Bonuses are good, but be careful...
on
Christmas Bonuses?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Bonuses in general are a very good idea, since they really help everyone feel like they are a valued member of the team, and that their hard work is being rewarded. But there are some caveats:
Give money, not gifts. Gifts may or may not be appropriate, while money is universal
If you give a bonus once, your workers will often expect the bonus every year. Make sure that they know what is expected of them for a bonus, and also make sure that they understand that bonuses depend on economic conditions, and that they might not always be there.
If you make giving out bonuses a habit, make sure that if you find out that there might not be a bonus in a given year, let your people know then. Telling people that they might not get a bonus isn't the greatest morale booster, but it is *way* better than having someone think a check is coming that isn't. Bigger checks are a pleasant surprise. Smaller checks are a slap in the face.
It's best if you come up with your own hard rules about determining bonuses (amount and who gets them) and stick with them, so it doesn't appear arbitrary.
I've worked for a number of years at a small company where we do annual profit-sharing bonuses, and it works well as a motivational tool, and everyone likes the extra money at the end of the fiscal year. But we also are reminded that they *are* bonuses, and if business gets tight, the bonus can and has been $0 in the past (thankfully, this is rarely the case)
Anyway, on the subject of companies still using legacy hardware, nuke plants have to be the king of dinosaur computer users. No new nuke plants have been ordered since the Three Mile Island accident in the late 70's, and all the hardware they use (everything from pump motors to computers) have to go through so much regulatory red tape that it is cost prohibitive to upgrade, hence, the computers running the control systems are all geriatric 70's era mainframes that constantly have to be maintained.
Indeed. Back in 1995, I was working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor, and had to do a lot of interfacing with two of the computers that monitored reactor operations. One was a VAX (in 1995 this raised a few eyebrows, but not that many), and the other was an Apple II that monitored various radiation sensors around the place. This Apple II crapped out one night (like almost all Apple II failures, it was the power supply that went), and I had to very hurriedly cobble up a replacement power supply for that damn fossil. Annoying, since only weeks before I had actually boxed up my old Apple II+ for storage to make room for a second PC in the apartment.
I still miss my old Apple II+, although unfortunately most of the media for it doesn't work anymore (about 97 or so I sat down with a serial cable and made disk image files of most of my old game disks to play in my emulators, only to find that about half of the disks had errors)
I still own two, a K&E duplex and a Picket Microline 18" which has better precision than the K&E (and I bought it at Picket's factory closing in the 80s).
They don't get much use, but do occasionally come out for three reasons:
To show younger folks how to use them (note that being 30 I came along well after the Age of Slide Rules was over)
I used mine in 1995 to take the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam, since they wouldn't allow any programmable calculators, and I find the slide rule easier to use than a non-RPN calculator:). The funny part was that I wasn't the only person in the room using a slide rule--probably 10% of the older engineers taking the PE exam on the other side of the room had slide rules as well.
I regularly win bets with it, since there is one calculation that you can due with a slide rule faster than any calculator if you are good: Have your victim write two rows of 20 random 3-digit numbers each on a chalkboard, and then challenge him to figure out which pair of numbers has the largest ratio. The calculator user has to enter a lot of numbers, while the slide rule user merely has to calculate the first ratio, set the slider, and visually check to see if the next ratio is better or worse. If it's better, calculate the next ratio, and if it's worse, leave the slider. You only need to remember which ratio was the best you've seen so far. I've only lost once, and regularly fleece new guys out of $5.
I also have a Marchant mechanical calculator, but it is broken.
The Fisher Space Pen has pressurized ink and is waterproof.
Seriously, anyone ever had one of these work well for actually writing? I've got three of them, and all of them sport ink that clumped horribly and flowed unevenly, so it looked like I was using a horrible Bic pen. Add to that the fact that I am left handed and the ink doesn't dry quickly so every once in a while my hand smears the ink as I'm writing... In general, I consider them to be kinda junky.
I still use them, but they are relegated to use in my scuba diving kit, backpacking gear, etc.
Normally, I just use Sanford Uniball Micro pens, as they are cheap, low friction, have good quick-drying ink. It also helps that I can get these free from the office supply room at work, although I have bought a whole box for use at home.
Just wait until States get the brass balls to audit Amazon.com, to get the purchasing history of State residents.
Not only is everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, going to pay fines and taxes out the ass
No, you don't mean everyone (and stop shouting).
