Would you give a loan with your own money to anybody, who would use that money just to buy some new clothing or a TV or a car or a house, or would you rather give a loan to somebody who'd show you his/her plan to build a business and generate revenue, so they could pay the interest and the loan back to you?
That you ask this question means you have no concept of risk. The first person presumably has a job and will continue working in it so I'd be a fool to lend to the guy with the business plan who 19 times out of 20 won't pay back even the principal.
Now in the real world I might still give the second guy a small amount of money, but only in exchange for a majority stake in his company and only if I thought he had already assembled a good team to execute his plans.
Does COX have a lien on your property? Where I live in NYC I know a number of people complain that they can't get cable because their neighbors won't allow CableVision run a line through their backyard. I know most cities have franchise agreements with a local cable monopoly that allows them to dig up the streets and lay their cable there, but I've never heard of a city using eminent domain run Cable TV lines across private property. I know it happens for power and gas lines, but those have long provided an essential service like police and roads.
The AC-3 codec sends the full uncompressed audio through, but it has three important parameters with respect to loudness.
One is dialnorm which just tells you what the average loudness of the dialog is (or the overall program if there is no dialog, i.e. in classical music.) Broadcasters have standardized on this being -24dB in internal program flows, but this number may be different when you see the program because the broadcaster needed to make a level adjustment for a particular probram. This is supposed to be applied to the value set by the volume knob so that when you switch channels or when the broadcaster transitions from one program to the next the volume stays within 1dB of the previous volume level.
Then there are two dynamic range compression parameters, one is for allowing the end user to adjust the dynamic range and the other is for preventing clipping. Your equipment decides how much of this DNR to apply. A great deal of DNR is applied when you output to the composite output of your set-top-box, because the ultimate playback equipment is a terrible little speaker in your TV. A small amount of DNR is applied when you send the audio to your 5.1 setup. And your 5.1 amplifier usually has a "Movie" setting to turn of DNR completely and a "Night" setting to apply a great deal of DNR even in a 5.1 setup.
I have only skimmed A/85, but I assume it just specifies that you provide decent parameters so the end user equipment can limit the dynamic range effectively using these parameters. So if your equipment has a "Night" setting a commercial won't be able to by-pass it with bogus params. But you will still be able to enjoy full dynamic range in the "Movie" setting when there isn't someone sleeping nearby.
It wouldn't split in two. The South, North East and California would not co-exist in one country. Where the rest of the western states and the middle of the country would go would be a guessing game, but they would probably be absorbed into one of those three viable states. Texas might go their own way and take parts of other nearby states with it, or it might itself split with parts joining the Western coalition and parts joining the Southern coalition.
If it happened it would be bloody, but it won't happen. The American civil war was seen coming for a long time before a southern states blockaded a federal fort to start the armed conflict. And chattel slavery was a much more divisive issue than the current debates about whether we should borrow 1 trillion dollars from China and give a 0.5% tax cut to those earning less than 1 million a year (D), or if we should borrow 1 trillion dollars from China and give a 2% tax cut to those earning more than 1 million a year (R).
According to wikipedia a LoC is exactly 10 terabytes. Never mind that my home library contains many times that amount of data and the LoC probably contains trillions of times that amount of data.
The "don't run any programs or the thing will overheat and die" bug still exists in the latest MacBook Pro's. I have a couple month old one that's the bane of my existence at the moment. (I needed it to make sure some code was compatible with FCP.) That thing is always demanding to be rebooted for an update of some sort, it heats up like crazy and dies when you do anything processor intensive, and the UI has so little polish that KDE shines like a 1950's presidential motorcade by comparison.
After using it for a couple months I thought about how Apple designed printer paper might look like. 10" on each side, $10 a sheet, razor sharp edges, both sides covered in fingerprint preserving plastic. One side would carry a large warning about not putting it in a laser printer as it would melt and destroy the printer, while the other would be filled with warnings about avoiding paper-cuts.
Jobs would send a tweet about how all paper can give you a paper-cut.
In the case of a mold used to make plastics, stamp metal, etc., its incredibly expensive for a company to get a new mold made.
To paraphrase the company spokesmen in the article, "We're big corporations! We shouldn't have to obey laws against fraudulent trading." I'm remain unconvinced.
How expensive are these molds in actual dollars? Why not just use stickers for the patent numbers if this is such a great expense?
If the patent has been so unprofitable that the former owner can't cough up a few million dollars for a mold, it never should have been granted in the first place. Maybe we should make the patent examiner who granted such a patent partially responsible for the bill? Or we could require a deposit 3x the estimated cost of retooling to be placed with the patent office on the first renewal date.
