Oh, I forgot to address one point in the grandparent...
The worm treatment I link to above works due the hookworms supressing the hosts immune system for their own benefit. It isn't the hosts immune system having a bigger fish to fry, as it were (I don't think the immune system really descriminates against pathogens), but rather that the immune system is slightly weakened.
There's a dude on Kuro5hin.org who documents his travels to Africa to cure his ills with self-inflicted hookworm infestation. While one can never be sure of the truthfulness of this article (at least, I don't know the guy personally), he does cite further reading that supports your thing about the worms.
How long till they have an advanced AI that they'll farm out to the DoD to help erradicate a pesky virus that's taking out nation-wide communications?
But seriously... before too long, Google's gonna have more cycles than Los Alamos and JPL and the other major labs. Maybe their next business step will be selling those cycles?
The point is that it's easier to remember 1 good password (on *your* system) than the inane policy set by your employer or 20 different passwords for various web sites.
After getting fed up with trying to think up clever, secure, mnemonic passwords every time an online service forced a change on me, I decided that all new passwords for every account everywhere would be a unique one: "ps waux | md5" ("ps -ef | md5sum" for you linux folk), truncated via cut(1) to whatever maximum password length.
Next, I create a pgp-encrypted (symetric -- with a good password) text file with the account info for all my accounts. I email that to my gmail account for online backup and to have it accessible.
So, for hitting slashdot, I "gpg -d/path/passwords.txt.asc", punch in my password, and cut-n-paste. Not only is this easier than I expected it to be, it's far more secure, as I now have *really* safe passwords for all of the many sites I visit.
(WTF is up with the first paragraph tag of my posts being eaten?)
WTF are you talking about? That there is no free will in this world? Leave those arguments for the theologists and philosophers.
The original article was about Verizon offering a baby-sitting by cell phone service, to which many countered "if parents would atually parent". Many responded with "the world is teh shits -- a dual-income household is necessary for survival any more". To which others responded, "bullshit -- don't be a dumb-ass and you can do okay." Then folks like you bring out the big time angst and say the deck is stacked in the favor of an elite few and against the majority.
So, if my success was "luck", if someone started out like I did and made poor fiscal choices and ended up on the street or a homeless shelter, then you would call that "bad luck"?
It doesn't matter if I've walked in a person's shoes or not. If I witness them spending cash on dumb shit like cable TV, a cell phone, and cigarettes then I certainly can and will judge them for their poor financial situation.
You don't get it. The median household income in the US was $43,318 in 2003. Half of all households make less than that. Many people in the US are barely scraping by with both parents working, often more than one job each. This is not their fault, either. They are not lazy, and not all of them are stupid. They are just unlucky. We have built a system that accepts this reality in exchange for the ability of a few to make outrageous amounts of money. This isn't about people making bad financial choices and whining about being forced into living beyond their means. This is about people having no choice but to live beyond their means, because their means are so small.
I don't think you quite get it. How you do in life is usually more about your choices, rather than how you started out.
My family of 4 lives comfortably on a gross income of around $17k/yr. My yearly income peaked 2 years ago at about $53k/yr. I'm able to live the way I do now because I planned and made wise choices with my money. I've been in the post-college workforce for about 10 years now. I consider myself "retired" from the 9-to-5 grind. I'm 34 and work half-time from home.
No huge cash reserves anywhere -- in fact, my savings is pretty much nill right now. Just a modest bit of equity in some property I paid off a while ago when I was getting paid well, and low monthly financial commitments. I bought a $40k house in the "country" -- 75 miles from a large city where an average starter home costs $150k. I have a $275 home payment, a $320 auto payment, a couple of utilities, and the misc stuff required of the car (insurance, taxes, gas).
We did the two-income thing for a few years early in our marriage, and it just wasn't worth it. The extra work wardrobe to maintain, the extra driving, the dining out because we were both too tired to cook. The need for TV to de-compress due to all the stress. When you break it down, most two-income families, in fact, come out worse at the end of the month.
