I wouldn't point the finger at the email gadgets per se. It seems more likely that nanny-state lazy parenting is to blame.
Or maybe, just maybe, it is businesses and corporations that think a salary is an excuse to reach into our entire lives.
Employers now expect to be able to control who we work for after we're laid off, fired, or quit. They expect to control who we work for once we leave the premises. Many expect to have a cell phone number to reach us at, at a bare minimum, if there's an "emergency."
Used to be that if you worked for Joe's Widgets and Joe wasn't treating you right, and Dave's Dodads offered you a better wage- fuck Joe and the horse he rode in on, you said "Sorry Joe" and went to work for Dave. Non-compete agreement? In a capitalist economy in a representative government? What the fuck? Back in the 50's, if you tried to get someone to sign a non-compete agreement telling them they couldn't work for a competitor for a year, that person would have walked right out the door. Used to be you could talk about your kids and it impressed your boss that you were a family man- not that it made your boss think, "shit, that means he'll be staying home for runny noses and wanting time off for their soccer games."
Used to be if a client said "hey, I know it's 10PM there, but I need this answered now" and someone would say, "I'm sorry, we do not conduct business this late." Now it's "sure, let me call Jane." Used to be that companies paid you for your talents, not that you were put on the planet for your employer and given a salary as a courtesy.
I had an employer call me once while I was asleep. I made it very clear I HAD in fact been asleep; I didn't need to say anything more than "I was asleep when you called." Didn't happen again. You gotta draw lines. If you don't, corporations will just continue eating into your life. Push back to the extent you think you have the power to do so, even if it's slight- just like they chipped away. Update your resume and start sending it out again. Network. When you interview, pay close attention to the kind of business, and try to get the precise commitment nailed down without looking too inflexible.
Go for a position where you can demonstrate a well-above-average capacity so that your boss -doesn't- complain when you didn't answer the phone last night, or comes to your defense when the exec's secretary bitches that you weren't fast enough fixing that email account. "That was Joe. We had a major emergency this morning, which he handled very well, but he wasn't able to get to that email account until after he was done. Joe is a very qualified employee who does top-notch work at an agreeable salary" is a powerful response to "Hey, who was responsible for my secretary not having email for 2 hours?" I wish more managers would realize that's the better response compared to hanging the employee out to dry and promising to "speak to them" about it.
I've found so many people misunderstand why execs mention problems they hear about. Half the time a complaint isn't actually a serious complaint, but a probe to see if this minor bump in the road is indicative of larger problems- and hence if your manager values you and comes to your defense, or hangs you out to dry. Sometimes if your manager really values you, coming up on upper management's radar might not be a bad thing. Like, maybe the next comment is, "glad to hear he's an asset, make sure his next performance report crosses my desk and I'll see about his compensation. I want to keep him." Or "hmm, so he does great work, eh? Would he be qualified for (insert next rung on The Ladder) over in Department X? We need a good person for that."
...is people going into rooms with fires to rescue equipment or backups. People just don't realize how poisonous/noxious the fumes are from burning electronics; they think they can hold their breath, except they get a small whiff of the fumes up their nose, or need to take another breath because of exertion (that box of tapes wasn't as easy to find as they thought)- cough, suck in a nice big breath of poisonous smoke, and collapse a few seconds later. Poisonous fumes stick around even after a fire is out. Wait for the fire department to come and declare the room and building SAFE. If you need something specific, ask the dude with the SCBA pack to go and get it for you; if there's no serious danger to them, they'll probably oblige.
The infamous Blue Book warns clearly and repeatedly that backups should NEVER be stored in the same room because of these dangers. Employees/managers feel too tempted to do shit exactly like what "Sean Thomas" did.
If there is a fire, GET THE FUCK OUT. Period. Companies have insurance and should have off-site backups for this kind of stuff, and it's not your fault if they don't. It's also much better to be alive and living off unemployment or looking for a new job, than in the ER with no job...or dead.
Side note: is it just me, or was this "competition" just a stupid submitting of resumes with "nominations", and "be a good little worker bee" crap? "Michael Beck is a young go getter. The word "no" and phrase "I can't" are not in his vocabulary." Gimme a break...
Believe it or not, alot of the parts in a mac laptop can be bought from dealers and people who fix them. Most want to install them but alot of repair sites will sell the parts to you direct.
I can't let this slip. You're completely WRONG. You're talking about places like PBfixit, and sure, you can get parts there if you feel like paying +400% markups for USED parts (because they buy old Powerbooks and such, and rip them apart. NONE of their parts are new, because NOBODY CAN GET APPLE PARTS. This is pretty important for things like screen clutches.) They're not a viable option, sorry.
First off, there are VERY few Apple "dealers" left, because Apple sends stock to Apple Stores, refuses to let dealers sell below Apple prices, etc. Remember back when Apple dealers were suing Apple? Yeah, they're mostly all dead now.
Second, Apple will not sell you any parts. There is ONE exception: in-warranty iMacs have a couple of components which are "user-serviceable." If it's out of warranty, you're shit out of luck- the machine has to go in for service and Apple charges a non-refundable, not-applied-towards-repairs $250 "diagnostic" fee.
