T-Mo has solid coverage up the Thurway between NYC and Albany. Dunno about the route that your train takes though. Might be worth looking into.
Thanks, I've looked. There are a number of T-Mobile users among the train regulars, and they drop signal far more often than Verizon users (though it also depends on the phone model). Upstate NY commuter train lore (vaguely confirmed by Verizon employees among the train regulars) claims that Verizon has their towers closer to the river than the other carriers. The trains run along the east side of the Hudson, through some very hilly and mountainous areas which are nice to look at, but not so great for wireless reception. Apparently most of the cell towers along the palisades on the west side are Verizon's -- mostly clear line-of-sight to the train.
Don't mistake my comments: Verizon is hardly a corporate saint. But there are legitimate situations where they are the best choice. Let's face it, in an ideal world, I wouldn't even need a cell phone....
Well, for me, it comes down to coverage. I work in the Hudson Valley and travel by train between New York City and Albany nearly every day of the week. Verizon is the only carrier with decent coverage for both my cell phone and EVDO Internet access for the entire trip. Sprint, Cingular, Nextel have very spotty coverage, especially north of Croton-Harmon.
Now, we can argue about EVDO and wireless technology and money-grubbing telco execs forever, but at the end of the day I just need to get some work done while I'm on the train. Today that means I use Verizon, and it works pretty well.
When I was in college, someone took one of my coffee mugs, filled it up with Hershey's chocolate syrup, and put it in the microwave for 90 minutes. Then they left. As best as we can tell, the syrup first boiled over and filled up the bottom of the microwave. Eventually it hardened into a black crust and caught fire. That's when the fire alarm woke us up, you know -- it was three o'clock in the morning.
The microwave was ruined, and there was some damage to the cabinet. And I lost my favorite coffee mug too. But it's probably the best use for Hershey's chocolate syrup that I could think of (since it's pretty awful stuff).
This reminds me of the "14 Days of Art" sponsored by the alt.design.graphics newsgroup for the last five or six years. During January of each year, participants would have to make one work of art per day, in any medium, and post it online for viewing by the rest of the group. Some of the results are schlock, but others are just breathtaking. There have been photographers, painters, printmakers, oragami artists, multimedia designers, etc... Google it, there's some good stuff to be seen.
"if it's overtime, aren't the teams usually tied?"
That's exactly what I mean. MS and the pirates are tied, but in this round of overtime, MS seems to be losing. They'll catch up, then the pirates will pull ahead, and back and forth.
From the article: "The antipiracy fight is a multimillion-dollar effort, Hartje said. Although it has been going on for some time, Microsoft can't say whether the fight is paying off. 'This is a multi-inning game. We're in the first inning and it is too early to tell what the long-term impact will be,' she said."
This is the first inning? C'mon, pirated software was online (BBSs) in the 1980s, if not earlier, and even then I could buy illegally-copied software from semi-shady PC hobby stores. Forget "don't copy that floppy" -- how about "don't copy that data cassette" or "this software download will take 16 hours on your 1200 baud modem, assuming your housemates don't pick up the phone and disrupt the signal".
Nah, it's more like double-death overtime, and Microsoft is losing.
Also in consideration is the "Fairness Doctrine," which required broadcasters to present controversial topics in a fair and honest manner. It was enforced until it was eliminated in 1987.
Kucinich said in his speech that "We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda" and added "we are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible."
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was also on hand at the conference and took broadcasters to task for their current content, speaking of "too little news, too much baloney passed off as news. Too little quality entertainment, too many people eating bugs on reality TV. Too little local and regional music, too much brain-numbing national play-lists."
Let us suppose that "fairness" means showing multiple sides of the issue. This means that you now have half the airtime for each side (for a two-sided issue, if there ever is such a thing). Supposing that your television or radio show is an hour, and you typically show four segments of 10-12 minutes apiece (plus commercials), it is already impossible for you to fully explain one side of the issue. Now explaining another side means you will be even less capable of explaining both sides (or all three, or five, or fifty). Such presentations will be even more horribly compressed than they are today. In other words, we will have the illusion of fairness: by showing multiple sides, it sounds fair, but they are summarized so much that it isn't fair to the issue or the consumer.
