Its funny, without even reading your post, your subject line was enough to get me to envision hundreds of cars on the roadways being hijacked by remote control and plowed at full speed into my local Home Depot. Then I envisioned the looks on people's faces as the car they just drove out of the dealer lot gets hijacked and plowed into the little shops at gas stations. That's what I thought of the instant I read "If GM was owned by the Borg".
and the Smart Coupe that I drive came 3rd - a car that you can't get in the States at all
I remember seeing all these strange cars on my first trip to Europe last year, the Smart being everywhere in Paris. At first, I was going to give you the good ole/. "bzzzt" because I've since seen them driving around NYC. So when I checked their site, I found "USA Market Entry 2006". Strange, I thought, that they don't even know they're already here.
I don't get all these cable outages people are experiencing. I had to wait 6 years to get a cable modem after my first friend got his because my town's cable infrastructure was decades old. Yet my cable tv never goes out. Granted, once Comcast moved in I saw trucks all around town for months pulling new cable, so it had *better* not go out now! OTOH, whenever people ask me about dish systems, I give them the fair warning, "just keep in mind that the dish only goes out when you need it most."
True stories: I was in a hotel room near the office data center on emergency duty for Hurricane Floyd. I had the tv on, my police scanner and a Nextel with multiple executives a button press away. Sure enough, as the eye of the storm came up through Hudson Bay, the dish servicing the hotel went out. I was stuck with the scanner for the rest of the night.
Then, last July 4th, I was visiting Mom in Orlando, when the typical afternoon thunderstorms actually kicked up a couple of tornados in the area. They broke in on the local tv channels and were putting up "Super Doppler 9" or whatever they call it there, and started to drill down to show the current position and track of the tornado. They kept drilling down closer and closer to our neighborhood when I heard, and an exact quote here, "there is a tornado on the ground! I repeat a tornado on the ground in our viewing area! It has been on the ground for about 15 minutes now and it is heading directly for" ssssshhhhhhhhhhhh.... "SEARCHING FOR SATELLITE SIGNAL".
"You gotta be shittin' me."
So, yes cable has been much better for me during the times I've needed it the most. Blizzard of '96? 39 inches of snow. Perfect. My friend's dish? Out to lunch. Even thick clouds knock it out. Rarely, but they do.
and it was but a mere shell of what it used to be.. at least I got to support the FSF by buying a nice-looking "Free Software/Free Society" t-shirt. Other than that, got the google pen and a good look at small displays that would be perfect for replacing my in-dash GPS display screen.. looking for one with multiple inputs. Oh, and I finally got a replacement Linux license plate. The one on my car now has "Compaq" in huge red letters on it, which isn't too cool as an IBM consultant.:) The new one has "OpenGroup" up there now.
Oh, and my vote for the most mis-guided individuals who have no idea how to make the conversion to Linux-for-business: the VOIP people who ran their setup on a chipped X-Box. Are you kidding me, people??? You want a business to buy your product, and you power your display with a video game console? The coolness factor drops way the hell off when you're trying to sell VOIP solutions. Build a damn PC. Jeez.
Anyone remember the IBM party in 2001? They rented out the whole upstairs, had an open bar, great music, a real BattleBots cage, and, well, an ice sculptor. But he cut out a damn fine Tux, too. THAT'S what I think of when I think about the days before the bust.
Yeah, but you know what? My Dad had a late-80's Jaguar, and the stock stereo had a "C19" button in with the presets, and I had no freaking idea what it was. CB channel 19 receiver. Think about it. When you're stuck in traffic, and the traffic reports don't cover anywhere near your area, what's the best place to find out what's going on? Channel 19. I have never seen it in any other car since, and I think it was one of the smartest things I've ever seen.
I had a CB radio powered by a 9-volt battery with a whip antenna that I taped to my bike. It was called "Truckin'!" and it had a picture of an 18-wheeler on it complete with the "speed lines" drawn behind it for effect. Mine was a transceiver, though, but only worked on channel 19. Thus began my trek to become the man now known as...
I have learned to turn my anger at telemarketers into a grand ole time figuring out new ways to hang up on them. One guy called at like 2:30pm on a Sunday asking me to talk for a minute about my television viewing habits. I told him, "well you called right in the middle of 'football sunday', and that was pretty fuckin' stupid on your part." Click.
