Greetings and salutations. I have a number of friends that work in the Department of Human Services, so, Let me give you some facts. First - DHS has an entire department of investigations whose one job is to track down and deal with cases of fraud. It does not matter if you report ONE example, or a hundred. However, you cannot simply say "I think that so-and-so is committing fraud". Rather, you have to give a little more specific information. For example, if you know someone who talks about the amount of aid they are getting by telling their caseworker that the baby-daddy is not in the home, but, you know for a fact that he is there more than half the week...that information will trigger an investigation. If you see someone trading their benefits for drugs or non-approved items, you have to tell DHS WHAT drugs/non-approved items are being gotten and how. If you know that a mother is getting a fair amount of cash, based on there being several childrend in the home,but you know for a fact that there are not that many kids in the house....tell DHS these facts. If you know a person who is receiving benefits, but is working full time....report it.
The investigators at DHS have been doing this sort of thing for a long time, and, it does not take any time at all for them to find out if things are hinky. If nothing wrong is happening, then, the investigation is closed. If they find something...appropriate actions are recommended. Now, whether or not fraud is prosecuted is not under the control of DHS. That is the responsibility of the prosecutor's office. Too many of these folks are in elected offices, and, will not bother with welfare fraud because it is not a sexy issue to include in their campaign commercials. Much more fun to do something high-profile, like going after murderers, paedophiles, etc.
Finally, remember this: "All that is required for Evil to win is for good men to do nothing". If you really know seven folks that you have seen committing fraud, and you fail to report them, then, you are aiding and abetting in that fraud. Also, I would suggest that you have no right to complain about anything associated with the welfare system.
I agree that opinions are unregulated and we all have the freedom to believe what we believe. However, the only opinions worth more than warm snail spit are those with a good basis in fact...not just random opinion.
Pleasant dreams....
Greetings and Salutations;
About the probabilities of failure of the Shuttle...If you read Feynman's book (I think it was in "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman", he talks about the Challenger disaster. He was on the committee investigating the incident, and, made a couple of very telling observations. First off, he noted that in the process of communicating the shuttle's viability for safe launch under the conditions at the Cape that day, it seems that every level of management deleted a zero from the probability of failure. So, for example, if the engineers on the ground said to their manager, "there is a 100,000 to 1 chance that this launch will fail", he would tell HIS supervisor "There is a 10,000 to 1 chance of failure", and, so on up the line. By the time it got to the top, it was down to a 10 to 1 or, at most, a 100 to 1 chance of failure. In addition to that, in order to keep on the schedule dictated by political pressure, some vital components were not properly or completely tested. I point you at this youtube video where Feynman demonstrates the failure of the "O" rings that sealed the solid booster rockets when subjected to cold weather: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qAi_9quzUY The fact that the "O" rings became brittle at the freezing temperatures present that day ensured that the booster seal (and the launch) would fail.
Here, http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix.html Feynman discusses the general reliability of the machinery. It is an interesting and informative analysis, and, well worth reading.
So...the bottom line is that, at least in the case of Challenger, it was political pressure and the unwillingness of anyone to pull the plug at a dangerous moment that caused the launch to fail and the astronauts to be killed, not crappy construction or bad design of the Shuttle.
Pleasant dreams
beemandave
Greetings and Salutations;
Right on the money here! You deserve that +5 mod because you have pretty much defined reality as it relates to programmers (aka Software Engineers) around the world. It is a fact that 20 year olds are naive, and happy to work huge hours for slave wages because they love the programming. I know, because I used to be that way myself. They also have little or no business experience, so, they are often unaware of how they are being exploited. As one reaches one's 30s, though, the education comes and the eyes open. Also, there is a good chance that the more mature person realizes there is more to life than programming. This leads to attempts to negotiate with management to get more money and time off. Management refuses, because they are, basically dumber than rotting stumps, so the older programmer bails and goes to another company, for more money and free time. However, this hopscotch career path only lasts so long, so, if the programmer is smart, they will start moving out of programming into system admin work. That has no age limit and less age bias, so, one can hang in there longer and make better money.
The really annoying thing, though, is that assumption on the part of management that a given IT worker is unable to learn new skills. I have lost some work in the past because management assumed that, because I worked on a Wang system, that I could not work on any other type of system.
And the problem I have with PETA is that they are perfectly happy to euthanize thousands of cats and dogs every year, instead of working to find good homes, or, at least, safe places for them to live. It seems kind of hypocritical of them to only deal with creatures that they find convenient.
Hum...according to a quick search, the CEO make $2.5 million/year, and, most of the rest of the upper level management folks are making between $700,000 and $900,00. While that might not keep the company doors open, it would certainly help give the many, near-minimum wage employees a larger separation bonus.
The fact that management was asking for an 8% pay cut, and a 17% increase in employee contributions to the health plan costs had to hurt most of the workers. Unless they make a pretty good chunk of change, that can be a significant bite out of one's income. The fact that upper level management gave itself huge salary increases while freezing the pay of the employees is not a good thing either. Now, a quick Net search seems to indicate that the average "inside worker" at Hostess was making about $25K/year. That is not a terrible salary, by any means, if one is single. However, if one has a wife and a couple of kids, it looks like that is barely above the poverty level in America.
