Sadly, Fox News is no longer "niche" press. They're just as mainstream as CNN, CBS, etc. Which is fucking scary as the mythical "liberal bias" no longer exists (and hasn't really since the Carter administration) to counteract the extreme conservative bias on Fox News. I should probably start learning the words to "O Canada."
Yeah, Americans always have this arrogance that we're the best in the world. Truth is, as far as technical schools go, there are some in Russia, Taiwan and India that churn out many more really, truly smart and excellent programmers than even the best schools in the US. But of course, because their English is not so good, they must be stupid. Nevermind the fact that they've been doing calculus since they were probably 14. That gets you labeled a "child prodigy" here. Go figure.
Cost of living here is still quite expensive, unless you want to live in a rathole student apartment or out in the middle of nowhere. Expect to pay around $1000/mo for a decent 2 bedroom apartment. UT Austin is also the biggest school in the country, at last count there were somewhere around 52,000 students here. I used to be a CS major and I can vouch for the program (the EE program is excellent as well.) The liberal arts side of the school is nothing great, but the science and engineering programs are top notch. Not to mention Austin is just an awesome place to live if you're into any sort of outdoor activity (mountain biking, running, hiking, camping, etc.) The climate is relatively mild (winters ~40F, summers ~90F) and there are lots of places to go within a close proximity. I'd live here forever if the job market didn't suck so bad.:)
It's always been this way. The first two chapters of Plato's Republic are dedicated to just this argument (that being an injust person pays better rewards than being a just one.) Granted, the arguments are crap, but the only point I'm trying to make is that the argument itself has been around for aeons.
Look at it this way: The guys in India and Russia work just as hard as the people here do. HP's competitors will hire these people even if HP does not, yet American workers cost more. If HP doesn't oursource to India, they're at a disadvantage. This is way OT, so I won't debate here as there have been far too many stories about this recently. But the crux of the situation is that the world economy is evolving so that we're not the only people capable of white collar work. If you want the job, you can have it, but it may require relocating to Bangalore and taking a significant pay cut.
I'm not totally insensitive here; I'm in the same boat too, but you have to be realistic and see the direction the world economy is headed. Just because these guys in India weren't born in Kentucky doesn't mean they deserve the job any less. If you work for someone else, you're always going to be subject to their rules. Learn to deal with it or work for yourself.
Uh, I don't think not selling in the EU is an option. That would mean that every computer sold in Europe would have to come with another OS, probably Linux; or even more intriguing, it would open the door for Apple to put out OS X for x86 (there are some technical obstacles to this, but Apple has been long rumored to be keeping OS X under development behind closed doors for x86.) Needless to say, that's not something MS wants to see happen, as it would mean that every time someone buys a laptop, it wouldn't have Windows on it. I think they'd rather see that laptop have Windows on it without WMP than not at all. Just a thought.
Hrm, I know you're NAPA (nor am I) but I believe the reason Mars doesn't have an atmosphere isn't the gravity (Mars gravity is pretty close to Earth gravity, something like 0.8g) but rather the lack of a magnetosphere to protect the atmosphere from outside forces (solar flares, etc.) IIRC this is because there is no longer thermal activity in the Martian core, which isn't exactly something we can change in any comprehensible amount of time (say, under a billion years or so.) So it seems the sci-fi geek dreams of terraforming Mars are, much like women, just sci-fi geek dreams.
No, because you can't scam people more than one or two times per account. The negative feedback would make it pretty obvious. Besides, why waste your time on 100 $3 items when you can get someone to buy one thing for $300?
Apple loves XML. Almost everything in OS X is XML (dig through a.app folder in the console if you're curious.) Most OS X apps store stuff as XML as well, so it's all very portable. Open standards fucking rule.:)
Obvious troll, but I'll bite. They're not Nazis, they're in business to make money. They have AUPs that probably explicitly state that they're able to cut your service if it's deemed abusive. You also seem to have a warped concept of freedom here. You're paying to use a service, and that service comes with certain rules designed to protect both you and the provider of that service. These terms are agreed upon before you ever pay anything (it's up to you to read them or not, but by signing a contract you agree to follow them,) and if you don't want to abide by the rules, you're free not to have a cable modem. Spambots are destructive; they eat bandwidth and are a pain in the ass to other people. They're also often against the AUP of most broadband providers.
Contracts exist for this very reason; to make sure that the terms of the agreement are fair for both sides. If you don't think they're fair, don't sign the contract. It's that simple. But you probably won't get broadband either.
Screw CSI and Survivor, I'd rather have the Daily Show, South Park and Chapelle's Show. Which are also cut off on Dish. Which would make me ditch the dish.
