Penn State recently started a program for non-techies.
Information Sciences and Technology (IST-BS). The classes read like the two years of engineering (but simplified), intermingled with Human Resource-related training like Technical Writing, Communications, some teaching classes, and so on. It was designed by companies looking for tech-saavy workers but not full engineers or programmers.
I assume that's down/up speed. That level costs $35. My current $15 service only gives 1 Mbit/s (and I'm okay with that). I've never paid more than $19 for internet and see no reason to start now.
Sony has never been a customer-oriented company, dating all the way back to Betamax. Their bread-and-butter is professional-level services like TV stations and national production studios. The engineers that work at these places have the patience (and money) to follow Sony's continual upgrade path.
Customers don't. Customers just want to buy something and keep it for 5-10 years. Customers want it to "just work". But Sony prefers to keep offering new products every year - like releasing Betamax I, then Betamax II, then Betamax Hi-Fi, then SuperBeta..... all incompatible standards. The customers said "forget this" and quit.
Now it appears Sony is making the same stupid mistake with the PS3 - trying to force a continual, professional-style upgrade path and breaking customers' hardware (or software) in the process. Customers will soon tire of the hassle, and cost, and jump to another console.
>>>Upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 is easy. Upgrading from XP to Windows 7 is a major undertaking
Major undertaking? You lost me there. Windows 7 is just Vista with a +0.1 bugfix. NT 6.0 to 6.1. It's no more painful than moving from Windows 2000 to XP was (NT 5.0 to 5.1). Therefore if XP to Vista is easy, then XP to Seven should be almost as easy. .
>>>Software being too old, insecure and barely compatible is reason enough.
But IE7 and 8 are no better, security wise. As for compatibility, if you move to IE8 or Firefox, and your timecard and other government apps break, how is that better? It's cheaper to stay put with IE6. ----- Maybe what the UK government really needs to do is have two browsers installed: IE8 for web surfing, and IE6 just for internal usage. Then they don't need to waste money updating their apps.
Oh and age: I'm still using MS Office 97. It still works just fine, and has a minimal memory footprint of just 4 megabytes. Plus it's fast. Why upgrade?
>>>I feel someway qualified to say that it didn't seem it wasn't even half the abomination it was declared to be.
Try running a brand new PC that you just bought, but only came with 1/2 gig of RAM because Microsoft said that's all Vista needs. It runs so slow you'll think there's a Pentium 1 (~200 megahertz) under the hood instead of a 3000 megahertz processor.
Although I later upgraded that PC to 1.5 gig, it still ran pretty poorly compared to my older XP machine.
I'd like to know why they include military expenses as a "subsidy" for fossil fuels. We don't have to use the military to get oil from Iran or Iraq - we could buy it from friendly countries like Canada, UK, Russia.
Also renewable energy like solar cells, hydroelectric, and so on need military protection as well (from invasion or terrorism). So the military expenses should be on that tally sheet too, but they conveniently left it off.
On my job, about five years ago, I installed torrent to grab some Doctor Who audio files to relieve the boredom, and the next day I came-in to discover my computer missing. They thought I had some kind of virus, wiped the drive, and handed it back to me a day later.
If you had RTFA (instead of googling), you'd know what LTE is. It's basically the same speed as 3G, but with 1/4 as much latency for VOIP, online gaminng, and such.
(1) No doubt this is why Verizon ATT and others want to kill-off TV channels 25 through 51 --- so they can expand that 10 megahertz to 170 megahertz worth of cellphone spectrum.
(2) $50 a month sounds like a ripoff, especially considering I'm only paying $15 here in the US. Of course my connection is wired not wireless, but I'm okay with that. It's not a limitation for me.
>>>I don't know why you, a supposedly strict Constitutionalist, would want to limit the freedom of association anyway.
The Constitution doesn't apply to the internal rules of Congress, which are many and varied. If Congress wants to eliminate party affiliations for its members, it can, just the same way it limits free speech to fixed lengths of time. Plus its members chose to be there. They chose to voluntarily abide by Congress rules, just the same way you voluntarily abide by dress codes and other rules on your job. .