I do not think that anyone has all the facts, but, it looks to me that there were two major factors that brought the Hostess brand to this end. 1) bad management, that included allowing the infrastructure to wear out so the factories were less productive; a lack of oversight that allowed general, unnamed overhead expenses to grow to very high levels; and, an increasingly adversarial relationship between management and employees. 2) A lack of understanding about the changing desires of Americans. Take wonder Bread for example - it is, in my opinion, pretty awful. It is fragile, tasteless, mostly air, and, has the reputation for having more components from a chemical plant than a green plant. While that was the goal for Americans at one time, there is a little more interest in good, healthy food these days. Same thing for the cupcakes and Twinkies. I know a lot of people that talk about them, and, used to eat them, but, would not do so on a bet these days. However, if the product was that loved, it seems to me that they could have gotten away with raising the price a bit, and more than easily made up the deficit.
Greetings and Salutations;
I have not looked at ALL of them, but, I have looked at several, as this came up on a FB posting a bit ago. One very interesting thing I noted was that at the time, a vast majority of the signers of the petition were NOT from the state supposedly wanting to leave. Another point is that I do not think that any such actions should be viable, unless a super-majority - say, 85% - of the population votes for it.
To me, this is is the action of a small minority of cry-baby deniers who cannot accept the fact that a majority of the voters in the US felt that, even with his flaws and failures, President Obama is putting America onto a positive path that will lead to an improved life for all of us.
Regards
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations;
America, alas, has WAY too many laws. I think this is a side effect of the recent foolishness that has defined a corporation as a "person", and, the unregulated ability of lobbyists for the industry to flood the government with cash to get laws which hurt the consumer and help business passed. I certainly agree that artists should be compensated for their output - after all, their creativity is exactly what we are paying them FOR. However, the only profitable part of the recording industry is to produce content.
Perhaps the best course of action would be for a groundswell of support by consumers to get the law repealed is the correct answer here.
pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations;
I have to say that I am glad that the case failed, and, with luck many more will too. The only people that will get nailed by these enforcement measures are, I fear, the naive and (mostly) innocent youth who are not the soulless thieves engaging in the wholesale business of selling copies of the music without passing royalties along to the artists (and, yes, I do include the recording industry in general in that latter category). IN America, the RIAA did, at one time, provide a useful service at a reasonable price to an artist. However, like many organizations, it has evolved to being in the business of getting as much money as possible from the consumer, and, giving as little of it as possible to the artists that provide its life-blood. Speaking of which...thanks to the creative accounting practices of the RIAA, a given artist might expect a royalty rate of 10% to 20% on an album, but, the actual rate never climbs over 2.75%. A quick search turns up a number of detailed articles about how this works....
But, I digress - so back to copyright infringement... If the recording industry had not spent the past several decades inhaling stupid gas by keeping its head firmly planted in its ass, it would realize that there are some simple steps that it could take to make everyone in the process richer and happier. I would propose these changes:
1) drop all chasing after individuals, and, go after the companies that do wholesale duplication and flood the market. Frankly, the recording industry's record of suing college students, grandmothers, and, 6 year old girls for mountains of money is not doing anything positive for them. It is not making the purchasing public think "wow...they are really standing up for the artists! I WILL buy that new album for full retail!", nor, is it actually causing a drop in copyright violations or filesharing.
2) Seriously reconsider the cost of a CD. One of the major reasons that filesharing happens is that few people are interested in paying $25+ for a recording that might have one or two good tracks on it.
3) Continuing that thought...stop producing mindless, shallow and mind-numbingly boring albums. I, over the years, have bought quite a few albums. One of the criteria I use to decide if I am going to spend my hard-earned money on the recording is the question - can I tell what track is being played? If I have an album where there are a dozen tracks, all of which sound identical to each other...I probably will pass on that recording. Now, here, part of the problem does lay at the feet of the artists. I think that they have realized that it is all about money, and that the music means nothing. This has depressed their creativity so much that they are phoning in the performances. However, I also believe that if given positive feedback, in the form of fan appreciation, and cash, they might well get that spark back.
4) realize and accept the fact that file sharing, rather than depriving the company of profit, is the best and cheapest advertising that they could get. The best salesman in the world is the person who has personal experience with the music, and, is pushing it to their friends. When Napster was new, and still legal, the recording industry pushed to kill it by claiming it was the reason that CD sales were down by 15-20%. Well, independent polls showed that people were using it to sample a new artist's music, and, more often than not would go out and purchase that artist's CDs if they liked it. At the time, I was in a fair number of chat rooms, and, I always made it a point to ask how folks were using Napster. About 1 person out of 100 said they were using it to get as much music for free and they had no intention of buying any more CDs. The remaining 99% were using it as a s
greetings and salutations;
Dealing with the Middle East, and the attack rabbit were certainly interesting moments in Carter's tenure. I have to say that the the Iranian Students refusing to release the hostages they held until Reagan was sworn in was a childish and pitiful action that brought contempt down on a society that had some significant high points in its history.
However, perhaps what is more important is the fact that Pres. Carter has been one of the few presidents who has truly continued to serve the country after leaving office. He has done this in two ways. Firstly, his long-time association with Habitat for Humanity has meant that there are a lot of people out there with homes that Pres. Carter had a real hand in building. He is a fine woodworker, and I would be proud to say that he applied that craftsmanship to MY house! Secondly, his travels around the world to monitor elections and involve himself in diplomatic talks where rational discussion over rides emotion have helped mend America's image in the eyes of the world, and, have helped nurture the spread of democracy - and freedom - which is also a good thing
Pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Greetings and salutation;
So...you, the AC, are willing to trust your government to a man who has made his millions by making sure that the businesses he has had a hand in have made a huge profit, no matter WHAT the human cost, as opposed to a community organizer who has worked to help the disadvantaged in America? You do realize, do you not, that Mr. Romney will throw you under the bus with no more thought or concern than he would with an empty milk carton, if it suited his goals? If you believe anything else, then you have honed the talent of self-delusion to a fine edge.
