If you take economics a little further, you get terms like constant, increasing or decreasing returns to scale. Basically, if making 1 pen per day costs $1, 1000 pens/days for $1000 would be a constant (still $1/pen) return to scale.
Very few industries have increasing returns to scale at very high volume - even if DSL was (ie: 1 DSL user costs $10/month each, 10 cost 9/month each, 10000 cost 8/month each), there would be a point where it'd probably cost too much to add another say 50,000 users AT THE SAME COST.
So you are right, $200 mil a month is less than $250 mil a month. But then you have to pay 2000 IT employees instead of 200, upgrade more of the country's old lines, hire more tech support, etc.
Monopolies are rarely stupid. With billions of (nearly) guaranteed profit, you can afford to hire real smart guys who'll tell you that it'll cost exactly $x to provide service to y thousand people and what rate you'll likely be able to charge.
Another thing business can do is discriminate. Ooo, a bad word! Actually, this works out well for customers in the end.
Remember when you were a kid and seeing a movie cost half as much as your parents tickets did? Youth make less money than adults, so in order to capture more of their money, you need to reduce the ticket price from the adult rate.
Works the same with DSL - if you want no cap, high speed, server-running service, you pay for a REALLY good plan or you go to a T1. Average-joe types want good price and basic usage, seperate rate plans for them.
Sounds horrible but high-paying customers help subsidize the cost for lower-rate paying people. Monopolies have their cake and eat it too - they get to charge $1000/mo AND $100/mo. It all breaks down when $100/mo users get $1000 service, so companies have to enforce limits - caps and speed reduction for $100 users for example.
Here are a few trends worth remembering:
*(artifical) monopolies tend to die; monopolies by law last longer but this is changing too *if a company IS making money hand over fist, this is a signal to other companies enter the same industry (and competition usually gets you more choice and/or better prices)
If you enjoy watching how the world economies react to events (September 11th, stagflation in the 70s, Germany and Japan's incredible recovery after WWII) take an intro to Macroeconomics course or two. If you're more interested in knowing how companies choose prices, how households make decisions - try microeconomics.
the minute we stop using 'traditional' Intel/AMD CPUs in favour of NVidia/ATI, we'll have to drop 'traditional' NVidia/ATI and go back to Intel/AMD;).
Seriously though, the design we have now is a good one. A strong, general-purpose CPU augmented with a specialized GPU for high-cost operations. Depending on how high the cost is (ie: iDCT for playing DVDs) we may want to start moving the work to the specialized cpu - this has been done with ATI cards for a couple years now.
Too many options is bad sometimes. I mean what would happen if a news oriented website were to give you the option of reading both regular news and satirical news on the same page?!
I'd imagine a Chinese state-run newspaper would use it as their prime news source.
I've had similar issues with PC - so after talking with them, I have the following info:
Option 1: Keep your PC account, ask to 'increase' the amount they automatically clear. If you've got an account in good standing, getting your $200 changed to $500 can be done over the phone. I asked about higher than that and PC apparently does this automatically over time - I'm a fairly new account and mine was due to be upped. If your account has overdraft protection, you also have access to $400 overdraft (so $200 + 400, or in my case now $500 + $400 available for larger cheques).
Option 2: Find another bank that clears the full amount of your cheque immediately. Put your cheques in that account, then send a request to PC for a withdrawl from that account - from what I'm told, it work similar to a debit card purchase in that it is immediately cleared.
Other options: do a wire transfer between bank accounts (costs money, takes a little time), set up auto-deposited payroll cheques at PC, etc.
PC has been doing a great job keeping competitive and I'll gladly keep my business there. I've been using IE/Opera/Mozilla with their site and have no complaints.
Buying a UPS to filter/condition power is a good idea but don't relax too much. I purchased a higher-end UPS (retails for at least a few hundred; online power conditioning) and while it has been a lifesave, I've still had power supplies blow up.
Just a week ago, my computer shut down suddenly while using it - power supply looked to tbe the problem. (PS fan won't spin, a quiet noise started in the lower frequencies and kept increasing - but the MB "power" LED was still on)
Got it back to the computer shop and they decide to double check - I kindly asked they unplug the MB/HD. I had my back turned to the PC and the room lit up something fierce for a fraction of a second.
I've had good luck - I've seen two PSs blow through my life and they haven't taken the computer with them. Yet.
I don't have any proof of this, but when I was attending high school nearing the end of the millenium, my school was offered $1/seat for Wordperfect Office. As I remember, my computer teacher was very vocal about how learning a concept (word processing, writing documents) is far more valuable than a tool (word, wordperfect).
I can't remember the cost, but the school had MS Office on all PCs the following years. I *vaguely* remember $150/seat being the going rate.
As a Canadian looking south, how difficult was it to find employment out-of-country? Did you have a great deal of experience, get 'abused' on wage, have trouble finding a company to 'sponsor' your TN?
While I hold out hope I'll find a fair paying career in Canada, I know quite a few grads looking for work since January. Most are in the top half of the grads I've met as far as work ethic and actual knowledge.
Knowing what you know now, would you do it over again?
Sorry, thought I clarifed that, guess it's just the voices in my head again. Paid them and gave them credit card info, student number and an email address. That or you're right - they really ARE good.
I completely agree with the gestures - 99% perfection. The other 1% is theirs if they can make it easily configurable.
Yeah - crashing isn't great, hasn't happened lately thankfully. Which actually brings up a wonderful feature though: crash recovery. If I had 20 tabs open, with each tab having a 20-site history - Opera detects the crash and I'm *exactly* where I was before the crash. Related to that is the fact that you can save the current window setup and reload automatically - works beautifully.
