As I read the news about Gary Gygax today at my desk in work, I was surprised to find myself getting a little choked up. I abandoned D&D in my "adult life" and haven't played in twenty or so years, but hearing about Gary sent me back all those years. From the late 70s through the mid 80s a group of my friends played together as we moved from junior high to high school, eventually petering off as we all separated for college.
Despite the proclamations of latter day geeks these days that playing D&D was (or is) cool & great for so many reasons, playing D&D was most certainly not cool back in the day. Particularly bad if potential or current girlfriends got wise to our gaming proclivities. So we kept our sessions clandestine. For us D&D was both uncool & cool at the same time.
All those hours in class idled away thinking about how to construct the next adventure, money blown skulking in joints like the Compleat Strategist, eyes strained poring over the latest issue of Dragon, ultimately culminating in a late night game session powered by coca cola and nachos and accompanied by lewd & raucous commentary - these were some of the best times of my youth - and Gary Gygax helped bring them into existence.
The irony (to me now) was that we didn't even like Gary Gygax. We'd read those original softcover and then hardcover books that pretty much dripped with Gygaxian lore & wisdom, and say "Oh my god, Gygax is such a pompous load." We'd laugh, secure in the knowledge that although we played this incredibly geeky game, we were no Gygax-es --- that guy was the consummate geeky load.
But the truth is we were Gygax and he was us. All these years later I think quite differently about Gygax & am grateful that he made the creative effort he did. Simply put, he gave us something to do that was creative & socially-engaging at a point in our lives when we needed it.
I ventured into the closet tonight and dug out my old hardcover books to take a spin down memory lane. Despite the goofy artwork, the various goofy game mechanics and wacky sounding game material (the Apparatus of Kwalish? just who was Kwalish anyway?), I can still see the appeal of the game.
Lastly, a note to aspiring young gamers, don't let anyone spill bong water on your Fiend Folio --- it will still smell like bong water 20 years later...
With a tendency toward old fogey-ism acknowledged, I doubt I would ever use an ebook reader extensively. When I acquire a "book", I prefer it to be a physical thing that I own & not something that is licensed. Physical books are also desirable in that one doesn't need special technology to read them (except for something to provide light at night... and maybe glasses...).
I suppose I might use an ebook reader to read things that I would throw away, like a newspaper or a magazine... or possibly work-related material that I didn't want to lug around.
At the end of the day, I suppose I just like real books - the feel of them, the way they look, smell, etc.
I realize that sounds luddite. Clearly I should just haul my keister down to the second-hand bookshop and kvetch with the subversives therein about this Demon of Progress.
I'm in complete agreement on having several dummy accounts.
I have a tiered system for my personal email. One email is essentially my "dirty whore" used for random registrations and accounts (eg. slashdot). I rarely check this one and usually it is only to verify a registration or to do bulk deletes without reading anything. This account is inundated with spam, but I don't care since I don't actually expect important email from it.
The second email is for legitimate communication and is somewhat public, but I don't hand it out to everyone. It suffers from some spam, but I'm happy to let spam filters do their thing with some loss due to false positives.
The third email is privileged - only my "inner circle" gets access to this email address. I treat it like gold, but would have no problem abandoning it if spam became a problem. Five years so far using the same account - no problems yet.
I also have a couple of forwarders that I'll direct to different accounts.
My work email is "work only", no personal email sent with it (and vice versa). I get a good volume of work email, but none of it is spam (although company does filter).
There is a little extra overheard with this method - but I am effectively completely unaffected by spam.
I can understand the desire to abandon email if, all else being equal, spam has overwhelmed your inbox. However, I'm not so sure about those who claim to have too much "legitimate" email, at least in the context of workplace email.
My last company adopted a policy for email that included guidelines to help streamline email use.
An example of a guideline was a protocol for using "to:" and "cc:". Only people who absolutely needed to read an email were to be put on "to:" while "cc:" was to be used as exactly what it means, courtesy copy. This allowed people to filter on "cc:" and reduce the volume of priority email. I found, more often than not, that I didn't have to read my cc: filtered mail at all - and periodically either filed it or just deleted it.
Another example was minding when email was appropriate which depended in part on the urgency and content of communication. If something is critical - don't send an email, get up and actually physically talk to the person face to face (or phone, page, text or instant message them if necessary).
