But here in the US, we need to have something which actually works. The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) wrote the law - in order to guarantee opt-in wasn't a premise because they didn't believe it to be "financially viable option" translated: if we can't ensure our ability to make money, it's its a bad thing. Those who have been interviewed about the issue and have been willing to discuss it have admitted it left a long skid mark. I can pull up the cite if someone wants it.
If spam legislation is supposed to work, why do we get more? It can't be because we don't click on the opt-out list. Those are a crock. I've seen some which do nothing more than display text files which say, "Thanks!" and an error is produced because they didn't know what they were doing with VBScript under ASP.
"...and how much time away from official projects did you use to create this?"
(fyi: I've always heard of "side projects" as "desk drawer" projects. I walked into a primarily mainframe site but one of the largest backbone sites in the state (mid 80s). I had the phone number of my predecessor and took calls for things she'd been working on. Someone in another "area" (we supported special projects for the state, city, med school, research med, dentistry school, a nursing school, faculty, staff, and students, and a few other areas I'm forgetting. Most was for academics, so no systems changes could made and life was "quieter". One of our "users" called and wanted some updates want to be made to their [software] system. I was obviously in the dark and went to the boss, who also knew noting about it
It turned out there was a 10'000+ line SAS project and it'd been in and out of the desk drawer for a substantial period of time. Fortunately, it wasn't my job to tell these folks they'd been taken down the primrose pack and they'd have to get in line like everyone else. Fortunately, that beat the witch hunts we experienced when problems occurred.
1) convince your trouble maker and turn him into an ally and use him as a buffer against those above him.
2) convince those above him what's right|wrong and leave your immediate troublemaker in the cold.
3) continue to bang your head against the the wall until you reach brain or they send you out the door with a patch of skull missing.
4) You realize this is an intractable situation and high-tail it out of there while you still have the ability to do so on your own terms.
There are subtle nuances, but unless you are adept at pulling a rabbit out of the hat, I'd vote for #4, regardless of how long you've been there. People understand bailing out of failing situations.
What does a private company owe someone who simply wants to be ranked high?
Um, Google is a public company.
However, public or private, Google isn't required to reveal their methods as those methods could qualify as a trade secret. If you try to haul Coke into court and demand they hand over their formulae, what do you think would happen? (besides the judge giggling, snickering, and laughing as though they are wearing feathered underwear under their black robe.
If they don't like the way they're ranked, they have several choices: (a) pound sand, (b) rely upon other search services, (c) take a timeout in the corner, (d) hire a spammed service which promises to put them in the top 100.[1] And in fact, this last item may be why they're acting like their tail is being twisted: they hired someone to rank it, it either failed or was short-liived, and the service they hired said it was Google's fault. I could accept option (d) without too much arm-twisting. "Hey, we did our part. Google screwed you over."
They're mad because they've got a Field of Dreams problem. Everyone thinks they have the next perpetual machine and they'll have to reinforce their doors because people will be knocking them down. No one shows up, no one cares, and after a good crying jag, they figure someone's going to pay for it. After all, they did their part correctly so someone else screwed up.
I've got some advice for them handed down many, many years ago: "No matter how good a product is, the market can be cruel & harsh." If they self-publish a book, are they going to sue the various chains because they won't put it on the shelves? And if the book manages to get onto the various shelves and it doesn't sell, are they going to sue the bookstores?
[1]
I still snicker at the logic of placement spam: "Guaranteed to make your site ranked in the top 100 of the following search engines:..." Even if they manage to accomplish this, they don't tell you how long you'll remain there. Simply put: if 1'000 people respond to this ad for a single blast of spam (and the service is legitimate in its efforts), how can all of them be guaranteed top 100 placement? Then look at how many people are spamming this service. For some reason, this logic escapes many who believe themselves to be intelligent.
The bottom line? After the judge stops laughing, it should be dismissed via summary judgement, demand gorilla glue to be liberally applied to each person's head, then lodge it into their tucus.
Once you add removeability in the equation the cost of backup to disk for disaster (offsite or fire safe) recovery is much higher than tape
It depends upon the environment & circumstances. When I was responsible for the mainframes, a couple of midrange, & related resources, I periodically made my own backups in addition to what was normally scheduled. Being the paranoid bastard I am, downtime for upgrades were scheduled long enough for me to make an extra set. Those extra sets made a trip home to my garage in nice containers "just in case".
I'm still paranoid with "personal" machines which I can reformat & start over with here at home. There's always a little piss shiver simply because of how many things have to be aligned for the machine to come up correctly and only a couple to prevent it.
Someone on ars technica was whining about a warrant or subpoena would no longer be needed to examine your material because it would be on someone else's machine.
That's when I pointed out people wet their pants over things which can be negated with something simple[1] (encryption).
