In California, at least everywhere here that I've seen them, the cameras are installed in pairs. Though, we only have red-light violation cameras, so maybe that's something unique.
One is behind the intersection and captures the license plate. The other is in front and captures the driver.
I'm told that when you receive your ticket, it includes the two photos and you can contest it if it's not you. They mail it to the owner of the license plate, and if you're not the driver you can presumably fill out a form to redirect it to the person in the photo.
I'd have to imagine that a similar process exists in other situations. For example, even if it was your license plate, couldn't you claim that you weren't driving the car at the time?
Please help me to understand why a reboot at 3:00 AM when I'm not using my machine is such a horrible thing, as you so claim.
Not to mention I can change the time, turn the feature off, or that it prompts me 10 minutes before rebooting in case I'm doing something. Add to that the auto-save feature of any decent program. Then add to that all the advanced configuration that a WSUS can provide a network administrator.
Really, why do we fear the reboot? Especially when we're supposed to be turning our machines off every night when we stop using them.
Oh, and if you're referring to a server, then please tell me you're not using a browser to surf the web on a production server?
I have a BluRay player (in my PS3) and a 1080p television, but I'm still buying regular DVDs.
Why? Because BR discs are still 2-4 times the price as their non-BR counterparts. I can pick up recent DVDs for $5-15, while the cheapest I've ever seen a BluRay disc is $20 in the "bargain bin".
What is totally shocking to me is the latest release of movies in BluRay that came out on DVD years ago.
So if current BR discs are so much more expensive, how much will a BR+ disc be? And the scary question: when will they stop selling regular DVDs?
I know, I know, it's just like the end of VHS all over again. But I don't remember DVDs ever being 4x as much as new VHS releases.
There are other benefits to the author for having a dead-tree book purchased, even when out-of-print.
That sale helps improve the overall rating for the book, and all other books the author has written. So, your purchase may actually trigger the purchase of other sales from the same author. This works electronically on sites like Amazon, and in the real world when statistics are tabulated in all sorts of ways.
An out-of-print book might also be sold directly by the author or publisher, or just some guy who doesn't want the book any more. Either way that purchase is helping other people, even if it helps Jeff Bezos's gigantic empire and the thousands of people who work for him.
I think the ethical thing to do is purchase the dead-tree book and then download the ilegal version so that you can enjoy it in the medium you intended. This might not be legal, but it's ethical in my eyes so long as you don't pass it on. If you later sold the dead-tree book, you could then delete the electronic version.
I have yet to see a vista commercial that talks about the technical merits of the operating system, because your average user doesn't understand or care about indexed search or file systems etc
Which is exactly why you won't see a commercial touting those features. Sure, they are there and plenty more. Administrators find dealing with Vista far easier than XP, hardware/peripheral issues aside for the time-being.
But your average grandma who thinks that Office 2007 and Vista are the same thing? No, they want pretty features like DVR functionality and easier photo sharing.
A well-chosen outside consultant or IT shop can do just as well, or better, or worse, than a permanent IT position.
I'd even go so far as to say that, unless you've got 4-5 IT full-time people on staff, hiring an outside company will often give you better support, more reliability, less downtime, and be overall cheaper.
One reason is that with only 1 or 2 IT people on staff, you have a very limited pool of knowledge and experience. An outside company, however might have 5-25 people who are often just as experienced or more.
Another reason is that employees take vacations, but hired companies do not. If your server goes down while one IT guy is in the Bahamas and the other one is out sick, what happens? A well-chosen IT firm won't have this issue.
A third reason is buying power. If you're ordering 20 machines from Dell, you'll get a nice discount. But if you're ordering those machines from an IT shop that orders 100s of machines a month, you'll usually see a nicer discount.
To say that an internal IT person knows your system better is somewhat true, but if outside consultants are the ones that put it in there's a pretty good chance they'll know it quite well.