As for your comments about the changes that another Obama administration might bring...it is not hard to find a number of discussions on the Internet about how the current administration's spending is MUCH less than previous administrations. This trend is unlikely to change. As for the liberty issue - I agree that we have seen some serious erosion of the rights of Americans, but, almost all those restrictions were imposed by the previous administration. Obama has not added MORE walls, and, again, shows no signs of doing so. Finally....I do not think that word - statism - means what you think it means.
I believe that it is not the flavor of the administration that manages to buy its way into leading the Federal government that is the major issue in today's world, nor do I believe that either of the flavors have the lock on how to bring perfection to America's society. Rather, what is required for Society to improve and for America to regain some of the luster it used to have is the Citizens working their way back to a more moderate point of view, and, for those citizens to start taking more responsibility for their own lives and working to improve the living conditions in America as a whole. We, as a society, also need to start requiring that our government behave in a more honorable fashion, and enforce that by replacing politicians with others.
Greetings and Salutations;
I have to point out that "freedom of speech" is not absolute. It does not absolve the speaker from having to take responsibility for their words, nor, is it license to lie without consequences. This has been ruled upon a number of times by the Supreme Court here in the US. I have to say that this is one area where I agree with the Justices (although there are plenty of other areas where we disagree). The way that truth in advertising has become as rare as an Emu these days is a terrible thing and should not be tolerated. If your marketing people are so incompetent that lying about one's competition is the only way they can find a way to show that your company is a better choice, either you need to hire better people, or, admit that they have a point, and, shut down your company, since it obviously is worthless.
Pleasant dreams.
Dave Mundt
This is a good point. A bit ago, I noticed that at certain times of the day my aircard would seem to be running slow. Well, being kind of compulsive, I gathered about a month's worth of data by doing speed tests every half hour. I discovered a very interesting pattern in doing this. It seems that every day, between 8:00 and 9:00 in the morning, my speed would drop from megabit rates to 128K (at best- and 64K typical). It would stay slow like that until sometime between 22:00 and 23:00 at night, then, would pop back up to "broadband" rates again.
Verizon was claiming, at the time, that any speed drops would be the result of traffic congestion at the local tower. If this was the case, I would not have seen such an obvious and consistent curve. After all...The area I live in is lightly populated, and, a vast majority of the people go elsewhere for work. There are not that many companies in the area either that would be depending on cell towers for their communications. This, and the obvious shape of the speed curves, make me think that it was nothing more than deliberate throttling to discourage the use of the cell system for data access.
I do keep statistics about my bandwidth usage, and, on the average, I pull about 12 gig a month. While more than some, it is considerably less than I used to use. A year or so ago, I was watching more online entertainment content (hulu and youtube have some amazing content), and, was listening to radio stations from around the world that stream their content. I was pulling the high-quality streams for this data too, which adds to the usage. I was also pulling down Linux ISOs and other large data files, so, that added up quickly to the 65 gig or so per month I was using. Now, I almost never watch streaming video, because of the buffering issues (and because of that I am NOT seeing some of the Olympic events I would have liked to watch), and, I choose the lowest quality of streamed sound from the radio stations. I also am simply not listening to as much online content like that as I used to.
So...the bottom line for me is that I am annoyed by Verizon's business decisions, and, they are pushing me closer and closer to leaving their company, and, moving on to alternative providers. Because of changes in my reality, the need for the remote access offered by the aircard has pretty much gone away, so, I would be quite comfortable with dumping that and going with cable or dsl. We shall see.
Greetings and Salutations;
Well, I have been editing and contributing to OpenStreetMap for several years now, and, I have to say that while there is a point to the criticism, in general, I would disagree with their analysis. It is a bit too self-serving for my taste. I do not own a TomTom, but, have had a couple of Garmins, and, have used a TomTom unit before. The commercial maps have been no better than the Open Source maps, and in several cases have been far less accurate. There are a number of places here in East Tennessee where the commercial maps have the GPS insisting that I am driving through the fields on the side of the road.
One point where Open Street Map shines is that it has actual roads and trails in such places as National Parks and forests...where the commercial maps have nothing but blank green areas.
Greetings and Salutations;
Hum...I have, for years, wanted to see some of the outtakes from "Ice Pirates". It is a truly awful film, but, right after that line, there is a cut and from the expressions that remain on the actor's faces I suspect there was something terribly amusing and probably pretty crude that got said.
Now, I am going to have to get a copy of it and inflict it on some folks....Sigh.
Greetings and Salutations;
I totally agree with the first line. It may be possible, by spending enough cash, to get a version of Windows that is secure enough to not get hacked every week...but it is neither easy nor cheap. However, there are no distributions of Linux that I know of that lack the tools to turn it into Fort Knox. I have had several clients that i switched from Windows to Linux. With Windows, they were getting hacked very often. After I set up Linux as their server software, they never got hacked again.
As for the support issues....Linux makes it very easy to create scripts to maintain and update machines remotely. If it is a business setting where there are a significant number of machines on a network, then, IT should have a "standard" setup, and employees should not be allowed to pop whatever software onto their systems that they want, without approval.
