If they were so sure of the Hawking effect (which they're not), then why bother looking for it?
And, at one point in history everyone was SOO sure the Earth was the center of the universe, so why did we bother checking that?
Uum, it's called scientific progress. Maybe we should decide it's not worth it in this case (at this point in time), but to ask why we bother to check hypotheses and theories is absolutely idiotic...
I don't know about anybody else, but I've got 3 failed (i.e. DEAD) Maxtor ATA-133 drives (40gb, 60gb, & 80gb) sitting in my desk waiting to become paperweights. All of them were made in Singapore and they all failed in the past year (2 in the past 5 months).
I finally gave up on Maxtor and went with a 120gb ATA-100 Seagate drive which has worked flawlessly for 3 months.
At work we've been using 802.11a and 802.11g devices (not to mention 802.11b) since the absolute first days they were each available. All the testing I've ever done was far from impressive and probably close to what they are saying in this article:
802.11b Advertised Speed: 11 megabit or 1.38 megabytes/sec Advertised Range: 150 feet Real-world Speed: 4.5 megabit or 0.55 megabytes/sec Real-world Range: 100-250 feet depending on interference
802.11a Advertised Speed: 54 megabit or 6.75 megabytes/sec Advertised Range: 150 feet Real-world Speed: 21.5 megabit or 2.7 megabytes/sec Real-world Range: 50-100 feet (outside of that and the link is so weak the real throughput is worse than 802.11b)
802.11g Advertised Speed: 54 megabit or 6.75 megabytes/sec Advertised Range: 150 feet Real-world Speed: 19.5 megabit or 2.45 megabytes/sec Real-world Range: 100-200 feet (at 200 feet you can still get better than 802.11b throughput, while 802.11a usually is completely gone at 100 feet unless you are in an open field)
The reality is that they had better start advertising the true speeds and problems of 802.11a/g because a lot of people get disappointed when they compare them to standard 100Base-T wired connections -- to me it's flat-out false advertising. The real-world range of 802.11g is similar to 802.11b and its real-world throughput is consistently 3-5 times faster than 802.11b.
But to say that 802.11a/g are "54 megabit" so people compare them to a 100 megabit ethernet connection is REALLY wrong. It reminds me of the "56k" modems we have in our computers that never connect faster than 40k-45k for most people.
(for the record, our wired 100Base-T network that all these devices are plugged into is very fast -- we have no problem getting 8 to 11.5 megabytes-per-second of throughput)
Sorry, I have to disagree on this. I just bought an iPod 15gb -- it's my first Apple MP3 player, but my 5th MP3 player overall. When it comes to portable sound quality (using the player standalone with a *good* pair of headphones):
Rio -- OK sound quality, but not a replacement for a good CD player. Archos -- Incredibly crappy sound quality and buggy interface; it's definitely better as an external hard drive an anything else, which makes sense when you look at their other products. Creative Nomad -- OK sound quality like the Rio, but still lacking something when compared to a standard portable CD player. iPod -- The best sound quality I've ever heard in a portable music device - it's better than most of the best ones I've ever had; the interface is very slick.
Oh, and I'm an IT guy who uses Windows, Linux, and BSD PC's everywhere, so I am certainly not a "Mac fanboy".
The point is that the US (and it's citizens) do NOT abuse people anywhere near the level of the Iraqi dictatorship.
When was the last time you saw any REAL democracy where their "leader" gets 100% of the public vote??? That's what Saddam got in their last "election". I'll tell you right now there's no f*ckin' way he got 100% of the vote after killing over 150,000 of those people (you can never kill all of your opposition).
Anybody who today still believes that Saddam Hussein and his "government" are innocent victims of us "big bad imperialist Americans" is seriously delusional. And anybody still out there protesting weeks into this war is ignorant.
And if any of you want to know what my brothers, friends, and I are fighting for in Iraq, I STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU READ THE FOLLOWING STORY FROM A MAN WITH FAMILY IN BAGHDAD:
You can't use France or Germany as examples because being unemployed there is NOTHING like being unemployed here in the U.S. They generally take care of their unemployed, while here I would never go on unemployment because you waste most of your time getting benefits that won't even sustain you. A case in point:
We've had two kids in the past 4 years. Both times, my wife went back to work 2-3 months after the baby was born because the unemployment pay she got from maternity leave was $100/MONTH! I supported us fine while she was out of work and recovering, but I couldn't believe how little she got while out of work.
I'm German-American and I know people in Germany who I told about this. They were shocked and one of the people I talked to was a woman going back to work after being on government-paid maternity leave for 3 1/2 YEARS! Not only does the German government guarantee that her employer will give her her job back when she returns, but the government paid her FULL WAGE (over $55,000/year) while she was on leave! On top of all of this, the woman was complaining that she couldn't stay on maternity leave for another 1 1/2 years (3 1/2 years is the limit) until her son starts school!
Another example:
In Germany, it's very easy to be a perpetual student and be paid unemployment while you do it. I know at least two people who have been going to the university for over ten years simply because they can't get a job, so they keep going back to school because the government will keep paying them unemployment.
The one and only time I ever considered getting unemployment here in California was in 1991 and I would have had to spend literally hours every day just to get it and it would have been 1/4 to 1/6 of what I could make by just pounding the pavement to find a job.
My main point is that the unemployment system here in America, for better or worse, SUCKS and every American suffers in one way or another because of it. So, 5.7% here in the U.S. is not the same as 10% in Germany because the unemployment systems don't work the same. If ours worked the same, we'd probably have 10-15% unemployment, too, but because we don't take care of our people most of them have to take extremely low paying jobs or 2-3+ jobs just to SURVIVE.
It's enough to make me consider moving to Germany to try to get German citizenship...
