No HIV cannot do to humans what it did to chimps. As far as I know chimps do not know about protecting themselves from HIV and similear dieses, while many humans do.
I know that HIV is an issue. I'm careful not to have sex with anyone at risk for HIV. (ie, only others who are also careful about partners) This isn't perfect protection; not all partners are fully honest, but my odds of HIV are extreemly low. Therefore it is likely that my genes will survive even if I don't have any of the HIV resistant ones.
I'm not an expert on chimps, but my understanding is when a female is in heat she will mate with every male she can find (the entire tribe, subject to some rules which we don't need to get into) in a day. In that enviorment STDs will spread quickly. Any resistant genes will be a great benifit, as the rest of the population dies.
PS, comments that I'm a geek and so I'm unlikely to pass my genes on, HIV or no are not relavent.
We don't know why we should care
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 2
The problem with freedom is you don't realise what it really means. I know a few people who really understand what religious freedom means. All were religious in the Soviet Union (or satalite countries), China, Pakastan(sp), Malasia, or other country where religious freedoms do not exist. I know ministers who do not have email because China will read it, they get their regular mail only when the visit other countries. They carry a bible with absolutely NO marks on it. (Most love those little notes they normally write in their bible). No pictures, names, or contacts are ever allowed written down.
As an american though, I don't live like that. I make no seceret that I'm religious, and even though many/. readers think it is foolish, not one will attempt to kill me for my beliefs. In the town where I live there are 10 different churchs (that I know of) all who claim they are the only right one in town. Nobody in my town as ever been threatened because of their beliefs, even though most (including athiests) would prefer everyone belived like them.
P.S. the more technicaly savey of the ministers I know are the only ones who I know that actually use pgp and encourage it. They however know that keystroke loggers and the like make pgp less usefull in non-free countries.
If you throw away the UML when you move to the next phase, then the UML step was mostly wasted. I can do everything UML does by writting and reviewing my header files. UML is great, if you keep it up to date with the program because you can see all the data on one page (11x17 poster) that you hang on the wall.
Class A has a pointer to class B, which has a child C, containing a pointer to class D, and that is how class A and class D fit in the whole system.
Remember the Mythical Man Month quote: (Which I cannot find offhand, but something like this) show my your logic, but hide your datastructurs and I will be mystified. Show me your datastructures and you will not need to show me the logic, it will be obvious. UML is a nice way to show the data structures -- if it is kept up to date
I like UML. Having a few posters on my wall that defined my data structures made the changes in my logic obvious. Even when UML had some lacks that it was still obvious what I needed to do. (The implimentation I used did not support an array, and I had one problem which required writing an array to hardware) However I was always printing out new posters because something changed. Worse, I had to keep track of a different one for each version of the product in the field. Still it is much clearer to have the essence of the header files all on one page, than scattered about in many different files.
I am not that old, and I seen several cases of someone cutting as pasting some similear code, comments and all, and then not updating the comments with the minor changes. When the comments references one register, and the code a different one, the comment is useless. Even though the code is similear, you can be sure that something is different, otherwise the two functions would be combined into a different one. But what logically is different between the two? What was missed?
When the orgional was written 25 years ago in assembly for a different CPU,(previous model, old code will still run) by a guy who is dead, you are in trouble. (I'm thinking of a real case here)
Great documentation also doesn't help when it covers the wrong thing. I read the documentation for one module I needed to make minor changes in and discoverd nothing about the code, instead I found the rough draft for a book: Advanced tricks with internal OOA process (Don't look on amazon, it never got further, and in any case is just enough specific to that companies old precess that it wouldn't apply elsewhere).
The problem with documentation is that good documentation rarely exists, not that it is hard to get at. Literate programing sounds good, and it would be if everyone wrote good documentation, but nobody could find it afterwards. Instead nobody writes good documentation, but at least it is in accessable places. (Generally company specific, but most companys do a fairly good job of keeping it)
Sometimes, sometimes. Some things go through far too easially, others are held up far too long. McDonalds, and most other resteraunts also have standards which may or may not be hard to meet, and you may or may not be able to grease the gears. You never know when someone will decide that they have an interest in doing their job right, and hold you up longer trying to figgure out why you wanted to grease the gears instead of doing the paperwork right.