>>>We'd end up exactly as we did in the 1790s - with a Congress separated into two groups
Actually the voting record shows that the members of 1789 to 1796 did not divide into groups. They voted their conscience, randomly agreeing or disagreeing with where President Washington stood, with no clear line of separation. Not until the Federalist v. Democrat Congress in 1797 did members develop a Tribe mentality - us versus them.
So my proposal is simple - let's revert to how the Congress operated those first eight years without the division of the seats like we have now. Everyone intermingles.
I don't have to pay a Fine to keep the Walmarts or Pep Boys or Best Buys of the world open. Why would I need to pay a fine to keep Baltimore General open? Answer: I don't. They can cover their costs the same way the aforementioned stores do - through the prices of the things they are selling.
>>>Because free-loaders like yourself...are costing ME money.
Fee-loader? I'd sooner DIE than steal from you. Thieves don't go to paradise (or elysian fields or whatever you believe). I have always paid my own health bills, and will continue to do so. How DARE you sit there and insult me, you worthless piece of shit? I've got almost half a million in the bank, and can easily afford to pay my own bills, thank you very much.
Oh and don't give me that nonsense about "expensive" health costs. My father got a pacemaker installed for just 8000 (yes that was the actual bill). My brother's wife had a hysterectomy for just slightly more $11,000. In other words the procedures were only about 1/6th the cost of the two Lexuses or SUVs or Whatevers in your drive. If you can afford them, you can afford the pacemaker or hysterectomy too.
No because I think deductions are a terrible idea. Why should someone with 5 kids pay less in taxes than I do, if we both earn the same income? Or less tax because he lives in an expensive house while I live in a small two-room unit? It's inequality. Also in a world that's overpopulated already, with suburbs destroying the natural environment, it's ridiculous for the system to be designed to encourage the creation of more humans/sprawl.
I don't think we should have a flat tax, but we should eliminate all these deductions. People should pay the same amount given equal incomes.
Aside -
And on another note, I think the US Income Tax bracket for 0% should be raised from 15,000 to 100,000. Help give some relief to the low and middle incomes, while keeping all other taxes the same.
>>>The problem was that many people would opt out before, and not get any kind of health insurance.
Everything dies. That's not a "problem" or tragedy. It's just a fact. If I choose to die by opting-out of the government-paid health or retirement system, that is my right. ----- As for the current system: Anybody can free care from the corporate hospitals, and then not pay the bill. The cost of these unpaid bills comes out of the paying customers, but not all of it. Some of it also comes out of the pocket of the CEO, the various managers, and stockholders (i.e. they get less profit).
I'm okay with that arrangement. The reason hospitals so favor government-paid healthcare is because then they can suck their profits out of the taxpayerd' wallets. It screws us and favors the megacorp.
>>>more participants are racist than you'd expect from an average organization.
You think? I bet there are just as many racist policies in the "Democrat" organization as the Tea Party. Ever stopped to review their policies? A lot of them are anti-black and/or pro-suppression. The sad part is that many of the D's don't seem to realize their policies are keeping black down - it's like a blind racism. They believe they are doing good, but it's actually the opposite.
Example: Not allowing poor blacks to quit crumbling innercity school and go to a suburban public school to get a better education.
>>>How about the "fines" you pay for roads/schools/police/fire dept./etc ?
Those aren't fines. Those are user fees that I pay, either in advance or retroactively, for the education I received, the police protection, and so on. And in the case of roads, if I don't drive then I don't pay the gasoline/road tax, so it really is an optional tax.
THIS $950 fine I was discussing is an Anti-Choice measure, and it sets the precedent that I can be fined for anything. "You chose not to buy solar panels - fine." "You chose to buy a regular car instead of a hybrid. Fine." "You chose to buy a Honda instead of an American car - fine."
That is not freedom. This is not Democrat.