Just like outsourcing marketing, human resources, plumbing, accounting, and anything else, there is a very obvious benefit for small organizations to outsource IT. And just like those other examples, there comes a point where hiring full-time employees makes sense.
Is there any admin in the world that didn't get the message that this was kinda sorta urgent?
This was the first time in four (?) years that Microsoft went out-of-cycle on their patches. That alone got attention, and would hardly be considered "downplayed".
Every stinkin' newsletter I got last week all mentioned it. Vendors mentioned it. Slashdot mentioned it a dozen times. And Microsoft sent out many many bullitens.
What would it take to satisfy the submitter's requirements for sufficient attention? CDs mailed out via FedEx Next Day to every registered owner of Windows?
Perhaps the real downplaying is what Slashdot tends to do whenever a Linux-releated bug is found.
Has any business, anywhere, recieved any tangible benefit from their participation in Second Life?*
I hear about all these businesses and universities spending so much money on virtual places that are lucky to get a dozen "hits" a month. Are any of these visitors buying a product, becoming more brand-loyal, or spreading the word?
*Linden Labs and Second Life developers not included.
You can't take a deduction for labor. Simple as that. I wish you could. I design websites and do computer training (mostly MS Office) for a number of organizations locally, adding up to some 300 hours a year. (I keep track of it.)
Not a single minute is tax deductable, but like others have said -- your mileage and expenses usually are.
Instead... look for ways to make money off your volunteer work. If you own a business, exchange your volunteer time for promotional mention in the organization's newsletter, website, or a banner next time they hold an event.
You won't get much business from it, but you might get a few new clients that need your help which may help "pay" for your volunteer work. What goes around comes around.
Apparently the submitter is in an alternate universe and read a completely different article than the one submitted.
In the quote where Microsoft "concedes" that Google is doing better, the quote is referring to online advertising and NOT any form of productivity software. Read the article yourself. About halfway down.
The rest of the article is Ballmer boasting, and rightfully so, that no one uses Google Apps. Not even poor college students, except for occasional collaboration, and even then it's minimal. (The article doesn't mention that Microsoft practically gave away MS Office to students for about $50 each.) Then it talks about how Microsoft is planning to up the ante on collaboration with free online services like Office Live.
There's stretching it, and then there's taking a quote so far out of context you're disrupting the space-time continuum.
Your statement might hold merit if that were the case, but current history has shown the opposite.
My contacts have had no problems opening the Office 2007 files I send them, despite being on older versions of Office. Microsoft has made free upgrades available to those users so that they can open my documents, edit them, and send them back to me without me even knowing they were on an old version.
And I still have the ability to Save As if needed.
Most stores require some kind of written ad. They tell you that web-offers don't qualify for price matching, and I suspect they'll say the same about any phone application. Even if it is the Wal*Mart down the street, they'll want to see it in writing.
This brings up another point too.. who keeps the prices current?
Now you're talkin'! That's infinitely better than saving a few bucks.
Seems to me that Amazon should make this app for the iPhone and Android. Then they can show consumers the Amazon reviews and if they're curious, the Amazon price. They could let the user order it from Amazon with one-click, put it on a wishlist, etc.
I'm trying, really, to imagine why I'd want this on my phone.
If I'm at Best Buy, and I scan a DVD and it comes up $2 cheaper at Wal*Mart down the street, I still don't think put up with driving, parking, and all that hassle just to save a few bucks. Now, if it were 35% or 50% higher, then sure, but that rarely ever happens in the retail environment.
And if it found it $2 cheaper on Amazon.com, then that's great. That at least gives me the choice... buy it now for $15 or get it in a couple days for $13. But I already knew that Amazon.com would be cheaper before I even walked in, so this is moot.
About the only useful application I see here is if the retail store is just hoping to get "lucky" by charging me a super-high markup on something that I'd be better off getting somewhere else. When this happens, I can usually tell I'm being gouged when I see the price. I don't need a CueCat-like device to tell me that.
