I'm also in a rural area, and my DSL service is 1.5Mbps/512Kbps for $80/month. And that's the ONLY alternative other than satellite available in the area. Service is rock solid, but it sure is a skinny pipe.
My home has been completely CF for 6 years now. Early on, I had purchased small lots from a wide variety of manufacturers to determine which ones were better, and it was quickly apparent that Home Depot's Commercial Electric brand outdid all the rest in terms of performance and cost, and I've been pleased with the lifespan as well. I do not have any problems with slow turn on, and they reach full brightness in just 20sec or so. The only bulb in the house with slow turn-on is a Phillips CF buglight on the front porch...
I saw a sizable reduction in my electricity bill, and changing a light bulb is now a relatively rare event in this household.
Now, in my shop, I use the 4ft T8 bulbs. Marvelous light output.
Minor note. Most ceiling fans with remote controls do not like the inductive load of the CF bulbs. The bulbs will flicker badly. In those fixtures, I put a single low wattage (20W) incandescent bulb along with the other CFs, to provide enough resistive load to keep the triacs operating. Same is true of most lights controlled by motion detectors.
I live in the United States, in Arkansas (central US). The large majority of our state's electricity is nuclear, and it works quite well for us. Much less expensive than natural gas, so much so that an adjacent state (Louisiana) has sued to transfer some of their utility cost to us, because they mandated that the utility company (which services both states) use natural gas rather than nuclear, and now they're paying the price. Unfortunately, the federal government believes their complaint has some merit, so our rates will be going up to cover their poor decisions.
Anyway, I have a pure electric (heat pump) house, and it works quite well for me. Weather is colder here in the winter than in the UK, so heat pumps should work nicely there.
I remember point masses and spring quite well...I did an undergraduate thesis on acoustic vibrations in crystals and used a mass and spring model for my simulations. I was pretty proud of it, until I looked at a good friend's thesis. She had done one on metal diffusion using quantum mechanical principles. I didn't have the guts to let her look at my thesis.:)
I obtained my M.S. at the University of Illinois...
What I have seen is that since the tech collapse of 2000, new grad positions have been HARD to come by, but I see campus recruitment has started again. So, there's some small glimmer of hope for newly generated new grads, as well as for folks who may be underemployed. But I kind of doubt we'll see the gold rush of the late 1990s.
I didn't mean that absolutely nothing from C.S. is of value. I took a numerical methods class while working on my physics B.S., and some small amount of that has proven useful. But the most important skill is the ability to research and find answers to problems, rather than hoping to rely on a palette of algorithms and methods. The philosophy classes I took on logic and argumentation styles have proven more valuable than so many things I have taken. Still, the best foot in the door is the list of stuff you've created. And I'll be honest...I've interviewed a LOT of people who hoped an MCSE certificate would gain them entry. Perhaps it does in some jobs at some companies. Neither does any Linux certification. I've designed software that runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, SVR4, VMS, blah blah blah, and focusing on the architecture and design of the solution has always been more important than the label on the box. I'm not saying certification is not useful some places, but it's not an automatic ticket to gainful employment.
Well, actually I had been writing software for about 8-9 years before getting my first job. I was self-taught on IBM 360 assembly language and FORTRAN and BASIC in high school, then designed computer systems and wrote software for them as a research assistant while in college. My first job with the company I've spent the last 20 years at was a summer internship in a manufacturing facility, in the test engineering department. Spent a summer generating reports.:) I showed an aptitude for computer systems, so the manager of the test engineering department tried me out on creating some software for automating tests. After another couple of summers as a coop student, I had a reputation as quite a proficient software designer, so my first permanent position was in software design.
[disclaimer: I am not authorized to speak for my company; they are not responsible for my statements, and I don't identify them.]
