It doesn't take a team of people millions of dollars and months to shoot a porn movie, let alone a porn clip, let alone a set a photos. Give me 10 cute girls, a digital camera, and a week or so, and I can throw together a pretty professional website with lots of content for next to nothing.
Seriously... give me 10 cute girls and a digital camera...
For the real paranoids: Grocery stores that use these cards often give you one large card for your wallet and two small ones for your key-ring. Most people pop the large one into their wallet and toss out the rest of the packaging.
I find about one a week on the sidewalk outside the QFC grocery store.
Use that and pay in cash and Big Grocery Brother will give you your "discount" without being able to compile a list of what kind of toilet paper feels most comfortable against your hairy ass.
I live in Seattle where there's so much WiFi available (free or otherwise) that it would be foolish for any business not to provide outlets for their customers. In fact, I've noticed places ADDING outlets and power strips. There's one place in Belltown that has a plug at each table, at table height so you don't even have to stoop over to plug in.
The biggest problem that I can see some businesses having is that people DON'T WANT TO LEAVE their nice cushy spot next to an outlet, which can be off putting to other potential customers.
I frequently see people walk up to a coffeehouse, look through the window... see that there's nowhere (near a plug) to sit and walk away.
The last few times I dared watch X-Play (about a month ago), I noticed that the show went from criticism, to showing cinematics and previews of upcoming games. Opinions seem to have been removed from the show. It was like a series of commercials interrupted by lame banter.
At least Morgan was still hot... but that's just not enough anymore, so I tuned out forever.
So now Mel Brooks needs to come out with a Special Edition with souped up graphics that clash with the rest of the film, CGI John Candy, and Rick Moranis replaced by Hayden Christiansen's older less successful brother, Tove Christiansen.
If you have an iPod and a laptop, you can go to the local library, rip the book to mp3, stick it on your iPod and then delete it when you're done listening. Works for me.
It's not general knowledge, Apple stores have factory reconditioned iPods for sale.
I was going to buy a 20 gig iPod, but the salesman clued me in and I bought a refurbished 30 gig for less than a price of a new 20 gig (old prices). It came with the usual accessories and the same one year warranty.
The Mac user approaches an unfamiliar PC and recoils in horror, screaming "Oh my god! This mouse has 3 buttons on it! Where do I click? WHERE? And a scroll wheel?"
He faints dead away, knowing that his expansive vocabulary, and advanced writing skills were useless...
If I were paying $20 a month for the premium version of Hotmail or Yahoo, I think I would feel slightly irritated to discover that those tiny mailboxes that I'd been putting up with for years, were completely uncessary.
It's nice that the premium accounts are given two gigs of space, but upsetting that Hotmail/Yahoo had to be "forced" into doing it by Google.
I think it's telling how accustomed we are to getting screwed over that MOST PEOPLE THOUGHT GMAIL WAS A JOKE when it was announced on April 1st, because they couldn't imagine a 1 gig webmail account.
Imus' audience is mainly middle of the road left wingers... and he does quite a lot of talking about politics so he's preaching to choir. Stern's listenership is more right wing... and Stern doesn't usually involve himself in politics in more than a superficial way. Stern can "flip" votes. Imus can't.
Imagine how long Rush would stay on the air if he turned on the Republican party.
Clear Channel seemed to have no problems with what Stern was saying when he was a Bush backer, as he was until he came back from a week-long vacation having read Al Franken's book.
He does an adult show, but welcome to the 21st century... if you don't like the show, turn off your radio, don't turn off mine.
You don't find it curious that obscene and pro-Bush was ok with Clear Channel, while obscene and anti-Bush was not? The timing of the hearings gave them the perfect excuse to drop him from the channels that they own. Stern was recently fined for a show that he did 3 YEARS AGO. Where was the Clear Channel outrage then?
BTW - I wasn't taking a political stance one way or another... but way to over-react there...
And I'll be sure to get clearance from the Tolkien estate next time I decide to use the English language...
Yes... I know... off-topic. But I'm sure that the poster of the above response probably wouldn't hire me based on my political leanings;^)
I could see Clear Channel screening their employees to determinine their political loyalties.
Clear Channel is a well known supporter of the Republicans and G.W. Bush... and they have fired DJs in the past who spoke out against the administration, organized pro-war rallies, and most recently dropped Howard Stern after he began to speak out against Bush.
