It is pretty obvious that the diplomas are used by their buyers to get jobs
Why would the diploma's themselves matter? I've never even heard of an employer wanting to see the paper. Or do they pretend that they're a college when the employer calls? If that's the case, then I still don't see why it matters. If the employer is willing to accept someone from a college they never heard anything about, then who cares if they went at all? Or is it more about people just lying to their friends (like anyone who actually went to college would hang a diploma on their wall)?
I'm very big into my HTPC, but I only use Myth for the occasional HD antennae recording. And I only get two channels in good enough to record. I will never pay (not even $20/year) to receive a measly two channels worth of guide info that I might check out once a week and never in the summer.
This sucks (hadn't heard about the free service going away till now) but then I haven't been all that impressed with Myth anyway (the interface/UI that is). I guess I'll have to write my own solution that scrape websites. Not ideal, but at least it'll finally look like what I think a DVR should look like and not some poor mans Tivo clone.
I don't understand why I should have to pay for what is effectively an advertisement to watch advertisements. The networks should be providing these feeds gratis to anyone who wants them. I guess they'd rather we download the shows than watch them live.
Specifically, piracy is caused by artificially fixing prices too high.
I don't buy CDs because I typically only want a track or two off of them and it's a waste of money for me. I don't mind spending $2 or $3 a track (much more expensive per track) if I can get what I want. And this is what I want, DRM-free FLAC and a full catalog to choose from (not the same ole top 40 shit). When the recording companies start giving me those three things (and assuming I can actually find the songs I want), then they'll start getting my money again. It's that simple. They're moving in the right direction, they just need to move quicker.
I think once the companies start getting on the same page, then it'll be easier for companies like Sirius to sell me what I like listening too. Catering their selection to me personally, based on the stations I like listening too. I'd be buying music more than I did in the pre-MP3 days if they did this.
I appreciate the Hume reference and I typically think of him when it comes to global warming. There are people with scientific facts on both sides of this issue, how do I determine who is right? Hume would say that we cannot know anything for certain, that we can't even trust our memories or senses to be accurate. He would say that just because something has happened in the past that it's no indication of what will come. And he certainly wouldn't put much faith in the facts being presented by either side. Towards the end of his life, a friend had asked him something along the lines of, "How do you guide your judgements if you can't even trust any facts or even your own memory of events?" His answer, "instinct." The man who took science too far felt that instinct was the best we could do.
I fairly agnostic on the issue of global warming, but my instinct tells me that the global-warming-is-man-made crowd is untrustworthy. They're too cult-like and they keep on pretending like there isn't even a debate on this. That's what drives me away from accepting it as fact. Also, in my experience, the largest problems tend to be ignored and neglected. The tremendous focus on global warming reminds me of the hysterical war on terror. It feels like bullshit and since I agree with Hume on so many other things, I'll let my instinct guide me on this one too. I could be wrong, but if I am, I feel like it's the fault of the global-warmers. Approach it like any other issue and I may yet end up in their camp.
I'm not sure what their current process is (I had assumed it was costly and manual), but this might be great for removing dust and and excessive grain from old movies and TV shows. Perhaps that'll actually make it worth it to buy the old stuff on HD/Blueray.
Nah, the only reason I even mentioned Gentoo is that an 'emerge --sync' shows the greatest benefit from ReiserFS that I've seen. I don't even use specialized cflags anymore aside from the ones everyone uses (-O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer). I prefer Gentoo more for the community support, rather than the possible optimizations.
Someone else provided a couple of links for you, but the two file systems that stand out are ReiserFS for lots of small files (compiling source code, maybe/var, etc) and XFS for the large ones (video, ISOs, tarred backups, etc). However it's recommended that you use an uninterruptible power supply with XFS as a power outtage while writing may zero out the file. I generally use ext3 for all the rest and ext2 for the/boot partition, for no particular reason.
I'm not crazy with optimizations and I don't even know the one you mentioned. I use vanilla cflags too. But the file system thing does make a big difference. I know this because I haven't done this with all my computers and I'm constantly transcoding video on them all. It can take me a couple of minutes to delete my temp files from an ext3 system, but it's instantaneous under XFS. And "emerge --sync" is so much quicker on a ReiserFS that emerge is now even telling me to using it when I'm not because it can detect how slow it's running. All of this adds up. I don't care about microseconds, I'm talking minutes.
