Who said anything about auto unions? Ever think there are unions in other industries? And did you notice where I said "many of them"? Perhaps I think there are some unions that do good.
Please provide an example of what you're describing. I do a lot of SAS programming, and I can't think of a situation where x=y is the same as y=x, other than in If statements. The only thing I can think of right now that comes close is that you can do something like, "0<=x<=12" if you want to check that x is between 0 and 12, a construct that really surprised me the first time I saw it.
When I'm showing SAS to new people, I tell them to forget any prior programming experience they have. That's not really true, of course: standard programming logic does apply, you just have to understand how the data step works before you can be effective, and I've found it's best to go in with a mostly blank slate.
My gripes with SAS are the bugs: for example, proc import will silently drop values from a dataset if they don't match what it determined that field should be - SAS probably doesn't consider this a bug, but I do. Silently dropping data has to be the Ultimate Sin for a statistical analysis package.
I can see that you haven't updated your view of unions since then. Now, many of them have gotten fat and lazy and worthless and are actually killing companies that should be succeeding. Enjoy your own propaganda.
I just counted: at work I have 27 passwords on my list. Maybe 4 of those are for defunct systems, but everything else I use at least occasionally. Just about all of them have to be changed every three months, to a new 13-character string. There's no way I could remember all of them. And these are all different from my my "personal" passwords for things like root/admin, websites, banks, etc. I requested software to manage passwords, but of course it was ignored. I'm pretty sure everyone has a list somewhere, because they don't want to spend all day on the phone getting passwords reset. We definitely need a better solution. I'm starting to think fingerprint readers on our computers WOULD be a good idea, except that I know our security office: they'd require the fingerprint AND a password.
Yeah, I buy NVidia cards because I know they are supported under Linux. My one experience with an ATI card was not very good (although it was in a laptop). However, I hope the kernel dual-head support is better than NVidia's for my current card - mine will shut off the primary monitor (which gives an "out of range" error message) from time to time. VERY annoying, and I know it's not the monitor because I've had the same problem with two totally different monitors (two CRTs vs. two LCDs, running at different resolutions and clock speeds).
Every time I see a picture of it, I think how they could have designed it a bit more ergonomically. It looks like a committees designed each part without talking to each other.
Wait... you want an unmanned robot that's on a planet no human has visited to be a more comfortable workstation?
However, as a private person, I pay my internet subscription and as part of that I get up to five (familial) email addresses without hassle. Why should I invest in a private domain name ?
One huge advantage is that you can keep the same email addresses even if you change ISPs.
If Verizon does that, AT&T will be quick to point it out in the ads. Somehow, I don't think Verizon is quite that stupid, although I could be totally wrong.
Yes, they are that stupid, but like the other response said, there is no real competition between providers. Verizon has been doing this with their BREW system for years. Some apps have both a "permanent" subscription option and a monthly subscription option, but there are others that are monthly only, such as the navigation application. I bought a permanent license for Tetris for $6 years ago, on my previous phone, instead of paying $1.99/month for it. (Of course, Tetris didn't carry over to my new phone with Verizon, which is why I have the word permanent in quotes.)
I'm thinking a moving walkway that goes quickly enough that even a fast runner wouldn't be able to cross it the wrong way. Bonus: at the end, the travelers get thrown toward the baggage carousels.
I had to deal with a PDF form recently, from the DMV. Basically you filled it out and then printed it out.
Screw the DMV. If they're going to make me wait in line for an hour, they can spend an extra 10 minutes trying to figure out my hand writing.
You don't want to do that. I had a situation a couple years ago where the DMV misread what I'd written (and I have reasonably good handwriting) and put incorrect information for the lienholder on the title. Well, my credit union wanted me to fix it, of course, because they were afraid they wouldn't get paid if the vehicle was totaled. Long story short, it took three trips to the DMV (with hour-long waits each time) to fix the problem. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember one problem they had was that the letter from my credit union wasn't on letterhead that had their address, or something crazy like that.