Downside: the page that crashed you is likely opening too:). Opera is at least smart enough to make the last window you were in the active one, so a quick and the page won't crash again.
Quick-Preferences is another great thing - first three options are: Accept pop-ups, refuse and open in the background. From there, privacy options, scripting enabling/disabling, etc all on one menu that came from one key press or one click and some scrolling.
If you're talking about a password management system, I agree, would be welcome. (but took me a long time to trust ANY browser with THAT much info - and even still, I think I'll hold off on giving Opera that much power over me) The Personal Information section is as close as it gets - one right click and an "insert" later and all info is provided.
Opera gets an A in my books, and with Moz doing so well, I hopefully will never have to choose IE again. Except for those apps that want it, sigh.
Opera is one the of few companies who haven't spammed me yet.
I've been using Opera for the better part of two years, the last half year as a paying member. The only email I've ever seen from them is a thank-you for buying their product and the occasional update notice (which I gave them permission to do.)
Moz is a great browser - I'm using it now for pages that Opera has trouble with (only found two so far: a few Jobopolis postings and my bank's secure site).
In all my time using Opera, the only thing I've seen from them is an advertising banner in the top-right corner of the window. I'm even allowed to "recommend" which ads I want - and those preferences are NOT tied to any personal info. How do I know? I never gave them any, not even an email address.
Moz is great, but Opera is faster, leaner, light-years ahead of Moz's standard tabbed browsing... but given another few years, Moz will catch up and I'll gladly switch over.
Hmmm - maybe I should toss my resume in there, I seem to be advertising enough for them already...
Other posters have said this but I haven't much in the way of solutions to this problem. What problem?
Let's say duplication costs $1, new CDs (new releases) $20, used CDs (new releases) $13 and I get $6 for selling it.
Math says I spent $21 to make a copy and I got $6 selling it used = I'm out $15 instead of $20. What I did was totally illegal but just *so* easy. Or, I buy a used CD instead of new - I'm now out only $14-$6=$8 per CD.
If I remember my economics, this makes me feel a little richer. If I saved $100 though, I do NOT spend the whole thing on new CDs - I spend it on pizza, beer and way too much at the Torontozilla party. Even if we ignore this effect and pretend we put all our savings into more CDs, we are getting MANY more CDs for the same amount of cash.
So, I don't spend more money - but I'm getting more stuff. Who lost it? The members of the RIAA.
They have a legit problem here. Their product is insanely easy to copy - even my mom can do it. Adding the fact that people are buying less CDs just to replace their tapes... imagine where their sales estimates are in 5 years.
The RIAA is trying to solve a problem - let's assume they are going the wrong way. Their product is easy to copy and there is a large market for used product. A tax won't work. What will?
Ignore the inflated "piracy loss". Use your brain and solve the problem yourself - kudos to anyone who comes up with a fair solution... but in the absense of a fair one, the RIAA will take any solution.
First off, spend a great deal of time explaining your position to everyone and remind them that they just lost 6 years of work. Since they are computer users and not admins, you might even want to gather comments - there'll be a fair bit of noise but you might catch a few good questions (ie: what's a directory? is it like a folder? how is it possible to have an H: when it goes ABCD?)
After the introductory period is over, explain that files will be moved to the LAN. Every so often (random, 1..5 days sounds about right) schedule a script to collect up all.xls,.doc,.txt and anything else you deem necessary. Heck, maybe just move "all files created within 5 days below 1MB" or something.
Put notes on everyone's computer that night saying "your work has been moved to H:\slave-number-512\work" and maybe some instructions on how to get to that folder.
A few people will freak - "Ohmigosh, my file is gone!" and you'll teach them how to get the files again - "Oh wow, you got my file back!". (great example LittleGuy!)
All versions of Windows I've worked with include registry settings for setting a default Program Files folder, My Documents folder, etc. Change those to point to the user's folder and you've just saved them the "GRRR I hate that I have to click on THIS, then THIS then go into THIS dir.. why can't it just point me there FIRST?".
Keeping people educated won't fix the problem but it includes them in the solution. There might be people who resist anything - but if they interfere with your job, step up your actions. Talk with them, then try something slightly drastic (removing their MyDoc folder?) then talk again, then their boss, then something very drastic ("my files are gone!!!" "there was a surge last night and we had to restore with our backups...") with approvals from higher-ups.
I hate to draw this kind of comparison, but it's very similar to how you litter-train a pet. You collect their shit, put it somewhere else and eventually they learn to put their shit in the right place.
Sorry if I mislead anyone, I guess I didn't speak clearly enough. Tainanmen Square is something none of us should forget.
I was speaking about the government not in structure but in "tone" - from what little I've read, Eastern cultures tend to be more people-oriented than western ones. Governments reflect at least a part of regional cultures and both China and Taiwan share quite a bit. China's state media (The People's Daily?) and Taiwan's press release both have a focus on "the people" that seems a little more authentic than the western-style news I'm used to reading. (US and Canada only)
I'm not looking for OSS to save the world - I'm just focusing on the idea that governments co-operating around the world is a *fantastic* picture to me. It brings us one step closer to blurring/erasing these pitiful borders we have. I'm in no rush to install a "One World" government, but the closer we get, the closer we are to an end to disputed borders, more cooperation in general, etc.
And who knows - maybe people (including me) might stop trying to pick others apart and make helpful corrections instead;). But I might be hoping for too much.
Originally I was going to comment on how different the priorities are between the western (US/Can) and eastern (China/Taiwan) worlds are. Assuming the translator did their job correctly and introduced a minimum of bias, a few phrases caught my eye: "benefits the government NT$ 2 billion and the society NT$10 billion", the statement about international cooperation on free application software development and coordination of training centres, "...and ensure the people's rights to...".
