Mod parent up -- funny. Americans *do* run into each other while looking at their electronic devices. We behave like jackasses all the time. Why should we expect the Chinese to be any different? *That* would be racist.
FWIW, my beef with China has always been its government. I'll change my mind when I stop hearing about people being jailed for criticizing that government, and when I quit hearing about corruption that would make U.S. politicians seem honest by comparison. I'll also trust their GPS then, too.
Maybe because they like being flamed for asking a serious question of a bunch of (generally speaking) really bright people with a technical bent? It seems to me like automatic light controls sort of fall into an area of interest to geeks.
FWIW, I agree with the assessments of X10's marketing techniques, but the controller I bought from them 10-15 years ago is still holding up fine. If I'd known they made lights like the ones you linked to, I probably would have installed them on my new porch instead of what I did install. Of course, if they didn't load up my browser with cookies and popup ads when I visit their web site, maybe I'd have been more inclined to check it before going to Lowe's.
TFA is about a book that purports to list the top 50 foreign countries among U.S. emigres (sp?). But if I'm fed up with America, then why in heck would I want to move to a country that is full of U.S. expatriates?
I dunno. Over at my town's recycling center, the Veterans of Foreign Wars have an old USPS box for "dignified disposal" of worn-out U.S. flags. It's not blue, of course, and it has a sign on it saying not to put mail there. But if the local chapter of the VFW can get their hands on one, I don't know why you or I couldn't.
I think that I've heard that the plaintiff has to prove both malice and falsehood when he's claiming libel. So I don't mind if you insult me that way, so long as you're smiling when you do it.
Don't get me started on insurance companies. It won't be pretty. When the Revolution comes, first the lawyers, then the insurance claims adjusters....
That's it! I'm taking away my kid's computer and replacing it with a typewriter!
But seriously, this is why you want an umbrella liability insurance policy. Whether it's your kid or your dog or your spouse -- or you, yourself, you can be sued for just about anything, anytime. And, for what it's worth, there's nothing new about this. Parents *are* held responsible for the actions of their kids all the time.
I like the Faraday wallet, too, but I wonder if it works. FWIW, I wrapped my wallet in a layer of aluminum foil and took it outside the office just now. The card reader at the door let me right back in without unwrapping it.
A while back someone posted instructions on how to kill a RFID. After I check applicable laws, I will probably fry the RFID in any driver's license or passport I get.
I see that you are right. I must have misread the paperwork when they arm-twisted my wife into signing us up for FiOS about a year ago. (The door-to-door sales rep said, "Your DSL is going away." My wife, whom I had barely convinced to go to DSL about a year earlier, immediately caved. She cancelled the contract the next day after we talked about our relatively puny bandwidth needs. And therein lies a secret about what wives consider to be necessity.)
Interesting. I didn't know you could keep the copper.
FWIW, they may succeed installing FIOS at my house only when they do away with DSL. The DSL we get is fast enough for our needs and costs a good deal less. As a bonus, our phone still works when the power goes out. With FIOS for voice, you have to provide backup power to the equipment inside your house to keep phone service. As much as my power goes out, I need the phones working to call the power company.
Sounds like you've dated one of my old girlfriends.
I'd really like to see them come up with cats that don't claw furniture to shreds or spray anywhere in the house. And if they'd just bring home a whole rabbit, instead of pieces of chipmunks and tiny birds that are too small to eat.
Still, Lawler said more than a dozen other cities have ordered the anti-terror apparatus, called the Intelligent Aquatic BioMonitoring System, which was originally developed for the Army and starts at around $45,000.
It's obvious that they have good marketers. Bream are not known for their wiles and will nibble just about anything in the water. But they are tasty!
Before we were married, my wife wanted an unlisted number but didn't want to pay for it. She learned she could list the number under any name she chose, so she used her grandmother's name instead. This worked just fine, since she lived in a different state than the one where her grandmother lived.
No, but I can show you where state laws have been redesigned for the Segway (look for "electric personal assistive mobility device", which makes it sound like a wheelchair or something). I'd love to know how much it cost to lobby that into law.
Troister says Ontario's land titles system is a good system, "except in the event of fraud where it breaks down, and leaves innocent owners and innocent buyers and lenders helpless and without speedy and fair relief."
