Not exactly. You are correct that it doesn't take any special actions on your part to copyright a work, as anything you write is copyrighted automatically. You can register the copyright with the government if you want to defend it and recover damages. The "mail-yourself-a-copy" trick is often known as the Poor man's copyright, and probably won't hold up if contested. See the links below:
www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.htmlen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_man's_copyright
Well, if you know what I'll say, I guess I'll just shut up.:)
Windows doesn't deliver all the time, either. I have frustrations about how Windows works, too, but the question wasn't "Why isn't Linux better than Windows?" The question was if Linux is out of touch with the average user, and "average user" I interpret as "office worker" or "home user". Neither one gets their kicks out of making broken appliances work, and that's exactly what a computer is to them: an appliance they expect to just work.
The reason that Linux isn't adopted more isn't because Windows is perfect, it's because Windows is "good enough" for most people. The measure of "good enough" varies for each person and situation, but the biggest barrier to entry in my mind is that Windows comes bundled with virtually every computer that is sold. People just want to plug it in and turn it on. When I go into BestBuy or OfficeMax, I expect any piece of hardware on their shelf to have drivers that work with Windows. If it doesn't, it's broken and I and return it.
With Linux, what do I get? A Google search returns a mirror of kernel mailing lists complaining that the manufacturer doesn't release specs and a HOWTO that explains what modules I need to install or where to download source code. That just doesn't fly with "average user".
Yes. The average person is "an idiot." Yes. A large group of people's VCRs blick "12:00." But I find that people have been conditioned to believe the knowledge and understanding is a burden and so people go well out of their way to avoid learning or experiencing anything that might lead to learning something. (I think this somehow goes back to our experiences with public education...)
And a lot of people just don't care about the clock on their VCR, they have lives to live. Last week, I had trouble reordering checks through my bank's website, as we recently moved and their system hadn't updated our address. So, I call up the 800 number and get somebody on the phone that mutters "hmmm" and "um, no, let's try this" for the next 3 minutes while they point and click their way through their computer. Finally the agent says, with a tone of finality, "oh, well here's the problem, the blah blah blah hasn't been updated by the blah blah office." And that's it! Apparently, I should just be glad that the problem has been tracked down. Look, I just need new checks with the right address so I can pay the water bill. None of these details that I am paying you to handle interest me in the slightest.
And that's exactly why my family's computer doesn't run Linux, our phone system isn't an Asterix box, and I don't waste time wondering if the laptop I'm looking at will support NDA-free wireless drivers. After I spend all day dinking around with technology because that's what I'm paid for, the last thing I want to do in my free time is create hassle for myself by trying to cobble together something that mostly works. Hobbies are great, but most people who buy a computer do so because they have something in mind that they can do by using the computer as a tool, not because they can envision all the endless hours of self-enlightenment they can acheive by struggling to get the damn thing working.
It looks like their display is an off the shelf product. There are a few Chinese companies that make displays that other companies can just bolt onto their exercise product. Low-end products or companies that have welders and painters but no electronics guys do it that way. Maybe their final product will be bus-powered. $495 seems steep for a non-powered treadmill, but you're paying for the controller anyway. Probably $15 worth of parts in the controller. The thing that makes me raise an eyebrow is that their "press release" dated Oct. 2006 states they are accepting preorders immediately, with shipping an estimated 10-12 months away. They want $300+ up front, for an estimated ship date a year away? I'm guessing they've built 3 of them, and need the cash to finish development and get it ready to produce. They also state they have patents pending on this thing, but all I see is prior art. On the bright side, at least their controller is emulating a keyboard and mouse, which means it should be able to control any game, rather than some of the hard-wired controllers I've seen on this sort of thing before. You should be able to navigate web pages as well. Too bad about replacing the mouse with buttons, though; aiming with the speed of the mouse works much better for me. It would be handy to have some software to run that allows you to configure the keymap on the controller, maybe on a per-game basis.
