He took that into account. Don't be a fool yourself?
What's more, you don't even get to keep it for the entire two years. You have to give it back at the end of each year. Bet you don't get "yours" back at the begining of the year either. That's a major "pain in the ass" factor. Plus you automatically get charged for any nonwarrenty damage done to you "your" computer, even if it's damage *you* would just live with.
It would be interesting to know what the standard failure rate in the honors program is, wouldn't it?
For that matter, I not sure of the quality of the school. Every college of quality that I've ever been to considered *everybody* to be in the "honors" program. The very existence of such a program smacks of "junior" college, pay to be in extended high school. In other words they don't really consider their "non-honors" students to be doing legitimate college work.
At a "real" college you do your work as best you can as everyone is expected to and if you go above and beyond you get your Cum Laude at the end of it.
Ok, I don't *totally* mean to belittle such colleges. There is a legitmate need for some people to get two year "degrees" in "hotel hospitality." ( Because they haven't learned on their own to be polite to customers or how to make a bank deposit?) But I'm not sure I'd want to enroll in a college as a serious student that makes such overt distinctions between its "real" students and its "fake" ones.
If you're the sort who feels the need for that sort of rank of social superiourity just go to a "real" college and join an uptight, snooty frat or something.
Well, you was lucky then. In *my* day we had to use slide rules and *guess* where the decimal point went, uphill, both ways.
And we liked it!
Oh, did I mention eating cold lump of poison? Oh, wait, you still have to do that, don't you? At least the quality of college food is a social constant.
Another reason to forgo the iBook and live off campus.
In my city I would have my choice of two schools within 10 minutes walk from my parents home. One of them is a city community college allied with the state system ( get your associates at the city college and automatic transfer to the four year program at state) and one is an expensive, ritzy, private college of high repute (Union). And this in a city of only 50,000 residents.
I could get a new "businessman's" one bedroom apartment, equally within walking distance, for only $450/month. Ok, that's $5,400/year, plus food, but to have my own home rather than a dorm room. Get a roomate, if you are so inclined, and have the shared home, but enough left over to buy the laptop on your own, and odds are you'ld have to share the crappy little dorm room anyway, with a "bathroom" you have to share with the whole frikkin' dorm, not just one other person. Rent the apartment first yourself and you even have *personal choice* up front over whether you think your potential roomie is suitable. Pop for another $500/year between the two of you and you each get your own bedroom.
A "college student's special" studio apartment would only set you back $350/month (yes, with everything). That's only $4200 a year.
Most colleges have private student housing available within walking distance of campus, and those that don't I've found usually provide free shuttlebus service to/from town. Not as convienient as your own car but a damned sight cheaper.
Living on your own in town can also be the difference between being able to keep up with your school work AND maintain a part-time job, and not being able to work except for a "student work program" which pays less than minimun wage. This difference alone could make up for a couple of iBooks a year.
All that being said there are valid reasons beyond the financial for the college encouraging people to live on campus. Thoreau once marveled at the fact that colleges charge you money for the least valuable service they provide, i.e. classes, while the most valuable service, living within the enviroment of the campus and associating with all and sundry in that enviroment, essentially came free. He had a point.
In the sense you mean they only deal with high level tax issues, and as has already been noted elsewhere the IRS itself will provide you with all the relevant computer data and programing you need.
What's more, the laws change every time a legislative body goes into session.
Quickbooks is no replacement for a good accountant and lawyer.
It is the businessman's responsibility to know and understand all laws applicable to his business. Relying on software to *understand* it for you is folly that can only lead to eventual disaster. That people do so I actually find shocking. Don't end up being like the girl refered to in a post a couple of days ago who insisted her physics paper claiming that electrons go 6 times the speed of light was correct because it was the answer her computer gave her. The IRS won't buy that line any more than the physics professor did.
You are right. The laws can be so arcane that *noone* understands them, not even the people who wrote them.
That includes the people who wrote Quickbooks. Garbage in, Garbage out.
Do your own homework. Know your own business. It's cheaper - and safer. It takes more time. If you went into business to have more time - boy did you make a mistake! As I like to say to people, the greatest thing about being in business for yourself is that you get to chose your working hours - all 100 a week of them.
As well as handling your own finacial and legal matters at a low level other matters you should be prepared to take care of personally as the new CEO of your own startup firm include:
Cleaning and unclogging toilets, shoveling walks, taking out garbage, chasing racoons out of the vents and wall spaces ( Yes, I've actually had to do this), washing floors, cleaning carpets, being the LAST person in the business with a nice desk and the last person in the firm to *make any money.*
If you aren't fully prepared to be personally responsible for all of the above, even if you have millions in start up capital from somewhere, get an hourly job. You'll be happier.
