I telecomute since we shut down our office, so I have to telecomute.
Some of it's great, like the walk across the hall in the morning to my "office". Sometimes there can be a bit of a snarl up if there's a queue for the bathroom, but usually it's a pretty uneventful journey.
Some of it sucks, like not having any human contact. I really find I start to go stir-crazy after a while, and have to force myself to leave the house and go for a walk, which is an oddly difficult thing to do - I guess that's part of the "stir-crazy"ness - cabin fever.
I reckon if you could telecommute if you wanted to, that would be ideal. Telecommute for the first couple of hours of the day, then commute into work when the roads are empty, or (certainly in the UK) when the trains are cheaper and empty! Similarly, be able to leave early and finish you day at home. As a previous (or maybe postious?) poster mentioned, if you need to wait in for a delivery. But it is really good to be able to mix with your co-workers.
In the UK where we have, or at least had a "company car" culture, it would seem a neat idea to get the Government to allow tax breaks for employees to be able to charge up their electric cars at work.
Along with subsidies on buying electric vehicles in the first place, this might well kick start the revolution, because as more people buy an electric runabout the prices should come down, better infrastructure (eg plug in to parking meters for a top-up charge and automatically be debited for the juice and the parking?). It is most likely that these vehicles would be used for the short, town-based, trips which should reduce pollution in towns.
Actually, the rest of the world doesn't use dd/mm/yyyy for their date formation. Billions of Chinese use what is known in the West as the ISO standard date format.
Indeed, and they were expecting this release in 2nd quarter Monkey, and weren't expecting to have to wait another 5 Water Buffalos to get the release!
Considering that it's a first release of an experimental package that performs a function that few if any have ever done before, no, it's not the best idea to use it. Even the most basic encryption is not yet there.
Still, this shows that even Microsoft can pull some really neat things out of its R&D division. I shall look forward to a similar feature going into the MadWiFi driver set in the coming months, and thence into the Auditor Security Toolkit.
Hey, I don't know a lot about this, but if you had your laptop in your car and were being driven (for safety reasons!) whilst you surfed the internet, could this setup allow you to start off using your home wifi connection, then continually switch to the next strongest (unencrypted) signal and hence provide some sort of wifi roaming capability?
This isn't that strange, and certainly here on SlashDot I'd expect the readership to be well aware how things can get harder if they are rubbed the right way.
You have a problem with people hacking into your cell phone account and paying your bill for you?
I took an item back to a shop a year or so back and was crediting my credit card with the amount (as I used the card to buy the item) and I got the third degree from the credit card company. The transaction stalled and a couple of minutes later the phone by the checkout rang. Funniest thing! Asked me all the questions, password, pin number, favourite colour, shoe size, are you now, or have you ever been, a communist, etc etc.
After I passed all the tests and successfully credited my card with the £200 I asked the assistant how often credit card thieves steal cards to make refunds. He looked at me rather blankly and started serving the next customer. A beautiful moment.
... it won't happen such that a bunch of lowland dwellers go to sleep Tuesday night, dry, and wake up Wednesday morning floating on their mattresses. We will see it coming, people and businesses can migrate (and they will... believe me, they will.)
..since the company should test all products before they start selling them. No one person is usually responsible for bad products.
Oh Yes! The Programmer Wrote the code, but it might have been designed by someone else. There's the chap who wrote the Requirements that the designer tried to match. Let's not forget the people in the Test Department who must have let the problem through, although that might have been the fault of whomever wrote the Test Specification.
There may have been a contractual obligation to deliver on a specific date (already mentioned up above), so perhaps the contracts people may be liable for setting an unreasonable completion/delivery date. There might be fiscal cut-backs reducing staffing levels in one or all of the above departments, so the accounts Dept. could be blamed, although maybe they only did that because the Share Holders wanted a better dividend, so perhaps it could be the Share Holder's fault?
If you buy software from a company, it is not unreasonable to expect it to do what you asked. More often than not, when there are problems the software company will sort out those bugs for free, indicating that they are aware that the problem is due to a shortfall on their side of the contract. If you decide to use litigation against the software companies, the price of software will rise dramatically, and it will be the lawyers who win.