I've cited this elsewhere and will do so again: on the x86 desktop|workstation, there are three players: Windows, *nx, and Mac. Microsoft hasn't given a rat's posterior for a long, long time how some facilities have thought about their product - there's not been a choice: Windows or {}. The opportunity of *nx made Microsoft antsy enough to threaten software license audits, which may be true, may be apocryphal (There are three sides to every story: Yours, mine, and the truth).
Now that Mac has thrown their hat into the fray, you're dealing with a tried & true UI and I've not heard of many Mac users running into the dark of night, screaming from the lunacy they've encountered.
Linux may find itself to be a server (mostly) and a desktop|workstation for those who can't afford the other licenses or the diehards refuse to pay for a license from Microsoft or Apple.
XP's things aren't the funniest (clinical): Were they not going to consolidate XP into a couple of core types?"
They seem to be breeding like coat hangers in a dark closet.
As for all of the discussions about Windows vs. Linux (and the varios Linux UIs), the game has become cutthroat (for those of you who are athletically inclined), not 1::1. Larger boxes (e.g., are server issues, but that's a different sandbox. The desktop has now become Linux, Windows, and Apple. Although many are claiming to set relatives with a *nix build and they've not noticed any problems, I don't think that's germane to this discussion.. But if businesses get tired of kneeling in front of Microsoft, *poof* here comes Mac, even if it's on a machine-by-machine, group-by-group, division....
I would say Microsoft fears Mac when it comes to the desktop UI until Linux can demonstrate a professional, long-term UI, no matter what some says about what's available now. Remember, you have bias. If we were to assign you the task of defending Windows and your opponent switching from Windows to Linux, what would your arguments look like? I think honest answers on the opposition position make for interesting entertainment, but more imporantly, how well-versed they are about each others' material. (you'd be surprised how little people are able to defend the opposing view because they know almost nothing about it, but use fiat|ukase to make their viewpoint to be the right one.
There are a few times when it's nice to see someone representing the executive branch get nailed. The affiliates got a lot of airplay about this until the punishment was doled out. What the PI did was film the cop's car over his dashboard so the speed could be seen real-time. The cop must have been one of the finest available. He didn't notice someone sitting on his immediate right bumper for a lengthy distance.
Unfortunately, that's an extreme. There's nothing like driving one of our interstates at the speed limit (70mph) and see someone with a couple of [unlit] strobes and silent sirens cruising along at 80+.
Here in Indy, 465 is like a public race track betwixt races. With three lanes, there's the occasional opportunity to have a cop trapped behind you in the leftmost lane doing 55mph (the speed limit) and the other two lanes aren't going to give them room, either. I'll frequently keep going instead of worrying about my exit just to pace and know it's got to be killing them to do 55. If they want to kick the lights & siren on, there'll likely be a check (by moi) as to whether they really had an emergency.
I came with a good solution for seatbelt issues a long time ago:
People aren't required to wear a seatbelt, but insurance companies aren't required to cover anyone who isn't wearing theirs at the time of the accident. Of course, if they cause an accident, their insurance company would be on the hook for the coverage they'd have to provide to others, just like the status quo.
I figure if that's permitted|encouraged at the next time of re-enrollment, those who don't want to wear them might get a jolt (literally) on their first accident.
I worked as an EMT in my later teens and early twenties (half a lifetime ago). Yes, there are those rare times when a seatbelt wouldn't have made a difference, but you can't use this type of exception to disprove the rule.
Personally, I don't mind wearing one and when dropping the missus off at the store & waiting for her to return, even for 15-20 minutes, I don't take it off - it just feels natural, regardless of what I saw in my previous work - that's not the motivation.
If the cops were to pull you over and give you a warning, as well as to check on the infants & kids (who are climbing all over the car like it's a McDonald's PlayPlace), that's fine. A nice, big piece of red paper reminding them anyone in their vehicle who isn't strapped in might find themselves living on the streets.
Not all news tells you [directly] whether someone was wearing one when describing an accident not as an addendum to an accident, but it's still easy to tell:
Q: How can you tell someone wasn't wearing their seatbelt in an accident?
A: The TV newsfolk use the word ejected (and usually the word "dead") during the same story.
Several years ago, the Country Club Clint Eastwood owns decided to go off the grid with solar power. They sued him. He won, but it was only for eighteen months. It's been a few years, but IIRC, the terms were that they had to meet before someone wearing a black bathrobe to decide what would happen in the next eighteen months.
I'm guessing by now that club is completely off of the grid as no one (except peabrains) want to be seen on tv as fighting something like this.
Once home fuel cell systems are set up, I always thought it would be interesting to create minigrids in neighborhoods such that you could minimize the number of cell systems, but more importantly, if one goes offline, you'd have backup via the minigrid. I suppose you could remain connected too the grid and sell your excess and if you lose power you'd have to suck up a little juice in the meantime.
