Hmm, Journalism Major, just looked it up at a nearby college, Miami University of Ohio, hmm, Journalism, part of the English department. Hmm, I reiterate English Majors!http://www.units.muohio.edu/english/People/Faculty /journalism.html Note the top of the page.
Department of English
Faculty
Journalism
This would go to indicate that Journalism is a subset of English majors, would it not?
Sorry, my sister, an experienced professional editor, frequently spoke of newsroom personnel bragging about how bad their math skills were, and who understood science less than whom. I figured that someone from a newsroom might have an insight into what the journalism field is like more than the average/. reader. My other writing friends echo the same sentiments.
Really, how long do you expect it to take for technical news to hit non techies? Now, right on the news, with the weather report, is the mention of a new virus, worm, phishing scam, or whatever. Most of which a/. reader has known about the vulnerability far longer than reality TV watching morons.
The media is run by English majors who brag to each other who understands math/science less than the others! Don't expect an English major to understand tech stuff. You wouldn't, perhaps, remember proper gerund useage, would you?
What would be inherently wrong with IndiaNet ChinaNet or SriLankaNet, if they should choose to make their own network? Surely, some people in IndiaNet territory may want access to the old Internet, but some may not.
Actually, by now, after having access to the full Internet, a smaller Internet may have problems with their customer base wanting access to the old Internet, despite of the fact that their country doesn't control the domain structure. I don't suppose that it is the people but, the powers that be that have problems with who controls the Internet. As with most people, if the service works, the people are happy, they don't care who's behind the curtain, pulling the strings.
Is your buddy list NOT stored on AOL's servers for an AIM ID? They are providing you this service for free. Why can they not try to earn some ad revenue from their user base?
Gee, we set up our 4 kids, and 5 of the neighbor's kids with Linux for day to day use. All of the machines available are in constant use. Oops, sorry that I didn't realize that kids are too stupid to adapt.
At least with *nix file permissions, each child has private file ownership, and their siblings can't delete each other's homework for more space for MP3's.
I suppose that we could set the kids up with a virus, worm and spyware vulnerable OS if that is really what you think is best.
AC said, "If liberals are bleeding hearts pandering to the lowest common denominators, conservatives are greedy savages who only pander to themselves."
By your very definition of conservatives as greedy savages, they would, in fact pander to the reality TV watching, stupid masses! Where there is interest, there is a market. Building a better mousetrap won't necessarily bring the world to your door. Case in point, Microsoft. They have never made a better mousetrap, but they have great distribution channels and a great legal department.
The previous poster stated, "Most eggs are wasted."
While this is ion fact true, this is at a rate of 1 per month, NOT the numbers harvested with the drugs used for egg donation. If she has not had any children of her own, here in the US she would not be considered in any egg donation scenario, beyond that for a close relative.
It didn't take much to make me switch from MS to Linux.
In college I used Unix, DOS, and Mac. (I was ok with using DOS when it came packaged with GW basic to do your repetitive tasks in a quick and dirty way. When they removed that, it was a rip-off.) I have never had any partiality toward any MS product, but damn many experiences pushing me away from them. I college I studied C in a Unix environment. It worked. That's a good thing to my mind. When I went on to take a second semester of C, the school had switched to MS Quick C. I had used Boorland's Turbo C, and it was fine. I had used the C compiler with the Unix install that we had. Then I had the most bug ridden piece of crap that I had ever seen land in my lap. The examples in the Official MS manual would not compile! I had never before seen such a dreadful piece of software in my life. That soured me against MS, the company a bit.
In that same era, if I wanted a word processor, I headed to the Mac labs, not the MS based labs. If I needed to program a robot, and directly control I/O, I was in the MS realm, because control of RS232 was well documented, and part of my curriculum.
