Try reading the article. The RFID he has contains nothing but an 8 digit hex key... a unique identifier. It can only be read at most up to two inches away. The unique key is not something he is giving out or sharing (otherwise anyone could walk into his house once he has that part working).
what you're final goal is. If you're looking for a degree, then yes, check before hand if any credits you're getting will transfer over. However, if you're goal is a job, then you have to look at what the qualifications are for the jobs you're interested in. Do they require a university degree or will a technical type diploma suffice? Do you have experience?
I completed most of a University degree but got fed up with the fact that all I was learning was theory, I really had very little idea how computers worked and had next to no programming knowledge. I worked part time at a local computer store putting together and fixing PCs. I picked up a help desk contract and started doing a lot of learning on my own. I'm now in a fairly senior tehcnical position (actually, the next step up is management). The university classes didn't really help, except to network and learn from things other students did in their spare time. What helped me was experience and proof I did learning on my own.
the government should decide on what gets the job done with the least amount of money
I can't agree with you there. Its not about what's cheapest. A government looking to purchase or build anything (software, roads, a desk, etc.) should not decide solely on price. This is when we get into complaining about the "lowest bidder" and the crappy work they do. The government, like anyone, should choose a product based on cost AND quality. Sometimes its better to spend more if it will save time/money/lives later on.
The point is not to blend in with their surrondings, but to like something uninteresting to whatever they are trying to hide from. A predator that would feast on an octopus would not like pay attention to a piece of seaweed floating by or a coconut bouncing along the sea floor. Speaking of which, if I hadn't read the article, I would not have guessed that those were octopi.
Leash laws be damned!
No no no, I want this guy enforcing leash laws. That's right buddy, you let your dog out to run around the street and sh*t on my lawn again. You'll provide a nice appetizer for my pet.
Even if its not true, its gotta be a great way to market a new show. Imagine if *BC put out a torrent of their new sitcoms before airing. Folks could download and watch. have a website link at the end of the program where people can chat, vote, discuss, etc. Great and free marketing research!
I tried a few different searches on a range of topics and on pretty much every page there was no notice of non-traditional license and most had a copyright notice at the bottom.
It will be interesting to see what happens since the CRTC has not yet ruled on VoIP, but it looks like they're leaning towards ruling that VoIP providers will regulated just like LECs, which means they must provide 911 service, and to the appropriate centre for your calling location.
Everytime I've changed jobs when offered the new position, they ask when I can start. My answer is usually the same. I would prefer to give my current employer at least two weeks notice. If I was in the middle of a bigger project, I might ask for a longer time before my start date if my employer deserved it. I worked for a small webhosting company for a year. I built a brand new control panel to fit their... unique environment. I helped build an automated billing system (billing had been done manually until that point). After 1 year, during my "review" they had no complaints about me. I asked for a raise. They said they didn't see me getting a raise for the forseeable future as I was the highest paid employee at the time (just over 50K/year) which was less than I had made previous to taking this job. Luckily I was on a leave of absence from my previous position. I informed them I would be returning in two weeks and game my notice to the web hosting company.
The brought in a new guy to take over the work I was doing and I trained him as much as I could in the time available. They asked if they could call me at work if they had problems. I said no. My employer was not paying me to handle your problems. They asked if they could call/email me after regular hours. I said sure, but that by contacting me they were agreeing to a $250/hour consulting rate, minimum 3 hours with no guarantee on resolution of the issue.
Never did hear from them. Did I burn a bridge? Probably. Do I regret it? No. I will not be taken advantage of. If a company refuses to recognize my contribution in any meaningful way, and then asks for my help afterwards with little or no compensation, I'm not going to bend over for them.
I would have to agree. I would love to create a thin client setup at home. I'd love a dump (cheap) terminal in most every room that is small enough to not require a lot of space, but large enough for a reasonable sized keyboard (email,ssh,etc) but is mostly just screen for websurfing, getting weather/news updates, etc. Add one in the kitchen tied into a recipe database. A webcam and mike in the babies room and a portable screen with speakers and presto, instant baby monitor, with color screen. With the click of a button start playing soft music when the baby won't go back to sleep.
