Camera: sounding like a better solution for those who don't mind the strange distortions you don't get with a flatbed.
My camera was mounted about 3 feet above the documents (tripod was bungied to a bookshelf next to the desk) and I didn't notice any strange distortions. Printed docs seem equivalent to a photocopy.
Shredder: wha? Why not just incinerate the originals?
As an apartment dweller (limited storage space was the whole reason for getting rid of the paper documents), I don't really have easy access to a burn-barrel (or even a fireplace) to incinerate documents in.
1000 pages in less than an hour, are you and your wife really humans ? Can we send a bladerunner there:)
1000 pages in less than an hour, are you and your wife really humans ? Can we send a bladerunner there:)
Once you get in a rhythm, it's easy. There are 3600 seconds in an hour, so 1000 per hour is one page every 3 or 4 seconds. The nice part about using a digital camera is that you really can scan as fast as you can lay documents out since the "scan" happens nearly instantly. I'd lay out a document and as soon as I'd go for the next one, she'd snap the photo.
It helped that the paperwork (old business records) was well organized in file folders and easy to scan, just grab a file folder from the box (which had around 20 to 50 unstapled pages), and lay each page out one at a time. When the stack of scanned pages got over 1/2" high, I'd move it to the shred box.
They meant you'd leave the phone in your pocket, or in a bag in the room or something, with internet sharing active. You wouldn't need to touch the phone at all.
Well, you're right, you wouldn't need to touch your phone to act as a Wifi hotspot, but how would you use this clever Wifi network without using your phone? The premise here was that the computer they gave you would be locked to a small subset of whitelisted websites. The Wifi on your phone doesn't help you get around URL blocking on their computer.
When I had a bunch of old documents i wanted to image, I used a tripod to suspend my digital camera over my desk pointing downward, set it to fixed focus along with a bright light nearby, then my wife and I started snapping pics as fast as I could lay pages out. We used a DSLR, but any camera should work. Setting it to fixed focus was key to prevent focusing delays.
I'd put a page on the desk and she'd snap a pic as soon as I'd lay it down (with a remote shutter release, it would be easy to do it with one person). We did over 1000 pages in less than an hour - it took longer to shred the docs than it did to image them because the cheap shredder kept turning itself off due to thermal overload. I taped the focusing ring and zoom ring in place to make sure it didn't move out of focus and spot checked a few docs along the way to make sure everything looked good. My 10MP camera gave around 250dpi resolution for legal sized documents, which was more than sufficient for my needs. I originally thought I'd save them as uncompressed TIFF's and convert to PNG's, but it turned out that the "fine" JPG setting on the camera gave good results with small file sizes (and didn't need as many memory cards). I've printed a few of the docs since then, with adequate cropping in an image editor, the printed docs look about as good as a photocopy.
Maybe not the best solution for ongoing needs, but if you have a single big batch to do and you don't want to spend a lot of money on a scanner, it might be worth looking into. This method would work well with poor quality and/or oddly shaped originals like thermal paper receipts.
Seriously, I commute a 100+ miles a day. And this will work just fine for me.
If you commute 100+ miles a day, this is entirely the wrong vehicle for you. Even with all electric, it's an insane waste to haul around a huge SUV with just your fat ass in it.
Is there another all-electric car that has enough range for his commute? He'd have to charge a Nissan Leaf at work.
Ya because you can't have a wifi hotspot running on your cell phone. And you can't create an ad-hoc wifi network to collude during the exam.
It's not that hard to see someone using their phone during a test. If the prof provides a computer for internet access and walks around and sees someone typing on their phone, he can confiscate the phone (or fail the test taker for violating the "no phones" rule). It's no different than a teacher patrolling for calculators during a "no-calculators" test.
Linux requires root for too many things. You shouldn't need root to mount a file/device.
So you're saying I should be able to plug in a USB stick with a setuid root shell on it, mount that without root permissions, and own your system with almost zero effort?
When my system automounts filesystems, it's mounted with the nosuid flag (which is the default when a user is given permission to mount a filesystem via the "user" flag in fstab - "suid" permission would have to be explicitly granted to enable it on a user mounted filesystem).
