To me it would seem that the partial redundancy would only work if the code was like the examples they give. If you coded such that there was no partial redundancy in the code then it probably would not be any better than gcc.
i.e.
x[i] += a[i+j*n] + b[i+j*n];
could be coded as
l=i+j*n;
x[i] += a[l] + b[l];
Both would yeild the same result, one would use more variables, but both would only do the calc once. Would this be any different?
Personally I can see not doing the calc's twice, but I'd think that a good programmer would code so he is not doing the calcs twice.
I just saw a show, I think it was on sci-fi the other day. They were growing hearts in women and the women thought they were pregnant. They ended up 'miscarrying' or so the doctor had them believe, and that was when the doctor would harvest the heart.
How weird that they are doing something similar with a sheep and pig, well sort of.
Does anyone else really understand the correlations of sci-fi and real life? Its not just coincidence that some of these stories happen, its because sci-fi authors see the world as it potentialy could be. Yes the shows are fiction, but the sci in sci-fi is for science and often times they are based on reality and the truth is streatched.
It stopped showing in my area to soon. There were 3 movies on my list to see over xmas holidays. Harry Potter, LOTR, and Star Trek. I saw the first two as they came out first. By the time I was able to see ST it was gone. It was in the theaters for 2 weeks and then gone. No wonder it bombed! My friends and I were PISSED! I could not belive that it left that quick. The nearest theater showing it was 1-1/2 hours away. Guess I'll have to wait for it to be on DVD in 6 months now, where it will probably do real well.
okay I guess that is not the noise that a parrot makes.... http://www.parrotcode.org/
" Parrot is a virtual machine used to efficiently execute bytecode for interpreted languages - specifically, Perl 6, although we would like to keep the door open for other languages in the future. As such, Parrot will be the core of the Perl interpreter; it will be the target platform to which Perl 6 code is compiled."
Even if you have a network appliance that 'scrubs' email and data as it come in, it has to know what is good and what it bad. In the case of a new virus there is no way it is going to know that the virus is a virus and not a real attachment.
So do you delete ALL word attachments or scan them all for known virus? Or do you attempt some sort of AI that figures out virus / worm from none virus / worm?
In the case of using AI, I just don't think it is quite there yet. Yes it may be possible, but not cheap enough for the general public. I wish!
In the case of deleteing all attachements, you could set up a quarentine place for them. I think Norton utilities has a virus scanner that does this for email. My dad once mentioned something about this. He loves it. I no longer get MS virus email from him;-). Of course I run Linux at home so even when I did get them they did not work cause the binaries just would not run under Linux without wine and me manually running them, and even then I don't think they could have done anything without enough permissions.
Depending on how many servers you have, one thing would be to setup some of the servers as read only. Not sure if you can do that with windows. I.E. Create an account for the mail system and give it access to only certain things on the system and then lock down the rest of the system. Using permsissions restict the mail from screwing up the rest of the server. I don't know enough about windows to know if this can be done? I know you can restrict accounts from accessing data, but can you restict the email admin account? Can windows run entirely off a cdrom? Can windows run in a memory filesystem? Maybe embedded windows can do this, and you may be able to make an embedded windows mail server. Or search the internet for embedded devices and windows servers or somehting.
In unix I know I can run my whole filesystem off a cdrom ( I am doing this with my freebsd home based router). Worst case senerio I have to reboot the router. There are a few problems in my current approach (swap errors in FreeBSD), but it works. Turn it on and it boots up in less than 2 minutes. To shut down just hit the power button, no shudwown required.
My suggestion is to look for embedded devices and make an embedded mail server of your own. You may try using http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/cerfcube/ to create an embeded window mail server. The OS should hopefully be protected in flash ROM, but since I have not tried I cannot say. It may be possible to use this and create a device that you just have to reboot to fix the problem.
Best thing to do NOW if you have not already, is to install Anti virus utilities like Norton and Mcafee stuff on your laptops and servers and use them if they are windows machine which I suspect they are. KEEP THEM UP TO DATE. Our sys-admins send out emails at LEAST once a week with new virus updates.
Lastly educate the people in the company, with weekly emails on the latest virus. If they are aware that they could get a virus that could f*** up their project and screw their deadline they may be more cautious about their email. Not everyone will, but it may be just enough people that it would make your life a little easier.
Re:It's nice
on
Immortal Code
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Well I can't see M$ code so I can't say. However the biggest advantage I see in open source is if the API is not clear you can look at the source to see exactly what the f*** is going on. I find this helps the most. (Debuggable, cause you have the code.)
