I know (from experience) that it takes no more than five minutes to explain left- and right-clicking to a three-year-old child.
i teach kindergarden. i used to do tech support. i assure you that it's easier to explain *anything* to a 3 year old than it is to a 30 year old (or a 60 year old for that matter)
the three year old *wants* to learn it.... the older folks only claim they do
I see this as boiling down to a discussion as to the specific roll of government, and, as a possible precedent-setter for anything that deals with private/public conflicts.
"We feel that they spend a lot of their funding and attention on duplicating products and services that already exist in the private sector," Barry Lee Myers, executive vice president of AccuWeather, says of the weather service. "And they are not spending the kind of time and effort that is needed on catastrophic issues that involve lives and property, which I think is really their true function."
He added that the weather service might have done a better, faster job of warning about the southern Asian tsunami if it had not been distracted in this way. Sen. Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, where AccuWeather is based, has supported the industry group's position.
There's an argument here that suggests that the national weather service should provide one roll, monitoring and predicting weather, and leave the dissemenation of that information to the private sector.
The increadibly fallacious support for this is that (paraphrasing) "if the NWS is taking time to dissemenate their information, then obviously they aren't spending enough time predicting natural disasters," That's a crock, frankly.
Instead of charging heaps of money for the info via private sector (as a poster from Oz pointed out has heaps of humal life risks), simple (uh oh, here comes a dirty word) *expand* the NWS to include a whole division for making its findings available. Hell, even bring on some of the private sector people to lead that devision.
At the end of the day, our tax dollars are going to collect this data, we should be able to see it, and the Clinton-era protocols that call for it to be available at "no more than the cost of distribution" seems perfectly reasonable to me.
The roll of our government shouldn't be to garauntee corporate profits, *especially* where human lives are concerned.
As an example, the LEP accelerator at CERN which was used in the period 1989-2000, acceleratod electrons to about 99.9999999977% c.
right, sure, but, an electron is one thing, a ball of gas the size of jupiter is another... on earth we accellerate tiny little masses to high speed... what they're measuring is something more massive than our own planet
let's talk cause/effect here, and other possible explinations for the data:
from the article: Mr. Litan, like his former employer Janet Reno, simply ignores that Microsoft has provided incredible benefits to consumers. He rests his case on the lame notion that, in his opinion, the company's management had "anticompetitive motives." Economic analysis may not be Mr. Litan's strong point, but mind-reading apparently is. He claims that such a malevolent "intent" has harmed Microsoft's competitor Netscape by keeping it from competing in the Web browser market. In fact, Netscape has distributed more than 150 million copies of its browser since 1995.
besides the fact that any data offered is couched in cheap ad homs directed at mr. litan, no possible explination, other than "microsoft is the beneavolent peace angel" are offered
how about this: netscape has distributed more than 150M copies of its browser? how many are still in use? how many were end users able to install without difficulty? how many *could* it have delivered if not for microsoft's anticompetitive practices?
Second, as Stan Leibowitz and Steve Margolis have shown in their book, Winners, Losers and Microsoft, in virtually any market that Microsoft has entered (financial software, spreadsheets, etc.), the effect has been a dramatic reduction in prices and an expansion of output and innovation.
okay... how about this: those in competition with microsoft may have *had* to dramatically lower prices (perhaps even to marginal or sub-proffitable levels) to try to keep their businesses afloat in the face of anticompetive strategies? an expansion of output and innovation? perhaps output means "giving it away for free or for less than proffitable cost in a losing attempt to regain some market share"... as for innovation, that one was probably pulled from where the sun don't shine
let's all remember back to our first statistics or uni-level science class, and recall how numbers and data are collected and presented, and be mindful of explanations
Being a soldier is not, and should not ever be, an industry. There should be no fighting for jobs in the military.
