I guess I feel kinda bad that they put so much thought into the remote control. I think the only thing I've ever used it for was to teach my Sony Remote Commander how to work with the TiVo. I gotta admit, though, that the Sony isn't the most ergonomic control in the world, and its size is an encumberance, but golly, it's soooooo nice having a single control for the TV, receiver, DirecTV, TiVo, and DVD player.
And before I'm accused of being a rich idiot again, the TV's a 27" analogue, five-year old RCA, the receiver's a Technics, the DirecTV was $50, the DVD player's a $100 Philips, and the TiVo's an original series 1 with self-installed updates, and the reason I have the Sony Remote Commander is I can't justify the cost of Philips Pronto. So there.
Yeah, he's not guilty of Microsoft patent violation, but I own the copyright on that database!
Re:here comes the over-use of the "funny" mod
on
The Simpsons Movie
·
· Score: 1
I've gotta agree. I watch the reruns when TiVo thinks of grabbing them, and I still watch them every Sunday. But... I of course recognize the declining quality. But, even as I watched the Snowball II episode recently, I recognized it as being on par with the "classic" Simpons. It was fantastic!
in 1996 was the last time I used a gopher server. Also 1996 was the first time I'd used a gopher server. To me (an enlisted soldier in the US Army) the internet was a brand new thing for me and I used everything I could get my hands on. I'd just dumped AOL (yeah, yeah, I was an AOL'er for a year, and that's when they charged per minute) for this internet thing.
I remember that the gopher program for my Mac Colour Classic had a gopher in a really nifty pair of sunglasses. But it turns out I just didn't gopher very much -- Archie and/or Veronica (am I remembering right?) found everything I needed on FTP, and this is when the web was getting popular -- my first browser was Mosaic.
All this, and I'm a relative late starter to the internet compared to most of the/. crowd (and an really early adopter in my own crowd).
I'm NOT an awesome programmer by any means. But I bet as far as someone that doesn't do it for a living, I'm damn good and could probably hang with a lot of pros.
I programmed 8510 assy. on my Commodore-128 as a kid. Yeah, I had to, due to limitations of basic.
There's NOTHING like knowing how a computer works to make a computer work, ya know?
I have DirecTV, and am at a pretty sharp angle from their satellites (longer distance, in Michigan). I also have an oval dish instead of a round one in order to get "Para Todos" service in Spanish for my wife. This means signal meters for both satellites. I get about 68/100 on both satellites. When I had just the round dish, I usually got high 80's. Despite that, I only usually get a broken/lost signals in super-heavy downpours of rain -- maybe three times per year. It could be more, it's not like the TV is on 24-7.
Additionally I get free basic cable from Comcast, who provides my internet connection. So I save a couple of bucks by not getting DirecTV local channels (although Telefutura'd be nice [soccer]).
I use it with an original Sony-built TiVo series 1. It nicely integrates the cable and DirecTV receiver so that I get a single stream of channels, i.e., it's smart enough to use the built-in tuner for cable and to control the DirecTV box for the higher channels. The guide and everything is similarly unbroken. The nice thing about the TiVo series one is it's a geek haven -- it's YOUR box and you can do with it what you will. Checkout "Hacking TiVo" over at Amazon, reviewed here sometime in the past.
My decision is based mostly on the languages and channels offered (i.e., all the Spanish stuff for my wife), so I'd never, ever consider Comcast for all my needs here in Michigan. I imagine that in downtown L.A. the cable options for my needs would be better. But still, I was a DirecTV customer since before I met my wife, so I guess I'm just overall really, really happy with it.
Close to the same in English, "menses" from Month. English is my native Language, but I'm stupid and only know this from learning Spanish where the word is "mes" for month. Supposing I were female I'd know that I imagine.
Oh, yeah, speaking of Spanish, "mensa" means dumb or silly. But FWIW "Bimbo" is a brand of bread.:)
I don't remember how fast Command-Tab switching goes back in classic Mac OS -- at least Mac OS 9, and maybe the intermediate releases of Mac OS 8 (maybe 8.5?). Sure, no on-screen feedback like now, but the applications switched. The visual feedback is something I definitely liked from Windows, so I'd always installed and used Action Go! Mac (http://www.poweronsoftware.com/products/actionGom ac/), which did exactly what I wanted it to. I'd never, ever heard of Proteron in those days. So, maybe PowerOn Software ought to be griping to Proteron that they got ripped off.
