Otherwise, how about one o' them ThinkPad keyboards with a little red nubby thing plus a trackpad?
I'm typing this on one (an IBM Space Saver PS/2). It's taking a little getting used to, but not having to reach away from the keyboard to use the mouse is great. I get neck and right-shoulder pain from the arm motion of using a standard mouse, and I'm hoping this helps a bit.
If one prefers a touchpad, Adesso makes several keyboards with built in touchpads.
If we're treating them so well, and everything's all nice and legal and on the up-and-up, why not imprison them on American soil?
And as someone else pointed out, many of these detainees were turned in by bounty hunters who got paid by the head. I doubt there was a lot of discriminating intelligence involved in that rounding-up process.
A professional journalist knows that if he/she repeatedly publishes lies or inaccuracies, they'll be finding other ways of earning a paycheck (thus, providing food for their bellies and a bed to sleep in).
I may be mistaken, but I always thought Google's motive on this was to have as much searchable content as possible on each user, for advertising/demographic purposes. It may be irelevant to the user, but to them it's more raw content to sift through. I don't think they are purposely trying to be annoying about deleting messages, they would just rather you keep your old stuff lying around so they can continue to grep it for useful marketing fodder.
...but I can't get my pot dealer to deliver. Plus, once in a while my TiVo has to download a software update over dialup. That can take a little while, so it's a good opportunity to get some fresh air.
Seriously though, there's a good excuse to go out once a month right in my sig.
Javascript: poor fit for server-side use. Nobody does anything serious with it that way.
Actually, in a 'classic' ASP environment, server-side JavaScript (JScript) is a vastly superior option to VBScript. I have used it extensively in the past for small-to-medium sized corporate intranet apps at my job. You get identical access to the ASP, COM and Windows-scripting object models, and much better object-oriented support to boot. JavaScript is damn solid; I wish it had a server-side presence in the Unix world.
Plus, in a Windows environment JScript is probably the closest thing to PHP, in terms of syntax and relative complexity.
Unfortunately ASP.NET is a classic "leaky abstraction;" it tries to make things simple that sometimes aren't, and this will bite you.
Agreed completely. With this stated, I'm surprised you would rate ASP.NET the best choice. What you pointed out is a significant issue, especially when one relies on Visual Studio. Too many web developers don't understand how a lot of their code works; VS.NET takes that problem to a frightening new level.
If you want something that will scale to absolutely huge levels (like the aforementioned CNN), J2EE is about the only game in town. (But a living hell to code for -- not recommended for smaller projects!)
No argument.
Perl: it's nearly impossible to maintain a substantial site in perl with multiple developers working on the code. The language works against you here.
Totally disagree. Put *good* Perl programmers on a team, make them adhere to sane coding/documentation standards, and give them Mason or HTML::Template (depending on preference); you'll get maintainable site. The catch with Perl is that it punishes seat-of-pants code slinging more harshly than the other languages mentioned. I know it's a mantra around here, but you CAN write clear Perl code. (Disclaimer: I mostly use Perl nowadays.)
I really like Python, but I usually run back to Perl for CPAN and the quality/volume of the documentation available. I don't have enough real-world experience with it to fairly judge against the others. Ditto Tcl.
No amount of lucid, well thought out reasoning in favor of staying will ease the bitterness and regret you will feel ten years from now if you don't go. There will still be sterile, soul-sucking cubicles here when you get back, I promise.
Sorry to oversimplify a tough decision. All I can say is what-if's and if-only's can haunt like demons.
You're involved in outsourcing and telemarketing - and you expect sympathy here?
Add to that, the message on the front page of his/her website: "To be viewed with IE5 or better. Netscape users, too bad. You don't deserve to see my site anyways."
The latest photos from Mars Express, Opportunity, and Spirit are interpreted as sea shells, pyramids, Nasca-like lines, etc. and one truly freak-deaky crab claw.
Anyone who's seen the Outer Limits episode "Invisible Enemy" (starring Adam West, circa 1960-something) already knows that Mars is inhabited by large, blood-thirsty creatures with crab-like claws. Awful, awful episode.
Another thought: Today's powerful hardware and cheap memory could enable classic games to be remade exactly as they were, but with tons of additional levels. What I really want are games like Donkey Kong, Crystal Castles, Ladybug, Ms. Pac Man, etc, with literally hundreds of unique levels. That was the major drawback of those games, the lack of levels.
Or maybe I'm just longing for my lost youth, spent mostly in arcades (late 70's - mid 80's).
