Yes, and if your VPN has to terminate your account (because of DMCA violations, for instance) you still have your ISP's broadband account. In places where you have no other options for broadband, this is an important consideration.
Obviously if you are committing serious crimes or you torrent something and your name/IP gets turned over to the MPAA (by the VPN or your ISP) you can still (easily) be found and prosecuted, but for a majority of cases it just means you have to hunt for a new VPN instead of a new ISP.
If you are 45+, been coding all of your professional life and you don't have a personal network of individuals that you have worked with before who would be willing and able to help you get a job at their company, then maybe the universe is trying to tell you something.
Don't get me wrong. Being older and looking for a CS job is something I don't look forward to (I've never been unemployed -- yet). I'm 37 and the kicker is that I also have no degree. How many companies are going to consider me when I'm 45+? How many would consider me today if I were 25? Very, very few, except for the ones that employ (or have employed) individuals who I have worked with in the past that would be willing to vouch for me, push my resume under their manager's doors and stake their reputations on my abilities.
1) Customer places order. 2) Dominos HQ checks current moon position relative to the customers address and local weather conditions. A launch window is calculated. 3) Pizza is assembled, uncooked, and prepared for launch. 4) Pizza is launched on a trajectory to arrive at your home within 8 to 12 hours, only slightly longer than that of terrestrial delivery. 5) Pizza is baked during re-entry (only extra-crispy orders, please). 6) Pizza arrives at customer's location (+/- 1 km) and, for once, it's still warm when delivered.
The same problem happened when people started upgrading their laptops to Windows Vista (and 7) and using the Aero interface. It put a much greater strain on the video cards and the increased heat pushed some people's systems over the edge and they started crashing. A lot of them were older laptops that likely had a lot of dust and grime built up in their system and fans that were starting to fail.
Is there something about Lion that would cause it to put a greater strain on the GPU during normal usage? I have a MacBook Pro from around that time but haven't bothered to update it to Lion since I don't really use it all that often anyway.
I tend to agree that the point is that the path you choose is ultimately inconsequential to the end that it "made all the difference." Where the difference being, clearly (in my mind), one's uniqueness. It also does not imply that the writer is better or worse for having chosen said path. The "sigh" he makes could be regret for himself or for those who chose the other path.
Since everyone is unique, clearly the path(s) we have chosen "made all the difference" regardless of whether or not those paths were the ones less traveled.
So, I don't think he's embellishing. He's simply stating a universal truth and it is just as true whether the statement be made at the moment he chose or "ages and ages hence." The choices you make in life are what ultimately define you.
Odds are you will not be able to claim an undue hardship and if you still decide you are unable to pay then the banks will, at the very least, garnish the wages you are earning from flipping burgers. If you go to school, take on a mountain of debt and fail to get a job that allows you to repay your debt then you are pretty well screwed. That debt is going to hang over your head (and probably grow) until you pay up or until you die.
"...why shouldn't people who want to live in rural areas have to pay more for services? It costs more to provide services to them."
What the hell are you talking about? *Want* to live in rural areas? You think people who live in rural areas are on permanent vacations or something? The reason people live in rural areas is because YOU pay them to. I'm not talking about some act of charity either. You need food. You need electricity. You need lumber. You need rock & minerals. The people who live in rural areas provide these in return for your money. Not just in the price of the goods but the infrastructure paid by all of our taxes. Or do you think that if you made people in rural areas pay "their fair share" for roads, utilities, etc. that somehow you'd still be able have any of the products listed above at prices you could still afford?
And don't say, "Oh, I'm not talking about the people who work in *those* industries. I'm mean the person who lives in Kansas and works at a <fill in the blank>." So, where does a miner go to buy clothes, groceries, gas, get a pizza, buy a new car, or see one of those fancy moving pictures? Guess what? Those places still need human employees. That's why they are out here "in the sticks". It's not because they want to lead inefficient lives, it's because there are jobs out here, jobs you indirectly pay for. Jobs that you *need* to pay for. And, wouldn't you know it, these people also need basic services like police, fire, health care, insurance, banking, road maintenance, local government... Do you see where this is going?
If you've got a better solution for keeping an urban area functioning with no one living in rural areas feel free to let us know. Until then, maybe you should leave your urban cocoon and get a better idea for how this world works.
