IIRC, the "bring your own internet" option (essentially an AOL mailbox) is $9.95. Most people's personal mailboxes can get weaned to another provider within a year or so.
Tho I do understand about entrenchment... my Earthlink email addy will be 7 years old next month, my ELN-hosted websites are 6 years old now, and (despite that I now have my own domains that I can point anywhere) trying to catch up with all the links, referrers, and clients to change 'em all would be such a hopeless task, that even *IF* I could get broadband, I'd just keep the ELN account. Saving $21/mo. does not offset the potential for lost clients.
"Free" local calls require a local line, and that ain't free -- it's anywhere from $20 to $50 per month, depending on where you are. So it's more accurate to say you get unlimited local calling for a fixed fee, NOT that it's "free".
I'm around the corner, just out of Antelope Acres (south of Rosamond for folk with low-resolution maps:) Please tell me who to beat the crap out of at Verizon so we can at least get 56k modem connects... yes, it's still 26k MAX here, due to the shitty old DMS... supposedly they replaced it and if you're in Ant.Acres you can now get DSL, but they didn't switch over the lines for anyone who wasn't right in "town".
I know Earthlink was testing fixed wireless, but so far nothing has come of it. What's the range on your guy's system?? Cell phones work fine here, if that's of any use.
I see prices haven't gone down any since the last time I checked on Satellite, 3 years ago... $600 installation fee and $60/month, or $100 activation fee and $100/month (for the first 15 months). Ouch!!
And I expect it's still subject to falling over when the weather isn't good.
Try getting broadband here in Southern California, if you aren't right in town, and sometimes not even then. There are parts of Los Angeles proper that still can't get it. And where I am, only 2 miles from a DMS (but it's a bad/old one, so no DSL), 15 miles from town, and 50 miles from Los Angeles, when you ask about broadband, they laugh and point.
Webmasters should remember that the inverse of "20% of America now has broadband!!" is that 80% of America still DOESN'T have broadband, and that many areas with old lines, rural or not, are limping along at 26k MAX.
For folk who "don't need it anyway"... most sites take so damned long to download anymore, that even for minimal use, broadband would save many hours now wasted on the "World Wide Wait".
And you're right... farmers are not only businessmen, they're businesses that never get a day off, don't get paid except for "overtime" (harvest), and anything that saves a few waking moments to use for something more productive than waiting for dialup is a GOOD thing.
I haven't tried it yet myself (I practice safe hex by long habit), but take a look at "Geek Superhero", $25 shareware http://www.geeksuperhero.com/ which is meant as essentially ZoneAlarm for applications (it tattles on and requires approval for anything that tries to meddle with the system). Over the years I've come to trust the author, and he's very responsive to bug reports, feature suggestions, etc. If someone tests it against the wide world of malware, I'd be interested to hear how it fares, and I'm sure Michael would be too.
That may be if you're doing browser-specific stuff in the first place. My objective is to make stuff as broadly-accessable as possible, and that means I allow for browser bugs and deficiencies, so long as it doesn't break anything else.
The nasty Compaq Presario I mentioned probably had a P60-rated CPU (far as I've ever seen, yes, it's the slowest of the species). But as best I could tell from the jumper block (or rather, the traces where the referenced jumper block didn't exist), it was set to 50MHz, tho there was a 60MHz option (if the jumpers had been there to change). I'd guess Compaq had bought a run of CPUs that didn't even test good at the standard minimum 60MHz, and hardwired them to what they DID test as their max. Quite a piece of crap any way you looked at it.
'Twas only 3 years ago that I finally retired my Win3.1 setup as the main internet box... it used an updated version of the old Shiva PPP dialer, and originally had NS2.02 -- fast, stable, and completely immune to the Usual Online Malware Tricks. I still have the old setup archived, the least I could do after 7 years of near-100% perfect service.:)
Anyway... I don't really CARE if a site is standards-compliant; I care if it works across the board; the two are not necessarily contiguous. Since I can't control what bugs browsers have in their rendering engines, and wish to NOT force a certain browser on visitors, I use some "noncompliant" structures myself, because I've found they render more consistently than the "compliant" way of doing things.
My primary browser (and email client) of choice is still Netscape 3.04 -- yes, really!! Simple, fast, doesn't annoy me, runs on any piece of crap (and even from a CD if need be) and I've been dragging the same install from system to system for almost 7 years now, mail, cookies, bookmarks, and all. It still does 90% of everything I need.