I work for one of the largest U.S. direct marketing companies (not a phone rep, in their IT dept). I've thought about the DNC list a lot, and I fail to see the problem with it.
The people who don't want to get calls sign up. Those who wish to get calls won't sign up. Simple. Seems like the best solution possible.
My employer does hundreds of millions in sales annually, out of approximately 70 call centers across the country. Look, someone's got to be buying all that stuff (I'm looking at you, middle America).
It eliminates some jobs, yes (not just phone reps either - two rounds of staff layoffs here in the past year). It sucks, but that's just how it goes if the market is allowed to adjust itself. The pool of callable numbers decreases, but I would think your sales ratio goes up when you're only calling people who want to be called.
Now, I'll grant you that if I had been a part of the layoffs (*phew*), my bitterness level would be considerably higher toward the DNC list, but that doesn't change the reality that the list is a Good Thing.
Ah, what do I know? I screen all my calls with an answering machine anyway.
A surprising amount of the time, the command prompt is a HELL of a lot faster.
YARGH! I swear, people WANT to be stupid. Either that or they think they can catch a disease from the keyboard and not the mouse.
Amen.
At my company, the payroll department accesses staff information on the mainframe via GEAC terminal screens that you navigate with keyboard commands. They weren't crazy about it at first, but now they fly through the screens so fast that you'd have a hard time keeping up with them just watching over their shoulder.
So now the brats in HR need to work with this data, and we have to crank out entirely new browser-based interface screens to enable them to work with exactly the same data. But whatever, they stamped their feet loudly enough to management so that they wouldn't have to spend half a day learning some typed commands. The new front-ends will end up being clunkier than the original screens, but hey, at least they can use the mouse!
Slashdot Mirror
Otherwise, how about one o' them ThinkPad keyboards with a little red nubby thing plus a trackpad?
I'm typing this on one (an IBM Space Saver PS/2). It's taking a little getting used to, but not having to reach away from the keyboard to use the mouse is great. I get neck and right-shoulder pain from the arm motion of using a standard mouse, and I'm hoping this helps a bit.
If one prefers a touchpad, Adesso makes several keyboards with built in touchpads.
Who would win in a cage match between you, Tom Kenny and Richard Horvitz?
If we're treating them so well, and everything's all nice and legal and on the up-and-up, why not imprison them on American soil?
And as someone else pointed out, many of these detainees were turned in by bounty hunters who got paid by the head. I doubt there was a lot of discriminating intelligence involved in that rounding-up process.
...look anything like this?
A professional journalist knows that if he/she repeatedly publishes lies or inaccuracies, they'll be finding other ways of earning a paycheck (thus, providing food for their bellies and a bed to sleep in).
Judith Miller notwithstanding.
Like most of the intended audience for this article and subsequent discussion, I thought I wasn't going to have anything to do tonight (Saturday).
Slashdot and Boston.com to the rescue!
I may be mistaken, but I always thought Google's motive on this was to have as much searchable content as possible on each user, for advertising/demographic purposes. It may be irelevant to the user, but to them it's more raw content to sift through. I don't think they are purposely trying to be annoying about deleting messages, they would just rather you keep your old stuff lying around so they can continue to grep it for useful marketing fodder.
Annoying? Slightly I guess, but not a huge deal.
Ahh forget it.
Magazines come and go, but Mad is the only one that still gets my subscription money every year. Keeps me laughing. Alfred rules.
...because Neilsen already does such a stellar job estimating the true value and popularity of TV and radio programming for advertisers and networks.
...but I can't get my pot dealer to deliver. Plus, once in a while my TiVo has to download a software update over dialup. That can take a little while, so it's a good opportunity to get some fresh air.
Seriously though, there's a good excuse to go out once a month right in my sig.
Gotta jump in here:
Javascript: poor fit for server-side use. Nobody does anything serious with it that way.
Actually, in a 'classic' ASP environment, server-side JavaScript (JScript) is a vastly superior option to VBScript. I have used it extensively in the past for small-to-medium sized corporate intranet apps at my job. You get identical access to the ASP, COM and Windows-scripting object models, and much better object-oriented support to boot. JavaScript is damn solid; I wish it had a server-side presence in the Unix world.
Plus, in a Windows environment JScript is probably the closest thing to PHP, in terms of syntax and relative complexity.
Unfortunately ASP.NET is a classic "leaky abstraction;" it tries to make things simple that sometimes aren't, and this will bite you.
Agreed completely. With this stated, I'm surprised you would rate ASP.NET the best choice. What you pointed out is a significant issue, especially when one relies on Visual Studio. Too many web developers don't understand how a lot of their code works; VS.NET takes that problem to a frightening new level.
