We were back in the machine room, he was looking over my shoulder (there it is again!) as I was trying to tame this machine.
He said "Why don't you use My Computer?" while heard "Why don't you use my computer?"
I asked him why I would use his computer when the one in the machine room is the one that needed our T.L.C. I was serious as a heart attack.
This went on for a few more rounds until he explained that he meant the My Computer single-pane file browser, as opposed to going through the Start menu.
I feel like MicroSoft expects me to wear one of those sticky badges like you find at fundraisers that says
Amazing! I guess when I submitted this article a full day earlier it wasn't biased against MicroSoft enough to suit whichever O.S.S. sycophant reviewed it.
There's pattern developing here...curiouser and curiouser.
Every time it starts rainin, I get tephone calls from all over the worl. And then I pick the phone up and I hear about 15 different people talkin, but no one can hear me.
Would you tell me what the hell's goin on with the tephone cumpny??!!
if you're using an XML file in a place where you need a high performance SQL database then you're doing something wrong. If you're using XML as datastorage for some small webapp who cares so long as it's fast enough for that particular application.
As you point out, it is the wrong tool for the job, much like using tables to layout HTML pages (as the CSS religionists like to point out).
My 64 million dollar question is why they put an acronym inside another acronym: XOP stands for XMLOP? WTF??!!
I asked a buddy who works in the field for A Major U.S. Cell Carrier and when we were discussing their EV-DO data network, I speculated that it would be cool to say hasta la vista, baby! to all wireline providers, get a data+phone, and run my home Internet access AND VoIP all over that single "cell" phone.
He countered by stating that they sell a device that uses only their SIM card and has no viable way to get to it from the outside such as Bluetooth, thus preventing my evil plan from cutting into their voice revenue stream.
I guess they have beaten me to the punch on that one.
Notwithstanding their stance, I don't see how John Q. Homeuser out there meshing together a neighborhood's WiFi hotspots is going to be a worthwhile solution once the carriers have sufficient deployment of their wireless data networks. Who will need DSL or cable Internet service? Who will need landline service (if you can tolerate occasional service dropouts)? You will be able to get it all from your wireless carrier at market rates and take it pretty much anywhere, without having to worry if you're affiliating with some WiFi hotspot that might be problematic or whether you can even find a hotspot at all.
OK, I've written too much. I apologize. But, I just switched to Sanka today so, have a heart.
Most young doctors today are probably trying to pay off enormous education loans and pay for current liability insurance, if they are not bailing out of the profession altogether. They probably have to cut every corner out of necessity.
Somehow, the Star Trek-y benefits of allowing a doctor in a vacation spot in, say...Thailand, being able to pull up my medical records on a whiz-bang high-tech system are balanced by the concerns of unauthorized or even malicious use of such records. Could such malicious use ever happen???
Well, apparently it will someday rock Google's little universe because according to John Dvorak [1] they are likely going to customize Firefox with Google branding, Google shortcuts, and possibly even ultimately develop some sort of Net-based operating system that runs in the browser, thus putting a serious hurt on Micro$oft.
Now, we've heard such talk before, but Google seems like they might just be able to pull off at least some of this, if true. That would certainly rock somebody's world!
[1] This story was rejected yesterday by the esteemed 'editors' of slashdot.
Also, I find the title "don't click the blue E" particularly funny.
Do what others suggested and change the target of the blue E so that it launches Firefox.
I did that on my Dad's computer and he never knew the difference. Of course, he's lucky if he can turn on the power switch to his computer in the first place, but that's another story altogether.
books beat electronic documents?
on
Firefox In Print
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
...and I could easily see said book becoming obsolete roughly 1 month after its release date.
Printed matter covering electronic applications seems really stone-age to me. It becomes outdated rather quickly, so a person picking up that Firefox book tries a hack a year later, but it no longer works because of changes in the code base, for example.
But, I guess even though "information wants to be free", authors of said information don't want it to be. You can sell a book, but you can't sell a web site, at least not in the conventional sense.
Maybe an e-book??? Nahhh, then those pirates over at slashdot would put it up on Bit Torrent and there go the profits.
Since this is a restoration effort we are not at liberty to improve the design of the boiler or transmission system, but there is research being done on steam technology that is promising. Much of it is being done in India I understand. Just because Polar Express is in vogue right now and when we hear "steam" we think of quaint old steam trains, this is not your father's steam engine (in TFA).
Also, it is a fact that steam engines operate more efficiently at high altitudes than internal combustion engines, where that might be applicable. We should not be so quick to dismiss the possibilities.
