Then there's the Comanche helicopter, which they've been kicking around for years and finally decided, after spending billions, to just say "oh well, so much for that"?
So you'd rather have them spend the full $80 billion instead of stopping at $36 billion, even though they've concluded the program is unnecessary?
Or would you have also ranted about it if they had continued the program?
Every builder I know will tell you that architects don't know the first thing about designing buildings that can actually be built. That's what engineers are for.
Each additional design increases the complexity of planning, logistics, the actual execution of the construction, and the time factor involved with creating the subdivision (the company putting up the subdivision generally views the whole subdivision as a single project, not just each house individually).
If you're building many different designs, you have to source a LOT more materials in the right quantities. Have you ever seen the full materials list for a decent sized house? They're enormous, and each new design multiplies that specification workload. Volume discount pricing is an extremely important factor that is inversely proportional to the number of available designs. You have to arrange for materials delivery according to the build schedule, and of course, each design will have it's own unique schedule (further complicated by uncontrollable factors such as weather, attendance issues, buyer changes, and so on). You have to schedule the arrival of the different tradesmen, another extremely complicated logistics problem. Assuming you're using the same crews repeatedly (normally the case in a subdivision), you gain enormous efficiencies with limited design selections because the crews can an do learn the designs, allowing them to work faster (and one would hope, better).
So yes, it IS expensive to build many different types of houses.
By comparison, design costs are negligible. In any sizable subdivision, economies of scale make design costs almost irrelevant in comparison to actual construction expenses. In other words, the cost of design is diluted among the many homes which are purchased using that design -- and again, limiting the number of designs further dilutes that particular cost. In fact, the basic design is really one of only and handful one-time expenses assiociated with housing subdivisions that can be absorbed by the pricing of many homes.
Bullshit, pure and simple. I know a LOT of people who used to work for Microsoft. I knew some of them WHEN they worked there. I know people who STILL work there. I've also had several ex-employees end up there, and remained in contact with them. And what you're saying has NEVER come up, and these are the kind of hardcore developers who would be completely enraged by such a stupid policy.
Either you're lying, or the person you claim to know is lying.
I'm still trying to figure out what's 'adult' about most 'adult' content
I suppose that's borderline trolling, since I doubt you ACTUALLY can't figure it out. It seems pretty obvious to me that it's called "adult" content to make it obvious that it is inappropriate for children.
There's this guy who sits close by where I work - I get the impression that he thinks he's a real savvy dude. What he doesn't know is that I know everything he does on the network- including all the hardcore porn sites he visits. It's sad, but I get a good laugh out out of it.
That last sentence can be interpreted several ways...
Define "corporations". My wife is incorporated. So is the company I work for, which currently employs over 50,000 people.
I believe the key factor is simply that it costs too much to retool in any short timeframe. My company, for example, owns something like 65,000 end-user desktop machines (actually, probably more; I doubt even the accountants have an exact count). Imagine the nightmare of trying to change operating systems while ensuring that everyone's work is reasonably uninterrupted and that everyone has some OSS-panacea -version of whatever applications their work requires. Hell, our janitors (oops -- sysadmins) can't even reliably deploy simple patches and updates without borking the job roughly half of the time.
Ok, so we backpedal and ignore the desktop for the moment, and just look at the servers. Migrating the servers is a bit more realistic, but we're still talking about roughly 6,000 servers. Even if you could get a reasonably large number of the thousands of admins to agree on what to use (and you won't), the process is simply too huge to tackle with any speed.
The ONLY way truly large companies (we are a large financial company, but we are only medium-sized when you consider the full spectrum of companies out there) will migrate is S-L-O-W-L-Y. The traditionally-touted benefits of OSS are simply irrelevant in comparison to the labor, cost, and risk of doing anything but gradual implementation.
In other words: most OSS thinking is still very small-time. Only companies like Sun and IBM seem to be making any serious attempt to change that in the near term -- and then the end-result tends to be roughly in the same price range for such large accounts, which means any potential long-term cost benefits aren't terribly relevant.
Personally, I've never understood the mentality of allowing a web page to modify ANYTHING outside the boundaries of its frame. Doesn't this break the whole 'object orientedness' of a windowing display?
