GeoEye-1 is scheduled to launch aboard a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg AFB Sep 4 11:50am PDT. However, unconfirmed reports state that the launch may be delayed because Hurricane Hanna has grounded east coast support personnel.
the pipe providers (cable cos) will grab our throats and shake us down for money.
Tell me about it. I subscribe to some premium sports tier to get the Fox Soccer Channel from Charter. With this Olympics, NBC is showing much of the soccer on some
"NBC Soccer Channel" which I've never heard of. It suddenly showed up in my channel listings, but if I try to tune to that channel, I get the "Not authorized - please call this 800 number to subscribe." panel. So while the Fox Soccer Channel is included with the Premium Sports Tier, the NBC Soccer Channel seems to be in some "Ultra-uber Premium Sports Tier". I hate these ass-hats.
Silverlight 2 (required for NBCOlympics.com) doesn't run on most Macs in the field. It only supports the newer intel-based Macs, which eliminates the 3 Macintoshes I have at home (including my PowerMac G5 with 4 x 2.5GHz cores, 8GB RAM, and 30" Cinema HD display). It also doesn't run on either of the Windows 2000 machines I have at home.
As mentioned previously, Moore's Law does not apply here.
However, the use of nano-tech (to increase light collecting surface area), multiple layers (to absorb more frequencies), and lenses/concentrators (to focus more light on the collectors), and thermo-electric converters (to convert heat from the panels into electricity) should be able to push efficiencies well passed the 40% range at reasonable cost. Of course, these improvements will be "5-10 years out" for the foreseeable future.
I suspect this may be the case. I've known developers that used non-free editors like Brief or BBEdit for years. They loved them and were highly productive. I've known developers that used free editors like emacs or vi for years. They loved them and were highly productive. I've known developers that have tried various tools that were simply not very good, and they wouldn't use them - even if they were free - even if they were told to use them by management.
For what its worth, 3/4 of our team uses emacs. We didn't 'standardize' on it. We were emacs users before we knew each other. The one person who doesn't use it, uses the editor in Visual Studio. But then again, she is the only one that uses Windows as her primary development platform.
Also interesting, each of has tried Eclipse at one time or the other in the last five years, and none of us has liked it.
But you need thousands upon thousands of dollars to sue. Who can afford to lose that much ?
I suspect that a vast majority of "Plays-for-sure" consumers purchased less than USD$5000 worth of music. This would qualify them to file in Small Claims Court, which requires tens, not thousands, of dollars. Microsoft would likely find that 100,000 small claims suits is much more painful than a handful of class-action suits.
One day 15 years ago, I started a new job. I walked in with a NeXTStation Turbo. The IT guys threw up their hands and said "You're on your own, buddy." I have been my own administrator ever since.
As a side note, I can't understand programmers tend to use code like
m_allowFontSmoothing = (nameStr != "Ahem");
instead of... "
Because we are professionals and we know how to use our tools correctly. For me, the one-line version is clear, concise, easier to read, and less likelier to contain an error. I wouldn't ask a surgeon to confine his technique to that which can be done with a Buck knife and dental floss, just because it would be easier for me to understand.
I seem to recall the MS-DOS 2.x suffered this same problem with either the Int 21 or Int 13 interfaces. (Hey it was 20 years ago, I don't remember the details.) If you made certain BDOS calls with the direction flag set, the message "A evird rorre etirw daeR" ("Read write error drive A" backwards) would be displayed on the console. It wasn't fixed for years. I remember we rigorously enforced the "Clear the direction flag before calling into MS-DOS" rule.
I watched the linked video and was not impressed. Yes, it looked slightly better than most YouTube vids, but that is like saying TacoBell tastes slightly better than dog poop. My complaints:
1) Poor interlacing. This may be a result of the source video, but the skateboarding dog video suffers from heavy interlacing artifacts - ghosting and double images.
2) Still looks like crap full-screen. This has little to do with hardware acceleration and scaling support, and a lot to do with me having a 30" 2560x1600 display. Full-screen on my laptop would probably be OK. Full-screen on an iPhone is probably the current quality target.
3) No resizable viewer. Higher quality video in small viewer is still quite unsatisfying. Because full-screen is "too big" (see above), the YouTube video player needs a "x2" and maybe an "x4" button that allows the player to enlarge.
