will have to fed-ex our luggage to our destination.
Actually, I've been doing that for over a decade.
I used to oversee nationial rollouts of systems, which meant I was on the road 95% of the time, often spending only a day or two in each site before moving on. I had enough to worry about without babysitting a suitcase which may or may not arrive on my flight, but was on the road long enough and in different enough climates every week that a roll-on wasn't sufficient.
Enter FedEx.
Every few weeks I'd pack up a load of freshly cleaned/laundered clothes and send them to my major destinations over the next month. Coats & thick socks to cold places, extra shirts & undershirts to hot ones, replacement underwear, etc. I'd put each cache in a cheap collapsable nylon duffel, then into the office for shipping to jobsites with strict instructions to hold for my arrival (there were usually a couple of other boxes full of gear)
Sure I had to pop by a store every so often, but at least I wasn't inconveniently buying a couple of new dress shirts at top dollar every week, and these were already laundered, pressed, etc. Plus when you're from out of town finding a store that sells decent dress shirts or whatever, getting to it, etc. is just another hassle one can do without. My concerns were the job, finding my way back to tonight's hotel, getting fed decently, and getting to the airport; not haberdashery.
Even if I'm paying I still often ship clothes ahead. It is a small expense compared to much of the trip, and frankly skipping the joy of dragging the suitcase to the airport, then the thrill of the lugguage carrousel at the other end (wheel... of... mangled... lugguage! Did mine arrive today or is it on it's way to Guam? Let's wait an hour surrounded by annoying people to find out!), makes it worth every penny. Check in to my hotel, have them send the box to my room, ahh, properly packed clothes, nothing crushed, all ready for wearing during my stay.
Seriously, career advice? Show up every day looking neat & fresh when everyone else is rumpled and worn. Especially true with suits, they can only be worn so many days in a row before getting nasty, no matter how often they're sent out for overnight abuse at outragous rates by the hotel dryclean service. Shipping costs are just a sound investment then.
How many people reply on the Slashdot forums and don't read the articles but just want to talk and interact?
Yes dear, they're called "boors": Folks who can't be bothered to make the least effort to inform themselves before imposing on others to do so for them.
They're self-indulgant parasites, taking up space but contributing little of value, indeed actively degrading the quality of conversation. They're why moderation systems are now so popular, and why unmoderated environments like usenet are now largely wastelands.
"Talk & interact" is an admirable, if limited, goal for a child's playgroup.
However adults have a higher expectation for interaction, it is called "conversation", and to engage in such one must have a clue as to what one is talking about. To excuse posters from this minimal level of competence, to indulge their social dysfunction, neither benefits the community or those unable to meet this requirement.
Instead setting expectations, giving public feedback, both provides incentive towards socially sucessful interaction and dissuades antisocial "I want to make noise" masturbation. Hopefully Atlantis-Rising and others who are disinclined to RTFA but insist on posting inanities will learn from this and adopt age-appropriate communication strategies.
Or perhaps this will be the wake-up-call they need to look into medication to control a disorder, develop better skills, simply learn when to not speak unless they have something useful to say.
That's a bad metaphor; when the tide rises on one side of the planet, it goes down on the opposite side.
No, yours is bad science.
Tides are (roughly) symetrical on both sides of the planet; therefore for high tides it's the halfway-inbetween parts that simultaniously (approximately) experience low tides. Learn more at Wikipedia
Metaphores aside I believe that education results in greater stability, greater productivity, and improved quality of life for everyone. Large inequalities have a habit of working themselves out - violently. Better customers lead to better products. And progress is a communal societal process, we all benefit from universal social suffrage.
Are you one of those obnoxious kids who couldn't wait for the teacher to finish saying something before yelling out what you thought would be the answer?
Are you still so socially stunted?
Have you considered medication to help control this compulsion? Some sort of course in effective communication? Learning to sit on your hands?
Seriously, shut up. Go away. You're not contributing signal, you're noise.
Is this a troll? No, it's communicating to the too-quick-to-post asshats to actually skim (at least!) the damn article so they don't continually burp up inanities. It might be off-topic, but then anything that begins with "I have not RTFA" was pretty much assured to be that to begin with...
Big state, northeast corner of the nation, not exactly a hippy-dippy/anything-goes/lets-try-new-things-for- the-heck-of-it/cost-means-nothing kinda place.
They've been putting laptops in the hands of their students for a few years now.
They're not alone, other school systems have done the same. Colleges too, many now require incoming students to have a laptop.
As to "force their students to deal with paper textbooks", that's mostly an artifact of the textbook publishers. Indeed many parents, educators, and medical folks, are getting worried about the burdon on students of carrying around their many textbooks and other supplies. They're starting to see kids suffering real medical maladies and moving to digital formats is something they look forward to.
Furthermore, I know Massachusetts has promised to buy into the Negroponte program, and several other states have expressed interest. However these are all on hold until a final prodoct is delivered and serious large scale ordering, and economies of scale, can take place.
Instead of depreciating other nations and their attempts to serve their children I think folks should indeed be wondering, and worrying, about what our own is nation doing for it's students, while at the same time recognizing improving education everywhere benefits the US. We're all better off when the next generation, everywhere, is more aware of the world they are inheriting and which we will all have to live in, trade in, and resolve issues in.
So a lot of expensive desktops emulating, um, pretty much themselves, using funky somewhat pricy software, running substantial images pulled off of expensive servers over an expensive network (bacause GB'net or not, a building full of folks starting up in the morning is gonna hammer you.) Then comes the challenge of managing all of those funky images, reconciling the oddities of an emulated environemnt, etc.
Could you make it work? Sure. But I gotta wonder if it'd be worth it.
Is gonna be any better then a well managed native environment? Or going Citrix clients? Or Linux/MacOS/terminals (chose your poison) boxes instead of MS Windows?
I hear your pain, I just think you're substituting a known set of problems with a more expensive, more complex, more fragile, baroquely elaborate, well, more-of-the-same.