It sounds like your problem is more with ordering/SALES, not with tech or warranty support. Those are two completely different departments.
Dell tech/warranty support is and has always been generally outstanding. We've bought hundreds of computers from them over the past 3 years and have had very few problems...
Everything you say makes great sense in theory, and I wish I lived in a world where talent and drive alone gets you jobs.
Excuse me for being a smart-ass, BUT:
If you want to get ahead based on your talent and drive move to America, because that's what we have. If you are going into too many companies where "talent and drive alone" aren't cutting it, then YOU'RE LOOKING IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES. Some advice:
-- Move to an urban area; "talent and drive" won't get you diddly squat in a rural sh*thole like South Dakota, and I know because that's where I grew up; there are ALWAYS opportunities in the urban areas (and I mean ALWAYS).
-- When you get to that urban area, apply for any and every job you are capable of doing, as if your life depends on it because IT DOES; as long as the company has interesting positions you could potentially move into in the FUTURE, you shouldn't limit yourself to engineering or programming jobs today.
-- Learn to swallow your pride to survive, because we are talking about YOUR SURVIVAL; I can't tell you how many out-of-work-techies I've seen unemployed for the past 2 YEARS because they're holding out for a job like their last job; future companies WILL understand if you had to survive in a lesser job for a couple of years until the economy turned around.
I graduated with a BSCS in 1990 (the last recession), looked in California for any technical computer or programming job I could find, but couldn't find anything for over a year. I happened to take a receptionist job at an electronics "start-up" just because I was desperate to pay the bills -- I was within weeks of being homeless at that point. I kept looking for a better programming job (Netscape, etc.), but my company kept growing and moving me into better-paid and more appealing positions than I could find with other companies.
Today, I'm still with this company, we've merged with other companies to form the largest power supply distributor/manufacturer in North America and Europe, and I head up the I.T. Department. Most people can't believe that I started as the receptionist with the President at arm's reach behind me, but THAT is what talent and drive can get you in America, but America isn't kind to those who are picky.
(By the way, we've always been profitable, we still are today, and we've done it without mass layoffs)
What's funny is that, according to IMDB.com, all the battle scenes are simply footage from the Battlestar Galactica series -- man, that's a B-grade movie when they have to use footage directly from a TV series!
Also, here are a few "memorable quotes" from IMDB.com for this movie (I can't believe this movie was meant to be anything more than a spoof of Battlestar Galactica considering these quotes and the fact that they used BG footage):
---------- Lea Jansen: Can a woman buy a man a drink in this galaxy?
---------- Pirates: Surrender, or be blown to astro-dust!
---------- Kalgan: I'm being undermined by my own disciples!
---------- Kalgan: It's not unlike ancient dental equipment on Earth - not that you'd know anything about that!
---------- Kalgan: Take that, you space bitch!
---------- Kalgan: You're much more attractive with your mouth shut!
The only way I can respond to this post is, "Well, DUH!" I've worked for a 150 person company for 12 years as the I.T. Director, so we've always joked that my unwritten title has been "Director of Covert I.T. Operations".
The bottom line is that, yes, this should be dealt with on a performance basis, but what do you do when you realize that an employee is underperforming? Do you just give them a warning that they are not performing at the level you expect them to? Or, do you turn to these tools for that individual to prove that they are wasting huge amounts of company time (at least to the manager, if not to the HR department and the employee himself)?
That's what we have always done and it has generally been effective without causing ill-will from employees. If you hire someone to do a job, and they are not doing that job, then you need to somehow show why if you intend to fire them (at least here in California, I don't know if you can just fire people for no reason in other states) or even if you just want them to do a better job. Also, there is NO employee I've ever met who likes the extra workload because they have to work with someone they know is screwing off while they are working hard.
Nobody gets pissed off when you fire jerks who refuse to do their work. Believe me, there are plenty of people out there who seriously think it's OK to talk on the phone ALL DAY (I'm talking 4-8 hours non-stop) while they work, and screwing off on the internet in IM, porno sites, Hotmail, etc. is no different. There will always be people who will abuse their freedoms at work and we have to use tools case-by-case to weed them out.
Aside from people who can't get their jobs done, we have always given employees a lot of leeway on doing personal things during company time. Nobody cares that I'm posting this right now, and I don't care if other employees do things like this either, as long as they get their jobs done! Performance has to be king to keep everybody happy!
Roger Ebert had a REALLY funny review of Nemesis and why he's not interested in Star Trek any more. It had me laughing for at least 15 minutes. Here are a few choice quotes in case the page gets Slashdotted:
"There might have been a time when the command deck of Starship Enterprise looked exciting and futuristic, but these days it looks like a communications center for security guards."
"Fearsome death rays strike the Enterprise, and what happens? Sparks fly out from the ceiling and the crew gets bounced around in their seats like passengers on the No. 36 bus. This far in the future they wouldn't have sparks because they wouldn't have electricity, because in a world where you can beam matter--beam it, mind you--from here to there, power obviously no longer lives in the wall and travels through wires."
"I've also had it with the force shield that protects the Enterprise. The power on this thing is always going down."... "I'm thinking, life is too short to sit through 10 movies in which the power is shifted around on these shields. The shields have been losing power for decades now, and here it is the Second Generation of Star Trek, and they still haven't fixed them."
"I tried to focus on the actors. Patrick Stewart, as Capt. Picard, is a wonderful actor. I know because I have seen him elsewhere. It is always said of Stewart that his strength as an actor is his ability to deliver bad dialogue with utter conviction. I say it is time to stop encouraging him."
"There is a scene in the movie in which one starship rams another one. You would think this would destroy them both, and there are a lot of sparks and everybody has to hold onto their seats, but the "Star Trek" world involves physical laws which reflect only the needs of the plot. If one ship rammed another and they were both destroyed and everyone died, and the movie ended with a lot of junk floating around in space, imagine the faces of the people in the audience."
