I use Dvorak at home and QWERTY at work. When switching from one environment into the other, it takes my fingers about a minute to figure out that they're switching keymaps, then they're at full speed on either. As an aside, I find that I type faster and more comfortably on Dvorak, but am uncertain whether it is better or worse for the remediation of RSI.
I share an office with a graphic designer with a very long and deep background in Quark. I have had to help her deal with Xpress' bad behavior for some time. When I read the article, I told her, excitedly, "The CEO of Quark abruptly quit!"
"Just like Quark," she quipped.
Huh? In the U.S., building, zoning, subdivision, and other regulatory codes are written and enforced at the municipal or county level with some general rules dictated by state statutes. One wouldn't go to a courthouse to get them, but to City Hall, and there would be no copyright as they are a regulatory code. Perhaps parent is referring to a codifier (who compiles and publishes codes, ordinances, etc) who can copyright the presentation or codification, but not the laws themselves (cf. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc.)!
They (the gov) don't even have to outlaw rebates. Just make it false advertising to put prices in ads or store displays with the rebate amount already subtracted.
We have a law in Connecticut that deals with this. If a retailer advertises a price for a product, they must accept that price at the point of sale, whether or not that price includes in small print "after rebate." So if Crazy Bob's Komputer Outlet wants to sell RAM chips for "$1.99!!!*" they have to take $1.99 at the register. If they want to offer a mail-in rebate, they have to advertise the product as "$91.99 with a $90 mail-in rebate!!!!" We also have a litigious Attorney General who is pretty zealous about enforcing this law, so we find that it accomplishes its purpose.
This bill only applies to satellite images purchased by the government from outside vendors with an exclusivity agreement. From the Armed Services Committee report:
The United States often enters into exclusive licensing agreements with commercial satellite operators that prohibit these companies from selling certain unclassified data and imagery, except to the United States and to approved customers. Compelled release of such data and imagery by the United States under FOIA defeats the purpose of these licensing agreements, removes any profit motive, and may damage the national security by mandating disclosure to the general public upon request.
This is a very specific class of satellite photo. Commercial photos sold to private users are still legal; so are government photos obtained via non-exclusive contracts. The submitter and article have the facts all wrong!
No, absentee ballots must be received by the close of polls on election day in order to be counted. Otherwise, we would have to wait days or even weeks to know the results of close races as ballots trickle in.
Here in Connecticut, there are two steps to absentee voting: first, the voter fills out an application and submits it to the Town Clerk. Then the Clerk gives him a ballot to fill out and return. Imagine how this plays out when the voter is on the other side of the earth:
1.) The application has to get to the voter somehow. This is not as much of a problem as it once was, because one can email the town clerk and ask for it to be mailed, one's relatives can send it to you, or you can print it out from the Secretary of the State's web site.
2.) Once the application is filled out, it must be mailed back to the Town Clerk. Currently, the law allows one to fax the application to ensure the ballot goes out in a timely manner, but it must be mailed at the same time it is faxed. If the application is not received in the mail be the close of polls on election day, the ballot is rejected.
3.) When the Town Clerk receives the application, he prepares a ballot and mails it.
4.) Then I get to vote. And mail back the ballot. And hope that it's received in time.
That's a cycle of three or four mail trips across the world. Anybody overseas who wants to vote absentee needs to get going right now to make sure their votes are counted! Incidentally, look at the audit trail absentee balloting leaves in its wake: the completed application, an outer envelope for mailing, an inner envelope to ensure ballot secrecy, and the ballot itself. With the potential for mischief that absentee balloting presents, I am glad all this paperwork exists. However, in the interest of timeliness and of not disenfranchising remote voters, I think the application process, but not the voting itself, can be shortened by using email without sacrificing security. Imagine this process:
1.) The voter emails the town clerk with the required information and a digital signature.
2.) The clerk mails the ballot.
3.) The voter mails back the ballot.
That's two mail trips. That's still a wait, but the process is simpler, there's still an audit trail, the identity of the voter is still verifiable, and the ballot is on good old paper. Why can't states adopt a sensible, middle-ground process like this one? And why doesn't Missouri's chief elections official understand the importance of an auditable vote?
How about suing tobacco companies for producing cigarettes that people choose to smoke, or gun manufacturers for making weapons that are used to commit crimes? Pretty crazy world, isn't it?
"Seth Finklestein" is not only a liar, but an idiot as well. FTC Commissioners are appointed, not elected! Mozelle Thompson has never held elected office in his life. He is an expert in government finance and has spent most of his career as an attorney and bureaucrat.
Regardless of what you think of him, the parent post is an ignorant fabrication.