That all being said, having bar-code reading integrated into employees cell phone can do a lot in the business world. If these APIs are easily tied into, I could see a whole set of custom apps for document/product tracking, inventory, etc.
I'm glad you re-replied using your real account so that you can get my reply. I don't think I would have bothered with the AC login. Here's a few things that you might find helpful or informative:
i have to go to task manager to end processes (lest they just endless take up memory and never auto close)
That depends on the app. Apps can have an Exit/Quit button, and they can make the X close the app. Blame the programmer. For what its worth, some OEMs ship with a free Task Manager link on the very top-corner when you're on the Today screen, and this lets you close apps. Furthermore, I've never ever needed to close an app.
everything is inconsistent
Again, this might be the apps that you're using. But, when I run it with the original stuff that it came with everything is very consistent. If you've ever used any SmartPhone, you'll see the same inconsistency through every OS if they're programmed by different people. Not sure why that is relevant here.
setting up networking makes zero sense, its all designed around this concept of connecting to the "internet" or to "work"
Agreed. I blame the mobile vendors for that one.
there is a "communication manager" (which lets me turn on wifi, the phone antannae, bluetooth...and vibrate, makes no sense). from the "communication manager" i can get to the "wlan" config screen (where u can see signal strength and the network ur connected to) but not the "wireless screen" which is where you actually define access points.
The Comm Manager is your one-stop-shop to turn on/off all communications stuff, including the vibrate feature. Communications includes the phone and incoming calls, so it makes sense to me that Vibrate is here. "Wireless" means cellular stuff. "WiFi" means 802.11 stuff. Think like your average user, not a programmer, and it makes sense.
i cant read pdfs
I can. It came with the phone for free. I can also read and edit Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint documents and send them to others and they'd never know I was using a phone.
internet explorer is total crap, it doesnt support javascript, flash or applets
Neither does any other mobile phone browser that I know of, at least not free ones or ones built into phones. But FWIW, WM 6.2 will support these features in just a few months. It will be the first to do this.
some windows show a little square X in the top right corner to hide it (remember you cant really close an app without the task manager) while others have a circle that says OK instead of the X.
Blame the programmer if you don't like the way the dialog box works. I seemed to learn the convention pretty quickly.
sometimes i have to reset the phone to make a phone call
I haven't reset mine in over a week, probably longer. And if you think iPhones are perfect, you've got another thing coming. Perhaps you have a lot of poorly designed apps loaded on your phone, or your carrier has weighed it down with junk.
i cant sync it with anything other than windows and in windows i need to install outlook (which doesnt come with windows) in order to backup contacts and calendar items....everything else doesnt need outlook, so thats inconsistent
You don't have to use Outlook for contacts (use the SIM for that), just calendar and tasks. My phone came with a full version of Outlook 2003, so I don't know what you're complaining about unless you're not on Windows. You bought a WINDOWS phone, hello!
if i want to use msn messenger i need to download ALL contacts on my hotmail account into the address book in my phone, i cant selectively choose anyone, and since hotmail likes to automatically create users in its ad
Microsoft will push for a minor update its 6.1 version as early as this year still, calling it 6.2 -- which will have some bells and whistles like an improved browser that can display Flash and Ajax applications.
Let's also not forget that for a significant number of business users, WM 6 is quite sufficient and still beats the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry hands-down in a corporate environment.
For proof, take a look at the latest WM6 phones from HTC and Samsung, such as the Touch Pro about to come out in a few weeks.
All of these competing phone OSes are making improvements (such as the iPhone 2's ability to activesync), but by the time they catch up with WM6 in the business world it will be 2010, when Microsoft has released WM7.
I don't think it's that unusual for a press agency to write about events before they happen. They're expected to put out a release almost immediately to various wires (like AP), or they'll get scooped by other reporters and bloggers.
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and suggest that they wrote the release as I would expect, and it somehow got out before it should have.
You can also bet that both of our US Presidential candidates are already working on their acceptance speeches, and will have them completed days before the election even takes place. I'm sure their campaigns' press releases already have quotes in them, too.
