EPB in Chattanooga is only about 50 miles from Murphy, NC. If they showed interest in expanding, it becomes interstate commerce and, therefore, a federal matter. (I'm not a lawyer, so YMMV.)
My SpeedTest after the announcement had me at 60 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up.
More importantly, in two years I have had exactly zero downtime, as compared to my former monthly visits from Comcast.
Topher
I've found that shaking cayenne pepper around the perimeter of the building and along the cable runs does much the same thing. I've heard of contractors mixing capsaicin into mortar and caulking on new buildings--apparently it also seems to repel cockroaches as well.
I vaguely recall having one delivery problem in nine months, and that was probably just me trying to download the L.A. Times too early in the morning (I'm on Eastern time and I usually download it around 7:30 with no problems).
I've had subscriptions to three newspapers on the Kindle, and they are all a bit different. All share the common feature of the front section having headlines and the first three or four lines of the article. What I do is move back and forth between this section and the articles (using the Back button to return to where I left off in the front section). At the front of each article is a next article link, so it's also very easy to just jump from one article to the next after the first paragraph.
The New York Times has pictures, the L.A. Times doesn't, so that is a consideration. Also, they don't send the comics or the crossword puzzles, so you'll miss those.
Right now I have about three months of the L.A. Times on my Kindle (I deleted older papers manually, but theoretically they should be available forever once downloaded), and the search feature is pretty quick. I can search through every book and newspaper on my Kindle in about a minute.
Topher
No argument there. My main reason for getting the Kindle was newspaper access (I really like being able to wake up to my L.A. Times in Chattanooga) and not proprietary eBook reading. I would really like to be able to share the proprietary books with friends (currently I can only share with my significant other's Kindle), but it hasn't been a show-stopper for me.
No SD card slot and when the battery starts to die the early adopters can just buy a new battery... and they paid the same price. Who really got the better deal?
Thanks for the info. I was trying to convince myself that the Kindle 2 was better, now I know I should just stick with my trusty original.
There is one reason to keep information that old classified: Protecting the identities, and the lives, of current operatives.
Here's an example: Let's say the CIA's current operatives in Shanghai were all recruited by a long-serving operative there, starting back in the 1960's. If the classified information provides enough information for China to identify him, China can go back into their intelligence files and possibly identify people with whom he has had regular contact over the years, allowing them to identify the current operatives. This could cripple the intelligence network for that area, and possibly result in the deaths of many CIA employees.
We do about half of our sales through eBay, and we've been there since close to the beginning (1997). This isn't necessarily because we want to do business through them, it's just easier to find buyers through them than through our normal websites. eBay is very good at getting our items pushed to the top of search engines.
For a while, we were the largest eBay Store in our category, with about 12,000 items. We also ran about 1,000 auctions every week, mostly to drive people from the auctions to our store items (if a potential buyer was interested in one kind of product, our auction listing would give them an option to click on related items in our store). A few months ago, in an effort to drive business toward eBay Express, eBay dramatically increased the rates for eBay Store listings (from between 150% and 400%, depending on the cost of the item). This price increase had two results. First, many of our competitors opted to leave eBay completely, preferring to try their luck with other venues. Second, our profit margin on eBay dropped significantly.
We haven't seen any significant sales through eBay Express, and we don't expect that to change. I'd guess that eBay has probably lost a significant amount from this experiment, because their attempt to push people toward an undesirable venue has caused them to lose a large number of high-volume sellers.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Turning the internet over to a non-U.S. body could be seen as "abridging the freedom of speech" of its citizens. Therefore, turning over control to the U.N. or to another entity voluntarily simply can't be done legally.
In this case karma did work . . . and someone else ratted them out before I had the chance (he had actually begun the process before I left). The company had a knack for really angering employees.
My intent had been to wait until I was settled into a new job, as I've heard horror stories about whistleblowers in the past, and the situation was bad enough that I quit without having a new job in hand. As it turned out all I had to do was feed information to the employee who had beaten me to the punch to get the job done.
. . . so your first move is to learn that company's system.
I've worked for companies where taking responsibility for mistakes was a death knell, but I worked for another where being the company scapegoat allowed me to advance very quickly--because upper management knew who I was and that I got things done.
One boss wanted everything cleared through him; another was happy to give me projects and leave me alone to do them. One company was very strict with policies and procedures; my current employer couldn't care less about how I get things done.
The best piece I can give is not to sell out. You can always find another job--but you have to be able to live with yourself.
I did have one job where I walked away after learning about serious companywide fraud that I was expected to perpetuate. I've never regretted it.
