to BE a monopoly. What's illegal is to abuse your monopoly status. If Arm doesn't abuse its position, then nobody will complain. Sometimes being a monopoly is a good thing - the higher your production, the higher your protential efficiency. If you are passing this savings to the consumer, everyone wins.
It's a simple rule to keep track of... never ever let the employer spend your money for you. In its purest form, it means no expensing anything, no up-front cash of any sort for your employer, even if it's to be reimbursed later. (which often times works out to much later)
The only "exception" I make to this simple rule is that of convenience. I bring my laptop to work because when I go on a service call, it's convenient for me to have my laptop as a resource. I could do my job just as efficiently, although more unpleasantly, without my laptop though.
A smart employer will realize it's unwise to pressure employees into using personal assets and resources for company business. One manager I used to have always kept the "what if he gets hit by a bus tomorrow?" concept on his mind. If getting day-to-day business done at work depended on my bringing my laptop, how much forward-thinking does it take to realize this is BAD if you quit, get fired, get injured, etc? If the manager truly cares about the business, they won't try to get employees to donate to the company - in fact, quite the opposite will be true, to prevent the creation of a failure point. At my last job, I actually had to put together a case for why it was useful to the company for me to bring my laptop in for them to allow it.
As for the more specific issue of the company wanting you to spend money for them... well, there are a few professions where this is supported to an extent. Mechanics sometimes are required to provide their own tools, although they often are reimbursed for costs of purchasing replacements, and I think this is partly done because the mechanics are picky about what sort of tools they prefer to use.
Spending cash monthly for your workplace is insane. Never forget that you have a business relationship with the company, nothing more. "Company loyalty" is an illusion created by businesses to increase proffit margins - a place where they try to get something for nothing. This comes in many forms... working OT without clocking it (or pushing hours over to next week etc), being on call (or carrying a pager) without compensation, use of personal equipment (especially transportation) without compensation, these things are all ways for your employer to get something for nothing from you.
In your case, if the company refuses to pay for the line to home, they have no business expecting you to pay for it for them. Also, ask yourself how much of your paycheck is to compensate you for being on-call while at home? If you are an independent contractor, you are paid a flat fee for the expenses you incur, and it's your job to evaluate whether you are being compensated for all your expenses plus your time and effort. As an employee of a company, you should have a clear understanding of what your paycheck is compensating you for. For most people this means the work they do for the company while on the clock, and that's it. Period. If they start asking you for more, then you start asking THEM for more. Nice and simple.
Just tossing out another point of view - similar but different than some of the others previously discussed. First off, examine the data you are keeping - do you really need that much? Nowadays it's common to be able to acquire data faster than it can be processed, and if you never stop gathering data, well, you never will catch up, only fall farther and farther behind.
If you DO need this data, and you are going to need it for awhile, (year or more) I'd recommend cheap HDs. They also have an advantage of being easily catalogged, and are untouchable when compared with access time of tapes. Don't go raid5 though, this is not "catastrophy-proof". (flood, fire, tornado, etc) For catastrophy protection, mirror your drives. When you have them loaded up with data, pull the FW cables and swap drives in the enclosures with fresh empty drives. Label them well, and then take each half of the mirror to DIFFERENT LOCATIONS. It's OK to keep one set on-site, but the other set must be somewhere else, preferably in another zip code. This will allow you near instant access to your data (since it's onsite), will protect your data from mechanical failure (through mirroring) and will protect you against catastrophy. (you WILL need to acquire new firewire boxes etc if your office gets leveled... don't forget this detail in general - the data is of no value if you lack the equipment (tape drives etc) to read it back in with) I know you can get compression and fit more on a tape etc by using archiving software, but it may be worth the extra cost to obey the KISS rule and just simply drag and drop the data to the formatted HDs. This will make data recovery MUCH SIMPLER, and if there are errors on the HD when you need to recover, this will insure you can actually recover most/all of the information. Archive streams and tapes are notorious for losing 100% of the data that follows a corruption point in the stream.
Once you know you no longer need a specific set, drop it back into the pool of usable drives. Buy them by the case, it's much cheaper this way. It also is advisable to buy the same make/model every time you have to get more drives, even if there are newer, larger, cheaper models out, because having all the same drives means one less complication to worry about in times of crisis.
... would be the ones that show how you and your prospective new manager will be interacting. For example, if you are a "hands-off" type person, find out if the interviewee is a micromanager. Ask leading questions, but lead them in the opposite direction that you want to hear, and see if the candidate follows you. If he does, he's either not being honest, or intends to go that way, and in either event it's a Bad Thing(tm) for you. Don't lead/push too hard though, or you might make a favorable candidate wonder if this is the right job to accept. Give them an opportunity to show their position in the 'favorable' direction.
