My curiosity is that Firefox has lost the browser war on features. Now, I haven't looked extensively, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera (I think), and Safari don't have some of my most desired Firefox add-ons (notably Ad-block, Tab Mix Plus, and ForecastFox). (I am open to being corrected)
I recognize the failings of Firefox in some areas - it has massive memory leaks (particularly when a flash site is or was loaded). It actually prevents my computer from going into sleep mode. It may be slower than others in javascript processing and other things. It may not support specific items of some standards and standardly as other browsers, but it does a decent job at a lot of the major web sites and does support other specific items of some standards better then the others. I like Chrome's idea for sandboxing each tab for security and stability.
The free market will ultimately fix itself. The tax code is so overly complex that these loopholes exist. The whole mess could be cleaned up by stating: "Any person earning over X amount pays 10% of their earnings." (Person as defined by law... a corporation is a person). No deductions allowed. That would bring in at least $1.5T (based solely on GDP, which is not all income earned by US citizens).
The Taxed Enough Already party is rallying to keep their taxes high? That makes no sense.
As is stated elsewhere, the poor and lower middle class hardly pay any income taxes. I made between $40k and $75k last year and I got money back by doing my tax return. I'm not saying I got my taxes back... I got my taxes back plus extra (due to credits, etc). (If they come after me for this, I turn around and sue the tax software maker for their mistake... I answered the questions honestly.) It will likely happen again this year because of "green" credits on home improvements, I've made.
But his point still holds valid. If one wants a 3TB drive for a cheap desktop or any netbooks (which usually only hold a laptop HDD, anyway), then one might want to re-evaluate what they are trying to do.
Why 3 whole gigabytes, I could own the world! I would triple boot my DOS 6, Windows 95 and Windows 98 SE operating systems. I could complete my computer with a paradox database, MS Office 97, and even Quake and Myst games (I hear that Team Fortress mod and the full motion video and puzzle games are teh win). I'd still have enough space left over to store a few of my most favorite music. My Pentium 133 with 512MB RAM won't know what to do with all that space!
Certainly, I had an advantage of having a nurturing family growing up... I certainly wish all would make correct familial decisions. I also don't begrudge those who don't have what I have. Unlike many who think the government should take care of our poor, I think charities and citizens should take care of the poor. I put my services and resources toward that purpose as well.
And I really do feel bad for those without. I was working at a decent job, but felt I could do better. My job search wasn't serious for a long time, because I knew there were other, just as deserving, candidates. An opportunity did arrive and I jumped at it. Fortunately, my previous company decided to fill my vacated position.
I'm not trying to say, "Look at me, I'm awesome." I'm trying to say "Look at me, it is possible for anyone, because I'm not any more special than anyone else."
I don't know if you are trolling or not, but I'll give a response anyway.
Afghanistan was not invaded under false pretenses. Al Qaeda was running the government of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda actually attacked the United States of America at least three times that was reported. The first two times (attempted bombing of the trade center using a car bomb in a parking garage and running a boat into a battleship and killing 30+ soldiers). President Clinton didn't do anything - even when he had a sniper with his gun trained on Osama's head. The third time brought down two Trade Center towers and several smaller buildings and you know the story. We were justified in going in and whipping a few butts in Afghanistan.
Iraq is a little murkier. To be sure, GW Bush wanted to finish what his father couldn't. Also hindsight is 20-20 and we now know that Saddam was less worried about the US and more worried about Iran. But due to that last statement, he was telling the Western world "I have no WMDs!" But he was sending signals that Iran could pick up... and thus the rest of the world's security personnel were reporting to their leaders that "Yes, Iraq does have WMDs." It didn't help that some French companies were breaking embargo by sending suspicious materials to Iraq. So, when Russia, Britain, the US, and several other countries' are saying Iraq presents a present danger, it was difficult not to invade. And remember, Democrats and Republicans agreed. Unfortunately, the war in Iraq got mired by politics, similar to Vietnam.
Saddam was a bad man. Toppling Iraq was a good thing, but may have empowered Iran. Certainly, our current President's world wide apology tour and inability to voice outrage at Iran's human rights violations has empowered Iran's leadership more. But our citizenry is very war weary. The problem is that Iran really wants to wipe Israel out. But, if anyone hasn't gotten the memo yet, under our current administration, Israel is no longer an ally.
