Not for nothing does the article refer to PS3s as "Trojan Horses", carrying disks we can't play anywhere they don't want us to into our homes. Those disks, presumably, will pop out of the front of these players and slit our throats the first night we own them.
Based on what I'm reading about the DRM in these and the companies involoved, the only way the consumers can get hurt is if EITHER of these format gets accepted.
Because she worked for Microsoft, she should recuse herself on Microsoft issues. On some levels this makes this discussion moot -- she's one we don't have to worry about. Would the REST of the court be favorable to Microsoft?
I just emailed this to comments@foxnews.com -- send somethign like it, but do better than me.
---
You just published (Wednesday, September 28, 2005) an absurd piece by Jim Prendergast.
The guy's paid by Microsoft. His article is absurd to anyone who is slightly technical. If you have a technology desk editor, he or she should be embarrassed that this made it into the paper. Unless Microsoft paid you to publish it.
Prendergast starts off by misstating the situation. "every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats" -- This is untrue. Using it as a premise allows him to imply that Microsoft products cannot be used.
Massachusetts has only said that all documents need to be in the format. That means that Microsoft need only add the ability to save in this format. Word saves in many formats already. A simple upgrade keeps them in the game.
But MS doesn't want to do that upgrade, because they want to keep a monopoly. This file format would let anyone read their files and use them, so they're fighting this.
Prendergast goes on with "Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making." Since this change allows Massachusetts to use several programs, instead of just Word, and since anyone who wants to play in Massachusetts need only add this file format, this is complete double-speak. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, etc.
I could rebut many more points in the article, but the reality is that there is very little here which is not simple distortion.
Here's my real point:
The fact that you published this means that YOU have no editorial judgment. It means you're either badly educated with respect to technology to the point of complete incompetence or in someone's pay. It means that since you don't hire competent editors, your other bureaus are suspect as well. Which means I cannot trust anything I read in your on-line news.
Fox doesn't know he's a shill. At least it's unlikely. Tell 'em. Eamil these guys and tell them why they just gave a lot of free advertising to MS, and who they have in their barn.
Tell them we now know how little they understand what they print.
comments@foxnews.com
Flood 'em. Let's lose this guy his job. Lord knows he'll have another in a second, but at least it'll be a little clearer to everyone that he's only working for them part-time, and will always have his main employer's interests at heart -- that is, Microsoft's.
I think you're both right and wrong -- right that Linux isn't the answer yet, but wrong on why.
Yes, it's an elitist attitude. All central control of dispersed machines needs to be or it's a nightmare. We're in the business of restricting the user's ability to do things, and more importantly, to add things.
No, these people really SHOULD be able to learn such a system. A. People are more versitile than you think, and B. The original poster is right -- if any computer literacy is involved in their job description, they should be able to learn a new system, else you're bogged down to one system forever.
(Sales folk should be both computer literate and willing to use systems, if corporate tells them to, because we need to be able to see where they're going and who they're talking to, and what leads they get and pursue. We need to be able to project end of month sales based on the behavior of the salespeople, we need to see how promotions are working in middle of month, not just when the paper-work comes in at 4pm on the 30th, and we need to minimize that paperwork in the first place by using paperless ordering systems.)
But learning a system doesn't mean being able to do everything you used to do. That's the whole point of this elitist way we have to do things. They will be MORE restricted. Period. They won't have admin rights, they won't be able to modify the OS, thy won't be able to add just anything they find that looks neato on the web.
(And Linux is a well designed OS, which means it can run scripts on a timer or on startup, and therefor can self-patch. While that may not be a just-works-right-out-of-the-box-solution it's very doable with some initial work.)
So on those levels I agree completely with the original poster.
But I think you're right that it's still not a working solution. And that's because we don't have all the apps we need. Our users need, rather. On one hand, Windows is a virus like many claim the GPL to be. You put Windows boxes in the headquarters, and you wind up needing Windows boxes as laptops to interact with those. (You are ABSOLUTLEY RIGHT about Exchange interoperablility.) I hate it, but it's true. And on the other hand, the best sales automation programs are under Windows, and we want them to have the best. So our salesfolk in the field will have Windows boxes for the forseeable future.
We'd need to get rid of most of the central Windows boxes to accomplish this, and we'd need to get very high-quality sales apps under Linux.
