There are people of all beliefs, colors and creeds. Yes a lot of southern baptists. I'm not one of them. Who cares what your neighbors believe?
I might, for one. It depends to some degree on what they believe and the proportion of the population that share their belief. If my neighbor believes that my system of beliefs and ethics is "wrong" and that the underlying principles/mandates of his faith dictate that he should try to impose his system of beliefs and ethics on me (and, more particularly, my children), then it's a problem. If the number of people who agree with him significantly outnumber the number of people who are like me, it's a bigger problem.
Southern Baptists are a favorite denomination to trot out as being intolerant, but I have seen the same kind of attitude in Presbyterians and have read of similar things in Judaism and Islam. IMHO, the more culturally diverse an area is, the less likely one group will attempt to dominate the others.
Anyway, you make a good case for Huntsville, but I'll stay where I am until I can move to Lincoln, Montana.
You may also find local chapters of special interest groups, like Perlmongers. I've generally been happy to see job postings from real employers on the lists I subscribe to. What I can't abide, though, is postings that don't give any information about the particulars of the job, or when the sender is simply looking to collect resumes to pad his portfolio of "talent".
Re:Regenerative braking on the front wheel
on
The Hybrid Scooter
·
· Score: 1
Agreed, it's inherently anti-lock, but I recall (with some anguish) how little traction there is on ice, and my thinking is that the drag of the motor might be enough to induce a skid on wet or icy pavement. One can skid and still have spinning wheels.
OTOH, I also realized when the first guy replied that my question is kind of dumb. Brakes of any kind invite a skid in slippery conditions, and if no braking is going on, the risk of a skid is the same regardless of the braking system.
Regenerative braking on the front wheel
on
The Hybrid Scooter
·
· Score: 1
That's an interesting idea, doing the regenerative braking from the front wheel, but I'd be a little worried about it in slick conditions. I'm wondering if the braking can be modulated adequately to prevent a skid. With a four-wheel vehicle, if your front wheels lock up, you slide or maybe spin; lock up the front wheel on a two-wheel vehicle, you either flip or lose your balance and crash. Of course, I suppose that if they electronically detect that the rear wheel has lost traction, the problem might be (mostly) prevented.
One shortcoming in the article is that they don't tell us how the prototype is powered, just that it's not hydrogen yet.
I've misplaced the link, if I ever had it (I just recall hearing about this from my wife the evolutionary biology teaching fellow) but there's currently a species of primate (bonobo?) that has different behaviors for different kinds of predators. They scurry up into trees for land-based predators, they go down under cover for large birds, and do something in between (I forget what) for snakes.
A book I read a few years ago, Language and Species, talked about a proto-language in vervet monkeys, in which they warned of different kinds of predators. The author pointed out that one difference between those monkeys and us is that they cannot distinguish between "snake" as representing a thing that might exist but isn't here right now, and "snake" as representing an immediate danger, because it's right here, right now. So everytime they hear the vervet "word" for "snake", they react as if there is one present.
Come to think of it, we get that reaction here, both pro and con, when certain subjects come up. Maybe we're not as evolved as we'd like to think.
"Primates went a particular route," Isbell told LiveScience. "They focused on improving their vision to keep away from [snakes]. Other mammals couldn't do that. Primates had the pre-adaptations to go that way.
Natural selection doesn't work that way. Pre-human primates focused on staying alive. It could be that the ones who were better at detecting snakes survived and the others didn't, but we humans are the first species that seem to be capable of directing the evolution of our descendants (for better or worse).
I wish that people who wrote about evolution would learn to use phrasing that conveys how natural selection works, instead of attributing it to the intelligence of the species in question. I know, it's a Fox News article, but I've even seen Daniel Dennett make that mistake in his writing.
No, downloading transactions isa way to save lots of time on data entry. Spoting mistakes is the job of the reconciliation process (which gnucash has specific functions to help you with).
I understand that downloading the transactions saves data entry time, but I don't follow how the reconciliation process is going to catch errors if one relies on data from the bank:
Download the bank's transaction records and import them into my accounting records.