Should the Fairness Doctrine be reinstated, the real question is whether it will come into the Internet Age. Sure, the broadcaster is telling you the XYZ perspective, but if you go on their show's web site, they go into depth about the ABC, PDQ, and WTF perspectives. Broadcasters are therefore "presenting" multiple sides, just not in the same medium. If so, this will lead to a mini-industry of commercial information vendors who have "all sides available" kits on leading topics.
Per Copp's comments: "...too little news, too much baloney passed off as news. Too little quality entertainment, too many people eating bugs on reality TV." I'm not sure how the Fairness Doctrine would improve this (and it's not clear that Copp thinks it will) but there are two sides to baloney, too. I'm not [just] trying to be funny (the bread side? the cheese side? the mustard side?) but even stupid issues have multiple perspectives. And besides, television is not about quality entertainment. It's about what makes money. If people eating bugs makes money, you'll see it on television.
If I had mod points, I'd mod up parent up even further. Excellent point.
Yes, Cisco owns the name. Fine. But Apple was in fair negotiations with them about the name when they decided to launch their own product with it. Like parent says, Steve was probably pissed about their product launch too. Right back atcha, Cisco.
Reminds of the signs I saw on a highway in Pennsylvania... "Jim Thorpe, 2 miles"... "Jim Thorpe, 1 mile"... "Jim Thorpe, exit". Must be nice for Jim to have such an arrangement with the highway department.
This means that the billboards will display their messages whenever the MAIL DELIVERY TRUCK drives by. Nice. And I'm betting a number of tags will mysteriously get lost in the mail and end up on eBay. Other issues:
If it's a keyfob, then it will also trigger the signs when someone is driving their OTHER non-Mini vehicle. Many families have two cars, and people drive other cars.
The article says "When the boards detect that you are about the drive by, they deliver a personal message based on the information you originally gave." In other words, when you're driving 70mph down the road, make sure you look up for your important message from your car manufacturer -- and then miss your turn.
Opposite extreme: you're stuck in traffic for 50 minutes underneath the sign.
And there are too many ideas for mischievous messages... "Mini announces recall of your vehicle's braking system" for example.
You make excellent points. That's why we have things called "planning" and "weighing your options".
Admittedly, many people do not do this very well, which has led to many of humanity's problems throughout history. Database selection and design are just items #92838701283743^199320 and #92838701283743^199320+1 on the list of things people ought to have thought about more over the last few million years.
Transporting 1500 pounds of bricks from the store to my house is much faster if I use a big truck rather than making dozens (if not hundreds) of trips with my Honda Civic.
Wearing dress pants with a nice shirt and tie often makes an interview more likely to succeed, even if I wear jeans every other day after I get the job.
Carving pumpkins into "jack-o-lanterns" always turns out better if I use a small, extremely sharp knife instead of a chainsaw.
Who woulda thought that specific-use items might improve the outcome of specific situations?
I'm not an electrician so I can't answer what you're saying -- but I saw this myself. It was an extremely small gap, and extremely small arc, but it simply wasn't attached properly.
Anyone who has been in New York City's Pennsylvania Station (Manhattan's train terminal for Amtrak, Long Island Railroad, and New Jersey Transit) has seen the television screens with the arrival and departure times. These look like fairly basic systems (simple white text on a black background). I commute into the city, so I'm there every day. A while back I was waiting for my train when the departure screens suddenly switched to the Windows blue screen of death (complete with error codes, etc.). It was like that the next day as well. I really wished there was a ctl-alt-delete button beneath the departure board.....
Twelve years ago, I worked in the I.T. department of a small private college in upstate New York (around 4000 students). Our main server room was fairly meticulous and well set-up (we had a perfectionist geek as the main sysadmin at the time). One summer, that building was scheduled for new electrical service to some new science labs in the upper floors of the building. A few hours after the electricians showed up, they came running to our offices and insisted we follow them down to the basement. There, they showed us the wiring to our server room, installed just a couple of years earlier: it was not actually physically connected. The wires had a small gap, and the electricity was simply arcing over. One serious bump of the box would probably move them enough to cut our power.
So their first task was to fix this. They would turn off the power for 30 minutes while we ran all the servers on UPSs, then temporarily reconnect power for awhile to recharge the UPSs, then turn off the power again and work... took all day at this rate.
