I'm in the early stages of a project to switch from Windows to Linux - not just at home but at my wife's workplace (she works directly with the company president in a SOHO environment, just a few people). My wife has fallen in love with Linux if only due to the greater amount of customizations, skins and other "pretty!" things she can do by comparison with Win98/2k, so she's been using it for months, and I have other computers around with various Linux distros installed for experimentation purposes (though I still have Win2k on my main system until my current development work is over).
I eventually want to be able to make a customized Knoppix-like CD with all my apps, coupled with the ability to securely access my files at home (we have DSL). But more than that - I want to be able to forget all the masses of stuff I've had to learn about Windows over the years, but I'm sort of the go-to guy for computer help amongst my social circle (I don't hang out with geeks...) so ideally I want to be able to offer a Windows alternative to nontechnical types - a Linspire-like setup that looks and works almost exactly like WinXP. "My computer is screwed up, can you come over and fix it?" "Take this CD instead, you'll have no more problems..."
Mozilla is a great browser and I've switched a few people over to it, but you do still have to put up with more than a few 'issues' - websites that look and work fine in IE but don't appear correctly in Mozilla, or misconfigured servers which don't send the MIME-type of.avi files allowing Mozilla to display them as garbage text (whereas IE figures out it's a video file regardless), and so on.
Maybe I can learn enough about Mozilla to reconfigure it to work around such things (I understand why it's more important to the Mozilla people to be standards-compliant, but the kinds of people I'm hoping to help here Just Want It To Work...) and maybe I can learn enough about Linux to work around a number of similar issues, but at the least I know that *I'm* gonna be happier once I'm able to ditch Windows. I just hope I can switch everyone else too!
"Personality clashes" - that covers a fair whack of ground. You can't possibly expect useful advice (if there even is such an animal) without a lot more information about you, and the other person, preferably from an unbiased third party... one or both of you might need psychoanalysis, or just a weekend on a fishing boat together, or (for all I know) a lobotomy, but what you *don't* need is suggestions from the Slashdot crowd based on an extremely vague question.
But on a more constructive note, I've been there myself, more than once. So you've asked a vague question and you'll get a vague answer: in my case, back in the old days, in retrospect, most of the time, frankly it was my fault. Then I got a bit older and a bit wiser, and now I find myself flexible enough to deal with or avoid almost any unpleasant situation. So try waiting a few years until one or both of you grows up a bit. (Note that in most cases, time alone doesn't help people, so this probably won't work - but neither will the books and classes recommended to you by others)
I'm been working on some ideas along parallel lines for some while - making a "computer on a disk" (live CD) so that I can take my environment, apps and preferences and data, anywhere I go. But one of the complications I'm anticipating is finding places which will let me use it! A cyber-cafe or a Kinko's would be stupid to let anyone come in and boot off their own CD (how many of them know what a "Live CD" is?), so you may be forced to resort to computers owned by friends - which is OK, if you only travel near places where friends of yours live...
So, it's a good idea in principle, but perhaps in practice your efforts might be better served by coming up with some kind of remote control setup - a secure browser-based means of contacting your personal computer back at home (like GoToMyPC but cheaper...), a kind of a proxy I guess. Then with that you wouldn't even need to worry about a keylogger - you could set up rotating passwords to access your PC (based on the hour of the day plus the date, plus your age, or whatever - a fairly secure yet memorable scheme should not be difficult to concoct) and keep your static bank passwords in your Mozilla password-manager at home, so at no time are you typing anything anyone else can use. (by the way, even if you're not worried about a keylogger, what about all the windows you can see from where you sit in that sunny cyber-cafe - ever heard of camcorders with good zoom lenses...?)
Would take some more setup time, but might be worth it. You wouldn't even need to leave your PC on 24/7 if you set it up to boot at a given hour every day, which I think most can do.
You left out Step 5: take job delivering pizza because all your clients have dropped you.
My advice to people is to disengage the thick cable that's usually to be found lodged in the back of their machine near the main cooling fan; guaranteed end to all computer problems, but then I'm actually trying to get out of the computer-fixing game permanently.
If you aren't, it might pay to be a little nicer to your customers. I love Mozilla, but it's not for everyone, not while there are poorly-made sites that only work correctly in IE...
Just wondering, how can you be "stuck" with an old machine these days? I've seen working, name-brand P3/500-class systems sitting by dumpsters at my old apartment complex, a year and more ago. I've got people wanting to give me ~300-400Mhz laptops they have no other use for these days (I have a contact at a South American school which needs all they can get). A friend of mine recently contracted a persistent virus on an Athlon 850 and decided to buy a new Dell rather than call me up to fix it, so he's got a spare he'll probably put out by the curb.
Believe me, I know what it's like not to have any extra cash - but if that's the only reason you're stuck with a computer incapable of running a GUI, then one of us is overlooking something...