As people have said, it already has taken off. Personally, I use AWS for much humbler reasons than most. I use it for hosting my personal domain(s) -- web, DNS, SVN, etc. I used to just have a linux server in my basement do it all, but then you have a $500 machine to maintain, a static IP to provision, possible TOS violations with your ISP, poor upload speeds, etc. For a few dollars a month I can host everything I used to at home on a virtual linux server with redundant storage attached and excellent bandwidth. It was a no-brainer for me.
I also store important documents and other irreplaceable items (photos, video recordings, etc) with their S3 service. I still have things stored locally, but it gives me additional piece of mind to have it somewhere redundant and external. You don't need to use Amazon for that, but it is more convenient for me than backing stuff up to media and then physically locating it somewhere off-site.
As far as the recent newsworthy outage at AWS, I trust Amazon will learn from their mistakes and fix them more than I trust my local ISPs to do so. Also, that network outage did not affect any of my sites or data.
Building up your savings to a reasonable level is never a bad idea.
By your logic you should not be paying for insurance on your auto, home, health or possessions since that money should be spent on paying down loans. Well, that's what having a source of liquidity is all about -- insurance. It's great that you will save a few grand on interest if you pay something off sooner. It's not so great that the first time you lose your job you are starving and on the streets because you had nothing saved.
To each his own, but you will regret making that double mortgage payment for the last year if now you become unemployed and realize that if you had saved that money you wouldn't be worrying about your mortgage for another 12 months (a simplified scenario, granted).
I'm all for paying off loans early, but I'm also for building up 3-6 months of cash (or other fairly liquid assets). You have to balance it. It's not all about paying the least amount possible. If that were the case you'd be living with your parents, eating rice and beans for every meal and walking/biking to work (not a bad lifestyle really, but it's probably not the one you've chosen). Building a buffer of cash gives you security and piece of mind which can go very far into reducing stress and therefore making life (and yourself) more pleasant and enjoyable.
While I have no love for the wealthy (they do just fine without it), it is not they (directly) who have killed off the middle class. Globalization (which I'm also not against) has killed off the middle class. And it is killing off the middle class (in America) because the middle class let it.
Everyone who, when presented with multiple products to purchase to fulfill a specific need or desire, will usually pick the cheapest one (everything else being equal). Well, guess what? The cheapest one is not made in America. So every time you do this you send jobs overseas. It's a vote that tells corporations that if they want your business then they have to use cheap foreign labor to get it.
So cry me a river middle class America -- for once you got what you voted for. Why shouldn't tech (and pretty much everything else) leave America? We obviously won't pay for it anyway. I sure as hell do not want to invest in a company that is going to employ Americans (I'm an American btw). You're paying a premium for nothing. Simply wasting money to sustain a way of life that is rapidly losing momentum as it further enters the atmosphere of global reality (excuse the poor analogy).
I am 37 too and we are very different (not better or worse, just different).
I'm not a computer scientist and I'm not a software engineer (and, no offense, but thank goodness I'm not a system admin). I'm a code monkey, a digital carpenter if you will. I've had my ass planted in front of a computer since the age of 9 -- it's what I do, it's what I love. I have been gainfully employed as a coder since the mid 90's. I achieved my ideal position and status the first day I went to work professionally -- a code monkey. I have absolutely no desire to "advance" (to what?). I want to code, not manage. Money? I already make twice the average household income in my area. Could I make more? Sure, but to what end? I'm more than happy with the money I make. You have to draw a line at some point and just start enjoying life and stop worrying about how much the guy down the hall makes. I ride out tough times not because of what is on a piece of paper, but by delivering positive results day after day, year after year.
Also, I have no degree. Not implying that one shouldn't get a degree but dropping out of university and going to work has turned out to be a good choice for me. I work amongst many hardware and software "engineers" (all with degrees) and I am at no disadvantage when it comes to performing my job.
I would like to add that my life is also fairly low stress which I think is very important too. The low stress doesn't come from having a good job. It comes from living well below my means. I could pay my mortgage, keep the lights on, put food on the table and gas in the car even with a 75% pay cut. Yes, I'm fortunate, but it isn't all luck.
If you send PDF to (1) Amazon will convert your file to its AZW format and wireless transfer it to your Kindle. There is a fee of $0.10 using this method.
If you send the PDF to (2) Amazon will convert your file to its AZW format and email it back to you and you can manually copy it to your Kindle via USB. This is free of charge.
Both methods are easy and I don't know what you mean by "locked down".