I know what this party has become, but it's the polar opposite of what its founded Thomas Jefferson intended (a party to defend the 10th amendment).
>>>the large majority of those loans have been repaid.
And then redirected by the Congress towards other projects, like building more bridges to nowhere. So really the money is STILL spent. They converted the 700 billion bailout cash into 700 billion of pork. It's wasteful.
Current National Debt == $130,000 per US home, and projected to be $140,000 by year's end, and $200,000 by the end of Obama's eighth year.
I posted often and frequently that the Bailout Bill was stupid, and that I was happy the Republicans voted it down. Then the Republicans turned-around and voted for the second, revised bill Nancy Pelosi came-up with, and I started calling them Bastards instead of Republicans. And then I joined a Tea Party in December of '08. It's not my fault you chose not to hear my voice. You also chose not to hear my voice in 9/12 when I said going to war was a dumbass decision, but was passed near-unanimously by the Congress (both D's and R's).
Oh and by the way the Tea Parties date back to December 2007 when Bush was still in office. It was originally started by libertarian Ron Paul, who then stepped aside after his campaign was finished, but the momentum continued without him.
Why are you hating on Alabama? Jeez. That's almost as bad as hating on..... say, Greece. Just because it's a backwards agrarian state doesn't mean they don't teach evolution and science.
As soon as you enter Congress, you are no longer allowed to belong to any party. You become one single whole group, with no allegiances to anything but your own personal beliefs, your voters back home, and the Law.
If that works, extend it to the Member State Parliaments too.
Slashdot Mirror
Penn State recently started a program for non-techies.
Information Sciences and Technology (IST-BS). The classes read like the two years of engineering (but simplified), intermingled with Human Resource-related training like Technical Writing, Communications, some teaching classes, and so on. It was designed by companies looking for tech-saavy workers but not full engineers or programmers.
OH and it's a wideband technology (width equal to two TV channels), so each tower can handle lots and lots of people at the same time.
>>>Really 5/.5 mbps for $15?
I assume that's down/up speed. That level costs $35. My current $15 service only gives 1 Mbit/s (and I'm okay with that). I've never paid more than $19 for internet and see no reason to start now.
Sony has never been a customer-oriented company, dating all the way back to Betamax. Their bread-and-butter is professional-level services like TV stations and national production studios. The engineers that work at these places have the patience (and money) to follow Sony's continual upgrade path.
Customers don't. Customers just want to buy something and keep it for 5-10 years. Customers want it to "just work". But Sony prefers to keep offering new products every year - like releasing Betamax I, then Betamax II, then Betamax Hi-Fi, then SuperBeta..... all incompatible standards. The customers said "forget this" and quit.
Now it appears Sony is making the same stupid mistake with the PS3 - trying to force a continual, professional-style upgrade path and breaking customers' hardware (or software) in the process. Customers will soon tire of the hassle, and cost, and jump to another console.
Anonymous Coward didn't read my message. Let me spell it out: Many companies ban torrenting or P2P.
>>>Upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 is easy. Upgrading from XP to Windows 7 is a major undertaking
Major undertaking? You lost me there. Windows 7 is just Vista with a +0.1 bugfix. NT 6.0 to 6.1. It's no more painful than moving from Windows 2000 to XP was (NT 5.0 to 5.1). Therefore if XP to Vista is easy, then XP to Seven should be almost as easy.
.
>>>Software being too old, insecure and barely compatible is reason enough.
But IE7 and 8 are no better, security wise. As for compatibility, if you move to IE8 or Firefox, and your timecard and other government apps break, how is that better? It's cheaper to stay put with IE6. ----- Maybe what the UK government really needs to do is have two browsers installed: IE8 for web surfing, and IE6 just for internal usage. Then they don't need to waste money updating their apps.
Oh and age: I'm still using MS Office 97. It still works just fine, and has a minimal memory footprint of just 4 megabytes. Plus it's fast. Why upgrade?
>>>I feel someway qualified to say that it didn't seem it wasn't even half the abomination it was declared to be.