I don't pay sales tax on my online purchases. And even if this goes through, I won't. Why? Because I live in a state with no sales tax, and no use tax. This proposed legislation *doesn't* create any new taxes, it just streamlines enforcement of the existing sales and use taxes. Sales taxes themselves are already fairly well enforced, but use taxes are often scoffed off. If you live in a state with no existing taxes, the situation doesn't change---I can continue to shop online to my heart's content.
In a way, this is good. New Hampshire already gets a real big boost to the economy from people coming across the borders from VT, MA, and ME to shop. Now internet sellers will start setting up here as well (admittedly, for large online retailers it is difficult to avoid establishing nexus in a state, but that's another topic).
I remember trying to install from those same SLS diskette images downloaded from Rusty 'n Edie's at 9600 baud. It was not a pretty picture.
Indeed, I still have a whole shoebox of floppies that (if they can still be read) consist of the current Slackware version in 1993/94. I managed to get many a free meal in exchange for letting folks borrow the box to do a Linux install. Those were the days.
Then again, I've got better museum pieces than that, including a 486 still running Debian 0.93R5 (that even made 666 days of uptime in '96 or '97 before a power outage took it out), although it doesn't really do much other than sit there. Doing anything with it stopped being the point a long time ago...
But really, it's rather interesting that someone is still keeping these old dists around, it's interesting to see what happened when.
But I don't blame the writers for being unfunny. Their job isn't to humor us on how this toaster can kill you when soaked in water while plugged in - it's to be serious and prevent injury and death in many cases. As far as a story goes, this isn't one and I see the slashdotting as a benefit to those who will never see the site.
Myself, I'm usually much more impressed by technical drawings that actually convey a message without many words in a multi-ethnic manner. Particularly good examples I've run into include
The sticker on the side of the vending machine here that iconically shows that rocking the vending machine in an attempt to get free product may result in a particularly unpleasant blunt trauma death.
The sign I saw in Munich that made it clear that peeing off the U-bahn platform could result in electrocution. A nearby sign iconically warned that you can get a hefty fine for drinking a mug of beer on the U-bahn.
The iconic depiction in my snowblower manual that tells you that if you stick your arm into the snow ejector port to clear a jam, you may lose half of your arm and end up bleeding to death in a snowbank, your frantic calls for help unheeded.
The sticker on my roof rack that indicates that overloading the roof-rack may result in sudden and catastrophic failure of the rack, with your bicycles impacting the hood of the person tailgating you.
In all these cases the images are entertaining because they actually manage to convey the message they were intended to.
At http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/index.html they also have the 28 Meg "Medium Resolution" version, which you'll want if you actually want to read any of the fine print on the graphics...
Looks like someone slept through history class. The first attempt on a President was Jackson in 1835. Lincoln was killed in 1865 by Booth, an actor. The next President to be shot was Garfield in 1881 by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappoined unemployed guy. The next assassination happened in 1901 when McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. Between 1901 and when Kennedy was shot in 1963 by Lee Oswald, there were two attempts on Presidents. One happened in 1912 against former President Theodore Roosevelt on a campaign stop. The second happened against Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. The shots missed Roosevelt but killed Anton Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago. After Kennedy's death, there were three attempts on a Presidents life. The first two happened in September 1975 against Gerald Ford while in California. The third happened against Reagan in 1981.
Don't forget the attempt on Truman's life in 1950, in which two Puerto Ricans tried to shoot their way into the White House.
Well, it would have made more sense to have kept selling the product to Mac users until it was no longer profitable. As far as I knew, Premiere is still the most popular film editing app amongst Mac users,
I'm not too sure about this... Final Cut Pro has a pretty large userbase in the Mac world.
I guess when you are used to being the only bully on the block, and have thus come to enjoy forcing people to pay your extremely high prices (since there isn't anywhere else to go)
This comment doesn't really apply, since 1. Adobe hasn't had a monopoly or near-monopoly on the Mac platform for quite some time (Final Cut in it's various flavors has been around a while), and 2. Final Cut Pro is actually more expensive than Adobe Premier.
What size dewars are you getting for $200? We get charged ã0.085 (about 12 cents) a litre.
Usually I buy 150 liter dewars. Much of the cost here is the deliver---depending on the delivery schedule, they cost me around $150 on average, but getting same day delivery adds about $50 to that. And my place is in The Sticks.
The more correct short answer is that you easily can.