I totally agree with you actually:) But a blanket statement like "Linux is more secure than Windows" is flat wrong, because it really depends on the setup. Linux *can* be more secure than Windows, but in all honesty you can secure a Windows server pretty well with a good firewall and keeping up with the patches (which is what you have to do to keep a Linux server secure)
And the debian default install leaves RPC daemons running too, even if you never installed anything that uses them. I don't know about other distros, but that pisses me off because I know a lot of the RPC daemons aren't the most secure things in the world. I also use a general principle that if I'm not using a port, it shouldn't be open. That also makes it a lot easier to identify intrusion in the event of a breakin (I got nailed by a BIND 4 bug years ago, the guy installed trojans for ps, netstat, etc. but I was able to portscan the box and figure out his backdoor and remove it.)
Also, it depends what we're talking about. If we're talking NT4... well okay, it's a piece of swiss cheese. But XP server really isn't *that* bad; I wouldn't run it myself because Linux can do everything it can for a lot less money, but it can be secured. Anyway, my point is that there are stupid Linux admins out there, just as there are stupid Windows admins out there (though there seem to be a lot more of the latter.) Saying that Linux is more secure is wrong, but saying that Linux can be more secure is probably right.
This is a common misconception. Linux is more secure than Windows because it's a lot easier to micromanage your system. But it also places a lot more of the responsibility for security on the administrator's head, which means if you have a Linux admin who doesn't know how to properly secure a box *and maintain that security*, it'll probably be more insecure than a Windows machine. Most hacks for Windows aren't widely exploited until after a patch is released anyway, whereas on Linux it's often in reverse (though the patches are usually available within hours.) Linux just better allows you to micromanage things than Windows, which can either be a good or a bad thing depending on the skill of the admin.
Heh, I consider myself a nerd but I don't buy into the trappings of most nerds. I'm social, I have dreadlocks, I ride my bike insane distances, and I can have normal social interactions without having to resort to a fantasy life. Most "social" nerds won't touch role-playing, simply because it perpetuates the 30-year-old-pimple-faced-geek-living-in-parents-ba sement stereotype. There are other social activities that don't involve role-playing. Join an intramural sports team (this will not make you a 'jock,' because they don't exist after high school) or if you're totally uncoordinated, join an academic club with people who share your interests. What you do does not define who you are; you can be a very nerdy computer programmer and still be a rich yuppie asshole. In the words of Tyler Durden, "You are not your job. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis."
Agreed; RPGs will just further his descent into geekdom and the isolation of "geek culture." Social skills mean being to be able to get along with regular people (i.e. ones who don't play dungeons and dragons) and frankly, the idea of role playing just REEKS of low self-esteem and escapism. Most RPers I know also happen to be on a pharmacy of antidepressants. I don't think it's a coincidence.
My theory on this is that most geeks are mildly autistic (though obviously not to the degree most people associate with autism.) Before you get up in arms, think about it. Obviously there are varying degrees of autism, but all of them affect social interactions in some sort of way. A lot of "gifted" kids put a lot of time into solitary efforts, which may be why they seem so academically gifted. I was always considered "gifted," but when I was a child I exhibited a lot of (mild) autistic tendencies, such as I hated being touched, would often act inappropriately in social situations, was obsessed with "classifying" things, etc. This may also help explain the extreme gender gap in the tech sector, as autism is about four times more prevalent in males than it is in females.
Keep in mind I have no authority on this subject, I'm just a geek who's noticed a few things that seem a little more than coincidental (such as the abnormally high rate of autism and asperger's syndrome in children of tech sector employees) and pulled some theory out of his ass, but I'd be interested to see a bit more scientific study of something like this. Does anyone else have any more information on this subject?
No, it's just a program:) An operating system has certain features that basically allow it to run other things. Stuff like memory management, schedulers, function loaders, etc. This stuff is not essential to running a program on hardware, which you can do either by writing some x86 code or even farming it off to another less complicated CPU. More than likely this is just a monolithic program that runs pretty much independently of any motherboard functions. It'd be a lot less problematic that way, anyway. I got a D in my OS class though, so I could be wrong:)
Yeah, I loved the cubes too. Everyone did; but it was a poor marketing price point, as the cube cost more and was less powerful than a comparable PowerMac. They sell for lots of money now because they've achieved this cool cult status, kind of like the Newton (another excellent product that was about 5 years ahead of its time.) So it basically got relegated to people who didn't need a super powerful computer but were willing to shell out $2000 for a stylish one. The funny thing now is they could just rip the monitor off the iMac and essentially have the same thing.
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Sadly, Fox News is no longer "niche" press. They're just as mainstream as CNN, CBS, etc. Which is fucking scary as the mythical "liberal bias" no longer exists (and hasn't really since the Carter administration) to counteract the extreme conservative bias on Fox News. I should probably start learning the words to "O Canada."