Fast forward many years. My husband and I were buying computers. (Plural, as we don't play well with others...) He got a 60 MHz Intel box, I got a 60 MHz Mac. (Yes, I know, ancient history here, but we are leading somewhere here, I promise!) We had our machines set up. My Mac just worked. I used it. I worked, I played, and it simply worked. My husband is far more geeky that I could ever be, but he could never get his MS box to do quite what he wanted it to do. He extolled the virtues of his more documented software and hardware, but still his machine had failure after failure. It lead to my anti-Windows saying, "It's Sunday, time to reload Windows!"
My husband kept incrementally upgrading hardware on his Intel box, not a luxury that I had on my Mac. I held on to that 60 MHz machine until it was way out of date. I started using some of his discarded hardware for some kids software. Eventually my old Mac was put out to pasture, and I was migrated to faster hardware, and buggier software. But, as I couldn't afford the Apple upgrade path, I considered myself lucky for having been able to use a stable OS in my own home for as long as I could. (In all of the time that I used my Mac, I never caught anything. There may be Mac viruses, but they weren't prevalent on the BBS's and later the Internet. I have no first hand experience with them.) Once I was using MS for daily use, I cursed the BSOD multiple times per day. I dreaded the bloody thing. When I was offered a FREE version of *nix, I thought I had died and gone to heaven! I was rid of the MS nonsense.
Fast forward a few more years. I was editing a print media newsletter for a 300+ family home schooling group. (As this is a group with many educators, there was a disproportionately high percentage of Mac users. Our group was roughly split 50/50) Despite the submission guidelines that always specified plain text email, people routinely submitted from whatever they had, be it from MS Word for Win, MS Word for Mac, or any other word processor that they had lying about. The previous editors all warned me of this. I was using Star Office. It was great for importing from other formats. Though in theory Word for Win was supposed to open in Word for Mac, and the reverse, in that era, it did not in fact work. Whereas, here I sat with Sun's Star Office, and I could read both. That really made for a positive experience with the Linux world for me. It didn't matter what the data was, or where it came from, I could read it.
Fast forward a few more years. The kids needed Windows software for some educational software. (They had to log in to the system with IE running under Windows.) Take into account that they had a machine far newer and faster than mine. I am not a computer user, I am a computer abuser. Normally on my Linux box, desktop #
Well, with many diseases, treatments vary a great deal by country. Some times knowing what else is used and available elsewhere can be helpful.
Of course, there are other great elements to online support groups.
anonymity
immediacy
There can be great comfort, after a diagnosis to talk to someone who has been through the ropes. In a support group you can freely complain about having a bad day, when you know that your family doesn't want to hear it again. Your fellow sufferers can commiserate with you, and sometimes offer productive suggestions.
Great, so companies currently sink tons of money into research, that may, or may not lead to a viable product. So, strip companies of the potenital to recoup their investments, and just watch R&D completely dry up.
Yeah, socialize it all, then let's see the stagnation of research. Why are people so averse to seeing a person, or a company profit from ideas and the work that they put into them in order to bring them into fruition.
by Phylter Saturday March 19, @08:51AM
Your site is geared towards what could be condsidered early adopters.
I am also considered an early adopter so the fact that I use Firefox doesn't count as much, so I'm told.
Well, I spend a few too many hours per week with what would be considered the non-traditional users. I spend many hours on in moms groups, textile craft groups and other female centric mailing lists. After a million and one complaints/pleas for help from people in the Win/IE realm, there are a few of us converting a few people at a time to the other side of the fence. I keep seeing links to Firefox in what people were considering the soccer mom demographic.
Plus, as long as you keep nursing at the MS teat, you are assured a job in the tech support industry, as you are sure to have many, many fires to fight each day, to justify your presence. Sometimes it is wise to build a fire break, unless you just get a rush from watching things burn. In that case, keep the status quo, and pass the marshmallows!
As a person with WAY too many Yahooey group subscriptions, I love the out of context ads. They TRY to place appropriate ads by key words, but at times they fall flat on their faces.