Yeah, I'm in a meetup group but we haven't really met yet. The 2/3 vote thing doesn't bother me so much. Congress can authorize a war, but Paul would simply not send the troops. For much of the rest, getting a 2/3 majority will be tough. Not to mention, if he had the bully-pulpit, it'd be impossible for the press to ignore him. He could expose lobbyist connections and shame legislators for the absurd riders they add to the bills. As for the times, I think they'd be a lot more exciting if Paul had made the $5 million mark this last quarter. He seems to have massive online support, so why aren't people donating?
For the last few years, however, most Linux distributions have discouraged having multiple partitions
Really? I can't see why. In the past, I didn't really see the point of multiple partitions but with the choice of filesystems now, they make a huge difference. Putting my/usr/portage (Gentoo) dir in a separate ReiserFS partition makes system updates a lot faster. And dealing with large video files on anything less than XFS is a slow PITA, especially when trying to delete the associated transcoding temp files. Maybe these things don't affect the average user much, but computers are never fast enough for me and I'll take what I can get.
You don't remember Ronald Reagan, who basically ran on civil rights and limitations on federal government power
What they say and what they do are two different things. Regan quadrupled the national debt. That's not conservatism. He just made conservatives feel better with his grandfatherly approach. Although, he was far more conservative than the Bush dynasty I suppose. Ron Paul on the other hand, I have little doubt that he'd veto most of the bills that came across his desk. Gridlock leads to economic boom, see 90s for example.
But we all know that doing so effectively throws away our vote, so we settle for the lesser of the two evils.
Actually, I don't know this. I know the exact opposite to be true. You only throw away your vote by voting for one of the mainstream candidates. They aren't much different from one another. All you who voted democrat to get us out of the war are now learning this. So your vote is not actually deciding anything. The mainstreamers are likely to get elected all the same without your vote, proving it to be worthless.
The advantage of voting third party is that the mainstream candidates have difficulty attracting new voters. They focus their campaigning efforts on the small number of hoopleheads who can't make up their mind one way or another. But even that is unpredictable. The easiest way for them to get a new block of voters on their side is to co-opt the issues of a fringe candidate who's managed to gain a percent or two of the vote. By voting third party, you are effectively shaping the views of the mainstream candidates so that next time around, when you get stuck with another mainstreamer, he'll at least be closer to what you actually want since he'll be vying for your vote. Or you get a miracle and elect the better fringe candidate instead. Either way you win.
Voting isn't about putting a person in office, it's about expressing where you want the country to go. If you are not being honest in your vote then you are subverting democracy and ensuring that you'll get something you don't want. That's the only true waste of your vote.
This is the stuff they DON'T teach you in university but they should.
School, schmool. Why didn't anyone else teach me this? This is such an obvious truth but it's not one people talk about openly. Almost as if they're ashamed by it. While growing up, I had been flat out told by several people that there's plenty of time for socializing later in life. Not only was this not true, I find that advice to be rather crippling. I was raised with a set of beliefs that are incompatible with reality and I've never been able to adjust to that fact. I wish I had slashdot as a kid. Best advice site on the net!
I'm not in school to get laid! I'm in school to get a good job
Yeah, I made that mistake too. I think I even said the exact same words. Towards the end of high school, I was just starting to break out of my shell so I thought I'd be ok. And years of my mother saying there will be plenty of time for women later didn't help either. So I chose an engineering school with a 2:1 male-to-female ratio, figuring that it was time to get serious about my future. All my social progress came to a screeching halt and I never really recovered. School is simply the best time to meet women and you should be doing all you can to take advantage of it now. The degree is just about getting your foot in the door. It's worthless compared to the rest of what college has to offer.
