Why not fill it with an assortment of human knowledge and history and send it off into deep space for alien archeologists? The human race may no longer exist but we can live forever as material for museum exhibitions!
God, the Father, is being an irresponsible parent by letting wars, torture, pain and anguish continually occur amongst his children without doing anything to stop it. No striking anyone down with lightning; only random and baseless floods. It's time to sue God and report Him to the children services agency.
The Japanese robot moon base is a spectacular announcement. It provides the ability to perform all kind of work and activity on the moon without the burden of human life support, or risk to humans considering cosmic radiation cancer risk, silica moon dust hazards, etc.
But here on Slashdot, many respond with nationalistic bickering and insults. Shouldn't this tech-savvy bunch be smarter and above this?
Maybe humans in their present physical and psychological state aren't meant for really space? Off World will end up being a refuge for the robots and replicants.
"Not at all. The issue here isn't statistics. It's that less-than-brilliant people could potentially be making huge, life-changing decisions based on this test."
Maybe Darwinism should take its course.
"Yes, the tests might give you an idea about your risks for certain health problems, but there is no real benefit to these kits. The same testing (or better) is available through labs, if someone feels it's necessary."
"Not to mention, as someone said above, family history is a pretty accurate (and free) way to get similar information."
Not if: 1) you don't know who your family is; and 2) there's a history of mis-diagnosis. Looking at a family that is now recognizing widespread Celiac Disease and gluten-intolerance, decades of past GI-related ailments in deceased family members including ulcers, gastroesophageal reflux disease, colon and esophageal cancer suggests a common basis that was never considered in individual cases. I've seen bad drug interactions diagnosed as epilepsy, peanut allergies diagnosed as candida to chronic infections, other food allergies diagnosed as Barrett's esophagus, allergies diagnosed as personality disorders, etc., etc., etc...
The kits that Walgreens proposed having in their stores seemed to have an element of bait and switch in them (low initial cost followed by a variety of add-ons), so the tests packages should be clear as to what the consumer is really getting. On the other hand there are big pharm companies making huge amounts of money off consumers who neither understand their meds, nor side-effects/contradictions, nor general effectiveness, nor how lifestyle changes can often be far more effective than the meds they're prescribed.
As soon as I heard about the iPad 3G, the first thing I though of was velcro-attaching it to the dashboard to use as a GPS unit, with full true Google Maps functionality ("My Maps"). A couple of 3m Command Jumbo Hook "velcro" strips should hold an iPad on the dash just fine, until some company makes a decent suction mount.
The Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO) sued the City of Chicago this morning, charging that because of the meter deal taxpayer money is illegally being used to benefit a private company, Chicago Parking Meters LLC. You can click on to the Chicago Reader blog story here...
Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke of the Chicago Reader have been excellent investigative journalists uncovering the corrupt parking meter fiasco. What it comes down to is the meters being sold off for peanuts ($1.5 billion over 75 years is nothing), and the public's right to know trashed. Clauses in the meter contract have been said to inhibit transportation innovation in the city. If one wanted to expand bike lanes or add streetcars and needed to remove meters to facilitate that, the city would have to pay LAZ/Morgan Stanley for lost revenue. Here's a link to their blog postings on the Chicago parking meters...
And hats off to the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO), finally someone steps up to sue the City of Chicago. I'm becoming a member today...
My dad had over 35 years with a civil engineering company as a project manager, and in many years brought in 10s and sometimes 100s of millions of of dollars of additional contracts annually just because clients liked him (something that wasn't required by his position like some engineering and consulting firms these days). Any animosity with coworkers was with the marketing and contracts department heads, which got to some of the company partners. While it was a situation where most of the partners loved him because he was a nice guy and incredibly profitable, some other partners for years were bad-mouthing him about his "tactics to generate new work" and the way he fraternizes with clients.
His department wasn't hurting for work and he was supposed to be put on a new project (he liked working and there was no policy to encourage or force retirement). One Tuesday he gets into work at 6:30am before most people and finds out he can't log into the network. At 9am someone from HR and a guard come by, gets escorted to the HR office where he finds out he's been laid off, paperwork is done, personal articles would be boxed and shipped to him, he's escorted out the door. After decades of exemplary service to the company, he was essentially curbed and dumped on the street like a piece of crap with little explanation. His own line of management apparently didn't see what was coming, their department was profitable while the layoffs were otherwise in departments that weren't cutting it. My dad was depressed and confused since he didn't see it coming after decades of praise and bringing profits to the company far beyond what was required by his job.