Some of my favorite bad ad placement examples
Online dating ads posted to stay at home moms groups - this demographic is primariy married, and rather traditionaly conservative. I'd love to show the dating service where their ad dollars are going!
Ads for low fat, high sugar psuedo-foods posted to low carb, or whole foods dieting groups. How many people who are following The Paleo Diet, or Neanderthin are going to buy prepackaged diet shakes? I think that's like trying to sell pork chops at the Orthodox temple.
Ads for high priced luxury items in frugality groups. Gee, for the set that is trying to figure out how to squeeze another $3 out of their weekly food budget really serious candidates for a Rolex?
Ads for shall we say, adult content popping up on child centered lists.
As a group owner/moderator, for the free service I wish that they would give a list of acceptable ad categories. For free service, select at least 5, or something of that ilk. It may work out better for all involved.
The major hole in the notion of handing out the keys is that if they do SELL them (They had only leased them up until this point) The would have to make parts for a number of years to support the vehicles. The auto industry is under regulations that require them to do such things, unlike the computer industry. Imagine the odd, proprietary hardware that you have sitting around your workroom, all having to be supported for 10 years. How much would that squelch innovation. I think that GM's original decision to release their vehicle on a lease only basis was wise.
As for the wonderful mileage that everyone's posting on the hybrids, we get close to that with a beat up, old Ford Festiva, without the problem of having to charge up a huge battery. No special training for the fire department on the jaws of life, just get out a spatula! (Or the shop-vac) I won't discuss the milage on our other vehicle. {whistle and twiddle thumbs, trying to look innocent}
Amazon already asks if you wish to receive reminder notices for events. If you make a profile, you can choose to get such notices. "Special Occasion Reminders" are listed under "Gift Services"
Actually, after browsing Amazon a bit too much over a period of years, they give me some excellent suggestions. Their predictive lists are good. I shop for me, and a husband, and 4 boys, so I suppose that anything that they list would hit one of us. I have eclectic interests, and vacillate from one hobby to another and back again. They always pop up with something that I gasp, "Ohhh! I want THAT!"
A friend has a whole computer lab of ancient computers fired up in his basement. I walked into the room and was foaming at the mouth in half a second. I asked him how he could tollerate the dreadful shriek. To which I received a puzzled look and a, "What shriek?" The flash and flicker was about as annoying as the sound. Hmm, he gets these cast off computers really cheap, wonder why?
I've read articles about women who can't bear to work on, or around computers, and it seems to be those with very accute high frequency hearing. I suppose that it makes employment for these women pretty tough, as computers are bloody everywhere.
Women are suppossed to have better hearing in the high frequency range anyway. I suppose that men lose their high frequency hearing to drown out their wives, perhaps? Pity my unlucky sod of a husband, I don't have a high pitch voice. He'll have to lose quite a bit to drown me out.
Back to way back up the thread, on flicker. Is there anyone who can tollerate the gawd awful flicker of those flurescent bulbs that are made to fit the standard incandescent fixtures? Shudder! Those stayed in my kitchen under a week. I may be cheap, and want to cut utility bills, but convulsions are too high a price.
museumpeace Tuesday March 15, @04:36PM:...If you happen to view a monitor from such a distance that the space between even numbered [or harmonics ] rasters approximately projects to the retina at the spacing be individual receptors [rods? cones? idunno] you might undo some of the interleaving effect....
Rods sense light
Cones sense color
OT maybe, but trivia, males have more rods, females have more cones. (No, this is not a 4th grade joke. Look it up!) This is why males tend to have less acute color vision, and females are more prone to nightblindness.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling! They're out to get me! (I used to be paranoid, but now I know that everyone's out to get me!)
You have to love the panic mongers. If you have a deep, dark secret, don't shout it in a public place, don't share it on a public network. It just takes a bit of common sense. Yeah, they could monitor me, but is there anything that they'd want to know?