I'm in my mid-30s now and I've grown to accept my situation. My sex drive diminished from non-use and I don't feel lonely anymore. In fact, I feel I advantaged over all my co-workers who seem so envious that I do what I want whenever I want. Especially now that I have a sense of how women age. Still though, if I had it to do over again, the one thing I'd change in my life would be to pick a different school. I would have looked for the most social school with an acceptable enough reputation. You portrayed yourself in a certain way with your post. All I can tell you is that you're going to become more like that with age. You're smart, the money will come. But the opportunity you have now will never come again. Make sure to join something that will let you spend enough time with women so that they can get to know you. Drama club worked quite well for me in high school and I never had to make the first move (I'm simply incapable).
Also, don't knock bat-shit insane or you'll never get laid. If they aren't bat-shit insane, they're likely quite boring (or not in fact women). Taken means nothing at your age. Just be a better listener and you'll be all their boyfriends aren't. Women cheat easily. As for incompatible natures...can't help you there. I'm a lifetime bachelor, very much for that reason. Just find a way past all of that and have some fun before you end up like me.;)
Cause I remember the feel of the late 90s and it was night and day to what it's like now. Companies are so tight with their budget now that we're actually using equipment that would have been considered old during the last bubble. In fact, we lose and turn down customers because our equipment can't keep up or fails. That's insane (you don't turn down ten dollars to save a buck), but emblematic of the shell-shock that executives are still feeling from those times. Despite some big profits, I haven't seen spending returning to reasonable levels, much less the excess of the 90s. We've turned out the lights in the vending machines, no longer water plants and don't maintain the landscape anymore despite the fact that I work for a major, very profitable company.
The dollar bubble is a much more serious concern. That's the bubble of all bubbles and it's popped. No one wants anything to do with it anymore given how recklessly the US congress has been spending our money (for things most people are very much against). No one wants our bonds and oil producers have started selling in Euros instead. The fed's answer: print more money. All "bubbles" spawn from this one and the eco-pundits treat it as a good thing cause it'll encourage exports, as if we still exported anything other than weapons. As a web application developer, I'd much rather the discussion be focused on the big picture rather than any one portion of our economy that is merely perceived to be inflated. The rest would work itself out on its own if we'd stop pumping worthless paper into the economy.
If the pretext is significant enough, they'll still go in and likely have increased support for Iraq and Afghanistan given their strategic adjacency to Iran. We've been sending cruiser after cruiser to the region. That's an expensive bluff if they weren't convinced they would use it. Nancy Pelosi went out of her way to remove language from an Iraq spending bill reasserting the need of the president to go through congress before attacking Iran. The dems have given him a blank check on that one. It may seem like support is building against the war, but it's all a dog and pony show in policy circles. I'd say there's still a really good chance we're going into Iran, even if it has to wait for a democrat to drag us in (since it would be difficult for a republican to do so at this point).
It may be harder in some parts of the country than others, but I found it real simple to buy a Wii. Pick up a phone book and call half a dozen stores (Walmarts seem to get them regularly in my town). Then go to the store and buy it. I've talked to a number of frustrated people who travel all over town and waste their time looking instead of phoning ahead first. I had one in my hands within 30 minutes of making the decision to buy one. Everyone I know who has one did it this way. I'm almost thinking I should start selling them on E-Bay.
I'd say IM has it's place. I get so much e-mail, that I only go through it every hour or two. Phone calls take me out of whatever I'm doing and don't allow me to easily post links to someone or cut and paste something. Person to person devolves into chatting. So if someone has a quick question to me, they know to IM. I give it priority over mail and I'm less likely to ignore it as I would the phone. And in my experience, most people I know don't abuse IM so it's probably my favorite way to communicate.
The social network sites continue to baffle me. It's the first thing in my 34 years that makes me feel old and out of touch. I'm learning some from this thread, but I can't imagine that any proprietary service will take the place of broad technologies. Today's kids will be indoctrinated into using e-mail in the work place. By the time they're able to make the decisions, they'll be too dependent on it to go back.
Slashdot Mirror
It is pretty obvious that the diplomas are used by their buyers to get jobs
Why would the diploma's themselves matter? I've never even heard of an employer wanting to see the paper. Or do they pretend that they're a college when the employer calls? If that's the case, then I still don't see why it matters. If the employer is willing to accept someone from a college they never heard anything about, then who cares if they went at all? Or is it more about people just lying to their friends (like anyone who actually went to college would hang a diploma on their wall)?