One thing I look for in a manager is a backbone. Some managers cower in the corner when corporate eyes your department for a budget cut. Others will actively fight for their staff, sometimes at significant risk to their own position. They're not common at all, but worth looking for. Try to find a manager with some backbone, so you don't get walked on by the higher-ups.
The hardest quality to find is confidence. Managers that want to meddel in everything are ultimately disruptful to the entire process. If the candidate isn't comfortable with allowing the people whose jobs it is to tighten the bolts to handle the wrench by themselves, life's going to be rough. Of course the opposite of that is the manager who doesn't care, but at least in my experience, they are much less common than the micromanagers. At least that variety can (usually) safely be ignored.
Some certs you can pass if you have even a tiny clue. Others require knowing what you're doing. A small few actually require you to study the studyguide to pass.
Another thing I wonder about is how many of these 'certifications' are just money grubbing. All the people I know that have taken the MCSE were surprised at the simplicity of the test, and surprised at the high cost of the test. Seems like a money grab by (in this example) MS, at the expense (monitarily) of the employees, and at the expense (hiring unqualified workers) of the employers. Now try that stunt with say... Cisco certifications... good luck!
I just recently took the three basic Apple certifications. Now I consider myself an experienced mac user and technician, and from that point of view I'd describe the test to contain 1/3 "do you know what a mouse is?" questions and 1/3 of what I'd consider "knowledgeable" technician questions. The remaining 1/3 were "did you really read the study materials, we're getting picky here" questions. At $150/test, these were still expensive, but not nearly as bad as some others. Unfortunately, although these tests were for service technician certifications, the test questions required much more knowledge of basic mac usage (trivia?) than service, and did a poor job of testing a person's ability to actually troubleshoot and identify problems.
By my take on the diagram of how it works, the system requires itself to have a static copy of the background to be mimmiced. In all the demos, you never see the camera move, because that would change the background that is being mimmiced, and would probably give the hardware an aneurism trying to keep up with the updates. They most likely had to take a shot of the background before the demonstrator and his "stealth object" came into view, to use for the projection part of the process. That, and they're probably using a visual comparison system to determine how to mask off the projector so it doesn't project light of any sort anywhere except where the cloaked item is.
This means it's not really possible to cloak something that's in front of a changing backdrop, at least not with this implementation of the technology.
Yes, all four tires. I saw the pictures of the car sitting parked in the driveway with four flats. Then closeup shots of one of the wheels where you could see how it arced from the wheelwell into the tire where the bead seal is. I wish I had made copies, but it wasn't my computer...
oh let me count the lightning stories...
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When Lightning Strikes
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· Score: 5, Interesting
A guy I know put an antenna up in a pine tree, about 70 feet, without a ground wire. Needless to say it got nailed, about 2am while he slept. Detonated the antenna, peeling it into 2ft long, thin strips of fiberglass. Boiled his coax, all the way into his house. Electrofried his radio, and set its power cord on fire. (under his bed, where he was sleeping, setting the carpet on fire) Blew the outlet off the wall. Got into the breaker box and destroyed several breakers, two microwaves, and three color TVs. Finally found ground via the phone entrance box on the outside of the house, which was blown off the house. This was the SECOND time he had been hit, the previous time was the same exact scenario, just not as damaging.
A guy down the block got his ham radio antenna hit, blowing the base of the antenna to pieces. (severing the ground connection in the process, unfortunately) The lightning then took out his coax like det cord, which was laid down under one layer of shingles. This shot the shingles that were laid over the coax right off the house. It then took out his radio, followed the power cord into the electrical system in his house, took out all the appliances in his kitchen, and then went underground to his garage and took out three marine radios that were on charge at the time.
A friend and former co-worker had an employee of his arrive late to work. When asked of the excuse, he said he got his truck struck by lightning on the way in. And boy did he. They never found any of the whip antenna. The base of it, solid brass, was melted like ice cream. Blew out the back sliding windows where the coax came into the cab. Blew the radio to pieces. Finally found ground via front left quarterpanel, which was permanently bowed inward from the sudden heating.
I worked on someone's computer recently, they had pictures on their desktop of a relative's car that was struck while going down the highway. It hit the rear mounted stereo antenna, arced into the body of the car, (creating a 1/2" hole in the metal near the antenna mount) and found ground via ALL FOUR TIRES, arcing across the wheel wells and apparently through the steel belts, flattening all four tires in the process. It also blew out the rear window from the concussion.
My car was struck by lightning while on the road too. Took out the headlights and the windshield wipers, which then started working normally a few hours later. (probably tripped the breakers that those items usually are on instead of fuses)
I have a large ham radio antenna at my house as well, which has been struck at least three times so far, you can count the char marks on it. Thanks goes to a 1/4" solid aluminum ground wire and a 10ft copper water pipe for a ground rod, the lightning has never even scratched my radio, which remains plugged in and cabled up 24/7.