True. However, these were documents that put a large number of other American and Australian (and probably British and other nationalities) peoples in danger. Whether you agree that Americans defending themselves against Muslim radicals is right or not, what wikileaks did was an act against the United States of America. The worst the USA did was put him on a watch list. Annoying, yes, but hardly the Russian tactic of poisoning you with radiation (Alexander Litvinenko) or throwing him and his wife (if he had one) into a forgotten political prison (Liu Xiaobo) (if he could be extradited).
I was referring to the calendaring and task system of Outlook that Thunderbird does not have (that I have noticed). As far as e-mail goes, I prefer Thunderbird.
There are several features that I have used in the past, that I could not adequately perform in OO.o Calc.
Shared Documents I could not get OO.o to allow my team to work on the same spreadsheet at the same time. Now, we were forced to use xls files; so, perhaps, this is not an issue if I had been using Calc's native file format.
Formulas There are a large number of formulas that exist in Excel that don't in OO.o Calc. When I took my Stats & Analysis class (a few years ago, sure) Calc's formulas left me wanting
Formatting The interface for formatting does not seem intuitive to me. Even though I've been using Calc for 8 years now, using certain formatting features in Excel was easy and quick to learn.
filtering Filtering in the latest version of Excel is rather nice compared to Excel 2003 or 2000. I *don't* know how Calc compares as I haven't had a need to use the feature at home.
I don't know, I'm supporting 2 kids, a dog, a house, two cars and a stay-at-home wife on my salary. Sure, things are tight. But I still can afford a few luxuries - high speed internet and the high-def cable package, going out to a movie once every couple of months, and a fast-food trip or order-out pizza is sometimes debated.
Granted, I live in an area where cost of living is relatively low, but I'm certainly not "rich" by definition (I'm nowhere near a 6-figure income and have very little savings to show for... I'll have to give the savings and investments a few years to grow.)
Then again, I don't smoke or drink alcohol or buy lotto tickets. I'm sure I save a few hundred a month that way.
I really never understood how powerful the value of "1" was until I hit my second year of college Calculus. (I know, I'm a little slow). But They Might Be Giants easily explains the concept to children: One Everything (scroll down, item 14)
Zeros, High Five, Seven, and Seven Days of the Week are also favorites. Check out the videos on youtube.
I really like OO.o, but I recognize its shortcomings. Excel has some very excellent features that Calc cannot stand against. Outlook is a very good PIM. OO.o doesn't have anything like this. I use Thunderbird - but that's not OO.o, and it (t-bird) doesn't touch the other features that Outlook contains.
However, Writer and Presentations (equivalents to Word and Powerpoint) are very good replacements. Plus, as a home user, you can't beat the price benefits of OO.o over MS Office.
One might make a correlation - as The GIMP is to Photoshop, so is OO.o to MS Office.
Don't forget filing fees. The paralegals at the court building don't do their work for free either. The judges get a cut for their services (which I think come out of the filing fees, if not it is a court costs that the attorney has to pay from his escrow account.)
There could be a way. It requires two transactions. This would be similar to proving you are a citizen and resident of the community and registered to vote in that community and then taking the paper to vote on. The first transaction is the user logon using the unique key they were given when they registered to vote. Then, when they vote, create a hash using the datetime with the vote selections (and a random number) to prove uniqueness of the vote.
I'm still not convinced Internet voting is a good thing. But as others have mentioned, the old pencil and paper method is also fraught with mischief (vote early, vote often).
What about reactive radio technology? That is, you can track a radio receiver by it's reactions to incoming radio waves. Obviously, the receiver monitoring the reaction would need to be in close range, but perhaps these things are all over the place.
Have governments gone through this trouble or am I just pulling from science fiction? I do remember learning something about this in one of my electronics classes.
It's because the Dems knew a spanking was coming from back home. They stuck their necks out for the federalize health care bill. But that was after Obama decided the feds need to control the auto industry (hail the folks wagon) and control the "evil" wall street markets, among other things. It was too much, too quick. Thankfully so... now we can work to turn this mess around. Out with the liberals, marxists, socialists, communists, moderate republicans... all of those that want to spend, spend, spend without any money in the coffers. (PayGo... it was a nice thought.)
I don't understand that mentality of the business world toward IT/IS employees. Don't they want to keep the people around who have product knowledge and a history at the company? Why don't they give raises? But I agree. After my first year at my first job, I got a great raise. The next two years were -0-. I jumped ship and got a $20k (no benefits) raise.