In my experience, you attract premier programmers by doing this:
- Know them personally or have worked with them in the past. When a stellar programmer changes jobs, it is almost always to work with someone they have directly worked with in the past. The great programmers don't usually browse the help-wanteds or craigslist looking for work -- they receive unsolicited offers from people they know and trust.
- Have a project that is visible, interesting, and challenging. If a great programmer does happen to be open to new options it will be the ones that are truly interesting to him. Things that *don't* generate interest are: super-secret stealth mode startups (how can you hope to interest me if you tell me nothing), monetizing ad-space in video streaming, ecommerce, pr0n (other than as a consumer). Craigslist ads looking for "Rockstar programmers to work in a hip radical fast-moving environment with foosball tables, XBox 360s, and endless 'Dew" especially don't work.
- Have a clear vision and communicate that vision well. Related to the previous item. If the project is interesting and challenging, you need to convey that fact effectively and motivationally. While attending an Internet2 conference, I attended a presentation by some guy studying off-shore microplate tectonics. They had embedded a network of sensors in the plates off of Puget Sound. The presentation was heavily into oceanographic and geological research -- not even remotely related to my previous employment history. But by the end of the presentation, I wanted to work on that project - now.
- Grow your own. This is especially difficult to do. Great programmers are not born, they are bred. Intellect, problem solving skills, and drive are the raw materials; but experience working on great code with great mentors are what really builds a great programmer. Some of the best skills development happens in the first 5-7 years out of university. Stellar senior programmers tend to really become apparent in the 7-10 year experience range. Note that you rarely get great programmers right out of school. You can get talented programmers that have great potential right out of university. Identifying such diamonds-in-the-rough is a real challenge.
- Don't be cheap. Great programmers tend to motivated more by the challenge than greed, however we still need to pay the rent/mortgage, eat, raise families. Free snacks and soda are OK, but not really sustaining. Great programmers are 4-10 times more productive than average programmers and should be compensated accordingly. Note that said compensation could be performance-based: equity or frequent raises. If you can only afford to pay a series of grad students $10/hr to write code, don't expect to be able snag a stellar professional with cup-o-noodles and a civil servant paycheck.
Even though I have hundreds of tee shirts and polo shirts, I have a special place in my heart for:
1) Ones for companies/projects I have actually worked on. I was heartbroken when I lost my only 3R Computers shirt on a high speed boat ride between island in the Caribbean.
2) NeXT tee shirts.
However, I do actually buy some shirts. Unfortunately, they are Hawaiian shirts.
I remember reading that book a couple of decades ago. I think I was given a copy by Jon Sachs. I am amazed at how many of these people I actually worked with, or even had meaningful conversations with in my life:
Gary Kildall: I never met him in person, but corresponded with him by telephone and email a bit back in 1982-3 when I was working on CP/M and MS-DOS BIOS for 3R Computers' TC-1 and TC-100. I really shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but Kildall was an ass.
John Warnock: I really only met him twice at some Adobe functions. Adobe was next door to Verity, and they embedded some Verity technology into Acrobat, so we were over there a bit.
Dan Bricklin: I met him once at some small conference where he was pushing his prototyping product "Dan Bricklin's Demo Program". I remember being interested because I was doing a bit of rapid prototyping with NeXT's InterfaceBuilder.
Bob Frankston: Was kept locked in a secret room at Lotus in the mid-to-late 80's when I was working on Lotus Manuscript. I met him twice. I believe his official job title was "I'm Bob Frankston, dammit! I invented the friggin VisiCalc. Have you heard of it? Now get me a sandwich... and some more virgins."
Jon Sachs: Sachs actually started the Lotus Manuscript project, so I worked with him extensively from 1986-1988. I also met him briefly in 1981 (82?) at Data General (I was hired about 2 weeks before he left). Of all the people on the list I have met, Sachs was definitely the most modest and the coolest. Even though he was worth like $130M at the time, he used to drive this beat-to-crap old Jeep. When that finally gave up the ghost, he bought an Audi Quattro - used.
Ray Ozzie: Another Lotus Manuscript contact. Ray was running Iris, developing Notes for Lotus. They wanted to use the same printer driver technology that Manuscript used. I also remember Ray when he worked at Data General in the early 80's. Although I didn't work with him directly, I do remember him playing Snake... a lot. I like Ray, and communicate with him once or twice a year, even tho he works for Microsoft.
