So, your point is that VOIP networks are less reliable, and therefore unsuitable for urgent situations. Okay, I'll accept that. However, I'm not so sure about your conclusion. In this day and age, pretty much everyone has a cell phone. Which is essentially POTS, and about as reliable (modulo coverage area, of course). As I see it, that can be used in an urgent situation just as easily as a land line phone, perhaps more so. Sure, the call costs more, but if the situation is in fact urgent, that's unlikely to be much of a problem.
No, I'm not annoyed in the slightest, because I'm not American and therefore don't have their bizarre issues with people using cell phones. When will they catch on that it's normal everywhere else?
Perhaps it'll happen at the same time the other half of them realise that the phone hears you just as well if you don't scream at the top of your voice.;-)
Re:low unemployment compared to europe
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 1
> The 3rd world will turn in to the 2nd world
What, they'll all become Soviets? Wikipedia says: Second World refers to nations within the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, e.g. Warsaw Pact countries. Besides the Soviet Union proper, most of Eastern Europe was run by satellite governments working closely with Moscow. This term may or may not also refer to Communist countries whose leadership were at odds with Moscow, e.g. China and Yugoslavia.
If it were perfect, music creators too would give away the product (music IP), and sell the process (concerts, official recordings with booklets and all). It sounds like it could work out as a fairly good deal for the artist: you make money AND your fans think you're all generous and altruistic, so you can probably even convince them to 'donate' to you as well. That model seems to be working fairly well for software, after all..
I agree with the parent - I just don't understand the problems that people here (I'm tempted to say "Americans", but that might be too general) have with cell phones. I can see where the problem is in a 'one-to-many' or 'audience' environment (eg. movie, theatre, concert, etc), but I don't think I know anyone at all that would complain about normal cellphone use (not shouting) in public places such as trains and the like. The prevailing etiquette here (New Zealand) appears to be that if it's OK to talk to someone next to you, then it's OK to talk on a cell phone.
Before I saw it on Slashdot, I had no idea that people could even care so strongly. Again, I want to pass it off as an American quirk, but it seems that people from other countries make up a fair share of the complainants too. So what (and where) is the big deal?
Outside of the US, tty has gone away as it has been replaced mostly with SMS.
I'm not in the US, but here, SMS costs 20c per 160 character message. Not really practical for a conversation, even with a phone with a full keyboard.
I'm just curious, why were you uncomfortable?
I'm not the previous poster, but I rather feel I'd be uncomfortable to pass my conversations through someone I didn't know, even if they were very professional about it. I'm not sure why, but I'd much rather type directly. However buying expensive equipment to do that is rather prohibitory, which leads on to the next point you mentioned:
A bit offtopic to what we're discussing but I just wanted to add in that I really hate the TTY standard. I out-type it so easily. I've been using iprelay but it's extremely insecure (it's raw, nothing encrypted). Hey, maybe I should invent a new, open standard for TTY (because I despise that I'm forced to buy proprietary software and hardware in order to do TTY).
How about standard Hayes-compatible/ASCII modems? Surely you can't outtype 56 (well, 33) kbit? It's kind of mind-boggling that such a ridiculous outdated standard is still the standard in this narrow application, when there is a much faster, better, standard used for everything else, that is produced in commodity quantities and is hence very cheap! Surely regular modems would make a better teletype?
> When is the last time you saw an onboard NIC,
> sound, HDD controller, graphics controller, or > anything else integrated into a chipset fail?
My Mac's onboard NIC is quite quite dead.
> - Even if that 1 function of the IC did fail and
> the rest of the chip still works fine, what is
> preventing you from just adding the damn PCI NIC then?
It's a Mac? No expansion but USB, and no driver support for any existing USB NICs?
Good thing I don't ever use it anyway, else I might be annoyed.
>However, a coutermeasure to that would be to factor
in the results of a spell check and grammar check.
>Some errors can be tolerated, however having too
many mispellings and too many word groups that can't
>possibly be a proper sentance should raise the score
enough to counteract the attempts to lower it and
>then some.
Ah.. finally - an intelligence test is required to use the internet. (Or some fraction thereof.)
So put it behind your firewall like everything else on your network..
I never suggested making it a DMZ host or anything even remotely similar to that.
And yes, not everyone has the network/old PCs/care-in-the-world to do it.. but Slashdot is the site of geeks after all, not email-to-grandchildren users.
Ghost the disk that comes with the computer onto an old, fairly useless pentium. Write a script to watch the ads for the contractually required time. Put the old pentium in a cupboard with an ethernet cable and forget about it, except for once a month, when you drop in the CD of new ads.
Format the nice new fast computer with whatever os you choose, and use it as you please.
They get their ads "watched" three times an hour, 24/7, by a genuine internet-connected PC running all the spyware they feel like, and you get to use the new hardware as you like.
