...and is, therefore, valid. I can tell my wife "you ruined my archeological filing system!" when she decides to "neaten up".
Ok, now to actually answer the question posed here (as opposed to what a lot of other people here are doing, which is either come up with something witty or else attempt to codify a sweeping new all-inclusive whiz-bang OS change).
Ahem.
I know the question is asking about emails, files, contacts, and meetings, but as I keep relatively few contacts permanently filed and don't much like meetings, I'll address what I do about files and emails.
Files: I start with a simple folder: "Files". In my case, "D:\Files". (I like folders Windows doesn't much know about, nor mess with.) Inside that, I have pretty much a heterogeneous hodgepodge of hierarchies of folders: "Projects", "Photos", "Temp" (big one, that), etc. Nothing earth-shattering.
Emails: I try to organize these into folders denoting conversational thread ("Buddies", "List Stuff", "Family", "Work", etc.), combined with where they are in my email-processing conveyor belt ("To Do" (I haven't replied yet), then "Transfer" (I've replied, but not archived), then "Done" (archived and ready for deletion)), for whichever conversational threads I want to save. Using the examples above would result in:
List Stuff
Work
To Do - Buddies
To Do - Family
Transfer - Buddies
Transfer - Family
Done - Buddies
Done - Family
(I would use a bit of hierarchy here, like:
List Stuff
Work
To Do
Buddies
Family
Transfer
Buddies
Family
Done
Buddies
Family
, except Yahoo! Mail doesn't allow folder nesting. (And before you laugh at me for using Yahoo! Mail, can you access your mail at any web browser anywhere? How many times have you changed addresses in the last 5 years? I haven't at all.))
...I only write business applications and websites and stuff like that. At least when my creation fails, no one dies. These NASA guys...they have it rough.
My first experience with this kind of nonsense was with a box containing the install disks (and by "disks" here, I mean 3.5" floppies, this being about 13 years ago) for Macintosh System 6.3. There, spanning the gap over the disks in their little plastic tray, was a paper sticker proclaiming that, by breaking the seal, you agreed to...something. Of course there was no room on the sticker for the actual contract you were supposedly agreeing to by the tearing of a paper, and it wasn't clear where this "agreement" referred to actually was. But, trickster that I am, I found that I could slip the disks out one by one without tearing the sticker. (Looking back on it now, I suppose I could have cut the back of the plastic tray with a box-cutter, but no matter.)
Since then, of course, this silliness has escalated to the point where the events in the article come to pass: you are required to do something which you could do entirely by accident, which is supposed to signify that you agree to something you aren't told, and in fact have no way of finding out about without doing the thing you're supposed to do. Double Catch-22 ("Catch-44"?).
So how about this: we start sending mail (real, physical mail might make more of an impression, but email could be good for a larf too) to these companies, proclaiming on the outside of the envelope (or, in the case of email, in the Subject: or some other more obscure header line) that, "by opening this mail, you agree to the enclosed agreement". Then, inside, you have whatever agreement amuses you. For example:
The opener (you; hereafter, 'Dorkus') agrees provide me with all the free cookies, hundred-dollar bills, and blowjobs I ask for, and like it, in perpetuity, throughout the universe, forever and ever, amen.
If anyone ever tries to call you on their EULA, simply fire back that they agreed to your UALA (User Abuser License Agreement) too, and it's equally enforceable.
Caller ID (so you can tell who's calling) plus Privacy Manager (so they can't get through with blocked ID) plus Voice Mail (so they can leave a message failing all else).
I have this combination. Works like a charm. (Check your particular phone company for their equivalent.)
Uh-huh. And what about British citizens living abroad, who, one would reason, would have the most cause to want to access BBC content in a way other than normal television?
It's ridiculous. Make it available or not. Don't give us this e-Balkanization crap.
You beat me to the issue I thought of, but not the application: How about they take a CAT scan (or something), extract the skull portion (or even the skull portion plus muscle portion), then generate models of you with x% less body fat? Could be a great motivator...
Ah, yes, the old Hindenburg chestnut. Are we cursed forever to avoid using the single most commmon element in the universe, one that will burn clean, simply because someone burned a balloon with it once decades ago?