It's hardly the only show on the air which does this - "Ali G" from the UK (and HBO) is a great example, he's interviewed the likes of Newt Gingrich, C Everett Koop, Ralph Nader, Buzz Aldrin and many others, most of whom never caught on. I'm sure the basic concept goes back as far as audiovisual reproduction technology.
The good satirical shows (like the Daily Show) merely allow genuine whackos and phonies to make fools of themselves; I'm sure there are also lowbrow shows which try to ambush and victimize unsuspecting guests as well. I dunno which sort this "Crossballs" will be (though there's one or two in the cast whom I know don't need to be doing crap to pay rent, so there's hope) but regardless, her reaction seems to be a bit over the top...
The only reason to own a radio (unless you're part of the overwhelming majority of the world who actually enjoys music fed to them) - PhilHendrieShow.com
A year ago I moved out of state; my old ISP had been bought out and was going downhill fast anyway, so the only good thing about the move was ditching them... To this day, however, my old web page is still online - I still get an occasional request from someone who's Googled the pics I put up of the stuff I was trying to give away just prior to leaving town.
Leaving the obvious issues and questions aside, I think this just falls under the broad category of "If this was our biggest problem, we'd be doing OK..."
Treat this like a project; get yourself a Killer App for the task.
Find something that you just WANT to do - or something worth doing, for example a charity or community group - and let that force you to learn what you need to learn.
You initially got into this computer thing 'cos it seemed cool and fun; and at the time, it was. Now you're trying to get back into it but without quite the same motivation. You want it to be fun and easy like it was the first time? Well, you've learned a thing or two since then, so use those life-skills...
I bet you don't even have to leave your chair to recognize something, or someone, in your life that needs Fixing. To the extent that there's a technological solution to the problem, let yourself find and implement the answer. If you get it right, you can probably sell the idea too.
> they don't demonstrate it as much as they mention it in passing > and pay lip service to it. Usually they try to prove their theory, > when it fails, or when it works, then they go blow stuff up.
And - your problem IS...?!
For television, particularly the Discovery Channel, they're a step forward.
Well, it's "edutainment" maybe, but they at least make passing references to objectivity and the scientific method. It combines elements of Junkyard Wars (pre shark-jumping) with Snopes and - uh, what other TV shows actually demonstrate processes like testing your assumptions and trying to prove the opposite of your theory?
My wife and I both like it, and we're such different people that apart from top-shelf comedies, almost nothing else on the air qualifies. I'll watch until it, too, goes downhill.
I daresay you'll reach more hams via Slashdot than through any TV show. Are you just trying to draw attention to your endeavor, or are you hoping to attract more interest to amateur radio in general and perhaps recruit new fans? (call the show "Elmer Live"...) I'd hope any nascent genuine geeks won't be wasting time watching the mostly-drek on the Discovery Channel (Mythbusters notwithstanding) - figure out what the kids watch, and show 'em what's cool about ham radio if you can.
(KB0UQY - got the licence 8 years ago now, and have never so much as touched a radio since...)
> Except that extra digits in a telephone number are ignored, > so the number formed by "4" + (DishNetwork number) might be > a valid 7-digit or 10-digit telephone number.
I wasn't long-winded enough in the original post to mention this, but assuming it's an 800- number to begin with, the prefix would be "418" which doesn't exist in my area code (I checked).
And to the best of my knowledge, it's not trying to make outgoing calls anyway - I'm just trying to have an extra layer of protection in case I hit the wrong button(s) during one of those commercials where they say "use your remote to buy now!"... or in case something does, anyway. I notice that every time I get a "software update" the box ends up just slightly more flaky - info-screens coming up over programming without being asked for, picture sometimes not coming back properly when you switch back from guide mode, etc.
I'm not really worried about the box dialing out as it is. But who knows whether someday a hacker will get control of the satellite uplink and download a patch that causes tens of thousands of satellite receivers nationwide to repeatedly call a Nigerian phone-sex line - lotta quick bucks in that sort of scam, I bet, and I know it's possible 'cos I saw someone do it on TV once (I think it was 'Max Headroom'...)
I dunno about DirectTV, or Tivo, but I have DishNetwork and it doesn't mind not being able to dial out. I leave a phone line hooked up to it so that we have the CallerID-on-TV feature, but since I don't use PPV and am the suspicious type, I've effectively disabled its dial-out capability by setting the "dial this number for an outside line" to a "4". Six months, no probs.
As for Tivo's guide, maybe I'm missing something but is it that big a deal? I've never used a Tivo but I'd guess that the guide you get from your satellite TV receiver ought to have most of the same functions. Granted, it won't guess at shows you might like to watch, but then again that 'feature' leads only to bad standup comedy jokes which reference Will and Grace, in my experience...
