> I'm only a year older than you, gotten in a number of accidents, and I pay about half of what you do.
You are probably also living in a different state than the original poster. I've run quotes on myself in all 50 states, using my own data -- female, age 23, etc, etc -- and the results differ by up to $2000/yr.
I'm going to venture a guess that the original poster lives in either MA or NJ, the two states with the highest auto insurance rates in the nation...
> The web only has "forums" not true communities. There is no real interaction on the web,
> just reaction. Without ongoing interaction, there can't be any form of community,
> because no one knows how to work and be with one another, they just know how to anticipate
> and react to the actions of each other. It's a difference.
Yes, which is why -- repeat after me -- the web is not the internet. Yes, "the web" is mostly a non-interactive, eyeball-driven, point-and-drool, entertainment-for-the-masses medium. I'd say that/. and k5 and other community-driven weblogs are the closest you'll find to breaking that paradigm. On the web.
However, there's still Usenet, there's still MOO, there's still email... there's still a lot of things. I wouldn't knock the idea of a "virtual community" that quickly. Most of the people I consider my closest friends in the world are part of my "online" community.
Personally, I think that Russ Allbery said it best. If people haven't read his "Rant about Usenet", then I don't think they can quite see just how deeply community *can* run.
> Software should be tested extensively before a x.0 release, and the
> new major version number only applied when the program is ready.
I will not deny this; however, NO software, NO operating system -- whether it be open source, closed source, Red Hat, Windows, Debian, *whatever* -- should ever be installed into a production environment without extensive custom testing by the business that is deploying the software.
It doesn't matter if it's an X.0 release, though yes, historically they have been buggier -- basically because anything X.0 is radically different from the previous versions.
As an example, my company runs on NT. We recently decided to apply SP6A. Brought it into the QA lab, installed the SP, and realized that our call tracking software promptly shuffled up the curtain and joined the choir invisible. Checked through all of the information on the SP, trying to find WHY it was having problems -- and eventually traced it, no surprise, to a.DLL conflict. If we'd just rolled that into production, we would have lost a good day's work while trying to scramble around and do a rollback.
People, this is why we have QA departments. Or should. Don't depend on the vendor to test things. They *do* test things, but they can't test things with your environment, your configurations, and your needs.
> How was the house purchased? Cash up front? Some weird tripartite mortgage thing?
> And what are the issues you've found regarding joint non-spousal ownership of a residence?
The idea that I had -- which is, mind you, possibly and even probably completely illegal under U.S. tax code -- was to form a limited liability corporation that actually owns the property, and have people purchase shares in that company in exchange for shares in the property. Let me illustrate:
Let's say we have Alice and Ben, who want to start their Geek House. Together, they scrape up $10,000 for the down payment, and take out a mortgage for the other $90,000. (I like even numbers.) Alice and Ben would then issue 10,000 shares of GeekHouse, Inc., worth $100 each. Alice would have 500 shares; Ben would have 500 shares, and the additional 9000 shares would be owned by the company.
Each month, Alice and Ben would split the cost of the mortgage by purchasing a number of shares equal to the mortgage payment that month. If Casey came along and wanted to live in the Geek House, and Alice and Ben were cool with that, the mortgage would be split 3 ways, with Casey buying shares from Alice and Ben first until the issued shares were pooled mutually, and then joining in the same setup.
If, say, 10 years down the line Alice decides to move to Borneo to study basketweaving, the other members of the collective buy her shares back from her, as quickly as they can manage to do so. In the meantime, Alice continues to have a say in the decisions of the collective, the same as any shareholder would have in a company.
Tweak this idea mildly for things like monthly utilities, cost of living, etc, etc... I wonder if it is legal. If it is, I'm going to set things up like this in another few years when my roommate and I get enough money to buy a house. It just strikes me as the most intelligent way to handle it -- in essence, you pay rent for a while, you get some legal ownership of things, and if you decide to leave, you get your investment BACK.
What would that prove? That the evil hacker(sic) types are bad and nasty and want to make life difficult for the RIAA?
Guess what? They know that already.
DDoS isn't going to do anything except make our reputation *worse*. What we need to do is boycott the challenge, and be very, very vocal about *WHY* we are boycotting the challenge -- not that we can't do it, but that we won't do their dirty work for them until and unless they decide that it's time to play nice.
Maybe Intel is getting their asses whomped in the market, but really, how far is it possible to push AMD? Moore's Law can't keep chugging along forever...
(I tried posting this already, it posted somewhere else. Let's see if it works this time.)
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> I'm only a year older than you, gotten in a number of accidents, and I pay about half of what you do.