But that would rely on programing. The spreadsheet solution requires no programing knowledge ( despite what some of the trollier replys to my post have implied. A spreadsheet is a businessman's app, not a programing enviroment. If you can't figure out what a spreadsheet is and how to work one within a few minutes you have no business in business).
Under certain circumstances, for certain people, your solution is superiour.
With this caveat I suppose. *I* would never do it quite that way. In any business of mine no accounting data ever goes on the net. Ever. The accounting dept. is stand alone. The idea that in my small office all can access the books gives me the willies. *I* can access the books. My *bookeeper* ( should I even have one at the time) can access the books. That's it. A few times a year an accountant will be given temporary access.
It can be inconvienient at times, but nowhere near so inconvienient as having the SEC digging through your computers caches and coming up with all sorts of juicey little tidbits. God forbid that any internal finacial data should ever be transmited across the Internet. Then they don't even have to dig around in *your* caches.
In the old days of paper and pencil the bookeeper was the first employee to get their own office. The office contained a safe. Not for the money. for the *books.*
Grandma knew something about sucking eggs that the "chillen's" haven't figured out yet.
"Ok, let me just run home and fire up the computer to print this check and I'll be right back."
An outfit so small and so poor that it *needs* to run free Visicalc on an old 8088 doesn't print checks, it writes them just like most of the world does. It doesn't have very many to write either. Maybe a half dozen a month if it's unlucky.
In my last retail business (3000 square foot store) I wrote three checks a month. That's all. At that "volume" hand writing them is quicker, easier and cheaper.
Honestly, you realize hundreds of billions of dollars have been transacted perfectly well with no more "technology" then pen and ink don't you? I have a physical handicap that makes writing a difficulty and it's *still* easier to hand write small volumes of checks than print them.
When an person/outfit gets big enough that the printing volume gets large enough that there is *benifit* to printing checks and forms then they use their office suite to print them, as I already suggested. Document processors are just that, not just overbloated $400 post-it note writers. If it comes to that I first started printing checks and forms on an 8088 running Microsoft Works 1.0.
It seems easy to forget that just because new ways of doing things come up that the old ways still work just fine, and in certain situations, for certain people, are even *better* than the new ways.
The right tool for the right job, and the size of the job helps determine the right tool.
Honestly, relying on a program like Quickbooks to write a half dozen checks a month, one W2 * a year* and keep a daily transaction ledger is just plain doofey.
To equate a spreadsheet with programing and IT as some above have done is even doofier. Spreadsheets are an office app, just like a WP. Spreadsheets have been traditionally hated by the IT deparment because they were the app that took computing *OUT* of the IP department and put it on a PC on every businessman's own desk.
Accounting apps are there to save time and money. If they do neither they are less than worthless. They are NOT supposed to replace understanding of what's going on with your money. If you *can't* balance a checkbook because * you don't understand* the process perhaps business is not the best place for you.
If you *do* understand the process whipping up a checkbook balancer in a spreadsheet is barely the work of minutes. A simple, single entry, bookkeeping system is hardly the work of more minutes, even if you've never used a spreadsheet before. Double entry will take a bit longer, but then I've refered the reader to a work that lays it all out for them. All they have to do is type it in.
An office suite, ( which, again, isn't IT, it's a collection of apps for *office workers*) does everything Quickbooks does, and more (without phoning home). That's why MS was late to the "Financial management package" party. It never occured to them that anyone would want such a thing because * they had already provided one,* complete with instructions on how to use it as such.
It's called MS Office.
KOffice works just as well. Open Office works even better.
What the hell do you think is really going on behind the scenes in Quickbooks, behind all the pretty graphics and doofey interface? It's just a *crippled* office suite.
"Fight the conventional wisdom! make good code by doing it right, not by being a genius who can hold 4000 variables in his mind over a month-long project (because you aren't one anyway)."
The hell I'm not! ( Not as good as my father though, who had a true photographic memeory, scan a book and read it back from the "image" in his mind at a later date. Very annoying to mere mortals)
But this is irrellevant ( and how a relevant got into my pajamas I'll never know). The point is that anyone *else* who is ever going to look at your code can't be expected to spend weeks just figuring the bloody mess out. Write tight code and comment well and comment often.