Dvorak mentioned something in one of his columns sometime last year. Philadelphia was going to create a huge hotspot until the big boys got wind of what was going on. How did they deal with it? PAC -> State Legislature -> PAC -> Governor.
Bing Bang Boom.
Any towns or cities wishing to create a hotspot has to make it known publicly and give the commercial entities some time to decide what they want to do; i.e. right of first refusal, with a fourteen month window.
This is OTTOMH, but it's very close to what was reported.
I'm waiting to see how long it takes before VOIP are put into a similar position to where they cannot economically compete and will have to sell out to standard telcos. Or, standard telcos are provided some extra benefits in order to compete. I would view the 911 issue was one of the first arrows out of the quiver. Certain exceptions aside, nearly all monopolies were the result of gov't intervention "in the olden days" - ensuring they had enough of a market to remain competitive. These people are like Microsoft: they don't want to play second fiddle to anyone under any condition.
We're going to have to deal with something similar here in Indiana. Legislation has passed permitting telcos to compete head-to-head with cable systems. The issue was never raised, as most stats are not. 95% of the households in the US with access to cable have no choice regarding which cable provider. The cable lobbies said the telcos would only go after affluent markets (well, duh!) for better features and for some reason, that's not fair. The telcos said in competitive markets, cable prices easily dropped 25%. "Why would you want to pay 25% more for what you're already getting?" Boffins will observe a 25% discount is not the same thing as a 25% increase over the 25% discount. The telcos also promised "everyone who chooses the telco option plus those who subscribe to cable when that's the only [ground] option will have lower prices". That's a heck of a guarantee. I'd love to challenge them on a panel and ask them, "If that's not the case within five years, are you willing to pull out? If not, then why did you make that promise?"
iPod cases aside, what about the patents which non-Apple companies have secured for the actual add-on toys (e.g. wireless attachments)?
And...successfully defended said patents against other companies who were practically shipping to market when they found out they were in violation of other parties and as a result, had to climb into the white porcelain euphemism whilst Jinx the cat practiced his newest trick: flushing (Meet the Parents, Meet the Fokkers).
That's not an issue of good or bad writing. It's a matter of organizational skills.
It's the same thing for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Those who aren't very diligent about any of those skills seem to think it's intelligence, but they consider themselves to be smart, so it must be BS. Or, "When it matters, they can do it right, look things up, or have spell-checkers back them up.
The quality of communication skills (in general) should probably be a bigger factor in the interviewing process than the status quo. Cover letters & resumes can be vetted by someone else until they are pristine and someone can do well verbally in an interview, but writing should be a good sign as to the organizational skills they bring to an organization.
Sure, they may hired to be a code jockey, but if they aren't organized, how good can their code be? Besides, no one is hired for a single purpose. Well, unless they are short-sighted. Perhaps that type of business & the prospect deserve each other.
As I've posed here before, if we were to put everyone in the front of a room and say, "Everyone who is a good programmer go the the right, those who aren't, go to the left. Where do you think everyone on/. would go? (I think it's pretty obvious) If it's true, then why does so much software suck? And for that matter, people have complained (on/., no less) about how much the docs suck - either within the code or external. Could it be because the people who do it couldn't write their way out of a wet paper bag? I love examples where you can't tell what's what because the choices of variables, functions, etc. are ambiguous. Another sign of organizational issues.
People aren't hired to be editors, but it would be interesting to see them write something on the fly as well as a quick editor test. A lot of editors who take tests aren't "graded" for perfection, but for instincts in what they flag.
And whilst I've climbed to the summit of Mount Soapbox, there's one other reason spelling helps: retrieving things online, whether they be in usenet groups,/. archives, or the web in general. People use "definately" instead of "definitely", "then" instead of "than", etc. Those aren't usually words you're going to search for, but if they can't get simple words spelled correctly, what's going to happen when you search for things which were written by a computer "professional" with ten years of experience (who only knows English, has never lived in any other countries) and they write as though they should have been held back in fifth and sixth grade (each). Double letters where they should be single. Single when they should be double, etc.
I will now begin climbing down from Mount Soapbox and hand the talking stick to someone else.
Perhaps not. But the recent announcements are a strong distraction from other activities on Apple's part. Once Apple has everything going full steam on an Intel/AMD platform, it could be come a Linux desktop killer. If someone (e.g. business|corporation) doesn't like what Windows is doing for them, it's a matter of purchasing Mac stuff and pushing it onto the HD.
Whilst Linux is free and multiple UIs are available, it's not the Windows-killer everyone believes it will be. At least, not at the user level. Servers, that's another story. But I'm discussing end-users. There's no way anyone can legitimately|fairly state any of the existing Linux UIs can compete with Mac.
