A lot of homeschooled kids end up socially disfunctional because they aren't put into extra curricular activities where most socializing happens even in public schools.
You could probably learn just as much as the class teaches by joining clubs and sports teams. You learn how to interact with people by being around people.
A lot of it is just getting past your fears and putting yourself out there. The more you do it the more your fear lessens or at least your ability to deal with it improves.
for my daughter who's not quite 2 yet using the Wiimote and the XNA Game Library. But since it costs $40-50 for the controller plus $20 or so for a bluetooth adapter there's probably not going to be much demand for Wiimote enabled games on the PC.
However if PCs came equipped by default with a bluetooth adapter and games started making the Wiimote an optional controller it would be tempting for people to purchase a Wiimote even if they don't have a Wii.
Likewise if this TrueMotion controller costs as much or less than any other high end game controller and has a lot of support in existing games people would spend the money to get it. The TrueMotion people need to work with Valve, Id and others to encourage them to come out with a free patch that makes the TrueMotion controller work with the popular games already out.
The only thing I don't like about using the Wiimote with the PC is that connecting isn't as easy as pressing the A button. If TrueMotion is easy to use for the consumer and gets below $50 I'd definitly switch from messing with the Wiimote.
You have to use the accelerometer data and the IR data in order to figure out where the wiimote is located in 3D space and what direction it is pointing.
Elmo's World: The Video Game is a homebrew product with 3 mini games demonstrating the use of the Wiimote as a pointing device.
The TrueMotion controller uses a lot more sophisticated materials and methods to get a more accurate reporting of location and direction of the pointer. The biggest advantage is not having to be pointed at a light source so you can face it away from the screen and its location is still known.
With the Wiimote the Wii has to make some assumptions about location when the Wiimote can't see the IR lights. In those cases it tries to make use of the accelerometers to figure out how the wiimote is moving to keep everything accurate. As soon as two IR light sources are in view it can get the (somewhat) exact location again.
It wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo as some point releases an updated Wiimote that does away with the IR sensor. The issue for them is always cost. Nintendo seems to try to make the best use of current technology that can be assembled under a certain price point. If they could build a TrueMotion like system and sell it for no more than the current Wiimote they'd most likely do it. In the meantime the Wiimote as is works well enough and meets the price requirements.
When *won't* you be able to get a video card that takes up less than half your case and doesn't require its own power supply?
Right now you can still get a high powered graphics card for less than $50 with a small or no fan. But those cards are 2 year old technology. These days all the latest and greatest are essentially a PC within a PC and I doubt the power and cooling requirements will go down with time.
So in 5 years these rediculously large cards will cost $50 but they'll still be rediculously large.
10 years ago graphics cards and graphics requirements for games were going neck and neck. Now it seems that graphics cards are outpacing what games actually demand. So you can go with a cheaper card and still get very good quality rendering.
I'm willing to bet that if your friend tried he could find $10 he's wasting. Does he smoke? Drink? Buy junk food? I used to blow $80 a month on two cell phones. A couple years ago the contract finally expired and I've been on prepaid ever since. It doesn't get any cheaper than Tracphone. It only takes a minute to call someone and tell them to come over. The cell phone now costs less than $10 a month.
I also used to fast food for lunch which cost around $5 a day. Now I spend less than $2 a day and bring in cheap frozen entrees. I also cut out soda and just drink water during the day.
The cost of the coverter box after the coupon is around $10. Also if he's a best friend of yours then say "Happy " and get him a converter box so he can relax with a nice clear digital picture and some snazzy new channels that are digital only.
It's priorities. I'm getting a coupon and paying for the converter box with some money I earned blogging with SocialSpark.com
And no, going a year without TV and spending the time finding ways to better yourself wouldn't kill you. Sometimes it takes hard work and sacrifice to pick yourself up and make your life easier going forward. Choose to be miserable for a year so you can be happy for the rest of your life.
They were paid for with the money raised auctioning off the soon to be available bandwidth.
The government made billions of dollars on the deal even after you subtract the value of the coupons.
I ordered a coupon even though we have cable because we may decide to drop cable in the future. The only reason we have it now is because it's $8 a month as part of the HOA fees.
I also have an old WinTV PCI card that is far from digital ready so we may not need it now there is a definite potential for use.
