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scott wrote:
>> iPhone?
>>
>> That's not a phone - it's a hand-held computer with built-in GSM! :-P
>
> Did you look in a phone shop recently?
I bought a new phone just a few months ago, remember?
> Most phones have large high
> resolution displays and are capable of far more than just phone calls.
Not in the shop I went to...
Of course, that's just it. The only way a phone can have a large display
(or large anything else) is if the phone itself is large - and then it
won't fit in your pocket any more.
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>> Most phones have large high resolution displays and are capable of far
>> more than just phone calls.
>
> Not in the shop I went to...
amazon.co.uk, best selling phones for between 100 and 200 pounds (not even
counting the high-end phones), most of the ones I see on that page have a
screen taking up at least half of the entire handset:
1,2 & 6) LG Viewty - 3 inch 400x240
3) SE W890i - 2 inch 320x240
4) SE K850i - 2.2 inch 320x240
5) SE K770i - 1.9 inch 320x240
7 & 8) SE W910i - 2.4 inch 320x240
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scott wrote:
>>> Most phones have large high resolution displays and are capable of
>>> far more than just phone calls.
>>
>> Not in the shop I went to...
>
> amazon.co.uk, best selling phones for between 100 and 200 pounds (not
> even counting the high-end phones), most of the ones I see on that page
> have a screen taking up at least half of the entire handset:
That'll be it then.
My phone cost me £30.
(Seriously - would *you* put £200 of equipment in your pocket and walk
around with it?)
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> That'll be it then.
>
> My phone cost me £30.
In the trade, we call that "low-end" :-) Most phones are sold as part of
contracts are often worth in excess of 10x the amount you paid, even the the
owner didn't actually pay that in one lump sum.
> (Seriously - would *you* put £200 of equipment in your pocket and walk
> around with it?)
Of course I do, as does a large proportion of the population. Anyway, I
suspect if someone wanted to mug me they would be *way* more interested in
my car keys, or my wallet, or my watch etc. I'm not about to leave all that
at home the whole time, so why bother with just the phone?
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scott wrote:
>> That'll be it then.
>>
>> My phone cost me £30.
>
> In the trade, we call that "low-end" :-)
Yeah, well... I only want it so I can make telephone calls. I already
*have* a real camera and a real music player. :-P
> Most phones are sold as part
> of contracts are often worth in excess of 10x the amount you paid, even
> the the owner didn't actually pay that in one lump sum.
For somebody who spends about £20/year on calls, a contract that charges
a monthly fee of even £5 with calls on top sounds rather expensive.
>> (Seriously - would *you* put £200 of equipment in your pocket and walk
>> around with it?)
>
> Of course I do, as does a large proportion of the population. Anyway, I
> suspect if someone wanted to mug me they would be *way* more interested
> in my car keys, or my wallet, or my watch etc. I'm not about to leave
> all that at home the whole time, so why bother with just the phone?
Credit cards can be cancelled - at which point they become worthless.
Cars can sometimes be found and recovered. But a phone? Once it's gone,
you're basically never going to see it again.
But still, it's not as bad as the £7,000 necklace I saw in John Lewis.
Where the hell would you wear that?? o_O
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Invisible [mailto:voi### [at] dev null]
> (Seriously - would *you* put £200 of equipment in your pocket and walk
> around with it?)
Yes ;)
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com
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> For somebody who spends about £20/year on calls, a contract that charges a
> monthly fee of even £5 with calls on top sounds rather expensive.
Indeed, although it seems a lot of people use their phone a lot more than
you. At the other end of the spectrum is my boss (who has a UK phone
contract), he recently joined a several hour phone conference by calling
Japan from his mobile phone - while in the US. Let's just say his monthly
phone bill is often in 4 digits! Mine was 350 euro the other month when I
used the 3G connection in France as a modem to download email onto my laptop
:-O Data tarifs abroad are quite pricey!
> Credit cards can be cancelled
Sure, but the thief can still buy something with it worth a lot more than
your phone, which makes it more valuable to them. Even if you don't
actually lose anything.
> Cars can sometimes be found and recovered.
Here cars tend to just be "exported" to Eastern Europe and then sold, nobody
holds out much hope if your car gets stolen. If they have the key they're
laughing, even if they sell it for half price because it's stolen and only
got 1 key, they are going to get a hell of a lot more for it than a phone.
> But still, it's not as bad as the £7,000 necklace I saw in John Lewis.
