It had a steel frame, simple 21 gears derailleur gearshift, none of this fancy suspension fork crap and over all it simply was robust. I could repair and replace everything on it myself (but seldom needed to). The only parts I replaced with something more modern was the brakes and lighting. I used to cycle to work on it until It was stolen out of my backyard half a year ago and I still miss it.
I recently bought (used) a few of the old Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro from before the 4000 series. Those that still included a USB hub and the lettering on the keys did not disappear after only a few months of normal usage. Before that I had several of the 4000 Keyboards and all of them started to lose their lettering within a few months. They are just really bad quality.
I will probably be using them until they fall apart.
Get BitTorrent Sync from http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html and set up your own server, either locally or "in the cloud" (which you control). There are clients for all major platforms, including Android, and it works well. Traffic is encrypted and storage is only on computers you control yourself. There is one drawback, though: It's not open source so you have to trust BitTorrent Inc.
but instead invest into gameplay. Example: Civilization I was a great game, not because it had such nice graphics or sound effects but because of the complexity of the game play. But the interface was easy to use, the different types of terrain and units easy to recognize and it was easy to pick up the strategy. Also, it worked on rather minimalistic hardware. (And, I have to admit, I originally got it as a pirated copy, but I bought it later. But since the bought version came with copy protection I continued to use the pirated one.) Now look at the latest installments of that series. The graphics and sound are improved but that also results in units and terrain being much harder to recognize. The gameplay is basically unchanged. But it requires so much computing power that the later stages of the game become basically unplayable if you don't run it on a top of the notch machine. I have switched back to playing Civilization I when I am in the mood.
"Der Steppenwolf" from Hermann Hesse was required literature at school and despite that I read it and it possibly saved my life. At that time I was thinking seriously about suicide and when I read the following quote from the main character, something along the lines "you can always commit suicide later if it gets too hard, so just keep going for now" (I don't remember the exact words and it is in German anyway, so it wouldn't be of any use here) That absolutely made sense to me. As long as you are alive, things can improve, once you are dead, you are dead and that's it.
There have been other important books later but I think the above is quite fundamental so no other became as significant as that one book.
The Star, by Arthur C. Clarke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_(short_story) )
At least, if you believe in Christian mythology you will find it rather depressing that god chose to let the star of such a great civilization go nova just to generate the star of Bthlehem.
Yes, I know, "phablet" is a stupid name, but the Samsung Galaxy Note (the smartphone, not the tablet) with the Kindle software makes an excellent e-book reader. You have to get used to the size, though. It is huge for a phone and maybe a little bit too small for a tablet, but in my view exactly right for an e-book.
I own a Samsung Galaxy Note and I knew beforehand how large it is. But I didn't buy a mobile phone, I bought a small tablet with mobile Internet connection and that's exactly what I got. Yes, I can also make phone calls with it, but I rarely do.
As for carrying it: There are nice belt pouches for it.
The solution is simple: If you don't like it, don't buy it.
Of course, if somebody can come up with a smartphone that has a >=5" display but is much smaller, that would be nice. Maybe with glasses? That would still leave the problem on how to interact with it (no, speech recognition is not a solution). We'll see.
... so will there be "Glass" in the strength I need for my eyes?
(I am still looking for sun glasses that are worth that name, preferably mirror sunglasses, in the strength I need. All they try to sell me are slightly darkened glasses and these are not even worth considering.)
... is far from perfect. Depending on which measure us use, Germany ranks somewhere in the top middle of the statistics. And it is definitely bad for both extremes of students: Those that are really bright and those that are - em - "intellectually challenged".
Have you checked what kind of legal cases are excluded? (I am sure there is an exclusion clause in your contract.)
In Germany these insurances often explicitly exclude any internet related cases, which means they are nowadays pretty much useless.
(In case somebody can tell me an insurance that does cover these cases (e.g. filesharing, "AGB" and other cases of "Abmahnung wegen unlauteren Wettbewerbs" etc.), and is still reasonably priced, please tell me.)
Either way, when the bureaucracy becomes stifling, I collect my letters of recommendation and move somewhere more lively. Unless you work in oil or heavy industry, there's always a wave to ride, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. The pay is generally lower than what you'd get being a placeholder at a large company, but on the other hand, I've never had trouble paying the bills, either. Money isn't everything.
I have been doing the same for quite a few years, but while money isn't everything and an interesting job without much of a restricting bureaucracy counts for quite a lot, there is one real drawback: Unless you are lucky to have lots of job opportunities in your area, you'll have to move frequently. This causes havoc with your social life. Your friends and family will put up with it once or twice but sooner or later you will lose friends and your wife will start complaining, I am not even talking about kids (I don't have any myself).