Lastly, if you're ever on a beach and run into a patch of what appears like a cross between pavement and sand, that's where lightning has struck the beach and melted the sand into glass. Really weird effect...
I too cut my teeth on 6502 assembly, and I'm thankful for it. It's allowed me to be able to spot areas in need of optimization and of course debugging compiled code where the source is not available or the debugger is not being helpful. Crypto is one area that demands assembly for high speed processing - the last two crypto blocks I optimized yielded a 10x and 30x speed increase. It's even helped me find bugs in compilers when they were generating broken code from my working source.
That, and lastly, assembly makes you gain a whole new respect for higher level languages. Surely you remember having to make your own math libraries for the 6502, since it was an 8 bit processor that couldn't even multiply. Once you know how the basics work, it greatly benefits your use of the tools built on the basics.
So much talk about cable modems, and no mention of DSL. I'm in a somewhat "backwater" area as far as broadband is concerned, and have been hopping between different technologies as they become available in my area, including dial-up, MVL, cable, and now DSL.
I'm thankful to say that DSL prices are starting to become competative. My first DSL line (McLeodUSA) is $140/mo for 768/768 with a few static IPs. Qwest has been offering DSL in this area for over a year, but offering lower speeds (256/512) for higher prices ($200/mo) and no statics. Just recently they got their heads screwed on straight and now offer 900/1500 for $70/mo with statics. So the prices ARE dropping, and the providers ARE realizing they have to be reasonable to get more business.
When I talked with Qwest, they said the reason for the new plans was "to become competative with cable". Interesting, we've see how proliferation of dial-up affects cable prices, and now we can see how that is trickling down to the digital line rates.
I'm curious how many ppl leave their car running while pumping gas. Often times I do. (no explosions so far) Is there anything specifically dangerous about this? The exhaust is safely cool by the time it reaches the tailpipe, and I can't think of anything that would build up static or spark on my truck. Although if it *were* insulated, the belts would make a great van de graffe (sp?) generator.
Re:Don't get it
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The FragBook
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm happy cleaning house at the lan games with my 17" tibook. Granted, the external speakers and usb trackball are somewhat manditory, but that still fits well within my definition of "portable". Sadly, it's over 2 years old and the graphics chipset is showing its age when I play UT 2004, but I foresee an upgrade next year sometime to put my fps back in the high double digits where they belong.
And the ironic part... the lan games are hosted at -my- house, and almost without exception, all the guests bring giant towers with deafening fans and hulking trinitrons. I have to chuckle watching them lug all that big equipment around. (one fellow has gotten smart and now brings a big LCD monitor) But yet for some reason they never want to even consider a laptop. They must enjoy hauling the big boxes around?
I run Ad-Aware on badly behaving Windows boxes and show their 'owners' just what a mess they have. Record so far is 500+ items tagged by AdAware. Unreal.
Only 500? I've watched the PC techs at our shop place at least three machines into the "1000-club". The amazing thing is about 15% of the machines we clean come back within a week, infested again, despite the fact that every PC that leaves our service department leaves with spybot and ad-aware on the desktop, with instructions on how to run them weekly.
"Your internet connection isn't optimized. Click 'yes' to optimize"
"Click 'yes' to enter this web site"
... and my personal favorite...
"You must click 'Yes' to view this web page"
Don't people ever learn? I certainly hope not - they keep people like us in business.
(now watch me destroy my karma... "and this is yet another reason why I am soooo glad I own a mac.")
I work at a computer retailer, and we get about one of these calls a day, almost always for purchases of several laptops. (expensive nice ones, macintosh or toshiba usually) Our sales manager has implemented the policy that as soon as the TTY voice is heard, recite "DO NOT CALL BACK EVER AGAIN" and hanging up. It seems a bit rude to me, but then again, attempting to scam a small business out of thousands of dollars is also quite rude.
This apparently has been going on for the last several years, so it's nothing new. I was surprised just how many of these calls we get - there must be quite a few scammers out there running through the phonebooks looking for a mark.
FYI, any new mac you buy will have gigabit on the mobo, including the laptops.
One of these days I may upgrade to a gigabit switch in the basement so the house network runs 1000bt, but I'm in no great hurry. HD i/o speeds here are already being pushed with the 100bt so I don't know how much gigabit will help anything.
That may be a convenient way to think, but it only considers today. Thinking about tomorrow, when they don't have as much money as they want to spend, they just raise taxes. And that DOES affect us all.
There used to be a Buzz Buzzard in our city's telephone book.
That, and a friend of mine went to school with a vietnamese transfer student. I don't know how his name was spelled, but it was pronounced "dung heap". Apparently he was the first one to inform this kid that his name literally translated to "pile of $hit"...