There's no end to the possibilities of low power dump terminals that can do high bandwidth low CPU tasks like streaming video/audio (VoIP, PVR, Video on Demand, etc) and the simple things like check email and the web.
Now, if only I had the time and money to set this all up
I've done contract work in the past, and I wouldn't consider those points to define the difference between a contractor and an employee. For example, an ISP wanted to bring their outsourced help desk internal. They began by hiring contractors to man the phones. I was one of the contractors.
Guess what, I worked 40 hours a week, 8- 4:30 (same basic hours as most employees). The ISP provided me with a desk, computer, network, phone, chair, etc. etc. to be able to answer and troubleshoot customer problems. I didn't have an assistant, though after a month, I was moved to Tier II where I took calls that Tier I couldn't handle. As the year went by (originally a 3 month contract that ended up being about 12 months) I (and others) esentially had assistants that answered the phone and only passed real problems onto us.
Admittedly this was in Canada. Did I feel cheated? No. I had a good paying job in a field I was interested in. I worked with people I enjoyed and management took my suggestions seriously. When the contract was ending I was free to apply for the same or similar positions if I was interested, and given my experience and obvious qualifications, I more than likely would have been picked. However, I moved onto another contract and did that for a few years before finally settling into some full time employee work. I learned a lot in that time, including my value to a company. I was underpaid a lot during my contracting years, but I don't regret those years. I learned a lot about the real world that school could never have taught me and was earning a comfortable living.
Would I sue the ISP if I could? Not likely. I'm now one of the senior technical employees (though no longer on the ISP side of things). Even if I wasn't, the ISP never treated me badly or made me feel 2nd rate. I was paid what was agreed to. I was allowed vacation time (assuming reasonable notice as given) thought it was unpaid.
Most of the IT managers where I work are nearing retirement. At this point they seem timid of making leaps into new areas. As its been said before, nobody ever got fired for choosing Oracle, and that's how it is with IE. These are people who have spent most of their careers dealing with the big commercial Unix boxes (AIX, Sun, SGI, HP) and Microsoft. They don't understand (for the most part) how something without a brand name or big company headquarters can produce and sustain quality software. Hopefully as these folks retire and younger folks move in, we'll see a shift, or at least more acceptance of OSS.
I wonder at what point next-gen consoles will begin to not create the positive hype that seems to currently surround them. I'm not a huge console gamer, but at some point people will no longer be willing to shell out the money to move to the newest console until a time when the price of the console has dropped well below its initial levels. Even in the PC world, the percentage of people that will rush out to pick up the newest video card seems to be dropping. There isn't quite the anticipation that there once was.
I am building a setup similar to the one we saw on slashdot a while ago that had pictures of a burglary in progress mailed offsite. I've been slowly piecing it together (off an on since around November) and have dug up an old Connectix Quickcam that I'm going to hook up. If the system detects the door opening (not through camera, but through other sensors) it will run the script to grab an image (or 2 or 3) and email them to google. Aside from that, I dont have a real good use for gmail.
My apologies my (admittedly limited) experience does not include restaurants intended for daily eating. Though, the cafeteria at my place of work would probably be close, with complete meals available for under $5. However, they are only open from 7:00am until 4:00pm. I also normally pack my own lunch as I can do so for much less than $5.
Video is normally thought of as two dimensional, lets call these dimensions Length and Width. For example, you could download a video of the internet that is 740x480. Now, you could also say that video has a third dimension, time.
However, if we add audio in, then we have to look at how many dimensions audio(sound) exists in. Regardless of the digital compression, number of channels, bitrate, etc, sound exists in three dimensions, Length, Width and Depth. Sound is a wave that will travel through a medium such as the atmosphere. You could say sound also exists in the 4th dimension, time.
