It's too bad this was posted anonymously. It deserves to be modded up. I, too, have seen Verizon in action. They are very happy that their competitors in the DSL area are gone, so they can take their own sweet time to expand their offerings, which they have little incentive to do. They are just using similar tactics to short-circuit wi-fi as well, so their POTS system doesn't go down the pot.
So if I put a tape recorder hidden in a room that records telephone calls, and I come back later to retrieve the tape (or get the tape recorder to call me late at night to play back the tape), how is that different than using a key logger to record PC activity?
Is using a tape recorder like this covered by wiretap laws? If not, what laws cover it? Those laws should apply to keyloggers too.
If you've ever used SAS, then you're familiar with PivotTables. PROC TABULATE is a very powerful function in SAS that does everything PivotTables do and more.
Turning it off is not that easy, at least for me. I logged in as admin ("Owner") and turned off the firewall. Then I logged off and logged back in as a normal user (myself), and the firewall was turned back on! And since I didn't have admin privileges, I couldn't turn it off. So I logged off and back in as Owner, and it was off.
Finally, some combination of turning ot off, rebooting, logging in, turning off, etc, finally got my user account to turn the thing off (I use ZoneAlarm Pro). However, when my wife logs in on her user account, the firewall is on again, and she can't turn it off.
Otherwise I haven't had any problems with SP2. I disabled the security center process too while trying to figure this mess out.
...and you certainly WOULD drop a photo album if it had ten thousand pictures in it! If you could lift it in the first place!
Also, if you carry your ten thousand pictures around in a shoe box (a BIG shoebox), you will scratch a lot more pictures that way, even if you don't drop it. The shoebox is a better analogy than an album than dropping a bare DVD. If the DVD was inserted in a jewel case before it was dropped, it probably wouldn't scratch the DVD. A DVD in a jewel case is a better analogy to pictures in an album.
When you can walk into a store, pay $16.99 for a DVD, new release, or less for an older movie, and you get not just the movie, but trailers (who watches these?), commentary, featurettes, and subtitles, I think this is a reasonable price to pay for a DVD. I see no reason to share these movies with strangers.
Now, paying $16.99 or more for a CD with 10-12 songs, 9 of which I couldn't care less about, that's another story. While I haven't and won't share, I can certainly understand the argument.
So I don't really have a problem with MPAA doing this, as long as the prices stay where they are as a result.
But to Candidate1 and Candidate 2 (and 3 and 4...) the smaller states won't matter any more. They won't bother to visit these states in order to get elected. They will only go to the populous states and be sure to get their votes. Any important issues to a small state (e.g., the Alaska Pipeline) will be completely ignored if a more populous state can benefit from something else (e.g., Texas).
If you think the country is divided now, just wait after a few elections after implementing a national election and see how many divisions exist in this country.
The most obvious good thing about a true popular vote election would be the incredible turnout. For instance, how many Republicans in California and Democrats in Texan would vote if it was a popular vote?
And with a popular vote, how many people in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, North/South Dakota, Montana, etc. would bother to vote? A Popular vote does not solve this problem...it merely shifts it to a different demographic.
I only use a couple words at a time to search. I see what kind of results that gives me, and do a second or third search with one or more keywords if I don't find what I'm after. Plus, Minus, and Quotes are the only three punctuation marks I use.
The only time I use a sentence is when I'm searching for a quote.
If you're worried about the RFID tags being detected wherever you go, consider this...
If you put your passport in a static bag, wouldn't it act like a Faraday cage and shield your passport from being detected?
If so, and I haven't tested this (anyone wanna try?), then if you upgrade the RAM in your PC you should be "protected" from these RFID privacy problems.
You are right, and completely wrong at the same time. The very reason that NY and CA do not run away with the election now is BECAUSE of the electoral college. Note that I was referring to the large states...not just NY and CA (the two largest in population). Without the electoral college, only the populous states would matter in an election. The smaller states would not matter except when the large states can't make up their minds.