But if we had those, and could dump Windows on our laptops, our support staff's life would be easier, we'd spend less on laptops, we'd have more information about how our workers function and control over how our workers function, so as to maximize our investment. (Nightmare as that is in a society in general, those last two are important goals for a buisiness.)
I'm with you. On the hardware side, most of this stuff is easily reproducable. That's why it was done that way in the first place. A counter-example would be a friggin' Apple variable speed disk drive. Yikes.
As for file formats, virtually everything I encountered in my CP/M experiences could be figured out by a perl programmer in about 5 minutes.
Keeping this stuff around for reading history is silly. Keeping it around because it IS history makes more sense. I have a Kaypro-10 in my closet, and I don't show it off, but I'm hardly likely to sell it. It's still as good or better a word processor than a business-world Windows box, since it has a simple version of EMACS and a beautiful slow-phosphor greeen screen.
I have a friend who's trying to do installs on windows, and the lack of a decent scripting language, a way to produce a nice date-named file, or even a friggin' SLEEP function makes it almost impossible. A small, ported bash, ksh, sh, zsh, csh or any other shell would be FANTASTIC for lan admins.
Firstly, is there already one -- something which can be installed in \WIN or \WINNT or whatever, takes less than a 1M or so, and doesn't require a bunch of support files?
That's the requiement if you're going to put it on a bunch of machines without causing more trouble that you save.
If there isn't, I'd love it if someone ported over something with enough functionality to be useful, and running on all these different OS versions (even if you need different executables on each). It'd get a large following quickly. Monad would be a frustrating complication in the face of it, if everytone was using winsh, and had been for a year, and didn't need to use longhorn to get it, and knew it was available for use on one's entire installed based, so that no upgrade (besides a trivial install) was necessary.
Most faculty members are fine, many are great, but Universities have some who are crazy and evil. People will be unlikely to tell you flat out, so listen for hints and talk to a bunch of people. Don't work for a specific faculty member unless you know 'em pretty well, or have talked to a bunch of people privately about them.
The crazy ones can be more awful to people around them than anything you've ever experienced. Because they're not just rotten people, they're CRAZY, rotten people.
It's rare, but it happens enough that you need to scope folks out, first.
So they got a lot of energy out, but it's less than the energy in... What was the energy in, here? Heating the crystal? 100 degrees seems small. Separating the hydrogen from oxygen? Unless they turn it all into helium, it seems like they can recover most of that energy from any unspent hydrogen.
So where's the input energy?
And how much real energy are we talking about, here. Volts is only part of the equation. How about amps or watts or some other unit which gives us a real sense of the amount of power, not voltage?
It doesn't matter what CPU Apple uses. The Intel switch won't get them more marketshare or less, either. Properly spun, no one will care what processor it's on.
I'll care, 'cause I'm a techie and I've coded 8080's enough to hate little endian. But I'm the miniscule minority.
So while they may take marketshare away from HP or Dell (or for that matter lose it to them), that trajectory won't be any different than if they didn't switch.
Warm blooded animals and mammals in general have higher oxygen requirements than fish. Not positive about it, but I think it's a MASSIVE difference.
How much surface area is he going to need? Seems like it's going to be many times that of a fish. But then, that assumes the same efficiency as a fish's gills. Maybe he's far more efficient.
"Deeper, longer" (and uncut) seems like a controversial idea -- I don't mean just here, but rather, what about areas of the ocean with low concentrations, what other gasses get brought in, reserve capacity of the system, etc. What seems more likely and useful for recreational divers is "shallow, but longer." A 20 foot dive can now go on for hours. That'll be more fun for recreational divers who aren't interested in the down direction, so much as light reef diving.
If the idea is to run on a number of different CPUs (even if only x86) that'd be great. It's more Apple's style to go with only Xeon or only Pentium M, etc, though I think. We'll see.
A cut-off at some opcode base (like P4 or newer) might actually be a good thing. Windows is all 486+ code, at this point, still, right? Or is it pentium, now?
More Intel stuff? I like AMD because it's faster, and they just have better ideas than Intel.
I like Power because it's big endian. It's much more pleasant, and faster for IP.
I'd prefer Cell, new and untried as it is.
I love the idea of Apple changing chips and getting OS-X running on multiple architechtures -- therein lies the ability to chose the platform for the job. Ever think about OS-X for servers, really? How about supercomputers? How about embedded devices? -- right now it's just desktop (and people who have used it as a server OS will agree with that, in large part).
