Re:I thought amphibians were disappearing?
on
The Plague of Frogs
·
· Score: 2
> Amphibians, particularly frogs, are supposed to be an indicator species for pollution. From all accounts I've read they are dying off in great numbers around the world. Maybe because the live near the surface of the water, they are more sensitive to things like acid rain?
Solution obvious: Set up a huge coal-fired generator immediately to the east of Hawaii, and remove the scrubbers from the smokestacks!
It's arguably less-wasteful than having three tons of powdered caffeine sitting idle in a warehouse. If it ain't being used for the frogs, let me have some!.
(My only complaint with three tons of powdered caffeine in Hawaii is that it probably means there was an awful lot of good Hawaiian coffee that's been ruined by decaffeination.)
> We've been in "economic recovery" for years now.. Like another poster said, I'll believe it when I see it.
Funny, I thought the poster who said "I'll believe it when I see it" was talking about the salary cuts, not the recovery. I just got a nice bonus and another raise. (Of course, my company's profitable, which may have something to do with it. We're hiring judiciously, but having a hard time finding qualified folks because of the flood of dot-com refugees.)
The old adage is still true: A slowdown's when you hear about job losses. A recession's when you know someone who lost their job. A depression is when you lose your own job.
Whether you're in slowdown or recovery depends on who you ask, and where you're looking, and if you got hit, you certainly have my condolences. It's certainly sux0r3d to be in the dot-com and networking/telco world over the past couple of years, and it'll probably continue to sux0r for at least another year or two as the big telcos continue to implode beneath the crushing depths of their of their debt.
> Why is it that Florida seems to attract so many kooks? I mean, sure, nice weather and plenty of old ladies flush with cash, but there must be something in the water to make Florida the scam capital of the world, as well as the spam capital.
It's the spam capital because it's the fraud capital.
It's the fraud capital because of liberal bankruptcy laws. You go belly-up, creditors can't really seize anything.
By removing the risk (consequences) of bad business decisions, Florida encourages scams/frauds.
"Doesn't matter if you go into debt to the tune of $10000 on your credit card to play the latest MLM, the creditors'll eat the loss, but hey, that's their problem.
Doesn't matter if Grandma goes $10000 into debt playing your MLM scam, she doesn't lose her house either. Of course, she eats dog food, but hey, that's her problem."
I believe the preceding two sentences adequately summarize the state of "bidnizz ethiks" in Florida.
> Anyway, I nominate the first nuclear explosion as the greatest ever experiment. Until a hole is successfully opened in the spacetime, splitting the atom is the greatest scientific achievement ever.
I'd agree - but we're going for "most beautiful". While I'd agree that Trinity has its own sort of beauty, I'd say it falls down on two points:
> > must not be too complicated or expensive, and, most importantly, be within the reach of students
Even if it's within the reach of your students, it's disqualified on the grounds that it's (a) very complicated, and (b) even more expensive. Not just to build it, but to clean up after it. Building a new city to house the rebuilt university to house the rebuilt lab can get pricy, y'know.
On the other hand, I suppose there are physics "students" working on this problem in Baghdad at the moment, and I happen to think that Baghdad is in rather desperate need of, uh, "urban renewal"... it'd look way cool on CNN if one of those were to go off in a Baghdad basement, remind the rest of the world that Some Things Are Not To Be Fucked With By People Who Don't Know What They're Doing, and simultaneously qualify as the Greatest Darwin Award in human history. I could live with that. ('Specially as I'm not downwind:)
> until a hole is successfully opened in the
spacetime, splitting the atom is the greatest scientific achievement ever.
...well, greatest Darwin Award until then, at any rate:) Schluuuuuuuuuuur*poof*
So I'll one-up your fission experiment with a (Farnsworth Fusor. It's relatively safe to build, fuses hydrogen, emits detectable neutrons to confirm that you've got real, honest-to-God fusion, and looks way cool.
(Don't expect to get breakeven with it - it's orders of magnitude too inefficient. It's just... well... kinda neat.)