well well taken- yes, it was (partly) in jest... i have friends in the services who are putting up with reduced healthcare benefits (among many many other budget cuts that not only affect service members, but also their spouses and kids); that's mostly what i was thinking about with that comment
so no, there shouldn't be fighting for jobs in the military, and i hope it never comes to that, but given bush's track record (despite his talk) on military payroll and benefits, well, let's just see in four years
i think i'm one of those oddballs that opposes the war, opposes out of hand military spending on wasted crap like these rediculous projects, but supports wholeheartedly pay rises for our soldiers
The Interesting Bit is in the Last Paragraph
on
Low-bandwidth Net Radio
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Reading the article, my first thought was "so what? So we can ultracompress audio so it sounds good at low bandwidth? What's the point?" Truth is, everyone (at least in the west and industrialized Asia) has or will get broadband, *especially* those who are interested in things like net radio.
Then you get to this bit:
It seems crazy until you try it, but Mostly Classical proves that aacPlus can sound great at 24 kpbs. At 48 kbps, it's almost as crisp as a CD. At 128 kbps, it can deliver 5.1 channel surround sound.
Using the compression to deliver multichannel surround sound is pretty cool. In 5, 10 years, we'll probably have a really flash standard for home audio, and it's nice to know that some folks are thinking ahead to make sure we'll be able to get it streaming on our DSL lines.
I used to work for a company that, no joke, had a masseuese (sp?) who came in once a week to give everyone a rub-down... she was pretty hot too. I have no idea how much she was paid, but the company went belly-up and took a bending-over in a last-distch acquisisition deal pretty quickly. we spent more money on perqs like massage bunnies and free popcorn and cool high-def monitors than even a fraction of what were bringing in proffit-wise...
so, with appologies for all the two-part vocab, we can only dream of massage bunnies, because it's time to update the resume when they show up (maybe that's 'murphey's law' of massage bunnies?)
heaps of other folks have responded the same, but just for the record- AMEN... okay, i'm a mac fanboy here, but really, that's not the bit i'm amen-ing, and mac's might not be the best solution for everybody...
the bit i'm amen-ing is the bits about keeping it real and not holding folks up to rediculous standard
see, here's the important bit nobody's talking about:
your average rape, hommicide, assault, robbery, etc, is against a poor person, and frankly, the criminal justice system doesn't really care about poor victims
your average warez distributor is ripping off rich copyright owners, the kinds of people who are chummy with lawmakers
and, it goes even deeper-
take two hyppothetical violent robberies, one committed in richmond california, and one committed in lafayette a few miles away... lafayette is an affluent area, with big wide roads and lots of nearby hospitals, and an overall low instance of 911 calls... the robery victim is rushed to hospital, and if the perp is found, he gets charged with assault
in richmond however, things are very different... roads are poorly maintained due to underfunding, emergency services are over extended, hospitals aren't as nice, etc... all the hallmarks of a poor ghetto... our robbery victim here suffers from a slower 911 response time than he would if he lived 40 miles to the southeast, and is delivered to less-modern hospital with a lower-paid staff... he's less likely to live, and the perp is more likely to be charged with murder
the point here is that money not only determines sentencing for crimes, but the very factors that lead to what you're charged with
i guess this just a very long-winded way of agreeing with other posters that our current system is whack
the respondents' (corp.'s) arguement, "if it were true, fair enough, but you can't prove it" is pretty cage, but it invite injunctive relief until platiff's argument can be established or no
how about this argument: the definition of "life" requires the life-form to:
* be composed of cells
* be composed of cells that reproduce
* undergo "growth", in which the life-form changes physically and neuologically with age
with the simple evidence of production manuals, source code, etc, it should be pretty easy to prove that any sort of electronic "learning" this computer has attained, no matter how amazing or emotive, still does not meet that bare requirements for legal "life"
This is not a "really smart" story, it's a fantasy. It's too many ill-informed people (with too much time on their hands) that have seen "I, Robot". It even reads like some of the 'Susan Calvert' Asimov stories.
amen to that...my first reading of the article reminded me of the courtroom scene in heinlein's i will fear no evil, about the property rights of a dead man's brain transplanted into his stunning secretary's body
it's cute speculation, and probably rather fun to argue before an audience, but it will never actually be a real issue- there is a very large difference between a machine created by the hand of man, and a human created from other parts...
now, i know there are folks out there that will raise the cry of "wait! once we start genetically engineering babies, the line is blurred!" sure, it's blurred, a little, but i can still tell the difference between a human being and a computer at 100 yards; it's blured, but not obscured
that said, come on, it's fun to speculate, and it's rather neat that, as earlier posters mentioned, STTNG dealt with it ages ago.