At the risk of being old-fashioned, if one of the parents stays home and actually makes food from scratch and does other productive things to save money by reducing consumption or creating consumables, you make out much better. Why? Because savings are tax free. That $15 dinner for 4 at McDonald's was really $20 if you count the gross income needed to buy it. Toss in a buck or two for the gas. Then there's the indirectly-related expenses, ones that allow for the 2nd job: daycare, the 2nd car (and insurance to go with), etc.. So that $15 McD's meal may, in reality, come out to $30.
Now, a similar dinner made at home from scratch (where practical), may cost $7 in materials and a hour of time. Say it comes out to $10 when you count the applicable factors (outlined above) of a single working family member.
Sure, I was "lucky" by getting to go to college and starting off on relatively secure footing in life. Many are not so lucky. However... I see many "poor" making simply dumb financial choises.
I had a poor(-ish) neighbor that I would verbally assault on a regular basis due to her dog getting off his leash and harassing our livestock. I said, "Go spend $10 and get a body harness -- he'll never get loose again." She repsonded indignantly, "You have the money?!?", implying she had no money to spare. Yet she had a huge wide-screen TV and stereo set up in her house, she had a Dish subscription, and her high-school daughter would yap all night on the front porch with her cell phone.
Drive down the "poorest" neighbourhoods in your town. Look at the people talking w/ cell phones on the porch/lawn, the fanicer-than-needed autos in the driveways, the cable/satellite installations, with big TVs in the living room. How many are smoking or drinking beer? Sure, this is a generalization, and some are better/worse than the average. But think what $100/month (cable, cell phone, plus cigarettes) could do to jumpstart a "poor" family if put into a simple savings acco
First, try a live-CD distro (like Knoppix). Mess around with it a few times, just to see how it goes. See if your hardware is compatible. If you're missing a few linux-friendly things, treat yourself to an upgrade with linux in mind.:) Worst case, assuming you ditch the penguin forever, is you have a nicer rig to use.
Next, once you're comfortable with configuring a live-CD, back up your data and do a dual-boot install. Use linux as much as you can stand it, then switch back to Winderz for the few must-have apps. If you hate it, dump linux and you'll have a fresh Windows install that may run well for a few months.;-)
Once you convert to OSS versions of most of your apps, and are comfortable with linux being your primary environment, back up your data then install a 100% linux install. Then, for those few clingy win32 apps, try using Wine (a mostly bitter pill, but it does some stuff well) to run the apps. Failing that, try Qemu. If *that* fails, try VMWare or Win4Lin.
Eventually, a few months down the road (or a couple of years, even), you may decide that the stability and reliability of Linux outweighs the win32 baggage and you either find linux equivalents you really like or you "settle" for something not 100% what you'd prefer.
I began the above transition about 7 years ago (except live-CDs weren't around). Took about 2 years. Games kept me dual-booting for about a year... until a wife and kids took more of my time and I decided that silly free games (nethack and xmame) were enough for the occasional video game fix. Then Quicken and Turbo Tax kept me using VMWare for about a year. I replaced Quicken with GnuCash for a year or so, then I ditched it for a simple spreadsheet checkbook balance sheet. By that time, I was beyond the simple tax returns, and I decided that $200 yearly H&R Block trip was less painfull than the $50 TurboTax and several hours of punching in stuff. (Also, the whole anti-piracy FUBAR for Turbo Tax in the late 90s turned me off Intuit.)
So I've been 100% Winderz free for 5 years, and I'll never go back. I don't put up with DRM or anti-piracy shit any more. If I doesn't run on Linux (now, FreeBSD/amd64), I find something else to use.
Illegals are directly screwing honest citizens over.
Yeah... whatever. Those 50% reductions on prices for hand-picked fruits and veggies due to cheap laobor is really screwing us US natives over.
I wish that there were a way to magically make all the under-the-table immigrant workers vanish. Then I could sit back and laugh as the prices of dining out, hotel stays, home construction, lawn care, and produce shot throught the roof. Those bitching the most would suddenly find themselves tightening their belts even further than they are now, even *with* those jobs they'd supposedly have if those illegals went away.
Did nobody learn the lesson of "no immigrant work day" (or whatever the hell they called it) earlier this year? There was a measurable impact by the loss of people working that day, and that was a drop in the bucket. Most of those people took time off in such a way that they didn't loose their jobs. Can you immagine if *every* one of those workers left for good?
