My real world mileage on my Fiat 500 is about 5 mpg more than the sticker label. (42 mpg average)
Without even trying, I see similar results on my Honda Fit. It's estimated for 27 city, 33 highway, and driving about 40/60 split of city and highway miles, I average about 38 mpg, and this is in hilly New Jersey. In flat Texas (DFW area) I would regularly average 42 to 43 mpg, and if I was really trying to save gas, I could eek out upper 40s or low 50s just by driving conservatively. (No crazy stuff like shutting off the engine while moving, or other bizarre stuff I've heard of self proclaimed "hypermilers" doing.)
I am in a similar situation to you. I also work in a company (distribution and corporate side of after sales parts for an auto manufacturer) that does not allow installation of non-approved software, and while I agree with some of the other posters regarding getting into possible firing territory by going against company policy, sometimes the experience can still be useful to help you move up or around in your company. Try to associate your tinkering with something already related to your job, or to help others in your department. Depending on the size of your company, strictness of management and company policy, you may wind up using a hobby to make lives easier for you and those around you. Or you may get canned. You don't say what kind of work you normally do or what sector of industry you work in, but you have several options. Here are some of the options I have looked at and used.
Personally, my first choice would be to find something that is already available to you without the need to install new software and work within that area. For example, you probably hve a web browswer available on uour work computer, and you already work with HTML and CSS, so you could move on to JavaScript. You can make little standalone projects using just these that are available to run unchanged on just about any computer. There are, of course, limits to this, such as local file access and things, but projects like TiddlyWiki may have some pointers. Another option within this realm is taking a look at the office suite available to you. For example, if you have MS Access or Excel on hand, you can make lots of things by getting into VBA scripting. (I recommend Access only because it lends itself better to application development. If you know enough VBA, you can just about make any Office app do what you want, but it's harder to do data manipulation in Word for example).
Another option, of you feel braver is to go the PortableApp route, like you mentioned. You can find portable versions of some scripting languages, such a s Python, which are workable. The downside is that if you decide you need a specific library that doesn't respect being shoehorned into being "portable" (in the sense of being able to run it from an external flash drive or hard drive without leaving traces on the host computer) it could lead to possible discovery by your IT group, depending on how invasive they are in their tracking.
Along in this portable app group, one item I might suggest trying is a scripting language called Rebol. (rebol.com). It's multiplatform interpreter and GUI library in a single file that has some interesting features. Depending on how you run it, it may put a couple of folders in the folder it exists in, but other than that, I think it's pretty "quiet".
Outside of that, some of the posters above have some neat ideas about either remote access to your home computer or utilizing online programming environments. I may even look into these for myself, as the may be feasible depending on what is currently not off limits thought the proxy at work.
By going with the "using what's already available to you" route, whether it's a web browser or an office suite, you may be better suited to present some of your projects and ideas to coworkers and management, since by using those, you technically may not be violating your company's do-not-install rule. It doesn't mean it's bulletproof as they could view creation of new scripts and projects as a violation of the rule, depending on how strict they are. You're the one that has to use your judgement and figure out what you think they will or will not allow, and whether or not it puts you in danger of getting fired.
I'm personally a big fan of Linux Mint. It builds off of Ubuntu, but it comes already setup with a number of proprietary items that other distros don't want to include, such as flash , mp3 and NVidia support. It has the familiar Windows-like setup you mentioned and it's easy to maintain with the mint-update tool, which lets the user know when there are updates to install. (I know other distros have similar utilities, but Mint's never seemed to break anything on an update.) It also has a number of other mint-* tools that make maintenance very easy and gives it a nice polish even over Ubuntu.
I was having the same problem with Jamendo, and then realized that my issue was that I had flashblock or adblock turned on and it surpressed the embedded player in the side bar. Once I allowed that through and allowed it to load fully, then clicking the play button next to a song or album brought up the mini-window embedded player and it worked fine.
What about using the offline sync option with Google Gears? That way if the online service is down, you still at least have access to your files. I don't know if it will do that with PDFs, or if there is any sort of limit on how many files it keeps synced at a time, but it's just a thought.
Lets be honest, all religion is bogus and would not pass muster. Sheeple believe it, sheeple will fight and die for it.
How is other nonsense and lies any different?
This demonstrates perfectly the antithesis of one of the points in the summary:
"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly," he said.