A friend is an Apple employee (ie, works in Cupertino) and when I've asked if he can get parts- the answer is "nope. I can take my machine to the repair desk and they'll fix it, but I can't get parts."
This is a complete reversal of policy- I remember in college ANY certified technican would get a CDROM parts catalog on a regular basis in the mail, and could order almost ANY part for any machine.
Election's over, gents. This would have been much, much more helpful more than 12 months before the election...
One does wonder if the report was held until after the election on purpose- possibly to avoid cuts in funding and such under the then-Republican-majority Congress?
Context switching, aka, incompetence
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You Call This Agile?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Why do I see Joel constantly talking about how disturbing it is to "context switch", when sysadmins like myself are expected to handle a dozen or more tasks, most of them "surprise" stuff, daily? Don't tell me "oh, programming is complex"- so are networks.
So, you get unlimited M&Ms, a 30" screen, aereon chair, and get all upset when you spend an unexpected 2 hours out of your 8 hour workday on an emergency, one a week or so. Meanwhile, I'm working on whatever was left in the IT supply room, have to carry a pager, work 10 hour days because I'm doing 2-3 people's jobs- and I've got a half dozen long term project goals...but I'm getting bugged HOURLY to fix the most trivial shit by programmers who can't be bothered to stick paper in a printer?
If Sarah was a sysadmin and had to waste a day collecting her thoughts after spending two hours fixing a mysql database, she'd be fired. You programmers need to stop behaving like prima donnas.
You'd think- but the asshole (Matt Katzer) filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit in response to a lawsuit seeking him to cease and desist (he was hounding a government research facility that was employing one of the JMRI authors and JMRI had enough)..basically won it, and got over $30K for his attorneys...and that's AFTER their claims for legal fees were determined to be excessive/unreasonable, and reduced!
He's run out and filed patents for stuff days after someone else announced they developed it...then turned around and demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties. Made absolutely insane, blatantly false assertations.
Both his lawyers should be disbarred based on the level of falsehoods present in court filings. EFF, where the hell are you? I'm always hearing about I should donate to the EFF, but I don't see them doing a fucking thing for JMRI to fend off this sleaze.
they're going down the street or stockpiling parts
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Blu-ray Laser Gadget
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· Score: 1
I smell a lie... why don't they go down the street to the Chinese factory churning out these diodes for $5/unit and leave the marketing BS to Sony?
What makes you think that isn't exactly what they're doing now? They're probably not $5- more like $50/100, especially in single unit quantities...some laser diodes ARE pretty pricey. And then you need a drive circuit, though nothing specific to this type of diode, most likely. I also doubt they're being made in china; South Korea, Japan...maybe Malaysia. Japanese electronics manufacturers moved out of China as fast as they moved in, because of very high bin rates.
Even if they DO buy the blu-ray players, they're selling or stockpiling parts for when the blu-ray machines break. None of the manufacturers will want to service the systems. They'll want people to grumble, throw last year's unit in the trash, and buy next year's model; same reason I wouldn't expect the first units to be very reliable. Repair prices from the manufacturer will be sky high, and the market ripe for a replacement-parts company.
In Egypt, a muslim country, police brutality is government policy, not some idiot running out of line, like it is in the US.
A friend's husband, who is about 40 or so, told me a story about how he and his buddies would play games with the South Boston cops. The favorite consisted of getting a cop to show up with a cruiser, leave the cruiser on a foot chase for one kid...and then friends would jump out and snatch the cruiser and go on a short joyride, then leave it somewhere.
He said another group of kids heard about it and tried the same trick a week or so later, but the cops had wised up and were ready. "They got the shit beaten out of them", because the cops were furious at being made to look like idiots. He also said that on more than one occasion when he was up to something he shouldn't have been, he was beaten by cops. My mother's father was a Long Island cop; she once mentioned memories of him washing blood off his nightstick. Here's a pro-tip for you, son. You don't get blood on a nightstick unless you -repeatedly- hit someone...and you don't need to repeatedly hit someone to subdue them.
If you think cops here in the States are innocent little angels and it's just the rest of the world where cops beat people, you're from the "right" side of the tracks and blissfully ignorant. The Boston Globe did a story on a journalism student who was threatened, had his gear confiscated, etc after taking some pictures of police in Provincetown beating people during a light riot (ie, people got to drinking and things got out of control.)
Police beat the people whom they can't just threaten with minor charges. Ie, the people who already have a record. For those of us that haven't had anything worse than a parking ticket, cops can lord enormous power over: how exactly would you prove your innocence if the cop decides you "assaulted an officer", or "interefered with the duties of an officer"? He's an officer of the court, you're not. At every job interview you'll now have to check the 'yes' box next to "have you ever been convicted of a crime?"...and do you think you'll be believed when you say that it was just because you got into an argument over a cop who was trying to give you a bogus speeding ticket, and you never laid a finger on the cop?
Seriously though, the author completely ignores the vast geographic differences between the US and other industrialized country when categorizing the US as falling behind in broadband acceptance. The US has an average population density of ~30 people per square km, industrialized Europe's is ~100, while Japan's is 336. The higher the population density, the less cable is needed (and hence, the lower the cost) to provide broadband to all these people.
I used to think the same- until I went looking for broadband in Boston, looking for a place to rent. Here's a general description of how it goes.