It's interesting to note that for large democratic states, for example (i.e., don't read anything unintended into this), that if those republicans want a vote that matters, they should move to a smaller state or a republican state, or better yet, try to "convert" or attract more republicans. That doesn't happen very much. Why not? Could it be that there are other infuences involved, such as the state being fortunate enough to take advantage of the winds of fortune (see Pennsylvania or California as examples of steel and Internet winds) temporarily.
In short, if you don't like being a republican in a democratic state, or vice versa, move to one. If you're not willing to do it, then things must be fairly good where you are. Getting rid of the electoral college won't change this dynamic. In that case, if you want your vote to count, move to a large state. If you're not willing to do that, then you must have it pretty good in your small state.
Americans love democracy so much...they really should try it some time.
No, America shouldn't try democracy. It never was intended to be. Look at http://www.angelfire.com/pa/sergeman/quotes/dem.ht ml for quotes about what our government is, quoted by the founding fathers. For example:
"We are now forming a Republican form of government. Real Liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship."
--Alexander Hamilton
Also, the electoral process we have now is very sensible, believe it or not. If we go with a national popular vote to elect the president, then you better move to New York or California if you want your vote to count for anything. Any of the smaller states will have no voice in the election once the large states have their say. Elections would degenerate to this state after only a few elections as people become discouraged.
...now that Iraq has been "liberated", shouldn't they also be allowed to participate in the election of the "leader of the democratic free world"?
If the people of Iraq petition to become a state, and then vote to become a state (or whatever the procedure is), then they can participate. Like that will ever happen.
But the artile listed above was printed 10/9. So this guy's dismissal had to have happened on or before 10/1. I suppose if this thing blows up, this quote "...what I am most looking forward to now is spending more time with my family" may not be as easy-going as he hopes.
Just like Microsoft developed Excel and Word for the Macintosh, it could release Office for Linux. Yes, I know that will never happen and OpenOffice makes that a moot point anyway, but that is the best example to illustrate my point.
Develop and support the game using the same business models being used today (closed source), just write a version for Linux. Why must a game/application be open source just because it is supposed to run on an open source operating system? The only difference is that the company takes the responsibility of supporting it instead of the open source community supporting it.
I own a Handera 330. It does everything I want it to do. If it had color it would be perfect for me, and updating it with USB like the rest of the world is a good idea. With the CF slot I can plug in any other function I want, and with the MMC slot I can put in as much flash memory as I need (for MP3/JPG/backups/etc).
It's too bad they couldn't sell enough to come out with their next interation!
I do not care if Doom3 is open source or not. I am willing to pay iD for Doom3. I just want a version of the game to run on my Linux box. If that means I have to have a specific distribution, I could probably live with that. If that means that the Doom3 CD is a stand-alone CD that boots up and runs Doom3, that's fine (Hmmm...turn a PC into a real game console).
If the only reason they don't make games for Linux is because they're scared of open source (read: no profits, and opening up proprietary code), that is a pretty lame reason not to do it, IMnsHO. Just make a closed-source version of the game that I can run on Linux...that's all I need to get me to stop using Windows and switch to Linux permanently (i.e., no dual boot).
I'm already using OpenOffice, Mozilla, and other open source software in Windows as it is. The only reason I don't switch to Linux is the games!
The movie was like watching bad home movies. By the time anything interesting happened, the movie ended! I turned to my friends afterward, and said "I can't believe I paid money to see this!"
There was nothing scary about this movie. I suppose the fact that it got national attention on such a small production budget earns it some kudos, but it was an awful movie.
I had to stop RTFA because the opinions in it are just as flawed as the opinions it tries to dispell.
Remember, this was 1984. IBM was just introducing the IBMPC-AT. This had a new hardware design, using a 16-bit expansion slot, backward compatible to the existing 8-bit PC-XT slot. New hardware would be needed to take advantage of it. Compaq had just started gaining ground as the first successful clone of the IBMPC. IBM had not yet decided to change the hardware architecture of the PC with MCA. There was no VESA localbus, nor PCI. The IBMPC-AT used the new 80286, which had bugs in it at the top end of its address range (the phantom 64K thing, HMA). It was mostly compatible, but there had to be patches of software to fix it. There also had to be new versions compiled to take advantage of the new features of the chip. In short, the PC industry was still new.