I agree completely. The question should have been, "Have you received a raise in the past year?" At my previous company, no one received a raise for the past 2 end of years. First, because the owner was projecting forward (it looks like a bad year, no raises and we let people go.) Small company, nearly destroyed morale. At the end of the second year, no raises because the owner was projecting backward (this past year was bad, even though we ended in the black - barely - but this next year looks great!, still no raises.) I understand his point of view and where he is coming from, but I object to basing an 2 outcomes from the same result. There were other problems (the owner liked pushing everyone hard). I was the first to leave, but 2 others left a week after I did. It was rather humorous, I thought. I'm now getting paid better and have slightly better work (if not quite as interesting).
As a previous poster rather rudely advised... there are jobs - get one. While it may sound harsh as there may be no jobs in your area, I know there are jobs in many other areas. Just this week I've had 4 placement agencies call me with opportunities in my area. The job I currently have I acquired when there were about 5-8 similar opportunities. And that's not counting the jobs that I might've qualified for had I a little more experience. If you can, look outside of your town/state.
Yes, I agree... get the politicians out of the war and let the military when those things. It is the bureaucracy that is muddling up the wars. Useless? Debatable. Costly? Certainly, but what war isn't? Both Repubs and Dems share the blame for the inability to create a balanced budget and trying to spend money we don't have.
I'm not sure what the game prices were in 1996, but I know that when I was a teen buying games (1988-1993) I wouldn't lay down over $30. Of course, my mentality carried over to now, where the game has to be absolutely extraordinary for me to lay down more than that price. (Valve's Orange Box was one. Getting a dozen Popcap games for $90 through Steam was another.)
I'll probably pick up Diablo III when it comes out, but I am going to look for the price point to be at $45. Anything over $50 and I will wait until the next year when the expansion comes out and I can pick up the combo. (And if they force us to run local games through battle.net, I will likely not pick it up at all.)
The great thing about waiting, though, is that often you will get the original and expansions as one package for the same price as when the original came out. At least that's what I did with a few games.
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My curiosity is that Firefox has lost the browser war on features. Now, I haven't looked extensively, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera (I think), and Safari don't have some of my most desired Firefox add-ons (notably Ad-block, Tab Mix Plus, and ForecastFox). (I am open to being corrected)
I recognize the failings of Firefox in some areas - it has massive memory leaks (particularly when a flash site is or was loaded). It actually prevents my computer from going into sleep mode. It may be slower than others in javascript processing and other things. It may not support specific items of some standards and standardly as other browsers, but it does a decent job at a lot of the major web sites and does support other specific items of some standards better then the others. I like Chrome's idea for sandboxing each tab for security and stability.
I don't know... I think you'll be infringing on my patent of a Linux-based wireless router that has X-number power connections and Y-number antennas.
The free market will ultimately fix itself. The tax code is so overly complex that these loopholes exist. The whole mess could be cleaned up by stating: "Any person earning over X amount pays 10% of their earnings." (Person as defined by law... a corporation is a person). No deductions allowed. That would bring in at least $1.5T (based solely on GDP, which is not all income earned by US citizens).
I don't think that's true. The "green" credits from home improvements can increase your return above what you paid with income withholdings.
The Taxed Enough Already party is rallying to keep their taxes high? That makes no sense.
As is stated elsewhere, the poor and lower middle class hardly pay any income taxes. I made between $40k and $75k last year and I got money back by doing my tax return. I'm not saying I got my taxes back... I got my taxes back plus extra (due to credits, etc). (If they come after me for this, I turn around and sue the tax software maker for their mistake... I answered the questions honestly.) It will likely happen again this year because of "green" credits on home improvements, I've made.
But his point still holds valid. If one wants a 3TB drive for a cheap desktop or any netbooks (which usually only hold a laptop HDD, anyway), then one might want to re-evaluate what they are trying to do.
Why 3 whole gigabytes, I could own the world! I would triple boot my DOS 6, Windows 95 and Windows 98 SE operating systems. I could complete my computer with a paradox database, MS Office 97, and even Quake and Myst games (I hear that Team Fortress mod and the full motion video and puzzle games are teh win). I'd still have enough space left over to store a few of my most favorite music. My Pentium 133 with 512MB RAM won't know what to do with all that space!