It doesn't sound like much of an improvement really, just new and more complex failure modes, at extra cost.
Though, I guess, if you're looking for a new, challenging, and complex environment this would be it; just take your current one and abstract it another level. I wouldn't want to be the one footing the bill, or trying to rely on any of it, but at least it'd be something different.
Yes yes yes, shiny gadgetry to do little of import.
On the other hand, it is "kewl", and could evolve into some genuinely useful stuff.
For example, a friend came home last weekend to find his live-in elderly mother, already incapacitated by a stroke, had been lying on the floor for 3 hours after a bad fall. If a house system had been able to identify someone was unmoving in a non-stationary part of the house it could have informed him, supplied images to his cellphone, tied into his intercom system to communicate with her.
(Yes, there are all sorts of other things to be done for his mother, and he has, including an emergency-call amulet - she didn't use it. The point is these technologies could move into these areas improving them)
For another example, an former boyfriend of mine has a condo in a resort area several hours from his primary residence. Setting up a webcam to monitor it visually was an obvious step towards maintaining the home, but a "smart" system that could make limited 'decisions' such as thresholds for activity before alerting him, monitoring temperature or water levels, etc. would be quite valuable. Yes one can really geek out now and do it with X-10 etc. gadgets but he's not, he's just an average fella willing to spend a few bucks on some easy to install/use package for his vacation home.
Then there's the partner-factor. If the significant other isn't comfortable having it in the home, using it, then it's a no-go. If putting a friendly interface on it makes it that much more usable then that is, as Martha would decree, "a good thing".
Personally I'd love a front door "window" that would direct package deliveries to my always-home neighbor, display to religious proselytizers an animated rendition of them (complete with inserted photos of their faces) dropping into the pits of hell, and inviting everyone else to record a video message that will be relayed to me. Allowing me to respond with unlocking the door or lawn sprinklers as appropriate would be a cherished upgrade!
GPS would be much better if it didn't cost about $100 to just get an updated map each year for your GPS system.
How fast do your roads change?
Even around Boston's "Big Dig" my several-year old GPS database is perfectly adequate. Perfect - no. But not worth another $100/year just to add the changes from last year.
"If I want to get back to a place, I'll use scratchings in dirt. That's what it's designed for.
I use a GPS all of the time. I don't know about "smooth wombat" but I find myself in places I don't know well all of the time, trying to get to other places I don't know well. Plugging the address into my GPS and getting turn-by-turn directions gets me where I need to be quickly, effortlessly, and safely.
Furthermore I often find I'm not sure where I am at all, and in Massachusetts it's customary to label only side-streets, not the big street you're driving down for miles trying to figure out what it's name is. Oh, and lets not forget after dark, when finding much less reading a street name signs is almost impossible. Maps are great if you know where you are on them, not if you don't.
Then lets consider what what my GPS also offers. Nearby services, want a restaurant, there's a list a sorted by distance. Need a gas-station? Last evening when I was running late I could see on my GPS display the gas station 'so helpfully' listed on the highway sign was in truth several miles off the exit, while at the exit after that one there were two much closer. Later I needed a book to bring a friend suddenly in the ER - Look, there's a Barnes & Nobles a half mile away, never had any idea it was there. Need directions to Beth Israel Hospital? 49.5 miles, and even though I used to contract there I was well away from any route I would have thought to use.
Sneer and say how in the old days you'd pull out maps & flashlights & ask strangers by the roadside who don't even know what road they're _on_ much less how to get to Main Street for directions, I'll be buzzing by listening to "Next Left in 600 yards" and changing lanes well in advance.
TomTom's "Jane" voice is my muse, and call her the "bitch in a box" if you will she gets me where I'm going with no huhu. Sure she often prefers the direct route over the better route, insists that I can use the emergency-vehicles-exit off of the Mass. Turnpike, and that Weybosset St. in Providence RI is 2-way, but with a bit of common sense she's a great companion. Oh, and the conference last year with the highway accident in front? Everyone else was in traffic for up to 4 hours, I sat for 5 minutes in it, tapped out a request for an alternate route, and after going through the back of an industrial park, through a very nice neighborhood, and over (what appeared in the dark to be) a mountain, I pulled up to the back door of my hotel 20 minutes later. Way to go Jane TomTom!
Oh, and cellphone? How do you think I found out my best friend was in the ER, and what he needed?
I built something like this 10 years ago. A big corporation's in-house marketing & PR department, lotsa project files full of artwork and such for campaigns, big files used daily for months then ignored for years. It was MacOS 9 & Windows 95 clients, Netware 4.1 on a HP server with RAID 5 and 2 DLTs w/ loaders.
One DLT was for backups using ARCServe (before they got bought by CA). It was simply a matter of shipping cartridges in and out of the storage vault & off-site as required, replacing individual tapes when they got too old.
The other DLT was 2nd tier storage. As files aged on the RAID 5 array they'd first be compressed by Netware for space savings, then after they were inert some period of time they'd be migrated to tape. If read they'd be automatically pulled back from tape, decompressed, and returned to active use on the RAID array until they aged back to 2nd tier storage again.
The whole architecture was nothing more then a few settings under Netware, it was invisible to clients, and seemed to manage itself quite well. I did a lot of tests; pulling tapes, inserting damaged tapes, pulling drives, setting yesterday age-dates and then pulling back files, etc. - it ran flawlessly. I recall being particularly impressed that backups & indexing could be exempted from counting as 'reads' and not pulling every file back to active use.
Sadly the department was outsourced a few weeks after the new architecture went live, so I never really got to see it all in ongoing use. I took advantage of the change to make my own departure to a saner environment (IT's employee-retention average was literally weeks & after 2 years I'd had enough.)
However the tiered storage was a thing of beauty, and dead easy to administer after it was set up. I've always suspected that was one of Netware's problems: It didn't need much baby-sitting so it kinda fell of most folk's radar, it just did a few things but it did them really really well, maybe too well.