LN2 is not a controlled substance. In most any area, it's simply a matter of opening up the phone book and finding a gas supplier. Many welding gas and medical gas companies provide it, and most sell to the public, and those that don't usually don't because they are set up to deal with businesses through purchase orders.
I only know the suppliers for the places I've lived---Praxair in St Paul, MN, and Merriam Graves in western NH, but both will happily sell you bulk dry ice, LN2, various gases in bottles, etc. I've done it at both places. Just be prepared to leave a *large* deposit on the LN2 dewar. If they ask too many questions tell 'em you're an artist (artists, especially those that weld, buy the freakiest damn things at times). And the LN2 ain't cheap, either. Depending on the supplier be prepared for between $80 and $200/dewar. (Although I guess if you compare it it's probably cheaper per volume than beer...)
Then again, due to the massive number of LN2 dewars I use at work, I'm on a first name basis with Merriam Graves' delivery guy...
But to go back to the comments of the guy I'm responding to...don't mess around with this stuff without thinking about it. It's real easy to burn yourself (wear eye shields), it easily splatters since it boils upon contacting most anything, etc.
Re:Cryptonomicon, Earth, A Deepness in the Sky, HH
on
A Good Summer Read?
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· Score: 1
David Brin - "Earth" is an epic plot weaver, the ultimate internet, combined with some interesting physics, maths and enviromental outcomes. I needed 6 bookmarks to read that one.
"Earth" is quite good, I second the recommendation, although I also recommend a number of bookmarks.
I just finished "Kiln People" as well, which while I thought it was a little weak at points, in general it was very well written and had some nicely converging storylines.
That game had this hilarious flaw. You know how the moneylender charged you absurd amounts of interest? You could pay him back more than you borrowed, and it kept applying interest on the negative amount you owed him... So you could just use him as a high interest bank...:)
I remember overpaying Elder Brother Wu. In fact, I always try that in every modern DopeWars variant game just to see if it works.
I also remember that during a fight, if you started a fight with the sequence Run, Fight, Run, Run, Run it *always* worked, so even very early in the game I could safely risk trading large holdfuls of Opium.
well, that's why apple allows you to preview songs (dont know what how much of songs tho, maybe like 30 seconds)
Yeah, it's 30 seconds, but it appears that they need to do a little fine-tuning... A couple of the tracks I was looking for are available, but from "Live" albums, and the 30 second excerpts consist of nothing but the audience cheering...
Oh well, they'll work the kinks out.
Rich (who has already spent $2.97 on tracks from obscure albums that's he's been looking for)
If this is something most of the residents are willing to pay for, they would just raise property taxes. Since $40/mo is $480/year... adding an additional $500/year to the average property tax of a house in that area is pretty minor. Estimating the taxes are in the $4000-5000/year range anyway.
$4000-$5000/year probably isn't too far off for Hanover. But this is the "Live Free or Die" State. Trust me, people around here have been known to get very angry about smaller amounts of money. Heck, the number one political issue here is the statewide property tax to support schools.
But you hit on an interesting issue here----While Hanover, NH is mostly compact (most of the houses within a short distance of downtown), the town itself in total is actually pretty big (with the minor villages of Etna and Hanover Center, for example), and many of the houses outside of downtown are very sparse (former farmland) and rural. And some corners of Hanover are *very* remote, like those east of Moose Mountain (the Goose Pond road section, or Moose Mountain and Goss roads---one of my coworkers lives back there and it's a full 30 minute drive to get to the rest of Hanover). Would be very expensive to run fiber out there, but in the spirit of "fairness" are you going to spend their tax money?
The trick with this is that to cover all college land, we bleed over into the town a *lot*. And since it's an unsecured network (anybody who knows the SSID can join), a not-completely-insignificant portion of the town that surrounds the school gets free internet access.
Hey, I *like* being able to surf from the Dirt Cowboy (the only coffee shop in Hanover, for you non -Upper Valley of VT/NH folks) for free using Dartmouth's 802.11 network. And to think that when I travel Starbuck's wants to charge me...:)
Closing thought: Strange that the first I hear of a local issue is via Slashdot...
It's been in the papers, but it hasn't exactly been front page material. (Then again, the next office at work houses one of the Hanover Selectmen, so I hear a lot through the walls, too)
You lucky Hanover folk... Down the road in Grantham, NH, I can't get *any* broadband except for satellite, which is worthless (Adelphia is bankrupt and won't do capital improvements, Verizon refuses to put a DSLAP in so we can get DSL, and I don't have line
of sight to the local school for 802.11 access).:) And I tried getting a second line, but if you get a second line down here Verizon multiplexes the line so the best throughput you get is ~28 kbaud.
