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1. Find out which Companies can make set-top converter boxes.
2. Buy Stock
3. Make government grant, letting lots of people get said set-tops
4. Profit.

Mmmmm... Wish I would've thought of that... oh wait, I'd prolly go to jail if I did it... nevermind.

--Luke
ChristianNerds.com News - If you're one too, it's probably of interest to you.

The worst thing you can do in this situation, though, is have a tech bag that looks like a tech bag. Man, with all your eggs in one basket like that, if your tech bag is lost, you're lost.

--Luke
ChristianNerds.com News. - If you're one too, it's probably of interest to you.

CafePress.com has the ability to send out CDs on demand. It's like 4.95 as the base price, I think, for CDs, and if you set the price any higher than that, you get the profits. They don't touch the rights, and you don't have to worrk about doing any of the print work.

Luke
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Does your Aunt Maggie want to learn about computers, but you don't have time to teach her? Send her top ChristianNerds.com, the Easy-to-Understand Computer Encyclopedia.

Wow, if you think you have latency problems now with your VoIP, wait until they cludge on all of these other services.

But seriously, the use of these other services are going to cause a major headache to those trying to get VoIP in the short run,In the long run, however, making the networks streamlined for the other services as well is really going to make the VoIP service stream great.

Luke
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ChristianNerds.com, the Easy-to-Understand Computer Encyclopedia

Ever hear of Megaman Soccer? Overall, I don't think the game fared very well, because people thought it was a badly made sports game, but as just a fun game, it was cool. I mean, you hit the guy with a ball and he bursts into flames? How cool is that! Or you can't quite get past their goalie? Chop him into little pieces. BUt wait, he's a big metal thing that can't be chopped up into pieces. Your loss. you just wasted your special ball. I mean, there was strategy, (although it's not quite a strategy game), there was sports (although there was enough changes to make it not quite a normal sports game), and there was super cool enhancements that you could get by defeating other teams. That's cool stuff. I'm not even a soccer fan and that game rocked.

Luke
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Is your boss making dumb decisions because he doesn't understand computers? Send them to ChristianNerds.com, the easy-to-understand computer encyclopedia

"A rash of tombstone thievery has been noted in recent months, as youth convert them into home entertainment systems. A new job market, however, has sprung up, as satellite-tracking of tombstones becomes the newest fad."

Who knew that one day, we'd have to worry about a new tombstone-trade in the black market.

Luke
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ChristianNerds.com - An Easy-to-Understand Encyclopedia of Computer Knowledge/a

"On man's psycopath is aanother man's genius."

There are many other psychological disorders out there that you could say, "One man's _________ is another man's genius" but psychopath isn't one of them. If soemone IS a genius and has these qualities, then I'd still not want them in the corporate environment, because if someone has no problem harming other people or doesn't care about the ramifications of their actions toward someone else, then even if they are super smart, it's no excuse for their behavior.

Other ________'s could be perfectly feasible, though. A schitzophrenic (no clue on spelling) for instance could be a wonderful genius and under supervision could still be helpful (note: not in alot of power, but still in the force). An agorophobic (also, not sure of spelling) could still be a very productive person. But Psychopath always involves harming others.

Evil Genius? Yes. But still keep them out of the workplace, because as we've all seen on movies, cartoons, and politics, when evil geniuses have power, Bad Things Happen.

Luke
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Help your boss learn about computers. Send him to ChristianNerds.com

Most-likely, the real reason it won't get outsourced will be medical insurance. Doctors over here have to have so much malpractice insurance that it's uber expensive, but most of our health insurance companies wouldn't allow for remote surgeries from areas where they wouldn't be able to check up on/sue the person on the other end.

However, if you're rich enough, I guess it'd be possible, but then again, if you're rich, you wouldn't need it outsourced to lower costs.

Luke
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ChristianNerds.com, the Free, Easy-to-Understand Computer Encyclopedia

Hrm... for the equipment to make this possible, they would have to put in quite a bit of cash to make that possible, so if the doctors over there are so good that it would make it worth outsourcing to them, I'd say go for it!

