Yes...Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, etc can log your keystrokes and behaviors through their servers and their widespread affiliates.
But this is nothing compared to your ISP. Comcast, AT&T, Roadrunner, etc have access to EVERYTHING their customers do on their Internet connections (minus a fractional percentage of encrypted traffic, of course).
Funny that most folks seem to ignore this elephant in the room.
The Swiss are culturally very discreet about wealth. Displays of wealth-for-the-sake-of-wealth are viewed in a very negative light. Pretty much the opposite of the ostentatious American "real housewives" culture.
The cultural taboo against displaying wealth means that the Swiss are much more likely to use their money in more enriching ways. Travel, art, environmental preservation, etc. Also, the Swiss middle class have more flexibility to move through the class hierarchy, because their outward appearance is not so different from the rich.
I especially like that swiss currency carries pictures of great artists and writers...not political and military egos.
...when I start preaching the benefits of regression testing, unit testing, and version control to my team, I see the Dogbert eyeroll, as if I'm the PHB
If you get that "eyeroll" on these technical suggestions, chances are, you did not hire real software developers.
You hired some dimwits who claimed to be software developers, but in fact have no understanding of the profession, and are just there to punch the clock and pull their paychecks with the minimum amount of work or learning.
Fire them, and be smarter about interviewing next time.
Too much process can mean death to a small company.
Recognition of this fact confirms that you are not the problem; your lazy/stupid team is.
Again, fire them, and hire new blood, learning from your previous interview mistakes. It may be painful in the short term, but will pay off in the long term.
I don't know if it's common, but it is financial shenanigans.
My guess is, they do this to avoid having to actually match your contributions.
If you set your deductions + company match to hit the $16500 annual limit (as any obediently programmed salary-slave should), and then the company drops a bonus that is the same or larger than their match obligation (5% of salary), they end up not having to match AT ALL...because the bonus has already pushed your account to the contribution limit.:D
Now...go read the fine print in the contracts that give your money to the banks to use as they wish...:p
Yep, that's one of the hooks: "Hey, I had a $100,000 salary, and now it's really $105,000!"
But then you need to consider:
1) That 5% salary gain is more like a 3½% gain after deferred income tax. It is income, not cap gains.
2) The performance differential between the "dumb" company-approved investment funds, and "smart" independent investments (real estate, business opportunities, selected stocks/commodities, etc), could easily be in the double-digits.
3) You likely have a 10% penalty (on top of taxes) if you want to access your own money from this account before age 59½ (e.g., to invest in some business or property opportunity that will have double- or triple-digit gains, versus the single-digit gains & losses of the current mutual-fund markets).
4) The matching funds from your owner/employer are likely subject to a vesting schedule or similar mechanism that handcuffs you to their corporation, even if it is a bad career choice for you. That is their motivation for matching.
etc.
Be sure to read the fine print, and also do the opportunity-cost math.
In the final analysis, the 401k doesn't make financial sense for many folks. But then you are presented with stuff like matching calculations...you know...don't forget to structure your "contributions" so you max out the company match before hitting your limit!! Etc. Many folks are distracted by these details, and miss the bigger picture of whether the account makes sense in the bigger picture.
You're talking about different model years of the same product. That's evolution, not inspiration. Apparently you have a poor grasp of the English language.
Yes, all of the Beetles look similar. That's the whole point. The bulbous-arc body design. You can look at an old one, or a new one, and tell immediately that they are related.
By contrast, if you look at the port on an iPod, and on an SX-70 polaroid camera, they do not appear similar in any significant way.
The most you could claim is that they are both rectangular. Wow. But...the rectangular slots on my toaster bear a much greater resemblance to the ipod port, than does the port on the SX-70 camera. Hmm, perhaps the ipod port was inspired by a toaster. I tried to stuff some bread into it, and it kinda sorta squished in there! Well, that proves it.
Please stop kicking yourself in the mouth, and go look at the pictures and videos of these ports.
