Oops, sorry, I forgot we've had Republicans in the White House, and they're determined to make the US dollar the weakest currency in the world (and doing a damned fine job of that, at least).
(Many years ago when I was in school, I went to Europe, and the dollar was nearly on par with the pound, and you got 7 French francs or 3 deutschmarks to the dollar. I even remember 250 Yen to the dollar)
Joe Average doesn't give a shit about DRM, and DVDs prove it. I'd bet a dollar that 98% of Americans* couldn't figure out how to copy a DVD, and most if not all of those don't care. DRM only matters to the file sharers and the audio/video/technophiles** who want their systems to perform *just the way they like it*. Nobody else cares.
*I know, it's no fair choosing stupid Americans, but I'm trying to prove my point. ** I'm part of that group
I also support my local Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) as much as I can, and actively talk down that numbnut Sen George Allen (R-VA, GWB lapdog) whenever I get a chance.
It would be nice if they supported Linux from the start, especially since the software and drivers clearly exist and there is no extra work involved. It seems that at the very least, it would likely help to discourage the DRM cracking.
This has got to be the funniest thing on/. for quite some time. Release the drivers to the largest group of MPAA-haters in the universe? Do you think for a minute that any self respecting Linux nut is going to put a closed-source, DRM encumbered driver on his or her system for any purpose other than to find a crack for the encryption? Why don't we all just scratch a check for $10,000 to our local poitician and ask him to so "something positive" with the money.
Okay, I'm with the rest of the drooling HT crowd over higher definition sources, especially for larger screens. I also understand that the images will be sharper. But to have to decribe the difference as:
On the inside of her left forearm there is a brown spot that is clearly visible on the hi-def version. On the DVD you have to know it's there to see it.
Just makes me start to wonder how few applications there are where HD really matters. (Oh, I do have an aversion to watching football in SD, even on a small 51" screen...so there are places where it definitely does matter).
That's way too complicated, and not easily decodable on the TV end w/o an extra box with the networking and TS decoder (=$$). If I could get the TS already encoded onto 8VSB in baseband and then remodulate it into a standard OTA channel like I do with NTSC baseband->UHF, I could pack as many channels onto the coax as I had sources (I don't have the money to run out of channels >36, where my lowpass cutoff filter is, even with a 2-3 channel separation). Then with a TV with ATSC and an external IR receiver, I could control any source, from any room, with multiple sources running simultaneously. Naturally, I'd want the ATSC modulators to cost what NTSC modulators do ($40/channel for cheap FA ones, $100-$125/channel for the good ones).
The problem is that it *could* be transparent and easy to implement, but due to DRM and the content nazis it won't be. It just bugs the hell out of me.
Sorry, I should have said "left of the current center"? Did anyone mistake me for being in the 1860s?
Of course I meant the current center; and left/right seem primarily dependent on social issues. Environmental is almsost always a for/against left/right thing. Fiscal conservatism, afaict doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't since before I was born (in th 60s). Even the Reagan era wasn't dominated by fiscal conservatives - they spent all the money, it just went to contractors.
The national media tends to be press release driven, so it's hard to pin them to a particular stance. I tend to agree with them a good bit of the time, and I feel I'm left of center (environmentally left, socially moderate, fiscally conservative, always been a Democrat). There seem to be fewer far-left media outlets than far-right, which may skew my view of what is "center". Still, center isn't some absolute point in space, it will always be relative to the current trends.
Slashdot does lean left. When I post a politcally leftist comment, I get modded up. When I post a politically right comment (sometimes even in jest) I get modded down. There is no lack of left wing nutjobs here, but they also get modded down. I'm just glad I'm not one of the Libertarians, since they are in the position of having to agree with the far-left nuts more and more often in the face of the stupid shit the current right keeps trying to pull. I'm pretty sure that every time they agree with a lefty, they feel like they need a shower. They don't shower, of course...as is their right to complete freedom from having to give in to any social moors.
How about we concentrate on getting systems which will modulate the original, compressed HD over coax so that 99% of the population who owns a house that is already built around the old way of doing things can still watch TV without fishing cable around?
