hang in there, nextel's reign when it comes to direct connect is about over. from what i understand, sprintpcs will be offering a comparable service (ptt - push to talk) this fall. verizon also has something in the works -- should be soon. others may too.
of course, then everyone will have the joy of dealing with compatibility issues as i'm sure the networks won't talk with each other. joy.
could you detail which specific phones you and your wife have? and if either of you have had any other models in the past with sprint that were better or worse?
i've got a sprint 2g phone now and it's alright, but not stellar. have been debating whether to get a 3g phone with them or to jump to another provider, most likely verizon.
i wonder if merely moving to any 3g phone would improve things or whether limiting it a specific model or two would help more. i've got an lg-5250 now.
1) apple ibook. new or used. my 700mhz gets 4.5 hours of battery life with the screen dimmed, but still on. if i cut it off (eg: just playing mp3s) i can get 7+ hours.
2) consider auctions -- and i don't mean ebay. rather, consider physical auctions in or near your town - think government or university surplus. risk is high, but cost is really low. some let you test equipment a day or more early, some don't. if you want more details on that, email me.
my experiences have been pretty good with apple's support. i've had three issues in the (almost) year i've had my ibook.
1) the battery was doa. i decided to deal with it through the dealer i bought the computer from. bad idea. dealer was helpful, but apparently, apple doesn't back up their dealers as well as they could, giving themselves and their apple stores priority over their dealers. it did get taken care of, no cost to me, but it took about a month. lesson learned: go to apple direct.
2) at about 5 months, the backlight went out. called apple direct. was a busy day as i was on hold for about 20 min (still better than most of the other pc outfits i've dealt with in the past). after 5 or 6 minutes of troubleshooting, they agreed it needed to be sent in. box was at my door the next morning. i had it back in my hands in less than one week -- can't ask for more when it had to go in. ended up being a power supply problem that quit powering the backlight. odd, but no problems since.
3) a couple months after that, my battery had suddently toasted itself -- was getting less than half the life out of it i was getting just a month earlier. this was widespread enough that it was talked about on macslash and here on/. (and on apple's forums). called and got right through. first tech didn't really listen to what i said, but asked me to do a few things that would take a few hours and call back (run it down, blah blah blah). rather than fight really hard, i just did it and called back. got right through again. next tech promptly agreed to replace it. this was about 4:00pm. had it on my door by 10:00am the next day.
all said, i obviously haven't had perfect experiences, but i really don't have anything to complain about. always deal directly with apple, and if you get the occasional tech that doesn't quickly do what you want, just move along to another one. unlike most outfits, apple appears to have more good ones than bad ones. oh, and i do have applecare.
i'm sure nearly all of us here on slashdot are open to whatever new innovative ideas you have. bring it on.
however, it will have to be something new. it has to work. reliably. all the time. with almost zero false negatives and absolutely zero false positives. and, it needs to have minimal social costs. with all of the various technological solutions today, we're not there. just so everyone is on the same page, let's do a run down of where we are now.
blacklists : often over zealous, not reliable. too reactionary. scoring filters (eg: spamassassin) : somewhat useful, but still not nearly consistent enough. bayesian filters : better yet. in my experience, after a very large training set, false positives are basically zero. however, false negatives continue. and, it took thousands of messages to train it to this point. challenge-response : cool concept, but far too high a social cost. too many people will not respond to the challenge. time-delay mechanisms : maybe for personal use, but unacceptable for business (and some personal).
consider especially the needs of different groups of email recipients when considering social costs and reliability demands. 1 - business : cannot put any burden on the sender, false positives unacceptable. 2 - children : false negatives unacceptable due to the adult nature of much spam. 3 - adults, personal use : probably can deal with the most aggravation here. but at the same time, we need it to be extremely simple for it to be viable for the masses.
and lastly, it has to be practical. as much trouble as we're having getting rid of open relays and open proxies, we are _not_ going to be able to replace smtp. so just skip that one.
so, with _all_ of this in mind, bring on the innovations.
myself, i think i'd rather have legislation very similar to the junk-fax laws that allow for easy suits and judgements by the public at large.
okay, i've read a lot of comments here and it seems i can summarize by saying that there are no good programming languages -- they all have major problems. nearly everyone is offering reasons not to use certain languages, but few alternatives are being offered. so, here's your chance to make a suggestion and back it up:
my background: started with basic, quickly moved to turbo pascal, which i liked and used heavily for several years. then i looked at c++ and then got tied up in school and didn't come back to anything for several years. eventually i found some spare time again and ended up messing with php, which is what i've been using lately. as should be evident, i am _not_ a professional programmer, i just tend to hack a little on my own.
as i mentioned, i liked pascal -- it was strongly typed, compiled fast, and worked for me then. c++ left a poor taste in my mouth; probably because it'd compile way too much and bomb out at runtime -- i'd much rather a compiler error than a runtime error. php is okay, but the project i'm working on presently is getting bigger and i can see the day when it's going to get out of hand. and, it's oop support is definitely a bit below average.
