At our small rural school, a junior one day threw a pop bottle at the car of a senior as the senior was driving away. The senior got out, roughed up the junior a little bit, and put him in his place.
But, the junior got pissed, got two of his buddies, and went over to the senior's house and vandalized the guy's car to the tune of about $1,500, plus did another $1,000 to his mother's car.
When the three stooges appeared in court, one of the three was a minor. (An accomplice, not the junior...he was 18...yea, what a shocker.) They got the minor to testify that he did all the dirty work, and the other two were just accomplices. Rather than the junior getting 90 days in jail and a $2,500 fine, he made off with just a small fine, and the minor got 40 hours of community service.
They don't just learn how to be a criminal by their friends...they are groomed.
I was planning on purchasing some Panasonic Lumix cameras for our school. I've been very excited about the purchase, particularly because that they use a unique battery, rather than AAs. Reason being, I've had about 20 AA rechargeables disappear in the last two years. That's about $50 worth of batteries.
So, get a battery that's exclusive for the Panasonic camera, and no more people jackin' batteries. Of course, all of this was contingent on buying the $8 off-brand batteries, not Panasonic's $50 take-it-up-the-ass brand.
More generally, mercury containing florescent lamps (mostly the conventional long-tube type) have been used in commercial and industrial applications for decades...somehow, nobody worried at all about that.
That's because businesses and offices that employed use of florescent lamps knew that they had to properly dispose of the ballasts & bulbs that contained the stuff. By-and-large, when you do business, you can't be ignorant of proper disposal procedures, less you like getting fined up the wazoo to pay the government to clean up for you.
On the other hand, once you put this stuff into the hands of Joe Consumer, they don't know jack about what the stuff is or why you can't throw it away in the dumpster. Sadder yet, they prefer to remain ignorant.
The other day, someone in my apartment was moving out. They threw their VCR, old computer, monitor, and air conditioner into the rear dumpster. Guess my kids will be soaking up dioxins, lead, and refrigerant compounds for years. Thanks Joe!
After teaching in Cairo, Egypt for a year at a private school, I found out the value of an American Education.
$10,000 a year.
That's how much the richest of the richest in Cairo were willing to pay so that their kids could get an American education.
It's sad to know that we have to pay our kids to go to school now. We're teaching our children that their education has no value, which is so egregiously incorrect.
I believe the industry knows that you cannot stop 100% of software piracy. I don't think that's their goal.
I remember back in 2000 when I went to my dentist. He sat me down and started making the usual small-talk, asked me where I worked, what I was majoring in in college, etc. When I told him I was a comp sci major, he brought up Napster. My dentist was using Napster. He went on and on about how computer illiterate he was, but he had no problems using Napster, and how he was finding songs on there from back when he was a kid, how he could find anything he wanted, and how simple it was to get whatever song he wanted...
I believe the industry is just trying to make sure my dentist doesn't start downloading songs again.
Articles like this are designed to fool and manipulate the public. After reading three paragraphs into the article, everyone's bullshit detector should have gone through the roof. Read this:
The Times reviewed every case on record in the last 15 years in which a tenured employee was fired by a California school district and formally contested the decision before a review commission: 159 in all (not including about two dozen in which the records were destroyed).
So, 183 firings were contested. In 15 years. Anyone bother to think for a moment about what percentage of teachers this was?
LAUSD is the 2nd largest district in the country. This year alone, there were 46,496 teachers employed in the district. In one year. I would estimate that the average year over the last 15 years saw 43858 teachers. 183/15 = 12.2 teachers contested per year. 12.2/43858 teachers means that there were problems with.03 PERCENT of the teaching staff. That's roughly one out of every 3,600 teachers each year.
If anyone here thinks that teacher unions should be done away with because 1 out of 3,600 teachers is a bad apple in LAUSD, you are an idiot. Public schools are the greatest economic equalizer in the world today. They allow the poorest of children to still become part of the middle class. No other economic factor even comes as close to achieving this. And the more empowered teachers are to concentrate on teaching, the better the school. Unions help provide this.
Stop bashing unions, and instead bash the government officials who turn our public schools against themselves, their students, and their communities.
This is why I hate politicians who fuck with what we teach.