I have been a manager and recruiter for my company, traveling to colleges for interviews as well as hosting local job fairs in major cities. I'll be honest with you; the American citizens did not fare very well in the interviews. Based on the conversations, I'd have to say they spent far too much time partying in college rather than building the experience necessary to do the job. The Indians and Chinese, on the other hand, all seemed to be quite motivated to build the kind of solid experience that is necessary to be a success. To a man/woman, their portfolios indicated a dedication to putting forth the effort to hone skills, rather than see how many beers can pass through a urinary tract.
Frankly, when I was hiring (I'm now in a different position), I preferred to hire US citizens, because the paperwork required to hire non-citizens is painful. However, I really could not find enough qualified citizens to fill our positions, and I had to hire non-citizens. Did I discover that some of the non-citizens had lied and padded their resume in order to get the job? Yes, but not as many as you might wish to think.
What encouragement would I give new CS folks? Don't think that your CS degree means you're qualified, because it doesn't. I've never met a new graduate that still did not need about 6 months of training before they were truly qualified for the work that is required. Instead, while you are earning your degree, focus on putting your energies into creating projects and products outside of your class assignments, things that show you have creativity and initiative. Because, guess what? Your competitors are...
A CS degree, or some other technical degree, is merely table stakes to get your resume looked at. The classes you take don't really mean too much in the real world. It's all about demonstrating what you can DO...
Completely agree. Performance in software development is independent of educational background; success hinges on talent and desire.
My formal education (B.S. and M.S.) in physics, although I always enjoyed designing, building, and programming computers as a hobby. When the physics department head at the graduate school I was attended congratulated us on our newly minted M.S. degrees and told us that, on average, it would take 9 more years to get a Ph.D., I did the math and split for a software/systems development career. Never have regretted it, and have never encountered a situation where lack of formal C.S. training was a problem.
Frankly, among all the people I have encountered the last 20 years of professional work, the people with math backgrounds have historically been the most productive and creative.
Heh? In 1994, we were already buying commercial softphone applications for PC to PC telephony. In 1995, we had the ability to click a button on a web browser and launch a voice session with a customer service rep in an ACD pool. In 1996, we demonstrated a macintosh running voip software connected to a gateway that put the voice session out on an ISUP trunk to an M-1 PBX. I'm having difficulty understanding the originality of a 2000 filing on this subject.
I live in a rural area (yes, by choice. Moved from a large city to this location the very day DSL was made available), and I pay $80/month for 1.5Mb/512Kb.
There is no other option other than satellite, and the latency is too high on satellite for it to be used for VPN traffic.
I pay twice as much for 1/2 the bandwidth I used to in the city, and my old residence in the city now gets 10Mb/3Mb for $40/month. However, I get to look out the windows of my home office at rolling hills, trees, deer, skunks, black bear, and I don't mind SO much.:)
Where does all this "US citizens are idiots" sentiment come from?
Hmmm...I work for a large multinational corporation, and I daily work with people in Ireland, Canada, Turkey, India, China, and Australia. I think I realize people in other countries do own and use computers...
Let's bring it back to the issue at hand instead of stretching for reasons to do more USA bashing.
The word was "Mom", and it was mis-interpreted as "Aunt". Someone went off talking about "Mum", and I was trying to use mild humor to bring it back to "Mom" from "Mum", and I start getting all this anti-USA garbage.
Did I say ANYTHING ANYWHERE about other countries being bad or non-existent? I don't think so.
With all the USA bashing I read in here daily, I wonder how it would come across if we really did start saying bad things about other countries, rather than it all being in fevered imaginations...
I was speaking for myself, and for the interests of clarification in the comparison...I was trying for a humorous way to bring us back to the point that the comparison was between "Mom" and "Aunt", not "Mum" and "Aunt".
Mum is a (chiefly British) abbreviation of "Mummy", like someone else said. The primary definition of Mummy relates to dead Egyptians, while there are a whole host of definitions for "mum" that are more used than "abbreviation of Mummy (Mommy).
In response to another poster, I did not presume we all were in the USA. However, the whole point of the article is that the software confused "Mom" with "Aunt". Nowhere does "Mum" come into this demonstration.
