As you can see, Sprint's highest data service offering is $80/mo for 300MB of data transfer. Extra MB costs $0.002. Additionally your required to enter into a 1-Year Agreement with Sprint.
This $15/mo option is a data service intended for a Sprint PCS cellphone to use to browse the web, send emails, SMS, etc. It was never meant by Sprint PCS to be used as an unlimited data service for a laptop or PDA. In fact, the only way you can use this service for those devices is if you buy a data cable for your Sprint PCS phone that SPRINT WON'T SELL YOU! Sprint PCS *used* to sell data interface cables for their phones but they stoped when they realized the cat was out of the bag. Now you can go online and buy a 3rd party data cable and use the Vision service from your phone as a data service for you PDA/laptop.
HOWEVER, this is no way makes it an OFFICAL service plan or SUPPORTABLE. Hell, in fact Sprint PCS's billing system and customer service are so damn fucked up half the time when I hear of people using their PCS Vision phone for data service they have horror stories to tell about billing screwups. One particular story they got the data cable and told Sprint to enable the unlimited PCS Vision service for their phone and then the next month got a $1300 bill from Sprint!
People need to know that using the Sprint PCS Vision service in this way is a total workaround circumvention and unsupported! I don't know why SPrint PCS hasn't closed this loophole in their system, perhaps their billing system is incapable of dealing with that many data customers. Who knows!
That makes a fuck of a lot more sense but the way folks talk about it they make it sound the other way.
However, it still has to be said, if this was a private network of a sort and it was in total 40 petabytes of data accessible to anyone connected to the network that still means you're talking about a shitload of money and hard driver between a small group of people, unless these hubs were actually NOT as exclusive as people thought they were thus driving up the number of members and subsequently increasing the total amount of available data to 40 petabytes.
So which do I believe more? A Elite group of p2p traders that between their small so-called "trusted" members has a combined total of 40 petabytes of storage.
OR
A p2p network that claims they were elitist but really they let any Tom, Dick, and Harry become a member (hence the reason their ass got busted).
But in either case, 40 petabytes per network? That seems like a ludicrous amount of data and equipment...I still call bullshit on these figures.
Not just one, but 5 places with 40 PETABYTES, EACH?!?!
Uhm okay math time....
1 Petabyte = 1024 Terabtyes
1 Terabyte = 1024 Gigabytes
So 40 Petabytes = 41,923,040 GB
41,923,040 GB / 300 GB per drive (generous assumption) = 139,744 drives per node!
5 nodes means 558,976 drives in use in total. Half a million 300 GB IDE drives?
I can think of a few places with petabyte arrays, this is not one of them I think.
Some simple math. This is assuming these people paid for the hardware and didn't just hijack a few 18-wheeler shipments from Maxtor.
139,744 300GB HDs * $157.5 (Knock 30% off for a volume discount from lowest price online of $225) = $22,009,680 in sunk capital in drives alone per node!
Or in total this means $110,048,400 spent on just HARD DRIVES ALONE. This doesnt even begin to include costs for enclosures or anything else.
So who the fuck are these "people"? These numbers are ether TOTALLY WRONG AND FASLEIFIED or they busted some kind of massively well funded organization?
(And no, I haven't even read the article yet but if those numbers are wha they said I stand by this)
Looks like another member of Project Mayhem has died.
Imagine a Beowful cluster of Gentoo 2004.1 sys....
on
Gentoo 2004.2 Released
·
· Score: 0
so I can finish my damn Gentoo 2004.2 compile sometime before the heat death of the Universe!
It will be interesting to see how well the Gentoo documentation is updated to follow this release. A big beef I had with Gentoo when I last tried installing it was the documentation was only partially synced with the 2004 series so some commands didnt work quite the way one expected them to. Additionally, installing Gentoo more or less dictates that you have two computers - the one your installing Gentoo on and the system you use to browse the Gentoo forums and Install instructions to deal with gotchas and unexpected behavior.