With all the flames for the iPod and its battery, I can't help but wonder.. do these people think that most consumer products with rechargeable batteries allow the batteries to be replaced easily, if at all? I just threw out a cordless screwdriver whose batteries stopped taking a charge, and there was no replacing them. A few months ago I threw away a rechargeable flashlight for the same reason. So what is it about the iPod that makes it deserve such relentless attacks? Do a google search on "ipod battery" and I'm sure you'll find dozens of sites that offer replacement batteries for the iPod, with detailed instructions on how to do the replacement - that's more than I can say for any of the rechargeable items I've thrown away in the past few years.
I asked my registrar (register.com) a similar question, and found out at least for them how it works. Apparently when you pay for your domain, they forward the registration fee to icann or whoever, so your domain is registered with them for however long. From there, you can transfer your domain to any registration service, usually free of charge.
I asked the rep then what is to stop me from registering my domain at the cheapest place possible for an extended time, (10 yrs etc) and then transferring it to register.com to take advantage of their free 800# support etc. She said that although that's abusive to them, it's allowed, and that some people do indeed do that to get their higher quality services without paying the higher registration fees.
This being the case, if NS goes under, you can just transfer administration of your domain name to another registrar. I suppose you can think of it like stock... you pay a broker to buy and manage stock for you. If the broker or his company goes away, it doesn't mean you've lost your stock - you just have to find another broker to continue providing you services for the stock you own. That, and you have the right to change who manages your stock at any time.
Like it or not, when you're on the clock, they own your time. If they say no cel phones, that is their right. I've ran into this problem in the past, on bringing my notebook to work. My solution to the problem was to draft a request for clarification/exception on my notebook, and was accompanied by a convincing and long list of incidents where my notebook did a job that no other computer in the building was capable of, or when company time/money was saved as a result of me having my notebook. I was actually more interested in the sheer convenience of having my own system with me at work, but I had a valid point in that I am more valuable as an employee to them when I have my laptop.
The counter-argument that was raised by my manager was "if the company needs your notebook, then what the company really needs is its own notebook". That got about two steps up the management ladder before being shot down by the bean-counters. Since they had already agreed that I had a point, and since they now couldn't do the best thing about it, they did the second-best thing - they got off my case about it. (I wasn't a formal exception, but was basically left alone, I could walk past managers with my laptop bag in tow without getting "pulled over")
I think you should persue this route. Since they're not all that expensive, you're very likely to get your own company-provided cel phones as a result, and you'll probably get less static from them about redirecting your warning instant messages to the company phone than you are getting now about your own cel phone. The down-side of this is you are now basically chained to the phone... it's like a pager and they'll expect you to answer it off-hours. At this point, just take it over... give out that as your 'new' cel number and ditch your own phone. Save on monthly charges and keep the peace at the same time.;-)
I spent a summer working at a store that was without a doubt the "worst case scenario" for a family-run business. The new owner was an honest, hard-working, trusting woman. Unfortunately, her two sons (and their wives) were a pack of thieves and constituted the rest of the staff besides myself. It was not unheard of for the store's till to come up with less cash in the evening than it started with in the morning. Store supplies, namely food, were regularly eaten for breakfast, lunch, and even prepared and taken home for dinner by most of the staff. Money was commonly withdrawn from the till to go next door to the gas station to get pop or snacks at lunch or at any other convenient time. Money was even taken from the till just as they would be leaving for the evening if they wanted to pick up something on the way home. The timeclock, "mysteriously broken" before my arrival, I fixed, amidst the dirty looks I got from the rest of the staff. (this put an end to their cheating on their time cards)
I realize this is probably not the scenario you're in, but it's worthwhile to keep the ideas in mind. Despite my discussions with her on several occasions, she refused to stop believing in her family, although she admitted she knew the basics of what was happening from day to day. In the end, six months later, it cost her her business.
There's a reason most employers don't let people with "personal interest" in eachother be in manager/managed positions relative to eachother - it's not easy to ignore your feelings and deal out level-handed management to your friends or family. You might want to consider hiring a part-time or on-contract personnel manager. Maybe just someone you know professionally from somewhere that you pay a modest fee to, to act as a manager and reviewer for your staff. Someone whose judgement you trust, and whom you are willing to listen to even if they have something to say that you're not going to like hearing about. Having this person around to conduct evaluations, discuss problem issues, etc., could easily prove worth the cost, considering your circumstances.
If they are mainly targetting "hijacked" computers that are spam engines, this sort of problem may be more difficult for the average user to fix than say a virus. If a spamhaus is remoting maybe 200 computers, is that enough to catch Symantec's attention and make a definition for? Possibly not. Removal of this sort of "low incidence" non-viral back door would then require the user to nuke and pave their system unless they were/knew someone familiar with registry editing etc.