I did, though, hear of Proteron in the Mac OS X 10.1 or so days. And I used their free version of LiteSwitch. In fact, I used it until Friday when I installed Panther. Of course 10.2 made Cmd-Tab not work, trying to force you to upgrade to the paid version of LiteSwitch. But a nice, little, free Haxie took care of that -- free versions kept on chugging along.
I prefer to have the built in version. I wish no ill will toward Proteron, but I do hope they grow up.
Gosh I almost feel like a traitor saying this, but, I've recently come to really, really appreciate the maps generated by expedia.com. Why? I'm planning a road trip through much of Mexico, and unlike everyone else, expedia.com actually HAS driving directions in Mexico.
Other than that, I use mapquest.com almost reflexively.
I don't have as much fun with my computers as I did with my Commodore. I splurged for a C=128 (which had the C=64 mode) with my paper route money, and kept it until I got my first Mac in 1988. It was cool, then, to run "kind of IBM stuff" like WordStar and TurboPascal in the CP/M mode.
Cocoa on the Mac and Delphi on the PC just aren't as fun.
I'm from Michigan. AND I've been using computers since the third grade. A C= PET, in fact. I was introduced to it in a kind-of school enviroment -- the intermediate school district media center (kind of a hierachical thing here in Michigan). They didn't have computers in every classroom; that would have been waaaaay too expensive. I had an inside track then. But Playing with the thing introduced me to my love for computers (shut up, sicko!).
We didn't have computers in the classroom until intermediate school (what you folks pro'lly call middle school--6th-8th grade). Even then, it was a single lab full of TI99-4A's, with a couple of Apple ]['s for the fun of it. Through all that, I was a C=128 kid at home, since it was better (let's start that flame war), and had all of the good warez (in 64 mode). Even in high school there was a small Mac-lab-slash-teachers'-smoking-lounge (!!) that was only for teachers and journalism students (like me at the time).
We did some fscking good things without having a computer with us all the damn time. Hell, now that I'm a responsible adult I'm undisciplined enough to be posting here during the work day! Imagine a kid. What does a computer do that a teacher doesn't? Research skills are going to hell. English is going to hell. Math is going to hell. Okay, maybe for Geography they'd be pretty useful. And maybe aspects of science. But ONE computer with an LCD projector would take care of that (yeah, I was a pioneer when I brought my C=128 to school to hook to the 19" TV to give a speech in speech class. I should own the patent to PowerPoint to this day.).
That said, if this stupid waste of taxpayer dollars is going to go through, let's hope it's Mac OS X.
But back to the stupid waste of money -- I'm what the schools look for -- someone who knows math and science. But only in their wet dreams for $35,000 per year!
There aren't any drivers for other motherboards. If there were, you could install Mac OS X on any PPC motherboard. Mac OS X hides the drivers from you, though. In the System 9 and earlier days, there was a kind-of driver called the System Enabler. All of the Mac systems and motherboards are different, needing different code to run the parts.
It has NOTHING to do with Open Firmware, which is mostly a bootloader.
Oh, and you CAN run Mac OS X on a generic PPC motherboard -- run PPC Linux, and install the Mac On Linux virtual machine (not emulator). You can run a lot of Mac OS', including Mac OS X. I've not tried it myself, though, since I have real Macs.
Apple has no BIOS on a chip anyware. Yes, there's Open Firmware, which is an open standard -- you're NOT locked into any type of control by Apple. You can run Linux on them. You have full control. THAT'S how it's different than Apple.
Oh, you mean the old "Apple ROMs"? That's been ancient history for at least four years, maybe more. There's no more Mac ToolBox on ROM -- it's all loaded into memory from the hard drive.
I am very, very concerned about this move. I run Linux on my Intel box with the current motherboard. Anyone got a good supply of fast PPC motherboards? I could do Linux that way, I guess....
I'm a Ford engineer (not a computer engineer). It's about damn time. Of the 20 PC's in my office, we use email (Outlook), Excel, a lot of web-based apps, several dumb-terminal apps, and a few in-house, Windows-based apps (nothing fancy that shouldn't run in WINE or just be updated anyway). It's all Win2K (just got it with new Dells). For what we do, there's no sense in it! The fact that they're PC's means most of the user problems come from home versions of stuff introduced here. The first user is an admin, which works for me, but gives to much power to the less educated.