Word-of-mouth advertising *is* the best for Firefox because Firefox nor Mozilla are not some huge monolithic entity out to sell their product in the conventional sense.
If savvy folks, like the commenter who wowed a girl over to Firefox by installing sexy themes, tackle the problem one user at a time (or even a hundred users at a time) the solution will start to spread like wildfirefox.
In a week, when all the New Year's Resolutions start and Year In Review stories come out, this Firefox ad will be catching the poop of somebody's parakeet. Thousands of dollars for parakeet poop. No thanks.
Yeah. And slashdot calls this stuff "news", the root word of which is "new". Nothing new about rumors when every reputable news outfit has already reported the agreement of this deal.
Note the link to the story in the header includes the date, which was two days ago.
I was one of two people in the whole agency with a CS degree, making me uniquely qualified.
Since you were one of TWO people, you were not uniquely qualified. If you had been the only one, then yes that would have been a true statement. Unique means "the only one of its kind", not 'special' or its synonyms.
Moose and Rocco will be by shortly to discuss your severance...uh, pay that is.
No passenger airline in the United States has ever made a profit, except from government handouts. (You can look it up. Allan Sloan's article, Washington Post, sometime in Nov. 2002)
That is why this is suddenly such a Great Idea. We don't know yet which carrier will get the monopoly on carrying these airborne calls, but the airlines will surely get a cut. That is what is behind this, not technical advancement or study.
I have a much more comfortable, civilized ride on a train anyway.
This attempt at a "Hail Mary" pass or "swinging for the fences" cannot possibly be as effective as a groundswell of support initiated by those very people whose names appear in this 2-page spread.
Instead of raising all this money to see their names in lights ONE TIME, why not send them out to every weblog, web bulletin board, mailing list, support comment area, guest book...in short EVERYWHERE they can to leave 5 or 10 plugs that link back to spreadfirefox.com
This should be in addition to those in support positions, whatever their job description, advocating the use of Firefox to the user base and sneaking Firefox onto systems. "We've secretly changed Homer Simpson's Internet Explorer web browser over to the new Firefox web browser. Let's watch on hidden camera..."
The sound perceived by bone conduction is typically lo-fidelity, mostly the lows and mid-range frequencies are heard, but the highs are basically non-existant.
Despite the fact that when most people say 'mp3' these days they expect us to think 'music' (or even 'pirated music'!), I see this as a potential boon to Masters swimming instructors. I will soon be joining a Masters swim team simply to improve my breathing technique and to learn how to turn, and from what I have seen it seems pretty silly to have the instructor screaming at the top of his lungs for the few milliseconds that a swimmer's ear is above the surface while taking a breath.
This device could allow the instructor to issue guidance and instructions pretty much full-time to an immersed swimmer. Now THAT would be a practical and useful application.
As for surfing (the REAL kind of surfing where you get wet, not sitting on your fat ass browsing web pages), I know that Craig, Topher, Buddy, Beaker, and Vax would miss my various renditions that I sing while we're out in the lineup waiting for a waves, so I'll pass on this device for that application. Besides, it's healthier to be able to hear the maladjusted sociopath who is threatening you for surfing "his break".
Verizon is not stupid. They want you to run up your airtime minutes to talk.
They do not want you to point your Bluetooth phone with its EV-DO service to your laptop, run a VoIP softphone, and talk using their unlimited Internet access, thereby bypassing their rate plan.
So they lock you in to a few functions with Bluetooth.
This kind of blew my whole business plan that I was thinking about right out of the water.
Your telephone number on the Public Switched Telephone Network is not unique without the country code and area code. The North American country code is '1' and your area code is whatever it is; but your area code could just as easily look like a local exchange prefix, so how would the switch know how to interpret the number you are dialing (the address of your call) without 10 digit dialing?
Think of my buddy's auto parts store whose number is 213-8778...should the switch think you are calling downtown L.A. or what? There's the rub!
This is why it is misleading for people to write phone numbers with the area code as some sort of red-headed stepchild (apologies to you redheads out there); what is the point of writing (213) 456-1234?? I can count how many digits are there if I really only need 7 of them, but it leads us into bad habits that will bite us in the ass sooner or later. Why not write your i.p. address as (10) 1.1.11 or something? Makes no sense.
So 10 digit dialing is just a lazy man's cheat that will be forced to go away as more and more addresses (phone numbers) are added to the network. It is inevitable.
