At first, the general reaction to this episode is "Hey! We got cheated!" With an episode titled "The Truth," you expected answers to the questions raised over the last 9 years. Who is the conspiracy? Who are the aliens, and why are the rebel aliens against the alien invaders? And so on, and so forth.
However, I personally don't think that this was the message of The X-Files at all - and certainly not the message of this episode. In fact, The Truth that Mulder has been seeking throughout the entire series is that there are questions - some of which may not have answers, at least easy answers. The Truth is that there is something more out there than all of us, whether it be alien invaders, government conspiracy, supernatural or paranormal events.
If you look back at the entire 9 year history of the X-Files, you quickly realize that for every answer they find - another group of questions take the place of what answers they may find. They could've attempted to answer some of the questions asked throughout the series (not all, mind you - to answer all the questions would take far more than a 2 hour TV episode) but in the end, the answers would have been anticlimactic, and just lead the viewer to start asking "But what does that mean for...?"
So in short, The Truth that is out there is the question. Indeed, in some ways, it is the human condition. The quest for something more, something outside of ourselves. It is the belief that there is an answer to every question. And in this, I think this episode succeeded.
To be fair, Apple's manuals are horrendously bad. There's little useful information there about the way the GUI part of the operating system works, let alone the BSD underpinnings.
Ok, I know I'm _so_ going to get moderated as -1, Flamebait, but...
Apple's docs, no matter how bad, are still better than a good majority of manpages.:-)
obviously the writer doesnt have a clue as to what slamming is
I used to work at WorldCom, slamming is switching long distance without the customers permission/knowledge, if the customer returns this card to VeriSign, then they give permission, its not VeriSigns fault that the customer is clueless...
Slamming is also using a deceitful or misleading sales technique in order to elicit the customer to change long distance companies. An example is treating "no" as "no I don't want to keep my existing phone company," or a company naming a subsidiary "No Thanks Long Distance" so those who say "No Thanks" get switched.
These are extreme examples, but there have been others where the customer clearly did not intend to switch long distance companies, but an underhanded technique by the telemarketer allowed them to switch the customer.
This is now why they have "Slamming Protection" to prevent any long distance company from changing you without you explicitly telling both companies (the long distance company AND your local carrier) that you intend to switch.
And for the record, I agree - these "renewal notices" are, in my opinion, clearly mail fraud (disguising a sales promotion as an invoice) and highly deceptive, not to mention sleazy.
P.S. Might I compliment you on your wonderful attention to customer care? "The Customer Is Clueless." Yeesh. Thanks - I'll add WorldCom to the list of companies never to do business with.
Can't really fault TiVo for the judge part. If a judge orders you to do something, you better d@mn well do it.
Just to clarify this person's post - this was SonicBlue, the makers of ReplayTV, that was ordered by a judge to spy on their consumers. Not TiVo.
And before someone starts, TiVo does do their own completely anonymous, aggregate statistics gathering, but you can opt out of this statistics gathering.
Ahh, Artemis. For those of you not in the loop with Apple's code names, this is the machine alternately known as the Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One, the AIO, the Performa G3, and the "MolarMac."
The latter name, of course, referring to it's shape - vaguely looking akin to a giant molar tooth. You can see pictures of it on Apple-History. I personally don't consider it all that unattractive - not the best design in the world, but I've seen worse from PC manufacturers.
Nice part about the MolarMac? It was basically the full beige G3 desktop design in an all-in-one housing - meaning, if I recall correctly, it had 3 PCI slots and a ZIF slot for upgrading the processor. Bad part? 60+ pounds of computer does not lend well to portability. Don't bother security cabling it down - the sheer heft alone will keep it in place.:-)
Re:Several cool Features
on
PVR For Linux
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· Score: 1
With TiVo, this is easy.
Hit Guide to enter the guide - this shows everything that is showing now (except for 5 minutes before the half hour - that's when it changes over to the next time block). Hit Enter to go into the menu - change the time to the next half hour, then hit select. (Pardon me if I got one of the buttons wrong - I use a universal remote, not TiVo's remote). You suddenly see "what's on next."