Not mentioned above, but just as significant:
Mitch Kapor: Founded Lotus with Sachs and was still running it when we were developing Manuscript. I first met him at some big Lotus gala featuring the Pointer Sisters or the Pips or someone like that. I think they were celebrating the one-millionth wheelbarrow full of money they had dumped into the Charles River because they had just too damn much money. I spent much more time talking to him when I met Kapor at some conference pushing his uber-calendar project, Chandler. Chandler can best be described as the "Black Hole of Calendaring" - it is so massive that not even light can escape its gravitational attraction. I've seen many good programmers sucked into that black hole.
Steve Jobs: Like Kapor, Jobs is not a programmer, so not featured in the book. My experience with the Steve occurs during his time at NeXT Computer. I was an early adopter of NeXT. I was won over when Steve demo'ed the system at Lotus in 1988, and have been using NeXTStep/OpenStep/MacOSX as my primary development environment since. Steve once offered me a job after I gave detailed feedback on some broken app with suggestions on how to make it better. I've spoken to him only once since he returned to Apple.
Steve Wozniak: Woz lived in the next town over when I was in Sunnyvale. I met him once when he was promoting his tech-heavy school for kids. He was a major influence to my "give back to the community when you have been fortunate" ideals. If life were Star Trek (it isn't?) then Woz is the result of some "Enemy Within"-style transporter accident -- with the evil Bill Gates materializing shortly after. Woz is definitely the funniest and coolest person on this list.
Although the fiber itself is glass, the undersea cables are not simply bare fibers. The glass fibers (usually 2-12 fibers) are bundled with electrical cables used to power optical repeaters, steel cable for tensile strength, then wrapped in armor plating to protect against most of the common undersea hazards.
Actually, it does have DVI output. From the press release:
"Every MacBook Air includes a micro-DVI port so users can connect to Apple's gorgeous 20-inch or 23-inch Cinema Displays to extend their desktop or connect to projectors and other displays via DVI, VGA, Composite and S-video adapters. "
Late this summer, I started getting a rash of unsolicited phone calls, sometimes 3 or 4 in an hour. I said to myself, "WTF happened to the Do Not Call List?" When I went to the Do Not Call Registry web site, and queried my number[s], none of them were on the list. It had only been 4 years (not 5) since the registry became active. I haven't moved or changed my phone numbers. I can think of no good reason why my numbers were no longer on the Do Not Call List, but it had obviously happened this spring or early summer. I re-registered my numbers and the calls tapered off a bit, but I still get 3-4 per week.
If I were you, I wouldn't even bother waiting a year to re-register. Do it now [if the system allows you to].
There are a few things that I remember from my childhood:
Apollo When I was a kid, the Apollo Project was an incredible motivator of young people to develop an interest in science and math. These were my nerd heros before the word "nerd" was common. As a national mission, the Apollo Project probably had a far greater impact on the education of our young than the No Child Left Behind Program ever will.
Star Trek (TOS and TNG). Probably a direct result of my interest in space travel from the Apollo Program, but Roddenberry's positive vision of the future made me want to make it happen. The influence of these shows on two generations of nerds and engineers is visible everywhere.
Mr. Dighton My 7th grade math teacher. I was bored - so very bored with school. I hated it - every minute - for years. Up until about 1/3 of the way through the seventh grade. My math teacher recognized the symptoms. He sat me down one day for a talk. I don't remember the exact conversation, but he convinced me that education was a privilege, not a prison sentence*. He started giving me more challenging assignments, going way outside of the curriculum. I eventually exhausted the math program at my local school system and spent two years of high school taking math and science classes at LSU - for free (well on my parents' taxpayer dime). I am the only member of my immediate family to graduate from university. Today, teachers get reprimanded, even fired, for teaching outside of the approved curriculum or treating gifted students any differently than they teach, uh, un-gifted students. One great teacher can an incredible impact on a child. I was fortunate - I had at least 3 outstanding teachers in my primary and secondary education. That is probably 2 more that your typical kid gets.
