So far I've purchased 2 cars, but am still renting (one car at $14k immediatly after graduation, the other at $35k last year, and it's 1 month from being paid off).
I now had a $14k car loan
You mean the bank bought the car for you, I assumed you bought the car yourself and was wondering where you came up with $14k through college. I don't consider a $1k down payment and $13k in debt as something I "own". Just the same as I don't consider $50k down and $250k in debt on a house as something I "own". And actually, quite a few mortgage laws look at it the same way - the lender owns the house until the debt is fully paid. Don't make a payment? There goes your car... house... boat... etc. If you really owned your house, then how come the bank is foreclosing on it and selling it to someone else?
It's for that exact reason that I'll pay $4k (cash, as in I bought it, not the bank) for a car, drive it for 2 years, then sell it for $3k. Buy another for $4k and repeat the process (and adjust as necessary... $8k/$6k, etc). I always own the vehicle and don't lose $3k/year (or more) for buying a shiny new car whose value drops like a rock. Although around $10k, depreciation doesn't hit you TOO hard, and I guess you might still have some warranty remaining. How much is that $35k car worth today? Not how much you would sell it for, but how much would anyone actually be willing to give you? Whatever it is, I can assure you it'll be below blue book. Nobody pays blue book anymore - the used car market is insanely flooded. That's why you can pick up 2005 sedans with 30k miles on them for under $10k. Only suckers buy new cars.
Not that borrowing money is always bad. You can borrow money for a house, sit on it for a year or two, and absorb the profits from the sale. But that doesn't generally apply to vehicles.
And I just find this statement odd: they let me off with a 5-year, 13.9%
Let you off? 13.9%? Wow. Money, down, the, drain. A shiny new car isn't essential for life. Save up your cash, stop wasting money on interest payments, make some wise investments, and you'll be a million times better off 10 years down the road. I know our society is all about spend spend spend, 2nd, 3rd, 4th mortgages, lines of credit, balance transfers, etc. But just fight it. Don't give into the hoopla. You'll thank yourself later on in life when you're vacationing in Europe 5 weeks out of every year because you're not up to your eyeballs in debt just trying to scrape by month-to-month.
Um, I think 4% is pretty standard for anyone across any industry that is considered a worker that gets their work done in a timely fashion and in good order. If you want that 10% raise, you better be implementing procedures to save the company millions of dollars and make sure your management knows about it. The only justification you could make for a higher raise while "just doing your job" would be for a smaller company where the earnings are more transparent to the workers. If there's only 30 people at the company and profits rise 30% over the year due to everyone "just doing their job", then yeah, a higher raise is arguable. But all that fancy stuff you do as a server admin for a large company, managing server space, making backups, handling software licensing schemes, that's all your job. You're expected to do it and do it reasonably well, that's why you were hired. And in return, you can expect a cost-of-living raise plus a small service incentive increase. The average raise at my company this year will be about 3.5% and I'll be content with that. Mainly because I'm still learning some of the processes and I don't know how everyone else will review my performance thus far. While I think I've done a great job on everything I've worked on, I figure that's what is expected of me. But if I end up patenting some new technologies in the coming year that I believe will help the company, I may feel different. If you can backup your claim for a higher raise, then by all means go for it. But don't sit there and whine that you only get 4% for just doing your job.
Besides, hasn't anyone ever told you? You don't get rich working for someone else.
If this ever goes to court, the company should expect their lawyers to be prosecuted for an unlawful breach of duty on the part of a ship's master or crew resulting in injury to the ship's owner.
Well, considering that your rent/mortgage and utilities is only $650/month, I'd say your statement of "things aren't cheap" is rather off. I pay almost $800/month for a 1 bd / 1 ba apartment in a low income area. About 1 mile north of me a studio goes for $1k/month minimum, apartments start at about $1.2k. Now, this is probably on the other end of the spectrum in that is one of the more expensive areas to live, but it's not the most expensive.
Still, my original statement is fairly accurate of your situation "Even with a reasonable amount of debt, the best you can afford with that is a small condo and a 2 year old Honda."... Although I have no clue how you afforded a $14k car at graduation, unless you had your parents paying for part of your college. But everyone isn't that lucky and some of us have to survive on our own.