> if you can swallow your pride and deliver pizza, you could > just as easily swallow someone else's pride and do gay porn.
Wow, in your mind those two professions are equivalent? (And I thought *I* was a huge moral relativist...) The apparent nonexistance of a line between legal and illegal actions should leave you admirably suited to a job in almost any large corporate legal department. Blimey, you're set for life, dude!
Personally, I delivered pizza for 2 years - even while I was earning $75/hr as an at-home programmer. It was a nice break from the keyboard, getting me out of the house on a regular basis, and I got the not-so-occasional free slice - the best kind of pizza is free, after all! So where's the pride-swallowing, I ask you? I'm not begging for change, I'm not representing scumbags in court, I'm not calling people during dinner to sell them siding, and my clothes stay on. It can be dangerous work if you're not in a nice area, but otherwise it's enough to live on and you'd be surprised how many computer-y types I've known through the years who used pizza places as a nice little moonlight position... especially computer techs - I think it's just a nice change of pace to have a job where people are happy to see you!
> Actually, our hiring policy (when we do it) is completely backwards, intentionally.
Brilliant insight - hire people for the job they're going to do based on ability and experience, even if it's not the kind of ability that shows up on paper! Test someone's actual skill rather than their ability to answer questions (in front of you or on an exam) - what a novel idea... problem is, that's the exception rather than the rule.
Perhaps the way to fix all the multiple problems within the industry is by targeting the people who do the hiring, hmm? Show me a troubled industry that (for the sake of argument, is magically) full of HR decision-makers with a clear view of their goals, and within four years - one generation of college education - I'll bet you'd find the right people will be in the right spots almost everywhere. Without square-pegs in round holes, everyone's effectiveness goes up while keeping salary growth lower 'cos you're not paying people to do jobs they hate.
> 5) Invent your own games! The only limit is your creativity.
And, uh... your free time. Right? (Uh...)
> 2) Swap them at parties as introduction cards.
Rockin' parties!
Seriously - I applaud your impulse to screw with the tracking benefits they derive, believe me. But don't for a moment think it'll make a difference. They already know a certain percentage of people will do this (I bet they even have a fair idea how many percent) and have ways around it, in the rare occasions it could actually make a difference. I used to work with databases a lot, and when you have 160,000 addresses and 0.1% inaccuracies to deal with, you're not even gonna waste time on them 'cos it's not worthwhile. I can think of 3 or 4 easy ways they can nullify the impact of the measures you describe in your post (mainly by designing queries to group data in other ways, or simply filter out abrubtly-changing profiles).
What IS the answer? Well, an organized campaign where people took carefully-designed steps to hork things up - maybe effective in the long run, but certainly not worthwhile. And what do you expect it to accomplish, make the stores say "we're sorry"? Take the cards away and replace them with something even more sinister, like RFID tagging grocery packaging? (oh... uh... hmm!) Or how about just making it more expensive for them to do business, thereby raising costs for everybody? Yeah!!
By all means, give false info on the form. Swap cards around. Patronize non-club stores. Whatever else you want to do in that vein, go for it! But don't spend too much of your time and attention span because you think you're vexing them, 'cos you're not and ultimately life is too short.
> The Sham Store -- see how much you save by shopping here?
One should never ascribe to falsehood that which can easily be explainedy by typographical error... (paraphrasing Sir Humphrey) It IS a savings - but for them, not you.
Everyone who talks about club cards as if it were a privacy issue is, IMO, missing a big part of the point - you CAN make up false data or just use a card you find on the street, the stores know this, and they don't care. Is there anyone you know who doesn't ALREADY get junkmail in their box from the local grocery chains? Most stores say they'll never use your info in any personally-identifiable form, and for all I know they stick to it (and that might be where the beef recall notification issue gets a bit hazy).
What they DO get is an incredible amount of information about their customers, not just in aggregate but as individual units - they just strip off your name/addr info and they still have a dataset which they know is from a single person in most instances. From this they can tell a lot: How many people are in your family? How healthy do they eat? How price-conscious are you (do you switch brands when something else is on sale? Ever noticed how the 3 main tuna brands, for example, keep alternating being on sale...) and how much of an impulse shopper are you? If you clip coupons, there's a certain chance you're an at-home Mom... What time of day/week does most of your shopping occur, and do you entertain on the holidays? Chips and dip over Superbowl weekend - ah, a sports fan, are ya? Let's try putting pictures of footballs near the beef section on a rainy day and see who has indoor grills... (OK, that last one was maybe a stretch?)
Without these cards, they have only store-by-store info. They can move the health food items nearer to produce and find out if that results in a sales increase for either one, but the club cards can tell them WHY - maybe Mrs. Frozen-Dinner only hits that side of the store for bananas, but suddenly her and people like her are buying rice cakes. Or maybe that actually cuts into sales of breakfast cereals when the health food nuts only have to make a quick pass through that corner before leaving. Etc.
