Yes, this has been a major point at work - we're a retailer with locations in Mass, and many of our in-store systems date from the 1980's, so there's no encryption. The law says encryption is required when the data is in transit, including being on portable devices, not when it's sitting in a database.
I don't remember the Selectrics we used being correcting, although my mom had one at home that was. (It was technically the property of my dad's company.)
I'd totally forgotten about the little plastic strips with the white stuff to clear out typos - or the sticky strips of paper to use if you really messed up.
* Keyboarding skills * Lots of practice - that's how you get up to speed, and how you get a decent looking letter out of a manual typewriter * The proper form for various business documents such as letters * How to properly fold a letter to get it into both sizes of envelope * How to annotate the bottom of the letter to indicate a copy went to someone else, and who actually typed the letter
In short, a bunch of (now largely obsolete) secretarial skills.
The equivalent set of skills for Word (mail merge, templates, Wizards, etc) probably would take a semester to teach people who aren't computer-literate already.
I'm old, so the class I took in high school was called Typing. We had a 50/50 mix of IBM Selectrics and manual typewriters.
It's probably the most useful class I took in high school. But just because the modern version uses computers doesn't make it Computer Science. They should just keep calling it typing if you ask me.
We had Computer Programming classes too. The first level used TRS-80 Model III/IV BASIC. For the advanced class, which I never took, they used Apple II to do Pascal!
So far as the spam blocker... as much as I'd like to be rid of junk mail, the USPS isn't the organization to do it.
It is inappropriate, immoral, and no doubt illegal to accept money from party "A' to deliver something to "B", and also accept money from "B" to not deliver that same thing.
If someone pays the post office the correct rate to deliver something, they have entered into a contract. The post office has to deliver it. They can't just throw it away.
I would cut normal mail delivery to three days a week - Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If a holiday falls on one of those days, that week is Tuesday - Thursday - Saturday.
I said this to my mom - who is in her late 60's - and she was aghast. She just couldn't imagine not getting mail every day.
My wife and I get almost nothing worth having via mail - all the bills come in via email, and I pay them electronically, either by push from my bank or pull from the vendor. A lot of the mail goes directly into the recycle bin before I even hit the house.
When I ship a package it's a mix of price and convenience. UPS is actually the most convenient for me - going past their local facility is barely out of my way home from work - but USPS is cheaper. But I almost never care about what day it gets there.
I'm left-handed but have mice on different sides of the keyboard on different computers. I think I use my index finger on both buttons no matter which side, always with a "right handed" mouse configuration.
I think my (Fortune 200) employer has a bunch of stuff that runs on a mainframe because that's where it runs, not because of any volume or even reliability requirements. It needs to run once a day (or once a week) and process what once was an awe-inspiring amount of data but now is a DVD.
Since we're officially a "Microsoft Shop" I could totally see us using something like this.
I am kind of amused by Microsoft now being in the business of "hardware" to run IBM's "software" though.
I remember carrying a pocket knife to school routinely and some of my friends had big knives in their bag.
Especially during hunting season.
During hunting season the dean would make sure everyone knew that if their rifle was in their pickup, park in the street, not in the school parking lot.
The cat we had when I was in high school would play fetch. We'd throw a little rubber ball and he'd go running through the house and get it, bring it back and drop it at your feet.
My mom's current cat will do the same thing with "mousies" - little fur-covered toy mice. Throw it, he runs after it and brings it back.
Fetch isn't that unusual in cats in my experience.
Unless I get on a cargo ship or charter a yacht it isn't happening unless I fly.
"But there are Hawaiian cruises" you might say. Yes, there are. But that's where they start and end. At least a couple years ago there weren't any starting on the mainland.
I'm outraged because I'm not convinced the darn things are safe, and I don't see how it makes anything any safer.
I also don't see why things need to be any safer. It seems fine to me.
I don't really care about the nudity. Hell, I'll strip down to my underwear there at the checkpoint if they want. I'd lose them too but people might be offended.
I see people saying I'm wrong, but where does the consensus fall on use of sampling of music?
I can't cite articles but I'd swear "we're" "in favor" (I know, gross generalizations) of artists being about to use samples of other artist's music.
And that most certainly is for profit.
