I was at BofA at the time, lured in by their student accounts with no fees and forgiven overdraft fees. Of course I dropped them after that incident.
For anyone in the US reading this, I would recommend finding a credit union. Since they are owned by the members, they are generally more responsive, offer lower rate mortgages to long time customers, etc. Also your money is lent out to people like you, based on whatever criteria for which you can find a credit union including: your religion, your local region, your profession/union.
Playing devil's advocate here for a moment: most college students are willing to settle for 3 grand given their finances. Their parents' money doesn't (generally) come into play here. Of course, if you had a lot of it you could fight the claim. But only if you were provably innocent AND were willing to spend more money on lawyers than it would cost to otherwise settle the case.
If anything, the RIAA is chasing after larger schools. More students leads to more profit with less expense.
No problem, I'm not easily offended, and I didn't mean to insult you at all.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'll leave it at that since we're too off topic. Perhaps we can discuss education solutions in another thread sometime.
You can't, but you can start by reading and doing only sufficiently small quantities of drugs to avoid completely fry your brain. I'd say that would go far for about half of high schoolers...
Including room and board is fair, if we assume the students would otherwise be living with their parents. Including all of it is not. For instance, 18 year olds or whatever still eat when they live with their parents. They use electricity, water, gas, and all that jazz.
You might also argue that the parents also no longer need the space the kid took up when he goes to college. Now most people won't sell their house over it, but I know my parents got a nice guest bedroom when I moved, then a home office when my sister did so.
By the way, she went to school for free, and will be quite employable in a year, although mainly as a teacher (but that was her decision).
So you're saying that a poor kid who is able to get good grades and game the system can't get into your school? I have no doubt there are such schools. I also know schools that search far and wide students from lower income families with decent SAT scores so that they can demonstrate their "diversity." Of course they also search far and wide for rich, underrepresented minority students who pay tuition and make them look good but I digress...
With respect to your hoods, I would point out that things have changed a lot in the past say 50 years, so, depending on how old you are, that example may be dated.
You also ignored the most important part of my argument which was needs-blind admission. At these schools, the people who make admissions decisions don't even talk to the financial aid people. The only possible factor holding back an less-well-off applicant would be his "choice" (a better term escapes me at the moment) of high school. Even this is changing. For instance, when I lived in Houston, I discovered that there were many "magnet" schools, for everything from the arts to hardcore science. These were free and open to bright or talented students. In some areas, school choice has given poor students an out from the feeder-schools-for-prison type places.
Yes, public primary schools in this country by and large suck, however our private University's are world renowned. At least I proposed a few on-going solutions for the problem of education inequality at the secondary level. What do you propose to do?
Too bad you're wrong. You're more than welcome to buy a GSM phone unlocked and put a sim card in it. Then you can use it on any network which is gsm. There are a few in the US. But I suppose you would complain that you can't use Sprint.
I can't argue with your first point. Education in general favors the rich, or at least those who live close to them. I will say that it is perfectly possible to go to a good private uni having graduated from a decent public high school. This I know from experience. The rest I will leave to statistics.
You're not saying that the legacy policy is a good thing, and that the rest of us peons should be satisfied going wherever we can afford, are you? Absolutely not. I was just explaining how the current system works. I also believe that legacy admissions are good for the student body in general. Undergraduate education is an anomaly in any case. Go to a professional school, and you will see nearly everyone there borrowing the money for his education.
I would completely advocate a free, public higher education system that is better than our own. However, at the moment I believe that our hybrid system of public and private higher education is doing a good job. Actually that's an understatement, as it is the best in the world. Our mostly-public primary and secondary education systems, however, are lacking for a first-world country. Why force the over-achieving system to be like the under-achieving one, rather than the other way around?
Anybody who is smart and accomplished can go to to a good school, if not Duke in particular. You can always borrow the money. Many, many, if not all good schools now have need-blind admissions. Anyways, everyone knows it's really the middle class that get screwed over on aid anyways, not poor folks.
*Some* people with connections can get in even if they are not so smart, or really accomplished is the more accurate term, as grades count. You don't have to be rich, mind you, just related to somebody. These people, while deriving much less benefit from the education than the smart kids, also go on to pay for the whole deal for the next generation (along with the qualified students of course.)
Without wealthy donors, the whole system breaks down, and it's just a matter of how you create them. You can tax the unwilling, maintain a huge alumni base, and bet that students will stay closer to the school, thus more likely to donate. In case you don't get the hint, I'm talking about state schools. (Smaller) private schools need to ensure a larger proportion of wealthy alums, and allowing family connections to count makes that easier, not to mention the good will from the alumni.
BTW you just proved the point I made here. Thank you for that.