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to BE a monopoly. What's illegal is to abuse your monopoly status. If Arm doesn't abuse its position, then nobody will complain. Sometimes being a monopoly is a good thing - the higher your production, the higher your protential efficiency. If you are passing this savings to the consumer, everyone wins.
It's a simple rule to keep track of... never ever let the employer spend your money for you. In its purest form, it means no expensing anything, no up-front cash of any sort for your employer, even if it's to be reimbursed later. (which often times works out to much later)
The only "exception" I make to this simple rule is that of convenience. I bring my laptop to work because when I go on a service call, it's convenient for me to have my laptop as a resource. I could do my job just as efficiently, although more unpleasantly, without my laptop though.
A smart employer will realize it's unwise to pressure employees into using personal assets and resources for company business. One manager I used to have always kept the "what if he gets hit by a bus tomorrow?" concept on his mind. If getting day-to-day business done at work depended on my bringing my laptop, how much forward-thinking does it take to realize this is BAD if you quit, get fired, get injured, etc? If the manager truly cares about the business, they won't try to get employees to donate to the company - in fact, quite the opposite will be true, to prevent the creation of a failure point. At my last job, I actually had to put together a case for why it was useful to the company for me to bring my laptop in for them to allow it.
As for the more specific issue of the company wanting you to spend money for them... well, there are a few professions where this is supported to an extent. Mechanics sometimes are required to provide their own tools, although they often are reimbursed for costs of purchasing replacements, and I think this is partly done because the mechanics are picky about what sort of tools they prefer to use.
Spending cash monthly for your workplace is insane. Never forget that you have a business relationship with the company, nothing more. "Company loyalty" is an illusion created by businesses to increase proffit margins - a place where they try to get something for nothing. This comes in many forms... working OT without clocking it (or pushing hours over to next week etc), being on call (or carrying a pager) without compensation, use of personal equipment (especially transportation) without compensation, these things are all ways for your employer to get something for nothing from you.
In your case, if the company refuses to pay for the line to home, they have no business expecting you to pay for it for them. Also, ask yourself how much of your paycheck is to compensate you for being on-call while at home? If you are an independent contractor, you are paid a flat fee for the expenses you incur, and it's your job to evaluate whether you are being compensated for all your expenses plus your time and effort. As an employee of a company, you should have a clear understanding of what your paycheck is compensating you for. For most people this means the work they do for the company while on the clock, and that's it. Period. If they start asking you for more, then you start asking THEM for more. Nice and simple.
Just tossing out another point of view - similar but different than some of the others previously discussed. First off, examine the data you are keeping - do you really need that much? Nowadays it's common to be able to acquire data faster than it can be processed, and if you never stop gathering data, well, you never will catch up, only fall farther and farther behind.
If you DO need this data, and you are going to need it for awhile, (year or more) I'd recommend cheap HDs. They also have an advantage of being easily catalogged, and are untouchable when compared with access time of tapes. Don't go raid5 though, this is not "catastrophy-proof". (flood, fire, tornado, etc) For catastrophy protection, mirror your drives. When you have them loaded up with data, pull the FW cables and swap drives in the enclosures with fresh empty drives. Label them well, and then take each half of the mirror to DIFFERENT LOCATIONS. It's OK to keep one set on-site, but the other set must be somewhere else, preferably in another zip code. This will allow you near instant access to your data (since it's onsite), will protect your data from mechanical failure (through mirroring) and will protect you against catastrophy. (you WILL need to acquire new firewire boxes etc if your office gets leveled... don't forget this detail in general - the data is of no value if you lack the equipment (tape drives etc) to read it back in with) I know you can get compression and fit more on a tape etc by using archiving software, but it may be worth the extra cost to obey the KISS rule and just simply drag and drop the data to the formatted HDs. This will make data recovery MUCH SIMPLER, and if there are errors on the HD when you need to recover, this will insure you can actually recover most/all of the information. Archive streams and tapes are notorious for losing 100% of the data that follows a corruption point in the stream.
Once you know you no longer need a specific set, drop it back into the pool of usable drives. Buy them by the case, it's much cheaper this way. It also is advisable to buy the same make/model every time you have to get more drives, even if there are newer, larger, cheaper models out, because having all the same drives means one less complication to worry about in times of crisis.
... would be the ones that show how you and your prospective new manager will be interacting. For example, if you are a "hands-off" type person, find out if the interviewee is a micromanager. Ask leading questions, but lead them in the opposite direction that you want to hear, and see if the candidate follows you. If he does, he's either not being honest, or intends to go that way, and in either event it's a Bad Thing(tm) for you. Don't lead/push too hard though, or you might make a favorable candidate wonder if this is the right job to accept. Give them an opportunity to show their position in the 'favorable' direction.