Perhaps you could just vote with your feet! If some supplier consistently delivers dodgy code, try a different supplier!
Meanwhile, back in Pakistan they wait for aid while China and the US debate who will spend the most resources to control the totally barren lifeless peice of junk orbiting the earth. anyone waiting for aid should get up off their asses and make their life better for themselves. One day all these African countries are going to stop fighting themselves and start actually producing products and then Indonesia and Mexico will be in real trouble
Obviously playing to the stereotypes, and no offence meant, but I'd guess you're an American?
And by the way... just where is/are the battery(ies)?"
BWUHa Ha Ha HA hAAAAA
These aren't Exoskeletons at all... No, they're Eeeevil ROBOTS that are powered by humans. Once the Robot has drained the human "power-cell", it is discarded and a new one is plumbed in.
"To Serve Humans" indeed!... Hasn't ANYONE thought of the children!
No input on the Nano is crummy, but it's form factor makes it much more likely I will take it someplace.
My wife just got a 6GB iPod Mini and it's terrific. Also picked up one of them iTrip doohickies too, and it's excellent for using in the car. Shame it's illegal in the UK really!
Now what with more and more (top end) car manufacturers building Bluetooth into their cars for Hands-Free Mobile use, using the Stereo, why not have a "bTrip" (er - "iTooth"?) that connects automatically to the car Stereo as well. That'd sure be neat!
Build the BlueTooth into the iPod/iNano/iVimto and you presumably don't need the USB connector anymore either! Maybe permit swapping songs with other iPeople on the train etc, or even listen in to whatever other people are playing?
You'd be better off with a hidden cameras with montion sensor focused on the most likely points of entry. So when the police arrive you can give them a picture of the criminal instead of telling them to duck as you attempt to deactive your home-made "security system".
The best CCTV security cameras detect motion to switch themselves on, then point the cameras at the motion, then make a noise. The noise makes the purp look to see what the noise is, and you get a nice full-face picture of the wannabe burglar!
Works a treat, every time. If the purps get wise and don't look, then when it's you creaping up with your cricket bat (a baseball bat would be an acceptable alternative for our US friends) you can whack 'em on the noddle and they can end up in yer gimp basket for a month or two before you hand 'em over to the police. ("Why's he walking like John Wayne, sir?"... "He didn't look when he heard a noise officer!").
The hand is an assistive technology, true, but the goal should be that it "just works" and does so as unobtrusively as possible, so that it doesn't stick out any more than, say, glasses, contacts, cochlear implants, or hearing aids.
Interesting that you include hearing aids in that list. I've wondered about this for a few years, on and off (I really should get out more), but while glasses have become fashion items, and people with good eyesight will use glasses to help them further (eg sunglasses), you don't see people using hearing aids unless they really have to!
... and what about some sense of fashion for hearing aids? Sure, they are becoming smaller and smaller, but this is just to allow them to be hidden.
I have partial hearing loss and wouldn't even think of using a hearing aid, but anyone with slightly wonky eyes will get themselves some glasses.
How about hearing aids for people with good hearing, for use at the cinema or theatre, that would filter out the dim-wits with their mobile phones and packets of crisps?
How about a device to wear at the Pub which can allow you to filter out the background noise and actually hear, and converse with, your friends?
I reckon there's a long way to go before hearing aids can be mentioned in the same sentence as glasses!
It was too near Sea Level, so they raised it! Obviously, Seattle isn't actually sinking, which helps, but wouldn't this be a great time to raise the level of New Orleans to sea level or preferably above the projected flood level?
It'd be a big project, but maybe not much more expensive than building the levees?
Now, if they added a GPS to the thing, and some way for the driver to register, on returning to the vehicle, that they had had a good time at the current local, maybe even the restaurant/theatre/etc they visited, then the car could be actively feeding information about what is good in the city for future visitors.
Actually Charles Clarke stated that an ID Card system could not have stopped the bombings.
Thanks for that link. It's funny how the government has, at one point or another, used terrorism/security, asylum seekers, benefit fraud, and a few others as I recall, as reasons why we need ID cards. In this case, they admit that ID Cards wouldn't help, which must surely mean that they will not stop terrorists at all, because you have to assume that the terrorists will chose actions where they will not be caught over those where there's a good chance of failure.
