Actually, the libertarians on my facebook aren't too happy about this either.
I mean, surprise surprise, libertarians aren't happy when restraints are put on personal liberty by a governmental institution. Does it matter if it's a federal government or a state government?
That's the good thing about America, we don't need to leave here unless we really want to, we've already got pretty much everything here. Cubans? we've got those. They're in Miami. Iranians? (scuse me, "Persians"), we've got those all over the place. I grew up down the street from two Persian families. Russians? Mexicans? Vietnamese? Sure! Any please in the world that its' not really "safe" (well, for an american) to travel to, we've already got them here, and chances are that there's a major metropolitan area with a section devoted to any given ethnicity.
How hard can it be, I mean, they've been doing it in movies since at least the 80s. Hell even the $500 dell desktop on CSI:miami can do it.
"we've got a convenience store video feed of the getaway car, the camera was recording in 480i from 300 yards away" "can you sharpen it up a little?" "sure. one moment... ok got it. License plate is california JGL-711. Ok just a bit more... yeah, looks like registration expires march 2012. Wait, let me clean it up some more, yeah it looks like there's a small identifying scratch on the trunk lid about a half inch long shaped like a boomerang. Oh wait, this is the new version of the software, let me zoom in a bit further, yeah I'm pretty sure I'm seeing loose skin cells on the edge of the trunk lid, maybe our missing person is in the trunk!" "good work, now where's my sunglasses?"
1. Root your nook, install both readers, read any format you like. -or- 2. Download calibre software (or use online version at www.2epub.com) to your pc. change the mobi files to epub.
I first looked for media (music) from two or more media sources (napster and my own cd collection) over a decade ago.
Seriously, how can you patent "looking in two different places for something you want". I think that's called cross-shopping and it's been going on since about 2 days after we found out we can barter one item for another back in the stone age?
Since the Nook Color isn't designed as a video playback device, this limitation wasn't a big deal for whomever chose the hardware architecture for the Nook.
This has generally been my working assumption, either that or the rendering hardware was finalized before the display size was known. it is just the first time I've ever had a device incapable of rendering a format it supports at it's own native resolution. struck me as very odd. Seems to me like buying a Corvette and putting cheap tires on it. You know the corvette's guts are capable of 170mph, but the car will never get faster than 120mph nonetheless. (the need to do faster than 120mph obviously notwithstanding).
If I did, would I overclock it to 150% of normal speed?
As long as it lasts through a single movie (say, for an airplane trip), that'd be good enough for me.
For car trips, it uses a standard microUSB port, and I've got at least two car chargers for those. Granted, the NC will draw about twice the default amps of a stock usb port if it has its preference, but stock will do in a pinch.
Why would you choose to build a device with hardware incapable of handling rendering at the native resolution of the device, especially when you've chosen hardware capable of rendering at 2/3 of the native resolution. was the last 1/3 really so far away price-wise?
I'll be interested to see if it has full software rendering engine bypassing the hardware decoder. I don't see why it shouldn't, I believe that's what the desktop VLC does.
The hardware decoders on a lot of phones/tablets leave a bit to be desired. Why, for instance, would you limit hardware (nook color) with a display with a native resolution of 1024x600 to hardware accelerated playback of 854x480. ugh. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why my handbreak encodes weren't playing any visuals at native res until I looked up the stupid 854x480 limitation.
It's embarrassing for the teacher, and embarrassing for the students.
I took a chem class in college where the professor was just horrible at teaching. I don't know if he just didn't give a damn, or if he was just a really bad teacher who did really good grant work, who knows. Either way, it was well known that you basically had to bring a list of "what the fuck was he talking about" topics to your discussion classes to ask the TAs to explain. I had a brilliant TA who who was saddled with the thickest indian accent I've encountered in my entire life. We'd ask him to explain a topic, and he'd explain, and none of us would understand his accent, we'd sheepishly ask him to repeat again, and he'd just speak louder.
I actually talked to a bunch of the other students about it after class, and we were all releaved to find out we were experiencing the same problem. none of us could understand the guy. We all agreed that when we could cut through the accent, we thought he was much better at explaining the concepts than the teacher, and he certainly knew what he was talking about, but at least half the time it was almost like he wasn't speaking the same language as us.
Now, that's just a single TA in a class that had A. the professor, and B. other TAs to ask questions to. If this was a single teacher instructing the class, and that person was all the class had to turn to for explanation of the topic, say what you want... a lot of people are going to fail that class who otherwise shouldn't have.