The hold up is because it sucks and no one wants it. I used to design electronics for exercise equipment and I saw all kinds of crap from other manufacturers come through our lab. It just comes down to the fact that controlling a modern video game is too complicated to be done by some aftermarket doo-dad that you attach to an exercise machine. I recall in particular an add-on product that was designed to control a 4 wheeler game. It hooked into a standard console (3DO or Playstation, I forget), and then attached to an exercise bike. The brake and steering were controlled by a normal gamepad, and the accelerator was controlled by a gizmo that you strapped to the bike to measure the speed of the bike's flywheel. To effectively brake you had to stop pedalling and wait for the flywheel to coast to a stop. Using the brake into a corner and then accelerating out of it was impossible. Because of this handicap alone, you could never beat one of the computer players. There was no way to win the game, which was frustrating as hell. Because it was hard-wired to press the "A" button as you pedalled, it wouldn't work with any game that expected you to use that button for something else. We never thought anybody would buy such a kludge: you had to buy the game console and game, then the exercise bike, then the add-on kit, to provide a gaming experience worse than if you just bought the console and game.
One big difference: the government does not have to make a profit or answer to stock holders, and they have an endless account to write paychecks out of.
A government position is not an endless paycheck, it is possible to be let go, even in the union. A Reduction in Force action, perhaps. It is very difficult, however, and in the small part of the system I've seen, it seemed that non-performers were just gradually excluded from interesting projects until they either quit of their own accord, or just become one of the Wallys roaming the halls and chatting, waiting to be eligible for retirement. It's probably cheaper for the government to just let that happen than to face the expense of trying to get rid of a union employee.
With the new pay system being put in place for most civil servants, more likely the way to the door will be several "less than satisfactory" reviews with no pay increase.
I mean, if they really decide we aren't needed anymore, they can always reconsider and cancel our employment next month. I'm sure they'll find they really really really miss us after we're gone.
Geez, you really ARE an AOL Retention Specialist; replace "employment" with "account", and this is the same line they spewed at me a half a dozen times before finally letting me cancel...
The US Army is deploying armed robots in Iraq that are capable of breaking Asmov's first law that they should not harm a human
Just to clarify... Asimov was a Science Fiction writer. His "laws of robotics" were guidelines he put into his stories as plot devices and his opinion of the future. No one's breaking any laws of nature or dividing by zero here...
But people buy them anyway--and I can see you saying it now, "But if the houses are being purchased at that price, then they were worth that price, by definition."
I'll say it, then: "If the houses are being purchased at that price, then they were worth that price, by definition." I can't think of a better way to measure what something is worth than by what price someone is willing to pay for it. Can you?
That being said, I agree that the way housing prices are spiraling upwards is insane. Others in the thread have argued that there is no "bubble", but when prices are increasing faster than salaries, there is a point where the market just cannot be sustainable.
In my county, average salaries have increased maybe 25% (that's being generous) in the last 10 years, but all of the homes I see for sale each week in the newspaper are 100-150% more than comparable homes 10 years ago. This is not sustainable, there has to be a point where people just cannot afford to buy a home and values will have to fall. Sadly, there are so many people around here building and buying these homes, only to have to sell them within a year to get out from under the mortgage or face forclosure. Maybe that's why my state is #1 in personal bankruptcy.
Environmentally friendly practices should be the default... As a man-made construct: Solar panels == good. Garbage == bad. Got that?
I'm all for getting energy from the sun, but a couple of years ago I read that because of the inefficiency of solar cells and their relatively short lifespan, that manufacturing a solar cell consumed more energy than what the cell would produce during its lifetime. Because of this, they really only made sense to use in locations where other electrical sources were not available.
Has technology advanced to the point where solar energy is a net energy-gainer, or was my information faulty? Perhaps this loss was only for photovoltaic cells, and a solar-powered steam turbine system is a net energy producer?