Also in open source, I find that if I write something someone else may have a mod that they want in it or they may make their mod on the code and then ask me to include it. I then review thier mod and determine the best way to include it in my code. They may also review my code and offer suggestions on how to improve the code. This does not happen all the time at corporations. I can't speak for all companies, but some that I have worked for, it is more important (read moneywise) to get the code done and to the client than to do it right and nicely. (Code review, by someone trying to modify it or by the owner?)
Lastly in open source, developers are more likely to rewrite code and drop bad API's (gtk1.0 -> 1.2 -> 2.0 just look at the text widget, notebook and a few more) and do it right the second time around no matter how long it takes than private companies. (Rewrites and screw the client they'll get over it!). I think that this is becase in windows it has traditionally been much harder to have multiple copies of similar dlls than UNIX (not impossible, just more difficult, IMHO). Glibc is a good example of shared libs that you can have many versions of. M$ has a tendancy to wrap its API's on top of each other and keep old baggage around so you have no idea of what you are actually calling, or to change the API and then not tell you.
I guess you must have missed your numerical analysys classes then.
You task: given 2 points recreate a sine wave:
point 1 -> x=2, y=1
point 2 -> x=3, y=4
Well?
So how do you determine that given these two points that it IS indeeed a sine wave and not a straight line? Or a triangle wave? YOU CANT. That is my point.
Yes if you take enough sameples then yes you get closer to duplicating the original wave.
When you are dealing with voice and CD data this is ueually possible. The problem is that if you loose enough of these points (as in shotty transmission) then you loose the sound, where as with analog if you loose the same 'sample' then you may stil have sound.
Also if you did take signals then you would know that there is a carrier wave and there is a signal that gets put on this carrier wave. In the case of AM and FM signals the carrier wave and analog sound wave get 'combined' (amplidtude modulation or frequency modulation) to one wave which is then transmitted and then take apart. if you loose 1 milliseconds of this sound every 5 milliseconds you will still have a sound and you will be able to make it out. In digital if you have a sample point ever 5 millisec (bad sample I know) and you drop the same 1 millisecond point on that sample point, YOU have LOST your sound entireley and cannot reproduce your sound.
This is what the original poster was talking about. In analog phones if you have a bad connection you can often make out what the other end is saying, but in digital you either have sound or you don't.
Go back to school and learn this all over again and loose some of the attitude and maybe you will have a job in the field again.
"This may surprise you, but calculus (specifically integration) is not the end of mathematics. The Nyquist theorem states that in order to accurately reproduce a frequency, the sample rate must be twice or more than the frequency. Using just two samples per waveform, the sine wave can be reconstructed."
Okay you now have the frequency, how do you know what the max / min amplitude is? Its offset from 0 axis?
If you remember forier transforms then your realize that these are only approximations as well.
"No, the digitally-reproduced waveform is not going to be 100% the same. It will be something like 99.999%. "
I think it is less than that, but my point is just that. THERE IS SOME LOSS and what that is YOU cant say.
Also note, yes I am a BSEE, but I'm not for hire, I'm employed!! I wouldnt hire an artogant a**hole like you!
Are they talking about the System 5 start up scripts? If so easy fix is to say f***'em and switch to bsd style startup. It's much easier to find things IMHO. But then again is this true???
I'd quote the article, and started to, but I then thought about possible copywright infringements (seriously!) and decided not to, but do read paragraph 6 of the article.
How will I be affected by TCPA? I run several machines at home some running NetBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows. I generally build my machines, unless they are given to me by my employer (or its a laptop), and even then I reinstall the OS or install my own OS of choice. (Whatever I'm in the mood to run at time of install or what works). If I buy a new Motherboard from AMI with TCPA will I stil be able to do this? Will I have to do special tricks to get this done or will it be just like it is now?
2 samples for a sound wave??? sounds more like a triangle wave. Real sound is not just 1 sound wave. There is noise that is lost that makes up the rest of the sound. Thus if I have a varing signal, like voice, and I sample it, I loose the noise. That is what calculus is all about. You have a wave and you APPROXIMATE the area under the curve. There is NO way today, that a 100% reproduction of an analog signal can be done digitally. If I sample at point a and point b, and between these two points is a spike, then I have to guess what that is. Did you also take numerical analysys? Remember the trapizoidal rule?????