"I think it is time for "Star Trek" to make a mighty leap forward another 1,000 years into the future, to a time when starships do not look like rides in a 1970s amusement arcade, when aliens do not look like humans with funny foreheads, and when wonder, astonishment and literacy are permitted back into the series. Star Trek was kind of terrific once, but now it is a copy of a copy of a copy."
TNG was the first Star Trek *anything* that really went mainstream. But a LOT of the fans were really young -- I'm 33, love the original series because I grew up with it, but you can only stretch that so far. I love Enterprise (so far) because it's so much like the original series, but I never liked TNG for a lot of reasons. The TNG fans I knew were almost all teenagers, and that was in the early to mid-90's. And you know how quickly the tastes and attitudes of teenagers change -- maybe the demographics of the TNG fans has changed massively???
Also, even though I never liked the TNG series much, most of the TNG movies were good enough for me to go see. I paid for Insurrection, I thought it was very, very weak, and that had a big effect on my not going to see Nemesis -- for whatever reason, the previews didn't make me decide I wanted to go see it enough to risk wasting my time again (on a side note, if movie trailers suck so bad that they don't tell you what the movie is about, I will not go to see the movie). I think it's likely a lot of the hard-core Trek fans like me who were left after most of the teen TNG fans lost interest felt they were screwed by Insurrection.
The bottom line is I think the people who made this movie did NOT do their homework. $52 million is nothing to sneeze at, but if you spent $70 million to make the movie (according to IMDB.com), you got screwed. If you have a small target audience, you'd better damn well limit the budget.
Maybe those same people need to WATCH the damn movies they are making (do your homework!). According to IMDB.com, Insurrection's budget was $58 million and it made a total of about $81 million. Maybe they didn't notice that Insurrection sucked and they stupidly gave the next movie a higher budget.
I think this all comes down to business, and Paramount made some bad business decisions because $52 million in revenue is not a bomb, IMHO, unless you make dot-com-like business decisions.
This sounds good, but it's not exactly original. I'm doing this right now (DFS and file replication) between our servers to replace our offsite backup service. And, I can tell you firsthand that it's as easy as 1-2-3 in Windows Server 2003 (no more ".Net" in the name).
I will probably get modded as a Troll, but I have to honestly say that it has never been easy to accomplish this in Linux or even in Windows 2000. I hope Linux better supports this in the future -- it simply lost a place on five of our servers because of the pitiful support for DFS or DFS-like file replication. And I'm not talking about some custom server solution package, IT people should be able to add it easily to an existing server.
Uum, I think we already established the fact that your point is POINTLESS... if you read the many posts above on this subject.
Nolan Bushnell is the father of video games for the same reason that Ford is famous -- for bringing something of such magnitude to the masses. Bringing it to the masses, not INVENTING it (they're not the same; see the earlier posts if you don't agree).
Also, I seriously doubt that, like so many other inventions, Ralph Baer was the ONLY one who thought of this idea or made a video game -- he's just one of the guys who got the recognition (and, to be honest, I never heard of the guy, so he doesn't get much recognition). Unless you actually think that only one person can be blessed with a revolutionary idea -- that would be ludicrous.
Re:RADAR was invented by the brits!
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Actually, the basic principles of RADAR were discovered by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz in 1887.
I've also read that the Germans were working on RADAR applications at the same time the Brits and Americans were -- it just so happens that the Brits built the first application from the research. And, technically, the man who was mainly responsible for developing RADAR into a usable application was actually a Scot, not a Brit -- Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt. You can talk all you want about how Great Britain includes England, Scotland, and NORTHERN Ireland, but most Irish and Scots I know would say a Scot!=Brit.
Like most other inventions (airplanes or cars, anyone?) nothing is "invented" without the cooperation of scientists from ALL countries. There's no such thing as a single man inventing any of these things -- we may have been taught that in elementary school, but we all have to grow up and realize that things are quite a bit more complicated than that.
The problem is that the vast majority of fans DON'T GIVE A SHIT about the "quality of the mastering". Why do you think so many techno artists sell so many CD's in cheap CD-R format at $5 each??? Why do you think SO MANY people download music that is NOT "professional quality"???
The problem with "recording professional quality music", as you put it, is that it has become so damn blown out of proportion and convoluted that it does NOT serve the consumer who actually PAYS for that equipment (through high-priced CD's). You may be able to tell the difference between a "professional quality" CD and a home-made techno CD-R, but you are only a teany-tiny minority of all the PAYING customers.
Remember, in a real market system if you don't serve the customer what they want (and ONLY what they want to be cost-competitive), you die. It's about damn time the music industry started living in the same business environment every other company has to -- the costs of making a single "professional quality" CD album are obviously ridiculous and out of control.
The problem is that you are sitting in Sydney, not in the country/outback. Do people in the outback drive little POS japanese/korean cars? I'd be surprised if they do.
Here in America (I grew up in South Dakota and now live for 12 years in San Jose, CA), city dwellers tend to like smaller cars, but nowhere near what the sardines in Europe and Japan/Korea like. We have way too many SUV/Pickup drivers here in California cities, IMO, but we still accomodate them.
But, the stark difference between rural Americans and urban Americans is that rural Americans faithfully buy relatively big American cars because:
1. It's American 2. They generally have lots of room and very little traffic/parking
Even today, when I go back to South Dakota, there are virtually NO foreign cars anywhere -- good luck finding a VW or Honda dealership, let alone a Subaru or BMW dealership (maybe one or two token dealerships in each state). So, small size or gas usage is not an issue for most Americans (that would be rich Americans and rural Americans which, IMHO, make up the majority of Americans). As you saw in the last Presidential elections, urban Americans do NOT generally make up the majority here (statistically, most urban Americans voted for Gore, which was why it was so close). There are a lot of rural Americans who will look at this GM car and never buy it -- they'll stick with the XYZ SUV bigger than most urban garages.
