I have the unusual habit of paying writers directly after downloading their books on warez sites. So as far as I'm concerned, my books are paid for and readable by anyone who happens to inherit them after I die.
Not that I give a toss about what happens after I die, mind you...
Although I agree, I really don't because it doesn't sound you have you ever had to go through a deceased family members belongings and disseminate it between the immediate kin. For you and me in 50 years, we're talking about 'digital media' here on a boat-load of CDs, DVDs, or some sort of ssd/spinning storage media, not tangible items.
It was easy to inherit vinyl records, cassette tapes, books, developed photos, movies are a bit of a stretch (because home recording devices were VERY expensive back then), because you had them in your possession, could hold onto them, look at them at a glance and see their monetary or personal worth. Who's going to look at your stack of media and go through the trouble of finding an older technology device to see what's on it?
I've had two Raspberry Pi's running side-by-side since June and I did initially experience 'network choke' as described but it was from improperly powering my Pi's. I was using a 5v microUSB adapter but with too low of an amp draw. Pay particular attention to what you're using as a power source would be my first bit of advice.
My second bit is a bit of a rip FTFA. The quote "As I said, the Pi is currently being worked over by a crowd of skilled techno-people" is a bit of a stretch. I'd say maybe20% of Pi users actually have their shit together with enough well-rounded-ness of hardware/EE/development in their background to be productive with the Pi. The other 80% are just trying to use this device as a $35 desktop replacement who want to try and hook up 4 1TB SATA devices to it, followed a long with a board load of "pamper-me" forum posts that will make a self-respective real "geek" nauseated.
Issues like this are seen ALL the time in the 'real hardware engineering world', and they are worked out. Let's not be so quick to judge this device all the time, and see the Pi for what it is: A very easy-to-work-with low cost ARM platform that far beats out the overheard of working with any SBC or emebedded hardware platform that would need JTAG, flash map, kernel/bootloader support to get going...on your own.
This is the single most stupid statement ever. I dont know ANYONE that can afford photoshop. and all the kiddies torrenting music, really? you think all these kids have hundreds of dollars a week to spend on music?
Agreed. Although I'm on the inverse of that, because I really do have the extra budget to afford to go get the new music, movies and programs I seek. Why don't I? Because of two things: 1) Cost has skyrocketed and 2) The sharing model has turned against the consumer because of the mass digital medium with of distribution of it via the internet.
With the later, we, as consumers, are now 'punished' for sharing the content we purchased because Big Company thinks we need to pay for that very same content's royalties and personal use ownership copyright over and over and over again for every medium that it's provided by. I didn't see this when my friends and I were making high-speed dubs of tapes or recording a show via VHS/BETA from HBO, airwaves, PPV satellite, etc. and giving it to a friend to watch. It was all tangible distribution but a closed consumer market with 'who' they knew was going to pay for their services.
It's all greed. Because technology and the internet expanded Big Company's reach to 'everyone' in the world, their market truly is 'everyone', so they conjure up 'losses' based on what they could reach, not who they really reach as potential, paying consumers for their material.
...is support for SPI and I2C. I'm hoping they've also applied (and tested) some of the latest kernel patches for GPIO interrupt support for the Pi. Only thing that makes this news for me is that I don't have waste the time side-building my own distro to get all this working (not to mention having a friendly ARM cross compiler, although crosstool helps with that immensely). I've grown really lazy as my years in Linux usage increase. Let the development begin.
"News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Although I find stories of older men prying dead mice out of stray cats' mouths very riveting for about 2.5 seconds (which as already stated many times already, complete ODD), this isn't or should EVER be a slashdotted story. Ever. Period. Get back to the tech news,/.
I am all for this type of exposure, not because I believe in total abiding. The issue I share with the Aussies is that people in this world as leeches to society. I know people who claim unemployment, get food stamps, state assistance, have nothig in their name, file for bankruptcy with a bunch of toys under their possession, etc. and are "professional sellers" on eBay, all the while shuffling funds to their PayPal account from the bank. It's pathetic and I feel no shame on ousting garage like that to lessen the debt on taxpayers like myself.
That watching your FB stock lose value in the 'beeeeeellions' must have a more smoothing comfortableness to Zuckerberg on a 5"x3" screen versus a 27.5" screen. Smaller screen == Loses 'feeling' smaller than they are.