Turns out he was one of a dozen employees that were laid off the day before, just that he had taken it off so wasn't around for it. The tactics employed for the others were not much different. The others were stopped at the entrance before entering, HR business was conducted near the entrance where other employees could pass by and see, something entirely new for the company.
Also turns out that the only substantial reason for letting him go was that it looked bad to be laying a bunch of people off and keeping a worker who was past retirement around. They figured that at 70 he's already set with a retirement package, social security, his annual and sick leave payouts, and now a big severance package that accounted for 35 years of work, so he's fine. The severance package was great but the layoff tactics employed were horrible, especially considering his decades of past service to the company. My dad even said they could have talked to him about leaving and he would have left, he previously had the impression they wanted him to work as long as he wanted, especially when plans were in motion for him to be on a new project, but they just resorted to the HR boot with little explanation, probably to scare and shake up the other employees, with no consideration for my dad's feelings.
For a couple of days my dad's buddies, some of his coworkers and I spent a lot of time counseling him, but I think the only thing that saved him from depression were the unsolicited job offers that were rolling in within days, for more than he was being paid before. He started working for a new company within 2 weeks that he loves to this day and wonders why he stayed at the old one for so long, kind of like being a victim of abuse, after time you just take it as being normal.
Being laid off like that still gnawed at him for months until he was invited to the old company's Christmas party (like what do those a-holes want?), then some of the partners tried to provide a dinner invitation to ask if he'd like to come back as either a full-time employee or an independent contractor. And he told them, with the way the company let him go, punted to HR and tossed out, why should he come back? Why should he work for a company that doesn't show respect to its valuable employees?
Earlier that same year, I know other well performing engineers and project managers who w
Consider if we could walk around with a miniature HDTV that could record what's in our field of vision (as well as audio). This LifeCam might be integrated into a pair of glasses or a pendant around our neck. A constant stream of video and audio would be delivered wirelessly to a remote server or something like a beltcliped memory device. Maybe this LifeCam would also capture the other interfaces around us as we interact with them, like video monitors, TVs, mobile phone displays.
So wherever all this data is collected, a program is run on the data, something that's an evolution and merging of products like Apple's iPhoto, Time Machine, Spotlight, and Nokia's LifeBlog. This program is constantly analyzing, indexing and arranging the info in the stream. It's keeping all the video and audio intact, but it's indexing info that's ripe for databasing like contacts, conversations, transactions, GPS data, things we did. What if we could download widgets that provide focus on what interests us, that can also datamine our past life data as well?
I could see a whole new twist on the surveillance society where we all have a camera and system that's datamining away. I'd go for the LifeCam 360 with iris scanning, so if I get mugged the cops will know who did it within minutes and maybe even find and arrest the guy; that could be a crime deterrent. If I wanted to review a conversation from a month ago, I could time machine back to it, and retrieve a person's name and contact info if I had forgotten. I could run a diet and exercise widget that could help me stay fit, telling me if I'm running enough or drinking too many mocha lattes. An alcohol widget could inform me if I might have a drinking problem. The girlfriend widget might tell me if the woman I'm dating is ok or a bitch, and maybe tie into a forum of peers who could comment as well. I could see financial widgets, work aids, program elements that integrate into things we use like photo and video software, desktop calendars, project management software, where when we use a desktop computer, it'll have calendars, address books and such that are built from our experiences in addition to what we might manually enter.
I think it would be cool if the GUI were in our heads (Terminator style, but with improved graphics), but that might take awhile yet, along with true brain interfaces.
I think a life recorder/indexer is more likely in the foreseeable future, and more practical. I also think it would be better to have a true record of one's experiences and actions, not a product of our minds that could be distorted over time due to things like emotions, opinions, perspective, or just bad memory.