Verizon has rolled our FiOS in almost every suburban neighborhood in Eastern Massachusets with a decent average per-household income, but nowhere in Boston or surrounding neighborhoods. Newton, in fact, is the closest city to Boston which has FiOS. Alston, Brighton, Boston, Cambridge, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Somerville, Watertown...the list goes on. None of these places have FiOS. These places have relatively high population density, and some of them have enormous $/household income levels. A few state legislators have made noise about it- accusing Verizon of getting all the benefits of being a public utility, but discriminating in how it rolls out its services. Verizon's official line is that it is "easier" to work in the Suburbs; possibly true, but in the city, you have 10-50 times the customers for any given block; even if you have to hire 2x the crews to finish the job faster, hire police details, pull more permits...you'd still make your money back faster. I am convinced that what Verizon is terrified of is that one person in a building will buy FiOS, and then share it wirelessly or with ethernet runs to everyone else. 10mbit down and several mbit up goes a LONG way for a lot of home users...and it is pretty cheap, too...$30-40/month.
The towns that do are all outside, or inside-but-very-close-to, the 128 corridor. Meanwhile, Verizon MIGHT offer DSL service if you're not a)too far from a CO which is b)actually wired for DSL which c)Verizon has decided to offer something better than 1mbit down and 128kbit (YES, 128KBIT!) up...or sDSL service, which costs an arm and a leg...
Up until recently, Verizon wouldn't even offer ANY DSL services where Comcast operated; comcast's service costs a minimum of $40-50/month, and it's more expensive if you chose not to also get basic cable.
That should read "Managing money with a free open source application", since Gnucash runs on Linux, and numerous Unixes- including MacOS X (albeit in a very-poorly-integrated fashion.)
One thing that always bugged me about Gnucash- you have to pull OFX (or whatever) files by hand. Quicken could automatically fetch the latest data from my bank with a button click...
Also, are there any LiveCDs that contain up-to-date versions of Gnucash and associated libraries? On an intel mac, it's almost easier to run a virtual machine just for Gnucash, than spend hours upon hours of compiling with Fink...
If they ran their shuttles on something like Debian stable it would be a rock solid platform and probably end up saving them lots of money. Or am I missing something here.
Yes, you are. Primarily the fact that Debian Stable isn't even Carrier Grade, and certainly not qualified for life support. Ie, "doesn't crash in the midst of re-entry."
Keep in mind that the shuttle computers are highly redundant (I believe there are three main computers, and three backups of each component?), monitor a HUGE number of sensors, control a large number of servos and other systems, do telemetry, etc.
I'm afraid I don't take these "Friends of Liberty" folks at face value. Their assertions are backed up by a volume of evidence found in similar conspiracy theories. NONE WHATSOEVER.
Read the PDF listed at the bottom of the press release. The very first paragraph explains the source of their concerns:
The Identity Project submits these comments in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
(NPRM) published at 71 Federal Register 40035-40048 (July 14, 2006), docket number
USCBP-2005-0003-0003, and the associated "Regulatory Assessment" published July 18, 2006 on the
Web site at http://www.regulations.gov/ and docketed as USCBP-2005-0003-0005.
In the guise of an NPRM alleged to propose a change only in the required timing of transmission
of information already required to be provided to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP),
the CBP has actually proposed a fundamental regulatory change with far-reaching (literally and
figuratively) legal, policy, and logistical implications: The NPRM would replace a requirement for ex
post facto notice to the CBP of information about who is on each vessel (ship or plane) with an
unconstitutional system of prior restraint of international travel, entirely unauthorized by statute and
inconsistent with the U.S. obligations embodied in the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights.
Here is the full docket in PDF format (took me a while to find it until I came across a Reddit comment that said to make sure you allow the search engine to search closed-for-comment documents...and when I did, it took the search engine a minute or more to find the document.)
OK, Frankfurt isn't exactly a luxurious destination- but why are Wikipedia people going on "retreats", and who is footing the bill? And I don't mean just airfare or accomodations...I mean meeting facilities, dinners, etc...
Businesses love to complain about how hard it is to find employees when they're being cheap on labor, or how they can't retain good help.
There's no talent problem; there's a "how the IT industry treats workers" problem. Here's the current IT talent pool "problem", as I see it:
The IT industry is one of the few industries that seems almost completely unwilling to recognize general skill/talent, and expects to hire someone who they can drop in and have productive in a matter of hours. It doesn't work that way- in the IT industry or any other industry. Every new employee needs training and familiarization, every new hire causes lost productivity. GET OVER IT. There are industries where corporations send workers to a WEEK OR MORE of training before they've "worked" a single hour.
Loads of IT workers were encouraged to drop out of / skip college because their technical skills were all they supposedly cared about. Now it's "degree or don't apply." So much for technical skill.
Employers and the industry are doing nothing to make training/certification easy or inexpensive. Redhat certification, for example, costs thousands of dollars- out of reach of most job seekers. Furthermore, loads of employers are refusing to invest in their workerforce (continuing education/training) and/or treat them like shit. They're then shocked when said employee's performance drops and they get fired/"laid off"
Employers are abusing "temp to perm" and "temp" positions, cheating the unemployment and benefits systems and tricking workers into thinking that, if they're good little drones, they'll get the job at the end of 3 months- when in reality, the company will show them the door with a silly little excuse.