The only taxes these people don't pay is income taxes, auto registration, and property tax, the latter two items due to their illegal status causing problems -- I'm sure they would if they could without fear of getting nailed and if they could afford it. They still pay sales taxes, gas taxes, booze taxes, tobacco taxes, utility taxes, etc -- so they contribute to the tax base yet can't get benefits! Plus, the wages of their jobs are so low, even if they *did* file taxes properly, they'd get most (if not all of it) back -- and those with kids would be able to get earned income child credits -- thereby getting *more* money than they paid into the system!
Seems us poor, abused US citizens are still getting the better part of the bargain!
Say your friend didn't get his car hit, due to there being no illegal immigrants to hit his car. Theoretically. Over the course of a year, the extra money he'd pay for much of his food would easily cover his $498 car repair bill. For now we'll ignore the fact that tons of *legal* residents are too poor to afford insurance. Sounds like the insurance company fucked your buddy over, not the illegal. Shit happens -- that's why you buy insurance, no?
There's a large chunk of the US population that totally ignores the benefits they receive every day from the presence of illegal immigrants. And yet they complain and call for their deportation, etc.. People really need to pull their heads out of their collective asses.
That said, the immigration system is buggered, and I think it needs much improvement. But the simple ideas currently posed to solve this huge problem are laughable at best.
I'm also wondering how long it will be before the RIAA comes up with a new media distribution format (a sort of super-audio-CD) that does something for the customer (maybe raises the sampling rate from 44k to 48k), and also uses a CSS-style encryption.
You mean like DVD-Audio? Last time I checked, it wasn't truly cracked. There's a software hack to use WinDVD to rip the audio, but those with alternative platforms are SOL until the copy protection is truly defeated.
And this wasn't done quickly, either. According to the article I linked above, the WinDVD hack came out in 2005 -- years after DVD-Audio was released.
The content cartel is getting better with each iteration of new media.
Our second cow is a few days away from having her calf ("freshening" as it's known to dairy folks). My wife's the primary cheese maker of the house, and one of her greatest challenges has been perfecting cream cheese. We've got most of the other basic cheeses down: mozzarella, cheddar, parmesean, feta, jack, and a couple others. But cream cheese has been a constant challenge, and it's a constant frustration since we *love* cheesecake.
Tor's pretty nice. Unfortunately, Slashdot blocks known Tor nodes. Or at least it did when I last tried to log in via the Tor network. It was very annoying.
Re:Missing area (here you go 95' booth babes)
on
The E3 of 1995
·
· Score: 1
At least they didn't have Paris Hilton in '95. You know E3 is going down in flames when that skanky thing can pimp herself there.
I live in Utah, where long-term food storage is (to put it mildly) a big thing. I'm not LDS ("Mormon" to you unlearned gentiles), but my family has taken to putting away food as part of the rainy day fund. A couple of years ago, I took a year off. I cashed in the pre-tax retirement fund my employer was contributing to, and lived off of that (for the most part). It wasn't much -- about $30k after the 20% withholding, most of which was used to pay off a small loan (some remote land). My salary before my little sabbatical was about $53k/yr. The food storage we had on-hand helped to stretch the remaining $10k, which also had to pay for a mortgage and a hefty truck payment. Having a milk cow and chickens also helps the food go a long way, too.:) Had I not had the truck to pay for, we could have easily coasted along for 2 to 3 years.
While one can't go wrong with having money in the bank (or a fund) earning interest, my family's philosophy is to reduce monetary need first then put money away. I recently downgraded my job from $45k/yr to ~$17k/yr, and our standard of living hasn't suffered.
One poster on this thread has mentioned she doesn't wish to "risk" being forced into a "frugal" lifestyle. Our take on things is live frugally by default and you live with much worry in the long run.
Interesting (but not at all a shock) that students are recruited to rat out their peers. There must be a big-time carrot being held out to rise up high within Party ranks.
The carrot being to not vanish and end up in a Chineese re-education prison?
We -- the public -- have made investments. You think those federally-mandated telco surcharges to subsidize rural copper hasn't been used to further interenet technologies? If they want to start mucking w/ the internet, I say yank those monies and see how they like it.
