Look at Nortel stock... if you bought $1000 of Nortel stock last year, you'd have $43 today. I won't even mention Lucent. Those are the big boys - the small ones (cough Iron Bridge cough) are all dead or dying.
One of my teachers brought this up the other day... If you bought 1000 dollars worth of Nortel Stock, you'd have 43 dollars today. *BUT* if you had bought 1000 dollars worth of cheap beer, and recycled the cans, you'd have approximately 102 dollars.
So, with the way the economy is going, his advice was to stay away from tech stocks, and drink heavily...
UC Santa Cruz (Not just for hippies anymore! no matter what they try and make you think) does a decent job of it. Regardless of your major, you're basically forced to take one class of every major type-- Including two topical "Bullshit" courses (Disney! Muppets! Wine Tasting!).
You have to take a couple "computationally intensive" classes (math, astronomy), two intro to humanity courses(history, psych, sociology, linguistics, etc), two intro to earth sciences (chem, physics, and comp sci/eng. Don't ask), intro to arts/lit (Art, digital media, film, music, lit) and, well, I'm sure I'm missing some, but that's a quick rundown... Also, they try to teach you to hate it right off the bat with a core course.
Not that I'm bitter or anything, but my core course said more or less "These three things are killing the world in general, and California in particular: Farmers, Southern California, and High tech." This went over *REAL* well with me because I was a CE major from southern california whose family farms...
The earth moves in cycles. From the high end, in a "global warming" trend, to an ice age, there is no problem with either end. True, we may well be helping it along with the stuff we put in the air, but it'll balance back out.
If the temperature raises, Ice melts.
Ice melts, water level rises.
Water level rises, more surface area, more evaporation (remember! hotter weather!)
More evaporation, more crap in the air between us and the sun.
More crap between us and the sun, less sun gets through.
Less sun gets through, lower temperature, less vapor can be held by the air. Ice forms again, rinse. repeat.
So what if we're helping it along? If we all die, the earth won't know the difference. It'll just go on as it always has. So what if the coasts are all flooded (I live on the Cali coast, I can say this). The worst we can do is kill every living organism on the earth. The worst that will probably happen is that there will be a number of years of hot, humid weather, followed by a general cooling trend
And don't get me started on endangered species...
--Just another Hard working Conservative in Santa Cruz
Exantrius
"According to his plans, a pickup truck will be waiting to drive him to a group of bleachers where fans and 12 Hooters bar girls will pour champagne all over him. "
Now all he's got to do is git liquered up and shoot himself to the moon...
Does it come with a built in ethernet jack? Just the thing I want coming out of my chest(Wait, that might be kinda cool...), but it's probably a far sight better than radio waves. I seem to remember something about not being allowed to use cell phones in hospitals because the phone sends out signals which *MIGHT* mess up pace makers...
Even though it doesn't specifically state it, I would guess they mean a wireless connection. This would connect to a base station, relay information. Aside from the above, *WHEN* does it send out? Constantly? Do I want anyone with a radio to be able to tune into my heart? For that matter, do I want the radio to lose reception any time I'm near it?
How often would this be sent? Twice a day? Twice an hour? Twice a minute? What happens when some smartass with too much time on his hands decides to pretend gramps is having a heart attack by hijacking the signal, and watch the coroner pull up while gramps is asleep? I don't see this working on a modem connection, and since the number of old people on broadband connections are very small, I don't see much of a use for this... Some revolution...
I think that's enough for me to consider this a Bad Idea.
--Ex
Actually, I have a friend that goes to UCSB. Last year, he complained too... Complained that noone bugged him about keeping a warez site up for the whole year. UCSB has absolutely no network Oversight, therefore the place gets red-lined. For instance, up here at UC Santa Cruz, they "limit" dorms to a gig a day (upload) and a very high (but obtainable) download limit. If you break the limit two times, they'll shut you down for a month, and after enough warnings, they'll shut you off for the rest of the year or longer.
