On my home asterisk exchange I have the solution - whay are We on hold THEY should be on hold - basically why should you wait with your ear to the phone waiting for a human for half an hour - there's something about listening on the phone for a human to answer that makes it really hard to multitask - at least if your a programmer it is... so - put them on hold - play a message "I really want to talk to you - when a real human shows up please type pound" and go on working an hour later when a real human shows up the phone rings and you deal with them
this is not one of those mythical tracking devices you see on TV - it doesn't have an embedded GPS and periodically broadcast it's position like your cellphone might. This is basically a UPC code that treats you like meat in the supermarket freezer - can only be read from very close up when you rub the frost (tin foil) off it
I think we all get the dreaded "SSSS" on our boarding passes on occasion, happened to me on Sunday (changed my flight the day before so I wasn't suprised) and the chemical sniffer was set off by my MP3 player, god knows why ("sir, have you been near fertilizer recently? on a farm?" - they didn't actually come out with "made any bombs recently?" - probably I'd just been too near miracle-gro)
build the faraday cage into the passport (a layer of tin would in the covers) that way it only works when you open it?
(at this point I put on my real tin foil hat and wonder which parts of the govt might want to wander around snooping on passports themselves.... in bus stations, airport rental car counters, subways, etc etc....)
my experience is that you start the nerf culture when you are 5 guys in a garage.... it lasts until that 3rd level of management gets slotted in (that one's always the hardest culturally) where it gets converted to something like "don;t do it in front of customers" or "wait until after 6"
I completely agree - most of the companies (all startups) I've worked for over the years, good and bad, have had cubes - only one has had offices and honestly I found it quite isolating - a good startup environment involves communication and team building - you have to hang out with your co-workers or it doesn't work
besides it's no fun how can you have nerf wars in offices? and what happens when your neighor's gear catches fire while he's at lunch (happened to me) you'll notice in cubes (sniff sniff.... something's burning...) maybe not in offices....
why? are your electorates larger than 4 million? (I've lived there for the past 20 years, I know the answer is 'no') - besides how did you vote before we had computers, it wasn't that long ago, certainly after the US was more than 50 million people
In NZ we have proportional representation along the German model so one of our 2 votes is a party vote that is nation wide - while in the US you just vote for a local representative or state-wide vote for the electoral college - under the US system you never vote nationwide for anything ever, 4 million compared with 300 million is a bogus apples and oranges comparison - comparing your largest state with NZ IS appropriate
Besides it's not that difficult to scale - in the end someone calls in the vote to the electoral office, 10 times bigger does mean 10 times more phones and people at that level but from there on up it IS all computerised anyway - hell a spreadsheet can do that part - what is important is that all the local numbers are counted and scrutinised before they are passed upwards (parties get to run their own individual copies and will scream if they see a mistake)
What is important is that the whole system is laid bare, it's not in the bowels of a machine somewhere, anyone can show up and count the votes too, and if there's a dispute, there's a cardboard box full of paper that can be counted again
Anyway I think you missed the main thrust of my argument - you don't need to get a result right away, certainly not the same night, especially in the US where you vote in November and the President takes over in January - parliamentary democracies (like NZ) have MUCH faster changes of govt (under some circumstances the cabinet ministers would be packing their desks the next day) yet having watched this recent election result close up no one seems to be in any hurry to get much done until we have a final result - unlike say Florida 5 years ago where they really should have done it right rather than leave over half the country thinking they were robbed - elections like law don't just need to be done fairly they need to be seen to be done fairly too.
Democracy is such a fragile thing, we're lucky to have grown up in countries where it's been ingrained into our world view, it's not something that just happens overnight, to change a society to have a stable ongoing democracy takes generations before it really sticks and a lot of it has to do with some very basic trust that whoever gets elected they'll go quietly when their time is up
NZ too - we just had a national election - counted manually at the precinct level - polls closed at 7pm main results were in by 11pm
Of course we don't actually have a real result yet because the results are almost too close to call and the special votes haven't been counted yet (10% of the total and the 2 main parties are 1% apart) - still no one's panicing, the electoral office is taking it's time (2 weeks), doing it correctly, no lawsuits, no anguish... people are being patient, better to get it right than get it done fast
Having lived in the US for the past 2 presidential elections (esp 2000) it's great to see an election been done sanely and simply.
