well, the life of a star is inversely proportional to its size... the bigger the star, the faster it blows up. it *is* plausible that during the early days of the universe when things were much more densely packed than they are now, bigger stars could have formed early on.
but I still think they're most likely trapped planets.
They can guesstimate the age of a star based on its light characteristics. Our current understanding is that stars tend to follow a set progression through their evolution, and by looking at the current characteristics of a star (mass, heat, spectral composition), they can guess roughly how old it is.
It's all guesswork, mind you, and it doesn't necessarily tell us that the planets themselves are as old as the star. They could be trapped planets from other solar systems that the stars came into contact with over the years, or even trapped proto-stars that never had enough mass to start fusion... current thinking is that the interstellar medium may have a lot of this type of planet.
So... you claim to know the bylaws and code of conduct for the school he was attending, and that his actions were 100% in accordance with the conduct allowed therein?
Not sure where you studied, but the school I went to had a zero tolerance policy for incidents of racial hatred. Didn't even have to be inciteful. Using a racial slur was enough to get you expelled, if somebody complained. And I knew about those rules well in advance of entering the school, because they publish their bylaws and code of conduct on the school website.
Are you telling me, with 100% certainty, that his school didn't have rules like that one?
What if I say (as a British subject) "Kill David Cameron", I go to jail. Now what if I say "Damn Cameron, his policy on blacks is killing me. I could just kill him.", do I go directly to jail? If so, you don'e see a tiny problem there?
You can go to jail in the US for saying that about the president, you know.... The question is whether you're inciting people to do something, and the seriousness of your "threat". If you're pissed out of your mind in a bar in rural Nebraska, you probably won't get arrested for threatening the President's life. If you're standing on the lawn at 2600 Pennsylvania, then there's a pretty good chance they'll take it more seriously.... Context is everything.
I see many who feel 'ladyboy' and 'newhalf' are just as offensive as 'shemale', essentially leaving the trans community with no non-offensive (english) word for such people, which I tend to interpret as their existence being offensive.
I suppose. In truth, I live in a country that's generally fairly open to it (still have our fair share of stupid, mind you), and in a city that's especially open to it. There's still a number of people for whom it's automatically a bad thing, and I don't think we'll ever reach a day when guys who think that getting aroused when looking at an attractive transwoman makes them gay will be gone, but things are getting better. Slowly but surely, things are improving for trans people, and I'm seeing it first hand, because I'm working directly in community outreach and education. (as recently as yesterday, I taught a seminar for a federal government department on how to create safer spaces and use inclusive language for the queer community). I don't really live in the part of the world where terms like "ladyboy" or "newhalf" are used commonly, though.
It might be an element of the groups I have dealt with, who tend to be pretty big on the 'gender binary' concept, so things like genderqueer/adrogynous/etc are attacked as hurting the absolutism they seek. Very similar to the attacks I see from gays against bi peeps since they see bisexually somehow underpinning both their normalcy and genetic argument. On the trans end it often seems to come down to clinging to the imagery of it being a simple birth defect, and thus there are still only two sexes and they simply have a correction to make.. anything inbetween threatens this idea.
You have a point... again, because I work on community education, I have a very good background in gender theory (have lectured on the subject at the local university). I can see how people would want to cling to the binary, but it's an idea that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and never really has. Binaries don't actually exist in nature, and in every way that we, as humans, have ever sought to define sex, there's variation beyond a simple A or B selection. I have never seen any reason to believe that gender isn't equally fluid, and I don't really see how that understanding is incompatible with the idea of transsexualism/transgenderism. It's a spectrum, just like sexual orientation and physical sex. Even if you are one of the folks who says that it's a birth defect, I don't really see how that's incompatible with the idea that there's a C - All of the Above, or D - None of the Above option. If you identify as the "opposite" end of the spectrum from what your physical body presents, and feel that you need to change the body, then who cares what the person across the street feels about their body? It's a deeply personal thing that shouldn't in any way be affected by what other people do with their lives.
I think the problem is that people, in general, have the notion that gender and sex are tied to each other. We're *finally* getting people to accept that sex and sexuality are not inexorably linked, but it seems an extremely difficult concept for some people to wrap their heads around that gender is also independant.