I'd say put the cash ear-marked for the ID cards toward the Olympics in 2012 instead!
... and the many replies to this effect
My intention was not to denigrate the Spanish people but to show that even the perception that Spain pulled out of Iraq because of the Madrid bombings will have an encouraging effect on would-be terrorists.
I understand that there was a government change, and well done for voting out the liars! I really wish the UK public could see through all the smoke generated by Our Tony's army of spin-doctors, though I'm not sure the others are any better!
Unfortunately, it is quite an easy, if apparently inaccurate, leap to make when Spain (the Government in power, even if not supported by the majority of the people) supported the war before the bombings, then Spain (the, as it happens, new, Government in power) pulls out of Iraq after the bombings.
There have been other incidents where decisions have been made that encourage terrorists, for example I recall reading about Italy paying for the release of some Italian reporters?
There should be a unilateral agreement that no one should give in to terrorists. Look at the way Isreal (who I am absolutely NOT holding up as a shining example of all that is right in the world!) dealt with the spate of airline hyjacks way back when (70's was it?). Isreal announced (as I recall, certainly something like...) that they considered all Isreali people to be front-line troops and any hyjacked planes would be landed and stormed. Some Isreali's lost their lives when planes were stormed, but who now even thinks about hyjacking an Isreali plane? They just don't bother because they know there is no way to win.
Of course, this has all changed since the Towers were brought down, because now it is unlikely that people on a plane will simply allow themselves to be hyjacked without attempting to thwart the hyjackers, or attempting to re-take the plane. The goalposts have been well and truely moved, and it's perhaps ironic that the Sep-11 hyjacks might have ended the spectre of plane hyjacking by doing so!
Saying "NO" to terrorism in this way takes a Government who are not simply trying to get re-elected (and don't get me started on the News companies who flood us with the personal tradegy stories!). It is a tough line to take, but for the good of the people, the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few!
Thousands of years of human history would seem to contradict this. Think the Inquisition, the Crusades, countless Protestand vs. Catholic wars in Europe, Hindu/Buddhist conflicts in India, and Sunni/Shiite violence in more recent times. For (far too) many people, their belief in God allows them to dehumanize those who don't share their beliefs, making just about anything fair game.
I replied to the next caller who made a similar point, and it is true that there are many instances of religious conflict in the past, but I think it is universally accepted that from our current perspective, these events were simply wrong!
My point (badly made!) was that the benefit of hindsight allows us to look back upon, and hopefully learn from, the bloody history of religion. Christianity has changed from the old inquisition and crusades days to the current more peaceful "missionary" type of approach, and a far greater tolerance for other religions.
Anyone claiming a religious right to maim and kill will usually be shouted down the loudest from within their professed religion.
The purpetrators of this attrocity are the faceless, and I would suggest faithless (because no one could truthfully commit such acts in the name of any God) terrorists
I agree with everything else that you say in your post but this bit was just arbitrarily offensive. Trying to claim that anyone who commits attocities like this is by definition an atheist is unbelievably bigoted. Christians, Moslems and atheists and other groups all are capable of inflciting horrors on others and history is full of many examples from all of them.
Ah. I was not trying to imply that these, or any other, terrorists in the name of religion were not themselves convinced of their religous right, rather that the consensus of opinion within their "chosen" religion would likely as not come out and say that having commited such acts they could not be true followers of that religion, having been somehow misguided in their interpretation of their belief.
Sure, there were many instances of Christian outrage in the past, but now most (if not all) Christians would say those people were wrong to have inflicted cruelties in the name of their God.
Indeed, rather than being arbirarily offensive I was actually trying to be exactly the opposite, and specifically _not_ lay the blame with the religion, because I do not believe it is, at heart, a religion issue. Religion may help the leaders of such groups to recruit, and as such it is a useful tool, but the fact that the criminals who planted the London bombs were likely to be Muslims is incidental to the outcome.
God? Hmm... Would that be the same guy who wipes out the entire population of the Earth apart from a select few in a boat in Genesis? What were you saying about atrocities again?