*Assume* that someone else will be responsible for maintaining your work and treat them decently.
And if you want to take the time and trouble you can hack spreadsheets to be just as automatic as Quicken in any modern Office Suite, like, say-Open Office. Frankly, since I understand the math involved, I'm not sure why anyone would bother with propriatary accounting systems.
Roll your own. If you don't understand the math it will force you to learn it. In my opinion you *should* understand the math of handling your money, especially if it's a business.
What's more, commnand line spreadsheets are readily available ( Visicalc itself is now available for download) so even people, businesses or nonprofits with little or no capital can run a spreadsheet on free antique hardware that Quicken would choke on.
I highly recommend the book "Elements of Spreadsheet Style" by John Nevison. Out of print but available used through Amazon for under ten bucks.
An older Edition of the classic book "Small Time Operator" known as the "Computer Edition" includes complete Visicalc code for all of your bookeeping needs. This is also available used through Amazon but will set you back twentysix bucks. Cheap price for avoiding the propriatary rat race and a hell of a book for anyone just getting started in their first business.
places limitations on algebraic systems. One of the things that it does *not* do is place limits on understanding because it imposes no limits on * the number of algebraic systems* you can devise.
If a theorem cannot be expressed in one system you simply make another where it can.
One of the fascinating things about the human mind is its ability to go *beyond* single logical structures and fully understand an infinite number of incompatible algebras.
The problem with developing AI isn't so much that we don't understand the human mind, it's that we *do* understand it to be something well beyond a simple algebraic computer, which at the moment is all computers are. They are *computational* devices with a preprogramed logic. *That* logic is subject to Godel.
Your computer is a giant abacus. Nothing more, nothing less. This says nothing about the possibilities of developing machines that are *not* simply a bank of bistable switches.
Nor is there any axiom which states that intelligence must be *human* in form.
That last point is outrageously important to all sorts of fields.
"Arguing with an engineer is like mud-wrestling a pig; after a few hours, you realize he likes it."
Ah, but you should see them run screaming from the room when us physicists and mathmaticians enter the fray. We like it so much we bring our own mud with us and start right off flinging.
by Kurt Vonnegut. Pay particular attention to the one entitled "Harrison Bergeron," one of the greatest short social commentaries ever written and amazingly prescient.
Then check out his novel "Cat's Cradle."
Many of his stories take place in a fictionalized version of locations mere feet from where I sit right now. Kurt spent some time as a PR writer for GE. Illium, NY in the stories is Schenectady, the Illium Works are GE and the Iroquois River is the Mohawk.
Anyone who reads 1984 should also read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." 1984 is a vision of the future totalitarian society USSR style. Brave New World is a view of the the future totalitarian society USA style, although it's getting harder and harder to tell the two apart. I suppose there are those who would get *really* bent out of shape by this one though as the society pictured teaches sex and promiscuity to children whose age is in the single digits, not to mention government sanctioned recreational drug use.
Very Swiftian. Which reminds me, I just love turning younger people on to Gulliver's Travels, the book, as opposed to the silly movie/TV versions.
both in and out of schools, will be using all the focus on the internet as a distraction while quitely slipping these subversive documents called "books" to "kids" under the table.
I recommend "Farenheit 451", "Lies my Teacher Told Me" and "Welcome to the Monkey House" for starters.
Indeed, any librarian who isn't doint this isn't a libraian at all, just a book filing clerk, and should find some other line of work.
In the book an old man is recalling the "good old days," and in particular TV shows he used to watch. His young grandaughter is puzzled by this and responds:
"But grandfather, you don't watch TV. TV watches you."
By the way, been to a mall or a major airport lately?
about customizing my own Linux box, no, I don't think it was. Nor did I at any point compare the imaginitive powers of *any* Linux user to Einstein's, let alone the 'average' Linux user's.
I will go on record though as saying that the "personalization" of my own Linux box goes far beyond the mere choosing of options. That's why I use Linux. It allows me to hand craft my own commands, libraries, apps and even the OS itself to an extent not possible in other OS's.
As it happens I am a physicist by training whose mother founded the ceramics dept. at Alfred and whose father is an internationally known writer and I've been in the habit of rubbing elbows and just plain hanging out with Nobel's and "near" Nobel's for decades. I can't claim to have met Einstein but I've known some of those minds who he himself admired.
I think I've got a broad enough view to have a reasonable idea of what is creative and what isn't.
A six year old with eight crayolas and average IQ can be very creative. So can a kid with a LOGO interpreter.