People, especially those here on Slashdot, keep blaming teachers for the problems with school. In reality, it's assholes like these ignorant pricks who make us educators look like idiots. What they do in the end only makes schools appear less and less credible.
Taking my money to pay somebody else's housing bill is theft of labor.
Replace the word "housing" with "medical", and you have the basis of health insurance.
Or don't you believe in health insurance either?
I don't disagree with you that it's frustrating beyond belief that we live in a "capitalist" nation, where people should "live by the dollar, die by the dollar," but when people & businesses make fiscally irresponsible decisions, it's OK to rob from the responsible to support the irresponsible. But this still isn't theft. Agreements (explicit or implicit) exists between you and them that permit this to happen. In terms of insurance, we pay to be part of the socialist program. In terms of government, we elect the bozos that enact these asinine policies.
So, it's not theft. It's the government. (If you want, you may choose to finish this response with, "Same difference.")
1. Durability. The keyboard is built using the design principles first worked out during the construction of the pyramids.
After having and using a Model M for the last 10 years, I thought the keyboard lasting through 10 years of wear-and-tear alone was enough proof of its durability.
Then, last month, in a heated dispute with my spouse over whether she or my computer received more of my attention, she took the keyboard, ripped it out of the computer, and swung it like a 10 lb. sledgehammer against the desk. Keys exploded from the keyboard, flew about 4 ft. in all directions, and landed all over the room.
The next day, when everything was settled down, I put all the keys back together, and aside from a broken plastic retaining clip on the CTRL key, everything snapped back into place w/o difficulty. I've been using the keyboard now for one month. The only evidence from the "impact" is a CTRL key that doesn't stay in place.
I'd like to see another keyboard take that level of abuse and still work.
...about 300 kids K-12. I'm a little surprised that you're asking this question. Are you a technology coordinator who is now addressing these concerns for a district who has never addressed them until now?
Most districts have access restriction policies that students have to agree to and sign. I'm sure about 95% of the Slashdot crowd's gonna scream to high heaven against restrictions, but it's a no-brainer. In short, four letters: CIPA. From the FCC's webpage:
Schools and libraries subject to CIPA are required to adopt and implement a policy addressing: (a) access by minors to inappropriate matter on the Internet; (b) the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, and other forms of direct electronic communications; (c) unauthorized access, including so-called "hacking," and other unlawful activities by minors online; (d) unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of personal information regarding minors; and (e) restricting minors' access to materials harmful to them.
These last two are really the biggest ones to consider when drafting an Acceptable Use policy, particularly the last, since "materials harmful to them" could mean practically anything.
Our district has taken steps to block MySpace, FaceBook, etc., because all these websites allow minors to publish themselves online. If students accessed these sites at school, and the child was kidnapped due to information posted on MySpace, districts may be found liable.
And banning MySpace will certainly not make these laptops useless. I'm surprised by this comment...it sounds quite ignorant. Districts didn't spend millions of dollars on these machines for students to post poorly-made self-portraits of themselves online. They (I hope) spent the money to grant students equal access to a tool that can be used to enhance learning. I would see a school-owned laptop in the hands of a student exactly the same way as any other computer at school. I'd restrict the hell out of it, because until they graduate and buy it for themselves, the district is responsible for what is done with that laptop.
An ancillary addition to Private Browsing is a new addition to the "Clear Recent History" dialog box allowing users selectively to erase the last hour, the last two hours, the last four hours, today's, or all browsing history -- previously, the wipe was all or nothing.
No matter how much or how little of the history you delete, there's always going to be that little "gaping hole." Clever parents know that when someone goes online, there's going to be a history trail. But when a parent checks the history and finds nothing there for that day, red flags will go off.
Hopefully, in the next version, they include a "Generate Random History" option in the browser...and make sure it's intelligent enough to determine which sites you would regularly visit (sans porn, of course).
The public would not pay for its Internet services if AT&T discriminated against content, [Jim Cicconi, AT&T executive vice president for regulatory affairs] added. "We'd be shooting ourselves in the foot."