Eventually I got it all straightened out and was glad I was done with the DMV for a while. Then I discovered that when I was registering that vehicle, the DMV incorrectly canceled the registration on another vehicle I owned. Back to the DMV again...
Does anyone else remember the new Denver Airport's original luggage system? This system singlehandedly delayed the airport's opening for over a year. Eventually the airport retrofitted a standard baggage moving system. If someone has access to the code of the original system, they could easily submit that.
For that task, the area is not “word processing”, but “DTP”.
InDesign, QuarkXPress, Scribus and (La)TeX would be the tools for that.
Years ago, I was working with a contractor to write some user manuals. I assumed it'd be done in some desktop publishing software package like you listed - these people are pros, right? (I didn't write the contract or have much control over it.) I was stunned - and scared - when the manuals came back in Word format. The files have held up reasonably well through several cycles of edits, so perhaps it's not as insane as I first thought, but I'm damn glad I'm not the one that has to edit them. And I'm sure sooner or later we'll upgrade to a Word version that will bork them.
Flaw in your argument: people already exist and eat that food anyway. This idea is to take heat that already exists and is being wasted (sometimes) and make it do useful work for us.
Maybe because US consumers were not interested? I'm not being arrogant here, that's a real question. I really don't understand.
And that's the primary answer. US consumers aren't interested. I can think of a couple reasons:
Older diesels gave diesels a bad name. We used to have an '85 Jetta diesel that ran like this: "knocka knocka knocka ping thunk". The car rattled horribly (probably from the shaking from the engine over the years). Sure it got over 40 MPG, but people want smooth, quiet cars. I know current diesels can do that, but most people don't.
Diesels were known for having poor power. We had a V6 Cutlass Ciera (midsize, early 90s car) that had way too little power. If you were behind someone doing 50 MPH on the highway in the right lane, you literally did NOT have the power to pass them. You'd pull out in the other lane, step on it... and you'd just sit there, not gaining on them. For trucks that were used for heavy hauling/towing, sure, they'd get good mileage, but if you stepped on it for some reason, it took quite a while for power to show up. Again, I know current diesels run like gas engines (or better) in these situations, but that's how it was and it's what people remember.
Also, fewer gas stations carry diesel. Many stations do; it's not rare by any means. But I can think of several off the top of my head that don't carry diesel at all.
It's a Macbook Pro. At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, so far I love it. It has useful command line access like Linux, but with much better GUI polish. I still use Linux for my desktop machine at home, and this is the first Apple machine I've bought, though I did use them a lot in college back in the System 7 days.
When I was looking to replace my previous laptop, I didn't want to buy Windows again, and I wasn't happy with the Linux laptop offerings, so I thought I'd try Apple this time around.
I thought I wanted a netbook, but I was somewhat concerned I wouldn't be happy with it. I eventually decided to get a small "real" laptop, and I've been thrilled with it. 4.5 lbs, 13" display, 7 hours of battery life. It was more expensive, of course, but at $1200 it was far cheaper than my last laptop (7 lbs, 15" display, 2 hours of battery life on a good day, $1600).
My employer recently announced that we're all upgrading from Office 2000 to Office 2007, since 2000 is going EOL. My fiancee was pleased, because she has 2007 on her personal laptop and will no longer have to worry about saving as older version. I was scared, because even minor upgrades for Office have broken files for me (the last service pack to Office 2000 did that - I was no longer able to open a file I'd been working on; I had to get the support staff to downgrade me again so I could re-read the file; I ended up redoing it in WordPerfect). I'm hoping it goes smoothly, but I worry there'll be some file I need that I can no longer read. (No, OpenOffice.org and the like are not an option here. Yes, they work great. No, I can't install it.)
I have a coworker who has no inside voice. She was a cheerleader in high school (she's well past that now - her kids are graduating from college), and she has the stereotypical energy and voice for it. She's also very intelligent and does good work. But, she's very loud. Even when she's not talking to someone, she'll randomly call things out like, "I'M NOT GETTING ANYTHING DONE, GUYS!" Apparently she feels the need to spread the lack of productivity around.
