"By the way, it was clearly impossible for any Soviet to live "as well" as I do in the States. No matter how much money they had. I'm free; they weren't."
What's your point? They lived quite a bit better, and accomplished more per capita, than quite a few capitalist and democratic nations. So by your reasoning, their system is better?
Quality of life is not a great way to measure much. If someone prospers because he stole the base of his financial empire from others, I would not look at it positively in any way.
They are funding it. I know, because my graduate advisor is working on it (here in the US, supported by DARPA). In fact, a lot of money in the US is going into this...
I've used MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger for voice chats. They sucked compared to Skype.
Also, neither of the above two work in Linux. The only reason I gave Skype a try was for the convenience not to have to reboot my computer just so that I can use Windows to do voice chat.
I like Skype because I get less than a 10th of the dropped packets that I do with the other two, and because they actually catered to me.
I signed up a few months ago with Broadvox Direct - the price then was $20/mo (now $30/mo).
Initially, voice quality was good - better than cell phone but not as good as a land line.
Now it's a little worse, but still fine.
No noticeable latency. Many features - well worth the money.
The ATA that comes with it has QoS, so if you put it ahead of everything else, you should be fine.
Don't worry about bandwidth issues. At the better quality it uses no more than 90 kilobits/s - which will barely have an effect on anything you may be downloading. I've put it to the test - Web download, bittorrent, etc. No detectable change in sound quality or download speed.
Downtimes have been few and far between. However, keep in mind that VoIP is still in its infancy, and you just won't get the quality customer service that land line companies provide.
The other issue is regarding availability of 911 (frequently not possible on VoIP).
No regrets about the change - got rid of my landline.
Honesty naturally evolves in a free market because it is the only way for a business to survive in the long run. When markets are not free, public honesty tends to suffer greatly.
All makes sense until I see the good old news media companies, and how everyone flocks to dishonest sources.
Then I realize the whole concept of evolving honesty is rubbish.
The reason one should go to a university these days is for both job training and to get an education. It's the only time in your life that you can dedicate yourself to it.
But to require every student to get a full liberal arts degree in order to get a job in a specialized area is not simply inefficient, it's idiotic.
A full liberal arts degree? Oh please! Where I went, we had to take six courses in such areas for engineering - that's at most a little over a semester's worth. Not even 15% of your time.
As one of the posters said: It's your money. If you don't like it, the universities don't have to change - you have to find one that suits your desires. There are dedicated colleges in the US - often quite expensive. Or you could move to one of those countries you envy and do your college there.
This more than anything else is the reason the third world (esp. India and China) will eat us alive
Nonsense. I used to hear this during my undergrad: "Once you go to grad school, the folks from China and India will just blow you out - you can't compete with them." I ended up going to a university ranked 3rd in my field (electrical engineering), and 5th in engineering overall. Yes, the folks from abroad often had taken my introductory grad courses in their undergrad, but it made very little difference. It takes at most a year to catch up with them. And then I knew as much as they did with regards to engineering, and much more with regards to everything else. I didn't get the tail end of the curve as everyone suggested.
The only difference is that they may get their PhD a year earlier. Good for them - I'm not in a hurry.
The OS, while it may suck a little, is not the problem. It's the fact that Microsoft bundled a whole bunch of poor quality software with Windows.
For most people, Linux is still not a viable alternative. Some distributions are easier than others to use, but all are a pain to maintain for those who do not want to go use the command line and edit sundry config files all over the place.
I used to tell all my friends, "Use Linux! Use Linux! Use Linux!" Now I say it only to tech-minded ones, because most people actually try it and come to me with a huge list of complaints. I could solve all their problems for them, but that would only show that the Linux distro they tried is simply not good for ordinary users.
No - a better solution (for now) is to get people to use good software on Windows. I've managed to get people to switch to Open Office and they never regretted it.
Sites like Clean Software help (albeit is a little scanty now).
Opera had tabs before Firefox did. Also mouse gestures.
True, but I bet Microsoft is still stealing it from Firefox. They didn't care about it while Opera had it. Only when Firefox brought it along and started eating into their browser share...
I get an unlimited local plan for $20/mo (can get cheaper, but it then costs 5 cents per call, which would be bad here).
Now if I can set it so that only calls local to my town are made, and rack up enough credits that way, I'd be in heaven (barring poor sound quality). I make calls to countries that cost me over 20 cents/minute (used to be as high as 81 cents/minute a few years ago). 20 cents/minute is too much for a poor student like me - I only make short important calls.
Now for $20/mo, I'd love to be able to make long calls to certain countries. Especially considering that credits don't take time into account - just the number of calls.
The real question is: Can I connect my VoIP line on this (sorry, don't know anything about Asterix)? That would get me lots of credits, as I have unlimited calls to the US & Canada.
