Re:comp time is unheard of in the US?
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Pay vs. Happiness
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At least for hourly employees, comp time became illegal last year in the US. Employers are required by federal law to pay time-and-a-half for any work over 40 hours a week. My company just cut out overtime rather than actually be required to pay for it.
Salaried employees aren't required to be paid at all for their extra effort. They get paid by the week, whether the employee's there 10 hours or 162. Any extra compensation is at the pleasure of a given company.
That's interesting. I thought they were dead and gone. I stand corrected.
I don't see any LG references on the Heathkit website, so I'm guessing they spun off Heathkit when they bought controlling interest in Zenith (they'd been investors in the company since the '80s).
RS-232 isn't dead yet, either with straight or null-modem cables. Work in the PBX/office telephone industry sometime. Serial ports are still in widespread use, even in all-VOIP systems since you have to have a way to configure network parameters apart from the network.
- cdroms (everyone has dvd's now!)
Not yet. I still don't have a DVD burner and even if I did, my ISP doesn't allow the downloading of a full DVD-size file in one session (2 Mb/day limit) so it wouldn't do me much good.
- CRT monitors
Give it a couple more years. CRT monitors are still much cheaper than flat ones.
- Modems
Nope. Not everyone has broadband. Modems have at least another 5 years of life.
These are in fact dead. Printers use almost exclusively USB now, and what wired network technology hasn't used strictly RJ-45 cables in the last 10 years or so?
One from the engineering world that should be dead, but isn't yet: The IEEE-488 (aka HPIB) test equipment interface bus. There's still too much older-but-useable equipment using it.
Because the Justices that were in the majority are considered liberals or moderates.
The four conservative Justices (Renquist, O'Connor, Scalia, & Thomas) all voted against this abomination. These are the ones that are constantly berated by most Democrats.
True liberals (in the classic sense - those that believe in true freedom) should, and probably are, appalled by today's decision. These people have nothing in common with today's Democratic Party of the US. They have more in common with Libertarians in that regard, but they believe in a bigger government "safety net." They also believe in private enterprise and private property. Today's liberals don't as much.
Modern liberalism is more akin to European-style socialism than they are to the classic American liberalism of their predecessors like Jack Kennedy & Hubert Humphrey. While I don't believe they are in favor of total nationalism of private enterprise, they do believe in more government influence (at best) or control (at worst) of private property.
They have more in common with religious conservatives (who want to control your bedroom and TV) than they want to admit. They just want to control a different aspect of peoples' lives than the "Theocons" (as they have been recently called) do.
To tell the truth, this decision should make both government-control-loving Democrats and corporation-loving Republicans happy. That should tell you that this decision is a really bad one.
AC Said: " No doubt you also believe that police, fire, and ambulance service should be put out for bid to the private sector, along with municipal water and sewer service. How..., how anarchistic of you."
Ambulance services are 100% private in the Phoenix area, and many other parts of the country as well. Scottsdale and a few other smaller towns have a privately-owned for-profit fire department (Rural Metro), but that'll be changing in the next year or so, if it hasn't already. Rural Metro is going broke.
That's probably why this isn't in court right now. Cox is getting their payoff **oops, I mean** involvement.
Don't expect this in other valley cities. With Phoenix's size, the costs involved to build a wireless network in a city of 1.5 million people & 450 square miles (larger in land area than LA) would be huge. If it cost more than $3 million then a public vote would be required.
Scottsdale & Paradise Valley might want to do this since they are ultra-wealthy cities, but most of the others are far more conservative (and poorer). They would consider this to be public money going to an area that should be only served by the private sector - generally considered a major no-no in these parts.
Our arch-conservative state legislature tends to think the same way. If a bill banning such municipal wi-fi networks were to be introduced, it would probably pass with flying colors. I think one state (Pennsylvania?) has or will be doing just that.
Tempe is a city of about 150,000 people - larger than many major college towns. Scottsdale is a bit bigger at around 200,000. Mesa is about 400,000.
The metro Phoenix area is about 3.5 million, larger than metro Baltimore and Denver. It's the 15th-largest metro area in the US.