Just use a CMS and call it good. I remember the days before very customizable templating where you hand-roled all that web site crap yourself. There are plenty of CMSs out there (TomatoCMS, Wordpress, Joomla, LightCMS, ezPublish, etc) that will do exactly what you want in about 20 minutes of your time. There's also lots of customizing and add-on's you can get for the more popular CMS's that I mentioned, too. And to keep to your Java roots, you can do all the client side stuff you want in JQuery or equivalent.
There's always going to be American/United States bias in the world outside CONUS, so why even include them as part of your study? The world doesn't re-elect our president, United States citizens do. In places where I live where electoral votes count the majority, it gets comfortable to feel as though you vote doesn't count anyway.
Hate to be pessimistic, but this is pretty meaningless. Out of the millions of SSIDs in the US alone, TFA writer could only confer with 400 of them for a sample and make some half ass meaningful attempt at analysis? That's hardly anything worth blogging about. This is no more useful than it would be me using my neighbor's regular smoke breaks outside as a counter for how many people like fresh air during the sunlight hours of the day. Stupid.
Cyberweapons may give nations a way to attack enemies without killing anyone. They'll definitely give domestic political groups a whole new world of dirty tricks to play."
Your sense of 'military and collateral' damage is very skewed, there, article submitter. So 2-3% of military troops on the ground won't die, or any other native county civilians along the way, but you're ok with the vulnerability of a digital US infrastructure that has MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of US federal, contractor, civilian and citizen 'at risk.
This isn't a new pandora's box. What makes it shock value is that it's one thing to admit being behind Stuxnet, it's another to admit you're the United State Goverment and you're behind Stuxnet.
I'm less concerned about going to 'troops-on-the-ground' war with Iran than I am having this Stuxnet-a-la-Flame end back up in the United States lap that cripples some of our infrastructure. Obama has cracked the egg on remote warfare with this cyber-terrorism code slingers and the uber ramp up of drone usage from the end of the Bush era.
FTFA, our officials should have a good check on the premise that cyber warfare's shock value of implementation is very unexciting. It's different when you have physical assets to move around the globe vs. telling a someone to sling code and infiltrate an infrstructure such as an Iranian nuclear facility. You don't see the benefits or out-of-controllness in chunks, it's all or nothing once it's in place.
Although most things are no brainers like you mentioned in your post, I'd say my best advice is: Don't guess and do analysis. Clearly you invested into virtualization for a reason and not just because you convinced your boss it was the 'trendy' thing to do. I'm glad to see you're not picking random systems because some poser sys-admin who makes bullshit conjectures said it was a good idea.
On the Windows side, there's plenty of tools to use to gauge virtualization candidacy; I've mostly used perfmon and cross-referenced it with my current performance on VMFS storage luns and what CPU/memory resources I have to spare in what resource pools are available. Linux (which is my primary line of expertise), IMHO, is much easier to gauge. You've got sar, iostat, vmstat (heck the whole sysstat pkg for that matter), not to mention if are a GUI trending fanboi, you've got xymon, nagios, cacti, big brother, etc. to graphically trend performance with nice rrd-tool graphs.
Also, my other factor is your line of business, where your datacenter is and annual budget towards technology update/refresh.
150 bucks buys a lot of potatos, if you don't know it you never were shoe stringing it as a student
Right. What would I know about shoe-stringing. I'm surprised you left your 'woe-is-me' story out of this post. I really am. $150 today is two tanks of gas for commuting and eating out with the wife and kids once a week. Shoe-stringing or not, it doesn't go as far as it used to and everyone has that expense, white collar or not.
the biggest racket is when the professor makes a separate business from his position by hocking books - either for straight up cash, booze or goodwill from someone who arranged him some weed and a bj.
You must have went to a tech school or some half-ass community college where they call half-ass knock-off professionals 'step-in night professors'. No one professor I know in any decent state school or Big 10 college did that. ever. period. Baseless.
wtf do we even need books for in an age when the professor could(if he could be bothered to take time from boozing and scheming for grants)
You sound bitter. Perhaps you should have read that $150 Algebra book more, got a PhD and have become a professor. Sounds like 'the dream life'; booze and free money.