I was asking myself the same question, how much do we really want to spend to rebuild some place that doesn't seem to be cut out for human habitation? Then a co-worker sent me this article:
New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize
By George Friedman September 01, 2005 22 30 GMT -- The American political system was founded in Philadelphia, but the American nation was built on the vast farmlands that stretch from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. That farmland produced the wealth that funded American industrialization: It permitted the formation of a class of small landholders who, amazingly, could produce more than they could consume. They could sell their excess crops in the east and in Europe and save that money, which eventually became the founding capital of American industry.
But it was not the extraordinary land nor the farmers and ranchers who alone set the process in motion. Rather, it was geography -- the extraordinary system of rivers that flowed through the Midwest and allowed them to ship their surplus to the rest of the world. All of the rivers flowed into one -- the Mississippi -- and the Mississippi flowed to the ports in and around one city: New Orleans. It was in New Orleans that the barges from upstream were unloaded and their cargos stored, sold and reloaded on ocean-going vessels. Until last Sunday, New Orleans was, in many ways, the pivot of the American economy.
For that reason, the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 was a key moment in American history. Even though the battle occurred after the War of 1812 was over, had the British taken New Orleans, we suspect they wouldn't have given it back. Without New Orleans, the entire Louisiana Purchase would have been valueless to the United States. Or, to state it more precisely, the British would control the region because, at the end of the day, the value of the Purchase was the land and the rivers - which all converged on the Mississippi and the ultimate port of New Orleans. The hero of the battle was Andrew Jackson, and when he became president, his obsession with Texas had much to do with keeping the Mexicans away from New Orleans.
During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.
Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina's geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become an added value to the region since Jackson's days, was at risk. The navigability of the Mississippi south of New Orleans was a question mark. New Orleans as a city and as a port complex had ceased to exist, and it was not clear that it could recover.
The ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, the Port of South Louisiana is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A larger proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 57 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on.
Get a laptop corpse, carry it on you flight to the U.S., pitch it into the garbage, let the customs weenies think that your new laptop is the old one. Simple.
This might bite you in another way: many times (here in the U.S., anyway) security will ask you to turn on the laptop to prove that you aren't hiding anything unfriendly inside it. The logic behind this is a whole other thread, but if your laptop "corpse" doesn't turn on, you may be sending up red flags to cause yourself further scrutiny, which you don't want.
Or, maybe you can just tell them the battery's dead.
No, I would think having a dish on your roof and the shitty service that comes along with it would be considerably more annoying.
I'm glad you're enjoying your cable. I had much better service when I was a Dish subscriber than you can get with Comcast.
Up until they got a dish a couple of months ago, my parents had Comcast. Whenever I visited, I was amazed at how crappy their service was. It wasn't static in the picture, it was almost as if they were getting corrupted blocks of data on their "digital cable" channels. Like watching a dirty DVD: all pixelated and funny. I was suprised as well at how shoddy the Motorola set-top box they had was. An inconsistent user interface, slow updates, and then for some reason it decided to not turn itself on and off properly. And this was on their second box.
The last straw was when they got a letter from Comcast letting them know their bill would be going up $15/month, to over $60 for basic service.
I hate the Comcast commercials where "ex-dish owners" tell us how miserable life was with a dish. ("When the dog sneezed, we lost the picture!") "I had to install mirrors all over my house to be able to see the TV while I fixed the dish. (Because I'm too stupid to have my wife look at it while I'm on the roof)" "We had to adjust it twice a week! (Because I never did figure out that I should tighten the bolts that hold it to the roof)."
I had Dish network for two years, never climbed on the roof to do anything, winter or summer.
The funniest thing I see on TV these days is Comcast commercials on Dish network, and Dish commercials on Comcast. Are they really so greedy for advertising dollars that they have no problem advertising for their competition?
You're just wasteful if you can't get by with $20k/year. That's over $1,600 per month!
You're making a huge generalization here. In some areas of the US, $1,600 a month will leave the landlord asking for his other $800. Your experience means nothing to anyone else not in your exact circumstances.