What it's going to boil down to is free Linux or paid Mac. Unless|until Linux desktops can surpass Mac desktops, the suits who sign the checks will likely tilt towards Mac instead of Linux. Unless their IT budget approaches $0.00
I'd have to pull up my AP Writing Style to follow their de facto standards, but the standard is to use the acronym once, put the meaning inside parentheses, then use the acronym thereafter.
e.g. Today, Apple announced their new latest entry into the CE (Consumer Electronics) field. It's hoped the 2006 CE market will eventually finish stronger than 2005's. yadda yadda
What amuses me (and I'm not wearing feathered underwear) is claims.
If you call a cow's tail a leg, how many legs does a cow have?
Four. Calling it so doesn't make it so.
A. Lincoln
Privacy issues aside, speed aside, most of my time is spent paging because of scanning because the number of items per page (I'm not talking about not knowing I can adjust from 20 to 50 or 100, so don't respond on that basis) is so small. I know it's easier to squirt that much through instead of allowing people to get more than they are currently getting. My current peeve is with the MSDN search. Ten (10!) per page. That sucks. It doesn't even say, "1-10 of 1'000" so you know you likely need to reduce your search. But a lot of it is because they think they know more about want we want than we do. It's fine for defaults, but leave some flexibility for those who need more.
Bottom line: claiming "speed" [in current search engines] is like people claiming they use less oxygen (or produce less navel lint or ear wax) on a daily basis than someone else. It's not a useful measurement because it doesn't matter. It's not a critical factor. It'll give them some press and that feeds into their primary strength(s), which is Marketing & Sales.
The stock will boost a little by those impressed by such things, but BFD.
Devil's Advocate: Would you say the same thing if it were the Minnesota Democrats?
(I can ask the question as I vote for neither party and do not live in Minnesota. I just enjoy seeing one-sided statements made as though that's the only group who would commit such an act. I also like seeing people switch roles and arguing for each other's positions to remove their bias)
Recently viewed for the first time and hooked on cable: Foolproof
I cannot cite stats (and wish I could), but in the case of Win2K, there's a lot of money sitting on the table. Aside from values such as Microsoft believes 1/3 of all Windows (versions) currently in use are warez or late beta copies, 1/3 of their revenues come from MS Office, now their ca$h cow.
Right now, however, their greatest 1-2 punch is Marketing and Sales. And they are stymied. It's more than tens of thousands. I think it's into the hundreds of thousands of business|corporate seats of Huey, Dewey and Louie (Win2K, Office2K, VS6) and they have no intention of budging. Why should they? Aside from the fact the service ended with an SP4-rollup for Win2k, Win2K died June 30, '05. VS6 is be removed from D/L MSDN (if it hasn't been). If you were a bean counter crossbred with a techie, you wouldn't be tossing any more chips onto the table. The systems are stable. TCO is lower, lower, lower, and lowest with time. If you take a bite at the bait on Microsoft's hook, you'll have to spend tons 'o hardware, software, training, you name it. Stuff Microsoft and all of their cronies (towit: hardware for new workstations|PCs) will simply drool over.
"Ducks on the Pond" may be a baseball term, but not for Microsoft. Those three are so tightly enmeshed Microsoft might have gotten something soft & fleshy caught in their collective zippers. They've presented their shrewder customers with no reason to upgrade and look back at Donald's nephew's in a scrapbook on running as a virtual machine for old-time's sake (like Microsoft Bob).
This may be a case of Microsoft screwing up by doing better than they were expected to have. And it's costing them enough money to make $crooge McDuck blush.
This: .Process took 68284.67 cpu seconds or 19:00:32 wall time..Used 142270158467 bytes or 132.5 gigs. Return code 4
Should be Return Code 42.
Re: Google's price too high? I think it's not just some future expectation and certainly not what someone believes the be the current value (or value in the next six months).
There's too much "peer pressure" in society to buy Google. People who are innumerate and can't figure out why their PC is broken because they unplugged it to plug in the vacuum cleaner know who Google is.
(BTW, I agree about Buffet) Try Berkshire Hathaway. The higher prices keep serious investors around and avoids flipping. Flipping starts to influence the market, particularly during IPOs. That begins to affect the market, in and of itself. Buffet's purpose of stock is to be a long-term investment and to avoid flipping at all costs.
Then again, he's wary of tech stocks and didn't buy one until after the dot-drop. Unfortunately, it was a rather notorious spamhaven (Level3). He has since unloaded it. He believes tech firms are a bit too fickle for his tastes. And whilst we're on the subject of Warren, he doesn't believe forecasts or indications of performance should be leaked prior to the actual announcement. He's the single-largest stockholder of Coco-Cola and has long worked to avoid even hinting at at future expectations. Believe in the company (or) not. Let the chips fall where they may. Make your own expectations. If they fail, sell, and move on.
Slashdot Mirror
But here in the US, we need to have something which actually works. The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) wrote the law - in order to guarantee opt-in wasn't a premise because they didn't believe it to be "financially viable option" translated: if we can't ensure our ability to make money, it's its a bad thing. Those who have been interviewed about the issue and have been willing to discuss it have admitted it left a long skid mark.