Yes, you can argue that the chip doesn't matter, but health, agility and growth in an OS is to run on multiple platforms. Chucking a platform to run on another isn't as good as a both/many aim. But I understand that that's a CS way of thinking, not a business one -- for the business, we want to widgitize it, and reduce costs.
But INTEL? They're hotter, slower and more expensive than AMD. They're behind on the dual core curve. If ya gotta go "all" why not go all opteron? Sigh. I suspect a sweet deal from Intel, and who can blame a business for chosing to go with that?
If Apple poured money into GCC they'd get sweet compilers, like those said to be the real reason for going Intel. And if they sped up (for example forking on) Darwin, they'd get more out of their existing chips.
It's a boring, frustrating move.
Reminds me of (though it's not as bad, clearly) as when SGI decided to drop IRIX in favor of NT.
I'm not a feminist. I like traditional roles. I like being the guy and there being a difference between the sexes, but engagement rings just piss me off.
The diamond engagement ring is a modern concept -- 1880's, thank you very much De Beers. But it sits on the chattel, economical arrangement ideas.
Engagement rings are expensive because they come from a tradition of viewing women as property, and men as providers, not partners. You're putting a down payment on her so as to keep her from marrying someone else, and to prove that you're successful. She wears it to prove to her friends that her husband is successful.
Wedding rings are great. They're generally cheap and function as symbols to two people binding to one another. Engagement rings are about materialism, conspicuous consumption, and investment in a woman as property via a down payment that you lose if you breach the contract.
If you MUST prove to her you're affluent, something's horribly wrong in your relationship. If you just want to prove it, stop for a second and think "why?" -- is it confidence issue for yourself, or are you just allowing the weight of history and our avaricious, hungry, capitalist society to put desires in your head?
If you really both want something to put on her finger to say "I am owned, even though I'm not yet married" to outsiders (and there's real comfort in that for both parties, I know), consider one of those Irish friendship rings, then she can box it away when she gets the real, mutual icon of the final attachment, instead of looking at it as so expensive she needs to wear it.
(or at least three) companies working on or who already have a hot new electric motor. We've seen other ones on slashdot (a year ago?).
Where's the battery advance? I'm asking that rhetorically, as I don't think there is anything real to report, silver bullet-wise, on batteries, and I'm worried that there won't be -- that fuel cells are the only hope.
Somebody PLEASE tell me I'm wrong and shoot us a URL.
What you're saying seems (at first) logically sound, but I can't agree to "if it is a Bell hardware problem, your wait time won't be decreased a whit." It's simply untrue. Not because a CLEC can actively fix SBC problems, but because a CLEC can tell SBC what it really needs to know, contact the right people, tell when nothing's happening, tell SBC people their jobs when they're dropping the ball, escalate and harrass in ways their long experience with SBC shows is effective (and not muddy the waters in ways which experience shows slow them down).
While it makes logical sense that CLEC tests before calling SBC mean a fomula like this:
CLEC TIME + SBC TIME = TOTAL TIME as opposed to a pure SBC model:
SBC TIME = TOTAL TIME What really happens (with a GOOD CLEC) is:
CLEC TIME + (SBC TIME / CLEC EFFICIENCY BOOST FACTOR) = TOTAL TIME
And CLEC time SHOULD be short, because a CLEC really needs your business. They're all small. They have to have a fast response to your problem, because they cannot afford to lose your business. The one I work for has spectacular uptimes compared to SBC -- and that's using SBC lines. When they do go down, they get dragged back up much faster than SBC would do it independant of us.
If you're not getting a quick response from your CLEC, or if you're not getting faster response out of SBC because you have a CLEC, you need to change CLECs.
An alternative to getting a good CLEC is to hire someone who used to work at SBC and is very good at telco, and who works mainly on keeping your lines up. That's expensive, though, given that a good CLEC will essentially provide this service and pay you (in the form of lowered rates) rather than requiring you to pay for such a person. Though saying all this makes me think that there's a market for being an outside-of-SBC consultant, and being on retainer for multiple companies...
And I can tell you definitely, that you're paying WAY TOO MUCH for those T1's.
That said, I know what you want is service, not price. If you go with a CLEC (a company which resells products the ILEC (the monopoly) sells, you're going through both SBC and a middle-man.