Personally I like Linux but I wouldn't suggest Gentoo unless you like having to discover how to do even the simplest of tasks (just how many bloody kernels to choose from now?). Not to mention that it seemed last time to only have a portage setup for Apache 2.0 and not Apache 1.3 which IMHO is a big no-no in my book due to PHP threadsafe issues (okay, color me paranoid but when was the last time you looked at how many bloody libraries are encapsulated in your PHP install?). Slackware or OpenBSD are the way to go if you asked me....
Dude, try OpenBSD 3.5. Automatic firewall rules syncing and HA with pfsync and carp! I think you will find it far nicer to work with then Linux+Shorewall. Not saying thats a bad choice, just the stuff in OpenBSD 3.5 is really seriously good stuff.
I seem to recall China was working on its own distro? I know a few people in Japan but none of them are Linux users or admins.
My comment is still relevant because this trend WONT be seen in the US since you don't see their distro being sold anywhere that your average geek will shop.
Additionally this will help in Japan but China? Come on, when was the last time you saw anyone in China pay money for licensing? *cough*DVD players w/CSS & Macrovision able to be turned off*cough*
And frankly this distro wasn't always a Japanese distro, they did try their thing in the states for a while until they closed up shop or whatever over here.
I seem to recall there was someone in this story who commented who worked in the US side of things on the PPC stuff...he might be able to comment on this better.
WTF? I thought these guys died out over a year ago if not more, yet they have a Slashdot icon? I don't even know anyone who uses this distro anymore let alone anyone who could probably even remember these guys existed. These jokers werent even targeting the desktop linux market they were trying to be server oriented and HA oriented and now they come out from the Bermuda Triangle of Distro and are trying to pitch themselves as a legit desktop distro that can play all those media codecs that were/are questionable under xine/mplayer? Sorry Charlie but this just seems dead in the water before it was even announced.
The specification isn't THAT complicated, true but the array of media formats one might want to import as assets can be dizzying. Additonally its takes some know-how in the program for how to properly convert assets into your MPEG-2 streams. Scripting can become complex too. If you want to deal with 16:9 verse 4:3 can be a PITA depending on what format something was shot in, etc.
As far DVD author being a specialist it also depends on how much of the input workflow you have control over. Myself I usually end up dealing with importing the video onto our edit stations and then at that point it becomes a quest for tweaking the MPEG-2 encoder settings right for the various segments that will go onto the DVD.
DVD scripting I believe is outside of Encore's capabilities. This is part of why I love DVD Studio Pro 2 so much, its about the same cost but far more capable.
Having to run WinXp is a small price to pay. I know people who are stuck with Mac OS 9 if the want to run certain mac versions of Sonic authoring products.
DVD Workshop is sort of like Adobe Encore Lite in my books. But I'm at the point now where anything less then DVDSP2 isn't worth my time as I just get frustrated with limitations.
First, most consumer oriented DVD authoring apps are absolute garbage and not worth your time if your looking to make something unique that is your own and you don't need templates written in stone to guide you.
On the PC side Ulead DVD Workshop was a decent app with some flexibility but it has its limitations. If you need something more powerful then DVD Workshop I would recommend Adobe Encore.
If you need something more advanced then Encore you are now entering the realm of Sonic Scenarist which is what is used by a lot of the pros for Hollywood movie DVDs. It comes with a very high pricetag depends on which version you opt for.
On the Mac side of things you've got iDVD 4 which is very nice for non-technical people. It has some nice features and flexiblity. If you need more then iDVD 4 skip ahead to DVD Studio Pro 2 which is IMHO one of the easiest to use fully featured DVD authoring apps I've had the pleasure to use. There are a very few things that DVDSP2 doesn't do that Sonic Scenarist does support and if you need them your usually in a postion to afford the cost of Scenarist.
Personally, if your going to be making money off DVD authoring I'd have a Mac around just for working in DVDSP2 and then use something like CinemaCraft SP on a very fast PC for MPEG-2 encoding (unless G5 encode speeds are fast enough for you, depends on your projects and turnaround time).