I've used Maxthon, nee MyIE2, for years now. Natively it is a well-written shell over MS IE. Interestingly MS has even featured Maxthon in some of their conferences. Maxthon has a decent set of plug-ins that can overcome many of IE's worst shortcomings, including fixing PNG alpha-layers, control over flash, etc.
And yes, Maxthon can also use the Gecko Active-X (or whatever it's called this developer season) engine. Note "can", I haven't seen any interest in this since it was first done about 2 years ago and the code looks pretty stale now. Honestly I expect most folks just use FireFox directly instead of switching engines (though the switch is trivial). If you're trying to load or compare sites it's probably worth it for sanity & debugging to do so in a full native browser stack instead of an alternate engine under a shell.
It helps to understand the story that Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, is the site of the Sudbury Basin, the second largest impact site on the earth, where a comet struck a bit less then 2 billion years ago. The main business of Sudbury is mining out the ore left by that impact, the largest deposit of nickel on Earth, as well as high concentrations of other valuable metals.
Combining the region's extra-terrestrial economic base, it's concentration of engineering & science-types, 3 post-secondary institutions, and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, leads to lots of interesting ideas. For example Sudbury was a pioneer of high-speed public networks with their fiber optic one first lighting up over a decade ago.
Finally, Sudbury for many years was regarded as looking very moon-like. Deforestation of the surrounding Canadian Shield and acid rain from ore smelting had killed off much of the greenery, leaving large swaths of pitted black rock. It didn't help that Apollo astronauts trained nearby, though not for the general appearance of the area but for some specific meteor-impact features. It's gotten much greener in recent years, but "like the moon" isn't an unusual comment.
So, already mining extra-terrestrial origin ore, in an isolated moon-like community, with a high concentration of geologists, mining engineers, and physicists; a lunar mining colony suggestion is hardly surprising.
They get net 90 day terms and sell everything within 30 days. That's 60+ days float to invest, collect interest, etc. The "making a profit on selling goods" is almost incidental on top of that.
I've a buddy who used to be banker to Costco - his job was to park a billion dollars or so every night (ok, his bank's & financial systems.) He loved working with Costco, indeed they were one of the few companies he'd considered jumping to, if he was willing to move. He felt their financial people were some of the best, the corporate climate, looking at it from his privileged position, excellent, and their prospects for future growth strong.
Interestingly the clients he used to rail about are pretty much gone or a shadow of what they once were (is Tower Records still around?)
Actually there is a "tiering" in effect, though you may not be aware of it.
Theater chains negotiate with studios for films. They promise n-number of screens, guaranteed showings, buy-in on promotions, and even limits on discounts (last night the cinema I was in advised that "Due to contractual obligations to the studio there are no discounts on The Davinci Code".)
Furthermore in many cities there are more & less expensive cinemas. For example in Montreal the Paramount Theatre downtown charges a premium (it's the busiest cinema in Canada), in Boston the Sony charges more per showing. Outside Montreal the Guzzo chain is always cheaper, for Boston suburbs that would be Flagship.
Beyond that there are first-run/second-run cinemas, where the first runs, paying a higher rate for their film lease, won't surrender it until they've wrung all of the profit they can out of it. Then the second tier, who don't do much advertising, tend not to have high-end sound-systems, vibrating seats, giant screens, stadium seating, etc., pick it up and carry it until it can't draw anyone more.
So if you want to see the latest "blockbuster" on opening weekend you'll likely have to pay $12 with no discounts at the hyperplex, however if you're willing to settle for a no-name comedy or last season's hit then it's showing for $9.50 in the strip mall and they'll accept coupons/bought-at-discount tickets.
That's tiering.
GeoTrust was bought by VeriSign last month
on
Choosing an SSL CA?
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· Score: 2, Informative
The new was made public 1 month ago with the announcement that almost all of GeoTrust's staff were being let go in a few weeks, VeriSign was the new owners and were gonna consolidate operations.
GeoTrust is still in business right now, I know for a fact that they've got salesfolk answering the lines and their product lines haven't been shut down so as far as a certificate goes they're still as good as they were a month ago. And those certificate chains are a valuable asset and will no doubt be maintained indefinitely. However the package and pricing will likely change as VeriSign moves yet more solidly into the number 1 (and 2, and 3) spot.
Many years ago I spent a lot of time volunteering at the Charles Hayden Planetarium in Boston, Mass. (actually I was the Museum of Science volunteer with most hours for several years.)
I did a lot of talking about astronomy, showing off models of spacecraft, helping folks try on spacesuits, etc. I also helped out with the shows, the 3pm one being the live show, "Stars of the Season". In the theater for that show was the lecturer and a guard. The guards were mostly there to help anyone who had to get up in the dark, and to occasionally shush those who couldn't keep quiet and didn't believe us about how sound carries in a domed room.
Back in those days many of the guards assigned planetarium show duty were high-school and college students, most of them from a few families that the museum knew well. It was a great arrangement, we hired whole families of kids, and their friends, they were usually pre-trained by their older siblings who had worked for us, were honest and hardworking, and the friends of theirs we also hired were pressured to be the same. We knew the parents, the parents knew the staff, the kids had great part time jobs and we had great part time staff.
However these families were local, usually meaning Boston, Cambridge, or Somerville Mass. So they were almost universally urban kids who knew the subway system by heart but rarely got out into suburbia much less beyond. This didn't mean much to us 'til one day one of them came into the planetarium off absolutely floored: Our show was real!
He'd stood through it a hundred times, listening to the lecturer, watching the sky shift around, various sights like the Milky Way be pointed out, but it was all "planetarium stuff". Then the weekend before he and a bunch of the other younger guards had gone up north to a lake in New Hampshire for a weekend on partying. That night they'd gone out onto the dock, and been shocked: Stars!
Not the occasional glimmer through the glow back home, but millions, even (yes) bill-yuns! Shining close and bright, the Milky Way a clearly defined river of light, everything like we showed it in the planetarium but which they'd never seen for themselves.
He was astonished, and full of questions: Suddenly it was all real, and exciting, and he was interested!