The reason that everyone is going digital is because it is cheaper. It is cheaper to send a digital signal down the calbe line than analog signal. It is less lossy in terms of distance, where analog needs boosters digital is better over distance.
If your a BSEE its no wonder your looking for a job.
Hmm the reality is that analog WOULD sound better. You have to realize that analog is real sound. Basically there is the carrier signal and then the actual data signal. Digital is digitized signal and the carrier signal. When your carrier signal goes in analog you get static, but in digital you get nothing. Either way you get H**lo or H lo. Analog always sounds better though. Look at records vs CD. Many people complained that records were better than cd sound wise. But it does not matter in the end records are on the way out and cd's are in and there is a new digital format coming to replace the old digital.
There is just no way in winning in this debate. Analog will always sound clearer. In digital you have the sample rate. This means that in a signal how many parts of that signal will I get? Digital purposesly drops parts of sound. If you have a basic sine wave. In digital you will have part of that way. The sample points. In analog you have the whole wave. If you have a higher sample speed you get more points. Live with it!
It sounds to me like he has sprint service. Sprint in my area sucks butt. AT&T is better in my area. This is not true for everyone. ASK people you know which service they have better luck with.
These things are not 'common' sense they are in the employee handbooks at many companies.
The fact that I am taking up their bandwidth is not in the employee handbook. It says not supposed to use 'their email' not their network. Yes this is exactly why companies are doing this, but at the same time employees are doing these things because many of us feel like the companies we are working for are screwing us over big time! Cutting peoples pay and keeping people who are utterly useless, when their pay could be used to keep good employes paid well. There is only so much 'good employee' being that one can take after the whole company has recieved 2 paycuts and no raises in 2 years. Yet we keep dead weight. People who work remotely and you do not see what they do. Or when you do see what they do you end up having to go in after them and fixing it so that it actually works correctly.
So how much is one supposed to give to 'the company' and get little back? Not even a pat on the back from upper management even though everyone knows how awesome job this employee has done?
When you feel as shafted as many tech employees do by the companies that they work for then you can say that they should sign these things.
One more paycut and I'll go to starbucks because I'll be making more and have all the coffee and tea I want and maybe even free wireless internet access and get paid better.
Its a waste of time. I have heard of things like you are not supposed to disclose technology, but that is usually pretty obvious. I have also heard that many companies do not want you leaving them to work for a competitor and / or client and making you sign stuff stating you wont.
I know where I work we are not supposed to use the business stuff for personal use, that is in the employee handbook. That includes, phone, internet, mail, servers, computer, etc, but people do it anyway. My cars in the shop so I need to call them. As long as it is not long distance it is not an issue around here, but if someone started making lots of long distance calls then it could become an issue.
I should not be surfing slashdot during work hours, but since they cut my pay by I say f****'em! I'm taking it out in bandwidth.
Being a FreeBSD and NetBSD user, there is much more different code base these days. While it is true that these project share code, NetBSD does not even have the fdrop() and other f****() function that FreeBSD does in/usr/include/sys/file.h .
If you have ever used these systems and configured kernels on these systems you would see similarities, but you would also see many more differences in kernel config parameters. The sound systems are different. FreeBSD is now using ipfirewall instead of pushing ipfilter like NetBSD and OpenBSD has a different packetfiltering mechanism.
They are not as similar as they used to be.
Re:Does not effect OpenBSD or NetBSD
on
FreeBSD Kernel Leak
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Its a FreeBSD kernel bug, NetBSD and openBSD use different kernels than FreeBSD.
What about those shirts that changed colors a few years ago based on your sweat or 'body'?
What about mood rings that change based on temp?
Wouldn't these both be possible candidates for prior art? I'd really love to see what they are claiming is actually 'new'? My computer changes color based on the temperature in the room?
Me too. I use mozilla specifically for its good cookie controil. If I visit a site and it says to view this site you need cookies enabled, I'm gone.
Oracle does this shit too, just to read their documentation. They also make you register, which also pisses me off. Register so we can send you spam. Not only do they make you register, but then they cookie you to death, with each of their domains setting cookie after cookie, just to read a fucking docuement. That is enough for me to pick mysql or sybase over oracle any day.
Re:Mirabilis filed the patent
on
AOL Patents IM
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, but I was using compuserve in 94, and they had chat rooms. Also irc predates IM and ICQ. They both are just obvious extensions of IRC.
Well I have been to Kansas, which is in the midwest. You can get a really big house for 150-250k. Problem is you'll be lucky to make 30k, unless you work for a company in another state and telecommute.