I'll admit I prefer the Sony Clie line, but the Palm OS has one thing going for it that the/. crowd can appreciate: it doesn't run any version of Windows.
Oh, and it syncs with my Macs with no problem.
Oh, and it does just about anything a WinCE (or whatever it's called today) device can do. It only takes software. You need that on a non-Palm device, too.
Honestly, if I could put a color screen on my still-working Newton and shrink it to a reasonable size, I'd probably use it instead. Unfortunately it's now just a curious toy that I don't use for anything.
Hey, I'm a capitalist, and I'd support RFID tags whole-heartedly, with the caveat given that:
(1) I can get a cheap RFID scanner for use in my home, and it's guaranteed to work with all RFID tags.
(2) There's a requirement that RFID tags be assembled into the packaging or article in such a manner that they can be removed by the consumer without destroying, defacing, or voiding the warranty of the item.
No big deal. It'd be simpler than scraping off the price tags for birthday gifts, or those damn labels on the glass of picture frames. Flush 'em down the toilet and they're gone. If you see DPW rerouting your plumbing for "individualized collection" then you'll have to figure out where else to dispose of the tags.
The tags worry me for the government a little, but worse for commercial abuse. Remember "Minority Report"? Yeah, I'll kill the little suckers, but I'm not against them in principal if I have ultimate control.
So the question to be asked is what file is erased when you do a format-install such that your computer is deauthorized? Couldn't I just backup my home folder and not worry about being deauthorized? Anyone care to investigate? I'd hate to have to do a clean install in 20 years when Apple no longer has the licensing servers and lose all my music. On the other hand, reencoding to MP3 isn't all that horrible.
...when industrial robots started showing up 30 years ago in the auto industry, the same thing was said -- all of the worker will get laid off. Sure, some unskilled labor has been displaced, so a $25/hour Big-3 worker with no skills is now a $15/hour supplier-worker with no skills. But the importance of skilled labor has skyrocketed. Who maintains the robots? Skilled, licensed electricians. Who programs the robots? Skilled, college-educated controls engineers. Who designs the robots? Skilled robotics engineers and software engineers. Who Integrates the robots? A whole crew of skilled workers. What do the robots do in return? They're not lazy, show up every day, don't sue, and are more reliable. When you consider their initial capital cost, projected project life, maintenance, so on and so forth, robots generally aren't cheaper than equivilent human, union labor. When you factor in their behavior and reliability, they're just easier to get along with.
In developing countries where the natives haven't gotten fat, lazy, and developed the "I deserve" attitude, the Big-3 don't use nearly as many robots. Consider a certain Mexican vs. USA auto plant (I'm familiar with both, and they both produce the identical product): the Mexicans (unionized at that) are reliable, non-lazy, hard workers. They show up every day. They work honestly, and they know they have to work to receive their large paychecks (yeah, they're comparatively large). There are a total of 22 robots in the body plant, the rest of the work being performed by lots and lots of human labor. The North American body shop, in contrast, is almost entirely automatized, despite it costing more. In the long run, though, there are no hangover days, no-shows, politics, grievances, and so on to worry about. Because of the general worker attitude, they're losing their own high-paying jobs.
I stress "general attitudes" because there are both good and bad apples in any group.
Luckily for me I *don't* see too many people using them. While the dweebs wait in line, I zip on up, insert credit card, get the tix, and get into the auditorium.
I haven't tried it yet, but I wonder if it'd be easy enough to use senior/child tickets -- they're all the same color. Really, though, I'm not going to steal $4 whole dollars from a cinema.
So it's a web page form instead of an email address. No big deal, and probably a great thing. I don't publish my own email address on my site. I have an easy-to-use email form instead. Granted, it's a single page and not needlessly complex like the White House's, but it's cut down on a lot of spam.
Oh, yeah, the president@whitehouse.gov probably receives a butt-load of spam -- I know I got into the habit of using that address as my fake spam address back during the Clinton administration -- (1) I couldn't have been the only one and (2) based on the amount of spam I get at my secret, valid email address the poor presidential staff must get a hell of a lot more.