I'm not sure how widespread a problem it is, since I only encountered it once in my life, but "people's feelings" be damned, it WAS a problem.
Sadly AC has the truth of it. This plan should be labled "Current roadmap for the next 20-30 years... unless whoever is elected to congress and the presidency in the next couple of years change their mind. again."
My brother works for an IT company contracted to the military. He does less than I do, and makes nearly 1.5x as much as a matter of -normal- pay. Every two years he gets sent out of country for 3 months, and he earns like 3x normal pay if it's a country with an active war.
His benefits are pretty decent, and he gets almost European levels of PTO.
I'm quite envious. I guess that's what a Top Secret SCI clearance will do for you.
I don't think that we should make college more expensive, not by a long shot. I would much rather have tuition kept down to reasonable levels, and I am perfectly fine with state funds going to assist in-state students with tuition.
I'm just not a fan of the "no degree = no job, no matter what" opinion that has formed in the past 20 or 30 years amongst both students and employers alike, that's all. There are a lot of jobs where a college degree in a related field is a big help, or even absolutely necessary, for success in that field. There also a lot of jobs where a college degree is of little help, or even no help whatsoever, yet today's youth thinks they need a degree to attain those jobs, and even more perplexingly the employers think that the youths need a degree to do that job when it is very demonstrable that they may not be helped much if at all by having a degree.
If you don't mind me asking, what is it about that college degree is required to do the job? Does it matter if it's a degree in a semi-related field, or even an un-related field?
I understand if a company wants a degree in biology to work as a tech on computers that are used in live operating room situations. A buddy of mine works for a company that does just that (fascinating work by the way), and I understand the desire that they know human machines as well as transistor machines.
But what about the companies who just require "a degree". What is it about that magic piece of paper? Is it the college experience we're after? Would someone who went to school for 4 years but achieved no degree (for whatever reason) qualify?
That's the thing that gets me about society's focus on a college degree nowadays. A good portion of the time (A majority??), a person's degree has jack all to do with what they're applying for. Seems a pretty arbitrary requirement to me, and the only reason I've ever been able to understand for jobs that just require "a degree" is a hypothetical spiteful feeling on the part of the hiring staff "well we had to get degrees so dammit they should too."
I disagree. it is far -easier- to learn now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Virtually any topic you care to be interested in likely has thousands or tens of thousands of pages of documentation online. Way more than that if you're willing to use less-than-legal means to acquire it (which, let's be honest, is not a problem for your average 16-year-old today or in the 90s).
As for practical experience, you can learn a very large portion of what you need to do a good job on a day-to-day basis at home in your spare time -if you know what you should be learning-. That's the problem. While there are thousands of pages of documentation online, you can rarely get an idea before entering the business world of what it is you'll need to know to succeed there. You just have to hope you've studied and practiced the right things.
Or, you know, you could just find somebody who has done said job for a few years and ask them.
Let's use my field as an example. It is trivial for a 16-year-old today to download a copy of server 2008 and windows 7, then use a couple spare computers or a bunch of VMs on his own computer to set up a functional domain, then download a couple microsoft MOC courses and practice the basics of AD domain, NTFS permissions, and workstation management. Basic stuff, but the demand for it is still there. He then goes down to a local software company and applies for an entry-level phone tech support job. Trust me, those are still out there. from that point, he is now building experience in the industry that looks good on a resume, as well as learning actual skills to land a much better job a year or two down the line, which you then turn into the job you actually want a few years after that.
Doing something like that is tremendously easier to do nowadays than it was in the 90s.
I don't disagree. I, along with most people I assume, learned a great deal at college while outside the classroom, or at least not what was necessarily the point of the class.
College is beneficial to many people, certainly. Why should it be "mandatory" however? Is college "for everybody"? Not in my experience. I'm sure you could probably identify at least a couple people in your life who learned little while in college, or struggled very hard there with things that ultimately didn't matter very much. You could make the arguement here that college teaches one how to deal with life's struggles... but I counter that it's hardly the only place to learn that, and add that it is a shame that we no longer teach our youth that life isn't all roses and honey prior to age 18 anymore.
For someone who I is praising graduate and post-graduate work, your reading comprehension leaves a bit to be desired. I mentioned (or at least inferred very strongly) that I'm in IT in paragraph 2.