If a tool exists, it will be used... both for good or for ill.
I temped at an HMO for about a year and they finally were forced to hire me because they could no longer keep temps, due to a newly implemented policy.
Their hiring policy was that any job posting HAD to be posted publicly for at least 48 hours, and they used Monster.com for this purpose. In that time period, they recieved about 90 resumes for my position.
How do I know this? It was my job to sort my boss's email and print them out.
There was absolutely no intention to read any of these resumes or invite anyone for an interview. I stopped taking online job searches seriously after this experience.
As an off-topic post-script:
Six months to the day after I was hired, I was laid off because my job was automated. Actually, it was at my six-month evaluation... after taking most of my work away from me, the new manager stated that I didn't seem to be "working out" the way they expected. I found out later from a coworker that they never intended to hire me in the first place, as they always intended on automating my position, but the "offshore" programmer that they hired to write the program that automated my job, took longer than they expected. If they kept me on beyond the six months, I would have to get severance pay!
These new automated reports were skimpy and full of errors, but only a handfull of people actually read them... so it really didn't matter to anyone.
I like to imagine that there was once a time where people weren't so disposable... but I'm sure that's not true.
The same thing happened to me in my the later half of my twenties... but it was more than games... it included movies and music.
I think it has to do with the sheer amount of stuff that we have. When I was a young kiddie pushing the boxy pixels around on a screen, I had maybe half a dozen games to play with so I enjoyed them more. Thousands of games later, I've grown very jaded and the best graphics in the world aren't going to bring back my enthusiasm for very long.
Really, it's the same thing with all objects... when you can focus on a few things, you achieve greater understanding and pleasure... but the more you have, the less pleasure individual things bring you, until one day you don't feel much of anything at all and it's time to move on to the next thing.
Ah...but in a business setting, you don't want to have Macs that are capable of passing along a virus or worm to your clients who might be running a PC. It looks very unprofessional.
Additionally, it might be easier to make the case for getting a Mac into a Windows office if you can point at the existence of current Anti-Virus software... at it makes the suits less nervous.
That's true of pretty much any sort of mass produced food product that's sold all over the world. Greek Nescafe makes excellent frape (a shaken coffee drink, with milk, sugar and ice).
Greek soda-pop has much more of a kick to it than the American counterpart. I have many friends who swear by Mecican Coca-Cola, which they say is truer to the original formula (no, not the one with cocaine in it).
In Seattle Millennium Cable's top residential "High-Speed" offering is 150KB/s for $49.95. I get it as part of a package and share it with two other roommates who rarely use it, so it makes the pricing easier to swallow. The service goes down about once a month.
If I lived TWO BLOCKS closer to downtown Seattle, I could get Comcast which is 250KB/s for about $10 - $15 more.
DSL with Qwest isn't even an option that I care to investigate. I've been through that experience.
I called Comcast to find out why I couldn't get service through them... they were apologetic but told me that the city regulations prevented them from selling me service as the city of Seattle has a contract with Millennium for that part of town.
I have no great love for Comcast, but it's disheartening to keep bumping up against government regulations that protect substandard service and reward mediocrity.
This may be my imagination, but CDs that I bought in the early 90s felt a little heavier and appeared a little bit thicker than CDs that I buy now.
I noticed the same thing with videotapes and floppy discs.
In the case of CDs and DVDs, I think that cheaper material translates into higher flaw and failure rates... as the data has less plastic to protect the data from wear and tear.
Has it occurred to anyone that the machines that use the media also use cheaper parts as well? Portable CD players that I've used in the recent past seem less forgiving of scratches than the big clunker that I owned ten years ago.
I quit drinking coffee three weeks ago. Drinking lots of water helps cut down on the headaches... and upping your protein intake seemed to help me as well. If going to the coffee house or stand is part of your daily routine, get a steamer (steamed milk) instead of coffee. It's 1/2 to 1/3 of the price of a mocha or a breve.
One unexpected side effect of quitting is that my contact lenses work better. Coffee had the effect of dehydrating me to the point where my contacts would dry by two in the afternoon.
I have a wireless network in my house and I live in a part of Seattle that is saturated with cafes (and at least one bar) that provide free wireless for the price of a cup of coffee (or beer). I can think of nine places within a 1 mile radius of my house where I pop open my laptop and be connected without having to log in or pay anything extra. This number seems to be growing every month.