It is not a simple thing though, as it involves telling folks "no" and most people react like 4 year olds when this happens.
pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations; While you have a point here, this is a bit of a harsh evaluation, especially since we do not have any information on the projects the OP speaks of. I can think of half a dozen places in Home Automation, for example, where a small, cheap, embedded controller, with a touch screen, would be a great answer. While the solutions you propose are, in general, quite workable, what they lack is flexibility. For example, a mechanical timer WILL spray water at the same time, for the same volume, but, it has no way of knowing if it is pouring rain. Nor, for that matter does it know if the drought conditions have depleted the water levels in the landscaping more quickly than normal. These can easily be dealt with by a smart controller, with a couple of sensors added to it. Your second example, turning the lights on at dusk and off at dawn is specific enough that one would likely not gain a lot by automating it beyond a simple switch. However, what about a very cloudy day? also, what about turning the lights off when it is still dark? I will give you the car headlight example with no argument, though, as that is pretty well defined.
Pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Do not down play Woz's contribution to Apple. One of the major reasons for the success of the Macintosh was the IWM chip that was the heart of it This amazing hardware hack coupled complex state machine logic and individual circuits together in one chip to become greater than the sum of its parts. Woz's design used the partial circuits in a dozen or more different ways, reconfiguring itself on the fly to do what needed to be done at that point. Could another engineer have done this design and made it work so well? Perhaps, but, I doubt it. "IWM" stands for "Integrated Woz Machine", and well it should. It remains a pretty spiffy hack,
pleasant dreams
bee man dave
Greetings and Salutations;
Imagine this being said in Bill Cosby's voice - "Riiigggghhhttt" (See his tale of Noah and the ark).
I would think that this sort of remote monitoring would be high priority, considering the recent economic losses suffered by American Citizens caused by the increased severity of storms that hit the country. The fact that it is likely that the energy for those storms came from global climate change is not relevant (I suppose).
Of course, the fact that the people that have been hurt have NOT been part of the 1% may have an influence on the level of care that the government has, too.
Pleasant dreams
bee man dave
Greetings and Salutations;
I am not going to quote sources, as it is easy enough to search them out. However, folks that say that "travel is not a right" are totally wrong. Although the right to travel is not explicitly in the Constitution (except as regards legislators), the current interpretation is that it was such an obvious thing that the writers simply did not think it necessary to put it into the document. However, that having been said, it is a fact that the First Amendment does say that freedom of assembly is a basic right of the citizen and cannot be interfered with by the Government. Implicit in this clause is the freedom to travel, simply because it would be impossible for a group of citizens to assemble without traveling to a meeting point.
Pleasant dreams
dave
Greetings and Salutations;
This is my thought too. With a 23" screen, it would be easy to read throughout the kitchen, and, it does have outputs that could go to a larger LCD tv mounted near it. It would mount on the wall nicely, and, having used one for a little bit, I find that the on-screen keyboard is not good for touch-typing, but, works ok for light data entry. (URLS, Google searches, etc).
I think that concerns about limiting its role are overstated. I do not think that it would get used for "general computing". After all, in most cases, we hang out in the kitchen for one of a few reasons: to cook; to eat what we have cooked; or to clean up. I, for one, do not set my laptop up on a kitchen counter and work there, simply because there are better places.
As for the linux issue...that is true enough. While Linux will run nicely on the box, it really does not support the touch screen at all. There are some primitive steps towards that, but, getting it to work can be both painful and complicated, requiring some technical skills (applying patches to the OS & other programs, recompiling, etc). The technology is too new yet for widespread support, however, I suspect that by this time next year, there will be considerable improvement in the support.
Pleasant dreams
bee man dave.
Greetings and Salutations;
No...we are not LOSING the war on Terror. We, the citizens, have already LOST it. We have turned over unprecedented amounts of power and control to the government, and given up many of the liberties that our ancestors shed rivers of blood to take for themselves. It seems to me that the citizens of America and Great Britain have been turned into mewling, fearful infants by the deliberate actions taken by the government to re-enforce the idea that the only "safe" path is to let the "authorities" handle any situation. At least in America, have been brainwashed into an almost insane belief that life should be perfectly safe and any time that anything goes awry, we are to run to the government to fix the problem! While our love of CCTV cameras scattered around populated areas does run behind that of the government of Great Britain, it appears that the US government is rushing to catch up. It used to be that the only people that were under 24 hour per day surveillance were the prisoners in maximum security prisons. Using the Boogie Man of terrorist attacks, our governments seem to be on the road to turning the entire country into a high security prison.
I fear that we have become an embarrassment to the spirits of our Grandparents, who showed such courage and strength of will during the horrors of the 2d World War. Can we regain that legacy? Change is always possible, but, I do not think that there is the strength of will left to do so. Rather, we will continue to accept the lies of the government, and continue to curl up into a little ball, hoping that if we ignore the problems, they will all go away.
On that happy thought....
Pleasant Dreams
Bee Man Dave
Greetings and Salutations;
Not to be overly pedantic, but, the quote is actually NOT from Monty Python, alas. Rather it is part of a hugely funny skit by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore during their "Beyond the Fringe" days. I believe it was in the late 50s, although I am not sure of that. In any case here is a link, that, if you scroll down a bit, will get you the whole script. http://www.slaw.ca/2006/02/20/i-never-had-the-latin/
I have it on tape someplace, too, in that stack of recordings that are awaiting transfer to CD. As with much of their humor, the deadpan seriousness of their conversation makes it all the funnier.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Slashdot Mirror
Greetings and salutations.