"We've always thought of our brains in terms of our latest technology. So at one point our brains were steam engines. When I was a kid, they were telephone switching networks. Then they became digital computers. Then, massively parallel digital computers. Probably, out there now, there are kid's books which say that our brain is the world wide web. We probably haven't got it right yet."
Rodney Brooks, Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Donald Knuth wrote a lengthy letter (pdf) to the Journal of Algorithms elaborating on the excessive costs to libraries and universities of peer-reviewed journals. Peer reviewers volunteer their services, and authors do much of their own typesetting thanks to the magic of desktop publishing, so the only production costs are the printing, postage and shipping, some clerical support, and an editor-in-chief. Yet Journal of Algorithms, for example, costs a budget-busting $731 per year for libraries. Libraries must economize on journal subscriptions, limiting access to the latest research.
I'm not overly fond of the current subscription model, since it encourages a publish-or-perish mindset amidst academe's stately groves. A system where the organization funding the research also pays for its publication (instead of the reader paying to access it) might put the brakes on excessive publishing, both in the sciences and in the humanities, and greatly increase readership, and therefore the dissemination of knowledge.
That's exactly what these loathsome voice-driven phone systems were meant for: to prevent "wasteful" contact with human customer service representatives by allowing customers to state what they want in clear language without navigating a byzantine menu hierarchy. What the geniuses who came up with this idea failed to take into account is that there is no substitute for human contact! People want to explain their problems to a person, not guess at what the machine wants to hear. The sheer amount of customer distemper that leads to the invention of an "anger detector" is an obvious testament to just how unready for prime time voice-driven menu technology is.
Those tasks that phone systems are good at, such as billing functions, can be done just as well through DTMF systems, in my opinion. Until this menu technology can simulate human conversation beyond (or just short of) the Turing test, cost-cutting managers will just have to swallow the cost of real, live customer service.
Just a correction, 50.000 to 60.000 at the late WTC are worst-case casualties, not fatalities. No one knows, of course, how many have been killed, certainly many thousands, but most news sources say no more than 5.000 are dead and no more than 25.000 wounded. These numbers are sure to increase; may God, Allahw akg all the rest help us all.
Slashdot Mirror
Larry Wall, I demand that you stop having fun and get back to writing free software for me at once! Your Fan, M. Piedlourd
I use Dvorak at home and QWERTY at work. When switching from one environment into the other, it takes my fingers about a minute to figure out that they're switching keymaps, then they're at full speed on either. As an aside, I find that I type faster and more comfortably on Dvorak, but am uncertain whether it is better or worse for the remediation of RSI.
I share an office with a graphic designer with a very long and deep background in Quark. I have had to help her deal with Xpress' bad behavior for some time. When I read the article, I told her, excitedly, "The CEO of Quark abruptly quit!" "Just like Quark," she quipped.
Huh? In the U.S., building, zoning, subdivision, and other regulatory codes are written and enforced at the municipal or county level with some general rules dictated by state statutes. One wouldn't go to a courthouse to get them, but to City Hall, and there would be no copyright as they are a regulatory code. Perhaps parent is referring to a codifier (who compiles and publishes codes, ordinances, etc) who can copyright the presentation or codification, but not the laws themselves (cf. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc.)!
Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
They (the gov) don't even have to outlaw rebates. Just make it false advertising to put prices in ads or store displays with the rebate amount already subtracted.
We have a law in Connecticut that deals with this. If a retailer advertises a price for a product, they must accept that price at the point of sale, whether or not that price includes in small print "after rebate." So if Crazy Bob's Komputer Outlet wants to sell RAM chips for "$1.99!!!*" they have to take $1.99 at the register. If they want to offer a mail-in rebate, they have to advertise the product as "$91.99 with a $90 mail-in rebate!!!!" We also have a litigious Attorney General who is pretty zealous about enforcing this law, so we find that it accomplishes its purpose.
* after rebate
In Soviet Russian satellite, the pings hear YOU!!
This is a very specific class of satellite photo. Commercial photos sold to private users are still legal; so are government photos obtained via non-exclusive contracts. The submitter and article have the facts all wrong!
A cursory reading of all those articles shows that in those races, the outcome hinged on ballots that had been received but not yet counted.
No, absentee ballots must be received by the close of polls on election day in order to be counted. Otherwise, we would have to wait days or even weeks to know the results of close races as ballots trickle in.
1.) The application has to get to the voter somehow. This is not as much of a problem as it once was, because one can email the town clerk and ask for it to be mailed, one's relatives can send it to you, or you can print it out from the Secretary of the State's web site.