So, it's important that you get a good CLEC which is both very service oriented and is populated with at least some ex-SBC people who can call SBC Vice-Presidents who are old friends to get you back up in a timely manner, when SBC screws you, which they'll do from time to time. I know we make those calls, when the ILEC just isn't doing the right things, but I don't know about other CLECs.
When you're getting the ILEC to do something, like diagnose a line, you're often talking to underlings who don't know what they're doing. It's hugely helpful to have someone on your side of the phone who knows both their job and thei manager's job.
Get a CLEC.
Ask around. Get a company that's been in business for more than just a few years. And watch the salesman. If he gets all excited about some point to point T1's, that means they're small (or he is, unfortunately) and that they'll CARE about your business, unlike SBC.
And don't go with MCI. They're AWFUL, unless you're a giant company.
Good gravy. Talk about backwards. Passwords should be long and intuitive and used on secure machines with secure communications so that you can use the same password on a group of trusted machines without having to write them down.
Out with the password, in with the pass-phrase, and in with TOKENS.
They still have the advantage in networking and social building. Taking that break and hanging with the smokers is (if you pick your smokers well) good for your career.
It's also good for your social life. You can meet folks at OTHER companies out there on the ledge where you (I mean they) smoke.
And in most states, you're owed breaks. (If your employer gets sued it may force you to actually take 'em. You'll be surprised how much mandatory "stop what you're doing and waste some time" time there is.)
You're right, this is great. What the BBC reported, and what MSNBC wrote did not at all get what is important about this -- assuming we'd all see Buck Rogers in between the lines. What I saw by lack of detail was simplicity.
It's rare that there actually IS Buck Rogers in there. Thanks for the Duke Med News pointer.
It's a funding-by-media trick -- it generates buzz, but they've got a switch which moves an arm, and a single neuron controlling the on off. From down, to up. No control. You could also say "Monkey uses mind to start a car!" using the same single neuron to control a remote starter. Or "monkey controls gun!" by putting a solenoid on a trigger. Both would play well, but then you wouldn't get that nice picture of an arm moving.
There's no real science, here, just an application of 30 year old-tech.
Disclaimer: I'm basing this on my general distrust and what I am NOT seeing written here.
Slashdot Mirror
Based on what I'm reading about the DRM in these and the companies involoved, the only way the consumers can get hurt is if EITHER of these format gets accepted.
So, um... Where's door number 3?
Because she worked for Microsoft, she should recuse herself on Microsoft issues. On some levels this makes this discussion moot -- she's one we don't have to worry about. Would the REST of the court be favorable to Microsoft?
I just emailed this to comments@foxnews.com -- send somethign like it, but do better than me.
---
You just published (Wednesday, September 28, 2005) an absurd piece by Jim Prendergast.
The guy's paid by Microsoft. His article is absurd to anyone who is slightly technical. If you have a technology desk editor, he or she should be embarrassed that this made it into the paper. Unless Microsoft paid you to publish it.
Prendergast starts off by misstating the situation. "every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats" -- This is untrue. Using it as a premise allows him to imply that Microsoft products cannot be used.
Massachusetts has only said that all documents need to be in the format. That means that Microsoft need only add the ability to save in this format. Word saves in many formats already. A simple upgrade keeps them in the game.
But MS doesn't want to do that upgrade, because they want to keep a monopoly. This file format would let anyone read their files and use them, so they're fighting this.
Prendergast goes on with "Worse, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making." Since this change allows Massachusetts to use several programs, instead of just Word, and since anyone who wants to play in Massachusetts need only add this file format, this is complete double-speak. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, etc.
I could rebut many more points in the article, but the reality is that there is very little here which is not simple distortion.
Here's my real point:
The fact that you published this means that YOU have no editorial judgment. It means you're either badly educated with respect to technology to the point of complete incompetence or in someone's pay. It means that since you don't hire competent editors, your other bureaus are suspect as well. Which means I cannot trust anything I read in your on-line news.
Fox doesn't know he's a shill. At least it's unlikely. Tell 'em. Eamil these guys and tell them why they just gave a lot of free advertising to MS, and who they have in their barn.
Tell them we now know how little they understand what they print.
comments@foxnews.com
Flood 'em. Let's lose this guy his job. Lord knows he'll have another in a second, but at least it'll be a little clearer to everyone that he's only working for them part-time, and will always have his main employer's interests at heart -- that is, Microsoft's.
I think you're both right and wrong -- right that Linux isn't the answer yet, but wrong on why.