The American mainstream media image of "rich" is a total fabrication, pushed onto the masses to get them to buy more stuff. Buy a McMansion, Mercedes, Rolex, etc...and you will feel rich!
The real rich could give a rat's ass about such superficial trappings. The most valuable commodities are their comfort, time, and freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want.
That last bit may seem hard to achieve without lots of money. However...comfort, time, and most reasonable freedoms in this world can be achieved without much money...unless you are too busy chasing after money, to focus on what the rich finally realize is most important...;)
Live in Switzerland for a while, and it will all make sense.
No, I didn't say that they are all "corrupt" or "incompetent".
They are, however, undeniably ALL in business to make money for themselves.
If you automatically donate your money to an "investment fund" that you do not actively track & manage over the years (or decades), the fund managers will use your money for their own goals, risk profiles, hedges, profits.
And then...oops...we lost all of your savings! Sorry. But we never guaranteed anything. You just gave us your money and blind trust.
In my experience, most corporate slaves don't pay much attention to their retirement accounts until they are well into their 40s, by which time the fund managers have had a couple decades of free play with the money. Then more folks start to take an active role with their money....but there is still a good decade or two of free-play with most accounts.
You should be happy to know that one of common signs at these protests is "End the Fed".
I would be happier if those signs said at least "End the Fed Banking Cartel".
Most folks have absolutely no idea what the Fed is and what it does. But many folks do understand what a cartel is, and that it is bad for the free market and for society as a whole.
So saying "End the Fed Banking Cartel" simultaneously informs them that the Fed is a cartel vehicle (for the big banks) and explains why it should be "Ended".
Ideally the protestor carrying that sign also knows the full history of the Fed, and can provide the phone number and mailing address of any US senator or representative, so if anyone expresses interest in the message, the protestor can tell them exactly what to do and why.
The march/occupation itself should only be the tip of the iceberg of change. Unfortunately it is usually the whole shebang. Just a place for the young ones to vent their uninformed anger, and hook up with each other.:p
The best course depends on your specific situation, goals, and company-sponsored plan rules. That's why you should spend at least 1% of your time & money to educate yourself and/or find a money manager whom you trust
At one extreme, there is the option of terminating all of your 401k contributions, withdrawing all of your 401k funds, and directly investing these monies in ways that you (or your money manager) believe are best aligned with your goals.
At the other extreme you (and/or your money manager) could simply select different funds for your contributions; funds that perform much better than the ones which your company-sponsored plan "suggests".
Much depends on the specifics of your company's plan. Do they match your "contributions"? How much? On a vesting schedule? With any fund, or only specific approved funds? Etc.
There are many "hooks" to entice people to give up control of large amounts of retirement funds. You need to find the hooks in your plan, and determine whether any of them are actually worth it. Chances are, no, because the guys who made those plans have to skim their cut. But you still need to check.
Tangential thought: Most Americans wear a suit for 2 of their 3 most important life events--marriage, and death. Obviously you can't wear a suit at your own birth, but if you could, it would probably be 3 for 3.
How insidious is that programming? Even deeper than the Debeers "diamond engagement ring tradition" scam.
If you could change those "traditions", you might go some way towards opening people's eyes to the reality.
Your inability to understand that these ports don't even look similar, and the connectors for each can't even be forced into the other one, continues to amaze.
So they look different, don't fit, have opposite genders, have radically different construction and numbers of pins...exactly how do you think one "inspired" the other?
You obviously haven't looked at any of the pictures.
I'd love to have the requisite time and knowledge to be able to manage my own retirement account, but I don't. And neither do a lot of people.
There are many different levels of management.
Most folks just throw their automatic paycheck deductions at one or more "funds" that their employer told them were appropriate. This is ZERO management. They have absolutely no idea who is managing that money, how they are managing it, and what it is ultimately being used for.
You don't have to actively manage each dollar of your savings. But if you plan to build a retirement nest egg of say a few $100K, it would be kinda stupid to NOT invest a few $1K of your time to learn about the options, and proactively find a money manager whom you can trust to do the right thing.
