What I meant by "nobody else actually uses Bluetooth," is that out of the 140+ employees here, all of them with Bluetooth-enabled cellular phones and laptops, I am the only person that has it turned on. Ever.
I started toying with the idea of having my computer respond to my proximity. Unfortunately, it will only detect MY proximity, since everyone else has it turned off!
It was funny when IBM came to train us on xcat -- we wanted to share a PDF, but there is no infrared, bluetooth is turned off, and everyone runs firewalls. We had to revert to sneakernet to transfer a file between us. Pretty stupid, if you ask me.
Agreed -- most of the time, I talk on my cell for more than 4 hours a day. Then there's the appointment twiddling, games while I'm in the can, and I take a ton of pictures. Convergence devices are great, unless they don't do anything very well. Case and point is my Nokia 3650: Camera sucks, syncing sucks, nobody else actually uses Bluetooth, operating system is slow to respond, and no MP3 or external mic, video for only 30 seconds, etc. Still, there aren't any phones that out-function the old phone.
I carry one device. The features are lacking, but I won't buy another phone until it has the combination of features I want. Nokia's N90 is looking good, but I will not buy it with that silly multi-pin connector.
It is actually pretty obtuse looking, when compared to the iPod, or some of Nokia's modern phones. Where's the cool aesthetic design?
I am not one of those people who has a giant repository of MP3s -- I listen to somafm or other Internet radio things. Would a Wi-Fi phone let me play Internet streams?
I am quite happy with my Nokia 3650, though it does not play MP3s. Even this old phone out-features most phones on the market today (camera/video, Bluetooth, Infrared, MMC card slot) -- even though most of these features are kinda crappy. I just don't need another phone.
Also, I am pretty disappointed with phones and handhelds these days. My 3650 does everything my Palm Pilot did in '96. We need something more revolutionary in the same way the original PP was -- sensemaking, and simplicity. I like having the camera (as crappy as it is), but I would like to have more software settings for the camera (light levels, color, etc). They certainly could have done a better job with the operating system, even if they let us upgrade the firmware easily.
I am affraid of the headphone connector for Nokia's N90 -- why couldn't they include a standard headphone jack? Some of us corrode those inline bar-and-tooth connectors within seconds of touching the thing!
Jeez, I thought there would be a bias towards Bush, but greater than 70% in all cases. I wonder if someone's writen a paper on truth vs. google result numbers. Thanks again, Doc, rock-on.
I understand that it costs less to install a city-wide Wi-Fi network (one time fee) than it does to provide trashbags to the same city per year. While those are apples and oranges, you don't need to continuously redeploy the entire network every year. Wi-Fi, when done properly, is not a giant financial undertaking. I'd like to see more of this -- it is sensemaking!
So, it is obvious that government people here in the US just do not understand the Internet. Rather than try to change things, STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM IT. This is, after all, MY fucking Internet -- I helped build pieces of it. My blood, sweat, tears, fears, sexual desires, and future, are invested in this Internet.
It isn't quite triangulation, tho. Triangulation uses other receiving antennas to figure out where the transmitter is. You don't want to really do this with Wi-Fi. Each AP model has its own charichteristics, antennas, power-levels, and radiating patterns. Receiving Wi-Fi cards are just as diverse, and moreso with additional antennas.
So, while you do have to factor in all the diverse hardware, and make a model of a 'generic' AP and scanner, deal with GPS drift and errors, and I am sure a few other things, it can still be done -- especially with a large scale database, like WiFiMaps.com.
For contrast, I am 31 and unmarried. I also drive properly.
Unfortunately, I think that living in Boston, and not paying my parking tickets ontime -- it is treated as a moving violation, because they yank your license, registration, and unregister you to vote when this happens. Bastards!
I am kinda disgusted with insurance in general. I had Geico myself, and when vandals payed my Subaru a visit, I had to pay for the repair myself. The (expensive) cheapest plan I could get from them would not cover the damage.
So I switched insurance companies, bumped up the plan just to cover glass, and skimped on as much else as I could, to keep my insurance bill down. Now, I pay more than one of my coworkers does, and he has two cars and two people on the policy, and his policy covers damage and far more than my insurance plan does.
My uncle, who died a couple of months ago in a motorcycle accident which was not his fault, will not be receiving any money from the insurance companies. He's dead, and his family are missing that income, and no income from the insurance.
I own my car (finally), an 8 year-old partially chewed Subaru. It isn't even a nice car. This pisses me off. I wish I wasn't forced by law to pay money to a company which does nothing for that money I pay them. Health insurance is the same thing -- we all pay, but you can't use the service. Bastards.