That's how bad it was. I picked up an upgrade copy for $50 at Best Buy. When Vista hits the bargin bin like ME did then I'll say that it's as dreadful as ME. So far MS isn't cutting the price of Vista. You can find the Basic version without SP1 for less than $50 on Amazon since sellers are trying to get rid of them but with SP1 you're still paying the typical $100 for an upgrade copy of Windows.
ME was a sad attempt to bridge the gap between Window 2000 and Window 98 by simply changing the UI to match and adding in a few extra features such as internet connection sharing. What really made it stupid was that XP came out shortly after so it was a big waste for people to buy it.
At least Vista owners will get some use out of their software before the replacement shows up. ME owners felt ripped off because XP was such a huge improvement and all they got was an ugly version of 98.
Seriously unless you plan on using this thing on the go there's no reason to rely on a battery. And it's not much of a system for on the go computing.
The only reason I don't like laptops is because if the screen goes out you're screwed. My wife's laptop is perfectly functional minus the screen. Fortunatly it has a TV out so it's used to watch Netflix on the TV. This keyboard PC is something that for the right price may be worth getting to replace the old and busted laptop to serve that purpose and be useful for other things as well.
I don't really want to pay $99 for a dedicated Netflix box but if it could be used as a regular PC as well then that's more reasonable.
There are plenty of areas around which are void of lighting. Often times lights are necessary for safety and although you may be able to encourage people to use mirrors and what not to maximize the amount of light hitting the ground rather than going up into the sky, you're not going to have much luck getting populated areas to turn down the lights much. Lighting helps avoid crime.
You can't have a dark city.
The government should just make sure they have large enough plots of land that keep the cities far away so people can go visit and view the dark sky.
because they only care about what the average person buys. It doesn't matter if per inch of viewing area an LCD uses less power than a CRT if the average consumer buys 2 inches of LCD for every inch of CRT.
I'm fine with my 24-27 inch CRT. But I'm not going to buy an LCD that's less than about 34 inches.
So if the government wants to reduce my power consumption they need to make sure that the 34 inch LCD uses less power than the 24 inch CRT I already have. It doesn't matter if the 24 inch LCD uses less power because on average, nobody buys a 24 inch LCD to replace a 24 inch CRT.
If you're any good at what you do you'll have a lot of good ideas so it doesn't matter if a few get "stolen." You should be flattered that someone thinks an idea or two of yours are worth putting the time into implementing themselves. At the end of the day the person looking to hire you is going to see that you have brains and not the guy who relies on everyone else to come up with ideas for them.
If you only have one "good" idea and cling to it like your life depends on it people are going to think you're an idiot with no good ideas. That and a huge hypocrite. In your life you will "steal" a lot of ideas from a variety of sources. You can call it research all you want but "your" ideas are the product of a lot of digging into other people's ideas.
So lighten up. If you're actually good at what you do you'll have plenty of big ideas to bank on.
If you download and try Johnny Lee's headtracking demo you soon realize you can't tilt your head. It's because he's using the raw information from Brian Peek's library which doesn't tell you where the wiimote is actually pointing.
The above link has a demo that uses Brian Peek's library and some additional code to allow you to use the Wiimote as a pointing device.
I'd rather spend $50 for a Wiimote and $15 for a Wii "sensor" bar than have to buy a whole new PC just to be able to use a pointing device like the Wiimote.
The only part time tech work I had was as an intern or working at a University doing tech support for one of the colleges. Working at the University required being a student.
Otherwise there's probably very little chance of getting part time work.
You were supposed to be learning concepts. Not syntax. I started with BASIC as well when I was 5 or so. I got a copy of a C compiler when I was about 12 and quickly gave up and went back to BASIC. By the time I was 18 I was ready for C++ and jumped right in. I've now worked with about a dozen languages. I translate between languages often. At every job I end up using at least 3 or four.
There's nothing I learned from BASIC that wasn't useful. You also have to be self motivated to make your code better.
If you're learning syntax when learning how to program then you're doing it wrong. If you ignore syntax and focus on learning concepts then it doesn't matter what language you use. Eventually the uglyness of BASIC will become apparent and you'll be happy to learn and embrace better ways of doing things.
In the mean time, kids are more interested in making games than pretty, easy to read code and BASIC is the easiest language to use to accomplish that goal.