The term "internet" is a damn broad statement in and of itself. I think that has a lot to do with just exactly where to draw a line as to what's considered using the internet or not
that's exactly the question- what is using the internet, and, how reasonable is such a punishment as internet usage becomes even more common than it is now?
10, or even 5 years ago, you could get by without an email address... you could have a normal family life, and an almost normal job, and never think about email... but now? how about 5 or 10 years down the road? not being allowed an email address would be like prohibiting someone from talking, or from using the postal system.
a generalized internet ban would essentially mean somebody couldn't work, or, employers would have to put up unreasonable work-arounds, like a special extra employee to handle all the email for the ban-ee... it would be rediculous
as other posters have mentioned, this will soon mean the ban would extend to most telephone use as well...
so, hopefully, some court somewhere, like the british court that restricted the ban to chat rooms, will realize that they have to tailor bans to specific needs
however, i think idea of these kinds of bans in general are a little dodgy anyway- take mitnik's ban, he had to put up with that after serving a prison term... well, come on here, if you've served your time you've served your time, and normal probation should follow... we don't tell jewelry thieves that they must serve their entire probation without entering jewelry stores, and imagine the uproar if a bank robber was told he had to serve his probation without entering a bank!
that said, in the case of the pedephile, that seems pretty reasonable to me- if the popularity of bans continues, hopefully, they'll be restricted to recreational activities, such as chat rooms, but not prohibit uses that are necessary for one's livelyhood... but, this is the court system we're talking about, so i'm not keeping my fingers crossed
wall off a quiet section reserved for people who sign an agreement to stay non-noisy for the entire trip
that's exactly how they do it on the trains in england! "carriage 6 is the quiet carriage- the use of electronic items is strictly prohibited on carriage 6"
well, if it's such a problem, do what the japanese do... on the shinkansen (bullet train) which is essentially a slow airplane on wheels, the vestibule near the toilets is the required spot for all mobile conversations... if your phone rings, you leave your seat and have your conversation back by the loos, not in your seat
it works because everyone respects not being an ass to others... whether or not this would work on airplanes is another matter, but the idea of a mobiles section in the same sense as smoking sections would be a step in the right direction
I think the biggest paper-killer, though, is that by the time the news is printed and in your hands, it's out of date. For local news where not much happens (or if it does, everyone immediately knows), a paper might still work - but for national/international news, it just lacks the immediacy of online news sources.
do we really need split-second news reporting 24-7? the tiny tiny tiny % of people who's day-to-day functioning depends on knowing exactly what happened the moment it does don't get their news from either newspapers or the internet.... they've got an AP or reuters wire in the office, or more likely, a branch in the relevant location
for the rest of us, ya know, news that's a day or so old is really not the end of the world... where i live, the english language newspapers are three days behind, because they are just translations of the local papers, but i don't mind one bit... i get most of my news fresh, from the bbc and salon, and then happily read it again in the paper three days later, mostly because i'm interested in the local editorial slant
so, wherever the future of news reporting is, i just don't buy the timeliness argument much anyway... people like newspapers
How is it they let people become the network administrator for an entire technical college, a college that hands out degrees in technical fields, that are just that ignorant. How can any competent network admin possibly think Firefox and Winamp are causing a computer to not boot?