I think that would really tee off the users. Having to keep your statement around for a month? I throw mine out as soon as I verify that there is roughly the expected amount of money in my account.
Plus banks are trying to push people to electronic statements. They're actually more secure, since mail theft is a very common method of obtaining personal information.
I would also appreciate it if they didn't let someone log in use "bill" pay, which I had never previously used, to send himself (well probably some else but I digress) a check for the entire contents of my account, then claim it was my fault that they couldn't recognize such an obvious fraud. Personally I think online access should be read and transfer only, unless explicitly authorized in person or by notarized document, and then bill pay should be limited to verifiable companies, not random ass strangers.
After re-reading my post, I should correct myself. The IRIX machine I used did not have a UMA, however it appeared so to userland. Unlike a cluster, you didn't have to worry about whether the memory you were addressing was on your CPU for correct function, only for performance. It used a touch policy, wherein the last CPU to touch a page had it in its local memory.
How does this compare to say a quad core Xeon running Linux? Anybody know?
Yeah, but yesterday's supercomputers are todays commodity machines. The last IRIX "super"-computer I used had 16 processors with a uniform memory architecture. We're quickly approaching that level on commodity hardware. My el-cheapo box has 2 processors with a uniform cache-coherent memory architecture.
What I'm getting at here is that perhaps we could look to the past for some ideas about multi-threading, and IRIX is not a bad choice at all, particularly since it was Unix-derived, like the Linux we use now, whereas BeOS is not.
The Vista part is true, but it also takes 3 times as much CPU to play a video as it did under XP. 3% to play the video, 3% to let Aero have a realtime preview of your video, and 4% to make sure you are not copying the video. Despite claims by Microsoft and others, the DRM eats cycles even when playing non-protected video. Also that process is bound to the same CPU as the video playing so good luck spreading out the load, should you ever need to.
I understand the need for DRM to play Blu-Ray or whatever, but WTF. Why are my pirated DivX videos taking so many cycles, heating up my laptop, and forcing fans to come on everywhere.
Cool trick for anyone experiencing this though. Use VLC for unprotected stuff. It will automatically disable Aero (current version at least), which could be seen as a bad thing, but I like it. Cycles and power used go back to XP levels. Who needs Aero when you're playing video anyways? If you want it back you can always use WMP.
1) I have karma to burn 2) You modded the wrong comment. You should've modded my original comment flaimbait. 3) I'm not trolling. 4) Last time evar I post about Xbox/Wii/PS3 on slashdot 5) I hope they get bought out by activist investors who can knock some sense into upper management.
I liked your post, other than the fact that you accused me of being thirteen-ish. I am much older than that, and I am never going to appreciate Wii sports, except in as much as it is free, which is awesome. What little gaming I do has been on the PC lately due to disappointments with the Wii and 360.
I will say this: my example, ideal balance between casual and hardcore is Super Metroid. Is that one on the VC?
I am not trolling. I like Nintendo. I do not like the Wii. I have hardly commented on this subject before, but this it totally on-topic here so I took the opportunity.
I've played Virtual Console games, and it's a Good Thing (tm). I just don't think we should judge the Wii on the merits of the old games it plays. I think we've played out the HDTV thing -- if you care you're disappointed, if you don't then it's not a problem.
My view is this: Nintendo has abandoned gamers for some other market. The $100 NES was not cheap in its day. Please don't accuse me of not liking Nintendo; I have Tetris -- the old black and white one that doesn't work in the DS. I am not opposed to their courting "casual" gamers, but why can't they give real gamers something as well? Instead I am left to the likes of MS and Sony.
Wow another line by line reply to my rant. I do appreciate it actually that you didn't just flame me.
I've already explained above why I feel betrayed by Nintendo, who used to own the "hardcore" market, although I don't consider myself hardcore, just traditional. They have left us to truly consumer-hating corporations.
The lack of HD support is just another example of how Nintendo abandoned the technology enthusiasts who use to love their systems.
With the respect to the economics. Who decided it was a great business model to sell games to people who don't like to play games? The whole thing is a Wii-induced fad. The Wii may have caused some people who wouldn't have otherwise to pick up a game, but it won't get them to stick with gaming as a hobby for any prolonged period of time. I will take no joy in seeing it go because, you see, I actually like the Nintendo brand, and Nintendo's survival in its current form is in no way guaranteed, whereas MS can sell consoles at a loss from now until eternity if they care to.
Can't wait to see Mario Kart, though. Might actually have to buy one of these suckers.
Slashdot Mirror
I was at BofA at the time, lured in by their student accounts with no fees and forgiven overdraft fees. Of course I dropped them after that incident.