We were all taken aback, and then saddened when we realized the situation. We were all well familiar with dark skies and seeing our friends the stars and planets, but these were young people who'd never seen a night sky in all of it's glory. There was a whole universe of science and beauty right above them and they'd never, never even had the opportunity, to see it and be inspired by it.
The next summer the Museum did a program about clear skies, but that was 25 years ago and things have only gotten worse. Now many urban buildings are lit from the outside; I remember the night when the "Old Hancock Tower" in Boston's Back Bay was lit and my nearby, nicely nearly dark with small streetlights, South End street became forever bright enough to read a book on all night. The same is true of many cities, lighting the exteriors of buildings all night to show them off, and in the process drowning out the night sky.
I still get to revel in dark skies. Many of my good friends live on mountainsides in Vermont and from there I get to drink it all in every so often, share the stars with friends, get to revisit the skies. But urban kids, outside of field-trip to the planetarium, where it seems all "make believe", they get no stars at all. That's a sad thing.
If you get the chance, know some urban kids, give them a treat: Take them out some night. An hour's drive from downtown, a stop for icecream, then find a big field away from a mall or lit parking lot. Suburban & rural public schools are great for this, especially where playing fields are on the far side of the building from the parking lot. A pair of binoculars is great but not necessary, however sweaters often are (it gets cooold on a clear viewing night). Then start looking up. Let your eyes adjust, find Orion's Belt, then you're off! It's the cost of the evening, and a memory the kids will have forever.
Yes, kids need water, food, vaccinations, a place to sleep, and if they and their communities are to be successful and self-supporting an education also.
Is a $100 laptop extravagant for supporting an education? No,because it's multipurpose tool offering information, tutorials, communications, and soon after distribution locally built & relevant applications. By offering these kids access to the larger world, to an education in their own language, to contribute and distribute materials, it gives they, and their communities, opportunities to break their cycle of poverty.
It's not an either/or proposition between food and education, BOTH are needed, one fills the short-term need and the other the long-term.
The FSF won't take another look at Sveasoft, because they consider it a closed case. They don't seem to understand that the situation has changed since then.
The folks I've known as the FSF have been quite bright, quite aware folk,s so I expect if there truly is (now, today) an issue they'd be pursuing it. That they're not speaks far more to me then your asserting over & over that you're right/they're clueless.
Furthermore you've yet to make a case that the GPL requires distribution of code for limited release experimental binaries. You keep saying it's a GPL violation yet seem unable to produce an actionable complaint that I could ask the fine folks at the FSF to follow up on.
Frankly it's put-you-money-where-your-mouth-is and you're hemming & hawing. Either there is a GPL violation as you keep claiming or you're some 'net troll with an axe to grind and a fixation 'bout guvm'nt conspiracies, GPL violations, and wearing a colander on your head.
Which is it? A complaint I can walk into the FSF's offices with or more handwaving?
If you're so absolutely convinced that your interpretation of the GPL is correct then why isn't the FSF active on this? Is there any possibility that you are incorrect?
As to your behavior, if you keep accusing a GPL violation and you're wrong, and been corrected, then you are indeed a dick. Making the accusation wherever unsurprisingly leaves you unwelcome on your victim's forums.
I don't pretend a superior knowledge of the details of the GPL. However it is my understanding that distributing betas, even in binary, is acceptable without supplying the source code. If Sveasoft is exploiting a loophole then that is something to be addressed in GPL 3.
However, your just claiming a GPL violation, even if you do it over and over, does not make something fact. Provide something that I can walk into the FSF with or reconsider if you are indeed just a dick.
While you may not like this it is acceptable under the GPL.
As to being banned from the Sveasoft forums, I'm guessing you repeatedly, either ignorantly or maliciously, publicly made your charge. It's a serious one, and one apparently without merit. I'd toss you off also.
I'm not saying Sveasoft/James is a lovely person, but if you really had a case of GPL violation I think the Free Software Foundation would be active on this. I'll be happy to pop in their office next week (my eyeglasses shop is in the same building) and inquire but I think you're just being a crank.
Again, provide a citation where Sveasoft is violating GPL, something that the FSF can act upon, or acknowledge you're wrong.
The Free Software Foundation doesn't seem to think they're violating GPL, and they're about as authoritative as one can get.
You can have whatever issues you like, but let's not going around crying "wolf" just because you don't like a model / person / business. GPL violation is a serious charge around here, with a VERY specific meaning, and unless you can back it up I think it would be appropriate if you were to retract that claim.
Impress the locals by being the biggest / baddest / most impressive thing they'd ever seen, and leave them not wanting to mess with Sweden!
Host dignitaries & high-ranking hostages during negotiations, thus their VIP-level amenities.
Actually fight (& win) battles.
Now, back in the day good wood carvers were relatively cheap, so hiring a crew to gussy your ship up was, all things considered, pocket change. Think of it as the 1%-for-art stipulation that is built into many civic construction projects today. The result was your ship looked shu-weet, and so when it sailed into port everyone noticed, and talked, and generally got your nation some good press.
By the way, that's still a big deal in navel circles, visiting ports and showing the flag. These vessels have to do something, keep in training, and so doing diplomatic/PR duty is as good as many other things. Part of that is looking the part - now we go for angular grey steel & exotic weaponry, back then it was "I can afford to pimp-out-my-ship" gilding.
As to the decoration being heavy, the whole freakin' ship was "heavy", a layer of pretty painted bits was about negligible in effect.
Finally, your considered expert opinion on historical wooden sailing ships aside, the hull was perfectly fine for it's needs. Yes most i^Hg^Hn^Ho^Hr^Ha^Hn^Ht^H unsophisticated folks look at these ships and wonder "however did they stay upright" but they did. Much of the misapprehension comes from not understanding the weight distribution on these craft, the rest comes from not respecting the skills of it's sailors.
And, as has been doubtless pointed out several times already, the ship sank due to late-added lower gunports that were left open and effectively scuppered them.
