Perhaps that is why the Mac isn't nearly as popular as Windows and the plethora of companies that produce systems for that OS.
People always need diversions, games provide that and some diversions develop into powerful full blown industries that can make or break a platform.
An example of this would be smaller "sporty" foreign automobiles. Without the aftermarket "racing" parts the sales of such automobiles woldn't be quite as strong. There would also be no point in making a movie called "The Fast and Furious".
In a way it's to bad that the development of what the Mac has become has always sidelined the idea of really great games being released in a timely fashion. It is good that appears to be changing though...
Until then, is there even a MMORPG that even has a Mac client?
How Long can you Frag me in RtCW: Enemy Territory? Oh, that's right there isn't a Mac client yet... Might never be one, but there might soon, it would be nice to see.
How about Medal of Honor: Allied Assault? There isn't a Mac Client for that either...
What of Star Wars Galaxies, can you join me in that game? Not unless there is an ultra secret Mac Client hidden out there in the ether.
Macs aren't for gaming. Windows machines are.
The Mac is MUCH better for graphics arts and a plethora of other things as well... I don't do those things often and never professionally.
I can also purchase the spare battery that will sit in the laptop at the same time as the main battery that will double my running time. It's not cheap, but it will make the system run longer...
Having to "fend of women" isn't a reason to own a laptop. That's not a feature at all. Sure, those Titanium power books look nice, but so does the high-end Inspiron laptops. I love that blue color that comes standard with that machine.
I like the flexibility of being able to run Windows software (mostly games) and the ability to run Linux on the same machine.
All we use, for laptops, are Dell systems. The decision was based on the testing they report performing as well as their 3-year in our offices warranty.
We haven't had any issues with the laptops, besides having one delivered with a CPU that had popped out of its socket. Of course, the box it was shipped in looking like it had been run over by the carrier service... So, that wasn't a big deal.
Well, I do hope that we don't have the problems with any of the Dell laptops that we use and I surely hope that I don't have any issues with my personal Dell laptop either. (That would suck.)
I just took a look at http://www.emperorlinux.com/ and found that the high-end Dell laptop, the one with the WIDE SCREEN display was fully supported by Red Hat 9, which is the main Linux that they ship...
So, I ordered myself a Dell and it will be in my hands this evening...
Now, I get the best of "both" worlds... I have a kick-ass and sexy EASILY portable system to take to LAN Parties, which will play just about EVERY game out there, being that it runs Windows... AND I will also be able to partition the hard disk to toss Red Hat 9 on it, providing me with a powerful portable UNIX workstation that supports 3 button functionality RIGHT on its built-in mouse pad...
(Try that with a Mac!)
If I really wanted to... I could also order up some easily replaceable "Skins" for this high-end Inspiron Laptop giving it a more unique look. Needless to say, this will be one bad-ass machine.
I can't say the Mac laptops are all that bad. I went to the local store to take a look at their 15.4" wide screen displays to help me make my decision about buying the Dell. (I almost went for the standard 15.4" screen until I saw the beauty that is the Wide Screen on a laptop format...)
To many people just don't give a hoot or somehow believe that they have superhuman reflexes and such.
Personally, I hate it when some moron starts riding my ass. I have been rear ended by one of those idiots and it was far from fun.
Most of the time I do have a moron on my tail is when there is PLENTY of room to go around (On the LEFT hand side, which is the only side you are supposed to pass in the US.) Most of them are just a mess of teenage kids.
There are times when I think it might be fun to just slam on my breaks when I see a Mercedes or another high priced auto tailing me like that.
About SMALL/TINY corporations. I agree with you regarding VERY large publicly traded corporation.
PersoRe:Read up on Corporations...nally, I work for a small corporation that isn't publicly traded. The shares are owned by two of the company officers, which also make up the Board of Directors.
At this corporation, I am the Chief Technology/Information/Logistics Officer with my official title being IT Manager/Buyer. No, I am not one of the shareholders and I don't know if I would want to be a shareholder either...
Limited Liability Corporations are well... Corporations... They combine the benefits of both sole proprietership/partnerships with the good stuff of corporate structures.
There is almost no reason to have a partnership or sole proprietership with the existence of LLCs and S-Corps structures. The protections they provide are incredibly important.