Here's the point - the stores used to pay BIG-$$ for that information. Now they get it essentially for free, thanks to you, AND they claim to be doing you a favor in the process: by making you sign up for a "club" to get the occasional discounts you used to get for free...
You can make up info, or use multiple cards and only buy, say, milk and bread with one, and only buy tic-tacs with another, etc - however you want to screw up the system, I applaud you. But those who just stay outside the system and recognize that they're paying more for convenience and/or selection - I could go to a Jon's a mile away and get great prices without a club card, but there's a Ralph's outside my front door and they have more stuff - that's OK too.
What I do think is a bit sad is people who just don't think twice about it and actually believe the stores are doing this to attract customers...
Depends on your lifestyle and location, I guess. I had the WQV-10 (color model) - well I still have it, but it's been acting up too much to bother with lately - and the main thing I found useful about it was that I didn't have to dig another camera out of my pocket or camerabag.
If I see something while driving, for example, I can just whip off a shot (generally blurred, mis-aimed, or too dark, but in principle...) and move on. Or I can stand right in front of someone and "examine my watch" and not arouse suspicion that I'm photographing them - this is often useful for the more bizarre examples of humanity which I tend to happen across in some of the places I find myself... And as someone else mentioned, you can dump pictures into it (often better-quality ones than the watch can capture) and then you can try to show them to others - on the dim, non-backlit screen.
I think on the whole, watch-camera technology isn't quite 'there' yet; of course, by the time it is, some of the surprise value will be gone. (I think that's why I'm not the early-adopter type I used to be - it's not enough merely to impress others, it actually has to work without undue trouble!)
>> Though it would be very expensive, you could take a two- or three-bedroom >>house, insulate it with aerogel, and you could heat the house with a candle. >> > Seems to me that in this case, having a few lights left on or PC with a hot > CPU left running would quickly make things uncomfortable
Not to mention the average hundred+ watts of heat put out by each inhabitant (depending on how hard they were complaining about the heat...)
(sorry if this is redundant, I haven't time to read much of the preceeding conversation but somehow still feel as if I have something to add here...)
Anyhow, my read on all this lately is that the bigshot software guys just don't know what else they can do in the near-term, so that's why they're resorting to vague market-ese... everyone agrees, computers will get more useful and ubiquitous, and everyone knows that software companies need to offer new blinkenlights to keep their sales up if we're ever to pull out of this economic situation, but I'm guessing nobody's yet found a way to really express and define the next step between 'here' (where Windows-reboot hell is still a fact of life for many) and 'there' (where you just ask your wall to make dinner at about the time that your spouse's ramjet from Indonesia will be returning him or her to your home and your kids will grow up never knowing that "spam" used to have a computer-y meaning...)
So maybe the more interesting question is - well, what IS the "next step", and should we even be thinking about tech-world progress in this way? I usually find that when you run into an unanswerable question, in the sense that there's no clear way to come up with a concise statement that everyone agrees is correct, then often as not you've just phrased the question wrong. There's another way to look at the situation that'll remove the problems.
Any word yet on whether a killfile feature for the news reader will get implemented? I like XNews fine, but it'd be nice to just use Mozilla for EVERYTHING... (and reading Usenet without a killfile is just uncool)
Wow, a new definition for "clueless" - someone who's unfamiliar with an acrynym which refers to some hacker meeting. (I don't want to sound pissy lest I get moderated down for being a crank, but hey, you're either extending the "clueless" label to a ridiculously large proportion of the world's population, or you're diluting its effectiveness and impact when applied to genuine idiots... let's not lose this expressive word to overuse like we lost "dork" or "geek"!)
> (my bad, but IBM's whole FRU thing will drive you > crazy until you figure it out
There's somebody who's figured it out?
This is OT, but the IBM part number system is legend amongst repair depot techs... my best story about it involves a 3-day odyssey of trying to find the right part number to order a replacement floppy drive for a PS/1. Hours on the phone just trying to find the right department (and I had the special support numbers and access codes they give to places which do warranty work for them), etc etc - skipping to the climax, I was on a conference call with 3 different IBM employees (in 2 diff states), and they were ALL arguing over what the part number was. The best bit: guy#1 - "I just asked my supervisor and he's sure this is the right number." guy#2 - "I AM your supervisor, and I'm telling you it's not!"
Anyhow, we eventually got the right drive. (I couldn't use just any one 'cos the button had to fit through the bizarre bezel of the cabinet)
Slashdot Mirror
Can't be a "worst" without a "II" in the title - Lawnmower Man II, Blues Brothers II(,000), and Men in Black II spring to mind.
8 6884088)...
