I agree that HP made a stupid mistake by discontinuing their calculators; I'm glad to hear they brought them back.
I ended up getting the 48GX after all because I need one of the expansion packs, and I didn't want to spend the money for the 49G+.
> they fired all the engineers and HP is now run by MBAs in > shiny suits.
What's ironic about your post (and I'm not offended) is that although my undergrad work was in electrical engineering, I'm currently working on my MBA.;-)
Thanks for the suggestion! That's the first site I found that actually had a link.
I ended up buying a 48GX with the financial plug-in because it's cheaper. My HP is really on for exams and quickie things; my PowerBook is more for extended number crunching.
>>Sounds like its power supply inverter is toast. Rip it apart, trace >>down the IC that is making all the noise (or look for a small IC >>mounted xformer near on IC) and do some home work. Replace what makes >>noise and what ic is a PWM if it has one, unless its home brew PWM >>inversion and learn. > >Generally the only time an IC makes a noise is when it sizzles just >before it goes bang. > >But yes, it sounds like a faulty component in the inverter for the TFT >backplane, probably a coil with shorted turns, or an eletrolytic >capacitor which was glued-down on the board but the glue has broken >down and fallen off.
Thanks. I used my 48S during our quiz tonight, and people around me could hear it buzzing. The guy next to me had a cheapo TI calculator, and he asked me why my HP calculator was growling at his calculator.
> People get way too worked up about all of this. Low- > level election fraud has always been and will always be > present.
You must be new here. Allow me to be the first to welcome you to the United States of America! In this country, we have a democracy (technically a republic), where voting is the single most important way a citizen can make sure their voice is heard. Voting is the foundation of our nation. Thus, patriotic Americans believe that voting is a sacred right, and we take it seriously.
> Had the election come to depend on a Democrat- > controlled state we would have found the same sorts of > attempts to slant the result towards Gore
It's a bad idea to deem an action acceptable because in the hypothetical, you think others would do it too. If that were the case, then I could say it's okay for me to steal your wallet or purse, because if you were in my position you would have done the same thing.
> I voted for Bush, who, IMO, has done a good job in some > ways but has also made some significant blunders. > Overall, I suspect he handled 9/11 better than Gore > would have
Trillion dollar deficit? Unemployment at 6%? Two unfinished wars costing a billion dollars a week? As a self-proclaimed "fiscal conservative," I'm sure you're proud.
And the question of how Gore would have handled 9/11, that's another hypothetical question. But we know this, if Gore had been president, the terrorist attacks wouldn't have happened at all because there's every reason to believe he would have continued the policy of the Clinton administration. The Clinton administration was actively working to thwart terrorism and hunt down bin Laden for years. When Bush took over, his administration ignored the terrorist threats, in favor of other priorities like a missile defense system or the war on drugs. A month before 9/11, Ashcroft diverted funds from anti-terrorism efforts to the war on drugs, and the Bush administration was trying to open up relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
> NO! First of all, when the (Democrat majority) USCCR > held hearings on the Florida election, they were not able > to find a single person that was disenfranchised by the > felon list.
You linked to the dissenting opinion, and not the original report. The majority opinion was 6-2. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that the 2000 presidential race in Florida was marred by "injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency" that disenfranchised minority voters.
The report concluded that:
* "countless unknown eligible voters" were wrongfully turned away from the polls or purged from voter registration lists because of procedures and practices used by election officials.
* criticism of an an effort to purge convicted felons and other ineligible voters from registration roles. Lists of ineligible voters, compiled by a private firm, had an error rate of at least 14 percent, and black voters had a "significantly greater chance" of appearing on the inaccurate lists than white voters
* black voters were nine times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected during the counting process. Faulty voting systems were more likely to be used in areas with higher percentages of minority voters, but even in counties where the voting systems were the same, black voters still had a higher rejection rate than white voters
(Source: "Civil Rights Commission Approves Report Assailing Florida Vote", CNN, June 8, 2001.)