This is much better than zero management of your nest egg, which places absolute trust in corporations that are inherently sociopathic.
Just put anyone in a suit up against the wall and you won't go too far wrong.
Actually yes, you would.
99+% of people in suits are tools of the aristocracy. They may be well-paid tools...and some of them are even aware of the real social hierarchy in supposedly "classless" America...but they are tools nonetheless.
The real aristocracy does not wear suits on a regular basis. You are just as likely to find an aristo with no shirt and no shoes, on the deck of a yacht moored off a private island.
Other people on the island (who also do not wear suits) manage the high-level details whilst the yach-owner plays.
The folks in suits are the soldiers, in the trenches. That is what it means to be a "white collar" worker these days.
And the 21st century "American Dream" is to wear a suit for long enough that you figure out the system, and become that private-island and yacht owner.
It is a very compelling dream for a great many shallow people, who have no significant talents to contribute to society.
-----
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it. -Mark Twain
The behavior of companies is not the pressing problem, it is the government reinforcing those behaviors and making them viable and repeatable that causes the serious harm.
And exactly who do you think purchases the government that reinforces those behaviors?
Go spend some time looking at the campaign finance statistics on opensecrets.org, and you will understand.
Currently these statistics are open and public by law. When you start to have trouble finding these stats. you will know that even the concept of democracy in the USA is well and truly dead.
The protesters are drawing some attention and venting some anger, but that's about it right now.
There is however a huge opportunity for public education.
Instead of angry faces, and moronic signs like "y u not angry?", it would be nice to see some calm & rational folks down there with signs like:
"Bank Locally"
"Manage Your Own Retirement Funds"
"Reinstate Glass-Steagall"
"End the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel"
And if you talked to these people, they would make suggestions like:
1) Move all of your accounts and loans to a transparent, non-profit, local credit union. Or at least to a trusted small local bank.
2) Withdraw all money from your 401K, 403B, IRA, etc and manage it yourself. (The banks and government have lied to you about the long-term benefits of these accounts...which you will see when your retirement funds, which probably were already reduced by poor money management, are hit with the double-whammy of higher capital gains tax plus hyper-inflation).
3) Lobby your local senators and representative to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, cap usurious interest rates, institute clawback laws for insane compensation of bank execs, place the Federal Reserve under ~government~ control (haha! you thought it was under government control?), etc. Call your elected representatives. Write them. Collect signatures of other constituents who will not re-elect them unless they push for these changes.
Yeah, my initial drive-imaging experiences were with Ghost, but I gave it up when I got serious about imaging our systems.
PING is much better in my opinion, and not just because it is free.
It does have a resizing-on-the-fly capability (during image creation). I don't use it because I've simply standardized on a 25GB partition for Windows system & programs. I rarely use more than 15GB. Data lives on a different partition with file-level backup.
I boot PING from a USB stick, and save the disk images to an external USB drive. In theory you can put everything on a bootable CD or DVD set, but I've never bothered. Since PING ignores the huge hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys, and provides several choices for compression, you can easily fit a complete image of Windows XP with office apps, on a single DVD.
The observation was about design. Not functionality.
That makes it even more depressing, because those ports don't appear even superficially similar.
The SX-70 has a large beveled bump, around a chunky black plastic insert, with a slot in that plastic that accepts an edge connector from flash bulb or other accessory.
The iPod has a simple hole in the bottom with a male connector wafer inside, the same design as most modern cell phones.
If your vision is very poor...and you view both ports from a distance...I suppose they could both look like blurry black rectangles. That's about it. They aren't even close to the same size.
I didn't mean to waste anyone's time...If you still feel like I should be banned, that's certainly your prerogative.
And yet you did. Though it would be more appropriate to downgrade the idiots who let your musings through.
I mean, this article had approximately the same value as saying "Hey, I can stick a butter knife into the holes on these two devices!". Fail.
No one mentioned pin compatibility. It would be ridiculous to consider pin compatibility between these two devices.