Actually, most of the trans people I know don't have a problem with drag/ladyboys.... "shemales" is a different story... that's offensive because it's specifically tied to sexual fetishism, but drag and ladyboys are performance. Transsexualism isn't performance, it's real, and outside of people who are just beginning their "real life experience" period, I don't know any trans people who have a problem with the idea of drag. They don't like to be identified as it (because they aren't), but they can accept it as a different concept.
That being said, there's a whole lot more to "transgendered" than transsexualism. Genderqueer, people who simply refuse to associate with either specific gender, androgynous culture, etc., all fit within the umbrella term.
And yes, I do know several transgendered individuals, some of whom are also transsexual. It comes from my volunteer work with the local queer community center.
Also worth noting... historically treatment for transgender issues was restricted by a (now debunked) theory that very narrowly defined what could be accepted as "trans". That created an inaccurate skew in terms of the sexuality... in Canada, for example, until the last couple of years it was impossible for somebody who identified as homosexual to get gender reassignment therapy. If you were a transwoman, you, by definition, had to like men exclusively, sexually. That has changed, and a very large number of "gay" trans people have come out of the woodwork and are now seeking therapy. I would expect that when the dust settles it'll be somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of trans people who are homosexual.
We had that previously. With CDMA networks. Phones with no SIM card.
And you know what happened? The carriers got in league with each other and said "we agree not to activate phones you sold for your network, if you agree not to activate ours." The result was that you could easily switch carriers with a phone call, and keep your number, too, but you had to buy a new phone.
SIM cards get around that... They still sell phones that are "locked", but they can be unlocked. Once a phone is unlocked, it can be used with any carrier, when you put the SIM in.
When they figure out how to do 3D TV's which don't require that I wear clunkly glasses and keep my head perfectly level, I'll consider buying a 3D TV. Until then, the 42" LG flatscreen that I bought 5 years ago works perfectly well. It does 1080p, the picture is bright enough and clear enough, and it has 2 component video inputs and 3 HDMI, which is better than a lot of TV's on the market today.
For the foreseeable future, I don't see any reason to replace it unless it decides to shuffle off its mortal coil.
I don't know where in the world you're living. In the US, most crossings that I encountered were at right angles and a simple "turn left"/"turn right" is sufficient. In the European cities that I've visited so far, this can quickly be too little information. I regularly come across situations where a simple "turn left" voice command is just not enough to distinguish between the two or three options that may be there (I'm not kidding, these crossings exist). Without a map showing which way I'm supposed to take, I'd be completely lost.
And most good GPS navigation systems will say "bear left", rather than "turn left" when there's multiple choices.
Most cities that have these kinds of intersections have replaced them with roundabouts, which eliminate the problem you describe. (if you want a good example of the kind of issue being described, go to http://maps.google.ca/?ll=48.853153,2.369013&spn=0.011366,0.027874&t=h&z=16 (or in case Slashdot mangles the link, search for "Place de la Bastille, Paris, France")
This would just mean that automakers need to focus on smartphone integration where you can just plug your smartphone into a dock built into the dash where the CD player normally is and the smartphone acts as the CD player's screen. I know a car or two has iPhone integration similar to this. Unfortunately, Google needs to get their act together because their 3rd party hardware support is nowhere near the iPhone's. They need to start putting out consistent hardware that can be targeted for hardware integration like this.
Actually, my Android phone has no problem integrating with my car. If I want to use the Android phone as the controller, I can play music through the car's stereo using Bluetooth, and if I prefer that the stereo do the work, I can plug the phone into the car's USB port and mount it as a thumb drive. In both cases, the steering-wheel mounted audio controls work for changing track.
There's no standard dock for Android, so having a simple dock you can plug into on the dash isn't going to happen, but there's no shortage of systems that will let you integrate with the car. In fact, my car integrates better with Android than it does with an iPhone, because the iPhone itself doesn't like being used in that way.
*shrugs* If I need GPS, I use my cell phone. It has current maps, and doesn't require me to buy a $200 update every few months so I'm up to date.
I also stuff it in the cup holder and just listen to the auditory commands, if I'm using it for navigation. The screen *is* a distraction. If I want to study the route, I'll do it when the car isn't moving.
