I'll second that on the LJII/III series - they're tanks. Get one on eBay, from a seller local to you to avoid shipping hassles. They're easy to fix, and with proper maintenance will outlast the owner... and like the VW bug, they're so ubiquitous that you'll always be able to find parts online cheaply. (disclaimer: I used to fix printers for a living, especially HPs, and currently own an LJ2 along with a boxful of spares in the closet from my old job...)
In general, older printers are great values. Even inkjets - a high-end model from 4-5 years back, like my Epson Stylus Photo EX (11x17", 5-color process) might cost only $30 from someone nearby (check the Craigslist for your city) and you can get carts for as little as $3 on eBay. And forget buying that expensive 11x17" paper - $1 a sheet?!?! - I found a finger-paint book at a 99-cent store with what feels (and works) like the same stuff, and it's 30 sheets of 18"x12" for a buck!
Moving on to automobiles, skip those expensive 'new' cars - check out my website for tips on building your own Humvee out of a used toolshed and 50,000 wind-up motors out of children's toys...
OK, I'm joking about the last bit, but the point remains - go used. You're recycling, you're saving money now and in the long run, and really, what printing innovatino of the 21st century are you missing out on??
To recycle any sort of battery: http://www.BatteriesPlus.com - not intended as an endorsement per se, it's just the place I take my old batteries and buy some of the more obscure models of replacement when the need arises. Looks like they're in (almost?) all 50 states.
I once had a cable company (TCI - this was awhile back...) cash a $21 check for $26! My bill was $26, had been for some while, but I was disputing a $5 "administrative fee" and had been paying $21 per month. One month I noticed my previous balance had hit "$0" without the fee having been reversed - checking with my bank, it turned out they'd somehow managed to turn my $21 check into $26, I still don't know how... I eventually got it taken care of, but while over time I moved to direct-debit for all my bills, I never gave TCI the "keys" to my account.
Nowadays, I'm married and recently moved to a new city. My wife put us on direct debit for all our bills, and within 2 months we were fighting auto insurance, cellphone AND satellite TV providers over billing errors...
I was a field tech for several years, about half the calls were printers, and I can tell you that there are a lot of Laserjet II and III series units still running fine. They really built 'em in those days; there's a stark contrast to how the newer, lower-end printers are put together internally (I think the 6L has a wind-up key in the back...) My main printer at home is an LJ2, built in 1986. I could probably drop it out a window and, at most, have to replace the heating element in the fuser.
As for abuse - well, there was one secretary at an office who was "feeding" Cheerios into a printer... (but that belongs in the "wacky user stories" thread)
I've mentioned this story in the past, but it bears repeating here - even with good intentions, sometimes opt-out doesn't make much difference...
I worked for several years at a well-known nationwide nonprofit charity, maintaining a donor database with an address list in the low 6 figures in length. For a variety of reasons, we had a lot of ongoing technical problems, especially when it came to address sharing with other nonprofits - long stories aside, there came a day when I was digging into the workings of an update query which effectively implemented the "Don't share my address" checkbox on the donation form. Turns out, for at least the past 3 years (starting prior to my tenure), it had been set up backwards. When I fixed it, some 16,000 records got updated... (and who knows, maybe the correction eventually propagated around the nonprofit community's mismash of list-exchange systems??)
My point is, once your information gets out, consider it out for good. Everything from fuzzy wording of a privacy agreement to out-and-out unethical behavior (either as company policy, or due to a disgruntled employee or hacker attack) could cause your data to go where you don't want it to - or, it might just be a technical glitch somewhere deep in an under-tested program handled by an under-trained user.
As the other respondant said, Xenon is the fuel they take with them. Several obvious reasons spring to mind - it's a bit easier to ionize a gas than, for example, solid propellant... also, it's a lot less volatile than hydrogen. I'm not sure why Xenon was chosen over other inert gases, but it could be because it's the heaviest one (thus more thrust per atom) that is affordable?
At a T-Mobile wireless store in Denver last summer, one of the flatscreens which normally showed their animated demo/whatever was blank, except for the monitor's screensaver bouncing slowly around the display - yes, you guessed it: "NO SIGNAL"...
Why is explaining Linux to people working for a nonprofit distinct from, or harder than, explaining it to anyone else? I've worked for nonprofits, for-profits and the federal government - I never noticed a generalized difference in average computer literacy OR overall intelligence amongst them.