Mum? We're not in the UK or Australia...try "Mom"...
While there are some jurisdictions that allow first cousins, I'm not aware of any that allow marriage to sisters.
Most ofolks I know pronounce "aunt" as "ant" Some of my easter ozark relatives pronounce "aunt" as "ain't" Some of my northern relatives pronounce "aunt" as "awnt"
So, with my northern relatives, "mom" and "aunt" have the same vowel sound.
And of course, "soft drink" is variously pronounced "pop", "soda", "sodie", and "coke" (in Texas, every soft drink is pronounced "coke")
I solved this problem years ago. I programmed my (VoIP) phone service to respond to all anonymous calls with a message requesting them to put this number on their DO NOT CALL list. Then dropped them immediately into voice mail in case there really WAS something they wanted to say. In the initial voice mails, I heard lots of background noise, and people saying, "Hey! Listen to this!" to their coworkers, but they all got the hint.
I was responding to your assertion that education makes a person smart.
1) By your definition, I'm intelligent, since I have an advanced degree. 2) However, I have encountered quite a few people with advanced degrees who were "dumbasses". 3) I've encountered a number of individuals witch just a high school education who are the wisest folks I know. 4) Consequently, I do not believe that my degrees makes me intelligent (I was just born intelligent.:) ).
I respect your right to believe that God is imaginary. I disagree with it, but I support your right to hold that belief.
I'm one of those dumbasses that worships a deity. Oh, wait...I forgot...I have a masters degree in physics...guess I'm not a complete dumbass...
Anyway, the dumbest prof I ever had the "pleasure" to study under was a PhD economics prof, who insisted that, "Trade imbalances are a great way to run an economy, because we get hard merchandise and the other countries get nothing but a bunch of paper in return." I argued this stupid point with him in class to no avail. On the semester examine, he had an essay question on the exam where he wanted us to regurgitate this moronic view back to him. I knew what he wanted, but instead detailed the problems with such an economic philosophy. Ended up getting a B in the class rather than an A, and that put me over the line from summa cum laude to magna cum laude.
Yeah, perhaps it was "dumb" on my part not to tell the prof what he (foolishly) wanted to hear, but I just couldn't stomache regurgitating what I know to be falsehood.
Same way that I've never lied to my children about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. They've known all along that those are just fun make believe.
Cowardice and Heroism exist on both sides of the aisle. Partisan arguments are pointless and fruitless. Both democrats and republicans desire to run the show the way they see fit, and both have good and bad points, both have honest and dishonest men and women wrapped in their respective cloaks.
I understand, and by and large agree with, your thesis that humans are self-absorbed, self-interested beings. However, how would you interpret those individuals who have thrown themselves on handgrenades to save their platoon buddies from death? Death was virtually certain for these individuals, and there was some opportunity to escape from the situation with only minor or moderate injury, yet they chose to sacrifice themselves for their comrades. By the self-interest theory, it was an inappropriate decision, even if they considered the possibility of posthumus accolade, because they wouldn't be there to experience the reward.
Rather, I believe that people are able to rationally select a greater good, even if it brings personal harm. I'm not saying that most people actually do this on a regular basis, but the capability is there. On the other hand, I meet more and more people who meet the clinical definition of sociopaths, who truly are incapable of considering anything beyonds themselves, and they are scary people.
Our church received a set of PIII desktop machines when the local school system upgraded their hardware, and I was tasked with setting them up. The hard drives had been wiped, and I was loathe to buy/administer Win98 licenses, and XP does not run very well on 64MB of memory, and I didn't want to ask the church for more memory AND license fees, so I just installed DSL (Damn Small Linix) on the boxes. Yes, I grok the jokes about DSL on church machines...
Anyway, the small amount of Windows educational software that the church wants to run on the machines runs just fine under Wine, and the machines are quite responsive.
I did try Knoppix and SuSE before trying DSL, and they just needed more memory than the machines had to work effectively.