Must be pretty normal for you to just come on slashdot to be a douche-troll, argue-for-the-sake-of-arguing moron? I find it insulting to quote myself, you can re-read parent. I said it would have potential to fly for gen-ed. But what about outside of that?
Great caveman-checkbook-foolery math, "Lets take 100 people x $150 and make a BIG number to post about". How about this for reality math for just one of those 100 'mystery' people you mentioned:
* $150 - Cost of one ged-ed book
* Maybe 8 gen-ed books at maximum for open book substitute ($150 x 8 = $1200 in book savings over two semesters)
* Total Cost for a 4 year (lets be honest, most ppl do 5 years now) decent school, all on student loans = $38,000
WOW! Maybe a 3% savings on your total school bill? Who cares. Any student with half a drive can go get a part-time job at McDonalds for $12 minimum and put a bigger dent in that school bill than waiting for the openbook miracle to save them some $$$.
So what was your argument again? I thought so, Will Hunting.
This is a great concept, but who does this benefit in the end? I know quiet a few professors that I took classes from that the very books we used in 'their' classes were one's they 1) either knew a close colleague in their field that reviewed it or provided input into it (see liner notes for their names) or 2) endorsed or provided input on the writing or content of it themselves. Outside of that, there's always going to be that uber passionate professor that isn't going to like the quality, content or organization of the open textbooks they have to choose from and opt to still pick the book of their choice for the benefit of their students and curriculum.
So let's say this flies for gen-ed courses, which is totally could. I don't see it working at all for actual studies or specific majors with changing content or new adoptive technologies.
Hoping on the student loan bandwagon a second, let's say even half of a students book moved to an openly available one, it still wouldn't make a dent in reducing costs for the student in any manner of impact. I also thought my university's bookstore thoroughly enjoyed raping student's pocket books on the re-re-re-reselling of used books at a dirt cheap by-back tactic. Either way, if I see the fee or cost difference falling right back into the student's lap as some 'new' fee line-item.
The obviousness oozes out of this article... for starters, who uses MS IM anymore? FB and gtalk have pretty much squeezed those out with mass appeal unless you have a multi-client and are holding onto it for legacy reasons. Secondly, much like anything else that has made national headlines for 'the solicitation and is a hub of means to access of copyrighted material' should probably be abandoned and use something else people.
WTF does this show up on/. at least once a week? As entertaining-yet-lame as the Linux vs Windows vs Apple vs Foo flamewar debates can be, can we 'stop' making this drivel a headline/. news story already?
WTF is it with Hollywood becoming the most unoriginal and rising as the pinnacle of butchery lately with re-makes, re-takes and spin-offs of original shows or movies? Who gives a hell what Bay's writers are doing to add complexity to the TMNT; it'll be a complete massacre, and in the end, Vanilla Ice can hold his head a little higher since this TMNT production will take his place on the suck-it-all podium in TMNT II: Secret of the Ooze.
Where work-from-home at my place of work has become highly scrutinized because of people using it as a free vacation day, I've never ever had a problem with it at all. I think there's some prerequisites to this advice, though. Firstly, if you haven't proven yourself at work already as a reliable person that doesn't have to be micro-managed, or managers have an wishy-washy feeling about your 'work' character, then ignore my advice, because it's just going to be an epic fail or a bit harder when you start out.
1) Be available when you're suppose to: For shit's sake, I see so many of my co-workers who are 'suppose' to be available during core hours, who, when they WFH, cannot be reached by inner-office instant message, e-mail or phone, don't call into the meetings they are suppose to. I repeat, you do not want to be one of those people. It makes you look bad and it will catch up with you sooner than you think.
2) Set realistic daily work goals: Myself, I accomplish more at home because I'm not being fucked with or getting cube drive-by's, but that doesn't mean I don't kill myself in the process because I am more productive. Test the waters for the first day and see what you get done. At times, I've gotten what I needed to get accomplished in 5-6 hours and I called it a day. There's nothing wrong with that if you're showing production and results.
3) Have what you need to succeed: I have a very nice VPN solution, so I can rely on my own personal computing environment that I'm comfortable with (and also mirrors what I have at work with my desktop). But if you are issued a work laptop that they only allow you to connect into 'their' network with, then get what you need to 'feel' that comfortable productivity. I've never been at a place that wouldn't pay for a wireless keyboard/mouse set or get me a decent enough laptop to take home. Also, if you have books, paperwork, materials, bring that shit home. Don't think that you can get to everything 'digitally' because rarely does that play in your favor.