Actually, to that end, I'm a bit surprised that the NHTSA isn't suggesting that the in-dash navigation systems should blank the screen while the car is moving. That would make things significantly safer, I think.. they could even make it so that if it's pulled out and facing the passenger seat instead of the driver, the screen unblanks and updates, so that a passenger can give directions.
There are new applications that can be opened up by having high temperature superconductors, though. Because I work in the telecom industry, one example leaps immediately to mind: if we can devise a high temperature ductile superconductor, we can replace all of the copper telephone lines, and the fiber optic that they're being replaced with, with superconducting lines. These lines would allow for service over a *much* greater distance than even fiber optic (which caps out at about 14km from the ONU), while still offering higher speeds than we can get today.
It's the resistance in copper lines that limits the telephone service to a certain maximum (about 10km on copper for voice, though that can be extended with load coils), and it's that same resistance that limits the distance for DSL technologies. It's also the main limiting factor for distance in coaxial cables as well. Imagine the impact it would have if we could run a 10 gigabit ethernet cable to a distance of 100km from the CO. High temperature ductile superconductors would make that possible. Even if it stopped being a superconductor past about 40'C, it would still allow us to service *most* of the world's population (there's very few areas where the in-ground temperature is over 40'C and most of them are unpopulated).
Because that's exactly what they did with the mining industry and rare earths? The US was, at one point, the largest supplier in the world of rare earths. You didn't dig them all up, they're still there in the ground, though today there's almost no rare earth production in the US.
What happened? China flooded the market with low cost minerals whose production was effectively subsidized by the significantly less stringent environmental controls, and US-based business couldn't keep up. And of course now that there's no rare earth production outside of China, they've started hoarding it and are interfering with and manipulating the world market.
In other words... China may be taking a loss right now, but will they still be 5 years from now?
It's a flawed analogy. As long as the polling station follows the set rules for how a polling station is to be run, who cares where it is?
And before some nitwit replies that by this logic, they could have the polling station at the top of Everest, accessibility is one of the set rules for how a polling station is to be run.
Not just the Guardian. there's several websites that have gone the way of requiring you allow their app to access your profile in order to click the link that somebody posted. I have platform apps disabled, and when I encounter this one, I move on, but I do feel sorry for all the people who don't realize that allowing this app to access your profile means you just gave all of your personal information to the website whose story you were trying to read.
Oh, did you think a severance was something you are entitled to? I see your line of reasoning a lot of slashdot. The time to negotiate is not when you are being laid off/fired. Consider yourself lucky for getting anything above and beyond a pink slip.
Am I ever glad I don't live in whatever backwater country you're in. In the civilized world, severance is mandated by law in the case of a layoff, either in the form of advance notice ("we'll be shutting down operations next November, line something up now and if you get a job before then, we'll give you a reference"), or pay in lieu of notice ("you're all done. pack your things, go home. your final pay will have 4 weeks' pay in lieu of the notice"). The amount of notice or pay in lieu is dictated by the size of the layoff... a small layoff of 20 or fewer people is only 2 weeks, with it increasing significantly with the number of people being let go. When Dell shut down operations in this city, I walked away with a $25,000 severance package (which would have been more, but I was given 4 weeks' notice), and got to keep my medical benefits for 6 months, and I wasn't anywhere near senior management.
There is a difference between being laid off and being fired.
Here in usa, i have no security on my wifi either, but it only grants access to my lan. To use the internet, openvpn is required. I usually relax that for guests as i cannot support every client.
No offense, but you're nuts... You'd be safer opening up free access to the Internet, and segregating your LAN onto a separate VLAN that requires a password. Most people who "steal" wifi just want free access to the Internet, but there's a few who would quite happily make use of your LAN instead.
You could also use a captive portal, if you want to keep the wifi unencrypted. They're fairly easy to set up.
Also, of course, since the big makers (Dell, Gateway, etc) are enjoined from selling linux-equipped desktop machines under penalty of losing their Microsoft OEM licenses, there are no "sales figures" for Linux Desktop Systems period. Microsoft "owns" the channels from which Linux Desktop Systems would emerge into actual conciousness.
