But it's a lousy scenario. There shouldn't *be* expensive, hidden redirects, and we're just encouraging what I consider (at best) stupid. even (worse) anti-social, possibly evil behavior.
'anti-social' and 'evil' - did you actually read what you'd written before submitting it?
It doesn't strike you as in any way, how can I put this, crazy?
But don't pretend that you're somehow morally superior to the guy who pays for Chinese-farmed gold.
He can do and he is, because he's not cheating (it's expressly forbidden by the rules of the game - note the emphasis on the word game and try not to lose the plot here).
You may have noticed most games tend to have rules, this helps to ensure people have fun playing, breaking them is cheating which is a Bad Thing (TM). This is something you should already grasped by now, unless your highly socially dysfunctional.
It's "wrong" to buy gold in WoW, in the same way that it's "wrong" to steal money from the bank in Monopoly, even if the other players have played it more than you that day and seem 'better'.
You're advocating behaving like a little kid who sees other people playing something and want's to join in, but then he decides doesn't like the rules the other players are happy with, so he just disrupts the game for everyone else by doing what he wants (and continues to do so and argue about why "his rules are better" even when asked to leave by the other players).
But can you add more RAM? Or replace your disk architecture? Or upgrade the network interface?
Building a system yourself from a mix of new and old parts lying around costs no less, takes significantly longer to set up, uses less reliable hardware (by virtue of it's age, and that it's untested together, and no one has sanitised the software build, and is so is more likely to be prone to problems you'll need to debug), but gives no useful benefit to those who just wanted what the article is about - a home network attached storage device.
I don't see any significant advantages of a semi-DYI NAS over just putting together an actual file server
I'm not sure what you mean by ' semi-DYI NAS', but I'm surprised you don't see the significant advantage (especially as it's been pointed out).
I can only assume you don't value your own time much (and don't mind the hassle of setting up maintaining yet-another-computer).
Presumably, you wouldn't use a NetApp Filer, because they arn't flexible as building your own system either.
I've thought about getting something like the Nostromo for ages, but was worried it might be a daft gimmick.
Can you (or other users) share what sort of games you play with it, and what it works well with it (and what doesn't work so well)?
Do you use it as a complete keyboard replacement while playing, or as a suppliment for the main keyboard and just jump to some of the time while gaming?
Actually, the G15 keyboard has been shipping for awhile now.
The swines, I was rigged up for pre-order notifications and they just sent me an update today saying it was avalible to order! My local retailer has had a problem getting them too - maybe they have had limited stock...
If you'd actually checked it out rather than making assumptions, you'd see you can reconfigure and upgrade the TeraStation (you can easily put your own distribution of Linux on it if you want to) and you can upgrade it with alternative (faster/larger capacity) disks.
total price: $233.79. And that's JUST for mouse + keyboard and games, not to mention new graphics card etc etc.
On my most recent system I sent spent ~ 800 UKP on the CPU (AMD FX-57), and have 2 x (for SLI) 360 UKP GeForce 7800 GTX graphics cards (which are not even the top of the like 512 MB's, which come in at 460 UKP!). Note that's USP (total 2,679 USD) - a price which doesn't include the 2 GB of fast (2-2-2-6) DDR RAM, motherboard, 10K RPM SATA Disks, 600 W PSU, etc.
My old (at the time, brand new) DiNovo Logitech keyboard and mouse (with media pad) cost me 199 UKP - way more than 233 USD (I bought it over the Microsoft one because I was using my PowerBook for so much work stuff, it made transitioning between the two easier as the keyboard is essentially a laptop one, which made a difference in fast paced multiplayer FPS games).
While I don't think much of this system (other than that it's a neat idea) I would happily plonk down 500 UKP for something like a production version of the Optimus - while I agree gamers are often cheap (given a high percentage of them are 20, and have little to no disposable income) I don't think cost will be a barrier for those of us with a decent disposable income and who looking for the best gaming system and peripherals they can get their hands on.
I remember seeing these things about 8-10 years ago in high street stores (I bet there are some old dupes for this one...;-)
In other news, the Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard (with backlit keys, macro buttons and a programmable backlit LCD display) finally started shipping today (after being hyped last year) - an update on the Optimus is due out on the 1st of February too.
Step 1) Buy device that works out of the box. Step 2) Configure it for your requirements using web based interface, in under 5 minutes.
Your then free to spend your life doing something less boring and tedious than setting up (and supporting, when it eventually expires / and or goes wrong) a naff POS-hardware server.