4) DONT abuse it: I always laughed in my younger, insubordinate and rebellious years when I'd hear "WFH is a privilege, not a right" and now that I'm a bit wiser, that's 110% the truth. I'm just like any other person, I have the TV on sometimes or stereo going, or use my lunch break to go to the hardware store quick for something. See it as your work trusting you do be independent but still a very reliable asset that they depend on. There's no reason to be uptight, you're at home, but don't be a douche and not do a thing get paid for it. It makes you complacent and lazy, and IMHO, that'll see you right out the door in time.
This is going to be a pretty strong opinion without a lot of facts (but a lot of feelings towards humanity, morality and nature) but why, as a nation, are we even letting 'fracking' exist to fatten pockets of Oil companies and politicians to piggy bag loop holes onto ? I don't need to be a 'fracking' expert to know a handful of things:
A) Pumping unknown chemicals into the ground that pollute water sources is a bad idea, B) Causing earthquakes in the mid-west where should not be feel-able earthquakes is not a good thing at all, what-so-ever, C) The uncanny health deterioration and after-effects of water pollution on animals and humans, not to mention 'poisoning the well' with natural gas so you can start potable and stream water on fire is (there's a theme here) not good at all, period. D) Contamination from fracking water just being dumped out on the land and seeps back into our habitats, bad. E) The pollutants from the refining process that has makes places in Wyoming have worse air pollution than L.A., horrible. May the list go on...
Why do we all need a 'study' to come out to tell this is bad? I'm ashamed of the greed that our country has consumed itself in that we'll destroy anything, for what? The Almighty Dollar.
It is like withholding information on how to produce high quality steel because it will be used to make very sharp swords, or nuclear energy and research is bad and information about it should be restricted because such knowledge is involved in producing bombs.
I was onboard until your argument produced holes in it. I agree with what I quoted, but tell me the benefit of making a deadly flu virus that doesn't spread over it's natural means? That doesn't provide a barrier to improve anything in my world. If anything someone funded it to do just that: Have scientific evidence for a terrorism report. Should we censor ourselves from providing information like this? Totally.
There are many other ways to massage a scientist's ego than let them do a dog-and-pony show to prove their funding was actually used for something. I don't think it advantageous to share things like this at all.
I mostly visit slashdot as an avenue for tech/science/nerd news, and an occasional giggle at flame wars. The growing trend of 'Ask Slashdot' posts I've never had a problem with; what is a problem is the growing rate of redundancy/frequency in question posts versus actual news, no one moderating the train wreck of flame wars and the shear lack of aptitude from the question poser in terms of topic worth.
'Ask Slashdot' used to be an infrequent-but-jolt-of-freshness into daily reading, now it's just being used WAY to often with poor content abandonment IMHO. I see more posts saying "Didn't we just discuss this last week?" followed by a link to a slashdot URL showing the evidence.
All cynicism aside, I'm not for it and I'm sure as hell hoping the next administrative post to slashdot isn't "We're changing our slogan to 'Slashdot: Regurgitated Tech Commentary and Questions. No News. Stuff that doesn't matter".
While I agree 100% with that, how many times over are you going to spend that kind of money to find the 'shining light' that holds it's weight against the iPad before ultimately spending enough of your own money on sub-par devices that you could outright owned an iPad?
No, I'm not a Apple fan boi, but the iPad is a pretty fantastic device. Nothing can touch it right now and I think what gets all of us as end-point consumers is everyone's marketing bullshit lately to get into the tablet market and make a quick, almighty dollar off all of us.
I think the e-Reader should remain an e-Reader. Period. Perhaps the slight reach to make it enough to casually surf the internet and check e-mail I can live with, but that's where B&N and Amazon are making their mistake IMHO: Taking something and making it something it's not. Let's not forget the iPad was a touch-screen computing device with 'e-Reader and multi-media capabilities' not the other way around.
I am not sure what is gained by breaking into, compromising and exploiting a foundation like The Linux Foundation when the perps were more than likely using a Linux driven OS and tools to do what they did. Seems like some need a re-education in not harming the hand that builds your house...