You may wanna back up a bit and do your research there, friend... I'm typing this on a Dell laptop that's about 6 months old, and which came with Ubuntu LTS preinstalled (Vostro V130n). They don't actively market it, because they don't want customers calling them to complain that their Windows-only software doesn't work on it, but they do sell it on consumer-class devices, on both desktop and laptop form factors, and they go out of their way to make sure that as much of their hardware as possible is supported by Linux, even if they don't provide the OS with it.
Marketing is a large part of why Linux isn't taking off as much as people may like. But it's not the only reason... I know several people who have switched back to Windows, because application X doesn't work right in Linux. Application support is the reason Linux isn't winning on the market, not pure sales figures. Hence why Linux is winning in server space: it has the application support.
Actually, by the mid 90's, wintel had caught up with Amiga for most uses. Amiga was definitely ahead of its time (compare a game like Fire & Ice on Amiga against its PC counterpart), but with a bigger market for PC (from the open platform and cheaper commodity hardware) it didn't take that long for it to catch up and surpass Amiga.
Twenty years ago, a Cadillac PC was three to four thousand bucks. These days you can get an amazing PC for under a grand. I got a used Dell for $600, including tax, with dual core, 16G RAM and a 1T drive.
Case in point, I put together a Core i5 2500k (overclocked to 4.7GHz), 16GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 6870, 16GB of RAM, 1TB drive w/ 60GB SSD for cache (using the Z68 motherboard) for under $1000, less than a month ago. I did salvage the optical drive, monitor, keyboard, and mouse from an old system, but everything else was new. Even if you pick up a *really* nice 24" monitor, it's still under $1500.
For $2500, you can buy a *really* nice iMac, and get better technical support. (as much as I loathe Apple's business practices, their customer service is *really* good, and I'd recommend them to anybody that actually needs customer service/tech support).
Slashdot Mirror
well, the life of a star is inversely proportional to its size... the bigger the star, the faster it blows up. it *is* plausible that during the early days of the universe when things were much more densely packed than they are now, bigger stars could have formed early on.
but I still think they're most likely trapped planets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence
They can guesstimate the age of a star based on its light characteristics. Our current understanding is that stars tend to follow a set progression through their evolution, and by looking at the current characteristics of a star (mass, heat, spectral composition), they can guess roughly how old it is.
It's all guesswork, mind you, and it doesn't necessarily tell us that the planets themselves are as old as the star. They could be trapped planets from other solar systems that the stars came into contact with over the years, or even trapped proto-stars that never had enough mass to start fusion... current thinking is that the interstellar medium may have a lot of this type of planet.
He shouldn't be kicked out of school at all.
So... you claim to know the bylaws and code of conduct for the school he was attending, and that his actions were 100% in accordance with the conduct allowed therein?
Not sure where you studied, but the school I went to had a zero tolerance policy for incidents of racial hatred. Didn't even have to be inciteful. Using a racial slur was enough to get you expelled, if somebody complained. And I knew about those rules well in advance of entering the school, because they publish their bylaws and code of conduct on the school website.
Are you telling me, with 100% certainty, that his school didn't have rules like that one?
What if I say (as a British subject) "Kill David Cameron", I go to jail. Now what if I say "Damn Cameron, his policy on blacks is killing me. I could just kill him.", do I go directly to jail? If so, you don'e see a tiny problem there?
You can go to jail in the US for saying that about the president, you know.... The question is whether you're inciting people to do something, and the seriousness of your "threat". If you're pissed out of your mind in a bar in rural Nebraska, you probably won't get arrested for threatening the President's life. If you're standing on the lawn at 2600 Pennsylvania, then there's a pretty good chance they'll take it more seriously.... Context is everything.
I see many who feel 'ladyboy' and 'newhalf' are just as offensive as 'shemale', essentially leaving the trans community with no non-offensive (english) word for such people, which I tend to interpret as their existence being offensive.
I suppose. In truth, I live in a country that's generally fairly open to it (still have our fair share of stupid, mind you), and in a city that's especially open to it. There's still a number of people for whom it's automatically a bad thing, and I don't think we'll ever reach a day when guys who think that getting aroused when looking at an attractive transwoman makes them gay will be gone, but things are getting better. Slowly but surely, things are improving for trans people, and I'm seeing it first hand, because I'm working directly in community outreach and education. (as recently as yesterday, I taught a seminar for a federal government department on how to create safer spaces and use inclusive language for the queer community). I don't really live in the part of the world where terms like "ladyboy" or "newhalf" are used commonly, though.