I support both Macs and PCs and I love the ISO mount feature. I never saw why Windows XP or Vista or 7 didn't include it -- until I stepped into the license administration role. I hate the ISO install feature. This is a corporate nightmare. "Hey, I need such-and-such software" "Here's the ISO. Just install it. The tech gave me the license." Then I get to come around and uninstall all the users' precious software because they don't have a license. HP's Radia works just fine, thank you.
Why does ISO mounting make things any different.? Instead of saying "Here's the ISO. Just install it. The tech gave me the license", it becomes "Here's the ISO, burn it and install it". Or "Here's the CD-ROM, just install it".
Linux requires root for too many things. You shouldn't need root to mount a file/device. Only read (and optionally write) permissions on the file/device.
In my linux desktop, my CD-ROM and USB devices automount when I plug them in, no root required, I don't even need to run a command, they just mount. And I can unmount them by clicking through my file manager. I can mount an ISO by right-clicking on it in my file manager. No root required.
What mounts do you need root for? If it's something you need to do more than once, add it to fstab and add the "user" option.
Nowhere there does it say he quit, it just says he's decided to seek employment elsewhere, most people will find another job before they quit their current one.
Yeah, I noticed that after I submitted my post - the post I was replying too said "I quit", and I thought he copied that down from the original submission.
I didn't think it was significant enough to reply to my own post with a correction. If Slashdot allowed edits, I would have changed my reply to "He did quit (or at least, he plans to as soon as he finds a new job)".
But since that was such a minor nit, I didn't think it was worth posting a correction.
There ain't no other choice right now that will meet demand and not generate CO2. There is a downside but it's the least bad choice right now. How many wind farms or solar ones can produce that kind of base load? 2.2GW and with reprocessing the fuel should last long enough to get fusion figured out and then antimatter reactors would be the final step.
Is there any reason to believe that Antimatter will ever be a viable energy source? Are there deposits of antimatter somewhere in the near universe that can be mined? I thought antimatter had to be created with huge amounts of energy?
the same kernel and userland work on both super computers, cellphones, and everything in between. there is not a computing solution that can't be made to work with gnu/linux.(not that its always the best solution. Also, your company's accounting software would run just fine on linux if someone ported it for linux. Its not because of any flaw of lack of capability, but choices made by your accounting software's developer. At least from a techincal standpoint, when you are doing development work, and control all the code, yes, linux is far more flexable than most any other operating system., to include UNIX, which as very flexable and very portable itself.
While that is indeed flexible, it's completely irrelevant to me when I need to buy a new server. I don't really care whether or not my server operating system can run on a phone, I'm more interested in whether or not it can run the applications I need and how much it will cost to install and maintain.
Sounds like you went to a rather dodgy shop. Last year when my door handle broke on my daily drive (cheap pot metal handle) it cost $230 or so dollars to get it repaired professionally and that included paying to get the new handle painted to match the rest of the door. I could have done the repair my self for probably half of that but I didn't want to fix it in the middle of winter in an unheated garage and deal with the side impact airbags as those are dangerous and expensive if you set them off accidentally. This was on a 14 year old car at the time, but then I take better care of my vehicles than most.
I don't think you understand the scope of the repair, it wasn't just a matter of replacing the handle, because he tore off so much sheet metal with the door handle, there was a 6" wide by 4" deep hole in the door, and deep gouge marks surrounding that hole from the screwdriver or prybar he used to get the door handle off. I don't see how such a fix could be repaired in a way that leaves the door functional without replacing the whole door panel (or maybe it was the door, I dunno). All I know is that labor was around 75% of the price on the estimate.
The way they explained it, in order to keep the newly repainted door from standing out from the rest of the car because of color matching, they had to blend it in to the surrounding body by repainting parts of those panels to blend in the paint, which added to the scope of the repair and the labor.
I trust that the insurance adjuster that looked at the car knew a thing or two about reasonable costs (why else would he have that job?), and the body shop was on the insurance company's list of approved shops, so I don't think they ripped off the insurance company by inflating the cost of the repair.
The repair really did turn out seamless and it's impossible to tell that the door was repainted - I've seen other cars on the road where a body panel is clearly a different shade than the rest of the car, so I'm glad they took the time to blend it in carefully.