You can have One-Man Corporations and depending upon the type of business it may behoove you to do so. For instance, if you own many properties as rentals, as a sole proprieter if one of those tenants gets hurt, he/she could sue you and you could lose EVERYTHING, even your own home/car and personal savings.
With an LLC or S-Corp, you will not be held personally responsible, even though you are the sole-owner/share holder of the corporation. Sure, the company would be dead, but you would still have ALL of your personal belongings.
It would show extreme negligence to put yourself into a situation where you could lose everything save the clothes on your back. Having an S-Corp or LLC shows EXTREME prudence on your part.
Schizophrenia? You should read more...
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Working with ADHD?
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· Score: 1
Very little (the concentration part being the main thing in common ONLY) of what was written above has anything to do with Schizophrenic Disorder. My father has a severe case of that disorder and the symptoms are far greater then what was listed above.
Shizophrenia is a split of the mind, between reality and the fantasy that a Schizophrenic's mind creates for them. You can explain and show ALL the evidence in the world that there isn't a conspiracy against a Schizophrenic, that their face isn't plastered all over the internet, that they aren't being watched 24 hours a day on television by the American People, but none of that matters.
That belief will NEVER go away. (At least in my fathers case.) The medication has calmed him and he is much more of a human being then he ever was prior to being medicated, but he is still quite a bit out there and always will be.
...not sole proprieterships and partnerships and the rest you mentioned. Your point is oddly out of place, even though being slightly on the topic of this thread...
Any corporation, no matter how large or small has a Board of Directors. The board is made up of people that are voted into positions, by the shareholders.
In the case of a really small company with only a few shareholders, those shareholders (if even only 2 or 3 people) will typically make up the board.
...called Intoxicated Vehicular Attempted Murder. If the drunk is caught before killing someone. If they do kill somone, it shouldn't be called "Manslaughter" that doesn't sound strong enough.
It should be called Intoxication Vehicular Murder. Before someone becomes intoxicated, they know whether or not they will be driving their drunken ass home. If they become to hammered to be able to handle their car, that is also their fault. It is also known that drunk drivers tend to kill people while they are driving.
If the law calls DUI, Intoxicated Vehicular Attempted Murder and treats these criminals as attempted murderers, I am fairly sure that we would see a HUGE decrease in drunken driving and fewer lost lives.
I NEVER drive drunk and have had family members killed by drunk drivers that got off lightly in comparison to my family member that spent 1 year of "life" attached to respirators while brain dead, before the family had him taken off the machines. It's not fair that a drunk driver can get off with a few years prison term when they take a life and practically community service when they are caught just prior to possibly killing someone.
I have been to a mall recently. I also saw more stores then one store and far more store managers then one would find in a Wal-Mart.
I also saw greater variety then one would find within a Wal-Mart with a myriad of positions that result in all levels of income potential.
Another thing that I saw was a number of franchise as well as Mom and Pop stores dispersed throughout the place.
Does Wal-Mart provide that?
I am not discounting that your small town's downtown area had fallen away prior to Wal-Mart's appearance. There are many factors to the destruction of Small Town Downtown areas.
However, there are far to many cases of vibrant and VERY active small town downtown areas drying up after a Wal-Mart moves into the area to ignore as a fluke.
There is a fundamental difference between a Wal-Mart and malls or mini-malls. With a Mall shopping center many of the stores can be ran by local interests, whether they be a franchise or a mom and pop store that exists only in that one Mall or shopping center.
Also, while the jobs aren't exactly the highest paying, there are more store manager positions available in a Mall or Mini-Mall. Those Malls and Mini-Malls provide a significant lower-middle-class to a community. Wal-Mart doesn't provide that to a small town community.
...is that the money that used to spend its time in various community related transactions at least 7 times before leaving a community now leaves that community within 2 to 3 transactions.
In most small towns that a Wal-Mart is dropped on, the vibrant downtown area dries up and becomes a shell of its former self with only a few niche shops and perhaps one or two restaurants that typically go out of business as well, since nobody has money to buy from them anymore.