From a Canadian standpoint, it sounded like people being put first. WAY first. Not about dropping Microsoft - just the fact that people tend to be put that far first.
Sitting back a second, I remembered the just-passed anniversary of Tiananmen square. So much for the "ideal" ways of the east.
But it got me thinking. Imagining what would happen if other governments adopted this plan of using and developing free software to meet the needs of the government. While the private sector has little incentive to release any work they did while paying for the employee to do it, the public sector has almost no incentive NOT to.
Imagining a little further, a few other governments pick up the idea - at least small groups anyway - because the work of Taiwan (and maybe Germany) provided a very necessary tool that was only available via closed-source software. Simplifying and standardizing international charsets alone would be a godsend.
Now, other countries make the switch to a partially open system and add their piece of the pie.
Suddenly, governments everywhere are noticing the next-to-nil cost of switching some or all of their systems to an open-source based solution. Training was needed anyway and other governments won't mind giving some limited support for the first bit. Service companies step in later for more robust support seeing some money in the picture.
I like the idea of open-source. I don't preach the benefits of open source nearly as much as I preach the benefits of solution X over solution Y where *applicable* (eg: Linux over Windows, Apache over IIS).
I like the idea of governments co-operating, improving the picture for everyone. Even if it saved them nothing over the current system.
I like the way the world looks for my future children right now.
Deregulation is meant to introduce competition, which on the whole is believed to increase the benefit to society.
I live in Canada here and our two monopolies have been fighting it out every chance they get. High speed internet? Company A offers a free install, company B matches. Summer comes around and B offers a free month or two, A sees that and offers a money back guarantee. The number of ads I've seen on this topic alone blows my mind.
We're still getting pooched for cable but satellite service has exploded lately. The local cable co is hated by everyone and droves have fled to the "cheaper/faster/better" satellite system. While prices have pretty much stayed the same (satellite = 0.8 * cable co) the battle for features is heating up REAL fast.
You might not see a change in the bottom line, but how many channels do you have? How many did you start with?
Having the gov't pitch in would definately help in the short run, but would every tax dollar spent equal the same benefit as say, a tax dollar going to cure cancer?
I wouldn't leap before you look - competition kept the price bleedingly low the past few years. Having the gov't pitch in money or laws might get rid of the bumps but I'd hate to have a steep hill for a century. (just imagine: government monopolies for phones, for internet, for cable... why exactly are we calling ourselves capitalists again?)
Just for the record, there are major problems with this overly simplistic model:
1) Everyone is charged regardless of usage. We might not agree with Delta overbooking planes, but it either reduces ticket prices or delta makes more money. (being a public company they publish their better profits and new cheaper local competition comes in since profit opportunities are better)
2) Costs increase *dramatically* for the company for each customer. 640k is near half a T1, so for every second customer that comes in, each new customer pays for all costs associated with that "almost half T1".
You've purchased the service, but I've never seen a document saying you've purchased 10^9 k/month at 640k/s. If they don't document where you get cut off then you're right, you're perfectly able to "rip the company off" and we've been doing that for years.
Now after some of the companies of mostly fluff are gone, the survivors are trying to get out of the red ink and into the black. The myth that content will save the day and you need to sign up millions of customers to be profitable is gone and companies are looking to be stable.
Look at it this way:
*If they overcharge, they lose a major part of the market - someone else will service these customers. *If they make HUGE profits even with $10/month, other companies have an incentive to get some of this pie and charge $9. Then $8, 7.... *If they don't make enough profit and stay that way, they cut corners and eventually die. Some of the old customers move to larger companies, which likely benefit from economies of scale.
If they are "gouging" successfully, they will benefit in the short term only. Since price increases are small and companies are still going under, I highly doubt major profit is being made.
Letting everyone (ab)use their high speed by downloading every second only hurts us.
If you like 640k/s all the time, buy the fractional T1. If you don't value your 640k/s THAT much, look for a cheaper option. Like what you have now.
A few years ago, I remember a professor at the University of Waterloo talking about his problems with RSI. He gave this talk to all first year students.
I'll skip the story (he develops RSI and learns to cope, surprise!) but I'll mention a few things. This knowledge is out of date but at least was once upon a time based in fact:
*Resting your wrists on anything - gel pads, hard surfaces, a pillow - increases pressure on the nerves around your wrists. Lightly resting is one thing but anything more than that is asking for trouble. Either boost yourself up a few inches or lower the keyboard; it'll give you less of an incentive to rest "heavily" on any surface.
*Keep your monitor around 10-20% below eye-level (I assumed he meant middle of the monitor)
*~90 degree angle at the elbow
That was around 5 years ago - there was more but he never covered "how to remember things when you get old."
I think there should be a "nuke first 50 posts" (aka: kneejerk posts) option for subscribers here.
Firstly, Slashdot isn't a person. Slashdot doesn't have an opinion. Slashdot is a community. Slashdot is "lead" for lack of a better word by editors. Taco, an editor, decided to say "Let's nail companies who licence pop-under ads!"
The community did NOT suddenly ok pop-unders. Even if Taco meant that he supported pop-under ads (which I HIGHLY doubt), that doesn't meant the masses that read slashdot suddenly changed their mind.
And of course, people who do change their mind should be attacked! Linux will be the ONLY answer for the rest of time. Microsoft will ALWAYS be bad. No company will ever do good.
So, before you post the next time:
a) The submission and the editor comments represent themselves. NOT Slashdot. The fact that "Linux is dead" was authorized for front-page posting does NOT mean it is.
b) read the article.
c) If anyone says "companies that licence pop-under ads should be shot!", don't accuse them of murder. Now, go re-read what taco commented.