Is it one button? No, but it's actually more flexible that way - you can see the next half hour, the next hour, even sometime next week.
Re:bye bye tivo
on
PVR For Linux
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· Score: 0, Troll
There may or may not be DMCA implications - but there sure as heck are patent violations. Pause Technologies, Gemstar/TV Guide, TiVo, and ReplayTV all have a few patents that this product is violating.
Will any of the above go after this project? Probably not, as they're currently busy squabbling amongst themselves - but it's possible. I hope the people running this project have hired really good lawyers - they may need them.
Re:I'm still scratching my head...
on
AdCritic To Return
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· Score: 3, Informative
They took it down simply BECAUSE it was free publicity for the companies whose ads appeared on AdCritic.com
.
From what I recall, only very briefly right near the very end did the concept of "revenue stream" even remotely cross the minds of anyone associated with the website. From what I remember, AdCritic, free of charge, took the time (labor cost) to digitize television ads; they free of charge hosted the ads on their servers, and free of charge let the hordes of consumers get access to them. That's a lot of free of charges without any return.
Only near the very end did they realize what they should've done in the first place - and what the new buyers haven't quite realized apparently, based on the press release. What they should do is put together a package they can sell to manufacturers - "You have ads. We have a server to host them, and the bandwidth to do so. Hire us, and we'll do the work for you - all you do is add a link to your ad on our website. All this for a small percentage of your television advertising budget."
As an example of the type of website they could have been, look at Apple's Quicktime Movie Trailers website. Apple's selling the service to the movie industry - host your trailer on our site for a fee. Apple gets publicity out of it, through the fact that they get the traffic and the fact that it's all in QuickTime, and the movie industry gets the publicity for their films.
I hate people who do posts like this, and please mod me down as redundant, but... Mod the parent up. This is very useful information, and proof positive that this is illegal.
Umm, so the big VERISIGN logo in the corner didn't clue anyone in? I agree that this is a shady business practice and should be stopped, but it's clearly marked on the letter that it's from Verisign.
True. It clearly says "VeriSign." No argument there.
But how is the average consumer supposed to know for certain that the company they used as a registrar didn't in turn go through VeriSign? In addition, company names change like the weather - many consumers may just think "Oh, I registered my domain 2 years ago - the company must have changed names" and believe that VeriSign is just a new name for their registrar. Lastly, VeriSign/Network Solutions is widely considered the host of the master domain database - so the average consumer would be likely to believe VeriSign is responsible for renewals.
Unless the average consumer knows enough to either read the (very) fine print stating that this would be, indeed, a domain transfer, not a renewal, or know that their registrar is not VeriSign, it's likely that many would be tricked into switching to VeriSign.
This isn't the same as sending an advertisement about VeriSign's services. This is the Internet equivalent of "slamming," the practice less reputable long distance companies use to switch which LD service you use without you even realizing it.
If it were a flier saying "Switch to us!" and advertising their services, and offering the consumers an informed choice as to whether to switch or not, this wouldn't even be an issue. Instead. VeriSign sent these letters that appear as if they are correspondence from your registrar - and unless you know that your registrar isn't VeriSign, you are very likely to return this form, and suddenly you are "cyber-slammed."
ICANN needs to build into the domain registry some controls like the phone companies offer - a notice telling you that "your registrar is being switched from company A to company B, do you approve this change?"
Re:Okay, so maybe I'm being stupid but...
on
802.11b on your Tivo
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· Score: 2, Informative
This guy is considered a deity over there because not only has he managed to produce an 802.11b (good grief, I hate the WiFi brand name) card adapter for the TiVo, he's also managed to produce a 10/100-base-T ethernet card (not just an adapter, an original card from scratch) for the TiVo - all within the span of a few months.
Adapters for the TiVo existed to allow one to plug an ISA NE-2000 NIC into one's TiVo, but they were only OK because they were a 2 piece unit (adapter and card) which adds an additional point of failure, not to mention they were only 10-base-T and used an NE-2000 driver for that card that only worked so-so.