DVD authoring on Linux I have yet to try but this stuff is non-trivial to do even under Windows. DVDSP2 is great because it helps hide some of the underlying complexity, just enough so its not overwhelming but you do need to know a few things about the DVD spec. I suspect part of Linux's problem when it comes to DVD authoring packages is the mutli-application aspect of such a program. Remember an authoring package has to understand multiple media types for assest, be able to composite both 2D images and moving video as well as deal with sound, editing, compositing, not to mention DVD scripting and other things if it intends to allow you to do anything allowed withing the DVD-Video spec.
Keep in mind that some of these higher end authoring packages like Scenarist are so complicated that you have people whose whole job description can be summed up as "Sonic Scenarist Specialist" when it comes to DVD authoring.
"Of course, they're expensive as all hell, and their isn't enough software for them, but that's another story.;-)"
What software is the Mac missing that your talking about here? I do work on my Mac and play my games on my PC. So assuming we are talking about work type apps what is missing for the Mac? Illuminate me please.
Expensive as hell? Go price a 12" or 15" PowerBook and try to find a PC laptop with the same feature set that is built as well as the Mac laptop. I've had my 12" PowerBook accidentally electrocuted by a 400W spot floodlight while running and the system didn't crash or reboot and works perfectly and only has minor carbon scorch marks on the aluminum case. Want a good desktop? Get the 1.6Ghz G5 PowerMac its plenty fast for anything you would ever do unless your app is speed sensitive like MPEG-2 encoding or doing extensive video editiing in which case you buy as fast as you can.
Plus its nice for working on virus investigations because people can send me PC virii all day long and I don't have to worry about it getting triggered on my Mac.
Tell that to my friend who has been unemployed for the last year nearly and has his PhD! The guys isn't stupid at all either, the market simply SUCKS in California.
Additionally I have historically hardly ever seen PhD and Masters degrees in CompSci fields amount to any added benefit in the hiring process OR the salary one gets.
If fact there is a professor at UC Davis who has testified before Congress about H1-B visa issues and the job situation in America before and has shown that the time a person spends on a more advanced degree then their B.S. in Comp Sci actually realizes LESS total financial possibilities due to the time and money spent on the advanced degress verses being in the workforce for that time period.
You also have HR hiring practices to blame for some of this as well where you have HR people asking for job requirements that are impossible or ask for so many specific specialized areas of knowledge that it looks like a company took the job descriptions for three senior level people and combined them into one job at 1/3rd the pay (with probably unrealistic timetables as well once hired).
You can find Professor Norm Matloff's testimony and writings about these issues here:
Some of the documents on his site arte very long but they are worth your time to read to gain a truer understanding of the national debate about H1-B's and how this and other issues synergize together to create the Pissed-Off Programmer plight now facing our nation.
And certifications are not the answer to this problem by far in my opinion, most certs are worthless with a few exceptions in my book (namely CCIE, CISSP, GIAC for example).
Jope this helps you understand why "going back to school" is really a non-answer to this problem at hand.
Selling pictures? I don't sell any of my photos. However for that matter I don't mind if people copy them or use them for their desktops. My photos are free for anyone who is of the mind to like what I have done.
Basically taking photos is one of my hobbies, I consider myself an amatuer still. I'm working to take better photos.
I might at one point start making some money off the hobby but I think that day is still a year or two off perhaps.
The backstory behind those photos is that the guy worked for a local car dealership and had a box of checks for the dealership due for the bank in the bed of his truck which fell out the back and spread thousands of checks all over the street. The poor guy was picking up checks all night I imagine.
Yes, he made it himself. He told me how he did it and in retrospect it didn't sound hard, just required some creative thought was all. The critical part was getting the bowl rolled out.
I know the owner of this car
on
The Star Wars Car
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Shawn is a pretty cool guy, very creative and artistic.
Contrary to commonly held views the guy has a lovely wife. I just love how people go straight for the typical stereotypes.
Anyways, I'm about to do something against the better part of my judgement and post a link to my photo gallery where I have just a few photos of his Star Wars H-Wing car:
http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/R2day http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/R2light n ight http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/So lCockp it http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/SolC ockp it2 http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/Sol GunLa test
If I remember correctly it is either going to show up in FHM or Wired magazine among other places.