I have lived in DC and Virginia. Your salary there would be better. Probably 60-90k depending on your skill level. Problem is that housing is more expensive than Kansas, and the commute is as bad as here.
I have lived in Florida, Boston, Lousiana, and several other places. There is always a tradoff no matter where you live. Truth is that the salary that you are making now, probably wont be what you would make somewhere else. It would probably be lower. So well housing would be lower, so would your salary and it all kinda balances it self out.
So what do you prefer? Earthquakes, stay in CA (Oh and they have earthquakes in Kentucky too, as well as NY, just not as often. [we are all waiting for the 'big one']). Floods, live near the Mississippi, or Texas, AZ, New Mexico, etc. Tornados, try the midwest like Kansas, Oaklahoma, 'tornado alley'. Snow? Then anywhere in the north.
After living in several different climates and visiting several different US climates, I find that I am happy'er here in CA. We have better restaurants IMHO then elsewhere and I like the climate. Yeah we have earthquakes, but look at the USGS and you'll find so do other parts of the country. When I was in New Hampshire, we had 2 small ones that shook the bed.
I guess this is 'xtra protection' from hackers. Think about it, your computer must be safe if you can't get into it;-)....
Tell your dad to make the switch and use Mac or Linux or anything other than XP. To all those windows XP fans, all I can say is I'm sorry, but I have heard NOTHING good about XP and this is just another nail in their coffin.
Slashdot Mirror
i.e.
x[i] += a[i+j*n] + b[i+j*n];
could be coded as
l=i+j*n;
x[i] += a[l] + b[l];
Both would yeild the same result, one would use more variables, but both would only do the calc once. Would this be any different?
Personally I can see not doing the calc's twice, but I'd think that a good programmer would code so he is not doing the calcs twice.
How weird that they are doing something similar with a sheep and pig, well sort of.
Does anyone else really understand the correlations of sci-fi and real life? Its not just coincidence that some of these stories happen, its because sci-fi authors see the world as it potentialy could be. Yes the shows are fiction, but the sci in sci-fi is for science and often times they are based on reality and the truth is streatched.
It stopped showing in my area to soon. There were 3 movies on my list to see over xmas holidays. Harry Potter, LOTR, and Star Trek. I saw the first two as they came out first. By the time I was able to see ST it was gone. It was in the theaters for 2 weeks and then gone. No wonder it bombed! My friends and I were PISSED! I could not belive that it left that quick. The nearest theater showing it was 1-1/2 hours away. Guess I'll have to wait for it to be on DVD in 6 months now, where it will probably do real well.
I think this would cover a CLI / JVM kinda thing.
So do you delete ALL word attachments or scan them all for known virus? Or do you attempt some sort of AI that figures out virus / worm from none virus / worm?
In the case of using AI, I just don't think it is quite there yet. Yes it may be possible, but not cheap enough for the general public. I wish!
In the case of deleteing all attachements, you could set up a quarentine place for them. I think Norton utilities has a virus scanner that does this for email. My dad once mentioned something about this. He loves it. I no longer get MS virus email from him ;-). Of course I run Linux at home so even when I did get them they did not work cause the binaries just would not run under Linux without wine and me manually running them, and even then I don't think they could have done anything without enough permissions.
Depending on how many servers you have, one thing would be to setup some of the servers as read only. Not sure if you can do that with windows. I.E. Create an account for the mail system and give it access to only certain things on the system and then lock down the rest of the system. Using permsissions restict the mail from screwing up the rest of the server. I don't know enough about windows to know if this can be done? I know you can restrict accounts from accessing data, but can you restict the email admin account? Can windows run entirely off a cdrom? Can windows run in a memory filesystem? Maybe embedded windows can do this, and you may be able to make an embedded windows mail server. Or search the internet for embedded devices and windows servers or somehting.
In unix I know I can run my whole filesystem off a cdrom ( I am doing this with my freebsd home based router). Worst case senerio I have to reboot the router. There are a few problems in my current approach (swap errors in FreeBSD), but it works. Turn it on and it boots up in less than 2 minutes. To shut down just hit the power button, no shudwown required.
My suggestion is to look for embedded devices and make an embedded mail server of your own. You may try using http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/cerfcube/ to create an embeded window mail server. The OS should hopefully be protected in flash ROM, but since I have not tried I cannot say. It may be possible to use this and create a device that you just have to reboot to fix the problem.