So a few pens, some printed ballots, some cardboard boxes, an aggressive govt campaign to get everyone registered (run thru the Post Office who have the technology and day to day inclination to keep track of people who move) and a bunch of volunteers (both to run it and party scrutineers to keep everyone honest) - no need for computers, punched cards, hanging chads - cheap at twice the price
no what they have is a bunch of conjectures that they think explain what's happening elsewhere in the universe better that the others we have at the moment (aka string theories) problems are that they posit extra dimensions (mostly more than 6) - so how to prove ones conjecture? - start hypothesis: "existence of tiny extra dimensions will also cause macroscopic (ie galaxy sized) things that can't normally be explained or microscopic (ie nanometer sized at the size of the dimension) things that can't normally be explained" - at this point one goes off and looking for proofs of your hypothesis...
That IS the scientific method - you start with a 'conjecture' which IS a made up explanation and look for ways to prove or disprove it. If you think it's done by fairies at the bottom of the garden you race down there and start looking under leaves. "God did it"? start looking for gods to photograph and measure. Extra dimensions? start looking for evidence of them
"Cheapen" is just a value judgement on your part (and IMHO homophobic). I think that the state has decided to value marriage for a number of reasons, primarily around the support of kids - in case you haven't noticed there are lots of ways to have kids these days, not all require a mummy and daddy to be present at the conception, just appropriate DNA and as a result there are lots of different sorts of families.
Many of the state sponsored benefits of marriage involve incoming splitting (averaging income for tax purposes - in essence total up the salary divide by the number of partners before applying the tax tables to each, sharing of partner's social security etc etc). Don't see why you shouldn't do that with anyone you choose (because they involve sharing by definition 1 person ends up worse off and one better). Same goes with marrying multiple partners - I have no problem with that - seems like it's none of my business who you love (just don't start marrying minors below the age of consent). Sure you can marry yourself and income split with yourself - wont help much though - simple math tells you that.
Also don't forget that in AFAIK most states it's NOT illegal for 2 people of the same sex to BE married just to GET married (otherwise the nice legally married lesbian couple down the street would have been forced to become divorced when he legally became a she.... [and before I might add their daughter was conceived]).
on a PJB those names are just names - what it does have is a fixed 3 levels of hierarchy (it has its own FS) each level can have its own name, by convention those happen to be genre/disk/track but a user can put anything in there - I haven't read the patent but this is at least prior art in this area that Apple would do well to look at (along with just about every software mp3 player of the day)
Homosexuals sue to get married, which is an act under GOD and not man
Last time I looked gay people were suing to get the right to get married CIVILLY - they're suing the state, not the churches - I believe they should have the same civil rights to marry as us straight people do - If they start suing churches I'd get upset (1st amendment and all that)
Like or not there are two sorts of marriage - civil and religious, the state only recognizes the civil ones, though it allows religions to perform them on its behalf (not so in all countries where people are required to have a civil ceremony and may have an optional religious one afterwards). If you go to church and have a marriage ceremony done by some random cleric and haven't done the right paperwork you're not married as far as the state is concerned (for example if you're already married and marry a second wife without divorcing the second one in a splinter-LDS sect's ceremony that does recognize plural marriage the state doesn't recognize it no matter what your god thinks).
The religious marriage is between you your church and your god and is no business of the state. Likewise as someone who was married civilly, not in a church, my marriage has nothing to do with you, your church or your imagined god - on the other hand the IRS cares a lot....
Besides there are churches that are prepared to marry gay people (I've been to 3 gay church marriages in the past few years), MCC is one, I'm sure there are lots of others
I have an electronic key for my Prius - when we bought it we got 2 - with the strong warning "lose it and it will cost $1000 to replace" - being able to make my own backups might be a very good thing
think of chip design - you want about a gazillion machines for QA simulation in the 2 months prior to tapeout and they're going to be idle for the rest if the year
Mind you the cost of chip design software is the limiting factor here, not the cost of hardware to run it on
Come on - read the article maybe - or just know a little history - this is the real "the right stuff" these guys did this 40 years ago - they're retired, in their 60s and 70s.
make them return to their roots - I predict that if we force all the athletes to go back to performing nude like in the good old days then US TV advertizing revenue will dry up and the olympics will go back to being the amateur event it used to be.... besides no one will have anywhere to attach sponsor's logos....
there's a reason they're called 'root' kits and it has NOTHING to do with windoze - first caught one of these on my home sun box back in the early 90s - however you using this as an excuse to trash people should be modded 'flamebait'
What's wrong with them? no NAT for a start - took me forever to set one up as an AP at home (not a router) I had MAC filtering on the main router and didnt realise you have to add both' the MAC of the AP and the box behind it.