I can pull up the cite if someone wants it.
If spam legislation is supposed to work, why do we get more? It can't be because we don't click on the opt-out list. Those are a crock. I've seen some which do nothing more than display text files which say, "Thanks!" and an error is produced because they didn't know what they were doing with VBScript under ASP.
And to both (immediate) parents...
"...and how much time away from official projects did you use to create this?"
(fyi: I've always heard of "side projects" as "desk drawer" projects. I walked into a primarily mainframe site but one of the largest backbone sites in the state (mid 80s). I had the phone number of my predecessor and took calls for things she'd been working on. Someone in another "area" (we supported special projects for the state, city, med school, research med, dentistry school, a nursing school, faculty, staff, and students, and a few other areas I'm forgetting. Most was for academics, so no systems changes could made and life was "quieter". One of our "users" called and wanted some updates want to be made to their [software] system. I was obviously in the dark and went to the boss, who also knew noting about it
It turned out there was a 10'000+ line SAS project and it'd been in and out of the desk drawer for a substantial period of time. Fortunately, it wasn't my job to tell these folks they'd been taken down the primrose pack and they'd have to get in line like everyone else. Fortunately, that beat the witch hunts we experienced when problems occurred.
1) convince your trouble maker and turn him into an ally and use him as a buffer against those above him.
2) convince those above him what's right|wrong and leave your immediate troublemaker in the cold.
3) continue to bang your head against the the wall until you reach brain or they send you out the door with a patch of skull missing.
4) You realize this is an intractable situation and high-tail it out of there while you still have the ability to do so on your own terms.
There are subtle nuances, but unless you are adept at pulling a rabbit out of the hat, I'd vote for #4, regardless of how long you've been there. People understand bailing out of failing situations.
What does a private company owe someone who simply wants to be ranked high?
Um, Google is a public company.
However, public or private, Google isn't required to reveal their methods as those methods could qualify as a trade secret. If you try to haul Coke into court and demand they hand over their formulae, what do you think would happen? (besides the judge giggling, snickering, and laughing as though they are wearing feathered underwear under their black robe.
If they don't like the way they're ranked, they have several choices: (a) pound sand, (b) rely upon other search services, (c) take a timeout in the corner, (d) hire a spammed service which promises to put them in the top 100.[1] And in fact, this last item may be why they're acting like their tail is being twisted: they hired someone to rank it, it either failed or was short-liived, and the service they hired said it was Google's fault. I could accept option (d) without too much arm-twisting. "Hey, we did our part. Google screwed you over."
They're mad because they've got a Field of Dreams problem. Everyone thinks they have the next perpetual machine and they'll have to reinforce their doors because people will be knocking them down. No one shows up, no one cares, and after a good crying jag, they figure someone's going to pay for it. After all, they did their part correctly so someone else screwed up.
I've got some advice for them handed down many, many years ago: "No matter how good a product is, the market can be cruel & harsh." If they self-publish a book, are they going to sue the various chains because they won't put it on the shelves? And if the book manages to get onto the various shelves and it doesn't sell, are they going to sue the bookstores?
[1] I still snicker at the logic of placement spam: "Guaranteed to make your site ranked in the top 100 of the following search engines:..." Even if they manage to accomplish this, they don't tell you how long you'll remain there. Simply put: if 1'000 people respond to this ad for a single blast of spam (and the service is legitimate in its efforts), how can all of them be guaranteed top 100 placement? Then look at how many people are spamming this service. For some reason, this logic escapes many who believe themselves to be intelligent.
The bottom line? After the judge stops laughing, it should be dismissed via summary judgement, demand gorilla glue to be liberally applied to each person's head, then lodge it into their tucus.
Once you add removeability in the equation the cost of backup to disk for disaster (offsite or fire safe) recovery is much higher than tape
It depends upon the environment & circumstances. When I was responsible for the mainframes, a couple of midrange, & related resources, I periodically made my own backups in addition to what was normally scheduled. Being the paranoid bastard I am, downtime for upgrades were scheduled long enough for me to make an extra set. Those extra sets made a trip home to my garage in nice containers "just in case".
I'm still paranoid with "personal" machines which I can reformat & start over with here at home. There's always a little piss shiver simply because of how many things have to be aligned for the machine to come up correctly and only a couple to prevent it.
Someone on ars technica was whining about a warrant or subpoena would no longer be needed to examine your material because it would be on someone else's machine.
That's when I pointed out people wet their pants over things which can be negated with something simple[1] (encryption).
"Make things simple, not simpler." -Erasmus
I've cited this elsewhere and will do so again: on the x86 desktop|workstation, there are three players: Windows, *nx, and Mac. Microsoft hasn't given a rat's posterior for a long, long time how some facilities have thought about their product - there's not been a choice: Windows or {}. The opportunity of *nx made Microsoft antsy enough to threaten software license audits, which may be true, may be apocryphal (There are three sides to every story: Yours, mine, and the truth).