I'm pretty sure if you come up with an idea card that can plug into the diagnostic slot on the Series 1 TiVos, and can seriously explain how it could be useful, this guy could make it.
No, you would be missing the point. The primary purpose of these devices, according to everything I am reading, is to rapid protype a home-brewed Game Boy Advance game. This would be entirely legal. Without this device, I don't see how developing a game on your own would even be feasible.
This device could also be used for the personal archiving of commercial Game Boy Advance games. This is more murky - but since there's no copy control mechanism being bypassed save the proprietary format of the cartridge, I don't think there would be a problem with this either, so long as only one copy of the game is used at any one time, and the backup is for personal use only.
Could this be used to copy GBA games in such a way as to redistribute them? Probably. Is it the primary purpose of this device? Not according to the developer or the reseller, I'd wager.
I know this was meant to be funny, but this is probably very true. When a company goes Chapter 7, or a company has all assets bought by another company but the company itself isn't sold, from what I'm aware a lawyer is named to be CEO of the shell of the company, in order to effectively handle the legal issues of dissolution. I believe the latter of the above is what happened to Be - Palm bought all assets, but left the company itself to eventually dissolve.
I'm a recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, which is one of the top rated MIS/CIS schools in the country, and is a 6 time AITP 4-year program award winner. That said, I can only tell what my program was like at UW-Whitewater.
The program I was in was called Management Computer Systems. It wasn't exactly MIS, CIS, or CS... based on the responses to this story, the closest major at other schools would be CIS. The program was co-run by the schools of Business and Letters and Sciences, and featured professors from both colleges.
My program offered two tracks - both ending up with an MCS degree, but one with a BA through the Letters and Sciences school, and one ending with a BBA through the Business school. There was very little difference between the two, and both were considered equally valuable. The major differences was the BA degree required additional calculus classes and two courses in assembly, where as the BBA degree that I took offered 2 additional business courses and only required a "Short Calc" for Business students.
As for the rest of the curriculum, it included courses in C++ (Procedural and Object-Oriented), C++ and Data Structures, Pascal, Java, Cobol and File Structures, and an elective in Visual Basic. It also included the requisite courses in Database Design and Analysis and a year-long course in System Analysis and Design. On the business side, you were offered courses in Accounting, Statistics, Macro and Micro Econ, Production Operations Management, and a capstone class that included elements from all the business courses.
I'm slightly biased as well, since the career track I'm on right now put me back into academia working as a computer technician with a local college, so much of the business training I got has so far gone much to waste - but if I had taken the other job I was offered out of college, as a consultant/contractor/whatever, I probably would say the business courses I was offered would offer me a broad skillset that would come in handy. It allows one to look at the big picture - not only what's technically feasible, but also what is fiscally responsible and what fits the business rules that exist already.
I can say though that the CS majors were those who wanted to focus more on researching and creating the technology, rather than the planning and implementing of the technology. I would have to say that you would have to love the science and mathematics of programming to really enjoy CS, while the major that I took offered me just enough programming to be able to program and understand what the CS people produce, but at the same time cross the org chart boundaries and explain that programming to the suits over in accounting and management.
I can't emphasize this post enough. Use conduit, use conduit, use conduit. If you think that you can accurately predict exactly how much wire you'll need and where, I'll let you buy some lottery tickets for me. I use the practice at work, and it is an unbelievable timesaver, being able to climb above the ceiling and just push wire through the conduit into the box.
As for which kind of conduit, we personally use standard metallic in-wall electrical conduit running to standard electrical boxes. There may be some reasons to use non-metallic raceway, but I'm personally not aware of any such reasons, as long as the raceway is far enough away from conduit carrying electric wiring to meet code.
It's a shame you had the phone run seperately from the networking plant. If it were me, I'd recommend running Cat5 or better for both phone and networking - one drop for phone, one drop for data, both in the same conduit. For phone, you could probably settle for Cat3 for cost reasons, but using Cat5 or better would allow you to switch a phone jack to a network jack fairly easily. Besides for this, going back later and trying to trace out both how phone runs AND how network runs... that's a hassle you shouldn't need to deal with.