Email is fine if you don't need an immediate response or action and if you want to send a chunk of information for people to mull on. You don't want to get bogged down in "banter" in email - if something requires a discussion - have a face-to-face or teleconference meeting with all parties.
There is a lot more to it than this and, for the example of the company I was at, it fit into a much broader system of time and priority management that had the backing of senior managers (ie. everyone was expected to work that way).
I found that the only time I fell behind on email was when I was genuinely overloaded with work.
My impression is that people who think they have too much legitimate email fall into two camps. In the first, most of their email is not essential, although not spam in the 'free viagra' sense. It's just not essential in the sense that if they don't read it - they are no better or worse off than if they had.
In the other camp are people who actually have too much legitimate email, but this isn't the fault of 'email' per se - it's because they just have too much work to do...
I know my workplace email rules probably can't be applied for someone who is in the public eye like Lawrence Lessig, since no doubt he gets emails from hundreds of people who can't be expected to follow the "rules". He could, however, have a "public" email and an assistant tasked to be the first line of defense...
Luckily I happen to have a copy of MIL-STD-810F right here. In practice you have to take these standards with a grain of salt, but some funny things come to light when you compare what the article/Verizon's claims are vs. what the standard prescribes. Also, it's likely that many existing "non-ruggedized" cellphones would pass these tests.
Water Resistance (Method 506.4, procedure I). The writeup says the test was designed to simulate rainfall of 2 inches per hour with a 40 MPH wind. This is fine if you take it by itself. However, if you look at section 2.3.2. of Method 506.4 which provides guidance on "Rainfall Rate", you get a blurb recommending a minimum rate 4 inches per hour "since it is not an uncommon occurrence and would provide a reasonable degree of confidence in the materiel." Hmm. Well, at least they got the wind velocity (40MPH) right. Is this really an exciting test though? My non-MIL-STD qualified cellphone (had it for two years so far) has gone through some harsh rainstorms without any problems.
Immersion (Method 512.4, procedure I). Maintaining a seal at 1m for 30 minutes is actually pretty good for a cellphone. It would be interesting to know if they bothered heating the test sample prior to the test (as is recommended). This creates a pressure differential as the case interior cools during immersion - and it will tend to pull water in through faulty or inadequate seals. It's a more realistic test than immersing a room temperature sample in room temperature water. Imagine if your cellphone was in your pocket before it tumbled out into a puddle on the trail. It would be near body temperature initially and then would start cooling to whatever the puddle temperature was. Probably they did this... although they didn't bother with the 4 inches per hour...
Humidity (Method 507.4). I wonder why they did this test. They already established that the product exhibits decent water ingress protection with the immersion and spray tests, so maybe the only thing they'd gain would be the added pressure differentials from thermal cycling. It's unlikely that there are any exposed metal bits, so corrosion wouldn't be a concern. I suppose they could have coatings & paint for the plastics that they might evaluate for degradation. I can't see the appeal - again, just citing my run-of-the-mill phone which has gone through high humidity conditions without problems.
Salt Fog (Method 509.4). Salt fog and spray tests are funny because they are really hard to correlate with real-world exposure. You really have to strap down a sample out in the wild somewhere for a year to see what effects correlate with your lab experiment. I could see salt being a cosmetic issue for a mariner's cellphone - and possibly more damaging if seal integrity was weakened and salt started corroding metal on circuit boards, component leads, connectors, etc. This is a useful test to run, although using an arbitrary 48hrs doesn't tell you much. Also, you have to wonder if they only did 48hrs of straight spray as opposed to the suggested 24hr wet/24hr dry cycle. Either way, makers of equipment for marine environments often expose their products to many hundreds of salt fog test hours - so is 48hrs enough? Hard to say.
Drop (Method 516.5, procedure IV). This is a pretty straightforward test with so little detail that it would be tough to diverge from the procedure. Curiously they dropped from 1.5 meters instead of the suggested 1.22 meters. I guess this is a good thing. I've probably dropped my cellphone a couple of dozen times, although generally from waist-height, say about a meter, rather than 1.5 meters. It's been dropped on a variety of surfaces including concrete, wooden floors, tile and so on. Nicked and scarred, yes, but it still works. One interesting clause in the test method allows for splitting the 26-drop requirement among five test samples. Wonder if they did that.