Honestly, I think this will resolve itself in the marketplace, if it doesn't we can increase the fines from $500 per item max to $50,000 per item max. And we can also impose minimum fine of 3x the retail cost of the item with the fraudulent markings. Only if such simple measures don't work would I support the a retooling deposit and extending liability to the patent examiner.
In NY and NJ at least FedEx is the absolute worst. The USPS at delivers 99% of the time, although it too often arrives shredded and mud soaked in a large plastic bag 9 months later. DHL mostly left the US market but they never lost or damaged a package, but the package was reliably a day later than it should have been. UPS delivers 100% of the time and usually early, the 0.5 % of the time that the item arrives damaged a few photos are sufficient for the insurance claim. Meanwhile, FedEx package delivery sends a different delivery team every time, they lie about having attempted delivery almost every single time, and things usually arrive 3-5 days late when you are lucky enough that they arrive at all. OTOH I've never had a problem with FedEx overnight letter delivery, and they are convenient and cheap so I do use them for that unless they are original documents; but for packages, never when I can avoid it.
Airline travel was only for a few elites fifty years ago, what's so wierd about it being only for a few elites now?
Fifty years ago you had to pay half the cost of a small car for a seat on a passenger airline to fly somewhere with dignity. Now you have to rent an aircraft with staff at the cost of several luxury cars. And it's not because the cost of flying has gone up 10000% in fifty years, it's government policy has been captured by a small number of paranoid fools.
This particular law is severely flawed and will cost Arizona dearly in civil rights lawsuit payouts if it ever goes into effect. But Arizona residents are in their rights to be upset with federal immigration policy. The feds have essentially closed the borders on both sides of the state causing an through Arizona that this small state is completely unable to cope with. They can't be and shouldn't be expected to hire the law enforcement needed to deal with the migration. These migrants don't settle in Arizona and pay taxes, they move through it on their way to places with an excess of jobs and pay their taxes there.
The problem on the federal level is that there is no consensus among the American people on immigration. I believe migration is a human right that should only be curtailed when there is a compelling state interest, for instance the state has a compelling interest to prevent foreign troop movements within it's territory. But this founders' view hasn't been the consensus view for over a hundred years. People with money tend to also believe in open borders because it creates jobs and keeps the economy strong, whether or not they believe migration is a human right. But there are many people who don't believe migration is a human right and who also believe it deprives the descendants of earlier immigrants of good pay due to the increased competition for jobs. There is also a significant minority who are just plain racist; these are the folks who will make the Arizona approach fail, since some of them happen to be police officers. The problems in Arizona need to be solved at the federal level by debate and compromise between the reasonable people on both sides of the issue. But the politics of migration doesn't currently divide along party lines, there are still a few pro-business folks in the republican party and there are democrats with significant union support. And to be perfectly honest, there are is a small minority of racists serving in congress on both sides. The republican party has decided (rationally) that it is in the party's best interest at the moment not to pass any popular laws, as that would bolster the standing of our president and potentially hurt their chances in the mid-term elections. This may change after the mid-term elections, but I wouldn't bet on it; I believe only laws that have broad support in the democratic party are likely to pass until at least Obama's second term. By then republicans will have regrouped and started thinking about becoming the party of good government again, if only to have a chance to recapture the White House in 2017.
PS Arizona was a founded racism. It was the part of New Mexico that seceded from the United States as part of it's residents' fight for the right to keep slaves, which was at the time illegal in all of New Mexico. This was only 14 years after we conquered the territory in the Mexican-American war. It was a hinterland of the Mexican state of Alta California, which included present day California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Partly due to it's residents' history of betrayal to the USA and largely due to it's insignificant population prior the invention of modern air conditioning systems, it was the last State to be incorporated prior to Alaska and Hawaii.
grade 1 -- addition/subtraction, multiplication tables grade 2 -- addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, identifying simple series (+-*/) grade 3 -- algebra, translating problems into algebra and identifying more complex series grades 5-7 -- addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, identifying simple series. grade 8 -- algebra again, yawn. grade 9 -- calc, trig, geometry. grade 14 -- calc 2 & 3 (complex numbers, Lagrange, etc.), Linear Algebra, (& Algorithms, Complexity, Logic) grade 15 -- Probability grad school -- Algorithms & Complexity again, yawn
Now I did pick up math other places, mostly in computer and engineering classes. But all the excitement was in grades 1-3, 9 and 15, the times when I was actually learning enough to keep the material interesting.