C'mon folks, there's a hundred usable channels with 19.x Mb/s effective bandwidth so we could *in theory* just pipe that HD signal from a remote box to the tv with the existing wires, let the ATSC STB (or internal tuner) demodulate and decode the content and display it. Hell, we could all have everything-everywhere in our houses with all the ugly gear stashed in the basement with this standard. *Analog is not the enemy* OTA HD works damned fine. Why fuck it up with expensive, unnecessary cabling?
Disclaimer - yes I have an older home. I also have the DVD jukebox on channel 40, my Tivo on 45, my wife's tivo on 50, and a media server on 55. They get combined with the off air antenna and piped through an RG-59 coax to every TV in the house, with a Xantech IR sensor (DC coax return) at each TV. It works great, except that there's no HD. My parents just bought a new house, but can't put HD in the rooms because the builder ran (the standard) one coax to each TV location. Suprise...DTV requires 2 to get HD (I haven't verified this, mine are old TiVo units with two tuners, and need two cables).
If the Democrats win in the fall, and they are skewed from the exit polling data, then yes, there will even be an uproar on slashdot. Now, it will mostly be split between "we need a goddamned paper trail" and the new favorite "we told you there should have been a paper trail, but nobody listened to us." The national "mainstream" (center-left) media will do their obligatory piece on it and let it die. The far left will be unusually quiet. The conservative media will, however, make up for that silence with indignation and outrage that the Left-controlled polling places were just shoddily run, and that it's all the more reason that the Left should never be allowed to run anything./., on the whole, leans moderately left. I'd say the mean is farther left than the median, though, so there will still be uproar. You needn't worry that there will be a lack of coverage.
Presumably you would be first to market, and since you developed the idea it would follow that you would have the greatest insight in developing and enhancing the product. By this way , you could continually inmprove your product, and you would always be first to market giving you an advantage that the "copycats" did not have. Of course, you might well have higher R&D costs, but that's what it take to be "the best". You would then be required to compete on continuous innovation and quality (and, of course, brand) with the other players in the market.
That doesn't mean you would win. Look at Oreos. They were the copy of Hydrox cookies. Sometimes the innovator doesn't win. Sunshine Biscuit, somehow, still survived.
"I may be able to almost agree with allowing the state attorney general to add to the list..."
Oops, I misread that as "agree with adding the state attorney general to the list." That would certainly make for a lively discussion of the law!
Re:With all due respect to the man ...
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Steve Irwin Dead
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Actually, I thought this was a very neutral comment. Especially on/.
The popular vote was essentially 50/50 - you can all go argue about which side of 50% one or the other candidate had, or the fact that a good portion of the populationwas to freakin' lazy to go vote. The is particularly appropriate becuase the comment GP was concerning the internation image of contries. Fo Austrailia to be associated with Steve Irwin is no necessarily bad when compared to America. A good portion of the world hates us with a passion. Another significant chuck does not see us in a positive light. Most of the world is not a fan of our current sitting head of state, and he is large figure on the international stage. Fo good or ill, he really does represent the quintessential American. I would call him abrasive, arrogant (in the "my view is the right view" way), reactionary, and poorly spoken. From appearances, he puts the profit of American corporations above most other priorities. Lots of people happen to like that, and it got him re-elected. The point is that a large portion (right now you could say majority) is not like that, but that makes no difference in the eyes of those who don't have direct contact with Americans.
Oh, sure we're an impulsive crowd, but most are educated and realize when we've been snookered before.
Did nobody in either camp stop and look at how they had royally screwed every early adopter of HDTV? The promise of content that never occured. The delayed, and delayed, and delayed rollout of OTA. The jumble of formats that caused event the best CE to falter under the load of options. The incompatibilities between components. The ubiquitous component interface that every early adopter had on their display sets which are now utterly obsolete due to the need for "content protection" - a perfectly good $7000 50RP set which may be relegated to 480p at the whim of the broadcaster. The promise of 20Mb HD that got chopped into subchannels to rerun Andy Griffith and the Golden Girls in SD simultaneously, at the expense of HD. The iron fist approach to preventing transferring DVDs to Media Servers.