I think most people can grasp: - Commercial software costs a lot of money, partly because of the advertising they do. It's inefficient and requires some heavy-duty hardware to run. - free software does not cost money, in part because you have not heard of it... But it does about the same thing anyway, and runs well on older PCs.
I realize you're trying to overcome FUD here and not just explain a simple A vs B situation, but I don't get why the nonprofit status of the workplace makes it any more difficult. To the contrary, they're often more amenable to cost-based arguments. And if the basic facts, backed up by a quick side-by-side demo, doesn't sway them - well, you've done what you can.
For a long time Dotster was the only company about which I could honestly say I'd never, ever had anything resembling a problem. I used Dotster for years, but am now in the process of migrating away from them. (Every time I find a place I like, it goes down the tubes sooner or later... Why don't the few good companies out there ever STAY good??)
I used to love Dotster's account management interface, and their support staff was not only competent but even had a sense of humor! Sadly, things have gone downhill lately - they now spam me endlessly with renewal notices (even when I've turned off every notification preference I can find) and THREATEN that if I fail to renew a domain, they'll hold onto it for at least 6 weeks and charge me $99 (over and above the annual fee) if I decide to renew during this "redemption period"... IMO that's just absurd! I've asked about the rationale behind this policy, but got no reply.
They're no longer the best in service; the feature set of their management tools is no longer best-of-breed; and they never were the cheapest out there, so it's time to switch.
Circa 1992, I had two separate hard drives on my Amiga, and I backed up one to the other. I figured, it's a LOT cheaper than a tape drive, and way faster than floppies.
A hard drive fails to spin up one morning.
Ten minutes later, I wreck the second one while trying to pull the first one out of the system (I still don't know how exactly).
> > What are you supposed to do when the call is an automated recording? > > Check your state laws. In many states, even those without > their own do-not-call lists, it's illegal
Sure, illegal... I ask again - what are you supposed to DO?? If the originating phone number doesn't come through, how do you pursue a complaint? If you call them back at the business number provided, they can easily claim that they hired a subcontractor and never authorized them to perform that sort of marketing. (and the subcontractor has doubtless gone out of business just minutes ago...) If that story is legally unacceptable, then it opens the door to pranks - anybody could make a recording promoting some company they have a grudge against, and call hundreds of people from a rented offshore phone number.
Does the do-not-call law cover companies based overseas, like Bermuda? Can the do-not-call law be enforced if, when you ask what company they represent, they suddenly don't speak-ee the Eeeenglish? (or "My supervisor is not here, sorry " is the other one I get a lot) What are you supposed to do when the call is an automated recording? What about when half the calls you DO get are from exempt organizations, like police fundraisers?
This law is a good start, but don't for a minute think that it's gonna make more than a small difference by itself. Neither does CallerID, at least in my case - between my Mom's number being unlisted, my wife working at a place which shows up as "Anonymous", and her family calling from overseas ("Unavailable"), I'm just lucky my number is new and I only get a couple bad calls a week, 'cos I have to answer them all...
Speaking as someone who lives in Hollywood (where eccentricity is often tolerated entirely too much...), I'm not prepared to accept the assertion that intolerance to nonconformity is denying society the fruits of genius on a significant scale.
Sure, you're gonna find a "mad" genius or two, whose inability to fit into society leads to isolation, instutionalization or incarceration. And for every one of them you'll find at least a thousand just-plain-whackos. I daresay that we've "lost" more natural math geniuses to them being born as Kalahari Bushmen who never saw a zero in their whole lives, then to over-adherence to any collection of cultural mores.
The benefits of encouraging a certain level of - call it consistency - more than likely outweigh the detriments. Of course it can go too far; nobody would suggest that dressing a specific way be used as a criteria for hiring in an academic institution, for one example. But asking that the faculty generally refrain from habitually making up nonsense words in ordinary conversation, and that they bathe now and then and try to remember to at least WEAR clothes - I reckon that's a good thing.
> sounds good, until you find some Microsoft security hole has allowed a > spammer to use your PC to send their filth for them
I'm not suggesting the auto-response go to the From: field, by any means. The one authentic part of any spam has to be the "Click here to send me your money!" link (well, granted, I've received more than a couple without even so much as that...), and that's what your target is.