"Total cost for this project is probably $500 or $600, almost all due to the hard disks"
Personally, I'd rather spend the 500-600 USD on something that meets my needs and just works out of the box like a Buffalo TeraStation than re-invent the wheel.
So, giving people root on their own boxes has been very successful for me. You say my way is the wrong way, but I don't see a "right" way to set up their environment that wouldn't waste tons of both my time and the users' time, and even still I don't see what the benefit would be. Can you elaborate on what you think the "right" way is?
To manage something like Apache with sudo, the effort required is really small:
e.g. in sudoers conf: >User_Alias WEBMASTERS = bob, jane, sue >WEBMASTERS ALL = (root)/usr/local/sbin/apachectl start, (root)/usr/local/sbin/apachectl stop
As a user, seeing commands you can run with sudo is as simple as 'sudo -l', you can always put a note (with an example of how to do it) in the motd (I've tended to do that myself).
If they are doing software development and have requirements that include things like the ability to experiment with privilage seperation or modify iptables rulesets, then I'd definately have given them VMware (thought I'd probably set up a GSX server in preference to individual client installs of VMWare).
Tools like VMware and Virtual PC are a lot easier to manage than a bunch of desktops and a far better environment for testing and developing in - when someone screws up, they can revert to a previously saved version of the system, or click to make a new instance using an existing image (allowing them to create a version based on whatever distro/OS they need to - for those doing work involving multiple platforms, or with a tendancy to break things).
As well as being easier (for developers and for those supporting them), it's ultimately a lot more useful thanks to things like the ability to easily revert to 'known good' images and to clone systems for testing. It also works out a lot cheaper than buying physically seperate development hardware for each developer (and reduces the downtime for users that comes from only having a single desktop for development and general use).
The 'live production' varient, ESX Server is really cool too (but that's a bit OT).
You are going to get a bunch of responses. most of them from people that will say something like.. "NO." "NOBODY GETS ROOT, PERIOD".
That would be correct.
Well, in an ideal world, it would be that way. We would setup systems for people to use and they could just use them without root privledge. Unfortunatley we know that isn't possible if you want your users to actually be productive and get things done.
That would be wrong.
If your giving users root 'to get things done' it's because you have set up their environment badly.
I look at it this way. If you bomb your laptop or your test server, either you can fix it, or you can call me and I'll walk you through fixing it, fix it, or just give you a new clean configuration.
You ought to have a netboot/jumpstart system in place so that users can do this themselves.
However, the "real" servers that are accessed by someone that isn't themselves, the users do not get the root password, ever.
You should be aiming a lot higher than that - on a production server with sensitive data nobody should have root, not even the administrators (because you really shouldn't be relying on DAC alone in that sort of environment - you should have MAC, devolved permissions, four eyes authentication, etc.).
You seem to missing the rather central point that you don't own and maintain the roads, which is why it's ridiculous for you to suggest you ought to be entitled to payment when people use them.
Those who maintain roads (local, regional and federal government - or private firms under PFI contracts) do indeed collect money from users of those roads, both directly and indirectly. These funds are collected variously through such means as general taxation (often at a local city / regional level, for such things as the maintenance of pavements and smaller streets), as well as through road tax (which applies in most western countries) and of course tolls.
I would also point out that regions tend not to cross-bill each other based on the amount of border traffic (e.g. it's not as if the state of Colorado bills Utah every time someone drives from Salt Lake City through Colorado on their way to Kansas).
"ISPs are now reducing access to peer-to-peer applications, blocking Skype, and, scariest of all, lobbying Congress to let them do it."
They don't have to lobby congress - it's their network, they can offer whatever QoS they like.
People have been using different levels of QoS to consumer traffic than commercial traffic since consumers starting using the net - throttling P2P traffic isn't "news" and neither is port blocking. Plenty of ISP's block incoming ports, and not all providers route to all destinations, nor are they obliged to by any form of holy covenant (for example, MFN used to deliberately black hole traffic to ISP Manawatu Internet Services [insert long story here]). Blocking out going ports is likely to be slightly more contentious - and subject to regulatory interference - if they are trying to block outgoing common VoIP traffic and they are an incumbant fix-lined telco, but some ISP's already block specific outbound ports (specifically port 25 connections other than their mail servers as a Spam prevention measure).