Slashdot Mirror
In California, at least everywhere here that I've seen them, the cameras are installed in pairs. Though, we only have red-light violation cameras, so maybe that's something unique.
One is behind the intersection and captures the license plate. The other is in front and captures the driver.
I'm told that when you receive your ticket, it includes the two photos and you can contest it if it's not you. They mail it to the owner of the license plate, and if you're not the driver you can presumably fill out a form to redirect it to the person in the photo.
I'd have to imagine that a similar process exists in other situations. For example, even if it was your license plate, couldn't you claim that you weren't driving the car at the time?
Please help me to understand why a reboot at 3:00 AM when I'm not using my machine is such a horrible thing, as you so claim.
Not to mention I can change the time, turn the feature off, or that it prompts me 10 minutes before rebooting in case I'm doing something. Add to that the auto-save feature of any decent program. Then add to that all the advanced configuration that a WSUS can provide a network administrator.
Really, why do we fear the reboot? Especially when we're supposed to be turning our machines off every night when we stop using them.
Oh, and if you're referring to a server, then please tell me you're not using a browser to surf the web on a production server?
I am using the word "beleaguered" in a sentence.
There.
I have a BluRay player (in my PS3) and a 1080p television, but I'm still buying regular DVDs.
Why? Because BR discs are still 2-4 times the price as their non-BR counterparts. I can pick up recent DVDs for $5-15, while the cheapest I've ever seen a BluRay disc is $20 in the "bargain bin".
What is totally shocking to me is the latest release of movies in BluRay that came out on DVD years ago.
So if current BR discs are so much more expensive, how much will a BR+ disc be? And the scary question: when will they stop selling regular DVDs?
I know, I know, it's just like the end of VHS all over again. But I don't remember DVDs ever being 4x as much as new VHS releases.
There are other benefits to the author for having a dead-tree book purchased, even when out-of-print.
That sale helps improve the overall rating for the book, and all other books the author has written. So, your purchase may actually trigger the purchase of other sales from the same author. This works electronically on sites like Amazon, and in the real world when statistics are tabulated in all sorts of ways.
An out-of-print book might also be sold directly by the author or publisher, or just some guy who doesn't want the book any more. Either way that purchase is helping other people, even if it helps Jeff Bezos's gigantic empire and the thousands of people who work for him.
I think the ethical thing to do is purchase the dead-tree book and then download the ilegal version so that you can enjoy it in the medium you intended. This might not be legal, but it's ethical in my eyes so long as you don't pass it on. If you later sold the dead-tree book, you could then delete the electronic version.
I have yet to see a vista commercial that talks about the technical merits of the operating system, because your average user doesn't understand or care about indexed search or file systems etc
Which is exactly why you won't see a commercial touting those features. Sure, they are there and plenty more. Administrators find dealing with Vista far easier than XP, hardware/peripheral issues aside for the time-being.
But your average grandma who thinks that Office 2007 and Vista are the same thing? No, they want pretty features like DVR functionality and easier photo sharing.
You also didn't have to recharge your pager once a night. I remember two AA batteries going for months in my old pager.
That's awfully subjective.
A well-chosen outside consultant or IT shop can do just as well, or better, or worse, than a permanent IT position.
I'd even go so far as to say that, unless you've got 4-5 IT full-time people on staff, hiring an outside company will often give you better support, more reliability, less downtime, and be overall cheaper.
One reason is that with only 1 or 2 IT people on staff, you have a very limited pool of knowledge and experience. An outside company, however might have 5-25 people who are often just as experienced or more.
Another reason is that employees take vacations, but hired companies do not. If your server goes down while one IT guy is in the Bahamas and the other one is out sick, what happens? A well-chosen IT firm won't have this issue.
A third reason is buying power. If you're ordering 20 machines from Dell, you'll get a nice discount. But if you're ordering those machines from an IT shop that orders 100s of machines a month, you'll usually see a nicer discount.