And Tempe has a lot of decent neighborhoods. It also has a few really crappy ones, mostly on the west side near the border with Phoenix. But so do most cities its size.
For every Enron or WorldCom that gets caught doing something illegal, there are tens, if not hundreds of smaller companies that do this and don't get caught. Not only do they not get caught, but the high-percentage shareholders are in on the whole scam.
Even in honest companies (which fortunately is most of them), if a company doesn't produce a profit each and every quarter, the CEO runs the risk of being fired. The SEC form 10-Q (or equivalents in other countries) that gets filed every 3 months is God.
If the stockholders don't like what they see on that form, they can tell the board to make a change if they wish. They are the owners. They call the shots.
It happened at my company several years ago, where the new hot-shot CEO promised big profits in one quarter. We barely broke even, he got canned immediately, the CFO took over as CEO and has been there ever since.
* Has no vision at all. He takes his marching orders from the Board of Directors, who represent the stockholders.
* Surrounds himself with yes-men who tell him what he wants to hear.
* Listens? To what? He's the CEO and makes all the important decisions.
* Rewards himself when someone comes up with a good idea. His employees' performance is supposed to make him look good.
* Mandates sycophancy.
* Juggles the books if necessary to increase the stock proce. His job, by law, is to maximize shareholder value. Period.
* Is above criticism. He's the boss, after all. He wouldn't have achieved his position by being a complete f**k-up, would he?:-D
* Loves the squabbles between his managers. Makes him look that much better. He'll just fire one of them (probably the technical guy).
* Has his golden parachute ready when the s#!t hits the fan. The layoffs and the collapse of the company are his successor's problem. Meanwhile, he leaves with a $20,000,000 severance package.
You picked the 3 worst distros for a newbie to use (dons asbestos underwear at this point:-D ). Red Hat is Red Hat (works for the most part but is not for consumer use). SuSE works for some people but I always had trouble with it. Slackware is definitely not for newcomers.
I recommend Mandrake for consumer boxes because it's the easiest to configure for the inexperienced (disclaimer: I use one Mandrake 9.1 box and 3 Slackware 10 boxes at home and work, but I have 6 years of Linux experience).
Cygwin? I use it on my XP box at work once in a while (mostly for nedit) but it can be a pain in the ass at times. Most people don't even know what it is. It's a tool for professionals, not consumers.
As far as open source software for Windows killing Linux: Don't bet on it. Overall it's still not as good as the equivalent or identical Linux version of the same program. Mozilla & Firefox are exceptions. OpenOffice is not.
For the most part, older hardware works better with modern versions of Linux than Windows 2000 or XP. Win98 runs faster (I didn't say "better") than Linux, mainly because it's a bit smaller being DOS-based.
But the only reason to run Windows anymore is for some games and streaming media, especially for sports. All leagues (at least in the US) other than Major League Baseball mandate Windows Media Player or a version or RealPlayer with the browser included (NFL) - neither is available for Linux. Mplayer-plugin is a joke. This stinks but it's reality. It's also the only reason I keep Windows 98 around.
Inside the drawers are the olive-green folders with the tabs. Inside of those are manilla folders. Individual files (or documents) are inside the manilla folders.
Now, if you are one of those people who likes nested directories down to the 10th level (e.g./home/you/docs/a/b/c/d/e/f/g/document.txt) you are obviously too anal-retentive to deal with real life.:-D
Telecommunications is considered Interstate Commerce, which the Constitution allows the federal government to regulate.
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution: (Congress shall have the power) To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
That authority is now with the FCC, authorized by the Communcations Acts of 1934 and 1996. Originally, it was the Navy Department. Would you rather have the military controlling all radio like in the World War I era?
What you suggest is heresy against The Unix Way. Your punishment is say 5 "Hail Stallmans" and promise never to speak such evil of The Ultimate Filesystem again.:-D
Seriously, I don't think the Linux kernel supports anything other than the standard Unix filesystem layout. Other than that, what you say makes excellent sense.
If OpenOffice.org (or any other supplier for that matter) isn't on the List of Approved Vendors (or whatever it's called), I doubt that they'd be allowed to use it.