It says "updated Dec 15, 2006" but the comments at the end of the article are all dated from 2004. I mean, the problem is much older than that, but it seems the article was just updated with 2006 dates to make it seem more current. Or am I missing something?
As the saying goes: if you torture statistics long enough, they will confess to anything.
They are comparing the number of purchases on iTunes to the number of compact discs bought elsewhere. These are not analogous numbers unless we assume that every iTunes purchase is exactly one album, which is unlikely.
Regardless, the purpose of the iTunes Store is to sell iPods. Period. All Apple has to do is break even on iTunes sales (which they didn't do for the first year)... but if iPod sales are still up (as they are) then the iTunes store is hardly an indicator of anything except silly market analysts.
"Or, more to the point, Apple doesn't want their customers waiting for the new versions that may have the features that their customers really want. Apple wants their customers buying every release; not just the realeases that have the features that the customers want."
Oh please. Apple does't force anyone to upgrade, not the way certain other dominant OS companies do. If you jump every time Apple releases a new software version, you are generally on the bleeding edge. Most Apple users -- heck, most computer users -- know to wait a little while and see if the thing is all it's cracked up to be.
Personal example: after OS X came out, I waited until 10.2 before migrating to it from OS 9, because 10.0 and 10.1 were simply not practical or compelling. 10.2 was stable and fast (especially 10.2.8). In fact it still runs well on two Macs in my house. The only reason I have 10.4 on my systems is because it came included. I know companies that still have Mac OS 8.6 running on a few PM7600s because of custom software that won't run on anything else -- and they run beautifully.
Finally, it's hardly computers that are limited to bleeding edge buyers. Consumer Reports and others frequently report how new car models (etc.) should generally be avoided until the manufacturer has made them for a year or two and worked out major problems.
The argument is that since Google has close to 73% world market share in search traffic, that they also have that same 73% in search advertising.
Unfortunately the chart you link to cannot possibly be accurate. Search engines are not operating systems or phone companies. Studies indicate that people typically use more than one search engine. So while 70% of people may use Google, it's not that Google has 70% of a "search engine market"; it's that 70% of Internet users have visited Google. 40% may have also visited MSN. But you can't graph 110% on a pie chart.
I met a college student last year who writes all of her papers in Adobe Photoshop. She just sets up 300dpi pages and types all the text into text boxes. That way she could make pretty photographic backgrounds. And there are NO security issues!
I didn't realize it then, but she is obviously a genius.
Your first mistake was taking a job that would put you in this position. For future reference, I suggest telling prospective employers that you have personal reasons for not working on so-called "adult-oriented" content like this. You need to say this up front or you will end up surprising them (and not in a good way) when it comes up later. Admittedly, if you say this in a job interview, you are likely to lose some possible opportunities, but your convictions are nothing more than vapor if you don't actually stand by them.
Oh, the other thing about convictions: if you are plagued with regret after you make a decision based on your convictions, there is a chance that they weren't really convictions after all, but simply some kind of moral costume you put on to help yourself feel better. Test and refine your convictions as time passes, but don't regret them: you have to believe them fully.
I was recently offered more than five times my current hourly rate to be the lead developer on a big Flash and video-intensive web site for a new casino. I have moral objections to casinos, so I turned it down. The money would have been very handy, but I still have to live with my own conscience. I'm sure someone else has picked up the job. I have zero regrets about my decision. I simply refuse to be associated with casinos and all the social problems they lead to (dramatically increased bankruptcy rates, violent crime, auto thefts, larceny, substance abuse, suicide rates, etc.).
From the article: "Some say the lax rules have fueled the rise of patent speculators--disparagingly known as "patent trolls"--who make a living off predicting those incremental changes to existing high-tech inventions, landing patents and then going after companies for infringement."
This seems to be one of the real problems with the patent system: abuse. If you can predict the incremental changes to technology, then it suggests some kind of obviousness, no? Perhaps we need a "business reality check" test for patents: if you don't make a serious attempt to commercialize your patented idea with X number of years, then your patent dries up (or at least your potential damages are capped at Z number of dollars). The patent system should exist to protect ideas, not to line pockets with gold.