OK. Point taken. How about "... because no one could truthfully commit such acts in the name of any current God". Certainly, there are stories of (some or other) God slaying people left right and centre, but I think it is generally accepted now that the figures throughout history who waged war in the name of their God(s) were, at best, misguided, and at worst, acting under the banner of relegion but actually grinding a completely different axe!
Whilst I have no doubt that the miscreants who purpetrated this latest in a long line of terrorist outrages believed whole heartedly in their cause, I cannot help but wonder if at some point up the hierachy, above the brain-washers, in the echelons who set the agenda, sit perfectly rational people just hell-bent on furthering their own ambitions. This is almost certainly true in Ireland, where the terrorism has markedly dwindled since the Towers came down, and yet the organised crime, that used to be just for fund raising, continues unabaited.
Once you are in control of a powerful organisation, it must be very difficult to stand down and return to ordinary life. Reminds me somewhat of the joke told about the US military describing the first Iraq conflict as "not much of a war, but it's the only one we've got".
Slashdot Mirror
Some of it's great, like the walk across the hall in the morning to my "office". Sometimes there can be a bit of a snarl up if there's a queue for the bathroom, but usually it's a pretty uneventful journey.
Some of it sucks, like not having any human contact. I really find I start to go stir-crazy after a while, and have to force myself to leave the house and go for a walk, which is an oddly difficult thing to do - I guess that's part of the "stir-crazy"ness - cabin fever.
I reckon if you could telecommute if you wanted to, that would be ideal. Telecommute for the first couple of hours of the day, then commute into work when the roads are empty, or (certainly in the UK) when the trains are cheaper and empty! Similarly, be able to leave early and finish you day at home. As a previous (or maybe postious?) poster mentioned, if you need to wait in for a delivery. But it is really good to be able to mix with your co-workers.
Along with subsidies on buying electric vehicles in the first place, this might well kick start the revolution, because as more people buy an electric runabout the prices should come down, better infrastructure (eg plug in to parking meters for a top-up charge and automatically be debited for the juice and the parking?). It is most likely that these vehicles would be used for the short, town-based, trips which should reduce pollution in towns.
Indeed, and they were expecting this release in 2nd quarter Monkey, and weren't expecting to have to wait another 5 Water Buffalos to get the release!
After all the talk about the good Captain's sexuality, I suspect the answer might be ...
A crowbar
Still, this shows that even Microsoft can pull some really neat things out of its R&D division. I shall look forward to a similar feature going into the MadWiFi driver set in the coming months, and thence into the Auditor Security Toolkit.
Hey, I don't know a lot about this, but if you had your laptop in your car and were being driven (for safety reasons!) whilst you surfed the internet, could this setup allow you to start off using your home wifi connection, then continually switch to the next strongest (unencrypted) signal and hence provide some sort of wifi roaming capability?
This isn't that strange, and certainly here on SlashDot I'd expect the readership to be well aware how things can get harder if they are rubbed the right way.
I took an item back to a shop a year or so back and was crediting my credit card with the amount (as I used the card to buy the item) and I got the third degree from the credit card company. The transaction stalled and a couple of minutes later the phone by the checkout rang. Funniest thing! Asked me all the questions, password, pin number, favourite colour, shoe size, are you now, or have you ever been, a communist, etc etc.
After I passed all the tests and successfully credited my card with the £200 I asked the assistant how often credit card thieves steal cards to make refunds. He looked at me rather blankly and started serving the next customer. A beautiful moment.
*cough-katrina-cough*
Oh Yes! The Programmer Wrote the code, but it might have been designed by someone else. There's the chap who wrote the Requirements that the designer tried to match. Let's not forget the people in the Test Department who must have let the problem through, although that might have been the fault of whomever wrote the Test Specification.
There may have been a contractual obligation to deliver on a specific date (already mentioned up above), so perhaps the contracts people may be liable for setting an unreasonable completion/delivery date. There might be fiscal cut-backs reducing staffing levels in one or all of the above departments, so the accounts Dept. could be blamed, although maybe they only did that because the Share Holders wanted a better dividend, so perhaps it could be the Share Holder's fault?
If you buy software from a company, it is not unreasonable to expect it to do what you asked. More often than not, when there are problems the software company will sort out those bugs for free, indicating that they are aware that the problem is due to a shortfall on their side of the contract. If you decide to use litigation against the software companies, the price of software will rise dramatically, and it will be the lawyers who win.