You might want to check out some electrical engineering control systems books, and electrical engineering texts dealing in Fourier math in general. I forgot a lot of this stuff since getting my BSEE, but like back in '89 or '90 with MathCad for DOS, I was modeling Fourier equations (I think with some feedback loops) to approximate sine waves, then triangle and square waves, futzing with the math to smooth out the spikes that would occur at sharp transitions (like at the corners of the square and triangle waves). Just 2D then because that's all the computers I was using could handle, like it took an hour to model a square wave on a 486. I think control systems math, namely Fourier and possibly Laplace, could provide a way of deriving numerical approximations to your second order wave equations. That's what control math is all about, providing a means to model systems, then machine-implementable ways to stabilize those systems.
-- Bad control systems joke follows --
Q: Why are all the Polish plane flights half full?
A: Because all the poles have to be on the right side of the plane for stability.
"However, why would they expect people to run Windows on Apple hardware? People switch to a Mac mostly for OSX (Altho the hardware is nice looking)"
I think a lot of older people (like those who remember the 1984 ad) believe that Macs are just for kids and not a serious platform for business. There's a lot of people that don't even know that there's Office for Mac, Lotus Notes for Mac, or that you could run Windows on a Mac (VPC before, Boot Camp and Parallels now) to run other apps like WordPerfect (the choice of many attorneys). There's a lot of people at my office amazed that I can do everything at work on my MacBook that others do on their PCs, thanks to Parallels/Windows, Notes for Mac, Office for Mac, web server-based apps, etc. I think most people have no idea until they see it first hand.
I also know people who wouldn't even consider a Mac until they walk into an Apple store. I have people asking me what PC notebook to buy, tell them to just visit the Apple store "just to look," then they're calling me on my cell phone asking me about which Mac to buy and wanting to know more about that Virtual PC thing I was talking about.
Now I think for many people, their next computer may be a "Mac for the kids" that can also do Windows for working at home. Windows on a Mac will be a gateway.
A free market is a market where price is determined by the unregulated interchange of supply and demand rather than set by artificial means. The problem is that things like lobbying, pork, tax incentives, and a disparity in the regulatory and tax structures amongst countries act as artificial means to make the "free market" not really that at all, to the detriment of American workers. Maybe it makes good business sense, but it is anti-American for American workers, and there's nothing socialist about wanting to keep jobs here at home. I'm not some kind of WTO-protester type (or some staunch proponent of capitalism either), but maybe some of what those folks were saying years ago was correct after all, because things like what Bank of America is doing demonstrates a corporate attitude that American customers are great to make money off of, but American workers are a disposable commodity.
The liquid looks cloudy and uninteresting? Don't talk about my family that way!
And don't worry about the "alien invasion" either, we always try to find hosts who wouldn't resist or twitch too much over being in an overtly symbiotic relationship. Your current parasites really haven't been doing much for you, we'll change that. We offer change: we provide the brains, you provide the body, and everyone will be happy in the end. Hell, Alex here is getting laid more since he can now talk NPR with the BoHo chicks, and I'm starting to really get into earth women; sweet! Network gaming sure wasn't doing it for Al here, your life will improve too.
The invasion will begin shortly... once the current season of America's Next Top Model is over. I'm really liking Al's Lazy Boy gaming chair too.
The arrogance of universities is nothing short of incredible. It amazes me that administrators and professors often see themselves as "god-like" when they are really just prima donnas in a service industry funded by tax dollars and tuition fees. As someone who worked their way (and incurred debt) through undergrad and grad school, I had no tolerance for bad service of any sort and conveyed that to several professors when it was appropriate, reminding them why they were there. To see these same types want to impose control over the personal lives of students is disturbing. Hopefully students will stand up to this and rightly tell their schools to bugger off and get back to concentrating on academics, their core business and reason for existence.
I agree and think it's kind of pathetic that Apple continues to charge what it does for a high-end PowerBook considering what one can get in a Mini. Also, why do they hinder the Mini by not giving it 1-Gbit ethernet and FW800? Being a 1.25-GHz PowerBook owner, the Mini could be a great little machine to connect to a PowerBook and off-load work, or to use as an external DVD burner with some extra brains, but the data transfer rates on the Mini are pathetic.
I think that a PowerBook revision is coming next week, but it'll be nothing in performance compared to even a lowly G5 iMac. I can't wait for the Intel Macs to finally come.