Any conclusions to share on the assignment? It sounds interesting.
CIA agents are real people with real feelings and interests
Or they are dead people, with fangs, pale skin and a blood fetish.
it's basically an inexpensive way to ensure that the stuff I really want to keep is safe
I think you mean it's an easy way. You may not trust your backup process but it's far cheaper to simply do it yourself.
I'm very big into my HTPC, but I only use Myth for the occasional HD antennae recording. And I only get two channels in good enough to record. I will never pay (not even $20/year) to receive a measly two channels worth of guide info that I might check out once a week and never in the summer.
This sucks (hadn't heard about the free service going away till now) but then I haven't been all that impressed with Myth anyway (the interface/UI that is). I guess I'll have to write my own solution that scrape websites. Not ideal, but at least it'll finally look like what I think a DVR should look like and not some poor mans Tivo clone.
I don't understand why I should have to pay for what is effectively an advertisement to watch advertisements. The networks should be providing these feeds gratis to anyone who wants them. I guess they'd rather we download the shows than watch them live.
Specifically, piracy is caused by artificially fixing prices too high.
I don't buy CDs because I typically only want a track or two off of them and it's a waste of money for me. I don't mind spending $2 or $3 a track (much more expensive per track) if I can get what I want. And this is what I want, DRM-free FLAC and a full catalog to choose from (not the same ole top 40 shit). When the recording companies start giving me those three things (and assuming I can actually find the songs I want), then they'll start getting my money again. It's that simple. They're moving in the right direction, they just need to move quicker.
I think once the companies start getting on the same page, then it'll be easier for companies like Sirius to sell me what I like listening too. Catering their selection to me personally, based on the stations I like listening too. I'd be buying music more than I did in the pre-MP3 days if they did this.
I appreciate the Hume reference and I typically think of him when it comes to global warming. There are people with scientific facts on both sides of this issue, how do I determine who is right? Hume would say that we cannot know anything for certain, that we can't even trust our memories or senses to be accurate. He would say that just because something has happened in the past that it's no indication of what will come. And he certainly wouldn't put much faith in the facts being presented by either side. Towards the end of his life, a friend had asked him something along the lines of, "How do you guide your judgements if you can't even trust any facts or even your own memory of events?" His answer, "instinct." The man who took science too far felt that instinct was the best we could do.
I fairly agnostic on the issue of global warming, but my instinct tells me that the global-warming-is-man-made crowd is untrustworthy. They're too cult-like and they keep on pretending like there isn't even a debate on this. That's what drives me away from accepting it as fact. Also, in my experience, the largest problems tend to be ignored and neglected. The tremendous focus on global warming reminds me of the hysterical war on terror. It feels like bullshit and since I agree with Hume on so many other things, I'll let my instinct guide me on this one too. I could be wrong, but if I am, I feel like it's the fault of the global-warmers. Approach it like any other issue and I may yet end up in their camp.
It's not a weapon if you're just using it to hand-scribe your DVDs. Which is of course what any self-respecting geek would be doing with it. ;)
I'm not sure what their current process is (I had assumed it was costly and manual), but this might be great for removing dust and and excessive grain from old movies and TV shows. Perhaps that'll actually make it worth it to buy the old stuff on HD/Blueray.
Nah, the only reason I even mentioned Gentoo is that an 'emerge --sync' shows the greatest benefit from ReiserFS that I've seen. I don't even use specialized cflags anymore aside from the ones everyone uses (-O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer). I prefer Gentoo more for the community support, rather than the possible optimizations.
Someone else provided a couple of links for you, but the two file systems that stand out are ReiserFS for lots of small files (compiling source code, maybe /var, etc) and XFS for the large ones (video, ISOs, tarred backups, etc). However it's recommended that you use an uninterruptible power supply with XFS as a power outtage while writing may zero out the file. I generally use ext3 for all the rest and ext2 for the /boot partition, for no particular reason.
