I don't claim to have any knowledge of why the university is in financial trouble. I've just been told by the higher-ups, and by the director of MIT-LL himself, that that is the case.
Uhm, I didn't, as you put it, claim that she (MIT's new president) will straighten out the finances all by herself. But a president is usually capable of exerting significant influence on the Board of Regents, and also of shaping university policy. It's entirely possible she will have a positive effect on MIT's finances.
One does not have to be an accountant to figure out how not to spend a company or university into the red, after all. It helps but isn't absolutely necessary.
Speaking as an employee of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, I've gotta say this is a welcome change. MIT has been in financial trouble for some time, and it has gotten to the point where it's affecting us -- and the Lab is normally financially autonomous.
Remember back in college when you had a TA -- or worse, a prof -- who could barely speak English, trying to teach you a subject you barely understood anyway? Remember how frustrating it was to have to simultaneously learn some extremely difficult subject and learn what sounded like something halfway between English and some other language?
Well, lo and behold, computer companies are finally realizing that it's hard for people who may or may not be good at computers, to receive Tech support from someone who barely speaks English.
You'd think that fall into the realm of common sense, but then again, most universities don't care that their TA's hardly speak English, so why should computer companies care?/bitter
Computer users in general are not the smartest folk. Present company excluded of course, but avid Slashdot readers are in the minority of those who use computers worldwide.
In other words, stupid people are going to try to stick these things into a CD/DVD drive, and when the drive doesn't read the much newer disc, the person is going to call Tech support and complain.
Sizing it differently (I would assume bigger, but maybe it's smaller to still allow a disc to fit into a 5.25" drive bay) would alleviate some of the confusion.
I think you've got too much faith in the average person's level of grammar knowledge.
Many people I know don't need Word's help to put a bunch of extra commas in sentences where they don't belong. They can do that just fine by themselves.
The problem seems to stem from apathy on the part of most people I know. Who needed to learn English back in high school? After all, we were all going to be scientists and programmers. Let the Technical Communication people worry about it, right?
It's a rare occurrence, and quite extraordinary in my opinion, when I find someone at my university who can write in a way that doesn't make me wince. Proper spelling, grammar, and overall English usage seems to be an increasingly lost art, and I think it's sad.
Mobile phones are better than communicators? Since when?
The range of the transporters -- at least on The Next Generation -- is 40,000 km. Communicators work at least as far as the range of the transporters, since otherwise they wouldn't be very useful.
You ever seen a cell phone that could transmit and receive from a tower that was 40,000 klicks away? Me either.
That's why I'm thankful we have a (somewhat) free market....
If Progressive somehow eventually requires its customers to have this device, then so what? You can always switch to another insurance company.
Or go without insurance. Sure, it's illegal, but it is ultimately your choice, after all.
Or, you could go the most extreme route of all -- don't drive a car. Probably not a feasible solution out here in the Southwest, but if you live in a big city, sure, you could do it.
It's all about how much you're willing to sacrifice in order to give the corporations the finger.
Well, for one thing, all the expressions you cited as examples are almost never used here in "bloody America," at least not that I've heard, anyway.
And for another, all of those events happened a long time ago -- at least sixty years ago for D-Day, and longer for the others. The memories of those particular events aren't as harsh as those of 9/11 -- after all, it happened not even three years ago yet. A lot of people here still can't even stand to watch a movie or see a picture with the Twin Towers in it, due to the memories they bring back.
You would be a fool if something similar to the events of September 11 happened to you and your country, and you didn't take it seriously.
There are various microclimates in New Mexico that are like that, yes. Namely, Los Alamos, Albuquerque, and Socorro. All have high concentrations of Ph.D's per capita. Plus the cost of living (compared to the East and West coasts) is incredibly low.
What's your reason for being here / staying here? I grew up here and managed to get a good job at WSMR, so I have no reason to go anywhere.
Yes, but we're not talking about what happened to the Comcast customer here. We're talking about the possible excuses / defenses various Slashdotters have said they would use in a similar situation.
I'm just trying to show that the best defense is to not download copyrighted works in the first place -- or, if you're gonna do it, don't get caught!
It's cool, it's FREE, supported by nonintrusive ads on the side of your Web browser, and it's likely fast, too.
And all a significant portion of the Slashdot crowd can think to do is whine about it being "probably closed source" and "probably Windows" and you don't know if it's secure or not... cry me a river.
You want to use it, cool. Don't do anything that you wouldn't want published in the NY Times. Do that stuff at home.
If you want your Open Source and your Linux and your guarantees that it's free, well, open up your own business and give away YOUR bandwidth.