Hmmm, now if you include audio (debatable since you did say count the dimensions of video - but just for the fun of it...):
Since audio, or sound, is a wave that travels through three dimensions, I guess we could say that video (assumming it has audio included) does end up with 4 dimensions. Otherwise, I'd say your correct. Of course when most people think three dimensions, they think X,Y,Z not X,Y,time
I recently added RBL to my postfix setup and that made a huge reduction in the amount of spam getting through, though a lot still did, which for the msot part gets picked up by SpamAssassin. The really interesting thing though is the number of viruses that are coming through. I setup up a quarrantine area just so I can go in now and then and see what spamassasin and ClamAV are picking up. Normally in a month I would expect 20-1000 virus messages, depening on new outbreaks. In the last 3 months, I have 1 virus thats been quarrantined. The RBL (which include most dynamic IP ranges) has been more effective than anything I've used to far in reducing the number of unwanted emails than anything else.
For the most part I agree, however, my wife and I did sign up for a package. The main reason being because we travel on the highway a fair bit. Here (Saskatchewan, Canada) you don't want to have car problems in the winter - being stranded can be very serious. We have no "extra" features on our phone, and rarely even turn it on. We treat it more like an emergency kit, nice to have with you, but hopefully you'll never need it.
Wow, I don't know how even a smiple meal can cost you $20 or more. Take the following meals I prepare regularaly for my wife and I (all prices are CDN $):
Spaghetti w/Meat Sauce, Garlic toast, salad Total Cost: About $8 Under $1 for the spaghetti, $3 for the can of meat sauce, under $1 for the garlic toast (bread toasted, butter, garlic salt) about $3 for the salad (lettuce, carrots, etc.)
Steak and Potatoes
Total Cost: $8-$14
Steak - depends, can vary from $4 to $10 (yes, this is fresh, butcher cut, or grocery store meat - just depends how much we want). Potatoes, $1. Vegetables $3, additional ingredients $1 (I often cook the steak in onion soup mix)
Chicken Caesar Salad
Total Cost: $6
Two Chicken Breasts: $3, caesar salad mix $3
That's just a few meals but a gives a good idea of what it costs the two of us to eat a meal, and if anything, those costs are high. I dont' think I can spend much more than $20 on a meal for the two of us, but for the two of us to eat a decent comparable meal at a restaurant would cost minimum $30, not too mention it most cases it would take longer to go out than to cook at home. Actually, McDonald's costs the two of us $10 to eat. I can usually do steak and potatoes for less, I can probably do a full roast beef dinner for all of about $15-$20 that would feed at least 4 people, or do 2-3 meals for my wife and I.
Now, for a single guy, you just have to shop smarter. Buy a package of 4 chicken breasts (boneless, skinless of course) and when you get home, wrap them in meal sized portions (I did some in singles, some in doubles). Its not that tough, and when I was in university, I could either cook good, nutritious meals, or hit the drive thru. I took the drive thru and found myself broke and not feeling very well.
I'm not familiar with Wisconsin tax law, but I would assume that these taxes should apply anyways, assuming that you are buying from a business with a physcial location in that state. At least that's how I believe it works here in Canada and provincial taxes.
I don't think downloads should be any different than any other product or service simply because its off the internet. If I buy a service contract, I have to pay tax on that, and its as intangible as a downloaded mp3 or ebook. However, if the company does not have a physical location in my province, I don't have to pay provincial tax, only federal tax. I live in Saskatchewan and frequently by hardware from a Canadian distributor in BC. I have to pay GST (federal) but not PST (provincial) on the hardware and the same on any labour I pay (I usually have them build the computer for me for $25 if I'm ordering a full system).
However, I can see this being very difficult to enforce. You can't base the choice on the originating IP, those can easily be proxied from another state. Since we're talking about non-physical goods, there's no shipping address, and even if there was, what says you aren't shipping it to a friend in another state. The only thing I could think of would be if you could validate the "home" address of the credit card and base it on that address, but there are ways around that as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Try reading the article. The RFID he has contains nothing but an 8 digit hex key... a unique identifier. It can only be read at most up to two inches away. The unique key is not something he is giving out or sharing (otherwise anyone could walk into his house once he has that part working).
what you're final goal is. If you're looking for a degree, then yes, check before hand if any credits you're getting will transfer over. However, if you're goal is a job, then you have to look at what the qualifications are for the jobs you're interested in. Do they require a university degree or will a technical type diploma suffice? Do you have experience?