Now that Mac has thrown their hat into the fray, you're dealing with a tried & true UI and I've not heard of many Mac users running into the dark of night, screaming from the lunacy they've encountered.
Linux may find itself to be a server (mostly) and a desktop|workstation for those who can't afford the other licenses or the diehards refuse to pay for a license from Microsoft or Apple.
XP's things aren't the funniest (clinical): Were they not going to consolidate XP into a couple of core types?"
They seem to be breeding like coat hangers in a dark closet.
As for all of the discussions about Windows vs. Linux (and the varios Linux UIs), the game has become cutthroat (for those of you who are athletically inclined), not 1::1. Larger boxes (e.g., are server issues, but that's a different sandbox. The desktop has now become Linux, Windows, and Apple. Although many are claiming to set relatives with a *nix build and they've not noticed any problems, I don't think that's germane to this discussion.. But if businesses get tired of kneeling in front of Microsoft, *poof* here comes Mac, even if it's on a machine-by-machine, group-by-group, division....
I would say Microsoft fears Mac when it comes to the desktop UI until Linux can demonstrate a professional, long-term UI, no matter what some says about what's available now. Remember, you have bias. If we were to assign you the task of defending Windows and your opponent switching from Windows to Linux, what would your arguments look like? I think honest answers on the opposition position make for interesting entertainment, but more imporantly, how well-versed they are about each others' material. (you'd be surprised how little people are able to defend the opposing view because they know almost nothing about it, but use fiat|ukase to make their viewpoint to be the right one.
There are a few times when it's nice to see someone representing the executive branch get nailed. The affiliates got a lot of airplay about this until the punishment was doled out. What the PI did was film the cop's car over his dashboard so the speed could be seen real-time. The cop must have been one of the finest available. He didn't notice someone sitting on his immediate right bumper for a lengthy distance.
Unfortunately, that's an extreme. There's nothing like driving one of our interstates at the speed limit (70mph) and see someone with a couple of [unlit] strobes and silent sirens cruising along at 80+.
Here in Indy, 465 is like a public race track betwixt races. With three lanes, there's the occasional opportunity to have a cop trapped behind you in the leftmost lane doing 55mph (the speed limit) and the other two lanes aren't going to give them room, either. I'll frequently keep going instead of worrying about my exit just to pace and know it's got to be killing them to do 55. If they want to kick the lights & siren on, there'll likely be a check (by moi) as to whether they really had an emergency.
who's
I came with a good solution for seatbelt issues a long time ago:
People aren't required to wear a seatbelt, but insurance companies aren't required to cover anyone who isn't wearing theirs at the time of the accident. Of course, if they cause an accident, their insurance company would be on the hook for the coverage they'd have to provide to others, just like the status quo.
I figure if that's permitted|encouraged at the next time of re-enrollment, those who don't want to wear them might get a jolt (literally) on their first accident.
I worked as an EMT in my later teens and early twenties (half a lifetime ago). Yes, there are those rare times when a seatbelt wouldn't have made a difference, but you can't use this type of exception to disprove the rule.
Personally, I don't mind wearing one and when dropping the missus off at the store & waiting for her to return, even for 15-20 minutes, I don't take it off - it just feels natural, regardless of what I saw in my previous work - that's not the motivation.
If the cops were to pull you over and give you a warning, as well as to check on the infants & kids (who are climbing all over the car like it's a McDonald's PlayPlace), that's fine. A nice, big piece of red paper reminding them anyone in their vehicle who isn't strapped in might find themselves living on the streets.
Not all news tells you [directly] whether someone was wearing one when describing an accident not as an addendum to an accident, but it's still easy to tell:
Q: How can you tell someone wasn't wearing their seatbelt in an accident?
A: The TV newsfolk use the word ejected (and usually the word "dead") during the same story.
1. It's illegal to go off the grid.
Several years ago, the Country Club Clint Eastwood owns decided to go off the grid with solar power. They sued him. He won, but it was only for eighteen months. It's been a few years, but IIRC, the terms were that they had to meet before someone wearing a black bathrobe to decide what would happen in the next eighteen months.
I'm guessing by now that club is completely off of the grid as no one (except peabrains) want to be seen on tv as fighting something like this.
Once home fuel cell systems are set up, I always thought it would be interesting to create minigrids in neighborhoods such that you could minimize the number of cell systems, but more importantly, if one goes offline, you'd have backup via the minigrid. I suppose you could remain connected too the grid and sell your excess and if you lose power you'd have to suck up a little juice in the meantime.
Dvorak mentioned something in one of his columns sometime last year. Philadelphia was going to create a huge hotspot until the big boys got wind of what was going on. How did they deal with it? PAC -> State Legislature -> PAC -> Governor.
Bing Bang Boom.