One time I was meeting with someone at my desk, and she said (not to anyone in particular), "Do you know what it's like not to be getting anything done?" The guy I was meeting with said, "Yes, we're experiencing that right now."
I've complained to our supervisor a couple times, and she'll stop for a while, but she always reverts back to who she is. She just doesn't get that people find loud noises distracting, I think because she doesn't find it distracting. I can't figure how she's gone working 40 years without understanding this, but there it is.
If our supervisor told me I couldn't wear headphones, I'd tell her that my coworker must wear a muzzle. Fortunately, our supervisor, years ago, was in a similar situation that I'm in (with the same coworker!), so she understands why I get frustrated and upset. And she knows it'd be crazy to outlaw headphones - everyone that sits near the loud coworker has them, because we NEED them.
And truthfully? I loved this feature. I would order out to restaurants and at the end it would be like "do you want to share this over Facebook" and I'd be like "Shit why not!" and I'd get a laugh out of my friends criticizing or commending me on my food choice.
Yeah, that's cool. But what about the person who rented the DVD AIDS and HIV Answers from Blockbuster and had that rental show up on their Facebook profile without their knowledge or permission?
As I understand it, you had to specifically approve each post. And if you didn't explicitly approve it, it would be ignored. At least, that's how I read FAQ #2. I never used it, never even ran into it, so I really can't say much about it beyond what I read on that site today. I agree the information sharing is annoying, but it doesn't sound like it posted info publicly automatically.
I work for the federal government, and we have a contractor that I swear cannot communicate in any way BUT PowerPoint. It's really annoying. In addition to meetings that actually are presentations of their work (and thus reasonably suitable grounds for a presentation), almost every meeting we had with them involved a PowerPoint presentation. In meetings where we're trying to resolve an issue, this setup is especially bad since it sets up a "speaker/audience" dynamic instead of a group discussion dynamic. Eventually I started seeing the humor of it and started collecting their slides, but that was after I discarded several reams worth of printed out slides... even with what's left, the pile is probably 6 inches thick.
I can't help but imagine their children get lectured by PowerPoint, too. "First slide: Ball through the window. Next slide: Damage caused. Next slide: Amount to repair.... Last slide: You won't do this again." This is probably how the stories of grade-school kids needing to do PowerPoint presentations came to be.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but you're trading one evil master for another, not getting a better situation.
Yeah, I know, and that's why I was hoping the Droid would be better.. One of the things I don't like about the iPhone is that Apple is in control (basically) of what apps I can install, unless I jailbreak it, which I really feel I shouldn't have to do. Also, I've been wondering if Apple has the ability to remove apps from devices (ala the Kindle)... if so, that would be extremely annoying.
Yeah, but I want to do a lot more with the laptop. My fiancee has an iPod Touch now, and although I like it, I find the keyboard annoying to use, so that'll keep me from doing anything MORE than light browsing.
Pretty much. My fiancee and I will be combining our accounts next spring (she has AT&T, I have Verizon), and AT&T is sort of our default because both of our families use AT&T. We want smart phones, not necessarily the iPhone, and I was excited about the Droid. I should have expected that Verizon would come up with an 'unlimited' but capped at 5 GB plan. Guess it'll be the iPhone after all.
I really do want to be able to tether, because we occasionally travel and don't have WiFi access and I want to use the laptop. But I've survived this long without tethering, and a smart phone will be enough for light web browsing and email.
Electrical codes in the US call for GFI only in bathrooms, kitchens, and outdoors - basically, places where there's likely to be water. (Not that it's a bad idea to have them elsewhere.)
For the adapters, the problem is that there is a huge installed base of non-grounding outlets, and of course no politician wants to be responsible for forcing them to be upgraded. Obviously you can't install a non-grounded outlet (I doubt you can even buy them), but if it's already there it's grandfathered in, until you renovate the room or otherwise work on the electrical system.
As for the lights changing brightness and such, my house does that, pretty badly. It's 40+ years old and has only 100 amp service, clearly not designed for today's usage. But, most houses I've been in of more recent vintage don't have this problem, including my brother's house that has about 40 arcade games (pinball, video games, and a classic Coke refrigerator) in his basement, even when they're all running.