There are some EXTREMELY rare cases where that is not the case, but that is typically due to other mitigating factors that simply aren't available in most small towns. Things like Colleges and Art Academies or tourist attractions.
If you drove to 200 or so small towns that Wal-Mart moved into, check the City Records one to two years before Wal-Mart moved in to see how many businesses were registered and paying taxes and then look at the same records one, two, three and five years later. Most ALL of the time you see the number of businesses drop away.
This erodes the tax base since many of those business owners will either lose everything and become a VERY underpaid Wal-Mart employee or will pack up and skip town.
All in all the net effect is that many community leaders, that may have sponsored local events, as many small town shopkeepers and business associations do, will disappear. This causes an abrupt ending to many local events and eventually destroys the heart and the soul of those small towns.
Wal-Mart is a community destroying corporate monster that knows no bounds, sells cheap merchandise from overseas manufacturers, denigrates its employees and does what it can to destroy ALL competition. (Like it is attempting to do with Meijer's here in Michigan. I know that because I had overheard a Wal-Mart location scout chatting away on his cell phone regarding a new Meijer's store.)
The same can be said about geeks. I belong to a few mailing lists that have general discussions about Linux and you would be surprised at how naive a number of PhD carrying people there are on the list.
A few knew nothing about depreciating the value of a capital expense over the course of a few years. One was thinking about buying a lower end laptop to save some money for his small consulting firm, when he really should have talked to his accountant about depreciating the cost and saving money over the long-haul with taxes.
Several others knew nothing about the ways that businesses make decisions and that it isn't always about what might be right or could 'possibly' lead to 'potential' revenue. Sometimes business decisions are made for the longterm viability of a corporation, even if that decision appears, on the surface, to just be something to piss everyone off.
The problem with some professional managers with business degrees is that they might now really know when they are outside of their element. They might not know when they should let a department head and his/her team make a decision. Sometimes those things work out, sometimes they don't.
However, if you ignore the skills that someone could bring to a company simply because they "know nothing" since they have a business management degree then you would only be hurting your company, since you wouldn't have the knowledge of which business decisions have worked in the past, work only in theory and are known to work like gangbusters.
It takes more then a handful of developers to start a software company. If your department is nothing by developers, with little knowledge outside of software development you will have only a small chance at success.
Companies are in departments that are interdependent in order to compliment eachother.
You would need to have a good salesperson or two, someone GREAT with finances, like an accountant with at least a Bachelors, but better with a Masters Degree in Accounting.
You may also need someone with professional management skills. Not just a software team management style, but someone with a degree in Business Management.
The other person you would likely want to have is a professional purchasing agent. If you don't have someone that is GREAT at negotiating purchases and discounts your company will be bleeding money like there is no tomorrow. A good Purchasing Agent can cut costs by several percentage points.
With all that in mind, I wish you the best. It is a tough economy, but with the right crew and an innovative product, that fits perfectly in an uncovered niche market or is a POWERFUL broad use tool you could likely be looking at success.
All the Sidekick would need is an up to date SSH client that supports SSH1 and SSH2. That feature alone would make the Sidekick the most valuable UNIX and other Real Network Admins (Cisco Router/firewall network admins.) gadget available.
I haven't heard nor have I been able to locate any information regarding an SSH client for the Sidekick, has anyone else?
With our application server, I chose to install Blackbox to not only provide greater performance with the network transparecny component of X11, but to also "control" what applications the users have access to.
Blackbox has one of the easiest methods of controlling the menu then any of the other Window Managers that I have played with.
This just smacks of "Active Desktop"
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Eyes on Karamba
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The only major difference being that one actually has the choice of what to put on their desktop, not some mega corporation that only wants to "push" a bunch of silly adds down our throat...
Does anyone else remember "Active Desktop"? The premise is almost exactly what Karamba is. It gives the user the ability to display disparate information that is streamed to the computer over a network connection directly on the desktop, underneath applications.
...about cigarettes. You can keep telling yourself that taking LSD won't do anything bad to your body and mind.
By the way, in my father's case it was a gradual onset, which started after his use of LSD. As is the case with most everyone that is afflicted with Schizophrenia. He was, what I call, a functionaly schizophrenic, in that he was barely able to take care of himself through many years of his life. Then, he became worse, some major stressers entered his life and he was unable to cope. The he started to slide down the slippery slope of madness.