I have my alt-mailboxes set up in Mozilla, and I use it as an alt-browser when I have to, but it's just too damned slow (with too many annoyances) for everyday use. The only thing that made it tolerable at all is the Prefbar mod, which no Moz user should be without!! (I gather there is now a Prefbar for Firefox.)
I did once try to set up Moz on a disabled client's old P50. Moz wouldn't even LOAD, let alone run. So they are still using NS4, which runs acceptably on that antique, and does everything they need, without impacting their limited budget.
And what's wrong with the idea of choosing the one that suits your uses, rather than listening to some nebulous "but it's dying" marketroiding?? If the plethora of viable linux disties is any indication, there's plenty of room in the market, and the winners [note plural] will, as you say, be anyone who offers consistently good support.
[SigRef] "Shaving cream, be nice and clean..." I haven't heard that ditty in decades. I feel old.:)
I bought a 6 pack of fluorescent floodlights at Costco a couple years ago, so they do exist. I haven't had occasion to use them yet, but the regular style fl's I got at the time are actually a bit too bright.
I've read that you aren't supposed to use compact fluorescents with dimmers (I don't have any dimmer switches, so I've never tried it). But I have several living in old 3-way lamps, without complaint -- they come on at the 2nd level, just like a 60W incandescent does. So far I've only had ONE fluorescent fail, after about 6 years of service (around 8 hours a day).
I've also found that the newer fluorescents are too bright, compared to the 25W and 40W bulbs I'd previously used in areas intended to be only gently lit. This is why I have a towel draped across the lampshade... looks funny but cuts it down to about what the old old fl. that died was like.
I don't know the book, but for several years I did laundry by hand, and while if you're efficient about it, it's not too hard, nonetheless it's certainly a nuisance, and hand-washing requires some skill to get the clothes really clean.
I don't know the Amish rules, but I wonder if some of the goal is to discourage "lazy" behaviour. It certainly is lazier to pitch clothes in the washer and dump in a cup of detergent, than to haul and heat water, make your own soap, etc.
Newer compact fluorescents are quite a lot brighter than they used to be. In fact, I had to hang a towel over my main lamp because I couldn't find one that was as dim as either the original 60W bulb, or the old fluorescent that finally went bad after about 6 years of use. (This is the ONLY one I've had go bad, so far, and I've got a bunch in use.)
While I expect LEDs will have better "colour control"... the trick with compact fluorescents, in areas where you need really clean or more natural-looking light, is to use one incandescent bulb and one fluorescent. That way you get much of the energy savings (significant, in my experience) without too severely compromising lighting quality.
I have fluorescents in most of my lamps in areas where you don't really need sharp-edged lighting, such as the living room and bedroom. I have mixed types in the kitchen and workroom, where hard light is needed. And in the bathroom, where it has to be absolutely sharp, it's all incandescent.
As to floodlights, fluorescent floodlights have been around for a couple years now. Regardless of configuration, they are all down to about $2 each, and as noted the longevity is spectacular and the energy savings are real (about $20/month at SoCalEd's evil rates, for a bulb that's on 8 hours a day).
So while they aren't right for everything, and sometimes need to be used in conjunction with regular incandescents, they do have their benefits.
Mine rarely have dire emergencies. When one does, I'll make time to get to 'em, but otherwise it's usually something that can wait. My most faithful are likewise most willing to wait, having already had their bad experience with an incompetent... I'd fire up the machine, look around, and amaze 'em by saying, "Oh, I see Darryl was here!" (He always "fixed" every machine exactly the same, whether that broke it or not.)
You'd think so, but it has more to do with resale value in a market where there is a high incidence of defaults on home loans. Banks don't want to get stuck with an older home that may need updating before it's salable. And there is practically a cult of "we only want a NEW house that NO ONE ELSE has EVER lived in" among the yuppie set. Nice older homes, fully remodeled, updated, with real yards and mature trees, typically sell for half what a cheaply-built new house does.:(
Of course, this is rabidly encouraged by the construction industry and its various subsets; it's their bread and butter. My sister is an architect who handles big housing tracts; I get to see the mentality at work firsthand.
Since you posted that A.C., you must have secrets too;)
But seriously... I don't care about Kuralt's secret life. I also don't care if Elena has her own sordid secrets. And I don't care if the presentation is slanted or inaccurate or even entirely made up. What interests me is the fact that her work is *effective* as a =visual narrative=. It's essentially an online coffee-table book, designed to be beautiful and evocative. It's not an encyclopaedia or a history text, meant only for dry facts.
