I agree. But there is a LONG distance between "snappy-dressing, smooth-talking" and (at least the popularly presented opinion of Stallman as) "raggedy bearded, somewhat unwashed, vaguely asshole-ish". There's a happy medium. That's all I'm saying.
Also, what's the deal with everyone criticizing his personal appearance? What does that have to do with anything? When did "fair looks" become the be-all end-all of everything.
He doesn't have to wear an Armani suit. But when you're dealing with professional people, not looking like a flood victim does a lot to help your credibility. If you appear you're putting very little effort into your personal appearance, what else are you dropping the ball on? Why else do you think there's a "business casual" at minimum in most workplaces nowadays? It's not so that the polo shirt manufacturers stay in business...
My wife used to love the 80s music channel they had under the old system. But now they replaced that with "Ethel" or "Fred" or somesuch, and it sucks ass.
Well, which is it? 80's (channel 8), which plays mostly Top 40 hits from that decade with some deep cuts tossed in, or Fred (channel 44), which is "classic alternative", which is going to play New Wave and some punk, mostly from the 80s, but sometimes possibly a bit earlier and possibly reaching into the early 90s, or Ethel, which is going to play newer versions of what Fred plays? There's also a ton of Top 40 format stuff hiding in the 20s, and any of those might trot out an 80s tune now and again.
Yet another annoying factor is that the old system used to tell you on screen what was currently playing and which album it was from. It was very informative. The new system just gives you a little info and 90% of the time it's completely wrong. If that's what XM is like, then they can shove it.
That's gotta be DirecTV dropping the ball, not XM. I have XM radio, my girlfriend has XM radio, and we both listen to it online, and the artist, song title, and (in online's case) album title is always correct.
We have Dish Network at home, which in addition to keeping its own digital music channels, added Sirius' lineup. I find the jazz lineup a little better on Sirius while my girlfriend likes the alternative lineup on XM a bit better. We picked XM for the car because my Acura came with it standard - something I think is a big limiter in new radio sales - a particular manufacturer signing exclusive deals with one company and not the other, and the retro radio sales just follow along that track. When the lease on my Acura is up, unless I want to pay full price on getting a Sirius subscription, I'm either going to have to buy a model of car with it included or retro an XM radio into it and ignore the Sirius built-in. Why they couldn't stay modular and have either XM or Sirius be an option (like in the Audi/VW world) is beyond me.
I also agree that sat radio's main competition is not from the other company, but from in-car media players. Right now I specifically have not bought an IPod/MP3 player because most of the time I'm listening to music I'm either at home (I have access to CDs) or I'm in the car (and I just turn on my sat radio). If the playlists start getting compromised because they're spending so much money for shock jocks that they can't play a deeper selection of music, then IPods might become a more serious consideration. I spend money for XM every month so I don't have to buy the CDs that I would normally use to make such a varied playlist that I have at my disposal, because at the end of the day an IPod is useless if all you can put on it is the music you've bought and are already sick of, or what's limited to the stuff you can buy on AMS or something similar. Sometimes you just want to get in the car and have music... you don't want to have to skip through a playlist that you put together when you were in an entirely different mood.
I'm pretty sure that was "Eon and the Time Tunnel" which was never verifiably released to arcades. I have a magazine from the early 80s that talked about it. Space Ace definately only had one LD player, as did "Dragon's Lair II" and "Space Ace II".
Enjoying what you do =/= fucking around at work. Seriously, if we were talking about excessive personal phone calls, no one would have an issue. Why are we tossing that standard out the window just because it's a computer and it's not obvious to the boss?
I enjoy my job. I also don't do an excessive amount of personal things on non personal time. Quick check of the weather? Sure, why not. But otherwise, I have a lunch break and time after 5 PM (and before 8 AM) for that.
I actually believe it's some weird subconscious thing that people don't want to overuse one of a pair of homonyms or similar sounding words. Think about it, most of the time one can write either affect/effect as a verb one means "affect", because one usually means the "to influence" sense. But it's like this little tiny voice in peoples' brains that tell them they used "affect" way too often this month and "effect" not nearly enough, and they're both (transitive) verbs, right? So they randomly use "effect" and most people, also not knowing the difference, don't call them on it.
Taking that analogy too far would be like saying the sales department is there to make the money that the accounting department embezzles, or the custodial staff is there to clean up the ashes after the secretarial pool sets random fires.
Yes, it sounds silly, but so does making IT out to be subservient slaves to the whims of every other employee in the company. You're ALL there to make money for the company - all effort is supposed to go towards that goal.