It's a pen. Frankly, I had a "Big Fat Mont Blanc" and wasn't impressed. It didn't allow me to write faster, make my handwriting more legible, or make my message more intellectual, so I sold the silly thing on eBay. A fine automobile, on the other hand, is generally faster, handles better, and is potentially safer than a "second-hand Toyota." A Mont Blanc is a status symbol best used to impress middle management.
If someone walks into my office and takes my Bic, no big deal. I use the black crystal Bic for standard writing and a red crystal Bic for commenting on the work of others. They do the job well, and I never have to worry about where to find a refill.
At the start of the project (which is, unfortunately, where I got most of my information) the intended fuel was sylene. I remember the design team being concerned about this because of difficulties posed by the corrosive properites of the fuel.
The concept of a scramjet is, despite what I wrote earlier, really elegant. The launch vehicle possibilities for a design incorporating a scramjet as a mid-to-high level boost stage are intriguing. Viewing things from the inside on the X-43 program, however, leads me to believe that the Frankenstein's monster of a testbed they created was due mainly to political, rather than engineering, considerations. I'm fairly certain that it isn't entirely coincidental that the prime contractor (Microcraft) and one subcontractor were located in VP Gore's home state.
I worked for one of the companies involved in this program, although not directly on the program itself.
Let's see, we've got a scramjet test aircraft, which will be boosted to hypersonic speeds by a modified Pegasus rocket, which will be dropped from a B-52. So, besides developing the scramjet test aircraft, an interface system between the Pegasus and the X-43A needs to be designed and the whole system tested.
That didn't bother me too much. What really got me was what the point of the program was in the first place. The goal was to test the ability of a scramjet engine to propel an aircraft at hypersonic speeds. The Pegasus booster was supposed to accelerate the test aircraft to hypersonic speeds, then detach, at which point the scramjet would be started and the instrumentation would transmit 10 seconds of data. Besides the limited amount of data, if I recall correctly, the scramjet was not supposed to even maintain the aircraft's speed, which calls into question the value of the technology as a means of propulsion, in my opinion.
If I recall, the contract value was $33 million, and was significantly overrun. Your tax dollars at work (if you're American).
In a previous career I worked for Accurate Automation, who had several NASA and USAF contracts to design a Mach 5 aircraft known as LoFLYTE (Low Observable Flight Test Experiment).
In August 1996, the Times of London felt that this program was the cause of several UFO sightings over the U.K. and Belgium from 1989-1991 and printed a front page story to that effect. The Belgian Minister of Defense eventually closed the investigation of the UFO sightings by agreeing with this claim. The problem with these claims, however, was that the plane did not fly at all until December 1996, and the version that flew was an 8-foot long fiberglass aircraft with a top speed significantly below Mach 1.
One of the issues that the LoFLYTE program was designed to investigate is one that the DARPA programs will also face: How do you design an aircraft that can fly at hypersonic speeds but that can also be controlled at take-off and landing speeds?
One other thing to consider: Do you need a warhead in a hypersonic cruise missile, or will a hypersonic shockwave do all the damage you need?
In a previous job I used to manage a development group. I had a few simple rules, which seemed to work for everyone:
1. Give me 40 hours per week. You pick which 40, as long as 10:00-11:00 a.m. Monday was one of them.
2. I let the programmers divide the tasks among themselves. I had one guy who loved doing interfaces and another who enjoyed driver development, so I assigned the tasks accordingly.
3. I mostly let the programmers make the hiring/firing decisions. I almost always had job applicants interview with each current programmer. If I received repeated reports of someone not being a good team player (the most blatant example was one programmer insisting on using Pascal when the rest of the team was using C++), I took appropriate action.
My problem was that my boss was a micromanager who would walk the halls interrupting programmers for hours at a time. He wanted daily status reports on most projects (my policy was for strict version management and weekly Monday morning meetings to bring the team up to date). Fortunately, one of my programmers developed a status report generator, which would randomly generate one-page status reports. My boss would also pull programmers off-task to work on his Etch-a-sketch or to do tech support for one of the admin staff, when there were others better qualified and, more importantly, more available for that sort of work. Most of my programmers would quit within two years, telling me to call them when I worked somewhere else.
Since eBay had already banned the seller when I first looked at the feedback (for what I think was an unrelated issue), it was probably the right thing to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Um...how many cable network providers do YOU have where you live? Does ANYONE have three (3) or more?
Chattanooga, Tennessee. EPB, Comcast, AT&T. But yeah, almost no one has a choice. I'm lucky.
EPB in Chattanooga is only about 50 miles from Murphy, NC. If they showed interest in expanding, it becomes interstate commerce and, therefore, a federal matter. (I'm not a lawyer, so YMMV.)