Perhaps you could just vote with your feet! If some supplier consistently delivers dodgy code, try a different supplier!
Obviously playing to the stereotypes, and no offence meant, but I'd guess you're an American?
*cough*
BWUHa Ha Ha HA hAAAAA ... No, they're Eeeevil ROBOTS that are powered by humans. Once the Robot has drained the human "power-cell", it is discarded and a new one is plumbed in.
These aren't Exoskeletons at all
"To Serve Humans" indeed! ... Hasn't ANYONE thought of the children!
Er ... don't you mean ...
Give a man a phish and he will have, er, a phish
Teach a man to phish and he will, er, be a phisher or men, or something.
My wife just got a 6GB iPod Mini and it's terrific. Also picked up one of them iTrip doohickies too, and it's excellent for using in the car. Shame it's illegal in the UK really!
Now what with more and more (top end) car manufacturers building Bluetooth into their cars for Hands-Free Mobile use, using the Stereo, why not have a "bTrip" (er - "iTooth"?) that connects automatically to the car Stereo as well. That'd sure be neat!
Build the BlueTooth into the iPod/iNano/iVimto and you presumably don't need the USB connector anymore either! Maybe permit swapping songs with other iPeople on the train etc, or even listen in to whatever other people are playing?
The best CCTV security cameras detect motion to switch themselves on, then point the cameras at the motion, then make a noise. The noise makes the purp look to see what the noise is, and you get a nice full-face picture of the wannabe burglar!
Works a treat, every time. If the purps get wise and don't look, then when it's you creaping up with your cricket bat (a baseball bat would be an acceptable alternative for our US friends) you can whack 'em on the noddle and they can end up in yer gimp basket for a month or two before you hand 'em over to the police. ("Why's he walking like John Wayne, sir?" ... "He didn't look when he heard a noise officer!").
and
Which brings up damage control. I am sure the crew will be able to climb around inside and apply temporary patches.
Not sure this would work, what with the Damage Control Crew wetting themselves laughing at their high pitched squeeky voices ...
[High Pitched Voices] ...
Srgnt "Butch" Butcher : Hey Brad, puncture in complz342. Patch Stat!
Prvt "Brad" Bradley : You sound like mickey mouse! Say it again
The only thing worse would be if laughing gas generated lift!
It'd be like a bloody "Carry On ..." film!
Interesting that you include hearing aids in that list. I've wondered about this for a few years, on and off (I really should get out more), but while glasses have become fashion items, and people with good eyesight will use glasses to help them further (eg sunglasses), you don't see people using hearing aids unless they really have to!
I have partial hearing loss and wouldn't even think of using a hearing aid, but anyone with slightly wonky eyes will get themselves some glasses.
How about hearing aids for people with good hearing, for use at the cinema or theatre, that would filter out the dim-wits with their mobile phones and packets of crisps?
How about a device to wear at the Pub which can allow you to filter out the background noise and actually hear, and converse with, your friends?
I reckon there's a long way to go before hearing aids can be mentioned in the same sentence as glasses!
It was too near Sea Level, so they raised it! Obviously, Seattle isn't actually sinking, which helps, but wouldn't this be a great time to raise the level of New Orleans to sea level or preferably above the projected flood level?
It'd be a big project, but maybe not much more expensive than building the levees?
Now, if they added a GPS to the thing, and some way for the driver to register, on returning to the vehicle, that they had had a good time at the current local, maybe even the restaurant/theatre/etc they visited, then the car could be actively feeding information about what is good in the city for future visitors.
Thanks for that link. It's funny how the government has, at one point or another, used terrorism/security, asylum seekers, benefit fraud, and a few others as I recall, as reasons why we need ID cards. In this case, they admit that ID Cards wouldn't help, which must surely mean that they will not stop terrorists at all, because you have to assume that the terrorists will chose actions where they will not be caught over those where there's a good chance of failure.
I'd say put the cash ear-marked for the ID cards toward the Olympics in 2012 instead!
My intention was not to denigrate the Spanish people but to show that even the perception that Spain pulled out of Iraq because of the Madrid bombings will have an encouraging effect on would-be terrorists.