But, if the public only had a choice between DSL w/ AT&T, cable w/ Comcast, or no internet at all, and both companies throttled content, then the public is really left without a choice. It used to be that consumers had a choice between their internet provider. Nowadays, many major cities and municipalities only have one or two choices, usually both of them major players. And when regional monopolies exist, regulation has to exist to ensure that the monopolies aren't abused.
Was in the age of Dial-Up. I remember that there were a few ISPs back in the mid '90s that charged $20/month for a limited amount of time online...somewhere between 30 to 50 hours per month. But when other ISPs offered unlimited time online for the same price (or $25 to $30 per month), it was a no-brainer.
Of course, this was also back when even a mid-size municipal city (80,000+ population) could have three or four local ISPs to choose from.
Now, if you live in a place like Minneapolis, your only choices are Comcast or Qwest. If both decide to switch to a capped bandwidth, you're screwed.
Doesn't anyone else find it foolish of our culture to think that, while we cannot accurately predict the weather 100% of the time, we still think we have the power to bend it to our will?
It's sad when we can no longer convince Americans that the work that they do is work that they should want to do because it's what the company pays them to do.
Now, Americans are convinced that work must be entertaining, enjoyable, and come with a reward that is supplemental to the salary that they work for.
What's going to happen next? Will workers at McDonalds not serve us unless we dangle a dollar in their face and tell them, "If my meal is ready in the next 60 seconds, you get this reward?"
For those who are curious as to what these new bags look like or what makes them different, Targus has one posted on their website here, along with pictures.
Basically, the whole carrying case just splits in half right down the middle while staying hinged at the bottom, allowing for the laptop to be x-rayed without interference from the other materials in your bag.
I would recommend holding off on learning languages at the University unless you are either interested in the language or intend to pursue a career in a place where that language is spoken.
My experiences with foreign languages:
I studied German in high school. Haven't spoken a lick of it since, and I can't remember a single bit of it.
I studied Norwegian in college. I enjoyed it, because I had a few Norwegian friends, plus it's part of my heritage. I put a lot more effort into it, and got a lot out of it. But, I haven't spoken or studied it in five years. I can't remember much of it anymore.
I studied Arabic my first year out of college. I taught Mathematics in Egypt for a year. I heard the language everyday, so learning it was easy (thanks much in part to having a great tutor). I used Arabic every day, and as a reward learned vast amounts of knowledge about the people and their culture because of it...not to mention all the times I stopped Arabs from conning me or my family out of money by chewing them out in their own language. I can still speak what I've learned to this day, even though I haven't resided in Egypt for four years.
If you know what you are going to college for, then work towards that goal. Don't take a foreign language just because you think you should. It will usually end up being a waste of time. You will appreciate a foreign language far more if you actually learn it while living in the country where it's spoken, and you will retain it far longer than learning a language only from a book. There are great career opportunities overseas for engineers...always have been, always will be, and I strongly recommend pursuing one, even if it's only for six months to a year. Then, while you're there, study up on the language. When you're there, then it's incredibly rewarding.
"Is paying two to three thousand dollars simply unavoidable if I want to monitor my front and back yards?"
Yes.
What do you really want to capture? A video feed of something that looks like it came from an Atari video game, or an actual image of a face that police can use to track the perpetrator? And would you really trust a couple-hundred dollar camera to stand up to outdoor conditions? Security cameras are expensive because the companies that offer them know that clients want SECURITY. And security costs money.
I wouldn't pay for cameras that expensive, because the value of the property that I have in my apartment doesn't justify the cost. But if you have property that you want to protect, you'll have to determine for yourself whether the cost of the cameras is worth the cost of protecting your property.
Actually, this is a very good point that the parent brings up. The way corona discharge is possible is to push a very high voltage with very low amperage through a very small electrode. The high voltage creates the ion flow, but the low amperage prevents arcing from occuring. However, if a pool of dust collects between the electrodes, you'll have an easy path for the electricity to arc across.
Not to mention that you better not drop a screw in the case while it's in operation! Or a screwdriver, or a paper clip, or other random metalic objects.
Brilliant idea, neat application, but there's always a risk involved when you're playing with high voltage, even micro-amps worth.
It all depends on how much cognitive development you want to provide for your child.