Moderators:
a) AVOID modding up any post short of an amazing one before 50 get posted. THEN reward people who have something intelligent to say.
b) do NOT mod up ANYTHING says "slashdot changed their minds!", "Everyone supports the RIAA now that movie X is on DVD!", etc. If anyone has anything new and intelligent to say about this, they can say it without accusing the entire community of changing their minds. They could also avoid using Everyone, Always, Never and any other absolute.
For a community embracing open source philosophies, there sure is a loud minority that needs to practice opening their mind first.
Public funds should not equal public source. There is my bias.
Public funds SHOULD provide public benefit. I don't want tactical nuke control software public sourced so people can browse through, so I guess we'll have to have a restriction there. Oh, and there is that evil cellular lobby that wants to co-fund a project with the government so we'll have to stop that because the cellular companies want to keep some info private.
Eventually, so many exceptions will have to be made, we'll end up with what we have now - sometimes, research stays private, even if we paid for it. By and large, it is publicly available.
In a system where the government imposes must-share rules on everything they touch, we'll also have to identify every penny that came in. Also, if partnering with a company, we'll have to make sure they don't provide anyone that might learn something and use it at the company.
To sum it up: open sourcing everything is wrong. Closing access to all information is wrong. There needs to be a balance.
Worst case scenario in a mixed-system: a company gets access to research that taxpayers can't see. Obviously, there is no benefit to taxpayers correct?
Forgot to mention, the research was on how to get 5x the battery life on Li-ion batteries. The company makes better batteries and makes more money. If they choose to hire more people, we benefit. If they keep all the profit and change nothing, anyone owning stock in the company benefits.
When research is used successfully, it is nearly impossible for society to lose (insert your favourite anti-nuclear idea here to "prove" me wrong). The benefits of everyone being able to use research as opposed to a few (or one) entity seeing that research is small, maybe even zero.
Society benefits from research. This is what we want to encourage, not one-rule-fits-all thinking.
end rant.
Jeff If you don't like what I have to say, hit "reply" and post your thoughts for discussion, don't mod anyone down because you disagree.
MAPS might have a few good points but in my wholly uninformed point of view, they seem to deserve to lose.
To sum up 3 years:
Gordon Fecyk: Hey Paul, here is the DUL - I'll even indemnify you of any damages because of the list.
Paul Vixie: Great - I'll make you the maintainer of the DUL and we'll draw something up saying you can regain ownership of the DUL for $10 (the contract minimum in the US at the time). MAPS will take the good and the bad - all the publicity and all the legal trouble associated with it. When you want to leave, you can take the DUL back for $10.
forward 3 years
GF to Dave Rand/MAPS: I'm leaving. Here is $10. I have a recent copy of the DUL. I own it. You can use it free for a little while and we'll work out a contract after that. I'll even let you have first change to negotiate for it.
MAPS to GF: Lawsuit.
MAPS argues in the lawsuit that GF doesn't own the DUL and even if he did, he couldn't maintain it properly on his own, it causes legal issues with MAPS (privacy issues), saying that he owns it hurts MAPS, etc.
If I was MAPS, I'd be protecting my income sources as strongly as possible. Not having followed the MAPS project/organization much and seeing they still accept donations, I would be worried too.
The right thing to do would be to honour the agreement between Paul Vixie and Gordon Fecyk. If it bankrupts the organization, it is a sad thing but something could be worked out. (eg: cheap licencing - Gordon seems *very* reasonable)
The wrong thing is to fight for your life and not even try to do the right thing first.
Then again, if the DUL is a major source of income for them, I can't seem them caring much about doing the right thing. Morals are nice but survival comes first I suppose.
My morals suggested I check google for a cached version of the DUL and post the link but it looks like google didn't get it in time. Anyone have links?
Hey there fellow north dude - and north dudes across the country.
As one of many CS grads recently released into the real world, I'm trying to gather some experience-based comments on entering the job market.
If any of you want to give me a shout, send a message my way - I'm at jeff_slash_suffix at jeffdom.com and remove the "_suffix".
I've got a website started and might start a web board about this - anyone with suggestions on job hunting, good web-board software, etc is encouraged to contribute or mail me.
Just for the record, this is nothing new nor is it something to worry too much about.
I'd have to dig around my text books for the proper term, but crimes can be placed in two categories. Most offenses are handled "normally" - people are innocent till proven guilty, etc.
There are a class of brimes where you are basically guilty on the spot (if so charged). Every one I can think of is car-related - parking tickets, driving under the influence, speeding, etc. In each one of these cases, proof is relatively easy to come by. If your car goes through a red and there is a picture of your car and a red light, this seems enough for me.
You can always appeal your verdict-by-mail but this tends to be rather difficult since they have a photo of the car, red light and driver (sometimes).
In Ontario a few years ago, we had photo radar on a few major highways - you speed, you get fined. There were quite a few angry people, everything from "tax grab" to "abuse of power" to "trusting unreliable technology" was being reported.
Now that photo radar is gone, the reporting is "everyone wants it back".
While many people just learn to avoid the camera'ed intersections, this is a perfectly legal and moral mechanism to improve road safety.
Slashdot Mirror
For the record, I've been running ICQ for a few days now and I've got 7MB in RAM and 6MB swapped out.
There is also an ICQlite version being developed to combat the myth of massive resource usage.
Just in case anyone wanted to know.
If you take economics a little further, you get terms like constant, increasing or decreasing returns to scale. Basically, if making 1 pen per day costs $1, 1000 pens/days for $1000 would be a constant (still $1/pen) return to scale.
