"The planet could not grow to Jupiter size because the star is small and the system ran out of gas."
No problem. They'll just coast another few light years, and it turns out there's a Speedway just past the next pulsar. Add a couple chili dogs from the snack bar, and there'll be enough gas in that system for another 5 million years.
It isn't just MCI, then, as another company (famous singer/pianist in their commercials, with joggers and trees, possibly in a South Carolina metro area) did the exact same thing to me several years ago. After several cancellation attempts, they FINALLY stopped sending me bills for a plan that didn't exist. I can't imagine there are customers naive enough to support such a business model.
I tried that but still get an occasional offer. It isn't that big a deal, however, because I use a post office box (lock and key) and also have a heavy-duty cross-cut shredder. It feels pretty good to see that annoying sample credit card get chewed into bits by a nice powerful shredder.
I think everyone should have a shredder. Put all junk mail, old greeting cards, years-old billing statements, magazine address labels, etc. though it, and anyone who looks in my garbage will just find a rotton banana peel and pot roast trimmings covered in bits of paper. If anyone is desparate enough to deal with that mess, then they probably earned that information and can have it.
"Recompiling software gets you almost nothing. Maybe 10% more performance, at the very maximum."
Beyond that, I ran into a problem once when using some very tempting compiler flags and broke the application. These problems are generally due to very difficult-to-crack bugs in the application or the compiler (or just my bad luck), which is why I just ended up not bothering. Nearly everyone should just use -O2 like the packagers use and be done with it. That way, it's more likely that more than one person in the universe can duplicate the problem and find a resolution that benefits everyone and doesn't waste valuable developer time.
It is in the USA. It isn't just me, either, as I know someone who can't even get 28K on their modem, and the phone company says all they'll guarantee is 14K or 9.6K or something like that. I was luckier in that I could at least do 28K.
Yeah, this is probably a lot like "POSIX compliance" for Windows NT. It was there to meet bullet points on requirements documents, rather than to actually provide the functionality.
If Windows had really implemented POSIX, then why is there Services For UNIX, Cygwin, and the MKS suite?
In the past decade+ that I've been exposed to Windows, never have I once had the impression Microsoft was really interested in interoperability or compatibility, beyond some token marketing-oriented effort.
"Spoken like someone who probably never ventured far from suburbia"
In the house I referred to, the nearest decent size town that wasn't an itty bitty dot on the map was 30 minutes away in good weather. The only internet access was over noisy phone lines that were not very reliable. Additionally, it was a long-distance call for access. There was no cable TV service at all, and satellite internet access is very expensive. Of course, I am not talking about sitting on some mountain in Montana hours and hours from anything at all, but by any modern sense of the word, it was "rural". And, I really was thankful to have my phone working on any given day.
Rural areas still have some people who are thankful to have a phone line most hours of the day. Broadband internet is just something they read about in the print newspapers!
For example, one house I used to lived in definitely did not have a "five nines" dial tone. Lightning, drunk drivers hitting phone poles, corrosion on decades-old lines, all have knocked out my phone service at times. There wasn't even cable TV--everyone had mini-dishes...if they had a view of the satellite.
Does it spawn a new process for each iteration, or is it able to feed files into a single running application? The former: VERY VERY SLOW. The latter is faster, but, in typical shell scripts with a for loop, spawning small dedicated processes works very well, too. Photoshop is not a small dedicated process.
This is why applications that can be scripted aren't always applications that should be scripted. Conversely, programs that are CLI from the beginning, like ImageMagick, work in scripts like a charm. These days, the simple UNIX shell is perhaps the most underrated tool for professionals, IMO (just don't get into quoting strings 3 deep, and it's great!).
Phone companies managed to get usable broadband over ancient phone lines, and all I have to do is plug in a little adapter to my telephone. This is a good re-use of existing infrastructure, and stock holders should look favorably on this. Of course, a smart company would take some of the resulting savings and keep a fund ready for eventual replacement of their lines.