Once I accidentally answered, even when I saw the name of the newspaper right on the caller id. Before they even said hello, I muttered, "oh shit, I didn't want to talk to these assholes." Click! Never heard from again.
Once Omaha Steaks called me twice in a couple of weeks, and when they identified themselves the second time, I said, "oh cool!" When they asked why I was so happy, I replied, "Well, I told another one of you idiots to never call me again just two weeks ago, so now you're violating federal law and I'll collect $500!" Click. Never heard from again.
Ahhhh... never gets old. Sometimes when the caller id is blocked, I just pick up and hang up just for the hell of it. Or when they start spewing off, a good old fashioned, "HEY, SHUT UP FOR A SECOND" before leading into the standard statements about the DNC sometimes make my day.
I mean, really, can't they get any better jobs? SHEESH
Seems like a strange thing to offer. Here at work, once you get exposed to open source code, you can never go back to dealing with internal code merely due to the risks that algorithms you develop internally may accidentally be recreated in open source work.
How can RH say that they will replace your code with non-tainted code if the tainted code is the only way they've seen for approaching a problem. Seems like they need the equivalent of an optoisolator between their tainted developers and non-tainted developers. A white room approach with a description of the goal slid under the door.
Seriously. I notice the states with the absolute worst drivers are being mentioned here. I grew up in NJ and the NJ Turnpike is the only place I've been flashed by a cop at 90 just so he could pass me up. And Florida is where you have all the blue-hairs turning willy nilly and driving off into ditches, claiming "they moved the street!" VA drivers just think they are bad-ass, but I'm still waiting to hear about Californians, who think that rain means "plow into the car in front of you."
I have an '03 Nissan Murano with CVT and dynamic AWD. It is by far the most intelligent car I've ever driven. You can just about look in the direction you want to go and it gets you there, with ease and command. My experiences in snow driving this year had me mentally developing a commercial that shows someone driving in summer while everyone else is driving in winter weeks before the commercials actually started showing up every 10 minutes.
"Stab it and steer, peanut!" - Nicholas Cage, "Wild at Heart"
I'd be curious to see how many Mobil SpeedPass holders pay some other way because they forgot the fob or out of habit...
When my local Mobil was having trouble authenticating their Speedpasses to hq, they kept calling the cops with license plates of "non-payers". I found this out b/c my wife said it took a couple tries for the light to stay on the very first time she used it, but she showed me the receipt she ended up getting anyway. The next day, a cop was at the door and explained the situation. I told him that she showed me the receipt last night, and he didn't even wait around to see it for himself. He did say that if they didn't fix their problems, he's going to start charging them for all the false reports he'd been getting.
It took me a while to get her to start using it again, and it hasn't happened since.
To use the keychain-based Speedpass now (my nearest Mobil station is right next to the main highway out of town and has a Subway in it -- w00 h00!) I have to hold it against a little reader pad for a second or two for it to register. Unless you reach out and rest your wrist right on boxes that look like supermarket credit card readers, I don't think you have much to worry about. And they do have to push a button on the register to process the payment, so you could still yell out, "don't hit that button!!!"
So I don't carry cash. But I'll be damned if I'll go from a more secure to less secure method of transaction. I also imagine there's no credit protection for this speedpass system, as there is for all credit cards. No go.
The rf only works for a distance of a couple inches for the keychain fob and wristwatch. No pringles can from across the parking lot, nor the ability to reproduce a keyfob with your RFID in it. Also, it only acts as a conduit to the frontend charge system for your Visa card. It is not another credit card. Therefore all your protection offered by the Visa card still applies.
Minor nit. Another multi-year Speedpass user here, and we were typing at the same time about using it in the cold. Nit: If you lose the fob, don't cancel the credit card! Just call Speedpass customer service and cancel the fob. That way, you can still get gas with your card until the replacement fob arrives..
I'm surprised how many people have said, "just cancel the card" here. Its not THAT tightly bound to the card. I had mine bound to a check card a year before they approved it. Also, they call you when they detect unusual activity. I had to fill up every 2 days for 2 weeks, so they called to see if everything was ok.
