You can usually do both- just call your local phoneco and ask for a emergency-only line that only dials 911 and 0. Also known as Basic Dial Tone Service, it will cost you someplace between $0-$12/month, depending on whether or not they force you to get local dialing with it or not, and what taxes apply. Don't forget to plug in an old fashioned WIRED phone to the line, so that you have service in case of a power outage as well.
Were you first asked "is this an emergency?" That used to be the standard when I was involved in fielding emergency calls. If you said "yes," then you weren't put on hold.
I had to call a couple of weeks ago about a suspected (and thankfully non-existant) chimney fire (turned out to be a piece of newspaper went up the flue and got caught in the spark trap at the top of the chimney- made for a nice bit of harmless fireworks spotted by a passing car, who notified me). I was put on hold without anybody asking anything- by the time I was off hold, they sent out the fire department anyway though I said the flames were out...
If the poster had read a bit further, he would have found out This isn't a new story (same link as parent, but I had written this in notepad while wating for the story to come out of the mysterious future) AND the guy involved was a bit of an idiot who wouldn't know a five alarm fire from a small fire he could rescue a computer from. He probably caused more delay in the attempt to rescue his house by leading the police on a chase from front door, through kitchen, to basement and out a window than the delay caused by Vonage National 911 putting him on hold.
Anybody who only has Vonage without some form of backup line (either a bare bones land line or a cell phone) is a bit of a moron anyway- what would he have done if a candle lit the drapes on fire during a power outage?
Not only that, but Australians aren't Brits, and to be specific, the scientists will have 29 seconds before the crash to examine data (6 seconds of actual burn starting at 35 miles, 23 seconds later the thing will plow into the ground). But it does start out on a rocket- they're dropping it from 100 miles up to get the proper speed for the scramjet to operate.
Actually, homosexuals generally were culled in tribal and village societies. Even in native american ones. From a societal standpoint they are actually harmful. In small societies they merely stunt social advancement. In large societies, like the ones we have today, they can aggregate to unnatural levels and then lobby to change laws (and thus economics) to their advantage to the disadvantage of all others.
Yep- thus I'm against such lobbying efforts. I'm not buying the idea that 10% of all human beings, for all time, have been homosexual- nor am I buying into the idea that just because a genome exists it must be good.
I realize you were you were just being facetious about supporting issuance of hunting permits to remove them from the genome, but there is always a grain of reality in most humor. Hunting permits might be a bit extreme or conisered inhumane. A compromise might be that in exchange for allowing civil unions (and the ensuing economic privileges) for homosexuals, permanent sterilization should be a pre-requisite.
Given what passes for sex for them, that shouldn't be much of a problem.
In what way does this address any part of what I said? It doesn't even make much sense: without a degree, you'd be even worse off, having to compete for the job with your hypothetical 50000 other applicants who *do* have a degree and are - as you said - ready to work for less. Why in the world should a HR department pick you over the other guy?
I'm saying that degrees are begining to not offer a return on the investment. You'd be better off working at McDonald's, and working your way up to franchise owner, and taking advantage of their retirement plan, than you will getting a degree and working in IT. The depression of wages will only continue as time goes on. You can't outsource a burger flipper- but just about everything on the software side you can. You can't insource a burger flipper (and who would want to?) but you can easily pay for an H-1b visa to come here and pull cable.
If you have to compete with people with degrees who are willing to work for less money, the worst approach you can possibly take is to say "forget the college, you don't need it". Get yourself a higher degree, lower your offer, or do both.
The problem is, you can't lower your offer- you still have to pay for that $800/month apartment, the kid's clothes, the wife, the family. And a higher degree means NOTHING in this industry except for more time unemployed.
Finally, the education is NEVER worthless. Even the "useless" knowledge, not directly related to what you might be doing one day, can come very handy when it comes to communicating with the customer who is not exactly a high school drop-out.
Near as I can tell, just about every other degree might as well be a high school drop-out for what the "business administration" and "liberal arts" schools teach. Their drag on the economy is what is killing American Capitalism and turning it into Corporatism.
Fine, put it in your store window. Lets see how long you last.
But that's exactly my point- lawsuits are unneccessary as long as the lost business does the same job.