Budweiser and other companies export malt and other beer making products to breweries in Europe. It has been awhile but I believe that Bud has at least one plant in Wisconsin dedicated to export.
Maybe Motorola's iTune phones just aren't up to Apple's standards to carry the brand? Often Moto products have great potential but end up being stunted in some way, like their A630, great form factor but lacking in UI and display. I think there's little to get excited about in a normal-ish phone that plays iTunes. What Apple should do is maybe take its iPod Mini or Shuffle (display added) and incorporate a phone (GSM please) with Motorola's assistance, that would be exciting.
The was an article in last week's Chicago Reader, from what I recall, that said that park guard's were pocketing fees collected at the park, and technically, a pro photographer should apply for a permit in advance for photo taking.
What's also absurd is that the city (and taxpayers) pays the salary of a city worker to manage photo permits for that thing, is it really worth it?
The upside of all this is that the guards might chase off the annoying wedding photo groups, so annoying in the spring especially.
...it's a woman, a big-bottomed Chicago woman, you just have to look at it from underneath. I've heard other people, especially artsy women, call it the "Stainless Steal ______." (think of a word that denotes part of a woman's anatomy, and rhymes with the Chicago streets Paulina and Lunt).;-)
"Morning Edition, January 31, 2005 The government of Brazil says it will switch 300,000 government computers from Microsoft's Windows operating system to open source software like Linux. Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to meet with Brazil's president to discuss the change. Brazil is dropping all proprietary software."
Slashdot Mirror
Why not fill it with an assortment of human knowledge and history and send it off into deep space for alien archeologists? The human race may no longer exist but we can live forever as material for museum exhibitions!
God, the Father, is being an irresponsible parent by letting wars, torture, pain and anguish continually occur amongst his children without doing anything to stop it. No striking anyone down with lightning; only random and baseless floods. It's time to sue God and report Him to the children services agency.
The Japanese robot moon base is a spectacular announcement. It provides the ability to perform all kind of work and activity on the moon without the burden of human life support, or risk to humans considering cosmic radiation cancer risk, silica moon dust hazards, etc.
But here on Slashdot, many respond with nationalistic bickering and insults. Shouldn't this tech-savvy bunch be smarter and above this?
Maybe humans in their present physical and psychological state aren't meant for really space? Off World will end up being a refuge for the robots and replicants.
Darwinism again in action. So let's just have a nanny state and "protect" everyone from their genetic information.
"Not at all. The issue here isn't statistics. It's that less-than-brilliant people could potentially be making huge, life-changing decisions based on this test."
Maybe Darwinism should take its course.
"Yes, the tests might give you an idea about your risks for certain health problems, but there is no real benefit to these kits. The same testing (or better) is available through labs, if someone feels it's necessary."
These genetic test kits are processed by CLIA-certified labs using state of the art equipment (Illumina for example - http://www.illumina.com/systems/iscan.ilmn ).
"Not to mention, as someone said above, family history is a pretty accurate (and free) way to get similar information."
Not if: 1) you don't know who your family is; and 2) there's a history of mis-diagnosis. Looking at a family that is now recognizing widespread Celiac Disease and gluten-intolerance, decades of past GI-related ailments in deceased family members including ulcers, gastroesophageal reflux disease, colon and esophageal cancer suggests a common basis that was never considered in individual cases. I've seen bad drug interactions diagnosed as epilepsy, peanut allergies diagnosed as candida to chronic infections, other food allergies diagnosed as Barrett's esophagus, allergies diagnosed as personality disorders, etc., etc., etc...
The kits that Walgreens proposed having in their stores seemed to have an element of bait and switch in them (low initial cost followed by a variety of add-ons), so the tests packages should be clear as to what the consumer is really getting. On the other hand there are big pharm companies making huge amounts of money off consumers who neither understand their meds, nor side-effects/contradictions, nor general effectiveness, nor how lifestyle changes can often be far more effective than the meds they're prescribed.
As soon as I heard about the iPad 3G, the first thing I though of was velcro-attaching it to the dashboard to use as a GPS unit, with full true Google Maps functionality ("My Maps"). A couple of 3m Command Jumbo Hook "velcro" strips should hold an iPad on the dash just fine, until some company makes a decent suction mount.