My SpeedTest after the announcement had me at 60 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up. More importantly, in two years I have had exactly zero downtime, as compared to my former monthly visits from Comcast. Topher
I've found that shaking cayenne pepper around the perimeter of the building and along the cable runs does much the same thing. I've heard of contractors mixing capsaicin into mortar and caulking on new buildings--apparently it also seems to repel cockroaches as well.
I vaguely recall having one delivery problem in nine months, and that was probably just me trying to download the L.A. Times too early in the morning (I'm on Eastern time and I usually download it around 7:30 with no problems).
I've had subscriptions to three newspapers on the Kindle, and they are all a bit different. All share the common feature of the front section having headlines and the first three or four lines of the article. What I do is move back and forth between this section and the articles (using the Back button to return to where I left off in the front section). At the front of each article is a next article link, so it's also very easy to just jump from one article to the next after the first paragraph. The New York Times has pictures, the L.A. Times doesn't, so that is a consideration. Also, they don't send the comics or the crossword puzzles, so you'll miss those. Right now I have about three months of the L.A. Times on my Kindle (I deleted older papers manually, but theoretically they should be available forever once downloaded), and the search feature is pretty quick. I can search through every book and newspaper on my Kindle in about a minute. Topher
No argument there. My main reason for getting the Kindle was newspaper access (I really like being able to wake up to my L.A. Times in Chattanooga) and not proprietary eBook reading. I would really like to be able to share the proprietary books with friends (currently I can only share with my significant other's Kindle), but it hasn't been a show-stopper for me.
No SD card slot and when the battery starts to die the early adopters can just buy a new battery... and they paid the same price. Who really got the better deal?
Thanks for the info. I was trying to convince myself that the Kindle 2 was better, now I know I should just stick with my trusty original.
Recently, the cost of an ebook for the Kindle has been comparable to the cover price for a hardback copy.
Nah. Most current NYTimes bestsellers go for $9.99, which is normally less than half the cover price for the hardback.
I have a ton of PG books on my Kindle. It's very easy to load them with the USB cable, or I could pay 10 cents to send them via Amazon's server.
There is one reason to keep information that old classified: Protecting the identities, and the lives, of current operatives.
Here's an example: Let's say the CIA's current operatives in Shanghai were all recruited by a long-serving operative there, starting back in the 1960's. If the classified information provides enough information for China to identify him, China can go back into their intelligence files and possibly identify people with whom he has had regular contact over the years, allowing them to identify the current operatives. This could cripple the intelligence network for that area, and possibly result in the deaths of many CIA employees.
We do about half of our sales through eBay, and we've been there since close to the beginning (1997). This isn't necessarily because we want to do business through them, it's just easier to find buyers through them than through our normal websites. eBay is very good at getting our items pushed to the top of search engines.
For a while, we were the largest eBay Store in our category, with about 12,000 items. We also ran about 1,000 auctions every week, mostly to drive people from the auctions to our store items (if a potential buyer was interested in one kind of product, our auction listing would give them an option to click on related items in our store). A few months ago, in an effort to drive business toward eBay Express, eBay dramatically increased the rates for eBay Store listings (from between 150% and 400%, depending on the cost of the item). This price increase had two results. First, many of our competitors opted to leave eBay completely, preferring to try their luck with other venues. Second, our profit margin on eBay dropped significantly.
We haven't seen any significant sales through eBay Express, and we don't expect that to change. I'd guess that eBay has probably lost a significant amount from this experiment, because their attempt to push people toward an undesirable venue has caused them to lose a large number of high-volume sellers.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Turning the internet over to a non-U.S. body could be seen as "abridging the freedom of speech" of its citizens. Therefore, turning over control to the U.N. or to another entity voluntarily simply can't be done legally.
In this case karma did work . . . and someone else ratted them out before I had the chance (he had actually begun the process before I left). The company had a knack for really angering employees.
My intent had been to wait until I was settled into a new job, as I've heard horror stories about whistleblowers in the past, and the situation was bad enough that I quit without having a new job in hand. As it turned out all I had to do was feed information to the employee who had beaten me to the punch to get the job done.
. . . so your first move is to learn that company's system.
I've worked for companies where taking responsibility for mistakes was a death knell, but I worked for another where being the company scapegoat allowed me to advance very quickly--because upper management knew who I was and that I got things done.
One boss wanted everything cleared through him; another was happy to give me projects and leave me alone to do them. One company was very strict with policies and procedures; my current employer couldn't care less about how I get things done.
The best piece I can give is not to sell out. You can always find another job--but you have to be able to live with yourself.
I did have one job where I walked away after learning about serious companywide fraud that I was expected to perpetuate. I've never regretted it.