So, this original poster does represent a lot of Americans. Even here in California, I don't see many electric or hybrid cars at all. I just don't think they (or you, obviously) understand what most Americans are saying -- we generally want the same cars as we had before, but if you change them, make them look cool, not dorky.
In America, our cars mean a lot more to us than they do to people in most other countries.
What was the app? I've been working with.NET development for about 6 months and everything I've used on every hardware from 400MHz Celeron's to 3GHz P4's has run very, very fast. And IMO, C# is incredibly easy to program simple stuff in -- reminds me of when I started programming on that Commodore PET in 1979-1980 (hmm, from PET to.NET? cool...)
Also, what language was it in? ".NET" could be practically any language supported in Windows -- C, C++, C#, Java, Visual Basic, among others. Also, you know there's a separate.NET Embedded, right? Probably more tuned for a phone, I would think (not to mention that any program developed for a phone would have to be different in some way from the desktop version -- not a straight port).
Anyway, I'd love to take a look at any.NET app that ran slowly -- it'd be a first for me to see that...
This doesn't make any sense to me -- why not just DRINK COFFEE, like the rest of the military?
I never drank coffee until I joined the Army, and after that I found out why everyone in the military (that I know) regularly drinks coffee -- because the peace-time military ain't exactly exciting. I've rarely heard of anyone overdosing on coffee (I heard on the radio yesterday a woman OD'd on coffee and died after drinking over 400 cups in a day, but that's extreme), and I've never heard of anyone for whom coffee did not wake them up.
The only disadvantage on watch duty is you have to take a piss more often, but isn't that worth avoiding drug side-effects? I have taken caffeine pills before, and they work, but there are side-effects compared to just drinking coffee.
I think you are missing the point here -- from a PC-geek's point of view. Most of us PC-geeks (and Mac-geeks, I guess, since I was the same when I used only Macs), have most of these components laying around everywhere waiting to be used. The point of building a PC instead of buying a pre-built one is that it's a cheaper entry into getting another computer (not your first one) using your old components. I would still argue that a put-together PC is way better than many cheaper pre-built PC's, but that's my opinion.
So, if you want to get into a second (or third or fourth or nth computer... like at my house) computer as cheaply as possible, you put together a Franken-puter from orphaned parts you have left over from upgrades to your primary computer. With this information in the article, I can put together a cheap G4 Mac for about $700 (cheaper 800MHz G4 CPU is $500, and the M/B is $200) and use parts that would otherwise collect dust in my house.
At least it gives me the option if I want, because I can tell you right now I'm not paying $1000 more out-of-pocket for a pretty Apple G4 Mac when I don't have to. Ex-Mac users, curious PC users, and even budget-minded Mac users will all find this information useful...
The less he says, the less likely he is to be lambasted for it for years in the future. A lot of his answers were conservative, but at the same time seemed to be just having fun.
I AM a long-time trekkie and a fan of the original series and Shatner's character Captain Kirk, but IMHO William Shatner has to be one of the most over-analyzed actors in human history. I mean, what did he REALLY do besides Star Trek and TJ Hooker (and how many people will still remember TJ Hooker in 10 more years if they even remember now)?
The truth is that Shatner is a pretty average guy in the fact that most people could probably act as well as him, he just had a big break called "Star Trek". Maybe that's why so many people grill him. I don't think he merits an interview anywhere, but that's probably why he seems to tell so many people to "get a life" -- in other words, why does anyone care about him or his life?
Let's get real here, people, and at least UTFS (Use The Fucking Site):
I looked up 6+ albums, and they were all cheaper to download/burn than to buy the CD from Amazon or Borders. Not CHEAP, but cheapER.
One example was $14 to download an album with 12-13 songs, $1.99/song individually, and $17-$19 to buy the CD itself from Amazon or Borders. Quite a few other songs I looked up were $0.99/song individually. All of them were cheaper on a per-song basis to download/buy entire albums than individually.
Also, 90+% of the albums I saw had 30 second previews, so it should be easy to avoid the typical dilemma of buying a whole CD just because you like 1-2 songs.
That is my primary problem with buying CD's because I effectively end up paying $6-$8/song. I don't think I'm the only one out there who uses Kazaa because of that.
Now that I've seen this service, I'll start using it. I can't guarantee I won't sometimes use Kazaa when I can't find music on Liquid.com or a service like this, but I found two very off-the-wall artists on Liquid.com, so I doubt it'll happen often. One of those artists I had to buy their CD from Amazon.de (Germany) and pay the overseas shipping to get the CD with some songs I couldn't even find on Kazaa, so this service offers BIG advantages to people like me.
The bottom line is this IS a big move in the right direction because at least it offers an alternative to MOST people (obviously not everyone). If I have to choose between paying a buck for a good-quality song I want right away with little searching, versus paying nothing to search forever in Kazaa for songs I want and downloading them 5 times each to ensure I get a good complete copy, I'll choose paying a buck...
All this Silicon Valley North/South/East, Silicon Alley, etc. crap is ridiculous. Come up with your own f*ckin' name because using an offshoot of Silicon Valley just makes you look like a weak wanna-be, which is exactly the opposite of what I'm sure you're going for.
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If they were so sure of the Hawking effect (which they're not), then why bother looking for it?
And, at one point in history everyone was SOO sure the Earth was the center of the universe, so why did we bother checking that?
Uum, it's called scientific progress. Maybe we should decide it's not worth it in this case (at this point in time), but to ask why we bother to check hypotheses and theories is absolutely idiotic...