There are no legitimate reasons to have them as commuter vehicles, unless you're a careless asshole. Like you said, they just don't care about other people on the road -- their car is big, and that's it.
I am not sure of what to do about assholeism on the highway. As a commuter in a Subaru, I see these people as accidents waiting to happen -- no turn signal, not paying attention to the lines in the road, not paying attention to the existance of other vehicles in their paths.
These people just don't care -- but how do we stop them? I think mandatory driving tests every couple of years may work. You must drive for an hour or two with your friend, and an instructor in the back seat, and have your license yanked for a period of time for each violation.
I'm personally for planned cities -- visit a town like Venice, and you'll see that it's perfectly possible to get around without owning a vehicle, so long as they're a little bit of public transit Think about how much cleaner New York could be if people couldn't bring vehicles in from outside, and there were only delivery vehicles, mass transit, and taxis.
And this is sensemaking, no? And so that probably won't happen here in the United States.
Look at Boston's Big Dig -- How long, and how way overbudget? TENS OF BILLIONS?!@ If you're not allowed to bring your vehicles into the City, and rapid transit is available, plus bicycles, small EVs -- it sounds like a scene in a science fiction movie, but we could have had some of these things in the friggin '70s, if our culture was based upon sense-making.
I say us geeks organize, make some sene, get off this planet, and leave the ninnies behind -- who's with me?
For those of us who live in the City, and commute to the suburban industrial parks (that are so increasingly popular), I don't have a garage, and as a consequence, no outlet to plug-in such a vehicle. While I'd love to not be spending $35 every week to fill the tanks of my 26.7mpg Subaru Outback Sport, this is unfortunately not a solution for me!
I would think that a turbine/electric hybrid would be the most useful in my case -- where are they? It's such a simple concept. I don't need a hybrid SUV , I need a practical and safe commuter vehicle, that handles my dumpster-diving habit, and the occasional day-long trips across states.
I seriously sometimes hate being outside the sales demographic, it makes TV, food, music, movies, and cars always a puzzle!
Very frustrating for me as a UNIX admin, and user. ALL, and let me put that in bold, ALL recruiters and HR people will only handle.doc resumes. Not a single recruiter or HR person I have ever dealt with (in 10 years) would accept a PDF, ASCII, or other formatted document. I find that fucking retarded, but it's something that we have to deal with if we want to eat.
Don't believe me? I have documented my job search. The best is when they send a blank email with a.doc attachment of the job description. That pisses me off too.
You're right! Free SPace Optics will become popular as soon as aiming mechanisms are dirt-cheap. Right now, you have to have engineers aim them, and the types of inexpensive equipment for this wouldn't even stay straight.
I have been using an Epson 1520 for about 5 years now. Very good at printing photos, and being a 4-color unit (not 7 or 15 color), it is cheap to get ink, and continuous ink supplies are available REALLY cheaply.
With people complaining about inkjets, you have to realize that this is the cheapest possible printing technique. Unfortunately, most manufacturers don't pay attention to what people want in a printer, and make their products to sell units -- not to last, or work great, etc.
This is why I bought a used HP 8000N laser printer. Now, I can print all the documents I want, and use my Epson for color photos. I have the best of both worlds!
JVCs are junk. At least this is my experience. I have a JVC DVL-505u, and it has given me nothing but troule -- I should have spent the extra $200 and got a canon. Granted, this was a while ago.
I'm into digital video. I used to work with ancient Macintosh computers, back in the days of MJPEG analog capture cards, about the time Premiere 2 came out. Ad nauseum, I'm into portable video, especially as gagetty as I am.
I'm looking for a digital camcorder which does 720x480, or x486 -- I think the extra 6 aren't needed if you are not capturing from an analog source. I'm also looking for MPEG2 or better. Compact Flash formats have disks of -- what, 4 gigs? I'll settle for SD or MMC.
There are a couple units like the Canon S2, this thing, and others. I didn't find a link to this ultra generic model. They're all 640x480, which bothers me.
Awesome link. I hate it when people can't park properly. It is nice to see a forum where people can be made fun of publicly for parking like an asshole!
Slashdot Mirror
What I meant by "nobody else actually uses Bluetooth," is that out of the 140+ employees here, all of them with Bluetooth-enabled cellular phones and laptops, I am the only person that has it turned on. Ever.
I started toying with the idea of having my computer respond to my proximity. Unfortunately, it will only detect MY proximity, since everyone else has it turned off!
It was funny when IBM came to train us on xcat -- we wanted to share a PDF, but there is no infrared, bluetooth is turned off, and everyone runs firewalls. We had to revert to sneakernet to transfer a file between us. Pretty stupid, if you ask me.
