There was a fugitive named Bucky Phillips who escaped from a New York State prison and was roaming around Western New York. People got a big kick out of it, saw him as a folk hero, printed up "Run Bucky Run" t-shirts, the whole thing.
Then he started shooting at cops, and killed a trooper.
Funny how he stopped being so relatable after that.
I use an HP "Media Center" PC, running Ubuntu with MythTV and accessed with a Microsoft Remote Keyboard. Two analog tuners for cable, and an HDHomerun hooked to a powered antenna for over the air HD content.
MythTV runs on virtual desktop one, and a web browser on virtual desktop two.
Or, you could stop printing out all of your emails.
Oh, who am I kidding. We've still got professors at my school lecturing with transparencies they produced on typewriters. It's going to be years before the entirety of the faculty is willing to handle paperless communication.
I work in academia, which is in many ways culturally similar to working in government. I wonder how many of these inefficiencies persist in order to placate an aged workforce that refuses to embrace technology and learn to do anything in a new way.
I see a lot of people around here just sort of "running out the clock" - I can't imagine we're unique.
We have a group of professors at the college I work for who insist on using Powerpoint as a page layout tool for making posters. It drives the desktop support people and the print shop absolutely batty.
If you haven't read "The Two Income Trap", you might be interested in it; it's essentially an expansion of this idea.
The first two income families had a huge advantage in terms of acquiring desirable housing. So more and more people started doing it, and now it's essentially mandatory in many places.
For me it was a Jesuit high school, Rochester, NY, mid-90s.
Woe be unto the student who did anything wrong during the early spring, when the snow first melted. Because you'd be spending the next week in ankle-deep mud, dredging for the priest's cigarette butts under the windows of the residence.
Congratulations! You are the first person in the history of Slashdot to type "MAC" and not mean it as a borderline-illiterate abbreviation for "Macintosh". Excellent work.
Today, we have ignorant marketeers, corrupt accountants and lawyers running companies. And they don't know what their companies even do for a living.
I'm taking MBA courses right now -- yeah, yeah, boo hiss, whatever -- and the other night one of my professors asked what seemed like a simple question.
"How many of you know where the company that you work for gets its money from?"
Out of nearly forty students, only half a dozen hands went up.
Scary stuff. We're all just hanging out, doing some minor task and watching the clock with no idea of a bigger picture.
--saint
Re:And yet they do nothing to discourage the car
on
The Fresca Rebellion
·
· Score: 1
I bike to work in Buffalo, year 'round. It's really not so bad. Good gloves help.
Speaking as someone at an.edu, we all saw this news yesterday. There are many other venues besides Slashdot that cater to higher ed IT, and it's being discussed elsewhere.
I wouldn't call the low comment count a sign of disinterest, but rather a sign that there aren't a lot of our peers here so it's not a productive forum for this sort of thing.
My crazy friend Tom , the same age as me, said once when we were teenagers that someday you would be able to play records in your car.
DeSoto actually had a system called the Highway Hi-fi that did this -- it was a turntable with some sort of fluid base to keep bumps in the road from making the needle skip. There were only a half dozen or so albums that were compatible with its weird geometry, though.
This random thought brought to you by Slashdot Car Nerd #227599.
I live in Buffalo, NY, the second- or third-poorest city in America, depending on who you ask. Yes, the city neighborhoods tend to have lots of corner stores that sell grape drink and Li'l Debbie knockoffs. But there are supermarkets and farmer's markets all over the city as well.
The entire city is fewer than ten miles wide. A bicycle trip with a backpack could retrieve a week's worth of fresh produce in less than an hour.
The problem isn't availability, it's education. Unfortunately, since poor neighborhoods also tend to have lots of single parents and a tremendous high school dropout rate, teaching that there's better food -- and a better life -- available is a bit of an uphill battle.
There was a time when it was possible to work your way through college as a waiter or a hospital orderly. That was before the government started shovelling money into our universities.
That was also back before colleges became thinly veiled resorts. Two hundred channels, wireless everywhere, free everything, newly renovated dining facilities -- there's a whole lot of money being spent on the non-academic parts of colleges.
I work at my alma mater, and I can barely recognize it.
Slashdot Mirror
There was a fugitive named Bucky Phillips who escaped from a New York State prison and was roaming around Western New York. People got a big kick out of it, saw him as a folk hero, printed up "Run Bucky Run" t-shirts, the whole thing.
Then he started shooting at cops, and killed a trooper.
Funny how he stopped being so relatable after that.
--saint
I'm afraid not - the tuner in mine was a standard Hauppage PVR-150 model, and I added a second one myself. I've never heard of an "XCode 2100".
Did you try asking on the MythTV mailing list? When I built my first mythbox with ATI TV Wonders, they were very helpful.
--saint
I use an HP "Media Center" PC, running Ubuntu with MythTV and accessed with a Microsoft Remote Keyboard. Two analog tuners for cable, and an HDHomerun hooked to a powered antenna for over the air HD content.
MythTV runs on virtual desktop one, and a web browser on virtual desktop two.