1) Project manager demands issue tracking software be used for whatever reason, sometimes as part of CMM or 6-sigma or ISO-something compliance. The fact that some issue tracking software requires high-skill system administration and end-user training doesn't register.
2) Project manager then whines when the non-technical testing staff finds hundreds of issues, entering every single one of them as separate issues not bothering to cross-reference any of them. This makes the developers look bad.
3) Project manager then complains about the hours it takes to maintain the issue database and clear out redundant issues. Even then, lots of stale issues collect and are never resolved. This makes the developers look bad.
4) Project manager also complains about the support costs, if commercial software was used, or lack of tangible support, of non-commercial software was used. This can also wear on the developers, who don't want to spend hours debugging their tools mid-project.
4) Staff eventually burns out and project stagnates. This also makes the developers look bad, but it can also make the manager look bad, depending on their B.S. skills.
It is not unknown for updates to have new "features" and EULA clauses. It isn't just a matter of repairing the original product, it is a matter of transforming the original product into something new and not necessarily what the customer intended to purchase.
It would be a good thing for the IT industry, in the long term, for these things to get a good legal test. This would rein in the abusers, while clarifying the rules of business for the honest folk.
Isn't it wonderful how computer security is now a matter of politics? IMO, this invalidates the entire anti-virus industry (if that is news to anyone).
That isn't the laptop burning your legs. The Alien that sat in that seat before you got a paper cut and bled acid all over the upholstery. Check the back of your pants before standing up--that could be really embarrassing!
Whatever the amount is, if queries from Firefox generate this revenue, then people should ensure their user agent strings are accurate, rather than spoofed to look like IE.
No kidding. I wonder how many people, after getting their interest-only balloon-payment mortgage, get burnt after realizing they are bilked for $6000/year in property tax?
"Man, that really is a nice library! Oooh, look at the schools! Gilded goal posts!" (one week elapses) "What do you mean you don't accept post-dated checks? If it's good in 2051, it's good today, right?"
It isn't a matter of being a Luddite. Most people can't control who their neighbors are, which is one reason why living in the subburbs is so darn stressful. The only defense against neighbors in high population density areas is to have tons of money, to pay the association people to enforce restrictions, and to put up big fences.
Outside cities, the other defense is a lot of land, and lots of shrubbery in the woods to block sound and line of sight to roadways.
Another defense is a lot of insulation in the walls and ceiling to block sound, which is an added bonus on top of energy efficiency. Unfortunately, a lot of the cookie-cutter 1000-unit neighborhoods were built quickly and cheaply, meaning often inadequate insulation (one house I lived in wasn't even up to code, before I fixed that).
Windows is for people who value their time and Linux isn't.
Okay, we know that isn't quite right.
Mac OS is for people who value their time and Windows isn't.
That is more honest.
I've spent about as much time fighting with Windows as I have with Linux, Solaris, *BSD, etc. The difference is that Microsoft's marketing is so brilliant that most people simply don't realize it. For every annoyance in GNOME, for example, there is one in Windows (e.g., registry corruption!). In this article's case, it was getting devices to work well. Other times it has been device conflicts. Yet other times it is applications stepping on each other. And so forth.
This is one reason companies like Apple, Sun, and IBM still have viable business models, because they reduce complexity where it counts for many people.
VHS tapes are also under $1 on close-out sales, but I've had a couple problems with new tapes that are simply defective (locked spindles, bad audio, etc.). I suppose it's hard to have much profit at $0.75 for a whole tape cartridge plus, coincidentally, having a movie on it.
Another concern is that newer media formats might not have the life cycle of CD and DVD. CDs are still useful and have been around a couple of decades, CDs are scratch tolerant, etc. DVDs still work, but are more fragile. How well do Blu-Ray and HD-DVD stand up?
Slashdot Mirror
"The planet could not grow to Jupiter size because the star is small and the system ran out of gas."