I don't know about anybody else, but I've got 3 failed (i.e. DEAD) Maxtor ATA-133 drives (40gb, 60gb, & 80gb) sitting in my desk waiting to become paperweights. All of them were made in Singapore and they all failed in the past year (2 in the past 5 months).
I finally gave up on Maxtor and went with a 120gb ATA-100 Seagate drive which has worked flawlessly for 3 months.
Crossing my fingers...
Is this even really news?
At work we've been using 802.11a and 802.11g devices (not to mention 802.11b) since the absolute first days they were each available. All the testing I've ever done was far from impressive and probably close to what they are saying in this article:
802.11b
Advertised Speed: 11 megabit or 1.38 megabytes/sec
Advertised Range: 150 feet
Real-world Speed: 4.5 megabit or 0.55 megabytes/sec
Real-world Range: 100-250 feet depending on interference
802.11a
Advertised Speed: 54 megabit or 6.75 megabytes/sec
Advertised Range: 150 feet
Real-world Speed: 21.5 megabit or 2.7 megabytes/sec
Real-world Range: 50-100 feet (outside of that and the link is so weak the real throughput is worse than 802.11b)
802.11g
Advertised Speed: 54 megabit or 6.75 megabytes/sec
Advertised Range: 150 feet
Real-world Speed: 19.5 megabit or 2.45 megabytes/sec
Real-world Range: 100-200 feet (at 200 feet you can still get better than 802.11b throughput, while 802.11a usually is completely gone at 100 feet unless you are in an open field)
The reality is that they had better start advertising the true speeds and problems of 802.11a/g because a lot of people get disappointed when they compare them to standard 100Base-T wired connections -- to me it's flat-out false advertising. The real-world range of 802.11g is similar to 802.11b and its real-world throughput is consistently 3-5 times faster than 802.11b.
But to say that 802.11a/g are "54 megabit" so people compare them to a 100 megabit ethernet connection is REALLY wrong. It reminds me of the "56k" modems we have in our computers that never connect faster than 40k-45k for most people.
(for the record, our wired 100Base-T network that all these devices are plugged into is very fast -- we have no problem getting 8 to 11.5 megabytes-per-second of throughput)
Sorry, I have to disagree on this. I just bought an iPod 15gb -- it's my first Apple MP3 player, but my 5th MP3 player overall. When it comes to portable sound quality (using the player standalone with a *good* pair of headphones):
Rio -- OK sound quality, but not a replacement for a good CD player.
Archos -- Incredibly crappy sound quality and buggy interface; it's definitely better as an external hard drive an anything else, which makes sense when you look at their other products.
Creative Nomad -- OK sound quality like the Rio, but still lacking something when compared to a standard portable CD player.
iPod -- The best sound quality I've ever heard in a portable music device - it's better than most of the best ones I've ever had; the interface is very slick.
Oh, and I'm an IT guy who uses Windows, Linux, and BSD PC's everywhere, so I am certainly not a "Mac fanboy".
The point is that the US (and it's citizens) do NOT abuse people anywhere near the level of the Iraqi dictatorship.
When was the last time you saw any REAL democracy where their "leader" gets 100% of the public vote??? That's what Saddam got in their last "election". I'll tell you right now there's no f*ckin' way he got 100% of the vote after killing over 150,000 of those people (you can never kill all of your opposition).
Anybody who today still believes that Saddam Hussein and his "government" are innocent victims of us "big bad imperialist Americans" is seriously delusional. And anybody still out there protesting weeks into this war is ignorant.
And if any of you want to know what my brothers, friends, and I are fighting for in Iraq, I STRONGLY SUGGEST YOU READ THE FOLLOWING STORY FROM A MAN WITH FAMILY IN BAGHDAD:
"I Was Wrong", by Ken Joseph, Jr.
You can't use France or Germany as examples because being unemployed there is NOTHING like being unemployed here in the U.S. They generally take care of their unemployed, while here I would never go on unemployment because you waste most of your time getting benefits that won't even sustain you. A case in point:
We've had two kids in the past 4 years. Both times, my wife went back to work 2-3 months after the baby was born because the unemployment pay she got from maternity leave was $100/MONTH! I supported us fine while she was out of work and recovering, but I couldn't believe how little she got while out of work.
I'm German-American and I know people in Germany who I told about this. They were shocked and one of the people I talked to was a woman going back to work after being on government-paid maternity leave for 3 1/2 YEARS! Not only does the German government guarantee that her employer will give her her job back when she returns, but the government paid her FULL WAGE (over $55,000/year) while she was on leave! On top of all of this, the woman was complaining that she couldn't stay on maternity leave for another 1 1/2 years (3 1/2 years is the limit) until her son starts school!
Another example:
In Germany, it's very easy to be a perpetual student and be paid unemployment while you do it. I know at least two people who have been going to the university for over ten years simply because they can't get a job, so they keep going back to school because the government will keep paying them unemployment.
The one and only time I ever considered getting unemployment here in California was in 1991 and I would have had to spend literally hours every day just to get it and it would have been 1/4 to 1/6 of what I could make by just pounding the pavement to find a job.
My main point is that the unemployment system here in America, for better or worse, SUCKS and every American suffers in one way or another because of it. So, 5.7% here in the U.S. is not the same as 10% in Germany because the unemployment systems don't work the same. If ours worked the same, we'd probably have 10-15% unemployment, too, but because we don't take care of our people most of them have to take extremely low paying jobs or 2-3+ jobs just to SURVIVE.
It's enough to make me consider moving to Germany to try to get German citizenship...
It sounds like your problem is more with ordering/SALES, not with tech or warranty support. Those are two completely different departments.