Very few industries have increasing returns to scale at very high volume - even if DSL was (ie: 1 DSL user costs $10/month each, 10 cost 9/month each, 10000 cost 8/month each), there would be a point where it'd probably cost too much to add another say 50,000 users AT THE SAME COST.
So you are right, $200 mil a month is less than $250 mil a month. But then you have to pay 2000 IT employees instead of 200, upgrade more of the country's old lines, hire more tech support, etc.
Monopolies are rarely stupid. With billions of (nearly) guaranteed profit, you can afford to hire real smart guys who'll tell you that it'll cost exactly $x to provide service to y thousand people and what rate you'll likely be able to charge.
Another thing business can do is discriminate. Ooo, a bad word! Actually, this works out well for customers in the end.
Remember when you were a kid and seeing a movie cost half as much as your parents tickets did? Youth make less money than adults, so in order to capture more of their money, you need to reduce the ticket price from the adult rate.
Works the same with DSL - if you want no cap, high speed, server-running service, you pay for a REALLY good plan or you go to a T1. Average-joe types want good price and basic usage, seperate rate plans for them.
Sounds horrible but high-paying customers help subsidize the cost for lower-rate paying people. Monopolies have their cake and eat it too - they get to charge $1000/mo AND $100/mo. It all breaks down when $100/mo users get $1000 service, so companies have to enforce limits - caps and speed reduction for $100 users for example.
Here are a few trends worth remembering:
*(artifical) monopolies tend to die; monopolies by law last longer but this is changing too
*if a company IS making money hand over fist, this is a signal to other companies enter the same industry (and competition usually gets you more choice and/or better prices)
If you enjoy watching how the world economies react to events (September 11th, stagflation in the 70s, Germany and Japan's incredible recovery after WWII) take an intro to Macroeconomics course or two. If you're more interested in knowing how companies choose prices, how households make decisions - try microeconomics.
the minute we stop using 'traditional' Intel/AMD CPUs in favour of NVidia/ATI, we'll have to drop 'traditional' NVidia/ATI and go back to Intel/AMD ;).
Seriously though, the design we have now is a good one. A strong, general-purpose CPU augmented with a specialized GPU for high-cost operations. Depending on how high the cost is (ie: iDCT for playing DVDs) we may want to start moving the work to the specialized cpu - this has been done with ATI cards for a couple years now.
Too many options is bad sometimes. I mean what would happen if a news oriented website were to give you the option of reading both regular news and satirical news on the same page?!
I'd imagine a Chinese state-run newspaper would use it as their prime news source.
Oh wait..
I've had similar issues with PC - so after talking with them, I have the following info:
Option 1: Keep your PC account, ask to 'increase' the amount they automatically clear. If you've got an account in good standing, getting your $200 changed to $500 can be done over the phone. I asked about higher than that and PC apparently does this automatically over time - I'm a fairly new account and mine was due to be upped. If your account has overdraft protection, you also have access to $400 overdraft (so $200 + 400, or in my case now $500 + $400 available for larger cheques).
Option 2: Find another bank that clears the full amount of your cheque immediately. Put your cheques in that account, then send a request to PC for a withdrawl from that account - from what I'm told, it work similar to a debit card purchase in that it is immediately cleared.
Other options: do a wire transfer between bank accounts (costs money, takes a little time), set up auto-deposited payroll cheques at PC, etc.
PC has been doing a great job keeping competitive and I'll gladly keep my business there. I've been using IE/Opera/Mozilla with their site and have no complaints.
Buying a UPS to filter/condition power is a good idea but don't relax too much. I purchased a higher-end UPS (retails for at least a few hundred; online power conditioning) and while it has been a lifesave, I've still had power supplies blow up.
Just a week ago, my computer shut down suddenly while using it - power supply looked to tbe the problem. (PS fan won't spin, a quiet noise started in the lower frequencies and kept increasing - but the MB "power" LED was still on)
Got it back to the computer shop and they decide to double check - I kindly asked they unplug the MB/HD. I had my back turned to the PC and the room lit up something fierce for a fraction of a second.
I've had good luck - I've seen two PSs blow through my life and they haven't taken the computer with them. Yet.
The donor car it was built on actually has 108k on it - the "Speeder" after built though, only has gone 880 miles.
I don't have any proof of this, but when I was attending high school nearing the end of the millenium, my school was offered $1/seat for Wordperfect Office. As I remember, my computer teacher was very vocal about how learning a concept (word processing, writing documents) is far more valuable than a tool (word, wordperfect).
I can't remember the cost, but the school had MS Office on all PCs the following years. I *vaguely* remember $150/seat being the going rate.
As a Canadian looking south, how difficult was it to find employment out-of-country? Did you have a great deal of experience, get 'abused' on wage, have trouble finding a company to 'sponsor' your TN?
While I hold out hope I'll find a fair paying career in Canada, I know quite a few grads looking for work since January. Most are in the top half of the grads I've met as far as work ethic and actual knowledge.
Knowing what you know now, would you do it over again?
Sorry, thought I clarifed that, guess it's just the voices in my head again. Paid them and gave them credit card info, student number and an email address. That or you're right - they really ARE good.
:). Opera is at least smart enough to make the last window you were in the active one, so a quick and the page won't crash again.
I completely agree with the gestures - 99% perfection. The other 1% is theirs if they can make it easily configurable.
Yeah - crashing isn't great, hasn't happened lately thankfully. Which actually brings up a wonderful feature though: crash recovery. If I had 20 tabs open, with each tab having a 20-site history - Opera detects the crash and I'm *exactly* where I was before the crash. Related to that is the fact that you can save the current window setup and reload automatically - works beautifully.