Never heard of Mark Fiore before Apple making a stink out of an app. Checked out Fiore's website and love it, can't wait for the iPad app !!
The Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO) sued the City of Chicago this morning, charging that because of the meter deal taxpayer money is illegally being used to benefit a private company, Chicago Parking Meters LLC. You can click on to the Chicago Reader blog story here...
http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2009/08/19/ivi-ipo-sues-the-city-over-the-parking-meter-deal
Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke of the Chicago Reader have been excellent investigative journalists uncovering the corrupt parking meter fiasco. What it comes down to is the meters being sold off for peanuts ($1.5 billion over 75 years is nothing), and the public's right to know trashed. Clauses in the meter contract have been said to inhibit transportation innovation in the city. If one wanted to expand bike lanes or add streetcars and needed to remove meters to facilitate that, the city would have to pay LAZ/Morgan Stanley for lost revenue. Here's a link to their blog postings on the Chicago parking meters...
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ArticleArchives?tag=parking%20meters
And hats off to the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO), finally someone steps up to sue the City of Chicago. I'm becoming a member today...
http://www.iviipo.org/membership.html
http://www.iviipo.org/
My dad had over 35 years with a civil engineering company as a project manager, and in many years brought in 10s and sometimes 100s of millions of of dollars of additional contracts annually just because clients liked him (something that wasn't required by his position like some engineering and consulting firms these days). Any animosity with coworkers was with the marketing and contracts department heads, which got to some of the company partners. While it was a situation where most of the partners loved him because he was a nice guy and incredibly profitable, some other partners for years were bad-mouthing him about his "tactics to generate new work" and the way he fraternizes with clients.
His department wasn't hurting for work and he was supposed to be put on a new project (he liked working and there was no policy to encourage or force retirement). One Tuesday he gets into work at 6:30am before most people and finds out he can't log into the network. At 9am someone from HR and a guard come by, gets escorted to the HR office where he finds out he's been laid off, paperwork is done, personal articles would be boxed and shipped to him, he's escorted out the door. After decades of exemplary service to the company, he was essentially curbed and dumped on the street like a piece of crap with little explanation. His own line of management apparently didn't see what was coming, their department was profitable while the layoffs were otherwise in departments that weren't cutting it. My dad was depressed and confused since he didn't see it coming after decades of praise and bringing profits to the company far beyond what was required by his job.
Turns out he was one of a dozen employees that were laid off the day before, just that he had taken it off so wasn't around for it. The tactics employed for the others were not much different. The others were stopped at the entrance before entering, HR business was conducted near the entrance where other employees could pass by and see, something entirely new for the company.
Also turns out that the only substantial reason for letting him go was that it looked bad to be laying a bunch of people off and keeping a worker who was past retirement around. They figured that at 70 he's already set with a retirement package, social security, his annual and sick leave payouts, and now a big severance package that accounted for 35 years of work, so he's fine. The severance package was great but the layoff tactics employed were horrible, especially considering his decades of past service to the company. My dad even said they could have talked to him about leaving and he would have left, he previously had the impression they wanted him to work as long as he wanted, especially when plans were in motion for him to be on a new project, but they just resorted to the HR boot with little explanation, probably to scare and shake up the other employees, with no consideration for my dad's feelings.
For a couple of days my dad's buddies, some of his coworkers and I spent a lot of time counseling him, but I think the only thing that saved him from depression were the unsolicited job offers that were rolling in within days, for more than he was being paid before. He started working for a new company within 2 weeks that he loves to this day and wonders why he stayed at the old one for so long, kind of like being a victim of abuse, after time you just take it as being normal.
Being laid off like that still gnawed at him for months until he was invited to the old company's Christmas party (like what do those a-holes want?), then some of the partners tried to provide a dinner invitation to ask if he'd like to come back as either a full-time employee or an independent contractor. And he told them, with the way the company let him go, punted to HR and tossed out, why should he come back? Why should he work for a company that doesn't show respect to its valuable employees?