And guys, please try to not kill my server if you can handle it. I only do this as it seems like most the mirrors or image hosts are hosed right now and I think people should at least have some idea of what the car looks like.
The company Standard Technical Merchandise of Australia has an amazing laptop sport backpack that you can look at here:
http://www.standardtm.com.au/backpacks_sports.cf m
You can get the bag here:
http://www.laptoptravel.com/cgi-bin/lapt.storefr on t/3fe940e7061c6f942717d02a43030642/Ext/LT_InfoCata log/ViewProduct/SPORTBACKPACK-1?catid=4439&prodid= SPORTBACKPACK-1
I use this with my 12" Powerbook and carry all my laptop stuff in it and still have room for usually a textbook or two. The backpack is very well made and is padded nicely for the laptop compartment, which is suspended up so the laptop doesnt hit the ground when you set it down.
This laptop backpack is easily the best buy for the money. I did some extensive research into this when I bought mine and I did find other computer backpacks buts they all cost way over $100 or were not big.
Did I mention the backpack is on sale now? It's a really good deal.
(Note, I don't work for either company I am just really happy with this backpack)
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry but that $15/mo for unlimited data is a LIE.
i onsV2/DataPlans.jsp
i onsV2/FreeClearFairFlexiblePlans.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Ef older_id=1478057&CURRENT_USER%3C%3EATR_SCID=ECOMM& CURRENT_USER%3C%3EATR_PCode=None&CURRENT_USER%3C%3 EATR_cartState=group&bmUID=1094155658077
n .asp?action=addDevice&device.id=191405&pc=2&lastSt ep=30
See Sprint PCS will refuse to sell a UNLIMITED data account for anyone wishing to use a Sprint PCS PCMCIA Connection card. Source: http://www1.sprintpcs.com/explore/servicePlansOpt
As you can see, Sprint's highest data service offering is $80/mo for 300MB of data transfer. Extra MB costs $0.002. Additionally your required to enter into a 1-Year Agreement with Sprint.
Now, the "$15 unlimited data" the poster is talking about is the Sprint PCS Vision Professional Pack. Source: http://www1.sprintpcs.com/explore/servicePlansOpt
This $15/mo option is a data service intended for a Sprint PCS cellphone to use to browse the web, send emails, SMS, etc. It was never meant by Sprint PCS to be used as an unlimited data service for a laptop or PDA. In fact, the only way you can use this service for those devices is if you buy a data cable for your Sprint PCS phone that SPRINT WON'T SELL YOU! Sprint PCS *used* to sell data interface cables for their phones but they stoped when they realized the cat was out of the bag. Now you can go online and buy a 3rd party data cable and use the Vision service from your phone as a data service for you PDA/laptop.
HOWEVER, this is no way makes it an OFFICAL service plan or SUPPORTABLE. Hell, in fact Sprint PCS's billing system and customer service are so damn fucked up half the time when I hear of people using their PCS Vision phone for data service they have horror stories to tell about billing screwups. One particular story they got the data cable and told Sprint to enable the unlimited PCS Vision service for their phone and then the next month got a $1300 bill from Sprint!
People need to know that using the Sprint PCS Vision service in this way is a total workaround circumvention and unsupported! I don't know why SPrint PCS hasn't closed this loophole in their system, perhaps their billing system is incapable of dealing with that many data customers. Who knows!
In any case, of all the carriers out there in the US T-Mobile seems to have the most sensible plans. Unlimited data behind a NAT - $20/mo option
Unlimited data with a routeable IP - $20/mo option
Source: http://www.t-mobile.com/products/accessories/addo
Huh? I'm sorry but your comment seems out of context for me somehow? What does the average RPM of a drive have to do with the drives per node?
That makes a fuck of a lot more sense but the way folks talk about it they make it sound the other way .
However, it still has to be said, if this was a private network of a sort and it was in total 40 petabytes of data accessible to anyone connected to the network that still means you're talking about a shitload of money and hard driver between a small group of people, unless these hubs were actually NOT as exclusive as people thought they were thus driving up the number of members and subsequently increasing the total amount of available data to 40 petabytes.