Rights got to be balanced. It is what makes real life so difficult. How do you balance the right of target to make its website the way they like it with some peoples rights to live a normal live despite a physical disability.
How about relative harm?
My freedom to form a club of people I like is offset by the rights of other people to join clubs they wish. So whites only golf clubs are a no-no.
Also a stupid idea- why not just create a blacks only golf club? Or a blue people only golf club?
It all depends what you consider more important. The freedom of people with bad eye sight or the freedom of website designers.
How about the freedom to be left alone without invading other people's space?
Off course as a programmer I personnally think that designers should have NO rights but that is just me.
I'm a programmer too- and while I think it's stupid to cut off a significant segment of your potential customer base, stupidity is the right of every business and person in the country. Try a BOYCOTT instead of a LAWSUIT.
It wasn't a US citizen filing the complaint- the US has no hate speech law. Canada, on the other hand, has Article 13 of the Hate Speech Act- which if this ever goes to court, I'm going to argue that the Hate Speech Act is actually against Article 13 of the same act.
The point of education is not solely to get a job. I wouldn't be going for a Ph. D. if I believed that education ended with vocation, nor would anyone else.
The point of education for me is to enable me to work in my industry. If the education fails to do that, then there is no actual vocation, just a hobby that you don't get paid for.
Also, not all of those 50,000 are going to want to work for one particular company. This is one of the few cases where the numbers cancel each other out to the individual's benefit: Lots of companies, lots of workers, and a more or less constant ratio between the two.
There hasn't been a large number of companies in IT since 2001. It's gotten better in the last year- but in this case better means 5% unemployment instead of 20% unemployment. That means, on average, for any given career you spent one year out of the last 5 unemployed- and going forward you can expect 6 months out of every 10 years to be unemployed and not earning money. Compare that to ANY other career on the planet, and that's what people are talking about when they say IT is a dead end job. Those are NOT numbers that are in the individual's benefit at all.
It floored me enough to actually enable him to do it- since Slashdot's not a Canadian server, he needed me to forward the remarks to his Canadian mail server- I'm even kind of looking forward to them trying to sue me directly (since I run my own mail server). Since I don't really plan to EVER go to Canada again (except maybe by ocean, and even then I'd be visiting the villiage reservation of the Jowadaino in Northern British Columbia- about a day and a half's sail north of Vancouver) I don't expect his threat to "keep you out of my country" will mean anything to my life at all. The border isn't secure on their side either.
But they would conduct terrorist acts if they believed their actions would bring a better life to their families and friends...
EXACTLY my point. As long as we respond to terrorist acts by attempting to bring "democracy" and "a better standard of living" to the area- those attacks will be seen as a success, and the attacks will continue. We must make it clear that the families of terrorists end up worse off, not better.
Here's his side of the story, mine can be found in my journal in entries around the same date. It all stemmed from an off-the-cuff remark I made about not seeing homosexuals as being useful to a tribal society from an evolutionary standpoint (because they typically do not produce children) and therefore, in abscence of other ethical systems and religious mandates, I'd be for the government issuing hunting permits to remove them from the genome. This is apparently what passes for hate speech in Canada- off the cuff philosophical ramblings with no real force behind them whatsoever.
You must have missed my big argument with TomHudson where he actually reported me to Canadian authorities for hate speech. I wonder whatever happened to that complaint?
We destroyed a lot of the Iraqi infrastructure the first time we went on a rampage there. This of course caused widespread dysentery and disease because people no longer had access to clean water and sewage facilities. We of course didn't care because we had no intention of taking over the place after that war.
Yes, but apparently not enough- we had to return 10 years later.
This time around the goal was to occupy the country so we refrained from doing things like launching ICBMs and massive arial bombardment. It makes no sense to destroy the stuff you want to take over.
Ah, but that wasn't the claim, was it? The claim that 84% of our military believe was the objective was to Get Saddam because he was part of the cause of 9/11. 72% now believe that objective has been accomplished, and 29% believe we're at mission accomplished and should withdraw now.
