Yes, but they were stopped by the Wal-Mart - who pre-emptively sued to block the used of Wallholes as the new term for openings to the outside.
America: government by the lobbyists for the corporations... what a great plan.
He was not hip to current culture - he should have said: "Hell yeah, baby, I shagger her rotten and you would have too..." imitating Mike Myers as Austin Powers. He'd have been censured by the damned GOP laden congress anyway, but the public would have loved him for his forthright honesty.
Seriously, are you one of those conspiracy nuts who think everything is part of the government (or some ultra-powerful "shadow government") master plan to keep us all in line or whatever?
Well, governments pretty much exist only to keep power out of the hands of the people they claim to serve.
Well, define better...
Faster, yes. Certainly - and for most people that is the key.
However, derigibles are quieter, more fuel efficient, do not require long runways, and the ride is spaceous (because volume is not an issue, though wieght is). So flying to Europe may take 2 days, but you can dance, stroll around, and sleep in a proper (if air-filled) bed.
Could have certain application for retired (or less time constrained) tourists.
I have always felt that the problem the RIAA has with P2P is that it has the potential to remove the middleman/distributer/record label from the artist consumer equation.
To me this is all resoundingly familiar (giving away my age) the huge FUD campaign the RIAA created back when device makers were trying to standardize on DAT tape decks for home audio use. RIAA protested, not because of home piracy, but really because with digital recording at home musicians and artists no longer needed expensive studio time and equipment. Scratch the need for a class of dinosaur.
Computers with non-linear editing and digital recording have simply replaced DAT tape decks, and P2P networks are simply replacing direct-marketing - both could easily make recording labels obsolete, and worse - at this particular time the studio labels all have crappy talent.
No idea about yahoo specifically, but individual users of most ISP's mail systems can block HTML mail, and many choose to because HTML mail is far too easy to slip web-bugs and problems into.
We know that Usians are OK people as individuals, but the strengh of hate that your obnoxious corporations and their puppet government are creating will surprise you.
Thank the gods! Sometimes it seems so dark here in the U.S. that we media-blinded and hood-winked Americans can forget that there is hope from outside the corrupt facist oligarchy that has control here.
There is back-lash from within as well, though it is likely to be powerless against the corporations for some time to come.
I did not renew after the first year. Hell, I wanted a refund for the wasted money (cost of the car was higher because of the OnStar crap).
My reasons:
As a cellphone, it was insanely expensive per minute (~$1/minute if very few used, dropping gradually to $0.20 per minute the more you use) - compared to my Nextel, that 's insane.
As a Navigation system, it sucked. The directions were no better than the person at the other end of the call. Sometimes excellent, sometimes miserable... all depended on who was on shift. The directions were never turn by turn, instead - the call taker would rattle off the directions they pulled off of something like MapQuest/MapBlast and feed them to you all at once while you are on the call and expect you to call back as often as you needed to to get to the destination. Compared to any onboard turn-by-turn system, this was dramatically inferior, especially on rainy nights where you are still counting on being able to read road signs (the turn by turn ones can almost direct a blind person). Even worse, the map source the OnStar call center people use was not as up to date as the 2 year old CD's in my wife's BMW! (this was a shock, in theory OnStar's maps can always be up to date because they bypass the whole distribution of media thing).
I never lock myself out of the car, so did not care about that.
I am concerned about privacy, and OnStar can be set to passively listen and there is no way I can tell that it is doing so.
I already have lojack.
The remaining reason to keep OnStar active (the hypothetical emergency services call that can happen if airbags deploy and I am out cold), just is not enough to make me subscribe to such expensive service.
I do wish I could drop my cell phone in a cradle and use the hands free mikes and speakers with my own cell phone.
I use Sony's discontinued StreeetMapUSA software and GPS dongle for decent directions on my laptop, though this really needs a passenger for turn-by-turn capabilities that my wife enjoys in her BMW.
Back in 1994, the US Air Force had a "technical school" (the training you get right after basic training) that taught computer programming in a 12 week, full days course. The course used both PDL (a mock programming language) and flowchart logic, and you could solve any problem given in the class in either PDL or flowcharting, but then also had to be able to create the flowchart from the PDL or the PDL from the flowchart.
I found that a fascinating concept and it has stuck with me ever since - som people think graphically, some think procedurally. Translation from one to the other is not a big deal, so don't force people to learn a thinking method that does not work for them, let them think how they like and then translate to make both documentations available.