Fiber? Seems overkill for a home installation. Yes, they may go to fiber at some time in the future - but personally, I doubt it. Most home users probably won't saturate a 100-megabit network, and if they do, gigabit out and rapidly dropping in price. Besides, should fiber to the desktop become necessary in the future - well, that's what those conduits are for.
Personally, I'd run a minimum of 1 phone drop and 2 data drops per room, minimum. (Note that's an absolute, bare bones, minimum.) In addition, I'd have the electrical contractor run multiple blank boxes with conduit per wall, and just have the boxes covered over with blank plates.
You've already posted this story to this "news"board.
For the reading impaired, I will quote from the aforementioned story...
I have a model for review coming my way so I'll give a detailed report when I have time to plug it in and give it a beating.
The poster promised a review. This is the review. What's the problem? Yes, he mentioned it was coming out in the last article. In this article, he has one and has used it, and posted his thoughts after using it.
My only question is why this company chose not to include even a rudimentary DVR (Digital Video Recorder) type technology into it. If it hooks up to the TV, and has a hard drive, one would think that a basic DVR functionality would not be too terribly hard.
Yes, but all it did for many, many years was just play WAV files. I don't exactly consider that a direct predecesor to the current Windows Media Player.
If you take a look at that timeline, it wasn't until 1999 that Microsoft actually incorporated video playback into Media Player, renaming it Windows Media Player. Before that point, the only game in town really was QuickTime.
From what I read, USPS ships some - but not all - Express, Priority, and First Class parcels on FedEx planes. Here is a news release announcing the partnership.
USPS also has a service they call Airborne@Home which partners with Airborne Express. With this service, Airborne acts as a courier service, picking your package up and dropping it off at a post office.
Therefore - if you ship a package with Airborne@Home, you could end up getting Airborne to ship your package with FedEx. Weird.
Well, I made it about 2 lines into this article. It's nice to know that Jon's not even trying to make an article look interesting anymore so I don't feel as bad when I stop reading after 3 minutes.
It takes you 3 minutes to read 2 lines? Wow. Either you read Slashdot on one of those 42" Plasma monitors at an unrealistically high resolution, or you really have to brush up on those reading skills.
Logos have never really bothered me, and most networks now use an alpha effect of a transparent logo, so it doesn't really take up space...
I thought so too, till I just took a swing through the channels... you might want to re-examine the channel lineup before you make that assumption that most do that.
Take TNN for example. A freakin' black bar on the bottom of the screen, covering up part of the image (or worse yet, virtually all of subtitles). And that's just to show what SHOW is on, as if they don't trust viewers to figure out that the space show with the bald captain is ST:TNG, or the show with the juggy lifeguards is Baywatch. To actually show which channel you are watching? A larger, full color logo that sticks up ABOVE the black bar.
Doubt that it's spreading? Take Fox Sports this season. Gone is the fairly innocuous Fox Box - now its the Fox Bar, that covers up the TOP of the picture. When it's on FOX broadcast, it's not so bad, but if all the Fox Sports Net regional channels are like the Midwest channel - it's almost twice as large. And that's just one example.
Headline News was thought to be way out of line when they unveiled their new Bloomberg-inspired information overload format which squeezes the actual picture down to 1/4 the screen... but after Sept. 11, all the news channels now have at minimum a full-color scrolling ticker. Channels that HAD a ticker already, like CNNfn and CNBC? They added another.
Of course, this is ignoring the ever growing use of Chiron graphics on the news channels that have grown from the 80's square box over the anchor's shoulder to what I'm watching on Fox News Channel, a half-screen graphic.
Even the channels that use a pseudo-transparent logo are making them less and less translucent, adding more and more color and animation and URLs and other information into them. Look at Discovery Channel for an example of this.
I wasn't quite this bothered until I started scanning the channels - and noticing that the alpha effect of a transparent logo are actually becoming the exceptions...
Reading the thread at macnn, I get the impression that quite a high percentage of users had such a setup.