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Actually, I've been doing that for over a decade.
I used to oversee nationial rollouts of systems, which meant I was on the road 95% of the time, often spending only a day or two in each site before moving on. I had enough to worry about without babysitting a suitcase which may or may not arrive on my flight, but was on the road long enough and in different enough climates every week that a roll-on wasn't sufficient.
Enter FedEx.
Every few weeks I'd pack up a load of freshly cleaned/laundered clothes and send them to my major destinations over the next month. Coats & thick socks to cold places, extra shirts & undershirts to hot ones, replacement underwear, etc. I'd put each cache in a cheap collapsable nylon duffel, then into the office for shipping to jobsites with strict instructions to hold for my arrival (there were usually a couple of other boxes full of gear)
Sure I had to pop by a store every so often, but at least I wasn't inconveniently buying a couple of new dress shirts at top dollar every week, and these were already laundered, pressed, etc. Plus when you're from out of town finding a store that sells decent dress shirts or whatever, getting to it, etc. is just another hassle one can do without. My concerns were the job, finding my way back to tonight's hotel, getting fed decently, and getting to the airport; not haberdashery.
Even if I'm paying I still often ship clothes ahead. It is a small expense compared to much of the trip, and frankly skipping the joy of dragging the suitcase to the airport, then the thrill of the lugguage carrousel at the other end (wheel... of... mangled... lugguage! Did mine arrive today or is it on it's way to Guam? Let's wait an hour surrounded by annoying people to find out!), makes it worth every penny. Check in to my hotel, have them send the box to my room, ahh, properly packed clothes, nothing crushed, all ready for wearing during my stay.
Seriously, career advice? Show up every day looking neat & fresh when everyone else is rumpled and worn. Especially true with suits, they can only be worn so many days in a row before getting nasty, no matter how often they're sent out for overnight abuse at outragous rates by the hotel dryclean service. Shipping costs are just a sound investment then.
Yes dear, they're called "boors": Folks who can't be bothered to make the least effort to inform themselves before imposing on others to do so for them.
They're self-indulgant parasites, taking up space but contributing little of value, indeed actively degrading the quality of conversation. They're why moderation systems are now so popular, and why unmoderated environments like usenet are now largely wastelands.
"Talk & interact" is an admirable, if limited, goal for a child's playgroup.
However adults have a higher expectation for interaction, it is called "conversation", and to engage in such one must have a clue as to what one is talking about. To excuse posters from this minimal level of competence, to indulge their social dysfunction, neither benefits the community or those unable to meet this requirement.
Instead setting expectations, giving public feedback, both provides incentive towards socially sucessful interaction and dissuades antisocial "I want to make noise" masturbation. Hopefully Atlantis-Rising and others who are disinclined to RTFA but insist on posting inanities will learn from this and adopt age-appropriate communication strategies.
Or perhaps this will be the wake-up-call they need to look into medication to control a disorder, develop better skills, simply learn when to not speak unless they have something useful to say.
No, yours is bad science.
Tides are (roughly) symetrical on both sides of the planet; therefore for high tides it's the halfway-inbetween parts that simultaniously (approximately) experience low tides. Learn more at Wikipedia
Metaphores aside I believe that education results in greater stability, greater productivity, and improved quality of life for everyone. Large inequalities have a habit of working themselves out - violently. Better customers lead to better products. And progress is a communal societal process, we all benefit from universal social suffrage.
Then why are you posting?
Are you one of those obnoxious kids who couldn't wait for the teacher to finish saying something before yelling out what you thought would be the answer?
Are you still so socially stunted?
Have you considered medication to help control this compulsion? Some sort of course in effective communication? Learning to sit on your hands?
Seriously, shut up. Go away. You're not contributing signal, you're noise.
Is this a troll? No, it's communicating to the too-quick-to-post asshats to actually skim (at least!) the damn article so they don't continually burp up inanities. It might be off-topic, but then anything that begins with "I have not RTFA" was pretty much assured to be that to begin with...
Maine?
Big state, northeast corner of the nation, not exactly a hippy-dippy/anything-goes/lets-try-new-things-for- the-heck-of-it/cost-means-nothing kinda place.
They've been putting laptops in the hands of their students for a few years now.
They're not alone, other school systems have done the same. Colleges too, many now require incoming students to have a laptop.
As to "force their students to deal with paper textbooks", that's mostly an artifact of the textbook publishers. Indeed many parents, educators, and medical folks, are getting worried about the burdon on students of carrying around their many textbooks and other supplies. They're starting to see kids suffering real medical maladies and moving to digital formats is something they look forward to.
Furthermore, I know Massachusetts has promised to buy into the Negroponte program, and several other states have expressed interest. However these are all on hold until a final prodoct is delivered and serious large scale ordering, and economies of scale, can take place.
Instead of depreciating other nations and their attempts to serve their children I think folks should indeed be wondering, and worrying, about what our own is nation doing for it's students, while at the same time recognizing improving education everywhere benefits the US. We're all better off when the next generation, everywhere, is more aware of the world they are inheriting and which we will all have to live in, trade in, and resolve issues in.
A rising tide does indeed float all boats.
So a lot of expensive desktops emulating, um, pretty much themselves, using funky somewhat pricy software, running substantial images pulled off of expensive servers over an expensive network (bacause GB'net or not, a building full of folks starting up in the morning is gonna hammer you.) Then comes the challenge of managing all of those funky images, reconciling the oddities of an emulated environemnt, etc.
Could you make it work? Sure. But I gotta wonder if it'd be worth it.
Is gonna be any better then a well managed native environment? Or going Citrix clients? Or Linux/MacOS/terminals (chose your poison) boxes instead of MS Windows?
I hear your pain, I just think you're substituting a known set of problems with a more expensive, more complex, more fragile, baroquely elaborate, well, more-of-the-same.
It doesn't sound like much of an improvement really, just new and more complex failure modes, at extra cost.