Problem is, I don't know what your mother is worth. However, the base price for any mother starts at about $15k/year. So I'll offer you $15k/year for your mother unless you can prove otherwise that she is worth $66k/year.
I've got news for everybody. Unless you want to live your entire life deep in debt and only make the monthly payments, then $60k is not that much money. Even with a reasonable amount of debt, the best you can afford with that is a small condo and a 2 year old Honda. And that's if you do nothing else with your money. And if you want to live completely debt free, you're looking at renting a shitty studio apartment and driving that 1982 Civic for the next 10 years. People who make $60k don't run around in Beemers as they pull up to their 4000 square foot estate. Unless they live in some 3rd world country or something. Or if they're married to someone else who also makes $60k.
Yeh, but it still doesn't make sense. It's illegal for the professor to make 30 copies of a book and hand it out in class. Yet, it's legal for all 30 students to make their own copy of the book. What's the difference?
I experience the same to a lesser extent. Once opera was free, I started using ff/opera about 75/25. But a couple weeks ago my java installation for ff broke, and I couldn't fix it with a quick reinstall (and I needed to use some java sites right then and there) so I started using opera even more. Now I'm at about 50/50. But there are some things I don't like about opera. First is that it chokes on gmail for some reason. There was a gmail problem back in v7 or so that was supposed to be fixed, but I've got the latest version and it still chokes. And some of the layout is annoying.
Me too. Annoying as hell. It happens when i do a slight click-and-move-mouse-downward action. However, it only happens when I click in the white space area left of the comments. If I do it in the text area of the comments, it doesn't do it. And it started right after slashdot switched to the new design. I haven't seen it happen on any other site either. I can repeat it at will though, so this is not some sort of figment of our imaginations.
As opposed to a Vigenere cipher that is only a few hundred years old and several orders of magnitude harder to crack (without computers). Yet, nearly as easy to implement.
I talked to a college graduate that went to an interview at Microsoft. Apparently they throw a ton of these at you. The sad part is that like 90% of the people know this and get guides (online or something) to study the puzzles beforehand, so they know all the answers and don't actually do any thinking on their feet. Anyways, here's one of them...
You have 2 strings. Each string takes 1 hour to burn from end to end. You do not know the burn rate of the strings, it is completely random, and the burn rate varies along the string (ie 90% of the string may burn in the first 2 minutes and the last 10% may burn in the last 58 minutes). And the burn profile for each string is different (ie you can not flip the strings to have them burn symmetrically against each other).
Use the 2 strings to measure a 45 minute time period.
Yeh, and half the time I'm doing an address search, it does a local search instead of a map search. So when I type in 12345 Street, Town, ST it brings up a local search of pizza houses or something...
Well, I'm probably guilty of not cleaning or discarding my pillow often enough, but I think a regular wash would do the trick. How many people clean their bathrooms every day? And they aren't cesspools of disease. I'm willing to admit that I only clean my bathroom when needed (usually a quick clean every 1 week, and a thorough clean every 2 weeks), but it isn't used all that often, and only by 1 person (me). But still, there are no fungus colonies running rampant in there. Weird stenches from rogue bacteria do not emanate from there. In fact, it smells and looks cleaner that other people's bathrooms that I've been in. So what's the point? Wash your pillow once every 1 or 2 weeks and discard it every 2 or 3 months. Feel free to change those numbers as you wish. I'm not an expert, just speculation. Besides, pillows are cheap. Although my problem is that once I've broken in a pillow and it has that nice soft cushiony feel to it, I don't like to get rid of it and start over with a new annoying-fluff-in-your-face pillow.
Hopefully it doesn't get bogged down by patent issues as well. If this is the kind of breakthrough development in materials that they make it out to be, it should be accessible to anyone and everyone to come up with great new ideas on how to use it. Just sitting here I've already thought of half-a-dozen different uses to reduce complexity, cost, risk, and increase accessibility in existing systems. I'm concerned about the "patent" and "commercial partners" wording in the article. They need to have flexible licensing and just set a fair price for access to the technology to allow small guys a chance to get in on the business... but then set a royalty rate or something so if an invention does hit it big, they can take their appropriate share (which would hopefully fund additional CSIRO research).