so, what should i consider? i use oop a bit, i prefer typed languages, but will deal with untyped langs if it's useful otherwise. mostly i'm developing web-based stuff today. probably the most important thing is i don't like the language getting in my way - my goal is to come up with functional software, _not_ waste time figuring out how to work around various bugs or idiosyncracies in a language or a compiler.
so, here it is for karma-whores and meaningful contributors alike: what are your recommendations and why?
that not a solution; it's a trite comment (not worthy of its present moderation 'interesting' either. a solution would include another brand or two to actually use.
i'm still using maxtors myself at this point. why? i'm not sure what else to use that's better and the ones that have failed at least made noises and gave warning--something past western digitals did not.
so again, what do you recommend that would be better?
good question. honestly, i'm not totally sure. i was under the impression the univeral connectivity surcharges were taxes to fund people in rural areas who couldn't possibly pay the fees to actually run lines to their houses out in the sticks, and that it's a carryover from landline bills. but i could definitely be wrong.
as an aside, i just pulled up my latest cell bill. taxes are: 0.32 county tax 0.80 state universal service fund 1.29 federal tax 1.40 city sales tax 1.16 state sales tax 0.43 city 911 charge 0.94 federal universal service fund 0.40 federal e911 0.47 federal telephone number pooling ---- 7.21 total
as a contrast, here are the taxes from a bill two years ago. please note that my base bill then was $30, now it's $40, and i have moved to another state. however, same carrier (sprintpcs).
0.92 federal tax 0.90 city sales tax 0.30 county sales tax 1.35 state sales tax 0.12 state universal service fund 0.54 'usa regulatory obligations and fees' ---- 4.13 total
it's quite interesting to me that while my bill has increased 33%, the taxes have increased 75% and most of it seems to be federal. but there was, 23 months ago, a state universal service fund.
i have a suspicion that we're going to get shafted yet again by the mobile phone providers in november. i'd love to be wrong, but i see a nice, fat fee being added to my bill again.
1) having a mandated monthly portability surcharge -- if it's a charge at the time you transfer carriers, then it's very reasonable (which, i understand, is how it's done in parts (all?) of europe
2) as it stands now, telemarketers cannot call my cell #. if portability makes it such that cell vs. landline is no longer easily identifyable and they can start calling me, i'm going to be one VERY unhappy camper. i dumped a landline in favor of a cell phone only awhile ago. and avoiding commercial solicitation was a significant reason for doing so.
so, while i agree, options are good. if you take away my option to not pay for portability and you take away my option to be free of telemarketers and their ilk, then i don't want the option to keep my number. it's not an even trade!
yeah, something like that. except i was thinking a little stronger. instead of a rolling 3 out of the last 5, a stricter you can run a deficit a maximum of 4 times. if you run it in 5 years, your time in office is really short. if it takes you 20 years to fail 4 times, then you'll be around a while, but still not forever. so, it might even give us a hint of term limits, but rather than being an arbitrary length of time, it's based on a principle that we find important, namely not spending money we don't have.
OT: I think making a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget may be going too far, but make it so that you can't be re-elected as president if you have a budget in the red (or something like that -- though not sure what to do about second-term presidents)..
since it's congress that writes the budget, maybe we could change that so that congress-critters couldn't be re-elected... or only allow them to be in the red a maximum number of years before they become ineligible for re-election, or something like that...
two general categories of thought come to my mind:
regarding physical storage, it really shouldn't be hard to sort most of it out. use furniture that matches what's around -- beyond that, think drawers. games and accessories go well in drawers, and they're easily hidden from view. options here vary anywhere from a coffee table with builtin drawers, to filing cabinets, to plastic storage containers, to assorted other furniture. you might even find something with doors on the front and drawers inside, thus keeping up a nice look, if the room where you've got stuff warrants it.
as for the console units themselves, shelves and doors on the front will probably do you best. you can shove a primary connected controller alongside the console and away you go. to help, give each console one shelf section (physically separate two side by side, if necessary). this will help keep cables from getting tangled. also, don't cram stuff in there. leave extra space. this should help keep things from getting really jumbled up. i've seen many entertainment centers that would be able to provide this.
lastly comes how to deal with the cables routing into the tv. use a audio/video receiver. many, many offer basic composite video switching along with audio. if this system is also used for movies, then 5.1 surround sound might matter, otherwise, just pick up an old, used highend model that has lots of inputs (plus video) but might only be prologic capable. some models even include the ability to program the display for what's connected into it, instead of defaults like tape, vcr, phono, etc. i've got a sony that does this. i've had it connected to a computer or two in the past and have programmed the display to show the computer's names. same idea for the consoles.
the fair labor standards act is the core of the law, alongside some additional regulations. there are a number of additional links on this page. there are a ton of fact sheets also available. do remember that the fact sheets are a guideline, but are not the actual law.
as for state laws, check your state dept. of labor, or simply look for an online (or print) version of state laws. in general, more progressive states are likely to have more stringent laws, less progressive states are less likely to have anything (or they may be more lax, making them effecitively a waste of paper or electrons).
some of my understanding also is derived from assorted HR web sites. i did not mark them and don't remember which ones, as it's been a little while. however, a search for HR targeted sites, online magazines, or print magazines should lead you to some discussion of the issue at large along side some case studies.