I have a number of friends that work in the Department of Human Services, so, Let me give you some facts. First - DHS has an entire department of investigations whose one job is to track down and deal with cases of fraud. It does not matter if you report ONE example, or a hundred. However, you cannot simply say "I think that so-and-so is committing fraud". Rather, you have to give a little more specific information. For example, if you know someone who talks about the amount of aid they are getting by telling their caseworker that the baby-daddy is not in the home, but, you know for a fact that he is there more than half the week...that information will trigger an investigation. If you see someone trading their benefits for drugs or non-approved items, you have to tell DHS WHAT drugs/non-approved items are being gotten and how. If you know that a mother is getting a fair amount of cash, based on there being several childrend in the home,but you know for a fact that there are not that many kids in the house....tell DHS these facts. If you know a person who is receiving benefits, but is working full time....report it.
The investigators at DHS have been doing this sort of thing for a long time, and, it does not take any time at all for them to find out if things are hinky. If nothing wrong is happening, then, the investigation is closed. If they find something...appropriate actions are recommended. Now, whether or not fraud is prosecuted is not under the control of DHS. That is the responsibility of the prosecutor's office. Too many of these folks are in elected offices, and, will not bother with welfare fraud because it is not a sexy issue to include in their campaign commercials. Much more fun to do something high-profile, like going after murderers, paedophiles, etc.
Finally, remember this: "All that is required for Evil to win is for good men to do nothing". If you really know seven folks that you have seen committing fraud, and you fail to report them, then, you are aiding and abetting in that fraud. Also, I would suggest that you have no right to complain about anything associated with the welfare system.
I agree that opinions are unregulated and we all have the freedom to believe what we believe. However, the only opinions worth more than warm snail spit are those with a good basis in fact...not just random opinion.
Pleasant dreams....
Greetings and Salutations;
About the probabilities of failure of the Shuttle...If you read Feynman's book (I think it was in "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman", he talks about the Challenger disaster. He was on the committee investigating the incident, and, made a couple of very telling observations. First off, he noted that in the process of communicating the shuttle's viability for safe launch under the conditions at the Cape that day, it seems that every level of management deleted a zero from the probability of failure. So, for example, if the engineers on the ground said to their manager, "there is a 100,000 to 1 chance that this launch will fail", he would tell HIS supervisor "There is a 10,000 to 1 chance of failure", and, so on up the line. By the time it got to the top, it was down to a 10 to 1 or, at most, a 100 to 1 chance of failure. In addition to that, in order to keep on the schedule dictated by political pressure, some vital components were not properly or completely tested. I point you at this youtube video where Feynman demonstrates the failure of the "O" rings that sealed the solid booster rockets when subjected to cold weather: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qAi_9quzUY The fact that the "O" rings became brittle at the freezing temperatures present that day ensured that the booster seal (and the launch) would fail.
Here, http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix.html Feynman discusses the general reliability of the machinery. It is an interesting and informative analysis, and, well worth reading.
So...the bottom line is that, at least in the case of Challenger, it was political pressure and the unwillingness of anyone to pull the plug at a dangerous moment that caused the launch to fail and the astronauts to be killed, not crappy construction or bad design of the Shuttle.
Pleasant dreams
beemandave
There is NO time when it is good to have a hard-coded admin password on a networked device. that is just bad programming.
pleasant dreams.
Greetings and Salutations;
Right on the money here! You deserve that +5 mod because you have pretty much defined reality as it relates to programmers (aka Software Engineers) around the world. It is a fact that 20 year olds are naive, and happy to work huge hours for slave wages because they love the programming. I know, because I used to be that way myself. They also have little or no business experience, so, they are often unaware of how they are being exploited. As one reaches one's 30s, though, the education comes and the eyes open. Also, there is a good chance that the more mature person realizes there is more to life than programming. This leads to attempts to negotiate with management to get more money and time off. Management refuses, because they are, basically dumber than rotting stumps, so the older programmer bails and goes to another company, for more money and free time. However, this hopscotch career path only lasts so long, so, if the programmer is smart, they will start moving out of programming into system admin work. That has no age limit and less age bias, so, one can hang in there longer and make better money.
The really annoying thing, though, is that assumption on the part of management that a given IT worker is unable to learn new skills. I have lost some work in the past because management assumed that, because I worked on a Wang system, that I could not work on any other type of system.
And the problem I have with PETA is that they are perfectly happy to euthanize thousands of cats and dogs every year, instead of working to find good homes, or, at least, safe places for them to live. It seems kind of hypocritical of them to only deal with creatures that they find convenient.
Hum...according to a quick search, the CEO make $2.5 million/year, and, most of the rest of the upper level management folks are making between $700,000 and $900,00. While that might not keep the company doors open, it would certainly help give the many, near-minimum wage employees a larger separation bonus.
The fact that management was asking for an 8% pay cut, and a 17% increase in employee contributions to the health plan costs had to hurt most of the workers. Unless they make a pretty good chunk of change, that can be a significant bite out of one's income. The fact that upper level management gave itself huge salary increases while freezing the pay of the employees is not a good thing either. Now, a quick Net search seems to indicate that the average "inside worker" at Hostess was making about $25K/year. That is not a terrible salary, by any means, if one is single. However, if one has a wife and a couple of kids, it looks like that is barely above the poverty level in America.