As for the distributed side of this argument, I've thought it was a good idea for years. Whether or not we do it with hydrogen, we need to do it. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of...wait, let me start that again. Imagine every house's roof covered not with wood shake, or spanish tile, or what-have-you, but with photovoltaic cells. Now imagine that people's cars run on domestically-produced hydrogen. And when I say "domestic", I mean "in the household". Produced by electrolysis, in your own house, using electricity from your (and your neighbors', and everyone else's on the grid) rooftop photovoltaics plus water from your tap. Storage plants run electrolysis too, storing hydrogen for nighttime, when they burn it again and send the power back out again.
Now compare that to our current state of affairs: the vast majority of our electricity coming from coal or gas, much of it imported; our cars running on gasoline, almost all of it imported.
Now try and tell me it doesn't make sense to switch.
Weren't concerts (i.e., in-person performances by the artists, whether stadiums or drawing rooms) the primary moneymaker for musicians in the past? Why not consider recordings to be a form of advertising for the concerts? Won't more people be willing to pay more money to see a concert if they have found they like the music they've listened to from that artist? And if that advertising comes at no cost to the artist/record company/whoever, as it is with P2P, isn't that all the better?
(Leaving aside for the moment all the ancillary revenue from things like T-shirts and such.)
Ferinstance: I've read for some time about the idea that all of space is filled with a super-duper tiny froth of particle-anitparticle pairs spontaneously forming and mutually annihilating. Couldn't all these particles, even though they exist for short times, exert gravitational (or other) force and account for some missing mass? Maybe even the "dark energy"?
Slashdot Mirror
Color coordination. Only do it if the colors of the iPod and the New Beetle match. Also, what colors do the new iMacs come in?
[Hums "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" by the Kinks]
...where MS's monopoly is the werewolf?
Filk version of "Werewolves in London", anyone? Maybe "Werewolf from Redmond"?
Ok, now to actually answer the question posed here (as opposed to what a lot of other people here are doing, which is either come up with something witty or else attempt to codify a sweeping new all-inclusive whiz-bang OS change).
Ahem.
I know the question is asking about emails, files, contacts, and meetings, but as I keep relatively few contacts permanently filed and don't much like meetings, I'll address what I do about files and emails.
Files: I start with a simple folder: "Files". In my case, "D:\Files". (I like folders Windows doesn't much know about, nor mess with.) Inside that, I have pretty much a heterogeneous hodgepodge of hierarchies of folders: "Projects", "Photos", "Temp" (big one, that), etc. Nothing earth-shattering.
Emails: I try to organize these into folders denoting conversational thread ("Buddies", "List Stuff", "Family", "Work", etc.), combined with where they are in my email-processing conveyor belt ("To Do" (I haven't replied yet), then "Transfer" (I've replied, but not archived), then "Done" (archived and ready for deletion)), for whichever conversational threads I want to save. Using the examples above would result in:
- List Stuff
- Work
- To Do - Buddies
- To Do - Family
- Transfer - Buddies
- Transfer - Family
- Done - Buddies
- Done - Family
(I would use a bit of hierarchy here, like:- List Stuff
- Work
- To Do
- Buddies
- Family
- Transfer
- Buddies
- Family
- Done
- Buddies
- Family
, except Yahoo! Mail doesn't allow folder nesting. (And before you laugh at me for using Yahoo! Mail, can you access your mail at any web browser anywhere? How many times have you changed addresses in the last 5 years? I haven't at all.))And that's pretty much it.
(Hey, you asked...)
Isn't the laptop you carry now a potential weapon? Pretty dense and heavy, with sharp corners. Would make a nice dent in anyone's head.
And how about those hard, bony hands you have there? One good punch from those could knock someone out!
Or those teeth in your head! Sharp and hard and rigged up to a very strong and effective system of musculature -- you could maim with those things!
Better get rid of all of 'em.
No? 6.63? Dunno. It's been a long time.
- Simon & Garfunkel + James Taylor + Bob Dylan
- Marylin Manson + Tool + Nirvana
- A bunch of Christmas carols + Dead Kennedys
- TV theme songs + Gregorian chant
- Eigenradion + itself
Guys, give us a copy of the software to feed stuff into!...I only write business applications and websites and stuff like that. At least when my creation fails, no one dies. These NASA guys...they have it rough.