You seem to be missing perhaps the most fundamental aspect of security: "Make your data secure enough such that it is not worth anyone's time to get past the security measures".
Note that this does not mean make your data as humanly secure as possible. If it takes six months of brute force time to break my encryption, I don't mind. I don't have anything that is worth the trouble. So I'm not going to create hurdles for myself by securing it further.
If you have more valuable data, then make it as much harder to get to it. Going overboard will not gain you anything, other than a hassle.
Yes, big brother can storm my house, and torture the information out of me. But it's not worth their trouble. It perhaps would be worth it if I had no security measures and conducted all my Internet transactions in plain text. So I just use a few simple measures to make sure it's not that easy.
Cheaper? With the visa situation the way it is, if there were a cheaper place, people would go there.
I think few countries can compete with what the US pays students who have teaching or research assistantships. Frequently, all the tuition is waived as well. I live quite comfortably on what I earn from my assistantship.
I've looked at Canada, UK, and a few other countries in Europe. None of the universities I looked at would pay me enough for an assistantship for me to simply live.
You have to understand that what may be true in the US need not be true in India. I'm guessing a higher degree over there does guarantee a higher paid job. It's just the way people think over there.
In addition, you seem to be talking mostly about Master's degrees. Keep in mind that a number of people desire PhD's. They really like their fields, and want to do research on it (or teach). Other than the fact that you spend so many years getting the PhD, there's little financial loss. PhD research jobs pay a lot more than if you just had a Bachelor's degree.
"Ad-Aware and SpyBot offer great performance for free, yet when Microsoft debuts its AntiSpyware application, it will require a subscription fee."
A subscription fee?! First, they produce an OS that's just open to all manner of spyware one can imagine, then they actually charge to have it removed?!
It's interesting to note that in the whole rant, he never actually explained this. He said that both guest experts and ordinary people will be able to contribute (which can be done now). But exactly what policy that favors the experts will make editing wars less likely?
The original post that started this all speaks of forks. Most of the links provided, though, are simply specialized topics - I see no problem with such forks. If it bothers anyone, they're probably free to just go copy the whole article and place it on Wikipedia (depending on the license, of course).
Regardless of its criticisms, I'd say that Wikipedia is the best encyclopedia I have seen to date. Yes - for certain topics, Brittannica(sp?) seems a bit more pedantic, but that's precisely because only one viewpoint is being represented. I'm sure I can find plenty of articles in Brittannica that I think are hogwash. I can do the same with Wikipedia, but am free to look at the History pages to see the whole story.
I do recognize the problem with controversial articles always getting edited back and forth, and it does affect the quality of those articles for the majority who do not wish to view article histories.
I myself am considering starting a fork, which I plan to work on alone for a number of years before releasing it to the public. The content that I wish to specialize on would be highly controversial, and I don't want edit wars to spoil what would be most of the articles. I wish MediaWiki had some method by which I could:
1) Assign one or a few sysops to each category. 2) Allow logged in users to make contributions (anyone can get an account). However, their contributions will not get to the main article automatically, but be tagged for review. 3) The sysop for that category will review, and if there are no major complaints, will allow it to get posted.
The only problem is if two or more people edit the same article before the sysop can review it...
But one thing I would insist on is that the sysops not be experts in the category they pick - it would probably be a random assignment. Most of the "experts" I have seen in some fields are incredibly biased, and I simply do not trust them.
In addition, once a change in the article has been approved, it would require, say, a vote of 3 or 5 sysops to revert that change. And a means to phase out horrible sysops.
You get the idea. Some means of quality control. The actual rules could vary.
However, the above is simply not suited for Wikipedia.
I signed up for Broadvox Direct's unlimited plan - $20/mo to the US & Canada.
Got it all set up a few days ago. Quality is great. Apparently there was an outage (not sure how long, perhaps under an hour) on New Year's Eve, but I wasn't even home when it happened.
I can't really say I'm saving much money, as my land line is only about $15, and if I include long distance calls using my calling card, the total is probably still under $20. But with all the added features I get - some of which aren't available on regular lines - I've got no complaints.
Slashdot Mirror
"By the way, it was clearly impossible for any Soviet to live "as well" as I do in the States. No matter how much money they had. I'm free; they weren't."
What's your point? They lived quite a bit better, and accomplished more per capita, than quite a few capitalist and democratic nations. So by your reasoning, their system is better?
Quality of life is not a great way to measure much. If someone prospers because he stole the base of his financial empire from others, I would not look at it positively in any way.
"Stalin's system of maintaining power deserved to be destroyed."
It was, and thankfully not by any invading force, which no doubt would have been more bloody and less beneficial for the people living there.
"Stalin's system of maintaining power deserved to be destroyed."
Yes, and certainly not in the manner that it was.