What we really need to do (yeah us techies) is to educate users that their home computer is probably doing bad stuff without their knowledge. Then we show them how to stop it, or offer to help them clean up their machines.
Unfortunately, this sounds good, but does not work.
I did some work for money at a guy's house. He had just moved into this roommate situation, was doing real estate work and I set up his wireless access point and installed some software on his laptop and other minor configuration. Easy for me, he was satisfied, and his machine was safe and secure the way I left it.
While there, he asked me to look at his roommate's computer because "it wasn't working right". It was running Windows 98 on a DSL connection and he had just bought Norton Anti-Virus and tried to install it. I never could get it to complete the install and run through multiple attempts, even with Symantec's so-called support. It was likely a conflict with other software, but where does that endeavor end?
Mind you, I was doing this Win98 work for free because it almost certainly had loads of spyware and other malware on this machine and I was trying to help the Net, but the guy simply couldn't be bothered. He uninstalled the Norton package and is reading his AOL e-mail with a totally unprotected Win98 computer. No anti-virus. No firewall. No incentive or desire to change this situation. I couldn't make a career out of his one computer, having spent several hours on it already.
He gets this tortured look on his face and exclaims how he "just doesn't understand computers, so leave it alone, thank you very much!"
Multiply this case by the number of non-technical computer users out there whose machines are hooked to cable modems or DSL connections and you can see why this problem will likely never go away without significant structural changes in the Internet or its next incarnation.
Slashdot Mirror
I went through this exact thing with a co-worker.
We were back in the machine room, he was looking over my shoulder (there it is again!) as I was trying to tame this machine.
He said "Why don't you use My Computer?" while heard "Why don't you use my computer?"
I asked him why I would use his computer when the one in the machine room is the one that needed our T.L.C. I was serious as a heart attack.
This went on for a few more rounds until he explained that he meant the My Computer single-pane file browser, as opposed to going through the Start menu.
I feel like MicroSoft expects me to wear one of those sticky badges like you find at fundraisers that says
"HELLO!
My Name Is:
(^)(&*@#!)*^&"
Good riddance!
Amazing! I guess when I submitted this article a full day earlier it wasn't biased against MicroSoft enough to suit whichever O.S.S. sycophant reviewed it.
There's pattern developing here...curiouser and curiouser.
THANK YOU for telling us about that other extension repository.
It's too bad that it isn't as broadly publicized, else there might be less crying about the availability of extensions.
Every time it starts rainin, I get tephone calls from all over the worl. And then I pick the phone up and I hear about 15 different people talkin, but no one can hear me.
Would you tell me what the hell's goin on with the tephone cumpny??!!
Now. RIGHT NOW!!
As you point out, it is the wrong tool for the job, much like using tables to layout HTML pages (as the CSS religionists like to point out).
My 64 million dollar question is why they put an acronym inside another acronym: XOP stands for XMLOP? WTF??!!
They REALLY have too much time on their hands!
I asked a buddy who works in the field for A Major U.S. Cell Carrier and when we were discussing their EV-DO data network, I speculated that it would be cool to say hasta la vista, baby! to all wireline providers, get a data+phone, and run my home Internet access AND VoIP all over that single "cell" phone.
He countered by stating that they sell a device that uses only their SIM card and has no viable way to get to it from the outside such as Bluetooth, thus preventing my evil plan from cutting into their voice revenue stream.
I guess they have beaten me to the punch on that one.
Notwithstanding their stance, I don't see how John Q. Homeuser out there meshing together a neighborhood's WiFi hotspots is going to be a worthwhile solution once the carriers have sufficient deployment of their wireless data networks. Who will need DSL or cable Internet service? Who will need landline service (if you can tolerate occasional service dropouts)? You will be able to get it all from your wireless carrier at market rates and take it pretty much anywhere, without having to worry if you're affiliating with some WiFi hotspot that might be problematic or whether you can even find a hotspot at all.
OK, I've written too much. I apologize. But, I just switched to Sanka today so, have a heart.
Most young doctors today are probably trying to pay off enormous education loans and pay for current liability insurance, if they are not bailing out of the profession altogether. They probably have to cut every corner out of necessity.
Somehow, the Star Trek-y benefits of allowing a doctor in a vacation spot in, say...Thailand, being able to pull up my medical records on a whiz-bang high-tech system are balanced by the concerns of unauthorized or even malicious use of such records. Could such malicious use ever happen???