The idea of what is or isn't a cult is relative, and therefore truth is be relative. It doesn't matter if you're atheist, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, LDS, Heaven's Gate, Pagan or whatever. Each group has it's own "truth", and things that don't follow those beliefs/faiths are seen as non-truths.
And some would say THAT truth is even bogus, which all the more proves the point.
This doesn't just go for religion either. Lawyers make a living from the relativity of truth. If truth were absolute and easily discernable, we probably wouldn't need lawyers.
Same here. I think that things like this are fascinating, and if it hadn't been for them making a big deal out of it, it would have taken me a lot longer to find something like this. Then again, getting posted to Slashdot helped, too.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but isn't the speed of light supposed to be an absolute for things in the realm of "real world applications"? How can a single "task" (whatever that means) get processed faster than the speed of light? Even with multicore technology, I wouldn't think that a single task could get split up between the cores because that task is, well, singular.
I agree. Not only that, but also get rid of AM/PM and just go to a 24 Hour clock. In all seriousness, it would get rid of ambiguity when referring to time in any medium. It would take some adjusting for people to get the hang of the sun rising at 13:30 where they live, or working from 18:00 to to 2:00. But when you want to call your relatives that live on the other side of the country (assuming your country spans multiple current time zones) it will be easy to say, "Hey, I'll call you tomorrow at 11:00," and there will be no question of "your time or my time?"
If your collective conflict resolution skills are that poor, I'm not sure I would like to be in (or near) that family in the first place.
Well, here's the thing about that. Just because someone may or may not have great conflict resolution skills, it doesn't mean that they want to egg on that conflict in the first place. Not everyone wants to sit around and argue political points at the dinner table because they all have great conflict resolution skills. Granted some people start arguments for the hell of it, but there are a lot that would prefer to skip it altogether, if possible. Maybe some people have contacts in their GMail that are more argumentative than others that are now having to deal with conflicts with those people rather than just avoid it because it's not something that concerns them in the first place.
I can install Gentoo without the manual. Once you do it a couple times it just makes sense...
But who wants to install it more than once? If it's a hobby to install Linux over and over, then fine, you have a point, but I would think most people would want to install it once and then be able to actually USE the computer for quite some time.
I'm not really trying to be snarky about this. I'm just saying that the only time you should have to reinstall an OS is either if you keep picking at it until it just breaks, or when a new version comes out. For things like Gentoo and Arch, they're only pseudo-releases anyway. Once installed, it's a rolling release system. I would actually think that, if anything, Gentoo would be something you would install the LEAST number of times because of this.
Suzanne Vega on The ScreenSavers
on
How MP3 Was Born
·
· Score: 1
I remember (back before TechTV got bought out and became crap) that Suzanne Vega was on The ScreenSavers and talking to Leo Laporte about this very topic. If I remember correctly, she was actually very unhappy about the whole MP3 idea, especially since it was her music that they used to help fine tune the codec. It surprises me a bit that the article states that Karlheinz met her at the MP3 commemoration event.
If it is done right, the user of a thin client does not even know his programme is running on a distant server. Normally, a user will have something like a P4 on his thick client and a single hard drive. When he loads a file, it takes a few ms to seek and a few more to transfer. With server-centric computing, files like the browser executable, common webpages, and parts of the databases are already in RAM taking microseconds to activate. Things just flash on the screen! On my personal terminal server, now two years old and rickety, the first time I load OpenOffice (my biggest, ugliest app) it can take 7s. When someone logs in after me and runs OO, it takes 2s to get going. You tell me users hate that? No, if it would work the way you seem to be able to make it work, then I'm sure it would be a great experience as long as the right programs were also served to the right people. You said it your self: "If it is done right"... From what I hear, too often that's not the case.
But in all fairness, I understand your point. Doing it right would make for a good experience. My point was that my company does it very poorly. Who honestly thinks that running a terminal and a server in the same building in Texas needs to have all data routed through New Jersey first? With 3500 employees in the original post, my thinking was that there is a good chance that they MAY not all be sitting in the same building, or even the same town.
Maybe you should be hired to come kick our IT into gear... I'd love to see it done right, and run Linux to do it to boot! Hell, getting our IT to respond quicker than a three-week time period to a simple "Please reset my password" request would be nice.
Slashdot Mirror
The chat client ICQ was doing this back in 1998. Why is it surprising that this would still be possible 20 years later?