Quite true. The default hard drive name under Mac OS is "Macintosh HD" - including the space. My hard drive is partitioned into "Mac OS X Boot" and "Mac OS 9 Boot" - yes, 9 spaces in there. I don't think that's particularly uncommon either.
Slashdot Mirror
At first, the general reaction to this episode is "Hey! We got cheated!" With an episode titled "The Truth," you expected answers to the questions raised over the last 9 years. Who is the conspiracy? Who are the aliens, and why are the rebel aliens against the alien invaders? And so on, and so forth.
However, I personally don't think that this was the message of The X-Files at all - and certainly not the message of this episode. In fact, The Truth that Mulder has been seeking throughout the entire series is that there are questions - some of which may not have answers, at least easy answers. The Truth is that there is something more out there than all of us, whether it be alien invaders, government conspiracy, supernatural or paranormal events.
If you look back at the entire 9 year history of the X-Files, you quickly realize that for every answer they find - another group of questions take the place of what answers they may find. They could've attempted to answer some of the questions asked throughout the series (not all, mind you - to answer all the questions would take far more than a 2 hour TV episode) but in the end, the answers would have been anticlimactic, and just lead the viewer to start asking "But what does that mean for...?"
So in short, The Truth that is out there is the question. Indeed, in some ways, it is the human condition. The quest for something more, something outside of ourselves. It is the belief that there is an answer to every question. And in this, I think this episode succeeded.
Ok, I know I'm _so_ going to get moderated as -1, Flamebait, but...
Apple's docs, no matter how bad, are still better than a good majority of manpages. :-)
Slamming is also using a deceitful or misleading sales technique in order to elicit the customer to change long distance companies. An example is treating "no" as "no I don't want to keep my existing phone company," or a company naming a subsidiary "No Thanks Long Distance" so those who say "No Thanks" get switched.
These are extreme examples, but there have been others where the customer clearly did not intend to switch long distance companies, but an underhanded technique by the telemarketer allowed them to switch the customer.
This is now why they have "Slamming Protection" to prevent any long distance company from changing you without you explicitly telling both companies (the long distance company AND your local carrier) that you intend to switch.
And for the record, I agree - these "renewal notices" are, in my opinion, clearly mail fraud (disguising a sales promotion as an invoice) and highly deceptive, not to mention sleazy.
P.S. Might I compliment you on your wonderful attention to customer care? "The Customer Is Clueless." Yeesh. Thanks - I'll add WorldCom to the list of companies never to do business with.
Just to clarify this person's post - this was SonicBlue, the makers of ReplayTV, that was ordered by a judge to spy on their consumers. Not TiVo.
And before someone starts, TiVo does do their own completely anonymous, aggregate statistics gathering, but you can opt out of this statistics gathering.
Wait a sec.
Let's think about this a second...
Hmm. Think there's a proverb that applies here...
Ahh, Artemis. For those of you not in the loop with Apple's code names, this is the machine alternately known as the Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One, the AIO, the Performa G3, and the "MolarMac."
The latter name, of course, referring to it's shape - vaguely looking akin to a giant molar tooth. You can see pictures of it on Apple-History. I personally don't consider it all that unattractive - not the best design in the world, but I've seen worse from PC manufacturers.
Nice part about the MolarMac? It was basically the full beige G3 desktop design in an all-in-one housing - meaning, if I recall correctly, it had 3 PCI slots and a ZIF slot for upgrading the processor. Bad part? 60+ pounds of computer does not lend well to portability. Don't bother security cabling it down - the sheer heft alone will keep it in place. :-)
With TiVo, this is easy.
Hit Guide to enter the guide - this shows everything that is showing now (except for 5 minutes before the half hour - that's when it changes over to the next time block). Hit Enter to go into the menu - change the time to the next half hour, then hit select. (Pardon me if I got one of the buttons wrong - I use a universal remote, not TiVo's remote). You suddenly see "what's on next."
Is it one button? No, but it's actually more flexible that way - you can see the next half hour, the next hour, even sometime next week.
There may or may not be DMCA implications - but there sure as heck are patent violations. Pause Technologies, Gemstar/TV Guide, TiVo, and ReplayTV all have a few patents that this product is violating.