My first experience with this kind of nonsense was with a box containing the install disks (and by "disks" here, I mean 3.5" floppies, this being about 13 years ago) for Macintosh System 6.3. There, spanning the gap over the disks in their little plastic tray, was a paper sticker proclaiming that, by breaking the seal, you agreed to...something. Of course there was no room on the sticker for the actual contract you were supposedly agreeing to by the tearing of a paper, and it wasn't clear where this "agreement" referred to actually was. But, trickster that I am, I found that I could slip the disks out one by one without tearing the sticker. (Looking back on it now, I suppose I could have cut the back of the plastic tray with a box-cutter, but no matter.)
Since then, of course, this silliness has escalated to the point where the events in the article come to pass: you are required to do something which you could do entirely by accident, which is supposed to signify that you agree to something you aren't told, and in fact have no way of finding out about without doing the thing you're supposed to do. Double Catch-22 ("Catch-44"?).
So how about this: we start sending mail (real, physical mail might make more of an impression, but email could be good for a larf too) to these companies, proclaiming on the outside of the envelope (or, in the case of email, in the Subject: or some other more obscure header line) that, "by opening this mail, you agree to the enclosed agreement". Then, inside, you have whatever agreement amuses you. For example:
If anyone ever tries to call you on their EULA, simply fire back that they agreed to your UALA (User Abuser License Agreement) too, and it's equally enforceable.
Caller ID (so you can tell who's calling) plus Privacy Manager (so they can't get through with blocked ID) plus Voice Mail (so they can leave a message failing all else).
I have this combination. Works like a charm. (Check your particular phone company for their equivalent.)
From the article:
Oh yeah. Much more readable.
...is defined here.
It's ridiculous. Make it available or not. Don't give us this e-Balkanization crap.
...can they determine whether the downloader is a British citizen? "Click here if you are, and here if you're not"?
Base-10 math? Not bits, but actual digits? All the benefits of BCD with none of the overhead.
On the other hand, 7-bit ASCII now needs three digits -- 300 values, wasting 172 values, more than have the value-space of a byte ("bydte"?).
Don't even begin to ask UNICODE to retool for this.
Signed,
Lieutenant L. T. Smash
(not spell-checked)
You beat me to the issue I thought of, but not the application: How about they take a CAT scan (or something), extract the skull portion (or even the skull portion plus muscle portion), then generate models of you with x% less body fat? Could be a great motivator...
Or would that be SPCP?
Japan's been watching too much A.I.
Sincerely, Halon Joel Osmium
Am I right, here, people? Back me up, hah?
Now, literally.
Don't forget the free cell phone so they can track with triangulation too. Or just skip the middleman and do GPS units as ankle-tags.
Ah, yes, the old Hindenburg chestnut. Are we cursed forever to avoid using the single most commmon element in the universe, one that will burn clean, simply because someone burned a balloon with it once decades ago?
As for the distributed side of this argument, I've thought it was a good idea for years. Whether or not we do it with hydrogen, we need to do it. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of...wait, let me start that again. Imagine every house's roof covered not with wood shake, or spanish tile, or what-have-you, but with photovoltaic cells. Now imagine that people's cars run on domestically-produced hydrogen. And when I say "domestic", I mean "in the household". Produced by electrolysis, in your own house, using electricity from your (and your neighbors', and everyone else's on the grid) rooftop photovoltaics plus water from your tap. Storage plants run electrolysis too, storing hydrogen for nighttime, when they burn it again and send the power back out again.
Now compare that to our current state of affairs: the vast majority of our electricity coming from coal or gas, much of it imported; our cars running on gasoline, almost all of it imported.
Now try and tell me it doesn't make sense to switch.
This is obviously a misplaced writeup from the instructions for the upcoming Command & Conquer: The Red Planet.
Them nuke reactors take tons of cash, though...better build several war miners. And point them at super-valuable fossil deposits.
...concerts?
Weren't concerts (i.e., in-person performances by the artists, whether stadiums or drawing rooms) the primary moneymaker for musicians in the past? Why not consider recordings to be a form of advertising for the concerts? Won't more people be willing to pay more money to see a concert if they have found they like the music they've listened to from that artist? And if that advertising comes at no cost to the artist/record company/whoever, as it is with P2P, isn't that all the better?
(Leaving aside for the moment all the ancillary revenue from things like T-shirts and such.)
Followups?
Ferinstance: I've read for some time about the idea that all of space is filled with a super-duper tiny froth of particle-anitparticle pairs spontaneously forming and mutually annihilating. Couldn't all these particles, even though they exist for short times, exert gravitational (or other) force and account for some missing mass? Maybe even the "dark energy"?