And lest we forget - Cannonball Run II was so awful, it inspired an entire book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/07
I'm in the early stages of a project to switch from Windows to Linux - not just at home but at my wife's workplace (she works directly with the company president in a SOHO environment, just a few people). My wife has fallen in love with Linux if only due to the greater amount of customizations, skins and other "pretty!" things she can do by comparison with Win98/2k, so she's been using it for months, and I have other computers around with various Linux distros installed for experimentation purposes (though I still have Win2k on my main system until my current development work is over).
.avi files allowing Mozilla to display them as garbage text (whereas IE figures out it's a video file regardless), and so on.
I eventually want to be able to make a customized Knoppix-like CD with all my apps, coupled with the ability to securely access my files at home (we have DSL). But more than that - I want to be able to forget all the masses of stuff I've had to learn about Windows over the years, but I'm sort of the go-to guy for computer help amongst my social circle (I don't hang out with geeks...) so ideally I want to be able to offer a Windows alternative to nontechnical types - a Linspire-like setup that looks and works almost exactly like WinXP. "My computer is screwed up, can you come over and fix it?" "Take this CD instead, you'll have no more problems..."
Mozilla is a great browser and I've switched a few people over to it, but you do still have to put up with more than a few 'issues' - websites that look and work fine in IE but don't appear correctly in Mozilla, or misconfigured servers which don't send the MIME-type of
Maybe I can learn enough about Mozilla to reconfigure it to work around such things (I understand why it's more important to the Mozilla people to be standards-compliant, but the kinds of people I'm hoping to help here Just Want It To Work...) and maybe I can learn enough about Linux to work around a number of similar issues, but at the least I know that *I'm* gonna be happier once I'm able to ditch Windows. I just hope I can switch everyone else too!
"Personality clashes" - that covers a fair whack of ground. You can't possibly expect useful advice (if there even is such an animal) without a lot more information about you, and the other person, preferably from an unbiased third party... one or both of you might need psychoanalysis, or just a weekend on a fishing boat together, or (for all I know) a lobotomy, but what you *don't* need is suggestions from the Slashdot crowd based on an extremely vague question.
But on a more constructive note, I've been there myself, more than once. So you've asked a vague question and you'll get a vague answer: in my case, back in the old days, in retrospect, most of the time, frankly it was my fault. Then I got a bit older and a bit wiser, and now I find myself flexible enough to deal with or avoid almost any unpleasant situation. So try waiting a few years until one or both of you grows up a bit. (Note that in most cases, time alone doesn't help people, so this probably won't work - but neither will the books and classes recommended to you by others)
I'm been working on some ideas along parallel lines for some while - making a "computer on a disk" (live CD) so that I can take my environment, apps and preferences and data, anywhere I go. But one of the complications I'm anticipating is finding places which will let me use it! A cyber-cafe or a Kinko's would be stupid to let anyone come in and boot off their own CD (how many of them know what a "Live CD" is?), so you may be forced to resort to computers owned by friends - which is OK, if you only travel near places where friends of yours live...
So, it's a good idea in principle, but perhaps in practice your efforts might be better served by coming up with some kind of remote control setup - a secure browser-based means of contacting your personal computer back at home (like GoToMyPC but cheaper...), a kind of a proxy I guess. Then with that you wouldn't even need to worry about a keylogger - you could set up rotating passwords to access your PC (based on the hour of the day plus the date, plus your age, or whatever - a fairly secure yet memorable scheme should not be difficult to concoct) and keep your static bank passwords in your Mozilla password-manager at home, so at no time are you typing anything anyone else can use. (by the way, even if you're not worried about a keylogger, what about all the windows you can see from where you sit in that sunny cyber-cafe - ever heard of camcorders with good zoom lenses...?)
Would take some more setup time, but might be worth it. You wouldn't even need to leave your PC on 24/7 if you set it up to boot at a given hour every day, which I think most can do.
You left out Step 5: take job delivering pizza because all your clients have dropped you.
My advice to people is to disengage the thick cable that's usually to be found lodged in the back of their machine near the main cooling fan; guaranteed end to all computer problems, but then I'm actually trying to get out of the computer-fixing game permanently.
If you aren't, it might pay to be a little nicer to your customers. I love Mozilla, but it's not for everyone, not while there are poorly-made sites that only work correctly in IE...
Just wondering, how can you be "stuck" with an old machine these days? I've seen working, name-brand P3/500-class systems sitting by dumpsters at my old apartment complex, a year and more ago. I've got people wanting to give me ~300-400Mhz laptops they have no other use for these days (I have a contact at a South American school which needs all they can get). A friend of mine recently contracted a persistent virus on an Athlon 850 and decided to buy a new Dell rather than call me up to fix it, so he's got a spare he'll probably put out by the curb.