Each solution was then gone over line by line (or picture by picture) until the problem was thoroughly diagnosed by the entire class. In 12 weeks, you really would learn generic programming, and if you were lucky your first duty assignment allowed you to proactice what you just learned and apply it to a real language (meaning any computer language in use at the time - many people graduated "programmers" but then got assignments with no programming involved at all).
So when you ask - can the military teach programming... my answer is hell yes. In some ways better than most colleges. Sadly, right after learning how, most airmen quickly forget because they end up doing junk work that has no programming in it at all.
Many young troops pick this up as a hobby because their jobs are so unrelated to their desired career, they develope their skills. A few get a lucky duty assignment where they can actually develope their skills. A few pick up an inspirational contracted training class from a nearby college professor of a professional services company. Those lucky few end up decent programmers and/or IT professionals. The rest are probably not fit to load tapes.
Sadly, the military - like most guaranteed job scenarios offers no incentive to perform and very little incentive to stay in if you do perform - so over time most of the good folks leave and the result that is in any military IT unit, fewer than 1% are worth employing.
When I worked at the 7th Communications Group at the Pentagon (about 600 USAF, 500 civil service) I frequently felt like 15% of the people were doing all the work and carrying the other 85% on their backs. When I left (in 1994 - shortly after conversion to DISA), I would not have taken more than about 10 people with me if given the opportunity (yes, only 10 out of 1100 were worth it, ouch!). Several of those 10 eventually did end up at the same company.
Another anomally about the military way, is that rank has absolutely nothing to do with programming skill. That lends to the problem of no incentive for performing. Don't assume that a Colonel knows any more or any less than an Airman First Class. The Colonel pays more in taxes than the Airman makes, but they may have equal computer skills... I am not saying all high ranking officers are dumb, some of them are brilliant - but the skills are not reflected by rank at all.
So while OSS continues to make great inroads in the OS space, for example (lots of interesting work there), it's hard to picture a loose collection of programmers building a serious contender to SAP or PeopleSoft's product set. They're not interesting enough projects to inspire passion in peoples' free time, at least not the the necessary degree. And there's a LOT of money/effort spent on this dull sort of software.
Very good point, but there is a solution - governments (and all paying customers) should demand that they have a right to view the source for themselves - after signing non-disclosures that they will not rip it off. The obvious problem with this solution is that the greedy corporations will cry that they might get ripped off by the same people they've be ripping off for a decade... sigh.
I really do hope that someday all publically funded agencies will learn to demand "source visible" software products, and mostly use open source except for those few areas where open source has not solved the problem adequately yet.
Oracle, the world's second-largest software company, need not worry (yet) about governments switching to open-source alternatives to its database software.
I disagree, at least for small databases that are OLTP in nature. Postgress and MySQL both have duplicated all the relevant featurs of Sybase/Oracle/DB2, and at a fraction of the cost in systems - let along license fees.
I am guessing that just as Linux has eaten the low end sales of HP-UX, Solaris, Irix, classic AIX, and Digital UNIX systems - MySQL and Postgress will much on the soft underbelly of database software (OLTP servers with 4 database engines or fewer that have database footprints of less than 100GB).
Scaleability, and a few decision support features are all that are left and this "battle" will have been won, and the only Oracle can do is a holding action much like IBM Mainframes have done against desktop computers.
I have had to tell WETA (the local public television station) many times. They were so annoying, that I ended up changing my phone number. The sad thing is I enjoy public television and liked to donate a small amount each year, but now I am morally obliged to let them rot. I contribute to WMPT (which I also get) and they have never called.
A few years after this happened I moved, and the WETA junk mail (regular U.S. Post) actually followed me to my new address. I guess they have a big budget for sending out junk mail and do not need my charitable contribution after all.
That cranor.org site is very interesting, but the authors (who write a very good brief to be sure) keep missing one type of election fraud: keeping legitimate registered voters from legally voting.
A voting system is both inaccurate and vulnerable if it allows corrupt officials to deny voting priviledges to those who are eligible.
I think the really interesting thing here is that IBM is recognizing that there is a real need for an Itanium alternative in the server market... With SGI and HP both sunsetting their own traditial chip designs (MIPS and HP-PA) in favour of Itanium, some IT manglers are afraid that there will not be sufficient diversity to survive serious design flaws that may crop up in any one architecture.
