It's not just Best Buy. It's the moron manager, the idiot cashiers, and the dumb-fucking cop. I hope this guy sues the shit out of not only the store, but the police department. People get sequential serial numbers on money all the time, especially when they get their money from banks.
...don't you think they would have found something more profitable than oil? Yes, oil is a volume business, and the margins are lower than, say, potato chips.
Had you actually raised an issue, rest assured I wouldn't have dodged it.
When people can't seem to grasp simple logic, they attack.
Attack? I asked a simple question. If you consider that to be an attack, then your scathing remarks on the quantity of Gates's charity is certainly an attack. So what does that say about you, that you think people of attack to be 'incapable of grasping simple logic'? Hypocrite?
I'm going to ignore the rest of your pithy comments, because basically what you did, by way of declaring your own poverty, is admit that you don't give jack away to charity. Nobody expects a monetary contribution, you can certainly volunteer, and the average volunteer hour far exceeds what most individuals are willing to give monetarily. So let me rephrase my question: what have you given to charity? Because Gates's money buys computers, but people are needed to set them up and teach others how to use them.
There is also this notion inherent in your derision for Gates that people are somehow responsible for the world they live in, and obligated to give an amount of wealth according to some arbitrary formula. That kind of socialist thinking belies the cynical belief that people are incapable of acting altruistically. And while Gates certainly won't miss the money he's given away, the people who are the beneficiaries of his charity are certainly enriched by it, and thats all that matters. The degree of an individuals charity is the measure by which others are enriched by it.
You made a personal decision based on what you felt there ethical or moral bases.
To answer your question, the best time to leave a job is when you think you can leave a job. The problem with most people is that the believe their job won't survive without them if they go. Then there are people who believe they won't survive without their job. Most people are so afraid of uncertainty that they'll gladly surrender all their freedoms just to know that they'll be 'taken care of'.
I like to tell people (remind) that this is a new era in free market capitalism where the invidivual is empowered like never before to act not as a tool of capitalism, but as a commodity or resource. We are moving away from an economy based on labor or manufacture towards an economy based on expertise, and the good thing about that is while any jackass can dig a ditch, not everyone can program ASM or Cobol, so you'll be able to determine your market price with greater certainty. And, if every jackass learns ASM or cobol, move to C#, or Ruby, or Java. Expanding skillsets make individuals more valuable. Don't sell yourself out by working for less than your worth. If you absolutely have to, then remind - in a professional manner - your supervisor that since you're selling your services at below-market prices, you reserve the right to take advantage of better job offers at any time.
In your experience, can managers with little technical knowledge successfully run a technically-oriented company?
If there is one thing I learned in the military, it is that you are not qualified to tell someone how to do their job unless you've done your job. People who are qualified to command troops in battle typically have been shot at and have shot people. People who have been trained to command, but haven't so much as fired a gun at a range are called officers. They're usually the first ones shot in a hot LZ, which is gods way of looking out for the enlisted man. (Little combat infantry humor there.)
The same holds to be very true in the technical world. A person with a MBA can push paper, balance spread sheets, and sign off on requests all day long, but to be more than just marginally effective they have to be able to speak the language. Otherwise, all they are capable of doing is transmitting deadline pressure from the top down, and piss-poor excuses from the bottom up.
Neither solar nor nuclear... [w]ill fit the US economic model. They favor centralised power generation, which favors high density cities, trains and trams, rather than suburbs and automobiles...
That's not necessarily true any longer. Most larger power coops will actually buy power from their customers. In the desert southwest, for instance, power companies have realized a cost savings from customers who use solar and dump their excess back into the grid. Since the power companies don't have to maintain residential solar power setups, and because they pay less than the going rate for consumer generated power, its become a real treat for them. The only thing slowing the adoption of solar in most areas is a) the expense (not just of solar cells, but large battery banks and inverting equipment) and b) less than favorable weather. This development alone may make it practical in the southwest (even to the point that power companies change their business models to just the distribution and brokering of customer generated power, with some backup of their own), and make make solar an option in less sunny climates.
Also, there are a few large coops (Progress Energy I believe is one) who in the past had advocated a distributed power distribution network based on new safe reactor designs.
Finding someone competant to review scientific matters for slashdot is not the problem. Finding someone who is both competant and a left winger like the rest of the slashdot editors will be utterly impossible.
I know its popular to bash oil companies, but its also disingenuous, especially when you lie.
The patent for NiMH batteries is held by ECD Ovonics, which is owned by Texaco and Mobil.