Remember too that every case of someone getting caught is circulated. After every case of this the agents go on alert, and do the job right for a few days/weeks/months, before sliding, you don't want to plan on bribes only to get your application in minutes before someone is caught.
Vandals break windows, spray paint wood, and use a gun on convience store workers. (Obviously the latter is a different class of crime). In the book he accounts for a case of heavy glass that was broken several times within days of being put up. They finialy just put up plywood, and it was never broken, but it was painted all the time. The plywood was actually much easier to break than the glass it replaced, but nobody breaks plywood, they paint it. (or burn it, but it is hard to burn large parts of a panel)
A convenience store worker's head does not afford the ability to throw a cinder block though it. You can do so, often killing the worker, but you don't think of that.
Re:This reminds me of a book....
on
Shop Till It Drops
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It comes down to cost. 8 years ago when I worked at McDonalds we considered a robotic fry vat. The one we had wasn't working well anymore, so a new one was required. However the cost got in the way. Something like 5 times the price just to get the robotic version. We could not make the payments.
McDonalds really wants to replace all their fry vats and grills with robotic versions. The oil is somewhere between 300 and 450 degrees (f), and burns are common. However the cost couldn't be justified. Build a robot that is reliable and cheep and they will make you rich. (remember though that the enviorment isn't the easiest to work with, it all has to pass FDA inspection, and greese tends to clog things)
Remember though, in the end it is about the consumer. If you don't ilke it, stick with it. There are still a (few) gopher sites around, even though I havn't seen one since 1995. There are a couple BBSs in my area, though I haven't called one since I got on the internet.
I used to be into irc, one guy at work found out, and decided to check it out. In half an hour he found 10 warze sites, and concluded that it was irc was about. I used it for hours at a time, over several years, and never once encountered warze (or porn, which is appearently the other big thing on irc). Porn is a major force in web-commernce according to slashdot posts, but I rarely encounter them.
If the consumer doesn't like it, they won't find it. If the consumer finds it useful they will. Now you might find that you are a minority consumer, but just because you don't want what everyone else does, doesn't mean that you can't get your fix.
I don't care if AOL wins, and 95% of the net population subscribes to their service, which can only be accessed with their client in windows. Knowing AOL/TW, I don't expect to have any interest in the content I cannot access. My TV is only used for nostalga trips with my Atari, I have no interest in any of the programs I could get. Maybe there is something of interest, but I haven't seen it. YMMV.
Hmm, one of my former co-workers concluded it was impossibal to be both a good programer and a good musician. That isn't to say you can't do both, but you cannot be good at both. He was in his late 50s, and has been a programer all his working life, so he has plenty of expirence.
Note however that being good different from just playing. I'm not sure where though, other than I play but am not good.
Yeah right, welcome to the real world. I don't own any Microsoft products (not even illegal copies). I'm looking for a job, and I've been unable to apply for several because they demand my resume in Word format only, which I cannot save in. The worst offenders seem to be companies looking for unix help, companies looking for help with Windows don't have a problem with plain text.
I wish they were hurry up, if they claim the rights to my creations, they have to buy them. I consider my short story worth only 35 million dollars. The fact that nobody else thinks so doesn't matter, I wasn't going to sell it, but since they now own it they have to compensate me for it. That picture my great aunt painted with worthless to any collecter, but to me it is worth a lot of money.
First of all, get an accountant or to handle the details. I believe in do it yourself, but if you have to ask this question, it means that you either don't have the time, or don't want to find out the details the hard way. (Nothing wrong with that, you have a job to do, and you can probably make more money doing your job than you would save by not hireing a pro)
Now that I've said that: you don't nessicarly want to take all deductions you can. For instance you can deduct your home office space from your taxes. However when you deduct that space (beyond all the rules for using it, which I assume you can follow), you pay more when you sell the house because the part you deducted you owe taxes on, while the rest of the house you don't owe taxes on. (subject to certian rules you don't pay taxes when you sell a house that you lived in)
Note, tax law is extreemly complex. You have in your situations many deductions you can take, but some will be counter productive in the long run. Worse yet, they change the law from time to time, so you might decide to take or not take a deduction, only to discover latter that you should have done it the other way. (In the house example, if most people telecomut in the future odds are you could have it both ways)
Good luck. Your situation is extreemly complex, what is right for you could easially be wrong for everyone else. You either get to study the tax code in detail, or hire someone who hopefully knows it well enough to get the right details for you.