The sentence you cited from the New York Times article was incomplete and out of context. It was talking about the Democrats' accusation that the Republicans had organized an effort to seek votes after the deadline: "The Times study found no evidence of vote fraud by either party. In particular, while some voters admitted in interviews that they had cast illegal ballots after Election Day, the investigation found no support for the suspicions of Democrats that the Bush campaign had organized an effort to solicit late votes."
Earlier in the article, "the Republicans mounted a legal and public relations campaign to persuade canvassing boards in Bush strongholds to waive the state's election laws when counting overseas absentee ballots. Their goal was simple: to count the maximum number of overseas ballots in counties won by Mr. Bush, particularly those with a high concentration of military voters, while seeking to disqualify overseas ballots in counties won by Vice President Al Gore.... In an analysis of the 2,490 ballots from Americans living abroad that were counted as legal votes after Election Day, The Times found 680 questionable votes. Although it is not known for whom the flawed ballots were cast, four out of five were accepted in counties carried by Mr. Bush"
> George W. Bush won the 2000 election under the current > American Electoral System.... The mix-up in Florida was because people couldn't figure out a simple ballot.
Oh, is that how it happened?
Even if we ignore the controversial Supreme Court ruling, the issue was much more complicated than that.
Jeb Bush and co. worked to get thousands of black voters disenfranchised by removing their names from the voting rolls if they had a name similar to that of a convicted felon ("Official: Florida disenfranchised minority voters", CNN, March 9, 2001).
Bush worked to maximize the number of overseas ballots in counties he won, he also worked to disenfranchise military ballots in counties Gore had won ("How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote", New York Times, July 15, 2001).
Of course, the problem was exasperated by Gore deciding to only have recounts in counties he won, rather than across the whole state.
So, the real issue was not just a complicated voting ballot, but also the way the votes were counted. And it's easier to verify how votes are counted (and recounted if necessary), if there's a paper trail. It doesn't help that Diebold's system is insecure.
Consider the fact that Diebold CEO Waldon O'Dell is a Republican who said in a fundraiser letter that he was committed to ""committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to [George W. Bush] next year." It is all the more important to make sure the way votes are cast and counted are transparent to the voters themselves.
And before I get lambasted by conservatives, consider the following: how would you react if you heard that the CEO of the company supplying voting equipment wrote in a Democratic fund raising letter that he was committed to helping Hillary Clinton win the presidency in 2004? You'd be a little nervous, and a lot pissed.
Maybe I can ask a Unix neophyte question without getting flamed (this is Slashdot, of course)
When I first got my PowerBook G4 (17"), it was really fast. Over the months it seemed to get noticeably slower. I always run the CPU monitor in the Dock, and I found that it was becoming more common to see the "Niced" processes appear on the graph, particularly after a reboot, when everything is getting set up.
As usual, after a system update (like with 10.2.8), it would seem that things would get faster, and I'm not noticing any niced processes, or at least not as frequently.
My question is why would niced processes appear more often, and what does a system update do to make them go away? I don't haven't adjusted the nice values of any application manually, and I run Disk First Aid and Repair Permissions fairly regularly.
I suspect that the "optimizing" stage of the installation has something to do with this, but I'd like to know if there's any way to manually do this so I don't have to wait for a system update to get the system in top shape.
Why is objectivity important? What an odd question. Objective measurements of consumer goods makes it easier to understand substitute products and to determine if you're getting a good price for what you bought.
Oh, you meant, "where are the objective standards?", not "why are there objective standards?" As we all know, "wherefore art thou" isn't a fancy way of saying, "where are you?" It means, "why are you?" or "what purpose are you?"
I'm just glad the word "whither" has gone out of fashion again. Casual, improper use of Shakespearean English makes fools of us all.
> Stop talking trash about Glenn Miller or I'll run a String of > Pearls through your nose. Now Take the A Train outta > here or I'll sing you a Moonlight Serenade, and you don't > want that.