The question a thinking individual might ask is why are oil companies interested in developing better, more efficient batteries when it would mean less oil being consumed to keep them charged. The answer is simply this - oil companies dont' care about oil. Oil is just a highly profitable commodity. What oil companies care about is energy.
The vast majority of research being conducted into renewable and environmentally safe energy sources is being conducted by the oil companies, not by governments. The biggest advances in materials sciences are coming out of universities that are getting loads of cash from oil companies. And the biggest conservation and reclaimation efforts are being done by oil companies.
Please, please...stop swallowing the anti-capitalist rhetoric you're being spoonfed, do some research, and think for yourself.
On Saturday evening, talk show host Art Bell had an interview with journalist Douglas Mulhall in which they discussed this new solar cell technology. The Hindustan times is the first paper to cover this development (American media is too obsessed with the Pope and Chris Rock). Bell is typically a ham (both figuratively and literally), but occasionally he hits on some very leading edge issues, which make listening to the other 80% of nonsense worth it (and the nonsense is entertaining).
While his tone is dripping with condescension, not everyone who writes a blog is worthy to have their thoughts read. I write my blog for the sake of friends and relatives, and some people find my words either interesting or infuriating. I wouldn't deign to assume that I am at the vanguard of a new type of media content distribution paradigm as some people do. Over at K5 there's a hack piece on the blogosphere just about every week, and they all have the same conceited notion that blogs will revolutionize the world. I think that often we, the technorati, get so wrapped up in the splendor of what technology can do, that we tend to overestimate what it will do. Todays predictions of a new media format through wikis and blogs are analagous to the flying cars and domed cities of the 50's.
Eventually time will pass, and that time in history can be looked back on in an almost clinical way,
How? Everyone will be ignorant of it, and that almost guarantees the resurrection of the same kind of rigid idealized society which justified the atrocities committed in the name of Germany, the 'aryan race' (I bet people in India get tickled by that notion), and Socialism. People who don't fully know their history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
The story indicates that these states have banned 'communities' from establishing wifi networks. The truth is that they prohibit local governments from getting into the ISP business. Communities are still free to set up WiFi.
People shouldn't equate their societies with their governments, because it really doesn't speak well of their societies.
Under 15 USC 50 2304 (Magnussen Moss Act), HP has violated the terms of your warranty by disallowing you from using compatible hardware. When you purchased the laptop, one of the stated features was a PCMCIA slot - theimplied warranty is that it was interoperable with aftermarket componants which conformed to the PCMCIA standard.
In short, you have the makings of a class action lawsuit on your hands. Get the to a slimy lawyer. They'll be in the phone book under "D" for democrat.
Because if you mean to imply that governments have better employment conditions, are more environmentally responsible, or do not produce harmful finished goods, I'd love to arrange a meeting so that I can laugh in your face.
For starters, they're not Savant's, they're "Idiot Savants". Due to the complications of political correctness, we can no longer acknowledge their cognitive deficiencies by invoking the legally defined status of idiot, mostly because the real idiots are offended by the term. A savant is someone who is highly knowledgable and educated, often part of a honors society.
But that technicality aside, some of these people don't deserve to be called savants. A classic savant is someone with severe functional handicaps who displays an indordinant aptitude in one area. Rainman is an example. I knew a black guy who could sculpt a statue from clay by memory, and showed tremendous adaptation and improvisation in his form. That's a savant. This guy is able to communicate, knows seven languages, and is a mathematical prodigy. If that makes him a savant, then there are alot of unrecognized savants roaming the campuses of this country. And lurking on slashdot.
Which may come as a cynical statement, but America was founded on the notion of a society of rugged individuals who work in their own benevolent self interest. The notion of government providing a service which could otherwise be provided by the private sector (i.e., individual entrepreneurs, existing businesses, even the dreaded evil 'corporation') is allophatic to the notion of American democracy. History has shown time and time again that when government attempts to provide a service, they do it less efficiently, are less responsive to customer needs, and provide fewer features.
Local governments are particularly in focus because they are more likely to be corrupt (owing to the lack of oversight built in at the municipal level - take Atlanta for example), inept, and given to mob mentalities.
What kills me is that the history of public wifi started as individuals using low-cost wifi hardware to setup free access internet WANs, particularly in low income neighborhoods and on college campuses. Now everyone expects government to step in when corporations don't offer satisfaction. It's just begging for the tyranny of a nanny state.
..it as OVER Hiroshima. Had it been at ground level the greater share of the energy would have been directed upward into the atmosphere. Airbursts are discussed here in the FAQ you linked to. And unless terrorists lug their device onto an airplane and detonate it at the right altitude, my statement stands.