In talking to friends that have similar body made, my repair costs didn't seem to be out of line with theirs.
There are companies that would embrace him and his ideals.
No company will hire this guy or anyone else that is going to quit because of selection of software.
It shows that he's not reliable and maybe a flake. What next, he'll get hired at another company and quit because they're switching to Oracle?!
If you're that much of a zealot that you'll quit because your company isn't using FOSS, then you really need to get a fucking life.
I can't speak for other areas, but there are plenty of places in the SF Bay Area that will hire you (or not) based on your support of FOSS - bonus points if you can point out actual contributions to FOSS software. Many of these places were started by and run by people who also embrace FOSS software. Tell them that you can only work on a Windows desktop and the interview will end quickly.
Granted, he's probably not going to get a job at a large fortune 500 (or even fortune 1000 company), but there are small companies and startups that embrace open source since it was FOSS software that helped them get their company off the ground at little cost.
Me? I'm somewhere in the middle - I prefer FOSS solutions, but will use the right tool for the job. I work with (and sometimes manage) Linux, Microsoft, and Apple zealots, and you know what? They all have valid points about their preferred platform - I don't expect our PHP developers to code a.Net sharepoint interface, nor do I expect our SQL/Server Admin to set up MySQL replication. Of course, I don't expect our SQL/Server admin to design a web page because that's not what he's paid for and that's not his core strength.
If you're that much of a zealot that you'll quit because your company isn't using FOSS, then you really need to get a fucking life.
Of course, some would say that if you're willing to whore yourself out to whatever technology your company deems appropriate, you need to get some balls and take control of your life. If you don't want to be a.Net programmer and you have the skills to get another job doing what you want, why shouldn't you?
linux servers are more flexable and scalable than windows, and they DO have a presence in the mainframe market(suprised but true).
What does that mean more flexible ? Our Linux servers are great at running my company's website, but they won't run our accounting software. Is that flexible? Is IIS7 any less scalable than Apache? I manage around 100 MS and Linux servers, and the only reason we have so many is for application segmentation and security, not scalability - nearly all are running on shared hardware under VMWare. Few companies need the capability of a mainframe, so I'm ignoring the mainframe/supercomputer market, and I agree that there are definitely niches where Linux is the clear choice, but most companies aren't in that niche.
"Oh no. My management made a platform decision that I don't like. I quit." Then fucking quit you idiot. Go start your own company founded on whatever principles you want and make your own platform decisions then.
He did quit. Why does he have to start his own company when he could work at an existing company that embraces his ideals? Not everyone wants to run their own company, nor should they.
If you had to explain to family why you quit your job, do you realize how fucking retarded it sounds to say "I quit because of principles. I refuse to work for a company that buys from Microsoft"
Good for you that you have principles -- but those are fucking stupid principle. Set your priorities. Jeebus Christ this is idiotic.
There are companies that would embrace him and his ideals. He just doesn't work at one, and judging the fact that he's looking in the newspaper for a new job and not Craigslist, he probably doesn't live in an area where he's likely to find a company that's runs significantly on open source software. Just because you have no ideals surrounding open source, that doesn't mean that no one else should. As for what he tells his family, that's none of your concern - his wife may be a hardcore OSX geek and completely understand.
That said, he's going to run into Microsoft at just about every company in the back office, but there are plenty of companies that use Open Source products for their public facing web sites and in-house tools. For some things, Microsoft is the Right Answer, it's just that MS comes with a lot of baggage and the foot print starts to grow and before you know it, you've got your entire infrastructure on MS and there's so much momentum behind it, it's hard to move off. SaaS is making it easier to not grow a large MS infrastructure to run your business, but even SaaS providers often come with Microsoft dependencies either with MS-only thick clients, or MSIE requirements for full functionality.
So - then are you saying that you should never RMA a failed HD? Because if NewEgg doesn't wipe drives as part of the refurbishment, then you can never send a drive back.
I wouldn't send back a potentially repairable drive that has my personal data on it.
At work, we have some drives that we're not legally allowed to return unless we can do a secure wipe of the drive (or the manufacturer will certify that they've destroyed the data). We had to pay extra for our storage array maintenance contract for non-return.