That's quite interesting, in that it's completely different from the experience here (rural midwest). The only trailers I saw I downloaded from the Serenity website.
They must not have spent much on promotion of the movie. Absolutely the ONLY place I ever saw it advertised was on Sci-Fi channel, at least in this area. Absolutely no one around here who was not a Sci-Fi channel watcher had a clue it was on, or anything about what it was about.
My son (14yr) and I heartily enjoyed the movie. Others would have, if they had KNOWN about the film.
My daughter (12yr) bought the DVD the instant it was available, because she didn't have the opportunity to see it at the theater.
Granted, this was 13 years ago, but back in the days when I was involved in recruiting for my company (a large high-tech firm), we went through strict training to guarantee that race was NOT an issue in our recruiting. While we did not have any racial quotas to fill, we were urged to impartially evaluate everyone.
Full disclosure: I'm a WASP.
Now, to my personal experiences as a recruiter on college campuses: 1) The whites had spent too much time partying and were generally underskilled. 2) The blacks openly expressed that they would not accept an entry level programmer job. It was either technical management or product line management, or they were not interested. 3) The asians and the Indians were motivated and had plenty of extracurricular experience (either that, or they were lying through their teeth. I never did know, since I was not the hiring manager.)
We really tried to give preference to US citizens, because the whole green card H1-B thing is a major pain to deal with. But in the end, we had to go with the people that appeared to have the skills, the drive, and the willingness to do the technical jobs that were available.
Later (about 6 years ago), I was again recruiting at various job fairs. This time, the people were a mixture of folks looking for better jobs, or non-citizens looking for someone to sponsor their stay in the US. The citizens looking for better jobs were still underqualified, and the non-citizens were almost uniformly F-1 visas trying to convert to green card or H-1B. We found very few satisfactory candidates from that round.
In this rural county (about 20,000 people in the county) We have one sizable town, with a population of 13,000.
In this town, there is a Walmart and 4 other grocery stores. Walmart does well over 50% of the grocery business in this county.
I'm all for local businesses, and patronize them when feasible (I MUCH prefer the local hardware stores over Home Depot), but when it comes to food, which is such a large chunk of our monthly budget, we HAVE to use comparison ad shopping at Walmart. Walmart honors all other competitors ads, which means we can shop a single store and get the best prices on anything anyone has on sale. We save $50/week using comparison ads, and that pays for the clothing budget (yeah, I know $50/week clothing budget for a family of 6 is ridiculously small).
Anyway, I'm concerned about the viability of local businesses, but afraid the home budget trumps that concern sometimes.
Walmart gets all my money
on
Supermarket VOIP
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Walmart gets pretty much ALL my money spent at retail. And with a family of 6, we spend a lot.
Not saying I'm happy about it, but can't make the paycheck stretch as far anyplace else.
But Newegg gets my computer equipment expenditures...
I was part of the MTV generation in college. Anytime I was in the dorm room, I had MTV on. Married a woman who absolutely loves music. She still plays it loud, 23 years later. But we don't buy many CDs anymore, unless I buy her a CD replacement for one of her old LPs. We just can't find anything new that we like as much as the stuff we already have (Journey, ELO, Boston, Styx, Men At Work, Kansas, Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd, Cheap Trick, Foreigner, Eagles, Flock of Seagulls, yadda yadda) unless it is some new Contemporary Christian groups (yeah, I grok the fundamental conflict there).
In my late 30s, I started listening to talk radio rather than rock stations. Now, in my early 40s, I don't listen to radio at all. I periodically try the available rock stations, and all those that claim to be playing "oldies" are playing heavy metal crap rather than anything I want to listen to.
I'd love to have a service that played new music that was any good (my definition of "good" being the operative word here), but I've just been unable to find it. So, I just continue with the music that I already have. The RIAA is wrong; it's not that people like me are pirating music; we just can't find anything worth buying.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm also in a rural area, and my DSL service is 1.5Mbps/512Kbps for $80/month. And that's the ONLY alternative other than satellite available in the area. Service is rock solid, but it sure is a skinny pipe.