Slashdot Mirror
I have the unusual habit of paying writers directly after downloading their books on warez sites. So as far as I'm concerned, my books are paid for and readable by anyone who happens to inherit them after I die.
Not that I give a toss about what happens after I die, mind you...
Although I agree, I really don't because it doesn't sound you have you ever had to go through a deceased family members belongings and disseminate it between the immediate kin. For you and me in 50 years, we're talking about 'digital media' here on a boat-load of CDs, DVDs, or some sort of ssd/spinning storage media, not tangible items.
It was easy to inherit vinyl records, cassette tapes, books, developed photos, movies are a bit of a stretch (because home recording devices were VERY expensive back then), because you had them in your possession, could hold onto them, look at them at a glance and see their monetary or personal worth. Who's going to look at your stack of media and go through the trouble of finding an older technology device to see what's on it?
I've had two Raspberry Pi's running side-by-side since June and I did initially experience 'network choke' as described but it was from improperly powering my Pi's. I was using a 5v microUSB adapter but with too low of an amp draw. Pay particular attention to what you're using as a power source would be my first bit of advice.
My second bit is a bit of a rip FTFA. The quote "As I said, the Pi is currently being worked over by a crowd of skilled techno-people" is a bit of a stretch. I'd say maybe20% of Pi users actually have their shit together with enough well-rounded-ness of hardware/EE/development in their background to be productive with the Pi. The other 80% are just trying to use this device as a $35 desktop replacement who want to try and hook up 4 1TB SATA devices to it, followed a long with a board load of "pamper-me" forum posts that will make a self-respective real "geek" nauseated.
Issues like this are seen ALL the time in the 'real hardware engineering world', and they are worked out. Let's not be so quick to judge this device all the time, and see the Pi for what it is: A very easy-to-work-with low cost ARM platform that far beats out the overheard of working with any SBC or emebedded hardware platform that would need JTAG, flash map, kernel/bootloader support to get going ...on your own.
This is the single most stupid statement ever. I dont know ANYONE that can afford photoshop. and all the kiddies torrenting music, really? you think all these kids have hundreds of dollars a week to spend on music?
Agreed. Although I'm on the inverse of that, because I really do have the extra budget to afford to go get the new music, movies and programs I seek. Why don't I? Because of two things: 1) Cost has skyrocketed and 2) The sharing model has turned against the consumer because of the mass digital medium with of distribution of it via the internet.
With the later, we, as consumers, are now 'punished' for sharing the content we purchased because Big Company thinks we need to pay for that very same content's royalties and personal use ownership copyright over and over and over again for every medium that it's provided by. I didn't see this when my friends and I were making high-speed dubs of tapes or recording a show via VHS/BETA from HBO, airwaves, PPV satellite, etc. and giving it to a friend to watch. It was all tangible distribution but a closed consumer market with 'who' they knew was going to pay for their services.
It's all greed. Because technology and the internet expanded Big Company's reach to 'everyone' in the world, their market truly is 'everyone', so they conjure up 'losses' based on what they could reach, not who they really reach as potential, paying consumers for their material.
...is support for SPI and I2C. I'm hoping they've also applied (and tested) some of the latest kernel patches for GPIO interrupt support for the Pi. Only thing that makes this news for me is that I don't have waste the time side-building my own distro to get all this working (not to mention having a friendly ARM cross compiler, although crosstool helps with that immensely). I've grown really lazy as my years in Linux usage increase. Let the development begin.
"News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Although I find stories of older men prying dead mice out of stray cats' mouths very riveting for about 2.5 seconds (which as already stated many times already, complete ODD), this isn't or should EVER be a slashdotted story. Ever. Period. Get back to the tech news, /.
I am all for this type of exposure, not because I believe in total abiding. The issue I share with the Aussies is that people in this world as leeches to society. I know people who claim unemployment, get food stamps, state assistance, have nothig in their name, file for bankruptcy with a bunch of toys under their possession, etc. and are "professional sellers" on eBay, all the while shuffling funds to their PayPal account from the bank. It's pathetic and I feel no shame on ousting garage like that to lessen the debt on taxpayers like myself.
