To me, a 12-month plan *is* an yearly plan. You can may pay monthly, quarterly or whatever; but if you're "locked in" for a year, it's a 'yearly plan' not a 'monthly plan'.
Tracphone works for many people who don't need a ton of minutes every month-- most people don't need to pay 300 minutes a month. I use my cell phone for work-- people call me all the time for emergencies, and I hardly ever go over 300 minutes.
With Tracphone, you can pay $200 and get a decent phone and 300 minutes for a years worth of service-- no extra fees except for the sales tax.
In comparison, if you choose a typical plan through a major provider, it's hard to find anything cheaper then a $400/year.
would like to see phones unlinked from the service providers
Well, you *can* buy your own phone and have a phone service plan seperately-- it's just that the plan providers provide a free or cheap phone if you sign up for a 1-year or 2-year contract. The month-to-month plans don't seem like a good deal.
But truthfully, it's hard to compare each plan side by side, because each plan comes with dozens of little exceptions and little add-on charges. Some websites, like Letstalk.com seem to leave out all sorts of important information-- sometimes I wonder if Letstalk is owned by the Cell Phone providers themselves.
I'm interested in how people get one of those phones from Amazon with 100% rebates, WITHOUT signing up for any sort of phone plan.
At my last 3 jobs (Over 4 years), it was required to take these things. Along with the occasional piss-in-the-cup drug test. At many workplaces, companies are running background checks on existing employees. The tests are a "requirement of your continued employment here at the company".
On the other hand, I've installed Suse, RedHat Enterprise, Fedora & Debian on dozens of boxes. Ubuntu is the only one who autodetected all of my video settings correctly.
I actually think this much to do with the good work done by the x.org folks, as well as work done by
For example, Debian "stable" still uses Xfree86, and Xfree86 couldn't detect it's left nut without editing the Xfree86 conf file.
Fedora at this time used an experimental version of X.org , wheras Ubuntu had a polished & more stable version.
RedHat used a stable version of X.org (maybe it was still Xfree86), but the config tools screwed up the config so badly taht X wouldn't start.
Suse had some propietary tools which mucked up the display.
The worst part about OSS election software is that someone else runs 'make', you run 'make install', but the install process installs too much crap and trashes some of your local files.
Then, you try to 'make uninstall' but the process fails halfway through and so you're left with a system in an unknown state, with rogue files hanging out everyyear.
But as Thomas Jefferson said, it's doubful that your current system will remain stable forever. Every once in a while you need to Reinstall the Operating System.
Where do you think your "Japanese" or "Korean" car is made? There's a good chance it's made in the U.S.
Excellent statement. I've been saying this for years... I can buy a Ford, which is manufacured from components from the US, Mexico, Japan & Korea; or I can buy a Toyota, which is *also* made from the same countries.
It's about getting a service from abroad with most probably lower costs.
Some costs like labor & rent may be lower. Other costs, such as communication, are much higher.
It is hard enough for manager to communicate their technical needs to a technical staff when they are sitting in the same room, working on the same whiteboard, with the same set of requirements in front of them. This same process becomes much more difficult when you are dealing with staff who speak a different language, work in a different timezone, who have different coding standards and who can only communicate over the phone or some kludgy computer tools.
There are too many companies today who think you can treat the employees (including managers) as a unit of business logic-- they think you can assign task X to any person who fits the "job category", and they can get the job done. This is usually the result of an manager who does not understand the details in the project-- The devil is always in the details.
I've known several dozen large projects where the technical staff was in Europe, Australia, India or some other country; and the managing staff was in the US--- only 1-2 of those those projects suceeded. The rest usually died a slow lingering death. The costs looked good up front, but that's because they managers underestimated all of the inefficiencies in the outsourcing.
Ok, maybe I'm totally out of the loop now. I was even thinking about Humboldt... Cal Poly I could see having a ton of laptops, but not Humboldt. Shows you what I know...
Although maybe you see more laptops in for repair because laptops are more prone to error? And it's easier to haul a laptop down to the repair shop then lugging a big old desktop.