Just because you only see the space inside the lines of your coloring book doesn't mean that's the way everybody does it.
Citroen or Messerschitt in America, or eaten something wasn't a "breakfast cereal" at all for breakfast, or eschewed furniture completely.
Even where the culture allows "choice" without discrimination or ostracisation it only allows such choices from a fairly narrow check list.
Stray from that list and yes, the car you drive and your furniture (or lack thereof) will have your neighbors all clucking their tounges very, VERY loudly.
with OSX on it, to go along with the System 7 and OS8 boxen in my house.
It isn't because of any particular love of Apples though, it's because I'm a geek, I want at least one of everything I can get my grubby little grounded paws on. So in my case at least being Linux user who wants a Mac doesn't confer any special status to or feelings about Macs in general.
Hell, I'd adore having a Babbage machine. Now THAT would be cool.
and an old time mainframe guy. Then he's wearing sandals ( having learned through experience how idiotic going around barefooted is these days) and has a grey ponytail to go along with the beard.
When you see this guy wave and say hi, it's me (unless he's wearing rainbow suspenders. I hate suspenders).
KFG
Re:The thermostat that controls your house heat. .
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It doesn't know that. In fact it can't know that. It can only *assume* that. That's the failure of all mechanical heuristic approaches. The human mind is more complex and dasterdly than that.
In fact Brasil deals directly with this very example.
The smartest robot is stupider than my cat, and I wouldn't trust heuristic decisions to my cat, at least with regards to my own safety and comfort.
Clippy was a bad idea. Putting clippy in control of my house when I'm perfectly capable of spending the 2 seconds to make a decision and actually *do* something myself is a revolting concept.
Maybe I've left the door open because the damned thermostat is acting funny and I need to the cool the house down through alternate means.
In the real world as it is right now this problem is dealt with by the age old method simpler, and more effectively, by the proper placement of the thermostat in the most temperature stable portion of the house *away* from the front door. Never use a computer to do what ordinary common sense arangement of physical parameters renders unecessary.
Nor can any artificial hueristic sense what *I want* at any given time. Like leaving the door open for the breeze. Humans are wonderfully changable in mood and 50 degrees may be comfortable for me one minute and intollerable the next, completely unpredictably. So even a "perfect" robot is only going to be able to operate effectively a certain small percentage of the time.
More often than not the most effective way to deal with an issue is to get off your ass for 10 whole seconds and deal directly with the issue, personally.
"Immobile robots" deal with certain things very effectively, like timing the spark to your car's engine, but very poorly when trying to figure out WHY the door is open and just what it should do about it.
There isn't even savings in human time and aggravation if you simply replace having to do it yourself with having to hit the override button and do it yourself anyway half the time.
it's still possible to buy or download older distros if you're starting from scratch. This makes sure that everything is coordinated on the software/library front.
If you have no need for the latest Windows workalike GUI or certain hardware support it may even well be the "correct" way to go.
Red Hat 5.2 is a real workhorse of a distro.
On my old 486 VGA laptop I run mulinux which I belive still runs a 2.0x kernel. Boots from a single floppy and uses UMSDOS so it doesn't interfere with my Windows 3.11 install at all. If all you run is vi and some network tools this is really all you need.
There's lots of work still to be gotten out of older kernels.
Kindly take every 486 in working condition you can find and drop it off at my house. A dozen will do nicely thank you. Hell, I'll even take a few busted ones in the lot.
And while you're here I've got a few NST's ( Nice Shiney Things) to sell you. Cheap Price, especial just for you, mi Amigo, orginal, from di ruins.
Glad to know that stability is no longer a needed feature of servers.
Sorry for biting the bait though. It wasn't even a very good troll.
KFG
The thermostat that controls your house heat. . .
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( or fridge heat or car engine heat)is nothing more than an immobile robot. Some of them even have electrical logic circuits these days, but even the "old fashioned" kind were a simple analog robot with its "logic" built into the properties of the materials.
Pretty much nothing to see here I'm afraid. Your house has been full of variants of the simple "immobile robot" for several decades.
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He took that into account. Don't be a fool yourself?
What's more, you don't even get to keep it for the entire two years. You have to give it back at the end of each year. Bet you don't get "yours" back at the begining of the year either. That's a major "pain in the ass" factor. Plus you automatically get charged for any nonwarrenty damage done to you "your" computer, even if it's damage *you* would just live with.
It would be interesting to know what the standard failure rate in the honors program is, wouldn't it?