Kids have no problem learning early, but the whole repetition thing that teachers go on about is bunk. You never have to be taught the same thing twice. Using the skills is different, when I took signals and systems I dusted off the calc book and reread some stuff and I then understood the material more deeply. But that was in the context of learning something new and hence was satisfying, being forced to do the same exact thing over and over again only teaches how to focus anger onto your tormentor.
My vote would be to teach arithmetic and algebra in grades 1-3, then just teach the simple sciences in grades 4-6 to re-enforce that math. Then teach real number Calculus and Probability in 7th grade, follow up with sciences that use that math in 8th & 9th grade. For kids interested in it, teach the practice of math in 9th-12th grade as well as advanced math courses by paying community college tuition for them.
PS The sciences need to be taught by science teachers, I cringe every time I recall science classes taught before 7th grade. T: "Which will hit the ground first? This feather or this lead ball?" Me: "We're not in a vacuum, so I'm going to with the lead ball." T: "Well lets see! Well the lead ball hit the ground first this time and that's the wrong result, lets repeat the experiment until we get the right result!" Yes this was one of many errors in her course material, but there are just too many things wrong with repeating an experiment until you get the expected result as a way to practice "science". By the end of the lesson everyone but me saw five lights. *sigh*
PS2 Yes 1-3 were not in a normal school, but I can't image I would have bothered with math at all had I been taught maths even more slowly.
Um, I'm in North America's largest city and the best I can get is a measly 15/5 Mbps connection. 100/100 would be a great improvement, it's what I was expecting by the year 2000. 10Gbs/10Gbs is more like what I was hoping for by 2020. I have noticed that my round-trip latency to the nearest IPs outside my ISP have fallen from 20 ms to 13 ms in the last 15 years, I think I have gamers to and Cisco thank for that improvement.
Your accountant already has software to deal with the 300 pages of cruft you need to generate quarterlies and yearlies. You don't want to waste time you could be spending building your business on learning tax law which will be half-irrelevant next year when the laws are again changed. You should familiarize yourself with a business tax form, just so you know how to categorize your expenses, this keeps your accountant hours down and saves you from a barrage of e-mails when your trying to get actual work done.
Another option for W-2's is to use a payroll service. Something like ProPayroll is $600 a year + $2 per check. That's a little more expensive than just having your accountant deal with it as part of your other taxes, but it's more time efficient. You just plug in the relevant numbers on a website at each payroll period.
For meeting minutes, use paper. This is a small business, you and your wife probably talk about the business all the time. The board meetings are just a time to get the big picture down on paper. Paper works is great for this task. Just put it in a binder labeled "meeting notes". This binder will also accept "meeting notes" from whenever you change your banking relationship and they need some specific language in your meeting minutes.
Yup, YouTube magically started working for me when I switched my nameserver to not use my ISP as a forwarder. And that is with a business account. Unfortunately, I'm in NYC which according to slashdot-group-think is simply not built densely enough to allow for competition like they have in the places where sheep outnumber people.
You need to be specific about what you actually need in a PVR for anyone to intelligently recommend an alternative for you. The most painless is probably TiVo. Something less feature rich but still configurable would be SageTV and GB-PVR. Easy to set up but probably lacking too many features you crave after using MythTV would be Microsoft's MCE, included in some versions of Windows 7. AFAIK none have time-stretch as so they don't appeal to me, and none allow you to have as many recording devices, nor can they schedule your recordings as well.
Your MythTV problems can probably be fixed with significantly less pain than switching to any of the alternatives. For the sound problem uninstall pulseaudio. For the DVD problem there is nothing wrong with using Xine or Ogle, there is a reason MythTV can be configured to use external DVD players. There are a number of LIRC configs out there that map your keys so that this is fairly seamless they are configured by default in MythTV distros. For NetFlix streaming get a Roku box or PS3 and use the input switching on your TV; a PS3 can actually see MythTV recordings and play them as well.
PS I may be biased as a long time user and some time contributor to MythTV. But I am also well aware of it's warts and have given other PVR options a chance. One thing I have not tried is using XBMC as a frontend for MythTV, I just couldn't get that software installed when I attempted to try it.
PS2 One of the main tasks for 0.23 is to speed up and fix regressions in the mythfrontend UI. Also, simplifying the configuration of audio in general and adding pulseaudio support is being actively worked on.