If I remember correctly, we have a much better connection than UCSB, but our network still gets busy. Perhaps you should talk to the network people there and see if they can start filtering the people (like my friend) who would do 3-5 gigs of traffic a day up, and as much as possible down (mostly mp3's and music videos).
I found this about an hour ago, and started playing with it. I tried to register iam.god... Of course is.god would be a good investment (Imagine, for only $20 bucks, you can get *.is.god as your domain name!) Okay, it's probably not original, but It let me sign up for it! Hasta luego Exantrius
"...I'm right now reistalling windows on a generic workstation because my rc3 disk of W2k will not stay stable for more than a week under any kind of steady use..."
Would you care to read that? especially the "rc3" part? rc3 is a beta, and shouldn't be construed as a final product... However I've been running RC3 for almost a month now, and well, other than a few "death clicks", where it just stops responding and I have to hard reboot, it's been pretty much rock solid...
Wait for the final product before passing final judgement... Or perhaps wait until they release a *Win2k compliant* version of EZ CD pro...
You missed the last sentence I wrote (one of the last) that "this is something I hope you already know"... I figured most/.'ers were smart enough to figure out that I meant "this was stuff I knew, and should be common sense, so I hope that you already know it".
It is a writing class; The teacher uses this section to introduce somewhat easily the quarter. And the gist of the book was "it's a marketing enterprise", followed by "this is why they do this, that is why they do that, etc. And no shit, sherlock, webpages have ads. Yes, they can often get in the way, but no, they don't take up 30 seconds of your life, even IF you click on it.
...but so are all news sources. I just finished a section of a class, about tv news shows. The gist of it was "TV News shows are all about selling ads; if they could get away with it, they wouldn't give any news, just play commercials." Now, why do they actually share information? To keep their respectability above a point. No respectability == no viewers... No viewers == no ads.
A project in this section was to watch a commercial TV news show, and a non-commercial one. I dug the tv out of the box, and plugged it in, and went to CNN... First off, they showed a drought in texas. Then they spent 4 minutes on Michael Jordan buying part of that sports team (whatever it was), and then a bunch of stuff on the election (I guess politicians buy a lot of tv time in the year before presidential elections)... They played four minutes of the guy that owns time-Warner, and him going on about the aol merger, and some sports team guy who made some type of slur... Note that this was the same day as the seton hill University fire. Also note that was given about 30 seconds (right before a commercial for life insurance, then an ad for Seton Hill Universities internet classes... Go figure...). Comparing it with the McNeil news hour (non-commercial news show), it was atrocious. However, it wasn't all that great either... All in all, I'm glad I get my info from the internet... I get a wider variety of information and don't get as much crap that I don't care about (who gives a flying fuck who owns the Washington Wizards?).
A good book to read, if you wanna read something to what I hope you already realize about how news shows work, try _How To Watch TV News_ by Neil Postman and Steve Powers... (too lazy to do it in html) Hasta luego /Exantrius
My brother is in a class where almost a quarter of the children are on some type of medication (most of them for ADD). He is seven years old.
Most of the kids are normal, but in todays society where nearly every adult takes some type of medication, and as parents hear more and more about ADD, and how it can cripple a child mentally, they become more and more sure their child has it. Parents are drugging their kids, we don't need to provide for that in schools!
Parents have to start realizing that their children are normal, and they are behaving exactly how 7 year olds behave. My brother gets unruly sometimes, as do all other kids. The answer is to take away stimuli. Set them down, and have them sit somewhere until they calm down! That worked with me (although I was on antidepressants for a couple years), and that has worked with generations before.
This whole story is a joke as far as I'm concerned. So many adults think the only way out is the easy one.
I just hope my children never have to go through what I did. There are a few good schools left. I went to two of them. Now I'm out, and I'm free from a lot of the garbage.