Earlier that same year, I know other well performing engineers and project managers who w
Consider if we could walk around with a miniature HDTV that could record what's in our field of vision (as well as audio). This LifeCam might be integrated into a pair of glasses or a pendant around our neck. A constant stream of video and audio would be delivered wirelessly to a remote server or something like a beltcliped memory device. Maybe this LifeCam would also capture the other interfaces around us as we interact with them, like video monitors, TVs, mobile phone displays.
So wherever all this data is collected, a program is run on the data, something that's an evolution and merging of products like Apple's iPhoto, Time Machine, Spotlight, and Nokia's LifeBlog. This program is constantly analyzing, indexing and arranging the info in the stream. It's keeping all the video and audio intact, but it's indexing info that's ripe for databasing like contacts, conversations, transactions, GPS data, things we did. What if we could download widgets that provide focus on what interests us, that can also datamine our past life data as well?
I could see a whole new twist on the surveillance society where we all have a camera and system that's datamining away. I'd go for the LifeCam 360 with iris scanning, so if I get mugged the cops will know who did it within minutes and maybe even find and arrest the guy; that could be a crime deterrent. If I wanted to review a conversation from a month ago, I could time machine back to it, and retrieve a person's name and contact info if I had forgotten. I could run a diet and exercise widget that could help me stay fit, telling me if I'm running enough or drinking too many mocha lattes. An alcohol widget could inform me if I might have a drinking problem. The girlfriend widget might tell me if the woman I'm dating is ok or a bitch, and maybe tie into a forum of peers who could comment as well. I could see financial widgets, work aids, program elements that integrate into things we use like photo and video software, desktop calendars, project management software, where when we use a desktop computer, it'll have calendars, address books and such that are built from our experiences in addition to what we might manually enter.
I think it would be cool if the GUI were in our heads (Terminator style, but with improved graphics), but that might take awhile yet, along with true brain interfaces.
I think a life recorder/indexer is more likely in the foreseeable future, and more practical. I also think it would be better to have a true record of one's experiences and actions, not a product of our minds that could be distorted over time due to things like emotions, opinions, perspective, or just bad memory.
You might want to check out some electrical engineering control systems books, and electrical engineering texts dealing in Fourier math in general. I forgot a lot of this stuff since getting my BSEE, but like back in '89 or '90 with MathCad for DOS, I was modeling Fourier equations (I think with some feedback loops) to approximate sine waves, then triangle and square waves, futzing with the math to smooth out the spikes that would occur at sharp transitions (like at the corners of the square and triangle waves). Just 2D then because that's all the computers I was using could handle, like it took an hour to model a square wave on a 486. I think control systems math, namely Fourier and possibly Laplace, could provide a way of deriving numerical approximations to your second order wave equations. That's what control math is all about, providing a means to model systems, then machine-implementable ways to stabilize those systems.
-- Bad control systems joke follows --
Q: Why are all the Polish plane flights half full?
A: Because all the poles have to be on the right side of the plane for stability.
If this bothers you, please write to "opinions@washingtonpost.com" and let them know.
"However, why would they expect people to run Windows on Apple hardware? People switch to a Mac mostly for OSX (Altho the hardware is nice looking)"
I think a lot of older people (like those who remember the 1984 ad) believe that Macs are just for kids and not a serious platform for business. There's a lot of people that don't even know that there's Office for Mac, Lotus Notes for Mac, or that you could run Windows on a Mac (VPC before, Boot Camp and Parallels now) to run other apps like WordPerfect (the choice of many attorneys). There's a lot of people at my office amazed that I can do everything at work on my MacBook that others do on their PCs, thanks to Parallels/Windows, Notes for Mac, Office for Mac, web server-based apps, etc. I think most people have no idea until they see it first hand.
I also know people who wouldn't even consider a Mac until they walk into an Apple store. I have people asking me what PC notebook to buy, tell them to just visit the Apple store "just to look," then they're calling me on my cell phone asking me about which Mac to buy and wanting to know more about that Virtual PC thing I was talking about.
Now I think for many people, their next computer may be a "Mac for the kids" that can also do Windows for working at home. Windows on a Mac will be a gateway.
"If you get too excited about what is supposed to be an incredibly amazing product you simply won't buy a new Apple this year."
Doubtful, just look around the office (assuming a non-tech business). How many do you think read Slashdot or similar sites for news to plan ahead?