Yes. She stole a bunch of people's recipes. (Recipes are kind of marginal from a copyright standpoint, apparently, which I didn't know.) And when she was caught at it she said stupid things that pissed people off.
For that, she was punished by losing her magazine.
If we want the home infringer to be fined a few dollars a song, that seems kind of extreme to me.
I've had plenty of family members die - I'm out of grandparents, my wife is out of grandparents, I'm down to one parent. The most recent death was 4 or 5 years ago.
I've also had a small business fail, entirely outside my control. That was 7 years ago I think.
The thoughts and feelings are very similar in a lot of ways. The same reactions, the same stages of grief, even.
The level of pain is not the same, but the reactions, for me at least, were very similar.
Of course, this was a business that was founded when I was 7 and was on its second generation when it went under - so there was some significant history there.
PS: fuck you too. You don't get to tell me how to feel about things or what is the right thing to feel. You can disagree without being rude about it. I'm sorry for your recent losses but it doesn't get you a pass to be an ass.
I just don't understand how it's any different than using some peer-to-peer/bittorrent/whatever thing to illegally distribute the latest piece of crap pop music.
Yet we don't seem to have a lot of trouble with that, even when LimeWire, PirateBay or whoever is somehow making money off it.
Slashdot Mirror
At first I read that as a hole for the testicle and wondered why you would want a hole for that in your sweater.
Now a tentacle, absolutely, gotta let that swing free.
Yes, this has been a major point at work - we're a retailer with locations in Mass, and many of our in-store systems date from the 1980's, so there's no encryption. The law says encryption is required when the data is in transit, including being on portable devices, not when it's sitting in a database.
I graduated from high school in 1986.
As with your school, the two computer courses (I don't remember their formal name) were taught by a teacher in the math department.
Obviously the typing (Selectric + manual) wouldn't be taught in the math department.
I don't remember the Selectrics we used being correcting, although my mom had one at home that was. (It was technically the property of my dad's company.)
I'd totally forgotten about the little plastic strips with the white stuff to clear out typos - or the sticky strips of paper to use if you really messed up.
I have one sitting on top of my overhead cabinet at work. It works great but when I use it my cube farm neighbors complain.
When I took typing, the class included
* Keyboarding skills
* Lots of practice - that's how you get up to speed, and how you get a decent looking letter out of a manual typewriter
* The proper form for various business documents such as letters
* How to properly fold a letter to get it into both sizes of envelope
* How to annotate the bottom of the letter to indicate a copy went to someone else, and who actually typed the letter
In short, a bunch of (now largely obsolete) secretarial skills.
The equivalent set of skills for Word (mail merge, templates, Wizards, etc) probably would take a semester to teach people who aren't computer-literate already.
And letter folding is always relevant, right?
I'm old, so the class I took in high school was called Typing. We had a 50/50 mix of IBM Selectrics and manual typewriters.
It's probably the most useful class I took in high school. But just because the modern version uses computers doesn't make it Computer Science. They should just keep calling it typing if you ask me.
We had Computer Programming classes too. The first level used TRS-80 Model III/IV BASIC. For the advanced class, which I never took, they used Apple II to do Pascal!
So far as the spam blocker... as much as I'd like to be rid of junk mail, the USPS isn't the organization to do it.
It is inappropriate, immoral, and no doubt illegal to accept money from party "A' to deliver something to "B", and also accept money from "B" to not deliver that same thing.
If someone pays the post office the correct rate to deliver something, they have entered into a contract. The post office has to deliver it. They can't just throw it away.
Amen.
I would cut normal mail delivery to three days a week - Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If a holiday falls on one of those days, that week is Tuesday - Thursday - Saturday.
I said this to my mom - who is in her late 60's - and she was aghast. She just couldn't imagine not getting mail every day.
My wife and I get almost nothing worth having via mail - all the bills come in via email, and I pay them electronically, either by push from my bank or pull from the vendor. A lot of the mail goes directly into the recycle bin before I even hit the house.
When I ship a package it's a mix of price and convenience. UPS is actually the most convenient for me - going past their local facility is barely out of my way home from work - but USPS is cheaper. But I almost never care about what day it gets there.
Don't swap them for me either.
I'm left-handed but have mice on different sides of the keyboard on different computers. I think I use my index finger on both buttons no matter which side, always with a "right handed" mouse configuration.