IT is very much a field where good solid useful work is done by people who have no college education or have a college education that provides little assistance to their daily tasks. Would my job exist today without the work of graduate and post-graduate students? well, possibly not, but I counter with the question "was it their graduate and post graduate work that made them capable of creating the solutions to the burning questions, or even able to identify the questions in the first place?" perhaps not. Bill Gates very famously did quite well for himself in the field (granted, at least as much of his success was business-based as IT-based) without finishing college.
Note: I separate IT from EE in this case. The hardware underlining information technology very much contributes to its success, and EE is a field that several of my my muddies studied in school, so I assume that the undergraduate work there was useful.
You don't need a college degree to get a job, although we as a society have done a very good job of convincing young people otherwise. I make a very decent salary for a 30-something with only partial-college education. what I have that makes me worthwhile to employers is half a decade of professional experience, and nearly two decades of non-professional experience, in my field of choice, as well as experience dealing with the type of people (Both clients and colleagues) that I am likely to interact with. It is only something that I found out in retrospect though. I don't know that I could blindly walk in to "Screw it, I'm not going to college, I'll be fine" without so much experience seeing that it actually is fine.
You can still get ahead in the world on the strength of experience, you just have to start lower and prove yourself more often. I'm probably about 5 years behind where I could have been if I'd graduated with a degree in IT (which, to be fair, they didn't even offer when I was in college), but I'm also running without the debt as well. I'm not sure which is a greater hindrance on you long term. I'd be interested to see a study on how today's student debt affects people long term. The last one I read on the subject said that once accounting for debt levels, delayed entry into the workforce, etc, a college education was only worth something like an extra $100,000 to $400,000 over the course of a lifetime, depending on the profession (obviously something like doctor is right out). I don't remember how old those figures were though. If tuition keeps going up much faster than inflation and salaries, it's going to cross over the other way at some point.
So, if you want to get into the business world without a college degree, it can be done.. but what it really requires is a plan. you have to know where you're starting out, and where you plan to go from there... which almost no 18 year old has. I didn't. Hell that's half the reason a lot of people go to college in the first place, to learn who the hell they are and what they want to do with their life. College is a much easier choice, and if I did it all again I probably would still choose to go, and maybe even to graduate this time, but not because you outright -need- to... just because it's easier.
Normal sex without testicle injuries, like softcore diablo, is for clueless sissies.
Normal sex ain't the same game. Shut up, you're not allowed to talk here unless you get your balls stomped on and ruptured at some point during the act.
But the rich certainly benefits from overseas diplomatic missions / protection, military protection of high value private assets, foreign interventions, airport security, etc...i.e. things that represents a much higher benefit per tax dollar than your average Joe (and which the average Joe aren't likely to use).
please explain how?
this argument is always presented as if it is self evident. It most certainly is not. A particular wealthy individual -with influence- may benefit from a specific instance of foreign intervention or diplomatic protection, but is usually the sort of thing that causes controversies and charges of abuse of power, not the sort of thing that every wealthy individual can expect simply by paying taxes.
In the first case the costs scale with some function of population and land area, if you own a lot of land you need more roads. If you have an expensive property you'll more likely need to call out the police, etc.
I've always found this argument to be ridiculous, but it pops up again and again. Are you suggesting that the roads in your average billionaire's neighborhood get repaved every 6 weeks instead of every 5-20 years like the rest of the country? Or are you suggesting he can somehow drive 17 cars simultaneously 24 hours a day on those roads around his house?
As for more benefit from police coverage? You mean the guy with the fence around his property, with private security and an extensive camera network on his property? The guy who lives in a neighborhood full of people of similar means? Man I bet the police are out there -all the time-. I mean, I can't tell you the number of episodes of COPS that feature prominently sherman oaks and beverly hills. Maybe they have problems with the guys from Oceans 11 pulling heists, but that's about it.
I doubt that that his kids are getting a better education at the local public schools since chances are he's sending them to a private school anyway.
I also don't suspect that should the US ever get invaded, an entire platoon of marines will be dispatched to guard his property.
The rich get no more real benefit from taxes than anybody else. If anything, they get -less- benefit from taxes on a per-dollar basis than any body else. Really, the rich get government benefit from hiring lobbyists, not from taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the libertarians on my facebook aren't too happy about this either.
I mean, surprise surprise, libertarians aren't happy when restraints are put on personal liberty by a governmental institution. Does it matter if it's a federal government or a state government?