Finally, as a person in a hiring position, I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
Isn't that kind of like not hiring a mechanic who took courses in auto repair and instead hiring someone who "taught himself" on his (still not running) car up on blocks in his front yard?
The fact that unions were needed 100+ years ago to improve conditions does not necessarily mean that said conditions will return overnight if unions were done away with or severely scaled back. Society is different now.
Michael Caine has said in interviews that he took whatever came along earlier in his career so he could be more choosy later in it. Now I'm not entirely sure he's following that to the letter, but he does seem to have had a better nose for projects lately.
Of course, you could always look at it like Vincent Price did when asked why he was in so many bad movies - "I'm an actor, my job is to act."
"SPF/Caller ID is not a 100% a spam prevention mechanism."
_ALL_ these two services do is verify that the E-mail in question is actually coming from the domain it claims it is. No more mails coming from a Chinese open relay that claim to be from Yahoo, and hence, no false bounces back to innocent sources.
If a spammer fires up a domain, publishes SPF records, and begins spamming away, you can pretty assuredly block that domain from your mail servers without worrying about stomping on anyone else. Plus the fact that a spammer will have to register a domain specifically to spam, and registrars are getting sticky about having legit contact information for domains, you now have an actual entity to track. If they steal a CC number to register the domain, they're committing a crime, etc.
It's not, by itself, going to stop spam. No one technology will. Use the right ones in combination and you can get your spam rate to practically zero with no false positives.
Maybe radio was going downhill before Clearchannel
It was.
and before Clearchannel all the radio stations really did sound exactly the same
They did.
But you're not wrong... Clear Channel really did seem to kill that last 10% of mainstream radio differentiation. Before you had three or four stations that sounded the same but one had a great morning personality or something... now that's no longer the case.
Easier said then done. When was the last time you saw a decent B&W phone for sale that wasn't the $200 Motorola v60? Maybe one or two here and there depending on what carrier you go with but there's really no ubiquitous B&W phone across carriers anymore.
Go is infinitely cooler because you can see board positions develop as the game progresses, while in Chess everything zooms around the board until there's nothing left.
Maybe the way YOU play, but anyone who is beyond the rank beginner level at chess will tell you it's considered better/more elegant to win without making the board a killing zone.
Sure, you can win when it's your king and a power piece vs. just his king, but it actually kinda gets old fast. It's far more fun to figure out how to checkmate the guy when he's still got most of his power pieces on the board.
Um, the 356 was also 100% Porsche designed - it was Ferdinand Porsche's design, just like the VW Beetle was. What YOU mean is the 911 was the first Porsche to be 100% Porsche-built.
Anyhow, not too worry, there is at least 20-30 oil years supply at full out production. We won't be the ones who really suffer from running out, it will be those who come after us... You don't really care about them do you?
Sure do, that's why I want non-gas powered vehicles to take off. Simply giving the public a 10-12 higher MPG vehicle so that a company can sell more gas guzzling SUVs is not going to make a whit of difference to consumption. You really should take the moral posturing to the trailer hitch-less Ford Excursion driving family of four with the grocery bags in the back.
In the meantime I will pay whatever gas costs to drive my ICE car. If it's too expensive, I'll drive less, or telecommute, or move closer to my job, or whatever. When the TCO of an electric/borax/nitrogen/hydrogen car drops to around what it costs to own an ICE car, then I'll switch.
Except a regular Civic sedan already gets about 32 MPG in the city and 38 on the expressway. That puts the breakeven point way WAY into the future for the hybrid, even with the tax credit. (Honda claims "up to" 51 MPG for the hybrid, so 42 seems reasonable if a bit low.)
And yes, it's more up front than over the long term, blah blah, but that's only if you pay cash for the car. Who does that? So now the higher price of the car is costing you more in interest payments in the long run too.
Don't get me wrong, they're cool cars, but you have to drive them solely for the lessened environmental impact. The money won't come out in your favor even with the credits you get from the government, unless you keep the car for a looooong time.
Sure. In fact I'm working on a proposal to run our own Jabber server at work and provide it to all of our customers (I work for an ISP.) The Jabber model is great, but it's not going to get to AIM or Yahoo or MSN levels with volunteer-based support.
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I agree. But there is a LONG distance between "snappy-dressing, smooth-talking" and (at least the popularly presented opinion of Stallman as) "raggedy bearded, somewhat unwashed, vaguely asshole-ish". There's a happy medium. That's all I'm saying.