So which do I believe more? A Elite group of p2p traders that between their small so-called "trusted" members has a combined total of 40 petabytes of storage.
OR
A p2p network that claims they were elitist but really they let any Tom, Dick, and Harry become a member (hence the reason their ass got busted).
But in either case, 40 petabytes per network? That seems like a ludicrous amount of data and equipment...I still call bullshit on these figures.
Not just one, but 5 places with 40 PETABYTES, EACH?!?!
Uhm okay math time....
1 Petabyte = 1024 Terabtyes
1 Terabyte = 1024 Gigabytes
So 40 Petabytes = 41,923,040 GB
41,923,040 GB / 300 GB per drive (generous assumption) = 139,744 drives per node!
5 nodes means 558,976 drives in use in total. Half a million 300 GB IDE drives?
I can think of a few places with petabyte arrays, this is not one of them I think.
Some simple math. This is assuming these people paid for the hardware and didn't just hijack a few 18-wheeler shipments from Maxtor.
139,744 300GB HDs * $157.5 (Knock 30% off for a volume discount from lowest price online of $225) = $22,009,680 in sunk capital in drives alone per node!
Or in total this means $110,048,400 spent on just HARD DRIVES ALONE. This doesnt even begin to include costs for enclosures or anything else.
So who the fuck are these "people"? These numbers are ether TOTALLY WRONG AND FASLEIFIED or they busted some kind of massively well funded organization?
(And no, I haven't even read the article yet but if those numbers are wha they said I stand by this)
is Robert Parson.
(chorous) His name is Robert Parson.
Looks like another member of Project Mayhem has died.
so I can finish my damn Gentoo 2004.2 compile sometime before the heat death of the Universe!
It will be interesting to see how well the Gentoo documentation is updated to follow this release. A big beef I had with Gentoo when I last tried installing it was the documentation was only partially synced with the 2004 series so some commands didnt work quite the way one expected them to. Additionally, installing Gentoo more or less dictates that you have two computers - the one your installing Gentoo on and the system you use to browse the Gentoo forums and Install instructions to deal with gotchas and unexpected behavior.
Personally I like Linux but I wouldn't suggest Gentoo unless you like having to discover how to do even the simplest of tasks (just how many bloody kernels to choose from now?). Not to mention that it seemed last time to only have a portage setup for Apache 2.0 and not Apache 1.3 which IMHO is a big no-no in my book due to PHP threadsafe issues (okay, color me paranoid but when was the last time you looked at how many bloody libraries are encapsulated in your PHP install?). Slackware or OpenBSD are the way to go if you asked me....
Dude, try OpenBSD 3.5. Automatic firewall rules syncing and HA with pfsync and carp! I think you will find it far nicer to work with then Linux+Shorewall. Not saying thats a bad choice, just the stuff in OpenBSD 3.5 is really seriously good stuff.
www.openbsd.org
Bloomberg has info about IPO share auction:
0 6& sid=aLjRy1totEDQ&refer=home
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100000
First IPO post!
I seem to recall China was working on its own distro? I know a few people in Japan but none of them are Linux users or admins.
My comment is still relevant because this trend WONT be seen in the US since you don't see their distro being sold anywhere that your average geek will shop.
Additionally this will help in Japan but China? Come on, when was the last time you saw anyone in China pay money for licensing? *cough*DVD players w/CSS & Macrovision able to be turned off*cough*
And frankly this distro wasn't always a Japanese distro, they did try their thing in the states for a while until they closed up shop or whatever over here.
I seem to recall there was someone in this story who commented who worked in the US side of things on the PPC stuff...he might be able to comment on this better.
WTF? I thought these guys died out over a year ago if not more, yet they have a Slashdot icon? I don't even know anyone who uses this distro anymore let alone anyone who could probably even remember these guys existed. These jokers werent even targeting the desktop linux market they were trying to be server oriented and HA oriented and now they come out from the Bermuda Triangle of Distro and are trying to pitch themselves as a legit desktop distro that can play all those media codecs that were/are questionable under xine/mplayer? Sorry Charlie but this just seems dead in the water before it was even announced.