Also there are other applications that can convert PDFs to formats used by the Kindle and those can be used as well so you need not use Amazon if you are afraid of them snooping.
Partially related. This weekend I downloaded George Orwell's Animal Farm in PDF format from Australia's Project Gutenberg. This work is not public domain in the U.S. but it is in Australia. Regardless, I used the @free.kindle.com to convert the text and it worked fine. Though I am breaking U.S. law (I'm sure) because the book is not public domain, Amazon still converted it for me. For the record, I did not realize the book was not in the public domain at the time I downloaded and converted it (I just did a Google search for it and saw the PDF version). After wondering why an Australian site was the only good hit in Google I became curious and researched it.
If I am contacted by the authorities I will let Slashdot know.:P
"It's a revenue gap that will certainly grow in such harsh economic times where only the best retailers with the lowest overhead will survive, and the rest will be left struggling."
Maybe it was all a dream, but I would have sworn the USA had a capitalist economy.
While I wouldn't deride anyone over how they use the technology they paid for, I really have to wonder why use a phone for doing word processing and spreadsheets?
Unless I'm in a car, at a restaurant or in a theater I'm probably not too far from a computer or a laptop. I personally can't imagine needing to do either of those activities in a setting other than home or work. And if you commute to work via mass transit, do yourself a favor and buy a cheap laptop. If you drive to work then do me a favor and keep your eyes on the road.
I'm am not aware of any hybrid wireless security scheme using both TKIP as a key manager and AES the cipher. Though I suppose it would be possible.
When you see TKIP/AES or more commonly TKIP+AES. They are saying both TKIP/RC4 and CCMP/AES specifications are supported. So, for instance, you could set up a client to use "TKIP+AES". This basically means the client will try to connect to the AP using CCMP/AES first. If that fails it will try TKIP/RC4. It doesn't mean you're using both TKIP and AES simultaneously.
WPA2 (full 802.11i) has always been and currently is only CCMP/AES.
AES and TKIP are not apples to apples. AES is an encryption algorithm. TKIP basically handles the keys that the encryption algorithm uses.
A better apples to apples comparison would be between the encryption algorithms (RC4 and AES) or the key managers (TKIP and CCMP).
Generally, WPA uses TKIP/RC4 and WPA2 (802.11i) uses CCMP/AES.
WPA (TKIP/RC4) was supposed to be a bridge between WEP and WPA2. WPA used RC4 (just like WEP) but enhanced (TKIP) in order improve security while using existing (WEP/RC4) hardware.
WPA2 has always been considered more secure than WPA on paper though until this there has never been a documented exploit for either of them.
In one city in the U.S. vehicles are already being tracked. Granted it's mostly for the sake of academic research at this point but that will change eventually.
Basically the entire city is blanketed with cameras at all of the major intersections. These images are sent back to a server farm to be processed in real-time.
The algorithm is pretty neat. It picks the vehicles out of the image and extrapolates the 2D image into 3D -- much like some facial recognition software. Once it has the 3D image it pulls the vehicle's "fingerprint" and uses that to track that vehicle regardless of which angle (within reason) that a camera happens to photograph said vehicle.
With all of the camera coverage the system can essentially follow a given vehicle anywhere in the city. Currently the system can fingerprint roughly 10,000 vehicles per second and is about 90% accurate.
Obviously there are issues with identical makes & models of vehicles. But they're making good progress and it will only get more and more sophisticated.
It's better than using license plates or GPS because those can be obscured or disabled. You really have very few practical options to avoid being tracked in this system.
Well, if you drink your coffee like the people who I know drink their coffee then the missing 3 oz is designed to leave room for various incarnations of cream and sugar.
Yeah, we just used scissors. Didn't even make it square, just cut a little 'V' into the opposite side. Don't think I ever made a coaster -- you know what I mean.:P
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and if your VPN has to terminate your account (because of DMCA violations, for instance) you still have your ISP's broadband account. In places where you have no other options for broadband, this is an important consideration.
Obviously if you are committing serious crimes or you torrent something and your name/IP gets turned over to the MPAA (by the VPN or your ISP) you can still (easily) be found and prosecuted, but for a majority of cases it just means you have to hunt for a new VPN instead of a new ISP.
If you are 45+, been coding all of your professional life and you don't have a personal network of individuals that you have worked with before who would be willing and able to help you get a job at their company, then maybe the universe is trying to tell you something.