Reconcile the records in my accounting against the statement the bank sent me.
This is great for checking to ensure the accounting software is working correctly, but it doesn't help me if the bank has transactions I didn't make, or if I have written checks that have not been cashed. The way I have to see it, for a proper reconciliation to take place, I need to enter the transactions that I know about and compare them against the transactions the bank says took place.
Here's an example of what I mean:
At a restaurant, I get bad service, so I only add $0.02 as the tip on the charge receipt. I pocket my receipt and go home.
The waiter sees what I have done and adds a 1 to the left side, giving himself a tip of $10.02.
The charge statement comes in a month later. I have forgotten all about the lousy waiter except for the facts that he insulted my wife and spilled coffee in my lap.
If I rely on the transactions downloaded from the bank, it will be easy to overlook the increased charge when I reconcile my account. If, however, I have entered the transactions from the receipts I brought home in my wallet, I will catch the slimy waiter's trick right away.
(Disclaimer: I do not stiff waiters. No actual waiters were harmed in the creation of this post. )
I'm not sure that using the downloads from the bank is such a good idea, because it takes away part of the benefit of tracking one's finances in an accounting program. Since I manually enter each charge or deposit/payment, when the bank/credit card statement comes in, it's easier to spot charges that don't belong there, or credits that were not processed. Downloading the information from the bank means you're trusting them to get everything right, and that no one is going to commit fraud against your bank account.
Well, I for one wish the authors of these alerts would give the bill number. I searched the Library of Congress bill tracking system using the supposed title of the bill and didn't find it. I did, however, find this bill, which seems fair on its face, at any rate.
The AT&T lawyers behind this are idiots and should be fired. There's aperfectly good solution for redaction of PDFs, Redax, and it's widely advertised and discussed in computer publications intended for legal staff. Moreover, this Redax stuff actually works. Since U.S. federal courts now require (or at least strongly encourage) electronic filing in PDF, any lawyer who plans to litigate in the federal court system needs to know about it.
But seriously, I'm amazed at the amount of modification that they seem to be getting away with. At the school I went to, they'd bust you for using tape to hang a poster on the wall. The RA would probably have had a fit if he'd seen the extension phone I wired in. Anyway, I sure wouldn't have put up a web page about it.
Kodak Easyshare is one example I have come across - why should a photo album manager need admin privileges to my box?
Well, can't blame British Rail -- I mean, Microsoft -- for that! (And I try to blame nearly everything on Microsoft.) I'd like to say it's people who accept software that requires admin access to run, but unfortunately, it's just like with the unfair software licenses that are so common -- you feel like you have no choice. "What do you mean, I spent $500 for this digital camera, and I can't run the software because it's unsafe?" Stuff like this ought to be prominently highlighted in product reviews.
In the corporate world, it's a similar problem. You need a package that does X, and after a search, you decide on one. It turns out not to run under the locked-down environment that everyone knows is safe. The vendor, having cashed your company's check, won't fix it. Management, needing to get the work done that the software was bought for, decrees that the package must be installed, and the necessary accomodations made. So you're hosed.
Runas and sudo are great workarounds, but they're no substitute for properly thought-out software that is designed to be secure from the ground up.
Among my folder full of favorite cartoon strips: an edition of On the Fast Track, by Bill Holbrook from about 20 years ago. One of the characters says, "One good thing about computers is they provide an employment opportunity for history majors." I used white-out (remember that stuff?) to substitute "Spanish" for "history", but the sentiment is the same.
In What Color Is Your Parachute? the author talks about identifying and marketing one's transferable skills. You seem to have done it perfectly. Congratulations!
I don't think so. I think it's about short-circuiting a shareholder proposal mentioned in the FA. I own a small amount of Apple stock, and I read the shareholder proxy info. It really ticked me off. The proxy certificate only permitted shareholders the option of voting on whether a shareholders group would be allowed to present a recycling proposal at the shareholders meeting. Not "Vote yes or no on a recycling proposal", but "Shall we allow these shareholders present a proposal at the meeting?". Naturally, the board of directors recommended against this. (For some reason, boards of directors are always against anything that isn't their idea.)