Vibration (Method 514.5, procedure I, category 24). At every turn
I wish I was a policy wonk and that I could get articles out in the press in an attempt to swing public opinion, just like Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation. Hey, maybe I could do it right here and just respond to Tom.
"Tom, do you think I'm stupid? I mean, really Tom, who exactly is your audience in this article? Obviously you want to influence people and get them to _not_ support this 'net neutrality' thing. Clearly your audience couldn't have been me, since I had good chuckle reading about Junior and Suzie being denied their 'somethings' and EMT's losing the link (how many cc's Ringers Lactate, Rampart? Rampart come in!) as the rest of us 'bring down the Internet' to check out this season's lingerie offering. Why did I chuckle? Well, you have to admit, your scenario sounds silly. In fact, when you sit down and pull things apart, it doesn't make any sense at all.
First off, let's strip out some things that aren't relevant. I know you want to get everyone's knickers atwist by suggesting that not only will my TV, phone and computer go on the fritz because of a lingerie show, but also injured people will die with isolated EMT's and cops won't be able to call back up when things go bad.
Cops and EMT's need to rely on safety critical systems. This is a different animal than watching the superbowl or chatting with auntie on the phone. I am okay with cops and EMT's getting priority on _whatever_ system they choose to use for operations, but this part of your scenario is not about business and market economics - it's just to get a rise out of people. Peel it back even further and you become more of disappointment to me, because in the context of this discussion it implies you would advocate telco's charging government entities through the nose for these premium services. Well, cops get paid by us. So you want higher taxes? I thought the IPI would like lower burden on the taxpayer. Guess you are showing your true pro-business colors here. Fundamentally, no one is going to make a fuss if organizations that require redundant, highly reliable, fail safe (etc) communication systems get priority. Really though, Tom, I know you're not stupid and you know that folks are wary about putting things like this exclusively on packet systems, even if Junior and Suzie's parents have only a vague understanding of the issue. You are no doubt hoping that Junior and Suzie's parents won't notice a little fear-mongering.
Okay, so let's just restrict it to the disruption of my superbowl viewing pleasure. And to make you feel better, Tom, I'm not being entirely above boards in my argument here - I don't even like football - but for the sake of discussion, let's move on.
So now you've got the situation where my entertainment or personal communication systems are disrupted. Okay. I don't need to be in 2009 to wait for that - it happens right now Tom! Either way though, you would therefore like the telco's to be able to charge a premium to somebody to make sure that some 'content' actually gets through reliably. If you were telling the truth, I would agree, and say, okay Tom, if the telco's can reliably deliver the superbowl to me I might be willing to pay a little more, and maybe the NFL and the networks would too. And maybe we'd all be better off for it. Certainly we'd want this to be a market-driven affair - and the telco providing the best service at the best cost (with some margin for them) would end up winning the most customers. No need to legislate here, I agree!
Oh dear Tom, we know this if far from reality, you and I, don't we? Truth is that the telcos would actually prefer legislation that locks in their ability to offer and charge for tiered services - contrary to what you are saying - they want legislation - the just don't want the net-neutrality legislation! They don't want free market forces to prevail which would, they think, drive them further into the commodity side of things - because as you correctly noted - content is king. No one ca
Call me a starry-eyed dreamer, but I love the American system. I love that there are laws, and that despite the fact that people try to circumvent them from time to time - even with the best of intentions, the law eventually catches up with them.
The system is great because it lets citizens participate in the creation and modification of laws over time - so we have a hand in shaping the ever-evolving legal framework underpinning our democracy.
I'm not a legal expert, but even with my layman's understanding of the issue, it seems that some bounds have been exceeded and a correction is in order. I'm not crazy about excessive litigation, but if the executives at Verizon and the others illegally provided my phone records to the NSA out of some kind of misguided patriotism - then they are not only bad business leaders but bad citizens. They've let down their employees, their shareholders and their fellow citizens. They should be held accountable.
This isn't immediately about whether tracking citizens' communications is right or wrong. It's about breaking laws. If at some point in the future we want to grant the government the right to track our phone calls without court orders, or whatever, then we should amend the laws accordingly.
Anyway, I'm calling my rep & senator and voicing my opinion. I wonder what conclusions the NSA will make over phone data over the next while. Maybe that people don't like being monitored by government without permission...?