Luke
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ChristianNerds.com, the Easy-to-Understand Computer Encyclopedia

I'm sorry, Mr Smith. The receptionist clogged up our bandwidth with illegal P2P downloading while we were making the incision. So, uh, it's just a tad off. Sorry.

Luke
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Have friends and family that don't understand computers? Don't want to explain them? Send them to ChristianNerds.com, the Easy-to-Understand Computer Encyclopedia.

Once the beast is in the wild, it's pretty hard to bring it back. Like "Hacker". It's out there for good.

But at least it's like Kleenex. Just because it's earned itself a business-related name doesn't mean that you can't use the technology.

"Goody Goody for our side!", as my grandmother used to say.

Luke
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Send your boss to ChristianNerds.com, the Computer Encyclopedia that speaks in an easy enough language that even they could understand it.

But at least we know it was the right piece of paper!

Luke
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Want to make your life easier? Whenever someone asks you a computer question that you don't want to answer, Send them to ChristianNerds.com

It doesn't seem to matter what they discuss. The media just grab on to words like virus and have themselves a field day, trying to scare people and sound educated.

Leaves those of us who are english geeks frustrated with word misuse, but for the average person, it's irrelivent it seems.

Luke
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Have a webpage that teaches computer basics too? Contact me. Maybe we can swap links.

Isn't it sad, though, that standards tend to only be set by those who are the minority, in order to convince the major player to conform to them?

It's not flamebait, it just seems true. Like, the whole, IE7 thing. It said it's just adding the most-requested standards to the package.

*shrug*

Luke
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Have a website that teaches basic computer education too? Maybe we could trade links.

20 miles to a gallon is nothing.

A while back there was a model airplane that flew 1882 miles across the atlantic on less than a gallon of fuel.

Here's the article.

Luke
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And Here's my shameless plug for my website

C'est beau. C'est pas comme si on te voulait ici de toute façon.

In case you're too lazy for babelfish, he/she said that it was pretty up there, and they didn't want you in Canada anyway.

Luke
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Tired of answering basic computer questions for people? Send them to ChristianNerds.com instead!

If the Zodiac is no more, then what do I say, if someone asks me what my sign is?

*sits here, watching the following thread for the puns and fun answers*

Luke
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Have a teaching-about-computer-basics website? Maybe you might want to swap links with ChristianNerds.com?

I sure could cut the cable cord for alot less than they could. Of course, I'd use something more along the lines of some sidecuts, but hey!

Luke
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Have a teaching-about-computer-basics website? Maybe you might want to swap links with ChristianNerds.com?

If a person has been working solely on search-related technologies for years, even if he has to live with a non-compete agreement, he still isn't having his ability to work taken away.

He just can't do search things. In the same way that someone who used to sell cars (work with me here), if he has a non-compete agreement, could still be a mechanic or a professional driver. He just couldn't be a car salesman.

This guy can still be a developer, or be any other computer-related thing, which would take a large portion of his previous skillset into account. Just he can't do the exact same thing.

It's not like they say, "You can't use your fingers any more." He can still make a perfectly-fine living. Just has to wait for working on search stuff.

Luke
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Have a teaching-about-computer-basics website? Maybe you might want to swap links with ChristianNerds.com?

One phrase. Frozen Bubble.

Fun, exciting introduction to Open Source.

But, then again, nobody would have any productivity for the rest of the day.

Luke
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Tired of answering tons of basic computer questions for friends and family? Send them to ChristianNerds.com instead!

I always thought that the idea of listening to the audio from DVDs (well, back in the day, I imagined it as from VHS's, but it works the same way) would be nice way of travelling.

On a trip to school, a several years ago, I caught a television broadcast signal on my radio (like, they were transmitting the tv sounds onto the radio), and they were playing the sounds to Casper -- that one with the fat ghost and the smelly ghost and stuff.

Anyway, since I'd already seen the movie, I knew enough to be able to understand what was going on, while still watching the road.

I work on other stuff while "watching" movies at home anyway, and since I don't look at the screen too much when I do that anyway, it's about the same.