I would start with a language that's easy to use and gives easy access to graphics. A beginner needs to learn "concepts" not syntax. I like BASIC because you can create simple shapes and learn all about double buffering and screen modes without having to learn much syntax. You can also learn how to make functions and implement basic AI. BASIC would allow students to make games within the confined time of a semester or year.
Then, if the student decides that this programming thing is fun they can be aware of DirectX, OpenGL, etc and when they go to learn how to use it they know the concept of screen modes, double buffering, functions, loops, logic, etc which makes learning the new more powerful languages significantly easier. Games require a vast array of concepts that can be applied to any programming project.
It would take a week to learn in C what can be learned in a day with BASIC. Students can then be self motivated to learn the more complex version of the basic concepts on their own time.
The next class should get into more powerful languages that show how the concepts learn in BASIC are applied. Then you don't have to waste a semester showing students that all languages implement many of the same concepts. They'll figure it out on their own. And they'll know the concepts so they can figure out how to use any language quickly.
If this stuff costs thousands of dollars per square yard it would be financially viable for swimsuits and other items that use smaller amounts. A single win as a swimsuit would probably pay for itself in endorsements. However it would quickly become economically unsound for large items. It's probably not worth hundreds of millions of dollars to coat a sub with it.
"Williams says. Still, he predicts that memristors will arrive in commercial circuits within the next three years."
It seems fast because nobody was talking about these things for the last 30 years. It's only because of technological advances in circuit printing and general computing that we can make these things and integrate them without having to develop a lot of additional technology. The transistor is very old but only after developing a lot of supporting tech have we been able to shrink them down to fit billions in a processor. That same tech can already be applied to memristors. We don't need to wait decades before we can shrink a memristor down to practical levels for ICs.
as a joke. Maybe the reason some people don't see it as funny is because the scientists involved aren't doing a very good job explaining how what they're doing isn't dangerous.
The fact that you thought the submitter was being serious would indicate that you aren't sure that there couldn't be serious consequences to making little black holes.
but this was known if you followed right wing blogs. The idea was to pay college students $5000 if they completed 100 hours of community service. So that works out to $50 an hour. Obama may be changing his mind and skipping out on the pay and just requiring the work.
I got my currently salaried position as a developer without a degree. I'm going to be encouraging my daughter to focus on her talents early like I did so she can start on her career before she finishes college. Not many students do that. A lot of them expect to go to college for four years, never have a job prior and then get a high paying job.
I did end up getting a degree but it wasn't entirely necessary. If I felt like a requirement to get the piece of paper was too absurd I could have just passed on it and been fine. Most students can't do that.
This information is already available at the Barack Obama campaign web-site and this updated version should just go there.
Having a.gov domain means it's a tax payer funded government web-site.
Apparently Obama's first order of business, before even being president, is changing the definition of the.gov tld, creating fake government offices and giving himself another venue to spew propaganda.
The main advantage to BASIC is that it's trivial to get simple graphics going so you can learn how to make a wide variety of games without having to get overloaded with information about APIs and whatnot. Unfortunatly most games don't have terrible graphics so beginning programmers tend not to be satisified with large solid colored blocks.
It may be worthwhile to come up with a compiler that expands the BASIC commands to include functions which load various graphics formats into sprites and allow you to display them easily. I remember having to use primitive shapes to draw graphics and then GETing the area on the screen and PUTing it. Eventually I developed my own graphics format that used text files that could be edited by hand.
Seems like it would be a lot simpler and more productive to simply buy a large area of land outside of a city and create a huge residential area with a central area for research. The scientists could then make use of existing resources while living and working in their own secluded area. They're called "walls." A lot of residential areas in cities have them.
A whole new city requires police, fire, hospitals, government, stores, etc.
If you wanted to be really clever you could just build a skyscrapper with room enough for everyone who wants to work there and the rest of the space be dedicated to research. You could plop such a building or few in the middle of any established city.
It'd be pretty nice to have subsidized living provided by your employer and be able to take the elevator down to work.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of homeschooled kids end up socially disfunctional because they aren't put into extra curricular activities where most socializing happens even in public schools.
You could probably learn just as much as the class teaches by joining clubs and sports teams. You learn how to interact with people by being around people.
A lot of it is just getting past your fears and putting yourself out there. The more you do it the more your fear lessens or at least your ability to deal with it improves.