That watching your FB stock lose value in the 'beeeeeellions' must have a more smoothing comfortableness to Zuckerberg on a 5"x3" screen versus a 27.5" screen. Smaller screen == Loses 'feeling' smaller than they are.
Oh and about the phone? Horrible idea.
Just use a CMS and call it good. I remember the days before very customizable templating where you hand-roled all that web site crap yourself. There are plenty of CMSs out there (TomatoCMS, Wordpress, Joomla, LightCMS, ezPublish, etc) that will do exactly what you want in about 20 minutes of your time. There's also lots of customizing and add-on's you can get for the more popular CMS's that I mentioned, too. And to keep to your Java roots, you can do all the client side stuff you want in JQuery or equivalent.
That's my $0.02.
There's always going to be American/United States bias in the world outside CONUS, so why even include them as part of your study? The world doesn't re-elect our president, United States citizens do. In places where I live where electoral votes count the majority, it gets comfortable to feel as though you vote doesn't count anyway.
Hate to be pessimistic, but this is pretty meaningless. Out of the millions of SSIDs in the US alone, TFA writer could only confer with 400 of them for a sample and make some half ass meaningful attempt at analysis? That's hardly anything worth blogging about. This is no more useful than it would be me using my neighbor's regular smoke breaks outside as a counter for how many people like fresh air during the sunlight hours of the day. Stupid.
Cyberweapons may give nations a way to attack enemies without killing anyone. They'll definitely give domestic political groups a whole new world of dirty tricks to play."
Your sense of 'military and collateral' damage is very skewed, there, article submitter. So 2-3% of military troops on the ground won't die, or any other native county civilians along the way, but you're ok with the vulnerability of a digital US infrastructure that has MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of US federal, contractor, civilian and citizen 'at risk.
This isn't a new pandora's box. What makes it shock value is that it's one thing to admit being behind Stuxnet, it's another to admit you're the United State Goverment and you're behind Stuxnet.
FTFA, our officials should have a good check on the premise that cyber warfare's shock value of implementation is very unexciting. It's different when you have physical assets to move around the globe vs. telling a someone to sling code and infiltrate an infrstructure such as an Iranian nuclear facility. You don't see the benefits or out-of-controllness in chunks, it's all or nothing once it's in place.
Although most things are no brainers like you mentioned in your post, I'd say my best advice is: Don't guess and do analysis. Clearly you invested into virtualization for a reason and not just because you convinced your boss it was the 'trendy' thing to do. I'm glad to see you're not picking random systems because some poser sys-admin who makes bullshit conjectures said it was a good idea.
On the Windows side, there's plenty of tools to use to gauge virtualization candidacy; I've mostly used perfmon and cross-referenced it with my current performance on VMFS storage luns and what CPU/memory resources I have to spare in what resource pools are available. Linux (which is my primary line of expertise), IMHO, is much easier to gauge. You've got sar, iostat, vmstat (heck the whole sysstat pkg for that matter), not to mention if are a GUI trending fanboi, you've got xymon, nagios, cacti, big brother, etc. to graphically trend performance with nice rrd-tool graphs.
Also, my other factor is your line of business, where your datacenter is and annual budget towards technology update/refresh.
150 bucks buys a lot of potatos, if you don't know it you never were shoe stringing it as a student
Right. What would I know about shoe-stringing. I'm surprised you left your 'woe-is-me' story out of this post. I really am. $150 today is two tanks of gas for commuting and eating out with the wife and kids once a week. Shoe-stringing or not, it doesn't go as far as it used to and everyone has that expense, white collar or not.
the biggest racket is when the professor makes a separate business from his position by hocking books - either for straight up cash, booze or goodwill from someone who arranged him some weed and a bj.
You must have went to a tech school or some half-ass community college where they call half-ass knock-off professionals 'step-in night professors'. No one professor I know in any decent state school or Big 10 college did that. ever. period. Baseless.
wtf do we even need books for in an age when the professor could(if he could be bothered to take time from boozing and scheming for grants)
You sound bitter. Perhaps you should have read that $150 Algebra book more, got a PhD and have become a professor. Sounds like 'the dream life'; booze and free money.
Must be pretty normal for you to just come on slashdot to be a douche-troll, argue-for-the-sake-of-arguing moron? I find it insulting to quote myself, you can re-read parent. I said it would have potential to fly for gen-ed. But what about outside of that?