My home has been completely CF for 6 years now. Early on, I had purchased small lots from a wide variety of manufacturers to determine which ones were better, and it was quickly apparent that Home Depot's Commercial Electric brand outdid all the rest in terms of performance and cost, and I've been pleased with the lifespan as well. I do not have any problems with slow turn on, and they reach full brightness in just 20sec or so. The only bulb in the house with slow turn-on is a Phillips CF buglight on the front porch...
I saw a sizable reduction in my electricity bill, and changing a light bulb is now a relatively rare event in this household.
Now, in my shop, I use the 4ft T8 bulbs. Marvelous light output.
Minor note. Most ceiling fans with remote controls do not like the inductive load of the CF bulbs. The bulbs will flicker badly. In those fixtures, I put a single low wattage (20W) incandescent bulb along with the other CFs, to provide enough resistive load to keep the triacs operating. Same is true of most lights controlled by motion detectors.
I live in the United States, in Arkansas (central US). The large majority of our state's electricity is nuclear, and it works quite well for us. Much less expensive than natural gas, so much so that an adjacent state (Louisiana) has sued to transfer some of their utility cost to us, because they mandated that the utility company (which services both states) use natural gas rather than nuclear, and now they're paying the price. Unfortunately, the federal government believes their complaint has some merit, so our rates will be going up to cover their poor decisions.
Anyway, I have a pure electric (heat pump) house, and it works quite well for me. Weather is colder here in the winter than in the UK, so heat pumps should work nicely there.
I remember point masses and spring quite well...I did an undergraduate thesis on acoustic vibrations in crystals and used a mass and spring model for my simulations. I was pretty proud of it, until I looked at a good friend's thesis. She had done one on metal diffusion using quantum mechanical principles. I didn't have the guts to let her look at my thesis. :)
I obtained my M.S. at the University of Illinois...
What I have seen is that since the tech collapse of 2000, new grad positions have been HARD to come by, but I see campus recruitment has started again. So, there's some small glimmer of hope for newly generated new grads, as well as for folks who may be underemployed. But I kind of doubt we'll see the gold rush of the late 1990s.
I didn't mean that absolutely nothing from C.S. is of value. I took a numerical methods class while working on my physics B.S., and some small amount of that has proven useful. But the most important skill is the ability to research and find answers to problems, rather than hoping to rely on a palette of algorithms and methods. The philosophy classes I took on logic and argumentation styles have proven more valuable than so many things I have taken. Still, the best foot in the door is the list of stuff you've created. And I'll be honest...I've interviewed a LOT of people who hoped an MCSE certificate would gain them entry. Perhaps it does in some jobs at some companies. Neither does any Linux certification. I've designed software that runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, SVR4, VMS, blah blah blah, and focusing on the architecture and design of the solution has always been more important than the label on the box. I'm not saying certification is not useful some places, but it's not an automatic ticket to gainful employment.
Well, actually I had been writing software for about 8-9 years before getting my first job. I was self-taught on IBM 360 assembly language and FORTRAN and BASIC in high school, then designed computer systems and wrote software for them as a research assistant while in college. My first job with the company I've spent the last 20 years at was a summer internship in a manufacturing facility, in the test engineering department. Spent a summer generating reports. :) I showed an aptitude for computer systems, so the manager of the test engineering department tried me out on creating some software for automating tests. After another couple of summers as a coop student, I had a reputation as quite a proficient software designer, so my first permanent position was in software design.
[disclaimer: I am not authorized to speak for my company; they are not responsible for my statements, and I don't identify them.]