I have 2 keychain fobs and 2 window transponders. The window transponders work about 1 out of every 10-20 tries. The keychain fob works great for me in the Northeast b/c, when it so damn cold out, its nice to just hold your keys inside your fist up against a "Place Speedpass Here" sign instead of taking off your gloves to fark with your wallet and credit card. The trick to get it to work inside is to pinch it between your thumb and index finger but rest your index finger's nail on the reader. Yes, radiate the RFID right through your fingertip. Works like a charm for me.
But, boy is it nice when it's about 3 below, and the pump is ready to go by the time you get out of your car. Privacy, shimvacy, its effin' freezing out! I only wish they, and more, places would take EZ Pass.. especially parking garages. Sometimes I just want to drive without stopping or rolling my windows down, is that too much to ask?
You call the Speedpass customer service number. Your credit card is not transmitted through the air, just the RFID serial number. It takes seconds for them to cancel the device.
I once had a job doing backend processing for trades in government bonds at the largest insurer in the US. A bunch of us had to handwrite vouchers every day to move money around between accounts to accomodate the trades. The signed, authorized vouchers would then be sent to a girl who worked after school keying them in. I have terrible handwriting, and she frequently made keying errors. So I wrote a small app to print out completed vouchers. They asked me to share the app with the other workers, installing it on a centralized PC running DOS (this was 1992). They also asked me to capture all of the transaction details in a record file, which would then be fed directly to the mainframe application. By reducing the processing time and eliminating keying errors, I was credited with saving the division $100k annually, and given a $1,000 check.
One day, an account manager came to me and said her group uses 4-digit account numbers instead of the 3 my app accepted. I took her word for it and changed the app to accept and store 4-digit account numbers. Well that broke the feeder file and crashed the mainframe app during one of the nightly feeds. Boy was I slapped around for that one.
I want a slow mo instant replay. I want xbox live multiplayer. I don't have the live service but if I knew most of the other cars in town were being driven by humans, it would be much more interesting.
Easier aiming with the gun. Holding the left trigger for half a second before firing results in randomly shooting pedestrians while cops are shooting me in the head from a couple feet away.
Maybe a second screen or status window achieved by using a crossover cable to my laptop, offering a dhcp server and a web site with a simple status screen.. like the red screen for checking your current status. I can play GTA3 for hours on end, but I don't start getting nauseous until I turn on the cinematic view. I just cannot drive with that camera view on.
I'd like to wait and see if slim devices comes out with a competing product.. obviously they are very supportive of our community, and I think they'd do a fine job.
I called them before to find out whether or not there was a router out in my area, and they told me that, not only did they not provide service in my area, but that I'm not a Comcast customer. Some real sharp tacks working for that company, let me tell you
I've had fairly good service from them. Of course, it helps if you know what the problem and solution are before you call:) I run bb4 big brother and can see little green, yellow, red or purple lights indicating status of various key systems in my internet chain. I was on with support for quite some time a year ago, and the guyI also recently disconnected my Linksys and swapped to a Linux box. Even though I spoofed the same MAC address that I was spoofing with the Linksys, I still wasn't getting a DHCP renewal from Comcast. I called, and asked them to reset my cablemodem.
She said, "but you have a lease." "I know, I'm switching computers." "What are you running?" "Linux." "Oh." "Yeah, please reset my cablemodem." "Okay, I just sent it." -- tail -f messages shows a new lease -- "That did it! Thanks!"
IBM isn't the first to take Linux seriously as a cost effective option for productivity.
True, but IBM has about 350,000 employees. And we are "the Linux company"... well, about as much as its possible to be one. The potential for cost savings are equal to the GDP of a small country. IBM, like most large companies, publishes standardized desktop images for various types of equipment and job roles. There have been standard Linux desktop images for years. I'm just glad to hear that IBM is getting behind Linux on the desktop and going after the cost savings.
As much as we might all like Linux to survive in the business world we need to be able to speak what everyone else speaks
This is IBM. I still meet coworkers every few weeks who haven't gotten around to installing MS Office yet. They think SmartSuite (and Netscape) is still the corporate standard, and can't believe the company bought Office XP licenses for every employee about 18 months ago.
Slashdot Mirror
How about putting the OS you purchased a license to use on your old boxen, that's not currently being used?
Those licenses are not transferable. You can't even blow away a PC and reload it with another copy of the OS you bought with it.