Aliens! They've returned Glen Miller.
Aw, smeg, that's all we need. Glen Miller on board, boring us to death with "Pennsylvania 6-5000."
Take him back, we don't want him!
(this quote brought to you in commemoration of the first two seasons of Red Dwarf being released on DVD!)
> You violate my rights when you deny me the ability to > hire who I want in whatever country I want to do my > work.
That's right! If I'm manager of a company, and I only want to hire white, dumpy, balding men who are great golfers then that's my business. Everyone knows that Negroes will shirk, Mexicans will steal, and girls, well, although they're good at getting coffee, they're better off in the homes.
Just because the government provides loans, lucrative contracts, and has the duty to make sure all citizens have equal opportunities certainly doesn't mean they have the right to suggest I can't discriminate according to race, color, gender, creed, etc. Right?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other work to do. These martinis aren't going to finish drinking themselves! The only thing keeping me awake during my afternoon nap is -- first it was manufacturing, now it's software development -- what if managerial jobs start moving overseas too?
> there's no particularly good reason that some data > should be taxed more than other data
I don't see how this follows. Different types of mail are charged at different rates. Vehicles can be taxed at different rates (for registration or tolls). It's not the item itself that is being taxed as much as the item and the intended purpose.
So a given RTP stream being used for video streaming can be taxed differently than an RTP stream for a phone call. In fact, VoIP allows for this better than traditional TDM lines, since a TDM line can't easily indicate what type of call is being connected (like a voice call versus a PPP call). The RTP stream can indicate during session negotiation though.
And to those that say regulation is intrinsically evil, realize that the reason the U.S. has the best landline phone system in the world is because of that regulation.
> in a club in Lagos Nigeria (the bar is called Towers, a nice > place on Victoria Island), there is a sign above the > urinals, which says: "Employees must wash genitals > before returning to work"
> I just wish I'd had my camera with me, but you will have > to take my word for it.
Funny sign, but my suggestion is that you don't try to take a camera into a public restroom, snapping pictures while standing at the urinal and snickering to yourself.
Just a friendly Slashdot public service announcement!
I know that this page should have been funny, but for some reason, I'm not laughing. And I'm even familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda.
I kind of expected something like "Engrish" or the often funny Airtoons (but it's probably only funny for those of us that fly a lot). Or even, the hasn't-been-updated-since-the-millennium Kibo and his amusing criticisms of font use or Gerald Holmes, which has outlived the silly.com web awards that are featured on his site. Hooray for Gerald!
> Sued? Try Criminally prosecuted. If the authorities find > the clown who started this virus, he's going to do time.
Absolutely. Boo-yah! You don't mess with the United States. That guy Osama bin-somebody who masterminded the Sept 11th attacks? Didn't take long for us to find him, right?
The anthrax mailer? Boom! We got him in no time, right?
Ken Lay, who defrauded millions from investors of Enron-- he's not on the street any more, right?
What about Bernie Ebbers, who's company WorldCom lied about more than $11 billion in revenue to defraud investors -- no way he's free, right?
Or what about a company like Microsoft that illegally abused their monopoly and cheerfully offered to "cut off their competitors' air supply"? The authorities certainly didn't let them off with a slap on the wrist, right?
So, if you think the authorities are serious about finding someone who killed thousands of people or stole millions of dollars, you'd better believe they're going to go after an anonymous cracker who targeted gullible Outlook users! He's as good as caught!
You're right; I forgot about the SIM for GSM phones. Yes, that would make it difficult to reprogram a GSM phone. However, CDMA IS-95 phones don't use SIM cards, so they could still be affected.