I used to get upset about corporate psycho-babble, but it doesn't bother me so much anymore. Over the years, I've seen so many "paradigm shifters", "enterprise enablers", etc. crash in such spectacular ways that when I'm confronted when a particularly slick-tongued buzzword generator, I just smile and get on with it because I know that unless they have substance to back up their style they are just going to end up being someone's lunch.
Eventually the rubber hits the road and woe unto the clueless who end up with treadmarks on their heads.
I use corporate psycho-babble when necessary, but always back up these utterances with hard data. It's useful knowing the language of the enemy.
"... our future security is going to depend increasingly on identifying and catching the shadowy figures who exist primarily in the elusive online world."
They shall never penetrate the security of the Shadow Council, aye, so as long as Gul'dan draws breath!
As frustrating as it sounds, there are even further costs being added as a result of delays caused by clearance backlogs. Overworked, beleagured agents are having to process many more people for clearances now. You would think this would be a good thing, making sure that people are trustworthy. Unfortunately, to investigate the slim, slim likelihood that one out of some large number of people is untrustworthy, the vast majority of those who are trustworthy are seeing huge delays in the completion of their clearance process.
If you've been abroad recently, or have any relatives living abroad - don't even think about trying to work in a secure environment these days.
I couldn't agree with you more! I have a 20GB jukebox and the interface drives me crazy. It's great to have my entire music collection on the thing, but I wish they had made it easier to actually get at a song I want to listen to.
I nearly snorted milk out of my noise reading about the patent, thinking of all the times I've cursed Creative.
I hope you are right that they will be using solid state memory as opposed to a rotating disk, but not because of the physical size. Microdrives are tiny these days - they fit nicely in the palm of your hand.
The reason I hope you are right is that from time to time I drop my mobile, but it keeps on working. Things with moving mechanical parts are generally less reliable. I wonder how many times I could drop a mobile with a disk before the head crashed on the platter and caused irreversible damage.
It would be interesting to see Apple's RMA data for iPods, although I bet people are less likely to drop their precious mp3 players than their mobiles (at least I am).
Hmm - interesting. Actually my Motorola seems to 'learn' new words after I use them a few times. So far this has only been proper names and the odd bit of slang - I imagine 'l8r' would be no different from any other collection of letters I routinely use. Hmm.
I've had a Motorola V550 for about 6 months that provides 'iTAP' entry which I suppose is Motorola's fancy name for predictive text entry. I begrudgingly gave it a try after a friend suggested it. I do agree that once you get used to it, it dramatically increases your speed of texting.
Prior to that I had a Sony Ericsson for about two years that had T9, although I hadn't bothered trying that entry mode.
I suppose I could further increase my speed by relying on shorthand, but I can't bring myself to butcher the language like that (eg. c u l8r!)
I suppose my reluctance to fully embrace text is evidence that I'm an old fogey. Unfortunately, there are only a few people in my social circle that I'd ever feel the need to text - and they don't really use text messages that much either. Furthermore, most of them live in completely different time zones. ------- -------
At least you've been honest enough to disclose your relationship with the company. Bearing that relationship in mind, I'm skeptical about your objectivity. This product sounds like a neat gimmick, but I doubt it would be particularly reliable as you claim. The GPS constellation is always 'turned on' and the satellites are never moved from their orbits - unlike access points.
I think the only way to understand what it's like arguing with a creationist is to - argue with a creationist!
Luckily, I've found a few captive ones you can cut your teeth on. Head over to this
thread on the Young America's Foundation message board (giving young conservatives a fun and safe place to rap!)
Basically, every argument with a creationist ends with something to the effect of "Because the Bible says so".
If you do end up registering on the site to have some fun - word to the wise - don't use personal attacks to get your point across. Just like with Bush's campaign rallies - you'll be banned!
Enjoy!
This was in the 1st Edition of the Deities & Demigods manual, but the 2nd Edition of AD&D overall. A little confusing, isn't it?
There were actually a few changes made from edition to edition of the Deities & Demigod manual. I believe there were some copyright issues over the inclusion Melnibonean & Cthulhu mythos. I've seen some of the 1st edition Deities & Demi on eBay and gave some thought to indulging my inner geek... and getting to know Loviatar again...
Slashdot Mirror
As I read the news about Gary Gygax today at my desk in work, I was surprised to find myself getting a little choked up. I abandoned D&D in my "adult life" and haven't played in twenty or so years, but hearing about Gary sent me back all those years. From the late 70s through the mid 80s a group of my friends played together as we moved from junior high to high school, eventually petering off as we all separated for college.