Scientific American In the 8th or 9th grade, I had a Marine Biology teacher with a box of Scientific American articles covering a wide variety of subjects. We were to read one article weekly, then write up a 1 page summary, with comments on the scientific methods used. She told us that, at first, we were not likely to understand anything about what we were reading; but she wanted to introduce us to science writing for peer-reviewed journals, scientific analysis and presentation. [Remember that Scientific American in the 70's was not nearly as fluffy as it is today.] Martin Gardner's monthly column probably influenced my interest in Mathematics. I still read SA to this day. Come to think of it, the mere fact that we had a marine bio class in my middle school still amazes me; considering the uniform, least-common-denominator, curriculum in our current schools. Like, Mr Dighton, this teacher (whose name I unfortunately don't remember) taught me two of my fundamentals of education*.
Robert Heinlein Again, Heinlein's mostly positive view of the future made me want to make it happen. He taught me that nerds (and particularly, female nerds) rule. He also gave me my smart-ass attitude and complete lack of respect for authority figures.
Isaac Asimov's Non-fiction I enjoyed reading Asimov's non-fiction much more than reading his fiction. His popularization of math and science histories made me truly appreciate the concept of standing on the shoulders of giants. His timelines of scientific progress show just how incremental and cumulative the process is, and made me mourn the loss of histories' great libraries and universities through religious extremism and fascism, resulting a the loss of great swaths of that accumulated knowledge.
Robert Rimmer's The Harrad Experiment [The book, not the movie.] Porn disguised as science. This book probably had more impact on my attitudes about sex and sexuality than anything the church, school, and maybe even my parents tried to impress upon me. I'm not saying that the end result was a great thing, just the power that a single book can have in shaping a
When I started using a small number of the suggestions from the author on how to write good C code, it dramatically improved my code quality.
Where might I find these "suggestions" of which you speek?
Slashdot Mirror
GeoEye-1 is scheduled to launch aboard a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg AFB Sep 4 11:50am PDT. However, unconfirmed reports state that the launch may be delayed because Hurricane Hanna has grounded east coast support personnel.
Win2K is not supported. Neither are PowerPC-based Macs (the majority of the Macintosh installed base).
the pipe providers (cable cos) will grab our throats and shake us down for money.
Tell me about it. I subscribe to some premium sports tier to get the Fox Soccer Channel from Charter. With this Olympics, NBC is showing much of the soccer on some "NBC Soccer Channel" which I've never heard of. It suddenly showed up in my channel listings, but if I try to tune to that channel, I get the "Not authorized - please call this 800 number to subscribe." panel. So while the Fox Soccer Channel is included with the Premium Sports Tier, the NBC Soccer Channel seems to be in some "Ultra-uber Premium Sports Tier". I hate these ass-hats.
Silverlight 2 (required for NBCOlympics.com) doesn't run on most Macs in the field. It only supports the newer intel-based Macs, which eliminates the 3 Macintoshes I have at home (including my PowerMac G5 with 4 x 2.5GHz cores, 8GB RAM, and 30" Cinema HD display). It also doesn't run on either of the Windows 2000 machines I have at home.
Neither could most Macintosh users. Silverlight 2 only supports intel-based Macs. It won't run on any of the 3 Macs or 2 PCs I have at home.
As mentioned previously, Moore's Law does not apply here.
However, the use of nano-tech (to increase light collecting surface area), multiple layers (to absorb more frequencies), and lenses/concentrators (to focus more light on the collectors), and thermo-electric converters (to convert heat from the panels into electricity) should be able to push efficiencies well passed the 40% range at reasonable cost. Of course, these improvements will be "5-10 years out" for the foreseeable future.
> Or maybe your product just sucks.
I suspect this may be the case. I've known developers that used non-free editors like Brief or BBEdit for years. They loved them and were highly productive. I've known developers that used free editors like emacs or vi for years. They loved them and were highly productive. I've known developers that have tried various tools that were simply not very good, and they wouldn't use them - even if they were free - even if they were told to use them by management.
For what its worth, 3/4 of our team uses emacs. We didn't 'standardize' on it. We were emacs users before we knew each other. The one person who doesn't use it, uses the editor in Visual Studio. But then again, she is the only one that uses Windows as her primary development platform.
Also interesting, each of has tried Eclipse at one time or the other in the last five years, and none of us has liked it.
I have worked under a couple of CEOs where "Going under" was undoubtedly the business strategy.
One day 15 years ago, I started a new job. I walked in with a NeXTStation Turbo. The IT guys threw up their hands and said "You're on your own, buddy." I have been my own administrator ever since.