Don't get me wrong. Being older and looking for a CS job is something I don't look forward to (I've never been unemployed -- yet). I'm 37 and the kicker is that I also have no degree. How many companies are going to consider me when I'm 45+? How many would consider me today if I were 25? Very, very few, except for the ones that employ (or have employed) individuals who I have worked with in the past that would be willing to vouch for me, push my resume under their manager's doors and stake their reputations on my abilities.
A new pizza delivery paradigm?
1) Customer places order.
2) Dominos HQ checks current moon position relative to the customers address and local weather conditions. A launch window is calculated.
3) Pizza is assembled, uncooked, and prepared for launch.
4) Pizza is launched on a trajectory to arrive at your home within 8 to 12 hours, only slightly longer than that of terrestrial delivery.
5) Pizza is baked during re-entry (only extra-crispy orders, please).
6) Pizza arrives at customer's location (+/- 1 km) and, for once, it's still warm when delivered.
The target market is the average dumb schmuck.
Funny, that's what your auto mechanic thinks about you.
The same problem happened when people started upgrading their laptops to Windows Vista (and 7) and using the Aero interface. It put a much greater strain on the video cards and the increased heat pushed some people's systems over the edge and they started crashing. A lot of them were older laptops that likely had a lot of dust and grime built up in their system and fans that were starting to fail.
Is there something about Lion that would cause it to put a greater strain on the GPU during normal usage? I have a MacBook Pro from around that time but haven't bothered to update it to Lion since I don't really use it all that often anyway.
I tend to agree that the point is that the path you choose is ultimately inconsequential to the end that it "made all the difference." Where the difference being, clearly (in my mind), one's uniqueness. It also does not imply that the writer is better or worse for having chosen said path. The "sigh" he makes could be regret for himself or for those who chose the other path.
Since everyone is unique, clearly the path(s) we have chosen "made all the difference" regardless of whether or not those paths were the ones less traveled.
So, I don't think he's embellishing. He's simply stating a universal truth and it is just as true whether the statement be made at the moment he chose or "ages and ages hence." The choices you make in life are what ultimately define you.
These newly minted masters graduates will find themselves declaring bankruptcy and defaulting on education loans.
Except that it is not that simple: https://www1.salliemae.com/after_graduation/manage_your_loans/borrower_responsibility/managing_debt/bankruptcy.htm
Odds are you will not be able to claim an undue hardship and if you still decide you are unable to pay then the banks will, at the very least, garnish the wages you are earning from flipping burgers. If you go to school, take on a mountain of debt and fail to get a job that allows you to repay your debt then you are pretty well screwed. That debt is going to hang over your head (and probably grow) until you pay up or until you die.
"...why shouldn't people who want to live in rural areas have to pay more for services? It costs more to provide services to them."
What the hell are you talking about? *Want* to live in rural areas? You think people who live in rural areas are on permanent vacations or something? The reason people live in rural areas is because YOU pay them to. I'm not talking about some act of charity either. You need food. You need electricity. You need lumber. You need rock & minerals. The people who live in rural areas provide these in return for your money. Not just in the price of the goods but the infrastructure paid by all of our taxes. Or do you think that if you made people in rural areas pay "their fair share" for roads, utilities, etc. that somehow you'd still be able have any of the products listed above at prices you could still afford?
And don't say, "Oh, I'm not talking about the people who work in *those* industries. I'm mean the person who lives in Kansas and works at a <fill in the blank>." So, where does a miner go to buy clothes, groceries, gas, get a pizza, buy a new car, or see one of those fancy moving pictures? Guess what? Those places still need human employees. That's why they are out here "in the sticks". It's not because they want to lead inefficient lives, it's because there are jobs out here, jobs you indirectly pay for. Jobs that you *need* to pay for. And, wouldn't you know it, these people also need basic services like police, fire, health care, insurance, banking, road maintenance, local government... Do you see where this is going?
If you've got a better solution for keeping an urban area functioning with no one living in rural areas feel free to let us know. Until then, maybe you should leave your urban cocoon and get a better idea for how this world works.
True, but lava in MC is useful to annoying. With LEGO it's absolutely devastating.