That's the good thing about America, we don't need to leave here unless we really want to, we've already got pretty much everything here. Cubans? we've got those. They're in Miami. Iranians? (scuse me, "Persians"), we've got those all over the place. I grew up down the street from two Persian families. Russians? Mexicans? Vietnamese? Sure! Any please in the world that its' not really "safe" (well, for an american) to travel to, we've already got them here, and chances are that there's a major metropolitan area with a section devoted to any given ethnicity.
It is most definitely not quite four million.
Just like the missile, you name it "Titan II" (aka "The Quickening" and/or "Electric Bugaloo")
How hard can it be, I mean, they've been doing it in movies since at least the 80s. Hell even the $500 dell desktop on CSI:miami can do it.
"we've got a convenience store video feed of the getaway car, the camera was recording in 480i from 300 yards away"
"can you sharpen it up a little?"
"sure. one moment... ok got it. License plate is california JGL-711. Ok just a bit more... yeah, looks like registration expires march 2012. Wait, let me clean it up some more, yeah it looks like there's a small identifying scratch on the trunk lid about a half inch long shaped like a boomerang. Oh wait, this is the new version of the software, let me zoom in a bit further, yeah I'm pretty sure I'm seeing loose skin cells on the edge of the trunk lid, maybe our missing person is in the trunk!"
"good work, now where's my sunglasses?"
yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaahhhh!
1. Root your nook, install both readers, read any format you like.
-or-
2. Download calibre software (or use online version at www.2epub.com) to your pc. change the mobi files to epub.
I first looked for media (music) from two or more media sources (napster and my own cd collection) over a decade ago.
Seriously, how can you patent "looking in two different places for something you want". I think that's called cross-shopping and it's been going on since about 2 days after we found out we can barter one item for another back in the stone age?
Since the Nook Color isn't designed as a video playback device, this limitation wasn't a big deal for whomever chose the hardware architecture for the Nook.
This has generally been my working assumption, either that or the rendering hardware was finalized before the display size was known. it is just the first time I've ever had a device incapable of rendering a format it supports at it's own native resolution. struck me as very odd. Seems to me like buying a Corvette and putting cheap tires on it. You know the corvette's guts are capable of 170mph, but the car will never get faster than 120mph nonetheless. (the need to do faster than 120mph obviously notwithstanding).
If I did, would I overclock it to 150% of normal speed?
As long as it lasts through a single movie (say, for an airplane trip), that'd be good enough for me.
For car trips, it uses a standard microUSB port, and I've got at least two car chargers for those. Granted, the NC will draw about twice the default amps of a stock usb port if it has its preference, but stock will do in a pinch.
ok, let me rephrase.
Why would you choose to build a device with hardware incapable of handling rendering at the native resolution of the device, especially when you've chosen hardware capable of rendering at 2/3 of the native resolution. was the last 1/3 really so far away price-wise?
I'll be interested to see if it has full software rendering engine bypassing the hardware decoder. I don't see why it shouldn't, I believe that's what the desktop VLC does.
The hardware decoders on a lot of phones/tablets leave a bit to be desired. Why, for instance, would you limit hardware (nook color) with a display with a native resolution of 1024x600 to hardware accelerated playback of 854x480. ugh. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why my handbreak encodes weren't playing any visuals at native res until I looked up the stupid 854x480 limitation.
It's embarrassing for the teacher, and embarrassing for the students.
I took a chem class in college where the professor was just horrible at teaching. I don't know if he just didn't give a damn, or if he was just a really bad teacher who did really good grant work, who knows. Either way, it was well known that you basically had to bring a list of "what the fuck was he talking about" topics to your discussion classes to ask the TAs to explain. I had a brilliant TA who who was saddled with the thickest indian accent I've encountered in my entire life. We'd ask him to explain a topic, and he'd explain, and none of us would understand his accent, we'd sheepishly ask him to repeat again, and he'd just speak louder.
I actually talked to a bunch of the other students about it after class, and we were all releaved to find out we were experiencing the same problem. none of us could understand the guy. We all agreed that when we could cut through the accent, we thought he was much better at explaining the concepts than the teacher, and he certainly knew what he was talking about, but at least half the time it was almost like he wasn't speaking the same language as us.
Now, that's just a single TA in a class that had A. the professor, and B. other TAs to ask questions to. If this was a single teacher instructing the class, and that person was all the class had to turn to for explanation of the topic, say what you want... a lot of people are going to fail that class who otherwise shouldn't have.