Right. Like the eighteen year old with a seventeen year old partner. Heinous predator criminals like that who deserve to have their future torn away from them.
>For better or worse, cell phones fit into category b. While you may disagree with the fact that a cell phone isn't a comodity >and has to be specially adapted for each network, that is the way the cell companies have chosen to have it.
Sorry, but English modals follow the same pattern for negation:
Will, will not.
Would, would not.
Do, do not.
May, may not.
Must, must not. .... Can, can not.
Sure, 'cannot' is a (more) acceptable alternative spelling for that particular case, but not the only acceptable one.
see:
http://www.bartleby.com/68/4/1104.html
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/cannot.html
I agree with the parent post completely - removing all the need for responsibility from kids can do nothing but bring up kids without any responsibility.
Here's an (albeit anecdotal) example:
Among the high schools in the city where I live, there are two with completely opposite educational philosophies. One has very stringent requirements on the homework done by the students. All classes assign daily homework which is actively checked up on by the teachers, and strict punishments when any task is not done, or is late. The other school has none of this enforcement. In place of daily homework, students are given problem sets which they may do if they feel they need additional reinforcement to the teaching done in class, and should they fail to hand in an actual assignment, the only consequence is a failing grade for it.
When students from these two schools reach university, their performance there differs drastically. Those from the first school typically think something along these lines: "Nobody's making me study? You don't have to go to lectures? Sweet!" A large number of them end up failing and having to repeat their first year - a huge waste of money and time.
Students from the second school find the environment far more similar to what they're used to, and tend to do a lot better in their first year.
Requiring responsibility begets responsibility. When "the right decisions" are made externally and forced upon the young person, they learn nothing, and when placed in a situation requiring individual responsibility will most likely fail miserably.
Nup.. Having gone to the seminar, I learned that it was not that the AI was being too clever for its own good, but rather too stupid: the soldiers were programmed to do nothing but run forward until they encountered an enemy, at which point to fight. The crucial missing instruction being "turn around if there are no enemies in front of you". Quite amusing to watch, too.
Damn you, whining over such a trivial little extra cost.. I have to pay 20c per extra meg over my 5gb monthly traffic cap, and I only get 256k cable to play with in the first place. For much more than US$40/month. $3/gb would be a dream.
(my $1 = US$0.55)
Slashdot Mirror
What, not even with dd?
(I'm not trolling here - I've just never come across one of these drives before)
Both prices are entirely artificial. The former is simply lower.
So, your point is that VOIP networks are less reliable, and therefore unsuitable for urgent situations. Okay, I'll accept that. However, I'm not so sure about your conclusion. In this day and age, pretty much everyone has a cell phone. Which is essentially POTS, and about as reliable (modulo coverage area, of course). As I see it, that can be used in an urgent situation just as easily as a land line phone, perhaps more so. Sure, the call costs more, but if the situation is in fact urgent, that's unlikely to be much of a problem.
No, I'm not annoyed in the slightest, because I'm not American and therefore don't have their bizarre issues with people using cell phones. When will they catch on that it's normal everywhere else? ;-)
Perhaps it'll happen at the same time the other half of them realise that the phone hears you just as well if you don't scream at the top of your voice.
> The 3rd world will turn in to the 2nd world
What, they'll all become Soviets?
Wikipedia says: Second World refers to nations within the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, e.g. Warsaw Pact countries. Besides the Soviet Union proper, most of Eastern Europe was run by satellite governments working closely with Moscow. This term may or may not also refer to Communist countries whose leadership were at odds with Moscow, e.g. China and Yugoslavia.
If it were perfect, music creators too would give away the product (music IP), and sell the process (concerts, official recordings with booklets and all). It sounds like it could work out as a fairly good deal for the artist: you make money AND your fans think you're all generous and altruistic, so you can probably even convince them to 'donate' to you as well. That model seems to be working fairly well for software, after all..
I agree with the parent - I just don't understand the problems that people here (I'm tempted to say "Americans", but that might be too general) have with cell phones. I can see where the problem is in a 'one-to-many' or 'audience' environment (eg. movie, theatre, concert, etc), but I don't think I know anyone at all that would complain about normal cellphone use (not shouting) in public places such as trains and the like. The prevailing etiquette here (New Zealand) appears to be that if it's OK to talk to someone next to you, then it's OK to talk on a cell phone.
Before I saw it on Slashdot, I had no idea that people could even care so strongly. Again, I want to pass it off as an American quirk, but it seems that people from other countries make up a fair share of the complainants too. So what (and where) is the big deal?
How many virtual desktops does Windoze XP support?
Four.
Not wonderfully well though, but mostly usable.
Outside of the US, tty has gone away as it has been replaced mostly with SMS. I'm not in the US, but here, SMS costs 20c per 160 character message. Not really practical for a conversation, even with a phone with a full keyboard.
I'm just curious, why were you uncomfortable?