Its funny, without even reading your post, your subject line was enough to get me to envision hundreds of cars on the roadways being hijacked by remote control and plowed at full speed into my local Home Depot. Then I envisioned the looks on people's faces as the car they just drove out of the dealer lot gets hijacked and plowed into the little shops at gas stations. That's what I thought of the instant I read "If GM was owned by the Borg".
:)
I guess I have an active imagination
and the Smart Coupe that I drive came 3rd - a car that you can't get in the States at all
/. "bzzzt" because I've since seen them driving around NYC. So when I checked their site, I found "USA Market Entry 2006". Strange, I thought, that they don't even know they're already here.
I remember seeing all these strange cars on my first trip to Europe last year, the Smart being everywhere in Paris. At first, I was going to give you the good ole
I don't get all these cable outages people are experiencing. I had to wait 6 years to get a cable modem after my first friend got his because my town's cable infrastructure was decades old. Yet my cable tv never goes out. Granted, once Comcast moved in I saw trucks all around town for months pulling new cable, so it had *better* not go out now! OTOH, whenever people ask me about dish systems, I give them the fair warning, "just keep in mind that the dish only goes out when you need it most."
True stories: I was in a hotel room near the office data center on emergency duty for Hurricane Floyd. I had the tv on, my police scanner and a Nextel with multiple executives a button press away. Sure enough, as the eye of the storm came up through Hudson Bay, the dish servicing the hotel went out. I was stuck with the scanner for the rest of the night.
Then, last July 4th, I was visiting Mom in Orlando, when the typical afternoon thunderstorms actually kicked up a couple of tornados in the area. They broke in on the local tv channels and were putting up "Super Doppler 9" or whatever they call it there, and started to drill down to show the current position and track of the tornado. They kept drilling down closer and closer to our neighborhood when I heard, and an exact quote here, "there is a tornado on the ground! I repeat a tornado on the ground in our viewing area! It has been on the ground for about 15 minutes now and it is heading directly for" ssssshhhhhhhhhhhh.... "SEARCHING FOR SATELLITE SIGNAL".
"You gotta be shittin' me."
So, yes cable has been much better for me during the times I've needed it the most. Blizzard of '96? 39 inches of snow. Perfect. My friend's dish? Out to lunch. Even thick clouds knock it out. Rarely, but they do.
and it was but a mere shell of what it used to be.. at least I got to support the FSF by buying a nice-looking "Free Software/Free Society" t-shirt. Other than that, got the google pen and a good look at small displays that would be perfect for replacing my in-dash GPS display screen.. looking for one with multiple inputs. Oh, and I finally got a replacement Linux license plate. The one on my car now has "Compaq" in huge red letters on it, which isn't too cool as an IBM consultant. :) The new one has "OpenGroup" up there now.
Oh, and my vote for the most mis-guided individuals who have no idea how to make the conversion to Linux-for-business: the VOIP people who ran their setup on a chipped X-Box. Are you kidding me, people??? You want a business to buy your product, and you power your display with a video game console? The coolness factor drops way the hell off when you're trying to sell VOIP solutions. Build a damn PC. Jeez.
Anyone remember the IBM party in 2001? They rented out the whole upstairs, had an open bar, great music, a real BattleBots cage, and, well, an ice sculptor. But he cut out a damn fine Tux, too. THAT'S what I think of when I think about the days before the bust.
Yeah, but you know what? My Dad had a late-80's Jaguar, and the stock stereo had a "C19" button in with the presets, and I had no freaking idea what it was. CB channel 19 receiver. Think about it. When you're stuck in traffic, and the traffic reports don't cover anywhere near your area, what's the best place to find out what's going on? Channel 19. I have never seen it in any other car since, and I think it was one of the smartest things I've ever seen.
I had a CB radio powered by a 9-volt battery with a whip antenna that I taped to my bike. It was called "Truckin'!" and it had a picture of an 18-wheeler on it complete with the "speed lines" drawn behind it for effect. Mine was a transceiver, though, but only worked on channel 19. Thus began my trek to become the man now known as...
LinuxHam.
I have learned to turn my anger at telemarketers into a grand ole time figuring out new ways to hang up on them. One guy called at like 2:30pm on a Sunday asking me to talk for a minute about my television viewing habits. I told him, "well you called right in the middle of 'football sunday', and that was pretty fuckin' stupid on your part." Click.