It might be an element of the groups I have dealt with, who tend to be pretty big on the 'gender binary' concept, so things like genderqueer/adrogynous/etc are attacked as hurting the absolutism they seek. Very similar to the attacks I see from gays against bi peeps since they see bisexually somehow underpinning both their normalcy and genetic argument. On the trans end it often seems to come down to clinging to the imagery of it being a simple birth defect, and thus there are still only two sexes and they simply have a correction to make.. anything inbetween threatens this idea.
You have a point... again, because I work on community education, I have a very good background in gender theory (have lectured on the subject at the local university). I can see how people would want to cling to the binary, but it's an idea that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and never really has. Binaries don't actually exist in nature, and in every way that we, as humans, have ever sought to define sex, there's variation beyond a simple A or B selection. I have never seen any reason to believe that gender isn't equally fluid, and I don't really see how that understanding is incompatible with the idea of transsexualism/transgenderism. It's a spectrum, just like sexual orientation and physical sex. Even if you are one of the folks who says that it's a birth defect, I don't really see how that's incompatible with the idea that there's a C - All of the Above, or D - None of the Above option. If you identify as the "opposite" end of the spectrum from what your physical body presents, and feel that you need to change the body, then who cares what the person across the street feels about their body? It's a deeply personal thing that shouldn't in any way be affected by what other people do with their lives.
I think the problem is that people, in general, have the notion that gender and sex are tied to each other. We're *finally* getting people to accept that sex and sexuality are not inexorably linked, but it seems an extremely difficult concept for some people to wrap their heads around that gender is also independant.
Actually, most of the trans people I know don't have a problem with drag/ladyboys.... "shemales" is a different story... that's offensive because it's specifically tied to sexual fetishism, but drag and ladyboys are performance. Transsexualism isn't performance, it's real, and outside of people who are just beginning their "real life experience" period, I don't know any trans people who have a problem with the idea of drag. They don't like to be identified as it (because they aren't), but they can accept it as a different concept.
That being said, there's a whole lot more to "transgendered" than transsexualism. Genderqueer, people who simply refuse to associate with either specific gender, androgynous culture, etc., all fit within the umbrella term.
And yes, I do know several transgendered individuals, some of whom are also transsexual. It comes from my volunteer work with the local queer community center.
Also worth noting... historically treatment for transgender issues was restricted by a (now debunked) theory that very narrowly defined what could be accepted as "trans". That created an inaccurate skew in terms of the sexuality... in Canada, for example, until the last couple of years it was impossible for somebody who identified as homosexual to get gender reassignment therapy. If you were a transwoman, you, by definition, had to like men exclusively, sexually. That has changed, and a very large number of "gay" trans people have come out of the woodwork and are now seeking therapy. I would expect that when the dust settles it'll be somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of trans people who are homosexual.
We had that previously. With CDMA networks. Phones with no SIM card.
And you know what happened? The carriers got in league with each other and said "we agree not to activate phones you sold for your network, if you agree not to activate ours." The result was that you could easily switch carriers with a phone call, and keep your number, too, but you had to buy a new phone.
SIM cards get around that... They still sell phones that are "locked", but they can be unlocked. Once a phone is unlocked, it can be used with any carrier, when you put the SIM in.
*that* is why we're using SIM cards.
When they figure out how to do 3D TV's which don't require that I wear clunkly glasses and keep my head perfectly level, I'll consider buying a 3D TV. Until then, the 42" LG flatscreen that I bought 5 years ago works perfectly well. It does 1080p, the picture is bright enough and clear enough, and it has 2 component video inputs and 3 HDMI, which is better than a lot of TV's on the market today.
For the foreseeable future, I don't see any reason to replace it unless it decides to shuffle off its mortal coil.
I don't know where in the world you're living. In the US, most crossings that I encountered were at right angles and a simple "turn left"/"turn right" is sufficient. In the European cities that I've visited so far, this can quickly be too little information. I regularly come across situations where a simple "turn left" voice command is just not enough to distinguish between the two or three options that may be there (I'm not kidding, these crossings exist). Without a map showing which way I'm supposed to take, I'd be completely lost.