Coincidentally, my parents are both in the medical industry. What you say is probably true, however, the only thing I hear from them about their computers at work is "those damn idiot bean counters changed our software again, I have to go through another goddamned meeting to learn how to use another program. The old one worked fine". Sure, they're not doctors. However, my father does home-patient care, and as such, he's used the same program at home to keep track of patients. Sure they can learn "new and improved" programs every three months, but why? Personally, I think it's best to leave 'new and improved' to techies and geeks, give them something that works, and that is similar to what they've used before... As for my mother, she does physical therapy. What program does she use? The same one she's used since they got the "brand new" 486... 7 years ago. Why hasn't she upgraded? because it works.
I understand your points, and agree that there have been advances that have helped people. I know behind the scene stuff is mostly computer driven, but there are still airline crashes.
Now I've forgotten what the original topic was. Suffice it to say, computer engineers help the world work more smoothly. They dont' help the world work.
Money is money. Everyone needs money. The President is the most prestigious job in the world. Not only is it the most powerful, but America couldn't function properly. True he doesn't get paid as much, but he controls the most powerful arsenal in history. Not only the power and prestige, the President, even the worst of them all, has made decisions that helped (and hurt) millions of people. I was drawn to computers for love of them, not because of some "geek magnet" factor. Sure, I'm a geek, but for years I debated going into politics, medicine and just about every other job in the world. A computer engineer may make more money, but how does he affect the lives of millions in a real sense? I have yet to find _ANY_ software that helps my parents get on with their daily life. For that matter, I haven't seen anything created in the past 6-10 years that was so much better for the average person, increasing productivity more than prior software available. My parents could use win31 better than win98, and their old excel works the exact same as the top of the line newest (which incidentally is a bitch to relearn after using an ancient version). I challenge you to find a dozen things in daily life that the normal person _Can't_ live without, which has been created in the past dozen years? Sure things have gotten better (cameras et al) but does that help feed the homeless? Does it divert wars? Politics allows you to actually have a bearing on real life. To influence Everyone. However, you're right, noone wants to go into politics now.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at Nortel stock... if you bought $1000 of Nortel stock last year, you'd have $43 today. I won't even mention Lucent. Those are the big boys - the small ones (cough Iron Bridge cough) are all dead or dying.
One of my teachers brought this up the other day... If you bought 1000 dollars worth of Nortel Stock, you'd have 43 dollars today. *BUT* if you had bought 1000 dollars worth of cheap beer, and recycled the cans, you'd have approximately 102 dollars.
So, with the way the economy is going, his advice was to stay away from tech stocks, and drink heavily...
Exantrius
UC Santa Cruz (Not just for hippies anymore! no matter what they try and make you think) does a decent job of it. Regardless of your major, you're basically forced to take one class of every major type-- Including two topical "Bullshit" courses (Disney! Muppets! Wine Tasting!).
You have to take a couple "computationally intensive" classes (math, astronomy), two intro to humanity courses(history, psych, sociology, linguistics, etc), two intro to earth sciences (chem, physics, and comp sci/eng. Don't ask), intro to arts/lit (Art, digital media, film, music, lit) and, well, I'm sure I'm missing some, but that's a quick rundown... Also, they try to teach you to hate it right off the bat with a core course.
Not that I'm bitter or anything, but my core course said more or less "These three things are killing the world in general, and California in particular: Farmers, Southern California, and High tech." This went over *REAL* well with me because I was a CE major from southern california whose family farms...
Hasta luego,
Exantrius
The earth moves in cycles. From the high end, in a "global warming" trend, to an ice age, there is no problem with either end. True, we may well be helping it along with the stuff we put in the air, but it'll balance back out.
If the temperature raises, Ice melts.
Ice melts, water level rises.
Water level rises, more surface area, more evaporation (remember! hotter weather!)
More evaporation, more crap in the air between us and the sun.
More crap between us and the sun, less sun gets through.
Less sun gets through, lower temperature, less vapor can be held by the air. Ice forms again, rinse. repeat.
So what if we're helping it along? If we all die, the earth won't know the difference. It'll just go on as it always has. So what if the coasts are all flooded (I live on the Cali coast, I can say this). The worst we can do is kill every living organism on the earth. The worst that will probably happen is that there will be a number of years of hot, humid weather, followed by a general cooling trend
And don't get me started on endangered species...