Better off trying for StarOffice. Sun may be on the "approved" list.
At least they were when I worked for a major defense contractor in the '80s. Their rule was $0.00 - absolutely no gifts whatsoever. Not even a Big Mac for lunch or a coffee mug from a vendor/subcontractor's rep or a US Government agent or member of the military (our customer).
Violations were a firing offense. My employer took ethics quite seriously, at least after some engineers and managers were caught taking bribes & gifts from vendors in the mid '80s. They were promptly fired and blackballed from the industry. Their clearances were permanently revoked so it was legal.
Microsoft should properly be stripped of all government contracts for this violation. Too bad it won't happen. Bill Gates is Bill Gates.
He's the chairman of the House committee that oversees the FCC. He was owned and operated by the NAB and didn't deny it.
Fortunately for the public he's retiring at the end of this term to become a lobbyist (not in broadcasting). His leaving Congress is the country's gain.
Apparently he's taken himself out of the picture if both Congress and the FCC are all of a sudden in favor of low-power broadcasting.
I don't know about the desktop drives, but my employer uses the Travelstar 20 and 40 Gb laptop drives. Our manufacturer in Korea used them because they were manufactured there and there was no import duty on them.
I should say "used to use" them. About 30% of those drives died by the time our customers received the product they were installed into (voicemail systems - 24/7/365 uptime required). Now our customers are pissed and threatening to sue us.
We ordered our manufacturer to switch back to Toshiba (which is what we used previously). They work.
If the average person hasn't heard of Linux up until now, they have been getting more familiar with it in the last couple of weeks. At least football fans have.
Why? Those IBM commercials with Linux as the "adopted kid" that have been running during the NFL playoffs. There have been other commercials mentioning Linux in the past couple of years (from IBM and Dell), but this is the first one that emphasises it.
Any commercial that features such diverse talents as 95-year-old ex-UCLA baseketball coach John Wooden, "Laverne & Shirley" star Penny Marshall, and Muhammad Ali all in the same ad, is pretty good.
BTW, where was Linus in all this? Shouldn't he be involved in these somehow?
1. Bally Astrocade (1978) - A competitor to the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision. Had technical problems that prevented it from being released in time for Christmas 1977. Nice machine, though, and had a Tiny Basic cartridge that noone else had. Bally/Midway never sold very many of them. Good thing they had Space Invaders and PacMan to fall back on.
2. Stringy-Floppy (Early '80s) - When even 90K floppy drives cost $500 this was an endless-loop tape drive that was faster than a cassette and cost around $150. Floppy drives started coming down in price soon thereafter.
3. Tandy TRS-80C (Early '80s) - The "ColorTrash80" had a chicklet keyboard, 32K of RAM, a 6809 processor, and a tape drive that allowed 8-character filenames (unlike Atari and Commodore). It was also too expensive and incompatible with the other TRS-80 products. Those who bought them loved them, though. Just not a lot of people bought them.
5. Over-the-air pay television services like ON-TV, Spectrum, SelecTV, and Wometco Home Theatre (1980-85). Right when cable was taking off. Easy to legally descramble with the old thumbwheel-tuner VCRs (at least with ON-TV).
6. Betamax, although it did survive in broadcast TV areas like news departments.
7. Audio tape cartridges that looked like cassettes but were about 3 times as large. This was in the mid-late '60s. Never went anywhere.
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At least for hourly employees, comp time became illegal last year in the US. Employers are required by federal law to pay time-and-a-half for any work over 40 hours a week. My company just cut out overtime rather than actually be required to pay for it.
Salaried employees aren't required to be paid at all for their extra effort. They get paid by the week, whether the employee's there 10 hours or 162. Any extra compensation is at the pleasure of a given company.
That's interesting. I thought they were dead and gone. I stand corrected.
I don't see any LG references on the Heathkit website, so I'm guessing they spun off Heathkit when they bought controlling interest in Zenith (they'd been investors in the company since the '80s).
Especially considering the fact that Heathkit went under about 15 years ago.
They were owned by Zenith at the time. Zenith is now owned by LG of Korea and they probably own all the old Heathkit trademarks now.