Use a mega-honeypot approach - have people donate a few thousand abandoned, spam-clogged Hotmail accounts to begin with, and set up some old PCs with scripts to bang on each incoming solicitation. Next step, ask spam-fighting organizations for copies of the latest ads they've been getting - as many copies of each as possible, in fact, since many of them have unique-IDs in the links - and blast them too. Make it a distributed project, so that spammers can't block your IP ranges. And of course, figure out some legal loophole by which you can claim it's not a DOS attack - because the sender is, after all, inviting you to check out their offering...
> The point of having a large-capacity MP3 player (such as the iPod) > is so that you don't have to do that: you just take your entire > music collection with you
And apparently, the poster is finding the inconvenience of all those separate devices to outweigh the "point" he originally bought them for - and presumably does not want to wait until everythings available in a single ear-bud... I think I'm suggesting an angle which would represent the minimum functional compromise and still result in reducing his gadgetry needs to a single item, not to mention now rather than next year.
> Bayesian filters on the content is the only way to go.
Aren't most of the spams filled with random gibberish these days specifically targeting Bayesian filters? My Mozilla client filter was working better and better for awhile, but lately the trend has been reversing... anyhow, I disagree that it's the "only" way to go.
I think collaborative filtering (no link, I've read about it in the past but can't be bothered to look up a good example at the moment) will become a major tool. Also, why has nobody come up with an Email client which automagically puts incoming messages from senders you haven't contacted (or who aren't in your address book) into a "suspect" folder - over and above any spam-filtration? Unless you're a webmaster, writer/columnist, or are selling something online, that'd help a lot of people I reckon.
And who was it had the idea of having EVERYONE reply to EVERY spam (using a automated script or plug-in or something), thus effectively DOS-ing any spammer's server...
He's asking how to avoid the problem, not what's the best 'utility belt'... and I think there ARE several good multifunction devices out these days, including the Treo 600. For me, it's not just a matter of how much stuff you're carrying, but how many different chargers/sync cables/carrying cases etc you have to deal with, plus keeping up with software or firmware updates, warranty expiration, etc - forget it. Technology is a convenience only up to a point.
(re: carrying an iPod, here's a heads-up: nobody really needs more than about 12 hour's worth of MP3 capacity for a daily commute...)
It's pretty straightforward - you want all you can reasonably get out of them. They want to pay what's fair, or less if they can... so the intersection of that is, what's it worth to them?
They probably won't want to tell you that - they may not know themselves, right now. But without more information on what your project's about and who the company is (not to mention what work they expect done), it's difficult to speculate on what the value is. It may be up to you to figure out what benefit they will receive from your work, and base your compensation (hourly or package-deal) on that.
How do you do that? I dunno. Track down other people they've funded, or former employees (or maybe just some people lower-down in the food chain than whoever contacted you). Look up their financial reports, try and guess how much your work will affect their business. For example, if you're writing a driver for a product of theirs, find out how many they sell per year and try to guess how many more they'll sell with your driver available. It's probably worth your while to do some legwork.
Or just make it an hourly rate. But I'm not always comfy with them; some days I do a lot more work per hour than others...
What they mean by "weakly interacting" is similar to how neutrinos are described - it doesn't have much of an electromagnetic impression, so it doesn't block light or smack into a detector in an earthbound observatory. Unlike neutrinos, it does posess a significant mass and is affected by gravity. And while that is "exotic", astrophysicists were only forced to consider this sort of thing when all previous efforts to explain some pretty obvious mis-matches in the numbers didn't work.
Now I'll let someone else explain about "dark energy"...
My best one dates back a few years, but...
on
How Were You Fired?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Long backstory deleted, but the new PHB hired a consultant to come in and help me rewire the network (about 3 dozen Netware 3.x terminals with a big wad of spagetti in the breakroom...). We were there 'til 11:pm or later getting the job done, and decided to go home and I'd do the documentation the next day. Next morning, I'm about to start typing it up, and I get The Call...
I pointed out that all of last night's work will be pointless if it's not documented so you might want to let me at least finish my current task, but they refused to let me touch a computer after that - they offered to let me write it on paper, though... I heard that months later they were still employing that same consultant (who made about 4 times what I, as an entry-level guy, was pulling down!).
A week later I found a job at 50% more pay - and this was 1995, well pre-boom. (not quite a happy ending as I've been underemployed for 2-3 years now, but...)