I do not think that anyone has all the facts, but, it looks to me that there were two major factors that brought the Hostess brand to this end. 1) bad management, that included allowing the infrastructure to wear out so the factories were less productive; a lack of oversight that allowed general, unnamed overhead expenses to grow to very high levels; and, an increasingly adversarial relationship between management and employees. 2) A lack of understanding about the changing desires of Americans. Take wonder Bread for example - it is, in my opinion, pretty awful. It is fragile, tasteless, mostly air, and, has the reputation for having more components from a chemical plant than a green plant. While that was the goal for Americans at one time, there is a little more interest in good, healthy food these days. Same thing for the cupcakes and Twinkies. I know a lot of people that talk about them, and, used to eat them, but, would not do so on a bet these days. However, if the product was that loved, it seems to me that they could have gotten away with raising the price a bit, and more than easily made up the deficit.
Greetings and Salutations;
I have not looked at ALL of them, but, I have looked at several, as this came up on a FB posting a bit ago. One very interesting thing I noted was that at the time, a vast majority of the signers of the petition were NOT from the state supposedly wanting to leave. Another point is that I do not think that any such actions should be viable, unless a super-majority - say, 85% - of the population votes for it.
To me, this is is the action of a small minority of cry-baby deniers who cannot accept the fact that a majority of the voters in the US felt that, even with his flaws and failures, President Obama is putting America onto a positive path that will lead to an improved life for all of us.
Regards
Dave Mundt
Just to continue the recursion - I hate people who hate other people for whatever damn-fool thing those people believe!
Greetings and Salutations;
America, alas, has WAY too many laws. I think this is a side effect of the recent foolishness that has defined a corporation as a "person", and, the unregulated ability of lobbyists for the industry to flood the government with cash to get laws which hurt the consumer and help business passed. I certainly agree that artists should be compensated for their output - after all, their creativity is exactly what we are paying them FOR. However, the only profitable part of the recording industry is to produce content.
Perhaps the best course of action would be for a groundswell of support by consumers to get the law repealed is the correct answer here.
pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations;
I have to say that I am glad that the case failed, and, with luck many more will too. The only people that will get nailed by these enforcement measures are, I fear, the naive and (mostly) innocent youth who are not the soulless thieves engaging in the wholesale business of selling copies of the music without passing royalties along to the artists (and, yes, I do include the recording industry in general in that latter category). IN America, the RIAA did, at one time, provide a useful service at a reasonable price to an artist. However, like many organizations, it has evolved to being in the business of getting as much money as possible from the consumer, and, giving as little of it as possible to the artists that provide its life-blood. Speaking of which...thanks to the creative accounting practices of the RIAA, a given artist might expect a royalty rate of 10% to 20% on an album, but, the actual rate never climbs over 2.75%. A quick search turns up a number of detailed articles about how this works....
But, I digress - so back to copyright infringement... If the recording industry had not spent the past several decades inhaling stupid gas by keeping its head firmly planted in its ass, it would realize that there are some simple steps that it could take to make everyone in the process richer and happier. I would propose these changes:
1) drop all chasing after individuals, and, go after the companies that do wholesale duplication and flood the market. Frankly, the recording industry's record of suing college students, grandmothers, and, 6 year old girls for mountains of money is not doing anything positive for them. It is not making the purchasing public think "wow...they are really standing up for the artists! I WILL buy that new album for full retail!", nor, is it actually causing a drop in copyright violations or filesharing.
2) Seriously reconsider the cost of a CD. One of the major reasons that filesharing happens is that few people are interested in paying $25+ for a recording that might have one or two good tracks on it.
3) Continuing that thought...stop producing mindless, shallow and mind-numbingly boring albums. I, over the years, have bought quite a few albums. One of the criteria I use to decide if I am going to spend my hard-earned money on the recording is the question - can I tell what track is being played? If I have an album where there are a dozen tracks, all of which sound identical to each other...I probably will pass on that recording. Now, here, part of the problem does lay at the feet of the artists. I think that they have realized that it is all about money, and that the music means nothing. This has depressed their creativity so much that they are phoning in the performances. However, I also believe that if given positive feedback, in the form of fan appreciation, and cash, they might well get that spark back.
4) realize and accept the fact that file sharing, rather than depriving the company of profit, is the best and cheapest advertising that they could get. The best salesman in the world is the person who has personal experience with the music, and, is pushing it to their friends. When Napster was new, and still legal, the recording industry pushed to kill it by claiming it was the reason that CD sales were down by 15-20%. Well, independent polls showed that people were using it to sample a new artist's music, and, more often than not would go out and purchase that artist's CDs if they liked it. At the time, I was in a fair number of chat rooms, and, I always made it a point to ask how folks were using Napster. About 1 person out of 100 said they were using it to get as much music for free and they had no intention of buying any more CDs. The remaining 99% were using it as a s
greetings and salutations;
Dealing with the Middle East, and the attack rabbit were certainly interesting moments in Carter's tenure. I have to say that the the Iranian Students refusing to release the hostages they held until Reagan was sworn in was a childish and pitiful action that brought contempt down on a society that had some significant high points in its history.
However, perhaps what is more important is the fact that Pres. Carter has been one of the few presidents who has truly continued to serve the country after leaving office. He has done this in two ways. Firstly, his long-time association with Habitat for Humanity has meant that there are a lot of people out there with homes that Pres. Carter had a real hand in building. He is a fine woodworker, and I would be proud to say that he applied that craftsmanship to MY house! Secondly, his travels around the world to monitor elections and involve himself in diplomatic talks where rational discussion over rides emotion have helped mend America's image in the eyes of the world, and, have helped nurture the spread of democracy - and freedom - which is also a good thing
Pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Greetings and salutation;
So...you, the AC, are willing to trust your government to a man who has made his millions by making sure that the businesses he has had a hand in have made a huge profit, no matter WHAT the human cost, as opposed to a community organizer who has worked to help the disadvantaged in America? You do realize, do you not, that Mr. Romney will throw you under the bus with no more thought or concern than he would with an empty milk carton, if it suited his goals? If you believe anything else, then you have honed the talent of self-delusion to a fine edge.