Will any of the above go after this project? Probably not, as they're currently busy squabbling amongst themselves - but it's possible. I hope the people running this project have hired really good lawyers - they may need them.
They took it down simply BECAUSE it was free publicity for the companies whose ads appeared on AdCritic.com
.From what I recall, only very briefly right near the very end did the concept of "revenue stream" even remotely cross the minds of anyone associated with the website. From what I remember, AdCritic, free of charge, took the time (labor cost) to digitize television ads; they free of charge hosted the ads on their servers, and free of charge let the hordes of consumers get access to them. That's a lot of free of charges without any return.
Only near the very end did they realize what they should've done in the first place - and what the new buyers haven't quite realized apparently, based on the press release. What they should do is put together a package they can sell to manufacturers - "You have ads. We have a server to host them, and the bandwidth to do so. Hire us, and we'll do the work for you - all you do is add a link to your ad on our website. All this for a small percentage of your television advertising budget."
As an example of the type of website they could have been, look at Apple's Quicktime Movie Trailers website. Apple's selling the service to the movie industry - host your trailer on our site for a fee. Apple gets publicity out of it, through the fact that they get the traffic and the fact that it's all in QuickTime, and the movie industry gets the publicity for their films.
I hate people who do posts like this, and please mod me down as redundant, but... Mod the parent up. This is very useful information, and proof positive that this is illegal.
Umm, so the big VERISIGN logo in the corner didn't clue anyone in? I agree that this is a shady business practice and should be stopped, but it's clearly marked on the letter that it's from Verisign.
True. It clearly says "VeriSign." No argument there.
But how is the average consumer supposed to know for certain that the company they used as a registrar didn't in turn go through VeriSign? In addition, company names change like the weather - many consumers may just think "Oh, I registered my domain 2 years ago - the company must have changed names" and believe that VeriSign is just a new name for their registrar. Lastly, VeriSign/Network Solutions is widely considered the host of the master domain database - so the average consumer would be likely to believe VeriSign is responsible for renewals.
Unless the average consumer knows enough to either read the (very) fine print stating that this would be, indeed, a domain transfer, not a renewal, or know that their registrar is not VeriSign, it's likely that many would be tricked into switching to VeriSign.
This isn't the same as sending an advertisement about VeriSign's services. This is the Internet equivalent of "slamming," the practice less reputable long distance companies use to switch which LD service you use without you even realizing it.
If it were a flier saying "Switch to us!" and advertising their services, and offering the consumers an informed choice as to whether to switch or not, this wouldn't even be an issue. Instead. VeriSign sent these letters that appear as if they are correspondence from your registrar - and unless you know that your registrar isn't VeriSign, you are very likely to return this form, and suddenly you are "cyber-slammed."
ICANN needs to build into the domain registry some controls like the phone companies offer - a notice telling you that "your registrar is being switched from company A to company B, do you approve this change?"
This guy is considered a deity over there because not only has he managed to produce an 802.11b (good grief, I hate the WiFi brand name) card adapter for the TiVo, he's also managed to produce a 10/100-base-T ethernet card (not just an adapter, an original card from scratch) for the TiVo - all within the span of a few months.
Adapters for the TiVo existed to allow one to plug an ISA NE-2000 NIC into one's TiVo, but they were only OK because they were a 2 piece unit (adapter and card) which adds an additional point of failure, not to mention they were only 10-base-T and used an NE-2000 driver for that card that only worked so-so.
I'm pretty sure if you come up with an idea card that can plug into the diagnostic slot on the Series 1 TiVos, and can seriously explain how it could be useful, this guy could make it.
No, you would be missing the point. The primary purpose of these devices, according to everything I am reading, is to rapid protype a home-brewed Game Boy Advance game. This would be entirely legal. Without this device, I don't see how developing a game on your own would even be feasible.
This device could also be used for the personal archiving of commercial Game Boy Advance games. This is more murky - but since there's no copy control mechanism being bypassed save the proprietary format of the cartridge, I don't think there would be a problem with this either, so long as only one copy of the game is used at any one time, and the backup is for personal use only.