Once again the goal is not to kill Osama. Osama is a very handy tool to keep the US public scared and docile. The goal is to build a pipeline from the oil rich caspian region to the warm water ports in the middle east. You can't do that if you have turned the country into a wasteland. You will need those afghans to toil for you. You need their labor.
And once again, that's the wrong objective as far as the American people or military are concerned- only a small minority at the top believe that to be our objective.
I do believe that we know EXACTLY where osama is. He is most likely under US custody in a prison somewhere in europe or the middle east. He will be brought out before the next election to assure a republican victory.
I hope so- but I doubt it. I'm to the point that I simply don't think our Commander In Chief has either the brains or the competance to do it.
Good luck FINDING longer than 2 years of service in this industry- at least if you're looking at small companies. That was my AVERAGE before I got smart and jumped ship from always-going-bankrupt private industry altogether.
And even then your education is practically worthless because there are 50,000 other people in this world willing to work for less than you are graduating every year with exactly the same degree.
Morality ends with the first act of terrorism- after that it's a simple escalation in total amorality to genocide. And if that escalation was quicker, and automatic, the terrorism would never happen to begin with- no one would dare be a suicide bomber if they knew that their wives, children, mothers, and sisters would have to pay for their crime.
33,000 dead Iraqi's agree, racism and bigotry produce terrorists, which erode YOUR safety.
The problem there is that fighting terrorists is an all-or-nothing proposition; we would either have to commit genocide on a level never seen before in this world (and given our rather inadequate-to-the-job army, that would require nukes) or we need to disengage from the area completly, and leave the Arabs to deal with their own problem. I used to be for the second, but now I think we've gone too far with the inept, incompetent halfway attack that killed those 33,000 dead Iraqis- I now think there is no solution other than genocide- because that's what the fanatical Islamic fundamentalists believe in.
The US does not care if it kills civillians and is willing to kill as many as it takes if it MIGHT result in the death of target.
I wish. If this were true, the Iraq war would have been over VERY quickly- in about the time it would have taken to retarget an ICBM, launch it, have it travel halfway across the world and the 12 cobalt warheads disperse around Iraq. If the key was simply to kill the target, that would have been the easiest way to get Hussien. It would also be the easiest way to get bin Laden, if you didn't mind the Tora Bora Mountains and most of Northern Pakistan/Afghanistan being turned into a radioactive glass crater. We know within the 100 mile fireball of a cobalt warhead where these people are.
In fact, I'd have to say that the neocons are cowards *NOT* to do this if these people are as evil as they say.
RTFA- the power falls to the Ministers, especially the Prime Minister. This doesn't get rid of that pesky bureaucracy- it does the exact opposite in fact. It makes the bureaucracy a bunch of petty dictators within their independant ministries.
Hate to say it, but all of this politically correct stuff gets into freedom of association problems:
Considering how much accessibility and standards support is available in modern web browsers (well, except for that one we all know), and a rising probability of legal exposure for sites not meeting these needs, is there really any excuse for online retailers and others to not make their websites accessible to all?"
How about "We reserve the right not to do business with those we choose not to do business with without explaination?" This is about a lot more than just website accessibility- it speaks to (but probably won't come up) the constitutionality of the ADA itself.
Wow, talk about skewed history. Now, if you want to say that Prescott Bush helped to fund the Nazis, you might be able to back that up with a few conspiracy theories, but you really managed to come up with something bizarre here.
Not really- the first oil deals in the middle east were all arms for oil deals- and Prescott was up to his ascott in them. It's what created the wealth that both Georges eventually used to become President. Without those deals- we not only would not have had 9-11, but Ronald Reagan would have had to look elsewhere for a Vice President. It's all connected- and it's the reason why W and the Prince are such buddy-buddies that they hold hands when they meet.
However, one could point out that it isn't very much of a conspiracy theory- how could Prescott, back in the 1920s and 1930s, possibly have known that Saudi Arabian Rebels would eventually attack the United States? And anything done since then is too little, too late- the damage to Saudi Arabia's political and economic systems had already been done, and due to the special place Mecca has in the Koran, the insult against the Prophet was already accomplished. NOTHING we did after that could have changed 9-11.
Slashdot Mirror
Especially since he was able to go back to rescue his computer full of pirated music....