The 99% of MythTV users not using Gentoo and not mucking with their database encodings just need to run mythtv-setup for the upgrade to happen.
The MythTV 0.22 upgrade process automatically converts the database from utf8 strings encoded in mysql latin1 strings to utf8 encoded in mysql utf8 strings. In order for the upgrade process to work the initial default character set must be latin1, as that was the requirement for all prior versions of MythTV. This is not the case for everyone because they either ignored the frequent warnings in the MythTV documentation and wiki about data corruption that it would create if they changed the character set of the database, or because their server was configured to perform on the fly conversions of the character set. Mostly the first set knew what they were doing and accepted the risk, but the second set of users were using Gentoo which by default shipped a broken combination of MythTV and mysql.
The brokeness was due to the fact that while MythTV did set the character set of the database to latin1 in previous versions, it did not specify that the connection to the database use latin1. Those who followed the MythTV documentation when setting up their systems changed the Gentoo defaults to ones that MythTV could cope with, those who made the mistake of using the ebuilds without looking at the installation documentation have to follow some simple directions to fix their database prior to the upgrade. MythTV automatically makes a backup of the database prior to the upgrade unless the user opts not to, so even those who repeat the mistake of using the ebuild will be able to revert to a working state and fix their database.
Internally, MythTV uses UTF-16 strings everywhere in 0.22 and in prior versions. Conversions only happen when dealing with databases and filesystems that require a different encoding.
mythfrontend really needs to lose some of the artificial distinction between "recordings" vs "videos" and present them in a single unified UI, though. 0.22 got a little better, but there's still a long way to go.
Internally things are a closer now, the MythVideo plugin and MythTV proper share the same in core data structure for videos/recordings and MythVideo can now use "recording" groups and there are plans to unify the database structure for 0.23. The actual unification of the UI is not scheduled yet, but from all the developer chatter I've seen every one of the devs wants to bring the functionality of MythVideo into the frontend itself.
Besides, in about the same time that it would take for US schools to institute a country-wide standard for just one typing course, there will be drastic improvements in voice recognition software and keyboards themselves will disappear from use anyway.
I'm a fast talking New Yorker, but this sentiment always cracks me up. Even those who can't touch type are still able to type significantly faster than they speak. There are exceptions like paraplegics and other significantly disabled folks and I hope they will benefit from drastic improvements in voice recognition and other new or improved input methods.
I you don't mind going to jail for destroying evidence or interfering with an investigation yes that would work.
Sheriff Joe has in the past faked subpoenas, if he weren't an elected official he'd have been fired years ago for gross negligence. Your best bet is to let him arrest you then sue the county, that way you get the taxpayers of Maricopa to buy you a nice mansion on a lake far far away.
Heh, that has to be an old statistic. I've not seen a doctor write a prescription in at least a decade. Their office assistants type in both the chart info and the prescriptions and then print out the prescriptions for the doctor to sign.
A good friend of mine had trouble concentrating on programming, turned out he had leukemia and had less than three months left to live.
Once you've verified you are not at death's door, see a head shrink. In my experience writers block is a form of performance anxiety. It rarely applies to programming because so few people are likely to ever read your work no matter how inspired it is. So your anxiety is probably caused by something else in your life, something a head shrink can help you with. With programming you can reduce the problem to small steps that can be completed without any real inspiration. That kind of programming will not be as good as when you feel inspired but it will get the job done. When you worry about it not being your best work, remember that you can always improve the work later. I'm sure you've noticed in your career that the right way to solve the problem won't occur to you until after you've done it a number of the wrong ways first; get the wrong ways done now and learn more about the problem that way, better solutions will come to you.
I took one look at the picture and wondered what was up with the chiclets that appeared to have replaced that woman's teeth?
Two minutes of googling reveals this woman is a "Former TV Anchor" whose "shock" at public use of her family's image is obviously completely faked. She has now posted photos of herself with her family going through the whole 15 minutes of fame media circuit!
Her goal all along was to garner media attention for herself at the expense of her family. The "News Media" has played into her sick little hands. No wonder since she was one of them before making the career change to trophy wife so she is an easy interview. I will be demanding an apology from NPR for airing this bizarre feel good piece; cursory research should have revealed that tough questions of this little media whore were in order. (I expect this sort of thing of the "Morning Show" so they will be spared my pen.:)
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Would you give a loan with your own money to anybody, who would use that money just to buy some new clothing or a TV or a car or a house, or would you rather give a loan to somebody who'd show you his/her plan to build a business and generate revenue, so they could pay the interest and the loan back to you?