A less-astute consumer like yourself could at least consider appearance, which is what the OP claimed to do when he said the connector was "very similar".
And yet...you cannot even force an ipod cable into the huge slot on this camera, which was designed to accept a PCB edge connector. Even if you could force it, no electrical contacts would be made except maybe with the mangled connector shield. Because (duh) you're trying to jam a female connector into another female connector.
It makes as much sense as taking two extension cords and trying to jam the socket ends of both together, while the plug ends are connected to a potato battery on one, and a 30 kilovolt transformer one the other.
Why is the "dd" suggestion modded as "funny", when it is perhaps the most flexible/practical response to the question?
Personally I use PING (PartImage Is Not Ghost) on my Windows machines, because it knows to ignore stuff like the multi-gigabyte Windows paging and hibernation files. But to each their own.
To the OP: If an ebay buyer is smart enough to find and use a recovery partition, they are probably smart enough to NOT want to use someone else's recovery partition. Be sure to provide the factory install discs (and for Windows, the COA with product key) for every machine if you want to sell them to anyone with half a clue.
These connectors are not even close to compatible:
1) As demonstrated, they do not even fit together.
2) The old camera appears to have a FEMALE connector (accepting a male PCB edge from a flashbulb or whatever), while the iPod has a MALE connector (wafer-card which inserts into the female enclosure on an ipod cable or dock).
3) The iPod connector has 30 contacts, while the old Polaroid connector appears from the pics to have 8 (or at most 9) contacts.
Comparing these connectors is like comparing apples...and dolphins.
You are obviously an American, and like most Americans, think that the American way is the only way on the planet. There is a fourth option, one that would never occur to a provincial lout like you.
4) You raised your children in Europe, where people don't suffer from the delusion that parents are supposed to be the only ones raising their children.
It is funny that you should make such "provinicial lout" assumptions, since I actually went to primary school in Europe. L'Isle-Jourdain, France, to be precise.
But in your rush to premature judgement, you entirely missed the point.
I said that parents have primary responsibility for their childrens' educations. I did NOT say that they are the only ones who should raise their children.
I'll rephrase this so you might understand: Regardless of whether your children are educated by you, or their grandparents, or a public school, or the village, or highly-paid nannies and tutors...YOU are still ultimately responsible.
If you do not like the "system" or "teachers" that are educating your children, then it is YOUR responsibility to find a better system or better teachers. That is exactly the point to which I responded.
FYI, I have lived much of my life in places where children are educated by a broader community...extended family, village elders, etc...and I believe that the best education does come from a wholistic environment, with many different people and age groups helping to educate the young.
But still, the primary responsibility to find and evaluate these teachers lies with the parents.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your English is not great, so you misunderstood my post. I would however appreciate an apology for your misguided personal insults.
Thanks for the barely-readable reply, and clear personal insult, though I was really hoping for a reply from the OP.
At least 10 of my close friends and family members are (or have been) teachers in the public education system, on the east coast and west coast, in districts ranging from very low socioeconomic (eg Bayview SF) to very high SE (eg Palo Alto).
Is the public system broken in many ways? Yes...though much of the breakage was caused by political crap like NCLB.
Do you get what you pay for? Generally...yes.
Are parents still ultimately responsible for their childrens' educations? YES.
Do the teachers "coddle" kids? Sometimes, some places, but overall, not nearly as much as you would have seen in the 1960s or 1970s or 1980s.
I'm curious..when did you go to public school? And what are your credentials as a parent or teacher?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes...Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, etc can log your keystrokes and behaviors through their servers and their widespread affiliates.
But this is nothing compared to your ISP. Comcast, AT&T, Roadrunner, etc have access to EVERYTHING their customers do on their Internet connections (minus a fractional percentage of encrypted traffic, of course).
Funny that most folks seem to ignore this elephant in the room.
The Swiss are culturally very discreet about wealth. Displays of wealth-for-the-sake-of-wealth are viewed in a very negative light. Pretty much the opposite of the ostentatious American "real housewives" culture.