Believe me, I know what it's like not to have any extra cash - but if that's the only reason you're stuck with a computer incapable of running a GUI, then one of us is overlooking something...
It's hardly the only show on the air which does this - "Ali G" from the UK (and HBO) is a great example, he's interviewed the likes of Newt Gingrich, C Everett Koop, Ralph Nader, Buzz Aldrin and many others, most of whom never caught on. I'm sure the basic concept goes back as far as audiovisual reproduction technology.
The good satirical shows (like the Daily Show) merely allow genuine whackos and phonies to make fools of themselves; I'm sure there are also lowbrow shows which try to ambush and victimize unsuspecting guests as well. I dunno which sort this "Crossballs" will be (though there's one or two in the cast whom I know don't need to be doing crap to pay rent, so there's hope) but regardless, her reaction seems to be a bit over the top...
The only reason to own a radio (unless you're part of the overwhelming majority of the world who actually enjoys music fed to them) - PhilHendrieShow.com
Not tech-y, but "comedy gold!"
A year ago I moved out of state; my old ISP had been bought out and was going downhill fast anyway, so the only good thing about the move was ditching them... To this day, however, my old web page is still online - I still get an occasional request from someone who's Googled the pics I put up of the stuff I was trying to give away just prior to leaving town.
Leaving the obvious issues and questions aside, I think this just falls under the broad category of "If this was our biggest problem, we'd be doing OK..."
Treat this like a project; get yourself a Killer App for the task.
Find something that you just WANT to do - or something worth doing, for example a charity or community group - and let that force you to learn what you need to learn.
You initially got into this computer thing 'cos it seemed cool and fun; and at the time, it was. Now you're trying to get back into it but without quite the same motivation. You want it to be fun and easy like it was the first time? Well, you've learned a thing or two since then, so use those life-skills...
I bet you don't even have to leave your chair to recognize something, or someone, in your life that needs Fixing. To the extent that there's a technological solution to the problem, let yourself find and implement the answer. If you get it right, you can probably sell the idea too.
> they don't demonstrate it as much as they mention it in passing
> and pay lip service to it. Usually they try to prove their theory,
> when it fails, or when it works, then they go blow stuff up.
And - your problem IS...?!
For television, particularly the Discovery Channel, they're a step forward.
Well, it's "edutainment" maybe, but they at least make passing references to objectivity and the scientific method. It combines elements of Junkyard Wars (pre shark-jumping) with Snopes and - uh, what other TV shows actually demonstrate processes like testing your assumptions and trying to prove the opposite of your theory?
My wife and I both like it, and we're such different people that apart from top-shelf comedies, almost nothing else on the air qualifies. I'll watch until it, too, goes downhill.
I daresay you'll reach more hams via Slashdot than through any TV show. Are you just trying to draw attention to your endeavor, or are you hoping to attract more interest to amateur radio in general and perhaps recruit new fans? (call the show "Elmer Live"...) I'd hope any nascent genuine geeks won't be wasting time watching the mostly-drek on the Discovery Channel (Mythbusters notwithstanding) - figure out what the kids watch, and show 'em what's cool about ham radio if you can.
(KB0UQY - got the licence 8 years ago now, and have never so much as touched a radio since...)
> Except that extra digits in a telephone number are ignored,
> so the number formed by "4" + (DishNetwork number) might be
> a valid 7-digit or 10-digit telephone number.
I wasn't long-winded enough in the original post to mention this, but assuming it's an 800- number to begin with, the prefix would be "418" which doesn't exist in my area code (I checked).
And to the best of my knowledge, it's not trying to make outgoing calls anyway - I'm just trying to have an extra layer of protection in case I hit the wrong button(s) during one of those commercials where they say "use your remote to buy now!"... or in case something does, anyway. I notice that every time I get a "software update" the box ends up just slightly more flaky - info-screens coming up over programming without being asked for, picture sometimes not coming back properly when you switch back from guide mode, etc.
I'm not really worried about the box dialing out as it is. But who knows whether someday a hacker will get control of the satellite uplink and download a patch that causes tens of thousands of satellite receivers nationwide to repeatedly call a Nigerian phone-sex line - lotta quick bucks in that sort of scam, I bet, and I know it's possible 'cos I saw someone do it on TV once (I think it was 'Max Headroom'...)
I dunno about DirectTV, or Tivo, but I have DishNetwork and it doesn't mind not being able to dial out. I leave a phone line hooked up to it so that we have the CallerID-on-TV feature, but since I don't use PPV and am the suspicious type, I've effectively disabled its dial-out capability by setting the "dial this number for an outside line" to a "4". Six months, no probs.
As for Tivo's guide, maybe I'm missing something but is it that big a deal? I've never used a Tivo but I'd guess that the guide you get from your satellite TV receiver ought to have most of the same functions. Granted, it won't guess at shows you might like to watch, but then again that 'feature' leads only to bad standup comedy jokes which reference Will and Grace, in my experience...