The box comes with instructions on how to tftp in new firmware - and in for a linux port if ever I heard of one....
Compare the price with a generic wireless home phone from Best Buy - except that they expect YOU to provide the base station...
I put up an asterisk exchange at home last month - I'd love to toss wifi phones thru the house... but at $200/pop they still cost too much - maybe at ~$50 I think they get interesting
Slashdot Mirror
On my home asterisk exchange I have the solution - whay are We on hold THEY should be on hold - basically why should you wait with your ear to the phone waiting for a human for half an hour - there's something about listening on the phone for a human to answer that makes it really hard to multitask - at least if your a programmer it is ... so - put them on hold - play a message "I really want to talk to you - when a real human shows up please type pound" and go on working an hour later when a real human shows up the phone rings and you deal with them
this is not one of those mythical tracking devices you see on TV - it doesn't have an embedded GPS and periodically broadcast it's position like your cellphone might. This is basically a UPC code that treats you like meat in the supermarket freezer - can only be read from very close up when you rub the frost (tin foil) off it
With the new 'tin-foil' cover it will probably burst into flames ....
I think we all get the dreaded "SSSS" on our boarding passes on occasion, happened to me on Sunday (changed my flight the day before so I wasn't suprised) and the chemical sniffer was set off by my MP3 player, god knows why ("sir, have you been near fertilizer recently? on a farm?" - they didn't actually come out with "made any bombs recently?" - probably I'd just been too near miracle-gro)
(at this point I put on my real tin foil hat and wonder which parts of the govt might want to wander around snooping on passports themselves .... in bus stations, airport rental car counters, subways, etc etc ....)
my experience is that you start the nerf culture when you are 5 guys in a garage .... it lasts until that 3rd level of management gets slotted in (that one's always the hardest culturally) where it gets converted to something like "don;t do it in front of customers" or "wait until after 6"
besides it's no fun how can you have nerf wars in offices? and what happens when your neighor's gear catches fire while he's at lunch (happened to me) you'll notice in cubes (sniff sniff .... something's burning ...) maybe not in offices ....
In NZ we have proportional representation along the German model so one of our 2 votes is a party vote that is nation wide - while in the US you just vote for a local representative or state-wide vote for the electoral college - under the US system you never vote nationwide for anything ever, 4 million compared with 300 million is a bogus apples and oranges comparison - comparing your largest state with NZ IS appropriate
Besides it's not that difficult to scale - in the end someone calls in the vote to the electoral office, 10 times bigger does mean 10 times more phones and people at that level but from there on up it IS all computerised anyway - hell a spreadsheet can do that part - what is important is that all the local numbers are counted and scrutinised before they are passed upwards (parties get to run their own individual copies and will scream if they see a mistake)
What is important is that the whole system is laid bare, it's not in the bowels of a machine somewhere, anyone can show up and count the votes too, and if there's a dispute, there's a cardboard box full of paper that can be counted again
Anyway I think you missed the main thrust of my argument - you don't need to get a result right away, certainly not the same night, especially in the US where you vote in November and the President takes over in January - parliamentary democracies (like NZ) have MUCH faster changes of govt (under some circumstances the cabinet ministers would be packing their desks the next day) yet having watched this recent election result close up no one seems to be in any hurry to get much done until we have a final result - unlike say Florida 5 years ago where they really should have done it right rather than leave over half the country thinking they were robbed - elections like law don't just need to be done fairly they need to be seen to be done fairly too.
Democracy is such a fragile thing, we're lucky to have grown up in countries where it's been ingrained into our world view, it's not something that just happens overnight, to change a society to have a stable ongoing democracy takes generations before it really sticks and a lot of it has to do with some very basic trust that whoever gets elected they'll go quietly when their time is up
Of course we don't actually have a real result yet because the results are almost too close to call and the special votes haven't been counted yet (10% of the total and the 2 main parties are 1% apart) - still no one's panicing, the electoral office is taking it's time (2 weeks), doing it correctly, no lawsuits, no anguish ... people are being patient, better to get it right than get it done fast
Having lived in the US for the past 2 presidential elections (esp 2000) it's great to see an election been done sanely and simply.