I have been a manager and recruiter for my company, traveling to colleges for interviews as well as hosting local job fairs in major cities. I'll be honest with you; the American citizens did not fare very well in the interviews. Based on the conversations, I'd have to say they spent far too much time partying in college rather than building the experience necessary to do the job. The Indians and Chinese, on the other hand, all seemed to be quite motivated to build the kind of solid experience that is necessary to be a success. To a man/woman, their portfolios indicated a dedication to putting forth the effort to hone skills, rather than see how many beers can pass through a urinary tract.
Frankly, when I was hiring (I'm now in a different position), I preferred to hire US citizens, because the paperwork required to hire non-citizens is painful. However, I really could not find enough qualified citizens to fill our positions, and I had to hire non-citizens. Did I discover that some of the non-citizens had lied and padded their resume in order to get the job? Yes, but not as many as you might wish to think.
What encouragement would I give new CS folks? Don't think that your CS degree means you're qualified, because it doesn't. I've never met a new graduate that still did not need about 6 months of training before they were truly qualified for the work that is required. Instead, while you are earning your degree, focus on putting your energies into creating projects and products outside of your class assignments, things that show you have creativity and initiative. Because, guess what? Your competitors are...
A CS degree, or some other technical degree, is merely table stakes to get your resume looked at. The classes you take don't really mean too much in the real world. It's all about demonstrating what you can DO...
Completely agree. Performance in software development is independent of educational background; success hinges on talent and desire.
My formal education (B.S. and M.S.) in physics, although I always enjoyed designing, building, and programming computers as a hobby. When the physics department head at the graduate school I was attended congratulated us on our newly minted M.S. degrees and told us that, on average, it would take 9 more years to get a Ph.D., I did the math and split for a software/systems development career. Never have regretted it, and have never encountered a situation where lack of formal C.S. training was a problem.
Frankly, among all the people I have encountered the last 20 years of professional work, the people with math backgrounds have historically been the most productive and creative.
Heh? In 1994, we were already buying commercial softphone applications for PC to PC telephony. In 1995, we had the ability to click a button on a web browser and launch a voice session with a customer service rep in an ACD pool. In 1996, we demonstrated a macintosh running voip software connected to a gateway that put the voice session out on an ISUP trunk to an M-1 PBX. I'm having difficulty understanding the originality of a 2000 filing on this subject.
I live in a rural area (yes, by choice. Moved from a large city to this location the very day DSL was made available), and I pay $80/month for 1.5Mb/512Kb.
:)
There is no other option other than satellite, and the latency is too high on satellite for it to be used for VPN traffic.
I pay twice as much for 1/2 the bandwidth I used to in the city, and my old residence in the city now gets 10Mb/3Mb for $40/month. However, I get to look out the windows of my home office at rolling hills, trees, deer, skunks, black bear, and I don't mind SO much.
Where does all this "US citizens are idiots" sentiment come from?
Hmmm...I work for a large multinational corporation, and I daily work with people in Ireland, Canada, Turkey, India, China, and Australia. I think I realize people in other countries do own and use computers...
Let's bring it back to the issue at hand instead of stretching for reasons to do more USA bashing.
The word was "Mom", and it was mis-interpreted as "Aunt". Someone went off talking about "Mum", and I was trying to use mild humor to bring it back to "Mom" from "Mum", and I start getting all this anti-USA garbage.
Did I say ANYTHING ANYWHERE about other countries being bad or non-existent? I don't think so.
With all the USA bashing I read in here daily, I wonder how it would come across if we really did start saying bad things about other countries, rather than it all being in fevered imaginations...
I was speaking for myself, and for the interests of clarification in the comparison...I was trying for a humorous way to bring us back to the point that the comparison was between "Mom" and "Aunt", not "Mum" and "Aunt".
:)
Mum is a (chiefly British) abbreviation of "Mummy", like someone else said. The primary definition of Mummy relates to dead Egyptians, while there are a whole host of definitions for "mum" that are more used than "abbreviation of Mummy (Mommy).
In response to another poster, I did not presume we all were in the USA. However, the whole point of the article is that the software confused "Mom" with "Aunt". Nowhere does "Mum" come into this demonstration.