Dell tech/warranty support is and has always been generally outstanding. We've bought hundreds of computers from them over the past 3 years and have had very few problems...
Why don't you just make it a web page, put it on some site, then post a link to it here?
If it's of any real value, it shouldn't just be buried here on Slashdot...
Everything you say makes great sense in theory, and I wish I lived in a world where talent and drive alone gets you jobs.
Excuse me for being a smart-ass, BUT:
If you want to get ahead based on your talent and drive move to America, because that's what we have. If you are going into too many companies where "talent and drive alone" aren't cutting it, then YOU'RE LOOKING IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES. Some advice:
-- Move to an urban area; "talent and drive" won't get you diddly squat in a rural sh*thole like South Dakota, and I know because that's where I grew up; there are ALWAYS opportunities in the urban areas (and I mean ALWAYS).
-- When you get to that urban area, apply for any and every job you are capable of doing, as if your life depends on it because IT DOES; as long as the company has interesting positions you could potentially move into in the FUTURE, you shouldn't limit yourself to engineering or programming jobs today.
-- Learn to swallow your pride to survive, because we are talking about YOUR SURVIVAL; I can't tell you how many out-of-work-techies I've seen unemployed for the past 2 YEARS because they're holding out for a job like their last job; future companies WILL understand if you had to survive in a lesser job for a couple of years until the economy turned around.
I graduated with a BSCS in 1990 (the last recession), looked in California for any technical computer or programming job I could find, but couldn't find anything for over a year. I happened to take a receptionist job at an electronics "start-up" just because I was desperate to pay the bills -- I was within weeks of being homeless at that point. I kept looking for a better programming job (Netscape, etc.), but my company kept growing and moving me into better-paid and more appealing positions than I could find with other companies.
Today, I'm still with this company, we've merged with other companies to form the largest power supply distributor/manufacturer in North America and Europe, and I head up the I.T. Department. Most people can't believe that I started as the receptionist with the President at arm's reach behind me, but THAT is what talent and drive can get you in America, but America isn't kind to those who are picky.
(By the way, we've always been profitable, we still are today, and we've done it without mass layoffs)
What's funny is that, according to IMDB.com, all the battle scenes are simply footage from the Battlestar Galactica series -- man, that's a B-grade movie when they have to use footage directly from a TV series!
Also, here are a few "memorable quotes" from IMDB.com for this movie (I can't believe this movie was meant to be anything more than a spoof of Battlestar Galactica considering these quotes and the fact that they used BG footage):
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Lea Jansen: Can a woman buy a man a drink in this galaxy?
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Pirates: Surrender, or be blown to astro-dust!
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Kalgan: I'm being undermined by my own disciples!
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Kalgan: It's not unlike ancient dental equipment on Earth - not that you'd know anything about that!
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Kalgan: Take that, you space bitch!
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Kalgan: You're much more attractive with your mouth shut!
The only way I can respond to this post is, "Well, DUH!" I've worked for a 150 person company for 12 years as the I.T. Director, so we've always joked that my unwritten title has been "Director of Covert I.T. Operations".
The bottom line is that, yes, this should be dealt with on a performance basis, but what do you do when you realize that an employee is underperforming? Do you just give them a warning that they are not performing at the level you expect them to? Or, do you turn to these tools for that individual to prove that they are wasting huge amounts of company time (at least to the manager, if not to the HR department and the employee himself)?
That's what we have always done and it has generally been effective without causing ill-will from employees. If you hire someone to do a job, and they are not doing that job, then you need to somehow show why if you intend to fire them (at least here in California, I don't know if you can just fire people for no reason in other states) or even if you just want them to do a better job. Also, there is NO employee I've ever met who likes the extra workload because they have to work with someone they know is screwing off while they are working hard.
Nobody gets pissed off when you fire jerks who refuse to do their work. Believe me, there are plenty of people out there who seriously think it's OK to talk on the phone ALL DAY (I'm talking 4-8 hours non-stop) while they work, and screwing off on the internet in IM, porno sites, Hotmail, etc. is no different. There will always be people who will abuse their freedoms at work and we have to use tools case-by-case to weed them out.
Aside from people who can't get their jobs done, we have always given employees a lot of leeway on doing personal things during company time. Nobody cares that I'm posting this right now, and I don't care if other employees do things like this either, as long as they get their jobs done! Performance has to be king to keep everybody happy!
Roger Ebert had a REALLY funny review of Nemesis and why he's not interested in Star Trek any more. It had me laughing for at least 15 minutes. Here are a few choice quotes in case the page gets Slashdotted:
... "I'm thinking, life is too short to sit through 10 movies in which the power is shifted around on these shields. The shields have been losing power for decades now, and here it is the Second Generation of Star Trek, and they still haven't fixed them."
"There might have been a time when the command deck of Starship Enterprise looked exciting and futuristic, but these days it looks like a communications center for security guards."
"Fearsome death rays strike the Enterprise, and what happens? Sparks fly out from the ceiling and the crew gets bounced around in their seats like passengers on the No. 36 bus. This far in the future they wouldn't have sparks because they wouldn't have electricity, because in a world where you can beam matter--beam it, mind you--from here to there, power obviously no longer lives in the wall and travels through wires."
"I've also had it with the force shield that protects the Enterprise. The power on this thing is always going down."
"I tried to focus on the actors. Patrick Stewart, as Capt. Picard, is a wonderful actor. I know because I have seen him elsewhere. It is always said of Stewart that his strength as an actor is his ability to deliver bad dialogue with utter conviction. I say it is time to stop encouraging him."
"There is a scene in the movie in which one starship rams another one. You would think this would destroy them both, and there are a lot of sparks and everybody has to hold onto their seats, but the "Star Trek" world involves physical laws which reflect only the needs of the plot. If one ship rammed another and they were both destroyed and everyone died, and the movie ended with a lot of junk floating around in space, imagine the faces of the people in the audience."