Oh well, one doesn't move to the north woods without giving up a few things...:)
I dont' understand why everyone is so down on the USPS
I used to like the USPS, then I moved someplace that isn't served by the USPS. While I live in a somewhat rural environment, my town has over 5000 residents, but only 1 part-time mail carrier (and no plans to *ever* get another according to the local postmaster), so if you aren't on the one street that's on the route, you don't get mail. They canceled rural route service years ago. And they ran out of PO boxes back in 2000, and again, they don't plan on ever getting any more of them. And they think there is nothing wrong...
On a related note, I hate businesses that can't understand that my PO Box is my *only* USPS-servicable address, businesses that insist on sending correspondence to my shipping address instead of my billing address, and rebates that don't accept PO Boxes.
The AxMan was great. Back when I lived in the Twin Cities, I used to volunteer at The Bakken Museum of Science and Electricity helping helps learn about science and electricity. We were always coming up with little projects for them (making their own capacitors, their own fire-by-friction kits, etc.). Of course, the first step for any real project was a trip to AxMan to pick up some random electronics tidbits, and the accompanying assortment of magnets, marbles, tubes, and whatnot. Could usually leave with two large shopping bags of "stuff" for under $5.
That, and while working on my PhD in Mechanical Engineering, I ended up buying more than a few items for the lab at AxMan.
Some of the apps I make have the option to "allow" a backdoor by setting a flag (default on). The client can turn it off if he/she really doesn't trust me, but in most cases they find it useful in case I ever have to bugfix the systems and/or they lose their own passwords.
I'll admit to doing this on a few projects I used to work on (always with full knowledge of the customer, however). Often, it was very useful, and timesaving (which meant a savings to the customer) to have such backdoors available. Usually, though, they'd be tied to a particular IP address (like my home machine), required a special handshake, or various other techniques to limit vulnerability. And I'd always remove them when terminating a relationship with the client.
Specifically, when working on firewall setups I'd usually put in a single non-standard port that was blocked to anything byt my IP, so I could fix problems remotely without having to charge the client (or have them wait) for the drive in...
If you do this sort of thing without the customer's knowledge, however, you deserve whatever problems it might end up causing.
Yeah, lucky you- no sales tax and your property taxes are 3x the national average
Yeah, whatever. Everyone *tells* me this, but really our property taxes aren't that bad. And when combined with the lack of a state income tax as well, it makes for one heck of a low tax burden.
Slashdot Mirror
I've worked for a number of years at a small company where we do annual profit-sharing bonuses, and it works well as a motivational tool, and everyone likes the extra money at the end of the fiscal year. But we also are reminded that they *are* bonuses, and if business gets tight, the bonus can and has been $0 in the past (thankfully, this is rarely the case)
Indeed. Back in 1995, I was working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor, and had to do a lot of interfacing with two of the computers that monitored reactor operations. One was a VAX (in 1995 this raised a few eyebrows, but not that many), and the other was an Apple II that monitored various radiation sensors around the place. This Apple II crapped out one night (like almost all Apple II failures, it was the power supply that went), and I had to very hurriedly cobble up a replacement power supply for that damn fossil. Annoying, since only weeks before I had actually boxed up my old Apple II+ for storage to make room for a second PC in the apartment.
I still miss my old Apple II+, although unfortunately most of the media for it doesn't work anymore (about 97 or so I sat down with a serial cable and made disk image files of most of my old game disks to play in my emulators, only to find that about half of the disks had errors)
I still own two, a K&E duplex and a Picket Microline 18" which has better precision than the K&E (and I bought it at Picket's factory closing in the 80s).
They don't get much use, but do occasionally come out for three reasons:
I also have a Marchant mechanical calculator, but it is broken.
Seriously, anyone ever had one of these work well for actually writing? I've got three of them, and all of them sport ink that clumped horribly and flowed unevenly, so it looked like I was using a horrible Bic pen. Add to that the fact that I am left handed and the ink doesn't dry quickly so every once in a while my hand smears the ink as I'm writing... In general, I consider them to be kinda junky.
I still use them, but they are relegated to use in my scuba diving kit, backpacking gear, etc.
Normally, I just use Sanford Uniball Micro pens, as they are cheap, low friction, have good quick-drying ink. It also helps that I can get these free from the office supply room at work, although I have bought a whole box for use at home.