"Is that Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2, ma'am? Are you running with the new MS Office extensions? Did MS Media Player modify the settings in the registry?"
You answered your own question. "Many" families may indeed buy a laptop before the student went to college, but that's a far cry from "Most" students owning laptops before they go to school.
I know very few college students who owned a laptop before going to college. Most of them have a desktop, because laptops are still too expensive and underpowered.
If a school fails to provide the students with adequate computing facilities, can the students pay less to attend the college? Or is this simply a way for the university to reduce costs and pass them onto the student as a "stealth fee"?
If I pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to school, I expect to have decent facilities. Do I need to provide my own chair in the classroom next?
At some point I read a statement from Take Two saying "We didn't know the code was in there, therefore we didn't violate any of decency laws".
I'm totally open to the idea that they put the code in there on purpose, but in that case maybe they really do deserve to get sued by the shareholders. They didn't remove the code.
No. The biggest mistake they made was allowing the Hot Coffee content in the game in the first place. There are many software tools which let you keep track of what code made it into the game, when it got there, who put it there, what's the test case, etc. I do this all the fucking time-- it's not simple, but it ain't rocket science.
If they did proper auditing they would have seen this mysterious chunk of data or code and could have removed it before shipping a hundred thousand units.
Free market! How dare you suggest we aren't getting the best of the best service! Why, I can get a cell phone plan in the States for $30/month + $10/month in extra fees. I go to Europe and they pay 10-Euros/month.
Maybe they don't want to pay $25.00 a month (Plus the FUSF fee, plus the taxes at $49.99/month, plus some sales tax for some equipment which you never used) to have the ability to browse an Internet full of advertisements.
Back in my day, a cup of coffee cost $0.50. Now it costs $2.50 at Starbucks and they burn the fucking beans. $2.50 for burnt coffee? And you get the pleasure of standing in line for 10 minutes, because all of the other coffee shops shut down.
"It's burnt coffee at Starbucks, let's be honest about it. If you get burnt coffee in a coffee shop, you call a cop. You say, "It's the bottom of the pot. I don't drink from the bottom of the pot. But when it's burnt at Starbucks, they say, "Oh, it's a blend. It's a blend." It's a special bean from Argentina....."
Not everybody lives in the service area for PacBell DSL.
And not everybody is savvy or patient enough to get the $15/month plan.
I try to renew at $15/month , and the dumbass on the phone says I can only renew for $35/month. I call again, and I can renew for $25/month but only if it's the second tuesday of the month and my right foot wearing a shoe. What to non-techies do in this situation?
And yet that is what most Debian Stable and Ubuntu users do for new third-party products.
If you want PHP5 for Debian, you need to download it from some unofficial Debian site. Some people know the site and trust the packages. To me, it's a "Random site".
I didn't say "trading". I said "manufacturer"-- companies who own factories in China, and who willingly or unknowingly participate in China's horrible treatment of the people who work in the factories.
And yes, as a consumer I am also partially responsible for this mess. My matches are American, my shoes are German, my desk is from eastern Europe, my Craftsman cabinet is American made (wierd!) -- but in most cases my choice is to either buy a Chinese made good, or not buy anything at all.
But they do have a moral imperative and a duty not to promote dictatorship.
Sure they do, as much as any American company or person. But why should Google be singled out while 90% of my consumer goods come from China? Many of those manufacturers have willingly or unwittingly participated in things worse then censorship.
Surviving members of a project generally have a better idea than the community at large.
Yes, but all of the LPR developers were killed off Unix sysadmin who was driven into madness after configuring, troubleshooting, configuring, troubleshooting lpr onto his systme.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it's a difference in terminology.
To me, a 12-month plan *is* an yearly plan. You can may pay monthly, quarterly or whatever; but if you're "locked in" for a year, it's a 'yearly plan' not a 'monthly plan'.
Tracphone works for many people who don't need a ton of minutes every month-- most people don't need to pay 300 minutes a month. I use my cell phone for work-- people call me all the time for emergencies, and I hardly ever go over 300 minutes.
