Reminds me of when MTV was "all music, all the time". Commercials started to creep in... suddenly it became difficult to tell when the music video stopped and the commericial began. I imagine the same thing will happen to XM.
Lines to the US are the only ones being used at higher than 1%... my theory is that's the Slashdot effect of everyone on this side of the pond looking at their "weather map".
If you're like me, when faced with annoying procedures, just ask for a charge number. Specify that this is a company required transaction, and you wouldn't want to charge your time inappropriately. For your line of work, that's probably illegal, and depending on how your time is contracted, it may even be illegal to work overtime unaccounted. If they won't give you one, tell them you'll have to speak to HR/ accounting/ whoever tracks charge numbers.
While I personally don't mind searches and don't bother, I've used this against the time card police, usually with ironic results.
Giving more rights to the worker may not necessarily be better for the workers. If a company is unsure of the future (and currently, who is), and they know that if they hire a person, they are required to maintain that salary for at least a year, or even six months, then they would be less likely to hire that person. However, in the US market, they could take a chance hiring them to do a job, and if things go well they could keep him.
In the best of times, of course companies hire. In the worst of times, the only reason a company will hire is if they know they can fire them just as quickly.
That being said, most companies realize that when they hire again, people will remember how they were treated. So unless it is a dire emergency, most (larger) companies will give some sort of package.
I'd think this is really going to play havoc with operations in Afganistan. Considering that the US depends on its satelliates and wireless links for intelligence and communications to coordinate everything from troop movements to weapons targeting, whereas the Afgans just need to sit tight in fragmented zones and shoot anything that moves. Usually satellites need to be shut down to protect it from solar events, I'm not sure if that's true for military satellites, but this sure is really lousy timing.
This is not meant for your typical civilian use. This is for soldiers in the combat zone, who need immediate surgery and don't have time to get to a MASH unit. Or, that woman in Antartica who needed surgery but was stuck for several months.
Or, in space, where it is much faster/cheaper/better to have one of these on board than to fly up a doctor for a house call (dammit Jim, I'm an ISS robotic arm operator, not a telisurgical robotic arm operator).
Even people in rural areas can benefit, sinec most local hospital cannot afford to keep all of the specialists they'd need for every possible emergency.
It would be interesting if they could use a SSN-DNS (geeks love acronyms).
Similar to how I don't need to remember 216.239.33.101 whenever I need to do a search, names could be registered to those unique numbers. Better yet, multiple names could be registered, and in this way you would not need to worry as much about SPAM, if the system did not allow you to resolve the name into the number yourself (i.e., you can't use a tool like ping to get the unique number for SidewaysTheDog, but if you try to access that name via your cell phone, my phone would ring). You could have multiple throw-away accounts, like email addresses nowadays, as well as semi-permanent accounts that you give out with care.
This does hinge on the system being able to resolve your unique number without giving the number to another user, but considering modern cryptography techniques, and a secure routing system, I think that is a reasonable thing to do.
In the future, our children will definitely be glued to our computer.
We will all live in a virtual world, designed to be incredibly realistic and highly entertaining, to distract us from the reality that we are being used as batteries for the new master race of computers.
More info on Code Red III
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 4, Funny
WARNING, VIRUS ALERT!!!
If you see a message on the boards with a subject line of "Hi, how are you," delete it immediately WITHOUT reading it. It is "Code Red III". This is the most dangerous virus yet. It will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer (up to 20 feet). It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream melts and milk curdles. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, reprogram your ATM access code,screw up the tracking on your VCR and use subspace fieldharmonic to scratch any CDs you try to play.
It will give your ex-boy/girlfriend your new phone number. It will program your phone autodial to call only your mother's number. It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will drink all your beer.It will hide your car keys when you are late for work and interfere with your car radio so that you hear 1940's hits and static while stuck in traffic.
It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, all while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing their hotel rendezvous to your Visa card. It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of "Code Red III", it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.
It will rewrite your back-up files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretation of key sentences.
"Code Red III" will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up and leave the hairdryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub. It will wantonly remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows,and refill your skim milk with whole. "Code Red III" is an evil virus conceived by evil people. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve. These are just a few signs. Be very, very afraid. PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!
Actually, in California at least, the power company does charge differently. But in this case, residential users pay less for power than businesses.
Business contracts are also juicier for the phone company than residential, especially rural service. Basically, it is the business users who subsidize the highly unprofitable rural users.
And as far as not advertising, if you are smart enough to need certain ports to not be blocked, you are smart enough to read the TOS.