I put "silent majority" in quotes to reference the parent poster's use of the word. I don't really have a true grasp of what the numbers might be, but the poll indicates the numbers are fairly even (39% to 44% is not a large spread). As well, they did not split the poll into responder's religion which could skew the results of looking at a Christian-only population. I was basically trying to indicate that the there are a lot of non-6000 YOE Christians, which there are. And this is all assuming you want to trust a poll that only sampled 1000 or 2000 people...
You're competely out of touch if you think the fundamentalist religious right (Christian, for this purpose) doesn't command enormous political power in the US.
Why don't you provide some evidence? I gave you examples to contradict the point you were trying to make... yet you just continue to talk while waving your hands.
The Bush administration has *coincided* with a number of court cases affecting religous activites, but the Bush administration (thats the executive branch, if you didn't pay attention in high school) not only has not "represented" any such thing it has actively worked to accomplish the opposite goal.
Do I need to make it any clearer? Stop spewing, and start ponying up some evidence.... Or should I take the fact that you failed to provide any backup as an indication that you don't know what you're talking about?
Well, yes it is. It's that simple.
Sigh, more hand waving. Let me know when you want to get back to a real discussion, otherwise I'm done with this comment.
I think you would be surprised at how many Christians peruse Slashdot. Perhaps we should create a poll?
As for getting up and yelling, I don't think the "silent majority" really feels they need to. There isn't a massive attack on science that needs defending. And science isn't attempting to legislate that all Christians be sent to boot camp. Religion is (for the most part) doing its own thing, and science is moving along with business as usual.
The reason that those specific guys get airtime is because what they are saying is quite controversial. Why would FOX want to put up some guy that says "Yeh, I'm a Christian. Yes, I'm for separation of church and state. No, I don't think ID is a legitimate scientific theory. Yes, I think we need more funding for the sciences."... His interview would be over in about 5 seconds and no one would be entertained.
As for the people you are meeting in SD... well... it's SD I guess? I know a lot of Christians that think the 6000 year old Earth thing is wrong. I'm sure we could have back-and-forth witnesses to say whether they've met 6000 YOE Christians or non-6000 YOE Christians.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, well there's some misunderstanding here
So far I've purchased 2 cars, but am still renting (one car at $14k immediatly after graduation, the other at $35k last year, and it's 1 month from being paid off).
I now had a $14k car loan
You mean the bank bought the car for you, I assumed you bought the car yourself and was wondering where you came up with $14k through college. I don't consider a $1k down payment and $13k in debt as something I "own". Just the same as I don't consider $50k down and $250k in debt on a house as something I "own". And actually, quite a few mortgage laws look at it the same way - the lender owns the house until the debt is fully paid. Don't make a payment? There goes your car
It's for that exact reason that I'll pay $4k (cash, as in I bought it, not the bank) for a car, drive it for 2 years, then sell it for $3k. Buy another for $4k and repeat the process (and adjust as necessary
Not that borrowing money is always bad. You can borrow money for a house, sit on it for a year or two, and absorb the profits from the sale. But that doesn't generally apply to vehicles.
And I just find this statement odd: they let me off with a 5-year, 13.9%
Let you off? 13.9%? Wow. Money, down, the, drain. A shiny new car isn't essential for life. Save up your cash, stop wasting money on interest payments, make some wise investments, and you'll be a million times better off 10 years down the road. I know our society is all about spend spend spend, 2nd, 3rd, 4th mortgages, lines of credit, balance transfers, etc. But just fight it. Don't give into the hoopla. You'll thank yourself later on in life when you're vacationing in Europe 5 weeks out of every year because you're not up to your eyeballs in debt just trying to scrape by month-to-month.
Um, I think 4% is pretty standard for anyone across any industry that is considered a worker that gets their work done in a timely fashion and in good order. If you want that 10% raise, you better be implementing procedures to save the company millions of dollars and make sure your management knows about it. The only justification you could make for a higher raise while "just doing your job" would be for a smaller company where the earnings are more transparent to the workers. If there's only 30 people at the company and profits rise 30% over the year due to everyone "just doing their job", then yeah, a higher raise is arguable. But all that fancy stuff you do as a server admin for a large company, managing server space, making backups, handling software licensing schemes, that's all your job. You're expected to do it and do it reasonably well, that's why you were hired. And in return, you can expect a cost-of-living raise plus a small service incentive increase. The average raise at my company this year will be about 3.5% and I'll be content with that. Mainly because I'm still learning some of the processes and I don't know how everyone else will review my performance thus far. While I think I've done a great job on everything I've worked on, I figure that's what is expected of me. But if I end up patenting some new technologies in the coming year that I believe will help the company, I may feel different. If you can backup your claim for a higher raise, then by all means go for it. But don't sit there and whine that you only get 4% for just doing your job.