With Tracphone, you can pay $200 and get a decent phone and 300 minutes for a years worth of service-- no extra fees except for the sales tax.
In comparison, if you choose a typical plan through a major provider, it's hard to find anything cheaper then a $400/year.
would like to see phones unlinked from the service providers
Well, you *can* buy your own phone and have a phone service plan seperately-- it's just that the plan providers provide a free or cheap phone if you sign up for a 1-year or 2-year contract. The month-to-month plans don't seem like a good deal.
But truthfully, it's hard to compare each plan side by side, because each plan comes with dozens of little exceptions and little add-on charges. Some websites, like Letstalk.com seem to leave out all sorts of important information-- sometimes I wonder if Letstalk is owned by the Cell Phone providers themselves.
I'm interested in how people get one of those phones from Amazon with 100% rebates, WITHOUT signing up for any sort of phone plan.
The phone is targeted for emerging markets, where people don't like to tie themselves into monthly contracts,
Am I wrong, or do they mean yearly contracts?
And you only get 75 frames per second... why IS that?
Where do things like arbitrary background, credit & criminal checks fit in, I wonder.
At my last 3 jobs (Over 4 years), it was required to take these things. Along with the occasional piss-in-the-cup drug test. At many workplaces, companies are running background checks on existing employees. The tests are a "requirement of your continued employment here at the company".
Does this make people feel like a criminal?
On the other hand, I've installed Suse, RedHat Enterprise, Fedora & Debian on dozens of boxes. Ubuntu is the only one who autodetected all of my video settings correctly.
I actually think this much to do with the good work done by the x.org folks, as well as work done by
For example, Debian "stable" still uses Xfree86, and Xfree86 couldn't detect it's left nut without editing the Xfree86 conf file.
Fedora at this time used an experimental version of X.org , wheras Ubuntu had a polished & more stable version.
RedHat used a stable version of X.org (maybe it was still Xfree86), but the config tools screwed up the config so badly taht X wouldn't start.
Suse had some propietary tools which mucked up the display.
The worst part about OSS election software is that someone else runs 'make', you run 'make install', but the install process installs too much crap and trashes some of your local files.
Then, you try to 'make uninstall' but the process fails halfway through and so you're left with a system in an unknown state, with rogue files hanging out everyyear.
But as Thomas Jefferson said, it's doubful that your current system will remain stable forever. Every once in a while you need to Reinstall the Operating System.
Apple must not have greased the story's author with enough free shit.
Ew... so that means they grease other authors who pay for the shit?
Where do you think your "Japanese" or "Korean" car is made? There's a good chance it's made in the U.S.
Excellent statement. I've been saying this for years... I can buy a Ford, which is manufacured from components from the US, Mexico, Japan & Korea; or I can buy a Toyota, which is *also* made from the same countries.
It's about getting a service from abroad with most probably lower costs.
Some costs like labor & rent may be lower. Other costs, such as communication, are much higher.
It is hard enough for manager to communicate their technical needs to a technical staff when they are sitting in the same room, working on the same whiteboard, with the same set of requirements in front of them. This same process becomes much more difficult when you are dealing with staff who speak a different language, work in a different timezone, who have different coding standards and who can only communicate over the phone or some kludgy computer tools.
There are too many companies today who think you can treat the employees (including managers) as a unit of business logic-- they think you can assign task X to any person who fits the "job category", and they can get the job done. This is usually the result of an manager who does not understand the details in the project-- The devil is always in the details.
I've known several dozen large projects where the technical staff was in Europe, Australia, India or some other country; and the managing staff was in the US--- only 1-2 of those those projects suceeded. The rest usually died a slow lingering death. The costs looked good up front, but that's because they managers underestimated all of the inefficiencies in the outsourcing.
Ok, maybe I'm totally out of the loop now. I was even thinking about Humboldt... Cal Poly I could see having a ton of laptops, but not Humboldt. Shows you what I know...
Although maybe you see more laptops in for repair because laptops are more prone to error? And it's easier to haul a laptop down to the repair shop then lugging a big old desktop.
