The general idea I take away from reading this article: The needy, politics-playing, "face-to-face" types that require a rigid schedule lest they have to manage their own time are feeling abandoned and unwanted when people flee the office to get away from them and actually get some work done. "We're not a *team* anymore! It's far to clear who's actually doing work here while I piss away my time in the office! I need you back here to help dilute the scrutiny I am receiving!"
It seems like a bitter opinion and it is. Corpolitics and the need to regiment and formalize everyday activities that had little to do with the task at hand drove me out of the industry and have kept me away. It is no wonder that other studies have shown people to be happier, more productive workers when they escape the micro-managerial tyrants and sycophantic coworkers that routinely bog down the average office workday. That this study shows that those left behind are sad pandas when everyone else takes their toys and goes home rather than play with them is no surprise.
I like the subscriber idea, but I would prefer to see it operate in reverse: The uploader would have the option of paying a fee to keep their content ad-free or near-ad-free, and therefore less likely to be skipped by viewers.
While agree the idea is inferred, the statement says that the new technology as part of the lease agreement will lower color printing costs by up to 30%, implying that the end user will pay 30% less for color printing.
At first this sounds great "Yay! I pay (up to) 30% less for printing color!"
Think about that though. HP under this plan controls the flow of ink (no jokes about controlling the universe, okay?); they let you have a 30% cost savings over buying their old (inflated cost, Q.E.D.) ink cartridges. But what if HP had managed via this technology to reduce ink consumption by say 70 or 80%? In reality, they're now making 40-50% *more* by implementing this leasing scheme.
People are willing to believe this scenario in light of the demonstrated gouging on consumables in the past, and I'd be inclined to believe it myself, HP having done nothing to address said concerns.
I wonder if any of the following has had an influence on selection of the date to advance the clock:
January 17th, 1945 - Soviet forces capture the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw. 1961 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex." 1966 - A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea. 1991 - Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm began early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation. (Thanks to Wikipedia for these)
As others have indicated; the "clock" is indeed arbitrary and the criteria for setting the clock subjective. In light of that, I'm sure someone on the panel to determine the clock's time is trying to make a statement by selecting the 17th.
That was a weak response. You know full well the procedure will be performed first, *then* costs will be negotiated.
As far as a "car dealer" negotiating with everyone; so do hospitals and doctors, hence the "plan network" insurance companies often have. These are the doctors and hospitals they have already negotiated some sort of deal with. Since negotiating on a case-by-case basis would be incredibly time consuming and expensive for an insurer, they simply work out prices ahead of time for most procedures; with an individual the negotiations can be performed on a much smaller scale.
You may live 1 day. You may live 40 more years. Either way you'll live for the rest of your life, so make the most of it.
If you are not in immediate danger, then don't go anywhere. You know where you are and what's aroun d you now. Running takes you into the unknown; you could flee directly into fallout or a firestorm. Move only when necessary. Minimize your exposure to radiation by monitoring the area around you with a detection device (geiger counter / RAD meter). Buy several detection devices now, make sure they are powered by removable batteries so you can power them by solar cells or scavenged batteries later (or learn how to do this to the devices you can get). Dosimeters may also help you gauge how much radiation you've been exposed to and when to flee if necessary. Have several planned escape routes that will take you at least 50 miles from your current location.
In the immediate aftermath, canned foodstuffs stored in a basement should suffice. Water stored in sealed containers should also remain safe. Cycle your supplies every 12 months; 6 months for the water. Keep a bottle of Clorox around to sterilize water if necessary (app. 1/2 ounce to the gallon).
If you live far away from major metros, as you claim, then you should be able to grow some of your own food. Learn how; it's pretty easy and really takes only a little effort. Corn grows like a weed ('cause it is), along with certain varieties of tomatoes and many root plants (potatoes, turnips). Test your soil regularly for contamination. There's no reason not to start the garden in advance; you can eat what you grow right now, and fresh vegetables are quite delicious. Be sure to seed a portion of your crops so you have something to start over with in the event you have to flee or recover from a blight. If the soil becomes badly irradiated, you may need to move, as cleanup requires a significant amount of work.