- Null-modem cable
RS-232 isn't dead yet, either with straight or null-modem cables. Work in the PBX/office telephone industry sometime. Serial ports are still in widespread use, even in all-VOIP systems since you have to have a way to configure network parameters apart from the network.
- cdroms (everyone has dvd's now!)
Not yet. I still don't have a DVD burner and even if I did, my ISP doesn't allow the downloading of a full DVD-size file in one session (2 Mb/day limit) so it wouldn't do me much good.
- CRT monitors
Give it a couple more years. CRT monitors are still much cheaper than flat ones.
- Modems
Nope. Not everyone has broadband. Modems have at least another 5 years of life.
- Pick old-tyme key combo: CTRL-ALT-DEL/PrtScrn/ScrLck/SysRq
Screen captures still require Alt-PrtScrn. Rebooting Linux is still done with Ctrl-Alt-Del, as is accessing the Windows Task Manager.
- Centronics printer cables
- Pick a non-Ethernet Layer 2 technology: ARCnet, Token Ring, ATM, LocalTalk, FDDI
These are in fact dead. Printers use almost exclusively USB now, and what wired network technology hasn't used strictly RJ-45 cables in the last 10 years or so?
One from the engineering world that should be dead, but isn't yet: The IEEE-488 (aka HPIB) test equipment interface bus. There's still too much older-but-useable equipment using it.
Because the Justices that were in the majority are considered liberals or moderates.
The four conservative Justices (Renquist, O'Connor, Scalia, & Thomas) all voted against this abomination. These are the ones that are constantly berated by most Democrats.
True liberals (in the classic sense - those that believe in true freedom) should, and probably are, appalled by today's decision. These people have nothing in common with today's Democratic Party of the US. They have more in common with Libertarians in that regard, but they believe in a bigger government "safety net." They also believe in private enterprise and private property. Today's liberals don't as much.
Modern liberalism is more akin to European-style socialism than they are to the classic American liberalism of their predecessors like Jack Kennedy & Hubert Humphrey. While I don't believe they are in favor of total nationalism of private enterprise, they do believe in more government influence (at best) or control (at worst) of private property.
They have more in common with religious conservatives (who want to control your bedroom and TV) than they want to admit. They just want to control a different aspect of peoples' lives than the "Theocons" (as they have been recently called) do.
To tell the truth, this decision should make both government-control-loving Democrats and corporation-loving Republicans happy. That should tell you that this decision is a really bad one.
If someone went back in time and killed Mrs. Gore, Al Gore would never have been born.
If Al Gore never existed, the internet would never have been invented.
And if the internet was never invented, then Slashdot would nev......
AC Said: " No doubt you also believe that police, fire, and ambulance service should be put out for bid to the private sector, along with municipal water and sewer service. How..., how anarchistic of you."
Ambulance services are 100% private in the Phoenix area, and many other parts of the country as well. Scottsdale and a few other smaller towns have a privately-owned for-profit fire department (Rural Metro), but that'll be changing in the next year or so, if it hasn't already. Rural Metro is going broke.
That's probably why this isn't in court right now. Cox is getting their payoff **oops, I mean** involvement.
Don't expect this in other valley cities. With Phoenix's size, the costs involved to build a wireless network in a city of 1.5 million people & 450 square miles (larger in land area than LA) would be huge. If it cost more than $3 million then a public vote would be required.
Scottsdale & Paradise Valley might want to do this since they are ultra-wealthy cities, but most of the others are far more conservative (and poorer). They would consider this to be public money going to an area that should be only served by the private sector - generally considered a major no-no in these parts.
Our arch-conservative state legislature tends to think the same way. If a bill banning such municipal wi-fi networks were to be introduced, it would probably pass with flying colors. I think one state (Pennsylvania?) has or will be doing just that.
Tempe is a city of about 150,000 people - larger than many major college towns. Scottsdale is a bit bigger at around 200,000. Mesa is about 400,000.
The metro Phoenix area is about 3.5 million, larger than metro Baltimore and Denver. It's the 15th-largest metro area in the US.