I've been jobhunting for some while and the best (?!) lead I've had recently was from some body shop (ahem, consulting firm) who wanted me to go out on Novell-related emergency calls - even though I repeatedly explained that my Netware experience stopped around 1996 and I don't remember much if anything. They offered me $75/hr, while admitting they charge clients $250/hr, and they want a piss-test, 24/7 availability via cellphone, and a non-compete agreement... I nearly hung up on the guy. (Email me if you want his number - heh)
Here in the L.A. area I see a lot of webmaster jobs going for $8/hr - this sort of market will tend to bring the unethical scum back into IT from their former jobs in spamming, black-market organ smuggling, and politics.
That $1,500 Cisco memory is, I think, good for everyone - it contributes to Cisco's bottom line by ripping off the ignorant and lazy, thus keeping them from having to raise prices for the rest.
But for a contrasting situation: about 5 years ago I worked for a dominant office-equipment supplier in the Rocky Mountain region (name left out not to protect the guilty, but to avoid self-embarassment...) in their PC/printer repair depot. We outsourced our monitor repairs, and would routinely double whatever the price was - whether it was mainly parts or labor - for no good reason other than that we could. We sold Laserjet fusers for a decent markup - until we changed from geniune HP to remanufactured parts, and kept the prices the same... so a $180 fuser we sold for $215 became a $40 fuser sold for $215... I could go on. They did that 'cos they were sleazy, and I hated working there.
I've been on the lookout for a 4-pin to 4-pin Firewire cable at a decent price for awhile now; usually I see them for a ridiculous $40-$50 most places. Recently when my need became more urgent, I swung by Fry's and found them for $9. That's just a case of buyer-beware - if you're concerned about saving money, make sure you're not being fleeced before plunking down your cash. Do some legwork if the price difference is worth your time.
Another example: inkjet printer makers sell the printers at a loss and make it up by selling carts at inflated prices. That's OK by me, when alternative sources for carts and ink are available. When they started putting ICs into the carts to prevent "counterfeiting", that's where I draw the line, and it turns out that inkjet printers from 2-3 years back (available for dirt cheap on eBay and Craigslist) still work just fine with $3 cartridges (also from eBay)....
The really outrageous markups are in the financial business anyway. $35 because they let your credit card payment check sit for 3 days before processing it? Bah!
Slashdot Mirror
I'll second that on the LJII/III series - they're tanks. Get one on eBay, from a seller local to you to avoid shipping hassles. They're easy to fix, and with proper maintenance will outlast the owner... and like the VW bug, they're so ubiquitous that you'll always be able to find parts online cheaply. (disclaimer: I used to fix printers for a living, especially HPs, and currently own an LJ2 along with a boxful of spares in the closet from my old job...)
In general, older printers are great values. Even inkjets - a high-end model from 4-5 years back, like my Epson Stylus Photo EX (11x17", 5-color process) might cost only $30 from someone nearby (check the Craigslist for your city) and you can get carts for as little as $3 on eBay. And forget buying that expensive 11x17" paper - $1 a sheet?!?! - I found a finger-paint book at a 99-cent store with what feels (and works) like the same stuff, and it's 30 sheets of 18"x12" for a buck!
Moving on to automobiles, skip those expensive 'new' cars - check out my website for tips on building your own Humvee out of a used toolshed and 50,000 wind-up motors out of children's toys...
OK, I'm joking about the last bit, but the point remains - go used. You're recycling, you're saving money now and in the long run, and really, what printing innovatino of the 21st century are you missing out on??
To recycle any sort of battery: http://www.BatteriesPlus.com - not intended as an endorsement per se, it's just the place I take my old batteries and buy some of the more obscure models of replacement when the need arises. Looks like they're in (almost?) all 50 states.
I once had a cable company (TCI - this was awhile back...) cash a $21 check for $26! My bill was $26, had been for some while, but I was disputing a $5 "administrative fee" and had been paying $21 per month. One month I noticed my previous balance had hit "$0" without the fee having been reversed - checking with my bank, it turned out they'd somehow managed to turn my $21 check into $26, I still don't know how... I eventually got it taken care of, but while over time I moved to direct-debit for all my bills, I never gave TCI the "keys" to my account.
Nowadays, I'm married and recently moved to a new city. My wife put us on direct debit for all our bills, and within 2 months we were fighting auto insurance, cellphone AND satellite TV providers over billing errors...
I was a field tech for several years, about half the calls were printers, and I can tell you that there are a lot of Laserjet II and III series units still running fine. They really built 'em in those days; there's a stark contrast to how the newer, lower-end printers are put together internally (I think the 6L has a wind-up key in the back...) My main printer at home is an LJ2, built in 1986. I could probably drop it out a window and, at most, have to replace the heating element in the fuser.