The cultural taboo against displaying wealth means that the Swiss are much more likely to use their money in more enriching ways. Travel, art, environmental preservation, etc. Also, the Swiss middle class have more flexibility to move through the class hierarchy, because their outward appearance is not so different from the rich.
I especially like that swiss currency carries pictures of great artists and writers...not political and military egos.
...when I start preaching the benefits of regression testing, unit testing, and version control to my team, I see the Dogbert eyeroll, as if I'm the PHB
If you get that "eyeroll" on these technical suggestions, chances are, you did not hire real software developers.
You hired some dimwits who claimed to be software developers, but in fact have no understanding of the profession, and are just there to punch the clock and pull their paychecks with the minimum amount of work or learning.
Fire them, and be smarter about interviewing next time.
Too much process can mean death to a small company.
Recognition of this fact confirms that you are not the problem; your lazy/stupid team is.
Again, fire them, and hire new blood, learning from your previous interview mistakes. It may be painful in the short term, but will pay off in the long term.
I don't know if it's common, but it is financial shenanigans.
My guess is, they do this to avoid having to actually match your contributions.
If you set your deductions + company match to hit the $16500 annual limit (as any obediently programmed salary-slave should), and then the company drops a bonus that is the same or larger than their match obligation (5% of salary), they end up not having to match AT ALL...because the bonus has already pushed your account to the contribution limit. :D
Now...go read the fine print in the contracts that give your money to the banks to use as they wish... :p
TOTO will do this for you, if you can figure out the control panel:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Wireless_toilet_control_panel_w._open_lid.jpg
Yep, I'm well aware of the motivations of the MSM.
So...do you have any good links to non-MSM coverage of the protests, to make your point???
Yep, that's one of the hooks: "Hey, I had a $100,000 salary, and now it's really $105,000!"
But then you need to consider:
1) That 5% salary gain is more like a 3½% gain after deferred income tax. It is income, not cap gains.
2) The performance differential between the "dumb" company-approved investment funds, and "smart" independent investments (real estate, business opportunities, selected stocks/commodities, etc), could easily be in the double-digits.
3) You likely have a 10% penalty (on top of taxes) if you want to access your own money from this account before age 59½ (e.g., to invest in some business or property opportunity that will have double- or triple-digit gains, versus the single-digit gains & losses of the current mutual-fund markets).
4) The matching funds from your owner/employer are likely subject to a vesting schedule or similar mechanism that handcuffs you to their corporation, even if it is a bad career choice for you. That is their motivation for matching.
etc.
Be sure to read the fine print, and also do the opportunity-cost math.
In the final analysis, the 401k doesn't make financial sense for many folks. But then you are presented with stuff like matching calculations...you know...don't forget to structure your "contributions" so you max out the company match before hitting your limit!! Etc. Many folks are distracted by these details, and miss the bigger picture of whether the account makes sense in the bigger picture.
YMMV. Good luck and godspeed.
You're talking about different model years of the same product. That's evolution, not inspiration. Apparently you have a poor grasp of the English language.
Yes, all of the Beetles look similar. That's the whole point. The bulbous-arc body design. You can look at an old one, or a new one, and tell immediately that they are related.
By contrast, if you look at the port on an iPod, and on an SX-70 polaroid camera, they do not appear similar in any significant way.
The most you could claim is that they are both rectangular. Wow. But...the rectangular slots on my toaster bear a much greater resemblance to the ipod port, than does the port on the SX-70 camera. Hmm, perhaps the ipod port was inspired by a toaster. I tried to stuff some bread into it, and it kinda sorta squished in there! Well, that proves it.
Please stop kicking yourself in the mouth, and go look at the pictures and videos of these ports.
It really is not so surprising.
The American mainstream media image of "rich" is a total fabrication, pushed onto the masses to get them to buy more stuff. Buy a McMansion, Mercedes, Rolex, etc...and you will feel rich!