Here's some real advice for the original poster: Some of the hottest IT jobs right now are probably...tada, health-related industries. Look around what you do RIGHT NOW and look at what things could be done better and more efficiently using computers. Develop some software to do so and you can make a mint.
Yes, you can make money by prescribing Viagra via email! Or, how about processing medical billing information at home! Your earning potential is endless!
We could see a university program offer students a rigorous education in creating quality production-ready code ("Software Engineering") in any language on any platform. But the CS degree remains focused on teaching boolean algebra, digital logic, and assembly language, just like we were creating the microcode layer all over again. Or it targets the PhD with AI classes that still haven't proven their utility outside games. Unix, TCP/IP, SQL, security, data mining, and GUI development are upper class single-semester electives, when they should be the core of the major throughout the first two years.
I disagree slightly here. I wish I saw more CS emphasis on the basics of how the machines work. I've known way too many CS graduates who can click buttons and configure software, but who do not have clue one about what is going on under the surface of the GUI. The reason that a lot of IT can be outsourced is because a lot of IT boils down to "GUI development" and "SQL". This is technician work that can be done by anyone with a reference book. Computer Science is a wholly different animal.
"You know... that'd be a PERFECT way of pawning off counterfeit bills. Here you go kid, I'll take a whole crate of chocolates. Hell, have a box for yourself, on me. No, really."
Yeah, but then you've laundered your counterfeit in exchange for what? You've got a box of chocolates, not money.
Slashdot Mirror
...I'm often left guessing what the compiler will do with my C code, especially on an unfamiliar platform.
That's the point... you write in the language you know and hope that the guys writing the compiler know the platform intimately.
If you need to guarantee the bit size of an integer, int is not the correct type.
Not exactly. You are correct that it doesn't take any special actions on your part to copyright a work, as anything you write is copyrighted automatically. You can register the copyright with the government if you want to defend it and recover damages. The "mail-yourself-a-copy" trick is often known as the Poor man's copyright, and probably won't hold up if contested. See the links below: www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_man's_copyright
Light leakage causing an explosion? Seriously?
Maybe the fuel tanks are full of Clorine and Hyrdogen, rather than jet fuel?
Well, if you know what I'll say, I guess I'll just shut up. :)
Windows doesn't deliver all the time, either. I have frustrations about how Windows works, too, but the question wasn't "Why isn't Linux better than Windows?" The question was if Linux is out of touch with the average user, and "average user" I interpret as "office worker" or "home user". Neither one gets their kicks out of making broken appliances work, and that's exactly what a computer is to them: an appliance they expect to just work.
The reason that Linux isn't adopted more isn't because Windows is perfect, it's because Windows is "good enough" for most people. The measure of "good enough" varies for each person and situation, but the biggest barrier to entry in my mind is that Windows comes bundled with virtually every computer that is sold. People just want to plug it in and turn it on. When I go into BestBuy or OfficeMax, I expect any piece of hardware on their shelf to have drivers that work with Windows. If it doesn't, it's broken and I and return it.
With Linux, what do I get? A Google search returns a mirror of kernel mailing lists complaining that the manufacturer doesn't release specs and a HOWTO that explains what modules I need to install or where to download source code. That just doesn't fly with "average user".
Yes. The average person is "an idiot." Yes. A large group of people's VCRs blick "12:00." But I find that people have been conditioned to believe the knowledge and understanding is a burden and so people go well out of their way to avoid learning or experiencing anything that might lead to learning something. (I think this somehow goes back to our experiences with public education...)
And a lot of people just don't care about the clock on their VCR, they have lives to live.
Last week, I had trouble reordering checks through my bank's website, as we recently moved and their system hadn't updated our address. So, I call up the 800 number and get somebody on the phone that mutters "hmmm" and "um, no, let's try this" for the next 3 minutes while they point and click their way through their computer. Finally the agent says, with a tone of finality, "oh, well here's the problem, the blah blah blah hasn't been updated by the blah blah office." And that's it! Apparently, I should just be glad that the problem has been tracked down. Look, I just need new checks with the right address so I can pay the water bill. None of these details that I am paying you to handle interest me in the slightest.
