I'm not sure about the OP, but I know that I certainly don't listen to Sirius-XM at any time other than when I'm in my car. And when I'm in my car, it's a godsend. Terrestrial radio is just complete crap--ads, payola, etc. (how many version of Z100, Y100, X100, KISS, etc. are there?).
Satellite radio is really not designed - primarily - for those of you who are sitting in an office or at home. That's a fringe benefit or secondary revenue stream. The real benefits are for the vast majority of people who want something interesting and consistent to listen to in the car. I know that when I drive from NY to Boston, I don't have to deal with the dead zones of central Connecticut....I get the same stations the whole way.
So I think the issue here is one of perspective...don't look at Satellite Radio as an expensive competitor to the various forms of Internet radio -- look at it as a cheap alternative to crap terrestrial radio in the car.
Am I the only person who, quite honestly, is not that fascinated about this prospect? Yes, it would be exciting to some to discover life on other planets, but Mars just doesn't seem to be such a major leap...it's our neighbor. We quite obviously have life here on Earth (though some would question how intelligent it is;), so it just doesn't seem to be such a monumental thing to discover some pre-microbes in the neighborhood. In fact, I somewhat expect it.
I think what we _really_ want to investigate is if there's some earth-like planet (and, possibly, earth-like life) outside our "comfort zone" -- I want to know if there's a more (or less) advanced civilization somewhere out there looking for us. That's the monumental discovery and the world-changing realization. Finding some bacteria on Mars doesn't really help answer that question at all, IMHO.
It's now been over 6 months and 3+ major firmware revisions, and the damn iPhone still doesn't do some of the most basic functionals of a real PDA phone:
-- No cut and paste -- No IMAP IDLE support (The best auto-check is every 15 minutes. Gee, thanks Apple. 1995 called and wants their email features back) -- No task list -- No way to sync notes -- No MMS messages. -- Etc.
OOOO but 1.1.3 added the feature of being able to send SMS to multiple recipients. Yeah. Great. I was really waiting for that feature...so glad that put that higher on the list than any of the above. Now I can spam all my contacts and say generic impersonal things like "Happy New Year!! Best wishes!!". Ugh.
It's such a frustration for me. I want to love this device -- I really do. But until Apple stops prioritizing features for 12-year-old girls over features to make the damn thing usable by a working adult, I will continue to complain and be sad. And the worst part is that EVERYTHING I (and the others like me) want can be done in software -- it's just a matter of someone getting priorities in line.
Pardon my ignorance on the subject, but I was under the impression that any type of packet blocking/filtering can be pretty easily overcome by simply masking the packets someway? (i.e. wrapping them in a different protocol via SSH tunnelling or something like that....) Again, I'm unclear on the details, but isn't something like this possible?
This article appeared about two weeks after I went through the same decision process for my small (3 active users) office setup, and I too decided on Communigate Pro. Once you get a hang of it, it's incredibly easy, powerful, and useful.
I've gotten it working to a point of satisfaction now, but the only thing I feel the setup is missing is some type of Palm/PDA integration. Because the Communigate MAPI Connector for Outlook isn't 100% native Outlook, many of the popular (and more powerful) Palm calendar apps out there (Keysuite & BeyondContacts, in particular), are unable to connect to folders/calendars/tasks that reside on the Communigate Server.
This is a big problem, since we need to be able to access the shared data while on the road.
Anyone have any ideas (or, in particular, have any direct experience with solving such a problem?)
The closest I've come to a solution is to hire an outside firm to build a "folder sync tool" for Outlook -- essentially something that will mirror the shared (server-based) folders with local (PST-based) personal folders, which the Palm can sync with. Figure it'll cost about $1000 to build the utility, but it's well worth it if it works.
This should come as no surprise to most people, and it would seem fitting that a company so focused on "the right way" would pick the stock market with both a superior (from an efficiency perspective) and more technological solution.
Frankly, I'm surprised that companies still list on NYSE at all. Sure, there are merits to the specialist system (fair & orderly marketplace, yadda yadda yadda), but anyone who actively trades NYSE stocks knows that in the end, the specialist is just like the rest of us -- out to make money for himself. Yes, there are market-makers on NASDAQ who are also out to make money and can game the market to some extent, but it's an order of magnitude better than the NYSE's way of doing things.