As for abuse - well, there was one secretary at an office who was "feeding" Cheerios into a printer... (but that belongs in the "wacky user stories" thread)
> the checkbox on the membership page should be unchecked by default.
That was supposed to be the case in our database as well. Again - good intentions, backed by inadequately trained people...
I've mentioned this story in the past, but it bears repeating here - even with good intentions, sometimes opt-out doesn't make much difference...
I worked for several years at a well-known nationwide nonprofit charity, maintaining a donor database with an address list in the low 6 figures in length. For a variety of reasons, we had a lot of ongoing technical problems, especially when it came to address sharing with other nonprofits - long stories aside, there came a day when I was digging into the workings of an update query which effectively implemented the "Don't share my address" checkbox on the donation form. Turns out, for at least the past 3 years (starting prior to my tenure), it had been set up backwards. When I fixed it, some 16,000 records got updated... (and who knows, maybe the correction eventually propagated around the nonprofit community's mismash of list-exchange systems??)
My point is, once your information gets out, consider it out for good. Everything from fuzzy wording of a privacy agreement to out-and-out unethical behavior (either as company policy, or due to a disgruntled employee or hacker attack) could cause your data to go where you don't want it to - or, it might just be a technical glitch somewhere deep in an under-tested program handled by an under-trained user.
As the other respondant said, Xenon is the fuel they take with them. Several obvious reasons spring to mind - it's a bit easier to ionize a gas than, for example, solid propellant... also, it's a lot less volatile than hydrogen. I'm not sure why Xenon was chosen over other inert gases, but it could be because it's the heaviest one (thus more thrust per atom) that is affordable?
At a T-Mobile wireless store in Denver last summer, one of the flatscreens which normally showed their animated demo/whatever was blank, except for the monitor's screensaver bouncing slowly around the display - yes, you guessed it: "NO SIGNAL"...
The oft-overlooked part of any business model is the need to be alive to spend the money you make...
I'm not saying anything, I'm just sayin'...
Why is explaining Linux to people working for a nonprofit distinct from, or harder than, explaining it to anyone else? I've worked for nonprofits, for-profits and the federal government - I never noticed a generalized difference in average computer literacy OR overall intelligence amongst them.
I think most people can grasp:
- Commercial software costs a lot of money, partly because of the advertising they do. It's inefficient and requires some heavy-duty hardware to run.
- free software does not cost money, in part because you have not heard of it... But it does about the same thing anyway, and runs well on older PCs.
I realize you're trying to overcome FUD here and not just explain a simple A vs B situation, but I don't get why the nonprofit status of the workplace makes it any more difficult. To the contrary, they're often more amenable to cost-based arguments. And if the basic facts, backed up by a quick side-by-side demo, doesn't sway them - well, you've done what you can.
For a long time Dotster was the only company about which I could honestly say I'd never, ever had anything resembling a problem. I used Dotster for years, but am now in the process of migrating away from them. (Every time I find a place I like, it goes down the tubes sooner or later... Why don't the few good companies out there ever STAY good??)
I used to love Dotster's account management interface, and their support staff was not only competent but even had a sense of humor! Sadly, things have gone downhill lately - they now spam me endlessly with renewal notices (even when I've turned off every notification preference I can find) and THREATEN that if I fail to renew a domain, they'll hold onto it for at least 6 weeks and charge me $99 (over and above the annual fee) if I decide to renew during this "redemption period"... IMO that's just absurd! I've asked about the rationale behind this policy, but got no reply.
They're no longer the best in service; the feature set of their management tools is no longer best-of-breed; and they never were the cheapest out there, so it's time to switch.
Circa 1992, I had two separate hard drives on my Amiga, and I backed up one to the other. I figured, it's a LOT cheaper than a tape drive, and way faster than floppies.
A hard drive fails to spin up one morning.
Ten minutes later, I wreck the second one while trying to pull the first one out of the system (I still don't know how exactly).
Lost about 5 years' worth of stuff...
> > What are you supposed to do when the call is an automated recording?
>
> Check your state laws. In many states, even those without
> their own do-not-call lists, it's illegal
Sure, illegal... I ask again - what are you supposed to DO?? If the originating phone number doesn't come through, how do you pursue a complaint? If you call them back at the business number provided, they can easily claim that they hired a subcontractor and never authorized them to perform that sort of marketing. (and the subcontractor has doubtless gone out of business just minutes ago...) If that story is legally unacceptable, then it opens the door to pranks - anybody could make a recording promoting some company they have a grudge against, and call hundreds of people from a rented offshore phone number.