Personally, I know people that went from being bright, inteligent people, capable of using the college level vocabulary that you seem fond of spouting, to having the ability to barely write out coherent sentences.
One women I know, now has a perpetual dull look about her and she now acts as though she has been put into slow-motion mode. She speaks slowly, not because she is weighing her words, but because she is simply not the same person she was before she melted her mind through drug use. I feel very sorry for this woman and had I known then, what I know now, I would have pushed for her to never use that substance.
Personally, I believe that some drugs aren't all that bad and others are quite bad. I don't need the government or the DEA to tell me that taking LSD or Exctasy is bad for me, I know people that have destroyed themselves permanently by taking those drugs. People that may never be able to live a normal life, because they believed that they were being lied to by the government and DEA.
Go ahead, do what you want to do, but when you wake up one morning drooling and rocking back and forth because you fried your brain, don't say I didn't warn you. Of course, by then, it will be to late for you. But, hey everything's a risk, right?
Good luck in life, may you never end up like some of the people that I know.
Originally, the drug LSD, was used in college courses for medical students who were studying to be psychoanalysts and psychiatric professionals. They were often given this drug by their professors in order to give them a glimpse at what their life would be like, if they were Schizophrenic.
You see, they found that the neural activity of Schizophrenics was the same as the neural activity of people under the influence of LSD.
They quite suddenly stopped this practice quite quickly after they started the practice. (BTW this was in the mid 50's to late 60's, as I recall.) It wasn't a war on drugs issue, which didn't appear until the 80's. It was because some of those students lost their minds, permanently.
So, they got to experience what life was like to be a Schizophrenic for the remainder of their life.
Is that something that you wish to take a chance with?
Originally, LSD was used by psychiatric students and given to them by their colleges to assist them in understanding what it is like to be Schizophrenic. It had been found that people on LSD have the same kind of brain activity as people suffering from Shizophrenia.
He also didn't wake up on day like this. It happened slowly over the course of his life. He finally "Snapped" when he was in his late forties. Prior to that he had always been a little "off" and that could have been anything.
I am not aware of how many High School, or even Middle School Students that take the time to read through medical journals or psychiatric journals to come across the statement that you displayed above. Of course, those two groups happen to be the groups that take LSD the most.
The truth of the matter is there is NO TELLING what LSD will do to a person. No two human beings have the exact same set of experiences, no two human beings have the same neural pathways or identical brain chemistry. That is a fact.
If you wish to play Russian Roulette with your the long-term quality of your life, so be it. Nothing that I, or anyone else, can say will stop you. Just don't come whining away on Slashdot, if you even have the capability to use a PC, after dropping LSD and your find yourself permanently living in a psychotic paranoid delusional hell.
However, if you do, I hope you are as lucky as my father is and you have some family member that will put their foot in your rear and get you the treatment that you would need for the rest of your life.
You have a real world experience that snaps the fine threads that are left holding your mind together and before you know it, you live in a delusional world. You feel that everyone is watching you, that there is a grand experiment being performed on you, that your name and face is plastered all over billboards and the internet.
Then you sharpen flathead screw drivers as protection for when they come to end the experiment. Yeah, LSD is fun. Bad things "never" happen to people that take LSD.
That may have never come off of their LSD trip and now live in a scary world filled with a conspiracy theory involving some kind of experiment being performed on him. This happened to him roughly 28 years after taking a few hits...
Now he sits in a room thinking about the conspiracy against and swears up and down, no matter what is shown to him, that he is posted all over the internet and billboards all over the US. He feels that his old employers are running this experiment and that he still works for them, that everyone that interacts with him is part of this grand conspiracy to see how he would react to having this "experiment" run on him.
He believes that the events of September 11th were created to see how it would mess him up. He believes that I am involved in the experiment and that I work for something he calls the coporation...
All I know is that he has sharpened the points on all the screwdrivers in my house, to protect himself when "they" come to end the experiment. I also know that the medication is finally starting to calm him and bring him slightly into reality.
So all I can say is, "Yay! Way to go LSD!"