As a story then, what part of the creationalism am I supposed to believe? If I do not have to believe it, then what's its significance? If the earth really so old, what does the story have to do in the bible anyway?
Because sometimes it's better to explain something poetically and figuratively, especially when it has to do with your soul, spirit and emotion. People respond to and remember it better. Why do you bother reading fiction or going to the movies? You could just read the book summaries and watch the trailers. "Romeo & Juliet: two lovers from warring families die." "Serenity: space crew battle evil government agent to uncover terrible secret." Don't forget how Hitchhiker's described Earth: "Mostly harmless."
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks, I've looked. There are a number of T-Mobile users among the train regulars, and they drop signal far more often than Verizon users (though it also depends on the phone model). Upstate NY commuter train lore (vaguely confirmed by Verizon employees among the train regulars) claims that Verizon has their towers closer to the river than the other carriers. The trains run along the east side of the Hudson, through some very hilly and mountainous areas which are nice to look at, but not so great for wireless reception. Apparently most of the cell towers along the palisades on the west side are Verizon's -- mostly clear line-of-sight to the train.
Don't mistake my comments: Verizon is hardly a corporate saint. But there are legitimate situations where they are the best choice. Let's face it, in an ideal world, I wouldn't even need a cell phone....
As if the drivers around me aren't already distracted on their cell phones, now they're gonna watch porn?
Well, for me, it comes down to coverage. I work in the Hudson Valley and travel by train between New York City and Albany nearly every day of the week. Verizon is the only carrier with decent coverage for both my cell phone and EVDO Internet access for the entire trip. Sprint, Cingular, Nextel have very spotty coverage, especially north of Croton-Harmon.
Now, we can argue about EVDO and wireless technology and money-grubbing telco execs forever, but at the end of the day I just need to get some work done while I'm on the train. Today that means I use Verizon, and it works pretty well.
When I was in college, someone took one of my coffee mugs, filled it up with Hershey's chocolate syrup, and put it in the microwave for 90 minutes. Then they left. As best as we can tell, the syrup first boiled over and filled up the bottom of the microwave. Eventually it hardened into a black crust and caught fire. That's when the fire alarm woke us up, you know -- it was three o'clock in the morning.
The microwave was ruined, and there was some damage to the cabinet. And I lost my favorite coffee mug too. But it's probably the best use for Hershey's chocolate syrup that I could think of (since it's pretty awful stuff).
This reminds me of the "14 Days of Art" sponsored by the alt.design.graphics newsgroup for the last five or six years. During January of each year, participants would have to make one work of art per day, in any medium, and post it online for viewing by the rest of the group. Some of the results are schlock, but others are just breathtaking. There have been photographers, painters, printmakers, oragami artists, multimedia designers, etc... Google it, there's some good stuff to be seen.
"if it's overtime, aren't the teams usually tied?"
That's exactly what I mean. MS and the pirates are tied, but in this round of overtime, MS seems to be losing. They'll catch up, then the pirates will pull ahead, and back and forth.
From the article: "The antipiracy fight is a multimillion-dollar effort, Hartje said. Although it has been going on for some time, Microsoft can't say whether the fight is paying off. 'This is a multi-inning game. We're in the first inning and it is too early to tell what the long-term impact will be,' she said."
This is the first inning? C'mon, pirated software was online (BBSs) in the 1980s, if not earlier, and even then I could buy illegally-copied software from semi-shady PC hobby stores. Forget "don't copy that floppy" -- how about "don't copy that data cassette" or "this software download will take 16 hours on your 1200 baud modem, assuming your housemates don't pick up the phone and disrupt the signal".
Nah, it's more like double-death overtime, and Microsoft is losing.
Um... maybe by "last I checked" you mean the 1990s?
From the article:
Let us suppose that "fairness" means showing multiple sides of the issue. This means that you now have half the airtime for each side (for a two-sided issue, if there ever is such a thing). Supposing that your television or radio show is an hour, and you typically show four segments of 10-12 minutes apiece (plus commercials), it is already impossible for you to fully explain one side of the issue. Now explaining another side means you will be even less capable of explaining both sides (or all three, or five, or fifty). Such presentations will be even more horribly compressed than they are today. In other words, we will have the illusion of fairness: by showing multiple sides, it sounds fair, but they are summarized so much that it isn't fair to the issue or the consumer.