Also, what's the deal with everyone criticizing his personal appearance? What does that have to do with anything? When did "fair looks" become the be-all end-all of everything.
He doesn't have to wear an Armani suit. But when you're dealing with professional people, not looking like a flood victim does a lot to help your credibility. If you appear you're putting very little effort into your personal appearance, what else are you dropping the ball on? Why else do you think there's a "business casual" at minimum in most workplaces nowadays? It's not so that the polo shirt manufacturers stay in business...
My wife used to love the 80s music channel they had under the old system. But now they replaced that with "Ethel" or "Fred" or somesuch, and it sucks ass.
Well, which is it? 80's (channel 8), which plays mostly Top 40 hits from that decade with some deep cuts tossed in, or Fred (channel 44), which is "classic alternative", which is going to play New Wave and some punk, mostly from the 80s, but sometimes possibly a bit earlier and possibly reaching into the early 90s, or Ethel, which is going to play newer versions of what Fred plays? There's also a ton of Top 40 format stuff hiding in the 20s, and any of those might trot out an 80s tune now and again.
Yet another annoying factor is that the old system used to tell you on screen what was currently playing and which album it was from. It was very informative. The new system just gives you a little info and 90% of the time it's completely wrong. If that's what XM is like, then they can shove it.
That's gotta be DirecTV dropping the ball, not XM. I have XM radio, my girlfriend has XM radio, and we both listen to it online, and the artist, song title, and (in online's case) album title is always correct.
We have Dish Network at home, which in addition to keeping its own digital music channels, added Sirius' lineup. I find the jazz lineup a little better on Sirius while my girlfriend likes the alternative lineup on XM a bit better. We picked XM for the car because my Acura came with it standard - something I think is a big limiter in new radio sales - a particular manufacturer signing exclusive deals with one company and not the other, and the retro radio sales just follow along that track. When the lease on my Acura is up, unless I want to pay full price on getting a Sirius subscription, I'm either going to have to buy a model of car with it included or retro an XM radio into it and ignore the Sirius built-in. Why they couldn't stay modular and have either XM or Sirius be an option (like in the Audi/VW world) is beyond me.
I also agree that sat radio's main competition is not from the other company, but from in-car media players. Right now I specifically have not bought an IPod/MP3 player because most of the time I'm listening to music I'm either at home (I have access to CDs) or I'm in the car (and I just turn on my sat radio). If the playlists start getting compromised because they're spending so much money for shock jocks that they can't play a deeper selection of music, then IPods might become a more serious consideration. I spend money for XM every month so I don't have to buy the CDs that I would normally use to make such a varied playlist that I have at my disposal, because at the end of the day an IPod is useless if all you can put on it is the music you've bought and are already sick of, or what's limited to the stuff you can buy on AMS or something similar. Sometimes you just want to get in the car and have music... you don't want to have to skip through a playlist that you put together when you were in an entirely different mood.
Because the movie trailer doesn't play every time I start the crossword puzzle.
I'm pretty sure that was "Eon and the Time Tunnel" which was never verifiably released to arcades. I have a magazine from the early 80s that talked about it. Space Ace definately only had one LD player, as did "Dragon's Lair II" and "Space Ace II".
Enjoying what you do =/= fucking around at work. Seriously, if we were talking about excessive personal phone calls, no one would have an issue. Why are we tossing that standard out the window just because it's a computer and it's not obvious to the boss?
I enjoy my job. I also don't do an excessive amount of personal things on non personal time. Quick check of the weather? Sure, why not. But otherwise, I have a lunch break and time after 5 PM (and before 8 AM) for that.
... about the price of airfare to Australia?
Pretty sure that was Sesame Street.
I actually believe it's some weird subconscious thing that people don't want to overuse one of a pair of homonyms or similar sounding words. Think about it, most of the time one can write either affect/effect as a verb one means "affect", because one usually means the "to influence" sense. But it's like this little tiny voice in peoples' brains that tell them they used "affect" way too often this month and "effect" not nearly enough, and they're both (transitive) verbs, right? So they randomly use "effect" and most people, also not knowing the difference, don't call them on it.
Taking that analogy too far would be like saying the sales department is there to make the money that the accounting department embezzles, or the custodial staff is there to clean up the ashes after the secretarial pool sets random fires.
Yes, it sounds silly, but so does making IT out to be subservient slaves to the whims of every other employee in the company. You're ALL there to make money for the company - all effort is supposed to go towards that goal.