Downside: the page that crashed you is likely opening too
Quick-Preferences is another great thing - first three options are: Accept pop-ups, refuse and open in the background. From there, privacy options, scripting enabling/disabling, etc all on one menu that came from one key press or one click and some scrolling.
If you're talking about a password management system, I agree, would be welcome. (but took me a long time to trust ANY browser with THAT much info - and even still, I think I'll hold off on giving Opera that much power over me) The Personal Information section is as close as it gets - one right click and an "insert" later and all info is provided.
Opera gets an A in my books, and with Moz doing so well, I hopefully will never have to choose IE again. Except for those apps that want it, sigh.
Opera is one the of few companies who haven't spammed me yet.
I've been using Opera for the better part of two years, the last half year as a paying member. The only email I've ever seen from them is a thank-you for buying their product and the occasional update notice (which I gave them permission to do.)
Moz is a great browser - I'm using it now for pages that Opera has trouble with (only found two so far: a few Jobopolis postings and my bank's secure site).
In all my time using Opera, the only thing I've seen from them is an advertising banner in the top-right corner of the window. I'm even allowed to "recommend" which ads I want - and those preferences are NOT tied to any personal info. How do I know? I never gave them any, not even an email address.
Moz is great, but Opera is faster, leaner, light-years ahead of Moz's standard tabbed browsing... but given another few years, Moz will catch up and I'll gladly switch over.
Hmmm - maybe I should toss my resume in there, I seem to be advertising enough for them already...
I'll keep this short:
Other posters have said this but I haven't much in the way of solutions to this problem. What problem?
Let's say duplication costs $1, new CDs (new releases) $20, used CDs (new releases) $13 and I get $6 for selling it.
Math says I spent $21 to make a copy and I got $6 selling it used = I'm out $15 instead of $20. What I did was totally illegal but just *so* easy. Or, I buy a used CD instead of new - I'm now out only $14-$6=$8 per CD.
If I remember my economics, this makes me feel a little richer. If I saved $100 though, I do NOT spend the whole thing on new CDs - I spend it on pizza, beer and way too much at the Torontozilla party. Even if we ignore this effect and pretend we put all our savings into more CDs, we are getting MANY more CDs for the same amount of cash.
So, I don't spend more money - but I'm getting more stuff. Who lost it? The members of the RIAA.
They have a legit problem here. Their product is insanely easy to copy - even my mom can do it. Adding the fact that people are buying less CDs just to replace their tapes... imagine where their sales estimates are in 5 years.
The RIAA is trying to solve a problem - let's assume they are going the wrong way. Their product is easy to copy and there is a large market for used product. A tax won't work. What will?
Ignore the inflated "piracy loss". Use your brain and solve the problem yourself - kudos to anyone who comes up with a fair solution... but in the absense of a fair one, the RIAA will take any solution.
A quick idea I had:
.xls, .doc, .txt and anything else you deem necessary. Heck, maybe just move "all files created within 5 days below 1MB" or something.
First off, spend a great deal of time explaining your position to everyone and remind them that they just lost 6 years of work. Since they are computer users and not admins, you might even want to gather comments - there'll be a fair bit of noise but you might catch a few good questions (ie: what's a directory? is it like a folder? how is it possible to have an H: when it goes ABCD?)
After the introductory period is over, explain that files will be moved to the LAN. Every so often (random, 1..5 days sounds about right) schedule a script to collect up all
Put notes on everyone's computer that night saying "your work has been moved to H:\slave-number-512\work" and maybe some instructions on how to get to that folder.
A few people will freak - "Ohmigosh, my file is gone!" and you'll teach them how to get the files again - "Oh wow, you got my file back!". (great example LittleGuy!)
All versions of Windows I've worked with include registry settings for setting a default Program Files folder, My Documents folder, etc. Change those to point to the user's folder and you've just saved them the "GRRR I hate that I have to click on THIS, then THIS then go into THIS dir.. why can't it just point me there FIRST?".
Keeping people educated won't fix the problem but it includes them in the solution. There might be people who resist anything - but if they interfere with your job, step up your actions. Talk with them, then try something slightly drastic (removing their MyDoc folder?) then talk again, then their boss, then something very drastic ("my files are gone!!!" "there was a surge last night and we had to restore with our backups...") with approvals from higher-ups.
I hate to draw this kind of comparison, but it's very similar to how you litter-train a pet. You collect their shit, put it somewhere else and eventually they learn to put their shit in the right place.
Sorry if I mislead anyone, I guess I didn't speak clearly enough. Tainanmen Square is something none of us should forget.
;). But I might be hoping for too much.
I was speaking about the government not in structure but in "tone" - from what little I've read, Eastern cultures tend to be more people-oriented than western ones. Governments reflect at least a part of regional cultures and both China and Taiwan share quite a bit. China's state media (The People's Daily?) and Taiwan's press release both have a focus on "the people" that seems a little more authentic than the western-style news I'm used to reading. (US and Canada only)
I'm not looking for OSS to save the world - I'm just focusing on the idea that governments co-operating around the world is a *fantastic* picture to me. It brings us one step closer to blurring/erasing these pitiful borders we have. I'm in no rush to install a "One World" government, but the closer we get, the closer we are to an end to disputed borders, more cooperation in general, etc.
And who knows - maybe people (including me) might stop trying to pick others apart and make helpful corrections instead
Originally I was going to comment on how different the priorities are between the western (US/Can) and eastern (China/Taiwan) worlds are. Assuming the translator did their job correctly and introduced a minimum of bias, a few phrases caught my eye: "benefits the government NT$ 2 billion and the society NT$10 billion", the statement about international cooperation on free application software development and coordination of training centres, "...and ensure the people's rights to...".