Meanwhile, no one seems to be using the T-Mobile/Starbuck's WiFi service. I tried it. Beyond the expense, I was irritated that I had to log on and off using Internet Explorer, and there appeared to be no way to upgrade or downgrade your account without having to call the 800 number and trust your luck that the person answering the phone would actually do what you needed done. Without screwing it up.
I tried another for pay service in an independent cafe with pretty much the same results.
Face it, unless the government steps in and forces independent free wireless ISPs to charge a fee for service, I can't imagine for pay WISPs making enough money to survive, let alone roam.
I notice that most sites break up a story over 3 or 4 pages to show you more adverts, so the first place my eyes go to is the "print version" icon so I can read the article without having to dodge commercials.
Although, banner ads appear on the top and bottom of print versions as well, at least they aren't in the middle.
Some of the doctors in the all Windows hospital that I work at have Macs. How do they pull that off?
It's part of their contracts.
Some hospitals will go a LONG way to attract top doctors, and that includes agreeing to let them use a non-standard OS... so I could see some of the more stubborn and powerful doctors in an all Linux hospital continuing to use Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't take a team of people millions of dollars and months to shoot a porn movie, let alone a porn clip, let alone a set a photos. Give me 10 cute girls, a digital camera, and a week or so, and I can throw together a pretty professional website with lots of content for next to nothing.
Seriously... give me 10 cute girls and a digital camera...
For the real paranoids: Grocery stores that use these cards often give you one large card for your wallet and two small ones for your key-ring. Most people pop the large one into their wallet and toss out the rest of the packaging.
I find about one a week on the sidewalk outside the QFC grocery store.
Use that and pay in cash and Big Grocery Brother will give you your "discount" without being able to compile a list of what kind of toilet paper feels most comfortable against your hairy ass.
I live in Seattle where there's so much WiFi available (free or otherwise) that it would be foolish for any business not to provide outlets for their customers. In fact, I've noticed places ADDING outlets and power strips. There's one place in Belltown that has a plug at each table, at table height so you don't even have to stoop over to plug in.
The biggest problem that I can see some businesses having is that people DON'T WANT TO LEAVE their nice cushy spot next to an outlet, which can be off putting to other potential customers.
I frequently see people walk up to a coffeehouse, look through the window... see that there's nowhere (near a plug) to sit and walk away.
The last few times I dared watch X-Play (about a month ago), I noticed that the show went from criticism, to showing cinematics and previews of upcoming games. Opinions seem to have been removed from the show. It was like a series of commercials interrupted by lame banter.
At least Morgan was still hot... but that's just not enough anymore, so I tuned out forever.
Well done Comcast...
So now Mel Brooks needs to come out with a Special Edition with souped up graphics that clash with the rest of the film, CGI John Candy, and Rick Moranis replaced by Hayden Christiansen's older less successful brother, Tove Christiansen.
I was going to buy a 20 gig iPod, but the salesman clued me in and I bought a refurbished 30 gig for less than a price of a new 20 gig (old prices). It came with the usual accessories and the same one year warranty.
And there's always the eBay option
He faints dead away, knowing that his expansive vocabulary, and advanced writing skills were useless...
It's nice that the premium accounts are given two gigs of space, but upsetting that Hotmail/Yahoo had to be "forced" into doing it by Google.
I think it's telling how accustomed we are to getting screwed over that MOST PEOPLE THOUGHT GMAIL WAS A JOKE when it was announced on April 1st, because they couldn't imagine a 1 gig webmail account.
Er... this is Slashdot... LINUX... not Windows... You like to look out a Linux and see a beautiful view...
Imagine how long Rush would stay on the air if he turned on the Republican party.
Clear Channel seemed to have no problems with what Stern was saying when he was a Bush backer, as he was until he came back from a week-long vacation having read Al Franken's book.
He does an adult show, but welcome to the 21st century... if you don't like the show, turn off your radio, don't turn off mine.
You don't find it curious that obscene and pro-Bush was ok with Clear Channel, while obscene and anti-Bush was not? The timing of the hearings gave them the perfect excuse to drop him from the channels that they own. Stern was recently fined for a show that he did 3 YEARS AGO. Where was the Clear Channel outrage then?