Routing equipment, transit and fiber is not free to run and neither are the teams that have to design and manage them - as the network grows, costs increase, often dramatically (it's not just a case of "light another fiber" and it all scales magically). This is why providers arn't really keen on those guys who pay 19.99 UKP a month then do 400 GB worth of (mostly P2P) traffic every month - not only does your back bone capacity (fiber and switch equipment) need to be expanded when customers start using that much traffic, but your transit capacity and your connection to the POP/DSLAM - but all of that all twice over, for redandancy of course.
If you don't like the QoS a provider is offering - either pay for a better QoS (as private companies do - those that made large networks cost effective to run at all and without which the general public would still still be on dialup) or try and provide a non QoS'd service yourself and see what happens to your users ability to do simple things like surf the web or play online games when the leechers signup (after being kicked off the other networks). Oops! - the network is full of P2P crap, no bandwith left, packets dropping everywhere, hardware at capacity - customers all leaving, huge transit bill to pay - doh!
The truth is, the relatively small number of people who flood the network with crap P2P traffic - and it really is a small percentage - screw up the service for everyone else (driving up the contention on the line, driving up operating costs very noticeably and driving down other people's download speeds). To make things worse P2P clients (with things like Kazza, rather than Bit Torrent in mind) are typically horribly inefficent and consist largely of noise - not even geniune downloads of files or software people want. That people are doing this primarily as a way to get "OMG FREE WAREZ!1" because they can't be bothered to pay for software/media is reprehensible.
If people were primarily using more efficient clients like Bit Torrent in a resonsible way this would not be such a big issue, though users inclined to share a lot of files for extended periods of time would still be doing more traffic than their 9.99 UKP a month broadband account reasonably entitles them to. BT is a great way of preventing a site or transit connection to a specific provider from being overloaded by a sudden influx of traffic (such as the weekly patching of WoW) - and it does this in a way that benifits end users, the content providers and the ISP's (as it cuts traffic outside the network). However, as a sole transit mechanisim (e.g. for Warez) it's not as desirible or good for users or providers - if users want to start being able to serve files themselves (and so use as much bandwith as download providers use, and be able to offer similar speeds), they need to start paying the same rates companies like File Front / File Planet do for that privilage, because that's how much it costs the ISP to provide that sort
You need to pay for subscription of Fileplanet to DL the 'high res' version (2.5GB)
I don't have a paid subscription, waited 30 min in the queue, registered for my key and downloaded and played the high resolution version.
(Though if you you've ever played GW I can't say I recommend bothering as it seemed like poor imitation, with an awkward control system, some bugged animations and a limited interface).
Sky are expected to launch their HTDV service in the Spring (as well as the likes of all X-Box 360 games supporting HD - if your interested in gaming content), and will be offering HD TV over IP in the next 18 months I expect. The BBC are actually due to start trials of HDTVin the Spring too (in particular in London), so it's not too far away.
You are the one that's bone headed - do you think the he people who dream up taxtion policies are really that stupid they didn't forseee something that simple?
It's never adventageous to earn 'less' or 'donate money to charity' to change income tax bracket, that's the sort of scam Homer Simpson would dream up.
If you are earning 49,000 and being taxed at 15% and earning over >50,000 thousand puts you into a 25 % tax bracket and you get a 1,500 pay raise you don't get to take home more of your money by getting rid of that extra 1,500 - you are only taxed the higher rate on the amount above the higher threshold - your not charged a higher rate on the whole amount.
I agree, I always build more complex applications like this (though I haven't had to use it of late due to the type of work I've been doing).
When you know you'll be writing a large or complex program from scratch, especially one with with quite a few libraries this is a great way to go. Creating dummy functions, with comments indicating what you want to do in each, and indicating what the input and output and end result should be, before you even start any real coding is a great idea.
It can also prove useful as way of validating or revising your original design, as it forces you to think through the implementation fully and can help you realise potential limitations.
Your circle of acquaintances is clearly limited. I've known a number of people who never watched any cable-only channel other than the History Channel and Weather Channel.
That's a fallacy, in the same way it is when you hear people say they only have a computer to "help with the family accounts" / "help the kids with their home work" or that they only get Playboy "for the articles".
I also know quite a few people who have only basic cable and watch local network channels almost exclusively.
Slashdot Mirror
But it's a lousy scenario. There shouldn't *be* expensive, hidden redirects, and we're just encouraging what I consider (at best) stupid. even (worse) anti-social, possibly evil behavior.
'anti-social' and 'evil' - did you actually read what you'd written before submitting it?
It doesn't strike you as in any way, how can I put this, crazy?
But don't pretend that you're somehow morally superior to the guy who pays for Chinese-farmed gold.