My real world mileage on my Fiat 500 is about 5 mpg more than the sticker label. (42 mpg average)
Without even trying, I see similar results on my Honda Fit. It's estimated for 27 city, 33 highway, and driving about 40/60 split of city and highway miles, I average about 38 mpg, and this is in hilly New Jersey. In flat Texas (DFW area) I would regularly average 42 to 43 mpg, and if I was really trying to save gas, I could eek out upper 40s or low 50s just by driving conservatively. (No crazy stuff like shutting off the engine while moving, or other bizarre stuff I've heard of self proclaimed "hypermilers" doing.)
I think Sprint missed a real opportunity using "star" instead of "pound".
##Mom
I am in a similar situation to you. I also work in a company (distribution and corporate side of after sales parts for an auto manufacturer) that does not allow installation of non-approved software, and while I agree with some of the other posters regarding getting into possible firing territory by going against company policy, sometimes the experience can still be useful to help you move up or around in your company. Try to associate your tinkering with something already related to your job, or to help others in your department. Depending on the size of your company, strictness of management and company policy, you may wind up using a hobby to make lives easier for you and those around you. Or you may get canned. You don't say what kind of work you normally do or what sector of industry you work in, but you have several options. Here are some of the options I have looked at and used.
Personally, my first choice would be to find something that is already available to you without the need to install new software and work within that area. For example, you probably hve a web browswer available on uour work computer, and you already work with HTML and CSS, so you could move on to JavaScript. You can make little standalone projects using just these that are available to run unchanged on just about any computer. There are, of course, limits to this, such as local file access and things, but projects like TiddlyWiki may have some pointers. Another option within this realm is taking a look at the office suite available to you. For example, if you have MS Access or Excel on hand, you can make lots of things by getting into VBA scripting. (I recommend Access only because it lends itself better to application development. If you know enough VBA, you can just about make any Office app do what you want, but it's harder to do data manipulation in Word for example).
Another option, of you feel braver is to go the PortableApp route, like you mentioned. You can find portable versions of some scripting languages, such a s Python, which are workable. The downside is that if you decide you need a specific library that doesn't respect being shoehorned into being "portable" (in the sense of being able to run it from an external flash drive or hard drive without leaving traces on the host computer) it could lead to possible discovery by your IT group, depending on how invasive they are in their tracking.
Along in this portable app group, one item I might suggest trying is a scripting language called Rebol. (rebol.com). It's multiplatform interpreter and GUI library in a single file that has some interesting features. Depending on how you run it, it may put a couple of folders in the folder it exists in, but other than that, I think it's pretty "quiet".
Outside of that, some of the posters above have some neat ideas about either remote access to your home computer or utilizing online programming environments. I may even look into these for myself, as the may be feasible depending on what is currently not off limits thought the proxy at work.
By going with the "using what's already available to you" route, whether it's a web browser or an office suite, you may be better suited to present some of your projects and ideas to coworkers and management, since by using those, you technically may not be violating your company's do-not-install rule. It doesn't mean it's bulletproof as they could view creation of new scripts and projects as a violation of the rule, depending on how strict they are. You're the one that has to use your judgement and figure out what you think they will or will not allow, and whether or not it puts you in danger of getting fired.
Why does it smell like sea water in here?
I'm personally a big fan of Linux Mint. It builds off of Ubuntu, but it comes already setup with a number of proprietary items that other distros don't want to include, such as flash , mp3 and NVidia support. It has the familiar Windows-like setup you mentioned and it's easy to maintain with the mint-update tool, which lets the user know when there are updates to install. (I know other distros have similar utilities, but Mint's never seemed to break anything on an update.) It also has a number of other mint-* tools that make maintenance very easy and gives it a nice polish even over Ubuntu.
I was having the same problem with Jamendo, and then realized that my issue was that I had flashblock or adblock turned on and it surpressed the embedded player in the side bar. Once I allowed that through and allowed it to load fully, then clicking the play button next to a song or album brought up the mini-window embedded player and it worked fine.
I just hope they don't use it near any pools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqzlDj0N47g
My experience if you work with IT you can get a lot of what you need without hassle.
Really? I wish IT at my job worked like that. At my job, if you ask IT for something, then they know what to restrict next.