I think it's a mighty fine point you're trying to make.
Whether you've simply downloaded a copyrighted work for your own use, or have chosen to share it with a million of your friends, you've still done something that, under current law, is illegal.
You haven't paid for or otherwise licensed the work. You downloaded it without permission of the copyright holder, and as such, you are in the wrong.
Either way, you take the risk, you better expect to pay the consequences if you get caught.
As shown by recent actions of the RIAA, they seem to be more interested in suing consumers (that is, a civil case or lawsuit) rather than trying to bring criminal charges.
I'm not sure you can use the Fifth Amendment as a defense if you're being sued by someone. You can be compelled by a judge to provide discovery (or something, I'm not sure I'm using the right term) and failure to comply could get you held in contempt of court.
I don't think you can simply refuse to provide any evidence that might incriminate yourself. If you could, I'm sure that defense would have been tried by many a CEO.
Hmm. I hadn't considered that. I figured it was just poor grammar (which is, sadly, characteristic of computer programmers and scientists of my generation).
Legally, however -- at least in the United States -- when a company incorporates, the corporation itself becomes a person. The corporation can be sued, but the individual boardmembers and employees cannot. These people are protected from both creditors and customers by way of incorporation.
That is why I think it's most correct to refer to incorporated companies as singular. It takes a bit more work to say something like "the employees of X corporation" or "the board members of X corporation," but that indicates without ambiguity that you are talking about the people in the corporation and not the corporation itself.
Plus, for the TRULY anal English majors in the audience, starting a sentence with "Working at abovenet" is a dangling participle. Just who are you talking about, exactly? Do YOU work at Abovenet? Do the Google employees work at Abovenet? Do the Google machines work at Abovenet?
More like "duck when you hear Iraqi terrorist fire, and hope the Army keeps the terrorists away from the server."
I don't think the military pays anywhere near that well (GS-11 through GS-13) unless you're a high-ranking officer sitting in a nice air-conditioned office FAR from the front. And even then it would be in the O payscale, not GS.
Oh, and also, make damn sure you don't snap any pictures of American bodies going home, otherwise you can kiss that cushy IT position goodbye.
This reminds me of something a geek friend did back in high school.
For whatever reason, the teachers decided that TI-81s and TI-82s were allowed on exams, whereas TI-85s were not.
Well, of course my friend (who had way too much money, courtesy of both his parents being high-level scientists at Los Alamos), had purchased the TI-85, which was top-of-the-line at the time.
He wasn't about to buy another, less-capable calculator just to use on the exam, but he was able to get his hands on the empty case (with button cutouts) of a TI-82.
He transplanted the guts of his TI-85 into the TI-82 case. He even changed the shift and 2nd button colors so they would look appropriate.
...but what's funny is those guys probably didn't even need their calculators.
I discovered two things in regards to my fancy programmable graphing calculator when I was in college.
Rule 1: Yes, it has 700k of memory. There's plenty of room in there to program in crib notes, homework questions, etc. And you can even do so fairly quickly provided you have the link cable and can do the typing on your computer.
Rule 2: But by the time you've gone to the trouble of gathering together every homework question asked all semester, and have programmed them all into your calculator, you most likely know all the questions by heart -- and probably the answers too, provided you did your homework all semester.
So why program the calculator at all? Study the questions and the answers, and study them well. Put some relevant formulas into the calculator. Then go in and ace the test using your calculator -- the one in your head. And use the one in your hand as a backup for formulas in case you freeze up on exams (like I do).
Some professors won't allow you to store stuff in a calculator, or even bring one in -- but they can't do anything about you storing everything you can in your head (unless of course you get a copy of the test beforehand that you aren't supposed to have).
Nothing wrong with it -- except unless you're learning the underlying concepts of the course and not just studying to pass the test, you haven't done yourself any good, and you'll forget everything you learned within six months.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't claim to have any knowledge of why the university is in financial trouble. I've just been told by the higher-ups, and by the director of MIT-LL himself, that that is the case.
Uhm, I didn't, as you put it, claim that she (MIT's new president) will straighten out the finances all by herself. But a president is usually capable of exerting significant influence on the Board of Regents, and also of shaping university policy. It's entirely possible she will have a positive effect on MIT's finances.
One does not have to be an accountant to figure out how not to spend a company or university into the red, after all. It helps but isn't absolutely necessary.
Speaking as an employee of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, I've gotta say this is a welcome change. MIT has been in financial trouble for some time, and it has gotten to the point where it's affecting us -- and the Lab is normally financially autonomous.