For anyone in the US reading this, I would recommend finding a credit union. Since they are owned by the members, they are generally more responsive, offer lower rate mortgages to long time customers, etc. Also your money is lent out to people like you, based on whatever criteria for which you can find a credit union including: your religion, your local region, your profession/union.
Uhhh home movies. People want to make DVDs of their family being entertained.
Playing devil's advocate here for a moment: most college students are willing to settle for 3 grand given their finances. Their parents' money doesn't (generally) come into play here. Of course, if you had a lot of it you could fight the claim. But only if you were provably innocent AND were willing to spend more money on lawyers than it would cost to otherwise settle the case.
If anything, the RIAA is chasing after larger schools. More students leads to more profit with less expense.
Great quote. Sucks I don't have mod points today. Can you source it for me?
It's official, the only people left in America who approve of the President have him confused with someone else.
No problem, I'm not easily offended, and I didn't mean to insult you at all.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'll leave it at that since we're too off topic. Perhaps we can discuss education solutions in another thread sometime.
You can't, but you can start by reading and doing only sufficiently small quantities of drugs to avoid completely fry your brain. I'd say that would go far for about half of high schoolers...
There are plenty, just not at Duke.
If you are lucky enough to be black, native American, or any race of Hispanic descent, you might even get in somewhere like Duke -- who knows?
Including room and board is fair, if we assume the students would otherwise be living with their parents. Including all of it is not. For instance, 18 year olds or whatever still eat when they live with their parents. They use electricity, water, gas, and all that jazz.
You might also argue that the parents also no longer need the space the kid took up when he goes to college. Now most people won't sell their house over it, but I know my parents got a nice guest bedroom when I moved, then a home office when my sister did so.
By the way, she went to school for free, and will be quite employable in a year, although mainly as a teacher (but that was her decision).
So glad he got his comeuppance. In China they sometimes execute you for official misconduct. Not such a bad idea if you ask me...
So you're saying that a poor kid who is able to get good grades and game the system can't get into your school? I have no doubt there are such schools. I also know schools that search far and wide students from lower income families with decent SAT scores so that they can demonstrate their "diversity." Of course they also search far and wide for rich, underrepresented minority students who pay tuition and make them look good but I digress...
With respect to your hoods, I would point out that things have changed a lot in the past say 50 years, so, depending on how old you are, that example may be dated.
You also ignored the most important part of my argument which was needs-blind admission. At these schools, the people who make admissions decisions don't even talk to the financial aid people. The only possible factor holding back an less-well-off applicant would be his "choice" (a better term escapes me at the moment) of high school. Even this is changing. For instance, when I lived in Houston, I discovered that there were many "magnet" schools, for everything from the arts to hardcore science. These were free and open to bright or talented students. In some areas, school choice has given poor students an out from the feeder-schools-for-prison type places.
Yes, public primary schools in this country by and large suck, however our private University's are world renowned. At least I proposed a few on-going solutions for the problem of education inequality at the secondary level. What do you propose to do?
Since when is off-topic ranting interesting?
Too bad you're wrong. You're more than welcome to buy a GSM phone unlocked and put a sim card in it. Then you can use it on any network which is gsm. There are a few in the US. But I suppose you would complain that you can't use Sprint.
I would completely advocate a free, public higher education system that is better than our own. However, at the moment I believe that our hybrid system of public and private higher education is doing a good job. Actually that's an understatement, as it is the best in the world. Our mostly-public primary and secondary education systems, however, are lacking for a first-world country. Why force the over-achieving system to be like the under-achieving one, rather than the other way around?
No. I don't care who pays too much for a phone.
Anybody who is smart and accomplished can go to to a good school, if not Duke in particular. You can always borrow the money. Many, many, if not all good schools now have need-blind admissions. Anyways, everyone knows it's really the middle class that get screwed over on aid anyways, not poor folks.
*Some* people with connections can get in even if they are not so smart, or really accomplished is the more accurate term, as grades count. You don't have to be rich, mind you, just related to somebody. These people, while deriving much less benefit from the education than the smart kids, also go on to pay for the whole deal for the next generation (along with the qualified students of course.)
Without wealthy donors, the whole system breaks down, and it's just a matter of how you create them. You can tax the unwilling, maintain a huge alumni base, and bet that students will stay closer to the school, thus more likely to donate. In case you don't get the hint, I'm talking about state schools. (Smaller) private schools need to ensure a larger proportion of wealthy alums, and allowing family connections to count makes that easier, not to mention the good will from the alumni.
BTW you just proved the point I made here. Thank you for that.
Don't forget piracy and online shopping.
Oh yeah and Wikipedia -- for "research."
I think that would really tee off the users. Having to keep your statement around for a month? I throw mine out as soon as I verify that there is roughly the expected amount of money in my account.
