"Why not just train for truck driving at the onset? It avoids lots of unnecessary expenses and moreover, you don't spend your days wondering what you could have been."
Not to mention that you can make lots of money driving a truck, or repairing trucks, or owning your own trucking business. There isn't any reason an intelligent person should RESTRICT themselves to professions that require an academic background.
A niche may be the best way to go, because no one in theu US needs a cheap NEW car.
That's too easy a market to undercut with USED cars. It's all about dollars per mile, so buying used and junking them when they go beyond economical repair makes great sense.
Those are great arguments for sending unmanned systems to explore instead of manned systems to waste money. We have thousands of years to play with, robots are more useful for dull/dirty/dangerous jobs than people, and improving automated systems is clearly useful on Earth. Scrap the meat transport (let private companies send tourists) and focus on being the leaders of unmanned/remote manned technology.
If we want useful tech, we can trade some of the enormous amount of time available (LEARNING about space is arguably more important than sending meat tourists into it) to improve our UNMANNED systems.
We can afford MORE unmanned systems, and use money to remove the necessity for manned systems except as transport. We should not want to use expensive people, and should want to automate or remote control everything possible because it is THOSE technologies that can empower us on Earth. Superb robots can eliminate the need to use people on the spot to exploit the resources of outer space, and they can also be used to generate wealth here on Earth.
Terrestrial exploration traditionally used people because they were available, cheap, and expendable. Lose a wooden ship and crew, you've lost almost nothing in practical terms. Lose an expensive system and its expensive (and emotionally over-valued) crew and you have program and PR disasters on your hands.
Sending people on primitive systems made sense when tech was primitive, we were in a Cold War PR race, and the public was more accepting of dead "test pilots". Those days are over. Make great droids, send them instead, and the economies cover the loss rate. This is little different from using UAVs in combat. Lose a piloted aircraft, and the dead (or much worse, captive) pilot is a huge liability that constrains future action. Lose a drone, order another drone. Enough with the silly meat fetish. keep the meat in control rooms where it belongs.
"You can't make the army cheaper unless your willing to kill more of your own soldiers to do it."
That argument is a fallacy, used to justify poorly run programs (FCS for example, which has been thrashing for years) by lumping them in with programs like advanced aircraft necessary for (absolutely mandatory) air dominance.
Real military REFORM involves sorting the "pork from the chaff", which is why it it difficult to implement. Program supporters never see their programs as problems more money and time won't fix...
Some reform saves money AND lives (fielding properly armored vehicles for MOUT instead of "obsolete since Mogadishu" HMMWVs) at the same time.
"at the risk of being yelled at for saying so... It's because many of these judges are at or past retirement age and haven't the inclination to learn."
As a old fucker (49), I agree with you. I'd go further. How DARE an American not love technology and WTF is wrong with anyone who does not embrace it? Those who don't need to retire or die and get out of the way.
Any of the near-retirement age people in this country still grew up in eras of tremendous technology growth ("planes, trains, automobiles") and should absofuckinglutely embrace all of it. THEIR generation helped create it in the first place!
"I am sure it does sting, considering they have spent quite a bit of that money on lawyers, corporate executive benefits, etc."
That's not the definition of "sting", if spending that money before the ship sank was one of the objectives in the first place. Companies aren't "people", they are an utterly expendable construct. Accomplish objectives, get paid, move on. A few million dollars seems like a lot to the peasantry, but for real players it's pocket money.
"They'll just have to offer upload and/or download speed that is faster than the free service and some people will be willing to pay the price for the higher speed... if the company actually delivers the speed they paid for..."
Or offer more services, such as email, good usenet access, etc.
"You're looking for the true Scotsman, and you're not going to find him."
I disagree, and suggest that a lot of what appeared to be maudlin overreaction was calculated exploitation to further pre-existing agendas. The smart Scotsman doesn't flaunt a kilt nowadays.
"Is it not possible that he was just reacting out of a still far too fresh sense of the horror of those events?"
A professional should not react that way, slaughter or not. If he did so for that reason it bespeaks poor self-mastery and that's not what we need in an AG.