Not only is everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, going to pay fines and taxes out the ass
No, you don't mean everyone (and stop shouting).
I don't pay sales tax on my online purchases. And even if this goes through, I won't. Why? Because I live in a state with no sales tax, and no use tax. This proposed legislation *doesn't* create any new taxes, it just streamlines enforcement of the existing sales and use taxes. Sales taxes themselves are already fairly well enforced, but use taxes are often scoffed off. If you live in a state with no existing taxes, the situation doesn't change---I can continue to shop online to my heart's content.
In a way, this is good. New Hampshire already gets a real big boost to the economy from people coming across the borders from VT, MA, and ME to shop. Now internet sellers will start setting up here as well (admittedly, for large online retailers it is difficult to avoid establishing nexus in a state, but that's another topic).
It's the new airline screening system that assigns you a security risk level based upon certain screening data.
More info is here.
Not quite---the original poster's list includes Beetle Bailey. Mort Walker, who draws Beetle Bailey, is still alive and well.
Not that I'm claiming that Beetle Bailey is funny... Just that you don't have to die for your comic strip to become moribund.
Indeed, I still have a whole shoebox of floppies that (if they can still be read) consist of the current Slackware version in 1993/94. I managed to get many a free meal in exchange for letting folks borrow the box to do a Linux install. Those were the days.
Then again, I've got better museum pieces than that, including a 486 still running Debian 0.93R5 (that even made 666 days of uptime in '96 or '97 before a power outage took it out), although it doesn't really do much other than sit there. Doing anything with it stopped being the point a long time ago...
But really, it's rather interesting that someone is still keeping these old dists around, it's interesting to see what happened when.
Myself, I'm usually much more impressed by technical drawings that actually convey a message without many words in a multi-ethnic manner. Particularly good examples I've run into include
In all these cases the images are entertaining because they actually manage to convey the message they were intended to.
Maybe I should put *these* on a site.
At http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/index.html they also have the 28 Meg "Medium Resolution" version, which you'll want if you actually want to read any of the fine print on the graphics...
Don't forget the attempt on Truman's life in 1950, in which two Puerto Ricans tried to shoot their way into the White House.
I'm not too sure about this... Final Cut Pro has a pretty large userbase in the Mac world. I guess when you are used to being the only bully on the block, and have thus come to enjoy forcing people to pay your extremely high prices (since there isn't anywhere else to go)
This comment doesn't really apply, since 1. Adobe hasn't had a monopoly or near-monopoly on the Mac platform for quite some time (Final Cut in it's various flavors has been around a while), and 2. Final Cut Pro is actually more expensive than Adobe Premier.
Usually I buy 150 liter dewars. Much of the cost here is the deliver---depending on the delivery schedule, they cost me around $150 on average, but getting same day delivery adds about $50 to that. And my place is in The Sticks.
The more correct short answer is that you easily can.
LN2 is not a controlled substance. In most any area, it's simply a matter of opening up the phone book and finding a gas supplier. Many welding gas and medical gas companies provide it, and most sell to the public, and those that don't usually don't because they are set up to deal with businesses through purchase orders.
I only know the suppliers for the places I've lived---Praxair in St Paul, MN, and Merriam Graves in western NH, but both will happily sell you bulk dry ice, LN2, various gases in bottles, etc. I've done it at both places. Just be prepared to leave a *large* deposit on the LN2 dewar. If they ask too many questions tell 'em you're an artist (artists, especially those that weld, buy the freakiest damn things at times). And the LN2 ain't cheap, either. Depending on the supplier be prepared for between $80 and $200/dewar. (Although I guess if you compare it it's probably cheaper per volume than beer...)
Then again, due to the massive number of LN2 dewars I use at work, I'm on a first name basis with Merriam Graves' delivery guy...
But to go back to the comments of the guy I'm responding to...don't mess around with this stuff without thinking about it. It's real easy to burn yourself (wear eye shields), it easily splatters since it boils upon contacting most anything, etc.
"Earth" is quite good, I second the recommendation, although I also recommend a number of bookmarks.
I just finished "Kiln People" as well, which while I thought it was a little weak at points, in general it was very well written and had some nicely converging storylines.
I remember overpaying Elder Brother Wu. In fact, I always try that in every modern DopeWars variant game just to see if it works.
I also remember that during a fight, if you started a fight with the sequence Run, Fight, Run, Run, Run it *always* worked, so even very early in the game I could safely risk trading large holdfuls of Opium.