The real rich could give a rat's ass about such superficial trappings. The most valuable commodities are their comfort, time, and freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want.
That last bit may seem hard to achieve without lots of money. However...comfort, time, and most reasonable freedoms in this world can be achieved without much money...unless you are too busy chasing after money, to focus on what the rich finally realize is most important... ;)
Live in Switzerland for a while, and it will all make sense.
No, I didn't say that they are all "corrupt" or "incompetent".
They are, however, undeniably ALL in business to make money for themselves.
If you automatically donate your money to an "investment fund" that you do not actively track & manage over the years (or decades), the fund managers will use your money for their own goals, risk profiles, hedges, profits.
And then...oops...we lost all of your savings! Sorry. But we never guaranteed anything. You just gave us your money and blind trust.
In my experience, most corporate slaves don't pay much attention to their retirement accounts until they are well into their 40s, by which time the fund managers have had a couple decades of free play with the money. Then more folks start to take an active role with their money....but there is still a good decade or two of free-play with most accounts.
YMMV.
See also my response to another reply on this comment:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2469114&cid=37669700
You should be happy to know that one of common signs at these protests is "End the Fed".
I would be happier if those signs said at least "End the Fed Banking Cartel".
Most folks have absolutely no idea what the Fed is and what it does. But many folks do understand what a cartel is, and that it is bad for the free market and for society as a whole.
So saying "End the Fed Banking Cartel" simultaneously informs them that the Fed is a cartel vehicle (for the big banks) and explains why it should be "Ended".
Ideally the protestor carrying that sign also knows the full history of the Fed, and can provide the phone number and mailing address of any US senator or representative, so if anyone expresses interest in the message, the protestor can tell them exactly what to do and why.
The march/occupation itself should only be the tip of the iceberg of change. Unfortunately it is usually the whole shebang. Just a place for the young ones to vent their uninformed anger, and hook up with each other. :p
Infinite options.
The best course depends on your specific situation, goals, and company-sponsored plan rules. That's why you should spend at least 1% of your time & money to educate yourself and/or find a money manager whom you trust
At one extreme, there is the option of terminating all of your 401k contributions, withdrawing all of your 401k funds, and directly investing these monies in ways that you (or your money manager) believe are best aligned with your goals.
At the other extreme you (and/or your money manager) could simply select different funds for your contributions; funds that perform much better than the ones which your company-sponsored plan "suggests".
Much depends on the specifics of your company's plan. Do they match your "contributions"? How much? On a vesting schedule? With any fund, or only specific approved funds? Etc.
There are many "hooks" to entice people to give up control of large amounts of retirement funds. You need to find the hooks in your plan, and determine whether any of them are actually worth it. Chances are, no, because the guys who made those plans have to skim their cut. But you still need to check.
Fair enough.
Tangential thought: Most Americans wear a suit for 2 of their 3 most important life events--marriage, and death. Obviously you can't wear a suit at your own birth, but if you could, it would probably be 3 for 3.
How insidious is that programming? Even deeper than the Debeers "diamond engagement ring tradition" scam.
If you could change those "traditions", you might go some way towards opening people's eyes to the reality.
Your inability to understand that these ports don't even look similar, and the connectors for each can't even be forced into the other one, continues to amaze.
So they look different, don't fit, have opposite genders, have radically different construction and numbers of pins...exactly how do you think one "inspired" the other?
You obviously haven't looked at any of the pictures.
I'd love to have the requisite time and knowledge to be able to manage my own retirement account, but I don't. And neither do a lot of people.
There are many different levels of management.
Most folks just throw their automatic paycheck deductions at one or more "funds" that their employer told them were appropriate. This is ZERO management. They have absolutely no idea who is managing that money, how they are managing it, and what it is ultimately being used for.
You don't have to actively manage each dollar of your savings. But if you plan to build a retirement nest egg of say a few $100K, it would be kinda stupid to NOT invest a few $1K of your time to learn about the options, and proactively find a money manager whom you can trust to do the right thing.