Once I accidentally answered, even when I saw the name of the newspaper right on the caller id. Before they even said hello, I muttered, "oh shit, I didn't want to talk to these assholes." Click! Never heard from again.
Once Omaha Steaks called me twice in a couple of weeks, and when they identified themselves the second time, I said, "oh cool!" When they asked why I was so happy, I replied, "Well, I told another one of you idiots to never call me again just two weeks ago, so now you're violating federal law and I'll collect $500!" Click. Never heard from again.
Ahhhh... never gets old. Sometimes when the caller id is blocked, I just pick up and hang up just for the hell of it. Or when they start spewing off, a good old fashioned, "HEY, SHUT UP FOR A SECOND" before leading into the standard statements about the DNC sometimes make my day.
I mean, really, can't they get any better jobs? SHEESH
Warning: DNRA
Seems like a strange thing to offer. Here at work, once you get exposed to open source code, you can never go back to dealing with internal code merely due to the risks that algorithms you develop internally may accidentally be recreated in open source work.
How can RH say that they will replace your code with non-tainted code if the tainted code is the only way they've seen for approaching a problem. Seems like they need the equivalent of an optoisolator between their tainted developers and non-tainted developers. A white room approach with a description of the goal slid under the door.
Seriously. I notice the states with the absolute worst drivers are being mentioned here. I grew up in NJ and the NJ Turnpike is the only place I've been flashed by a cop at 90 just so he could pass me up. And Florida is where you have all the blue-hairs turning willy nilly and driving off into ditches, claiming "they moved the street!" VA drivers just think they are bad-ass, but I'm still waiting to hear about Californians, who think that rain means "plow into the car in front of you."
I have an '03 Nissan Murano with CVT and dynamic AWD. It is by far the most intelligent car I've ever driven. You can just about look in the direction you want to go and it gets you there, with ease and command. My experiences in snow driving this year had me mentally developing a commercial that shows someone driving in summer while everyone else is driving in winter weeks before the commercials actually started showing up every 10 minutes.
"Stab it and steer, peanut!" - Nicholas Cage, "Wild at Heart"
We've had 20 years of the fattening of America's youth, and people are finally starting to take notice.
I'd be curious to see how many Mobil SpeedPass holders pay some other way because they forgot the fob or out of habit...
When my local Mobil was having trouble authenticating their Speedpasses to hq, they kept calling the cops with license plates of "non-payers". I found this out b/c my wife said it took a couple tries for the light to stay on the very first time she used it, but she showed me the receipt she ended up getting anyway. The next day, a cop was at the door and explained the situation. I told him that she showed me the receipt last night, and he didn't even wait around to see it for himself. He did say that if they didn't fix their problems, he's going to start charging them for all the false reports he'd been getting.
It took me a while to get her to start using it again, and it hasn't happened since.
To use the keychain-based Speedpass now (my nearest Mobil station is right next to the main highway out of town and has a Subway in it -- w00 h00!) I have to hold it against a little reader pad for a second or two for it to register. Unless you reach out and rest your wrist right on boxes that look like supermarket credit card readers, I don't think you have much to worry about. And they do have to push a button on the register to process the payment, so you could still yell out, "don't hit that button!!!"
So I don't carry cash. But I'll be damned if I'll go from a more secure to less secure method of transaction. I also imagine there's no credit protection for this speedpass system, as there is for all credit cards. No go.
The rf only works for a distance of a couple inches for the keychain fob and wristwatch. No pringles can from across the parking lot, nor the ability to reproduce a keyfob with your RFID in it. Also, it only acts as a conduit to the frontend charge system for your Visa card. It is not another credit card. Therefore all your protection offered by the Visa card still applies.
Minor nit. Another multi-year Speedpass user here, and we were typing at the same time about using it in the cold. Nit: If you lose the fob, don't cancel the credit card! Just call Speedpass customer service and cancel the fob. That way, you can still get gas with your card until the replacement fob arrives..
I'm surprised how many people have said, "just cancel the card" here. Its not THAT tightly bound to the card. I had mine bound to a check card a year before they approved it. Also, they call you when they detect unusual activity. I had to fill up every 2 days for 2 weeks, so they called to see if everything was ok.