I contend that video games don't harm cognitive development, but they (for the most part) don't help it either. Books, on the other hand, do. It's not so much on what's the appropriate time, but rather how much time is appropriate. I started playing video games at the age of seven, but my hours were heavily regulated by my mom, who (like the librarian she was) made sure that I was reading my quota of books for the week and getting my schoolwork done. On the other hand, if you're letting a seven-year-old frag away for five hours a day, then I'd really start getting concerned.
For those who disagree with my statement that video games do not help cognitive development, they don't. Cognitive science research indicates that students develop with "experience," experience being anything that a child experiences, from eating a meal to smelling something yucky to hitting a baseball to getting hit by a snowball to climbing a kitchen cabinet to get to the cookie jar that mom set down on top. Then, as a child learns words, they match words to experiences. If a child limits what they do every day to watching TV and playing video games, they don't get much opportunity to learn by doing. And for a child, tactile learning and feedback plays a crucial role in cognitive development.
2) Most new popular music today is disposable and no one wants to pay for this crap.
This is correct. Teenagers today are so fickle, they are in-and-out of music faster than a politician making a political stop in Iowa. The music industry knows that (and I think those who are smart realize that they only have themselves to blame for creating it). That's why their business model is basically to sell old wine in a new bottle. As long as the industry continues to change little with what they distribute but continue to promote it as new, they think they can continue to feed the demand of the adolescent behemoth. Unfortunately, what they haven't realized (and what no one hear has brought up yet), is that it's not the wine that's the problem. It's the bottle.
Look inside any school or any place where teenagers hang out, and you will be lucky nowadays to find a CD player. EVERYBODY has an MP3 player. The only reason not to have an MP3 player is if you don't have a computer, but on the other hand, everybody knows someone who has one. And why not? If you have a CD player, you eat up tons of money in batteries. Assuming you get 3 hours of playtime on a pair of AA's, that's at the least $2 that you spend to hear 3 hours of music. Listening to music for just one week will cost as much in AA's as buying a 512MB MP3 player at target that can last for 15 hours on a charge, and be recharged overnight on a computer or in an outlet. And that's just the battery issue. MP3 players now are as small as a stick of gum folded over in half. There's more mass in a set of keys than there is in many MP3 players and a pair of earbuds. Size matters, and in this rare case, smaller is better. And in the industry, NOBODY GETS THAT! Why buy a CD, upload it to your computer, then let the CD collect dust, when you can just download the music that you like for free and copy it to your MP3 player?
Believe it or not, the CD now is where the floppy disk was five years ago. The reason why the floppy disk stayed around for so long was because there was nothing there that could really replace it's function: it was universal, it was portable, and it was re-writable. CDs were universal and portable, ZIP disks were portable and re-writable, but nothing else was all three...until the USB memory stick came along. Now, that's what everyone's using. What the music industry has been so stubborn about is that they assumed for too long that the optical disk would last forever. Now, it's too late. Teenagers know how to get music online, they know how to download music online, and they know how to get it onto their MP3 players. And since the industry never changed their business model to embrace, support, and regulate this new method of distribution, they now have lost control.
(One thing the industry should have done right away at the start: charge royalties on all MP3 players based on the data they could hold, then let kids download for minimal cost...say $0.25 or $0.49 per song...right from their website.)
Mass integration is part of the ordeal. But from a design point of view, manufacturers sure don't seem to want people to fix things either.
For example, the rechargeable battery on my Norelco cordless electric razor gave out not too long ago. I looked online and found a few dealers selling replacement battery packs. I assumed that the battery swap would be very simple, involving nothing more than removing a few screws, pulling apart the casing, and swapping the battery pack with a new one.
When I opened the shaver, I found out that the battery pack was soldered onto a circuit board. I had to unscrew four more screws, wedge away a small daughter board, pull the remaining parts out of the bottom-half of the casing, the entire time delicately handling the motor (which was connected to the circuit board via two thin copper ribbon wires) as I de-soldered the old battery pack and soldered the new one.
If the device was intended to be repairable, they would've just included a removable battery pack.
Except when I'm working on it, Magic-1 is connected to the net. It serves web pages at http://www.magic-1.org
Not any more!