The driving factor for AWS moving to GSM was data, but a side effect is marginally better voice quality. GSM has better voice quality than IS-136 TDMA, mostly because the codecs can be more efficient because of the wider channel bandwidth --GSM uses 200 kHz, as opposed to IS-136 which uses 30 kHz. As such, with 8 users per channel for GSM (full rate), there is 25 kHz per user. With IS-136 at 3 users per channel (full rate), you get 10 kHz per user. I believe GSM can do half-rate, allowing for 16 users per channel, but that still allows for 12.5 kHz per user. It's been a few years for me, but I don't think that anyone has implemented half-rate on IS-136 to provide, which would be 5 kHz per user.
From studies I've read, IS-136 has the worst voice quality, followed by IS-95 CDMA, followed by GSM. However, to a casual user and with poorly optimized radio systems among carriers, you're right, there may be little discernible difference.
Of course, if you want the best voice quality, you'd better switch to an EIA-553 analog AMPS system, with a relatively few number of users. So the answer to poor voice quality is hair mousse, a skinny tie, a brick phone, and a time machine to take you back to the 1980s! Totally tubular!
> a T-Mobile (GSM) rep slammed an AT&T customer > (CDMA?), seems to me they'd have to give the slamee a > new phone.
Technologically, it's doable, but not as easily.
AT&T Wireless uses mostly D-AMPS IS-136, but they're trying to roll-out GSM into their markets because a) D-AMPS sux, and b) the data capabilities of D-AMPS sucks. Cingular is in the same boat as AT&T Wireless.
[Note that, as any anal-retentive RF Engineer will tell you, GSM and IS-136 D-AMPS are both TDMA (i.e., Time Division Multiplexed Access).]
Verizon Wireless, SprintPCS, and ALLTEL use IS-95 CDMA. So it is technologically conceivable that a consumer could get forcibly moved from AT&T Wireless/Cingular/Nextel once the GSM migration is complete. Ditto for Verizon Wireless/SprintPCS/ALLTEL.
The issue is generally the phones are the same, but internal settings in the phone must be changed to change carriers. This would have to be accomplished more than just moving the subscriber information from one service to another (like with long distance), but also reprogramming the settings on the phone.
Don't feel easy yet; cellular service providers have had what they call "Over the Air Programming" (OAP) for years now, so they could send the programming information over the radio control channel to change the phone's settings.
I wouldn't be surprised if as cellular technology continues to mature, users start to get spam short messaging service messages saying something like, "Reply to this message to improve your cellular phone service". If the user replies, they get moved to a new $2.99/minute rate plan with SleazyCell company.
And others rise in their place: Omni Group has risen to the top in terms of Mac OS X software developers. OmniGraffle is about as much of a Cocoa experience as you can get!
The New York Times issued a correction for their story on online reputations. It turns out the author has never been on the Internet and does not own a computer. Also, the reference to Amazon books was incorrect; Amazon actually is a the remnants of a forest, not an online bookseller. There is no such web site site as Slashdot.
[3G uses a wider frequency bandwidth for each channel than regular IS-95 CDMA. Approximately 3 times the bandwidth, if I remember correctly. Sorry. RF engineers have an annoying sense of humor!]
Shows the value of competition. Microsoft has to work as hard at the Mac market as any other software maker, so they're forced to compete. As a result, Office v.X was one of the first carbonized Mac applications (and used quite a few Mac OS X-specific features). Entourage is cool, Excel is really cool on the Mac, Word is okay, and PowerPoint is well... tolerable. But they're obviously trying.
Slashdot Mirror
> I bet when one guy redesigns the logo, the rest of the :-)
> company would stop working and just stare.
Then again, maybe it is true. We know that clearly it's true for Leander Kahney of Wired and at least 66 slashdotters.
Thanks for the info.
;-)
I agree that HP made a stupid mistake by discontinuing their calculators; I'm glad to hear they brought them back.
I ended up getting the 48GX after all because I need one of the expansion packs, and I didn't want to spend the money for the 49G+.
> they fired all the engineers and HP is now run by MBAs in
> shiny suits.
What's ironic about your post (and I'm not offended) is that although my undergrad work was in electrical engineering, I'm currently working on my MBA.