This is much better than zero management of your nest egg, which places absolute trust in corporations that are inherently sociopathic.
Just put anyone in a suit up against the wall and you won't go too far wrong.
Actually yes, you would.
99+% of people in suits are tools of the aristocracy. They may be well-paid tools...and some of them are even aware of the real social hierarchy in supposedly "classless" America...but they are tools nonetheless.
The real aristocracy does not wear suits on a regular basis. You are just as likely to find an aristo with no shirt and no shoes, on the deck of a yacht moored off a private island.
Other people on the island (who also do not wear suits) manage the high-level details whilst the yach-owner plays.
The folks in suits are the soldiers, in the trenches. That is what it means to be a "white collar" worker these days.
And the 21st century "American Dream" is to wear a suit for long enough that you figure out the system, and become that private-island and yacht owner.
It is a very compelling dream for a great many shallow people, who have no significant talents to contribute to society.
-----
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
-Mark Twain
The behavior of companies is not the pressing problem, it is the government reinforcing those behaviors and making them viable and repeatable that causes the serious harm.
And exactly who do you think purchases the government that reinforces those behaviors?
Go spend some time looking at the campaign finance statistics on opensecrets.org, and you will understand.
Currently these statistics are open and public by law. When you start to have trouble finding these stats. you will know that even the concept of democracy in the USA is well and truly dead.
The protesters are drawing some attention and venting some anger, but that's about it right now.
There is however a huge opportunity for public education.
Instead of angry faces, and moronic signs like "y u not angry?", it would be nice to see some calm & rational folks down there with signs like:
"Bank Locally"
"Manage Your Own Retirement Funds"
"Reinstate Glass-Steagall"
"End the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel"
And if you talked to these people, they would make suggestions like:
1) Move all of your accounts and loans to a transparent, non-profit, local credit union. Or at least to a trusted small local bank.
2) Withdraw all money from your 401K, 403B, IRA, etc and manage it yourself. (The banks and government have lied to you about the long-term benefits of these accounts...which you will see when your retirement funds, which probably were already reduced by poor money management, are hit with the double-whammy of higher capital gains tax plus hyper-inflation).
3) Lobby your local senators and representative to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, cap usurious interest rates, institute clawback laws for insane compensation of bank execs, place the Federal Reserve under ~government~ control (haha! you thought it was under government control?), etc. Call your elected representatives. Write them. Collect signatures of other constituents who will not re-elect them unless they push for these changes.
Etc.
Yeah, my initial drive-imaging experiences were with Ghost, but I gave it up when I got serious about imaging our systems.
PING is much better in my opinion, and not just because it is free.
It does have a resizing-on-the-fly capability (during image creation). I don't use it because I've simply standardized on a 25GB partition for Windows system & programs. I rarely use more than 15GB. Data lives on a different partition with file-level backup.
I boot PING from a USB stick, and save the disk images to an external USB drive. In theory you can put everything on a bootable CD or DVD set, but I've never bothered. Since PING ignores the huge hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys, and provides several choices for compression, you can easily fit a complete image of Windows XP with office apps, on a single DVD.
The observation was about design. Not functionality.
That makes it even more depressing, because those ports don't appear even superficially similar.
The SX-70 has a large beveled bump, around a chunky black plastic insert, with a slot in that plastic that accepts an edge connector from flash bulb or other accessory.
The iPod has a simple hole in the bottom with a male connector wafer inside, the same design as most modern cell phones.
If your vision is very poor...and you view both ports from a distance...I suppose they could both look like blurry black rectangles. That's about it. They aren't even close to the same size.
I didn't mean to waste anyone's time...If you still feel like I should be banned, that's certainly your prerogative.
And yet you did. Though it would be more appropriate to downgrade the idiots who let your musings through.
I mean, this article had approximately the same value as saying "Hey, I can stick a butter knife into the holes on these two devices!". Fail.
No one mentioned pin compatibility. It would be ridiculous to consider pin compatibility between these two devices.