I haven't had to return a consumer hard drive (yet), do they have to be returned in working order? If not, then I'd open it up and physically scrape a screwdriver across the platters. The data might be technically recoverable, but you know they aren't going to send those platters to another customer. (I'm not saying that I've never had a home hard drive fail, but typically by the time it does, it's old enough that I just buy a newer, bigger drive for not much money)
They tore off the handle, and you replaced the entire door panel? And then you paid some paint shop to do a professional job on a 7-year-old car? Can you call me the next time you need your computer fixed? I'm sure I can find something to charge you a couple grand for...
I don't usually buy comprehensive insurance for my computer, but when I do get my computer fixed under warranty, I generally let the manufacturer fix it the way they want. When the USB port on my laptop goes bad, I don't argue when the manufacturer wants to replace the entire $500 motherboard instead of soldering a new $0.79 USB port on the motherboard.
When someone tears off the door handle from my car and leaves a hole twice as big as the door handle used to be along with screwdriver pry marks, I believed my insurance adjuster and the body shop when they said I needed a new door. I didn't argue that they could weld in some new sheet metal and smooth it over with body putty. Not that it would have made it any cheaper since the largest part of the cost was labor. My insurance company decided how to fix it and how much they would pay, not me. I just wanted the car to look like it did before the damage.
How much would *you* pay to fix a car worth $15,000? Is 20% of its value too much? I'm glad you're not my insurance company.
Yes, but anything can trip a high acceleration value, so even if they have them, how do you propose differentiating the GPS falling to the ground because it wasn't placed correctly or someone hitting it with something by mistake with that swerve you were talking about?
I did some work on detecting road conditions using mobile phones as sensors, and I can assure you that the accelerometer is far from a reliable tool by itself.
My 7 year old Thinkpad can detect when it's in freefall and park the hard drive heads before it hits the ground, so I think a modern accelerometer enhanced GPS can tell the difference between a short, sharp impact from a fall and a longer more gentle G-force from hard braking or swerving. An orientation sensor can also help.
If your kid is pretending it's an airplane and waving it through the air, that might confuse the sensors, but even that should be distinguishable from legitimate hard braking.
Apart from the fact that very often, it doesn't. (I still have a TomTom 920T, although it seldom gets used these days; it was their top model a few years ago though.) My maps were until recently regularly updated, mapshare updates were applied before every trip, but for a significant proportion of the speed limits around town it was off by a margin of as much as 20 miles per hour, and that's in the few places where it even pretended to know the limits.
My Garmin is surprisingly accurate, both in town and on the highway. Often, the speed limit display changes the instant I pass a new speed limit sign. I haven't noticed any places where it hasn't been accurate, but most of my driving is either within a large urban area or on freeways - I don't do much small town driving. It's been quite handy, especially for freeway driving: "Hey, is this still a 70mph zone or did I miss a 55mph sign when I passed those trucks?"
Why would they boycott Tomtom rather than refusing to continue to participate in the insurance company program that lowers the rates for "safer" drivers? Is Tomtom the bad guy here? They are just providing the data - insurance companies (and their customers) are deciding how (or whether) to use it.
Don't want to join the monitoring program? Then pay a higher rate.
But I have always been of the mind that people speeding are paying WAY more attention to the road than the average driver, and in the end probably are not as likely to get in an accident.
I bet you're one of the 90% of drivers that think they are "above average".
That's just a decision you'll have to make. Do you really want to swerve and slam on the brakes and take the premium hike or will it cost less to just take a scrape and make him pay for it without reporting the incident?
Few people with a relatively modern car are going to accept a scrape or pay for a repair out of pocket.
A proper repair for a scratch and dent can cost thousands since to get a seamless repair they have to repaint the panel that was scratched and blend the new paint in to the adjoining panels. When someone broke into my 7 year old car by tearing off the driver's door handle, it cost $3500 to replace the driver's door panel and blend in the paint with the adjoining panels. If someone pulled out of the a driveway and struck the side of my car, I'd expect the same (or higher) bill. Definitely worth swerving out of the way (if possible).
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Camera: sounding like a better solution for those who don't mind the strange distortions you don't get with a flatbed.