If you have never done LSD, DON'T! You could ruin your mind forever, or put yourself into such a dangerous position that your mind will break one day and everything you hold dear today, will break under the weight of your madness.
Slashdot Mirror
That's good to know...
I made a mistake, it means I am human.
Perhaps that is why the Mac isn't nearly as popular as Windows and the plethora of companies that produce systems for that OS.
People always need diversions, games provide that and some diversions develop into powerful full blown industries that can make or break a platform.
An example of this would be smaller "sporty" foreign automobiles. Without the aftermarket "racing" parts the sales of such automobiles woldn't be quite as strong. There would also be no point in making a movie called "The Fast and Furious".
In a way it's to bad that the development of what the Mac has become has always sidelined the idea of really great games being released in a timely fashion. It is good that appears to be changing though...
Until then, is there even a MMORPG that even has a Mac client?
As other functions...
How Long can you Frag me in RtCW: Enemy Territory? Oh, that's right there isn't a Mac client yet... Might never be one, but there might soon, it would be nice to see.
How about Medal of Honor: Allied Assault? There isn't a Mac Client for that either...
What of Star Wars Galaxies, can you join me in that game? Not unless there is an ultra secret Mac Client hidden out there in the ether.
Macs aren't for gaming. Windows machines are.
The Mac is MUCH better for graphics arts and a plethora of other things as well... I don't do those things often and never professionally.
I can also purchase the spare battery that will sit in the laptop at the same time as the main battery that will double my running time. It's not cheap, but it will make the system run longer...
Having to "fend of women" isn't a reason to own a laptop. That's not a feature at all. Sure, those Titanium power books look nice, but so does the high-end Inspiron laptops. I love that blue color that comes standard with that machine.
I like the flexibility of being able to run Windows software (mostly games) and the ability to run Linux on the same machine.
All we use, for laptops, are Dell systems. The decision was based on the testing they report performing as well as their 3-year in our offices warranty.
We haven't had any issues with the laptops, besides having one delivered with a CPU that had popped out of its socket. Of course, the box it was shipped in looking like it had been run over by the carrier service... So, that wasn't a big deal.
Well, I do hope that we don't have the problems with any of the Dell laptops that we use and I surely hope that I don't have any issues with my personal Dell laptop either. (That would suck.)
Thanks for the info...
I just took a look at http://www.emperorlinux.com/ and found that the high-end Dell laptop, the one with the WIDE SCREEN display was fully supported by Red Hat 9, which is the main Linux that they ship...
So, I ordered myself a Dell and it will be in my hands this evening...
Now, I get the best of "both" worlds... I have a kick-ass and sexy EASILY portable system to take to LAN Parties, which will play just about EVERY game out there, being that it runs Windows... AND I will also be able to partition the hard disk to toss Red Hat 9 on it, providing me with a powerful portable UNIX workstation that supports 3 button functionality RIGHT on its built-in mouse pad...
(Try that with a Mac!)
If I really wanted to... I could also order up some easily replaceable "Skins" for this high-end Inspiron Laptop giving it a more unique look. Needless to say, this will be one bad-ass machine.
I can't say the Mac laptops are all that bad. I went to the local store to take a look at their 15.4" wide screen displays to help me make my decision about buying the Dell. (I almost went for the standard 15.4" screen until I saw the beauty that is the Wide Screen on a laptop format...)
To many people just don't give a hoot or somehow believe that they have superhuman reflexes and such.
Personally, I hate it when some moron starts riding my ass. I have been rear ended by one of those idiots and it was far from fun.
Most of the time I do have a moron on my tail is when there is PLENTY of room to go around (On the LEFT hand side, which is the only side you are supposed to pass in the US.) Most of them are just a mess of teenage kids.
There are times when I think it might be fun to just slam on my breaks when I see a Mercedes or another high priced auto tailing me like that.
When I saw Schizo... in my quick reading of your statement, then ending of the word became ..phrenia...
Simple mistake.
About SMALL/TINY corporations. I agree with you regarding VERY large publicly traded corporation.
PersoRe:Read up on Corporations...nally, I work for a small corporation that isn't publicly traded. The shares are owned by two of the company officers, which also make up the Board of Directors.