So just like Google's choice of an auction to price & distribute the shares, the selection of NASDAQ is a vote against the "old way" (more middlemen and old boys to pocket fees).
That is a typical obnoxious-geek response and should be modded as such.
Before you call someone else's interesting project "half-baked" and point out that he "didn't figure out" things (implying that you, however, did), why don't you go post YOUR php-based TCP/IP stack and webserver that DOES deal with the issues you mentioned. Then, you can freely criticize his work as much as you'd like, pointing out the solutions instead of highlighting the problems.
Until then, you should consider keeping comments like that to yourself.
At a maximum rate of 20 cents a text message, Ray would have tallied a bill of more than $10,060 for his protest.
Hate to be the grammar Nazi here, but the story is not inaccurate -- "would have spent" is the third conditional, which refers to "a condition in the past that did not happen.". So it's not saying he spent the money, it's saying that if he had NOT been on the unlimited plan, he would have spent it.
Ever since I read an article a few months ago about China's Wapi standard and Intel's lack of involvement, I've been wondering if one of the motivators behind these China-set standards (i.e. TD-SCDMA, Wapi) is a desire by the government to include backdoors for monitoring purposes.
A quote from an Intel source in a NY Times article on the subject:
"We won't be able to build a part that meets our requirements for quality," said Chuck Molloy, a spokesman for Intel, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif. But Mr. Molloy said that Intel's problems with the Chinese standard were "philosophical" as well.
That sounds suspiciously like "they want to include backdoors, and Intel doesn't want to be associated with that crap."
Oh you'd be surprised how easy it is to screw up just about anything in Hollywood.:)
I assume when they say they're making a movie out of the story, it really means "we're using a really cool story as a basis/theme/idea for a pretty lame blockbuster feature film".
Because while you're reading your free google mail online, they're parsing it and showing you AdWords ads based on the content. Friends emailing you about their new Asus motherboards? Bam...there's an ad to buy one.
There have long been known (or claimed) issues with that -- I recall seeing a Dateline-esque story a while back on how the cancer rate was wayyyy high at a school situated directly beneath high-voltage lines. There have been other claims to that effect as well, though I don't have specific info I'm afraid.
I wouldn't live/work/hangout for any significant time near high-voltage lines if I were you.
Actually, it IS what he said. Listen to the recording again. There's a small pop of audio interference that covers up the 'a', but it's generally known that he did actually say it (but we certainly didn't hear it)
What, you doubt my scientific prowess??? You think that, just maybe, the massive quantities of alcohol I ingested during fraternal initiation rites could have actually HINDERED my abilities to produce outstanding academic work?
Hmph. I scoff. As they say, "Hire a Teenager While They Still Know Everything."
...scientists have never been able to identify a VMO in humans, despite evidence that they do respond to pheromones.
But that doesn't sound right. Believe it or not, I actually wrote a paper for my freshman psychology class back in Fall '96 on the effect of human pheromones and the VMO. At that time, at least, it was fairly well known that the VMO did indeed exist in humans, and that even its location in the human body was known (See this and this, for example).
So when did it vanish from scientific literature, or was its existence called into question?
Very very well said. You've also highlighted what I believe the fundamental problem with VC investment is -- in many cases, the motivations of VCs are diametrically opposed to sound business practices.
Google's investors want their profits, and the only way they're going to get it is through an acquision (unlikely) or an IPO (probable). Unfortunately, as you pointed out, an IPO is totally unnecessary for Google, and will likely ruin the company.
As a fellow gearhead/nerd, this is an area I'm pretty familiar with. You are definitely not alone out there, though I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a totally general interest "car nerd" site like/.
This is because, like tech nerds, gearheads are generally divided up among their different camps. (Heck, we're in a camp here on/. -- I'm sure there a Microsoft-loving nerd sites out there, right?)
You'll generally find:
-- the Asian Import crowd (Hondas, Acuras, Nissans, etc.,) -- clubsi.com, etc.