You may also decide to keep livestock. Chickens and goats work well for this. They are easily tended and can be fed from your garden; Sunflower seeds and cornmeal for the chickens; whatever's growing nearby for the goats. Monitor for contamination, and if you have enough space maintain breeding stock so that you may slaughter the animals for meat as well as harvesting the eggs and goat milk. It's best to know what you're doing ahead of time, so you may want to raise some animals now if laws permit. Goats can make interesting pets; they're smarter than you think.
Learn how to build and operate a distillation rig. They can be constructed from readily available materials and are invaluable in providing a clean water supply. Distillation of water is easy (alcohol not so much, but you may want to get good at that: A little hooch to take the edge off post-nuke life might not be so bad) and ensures sterile drinking water. Build several evaporators for your rig and store them (with your canned goods may be a good spot). If the evaporator becomes contaminated and cannot be cleaned, you can quickly replace it.
There's your food and water. If you live in the sticks, then you've got shelter, as we're assuming your house has not been vaporized. None of that will protect you from your fellow man, however, nor will it catch game for you should you need to hunt. So: Firearms and ammunition. Both of these are ridiculously easy to store. If you're not a big "gun nut," but are serious about protecting yourself, get the following: A 12 gauge pump-action shotgun, a bolt-action 30 caliber rifle (.30-06 or "thirty aught six"), and a semi-automatic 9mm or 45 caliber pistol. These are the most common calibers for each type of weapon and are some of the simplest, trouble-free designs. Follow the instructions that come with the weapons for long-term storage, put them in a box and stash 'em near your food. Done. You don't need to touch 'em again for 500 years. You can do the same for the ammunition; get several hundred shotgun shells and a few thousand rifle and pistol rounds. Just make sure t
I think he's referring to the state of documentation content, rather than format or accessability: Let's get good, solid documentation that is concise, relevant, and doesn't require advanced knowledge to understand, and then we'll worry about ensuring it's accessable to everyone and anyone.
In my opinion, adding the additional onus of ensuring complete accessability to writing documentation would simply degrade the quality of the documentation for most OSS apps I've used even further. Documentation, as much as it is stressed, generally appears to be written as an afterthought or sloppily compiled along the way during development and rarely revisited. If the documentation is relatively complete, it often suffers from being written at a very high level and therefore out of reach for most new users. O'Reilly and company makes a killing in the secondary documentation market for these very reasons.
It seems to me it would be possible to build a device capable of overloading the tag with RF, causing it to overheat or pop. If you felt like being particularly nasty, you could just point the antenna at these poor fools and leave a broken, burned piece of glass in their arm. Probably not any sort of life-threatening injury, but certainly painful.
Anyone who has read the "terms of re-admittance" letter can clearly see that they are not terms of readmittance but a very clear "get out now, thank you."
Based on the other blogger reports (I did not read the mainstream press report), this is quite clearly overreaction on the part of a flustered administrator. Unfortunately, I think the poor student is out of luck. As has been stated; if you attend a private university then you submit completely to their rules as they set them. If they chafe too badly, it may be best to leave (as they have not so subtly asked him to do).
What harsh comments. I have to agree with the original post however; most IT positions these days are not careers, they are jobs. Whereas a career is doing something you like for just long enough that you can move on to doing what you love, a job is doing something you can do in order to not be sleeping in the subway when you're too old to work.
Having worked in IT for quite some time myself, I feel I can safely say that unless you are an IT "director," you're not going anywhere fast (and even that position can be limited. *Maybe* you can pull off CIO). Cable monkeys stay cable monkeys, network admins stay network admins, etc. Helpdesk personnel occasionally become helpdesk managers. ITs involvement in "business decisions" has usually been to help frame out deployment timelines, and only because they'll be the ones doing the rollout.
As a concession to the agitated poster, engineers don't do much better. The "Human Resource" culture has served to pigeonhole employees in a most severe manner. Unless you have an MBA, few paths within the corporation will be open to the person with the engineering degree.