I doubt this is connected at all with Apple's 970 offerings. IBM is already moving their AIX heritage to allegedly scaleable Linux, which is cool in concept (if unproven), and they are replacing their own Power architecture with PPC 970 - this is simply IBM staying in the UNIX server market - within their own strategic initiatives. A move I welcome, as it gives me at least a hope of a second non-Itanium based UNIX vendor 5-10 years from now.
They can pry my MIPS based Irix boxes from my cold, dead fingers - but someday I'll feel differently (when those boxes are really old and no longer supported). When that time comes, I'd prefer not to run Itanium (I still don't trust Intel for serious server work) and I'd prefer not to run Solaris/UltraSPARC - I trust Sun even less than I trust Intel - at least since they got all corporate.
What I REALLY hope, is that HP decides to offer HP-UX on either Itanium or PPC in the future - giving customers like me a choice not to use Itanium... HP has dealt with IBM before - and it worked (LVM is feature starved, but rock solid).
The desktop discussion (Apple or Amiga clones) is really non-sequitor - though it could be an interesting side-benefit of the new servers...
That was the best and last useable version of Word.... (grin)
SID or Directory Opus (both from Amiga OS)
on
A Better Finder?
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· Score: 1
I really miss Timm Martin's shareware program SID and a commercial product called Directory Opus. Both were file/directory utilities on the Amiga OS - and neither would replace the finder outright - but both offered interesting alternatives.
I used SID extensively for quickly sorting very large numbers of old text files. SID was so useful at this, that I would routinely use tar archive entire directory structures to QIC 150MB tapes, cart the tapes home, extract the archives on my trusty old Amiga, use SID to sort out and clean up the files, and re-organize them into more meaningful directory structures, then tar the results onto a tape to take back to my UNIX boxes at work. Back then (1988 - 1992) I routinely wished for SID for UNIX.
Today I still wish I had SID on Mac OSX. I no longer fire up the old Amiga - finder's detailed list view - with side by side finder windows showing different directories is pretty close to what SID looked like, so I no longer tar things off to the Amiga for SID sorting... but I wish SID were available for Mac OSX, because it was much more useful than two finder windows are. Much faster at many operations too.
Re:OS X Finder Laundry List - Please add yours.
on
A Better Finder?
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· Score: 1
Copy/Replace Dialogs: i wish they'd tell you the sizes of the files that are being copied and about to be over-written... then I could make the appropriate decision based on the facts that are before me, rather than having to go look in the background...
Re:OS X Finder Laundry List - Please add yours.
on
A Better Finder?
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· Score: 1
It is specifically more slow when the view is set such that file type or modification time are used as the key index (sort order). It is much faster if name is used as the key index. At least in column view.
I ditched Verizon (the local RBOC monopoly) when they refused to correct their mistakes on my basic local service installation. Their total disregard for me as a customer, based in the (un)sound logic that I had no choice was what put me off.
I had not even investigated the possibility of VoIP when I made the call. I was not even sure broadband would be available in my area via cable modem (DSL was out, as one way or another it uses Verizon's incorrectly hooked up lines).
What I did know what that Nextel and Sprint coverage (wireless) was excellent in my new house, and that for less than I paid Verizon for a land-line, caller id, anonymous call blocking, and unlisted number - I get the same plus voicemail and effectively free US long distance from Nextel.
We got lucky and Comcast rolled cable modem access into the neighborhood a month before we moved in. It is expensive, but it works.
Comcast may even offer local phone service eventually, which could be interesting.
The only difficult thing has been clubbing my home security alarm monitoring company into accepting cell phone calls.
Best thing about it has been absolutely no cold calling (at least so far).
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Hey, that sounds like the M.O. of the Bush Administration... I wonder if dubya is a Civ2 player? COOL!
Furthermore, the distaction from problems at home ability of Iraq is wearing out, so they need another distraction fast!
Yes, but they were stopped by the Wal-Mart - who pre-emptively sued to block the used of Wallholes as the new term for openings to the outside. America: government by the lobbyists for the corporations... what a great plan.
He was not hip to current culture - he should have said: "Hell yeah, baby, I shagger her rotten and you would have too..." imitating Mike Myers as Austin Powers. He'd have been censured by the damned GOP laden congress anyway, but the public would have loved him for his forthright honesty.