Besides, hasn't anyone ever told you? You don't get rich working for someone else.
Greg: Oh, yeah, you can milk anything with nipples.
Jack: I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?
If this ever goes to court, the company should expect their lawyers to be prosecuted for an unlawful breach of duty on the part of a ship's master or crew resulting in injury to the ship's owner.
I don't understand.
Well, considering that your rent/mortgage and utilities is only $650/month, I'd say your statement of "things aren't cheap" is rather off. I pay almost $800/month for a 1 bd / 1 ba apartment in a low income area. About 1 mile north of me a studio goes for $1k/month minimum, apartments start at about $1.2k. Now, this is probably on the other end of the spectrum in that is one of the more expensive areas to live, but it's not the most expensive.
... Although I have no clue how you afforded a $14k car at graduation, unless you had your parents paying for part of your college. But everyone isn't that lucky and some of us have to survive on our own.
Still, my original statement is fairly accurate of your situation "Even with a reasonable amount of debt, the best you can afford with that is a small condo and a 2 year old Honda."
Problem is, I don't know what your mother is worth. However, the base price for any mother starts at about $15k/year. So I'll offer you $15k/year for your mother unless you can prove otherwise that she is worth $66k/year.
I've got news for everybody. Unless you want to live your entire life deep in debt and only make the monthly payments, then $60k is not that much money. Even with a reasonable amount of debt, the best you can afford with that is a small condo and a 2 year old Honda. And that's if you do nothing else with your money. And if you want to live completely debt free, you're looking at renting a shitty studio apartment and driving that 1982 Civic for the next 10 years. People who make $60k don't run around in Beemers as they pull up to their 4000 square foot estate. Unless they live in some 3rd world country or something. Or if they're married to someone else who also makes $60k.
Yeh, but it still doesn't make sense. It's illegal for the professor to make 30 copies of a book and hand it out in class. Yet, it's legal for all 30 students to make their own copy of the book. What's the difference?
Yeh, I wonder if the affects of not considering how reliability effects their clock ends up effecting the actual affects themselves.
I experience the same to a lesser extent. Once opera was free, I started using ff/opera about 75/25. But a couple weeks ago my java installation for ff broke, and I couldn't fix it with a quick reinstall (and I needed to use some java sites right then and there) so I started using opera even more. Now I'm at about 50/50. But there are some things I don't like about opera. First is that it chokes on gmail for some reason. There was a gmail problem back in v7 or so that was supposed to be fixed, but I've got the latest version and it still chokes. And some of the layout is annoying.
Me too. Annoying as hell. It happens when i do a slight click-and-move-mouse-downward action. However, it only happens when I click in the white space area left of the comments. If I do it in the text area of the comments, it doesn't do it. And it started right after slashdot switched to the new design. I haven't seen it happen on any other site either. I can repeat it at will though, so this is not some sort of figment of our imaginations.
China says the line will promote the development of impoverished Tibet.
That, or help enslave Tibet?
As opposed to a Vigenere cipher that is only a few hundred years old and several orders of magnitude harder to crack (without computers). Yet, nearly as easy to implement.
Yeh, 20 minutes sounds about right for that rambling comment ...
I talked to a college graduate that went to an interview at Microsoft. Apparently they throw a ton of these at you. The sad part is that like 90% of the people know this and get guides (online or something) to study the puzzles beforehand, so they know all the answers and don't actually do any thinking on their feet. Anyways, here's one of them ...
You have 2 strings. Each string takes 1 hour to burn from end to end. You do not know the burn rate of the strings, it is completely random, and the burn rate varies along the string (ie 90% of the string may burn in the first 2 minutes and the last 10% may burn in the last 58 minutes). And the burn profile for each string is different (ie you can not flip the strings to have them burn symmetrically against each other).