Could this be used to copy GBA games in such a way as to redistribute them? Probably. Is it the primary purpose of this device? Not according to the developer or the reseller, I'd wager.
I know this was meant to be funny, but this is probably very true. When a company goes Chapter 7, or a company has all assets bought by another company but the company itself isn't sold, from what I'm aware a lawyer is named to be CEO of the shell of the company, in order to effectively handle the legal issues of dissolution. I believe the latter of the above is what happened to Be - Palm bought all assets, but left the company itself to eventually dissolve.
I'm a recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, which is one of the top rated MIS/CIS schools in the country, and is a 6 time AITP 4-year program award winner. That said, I can only tell what my program was like at UW-Whitewater.
The program I was in was called Management Computer Systems. It wasn't exactly MIS, CIS, or CS... based on the responses to this story, the closest major at other schools would be CIS. The program was co-run by the schools of Business and Letters and Sciences, and featured professors from both colleges.
My program offered two tracks - both ending up with an MCS degree, but one with a BA through the Letters and Sciences school, and one ending with a BBA through the Business school. There was very little difference between the two, and both were considered equally valuable. The major differences was the BA degree required additional calculus classes and two courses in assembly, where as the BBA degree that I took offered 2 additional business courses and only required a "Short Calc" for Business students.
As for the rest of the curriculum, it included courses in C++ (Procedural and Object-Oriented), C++ and Data Structures, Pascal, Java, Cobol and File Structures, and an elective in Visual Basic. It also included the requisite courses in Database Design and Analysis and a year-long course in System Analysis and Design. On the business side, you were offered courses in Accounting, Statistics, Macro and Micro Econ, Production Operations Management, and a capstone class that included elements from all the business courses.
I'm slightly biased as well, since the career track I'm on right now put me back into academia working as a computer technician with a local college, so much of the business training I got has so far gone much to waste - but if I had taken the other job I was offered out of college, as a consultant/contractor/whatever, I probably would say the business courses I was offered would offer me a broad skillset that would come in handy. It allows one to look at the big picture - not only what's technically feasible, but also what is fiscally responsible and what fits the business rules that exist already.
I can say though that the CS majors were those who wanted to focus more on researching and creating the technology, rather than the planning and implementing of the technology. I would have to say that you would have to love the science and mathematics of programming to really enjoy CS, while the major that I took offered me just enough programming to be able to program and understand what the CS people produce, but at the same time cross the org chart boundaries and explain that programming to the suits over in accounting and management.
I can't emphasize this post enough. Use conduit, use conduit, use conduit. If you think that you can accurately predict exactly how much wire you'll need and where, I'll let you buy some lottery tickets for me. I use the practice at work, and it is an unbelievable timesaver, being able to climb above the ceiling and just push wire through the conduit into the box.
As for which kind of conduit, we personally use standard metallic in-wall electrical conduit running to standard electrical boxes. There may be some reasons to use non-metallic raceway, but I'm personally not aware of any such reasons, as long as the raceway is far enough away from conduit carrying electric wiring to meet code.
It's a shame you had the phone run seperately from the networking plant. If it were me, I'd recommend running Cat5 or better for both phone and networking - one drop for phone, one drop for data, both in the same conduit. For phone, you could probably settle for Cat3 for cost reasons, but using Cat5 or better would allow you to switch a phone jack to a network jack fairly easily. Besides for this, going back later and trying to trace out both how phone runs AND how network runs... that's a hassle you shouldn't need to deal with.
Fiber? Seems overkill for a home installation. Yes, they may go to fiber at some time in the future - but personally, I doubt it. Most home users probably won't saturate a 100-megabit network, and if they do, gigabit out and rapidly dropping in price. Besides, should fiber to the desktop become necessary in the future - well, that's what those conduits are for.
Personally, I'd run a minimum of 1 phone drop and 2 data drops per room, minimum. (Note that's an absolute, bare bones, minimum.) In addition, I'd have the electrical contractor run multiple blank boxes with conduit per wall, and just have the boxes covered over with blank plates.