HR departments use all sorts of fancy technology to effectively dump your resume in the trash can without a single eyeball seeing it, after cheerfully sending you a "thanks for sending in your resume!" letter.
Employers post insane requirements looking for people with a skillset that goes on for PAGES and have grossly unrealistic expectations for years-of-experience. For even the most mundane schlep, I mean help, desk positions. Candidates respond by simply flooding employers with any position the candidate thinks they might be remotely qualified for.
Is it any wonder that IT staff leave the industry in droves after just a few years?
It says nothing about why the terminals were malfunctioning, which had everything to do with touch screen calibration (and the need to recalibrate from time to time)
Uh, no. Touchscreen technology has been around since the late 70's, and I remember using some circa-late-80's touchscreens that needed calibration, but only within an inch or less.
Touchscreens are in wide, wide use, including many applications where "regular" miscalibration problems would be completely unacceptable. Ie, medical systems, industrial (milling) equipment, ATMs, etc. Even self-checkout stations at stores have touchscreens, and I've never hit one that didn't register the correct button-push.
Not to mention: these machines are brand spanking new and in many cases made by companies which should be thoroughly familiar with the issues of touchscreen technology (example, Diebold, an ATM maker.)
I just don't "get" all of these problems. Here in MA, you fill in the bubble with a pencil, and stick your ballot in a machine in front of a poll worker. Moreover, you mark your ballot in complete privacy- you step into a booth and close a curtain...
And 50 employees are gonna have to sweat out their credit reports even as they look for new jobs
Makes you wonder why the courts don't automatically order credit reports of victims cleaned. The burden should NOT be on the victims, even if it is just a matter of sending a letter to the three agencies with a copy of the court docket or similar...
Fun trivia I learned from the manager at my co-op bank branch today: utility (cable, phone, power, gas, etc) companies have been moving towards a new electronic check cashing system,where your bank never gets the cancelled check back.
Fun, if you need to prove to a credit reporting agency that you DID in fact pay a bill (or a credit line was not listed on your account) since that involves...drumroll please...sending in a copy of the cancelled checks! Likewise for electronic fund transfers and automatic credit card billing. The deck is stacked even further against consumers, just like how you have to pay to get your report if you don't live in certain states...and even if you get the report for free, you don't get your FICO score...
The article seems light on details. Did the guy use some sort of key logger or computer filter, or did he go the low tech route and just use his employee's files from their hiring? Curiosity.
Do you have any common sense? Employers are -required- to have your SS # on file as a course of payroll/taxes.
Especially given the positive feedback we've gotten on the redesigned pref window, I'd suggest explicitly naming problems here rather than making such a vague and general argument.
Here's one: since the "new and improved" cookies window was introduced in 1.5, you cannot use the delete key or selection modifier keys (ie, something you can do in selection lists in 99.9% of the applications out there.) This makes deleting a large number of cookies extremely time consuming. Instead of "[shift] click click [delete] [click OK in confirmation" I have to do: "[click] [click delete] [click OK in confirmation] [[repeat FOR EACH COOKIE]]"
Want a solid bug report? MacOS X RC2 had to be restarted on average about 4-5 times a day because I would suddenly find myself unable to type in any forms, the URL bar, and the search bar.
From a "layman" perspective, it seems like if you can't keep the keyboard working, your programming staff is incompetent and/or has misguided priorities. Stop fucking around on all the fancy stuff, and get the basics right. Remember that the whole reason people went with you in the first place is that you were supposedly light and fast- and instead you've added in bloatware we can't remove. If you want to have "phishing protection", great, make it a plugin, even if it's included by default, so that we can remove it.
I'm a bit worried about the heat and noise of the new MacBook Pros.
I'm typing on a MBP "v1.0" and the only noise I hear is the hard drive- a quiet "whoosh". The fans at minimum speed (1000RPM) are completely inaudible. They are more progressive than the G4's which were pretty much an on/off switch.
As for heat? Every year I read whining about "how hot" the newest Powerbook is. It's all a bunch of shit (with the exception of the 12" Al Powerbook. That thing WAS an oven.) Component specs don't change- people just assume "oh, it's a gazillion times faster, it MUST run hotter!" Funny, but if you compare the new intel Minis to the old Minis- they use a few watts LESS power.
Right now it's sitting on my legs, I'm wearing jeans, and it isn't uncomfortable- smcfancontrol says it's 138 degrees F on the CPU die. When it's running too hot for comfort, I fire up smccontrol and bump the fans up to 1500rpm, where you can just barely hear them- and it cools things down by about ten degrees.
Boiling down some of the legalese, the charges (if any are filed) will be "conspiracy to knowingly present a false and fictitious claim upon or against the United States, or any department or agency thereof in violation of USC 18 (secs. 2, 371, 1036, 1343, 2318) and USC 49 (secs. 46314 and 46316) and 49 CFR (secs. 1540.103 and 1540.105)" (edited for brevity).
So, in English, this means what? Slander/liable against the US government? So, if I say "Bush has an ass the size of Texas", I should expect the FBI soon?
Sounds like a foot-in-the-door technique. Like using mail fraud/tax code to get your nose into someone's papers, or using a "tail light it out"/"speeding" to pull over someone that looks like they're up to no good.