It is possible that the shareholders group is proposing something more far-reaching than what was just announced. But I'm happy to see Apple taking this step. Dell is willing to take in my junk PC and recycle it, and I think HP is willing to also, so why not Apple?
All good points. Also, minimum requirements (RAM, OS version, etc.) ought to be specified. My worst home computer repair nightmares have occurred when the OS is so badly outdated that it's going to take all day just to download the patches, or when the friend/family member has stolen software installed. (My father-in-law now knows that my wife and I will kill him if he ever lets one of his friends install software on his computer.) Or the computer has WeatherBug, Kazaa, and God knows what else installed on it.
I've recently started using mass transit again, and it would be nice to get some sort of discount for it.
I'm no expert, by any means, but I think most mass transit systems are subsidized to some degree, so the passengers are getting a discount, in a sense. I think I figured out that the mass transit I rode to my previous job cost me $0.11/mile, for $5.60/day. On top of that, my employer participated in a program that allowed me to put $100/month of my salary toward the purchase of transit passes with pre-tax dollars, which was effectively a further discount. Your employer might be able to set up something similar, since it's IRS rules that allow this.
They've been "coming to the U.S. market" for something like five years now. I don't think we'll ever see them. I went to the SmartCar web site yesterday after reading the BBC article, and under "What we do", it talked about going to trade shows, not about producing cars for sale. FWIW, the electric vehicle in the local6.com article looked to be SmartCar. All in all, it looks to me like nothing there's innovative in either article.
I did the math on what it costs me to drive my minivan to work, and even at $3.25 a gallon, I'm better off keeping it than insuring (let alone maintaining) another car or even a motorcycle for commuting purposes, or downsizing and renting a minivan for family trips. So my plan is to continue bicycling to work as often as my schedule allows.
I'm with you. I won't buy something outfitted with such a control. Sheesh! And here 1984 seemed so far-fetched when I read it 30-some years ago. But between Philips and Cisco (helping erect the Great Firewall), not to mention the Dept. of Heimreich Security, I think all of the pieces are nearly in place. We just have to turn it on.
I don't necessarily disagree with his thinking, but it's worth having some perspective on how "progressive" his voice really is.
That's true. People change. President Bush went from being a partying drunk to a born-again teetotaller. One of my best friends' dad went from being a staunch Republican to a rabid liberal who makes my excoriations of the GOP and their camp-followers look like praise.
FWIW, I'm less against nuclear power than I was 30 years ago. The post about reprocessing the waste sooner brings up an idea that certainly has merit. But I wish they'd quit dumping it in South Carolina.
"The clever bit is how you integrate, balance and harmonize separate systems that allow you to drive the car in a spirited way, but don't feel in any way in danger, overpowered and intimidated," said Martyn Hollingsworth, Jaguar's director of engineering. "This is real important when you are in a car approaching up to 400 horses." (emphasis mine)
I'm sorry, but I think that when you're dealing with a machine that powerful, you ought to respect the thing. To quote Gumball Rally:
- Can you imagine making this trip at 55mph?
- 55 is unsafe!
- It's boring!
- That's why it's unsafe; you are going fast enough to kill you but slow enough to make you think you're safe.
It's true that Adobe owns and controls the PDF standard; however, the specifications are freely available, gratis, for anyone to write applications to create and display PDF. I don't remember the details of their restrictions on the license, but I recall them requiring that viewing applications respect the encryption on locked PDFs and something about not writing applications that directly compete with their products. One could argue the finer points of whether it's an open standard, but my point is that this is the closest I saw at DOJ.
Slashdot Mirror
(I know, it's a bad jibe, but someone had to do it.)
I might, for one. It depends to some degree on what they believe and the proportion of the population that share their belief. If my neighbor believes that my system of beliefs and ethics is "wrong" and that the underlying principles/mandates of his faith dictate that he should try to impose his system of beliefs and ethics on me (and, more particularly, my children), then it's a problem. If the number of people who agree with him significantly outnumber the number of people who are like me, it's a bigger problem.