Now my only problem is I haven't been able to use daschle@senate.gov as my spam address, since Tommy seems to have nothing but a web form, too. Too be fair, it's a lot simpler than the prez's form.
Safari works on a couple of sites that wouldn't render correctly or missed content entirely. It seems like a lot of debug code is gone, because it runs faster. I'm looking forward to playing with the accompanying web-kit for Cocoa programming.
One thing that bothers the heck out of me is FTP browsing. I'd rather have the choice to mount the server in Finder -- I'd choose NO most of the time and look at FTP in Safari.
I don't see why the crying about the loss of the commercial skip. I have Tivo, so honestly don't know how well commercial skip works. I *don't* implement the 30-second hack on my Tivo, either. Why DOES work super well for me is fast-forward. Hit it thrice rapidly, and the commercials go by in a blink. Wait to you see your program, and hit it the fourth time, and the Tivo BACKS UP a little bit. Once you've practiced a couple of days, you'll have the timing perfect. If it doesn't back up far enough going back to play (you know, you lose the first couple of seconds), hit the 8-second replay and you're golden.
Honestly, is SOUNDS like much more of an inconvenience than it really is. It's reflexive to me now.
Dumb question -- is commercian skip on RTV automatic? If you don't even have to bother picking up the remote at all, then maybe I see your point....
I'll agree. Books are good.
I DON'T have a PHP nor mySQL reference, and I'm kludging my way through some PostNuke stuff. Luckily as an experienced programmer, a language is a language and it's not been a major problem. BUT, I'm not doing a serious PHP project starting from the ground up (big difference between starting from scratch and modifying someone else's work). I think if I were going to write something entirely from scratch, I'd easily spend a week working with a paper book and following along until I was comfortable not having to cross-reference everything. In fact, I tried NOT purchasing books to learn Cocoa. In this case, "a language is a language" (Objective-C[++]) more or less applied, but the class libraries ("Cocoa") demanded something a lot more structured than sporadic online documentation. I ended up buy TWO books for Cocoa. It was worth every penny.
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I guess I feel kinda bad that they put so much thought into the remote control. I think the only thing I've ever used it for was to teach my Sony Remote Commander how to work with the TiVo. I gotta admit, though, that the Sony isn't the most ergonomic control in the world, and its size is an encumberance, but golly, it's soooooo nice having a single control for the TV, receiver, DirecTV, TiVo, and DVD player.
And before I'm accused of being a rich idiot again, the TV's a 27" analogue, five-year old RCA, the receiver's a Technics, the DirecTV was $50, the DVD player's a $100 Philips, and the TiVo's an original series 1 with self-installed updates, and the reason I have the Sony Remote Commander is I can't justify the cost of Philips Pronto. So there.
Yeah, he's not guilty of Microsoft patent violation, but I own the copyright on that database!
I've gotta agree. I watch the reruns when TiVo thinks of grabbing them, and I still watch them every Sunday. But... I of course recognize the declining quality. But, even as I watched the Snowball II episode recently, I recognized it as being on par with the "classic" Simpons. It was fantastic!
They CAN'T enforce it, regardless of what your HOA says, for dishes 24" and smaller.
in 1996 was the last time I used a gopher server. Also 1996 was the first time I'd used a gopher server. To me (an enlisted soldier in the US Army) the internet was a brand new thing for me and I used everything I could get my hands on. I'd just dumped AOL (yeah, yeah, I was an AOL'er for a year, and that's when they charged per minute) for this internet thing.
I remember that the gopher program for my Mac Colour Classic had a gopher in a really nifty pair of sunglasses. But it turns out I just didn't gopher very much -- Archie and/or Veronica (am I remembering right?) found everything I needed on FTP, and this is when the web was getting popular -- my first browser was Mosaic.
All this, and I'm a relative late starter to the internet compared to most of the /. crowd (and an really early adopter in my own crowd).
I'm NOT an awesome programmer by any means. But I bet as far as someone that doesn't do it for a living, I'm damn good and could probably hang with a lot of pros.
I programmed 8510 assy. on my Commodore-128 as a kid. Yeah, I had to, due to limitations of basic.
There's NOTHING like knowing how a computer works to make a computer work, ya know?