Got it?
Mum? We're not in the UK or Australia...try "Mom"...
While there are some jurisdictions that allow first cousins, I'm not aware of any that allow marriage to sisters.
Most ofolks I know pronounce "aunt" as "ant"
Some of my easter ozark relatives pronounce "aunt" as "ain't"
Some of my northern relatives pronounce "aunt" as "awnt"
So, with my northern relatives, "mom" and "aunt" have the same vowel sound.
And of course, "soft drink" is variously pronounced "pop", "soda", "sodie", and "coke" (in Texas, every soft drink is pronounced "coke")
I solved this problem years ago. I programmed my (VoIP) phone service to respond to all anonymous calls with a message requesting them to put this number on their DO NOT CALL list. Then dropped them immediately into voice mail in case there really WAS something they wanted to say. In the initial voice mails, I heard lots of background noise, and people saying, "Hey! Listen to this!" to their coworkers, but they all got the hint.
I was responding to your assertion that education makes a person smart.
:) ).
1) By your definition, I'm intelligent, since I have an advanced degree.
2) However, I have encountered quite a few people with advanced degrees who were "dumbasses".
3) I've encountered a number of individuals witch just a high school education who are the wisest folks I know.
4) Consequently, I do not believe that my degrees makes me intelligent (I was just born intelligent.
I respect your right to believe that God is imaginary. I disagree with it, but I support your right to hold that belief.
Howdy, Troll.
I'm one of those dumbasses that worships a deity. Oh, wait...I forgot...I have a masters degree in physics...guess I'm not a complete dumbass...
Anyway, the dumbest prof I ever had the "pleasure" to study under was a PhD economics prof, who insisted that, "Trade imbalances are a great way to run an economy, because we get hard merchandise and the other countries get nothing but a bunch of paper in return." I argued this stupid point with him in class to no avail. On the semester examine, he had an essay question on the exam where he wanted us to regurgitate this moronic view back to him. I knew what he wanted, but instead detailed the problems with such an economic philosophy. Ended up getting a B in the class rather than an A, and that put me over the line from summa cum laude to magna cum laude.
Yeah, perhaps it was "dumb" on my part not to tell the prof what he (foolishly) wanted to hear, but I just couldn't stomache regurgitating what I know to be falsehood.
Same way that I've never lied to my children about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. They've known all along that those are just fun make believe.
Matt, I was curious as to what Nortel product this was that was crashing.
Cowardice and Heroism exist on both sides of the aisle. Partisan arguments are pointless and fruitless. Both democrats and republicans desire to run the show the way they see fit, and both have good and bad points, both have honest and dishonest men and women wrapped in their respective cloaks.
I understand, and by and large agree with, your thesis that humans are self-absorbed, self-interested beings. However, how would you interpret those individuals who have thrown themselves on handgrenades to save their platoon buddies from death? Death was virtually certain for these individuals, and there was some opportunity to escape from the situation with only minor or moderate injury, yet they chose to sacrifice themselves for their comrades. By the self-interest theory, it was an inappropriate decision, even if they considered the possibility of posthumus accolade, because they wouldn't be there to experience the reward.
Rather, I believe that people are able to rationally select a greater good, even if it brings personal harm. I'm not saying that most people actually do this on a regular basis, but the capability is there. On the other hand, I meet more and more people who meet the clinical definition of sociopaths, who truly are incapable of considering anything beyonds themselves, and they are scary people.
Our church received a set of PIII desktop machines when the local school system upgraded their hardware, and I was tasked with setting them up. The hard drives had been wiped, and I was loathe to buy/administer Win98 licenses, and XP does not run very well on 64MB of memory, and I didn't want to ask the church for more memory AND license fees, so I just installed DSL (Damn Small Linix) on the boxes. Yes, I grok the jokes about DSL on church machines...
Anyway, the small amount of Windows educational software that the church wants to run on the machines runs just fine under Wine, and the machines are quite responsive.
