he acknowledged that's hard to resist coming out of college, but what you may be doing there just isn't morally right. It was a lecture that really made you think. Even though I was never offered one of those jobs, the ethics of what I'm doing each day does cross my mind - am I doing what's best for the results we're trying to produce? Is this the most statistically sound approach I can take? Am I violating a basic assumption of this statistic? And so on. I'm sure a lot of his students just blew off that lecture (it wasn't on the test), and I'm sure he knew that, but I'm glad he gave it anyway.
Your arguments (which I agree with) remind me of the anti-digital camera crowd. They say, "I'll never lose my pictures to a failed hard drive!!!!!!" Obviously, they can lose them to fire, water, etc. And of course, with a decent offsite backup plan, digital photos are far more resistant to disaster.
I work in a relatively new building - it was opened and we moved in in August, 2006. Unfortunately, we've had a number of problems with it, and in particular I know of a couple people who had pipes burst above their desk (in separate incidents, in different parts of the building). They lost pretty much every piece of paper at their desk, but fortunately most of their documents were digital and could be reprinted. Sure, they lost some time getting organized after the cleanup was finished, but they didn't lose anything irreplaceable.
They've been using computers since the 9th season (or somewhere around there).
They do look better, but it's not just the wide screen (and most TVs will let you watch it in the standard 4:3 mode). It's also because they've made the lines finer or something.
... and take all of the difficult, but doable steps necessary for identity theft.
If we're talking about the US: Now, yes. But up until fairly recently, there were no "difficult but doable steps" for identity theft. Even in the mid-90s, victims were in hell because no one would believe that they didn't run up the debts themselves, few businesses planned for the possibility, and they victims no way to resolve it.
I mention this because he said, "his uncle" - the problem could have happened long before there really was any recourse for victims of identity theft.
I use online bill payment for most things, but there is one check I write every month for the electric bill, because the company's online bill payment setup is horrendous, so I don't want to use it. If they ever ask me why, I'll explain the problems with their site and that I use plenty of other sites without a problem.
I'm glad they're doing this. I've been a subscriber for a long time and had quite a few back issues. Recently I decided that it wasn't worth keeping them (along with a couple other magazines) and have been slowly recycling them. It's freeing up a lot of space for books and just reducing general clutter.
I'll add to the Pair.com chorus. I had an account with them, then went with another provider that was slightly cheaper, but it wasn't worth it - the site would be slow to load or sometimes not load at all. I got a couple complaints from users about it. After a few months I switched back to Pair and was happy to pay slightly more to get better quality. (And, frankly, Pair ended up being cheaper in my case - the other company required a separate account for each domain you wanted, but with Pair I could have just one account with multiple domains. So, with two domains Pair.com actually became cheaper.) I think the other company was phpwebhosting.com, but I don't remember for certain.
Which brings me to a pet peeve of mine: poorly thought out landscaping on street-corner properties. I know you think your ugly bush looks cool and all, and the tree next to it really hides the street sign you placed them around, but street signs are there for a reason, and blocking drivers' view of oncoming traffic is just plain mean. Stop doing it.
I'll second that. I deal with that in several local parking lots. I don't know what these shopping centers are thinking - I guess they expect everyone will be driving SUVs.
Lately we've had snow piles that effectively do the same thing.
Yeah, but what would the service cost without the phone? If AT&T split out the "phone subsidy" from the monthly price so you could see what it was, I think you'd discover that most of that $1800 is actually what you'd be paying anyway for the service. And it's not like the competing cell phone companies here have very different rate plans - they seem about equivalent to me, last time I checked a couple weeks ago.
For example, let's use T-Mobile, and pretend they offer the iPhone. They discount the price $10/month if you're not subsidizing a phone, I've heard. So the subsidy fee is actually $10*24 months = $240. The other part of the $(monthly fee*24 months) is the service that actually makes the phone useful as a phone/web browser/text message device. You would have to pay that (or a similar amount) at any carrier, regardless of the phone.
I'm not sure why Slashdot has so much trouble understanding this. Slashdotters seem to think that cellular networks, phone networks, and internet bandwidth are free to install and maintain, and that $1800 several people quoted is entirely going to pay for the phone. Last time I checked, $240+$99 or whatever is still far less than the unsubsidized price of $599. (Actually, the subsidy is really less than that in today's dollars, because the monthly fee is worth less and less over time.)
If your real beef is with the two year contract then don't get one. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to sign a contract or buy an iPhone. It's their product, they can offer it on their terms; if you don't like it, you don't have to accept it. And, frankly, two years isn't really that much time. Wait until you buy a house and are "locked in" for 15 or 30 years (Heard over on Housedot: "There are fees to sell a house! OMG! It's a tarp!").
Actually, that would be awesome. A grocery store with products people want subsidised by Google for data mining to sell ads. Imagine searching online and seeing things like Lettuce, Carrots, Croutons and Salad dressing in your targeted advertising because you buy a lot of salad ingredients at Google Grocery.
That already exists. My local grocery store has scanners you can carry around that you use to scan the barcode of items you're buying. Go to the register, give them (or it) any coupons, pay, and you're on your way. But while you're walking around it will occasionally make old-fashioned cash register noises and show you coupons for stuff you happen to be near and stuff you buy a lot (you have to scan your shopper's card to get a scanner in the first place).
Billions and billions of dollars.
I have an LJ 4M+, which works fairly well, but it draws so much current in my house that the lights dim and the UPSs switch over to battery. So, I don't use it much. The house was built in the 60s and has a total of 7 circuits supplying a 3 bedroom/2 bath ranch - and that includes a dedicated circuit for the fridge. One of the eventual upgrades for the house is to get better service (I have 100 amp service now) and a breaker panel that has the room to let me split some circuits.
...the sentiment I have received from Fox News was that their country was stolen from them and the government was overthrown...
To be fair, this is pretty much how the Democrats were acting from 2000-2008.
I'm glad Obama won. I was tired of hearing the Democrats bitch. Now I get to listen to a different group bitching for a while.
Does anyone actually care about working to improve the country, or is it just constant sniping at the other political party?
That an entire generation has grown up without constant hijackings, that says something.
...yeah, it says we were doing pretty well without these scanners.
I remember one that had me laughing pretty hard. I had a description of it typed out here, but then I found it available on the web, so I'll just link to it. I promise, this really is a C&H cartoon.