because universities have the weight of beurocracy behind their hiring procedures, so the dood who's worked 50 hours a week doing all the IT for a small office for 10 years rates bugger-all, but the former high school geography teacher who decided to pick up an MCSE because his life needed a kick-start after he was laid off in the latest round of budget cuts, is obviously eminantly qualified
them's the breaks
so you're forced to using IE for the moment? send a link to this story to the IT head, and to his bosss, and to that dood's boss, and let them know that you're concerned about internet security at your school, but look! there's a free and easy solution that's already been implement by one of america's leading universities!
and as an aside, i reckon including the fellow's email was a low blow (albeit well deserved)
I don't know if vodaphone has anything available in the US, but the kana and kanji on my vodaphone (here in japan) is great...
one idea might be to look into who makes the phones in japan or china, and find a model that can be used with a US service provider, and just have the model shipped to you... my phone (with video capture, still camera, english, kana, kanji, and texting, cost 1 yen; so price shouldnt be an issue)
alternatively, since texting and email are so popular here, you may not need a phone... every phone comes with an email addy, and you can send emails from your regular account to them (although they don't like hotmail, i think because of the size of all the junk hotmail appends to your message)...
both my mac and my linux box have excellent kana/kanji support, and i send emails from my computer to others folks phones, in kanji, all the time...
(in re china & slashdot:) This is no different though, except the control isn't in the hands of a political party, but a few greedy corporations.
haven't we been pretty well shown that increasingly, the distinction between a company (or group of) and a government is essentially nil?
the truth is, im a little surprised that anyone is terribly concerned about this... i don't expect any different from my government, and i don't expect any different from a large compnay...
to attempt to argue for a moment that the olympics (or the super bowl, or the latest broadway or east-end show, or rock concert) should be totally free from gestapo defense of where the money is coming from is rediculous... certainly its an ideal that i support, but i think we all need to grow up and acknowledge that that's the way the world works....
if you don't like it, don't participate in it, that's cool... hell, try to change it- go to law school, vote, shoot a whole mess of people, whatever, but don't act outraged that monied interests are controlling people
this is expected evil behaviour, not anything out of the ordinary
you dont *have* to heat the glass... if you use it for the simple purpose of blocking IR (that is, heat) into your home, then 29 degrees seems to be a pretty reasonable cut off
have the special glass be the middle pane of three, and it should head up to 29 degrees in no time, and when its cold outside, it would automatically allow whatever warmth in can into the house
i reckon it would be a handy way to save money on ac too, if the ac only needs to cool from a 29 degrees point (and not 35 or 40!)
not only is the article "kinda stupid", but it itself is indicative of other problems in workplaces
when folks get all worked about issues like this, they aren't foccusing on their jobs, and when they aren't foccussing on their jobs, they aren't reading the helpful dialog boxes that tell why their email isn't work
i'm perfectly okay with being "the annoying weirdo in IT"
instead of going crazy about who's annoying and who's not, how about we just accept the fact that some people (like me) are weird and annoying, and just get our work done already!
isn't this just a bit derogatory towards older people, it's treating them like animals
not in the least... i used to sell home security systems, and most of the over-60 crowd was *way* into the pendant approach to safety/security
this is a *major* selling point for the facility in the article... my own grandmother (living 20 miles from nowhere on a peat bog in rural vermont, thanks to my reclusive grandad who i take after) once fell and broke a hip walking their german shepherd... well, now that she's making her own decisions, she's looked *exclusively* at high-maitnance assisted living places...
for most folks in their 70s and +, the cost is no issues, and being tracked is not only okay, its a value-added bonus... you have to realize that when you are at the age that colds can be fatal and a minor slip is terrifying, the idea of having a computer able to pinpoit your location can help you sleep at night
gracias amigo... i'm glad someone said this (because it needs to be said).... and someone with cred (e.g. you) is better than someone with an agenda (e.g. me)... only trouble is.. this *is* slashdot, and it's always pointless to argue with the under-informed over-educated
Slashdot Mirror
I know (from experience) that it takes no more than five minutes to explain left- and right-clicking to a three-year-old child.
i teach kindergarden. i used to do tech support. i assure you that it's easier to explain *anything* to a 3 year old than it is to a 30 year old (or a 60 year old for that matter)
the three year old *wants* to learn it.... the older folks only claim they do
I see this as boiling down to a discussion as to the specific roll of government, and, as a possible precedent-setter for anything that deals with private/public conflicts.