At this corporation, I am the Chief Technology/Information/Logistics Officer with my official title being IT Manager/Buyer. No, I am not one of the shareholders and I don't know if I would want to be a shareholder either...
Limited Liability Corporations are well... Corporations... They combine the benefits of both sole proprietership/partnerships with the good stuff of corporate structures.
There is almost no reason to have a partnership or sole proprietership with the existence of LLCs and S-Corps structures. The protections they provide are incredibly important.
You can have One-Man Corporations and depending upon the type of business it may behoove you to do so. For instance, if you own many properties as rentals, as a sole proprieter if one of those tenants gets hurt, he/she could sue you and you could lose EVERYTHING, even your own home/car and personal savings.
With an LLC or S-Corp, you will not be held personally responsible, even though you are the sole-owner/share holder of the corporation. Sure, the company would be dead, but you would still have ALL of your personal belongings.
It would show extreme negligence to put yourself into a situation where you could lose everything save the clothes on your back. Having an S-Corp or LLC shows EXTREME prudence on your part.
Very little (the concentration part being the main thing in common ONLY) of what was written above has anything to do with Schizophrenic Disorder. My father has a severe case of that disorder and the symptoms are far greater then what was listed above.
Shizophrenia is a split of the mind, between reality and the fantasy that a Schizophrenic's mind creates for them. You can explain and show ALL the evidence in the world that there isn't a conspiracy against a Schizophrenic, that their face isn't plastered all over the internet, that they aren't being watched 24 hours a day on television by the American People, but none of that matters.
That belief will NEVER go away. (At least in my fathers case.) The medication has calmed him and he is much more of a human being then he ever was prior to being medicated, but he is still quite a bit out there and always will be.
Any corporation, no matter how large or small has a Board of Directors. The board is made up of people that are voted into positions, by the shareholders.
In the case of a really small company with only a few shareholders, those shareholders (if even only 2 or 3 people) will typically make up the board.
...called Intoxicated Vehicular Attempted Murder. If the drunk is caught before killing someone. If they do kill somone, it shouldn't be called "Manslaughter" that doesn't sound strong enough.
It should be called Intoxication Vehicular Murder. Before someone becomes intoxicated, they know whether or not they will be driving their drunken ass home. If they become to hammered to be able to handle their car, that is also their fault. It is also known that drunk drivers tend to kill people while they are driving.
If the law calls DUI, Intoxicated Vehicular Attempted Murder and treats these criminals as attempted murderers, I am fairly sure that we would see a HUGE decrease in drunken driving and fewer lost lives.
I NEVER drive drunk and have had family members killed by drunk drivers that got off lightly in comparison to my family member that spent 1 year of "life" attached to respirators while brain dead, before the family had him taken off the machines. It's not fair that a drunk driver can get off with a few years prison term when they take a life and practically community service when they are caught just prior to possibly killing someone.
I have been to a mall recently. I also saw more stores then one store and far more store managers then one would find in a Wal-Mart.
I also saw greater variety then one would find within a Wal-Mart with a myriad of positions that result in all levels of income potential.
Another thing that I saw was a number of franchise as well as Mom and Pop stores dispersed throughout the place.
Does Wal-Mart provide that?
I am not discounting that your small town's downtown area had fallen away prior to Wal-Mart's appearance. There are many factors to the destruction of Small Town Downtown areas.
However, there are far to many cases of vibrant and VERY active small town downtown areas drying up after a Wal-Mart moves into the area to ignore as a fluke.
There is a fundamental difference between a Wal-Mart and malls or mini-malls. With a Mall shopping center many of the stores can be ran by local interests, whether they be a franchise or a mom and pop store that exists only in that one Mall or shopping center.
Also, while the jobs aren't exactly the highest paying, there are more store manager positions available in a Mall or Mini-Mall. Those Malls and Mini-Malls provide a significant lower-middle-class to a community. Wal-Mart doesn't provide that to a small town community.
In most small towns that a Wal-Mart is dropped on, the vibrant downtown area dries up and becomes a shell of its former self with only a few niche shops and perhaps one or two restaurants that typically go out of business as well, since nobody has money to buy from them anymore.