Slashdot Mirror
Who said anything about auto unions? Ever think there are unions in other industries? And did you notice where I said "many of them"? Perhaps I think there are some unions that do good.
Lacking the ability to read is never profitable.
When I'm showing SAS to new people, I tell them to forget any prior programming experience they have. That's not really true, of course: standard programming logic does apply, you just have to understand how the data step works before you can be effective, and I've found it's best to go in with a mostly blank slate.
My gripes with SAS are the bugs: for example, proc import will silently drop values from a dataset if they don't match what it determined that field should be - SAS probably doesn't consider this a bug, but I do. Silently dropping data has to be the Ultimate Sin for a statistical analysis package.
I can see that you haven't updated your view of unions since then. Now, many of them have gotten fat and lazy and worthless and are actually killing companies that should be succeeding. Enjoy your own propaganda.
Well, attach some huge solar panels to your iPhone.
I just counted: at work I have 27 passwords on my list. Maybe 4 of those are for defunct systems, but everything else I use at least occasionally. Just about all of them have to be changed every three months, to a new 13-character string. There's no way I could remember all of them. And these are all different from my my "personal" passwords for things like root/admin, websites, banks, etc. I requested software to manage passwords, but of course it was ignored. I'm pretty sure everyone has a list somewhere, because they don't want to spend all day on the phone getting passwords reset. We definitely need a better solution. I'm starting to think fingerprint readers on our computers WOULD be a good idea, except that I know our security office: they'd require the fingerprint AND a password.
Yeah, I buy NVidia cards because I know they are supported under Linux. My one experience with an ATI card was not very good (although it was in a laptop). However, I hope the kernel dual-head support is better than NVidia's for my current card - mine will shut off the primary monitor (which gives an "out of range" error message) from time to time. VERY annoying, and I know it's not the monitor because I've had the same problem with two totally different monitors (two CRTs vs. two LCDs, running at different resolutions and clock speeds).
Every time I see a picture of it, I think how they could have designed it a bit more ergonomically. It looks like a committees designed each part without talking to each other.
Wait... you want an unmanned robot that's on a planet no human has visited to be a more comfortable workstation?
However, as a private person, I pay my internet subscription and as part of that I get up to five (familial) email addresses without hassle. Why should I invest in a private domain name ?
One huge advantage is that you can keep the same email addresses even if you change ISPs.
Want to unlock this app, $5 a month please.
If Verizon does that, AT&T will be quick to point it out in the ads. Somehow, I don't think Verizon is quite that stupid, although I could be totally wrong.
Yes, they are that stupid, but like the other response said, there is no real competition between providers. Verizon has been doing this with their BREW system for years. Some apps have both a "permanent" subscription option and a monthly subscription option, but there are others that are monthly only, such as the navigation application. I bought a permanent license for Tetris for $6 years ago, on my previous phone, instead of paying $1.99/month for it. (Of course, Tetris didn't carry over to my new phone with Verizon, which is why I have the word permanent in quotes.)
I'm thinking a moving walkway that goes quickly enough that even a fast runner wouldn't be able to cross it the wrong way. Bonus: at the end, the travelers get thrown toward the baggage carousels.
I had to deal with a PDF form recently, from the DMV. Basically you filled it out and then printed it out.
Screw the DMV. If they're going to make me wait in line for an hour, they can spend an extra 10 minutes trying to figure out my hand writing.
You don't want to do that. I had a situation a couple years ago where the DMV misread what I'd written (and I have reasonably good handwriting) and put incorrect information for the lienholder on the title. Well, my credit union wanted me to fix it, of course, because they were afraid they wouldn't get paid if the vehicle was totaled. Long story short, it took three trips to the DMV (with hour-long waits each time) to fix the problem. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember one problem they had was that the letter from my credit union wasn't on letterhead that had their address, or something crazy like that.
Eventually I got it all straightened out and was glad I was done with the DMV for a while. Then I discovered that when I was registering that vehicle, the DMV incorrectly canceled the registration on another vehicle I owned. Back to the DMV again...