Southern Baptists are a favorite denomination to trot out as being intolerant, but I have seen the same kind of attitude in Presbyterians and have read of similar things in Judaism and Islam. IMHO, the more culturally diverse an area is, the less likely one group will attempt to dominate the others.
Anyway, you make a good case for Huntsville, but I'll stay where I am until I can move to Lincoln, Montana.
You may also find local chapters of special interest groups, like Perlmongers. I've generally been happy to see job postings from real employers on the lists I subscribe to. What I can't abide, though, is postings that don't give any information about the particulars of the job, or when the sender is simply looking to collect resumes to pad his portfolio of "talent".
OTOH, I also realized when the first guy replied that my question is kind of dumb. Brakes of any kind invite a skid in slippery conditions, and if no braking is going on, the risk of a skid is the same regardless of the braking system.
One shortcoming in the article is that they don't tell us how the prototype is powered, just that it's not hydrogen yet.
Come to think of it, we get that reaction here, both pro and con, when certain subjects come up. Maybe we're not as evolved as we'd like to think.
Natural selection doesn't work that way. Pre-human primates focused on staying alive. It could be that the ones who were better at detecting snakes survived and the others didn't, but we humans are the first species that seem to be capable of directing the evolution of our descendants (for better or worse).
I wish that people who wrote about evolution would learn to use phrasing that conveys how natural selection works, instead of attributing it to the intelligence of the species in question. I know, it's a Fox News article, but I've even seen Daniel Dennett make that mistake in his writing.
I understand that downloading the transactions saves data entry time, but I don't follow how the reconciliation process is going to catch errors if one relies on data from the bank:
- Download the bank's transaction records and import them into my accounting records.
- Reconcile the records in my accounting against the statement the bank sent me.
This is great for checking to ensure the accounting software is working correctly, but it doesn't help me if the bank has transactions I didn't make, or if I have written checks that have not been cashed. The way I have to see it, for a proper reconciliation to take place, I need to enter the transactions that I know about and compare them against the transactions the bank says took place.Here's an example of what I mean:
- At a restaurant, I get bad service, so I only add $0.02 as the tip on the charge receipt. I pocket my receipt and go home.
- The waiter sees what I have done and adds a 1 to the left side, giving himself a tip of $10.02.
- The charge statement comes in a month later. I have forgotten all about the lousy waiter except for the facts that he insulted my wife and spilled coffee in my lap.
If I rely on the transactions downloaded from the bank, it will be easy to overlook the increased charge when I reconcile my account. If, however, I have entered the transactions from the receipts I brought home in my wallet, I will catch the slimy waiter's trick right away.(Disclaimer: I do not stiff waiters. No actual waiters were harmed in the creation of this post. )
I'm not sure that using the downloads from the bank is such a good idea, because it takes away part of the benefit of tracking one's finances in an accounting program. Since I manually enter each charge or deposit/payment, when the bank/credit card statement comes in, it's easier to spot charges that don't belong there, or credits that were not processed. Downloading the information from the bank means you're trusting them to get everything right, and that no one is going to commit fraud against your bank account.
Well, I for one wish the authors of these alerts would give the bill number. I searched the Library of Congress bill tracking system using the supposed title of the bill and didn't find it. I did, however, find this bill, which seems fair on its face, at any rate.
The AT&T lawyers behind this are idiots and should be fired. There's aperfectly good solution for redaction of PDFs, Redax, and it's widely advertised and discussed in computer publications intended for legal staff. Moreover, this Redax stuff actually works. Since U.S. federal courts now require (or at least strongly encourage) electronic filing in PDF, any lawyer who plans to litigate in the federal court system needs to know about it.
But seriously, I'm amazed at the amount of modification that they seem to be getting away with. At the school I went to, they'd bust you for using tape to hang a poster on the wall. The RA would probably have had a fit if he'd seen the extension phone I wired in. Anyway, I sure wouldn't have put up a web page about it.