Well, apparently it will someday rock Google's little universe because according to John Dvorak [1] they are likely going to customize Firefox with Google branding, Google shortcuts, and possibly even ultimately develop some sort of Net-based operating system that runs in the browser, thus putting a serious hurt on Micro$oft.
Now, we've heard such talk before, but Google seems like they might just be able to pull off at least some of this, if true. That would certainly rock somebody's world!
[1] This story was rejected yesterday by the esteemed 'editors' of slashdot.
Do what others suggested and change the target of the blue E so that it launches Firefox.
I did that on my Dad's computer and he never knew the difference. Of course, he's lucky if he can turn on the power switch to his computer in the first place, but that's another story altogether.
...and I could easily see said book becoming obsolete roughly 1 month after its release date.
Printed matter covering electronic applications seems really stone-age to me. It becomes outdated rather quickly, so a person picking up that Firefox book tries a hack a year later, but it no longer works because of changes in the code base, for example.
But, I guess even though "information wants to be free", authors of said information don't want it to be. You can sell a book, but you can't sell a web site, at least not in the conventional sense.
Maybe an e-book??? Nahhh, then those pirates over at slashdot would put it up on Bit Torrent and there go the profits.
I haven't even read Phrack (Phreaking & Hacking) since its founder dropped off a 6-pack of Budweiser on my stoop out here one day years back.
But I thought that was one of the best...Thanksgiving dinners that I've had in a long time.
And Phrack was one heck of one hell of a magazine. That was one byooful magazine thar, bud.
W4NUA standin bye and monitrin
If you would like to see some images of the inside of a "classic" steam boiler, my group's web site documents our restoration of a steam locomotive.
Some that have not been given a home yet:
Side sheet and mud ring
Nicholson thermic siphons
Backsheet and crownsheet under repair
Since this is a restoration effort we are not at liberty to improve the design of the boiler or transmission system, but there is research being done on steam technology that is promising. Much of it is being done in India I understand. Just because Polar Express is in vogue right now and when we hear "steam" we think of quaint old steam trains, this is not your father's steam engine (in TFA).
Also, it is a fact that steam engines operate more efficiently at high altitudes than internal combustion engines, where that might be applicable. We should not be so quick to dismiss the possibilities.
Word-of-mouth advertising *is* the best for Firefox because Firefox nor Mozilla are not some huge monolithic entity out to sell their product in the conventional sense.
If savvy folks, like the commenter who wowed a girl over to Firefox by installing sexy themes, tackle the problem one user at a time (or even a hundred users at a time) the solution will start to spread like wildfirefox.
In a week, when all the New Year's Resolutions start and Year In Review stories come out, this Firefox ad will be catching the poop of somebody's parakeet. Thousands of dollars for parakeet poop. No thanks.
This whole ad thing just smacks of wanna-be-ism.
I see. So really slashdot is "Commentary and opinion that matters to nerds."
Yeah. And slashdot calls this stuff "news", the root word of which is "new". Nothing new about rumors when every reputable news outfit has already reported the agreement of this deal.
Note the link to the story in the header includes the date, which was two days ago.
I was one of two people in the whole agency with a CS degree, making me uniquely qualified.
Since you were one of TWO people, you were not uniquely qualified. If you had been the only one, then yes that would have been a true statement. Unique means "the only one of its kind", not 'special' or its synonyms.
Moose and Rocco will be by shortly to discuss your severance...uh, pay that is.
No passenger airline in the United States has ever made a profit, except from government handouts. (You can look it up. Allan Sloan's article, Washington Post, sometime in Nov. 2002)
That is why this is suddenly such a Great Idea. We don't know yet which carrier will get the monopoly on carrying these airborne calls, but the airlines will surely get a cut. That is what is behind this, not technical advancement or study.
I have a much more comfortable, civilized ride on a train anyway.
This attempt at a "Hail Mary" pass or "swinging for the fences" cannot possibly be as effective as a groundswell of support initiated by those very people whose names appear in this 2-page spread.
Instead of raising all this money to see their names in lights ONE TIME, why not send them out to every weblog, web bulletin board, mailing list, support comment area, guest book...in short EVERYWHERE they can to leave 5 or 10 plugs that link back to spreadfirefox.com
This should be in addition to those in support positions, whatever their job description, advocating the use of Firefox to the user base and sneaking Firefox onto systems. "We've secretly changed Homer Simpson's Internet Explorer web browser over to the new Firefox web browser. Let's watch on hidden camera..."
"Mmmmm...Firefox...."
How can it be a "standard" when it was just released?