That you ask this question means you have no concept of risk. The first person presumably has a job and will continue working in it so I'd be a fool to lend to the guy with the business plan who 19 times out of 20 won't pay back even the principal.
Now in the real world I might still give the second guy a small amount of money, but only in exchange for a majority stake in his company and only if I thought he had already assembled a good team to execute his plans.
Does COX have a lien on your property? Where I live in NYC I know a number of people complain that they can't get cable because their neighbors won't allow CableVision run a line through their backyard. I know most cities have franchise agreements with a local cable monopoly that allows them to dig up the streets and lay their cable there, but I've never heard of a city using eminent domain run Cable TV lines across private property. I know it happens for power and gas lines, but those have long provided an essential service like police and roads.
The AC-3 codec sends the full uncompressed audio through, but it has three important parameters with respect to loudness.
One is dialnorm which just tells you what the average loudness of the dialog is (or the overall program if there is no dialog, i.e. in classical music.) Broadcasters have standardized on this being -24dB in internal program flows, but this number may be different when you see the program because the broadcaster needed to make a level adjustment for a particular probram. This is supposed to be applied to the value set by the volume knob so that when you switch channels or when the broadcaster transitions from one program to the next the volume stays within 1dB of the previous volume level.
Then there are two dynamic range compression parameters, one is for allowing the end user to adjust the dynamic range and the other is for preventing clipping. Your equipment decides how much of this DNR to apply. A great deal of DNR is applied when you output to the composite output of your set-top-box, because the ultimate playback equipment is a terrible little speaker in your TV. A small amount of DNR is applied when you send the audio to your 5.1 setup. And your 5.1 amplifier usually has a "Movie" setting to turn of DNR completely and a "Night" setting to apply a great deal of DNR even in a 5.1 setup.
I have only skimmed A/85, but I assume it just specifies that you provide decent parameters so the end user equipment can limit the dynamic range effectively using these parameters. So if your equipment has a "Night" setting a commercial won't be able to by-pass it with bogus params. But you will still be able to enjoy full dynamic range in the "Movie" setting when there isn't someone sleeping nearby.
It wouldn't split in two. The South, North East and California would not co-exist in one country. Where the rest of the western states and the middle of the country would go would be a guessing game, but they would probably be absorbed into one of those three viable states. Texas might go their own way and take parts of other nearby states with it, or it might itself split with parts joining the Western coalition and parts joining the Southern coalition.
If it happened it would be bloody, but it won't happen. The American civil war was seen coming for a long time before a southern states blockaded a federal fort to start the armed conflict. And chattel slavery was a much more divisive issue than the current debates about whether we should borrow 1 trillion dollars from China and give a 0.5% tax cut to those earning less than 1 million a year (D), or if we should borrow 1 trillion dollars from China and give a 2% tax cut to those earning more than 1 million a year (R).
Err...exactly why is there a choice to vote in Spanish or English?
If you didn't then all those damn English speakers would act like a bunch of cry babies about directions not being provided in their language.
It would be useful if /bin/cp explicitly dropped use-once data that it reads into the pagecache - there are syscalls for that.
Other than opening the files O_DIRECT, how would you do that?
According to wikipedia a LoC is exactly 10 terabytes. Never mind that my home library contains many times that amount of data and the LoC probably contains trillions of times that amount of data.
The "don't run any programs or the thing will overheat and die" bug still exists in the latest MacBook Pro's. I have a couple month old one that's the bane of my existence at the moment. (I needed it to make sure some code was compatible with FCP.) That thing is always demanding to be rebooted for an update of some sort, it heats up like crazy and dies when you do anything processor intensive, and the UI has so little polish that KDE shines like a 1950's presidential motorcade by comparison.
After using it for a couple months I thought about how Apple designed printer paper might look like. 10" on each side, $10 a sheet, razor sharp edges, both sides covered in fingerprint preserving plastic. One side would carry a large warning about not putting it in a laser printer as it would melt and destroy the printer, while the other would be filled with warnings about avoiding paper-cuts.
Jobs would send a tweet about how all paper can give you a paper-cut.
In the case of a mold used to make plastics, stamp metal, etc., its incredibly expensive for a company to get a new mold made.
To paraphrase the company spokesmen in the article, "We're big corporations! We shouldn't have to obey laws against fraudulent trading." I'm remain unconvinced.
How expensive are these molds in actual dollars? Why not just use stickers for the patent numbers if this is such a great expense?