I did try Knoppix and SuSE before trying DSL, and they just needed more memory than the machines had to work effectively.
That's quite interesting, in that it's completely different from the experience here (rural midwest). The only trailers I saw I downloaded from the Serenity website.
They must not have spent much on promotion of the movie. Absolutely the ONLY place I ever saw it advertised was on Sci-Fi channel, at least in this area. Absolutely no one around here who was not a Sci-Fi channel watcher had a clue it was on, or anything about what it was about.
My son (14yr) and I heartily enjoyed the movie. Others would have, if they had KNOWN about the film.
My daughter (12yr) bought the DVD the instant it was available, because she didn't have the opportunity to see it at the theater.
Granted, this was 13 years ago, but back in the days when I was involved in recruiting for my company (a large high-tech firm), we went through strict training to guarantee that race was NOT an issue in our recruiting. While we did not have any racial quotas to fill, we were urged to impartially evaluate everyone.
Full disclosure: I'm a WASP.
Now, to my personal experiences as a recruiter on college campuses:
1) The whites had spent too much time partying and were generally underskilled.
2) The blacks openly expressed that they would not accept an entry level programmer job. It was either technical management or product line management, or they were not interested.
3) The asians and the Indians were motivated and had plenty of extracurricular experience (either that, or they were lying through their teeth. I never did know, since I was not the hiring manager.)
We really tried to give preference to US citizens, because the whole green card H1-B thing is a major pain to deal with. But in the end, we had to go with the people that appeared to have the skills, the drive, and the willingness to do the technical jobs that were available.
Later (about 6 years ago), I was again recruiting at various job fairs. This time, the people were a mixture of folks looking for better jobs, or non-citizens looking for someone to sponsor their stay in the US. The citizens looking for better jobs were still underqualified, and the non-citizens were almost uniformly F-1 visas trying to convert to green card or H-1B. We found very few satisfactory candidates from that round.
In this rural county (about 20,000 people in the county) We have one sizable town, with a population of 13,000.
In this town, there is a Walmart and 4 other grocery stores. Walmart does well over 50% of the grocery business in this county.
I'm all for local businesses, and patronize them when feasible (I MUCH prefer the local hardware stores over Home Depot), but when it comes to food, which is such a large chunk of our monthly budget, we HAVE to use comparison ad shopping at Walmart. Walmart honors all other competitors ads, which means we can shop a single store and get the best prices on anything anyone has on sale. We save $50/week using comparison ads, and that pays for the clothing budget (yeah, I know $50/week clothing budget for a family of 6 is ridiculously small).
Anyway, I'm concerned about the viability of local businesses, but afraid the home budget trumps that concern sometimes.
Walmart gets pretty much ALL my money spent at retail. And with a family of 6, we spend a lot.
Not saying I'm happy about it, but can't make the paycheck stretch as far anyplace else.
But Newegg gets my computer equipment expenditures...
I was part of the MTV generation in college. Anytime I was in the dorm room, I had MTV on. Married a woman who absolutely loves music. She still plays it loud, 23 years later. But we don't buy many CDs anymore, unless I buy her a CD replacement for one of her old LPs. We just can't find anything new that we like as much as the stuff we already have (Journey, ELO, Boston, Styx, Men At Work, Kansas, Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd, Cheap Trick, Foreigner, Eagles, Flock of Seagulls, yadda yadda) unless it is some new Contemporary Christian groups (yeah, I grok the fundamental conflict there).
In my late 30s, I started listening to talk radio rather than rock stations. Now, in my early 40s, I don't listen to radio at all. I periodically try the available rock stations, and all those that claim to be playing "oldies" are playing heavy metal crap rather than anything I want to listen to.
I'd love to have a service that played new music that was any good (my definition of "good" being the operative word here), but I've just been unable to find it. So, I just continue with the music that I already have. The RIAA is wrong; it's not that people like me are pirating music; we just can't find anything worth buying.