Yes, it's an elitist attitude. All central control of dispersed machines needs to be or it's a nightmare. We're in the business of restricting the user's ability to do things, and more importantly, to add things.
No, these people really SHOULD be able to learn such a system. A. People are more versitile than you think, and B. The original poster is right -- if any computer literacy is involved in their job description, they should be able to learn a new system, else you're bogged down to one system forever.
(Sales folk should be both computer literate and willing to use systems, if corporate tells them to, because we need to be able to see where they're going and who they're talking to, and what leads they get and pursue. We need to be able to project end of month sales based on the behavior of the salespeople, we need to see how promotions are working in middle of month, not just when the paper-work comes in at 4pm on the 30th, and we need to minimize that paperwork in the first place by using paperless ordering systems.)
But learning a system doesn't mean being able to do everything you used to do. That's the whole point of this elitist way we have to do things. They will be MORE restricted. Period. They won't have admin rights, they won't be able to modify the OS, thy won't be able to add just anything they find that looks neato on the web.
(And Linux is a well designed OS, which means it can run scripts on a timer or on startup, and therefor can self-patch. While that may not be a just-works-right-out-of-the-box-solution
it's very doable with some initial work.)
So on those levels I agree completely with the original poster.
But I think you're right that it's still not a working solution. And that's because we don't have all the apps we need. Our users need, rather. On one hand, Windows is a virus like many claim the GPL to be. You put Windows boxes in the headquarters, and you wind up needing Windows boxes as laptops to interact with those. (You are ABSOLUTLEY RIGHT about Exchange interoperablility.) I hate it, but it's true. And on the other hand, the best sales automation programs are under Windows, and we want them to have the best. So our salesfolk in the field will have Windows boxes for the forseeable future.
We'd need to get rid of most of the central Windows boxes to accomplish this, and we'd need to get very high-quality sales apps under Linux.
But if we had those, and could dump Windows on our laptops, our support staff's life would be easier, we'd spend less on laptops, we'd have more information about how our workers function and control over how our workers function, so as to maximize our investment. (Nightmare as that is in a society in general, those last two are important goals for a buisiness.)
Ok, so I have your basic skills necessary to do a better job than most computer forensics experts, or so some of the entries here imply.
What do they make? Any reason to try to get into that line of work?
I'm with you. On the hardware side, most of this stuff is easily reproducable. That's why it was done that way in the first place. A counter-example would be a friggin' Apple variable speed disk drive. Yikes.
As for file formats, virtually everything I encountered in my CP/M experiences could be figured out by a perl programmer in about 5 minutes.
Keeping this stuff around for reading history is silly. Keeping it around because it IS history makes more sense. I have a Kaypro-10 in my closet, and I don't show it off, but I'm hardly likely to sell it. It's still as good or better a word processor than a business-world Windows box, since it has a simple version of EMACS and a beautiful slow-phosphor greeen screen.
I have a friend who's trying to do installs on windows, and the lack of a decent scripting language, a way to produce a nice date-named file, or even a friggin' SLEEP function makes it almost impossible. A small, ported bash, ksh, sh, zsh, csh or any other shell would be FANTASTIC for lan admins.
Firstly, is there already one -- something which can be installed in \WIN or \WINNT or whatever, takes less than a 1M or so, and doesn't require a bunch of support files?
That's the requiement if you're going to put it on a bunch of machines without causing more trouble that you save.
If there isn't, I'd love it if someone ported over something with enough functionality to be useful, and running on all these different OS versions (even if you need different executables on each). It'd get a large following quickly. Monad would be a frustrating complication in the face of it, if everytone was using winsh, and had been for a year, and didn't need to use longhorn to get it, and knew it was available for use on one's entire installed based, so that no upgrade (besides a trivial install) was necessary.
Most faculty members are fine, many are great, but Universities have some who are crazy and evil. People will be unlikely to tell you flat out, so listen for hints and talk to a bunch of people. Don't work for a specific faculty member unless you know 'em pretty well, or have talked to a bunch of people privately about them.
The crazy ones can be more awful to people around them than anything you've ever experienced. Because they're not just rotten people, they're CRAZY, rotten people.
It's rare, but it happens enough that you need to scope folks out, first.
So they got a lot of energy out, but it's less than the energy in... What was the energy in, here? Heating the crystal? 100 degrees seems small. Separating the hydrogen from oxygen? Unless they turn it all into helium, it seems like they can recover most of that energy from any unspent hydrogen.