No, the industry has drawn a line, and the early adopters are on the other side. We're the ones who are most adversely affected by the content protection and market jockying. Don't come to me with your hand out for your improved shovel right after you run over my dog. The industry has, through their anti-piracy efforts, significantly alienated a large portion of their first-run consumers. They've managed to eliminate the initial cash infusion that covers the R&D part of the CE process, and now they're stuck with trying to add enough volume to get every household to buy the product just to cover the engineering costs.
The early adopters want to buy this stuff, but we want to play with our new toys, not see how womebody else want us to play with them. Give us back our control, and we'll open our wallets. 'Til then, go fuck yourselves.
Sadly, this is true. It's damned hard to decide to jump ship in this society. The Intel folks will probably be in a worse condition because there is a diminishingly small amount of work for "freelancing" in certain industries. Long hours are necessary, and the financial risks are real.
I went to school nights to get a second degree in order to change careers (a tangent one, though), and downsized most of what I was doing to affort to take a job at half pay to learn the new industry, but one in which small shops are common. I took 10k from my savings and managed to gross 20k my first 8 months. Unfortunately the startup costs were 30k, so I ended the year with $0. My gross has doubled every year since then, and there are occasional 60-70 hour weeks (though fewer than when I was "employed"). My accountant said it would take a year and a half to get my feet under me, and three before I could really pay myself. He was remarkably close.
If I could give advice to every college graduate out there, I'd tell them to learn to budget, never borrow more than was absolutely necessary, and avoid the natural human tendency to try and outspend your friends. A big house, a nice car, and lots of toys can bring you enjoyment, but they won't make you content. Nothing is nicer than the knowledge that you don't have to work for the man to keep a roof over your head or food on the table.
No, they would add to the law "unless you sign a waiver during the sighup process which explicitly states that some services may be given a slower maximum bandwidth" before it ever went into effect. The health insurance lobby in Virginia did just that to the "minimum requirements" law. So you sign a disclaimer at the back of your packet, and they no longer have to cover the state minimums (like annual health exams).
See how easy it is to defeat your common sense? Really pretty pitiful, if you ask me.
Oh, you say you can't get a 400 disc carousel to fit in my case for $50? Bummer, 'cause I need space for my discs, and the safest place is in a jukebox. Sure, I could rip all those DVDs and store them on disc, but that would take 2.8TB of disc space, and even at.30/GB I can buy two 400 disc jukeboxes for the price of the hard drives to store one. Why would I spend $500-600 on a box, plus $350 to $600 on the video cards they tested, to do the job of a $60 player, or the $500+$350+$850 (suprise: $1700) to get the equivalent storage of a $300 jukebox? This assumes that there is no value behind the time it takes to set up such a server.
Oh, two other questions - can someone who has never seen this box walk up, turn the TV on, and press play on the remote? Can this be done in the 5 minutes it takes to set up the standalong player?
That's why there are Unions. And, as typcially happens, the Union becomes exactly what the employee hated about management - a political, bottom line driven organization used to forcefully extract concessions from the opposite side. They're just working for you instead of the other side now.
It all comes back to monkeyspace. Big corporations exceed it, and need a kick in the pants (or regulations) to return balance. That's one reason why many small businesses are not regulated, and why many don't need it (oh sure, some do...some really do) - the 50 employee limit is within a standard human monkeyspace.
I wondered if the causeway was still open to the public.
I left NASA back in the late 90s, and had the supreme fortune of getting a vip pass to a launch while I was on TDY at KSC (sorry for the acronyms). I sat in the bleachers and watched the shuttle go up right across the banana river (I think is was on pad 39A, but I can't be sure). Employees don't normally get passes, but a high up mucky-muck had an extra pair due to a cancellation from some international dignitaries and offered one to me since I was there. Perfect weather, great launch. Of all the things I remember from KSC, the launch is top 5 - the others are a landing, standing about 110' up on launchpad 39B, the 3:45 thunderstorms (every damn day), and - my favorite - being in the VAB for the first time and being shown around in an area with a very low (7'-6"ish) black ceiling. Then the engineer I was with pointed out the landing gear about 20' away, and the fact that the ceiling was the shuttle. Talk about a "wow" moment for a newbie engineer.