A less-astute consumer like yourself could at least consider appearance, which is what the OP claimed to do when he said the connector was "very similar".
And yet...you cannot even force an ipod cable into the huge slot on this camera, which was designed to accept a PCB edge connector. Even if you could force it, no electrical contacts would be made except maybe with the mangled connector shield. Because (duh) you're trying to jam a female connector into another female connector.
It makes as much sense as taking two extension cords and trying to jam the socket ends of both together, while the plug ends are connected to a potato battery on one, and a 30 kilovolt transformer one the other.
Why is the "dd" suggestion modded as "funny", when it is perhaps the most flexible/practical response to the question?
Personally I use PING (PartImage Is Not Ghost) on my Windows machines, because it knows to ignore stuff like the multi-gigabyte Windows paging and hibernation files. But to each their own.
To the OP: If an ebay buyer is smart enough to find and use a recovery partition, they are probably smart enough to NOT want to use someone else's recovery partition. Be sure to provide the factory install discs (and for Windows, the COA with product key) for every machine if you want to sell them to anyone with half a clue.
This "article" appears to be complete and utter bullshit.
If you value your time, stop reading now.
Much farther down in these comments, someone with lower karma posted links to youtube video & picasa jpegs of the connectors:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSkUM6HonkY
https://picasaweb.google.com/111571551554338213029/WasTheIPodAccessoryPortInspiredByA40YearOldCamera?authuser=0&feat=directlink
These connectors are not even close to compatible:
1) As demonstrated, they do not even fit together.
2) The old camera appears to have a FEMALE connector (accepting a male PCB edge from a flashbulb or whatever), while the iPod has a MALE connector (wafer-card which inserts into the female enclosure on an ipod cable or dock).
3) The iPod connector has 30 contacts, while the old Polaroid connector appears from the pics to have 8 (or at most 9) contacts.
Comparing these connectors is like comparing apples...and dolphins.
Bad slashdot. No dinner. Go to your room.
It looks like someone should ban the OP.
You are obviously an American, and like most Americans, think that the American way is the only way on the planet. There is a fourth option, one that would never occur to a provincial lout like you.
4) You raised your children in Europe, where people don't suffer from the delusion that parents are supposed to be the only ones raising their children.
It is funny that you should make such "provinicial lout" assumptions, since I actually went to primary school in Europe. L'Isle-Jourdain, France, to be precise.
But in your rush to premature judgement, you entirely missed the point.
I said that parents have primary responsibility for their childrens' educations. I did NOT say that they are the only ones who should raise their children.
I'll rephrase this so you might understand: Regardless of whether your children are educated by you, or their grandparents, or a public school, or the village, or highly-paid nannies and tutors...YOU are still ultimately responsible.
If you do not like the "system" or "teachers" that are educating your children, then it is YOUR responsibility to find a better system or better teachers. That is exactly the point to which I responded.
FYI, I have lived much of my life in places where children are educated by a broader community...extended family, village elders, etc...and I believe that the best education does come from a wholistic environment, with many different people and age groups helping to educate the young.
But still, the primary responsibility to find and evaluate these teachers lies with the parents.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your English is not great, so you misunderstood my post. I would however appreciate an apology for your misguided personal insults.
And good luck raising your children well.
Thanks for the barely-readable reply, and clear personal insult, though I was really hoping for a reply from the OP.
At least 10 of my close friends and family members are (or have been) teachers in the public education system, on the east coast and west coast, in districts ranging from very low socioeconomic (eg Bayview SF) to very high SE (eg Palo Alto).
Is the public system broken in many ways? Yes...though much of the breakage was caused by political crap like NCLB.
Do you get what you pay for? Generally...yes.
Are parents still ultimately responsible for their childrens' educations? YES.
Do the teachers "coddle" kids? Sometimes, some places, but overall, not nearly as much as you would have seen in the 1960s or 1970s or 1980s.
I'm curious..when did you go to public school? And what are your credentials as a parent or teacher?