Here's hoping she enacts some real changes.
Remember back in college when you had a TA -- or worse, a prof -- who could barely speak English, trying to teach you a subject you barely understood anyway? Remember how frustrating it was to have to simultaneously learn some extremely difficult subject and learn what sounded like something halfway between English and some other language?
/bitter
Well, lo and behold, computer companies are finally realizing that it's hard for people who may or may not be good at computers, to receive Tech support from someone who barely speaks English.
You'd think that fall into the realm of common sense, but then again, most universities don't care that their TA's hardly speak English, so why should computer companies care?
Well, I don't really know. Is there a central location where they keep such statistics?
My bet is that Tech support folks actually did receive many calls about DVDs not working in CD-ROM drives. Such information is unverifiable, though.
Probably the same will happen with this, initially, and then it'll die down.
After reading it more carefully, I see that you're right.
Oh well. I guess that kinda takes the humor out of my post.
The reason here is probably analagous.
Computer users in general are not the smartest folk. Present company excluded of course, but avid Slashdot readers are in the minority of those who use computers worldwide.
In other words, stupid people are going to try to stick these things into a CD/DVD drive, and when the drive doesn't read the much newer disc, the person is going to call Tech support and complain.
Sizing it differently (I would assume bigger, but maybe it's smaller to still allow a disc to fit into a 5.25" drive bay) would alleviate some of the confusion.
Gotta hold that server together somehow.
Yes. The only version of Word 98 produced was for the Mac.
Which could explain many of this guy's problems, since he was editing the document on Windows.
How he got a piece of Mac software to install under Windows, I'll never know. But obviously it didn't run all that well.
I think you've got too much faith in the average person's level of grammar knowledge.
Many people I know don't need Word's help to put a bunch of extra commas in sentences where they don't belong. They can do that just fine by themselves.
The problem seems to stem from apathy on the part of most people I know. Who needed to learn English back in high school? After all, we were all going to be scientists and programmers. Let the Technical Communication people worry about it, right?
It's a rare occurrence, and quite extraordinary in my opinion, when I find someone at my university who can write in a way that doesn't make me wince. Proper spelling, grammar, and overall English usage seems to be an increasingly lost art, and I think it's sad.
Simply the best keyboard ever made. Unfortunately they're becoming hard to find these days.
Mobile phones are better than communicators? Since when?
The range of the transporters -- at least on The Next Generation -- is 40,000 km. Communicators work at least as far as the range of the transporters, since otherwise they wouldn't be very useful.
You ever seen a cell phone that could transmit and receive from a tower that was 40,000 klicks away? Me either.
That's why I'm thankful we have a (somewhat) free market. ...
If Progressive somehow eventually requires its customers to have this device, then so what? You can always switch to another insurance company.
Or go without insurance. Sure, it's illegal, but it is ultimately your choice, after all.
Or, you could go the most extreme route of all -- don't drive a car. Probably not a feasible solution out here in the Southwest, but if you live in a big city, sure, you could do it.
It's all about how much you're willing to sacrifice in order to give the corporations the finger.
Well, for one thing, all the expressions you cited as examples are almost never used here in "bloody America," at least not that I've heard, anyway.
And for another, all of those events happened a long time ago -- at least sixty years ago for D-Day, and longer for the others. The memories of those particular events aren't as harsh as those of 9/11 -- after all, it happened not even three years ago yet. A lot of people here still can't even stand to watch a movie or see a picture with the Twin Towers in it, due to the memories they bring back.
You would be a fool if something similar to the events of September 11 happened to you and your country, and you didn't take it seriously.
You need to gain some perspective.
Volume under a curve?
Don't you mean area?
There are various microclimates in New Mexico that are like that, yes. Namely, Los Alamos, Albuquerque, and Socorro. All have high concentrations of Ph.D's per capita. Plus the cost of living (compared to the East and West coasts) is incredibly low.
What's your reason for being here / staying here? I grew up here and managed to get a good job at WSMR, so I have no reason to go anywhere.
Yes, but we're not talking about what happened to the Comcast customer here. We're talking about the possible excuses / defenses various Slashdotters have said they would use in a similar situation.
I'm just trying to show that the best defense is to not download copyrighted works in the first place -- or, if you're gonna do it, don't get caught!
It's cool, it's FREE, supported by nonintrusive ads on the side of your Web browser, and it's likely fast, too.
... cry me a river.
And all a significant portion of the Slashdot crowd can think to do is whine about it being "probably closed source" and "probably Windows" and you don't know if it's secure or not
You want to use it, cool. Don't do anything that you wouldn't want published in the NY Times. Do that stuff at home.