It's a pen. Frankly, I had a "Big Fat Mont Blanc" and wasn't impressed. It didn't allow me to write faster, make my handwriting more legible, or make my message more intellectual, so I sold the silly thing on eBay. A fine automobile, on the other hand, is generally faster, handles better, and is potentially safer than a "second-hand Toyota." A Mont Blanc is a status symbol best used to impress middle management.
If someone walks into my office and takes my Bic, no big deal. I use the black crystal Bic for standard writing and a red crystal Bic for commenting on the work of others. They do the job well, and I never have to worry about where to find a refill.
At the start of the project (which is, unfortunately, where I got most of my information) the intended fuel was sylene. I remember the design team being concerned about this because of difficulties posed by the corrosive properites of the fuel.
The concept of a scramjet is, despite what I wrote earlier, really elegant. The launch vehicle possibilities for a design incorporating a scramjet as a mid-to-high level boost stage are intriguing. Viewing things from the inside on the X-43 program, however, leads me to believe that the Frankenstein's monster of a testbed they created was due mainly to political, rather than engineering, considerations. I'm fairly certain that it isn't entirely coincidental that the prime contractor (Microcraft) and one subcontractor were located in VP Gore's home state.
I worked for one of the companies involved in this program, although not directly on the program itself.
Let's see, we've got a scramjet test aircraft, which will be boosted to hypersonic speeds by a modified Pegasus rocket, which will be dropped from a B-52. So, besides developing the scramjet test aircraft, an interface system between the Pegasus and the X-43A needs to be designed and the whole system tested.
That didn't bother me too much. What really got me was what the point of the program was in the first place. The goal was to test the ability of a scramjet engine to propel an aircraft at hypersonic speeds. The Pegasus booster was supposed to accelerate the test aircraft to hypersonic speeds, then detach, at which point the scramjet would be started and the instrumentation would transmit 10 seconds of data. Besides the limited amount of data, if I recall correctly, the scramjet was not supposed to even maintain the aircraft's speed, which calls into question the value of the technology as a means of propulsion, in my opinion.
If I recall, the contract value was $33 million, and was significantly overrun. Your tax dollars at work (if you're American).
In a previous career I worked for Accurate Automation, who had several NASA and USAF contracts to design a Mach 5 aircraft known as LoFLYTE (Low Observable Flight Test Experiment).
In August 1996, the Times of London felt that this program was the cause of several UFO sightings over the U.K. and Belgium from 1989-1991 and printed a front page story to that effect. The Belgian Minister of Defense eventually closed the investigation of the UFO sightings by agreeing with this claim. The problem with these claims, however, was that the plane did not fly at all until December 1996, and the version that flew was an 8-foot long fiberglass aircraft with a top speed significantly below Mach 1.
One of the issues that the LoFLYTE program was designed to investigate is one that the DARPA programs will also face: How do you design an aircraft that can fly at hypersonic speeds but that can also be controlled at take-off and landing speeds?
One other thing to consider: Do you need a warhead in a hypersonic cruise missile, or will a hypersonic shockwave do all the damage you need?
In a previous job I used to manage a development group. I had a few simple rules, which seemed to work for everyone:
1. Give me 40 hours per week. You pick which 40, as long as 10:00-11:00 a.m. Monday was one of them.
2. I let the programmers divide the tasks among themselves. I had one guy who loved doing interfaces and another who enjoyed driver development, so I assigned the tasks accordingly.
3. I mostly let the programmers make the hiring/firing decisions. I almost always had job applicants interview with each current programmer. If I received repeated reports of someone not being a good team player (the most blatant example was one programmer insisting on using Pascal when the rest of the team was using C++), I took appropriate action.
My problem was that my boss was a micromanager who would walk the halls interrupting programmers for hours at a time. He wanted daily status reports on most projects (my policy was for strict version management and weekly Monday morning meetings to bring the team up to date). Fortunately, one of my programmers developed a status report generator, which would randomly generate one-page status reports. My boss would also pull programmers off-task to work on his Etch-a-sketch or to do tech support for one of the admin staff, when there were others better qualified and, more importantly, more available for that sort of work. Most of my programmers would quit within two years, telling me to call them when I worked somewhere else.
Yahoo! has an updated story here.
You can see the new and "improved" feedback here.
Since eBay had already banned the seller when I first looked at the feedback (for what I think was an unrelated issue), it was probably the right thing to do.
This guy (Roger, not Robert, by the way) uses the ID rgrace@metnews.com.
You can view his feedback profile at http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPI Command=ViewFeedback&userid=rgrace%40metnews.com&i tems=25