Best thing to do NOW if you have not already, is to install Anti virus utilities like Norton and Mcafee stuff on your laptops and servers and use them if they are windows machine which I suspect they are. KEEP THEM UP TO DATE. Our sys-admins send out emails at LEAST once a week with new virus updates.
Lastly educate the people in the company, with weekly emails on the latest virus. If they are aware that they could get a virus that could f*** up their project and screw their deadline they may be more cautious about their email. Not everyone will, but it may be just enough people that it would make your life a little easier.
Also in open source, I find that if I write something someone else may have a mod that they want in it or they may make their mod on the code and then ask me to include it. I then review thier mod and determine the best way to include it in my code. They may also review my code and offer suggestions on how to improve the code. This does not happen all the time at corporations. I can't speak for all companies, but some that I have worked for, it is more important (read moneywise) to get the code done and to the client than to do it right and nicely. (Code review, by someone trying to modify it or by the owner?)
Lastly in open source, developers are more likely to rewrite code and drop bad API's (gtk1.0 -> 1.2 -> 2.0 just look at the text widget, notebook and a few more) and do it right the second time around no matter how long it takes than private companies. (Rewrites and screw the client they'll get over it!). I think that this is becase in windows it has traditionally been much harder to have multiple copies of similar dlls than UNIX (not impossible, just more difficult, IMHO). Glibc is a good example of shared libs that you can have many versions of. M$ has a tendancy to wrap its API's on top of each other and keep old baggage around so you have no idea of what you are actually calling, or to change the API and then not tell you.
You task: given 2 points recreate a sine wave:
point 1 -> x=2, y=1
point 2 -> x=3, y=4
Well?
So how do you determine that given these two points that it IS indeeed a sine wave and not a straight line? Or a triangle wave? YOU CANT. That is my point.
Yes if you take enough sameples then yes you get closer to duplicating the original wave.
When you are dealing with voice and CD data this is ueually possible. The problem is that if you loose enough of these points (as in shotty transmission) then you loose the sound, where as with analog if you loose the same 'sample' then you may stil have sound.
Also if you did take signals then you would know that there is a carrier wave and there is a signal that gets put on this carrier wave. In the case of AM and FM signals the carrier wave and analog sound wave get 'combined' (amplidtude modulation or frequency modulation) to one wave which is then transmitted and then take apart. if you loose 1 milliseconds of this sound every 5 milliseconds you will still have a sound and you will be able to make it out. In digital if you have a sample point ever 5 millisec (bad sample I know) and you drop the same 1 millisecond point on that sample point, YOU have LOST your sound entireley and cannot reproduce your sound.
This is what the original poster was talking about. In analog phones if you have a bad connection you can often make out what the other end is saying, but in digital you either have sound or you don't.
Go back to school and learn this all over again and loose some of the attitude and maybe you will have a job in the field again.
Okay you now have the frequency, how do you know what the max / min amplitude is? Its offset from 0 axis?
If you remember forier transforms then your realize that these are only approximations as well.
"No, the digitally-reproduced waveform is not going to be 100% the same. It will be something like 99.999%. "
I think it is less than that, but my point is just that. THERE IS SOME LOSS and what that is YOU cant say.
Also note, yes I am a BSEE, but I'm not for hire, I'm employed!! I wouldnt hire an artogant a**hole like you!
Are they talking about the System 5 start up scripts? If so easy fix is to say f***'em and switch to bsd style startup. It's much easier to find things IMHO. But then again is this true???
I'd quote the article, and started to, but I then thought about possible copywright infringements (seriously!) and decided not to, but do read paragraph 6 of the article.
How will I be affected by TCPA? I run several machines at home some running NetBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows. I generally build my machines, unless they are given to me by my employer (or its a laptop), and even then I reinstall the OS or install my own OS of choice. (Whatever I'm in the mood to run at time of install or what works). If I buy a new Motherboard from AMI with TCPA will I stil be able to do this? Will I have to do special tricks to get this done or will it be just like it is now?
The reason that everyone is going digital is because it is cheaper. It is cheaper to send a digital signal down the calbe line than analog signal. It is less lossy in terms of distance, where analog needs boosters digital is better over distance.
If your a BSEE its no wonder your looking for a job.
I'm talking about pure sound itself not cell phones. Obvioulsy nobody here has ever taken any kind of singal class.