If the patent has been so unprofitable that the former owner can't cough up a few million dollars for a mold, it never should have been granted in the first place. Maybe we should make the patent examiner who granted such a patent partially responsible for the bill? Or we could require a deposit 3x the estimated cost of retooling to be placed with the patent office on the first renewal date.
Honestly, I think this will resolve itself in the marketplace, if it doesn't we can increase the fines from $500 per item max to $50,000 per item max. And we can also impose minimum fine of 3x the retail cost of the item with the fraudulent markings. Only if such simple measures don't work would I support the a retooling deposit and extending liability to the patent examiner.
FedEx, far and away the best, but expensive
Hah!
In NY and NJ at least FedEx is the absolute worst. The USPS at delivers 99% of the time, although it too often arrives shredded and mud soaked in a large plastic bag 9 months later. DHL mostly left the US market but they never lost or damaged a package, but the package was reliably a day later than it should have been. UPS delivers 100% of the time and usually early, the 0.5 % of the time that the item arrives damaged a few photos are sufficient for the insurance claim. Meanwhile, FedEx package delivery sends a different delivery team every time, they lie about having attempted delivery almost every single time, and things usually arrive 3-5 days late when you are lucky enough that they arrive at all. OTOH I've never had a problem with FedEx overnight letter delivery, and they are convenient and cheap so I do use them for that unless they are original documents; but for packages, never when I can avoid it.
Airline travel was only for a few elites fifty years ago, what's so wierd about it being only for a few elites now?
Fifty years ago you had to pay half the cost of a small car for a seat on a passenger airline to fly somewhere with dignity. Now you have to rent an aircraft with staff at the cost of several luxury cars. And it's not because the cost of flying has gone up 10000% in fifty years, it's government policy has been captured by a small number of paranoid fools.
This particular law is severely flawed and will cost Arizona dearly in civil rights lawsuit payouts if it ever goes into effect. But Arizona residents are in their rights to be upset with federal immigration policy. The feds have essentially closed the borders on both sides of the state causing an through Arizona that this small state is completely unable to cope with. They can't be and shouldn't be expected to hire the law enforcement needed to deal with the migration. These migrants don't settle in Arizona and pay taxes, they move through it on their way to places with an excess of jobs and pay their taxes there.
The problem on the federal level is that there is no consensus among the American people on immigration. I believe migration is a human right that should only be curtailed when there is a compelling state interest, for instance the state has a compelling interest to prevent foreign troop movements within it's territory. But this founders' view hasn't been the consensus view for over a hundred years. People with money tend to also believe in open borders because it creates jobs and keeps the economy strong, whether or not they believe migration is a human right. But there are many people who don't believe migration is a human right and who also believe it deprives the descendants of earlier immigrants of good pay due to the increased competition for jobs. There is also a significant minority who are just plain racist; these are the folks who will make the Arizona approach fail, since some of them happen to be police officers. The problems in Arizona need to be solved at the federal level by debate and compromise between the reasonable people on both sides of the issue. But the politics of migration doesn't currently divide along party lines, there are still a few pro-business folks in the republican party and there are democrats with significant union support. And to be perfectly honest, there are is a small minority of racists serving in congress on both sides. The republican party has decided (rationally) that it is in the party's best interest at the moment not to pass any popular laws, as that would bolster the standing of our president and potentially hurt their chances in the mid-term elections. This may change after the mid-term elections, but I wouldn't bet on it; I believe only laws that have broad support in the democratic party are likely to pass until at least Obama's second term. By then republicans will have regrouped and started thinking about becoming the party of good government again, if only to have a chance to recapture the White House in 2017.
PS Arizona was a founded racism. It was the part of New Mexico that seceded from the United States as part of it's residents' fight for the right to keep slaves, which was at the time illegal in all of New Mexico. This was only 14 years after we conquered the territory in the Mexican-American war. It was a hinterland of the Mexican state of Alta California, which included present day California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Partly due to it's residents' history of betrayal to the USA and largely due to it's insignificant population prior the invention of modern air conditioning systems, it was the last State to be incorporated prior to Alaska and Hawaii.
grade 1 -- addition/subtraction, multiplication tables
grade 2 -- addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, identifying simple series (+-*/)
grade 3 -- algebra, translating problems into algebra and identifying more complex series
grades 5-7 -- addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, identifying simple series.
grade 8 -- algebra again, yawn.
grade 9 -- calc, trig, geometry.
grade 14 -- calc 2 & 3 (complex numbers, Lagrange, etc.), Linear Algebra, (& Algorithms, Complexity, Logic)
grade 15 -- Probability
grad school -- Algorithms & Complexity again, yawn
Now I did pick up math other places, mostly in computer and engineering classes. But all the excitement was in grades 1-3, 9 and 15, the times when I was actually learning enough to keep the material interesting.