You left-out "nukular-saying."
Still makes them sound like stupid idiots that can't read. Nuclear - dealing with the nucleus. Pretty obvious to me which is right and which is wrong.
Agreed -- most of the time, I talk on my cell for more than 4 hours a day. Then there's the appointment twiddling, games while I'm in the can, and I take a ton of pictures. Convergence devices are great, unless they don't do anything very well. Case and point is my Nokia 3650: Camera sucks, syncing sucks, nobody else actually uses Bluetooth, operating system is slow to respond, and no MP3 or external mic, video for only 30 seconds, etc. Still, there aren't any phones that out-function the old phone.
I carry one device. The features are lacking, but I won't buy another phone until it has the combination of features I want. Nokia's N90 is looking good, but I will not buy it with that silly multi-pin connector.
It is actually pretty obtuse looking, when compared to the iPod, or some of Nokia's modern phones. Where's the cool aesthetic design?
I am not one of those people who has a giant repository of MP3s -- I listen to somafm or other Internet radio things. Would a Wi-Fi phone let me play Internet streams?
I am quite happy with my Nokia 3650, though it does not play MP3s. Even this old phone out-features most phones on the market today (camera/video, Bluetooth, Infrared, MMC card slot) -- even though most of these features are kinda crappy. I just don't need another phone.
Also, I am pretty disappointed with phones and handhelds these days. My 3650 does everything my Palm Pilot did in '96. We need something more revolutionary in the same way the original PP was -- sensemaking, and simplicity. I like having the camera (as crappy as it is), but I would like to have more software settings for the camera (light levels, color, etc). They certainly could have done a better job with the operating system, even if they let us upgrade the firmware easily.
I am affraid of the headphone connector for Nokia's N90 -- why couldn't they include a standard headphone jack? Some of us corrode those inline bar-and-tooth connectors within seconds of touching the thing!
My 2.2 Liter Subaru gets 350 miles on 13.2 gallons of gasoline. This is better how?
Oh, yuck, dewd! Didja really have to offer those pictures? Hell, I have plenty of pictures, but none of them are like *THAT*. Ugh!
Jeez, I thought there would be a bias towards Bush, but greater than 70% in all cases. I wonder if someone's writen a paper on truth vs. google result numbers. Thanks again, Doc, rock-on.
I understand that it costs less to install a city-wide Wi-Fi network (one time fee) than it does to provide trashbags to the same city per year. While those are apples and oranges, you don't need to continuously redeploy the entire network every year. Wi-Fi, when done properly, is not a giant financial undertaking. I'd like to see more of this -- it is sensemaking!
Totally. Also, look at the resulting difference in numbers of results between Kerry and Bush (or me for instance). Thanks, Doc!
Parking lots will be overflowing with war drivers...
...and this is a problem how?
So, it is obvious that government people here in the US just do not understand the Internet. Rather than try to change things, STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM IT. This is, after all, MY fucking Internet -- I helped build pieces of it. My blood, sweat, tears, fears, sexual desires, and future, are invested in this Internet.
We watch you while you sleep. Don't fuck with us.
It isn't quite triangulation, tho. Triangulation uses other receiving antennas to figure out where the transmitter is. You don't want to really do this with Wi-Fi. Each AP model has its own charichteristics, antennas, power-levels, and radiating patterns. Receiving Wi-Fi cards are just as diverse, and moreso with additional antennas.
So, while you do have to factor in all the diverse hardware, and make a model of a 'generic' AP and scanner, deal with GPS drift and errors, and I am sure a few other things, it can still be done -- especially with a large scale database, like WiFiMaps.com.
You could also check out WiFiMaps.com. We've been doing this for a while, but what makes us different, is that our database is open to the public.
For contrast, I am 31 and unmarried. I also drive properly.
Unfortunately, I think that living in Boston, and not paying my parking tickets ontime -- it is treated as a moving violation, because they yank your license, registration, and unregister you to vote when this happens. Bastards!
Heh. I live in Pittsburgh, 1989 is still years off in the future! This is a reminder for me to get out of this dinky little backwater.
I am kinda disgusted with insurance in general. I had Geico myself, and when vandals payed my Subaru a visit, I had to pay for the repair myself. The (expensive) cheapest plan I could get from them would not cover the damage.
So I switched insurance companies, bumped up the plan just to cover glass, and skimped on as much else as I could, to keep my insurance bill down. Now, I pay more than one of my coworkers does, and he has two cars and two people on the policy, and his policy covers damage and far more than my insurance plan does.