Should the Fairness Doctrine be reinstated, the real question is whether it will come into the Internet Age. Sure, the broadcaster is telling you the XYZ perspective, but if you go on their show's web site, they go into depth about the ABC, PDQ, and WTF perspectives. Broadcasters are therefore "presenting" multiple sides, just not in the same medium. If so, this will lead to a mini-industry of commercial information vendors who have "all sides available" kits on leading topics.
Per Copp's comments: "...too little news, too much baloney passed off as news. Too little quality entertainment, too many people eating bugs on reality TV." I'm not sure how the Fairness Doctrine would improve this (and it's not clear that Copp thinks it will) but there are two sides to baloney, too. I'm not [just] trying to be funny (the bread side? the cheese side? the mustard side?) but even stupid issues have multiple perspectives. And besides, television is not about quality entertainment. It's about what makes money. If people eating bugs makes money, you'll see it on television.
If I had mod points, I'd mod up parent up even further. Excellent point.
Yes, Cisco owns the name. Fine. But Apple was in fair negotiations with them about the name when they decided to launch their own product with it. Like parent says, Steve was probably pissed about their product launch too. Right back atcha, Cisco.
Reminds of the signs I saw on a highway in Pennsylvania... "Jim Thorpe, 2 miles"... "Jim Thorpe, 1 mile"... "Jim Thorpe, exit". Must be nice for Jim to have such an arrangement with the highway department.
(Yes, I know it refers to this.)
This means that the billboards will display their messages whenever the MAIL DELIVERY TRUCK drives by. Nice. And I'm betting a number of tags will mysteriously get lost in the mail and end up on eBay. Other issues:
And there are too many ideas for mischievous messages... "Mini announces recall of your vehicle's braking system" for example.
You make excellent points. That's why we have things called "planning" and "weighing your options".
Admittedly, many people do not do this very well, which has led to many of humanity's problems throughout history. Database selection and design are just items #92838701283743^199320 and #92838701283743^199320+1 on the list of things people ought to have thought about more over the last few million years.
I've made some similar discoveries myself!
Who woulda thought that specific-use items might improve the outcome of specific situations?
I'm not an electrician so I can't answer what you're saying -- but I saw this myself. It was an extremely small gap, and extremely small arc, but it simply wasn't attached properly.
Anyone who has been in New York City's Pennsylvania Station (Manhattan's train terminal for Amtrak, Long Island Railroad, and New Jersey Transit) has seen the television screens with the arrival and departure times. These look like fairly basic systems (simple white text on a black background). I commute into the city, so I'm there every day. A while back I was waiting for my train when the departure screens suddenly switched to the Windows blue screen of death (complete with error codes, etc.). It was like that the next day as well. I really wished there was a ctl-alt-delete button beneath the departure board.....
Twelve years ago, I worked in the I.T. department of a small private college in upstate New York (around 4000 students). Our main server room was fairly meticulous and well set-up (we had a perfectionist geek as the main sysadmin at the time). One summer, that building was scheduled for new electrical service to some new science labs in the upper floors of the building. A few hours after the electricians showed up, they came running to our offices and insisted we follow them down to the basement. There, they showed us the wiring to our server room, installed just a couple of years earlier: it was not actually physically connected. The wires had a small gap, and the electricity was simply arcing over. One serious bump of the box would probably move them enough to cut our power.
So their first task was to fix this. They would turn off the power for 30 minutes while we ran all the servers on UPSs, then temporarily reconnect power for awhile to recharge the UPSs, then turn off the power again and work... took all day at this rate.
It says "updated Dec 15, 2006" but the comments at the end of the article are all dated from 2004. I mean, the problem is much older than that, but it seems the article was just updated with 2006 dates to make it seem more current. Or am I missing something?
As the saying goes: if you torture statistics long enough, they will confess to anything.
They are comparing the number of purchases on iTunes to the number of compact discs bought elsewhere. These are not analogous numbers unless we assume that every iTunes purchase is exactly one album, which is unlikely.