And most good GPS navigation systems will say "bear left", rather than "turn left" when there's multiple choices.
Most cities that have these kinds of intersections have replaced them with roundabouts, which eliminate the problem you describe. (if you want a good example of the kind of issue being described, go to http://maps.google.ca/?ll=48.853153,2.369013&spn=0.011366,0.027874&t=h&z=16 (or in case Slashdot mangles the link, search for "Place de la Bastille, Paris, France")
This would just mean that automakers need to focus on smartphone integration where you can just plug your smartphone into a dock built into the dash where the CD player normally is and the smartphone acts as the CD player's screen. I know a car or two has iPhone integration similar to this. Unfortunately, Google needs to get their act together because their 3rd party hardware support is nowhere near the iPhone's. They need to start putting out consistent hardware that can be targeted for hardware integration like this.
Actually, my Android phone has no problem integrating with my car. If I want to use the Android phone as the controller, I can play music through the car's stereo using Bluetooth, and if I prefer that the stereo do the work, I can plug the phone into the car's USB port and mount it as a thumb drive. In both cases, the steering-wheel mounted audio controls work for changing track.
There's no standard dock for Android, so having a simple dock you can plug into on the dash isn't going to happen, but there's no shortage of systems that will let you integrate with the car. In fact, my car integrates better with Android than it does with an iPhone, because the iPhone itself doesn't like being used in that way.
*shrugs* If I need GPS, I use my cell phone. It has current maps, and doesn't require me to buy a $200 update every few months so I'm up to date.
I also stuff it in the cup holder and just listen to the auditory commands, if I'm using it for navigation. The screen *is* a distraction. If I want to study the route, I'll do it when the car isn't moving.
Actually, to that end, I'm a bit surprised that the NHTSA isn't suggesting that the in-dash navigation systems should blank the screen while the car is moving. That would make things significantly safer, I think.. they could even make it so that if it's pulled out and facing the passenger seat instead of the driver, the screen unblanks and updates, so that a passenger can give directions.
Well, we currently only lose about 6-7% of the electric energy we generate to transmission losses.
6% of a trillion-dollar industry is "not all that much"?
There are new applications that can be opened up by having high temperature superconductors, though. Because I work in the telecom industry, one example leaps immediately to mind: if we can devise a high temperature ductile superconductor, we can replace all of the copper telephone lines, and the fiber optic that they're being replaced with, with superconducting lines. These lines would allow for service over a *much* greater distance than even fiber optic (which caps out at about 14km from the ONU), while still offering higher speeds than we can get today.
It's the resistance in copper lines that limits the telephone service to a certain maximum (about 10km on copper for voice, though that can be extended with load coils), and it's that same resistance that limits the distance for DSL technologies. It's also the main limiting factor for distance in coaxial cables as well. Imagine the impact it would have if we could run a 10 gigabit ethernet cable to a distance of 100km from the CO. High temperature ductile superconductors would make that possible. Even if it stopped being a superconductor past about 40'C, it would still allow us to service *most* of the world's population (there's very few areas where the in-ground temperature is over 40'C and most of them are unpopulated).
That's happening. There's a couple of mines in California that are being restarted.
That being said, there's nothing to stop China from flooding the market again, if they feel their monopoly is being threatened.
Because that's exactly what they did with the mining industry and rare earths? The US was, at one point, the largest supplier in the world of rare earths. You didn't dig them all up, they're still there in the ground, though today there's almost no rare earth production in the US.
What happened? China flooded the market with low cost minerals whose production was effectively subsidized by the significantly less stringent environmental controls, and US-based business couldn't keep up. And of course now that there's no rare earth production outside of China, they've started hoarding it and are interfering with and manipulating the world market.
In other words... China may be taking a loss right now, but will they still be 5 years from now?
^^ This.
It's a flawed analogy. As long as the polling station follows the set rules for how a polling station is to be run, who cares where it is?
And before some nitwit replies that by this logic, they could have the polling station at the top of Everest, accessibility is one of the set rules for how a polling station is to be run.