--Just another Hard working Conservative in Santa Cruz
Exantrius
"According to his plans, a pickup truck will be waiting to drive him to a group of bleachers where fans and 12 Hooters bar girls will pour champagne all over him. "
Now all he's got to do is git liquered up and shoot himself to the moon...
-Ex
Does it come with a built in ethernet jack? Just the thing I want coming out of my chest(Wait, that might be kinda cool...), but it's probably a far sight better than radio waves. I seem to remember something about not being allowed to use cell phones in hospitals because the phone sends out signals which *MIGHT* mess up pace makers...
Even though it doesn't specifically state it, I would guess they mean a wireless connection. This would connect to a base station, relay information. Aside from the above, *WHEN* does it send out? Constantly? Do I want anyone with a radio to be able to tune into my heart? For that matter, do I want the radio to lose reception any time I'm near it?
How often would this be sent? Twice a day? Twice an hour? Twice a minute? What happens when some smartass with too much time on his hands decides to pretend gramps is having a heart attack by hijacking the signal, and watch the coroner pull up while gramps is asleep? I don't see this working on a modem connection, and since the number of old people on broadband connections are very small, I don't see much of a use for this... Some revolution...
I think that's enough for me to consider this a Bad Idea.
--Ex
Actually, I have a friend that goes to UCSB. Last year, he complained too... Complained that noone bugged him about keeping a warez site up for the whole year. UCSB has absolutely no network Oversight, therefore the place gets red-lined. For instance, up here at UC Santa Cruz, they "limit" dorms to a gig a day (upload) and a very high (but obtainable) download limit. If you break the limit two times, they'll shut you down for a month, and after enough warnings, they'll shut you off for the rest of the year or longer.
If I remember correctly, we have a much better connection than UCSB, but our network still gets busy. Perhaps you should talk to the network people there and see if they can start filtering the people (like my friend) who would do 3-5 gigs of traffic a day up, and as much as possible down (mostly mp3's and music videos).
Hasta luego
Exantrius
I found this about an hour ago, and started playing with it. I tried to register iam.god... Of course is.god would be a good investment (Imagine, for only $20 bucks, you can get *.is.god as your domain name!)
Okay, it's probably not original, but It let me sign up for it!
Hasta luego
Exantrius
the first few words:
"WASHINGTON--At its first and only meeting so far..."
Well Shoot, I should hope so! None of them people meeting before their first meeting!!
"...I'm right now reistalling windows on a generic workstation because my rc3 disk of W2k will not stay stable for more than a week under any kind of steady use..."
Would you care to read that? especially the "rc3" part? rc3 is a beta, and shouldn't be construed as a final product... However I've been running RC3 for almost a month now, and well, other than a few "death clicks", where it just stops responding and I have to hard reboot, it's been pretty much rock solid...
Wait for the final product before passing final judgement... Or perhaps wait until they release a *Win2k compliant* version of EZ CD pro...
/ex
You missed the last sentence I wrote (one of the last) that "this is something I hope you already know"... I figured most /.'ers were smart enough to figure out that I meant "this was stuff I knew, and should be common sense, so I hope that you already know it".
It is a writing class; The teacher uses this section to introduce somewhat easily the quarter. And the gist of the book was "it's a marketing enterprise", followed by "this is why they do this, that is why they do that, etc.
And no shit, sherlock, webpages have ads. Yes, they can often get in the way, but no, they don't take up 30 seconds of your life, even IF you click on it.
/ex
...but so are all news sources.
I just finished a section of a class, about tv news shows. The gist of it was "TV News shows are all about selling ads; if they could get away with it, they wouldn't give any news, just play commercials." Now, why do they actually share information? To keep their respectability above a point. No respectability == no viewers... No viewers == no ads.