2.) Once the application is filled out, it must be mailed back to the Town Clerk. Currently, the law allows one to fax the application to ensure the ballot goes out in a timely manner, but it must be mailed at the same time it is faxed. If the application is not received in the mail be the close of polls on election day, the ballot is rejected.
3.) When the Town Clerk receives the application, he prepares a ballot and mails it.
4.) Then I get to vote. And mail back the ballot. And hope that it's received in time.
That's a cycle of three or four mail trips across the world. Anybody overseas who wants to vote absentee needs to get going right now to make sure their votes are counted! Incidentally, look at the audit trail absentee balloting leaves in its wake: the completed application, an outer envelope for mailing, an inner envelope to ensure ballot secrecy, and the ballot itself. With the potential for mischief that absentee balloting presents, I am glad all this paperwork exists. However, in the interest of timeliness and of not disenfranchising remote voters, I think the application process, but not the voting itself, can be shortened by using email without sacrificing security. Imagine this process:
1.) The voter emails the town clerk with the required information and a digital signature.
2.) The clerk mails the ballot.
3.) The voter mails back the ballot.
That's two mail trips. That's still a wait, but the process is simpler, there's still an audit trail, the identity of the voter is still verifiable, and the ballot is on good old paper. Why can't states adopt a sensible, middle-ground process like this one? And why doesn't Missouri's chief elections official understand the importance of an auditable vote?
How about suing tobacco companies for producing cigarettes that people choose to smoke, or gun manufacturers for making weapons that are used to commit crimes? Pretty crazy world, isn't it?
I don't live in a subdivision, you insensitive clod!
Don't run it too often, or we'll have to redefine "software bloat" to refer to the user.
"Seth Finklestein" is not only a liar, but an idiot as well. FTC Commissioners are appointed, not elected! Mozelle Thompson has never held elected office in his life. He is an expert in government finance and has spent most of his career as an attorney and bureaucrat.
Regardless of what you think of him, the parent post is an ignorant fabrication.
If e-voting resulted in President CowboyNeal.
My cell plays the Mexican Hat Dance.
"We've always thought of our brains in terms of our latest technology. So at one point our brains were steam engines. When I was a kid, they were telephone switching networks. Then they became digital computers. Then, massively parallel digital computers. Probably, out there now, there are kid's books which say that our brain is the world wide web. We probably haven't got it right yet."
Rodney Brooks, Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
But "LinDOES" sounds like "Linda's." All it takes is one lady named Linda to sue...
Donald Knuth wrote a lengthy letter (pdf) to the Journal of Algorithms elaborating on the excessive costs to libraries and universities of peer-reviewed journals. Peer reviewers volunteer their services, and authors do much of their own typesetting thanks to the magic of desktop publishing, so the only production costs are the printing, postage and shipping, some clerical support, and an editor-in-chief. Yet Journal of Algorithms, for example, costs a budget-busting $731 per year for libraries. Libraries must economize on journal subscriptions, limiting access to the latest research.
I'm not overly fond of the current subscription model, since it encourages a publish-or-perish mindset amidst academe's stately groves. A system where the organization funding the research also pays for its publication (instead of the reader paying to access it) might put the brakes on excessive publishing, both in the sciences and in the humanities, and greatly increase readership, and therefore the dissemination of knowledge.
How much time to people spend coming up with these dull April Fool's submissions?
All I did was a "net send" to a coworker saying she performed an illegal operation and the police were on their way...
Access database. With a baroque VBA frontend.
That's exactly what these loathsome voice-driven phone systems were meant for: to prevent "wasteful" contact with human customer service representatives by allowing customers to state what they want in clear language without navigating a byzantine menu hierarchy. What the geniuses who came up with this idea failed to take into account is that there is no substitute for human contact! People want to explain their problems to a person, not guess at what the machine wants to hear. The sheer amount of customer distemper that leads to the invention of an "anger detector" is an obvious testament to just how unready for prime time voice-driven menu technology is.
Those tasks that phone systems are good at, such as billing functions, can be done just as well through DTMF systems, in my opinion. Until this menu technology can simulate human conversation beyond (or just short of) the Turing test, cost-cutting managers will just have to swallow the cost of real, live customer service.
Just a correction, 50.000 to 60.000 at the late WTC are worst-case casualties, not fatalities. No one knows, of course, how many have been killed, certainly many thousands, but most news sources say no more than 5.000 are dead and no more than 25.000 wounded. These numbers are sure to increase; may God, Allahw akg all the rest help us all.
It should be noted that it is spelt "caffeine," not "caffiene."
Cheers!
M. Piedlourd