You are probably also living in a different state than the original poster. I've run quotes on myself in all 50 states, using my own data -- female, age 23, etc, etc -- and the results differ by up to $2000/yr.
I'm going to venture a guess that the original poster lives in either MA or NJ, the two states with the highest auto insurance rates in the nation...
> The web only has "forums" not true communities. There is no real interaction on the web,
/. and k5 and other community-driven weblogs are the closest you'll find to breaking that paradigm. On the web.
... there's still a lot of things. I wouldn't knock the idea of a "virtual community" that quickly. Most of the people I consider my closest friends in the world are part of my "online" community.
> just reaction. Without ongoing interaction, there can't be any form of community,
> because no one knows how to work and be with one another, they just know how to anticipate
> and react to the actions of each other. It's a difference.
Yes, which is why -- repeat after me -- the web is not the internet. Yes, "the web" is mostly a non-interactive, eyeball-driven, point-and-drool, entertainment-for-the-masses medium. I'd say that
However, there's still Usenet, there's still MOO, there's still email
Personally, I think that Russ Allbery said it best. If people haven't read his "Rant about Usenet", then I don't think they can quite see just how deeply community *can* run.
> Software should be tested extensively before a x.0 release, and the
.DLL conflict. If we'd just rolled that into production, we would have lost a good day's work while trying to scramble around and do a rollback.
> new major version number only applied when the program is ready.
I will not deny this; however, NO software, NO operating system -- whether it be open source, closed source, Red Hat, Windows, Debian, *whatever* -- should ever be installed into a production environment without extensive custom testing by the business that is deploying the software.
It doesn't matter if it's an X.0 release, though yes, historically they have been buggier -- basically because anything X.0 is radically different from the previous versions.
As an example, my company runs on NT. We recently decided to apply SP6A. Brought it into the QA lab, installed the SP, and realized that our call tracking software promptly shuffled up the curtain and joined the choir invisible. Checked through all of the information on the SP, trying to find WHY it was having problems -- and eventually traced it, no surprise, to a
People, this is why we have QA departments. Or should. Don't depend on the vendor to test things. They *do* test things, but they can't test things with your environment, your configurations, and your needs.
--R.
> If it's Microsoft operating systems, the plural is SOS.
Shouldn't it be SOL instead?
If Squaresoft isn't making titles for the X-Box, I ain't buying one. ^_^
I just wish that Sony would stop being such dicks so I could end my boycott and buy a Playstation 2 when it comes out...
> How was the house purchased? Cash up front? Some weird tripartite mortgage thing?
... I wonder if it is legal. If it is, I'm going to set things up like this in another few years when my roommate and I get enough money to buy a house. It just strikes me as the most intelligent way to handle it -- in essence, you pay rent for a while, you get some legal ownership of things, and if you decide to leave, you get your investment BACK.
> And what are the issues you've found regarding joint non-spousal ownership of a residence?
The idea that I had -- which is, mind you, possibly and even probably completely illegal under U.S. tax code -- was to form a limited liability corporation that actually owns the property, and have people purchase shares in that company in exchange for shares in the property. Let me illustrate:
Let's say we have Alice and Ben, who want to start their Geek House. Together, they scrape up $10,000 for the down payment, and take out a mortgage for the other $90,000. (I like even numbers.) Alice and Ben would then issue 10,000 shares of GeekHouse, Inc., worth $100 each. Alice would have 500 shares; Ben would have 500 shares, and the additional 9000 shares would be owned by the company.
Each month, Alice and Ben would split the cost of the mortgage by purchasing a number of shares equal to the mortgage payment that month. If Casey came along and wanted to live in the Geek House, and Alice and Ben were cool with that, the mortgage would be split 3 ways, with Casey buying shares from Alice and Ben first until the issued shares were pooled mutually, and then joining in the same setup.
If, say, 10 years down the line Alice decides to move to Borneo to study basketweaving, the other members of the collective buy her shares back from her, as quickly as they can manage to do so. In the meantime, Alice continues to have a say in the decisions of the collective, the same as any shareholder would have in a company.
Tweak this idea mildly for things like monthly utilities, cost of living, etc, etc
What would that prove? That the evil hacker(sic) types are bad and nasty and want to make life difficult for the RIAA?
Guess what? They know that already.
DDoS isn't going to do anything except make our reputation *worse*. What we need to do is boycott the challenge, and be very, very vocal about *WHY* we are boycotting the challenge -- not that we can't do it, but that we won't do their dirty work for them until and unless they decide that it's time to play nice.
Maybe Intel is getting their asses whomped in the market, but really, how far is it possible to push AMD? Moore's Law can't keep chugging along forever...
(I tried posting this already, it posted somewhere else. Let's see if it works this time.)