And Tempe has a lot of decent neighborhoods. It also has a few really crappy ones, mostly on the west side near the border with Phoenix. But so do most cities its size.
Elderly Mandriva,
That Elderly Mandriva,
He don't say anything, but he must know something
That elderly Mandriva, he just keeps rolling along....
(Apologies to Stan Freberg)
For every Enron or WorldCom that gets caught doing something illegal, there are tens, if not hundreds of smaller companies that do this and don't get caught. Not only do they not get caught, but the high-percentage shareholders are in on the whole scam.
Even in honest companies (which fortunately is most of them), if a company doesn't produce a profit each and every quarter, the CEO runs the risk of being fired. The SEC form 10-Q (or equivalents in other countries) that gets filed every 3 months is God.
If the stockholders don't like what they see on that form, they can tell the board to make a change if they wish. They are the owners. They call the shots.
It happened at my company several years ago, where the new hot-shot CEO promised big profits in one quarter. We barely broke even, he got canned immediately, the CFO took over as CEO and has been there ever since.
The real-world CEO:
:-D
* Has no vision at all. He takes his marching orders from the Board of Directors, who represent the stockholders.
* Surrounds himself with yes-men who tell him what he wants to hear.
* Listens? To what? He's the CEO and makes all the important decisions.
* Rewards himself when someone comes up with a good idea. His employees' performance is supposed to make him look good.
* Mandates sycophancy.
* Juggles the books if necessary to increase the stock proce. His job, by law, is to maximize shareholder value. Period.
* Is above criticism. He's the boss, after all. He wouldn't have achieved his position by being a complete f**k-up, would he?
* Loves the squabbles between his managers. Makes him look that much better. He'll just fire one of them (probably the technical guy).
* Has his golden parachute ready when the s#!t hits the fan. The layoffs and the collapse of the company are his successor's problem. Meanwhile, he leaves with a $20,000,000 severance package.
You picked the 3 worst distros for a newbie to use (dons asbestos underwear at this point :-D ). Red Hat is Red Hat (works for the most part but is not for consumer use). SuSE works for some people but I always had trouble with it. Slackware is definitely not for newcomers.
I recommend Mandrake for consumer boxes because it's the easiest to configure for the inexperienced (disclaimer: I use one Mandrake 9.1 box and 3 Slackware 10 boxes at home and work, but I have 6 years of Linux experience).
Cygwin? I use it on my XP box at work once in a while (mostly for nedit) but it can be a pain in the ass at times. Most people don't even know what it is. It's a tool for professionals, not consumers.
As far as open source software for Windows killing Linux: Don't bet on it. Overall it's still not as good as the equivalent or identical Linux version of the same program. Mozilla & Firefox are exceptions. OpenOffice is not.
For the most part, older hardware works better with modern versions of Linux than Windows 2000 or XP. Win98 runs faster (I didn't say "better") than Linux, mainly because it's a bit smaller being DOS-based.
But the only reason to run Windows anymore is for some games and streaming media, especially for sports. All leagues (at least in the US) other than Major League Baseball mandate Windows Media Player or a version or RealPlayer with the browser included (NFL) - neither is available for Linux. Mplayer-plugin is a joke. This stinks but it's reality. It's also the only reason I keep Windows 98 around.
Inside the drawers are the olive-green folders with the tabs. Inside of those are manilla folders. Individual files (or documents) are inside the manilla folders.
/home/you/docs/a/b/c/d/e/f/g/document.txt) you are obviously too anal-retentive to deal with real life. :-D
Now, if you are one of those people who likes nested directories down to the 10th level (e.g.
Those types go wa-a-a-a-y to far.
Telecommunications is considered Interstate Commerce, which the Constitution allows the federal government to regulate.
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution: (Congress shall have the power) To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
That authority is now with the FCC, authorized by the Communcations Acts of 1934 and 1996. Originally, it was the Navy Department. Would you rather have the military controlling all radio like in the World War I era?
Didn't think so.
BLASPHEMY! Oops I mean "GNU/BLASPHEMY."