-- the VW crowd (vwvortex.com -- my home)
-- the Audi crowd (audiworld.com)
-- the BMW crowd (bimmer.org)
-- even the Ferrari crowd (ferrarichat.com) -- and believe it or not, these guys are a LOT more nerdy and friendly than the BMW crowd.
I was involved in a somewhat related situation. Here's what happened:
I used to work for a software company. I registered a domain for that software company through register.com and *MY* name was on the domain registration. I never actually transferred ownership to that software company, but leased the domain to them under a verbal arrangment. Their website was handled by XO and the domain registration was still handled by register.com
Software company gets acquired, and the new owner doesn't want to use the domain. Instead, appoints some scumbag to try to auction it off. Only problem, of course, is that the domain is still owned by me, and it was never theirs to sell.
Scumbag decides he wants control of the domain and sends a threatening lawyer-writ letter to both XO and register.com. XO AND register.com decide that the whole UDRP thing is just too complicated and simply lock me out of the website, my POP account, my register.com domain management account, and everything else related to that domain. Unbelievable. Take my credit card off the account, basically pretened that I don't exist anymore -- EVEN THOUGH my name was on the account, I was paying for the hosting, paid for registration, etc. I called, yelled, screamed, etc. Neither company cared...they just caved to the most scary-sounding letter and "wanted to avoid trouble". Scumbag thought he won.
So what did I do? Transferred the domain to new registrar (domainmonger.com -- very cool guys who actually respect the UDRP). Luckily, the automated register.com system let that happen, and all of a sudden, the domain was back in my (rightful) hands. Lots of people got pissed off when all of a sudden they realized that many lawyerletters had changed hands (and money was spent) and they had nothing to show for it. Tried the same approach with domainmonger, and got a simple "please refer to the UDRP if you wish to dispute ownership of this domain" right back in their faces. Upon realizing that a dispute takes time and money, they quietly shut up and went away.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure about the OP, but I know that I certainly don't listen to Sirius-XM at any time other than when I'm in my car. And when I'm in my car, it's a godsend. Terrestrial radio is just complete crap--ads, payola, etc. (how many version of Z100, Y100, X100, KISS, etc. are there?).
Satellite radio is really not designed - primarily - for those of you who are sitting in an office or at home. That's a fringe benefit or secondary revenue stream. The real benefits are for the vast majority of people who want something interesting and consistent to listen to in the car. I know that when I drive from NY to Boston, I don't have to deal with the dead zones of central Connecticut....I get the same stations the whole way.
So I think the issue here is one of perspective...don't look at Satellite Radio as an expensive competitor to the various forms of Internet radio -- look at it as a cheap alternative to crap terrestrial radio in the car.
Am I the only person who, quite honestly, is not that fascinated about this prospect? Yes, it would be exciting to some to discover life on other planets, but Mars just doesn't seem to be such a major leap...it's our neighbor. We quite obviously have life here on Earth (though some would question how intelligent it is ;), so it just doesn't seem to be such a monumental thing to discover some pre-microbes in the neighborhood. In fact, I somewhat expect it.
I think what we _really_ want to investigate is if there's some earth-like planet (and, possibly, earth-like life) outside our "comfort zone" -- I want to know if there's a more (or less) advanced civilization somewhere out there looking for us. That's the monumental discovery and the world-changing realization. Finding some bacteria on Mars doesn't really help answer that question at all, IMHO.
It's now been over 6 months and 3+ major firmware revisions, and the damn iPhone still doesn't do some of the most basic functionals of a real PDA phone:
-- No cut and paste
-- No IMAP IDLE support (The best auto-check is every 15 minutes. Gee, thanks Apple. 1995 called and wants their email features back)
-- No task list
-- No way to sync notes
-- No MMS messages.
-- Etc.
OOOO but 1.1.3 added the feature of being able to send SMS to multiple recipients. Yeah. Great. I was really waiting for that feature...so glad that put that higher on the list than any of the above. Now I can spam all my contacts and say generic impersonal things like "Happy New Year!! Best wishes!!". Ugh.
It's such a frustration for me. I want to love this device -- I really do. But until Apple stops prioritizing features for 12-year-old girls over features to make the damn thing usable by a working adult, I will continue to complain and be sad. And the worst part is that EVERYTHING I (and the others like me) want can be done in software -- it's just a matter of someone getting priorities in line.