Finally, as a person in a hiring position, I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
Isn't that kind of like not hiring a mechanic who took courses in auto repair and instead hiring someone who "taught himself" on his (still not running) car up on blocks in his front yard?
Consider:
The fact that unions were needed 100+ years ago to improve conditions does not necessarily mean that said conditions will return overnight if unions were done away with or severely scaled back. Society is different now.
Michael Caine has said in interviews that he took whatever came along earlier in his career so he could be more choosy later in it. Now I'm not entirely sure he's following that to the letter, but he does seem to have had a better nose for projects lately.
Of course, you could always look at it like Vincent Price did when asked why he was in so many bad movies - "I'm an actor, my job is to act."
Say it with me:
"SPF/Caller ID is not a 100% a spam prevention mechanism."
_ALL_ these two services do is verify that the E-mail in question is actually coming from the domain it claims it is. No more mails coming from a Chinese open relay that claim to be from Yahoo, and hence, no false bounces back to innocent sources.
If a spammer fires up a domain, publishes SPF records, and begins spamming away, you can pretty assuredly block that domain from your mail servers without worrying about stomping on anyone else. Plus the fact that a spammer will have to register a domain specifically to spam, and registrars are getting sticky about having legit contact information for domains, you now have an actual entity to track. If they steal a CC number to register the domain, they're committing a crime, etc.
It's not, by itself, going to stop spam. No one technology will. Use the right ones in combination and you can get your spam rate to practically zero with no false positives.
Here.
Maybe radio was going downhill before Clearchannel
It was.
and before Clearchannel all the radio stations really did sound exactly the same
They did.
But you're not wrong... Clear Channel really did seem to kill that last 10% of mainstream radio differentiation. Before you had three or four stations that sounded the same but one had a great morning personality or something... now that's no longer the case.
Easier said then done. When was the last time you saw a decent B&W phone for sale that wasn't the $200 Motorola v60? Maybe one or two here and there depending on what carrier you go with but there's really no ubiquitous B&W phone across carriers anymore.
Paraphrased from my shaky memory of the RotJ novelization:
Obi-Wan: "We fought, your father fell into a molten pit. He clawed his way out and survived, but is now more machine than man..."
Go is infinitely cooler because you can see board positions develop as the game progresses, while in Chess everything zooms around the board until there's nothing left.
Maybe the way YOU play, but anyone who is beyond the rank beginner level at chess will tell you it's considered better/more elegant to win without making the board a killing zone.
Sure, you can win when it's your king and a power piece vs. just his king, but it actually kinda gets old fast. It's far more fun to figure out how to checkmate the guy when he's still got most of his power pieces on the board.
Took the words out of my mouth, my man.
You're right. He's far more lucid and readable than Joyce's English-language work ever was.
Um, the 356 was also 100% Porsche designed - it was Ferdinand Porsche's design, just like the VW Beetle was. What YOU mean is the 911 was the first Porsche to be 100% Porsche-built.
Anyhow, not too worry, there is at least 20-30 oil years supply at full out production. We won't be the ones who really suffer from running out, it will be those who come after us... You don't really care about them do you?
Sure do, that's why I want non-gas powered vehicles to take off. Simply giving the public a 10-12 higher MPG vehicle so that a company can sell more gas guzzling SUVs is not going to make a whit of difference to consumption. You really should take the moral posturing to the trailer hitch-less Ford Excursion driving family of four with the grocery bags in the back.
In the meantime I will pay whatever gas costs to drive my ICE car. If it's too expensive, I'll drive less, or telecommute, or move closer to my job, or whatever. When the TCO of an electric/borax/nitrogen/hydrogen car drops to around what it costs to own an ICE car, then I'll switch.
Except a regular Civic sedan already gets about 32 MPG in the city and 38 on the expressway. That puts the breakeven point way WAY into the future for the hybrid, even with the tax credit. (Honda claims "up to" 51 MPG for the hybrid, so 42 seems reasonable if a bit low.)
And yes, it's more up front than over the long term, blah blah, but that's only if you pay cash for the car. Who does that? So now the higher price of the car is costing you more in interest payments in the long run too.
Don't get me wrong, they're cool cars, but you have to drive them solely for the lessened environmental impact. The money won't come out in your favor even with the credits you get from the government, unless you keep the car for a looooong time.
Sure. In fact I'm working on a proposal to run our own Jabber server at work and provide it to all of our customers (I work for an ISP.) The Jabber model is great, but it's not going to get to AIM or Yahoo or MSN levels with volunteer-based support.