One thing I look for in a manager is a backbone. Some managers cower in the corner when corporate eyes your department for a budget cut. Others will actively fight for their staff, sometimes at significant risk to their own position. They're not common at all, but worth looking for. Try to find a manager with some backbone, so you don't get walked on by the higher-ups.
The hardest quality to find is confidence. Managers that want to meddel in everything are ultimately disruptful to the entire process. If the candidate isn't comfortable with allowing the people whose jobs it is to tighten the bolts to handle the wrench by themselves, life's going to be rough. Of course the opposite of that is the manager who doesn't care, but at least in my experience, they are much less common than the micromanagers. At least that variety can (usually) safely be ignored.
Some certs you can pass if you have even a tiny clue. Others require knowing what you're doing. A small few actually require you to study the studyguide to pass.
Another thing I wonder about is how many of these 'certifications' are just money grubbing. All the people I know that have taken the MCSE were surprised at the simplicity of the test, and surprised at the high cost of the test. Seems like a money grab by (in this example) MS, at the expense (monitarily) of the employees, and at the expense (hiring unqualified workers) of the employers. Now try that stunt with say... Cisco certifications... good luck!
I just recently took the three basic Apple certifications. Now I consider myself an experienced mac user and technician, and from that point of view I'd describe the test to contain 1/3 "do you know what a mouse is?" questions and 1/3 of what I'd consider "knowledgeable" technician questions. The remaining 1/3 were "did you really read the study materials, we're getting picky here" questions. At $150/test, these were still expensive, but not nearly as bad as some others. Unfortunately, although these tests were for service technician certifications, the test questions required much more knowledge of basic mac usage (trivia?) than service, and did a poor job of testing a person's ability to actually troubleshoot and identify problems.
By my take on the diagram of how it works, the system requires itself to have a static copy of the background to be mimmiced. In all the demos, you never see the camera move, because that would change the background that is being mimmiced, and would probably give the hardware an aneurism trying to keep up with the updates. They most likely had to take a shot of the background before the demonstrator and his "stealth object" came into view, to use for the projection part of the process. That, and they're probably using a visual comparison system to determine how to mask off the projector so it doesn't project light of any sort anywhere except where the cloaked item is.
This means it's not really possible to cloak something that's in front of a changing backdrop, at least not with this implementation of the technology.
Sure, YOU'RE safe. But not the CAR. And yes for those crying "BS", yes, all of those are true, most of them witnessed first-hand.
Yes, all four tires. I saw the pictures of the car sitting parked in the driveway with four flats. Then closeup shots of one of the wheels where you could see how it arced from the wheelwell into the tire where the bead seal is. I wish I had made copies, but it wasn't my computer...
A guy I know put an antenna up in a pine tree, about 70 feet, without a ground wire. Needless to say it got nailed, about 2am while he slept. Detonated the antenna, peeling it into 2ft long, thin strips of fiberglass. Boiled his coax, all the way into his house. Electrofried his radio, and set its power cord on fire. (under his bed, where he was sleeping, setting the carpet on fire) Blew the outlet off the wall. Got into the breaker box and destroyed several breakers, two microwaves, and three color TVs. Finally found ground via the phone entrance box on the outside of the house, which was blown off the house. This was the SECOND time he had been hit, the previous time was the same exact scenario, just not as damaging.
A guy down the block got his ham radio antenna hit, blowing the base of the antenna to pieces. (severing the ground connection in the process, unfortunately) The lightning then took out his coax like det cord, which was laid down under one layer of shingles. This shot the shingles that were laid over the coax right off the house. It then took out his radio, followed the power cord into the electrical system in his house, took out all the appliances in his kitchen, and then went underground to his garage and took out three marine radios that were on charge at the time.
A friend and former co-worker had an employee of his arrive late to work. When asked of the excuse, he said he got his truck struck by lightning on the way in. And boy did he. They never found any of the whip antenna. The base of it, solid brass, was melted like ice cream. Blew out the back sliding windows where the coax came into the cab. Blew the radio to pieces. Finally found ground via front left quarterpanel, which was permanently bowed inward from the sudden heating.
I worked on someone's computer recently, they had pictures on their desktop of a relative's car that was struck while going down the highway. It hit the rear mounted stereo antenna, arced into the body of the car, (creating a 1/2" hole in the metal near the antenna mount) and found ground via ALL FOUR TIRES, arcing across the wheel wells and apparently through the steel belts, flattening all four tires in the process. It also blew out the rear window from the concussion.
My car was struck by lightning while on the road too. Took out the headlights and the windshield wipers, which then started working normally a few hours later. (probably tripped the breakers that those items usually are on instead of fuses)
I have a large ham radio antenna at my house as well, which has been struck at least three times so far, you can count the char marks on it. Thanks goes to a 1/4" solid aluminum ground wire and a 10ft copper water pipe for a ground rod, the lightning has never even scratched my radio, which remains plugged in and cabled up 24/7.