Or just let it die gracefully and bring back Futurama. Yes, I'm still bitter.
Yeah, Americans always have this arrogance that we're the best in the world. Truth is, as far as technical schools go, there are some in Russia, Taiwan and India that churn out many more really, truly smart and excellent programmers than even the best schools in the US. But of course, because their English is not so good, they must be stupid. Nevermind the fact that they've been doing calculus since they were probably 14. That gets you labeled a "child prodigy" here. Go figure.
Cost of living here is still quite expensive, unless you want to live in a rathole student apartment or out in the middle of nowhere. Expect to pay around $1000/mo for a decent 2 bedroom apartment. UT Austin is also the biggest school in the country, at last count there were somewhere around 52,000 students here. I used to be a CS major and I can vouch for the program (the EE program is excellent as well.) The liberal arts side of the school is nothing great, but the science and engineering programs are top notch. Not to mention Austin is just an awesome place to live if you're into any sort of outdoor activity (mountain biking, running, hiking, camping, etc.) The climate is relatively mild (winters ~40F, summers ~90F) and there are lots of places to go within a close proximity. I'd live here forever if the job market didn't suck so bad. :)
Actually, the porn guys are a lot less forgiving than the record companies. They won't sue you, they'll just break your legs.
It's always been this way. The first two chapters of Plato's Republic are dedicated to just this argument (that being an injust person pays better rewards than being a just one.) Granted, the arguments are crap, but the only point I'm trying to make is that the argument itself has been around for aeons.
No, the perfect woman would accept a pearl necklace. On a nightly basis.
If you need me, I'll be in the angry dome.
Absolute power lies with the US because we've got the fucking bombs, baby. And we're apparently not afraid to use them anymore either.
Look at it this way: The guys in India and Russia work just as hard as the people here do. HP's competitors will hire these people even if HP does not, yet American workers cost more. If HP doesn't oursource to India, they're at a disadvantage. This is way OT, so I won't debate here as there have been far too many stories about this recently. But the crux of the situation is that the world economy is evolving so that we're not the only people capable of white collar work. If you want the job, you can have it, but it may require relocating to Bangalore and taking a significant pay cut.
I'm not totally insensitive here; I'm in the same boat too, but you have to be realistic and see the direction the world economy is headed. Just because these guys in India weren't born in Kentucky doesn't mean they deserve the job any less. If you work for someone else, you're always going to be subject to their rules. Learn to deal with it or work for yourself.
Uh, I don't think not selling in the EU is an option. That would mean that every computer sold in Europe would have to come with another OS, probably Linux; or even more intriguing, it would open the door for Apple to put out OS X for x86 (there are some technical obstacles to this, but Apple has been long rumored to be keeping OS X under development behind closed doors for x86.) Needless to say, that's not something MS wants to see happen, as it would mean that every time someone buys a laptop, it wouldn't have Windows on it. I think they'd rather see that laptop have Windows on it without WMP than not at all. Just a thought.
Hrm, I know you're NAPA (nor am I) but I believe the reason Mars doesn't have an atmosphere isn't the gravity (Mars gravity is pretty close to Earth gravity, something like 0.8g) but rather the lack of a magnetosphere to protect the atmosphere from outside forces (solar flares, etc.) IIRC this is because there is no longer thermal activity in the Martian core, which isn't exactly something we can change in any comprehensible amount of time (say, under a billion years or so.) So it seems the sci-fi geek dreams of terraforming Mars are, much like women, just sci-fi geek dreams.
No, because you can't scam people more than one or two times per account. The negative feedback would make it pretty obvious. Besides, why waste your time on 100 $3 items when you can get someone to buy one thing for $300?
Apple loves XML. Almost everything in OS X is XML (dig through a .app folder in the console if you're curious.) Most OS X apps store stuff as XML as well, so it's all very portable. Open standards fucking rule. :)
Obvious troll, but I'll bite. They're not Nazis, they're in business to make money. They have AUPs that probably explicitly state that they're able to cut your service if it's deemed abusive. You also seem to have a warped concept of freedom here. You're paying to use a service, and that service comes with certain rules designed to protect both you and the provider of that service. These terms are agreed upon before you ever pay anything (it's up to you to read them or not, but by signing a contract you agree to follow them,) and if you don't want to abide by the rules, you're free not to have a cable modem. Spambots are destructive; they eat bandwidth and are a pain in the ass to other people. They're also often against the AUP of most broadband providers.
Contracts exist for this very reason; to make sure that the terms of the agreement are fair for both sides. If you don't think they're fair, don't sign the contract. It's that simple. But you probably won't get broadband either.
Screw CSI and Survivor, I'd rather have the Daily Show, South Park and Chapelle's Show. Which are also cut off on Dish. Which would make me ditch the dish.