I completed most of a University degree but got fed up with the fact that all I was learning was theory, I really had very little idea how computers worked and had next to no programming knowledge. I worked part time at a local computer store putting together and fixing PCs. I picked up a help desk contract and started doing a lot of learning on my own. I'm now in a fairly senior tehcnical position (actually, the next step up is management). The university classes didn't really help, except to network and learn from things other students did in their spare time. What helped me was experience and proof I did learning on my own.
the government should decide on what gets the job done with the least amount of money
I can't agree with you there. Its not about what's cheapest. A government looking to purchase or build anything (software, roads, a desk, etc.) should not decide solely on price. This is when we get into complaining about the "lowest bidder" and the crappy work they do. The government, like anyone, should choose a product based on cost AND quality. Sometimes its better to spend more if it will save time/money/lives later on.
The point is not to blend in with their surrondings, but to like something uninteresting to whatever they are trying to hide from. A predator that would feast on an octopus would not like pay attention to a piece of seaweed floating by or a coconut bouncing along the sea floor. Speaking of which, if I hadn't read the article, I would not have guessed that those were octopi.
Maybe this thing can keep the WoW service running.
Leash laws be damned!
No no no, I want this guy enforcing leash laws. That's right buddy, you let your dog out to run around the street and sh*t on my lawn again. You'll provide a nice appetizer for my pet.
Even if its not true, its gotta be a great way to market a new show. Imagine if *BC put out a torrent of their new sitcoms before airing. Folks could download and watch. have a website link at the end of the program where people can chat, vote, discuss, etc. Great and free marketing research!
I tried a few different searches on a range of topics and on pretty much every page there was no notice of non-traditional license and most had a copyright notice at the bottom.
Think of it as a sort of front end to grep and find (for the *nix folks). I regularaly use both these tools as do a lot of other people.
It will be interesting to see what happens since the CRTC has not yet ruled on VoIP, but it looks like they're leaning towards ruling that VoIP providers will regulated just like LECs, which means they must provide 911 service, and to the appropriate centre for your calling location.
Everytime I've changed jobs when offered the new position, they ask when I can start. My answer is usually the same. I would prefer to give my current employer at least two weeks notice. If I was in the middle of a bigger project, I might ask for a longer time before my start date if my employer deserved it. I worked for a small webhosting company for a year. I built a brand new control panel to fit their... unique environment. I helped build an automated billing system (billing had been done manually until that point). After 1 year, during my "review" they had no complaints about me. I asked for a raise. They said they didn't see me getting a raise for the forseeable future as I was the highest paid employee at the time (just over 50K/year) which was less than I had made previous to taking this job. Luckily I was on a leave of absence from my previous position. I informed them I would be returning in two weeks and game my notice to the web hosting company.
The brought in a new guy to take over the work I was doing and I trained him as much as I could in the time available. They asked if they could call me at work if they had problems. I said no. My employer was not paying me to handle your problems. They asked if they could call/email me after regular hours. I said sure, but that by contacting me they were agreeing to a $250/hour consulting rate, minimum 3 hours with no guarantee on resolution of the issue.
Never did hear from them. Did I burn a bridge? Probably. Do I regret it? No. I will not be taken advantage of. If a company refuses to recognize my contribution in any meaningful way, and then asks for my help afterwards with little or no compensation, I'm not going to bend over for them.
I would have to agree. I would love to create a thin client setup at home. I'd love a dump (cheap) terminal in most every room that is small enough to not require a lot of space, but large enough for a reasonable sized keyboard (email,ssh,etc) but is mostly just screen for websurfing, getting weather/news updates, etc. Add one in the kitchen tied into a recipe database. A webcam and mike in the babies room and a portable screen with speakers and presto, instant baby monitor, with color screen. With the click of a button start playing soft music when the baby won't go back to sleep.