If you want something that will scale to absolutely huge levels (like the aforementioned CNN), J2EE is about the only game in town. (But a living hell to code for -- not recommended for smaller projects!)
No argument.
Perl: it's nearly impossible to maintain a substantial site in perl with multiple developers working on the code. The language works against you here.
Totally disagree. Put *good* Perl programmers on a team, make them adhere to sane coding/documentation standards, and give them Mason or HTML::Template (depending on preference); you'll get maintainable site. The catch with Perl is that it punishes seat-of-pants code slinging more harshly than the other languages mentioned. I know it's a mantra around here, but you CAN write clear Perl code. (Disclaimer: I mostly use Perl nowadays.)
I really like Python, but I usually run back to Perl for CPAN and the quality/volume of the documentation available. I don't have enough real-world experience with it to fairly judge against the others. Ditto Tcl.
Cheers.
No amount of lucid, well thought out reasoning in favor of staying will ease the bitterness and regret you will feel ten years from now if you don't go. There will still be sterile, soul-sucking cubicles here when you get back, I promise.
Sorry to oversimplify a tough decision. All I can say is what-if's and if-only's can haunt like demons.
You're involved in outsourcing and telemarketing - and you expect sympathy here?
Add to that, the message on the front page of his/her website:
"To be viewed with IE5 or better. Netscape users, too bad. You don't deserve to see my site anyways."
Let's see:
1. Outsourcing
2. Telemarketing
3. Flagrantly IE-only website
I believe that's a Slashdot hat trick.
don't wake him up. He's obviously been dreaming for the past three months.
The latest photos from Mars Express, Opportunity, and Spirit are interpreted as sea shells, pyramids, Nasca-like lines, etc. and one truly freak-deaky crab claw.
Anyone who's seen the Outer Limits episode "Invisible Enemy" (starring Adam West, circa 1960-something) already knows that Mars is inhabited by large, blood-thirsty creatures with crab-like claws. Awful, awful episode.
Remake Sinistar. Hire Doug Bradley or Robert Englund to be the voice of the Sinistar.
Another thought: Today's powerful hardware and cheap memory could enable classic games to be remade exactly as they were, but with tons of additional levels. What I really want are games like Donkey Kong, Crystal Castles, Ladybug, Ms. Pac Man, etc, with literally hundreds of unique levels. That was the major drawback of those games, the lack of levels.
Or maybe I'm just longing for my lost youth, spent mostly in arcades (late 70's - mid 80's).
Maybe they can use this device to finally find those poor kids out in the woods near Burkittsville, MD. They've been missing since 1994, I understand.
Wake me up when the porn industry figures out how to utilize it.
The unemployment office?
It's self-referential:
Bios Isn't Open, Suckers
I work for one of the largest U.S. direct marketing companies (not a phone rep, in their IT dept). I've thought about the DNC list a lot, and I fail to see the problem with it.
The people who don't want to get calls sign up. Those who wish to get calls won't sign up. Simple. Seems like the best solution possible.
My employer does hundreds of millions in sales annually, out of approximately 70 call centers across the country. Look, someone's got to be buying all that stuff (I'm looking at you, middle America).
It eliminates some jobs, yes (not just phone reps either - two rounds of staff layoffs here in the past year). It sucks, but that's just how it goes if the market is allowed to adjust itself. The pool of callable numbers decreases, but I would think your sales ratio goes up when you're only calling people who want to be called.
Now, I'll grant you that if I had been a part of the layoffs (*phew*), my bitterness level would be considerably higher toward the DNC list, but that doesn't change the reality that the list is a Good Thing.
Ah, what do I know? I screen all my calls with an answering machine anyway.
I could have gotten FP, but I was too busy playing EQ.
Well I for one welcome our new wooden overlords.
A surprising amount of the time, the command prompt is a HELL of a lot faster.
YARGH! I swear, people WANT to be stupid. Either that or they think they can catch a disease from the keyboard and not the mouse.
Amen.
At my company, the payroll department accesses staff information on the mainframe via GEAC terminal screens that you navigate with keyboard commands. They weren't crazy about it at first, but now they fly through the screens so fast that you'd have a hard time keeping up with them just watching over their shoulder.
So now the brats in HR need to work with this data, and we have to crank out entirely new browser-based interface screens to enable them to work with exactly the same data. But whatever, they stamped their feet loudly enough to management so that they wouldn't have to spend half a day learning some typed commands. The new front-ends will end up being clunkier than the original screens, but hey, at least they can use the mouse!
Oh well, at least it's work.