Obviously, not everyone has the same experience with the USPS. Mine has been very good.
I ship a fair number of packages. I have a FedEx account and have found that most of my packages are cheapest to send via FedEx Home. I also have a USPS account. I ship USPS when I'm shipping media mail or when the package is lightweight. FedEx rates are generally better for heavier packages (4 pounds up). That's especially true if the ship-to address is a business, if it's not in the boondocks, and if the package needs insurance. One insight into why FedEx might be cheaper is that per wikipedia: "FedEx Express contractually flies a large number of packages for United States Postal Service totaling one billion dollars worth of packages per year, making it one of FedEx's biggest customers".
USPS has modernized and continues to do so. I recently used the web to have my mail held while I was out of town; worked like a champ. Their other online services are quite good; I just wish I could print more classes of postage/mailing labels online w/o having to use another (expensive) service provider (e.g. stamps.com).
Rates are up, but they're still much less than rates elsewhere in the world, especially considering the geographic distances involved. Service seems to me to be better too.
The USPS is head and shoulders above what the old Post Office was years ago. I just hope they continue to improve and innovate.
Why not simply follow the POSIX standard*? You can avoid a lot of hassles that way. Isn't that why we have standards?? I know, it doesn't resolve the conflict with Windows case "insensitivity", but... it does provide interoperability between POSIX-compliant OSes.
* upper/lower case alphabetic characters, numeric digits, underscore, dash, and period.
First, let me say that I have been an HP supporter for many years, but my support has waned through the Carly years.
I subscribe to the point of view that HP likely has violated the law and is simply using these contractors as a way to avoid having regular employees on the rolls. It may or may not be less expensive to have contractors rather than employees doing the work. It most certainly is more flexible since contractors can be let go for no reason at all and with little recourse or potential fallout. It does keep headcount low which is a favorite with financial types.
I suspect many of these contractors took the contract many months or years ago with little expectation that it would continue this long. They've likley received no pay raises in that time and are feeling a bit mistreated. I'm an independent contractor and I understand their feelings. Where else in Boise does an IT contractor find work?
My main concern here is why isn't the DOJ or DOL prosecuting this suit? Seems to me questions of employee vs. contractor are settled via federal law and the feds ought to be pursuing alleged abuses, not the individual contractors.
I've done perhaps 5 different SP2 upgrades. One of them screwed up the PC, but the PC was screwed up to start with (recovered back to SP1; reinstalled XP over the existing copy; reran SP2 upgrade - OK). The others went in without a hitch.
My main gripe is from my NAV users. Symmantec's "stealth" technology keeps the security center from figuring out when the virus files were last updated and hence causes a security fault to be flagged.
Well, in those days even the guys who repaired the computers wore white shirts and suits.
In the late 60's and early 70's, there were quite a few women in the field. That was one of the reasons I was attracted to it:-) There are likely a lot of reasons why women are no longer flocking to the field, but one reason, IMNSHO, is the advent of the PC. The PC filled a role that ham radio used to fill for boys. You could tinker and play with the stuff and do incredible things with it. So guys learned to program and began to develop into nerds while the girls didn't. Now CS programs are filled with guys who have computing backgrounds and girls, who are likely starting from scratch, are at a significant disadvantage at the starting gate.
I still use Outlook 2003 for my main e-mail client. I use Thunderbird at my client's site because they don't use Outlook.
In general I like Thunderbird. Nice to have an integrated News Reader (Outlook users must use Outlook Express for news), although it is missing the Decode and Combine feature that's useful for large binary postings.
I really like the contacts folder in Outlook. Works really well and I can access the data easily from Word for Mail Merges etc. I also MUCH prefer SpamBayes to the Bayesian filtering in Thunderbird. With TBird, I still get a lot of SPAM in my inbox that Outlook puts in my "Junk Suspects" folder.
I use a bunch of stuff on the Google toolbar including (1) move up a page (2) next/previous results page (3) google news (4) next occurence of search term (5) dictionary search and (6) autofill.
I agree about the plugins - IE is just a bit more seamless.
No, there's nothing wrong with you. I bit the bullet and downloaded Firefox some weeks ago. I can't say it has been a positive experience:
1. Speed - seems to be slower than IE to me; maybe my expectations were just too high.
2. Lost my Google toolbar and had to download and install the (not-fully-functional) add-in.
3. Several sites don't work properly, e.g. FedEx Ship Manager and Fidelity Full View. I did find one site that worked with FireFox and NOT with IE though!
4. Had to install other add-ins for Flash etc.
I'm still using Firefox in hopes that I will come to appreciate tabbed browsing etc, but it's slow going.