No problem. They'll just coast another few light years, and it turns out there's a Speedway just past the next pulsar. Add a couple chili dogs from the snack bar, and there'll be enough gas in that system for another 5 million years.
It isn't just MCI, then, as another company (famous singer/pianist in their commercials, with joggers and trees, possibly in a South Carolina metro area) did the exact same thing to me several years ago. After several cancellation attempts, they FINALLY stopped sending me bills for a plan that didn't exist. I can't imagine there are customers naive enough to support such a business model.
I tried that but still get an occasional offer. It isn't that big a deal, however, because I use a post office box (lock and key) and also have a heavy-duty cross-cut shredder. It feels pretty good to see that annoying sample credit card get chewed into bits by a nice powerful shredder.
I think everyone should have a shredder. Put all junk mail, old greeting cards, years-old billing statements, magazine address labels, etc. though it, and anyone who looks in my garbage will just find a rotton banana peel and pot roast trimmings covered in bits of paper. If anyone is desparate enough to deal with that mess, then they probably earned that information and can have it.
"Recompiling software gets you almost nothing. Maybe 10% more performance, at the very maximum."
Beyond that, I ran into a problem once when using some very tempting compiler flags and broke the application. These problems are generally due to very difficult-to-crack bugs in the application or the compiler (or just my bad luck), which is why I just ended up not bothering. Nearly everyone should just use -O2 like the packagers use and be done with it. That way, it's more likely that more than one person in the universe can duplicate the problem and find a resolution that benefits everyone and doesn't waste valuable developer time.
It is in the USA. It isn't just me, either, as I know someone who can't even get 28K on their modem, and the phone company says all they'll guarantee is 14K or 9.6K or something like that. I was luckier in that I could at least do 28K.
Yeah, this is probably a lot like "POSIX compliance" for Windows NT. It was there to meet bullet points on requirements documents, rather than to actually provide the functionality.
If Windows had really implemented POSIX, then why is there Services For UNIX, Cygwin, and the MKS suite?
In the past decade+ that I've been exposed to Windows, never have I once had the impression Microsoft was really interested in interoperability or compatibility, beyond some token marketing-oriented effort.
"Spoken like someone who probably never ventured far from suburbia"
In the house I referred to, the nearest decent size town that wasn't an itty bitty dot on the map was 30 minutes away in good weather. The only internet access was over noisy phone lines that were not very reliable. Additionally, it was a long-distance call for access. There was no cable TV service at all, and satellite internet access is very expensive. Of course, I am not talking about sitting on some mountain in Montana hours and hours from anything at all, but by any modern sense of the word, it was "rural". And, I really was thankful to have my phone working on any given day.
Rural areas still have some people who are thankful to have a phone line most hours of the day. Broadband internet is just something they read about in the print newspapers!
For example, one house I used to lived in definitely did not have a "five nines" dial tone. Lightning, drunk drivers hitting phone poles, corrosion on decades-old lines, all have knocked out my phone service at times. There wasn't even cable TV--everyone had mini-dishes...if they had a view of the satellite.
Does it spawn a new process for each iteration, or is it able to feed files into a single running application? The former: VERY VERY SLOW. The latter is faster, but, in typical shell scripts with a for loop, spawning small dedicated processes works very well, too. Photoshop is not a small dedicated process.
This is why applications that can be scripted aren't always applications that should be scripted. Conversely, programs that are CLI from the beginning, like ImageMagick, work in scripts like a charm. These days, the simple UNIX shell is perhaps the most underrated tool for professionals, IMO (just don't get into quoting strings 3 deep, and it's great!).
Phone companies managed to get usable broadband over ancient phone lines, and all I have to do is plug in a little adapter to my telephone. This is a good re-use of existing infrastructure, and stock holders should look favorably on this. Of course, a smart company would take some of the resulting savings and keep a fund ready for eventual replacement of their lines.
Pedants: yes, I do know how to count to five.