Either that, or the Federal government is visciously going after anyone that dares to suggest airline travel isn't safe, lest it hurt an already crippled and dying industry. Reminds me of the MBTA (Boston's subway/bus/commuter rail system) policy on photographic permits: you can film or take photos, but ONLY if the final product is vetted by the MBTA and does not show the MBTA in an "unfavorable" light or imply the MBTA system is "unsafe."
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't point the finger at the email gadgets per se. It seems more likely that nanny-state lazy parenting is to blame.
Or maybe, just maybe, it is businesses and corporations that think a salary is an excuse to reach into our entire lives.
Employers now expect to be able to control who we work for after we're laid off, fired, or quit. They expect to control who we work for once we leave the premises. Many expect to have a cell phone number to reach us at, at a bare minimum, if there's an "emergency."
Used to be that if you worked for Joe's Widgets and Joe wasn't treating you right, and Dave's Dodads offered you a better wage- fuck Joe and the horse he rode in on, you said "Sorry Joe" and went to work for Dave. Non-compete agreement? In a capitalist economy in a representative government? What the fuck? Back in the 50's, if you tried to get someone to sign a non-compete agreement telling them they couldn't work for a competitor for a year, that person would have walked right out the door. Used to be you could talk about your kids and it impressed your boss that you were a family man- not that it made your boss think, "shit, that means he'll be staying home for runny noses and wanting time off for their soccer games."
Used to be if a client said "hey, I know it's 10PM there, but I need this answered now" and someone would say, "I'm sorry, we do not conduct business this late." Now it's "sure, let me call Jane." Used to be that companies paid you for your talents, not that you were put on the planet for your employer and given a salary as a courtesy.
I had an employer call me once while I was asleep. I made it very clear I HAD in fact been asleep; I didn't need to say anything more than "I was asleep when you called." Didn't happen again. You gotta draw lines. If you don't, corporations will just continue eating into your life. Push back to the extent you think you have the power to do so, even if it's slight- just like they chipped away. Update your resume and start sending it out again. Network. When you interview, pay close attention to the kind of business, and try to get the precise commitment nailed down without looking too inflexible.
Go for a position where you can demonstrate a well-above-average capacity so that your boss -doesn't- complain when you didn't answer the phone last night, or comes to your defense when the exec's secretary bitches that you weren't fast enough fixing that email account. "That was Joe. We had a major emergency this morning, which he handled very well, but he wasn't able to get to that email account until after he was done. Joe is a very qualified employee who does top-notch work at an agreeable salary" is a powerful response to "Hey, who was responsible for my secretary not having email for 2 hours?" I wish more managers would realize that's the better response compared to hanging the employee out to dry and promising to "speak to them" about it.
I've found so many people misunderstand why execs mention problems they hear about. Half the time a complaint isn't actually a serious complaint, but a probe to see if this minor bump in the road is indicative of larger problems- and hence if your manager values you and comes to your defense, or hangs you out to dry. Sometimes if your manager really values you, coming up on upper management's radar might not be a bad thing. Like, maybe the next comment is, "glad to hear he's an asset, make sure his next performance report crosses my desk and I'll see about his compensation. I want to keep him." Or "hmm, so he does great work, eh? Would he be qualified for (insert next rung on The Ladder) over in Department X? We need a good person for that."
...is people going into rooms with fires to rescue equipment or backups. People just don't realize how poisonous/noxious the fumes are from burning electronics; they think they can hold their breath, except they get a small whiff of the fumes up their nose, or need to take another breath because of exertion (that box of tapes wasn't as easy to find as they thought)- cough, suck in a nice big breath of poisonous smoke, and collapse a few seconds later. Poisonous fumes stick around even after a fire is out. Wait for the fire department to come and declare the room and building SAFE. If you need something specific, ask the dude with the SCBA pack to go and get it for you; if there's no serious danger to them, they'll probably oblige.
The infamous Blue Book warns clearly and repeatedly that backups should NEVER be stored in the same room because of these dangers. Employees/managers feel too tempted to do shit exactly like what "Sean Thomas" did.
If there is a fire, GET THE FUCK OUT. Period. Companies have insurance and should have off-site backups for this kind of stuff, and it's not your fault if they don't. It's also much better to be alive and living off unemployment or looking for a new job, than in the ER with no job...or dead.
Side note: is it just me, or was this "competition" just a stupid submitting of resumes with "nominations", and "be a good little worker bee" crap? "Michael Beck is a young go getter. The word "no" and phrase "I can't" are not in his vocabulary." Gimme a break...
Believe it or not, alot of the parts in a mac laptop can be bought from dealers and people who fix them. Most want to install them but alot of repair sites will sell the parts to you direct.
I can't let this slip. You're completely WRONG. You're talking about places like PBfixit, and sure, you can get parts there if you feel like paying +400% markups for USED parts (because they buy old Powerbooks and such, and rip them apart. NONE of their parts are new, because NOBODY CAN GET APPLE PARTS. This is pretty important for things like screen clutches.) They're not a viable option, sorry.
First off, there are VERY few Apple "dealers" left, because Apple sends stock to Apple Stores, refuses to let dealers sell below Apple prices, etc. Remember back when Apple dealers were suing Apple? Yeah, they're mostly all dead now.