If you want your Open Source and your Linux and your guarantees that it's free, well, open up your own business and give away YOUR bandwidth.
And quit whining, dammit. Geesh. Use it or don't.
I think it's a mighty fine point you're trying to make.
Whether you've simply downloaded a copyrighted work for your own use, or have chosen to share it with a million of your friends, you've still done something that, under current law, is illegal.
You haven't paid for or otherwise licensed the work. You downloaded it without permission of the copyright holder, and as such, you are in the wrong.
Either way, you take the risk, you better expect to pay the consequences if you get caught.
Does the Fifth Amendment apply in civil cases?
As shown by recent actions of the RIAA, they seem to be more interested in suing consumers (that is, a civil case or lawsuit) rather than trying to bring criminal charges.
I'm not sure you can use the Fifth Amendment as a defense if you're being sued by someone. You can be compelled by a judge to provide discovery (or something, I'm not sure I'm using the right term) and failure to comply could get you held in contempt of court.
I don't think you can simply refuse to provide any evidence that might incriminate yourself. If you could, I'm sure that defense would have been tried by many a CEO.
Hmm. I hadn't considered that. I figured it was just poor grammar (which is, sadly, characteristic of computer programmers and scientists of my generation).
Legally, however -- at least in the United States -- when a company incorporates, the corporation itself becomes a person. The corporation can be sued, but the individual boardmembers and employees cannot. These people are protected from both creditors and customers by way of incorporation.
That is why I think it's most correct to refer to incorporated companies as singular. It takes a bit more work to say something like "the employees of X corporation" or "the board members of X corporation," but that indicates without ambiguity that you are talking about the people in the corporation and not the corporation itself.
Plus, for the TRULY anal English majors in the audience, starting a sentence with "Working at abovenet" is a dangling participle. Just who are you talking about, exactly? Do YOU work at Abovenet? Do the Google employees work at Abovenet? Do the Google machines work at Abovenet?
Google "have?"
What is with this movement to consider corporations as plural rather than singular?
A corporation, i.e., Google, is SINGULAR. As in, "Google HAS pulled its machines out of a datacenter..."
If you said something like, "Google employees HAVE pulled their machines out of a datacenter..." then that would be correct.
If you're going to be pedantic, so am I.
Actually, those are all civilian positions.
More like "duck when you hear Iraqi terrorist fire, and hope the Army keeps the terrorists away from the server."
I don't think the military pays anywhere near that well (GS-11 through GS-13) unless you're a high-ranking officer sitting in a nice air-conditioned office FAR from the front. And even then it would be in the O payscale, not GS.
Oh, and also, make damn sure you don't snap any pictures of American bodies going home, otherwise you can kiss that cushy IT position goodbye.
This reminds me of something a geek friend did back in high school.
For whatever reason, the teachers decided that TI-81s and TI-82s were allowed on exams, whereas TI-85s were not.
Well, of course my friend (who had way too much money, courtesy of both his parents being high-level scientists at Los Alamos), had purchased the TI-85, which was top-of-the-line at the time.
He wasn't about to buy another, less-capable calculator just to use on the exam, but he was able to get his hands on the empty case (with button cutouts) of a TI-82.
He transplanted the guts of his TI-85 into the TI-82 case. He even changed the shift and 2nd button colors so they would look appropriate.
Fooled the teachers every time...
...but what's funny is those guys probably didn't even need their calculators.
I discovered two things in regards to my fancy programmable graphing calculator when I was in college.
Rule 1: Yes, it has 700k of memory. There's plenty of room in there to program in crib notes, homework questions, etc. And you can even do so fairly quickly provided you have the link cable and can do the typing on your computer.
Rule 2: But by the time you've gone to the trouble of gathering together every homework question asked all semester, and have programmed them all into your calculator, you most likely know all the questions by heart -- and probably the answers too, provided you did your homework all semester.
So why program the calculator at all? Study the questions and the answers, and study them well. Put some relevant formulas into the calculator. Then go in and ace the test using your calculator -- the one in your head. And use the one in your hand as a backup for formulas in case you freeze up on exams (like I do).
Some professors won't allow you to store stuff in a calculator, or even bring one in -- but they can't do anything about you storing everything you can in your head (unless of course you get a copy of the test beforehand that you aren't supposed to have).
Nothing wrong with it -- except unless you're learning the underlying concepts of the course and not just studying to pass the test, you haven't done yourself any good, and you'll forget everything you learned within six months.