"We feel that they spend a lot of their funding and attention on duplicating products and services that already exist in the private sector," Barry Lee Myers, executive vice president of AccuWeather, says of the weather service. "And they are not spending the kind of time and effort that is needed on catastrophic issues that involve lives and property, which I think is really their true function."
He added that the weather service might have done a better, faster job of warning about the southern Asian tsunami if it had not been distracted in this way. Sen. Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, where AccuWeather is based, has supported the industry group's position.
There's an argument here that suggests that the national weather service should provide one roll, monitoring and predicting weather, and leave the dissemenation of that information to the private sector.
The increadibly fallacious support for this is that (paraphrasing) "if the NWS is taking time to dissemenate their information, then obviously they aren't spending enough time predicting natural disasters,"
That's a crock, frankly.
Instead of charging heaps of money for the info via private sector (as a poster from Oz pointed out has heaps of humal life risks), simple (uh oh, here comes a dirty word) *expand* the NWS to include a whole division for making its findings available. Hell, even bring on some of the private sector people to lead that devision.
At the end of the day, our tax dollars are going to collect this data, we should be able to see it, and the Clinton-era protocols that call for it to be available at "no more than the cost of distribution" seems perfectly reasonable to me.
The roll of our government shouldn't be to garauntee corporate profits, *especially* where human lives are concerned.
As an example, the LEP accelerator at CERN which was used in the period 1989-2000, acceleratod electrons to about 99.9999999977% c.
right, sure, but, an electron is one thing, a ball of gas the size of jupiter is another... on earth we accellerate tiny little masses to high speed... what they're measuring is something more massive than our own planet
let's talk cause/effect here, and other possible explinations for the data:
from the article: Mr. Litan, like his former employer Janet Reno, simply ignores that Microsoft has provided incredible benefits to consumers. He rests his case on the lame notion that, in his opinion, the company's management had "anticompetitive motives." Economic analysis may not be Mr. Litan's strong point, but mind-reading apparently is. He claims that such a malevolent "intent" has harmed Microsoft's competitor Netscape by keeping it from competing in the Web browser market. In fact, Netscape has distributed more than 150 million copies of its browser since 1995.
besides the fact that any data offered is couched in cheap ad homs directed at mr. litan, no possible explination, other than "microsoft is the beneavolent peace angel" are offered
how about this: netscape has distributed more than 150M copies of its browser? how many are still in use? how many were end users able to install without difficulty? how many *could* it have delivered if not for microsoft's anticompetitive practices?
Second, as Stan Leibowitz and Steve Margolis have shown in their book, Winners, Losers and Microsoft, in virtually any market that Microsoft has entered (financial software, spreadsheets, etc.), the effect has been a dramatic reduction in prices and an expansion of output and innovation.
okay... how about this: those in competition with microsoft may have *had* to dramatically lower prices (perhaps even to marginal or sub-proffitable levels) to try to keep their businesses afloat in the face of anticompetive strategies? an expansion of output and innovation? perhaps output means "giving it away for free or for less than proffitable cost in a losing attempt to regain some market share"... as for innovation, that one was probably pulled from where the sun don't shine
let's all remember back to our first statistics or uni-level science class, and recall how numbers and data are collected and presented, and be mindful of explanations
Being a soldier is not, and should not ever be, an industry. There should be no fighting for jobs in the military.
well well taken- yes, it was (partly) in jest... i have friends in the services who are putting up with reduced healthcare benefits (among many many other budget cuts that not only affect service members, but also their spouses and kids); that's mostly what i was thinking about with that comment
so no, there shouldn't be fighting for jobs in the military, and i hope it never comes to that, but given bush's track record (despite his talk) on military payroll and benefits, well, let's just see in four years
i think i'm one of those oddballs that opposes the war, opposes out of hand military spending on wasted crap like these rediculous projects, but supports wholeheartedly pay rises for our soldiers
Reading the article, my first thought was "so what? So we can ultracompress audio so it sounds good at low bandwidth? What's the point?" Truth is, everyone (at least in the west and industrialized Asia) has or will get broadband, *especially* those who are interested in things like net radio.