So a few pens, some printed ballots, some cardboard boxes, an aggressive govt campaign to get everyone registered (run thru the Post Office who have the technology and day to day inclination to keep track of people who move) and a bunch of volunteers (both to run it and party scrutineers to keep everyone honest) - no need for computers, punched cards, hanging chads - cheap at twice the price
in that vein of course the only way to deal with dolphins with dart guns IS of course sharks with frickin' lasers
to point fingers and laugh
Besides Burning Man is full of religion, drunken debauchery, wierd forms of transport but most important FIRE
well provided you're trying to hide on a chessboard, or around dice - you might have to wait for them to do color first ....
That IS the scientific method - you start with a 'conjecture' which IS a made up explanation and look for ways to prove or disprove it. If you think it's done by fairies at the bottom of the garden you race down there and start looking under leaves. "God did it"? start looking for gods to photograph and measure. Extra dimensions? start looking for evidence of them
I already left
Many of the state sponsored benefits of marriage involve incoming splitting (averaging income for tax purposes - in essence total up the salary divide by the number of partners before applying the tax tables to each, sharing of partner's social security etc etc). Don't see why you shouldn't do that with anyone you choose (because they involve sharing by definition 1 person ends up worse off and one better). Same goes with marrying multiple partners - I have no problem with that - seems like it's none of my business who you love (just don't start marrying minors below the age of consent). Sure you can marry yourself and income split with yourself - wont help much though - simple math tells you that.
Also don't forget that in AFAIK most states it's NOT illegal for 2 people of the same sex to BE married just to GET married (otherwise the nice legally married lesbian couple down the street would have been forced to become divorced when he legally became a she .... [and before I might add their daughter was conceived]).
on a PJB those names are just names - what it does have is a fixed 3 levels of hierarchy (it has its own FS) each level can have its own name, by convention those happen to be genre/disk/track but a user can put anything in there - I haven't read the patent but this is at least prior art in this area that Apple would do well to look at (along with just about every software mp3 player of the day)
Last time I looked gay people were suing to get the right to get married CIVILLY - they're suing the state, not the churches - I believe they should have the same civil rights to marry as us straight people do - If they start suing churches I'd get upset (1st amendment and all that)
Like or not there are two sorts of marriage - civil and religious, the state only recognizes the civil ones, though it allows religions to perform them on its behalf (not so in all countries where people are required to have a civil ceremony and may have an optional religious one afterwards). If you go to church and have a marriage ceremony done by some random cleric and haven't done the right paperwork you're not married as far as the state is concerned (for example if you're already married and marry a second wife without divorcing the second one in a splinter-LDS sect's ceremony that does recognize plural marriage the state doesn't recognize it no matter what your god thinks).
The religious marriage is between you your church and your god and is no business of the state. Likewise as someone who was married civilly, not in a church, my marriage has nothing to do with you, your church or your imagined god - on the other hand the IRS cares a lot ....
Besides there are churches that are prepared to marry gay people (I've been to 3 gay church marriages in the past few years), MCC is one, I'm sure there are lots of others
I have an electronic key for my Prius - when we bought it we got 2 - with the strong warning "lose it and it will cost $1000 to replace" - being able to make my own backups might be a very good thing
Mind you the cost of chip design software is the limiting factor here, not the cost of hardware to run it on
Come on - read the article maybe - or just know a little history - this is the real "the right stuff" these guys did this 40 years ago - they're retired, in their 60s and 70s.
make them return to their roots - I predict that if we force all the athletes to go back to performing nude like in the good old days then US TV advertizing revenue will dry up and the olympics will go back to being the amateur event it used to be .... besides no one will have anywhere to attach sponsor's logos ....
there's a reason they're called 'root' kits and it has NOTHING to do with windoze - first caught one of these on my home sun box back in the early 90s - however you using this as an excuse to trash people should be modded 'flamebait'
The box comes with instructions on how to tftp in new firmware - and in for a linux port if ever I heard of one ....
I put up an asterisk exchange at home last month - I'd love to toss wifi phones thru the house ... but at $200/pop they still cost too much - maybe at ~$50 I think they get interesting