Well, if you wanted to really pull one over on 'em, you could simply find a "COMPUTERS" store in your area that has gone under (around here they pop up and close down with regular frequency. In fact several have come and gone in one storefront nearby and have never changed the sign), and generate an invoice for the system from that store, then get your free copy of the software. MS may invest the effort in tracking down the proprietors and employees of the now defunct company, but they'll have a tougher time of that than they will going after the "current" offenders.
The biggest losers from this technology could be the car companies themselves, selling fewer cars, and insurance companies charging lower premiums.
Nah, they'll just change their rates to compensate. Cars will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars since they'll be coporate investments at that point, designed to pay for themselves. And the insurance companies will love it; they'll be able to sell huge "fleet" policies and not have to worry about paying out the big money for collisions, just covering small stuff from the parking garage or vandalism.
Actually, the software from Jurassic Park you mention really did exist. I don't remember what it was called, but it was basically a 3D representation of the file system that used blocks for the directories. The more data in a directory, the taller the block was. More of an exercise in "oh, cool" than usefulness. I remember running it on an SGI Indy running Irix 5.somethingorother, then deleting it.
One of the big problems this approach will have to overcome (in my opinion) is that people generally tend to order their thoughts in a manner specific to their native language. A development environment that seems intuitive and easy to use to a native English speaker might be backwards or obtuse to a person who natively speaks another language. To clarify; I'm not speaking strictly of grammatical structure of language, but of a seemingly inherent difference in the way people learn things based on what language is used in the teaching. For this reason it has always seemed better to me for programmers to learn a new, common language (that of the higher-level compiler they are interested in) so that when they work with others, everyone is on the same page (similar to scientists and doctors using Latin nomenclature).
I'd imagine that a "natural language" system could be developed with different approaches based on the native tongue of the programmer, but I would think this would damage the benefits of commonality that other languages now enjoy.
The real story is that in the south the roaches are so huge that you empty the entire can of spray on them to stun them momentarily while you load the shotgun. You'll laugh at this and think I'm kidding; Oh haha! Big roaches! That's funny!
Yeah, it's funny, until a Palmetto the size of a poodle is rummaging through your fridge looking for the "good stuff."
What really scares people is the potential for misuse or loss. Say that your insurer got ahold of your purchase data from Wal-Mart. They see that you've been buying a lot of over-the-counter indigestion remedies and quietly ship you a "policy update" that excludes stomach ulcers in the fine print. When you finally see the doctor, well, guess who's off the hook ("Oh, you didn't read paragraph III of section V subsection 2 of your policy update? I'm sorry...").
With that much data being collected, there are always other interested parties; people with interests other than reducing costs. It's the potential for loss and misuse that makes these databases the bad things that they are. I agree that ananonymous analysis of inventory movements is harmless, but when you start tying it to buyers then there's an issue.
Ah, but a company with no employees willing to work and nothing but "customers" pulling shenanigans will soon find itself in a difficult financial situation.
So you neither read nor use simple arithmetic? It's interesting that you're able to post here, then.
Oh come on now, that's a cop out and you know it. How long do you propose it should take to teach someone to read and to teach them the most rudimentary mathematics? Probably as long as it currently does now; about 9 months when the person is between 5 and 6 years old.
The material presented after that point is stultifying and often completely irrelevant. As a student I remember often reading textbooks (history texts were some of the worst) so blatantly bland that I would fall asleep reading them. Then later, on my own time, I would often look into the events described in the book from other sources and I would discover interesting stories of remarkable people. Not many people shared my interest; they would look at other books in fear. For all they knew it was another textbook waiting in there to suck the life out of them. Luckily I discovered long ago that people writing on something they care about have a tendency to output something thoughtful and interesting. On that same note, people writing about something, teaching something, or "learning" something that they've totally lost interest in results in mediocre results at best. The sad part of that lineup is that the lost interest in learning often results from the dry, disinterested manner in which the subjects are presented.
Just plug the Mac stuff into your PC. The USB keyboards and mice work just fine (at least they have for me). I use an iMac keyboard on my work PC since my desk there is very small and I wanted a small but functional keyboard. XP recognized it without any trouble.