OTOH, when they do need someone, I can count on them coming back to me, even if they have to wait as long as several weeks for a hole in my schedule. And if *their* friends have PC issues, they get told who to call... There's much to be said for generating customer loyalty.:D
Exactly right. And she has a wonderful sense of how to maximize impact from the materials she has. Remember Charles Kuralt's "On The Road" segments? That's what she reminds me of.
If it's not totally factual... well, it's not a history class. It's a travelogue. Its importance lies in "look and feel", not "source code".
Re:They have that stuff in Germany, too
on
A New Elena Story
·
· Score: 1
I think part of that is because in Europe (indeed, in most of the settled world) you've had war literally falling on your heads within living memory, and there has seldom been a time when the older generation could not remember having had to personally defend their country, within its own borders. In America, we don't have that -- we've not suffered war on our home soil in modern times.
So yes, I think you're right -- in Europe it's still a lot more up-close and personal.
Re:Stuff on the ground
on
A New Elena Story
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There's an old saying about this:
In England, they think 200 miles is a long ways. In America, they think 200 years is a long time.
It gets worse in America as you go west. Here in California, a 20 year old house may be "too old" for a bank to consider it loanworthy!! In fact, a lot of why California has the issues it does is a total lack of any sense of history. I don't mean of old places (we have that) but of a sense of continuity back through places and events. A lot of that is because most of the population here are immigrants, either from another state or another country, so hardly anyone here has any "roots". The rest is due to rampant commercialism, the cult of "new is better".
As to Elena -- yeah, I know her Chernobyl piece was debunked, but it was still powerful photo-journalism. She's young, and kids make mistakes. But hopefully she'll learn better and will fulfill her potential. Her style reminds me a lot of Charles Kuralt.
Try adding "GeekSuperhero" (from the makers of Getright -- geeksuperhero.com) to his system and teaching him to pay attention to it. It's sortof ZoneAlarm for applications.
That's pretty much what I do with paying clients. And because their WinBoxen run so well after I've had my way with them (those I set up crash seldom to never), they tend to believe me and do as they're told wrt safe computing. Consequently, very rarely am I called upon to fix something the user broke.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC, the "bring your own internet" option (essentially an AOL mailbox) is $9.95. Most people's personal mailboxes can get weaned to another provider within a year or so.
Tho I do understand about entrenchment... my Earthlink email addy will be 7 years old next month, my ELN-hosted websites are 6 years old now, and (despite that I now have my own domains that I can point anywhere) trying to catch up with all the links, referrers, and clients to change 'em all would be such a hopeless task, that even *IF* I could get broadband, I'd just keep the ELN account. Saving $21/mo. does not offset the potential for lost clients.
"Free" local calls require a local line, and that ain't free -- it's anywhere from $20 to $50 per month, depending on where you are. So it's more accurate to say you get unlimited local calling for a fixed fee, NOT that it's "free".
Great, now we know what's wrong with programming in C ... it's the pathetic math :)
I'm around the corner, just out of Antelope Acres (south of Rosamond for folk with low-resolution maps :) Please tell me who to beat the crap out of at Verizon so we can at least get 56k modem connects... yes, it's still 26k MAX here, due to the shitty old DMS... supposedly they replaced it and if you're in Ant.Acres you can now get DSL, but they didn't switch over the lines for anyone who wasn't right in "town".
I know Earthlink was testing fixed wireless, but so far nothing has come of it. What's the range on your guy's system?? Cell phones work fine here, if that's of any use.
I see prices haven't gone down any since the last time I checked on Satellite, 3 years ago... $600 installation fee and $60/month, or $100 activation fee and $100/month (for the first 15 months). Ouch!!
And I expect it's still subject to falling over when the weather isn't good.
BTW, when did it stop needing a modem uplink?
Try getting broadband here in Southern California, if you aren't right in town, and sometimes not even then. There are parts of Los Angeles proper that still can't get it. And where I am, only 2 miles from a DMS (but it's a bad/old one, so no DSL), 15 miles from town, and 50 miles from Los Angeles, when you ask about broadband, they laugh and point.
... most sites take so damned long to download anymore, that even for minimal use, broadband would save many hours now wasted on the "World Wide Wait".
Webmasters should remember that the inverse of "20% of America now has broadband!!" is that 80% of America still DOESN'T have broadband, and that many areas with old lines, rural or not, are limping along at 26k MAX.