It'll make economic sense when the consumer can get the controller for under $50 and can make use of it with software they already have.
I put together an Elmo game
http://blog.dawnofthegeeks.com/2009/01/08/elmos-world-the-video-game/
for my daughter who's not quite 2 yet using the Wiimote and the XNA Game Library. But since it costs $40-50 for the controller plus $20 or so for a bluetooth adapter there's probably not going to be much demand for Wiimote enabled games on the PC.
However if PCs came equipped by default with a bluetooth adapter and games started making the Wiimote an optional controller it would be tempting for people to purchase a Wiimote even if they don't have a Wii.
Likewise if this TrueMotion controller costs as much or less than any other high end game controller and has a lot of support in existing games people would spend the money to get it. The TrueMotion people need to work with Valve, Id and others to encourage them to come out with a free patch that makes the TrueMotion controller work with the popular games already out.
The only thing I don't like about using the Wiimote with the PC is that connecting isn't as easy as pressing the A button. If TrueMotion is easy to use for the consumer and gets below $50 I'd definitly switch from messing with the Wiimote.
http://blog.dawnofthegeeks.com/2009/01/01/a-better-wiimote-pointer/
You have to use the accelerometer data and the IR data in order to figure out where the wiimote is located in 3D space and what direction it is pointing.
http://blog.dawnofthegeeks.com/2009/01/08/elmos-world-the-video-game/
Elmo's World: The Video Game is a homebrew product with 3 mini games demonstrating the use of the Wiimote as a pointing device.
The TrueMotion controller uses a lot more sophisticated materials and methods to get a more accurate reporting of location and direction of the pointer. The biggest advantage is not having to be pointed at a light source so you can face it away from the screen and its location is still known.
With the Wiimote the Wii has to make some assumptions about location when the Wiimote can't see the IR lights. In those cases it tries to make use of the accelerometers to figure out how the wiimote is moving to keep everything accurate. As soon as two IR light sources are in view it can get the (somewhat) exact location again.
It wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo as some point releases an updated Wiimote that does away with the IR sensor. The issue for them is always cost. Nintendo seems to try to make the best use of current technology that can be assembled under a certain price point. If they could build a TrueMotion like system and sell it for no more than the current Wiimote they'd most likely do it. In the meantime the Wiimote as is works well enough and meets the price requirements.
When *won't* you be able to get a video card that takes up less than half your case and doesn't require its own power supply?
Right now you can still get a high powered graphics card for less than $50 with a small or no fan. But those cards are 2 year old technology. These days all the latest and greatest are essentially a PC within a PC and I doubt the power and cooling requirements will go down with time.
So in 5 years these rediculously large cards will cost $50 but they'll still be rediculously large.
10 years ago graphics cards and graphics requirements for games were going neck and neck. Now it seems that graphics cards are outpacing what games actually demand. So you can go with a cheaper card and still get very good quality rendering.
I'm willing to bet that if your friend tried he could find $10 he's wasting. Does he smoke? Drink? Buy junk food? I used to blow $80 a month on two cell phones. A couple years ago the contract finally expired and I've been on prepaid ever since. It doesn't get any cheaper than Tracphone. It only takes a minute to call someone and tell them to come over. The cell phone now costs less than $10 a month.
I also used to fast food for lunch which cost around $5 a day. Now I spend less than $2 a day and bring in cheap frozen entrees. I also cut out soda and just drink water during the day.
The cost of the coverter box after the coupon is around $10. Also if he's a best friend of yours then say "Happy " and get him a converter box so he can relax with a nice clear digital picture and some snazzy new channels that are digital only.
It's priorities. I'm getting a coupon and paying for the converter box with some money I earned blogging with SocialSpark.com
And no, going a year without TV and spending the time finding ways to better yourself wouldn't kill you. Sometimes it takes hard work and sacrifice to pick yourself up and make your life easier going forward. Choose to be miserable for a year so you can be happy for the rest of your life.
They were paid for with the money raised auctioning off the soon to be available bandwidth.
The government made billions of dollars on the deal even after you subtract the value of the coupons.
I ordered a coupon even though we have cable because we may decide to drop cable in the future. The only reason we have it now is because it's $8 a month as part of the HOA fees.
I also have an old WinTV PCI card that is far from digital ready so we may not need it now there is a definite potential for use.