You know what - if a 12 year old can find, compile, and execute sendmail, or any other client, I say go for it. If they figure out how to use non-default ports (sense I would expect all the standard ones to be blocked) for an IM client, or set up a torrent client from scratch, they've already learned more than most 99.5% of college grads. The trick is to require them to start from scratch each semester - clean the HD and give them a new distro. It's one thing to learn it once, it's quite another to learn to document your successes enough to reproduce the result after an extended period.
Besides, having them start with a fresh HD every 4-6 months will help get them ready for Windows.;-)
Have you ever seen an athelete and a non-athelete try to pick up golf? The athelete will probably have a handicap in the mid-teens by the end of the first summer of casual play, the non-athelete will take three years of casual golf to break 100, if they ever do.
Playing golf is not atheletic like running triathalons requires, however it does require a certain amount of strength, flexibility, and body control to play well. At least, well enough not to make a fool of yourself in front of coworkers.
If the data is available on line, then the student can go to the library and if the physical reference is out they can use a terminal. If it's not there, they should learn to (a) order or reserve the book and (b) find the information somewhere else. Part of learning is learning to do it the hard way the first time. If you do everything at the highest level, you have (a) no appreciation for what goes into what you do and (b) no way to fix it if something goes wrong. If you're a programmer, you should know how to code in assembly, even if you never use it. If your an engineer, you should be able to analyize a beam or mechanism dynamic by hand. If you're a researcher you should be able to write a coherent paper with nothing more than a pencil and a ream of paper.
Computers are nice, and children should learn to use them. They should not be dependent on them.
When I was in grade school we has a couple of computers, and about the only thing you could do on them was programming. So we learned to program.
The parents have found out the problem with modern computers - they come out of the box with "everything you need to have fun." Heck, isn't that the whole push of Apples new commercials (except calling Windows users stupid)? Why? Because that's how you sell computers.
They need to provide dtipped down, locked down versions for education. Oh, I know, think of the children. Look, they only have 5 hours of instruction a day, they should be making the most of it, not using computers to find a way to talk with friends. Heck, there is almost no reason that students in school need access to the internet. I didn't have access to more than the school library for papers, and did just fine. We're not trying to get these kids to do useful research, and we're not trying to teach them to be secretaries and middle managers - we're teaching them how to learn.
I say give them linux. It doesn't run anything that teens like without major hacking work (don't get all/. huffy about it - yu know it's true). Heck. I'd start em off with slack and the command line. Most people these days - and I mean you recent college grads - can't fix simple OS problems or resolve obvious app conflicts because *you have no idea how a computer works*. GUIs are not computers. We may as well give you toasters or washing machines. Kids will learn to work with what they've got. That's more real world than anything I know.
Oh, and get of my lawn, you young whippersnappers.
Re:Not sure why the fuss over 16GB USB Flash...
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16GB Flash USB Dongle
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Oh, if I had a dollar for every USB2 item which actually did 480Mb/s. The fastest rarely hit 1/4 of that speed. The specs on Kangaru's site do say that it will write up to 5MB/s, so it will only take 3.5 hours to fill it.
...to add to this comment. You should rarely attribute malice to a lack of male interaction. It typically only occurs in those groups which are "girlie" men - those particularly proud of their looks or physical prowess (ie - those which act more like females in their social interactions). As Batman said, find some common interests with your coworkers. Look for an excuse to go out to lunch with the group, even if you don't say much. Personal connection is all you need to make to be accepted most of the time. If you must, bring in some "trinket" that you feel might be a common interest - novel, magazine without "orgasm" or a photograph of any hollywood star printed on the cover, electronic item with "geek" quality. iPods don't count.
A word of warning, though - do not go outside your comfort zone. If you're not a Monty Python fan, don't quote them. If you don't get jazzed over hot rods, don't discuss 'em. Don't take up golf just to get in the mix if you're not an athelete.