Fucking greedy pieces of shit, those telcos are...
Or is that what you the subtle point you were trying to make?;-)
While I agree with you, being a 1-year Linux-->FreeBSD convert, I think that's a somewhat unfair jab at Win2003. FreeBSD 6.0 didn't support 3Ware's latest SATA-2 raid cards out of the box, either. Don't know if 6.1 now does, but I think comparing an OS that's 2-to-3 years newer than Win2003 is a bit disingenuous.
Is that the smugness of an OpenBSD user I hear in your tone? It's hard to tell, as your post had no real point.
I don't see anything wrong with the cross-pollination of technologies amongst the BSDs. I prefer PF over native IPF myself on my own server, and I, too, like the overloading feature. In fact, it's one of the things I love about FreeBSD (code sharing, I mean), to the point where I jumped from the Linux camp to the FreeBSD camp.
FreeBSD's a damn fine product (as is Linux). I'll be cvsup'ing my machines today.:)
Plus, thanks to that recent Supreme Court case about a Nevada man refusing to identify himself, these state laws will be the norm before too long. Sorry, I don't have the case name to cite, but it was a big deal when the ruling came down in the State's favor.
The fight scene in Happy Gilmore was well worth the many, many years of "The Price is Right" and simulated-fur announcements in "Miss USA" pagents of yesteryear.
Now, if we could get Bob Barker, William Shatner, Pat Sajack, and Richard Dawson in a tag-team, caged death match... That would be worth paying to see.:)
I recall a mid-to-late 90s product called Mango. It was a distributed network storage program for Windows. Though the company's namesake is still around, I'm pretty sure the product effectively vanished. Seemed a neat idea at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
The worm treatment I link to above works due the hookworms supressing the hosts immune system for their own benefit. It isn't the hosts immune system having a bigger fish to fry, as it were (I don't think the immune system really descriminates against pathogens), but rather that the immune system is slightly weakened.
Truth is stranger than fiction, sometimes. :)
Sun isn't specialized in finding trends and patters in massive amounts of data. Maybe google will farm out data analysis.
But seriously... before too long, Google's gonna have more cycles than Los Alamos and JPL and the other major labs. Maybe their next business step will be selling those cycles?
The point is that it's easier to remember 1 good password (on *your* system) than the inane policy set by your employer or 20 different passwords for various web sites.
Next, I create a pgp-encrypted (symetric -- with a good password) text file with the account info for all my accounts. I email that to my gmail account for online backup and to have it accessible.
So, for hitting slashdot, I "gpg -d /path/passwords.txt.asc", punch in my password, and cut-n-paste. Not only is this easier than I expected it to be, it's far more secure, as I now have *really* safe passwords for all of the many sites I visit.
(WTF is up with the first paragraph tag of my posts being eaten?)
The original article was about Verizon offering a baby-sitting by cell phone service, to which many countered "if parents would atually parent". Many responded with "the world is teh shits -- a dual-income household is necessary for survival any more". To which others responded, "bullshit -- don't be a dumb-ass and you can do okay." Then folks like you bring out the big time angst and say the deck is stacked in the favor of an elite few and against the majority.
So, if my success was "luck", if someone started out like I did and made poor fiscal choices and ended up on the street or a homeless shelter, then you would call that "bad luck"?
It doesn't matter if I've walked in a person's shoes or not. If I witness them spending cash on dumb shit like cable TV, a cell phone, and cigarettes then I certainly can and will judge them for their poor financial situation.
I don't think you quite get it. How you do in life is usually more about your choices, rather than how you started out.
My family of 4 lives comfortably on a gross income of around $17k/yr. My yearly income peaked 2 years ago at about $53k/yr. I'm able to live the way I do now because I planned and made wise choices with my money. I've been in the post-college workforce for about 10 years now. I consider myself "retired" from the 9-to-5 grind. I'm 34 and work half-time from home.
No huge cash reserves anywhere -- in fact, my savings is pretty much nill right now. Just a modest bit of equity in some property I paid off a while ago when I was getting paid well, and low monthly financial commitments. I bought a $40k house in the "country" -- 75 miles from a large city where an average starter home costs $150k. I have a $275 home payment, a $320 auto payment, a couple of utilities, and the misc stuff required of the car (insurance, taxes, gas).