Thanks for the suggestion! That's the first site I found that actually had a link.
I ended up buying a 48GX with the financial plug-in because it's cheaper. My HP is really on for exams and quickie things; my PowerBook is more for extended number crunching.
> Have you ever happened to put the three batteries in the
> calc with the wrong polarity?
Not that I'm aware of. The 48S is still making a loud static noise, so I think it's probably done for.
> The 49G has been available for over a year now. The link > you provided is to the 49G+ an entirely new beast.
Thanks. I could have sworn I wrote 49G+ in my submitted story, but I must have forgotten.
Rumor has it the 49G+ was released today, but I can't even find a store that sells decent calculators any longer.
>>Sounds like its power supply inverter is toast. Rip it apart, trace
>>down the IC that is making all the noise (or look for a small IC
>>mounted xformer near on IC) and do some home work. Replace what makes
>>noise and what ic is a PWM if it has one, unless its home brew PWM
>>inversion and learn.
>
>Generally the only time an IC makes a noise is when it sizzles just
>before it goes bang.
>
>But yes, it sounds like a faulty component in the inverter for the TFT
>backplane, probably a coil with shorted turns, or an eletrolytic
>capacitor which was glued-down on the board but the glue has broken
>down and fallen off.
Thanks. I used my 48S during our quiz tonight, and people around me could hear it buzzing. The guy next to me had a cheapo TI calculator, and he asked me why my HP calculator was growling at his calculator.
> People get way too worked up about all of this. Low-
> level election fraud has always been and will always be
> present.
You must be new here. Allow me to be the first to welcome you to the United States of America! In this country, we have a democracy (technically a republic), where voting is the single most important way a citizen can make sure their voice is heard. Voting is the foundation of our nation. Thus, patriotic Americans believe that voting is a sacred right, and we take it seriously.
> Had the election come to depend on a Democrat-
> controlled state we would have found the same sorts of
> attempts to slant the result towards Gore
It's a bad idea to deem an action acceptable because in the hypothetical, you think others would do it too. If that were the case, then I could say it's okay for me to steal your wallet or purse, because if you were in my position you would have done the same thing.
> I voted for Bush, who, IMO, has done a good job in some
> ways but has also made some significant blunders.
> Overall, I suspect he handled 9/11 better than Gore
> would have
Trillion dollar deficit? Unemployment at 6%? Two unfinished wars costing a billion dollars a week? As a self-proclaimed "fiscal conservative," I'm sure you're proud.
And the question of how Gore would have handled 9/11, that's another hypothetical question. But we know this, if Gore had been president, the terrorist attacks wouldn't have happened at all because there's every reason to believe he would have continued the policy of the Clinton administration. The Clinton administration was actively working to thwart terrorism and hunt down bin Laden for years. When Bush took over, his administration ignored the terrorist threats, in favor of other priorities like a missile defense system or the war on drugs. A month before 9/11, Ashcroft diverted funds from anti-terrorism efforts to the war on drugs, and the Bush administration was trying to open up relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
> NO! First of all, when the (Democrat majority) USCCR
:
... In an analysis of the 2,490 ballots from Americans living abroad that were counted as legal votes after Election Day, The Times found 680 questionable votes. Although it is not known for whom the flawed ballots were cast, four out of five were accepted in counties carried by Mr. Bush"
> held hearings on the Florida election, they were not able
> to find a single person that was disenfranchised by the
> felon list.
You linked to the dissenting opinion, and not the original report. The majority opinion was 6-2. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that the 2000 presidential race in Florida was marred by "injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency" that disenfranchised minority voters.
The report concluded that
* "countless unknown eligible voters" were wrongfully turned away from the polls or purged from voter registration lists because of procedures and practices used by election officials.