IMHO, if it doesn't handle fraud, the system is broken. Sadly, I can see the same thing happening here. The mechanism is incredibly simple, and who monitors everything concerning their property down at the courthouse? The only protection I see that I have is that if my mortgage is mysteriously discharged as the result of selling my house, the mortgage company will send me a copy of the recorded release of the deed of trust. By then, of course, it's too late for anything but legal wrangling. I guess I'll just keep hoping that the tax assessments keep coming.
Hmmm. When Alcatel laid me off years ago, they locked down all the computers in the building, so there was no way to check our e-mail. I hope Radio Shack got it right in that regard.
On the positive side, being sacked by e-mail could mean that you don't have to endure the indignity of slogging to work through rush-hour traffic only to be told to go home.
I think it'll be easy enough to vote with your dollars. I don't understand how, by any stretch of the imagination, it will be more cost effective to create beef using labs and cloning and all that technical crap, than creating it the old-fashioned way that cattle have been using for thousands of years. So if cattle are cloned for us to eat, you can bet that the beef will be sold as some sort of premium beef at a premium price. It will be easy enough to avoid that.
According to Health Canada and Statistics Canada, approximately 8% of Canadians will suffer from depression at some point in their lifetime. Around 5% of Canadians seek medical advice for depression each year; a figure that has almost doubled in the past decade. Figures in the U.S. are comparable, with approximately 18.8 million American adults (about 9.5% of the population) suffering depression during their life.
If I read this right, I can lower my risk of being depressed by almost 20% if I move to Canada. Has anyone got figures for somewhere warmer, like Costa Rica?
Also carpentry, blacksmithing, weaving.... Yup, we're living in an anomalous time, no doubt about it. But I think I'd say that even if we had oil to last thousands of years. The advice I give my kid is to learn everything you can about everything, because you never know what life will throw at you. Usually it's stuff that has NOTHING to do with a master's degree, like having the sump pump crap out at 10 p.m. on a rainy night.
Generally UNIX systems have much steeper learning curve - it takes longer to learn how to use them....
I think it depends on how you define "use". My 10-year-old is getting along fine with Gnome under Debian. She doesn't have the foggiest about how it works, but she managed to find a bunch of games and is able to do her work using OpenOffice.
On the administration end, there have been a number of things that I've had to learn about, like how to get my daughter's machine to print to the color printer on my wife's Windows machine, and on my own Debian laptop, the wireless thing just isn't there yet for consumption by my wife. On the whole, though, Linux administration is far better than it was five years ago, and light years better than when I first did any twelve years ago. (OTOH, I guess this exhibits that there is indeed a substantial learning curve, if I'm still challenged with it after 12 years....)
Same here with my HP LaserJet 4L. My only complaints are that it doesn't understand PostScript, and lately it's gotten some toner on one of the rollers, which means I'm going to have to clean it. Maybe that'll do it in and I'll have an excuse for an upgrade.
One thing I didn't see that anyone addressed yet concerning HP printers is that a year or two ago, I heard something about HP adding "smarts" to their toner cartridges or something, which would prevent using 3rd-party recycled cartridges. Admittedly, the last time I bought an HP toner cartridge, they paid for return-shipping the old one for recycling, and so they have done a fine job of addressing my environmental concerns, but it strikes me as a bit anti-competitive, and I'd rather not reward that behavior with my money.
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FWIW, my beef with China has always been its government. I'll change my mind when I stop hearing about people being jailed for criticizing that government, and when I quit hearing about corruption that would make U.S. politicians seem honest by comparison. I'll also trust their GPS then, too.
FWIW, I agree with the assessments of X10's marketing techniques, but the controller I bought from them 10-15 years ago is still holding up fine. If I'd known they made lights like the ones you linked to, I probably would have installed them on my new porch instead of what I did install. Of course, if they didn't load up my browser with cookies and popup ads when I visit their web site, maybe I'd have been more inclined to check it before going to Lowe's.
TFA is about a book that purports to list the top 50 foreign countries among U.S. emigres (sp?). But if I'm fed up with America, then why in heck would I want to move to a country that is full of U.S. expatriates?
I dunno. Over at my town's recycling center, the Veterans of Foreign Wars have an old USPS box for "dignified disposal" of worn-out U.S. flags. It's not blue, of course, and it has a sign on it saying not to put mail there. But if the local chapter of the VFW can get their hands on one, I don't know why you or I couldn't.
Don't get me started on insurance companies. It won't be pretty. When the Revolution comes, first the lawyers, then the insurance claims adjusters....