/get off my lawn and all that yadda
Certainly, I had an advantage of having a nurturing family growing up... I certainly wish all would make correct familial decisions. I also don't begrudge those who don't have what I have. Unlike many who think the government should take care of our poor, I think charities and citizens should take care of the poor. I put my services and resources toward that purpose as well.
And I really do feel bad for those without. I was working at a decent job, but felt I could do better. My job search wasn't serious for a long time, because I knew there were other, just as deserving, candidates. An opportunity did arrive and I jumped at it. Fortunately, my previous company decided to fill my vacated position.
I'm not trying to say, "Look at me, I'm awesome." I'm trying to say "Look at me, it is possible for anyone, because I'm not any more special than anyone else."
I don't know if you are trolling or not, but I'll give a response anyway.
Afghanistan was not invaded under false pretenses. Al Qaeda was running the government of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda actually attacked the United States of America at least three times that was reported. The first two times (attempted bombing of the trade center using a car bomb in a parking garage and running a boat into a battleship and killing 30+ soldiers). President Clinton didn't do anything - even when he had a sniper with his gun trained on Osama's head. The third time brought down two Trade Center towers and several smaller buildings and you know the story. We were justified in going in and whipping a few butts in Afghanistan.
Iraq is a little murkier. To be sure, GW Bush wanted to finish what his father couldn't. Also hindsight is 20-20 and we now know that Saddam was less worried about the US and more worried about Iran. But due to that last statement, he was telling the Western world "I have no WMDs!" But he was sending signals that Iran could pick up... and thus the rest of the world's security personnel were reporting to their leaders that "Yes, Iraq does have WMDs." It didn't help that some French companies were breaking embargo by sending suspicious materials to Iraq. So, when Russia, Britain, the US, and several other countries' are saying Iraq presents a present danger, it was difficult not to invade. And remember, Democrats and Republicans agreed. Unfortunately, the war in Iraq got mired by politics, similar to Vietnam.
Saddam was a bad man. Toppling Iraq was a good thing, but may have empowered Iran. Certainly, our current President's world wide apology tour and inability to voice outrage at Iran's human rights violations has empowered Iran's leadership more. But our citizenry is very war weary. The problem is that Iran really wants to wipe Israel out. But, if anyone hasn't gotten the memo yet, under our current administration, Israel is no longer an ally.
True. However, these were documents that put a large number of other American and Australian (and probably British and other nationalities) peoples in danger. Whether you agree that Americans defending themselves against Muslim radicals is right or not, what wikileaks did was an act against the United States of America. The worst the USA did was put him on a watch list. Annoying, yes, but hardly the Russian tactic of poisoning you with radiation (Alexander Litvinenko) or throwing him and his wife (if he had one) into a forgotten political prison (Liu Xiaobo) (if he could be extradited).
There are several features that I have used in the past, that I could not adequately perform in OO.o Calc.
I could not get OO.o to allow my team to work on the same spreadsheet at the same time. Now, we were forced to use xls files; so, perhaps, this is not an issue if I had been using Calc's native file format.
There are a large number of formulas that exist in Excel that don't in OO.o Calc. When I took my Stats & Analysis class (a few years ago, sure) Calc's formulas left me wanting
The interface for formatting does not seem intuitive to me. Even though I've been using Calc for 8 years now, using certain formatting features in Excel was easy and quick to learn.
Filtering in the latest version of Excel is rather nice compared to Excel 2003 or 2000. I *don't* know how Calc compares as I haven't had a need to use the feature at home.
I don't know, I'm supporting 2 kids, a dog, a house, two cars and a stay-at-home wife on my salary. Sure, things are tight. But I still can afford a few luxuries - high speed internet and the high-def cable package, going out to a movie once every couple of months, and a fast-food trip or order-out pizza is sometimes debated.
Granted, I live in an area where cost of living is relatively low, but I'm certainly not "rich" by definition (I'm nowhere near a 6-figure income and have very little savings to show for... I'll have to give the savings and investments a few years to grow.)
Then again, I don't smoke or drink alcohol or buy lotto tickets. I'm sure I save a few hundred a month that way.
I really never understood how powerful the value of "1" was until I hit my second year of college Calculus. (I know, I'm a little slow). But They Might Be Giants easily explains the concept to children: One Everything (scroll down, item 14)
Zeros, High Five, Seven, and Seven Days of the Week are also favorites. Check out the videos on youtube.