Roughly 50,000 light years ago. Remember that because it's on the far side of the galaxy, our astronomical observations are warped by gravity fields of massive objects between. So it could have happenned 50,001 years ago.
Basically, yes. Given the standard of a year as it is now, this event occurred 50,000 years ago (give or take a few minutes) and we're just now seeing it.
Would it change your opinion of your doctors diagnoses if you knew that the drug company who makes the medications he prescribes kicks back in the form of paid golf trips or junkets in the Carribean?
my auto mechanic on my car
Mechanics make gobs of money on labor, and nothing on parts, so they can be inclined to recommend service which may not be necessary or even advisable in order to make an extra few bucks.
While true honest professionals don't do these things, most normal people, when given the opportunity to make more money (or get more political power or publicity) through dishonest acts that carry plausible deniability, will take it. That's why I don't trust authority unless authority earns the trust.
This is an issue of Interstate Commerce, and only the federal government has power over that. Michigan may very well be overstepping their bounds to tax products sold in other states for personal use (as opposed to commercial or resale use).
However, it's been pointed out elsewhere that this is a consumption tax, not a sales tax, in which case people are paying a tax related to an activity. I would still posit that Michigan has no legal authority to tax behaviors, but I'll leave the decision to revolt against tyranny to the Michigonians, since I'm too busy fighting the man in my home State.
Intelligence Analysts and fiction writers have been on this tack for years. Remember, America built the first nuke in 1944 using technology which today is absolutely primitive. There exists a body of open source knowledge these days to allow your average college educated engineer to construct a functioning nuclear weapon capable of 10 or 20 kilotons. That's enough to take out a city block, and poison 10 city blocks with radiological fallout.
But then, you have to consider something else - the expense. Currently, third world governments are hard pressed to operate a weapons program under the radard. It would be far harder for individual organizations run as charities are to pool the resources for such a weapons program while maintaining terror operations. One nuke may have the political value of a million suicide bombers, but 20 suicide bombers can have the political, economic, and social impact of one nuke at 1/1000th the price. For that reason, you're unlikely to see a terrorist organization carry out a nuclear attack unless they do so with state sponsorship. After Afghanistan and Libya, no state on this planet (save for the crazies in Pyong Yang) will dare transfer such technology to a non-state actor.
The biggest danger we'll face is someone making a dirty bomb from radioactive materials from old medical equipment.
Slashdot Mirror
here
It's not just Best Buy. It's the moron manager, the idiot cashiers, and the dumb-fucking cop. I hope this guy sues the shit out of not only the store, but the police department. People get sequential serial numbers on money all the time, especially when they get their money from banks.
...don't you think they would have found something more profitable than oil? Yes, oil is a volume business, and the margins are lower than, say, potato chips.
Had you actually raised an issue, rest assured I wouldn't have dodged it.
Attack? I asked a simple question. If you consider that to be an attack, then your scathing remarks on the quantity of Gates's charity is certainly an attack. So what does that say about you, that you think people of attack to be 'incapable of grasping simple logic'? Hypocrite?
I'm going to ignore the rest of your pithy comments, because basically what you did, by way of declaring your own poverty, is admit that you don't give jack away to charity. Nobody expects a monetary contribution, you can certainly volunteer, and the average volunteer hour far exceeds what most individuals are willing to give monetarily. So let me rephrase my question: what have you given to charity? Because Gates's money buys computers, but people are needed to set them up and teach others how to use them.
There is also this notion inherent in your derision for Gates that people are somehow responsible for the world they live in, and obligated to give an amount of wealth according to some arbitrary formula. That kind of socialist thinking belies the cynical belief that people are incapable of acting altruistically. And while Gates certainly won't miss the money he's given away, the people who are the beneficiaries of his charity are certainly enriched by it, and thats all that matters. The degree of an individuals charity is the measure by which others are enriched by it.
You made a personal decision based on what you felt there ethical or moral bases.
To answer your question, the best time to leave a job is when you think you can leave a job. The problem with most people is that the believe their job won't survive without them if they go. Then there are people who believe they won't survive without their job. Most people are so afraid of uncertainty that they'll gladly surrender all their freedoms just to know that they'll be 'taken care of'.
I like to tell people (remind) that this is a new era in free market capitalism where the invidivual is empowered like never before to act not as a tool of capitalism, but as a commodity or resource. We are moving away from an economy based on labor or manufacture towards an economy based on expertise, and the good thing about that is while any jackass can dig a ditch, not everyone can program ASM or Cobol, so you'll be able to determine your market price with greater certainty. And, if every jackass learns ASM or cobol, move to C#, or Ruby, or Java. Expanding skillsets make individuals more valuable. Don't sell yourself out by working for less than your worth. If you absolutely have to, then remind - in a professional manner - your supervisor that since you're selling your services at below-market prices, you reserve the right to take advantage of better job offers at any time.