--saint
Or, you could stop printing out all of your emails.
Oh, who am I kidding. We've still got professors at my school lecturing with transparencies they produced on typewriters. It's going to be years before the entirety of the faculty is willing to handle paperless communication.
--saint
I work in academia, which is in many ways culturally similar to working in government. I wonder how many of these inefficiencies persist in order to placate an aged workforce that refuses to embrace technology and learn to do anything in a new way.
I see a lot of people around here just sort of "running out the clock" - I can't imagine we're unique.
--saint
We have a group of professors at the college I work for who insist on using Powerpoint as a page layout tool for making posters. It drives the desktop support people and the print shop absolutely batty.
Hammer, nail, etc.
--saint
If you haven't read "The Two Income Trap", you might be interested in it; it's essentially an expansion of this idea.
The first two income families had a huge advantage in terms of acquiring desirable housing. So more and more people started doing it, and now it's essentially mandatory in many places.
--saint
For me it was a Jesuit high school, Rochester, NY, mid-90s.
Woe be unto the student who did anything wrong during the early spring, when the snow first melted. Because you'd be spending the next week in ankle-deep mud, dredging for the priest's cigarette butts under the windows of the residence.
--saint
As you can tell, after ten years of this, I'm fed up with trying to support my idiot family.
That's weird. Because judging from your other posts here on Slashdot, you've got excellent social skills and a surfeit of compassion.
Congratulations! You are the first person in the history of Slashdot to type "MAC" and not mean it as a borderline-illiterate abbreviation for "Macintosh". Excellent work.
Yeah, and they won't sell a decent maintenance contract on any of it.
Try getting a G4 or G5 XServe power supply out of them. That certainly taught us not to let the local Apple fanboy put things in the data center.
--saint
Time for another thousand posts on how Evil Apple should leave in support for hardware that they don't sell. Fantastic.
--saint
Hug rejected.
I just read that, and in my head, it was Dwight Schrute's voice. I'm pretty sure that he is now the Official Voice for your posts.
Thanks!
Today, we have ignorant marketeers, corrupt accountants and lawyers running companies. And they don't know what their companies even do for a living.
I'm taking MBA courses right now -- yeah, yeah, boo hiss, whatever -- and the other night one of my professors asked what seemed like a simple question.
"How many of you know where the company that you work for gets its money from?"
Out of nearly forty students, only half a dozen hands went up.
Scary stuff. We're all just hanging out, doing some minor task and watching the clock with no idea of a bigger picture.
--saint
I bike to work in Buffalo, year 'round. It's really not so bad. Good gloves help.
--saint
I've had luck using Linksys WRT54GLs, reflashed with DD-WRT, for branch office VPN routers.
(Yeah, yeah, look at Tomato, I know. Haven't had problems yet, so I haven't looked to switch.)
--saint
Speaking as someone at an .edu, we all saw this news yesterday. There are many other venues besides Slashdot that cater to higher ed IT, and it's being discussed elsewhere.
I wouldn't call the low comment count a sign of disinterest, but rather a sign that there aren't a lot of our peers here so it's not a productive forum for this sort of thing.
--saint
Or "youse" (pronounced "yooz"), as in "youse guys".
Is that just a Western New York thing?
--saint
My crazy friend Tom , the same age as me, said once when we were teenagers that someday you would be able to play records in your car.
DeSoto actually had a system called the Highway Hi-fi that did this -- it was a turntable with some sort of fluid base to keep bumps in the road from making the needle skip. There were only a half dozen or so albums that were compatible with its weird geometry, though.
This random thought brought to you by Slashdot Car Nerd #227599.
--saint
I live in Buffalo, NY, the second- or third-poorest city in America, depending on who you ask. Yes, the city neighborhoods tend to have lots of corner stores that sell grape drink and Li'l Debbie knockoffs. But there are supermarkets and farmer's markets all over the city as well.
The entire city is fewer than ten miles wide. A bicycle trip with a backpack could retrieve a week's worth of fresh produce in less than an hour.
The problem isn't availability, it's education. Unfortunately, since poor neighborhoods also tend to have lots of single parents and a tremendous high school dropout rate, teaching that there's better food -- and a better life -- available is a bit of an uphill battle.
--saint
Why do I have this vision of Bugs Bunny confounding Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd?
Comcast season!
Verizon season!
Comcast season!
Comcast season!
*bang*
Epiphany is available in Ubuntu -- it also looks a hell of a lot nicer with GNOME than FF does. Give it a try.
--saint
Enhanced Driver's License. It's a substitute for a passport when crossing the Canadian border for poutine and strippers.
--saint
There was a time when it was possible to work your way through college as a waiter or a hospital orderly. That was before the government started shovelling money into our universities.
That was also back before colleges became thinly veiled resorts. Two hundred channels, wireless everywhere, free everything, newly renovated dining facilities -- there's a whole lot of money being spent on the non-academic parts of colleges.
I work at my alma mater, and I can barely recognize it.
--saint
I quit IT for a couple of years because it was boring to me. Linux brought me back, because it got me excited to work with computers again.
It does happen.
--saint