For that matter, I not sure of the quality of the school. Every college of quality that I've ever been to considered *everybody* to be in the "honors" program. The very existence of such a program smacks of "junior" college, pay to be in extended high school. In other words they don't really consider their "non-honors" students to be doing legitimate college work.
At a "real" college you do your work as best you can as everyone is expected to and if you go above and beyond you get your Cum Laude at the end of it.
Ok, I don't *totally* mean to belittle such colleges. There is a legitmate need for some people to get two year "degrees" in "hotel hospitality." ( Because they haven't learned on their own to be polite to customers or how to make a bank deposit?) But I'm not sure I'd want to enroll in a college as a serious student that makes such overt distinctions between its "real" students and its "fake" ones.
If you're the sort who feels the need for that sort of rank of social superiourity just go to a "real" college and join an uptight, snooty frat or something.
KFG
Well, you was lucky then. In *my* day we had to use slide rules and *guess* where the decimal point went, uphill, both ways.
And we liked it!
Oh, did I mention eating cold lump of poison? Oh, wait, you still have to do that, don't you? At least the quality of college food is a social constant.
Another reason to forgo the iBook and live off campus.
KFG
In my city I would have my choice of two schools within 10 minutes walk from my parents home. One of them is a city community college allied with the state system ( get your associates at the city college and automatic transfer to the four year program at state) and one is an expensive, ritzy, private college of high repute (Union). And this in a city of only 50,000 residents.
I could get a new "businessman's" one bedroom apartment, equally within walking distance, for only $450/month. Ok, that's $5,400/year, plus food, but to have my own home rather than a dorm room. Get a roomate, if you are so inclined, and have the shared home, but enough left over to buy the laptop on your own, and odds are you'ld have to share the crappy little dorm room anyway, with a "bathroom" you have to share with the whole frikkin' dorm, not just one other person. Rent the apartment first yourself and you even have *personal choice* up front over whether you think your potential roomie is suitable. Pop for another $500/year between the two of you and you each get your own bedroom.
A "college student's special" studio apartment would only set you back $350/month (yes, with everything). That's only $4200 a year.
Most colleges have private student housing available within walking distance of campus, and those that don't I've found usually provide free shuttlebus service to/from town. Not as convienient as your own car but a damned sight cheaper.
Living on your own in town can also be the difference between being able to keep up with your school work AND maintain a part-time job, and not being able to work except for a "student work program" which pays less than minimun wage. This difference alone could make up for a couple of iBooks a year.
All that being said there are valid reasons beyond the financial for the college encouraging people to live on campus. Thoreau once marveled at the fact that colleges charge you money for the least valuable service they provide, i.e. classes, while the most valuable service, living within the enviroment of the campus and associating with all and sundry in that enviroment, essentially came free. He had a point.
KFG
I think you need to take a basic economics course. Your math seems a bit off.
And that's only for *tuition.* Remember, this program posits paying room and board for two years as well to get the "free" computer.
KFG
For that matter, I once ran across Sally Jessie Raphael while flipping channels and recognized a friend's wife as a guest. The topic of the show?
Married Prostitutes. I'm not making that up. The friend died of AIDS last year.
KFG
In the sense you mean they only deal with high level tax issues, and as has already been noted elsewhere the IRS itself will provide you with all the relevant computer data and programing you need.
What's more, the laws change every time a legislative body goes into session.
Quickbooks is no replacement for a good accountant and lawyer.
It is the businessman's responsibility to know and understand all laws applicable to his business. Relying on software to *understand* it for you is folly that can only lead to eventual disaster. That people do so I actually find shocking. Don't end up being like the girl refered to in a post a couple of days ago who insisted her physics paper claiming that electrons go 6 times the speed of light was correct because it was the answer her computer gave her. The IRS won't buy that line any more than the physics professor did.
You are right. The laws can be so arcane that *noone* understands them, not even the people who wrote them.
That includes the people who wrote Quickbooks. Garbage in, Garbage out.
Do your own homework. Know your own business. It's cheaper - and safer. It takes more time. If you went into business to have more time - boy did you make a mistake! As I like to say to people, the greatest thing about being in business for yourself is that you get to chose your working hours - all 100 a week of them.
As well as handling your own finacial and legal matters at a low level other matters you should be prepared to take care of personally as the new CEO of your own startup firm include:
Cleaning and unclogging toilets, shoveling walks, taking out garbage, chasing racoons out of the vents and wall spaces ( Yes, I've actually had to do this), washing floors, cleaning carpets, being the LAST person in the business with a nice desk and the last person in the firm to *make any money.*
If you aren't fully prepared to be personally responsible for all of the above, even if you have millions in start up capital from somewhere, get an hourly job. You'll be happier.