Luke
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Tired of answering tons of basic computer questions for friends and family? Send them to ChristianNerds.com instead!

I generally look for any kind of talk radio that I can find. Instead of doing music or what have you on a CD or mp3 player, I look for talk radio, and try to learn stuff.

Can't stand the sports talk, but every once in a while, you'll stumble upon a real gem, listening to talk radio in places you've never been to before.

One time, I was driving through the appalations and found a radio equivalent of tech TV. It was fun!

Besides, music puts me to sleep.

Luke
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Tired of answering tons of basic computer questions for friends and family? Send them to ChristianNerds.com instead!

Man, they've all been like that. It's an entire series of games all about doing illegal stuff, and shooting cops, "making use of" prostitutes, etc.

It's been there since the first one, but nobody even lifted a finger -- government wise -- until now. It's been like three or four years.

Wow.

Luke
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Tired of answering tons of basic computer questions for friends and family? Send them to ChristianNerds.com instead!

Sadly, for those of us who constantly change the operating systems on our "hobby" computer, we'll probably get marked that we've pirated their operating systems, even though we're just using it on one system at a time, and bought it legitimately, and have a valid key and everything.

*sigh* as well

Luke
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Tired of answering tons of basic computer questions for friends and family? Send them to ChristianNerds.com instead!

The top news story of the hour:

Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, has announced yet a new version of the Windows Operating system. Trying to take advantage of the obvious new market of supercomputers, the computer giant is ready to release Windows SC. The new operating system, designed to beat the Japanese domination in computing power, as well as the Russians in spam-distribution, will link all computers running the operating system into one giant spam^H^H^H^Hcommercial marketing distribution center.

Luke
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Tired of answering tons of basic computer questions for friends and family? Send them to ChristianNerds.com instead!

It's just like the "first to space" race, but without a concrete final goal.

Let's see who can get furthur into space!

Luke
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Tired of answering tons of basic computer questions for friends and family? Send them to ChristianNerds.com instead!

When you have a game that features things that the majority of people have always wanted to do at some time or another, but didn't want to go to jail for it or they just didn't want to hurt people in real life, it doesn't matter what the rating it, it'll always sell like crazy.

Oh, and if you can jump out of a car, and let it keep going and run over gangstas and drug lords.

It won't hurt it.

Might even raise the sales of it, truth be told.

Luke
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Like computers, but are frustrated about explaining things hundreds of times over? Send them to ChristianNerds.com

It's a game called Grand Theft Auto, and they're surprized when it's not a pure, nice, and clean game? It's a game about doing illegal things anyway. If you can pick up the cart and read on it that it's about Theft, don't be surprized when you steal cars and do less-than-righteous stuff. man.

Luke
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If you also have a website that's geared for computer newbies, get a hold of me. Maybe we can partner up or something.

It's too bad that search engine results are so full of all-advertising sites that good sites tend to fall though the cracks. I've seen a number of pretty-decent websites that didn't show up until the tenth page of a google search just because they weren't "Optimized for search engine traffic". It's annoying.

I read an article a while back that says that anyone who does anything purely for the purposes of making their websites show up higher on search engine results than they should are scammers. I believe it. No matter how whitehat you are, if you're trying to beat the system, you're a scammer. period.

Dumb ol' no-good-content-advertiser-based-websites.

Luke
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This may be a shameless plug for my website, but at least it's got content.

From the Article, ""IT decision-makers polled believe that employees are spending an average of 5.9 hours per week surfing the internet for non work-related reasons." There's who's the ones claiming it. Just decision-makers. Like, pointy-headed bosses. They don't know; they just guess, and then websense extrapolates it under the assumption that they are right. Wow. What a way to make a scientific study.

Luke
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Send your pointy-headed boss to ChristianNerds.com. Teach him (or her) computer stuff.

Just looking at my website statistics from people coming to my website via slashdot.org, I actually have a large number at the beginning of the workday, and towards the end, but during the day, it looks like most people stay pretty productive...

Or just that they do their slashdotting in the morning and other non-productive surfing later :-)

Luke
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If you also have a website that's geared for computer newbies, get a hold of me. Maybe we can partner up or something.