> Where the hell would you wear that?? o_O
I think the better question is "who" not "where". And the answer is people
who earn more money than you or I :-) The same people who drive a car worth
100K or live in a house worth a million or two, why would they even take a
second look at some cheap necklace for "only" a few hundred pounds?
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scott wrote:
>> For somebody who spends about £20/year on calls, a contract that
>> charges a monthly fee of even £5 with calls on top sounds rather
>> expensive.
>
> Indeed, although it seems a lot of people use their phone a lot more
> than you.
This, presumably, is why contracts still exist? ;-)
> Data tarifs abroad are quite pricey!
And slower than cooling basult, presumably?
>> Cars can sometimes be found and recovered.
>
> Here cars tend to just be "exported" to Eastern Europe and then sold,
> nobody holds out much hope if your car gets stolen.
Really? When my moped was stolen, they didn't have much trouble finding
it. (Not that there was much left of it.) I guess it depends on whether
it's stolen by bored teenagers or professional criminals.
>> But still, it's not as bad as the £7,000 necklace I saw in John Lewis.
>> Where the hell would you wear that?? o_O
>
> I think the better question is "who" not "where". And the answer is
> people who earn more money than you or I :-) The same people who drive
> a car worth 100K or live in a house worth a million or two, why would
> they even take a second look at some cheap necklace for "only" a few
> hundred pounds?
Stop. You're really making me green. With ENVY! >_<
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Invisible wrote:
> Seems like it's the same amount of work to me, whether the kernel does
> it or the application does it.
First, you've eliminated all the overhead of two kernel calls per file,
which is something like 30% of a typical process' costs of execution.
Second, you can maintain a pointer to the file in the directory being
deleted. (Well, on things like FAT or ext3 you could - on a file system
like NTFS that actually rearranges the directories as you delete files,
it might be harder.) But, in other words, instead of
look up a file, delete the file, look up a file, delete the file
you have
delete, delete, delete, delete
So say you have a singly-linked unsorted list of integer values, and you
want to free up the memory. What is faster:
Look up "1", and unlink it.
Look up "2", and unlink it.
Look up "3", and unlink it....
or
Unlink the first. Unlink the first. Unlink the first...
>> To be fair, NTFS and other tree-based directory systems have to rework
>> the tree when you delete the files, so this too will be disk I/O
>> overhead.
>
> Um... you don't cache directory blocks, no? (Especially given that
> they're usually non-contiguous and so take a lot of thrashing to access,
> and there often heavily accessed.)
Sure. When your directory is bigger than your RAM, that doesn't help a
whole lot.
Not that it matters - you still wind up scanning thru the blocks. See
the linked-list example above.
> $500 seems like a hell of a lot of money to me...
Not for a business. It's a heck of a lot cheaper than paying me to
figure out how to do without. The computer they plugged into was $3500.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Invisible wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>
>> You can get 7.1 surround sound, mpeg encoders and decoders, and
>> hardware accelerated 3D in cell phones nowadays, dear. :-)
>
> What would be the point though?
Have you seen some of the japanese and korean cell phones? Apparently,
personal computers aren't real big over there. They use cell phones instead.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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On 14-Nov-08 11:10, Invisible wrote:
>>> ...so, rather like real Oracle backups then.
>>>
>>> Presumably the guy did a little researching on Oracle and found *a*
>>> way to make a copy of the data, and that's what we're using.
>>>
>>> Using a logical backup rather than a physical backup does take up
>>> less disk space. However, it takes more time to backup and restore
>>> (and these operations are logged transactions, and triggers can fire,
>>> etc.) Myself I'd prefer a real physical backup...
>>>
>> How much diskspace are we talking about? Remember current price is
>> about €100 for 1TB and you can expect that to halve next year.
>
> I have no idea how large their database is. I only know how big my one is.
yes, you have a ten pence database. ;) Tell that to your boss and see
how happy that'll make him
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>> I have no idea how large their database is. I only know how big my one
>> is.
> yes, you have a ten pence database. ;) Tell that to your boss and see
> how happy that'll make him
Oh, he won't care.
1. I'm in an inferior country, so I don't count.
2. My database is due to be decommissioned shortly.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Chambers wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Orchid XP v8 [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
>> Damn. Now I feel silly for paying £90 for a 200 GB drive a few months
>> ago...