Typical FUD post. A lot of claims and not even an attempt to back them up.
http://www.wikipov.org/
They are funding it. I know, because my graduate advisor is working on it (here in the US, supported by DARPA). In fact, a lot of money in the US is going into this...
Use http://www.jetable.org/en/index
And if you're one of the enlightened folks who use Firefox, then there's an extension for it.
Yes, they can't email you if you lose your password...
Agreed. Some people may call Midnight Commander a GUI (or partly one), but no one will deny that it is fully text based.
I can select random files using just the cursor keys with it, and copy/move/delete them faster than anyone who uses a mouse based file utility.
Why?
I've used MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger for voice chats. They sucked compared to Skype.
Also, neither of the above two work in Linux. The only reason I gave Skype a try was for the convenience not to have to reboot my computer just so that I can use Windows to do voice chat.
I like Skype because I get less than a 10th of the dropped packets that I do with the other two, and because they actually catered to me.
I signed up a few months ago with Broadvox Direct - the price then was $20/mo (now $30/mo).
Initially, voice quality was good - better than cell phone but not as good as a land line.
Now it's a little worse, but still fine.
No noticeable latency. Many features - well worth the money.
The ATA that comes with it has QoS, so if you put it ahead of everything else, you should be fine.
Don't worry about bandwidth issues. At the better quality it uses no more than 90 kilobits/s - which will barely have an effect on anything you may be downloading. I've put it to the test - Web download, bittorrent, etc. No detectable change in sound quality or download speed.
Downtimes have been few and far between. However, keep in mind that VoIP is still in its infancy, and you just won't get the quality customer service that land line companies provide.
The other issue is regarding availability of 911 (frequently not possible on VoIP).
No regrets about the change - got rid of my landline.
Honesty naturally evolves in a free market because it is the only way for a business to survive in the long run. When markets are not free, public honesty tends to suffer greatly.
All makes sense until I see the good old news media companies, and how everyone flocks to dishonest sources.
Then I realize the whole concept of evolving honesty is rubbish.
If you really want that degree, just go ahead with the less-paying offer and get that degree.
If you're marketable enough now to get that other management position offer, then you'll be even more marketable later once you have that degree.
Exactly - you hit the nail on its head.
The reason one should go to a university these days is for both job training and to get an education. It's the only time in your life that you can dedicate yourself to it.
But to require every student to get a full liberal arts degree in order to get a job in a specialized area is not simply inefficient, it's idiotic.
A full liberal arts degree? Oh please! Where I went, we had to take six courses in such areas for engineering - that's at most a little over a semester's worth. Not even 15% of your time.
As one of the posters said: It's your money. If you don't like it, the universities don't have to change - you have to find one that suits your desires. There are dedicated colleges in the US - often quite expensive. Or you could move to one of those countries you envy and do your college there.
This more than anything else is the reason the third world (esp. India and China) will eat us alive
Nonsense. I used to hear this during my undergrad: "Once you go to grad school, the folks from China and India will just blow you out - you can't compete with them." I ended up going to a university ranked 3rd in my field (electrical engineering), and 5th in engineering overall. Yes, the folks from abroad often had taken my introductory grad courses in their undergrad, but it made very little difference. It takes at most a year to catch up with them. And then I knew as much as they did with regards to engineering, and much more with regards to everything else. I didn't get the tail end of the curve as everyone suggested.
The only difference is that they may get their PhD a year earlier. Good for them - I'm not in a hurry.
Switch? To what? Linux?
The OS, while it may suck a little, is not the problem. It's the fact that Microsoft bundled a whole bunch of poor quality software with Windows.
For most people, Linux is still not a viable alternative. Some distributions are easier than others to use, but all are a pain to maintain for those who do not want to go use the command line and edit sundry config files all over the place.
I used to tell all my friends, "Use Linux! Use Linux! Use Linux!" Now I say it only to tech-minded ones, because most people actually try it and come to me with a huge list of complaints.
I could solve all their problems for them, but that would only show that the Linux distro they tried is simply not good for ordinary users.
No - a better solution (for now) is to get people to use good software on Windows. I've managed to get people to switch to Open Office and they never regretted it.
Sites like Clean Software help (albeit is a little scanty now).
Opera had tabs before Firefox did. Also mouse gestures.
True, but I bet Microsoft is still stealing it from Firefox. They didn't care about it while Opera had it. Only when Firefox brought it along and started eating into their browser share...
Plenty of things it can't do - tables, frames, etc.
The only reason I sometimes use Lynx over other text based browsers is its superior color capabilities. Very helpful when reading programming manuals.
Are you kidding?
I get an unlimited local plan for $20/mo (can get cheaper, but it then costs 5 cents per call, which would be bad here).