:-D
What you suggest is heresy against The Unix Way. Your punishment is say 5 "Hail Stallmans" and promise never to speak such evil of The Ultimate Filesystem again.
Seriously, I don't think the Linux kernel supports anything other than the standard Unix filesystem layout. Other than that, what you say makes excellent sense.
If OpenOffice.org (or any other supplier for that matter) isn't on the List of Approved Vendors (or whatever it's called), I doubt that they'd be allowed to use it.
Better off trying for StarOffice. Sun may be on the "approved" list.
After which, Ballmer jumps up, dances around the office, and chants "Ethics....ethics....ethics..."
At least they were when I worked for a major defense contractor in the '80s. Their rule was $0.00 - absolutely no gifts whatsoever. Not even a Big Mac for lunch or a coffee mug from a vendor/subcontractor's rep or a US Government agent or member of the military (our customer).
Violations were a firing offense. My employer took ethics quite seriously, at least after some engineers and managers were caught taking bribes & gifts from vendors in the mid '80s. They were promptly fired and blackballed from the industry. Their clearances were permanently revoked so it was legal.
Microsoft should properly be stripped of all government contracts for this violation. Too bad it won't happen. Bill Gates is Bill Gates.
He's the chairman of the House committee that oversees the FCC. He was owned and operated by the NAB and didn't deny it.
Fortunately for the public he's retiring at the end of this term to become a lobbyist (not in broadcasting). His leaving Congress is the country's gain.
Apparently he's taken himself out of the picture if both Congress and the FCC are all of a sudden in favor of low-power broadcasting.
I don't know about the desktop drives, but my employer uses the Travelstar 20 and 40 Gb laptop drives. Our manufacturer in Korea used them because they were manufactured there and there was no import duty on them.
I should say "used to use" them. About 30% of those drives died by the time our customers received the product they were installed into (voicemail systems - 24/7/365 uptime required). Now our customers are pissed and threatening to sue us.
We ordered our manufacturer to switch back to Toshiba (which is what we used previously). They work.
Canada's equivalent of the FCC has a section of their rules covering unlicensed transmitters that is almost identical to our Part 15.
Readeth Thyne Fukeng Manuyle?
If the average person hasn't heard of Linux up until now, they have been getting more familiar with it in the last couple of weeks. At least football fans have.
Why? Those IBM commercials with Linux as the "adopted kid" that have been running during the NFL playoffs. There have been other commercials mentioning Linux in the past couple of years (from IBM and Dell), but this is the first one that emphasises it.
Any commercial that features such diverse talents as 95-year-old ex-UCLA baseketball coach John Wooden, "Laverne & Shirley" star Penny Marshall, and Muhammad Ali all in the same ad, is pretty good.
BTW, where was Linus in all this? Shouldn't he be involved in these somehow?
In no particular order:
1. Bally Astrocade (1978) - A competitor to the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision. Had technical problems that prevented it from being released in time for Christmas 1977. Nice machine, though, and had a Tiny Basic cartridge that noone else had. Bally/Midway never sold very many of them. Good thing they had Space Invaders and PacMan to fall back on.
2. Stringy-Floppy (Early '80s) - When even 90K floppy drives cost $500 this was an endless-loop tape drive that was faster than a cassette and cost around $150. Floppy drives started coming down in price soon thereafter.
3. Tandy TRS-80C (Early '80s) - The "ColorTrash80" had a chicklet keyboard, 32K of RAM, a 6809 processor, and a tape drive that allowed 8-character filenames (unlike Atari and Commodore). It was also too expensive and incompatible with the other TRS-80 products. Those who bought them loved them, though. Just not a lot of people bought them.
4. The infamous '70s audio flops: 8-Track tape & Quadrophonic sound.
5. Over-the-air pay television services like ON-TV, Spectrum, SelecTV, and Wometco Home Theatre (1980-85). Right when cable was taking off. Easy to legally descramble with the old thumbwheel-tuner VCRs (at least with ON-TV).
6. Betamax, although it did survive in broadcast TV areas like news departments.
7. Audio tape cartridges that looked like cassettes but were about 3 times as large. This was in the mid-late '60s. Never went anywhere.