You can usually do both- just call your local phoneco and ask for a emergency-only line that only dials 911 and 0. Also known as Basic Dial Tone Service, it will cost you someplace between $0-$12/month, depending on whether or not they force you to get local dialing with it or not, and what taxes apply. Don't forget to plug in an old fashioned WIRED phone to the line, so that you have service in case of a power outage as well.
Were you first asked "is this an emergency?" That used to be the standard when I was involved in fielding emergency calls. If you said "yes," then you weren't put on hold.
I had to call a couple of weeks ago about a suspected (and thankfully non-existant) chimney fire (turned out to be a piece of newspaper went up the flue and got caught in the spark trap at the top of the chimney- made for a nice bit of harmless fireworks spotted by a passing car, who notified me). I was put on hold without anybody asking anything- by the time I was off hold, they sent out the fire department anyway though I said the flames were out...
Slashdoted already? That was quick.
If the poster had read a bit further, he would have found out This isn't a new story (same link as parent, but I had written this in notepad while wating for the story to come out of the mysterious future) AND the guy involved was a bit of an idiot who wouldn't know a five alarm fire from a small fire he could rescue a computer from. He probably caused more delay in the attempt to rescue his house by leading the police on a chase from front door, through kitchen, to basement and out a window than the delay caused by Vonage National 911 putting him on hold.
Anybody who only has Vonage without some form of backup line (either a bare bones land line or a cell phone) is a bit of a moron anyway- what would he have done if a candle lit the drapes on fire during a power outage?
Not only that, but Australians aren't Brits, and to be specific, the scientists will have 29 seconds before the crash to examine data (6 seconds of actual burn starting at 35 miles, 23 seconds later the thing will plow into the ground). But it does start out on a rocket- they're dropping it from 100 miles up to get the proper speed for the scramjet to operate.
Actually, homosexuals generally were culled in tribal and village societies. Even in native american ones. From a societal standpoint they are actually harmful. In small societies they merely stunt social advancement. In large societies, like the ones we have today, they can aggregate to unnatural levels and then lobby to change laws (and thus economics) to their advantage to the disadvantage of all others.
Yep- thus I'm against such lobbying efforts. I'm not buying the idea that 10% of all human beings, for all time, have been homosexual- nor am I buying into the idea that just because a genome exists it must be good.
I realize you were you were just being facetious about supporting issuance of hunting permits to remove them from the genome, but there is always a grain of reality in most humor. Hunting permits might be a bit extreme or conisered inhumane. A compromise might be that in exchange for allowing civil unions (and the ensuing economic privileges) for homosexuals, permanent sterilization should be a pre-requisite.
Given what passes for sex for them, that shouldn't be much of a problem.
In what way does this address any part of what I said? It doesn't even make much sense: without a degree, you'd be even worse off, having to compete for the job with your hypothetical 50000 other applicants who *do* have a degree and are - as you said - ready to work for less. Why in the world should a HR department pick you over the other guy?
I'm saying that degrees are begining to not offer a return on the investment. You'd be better off working at McDonald's, and working your way up to franchise owner, and taking advantage of their retirement plan, than you will getting a degree and working in IT. The depression of wages will only continue as time goes on. You can't outsource a burger flipper- but just about everything on the software side you can. You can't insource a burger flipper (and who would want to?) but you can easily pay for an H-1b visa to come here and pull cable.
If you have to compete with people with degrees who are willing to work for less money, the worst approach you can possibly take is to say "forget the college, you don't need it". Get yourself a higher degree, lower your offer, or do both.
The problem is, you can't lower your offer- you still have to pay for that $800/month apartment, the kid's clothes, the wife, the family. And a higher degree means NOTHING in this industry except for more time unemployed.
Finally, the education is NEVER worthless. Even the "useless" knowledge, not directly related to what you might be doing one day, can come very handy when it comes to communicating with the customer who is not exactly a high school drop-out.
Near as I can tell, just about every other degree might as well be a high school drop-out for what the "business administration" and "liberal arts" schools teach. Their drag on the economy is what is killing American Capitalism and turning it into Corporatism.
Fine, put it in your store window. Lets see how long you last.
But that's exactly my point- lawsuits are unneccessary as long as the lost business does the same job.