The system was not running UNIX, it was running a home brew quick get it out the door OS that supported only what we needed, and nothing more. The consideration for the CPU was cheap since we had no chance of using all the power it offered anyway.
As an example of how bad the implimentation was, We often lost characters, despite using telnet to get into the system. That is despite TCP we still managed to silently lose things. It didn't matter most of the time because you couldn't type fast enough to cause that, but when using automation tools (ethernet speed) we lost things all the time.
Actually when I want to do a quickie edit I use ed, not wanting to wait for vi to load. (Which not only takes the time for vi to load, but also the time to figgure out how to set TERM on whichever incarnation of a shell I'm using, not all of which are unix)
Emacs is great of long programming session, it does a lot of nice formating and brace matching automaticly. (I think vi can do this too, but not as nicely) vi is great for editing configuration files, quick and easy. When normal TERM variables don't exist, or the link is slow ed really shines.
Not really. For every VOIP call, you can take away one analog call, replacing it with a digital call. Digital allows you to put several calls on one wire, so in theory, if everyone moved to VOIP, then all those analog wires could be used for digital, and there would be MORE bandwidth than before.
Note, in practice, the phone companies moved most calls to digital except the wires closest to the customers. The theory applies though.
Depends on where you live. For me, the numbers work out like this:
POTS with unlimited local: $42/month
Cell phone with free LD: $44/month.
The cell phone looks like a no brainer. Sure it isn't unlimited talk time, but it is more than I use, and while I don't use the LD often, it is nice to have. It also work more places than the regular phone. Did I mention that voice mail, and callerID are included in the cell phone, but extra for POTS?
Hint: There is no law or moral requirement that you answer the phone. In fact, it is immoral to have your phone on in church. (If you are on call you can get away with it on vibrate) It is immoral to answer the phone when you are having a face to face conversation with someone else. (unless you warned the other party you are expecting a call, and then use callerId to take no other calls) It is immoral to answer the phone at dinner. (unless you are expecting a call, including being on call)
When you realise that you are not a slave to the phone, then the cell phone becomes a nice convience. When you are a slave to the phone, jumping when it rings, waiting for a call, then you will hate a cell phone.
I'd rather ditch POTS. I pay the same for my cell phone as for POTS, and I get more minutes than I need. Sure in theory POTS is unlimited, while the cell phone limites me to 1600 minutes a month (1000 weekend only too!), but in practice, I don't use the phone that much anyway.
Remember everyone is different. I haven't used my POTS line yet this year (I only keep it because I have to have it to get DSL, though other broadband should be here anytime now). Other people use the phone more than me, and a cell phone won't work. I used to move around a lot, and my cell phone number never changes, while the POTS number would change each time. I'm single, so that is a factor, I'm not trying to save money by sharing a line and phone with a family.
Just a minute
Flips on atari 800xl
pick up microphone and speak into it
"Computer, find me information on Anonymous Coward"
1030 (300 baud) modem dials out
short wait
Faster than you can read, the following appears, often in higher resolution than the computer can drive)
you got a C in gym class in 4th grade
Video of your at the office christmas party
Your rejection letter from MIT
(censered) communication from your bed last night, taken from microphone in your light
copy of your bare butt on the office copier
complete shower videos from 9th grade gym
Complete history of your postings to/.
This is old. I remember back in 1983 that people did the same thing with the Atari. Honest bought a game, and never even opened the origional package, just found a warzed copy without all the copy protection.
I had one game I could only load one out of 7 times, because my disk drive happened to spin 1 rpm faster than most (still within specs).