Then there is the logistics of the matter. I know that they could filter out 99% of my conversations. I know many people like myself who just leave their chat clients up as a sort of answering machine or phone replacement. If you have a potentially sleeping baby in the house, or are working on a vexing problem from which you cannot be distracted, ringing the phone for minor things is considered rude. IM is a safe, quiet conversation. I can speak to a friend, and come off as semi-articulate and intelligent, and they can't hear me yelling at my 4 kids in the background.
A typical conversation of mine:
me: How's your day going?
DH: Ok, I guess.
me: Boss being a twit?
DH: Yeah, BRB.
me: You going to be home on time?
DH has gone away
DH: You still there?
me: Oh, hi! You there?
me: If your're there can you pick up a loaf of bread on your way home?
Of course, "pick up bread" is code for pseudo ephedrine, coffee filters, drain cleaner, ether....
People can intercept your email too, so what? The implementation of Martial Law, oh, I mean The Patriot Act, has extended the government's wire tap privileges further into the phone system, with less and less of a reason needed. What about the security of cell phones? And how many of these panic mongers don't think twice before using a regular cordless phone at home. I can tell you from experience that these are not secure! I had to quit using a baby monitor, as I was sick of listening to my neighbor's late night drunken sobs to her friends about her husband. Hmm, the things that you learn when you listen to people's private calls. That was a morbid fascination for a short time, but it wore off quickly.
Much of it comes down to the fact that monitoring most people's communication would be a crashing bore. Sure, you could write content filters, as you do for spam detection, but how many false negatives, and how many false positives do you have with that? I'd expect the same level of difficulty monitoring IM's
IM is great for jotting off a few thoughts. It's not for exchanging company secrets. If you want to do that, at least use a private network, or better yet, meet in person. IM is great for multi-tasking. As you sit on hold, or buried in the 7th level of voice mail hell, you can carry on a conversation, or give and get tech support. "What was the command to fix that problem on my machine again?" copy, click, paste, Fixed! "Thanks again!" Do you realize how much easier that former scenario is than saying "Pipe, that straight line, on the key over the enter key, do you see it? It didn't work? Did you hit shift? Is the line vertical, or slanted?...(continue ad infinitum)"
With IM, you can, potentially help multiple people at one time as well. (All while playing a game of whatever keeps you from slitting your wrists on a daily basis.) As your minions actually attempt to execute what you have given them, there is invariably some time wasted. If you were on the phone with them, you'd have to hang on while they check to see if the fix worked. This way, they are still in your que, and yet you can move on to someone else.
There is also another great element to IM on a public server, with public profiles. People can, if they wish, put things in their public profile that would bring together people with like interests from around the world. I have developed many online friends due to one common interest or another listed on a public profile. Sure, for the
I live in a backward county that still uses paper and pencil ballots. When I watch the news on election night, our precincts have a greater percentage of the people voting than other parts of the area, and our results are always in promptly.
I can see on my ballot exactly where I marked. They use ebony pencils, which do not erase gracefully, so a poll employee would have to work hard to even have a potential of erasing and revoting my ballot. (If a voter does make an error, they can go to a poll worker to have the ballot voided, and have a new one issued, and they'll check off a new serial number)
This is a technology that works, and I have heard of far fewer challenges in the pencil ballot areas than in the punch card or lever areas.
Right now my state is airing comercials for the people in the punch card areas, teaching them how to look at their ballots when they are done. I wonder what that cost.
I most certainly don't want e-voting. That is just too bloody easy to tamper with. Yeah, can you see it now, run it on Windows CE! LOL! Insert a virus that changes all votes to George McGovern!
When I was a kid, my friend's mother was a paramedic. She carried a scanner to church. They sat on an aisle, in the back, and kept the volume down, but as a paramedic, she was always on call, therefore the radio had to be there. The same applies to some people and their phones, but now, I do realize that most cell phones are used more for social, rather than emergency use.
