No cell phone subscriber for you
Wireless companies were the No. 2 sector for complaints to Better Business
Bureaus in 2003, trailing only car dealers. They were the second-lowest
ranked industry in the University of Michigan’s customer satisfaction index,
second only to the hated cable companies.
…snip…
“We have tapped out the prime-credit segment in the U.S.,” said Roger Entner,
a Yankee Group analyst. “Everyone who wants to have a wireless phone and can
pass a credit check has one. Everyone who can pass a credit check and doesn’t
have one — after ten years of a continuous barrage (of advertising), they’re
not going to cave.”
[source…]
Why do I want a cell-phone again? Actually, just saw an advert for Verizon Wireless Internet Broadband. This is close to what I want. 300-500kbps everywhere, now that I’m a member of the laptop crowd is pretty appealing.
$79.99 monthly access gets you unlimited Verizon Wireless NationalAccess and
BroadbandAccess service
…one of the fastest, fully mobile wireless Internet data solutions available.
Quickly download complex files and view email attachments at typical speeds
of 300-500 kbps, capable of reaching speeds up to 2 Mbps…
[source…]
01:46 CST | category / entries / links
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The history (and future?) of P2P
So, was reading blogs today and ran across Bram Cohen’s latest posts. Bram’s the smart guy who wrote BitTorrent. The less interesting of his two new posts is in response to the recent SwarmCast announcements.
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01:27 CST | category / entries
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Nifty: JavaScript + OpenGL == JiggleScript
JiggleScript is a development enviroment that combines the well-known web
programming language JavaScript with OpenGL, the standard graphics API used
in modern 3D games. The target audience are those that may be familar with
JavaScript already from building web pages and would like to try their hand
at something that might be a little more fun without needing to learn C or
C++ or other “bigger” languages.
[source…]
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20:38 CST | category / entries / links
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Name Change Proposed for GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program)
My problems with GIMP. (Score:4, Insightful)
But, there’s two problems I have with GIMP, and one of them might have been
fixed and one definitely hasn’t.
First is the interface. [[[snip comments about interface]]]
Second is the name. It needs to change. This is not about being PC, it’s about
reaching out to as many people as possible, and getting them to try out the
GIMP. Will universities ever teach classes in a program that’s called ‘the
gimp?’ Will companies ever take seriously an employee who says that he wants to
install ‘the gimp’ on his computer? Y’all have to have gotten the same weird
looks as me when you’ve suggested that people try ‘the gimp’. Have you ever
told it to someone who uses a cane or crutches or is in a wheelchair?
[source…]
…and the response (classic slashdot).
Re:My problems with GIMP. (Score:5, Funny)
I agree that the biggest problem GIMP has for widespread
acceptance is the name. Frankly, it has labored without
the benefit clever self recursion for far too long!
So, in the interest of its long term viablility, I
formally propose a name change:
GIMP Isn’t Microsoft Paint
will, I believe, catapult GIMP onto desktops around the
world.
[source…]
I hereby declare that the GIMP has been renamed!
18:42 CST | category / entries / links
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The “Dell Tech Force”
Funny take on Team America (which I still need to see) / Thunderbirds.
“Quick, we must stop big iron!”
[source…]
Surprising to see RedHat get equal billing with Microsoft. Oracle / Ellison is in the background mixing things up (which, for your Oracle box, why should you pay the MS tax?).
Link via BBSpot.
08:30 CST | category / entries / links
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The Ultimate Matrix Collection
Picked up “Matrix the Ultimate” today. It’s got all the special editions of the three movies, along with some behind the scenes, making of’s, commentaries by philosophers, etc. Ten DVD’s, all new “digital transfers” (look great!), something like 30 hours of content, some of it new and interesting.
Watching it reminded me of the first time I saw the Matrix, along with some favorite lines.
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22:37 CST | category / entries
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In defense of “only one return statement”
I read this on Bruce’s blog (Bruce of “Thinking in Java” fame). He is actually responding to a questioner who writes…
One inspection that some of our developers favor is:
“There must only be a single return statement within each method”
PMD classifies this as a “controversial” inspection. They do
not comment on why it is considered controversial.
[source…]
I recently picked Java back up again (and “Thinking in Java” … great book!), and when I first started back with it, this “rule” (only one return statement in a Java function) was so hard-wired into my head that I thought it would actually be a compiler error to have more than one return statement in a function. This is not the case, but I still like to follow it for a variety of reasons. Please use the following sample code (the simplest and handiest bit of actual code I could find):
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01:14 CST | category / entries / links
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Human Trafficking
Just saw this on KERA. Not fun, and it is not easy to watch.