Actually, my best guess is that the submitter meant to type "OS would now ship in January of 2007".....?
Pardon my ignorance on the subject, but I was under the impression that any type of packet blocking/filtering can be pretty easily overcome by simply masking the packets someway? (i.e. wrapping them in a different protocol via SSH tunnelling or something like that....) Again, I'm unclear on the details, but isn't something like this possible?
This article appeared about two weeks after I went through the same decision process for my small (3 active users) office setup, and I too decided on Communigate Pro. Once you get a hang of it, it's incredibly easy, powerful, and useful.
I've gotten it working to a point of satisfaction now, but the only thing I feel the setup is missing is some type of Palm/PDA integration. Because the Communigate MAPI Connector for Outlook isn't 100% native Outlook, many of the popular (and more powerful) Palm calendar apps out there (Keysuite & BeyondContacts, in particular), are unable to connect to folders/calendars/tasks that reside on the Communigate Server.
This is a big problem, since we need to be able to access the shared data while on the road.
Anyone have any ideas (or, in particular, have any direct experience with solving such a problem?)
The closest I've come to a solution is to hire an outside firm to build a "folder sync tool" for Outlook -- essentially something that will mirror the shared (server-based) folders with local (PST-based) personal folders, which the Palm can sync with. Figure it'll cost about $1000 to build the utility, but it's well worth it if it works.
This should come as no surprise to most people, and it would seem fitting that a company so focused on "the right way" would pick the stock market with both a superior (from an efficiency perspective) and more technological solution.
Frankly, I'm surprised that companies still list on NYSE at all. Sure, there are merits to the specialist system (fair & orderly marketplace, yadda yadda yadda), but anyone who actively trades NYSE stocks knows that in the end, the specialist is just like the rest of us -- out to make money for himself. Yes, there are market-makers on NASDAQ who are also out to make money and can game the market to some extent, but it's an order of magnitude better than the NYSE's way of doing things.
So just like Google's choice of an auction to price & distribute the shares, the selection of NASDAQ is a vote against the "old way" (more middlemen and old boys to pocket fees).
That is a typical obnoxious-geek response and should be modded as such.
Before you call someone else's interesting project "half-baked" and point out that he "didn't figure out" things (implying that you, however, did), why don't you go post YOUR php-based TCP/IP stack and webserver that DOES deal with the issues you mentioned. Then, you can freely criticize his work as much as you'd like, pointing out the solutions instead of highlighting the problems.
Until then, you should consider keeping comments like that to yourself.
At a maximum rate of 20 cents a text message, Ray would have tallied a bill of more than $10,060 for his protest.
Hate to be the grammar Nazi here, but the story is not inaccurate -- "would have spent" is the third conditional, which refers to "a condition in the past that did not happen.". So it's not saying he spent the money, it's saying that if he had NOT been on the unlimited plan, he would have spent it.
Vanquish
It's people like you that probably think that Joe Camel had some sort of symbolism too!
Just a Camel
;)
A quote from an Intel source in a NY Times article on the subject:That sounds suspiciously like "they want to include backdoors, and Intel doesn't want to be associated with that crap."
Could this have something to do with it?
Oh you'd be surprised how easy it is to screw up just about anything in Hollywood. :)
I assume when they say they're making a movie out of the story, it really means "we're using a really cool story as a basis/theme/idea for a pretty lame blockbuster feature film".
but why offer free mail?
I'll tell you exactly why:
Because while you're reading your free google mail online, they're parsing it and showing you AdWords ads based on the content. Friends emailing you about their new Asus motherboards? Bam...there's an ad to buy one.
And that is what we call a Damn Good Idea.
nlh
In fact, he devotes a whole chapter in the aforementioned book regarding the complete lack of evidence regarding EMF as a health risk.
Right. But, um, wouldn't this study - by definition - be evidence regarding EMF as a health risk?
nlh
There have long been known (or claimed) issues with that -- I recall seeing a Dateline-esque story a while back on how the cancer rate was wayyyy high at a school situated directly beneath high-voltage lines. There have been other claims to that effect as well, though I don't have specific info I'm afraid.