Well, can't blame British Rail -- I mean, Microsoft -- for that! (And I try to blame nearly everything on Microsoft.) I'd like to say it's people who accept software that requires admin access to run, but unfortunately, it's just like with the unfair software licenses that are so common -- you feel like you have no choice. "What do you mean, I spent $500 for this digital camera, and I can't run the software because it's unsafe?" Stuff like this ought to be prominently highlighted in product reviews.
In the corporate world, it's a similar problem. You need a package that does X, and after a search, you decide on one. It turns out not to run under the locked-down environment that everyone knows is safe. The vendor, having cashed your company's check, won't fix it. Management, needing to get the work done that the software was bought for, decrees that the package must be installed, and the necessary accomodations made. So you're hosed.
Runas and sudo are great workarounds, but they're no substitute for properly thought-out software that is designed to be secure from the ground up.
Please mod parent up.
"What flavor is your lollipop?" the girl asked the boy.
"Cherry," he responded. "What flavor is yours?"
"Lime!"
In What Color Is Your Parachute? the author talks about identifying and marketing one's transferable skills. You seem to have done it perfectly. Congratulations!
It is possible that the shareholders group is proposing something more far-reaching than what was just announced. But I'm happy to see Apple taking this step. Dell is willing to take in my junk PC and recycle it, and I think HP is willing to also, so why not Apple?
All good points. Also, minimum requirements (RAM, OS version, etc.) ought to be specified. My worst home computer repair nightmares have occurred when the OS is so badly outdated that it's going to take all day just to download the patches, or when the friend/family member has stolen software installed. (My father-in-law now knows that my wife and I will kill him if he ever lets one of his friends install software on his computer.) Or the computer has WeatherBug, Kazaa, and God knows what else installed on it.
I'm no expert, by any means, but I think most mass transit systems are subsidized to some degree, so the passengers are getting a discount, in a sense. I think I figured out that the mass transit I rode to my previous job cost me $0.11/mile, for $5.60/day. On top of that, my employer participated in a program that allowed me to put $100/month of my salary toward the purchase of transit passes with pre-tax dollars, which was effectively a further discount. Your employer might be able to set up something similar, since it's IRS rules that allow this.
I did the math on what it costs me to drive my minivan to work, and even at $3.25 a gallon, I'm better off keeping it than insuring (let alone maintaining) another car or even a motorcycle for commuting purposes, or downsizing and renting a minivan for family trips. So my plan is to continue bicycling to work as often as my schedule allows.
I'm with you. I won't buy something outfitted with such a control. Sheesh! And here 1984 seemed so far-fetched when I read it 30-some years ago. But between Philips and Cisco (helping erect the Great Firewall), not to mention the Dept. of Heimreich Security, I think all of the pieces are nearly in place. We just have to turn it on.
Volkswagen is up-class now? Damn! And here my wife was calling mine a piece of crap!
That's true. People change. President Bush went from being a partying drunk to a born-again teetotaller. One of my best friends' dad went from being a staunch Republican to a rabid liberal who makes my excoriations of the GOP and their camp-followers look like praise.
FWIW, I'm less against nuclear power than I was 30 years ago. The post about reprocessing the waste sooner brings up an idea that certainly has merit. But I wish they'd quit dumping it in South Carolina.
"The clever bit is how you integrate, balance and harmonize separate systems that allow you to drive the car in a spirited way, but don't feel in any way in danger, overpowered and intimidated," said Martyn Hollingsworth, Jaguar's director of engineering. "This is real important when you are in a car approaching up to 400 horses." (emphasis mine)
I'm sorry, but I think that when you're dealing with a machine that powerful, you ought to respect the thing. To quote Gumball Rally:
It's true that Adobe owns and controls the PDF standard; however, the specifications are freely available, gratis, for anyone to write applications to create and display PDF. I don't remember the details of their restrictions on the license, but I recall them requiring that viewing applications respect the encryption on locked PDFs and something about not writing applications that directly compete with their products. One could argue the finer points of whether it's an open standard, but my point is that this is the closest I saw at DOJ.