Rights got to be balanced. It is what makes real life so difficult. How do you balance the right of target to make its website the way they like it with some peoples rights to live a normal live despite a physical disability.
How about relative harm?
My freedom to form a club of people I like is offset by the rights of other people to join clubs they wish. So whites only golf clubs are a no-no.
Also a stupid idea- why not just create a blacks only golf club? Or a blue people only golf club?
It all depends what you consider more important. The freedom of people with bad eye sight or the freedom of website designers.
How about the freedom to be left alone without invading other people's space?
Off course as a programmer I personnally think that designers should have NO rights but that is just me.
I'm a programmer too- and while I think it's stupid to cut off a significant segment of your potential customer base, stupidity is the right of every business and person in the country. Try a BOYCOTT instead of a LAWSUIT.
It wasn't a US citizen filing the complaint- the US has no hate speech law. Canada, on the other hand, has Article 13 of the Hate Speech Act- which if this ever goes to court, I'm going to argue that the Hate Speech Act is actually against Article 13 of the same act.
The point of education is not solely to get a job. I wouldn't be going for a Ph. D. if I believed that education ended with vocation, nor would anyone else.
The point of education for me is to enable me to work in my industry. If the education fails to do that, then there is no actual vocation, just a hobby that you don't get paid for.
Also, not all of those 50,000 are going to want to work for one particular company. This is one of the few cases where the numbers cancel each other out to the individual's benefit: Lots of companies, lots of workers, and a more or less constant ratio between the two.
There hasn't been a large number of companies in IT since 2001. It's gotten better in the last year- but in this case better means 5% unemployment instead of 20% unemployment. That means, on average, for any given career you spent one year out of the last 5 unemployed- and going forward you can expect 6 months out of every 10 years to be unemployed and not earning money. Compare that to ANY other career on the planet, and that's what people are talking about when they say IT is a dead end job. Those are NOT numbers that are in the individual's benefit at all.
And given their latest business practices, it will take them 3-4 days to recover that money to a real bank account....
It floored me enough to actually enable him to do it- since Slashdot's not a Canadian server, he needed me to forward the remarks to his Canadian mail server- I'm even kind of looking forward to them trying to sue me directly (since I run my own mail server). Since I don't really plan to EVER go to Canada again (except maybe by ocean, and even then I'd be visiting the villiage reservation of the Jowadaino in Northern British Columbia- about a day and a half's sail north of Vancouver) I don't expect his threat to "keep you out of my country" will mean anything to my life at all. The border isn't secure on their side either.
But they would conduct terrorist acts if they believed their actions would bring a better life to their families and friends...
EXACTLY my point. As long as we respond to terrorist acts by attempting to bring "democracy" and "a better standard of living" to the area- those attacks will be seen as a success, and the attacks will continue. We must make it clear that the families of terrorists end up worse off, not better.
Here's his side of the story, mine can be found in my journal in entries around the same date. It all stemmed from an off-the-cuff remark I made about not seeing homosexuals as being useful to a tribal society from an evolutionary standpoint (because they typically do not produce children) and therefore, in abscence of other ethical systems and religious mandates, I'd be for the government issuing hunting permits to remove them from the genome. This is apparently what passes for hate speech in Canada- off the cuff philosophical ramblings with no real force behind them whatsoever.
You must have missed my big argument with TomHudson where he actually reported me to Canadian authorities for hate speech. I wonder whatever happened to that complaint?
We destroyed a lot of the Iraqi infrastructure the first time we went on a rampage there. This of course caused widespread dysentery and disease because people no longer had access to clean water and sewage facilities. We of course didn't care because we had no intention of taking over the place after that war.
Yes, but apparently not enough- we had to return 10 years later.
This time around the goal was to occupy the country so we refrained from doing things like launching ICBMs and massive arial bombardment. It makes no sense to destroy the stuff you want to take over.
Ah, but that wasn't the claim, was it? The claim that 84% of our military believe was the objective was to Get Saddam because he was part of the cause of 9/11. 72% now believe that objective has been accomplished, and 29% believe we're at mission accomplished and should withdraw now.