"But they had a hard job getting anybody to buy into such a radical change."
They didn't offer any CPU/motherboard combos to leverage Linux community participation, so it is obvious they did not want that. Mobo/CPU combos would have gotten exposure that merely going B2B couldn't buy.
If your product is hardware your community can't buy, you cannot leverage their support very well.
"I often think of Barack Obama dropping solid gold out of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could, and at least once did, bring to a grateful democrat."
Rush! Can you hear me Rush? Wake up, boy and come to your senses. That Percoset withdrawal has got you raving again!
"I remember back in the day selling cookies to fat, middle-aged men who'd answer wearing nothing but boxers and a stained sports t-shirt while my mother waited impatiently in the car."
Thanks for the memories! I sure do miss those cookies.
"Every ebook article has at least one person complain they could never look at a computer screen for more than a few minutes therefore they could never read using a computer."
Composing the books in a format similar to Slashdot should solve that problem while mimicking future workplace experience.
"In any case, welding lenses would not be ideal on a battlefield. Especially if someone is trying to kill you...."
Not in their current "industrial" form factor, which defaults to a lower green shade when the system isn't energized. The same principle but with a clear lens could be helpful, and protective goggles are now common wear for soldiers.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why not just train for truck driving at the onset? It avoids lots of unnecessary expenses and moreover, you don't spend your days wondering what you could have been."
Not to mention that you can make lots of money driving a truck, or repairing trucks, or owning your own trucking business. There isn't any reason an intelligent person should RESTRICT themselves to professions that require an academic background.
A niche may be the best way to go, because no one in theu US needs a cheap NEW car.
That's too easy a market to undercut with USED cars. It's all about dollars per mile, so buying used and junking them when they go beyond economical repair makes great sense.
"There is nothing more pleasurable than searching for old books in a second hand book store. "
In my locale the second-hand book stores are filled with paperback romance novels and discarded self-help books.
A rifle brush up the urethra would probably hurt less for a shorter time than spending an afternoon looking through them,
Those are great arguments for sending unmanned systems to explore instead of manned systems to waste money. We have thousands of years to play with, robots are more useful for dull/dirty/dangerous jobs than people, and improving automated systems is clearly useful on Earth. Scrap the meat transport (let private companies send tourists) and focus on being the leaders of unmanned/remote manned technology.
If we want useful tech, we can trade some of the enormous amount of time available (LEARNING about space is arguably more important than sending meat tourists into it) to improve our UNMANNED systems.
We can afford MORE unmanned systems, and use money to remove the necessity for manned systems except as transport. We should not want to use expensive people, and should want to automate or remote control everything possible because it is THOSE technologies that can empower us on Earth. Superb robots can eliminate the need to use people on the spot to exploit the resources of outer space, and they can also be used to generate wealth here on Earth.
Terrestrial exploration traditionally used people because they were available, cheap, and expendable. Lose a wooden ship and crew, you've lost almost nothing in practical terms. Lose an expensive system and its expensive (and emotionally over-valued) crew and you have program and PR disasters on your hands.
Sending people on primitive systems made sense when tech was primitive, we were in a Cold War PR race, and the public was more accepting of dead "test pilots". Those days are over. Make great droids, send them instead, and the economies cover the loss rate. This is little different from using UAVs in combat. Lose a piloted aircraft, and the dead (or much worse, captive) pilot is a huge liability that constrains future action. Lose a drone, order another drone. Enough with the silly meat fetish. keep the meat in control rooms where it belongs.
"You can't make the army cheaper unless your willing to kill more of your own soldiers to do it."
That argument is a fallacy, used to justify poorly run programs (FCS for example, which has been thrashing for years) by lumping them in with programs like advanced aircraft necessary for (absolutely mandatory) air dominance.
Real military REFORM involves sorting the "pork from the chaff", which is why it it difficult to implement. Program supporters never see their programs as problems more money and time won't fix...
Some reform saves money AND lives (fielding properly armored vehicles for MOUT instead of "obsolete since Mogadishu" HMMWVs) at the same time.