"I think it is time for "Star Trek" to make a mighty leap forward another 1,000 years into the future, to a time when starships do not look like rides in a 1970s amusement arcade, when aliens do not look like humans with funny foreheads, and when wonder, astonishment and literacy are permitted back into the series. Star Trek was kind of terrific once, but now it is a copy of a copy of a copy."
AMEN.
TNG was the first Star Trek *anything* that really went mainstream. But a LOT of the fans were really young -- I'm 33, love the original series because I grew up with it, but you can only stretch that so far. I love Enterprise (so far) because it's so much like the original series, but I never liked TNG for a lot of reasons. The TNG fans I knew were almost all teenagers, and that was in the early to mid-90's. And you know how quickly the tastes and attitudes of teenagers change -- maybe the demographics of the TNG fans has changed massively???
Also, even though I never liked the TNG series much, most of the TNG movies were good enough for me to go see. I paid for Insurrection, I thought it was very, very weak, and that had a big effect on my not going to see Nemesis -- for whatever reason, the previews didn't make me decide I wanted to go see it enough to risk wasting my time again (on a side note, if movie trailers suck so bad that they don't tell you what the movie is about, I will not go to see the movie). I think it's likely a lot of the hard-core Trek fans like me who were left after most of the teen TNG fans lost interest felt they were screwed by Insurrection.
The bottom line is I think the people who made this movie did NOT do their homework. $52 million is nothing to sneeze at, but if you spent $70 million to make the movie (according to IMDB.com), you got screwed. If you have a small target audience, you'd better damn well limit the budget.
Maybe those same people need to WATCH the damn movies they are making (do your homework!). According to IMDB.com, Insurrection's budget was $58 million and it made a total of about $81 million. Maybe they didn't notice that Insurrection sucked and they stupidly gave the next movie a higher budget.
I think this all comes down to business, and Paramount made some bad business decisions because $52 million in revenue is not a bomb, IMHO, unless you make dot-com-like business decisions.
This sounds good, but it's not exactly original. I'm doing this right now (DFS and file replication) between our servers to replace our offsite backup service. And, I can tell you firsthand that it's as easy as 1-2-3 in Windows Server 2003 (no more ".Net" in the name).
I will probably get modded as a Troll, but I have to honestly say that it has never been easy to accomplish this in Linux or even in Windows 2000. I hope Linux better supports this in the future -- it simply lost a place on five of our servers because of the pitiful support for DFS or DFS-like file replication. And I'm not talking about some custom server solution package, IT people should be able to add it easily to an existing server.
Uum, I think we already established the fact that your point is POINTLESS ... if you read the many posts above on this subject.
Nolan Bushnell is the father of video games for the same reason that Ford is famous -- for bringing something of such magnitude to the masses. Bringing it to the masses, not INVENTING it (they're not the same; see the earlier posts if you don't agree).
Also, I seriously doubt that, like so many other inventions, Ralph Baer was the ONLY one who thought of this idea or made a video game -- he's just one of the guys who got the recognition (and, to be honest, I never heard of the guy, so he doesn't get much recognition). Unless you actually think that only one person can be blessed with a revolutionary idea -- that would be ludicrous.
Actually, the basic principles of RADAR were discovered by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz in 1887.
I've also read that the Germans were working on RADAR applications at the same time the Brits and Americans were -- it just so happens that the Brits built the first application from the research. And, technically, the man who was mainly responsible for developing RADAR into a usable application was actually a Scot, not a Brit -- Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt. You can talk all you want about how Great Britain includes England, Scotland, and NORTHERN Ireland, but most Irish and Scots I know would say a Scot!=Brit.
Like most other inventions (airplanes or cars, anyone?) nothing is "invented" without the cooperation of scientists from ALL countries. There's no such thing as a single man inventing any of these things -- we may have been taught that in elementary school, but we all have to grow up and realize that things are quite a bit more complicated than that.
The problem is that the vast majority of fans DON'T GIVE A SHIT about the "quality of the mastering". Why do you think so many techno artists sell so many CD's in cheap CD-R format at $5 each??? Why do you think SO MANY people download music that is NOT "professional quality"???
The problem with "recording professional quality music", as you put it, is that it has become so damn blown out of proportion and convoluted that it does NOT serve the consumer who actually PAYS for that equipment (through high-priced CD's). You may be able to tell the difference between a "professional quality" CD and a home-made techno CD-R, but you are only a teany-tiny minority of all the PAYING customers.
Remember, in a real market system if you don't serve the customer what they want (and ONLY what they want to be cost-competitive), you die. It's about damn time the music industry started living in the same business environment every other company has to -- the costs of making a single "professional quality" CD album are obviously ridiculous and out of control.
The problem is that you are sitting in Sydney, not in the country/outback. Do people in the outback drive little POS japanese/korean cars? I'd be surprised if they do.
Here in America (I grew up in South Dakota and now live for 12 years in San Jose, CA), city dwellers tend to like smaller cars, but nowhere near what the sardines in Europe and Japan/Korea like. We have way too many SUV/Pickup drivers here in California cities, IMO, but we still accomodate them.
But, the stark difference between rural Americans and urban Americans is that rural Americans faithfully buy relatively big American cars because:
1. It's American
2. They generally have lots of room and very little traffic/parking
Even today, when I go back to South Dakota, there are virtually NO foreign cars anywhere -- good luck finding a VW or Honda dealership, let alone a Subaru or BMW dealership (maybe one or two token dealerships in each state). So, small size or gas usage is not an issue for most Americans (that would be rich Americans and rural Americans which, IMHO, make up the majority of Americans). As you saw in the last Presidential elections, urban Americans do NOT generally make up the majority here (statistically, most urban Americans voted for Gore, which was why it was so close). There are a lot of rural Americans who will look at this GM car and never buy it -- they'll stick with the XYZ SUV bigger than most urban garages.