Lastly, if you're ever on a beach and run into a patch of what appears like a cross between pavement and sand, that's where lightning has struck the beach and melted the sand into glass. Really weird effect...
I too cut my teeth on 6502 assembly, and I'm thankful for it. It's allowed me to be able to spot areas in need of optimization and of course debugging compiled code where the source is not available or the debugger is not being helpful. Crypto is one area that demands assembly for high speed processing - the last two crypto blocks I optimized yielded a 10x and 30x speed increase. It's even helped me find bugs in compilers when they were generating broken code from my working source.
That, and lastly, assembly makes you gain a whole new respect for higher level languages. Surely you remember having to make your own math libraries for the 6502, since it was an 8 bit processor that couldn't even multiply. Once you know how the basics work, it greatly benefits your use of the tools built on the basics.
So much talk about cable modems, and no mention of DSL. I'm in a somewhat "backwater" area as far as broadband is concerned, and have been hopping between different technologies as they become available in my area, including dial-up, MVL, cable, and now DSL.
I'm thankful to say that DSL prices are starting to become competative. My first DSL line (McLeodUSA) is $140/mo for 768/768 with a few static IPs. Qwest has been offering DSL in this area for over a year, but offering lower speeds (256/512) for higher prices ($200/mo) and no statics. Just recently they got their heads screwed on straight and now offer 900/1500 for $70/mo with statics. So the prices ARE dropping, and the providers ARE realizing they have to be reasonable to get more business.
When I talked with Qwest, they said the reason for the new plans was "to become competative with cable". Interesting, we've see how proliferation of dial-up affects cable prices, and now we can see how that is trickling down to the digital line rates.
I'm curious how many ppl leave their car running while pumping gas. Often times I do. (no explosions so far) Is there anything specifically dangerous about this? The exhaust is safely cool by the time it reaches the tailpipe, and I can't think of anything that would build up static or spark on my truck. Although if it *were* insulated, the belts would make a great van de graffe (sp?) generator.
I'm happy cleaning house at the lan games with my 17" tibook. Granted, the external speakers and usb trackball are somewhat manditory, but that still fits well within my definition of "portable". Sadly, it's over 2 years old and the graphics chipset is showing its age when I play UT 2004, but I foresee an upgrade next year sometime to put my fps back in the high double digits where they belong.
And the ironic part... the lan games are hosted at -my- house, and almost without exception, all the guests bring giant towers with deafening fans and hulking trinitrons. I have to chuckle watching them lug all that big equipment around. (one fellow has gotten smart and now brings a big LCD monitor) But yet for some reason they never want to even consider a laptop. They must enjoy hauling the big boxes around?
I run Ad-Aware on badly behaving Windows boxes and show their 'owners' just what a mess they have. Record so far is 500+ items tagged by AdAware. Unreal.
Only 500? I've watched the PC techs at our shop place at least three machines into the "1000-club". The amazing thing is about 15% of the machines we clean come back within a week, infested again, despite the fact that every PC that leaves our service department leaves with spybot and ad-aware on the desktop, with instructions on how to run them weekly.
"Your internet connection isn't optimized. Click 'yes' to optimize"
"Click 'yes' to enter this web site"
"You must click 'Yes' to view this web page"
Don't people ever learn? I certainly hope not - they keep people like us in business.
(now watch me destroy my karma... "and this is yet another reason why I am soooo glad I own a mac.")
I work at a computer retailer, and we get about one of these calls a day, almost always for purchases of several laptops. (expensive nice ones, macintosh or toshiba usually) Our sales manager has implemented the policy that as soon as the TTY voice is heard, recite "DO NOT CALL BACK EVER AGAIN" and hanging up. It seems a bit rude to me, but then again, attempting to scam a small business out of thousands of dollars is also quite rude.
This apparently has been going on for the last several years, so it's nothing new. I was surprised just how many of these calls we get - there must be quite a few scammers out there running through the phonebooks looking for a mark.
FYI, any new mac you buy will have gigabit on the mobo, including the laptops.
One of these days I may upgrade to a gigabit switch in the basement so the house network runs 1000bt, but I'm in no great hurry. HD i/o speeds here are already being pushed with the 100bt so I don't know how much gigabit will help anything.
That may be a convenient way to think, but it only considers today. Thinking about tomorrow, when they don't have as much money as they want to spend, they just raise taxes. And that DOES affect us all.
There used to be a Buzz Buzzard in our city's telephone book.
That, and a friend of mine went to school with a vietnamese transfer student. I don't know how his name was spelled, but it was pronounced "dung heap". Apparently he was the first one to inform this kid that his name literally translated to "pile of $hit"...
That reminds me, how much longer after "real soon" can we expect the Mr Fusion to hit the market?