I really like OO.o, but I recognize its shortcomings. Excel has some very excellent features that Calc cannot stand against. Outlook is a very good PIM. OO.o doesn't have anything like this. I use Thunderbird - but that's not OO.o, and it (t-bird) doesn't touch the other features that Outlook contains.
However, Writer and Presentations (equivalents to Word and Powerpoint) are very good replacements. Plus, as a home user, you can't beat the price benefits of OO.o over MS Office.
One might make a correlation - as The GIMP is to Photoshop, so is OO.o to MS Office.
Don't forget filing fees. The paralegals at the court building don't do their work for free either. The judges get a cut for their services (which I think come out of the filing fees, if not it is a court costs that the attorney has to pay from his escrow account.)
There could be a way. It requires two transactions. This would be similar to proving you are a citizen and resident of the community and registered to vote in that community and then taking the paper to vote on. The first transaction is the user logon using the unique key they were given when they registered to vote. Then, when they vote, create a hash using the datetime with the vote selections (and a random number) to prove uniqueness of the vote.
I'm still not convinced Internet voting is a good thing. But as others have mentioned, the old pencil and paper method is also fraught with mischief (vote early, vote often).
What about reactive radio technology? That is, you can track a radio receiver by it's reactions to incoming radio waves. Obviously, the receiver monitoring the reaction would need to be in close range, but perhaps these things are all over the place.
Have governments gone through this trouble or am I just pulling from science fiction? I do remember learning something about this in one of my electronics classes.
It's because the Dems knew a spanking was coming from back home. They stuck their necks out for the federalize health care bill. But that was after Obama decided the feds need to control the auto industry (hail the folks wagon) and control the "evil" wall street markets, among other things. It was too much, too quick. Thankfully so... now we can work to turn this mess around. Out with the liberals, marxists, socialists, communists, moderate republicans ... all of those that want to spend, spend, spend without any money in the coffers. (PayGo... it was a nice thought.)
I don't understand that mentality of the business world toward IT/IS employees. Don't they want to keep the people around who have product knowledge and a history at the company? Why don't they give raises? But I agree. After my first year at my first job, I got a great raise. The next two years were -0-. I jumped ship and got a $20k (no benefits) raise.
I agree completely. The question should have been, "Have you received a raise in the past year?" At my previous company, no one received a raise for the past 2 end of years. First, because the owner was projecting forward (it looks like a bad year, no raises and we let people go.) Small company, nearly destroyed morale. At the end of the second year, no raises because the owner was projecting backward (this past year was bad, even though we ended in the black - barely - but this next year looks great!, still no raises.) I understand his point of view and where he is coming from, but I object to basing an 2 outcomes from the same result. There were other problems (the owner liked pushing everyone hard). I was the first to leave, but 2 others left a week after I did. It was rather humorous, I thought. I'm now getting paid better and have slightly better work (if not quite as interesting).
As a previous poster rather rudely advised... there are jobs - get one. While it may sound harsh as there may be no jobs in your area, I know there are jobs in many other areas. Just this week I've had 4 placement agencies call me with opportunities in my area. The job I currently have I acquired when there were about 5-8 similar opportunities. And that's not counting the jobs that I might've qualified for had I a little more experience. If you can, look outside of your town/state.
I tried that. Unfortunately, it failed in my environment. I'll give it another try at some point.
Yes, I agree... get the politicians out of the war and let the military when those things. It is the bureaucracy that is muddling up the wars. Useless? Debatable. Costly? Certainly, but what war isn't? Both Repubs and Dems share the blame for the inability to create a balanced budget and trying to spend money we don't have.
I'm not sure what the game prices were in 1996, but I know that when I was a teen buying games (1988-1993) I wouldn't lay down over $30. Of course, my mentality carried over to now, where the game has to be absolutely extraordinary for me to lay down more than that price. (Valve's Orange Box was one. Getting a dozen Popcap games for $90 through Steam was another.)
I'll probably pick up Diablo III when it comes out, but I am going to look for the price point to be at $45. Anything over $50 and I will wait until the next year when the expansion comes out and I can pick up the combo. (And if they force us to run local games through battle.net, I will likely not pick it up at all.)
The great thing about waiting, though, is that often you will get the original and expansions as one package for the same price as when the original came out. At least that's what I did with a few games.