A free market is a market where price is determined by the unregulated interchange of supply and demand rather than set by artificial means. The problem is that things like lobbying, pork, tax incentives, and a disparity in the regulatory and tax structures amongst countries act as artificial means to make the "free market" not really that at all, to the detriment of American workers. Maybe it makes good business sense, but it is anti-American for American workers, and there's nothing socialist about wanting to keep jobs here at home. I'm not some kind of WTO-protester type (or some staunch proponent of capitalism either), but maybe some of what those folks were saying years ago was correct after all, because things like what Bank of America is doing demonstrates a corporate attitude that American customers are great to make money off of, but American workers are a disposable commodity.
The liquid looks cloudy and uninteresting? Don't talk about my family that way!
And don't worry about the "alien invasion" either, we always try to find hosts who wouldn't resist or twitch too much over being in an overtly symbiotic relationship. Your current parasites really haven't been doing much for you, we'll change that. We offer change: we provide the brains, you provide the body, and everyone will be happy in the end. Hell, Alex here is getting laid more since he can now talk NPR with the BoHo chicks, and I'm starting to really get into earth women; sweet! Network gaming sure wasn't doing it for Al here, your life will improve too.
The invasion will begin shortly... once the current season of America's Next Top Model is over. I'm really liking Al's Lazy Boy gaming chair too.
...into my iPod, and mute it, that would be a Christmas miracle. ;-)
The arrogance of universities is nothing short of incredible. It amazes me that administrators and professors often see themselves as "god-like" when they are really just prima donnas in a service industry funded by tax dollars and tuition fees. As someone who worked their way (and incurred debt) through undergrad and grad school, I had no tolerance for bad service of any sort and conveyed that to several professors when it was appropriate, reminding them why they were there. To see these same types want to impose control over the personal lives of students is disturbing. Hopefully students will stand up to this and rightly tell their schools to bugger off and get back to concentrating on academics, their core business and reason for existence.
I agree and think it's kind of pathetic that Apple continues to charge what it does for a high-end PowerBook considering what one can get in a Mini. Also, why do they hinder the Mini by not giving it 1-Gbit ethernet and FW800? Being a 1.25-GHz PowerBook owner, the Mini could be a great little machine to connect to a PowerBook and off-load work, or to use as an external DVD burner with some extra brains, but the data transfer rates on the Mini are pathetic.
I think that a PowerBook revision is coming next week, but it'll be nothing in performance compared to even a lowly G5 iMac. I can't wait for the Intel Macs to finally come.
Is it possible that Apple will use recycled iPods as replacements under the recent iPod battery settlement?
http://www.appleipodsettlement.com/
http://www.appleipodsettlement.com/claim.pdf
Budweiser and other companies export malt and other beer making products to breweries in Europe. It has been awhile but I believe that Bud has at least one plant in Wisconsin dedicated to export.
Maybe Motorola's iTune phones just aren't up to Apple's standards to carry the brand? Often Moto products have great potential but end up being stunted in some way, like their A630, great form factor but lacking in UI and display. I think there's little to get excited about in a normal-ish phone that plays iTunes. What Apple should do is maybe take its iPod Mini or Shuffle (display added) and incorporate a phone (GSM please) with Motorola's assistance, that would be exciting.
The was an article in last week's Chicago Reader, from what I recall, that said that park guard's were pocketing fees collected at the park, and technically, a pro photographer should apply for a permit in advance for photo taking.
What's also absurd is that the city (and taxpayers) pays the salary of a city worker to manage photo permits for that thing, is it really worth it?
The upside of all this is that the guards might chase off the annoying wedding photo groups, so annoying in the spring especially.
...it's a woman, a big-bottomed Chicago woman, you just have to look at it from underneath. I've heard other people, especially artsy women, call it the "Stainless Steal ______." (think of a word that denotes part of a woman's anatomy, and rhymes with the Chicago streets Paulina and Lunt). ;-)
From NPR...
y Id=4471963
"Morning Edition, January 31, 2005 The government of Brazil says it will switch 300,000 government computers from Microsoft's Windows operating system to open source software like Linux. Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to meet with Brazil's president to discuss the change. Brazil is dropping all proprietary software."
Listen here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
The Brazilians are just saying no!