Eventially companies learned that copy protection pissed off the honest people more than it prevented the dishonest copies. So make sure if you are an honest person that you complain at the first sign of copy proection related trouble.
Of course I'm proud. Step back a little and look at those who watch TV, their life revolves around it. I was helping a friend plan a remodeling job, and where to put the TV was the first question, once the TV was placed on the paper, then he looked at what the rest of the house did. He ended up with the best place for the TV, but the rest of the house will be much worse.
I'm left out of nearly half of all coversataions because I didn't watch the show or movie. People are littlerally so uncreative that all they have to talk about is someone else's efforts on TV.
Don't forget that it influnces all your thinking. I can always tell who the popular people on TV are by looking at the birth section, whenever there are a lot of babies with one name there is a good chance that someone with that name is popular. (of course there are standard names that will always be popular so this isn't a universial indicator).
Sure you need a diversion, but do you really want TV to be it?
You want to work overseas, but your not willing to show that you want to. No wonder nobody wants to hire you. Show some effort.
Your second language is the hardest to learn, and you don't even know it. Start brushing up on it. Ideally you would get others to help (SO, kids, roommates). You should have entire days where you don't speak a word of english, and yet you have normal conversations.
Now learn some hard ones. French is a fine language (the people that speak it is a different matter), but it is too close to english. Learn something different. Russian, Hebrew, and Korean. Note I said and there, learn them all. I picked those there (there are several others with similear properties), because they are both very unlike english, and unlike each other to a large extent. They also have a different alphabit. Whereever your dream job takes you, you will have expirence with learning similear languages, so you can pick it up faster.
I'm told that after about 10 langauges you can pick up new ones in a matter of a few days. You will impress the interviewer with your fast learning if you don't speak the language when the interview is scheduled, but you do the interview in his native language.
"The federal government plays an important role in funding basic software research," said a Microsoft representative.
As a US tax payer, that is MY MONEY they are talking about there. I have no objectisons to the federal goverment funding development for things they need, but Microsoft is talking as if it is their right to have the money. It is not a right. Software may not be a significant part of the US budget (though much of it is obscured in other items), but it still amounts to millions or even billions of dollars a YEAR! (I used to work from one company that was getting a couple million a year to develop software, combine that with a few other companies)
I pay taxes on the money I earn. I expect that money will be used as carefully as I take care of mine. (and I'm known as a frugral guy) That doesn't mean spend no money, but it means think twice before spending it.
It is NOT the job of the goverment to fund research. Microsoft has a large pile of money, it is their job to invest that money in research. It is the goverment's job to see where the goverment needs something (that may not even be useful to anyone else), and supply money to get the need filled quickly. Any other research is for universities, and should be public domain.
Not all public schools will work with you, but many will. Find out, and take advantage of whatever they will do.
Try to get your kids in for music or Gym class, or perhaps you did poorly in math, so you should bring your kids in for math. I would be well advised to bring my kids (if I had them) in for english class. Most teachers have a set schedual, so you can your kid in at the same time every day for one class, and you get both socalization and instruction benifits.
The biggest advantage of public education is the varity of people and teaching styles the kid is exposed to. Your kids need to learn to work with people, including people they don't like. They also need to learn how to deal with the "bad" kids, that is to say no when a chance to do something wrong is offered.
Finially, don't be afraid to admit you are wrong, and give up on the whole idea. You might turn out to be a bad teacher, or you may have one kid who doesn't do well home schooled. All kids are different you might have one who shines and one who fails in home schooling. Most likely you will need to change things a little bit for each kid.
Last, beware of people like me who give advice about how to raise your kids, but don't have kids themselves. We mean well, but we don't know your kids.
There is very little difference between the Republicans and Democrats. Get out and learn what the real issues are. You will soon discover two things: There are many thousands of issues, and all have a whole range of possibale positions. If two people ever agree 100% on all the issues, then one of those two needs to be shot for not having a mind.
Liberalism is any belief that you disagree with, that is also new (and often popular). It is an attack because many view it as a group of changes that they belive are for the worse.