The TRS-80, Apple II, Amigas, and their clones were still around. The Apple II was old and tired, being 7 years old. Introducing the Mac was a breakthrough.
If Apple had made the hardware open, and licenced the software OS, there WOULD have been clone manufacturers to appear to fill the need. If that was the case, then we all could be using Macintoshes today instead of the PC, and they would be as cheap as today's PC's. The trick was to do this early, before the world settled on one particular architecture.
The article referenced here is just presenting another opinion, and one that, in my opinion, is wrong.
I agree it's not as competitive as I'd like, but try to imagine a city where five different companies are tearing up the streets to run new fiber all the time, and they're charging their customers to pay for all that extra infrastructure expansion. The utility model is just making the best of a tough situation.
This is why the gov't is trying to make the copper/fiber open to all competitors...just so there AREN'T 5 companies running redundant fiber all over the place. I would prefer that the individual towns would own the wire and then bid out who gets to run over the infrastructure, but that's never been the way things work so far, and that'll never happen now.
That's not because they have a bad attitude, it's because of physics. The farther you are from the CO, the less DSL is gonna work. You want them to invest a couple million into a new CO and its associated reterminations so they can provide DSL to you and your neighbors, who will complain if it costs as much as your Adelphia cable modem service?
I understand how DSL works. Yes, I *DO* want them to invest a few million in that infrastructure. If all companies had the attitude you suggest, then the only infrastructure that exists would be in major cities, and small cities and large towns would have everything backhauled to the major cities. When population grows in an area, you need the infrastructure to handle it. The extra cost will easily be offset by the increased customer base, and the long-term price to all customers will be negligible.
I don't see this as being an unreasonable customer. I see it as a lot of people saying "Hey, I want to give you some money for your service, all you have to do is come and get it." That's why I have Adelphia's Internet service. They were the first ones to build the infrastructure, so they got my money. Now they keep wanting more of it, and there's no competition. So I can't take my money elsewhere, and they know it.
I don't know what part of the country you are in, but around here, it's Adelphia or nothing. There is no cable competition. The only competition for cable is satellite, and just try to get broadband there for a lower price. The only broadband competition in my area is wireless, and I'm sure the price for cable and wireless (not to be confused with Cable and Wireless) would be more than what I pay now.
There isn't competition not because nobody is interested in competing, but because that is how the "utility" is regulated. Just like there is Verizon or nothing for telephone here. Oh, and Verizon hasn't decided to run DSL out to my area since we're too far from the CO, even though we are the largest town in the county.
So, since Adelphia is the only major high-speed player in this market, they are setting the price.
By the way, I'm watching the NASA-TV coverage of this event. There are at least three teams who attended the Chesapeake regional that I recognize that have made it to at least the quarter finals of the championships. As of right now (2:06PM eastern), one is in the semifinals.
Did you go out looking for sponsors? Did you learn anything from the engineers that helped you? Did you have any engineers helping you? How much building did YOU actually do?
FIRST isn't about students building a robot. If you want to do that, go build one for Robot Wars or BattleBots. If you don't want to build a robot, look into the Odyssey of the Mind competition.
FIRST is about marketing your team to get sponsorship. It's about getting community involvement in order to find engineers to help you and for people to help with logistics (shipping, travel, cheering section, etc). It's about LEARNING from those engineers. The robots just give you something technical to do to reach a goal: the competition. And there is supposed to be a website to get news out to the community, and there is an animated video you are to submit as part of the competition. It's not just a robot. Note that Odyssey of the mind is about a lot of the same stuff, too.
I have been a volunteer for both the Odyssey of the Mind and FIRST robotics competitions (Northern VA and Chesapeake Regional, respectively). I WISH I had the opportunity these students have when I was in school. I had LEGO's, Erector sets (no, not erection sets!), etc. and I had to build things on my own to learn the mechanics. The engineers involved on the FIRST teams are industry professionals. It would have been a great head start if I had learned the way things really are from a professional before I went to college.
If you didn't get professionals to help you, and you didn't get sponsors to give you free space to build your robot, or sponsors to donate time in a machine shop for your team, then you either didn't try hard enough, or you and your teacher/mentor didn't understand the game.