For folk who "don't need it anyway"
And you're right... farmers are not only businessmen, they're businesses that never get a day off, don't get paid except for "overtime" (harvest), and anything that saves a few waking moments to use for something more productive than waiting for dialup is a GOOD thing.
I haven't tried it yet myself (I practice safe hex by long habit), but take a look at "Geek Superhero", $25 shareware http://www.geeksuperhero.com/ which is meant as essentially ZoneAlarm for applications (it tattles on and requires approval for anything that tries to meddle with the system). Over the years I've come to trust the author, and he's very responsive to bug reports, feature suggestions, etc. If someone tests it against the wide world of malware, I'd be interested to hear how it fares, and I'm sure Michael would be too.
That may be if you're doing browser-specific stuff in the first place. My objective is to make stuff as broadly-accessable as possible, and that means I allow for browser bugs and deficiencies, so long as it doesn't break anything else.
The nasty Compaq Presario I mentioned probably had a P60-rated CPU (far as I've ever seen, yes, it's the slowest of the species). But as best I could tell from the jumper block (or rather, the traces where the referenced jumper block didn't exist), it was set to 50MHz, tho there was a 60MHz option (if the jumpers had been there to change). I'd guess Compaq had bought a run of CPUs that didn't even test good at the standard minimum 60MHz, and hardwired them to what they DID test as their max. Quite a piece of crap any way you looked at it.
:)
'Twas only 3 years ago that I finally retired my Win3.1 setup as the main internet box... it used an updated version of the old Shiva PPP dialer, and originally had NS2.02 -- fast, stable, and completely immune to the Usual Online Malware Tricks. I still have the old setup archived, the least I could do after 7 years of near-100% perfect service.
You mean the 403-forbidden?
Anyway... I don't really CARE if a site is standards-compliant; I care if it works across the board; the two are not necessarily contiguous. Since I can't control what bugs browsers have in their rendering engines, and wish to NOT force a certain browser on visitors, I use some "noncompliant" structures myself, because I've found they render more consistently than the "compliant" way of doing things.
Bah, all too newfangled for me :)
My primary browser (and email client) of choice is still Netscape 3.04 -- yes, really!! Simple, fast, doesn't annoy me, runs on any piece of crap (and even from a CD if need be) and I've been dragging the same install from system to system for almost 7 years now, mail, cookies, bookmarks, and all. It still does 90% of everything I need.
I have my alt-mailboxes set up in Mozilla, and I use it as an alt-browser when I have to, but it's just too damned slow (with too many annoyances) for everyday use. The only thing that made it tolerable at all is the Prefbar mod, which no Moz user should be without!! (I gather there is now a Prefbar for Firefox.)
I did once try to set up Moz on a disabled client's old P50. Moz wouldn't even LOAD, let alone run. So they are still using NS4, which runs acceptably on that antique, and does everything they need, without impacting their limited budget.
And what's wrong with the idea of choosing the one that suits your uses, rather than listening to some nebulous "but it's dying" marketroiding?? If the plethora of viable linux disties is any indication, there's plenty of room in the market, and the winners [note plural] will, as you say, be anyone who offers consistently good support.
:)
[SigRef] "Shaving cream, be nice and clean..." I haven't heard that ditty in decades. I feel old.
I bought a 6 pack of fluorescent floodlights at Costco a couple years ago, so they do exist. I haven't had occasion to use them yet, but the regular style fl's I got at the time are actually a bit too bright.
I've read that you aren't supposed to use compact fluorescents with dimmers (I don't have any dimmer switches, so I've never tried it). But I have several living in old 3-way lamps, without complaint -- they come on at the 2nd level, just like a 60W incandescent does. So far I've only had ONE fluorescent fail, after about 6 years of service (around 8 hours a day).
I've also found that the newer fluorescents are too bright, compared to the 25W and 40W bulbs I'd previously used in areas intended to be only gently lit. This is why I have a towel draped across the lampshade... looks funny but cuts it down to about what the old old fl. that died was like.
I don't know the book, but for several years I did laundry by hand, and while if you're efficient about it, it's not too hard, nonetheless it's certainly a nuisance, and hand-washing requires some skill to get the clothes really clean.
I don't know the Amish rules, but I wonder if some of the goal is to discourage "lazy" behaviour. It certainly is lazier to pitch clothes in the washer and dump in a cup of detergent, than to haul and heat water, make your own soap, etc.