My camera was mounted about 3 feet above the documents (tripod was bungied to a bookshelf next to the desk) and I didn't notice any strange distortions. Printed docs seem equivalent to a photocopy.
Shredder: wha? Why not just incinerate the originals?
As an apartment dweller (limited storage space was the whole reason for getting rid of the paper documents), I don't really have easy access to a burn-barrel (or even a fireplace) to incinerate documents in.
1000 pages in less than an hour, are you and your wife really humans ? Can we send a bladerunner there :)
1000 pages in less than an hour, are you and your wife really humans ? Can we send a bladerunner there :)
Once you get in a rhythm, it's easy. There are 3600 seconds in an hour, so 1000 per hour is one page every 3 or 4 seconds. The nice part about using a digital camera is that you really can scan as fast as you can lay documents out since the "scan" happens nearly instantly. I'd lay out a document and as soon as I'd go for the next one, she'd snap the photo.
It helped that the paperwork (old business records) was well organized in file folders and easy to scan, just grab a file folder from the box (which had around 20 to 50 unstapled pages), and lay each page out one at a time. When the stack of scanned pages got over 1/2" high, I'd move it to the shred box.
They meant you'd leave the phone in your pocket, or in a bag in the room or something, with internet sharing active. You wouldn't need to touch the phone at all.
Well, you're right, you wouldn't need to touch your phone to act as a Wifi hotspot, but how would you use this clever Wifi network without using your phone? The premise here was that the computer they gave you would be locked to a small subset of whitelisted websites. The Wifi on your phone doesn't help you get around URL blocking on their computer.
When I had a bunch of old documents i wanted to image, I used a tripod to suspend my digital camera over my desk pointing downward, set it to fixed focus along with a bright light nearby, then my wife and I started snapping pics as fast as I could lay pages out. We used a DSLR, but any camera should work. Setting it to fixed focus was key to prevent focusing delays.
I'd put a page on the desk and she'd snap a pic as soon as I'd lay it down (with a remote shutter release, it would be easy to do it with one person). We did over 1000 pages in less than an hour - it took longer to shred the docs than it did to image them because the cheap shredder kept turning itself off due to thermal overload. I taped the focusing ring and zoom ring in place to make sure it didn't move out of focus and spot checked a few docs along the way to make sure everything looked good. My 10MP camera gave around 250dpi resolution for legal sized documents, which was more than sufficient for my needs. I originally thought I'd save them as uncompressed TIFF's and convert to PNG's, but it turned out that the "fine" JPG setting on the camera gave good results with small file sizes (and didn't need as many memory cards). I've printed a few of the docs since then, with adequate cropping in an image editor, the printed docs look about as good as a photocopy.
Maybe not the best solution for ongoing needs, but if you have a single big batch to do and you don't want to spend a lot of money on a scanner, it might be worth looking into. This method would work well with poor quality and/or oddly shaped originals like thermal paper receipts.
Seriously, I commute a 100+ miles a day. And this will work just fine for me.
If you commute 100+ miles a day, this is entirely the wrong vehicle for you. Even with all electric, it's an insane waste to haul around a huge SUV with just your fat ass in it.
Is there another all-electric car that has enough range for his commute? He'd have to charge a Nissan Leaf at work.
Ya because you can't have a wifi hotspot running on your cell phone. And you can't create an ad-hoc wifi network to collude during the exam.
It's not that hard to see someone using their phone during a test. If the prof provides a computer for internet access and walks around and sees someone typing on their phone, he can confiscate the phone (or fail the test taker for violating the "no phones" rule). It's no different than a teacher patrolling for calculators during a "no-calculators" test.
Linux requires root for too many things. You shouldn't need root to mount a file/device.
So you're saying I should be able to plug in a USB stick with a setuid root shell on it, mount that without root permissions, and own your system with almost zero effort?
When my system automounts filesystems, it's mounted with the nosuid flag (which is the default when a user is given permission to mount a filesystem via the "user" flag in fstab - "suid" permission would have to be explicitly granted to enable it on a user mounted filesystem).
I support both Macs and PCs and I love the ISO mount feature. I never saw why Windows XP or Vista or 7 didn't include it -- until I stepped into the license administration role.
I hate the ISO install feature. This is a corporate nightmare.