(I know, I know, some of you might be thinking..."How could you be so cruel as to post a link on/. to a server that's only running at 4 MHz? Have you no mercy?" My response: Nope.)
Slashdot Mirror
At our small rural school, a junior one day threw a pop bottle at the car of a senior as the senior was driving away. The senior got out, roughed up the junior a little bit, and put him in his place.
But, the junior got pissed, got two of his buddies, and went over to the senior's house and vandalized the guy's car to the tune of about $1,500, plus did another $1,000 to his mother's car.
When the three stooges appeared in court, one of the three was a minor. (An accomplice, not the junior...he was 18...yea, what a shocker.) They got the minor to testify that he did all the dirty work, and the other two were just accomplices. Rather than the junior getting 90 days in jail and a $2,500 fine, he made off with just a small fine, and the minor got 40 hours of community service.
They don't just learn how to be a criminal by their friends...they are groomed.
I was planning on purchasing some Panasonic Lumix cameras for our school. I've been very excited about the purchase, particularly because that they use a unique battery, rather than AAs. Reason being, I've had about 20 AA rechargeables disappear in the last two years. That's about $50 worth of batteries.
So, get a battery that's exclusive for the Panasonic camera, and no more people jackin' batteries. Of course, all of this was contingent on buying the $8 off-brand batteries, not Panasonic's $50 take-it-up-the-ass brand.
More generally, mercury containing florescent lamps (mostly the conventional long-tube type) have been used in commercial and industrial applications for decades...somehow, nobody worried at all about that.
That's because businesses and offices that employed use of florescent lamps knew that they had to properly dispose of the ballasts & bulbs that contained the stuff. By-and-large, when you do business, you can't be ignorant of proper disposal procedures, less you like getting fined up the wazoo to pay the government to clean up for you.
On the other hand, once you put this stuff into the hands of Joe Consumer, they don't know jack about what the stuff is or why you can't throw it away in the dumpster. Sadder yet, they prefer to remain ignorant.
The other day, someone in my apartment was moving out. They threw their VCR, old computer, monitor, and air conditioner into the rear dumpster. Guess my kids will be soaking up dioxins, lead, and refrigerant compounds for years. Thanks Joe!
After teaching in Cairo, Egypt for a year at a private school, I found out the value of an American Education.
$10,000 a year.
That's how much the richest of the richest in Cairo were willing to pay so that their kids could get an American education.
It's sad to know that we have to pay our kids to go to school now. We're teaching our children that their education has no value, which is so egregiously incorrect.
I believe the industry knows that you cannot stop 100% of software piracy. I don't think that's their goal.
I remember back in 2000 when I went to my dentist. He sat me down and started making the usual small-talk, asked me where I worked, what I was majoring in in college, etc. When I told him I was a comp sci major, he brought up Napster. My dentist was using Napster. He went on and on about how computer illiterate he was, but he had no problems using Napster, and how he was finding songs on there from back when he was a kid, how he could find anything he wanted, and how simple it was to get whatever song he wanted...
I believe the industry is just trying to make sure my dentist doesn't start downloading songs again.
Fucking ignorant bullshit.
Articles like this are designed to fool and manipulate the public. After reading three paragraphs into the article, everyone's bullshit detector should have gone through the roof. Read this:
The Times reviewed every case on record in the last 15 years in which a tenured employee was fired by a California school district and formally contested the decision before a review commission: 159 in all (not including about two dozen in which the records were destroyed).
So, 183 firings were contested. In 15 years. Anyone bother to think for a moment about what percentage of teachers this was?
LAUSD is the 2nd largest district in the country. This year alone, there were 46,496 teachers employed in the district. In one year. I would estimate that the average year over the last 15 years saw 43858 teachers. 183/15 = 12.2 teachers contested per year. 12.2/43858 teachers means that there were problems with .03 PERCENT of the teaching staff. That's roughly one out of every 3,600 teachers each year.
If anyone here thinks that teacher unions should be done away with because 1 out of 3,600 teachers is a bad apple in LAUSD, you are an idiot. Public schools are the greatest economic equalizer in the world today. They allow the poorest of children to still become part of the middle class. No other economic factor even comes as close to achieving this. And the more empowered teachers are to concentrate on teaching, the better the school. Unions help provide this.