finally, i remember reading, perhaps on the DOL site somewhere, perhaps elsewhere, both case studies and actual judgements from DOL prosecutions (news or press release page maybe?). these too can be useful to gain an understanding.
once again, my original comment is my own, non-attorney, interpretation of all of the above. see an attorney or the DOL for more solid advice. also, feel free to take this information to them and run it by them -- might save you a few bucks in legal fees (then again, it might just get to laughed at ).
i've taken time to read the federal law on the DOL web site in the past as well as some discussion on HR related web sites. while IANAL, this is the jist of what i read:
it is hard to legally declare an employee exempt and make it stick. the professional clause, which is usually used in regard to IT employees, is shaky at best. the other common one, management, is easier. however, it takes more than just 'manager' in an employee's title. they must spend a minimum of a given percentage of their time in management related activities. i recall this being between 40 and 60%. note, however, this is not in the law, but in discussion and case studies by the DOL and are provided as a guideline.
there are very specific exemptions for time-and-one-half for programmers and analysts. given how the law is written, i suspect it would be hard to extend this to net admins, support people, etc. furthermore, the exemption for programmers and analysts is contingent on their effective hourly rate being at least 6.5 times minimum wage and only exempts from time-and-one-half, instead making their overtime merely straight time. it would seem to me that if programmers and analysts are explicitly mentioned in the law, that they do _not_ qualify for the 'professional' qualification.
likewise, because of the mention of programmers and analysts, which are arguably closer to professional than support people, i would argue that they don't qualify either.
and, employment contracts do _not_ trump law. you can no more agree to work for less than minimum wage than you can give away any other right, such as to time-and-one-half for over 40 hours. state law also can't trump federal law, although it can make it more strict (eg: time-and-one-half for greater than 8 hours in one day, etc).
there is little doubt this would have to be argued strongly as it is exceedingly commonplace in the industry to consider IT people as exempt.
i also don't know to what extent it would help employers hold on to exempt status for their employees when they are treated more that way. for example, if you are free to come and go whenever during the day, have flexible hours, have a flexible time and length for lunch, have the ability to work less than 8 hours one day because you work more than that other days, etc. if you are held to a strict set of hours, lunch break, etc., i think a claim that you have been improperly classified as exempt would be easier to win.
anyway, just some thoughts. definitely read the law (fed and state) and contact an attorney and/or fed or state labor board if you think you might have a claim.
(no i have not ever filed a claim on any of this -- i have been in a position to consider it and decided it wasn't worth the hassle, better to just leave that job and move on.)
"Of course as the owner of a few domains I can create email addresses at will and could scam the hell out of this on behalf of my local school."
maybe that's the key. if a ton of domain holders all did this, we can effectively make this program too expensive and can shut it down. yet another form of slashdotting!
i'd like to address this a little differently from the norm. mostly because i believe this issue is bigger than just music sharing.
in america, we have become a society of endless laws. laws passed are measured in boxes and tons, not pages as they ought to be. as such, there is no reasonable way to know all the laws we are subject to.
worse, in many cases the laws are written such that you are a lawbreaker regardless of how you act. a simple example: in all states, you can be written a ticket for exceeding the speed limit. you can also be written a ticket for reckless driving, endangering other drivers, or assorted similar offenses. unfortunately, in many states the one of the latter laws is interpreted to include driving slower than the traffic around you. so, if you're driving in a 65mph zone, but all the surrounding traffic is going 75, you can be written a ticket for speeding. however, if you do 65, you can be written a ticket for endangering other drivers (or whatever law would be relevant in a particular state). so, basically, by driving at all on those roads, you are a lawbreaker and whether you are ticketed has little to do with your own actions, but is rather a random chance.
this kind of situation is becoming more and more commonplace, in large part due to the sheer volume of laws to which we are now subject. i believe we need to take strong action to eliminate a large number of laws, for then it becomes reasonable for the citizens to actually uphold them, which i think most of them probably want to do most of the time.
back to music sharing. laws and court rulings seem to conflict. the might not legally, but they are likely to be understood that way to the average person. you can timeshift on your vcr, why not music? you do have fair use rights, supposedly, although the dmca seems to void much of that. so, sure, everyone's a bit confused. and then, again by volume of laws, who knows what any of it says anyway? a few of us/. types have actually read small sections of law and have a better idea. but that's not commonplace. and what to we find most of the time? that the law says something other than what we would have thought otherwise--for better or worse! so, most people simple pick what seems reasonable and convenient to them.
does this make all this music sharing right? not legally. practically? yes, for most people, which is why only 9% have issues with it. this is not a surprise, but rather expected given the state of american law today.
the XP titlebars do take more space than their predecessors. as for inconsistancies, real or perceived, howabout these:
when dragging a file somewhere, is it copied, moved, or is a shortcut created? it depends on a semi-complex set of rules that ordinary joes are not going to understand. is there visual indication of what it's going to do? no.
when you pull up your start menu, are things going to be in the same place as the last time you used it? if you have the default personalized menus, no. not efficient.
need to go to your device manager? where exactly you find it will vary depending on your version of windows. again, inconsistant. the same is true in numerous places throughout the system. again, inconsistancy for the user and absolute hell for anyone trying to help the average user with their machine, eg: tech support.