So where's the input energy?
And how much real energy are we talking about, here. Volts is only part of the equation. How about amps or watts or some other unit which gives us a real sense of the amount of power, not voltage?
It doesn't matter what CPU Apple uses. The Intel switch won't get them more marketshare or less, either. Properly spun, no one will care what processor it's on.
I'll care, 'cause I'm a techie and I've coded 8080's enough to hate little endian. But I'm the miniscule minority.
So while they may take marketshare away from HP or Dell (or for that matter lose it to them), that trajectory won't be any different than if they didn't switch.
Warm blooded animals and mammals in general have higher oxygen requirements than fish. Not positive about it, but I think it's a MASSIVE difference.
How much surface area is he going to need? Seems like it's going to be many times that of a fish. But then, that assumes the same efficiency as a fish's gills. Maybe he's far more efficient.
"Deeper, longer" (and uncut) seems like a controversial idea -- I don't mean just here, but rather, what about areas of the ocean with low concentrations, what other gasses get brought in, reserve capacity of the system, etc. What seems more likely and useful for recreational divers is "shallow, but longer." A 20 foot dive can now go on for hours. That'll be more fun for recreational divers who aren't interested in the down direction, so much as light reef diving.
If the idea is to run on a number of different CPUs (even if only x86) that'd be great. It's more Apple's style to go with only Xeon or only Pentium M, etc, though I think. We'll see.
A cut-off at some opcode base (like P4 or newer) might actually be a good thing. Windows is all 486+ code, at this point, still, right? Or is it pentium, now?
You stand CORRECT my friend.
So he should write a pile of those letters, then get his friends to HAND DELIVER THEM to the right person.
More Intel stuff? I like AMD because it's faster, and they just have better ideas than Intel.
I like Power because it's big endian. It's much more pleasant, and faster for IP.
I'd prefer Cell, new and untried as it is.
I love the idea of Apple changing chips and getting OS-X running on multiple architechtures -- therein lies the ability to chose the platform for the job. Ever think about OS-X for servers, really? How about supercomputers? How about embedded devices? -- right now it's just desktop (and people who have used it as a server OS will agree with that, in large part).
Yes, you can argue that the chip doesn't matter, but health, agility and growth in an OS is to run on multiple platforms. Chucking a platform to run on another isn't as good as a both/many aim. But I understand that that's a CS way of thinking, not a business one -- for the business, we want to widgitize it, and reduce costs.
But INTEL? They're hotter, slower and more expensive than AMD. They're behind on the dual core curve. If ya gotta go "all" why not go all opteron? Sigh. I suspect a sweet deal from Intel, and who can blame a business for chosing to go with that?
If Apple poured money into GCC they'd get sweet compilers, like those said to be the real reason for going Intel. And if they sped up (for example forking on) Darwin, they'd get more out of their existing chips.
It's a boring, frustrating move.
Reminds me of (though it's not as bad, clearly) as when SGI decided to drop IRIX in favor of NT.
I'm not a feminist. I like traditional roles. I like being the guy and there being a difference between the sexes, but engagement rings just piss me off.
The diamond engagement ring is a modern concept -- 1880's, thank you very much De Beers. But it sits on the chattel, economical arrangement ideas.
Engagement rings are expensive because they come from a tradition of viewing women as property, and men as providers, not partners. You're putting a down payment on her so as to keep her from marrying someone else, and to prove that you're successful. She wears it to prove to her friends that her husband is successful.
Wedding rings are great. They're generally cheap and function as symbols to two people binding to one another. Engagement rings are about materialism, conspicuous consumption, and investment in a woman as property via a down payment that you lose if you breach the contract.
If you MUST prove to her you're affluent, something's horribly wrong in your relationship. If you just want to prove it, stop for a second and think "why?" -- is it confidence issue for yourself, or are you just allowing the weight of history and our avaricious, hungry, capitalist society to put desires in your head?
If you really both want something to put on her finger to say "I am owned, even though I'm not yet married" to outsiders (and there's real comfort in that for both parties, I know), consider one of those Irish friendship rings, then she can box it away when she gets the real, mutual icon of the final attachment, instead of looking at it as so expensive she needs to wear it.
(or at least three) companies working on or who already have a hot new electric motor. We've seen other ones on slashdot (a year ago?).