Does the do-not-call law cover companies based overseas, like Bermuda?
Can the do-not-call law be enforced if, when you ask what company they represent, they suddenly don't speak-ee the Eeeenglish? (or "My supervisor is not here, sorry " is the other one I get a lot)
What are you supposed to do when the call is an automated recording?
What about when half the calls you DO get are from exempt organizations, like police fundraisers?
This law is a good start, but don't for a minute think that it's gonna make more than a small difference by itself. Neither does CallerID, at least in my case - between my Mom's number being unlisted, my wife working at a place which shows up as "Anonymous", and her family calling from overseas ("Unavailable"), I'm just lucky my number is new and I only get a couple bad calls a week, 'cos I have to answer them all...
Speaking as someone who lives in Hollywood (where eccentricity is often tolerated entirely too much...), I'm not prepared to accept the assertion that intolerance to nonconformity is denying society the fruits of genius on a significant scale.
Sure, you're gonna find a "mad" genius or two, whose inability to fit into society leads to isolation, instutionalization or incarceration. And for every one of them you'll find at least a thousand just-plain-whackos. I daresay that we've "lost" more natural math geniuses to them being born as Kalahari Bushmen who never saw a zero in their whole lives, then to over-adherence to any collection of cultural mores.
The benefits of encouraging a certain level of - call it consistency - more than likely outweigh the detriments. Of course it can go too far; nobody would suggest that dressing a specific way be used as a criteria for hiring in an academic institution, for one example. But asking that the faculty generally refrain from habitually making up nonsense words in ordinary conversation, and that they bathe now and then and try to remember to at least WEAR clothes - I reckon that's a good thing.
> sounds good, until you find some Microsoft security hole has allowed a
> spammer to use your PC to send their filth for them
I'm not suggesting the auto-response go to the From: field, by any means. The one authentic part of any spam has to be the "Click here to send me your money!" link (well, granted, I've received more than a couple without even so much as that...), and that's what your target is.
Use a mega-honeypot approach - have people donate a few thousand abandoned, spam-clogged Hotmail accounts to begin with, and set up some old PCs with scripts to bang on each incoming solicitation. Next step, ask spam-fighting organizations for copies of the latest ads they've been getting - as many copies of each as possible, in fact, since many of them have unique-IDs in the links - and blast them too. Make it a distributed project, so that spammers can't block your IP ranges. And of course, figure out some legal loophole by which you can claim it's not a DOS attack - because the sender is, after all, inviting you to check out their offering...
> The point of having a large-capacity MP3 player (such as the iPod)
> is so that you don't have to do that: you just take your entire
> music collection with you
And apparently, the poster is finding the inconvenience of all those separate devices to outweigh the "point" he originally bought them for - and presumably does not want to wait until everythings available in a single ear-bud... I think I'm suggesting an angle which would represent the minimum functional compromise and still result in reducing his gadgetry needs to a single item, not to mention now rather than next year.
> Bayesian filters on the content is the only way to go.
Aren't most of the spams filled with random gibberish these days specifically targeting Bayesian filters? My Mozilla client filter was working better and better for awhile, but lately the trend has been reversing... anyhow, I disagree that it's the "only" way to go.
I think collaborative filtering (no link, I've read about it in the past but can't be bothered to look up a good example at the moment) will become a major tool. Also, why has nobody come up with an Email client which automagically puts incoming messages from senders you haven't contacted (or who aren't in your address book) into a "suspect" folder - over and above any spam-filtration? Unless you're a webmaster, writer/columnist, or are selling something online, that'd help a lot of people I reckon.
And who was it had the idea of having EVERYONE reply to EVERY spam (using a automated script or plug-in or something), thus effectively DOS-ing any spammer's server...
He's asking how to avoid the problem, not what's the best 'utility belt'... and I think there ARE several good multifunction devices out these days, including the Treo 600. For me, it's not just a matter of how much stuff you're carrying, but how many different chargers/sync cables/carrying cases etc you have to deal with, plus keeping up with software or firmware updates, warranty expiration, etc - forget it. Technology is a convenience only up to a point.
(re: carrying an iPod, here's a heads-up: nobody really needs more than about 12 hour's worth of MP3 capacity for a daily commute...)