Use the 2 strings to measure a 45 minute time period.
Weird. I'm guessing this was for like $2000 insane-thread-count Egyptian silk sheets and not your $30 per set regular ol' sheets down at Target.
Yeh, and half the time I'm doing an address search, it does a local search instead of a map search. So when I type in 12345 Street, Town, ST it brings up a local search of pizza houses or something ...
Well, I'm probably guilty of not cleaning or discarding my pillow often enough, but I think a regular wash would do the trick. How many people clean their bathrooms every day? And they aren't cesspools of disease. I'm willing to admit that I only clean my bathroom when needed (usually a quick clean every 1 week, and a thorough clean every 2 weeks), but it isn't used all that often, and only by 1 person (me). But still, there are no fungus colonies running rampant in there. Weird stenches from rogue bacteria do not emanate from there. In fact, it smells and looks cleaner that other people's bathrooms that I've been in. So what's the point? Wash your pillow once every 1 or 2 weeks and discard it every 2 or 3 months. Feel free to change those numbers as you wish. I'm not an expert, just speculation. Besides, pillows are cheap. Although my problem is that once I've broken in a pillow and it has that nice soft cushiony feel to it, I don't like to get rid of it and start over with a new annoying-fluff-in-your-face pillow.
Warning, IANAPE - Pillow Expert
Ok, sorry, I told myself I wasn't going to reply, but I just can't resist.
1) You make claims.
2) I ask you to back up your claims.
3) You tell me to fuck off.
Wow, hilarious.
Have you tried milking a flea? It's not a pretty sight. Half the time you end up crushing it with the tweezers.
They just forgot to mention that we would not survive the landing.
Hopefully it doesn't get bogged down by patent issues as well. If this is the kind of breakthrough development in materials that they make it out to be, it should be accessible to anyone and everyone to come up with great new ideas on how to use it. Just sitting here I've already thought of half-a-dozen different uses to reduce complexity, cost, risk, and increase accessibility in existing systems. I'm concerned about the "patent" and "commercial partners" wording in the article. They need to have flexible licensing and just set a fair price for access to the technology to allow small guys a chance to get in on the business ... but then set a royalty rate or something so if an invention does hit it big, they can take their appropriate share (which would hopefully fund additional CSIRO research).
I put "silent majority" in quotes to reference the parent poster's use of the word. I don't really have a true grasp of what the numbers might be, but the poll indicates the numbers are fairly even (39% to 44% is not a large spread). As well, they did not split the poll into responder's religion which could skew the results of looking at a Christian-only population. I was basically trying to indicate that the there are a lot of non-6000 YOE Christians, which there are. And this is all assuming you want to trust a poll that only sampled 1000 or 2000 people ...
You're competely out of touch if you think the fundamentalist religious right (Christian, for this purpose) doesn't command enormous political power in the US.
Why don't you provide some evidence? I gave you examples to contradict the point you were trying to make
The Bush administration has *coincided* with a number of court cases affecting religous activites, but the Bush administration (thats the executive branch, if you didn't pay attention in high school) not only has not "represented" any such thing it has actively worked to accomplish the opposite goal.
Do I need to make it any clearer? Stop spewing, and start ponying up some evidence.
Well, yes it is. It's that simple.
Sigh, more hand waving. Let me know when you want to get back to a real discussion, otherwise I'm done with this comment.
I think you would be surprised at how many Christians peruse Slashdot. Perhaps we should create a poll?
... His interview would be over in about 5 seconds and no one would be entertained.
... well ... it's SD I guess? I know a lot of Christians that think the 6000 year old Earth thing is wrong. I'm sure we could have back-and-forth witnesses to say whether they've met 6000 YOE Christians or non-6000 YOE Christians.
As for getting up and yelling, I don't think the "silent majority" really feels they need to. There isn't a massive attack on science that needs defending. And science isn't attempting to legislate that all Christians be sent to boot camp. Religion is (for the most part) doing its own thing, and science is moving along with business as usual.
The reason that those specific guys get airtime is because what they are saying is quite controversial. Why would FOX want to put up some guy that says "Yeh, I'm a Christian. Yes, I'm for separation of church and state. No, I don't think ID is a legitimate scientific theory. Yes, I think we need more funding for the sciences."
As for the people you are meeting in SD