Despite the proclamations of latter day geeks these days that playing D&D was (or is) cool & great for so many reasons, playing D&D was most certainly not cool back in the day. Particularly bad if potential or current girlfriends got wise to our gaming proclivities. So we kept our sessions clandestine. For us D&D was both uncool & cool at the same time.
All those hours in class idled away thinking about how to construct the next adventure, money blown skulking in joints like the Compleat Strategist, eyes strained poring over the latest issue of Dragon, ultimately culminating in a late night game session powered by coca cola and nachos and accompanied by lewd & raucous commentary - these were some of the best times of my youth - and Gary Gygax helped bring them into existence.
The irony (to me now) was that we didn't even like Gary Gygax. We'd read those original softcover and then hardcover books that pretty much dripped with Gygaxian lore & wisdom, and say "Oh my god, Gygax is such a pompous load." We'd laugh, secure in the knowledge that although we played this incredibly geeky game, we were no Gygax-es --- that guy was the consummate geeky load.
But the truth is we were Gygax and he was us. All these years later I think quite differently about Gygax & am grateful that he made the creative effort he did. Simply put, he gave us something to do that was creative & socially-engaging at a point in our lives when we needed it.
I ventured into the closet tonight and dug out my old hardcover books to take a spin down memory lane. Despite the goofy artwork, the various goofy game mechanics and wacky sounding game material (the Apparatus of Kwalish? just who was Kwalish anyway?), I can still see the appeal of the game.
Lastly, a note to aspiring young gamers, don't let anyone spill bong water on your Fiend Folio --- it will still smell like bong water 20 years later...
Do they have to wait 6 months to have sex with the 50" transvestite?
With a tendency toward old fogey-ism acknowledged, I doubt I would ever use an ebook reader extensively. When I acquire a "book", I prefer it to be a physical thing that I own & not something that is licensed. Physical books are also desirable in that one doesn't need special technology to read them (except for something to provide light at night ... and maybe glasses ...).
... or possibly work-related material that I didn't want to lug around.
I suppose I might use an ebook reader to read things that I would throw away, like a newspaper or a magazine
At the end of the day, I suppose I just like real books - the feel of them, the way they look, smell, etc.
I realize that sounds luddite. Clearly I should just haul my keister down to the second-hand bookshop and kvetch with the subversives therein about this Demon of Progress.
I'm in complete agreement on having several dummy accounts.
I have a tiered system for my personal email. One email is essentially my "dirty whore" used for random registrations and accounts (eg. slashdot). I rarely check this one and usually it is only to verify a registration or to do bulk deletes without reading anything. This account is inundated with spam, but I don't care since I don't actually expect important email from it.
The second email is for legitimate communication and is somewhat public, but I don't hand it out to everyone. It suffers from some spam, but I'm happy to let spam filters do their thing with some loss due to false positives.
The third email is privileged - only my "inner circle" gets access to this email address. I treat it like gold, but would have no problem abandoning it if spam became a problem. Five years so far using the same account - no problems yet.
I also have a couple of forwarders that I'll direct to different accounts.
My work email is "work only", no personal email sent with it (and vice versa). I get a good volume of work email, but none of it is spam (although company does filter).
There is a little extra overheard with this method - but I am effectively completely unaffected by spam.
I can understand the desire to abandon email if, all else being equal, spam has overwhelmed your inbox. However, I'm not so sure about those who claim to have too much "legitimate" email, at least in the context of workplace email.
...
My last company adopted a policy for email that included guidelines to help streamline email use.
An example of a guideline was a protocol for using "to:" and "cc:". Only people who absolutely needed to read an email were to be put on "to:" while "cc:" was to be used as exactly what it means, courtesy copy. This allowed people to filter on "cc:" and reduce the volume of priority email. I found, more often than not, that I didn't have to read my cc: filtered mail at all - and periodically either filed it or just deleted it.
Another example was minding when email was appropriate which depended in part on the urgency and content of communication. If something is critical - don't send an email, get up and actually physically talk to the person face to face (or phone, page, text or instant message them if necessary).
Email is fine if you don't need an immediate response or action and if you want to send a chunk of information for people to mull on. You don't want to get bogged down in "banter" in email - if something requires a discussion - have a face-to-face or teleconference meeting with all parties.