Newer compact fluorescents are quite a lot brighter than they used to be. In fact, I had to hang a towel over my main lamp because I couldn't find one that was as dim as either the original 60W bulb, or the old fluorescent that finally went bad after about 6 years of use. (This is the ONLY one I've had go bad, so far, and I've got a bunch in use.)
While I expect LEDs will have better "colour control"... the trick with compact fluorescents, in areas where you need really clean or more natural-looking light, is to use one incandescent bulb and one fluorescent. That way you get much of the energy savings (significant, in my experience) without too severely compromising lighting quality.
I have fluorescents in most of my lamps in areas where you don't really need sharp-edged lighting, such as the living room and bedroom. I have mixed types in the kitchen and workroom, where hard light is needed. And in the bathroom, where it has to be absolutely sharp, it's all incandescent.
As to floodlights, fluorescent floodlights have been around for a couple years now. Regardless of configuration, they are all down to about $2 each, and as noted the longevity is spectacular and the energy savings are real (about $20/month at SoCalEd's evil rates, for a bulb that's on 8 hours a day).
So while they aren't right for everything, and sometimes need to be used in conjunction with regular incandescents, they do have their benefits.
Mine rarely have dire emergencies. When one does, I'll make time to get to 'em, but otherwise it's usually something that can wait. My most faithful are likewise most willing to wait, having already had their bad experience with an incompetent ... I'd fire up the machine, look around, and amaze 'em by saying, "Oh, I see Darryl was here!" (He always "fixed" every machine exactly the same, whether that broke it or not.)
You'd think so, but it has more to do with resale value in a market where there is a high incidence of defaults on home loans. Banks don't want to get stuck with an older home that may need updating before it's salable. And there is practically a cult of "we only want a NEW house that NO ONE ELSE has EVER lived in" among the yuppie set. Nice older homes, fully remodeled, updated, with real yards and mature trees, typically sell for half what a cheaply-built new house does. :(
Of course, this is rabidly encouraged by the construction industry and its various subsets; it's their bread and butter. My sister is an architect who handles big housing tracts; I get to see the mentality at work firsthand.
Since you posted that A.C., you must have secrets too ;)
But seriously... I don't care about Kuralt's secret life. I also don't care if Elena has her own sordid secrets. And I don't care if the presentation is slanted or inaccurate or even entirely made up. What interests me is the fact that her work is *effective* as a =visual narrative=. It's essentially an online coffee-table book, designed to be beautiful and evocative. It's not an encyclopaedia or a history text, meant only for dry facts.
OTOH, when they do need someone, I can count on them coming back to me, even if they have to wait as long as several weeks for a hole in my schedule. And if *their* friends have PC issues, they get told who to call... There's much to be said for generating customer loyalty. :D
Exactly right. And she has a wonderful sense of how to maximize impact from the materials she has. Remember Charles Kuralt's "On The Road" segments? That's what she reminds me of.
If it's not totally factual... well, it's not a history class. It's a travelogue. Its importance lies in "look and feel", not "source code".
I think part of that is because in Europe (indeed, in most of the settled world) you've had war literally falling on your heads within living memory, and there has seldom been a time when the older generation could not remember having had to personally defend their country, within its own borders. In America, we don't have that -- we've not suffered war on our home soil in modern times.
So yes, I think you're right -- in Europe it's still a lot more up-close and personal.
There's an old saying about this:
In England, they think 200 miles is a long ways.
In America, they think 200 years is a long time.
It gets worse in America as you go west. Here in California, a 20 year old house may be "too old" for a bank to consider it loanworthy!! In fact, a lot of why California has the issues it does is a total lack of any sense of history. I don't mean of old places (we have that) but of a sense of continuity back through places and events. A lot of that is because most of the population here are immigrants, either from another state or another country, so hardly anyone here has any "roots". The rest is due to rampant commercialism, the cult of "new is better".
As to Elena -- yeah, I know her Chernobyl piece was debunked, but it was still powerful photo-journalism. She's young, and kids make mistakes. But hopefully she'll learn better and will fulfill her potential. Her style reminds me a lot of Charles Kuralt.
Try adding "GeekSuperhero" (from the makers of Getright -- geeksuperhero.com) to his system and teaching him to pay attention to it. It's sortof ZoneAlarm for applications.
That's pretty much what I do with paying clients. And because their WinBoxen run so well after I've had my way with them (those I set up crash seldom to never), they tend to believe me and do as they're told wrt safe computing. Consequently, very rarely am I called upon to fix something the user broke.