I have DirecTV, and am at a pretty sharp angle from their satellites (longer distance, in Michigan). I also have an oval dish instead of a round one in order to get "Para Todos" service in Spanish for my wife. This means signal meters for both satellites. I get about 68/100 on both satellites. When I had just the round dish, I usually got high 80's. Despite that, I only usually get a broken/lost signals in super-heavy downpours of rain -- maybe three times per year. It could be more, it's not like the TV is on 24-7.
Additionally I get free basic cable from Comcast, who provides my internet connection. So I save a couple of bucks by not getting DirecTV local channels (although Telefutura'd be nice [soccer]).
I use it with an original Sony-built TiVo series 1. It nicely integrates the cable and DirecTV receiver so that I get a single stream of channels, i.e., it's smart enough to use the built-in tuner for cable and to control the DirecTV box for the higher channels. The guide and everything is similarly unbroken. The nice thing about the TiVo series one is it's a geek haven -- it's YOUR box and you can do with it what you will. Checkout "Hacking TiVo" over at Amazon, reviewed here sometime in the past.
My decision is based mostly on the languages and channels offered (i.e., all the Spanish stuff for my wife), so I'd never, ever consider Comcast for all my needs here in Michigan. I imagine that in downtown L.A. the cable options for my needs would be better. But still, I was a DirecTV customer since before I met my wife, so I guess I'm just overall really, really happy with it.
Close to the same in English, "menses" from Month. English is my native Language, but I'm stupid and only know this from learning Spanish where the word is "mes" for month. Supposing I were female I'd know that I imagine.
:)
Oh, yeah, speaking of Spanish, "mensa" means dumb or silly. But FWIW "Bimbo" is a brand of bread.
I don't remember how fast Command-Tab switching goes back in classic Mac OS -- at least Mac OS 9, and maybe the intermediate releases of Mac OS 8 (maybe 8.5?). Sure, no on-screen feedback like now, but the applications switched. The visual feedback is something I definitely liked from Windows, so I'd always installed and used Action Go! Mac (http://www.poweronsoftware.com/products/actionGom ac/), which did exactly what I wanted it to. I'd never, ever heard of Proteron in those days. So, maybe PowerOn Software ought to be griping to Proteron that they got ripped off.
I did, though, hear of Proteron in the Mac OS X 10.1 or so days. And I used their free version of LiteSwitch. In fact, I used it until Friday when I installed Panther. Of course 10.2 made Cmd-Tab not work, trying to force you to upgrade to the paid version of LiteSwitch. But a nice, little, free Haxie took care of that -- free versions kept on chugging along.
I prefer to have the built in version. I wish no ill will toward Proteron, but I do hope they grow up.
Gosh I almost feel like a traitor saying this, but, I've recently come to really, really appreciate the maps generated by expedia.com. Why? I'm planning a road trip through much of Mexico, and unlike everyone else, expedia.com actually HAS driving directions in Mexico.
Other than that, I use mapquest.com almost reflexively.
I don't have as much fun with my computers as I did with my Commodore. I splurged for a C=128 (which had the C=64 mode) with my paper route money, and kept it until I got my first Mac in 1988. It was cool, then, to run "kind of IBM stuff" like WordStar and TurboPascal in the CP/M mode.
Cocoa on the Mac and Delphi on the PC just aren't as fun.
WHAT A WASTE!
I'm from Michigan. AND I've been using computers since the third grade. A C= PET, in fact. I was introduced to it in a kind-of school enviroment -- the intermediate school district media center (kind of a hierachical thing here in Michigan). They didn't have computers in every classroom; that would have been waaaaay too expensive. I had an inside track then. But Playing with the thing introduced me to my love for computers (shut up, sicko!).
We didn't have computers in the classroom until intermediate school (what you folks pro'lly call middle school--6th-8th grade). Even then, it was a single lab full of TI99-4A's, with a couple of Apple ]['s for the fun of it. Through all that, I was a C=128 kid at home, since it was better (let's start that flame war), and had all of the good warez (in 64 mode). Even in high school there was a small Mac-lab-slash-teachers'-smoking-lounge (!!) that was only for teachers and journalism students (like me at the time).