>
> You* shouldn't be allowed to purchase computer equipment without first
> checking here:
> http://www.pricewatch.com/
Maplin isn't the cheapest place on earth, but they provide actual
customer service. It's worth a few percent more for that.
(They're also a real-world shop, so you can walk in, purchase something,
and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting 3 days for it
to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so you can go to the
post office to collect the item during their brief opening hours...)
> On the page for 1 TB hdds:
> http://www2.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/sata_1tb.htm
>
> 3 of the top 5 state in their summary that international orders are OK,
> so shipping to you shouldn't be a problem. The other two might still do
> it, they just don't state it.
Hmm. I wonder if that's changed significantly since March...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Seems like it's the same amount of work to me, whether the kernel does
>> it or the application does it.
>
> First, you've eliminated all the overhead of two kernel calls per file,
> which is something like 30% of a typical process' costs of execution.
...are you serious??! o_O
You're telling me an I/O-bound process is slowed down by the mere act of
changing CPU mode? I thought that stuff was more or less instant!
>>> To be fair, NTFS and other tree-based directory systems have to
>>> rework the tree when you delete the files, so this too will be disk
>>> I/O overhead.
>>
>> Um... you don't cache directory blocks, no? (Especially given that
>> they're usually non-contiguous and so take a lot of thrashing to
>> access, and there often heavily accessed.)
>
> Sure. When your directory is bigger than your RAM, that doesn't help a
> whole lot.
Well, true, but a directory entry is about 12 bytes, so you'd need to be
deleting several *thousand million* files, not just 3,000.
>> $500 seems like a hell of a lot of money to me...
>
> Not for a business.
Well, no... not if it's for something important anyway.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> Have you seen some of the japanese and korean cell phones? Apparently,
> personal computers aren't real big over there.
I don't know if this is actually true, but I'm told that *everything* is
quite small in Japan. Including the people...
(I hear claims of the opposite for the USA - but I'm pretty sure they're
exaggerating.)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> You're telling me an I/O-bound process is slowed down by the mere act of
> changing CPU mode? I thought that stuff was more or less instant!
No. When you add up all the cache misses, the TLB flushing, the
privilege mode changes, the checking of addresses, and all that, it
comes out to about 30% of the CPU compute-power being spent on that,
compared to running on bare metal with all that turned off. And you're
still talking O(N^2) instead of O(N) behavior.
> Well, true, but a directory entry is about 12 bytes,
It wasn't even 12 bytes back in unix v7 of CP/M. :-) With more modern
file systems, the files are hashed or sorted into the directories.
> so you'd need to be
> deleting several *thousand million* files, not just 3,000.
Uh huh. Takes about 2 hours on the machine I have at work to delete two
months of audio chopped into 20-second chunks. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Darren New wrote:
> Uh huh. Takes about 2 hours on the machine I have at work to delete two
> months of audio chopped into 20-second chunks. :-)
Huh?? You're clearly using the wrong filesystem!
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Invisible wrote:
> Yeah, well... I only want it so I can make telephone calls. I already
> *have* a real camera and a real music player. :-P
I use my cellphone to send about 6 SMS messages a week. That's all the use I
give it, why would I want a fancy phone?
I have a cheap GSM phone because my provider "forced" me to. Otherwise I'd
still be on CDMA.
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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Uh huh. Takes about 2 hours on the machine I have at work to delete two
>> months of audio chopped into 20-second chunks. :-)
>
> Huh?? You're clearly using the wrong filesystem!
I said that, yes.
"""
I think on Linux it was just a combination of me picking a file system
not really optimized for bunches of little files, combined with a
journaling mode that's designed for utter safety rather than efficiency,
combined with a software RAID. I probably could have improved it a bunch
if I had an incentive to learn my options before installing things.
"""
You understand I'm talking about quarter million 1.7-meg files, yes?
That's 2000+ deletes a minute (36/second) on an IDE drive with RAID
going on.
Yes, I'm using the wrong file system, but it's not *too* shabby.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Orchid XP v8 [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
>
> Maplin isn't the cheapest place on earth, but they provide actual
> customer service. It's worth a few percent more for that.
I'm not saying you *have* to shop online, just that you should check
prices first.
> and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting 3 days for
> it
> to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so you can go to
the
> post office to collect the item during their brief opening hours...)
Your post office doesn't deliver to your house?!?!?
> Hmm. I wonder if that's changed significantly since March...
Probably, I check the prices when I posted yesterday (November).