There's no end to the possibilities of low power dump terminals that can do high bandwidth low CPU tasks like streaming video/audio (VoIP, PVR, Video on Demand, etc) and the simple things like check email and the web.
Now, if only I had the time and money to set this all up
I've done contract work in the past, and I wouldn't consider those points to define the difference between a contractor and an employee. For example, an ISP wanted to bring their outsourced help desk internal. They began by hiring contractors to man the phones. I was one of the contractors.
Guess what, I worked 40 hours a week, 8- 4:30 (same basic hours as most employees). The ISP provided me with a desk, computer, network, phone, chair, etc. etc. to be able to answer and troubleshoot customer problems. I didn't have an assistant, though after a month, I was moved to Tier II where I took calls that Tier I couldn't handle. As the year went by (originally a 3 month contract that ended up being about 12 months) I (and others) esentially had assistants that answered the phone and only passed real problems onto us.
Admittedly this was in Canada. Did I feel cheated? No. I had a good paying job in a field I was interested in. I worked with people I enjoyed and management took my suggestions seriously. When the contract was ending I was free to apply for the same or similar positions if I was interested, and given my experience and obvious qualifications, I more than likely would have been picked. However, I moved onto another contract and did that for a few years before finally settling into some full time employee work. I learned a lot in that time, including my value to a company. I was underpaid a lot during my contracting years, but I don't regret those years. I learned a lot about the real world that school could never have taught me and was earning a comfortable living.
Would I sue the ISP if I could? Not likely. I'm now one of the senior technical employees (though no longer on the ISP side of things). Even if I wasn't, the ISP never treated me badly or made me feel 2nd rate. I was paid what was agreed to. I was allowed vacation time (assuming reasonable notice as given) thought it was unpaid.
Most of the IT managers where I work are nearing retirement. At this point they seem timid of making leaps into new areas. As its been said before, nobody ever got fired for choosing Oracle, and that's how it is with IE. These are people who have spent most of their careers dealing with the big commercial Unix boxes (AIX, Sun, SGI, HP) and Microsoft. They don't understand (for the most part) how something without a brand name or big company headquarters can produce and sustain quality software. Hopefully as these folks retire and younger folks move in, we'll see a shift, or at least more acceptance of OSS.
I wonder at what point next-gen consoles will begin to not create the positive hype that seems to currently surround them. I'm not a huge console gamer, but at some point people will no longer be willing to shell out the money to move to the newest console until a time when the price of the console has dropped well below its initial levels. Even in the PC world, the percentage of people that will rush out to pick up the newest video card seems to be dropping. There isn't quite the anticipation that there once was.
I am building a setup similar to the one we saw on slashdot a while ago that had pictures of a burglary in progress mailed offsite. I've been slowly piecing it together (off an on since around November) and have dug up an old Connectix Quickcam that I'm going to hook up. If the system detects the door opening (not through camera, but through other sensors) it will run the script to grab an image (or 2 or 3) and email them to google. Aside from that, I dont have a real good use for gmail.
okay, that will automatically burn, but then how does it automatically print/label the DVD?
Oh, and by the way, tarring a directory does not save space
Its not such a silly question if you actually try and answer it.My apologies my (admittedly limited) experience does not include restaurants intended for daily eating. Though, the cafeteria at my place of work would probably be close, with complete meals available for under $5. However, they are only open from 7:00am until 4:00pm. I also normally pack my own lunch as I can do so for much less than $5.
Video is normally thought of as two dimensional, lets call these dimensions Length and Width. For example, you could download a video of the internet that is 740x480. Now, you could also say that video has a third dimension, time.
However, if we add audio in, then we have to look at how many dimensions audio(sound) exists in. Regardless of the digital compression, number of channels, bitrate, etc, sound exists in three dimensions, Length, Width and Depth. Sound is a wave that will travel through a medium such as the atmosphere. You could say sound also exists in the 4th dimension, time.