He can do and he is, because he's not cheating (it's expressly forbidden by the rules of the game - note the emphasis on the word game and try not to lose the plot here).
You may have noticed most games tend to have rules, this helps to ensure people have fun playing, breaking them is cheating which is a Bad Thing (TM). This is something you should already grasped by now, unless your highly socially dysfunctional.
It's "wrong" to buy gold in WoW, in the same way that it's "wrong" to steal money from the bank in Monopoly, even if the other players have played it more than you that day and seem 'better'.
You're advocating behaving like a little kid who sees other people playing something and want's to join in, but then he decides doesn't like the rules the other players are happy with, so he just disrupts the game for everyone else by doing what he wants (and continues to do so and argue about why "his rules are better" even when asked to leave by the other players).
But can you add more RAM? Or replace your disk architecture? Or upgrade the network interface?
Building a system yourself from a mix of new and old parts lying around costs no less, takes significantly longer to set up, uses less reliable hardware (by virtue of it's age, and that it's untested together, and no one has sanitised the software build, and is so is more likely to be prone to problems you'll need to debug), but gives no useful benefit to those who just wanted what the article is about - a home network attached storage device.
I don't see any significant advantages of a semi-DYI NAS over just putting together an actual file server
I'm not sure what you mean by ' semi-DYI NAS', but I'm surprised you don't see the significant advantage (especially as it's been pointed out).
I can only assume you don't value your own time much (and don't mind the hassle of setting up maintaining yet-another-computer).
Presumably, you wouldn't use a NetApp Filer, because they arn't flexible as building your own system either.
I've thought about getting something like the Nostromo for ages, but was worried it might be a daft gimmick.
Can you (or other users) share what sort of games you play with it, and what it works well with it (and what doesn't work so well)?
Do you use it as a complete keyboard replacement while playing, or as a suppliment for the main keyboard and just jump to some of the time while gaming?
Actually, the G15 keyboard has been shipping for awhile now.
The swines, I was rigged up for pre-order notifications and they just sent me an update today saying it was avalible to order! My local retailer has had a problem getting them too - maybe they have had limited stock...
If you'd actually checked it out rather than making assumptions, you'd see you can reconfigure and upgrade the TeraStation (you can easily put your own distribution of Linux on it if you want to) and you can upgrade it with alternative (faster/larger capacity) disks.
total price: $233.79. And that's JUST for mouse + keyboard and games, not to mention new graphics card etc etc.
On my most recent system I sent spent ~ 800 UKP on the CPU (AMD FX-57), and have 2 x (for SLI) 360 UKP GeForce 7800 GTX graphics cards (which are not even the top of the like 512 MB's, which come in at 460 UKP!). Note that's USP (total 2,679 USD) - a price which doesn't include the 2 GB of fast (2-2-2-6) DDR RAM, motherboard, 10K RPM SATA Disks, 600 W PSU, etc.
My old (at the time, brand new) DiNovo Logitech keyboard and mouse (with media pad) cost me 199 UKP - way more than 233 USD (I bought it over the Microsoft one because I was using my PowerBook for so much work stuff, it made transitioning between the two easier as the keyboard is essentially a laptop one, which made a difference in fast paced multiplayer FPS games).
While I don't think much of this system (other than that it's a neat idea) I would happily plonk down 500 UKP for something like a production version of the Optimus - while I agree gamers are often cheap (given a high percentage of them are 20, and have little to no disposable income) I don't think cost will be a barrier for those of us with a decent disposable income and who looking for the best gaming system and peripherals they can get their hands on.
I remember seeing these things about 8-10 years ago in high street stores (I bet there are some old dupes for this one... ;-)
In other news, the Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard (with backlit keys, macro buttons and a programmable backlit LCD display) finally started shipping today (after being hyped last year) - an update on the Optimus is due out on the 1st of February too.
I think that misses the point:
Step 1) Buy device that works out of the box.
Step 2) Configure it for your requirements using web based interface, in under 5 minutes.
Your then free to spend your life doing something less boring and tedious than setting up (and supporting, when it eventually expires / and or goes wrong) a naff POS-hardware server.
"Total cost for this project is probably $500 or $600, almost all due to the hard disks"
Personally, I'd rather spend the 500-600 USD on something that meets my needs and just works out of the box like a Buffalo TeraStation than re-invent the wheel.
As I've said in a post just above, why just assume the use oil (of all things) to generate the electricity?
Oil is actually one of the least common ways of fuelling power plants (far behind even the use of renewable resources).