And that's exactly why my family's computer doesn't run Linux, our phone system isn't an Asterix box, and I don't waste time wondering if the laptop I'm looking at will support NDA-free wireless drivers.
After I spend all day dinking around with technology because that's what I'm paid for, the last thing I want to do in my free time is create hassle for myself by trying to cobble together something that mostly works.
Hobbies are great, but most people who buy a computer do so because they have something in mind that they can do by using the computer as a tool, not because they can envision all the endless hours of self-enlightenment they can acheive by struggling to get the damn thing working.
It looks like their display is an off the shelf product. There are a few Chinese companies that make displays that other companies can just bolt onto their exercise product. Low-end products or companies that have welders and painters but no electronics guys do it that way. Maybe their final product will be bus-powered.
$495 seems steep for a non-powered treadmill, but you're paying for the controller anyway. Probably $15 worth of parts in the controller. The thing that makes me raise an eyebrow is that their "press release" dated Oct. 2006 states they are accepting preorders immediately, with shipping an estimated 10-12 months away. They want $300+ up front, for an estimated ship date a year away? I'm guessing they've built 3 of them, and need the cash to finish development and get it ready to produce.
They also state they have patents pending on this thing, but all I see is prior art.
On the bright side, at least their controller is emulating a keyboard and mouse, which means it should be able to control any game, rather than some of the hard-wired controllers I've seen on this sort of thing before. You should be able to navigate web pages as well. Too bad about replacing the mouse with buttons, though; aiming with the speed of the mouse works much better for me. It would be handy to have some software to run that allows you to configure the keymap on the controller, maybe on a per-game basis.
The hold up is because it sucks and no one wants it. I used to design electronics for exercise equipment and I saw all kinds of crap from other manufacturers come through our lab.
It just comes down to the fact that controlling a modern video game is too complicated to be done by some aftermarket doo-dad that you attach to an exercise machine.
I recall in particular an add-on product that was designed to control a 4 wheeler game. It hooked into a standard console (3DO or Playstation, I forget), and then attached to an exercise bike. The brake and steering were controlled by a normal gamepad, and the accelerator was controlled by a gizmo that you strapped to the bike to measure the speed of the bike's flywheel. To effectively brake you had to stop pedalling and wait for the flywheel to coast to a stop. Using the brake into a corner and then accelerating out of it was impossible. Because of this handicap alone, you could never beat one of the computer players. There was no way to win the game, which was frustrating as hell. Because it was hard-wired to press the "A" button as you pedalled, it wouldn't work with any game that expected you to use that button for something else.
We never thought anybody would buy such a kludge: you had to buy the game console and game, then the exercise bike, then the add-on kit, to provide a gaming experience worse than if you just bought the console and game.
One big difference: the government does not have to make a profit or answer to stock holders, and they have an endless account to write paychecks out of.
A government position is not an endless paycheck, it is possible to be let go, even in the union. A Reduction in Force action, perhaps. It is very difficult, however, and in the small part of the system I've seen, it seemed that non-performers were just gradually excluded from interesting projects until they either quit of their own accord, or just become one of the Wallys roaming the halls and chatting, waiting to be eligible for retirement. It's probably cheaper for the government to just let that happen than to face the expense of trying to get rid of a union employee.
With the new pay system being put in place for most civil servants, more likely the way to the door will be several "less than satisfactory" reviews with no pay increase.
Gee, that's funny, I had to search for "ditty" on their homepage to find them:
a spx?c=us&l=en&cs=19&sku=DJDTY90
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.
Carpe Per Diem is much more lucrative.
I mean, if they really decide we aren't needed anymore, they can always reconsider and cancel our employment next month. I'm sure they'll find they really really really miss us after we're gone.