There is just no way in winning in this debate. Analog will always sound clearer. In digital you have the sample rate. This means that in a signal how many parts of that signal will I get? Digital purposesly drops parts of sound. If you have a basic sine wave. In digital you will have part of that way. The sample points. In analog you have the whole wave. If you have a higher sample speed you get more points. Live with it!
It sounds to me like he has sprint service. Sprint in my area sucks butt. AT&T is better in my area. This is not true for everyone. ASK people you know which service they have better luck with.
The fact that I am taking up their bandwidth is not in the employee handbook. It says not supposed to use 'their email' not their network. Yes this is exactly why companies are doing this, but at the same time employees are doing these things because many of us feel like the companies we are working for are screwing us over big time! Cutting peoples pay and keeping people who are utterly useless, when their pay could be used to keep good employes paid well. There is only so much 'good employee' being that one can take after the whole company has recieved 2 paycuts and no raises in 2 years. Yet we keep dead weight. People who work remotely and you do not see what they do. Or when you do see what they do you end up having to go in after them and fixing it so that it actually works correctly.
So how much is one supposed to give to 'the company' and get little back? Not even a pat on the back from upper management even though everyone knows how awesome job this employee has done?
When you feel as shafted as many tech employees do by the companies that they work for then you can say that they should sign these things.
One more paycut and I'll go to starbucks because I'll be making more and have all the coffee and tea I want and maybe even free wireless internet access and get paid better.
I know where I work we are not supposed to use the business stuff for personal use, that is in the employee handbook. That includes, phone, internet, mail, servers, computer, etc, but people do it anyway. My cars in the shop so I need to call them. As long as it is not long distance it is not an issue around here, but if someone started making lots of long distance calls then it could become an issue.
I should not be surfing slashdot during work hours, but since they cut my pay by I say f****'em! I'm taking it out in bandwidth.
If you have ever used these systems and configured kernels on these systems you would see similarities, but you would also see many more differences in kernel config parameters. The sound systems are different. FreeBSD is now using ipfirewall instead of pushing ipfilter like NetBSD and OpenBSD has a different packetfiltering mechanism.
They are not as similar as they used to be.
Its a FreeBSD kernel bug, NetBSD and openBSD use different kernels than FreeBSD.
I always though that jocks were dumb and had sex with the cheerleaders, but the nerds and geeks masterbated a lot more and were the smart ones.
.. they include masterbation as sex? I.E. What's there defination of sex?
What about mood rings that change based on temp?
Wouldn't these both be possible candidates for prior art? I'd really love to see what they are claiming is actually 'new'? My computer changes color based on the temperature in the room?
Oracle does this shit too, just to read their documentation. They also make you register, which also pisses me off. Register so we can send you spam. Not only do they make you register, but then they cookie you to death, with each of their domains setting cookie after cookie, just to read a fucking docuement. That is enough for me to pick mysql or sybase over oracle any day.
Yeah, but I was using compuserve in 94, and they had chat rooms. Also irc predates IM and ICQ. They both are just obvious extensions of IRC.
You yourself said, "I won't be running it on my servers anytime soon", so why should anyone spend the 2-300 dollars on Xpensive XP????
Well I have been to Kansas, which is in the midwest. You can get a really big house for 150-250k. Problem is you'll be lucky to make 30k, unless you work for a company in another state and telecommute.
I have lived in DC and Virginia. Your salary there would be better. Probably 60-90k depending on your skill level. Problem is that housing is more expensive than Kansas, and the commute is as bad as here.
I have lived in Florida, Boston, Lousiana, and several other places. There is always a tradoff no matter where you live. Truth is that the salary that you are making now, probably wont be what you would make somewhere else. It would probably be lower. So well housing would be lower, so would your salary and it all kinda balances it self out.
So what do you prefer? Earthquakes, stay in CA (Oh and they have earthquakes in Kentucky too, as well as NY, just not as often. [we are all waiting for the 'big one']). Floods, live near the Mississippi, or Texas, AZ, New Mexico, etc. Tornados, try the midwest like Kansas, Oaklahoma, 'tornado alley'. Snow? Then anywhere in the north.
After living in several different climates and visiting several different US climates, I find that I am happy'er here in CA. We have better restaurants IMHO then elsewhere and I like the climate. Yeah we have earthquakes, but look at the USGS and you'll find so do other parts of the country. When I was in New Hampshire, we had 2 small ones that shook the bed.
Tell your dad to make the switch and use Mac or Linux or anything other than XP. To all those windows XP fans, all I can say is I'm sorry, but I have heard NOTHING good about XP and this is just another nail in their coffin.