The specification isn't THAT complicated, true but the array of media formats one might want to import as assets can be dizzying. Additonally its takes some know-how in the program for how to properly convert assets into your MPEG-2 streams. Scripting can become complex too. If you want to deal with 16:9 verse 4:3 can be a PITA depending on what format something was shot in, etc.
As far DVD author being a specialist it also depends on how much of the input workflow you have control over. Myself I usually end up dealing with importing the video onto our edit stations and then at that point it becomes a quest for tweaking the MPEG-2 encoder settings right for the various segments that will go onto the DVD.
DVD scripting I believe is outside of Encore's capabilities. This is part of why I love DVD Studio Pro 2 so much, its about the same cost but far more capable.
Having to run WinXp is a small price to pay. I know people who are stuck with Mac OS 9 if the want to run certain mac versions of Sonic authoring products.
DVD Workshop is sort of like Adobe Encore Lite in my books. But I'm at the point now where anything less then DVDSP2 isn't worth my time as I just get frustrated with limitations.
Okay a few things to get out of the way.
First, most consumer oriented DVD authoring apps are absolute garbage and not worth your time if your looking to make something unique that is your own and you don't need templates written in stone to guide you.
On the PC side Ulead DVD Workshop was a decent app with some flexibility but it has its limitations. If you need something more powerful then DVD Workshop I would recommend Adobe Encore.
If you need something more advanced then Encore you are now entering the realm of Sonic Scenarist which is what is used by a lot of the pros for Hollywood movie DVDs. It comes with a very high pricetag depends on which version you opt for.
On the Mac side of things you've got iDVD 4 which is very nice for non-technical people. It has some nice features and flexiblity. If you need more then iDVD 4 skip ahead to DVD Studio Pro 2 which is IMHO one of the easiest to use fully featured DVD authoring apps I've had the pleasure to use. There are a very few things that DVDSP2 doesn't do that Sonic Scenarist does support and if you need them your usually in a postion to afford the cost of Scenarist.
Personally, if your going to be making money off DVD authoring I'd have a Mac around just for working in DVDSP2 and then use something like CinemaCraft SP on a very fast PC for MPEG-2 encoding (unless G5 encode speeds are fast enough for you, depends on your projects and turnaround time).
DVD authoring on Linux I have yet to try but this stuff is non-trivial to do even under Windows. DVDSP2 is great because it helps hide some of the underlying complexity, just enough so its not overwhelming but you do need to know a few things about the DVD spec. I suspect part of Linux's problem when it comes to DVD authoring packages is the mutli-application aspect of such a program. Remember an authoring package has to understand multiple media types for assest, be able to composite both 2D images and moving video as well as deal with sound, editing, compositing, not to mention DVD scripting and other things if it intends to allow you to do anything allowed withing the DVD-Video spec.
Keep in mind that some of these higher end authoring packages like Scenarist are so complicated that you have people whose whole job description can be summed up as "Sonic Scenarist Specialist" when it comes to DVD authoring.
2004-02-19 17:18:50 Paranoia RPG to come back as Paranoia XP (articles,games) (rejected)
Yeah, I'm bitter. Blow me slashdot!
"Of course, they're expensive as all hell, and their isn't enough software for them, but that's another story. ;-)"
What software is the Mac missing that your talking about here? I do work on my Mac and play my games on my PC. So assuming we are talking about work type apps what is missing for the Mac? Illuminate me please.
Expensive as hell? Go price a 12" or 15" PowerBook and try to find a PC laptop with the same feature set that is built as well as the Mac laptop. I've had my 12" PowerBook accidentally electrocuted by a 400W spot floodlight while running and the system didn't crash or reboot and works perfectly and only has minor carbon scorch marks on the aluminum case. Want a good desktop? Get the 1.6Ghz G5 PowerMac its plenty fast for anything you would ever do unless your app is speed sensitive like MPEG-2 encoding or doing extensive video editiing in which case you buy as fast as you can.