Easy. Calculate all the oil it took to produce the electricity to charge the segway.
Why use oil to generate the electricity?
I guarantee you that the bicycle uses the least oil of these four, unless of course the bicyclist subsists on a diet of oil.
How is a bicycle guaranteed to use less oil than a Segway?
If anything, I'd expect your average bicycle to use marginally more to keep it it good running order, given the mechanism is exposed to the elements.
This kid isn't a genius, after all: ...I've only just passed my driving test...
Because only rocket scientists have driving licences!
So, giving people root on their own boxes has been very successful for me. You say my way is the wrong way, but I don't see a "right" way to set up their environment that wouldn't waste tons of both my time and the users' time, and even still I don't see what the benefit would be. Can you elaborate on what you think the "right" way is?
/usr/local/sbin/apachectl start, (root) /usr/local/sbin/apachectl stop
To manage something like Apache with sudo, the effort required is really small:
e.g. in sudoers conf:
>User_Alias WEBMASTERS = bob, jane, sue
>WEBMASTERS ALL = (root)
As a user, seeing commands you can run with sudo is as simple as 'sudo -l', you can always put a note (with an example of how to do it) in the motd (I've tended to do that myself).
If they are doing software development and have requirements that include things like the ability to experiment with privilage seperation or modify iptables rulesets, then I'd definately have given them VMware (thought I'd probably set up a GSX server in preference to individual client installs of VMWare).
Tools like VMware and Virtual PC are a lot easier to manage than a bunch of desktops and a far better environment for testing and developing in - when someone screws up, they can revert to a previously saved version of the system, or click to make a new instance using an existing image (allowing them to create a version based on whatever distro/OS they need to - for those doing work involving multiple platforms, or with a tendancy to break things).
As well as being easier (for developers and for those supporting them), it's ultimately a lot more useful thanks to things like the ability to easily revert to 'known good' images and to clone systems for testing. It also works out a lot cheaper than buying physically seperate development hardware for each developer (and reduces the downtime for users that comes from only having a single desktop for development and general use).
The 'live production' varient, ESX Server is really cool too (but that's a bit OT).
You are going to get a bunch of responses. most of them from people that will say something like.. "NO." "NOBODY GETS ROOT, PERIOD".
That would be correct.
Well, in an ideal world, it would be that way. We would setup systems for people to use and they could just use them without root privledge. Unfortunatley we know that isn't possible if you want your users to actually be productive and get things done.
That would be wrong.
If your giving users root 'to get things done' it's because you have set up their environment badly.
I look at it this way. If you bomb your laptop or your test server, either you can fix it, or you can call me and I'll walk you through fixing it, fix it, or just give you a new clean configuration.
You ought to have a netboot/jumpstart system in place so that users can do this themselves.
However, the "real" servers that are accessed by someone that isn't themselves, the users do not get the root password, ever.
You should be aiming a lot higher than that - on a production server with sensitive data nobody should have root, not even the administrators (because you really shouldn't be relying on DAC alone in that sort of environment - you should have MAC, devolved permissions, four eyes authentication, etc.).
How else did you think they get routed?
You really should see a professional.
You seem to missing the rather central point that you don't own and maintain the roads, which is why it's ridiculous for you to suggest you ought to be entitled to payment when people use them.
Those who maintain roads (local, regional and federal government - or private firms under PFI contracts) do indeed collect money from users of those roads, both directly and indirectly. These funds are collected variously through such means as general taxation (often at a local city / regional level, for such things as the maintenance of pavements and smaller streets), as well as through road tax (which applies in most western countries) and of course tolls.
I would also point out that regions tend not to cross-bill each other based on the amount of border traffic (e.g. it's not as if the state of Colorado bills Utah every time someone drives from Salt Lake City through Colorado on their way to Kansas).
Ob-ISO International Date Format advocation ( 2005-12-01 for the win! :-)
"ISPs are now reducing access to peer-to-peer applications, blocking Skype, and, scariest of all, lobbying Congress to let them do it."
They don't have to lobby congress - it's their network, they can offer whatever QoS they like.
People have been using different levels of QoS to consumer traffic than commercial traffic since consumers starting using the net - throttling P2P traffic isn't "news" and neither is port blocking. Plenty of ISP's block incoming ports, and not all providers route to all destinations, nor are they obliged to by any form of holy covenant (for example, MFN used to deliberately black hole traffic to ISP Manawatu Internet Services [insert long story here]). Blocking out going ports is likely to be slightly more contentious - and subject to regulatory interference - if they are trying to block outgoing common VoIP traffic and they are an incumbant fix-lined telco, but some ISP's already block specific outbound ports (specifically port 25 connections other than their mail servers as a Spam prevention measure).