On top of that there is the issue of living space: You end up living in rented property all the time while all your friends have bought or built houses. Again, something your wife might not like. (OK, this is slashdot, so you might not have a wife.;-) )
Then of course there are the obvious issues like having to start all over again which can be seen positive or negative, but over the time it gets quite tiring. Also, seeing the changes to the worse coming is also quite depressing after the fifth or sixt time.
Yes, we should. They were able to get those ancient garbage cans fly to LEO and back for years without losing them and without killing many people. Try to do that yourself.
Also, even if that were a valid argument: What does their ability to perform a survey, statistical analysis of the answers and interpretation of the data have to do with their supposed inability to send people to LEO safely?
if I remember correctly the department of homeland security was created to fight dangers for the national security, that is terrorists. How does a database of Americans fit into this? And why was it used to catch a fugitive prisoner - no matter whether she was was acutally a murderess or not? What's next? Catching people for speeding?
required to handwrite a statement so it could be analyzed by their "handwriting expert."
if I remember correctly around 20 years ago in Germany a job application was to be hand written for exactly that purpose. I actually did that once but never again since my hand writing tends to be illegible even to me. Fortunately belief in that kind of analysis seems to have dropped. I haven't seen such a requirement lately.
twm
Who polls their email client at work anymore?
All of the modern clients have some sort of pop-up that will notify you when you have new mail
That's why I have set my email client to check for mail only every 30 minutes. It is just too distracting to have it tell me about new mail every few minutes. If it can't wait 30 minutes, the sender should have called me.
Also, in my experiance if someone who is in the office doesn't reply to your email within a few hours they probably never will.
That's probably true. I sometimes leave emails in the inbox to remind me to do something (I am too lazy to copy the stuff to a todo list), but that's usually not because it requires an answer but contains an action item.
this just shows us, once more, how far the US is behind Europe in terms of human rights, freedoms
Unfortunately many European countries, Germany in particular, do their damned best to catch up with the US there.
Only yesterday a court ruling was made public that the photographer can sue you if you used your own portrait photograph on your webpage without his consent. The reason: It's his copyright.
But surely it is wise not to run a trial on your 'live', 'production' data. Is it not much better to either take a copy of your 'live' data and run the trial against that.
We are talking about home users here don't we? How many of those have enough knowledge to make a restorable backup copy of their old system (If they make a backup at all)? They don't think of their computer files as "production data", it's just the stuff they use daily and that accumulates over the years. Email especially is something that just comes in and accumulates. You don't think about file formats in that context, it just comes from the internet, doesn't it? And I can use any email program to read it, so it must be compatible!
"Oh, there is a trial of the new Office available? Wow, how generous from Microsoft, let's install it."
I just looked at the site and wanted to give it a try, but the first thing to do there is to sign up using a username and password. I couldn't be bothered to think of yet another boring password and passed it on.
Maybe I am not the kind of people they are trying to attract, but I wonder: Why have this kind of "security" on a project like this?
My only real source of aggravation is that in that rare occasion that I need to type a DOS command in a Windows server, the clipboard can't be accessed with keystrokes, it has to be done through menu choices.
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Or at least I wish I could still use it.
It had a steel frame, simple 21 gears derailleur gearshift, none of this fancy suspension fork crap and over all it simply was robust. I could repair and replace everything on it myself (but seldom needed to). The only parts I replaced with something more modern was the brakes and lighting.
I used to cycle to work on it until It was stolen out of my backyard half a year ago and I still miss it.
I recently bought (used) a few of the old Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro from before the 4000 series. Those that still included a USB hub and the lettering on the keys did not disappear after only a few months of normal usage.
Before that I had several of the 4000 Keyboards and all of them started to lose their lettering within a few months. They are just really bad quality.
I will probably be using them until they fall apart.
There are several goals in this:
1. develop the technology
2. build the storage systems
3. generate jobs in the process
4. make the technology cheap
China will assist in 4. and destroy some of the jobs generated in 3 in the process, but only some of them.
That's fine with me (I am from Germany)
Get BitTorrent Sync from http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html and set up your own server, either locally or "in the cloud" (which you control). There are clients for all major platforms, including Android, and it works well. Traffic is encrypted and storage is only on computers you control yourself.
There is one drawback, though: It's not open source so you have to trust BitTorrent Inc.
but instead invest into gameplay.