* criticism of an an effort to purge convicted felons and other ineligible voters from registration roles. Lists of ineligible voters, compiled by a private firm, had an error rate of at least 14 percent, and black voters had a "significantly greater chance" of appearing on the inaccurate lists than white voters
* black voters were nine times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected during the counting process. Faulty voting systems were more likely to be used in areas with higher percentages of minority voters, but even in counties where the voting systems were the same, black voters still had a higher rejection rate than white voters
(Source: "Civil Rights Commission Approves Report Assailing Florida Vote", CNN, June 8, 2001.)
The sentence you cited from the New York Times article was incomplete and out of context. It was talking about the Democrats' accusation that the Republicans had organized an effort to seek votes after the deadline: "The Times study found no evidence of vote fraud by either party. In particular, while some voters admitted in interviews that they had cast illegal ballots after Election Day, the investigation found no support for the suspicions of Democrats that the Bush campaign had organized an effort to solicit late votes."
Earlier in the article, "the Republicans mounted a legal and public relations campaign to persuade canvassing boards in Bush strongholds to waive the state's election laws when counting overseas absentee ballots. Their goal was simple: to count the maximum number of overseas ballots in counties won by Mr. Bush, particularly those with a high concentration of military voters, while seeking to disqualify overseas ballots in counties won by Vice President Al Gore.
> George W. Bush won the 2000 election under the current ... The mix-up in Florida was because people couldn't figure out a simple ballot.
> American Electoral System.
Oh, is that how it happened?
Even if we ignore the controversial Supreme Court ruling, the issue was much more complicated than that.
Jeb Bush and co. worked to get thousands of black voters disenfranchised by removing their names from the voting rolls if they had a name similar to that of a convicted felon ("Official: Florida disenfranchised minority voters", CNN, March 9, 2001).
Bush worked to maximize the number of overseas ballots in counties he won, he also worked to disenfranchise military ballots in counties Gore had won ("How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote", New York Times, July 15, 2001).
Of course, the problem was exasperated by Gore deciding to only have recounts in counties he won, rather than across the whole state.
So, the real issue was not just a complicated voting ballot, but also the way the votes were counted. And it's easier to verify how votes are counted (and recounted if necessary), if there's a paper trail. It doesn't help that Diebold's system is insecure.
Consider the fact that Diebold CEO Waldon O'Dell is a Republican who said in a fundraiser letter that he was committed to ""committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to [George W. Bush] next year." It is all the more important to make sure the way votes are cast and counted are transparent to the voters themselves.
And before I get lambasted by conservatives, consider the following: how would you react if you heard that the CEO of the company supplying voting equipment wrote in a Democratic fund raising letter that he was committed to helping Hillary Clinton win the presidency in 2004? You'd be a little nervous, and a lot pissed.
Maybe I can ask a Unix neophyte question without getting flamed (this is Slashdot, of course)
When I first got my PowerBook G4 (17"), it was really fast. Over the months it seemed to get noticeably slower. I always run the CPU monitor in the Dock, and I found that it was becoming more common to see the "Niced" processes appear on the graph, particularly after a reboot, when everything is getting set up.
As usual, after a system update (like with 10.2.8), it would seem that things would get faster, and I'm not noticing any niced processes, or at least not as frequently.
My question is why would niced processes appear more often, and what does a system update do to make them go away? I don't haven't adjusted the nice values of any application manually, and I run Disk First Aid and Repair Permissions fairly regularly.
I suspect that the "optimizing" stage of the installation has something to do with this, but I'd like to know if there's any way to manually do this so I don't have to wait for a system update to get the system in top shape.
> Objectivity, wherefor art thou?
Why is objectivity important? What an odd question. Objective measurements of consumer goods makes it easier to understand substitute products and to determine if you're getting a good price for what you bought.
Oh, you meant, "where are the objective standards?", not "why are there objective standards?" As we all know, "wherefore art thou" isn't a fancy way of saying, "where are you?" It means, "why are you?" or "what purpose are you?"
I'm just glad the word "whither" has gone out of fashion again. Casual, improper use of Shakespearean English makes fools of us all.