From a Canadian standpoint, it sounded like people being put first. WAY first. Not about dropping Microsoft - just the fact that people tend to be put that far first.
Sitting back a second, I remembered the just-passed anniversary of Tiananmen square. So much for the "ideal" ways of the east.
But it got me thinking. Imagining what would happen if other governments adopted this plan of using and developing free software to meet the needs of the government. While the private sector has little incentive to release any work they did while paying for the employee to do it, the public sector has almost no incentive NOT to.
Imagining a little further, a few other governments pick up the idea - at least small groups anyway - because the work of Taiwan (and maybe Germany) provided a very necessary tool that was only available via closed-source software. Simplifying and standardizing international charsets alone would be a godsend.
Now, other countries make the switch to a partially open system and add their piece of the pie.
Suddenly, governments everywhere are noticing the next-to-nil cost of switching some or all of their systems to an open-source based solution. Training was needed anyway and other governments won't mind giving some limited support for the first bit. Service companies step in later for more robust support seeing some money in the picture.
I like the idea of open-source. I don't preach the benefits of open source nearly as much as I preach the benefits of solution X over solution Y where *applicable* (eg: Linux over Windows, Apache over IIS).
I like the idea of governments co-operating, improving the picture for everyone. Even if it saved them nothing over the current system.
I like the way the world looks for my future children right now.
Jeff
Deregulation is meant to introduce competition, which on the whole is believed to increase the benefit to society.
I live in Canada here and our two monopolies have been fighting it out every chance they get. High speed internet? Company A offers a free install, company B matches. Summer comes around and B offers a free month or two, A sees that and offers a money back guarantee. The number of ads I've seen on this topic alone blows my mind.
We're still getting pooched for cable but satellite service has exploded lately. The local cable co is hated by everyone and droves have fled to the "cheaper/faster/better" satellite system. While prices have pretty much stayed the same (satellite = 0.8 * cable co) the battle for features is heating up REAL fast.
You might not see a change in the bottom line, but how many channels do you have? How many did you start with?
Having the gov't pitch in would definately help in the short run, but would every tax dollar spent equal the same benefit as say, a tax dollar going to cure cancer?
I wouldn't leap before you look - competition kept the price bleedingly low the past few years. Having the gov't pitch in money or laws might get rid of the bumps but I'd hate to have a steep hill for a century. (just imagine: government monopolies for phones, for internet, for cable... why exactly are we calling ourselves capitalists again?)
Just for the record, there are major problems with this overly simplistic model:
1) Everyone is charged regardless of usage. We might not agree with Delta overbooking planes, but it either reduces ticket prices or delta makes more money. (being a public company they publish their better profits and new cheaper local competition comes in since profit opportunities are better)
2) Costs increase *dramatically* for the company for each customer. 640k is near half a T1, so for every second customer that comes in, each new customer pays for all costs associated with that "almost half T1".
You've purchased the service, but I've never seen a document saying you've purchased 10^9 k/month at 640k/s. If they don't document where you get cut off then you're right, you're perfectly able to "rip the company off" and we've been doing that for years.
Now after some of the companies of mostly fluff are gone, the survivors are trying to get out of the red ink and into the black. The myth that content will save the day and you need to sign up millions of customers to be profitable is gone and companies are looking to be stable.
Look at it this way:
*If they overcharge, they lose a major part of the market - someone else will service these customers.
*If they make HUGE profits even with $10/month, other companies have an incentive to get some of this pie and charge $9. Then $8, 7....
*If they don't make enough profit and stay that way, they cut corners and eventually die. Some of the old customers move to larger companies, which likely benefit from economies of scale.
If they are "gouging" successfully, they will benefit in the short term only. Since price increases are small and companies are still going under, I highly doubt major profit is being made.
Letting everyone (ab)use their high speed by downloading every second only hurts us.
If you like 640k/s all the time, buy the fractional T1. If you don't value your 640k/s THAT much, look for a cheaper option. Like what you have now.
A few years ago, I remember a professor at the University of Waterloo talking about his problems with RSI. He gave this talk to all first year students.
I'll skip the story (he develops RSI and learns to cope, surprise!) but I'll mention a few things. This knowledge is out of date but at least was once upon a time based in fact:
*Resting your wrists on anything - gel pads, hard surfaces, a pillow - increases pressure on the nerves around your wrists. Lightly resting is one thing but anything more than that is asking for trouble. Either boost yourself up a few inches or lower the keyboard; it'll give you less of an incentive to rest "heavily" on any surface.
*Keep your monitor around 10-20% below eye-level (I assumed he meant middle of the monitor)
*~90 degree angle at the elbow
That was around 5 years ago - there was more but he never covered "how to remember things when you get old."
Jeff
Vorlon: They are a dying race.
Us: Microsofties? or Hollingites?
Vorlon: Yes.
I think there should be a "nuke first 50 posts" (aka: kneejerk posts) option for subscribers here.
Firstly, Slashdot isn't a person. Slashdot doesn't have an opinion. Slashdot is a community. Slashdot is "lead" for lack of a better word by editors. Taco, an editor, decided to say "Let's nail companies who licence pop-under ads!"
The community did NOT suddenly ok pop-unders. Even if Taco meant that he supported pop-under ads (which I HIGHLY doubt), that doesn't meant the masses that read slashdot suddenly changed their mind.
And of course, people who do change their mind should be attacked! Linux will be the ONLY answer for the rest of time. Microsoft will ALWAYS be bad. No company will ever do good.
