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Comment Anywhere in Antigua or Barbados (Score 2) 148

The WTO (World Trade Organization) gave them an exemption from complying with US copyright laws, due to a 10+ year dispute over online gambling:

http://www.wto.org/english/tra...

At the DSB meeting on 28 January 2013, Antigua and Barbuda requested the DSB to authorize the suspension of concessions and obligations to the United States in respect of intellectual property rights. Pursuant to the request by Antigua and Barbuda under Article 22.7 of the DSU, the DSB agreed to grant authorization to suspend the application to the United States of concessions or other obligations consistent with the Decision by the Arbitrator.

Comment Could it be because they suck? (Score 1) 131

The one they set up at my work had a 'what are you doing?' question, but it wasn't searchable... so if you wanted to try to find people who might be working or have expertise in a given field ... you got nothing.

It likely doesn't matter anyway -- due to how tasks are broken down, it's not like everyone wanted to advertise their skills. I've got a lot of experience that I don't list on my CV, as then I get people asking me about how to fix things all the time. As I'm a contractor, that puts me into awkward positions where if I help people from other projects, I can't charge time to their tasks ... but the company I work for requires me to track & bill every hour. The prime on our contract had suggested the it / sysadmin have a mentoring system, but to the best of my knowledge, they've never worked out how we'd change our time for it as we're divided up across 200+ tasks.

Comment whiteboard + camera + projector (Score 1) 143

I completely agree. The problem with a bunch of tablets is that everyone's off looking at different things. With a whiteboard, you can much more easily tell who's paying attention to the discussion vs. reading their e-mail.

You want to be able to save what was discussed? Bring a camera. The important thing is to take the picture without a flash from a stable location. You might have to experiment with where to take the picture from, so you don't get too much glare from the lighting in the room.

Sometimes you need to show something that you don't want to draw yourself -- that's where the projector comes in. Although whiteboards don't make the best projection surfaces (due to glare issues), you can then mark 'em up w/ the pens, then take a picture so you have notes for later.

If you need to *also* take a set of more permanent notes while you're working, either get a large pad of paper that you can keep to the side of the board. (I like the ones that are also giant Post-It notes) or a second projector w/ someone typing up notes as you go.

I'm not a fan of 'smart whiteboards' as I've heard nothing but bad things about them. I've probably been to more than a dozen conference rooms, and when I mention the one sitting against a wall, I'm told it's either broken, or a pain to use. (the one exception was an elementary school, which we only used it as a projector). The only advantage that I'm aware of is for when you're having a meeting that has participants in multiple places -- which I've never had to deal with.

Comment Re:Hiring (Score 1) 536

Government contracting -- we got a bump in our funding for the year, but due to sequestration we knew we wouldn't have it permanently ... so we were actually honest in the job advertisement, rather than sucker someone in and cut them at the end of the fiscal year.

I got some interest from people who were willing to work remotely, but the manager (contractor) that was heading up the hiring wanted it to be a W2 position and not a 1099, which I assume is why I never got any of those resumes to review.

Comment Hiring (Score 4, Interesting) 536

Most of the people who know Perl well already have jobs, and aren't looking to change.

We tried hiring someone to help me offload some of my work, and one the task I've gotten behind on is updating & maintaining some Perl code.

We had one person who I felt could've jumped in, but that management didn't like (as he had previously worked here, and left). The rest were folks who we'd have to train on OO, closures, and other higher level concepts.

If this hasn't been offered as a 12-month position, maybe we could've found someone. If we had advertised it as a general programming job, and then taught someone Perl, maybe it would've been gone better for us.

With trendy languages, you at least get people willing to apply -- even if it's the case that they don't grok the language, you at least get someone you can train up.

Comment Re:CFL in Low Temperature (Score 1) 196

I wish I knew -- the one I have to replace the most often is the one that I have outside my back door on a motion sensing fixture; I've been using CFLs, but they die in 1-2 years, typically over the winter. ... but the one I last replaced was an 'appliance bulb' in my dryer ... it probably cost me more in gas driving all over the place to find the right bulb. (and the bulb had broken, so I didn't know the exact shape. ... so the first bulb I bought was too big to fit)

Comment Re:Transcript Please (Score 1) 148

I found instructions on how to get a transcript from the automatic closed captioning of YouTube videos. Unfortunately, the instructions are in a YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Of course, I have no idea what they're using for the video hosting -- I just see 'Missing Plug-in'. The 'alternate link' tells me that I have to install Flash ... like hell I will.