I'm not the previous poster, but I rather feel I'd be uncomfortable to pass my conversations through someone I didn't know, even if they were very professional about it. I'm not sure why, but I'd much rather type directly. However buying expensive equipment to do that is rather prohibitory, which leads on to the next point you mentioned:
A bit offtopic to what we're discussing but I just wanted to add in that I really hate the TTY standard. I out-type it so easily. I've been using iprelay but it's extremely insecure (it's raw, nothing encrypted). Hey, maybe I should invent a new, open standard for TTY (because I despise that I'm forced to buy proprietary software and hardware in order to do TTY).
How about standard Hayes-compatible/ASCII modems? Surely you can't outtype 56 (well, 33) kbit? It's kind of mind-boggling that such a ridiculous outdated standard is still the standard in this narrow application, when there is a much faster, better, standard used for everything else, that is produced in commodity quantities and is hence very cheap! Surely regular modems would make a better teletype?
> When is the last time you saw an onboard NIC,
> sound, HDD controller, graphics controller, or
> anything else integrated into a chipset fail?
My Mac's onboard NIC is quite quite dead.
> - Even if that 1 function of the IC did fail and
> the rest of the chip still works fine, what is
> preventing you from just adding the damn PCI NIC then?
It's a Mac? No expansion but USB, and no driver support for any existing USB NICs?
Good thing I don't ever use it anyway, else I might be annoyed.
>However, a coutermeasure to that would be to factor in the results of a spell check and grammar check.
>Some errors can be tolerated, however having too many mispellings and too many word groups that can't
>possibly be a proper sentance should raise the score enough to counteract the attempts to lower it and
>then some.
Ah.. finally - an intelligence test is required to use the internet. (Or some fraction thereof.)
If it takes eight seconds to open my Xterm, then it certainly is an anti-personal computer!
Microsoft Bob?
So put it behind your firewall like everything else on your network.. I never suggested making it a DMZ host or anything even remotely similar to that. And yes, not everyone has the network/old PCs/care-in-the-world to do it.. but Slashdot is the site of geeks after all, not email-to-grandchildren users.
Ghost the disk that comes with the computer onto an old, fairly useless pentium. Write a script to watch the ads for the contractually required time. Put the old pentium in a cupboard with an ethernet cable and forget about it, except for once a month, when you drop in the CD of new ads.
Format the nice new fast computer with whatever os you choose, and use it as you please.
They get their ads "watched" three times an hour, 24/7, by a genuine internet-connected PC running all the spyware they feel like, and you get to use the new hardware as you like.
Right. Like the eighteen year old with a seventeen year old partner. Heinous predator criminals like that who deserve to have their future torn away from them.
>For better or worse, cell phones fit into category b. While you may disagree with the fact that a cell phone isn't a comodity
>and has to be specially adapted for each network, that is the way the cell companies have chosen to have it.
Simple answer. GSM. Like the rest of the world.
Sorry, but English modals follow the same pattern for negation:
....l
Will, will not.
Would, would not.
Do, do not.
May, may not.
Must, must not.
Can, can not.
Sure, 'cannot' is a (more) acceptable alternative spelling for that particular case, but not the only acceptable one.
see:
http://www.bartleby.com/68/4/1104.html
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/cannot.htm
I agree with the parent post completely - removing all the need for responsibility from kids can do nothing but bring up kids without any responsibility.
Here's an (albeit anecdotal) example:
Among the high schools in the city where I live, there are two with completely opposite educational philosophies. One has very stringent requirements on the homework done by the students. All classes assign daily homework which is actively checked up on by the teachers, and strict punishments when any task is not done, or is late. The other school has none of this enforcement. In place of daily homework, students are given problem sets which they may do if they feel they need additional reinforcement to the teaching done in class, and should they fail to hand in an actual assignment, the only consequence is a failing grade for it.
When students from these two schools reach university, their performance there differs drastically. Those from the first school typically think something along these lines: "Nobody's making me study? You don't have to go to lectures? Sweet!" A large number of them end up failing and having to repeat their first year - a huge waste of money and time.
Students from the second school find the environment far more similar to what they're used to, and tend to do a lot better in their first year.
Requiring responsibility begets responsibility. When "the right decisions" are made externally and forced upon the young person, they learn nothing, and when placed in a situation requiring individual responsibility will most likely fail miserably.
Nup.. Having gone to the seminar, I learned that it was not that the AI was being too clever for its own good, but rather too stupid: the soldiers were programmed to do nothing but run forward until they encountered an enemy, at which point to fight. The crucial missing instruction being "turn around if there are no enemies in front of you". Quite amusing to watch, too.
Damn you, whining over such a trivial little extra cost.. I have to pay 20c per extra meg over my 5gb monthly traffic cap, and I only get 256k cable to play with in the first place. For much more than US$40/month. $3/gb would be a dream. (my $1 = US$0.55)