Stop bashing unions, and instead bash the government officials who turn our public schools against themselves, their students, and their communities.
This is why I hate politicians who fuck with what we teach.
People, especially those here on Slashdot, keep blaming teachers for the problems with school. In reality, it's assholes like these ignorant pricks who make us educators look like idiots. What they do in the end only makes schools appear less and less credible.
Taking my money to pay somebody else's housing bill is theft of labor.
Replace the word "housing" with "medical", and you have the basis of health insurance.
Or don't you believe in health insurance either?
I don't disagree with you that it's frustrating beyond belief that we live in a "capitalist" nation, where people should "live by the dollar, die by the dollar," but when people & businesses make fiscally irresponsible decisions, it's OK to rob from the responsible to support the irresponsible. But this still isn't theft. Agreements (explicit or implicit) exists between you and them that permit this to happen. In terms of insurance, we pay to be part of the socialist program. In terms of government, we elect the bozos that enact these asinine policies.
So, it's not theft. It's the government. (If you want, you may choose to finish this response with, "Same difference.")
1. Durability. The keyboard is built using the design principles first worked out during the construction of the pyramids.
After having and using a Model M for the last 10 years, I thought the keyboard lasting through 10 years of wear-and-tear alone was enough proof of its durability.
Then, last month, in a heated dispute with my spouse over whether she or my computer received more of my attention, she took the keyboard, ripped it out of the computer, and swung it like a 10 lb. sledgehammer against the desk. Keys exploded from the keyboard, flew about 4 ft. in all directions, and landed all over the room.
The next day, when everything was settled down, I put all the keys back together, and aside from a broken plastic retaining clip on the CTRL key, everything snapped back into place w/o difficulty. I've been using the keyboard now for one month. The only evidence from the "impact" is a CTRL key that doesn't stay in place.
I'd like to see another keyboard take that level of abuse and still work.
...about 300 kids K-12. I'm a little surprised that you're asking this question. Are you a technology coordinator who is now addressing these concerns for a district who has never addressed them until now?
Most districts have access restriction policies that students have to agree to and sign. I'm sure about 95% of the Slashdot crowd's gonna scream to high heaven against restrictions, but it's a no-brainer. In short, four letters: CIPA. From the FCC's webpage:
Schools and libraries subject to CIPA are required to adopt and implement a policy addressing: (a) access by minors to inappropriate matter on the Internet; (b) the safety and security of minors when using electronic mail, chat rooms, and other forms of direct electronic communications; (c) unauthorized access, including so-called "hacking," and other unlawful activities by minors online; (d) unauthorized disclosure, use, and dissemination of personal information regarding minors; and (e) restricting minors' access to materials harmful to them.
These last two are really the biggest ones to consider when drafting an Acceptable Use policy, particularly the last, since "materials harmful to them" could mean practically anything.
Our district has taken steps to block MySpace, FaceBook, etc., because all these websites allow minors to publish themselves online. If students accessed these sites at school, and the child was kidnapped due to information posted on MySpace, districts may be found liable.
And banning MySpace will certainly not make these laptops useless. I'm surprised by this comment...it sounds quite ignorant. Districts didn't spend millions of dollars on these machines for students to post poorly-made self-portraits of themselves online. They (I hope) spent the money to grant students equal access to a tool that can be used to enhance learning. I would see a school-owned laptop in the hands of a student exactly the same way as any other computer at school. I'd restrict the hell out of it, because until they graduate and buy it for themselves, the district is responsible for what is done with that laptop.
An ancillary addition to Private Browsing is a new addition to the "Clear Recent History" dialog box allowing users selectively to erase the last hour, the last two hours, the last four hours, today's, or all browsing history -- previously, the wipe was all or nothing.
No matter how much or how little of the history you delete, there's always going to be that little "gaping hole." Clever parents know that when someone goes online, there's going to be a history trail. But when a parent checks the history and finds nothing there for that day, red flags will go off.
Hopefully, in the next version, they include a "Generate Random History" option in the browser...and make sure it's intelligent enough to determine which sites you would regularly visit (sans porn, of course).