It's not computer hardware, I know, but I've got to put a word in for my Motorola Micro TAC Elite cell phone. I bought the phone in 1997, when it was the crown jewel of cell phone tech. It has worked flawlessly since then. It has been dropped, sat on, left in a refrigerator, dropped some more, left in the sun until it was too hot to touch (sun exposure in Florida can be severe), and most recently was thrown from my vehicle in an overturn accident. I spotted it on the ground when I was being loaded into the ambulance by the paramedics and asked one of the firemen to pick it up and throw it into the car for me. When I went to the towing yard to recover my personal items from the wreck, I found it on the floor of the car. I took it home, let it dry (it had rained), found the old original battery (the high capacity one had been flung somewhere in the accident), and powered it up. That thing still works fine. I mean wow; that is durability. My friends kid me about my relic of a cell phone, but until my carrier completely eliminates compatible service, I'm keeping it. It never drops packets or cuts out like their digital phones do (static starts to creep in when the signal strength drops).
This sounds reasonable, especially if Comcast fails to secure their monitoring/command system properly.
I propose it be named "Dinker," for the word used to describe machines dropping off the system. You know: "Dink, there goes one. Dink, there goes another." The bandwidth effects of such a virus would probably be minimal, but the impact on Comcast's helpdesk would be phenomenal.
Systems like this used to enforce multi-system pricing schemes are a complete farce designed to stick it to the customer with enough money or know-how to have a computer for each user in their home. Of course, they have a ready defense for this: "Oh, but this system makes sure that people who use the connection more (ie: multiple machines) are paying for it so that regular customers don't run out of bandwidth!" We all know this is a crock. I know people who can eat loads more bandwidth with one machine than 20 "average" users.
Slashdot Mirror
How much of history *is* lost because we refuse to rebuild some of it?
The general idea I take away from reading this article: The needy, politics-playing, "face-to-face" types that require a rigid schedule lest they have to manage their own time are feeling abandoned and unwanted when people flee the office to get away from them and actually get some work done. "We're not a *team* anymore! It's far to clear who's actually doing work here while I piss away my time in the office! I need you back here to help dilute the scrutiny I am receiving!"
It seems like a bitter opinion and it is. Corpolitics and the need to regiment and formalize everyday activities that had little to do with the task at hand drove me out of the industry and have kept me away. It is no wonder that other studies have shown people to be happier, more productive workers when they escape the micro-managerial tyrants and sycophantic coworkers that routinely bog down the average office workday. That this study shows that those left behind are sad pandas when everyone else takes their toys and goes home rather than play with them is no surprise.
I like the subscriber idea, but I would prefer to see it operate in reverse: The uploader would have the option of paying a fee to keep their content ad-free or near-ad-free, and therefore less likely to be skipped by viewers.
While agree the idea is inferred, the statement says that the new technology as part of the lease agreement will lower color printing costs by up to 30%, implying that the end user will pay 30% less for color printing.
At first this sounds great "Yay! I pay (up to) 30% less for printing color!"
Think about that though. HP under this plan controls the flow of ink (no jokes about controlling the universe, okay?); they let you have a 30% cost savings over buying their old (inflated cost, Q.E.D.) ink cartridges. But what if HP had managed via this technology to reduce ink consumption by say 70 or 80%? In reality, they're now making 40-50% *more* by implementing this leasing scheme.
People are willing to believe this scenario in light of the demonstrated gouging on consumables in the past, and I'd be inclined to believe it myself, HP having done nothing to address said concerns.
I wonder if any of the following has had an influence on selection of the date to advance the clock:
January 17th,
1945 - Soviet forces capture the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw.
1961 - U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warns against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex."
1966 - A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.
1991 - Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm began early in the morning. Iraq fires 8 Scud missiles into Israel in an unsuccessful bid to provoke Israeli retaliation.
(Thanks to Wikipedia for these)
As others have indicated; the "clock" is indeed arbitrary and the criteria for setting the clock subjective. In light of that, I'm sure someone on the panel to determine the clock's time is trying to make a statement by selecting the 17th.