> if you can swallow your pride and deliver pizza, you could
> just as easily swallow someone else's pride and do gay porn.
Wow, in your mind those two professions are equivalent?
(And I thought *I* was a huge moral relativist...)
The apparent nonexistance of a line between legal and illegal actions should leave you admirably suited to a job in almost any large corporate legal department. Blimey, you're set for life, dude!
Personally, I delivered pizza for 2 years - even while I was earning $75/hr as an at-home programmer. It was a nice break from the keyboard, getting me out of the house on a regular basis, and I got the not-so-occasional free slice - the best kind of pizza is free, after all! So where's the pride-swallowing, I ask you? I'm not begging for change, I'm not representing scumbags in court, I'm not calling people during dinner to sell them siding, and my clothes stay on. It can be dangerous work if you're not in a nice area, but otherwise it's enough to live on and you'd be surprised how many computer-y types I've known through the years who used pizza places as a nice little moonlight position... especially computer techs - I think it's just a nice change of pace to have a job where people are happy to see you!
> Actually, our hiring policy (when we do it) is completely backwards, intentionally.
Brilliant insight - hire people for the job they're going to do based on ability and experience, even if it's not the kind of ability that shows up on paper! Test someone's actual skill rather than their ability to answer questions (in front of you or on an exam) - what a novel idea... problem is, that's the exception rather than the rule.
Perhaps the way to fix all the multiple problems within the industry is by targeting the people who do the hiring, hmm? Show me a troubled industry that (for the sake of argument, is magically) full of HR decision-makers with a clear view of their goals, and within four years - one generation of college education - I'll bet you'd find the right people will be in the right spots almost everywhere. Without square-pegs in round holes, everyone's effectiveness goes up while keeping salary growth lower 'cos you're not paying people to do jobs they hate.
Sounds so crazy it might just work.
> 5) Invent your own games! The only limit is your creativity.
And, uh... your free time. Right? (Uh...)
> 2) Swap them at parties as introduction cards.
Rockin' parties!
Seriously - I applaud your impulse to screw with the tracking benefits they derive, believe me. But don't for a moment think it'll make a difference. They already know a certain percentage of people will do this (I bet they even have a fair idea how many percent) and have ways around it, in the rare occasions it could actually make a difference. I used to work with databases a lot, and when you have 160,000 addresses and 0.1% inaccuracies to deal with, you're not even gonna waste time on them 'cos it's not worthwhile. I can think of 3 or 4 easy ways they can nullify the impact of the measures you describe in your post (mainly by designing queries to group data in other ways, or simply filter out abrubtly-changing profiles).
What IS the answer? Well, an organized campaign where people took carefully-designed steps to hork things up - maybe effective in the long run, but certainly not worthwhile. And what do you expect it to accomplish, make the stores say "we're sorry"? Take the cards away and replace them with something even more sinister, like RFID tagging grocery packaging? (oh... uh... hmm!) Or how about just making it more expensive for them to do business, thereby raising costs for everybody? Yeah!!
By all means, give false info on the form. Swap cards around. Patronize non-club stores. Whatever else you want to do in that vein, go for it! But don't spend too much of your time and attention span because you think you're vexing them, 'cos you're not and ultimately life is too short.
> The Sham Store -- see how much you save by shopping here?
One should never ascribe to falsehood that which can easily be explainedy by typographical error... (paraphrasing Sir Humphrey) It IS a savings - but for them, not you.
Everyone who talks about club cards as if it were a privacy issue is, IMO, missing a big part of the point - you CAN make up false data or just use a card you find on the street, the stores know this, and they don't care. Is there anyone you know who doesn't ALREADY get junkmail in their box from the local grocery chains? Most stores say they'll never use your info in any personally-identifiable form, and for all I know they stick to it (and that might be where the beef recall notification issue gets a bit hazy).
What they DO get is an incredible amount of information about their customers, not just in aggregate but as individual units - they just strip off your name/addr info and they still have a dataset which they know is from a single person in most instances. From this they can tell a lot: How many people are in your family? How healthy do they eat? How price-conscious are you (do you switch brands when something else is on sale? Ever noticed how the 3 main tuna brands, for example, keep alternating being on sale...) and how much of an impulse shopper are you? If you clip coupons, there's a certain chance you're an at-home Mom... What time of day/week does most of your shopping occur, and do you entertain on the holidays? Chips and dip over Superbowl weekend - ah, a sports fan, are ya? Let's try putting pictures of footballs near the beef section on a rainy day and see who has indoor grills... (OK, that last one was maybe a stretch?)