One of the companies even has a competing box on the market now.
Could this mysterious other company possibly be Hewlett-Packard? (Hint to Slashdot - I'd like to see a review of this next.)
Another one has a PVR box for sale, which is something we all wanted to be added to the Zapstation.
Umm - well then why didn't they add this in? It seems like a natural.
You've already posted this story to this "news"board.
For the reading impaired, I will quote from the aforementioned story...
I have a model for review coming my way so I'll give a detailed report when I have time to plug it in and give it a beating.
The poster promised a review. This is the review. What's the problem? Yes, he mentioned it was coming out in the last article. In this article, he has one and has used it, and posted his thoughts after using it.
My only question is why this company chose not to include even a rudimentary DVR (Digital Video Recorder) type technology into it. If it hooks up to the TV, and has a hard drive, one would think that a basic DVR functionality would not be too terribly hard.
Yes, but all it did for many, many years was just play WAV files. I don't exactly consider that a direct predecesor to the current Windows Media Player.
If you take a look at that timeline, it wasn't until 1999 that Microsoft actually incorporated video playback into Media Player, renaming it Windows Media Player. Before that point, the only game in town really was QuickTime.
USPS Priority Shipping is now handled by FedEx.
From what I read, USPS ships some - but not all - Express, Priority, and First Class parcels on FedEx planes. Here is a news release announcing the partnership.
USPS also has a service they call Airborne@Home which partners with Airborne Express. With this service, Airborne acts as a courier service, picking your package up and dropping it off at a post office.
Therefore - if you ship a package with Airborne@Home, you could end up getting Airborne to ship your package with FedEx. Weird.
Well, I made it about 2 lines into this article. It's nice to know that Jon's not even trying to make an article look interesting anymore so I don't feel as bad when I stop reading after 3 minutes.
It takes you 3 minutes to read 2 lines? Wow. Either you read Slashdot on one of those 42" Plasma monitors at an unrealistically high resolution, or you really have to brush up on those reading skills.
Logos have never really bothered me, and most networks now use an alpha effect of a transparent logo, so it doesn't really take up space...
I thought so too, till I just took a swing through the channels... you might want to re-examine the channel lineup before you make that assumption that most do that.
Take TNN for example. A freakin' black bar on the bottom of the screen, covering up part of the image (or worse yet, virtually all of subtitles). And that's just to show what SHOW is on, as if they don't trust viewers to figure out that the space show with the bald captain is ST:TNG, or the show with the juggy lifeguards is Baywatch. To actually show which channel you are watching? A larger, full color logo that sticks up ABOVE the black bar.
Doubt that it's spreading? Take Fox Sports this season. Gone is the fairly innocuous Fox Box - now its the Fox Bar, that covers up the TOP of the picture. When it's on FOX broadcast, it's not so bad, but if all the Fox Sports Net regional channels are like the Midwest channel - it's almost twice as large. And that's just one example.
Headline News was thought to be way out of line when they unveiled their new Bloomberg-inspired information overload format which squeezes the actual picture down to 1/4 the screen... but after Sept. 11, all the news channels now have at minimum a full-color scrolling ticker. Channels that HAD a ticker already, like CNNfn and CNBC? They added another.
Of course, this is ignoring the ever growing use of Chiron graphics on the news channels that have grown from the 80's square box over the anchor's shoulder to what I'm watching on Fox News Channel, a half-screen graphic.
Even the channels that use a pseudo-transparent logo are making them less and less translucent, adding more and more color and animation and URLs and other information into them. Look at Discovery Channel for an example of this.
I wasn't quite this bothered until I started scanning the channels - and noticing that the alpha effect of a transparent logo are actually becoming the exceptions...
Reading the thread at macnn, I get the impression that quite a high percentage of users had such a setup.
Quite true. The default hard drive name under Mac OS is "Macintosh HD" - including the space. My hard drive is partitioned into "Mac OS X Boot" and "Mac OS 9 Boot" - yes, 9 spaces in there. I don't think that's particularly uncommon either.