So, to sum up the dimensions:
- Length
- Width
- Time
- Depth
Or, 4 Dimensions.None of that is an extra dimension though.
Hmmm, now if you include audio (debatable since you did say count the dimensions of video - but just for the fun of it...):
Since audio, or sound, is a wave that travels through three dimensions, I guess we could say that video (assumming it has audio included) does end up with 4 dimensions. Otherwise, I'd say your correct. Of course when most people think three dimensions, they think X,Y,Z not X,Y,time
I recently added RBL to my postfix setup and that made a huge reduction in the amount of spam getting through, though a lot still did, which for the msot part gets picked up by SpamAssassin. The really interesting thing though is the number of viruses that are coming through. I setup up a quarrantine area just so I can go in now and then and see what spamassasin and ClamAV are picking up. Normally in a month I would expect 20-1000 virus messages, depening on new outbreaks. In the last 3 months, I have 1 virus thats been quarrantined. The RBL (which include most dynamic IP ranges) has been more effective than anything I've used to far in reducing the number of unwanted emails than anything else.
For the most part I agree, however, my wife and I did sign up for a package. The main reason being because we travel on the highway a fair bit. Here (Saskatchewan, Canada) you don't want to have car problems in the winter - being stranded can be very serious. We have no "extra" features on our phone, and rarely even turn it on. We treat it more like an emergency kit, nice to have with you, but hopefully you'll never need it.
Wow, I don't know how even a smiple meal can cost you $20 or more. Take the following meals I prepare regularaly for my wife and I (all prices are CDN $):
Total Cost: About $8
Under $1 for the spaghetti, $3 for the can of meat sauce, under $1 for the garlic toast (bread toasted, butter, garlic salt) about $3 for the salad (lettuce, carrots, etc.)
Total Cost: $8-$14
Steak - depends, can vary from $4 to $10 (yes, this is fresh, butcher cut, or grocery store meat - just depends how much we want). Potatoes, $1. Vegetables $3, additional ingredients $1 (I often cook the steak in onion soup mix)
Total Cost: $6
Two Chicken Breasts: $3, caesar salad mix $3
That's just a few meals but a gives a good idea of what it costs the two of us to eat a meal, and if anything, those costs are high. I dont' think I can spend much more than $20 on a meal for the two of us, but for the two of us to eat a decent comparable meal at a restaurant would cost minimum $30, not too mention it most cases it would take longer to go out than to cook at home. Actually, McDonald's costs the two of us $10 to eat. I can usually do steak and potatoes for less, I can probably do a full roast beef dinner for all of about $15-$20 that would feed at least 4 people, or do 2-3 meals for my wife and I.
Now, for a single guy, you just have to shop smarter. Buy a package of 4 chicken breasts (boneless, skinless of course) and when you get home, wrap them in meal sized portions (I did some in singles, some in doubles). Its not that tough, and when I was in university, I could either cook good, nutritious meals, or hit the drive thru. I took the drive thru and found myself broke and not feeling very well.
I'm not familiar with Wisconsin tax law, but I would assume that these taxes should apply anyways, assuming that you are buying from a business with a physcial location in that state. At least that's how I believe it works here in Canada and provincial taxes.
I don't think downloads should be any different than any other product or service simply because its off the internet. If I buy a service contract, I have to pay tax on that, and its as intangible as a downloaded mp3 or ebook. However, if the company does not have a physical location in my province, I don't have to pay provincial tax, only federal tax. I live in Saskatchewan and frequently by hardware from a Canadian distributor in BC. I have to pay GST (federal) but not PST (provincial) on the hardware and the same on any labour I pay (I usually have them build the computer for me for $25 if I'm ordering a full system).
However, I can see this being very difficult to enforce. You can't base the choice on the originating IP, those can easily be proxied from another state. Since we're talking about non-physical goods, there's no shipping address, and even if there was, what says you aren't shipping it to a friend in another state. The only thing I could think of would be if you could validate the "home" address of the credit card and base it on that address, but there are ways around that as well.