The public would not pay for its Internet services if AT&T discriminated against content, [Jim Cicconi, AT&T executive vice president for regulatory affairs] added. "We'd be shooting ourselves in the foot."
But, if the public only had a choice between DSL w/ AT&T, cable w/ Comcast, or no internet at all, and both companies throttled content, then the public is really left without a choice. It used to be that consumers had a choice between their internet provider. Nowadays, many major cities and municipalities only have one or two choices, usually both of them major players. And when regional monopolies exist, regulation has to exist to ensure that the monopolies aren't abused.
Was in the age of Dial-Up. I remember that there were a few ISPs back in the mid '90s that charged $20/month for a limited amount of time online...somewhere between 30 to 50 hours per month. But when other ISPs offered unlimited time online for the same price (or $25 to $30 per month), it was a no-brainer.
Of course, this was also back when even a mid-size municipal city (80,000+ population) could have three or four local ISPs to choose from.
Now, if you live in a place like Minneapolis, your only choices are Comcast or Qwest. If both decide to switch to a capped bandwidth, you're screwed.
The game will apparently be playable on both machines at once, thanks to the spiffing new Pollux engine.
What can I say? I strive to make the very best.
Doesn't anyone else find it foolish of our culture to think that, while we cannot accurately predict the weather 100% of the time, we still think we have the power to bend it to our will?
It's sad when we can no longer convince Americans that the work that they do is work that they should want to do because it's what the company pays them to do.
Now, Americans are convinced that work must be entertaining, enjoyable, and come with a reward that is supplemental to the salary that they work for.
What's going to happen next? Will workers at McDonalds not serve us unless we dangle a dollar in their face and tell them, "If my meal is ready in the next 60 seconds, you get this reward?"
As long as the computers are at least a Pentium III class computer, donate it to a school. What they don't take, recycle the rest.
For those who are curious as to what these new bags look like or what makes them different, Targus has one posted on their website here, along with pictures.
Basically, the whole carrying case just splits in half right down the middle while staying hinged at the bottom, allowing for the laptop to be x-rayed without interference from the other materials in your bag.
I feel safe now, don't you?
I would recommend holding off on learning languages at the University unless you are either interested in the language or intend to pursue a career in a place where that language is spoken.
My experiences with foreign languages:
If you know what you are going to college for, then work towards that goal. Don't take a foreign language just because you think you should. It will usually end up being a waste of time. You will appreciate a foreign language far more if you actually learn it while living in the country where it's spoken, and you will retain it far longer than learning a language only from a book. There are great career opportunities overseas for engineers...always have been, always will be, and I strongly recommend pursuing one, even if it's only for six months to a year. Then, while you're there, study up on the language. When you're there, then it's incredibly rewarding.
"Is paying two to three thousand dollars simply unavoidable if I want to monitor my front and back yards?"
Yes.
What do you really want to capture? A video feed of something that looks like it came from an Atari video game, or an actual image of a face that police can use to track the perpetrator? And would you really trust a couple-hundred dollar camera to stand up to outdoor conditions? Security cameras are expensive because the companies that offer them know that clients want SECURITY. And security costs money.
I wouldn't pay for cameras that expensive, because the value of the property that I have in my apartment doesn't justify the cost. But if you have property that you want to protect, you'll have to determine for yourself whether the cost of the cameras is worth the cost of protecting your property.
Actually, this is a very good point that the parent brings up. The way corona discharge is possible is to push a very high voltage with very low amperage through a very small electrode. The high voltage creates the ion flow, but the low amperage prevents arcing from occuring. However, if a pool of dust collects between the electrodes, you'll have an easy path for the electricity to arc across.
Not to mention that you better not drop a screw in the case while it's in operation! Or a screwdriver, or a paper clip, or other random metalic objects.
Brilliant idea, neat application, but there's always a risk involved when you're playing with high voltage, even micro-amps worth.
It all depends on how much cognitive development you want to provide for your child.