Great caveman-checkbook-foolery math, "Lets take 100 people x $150 and make a BIG number to post about". How about this for reality math for just one of those 100 'mystery' people you mentioned:
* $150 - Cost of one ged-ed book
* Maybe 8 gen-ed books at maximum for open book substitute ($150 x 8 = $1200 in book savings over two semesters)
* Total Cost for a 4 year (lets be honest, most ppl do 5 years now) decent school, all on student loans = $38,000
WOW! Maybe a 3% savings on your total school bill? Who cares. Any student with half a drive can go get a part-time job at McDonalds for $12 minimum and put a bigger dent in that school bill than waiting for the openbook miracle to save them some $$$.
So what was your argument again? I thought so, Will Hunting.
This is a great concept, but who does this benefit in the end? I know quiet a few professors that I took classes from that the very books we used in 'their' classes were one's they 1) either knew a close colleague in their field that reviewed it or provided input into it (see liner notes for their names) or 2) endorsed or provided input on the writing or content of it themselves. Outside of that, there's always going to be that uber passionate professor that isn't going to like the quality, content or organization of the open textbooks they have to choose from and opt to still pick the book of their choice for the benefit of their students and curriculum.
So let's say this flies for gen-ed courses, which is totally could. I don't see it working at all for actual studies or specific majors with changing content or new adoptive technologies.
Hoping on the student loan bandwagon a second, let's say even half of a students book moved to an openly available one, it still wouldn't make a dent in reducing costs for the student in any manner of impact. I also thought my university's bookstore thoroughly enjoyed raping student's pocket books on the re-re-re-reselling of used books at a dirt cheap by-back tactic. Either way, if I see the fee or cost difference falling right back into the student's lap as some 'new' fee line-item.
The obviousness oozes out of this article... for starters, who uses MS IM anymore? FB and gtalk have pretty much squeezed those out with mass appeal unless you have a multi-client and are holding onto it for legacy reasons. Secondly, much like anything else that has made national headlines for 'the solicitation and is a hub of means to access of copyrighted material' should probably be abandoned and use something else people.
WTF does this show up on /. at least once a week? As entertaining-yet-lame as the Linux vs Windows vs Apple vs Foo flamewar debates can be, can we 'stop' making this drivel a headline /. news story already?
WTF is it with Hollywood becoming the most unoriginal and rising as the pinnacle of butchery lately with re-makes, re-takes and spin-offs of original shows or movies? Who gives a hell what Bay's writers are doing to add complexity to the TMNT; it'll be a complete massacre, and in the end, Vanilla Ice can hold his head a little higher since this TMNT production will take his place on the suck-it-all podium in TMNT II: Secret of the Ooze.
Where work-from-home at my place of work has become highly scrutinized because of people using it as a free vacation day, I've never ever had a problem with it at all. I think there's some prerequisites to this advice, though. Firstly, if you haven't proven yourself at work already as a reliable person that doesn't have to be micro-managed, or managers have an wishy-washy feeling about your 'work' character, then ignore my advice, because it's just going to be an epic fail or a bit harder when you start out.
1) Be available when you're suppose to: For shit's sake, I see so many of my co-workers who are 'suppose' to be available during core hours, who, when they WFH, cannot be reached by inner-office instant message, e-mail or phone, don't call into the meetings they are suppose to. I repeat, you do not want to be one of those people. It makes you look bad and it will catch up with you sooner than you think.
2) Set realistic daily work goals: Myself, I accomplish more at home because I'm not being fucked with or getting cube drive-by's, but that doesn't mean I don't kill myself in the process because I am more productive. Test the waters for the first day and see what you get done. At times, I've gotten what I needed to get accomplished in 5-6 hours and I called it a day. There's nothing wrong with that if you're showing production and results.
3) Have what you need to succeed: I have a very nice VPN solution, so I can rely on my own personal computing environment that I'm comfortable with (and also mirrors what I have at work with my desktop). But if you are issued a work laptop that they only allow you to connect into 'their' network with, then get what you need to 'feel' that comfortable productivity. I've never been at a place that wouldn't pay for a wireless keyboard/mouse set or get me a decent enough laptop to take home. Also, if you have books, paperwork, materials, bring that shit home. Don't think that you can get to everything 'digitally' because rarely does that play in your favor.