Where's the battery advance? I'm asking that rhetorically, as I don't think there is anything real to report, silver bullet-wise, on batteries, and I'm worried that there won't be -- that fuel cells are the only hope.
Somebody PLEASE tell me I'm wrong and shoot us a URL.
What you're saying seems (at first) logically sound, but I can't agree to "if it is a Bell hardware problem, your wait time won't be decreased a whit." It's simply untrue. Not because a CLEC can actively fix SBC problems, but because a CLEC can tell SBC what it really needs to know, contact the right people, tell when nothing's happening, tell SBC people their jobs when they're dropping the ball, escalate and harrass in ways their long experience with SBC shows is effective (and not muddy the waters in ways which experience shows slow them down).
While it makes logical sense that CLEC tests before calling SBC mean a fomula like this:
CLEC TIME + SBC TIME = TOTAL TIME
as opposed to a pure SBC model:
SBC TIME = TOTAL TIME
What really happens (with a GOOD CLEC) is:
CLEC TIME + (SBC TIME / CLEC EFFICIENCY BOOST FACTOR) = TOTAL TIME
And CLEC time SHOULD be short, because a CLEC really needs your business. They're all small. They have to have a fast response to your problem, because they cannot afford to lose your business. The one I work for has spectacular uptimes compared to SBC -- and that's using SBC lines. When they do go down, they get dragged back up much faster than SBC would do it independant of us.
If you're not getting a quick response from your CLEC, or if you're not getting faster response out of SBC because you have a CLEC, you need to change CLECs.
An alternative to getting a good CLEC is to hire someone who used to work at SBC and is very good at telco, and who works mainly on keeping your lines up. That's expensive, though, given that a good CLEC will essentially provide this service and pay you (in the form of lowered rates) rather than requiring you to pay for such a person. Though saying all this makes me think that there's a market for being an outside-of-SBC consultant, and being on retainer for multiple companies...
And I can tell you definitely, that you're paying WAY TOO MUCH for those T1's.
That said, I know what you want is service, not price. If you go with a CLEC (a company which resells products the ILEC (the monopoly) sells, you're going through both SBC and a middle-man.
So, it's important that you get a good CLEC which is both very service oriented and is populated with at least some ex-SBC people who can call SBC Vice-Presidents who are old friends to get you back up in a timely manner, when SBC screws you, which they'll do from time to time. I know we make those calls, when the ILEC just isn't doing the right things, but I don't know about other CLECs.
When you're getting the ILEC to do something, like diagnose a line, you're often talking to underlings who don't know what they're doing. It's hugely helpful to have someone on your side of the phone who knows both their job and thei manager's job.
Get a CLEC.
Ask around. Get a company that's been in business for more than just a few years. And watch the salesman. If he gets all excited about some point to point T1's, that means they're small (or he is, unfortunately) and that they'll CARE about your business, unlike SBC.
And don't go with MCI. They're AWFUL, unless you're a giant company.
Good gravy. Talk about backwards. Passwords should be long and intuitive and used on secure machines with secure communications so that you can use the same password on a group of trusted machines without having to write them down.
Out with the password, in with the pass-phrase, and in with TOKENS.
They still have the advantage in networking and social building. Taking that break and hanging with the smokers is (if you pick your smokers well) good for your career.
It's also good for your social life. You can meet folks at OTHER companies out there on the ledge where you (I mean they) smoke.
And in most states, you're owed breaks. (If your employer gets sued it may force you to actually take 'em. You'll be surprised how much mandatory "stop what you're doing and waste some time" time there is.)
You're right, this is great. What the BBC reported, and what MSNBC wrote did not at all get what is important about this -- assuming we'd all see Buck Rogers in between the lines. What I saw by lack of detail was simplicity.
It's rare that there actually IS Buck Rogers in there. Thanks for the Duke Med News pointer.
Oops. If that's true, then it IS cool. I stand corrected.
It's a funding-by-media trick -- it generates buzz, but they've got a switch which moves an arm, and a single neuron controlling the on off. From down, to up. No control. You could also say "Monkey uses mind to start a car!" using the same single neuron to control a remote starter. Or "monkey controls gun!" by putting a solenoid on a trigger. Both would play well, but then you wouldn't get that nice picture of an arm moving.
There's no real science, here, just an application of 30 year old-tech.
Disclaimer: I'm basing this on my general distrust and what I am NOT seeing written here.