I totally agree with you actually :) But a blanket statement like "Linux is more secure than Windows" is flat wrong, because it really depends on the setup. Linux *can* be more secure than Windows, but in all honesty you can secure a Windows server pretty well with a good firewall and keeping up with the patches (which is what you have to do to keep a Linux server secure)
And the debian default install leaves RPC daemons running too, even if you never installed anything that uses them. I don't know about other distros, but that pisses me off because I know a lot of the RPC daemons aren't the most secure things in the world. I also use a general principle that if I'm not using a port, it shouldn't be open. That also makes it a lot easier to identify intrusion in the event of a breakin (I got nailed by a BIND 4 bug years ago, the guy installed trojans for ps, netstat, etc. but I was able to portscan the box and figure out his backdoor and remove it.)
Also, it depends what we're talking about. If we're talking NT4... well okay, it's a piece of swiss cheese. But XP server really isn't *that* bad; I wouldn't run it myself because Linux can do everything it can for a lot less money, but it can be secured. Anyway, my point is that there are stupid Linux admins out there, just as there are stupid Windows admins out there (though there seem to be a lot more of the latter.) Saying that Linux is more secure is wrong, but saying that Linux can be more secure is probably right.
This is a common misconception. Linux is more secure than Windows because it's a lot easier to micromanage your system. But it also places a lot more of the responsibility for security on the administrator's head, which means if you have a Linux admin who doesn't know how to properly secure a box *and maintain that security*, it'll probably be more insecure than a Windows machine. Most hacks for Windows aren't widely exploited until after a patch is released anyway, whereas on Linux it's often in reverse (though the patches are usually available within hours.) Linux just better allows you to micromanage things than Windows, which can either be a good or a bad thing depending on the skill of the admin.
If I could do that, I'd have one myself. :(
That 70% of all statistics are just made up on the spot.
Heh, I consider myself a nerd but I don't buy into the trappings of most nerds. I'm social, I have dreadlocks, I ride my bike insane distances, and I can have normal social interactions without having to resort to a fantasy life. Most "social" nerds won't touch role-playing, simply because it perpetuates the 30-year-old-pimple-faced-geek-living-in-parents-ba sement stereotype. There are other social activities that don't involve role-playing. Join an intramural sports team (this will not make you a 'jock,' because they don't exist after high school) or if you're totally uncoordinated, join an academic club with people who share your interests. What you do does not define who you are; you can be a very nerdy computer programmer and still be a rich yuppie asshole. In the words of Tyler Durden, "You are not your job. You are not the car you drive. You are not your fucking khakis."
Agreed; RPGs will just further his descent into geekdom and the isolation of "geek culture." Social skills mean being to be able to get along with regular people (i.e. ones who don't play dungeons and dragons) and frankly, the idea of role playing just REEKS of low self-esteem and escapism. Most RPers I know also happen to be on a pharmacy of antidepressants. I don't think it's a coincidence.
My theory on this is that most geeks are mildly autistic (though obviously not to the degree most people associate with autism.) Before you get up in arms, think about it. Obviously there are varying degrees of autism, but all of them affect social interactions in some sort of way. A lot of "gifted" kids put a lot of time into solitary efforts, which may be why they seem so academically gifted. I was always considered "gifted," but when I was a child I exhibited a lot of (mild) autistic tendencies, such as I hated being touched, would often act inappropriately in social situations, was obsessed with "classifying" things, etc. This may also help explain the extreme gender gap in the tech sector, as autism is about four times more prevalent in males than it is in females.
Keep in mind I have no authority on this subject, I'm just a geek who's noticed a few things that seem a little more than coincidental (such as the abnormally high rate of autism and asperger's syndrome in children of tech sector employees) and pulled some theory out of his ass, but I'd be interested to see a bit more scientific study of something like this. Does anyone else have any more information on this subject?
No, it's just a program :) An operating system has certain features that basically allow it to run other things. Stuff like memory management, schedulers, function loaders, etc. This stuff is not essential to running a program on hardware, which you can do either by writing some x86 code or even farming it off to another less complicated CPU. More than likely this is just a monolithic program that runs pretty much independently of any motherboard functions. It'd be a lot less problematic that way, anyway. I got a D in my OS class though, so I could be wrong :)
Yeah, I loved the cubes too. Everyone did; but it was a poor marketing price point, as the cube cost more and was less powerful than a comparable PowerMac. They sell for lots of money now because they've achieved this cool cult status, kind of like the Newton (another excellent product that was about 5 years ahead of its time.) So it basically got relegated to people who didn't need a super powerful computer but were willing to shell out $2000 for a stylish one. The funny thing now is they could just rip the monitor off the iMac and essentially have the same thing.