As for your comments about the changes that another Obama administration might bring...it is not hard to find a number of discussions on the Internet about how the current administration's spending is MUCH less than previous administrations. This trend is unlikely to change. As for the liberty issue - I agree that we have seen some serious erosion of the rights of Americans, but, almost all those restrictions were imposed by the previous administration. Obama has not added MORE walls, and, again, shows no signs of doing so. Finally....I do not think that word - statism - means what you think it means.
I believe that it is not the flavor of the administration that manages to buy its way into leading the Federal government that is the major issue in today's world, nor do I believe that either of the flavors have the lock on how to bring perfection to America's society. Rather, what is required for Society to improve and for America to regain some of the luster it used to have is the Citizens working their way back to a more moderate point of view, and, for those citizens to start taking more responsibility for their own lives and working to improve the living conditions in America as a whole. We, as a society, also need to start requiring that our government behave in a more honorable fashion, and enforce that by replacing politicians with others.
Greetings and Salutations;
I have to point out that "freedom of speech" is not absolute. It does not absolve the speaker from having to take responsibility for their words, nor, is it license to lie without consequences. This has been ruled upon a number of times by the Supreme Court here in the US. I have to say that this is one area where I agree with the Justices (although there are plenty of other areas where we disagree). The way that truth in advertising has become as rare as an Emu these days is a terrible thing and should not be tolerated. If your marketing people are so incompetent that lying about one's competition is the only way they can find a way to show that your company is a better choice, either you need to hire better people, or, admit that they have a point, and, shut down your company, since it obviously is worthless.
Pleasant dreams.
Dave Mundt
This is a good point. A bit ago, I noticed that at certain times of the day my aircard would seem to be running slow. Well, being kind of compulsive, I gathered about a month's worth of data by doing speed tests every half hour. I discovered a very interesting pattern in doing this. It seems that every day, between 8:00 and 9:00 in the morning, my speed would drop from megabit rates to 128K (at best- and 64K typical). It would stay slow like that until sometime between 22:00 and 23:00 at night, then, would pop back up to "broadband" rates again.
Verizon was claiming, at the time, that any speed drops would be the result of traffic congestion at the local tower. If this was the case, I would not have seen such an obvious and consistent curve. After all...The area I live in is lightly populated, and, a vast majority of the people go elsewhere for work. There are not that many companies in the area either that would be depending on cell towers for their communications. This, and the obvious shape of the speed curves, make me think that it was nothing more than deliberate throttling to discourage the use of the cell system for data access.
I do keep statistics about my bandwidth usage, and, on the average, I pull about 12 gig a month. While more than some, it is considerably less than I used to use. A year or so ago, I was watching more online entertainment content (hulu and youtube have some amazing content), and, was listening to radio stations from around the world that stream their content. I was pulling the high-quality streams for this data too, which adds to the usage. I was also pulling down Linux ISOs and other large data files, so, that added up quickly to the 65 gig or so per month I was using. Now, I almost never watch streaming video, because of the buffering issues (and because of that I am NOT seeing some of the Olympic events I would have liked to watch), and, I choose the lowest quality of streamed sound from the radio stations. I also am simply not listening to as much online content like that as I used to.
So...the bottom line for me is that I am annoyed by Verizon's business decisions, and, they are pushing me closer and closer to leaving their company, and, moving on to alternative providers. Because of changes in my reality, the need for the remote access offered by the aircard has pretty much gone away, so, I would be quite comfortable with dumping that and going with cable or dsl. We shall see.
Greetings and Salutations;
Well, I have been editing and contributing to OpenStreetMap for several years now, and, I have to say that while there is a point to the criticism, in general, I would disagree with their analysis. It is a bit too self-serving for my taste. I do not own a TomTom, but, have had a couple of Garmins, and, have used a TomTom unit before. The commercial maps have been no better than the Open Source maps, and in several cases have been far less accurate. There are a number of places here in East Tennessee where the commercial maps have the GPS insisting that I am driving through the fields on the side of the road.
One point where Open Street Map shines is that it has actual roads and trails in such places as National Parks and forests...where the commercial maps have nothing but blank green areas.
Greetings and Salutations;
Hum...I have, for years, wanted to see some of the outtakes from "Ice Pirates". It is a truly awful film, but, right after that line, there is a cut and from the expressions that remain on the actor's faces I suspect there was something terribly amusing and probably pretty crude that got said.
Now, I am going to have to get a copy of it and inflict it on some folks....Sigh.
Pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations;
I totally agree with the first line. It may be possible, by spending enough cash, to get a version of Windows that is secure enough to not get hacked every week...but it is neither easy nor cheap. However, there are no distributions of Linux that I know of that lack the tools to turn it into Fort Knox. I have had several clients that i switched from Windows to Linux. With Windows, they were getting hacked very often. After I set up Linux as their server software, they never got hacked again.
As for the support issues....Linux makes it very easy to create scripts to maintain and update machines remotely. If it is a business setting where there are a significant number of machines on a network, then, IT should have a "standard" setup, and employees should not be allowed to pop whatever software onto their systems that they want, without approval.
It is not a simple thing though, as it involves telling folks "no" and most people react like 4 year olds when this happens.
pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Greetings and Salutations;
While you have a point here, this is a bit of a harsh evaluation, especially since we do not have any information on the projects the OP speaks of. I can think of half a dozen places in Home Automation, for example, where a small, cheap, embedded controller, with a touch screen, would be a great answer.