Child sex slavery is a result of numerous factors, including poverty and
organized crime syndicates that profit highly from trafficking. The complicity
of politicians and police officers make trafficking even more systematic, as
well as more difficult to eradicate. As USAID health technical advisor Matthew
Friedman says, “the amount of crime associated with [the child sex trade] is
probably equal, if not exceeding, the drug trade… It’s very, very
systematic.”
[source…]
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00:04 CST | category / entries / links
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The importance of picking the right voting system
First of all, the solution to the e-voting problem is available at the Open Voting Consortium. If you’re not afraid of thinking, you owe it to yourself to review some of their material, otherwise just support them when the question of e-voting comes up. A good place to start reading is the Open Voting Faq. They are very smart people who have done a lot of thinking about all the good things and bad things that can happen during an election, and the “right” way to solve the problems that can come up.
Some common objections and solutions I’ve heard are as follows:
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12:34 CST | category / entries / links
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Basic Open-Source Migration Path
Made a slashdot comment trying to help out someone who is trying to pitch a Linux solution to their business, specifically about the role of Open Office in the mix. I commented that it already has a non-animated version of clippy, thus you will automatically impress the people you are showing this to. :^)
Actually, in my experiences, Open Office support (not tech-support, but document support) is very solid. There are slight quirkisms (slightly different line-wrappings if fonts arent found, some UI choices are slightly different), but regardless of the maturity of the OO.org software, some important elements to your pitch must be:
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13:32 CST | category / entries
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Open source in asia / India / China
The Chinese market and Indian markets are huge— beyond
your wildest dreams huge. Imagine the combined market of
the US and EU in EACH country, but the economic maturity
(read potential) of 1955 in the US.
[source…]
Imagine if you could time-warp back to the 1950’s and set up shop, knowing what you know now. But imagine that it’d be different and interesting because it’s all involving new technology, new ways of doing things (will China be tech, nano-tech, bio-tech, etc?, and to what extent will each of those play a role).
And now the funny part. Socrates did this, right?
Intel: Hello we would like to show you our processors and this lovely software called Linux and OpenOffice.
Oriental Guy: Very nice. The chips are a bugger to copy, we will just have to buy them. How much for the software?
Intel: Free.
Microsoft: You will be sued and die!
[source…]
14:22 CST | category / entries / links
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This one goes out special to David…
“If at age 20 you are not a Communist then you
have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a capitalist
then you have no brains.” (attributed to George Bernard Shaw)
[source…]
So I’ve got 4 more years, Dave. ;^) … The guy has some other
interesting statistics, quotations in his other nearby entries.
11:42 CST | category / entries / links
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Got the visa!
So, the whole reason I put up this thing is to have a place I could point people to about the whole Visa process with Bety. Short of it is we got the visa, after much sitting, standing, and waiting. Didn’t know it was still possible to wait eight solid hours for paper to move from one side of the building to the other, but I guess there are a lot of people that apply for visas, and it’s almost guaranteed that each case is unique to some extent.
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01:14 CST | category / entries
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Got Blosxom installed…
So, I started updating my website, and ended up installing Blosxom. It feels like the Mo-zilla (well, FireFox) of blogging software, the base software is simple to the point of being unusable, but the architecture is great and there is a decent ecosystem of trivial to use plugins that customize it to your needs.
Most time was spent diddling around with the HTML templates. The one I’ve come up with (as you can see) is pretty simple, but that’s kindof what I want. Nicest thing about Blosxom is that it hides an incredible amount of complexity behind an incredibly simple interface.
Plugins I’ve got installed are:
- Markdown — neat text formatting.
- SmartyPants — pretentious “quotation” marks, etc.
- seemore — put in a <;— more —> comment, and it gets separated into traditional intro/body sections.
- timezone — handle alternate timezones (I’m CST, webhost is PST)
- directorybrowse — makes each category / directory clickable.
- moreentries — prev, next links.
- flatarchives — archives of all entries.
- MarkdownBlockquoteReferences — my own addition to format URL references in blockquotes from Markdown will send it over to that DaringFireball guy, as it ~should~ be included?
…installation of plugins (and blosxom itself) is generally as simple as “stuff this file into your ./plugins directory” … you’re expected to edit everything inline for configuration (local modifications), which is a really good system for certain types of techy people, and it makes everything uber-easy to get started with.
23:00 CST | category / entries
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