Kids have no problem learning early, but the whole repetition thing that teachers go on about is bunk. You never have to be taught the same thing twice. Using the skills is different, when I took signals and systems I dusted off the calc book and reread some stuff and I then understood the material more deeply. But that was in the context of learning something new and hence was satisfying, being forced to do the same exact thing over and over again only teaches how to focus anger onto your tormentor.
My vote would be to teach arithmetic and algebra in grades 1-3, then just teach the simple sciences in grades 4-6 to re-enforce that math. Then teach real number Calculus and Probability in 7th grade, follow up with sciences that use that math in 8th & 9th grade. For kids interested in it, teach the practice of math in 9th-12th grade as well as advanced math courses by paying community college tuition for them.
PS The sciences need to be taught by science teachers, I cringe every time I recall science classes taught before 7th grade. T: "Which will hit the ground first? This feather or this lead ball?" Me: "We're not in a vacuum, so I'm going to with the lead ball." T: "Well lets see! Well the lead ball hit the ground first this time and that's the wrong result, lets repeat the experiment until we get the right result!" Yes this was one of many errors in her course material, but there are just too many things wrong with repeating an experiment until you get the expected result as a way to practice "science". By the end of the lesson everyone but me saw five lights. *sigh*
PS2 Yes 1-3 were not in a normal school, but I can't image I would have bothered with math at all had I been taught maths even more slowly.
Um, I'm in North America's largest city and the best I can get is a measly 15/5 Mbps connection. 100/100 would be a great improvement, it's what I was expecting by the year 2000. 10Gbs/10Gbs is more like what I was hoping for by 2020. I have noticed that my round-trip latency to the nearest IPs outside my ISP have fallen from 20 ms to 13 ms in the last 15 years, I think I have gamers to and Cisco thank for that improvement.
Your accountant already has software to deal with the 300 pages of cruft you need to generate quarterlies and yearlies. You don't want to waste time you could be spending building your business on learning tax law which will be half-irrelevant next year when the laws are again changed. You should familiarize yourself with a business tax form, just so you know how to categorize your expenses, this keeps your accountant hours down and saves you from a barrage of e-mails when your trying to get actual work done.
Another option for W-2's is to use a payroll service. Something like ProPayroll is $600 a year + $2 per check. That's a little more expensive than just having your accountant deal with it as part of your other taxes, but it's more time efficient. You just plug in the relevant numbers on a website at each payroll period.
For meeting minutes, use paper. This is a small business, you and your wife probably talk about the business all the time. The board meetings are just a time to get the big picture down on paper. Paper works is great for this task. Just put it in a binder labeled "meeting notes". This binder will also accept "meeting notes" from whenever you change your banking relationship and they need some specific language in your meeting minutes.
Yup, YouTube magically started working for me when I switched my nameserver to not use my ISP as a forwarder. And that is with a business account. Unfortunately, I'm in NYC which according to slashdot-group-think is simply not built densely enough to allow for competition like they have in the places where sheep outnumber people.
You need to be specific about what you actually need in a PVR for anyone to intelligently recommend an alternative for you. The most painless is probably TiVo. Something less feature rich but still configurable would be SageTV and GB-PVR. Easy to set up but probably lacking too many features you crave after using MythTV would be Microsoft's MCE, included in some versions of Windows 7. AFAIK none have time-stretch as so they don't appeal to me, and none allow you to have as many recording devices, nor can they schedule your recordings as well.
Your MythTV problems can probably be fixed with significantly less pain than switching to any of the alternatives. For the sound problem uninstall pulseaudio. For the DVD problem there is nothing wrong with using Xine or Ogle, there is a reason MythTV can be configured to use external DVD players. There are a number of LIRC configs out there that map your keys so that this is fairly seamless they are configured by default in MythTV distros. For NetFlix streaming get a Roku box or PS3 and use the input switching on your TV; a PS3 can actually see MythTV recordings and play them as well.
PS I may be biased as a long time user and some time contributor to MythTV. But I am also well aware of it's warts and have given other PVR options a chance. One thing I have not tried is using XBMC as a frontend for MythTV, I just couldn't get that software installed when I attempted to try it.