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Oops, sorry, I forgot we've had Republicans in the White House, and they're determined to make the US dollar the weakest currency in the world (and doing a damned fine job of that, at least).
(Many years ago when I was in school, I went to Europe, and the dollar was nearly on par with the pound, and you got 7 French francs or 3 deutschmarks to the dollar. I even remember 250 Yen to the dollar)
Joe Average doesn't give a shit about DRM, and DVDs prove it. I'd bet a dollar that 98% of Americans* couldn't figure out how to copy a DVD, and most if not all of those don't care. DRM only matters to the file sharers and the audio/video/technophiles** who want their systems to perform *just the way they like it*. Nobody else cares.
*I know, it's no fair choosing stupid Americans, but I'm trying to prove my point.
** I'm part of that group
I also support my local Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) as much as I can, and actively talk down that numbnut Sen George Allen (R-VA, GWB lapdog) whenever I get a chance.
It would be nice if they supported Linux from the start, especially since the software and drivers clearly exist and there is no extra work involved. It seems that at the very least, it would likely help to discourage the DRM cracking.
/. for quite some time. Release the drivers to the largest group of MPAA-haters in the universe? Do you think for a minute that any self respecting Linux nut is going to put a closed-source, DRM encumbered driver on his or her system for any purpose other than to find a crack for the encryption? Why don't we all just scratch a check for $10,000 to our local poitician and ask him to so "something positive" with the money.
This has got to be the funniest thing on
Okay, I'm with the rest of the drooling HT crowd over higher definition sources, especially for larger screens. I also understand that the images will be sharper. But to have to decribe the difference as:
On the inside of her left forearm there is a brown spot that is clearly visible on the hi-def version. On the DVD you have to know it's there to see it.
Just makes me start to wonder how few applications there are where HD really matters. (Oh, I do have an aversion to watching football in SD, even on a small 51" screen...so there are places where it definitely does matter).
Those are Canadian dollars, they're not worth much in real money. 10$CAD a day or 5$CAD and hour is still insane though.
That's way too complicated, and not easily decodable on the TV end w/o an extra box with the networking and TS decoder (=$$). If I could get the TS already encoded onto 8VSB in baseband and then remodulate it into a standard OTA channel like I do with NTSC baseband->UHF, I could pack as many channels onto the coax as I had sources (I don't have the money to run out of channels >36, where my lowpass cutoff filter is, even with a 2-3 channel separation). Then with a TV with ATSC and an external IR receiver, I could control any source, from any room, with multiple sources running simultaneously. Naturally, I'd want the ATSC modulators to cost what NTSC modulators do ($40/channel for cheap FA ones, $100-$125/channel for the good ones).
The problem is that it *could* be transparent and easy to implement, but due to DRM and the content nazis it won't be. It just bugs the hell out of me.
Sorry, I should have said "left of the current center"? Did anyone mistake me for being in the 1860s?
Of course I meant the current center; and left/right seem primarily dependent on social issues. Environmental is almsost always a for/against left/right thing. Fiscal conservatism, afaict doesn't exist anymore, and hasn't since before I was born (in th 60s). Even the Reagan era wasn't dominated by fiscal conservatives - they spent all the money, it just went to contractors.
The national media tends to be press release driven, so it's hard to pin them to a particular stance. I tend to agree with them a good bit of the time, and I feel I'm left of center (environmentally left, socially moderate, fiscally conservative, always been a Democrat). There seem to be fewer far-left media outlets than far-right, which may skew my view of what is "center". Still, center isn't some absolute point in space, it will always be relative to the current trends.
Slashdot does lean left. When I post a politcally leftist comment, I get modded up. When I post a politically right comment (sometimes even in jest) I get modded down. There is no lack of left wing nutjobs here, but they also get modded down. I'm just glad I'm not one of the Libertarians, since they are in the position of having to agree with the far-left nuts more and more often in the face of the stupid shit the current right keeps trying to pull. I'm pretty sure that every time they agree with a lefty, they feel like they need a shower. They don't shower, of course...as is their right to complete freedom from having to give in to any social moors.