Slashdot Mirror
No HIV cannot do to humans what it did to chimps. As far as I know chimps do not know about protecting themselves from HIV and similear dieses, while many humans do.
I know that HIV is an issue. I'm careful not to have sex with anyone at risk for HIV. (ie, only others who are also careful about partners) This isn't perfect protection; not all partners are fully honest, but my odds of HIV are extreemly low. Therefore it is likely that my genes will survive even if I don't have any of the HIV resistant ones.
I'm not an expert on chimps, but my understanding is when a female is in heat she will mate with every male she can find (the entire tribe, subject to some rules which we don't need to get into) in a day. In that enviorment STDs will spread quickly. Any resistant genes will be a great benifit, as the rest of the population dies.
PS, comments that I'm a geek and so I'm unlikely to pass my genes on, HIV or no are not relavent.
The problem with freedom is you don't realise what it really means. I know a few people who really understand what religious freedom means. All were religious in the Soviet Union (or satalite countries), China, Pakastan(sp), Malasia, or other country where religious freedoms do not exist. I know ministers who do not have email because China will read it, they get their regular mail only when the visit other countries. They carry a bible with absolutely NO marks on it. (Most love those little notes they normally write in their bible). No pictures, names, or contacts are ever allowed written down.
As an american though, I don't live like that. I make no seceret that I'm religious, and even though many /. readers think it is foolish, not one will attempt to kill me for my beliefs. In the town where I live there are 10 different churchs (that I know of) all who claim they are the only right one in town. Nobody in my town as ever been threatened because of their beliefs, even though most (including athiests) would prefer everyone belived like them.
P.S. the more technicaly savey of the ministers I know are the only ones who I know that actually use pgp and encourage it. They however know that keystroke loggers and the like make pgp less usefull in non-free countries.
If you throw away the UML when you move to the next phase, then the UML step was mostly wasted. I can do everything UML does by writting and reviewing my header files. UML is great, if you keep it up to date with the program because you can see all the data on one page (11x17 poster) that you hang on the wall.
Class A has a pointer to class B, which has a child C, containing a pointer to class D, and that is how class A and class D fit in the whole system.
Remember the Mythical Man Month quote: (Which I cannot find offhand, but something like this) show my your logic, but hide your datastructurs and I will be mystified. Show me your datastructures and you will not need to show me the logic, it will be obvious. UML is a nice way to show the data structures -- if it is kept up to date
I like UML. Having a few posters on my wall that defined my data structures made the changes in my logic obvious. Even when UML had some lacks that it was still obvious what I needed to do. (The implimentation I used did not support an array, and I had one problem which required writing an array to hardware) However I was always printing out new posters because something changed. Worse, I had to keep track of a different one for each version of the product in the field. Still it is much clearer to have the essence of the header files all on one page, than scattered about in many different files.
I am not that old, and I seen several cases of someone cutting as pasting some similear code, comments and all, and then not updating the comments with the minor changes. When the comments references one register, and the code a different one, the comment is useless. Even though the code is similear, you can be sure that something is different, otherwise the two functions would be combined into a different one. But what logically is different between the two? What was missed?
When the orgional was written 25 years ago in assembly for a different CPU,(previous model, old code will still run) by a guy who is dead, you are in trouble. (I'm thinking of a real case here)
Great documentation also doesn't help when it covers the wrong thing. I read the documentation for one module I needed to make minor changes in and discoverd nothing about the code, instead I found the rough draft for a book: Advanced tricks with internal OOA process (Don't look on amazon, it never got further, and in any case is just enough specific to that companies old precess that it wouldn't apply elsewhere).
The problem with documentation is that good documentation rarely exists, not that it is hard to get at. Literate programing sounds good, and it would be if everyone wrote good documentation, but nobody could find it afterwards. Instead nobody writes good documentation, but at least it is in accessable places. (Generally company specific, but most companys do a fairly good job of keeping it)
Sometimes, sometimes. Some things go through far too easially, others are held up far too long. McDonalds, and most other resteraunts also have standards which may or may not be hard to meet, and you may or may not be able to grease the gears. You never know when someone will decide that they have an interest in doing their job right, and hold you up longer trying to figgure out why you wanted to grease the gears instead of doing the paperwork right.