Whether you call it a gift card, gift certificate, or whatever, I cannot emphasize enough the need to choose your merchant carefully and read the fine print! I know in our area, restaurants come and go with great regularity. While a restaurant gift certificate can be a wonderful gift, there is some risk in holding on to it.
My wife works for LL Bean and I think their approach to gift certificates is consumer friendly. They record who purchases the gift certificate at the time of sale. You can spend the certificates you bought at any time and in any way (e.g. web site, store, phone). You don't even have to have the original certificate in hand; they keep an online record of it. The only problem we've run into is when you give one as a gift, LL Bean's record still shows it as yours so it's possible for you to spend one you've given away! Still, all-in-all, it works very nicely. Of course, if they go bankrupt, we're going to be out some dough!
Many external and hardware modems come with "drivers". They're not really drivers in the normal sense, they're generally simply installable AT commands that are tailored to work well with the specific modem.
The FCC approval has nothing to do with UARTs (Univeral Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter). The UART is simply a way to convert digital signals from/to serial/parallel.
The Hayes (AT) command set has nothing to do with the FCC or with UARTs either. It was developed by the Hayes company to control their first modems.
FCC type approval is required for anything connected to the US public, switched telephone network. At one time, they required a working implementation of the device for type acceptance, but that may have been relaxed over time.
Glenn
The gears were in an actuator that is, itself, a failsafe. It's apparently not used except in an emergency. That's it didn't fail in use; it was never used! The gears apparently are made to fit in either a right side or left side actuator but need to be installed with the proper orientation. Makes sense to use the same gear for both sides only flip it over. If its orientation is critical though, you'd better have some really good assembly instructions. Maybe like those that come with that high quality Chinese press board furniture!
I respectfully disagree with your assessment of tape backup as too expensive.
I backup to a DLT4000 drive on 20/40GB media. Total cost of the backup solution $150 (SCSI card, media, and drive) via judicious (and lucky, I suppose) shopping on eBay.
DLT is fast, portable, high MTBF, and very long shelf life. It has been used for business data backup for years and has proven itself.
Hopefully, you know your employees well enough to decide what would be best received (cash, dinner out, tech toys, etc). A combination of things is likely best. Be generous, but don't give away the store. Consider using some of that excess to better fund their retirement accounts (e.g. SEP-IRA). If you give cash, don't forget that you have to deduct taxes up front!
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Obviously, not everyone has the same experience with the USPS. Mine has been very good.
I ship a fair number of packages. I have a FedEx account and have found that most of my packages are cheapest to send via FedEx Home. I also have a USPS account. I ship USPS when I'm shipping media mail or when the package is lightweight. FedEx rates are generally better for heavier packages (4 pounds up). That's especially true if the ship-to address is a business, if it's not in the boondocks, and if the package needs insurance. One insight into why FedEx might be cheaper is that per wikipedia: "FedEx Express contractually flies a large number of packages for United States Postal Service totaling one billion dollars worth of packages per year, making it one of FedEx's biggest customers".
USPS has modernized and continues to do so. I recently used the web to have my mail held while I was out of town; worked like a champ. Their other online services are quite good; I just wish I could print more classes of postage/mailing labels online w/o having to use another (expensive) service provider (e.g. stamps.com).
Rates are up, but they're still much less than rates elsewhere in the world, especially considering the geographic distances involved. Service seems to me to be better too.
The USPS is head and shoulders above what the old Post Office was years ago. I just hope they continue to improve and innovate.
Why not simply follow the POSIX standard*? You can avoid a lot of hassles that way. Isn't that why we have standards?? I know, it doesn't resolve the conflict with Windows case "insensitivity", but ... it does provide interoperability between POSIX-compliant OSes.
* upper/lower case alphabetic characters, numeric digits, underscore, dash, and period.
First, let me say that I have been an HP supporter for many years, but my support has waned through the Carly years.
I subscribe to the point of view that HP likely has violated the law and is simply using these contractors as a way to avoid having regular employees on the rolls. It may or may not be less expensive to have contractors rather than employees doing the work. It most certainly is more flexible since contractors can be let go for no reason at all and with little recourse or potential fallout. It does keep headcount low which is a favorite with financial types.
I suspect many of these contractors took the contract many months or years ago with little expectation that it would continue this long. They've likley received no pay raises in that time and are feeling a bit mistreated. I'm an independent contractor and I understand their feelings. Where else in Boise does an IT contractor find work?
My main concern here is why isn't the DOJ or DOL prosecuting this suit? Seems to me questions of employee vs. contractor are settled via federal law and the feds ought to be pursuing alleged abuses, not the individual contractors.