It could easily have been that dice that he uses to decide his position on complex issues, or the coin that he uses for deciding his position on simpler issues. When he's really flummoxed he gets out the Ouija board.
Slashdot Mirror
You, my dear, have never worked in a small, non-union factory, have you?
Hmm, Journalism Major, just looked it up at a nearby college, Miami University of Ohio, hmm, Journalism, part of the English department. Hmm, I reiterate English Majors! http://www.units.muohio.edu/english/People/Faculty /journalism.html Note the top of the page.
Department of English
Faculty
Journalism
This would go to indicate that Journalism is a subset of English majors, would it not?
Sorry, my sister, an experienced professional editor, frequently spoke of newsroom personnel bragging about how bad their math skills were, and who understood science less than whom. I figured that someone from a newsroom might have an insight into what the journalism field is like more than the average /. reader. My other writing friends echo the same sentiments.
Really, how long do you expect it to take for technical news to hit non techies? Now, right on the news, with the weather report, is the mention of a new virus, worm, phishing scam, or whatever. Most of which a /. reader has known about the vulnerability far longer than reality TV watching morons.
The media is run by English majors who brag to each other who understands math/science less than the others! Don't expect an English major to understand tech stuff. You wouldn't, perhaps, remember proper gerund useage, would you?
What would be inherently wrong with IndiaNet ChinaNet or SriLankaNet, if they should choose to make their own network? Surely, some people in IndiaNet territory may want access to the old Internet, but some may not.
Actually, by now, after having access to the full Internet, a smaller Internet may have problems with their customer base wanting access to the old Internet, despite of the fact that their country doesn't control the domain structure. I don't suppose that it is the people but, the powers that be that have problems with who controls the Internet. As with most people, if the service works, the people are happy, they don't care who's behind the curtain, pulling the strings.
Is your buddy list NOT stored on AOL's servers for an AIM ID? They are providing you this service for free. Why can they not try to earn some ad revenue from their user base?
Gee, we set up our 4 kids, and 5 of the neighbor's kids with Linux for day to day use. All of the machines available are in constant use. Oops, sorry that I didn't realize that kids are too stupid to adapt.
At least with *nix file permissions, each child has private file ownership, and their siblings can't delete each other's homework for more space for MP3's.
I suppose that we could set the kids up with a virus, worm and spyware vulnerable OS if that is really what you think is best.
AC said, "If liberals are bleeding hearts pandering to the lowest common denominators, conservatives are greedy savages who only pander to themselves."
By your very definition of conservatives as greedy savages, they would, in fact pander to the reality TV watching, stupid masses! Where there is interest, there is a market. Building a better mousetrap won't necessarily bring the world to your door. Case in point, Microsoft. They have never made a better mousetrap, but they have great distribution channels and a great legal department.
The previous poster stated, "Most eggs are wasted."
While this is ion fact true, this is at a rate of 1 per month, NOT the numbers harvested with the drugs used for egg donation. If she has not had any children of her own, here in the US she would not be considered in any egg donation scenario, beyond that for a close relative.
It didn't take much to make me switch from MS to Linux.
In college I used Unix, DOS, and Mac. (I was ok with using DOS when it came packaged with GW basic to do your repetitive tasks in a quick and dirty way. When they removed that, it was a rip-off.) I have never had any partiality toward any MS product, but damn many experiences pushing me away from them. I college I studied C in a Unix environment. It worked. That's a good thing to my mind. When I went on to take a second semester of C, the school had switched to MS Quick C. I had used Boorland's Turbo C, and it was fine. I had used the C compiler with the Unix install that we had. Then I had the most bug ridden piece of crap that I had ever seen land in my lap. The examples in the Official MS manual would not compile! I had never before seen such a dreadful piece of software in my life. That soured me against MS, the company a bit.