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Orchid XP v8 [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> I don't know if this is actually true, but I'm told that *everything*
> is
> quite small in Japan. Including the people...
>
> (I hear claims of the opposite for the USA - but I'm pretty sure
> they're
> exaggerating.)
We're not.
;)
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com
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>> Maplin isn't the cheapest place on earth, but they provide actual
>> customer service. It's worth a few percent more for that.
>
> I'm not saying you *have* to shop online, just that you should check
> prices first.
OK, fair enough.
I'm just saying that prices in a real shop will always be higher than
online.
>> and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting 3 days for
>> it
>> to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so you can go to
> the
>> post office to collect the item during their brief opening hours...)
>
> Your post office doesn't deliver to your house?!?!?
Nope.
Or rather, "not unless it fits through the letterbox".
For some reason, the box they use to send you a stick of DDR is the same
size as the box Zazzle uses to send you 3 coffee mugs.
>> Hmm. I wonder if that's changed significantly since March...
>
> Probably, I check the prices when I posted yesterday (November).
Clearly. I'm just wondering how much these prices move over time. Some
things get radically cheaper, some things don't change that much.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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"Gail" <gail (at) sql in the wild (dot) co [dot] za> wrote in message
news:491c8393@news.povray.org...
>> How much disk space do you have??
>
> Haven't we been over that before?
>
> Desktop:
> 1x80GB (2 paritions, OS)
> 1x320GB (2 partitions, apps and data)
> 1x160GB (1 partition, games)
>
> Laptop:
> 2x120GB drives
>
> Server:
> 1x80GB (OS and apps)
> 4x160GB in a RAID 5 config. Results in 480GB of usable space
>
And you can add just over 1 TB to that.
Went out today and bought a 1TB external (on sale!) and a 4GB flash drive,
then went to register at the conference centre and was given a 128 GB
external as a 'thank you for presenting' gift.
I think I might have enough storage space for a while now....
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> (They're also a real-world shop, so you can walk in, purchase something,
> and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting 3 days for it
> to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so you can go to the
> post office to collect the item during their brief opening hours...)
I often use amazon next day service and ship it to my office rather than
home.
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>> Data tarifs abroad are quite pricey!
>
> And slower than cooling basult, presumably?
Ermmm, have you ever used a recent 3G data connection? Quite similar to a
DSL line (I think mine says max 7.2mbit, but usally it's nearer 2mbit when
actually using it).
> Really? When my moped was stolen, they didn't have much trouble finding
> it. (Not that there was much left of it.) I guess it depends on whether
> it's stolen by bored teenagers or professional criminals.
Yeh, I guess if someone who mugs you randomly gets your car keys (rather
than mugging you for the sole purpose of getting your car key) they are not
likely to really know what to do with it, so chances of finding it might be
higher. They'd probably just drive it around a bit and dump it somewhere.
To steal modern cars (without having the key) you need a lot of skill and
knowledge, both with exactly how to steal it in the first place (you can't
just "hotwire" them), and then what to do with it afterwards to avoid
getting caught and actually getting some money.
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> I don't know if this is actually true, but I'm told that *everything* is
> quite small in Japan. Including the people...
Oh no, their cell phones are definitely bigger than ours, on the whole. The
Japanese market prefers bigger chunkier phones with huge displays (you try
fitting more than 6 Japanese characters onto a small low-resolution
display!) and many many features, some more useful than others. Like this:
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=5793
> (I hear claims of the opposite for the USA - but I'm pretty sure they're
> exaggerating.)
Their cars (and trucks and whatever else you call them) seemed way bigger to
me. That's what I noticed the most, when some guy got out of his 4x4, and
only when I saw that the 4x4 was higher than him (he wasn't short) did I
realise how huge his 4x4 was. Or when someone parked a Range Rover next to
a few American 4x4s, and it looked tiny! And then I saw some old woman get
out of what looked like a really old worn-out car, it was *huge*, like take
a Ford Mondeo and double it in every dimension (but make the suspension 2x
bouncier). It also said 5.4L on the back, which I guess is needed to just
move the thing :-)
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> Went out today and bought a 1TB external (on sale!)
They were advertising one of those for 99 euro here (I haven't checked yet
if that's a good deal or not), so I thought about picking one up. It woudl
be useful for moving large files between different machines, and I could
just plug it into my PS3 if I wanted to play some media in the living room.