So, this original poster does represent a lot of Americans. Even here in California, I don't see many electric or hybrid cars at all. I just don't think they (or you, obviously) understand what most Americans are saying -- we generally want the same cars as we had before, but if you change them, make them look cool, not dorky.
In America, our cars mean a lot more to us than they do to people in most other countries.
What was the app? I've been working with .NET development for about 6 months and everything I've used on every hardware from 400MHz Celeron's to 3GHz P4's has run very, very fast. And IMO, C# is incredibly easy to program simple stuff in -- reminds me of when I started programming on that Commodore PET in 1979-1980 (hmm, from PET to .NET? cool...)
.NET Embedded, right? Probably more tuned for a phone, I would think (not to mention that any program developed for a phone would have to be different in some way from the desktop version -- not a straight port).
.NET app that ran slowly -- it'd be a first for me to see that...
Also, what language was it in? ".NET" could be practically any language supported in Windows -- C, C++, C#, Java, Visual Basic, among others. Also, you know there's a separate
Anyway, I'd love to take a look at any
This doesn't make any sense to me -- why not just DRINK COFFEE, like the rest of the military?
I never drank coffee until I joined the Army, and after that I found out why everyone in the military (that I know) regularly drinks coffee -- because the peace-time military ain't exactly exciting. I've rarely heard of anyone overdosing on coffee (I heard on the radio yesterday a woman OD'd on coffee and died after drinking over 400 cups in a day, but that's extreme), and I've never heard of anyone for whom coffee did not wake them up.
The only disadvantage on watch duty is you have to take a piss more often, but isn't that worth avoiding drug side-effects? I have taken caffeine pills before, and they work, but there are side-effects compared to just drinking coffee.
I think you are missing the point here -- from a PC-geek's point of view. Most of us PC-geeks (and Mac-geeks, I guess, since I was the same when I used only Macs), have most of these components laying around everywhere waiting to be used. The point of building a PC instead of buying a pre-built one is that it's a cheaper entry into getting another computer (not your first one) using your old components. I would still argue that a put-together PC is way better than many cheaper pre-built PC's, but that's my opinion.
... like at my house) computer as cheaply as possible, you put together a Franken-puter from orphaned parts you have left over from upgrades to your primary computer. With this information in the article, I can put together a cheap G4 Mac for about $700 (cheaper 800MHz G4 CPU is $500, and the M/B is $200) and use parts that would otherwise collect dust in my house.
So, if you want to get into a second (or third or fourth or nth computer
At least it gives me the option if I want, because I can tell you right now I'm not paying $1000 more out-of-pocket for a pretty Apple G4 Mac when I don't have to. Ex-Mac users, curious PC users, and even budget-minded Mac users will all find this information useful...
I think it's called:
CYA -- Cover Your Ass.
The less he says, the less likely he is to be lambasted for it for years in the future. A lot of his answers were conservative, but at the same time seemed to be just having fun.
I AM a long-time trekkie and a fan of the original series and Shatner's character Captain Kirk, but IMHO William Shatner has to be one of the most over-analyzed actors in human history. I mean, what did he REALLY do besides Star Trek and TJ Hooker (and how many people will still remember TJ Hooker in 10 more years if they even remember now)?
The truth is that Shatner is a pretty average guy in the fact that most people could probably act as well as him, he just had a big break called "Star Trek". Maybe that's why so many people grill him. I don't think he merits an interview anywhere, but that's probably why he seems to tell so many people to "get a life" -- in other words, why does anyone care about him or his life?
Let's get real here, people, and at least UTFS (Use The Fucking Site):
I looked up 6+ albums, and they were all cheaper to download/burn than to buy the CD from Amazon or Borders. Not CHEAP, but cheapER.
One example was $14 to download an album with 12-13 songs, $1.99/song individually, and $17-$19 to buy the CD itself from Amazon or Borders. Quite a few other songs I looked up were $0.99/song individually. All of them were cheaper on a per-song basis to download/buy entire albums than individually.
Also, 90+% of the albums I saw had 30 second previews, so it should be easy to avoid the typical dilemma of buying a whole CD just because you like 1-2 songs.
That is my primary problem with buying CD's because I effectively end up paying $6-$8/song. I don't think I'm the only one out there who uses Kazaa because of that.
Now that I've seen this service, I'll start using it. I can't guarantee I won't sometimes use Kazaa when I can't find music on Liquid.com or a service like this, but I found two very off-the-wall artists on Liquid.com, so I doubt it'll happen often. One of those artists I had to buy their CD from Amazon.de (Germany) and pay the overseas shipping to get the CD with some songs I couldn't even find on Kazaa, so this service offers BIG advantages to people like me.
The bottom line is this IS a big move in the right direction because at least it offers an alternative to MOST people (obviously not everyone). If I have to choose between paying a buck for a good-quality song I want right away with little searching, versus paying nothing to search forever in Kazaa for songs I want and downloading them 5 times each to ensure I get a good complete copy, I'll choose paying a buck...
All this Silicon Valley North/South/East, Silicon Alley, etc. crap is ridiculous. Come up with your own f*ckin' name because using an offshoot of Silicon Valley just makes you look like a weak wanna-be, which is exactly the opposite of what I'm sure you're going for.
GEEK VIRGIN???
Man, my wife would never touch me if I were like this:
Eric's outfits weigh 15kg - 12 kilos of which are gadgets of every kind.
"I use the [paint] brush a lot because I often end up sleeping in odd places and this is the best way I have found for removing dust," he says.