We did the two-income thing for a few years early in our marriage, and it just wasn't worth it. The extra work wardrobe to maintain, the extra driving, the dining out because we were both too tired to cook. The need for TV to de-compress due to all the stress. When you break it down, most two-income families, in fact, come out worse at the end of the month.
At the risk of being old-fashioned, if one of the parents stays home and actually makes food from scratch and does other productive things to save money by reducing consumption or creating consumables, you make out much better. Why? Because savings are tax free. That $15 dinner for 4 at McDonald's was really $20 if you count the gross income needed to buy it. Toss in a buck or two for the gas. Then there's the indirectly-related expenses, ones that allow for the 2nd job: daycare, the 2nd car (and insurance to go with), etc.. So that $15 McD's meal may, in reality, come out to $30.
Now, a similar dinner made at home from scratch (where practical), may cost $7 in materials and a hour of time. Say it comes out to $10 when you count the applicable factors (outlined above) of a single working family member.
Sure, I was "lucky" by getting to go to college and starting off on relatively secure footing in life. Many are not so lucky. However... I see many "poor" making simply dumb financial choises.
I had a poor(-ish) neighbor that I would verbally assault on a regular basis due to her dog getting off his leash and harassing our livestock. I said, "Go spend $10 and get a body harness -- he'll never get loose again." She repsonded indignantly, "You have the money?!?", implying she had no money to spare. Yet she had a huge wide-screen TV and stereo set up in her house, she had a Dish subscription, and her high-school daughter would yap all night on the front porch with her cell phone.
Drive down the "poorest" neighbourhoods in your town. Look at the people talking w/ cell phones on the porch/lawn, the fanicer-than-needed autos in the driveways, the cable/satellite installations, with big TVs in the living room. How many are smoking or drinking beer? Sure, this is a generalization, and some are better/worse than the average. But think what $100/month (cable, cell phone, plus cigarettes) could do to jumpstart a "poor" family if put into a simple savings acco
Next, once you're comfortable with configuring a live-CD, back up your data and do a dual-boot install. Use linux as much as you can stand it, then switch back to Winderz for the few must-have apps. If you hate it, dump linux and you'll have a fresh Windows install that may run well for a few months. ;-)
Once you convert to OSS versions of most of your apps, and are comfortable with linux being your primary environment, back up your data then install a 100% linux install. Then, for those few clingy win32 apps, try using Wine (a mostly bitter pill, but it does some stuff well) to run the apps. Failing that, try Qemu. If *that* fails, try VMWare or Win4Lin.
Eventually, a few months down the road (or a couple of years, even), you may decide that the stability and reliability of Linux outweighs the win32 baggage and you either find linux equivalents you really like or you "settle" for something not 100% what you'd prefer.
I began the above transition about 7 years ago (except live-CDs weren't around). Took about 2 years. Games kept me dual-booting for about a year... until a wife and kids took more of my time and I decided that silly free games (nethack and xmame) were enough for the occasional video game fix. Then Quicken and Turbo Tax kept me using VMWare for about a year. I replaced Quicken with GnuCash for a year or so, then I ditched it for a simple spreadsheet checkbook balance sheet. By that time, I was beyond the simple tax returns, and I decided that $200 yearly H&R Block trip was less painfull than the $50 TurboTax and several hours of punching in stuff. (Also, the whole anti-piracy FUBAR for Turbo Tax in the late 90s turned me off Intuit.)
So I've been 100% Winderz free for 5 years, and I'll never go back. I don't put up with DRM or anti-piracy shit any more. If I doesn't run on Linux (now, FreeBSD/amd64), I find something else to use.
Freedom... indeed!
Yeah... whatever. Those 50% reductions on prices for hand-picked fruits and veggies due to cheap laobor is really screwing us US natives over.
I wish that there were a way to magically make all the under-the-table immigrant workers vanish. Then I could sit back and laugh as the prices of dining out, hotel stays, home construction, lawn care, and produce shot throught the roof. Those bitching the most would suddenly find themselves tightening their belts even further than they are now, even *with* those jobs they'd supposedly have if those illegals went away.