And what percentage of your income have you given to charity?
If there is one thing I learned in the military, it is that you are not qualified to tell someone how to do their job unless you've done your job. People who are qualified to command troops in battle typically have been shot at and have shot people. People who have been trained to command, but haven't so much as fired a gun at a range are called officers. They're usually the first ones shot in a hot LZ, which is gods way of looking out for the enlisted man. (Little combat infantry humor there.)
The same holds to be very true in the technical world. A person with a MBA can push paper, balance spread sheets, and sign off on requests all day long, but to be more than just marginally effective they have to be able to speak the language. Otherwise, all they are capable of doing is transmitting deadline pressure from the top down, and piss-poor excuses from the bottom up.
That's not necessarily true any longer. Most larger power coops will actually buy power from their customers. In the desert southwest, for instance, power companies have realized a cost savings from customers who use solar and dump their excess back into the grid. Since the power companies don't have to maintain residential solar power setups, and because they pay less than the going rate for consumer generated power, its become a real treat for them. The only thing slowing the adoption of solar in most areas is a) the expense (not just of solar cells, but large battery banks and inverting equipment) and b) less than favorable weather. This development alone may make it practical in the southwest (even to the point that power companies change their business models to just the distribution and brokering of customer generated power, with some backup of their own), and make make solar an option in less sunny climates.
Also, there are a few large coops (Progress Energy I believe is one) who in the past had advocated a distributed power distribution network based on new safe reactor designs.
Finding someone competant to review scientific matters for slashdot is not the problem. Finding someone who is both competant and a left winger like the rest of the slashdot editors will be utterly impossible.
I know its popular to bash oil companies, but its also disingenuous, especially when you lie.
The patent for NiMH batteries is held by ECD Ovonics, which is owned by Texaco and Mobil.
The question a thinking individual might ask is why are oil companies interested in developing better, more efficient batteries when it would mean less oil being consumed to keep them charged. The answer is simply this - oil companies dont' care about oil. Oil is just a highly profitable commodity. What oil companies care about is energy.
The vast majority of research being conducted into renewable and environmentally safe energy sources is being conducted by the oil companies, not by governments. The biggest advances in materials sciences are coming out of universities that are getting loads of cash from oil companies. And the biggest conservation and reclaimation efforts are being done by oil companies.
Please, please...stop swallowing the anti-capitalist rhetoric you're being spoonfed, do some research, and think for yourself.
On Saturday evening, talk show host Art Bell had an interview with journalist Douglas Mulhall in which they discussed this new solar cell technology. The Hindustan times is the first paper to cover this development (American media is too obsessed with the Pope and Chris Rock). Bell is typically a ham (both figuratively and literally), but occasionally he hits on some very leading edge issues, which make listening to the other 80% of nonsense worth it (and the nonsense is entertaining).
nt
While his tone is dripping with condescension, not everyone who writes a blog is worthy to have their thoughts read. I write my blog for the sake of friends and relatives, and some people find my words either interesting or infuriating. I wouldn't deign to assume that I am at the vanguard of a new type of media content distribution paradigm as some people do. Over at K5 there's a hack piece on the blogosphere just about every week, and they all have the same conceited notion that blogs will revolutionize the world. I think that often we, the technorati, get so wrapped up in the splendor of what technology can do, that we tend to overestimate what it will do. Todays predictions of a new media format through wikis and blogs are analagous to the flying cars and domed cities of the 50's.
How? Everyone will be ignorant of it, and that almost guarantees the resurrection of the same kind of rigid idealized society which justified the atrocities committed in the name of Germany, the 'aryan race' (I bet people in India get tickled by that notion), and Socialism. People who don't fully know their history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
The story indicates that these states have banned 'communities' from establishing wifi networks. The truth is that they prohibit local governments from getting into the ISP business. Communities are still free to set up WiFi.
People shouldn't equate their societies with their governments, because it really doesn't speak well of their societies.
Oh, well that changes everything entirely now, doesn't it... you fucking moron.
Under 15 USC 50 2304 (Magnussen Moss Act), HP has violated the terms of your warranty by disallowing you from using compatible hardware. When you purchased the laptop, one of the stated features was a PCMCIA slot - theimplied warranty is that it was interoperable with aftermarket componants which conformed to the PCMCIA standard.