As people have said, it already has taken off. Personally, I use AWS for much humbler reasons than most. I use it for hosting my personal domain(s) -- web, DNS, SVN, etc. I used to just have a linux server in my basement do it all, but then you have a $500 machine to maintain, a static IP to provision, possible TOS violations with your ISP, poor upload speeds, etc. For a few dollars a month I can host everything I used to at home on a virtual linux server with redundant storage attached and excellent bandwidth. It was a no-brainer for me.
I also store important documents and other irreplaceable items (photos, video recordings, etc) with their S3 service. I still have things stored locally, but it gives me additional piece of mind to have it somewhere redundant and external. You don't need to use Amazon for that, but it is more convenient for me than backing stuff up to media and then physically locating it somewhere off-site.
As far as the recent newsworthy outage at AWS, I trust Amazon will learn from their mistakes and fix them more than I trust my local ISPs to do so. Also, that network outage did not affect any of my sites or data.
Yeah, blue hippo had a great line in their ads that while perfectly understandable is designed to subtly confuse the customer.
"If you can afford 35 dollars a week for 12 months..."
Building up your savings to a reasonable level is never a bad idea.
By your logic you should not be paying for insurance on your auto, home, health or possessions since that money should be spent on paying down loans. Well, that's what having a source of liquidity is all about -- insurance. It's great that you will save a few grand on interest if you pay something off sooner. It's not so great that the first time you lose your job you are starving and on the streets because you had nothing saved.
To each his own, but you will regret making that double mortgage payment for the last year if now you become unemployed and realize that if you had saved that money you wouldn't be worrying about your mortgage for another 12 months (a simplified scenario, granted).
I'm all for paying off loans early, but I'm also for building up 3-6 months of cash (or other fairly liquid assets). You have to balance it. It's not all about paying the least amount possible. If that were the case you'd be living with your parents, eating rice and beans for every meal and walking/biking to work (not a bad lifestyle really, but it's probably not the one you've chosen). Building a buffer of cash gives you security and piece of mind which can go very far into reducing stress and therefore making life (and yourself) more pleasant and enjoyable.
While I have no love for the wealthy (they do just fine without it), it is not they (directly) who have killed off the middle class. Globalization (which I'm also not against) has killed off the middle class. And it is killing off the middle class (in America) because the middle class let it.
Everyone who, when presented with multiple products to purchase to fulfill a specific need or desire, will usually pick the cheapest one (everything else being equal). Well, guess what? The cheapest one is not made in America. So every time you do this you send jobs overseas. It's a vote that tells corporations that if they want your business then they have to use cheap foreign labor to get it.
So cry me a river middle class America -- for once you got what you voted for. Why shouldn't tech (and pretty much everything else) leave America? We obviously won't pay for it anyway. I sure as hell do not want to invest in a company that is going to employ Americans (I'm an American btw). You're paying a premium for nothing. Simply wasting money to sustain a way of life that is rapidly losing momentum as it further enters the atmosphere of global reality (excuse the poor analogy).
I am 37 too and we are very different (not better or worse, just different).
I'm not a computer scientist and I'm not a software engineer (and, no offense, but thank goodness I'm not a system admin). I'm a code monkey, a digital carpenter if you will. I've had my ass planted in front of a computer since the age of 9 -- it's what I do, it's what I love. I have been gainfully employed as a coder since the mid 90's. I achieved my ideal position and status the first day I went to work professionally -- a code monkey. I have absolutely no desire to "advance" (to what?). I want to code, not manage. Money? I already make twice the average household income in my area. Could I make more? Sure, but to what end? I'm more than happy with the money I make. You have to draw a line at some point and just start enjoying life and stop worrying about how much the guy down the hall makes. I ride out tough times not because of what is on a piece of paper, but by delivering positive results day after day, year after year.
Also, I have no degree. Not implying that one shouldn't get a degree but dropping out of university and going to work has turned out to be a good choice for me. I work amongst many hardware and software "engineers" (all with degrees) and I am at no disadvantage when it comes to performing my job.
I would like to add that my life is also fairly low stress which I think is very important too. The low stress doesn't come from having a good job. It comes from living well below my means. I could pay my mortgage, keep the lights on, put food on the table and gas in the car even with a 75% pay cut. Yes, I'm fortunate, but it isn't all luck.
The minimum age is 35.
Just saying..
You're forced to create an account...
If you have a Kindle, 99.9% of the time you have an account. So I suppose you are allowed to say "forced".
If you have an account (see above) you can send PDFs to one of two email addresses.