I'm not crazy with optimizations and I don't even know the one you mentioned. I use vanilla cflags too. But the file system thing does make a big difference. I know this because I haven't done this with all my computers and I'm constantly transcoding video on them all. It can take me a couple of minutes to delete my temp files from an ext3 system, but it's instantaneous under XFS. And "emerge --sync" is so much quicker on a ReiserFS that emerge is now even telling me to using it when I'm not because it can detect how slow it's running. All of this adds up. I don't care about microseconds, I'm talking minutes.
Yeah, I'm in a meetup group but we haven't really met yet. The 2/3 vote thing doesn't bother me so much. Congress can authorize a war, but Paul would simply not send the troops. For much of the rest, getting a 2/3 majority will be tough. Not to mention, if he had the bully-pulpit, it'd be impossible for the press to ignore him. He could expose lobbyist connections and shame legislators for the absurd riders they add to the bills. As for the times, I think they'd be a lot more exciting if Paul had made the $5 million mark this last quarter. He seems to have massive online support, so why aren't people donating?
For the last few years, however, most Linux distributions have discouraged having multiple partitions
/usr/portage (Gentoo) dir in a separate ReiserFS partition makes system updates a lot faster. And dealing with large video files on anything less than XFS is a slow PITA, especially when trying to delete the associated transcoding temp files. Maybe these things don't affect the average user much, but computers are never fast enough for me and I'll take what I can get.
Really? I can't see why. In the past, I didn't really see the point of multiple partitions but with the choice of filesystems now, they make a huge difference. Putting my
You don't remember Ronald Reagan, who basically ran on civil rights and limitations on federal government power
What they say and what they do are two different things. Regan quadrupled the national debt. That's not conservatism. He just made conservatives feel better with his grandfatherly approach. Although, he was far more conservative than the Bush dynasty I suppose. Ron Paul on the other hand, I have little doubt that he'd veto most of the bills that came across his desk. Gridlock leads to economic boom, see 90s for example.
No thanks George, I don't want to fuck Laura.
But we all know that doing so effectively throws away our vote, so we settle for the lesser of the two evils.
Actually, I don't know this. I know the exact opposite to be true. You only throw away your vote by voting for one of the mainstream candidates. They aren't much different from one another. All you who voted democrat to get us out of the war are now learning this. So your vote is not actually deciding anything. The mainstreamers are likely to get elected all the same without your vote, proving it to be worthless.
The advantage of voting third party is that the mainstream candidates have difficulty attracting new voters. They focus their campaigning efforts on the small number of hoopleheads who can't make up their mind one way or another. But even that is unpredictable. The easiest way for them to get a new block of voters on their side is to co-opt the issues of a fringe candidate who's managed to gain a percent or two of the vote. By voting third party, you are effectively shaping the views of the mainstream candidates so that next time around, when you get stuck with another mainstreamer, he'll at least be closer to what you actually want since he'll be vying for your vote. Or you get a miracle and elect the better fringe candidate instead. Either way you win.
Voting isn't about putting a person in office, it's about expressing where you want the country to go. If you are not being honest in your vote then you are subverting democracy and ensuring that you'll get something you don't want. That's the only true waste of your vote.
This is the stuff they DON'T teach you in university but they should.
School, schmool. Why didn't anyone else teach me this? This is such an obvious truth but it's not one people talk about openly. Almost as if they're ashamed by it. While growing up, I had been flat out told by several people that there's plenty of time for socializing later in life. Not only was this not true, I find that advice to be rather crippling. I was raised with a set of beliefs that are incompatible with reality and I've never been able to adjust to that fact. I wish I had slashdot as a kid. Best advice site on the net!
I'm not in school to get laid! I'm in school to get a good job
;)
Yeah, I made that mistake too. I think I even said the exact same words. Towards the end of high school, I was just starting to break out of my shell so I thought I'd be ok. And years of my mother saying there will be plenty of time for women later didn't help either. So I chose an engineering school with a 2:1 male-to-female ratio, figuring that it was time to get serious about my future. All my social progress came to a screeching halt and I never really recovered. School is simply the best time to meet women and you should be doing all you can to take advantage of it now. The degree is just about getting your foot in the door. It's worthless compared to the rest of what college has to offer.