Ditto ...
I've done perhaps 5 different SP2 upgrades. One of them screwed up the PC, but the PC was screwed up to start with (recovered back to SP1; reinstalled XP over the existing copy; reran SP2 upgrade - OK). The others went in without a hitch.
My main gripe is from my NAV users. Symmantec's "stealth" technology keeps the security center from figuring out when the virus files were last updated and hence causes a security fault to be flagged.
All-in-all a very good update from MS.
Well, in those days even the guys who repaired the computers wore white shirts and suits.
:-) There are likely a lot of reasons why women are no longer flocking to the field, but one reason, IMNSHO, is the advent of the PC. The PC filled a role that ham radio used to fill for boys. You could tinker and play with the stuff and do incredible things with it. So guys learned to program and began to develop into nerds while the girls didn't. Now CS programs are filled with guys who have computing backgrounds and girls, who are likely starting from scratch, are at a significant disadvantage at the starting gate.
In the late 60's and early 70's, there were quite a few women in the field. That was one of the reasons I was attracted to it
I still use Outlook 2003 for my main e-mail client. I use Thunderbird at my client's site because they don't use Outlook.
In general I like Thunderbird. Nice to have an integrated News Reader (Outlook users must use Outlook Express for news), although it is missing the Decode and Combine feature that's useful for large binary postings.
I really like the contacts folder in Outlook. Works really well and I can access the data easily from Word for Mail Merges etc. I also MUCH prefer SpamBayes to the Bayesian filtering in Thunderbird. With TBird, I still get a lot of SPAM in my inbox that Outlook puts in my "Junk Suspects" folder.
I agree about the plugins - IE is just a bit more seamless.
Probably because I needed it to watch the jibjab video :-)
1. Speed - seems to be slower than IE to me; maybe my expectations were just too high.
2. Lost my Google toolbar and had to download and install the (not-fully-functional) add-in.
3. Several sites don't work properly, e.g. FedEx Ship Manager and Fidelity Full View. I did find one site that worked with FireFox and NOT with IE though!
4. Had to install other add-ins for Flash etc.
I'm still using Firefox in hopes that I will come to appreciate tabbed browsing etc, but it's slow going.
Whether you call it a gift card, gift certificate, or whatever, I cannot emphasize enough the need to choose your merchant carefully and read the fine print! I know in our area, restaurants come and go with great regularity. While a restaurant gift certificate can be a wonderful gift, there is some risk in holding on to it. My wife works for LL Bean and I think their approach to gift certificates is consumer friendly. They record who purchases the gift certificate at the time of sale. You can spend the certificates you bought at any time and in any way (e.g. web site, store, phone). You don't even have to have the original certificate in hand; they keep an online record of it. The only problem we've run into is when you give one as a gift, LL Bean's record still shows it as yours so it's possible for you to spend one you've given away! Still, all-in-all, it works very nicely. Of course, if they go bankrupt, we're going to be out some dough!
Many external and hardware modems come with "drivers". They're not really drivers in the normal sense, they're generally simply installable AT commands that are tailored to work well with the specific modem.
The FCC approval has nothing to do with UARTs (Univeral Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter). The UART is simply a way to convert digital signals from/to serial/parallel. The Hayes (AT) command set has nothing to do with the FCC or with UARTs either. It was developed by the Hayes company to control their first modems. FCC type approval is required for anything connected to the US public, switched telephone network. At one time, they required a working implementation of the device for type acceptance, but that may have been relaxed over time. Glenn
I built an ADM-3A years ago; it had no firmware; no cpu. All basic TTL logic chips except for the UART.
The gears were in an actuator that is, itself, a failsafe. It's apparently not used except in an emergency. That's it didn't fail in use; it was never used! The gears apparently are made to fit in either a right side or left side actuator but need to be installed with the proper orientation. Makes sense to use the same gear for both sides only flip it over. If its orientation is critical though, you'd better have some really good assembly instructions. Maybe like those that come with that high quality Chinese press board furniture!
I respectfully disagree with your assessment of tape backup as too expensive.
I backup to a DLT4000 drive on 20/40GB media. Total cost of the backup solution $150 (SCSI card, media, and drive) via judicious (and lucky, I suppose) shopping on eBay.
DLT is fast, portable, high MTBF, and very long shelf life. It has been used for business data backup for years and has proven itself.
Hopefully, you know your employees well enough to decide what would be best received (cash, dinner out, tech toys, etc). A combination of things is likely best. Be generous, but don't give away the store. Consider using some of that excess to better fund their retirement accounts (e.g. SEP-IRA). If you give cash, don't forget that you have to deduct taxes up front!