To say that an internal IT person knows your system better is somewhat true, but if outside consultants are the ones that put it in there's a pretty good chance they'll know it quite well.
Just like outsourcing marketing, human resources, plumbing, accounting, and anything else, there is a very obvious benefit for small organizations to outsource IT. And just like those other examples, there comes a point where hiring full-time employees makes sense.
How about adding the word *scanned* into the headline, just as the original headline was.
That way others won't have to read the summary going "Hey, I thought Google was searching PDFs for the last 10 years."
I'm sorry... downplayed?
Is there any admin in the world that didn't get the message that this was kinda sorta urgent?
This was the first time in four (?) years that Microsoft went out-of-cycle on their patches. That alone got attention, and would hardly be considered "downplayed".
Every stinkin' newsletter I got last week all mentioned it. Vendors mentioned it. Slashdot mentioned it a dozen times. And Microsoft sent out many many bullitens.
What would it take to satisfy the submitter's requirements for sufficient attention? CDs mailed out via FedEx Next Day to every registered owner of Windows?
Perhaps the real downplaying is what Slashdot tends to do whenever a Linux-releated bug is found.
Has any business, anywhere, recieved any tangible benefit from their participation in Second Life?*
I hear about all these businesses and universities spending so much money on virtual places that are lucky to get a dozen "hits" a month. Are any of these visitors buying a product, becoming more brand-loyal, or spreading the word?
*Linden Labs and Second Life developers not included.
... except for the millions of dollars wasted on paper, ink, postage, return postage, and tabulation.
Just because there is no good solution currently does not mean the current system needs to be replaced.
That's a bit like saying the abacus works just fine, who needs calculators?
You can't take a deduction for labor. Simple as that. I wish you could. I design websites and do computer training (mostly MS Office) for a number of organizations locally, adding up to some 300 hours a year. (I keep track of it.)
Not a single minute is tax deductable, but like others have said -- your mileage and expenses usually are.
Instead... look for ways to make money off your volunteer work. If you own a business, exchange your volunteer time for promotional mention in the organization's newsletter, website, or a banner next time they hold an event.
You won't get much business from it, but you might get a few new clients that need your help which may help "pay" for your volunteer work. What goes around comes around.
Apparently the submitter is in an alternate universe and read a completely different article than the one submitted.
In the quote where Microsoft "concedes" that Google is doing better, the quote is referring to online advertising and NOT any form of productivity software. Read the article yourself. About halfway down.
The rest of the article is Ballmer boasting, and rightfully so, that no one uses Google Apps. Not even poor college students, except for occasional collaboration, and even then it's minimal. (The article doesn't mention that Microsoft practically gave away MS Office to students for about $50 each.) Then it talks about how Microsoft is planning to up the ante on collaboration with free online services like Office Live.
There's stretching it, and then there's taking a quote so far out of context you're disrupting the space-time continuum.
And yet Apple will still probably sell a metric assload of new MacBooks.
I'm sorry, we use imperial units here.
How many football stadiums is that?
Off the top of my head, from a non-geek (consumer) point of view in terms of sales and/or non-experience and buzz:
And from a geek perspective:
And frankly, you can piss on Vista all you want, but I have yet to actually talk to a non-geek that's running Vista who doesn't like it.
I'm playing on the Super Nintendo.
It's called METEO, you insenstive clod!
Your statement might hold merit if that were the case, but current history has shown the opposite.
My contacts have had no problems opening the Office 2007 files I send them, despite being on older versions of Office. Microsoft has made free upgrades available to those users so that they can open my documents, edit them, and send them back to me without me even knowing they were on an old version.
And I still have the ability to Save As if needed.
In Soviet Russia... the outdoors farts on you.
Most stores require some kind of written ad. They tell you that web-offers don't qualify for price matching, and I suspect they'll say the same about any phone application. Even if it is the Wal*Mart down the street, they'll want to see it in writing.
This brings up another point too.. who keeps the prices current?