There are some EXTREMELY rare cases where that is not the case, but that is typically due to other mitigating factors that simply aren't available in most small towns. Things like Colleges and Art Academies or tourist attractions.
If you drove to 200 or so small towns that Wal-Mart moved into, check the City Records one to two years before Wal-Mart moved in to see how many businesses were registered and paying taxes and then look at the same records one, two, three and five years later. Most ALL of the time you see the number of businesses drop away.
This erodes the tax base since many of those business owners will either lose everything and become a VERY underpaid Wal-Mart employee or will pack up and skip town.
All in all the net effect is that many community leaders, that may have sponsored local events, as many small town shopkeepers and business associations do, will disappear. This causes an abrupt ending to many local events and eventually destroys the heart and the soul of those small towns.
Wal-Mart is a community destroying corporate monster that knows no bounds, sells cheap merchandise from overseas manufacturers, denigrates its employees and does what it can to destroy ALL competition. (Like it is attempting to do with Meijer's here in Michigan. I know that because I had overheard a Wal-Mart location scout chatting away on his cell phone regarding a new Meijer's store.)
The same can be said about geeks. I belong to a few mailing lists that have general discussions about Linux and you would be surprised at how naive a number of PhD carrying people there are on the list.
A few knew nothing about depreciating the value of a capital expense over the course of a few years. One was thinking about buying a lower end laptop to save some money for his small consulting firm, when he really should have talked to his accountant about depreciating the cost and saving money over the long-haul with taxes.
Several others knew nothing about the ways that businesses make decisions and that it isn't always about what might be right or could 'possibly' lead to 'potential' revenue. Sometimes business decisions are made for the longterm viability of a corporation, even if that decision appears, on the surface, to just be something to piss everyone off.
The problem with some professional managers with business degrees is that they might now really know when they are outside of their element. They might not know when they should let a department head and his/her team make a decision. Sometimes those things work out, sometimes they don't.
However, if you ignore the skills that someone could bring to a company simply because they "know nothing" since they have a business management degree then you would only be hurting your company, since you wouldn't have the knowledge of which business decisions have worked in the past, work only in theory and are known to work like gangbusters.
It takes more then a handful of developers to start a software company. If your department is nothing by developers, with little knowledge outside of software development you will have only a small chance at success.
Companies are in departments that are interdependent in order to compliment eachother.
You would need to have a good salesperson or two, someone GREAT with finances, like an accountant with at least a Bachelors, but better with a Masters Degree in Accounting.
You may also need someone with professional management skills. Not just a software team management style, but someone with a degree in Business Management.
The other person you would likely want to have is a professional purchasing agent. If you don't have someone that is GREAT at negotiating purchases and discounts your company will be bleeding money like there is no tomorrow. A good Purchasing Agent can cut costs by several percentage points.
With all that in mind, I wish you the best. It is a tough economy, but with the right crew and an innovative product, that fits perfectly in an uncovered niche market or is a POWERFUL broad use tool you could likely be looking at success.
Good luck!
All the Sidekick would need is an up to date SSH client that supports SSH1 and SSH2. That feature alone would make the Sidekick the most valuable UNIX and other Real Network Admins (Cisco Router/firewall network admins.) gadget available.
I haven't heard nor have I been able to locate any information regarding an SSH client for the Sidekick, has anyone else?
With our application server, I chose to install Blackbox to not only provide greater performance with the network transparecny component of X11, but to also "control" what applications the users have access to.
Blackbox has one of the easiest methods of controlling the menu then any of the other Window Managers that I have played with.
The only major difference being that one actually has the choice of what to put on their desktop, not some mega corporation that only wants to "push" a bunch of silly adds down our throat...
Does anyone else remember "Active Desktop"? The premise is almost exactly what Karamba is. It gives the user the ability to display disparate information that is streamed to the computer over a network connection directly on the desktop, underneath applications.
By the way, in my father's case it was a gradual onset, which started after his use of LSD. As is the case with most everyone that is afflicted with Schizophrenia. He was, what I call, a functionaly schizophrenic, in that he was barely able to take care of himself through many years of his life. Then, he became worse, some major stressers entered his life and he was unable to cope. The he started to slide down the slippery slope of madness.