Once again the goal is not to kill Osama. Osama is a very handy tool to keep the US public scared and docile. The goal is to build a pipeline from the oil rich caspian region to the warm water ports in the middle east. You can't do that if you have turned the country into a wasteland. You will need those afghans to toil for you. You need their labor.
And once again, that's the wrong objective as far as the American people or military are concerned- only a small minority at the top believe that to be our objective.
I do believe that we know EXACTLY where osama is. He is most likely under US custody in a prison somewhere in europe or the middle east. He will be brought out before the next election to assure a republican victory.
I hope so- but I doubt it. I'm to the point that I simply don't think our Commander In Chief has either the brains or the competance to do it.
Good luck FINDING longer than 2 years of service in this industry- at least if you're looking at small companies. That was my AVERAGE before I got smart and jumped ship from always-going-bankrupt private industry altogether.
And even then your education is practically worthless because there are 50,000 other people in this world willing to work for less than you are graduating every year with exactly the same degree.
Morality ends with the first act of terrorism- after that it's a simple escalation in total amorality to genocide. And if that escalation was quicker, and automatic, the terrorism would never happen to begin with- no one would dare be a suicide bomber if they knew that their wives, children, mothers, and sisters would have to pay for their crime.
33,000 dead Iraqi's agree, racism and bigotry produce terrorists, which erode YOUR safety.
The problem there is that fighting terrorists is an all-or-nothing proposition; we would either have to commit genocide on a level never seen before in this world (and given our rather inadequate-to-the-job army, that would require nukes) or we need to disengage from the area completly, and leave the Arabs to deal with their own problem. I used to be for the second, but now I think we've gone too far with the inept, incompetent halfway attack that killed those 33,000 dead Iraqis- I now think there is no solution other than genocide- because that's what the fanatical Islamic fundamentalists believe in.
The US does not care if it kills civillians and is willing to kill as many as it takes if it MIGHT result in the death of target.
I wish. If this were true, the Iraq war would have been over VERY quickly- in about the time it would have taken to retarget an ICBM, launch it, have it travel halfway across the world and the 12 cobalt warheads disperse around Iraq. If the key was simply to kill the target, that would have been the easiest way to get Hussien. It would also be the easiest way to get bin Laden, if you didn't mind the Tora Bora Mountains and most of Northern Pakistan/Afghanistan being turned into a radioactive glass crater. We know within the 100 mile fireball of a cobalt warhead where these people are.
In fact, I'd have to say that the neocons are cowards *NOT* to do this if these people are as evil as they say.
Yes, let's get rid of that pesky bureaucracy.
RTFA- the power falls to the Ministers, especially the Prime Minister. This doesn't get rid of that pesky bureaucracy- it does the exact opposite in fact. It makes the bureaucracy a bunch of petty dictators within their independant ministries.
Hate to say it, but all of this politically correct stuff gets into freedom of association problems:
Considering how much accessibility and standards support is available in modern web browsers (well, except for that one we all know), and a rising probability of legal exposure for sites not meeting these needs, is there really any excuse for online retailers and others to not make their websites accessible to all?"
How about "We reserve the right not to do business with those we choose not to do business with without explaination?" This is about a lot more than just website accessibility- it speaks to (but probably won't come up) the constitutionality of the ADA itself.
Wow, talk about skewed history. Now, if you want to say that Prescott Bush helped to fund the Nazis, you might be able to back that up with a few conspiracy theories, but you really managed to come up with something bizarre here.
Not really- the first oil deals in the middle east were all arms for oil deals- and Prescott was up to his ascott in them. It's what created the wealth that both Georges eventually used to become President. Without those deals- we not only would not have had 9-11, but Ronald Reagan would have had to look elsewhere for a Vice President. It's all connected- and it's the reason why W and the Prince are such buddy-buddies that they hold hands when they meet.
However, one could point out that it isn't very much of a conspiracy theory- how could Prescott, back in the 1920s and 1930s, possibly have known that Saudi Arabian Rebels would eventually attack the United States? And anything done since then is too little, too late- the damage to Saudi Arabia's political and economic systems had already been done, and due to the special place Mecca has in the Koran, the insult against the Prophet was already accomplished. NOTHING we did after that could have changed 9-11.