Seriously, are you one of those conspiracy nuts who think everything is part of the government (or some ultra-powerful "shadow government") master plan to keep us all in line or whatever? Well, governments pretty much exist only to keep power out of the hands of the people they claim to serve.
Well, define better... Faster, yes. Certainly - and for most people that is the key. However, derigibles are quieter, more fuel efficient, do not require long runways, and the ride is spaceous (because volume is not an issue, though wieght is). So flying to Europe may take 2 days, but you can dance, stroll around, and sleep in a proper (if air-filled) bed. Could have certain application for retired (or less time constrained) tourists.
To me this is all resoundingly familiar (giving away my age) the huge FUD campaign the RIAA created back when device makers were trying to standardize on DAT tape decks for home audio use. RIAA protested, not because of home piracy, but really because with digital recording at home musicians and artists no longer needed expensive studio time and equipment. Scratch the need for a class of dinosaur.
Computers with non-linear editing and digital recording have simply replaced DAT tape decks, and P2P networks are simply replacing direct-marketing - both could easily make recording labels obsolete, and worse - at this particular time the studio labels all have crappy talent.
No idea about yahoo specifically, but individual users of most ISP's mail systems can block HTML mail, and many choose to because HTML mail is far too easy to slip web-bugs and problems into.
Thank the gods! Sometimes it seems so dark here in the U.S. that we media-blinded and hood-winked Americans can forget that there is hope from outside the corrupt facist oligarchy that has control here.
There is back-lash from within as well, though it is likely to be powerless against the corporations for some time to come.
Hell, I wanted a refund for the wasted money (cost of the car was higher because of the OnStar crap).
My reasons:
I do wish I could drop my cell phone in a cradle and use the hands free mikes and speakers with my own cell phone.
I use Sony's discontinued StreeetMapUSA software and GPS dongle for decent directions on my laptop, though this really needs a passenger for turn-by-turn capabilities that my wife enjoys in her BMW.
I found that a fascinating concept and it has stuck with me ever since - som people think graphically, some think procedurally. Translation from one to the other is not a big deal, so don't force people to learn a thinking method that does not work for them, let them think how they like and then translate to make both documentations available.
Each solution was then gone over line by line (or picture by picture) until the problem was thoroughly diagnosed by the entire class. In 12 weeks, you really would learn generic programming, and if you were lucky your first duty assignment allowed you to proactice what you just learned and apply it to a real language (meaning any computer language in use at the time - many people graduated "programmers" but then got assignments with no programming involved at all).
So when you ask - can the military teach programming... my answer is hell yes. In some ways better than most colleges. Sadly, right after learning how, most airmen quickly forget because they end up doing junk work that has no programming in it at all.
Many young troops pick this up as a hobby because their jobs are so unrelated to their desired career, they develope their skills. A few get a lucky duty assignment where they can actually develope their skills. A few pick up an inspirational contracted training class from a nearby college professor of a professional services company. Those lucky few end up decent programmers and/or IT professionals. The rest are probably not fit to load tapes.
Sadly, the military - like most guaranteed job scenarios offers no incentive to perform and very little incentive to stay in if you do perform - so over time most of the good folks leave and the result that is in any military IT unit, fewer than 1% are worth employing.
When I worked at the 7th Communications Group at the Pentagon (about 600 USAF, 500 civil service) I frequently felt like 15% of the people were doing all the work and carrying the other 85% on their backs. When I left (in 1994 - shortly after conversion to DISA), I would not have taken more than about 10 people with me if given the opportunity (yes, only 10 out of 1100 were worth it, ouch!). Several of those 10 eventually did end up at the same company.
Another anomally about the military way, is that rank has absolutely nothing to do with programming skill. That lends to the problem of no incentive for performing. Don't assume that a Colonel knows any more or any less than an Airman First Class. The Colonel pays more in taxes than the Airman makes, but they may have equal computer skills... I am not saying all high ranking officers are dumb, some of them are brilliant - but the skills are not reflected by rank at all.
grinning, ducking and running...
Very good point, but there is a solution - governments (and all paying customers) should demand that they have a right to view the source for themselves - after signing non-disclosures that they will not rip it off. The obvious problem with this solution is that the greedy corporations will cry that they might get ripped off by the same people they've be ripping off for a decade... sigh.
I really do hope that someday all publically funded agencies will learn to demand "source visible" software products, and mostly use open source except for those few areas where open source has not solved the problem adequately yet.