Really, you shouldn't invoke government regulation unless there is a natural monopoly. As long as you have choice, DSL or cable modem, regulation is just wrong. What is needed is better enforcement of the government regulation, that the phone company should open up DSL and support the DSL providers, rather than delay setting up a start-up DSL companies connection (or blaming faulty connections on them) until the start-up runs out of money.
Even DSL could be competitive with other DSL providers. Free market works!
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them...
That's why we should build the first one in Iraq.
Reminds me of when MTV was "all music, all the time". Commercials started to creep in... suddenly it became difficult to tell when the music video stopped and the commericial began. I imagine the same thing will happen to XM.
Lines to the US are the only ones being used at higher than 1%... my theory is that's the Slashdot effect of everyone on this side of the pond looking at their "weather map".
Email can't be 30. AOL wasn't even founded until 1985!
I think now he should change his name to "ShuttleWorthy"... at least on Slashdot.
But is there a Linux emulator for the 4004 software?
Now if only X10 would follow suit...
While I personally don't mind searches and don't bother, I've used this against the time card police, usually with ironic results.
Don't forget Mel!
And you thought having your personality rejected from a woman is bad, try denial of the basic existance of a personality. Man, that's cold.
Wow, Bill Gates was right. 640K of memory really is enough for anybody.
War, huh, dear God man! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again...
In the best of times, of course companies hire. In the worst of times, the only reason a company will hire is if they know they can fire them just as quickly.
That being said, most companies realize that when they hire again, people will remember how they were treated. So unless it is a dire emergency, most (larger) companies will give some sort of package.
I'd think this is really going to play havoc with operations in Afganistan. Considering that the US depends on its satelliates and wireless links for intelligence and communications to coordinate everything from troop movements to weapons targeting, whereas the Afgans just need to sit tight in fragmented zones and shoot anything that moves. Usually satellites need to be shut down to protect it from solar events, I'm not sure if that's true for military satellites, but this sure is really lousy timing.
Even people in rural areas can benefit, sinec most local hospital cannot afford to keep all of the specialists they'd need for every possible emergency.
Similar to how I don't need to remember 216.239.33.101 whenever I need to do a search, names could be registered to those unique numbers. Better yet, multiple names could be registered, and in this way you would not need to worry as much about SPAM, if the system did not allow you to resolve the name into the number yourself (i.e., you can't use a tool like ping to get the unique number for SidewaysTheDog, but if you try to access that name via your cell phone, my phone would ring). You could have multiple throw-away accounts, like email addresses nowadays, as well as semi-permanent accounts that you give out with care.
This does hinge on the system being able to resolve your unique number without giving the number to another user, but considering modern cryptography techniques, and a secure routing system, I think that is a reasonable thing to do.
We will all live in a virtual world, designed to be incredibly realistic and highly entertaining, to distract us from the reality that we are being used as batteries for the new master race of computers.
If you see a message on the boards with a subject line of "Hi, how are you," delete it immediately WITHOUT reading it. It is "Code Red III". This is the most dangerous virus yet. It will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but it will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer (up to 20 feet). It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream melts and milk curdles. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, reprogram your ATM access code,screw up the tracking on your VCR and use subspace fieldharmonic to scratch any CDs you try to play.
It will give your ex-boy/girlfriend your new phone number. It will program your phone autodial to call only your mother's number. It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will drink all your beer.It will hide your car keys when you are late for work and interfere with your car radio so that you hear 1940's hits and static while stuck in traffic.
It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine, all while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing their hotel rendezvous to your Visa card. It will seduce your grandmother. It does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of "Code Red III", it reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.
It will rewrite your back-up files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretation of key sentences.
"Code Red III" will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up and leave the hairdryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub. It will wantonly remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows,and refill your skim milk with whole. "Code Red III" is an evil virus conceived by evil people. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve. These are just a few signs. Be very, very afraid. PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!
Actually, in California at least, the power company does charge differently. But in this case, residential users pay less for power than businesses. Business contracts are also juicier for the phone company than residential, especially rural service. Basically, it is the business users who subsidize the highly unprofitable rural users. And as far as not advertising, if you are smart enough to need certain ports to not be blocked, you are smart enough to read the TOS. Really, you shouldn't invoke government regulation unless there is a natural monopoly. As long as you have choice, DSL or cable modem, regulation is just wrong. What is needed is better enforcement of the government regulation, that the phone company should open up DSL and support the DSL providers, rather than delay setting up a start-up DSL companies connection (or blaming faulty connections on them) until the start-up runs out of money. Even DSL could be competitive with other DSL providers. Free market works!