Though, I guess, if you're looking for a new, challenging, and complex environment this would be it; just take your current one and abstract it another level. I wouldn't want to be the one footing the bill, or trying to rely on any of it, but at least it'd be something different.
You're right - it's a dumb question.
Why? 'Cause you're on the freakin' web and can look up "chandler" and learn the more commonly used meanings of the word for yourself.
Next time, after typing "I know it's dumb" and before hitting "submit" how about wising up?
Yes yes yes, shiny gadgetry to do little of import.
On the other hand, it is "kewl", and could evolve into some genuinely useful stuff.
For example, a friend came home last weekend to find his live-in elderly mother, already incapacitated by a stroke, had been lying on the floor for 3 hours after a bad fall. If a house system had been able to identify someone was unmoving in a non-stationary part of the house it could have informed him, supplied images to his cellphone, tied into his intercom system to communicate with her.
(Yes, there are all sorts of other things to be done for his mother, and he has, including an emergency-call amulet - she didn't use it. The point is these technologies could move into these areas improving them)
For another example, an former boyfriend of mine has a condo in a resort area several hours from his primary residence. Setting up a webcam to monitor it visually was an obvious step towards maintaining the home, but a "smart" system that could make limited 'decisions' such as thresholds for activity before alerting him, monitoring temperature or water levels, etc. would be quite valuable. Yes one can really geek out now and do it with X-10 etc. gadgets but he's not, he's just an average fella willing to spend a few bucks on some easy to install/use package for his vacation home.
Then there's the partner-factor. If the significant other isn't comfortable having it in the home, using it, then it's a no-go. If putting a friendly interface on it makes it that much more usable then that is, as Martha would decree, "a good thing".
Personally I'd love a front door "window" that would direct package deliveries to my always-home neighbor, display to religious proselytizers an animated rendition of them (complete with inserted photos of their faces) dropping into the pits of hell, and inviting everyone else to record a video message that will be relayed to me. Allowing me to respond with unlocking the door or lawn sprinklers as appropriate would be a cherished upgrade!
How fast do your roads change?
Even around Boston's "Big Dig" my several-year old GPS database is perfectly adequate. Perfect - no. But not worth another $100/year just to add the changes from last year.
I call BS.
"If I want to get back to a place, I'll use scratchings in dirt. That's what it's designed for.
I use a GPS all of the time. I don't know about "smooth wombat" but I find myself in places I don't know well all of the time, trying to get to other places I don't know well. Plugging the address into my GPS and getting turn-by-turn directions gets me where I need to be quickly, effortlessly, and safely.
Furthermore I often find I'm not sure where I am at all, and in Massachusetts it's customary to label only side-streets, not the big street you're driving down for miles trying to figure out what it's name is. Oh, and lets not forget after dark, when finding much less reading a street name signs is almost impossible. Maps are great if you know where you are on them, not if you don't.
Then lets consider what what my GPS also offers. Nearby services, want a restaurant, there's a list a sorted by distance. Need a gas-station? Last evening when I was running late I could see on my GPS display the gas station 'so helpfully' listed on the highway sign was in truth several miles off the exit, while at the exit after that one there were two much closer. Later I needed a book to bring a friend suddenly in the ER - Look, there's a Barnes & Nobles a half mile away, never had any idea it was there. Need directions to Beth Israel Hospital? 49.5 miles, and even though I used to contract there I was well away from any route I would have thought to use.
Sneer and say how in the old days you'd pull out maps & flashlights & ask strangers by the roadside who don't even know what road they're _on_ much less how to get to Main Street for directions, I'll be buzzing by listening to "Next Left in 600 yards" and changing lanes well in advance.
TomTom's "Jane" voice is my muse, and call her the "bitch in a box" if you will she gets me where I'm going with no huhu. Sure she often prefers the direct route over the better route, insists that I can use the emergency-vehicles-exit off of the Mass. Turnpike, and that Weybosset St. in Providence RI is 2-way, but with a bit of common sense she's a great companion. Oh, and the conference last year with the highway accident in front? Everyone else was in traffic for up to 4 hours, I sat for 5 minutes in it, tapped out a request for an alternate route, and after going through the back of an industrial park, through a very nice neighborhood, and over (what appeared in the dark to be) a mountain, I pulled up to the back door of my hotel 20 minutes later. Way to go Jane TomTom!
Oh, and cellphone? How do you think I found out my best friend was in the ER, and what he needed?
I built something like this 10 years ago. A big corporation's in-house marketing & PR department, lotsa project files full of artwork and such for campaigns, big files used daily for months then ignored for years. It was MacOS 9 & Windows 95 clients, Netware 4.1 on a HP server with RAID 5 and 2 DLTs w/ loaders.
One DLT was for backups using ARCServe (before they got bought by CA). It was simply a matter of shipping cartridges in and out of the storage vault & off-site as required, replacing individual tapes when they got too old.
The other DLT was 2nd tier storage. As files aged on the RAID 5 array they'd first be compressed by Netware for space savings, then after they were inert some period of time they'd be migrated to tape. If read they'd be automatically pulled back from tape, decompressed, and returned to active use on the RAID array until they aged back to 2nd tier storage again.
The whole architecture was nothing more then a few settings under Netware, it was invisible to clients, and seemed to manage itself quite well. I did a lot of tests; pulling tapes, inserting damaged tapes, pulling drives, setting yesterday age-dates and then pulling back files, etc. - it ran flawlessly. I recall being particularly impressed that backups & indexing could be exempted from counting as 'reads' and not pulling every file back to active use.
Sadly the department was outsourced a few weeks after the new architecture went live, so I never really got to see it all in ongoing use. I took advantage of the change to make my own departure to a saner environment (IT's employee-retention average was literally weeks & after 2 years I'd had enough.)
However the tiered storage was a thing of beauty, and dead easy to administer after it was set up. I've always suspected that was one of Netware's problems: It didn't need much baby-sitting so it kinda fell of most folk's radar, it just did a few things but it did them really really well, maybe too well.