I understand that there was a government change, and well done for voting out the liars! I really wish the UK public could see through all the smoke generated by Our Tony's army of spin-doctors, though I'm not sure the others are any better!
Unfortunately, it is quite an easy, if apparently inaccurate, leap to make when Spain (the Government in power, even if not supported by the majority of the people) supported the war before the bombings, then Spain (the, as it happens, new, Government in power) pulls out of Iraq after the bombings.
There have been other incidents where decisions have been made that encourage terrorists, for example I recall reading about Italy paying for the release of some Italian reporters?
There should be a unilateral agreement that no one should give in to terrorists. Look at the way Isreal (who I am absolutely NOT holding up as a shining example of all that is right in the world!) dealt with the spate of airline hyjacks way back when (70's was it?). Isreal announced (as I recall, certainly something like ...) that they considered all Isreali people to be front-line troops and any hyjacked planes would be landed and stormed. Some Isreali's lost their lives when planes were stormed, but who now even thinks about hyjacking an Isreali plane? They just don't bother because they know there is no way to win.
Of course, this has all changed since the Towers were brought down, because now it is unlikely that people on a plane will simply allow themselves to be hyjacked without attempting to thwart the hyjackers, or attempting to re-take the plane. The goalposts have been well and truely moved, and it's perhaps ironic that the Sep-11 hyjacks might have ended the spectre of plane hyjacking by doing so!
Saying "NO" to terrorism in this way takes a Government who are not simply trying to get re-elected (and don't get me started on the News companies who flood us with the personal tradegy stories!). It is a tough line to take, but for the good of the people, the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few!
I replied to the next caller who made a similar point, and it is true that there are many instances of religious conflict in the past, but I think it is universally accepted that from our current perspective, these events were simply wrong!
My point (badly made!) was that the benefit of hindsight allows us to look back upon, and hopefully learn from, the bloody history of religion. Christianity has changed from the old inquisition and crusades days to the current more peaceful "missionary" type of approach, and a far greater tolerance for other religions.
Anyone claiming a religious right to maim and kill will usually be shouted down the loudest from within their professed religion.
I agree with everything else that you say in your post but this bit was just arbitrarily offensive. Trying to claim that anyone who commits attocities like this is by definition an atheist is unbelievably bigoted. Christians, Moslems and atheists and other groups all are capable of inflciting horrors on others and history is full of many examples from all of them.
Ah. I was not trying to imply that these, or any other, terrorists in the name of religion were not themselves convinced of their religous right, rather that the consensus of opinion within their "chosen" religion would likely as not come out and say that having commited such acts they could not be true followers of that religion, having been somehow misguided in their interpretation of their belief.
Sure, there were many instances of Christian outrage in the past, but now most (if not all) Christians would say those people were wrong to have inflicted cruelties in the name of their God.
Indeed, rather than being arbirarily offensive I was actually trying to be exactly the opposite, and specifically _not_ lay the blame with the religion, because I do not believe it is, at heart, a religion issue. Religion may help the leaders of such groups to recruit, and as such it is a useful tool, but the fact that the criminals who planted the London bombs were likely to be Muslims is incidental to the outcome.
OK. Point taken. How about "... because no one could truthfully commit such acts in the name of any current God". Certainly, there are stories of (some or other) God slaying people left right and centre, but I think it is generally accepted now that the figures throughout history who waged war in the name of their God(s) were, at best, misguided, and at worst, acting under the banner of relegion but actually grinding a completely different axe!
Whilst I have no doubt that the miscreants who purpetrated this latest in a long line of terrorist outrages believed whole heartedly in their cause, I cannot help but wonder if at some point up the hierachy, above the brain-washers, in the echelons who set the agenda, sit perfectly rational people just hell-bent on furthering their own ambitions. This is almost certainly true in Ireland, where the terrorism has markedly dwindled since the Towers came down, and yet the organised crime, that used to be just for fund raising, continues unabaited.
Once you are in control of a powerful organisation, it must be very difficult to stand down and return to ordinary life. Reminds me somewhat of the joke told about the US military describing the first Iraq conflict as "not much of a war, but it's the only one we've got".