In that same era, if I wanted a word processor, I headed to the Mac labs, not the MS based labs. If I needed to program a robot, and directly control I/O, I was in the MS realm, because control of RS232 was well documented, and part of my curriculum.
Fast forward many years. My husband and I were buying computers. (Plural, as we don't play well with others...) He got a 60 MHz Intel box, I got a 60 MHz Mac. (Yes, I know, ancient history here, but we are leading somewhere here, I promise!) We had our machines set up. My Mac just worked. I used it. I worked, I played, and it simply worked. My husband is far more geeky that I could ever be, but he could never get his MS box to do quite what he wanted it to do. He extolled the virtues of his more documented software and hardware, but still his machine had failure after failure. It lead to my anti-Windows saying, "It's Sunday, time to reload Windows!"
My husband kept incrementally upgrading hardware on his Intel box, not a luxury that I had on my Mac. I held on to that 60 MHz machine until it was way out of date. I started using some of his discarded hardware for some kids software. Eventually my old Mac was put out to pasture, and I was migrated to faster hardware, and buggier software. But, as I couldn't afford the Apple upgrade path, I considered myself lucky for having been able to use a stable OS in my own home for as long as I could. (In all of the time that I used my Mac, I never caught anything. There may be Mac viruses, but they weren't prevalent on the BBS's and later the Internet. I have no first hand experience with them.) Once I was using MS for daily use, I cursed the BSOD multiple times per day. I dreaded the bloody thing. When I was offered a FREE version of *nix, I thought I had died and gone to heaven! I was rid of the MS nonsense.
Fast forward a few more years. I was editing a print media newsletter for a 300+ family home schooling group. (As this is a group with many educators, there was a disproportionately high percentage of Mac users. Our group was roughly split 50/50) Despite the submission guidelines that always specified plain text email, people routinely submitted from whatever they had, be it from MS Word for Win, MS Word for Mac, or any other word processor that they had lying about. The previous editors all warned me of this. I was using Star Office. It was great for importing from other formats. Though in theory Word for Win was supposed to open in Word for Mac, and the reverse, in that era, it did not in fact work. Whereas, here I sat with Sun's Star Office, and I could read both. That really made for a positive experience with the Linux world for me. It didn't matter what the data was, or where it came from, I could read it.
Fast forward a few more years. The kids needed Windows software for some educational software. (They had to log in to the system with IE running under Windows.) Take into account that they had a machine far newer and faster than mine. I am not a computer user, I am a computer abuser. Normally on my Linux box, desktop #
Of course, there are other great elements to online support groups.
- anonymity
- immediacy
There can be great comfort, after a diagnosis to talk to someone who has been through the ropes. In a support group you can freely complain about having a bad day, when you know that your family doesn't want to hear it again. Your fellow sufferers can commiserate with you, and sometimes offer productive suggestions.Great, so companies currently sink tons of money into research, that may, or may not lead to a viable product. So, strip companies of the potenital to recoup their investments, and just watch R&D completely dry up.
Yeah, socialize it all, then let's see the stagnation of research. Why are people so averse to seeing a person, or a company profit from ideas and the work that they put into them in order to bring them into fruition.
by Phylter Saturday March 19, @08:51AM
Your site is geared towards what could be condsidered early adopters.
I am also considered an early adopter so the fact that I use Firefox doesn't count as much, so I'm told.
Well, I spend a few too many hours per week with what would be considered the non-traditional users. I spend many hours on in moms groups, textile craft groups and other female centric mailing lists. After a million and one complaints/pleas for help from people in the Win/IE realm, there are a few of us converting a few people at a time to the other side of the fence. I keep seeing links to Firefox in what people were considering the soccer mom demographic.
Plus, as long as you keep nursing at the MS teat, you are assured a job in the tech support industry, as you are sure to have many, many fires to fight each day, to justify your presence. Sometimes it is wise to build a fire break, unless you just get a rush from watching things burn. In that case, keep the status quo, and pass the marshmallows!
Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16:
...The proposed 2-factor authentication involves both a blood and semen sample. It will be hard to foil.
Does this mean that women can't use MS products? Woo hoo!
Some of my favorite bad ad placement examples
- Online dating ads posted to stay at home moms groups - this demographic is primariy married, and rather traditionaly conservative. I'd love to show the dating service where their ad dollars are going!
- Ads for low fat, high sugar psuedo-foods posted to low carb, or whole foods dieting groups. How many people who are following The Paleo Diet, or Neanderthin are going to buy prepackaged diet shakes? I think that's like trying to sell pork chops at the Orthodox temple.
- Ads for high priced luxury items in frugality groups. Gee, for the set that is trying to figure out how to squeeze another $3 out of their weekly food budget really serious candidates for a Rolex?
- Ads for shall we say, adult content popping up on child centered lists.
As a group owner/moderator, for the free service I wish that they would give a list of acceptable ad categories. For free service, select at least 5, or something of that ilk. It may work out better for all involved.The major hole in the notion of handing out the keys is that if they do SELL them (They had only leased them up until this point) The would have to make parts for a number of years to support the vehicles. The auto industry is under regulations that require them to do such things, unlike the computer industry. Imagine the odd, proprietary hardware that you have sitting around your workroom, all having to be supported for 10 years. How much would that squelch innovation. I think that GM's original decision to release their vehicle on a lease only basis was wise.
As for the wonderful mileage that everyone's posting on the hybrids, we get close to that with a beat up, old Ford Festiva, without the problem of having to charge up a huge battery. No special training for the fire department on the jaws of life, just get out a spatula! (Or the shop-vac) I won't discuss the milage on our other vehicle. {whistle and twiddle thumbs, trying to look innocent}
Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, @10:22PM: Wow! Tax chicks will date me?
Watch what you wish for, that tax chick might look like the fat Dixie Chick!
Amazon already asks if you wish to receive reminder notices for events. If you make a profile, you can choose to get such notices. "Special Occasion Reminders" are listed under "Gift Services"
Actually, after browsing Amazon a bit too much over a period of years, they give me some excellent suggestions. Their predictive lists are good. I shop for me, and a husband, and 4 boys, so I suppose that anything that they list would hit one of us. I have eclectic interests, and vacillate from one hobby to another and back again. They always pop up with something that I gasp, "Ohhh! I want THAT!"
A friend has a whole computer lab of ancient computers fired up in his basement. I walked into the room and was foaming at the mouth in half a second. I asked him how he could tollerate the dreadful shriek. To which I received a puzzled look and a, "What shriek?" The flash and flicker was about as annoying as the sound. Hmm, he gets these cast off computers really cheap, wonder why?
I've read articles about women who can't bear to work on, or around computers, and it seems to be those with very accute high frequency hearing. I suppose that it makes employment for these women pretty tough, as computers are bloody everywhere.
Women are suppossed to have better hearing in the high frequency range anyway. I suppose that men lose their high frequency hearing to drown out their wives, perhaps? Pity my unlucky sod of a husband, I don't have a high pitch voice. He'll have to lose quite a bit to drown me out.
Back to way back up the thread, on flicker. Is there anyone who can tollerate the gawd awful flicker of those flurescent bulbs that are made to fit the standard incandescent fixtures? Shudder! Those stayed in my kitchen under a week. I may be cheap, and want to cut utility bills, but convulsions are too high a price.
museumpeace Tuesday March 15, @04:36PM: ...If you happen to view a monitor from such a distance that the space between even numbered [or harmonics ] rasters approximately projects to the retina at the spacing be individual receptors [rods? cones? idunno] you might undo some of the interleaving effect....
Rods sense light
Cones sense color
OT maybe, but trivia, males have more rods, females have more cones. (No, this is not a 4th grade joke. Look it up!) This is why males tend to have less acute color vision, and females are more prone to nightblindness.