Try running a brand new PC that you just bought, but only came with 1/2 gig of RAM because Microsoft said that's all Vista needs. It runs so slow you'll think there's a Pentium 1 (~200 megahertz) under the hood instead of a 3000 megahertz processor.
Although I later upgraded that PC to 1.5 gig, it still ran pretty poorly compared to my older XP machine.
I'd like to know why they include military expenses as a "subsidy" for fossil fuels. We don't have to use the military to get oil from Iran or Iraq - we could buy it from friendly countries like Canada, UK, Russia.
Also renewable energy like solar cells, hydroelectric, and so on need military protection as well (from invasion or terrorism). So the military expenses should be on that tally sheet too, but they conveniently left it off.
I'm surprised any employee gets away with that.
On my job, about five years ago, I installed torrent to grab some Doctor Who audio files to relieve the boredom, and the next day I came-in to discover my computer missing. They thought I had some kind of virus, wiped the drive, and handed it back to me a day later.
Why is it cheaper? After all Finland has the same celltower installation costs that we have in the US. Are the costs subsidized by taxpayers?
Also what is the typical cost for a "14.4mbit/sec 3.5G (HSPA) data line" when you look at the EU taken as a whole?
If you had RTFA (instead of googling), you'd know what LTE is. It's basically the same speed as 3G, but with 1/4 as much latency for VOIP, online gaminng, and such.
http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/03/faster-mobile-broadband-driven-by-congestion-not-speed.ars/2
(1) No doubt this is why Verizon ATT and others want to kill-off TV channels 25 through 51 --- so they can expand that 10 megahertz to 170 megahertz worth of cellphone spectrum.
(2) $50 a month sounds like a ripoff, especially considering I'm only paying $15 here in the US. Of course my connection is wired not wireless, but I'm okay with that. It's not a limitation for me.
>>>I don't know why you, a supposedly strict Constitutionalist, would want to limit the freedom of association anyway.
The Constitution doesn't apply to the internal rules of Congress, which are many and varied. If Congress wants to eliminate party affiliations for its members, it can, just the same way it limits free speech to fixed lengths of time. Plus its members chose to be there. They chose to voluntarily abide by Congress rules, just the same way you voluntarily abide by dress codes and other rules on your job.
.
>>>We'd end up exactly as we did in the 1790s - with a Congress separated into two groups
Actually the voting record shows that the members of 1789 to 1796 did not divide into groups. They voted their conscience, randomly agreeing or disagreeing with where President Washington stood, with no clear line of separation. Not until the Federalist v. Democrat Congress in 1797 did members develop a Tribe mentality - us versus them.
So my proposal is simple - let's revert to how the Congress operated those first eight years without the division of the seats like we have now. Everyone intermingles.
I don't have to pay a Fine to keep the Walmarts or Pep Boys or Best Buys of the world open. Why would I need to pay a fine to keep Baltimore General open? Answer: I don't. They can cover their costs the same way the aforementioned stores do - through the prices of the things they are selling.
>>>Because free-loaders like yourself...are costing ME money.
Fee-loader? I'd sooner DIE than steal from you. Thieves don't go to paradise (or elysian fields or whatever you believe). I have always paid my own health bills, and will continue to do so. How DARE you sit there and insult me, you worthless piece of shit? I've got almost half a million in the bank, and can easily afford to pay my own bills, thank you very much.
Oh and don't give me that nonsense about "expensive" health costs. My father got a pacemaker installed for just 8000 (yes that was the actual bill). My brother's wife had a hysterectomy for just slightly more $11,000. In other words the procedures were only about 1/6th the cost of the two Lexuses or SUVs or Whatevers in your drive. If you can afford them, you can afford the pacemaker or hysterectomy too.
>>>hopefully you get my point?
No because I think deductions are a terrible idea. Why should someone with 5 kids pay less in taxes than I do, if we both earn the same income? Or less tax because he lives in an expensive house while I live in a small two-room unit? It's inequality. Also in a world that's overpopulated already, with suburbs destroying the natural environment, it's ridiculous for the system to be designed to encourage the creation of more humans/sprawl.