the windows interface is complex and confusing. there are way too many options and way too many ways to accomplish the same thing. numerous options and numerous paths to a given option are complex. this is _not_ what the average user needs. they need a simple and consistant interface. furthermore, the file system on a computer is _not_ the web. it doesn't work like the web. therefore, it should not have the same interface.
i am _not_ strictly opposed to familiarity for the end user. what i am opposed to is sacrificing other things in order to accomplish it. especially when it's visual duplication, but isn't functionally identical. again, it has to deal with expectations. users get _very_ used to things working an exact way. _any_ variation confuses them. some of this variation is considered a 'feature' in recent windows os's. this is bad. the linux community should not duplicate these features, and in fact should make things _look_ a little different so it is obvious to the user that things will work a little differently. this does not mean a radical depature, but some visual cue. additionally, because some fundamentals to linux systems are different than windows systems due to underlying architecture, we should be careful to deliberately make things look a little different there too. again, to _help_ the user see that it _is_ different.
great. i'm really excited about this. really. it's going to be great to take a lousy, non-intuitive interface from ms and bring it to linux. and, it's even more amazing to be able to bring the same fisher-price look to the linux platform. will wonders never cease?
oh, and those big-honkin' title bars. i _love_ how those take up so much screen real-estate. i'll be really glad to have those on my linux box too.
seriously though, there are some real concerns here i'm afraid. one of the absolute worst things one can do in a user interface is create an expectation and then violate it. the windows interface itself does this often enough that it confuses people, thus causing support headaches. but, this i'm afraid will be worse. to copy it completely, they'll have to duplicate as much of that idiosyncratic behavior as possible. however, because the linux platform really is different, they'll have to make a few exceptions, thus creating even more opportunities to violate the users' expectations.
again, i'm left feeling that with the two general directions of innovate or duplicate, this accomplishes neither. if you're going to innovate, do so. if you're doing to duplicate, at least duplicate something work duplicating. the mac os x interface would be a good start. perfect? not hardly. preferable to windows? absolutely.
and, it seems honestly tragic to continue to reinforce the de-facto marketplace dominace of windows. like the start-button-menu system of windows? fine, copy it. kde and gnome have. but at least they _look_ different so users will expect it to operate at least a little differently. like taskbars? find, copy them. but make them work differently. take good (or at least tolerable) ideas and improve on them, don't just copy them blindly. only copy great ideas blindly. and honestly, there just aren't very many in windows.
okay. i'm seeing several comments about battery life and that liion batteries should be treated differently from nicad and nimh batteries.
i know in nicad days, it was best to let them run down and then charge them fully. from my experience with cell phones and nimh batteries, that's a relatively good idea there with them too, although their propensity to develop memory was weaker.
but, what's best with modern liion batteries? should i keep my laptop on the charger whenever possible? let it run down to xx% and then charge it? is there a difference in how i should treat them in my cell phone vs. my laptop?
i would think it is possible when purchasing real estate, although on a rental basis, probably not. it's still not a great scenario, but perhaps this would work:
have the present owner order a new line (on separate billing) and then order dsl attached to that line. do this upfront, before closing, but probably with a commitment to buy. much like passing a home inspection. certainly, a home owner who just put their house on the market last week won't go for this. but, an owner who's had their place for sale for several months might. obviously, you also pay for the costs to run this test. if all is good, they cancel their line, leave the new one, billed to you, and you're good to go.
i know this may or may not be much different than what you've suggested above, except that it definitely would precede closing.
"Case believes that Safari does not pose a threat to the OmniWeb market-share."
perhaps that's because they'd have to have some market share to lose some?
seriously, i tried omniweb on recommendation. however, i found it seriously lacking. while it must have strengths (or it wouldn't garner a recommendation from anyone), it doesn't have tabs, nor does it render css. with those two shortfalls, especially the latter, it's pretty much unusable in my eyes.
if you can identify who the spammer is and if they are in the same country as you are, then you certainly can sue. whether you can collect of course, is a different matter. but, things that are likely to help: document, document, document. seriously. you can probably approach this two ways: a criminal basis, fraud, and a civil basis, personal loss.
for fraud, you'll likely need the assistance of a public prosecutor. if they are cool with that, you're in luck. if they aren't, there's not much you can do. you will have to somehow show ill-intent on the basis of committing the fraud. honestly, not too difficult, but given the courts in your jurisdiction, you never know. jurisdiction differences between you and the spammer may make this difficult.
for personal loss, jurisdiction can be worked with (if, as mentioned above, in the same country), although it could get expensive to pursue. documentation becomes really big here as you'll have to prove loss. document the time you spend contacting people to let them know of your new address. write a journal and document your 'pain and suffering' having to go through this. keep all server logs, measure for bandwidth and storage use (not totally sure what to do with it, but maybe someone else creative here will help), and anything else you can think of. if it requires long distance calls, document that. etc. then find a lawyer who will take it and see what happens. then again, contact a lawyer in your jurisdiction first, as the usual/. rules apply: few here are lawyers (i'm not) and none are _your_ lawyer.