"Hey, I need such-and-such software"
"Here's the ISO. Just install it. The tech gave me the license."
Then I get to come around and uninstall all the users' precious software because they don't have a license.
HP's Radia works just fine, thank you.
Why does ISO mounting make things any different.? Instead of saying "Here's the ISO. Just install it. The tech gave me the license", it becomes "Here's the ISO, burn it and install it". Or "Here's the CD-ROM, just install it".
Go ahead and double click on your iso with your 1 button mouse.
What's difficult about double-clicking with a one-button mouse? Even on my 7 button mouse, when I double click I use only one button at a time.
Linux requires root for too many things. You shouldn't need root to mount a file/device. Only read (and optionally write) permissions on the file/device.
In my linux desktop, my CD-ROM and USB devices automount when I plug them in, no root required, I don't even need to run a command, they just mount. And I can unmount them by clicking through my file manager. I can mount an ISO by right-clicking on it in my file manager. No root required.
What mounts do you need root for? If it's something you need to do more than once, add it to fstab and add the "user" option.
He did quit.
Nowhere there does it say he quit, it just says he's decided to seek employment elsewhere, most people will find another job before they quit their current one.
Yeah, I noticed that after I submitted my post - the post I was replying too said "I quit", and I thought he copied that down from the original submission.
I didn't think it was significant enough to reply to my own post with a correction. If Slashdot allowed edits, I would have changed my reply to "He did quit (or at least, he plans to as soon as he finds a new job)".
But since that was such a minor nit, I didn't think it was worth posting a correction.
There ain't no other choice right now that will meet demand and not generate CO2. There is a downside but it's the least bad choice right now. How many wind farms or solar ones can produce that kind of base load? 2.2GW and with reprocessing the fuel should last long enough to get fusion figured out and then antimatter reactors would be the final step.
Is there any reason to believe that Antimatter will ever be a viable energy source? Are there deposits of antimatter somewhere in the near universe that can be mined? I thought antimatter had to be created with huge amounts of energy?
the same kernel and userland work on both super computers, cellphones, and everything in between. there is not a computing solution that can't be made to work with gnu/linux.(not that its always the best solution. Also, your company's accounting software would run just fine on linux if someone ported it for linux. Its not because of any flaw of lack of capability, but choices made by your accounting software's developer. At least from a techincal standpoint, when you are doing development work, and control all the code, yes, linux is far more flexable than most any other operating system., to include UNIX, which as very flexable and very portable itself.
While that is indeed flexible, it's completely irrelevant to me when I need to buy a new server. I don't really care whether or not my server operating system can run on a phone, I'm more interested in whether or not it can run the applications I need and how much it will cost to install and maintain.
Sounds like you went to a rather dodgy shop. Last year when my door handle broke on my daily drive (cheap pot metal handle) it cost $230 or so dollars to get it repaired professionally and that included paying to get the new handle painted to match the rest of the door. I could have done the repair my self for probably half of that but I didn't want to fix it in the middle of winter in an unheated garage and deal with the side impact airbags as those are dangerous and expensive if you set them off accidentally. This was on a 14 year old car at the time, but then I take better care of my vehicles than most.
I don't think you understand the scope of the repair, it wasn't just a matter of replacing the handle, because he tore off so much sheet metal with the door handle, there was a 6" wide by 4" deep hole in the door, and deep gouge marks surrounding that hole from the screwdriver or prybar he used to get the door handle off. I don't see how such a fix could be repaired in a way that leaves the door functional without replacing the whole door panel (or maybe it was the door, I dunno). All I know is that labor was around 75% of the price on the estimate.
The way they explained it, in order to keep the newly repainted door from standing out from the rest of the car because of color matching, they had to blend it in to the surrounding body by repainting parts of those panels to blend in the paint, which added to the scope of the repair and the labor.
I trust that the insurance adjuster that looked at the car knew a thing or two about reasonable costs (why else would he have that job?), and the body shop was on the insurance company's list of approved shops, so I don't think they ripped off the insurance company by inflating the cost of the repair.
The repair really did turn out seamless and it's impossible to tell that the door was repainted - I've seen other cars on the road where a body panel is clearly a different shade than the rest of the car, so I'm glad they took the time to blend it in carefully.