Your experience is the same as mine. I've posted this very thing before as well. Monster and WashingtonPost job boards are useless. The list of headhunters I had three years ago has nobody left still doing that work. I worked my personal network as well, and I got a few hits. I also got one offer...a good offer. I'm just waiting to be told when and where to start.
The job boards do serve one purpose. They're good at filling out the unemployment forms online on where I've applied to positions. I had over 150 to choose from...at least 20 a week. It's a good thing they will accept three a week or I'd be filling out the forms forever.
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It's too bad this was posted anonymously. It deserves to be modded up. I, too, have seen Verizon in action. They are very happy that their competitors in the DSL area are gone, so they can take their own sweet time to expand their offerings, which they have little incentive to do. They are just using similar tactics to short-circuit wi-fi as well, so their POTS system doesn't go down the pot.
So if I put a tape recorder hidden in a room that records telephone calls, and I come back later to retrieve the tape (or get the tape recorder to call me late at night to play back the tape), how is that different than using a key logger to record PC activity?
Is using a tape recorder like this covered by wiretap laws? If not, what laws cover it? Those laws should apply to keyloggers too.
If you've ever used SAS, then you're familiar with PivotTables. PROC TABULATE is a very powerful function in SAS that does everything PivotTables do and more.
Turning it off is not that easy, at least for me. I logged in as admin ("Owner") and turned off the firewall. Then I logged off and logged back in as a normal user (myself), and the firewall was turned back on! And since I didn't have admin privileges, I couldn't turn it off. So I logged off and back in as Owner, and it was off.
Finally, some combination of turning ot off, rebooting, logging in, turning off, etc, finally got my user account to turn the thing off (I use ZoneAlarm Pro). However, when my wife logs in on her user account, the firewall is on again, and she can't turn it off.
Otherwise I haven't had any problems with SP2. I disabled the security center process too while trying to figure this mess out.
...and you certainly WOULD drop a photo album if it had ten thousand pictures in it! If you could lift it in the first place!
Also, if you carry your ten thousand pictures around in a shoe box (a BIG shoebox), you will scratch a lot more pictures that way, even if you don't drop it. The shoebox is a better analogy than an album than dropping a bare DVD. If the DVD was inserted in a jewel case before it was dropped, it probably wouldn't scratch the DVD. A DVD in a jewel case is a better analogy to pictures in an album.
Yeah, I'm done picking nits now.
When you can walk into a store, pay $16.99 for a DVD, new release, or less for an older movie, and you get not just the movie, but trailers (who watches these?), commentary, featurettes, and subtitles, I think this is a reasonable price to pay for a DVD. I see no reason to share these movies with strangers.
Now, paying $16.99 or more for a CD with 10-12 songs, 9 of which I couldn't care less about, that's another story. While I haven't and won't share, I can certainly understand the argument.
So I don't really have a problem with MPAA doing this, as long as the prices stay where they are as a result.
But to Candidate1 and Candidate 2 (and 3 and 4...) the smaller states won't matter any more. They won't bother to visit these states in order to get elected. They will only go to the populous states and be sure to get their votes. Any important issues to a small state (e.g., the Alaska Pipeline) will be completely ignored if a more populous state can benefit from something else (e.g., Texas).
If you think the country is divided now, just wait after a few elections after implementing a national election and see how many divisions exist in this country.
Check out http://www.fec.gov/pdf/eleccoll.pdf to see why what we have now is a good idea, especially compared to a national popular vote.
I only use a couple words at a time to search. I see what kind of results that gives me, and do a second or third search with one or more keywords if I don't find what I'm after. Plus, Minus, and Quotes are the only three punctuation marks I use.
The only time I use a sentence is when I'm searching for a quote.
If you're worried about the RFID tags being detected wherever you go, consider this...
If you put your passport in a static bag, wouldn't it act like a Faraday cage and shield your passport from being detected?
If so, and I haven't tested this (anyone wanna try?), then if you upgrade the RAM in your PC you should be "protected" from these RFID privacy problems.