So, before you post the next time:
a) The submission and the editor comments represent themselves. NOT Slashdot. The fact that "Linux is dead" was authorized for front-page posting does NOT mean it is.
b) read the article.
c) If anyone says "companies that licence pop-under ads should be shot!", don't accuse them of murder. Now, go re-read what taco commented.
Moderators:
a) AVOID modding up any post short of an amazing one before 50 get posted. THEN reward people who have something intelligent to say.
b) do NOT mod up ANYTHING says "slashdot changed their minds!", "Everyone supports the RIAA now that movie X is on DVD!", etc. If anyone has anything new and intelligent to say about this, they can say it without accusing the entire community of changing their minds. They could also avoid using Everyone, Always, Never and any other absolute.
For a community embracing open source philosophies, there sure is a loud minority that needs to practice opening their mind first.
I'd like to throw my two bits in.
Public funds should not equal public source. There is my bias.
Public funds SHOULD provide public benefit. I don't want tactical nuke control software public sourced so people can browse through, so I guess we'll have to have a restriction there. Oh, and there is that evil cellular lobby that wants to co-fund a project with the government so we'll have to stop that because the cellular companies want to keep some info private.
Eventually, so many exceptions will have to be made, we'll end up with what we have now - sometimes, research stays private, even if we paid for it. By and large, it is publicly available.
In a system where the government imposes must-share rules on everything they touch, we'll also have to identify every penny that came in. Also, if partnering with a company, we'll have to make sure they don't provide anyone that might learn something and use it at the company.
To sum it up: open sourcing everything is wrong. Closing access to all information is wrong. There needs to be a balance.
Worst case scenario in a mixed-system: a company gets access to research that taxpayers can't see. Obviously, there is no benefit to taxpayers correct?
Forgot to mention, the research was on how to get 5x the battery life on Li-ion batteries. The company makes better batteries and makes more money. If they choose to hire more people, we benefit. If they keep all the profit and change nothing, anyone owning stock in the company benefits.
When research is used successfully, it is nearly impossible for society to lose (insert your favourite anti-nuclear idea here to "prove" me wrong). The benefits of everyone being able to use research as opposed to a few (or one) entity seeing that research is small, maybe even zero.
Society benefits from research. This is what we want to encourage, not one-rule-fits-all thinking.
end rant.
Jeff
If you don't like what I have to say, hit "reply" and post your thoughts for discussion, don't mod anyone down because you disagree.
For the record, I believe the same "spirit" is present in the Canadian/US laws.
Nowhere in the law though, does it say the companies must make it easy for you to make the copy.
(This isn't my idea, this was stolen from a slashdot post I read long, long ago)
MAPS might have a few good points but in my wholly uninformed point of view, they seem to deserve to lose.
To sum up 3 years:
Gordon Fecyk: Hey Paul, here is the DUL - I'll even indemnify you of any damages because of the list.
Paul Vixie: Great - I'll make you the maintainer of the DUL and we'll draw something up saying you can regain ownership of the DUL for $10 (the contract minimum in the US at the time). MAPS will take the good and the bad - all the publicity and all the legal trouble associated with it. When you want to leave, you can take the DUL back for $10.
forward 3 years
GF to Dave Rand/MAPS: I'm leaving. Here is $10. I have a recent copy of the DUL. I own it. You can use it free for a little while and we'll work out a contract after that. I'll even let you have first change to negotiate for it.
MAPS to GF: Lawsuit.
MAPS argues in the lawsuit that GF doesn't own the DUL and even if he did, he couldn't maintain it properly on his own, it causes legal issues with MAPS (privacy issues), saying that he owns it hurts MAPS, etc.
If I was MAPS, I'd be protecting my income sources as strongly as possible. Not having followed the MAPS project/organization much and seeing they still accept donations, I would be worried too.
The right thing to do would be to honour the agreement between Paul Vixie and Gordon Fecyk. If it bankrupts the organization, it is a sad thing but something could be worked out. (eg: cheap licencing - Gordon seems *very* reasonable)
The wrong thing is to fight for your life and not even try to do the right thing first.
Then again, if the DUL is a major source of income for them, I can't seem them caring much about doing the right thing. Morals are nice but survival comes first I suppose.
My morals suggested I check google for a cached version of the DUL and post the link but it looks like google didn't get it in time. Anyone have links?
Jeff
Hey there fellow north dude - and north dudes across the country.
As one of many CS grads recently released into the real world, I'm trying to gather some experience-based comments on entering the job market.
If any of you want to give me a shout, send a message my way - I'm at jeff_slash_suffix at jeffdom.com and remove the "_suffix".
I've got a website started and might start a web board about this - anyone with suggestions on job hunting, good web-board software, etc is encouraged to contribute or mail me.
Jeff
Just for the record, this is nothing new nor is it something to worry too much about.
I'd have to dig around my text books for the proper term, but crimes can be placed in two categories. Most offenses are handled "normally" - people are innocent till proven guilty, etc.
There are a class of brimes where you are basically guilty on the spot (if so charged). Every one I can think of is car-related - parking tickets, driving under the influence, speeding, etc. In each one of these cases, proof is relatively easy to come by. If your car goes through a red and there is a picture of your car and a red light, this seems enough for me.
You can always appeal your verdict-by-mail but this tends to be rather difficult since they have a photo of the car, red light and driver (sometimes).
In Ontario a few years ago, we had photo radar on a few major highways - you speed, you get fined. There were quite a few angry people, everything from "tax grab" to "abuse of power" to "trusting unreliable technology" was being reported.
Now that photo radar is gone, the reporting is "everyone wants it back".
While many people just learn to avoid the camera'ed intersections, this is a perfectly legal and moral mechanism to improve road safety.