Remember too that every case of someone getting caught is circulated. After every case of this the agents go on alert, and do the job right for a few days/weeks/months, before sliding, you don't want to plan on bribes only to get your application in minutes before someone is caught.
Read Design of Everyday things by Donald Norman.
Vandals break windows, spray paint wood, and use a gun on convience store workers. (Obviously the latter is a different class of crime). In the book he accounts for a case of heavy glass that was broken several times within days of being put up. They finialy just put up plywood, and it was never broken, but it was painted all the time. The plywood was actually much easier to break than the glass it replaced, but nobody breaks plywood, they paint it. (or burn it, but it is hard to burn large parts of a panel)
A convenience store worker's head does not afford the ability to throw a cinder block though it. You can do so, often killing the worker, but you don't think of that.
It comes down to cost. 8 years ago when I worked at McDonalds we considered a robotic fry vat. The one we had wasn't working well anymore, so a new one was required. However the cost got in the way. Something like 5 times the price just to get the robotic version. We could not make the payments.
McDonalds really wants to replace all their fry vats and grills with robotic versions. The oil is somewhere between 300 and 450 degrees (f), and burns are common. However the cost couldn't be justified. Build a robot that is reliable and cheep and they will make you rich. (remember though that the enviorment isn't the easiest to work with, it all has to pass FDA inspection, and greese tends to clog things)
Remember though, in the end it is about the consumer. If you don't ilke it, stick with it. There are still a (few) gopher sites around, even though I havn't seen one since 1995. There are a couple BBSs in my area, though I haven't called one since I got on the internet.
I used to be into irc, one guy at work found out, and decided to check it out. In half an hour he found 10 warze sites, and concluded that it was irc was about. I used it for hours at a time, over several years, and never once encountered warze (or porn, which is appearently the other big thing on irc). Porn is a major force in web-commernce according to slashdot posts, but I rarely encounter them.
If the consumer doesn't like it, they won't find it. If the consumer finds it useful they will. Now you might find that you are a minority consumer, but just because you don't want what everyone else does, doesn't mean that you can't get your fix.
I don't care if AOL wins, and 95% of the net population subscribes to their service, which can only be accessed with their client in windows. Knowing AOL/TW, I don't expect to have any interest in the content I cannot access. My TV is only used for nostalga trips with my Atari, I have no interest in any of the programs I could get. Maybe there is something of interest, but I haven't seen it. YMMV.
Hmm, one of my former co-workers concluded it was impossibal to be both a good programer and a good musician. That isn't to say you can't do both, but you cannot be good at both. He was in his late 50s, and has been a programer all his working life, so he has plenty of expirence.
Note however that being good different from just playing. I'm not sure where though, other than I play but am not good.
Yeah right, welcome to the real world. I don't own any Microsoft products (not even illegal copies). I'm looking for a job, and I've been unable to apply for several because they demand my resume in Word format only, which I cannot save in. The worst offenders seem to be companies looking for unix help, companies looking for help with Windows don't have a problem with plain text.
I wish they were hurry up, if they claim the rights to my creations, they have to buy them. I consider my short story worth only 35 million dollars. The fact that nobody else thinks so doesn't matter, I wasn't going to sell it, but since they now own it they have to compensate me for it. That picture my great aunt painted with worthless to any collecter, but to me it is worth a lot of money.
No, this OS may have been quick and dirty, but it never crashed, ran fast on slow processors, and did not have a web browser.
First of all, get an accountant or to handle the details. I believe in do it yourself, but if you have to ask this question, it means that you either don't have the time, or don't want to find out the details the hard way. (Nothing wrong with that, you have a job to do, and you can probably make more money doing your job than you would save by not hireing a pro)
Now that I've said that: you don't nessicarly want to take all deductions you can. For instance you can deduct your home office space from your taxes. However when you deduct that space (beyond all the rules for using it, which I assume you can follow), you pay more when you sell the house because the part you deducted you owe taxes on, while the rest of the house you don't owe taxes on. (subject to certian rules you don't pay taxes when you sell a house that you lived in)
Note, tax law is extreemly complex. You have in your situations many deductions you can take, but some will be counter productive in the long run. Worse yet, they change the law from time to time, so you might decide to take or not take a deduction, only to discover latter that you should have done it the other way. (In the house example, if most people telecomut in the future odds are you could have it both ways)
Good luck. Your situation is extreemly complex, what is right for you could easially be wrong for everyone else. You either get to study the tax code in detail, or hire someone who hopefully knows it well enough to get the right details for you.