"Much like extreme veganism, where you are not supposed to eat anything from a plant where you end up killing the entire plant."
Why isn't plant vivisection considered sadistic?
It's like carving off steaks without first killing the cow.
"Good thing to have...."
Great thing to have.
Communicating from a combat zone via snail mail sucks (been there, done that).
" *shudders* "
Next up, 4chan /aarp/ , a great way to keep up with relatives not already on /b/.
"Linux will never be ready for the desktop (or server) if you can't move it from one building to another without rebooting!"
Handcart + fully charged UPS + wifi connection = profit!
"You could always mod your laptop to generate a spark when the kill signal is received. Then all you need to do is pack it with C4."
So much for being allowed to carry lappies on airliners, thank you very much! :)
"At least you know what you will be doing when you reach that age..."
You're just jealous that MY career path won't be outsourced! 8-P
"a lot of the "older guy's" tend to migrate into roles where they don't need to keep mountains of info bouncing around their head all the time."
Hello! Welcome to Wal-Mart.
"at the risk of being yelled at for saying so... It's because many of these judges are at or past retirement age and haven't the inclination to learn."
As a old fucker (49), I agree with you. I'd go further. How DARE an American not love technology and WTF is wrong with anyone who does not embrace it? Those who don't need to retire or die and get out of the way.
Any of the near-retirement age people in this country still grew up in eras of tremendous technology growth ("planes, trains, automobiles") and should absofuckinglutely embrace all of it. THEIR generation helped create it in the first place!
"I am sure it does sting, considering they have spent quite a bit of that money on lawyers, corporate executive benefits, etc."
That's not the definition of "sting", if spending that money before the ship sank was one of the objectives in the first place. Companies aren't "people", they are an utterly expendable construct. Accomplish objectives, get paid, move on. A few million dollars seems like a lot to the peasantry, but for real players it's pocket money.
"They'll just have to offer upload and/or download speed that is faster than the free service and some people will be willing to pay the price for the higher speed... if the company actually delivers the speed they paid for..."
Or offer more services, such as email, good usenet access, etc.
"You're looking for the true Scotsman, and you're not going to find him."
I disagree, and suggest that a lot of what appeared to be maudlin overreaction was calculated exploitation to further pre-existing agendas. The smart Scotsman doesn't flaunt a kilt nowadays.
"Is it not possible that he was just reacting out of a still far too fresh sense of the horror of those events?"
A professional should not react that way, slaughter or not. If he did so for that reason it bespeaks poor self-mastery and that's not what we need in an AG.
"But they had a hard job getting anybody to buy into such a radical change."
They didn't offer any CPU/motherboard combos to leverage Linux community participation, so it is obvious they did not want that. Mobo/CPU combos would have gotten exposure that merely going B2B couldn't buy.
If your product is hardware your community can't buy, you cannot leverage their support very well.
"In terms of sheep numbers, Linux supports more hardware than any one Windows version."
This metric is new to me.
"I often think of Barack Obama dropping solid gold out of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could, and at least once did, bring to a grateful democrat."
Rush!
Can you hear me Rush?
Wake up, boy and come to your senses.
That Percoset withdrawal has got you raving again!
"I remember back in the day selling cookies to fat, middle-aged men who'd answer wearing nothing but boxers and a stained sports t-shirt while my mother waited impatiently in the car."
Thanks for the memories! I sure do miss those cookies.
"Every ebook article has at least one person complain they could never look at a computer screen for more than a few minutes therefore they could never read using a computer."
Composing the books in a format similar to Slashdot should solve that problem while mimicking future workplace experience.
"In any case, welding lenses would not be ideal on a battlefield. Especially if someone is trying to kill you...."
Not in their current "industrial" form factor, which defaults to a lower green shade when the system isn't energized. The same principle but with a clear lens could be helpful, and protective goggles are now common wear for soldiers.
http://www.armor4troops.org/images2/Wiley%20X-on%20face.jpg
"Just hit the tank with a conventional missile first."
After which it won't need lasing. The reflectors would make a nice sparkly target. :)