Example: Civilization I was a great game, not because it had such nice graphics or sound effects but because of the complexity of the game play. But the interface was easy to use, the different types of terrain and units easy to recognize and it was easy to pick up the strategy. Also, it worked on rather minimalistic hardware. (And, I have to admit, I originally got it as a pirated copy, but I bought it later. But since the bought version came with copy protection I continued to use the pirated one.) Now look at the latest installments of that series. The graphics and sound are improved but that also results in units and terrain being much harder to recognize. The gameplay is basically unchanged. But it requires so much computing power that the later stages of the game become basically unplayable if you don't run it on a top of the notch machine.
I have switched back to playing Civilization I when I am in the mood.
I just realised that this does not really answer the original question (I should have read it, not just the title)....
"Der Steppenwolf" from Hermann Hesse was required literature at school and despite that I read it and it possibly saved my life.
At that time I was thinking seriously about suicide and when I read the following quote from the main character, something along the lines "you can always commit suicide later if it gets too hard, so just keep going for now"
(I don't remember the exact words and it is in German anyway, so it wouldn't be of any use here)
That absolutely made sense to me. As long as you are alive, things can improve, once you are dead, you are dead and that's it.
There have been other important books later but I think the above is quite fundamental so no other became as significant as that one book.
The Star, by Arthur C. Clarke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_(short_story) ) At least, if you believe in Christian mythology you will find it rather depressing that god chose to let the star of such a great civilization go nova just to generate the star of Bthlehem.
Yes, I know, "phablet" is a stupid name, but the Samsung Galaxy Note (the smartphone, not the tablet) with the Kindle software makes an excellent e-book reader. You have to get used to the size, though. It is huge for a phone and maybe a little bit too small for a tablet, but in my view exactly right for an e-book.
I own a Samsung Galaxy Note and I knew beforehand how large it is. But I didn't buy a mobile phone, I bought a small tablet with mobile Internet connection and that's exactly what I got. Yes, I can also make phone calls with it, but I rarely do. As for carrying it: There are nice belt pouches for it. The solution is simple: If you don't like it, don't buy it. Of course, if somebody can come up with a smartphone that has a >=5" display but is much smaller, that would be nice. Maybe with glasses? That would still leave the problem on how to interact with it (no, speech recognition is not a solution). We'll see.
... so will there be "Glass" in the strength I need for my eyes? (I am still looking for sun glasses that are worth that name, preferably mirror sunglasses, in the strength I need. All they try to sell me are slightly darkened glasses and these are not even worth considering.)
... is far from perfect. Depending on which measure us use, Germany ranks somewhere in the top middle of the statistics. And it is definitely bad for both extremes of students: Those that are really bright and those that are - em - "intellectually challenged".
Not foolproof, but generally good enough. At least when the system allows you to ask your own question.
Why does that matter? You can still answer "What's your mother's maiden name?" with stuff from a book.
In Germany these insurances often explicitly exclude any internet related cases, which means they are nowadays pretty much useless.
(In case somebody can tell me an insurance that does cover these cases (e.g. filesharing, "AGB" and other cases of "Abmahnung wegen unlauteren Wettbewerbs" etc.), and is still reasonably priced, please tell me.)
On top of that there is the issue of living space: You end up living in rented property all the time while all your friends have bought or built houses. Again, something your wife might not like. (OK, this is slashdot, so you might not have a wife. ;-) )
Then of course there are the obvious issues like having to start all over again which can be seen positive or negative, but over the time it gets quite tiring. Also, seeing the changes to the worse coming is also quite depressing after the fifth or sixt time.
Yes, we should. They were able to get those ancient garbage cans fly to LEO and back for years without losing them and without killing many people. Try to do that yourself.
Also, even if that were a valid argument: What does their ability to perform a survey, statistical analysis of the answers and interpretation of the data have to do with their supposed inability to send people to LEO safely?
Hi,
if I remember correctly the department of homeland security was created to fight dangers for the national security, that is terrorists. How does a database of Americans fit into this? And why was it used to catch a fugitive prisoner - no matter whether she was was acutally a murderess or not? What's next? Catching people for speeding?
twm
twm
Only yesterday a court ruling was made public that the photographer can sue you if you used your own portrait photograph on your webpage without his consent. The reason: It's his copyright.
I mean, how stupid is that?
twm
"Oh, there is a trial of the new Office available? Wow, how generous from Microsoft, let's install it."
Maybe I am not the kind of people they are trying to attract, but I wonder: Why have this kind of "security" on a project like this?
twm