There is a lot more to it than this and, for the example of the company I was at, it fit into a much broader system of time and priority management that had the backing of senior managers (ie. everyone was expected to work that way).
I found that the only time I fell behind on email was when I was genuinely overloaded with work.
My impression is that people who think they have too much legitimate email fall into two camps. In the first, most of their email is not essential, although not spam in the 'free viagra' sense. It's just not essential in the sense that if they don't read it - they are no better or worse off than if they had.
In the other camp are people who actually have too much legitimate email, but this isn't the fault of 'email' per se - it's because they just have too much work to do...
I know my workplace email rules probably can't be applied for someone who is in the public eye like Lawrence Lessig, since no doubt he gets emails from hundreds of people who can't be expected to follow the "rules". He could, however, have a "public" email and an assistant tasked to be the first line of defense
Luckily I happen to have a copy of MIL-STD-810F right here. In practice you have to take these standards with a grain of salt, but some funny things come to light when you compare what the article/Verizon's claims are vs. what the standard prescribes. Also, it's likely that many existing "non-ruggedized" cellphones would pass these tests.
... although they didn't bother with the 4 inches per hour ...
Water Resistance (Method 506.4, procedure I). The writeup says the test was designed to simulate rainfall of 2 inches per hour with a 40 MPH wind. This is fine if you take it by itself. However, if you look at section 2.3.2. of Method 506.4 which provides guidance on "Rainfall Rate", you get a blurb recommending a minimum rate 4 inches per hour "since it is not an uncommon occurrence and would provide a reasonable degree of confidence in the materiel." Hmm. Well, at least they got the wind velocity (40MPH) right. Is this really an exciting test though? My non-MIL-STD qualified cellphone (had it for two years so far) has gone through some harsh rainstorms without any problems.
Immersion (Method 512.4, procedure I). Maintaining a seal at 1m for 30 minutes is actually pretty good for a cellphone. It would be interesting to know if they bothered heating the test sample prior to the test (as is recommended). This creates a pressure differential as the case interior cools during immersion - and it will tend to pull water in through faulty or inadequate seals. It's a more realistic test than immersing a room temperature sample in room temperature water. Imagine if your cellphone was in your pocket before it tumbled out into a puddle on the trail. It would be near body temperature initially and then would start cooling to whatever the puddle temperature was. Probably they did this
Humidity (Method 507.4). I wonder why they did this test. They already established that the product exhibits decent water ingress protection with the immersion and spray tests, so maybe the only thing they'd gain would be the added pressure differentials from thermal cycling. It's unlikely that there are any exposed metal bits, so corrosion wouldn't be a concern. I suppose they could have coatings & paint for the plastics that they might evaluate for degradation. I can't see the appeal - again, just citing my run-of-the-mill phone which has gone through high humidity conditions without problems.
Salt Fog (Method 509.4). Salt fog and spray tests are funny because they are really hard to correlate with real-world exposure. You really have to strap down a sample out in the wild somewhere for a year to see what effects correlate with your lab experiment. I could see salt being a cosmetic issue for a mariner's cellphone - and possibly more damaging if seal integrity was weakened and salt started corroding metal on circuit boards, component leads, connectors, etc. This is a useful test to run, although using an arbitrary 48hrs doesn't tell you much. Also, you have to wonder if they only did 48hrs of straight spray as opposed to the suggested 24hr wet/24hr dry cycle. Either way, makers of equipment for marine environments often expose their products to many hundreds of salt fog test hours - so is 48hrs enough? Hard to say.
Drop (Method 516.5, procedure IV). This is a pretty straightforward test with so little detail that it would be tough to diverge from the procedure. Curiously they dropped from 1.5 meters instead of the suggested 1.22 meters. I guess this is a good thing. I've probably dropped my cellphone a couple of dozen times, although generally from waist-height, say about a meter, rather than 1.5 meters. It's been dropped on a variety of surfaces including concrete, wooden floors, tile and so on. Nicked and scarred, yes, but it still works. One interesting clause in the test method allows for splitting the 26-drop requirement among five test samples. Wonder if they did that.
Vibration (Method 514.5, procedure I, category 24). At every turn
I wish I was a policy wonk and that I could get articles out in the press in an attempt to swing public opinion, just like Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation. Hey, maybe I could do it right here and just respond to Tom.