Second, Apple will not sell you any parts. There is ONE exception: in-warranty iMacs have a couple of components which are "user-serviceable." If it's out of warranty, you're shit out of luck- the machine has to go in for service and Apple charges a non-refundable, not-applied-towards-repairs $250 "diagnostic" fee.
A friend is an Apple employee (ie, works in Cupertino) and when I've asked if he can get parts- the answer is "nope. I can take my machine to the repair desk and they'll fix it, but I can't get parts."
This is a complete reversal of policy- I remember in college ANY certified technican would get a CDROM parts catalog on a regular basis in the mail, and could order almost ANY part for any machine.
In once case, a vital piece of mail sent to a state taxing authority couldn't get through on a month-end calendar deadline, causing much grief.
Maybe a)it shouldn't be left until the deadline and b)sent via email, if it's so damn important.
And maybe you not tell clients to use a free DNS hosting service as their sole DNS provider...
http://vote.nist.gov/DraftWhitePaperOnSIinVVSG2007 -20061120.pdf
Election's over, gents. This would have been much, much more helpful more than 12 months before the election...
One does wonder if the report was held until after the election on purpose- possibly to avoid cuts in funding and such under the then-Republican-majority Congress?
One reason may have been the scary looking bearded dude holding a samurai sword staring at him through the window every day...
Seems a reasonable concern, given we all know what happened to the head of Siebel.
Why do I see Joel constantly talking about how disturbing it is to "context switch", when sysadmins like myself are expected to handle a dozen or more tasks, most of them "surprise" stuff, daily? Don't tell me "oh, programming is complex"- so are networks.
So, you get unlimited M&Ms, a 30" screen, aereon chair, and get all upset when you spend an unexpected 2 hours out of your 8 hour workday on an emergency, one a week or so. Meanwhile, I'm working on whatever was left in the IT supply room, have to carry a pager, work 10 hour days because I'm doing 2-3 people's jobs- and I've got a half dozen long term project goals...but I'm getting bugged HOURLY to fix the most trivial shit by programmers who can't be bothered to stick paper in a printer?
If Sarah was a sysadmin and had to waste a day collecting her thoughts after spending two hours fixing a mysql database, she'd be fired. You programmers need to stop behaving like prima donnas.
Unless you consider car engines robots. In which case, they've been compensating for damage in all sorts of ways since the late eighties.
My '91 Audi will compensate for:
...and so on. So, technically, Bosch was there way before these guys with the concept of "take damage and keep going" (which isn't that special...)
Yeah, right.
You'd think- but the asshole (Matt Katzer) filed an anti-SLAPP lawsuit in response to a lawsuit seeking him to cease and desist (he was hounding a government research facility that was employing one of the JMRI authors and JMRI had enough)..basically won it, and got over $30K for his attorneys...and that's AFTER their claims for legal fees were determined to be excessive/unreasonable, and reduced!
He's run out and filed patents for stuff days after someone else announced they developed it...then turned around and demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties. Made absolutely insane, blatantly false assertations.
Both his lawyers should be disbarred based on the level of falsehoods present in court filings. EFF, where the hell are you? I'm always hearing about I should donate to the EFF, but I don't see them doing a fucking thing for JMRI to fend off this sleaze.
I smell a lie... why don't they go down the street to the Chinese factory churning out these diodes for $5/unit and leave the marketing BS to Sony?
What makes you think that isn't exactly what they're doing now? They're probably not $5- more like $50/100, especially in single unit quantities...some laser diodes ARE pretty pricey. And then you need a drive circuit, though nothing specific to this type of diode, most likely. I also doubt they're being made in china; South Korea, Japan...maybe Malaysia. Japanese electronics manufacturers moved out of China as fast as they moved in, because of very high bin rates.
Even if they DO buy the blu-ray players, they're selling or stockpiling parts for when the blu-ray machines break. None of the manufacturers will want to service the systems. They'll want people to grumble, throw last year's unit in the trash, and buy next year's model; same reason I wouldn't expect the first units to be very reliable. Repair prices from the manufacturer will be sky high, and the market ripe for a replacement-parts company.
A friend's husband, who is about 40 or so, told me a story about how he and his buddies would play games with the South Boston cops. The favorite consisted of getting a cop to show up with a cruiser, leave the cruiser on a foot chase for one kid...and then friends would jump out and snatch the cruiser and go on a short joyride, then leave it somewhere.
He said another group of kids heard about it and tried the same trick a week or so later, but the cops had wised up and were ready. "They got the shit beaten out of them", because the cops were furious at being made to look like idiots. He also said that on more than one occasion when he was up to something he shouldn't have been, he was beaten by cops. My mother's father was a Long Island cop; she once mentioned memories of him washing blood off his nightstick. Here's a pro-tip for you, son. You don't get blood on a nightstick unless you -repeatedly- hit someone...and you don't need to repeatedly hit someone to subdue them.
If you think cops here in the States are innocent little angels and it's just the rest of the world where cops beat people, you're from the "right" side of the tracks and blissfully ignorant. The Boston Globe did a story on a journalism student who was threatened, had his gear confiscated, etc after taking some pictures of police in Provincetown beating people during a light riot (ie, people got to drinking and things got out of control.)