I don't need the RIAA to tell me what to listen to; especially considering that they and their lackey labels are complete morons and wouldn't know interesting and artistic music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
sure they know what interesting and artistic music is. how else do you explain their consistant ability to avoid publishing any of it?
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hang in there, nextel's reign when it comes to direct connect is about over. from what i understand, sprintpcs will be offering a comparable service (ptt - push to talk) this fall. verizon also has something in the works -- should be soon. others may too.
of course, then everyone will have the joy of dealing with compatibility issues as i'm sure the networks won't talk with each other. joy.
could you detail which specific phones you and your wife have? and if either of you have had any other models in the past with sprint that were better or worse?
i've got a sprint 2g phone now and it's alright, but not stellar. have been debating whether to get a 3g phone with them or to jump to another provider, most likely verizon.
i wonder if merely moving to any 3g phone would improve things or whether limiting it a specific model or two would help more. i've got an lg-5250 now.
couple of thoughts for you.
1) apple ibook. new or used. my 700mhz gets 4.5 hours of battery life with the screen dimmed, but still on. if i cut it off (eg: just playing mp3s) i can get 7+ hours.
2) consider auctions -- and i don't mean ebay. rather, consider physical auctions in or near your town - think government or university surplus. risk is high, but cost is really low. some let you test equipment a day or more early, some don't. if you want more details on that, email me.
my experiences have been pretty good with apple's support. i've had three issues in the (almost) year i've had my ibook.
/. (and on apple's forums). called and got right through. first tech didn't really listen to what i said, but asked me to do a few things that would take a few hours and call back (run it down, blah blah blah). rather than fight really hard, i just did it and called back. got right through again. next tech promptly agreed to replace it. this was about 4:00pm. had it on my door by 10:00am the next day.
1) the battery was doa. i decided to deal with it through the dealer i bought the computer from. bad idea. dealer was helpful, but apparently, apple doesn't back up their dealers as well as they could, giving themselves and their apple stores priority over their dealers. it did get taken care of, no cost to me, but it took about a month. lesson learned: go to apple direct.
2) at about 5 months, the backlight went out. called apple direct. was a busy day as i was on hold for about 20 min (still better than most of the other pc outfits i've dealt with in the past). after 5 or 6 minutes of troubleshooting, they agreed it needed to be sent in. box was at my door the next morning. i had it back in my hands in less than one week -- can't ask for more when it had to go in. ended up being a power supply problem that quit powering the backlight. odd, but no problems since.
3) a couple months after that, my battery had suddently toasted itself -- was getting less than half the life out of it i was getting just a month earlier. this was widespread enough that it was talked about on macslash and here on
all said, i obviously haven't had perfect experiences, but i really don't have anything to complain about. always deal directly with apple, and if you get the occasional tech that doesn't quickly do what you want, just move along to another one. unlike most outfits, apple appears to have more good ones than bad ones. oh, and i do have applecare.
i'm sure nearly all of us here on slashdot are open to whatever new innovative ideas you have. bring it on.
however, it will have to be something new. it has to work. reliably. all the time. with almost zero false negatives and absolutely zero false positives. and, it needs to have minimal social costs. with all of the various technological solutions today, we're not there. just so everyone is on the same page, let's do a run down of where we are now.
blacklists : often over zealous, not reliable. too reactionary.
scoring filters (eg: spamassassin) : somewhat useful, but still not nearly consistent enough.
bayesian filters : better yet. in my experience, after a very large training set, false positives are basically zero. however, false negatives continue. and, it took thousands of messages to train it to this point.
challenge-response : cool concept, but far too high a social cost. too many people will not respond to the challenge.
time-delay mechanisms : maybe for personal use, but unacceptable for business (and some personal).
consider especially the needs of different groups of email recipients when considering social costs and reliability demands.
1 - business : cannot put any burden on the sender, false positives unacceptable.
2 - children : false negatives unacceptable due to the adult nature of much spam.
3 - adults, personal use : probably can deal with the most aggravation here. but at the same time, we need it to be extremely simple for it to be viable for the masses.
and lastly, it has to be practical. as much trouble as we're having getting rid of open relays and open proxies, we are _not_ going to be able to replace smtp. so just skip that one.
so, with _all_ of this in mind, bring on the innovations.
myself, i think i'd rather have legislation very similar to the junk-fax laws that allow for easy suits and judgements by the public at large.
okay, i've read a lot of comments here and it seems i can summarize by saying that there are no good programming languages -- they all have major problems. nearly everyone is offering reasons not to use certain languages, but few alternatives are being offered. so, here's your chance to make a suggestion and back it up:
my background: started with basic, quickly moved to turbo pascal, which i liked and used heavily for several years. then i looked at c++ and then got tied up in school and didn't come back to anything for several years. eventually i found some spare time again and ended up messing with php, which is what i've been using lately. as should be evident, i am _not_ a professional programmer, i just tend to hack a little on my own.
as i mentioned, i liked pascal -- it was strongly typed, compiled fast, and worked for me then. c++ left a poor taste in my mouth; probably because it'd compile way too much and bomb out at runtime -- i'd much rather a compiler error than a runtime error. php is okay, but the project i'm working on presently is getting bigger and i can see the day when it's going to get out of hand. and, it's oop support is definitely a bit below average.