It breaks the "sandbox" concept we normally expect (or at least, hope for) from browsers, but there isn't anything inherent in "object orientedness" that would necessarily preclude modification of things outside the boundaries of a window frame (I don't think OO really applies to windowing-as-a-UI-experience except in a very superficial sense).
The problem is that the lock icon is doing double-duty, which is an old "no no" across the board in computer programming. It is being used to suggest both encryption of the communications link as well as authentication of the person at the other end. Possibly even triple-duty, as many users further interpret that as some kind of indication that the site at the other end is "safe".
In this case, there is no encryption (that plain-text mode they mentioned), and the authentication is useless -- they may be who they say they are -- but that doesn't really mean you should trust them.
A laptop using Hibernate will reduce the steps, and my 2.8GHz laptop with XP boots much faster than any other machine I've ever had (after all, few people ran DOS without a slew of start-up junk in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT).
Worst case:
1. Open lid, press power, wait about 10 seconds for boot. 2. Click Word icon on desktop, type letter, click Save button*. 3. Close lid (machine goes into hibernation).
* If speed is the goal, technically I don't need to bother clicking Save.
More typical case:
1. Open the lid, press power, wait 5 seconds to come out of hibernation. 2. Word is already running -- click New Document button, type my letter. 3. Close lid.
Much easier. I've been using Hibernate for a couple years and haven't had the slightest bit of trouble.
Over the last few years my mother has started using a computer and she finds it very hard to double click wihtout moving the mouse
Assuming she's using Windows, there is an undocumented registry setting which controls the size of the double-click hotspot. I think by default it's only 5x5. My mother had the same problem, and it mostly went away when I expanded it to 10x10 and slightly increased the double-click time (in the Control Panel). For the double-click hotspot, go to this location in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Mouse
Create two string values, one named DoubleClickHeight and the other named DoubleClickWidth. Set them to whatever pixel size you want. I can't remember whether you have to restart for the change to take effect.
(Disclaimer: if someone is reading this and planning to whining about undocumented features or whatever, please feel free to move on, I really don't care. I'm just trying to help this guy.)
Actually, a bank merely reports transactions in excess of $5000.00. There is no investigation by the bank under any circumstances. (Prior to 9/11 and the Homeland Security nightmare the limit was usually $10,000. Now in some cases reporting runs as low as $1000.) Investigation is handled by the Treasury, and at least for the moment, relatively unusual circumstances are still required before an investigation occurs.
Just out of curiosity, what's a legitimate reason to have $10,000 in cash in your house?
Asking that question presumes the legitimacy of anybody caring that I have a certain amount of cash. There is no legitimate reason to restrict the amount of cash I may choose to bear.
Any such restrictions amount to "thought crime"-style persecution.
I'm sure you can see how "oh wait, I already am" can be misleading.
As for the rest... while I certainly agree that many of the items you list aren't essential, some of us simply prefer to spend our spare time with some or all of those things. It really does make me happy to have a huge, beautiful home to spend my time in. I like having a lot of cars, some of which are very nice. I enjoy a really high speed 'net connection.
On the other hand, I've owned a couple of boats and did some skiing and that kind of thing. I found it boring. I could easily spend a weekend or two each month snowboarding somewhere. I tried snowboarding. It bored me. I've done the mountain bike thing, and a bunch of other things you'd probably conclude were acceptable alternatives. So far, only our motorcycles have really caught my interest.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not a very good troll.
By definition, if nobody else knew what you were doing, then the guys I know wouldn't have known about it, would they?
Dumbass.
Then there's the Comanche helicopter, which they've been kicking around for years and finally decided, after spending billions, to just say "oh well, so much for that"?
So you'd rather have them spend the full $80 billion instead of stopping at $36 billion, even though they've concluded the program is unnecessary?
Or would you have also ranted about it if they had continued the program?
Every builder I know will tell you that architects don't know the first thing about designing buildings that can actually be built. That's what engineers are for.
Each additional design increases the complexity of planning, logistics, the actual execution of the construction, and the time factor involved with creating the subdivision (the company putting up the subdivision generally views the whole subdivision as a single project, not just each house individually).