PS2 One of the main tasks for 0.23 is to speed up and fix regressions in the mythfrontend UI. Also, simplifying the configuration of audio in general and adding pulseaudio support is being actively worked on.
The 99% of MythTV users not using Gentoo and not mucking with their database encodings just need to run mythtv-setup for the upgrade to happen.
The MythTV 0.22 upgrade process automatically converts the database from utf8 strings encoded in mysql latin1 strings to utf8 encoded in mysql utf8 strings. In order for the upgrade process to work the initial default character set must be latin1, as that was the requirement for all prior versions of MythTV. This is not the case for everyone because they either ignored the frequent warnings in the MythTV documentation and wiki about data corruption that it would create if they changed the character set of the database, or because their server was configured to perform on the fly conversions of the character set. Mostly the first set knew what they were doing and accepted the risk, but the second set of users were using Gentoo which by default shipped a broken combination of MythTV and mysql.
The brokeness was due to the fact that while MythTV did set the character set of the database to latin1 in previous versions, it did not specify that the connection to the database use latin1. Those who followed the MythTV documentation when setting up their systems changed the Gentoo defaults to ones that MythTV could cope with, those who made the mistake of using the ebuilds without looking at the installation documentation have to follow some simple directions to fix their database prior to the upgrade. MythTV automatically makes a backup of the database prior to the upgrade unless the user opts not to, so even those who repeat the mistake of using the ebuild will be able to revert to a working state and fix their database.
Internally, MythTV uses UTF-16 strings everywhere in 0.22 and in prior versions. Conversions only happen when dealing with databases and filesystems that require a different encoding.
mythfrontend really needs to lose some of the artificial distinction between "recordings" vs "videos" and present them in a single unified UI, though. 0.22 got a little better, but there's still a long way to go.
Internally things are a closer now, the MythVideo plugin and MythTV proper share the same in core data structure for videos/recordings and MythVideo can now use "recording" groups and there are plans to unify the database structure for 0.23. The actual unification of the UI is not scheduled yet, but from all the developer chatter I've seen every one of the devs wants to bring the functionality of MythVideo into the frontend itself.
Here too. I actually checked my calendar app.
Besides, in about the same time that it would take for US schools to institute a country-wide standard for just one typing course, there will be drastic improvements in voice recognition software and keyboards themselves will disappear from use anyway.
I'm a fast talking New Yorker, but this sentiment always cracks me up. Even those who can't touch type are still able to type significantly faster than they speak. There are exceptions like paraplegics and other significantly disabled folks and I hope they will benefit from drastic improvements in voice recognition and other new or improved input methods.
I you don't mind going to jail for destroying evidence or interfering with an investigation yes that would work.
Sheriff Joe has in the past faked subpoenas, if he weren't an elected official he'd have been fired years ago for gross negligence. Your best bet is to let him arrest you then sue the county, that way you get the taxpayers of Maricopa to buy you a nice mansion on a lake far far away.
Heh, that has to be an old statistic. I've not seen a doctor write a prescription in at least a decade. Their office assistants type in both the chart info and the prescriptions and then print out the prescriptions for the doctor to sign.
A good friend of mine had trouble concentrating on programming, turned out he had leukemia and had less than three months left to live.
Once you've verified you are not at death's door, see a head shrink. In my experience writers block is a form of performance anxiety. It rarely applies to programming because so few people are likely to ever read your work no matter how inspired it is. So your anxiety is probably caused by something else in your life, something a head shrink can help you with. With programming you can reduce the problem to small steps that can be completed without any real inspiration. That kind of programming will not be as good as when you feel inspired but it will get the job done. When you worry about it not being your best work, remember that you can always improve the work later. I'm sure you've noticed in your career that the right way to solve the problem won't occur to you until after you've done it a number of the wrong ways first; get the wrong ways done now and learn more about the problem that way, better solutions will come to you.
I took one look at the picture and wondered what was up with the chiclets that appeared to have replaced that woman's teeth?
Two minutes of googling reveals this woman is a "Former TV Anchor" whose "shock" at public use of her family's image is obviously completely faked. She has now posted photos of herself with her family going through the whole 15 minutes of fame media circuit!
Her goal all along was to garner media attention for herself at the expense of her family. The "News Media" has played into her sick little hands. No wonder since she was one of them before making the career change to trophy wife so she is an easy interview. I will be demanding an apology from NPR for airing this bizarre feel good piece; cursory research should have revealed that tough questions of this little media whore were in order. (I expect this sort of thing of the "Morning Show" so they will be spared my pen. :)