Without these cards, they have only store-by-store info. They can move the health food items nearer to produce and find out if that results in a sales increase for either one, but the club cards can tell them WHY - maybe Mrs. Frozen-Dinner only hits that side of the store for bananas, but suddenly her and people like her are buying rice cakes. Or maybe that actually cuts into sales of breakfast cereals when the health food nuts only have to make a quick pass through that corner before leaving. Etc.
Here's the point - the stores used to pay BIG-$$ for that information. Now they get it essentially for free, thanks to you, AND they claim to be doing you a favor in the process: by making you sign up for a "club" to get the occasional discounts you used to get for free...
You can make up info, or use multiple cards and only buy, say, milk and bread with one, and only buy tic-tacs with another, etc - however you want to screw up the system, I applaud you. But those who just stay outside the system and recognize that they're paying more for convenience and/or selection - I could go to a Jon's a mile away and get great prices without a club card, but there's a Ralph's outside my front door and they have more stuff - that's OK too.
What I do think is a bit sad is people who just don't think twice about it and actually believe the stores are doing this to attract customers...
Depends on your lifestyle and location, I guess. I had the WQV-10 (color model) - well I still have it, but it's been acting up too much to bother with lately - and the main thing I found useful about it was that I didn't have to dig another camera out of my pocket or camerabag.
If I see something while driving, for example, I can just whip off a shot (generally blurred, mis-aimed, or too dark, but in principle...) and move on. Or I can stand right in front of someone and "examine my watch" and not arouse suspicion that I'm photographing them - this is often useful for the more bizarre examples of humanity which I tend to happen across in some of the places I find myself... And as someone else mentioned, you can dump pictures into it (often better-quality ones than the watch can capture) and then you can try to show them to others - on the dim, non-backlit screen.
I think on the whole, watch-camera technology isn't quite 'there' yet; of course, by the time it is, some of the surprise value will be gone. (I think that's why I'm not the early-adopter type I used to be - it's not enough merely to impress others, it actually has to work without undue trouble!)
>> Though it would be very expensive, you could take a two- or three-bedroom >>house, insulate it with aerogel, and you could heat the house with a candle.
>>
> Seems to me that in this case, having a few lights left on or PC with a hot > CPU left running would quickly make things uncomfortable
Not to mention the average hundred+ watts of heat put out by each inhabitant (depending on how hard they were complaining about the heat...)
(sorry if this is redundant, I haven't time to read much of the preceeding conversation but somehow still feel as if I have something to add here...)
Anyhow, my read on all this lately is that the bigshot software guys just don't know what else they can do in the near-term, so that's why they're resorting to vague market-ese... everyone agrees, computers will get more useful and ubiquitous, and everyone knows that software companies need to offer new blinkenlights to keep their sales up if we're ever to pull out of this economic situation, but I'm guessing nobody's yet found a way to really express and define the next step between 'here' (where Windows-reboot hell is still a fact of life for many) and 'there' (where you just ask your wall to make dinner at about the time that your spouse's ramjet from Indonesia will be returning him or her to your home and your kids will grow up never knowing that "spam" used to have a computer-y meaning...)
So maybe the more interesting question is - well, what IS the "next step", and should we even be thinking about tech-world progress in this way? I usually find that when you run into an unanswerable question, in the sense that there's no clear way to come up with a concise statement that everyone agrees is correct, then often as not you've just phrased the question wrong. There's another way to look at the situation that'll remove the problems.
Any word yet on whether a killfile feature for the news reader will get implemented? I like XNews fine, but it'd be nice to just use Mozilla for EVERYTHING... (and reading Usenet without a killfile is just uncool)
Wow, a new definition for "clueless" - someone who's unfamiliar with an acrynym which refers to some hacker meeting. (I don't want to sound pissy lest I get moderated down for being a crank, but hey, you're either extending the "clueless" label to a ridiculously large proportion of the world's population, or you're diluting its effectiveness and impact when applied to genuine idiots... let's not lose this expressive word to overuse like we lost "dork" or "geek"!)
> (my bad, but IBM's whole FRU thing will drive you
> crazy until you figure it out
There's somebody who's figured it out?
This is OT, but the IBM part number system is legend amongst repair depot techs... my best story about it involves a 3-day odyssey of trying to find the right part number to order a replacement floppy drive for a PS/1. Hours on the phone just trying to find the right department (and I had the special support numbers and access codes they give to places which do warranty work for them), etc etc - skipping to the climax, I was on a conference call with 3 different IBM employees (in 2 diff states), and they were ALL arguing over what the part number was. The best bit:
guy#1 - "I just asked my supervisor and he's sure this is the right number."
guy#2 - "I AM your supervisor, and I'm telling you it's not!"
Anyhow, we eventually got the right drive. (I couldn't use just any one 'cos the button had to fit through the bizarre bezel of the cabinet)