How about we concentrate on getting systems which will modulate the original, compressed HD over coax so that 99% of the population who owns a house that is already built around the old way of doing things can still watch TV without fishing cable around?
C'mon folks, there's a hundred usable channels with 19.x Mb/s effective bandwidth so we could *in theory* just pipe that HD signal from a remote box to the tv with the existing wires, let the ATSC STB (or internal tuner) demodulate and decode the content and display it. Hell, we could all have everything-everywhere in our houses with all the ugly gear stashed in the basement with this standard. *Analog is not the enemy* OTA HD works damned fine. Why fuck it up with expensive, unnecessary cabling?
Disclaimer - yes I have an older home. I also have the DVD jukebox on channel 40, my Tivo on 45, my wife's tivo on 50, and a media server on 55. They get combined with the off air antenna and piped through an RG-59 coax to every TV in the house, with a Xantech IR sensor (DC coax return) at each TV. It works great, except that there's no HD. My parents just bought a new house, but can't put HD in the rooms because the builder ran (the standard) one coax to each TV location. Suprise...DTV requires 2 to get HD (I haven't verified this, mine are old TiVo units with two tuners, and need two cables).
You mean in general, or just on slashdot?
/., on the whole, leans moderately left. I'd say the mean is farther left than the median, though, so there will still be uproar. You needn't worry that there will be a lack of coverage.
If the Democrats win in the fall, and they are skewed from the exit polling data, then yes, there will even be an uproar on slashdot. Now, it will mostly be split between "we need a goddamned paper trail" and the new favorite "we told you there should have been a paper trail, but nobody listened to us." The national "mainstream" (center-left) media will do their obligatory piece on it and let it die. The far left will be unusually quiet. The conservative media will, however, make up for that silence with indignation and outrage that the Left-controlled polling places were just shoddily run, and that it's all the more reason that the Left should never be allowed to run anything.
Presumably you would be first to market, and since you developed the idea it would follow that you would have the greatest insight in developing and enhancing the product. By this way , you could continually inmprove your product, and you would always be first to market giving you an advantage that the "copycats" did not have. Of course, you might well have higher R&D costs, but that's what it take to be "the best". You would then be required to compete on continuous innovation and quality (and, of course, brand) with the other players in the market.
That doesn't mean you would win. Look at Oreos. They were the copy of Hydrox cookies. Sometimes the innovator doesn't win. Sunshine Biscuit, somehow, still survived.
And to lower the bar for evidence for those older crimes.
"I may be able to almost agree with allowing the state attorney general to add to the list..."
Oops, I misread that as "agree with adding the state attorney general to the list." That would certainly make for a lively discussion of the law!
Actually, I thought this was a very neutral comment. Especially on /.
The popular vote was essentially 50/50 - you can all go argue about which side of 50% one or the other candidate had, or the fact that a good portion of the populationwas to freakin' lazy to go vote. The is particularly appropriate becuase the comment GP was concerning the internation image of contries. Fo Austrailia to be associated with Steve Irwin is no necessarily bad when compared to America. A good portion of the world hates us with a passion. Another significant chuck does not see us in a positive light. Most of the world is not a fan of our current sitting head of state, and he is large figure on the international stage. Fo good or ill, he really does represent the quintessential American. I would call him abrasive, arrogant (in the "my view is the right view" way), reactionary, and poorly spoken. From appearances, he puts the profit of American corporations above most other priorities. Lots of people happen to like that, and it got him re-elected. The point is that a large portion (right now you could say majority) is not like that, but that makes no difference in the eyes of those who don't have direct contact with Americans.
Oh, sure we're an impulsive crowd, but most are educated and realize when we've been snookered before.
Did nobody in either camp stop and look at how they had royally screwed every early adopter of HDTV? The promise of content that never occured. The delayed, and delayed, and delayed rollout of OTA. The jumble of formats that caused event the best CE to falter under the load of options. The incompatibilities between components. The ubiquitous component interface that every early adopter had on their display sets which are now utterly obsolete due to the need for "content protection" - a perfectly good $7000 50RP set which may be relegated to 480p at the whim of the broadcaster. The promise of 20Mb HD that got chopped into subchannels to rerun Andy Griffith and the Golden Girls in SD simultaneously, at the expense of HD. The iron fist approach to preventing transferring DVDs to Media Servers.