"Tom, do you think I'm stupid? I mean, really Tom, who exactly is your audience in this article? Obviously you want to influence people and get them to _not_ support this 'net neutrality' thing. Clearly your audience couldn't have been me, since I had good chuckle reading about Junior and Suzie being denied their 'somethings' and EMT's losing the link (how many cc's Ringers Lactate, Rampart? Rampart come in!) as the rest of us 'bring down the Internet' to check out this season's lingerie offering. Why did I chuckle? Well, you have to admit, your scenario sounds silly. In fact, when you sit down and pull things apart, it doesn't make any sense at all.
First off, let's strip out some things that aren't relevant. I know you want to get everyone's knickers atwist by suggesting that not only will my TV, phone and computer go on the fritz because of a lingerie show, but also injured people will die with isolated EMT's and cops won't be able to call back up when things go bad.
Cops and EMT's need to rely on safety critical systems. This is a different animal than watching the superbowl or chatting with auntie on the phone. I am okay with cops and EMT's getting priority on _whatever_ system they choose to use for operations, but this part of your scenario is not about business and market economics - it's just to get a rise out of people. Peel it back even further and you become more of disappointment to me, because in the context of this discussion it implies you would advocate telco's charging government entities through the nose for these premium services. Well, cops get paid by us. So you want higher taxes? I thought the IPI would like lower burden on the taxpayer. Guess you are showing your true pro-business colors here. Fundamentally, no one is going to make a fuss if organizations that require redundant, highly reliable, fail safe (etc) communication systems get priority. Really though, Tom, I know you're not stupid and you know that folks are wary about putting things like this exclusively on packet systems, even if Junior and Suzie's parents have only a vague understanding of the issue. You are no doubt hoping that Junior and Suzie's parents won't notice a little fear-mongering.
Okay, so let's just restrict it to the disruption of my superbowl viewing pleasure. And to make you feel better, Tom, I'm not being entirely above boards in my argument here - I don't even like football - but for the sake of discussion, let's move on.
So now you've got the situation where my entertainment or personal communication systems are disrupted. Okay. I don't need to be in 2009 to wait for that - it happens right now Tom! Either way though, you would therefore like the telco's to be able to charge a premium to somebody to make sure that some 'content' actually gets through reliably. If you were telling the truth, I would agree, and say, okay Tom, if the telco's can reliably deliver the superbowl to me I might be willing to pay a little more, and maybe the NFL and the networks would too. And maybe we'd all be better off for it. Certainly we'd want this to be a market-driven affair - and the telco providing the best service at the best cost (with some margin for them) would end up winning the most customers. No need to legislate here, I agree!
Oh dear Tom, we know this if far from reality, you and I, don't we? Truth is that the telcos would actually prefer legislation that locks in their ability to offer and charge for tiered services - contrary to what you are saying - they want legislation - the just don't want the net-neutrality legislation! They don't want free market forces to prevail which would, they think, drive them further into the commodity side of things - because as you correctly noted - content is king. No one ca
>booze their way to a six-figure corporate job
If Dubya can do it, so can I!
I love the system because there is an actual case to be dismissed.
Call me a starry-eyed dreamer, but I love the American system. I love that there are laws, and that despite the fact that people try to circumvent them from time to time - even with the best of intentions, the law eventually catches up with them.
...?
The system is great because it lets citizens participate in the creation and modification of laws over time - so we have a hand in shaping the ever-evolving legal framework underpinning our democracy.
I'm not a legal expert, but even with my layman's understanding of the issue, it seems that some bounds have been exceeded and a correction is in order. I'm not crazy about excessive litigation, but if the executives at Verizon and the others illegally provided my phone records to the NSA out of some kind of misguided patriotism - then they are not only bad business leaders but bad citizens. They've let down their employees, their shareholders and their fellow citizens. They should be held accountable.
This isn't immediately about whether tracking citizens' communications is right or wrong. It's about breaking laws. If at some point in the future we want to grant the government the right to track our phone calls without court orders, or whatever, then we should amend the laws accordingly.
Anyway, I'm calling my rep & senator and voicing my opinion. I wonder what conclusions the NSA will make over phone data over the next while. Maybe that people don't like being monitored by government without permission
This makes me both laugh and collapse into a fetal position at the same time.