I seem to recall the MS-DOS 2.x suffered this same problem with either the Int 21 or Int 13 interfaces. (Hey it was 20 years ago, I don't remember the details.) If you made certain BDOS calls with the direction flag set, the message "A evird rorre etirw daeR" ("Read write error drive A" backwards) would be displayed on the console. It wasn't fixed for years. I remember we rigorously enforced the "Clear the direction flag before calling into MS-DOS" rule.
I watched the linked video and was not impressed. Yes, it looked slightly better than most YouTube vids, but that is like saying TacoBell tastes slightly better than dog poop. My complaints:
1) Poor interlacing. This may be a result of the source video, but the skateboarding dog video suffers from heavy interlacing artifacts - ghosting and double images.
2) Still looks like crap full-screen. This has little to do with hardware acceleration and scaling support, and a lot to do with me having a 30" 2560x1600 display. Full-screen on my laptop would probably be OK. Full-screen on an iPhone is probably the current quality target.
3) No resizable viewer. Higher quality video in small viewer is still quite unsatisfying. Because full-screen is "too big" (see above), the YouTube video player needs a "x2" and maybe an "x4" button that allows the player to enlarge.
You could try Dr. Owen Harper:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Harper
In my experience, you attract premier programmers by doing this:
- Know them personally or have worked with them in the past. When a stellar programmer changes jobs, it is almost always to work with someone they have directly worked with in the past. The great programmers don't usually browse the help-wanteds or craigslist looking for work -- they receive unsolicited offers from people they know and trust.
- Have a project that is visible, interesting, and challenging. If a great programmer does happen to be open to new options it will be the ones that are truly interesting to him. Things that *don't* generate interest are: super-secret stealth mode startups (how can you hope to interest me if you tell me nothing), monetizing ad-space in video streaming, ecommerce, pr0n (other than as a consumer). Craigslist ads looking for "Rockstar programmers to work in a hip radical fast-moving environment with foosball tables, XBox 360s, and endless 'Dew" especially don't work.
- Have a clear vision and communicate that vision well. Related to the previous item. If the project is interesting and challenging, you need to convey that fact effectively and motivationally. While attending an Internet2 conference, I attended a presentation by some guy studying off-shore microplate tectonics. They had embedded a network of sensors in the plates off of Puget Sound. The presentation was heavily into oceanographic and geological research -- not even remotely related to my previous employment history. But by the end of the presentation, I wanted to work on that project - now.
- Grow your own. This is especially difficult to do. Great programmers are not born, they are bred. Intellect, problem solving skills, and drive are the raw materials; but experience working on great code with great mentors are what really builds a great programmer. Some of the best skills development happens in the first 5-7 years out of university. Stellar senior programmers tend to really become apparent in the 7-10 year experience range. Note that you rarely get great programmers right out of school. You can get talented programmers that have great potential right out of university. Identifying such diamonds-in-the-rough is a real challenge.
- Don't be cheap. Great programmers tend to motivated more by the challenge than greed, however we still need to pay the rent/mortgage, eat, raise families. Free snacks and soda are OK, but not really sustaining. Great programmers are 4-10 times more productive than average programmers and should be compensated accordingly. Note that said compensation could be performance-based: equity or frequent raises. If you can only afford to pay a series of grad students $10/hr to write code, don't expect to be able snag a stellar professional with cup-o-noodles and a civil servant paycheck.
Even though I have hundreds of tee shirts and polo shirts, I have a special place in my heart for:
1) Ones for companies/projects I have actually worked on. I was heartbroken when I lost my only 3R Computers shirt on a high speed boat ride between island in the Caribbean.
2) NeXT tee shirts.
However, I do actually buy some shirts. Unfortunately, they are Hawaiian shirts.
Upon reflection, I actually believe I obtained the book from David Glazer, who I worked with on Lotus Manuscript, now at Google.
I remember reading that book a couple of decades ago. I think I was given a copy by Jon Sachs. I am amazed at how many of these people I actually worked with, or even had meaningful conversations with in my life:
... and some more virgins."
... a lot. I like Ray, and communicate with him once or twice a year, even tho he works for Microsoft.
Gary Kildall: I never met him in person, but corresponded with him by telephone and email a bit back in 1982-3 when I was working on CP/M and MS-DOS BIOS for 3R Computers' TC-1 and TC-100. I really shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but Kildall was an ass.