> Stop talking trash about Glenn Miller or I'll run a String of
> Pearls through your nose. Now Take the A Train outta
> here or I'll sing you a Moonlight Serenade, and you don't
> want that.
Aliens! They've returned Glen Miller.
Aw, smeg, that's all we need. Glen Miller on board, boring us to death with "Pennsylvania 6-5000."
Take him back, we don't want him!
(this quote brought to you in commemoration of the first two seasons of Red Dwarf being released on DVD!)
> You violate my rights when you deny me the ability to
> hire who I want in whatever country I want to do my
> work.
That's right! If I'm manager of a company, and I only want to hire white, dumpy, balding men who are great golfers then that's my business. Everyone knows that Negroes will shirk, Mexicans will steal, and girls, well, although they're good at getting coffee, they're better off in the homes.
Just because the government provides loans, lucrative contracts, and has the duty to make sure all citizens have equal opportunities certainly doesn't mean they have the right to suggest I can't discriminate according to race, color, gender, creed, etc. Right?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have other work to do. These martinis aren't going to finish drinking themselves! The only thing keeping me awake during my afternoon nap is -- first it was manufacturing, now it's software development -- what if managerial jobs start moving overseas too?
> there's no particularly good reason that some data
> should be taxed more than other data
I don't see how this follows. Different types of mail are charged at different rates. Vehicles can be taxed at different rates (for registration or tolls). It's not the item itself that is being taxed as much as the item and the intended purpose.
So a given RTP stream being used for video streaming can be taxed differently than an RTP stream for a phone call. In fact, VoIP allows for this better than traditional TDM lines, since a TDM line can't easily indicate what type of call is being connected (like a voice call versus a PPP call). The RTP stream can indicate during session negotiation though.
And to those that say regulation is intrinsically evil, realize that the reason the U.S. has the best landline phone system in the world is because of that regulation.
> in a club in Lagos Nigeria (the bar is called Towers, a nice
> place on Victoria Island), there is a sign above the
> urinals, which says: "Employees must wash genitals
> before returning to work"
> I just wish I'd had my camera with me, but you will have
> to take my word for it.
Funny sign, but my suggestion is that you don't try to take a camera into a public restroom, snapping pictures while standing at the urinal and snickering to yourself.
Just a friendly Slashdot public service announcement!
I know that this page should have been funny, but for some reason, I'm not laughing. And I'm even familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda.
.com web awards that are featured on his site. Hooray for Gerald!
I kind of expected something like "Engrish" or the often funny Airtoons (but it's probably only funny for those of us that fly a lot). Or even, the hasn't-been-updated-since-the-millennium Kibo and his amusing criticisms of font use or Gerald Holmes, which has outlived the silly
> Sued? Try Criminally prosecuted. If the authorities find
> the clown who started this virus, he's going to do time.
Absolutely. Boo-yah! You don't mess with the United States. That guy Osama bin-somebody who masterminded the Sept 11th attacks? Didn't take long for us to find him, right?
The anthrax mailer? Boom! We got him in no time, right?
Ken Lay, who defrauded millions from investors of Enron-- he's not on the street any more, right?
What about Bernie Ebbers, who's company WorldCom lied about more than $11 billion in revenue to defraud investors -- no way he's free, right?
Or what about a company like Microsoft that illegally abused their monopoly and cheerfully offered to "cut off their competitors' air supply"? The authorities certainly didn't let them off with a slap on the wrist, right?
So, if you think the authorities are serious about finding someone who killed thousands of people or stole millions of dollars, you'd better believe they're going to go after an anonymous cracker who targeted gullible Outlook users! He's as good as caught!
You're right; I forgot about the SIM for GSM phones. Yes, that would make it difficult to reprogram a GSM phone. However, CDMA IS-95 phones don't use SIM cards, so they could still be affected.