I disagree, at least for small databases that are OLTP in nature. Postgress and MySQL both have duplicated all the relevant featurs of Sybase/Oracle/DB2, and at a fraction of the cost in systems - let along license fees.
I am guessing that just as Linux has eaten the low end sales of HP-UX, Solaris, Irix, classic AIX, and Digital UNIX systems - MySQL and Postgress will much on the soft underbelly of database software (OLTP servers with 4 database engines or fewer that have database footprints of less than 100GB).
Scaleability, and a few decision support features are all that are left and this "battle" will have been won, and the only Oracle can do is a holding action much like IBM Mainframes have done against desktop computers.
I have had to tell WETA (the local public television station) many times. They were so annoying, that I ended up changing my phone number. The sad thing is I enjoy public television and liked to donate a small amount each year, but now I am morally obliged to let them rot. I contribute to WMPT (which I also get) and they have never called.
A few years after this happened I moved, and the WETA junk mail (regular U.S. Post) actually followed me to my new address. I guess they have a big budget for sending out junk mail and do not need my charitable contribution after all.
ROTFLMAO!
A voting system is both inaccurate and vulnerable if it allows corrupt officials to deny voting priviledges to those who are eligible.
I doubt this is connected at all with Apple's 970 offerings. IBM is already moving their AIX heritage to allegedly scaleable Linux, which is cool in concept (if unproven), and they are replacing their own Power architecture with PPC 970 - this is simply IBM staying in the UNIX server market - within their own strategic initiatives. A move I welcome, as it gives me at least a hope of a second non-Itanium based UNIX vendor 5-10 years from now.
They can pry my MIPS based Irix boxes from my cold, dead fingers - but someday I'll feel differently (when those boxes are really old and no longer supported). When that time comes, I'd prefer not to run Itanium (I still don't trust Intel for serious server work) and I'd prefer not to run Solaris/UltraSPARC - I trust Sun even less than I trust Intel - at least since they got all corporate.
What I REALLY hope, is that HP decides to offer HP-UX on either Itanium or PPC in the future - giving customers like me a choice not to use Itanium... HP has dealt with IBM before - and it worked (LVM is feature starved, but rock solid).
The desktop discussion (Apple or Amiga clones) is really non-sequitor - though it could be an interesting side-benefit of the new servers...
Damn you, you tease!
That was the best and last useable version of Word.... (grin)
I used SID extensively for quickly sorting very large numbers of old text files. SID was so useful at this, that I would routinely use tar archive entire directory structures to QIC 150MB tapes, cart the tapes home, extract the archives on my trusty old Amiga, use SID to sort out and clean up the files, and re-organize them into more meaningful directory structures, then tar the results onto a tape to take back to my UNIX boxes at work. Back then (1988 - 1992) I routinely wished for SID for UNIX.
Today I still wish I had SID on Mac OSX. I no longer fire up the old Amiga - finder's detailed list view - with side by side finder windows showing different directories is pretty close to what SID looked like, so I no longer tar things off to the Amiga for SID sorting... but I wish SID were available for Mac OSX, because it was much more useful than two finder windows are. Much faster at many operations too.
Copy/Replace Dialogs: i wish they'd tell you the sizes of the files that are being copied and about to be over-written... then I could make the appropriate decision based on the facts that are before me, rather than having to go look in the background...
It is specifically more slow when the view is set such that file type or modification time are used as the key index (sort order). It is much faster if name is used as the key index. At least in column view.
I had not even investigated the possibility of VoIP when I made the call. I was not even sure broadband would be available in my area via cable modem (DSL was out, as one way or another it uses Verizon's incorrectly hooked up lines).
What I did know what that Nextel and Sprint coverage (wireless) was excellent in my new house, and that for less than I paid Verizon for a land-line, caller id, anonymous call blocking, and unlisted number - I get the same plus voicemail and effectively free US long distance from Nextel.
We got lucky and Comcast rolled cable modem access into the neighborhood a month before we moved in. It is expensive, but it works.
Comcast may even offer local phone service eventually, which could be interesting.
The only difficult thing has been clubbing my home security alarm monitoring company into accepting cell phone calls.
Best thing about it has been absolutely no cold calling (at least so far).
I was specifically checking to see if MSIE would not be on them anymore, but it is still there.
Sounds like the beginnings of a great new filter rule (grin).