Does anyone else remember the new Denver Airport's original luggage system? This system singlehandedly delayed the airport's opening for over a year. Eventually the airport retrofitted a standard baggage moving system. If someone has access to the code of the original system, they could easily submit that.
For that task, the area is not “word processing”, but “DTP”. InDesign, QuarkXPress, Scribus and (La)TeX would be the tools for that.
Years ago, I was working with a contractor to write some user manuals. I assumed it'd be done in some desktop publishing software package like you listed - these people are pros, right? (I didn't write the contract or have much control over it.) I was stunned - and scared - when the manuals came back in Word format. The files have held up reasonably well through several cycles of edits, so perhaps it's not as insane as I first thought, but I'm damn glad I'm not the one that has to edit them. And I'm sure sooner or later we'll upgrade to a Word version that will bork them.
Flaw in your argument: people already exist and eat that food anyway. This idea is to take heat that already exists and is being wasted (sometimes) and make it do useful work for us.
Maybe because US consumers were not interested? I'm not being arrogant here, that's a real question. I really don't understand.
And that's the primary answer. US consumers aren't interested. I can think of a couple reasons:
Older diesels gave diesels a bad name. We used to have an '85 Jetta diesel that ran like this: "knocka knocka knocka ping thunk". The car rattled horribly (probably from the shaking from the engine over the years). Sure it got over 40 MPG, but people want smooth, quiet cars. I know current diesels can do that, but most people don't.
Diesels were known for having poor power. We had a V6 Cutlass Ciera (midsize, early 90s car) that had way too little power. If you were behind someone doing 50 MPH on the highway in the right lane, you literally did NOT have the power to pass them. You'd pull out in the other lane, step on it... and you'd just sit there, not gaining on them. For trucks that were used for heavy hauling/towing, sure, they'd get good mileage, but if you stepped on it for some reason, it took quite a while for power to show up. Again, I know current diesels run like gas engines (or better) in these situations, but that's how it was and it's what people remember.
Also, fewer gas stations carry diesel. Many stations do; it's not rare by any means. But I can think of several off the top of my head that don't carry diesel at all.
It's a Macbook Pro. At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, so far I love it. It has useful command line access like Linux, but with much better GUI polish. I still use Linux for my desktop machine at home, and this is the first Apple machine I've bought, though I did use them a lot in college back in the System 7 days.
When I was looking to replace my previous laptop, I didn't want to buy Windows again, and I wasn't happy with the Linux laptop offerings, so I thought I'd try Apple this time around.
I thought I wanted a netbook, but I was somewhat concerned I wouldn't be happy with it. I eventually decided to get a small "real" laptop, and I've been thrilled with it. 4.5 lbs, 13" display, 7 hours of battery life. It was more expensive, of course, but at $1200 it was far cheaper than my last laptop (7 lbs, 15" display, 2 hours of battery life on a good day, $1600).
My employer recently announced that we're all upgrading from Office 2000 to Office 2007, since 2000 is going EOL. My fiancee was pleased, because she has 2007 on her personal laptop and will no longer have to worry about saving as older version. I was scared, because even minor upgrades for Office have broken files for me (the last service pack to Office 2000 did that - I was no longer able to open a file I'd been working on; I had to get the support staff to downgrade me again so I could re-read the file; I ended up redoing it in WordPerfect). I'm hoping it goes smoothly, but I worry there'll be some file I need that I can no longer read. (No, OpenOffice.org and the like are not an option here. Yes, they work great. No, I can't install it.)
I have a coworker who has no inside voice. She was a cheerleader in high school (she's well past that now - her kids are graduating from college), and she has the stereotypical energy and voice for it. She's also very intelligent and does good work. But, she's very loud. Even when she's not talking to someone, she'll randomly call things out like, "I'M NOT GETTING ANYTHING DONE, GUYS!" Apparently she feels the need to spread the lack of productivity around.
One time I was meeting with someone at my desk, and she said (not to anyone in particular), "Do you know what it's like not to be getting anything done?" The guy I was meeting with said, "Yes, we're experiencing that right now."