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scott wrote:
>> (They're also a real-world shop, so you can walk in, purchase
>> something, and have it in your hand the same day, rather than waiting
>> 3 days for it to be delivered and then waiting until the weekend so
>> you can go to the post office to collect the item during their brief
>> opening hours...)
>
> I often use amazon next day service and ship it to my office rather than
> home.
Yeah, I guess I could do that, except that
1. I have to notify the office that I'm expecting a parcel, otherwise
they will open it and file the invoice. (!)
2. I don't know the postal address of my place of work.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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scott wrote:
>>> Data tarifs abroad are quite pricey!
>>
>> And slower than cooling basult, presumably?
>
> Ermmm, have you ever used a recent 3G data connection?
I don't even know what 3G *is*. :-P
> Quite similar to
> a DSL line (I think mine says max 7.2mbit, but usally it's nearer 2mbit
> when actually using it).
Mmm, OK. My mum's works laptop used to have GSM capabilities. It was
several times slower than a 56K modem, depending on location.
>> Really? When my moped was stolen, they didn't have much trouble
>> finding it. (Not that there was much left of it.) I guess it depends
>> on whether it's stolen by bored teenagers or professional criminals.
>
> Yeh, I guess if someone who mugs you randomly gets your car keys (rather
> than mugging you for the sole purpose of getting your car key) they are
> not likely to really know what to do with it, so chances of finding it
> might be higher. They'd probably just drive it around a bit and dump it
> somewhere.
Pretty much, yeah.
> To steal modern cars (without having the key) you need a lot
> of skill and knowledge, both with exactly how to steal it in the first
> place (you can't just "hotwire" them), and then what to do with it
> afterwards to avoid getting caught and actually getting some money.
Well, you'd hope so...
OTOH, presumably if you lose your keys, they have ways to fix this, so
it can't be *that* secure.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> Yeah, I guess I could do that, except that
>
> 1. I have to notify the office that I'm expecting a parcel, otherwise they
> will open it and file the invoice. (!)
Ooh that's a bit scary :-) But so long as you don't order anything you don't
want them to see, I don't see why it should be a problem.
> 2. I don't know the postal address of my place of work.
How did you know where to go the first day you went there? Anyway, even if
you don't know, just look on some letter or headed paper, or ask someone, or
look on your job contract, or type the company name and town into Google, or
... Personally I have never met anyone who didn't know the address of where
they work!
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> Mmm, OK. My mum's works laptop used to have GSM capabilities. It was
> several times slower than a 56K modem, depending on location.
LOL, I used to have a 2400 baud modem too. Well, as usual, times have moved
on since then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Downlink_Packet_Access
Most service providers seem to be offering a flat-rate "mobile broadband"
package for around 20-30 pounds per month, really useful if you need a
network connection and travel sometimes without access to free-WLAN.
> OTOH, presumably if you lose your keys, they have ways to fix this, so it
> can't be *that* secure.
If you "lose" both keys it is a long and difficult process to get a new set
from the manufacturer. Of course they are going to check with lists of
stolen cars before doing so, and I guess you have to provide proof you own
the vehicle, ID etc. Most of the time people just lose 1 key, and then it
is quite trivial to buy a "blank" key and reprogram it from the old key.
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scott wrote:
>> Yeah, I guess I could do that, except that
>>
>> 1. I have to notify the office that I'm expecting a parcel, otherwise
>> they will open it and file the invoice. (!)
>
> Ooh that's a bit scary :-) But so long as you don't order anything you
> don't want them to see, I don't see why it should be a problem.
>
>> 2. I don't know the postal address of my place of work.
>
> How did you know where to go the first day you went there?
To be fair, I didn't know the postal address where I worked either. I
commuted for a year, and the only time I saw the address was the first
time I stuffed it into the GPS, and never after that.
I've worked several places where I knew how to drive to but couldn't
tell you the address. Not at all unusual when you live walking distance
from work, either. "Where are you?" "Know that brown building with the
green stripes next to the food store?" "Yeah." "Third floor."
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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scott wrote:
> you need a lot of skill and knowledge,
Or a tow truck.
I never understood why more motorcycles didn't get stolen.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> OTOH, presumably if you lose your keys, they have ways to fix this, so
> it can't be *that* secure.
Yes. They pull out $3000 worth of computers and replace them.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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scott wrote:
>> 1. I have to notify the office that I'm expecting a parcel, otherwise
>> they will open it and file the invoice. (!)