I wouldn't live/work/hangout for any significant time near high-voltage lines if I were you.
At least it's not a eunuchs license...
Did anyone else notice that when you google "Kelly", this story (as in, this /. story) comes up under 'News'?
I guess I knew that googleheads read slashdot, but now google does too!
Actually, it IS what he said. Listen to the recording again. There's a small pop of audio interference that covers up the 'a', but it's generally known that he did actually say it (but we certainly didn't hear it)
What, you doubt my scientific prowess??? You think that, just maybe, the massive quantities of alcohol I ingested during fraternal initiation rites could have actually HINDERED my abilities to produce outstanding academic work?
Hmph. I scoff. As they say, "Hire a Teenager While They Still Know Everything."
Hmm. Good point. Guess the whole "pass/fail" thing freshman year _did_ take its toll after all.
Ok, I'm confused. According to the article:
...scientists have never been able to identify a VMO in humans, despite evidence that they do respond to pheromones.
But that doesn't sound right. Believe it or not, I actually wrote a paper for my freshman psychology class back in Fall '96 on the effect of human pheromones and the VMO. At that time, at least, it was fairly well known that the VMO did indeed exist in humans, and that even its location in the human body was known (See this and this, for example).
So when did it vanish from scientific literature, or was its existence called into question?
Very very well said. You've also highlighted what I believe the fundamental problem with VC investment is -- in many cases, the motivations of VCs are diametrically opposed to sound business practices.
Google's investors want their profits, and the only way they're going to get it is through an acquision (unlikely) or an IPO (probable). Unfortunately, as you pointed out, an IPO is totally unnecessary for Google, and will likely ruin the company.
As a fellow gearhead/nerd, this is an area I'm pretty familiar with. You are definitely not alone out there, though I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a totally general interest "car nerd" site like /.
/. -- I'm sure there a Microsoft-loving nerd sites out there, right?)
This is because, like tech nerds, gearheads are generally divided up among their different camps. (Heck, we're in a camp here on
You'll generally find:
-- the Asian Import crowd (Hondas, Acuras, Nissans, etc.,) -- clubsi.com, etc.
-- the VW crowd (vwvortex.com -- my home)
-- the Audi crowd (audiworld.com)
-- the BMW crowd (bimmer.org)
-- even the Ferrari crowd (ferrarichat.com) -- and believe it or not, these guys are a LOT more nerdy and friendly than the BMW crowd.
Some would say otherwise.
Granted, it's not gospel, but sound in theory.
I was involved in a somewhat related situation. Here's what happened:
I used to work for a software company. I registered a domain for that software company through register.com and *MY* name was on the domain registration. I never actually transferred ownership to that software company, but leased the domain to them under a verbal arrangment. Their website was handled by XO and the domain registration was still handled by register.com
Software company gets acquired, and the new owner doesn't want to use the domain. Instead, appoints some scumbag to try to auction it off. Only problem, of course, is that the domain is still owned by me, and it was never theirs to sell.
Scumbag decides he wants control of the domain and sends a threatening lawyer-writ letter to both XO and register.com. XO AND register.com decide that the whole UDRP thing is just too complicated and simply lock me out of the website, my POP account, my register.com domain management account, and everything else related to that domain. Unbelievable. Take my credit card off the account, basically pretened that I don't exist anymore -- EVEN THOUGH my name was on the account, I was paying for the hosting, paid for registration, etc. I called, yelled, screamed, etc. Neither company cared...they just caved to the most scary-sounding letter and "wanted to avoid trouble". Scumbag thought he won.
So what did I do? Transferred the domain to new registrar (domainmonger.com -- very cool guys who actually respect the UDRP). Luckily, the automated register.com system let that happen, and all of a sudden, the domain was back in my (rightful) hands. Lots of people got pissed off when all of a sudden they realized that many lawyerletters had changed hands (and money was spent) and they had nothing to show for it. Tried the same approach with domainmonger, and got a simple "please refer to the UDRP if you wish to dispute ownership of this domain" right back in their faces. Upon realizing that a dispute takes time and money, they quietly shut up and went away.