Now if I can set it so that only calls local to my town are made, and rack up enough credits that way, I'd be in heaven (barring poor sound quality). I make calls to countries that cost me over 20 cents/minute (used to be as high as 81 cents/minute a few years ago). 20 cents/minute is too much for a poor student like me - I only make short important calls.
Now for $20/mo, I'd love to be able to make long calls to certain countries. Especially considering that credits don't take time into account - just the number of calls.
The real question is: Can I connect my VoIP line on this (sorry, don't know anything about Asterix)? That would get me lots of credits, as I have unlimited calls to the US & Canada.
You seem to be missing perhaps the most fundamental aspect of security: "Make your data secure enough such that it is not worth anyone's time to get past the security measures".
Note that this does not mean make your data as humanly secure as possible. If it takes six months of brute force time to break my encryption, I don't mind. I don't have anything that is worth the trouble. So I'm not going to create hurdles for myself by securing it further.
If you have more valuable data, then make it as much harder to get to it. Going overboard will not gain you anything, other than a hassle.
Yes, big brother can storm my house, and torture the information out of me. But it's not worth their trouble. It perhaps would be worth it if I had no security measures and conducted all my Internet transactions in plain text. So I just use a few simple measures to make sure it's not that easy.
Not at all.
At least last I heard (while ago), the number of Harvard students who benefit from this is less than 10. They simply did not admit such students.
Anyone have any official numbers?
Cheaper? With the visa situation the way it is, if there were a cheaper place, people would go there.
I think few countries can compete with what the US pays students who have teaching or research assistantships. Frequently, all the tuition is waived as well. I live quite comfortably on what I earn from my assistantship.
I've looked at Canada, UK, and a few other countries in Europe. None of the universities I looked at would pay me enough for an assistantship for me to simply live.
You have to understand that what may be true in the US need not be true in India. I'm guessing a higher degree over there does guarantee a higher paid job. It's just the way people think over there.
In addition, you seem to be talking mostly about Master's degrees. Keep in mind that a number of people desire PhD's. They really like their fields, and want to do research on it (or teach). Other than the fact that you spend so many years getting the PhD, there's little financial loss. PhD research jobs pay a lot more than if you just had a Bachelor's degree.
"Ad-Aware and SpyBot offer great performance for free, yet when Microsoft debuts its AntiSpyware application, it will require a subscription fee."
A subscription fee?! First, they produce an OS that's just open to all manner of spyware one can imagine, then they actually charge to have it removed?!
Wow! I need to get into this business!
...deserves it more than anyone else!
It's interesting to note that in the whole rant, he never actually explained this. He said that both guest experts and ordinary people will be able to contribute (which can be done now). But exactly what policy that favors the experts will make editing wars less likely?
The original post that started this all speaks of forks. Most of the links provided, though, are simply specialized topics - I see no problem with such forks. If it bothers anyone, they're probably free to just go copy the whole article and place it on Wikipedia (depending on the license, of course).
Regardless of its criticisms, I'd say that Wikipedia is the best encyclopedia I have seen to date. Yes - for certain topics, Brittannica(sp?) seems a bit more pedantic, but that's precisely because only one viewpoint is being represented. I'm sure I can find plenty of articles in Brittannica that I think are hogwash. I can do the same with Wikipedia, but am free to look at the History pages to see the whole story.
I do recognize the problem with controversial articles always getting edited back and forth, and it does affect the quality of those articles for the majority who do not wish to view article histories.
I myself am considering starting a fork, which I plan to work on alone for a number of years before releasing it to the public. The content that I wish to specialize on would be highly controversial, and I don't want edit wars to spoil what would be most of the articles. I wish MediaWiki had some method by which I could:
1) Assign one or a few sysops to each category.
2) Allow logged in users to make contributions (anyone can get an account). However, their contributions will not get to the main article automatically, but be tagged for review.
3) The sysop for that category will review, and if there are no major complaints, will allow it to get posted.
The only problem is if two or more people edit the same article before the sysop can review it...
But one thing I would insist on is that the sysops not be experts in the category they pick - it would probably be a random assignment. Most of the "experts" I have seen in some fields are incredibly biased, and I simply do not trust them.
In addition, once a change in the article has been approved, it would require, say, a vote of 3 or 5 sysops to revert that change. And a means to phase out horrible sysops.
You get the idea. Some means of quality control. The actual rules could vary.
However, the above is simply not suited for Wikipedia.
I signed up for Broadvox Direct's unlimited plan - $20/mo to the US & Canada.
Got it all set up a few days ago. Quality is great. Apparently there was an outage (not sure how long, perhaps under an hour) on New Year's Eve, but I wasn't even home when it happened.
I can't really say I'm saving much money, as my land line is only about $15, and if I include long distance calls using my calling card, the total is probably still under $20. But with all the added features I get - some of which aren't available on regular lines - I've got no complaints.
Am I happy? You bet!