If you're building many different designs, you have to source a LOT more materials in the right quantities. Have you ever seen the full materials list for a decent sized house? They're enormous, and each new design multiplies that specification workload. Volume discount pricing is an extremely important factor that is inversely proportional to the number of available designs. You have to arrange for materials delivery according to the build schedule, and of course, each design will have it's own unique schedule (further complicated by uncontrollable factors such as weather, attendance issues, buyer changes, and so on). You have to schedule the arrival of the different tradesmen, another extremely complicated logistics problem. Assuming you're using the same crews repeatedly (normally the case in a subdivision), you gain enormous efficiencies with limited design selections because the crews can an do learn the designs, allowing them to work faster (and one would hope, better).
So yes, it IS expensive to build many different types of houses.
By comparison, design costs are negligible. In any sizable subdivision, economies of scale make design costs almost irrelevant in comparison to actual construction expenses. In other words, the cost of design is diluted among the many homes which are purchased using that design -- and again, limiting the number of designs further dilutes that particular cost. In fact, the basic design is really one of only and handful one-time expenses assiociated with housing subdivisions that can be absorbed by the pricing of many homes.
As far as I'm concerned, "idiot" and "admin" have no place in the same sentence
I agree wholeheartedly; it's redundant.
Large steel beams with largish holes in it would probably be cheaper.
Bullshit, pure and simple. I know a LOT of people who used to work for Microsoft. I knew some of them WHEN they worked there. I know people who STILL work there. I've also had several ex-employees end up there, and remained in contact with them. And what you're saying has NEVER come up, and these are the kind of hardcore developers who would be completely enraged by such a stupid policy.
Either you're lying, or the person you claim to know is lying.
I'm still trying to figure out what's 'adult' about most 'adult' content
I suppose that's borderline trolling, since I doubt you ACTUALLY can't figure it out. It seems pretty obvious to me that it's called "adult" content to make it obvious that it is inappropriate for children.
There's this guy who sits close by where I work - I get the impression that he thinks he's a real savvy dude. What he doesn't know is that I know everything he does on the network- including all the hardcore porn sites he visits. It's sad, but I get a good laugh out out of it.
That last sentence can be interpreted several ways...
pretty funny that the response is 'damn stereotypes' which is then followedup by more stereotypes
No, what's funny is that you didn't figure out that was precisely WHY he followed up with more stereotypes. Jeez, he even spelled it out for you:
pretty funny that the response is 'damn stereotypes' which is then followedup by more stereotypes
Define "corporations". My wife is incorporated. So is the company I work for, which currently employs over 50,000 people.
I believe the key factor is simply that it costs too much to retool in any short timeframe. My company, for example, owns something like 65,000 end-user desktop machines (actually, probably more; I doubt even the accountants have an exact count). Imagine the nightmare of trying to change operating systems while ensuring that everyone's work is reasonably uninterrupted and that everyone has some OSS-panacea -version of whatever applications their work requires. Hell, our janitors (oops -- sysadmins) can't even reliably deploy simple patches and updates without borking the job roughly half of the time.
Ok, so we backpedal and ignore the desktop for the moment, and just look at the servers. Migrating the servers is a bit more realistic, but we're still talking about roughly 6,000 servers. Even if you could get a reasonably large number of the thousands of admins to agree on what to use (and you won't), the process is simply too huge to tackle with any speed.
The ONLY way truly large companies (we are a large financial company, but we are only medium-sized when you consider the full spectrum of companies out there) will migrate is S-L-O-W-L-Y. The traditionally-touted benefits of OSS are simply irrelevant in comparison to the labor, cost, and risk of doing anything but gradual implementation.
In other words: most OSS thinking is still very small-time. Only companies like Sun and IBM seem to be making any serious attempt to change that in the near term -- and then the end-result tends to be roughly in the same price range for such large accounts, which means any potential long-term cost benefits aren't terribly relevant.
http://www.redteamracing.org
The daily diaries are cool, too (see March 2nd and 4th).
Can somebody check the "You're new here, aren't you" auto-responder?
It seems to be offline again.
+1 Funny??!
Try +1 Insightful.
Stupid moderators.