1) Project manager demands issue tracking software be used for whatever reason, sometimes as part of CMM or 6-sigma or ISO-something compliance. The fact that some issue tracking software requires high-skill system administration and end-user training doesn't register.
2) Project manager then whines when the non-technical testing staff finds hundreds of issues, entering every single one of them as separate issues not bothering to cross-reference any of them. This makes the developers look bad.
3) Project manager then complains about the hours it takes to maintain the issue database and clear out redundant issues. Even then, lots of stale issues collect and are never resolved. This makes the developers look bad.
4) Project manager also complains about the support costs, if commercial software was used, or lack of tangible support, of non-commercial software was used. This can also wear on the developers, who don't want to spend hours debugging their tools mid-project.
4) Staff eventually burns out and project stagnates. This also makes the developers look bad, but it can also make the manager look bad, depending on their B.S. skills.
It is not unknown for updates to have new "features" and EULA clauses. It isn't just a matter of repairing the original product, it is a matter of transforming the original product into something new and not necessarily what the customer intended to purchase.
It would be a good thing for the IT industry, in the long term, for these things to get a good legal test. This would rein in the abusers, while clarifying the rules of business for the honest folk.
Isn't it wonderful how computer security is now a matter of politics? IMO, this invalidates the entire anti-virus industry (if that is news to anyone).
Thomjamin Frefferson said it, originally, but his multiple personality disorder confused biographers as to who they were actually writing about.
That isn't the laptop burning your legs. The Alien that sat in that seat before you got a paper cut and bled acid all over the upholstery. Check the back of your pants before standing up--that could be really embarrassing!
Whatever the amount is, if queries from Firefox generate this revenue, then people should ensure their user agent strings are accurate, rather than spoofed to look like IE.
Perhaps more importantly, how do they decide who gets to hook up with Troi and Crusher during trade disputes and shore leave to Risa?
No kidding. I wonder how many people, after getting their interest-only balloon-payment mortgage, get burnt after realizing they are bilked for $6000/year in property tax?
"Man, that really is a nice library! Oooh, look at the schools! Gilded goal posts!"
(one week elapses)
"What do you mean you don't accept post-dated checks? If it's good in 2051, it's good today, right?"
It isn't a matter of being a Luddite. Most people can't control who their neighbors are, which is one reason why living in the subburbs is so darn stressful. The only defense against neighbors in high population density areas is to have tons of money, to pay the association people to enforce restrictions, and to put up big fences.
Outside cities, the other defense is a lot of land, and lots of shrubbery in the woods to block sound and line of sight to roadways.
Another defense is a lot of insulation in the walls and ceiling to block sound, which is an added bonus on top of energy efficiency. Unfortunately, a lot of the cookie-cutter 1000-unit neighborhoods were built quickly and cheaply, meaning often inadequate insulation (one house I lived in wasn't even up to code, before I fixed that).
If you have the $$$, then yes.
Windows is for people who value their time and Linux isn't.
Okay, we know that isn't quite right.
Mac OS is for people who value their time and Windows isn't.
That is more honest.
I've spent about as much time fighting with Windows as I have with Linux, Solaris, *BSD, etc. The difference is that Microsoft's marketing is so brilliant that most people simply don't realize it. For every annoyance in GNOME, for example, there is one in Windows (e.g., registry corruption!). In this article's case, it was getting devices to work well. Other times it has been device conflicts. Yet other times it is applications stepping on each other. And so forth.
This is one reason companies like Apple, Sun, and IBM still have viable business models, because they reduce complexity where it counts for many people.
VHS tapes are also under $1 on close-out sales, but I've had a couple problems with new tapes that are simply defective (locked spindles, bad audio, etc.). I suppose it's hard to have much profit at $0.75 for a whole tape cartridge plus, coincidentally, having a movie on it.
Another concern is that newer media formats might not have the life cycle of CD and DVD. CDs are still useful and have been around a couple of decades, CDs are scratch tolerant, etc. DVDs still work, but are more fragile. How well do Blu-Ray and HD-DVD stand up?