Plus banks are trying to push people to electronic statements. They're actually more secure, since mail theft is a very common method of obtaining personal information.
I would also appreciate it if they didn't let someone log in use "bill" pay, which I had never previously used, to send himself (well probably some else but I digress) a check for the entire contents of my account, then claim it was my fault that they couldn't recognize such an obvious fraud. Personally I think online access should be read and transfer only, unless explicitly authorized in person or by notarized document, and then bill pay should be limited to verifiable companies, not random ass strangers.
My working theory: Slashdot is really a political discussion forum. The whole "News for Nerds" thing is just here to scare away the unwanted.
Oh dammit I gave it away... Somebody silence me next time.
After re-reading my post, I should correct myself. The IRIX machine I used did not have a UMA, however it appeared so to userland. Unlike a cluster, you didn't have to worry about whether the memory you were addressing was on your CPU for correct function, only for performance. It used a touch policy, wherein the last CPU to touch a page had it in its local memory.
How does this compare to say a quad core Xeon running Linux? Anybody know?
Yeah, but yesterday's supercomputers are todays commodity machines. The last IRIX "super"-computer I used had 16 processors with a uniform memory architecture. We're quickly approaching that level on commodity hardware. My el-cheapo box has 2 processors with a uniform cache-coherent memory architecture.
What I'm getting at here is that perhaps we could look to the past for some ideas about multi-threading, and IRIX is not a bad choice at all, particularly since it was Unix-derived, like the Linux we use now, whereas BeOS is not.
The Vista part is true, but it also takes 3 times as much CPU to play a video as it did under XP. 3% to play the video, 3% to let Aero have a realtime preview of your video, and 4% to make sure you are not copying the video. Despite claims by Microsoft and others, the DRM eats cycles even when playing non-protected video. Also that process is bound to the same CPU as the video playing so good luck spreading out the load, should you ever need to.
I understand the need for DRM to play Blu-Ray or whatever, but WTF. Why are my pirated DivX videos taking so many cycles, heating up my laptop, and forcing fans to come on everywhere.
Cool trick for anyone experiencing this though. Use VLC for unprotected stuff. It will automatically disable Aero (current version at least), which could be seen as a bad thing, but I like it. Cycles and power used go back to XP levels. Who needs Aero when you're playing video anyways? If you want it back you can always use WMP.
To whatever fanboy modded me troll:
1) I have karma to burn
2) You modded the wrong comment. You should've modded my original comment flaimbait.
3) I'm not trolling.
4) Last time evar I post about Xbox/Wii/PS3 on slashdot
5) I hope they get bought out by activist investors who can knock some sense into upper management.
As another poster said: happy gaming.
I liked your post, other than the fact that you accused me of being thirteen-ish. I am much older than that, and I am never going to appreciate Wii sports, except in as much as it is free, which is awesome. What little gaming I do has been on the PC lately due to disappointments with the Wii and 360.
I will say this: my example, ideal balance between casual and hardcore is Super Metroid. Is that one on the VC?
I am not trolling. I like Nintendo. I do not like the Wii. I have hardly commented on this subject before, but this it totally on-topic here so I took the opportunity.
I've played Virtual Console games, and it's a Good Thing (tm). I just don't think we should judge the Wii on the merits of the old games it plays. I think we've played out the HDTV thing -- if you care you're disappointed, if you don't then it's not a problem.
My view is this: Nintendo has abandoned gamers for some other market. The $100 NES was not cheap in its day. Please don't accuse me of not liking Nintendo; I have Tetris -- the old black and white one that doesn't work in the DS. I am not opposed to their courting "casual" gamers, but why can't they give real gamers something as well? Instead I am left to the likes of MS and Sony.
Earthbound 64 FTW!
Wow another line by line reply to my rant. I do appreciate it actually that you didn't just flame me.
I've already explained above why I feel betrayed by Nintendo, who used to own the "hardcore" market, although I don't consider myself hardcore, just traditional. They have left us to truly consumer-hating corporations.
The lack of HD support is just another example of how Nintendo abandoned the technology enthusiasts who use to love their systems.
With the respect to the economics. Who decided it was a great business model to sell games to people who don't like to play games? The whole thing is a Wii-induced fad. The Wii may have caused some people who wouldn't have otherwise to pick up a game, but it won't get them to stick with gaming as a hobby for any prolonged period of time. I will take no joy in seeing it go because, you see, I actually like the Nintendo brand, and Nintendo's survival in its current form is in no way guaranteed, whereas MS can sell consoles at a loss from now until eternity if they care to.
Can't wait to see Mario Kart, though. Might actually have to buy one of these suckers.