BTW - I wasn't taking a political stance one way or another... but way to over-react there...
And I'll be sure to get clearance from the Tolkien estate next time I decide to use the English language...
Yes... I know... off-topic. But I'm sure that the poster of the above response probably wouldn't hire me based on my political leanings ;^)
Clear Channel is a well known supporter of the Republicans and G.W. Bush... and they have fired DJs in the past who spoke out against the administration, organized pro-war rallies, and most recently dropped Howard Stern after he began to speak out against Bush.
If a tool exists, it will be used... both for good or for ill.
Their hiring policy was that any job posting HAD to be posted publicly for at least 48 hours, and they used Monster.com for this purpose. In that time period, they recieved about 90 resumes for my position.
How do I know this? It was my job to sort my boss's email and print them out.
There was absolutely no intention to read any of these resumes or invite anyone for an interview. I stopped taking online job searches seriously after this experience.
As an off-topic post-script:
Six months to the day after I was hired, I was laid off because my job was automated. Actually, it was at my six-month evaluation... after taking most of my work away from me, the new manager stated that I didn't seem to be "working out" the way they expected. I found out later from a coworker that they never intended to hire me in the first place, as they always intended on automating my position, but the "offshore" programmer that they hired to write the program that automated my job, took longer than they expected. If they kept me on beyond the six months, I would have to get severance pay!
These new automated reports were skimpy and full of errors, but only a handfull of people actually read them... so it really didn't matter to anyone.
I like to imagine that there was once a time where people weren't so disposable... but I'm sure that's not true.
I think it has to do with the sheer amount of stuff that we have. When I was a young kiddie pushing the boxy pixels around on a screen, I had maybe half a dozen games to play with so I enjoyed them more. Thousands of games later, I've grown very jaded and the best graphics in the world aren't going to bring back my enthusiasm for very long.
Really, it's the same thing with all objects... when you can focus on a few things, you achieve greater understanding and pleasure... but the more you have, the less pleasure individual things bring you, until one day you don't feel much of anything at all and it's time to move on to the next thing.
Additionally, it might be easier to make the case for getting a Mac into a Windows office if you can point at the existence of current Anti-Virus software... at it makes the suits less nervous.
Greek soda-pop has much more of a kick to it than the American counterpart. I have many friends who swear by Mecican Coca-Cola, which they say is truer to the original formula (no, not the one with cocaine in it).
If I lived TWO BLOCKS closer to downtown Seattle, I could get Comcast which is 250KB/s for about $10 - $15 more.
DSL with Qwest isn't even an option that I care to investigate. I've been through that experience.
I called Comcast to find out why I couldn't get service through them... they were apologetic but told me that the city regulations prevented them from selling me service as the city of Seattle has a contract with Millennium for that part of town.
I have no great love for Comcast, but it's disheartening to keep bumping up against government regulations that protect substandard service and reward mediocrity.
I noticed the same thing with videotapes and floppy discs.
In the case of CDs and DVDs, I think that cheaper material translates into higher flaw and failure rates... as the data has less plastic to protect the data from wear and tear.
Has it occurred to anyone that the machines that use the media also use cheaper parts as well? Portable CD players that I've used in the recent past seem less forgiving of scratches than the big clunker that I owned ten years ago.
One unexpected side effect of quitting is that my contact lenses work better. Coffee had the effect of dehydrating me to the point where my contacts would dry by two in the afternoon.
Good luck. The first few days are the worst.
Meanwhile, no one seems to be using the T-Mobile/Starbuck's WiFi service. I tried it. Beyond the expense, I was irritated that I had to log on and off using Internet Explorer, and there appeared to be no way to upgrade or downgrade your account without having to call the 800 number and trust your luck that the person answering the phone would actually do what you needed done. Without screwing it up.
I tried another for pay service in an independent cafe with pretty much the same results.
Face it, unless the government steps in and forces independent free wireless ISPs to charge a fee for service, I can't imagine for pay WISPs making enough money to survive, let alone roam.
At least in Seattle
Although, banner ads appear on the top and bottom of print versions as well, at least they aren't in the middle.
It's part of their contracts.
Some hospitals will go a LONG way to attract top doctors, and that includes agreeing to let them use a non-standard OS... so I could see some of the more stubborn and powerful doctors in an all Linux hospital continuing to use Windows.