Plus its nice for working on virus investigations because people can send me PC virii all day long and I don't have to worry about it getting triggered on my Mac.
Explain how you move out of somewhere if you do not have the necessary capital or support mechanisms in place? Thanks!
Tell that to my friend who has been unemployed for the last year nearly and has his PhD! The guys isn't stupid at all either, the market simply SUCKS in California.
Additionally I have historically hardly ever seen PhD and Masters degrees in CompSci fields amount to any added benefit in the hiring process OR the salary one gets.
If fact there is a professor at UC Davis who has testified before Congress about H1-B visa issues and the job situation in America before and has shown that the time a person spends on a more advanced degree then their B.S. in Comp Sci actually realizes LESS total financial possibilities due to the time and money spent on the advanced degress verses being in the workforce for that time period.
You also have HR hiring practices to blame for some of this as well where you have HR people asking for job requirements that are impossible or ask for so many specific specialized areas of knowledge that it looks like a company took the job descriptions for three senior level people and combined them into one job at 1/3rd the pay (with probably unrealistic timetables as well once hired).
You can find Professor Norm Matloff's testimony and writings about these issues here:
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/itaa.html
Some of the documents on his site arte very long but they are worth your time to read to gain a truer understanding of the national debate about H1-B's and how this and other issues synergize together to create the Pissed-Off Programmer plight now facing our nation.
And certifications are not the answer to this problem by far in my opinion, most certs are worthless with a few exceptions in my book (namely CCIE, CISSP, GIAC for example).
Jope this helps you understand why "going back to school" is really a non-answer to this problem at hand.
Selling pictures? I don't sell any of my photos. However for that matter I don't mind if people copy them or use them for their desktops. My photos are free for anyone who is of the mind to like what I have done.
Basically taking photos is one of my hobbies, I consider myself an amatuer still. I'm working to take better photos.
I might at one point start making some money off the hobby but I think that day is still a year or two off perhaps.
The backstory behind those photos is that the guy worked for a local car dealership and had a box of checks for the dealership due for the bank in the bed of his truck which fell out the back and spread thousands of checks all over the street. The poor guy was picking up checks all night I imagine.
Yes, he made it himself. He told me how he did it and in retrospect it didn't sound hard, just required some creative thought was all. The critical part was getting the bowl rolled out.
Shawn is a pretty cool guy, very creative and artistic.
t n ighto lCockp itC ockp it2l GunLa test
Contrary to commonly held views the guy has a lovely wife. I just love how people go straight for the typical stereotypes.
Anyways, I'm about to do something against the better part of my judgement and post a link to my photo gallery where I have just a few photos of his Star Wars H-Wing car:
http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/R2day
http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/R2ligh
http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/S
http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/Sol
http://www.nonmundane.org/gallery/Bizzare/So
If I remember correctly it is either going to show up in FHM or Wired magazine among other places.
And guys, please try to not kill my server if you can handle it. I only do this as it seems like most the mirrors or image hosts are hosed right now and I think people should at least have some idea of what the car looks like.
The company Standard Technical Merchandise of Australia has an amazing laptop sport backpack that you can look at here:
f m
r on t/3fe940e7061c6f942717d02a43030642/Ext/LT_InfoCata log/ViewProduct/SPORTBACKPACK-1?catid=4439&prodid= SPORTBACKPACK-1
http://www.standardtm.com.au/backpacks_sports.c
You can get the bag here:
http://www.laptoptravel.com/cgi-bin/lapt.storef
I use this with my 12" Powerbook and carry all my laptop stuff in it and still have room for usually a textbook or two. The backpack is very well made and is padded nicely for the laptop compartment, which is suspended up so the laptop doesnt hit the ground when you set it down.
This laptop backpack is easily the best buy for the money. I did some extensive research into this when I bought mine and I did find other computer backpacks buts they all cost way over $100 or were not big.
Did I mention the backpack is on sale now? It's a really good deal.
(Note, I don't work for either company I am just really happy with this backpack)
Play Netrek!
http://www.netrek.org/
It still doesn't suck!(tm)