so, what should i consider? i use oop a bit, i prefer typed languages, but will deal with untyped langs if it's useful otherwise. mostly i'm developing web-based stuff today. probably the most important thing is i don't like the language getting in my way - my goal is to come up with functional software, _not_ waste time figuring out how to work around various bugs or idiosyncracies in a language or a compiler.
so, here it is for karma-whores and meaningful contributors alike: what are your recommendations and why?
no need to worry about that--they can no longer log into their hotmail accounts anyway. they're getting mysterious incorrect password errors today.
that not a solution; it's a trite comment (not worthy of its present moderation 'interesting' either. a solution would include another brand or two to actually use.
i'm still using maxtors myself at this point. why? i'm not sure what else to use that's better and the ones that have failed at least made noises and gave warning--something past western digitals did not.
so again, what do you recommend that would be better?
> Doesn't your state have a "no call list"?
unfortunately, no.
good question. honestly, i'm not totally sure. i was under the impression the univeral connectivity surcharges were taxes to fund people in rural areas who couldn't possibly pay the fees to actually run lines to their houses out in the sticks, and that it's a carryover from landline bills. but i could definitely be wrong.
as an aside, i just pulled up my latest cell bill. taxes are:
0.32 county tax
0.80 state universal service fund
1.29 federal tax
1.40 city sales tax
1.16 state sales tax
0.43 city 911 charge
0.94 federal universal service fund
0.40 federal e911
0.47 federal telephone number pooling
---- 7.21 total
as a contrast, here are the taxes from a bill two years ago. please note that my base bill then was $30, now it's $40, and i have moved to another state. however, same carrier (sprintpcs).
0.92 federal tax
0.90 city sales tax
0.30 county sales tax
1.35 state sales tax
0.12 state universal service fund
0.54 'usa regulatory obligations and fees'
---- 4.13 total
it's quite interesting to me that while my bill has increased 33%, the taxes have increased 75% and most of it seems to be federal. but there was, 23 months ago, a state universal service fund.
i have a suspicion that we're going to get shafted yet again by the mobile phone providers in november. i'd love to be wrong, but i see a nice, fat fee being added to my bill again.
yes, but there are two concerns:
1) having a mandated monthly portability surcharge -- if it's a charge at the time you transfer carriers, then it's very reasonable (which, i understand, is how it's done in parts (all?) of europe
2) as it stands now, telemarketers cannot call my cell #. if portability makes it such that cell vs. landline is no longer easily identifyable and they can start calling me, i'm going to be one VERY unhappy camper. i dumped a landline in favor of a cell phone only awhile ago. and avoiding commercial solicitation was a significant reason for doing so.
so, while i agree, options are good. if you take away my option to not pay for portability and you take away my option to be free of telemarketers and their ilk, then i don't want the option to keep my number. it's not an even trade!
yeah, something like that. except i was thinking a little stronger. instead of a rolling 3 out of the last 5, a stricter you can run a deficit a maximum of 4 times. if you run it in 5 years, your time in office is really short. if it takes you 20 years to fail 4 times, then you'll be around a while, but still not forever. so, it might even give us a hint of term limits, but rather than being an arbitrary length of time, it's based on a principle that we find important, namely not spending money we don't have.
since it's congress that writes the budget, maybe we could change that so that congress-critters couldn't be re-elected... or only allow them to be in the red a maximum number of years before they become ineligible for re-election, or something like that...
two general categories of thought come to my mind:
regarding physical storage, it really shouldn't be hard to sort most of it out. use furniture that matches what's around -- beyond that, think drawers. games and accessories go well in drawers, and they're easily hidden from view. options here vary anywhere from a coffee table with builtin drawers, to filing cabinets, to plastic storage containers, to assorted other furniture. you might even find something with doors on the front and drawers inside, thus keeping up a nice look, if the room where you've got stuff warrants it.
as for the console units themselves, shelves and doors on the front will probably do you best. you can shove a primary connected controller alongside the console and away you go. to help, give each console one shelf section (physically separate two side by side, if necessary). this will help keep cables from getting tangled. also, don't cram stuff in there. leave extra space. this should help keep things from getting really jumbled up. i've seen many entertainment centers that would be able to provide this.
lastly comes how to deal with the cables routing into the tv. use a audio/video receiver. many, many offer basic composite video switching along with audio. if this system is also used for movies, then 5.1 surround sound might matter, otherwise, just pick up an old, used highend model that has lots of inputs (plus video) but might only be prologic capable. some models even include the ability to program the display for what's connected into it, instead of defaults like tape, vcr, phono, etc. i've got a sony that does this. i've had it connected to a computer or two in the past and have programmed the display to show the computer's names. same idea for the consoles.
the fair labor standards act is the core of the law, alongside some additional regulations. there are a number of additional links on this page. there are a ton of fact sheets also available. do remember that the fact sheets are a guideline, but are not the actual law.
as for state laws, check your state dept. of labor, or simply look for an online (or print) version of state laws. in general, more progressive states are likely to have more stringent laws, less progressive states are less likely to have anything (or they may be more lax, making them effecitively a waste of paper or electrons).