KFG
But that would rely on programing. The spreadsheet solution requires no programing knowledge ( despite what some of the trollier replys to my post have implied. A spreadsheet is a businessman's app, not a programing enviroment. If you can't figure out what a spreadsheet is and how to work one within a few minutes you have no business in business).
Under certain circumstances, for certain people, your solution is superiour.
With this caveat I suppose. *I* would never do it quite that way. In any business of mine no accounting data ever goes on the net. Ever. The accounting dept. is stand alone. The idea that in my small office all can access the books gives me the willies. *I* can access the books. My *bookeeper* ( should I even have one at the time) can access the books. That's it. A few times a year an accountant will be given temporary access.
It can be inconvienient at times, but nowhere near so inconvienient as having the SEC digging through your computers caches and coming up with all sorts of juicey little tidbits. God forbid that any internal finacial data should ever be transmited across the Internet. Then they don't even have to dig around in *your* caches.
In the old days of paper and pencil the bookeeper was the first employee to get their own office. The office contained a safe. Not for the money. for the *books.*
Grandma knew something about sucking eggs that the "chillen's" haven't figured out yet.
KFG
"Ok, let me just run home and fire up the computer to print this check and I'll be right back."
An outfit so small and so poor that it *needs* to run free Visicalc on an old 8088 doesn't print checks, it writes them just like most of the world does. It doesn't have very many to write either. Maybe a half dozen a month if it's unlucky.
In my last retail business (3000 square foot store) I wrote three checks a month. That's all. At that "volume" hand writing them is quicker, easier and cheaper.
Honestly, you realize hundreds of billions of dollars have been transacted perfectly well with no more "technology" then pen and ink don't you? I have a physical handicap that makes writing a difficulty and it's *still* easier to hand write small volumes of checks than print them.
When an person/outfit gets big enough that the printing volume gets large enough that there is *benifit* to printing checks and forms then they use their office suite to print them, as I already suggested. Document processors are just that, not just overbloated $400 post-it note writers. If it comes to that I first started printing checks and forms on an 8088 running Microsoft Works 1.0.
It seems easy to forget that just because new ways of doing things come up that the old ways still work just fine, and in certain situations, for certain people, are even *better* than the new ways.
The right tool for the right job, and the size of the job helps determine the right tool.
Honestly, relying on a program like Quickbooks to write a half dozen checks a month, one W2 * a year* and keep a daily transaction ledger is just plain doofey.
To equate a spreadsheet with programing and IT as some above have done is even doofier. Spreadsheets are an office app, just like a WP. Spreadsheets have been traditionally hated by the IT deparment because they were the app that took computing *OUT* of the IP department and put it on a PC on every businessman's own desk.
Accounting apps are there to save time and money. If they do neither they are less than worthless. They are NOT supposed to replace understanding of what's going on with your money. If you *can't* balance a checkbook because * you don't understand* the process perhaps business is not the best place for you.
If you *do* understand the process whipping up a checkbook balancer in a spreadsheet is barely the work of minutes. A simple, single entry, bookkeeping system is hardly the work of more minutes, even if you've never used a spreadsheet before. Double entry will take a bit longer, but then I've refered the reader to a work that lays it all out for them. All they have to do is type it in.
An office suite, ( which, again, isn't IT, it's a collection of apps for *office workers*) does everything Quickbooks does, and more (without phoning home). That's why MS was late to the "Financial management package" party. It never occured to them that anyone would want such a thing because * they had already provided one,* complete with instructions on how to use it as such.
It's called MS Office.
KOffice works just as well. Open Office works even better.
What the hell do you think is really going on behind the scenes in Quickbooks, behind all the pretty graphics and doofey interface? It's just a *crippled* office suite.
Cripple your own.
KFG
"Fight the conventional wisdom! make good code by doing it right, not by being a genius who can hold 4000 variables in his mind over a month-long project (because you aren't one anyway)."
The hell I'm not! ( Not as good as my father though, who had a true photographic memeory, scan a book and read it back from the "image" in his mind at a later date. Very annoying to mere mortals)
But this is irrellevant ( and how a relevant got into my pajamas I'll never know). The point is that anyone *else* who is ever going to look at your code can't be expected to spend weeks just figuring the bloody mess out. Write tight code and comment well and comment often.