Routing equipment, transit and fiber is not free to run and neither are the teams that have to design and manage them - as the network grows, costs increase, often dramatically (it's not just a case of "light another fiber" and it all scales magically). This is why providers arn't really keen on those guys who pay 19.99 UKP a month then do 400 GB worth of (mostly P2P) traffic every month - not only does your back bone capacity (fiber and switch equipment) need to be expanded when customers start using that much traffic, but your transit capacity and your connection to the POP/DSLAM - but all of that all twice over, for redandancy of course.
If you don't like the QoS a provider is offering - either pay for a better QoS (as private companies do - those that made large networks cost effective to run at all and without which the general public would still still be on dialup) or try and provide a non QoS'd service yourself and see what happens to your users ability to do simple things like surf the web or play online games when the leechers signup (after being kicked off the other networks). Oops! - the network is full of P2P crap, no bandwith left, packets dropping everywhere, hardware at capacity - customers all leaving, huge transit bill to pay - doh!
The truth is, the relatively small number of people who flood the network with crap P2P traffic - and it really is a small percentage - screw up the service for everyone else (driving up the contention on the line, driving up operating costs very noticeably and driving down other people's download speeds). To make things worse P2P clients (with things like Kazza, rather than Bit Torrent in mind) are typically horribly inefficent and consist largely of noise - not even geniune downloads of files or software people want. That people are doing this primarily as a way to get "OMG FREE WAREZ!1" because they can't be bothered to pay for software/media is reprehensible.
If people were primarily using more efficient clients like Bit Torrent in a resonsible way this would not be such a big issue, though users inclined to share a lot of files for extended periods of time would still be doing more traffic than their 9.99 UKP a month broadband account reasonably entitles them to. BT is a great way of preventing a site or transit connection to a specific provider from being overloaded by a sudden influx of traffic (such as the weekly patching of WoW) - and it does this in a way that benifits end users, the content providers and the ISP's (as it cuts traffic outside the network). However, as a sole transit mechanisim (e.g. for Warez) it's not as desirible or good for users or providers - if users want to start being able to serve files themselves (and so use as much bandwith as download providers use, and be able to offer similar speeds), they need to start paying the same rates companies like File Front / File Planet do for that privilage, because that's how much it costs the ISP to provide that sort
You need to pay for subscription of Fileplanet to DL the 'high res' version (2.5GB)
I don't have a paid subscription, waited 30 min in the queue, registered for my key and downloaded and played the high resolution version.
(Though if you you've ever played GW I can't say I recommend bothering as it seemed like poor imitation, with an awkward control system, some bugged animations and a limited interface).
Sky are expected to launch their HTDV service in the Spring (as well as the likes of all X-Box 360 games supporting HD - if your interested in gaming content), and will be offering HD TV over IP in the next 18 months I expect. The BBC are actually due to start trials of HDTVin the Spring too (in particular in London), so it's not too far away.
You are the one that's bone headed - do you think the he people who dream up taxtion policies are really that stupid they didn't forseee something that simple?
It's never adventageous to earn 'less' or 'donate money to charity' to change income tax bracket, that's the sort of scam Homer Simpson would dream up.
If you are earning 49,000 and being taxed at 15% and earning over >50,000 thousand puts you into a 25 % tax bracket and you get a 1,500 pay raise you don't get to take home more of your money by getting rid of that extra 1,500 - you are only taxed the higher rate on the amount above the higher threshold - your not charged a higher rate on the whole amount.
I agree, I always build more complex applications like this (though I haven't had to use it of late due to the type of work I've been doing).
When you know you'll be writing a large or complex program from scratch, especially one with with quite a few libraries this is a great way to go. Creating dummy functions, with comments indicating what you want to do in each, and indicating what the input and output and end result should be, before you even start any real coding is a great idea.
It can also prove useful as way of validating or revising your original design, as it forces you to think through the implementation fully and can help you realise potential limitations.
Your circle of acquaintances is clearly limited. I've known a number of people who never watched any cable-only channel other than the History Channel and Weather Channel.
That's a fallacy, in the same way it is when you hear people say they only have a computer to "help with the family accounts" / "help the kids with their home work" or that they only get Playboy "for the articles".
I also know quite a few people who have only basic cable and watch local network channels almost exclusively.
Sure you do!