That's how bad it was. I picked up an upgrade copy for $50 at Best Buy. When Vista hits the bargin bin like ME did then I'll say that it's as dreadful as ME. So far MS isn't cutting the price of Vista. You can find the Basic version without SP1 for less than $50 on Amazon since sellers are trying to get rid of them but with SP1 you're still paying the typical $100 for an upgrade copy of Windows.
ME was a sad attempt to bridge the gap between Window 2000 and Window 98 by simply changing the UI to match and adding in a few extra features such as internet connection sharing. What really made it stupid was that XP came out shortly after so it was a big waste for people to buy it.
At least Vista owners will get some use out of their software before the replacement shows up. ME owners felt ripped off because XP was such a huge improvement and all they got was an ugly version of 98.
problem solved.
Seriously unless you plan on using this thing on the go there's no reason to rely on a battery. And it's not much of a system for on the go computing.
The only reason I don't like laptops is because if the screen goes out you're screwed. My wife's laptop is perfectly functional minus the screen. Fortunatly it has a TV out so it's used to watch Netflix on the TV. This keyboard PC is something that for the right price may be worth getting to replace the old and busted laptop to serve that purpose and be useful for other things as well.
I don't really want to pay $99 for a dedicated Netflix box but if it could be used as a regular PC as well then that's more reasonable.
There are plenty of areas around which are void of lighting. Often times lights are necessary for safety and although you may be able to encourage people to use mirrors and what not to maximize the amount of light hitting the ground rather than going up into the sky, you're not going to have much luck getting populated areas to turn down the lights much. Lighting helps avoid crime.
You can't have a dark city.
The government should just make sure they have large enough plots of land that keep the cities far away so people can go visit and view the dark sky.
because they only care about what the average person buys. It doesn't matter if per inch of viewing area an LCD uses less power than a CRT if the average consumer buys 2 inches of LCD for every inch of CRT.
I'm fine with my 24-27 inch CRT. But I'm not going to buy an LCD that's less than about 34 inches.
So if the government wants to reduce my power consumption they need to make sure that the 34 inch LCD uses less power than the 24 inch CRT I already have. It doesn't matter if the 24 inch LCD uses less power because on average, nobody buys a 24 inch LCD to replace a 24 inch CRT.
If you're any good at what you do you'll have a lot of good ideas so it doesn't matter if a few get "stolen." You should be flattered that someone thinks an idea or two of yours are worth putting the time into implementing themselves. At the end of the day the person looking to hire you is going to see that you have brains and not the guy who relies on everyone else to come up with ideas for them.
If you only have one "good" idea and cling to it like your life depends on it people are going to think you're an idiot with no good ideas. That and a huge hypocrite. In your life you will "steal" a lot of ideas from a variety of sources. You can call it research all you want but "your" ideas are the product of a lot of digging into other people's ideas.
So lighten up. If you're actually good at what you do you'll have plenty of big ideas to bank on.
http://blog.dawnofthegeeks.com/2009/01/01/a-better-wiimote-pointer/
If you download and try Johnny Lee's headtracking demo you soon realize you can't tilt your head. It's because he's using the raw information from Brian Peek's library which doesn't tell you where the wiimote is actually pointing.
The above link has a demo that uses Brian Peek's library and some additional code to allow you to use the Wiimote as a pointing device.
I'd rather spend $50 for a Wiimote and $15 for a Wii "sensor" bar than have to buy a whole new PC just to be able to use a pointing device like the Wiimote.
The only part time tech work I had was as an intern or working at a University doing tech support for one of the colleges. Working at the University required being a student.
Otherwise there's probably very little chance of getting part time work.
You were supposed to be learning concepts. Not syntax. I started with BASIC as well when I was 5 or so. I got a copy of a C compiler when I was about 12 and quickly gave up and went back to BASIC. By the time I was 18 I was ready for C++ and jumped right in. I've now worked with about a dozen languages. I translate between languages often. At every job I end up using at least 3 or four.
There's nothing I learned from BASIC that wasn't useful. You also have to be self motivated to make your code better.
If you're learning syntax when learning how to program then you're doing it wrong. If you ignore syntax and focus on learning concepts then it doesn't matter what language you use. Eventually the uglyness of BASIC will become apparent and you'll be happy to learn and embrace better ways of doing things.