A project in this section was to watch a commercial TV news show, and a non-commercial one. I dug the tv out of the box, and plugged it in, and went to CNN... First off, they showed a drought in texas. Then they spent 4 minutes on Michael Jordan buying part of that sports team (whatever it was), and then a bunch of stuff on the election (I guess politicians buy a lot of tv time in the year before presidential elections)... They played four minutes of the guy that owns time-Warner, and him going on about the aol merger, and some sports team guy who made some type of slur... Note that this was the same day as the seton hill University fire. Also note that was given about 30 seconds (right before a commercial for life insurance, then an ad for Seton Hill Universities internet classes... Go figure...).
Comparing it with the McNeil news hour (non-commercial news show), it was atrocious. However, it wasn't all that great either...
All in all, I'm glad I get my info from the internet... I get a wider variety of information and don't get as much crap that I don't care about (who gives a flying fuck who owns the Washington Wizards?).
A good book to read, if you wanna read something to what I hope you already realize about how news shows work, try _How To Watch TV News_ by Neil Postman and Steve Powers...
(too lazy to do it in html)
Hasta luego
/Exantrius
My brother is in a class where almost a quarter of the children are on some type of medication (most of them for ADD). He is seven years old.
Most of the kids are normal, but in todays society where nearly every adult takes some type of medication, and as parents hear more and more about ADD, and how it can cripple a child mentally, they become more and more sure their child has it.
Parents are drugging their kids, we don't need to provide for that in schools!
Parents have to start realizing that their children are normal, and they are behaving exactly how 7 year olds behave. My brother gets unruly sometimes, as do all other kids. The answer is to take away stimuli. Set them down, and have them sit somewhere until they calm down! That worked with me (although I was on antidepressants for a couple years), and that has worked with generations before.
This whole story is a joke as far as I'm concerned. So many adults think the only way out is the easy one.
I just hope my children never have to go through what I did. There are a few good schools left. I went to two of them. Now I'm out, and I'm free from a lot of the garbage.
-ex
Coincidentally, my parents are both in the medical industry.
What you say is probably true, however, the only thing I hear from them about their computers at work is "those damn idiot bean counters changed our software again, I have to go through another goddamned meeting to learn how to use another program. The old one worked fine". Sure, they're not doctors. However, my father does home-patient care, and as such, he's used the same program at home to keep track of patients. Sure they can learn "new and improved" programs every three months, but why? Personally, I think it's best to leave 'new and improved' to techies and geeks, give them something that works, and that is similar to what they've used before...
As for my mother, she does physical therapy. What program does she use? The same one she's used since they got the "brand new" 486... 7 years ago. Why hasn't she upgraded? because it works.
I understand your points, and agree that there have been advances that have helped people. I know behind the scene stuff is mostly computer driven, but there are still airline crashes.
Now I've forgotten what the original topic was. Suffice it to say, computer engineers help the world work more smoothly. They dont' help the world work.
-ex
Money is money. Everyone needs money. The President is the most prestigious job in the world. Not only is it the most powerful, but America couldn't function properly. True he doesn't get paid as much, but he controls the most powerful arsenal in history. Not only the power and prestige, the President, even the worst of them all, has made decisions that helped (and hurt) millions of people.
I was drawn to computers for love of them, not because of some "geek magnet" factor. Sure, I'm a geek, but for years I debated going into politics, medicine and just about every other job in the world.
A computer engineer may make more money, but how does he affect the lives of millions in a real sense? I have yet to find _ANY_ software that helps my parents get on with their daily life. For that matter, I haven't seen anything created in the past 6-10 years that was so much better for the average person, increasing productivity more than prior software available. My parents could use win31 better than win98, and their old excel works the exact same as the top of the line newest (which incidentally is a bitch to relearn after using an ancient version). I challenge you to find a dozen things in daily life that the normal person _Can't_ live without, which has been created in the past dozen years? Sure things have gotten better (cameras et al) but does that help feed the homeless? Does it divert wars?
Politics allows you to actually have a bearing on real life. To influence Everyone.
However, you're right, noone wants to go into politics now.
-ex