Now you're talkin'! That's infinitely better than saving a few bucks.
Seems to me that Amazon should make this app for the iPhone and Android. Then they can show consumers the Amazon reviews and if they're curious, the Amazon price. They could let the user order it from Amazon with one-click, put it on a wishlist, etc.
Another wonderful blow to retail. :)
I'm trying, really, to imagine why I'd want this on my phone.
If I'm at Best Buy, and I scan a DVD and it comes up $2 cheaper at Wal*Mart down the street, I still don't think put up with driving, parking, and all that hassle just to save a few bucks. Now, if it were 35% or 50% higher, then sure, but that rarely ever happens in the retail environment.
And if it found it $2 cheaper on Amazon.com, then that's great. That at least gives me the choice... buy it now for $15 or get it in a couple days for $13. But I already knew that Amazon.com would be cheaper before I even walked in, so this is moot.
About the only useful application I see here is if the retail store is just hoping to get "lucky" by charging me a super-high markup on something that I'd be better off getting somewhere else. When this happens, I can usually tell I'm being gouged when I see the price. I don't need a CueCat-like device to tell me that.
That all being said, having bar-code reading integrated into employees cell phone can do a lot in the business world. If these APIs are easily tied into, I could see a whole set of custom apps for document/product tracking, inventory, etc.
I'm glad you re-replied using your real account so that you can get my reply. I don't think I would have bothered with the AC login. Here's a few things that you might find helpful or informative:
That depends on the app. Apps can have an Exit/Quit button, and they can make the X close the app. Blame the programmer. For what its worth, some OEMs ship with a free Task Manager link on the very top-corner when you're on the Today screen, and this lets you close apps. Furthermore, I've never ever needed to close an app.
Again, this might be the apps that you're using. But, when I run it with the original stuff that it came with everything is very consistent. If you've ever used any SmartPhone, you'll see the same inconsistency through every OS if they're programmed by different people. Not sure why that is relevant here.
Agreed. I blame the mobile vendors for that one.
The Comm Manager is your one-stop-shop to turn on/off all communications stuff, including the vibrate feature. Communications includes the phone and incoming calls, so it makes sense to me that Vibrate is here. "Wireless" means cellular stuff. "WiFi" means 802.11 stuff. Think like your average user, not a programmer, and it makes sense.
I can. It came with the phone for free. I can also read and edit Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint documents and send them to others and they'd never know I was using a phone.
Neither does any other mobile phone browser that I know of, at least not free ones or ones built into phones. But FWIW, WM 6.2 will support these features in just a few months. It will be the first to do this.
Blame the programmer if you don't like the way the dialog box works. I seemed to learn the convention pretty quickly.
I haven't reset mine in over a week, probably longer. And if you think iPhones are perfect, you've got another thing coming. Perhaps you have a lot of poorly designed apps loaded on your phone, or your carrier has weighed it down with junk.
You don't have to use Outlook for contacts (use the SIM for that), just calendar and tasks. My phone came with a full version of Outlook 2003, so I don't know what you're complaining about unless you're not on Windows. You bought a WINDOWS phone, hello!
Let's not mention this:
Let's also not forget that for a significant number of business users, WM 6 is quite sufficient and still beats the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry hands-down in a corporate environment.
For proof, take a look at the latest WM6 phones from HTC and Samsung, such as the Touch Pro about to come out in a few weeks.
All of these competing phone OSes are making improvements (such as the iPhone 2's ability to activesync), but by the time they catch up with WM6 in the business world it will be 2010, when Microsoft has released WM7.
I don't think it's that unusual for a press agency to write about events before they happen. They're expected to put out a release almost immediately to various wires (like AP), or they'll get scooped by other reporters and bloggers.
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and suggest that they wrote the release as I would expect, and it somehow got out before it should have.
You can also bet that both of our US Presidential candidates are already working on their acceptance speeches, and will have them completed days before the election even takes place. I'm sure their campaigns' press releases already have quotes in them, too.