But seriously, this is why you want an umbrella liability insurance policy. Whether it's your kid or your dog or your spouse -- or you, yourself, you can be sued for just about anything, anytime. And, for what it's worth, there's nothing new about this. Parents *are* held responsible for the actions of their kids all the time.
(Do I sound like a grumpy parent, or what?)
And then there's the problem of middle-aged guys from La Mancha wanting to knock it down.
A while back someone posted instructions on how to kill a RFID. After I check applicable laws, I will probably fry the RFID in any driver's license or passport I get.
I see that you are right. I must have misread the paperwork when they arm-twisted my wife into signing us up for FiOS about a year ago. (The door-to-door sales rep said, "Your DSL is going away." My wife, whom I had barely convinced to go to DSL about a year earlier, immediately caved. She cancelled the contract the next day after we talked about our relatively puny bandwidth needs. And therein lies a secret about what wives consider to be necessity.)
FWIW, they may succeed installing FIOS at my house only when they do away with DSL. The DSL we get is fast enough for our needs and costs a good deal less. As a bonus, our phone still works when the power goes out. With FIOS for voice, you have to provide backup power to the equipment inside your house to keep phone service. As much as my power goes out, I need the phones working to call the power company.
I'd really like to see them come up with cats that don't claw furniture to shreds or spray anywhere in the house. And if they'd just bring home a whole rabbit, instead of pieces of chipmunks and tiny birds that are too small to eat.
Before we were married, my wife wanted an unlisted number but didn't want to pay for it. She learned she could list the number under any name she chose, so she used her grandmother's name instead. This worked just fine, since she lived in a different state than the one where her grandmother lived.
Nice try, but if the material doesn't matter, then why do they need the gas lines at all?
No, but I can show you where state laws have been redesigned for the Segway (look for "electric personal assistive mobility device", which makes it sound like a wheelchair or something). I'd love to know how much it cost to lobby that into law.
How in heck do they grow tomatoes at the South Pole in winter? I can barely get enough light for mine to ripen in Virginia in SUMMER!
On the positive side, being sacked by e-mail could mean that you don't have to endure the indignity of slogging to work through rush-hour traffic only to be told to go home.
Darik's Boot and Nuke. Run it once, and you'll never be asked to fix your friend's computer again.
I think it'll be easy enough to vote with your dollars. I don't understand how, by any stretch of the imagination, it will be more cost effective to create beef using labs and cloning and all that technical crap, than creating it the old-fashioned way that cattle have been using for thousands of years. So if cattle are cloned for us to eat, you can bet that the beef will be sold as some sort of premium beef at a premium price. It will be easy enough to avoid that.
If I read this right, I can lower my risk of being depressed by almost 20% if I move to Canada. Has anyone got figures for somewhere warmer, like Costa Rica?
Also carpentry, blacksmithing, weaving.... Yup, we're living in an anomalous time, no doubt about it. But I think I'd say that even if we had oil to last thousands of years. The advice I give my kid is to learn everything you can about everything, because you never know what life will throw at you. Usually it's stuff that has NOTHING to do with a master's degree, like having the sump pump crap out at 10 p.m. on a rainy night.
I dunno, after reading all this information and misinformation, I think I'm gonna go rip the wires out of my house and get a black buggy.
I think it depends on how you define "use". My 10-year-old is getting along fine with Gnome under Debian. She doesn't have the foggiest about how it works, but she managed to find a bunch of games and is able to do her work using OpenOffice.
On the administration end, there have been a number of things that I've had to learn about, like how to get my daughter's machine to print to the color printer on my wife's Windows machine, and on my own Debian laptop, the wireless thing just isn't there yet for consumption by my wife. On the whole, though, Linux administration is far better than it was five years ago, and light years better than when I first did any twelve years ago. (OTOH, I guess this exhibits that there is indeed a substantial learning curve, if I'm still challenged with it after 12 years....)
One thing I didn't see that anyone addressed yet concerning HP printers is that a year or two ago, I heard something about HP adding "smarts" to their toner cartridges or something, which would prevent using 3rd-party recycled cartridges. Admittedly, the last time I bought an HP toner cartridge, they paid for return-shipping the old one for recycling, and so they have done a fine job of addressing my environmental concerns, but it strikes me as a bit anti-competitive, and I'd rather not reward that behavior with my money.