Then you get to this bit:
It seems crazy until you try it, but Mostly Classical proves that aacPlus can sound great at 24 kpbs. At 48 kbps, it's almost as crisp as a CD. At 128 kbps, it can deliver 5.1 channel surround sound.
Using the compression to deliver multichannel surround sound is pretty cool. In 5, 10 years, we'll probably have a really flash standard for home audio, and it's nice to know that some folks are thinking ahead to make sure we'll be able to get it streaming on our DSL lines.
I used to work for a company that, no joke, had a masseuese (sp?) who came in once a week to give everyone a rub-down... she was pretty hot too. I have no idea how much she was paid, but the company went belly-up and took a bending-over in a last-distch acquisisition deal pretty quickly. we spent more money on perqs like massage bunnies and free popcorn and cool high-def monitors than even a fraction of what were bringing in proffit-wise...
so, with appologies for all the two-part vocab, we can only dream of massage bunnies, because it's time to update the resume when they show up (maybe that's 'murphey's law' of massage bunnies?)
ah 2000.... that was fun....
heaps of other folks have responded the same, but just for the record- AMEN... okay, i'm a mac fanboy here, but really, that's not the bit i'm amen-ing, and mac's might not be the best solution for everybody...
the bit i'm amen-ing is the bits about keeping it real and not holding folks up to rediculous standard
good on ya- that needed to be said
see, here's the important bit nobody's talking about:
your average rape, hommicide, assault, robbery, etc, is against a poor person, and frankly, the criminal justice system doesn't really care about poor victims
your average warez distributor is ripping off rich copyright owners, the kinds of people who are chummy with lawmakers
and, it goes even deeper-
take two hyppothetical violent robberies, one committed in richmond california, and one committed in lafayette a few miles away... lafayette is an affluent area, with big wide roads and lots of nearby hospitals, and an overall low instance of 911 calls... the robery victim is rushed to hospital, and if the perp is found, he gets charged with assault
in richmond however, things are very different... roads are poorly maintained due to underfunding, emergency services are over extended, hospitals aren't as nice, etc... all the hallmarks of a poor ghetto... our robbery victim here suffers from a slower 911 response time than he would if he lived 40 miles to the southeast, and is delivered to less-modern hospital with a lower-paid staff... he's less likely to live, and the perp is more likely to be charged with murder
the point here is that money not only determines sentencing for crimes, but the very factors that lead to what you're charged with
i guess this just a very long-winded way of agreeing with other posters that our current system is whack
the respondents' (corp.'s) arguement, "if it were true, fair enough, but you can't prove it" is pretty cage, but it invite injunctive relief until platiff's argument can be established or no
how about this argument: the definition of "life" requires the life-form to:
* be composed of cells
* be composed of cells that reproduce
* undergo "growth", in which the life-form changes physically and neuologically with age
with the simple evidence of production manuals, source code, etc, it should be pretty easy to prove that any sort of electronic "learning" this computer has attained, no matter how amazing or emotive, still does not meet that bare requirements for legal "life"
This is not a "really smart" story, it's a fantasy. It's too many ill-informed people (with too much time on their hands) that have seen "I, Robot". It even reads like some of the 'Susan Calvert' Asimov stories.
amen to that...my first reading of the article reminded me of the courtroom scene in heinlein's i will fear no evil, about the property rights of a dead man's brain transplanted into his stunning secretary's body
it's cute speculation, and probably rather fun to argue before an audience, but it will never actually be a real issue- there is a very large difference between a machine created by the hand of man, and a human created from other parts...
now, i know there are folks out there that will raise the cry of "wait! once we start genetically engineering babies, the line is blurred!" sure, it's blurred, a little, but i can still tell the difference between a human being and a computer at 100 yards; it's blured, but not obscured
that said, come on, it's fun to speculate, and it's rather neat that, as earlier posters mentioned, STTNG dealt with it ages ago.