I've complained to our supervisor a couple times, and she'll stop for a while, but she always reverts back to who she is. She just doesn't get that people find loud noises distracting, I think because she doesn't find it distracting. I can't figure how she's gone working 40 years without understanding this, but there it is.
If our supervisor told me I couldn't wear headphones, I'd tell her that my coworker must wear a muzzle. Fortunately, our supervisor, years ago, was in a similar situation that I'm in (with the same coworker!), so she understands why I get frustrated and upset. And she knows it'd be crazy to outlaw headphones - everyone that sits near the loud coworker has them, because we NEED them.
And truthfully? I loved this feature. I would order out to restaurants and at the end it would be like "do you want to share this over Facebook" and I'd be like "Shit why not!" and I'd get a laugh out of my friends criticizing or commending me on my food choice.
Yeah, that's cool. But what about the person who rented the DVD AIDS and HIV Answers from Blockbuster and had that rental show up on their Facebook profile without their knowledge or permission?
As I understand it, you had to specifically approve each post. And if you didn't explicitly approve it, it would be ignored. At least, that's how I read FAQ #2. I never used it, never even ran into it, so I really can't say much about it beyond what I read on that site today. I agree the information sharing is annoying, but it doesn't sound like it posted info publicly automatically.
I work for the federal government, and we have a contractor that I swear cannot communicate in any way BUT PowerPoint. It's really annoying. In addition to meetings that actually are presentations of their work (and thus reasonably suitable grounds for a presentation), almost every meeting we had with them involved a PowerPoint presentation. In meetings where we're trying to resolve an issue, this setup is especially bad since it sets up a "speaker/audience" dynamic instead of a group discussion dynamic. Eventually I started seeing the humor of it and started collecting their slides, but that was after I discarded several reams worth of printed out slides... even with what's left, the pile is probably 6 inches thick.
I can't help but imagine their children get lectured by PowerPoint, too. "First slide: Ball through the window. Next slide: Damage caused. Next slide: Amount to repair.... Last slide: You won't do this again." This is probably how the stories of grade-school kids needing to do PowerPoint presentations came to be.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but you're trading one evil master for another, not getting a better situation.
Yeah, I know, and that's why I was hoping the Droid would be better.. One of the things I don't like about the iPhone is that Apple is in control (basically) of what apps I can install, unless I jailbreak it, which I really feel I shouldn't have to do. Also, I've been wondering if Apple has the ability to remove apps from devices (ala the Kindle)... if so, that would be extremely annoying.
Yeah, but I want to do a lot more with the laptop. My fiancee has an iPod Touch now, and although I like it, I find the keyboard annoying to use, so that'll keep me from doing anything MORE than light browsing.
Pretty much. My fiancee and I will be combining our accounts next spring (she has AT&T, I have Verizon), and AT&T is sort of our default because both of our families use AT&T. We want smart phones, not necessarily the iPhone, and I was excited about the Droid. I should have expected that Verizon would come up with an 'unlimited' but capped at 5 GB plan. Guess it'll be the iPhone after all.
I really do want to be able to tether, because we occasionally travel and don't have WiFi access and I want to use the laptop. But I've survived this long without tethering, and a smart phone will be enough for light web browsing and email.
Electrical codes in the US call for GFI only in bathrooms, kitchens, and outdoors - basically, places where there's likely to be water. (Not that it's a bad idea to have them elsewhere.)
For the adapters, the problem is that there is a huge installed base of non-grounding outlets, and of course no politician wants to be responsible for forcing them to be upgraded. Obviously you can't install a non-grounded outlet (I doubt you can even buy them), but if it's already there it's grandfathered in, until you renovate the room or otherwise work on the electrical system.
As for the lights changing brightness and such, my house does that, pretty badly. It's 40+ years old and has only 100 amp service, clearly not designed for today's usage. But, most houses I've been in of more recent vintage don't have this problem, including my brother's house that has about 40 arcade games (pinball, video games, and a classic Coke refrigerator) in his basement, even when they're all running.