What about using the offline sync option with Google Gears? That way if the online service is down, you still at least have access to your files. I don't know if it will do that with PDFs, or if there is any sort of limit on how many files it keeps synced at a time, but it's just a thought.
Lets be honest, all religion is bogus and would not pass muster. Sheeple believe it, sheeple will fight and die for it.
How is other nonsense and lies any different?
This demonstrates perfectly the antithesis of one of the points in the summary:
"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly," he said.
The idea of what is or isn't a cult is relative, and therefore truth is be relative. It doesn't matter if you're atheist, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, LDS, Heaven's Gate, Pagan or whatever. Each group has it's own "truth", and things that don't follow those beliefs/faiths are seen as non-truths.
And some would say THAT truth is even bogus, which all the more proves the point.
This doesn't just go for religion either. Lawyers make a living from the relativity of truth. If truth were absolute and easily discernable, we probably wouldn't need lawyers.
Same here. I think that things like this are fascinating, and if it hadn't been for them making a big deal out of it, it would have taken me a lot longer to find something like this. Then again, getting posted to Slashdot helped, too.
Hmmmm... it would probably actually be during a "new earth".
Durp... brainfart. Thanks. :p
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but isn't the speed of light supposed to be an absolute for things in the realm of "real world applications"? How can a single "task" (whatever that means) get processed faster than the speed of light? Even with multicore technology, I wouldn't think that a single task could get split up between the cores because that task is, well, singular.
It's the CRAP music that they churn out and expect everyone to buy just because they tell us it's "popular". No, they can keep their "music".
I agree. Not only that, but also get rid of AM/PM and just go to a 24 Hour clock. In all seriousness, it would get rid of ambiguity when referring to time in any medium. It would take some adjusting for people to get the hang of the sun rising at 13:30 where they live, or working from 18:00 to to 2:00. But when you want to call your relatives that live on the other side of the country (assuming your country spans multiple current time zones) it will be easy to say, "Hey, I'll call you tomorrow at 11:00," and there will be no question of "your time or my time?"
No DST.
No Timezones.
No AM/PM.
If your collective conflict resolution skills are that poor, I'm not sure I would like to be in (or near) that family in the first place.
Well, here's the thing about that. Just because someone may or may not have great conflict resolution skills, it doesn't mean that they want to egg on that conflict in the first place. Not everyone wants to sit around and argue political points at the dinner table because they all have great conflict resolution skills. Granted some people start arguments for the hell of it, but there are a lot that would prefer to skip it altogether, if possible. Maybe some people have contacts in their GMail that are more argumentative than others that are now having to deal with conflicts with those people rather than just avoid it because it's not something that concerns them in the first place.
Okay. THAT is completely awesome. Thanks for sharing!
Nice. Where's my mod points when I need them? Thanks for this.
Does it look and feel like the real thing? /Sili-what? oh.
I can install Gentoo without the manual. Once you do it a couple times it just makes sense...
But who wants to install it more than once? If it's a hobby to install Linux over and over, then fine, you have a point, but I would think most people would want to install it once and then be able to actually USE the computer for quite some time.
I'm not really trying to be snarky about this. I'm just saying that the only time you should have to reinstall an OS is either if you keep picking at it until it just breaks, or when a new version comes out. For things like Gentoo and Arch, they're only pseudo-releases anyway. Once installed, it's a rolling release system. I would actually think that, if anything, Gentoo would be something you would install the LEAST number of times because of this.
I remember (back before TechTV got bought out and became crap) that Suzanne Vega was on The ScreenSavers and talking to Leo Laporte about this very topic. If I remember correctly, she was actually very unhappy about the whole MP3 idea, especially since it was her music that they used to help fine tune the codec. It surprises me a bit that the article states that Karlheinz met her at the MP3 commemoration event.
But in all fairness, I understand your point. Doing it right would make for a good experience. My point was that my company does it very poorly. Who honestly thinks that running a terminal and a server in the same building in Texas needs to have all data routed through New Jersey first? With 3500 employees in the original post, my thinking was that there is a good chance that they MAY not all be sitting in the same building, or even the same town.
Maybe you should be hired to come kick our IT into gear... I'd love to see it done right, and run Linux to do it to boot! Hell, getting our IT to respond quicker than a three-week time period to a simple "Please reset my password" request would be nice.
hahaha... thanks for pointing that out. My mistake. But really, around our place, it's dummy. :)