You are right, and completely wrong at the same time. The very reason that NY and CA do not run away with the election now is BECAUSE of the electoral college. Note that I was referring to the large states...not just NY and CA (the two largest in population). Without the electoral college, only the populous states would matter in an election. The smaller states would not matter except when the large states can't make up their minds.
It's interesting to note that for large democratic states, for example (i.e., don't read anything unintended into this), that if those republicans want a vote that matters, they should move to a smaller state or a republican state, or better yet, try to "convert" or attract more republicans. That doesn't happen very much. Why not? Could it be that there are other infuences involved, such as the state being fortunate enough to take advantage of the winds of fortune (see Pennsylvania or California as examples of steel and Internet winds) temporarily.
In short, if you don't like being a republican in a democratic state, or vice versa, move to one. If you're not willing to do it, then things must be fairly good where you are. Getting rid of the electoral college won't change this dynamic. In that case, if you want your vote to count, move to a large state. If you're not willing to do that, then you must have it pretty good in your small state.
Also, the electoral process we have now is very sensible, believe it or not. If we go with a national popular vote to elect the president, then you better move to New York or California if you want your vote to count for anything. Any of the smaller states will have no voice in the election once the large states have their say. Elections would degenerate to this state after only a few elections as people become discouraged.
If the people of Iraq petition to become a state, and then vote to become a state (or whatever the procedure is), then they can participate. Like that will ever happen.
As past lawsuits have shown, this is cyberquatting. However, I like your solution better.
He left the department on 10/1:
. htm
http://www.governor.ohio.gov/releases/080404hayes
But the artile listed above was printed 10/9. So this guy's dismissal had to have happened on or before 10/1. I suppose if this thing blows up, this quote "...what I am most looking forward to now is spending more time with my family" may not be as easy-going as he hopes.
1) 0%
2) 0%
3) 0%
4) 100%
5) 0%
But hey, that's just me.
That wasn't my point.
Just like Microsoft developed Excel and Word for the Macintosh, it could release Office for Linux. Yes, I know that will never happen and OpenOffice makes that a moot point anyway, but that is the best example to illustrate my point.
Develop and support the game using the same business models being used today (closed source), just write a version for Linux. Why must a game/application be open source just because it is supposed to run on an open source operating system? The only difference is that the company takes the responsibility of supporting it instead of the open source community supporting it.
I own a Handera 330. It does everything I want it to do. If it had color it would be perfect for me, and updating it with USB like the rest of the world is a good idea. With the CF slot I can plug in any other function I want, and with the MMC slot I can put in as much flash memory as I need (for MP3/JPG/backups/etc).
It's too bad they couldn't sell enough to come out with their next interation!
I do not care if Doom3 is open source or not. I am willing to pay iD for Doom3. I just want a version of the game to run on my Linux box. If that means I have to have a specific distribution, I could probably live with that. If that means that the Doom3 CD is a stand-alone CD that boots up and runs Doom3, that's fine (Hmmm...turn a PC into a real game console).
If the only reason they don't make games for Linux is because they're scared of open source (read: no profits, and opening up proprietary code), that is a pretty lame reason not to do it, IMnsHO. Just make a closed-source version of the game that I can run on Linux...that's all I need to get me to stop using Windows and switch to Linux permanently (i.e., no dual boot).
I'm already using OpenOffice, Mozilla, and other open source software in Windows as it is. The only reason I don't switch to Linux is the games!
The movie was like watching bad home movies. By the time anything interesting happened, the movie ended! I turned to my friends afterward, and said "I can't believe I paid money to see this!"
There was nothing scary about this movie. I suppose the fact that it got national attention on such a small production budget earns it some kudos, but it was an awful movie.
I had to stop RTFA because the opinions in it are just as flawed as the opinions it tries to dispell.
Remember, this was 1984. IBM was just introducing the IBMPC-AT. This had a new hardware design, using a 16-bit expansion slot, backward compatible to the existing 8-bit PC-XT slot. New hardware would be needed to take advantage of it. Compaq had just started gaining ground as the first successful clone of the IBMPC. IBM had not yet decided to change the hardware architecture of the PC with MCA. There was no VESA localbus, nor PCI. The IBMPC-AT used the new 80286, which had bugs in it at the top end of its address range (the phantom 64K thing, HMA). It was mostly compatible, but there had to be patches of software to fix it. There also had to be new versions compiled to take advantage of the new features of the chip. In short, the PC industry was still new.