I don't think we should have a flat tax, but we should eliminate all these deductions. People should pay the same amount given equal incomes.
Aside -
And on another note, I think the US Income Tax bracket for 0% should be raised from 15,000 to 100,000. Help give some relief to the low and middle incomes, while keeping all other taxes the same.
>>>The problem was that many people would opt out before, and not get any kind of health insurance.
Everything dies. That's not a "problem" or tragedy. It's just a fact. If I choose to die by opting-out of the government-paid health or retirement system, that is my right. ----- As for the current system: Anybody can free care from the corporate hospitals, and then not pay the bill. The cost of these unpaid bills comes out of the paying customers, but not all of it. Some of it also comes out of the pocket of the CEO, the various managers, and stockholders (i.e. they get less profit).
I'm okay with that arrangement. The reason hospitals so favor government-paid healthcare is because then they can suck their profits out of the taxpayerd' wallets. It screws us and favors the megacorp.
>>>more participants are racist than you'd expect from an average organization.
You think? I bet there are just as many racist policies in the "Democrat" organization as the Tea Party. Ever stopped to review their policies? A lot of them are anti-black and/or pro-suppression. The sad part is that many of the D's don't seem to realize their policies are keeping black down - it's like a blind racism. They believe they are doing good, but it's actually the opposite.
Example: Not allowing poor blacks to quit crumbling innercity school and go to a suburban public school to get a better education.
>>>How about the "fines" you pay for roads/schools/police/fire dept./etc ?
Those aren't fines. Those are user fees that I pay, either in advance or retroactively, for the education I received, the police protection, and so on. And in the case of roads, if I don't drive then I don't pay the gasoline/road tax, so it really is an optional tax.
THIS $950 fine I was discussing is an Anti-Choice measure, and it sets the precedent that I can be fined for anything. "You chose not to buy solar panels - fine." "You chose to buy a regular car instead of a hybrid. Fine." "You chose to buy a Honda instead of an American car - fine."
That is not freedom.
This is not Democrat.
I know what this party has become, but it's the polar opposite of what its founded Thomas Jefferson intended (a party to defend the 10th amendment).
>>>the large majority of those loans have been repaid.
And then redirected by the Congress towards other projects, like building more bridges to nowhere. So really the money is STILL spent. They converted the 700 billion bailout cash into 700 billion of pork. It's wasteful.
Current National Debt == $130,000 per US home, and projected to be $140,000 by year's end, and $200,000 by the end of Obama's eighth year.
Well you heard at least one voice - Mine.
I posted often and frequently that the Bailout Bill was stupid, and that I was happy the Republicans voted it down. Then the Republicans turned-around and voted for the second, revised bill Nancy Pelosi came-up with, and I started calling them Bastards instead of Republicans. And then I joined a Tea Party in December of '08. It's not my fault you chose not to hear my voice. You also chose not to hear my voice in 9/12 when I said going to war was a dumbass decision, but was passed near-unanimously by the Congress (both D's and R's).
Oh and by the way the Tea Parties date back to December 2007 when Bush was still in office. It was originally started by libertarian Ron Paul, who then stepped aside after his campaign was finished, but the momentum continued without him.
registered users vs. registered users (posting as AC) so they can both insult AND mod down the person as (-1 troll)
I hate that.
No what's "wrong" is that I am being forced to pay a $950 Fine because I exercised my Pro-Choice right not to buy hospital insurance.
That's wrong. And that's what the tea parties are protesting against (in addition to Bush's idiotic 700 billion banker bailout).
Why are you hating on Alabama? Jeez. That's almost as bad as hating on..... say, Greece. Just because it's a backwards agrarian state doesn't mean they don't teach evolution and science.
As soon as you enter Congress, you are no longer allowed to belong to any party. You become one single whole group, with no allegiances to anything but your own personal beliefs, your voters back home, and the Law.
If that works, extend it to the Member State Parliaments too.