4) DONT abuse it: I always laughed in my younger, insubordinate and rebellious years when I'd hear "WFH is a privilege, not a right" and now that I'm a bit wiser, that's 110% the truth. I'm just like any other person, I have the TV on sometimes or stereo going, or use my lunch break to go to the hardware store quick for something. See it as your work trusting you do be independent but still a very reliable asset that they depend on. There's no reason to be uptight, you're at home, but don't be a douche and not do a thing get paid for it. It makes you complacent and lazy, and IMHO, that'll see you right out the door in time.
This is going to be a pretty strong opinion without a lot of facts (but a lot of feelings towards humanity, morality and nature) but why, as a nation, are we even letting 'fracking' exist to fatten pockets of Oil companies and politicians to piggy bag loop holes onto ? I don't need to be a 'fracking' expert to know a handful of things:
A) Pumping unknown chemicals into the ground that pollute water sources is a bad idea, B) Causing earthquakes in the mid-west where should not be feel-able earthquakes is not a good thing at all, what-so-ever, C) The uncanny health deterioration and after-effects of water pollution on animals and humans, not to mention 'poisoning the well' with natural gas so you can start potable and stream water on fire is (there's a theme here) not good at all, period. D) Contamination from fracking water just being dumped out on the land and seeps back into our habitats, bad. E) The pollutants from the refining process that has makes places in Wyoming have worse air pollution than L.A., horrible. May the list go on...
Why do we all need a 'study' to come out to tell this is bad? I'm ashamed of the greed that our country has consumed itself in that we'll destroy anything, for what? The Almighty Dollar.
It is like withholding information on how to produce high quality steel because it will be used to make very sharp swords, or nuclear energy and research is bad and information about it should be restricted because such knowledge is involved in producing bombs.
I was onboard until your argument produced holes in it. I agree with what I quoted, but tell me the benefit of making a deadly flu virus that doesn't spread over it's natural means? That doesn't provide a barrier to improve anything in my world. If anything someone funded it to do just that: Have scientific evidence for a terrorism report. Should we censor ourselves from providing information like this? Totally.
There are many other ways to massage a scientist's ego than let them do a dog-and-pony show to prove their funding was actually used for something. I don't think it advantageous to share things like this at all.
I mostly visit slashdot as an avenue for tech/science/nerd news, and an occasional giggle at flame wars. The growing trend of 'Ask Slashdot' posts I've never had a problem with; what is a problem is the growing rate of redundancy/frequency in question posts versus actual news, no one moderating the train wreck of flame wars and the shear lack of aptitude from the question poser in terms of topic worth.
'Ask Slashdot' used to be an infrequent-but-jolt-of-freshness into daily reading, now it's just being used WAY to often with poor content abandonment IMHO. I see more posts saying "Didn't we just discuss this last week?" followed by a link to a slashdot URL showing the evidence.
All cynicism aside, I'm not for it and I'm sure as hell hoping the next administrative post to slashdot isn't "We're changing our slogan to 'Slashdot: Regurgitated Tech Commentary and Questions. No News. Stuff that doesn't matter".
$200 isn't that bad for a little net portal.
While I agree 100% with that, how many times over are you going to spend that kind of money to find the 'shining light' that holds it's weight against the iPad before ultimately spending enough of your own money on sub-par devices that you could outright owned an iPad?
No, I'm not a Apple fan boi, but the iPad is a pretty fantastic device. Nothing can touch it right now and I think what gets all of us as end-point consumers is everyone's marketing bullshit lately to get into the tablet market and make a quick, almighty dollar off all of us.
I think the e-Reader should remain an e-Reader. Period. Perhaps the slight reach to make it enough to casually surf the internet and check e-mail I can live with, but that's where B&N and Amazon are making their mistake IMHO: Taking something and making it something it's not. Let's not forget the iPad was a touch-screen computing device with 'e-Reader and multi-media capabilities' not the other way around.
I am not sure what is gained by breaking into, compromising and exploiting a foundation like The Linux Foundation when the perps were more than likely using a Linux driven OS and tools to do what they did. Seems like some need a re-education in not harming the hand that builds your house...
Or you're just a total troll. Go back to your cave.