Police beat the people whom they can't just threaten with minor charges. Ie, the people who already have a record. For those of us that haven't had anything worse than a parking ticket, cops can lord enormous power over: how exactly would you prove your innocence if the cop decides you "assaulted an officer", or "interefered with the duties of an officer"? He's an officer of the court, you're not. At every job interview you'll now have to check the 'yes' box next to "have you ever been convicted of a crime?"...and do you think you'll be believed when you say that it was just because you got into an argument over a cop who was trying to give you a bogus speeding ticket, and you never laid a finger on the cop?
Seriously though, the author completely ignores the vast geographic differences between the US and other industrialized country when categorizing the US as falling behind in broadband acceptance. The US has an average population density of ~30 people per square km, industrialized Europe's is ~100, while Japan's is 336. The higher the population density, the less cable is needed (and hence, the lower the cost) to provide broadband to all these people.
I used to think the same- until I went looking for broadband in Boston, looking for a place to rent. Here's a general description of how it goes.
Verizon has rolled our FiOS in almost every suburban neighborhood in Eastern Massachusets with a decent average per-household income, but nowhere in Boston or surrounding neighborhoods. Newton, in fact, is the closest city to Boston which has FiOS. Alston, Brighton, Boston, Cambridge, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Somerville, Watertown...the list goes on. None of these places have FiOS. These places have relatively high population density, and some of them have enormous $/household income levels. A few state legislators have made noise about it- accusing Verizon of getting all the benefits of being a public utility, but discriminating in how it rolls out its services. Verizon's official line is that it is "easier" to work in the Suburbs; possibly true, but in the city, you have 10-50 times the customers for any given block; even if you have to hire 2x the crews to finish the job faster, hire police details, pull more permits...you'd still make your money back faster. I am convinced that what Verizon is terrified of is that one person in a building will buy FiOS, and then share it wirelessly or with ethernet runs to everyone else. 10mbit down and several mbit up goes a LONG way for a lot of home users...and it is pretty cheap, too...$30-40/month.
The towns that do are all outside, or inside-but-very-close-to, the 128 corridor. Meanwhile, Verizon MIGHT offer DSL service if you're not a)too far from a CO which is b)actually wired for DSL which c)Verizon has decided to offer something better than 1mbit down and 128kbit (YES, 128KBIT!) up...or sDSL service, which costs an arm and a leg...
Up until recently, Verizon wouldn't even offer ANY DSL services where Comcast operated; comcast's service costs a minimum of $40-50/month, and it's more expensive if you chose not to also get basic cable.
Managing Money With Linux Apps
That should read "Managing money with a free open source application", since Gnucash runs on Linux, and numerous Unixes- including MacOS X (albeit in a very-poorly-integrated fashion.)
One thing that always bugged me about Gnucash- you have to pull OFX (or whatever) files by hand. Quicken could automatically fetch the latest data from my bank with a button click...
Also, are there any LiveCDs that contain up-to-date versions of Gnucash and associated libraries? On an intel mac, it's almost easier to run a virtual machine just for Gnucash, than spend hours upon hours of compiling with Fink...
You forgot at the end:
set_Destination(couch);
start_navigation();
}
If they ran their shuttles on something like Debian stable it would be a rock solid platform and probably end up saving them lots of money. Or am I missing something here.
Yes, you are. Primarily the fact that Debian Stable isn't even Carrier Grade, and certainly not qualified for life support. Ie, "doesn't crash in the midst of re-entry."
Keep in mind that the shuttle computers are highly redundant (I believe there are three main computers, and three backups of each component?), monitor a HUGE number of sensors, control a large number of servos and other systems, do telemetry, etc.
*ducks and runs for cover*
Seriously though- they never "envisioned" a mission occuring over the end-of-year? Let me guess: a defense (space) contractor designed the systems.
I'm afraid I don't take these "Friends of Liberty" folks at face value. Their assertions are backed up by a volume of evidence found in similar conspiracy theories. NONE WHATSOEVER.
Read the PDF listed at the bottom of the press release. The very first paragraph explains the source of their concerns:
The Identity Project submits these comments in response to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) published at 71 Federal Register 40035-40048 (July 14, 2006), docket number USCBP-2005-0003-0003, and the associated "Regulatory Assessment" published July 18, 2006 on the Web site at http://www.regulations.gov/ and docketed as USCBP-2005-0003-0005.
In the guise of an NPRM alleged to propose a change only in the required timing of transmission of information already required to be provided to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the CBP has actually proposed a fundamental regulatory change with far-reaching (literally and figuratively) legal, policy, and logistical implications: The NPRM would replace a requirement for ex post facto notice to the CBP of information about who is on each vessel (ship or plane) with an unconstitutional system of prior restraint of international travel, entirely unauthorized by statute and inconsistent with the U.S. obligations embodied in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Here is the full docket in PDF format (took me a while to find it until I came across a Reddit comment that said to make sure you allow the search engine to search closed-for-comment documents...and when I did, it took the search engine a minute or more to find the document.)
OK, Frankfurt isn't exactly a luxurious destination- but why are Wikipedia people going on "retreats", and who is footing the bill? And I don't mean just airfare or accomodations...I mean meeting facilities, dinners, etc...