The system was not running UNIX, it was running a home brew quick get it out the door OS that supported only what we needed, and nothing more. The consideration for the CPU was cheap since we had no chance of using all the power it offered anyway.
As an example of how bad the implimentation was, We often lost characters, despite using telnet to get into the system. That is despite TCP we still managed to silently lose things. It didn't matter most of the time because you couldn't type fast enough to cause that, but when using automation tools (ethernet speed) we lost things all the time.
Actually when I want to do a quickie edit I use ed, not wanting to wait for vi to load. (Which not only takes the time for vi to load, but also the time to figgure out how to set TERM on whichever incarnation of a shell I'm using, not all of which are unix)
Emacs is great of long programming session, it does a lot of nice formating and brace matching automaticly. (I think vi can do this too, but not as nicely) vi is great for editing configuration files, quick and easy. When normal TERM variables don't exist, or the link is slow ed really shines.
Not really. For every VOIP call, you can take away one analog call, replacing it with a digital call. Digital allows you to put several calls on one wire, so in theory, if everyone moved to VOIP, then all those analog wires could be used for digital, and there would be MORE bandwidth than before.
Note, in practice, the phone companies moved most calls to digital except the wires closest to the customers. The theory applies though.
Depends on where you live. For me, the numbers work out like this:
POTS with unlimited local: $42/month
Cell phone with free LD: $44/month.
The cell phone looks like a no brainer. Sure it isn't unlimited talk time, but it is more than I use, and while I don't use the LD often, it is nice to have. It also work more places than the regular phone. Did I mention that voice mail, and callerID are included in the cell phone, but extra for POTS?
Hint: There is no law or moral requirement that you answer the phone. In fact, it is immoral to have your phone on in church. (If you are on call you can get away with it on vibrate) It is immoral to answer the phone when you are having a face to face conversation with someone else. (unless you warned the other party you are expecting a call, and then use callerId to take no other calls) It is immoral to answer the phone at dinner. (unless you are expecting a call, including being on call)
When you realise that you are not a slave to the phone, then the cell phone becomes a nice convience. When you are a slave to the phone, jumping when it rings, waiting for a call, then you will hate a cell phone.
I'd rather ditch POTS. I pay the same for my cell phone as for POTS, and I get more minutes than I need. Sure in theory POTS is unlimited, while the cell phone limites me to 1600 minutes a month (1000 weekend only too!), but in practice, I don't use the phone that much anyway.
Remember everyone is different. I haven't used my POTS line yet this year (I only keep it because I have to have it to get DSL, though other broadband should be here anytime now). Other people use the phone more than me, and a cell phone won't work. I used to move around a lot, and my cell phone number never changes, while the POTS number would change each time. I'm single, so that is a factor, I'm not trying to save money by sharing a line and phone with a family.
Just a minute /.
Flips on atari 800xl
pick up microphone and speak into it
"Computer, find me information on Anonymous Coward"
1030 (300 baud) modem dials out
short wait
Faster than you can read, the following appears, often in higher resolution than the computer can drive)
you got a C in gym class in 4th grade
Video of your at the office christmas party
Your rejection letter from MIT
(censered) communication from your bed last night, taken from microphone in your light
copy of your bare butt on the office copier
complete shower videos from 9th grade gym
Complete history of your postings to
At least that is how it would be in the movies.
This is old. I remember back in 1983 that people did the same thing with the Atari. Honest bought a game, and never even opened the origional package, just found a warzed copy without all the copy protection.
I had one game I could only load one out of 7 times, because my disk drive happened to spin 1 rpm faster than most (still within specs).