Just looking at my website statistics from people coming to my website via slashdot.org, I actually have a large number at the beginning of the workday, and towards the end, but during the day, it looks like most people stay pretty productive...

Or just that they do their slashdotting in the morning and other non-productive surfing later :-)

Luke
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If you also have a website that's geared for computer newbies, get a hold of me. Maybe we can partner up or something.

Exept for people that run websites for a business. Those people are gaining quite a bit from it. But sadly, when you're ADD like me, and you try to run a website, you tend to wander around the net, when you're supposed to be staying focused on working on your website.

But I don't mind, since I don't make any significant amount of money from my site.

Luke
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If you also have a website that's geared for computer newbies, get a hold of me. Maybe we can partner up or something.

Nobody knows anything, so let's write an article about it, because it'll generate hits on our website!

Marketing:
If you know it, write about it
If you don't know it, speculate.
If you hear someone else write about it, it must be important, so link to them and make something up.

Gotta love web reporting.

Luke
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Sure, those of us with our webpages in our sigs do the same thing :-P

I'm completely for VoIP. I'd love to be able to call friends across the world for hardly anything, but I'm also not for providers who don't do their hardest to make sure that their customers (who they're trying to convince to drop their landline) are receiving the same emergency service as they would have had.

I'm betting that the FCC tries to make the commercial providers illegal or at least severely restricted, but that's just a gut reaction against them because of their recent antics. But aside from that, I think that the 911 thing is a Good Thing(TM).

Luke
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Sure, you know everything on ChristianNerds.com (An Computer Encyclopedia for computer beginners), but your boss doesn't.

We just got within range of broadband internet within the last year. Even if they do bring some places up to those high speeds, I think they'll need to get the current areas more saturated to the point that enough people would be willing to pay for those speeds before the companies could afford to bring those technologies to the common household.

Luke
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Teach your Aunt Susie about technology: ChristianNerds.com

I've been told by numerous people, including my college roomate who went to court about a traffic ticket, that most of the time, just because someone is willing to go to the court about getting a ticket, they almost always win. Like, just being willing to spend the time to go is enough for reasonable doubt in a lot of situations.

Luke
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Help your boss understand what computers are before making decisions: ChristianNerds.com

...nevermore... nevermore....

"Quoth" is infinately funnier in this situation.

Luke
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Help your boss understand you. Send them to ChristianNerds.com

Although the "average user" won't be using the various plugins, Microsoft will still point to this as one more reason to say that FireFox isn't secure. Sure, FireFox has it's bugs. We need to get fixing them.

I'm not saying that FireFox is perfect. Obviously, it's not, and this article is a case in point. It's still the browser I use. For me, this is a warning to fix things or wait for them to stable up (oh yeah -- that mindset shown, I am a Debian user). But just like we use any little IE thing to say "See, IE is junk," this'll get used too.

*sigh* The joys of conflict.

Luke
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Smarten up your stupider-than-you coworkers, send them to ChristianNerds.com

Just more ammo for the mega-powers to say, "See, when it becomes mainstream, it becomes more insecure. Come back to windows."

Marvelous.

Luke
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Be smart. Teach others. ChristianNerds.com

It's probably because almost all of the research is funded by corporations that make themselves sound good. I mean, I'd rather trust someone who I didn't know, but I considered a *regular guy* instead of a paid researcher who told what to find. I mean, word of mouth advertising versus reading magazine advertisements. I'd believe word of mouth more.

Luke
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Don't let your family be ignorant any more, send them to ChristianNerds.com (The Free Online Computer Encyclopedia)

The best thing about the iPod is that you don't have to look at it. Well, that and it plays music. Remember all of the people having to get different headphones so their iPod's wouldn't get stolen? You could stick the iPod in your pocket and get on with life, while it happily lulled you into comfort with its background music or drowned out your uncomfortable surroundings with distracting foreground music.

Now, you have to look at it.

It's like they're trying to get into a small chunk of the PDA market, and a bit of the video game handheld market, but without the majority of their bonus features.