The term "internet" is a damn broad statement in and of itself. I think that has a lot to do with just exactly where to draw a line as to what's considered using the internet or not
that's exactly the question- what is using the internet, and, how reasonable is such a punishment as internet usage becomes even more common than it is now?
10, or even 5 years ago, you could get by without an email address... you could have a normal family life, and an almost normal job, and never think about email... but now? how about 5 or 10 years down the road? not being allowed an email address would be like prohibiting someone from talking, or from using the postal system.
a generalized internet ban would essentially mean somebody couldn't work, or, employers would have to put up unreasonable work-arounds, like a special extra employee to handle all the email for the ban-ee... it would be rediculous
as other posters have mentioned, this will soon mean the ban would extend to most telephone use as well...
so, hopefully, some court somewhere, like the british court that restricted the ban to chat rooms, will realize that they have to tailor bans to specific needs
however, i think idea of these kinds of bans in general are a little dodgy anyway- take mitnik's ban, he had to put up with that after serving a prison term... well, come on here, if you've served your time you've served your time, and normal probation should follow... we don't tell jewelry thieves that they must serve their entire probation without entering jewelry stores, and imagine the uproar if a bank robber was told he had to serve his probation without entering a bank!
that said, in the case of the pedephile, that seems pretty reasonable to me- if the popularity of bans continues, hopefully, they'll be restricted to recreational activities, such as chat rooms, but not prohibit uses that are necessary for one's livelyhood... but, this is the court system we're talking about, so i'm not keeping my fingers crossed
wall off a quiet section reserved for people who sign an agreement to stay non-noisy for the entire trip
that's exactly how they do it on the trains in england! "carriage 6 is the quiet carriage- the use of electronic items is strictly prohibited on carriage 6"
well, if it's such a problem, do what the japanese do... on the shinkansen (bullet train) which is essentially a slow airplane on wheels, the vestibule near the toilets is the required spot for all mobile conversations... if your phone rings, you leave your seat and have your conversation back by the loos, not in your seat
it works because everyone respects not being an ass to others... whether or not this would work on airplanes is another matter, but the idea of a mobiles section in the same sense as smoking sections would be a step in the right direction
I think the biggest paper-killer, though, is that by the time the news is printed and in your hands, it's out of date. For local news where not much happens (or if it does, everyone immediately knows), a paper might still work - but for national/international news, it just lacks the immediacy of online news sources.
do we really need split-second news reporting 24-7? the tiny tiny tiny % of people who's day-to-day functioning depends on knowing exactly what happened the moment it does don't get their news from either newspapers or the internet.... they've got an AP or reuters wire in the office, or more likely, a branch in the relevant location
for the rest of us, ya know, news that's a day or so old is really not the end of the world... where i live, the english language newspapers are three days behind, because they are just translations of the local papers, but i don't mind one bit... i get most of my news fresh, from the bbc and salon, and then happily read it again in the paper three days later, mostly because i'm interested in the local editorial slant
so, wherever the future of news reporting is, i just don't buy the timeliness argument much anyway... people like newspapers
How is it they let people become the network administrator for an entire technical college, a college that hands out degrees in technical fields, that are just that ignorant. How can any competent network admin possibly think Firefox and Winamp are causing a computer to not boot?
because universities have the weight of beurocracy behind their hiring procedures, so the dood who's worked 50 hours a week doing all the IT for a small office for 10 years rates bugger-all, but the former high school geography teacher who decided to pick up an MCSE because his life needed a kick-start after he was laid off in the latest round of budget cuts, is obviously eminantly qualified
them's the breaks
so you're forced to using IE for the moment? send a link to this story to the IT head, and to his bosss, and to that dood's boss, and let them know that you're concerned about internet security at your school, but look! there's a free and easy solution that's already been implement by one of america's leading universities!
and as an aside, i reckon including the fellow's email was a low blow (albeit well deserved)
think of the children??? think of ME!!!
heres a photo from the starbase site... remind me of THAT the next time i feel enouraged to follow links!
its cruel, okay, its cruel... but yeah... wow...