Eventially companies learned that copy protection pissed off the honest people more than it prevented the dishonest copies. So make sure if you are an honest person that you complain at the first sign of copy proection related trouble.
Of course I'm proud. Step back a little and look at those who watch TV, their life revolves around it. I was helping a friend plan a remodeling job, and where to put the TV was the first question, once the TV was placed on the paper, then he looked at what the rest of the house did. He ended up with the best place for the TV, but the rest of the house will be much worse.
I'm left out of nearly half of all coversataions because I didn't watch the show or movie. People are littlerally so uncreative that all they have to talk about is someone else's efforts on TV.
Don't forget that it influnces all your thinking. I can always tell who the popular people on TV are by looking at the birth section, whenever there are a lot of babies with one name there is a good chance that someone with that name is popular. (of course there are standard names that will always be popular so this isn't a universial indicator).
Sure you need a diversion, but do you really want TV to be it?
You want to work overseas, but your not willing to show that you want to. No wonder nobody wants to hire you. Show some effort.
Your second language is the hardest to learn, and you don't even know it. Start brushing up on it. Ideally you would get others to help (SO, kids, roommates). You should have entire days where you don't speak a word of english, and yet you have normal conversations.
Now learn some hard ones. French is a fine language (the people that speak it is a different matter), but it is too close to english. Learn something different. Russian, Hebrew, and Korean. Note I said and there, learn them all. I picked those there (there are several others with similear properties), because they are both very unlike english, and unlike each other to a large extent. They also have a different alphabit. Whereever your dream job takes you, you will have expirence with learning similear languages, so you can pick it up faster.
I'm told that after about 10 langauges you can pick up new ones in a matter of a few days. You will impress the interviewer with your fast learning if you don't speak the language when the interview is scheduled, but you do the interview in his native language.
"The federal government plays an important role in funding basic software research," said a Microsoft representative.
As a US tax payer, that is MY MONEY they are talking about there. I have no objectisons to the federal goverment funding development for things they need, but Microsoft is talking as if it is their right to have the money. It is not a right. Software may not be a significant part of the US budget (though much of it is obscured in other items), but it still amounts to millions or even billions of dollars a YEAR! (I used to work from one company that was getting a couple million a year to develop software, combine that with a few other companies)
I pay taxes on the money I earn. I expect that money will be used as carefully as I take care of mine. (and I'm known as a frugral guy) That doesn't mean spend no money, but it means think twice before spending it.
It is NOT the job of the goverment to fund research. Microsoft has a large pile of money, it is their job to invest that money in research. It is the goverment's job to see where the goverment needs something (that may not even be useful to anyone else), and supply money to get the need filled quickly. Any other research is for universities, and should be public domain.
Not all public schools will work with you, but many will. Find out, and take advantage of whatever they will do.
Try to get your kids in for music or Gym class, or perhaps you did poorly in math, so you should bring your kids in for math. I would be well advised to bring my kids (if I had them) in for english class. Most teachers have a set schedual, so you can your kid in at the same time every day for one class, and you get both socalization and instruction benifits.
The biggest advantage of public education is the varity of people and teaching styles the kid is exposed to. Your kids need to learn to work with people, including people they don't like. They also need to learn how to deal with the "bad" kids, that is to say no when a chance to do something wrong is offered.
Finially, don't be afraid to admit you are wrong, and give up on the whole idea. You might turn out to be a bad teacher, or you may have one kid who doesn't do well home schooled. All kids are different you might have one who shines and one who fails in home schooling. Most likely you will need to change things a little bit for each kid.
Last, beware of people like me who give advice about how to raise your kids, but don't have kids themselves. We mean well, but we don't know your kids.
There is very little difference between the Republicans and Democrats. Get out and learn what the real issues are. You will soon discover two things: There are many thousands of issues, and all have a whole range of possibale positions. If two people ever agree 100% on all the issues, then one of those two needs to be shot for not having a mind.
Liberalism is any belief that you disagree with, that is also new (and often popular). It is an attack because many view it as a group of changes that they belive are for the worse.