In talking to friends that have similar body made, my repair costs didn't seem to be out of line with theirs.
There are companies that would embrace him and his ideals.
No company will hire this guy or anyone else that is going to quit because of selection of software.
It shows that he's not reliable and maybe a flake. What next, he'll get hired at another company and quit because they're switching to Oracle?!
If you're that much of a zealot that you'll quit because your company isn't using FOSS, then you really need to get a fucking life.
I can't speak for other areas, but there are plenty of places in the SF Bay Area that will hire you (or not) based on your support of FOSS - bonus points if you can point out actual contributions to FOSS software. Many of these places were started by and run by people who also embrace FOSS software. Tell them that you can only work on a Windows desktop and the interview will end quickly.
Granted, he's probably not going to get a job at a large fortune 500 (or even fortune 1000 company), but there are small companies and startups that embrace open source since it was FOSS software that helped them get their company off the ground at little cost.
Me? I'm somewhere in the middle - I prefer FOSS solutions, but will use the right tool for the job. I work with (and sometimes manage) Linux, Microsoft, and Apple zealots, and you know what? They all have valid points about their preferred platform - I don't expect our PHP developers to code a .Net sharepoint interface, nor do I expect our SQL/Server Admin to set up MySQL replication. Of course, I don't expect our SQL/Server admin to design a web page because that's not what he's paid for and that's not his core strength.
If you're that much of a zealot that you'll quit because your company isn't using FOSS, then you really need to get a fucking life.
Of course, some would say that if you're willing to whore yourself out to whatever technology your company deems appropriate, you need to get some balls and take control of your life. If you don't want to be a .Net programmer and you have the skills to get another job doing what you want, why shouldn't you?
linux servers are more flexable and scalable than windows, and they DO have a presence in the mainframe market(suprised but true).
What does that mean more flexible ? Our Linux servers are great at running my company's website, but they won't run our accounting software. Is that flexible? Is IIS7 any less scalable than Apache? I manage around 100 MS and Linux servers, and the only reason we have so many is for application segmentation and security, not scalability - nearly all are running on shared hardware under VMWare. Few companies need the capability of a mainframe, so I'm ignoring the mainframe/supercomputer market, and I agree that there are definitely niches where Linux is the clear choice, but most companies aren't in that niche.
"Oh no. My management made a platform decision that I don't like. I quit." Then fucking quit you idiot. Go start your own company founded on whatever principles you want and make your own platform decisions then.
He did quit. Why does he have to start his own company when he could work at an existing company that embraces his ideals? Not everyone wants to run their own company, nor should they.
If you had to explain to family why you quit your job, do you realize how fucking retarded it sounds to say "I quit because of principles. I refuse to work for a company that buys from Microsoft"
Good for you that you have principles -- but those are fucking stupid principle. Set your priorities. Jeebus Christ this is idiotic.
There are companies that would embrace him and his ideals. He just doesn't work at one, and judging the fact that he's looking in the newspaper for a new job and not Craigslist, he probably doesn't live in an area where he's likely to find a company that's runs significantly on open source software. Just because you have no ideals surrounding open source, that doesn't mean that no one else should. As for what he tells his family, that's none of your concern - his wife may be a hardcore OSX geek and completely understand.
That said, he's going to run into Microsoft at just about every company in the back office, but there are plenty of companies that use Open Source products for their public facing web sites and in-house tools. For some things, Microsoft is the Right Answer, it's just that MS comes with a lot of baggage and the foot print starts to grow and before you know it, you've got your entire infrastructure on MS and there's so much momentum behind it, it's hard to move off. SaaS is making it easier to not grow a large MS infrastructure to run your business, but even SaaS providers often come with Microsoft dependencies either with MS-only thick clients, or MSIE requirements for full functionality.
So - then are you saying that you should never RMA a failed HD? Because if NewEgg doesn't wipe drives as part of the refurbishment, then you can never send a drive back.
I wouldn't send back a potentially repairable drive that has my personal data on it.
At work, we have some drives that we're not legally allowed to return unless we can do a secure wipe of the drive (or the manufacturer will certify that they've destroyed the data). We had to pay extra for our storage array maintenance contract for non-return.