Any towns or cities wishing to create a hotspot has to make it known publicly and give the commercial entities some time to decide what they want to do; i.e. right of first refusal, with a fourteen month window.
This is OTTOMH, but it's very close to what was reported.
I'm waiting to see how long it takes before VOIP are put into a similar position to where they cannot economically compete and will have to sell out to standard telcos. Or, standard telcos are provided some extra benefits in order to compete. I would view the 911 issue was one of the first arrows out of the quiver. Certain exceptions aside, nearly all monopolies were the result of gov't intervention "in the olden days" - ensuring they had enough of a market to remain competitive. These people are like Microsoft: they don't want to play second fiddle to anyone under any condition.
We're going to have to deal with something similar here in Indiana. Legislation has passed permitting telcos to compete head-to-head with cable systems. The issue was never raised, as most stats are not. 95% of the households in the US with access to cable have no choice regarding which cable provider. The cable lobbies said the telcos would only go after affluent markets (well, duh!) for better features and for some reason, that's not fair. The telcos said in competitive markets, cable prices easily dropped 25%. "Why would you want to pay 25% more for what you're already getting?" Boffins will observe a 25% discount is not the same thing as a 25% increase over the 25% discount. The telcos also promised "everyone who chooses the telco option plus those who subscribe to cable when that's the only [ground] option will have lower prices". That's a heck of a guarantee. I'd love to challenge them on a panel and ask them, "If that's not the case within five years, are you willing to pull out? If not, then why did you make that promise?"
iPod cases aside, what about the patents which non-Apple companies have secured for the actual add-on toys (e.g. wireless attachments)?
And...successfully defended said patents against other companies who were practically shipping to market when they found out they were in violation of other parties and as a result, had to climb into the white porcelain euphemism whilst Jinx the cat practiced his newest trick: flushing (Meet the Parents, Meet the Fokkers).
i.e. How will Apple deal with this?
Why?
Could it be because they'd always walk around asking, "What's up, Chuck?"
That's not an issue of good or bad writing. It's a matter of organizational skills.
It's the same thing for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Those who aren't very diligent about any of those skills seem to think it's intelligence, but they consider themselves to be smart, so it must be BS. Or, "When it matters, they can do it right, look things up, or have spell-checkers back them up.
The quality of communication skills (in general) should probably be a bigger factor in the interviewing process than the status quo. Cover letters & resumes can be vetted by someone else until they are pristine and someone can do well verbally in an interview, but writing should be a good sign as to the organizational skills they bring to an organization.
Sure, they may hired to be a code jockey, but if they aren't organized, how good can their code be? Besides, no one is hired for a single purpose. Well, unless they are short-sighted. Perhaps that type of business & the prospect deserve each other.
As I've posed here before, if we were to put everyone in the front of a room and say, "Everyone who is a good programmer go the the right, those who aren't, go to the left. Where do you think everyone on
People aren't hired to be editors, but it would be interesting to see them write something on the fly as well as a quick editor test. A lot of editors who take tests aren't "graded" for perfection, but for instincts in what they flag.
And whilst I've climbed to the summit of Mount Soapbox, there's one other reason spelling helps: retrieving things online, whether they be in usenet groups,
I will now begin climbing down from Mount Soapbox and hand the talking stick to someone else.
Perhaps not. But the recent announcements are a strong distraction from other activities on Apple's part. Once Apple has everything going full steam on an Intel/AMD platform, it could be come a Linux desktop killer. If someone (e.g. business|corporation) doesn't like what Windows is doing for them, it's a matter of purchasing Mac stuff and pushing it onto the HD.
Whilst Linux is free and multiple UIs are available, it's not the Windows-killer everyone believes it will be. At least, not at the user level. Servers, that's another story. But I'm discussing end-users. There's no way anyone can legitimately|fairly state any of the existing Linux UIs can compete with Mac.
What it's going to boil down to is free Linux or paid Mac. Unless|until Linux desktops can surpass Mac desktops, the suits who sign the checks will likely tilt towards Mac instead of Linux. Unless their IT budget approaches $0.00
Correct.
I'd have to pull up my AP Writing Style to follow their de facto standards, but the standard is to use the acronym once, put the meaning inside parentheses, then use the acronym thereafter.
e.g. Today, Apple announced their new latest entry into the CE (Consumer Electronics) field. It's hoped the 2006 CE market will eventually finish stronger than 2005's. yadda yadda
"no matter what" doesn't bother me.
What amuses me (and I'm not wearing feathered underwear) is claims
If you call a cow's tail a leg, how many legs does a cow have?
Four. Calling it so doesn't make it so.