*Assume* that someone else will be responsible for maintaining your work and treat them decently.
KFG
And if you want to take the time and trouble you can hack spreadsheets to be just as automatic as Quicken in any modern Office Suite, like, say-Open Office. Frankly, since I understand the math involved, I'm not sure why anyone would bother with propriatary accounting systems.
Roll your own. If you don't understand the math it will force you to learn it. In my opinion you *should* understand the math of handling your money, especially if it's a business.
What's more, commnand line spreadsheets are readily available ( Visicalc itself is now available for download) so even people, businesses or nonprofits with little or no capital can run a spreadsheet on free antique hardware that Quicken would choke on.
I highly recommend the book "Elements of Spreadsheet Style" by John Nevison. Out of print but available used through Amazon for under ten bucks.
An older Edition of the classic book "Small Time Operator" known as the "Computer Edition" includes complete Visicalc code for all of your bookeeping needs. This is also available used through Amazon but will set you back twentysix bucks. Cheap price for avoiding the propriatary rat race and a hell of a book for anyone just getting started in their first business.
KFG
places limitations on algebraic systems. One of the things that it does *not* do is place limits on understanding because it imposes no limits on * the number of algebraic systems* you can devise.
If a theorem cannot be expressed in one system you simply make another where it can.
One of the fascinating things about the human mind is its ability to go *beyond* single logical structures and fully understand an infinite number of incompatible algebras.
The problem with developing AI isn't so much that we don't understand the human mind, it's that we *do* understand it to be something well beyond a simple algebraic computer, which at the moment is all computers are. They are *computational* devices with a preprogramed logic. *That* logic is subject to Godel.
Your computer is a giant abacus. Nothing more, nothing less. This says nothing about the possibilities of developing machines that are *not* simply a bank of bistable switches.
Nor is there any axiom which states that intelligence must be *human* in form.
That last point is outrageously important to all sorts of fields.
KFG
our most valuable asset. Oh, by the way, you've proven too valuable so you're fired. Merry Christmas."
KFG
"Arguing with an engineer is like mud-wrestling a pig; after a few hours, you realize he likes it."
Ah, but you should see them run screaming from the room when us physicists and mathmaticians enter the fray. We like it so much we bring our own mud with us and start right off flinging.
KFG
by Kurt Vonnegut. Pay particular attention to the one entitled "Harrison Bergeron," one of the greatest short social commentaries ever written and amazingly prescient.
Then check out his novel "Cat's Cradle."
Many of his stories take place in a fictionalized version of locations mere feet from where I sit right now. Kurt spent some time as a PR writer for GE. Illium, NY in the stories is Schenectady, the Illium Works are GE and the Iroquois River is the Mohawk.
Anyone who reads 1984 should also read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World." 1984 is a vision of the future totalitarian society USSR style. Brave New World is a view of the the future totalitarian society USA style, although it's getting harder and harder to tell the two apart. I suppose there are those who would get *really* bent out of shape by this one though as the society pictured teaches sex and promiscuity to children whose age is in the single digits, not to mention government sanctioned recreational drug use.
Very Swiftian. Which reminds me, I just love turning younger people on to Gulliver's Travels, the book, as opposed to the silly movie/TV versions.
KFG
both in and out of schools, will be using all the focus on the internet as a distraction while quitely slipping these subversive documents called "books" to "kids" under the table.
I recommend "Farenheit 451", "Lies my Teacher Told Me" and "Welcome to the Monkey House" for starters.
Indeed, any librarian who isn't doint this isn't a libraian at all, just a book filing clerk, and should find some other line of work.
KFG
In the book an old man is recalling the "good old days," and in particular TV shows he used to watch. His young grandaughter is puzzled by this and responds:
"But grandfather, you don't watch TV. TV watches you."
By the way, been to a mall or a major airport lately?
( Cue Twiglight Zone theme)
KFG
about customizing my own Linux box, no, I don't think it was. Nor did I at any point compare the imaginitive powers of *any* Linux user to Einstein's, let alone the 'average' Linux user's.
I will go on record though as saying that the "personalization" of my own Linux box goes far beyond the mere choosing of options. That's why I use Linux. It allows me to hand craft my own commands, libraries, apps and even the OS itself to an extent not possible in other OS's.
As it happens I am a physicist by training whose mother founded the ceramics dept. at Alfred and whose father is an internationally known writer and I've been in the habit of rubbing elbows and just plain hanging out with Nobel's and "near" Nobel's for decades. I can't claim to have met Einstein but I've known some of those minds who he himself admired.