Yeah, it's 30 seconds, but it appears that they need to do a little fine-tuning... A couple of the tracks I was looking for are available, but from "Live" albums, and the 30 second excerpts consist of nothing but the audience cheering...
Oh well, they'll work the kinks out.
Rich (who has already spent $2.97 on tracks from obscure albums that's he's been looking for)
$4000-$5000/year probably isn't too far off for Hanover. But this is the "Live Free or Die" State. Trust me, people around here have been known to get very angry about smaller amounts of money. Heck, the number one political issue here is the statewide property tax to support schools.
But you hit on an interesting issue here----While Hanover, NH is mostly compact (most of the houses within a short distance of downtown), the town itself in total is actually pretty big (with the minor villages of Etna and Hanover Center, for example), and many of the houses outside of downtown are very sparse (former farmland) and rural. And some corners of Hanover are *very* remote, like those east of Moose Mountain (the Goose Pond road section, or Moose Mountain and Goss roads---one of my coworkers lives back there and it's a full 30 minute drive to get to the rest of Hanover). Would be very expensive to run fiber out there, but in the spirit of "fairness" are you going to spend their tax money?
Hey, I *like* being able to surf from the Dirt Cowboy (the only coffee shop in Hanover, for you non -Upper Valley of VT/NH folks) for free using Dartmouth's 802.11 network. And to think that when I travel Starbuck's wants to charge me... :)
Closing thought: Strange that the first I hear of a local issue is via Slashdot...
It's been in the papers, but it hasn't exactly been front page material. (Then again, the next office at work houses one of the Hanover Selectmen, so I hear a lot through the walls, too)
You lucky Hanover folk... Down the road in Grantham, NH, I can't get *any* broadband except for satellite, which is worthless (Adelphia is bankrupt and won't do capital improvements, Verizon refuses to put a DSLAP in so we can get DSL, and I don't have line of sight to the local school for 802.11 access). :) And I tried getting a second line, but if you get a second line down here Verizon multiplexes the line so the best throughput you get is ~28 kbaud.
Oh well, one doesn't move to the north woods without giving up a few things... :)
I used to like the USPS, then I moved someplace that isn't served by the USPS. While I live in a somewhat rural environment, my town has over 5000 residents, but only 1 part-time mail carrier (and no plans to *ever* get another according to the local postmaster), so if you aren't on the one street that's on the route, you don't get mail. They canceled rural route service years ago. And they ran out of PO boxes back in 2000, and again, they don't plan on ever getting any more of them. And they think there is nothing wrong...
On a related note, I hate businesses that can't understand that my PO Box is my *only* USPS-servicable address, businesses that insist on sending correspondence to my shipping address instead of my billing address, and rebates that don't accept PO Boxes.
The AxMan was great. Back when I lived in the Twin Cities, I used to volunteer at The Bakken Museum of Science and Electricity helping helps learn about science and electricity. We were always coming up with little projects for them (making their own capacitors, their own fire-by-friction kits, etc.). Of course, the first step for any real project was a trip to AxMan to pick up some random electronics tidbits, and the accompanying assortment of magnets, marbles, tubes, and whatnot. Could usually leave with two large shopping bags of "stuff" for under $5.
That, and while working on my PhD in Mechanical Engineering, I ended up buying more than a few items for the lab at AxMan.
The days are getting longer? Cool, I could use an extra five minutes each day to read Slashdot...
I'll admit to doing this on a few projects I used to work on (always with full knowledge of the customer, however). Often, it was very useful, and timesaving (which meant a savings to the customer) to have such backdoors available. Usually, though, they'd be tied to a particular IP address (like my home machine), required a special handshake, or various other techniques to limit vulnerability. And I'd always remove them when terminating a relationship with the client.
Specifically, when working on firewall setups I'd usually put in a single non-standard port that was blocked to anything byt my IP, so I could fix problems remotely without having to charge the client (or have them wait) for the drive in...
If you do this sort of thing without the customer's knowledge, however, you deserve whatever problems it might end up causing.
Yeah, whatever. Everyone *tells* me this, but really our property taxes aren't that bad. And when combined with the lack of a state income tax as well, it makes for one heck of a low tax burden.
See here
The Superdrive in the G4 TiBook is a Matshita UJ-815 drive, and at least with the Finder (I don't have Toast) it won't burn to CD-RWs.
It also burns DVD at 1x, compared to 2x for the Power Mac G4 Superdrives.