Putting the gas pedal on the right and the brake on the left is a standard--it is so universal that it invites no question as to its applicability.
This is not a standard yet, it is a specification. Let's get something right for once around here.
On topic remark: I can't wait for more interference from paging transmitters on 928MHz and between data devices on 2.4GHz. Oh, joy!
I couldn't agree more!
The sound perceived by bone conduction is typically lo-fidelity, mostly the lows and mid-range frequencies are heard, but the highs are basically non-existant.
Despite the fact that when most people say 'mp3' these days they expect us to think 'music' (or even 'pirated music'!), I see this as a potential boon to Masters swimming instructors. I will soon be joining a Masters swim team simply to improve my breathing technique and to learn how to turn, and from what I have seen it seems pretty silly to have the instructor screaming at the top of his lungs for the few milliseconds that a swimmer's ear is above the surface while taking a breath.
This device could allow the instructor to issue guidance and instructions pretty much full-time to an immersed swimmer. Now THAT would be a practical and useful application.
As for surfing (the REAL kind of surfing where you get wet, not sitting on your fat ass browsing web pages), I know that Craig, Topher, Buddy, Beaker, and Vax would miss my various renditions that I sing while we're out in the lineup waiting for a waves, so I'll pass on this device for that application. Besides, it's healthier to be able to hear the maladjusted sociopath who is threatening you for surfing "his break".
Verizon is not stupid. They want you to run up your airtime minutes to talk.
They do not want you to point your Bluetooth phone with its EV-DO service to your laptop, run a VoIP softphone, and talk using their unlimited Internet access, thereby bypassing their rate plan.
So they lock you in to a few functions with Bluetooth.
This kind of blew my whole business plan that I was thinking about right out of the water.
Its merger with AT&T Wireless will give Cingular 47.6 million subscribers
for which they only paid about $3500 PER SUBSCRIBER in the bidding war!! Yes, the decimal point is after the last zero.
Cheap at half the price. I hope their orange "Jack" logo doesn't soon turn into red, bleeding from their bank accounts.
Your telephone number on the Public Switched Telephone Network is not unique without the country code and area code. The North American country code is '1' and your area code is whatever it is; but your area code could just as easily look like a local exchange prefix, so how would the switch know how to interpret the number you are dialing (the address of your call) without 10 digit dialing?
Think of my buddy's auto parts store whose number is 213-8778...should the switch think you are calling downtown L.A. or what? There's the rub!
This is why it is misleading for people to write phone numbers with the area code as some sort of red-headed stepchild (apologies to you redheads out there); what is the point of writing (213) 456-1234?? I can count how many digits are there if I really only need 7 of them, but it leads us into bad habits that will bite us in the ass sooner or later. Why not write your i.p. address as (10) 1.1.11 or something? Makes no sense.
So 10 digit dialing is just a lazy man's cheat that will be forced to go away as more and more addresses (phone numbers) are added to the network. It is inevitable.
If you're down, call us - (800) 644-DYAD.
What if his phone service uses Voice over IP and his connection is being flooded?
What we really need to do (yeah us techies) is to educate users that their home computer is probably doing bad stuff without their knowledge. Then we show them how to stop it, or offer to help them clean up their machines.
Unfortunately, this sounds good, but does not work.
I did some work for money at a guy's house. He had just moved into this roommate situation, was doing real estate work and I set up his wireless access point and installed some software on his laptop and other minor configuration. Easy for me, he was satisfied, and his machine was safe and secure the way I left it.
While there, he asked me to look at his roommate's computer because "it wasn't working right". It was running Windows 98 on a DSL connection and he had just bought Norton Anti-Virus and tried to install it. I never could get it to complete the install and run through multiple attempts, even with Symantec's so-called support. It was likely a conflict with other software, but where does that endeavor end?
Mind you, I was doing this Win98 work for free because it almost certainly had loads of spyware and other malware on this machine and I was trying to help the Net, but the guy simply couldn't be bothered. He uninstalled the Norton package and is reading his AOL e-mail with a totally unprotected Win98 computer. No anti-virus. No firewall. No incentive or desire to change this situation. I couldn't make a career out of his one computer, having spent several hours on it already.
He gets this tortured look on his face and exclaims how he "just doesn't understand computers, so leave it alone, thank you very much!"
Multiply this case by the number of non-technical computer users out there whose machines are hooked to cable modems or DSL connections and you can see why this problem will likely never go away without significant structural changes in the Internet or its next incarnation.
Sad, but true.