My uncle, who died a couple of months ago in a motorcycle accident which was not his fault, will not be receiving any money from the insurance companies. He's dead, and his family are missing that income, and no income from the insurance.
I own my car (finally), an 8 year-old partially chewed Subaru. It isn't even a nice car. This pisses me off. I wish I wasn't forced by law to pay money to a company which does nothing for that money I pay them. Health insurance is the same thing -- we all pay, but you can't use the service. Bastards.
There are no legitimate reasons to have them as commuter vehicles, unless you're a careless asshole. Like you said, they just don't care about other people on the road -- their car is big, and that's it.
I am not sure of what to do about assholeism on the highway. As a commuter in a Subaru, I see these people as accidents waiting to happen -- no turn signal, not paying attention to the lines in the road, not paying attention to the existance of other vehicles in their paths.
These people just don't care -- but how do we stop them? I think mandatory driving tests every couple of years may work. You must drive for an hour or two with your friend, and an instructor in the back seat, and have your license yanked for a period of time for each violation.
I'm personally for planned cities -- visit a town like Venice, and you'll see that it's perfectly possible to get around without owning a vehicle, so long as they're a little bit of public transit Think about how much cleaner New York could be if people couldn't bring vehicles in from outside, and there were only delivery vehicles, mass transit, and taxis.
And this is sensemaking, no? And so that probably won't happen here in the United States.
Look at Boston's Big Dig -- How long, and how way overbudget? TENS OF BILLIONS?!@ If you're not allowed to bring your vehicles into the City, and rapid transit is available, plus bicycles, small EVs -- it sounds like a scene in a science fiction movie, but we could have had some of these things in the friggin '70s, if our culture was based upon sense-making.
I say us geeks organize, make some sene, get off this planet, and leave the ninnies behind -- who's with me?
For those of us who live in the City, and commute to the suburban industrial parks (that are so increasingly popular), I don't have a garage, and as a consequence, no outlet to plug-in such a vehicle. While I'd love to not be spending $35 every week to fill the tanks of my 26.7mpg Subaru Outback Sport, this is unfortunately not a solution for me!
I would think that a turbine/electric hybrid would be the most useful in my case -- where are they? It's such a simple concept. I don't need a hybrid SUV , I need a practical and safe commuter vehicle, that handles my dumpster-diving habit, and the occasional day-long trips across states.
I seriously sometimes hate being outside the sales demographic, it makes TV, food, music, movies, and cars always a puzzle!
Very frustrating for me as a UNIX admin, and user. ALL, and let me put that in bold, ALL recruiters and HR people will only handle .doc resumes. Not a single recruiter or HR person I have ever dealt with (in 10 years) would accept a PDF, ASCII, or other formatted document. I find that fucking retarded, but it's something that we have to deal with if we want to eat.
.doc attachment of the job description. That pisses me off too.
Don't believe me? I have documented my job search. The best is when they send a blank email with a
You're right! Free SPace Optics will become popular as soon as aiming mechanisms are dirt-cheap. Right now, you have to have engineers aim them, and the types of inexpensive equipment for this wouldn't even stay straight.
Mod parent up!
I have been using an Epson 1520 for about 5 years now. Very good at printing photos, and being a 4-color unit (not 7 or 15 color), it is cheap to get ink, and continuous ink supplies are available REALLY cheaply.
With people complaining about inkjets, you have to realize that this is the cheapest possible printing technique. Unfortunately, most manufacturers don't pay attention to what people want in a printer, and make their products to sell units -- not to last, or work great, etc.
This is why I bought a used HP 8000N laser printer. Now, I can print all the documents I want, and use my Epson for color photos. I have the best of both worlds!
JVCs are junk. At least this is my experience. I have a JVC DVL-505u, and it has given me nothing but troule -- I should have spent the extra $200 and got a canon. Granted, this was a while ago.
I'm into digital video. I used to work with ancient Macintosh computers, back in the days of MJPEG analog capture cards, about the time Premiere 2 came out. Ad nauseum, I'm into portable video, especially as gagetty as I am.
I'm looking for a digital camcorder which does 720x480, or x486 -- I think the extra 6 aren't needed if you are not capturing from an analog source. I'm also looking for MPEG2 or better. Compact Flash formats have disks of -- what, 4 gigs? I'll settle for SD or MMC.
There are a couple units like the Canon S2, this thing, and others. I didn't find a link to this ultra generic model. They're all 640x480, which bothers me.
Here, have a bunch of opinionated spooge.
Awesome link. I hate it when people can't park properly. It is nice to see a forum where people can be made fun of publicly for parking like an asshole!