I'm not sure how widespread a problem it is, since I only encountered it once in my life, but "people's feelings" be damned, it WAS a problem.
Sadly AC has the truth of it. This plan should be labled "Current roadmap for the next 20-30 years... unless whoever is elected to congress and the presidency in the next couple of years change their mind. again."
Bistromath.
My brother works for an IT company contracted to the military. He does less than I do, and makes nearly 1.5x as much as a matter of -normal- pay. Every two years he gets sent out of country for 3 months, and he earns like 3x normal pay if it's a country with an active war.
His benefits are pretty decent, and he gets almost European levels of PTO.
I'm quite envious. I guess that's what a Top Secret SCI clearance will do for you.
Are you calling me exceptional? thanks!
I don't think that we should make college more expensive, not by a long shot. I would much rather have tuition kept down to reasonable levels, and I am perfectly fine with state funds going to assist in-state students with tuition.
I'm just not a fan of the "no degree = no job, no matter what" opinion that has formed in the past 20 or 30 years amongst both students and employers alike, that's all. There are a lot of jobs where a college degree in a related field is a big help, or even absolutely necessary, for success in that field. There also a lot of jobs where a college degree is of little help, or even no help whatsoever, yet today's youth thinks they need a degree to attain those jobs, and even more perplexingly the employers think that the youths need a degree to do that job when it is very demonstrable that they may not be helped much if at all by having a degree.
If you don't mind me asking, what is it about that college degree is required to do the job? Does it matter if it's a degree in a semi-related field, or even an un-related field?
I understand if a company wants a degree in biology to work as a tech on computers that are used in live operating room situations. A buddy of mine works for a company that does just that (fascinating work by the way), and I understand the desire that they know human machines as well as transistor machines.
But what about the companies who just require "a degree". What is it about that magic piece of paper? Is it the college experience we're after? Would someone who went to school for 4 years but achieved no degree (for whatever reason) qualify?
That's the thing that gets me about society's focus on a college degree nowadays. A good portion of the time (A majority??), a person's degree has jack all to do with what they're applying for. Seems a pretty arbitrary requirement to me, and the only reason I've ever been able to understand for jobs that just require "a degree" is a hypothetical spiteful feeling on the part of the hiring staff "well we had to get degrees so dammit they should too."
I disagree. it is far -easier- to learn now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Virtually any topic you care to be interested in likely has thousands or tens of thousands of pages of documentation online. Way more than that if you're willing to use less-than-legal means to acquire it (which, let's be honest, is not a problem for your average 16-year-old today or in the 90s).
As for practical experience, you can learn a very large portion of what you need to do a good job on a day-to-day basis at home in your spare time -if you know what you should be learning-. That's the problem. While there are thousands of pages of documentation online, you can rarely get an idea before entering the business world of what it is you'll need to know to succeed there. You just have to hope you've studied and practiced the right things.
Or, you know, you could just find somebody who has done said job for a few years and ask them.
Let's use my field as an example. It is trivial for a 16-year-old today to download a copy of server 2008 and windows 7, then use a couple spare computers or a bunch of VMs on his own computer to set up a functional domain, then download a couple microsoft MOC courses and practice the basics of AD domain, NTFS permissions, and workstation management. Basic stuff, but the demand for it is still there. He then goes down to a local software company and applies for an entry-level phone tech support job. Trust me, those are still out there. from that point, he is now building experience in the industry that looks good on a resume, as well as learning actual skills to land a much better job a year or two down the line, which you then turn into the job you actually want a few years after that.
Doing something like that is tremendously easier to do nowadays than it was in the 90s.
I don't disagree. I, along with most people I assume, learned a great deal at college while outside the classroom, or at least not what was necessarily the point of the class.
College is beneficial to many people, certainly. Why should it be "mandatory" however? Is college "for everybody"? Not in my experience. I'm sure you could probably identify at least a couple people in your life who learned little while in college, or struggled very hard there with things that ultimately didn't matter very much. You could make the arguement here that college teaches one how to deal with life's struggles... but I counter that it's hardly the only place to learn that, and add that it is a shame that we no longer teach our youth that life isn't all roses and honey prior to age 18 anymore.
For someone who I is praising graduate and post-graduate work, your reading comprehension leaves a bit to be desired. I mentioned (or at least inferred very strongly) that I'm in IT in paragraph 2.