With all the flames for the iPod and its battery, I can't help but wonder.. do these people think that most consumer products with rechargeable batteries allow the batteries to be replaced easily, if at all? I just threw out a cordless screwdriver whose batteries stopped taking a charge, and there was no replacing them. A few months ago I threw away a rechargeable flashlight for the same reason. So what is it about the iPod that makes it deserve such relentless attacks? Do a google search on "ipod battery" and I'm sure you'll find dozens of sites that offer replacement batteries for the iPod, with detailed instructions on how to do the replacement - that's more than I can say for any of the rechargeable items I've thrown away in the past few years.
I asked my registrar (register.com) a similar question, and found out at least for them how it works. Apparently when you pay for your domain, they forward the registration fee to icann or whoever, so your domain is registered with them for however long. From there, you can transfer your domain to any registration service, usually free of charge.
I asked the rep then what is to stop me from registering my domain at the cheapest place possible for an extended time, (10 yrs etc) and then transferring it to register.com to take advantage of their free 800# support etc. She said that although that's abusive to them, it's allowed, and that some people do indeed do that to get their higher quality services without paying the higher registration fees.
This being the case, if NS goes under, you can just transfer administration of your domain name to another registrar. I suppose you can think of it like stock... you pay a broker to buy and manage stock for you. If the broker or his company goes away, it doesn't mean you've lost your stock - you just have to find another broker to continue providing you services for the stock you own. That, and you have the right to change who manages your stock at any time.
Not meaning to troll, but to answer the poster's question...
"buy a mac."
Like it or not, when you're on the clock, they own your time. If they say no cel phones, that is their right. I've ran into this problem in the past, on bringing my notebook to work. My solution to the problem was to draft a request for clarification/exception on my notebook, and was accompanied by a convincing and long list of incidents where my notebook did a job that no other computer in the building was capable of, or when company time/money was saved as a result of me having my notebook. I was actually more interested in the sheer convenience of having my own system with me at work, but I had a valid point in that I am more valuable as an employee to them when I have my laptop.
;-)
The counter-argument that was raised by my manager was "if the company needs your notebook, then what the company really needs is its own notebook". That got about two steps up the management ladder before being shot down by the bean-counters. Since they had already agreed that I had a point, and since they now couldn't do the best thing about it, they did the second-best thing - they got off my case about it. (I wasn't a formal exception, but was basically left alone, I could walk past managers with my laptop bag in tow without getting "pulled over")
I think you should persue this route. Since they're not all that expensive, you're very likely to get your own company-provided cel phones as a result, and you'll probably get less static from them about redirecting your warning instant messages to the company phone than you are getting now about your own cel phone. The down-side of this is you are now basically chained to the phone... it's like a pager and they'll expect you to answer it off-hours. At this point, just take it over... give out that as your 'new' cel number and ditch your own phone. Save on monthly charges and keep the peace at the same time.
I spent a summer working at a store that was without a doubt the "worst case scenario" for a family-run business. The new owner was an honest, hard-working, trusting woman. Unfortunately, her two sons (and their wives) were a pack of thieves and constituted the rest of the staff besides myself. It was not unheard of for the store's till to come up with less cash in the evening than it started with in the morning. Store supplies, namely food, were regularly eaten for breakfast, lunch, and even prepared and taken home for dinner by most of the staff. Money was commonly withdrawn from the till to go next door to the gas station to get pop or snacks at lunch or at any other convenient time. Money was even taken from the till just as they would be leaving for the evening if they wanted to pick up something on the way home. The timeclock, "mysteriously broken" before my arrival, I fixed, amidst the dirty looks I got from the rest of the staff. (this put an end to their cheating on their time cards)
I realize this is probably not the scenario you're in, but it's worthwhile to keep the ideas in mind. Despite my discussions with her on several occasions, she refused to stop believing in her family, although she admitted she knew the basics of what was happening from day to day. In the end, six months later, it cost her her business.
There's a reason most employers don't let people with "personal interest" in eachother be in manager/managed positions relative to eachother - it's not easy to ignore your feelings and deal out level-handed management to your friends or family. You might want to consider hiring a part-time or on-contract personnel manager. Maybe just someone you know professionally from somewhere that you pay a modest fee to, to act as a manager and reviewer for your staff. Someone whose judgement you trust, and whom you are willing to listen to even if they have something to say that you're not going to like hearing about. Having this person around to conduct evaluations, discuss problem issues, etc., could easily prove worth the cost, considering your circumstances.
If they are mainly targetting "hijacked" computers that are spam engines, this sort of problem may be more difficult for the average user to fix than say a virus. If a spamhaus is remoting maybe 200 computers, is that enough to catch Symantec's attention and make a definition for? Possibly not. Removal of this sort of "low incidence" non-viral back door would then require the user to nuke and pave their system unless they were/knew someone familiar with registry editing etc.