Not just the Guardian. there's several websites that have gone the way of requiring you allow their app to access your profile in order to click the link that somebody posted. I have platform apps disabled, and when I encounter this one, I move on, but I do feel sorry for all the people who don't realize that allowing this app to access your profile means you just gave all of your personal information to the website whose story you were trying to read.
Oh, did you think a severance was something you are entitled to? I see your line of reasoning a lot of slashdot. The time to negotiate is not when you are being laid off/fired. Consider yourself lucky for getting anything above and beyond a pink slip.
Am I ever glad I don't live in whatever backwater country you're in. In the civilized world, severance is mandated by law in the case of a layoff, either in the form of advance notice ("we'll be shutting down operations next November, line something up now and if you get a job before then, we'll give you a reference"), or pay in lieu of notice ("you're all done. pack your things, go home. your final pay will have 4 weeks' pay in lieu of the notice"). The amount of notice or pay in lieu is dictated by the size of the layoff... a small layoff of 20 or fewer people is only 2 weeks, with it increasing significantly with the number of people being let go. When Dell shut down operations in this city, I walked away with a $25,000 severance package (which would have been more, but I was given 4 weeks' notice), and got to keep my medical benefits for 6 months, and I wasn't anywhere near senior management.
There is a difference between being laid off and being fired.
I thought EVE Online already was the sandbox space/trading sim "done right"
Will it let you burn the land, or boil the sea?
Here in usa, i have no security on my wifi either, but it only grants access to my lan. To use the internet, openvpn is required. I usually relax that for guests as i cannot support every client.
No offense, but you're nuts... You'd be safer opening up free access to the Internet, and segregating your LAN onto a separate VLAN that requires a password. Most people who "steal" wifi just want free access to the Internet, but there's a few who would quite happily make use of your LAN instead.
You could also use a captive portal, if you want to keep the wifi unencrypted. They're fairly easy to set up.
Or if your existing router doesn't support a guest wifi network, flash it with Tomato, DDWRT, or any of the other after-market firmwares that do....
A growing number of off-the-shelf wifi routers support guest wifi networks out of the box, though.
Also, of course, since the big makers (Dell, Gateway, etc) are enjoined from selling linux-equipped desktop machines under penalty of losing their Microsoft OEM licenses, there are no "sales figures" for Linux Desktop Systems period. Microsoft "owns" the channels from which Linux Desktop Systems would emerge into actual conciousness.
You may wanna back up a bit and do your research there, friend... I'm typing this on a Dell laptop that's about 6 months old, and which came with Ubuntu LTS preinstalled (Vostro V130n). They don't actively market it, because they don't want customers calling them to complain that their Windows-only software doesn't work on it, but they do sell it on consumer-class devices, on both desktop and laptop form factors, and they go out of their way to make sure that as much of their hardware as possible is supported by Linux, even if they don't provide the OS with it.
Marketing is a large part of why Linux isn't taking off as much as people may like. But it's not the only reason... I know several people who have switched back to Windows, because application X doesn't work right in Linux. Application support is the reason Linux isn't winning on the market, not pure sales figures. Hence why Linux is winning in server space: it has the application support.
Actually, by the mid 90's, wintel had caught up with Amiga for most uses. Amiga was definitely ahead of its time (compare a game like Fire & Ice on Amiga against its PC counterpart), but with a bigger market for PC (from the open platform and cheaper commodity hardware) it didn't take that long for it to catch up and surpass Amiga.
so... what does that make me? ;)
Twenty years ago, a Cadillac PC was three to four thousand bucks. These days you can get an amazing PC for under a grand. I got a used Dell for $600, including tax, with dual core, 16G RAM and a 1T drive.
Case in point, I put together a Core i5 2500k (overclocked to 4.7GHz), 16GB of RAM, a Radeon HD 6870, 16GB of RAM, 1TB drive w/ 60GB SSD for cache (using the Z68 motherboard) for under $1000, less than a month ago. I did salvage the optical drive, monitor, keyboard, and mouse from an old system, but everything else was new. Even if you pick up a *really* nice 24" monitor, it's still under $1500.
For $2500, you can buy a *really* nice iMac, and get better technical support. (as much as I loathe Apple's business practices, their customer service is *really* good, and I'd recommend them to anybody that actually needs customer service/tech support).