That was a weak response. You know full well the procedure will be performed first, *then* costs will be negotiated.
As far as a "car dealer" negotiating with everyone; so do hospitals and doctors, hence the "plan network" insurance companies often have. These are the doctors and hospitals they have already negotiated some sort of deal with. Since negotiating on a case-by-case basis would be incredibly time consuming and expensive for an insurer, they simply work out prices ahead of time for most procedures; with an individual the negotiations can be performed on a much smaller scale.
I guess you're pretty serious, so here:
You may live 1 day. You may live 40 more years. Either way you'll live for the rest of your life, so make the most of it.
If you are not in immediate danger, then don't go anywhere. You know where you are and what's aroun d you now. Running takes you into the unknown; you could flee directly into fallout or a firestorm. Move only when necessary. Minimize your exposure to radiation by monitoring the area around you with a detection device (geiger counter / RAD meter). Buy several detection devices now, make sure they are powered by removable batteries so you can power them by solar cells or scavenged batteries later (or learn how to do this to the devices you can get). Dosimeters may also help you gauge how much radiation you've been exposed to and when to flee if necessary. Have several planned escape routes that will take you at least 50 miles from your current location.
In the immediate aftermath, canned foodstuffs stored in a basement should suffice. Water stored in sealed containers should also remain safe. Cycle your supplies every 12 months; 6 months for the water. Keep a bottle of Clorox around to sterilize water if necessary (app. 1/2 ounce to the gallon).
If you live far away from major metros, as you claim, then you should be able to grow some of your own food. Learn how; it's pretty easy and really takes only a little effort. Corn grows like a weed ('cause it is), along with certain varieties of tomatoes and many root plants (potatoes, turnips). Test your soil regularly for contamination. There's no reason not to start the garden in advance; you can eat what you grow right now, and fresh vegetables are quite delicious. Be sure to seed a portion of your crops so you have something to start over with in the event you have to flee or recover from a blight. If the soil becomes badly irradiated, you may need to move, as cleanup requires a significant amount of work.
You may also decide to keep livestock. Chickens and goats work well for this. They are easily tended and can be fed from your garden; Sunflower seeds and cornmeal for the chickens; whatever's growing nearby for the goats. Monitor for contamination, and if you have enough space maintain breeding stock so that you may slaughter the animals for meat as well as harvesting the eggs and goat milk. It's best to know what you're doing ahead of time, so you may want to raise some animals now if laws permit. Goats can make interesting pets; they're smarter than you think.
Learn how to build and operate a distillation rig. They can be constructed from readily available materials and are invaluable in providing a clean water supply. Distillation of water is easy (alcohol not so much, but you may want to get good at that: A little hooch to take the edge off post-nuke life might not be so bad) and ensures sterile drinking water. Build several evaporators for your rig and store them (with your canned goods may be a good spot). If the evaporator becomes contaminated and cannot be cleaned, you can quickly replace it.
There's your food and water. If you live in the sticks, then you've got shelter, as we're assuming your house has not been vaporized. None of that will protect you from your fellow man, however, nor will it catch game for you should you need to hunt. So: Firearms and ammunition. Both of these are ridiculously easy to store. If you're not a big "gun nut," but are serious about protecting yourself, get the following: A 12 gauge pump-action shotgun, a bolt-action 30 caliber rifle (.30-06 or "thirty aught six"), and a semi-automatic 9mm or 45 caliber pistol. These are the most common calibers for each type of weapon and are some of the simplest, trouble-free designs. Follow the instructions that come with the weapons for long-term storage, put them in a box and stash 'em near your food. Done. You don't need to touch 'em again for 500 years. You can do the same for the ammunition; get several hundred shotgun shells and a few thousand rifle and pistol rounds. Just make sure t
I think he's referring to the state of documentation content, rather than format or accessability: Let's get good, solid documentation that is concise, relevant, and doesn't require advanced knowledge to understand, and then we'll worry about ensuring it's accessable to everyone and anyone.