Did nobody learn the lesson of "no immigrant work day" (or whatever the hell they called it) earlier this year? There was a measurable impact by the loss of people working that day, and that was a drop in the bucket. Most of those people took time off in such a way that they didn't loose their jobs. Can you immagine if *every* one of those workers left for good?
The only taxes these people don't pay is income taxes, auto registration, and property tax, the latter two items due to their illegal status causing problems -- I'm sure they would if they could without fear of getting nailed and if they could afford it. They still pay sales taxes, gas taxes, booze taxes, tobacco taxes, utility taxes, etc -- so they contribute to the tax base yet can't get benefits! Plus, the wages of their jobs are so low, even if they *did* file taxes properly, they'd get most (if not all of it) back -- and those with kids would be able to get earned income child credits -- thereby getting *more* money than they paid into the system!
Seems us poor, abused US citizens are still getting the better part of the bargain!
Say your friend didn't get his car hit, due to there being no illegal immigrants to hit his car. Theoretically. Over the course of a year, the extra money he'd pay for much of his food would easily cover his $498 car repair bill. For now we'll ignore the fact that tons of *legal* residents are too poor to afford insurance. Sounds like the insurance company fucked your buddy over, not the illegal. Shit happens -- that's why you buy insurance, no?
There's a large chunk of the US population that totally ignores the benefits they receive every day from the presence of illegal immigrants. And yet they complain and call for their deportation, etc.. People really need to pull their heads out of their collective asses.
That said, the immigration system is buggered, and I think it needs much improvement. But the simple ideas currently posed to solve this huge problem are laughable at best.
You mean like DVD-Audio? Last time I checked, it wasn't truly cracked. There's a software hack to use WinDVD to rip the audio, but those with alternative platforms are SOL until the copy protection is truly defeated.
And this wasn't done quickly, either. According to the article I linked above, the WinDVD hack came out in 2005 -- years after DVD-Audio was released.
The content cartel is getting better with each iteration of new media.
Yes. I know goat aand sheep is the traditional milk for feta, but it can be done w/ cow's milk. We've also made cheddar and mozzarella with goat milk.
mmmmmm... cheesecake
Tor's pretty nice. Unfortunately, Slashdot blocks known Tor nodes. Or at least it did when I last tried to log in via the Tor network. It was very annoying.
At least they didn't have Paris Hilton in '95. You know E3 is going down in flames when that skanky thing can pimp herself there.
While one can't go wrong with having money in the bank (or a fund) earning interest, my family's philosophy is to reduce monetary need first then put money away. I recently downgraded my job from $45k/yr to ~$17k/yr, and our standard of living hasn't suffered.
One poster on this thread has mentioned she doesn't wish to "risk" being forced into a "frugal" lifestyle. Our take on things is live frugally by default and you live with much worry in the long run.
Have you ever tried Kope as a Gaim replacement? It's pretty nice.
The carrot being to not vanish and end up in a Chineese re-education prison?
Fucking greedy pieces of shit, those telcos are...
Or is that what you the subtle point you were trying to make? ;-)
Not that's I'd ever use Win2003, mind you. :)
I don't see anything wrong with the cross-pollination of technologies amongst the BSDs. I prefer PF over native IPF myself on my own server, and I, too, like the overloading feature. In fact, it's one of the things I love about FreeBSD (code sharing, I mean), to the point where I jumped from the Linux camp to the FreeBSD camp.
FreeBSD's a damn fine product (as is Linux). I'll be cvsup'ing my machines today. :)
I thought it was cigarette taxes.
Plus, thanks to that recent Supreme Court case about a Nevada man refusing to identify himself, these state laws will be the norm before too long. Sorry, I don't have the case name to cite, but it was a big deal when the ruling came down in the State's favor.
Now, if we could get Bob Barker, William Shatner, Pat Sajack, and Richard Dawson in a tag-team, caged death match... That would be worth paying to see. :)
I recall a mid-to-late 90s product called Mango. It was a distributed network storage program for Windows. Though the company's namesake is still around, I'm pretty sure the product effectively vanished. Seemed a neat idea at the time.