Luke
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Teach Aunt Martha about the computer the eay way: Send her to ChristianNerds.com, the Free Online Computer Encyclopedia (written in normal-people-speak)

You know how we've all grown to hate when we're in public places and people are sitting there, talking loudly on their cellphones?

Now, we're going to get to the point where we're sitting in public places and see all these little video screens, playing video that we can barely make out enough to know what it is, but just enough to have a shiney spot in the corner of our eye that's distracting and making it so that we can't concentrate. Marvelous.

Luke
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Help your boss understand what you're talking about: Send them to ChristianNerds.com . We teach computers in a form so basic, even your boss will understand.

There are too many companies who get really famous because of the fact that they looked at the market, saw the need, and filled it. There was a need for the iPod. Apple filled it. Joy of joys. People used to take their CD-players and tape players around, but many couldn't get the full use out of them because they could only hold one CD. Radio was too restrictive because you couldn't choose the content. Enter the iPod. Nice stuff!

Enter the knockoffs. The companies that can't read the market, because they're too big to have real risk-taking guts.

Then the iPod gets big and Apple somehow loses touch with the market. It's a rarity (except for long trips and sharing with friends) that people say, "Man, I wish I could watch a video clip right now." Or at least wanting it to the point that they would pay money for each clip that they put on it. Full Movies, yes, but ESPN recaps, no (though, a few bucks for all ESPN recaps this month would be very impressive).

Step 1: Read the market
Step 2: Find what the market needs
Step 3: Do it
Step 4: Profit
Step 5: Lose the market view
Step 6: Make a new product to ride on your popularity, with a market that doesn't exist yet
Step 7: Cross your fingers

But then again, if they weren't willing to fail, they'd be in the ranks with the big dogs that we tend to not like because they don't take risks (they just copy others). So, uh, even though I won't buy one, best of luck to them. If the market isn't there, at least their operating system rocks :-)

Luke
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Help your boss understand you: Send them to ChristianNerds.com (The Free Online Computer Encyclopedia)

I don't think just about everybody wants those things. I think, for the most part, "just about everybody" don't realize options in computers.

The average user doesn't realize that fans can be quieter, or that a computer even needs to run cooler.

The average user just says, "That's the computer." when looking at the case. They don't think of a way that it could be better in any way. Sure, slashdotters do, but "just about everybody" isn't one of us.

The average user doesn't know how to plug things in (I just tell people plug things into the hole that it fits in and then plug the speaker in the hole with a picture of a speaker next to it and then they get it on their own), but they don't think of wireless everything. I tell (middle age adult) coworkers that my computer has a wireless mouse and keyboard and they're very impressed. They don't think of extrapolating like that.

The average user doesn't know what a USB key is.

The average user doesn't know much about hardware inside the computer at all (my website, ChristianNerds.com has a question and answer section, where they email me questions about computers and I try to answer them, and I get at least one person every week asking what a printer is... A Printer! "Um, it's the thing that prints out your stuff onto paper."). The average user doesn't know enough to know what else to want. They like faster and they like flashier graphics. That's about it. Oh, and music.

Luke

Man, I hope that they get rid of the right ones. I've talked to their CRS's while lookin' to buy two different laptops and about 80% of the ones that I talked to were really knowledgeable... just that one that wasn't seeming to know what he was doing, but he at least passed me to someone who did, so I'd still count it as a good call.

There's too many other companies that I don't buy from specifically because of the fact that their Customer Service Representatives don't fully understand their own product (not talkin' about down-to-the-chip, but at least be able to tell me positives and negatives about using this technology over that one that the competitor has).

I'm about a month from being able to buy myself a new laptop (wanting them specifically, because their stuff is linux-friendly), so I hope they still have someone useful by the time I want one.

Luke
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"Help your stupid friends not be so stupid. Send 'em to ChristianNerds.com."

I run a website (http://www.christiannerds.com) that's supposed to teach computer basics to people who don't know much about computers at all.

Anyway, we've got IE down to like 79% now. Guess it sorta' goes to show you that if you actually WANT to learn about computers, you're alot more likely to choose Firefox (15%) or Mozilla (3%).

Luke