I've used Maxthon, nee MyIE2, for years now. Natively it is a well-written shell over MS IE. Interestingly MS has even featured Maxthon in some of their conferences. Maxthon has a decent set of plug-ins that can overcome many of IE's worst shortcomings, including fixing PNG alpha-layers, control over flash, etc.
And yes, Maxthon can also use the Gecko Active-X (or whatever it's called this developer season) engine. Note "can", I haven't seen any interest in this since it was first done about 2 years ago and the code looks pretty stale now. Honestly I expect most folks just use FireFox directly instead of switching engines (though the switch is trivial). If you're trying to load or compare sites it's probably worth it for sanity & debugging to do so in a full native browser stack instead of an alternate engine under a shell.
It helps to understand the story that Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, is the site of the Sudbury Basin, the second largest impact site on the earth, where a comet struck a bit less then 2 billion years ago. The main business of Sudbury is mining out the ore left by that impact, the largest deposit of nickel on Earth, as well as high concentrations of other valuable metals.
Combining the region's extra-terrestrial economic base, it's concentration of engineering & science-types, 3 post-secondary institutions, and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, leads to lots of interesting ideas. For example Sudbury was a pioneer of high-speed public networks with their fiber optic one first lighting up over a decade ago.
Finally, Sudbury for many years was regarded as looking very moon-like. Deforestation of the surrounding Canadian Shield and acid rain from ore smelting had killed off much of the greenery, leaving large swaths of pitted black rock. It didn't help that Apollo astronauts trained nearby, though not for the general appearance of the area but for some specific meteor-impact features. It's gotten much greener in recent years, but "like the moon" isn't an unusual comment.
So, already mining extra-terrestrial origin ore, in an isolated moon-like community, with a high concentration of geologists, mining engineers, and physicists; a lunar mining colony suggestion is hardly surprising.
That's addressed in the article you can't be bothered to read.
If you can't be bothered to inform yourself I certainly ain't gonna bother.
Apple's own MacOS X Product Manager has pointed out that they've only not released the Intel xnu code yet.
This follows Apple's pattern of getting the code working, then packaging it up when they get a chance.
There has been no official closing of anything, just one overheated journalist's rumor-mongering.
For a great rebuttel to Yager's blathering I recommend reading The 'Mac OS X Closed by Pirates' Myth.
In the meantime don't repeat rumor and assumption as fact.
Costco's profit comes from money management.
They get net 90 day terms and sell everything within 30 days. That's 60+ days float to invest, collect interest, etc. The "making a profit on selling goods" is almost incidental on top of that.
I've a buddy who used to be banker to Costco - his job was to park a billion dollars or so every night (ok, his bank's & financial systems.) He loved working with Costco, indeed they were one of the few companies he'd considered jumping to, if he was willing to move. He felt their financial people were some of the best, the corporate climate, looking at it from his privileged position, excellent, and their prospects for future growth strong.
Interestingly the clients he used to rail about are pretty much gone or a shadow of what they once were (is Tower Records still around?)
Actually there is a "tiering" in effect, though you may not be aware of it.
Theater chains negotiate with studios for films. They promise n-number of screens, guaranteed showings, buy-in on promotions, and even limits on discounts (last night the cinema I was in advised that "Due to contractual obligations to the studio there are no discounts on The Davinci Code".)
Furthermore in many cities there are more & less expensive cinemas. For example in Montreal the Paramount Theatre downtown charges a premium (it's the busiest cinema in Canada), in Boston the Sony charges more per showing. Outside Montreal the Guzzo chain is always cheaper, for Boston suburbs that would be Flagship.
Beyond that there are first-run/second-run cinemas, where the first runs, paying a higher rate for their film lease, won't surrender it until they've wrung all of the profit they can out of it. Then the second tier, who don't do much advertising, tend not to have high-end sound-systems, vibrating seats, giant screens, stadium seating, etc., pick it up and carry it until it can't draw anyone more.
So if you want to see the latest "blockbuster" on opening weekend you'll likely have to pay $12 with no discounts at the hyperplex, however if you're willing to settle for a no-name comedy or last season's hit then it's showing for $9.50 in the strip mall and they'll accept coupons/bought-at-discount tickets.
That's tiering.
The new was made public 1 month ago with the announcement that almost all of GeoTrust's staff were being let go in a few weeks, VeriSign was the new owners and were gonna consolidate operations.
GeoTrust is still in business right now, I know for a fact that they've got salesfolk answering the lines and their product lines haven't been shut down so as far as a certificate goes they're still as good as they were a month ago. And those certificate chains are a valuable asset and will no doubt be maintained indefinitely. However the package and pricing will likely change as VeriSign moves yet more solidly into the number 1 (and 2, and 3) spot.
Many years ago I spent a lot of time volunteering at the Charles Hayden Planetarium in Boston, Mass. (actually I was the Museum of Science volunteer with most hours for several years.)
I did a lot of talking about astronomy, showing off models of spacecraft, helping folks try on spacesuits, etc. I also helped out with the shows, the 3pm one being the live show, "Stars of the Season". In the theater for that show was the lecturer and a guard. The guards were mostly there to help anyone who had to get up in the dark, and to occasionally shush those who couldn't keep quiet and didn't believe us about how sound carries in a domed room.
Back in those days many of the guards assigned planetarium show duty were high-school and college students, most of them from a few families that the museum knew well. It was a great arrangement, we hired whole families of kids, and their friends, they were usually pre-trained by their older siblings who had worked for us, were honest and hardworking, and the friends of theirs we also hired were pressured to be the same. We knew the parents, the parents knew the staff, the kids had great part time jobs and we had great part time staff.
However these families were local, usually meaning Boston, Cambridge, or Somerville Mass. So they were almost universally urban kids who knew the subway system by heart but rarely got out into suburbia much less beyond. This didn't mean much to us 'til one day one of them came into the planetarium off absolutely floored: Our show was real!