In my opinion, adding the additional onus of ensuring complete accessability to writing documentation would simply degrade the quality of the documentation for most OSS apps I've used even further. Documentation, as much as it is stressed, generally appears to be written as an afterthought or sloppily compiled along the way during development and rarely revisited. If the documentation is relatively complete, it often suffers from being written at a very high level and therefore out of reach for most new users. O'Reilly and company makes a killing in the secondary documentation market for these very reasons.
...that theme song. That's right, you can't! It's burned forever into our memories, down there with how to walk and how to breathe. :)
20 years, holy cow. 20 years and I can still remember that damn song.
It seems to me it would be possible to build a device capable of overloading the tag with RF, causing it to overheat or pop. If you felt like being particularly nasty, you could just point the antenna at these poor fools and leave a broken, burned piece of glass in their arm. Probably not any sort of life-threatening injury, but certainly painful.
Anyone who has read the "terms of re-admittance" letter can clearly see that they are not terms of readmittance but a very clear "get out now, thank you."
Based on the other blogger reports (I did not read the mainstream press report), this is quite clearly overreaction on the part of a flustered administrator. Unfortunately, I think the poor student is out of luck. As has been stated; if you attend a private university then you submit completely to their rules as they set them. If they chafe too badly, it may be best to leave (as they have not so subtly asked him to do).
TFA seems a little disjointed and difficult to follow. Reads more like rambling than any sort of informative article or persuasive opinion piece.
What harsh comments. I have to agree with the original post however; most IT positions these days are not careers, they are jobs. Whereas a career is doing something you like for just long enough that you can move on to doing what you love, a job is doing something you can do in order to not be sleeping in the subway when you're too old to work.
Having worked in IT for quite some time myself, I feel I can safely say that unless you are an IT "director," you're not going anywhere fast (and even that position can be limited. *Maybe* you can pull off CIO). Cable monkeys stay cable monkeys, network admins stay network admins, etc. Helpdesk personnel occasionally become helpdesk managers. ITs involvement in "business decisions" has usually been to help frame out deployment timelines, and only because they'll be the ones doing the rollout.
As a concession to the agitated poster, engineers don't do much better. The "Human Resource" culture has served to pigeonhole employees in a most severe manner. Unless you have an MBA, few paths within the corporation will be open to the person with the engineering degree.
Well, if you wanted to really pull one over on 'em, you could simply find a "COMPUTERS" store in your area that has gone under (around here they pop up and close down with regular frequency. In fact several have come and gone in one storefront nearby and have never changed the sign), and generate an invoice for the system from that store, then get your free copy of the software. MS may invest the effort in tracking down the proprietors and employees of the now defunct company, but they'll have a tougher time of that than they will going after the "current" offenders.
The biggest losers from this technology could be the car companies themselves, selling fewer cars, and insurance companies charging lower premiums.
Nah, they'll just change their rates to compensate. Cars will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars since they'll be coporate investments at that point, designed to pay for themselves. And the insurance companies will love it; they'll be able to sell huge "fleet" policies and not have to worry about paying out the big money for collisions, just covering small stuff from the parking garage or vandalism.
Actually, the software from Jurassic Park you mention really did exist. I don't remember what it was called, but it was basically a 3D representation of the file system that used blocks for the directories. The more data in a directory, the taller the block was. More of an exercise in "oh, cool" than usefulness. I remember running it on an SGI Indy running Irix 5.somethingorother, then deleting it.
Yeah, like maybe the programming language itself?
;)
Actually, that's precisely what I was referring to (see the following sentence in parentheses).
Maybe my natural language wasn't clear enough.
One of the big problems this approach will have to overcome (in my opinion) is that people generally tend to order their thoughts in a manner specific to their native language. A development environment that seems intuitive and easy to use to a native English speaker might be backwards or obtuse to a person who natively speaks another language. To clarify; I'm not speaking strictly of grammatical structure of language, but of a seemingly inherent difference in the way people learn things based on what language is used in the teaching. For this reason it has always seemed better to me for programmers to learn a new, common language (that of the higher-level compiler they are interested in) so that when they work with others, everyone is on the same page (similar to scientists and doctors using Latin nomenclature).