No, the industry has drawn a line, and the early adopters are on the other side. We're the ones who are most adversely affected by the content protection and market jockying. Don't come to me with your hand out for your improved shovel right after you run over my dog. The industry has, through their anti-piracy efforts, significantly alienated a large portion of their first-run consumers. They've managed to eliminate the initial cash infusion that covers the R&D part of the CE process, and now they're stuck with trying to add enough volume to get every household to buy the product just to cover the engineering costs.
The early adopters want to buy this stuff, but we want to play with our new toys, not see how womebody else want us to play with them. Give us back our control, and we'll open our wallets. 'Til then, go fuck yourselves.
Sadly, this is true. It's damned hard to decide to jump ship in this society. The Intel folks will probably be in a worse condition because there is a diminishingly small amount of work for "freelancing" in certain industries. Long hours are necessary, and the financial risks are real.
I went to school nights to get a second degree in order to change careers (a tangent one, though), and downsized most of what I was doing to affort to take a job at half pay to learn the new industry, but one in which small shops are common. I took 10k from my savings and managed to gross 20k my first 8 months. Unfortunately the startup costs were 30k, so I ended the year with $0. My gross has doubled every year since then, and there are occasional 60-70 hour weeks (though fewer than when I was "employed"). My accountant said it would take a year and a half to get my feet under me, and three before I could really pay myself. He was remarkably close.
If I could give advice to every college graduate out there, I'd tell them to learn to budget, never borrow more than was absolutely necessary, and avoid the natural human tendency to try and outspend your friends. A big house, a nice car, and lots of toys can bring you enjoyment, but they won't make you content. Nothing is nicer than the knowledge that you don't have to work for the man to keep a roof over your head or food on the table.
No, they would add to the law "unless you sign a waiver during the sighup process which explicitly states that some services may be given a slower maximum bandwidth" before it ever went into effect. The health insurance lobby in Virginia did just that to the "minimum requirements" law. So you sign a disclaimer at the back of your packet, and they no longer have to cover the state minimums (like annual health exams).
See how easy it is to defeat your common sense? Really pretty pitiful, if you ask me.
Oh, you say you can't get a 400 disc carousel to fit in my case for $50? Bummer, 'cause I need space for my discs, and the safest place is in a jukebox. Sure, I could rip all those DVDs and store them on disc, but that would take 2.8TB of disc space, and even at .30/GB I can buy two 400 disc jukeboxes for the price of the hard drives to store one. Why would I spend $500-600 on a box, plus $350 to $600 on the video cards they tested, to do the job of a $60 player, or the $500+$350+$850 (suprise: $1700) to get the equivalent storage of a $300 jukebox? This assumes that there is no value behind the time it takes to set up such a server.
Oh, two other questions - can someone who has never seen this box walk up, turn the TV on, and press play on the remote? Can this be done in the 5 minutes it takes to set up the standalong player?
That's why there are Unions. And, as typcially happens, the Union becomes exactly what the employee hated about management - a political, bottom line driven organization used to forcefully extract concessions from the opposite side. They're just working for you instead of the other side now.
It all comes back to monkeyspace. Big corporations exceed it, and need a kick in the pants (or regulations) to return balance. That's one reason why many small businesses are not regulated, and why many don't need it (oh sure, some do...some really do) - the 50 employee limit is within a standard human monkeyspace.
I wondered if the causeway was still open to the public.
I left NASA back in the late 90s, and had the supreme fortune of getting a vip pass to a launch while I was on TDY at KSC (sorry for the acronyms). I sat in the bleachers and watched the shuttle go up right across the banana river (I think is was on pad 39A, but I can't be sure). Employees don't normally get passes, but a high up mucky-muck had an extra pair due to a cancellation from some international dignitaries and offered one to me since I was there. Perfect weather, great launch. Of all the things I remember from KSC, the launch is top 5 - the others are a landing, standing about 110' up on launchpad 39B, the 3:45 thunderstorms (every damn day), and - my favorite - being in the VAB for the first time and being shown around in an area with a very low (7'-6"ish) black ceiling. Then the engineer I was with pointed out the landing gear about 20' away, and the fact that the ceiling was the shuttle. Talk about a "wow" moment for a newbie engineer.