John Warnock: I really only met him twice at some Adobe functions. Adobe was next door to Verity, and they embedded some Verity technology into Acrobat, so we were over there a bit.
Dan Bricklin: I met him once at some small conference where he was pushing his prototyping product "Dan Bricklin's Demo Program". I remember being interested because I was doing a bit of rapid prototyping with NeXT's InterfaceBuilder.
Bob Frankston: Was kept locked in a secret room at Lotus in the mid-to-late 80's when I was working on Lotus Manuscript. I met him twice. I believe his official job title was "I'm Bob Frankston, dammit! I invented the friggin VisiCalc. Have you heard of it? Now get me a sandwich
Jon Sachs: Sachs actually started the Lotus Manuscript project, so I worked with him extensively from 1986-1988. I also met him briefly in 1981 (82?) at Data General (I was hired about 2 weeks before he left). Of all the people on the list I have met, Sachs was definitely the most modest and the coolest. Even though he was worth like $130M at the time, he used to drive this beat-to-crap old Jeep. When that finally gave up the ghost, he bought an Audi Quattro - used.
Ray Ozzie: Another Lotus Manuscript contact. Ray was running Iris, developing Notes for Lotus. They wanted to use the same printer driver technology that Manuscript used. I also remember Ray when he worked at Data General in the early 80's. Although I didn't work with him directly, I do remember him playing Snake
Not mentioned above, but just as significant:
Mitch Kapor: Founded Lotus with Sachs and was still running it when we were developing Manuscript. I first met him at some big Lotus gala featuring the Pointer Sisters or the Pips or someone like that. I think they were celebrating the one-millionth wheelbarrow full of money they had dumped into the Charles River because they had just too damn much money. I spent much more time talking to him when I met Kapor at some conference pushing his uber-calendar project, Chandler. Chandler can best be described as the "Black Hole of Calendaring" - it is so massive that not even light can escape its gravitational attraction. I've seen many good programmers sucked into that black hole.
Steve Jobs: Like Kapor, Jobs is not a programmer, so not featured in the book. My experience with the Steve occurs during his time at NeXT Computer. I was an early adopter of NeXT. I was won over when Steve demo'ed the system at Lotus in 1988, and have been using NeXTStep/OpenStep/MacOSX as my primary development environment since. Steve once offered me a job after I gave detailed feedback on some broken app with suggestions on how to make it better. I've spoken to him only once since he returned to Apple.
Steve Wozniak: Woz lived in the next town over when I was in Sunnyvale. I met him once when he was promoting his tech-heavy school for kids. He was a major influence to my "give back to the community when you have been fortunate" ideals. If life were Star Trek (it isn't?) then Woz is the result of some "Enemy Within"-style transporter accident -- with the evil Bill Gates materializing shortly after. Woz is definitely the funniest and coolest person on this list.
You sir, are a cad.
Although the fiber itself is glass, the undersea cables are not simply bare fibers. The glass fibers (usually 2-12 fibers) are bundled with electrical cables used to power optical repeaters, steel cable for tensile strength, then wrapped in armor plating to protect against most of the common undersea hazards.
Actually, it does have DVI output. From the press release:
"Every MacBook Air includes a micro-DVI port so users can connect to Apple's gorgeous 20-inch or 23-inch Cinema Displays to extend their desktop or connect to projectors and other displays via DVI, VGA, Composite and S-video adapters. "
Won't hook up to my 30" Cinema display, 'tho.
For an extra $15, our baggage handlers won't rummage through your bags and steal your stuff. Take advantage of our $5 rider covering pervert protection. For $20, we won't let them use your baggage to smuggle drugs into the country.
Late this summer, I started getting a rash of unsolicited phone calls, sometimes 3 or 4 in an hour. I said to myself, "WTF happened to the Do Not Call List?" When I went to the Do Not Call Registry web site, and queried my number[s], none of them were on the list. It had only been 4 years (not 5) since the registry became active. I haven't moved or changed my phone numbers. I can think of no good reason why my numbers were no longer on the Do Not Call List, but it had obviously happened this spring or early summer. I re-registered my numbers and the calls tapered off a bit, but I still get 3-4 per week.
If I were you, I wouldn't even bother waiting a year to re-register. Do it now [if the system allows you to].
Where might I find these "suggestions" of which you speek?