I'd imagine that a "natural language" system could be developed with different approaches based on the native tongue of the programmer, but I would think this would damage the benefits of commonality that other languages now enjoy.
The real story is that in the south the roaches are so huge that you empty the entire can of spray on them to stun them momentarily while you load the shotgun. You'll laugh at this and think I'm kidding; Oh haha! Big roaches! That's funny!
Yeah, it's funny, until a Palmetto the size of a poodle is rummaging through your fridge looking for the "good stuff."
What really scares people is the potential for misuse or loss. Say that your insurer got ahold of your purchase data from Wal-Mart. They see that you've been buying a lot of over-the-counter indigestion remedies and quietly ship you a "policy update" that excludes stomach ulcers in the fine print. When you finally see the doctor, well, guess who's off the hook ("Oh, you didn't read paragraph III of section V subsection 2 of your policy update? I'm sorry...").
With that much data being collected, there are always other interested parties; people with interests other than reducing costs. It's the potential for loss and misuse that makes these databases the bad things that they are. I agree that ananonymous analysis of inventory movements is harmless, but when you start tying it to buyers then there's an issue.
Ah, but a company with no employees willing to work and nothing but "customers" pulling shenanigans will soon find itself in a difficult financial situation.
So you neither read nor use simple arithmetic? It's interesting that you're able to post here, then.
Oh come on now, that's a cop out and you know it. How long do you propose it should take to teach someone to read and to teach them the most rudimentary mathematics? Probably as long as it currently does now; about 9 months when the person is between 5 and 6 years old.
The material presented after that point is stultifying and often completely irrelevant. As a student I remember often reading textbooks (history texts were some of the worst) so blatantly bland that I would fall asleep reading them. Then later, on my own time, I would often look into the events described in the book from other sources and I would discover interesting stories of remarkable people. Not many people shared my interest; they would look at other books in fear. For all they knew it was another textbook waiting in there to suck the life out of them. Luckily I discovered long ago that people writing on something they care about have a tendency to output something thoughtful and interesting. On that same note, people writing about something, teaching something, or "learning" something that they've totally lost interest in results in mediocre results at best. The sad part of that lineup is that the lost interest in learning often results from the dry, disinterested manner in which the subjects are presented.
Just plug the Mac stuff into your PC. The USB keyboards and mice work just fine (at least they have for me). I use an iMac keyboard on my work PC since my desk there is very small and I wanted a small but functional keyboard. XP recognized it without any trouble.
It's not computer hardware, I know, but I've got to put a word in for my Motorola Micro TAC Elite cell phone. I bought the phone in 1997, when it was the crown jewel of cell phone tech. It has worked flawlessly since then. It has been dropped, sat on, left in a refrigerator, dropped some more, left in the sun until it was too hot to touch (sun exposure in Florida can be severe), and most recently was thrown from my vehicle in an overturn accident. I spotted it on the ground when I was being loaded into the ambulance by the paramedics and asked one of the firemen to pick it up and throw it into the car for me. When I went to the towing yard to recover my personal items from the wreck, I found it on the floor of the car. I took it home, let it dry (it had rained), found the old original battery (the high capacity one had been flung somewhere in the accident), and powered it up. That thing still works fine. I mean wow; that is durability. My friends kid me about my relic of a cell phone, but until my carrier completely eliminates compatible service, I'm keeping it. It never drops packets or cuts out like their digital phones do (static starts to creep in when the signal strength drops).
This sounds reasonable, especially if Comcast fails to secure their monitoring/command system properly.
I propose it be named "Dinker," for the word used to describe machines dropping off the system. You know: "Dink, there goes one. Dink, there goes another." The bandwidth effects of such a virus would probably be minimal, but the impact on Comcast's helpdesk would be phenomenal.
Systems like this used to enforce multi-system pricing schemes are a complete farce designed to stick it to the customer with enough money or know-how to have a computer for each user in their home. Of course, they have a ready defense for this: "Oh, but this system makes sure that people who use the connection more (ie: multiple machines) are paying for it so that regular customers don't run out of bandwidth!" We all know this is a crock. I know people who can eat loads more bandwidth with one machine than 20 "average" users.