some of my understanding also is derived from assorted HR web sites. i did not mark them and don't remember which ones, as it's been a little while. however, a search for HR targeted sites, online magazines, or print magazines should lead you to some discussion of the issue at large along side some case studies.
finally, i remember reading, perhaps on the DOL site somewhere, perhaps elsewhere, both case studies and actual judgements from DOL prosecutions (news or press release page maybe?). these too can be useful to gain an understanding.
once again, my original comment is my own, non-attorney, interpretation of all of the above. see an attorney or the DOL for more solid advice. also, feel free to take this information to them and run it by them -- might save you a few bucks in legal fees (then again, it might just get to laughed at ).
i've taken time to read the federal law on the DOL web site in the past as well as some discussion on HR related web sites. while IANAL, this is the jist of what i read:
it is hard to legally declare an employee exempt and make it stick. the professional clause, which is usually used in regard to IT employees, is shaky at best. the other common one, management, is easier. however, it takes more than just 'manager' in an employee's title. they must spend a minimum of a given percentage of their time in management related activities. i recall this being between 40 and 60%. note, however, this is not in the law, but in discussion and case studies by the DOL and are provided as a guideline.
there are very specific exemptions for time-and-one-half for programmers and analysts. given how the law is written, i suspect it would be hard to extend this to net admins, support people, etc. furthermore, the exemption for programmers and analysts is contingent on their effective hourly rate being at least 6.5 times minimum wage and only exempts from time-and-one-half, instead making their overtime merely straight time. it would seem to me that if programmers and analysts are explicitly mentioned in the law, that they do _not_ qualify for the 'professional' qualification.
likewise, because of the mention of programmers and analysts, which are arguably closer to professional than support people, i would argue that they don't qualify either.
and, employment contracts do _not_ trump law. you can no more agree to work for less than minimum wage than you can give away any other right, such as to time-and-one-half for over 40 hours. state law also can't trump federal law, although it can make it more strict (eg: time-and-one-half for greater than 8 hours in one day, etc).
there is little doubt this would have to be argued strongly as it is exceedingly commonplace in the industry to consider IT people as exempt.
i also don't know to what extent it would help employers hold on to exempt status for their employees when they are treated more that way. for example, if you are free to come and go whenever during the day, have flexible hours, have a flexible time and length for lunch, have the ability to work less than 8 hours one day because you work more than that other days, etc. if you are held to a strict set of hours, lunch break, etc., i think a claim that you have been improperly classified as exempt would be easier to win.
anyway, just some thoughts. definitely read the law (fed and state) and contact an attorney and/or fed or state labor board if you think you might have a claim.
(no i have not ever filed a claim on any of this -- i have been in a position to consider it and decided it wasn't worth the hassle, better to just leave that job and move on.)
maybe that's the key. if a ton of domain holders all did this, we can effectively make this program too expensive and can shut it down. yet another form of slashdotting!
i'd like to address this a little differently from the norm. mostly because i believe this issue is bigger than just music sharing.
in america, we have become a society of endless laws. laws passed are measured in boxes and tons, not pages as they ought to be. as such, there is no reasonable way to know all the laws we are subject to.
worse, in many cases the laws are written such that you are a lawbreaker regardless of how you act. a simple example:
in all states, you can be written a ticket for exceeding the speed limit. you can also be written a ticket for reckless driving, endangering other drivers, or assorted similar offenses. unfortunately, in many states the one of the latter laws is interpreted to include driving slower than the traffic around you. so, if you're driving in a 65mph zone, but all the surrounding traffic is going 75, you can be written a ticket for speeding. however, if you do 65, you can be written a ticket for endangering other drivers (or whatever law would be relevant in a particular state). so, basically, by driving at all on those roads, you are a lawbreaker and whether you are ticketed has little to do with your own actions, but is rather a random chance.
this kind of situation is becoming more and more commonplace, in large part due to the sheer volume of laws to which we are now subject. i believe we need to take strong action to eliminate a large number of laws, for then it becomes reasonable for the citizens to actually uphold them, which i think most of them probably want to do most of the time.
back to music sharing. laws and court rulings seem to conflict. the might not legally, but they are likely to be understood that way to the average person. you can timeshift on your vcr, why not music? you do have fair use rights, supposedly, although the dmca seems to void much of that. so, sure, everyone's a bit confused. and then, again by volume of laws, who knows what any of it says anyway? a few of us /. types have actually read small sections of law and have a better idea. but that's not commonplace. and what to we find most of the time? that the law says something other than what we would have thought otherwise--for better or worse! so, most people simple pick what seems reasonable and convenient to them.
does this make all this music sharing right? not legally. practically? yes, for most people, which is why only 9% have issues with it. this is not a surprise, but rather expected given the state of american law today.
the XP titlebars do take more space than their predecessors. as for inconsistancies, real or perceived, howabout these:
when dragging a file somewhere, is it copied, moved, or is a shortcut created? it depends on a semi-complex set of rules that ordinary joes are not going to understand. is there visual indication of what it's going to do? no.
when you pull up your start menu, are things going to be in the same place as the last time you used it? if you have the default personalized menus, no. not efficient.