"Is that Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2, ma'am? Are you running with the new MS Office extensions? Did MS Media Player modify the settings in the registry?"
You answered your own question. "Many" families may indeed buy a laptop before the student went to college, but that's a far cry from "Most" students owning laptops before they go to school.
I know very few college students who owned a laptop before going to college. Most of them have a desktop, because laptops are still too expensive and underpowered.
If a school fails to provide the students with adequate computing facilities, can the students pay less to attend the college? Or is this simply a way for the university to reduce costs and pass them onto the student as a "stealth fee"?
If I pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to school, I expect to have decent facilities. Do I need to provide my own chair in the classroom next?
At some point I read a statement from Take Two saying "We didn't know the code was in there, therefore we didn't violate any of decency laws".
I'm totally open to the idea that they put the code in there on purpose, but in that case maybe they really do deserve to get sued by the shareholders. They didn't remove the code.
No. The biggest mistake they made was allowing the Hot Coffee content in the game in the first place. There are many software tools which let you keep track of what code made it into the game, when it got there, who put it there, what's the test case, etc. I do this all the fucking time-- it's not simple, but it ain't rocket science.
If they did proper auditing they would have seen this mysterious chunk of data or code and could have removed it before shipping a hundred thousand units.
So what's up south of the border?
Free market! How dare you suggest we aren't getting the best of the best service! Why, I can get a cell phone plan in the States for $30/month + $10/month in extra fees. I go to Europe and they pay 10-Euros/month.
Those communist fools!
And someone slipped me a Canadian nickel today...
Old people...
Maybe they don't want to pay $25.00 a month (Plus the FUSF fee, plus the taxes at $49.99/month, plus some sales tax for some equipment which you never used) to have the ability to browse an Internet full of advertisements.
Back in my day, a cup of coffee cost $0.50. Now it costs $2.50 at Starbucks and they burn the fucking beans. $2.50 for burnt coffee? And you get the pleasure of standing in line for 10 minutes, because all of the other coffee shops shut down.
"It's burnt coffee at Starbucks, let's be honest about it. If you get burnt coffee in a coffee shop, you call a cop. You say, "It's the bottom of the pot. I don't drink from the bottom of the pot. But when it's burnt at Starbucks, they say, "Oh, it's a blend. It's a blend." It's a special bean from Argentina....."
Not everybody lives in the service area for PacBell DSL.
And not everybody is savvy or patient enough to get the $15/month plan.
I try to renew at $15/month , and the dumbass on the phone says I can only renew for $35/month. I call again, and I can renew for $25/month but only if it's the second tuesday of the month and my right foot wearing a shoe. What to non-techies do in this situation?
Arg, I meant to say it isn't in "Debian Stable", and it wasn't in Debian Testing the last time I checked.
Although, it's hard to research this when the http://packages.debian.org/ is sick.
And yet that is what most Debian Stable and Ubuntu users do for new third-party products.
If you want PHP5 for Debian, you need to download it from some unofficial Debian site. Some people know the site and trust the packages. To me, it's a "Random site".
This is a very common practice.
I don't see how that necessarily imprisons, oppresses or hurts anyone.
That's either a very clever and dry joke, or you're an idiot.
http://www.google.com/search?q=tiananmen+square
trading with a dictatorship
I didn't say "trading". I said "manufacturer"-- companies who own factories in China, and who willingly or unknowingly participate in China's horrible treatment of the people who work in the factories.
And yes, as a consumer I am also partially responsible for this mess. My matches are American, my shoes are German, my desk is from eastern Europe, my Craftsman cabinet is American made (wierd!) -- but in most cases my choice is to either buy a Chinese made good, or not buy anything at all.
But they do have a moral imperative and a duty not to promote dictatorship.
Sure they do, as much as any American company or person. But why should Google be singled out while 90% of my consumer goods come from China? Many of those manufacturers have willingly or unwittingly participated in things worse then censorship.
Surviving members of a project generally have a better idea than the community at large.
Yes, but all of the LPR developers were killed off Unix sysadmin who was driven into madness after configuring, troubleshooting, configuring, troubleshooting lpr onto his systme.