I tried swapping them once. It was awful.
I think my (Fortune 200) employer has a bunch of stuff that runs on a mainframe because that's where it runs, not because of any volume or even reliability requirements. It needs to run once a day (or once a week) and process what once was an awe-inspiring amount of data but now is a DVD.
Since we're officially a "Microsoft Shop" I could totally see us using something like this.
I am kind of amused by Microsoft now being in the business of "hardware" to run IBM's "software" though.
I remember carrying a pocket knife to school routinely and some of my friends had big knives in their bag.
Especially during hunting season.
During hunting season the dean would make sure everyone knew that if their rifle was in their pickup, park in the street, not in the school parking lot.
Different time, different place, eh?
My wife's been teaching the cat how to open doors - the cat likes to follow her into the bathroom, and when they're leaving they both open the door.
I've seen her try to open the door when she's followed me in - she's definitely trying to apply rotational force to the knob.
The cat we had when I was in high school would play fetch. We'd throw a little rubber ball and he'd go running through the house and get it, bring it back and drop it at your feet.
My mom's current cat will do the same thing with "mousies" - little fur-covered toy mice. Throw it, he runs after it and brings it back.
Fetch isn't that unusual in cats in my experience.
Maybe I could get a lobbyist to pay for it.
Oh wait, I don't know any.
OK. I'd like to go to Hawaii please.
Unless I get on a cargo ship or charter a yacht it isn't happening unless I fly.
"But there are Hawaiian cruises" you might say. Yes, there are. But that's where they start and end. At least a couple years ago there weren't any starting on the mainland.
I'm outraged because I'm not convinced the darn things are safe, and I don't see how it makes anything any safer.
I also don't see why things need to be any safer. It seems fine to me.
I don't really care about the nudity. Hell, I'll strip down to my underwear there at the checkpoint if they want. I'd lose them too but people might be offended.
Or they can just feel me up, whatever.
Dang it I just modded you off-topic. Sorry. Posting to undo...
I'm saying she probably was ignorant of the law, and, although everyone says that's no excuse, it is a bit of an explanation.
Based on her note on the web site, this whole mess has tipped it over the edge, and it's probably causing her a lot of pain.
Pity and sympathy, even for the wrong-doer, is part of being a decent human being.
No, she did boost stories from all over. She stole recipes from Paula Deen and other Food Network "celebrities," among others.
People with way more money and lawyers than she did. Someone no sensible business person would steal from if they thought it was wrong.
I don't think she's evil, I think she's just ignorant (and possibly stupid.)
I see people saying I'm wrong, but where does the consensus fall on use of sampling of music?
I can't cite articles but I'd swear "we're" "in favor" (I know, gross generalizations) of artists being about to use samples of other artist's music.
And that most certainly is for profit.
Yes. She stole a bunch of people's recipes. (Recipes are kind of marginal from a copyright standpoint, apparently, which I didn't know.) And when she was caught at it she said stupid things that pissed people off.
For that, she was punished by losing her magazine.
If we want the home infringer to be fined a few dollars a song, that seems kind of extreme to me.
That's really something that almost everyone, Slashdot or not, could learn. When you screw up, say you're sorry and don't make stupid excuses.
I've had plenty of family members die - I'm out of grandparents, my wife is out of grandparents, I'm down to one parent. The most recent death was 4 or 5 years ago.
I've also had a small business fail, entirely outside my control. That was 7 years ago I think.
The thoughts and feelings are very similar in a lot of ways. The same reactions, the same stages of grief, even.
The level of pain is not the same, but the reactions, for me at least, were very similar.
Of course, this was a business that was founded when I was 7 and was on its second generation when it went under - so there was some significant history there.
PS: fuck you too. You don't get to tell me how to feel about things or what is the right thing to feel. You can disagree without being rude about it. I'm sorry for your recent losses but it doesn't get you a pass to be an ass.
I just don't understand how it's any different than using some peer-to-peer/bittorrent/whatever thing to illegally distribute the latest piece of crap pop music.
Yet we don't seem to have a lot of trouble with that, even when LimeWire, PirateBay or whoever is somehow making money off it.
OK, yeah, I missed that....
I still think that there's a big facet of "doesn't understand" going on here.
She clearly does understand now. I don't think she did.