1) "your kindle id"@kindle.com
2) "your kindle id"@free.kindle.com
If you send PDF to (1) Amazon will convert your file to its AZW format and wireless transfer it to your Kindle. There is a fee of $0.10 using this method.
If you send the PDF to (2) Amazon will convert your file to its AZW format and email it back to you and you can manually copy it to your Kindle via USB. This is free of charge.
Both methods are easy and I don't know what you mean by "locked down".
Also there are other applications that can convert PDFs to formats used by the Kindle and those can be used as well so you need not use Amazon if you are afraid of them snooping.
Partially related. This weekend I downloaded George Orwell's Animal Farm in PDF format from Australia's Project Gutenberg. This work is not public domain in the U.S. but it is in Australia. Regardless, I used the @free.kindle.com to convert the text and it worked fine. Though I am breaking U.S. law (I'm sure) because the book is not public domain, Amazon still converted it for me. For the record, I did not realize the book was not in the public domain at the time I downloaded and converted it (I just did a Google search for it and saw the PDF version). After wondering why an Australian site was the only good hit in Google I became curious and researched it.
If I am contacted by the authorities I will let Slashdot know. :P
"It's a revenue gap that will certainly grow in such harsh economic times where only the best retailers with the lowest overhead will survive, and the rest will be left struggling."
Maybe it was all a dream, but I would have sworn the USA had a capitalist economy.
While I wouldn't deride anyone over how they use the technology they paid for, I really have to wonder why use a phone for doing word processing and spreadsheets?
Unless I'm in a car, at a restaurant or in a theater I'm probably not too far from a computer or a laptop. I personally can't imagine needing to do either of those activities in a setting other than home or work. And if you commute to work via mass transit, do yourself a favor and buy a cheap laptop. If you drive to work then do me a favor and keep your eyes on the road.
I'm am not aware of any hybrid wireless security scheme using both TKIP as a key manager and AES the cipher. Though I suppose it would be possible.
When you see TKIP/AES or more commonly TKIP+AES. They are saying both TKIP/RC4 and CCMP/AES specifications are supported. So, for instance, you could set up a client to use "TKIP+AES". This basically means the client will try to connect to the AP using CCMP/AES first. If that fails it will try TKIP/RC4. It doesn't mean you're using both TKIP and AES simultaneously.
WPA2 (full 802.11i) has always been and currently is only CCMP/AES.
AES and TKIP are not apples to apples. AES is an encryption algorithm. TKIP basically handles the keys that the encryption algorithm uses.
A better apples to apples comparison would be between the encryption algorithms (RC4 and AES) or the key managers (TKIP and CCMP).
Generally, WPA uses TKIP/RC4 and WPA2 (802.11i) uses CCMP/AES.
WPA (TKIP/RC4) was supposed to be a bridge between WEP and WPA2. WPA used RC4 (just like WEP) but enhanced (TKIP) in order improve security while using existing (WEP/RC4) hardware.
WPA2 has always been considered more secure than WPA on paper though until this there has never been a documented exploit for either of them.
In one city in the U.S. vehicles are already being tracked. Granted it's mostly for the sake of academic research at this point but that will change eventually.
Basically the entire city is blanketed with cameras at all of the major intersections. These images are sent back to a server farm to be processed in real-time.
The algorithm is pretty neat. It picks the vehicles out of the image and extrapolates the 2D image into 3D -- much like some facial recognition software. Once it has the 3D image it pulls the vehicle's "fingerprint" and uses that to track that vehicle regardless of which angle (within reason) that a camera happens to photograph said vehicle.
With all of the camera coverage the system can essentially follow a given vehicle anywhere in the city. Currently the system can fingerprint roughly 10,000 vehicles per second and is about 90% accurate.
Obviously there are issues with identical makes & models of vehicles. But they're making good progress and it will only get more and more sophisticated.
It's better than using license plates or GPS because those can be obscured or disabled. You really have very few practical options to avoid being tracked in this system.
Dude, you could have just pulled the hand off.
Though I guess your method better captures the original spirit of the scene.
Well, if you drink your coffee like the people who I know drink their coffee then the missing 3 oz is designed to leave room for various incarnations of cream and sugar.
It's from the Kids in the Hall. It's a line from a Gavin skit. Watch one, then it will make sense.
Well, maybe not.
Yeah, we just used scissors. Didn't even make it square, just cut a little 'V' into the opposite side. Don't think I ever made a coaster -- you know what I mean. :P