In short, you have the makings of a class action lawsuit on your hands. Get the to a slimy lawyer. They'll be in the phone book under "D" for democrat.
Because if you mean to imply that governments have better employment conditions, are more environmentally responsible, or do not produce harmful finished goods, I'd love to arrange a meeting so that I can laugh in your face.
For starters, they're not Savant's, they're "Idiot Savants". Due to the complications of political correctness, we can no longer acknowledge their cognitive deficiencies by invoking the legally defined status of idiot, mostly because the real idiots are offended by the term. A savant is someone who is highly knowledgable and educated, often part of a honors society.
But that technicality aside, some of these people don't deserve to be called savants. A classic savant is someone with severe functional handicaps who displays an indordinant aptitude in one area. Rainman is an example. I knew a black guy who could sculpt a statue from clay by memory, and showed tremendous adaptation and improvisation in his form. That's a savant. This guy is able to communicate, knows seven languages, and is a mathematical prodigy. If that makes him a savant, then there are alot of unrecognized savants roaming the campuses of this country. And lurking on slashdot.
Which may come as a cynical statement, but America was founded on the notion of a society of rugged individuals who work in their own benevolent self interest. The notion of government providing a service which could otherwise be provided by the private sector (i.e., individual entrepreneurs, existing businesses, even the dreaded evil 'corporation') is allophatic to the notion of American democracy. History has shown time and time again that when government attempts to provide a service, they do it less efficiently, are less responsive to customer needs, and provide fewer features.
Local governments are particularly in focus because they are more likely to be corrupt (owing to the lack of oversight built in at the municipal level - take Atlanta for example), inept, and given to mob mentalities.
What kills me is that the history of public wifi started as individuals using low-cost wifi hardware to setup free access internet WANs, particularly in low income neighborhoods and on college campuses. Now everyone expects government to step in when corporations don't offer satisfaction. It's just begging for the tyranny of a nanny state.
...you know...decaf tastes just as good as regular.
..it as OVER Hiroshima. Had it been at ground level the greater share of the energy would have been directed upward into the atmosphere. Airbursts are discussed here in the FAQ you linked to. And unless terrorists lug their device onto an airplane and detonate it at the right altitude, my statement stands.
Roughly 50,000 light years ago. Remember that because it's on the far side of the galaxy, our astronomical observations are warped by gravity fields of massive objects between. So it could have happenned 50,001 years ago.
Basically, yes. Given the standard of a year as it is now, this event occurred 50,000 years ago (give or take a few minutes) and we're just now seeing it.
Would it change your opinion of your doctors diagnoses if you knew that the drug company who makes the medications he prescribes kicks back in the form of paid golf trips or junkets in the Carribean?
Mechanics make gobs of money on labor, and nothing on parts, so they can be inclined to recommend service which may not be necessary or even advisable in order to make an extra few bucks.
While true honest professionals don't do these things, most normal people, when given the opportunity to make more money (or get more political power or publicity) through dishonest acts that carry plausible deniability, will take it. That's why I don't trust authority unless authority earns the trust.
This is an issue of Interstate Commerce, and only the federal government has power over that. Michigan may very well be overstepping their bounds to tax products sold in other states for personal use (as opposed to commercial or resale use).
However, it's been pointed out elsewhere that this is a consumption tax, not a sales tax, in which case people are paying a tax related to an activity. I would still posit that Michigan has no legal authority to tax behaviors, but I'll leave the decision to revolt against tyranny to the Michigonians, since I'm too busy fighting the man in my home State.
Intelligence Analysts and fiction writers have been on this tack for years. Remember, America built the first nuke in 1944 using technology which today is absolutely primitive. There exists a body of open source knowledge these days to allow your average college educated engineer to construct a functioning nuclear weapon capable of 10 or 20 kilotons. That's enough to take out a city block, and poison 10 city blocks with radiological fallout.
But then, you have to consider something else - the expense. Currently, third world governments are hard pressed to operate a weapons program under the radard. It would be far harder for individual organizations run as charities are to pool the resources for such a weapons program while maintaining terror operations. One nuke may have the political value of a million suicide bombers, but 20 suicide bombers can have the political, economic, and social impact of one nuke at 1/1000th the price. For that reason, you're unlikely to see a terrorist organization carry out a nuclear attack unless they do so with state sponsorship. After Afghanistan and Libya, no state on this planet (save for the crazies in Pyong Yang) will dare transfer such technology to a non-state actor.
The biggest danger we'll face is someone making a dirty bomb from radioactive materials from old medical equipment.