>
> Ooh that's a bit scary :-) But so long as you don't order anything you
> don't want them to see, I don't see why it should be a problem.
http://www.thehumorarchives.com/attachment/78/dildo.jpg
>> 2. I don't know the postal address of my place of work.
>
> How did you know where to go the first day you went there?
I followed my dad's car. (He works there too, remember?)
You remember that our postal address changed just a few months ago, yes? ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> I never understood why more motorcycles didn't get stolen.
I've wondered about that... It's not like you'd even need to play ahead.
You just need that guy from Police Academy. What's his name? House.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> http://www.thehumorarchives.com/attachment/78/dildo.jpg
Haha yes, even if they don't open your mail I still wouldn't send anything
dodgy. I've had a few parcels turn up half-opened because they were damaged
during transit.
>>> 2. I don't know the postal address of my place of work.
>>
>> How did you know where to go the first day you went there?
>
> I followed my dad's car. (He works there too, remember?)
>
> You remember that our postal address changed just a few months ago, yes?
> ;-)
SO, weren't you emailed or something to announce this change? Maybe I just
work in a different place, but I see and use our postal address the whole
time for telling people how to get here, ordering stuff, filling in forms,
reading letters that people have sent to me, those free technical magazines
that are sent, on mine and my colleagues business cards etc it's everywhere.
Didn't you say you were sent some kit from the US? THey must know your
address, and it must have been written on the thing you received, just copy
that. Heck at our place there's even a big number above the entrance, and a
sign on the street for the street name, that's a good start.
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> To be fair, I didn't know the postal address where I worked either. I
> commuted for a year, and the only time I saw the address was the first
> time I stuffed it into the GPS, and never after that.
DId you really receive no real mail or parcels from outside, never send
anyone a real mail or package, never have to tell anyone where you worked
(eg if they coming to visit you or trying to deliver something), never fill
in any form that needed your work address, never have to tell a taxi driver
or a friend the address, never ordered anything for work, in one whole year?
What did you do there that was so closed off from everyone else?
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scott wrote:
>> http://www.thehumorarchives.com/attachment/78/dildo.jpg
>
> Haha yes, even if they don't open your mail I still wouldn't send
> anything dodgy. I've had a few parcels turn up half-opened because they
> were damaged during transit.
Too true.
(BTW, you have *no idea* how long it took me with Google to find that
image again!)
>> You remember that our postal address changed just a few months ago,
>> yes? ;-)
>
> SO, weren't you emailed or something to announce this change? Maybe I
> just work in a different place, but I see and use our postal address the
> whole time for telling people how to get here, ordering stuff, filling
> in forms, reading letters that people have sent to me, those free
> technical magazines that are sent, on mine and my colleagues business
> cards etc it's everywhere.
I don't do purchasing. I tell the purchasing guys what I want ordered,
and they order it. (Because they know how all the paperwork works and
stuff. Personally, I have no idea what a "PO number" is.)
> Didn't you say you were sent some kit from
> the US? THey must know your address, and it must have been written on
> the thing you received, just copy that. Heck at our place there's even
> a big number above the entrance, and a sign on the street for the street
> name, that's a good start.
You'll recall that my place of work isn't on a "street". (Indeed,
according to my TomTom, it isn't even on a *road*!) It's in the middle
of a farmer's field.
But yeah, the purchasing guys will know what the address is. They
purchase all my stuff for me!
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scott wrote:
>> (I hear claims of the opposite for the USA - but I'm pretty sure
>> they're exaggerating.)
>
> Their cars seemed way bigger to me.
...starting to understand why the USA doesn't want to reduce carbon
emissions...
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> But yeah, the purchasing guys will know what the address is.
So ask them for it, and you could also ask them if it's ok to get private
things delivered to work while you're there.
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>> Their cars seemed way bigger to me.
>
> ...starting to understand why the USA doesn't want to reduce carbon
> emissions...
But they're definitely changing, the car companies like Ford are scrabbling
to get more of the European "small" cars over to the US whilst they are
closing factories that make the big pickups and 4x4s. Maybe one day diesel
powered cars will become popular over there too, the Americans will probably
like them as they typically have more low-end torque than petrol cars.
I don't know if it's true or not, but I read somewhere that if you buy a
huge vehicle like a Hummer, you actually have to pay way less tax because it
is classed as a different sort of vehicle (like a goods vehicle or something
rather than a car).