I don't know if vodaphone has anything available in the US, but the kana and kanji on my vodaphone (here in japan) is great...
one idea might be to look into who makes the phones in japan or china, and find a model that can be used with a US service provider, and just have the model shipped to you... my phone (with video capture, still camera, english, kana, kanji, and texting, cost 1 yen; so price shouldnt be an issue)
alternatively, since texting and email are so popular here, you may not need a phone... every phone comes with an email addy, and you can send emails from your regular account to them (although they don't like hotmail, i think because of the size of all the junk hotmail appends to your message)...
both my mac and my linux box have excellent kana/kanji support, and i send emails from my computer to others folks phones, in kanji, all the time...
good luck!
(in re china & slashdot:) This is no different though, except the control isn't in the hands of a political party, but a few greedy corporations.
haven't we been pretty well shown that increasingly, the distinction between a company (or group of) and a government is essentially nil?
the truth is, im a little surprised that anyone is terribly concerned about this... i don't expect any different from my government, and i don't expect any different from a large compnay...
to attempt to argue for a moment that the olympics (or the super bowl, or the latest broadway or east-end show, or rock concert) should be totally free from gestapo defense of where the money is coming from is rediculous... certainly its an ideal that i support, but i think we all need to grow up and acknowledge that that's the way the world works....
if you don't like it, don't participate in it, that's cool... hell, try to change it- go to law school, vote, shoot a whole mess of people, whatever, but don't act outraged that monied interests are controlling people
this is expected evil behaviour, not anything out of the ordinary
you dont *have* to heat the glass... if you use it for the simple purpose of blocking IR (that is, heat) into your home, then 29 degrees seems to be a pretty reasonable cut off
have the special glass be the middle pane of three, and it should head up to 29 degrees in no time, and when its cold outside, it would automatically allow whatever warmth in can into the house
i reckon it would be a handy way to save money on ac too, if the ac only needs to cool from a 29 degrees point (and not 35 or 40!)
not only is the article "kinda stupid", but it itself is indicative of other problems in workplaces
when folks get all worked about issues like this, they aren't foccusing on their jobs, and when they aren't foccussing on their jobs, they aren't reading the helpful dialog boxes that tell why their email isn't work
i'm perfectly okay with being "the annoying weirdo in IT"
instead of going crazy about who's annoying and who's not, how about we just accept the fact that some people (like me) are weird and annoying, and just get our work done already!
am i the only one terrifeied by the phrase "chairman powell" ?
isn't this just a bit derogatory towards older people, it's treating them like animals
not in the least... i used to sell home security systems, and most of the over-60 crowd was *way* into the pendant approach to safety/security
this is a *major* selling point for the facility in the article... my own grandmother (living 20 miles from nowhere on a peat bog in rural vermont, thanks to my reclusive grandad who i take after) once fell and broke a hip walking their german shepherd... well, now that she's making her own decisions, she's looked *exclusively* at high-maitnance assisted living places...
for most folks in their 70s and +, the cost is no issues, and being tracked is not only okay, its a value-added bonus... you have to realize that when you are at the age that colds can be fatal and a minor slip is terrifying, the idea of having a computer able to pinpoit your location can help you sleep at night
it's technically illegal for viewer/listeners to [record broadcasts]
are you quite sure? wouldn't recording for the purposes of documenting an alleged violation fall under acceptable fair use?
gracias amigo... i'm glad someone said this (because it needs to be said).... and someone with cred (e.g. you) is better than someone with an agenda (e.g. me)... only trouble is.. this *is* slashdot, and it's always pointless to argue with the under-informed over-educated
thanks again