The driving factor for AWS moving to GSM was data, but a side effect is marginally better voice quality. GSM has better voice quality than IS-136 TDMA, mostly because the codecs can be more efficient because of the wider channel bandwidth --GSM uses 200 kHz, as opposed to IS-136 which uses 30 kHz. As such, with 8 users per channel for GSM (full rate), there is 25 kHz per user. With IS-136 at 3 users per channel (full rate), you get 10 kHz per user. I believe GSM can do half-rate, allowing for 16 users per channel, but that still allows for 12.5 kHz per user. It's been a few years for me, but I don't think that anyone has implemented half-rate on IS-136 to provide, which would be 5 kHz per user.
From studies I've read, IS-136 has the worst voice quality, followed by IS-95 CDMA, followed by GSM. However, to a casual user and with poorly optimized radio systems among carriers, you're right, there may be little discernible difference.
Of course, if you want the best voice quality, you'd better switch to an EIA-553 analog AMPS system, with a relatively few number of users. So the answer to poor voice quality is hair mousse, a skinny tie, a brick phone, and a time machine to take you back to the 1980s! Totally tubular!
> a T-Mobile (GSM) rep slammed an AT&T customer
> (CDMA?), seems to me they'd have to give the slamee a
> new phone.
Technologically, it's doable, but not as easily.
AT&T Wireless uses mostly D-AMPS IS-136, but they're trying to roll-out GSM into their markets because a) D-AMPS sux, and b) the data capabilities of D-AMPS sucks. Cingular is in the same boat as AT&T Wireless.
[Note that, as any anal-retentive RF Engineer will tell you, GSM and IS-136 D-AMPS are both TDMA (i.e., Time Division Multiplexed Access).]
Verizon Wireless, SprintPCS, and ALLTEL use IS-95 CDMA. So it is technologically conceivable that a consumer could get forcibly moved from AT&T Wireless/Cingular/Nextel once the GSM migration is complete. Ditto for Verizon Wireless/SprintPCS/ALLTEL.
The issue is generally the phones are the same, but internal settings in the phone must be changed to change carriers. This would have to be accomplished more than just moving the subscriber information from one service to another (like with long distance), but also reprogramming the settings on the phone.
Don't feel easy yet; cellular service providers have had what they call "Over the Air Programming" (OAP) for years now, so they could send the programming information over the radio control channel to change the phone's settings.
I wouldn't be surprised if as cellular technology continues to mature, users start to get spam short messaging service messages saying something like, "Reply to this message to improve your cellular phone service". If the user replies, they get moved to a new $2.99/minute rate plan with SleazyCell company.
And others rise in their place: Omni Group has risen to the top in terms of Mac OS X software developers. OmniGraffle is about as much of a Cocoa experience as you can get!
The New York Times issued a correction for their story on online reputations. It turns out the author has never been on the Internet and does not own a computer. Also, the reference to Amazon books was incorrect; Amazon actually is a the remnants of a forest, not an online bookseller. There is no such web site site as Slashdot.
The New York Times regrets the error.
R E A L L Y . W I D E . T E X T
[3G uses a wider frequency bandwidth for each channel than regular IS-95 CDMA. Approximately 3 times the bandwidth, if I remember correctly. Sorry. RF engineers have an annoying sense of humor!]
> Microsoft products on Mac frequently don't suck
... tolerable. But they're obviously trying.
Shows the value of competition. Microsoft has to work as hard at the Mac market as any other software maker, so they're forced to compete. As a result, Office v.X was one of the first carbonized Mac applications (and used quite a few Mac OS X-specific features). Entourage is cool, Excel is really cool on the Mac, Word is okay, and PowerPoint is well
> There are system updates every week
:-)
Yeah, if those updates don't come fast enough, Microsoft is planning on including a sledgehammer with every copy of their next version of Windows.
> Why do you think Saddam had so many dollars stashed?
Is this kind of like the "why did the chicken cross the road" joke?
Umm... because U.S. currency is all Donald Rumsfeld brought back in December 1983. Saddam Hussein wasn't going to fall for the old I.O.U. trick again.