IT is very much a field where good solid useful work is done by people who have no college education or have a college education that provides little assistance to their daily tasks. Would my job exist today without the work of graduate and post-graduate students? well, possibly not, but I counter with the question "was it their graduate and post graduate work that made them capable of creating the solutions to the burning questions, or even able to identify the questions in the first place?" perhaps not. Bill Gates very famously did quite well for himself in the field (granted, at least as much of his success was business-based as IT-based) without finishing college.
Note: I separate IT from EE in this case. The hardware underlining information technology very much contributes to its success, and EE is a field that several of my my muddies studied in school, so I assume that the undergraduate work there was useful.
You don't need a college degree to get a job, although we as a society have done a very good job of convincing young people otherwise. I make a very decent salary for a 30-something with only partial-college education. what I have that makes me worthwhile to employers is half a decade of professional experience, and nearly two decades of non-professional experience, in my field of choice, as well as experience dealing with the type of people (Both clients and colleagues) that I am likely to interact with. It is only something that I found out in retrospect though. I don't know that I could blindly walk in to "Screw it, I'm not going to college, I'll be fine" without so much experience seeing that it actually is fine.
You can still get ahead in the world on the strength of experience, you just have to start lower and prove yourself more often. I'm probably about 5 years behind where I could have been if I'd graduated with a degree in IT (which, to be fair, they didn't even offer when I was in college), but I'm also running without the debt as well. I'm not sure which is a greater hindrance on you long term. I'd be interested to see a study on how today's student debt affects people long term. The last one I read on the subject said that once accounting for debt levels, delayed entry into the workforce, etc, a college education was only worth something like an extra $100,000 to $400,000 over the course of a lifetime, depending on the profession (obviously something like doctor is right out). I don't remember how old those figures were though. If tuition keeps going up much faster than inflation and salaries, it's going to cross over the other way at some point.
So, if you want to get into the business world without a college degree, it can be done.. but what it really requires is a plan. you have to know where you're starting out, and where you plan to go from there... which almost no 18 year old has. I didn't. Hell that's half the reason a lot of people go to college in the first place, to learn who the hell they are and what they want to do with their life. College is a much easier choice, and if I did it all again I probably would still choose to go, and maybe even to graduate this time, but not because you outright -need- to... just because it's easier.
Normal sex without testicle injuries, like softcore diablo, is for clueless sissies.
Normal sex ain't the same game. Shut up, you're not allowed to talk here unless you get your balls stomped on and ruptured at some point during the act.
when you put it that way, it sounds just like pop-up spam.
i'm sure that as soon as someone invents an ad-blocker extension for AR, we'll be fine.
But the rich certainly benefits from overseas diplomatic missions / protection, military protection of high value private assets, foreign interventions, airport security, etc...i.e. things that represents a much higher benefit per tax dollar than your average Joe (and which the average Joe aren't likely to use).
please explain how?
this argument is always presented as if it is self evident. It most certainly is not. A particular wealthy individual -with influence- may benefit from a specific instance of foreign intervention or diplomatic protection, but is usually the sort of thing that causes controversies and charges of abuse of power, not the sort of thing that every wealthy individual can expect simply by paying taxes.
In the first case the costs scale with some function of population and land area, if you own a lot of land you need more roads. If you have an expensive property you'll more likely need to call out the police, etc.
I've always found this argument to be ridiculous, but it pops up again and again. Are you suggesting that the roads in your average billionaire's neighborhood get repaved every 6 weeks instead of every 5-20 years like the rest of the country? Or are you suggesting he can somehow drive 17 cars simultaneously 24 hours a day on those roads around his house?
As for more benefit from police coverage? You mean the guy with the fence around his property, with private security and an extensive camera network on his property? The guy who lives in a neighborhood full of people of similar means? Man I bet the police are out there -all the time-. I mean, I can't tell you the number of episodes of COPS that feature prominently sherman oaks and beverly hills. Maybe they have problems with the guys from Oceans 11 pulling heists, but that's about it.
I doubt that that his kids are getting a better education at the local public schools since chances are he's sending them to a private school anyway.
I also don't suspect that should the US ever get invaded, an entire platoon of marines will be dispatched to guard his property.
The rich get no more real benefit from taxes than anybody else. If anything, they get -less- benefit from taxes on a per-dollar basis than any body else. Really, the rich get government benefit from hiring lobbyists, not from taxes.