I think I've got a broad enough view to have a reasonable idea of what is creative and what isn't.
A six year old with eight crayolas and average IQ can be very creative. So can a kid with a LOGO interpreter.
Just because you only see the space inside the lines of your coloring book doesn't mean that's the way everybody does it.
KFG
Citroen or Messerschitt in America, or eaten something wasn't a "breakfast cereal" at all for breakfast, or eschewed furniture completely.
Even where the culture allows "choice" without discrimination or ostracisation it only allows such choices from a fairly narrow check list.
Stray from that list and yes, the car you drive and your furniture (or lack thereof) will have your neighbors all clucking their tounges very, VERY loudly.
KFG
with OSX on it, to go along with the System 7 and OS8 boxen in my house.
It isn't because of any particular love of Apples though, it's because I'm a geek, I want at least one of everything I can get my grubby little grounded paws on. So in my case at least being Linux user who wants a Mac doesn't confer any special status to or feelings about Macs in general.
Hell, I'd adore having a Babbage machine. Now THAT would be cool.
KFG
personalizing your Linux box was, in and of itself, a very creative undertaking.
When did "creativity" get limited to the "artsy-fartsy" field?
Gallileo, Newton, Einstein were all rather creative people I'd say, as is Larry Wall.
KFG
and an old time mainframe guy. Then he's wearing sandals ( having learned through experience how idiotic going around barefooted is these days) and has a grey ponytail to go along with the beard.
When you see this guy wave and say hi, it's me (unless he's wearing rainbow suspenders. I hate suspenders).
KFG
It doesn't know that. In fact it can't know that. It can only *assume* that. That's the failure of all mechanical heuristic approaches. The human mind is more complex and dasterdly than that.
In fact Brasil deals directly with this very example.
The smartest robot is stupider than my cat, and I wouldn't trust heuristic decisions to my cat, at least with regards to my own safety and comfort.
Clippy was a bad idea. Putting clippy in control of my house when I'm perfectly capable of spending the 2 seconds to make a decision and actually *do* something myself is a revolting concept.
Maybe I've left the door open because the damned thermostat is acting funny and I need to the cool the house down through alternate means.
In the real world as it is right now this problem is dealt with by the age old method simpler, and more effectively, by the proper placement of the thermostat in the most temperature stable portion of the house *away* from the front door. Never use a computer to do what ordinary common sense arangement of physical parameters renders unecessary.
Nor can any artificial hueristic sense what *I want* at any given time. Like leaving the door open for the breeze. Humans are wonderfully changable in mood and 50 degrees may be comfortable for me one minute and intollerable the next, completely unpredictably. So even a "perfect" robot is only going to be able to operate effectively a certain small percentage of the time.
More often than not the most effective way to deal with an issue is to get off your ass for 10 whole seconds and deal directly with the issue, personally.
"Immobile robots" deal with certain things very effectively, like timing the spark to your car's engine, but very poorly when trying to figure out WHY the door is open and just what it should do about it.
There isn't even savings in human time and aggravation if you simply replace having to do it yourself with having to hit the override button and do it yourself anyway half the time.
Just like that damned paperclip.
KFG
it's still possible to buy or download older distros if you're starting from scratch. This makes sure that everything is coordinated on the software/library front.
If you have no need for the latest Windows workalike GUI or certain hardware support it may even well be the "correct" way to go.
Red Hat 5.2 is a real workhorse of a distro.
On my old 486 VGA laptop I run mulinux which I belive still runs a 2.0x kernel. Boots from a single floppy and uses UMSDOS so it doesn't interfere with my Windows 3.11 install at all. If all you run is vi and some network tools this is really all you need.
There's lots of work still to be gotten out of older kernels.
KFG
Kindly take every 486 in working condition you can find and drop it off at my house. A dozen will do nicely thank you. Hell, I'll even take a few busted ones in the lot.
And while you're here I've got a few NST's ( Nice Shiney Things) to sell you. Cheap Price, especial just for you, mi Amigo, orginal, from di ruins.
Glad to know that stability is no longer a needed feature of servers.
Sorry for biting the bait though. It wasn't even a very good troll.
KFG
( or fridge heat or car engine heat)is nothing more than an immobile robot. Some of them even have electrical logic circuits these days, but even the "old fashioned" kind were a simple analog robot with its "logic" built into the properties of the materials.
Pretty much nothing to see here I'm afraid. Your house has been full of variants of the simple "immobile robot" for several decades.
KFG