Businesses love to complain about how hard it is to find employees when they're being cheap on labor, or how they can't retain good help.
There's no talent problem; there's a "how the IT industry treats workers" problem. Here's the current IT talent pool "problem", as I see it:
Is it any wonder that IT staff leave the industry in droves after just a few years?
It says nothing about why the terminals were malfunctioning, which had everything to do with touch screen calibration (and the need to recalibrate from time to time)
Uh, no. Touchscreen technology has been around since the late 70's, and I remember using some circa-late-80's touchscreens that needed calibration, but only within an inch or less.
Touchscreens are in wide, wide use, including many applications where "regular" miscalibration problems would be completely unacceptable. Ie, medical systems, industrial (milling) equipment, ATMs, etc. Even self-checkout stations at stores have touchscreens, and I've never hit one that didn't register the correct button-push.
Not to mention: these machines are brand spanking new and in many cases made by companies which should be thoroughly familiar with the issues of touchscreen technology (example, Diebold, an ATM maker.)
I just don't "get" all of these problems. Here in MA, you fill in the bubble with a pencil, and stick your ballot in a machine in front of a poll worker. Moreover, you mark your ballot in complete privacy- you step into a booth and close a curtain...
And 50 employees are gonna have to sweat out their credit reports even as they look for new jobs
Makes you wonder why the courts don't automatically order credit reports of victims cleaned. The burden should NOT be on the victims, even if it is just a matter of sending a letter to the three agencies with a copy of the court docket or similar...
Fun trivia I learned from the manager at my co-op bank branch today: utility (cable, phone, power, gas, etc) companies have been moving towards a new electronic check cashing system ,where your bank never gets the cancelled check back.
Fun, if you need to prove to a credit reporting agency that you DID in fact pay a bill (or a credit line was not listed on your account) since that involves...drumroll please...sending in a copy of the cancelled checks! Likewise for electronic fund transfers and automatic credit card billing. The deck is stacked even further against consumers, just like how you have to pay to get your report if you don't live in certain states...and even if you get the report for free, you don't get your FICO score...
Do you have any common sense? Employers are -required- to have your SS # on file as a course of payroll/taxes.
Especially given the positive feedback we've gotten on the redesigned pref window, I'd suggest explicitly naming problems here rather than making such a vague and general argument.
Here's one: since the "new and improved" cookies window was introduced in 1.5, you cannot use the delete key or selection modifier keys (ie, something you can do in selection lists in 99.9% of the applications out there.) This makes deleting a large number of cookies extremely time consuming. Instead of "[shift] click click [delete] [click OK in confirmation" I have to do: "[click] [click delete] [click OK in confirmation] [[repeat FOR EACH COOKIE]]"
Want a solid bug report? MacOS X RC2 had to be restarted on average about 4-5 times a day because I would suddenly find myself unable to type in any forms, the URL bar, and the search bar.
From a "layman" perspective, it seems like if you can't keep the keyboard working, your programming staff is incompetent and/or has misguided priorities. Stop fucking around on all the fancy stuff, and get the basics right. Remember that the whole reason people went with you in the first place is that you were supposedly light and fast- and instead you've added in bloatware we can't remove. If you want to have "phishing protection", great, make it a plugin, even if it's included by default, so that we can remove it.
I'm typing on a MBP "v1.0" and the only noise I hear is the hard drive- a quiet "whoosh". The fans at minimum speed (1000RPM) are completely inaudible. They are more progressive than the G4's which were pretty much an on/off switch.
As for heat? Every year I read whining about "how hot" the newest Powerbook is. It's all a bunch of shit (with the exception of the 12" Al Powerbook. That thing WAS an oven.) Component specs don't change- people just assume "oh, it's a gazillion times faster, it MUST run hotter!" Funny, but if you compare the new intel Minis to the old Minis- they use a few watts LESS power.
Right now it's sitting on my legs, I'm wearing jeans, and it isn't uncomfortable- smcfancontrol says it's 138 degrees F on the CPU die. When it's running too hot for comfort, I fire up smccontrol and bump the fans up to 1500rpm, where you can just barely hear them- and it cools things down by about ten degrees.
Boiling down some of the legalese, the charges (if any are filed) will be "conspiracy to knowingly present a false and fictitious claim upon or against the United States, or any department or agency thereof in violation of USC 18 (secs. 2, 371, 1036, 1343, 2318) and USC 49 (secs. 46314 and 46316) and 49 CFR (secs. 1540.103 and 1540.105)" (edited for brevity).
So, in English, this means what? Slander/liable against the US government? So, if I say "Bush has an ass the size of Texas", I should expect the FBI soon?
Sounds like a foot-in-the-door technique. Like using mail fraud/tax code to get your nose into someone's papers, or using a "tail light it out"/"speeding" to pull over someone that looks like they're up to no good.
Either that, or the Federal government is visciously going after anyone that dares to suggest airline travel isn't safe, lest it hurt an already crippled and dying industry. Reminds me of the MBTA (Boston's subway/bus/commuter rail system) policy on photographic permits: you can film or take photos, but ONLY if the final product is vetted by the MBTA and does not show the MBTA in an "unfavorable" light or imply the MBTA system is "unsafe."