You know that the vast majority of people have no idea how to locate their music on their computer, much less where their mp3 player's mount point is when they plug it in or even WHERE on that mount point to put the music files. To say you thought doing this was simple means you're much more computer savy than probably 95% of the population.

To me, that's where the brilliance of the iPod/iTunes came it. You put a CD in your computer, waited 10 minutes for it to rip, plugged in your iPod and your music was on your player. At the time, there was NO other music player that came with software that made the experience of actually getting music onto your device so dropdead simple. You had to know how to do 2 things, and that's it...put a CD in your computer, plug your iPod in. That's it.

You and I might prefer to tweak all our encoding settings, curate our music directory structures, decide for ourselves exactly what should be on our devices...but the common, non-technical person doesn't care.

Yeah. I'm going to second the split and elevated keyboard design.

I had an MS Natural Ergo keyboard but had been considering a truly split keyboard due to hand cramping and general tiredness feeling in my wrists and fingers at the end of the day. After a recent scare w/ finger numbness which I thought might be the onset of carpal tunnel (turns out it was some inflamation in my back pressing on a nerve), I got the Kinesis Advantage. About 2 weeks after switching I noticed all of the soreness, strain and cramping had gone away.

D'oh...You're right..I scanned the gemspec and missed the runtime one below the dev ones.

It's really a glorified bash script..and it doesn't actually require any ruby gems to run.

It's just pinging a configurable IP to test specific outbound connections and when an interface goes up or down it resets the routing table...nothing especially fancy.

There's actually been a bill proposed in the IL State House/Senate to ban traffic cameras throughout the state. There's probably no chance of it passing, but there's enough political traction to be made by proposing shutting them down that we MAY see some pullback on putting them up all over around here.

http://chicago.suntimes.com/ne...

Dammit..stupid slashdot threading....disregard my post since I thought you had replied to a different thread (but do read the article on Grace Hopper).

No, sorry...GP is referring to this brilliant woman - Grace Hopper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

The other problem that constantly plagued me was that even if you did strange things w/ the items you were carrying, several times you ended up losing the item, which discouraged the very experimentation that was needed to complete the game.

Like using up one Cupid's arrows in Kings Quest IV, and then making it to the last scene in the game and not having an arrow left to use and having to replay the entire f'ing game.

ARGHHHHH...the frustration is still with me!

You're getting downmodded because you have no idea what you're talking about with credit cards. You don't have to pay a 7+% for ANY purchase at all as long as you pay your monthly statement in full. The ONLY time you end up owing ANY interest on your purchases is when you decide to (or have to) carry debt from month to month, and then the APR on that debt is generally in the 20% range - absolutely atrocious rates btw.

So yeah, I use a credit card for pretty much every single purchase I make because:
A) It's super convenient - especially for gas.
B) I get between 1% - 4% back on every purchase I make. Every year, I end up getting north of $150 back just for using a card over cash.
C) I hate carrying a wad of cash around and getting coins back.
D) I get detailed reports of all my spending at the end of each month from the card that can easily be imported into the finance program of my choice
E) I'm protected should I ever lose my wallet, I lose nothing as long as I report the cards lost fairly quickly. I'd lose whatever cash I had if I just used cash.

The only time I generally don't use a card is when I want to support local small stores - mostly restaurants. Since paying in cash generally puts 1-2% more of the purchase in their pockets.

As much as I don't like these cameras, when you get a ticket in Chicago, and most of the suburbs I know of around here, you're provided w/ the means to actually watch your car commit the violation. I got a ticket for a rolling right turn on red last summer. You key your license and the citation number into a city website (google it, you'll find it) and you can watch an mpeg4 stream of your car passing through the intersection or turning on red or whatever - with a little curl magic you can download it as a keepsake.

Armed with the video, you should be able to appeal the ticket if you truly didn't commit the offense or if the camera went bonkers and ticketed everyone going through the intersection.

If it's a borderline case, most people don't bother with the hassle of appealing and just pay the fine...miss a day of work and sit in a traffic court for hours (and possibly pay court costs) or pay $100.

My observation around the Chicago area is that people are mostly just butthurt because they're getting ticketed for infractions that were lightly enforced before due to labor / manhour constraints of the police forces.

That's because it's 8 hours to do the development work and 1992 management hours to plan when those 8 hours will transpire and who will transpire them.

My God man, there's Gantt charts to adjust, Statements of Work to write up, change requests to employ, personnel allocations to make, budget charts to adjust, approvals to attain, approvals of approvals to attain, test plans to write (and then later ignore), opportunity costs to calculate, and that's just the tip of the iceburg.

I'm shocked they could fit all of that into only (!) 1992 hours - after all that's about 50 weeks worth of time.

I stand corrected and offer apologies to GP.

You are right that we dealt with the big box chains, I figured we were also doing their online fulfillments since we did it for several other retailers and was very wrong.

As someone who has worked in the logistics industry now for about 10 years, currently pretty much everything about your post is factually incorrect.

iPhones are shipped via ocean cargoships, they are domestically warehoused, and domestically shipped primarily via truck. I know this because my previous employer handled the supply chain logistics and domestic warehousing/staffing for the iPhone.

Also, look to the trade consortiums and trade lobbies for why there are fewer customs inspectors - not electronic/mechanical efficiencies.

Until planes can carry hundreds of shipping containers worth of goods or the number of air routes is vastly increased ocean shipments are going to be vastly less expensive for all but niche markets - .ie seafood is one current market where a majority of product is air shipped.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/debit-credit-facts-fraud-liability/story?id=16090439

You have a maximum liability of $50 for fraudulant credit card purchases - no liability if the phsyical card wasn't used to make the purchase (.ie online purchases). That's hardly losing "100% of [your] stuff" if someone rips off your card number.

NOTE: Identity theft is WAY different than somoene using your CC#.

My son, who is 27 months now, has been using a tablet since about 8 months old. We started mostly with apps that consist of pressing a button to hear animal or machine sounds, he also liked the bubble pop games - especially ones with lots of colors. He caught on really quickly and was able to navigate around my parent's kindle better than them shortly after he turned one. He liked the kneebouncers apps when he was little too, which are just a series of simple cartoon characters that do repetitive things every time you press any button. I also think the book apps on the tablet really helped him to appreciate actual books more, we had problems getting him to listen to a book until we got him some book apps. After watching them with us for awhile he really started liking real books too. The Netflix app is also nice. Lets face it, there's times where having 15 minutes to make dinner, take care of bills, etc are needed and I'm glad my son can watch something to keep him entertained that doesn't have any commercials in it.

I realize that everyone thinks their child is above average, but my son has a great vocabulary, counts to 15 by himself, knows all his colors and shapes, and has an extremely active imagination. I definitely think the time he spends on the iPad helps contribute to that.

Don't listen to the self-righteous assholes telling you your a bad parent because you want to spend time doing something other than peekaboo with you child. Anything that creates a form of bond between you and your child and stimulates their motor and cognitive skills is a valuable tool. It's obvious that a tablet should be just one form of stimulation you provide for your kids, but since there's several hours in the day for play there's plenty of time to include games/tablet use amongst books, puzzles, play-dough, blocks, etc