You have to love the panic mongers. If you have a deep, dark secret, don't shout it in a public place, don't share it on a public network. It just takes a bit of common sense. Yeah, they could monitor me, but is there anything that they'd want to know?
Then there is the logistics of the matter. I know that they could filter out 99% of my conversations. I know many people like myself who just leave their chat clients up as a sort of answering machine or phone replacement. If you have a potentially sleeping baby in the house, or are working on a vexing problem from which you cannot be distracted, ringing the phone for minor things is considered rude. IM is a safe, quiet conversation. I can speak to a friend, and come off as semi-articulate and intelligent, and they can't hear me yelling at my 4 kids in the background.
A typical conversation of mine:
Of course, "pick up bread" is code for pseudo ephedrine, coffee filters, drain cleaner, ether....
People can intercept your email too, so what? The implementation of Martial Law, oh, I mean The Patriot Act, has extended the government's wire tap privileges further into the phone system, with less and less of a reason needed. What about the security of cell phones? And how many of these panic mongers don't think twice before using a regular cordless phone at home. I can tell you from experience that these are not secure! I had to quit using a baby monitor, as I was sick of listening to my neighbor's late night drunken sobs to her friends about her husband. Hmm, the things that you learn when you listen to people's private calls. That was a morbid fascination for a short time, but it wore off quickly.
Much of it comes down to the fact that monitoring most people's communication would be a crashing bore. Sure, you could write content filters, as you do for spam detection, but how many false negatives, and how many false positives do you have with that? I'd expect the same level of difficulty monitoring IM's
IM is great for jotting off a few thoughts. It's not for exchanging company secrets. If you want to do that, at least use a private network, or better yet, meet in person. IM is great for multi-tasking. As you sit on hold, or buried in the 7th level of voice mail hell, you can carry on a conversation, or give and get tech support. "What was the command to fix that problem on my machine again?" copy, click, paste, Fixed! "Thanks again!" Do you realize how much easier that former scenario is than saying "Pipe, that straight line, on the key over the enter key, do you see it? It didn't work? Did you hit shift? Is the line vertical, or slanted?...(continue ad infinitum)"
With IM, you can, potentially help multiple people at one time as well. (All while playing a game of whatever keeps you from slitting your wrists on a daily basis.) As your minions actually attempt to execute what you have given them, there is invariably some time wasted. If you were on the phone with them, you'd have to hang on while they check to see if the fix worked. This way, they are still in your que, and yet you can move on to someone else.
There is also another great element to IM on a public server, with public profiles. People can, if they wish, put things in their public profile that would bring together people with like interests from around the world. I have developed many online friends due to one common interest or another listed on a public profile. Sure, for the
I can see on my ballot exactly where I marked. They use ebony pencils, which do not erase gracefully, so a poll employee would have to work hard to even have a potential of erasing and revoting my ballot. (If a voter does make an error, they can go to a poll worker to have the ballot voided, and have a new one issued, and they'll check off a new serial number)
This is a technology that works, and I have heard of far fewer challenges in the pencil ballot areas than in the punch card or lever areas.
Right now my state is airing comercials for the people in the punch card areas, teaching them how to look at their ballots when they are done. I wonder what that cost.
I most certainly don't want e-voting. That is just too bloody easy to tamper with. Yeah, can you see it now, run it on Windows CE! LOL! Insert a virus that changes all votes to George McGovern!
When I was a kid, my friend's mother was a paramedic. She carried a scanner to church. They sat on an aisle, in the back, and kept the volume down, but as a paramedic, she was always on call, therefore the radio had to be there. The same applies to some people and their phones, but now, I do realize that most cell phones are used more for social, rather than emergency use.
It could easily have been that dice that he uses to decide his position on complex issues, or the coin that he uses for deciding his position on simpler issues. When he's really flummoxed he gets out the Ouija board.