While the solutions you propose are, in general, quite workable, what they lack is flexibility. For example, a mechanical timer WILL spray water at the same time, for the same volume, but, it has no way of knowing if it is pouring rain. Nor, for that matter does it know if the drought conditions have depleted the water levels in the landscaping more quickly than normal. These can easily be dealt with by a smart controller, with a couple of sensors added to it. Your second example, turning the lights on at dusk and off at dawn is specific enough that one would likely not gain a lot by automating it beyond a simple switch. However, what about a very cloudy day? also, what about turning the lights off when it is still dark? I will give you the car headlight example with no argument, though, as that is pretty well defined.
Pleasant dreams
dave mundt
Do not down play Woz's contribution to Apple. One of the major reasons for the success of the Macintosh was the IWM chip that was the heart of it This amazing hardware hack coupled complex state machine logic and individual circuits together in one chip to become greater than the sum of its parts. Woz's design used the partial circuits in a dozen or more different ways, reconfiguring itself on the fly to do what needed to be done at that point. Could another engineer have done this design and made it work so well? Perhaps, but, I doubt it. "IWM" stands for "Integrated Woz Machine", and well it should. It remains a pretty spiffy hack,
pleasant dreams
bee man dave
Greetings and Salutations;
Imagine this being said in Bill Cosby's voice - "Riiigggghhhttt" (See his tale of Noah and the ark).
I would think that this sort of remote monitoring would be high priority, considering the recent economic losses suffered by American Citizens caused by the increased severity of storms that hit the country. The fact that it is likely that the energy for those storms came from global climate change is not relevant (I suppose).
Of course, the fact that the people that have been hurt have NOT been part of the 1% may have an influence on the level of care that the government has, too.
Pleasant dreams
bee man dave
Greetings and Salutations;
I am not going to quote sources, as it is easy enough to search them out. However, folks that say that "travel is not a right" are totally wrong. Although the right to travel is not explicitly in the Constitution (except as regards legislators), the current interpretation is that it was such an obvious thing that the writers simply did not think it necessary to put it into the document. However, that having been said, it is a fact that the First Amendment does say that freedom of assembly is a basic right of the citizen and cannot be interfered with by the Government. Implicit in this clause is the freedom to travel, simply because it would be impossible for a group of citizens to assemble without traveling to a meeting point.
Pleasant dreams
dave
Greetings and Salutations;
This is my thought too. With a 23" screen, it would be easy to read throughout the kitchen, and, it does have outputs that could go to a larger LCD tv mounted near it. It would mount on the wall nicely, and, having used one for a little bit, I find that the on-screen keyboard is not good for touch-typing, but, works ok for light data entry. (URLS, Google searches, etc).
I think that concerns about limiting its role are overstated. I do not think that it would get used for "general computing". After all, in most cases, we hang out in the kitchen for one of a few reasons: to cook; to eat what we have cooked; or to clean up. I, for one, do not set my laptop up on a kitchen counter and work there, simply because there are better places.
As for the linux issue...that is true enough. While Linux will run nicely on the box, it really does not support the touch screen at all. There are some primitive steps towards that, but, getting it to work can be both painful and complicated, requiring some technical skills (applying patches to the OS & other programs, recompiling, etc). The technology is too new yet for widespread support, however, I suspect that by this time next year, there will be considerable improvement in the support.
Pleasant dreams
bee man dave.
Greetings and Salutations;
No...we are not LOSING the war on Terror. We, the citizens, have already LOST it. We have turned over unprecedented amounts of power and control to the government, and given up many of the liberties that our ancestors shed rivers of blood to take for themselves. It seems to me that the citizens of America and Great Britain have been turned into mewling, fearful infants by the deliberate actions taken by the government to re-enforce the idea that the only "safe" path is to let the "authorities" handle any situation. At least in America, have been brainwashed into an almost insane belief that life should be perfectly safe and any time that anything goes awry, we are to run to the government to fix the problem! While our love of CCTV cameras scattered around populated areas does run behind that of the government of Great Britain, it appears that the US government is rushing to catch up. It used to be that the only people that were under 24 hour per day surveillance were the prisoners in maximum security prisons. Using the Boogie Man of terrorist attacks, our governments seem to be on the road to turning the entire country into a high security prison.
I fear that we have become an embarrassment to the spirits of our Grandparents, who showed such courage and strength of will during the horrors of the 2d World War. Can we regain that legacy? Change is always possible, but, I do not think that there is the strength of will left to do so. Rather, we will continue to accept the lies of the government, and continue to curl up into a little ball, hoping that if we ignore the problems, they will all go away.
On that happy thought....
Pleasant Dreams
Bee Man Dave
Greetings and Salutations;
Not to be overly pedantic, but, the quote is actually NOT from Monty Python, alas. Rather it is part of a hugely funny skit by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore during their "Beyond the Fringe" days. I believe it was in the late 50s, although I am not sure of that. In any case here is a link, that, if you scroll down a bit, will get you the whole script. http://www.slaw.ca/2006/02/20/i-never-had-the-latin/
I have it on tape someplace, too, in that stack of recordings that are awaiting transfer to CD. As with much of their humor, the deadpan seriousness of their conversation makes it all the funnier.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
Greetings and Salutations;
Well, as a 57 year old, I have been told by a number of folks that Walmart is always looking for greeters.
Pleasant dreams
http://blog.beemandave.com/