It's pretty straightforward - you want all you can reasonably get out of them. They want to pay what's fair, or less if they can... so the intersection of that is, what's it worth to them?
They probably won't want to tell you that - they may not know themselves, right now. But without more information on what your project's about and who the company is (not to mention what work they expect done), it's difficult to speculate on what the value is. It may be up to you to figure out what benefit they will receive from your work, and base your compensation (hourly or package-deal) on that.
How do you do that? I dunno. Track down other people they've funded, or former employees (or maybe just some people lower-down in the food chain than whoever contacted you). Look up their financial reports, try and guess how much your work will affect their business. For example, if you're writing a driver for a product of theirs, find out how many they sell per year and try to guess how many more they'll sell with your driver available. It's probably worth your while to do some legwork.
Or just make it an hourly rate. But I'm not always comfy with them; some days I do a lot more work per hour than others...
What they mean by "weakly interacting" is similar to how neutrinos are described - it doesn't have much of an electromagnetic impression, so it doesn't block light or smack into a detector in an earthbound observatory. Unlike neutrinos, it does posess a significant mass and is affected by gravity. And while that is "exotic", astrophysicists were only forced to consider this sort of thing when all previous efforts to explain some pretty obvious mis-matches in the numbers didn't work.
Now I'll let someone else explain about "dark energy"...
Long backstory deleted, but the new PHB hired a consultant to come in and help me rewire the network (about 3 dozen Netware 3.x terminals with a big wad of spagetti in the breakroom...). We were there 'til 11:pm or later getting the job done, and decided to go home and I'd do the documentation the next day. Next morning, I'm about to start typing it up, and I get The Call...
I pointed out that all of last night's work will be pointless if it's not documented so you might want to let me at least finish my current task, but they refused to let me touch a computer after that - they offered to let me write it on paper, though... I heard that months later they were still employing that same consultant (who made about 4 times what I, as an entry-level guy, was pulling down!).
A week later I found a job at 50% more pay - and this was 1995, well pre-boom. (not quite a happy ending as I've been underemployed for 2-3 years now, but...)
Looks like I.T. markups are tame by comparison...
I've been jobhunting for some while and the best (?!) lead I've had recently was from some body shop (ahem, consulting firm) who wanted me to go out on Novell-related emergency calls - even though I repeatedly explained that my Netware experience stopped around 1996 and I don't remember much if anything. They offered me $75/hr, while admitting they charge clients $250/hr, and they want a piss-test, 24/7 availability via cellphone, and a non-compete agreement... I nearly hung up on the guy. (Email me if you want his number - heh)
Here in the L.A. area I see a lot of webmaster jobs going for $8/hr - this sort of market will tend to bring the unethical scum back into IT from their former jobs in spamming, black-market organ smuggling, and politics.
That $1,500 Cisco memory is, I think, good for everyone - it contributes to Cisco's bottom line by ripping off the ignorant and lazy, thus keeping them from having to raise prices for the rest.
But for a contrasting situation: about 5 years ago I worked for a dominant office-equipment supplier in the Rocky Mountain region (name left out not to protect the guilty, but to avoid self-embarassment...) in their PC/printer repair depot. We outsourced our monitor repairs, and would routinely double whatever the price was - whether it was mainly parts or labor - for no good reason other than that we could. We sold Laserjet fusers for a decent markup - until we changed from geniune HP to remanufactured parts, and kept the prices the same... so a $180 fuser we sold for $215 became a $40 fuser sold for $215... I could go on. They did that 'cos they were sleazy, and I hated working there.
I've been on the lookout for a 4-pin to 4-pin Firewire cable at a decent price for awhile now; usually I see them for a ridiculous $40-$50 most places. Recently when my need became more urgent, I swung by Fry's and found them for $9. That's just a case of buyer-beware - if you're concerned about saving money, make sure you're not being fleeced before plunking down your cash. Do some legwork if the price difference is worth your time.
Another example: inkjet printer makers sell the printers at a loss and make it up by selling carts at inflated prices. That's OK by me, when alternative sources for carts and ink are available. When they started putting ICs into the carts to prevent "counterfeiting", that's where I draw the line, and it turns out that inkjet printers from 2-3 years back (available for dirt cheap on eBay and Craigslist) still work just fine with $3 cartridges (also from eBay)....
The really outrageous markups are in the financial business anyway. $35 because they let your credit card payment check sit for 3 days before processing it? Bah!