I haven't had to return a consumer hard drive (yet), do they have to be returned in working order? If not, then I'd open it up and physically scrape a screwdriver across the platters. The data might be technically recoverable, but you know they aren't going to send those platters to another customer. (I'm not saying that I've never had a home hard drive fail, but typically by the time it does, it's old enough that I just buy a newer, bigger drive for not much money)
They tore off the handle, and you replaced the entire door panel? And then you paid some paint shop to do a professional job on a 7-year-old car? Can you call me the next time you need your computer fixed? I'm sure I can find something to charge you a couple grand for...
I don't usually buy comprehensive insurance for my computer, but when I do get my computer fixed under warranty, I generally let the manufacturer fix it the way they want. When the USB port on my laptop goes bad, I don't argue when the manufacturer wants to replace the entire $500 motherboard instead of soldering a new $0.79 USB port on the motherboard.
When someone tears off the door handle from my car and leaves a hole twice as big as the door handle used to be along with screwdriver pry marks, I believed my insurance adjuster and the body shop when they said I needed a new door. I didn't argue that they could weld in some new sheet metal and smooth it over with body putty. Not that it would have made it any cheaper since the largest part of the cost was labor. My insurance company decided how to fix it and how much they would pay, not me. I just wanted the car to look like it did before the damage.
How much would *you* pay to fix a car worth $15,000? Is 20% of its value too much? I'm glad you're not my insurance company.
Yes, but anything can trip a high acceleration value, so even if they have them, how do you propose differentiating the GPS falling to the ground because it wasn't placed correctly or someone hitting it with something by mistake with that swerve you were talking about?
I did some work on detecting road conditions using mobile phones as sensors, and I can assure you that the accelerometer is far from a reliable tool by itself.
My 7 year old Thinkpad can detect when it's in freefall and park the hard drive heads before it hits the ground, so I think a modern accelerometer enhanced GPS can tell the difference between a short, sharp impact from a fall and a longer more gentle G-force from hard braking or swerving. An orientation sensor can also help.
If your kid is pretending it's an airplane and waving it through the air, that might confuse the sensors, but even that should be distinguishable from legitimate hard braking.
Apart from the fact that very often, it doesn't. (I still have a TomTom 920T, although it seldom gets used these days; it was their top model a few years ago though.) My maps were until recently regularly updated, mapshare updates were applied before every trip, but for a significant proportion of the speed limits around town it was off by a margin of as much as 20 miles per hour, and that's in the few places where it even pretended to know the limits.
My Garmin is surprisingly accurate, both in town and on the highway. Often, the speed limit display changes the instant I pass a new speed limit sign. I haven't noticed any places where it hasn't been accurate, but most of my driving is either within a large urban area or on freeways - I don't do much small town driving. It's been quite handy, especially for freeway driving: "Hey, is this still a 70mph zone or did I miss a 55mph sign when I passed those trucks?"
Why would they boycott Tomtom rather than refusing to continue to participate in the insurance company program that lowers the rates for "safer" drivers? Is Tomtom the bad guy here? They are just providing the data - insurance companies (and their customers) are deciding how (or whether) to use it.
Don't want to join the monitoring program? Then pay a higher rate.
Theres a huge difference between sharp braking and dangerous driving.
Yeah, that difference is an unexpected slippery spot in the road.
But I have always been of the mind that people speeding are paying WAY more attention to the road than the average driver, and in the end probably are not as likely to get in an accident.
I bet you're one of the 90% of drivers that think they are "above average".
That's just a decision you'll have to make. Do you really want to swerve and slam on the brakes and take the premium hike or will it cost less to just take a scrape and make him pay for it without reporting the incident?
Few people with a relatively modern car are going to accept a scrape or pay for a repair out of pocket.
A proper repair for a scratch and dent can cost thousands since to get a seamless repair they have to repaint the panel that was scratched and blend the new paint in to the adjoining panels. When someone broke into my 7 year old car by tearing off the driver's door handle, it cost $3500 to replace the driver's door panel and blend in the paint with the adjoining panels. If someone pulled out of the a driveway and struck the side of my car, I'd expect the same (or higher) bill. Definitely worth swerving out of the way (if possible).