The TRS-80, Apple II, Amigas, and their clones were still around. The Apple II was old and tired, being 7 years old. Introducing the Mac was a breakthrough.
If Apple had made the hardware open, and licenced the software OS, there WOULD have been clone manufacturers to appear to fill the need. If that was the case, then we all could be using Macintoshes today instead of the PC, and they would be as cheap as today's PC's. The trick was to do this early, before the world settled on one particular architecture.
The article referenced here is just presenting another opinion, and one that, in my opinion, is wrong.
I understand how DSL works. Yes, I *DO* want them to invest a few million in that infrastructure. If all companies had the attitude you suggest, then the only infrastructure that exists would be in major cities, and small cities and large towns would have everything backhauled to the major cities. When population grows in an area, you need the infrastructure to handle it. The extra cost will easily be offset by the increased customer base, and the long-term price to all customers will be negligible.
I don't see this as being an unreasonable customer. I see it as a lot of people saying "Hey, I want to give you some money for your service, all you have to do is come and get it." That's why I have Adelphia's Internet service. They were the first ones to build the infrastructure, so they got my money. Now they keep wanting more of it, and there's no competition. So I can't take my money elsewhere, and they know it.
I don't know what part of the country you are in, but around here, it's Adelphia or nothing. There is no cable competition. The only competition for cable is satellite, and just try to get broadband there for a lower price. The only broadband competition in my area is wireless, and I'm sure the price for cable and wireless (not to be confused with Cable and Wireless) would be more than what I pay now.
There isn't competition not because nobody is interested in competing, but because that is how the "utility" is regulated. Just like there is Verizon or nothing for telephone here. Oh, and Verizon hasn't decided to run DSL out to my area since we're too far from the CO, even though we are the largest town in the county.
So, since Adelphia is the only major high-speed player in this market, they are setting the price.
By the way, I'm watching the NASA-TV coverage of this event. There are at least three teams who attended the Chesapeake regional that I recognize that have made it to at least the quarter finals of the championships. As of right now (2:06PM eastern), one is in the semifinals.
Did you go out looking for sponsors? Did you learn anything from the engineers that helped you? Did you have any engineers helping you? How much building did YOU actually do?
FIRST isn't about students building a robot. If you want to do that, go build one for Robot Wars or BattleBots. If you don't want to build a robot, look into the Odyssey of the Mind competition.
FIRST is about marketing your team to get sponsorship. It's about getting community involvement in order to find engineers to help you and for people to help with logistics (shipping, travel, cheering section, etc). It's about LEARNING from those engineers. The robots just give you something technical to do to reach a goal: the competition. And there is supposed to be a website to get news out to the community, and there is an animated video you are to submit as part of the competition. It's not just a robot. Note that Odyssey of the mind is about a lot of the same stuff, too.
I have been a volunteer for both the Odyssey of the Mind and FIRST robotics competitions (Northern VA and Chesapeake Regional, respectively). I WISH I had the opportunity these students have when I was in school. I had LEGO's, Erector sets (no, not erection sets!), etc. and I had to build things on my own to learn the mechanics. The engineers involved on the FIRST teams are industry professionals. It would have been a great head start if I had learned the way things really are from a professional before I went to college.
If you didn't get professionals to help you, and you didn't get sponsors to give you free space to build your robot, or sponsors to donate time in a machine shop for your team, then you either didn't try hard enough, or you and your teacher/mentor didn't understand the game.
Your experience is the same as mine. I've posted this very thing before as well. Monster and WashingtonPost job boards are useless. The list of headhunters I had three years ago has nobody left still doing that work. I worked my personal network as well, and I got a few hits. I also got one offer...a good offer. I'm just waiting to be told when and where to start.
The job boards do serve one purpose. They're good at filling out the unemployment forms online on where I've applied to positions. I had over 150 to choose from...at least 20 a week. It's a good thing they will accept three a week or I'd be filling out the forms forever.