In the mean time, kids are more interested in making games than pretty, easy to read code and BASIC is the easiest language to use to accomplish that goal.
I would start with a language that's easy to use and gives easy access to graphics. A beginner needs to learn "concepts" not syntax. I like BASIC because you can create simple shapes and learn all about double buffering and screen modes without having to learn much syntax. You can also learn how to make functions and implement basic AI. BASIC would allow students to make games within the confined time of a semester or year.
Then, if the student decides that this programming thing is fun they can be aware of DirectX, OpenGL, etc and when they go to learn how to use it they know the concept of screen modes, double buffering, functions, loops, logic, etc which makes learning the new more powerful languages significantly easier. Games require a vast array of concepts that can be applied to any programming project.
It would take a week to learn in C what can be learned in a day with BASIC. Students can then be self motivated to learn the more complex version of the basic concepts on their own time.
The next class should get into more powerful languages that show how the concepts learn in BASIC are applied. Then you don't have to waste a semester showing students that all languages implement many of the same concepts. They'll figure it out on their own. And they'll know the concepts so they can figure out how to use any language quickly.
If this stuff costs thousands of dollars per square yard it would be financially viable for swimsuits and other items that use smaller amounts. A single win as a swimsuit would probably pay for itself in endorsements. However it would quickly become economically unsound for large items. It's probably not worth hundreds of millions of dollars to coat a sub with it.
"Williams says. Still, he predicts that memristors will arrive in commercial circuits within the next three years."
It seems fast because nobody was talking about these things for the last 30 years. It's only because of technological advances in circuit printing and general computing that we can make these things and integrate them without having to develop a lot of additional technology. The transistor is very old but only after developing a lot of supporting tech have we been able to shrink them down to fit billions in a processor. That same tech can already be applied to memristors. We don't need to wait decades before we can shrink a memristor down to practical levels for ICs.
as a joke. Maybe the reason some people don't see it as funny is because the scientists involved aren't doing a very good job explaining how what they're doing isn't dangerous.
The fact that you thought the submitter was being serious would indicate that you aren't sure that there couldn't be serious consequences to making little black holes.
are Kirk's illegitimate children.
that's just cruel.
but this was known if you followed right wing blogs. The idea was to pay college students $5000 if they completed 100 hours of community service. So that works out to $50 an hour. Obama may be changing his mind and skipping out on the pay and just requiring the work.
I got my currently salaried position as a developer without a degree. I'm going to be encouraging my daughter to focus on her talents early like I did so she can start on her career before she finishes college. Not many students do that. A lot of them expect to go to college for four years, never have a job prior and then get a high paying job.
I did end up getting a degree but it wasn't entirely necessary. If I felt like a requirement to get the piece of paper was too absurd I could have just passed on it and been fine. Most students can't do that.
There is no "Office of the President Elect"
This information is already available at the Barack Obama campaign web-site and this updated version should just go there.
Having a .gov domain means it's a tax payer funded government web-site.
Apparently Obama's first order of business, before even being president, is changing the definition of the .gov tld, creating fake government offices and giving himself another venue to spew propaganda.
OK Cupid is also free and has a lot of personality tests to find people who think like you. I met my wife through that site.
The main advantage to BASIC is that it's trivial to get simple graphics going so you can learn how to make a wide variety of games without having to get overloaded with information about APIs and whatnot. Unfortunatly most games don't have terrible graphics so beginning programmers tend not to be satisified with large solid colored blocks.
It may be worthwhile to come up with a compiler that expands the BASIC commands to include functions which load various graphics formats into sprites and allow you to display them easily. I remember having to use primitive shapes to draw graphics and then GETing the area on the screen and PUTing it. Eventually I developed my own graphics format that used text files that could be edited by hand.
Seems like it would be a lot simpler and more productive to simply buy a large area of land outside of a city and create a huge residential area with a central area for research. The scientists could then make use of existing resources while living and working in their own secluded area. They're called "walls." A lot of residential areas in cities have them.
A whole new city requires police, fire, hospitals, government, stores, etc.
If you wanted to be really clever you could just build a skyscrapper with room enough for everyone who wants to work there and the rest of the space be dedicated to research. You could plop such a building or few in the middle of any established city.
It'd be pretty nice to have subsidized living provided by your employer and be able to take the elevator down to work.