Regardless, the purpose of the iTunes Store is to sell iPods. Period. All Apple has to do is break even on iTunes sales (which they didn't do for the first year)... but if iPod sales are still up (as they are) then the iTunes store is hardly an indicator of anything except silly market analysts.
"Or, more to the point, Apple doesn't want their customers waiting for the new versions that may have the features that their customers really want. Apple wants their customers buying every release; not just the realeases that have the features that the customers want."
Oh please. Apple does't force anyone to upgrade, not the way certain other dominant OS companies do. If you jump every time Apple releases a new software version, you are generally on the bleeding edge. Most Apple users -- heck, most computer users -- know to wait a little while and see if the thing is all it's cracked up to be.
Personal example: after OS X came out, I waited until 10.2 before migrating to it from OS 9, because 10.0 and 10.1 were simply not practical or compelling. 10.2 was stable and fast (especially 10.2.8). In fact it still runs well on two Macs in my house. The only reason I have 10.4 on my systems is because it came included. I know companies that still have Mac OS 8.6 running on a few PM7600s because of custom software that won't run on anything else -- and they run beautifully.
Finally, it's hardly computers that are limited to bleeding edge buyers. Consumer Reports and others frequently report how new car models (etc.) should generally be avoided until the manufacturer has made them for a year or two and worked out major problems.
The argument is that since Google has close to 73% world market share in search traffic, that they also have that same 73% in search advertising.
Unfortunately the chart you link to cannot possibly be accurate. Search engines are not operating systems or phone companies. Studies indicate that people typically use more than one search engine. So while 70% of people may use Google, it's not that Google has 70% of a "search engine market"; it's that 70% of Internet users have visited Google. 40% may have also visited MSN. But you can't graph 110% on a pie chart.
I met a college student last year who writes all of her papers in Adobe Photoshop. She just sets up 300dpi pages and types all the text into text boxes. That way she could make pretty photographic backgrounds. And there are NO security issues!
I didn't realize it then, but she is obviously a genius.
Your first mistake was taking a job that would put you in this position. For future reference, I suggest telling prospective employers that you have personal reasons for not working on so-called "adult-oriented" content like this. You need to say this up front or you will end up surprising them (and not in a good way) when it comes up later. Admittedly, if you say this in a job interview, you are likely to lose some possible opportunities, but your convictions are nothing more than vapor if you don't actually stand by them.
Oh, the other thing about convictions: if you are plagued with regret after you make a decision based on your convictions, there is a chance that they weren't really convictions after all, but simply some kind of moral costume you put on to help yourself feel better. Test and refine your convictions as time passes, but don't regret them: you have to believe them fully.
I was recently offered more than five times my current hourly rate to be the lead developer on a big Flash and video-intensive web site for a new casino. I have moral objections to casinos, so I turned it down. The money would have been very handy, but I still have to live with my own conscience. I'm sure someone else has picked up the job. I have zero regrets about my decision. I simply refuse to be associated with casinos and all the social problems they lead to (dramatically increased bankruptcy rates, violent crime, auto thefts, larceny, substance abuse, suicide rates, etc.).
From the article: "Some say the lax rules have fueled the rise of patent speculators--disparagingly known as "patent trolls"--who make a living off predicting those incremental changes to existing high-tech inventions, landing patents and then going after companies for infringement."
This seems to be one of the real problems with the patent system: abuse. If you can predict the incremental changes to technology, then it suggests some kind of obviousness, no? Perhaps we need a "business reality check" test for patents: if you don't make a serious attempt to commercialize your patented idea with X number of years, then your patent dries up (or at least your potential damages are capped at Z number of dollars). The patent system should exist to protect ideas, not to line pockets with gold.
As a story then, what part of the creationalism am I supposed to believe? If I do not have to believe it, then what's its significance? If the earth really so old, what does the story have to do in the bible anyway?
Because sometimes it's better to explain something poetically and figuratively, especially when it has to do with your soul, spirit and emotion. People respond to and remember it better. Why do you bother reading fiction or going to the movies? You could just read the book summaries and watch the trailers. "Romeo & Juliet: two lovers from warring families die." "Serenity: space crew battle evil government agent to uncover terrible secret." Don't forget how Hitchhiker's described Earth: "Mostly harmless."
Next you will want to do away with humor!