I'm in my mid-30s now and I've grown to accept my situation. My sex drive diminished from non-use and I don't feel lonely anymore. In fact, I feel I advantaged over all my co-workers who seem so envious that I do what I want whenever I want. Especially now that I have a sense of how women age. Still though, if I had it to do over again, the one thing I'd change in my life would be to pick a different school. I would have looked for the most social school with an acceptable enough reputation. You portrayed yourself in a certain way with your post. All I can tell you is that you're going to become more like that with age. You're smart, the money will come. But the opportunity you have now will never come again. Make sure to join something that will let you spend enough time with women so that they can get to know you. Drama club worked quite well for me in high school and I never had to make the first move (I'm simply incapable).
Also, don't knock bat-shit insane or you'll never get laid. If they aren't bat-shit insane, they're likely quite boring (or not in fact women). Taken means nothing at your age. Just be a better listener and you'll be all their boyfriends aren't. Women cheat easily. As for incompatible natures...can't help you there. I'm a lifetime bachelor, very much for that reason. Just find a way past all of that and have some fun before you end up like me.
Absolutely the best controller for games like Descent. Too bad it didn't take off more.
Cause I remember the feel of the late 90s and it was night and day to what it's like now. Companies are so tight with their budget now that we're actually using equipment that would have been considered old during the last bubble. In fact, we lose and turn down customers because our equipment can't keep up or fails. That's insane (you don't turn down ten dollars to save a buck), but emblematic of the shell-shock that executives are still feeling from those times. Despite some big profits, I haven't seen spending returning to reasonable levels, much less the excess of the 90s. We've turned out the lights in the vending machines, no longer water plants and don't maintain the landscape anymore despite the fact that I work for a major, very profitable company.
The dollar bubble is a much more serious concern. That's the bubble of all bubbles and it's popped. No one wants anything to do with it anymore given how recklessly the US congress has been spending our money (for things most people are very much against). No one wants our bonds and oil producers have started selling in Euros instead. The fed's answer: print more money. All "bubbles" spawn from this one and the eco-pundits treat it as a good thing cause it'll encourage exports, as if we still exported anything other than weapons. As a web application developer, I'd much rather the discussion be focused on the big picture rather than any one portion of our economy that is merely perceived to be inflated. The rest would work itself out on its own if we'd stop pumping worthless paper into the economy.
How is looking at something to press a button superior to not having to look at something to press a button?
If the pretext is significant enough, they'll still go in and likely have increased support for Iraq and Afghanistan given their strategic adjacency to Iran. We've been sending cruiser after cruiser to the region. That's an expensive bluff if they weren't convinced they would use it. Nancy Pelosi went out of her way to remove language from an Iraq spending bill reasserting the need of the president to go through congress before attacking Iran. The dems have given him a blank check on that one. It may seem like support is building against the war, but it's all a dog and pony show in policy circles. I'd say there's still a really good chance we're going into Iran, even if it has to wait for a democrat to drag us in (since it would be difficult for a republican to do so at this point).
It may be harder in some parts of the country than others, but I found it real simple to buy a Wii. Pick up a phone book and call half a dozen stores (Walmarts seem to get them regularly in my town). Then go to the store and buy it. I've talked to a number of frustrated people who travel all over town and waste their time looking instead of phoning ahead first. I had one in my hands within 30 minutes of making the decision to buy one. Everyone I know who has one did it this way. I'm almost thinking I should start selling them on E-Bay.
I'd say IM has it's place. I get so much e-mail, that I only go through it every hour or two. Phone calls take me out of whatever I'm doing and don't allow me to easily post links to someone or cut and paste something. Person to person devolves into chatting. So if someone has a quick question to me, they know to IM. I give it priority over mail and I'm less likely to ignore it as I would the phone. And in my experience, most people I know don't abuse IM so it's probably my favorite way to communicate.
The social network sites continue to baffle me. It's the first thing in my 34 years that makes me feel old and out of touch. I'm learning some from this thread, but I can't imagine that any proprietary service will take the place of broad technologies. Today's kids will be indoctrinated into using e-mail in the work place. By the time they're able to make the decisions, they'll be too dependent on it to go back.