Personally, I've never understood the mentality of allowing a web page to modify ANYTHING outside the boundaries of its frame. Doesn't this break the whole 'object orientedness' of a windowing display?
It breaks the "sandbox" concept we normally expect (or at least, hope for) from browsers, but there isn't anything inherent in "object orientedness" that would necessarily preclude modification of things outside the boundaries of a window frame (I don't think OO really applies to windowing-as-a-UI-experience except in a very superficial sense).
The problem is that the lock icon is doing double-duty, which is an old "no no" across the board in computer programming. It is being used to suggest both encryption of the communications link as well as authentication of the person at the other end. Possibly even triple-duty, as many users further interpret that as some kind of indication that the site at the other end is "safe".
In this case, there is no encryption (that plain-text mode they mentioned), and the authentication is useless -- they may be who they say they are -- but that doesn't really mean you should trust them.
The test could go something like this:
Which is grammatically correct?
(a) "I have a better idea."
(b) "I got a better idea."
(c) "I am not old enough to have a credit card."
5:50 AM... Shouldn't you be outside waiting for the school bus?
My first mortgage was $105,000.
My next mortgage was $291,000.
I have just been approved for my third mortgage at $494,000.
I have never had to provide bank statements or explain anything.
A laptop using Hibernate will reduce the steps, and my 2.8GHz laptop with XP boots much faster than any other machine I've ever had (after all, few people ran DOS without a slew of start-up junk in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT).
Worst case:
1. Open lid, press power, wait about 10 seconds for boot.
2. Click Word icon on desktop, type letter, click Save button*.
3. Close lid (machine goes into hibernation).
* If speed is the goal, technically I don't need to bother clicking Save.
More typical case:
1. Open the lid, press power, wait 5 seconds to come out of hibernation.
2. Word is already running -- click New Document button, type my letter.
3. Close lid.
Much easier. I've been using Hibernate for a couple years and haven't had the slightest bit of trouble.
Over the last few years my mother has started using a computer and she finds it very hard to double click wihtout moving the mouse
Assuming she's using Windows, there is an undocumented registry setting which controls the size of the double-click hotspot. I think by default it's only 5x5. My mother had the same problem, and it mostly went away when I expanded it to 10x10 and slightly increased the double-click time (in the Control Panel). For the double-click hotspot, go to this location in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Mouse
Create two string values, one named DoubleClickHeight and the other named DoubleClickWidth. Set them to whatever pixel size you want. I can't remember whether you have to restart for the change to take effect.
(Disclaimer: if someone is reading this and planning to whining about undocumented features or whatever, please feel free to move on, I really don't care. I'm just trying to help this guy.)
Ok, so it's a VVLR OLED display.
(Very, Very Low Resolution...)
Waypoints were significantly revised several times last year to provide plenty of manuvering room around EnviroNazily-protected areas.
Actually, a bank merely reports transactions in excess of $5000.00. There is no investigation by the bank under any circumstances. (Prior to 9/11 and the Homeland Security nightmare the limit was usually $10,000. Now in some cases reporting runs as low as $1000.) Investigation is handled by the Treasury, and at least for the moment, relatively unusual circumstances are still required before an investigation occurs.
Just out of curiosity, what's a legitimate reason to have $10,000 in cash in your house?
Asking that question presumes the legitimacy of anybody caring that I have a certain amount of cash. There is no legitimate reason to restrict the amount of cash I may choose to bear.
Any such restrictions amount to "thought crime"-style persecution.
I'm sure you can see how "oh wait, I already am" can be misleading.
As for the rest... while I certainly agree that many of the items you list aren't essential, some of us simply prefer to spend our spare time with some or all of those things. It really does make me happy to have a huge, beautiful home to spend my time in. I like having a lot of cars, some of which are very nice. I enjoy a really high speed 'net connection.
On the other hand, I've owned a couple of boats and did some skiing and that kind of thing. I found it boring. I could easily spend a weekend or two each month snowboarding somewhere. I tried snowboarding. It bored me. I've done the mountain bike thing, and a bunch of other things you'd probably conclude were acceptable alternatives. So far, only our motorcycles have really caught my interest.
It isn't all about what something costs.
Sure, but not in a BMP. (I think the word you're looking for is monochrome.)