You know what - if a 12 year old can find, compile, and execute sendmail, or any other client, I say go for it. If they figure out how to use non-default ports (sense I would expect all the standard ones to be blocked) for an IM client, or set up a torrent client from scratch, they've already learned more than most 99.5% of college grads. The trick is to require them to start from scratch each semester - clean the HD and give them a new distro. It's one thing to learn it once, it's quite another to learn to document your successes enough to reproduce the result after an extended period.
;-)
Besides, having them start with a fresh HD every 4-6 months will help get them ready for Windows.
Have you ever seen an athelete and a non-athelete try to pick up golf? The athelete will probably have a handicap in the mid-teens by the end of the first summer of casual play, the non-athelete will take three years of casual golf to break 100, if they ever do.
Playing golf is not atheletic like running triathalons requires, however it does require a certain amount of strength, flexibility, and body control to play well. At least, well enough not to make a fool of yourself in front of coworkers.
If the data is available on line, then the student can go to the library and if the physical reference is out they can use a terminal. If it's not there, they should learn to (a) order or reserve the book and (b) find the information somewhere else. Part of learning is learning to do it the hard way the first time. If you do everything at the highest level, you have (a) no appreciation for what goes into what you do and (b) no way to fix it if something goes wrong. If you're a programmer, you should know how to code in assembly, even if you never use it. If your an engineer, you should be able to analyize a beam or mechanism dynamic by hand. If you're a researcher you should be able to write a coherent paper with nothing more than a pencil and a ream of paper.
Computers are nice, and children should learn to use them. They should not be dependent on them.
When I was in grade school we has a couple of computers, and about the only thing you could do on them was programming. So we learned to program.
/. huffy about it - yu know it's true). Heck. I'd start em off with slack and the command line. Most people these days - and I mean you recent college grads - can't fix simple OS problems or resolve obvious app conflicts because *you have no idea how a computer works*. GUIs are not computers. We may as well give you toasters or washing machines. Kids will learn to work with what they've got. That's more real world than anything I know.
The parents have found out the problem with modern computers - they come out of the box with "everything you need to have fun." Heck, isn't that the whole push of Apples new commercials (except calling Windows users stupid)? Why? Because that's how you sell computers.
They need to provide dtipped down, locked down versions for education. Oh, I know, think of the children. Look, they only have 5 hours of instruction a day, they should be making the most of it, not using computers to find a way to talk with friends. Heck, there is almost no reason that students in school need access to the internet. I didn't have access to more than the school library for papers, and did just fine. We're not trying to get these kids to do useful research, and we're not trying to teach them to be secretaries and middle managers - we're teaching them how to learn.
I say give them linux. It doesn't run anything that teens like without major hacking work (don't get all
Oh, and get of my lawn, you young whippersnappers.
Oh, if I had a dollar for every USB2 item which actually did 480Mb/s. The fastest rarely hit 1/4 of that speed. The specs on Kangaru's site do say that it will write up to 5MB/s, so it will only take 3.5 hours to fill it.
...to add to this comment. You should rarely attribute malice to a lack of male interaction. It typically only occurs in those groups which are "girlie" men - those particularly proud of their looks or physical prowess (ie - those which act more like females in their social interactions). As Batman said, find some common interests with your coworkers. Look for an excuse to go out to lunch with the group, even if you don't say much. Personal connection is all you need to make to be accepted most of the time. If you must, bring in some "trinket" that you feel might be a common interest - novel, magazine without "orgasm" or a photograph of any hollywood star printed on the cover, electronic item with "geek" quality. iPods don't count.
A word of warning, though - do not go outside your comfort zone. If you're not a Monty Python fan, don't quote them. If you don't get jazzed over hot rods, don't discuss 'em. Don't take up golf just to get in the mix if you're not an athelete.