We did some fscking good things without having a computer with us all the damn time. Hell, now that I'm a responsible adult I'm undisciplined enough to be posting here during the work day! Imagine a kid. What does a computer do that a teacher doesn't? Research skills are going to hell. English is going to hell. Math is going to hell. Okay, maybe for Geography they'd be pretty useful. And maybe aspects of science. But ONE computer with an LCD projector would take care of that (yeah, I was a pioneer when I brought my C=128 to school to hook to the 19" TV to give a speech in speech class. I should own the patent to PowerPoint to this day.).
That said, if this stupid waste of taxpayer dollars is going to go through, let's hope it's Mac OS X.
But back to the stupid waste of money -- I'm what the schools look for -- someone who knows math and science. But only in their wet dreams for $35,000 per year!
There aren't any drivers for other motherboards. If there were, you could install Mac OS X on any PPC motherboard. Mac OS X hides the drivers from you, though. In the System 9 and earlier days, there was a kind-of driver called the System Enabler. All of the Mac systems and motherboards are different, needing different code to run the parts.
It has NOTHING to do with Open Firmware, which is mostly a bootloader.
Oh, and you CAN run Mac OS X on a generic PPC motherboard -- run PPC Linux, and install the Mac On Linux virtual machine (not emulator). You can run a lot of Mac OS', including Mac OS X. I've not tried it myself, though, since I have real Macs.
Apple has no BIOS on a chip anyware. Yes, there's Open Firmware, which is an open standard -- you're NOT locked into any type of control by Apple. You can run Linux on them. You have full control. THAT'S how it's different than Apple.
Oh, you mean the old "Apple ROMs"? That's been ancient history for at least four years, maybe more. There's no more Mac ToolBox on ROM -- it's all loaded into memory from the hard drive.
I am very, very concerned about this move. I run Linux on my Intel box with the current motherboard. Anyone got a good supply of fast PPC motherboards? I could do Linux that way, I guess....
I'm a Ford engineer (not a computer engineer). It's about damn time. Of the 20 PC's in my office, we use email (Outlook), Excel, a lot of web-based apps, several dumb-terminal apps, and a few in-house, Windows-based apps (nothing fancy that shouldn't run in WINE or just be updated anyway). It's all Win2K (just got it with new Dells). For what we do, there's no sense in it! The fact that they're PC's means most of the user problems come from home versions of stuff introduced here. The first user is an admin, which works for me, but gives to much power to the less educated.
I'll admit I prefer the Sony Clie line, but the Palm OS has one thing going for it that the /. crowd can appreciate: it doesn't run any version of Windows.
Oh, and it syncs with my Macs with no problem.
Oh, and it does just about anything a WinCE (or whatever it's called today) device can do. It only takes software. You need that on a non-Palm device, too.
Honestly, if I could put a color screen on my still-working Newton and shrink it to a reasonable size, I'd probably use it instead. Unfortunately it's now just a curious toy that I don't use for anything.
Hey, I'm a capitalist, and I'd support RFID tags whole-heartedly, with the caveat given that:
(1) I can get a cheap RFID scanner for use in my home, and it's guaranteed to work with all RFID tags.
(2) There's a requirement that RFID tags be assembled into the packaging or article in such a manner that they can be removed by the consumer without destroying, defacing, or voiding the warranty of the item.
No big deal. It'd be simpler than scraping off the price tags for birthday gifts, or those damn labels on the glass of picture frames. Flush 'em down the toilet and they're gone. If you see DPW rerouting your plumbing for "individualized collection" then you'll have to figure out where else to dispose of the tags.
The tags worry me for the government a little, but worse for commercial abuse. Remember "Minority Report"? Yeah, I'll kill the little suckers, but I'm not against them in principal if I have ultimate control.
So the question to be asked is what file is erased when you do a format-install such that your computer is deauthorized? Couldn't I just backup my home folder and not worry about being deauthorized? Anyone care to investigate? I'd hate to have to do a clean install in 20 years when Apple no longer has the licensing servers and lose all my music. On the other hand, reencoding to MP3 isn't all that horrible.