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scott wrote:
>
> I don't know if it's true or not, but I read somewhere that if you buy a
> huge vehicle like a Hummer, you actually have to pay way less tax
> because it is classed as a different sort of vehicle (like a goods
> vehicle or something rather than a car).
>
I think that's true with things like 3/4 ton trucks and vans. The Hummer
is likely to get a Gas Guzzler tax, though. (Unless the Hummer has the
3/4 ton payload & towing capacity, then it would be exempt, as it is,
after all, classified as a truck. Yay lobbyists!)
In Texas I see lots of people driving 3/4 ton trucks as a status symbol.
You can always tell, because they usually aren't actually hauling
anything, and have a tiny ball hitch suitable for pulling a small
fishing boat that a simple 4 cylinder car could pull. :)
--
~Mike
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> I think that's true with things like 3/4 ton trucks and vans. The Hummer
> is likely to get a Gas Guzzler tax, though. (Unless the Hummer has the 3/4
> ton payload & towing capacity, then it would be exempt, as it is, after
> all, classified as a truck. Yay lobbyists!)
I think that's what I read about, that people bought them because they were
exempt from some tax ... yeh I just looked on Wikipedia about the Hummer H2,
and yes apparently it is exempt from the gas guzzler tax. It's also exempt
from fuel economy standards and emission testing because its gross weight is
over 8500lbs! Still, maybe with higher fuel prices the 10mpg performance
will hit people more than what they save with the tax cuts.
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 2. I don't know the postal address of my place of work.
Hahahahaha... PWN3D!
The address is on my email signature.
[As part of our big rebranding kick, we all got kitted out with new
email signatures. I hadn't really looked at it, but it actually includes
the company address!]
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scott wrote:
>> To be fair, I didn't know the postal address where I worked either. I
>> commuted for a year, and the only time I saw the address was the first
>> time I stuffed it into the GPS, and never after that.
>
> DId you really receive no real mail or parcels from outside,
Not me. Understand, this was a three-person office in a business park
without even a business phone line. (We took calls on our cell phones,
including conference calls.)
> in one whole year? What did you do there that was so closed off from
> everyone else?
No. I just had the lackeys do all that. There were lots of meetings
there. I just wasn't the one setting them up.
Thinking on it, I think most of the places I worked, I didn't know the
address, including big places. Even at Bellcore, the address I used was
2MRE127-H, which doesn't really tell you much outside of Bellcore's
numbering scheme.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Invisible wrote:
> Personally, I have no idea what a "PO number" is.
This is actually useful to know if you're ever going to work for
yourself. A PO# is an authorization the buyer files with his own
accounting department to pay the seller for the stuff.
So, Fred needs a computer. He gets it approved with his management and
all, and takes the approval to the accounting department, who gives him
a PO#. He then fills out a Purchase Order, including the PO# on it, to
purchase his computer. When the computer arrives, the mail department
takes him the computer and delivers the included copy of the PO/invoice
to the accounting department. The accounting department looks up the
PO#, sees that it should be paid, and pays the bill.
It's a good thing to know, because if there's one thing I've learned
working as a small consultant to big companies is this: If you don't
have a PO# before you go to work, it will take you six months to get
paid, if ever. If you *do* have a PO#, you mail the bill to the
accounting department, and they pay it. If you *don't*, you mail the
bill to the guy who hired you, who sits on it because paying you isn't
his job, until you send it again, and again, and finally start tacking
on finance charges and CC'ing the accounting department, at which point
the accounting department goes "Finance charges??" and things start
moving again.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Invisible wrote:
> ....starting to understand why the USA doesn't want to reduce carbon
> emissions...
We already reduce carbon emissions ourselves. We just don't want
outsiders telling us the only way to do it is to use less energy.
Hey, *our* country isn't the one where the buildings are all melting.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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scott wrote:
> I don't know if it's true or not, but I read somewhere that if you buy a
> huge vehicle like a Hummer, you actually have to pay way less tax
> because it is classed as a different sort of vehicle (like a goods
> vehicle or something rather than a car).
That's one of the reasons we have SUVs. Some people wanted large cars,
but the government (CAFE) said "all cars must be at least X efficient."
So the car companies built SUVs, which are heavy enough to be classified
as trucks.
It always amuses me to see people in monster pickup trucks and SUVs
coming to an almost complete stop for the speedbumps that I go over at
20MPH in my Camery.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Darren New wrote:
>
> Hey, *our* country isn't the one where the buildings are all melting.
>
Haha. What?
--
~Mike
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