I used to get upset about corporate psycho-babble, but it doesn't bother me so much anymore. Over the years, I've seen so many "paradigm shifters", "enterprise enablers", etc. crash in such spectacular ways that when I'm confronted when a particularly slick-tongued buzzword generator, I just smile and get on with it because I know that unless they have substance to back up their style they are just going to end up being someone's lunch.
Eventually the rubber hits the road and woe unto the clueless who end up with treadmarks on their heads.
I use corporate psycho-babble when necessary, but always back up these utterances with hard data. It's useful knowing the language of the enemy.
The 'gay' tag is like, uber geigh ...
They shall never penetrate the security of the Shadow Council, aye, so as long as Gul'dan draws breath!
... over tagging a few Christians? Some of them are pretty hot ...
As frustrating as it sounds, there are even further costs being added as a result of delays caused by clearance backlogs. Overworked, beleagured agents are having to process many more people for clearances now. You would think this would be a good thing, making sure that people are trustworthy. Unfortunately, to investigate the slim, slim likelihood that one out of some large number of people is untrustworthy, the vast majority of those who are trustworthy are seeing huge delays in the completion of their clearance process.
If you've been abroad recently, or have any relatives living abroad - don't even think about trying to work in a secure environment these days.
I couldn't agree with you more! I have a 20GB jukebox and the interface drives me crazy. It's great to have my entire music collection on the thing, but I wish they had made it easier to actually get at a song I want to listen to.
I nearly snorted milk out of my noise reading about the patent, thinking of all the times I've cursed Creative.
I hope you are right that they will be using solid state memory as opposed to a rotating disk, but not because of the physical size. Microdrives are tiny these days - they fit nicely in the palm of your hand.
The reason I hope you are right is that from time to time I drop my mobile, but it keeps on working. Things with moving mechanical parts are generally less reliable. I wonder how many times I could drop a mobile with a disk before the head crashed on the platter and caused irreversible damage.
It would be interesting to see Apple's RMA data for iPods, although I bet people are less likely to drop their precious mp3 players than their mobiles (at least I am).
Hmm - interesting. Actually my Motorola seems to 'learn' new words after I use them a few times. So far this has only been proper names and the odd bit of slang - I imagine 'l8r' would be no different from any other collection of letters I routinely use. Hmm.
I've had a Motorola V550 for about 6 months that provides 'iTAP' entry which I suppose is Motorola's fancy name for predictive text entry. I begrudgingly gave it a try after a friend suggested it. I do agree that once you get used to it, it dramatically increases your speed of texting.
Prior to that I had a Sony Ericsson for about two years that had T9, although I hadn't bothered trying that entry mode.
I suppose I could further increase my speed by relying on shorthand, but I can't bring myself to butcher the language like that (eg. c u l8r!)
I suppose my reluctance to fully embrace text is evidence that I'm an old fogey. Unfortunately, there are only a few people in my social circle that I'd ever feel the need to text - and they don't really use text messages that much either. Furthermore, most of them live in completely different time zones.
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At least you've been honest enough to disclose your relationship with the company. Bearing that relationship in mind, I'm skeptical about your objectivity. This product sounds like a neat gimmick, but I doubt it would be particularly reliable as you claim. The GPS constellation is always 'turned on' and the satellites are never moved from their orbits - unlike access points.
but war & pestilence will do if you're in a pinch 5pm on xmas eve
I think the only way to understand what it's like arguing with a creationist is to - argue with a creationist! Luckily, I've found a few captive ones you can cut your teeth on. Head over to this thread on the Young America's Foundation message board (giving young conservatives a fun and safe place to rap!) Basically, every argument with a creationist ends with something to the effect of "Because the Bible says so". If you do end up registering on the site to have some fun - word to the wise - don't use personal attacks to get your point across. Just like with Bush's campaign rallies - you'll be banned! Enjoy!
This was in the 1st Edition of the Deities & Demigods manual, but the 2nd Edition of AD&D overall. A little confusing, isn't it?
There were actually a few changes made from edition to edition of the Deities & Demigod manual. I believe there were some copyright issues over the inclusion Melnibonean & Cthulhu mythos. I've seen some of the 1st edition Deities & Demi on eBay and gave some thought to indulging my inner geek ... and getting to know Loviatar again ...
Just as long as they know about the hazards of "Mummy Crotch Rot" and STL (Sexually Transmissible Lycanthropy).