A. Lincoln
Privacy issues aside, speed aside, most of my time is spent paging because of scanning because the number of items per page (I'm not talking about not knowing I can adjust from 20 to 50 or 100, so don't respond on that basis) is so small. I know it's easier to squirt that much through instead of allowing people to get more than they are currently getting. My current peeve is with the MSDN search. Ten (10!) per page. That sucks. It doesn't even say, "1-10 of 1'000" so you know you likely need to reduce your search. But a lot of it is because they think they know more about want we want than we do. It's fine for defaults, but leave some flexibility for those who need more.
Bottom line: claiming "speed" [in current search engines] is like people claiming they use less oxygen (or produce less navel lint or ear wax) on a daily basis than someone else. It's not a useful measurement because it doesn't matter. It's not a critical factor. It'll give them some press and that feeds into their primary strength(s), which is Marketing & Sales.
The stock will boost a little by those impressed by such things, but BFD.
No one has brought up Sneakers and Martin Bishop (Robert Redford)?
I won't provide any spoilers, but this is certainly a method to bypass the system.
Whatever is decided should probably be done in conjunction of the Ajax landsharks.
I'm surprised they haven't taken a stand on this and posted it on their web site.
Here's an example:
Hormel decided to decide how Spam and SPAM would be used +/- tolerated: SPAM Internet Site Terms.
Bottom line: Jesse may use one of this three wishes on this: (according to Jesse, not meant to be an acronym), but it may not come true.
Devil's Advocate: Would you say the same thing if it were the Minnesota Democrats?
(I can ask the question as I vote for neither party and do not live in Minnesota. I just enjoy seeing one-sided statements made as though that's the only group who would commit such an act. I also like seeing people switch roles and arguing for each other's positions to remove their bias)
Recently viewed for the first time and hooked on cable: Foolproof
I cannot cite stats (and wish I could), but in the case of Win2K, there's a lot of money sitting on the table. Aside from values such as Microsoft believes 1/3 of all Windows (versions) currently in use are warez or late beta copies, 1/3 of their revenues come from MS Office, now their ca$h cow.
Right now, however, their greatest 1-2 punch is Marketing and Sales. And they are stymied. It's more than tens of thousands. I think it's into the hundreds of thousands of business|corporate seats of Huey, Dewey and Louie (Win2K, Office2K, VS6) and they have no intention of budging. Why should they? Aside from the fact the service ended with an SP4-rollup for Win2k, Win2K died June 30, '05. VS6 is be removed from D/L MSDN (if it hasn't been). If you were a bean counter crossbred with a techie, you wouldn't be tossing any more chips onto the table. The systems are stable. TCO is lower, lower, lower, and lowest with time. If you take a bite at the bait on Microsoft's hook, you'll have to spend tons 'o hardware, software, training, you name it. Stuff Microsoft and all of their cronies (towit: hardware for new workstations|PCs) will simply drool over.
"Ducks on the Pond" may be a baseball term, but not for Microsoft. Those three are so tightly enmeshed Microsoft might have gotten something soft & fleshy caught in their collective zippers. They've presented their shrewder customers with no reason to upgrade and look back at Donald's nephew's in a scrapbook on running as a virtual machine for old-time's sake (like Microsoft Bob).
This may be a case of Microsoft screwing up by doing better than they were expected to have. And it's costing them enough money to make $crooge McDuck blush.
Thinks sashimi vs. fish sticks.
sashimi is more fish-like that sushi.
Responding to several things at once:
This:
Should be Return Code 42.
Re: Google's price too high? I think it's not just some future expectation and certainly not what someone believes the be the current value (or value in the next six months).
There's too much "peer pressure" in society to buy Google. People who are innumerate and can't figure out why their PC is broken because they unplugged it to plug in the vacuum cleaner know who Google is.
(BTW, I agree about Buffet) Try Berkshire Hathaway. The higher prices keep serious investors around and avoids flipping. Flipping starts to influence the market, particularly during IPOs. That begins to affect the market, in and of itself. Buffet's purpose of stock is to be a long-term investment and to avoid flipping at all costs.
Then again, he's wary of tech stocks and didn't buy one until after the dot-drop. Unfortunately, it was a rather notorious spamhaven (Level3). He has since unloaded it. He believes tech firms are a bit too fickle for his tastes. And whilst we're on the subject of Warren, he doesn't believe forecasts or indications of performance should be leaked prior to the actual announcement. He's the single-largest stockholder of Coco-Cola and has long worked to avoid even hinting at at future expectations. Believe in the company (or) not. Let the chips fall where they may. Make your own expectations. If they fail, sell, and move on.
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrr
Does anyone believe all parties can't script and the response to both sides in advance?
Once again, WHG III is working on something new, not fixing what they believe to be old (or broken)[1]
____________________________
[1] "People don't want bug fixes; they want new features."
WHG III
When will Micorosfoft decide to work and play well with others in the world of CSS?
(besides, Microsoft pushed their RSS to make their life easier and presumed everyone would bow but not tell the Emperor he didn't have any clothes on.
Had they lost, there would have been some big-time hissy-fits.