Geez, you really ARE an AOL Retention Specialist; replace "employment" with "account", and this is the same line they spewed at me a half a dozen times before finally letting me cancel...
The US Army is deploying armed robots in Iraq that are capable of breaking Asmov's first law that they should not harm a human
Just to clarify... Asimov was a Science Fiction writer. His "laws of robotics" were guidelines he put into his stories as plot devices and his opinion of the future. No one's breaking any laws of nature or dividing by zero here...
But people buy them anyway--and I can see you saying it now, "But if the houses are being purchased at that price, then they were worth that price, by definition."
I'll say it, then: "If the houses are being purchased at that price, then they were worth that price, by definition." I can't think of a better way to measure what something is worth than by what price someone is willing to pay for it. Can you?
That being said, I agree that the way housing prices are spiraling upwards is insane. Others in the thread have argued that there is no "bubble", but when prices are increasing faster than salaries, there is a point where the market just cannot be sustainable.
In my county, average salaries have increased maybe 25% (that's being generous) in the last 10 years, but all of the homes I see for sale each week in the newspaper are 100-150% more than comparable homes 10 years ago. This is not sustainable, there has to be a point where people just cannot afford to buy a home and values will have to fall. Sadly, there are so many people around here building and buying these homes, only to have to sell them within a year to get out from under the mortgage or face forclosure. Maybe that's why my state is #1 in personal bankruptcy.
Environmentally friendly practices should be the default ...
As a man-made construct: Solar panels == good. Garbage == bad. Got that?
I'm all for getting energy from the sun, but a couple of years ago I read that because of the inefficiency of solar cells and their relatively short lifespan, that manufacturing a solar cell consumed more energy than what the cell would produce during its lifetime. Because of this, they really only made sense to use in locations where other electrical sources were not available.
Has technology advanced to the point where solar energy is a net energy-gainer, or was my information faulty? Perhaps this loss was only for photovoltaic cells, and a solar-powered steam turbine system is a net energy producer?
That's exactly the idea. AOL wants out of the dial-up business.
What else does AOL offer? They do have their portal, which could be called "Web-lite", but what value do they provide to broadband users?
I was asking myself the same question, how much do we really want to spend to rebuild some place that doesn't seem to be cut out for human habitation? Then a co-worker sent me this article:
New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize
By George Friedman
September 01, 2005 22 30 GMT -- The American political system was founded in Philadelphia, but the American nation was built on the vast farmlands that stretch from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. That farmland produced the wealth that funded American industrialization: It permitted the formation of a class of small landholders who, amazingly, could produce more than they could consume. They could sell their excess crops in the east and in Europe and save that money, which eventually became the founding capital of American industry.
But it was not the extraordinary land nor the farmers and ranchers who alone set the process in motion. Rather, it was geography -- the extraordinary system of rivers that flowed through the Midwest and allowed them to ship their surplus to the rest of the world. All of the rivers flowed into one -- the Mississippi -- and the Mississippi flowed to the ports in and around one city: New Orleans. It was in New Orleans that the barges from upstream were unloaded and their cargos stored, sold and reloaded on ocean-going vessels. Until last Sunday, New Orleans was, in many ways, the pivot of the American economy.
For that reason, the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 was a key moment in American history. Even though the battle occurred after the War of 1812 was over, had the British taken New Orleans, we suspect they wouldn't have given it back. Without New Orleans, the entire Louisiana Purchase would have been valueless to the United States. Or, to state it more precisely, the British would control the region because, at the end of the day, the value of the Purchase was the land and the rivers - which all converged on the Mississippi and the ultimate port of New Orleans. The hero of the battle was Andrew Jackson, and when he became president, his obsession with Texas had much to do with keeping the Mexicans away from New Orleans.
During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.
Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina's geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become an added value to the region since Jackson's days, was at risk. The navigability of the Mississippi south of New Orleans was a question mark. New Orleans as a city and as a port complex had ceased to exist, and it was not clear that it could recover.
The ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, the Port of South Louisiana is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A larger proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 57 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on.
My VCR, when I enable the function, sets the time to whatever the local PBS station says, DST included. No problem there.
If anyone needed any proof that Bush's tax cuts unfairly tax the middle class...
A wild-assed guess on Slashdot does not proof make.
Get a laptop corpse, carry it on you flight to the U.S., pitch it into the garbage, let the customs weenies think that your new laptop is the old one. Simple.
This might bite you in another way: many times (here in the U.S., anyway) security will ask you to turn on the laptop to prove that you aren't hiding anything unfriendly inside it. The logic behind this is a whole other thread, but if your laptop "corpse" doesn't turn on, you may be sending up red flags to cause yourself further scrutiny, which you don't want.
Or, maybe you can just tell them the battery's dead.
I'm glad you're enjoying your cable. I had much better service when I was a Dish subscriber than you can get with Comcast.
Up until they got a dish a couple of months ago, my parents had Comcast. Whenever I visited, I was amazed at how crappy their service was. It wasn't static in the picture, it was almost as if they were getting corrupted blocks of data on their "digital cable" channels. Like watching a dirty DVD: all pixelated and funny. I was suprised as well at how shoddy the Motorola set-top box they had was. An inconsistent user interface, slow updates, and then for some reason it decided to not turn itself on and off properly. And this was on their second box.
The last straw was when they got a letter from Comcast letting them know their bill would be going up $15/month, to over $60 for basic service.
I hate the Comcast commercials where "ex-dish owners" tell us how miserable life was with a dish. ("When the dog sneezed, we lost the picture!") "I had to install mirrors all over my house to be able to see the TV while I fixed the dish. (Because I'm too stupid to have my wife look at it while I'm on the roof)" "We had to adjust it twice a week! (Because I never did figure out that I should tighten the bolts that hold it to the roof)."
I had Dish network for two years, never climbed on the roof to do anything, winter or summer.
The funniest thing I see on TV these days is Comcast commercials on Dish network, and Dish commercials on Comcast. Are they really so greedy for advertising dollars that they have no problem advertising for their competition?
You're just wasteful if you can't get by with $20k/year. That's over $1,600 per month!
You're making a huge generalization here. In some areas of the US, $1,600 a month will leave the landlord asking for his other $800.
Your experience means nothing to anyone else not in your exact circumstances.
Here's some real advice for the original poster: Some of the hottest IT jobs right now are probably...tada, health-related industries. Look around what you do RIGHT NOW and look at what things could be done better and more efficiently using computers. Develop some software to do so and you can make a mint.
Yes, you can make money by prescribing Viagra via email! Or, how about processing medical billing information at home! Your earning potential is endless!
While I was in Europe I had a Tobishi radio... "Not quite a Toshiba, almost a Mitsubishi, TOBISHI!"
A lot of your post is dead on.
We could see a university program offer students a rigorous education in creating quality production-ready code ("Software Engineering") in any language on any platform. But the CS degree remains focused on teaching boolean algebra, digital logic, and assembly language, just like we were creating the microcode layer all over again. Or it targets the PhD with AI classes that still haven't proven their utility outside games. Unix, TCP/IP, SQL, security, data mining, and GUI development are upper class single-semester electives, when they should be the core of the major throughout the first two years.
I disagree slightly here. I wish I saw more CS emphasis on the basics of how the machines work. I've known way too many CS graduates who can click buttons and configure software, but who do not have clue one about what is going on under the surface of the GUI.
The reason that a lot of IT can be outsourced is because a lot of IT boils down to "GUI development" and "SQL". This is technician work that can be done by anyone with a reference book. Computer Science is a wholly different animal.
"You know... that'd be a PERFECT way of pawning off counterfeit bills. Here you go kid, I'll take a whole crate of chocolates. Hell, have a box for yourself, on me. No, really."
Yeah, but then you've laundered your counterfeit in exchange for what? You've got a box of chocolates, not money.