need to go to your device manager? where exactly you find it will vary depending on your version of windows. again, inconsistant. the same is true in numerous places throughout the system. again, inconsistancy for the user and absolute hell for anyone trying to help the average user with their machine, eg: tech support.
the windows interface is complex and confusing. there are way too many options and way too many ways to accomplish the same thing. numerous options and numerous paths to a given option are complex. this is _not_ what the average user needs. they need a simple and consistant interface. furthermore, the file system on a computer is _not_ the web. it doesn't work like the web. therefore, it should not have the same interface.
i am _not_ strictly opposed to familiarity for the end user. what i am opposed to is sacrificing other things in order to accomplish it. especially when it's visual duplication, but isn't functionally identical. again, it has to deal with expectations. users get _very_ used to things working an exact way. _any_ variation confuses them. some of this variation is considered a 'feature' in recent windows os's. this is bad. the linux community should not duplicate these features, and in fact should make things _look_ a little different so it is obvious to the user that things will work a little differently. this does not mean a radical depature, but some visual cue. additionally, because some fundamentals to linux systems are different than windows systems due to underlying architecture, we should be careful to deliberately make things look a little different there too. again, to _help_ the user see that it _is_ different.
great. i'm really excited about this. really. it's going to be great to take a lousy, non-intuitive interface from ms and bring it to linux. and, it's even more amazing to be able to bring the same fisher-price look to the linux platform. will wonders never cease?
oh, and those big-honkin' title bars. i _love_ how those take up so much screen real-estate. i'll be really glad to have those on my linux box too.
seriously though, there are some real concerns here i'm afraid. one of the absolute worst things one can do in a user interface is create an expectation and then violate it. the windows interface itself does this often enough that it confuses people, thus causing support headaches. but, this i'm afraid will be worse. to copy it completely, they'll have to duplicate as much of that idiosyncratic behavior as possible. however, because the linux platform really is different, they'll have to make a few exceptions, thus creating even more opportunities to violate the users' expectations.
again, i'm left feeling that with the two general directions of innovate or duplicate, this accomplishes neither. if you're going to innovate, do so. if you're doing to duplicate, at least duplicate something work duplicating. the mac os x interface would be a good start. perfect? not hardly. preferable to windows? absolutely.
and, it seems honestly tragic to continue to reinforce the de-facto marketplace dominace of windows. like the start-button-menu system of windows? fine, copy it. kde and gnome have. but at least they _look_ different so users will expect it to operate at least a little differently. like taskbars? find, copy them. but make them work differently. take good (or at least tolerable) ideas and improve on them, don't just copy them blindly. only copy great ideas blindly. and honestly, there just aren't very many in windows.
okay. i'm seeing several comments about battery life and that liion batteries should be treated differently from nicad and nimh batteries.
i know in nicad days, it was best to let them run down and then charge them fully. from my experience with cell phones and nimh batteries, that's a relatively good idea there with them too, although their propensity to develop memory was weaker.
but, what's best with modern liion batteries? should i keep my laptop on the charger whenever possible? let it run down to xx% and then charge it? is there a difference in how i should treat them in my cell phone vs. my laptop?
i would think it is possible when purchasing real estate, although on a rental basis, probably not. it's still not a great scenario, but perhaps this would work:
have the present owner order a new line (on separate billing) and then order dsl attached to that line. do this upfront, before closing, but probably with a commitment to buy. much like passing a home inspection. certainly, a home owner who just put their house on the market last week won't go for this. but, an owner who's had their place for sale for several months might. obviously, you also pay for the costs to run this test. if all is good, they cancel their line, leave the new one, billed to you, and you're good to go.
i know this may or may not be much different than what you've suggested above, except that it definitely would precede closing.
perhaps that's because they'd have to have some market share to lose some?
seriously, i tried omniweb on recommendation. however, i found it seriously lacking. while it must have strengths (or it wouldn't garner a recommendation from anyone), it doesn't have tabs, nor does it render css. with those two shortfalls, especially the latter, it's pretty much unusable in my eyes.
for fraud, you'll likely need the assistance of a public prosecutor. if they are cool with that, you're in luck. if they aren't, there's not much you can do. you will have to somehow show ill-intent on the basis of committing the fraud. honestly, not too difficult, but given the courts in your jurisdiction, you never know. jurisdiction differences between you and the spammer may make this difficult.
for personal loss, jurisdiction can be worked with (if, as mentioned above, in the same country), although it could get expensive to pursue. documentation becomes really big here as you'll have to prove loss. document the time you spend contacting people to let them know of your new address. write a journal and document your 'pain and suffering' having to go through this. keep all server logs, measure for bandwidth and storage use (not totally sure what to do with it, but maybe someone else creative here will help), and anything else you can think of. if it requires long distance calls, document that. etc. then find a lawyer who will take it and see what happens. then again, contact a lawyer in your jurisdiction first, as the usual /. rules apply: few here are lawyers (i'm not) and none are _your_ lawyer.
good luck. i certainly feel for you. this bites.
sure they know what interesting and artistic music is. how else do you explain their consistant ability to avoid publishing any of it?