He'd stood through it a hundred times, listening to the lecturer, watching the sky shift around, various sights like the Milky Way be pointed out, but it was all "planetarium stuff". Then the weekend before he and a bunch of the other younger guards had gone up north to a lake in New Hampshire for a weekend on partying. That night they'd gone out onto the dock, and been shocked: Stars!
Not the occasional glimmer through the glow back home, but millions, even (yes) bill-yuns! Shining close and bright, the Milky Way a clearly defined river of light, everything like we showed it in the planetarium but which they'd never seen for themselves.
He was astonished, and full of questions: Suddenly it was all real, and exciting, and he was interested!
We were all taken aback, and then saddened when we realized the situation. We were all well familiar with dark skies and seeing our friends the stars and planets, but these were young people who'd never seen a night sky in all of it's glory. There was a whole universe of science and beauty right above them and they'd never, never even had the opportunity, to see it and be inspired by it.
The next summer the Museum did a program about clear skies, but that was 25 years ago and things have only gotten worse. Now many urban buildings are lit from the outside; I remember the night when the "Old Hancock Tower" in Boston's Back Bay was lit and my nearby, nicely nearly dark with small streetlights, South End street became forever bright enough to read a book on all night. The same is true of many cities, lighting the exteriors of buildings all night to show them off, and in the process drowning out the night sky.
I still get to revel in dark skies. Many of my good friends live on mountainsides in Vermont and from there I get to drink it all in every so often, share the stars with friends, get to revisit the skies. But urban kids, outside of field-trip to the planetarium, where it seems all "make believe", they get no stars at all. That's a sad thing.
If you get the chance, know some urban kids, give them a treat: Take them out some night. An hour's drive from downtown, a stop for icecream, then find a big field away from a mall or lit parking lot. Suburban & rural public schools are great for this, especially where playing fields are on the far side of the building from the parking lot. A pair of binoculars is great but not necessary, however sweaters often are (it gets cooold on a clear viewing night). Then start looking up. Let your eyes adjust, find Orion's Belt, then you're off! It's the cost of the evening, and a memory the kids will have forever.
This has been addressed many times.
Yes, kids need water, food, vaccinations, a place to sleep, and if they and their communities are to be successful and self-supporting an education also.
Is a $100 laptop extravagant for supporting an education? No,because it's multipurpose tool offering information, tutorials, communications, and soon after distribution locally built & relevant applications. By offering these kids access to the larger world, to an education in their own language, to contribute and distribute materials, it gives they, and their communities, opportunities to break their cycle of poverty.
It's not an either/or proposition between food and education, BOTH are needed, one fills the short-term need and the other the long-term.
The folks I've known as the FSF have been quite bright, quite aware folk,s so I expect if there truly is (now, today) an issue they'd be pursuing it. That they're not speaks far more to me then your asserting over & over that you're right/they're clueless.
Furthermore you've yet to make a case that the GPL requires distribution of code for limited release experimental binaries. You keep saying it's a GPL violation yet seem unable to produce an actionable complaint that I could ask the fine folks at the FSF to follow up on.
Frankly it's put-you-money-where-your-mouth-is and you're hemming & hawing. Either there is a GPL violation as you keep claiming or you're some 'net troll with an axe to grind and a fixation 'bout guvm'nt conspiracies, GPL violations, and wearing a colander on your head.
Which is it? A complaint I can walk into the FSF's offices with or more handwaving?
As to your behavior, if you keep accusing a GPL violation and you're wrong, and been corrected, then you are indeed a dick. Making the accusation wherever unsurprisingly leaves you unwelcome on your victim's forums.
I don't pretend a superior knowledge of the details of the GPL. However it is my understanding that distributing betas, even in binary, is acceptable without supplying the source code. If Sveasoft is exploiting a loophole then that is something to be addressed in GPL 3.
However, your just claiming a GPL violation, even if you do it over and over, does not make something fact. Provide something that I can walk into the FSF with or reconsider if you are indeed just a dick.
The source for the in-development version is not.
While you may not like this it is acceptable under the GPL.
As to being banned from the Sveasoft forums, I'm guessing you repeatedly, either ignorantly or maliciously, publicly made your charge. It's a serious one, and one apparently without merit. I'd toss you off also.
I'm not saying Sveasoft/James is a lovely person, but if you really had a case of GPL violation I think the Free Software Foundation would be active on this. I'll be happy to pop in their office next week (my eyeglasses shop is in the same building) and inquire but I think you're just being a crank.
Again, provide a citation where Sveasoft is violating GPL, something that the FSF can act upon, or acknowledge you're wrong.
The Free Software Foundation doesn't seem to think they're violating GPL, and they're about as authoritative as one can get.
You can have whatever issues you like, but let's not going around crying "wolf" just because you don't like a model / person / business. GPL violation is a serious charge around here, with a VERY specific meaning, and unless you can back it up I think it would be appropriate if you were to retract that claim.
Now, back in the day good wood carvers were relatively cheap, so hiring a crew to gussy your ship up was, all things considered, pocket change. Think of it as the 1%-for-art stipulation that is built into many civic construction projects today. The result was your ship looked shu-weet, and so when it sailed into port everyone noticed, and talked, and generally got your nation some good press.
By the way, that's still a big deal in navel circles, visiting ports and showing the flag. These vessels have to do something, keep in training, and so doing diplomatic/PR duty is as good as many other things. Part of that is looking the part - now we go for angular grey steel & exotic weaponry, back then it was "I can afford to pimp-out-my-ship" gilding.
As to the decoration being heavy, the whole freakin' ship was "heavy", a layer of pretty painted bits was about negligible in effect.
Finally, your considered expert opinion on historical wooden sailing ships aside, the hull was perfectly fine for it's needs. Yes most i^Hg^Hn^Ho^Hr^Ha^Hn^Ht^H unsophisticated folks look at these ships and wonder "however did they stay upright" but they did. Much of the misapprehension comes from not understanding the weight distribution on these craft, the rest comes from not respecting the skills of it's sailors.
And, as has been doubtless pointed out several times already, the ship sank due to late-added lower gunports that were left open and effectively scuppered them.