Personally, I know people that went from being bright, inteligent people, capable of using the college level vocabulary that you seem fond of spouting, to having the ability to barely write out coherent sentences.
One women I know, now has a perpetual dull look about her and she now acts as though she has been put into slow-motion mode. She speaks slowly, not because she is weighing her words, but because she is simply not the same person she was before she melted her mind through drug use. I feel very sorry for this woman and had I known then, what I know now, I would have pushed for her to never use that substance.
Personally, I believe that some drugs aren't all that bad and others are quite bad. I don't need the government or the DEA to tell me that taking LSD or Exctasy is bad for me, I know people that have destroyed themselves permanently by taking those drugs. People that may never be able to live a normal life, because they believed that they were being lied to by the government and DEA.
Go ahead, do what you want to do, but when you wake up one morning drooling and rocking back and forth because you fried your brain, don't say I didn't warn you. Of course, by then, it will be to late for you. But, hey everything's a risk, right?
Good luck in life, may you never end up like some of the people that I know.
Originally, the drug LSD, was used in college courses for medical students who were studying to be psychoanalysts and psychiatric professionals. They were often given this drug by their professors in order to give them a glimpse at what their life would be like, if they were Schizophrenic.
You see, they found that the neural activity of Schizophrenics was the same as the neural activity of people under the influence of LSD.
They quite suddenly stopped this practice quite quickly after they started the practice. (BTW this was in the mid 50's to late 60's, as I recall.) It wasn't a war on drugs issue, which didn't appear until the 80's. It was because some of those students lost their minds, permanently.
So, they got to experience what life was like to be a Schizophrenic for the remainder of their life.
Is that something that you wish to take a chance with?
Originally, LSD was used by psychiatric students and given to them by their colleges to assist them in understanding what it is like to be Schizophrenic. It had been found that people on LSD have the same kind of brain activity as people suffering from Shizophrenia.
He also didn't wake up on day like this. It happened slowly over the course of his life. He finally "Snapped" when he was in his late forties. Prior to that he had always been a little "off" and that could have been anything.
I am not aware of how many High School, or even Middle School Students that take the time to read through medical journals or psychiatric journals to come across the statement that you displayed above. Of course, those two groups happen to be the groups that take LSD the most.
The truth of the matter is there is NO TELLING what LSD will do to a person. No two human beings have the exact same set of experiences, no two human beings have the same neural pathways or identical brain chemistry. That is a fact.
If you wish to play Russian Roulette with your the long-term quality of your life, so be it. Nothing that I, or anyone else, can say will stop you. Just don't come whining away on Slashdot, if you even have the capability to use a PC, after dropping LSD and your find yourself permanently living in a psychotic paranoid delusional hell.
However, if you do, I hope you are as lucky as my father is and you have some family member that will put their foot in your rear and get you the treatment that you would need for the rest of your life.
Like my father...
You have a real world experience that snaps the fine threads that are left holding your mind together and before you know it, you live in a delusional world. You feel that everyone is watching you, that there is a grand experiment being performed on you, that your name and face is plastered all over billboards and the internet.
Then you sharpen flathead screw drivers as protection for when they come to end the experiment. Yeah, LSD is fun. Bad things "never" happen to people that take LSD.
That may have never come off of their LSD trip and now live in a scary world filled with a conspiracy theory involving some kind of experiment being performed on him. This happened to him roughly 28 years after taking a few hits...
Now he sits in a room thinking about the conspiracy against and swears up and down, no matter what is shown to him, that he is posted all over the internet and billboards all over the US. He feels that his old employers are running this experiment and that he still works for them, that everyone that interacts with him is part of this grand conspiracy to see how he would react to having this "experiment" run on him.
He believes that the events of September 11th were created to see how it would mess him up. He believes that I am involved in the experiment and that I work for something he calls the coporation...
All I know is that he has sharpened the points on all the screwdrivers in my house, to protect himself when "they" come to end the experiment. I also know that the medication is finally starting to calm him and bring him slightly into reality.
So all I can say is, "Yay! Way to go LSD!"
If you have never done LSD, DON'T! You could ruin your mind forever, or put yourself into such a dangerous position that your mind will break one day and everything you hold dear today, will break under the weight of your madness.