Comment Re:Obama (Score 4, Interesting) 211

I don't think you can blame him for Guantanamo -- he's been blocked by Congress on that one: http://www.politifact.com/trut...

If you want to complain, you'll have to find some that you can actually blame on him ... luckily, you have lots to choose from : http://www.politifact.com/trut...

(and this is why when I ran for office, I only made one promise -- that I'd give fair consideration to everything put before me ... which meant I once had to abstain from a vote when I found that some complaints had been withheld, as I couldn't research if they were legitimate complaints or not)

Comment Boston has solar powered trash cans, too. (Score 2) 119

Okay, technically, they're trash compactors, so that they don't have to go and empty them as often:

http://www.cityofboston.gov/pu...

That seems to make more sense to me than a 'solar powered bench' which looks to me to be two seats as the whole middle of it's taken up by a box. (which might be the point -- it'd be less comfortable for a homeless person to sleep on it)

I've seen other solar "urban furniture" that made more sense to me -- things like bus stops w/ solar panels in the roof (to power lighting, up-to-date bus info ... and sometimes advertising).

I've seen other 'solar phone charging stations' that make more sense to me than having it take up 1/4 of a bench:

http://inhabitat.com/nyc/solar...

http://www.gizmag.com/street-c...

http://bostinno.streetwise.co/...

Comment Redress numbers (Score 1) 276

Yes, they exist, but the big problem is that you don't know about it 'til the first time you try to fly ... and then you have to jump through major hoops (if you're even allowed to board).

The first clue is that the airlines won't let you check in online -- if that happens, make sure you give yourself a couple of hours at the airport, rather than thinking you'll just breeze through security.

Then you can go through explaining that no, the 3 year old you're traveling with is not whoever it is that they're watching. (oh, you laugh, but it happened to my neighbors)

Comment Perl6 vs. Perl5 (Score 2) 283

So a few years ago, a bunch of people decided that there was no point in waiting for Perl6, and started back porting the features they liked into Perl5.

And to deal with the whole issue of the Perl6 syntax not being compatible w/ Perl5, they've added 'use feature' where you can tell it which features to enable. (or specify a version number to turn on a whole bunch of things)

So, you want postfix dereferencing? Then use perl 5.20, and enable the feature. (although, I believe it's currently enabled via 'experimental', so people know they're enabling a feature that may change)

Comment money != speech (Score 0) 209

Bah. You're assuming that money is the same as speech.

Money is an amplifier for a given person's speech, so a given person can buy a bullhorn & hang out down at the street corner, or by ads on hundreds of TV channels.

So what we have instead of 'limiting' the speech of others is the ability for those with the most money to be able to drown out all other voices until only theirs is heard. This is the equivalent of 'we don't want to put up with that guy with the bullhorn on the street corner'. Everyone should be able to have a voice, not just those that can shout the loudest.

I admit, much of the 'campaign finance reform' laws that they've attempted to pass have been flawed ... but trying to argue that money is a form of speech is horrible, horrible logic -- it's right up there with 'corporations are people', and claiming that corporations should have rights under the constitution.

And on the "money out of politics" front, some of the people who had been part of 'Occupy' have started 99 Rise, which their website describes as 'a network of activists and organizers dedicated to building a mass movement to reclaim our democracy from the domination of big money'.

Comment The teachers know ... (Score 2) 240

My girlfriend in high school and I would frequently go into the dark room -- but you really didn't have much time, as the teacher knew how much time things should take, and would wonder why we were going in there if it wasn't to develop something. (we had a print shop, and one of the darkrooms had a vertical process camera, so we were in there quite often; the photography darkroom not so much)

If you over developed things, he'd know you weren't watching things closely. So you could sneak a minute or two of snogging in, but that's about it.

We had darkrooms where the door revolveds, so there wasn't any way to let light from the outside into the darkroom. You learned to keep the door towards the inside, so you had a couple seconds of warning.

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