I contend that video games don't harm cognitive development, but they (for the most part) don't help it either. Books, on the other hand, do. It's not so much on what's the appropriate time, but rather how much time is appropriate. I started playing video games at the age of seven, but my hours were heavily regulated by my mom, who (like the librarian she was) made sure that I was reading my quota of books for the week and getting my schoolwork done. On the other hand, if you're letting a seven-year-old frag away for five hours a day, then I'd really start getting concerned.
For those who disagree with my statement that video games do not help cognitive development, they don't. Cognitive science research indicates that students develop with "experience," experience being anything that a child experiences, from eating a meal to smelling something yucky to hitting a baseball to getting hit by a snowball to climbing a kitchen cabinet to get to the cookie jar that mom set down on top. Then, as a child learns words, they match words to experiences. If a child limits what they do every day to watching TV and playing video games, they don't get much opportunity to learn by doing. And for a child, tactile learning and feedback plays a crucial role in cognitive development.
2) Most new popular music today is disposable and no one wants to pay for this crap.
This is correct. Teenagers today are so fickle, they are in-and-out of music faster than a politician making a political stop in Iowa. The music industry knows that (and I think those who are smart realize that they only have themselves to blame for creating it). That's why their business model is basically to sell old wine in a new bottle. As long as the industry continues to change little with what they distribute but continue to promote it as new, they think they can continue to feed the demand of the adolescent behemoth. Unfortunately, what they haven't realized (and what no one hear has brought up yet), is that it's not the wine that's the problem. It's the bottle.
Look inside any school or any place where teenagers hang out, and you will be lucky nowadays to find a CD player. EVERYBODY has an MP3 player. The only reason not to have an MP3 player is if you don't have a computer, but on the other hand, everybody knows someone who has one. And why not? If you have a CD player, you eat up tons of money in batteries. Assuming you get 3 hours of playtime on a pair of AA's, that's at the least $2 that you spend to hear 3 hours of music. Listening to music for just one week will cost as much in AA's as buying a 512MB MP3 player at target that can last for 15 hours on a charge, and be recharged overnight on a computer or in an outlet. And that's just the battery issue. MP3 players now are as small as a stick of gum folded over in half. There's more mass in a set of keys than there is in many MP3 players and a pair of earbuds. Size matters, and in this rare case, smaller is better. And in the industry, NOBODY GETS THAT! Why buy a CD, upload it to your computer, then let the CD collect dust, when you can just download the music that you like for free and copy it to your MP3 player?
Believe it or not, the CD now is where the floppy disk was five years ago. The reason why the floppy disk stayed around for so long was because there was nothing there that could really replace it's function: it was universal, it was portable, and it was re-writable. CDs were universal and portable, ZIP disks were portable and re-writable, but nothing else was all three...until the USB memory stick came along. Now, that's what everyone's using. What the music industry has been so stubborn about is that they assumed for too long that the optical disk would last forever. Now, it's too late. Teenagers know how to get music online, they know how to download music online, and they know how to get it onto their MP3 players. And since the industry never changed their business model to embrace, support, and regulate this new method of distribution, they now have lost control.
(One thing the industry should have done right away at the start: charge royalties on all MP3 players based on the data they could hold, then let kids download for minimal cost...say $0.25 or $0.49 per song...right from their website.)
Mass integration is part of the ordeal. But from a design point of view, manufacturers sure don't seem to want people to fix things either.
For example, the rechargeable battery on my Norelco cordless electric razor gave out not too long ago. I looked online and found a few dealers selling replacement battery packs. I assumed that the battery swap would be very simple, involving nothing more than removing a few screws, pulling apart the casing, and swapping the battery pack with a new one.
When I opened the shaver, I found out that the battery pack was soldered onto a circuit board. I had to unscrew four more screws, wedge away a small daughter board, pull the remaining parts out of the bottom-half of the casing, the entire time delicately handling the motor (which was connected to the circuit board via two thin copper ribbon wires) as I de-soldered the old battery pack and soldered the new one.
If the device was intended to be repairable, they would've just included a removable battery pack.
From the site about the homemade processor:
/. to a server that's only running at 4 MHz? Have you no mercy?" My response: Nope.)
Except when I'm working on it, Magic-1 is connected to the net. It serves web pages at http://www.magic-1.org
Not any more!
(I know, I know, some of you might be thinking..."How could you be so cruel as to post a link on