...when industrial robots started showing up 30 years ago in the auto industry, the same thing was said -- all of the worker will get laid off. Sure, some unskilled labor has been displaced, so a $25/hour Big-3 worker with no skills is now a $15/hour supplier-worker with no skills. But the importance of skilled labor has skyrocketed. Who maintains the robots? Skilled, licensed electricians. Who programs the robots? Skilled, college-educated controls engineers. Who designs the robots? Skilled robotics engineers and software engineers. Who Integrates the robots? A whole crew of skilled workers. What do the robots do in return? They're not lazy, show up every day, don't sue, and are more reliable. When you consider their initial capital cost, projected project life, maintenance, so on and so forth, robots generally aren't cheaper than equivilent human, union labor. When you factor in their behavior and reliability, they're just easier to get along with.
In developing countries where the natives haven't gotten fat, lazy, and developed the "I deserve" attitude, the Big-3 don't use nearly as many robots. Consider a certain Mexican vs. USA auto plant (I'm familiar with both, and they both produce the identical product): the Mexicans (unionized at that) are reliable, non-lazy, hard workers. They show up every day. They work honestly, and they know they have to work to receive their large paychecks (yeah, they're comparatively large). There are a total of 22 robots in the body plant, the rest of the work being performed by lots and lots of human labor. The North American body shop, in contrast, is almost entirely automatized, despite it costing more. In the long run, though, there are no hangover days, no-shows, politics, grievances, and so on to worry about. Because of the general worker attitude, they're losing their own high-paying jobs.
I stress "general attitudes" because there are both good and bad apples in any group.
Luckily for me I *don't* see too many people using them. While the dweebs wait in line, I zip on up, insert credit card, get the tix, and get into the auditorium. I haven't tried it yet, but I wonder if it'd be easy enough to use senior/child tickets -- they're all the same color. Really, though, I'm not going to steal $4 whole dollars from a cinema.
So it's a web page form instead of an email address. No big deal, and probably a great thing. I don't publish my own email address on my site. I have an easy-to-use email form instead. Granted, it's a single page and not needlessly complex like the White House's, but it's cut down on a lot of spam. Oh, yeah, the president@whitehouse.gov probably receives a butt-load of spam -- I know I got into the habit of using that address as my fake spam address back during the Clinton administration -- (1) I couldn't have been the only one and (2) based on the amount of spam I get at my secret, valid email address the poor presidential staff must get a hell of a lot more. Now my only problem is I haven't been able to use daschle@senate.gov as my spam address, since Tommy seems to have nothing but a web form, too. Too be fair, it's a lot simpler than the prez's form.
Safari works on a couple of sites that wouldn't render correctly or missed content entirely. It seems like a lot of debug code is gone, because it runs faster. I'm looking forward to playing with the accompanying web-kit for Cocoa programming. One thing that bothers the heck out of me is FTP browsing. I'd rather have the choice to mount the server in Finder -- I'd choose NO most of the time and look at FTP in Safari.
I don't see why the crying about the loss of the commercial skip. I have Tivo, so honestly don't know how well commercial skip works. I *don't* implement the 30-second hack on my Tivo, either. Why DOES work super well for me is fast-forward. Hit it thrice rapidly, and the commercials go by in a blink. Wait to you see your program, and hit it the fourth time, and the Tivo BACKS UP a little bit. Once you've practiced a couple of days, you'll have the timing perfect. If it doesn't back up far enough going back to play (you know, you lose the first couple of seconds), hit the 8-second replay and you're golden. Honestly, is SOUNDS like much more of an inconvenience than it really is. It's reflexive to me now. Dumb question -- is commercian skip on RTV automatic? If you don't even have to bother picking up the remote at all, then maybe I see your point....
I'll agree. Books are good. I DON'T have a PHP nor mySQL reference, and I'm kludging my way through some PostNuke stuff. Luckily as an experienced programmer, a language is a language and it's not been a major problem. BUT, I'm not doing a serious PHP project starting from the ground up (big difference between starting from scratch and modifying someone else's work). I think if I were going to write something entirely from scratch, I'd easily spend a week working with a paper book and following along until I was comfortable not having to cross-reference everything. In fact, I tried NOT purchasing books to learn Cocoa. In this case, "a language is a language" (Objective-C[++]) more or less applied, but the class libraries ("Cocoa") demanded something a lot more structured than sporadic online documentation. I ended up buy TWO books for Cocoa. It was worth every penny.
Ain't "æ" Greek? Who cares; I just said "ain't."