I have 2 keychain fobs and 2 window transponders. The window transponders work about 1 out of every 10-20 tries. The keychain fob works great for me in the Northeast b/c, when it so damn cold out, its nice to just hold your keys inside your fist up against a "Place Speedpass Here" sign instead of taking off your gloves to fark with your wallet and credit card. The trick to get it to work inside is to pinch it between your thumb and index finger but rest your index finger's nail on the reader. Yes, radiate the RFID right through your fingertip. Works like a charm for me.
But, boy is it nice when it's about 3 below, and the pump is ready to go by the time you get out of your car. Privacy, shimvacy, its effin' freezing out! I only wish they, and more, places would take EZ Pass.. especially parking garages. Sometimes I just want to drive without stopping or rolling my windows down, is that too much to ask?
You call the Speedpass customer service number. Your credit card is not transmitted through the air, just the RFID serial number. It takes seconds for them to cancel the device.
I once had a job doing backend processing for trades in government bonds at the largest insurer in the US. A bunch of us had to handwrite vouchers every day to move money around between accounts to accomodate the trades. The signed, authorized vouchers would then be sent to a girl who worked after school keying them in. I have terrible handwriting, and she frequently made keying errors. So I wrote a small app to print out completed vouchers. They asked me to share the app with the other workers, installing it on a centralized PC running DOS (this was 1992). They also asked me to capture all of the transaction details in a record file, which would then be fed directly to the mainframe application. By reducing the processing time and eliminating keying errors, I was credited with saving the division $100k annually, and given a $1,000 check.
One day, an account manager came to me and said her group uses 4-digit account numbers instead of the 3 my app accepted. I took her word for it and changed the app to accept and store 4-digit account numbers. Well that broke the feeder file and crashed the mainframe app during one of the nightly feeds. Boy was I slapped around for that one.
I want a slow mo instant replay. I want xbox live multiplayer. I don't have the live service but if I knew most of the other cars in town were being driven by humans, it would be much more interesting.
Easier aiming with the gun. Holding the left trigger for half a second before firing results in randomly shooting pedestrians while cops are shooting me in the head from a couple feet away.
Maybe a second screen or status window achieved by using a crossover cable to my laptop, offering a dhcp server and a web site with a simple status screen.. like the red screen for checking your current status. I can play GTA3 for hours on end, but I don't start getting nauseous until I turn on the cinematic view. I just cannot drive with that camera view on.
A bunch of things, I guess you could say.
I'd like to wait and see if slim devices comes out with a competing product.. obviously they are very supportive of our community, and I think they'd do a fine job.
The last thing I expected to see in my lifetime was an "out of ink" prompt on my TV
:)
"PC LOAD LETTER?!?! WTF does THAT mean???"
Sorry.
I called them before to find out whether or not there was a router out in my area, and they told me that, not only did they not provide service in my area, but that I'm not a Comcast customer. Some real sharp tacks working for that company, let me tell you
:) I run bb4 big brother and can see little green, yellow, red or purple lights indicating status of various key systems in my internet chain. I was on with support for quite some time a year ago, and the guyI also recently disconnected my Linksys and swapped to a Linux box. Even though I spoofed the same MAC address that I was spoofing with the Linksys, I still wasn't getting a DHCP renewal from Comcast. I called, and asked them to reset my cablemodem.
I've had fairly good service from them. Of course, it helps if you know what the problem and solution are before you call
She said, "but you have a lease."
"I know, I'm switching computers."
"What are you running?"
"Linux."
"Oh."
"Yeah, please reset my cablemodem."
"Okay, I just sent it."
-- tail -f messages shows a new lease --
"That did it! Thanks!"
IBM isn't the first to take Linux seriously as a cost effective option for productivity.
True, but IBM has about 350,000 employees. And we are "the Linux company"... well, about as much as its possible to be one. The potential for cost savings are equal to the GDP of a small country. IBM, like most large companies, publishes standardized desktop images for various types of equipment and job roles. There have been standard Linux desktop images for years. I'm just glad to hear that IBM is getting behind Linux on the desktop and going after the cost savings.
Its better than cutting staff.
As much as we might all like Linux to survive in the business world we need to be able to speak what everyone else speaks
This is IBM. I still meet coworkers every few weeks who haven't gotten around to installing MS Office yet. They think SmartSuite (and Netscape) is still the corporate standard, and can't believe the company bought Office XP licenses for every employee about 18 months ago.