For extra safety or regulatory compliance, your students can build and run it with H2 instead of deuterium and it'll look just as cool without any emissions at all. (And it'll be just about as far from breaking even either way;-)
In short, the Farnsworth Fusor is rather like his other big invention (a little thing called "television", which you may have heard of) -- both inventions consume more energy than they produce, neither serves any useful function, and both look pretty cool anyway:)
> CA was famous for years for doing all sorts of stuff to "make the numbers" at the end of each quarter.
Computer Associates' sales practices, or the State of California's budgeting? (Budget deficit of $12B six weeks ago, now $22B, and a certain Governor who wants to shift revenues and expenses to hide it. The accounting's legal, but it's still, IMHO, deceptive.)
All of which reminds me of an old joke:
Accounting Department: "It's March 31st, do we know whether we're gonna make our numbers for first quarter?"
Sales Department: "How the fsck should I know yet, I just got back from lunch! The quarter's only halfway over!"
> Seriously, though, it sounds like the state government there needs a complete overhaul and there don't seem to be any
oversights/checks on what really is going on there....
It's called a gubernatorial election. If you're in CA and eligible to vote, you might want to participate.
Despite what you may have heard (and despite his best efforts:-), Gov. Davis isn't the only candidate running.
> So, basically Turner is pissed because overall, in the whole US, a fraction of a percent of their possible audience is skipping
commercials.
> >Don't ever let them near a school! They'll go on a blood hunt for students not listening in class!
No, it'll be worse.
They'll go on a blood hunt for students who are paying attention.
Think about it. If the student's typing away on the keyboard and doing his assignment on the school computer, the computer doesn't idle out.
No idle time, no screensaver kicking in.
No screensaver, no pair of receptive eyeballs watching the happy Coke(tm) can or Pepsi(tm) can rotating on the screen, singing "Let's all go to the lobby, Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, and get ourselves a snack!"
Believe me, if the ad industry gets into your kid's school, it's the students that are paying attention to their classes (and getting minimal screensaver-ad-time) that are gonna get the detentions. (Where sitting numb and braindead at the desk, is the explicitly desired behavior, not just the convenient one:)
> Actually, this could be the purest form of representative democracy: hook the congressman up to a computer that processes the instructions from all of the consitutuents and calculates what the "Public" wants.
Yeah, but look what happens when you get it wrong.
Consider that this may well be the best explanation we will ever have Steve Ballmer and the monkeyboy video.
Technology in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing.
If Republican - advocate a free-market solution, pointing out the revenues (and earnings, and by extension, taxes) from the technology industry far outweigh the income from the Content Cartel.
(If she's a Republican on the Religious Right, you may also want to point out that Hollywood hasn't been terribly friendly to her party in terms of donations, or her constituents' values, either. When was the last time Andy Grove of Intel decided to advocate sexual promiscuity and drug use?:)
Second - no matter what party she's from, avoid terms like "Content Cartel". Works great on Slashdot. Makes you sound like a tinfoil-hat-loon to a politician.
If Democrat - go for the "why subsidize Hollywood and 'big business' over the little guy selling hardware out of his storefront" angle.
Also, and most importantly, if she's a Democrat - point her to Rep. Boucher. A fellow Congressman from her side of the aisle who truly "gets it".
(For that matter, pointing a Republican Congressman to Rep. Boucher wouldn't hurt either. "Hey, man, even some of the Democrats realize that Fritz' bill is a Big Mistake, and they realize so for precisely the same reasons I do. When a Democratic Congressman can find common ground with Sen. Orrin Hatch (e.g. the DMCA has gone far beyond what its legislative proponents intended), there's probably some room for not just bipartisanship, but there's also something fundamentally wrong with the Hollings bill."
Finally - it's not just the Hollings bill. Rep. Boucher put it very well in the interview when he said there were two ways to look at it: Either all your base are belong to Hollywood, or not.
If you can educate your Congresswoman as regards to what to look for (and what to look out for - (including, but emphatically not limited to, Hollywood-mandated restrictions on hardware manufacturers and computer owners, backed up by force of criminal law) - you stand a reasonable chance of not just stopping the CBDTPA, but whatever successor bills Hollywood tries to put through if CBDTPA is defeated.
Finally-finally - and you probably shouldn't have to be told this, but just for the sake of completeness - be respectful and professional. Get a haircut. If you're male, wear a suit and tie. Dress like you're going to the most important job interview of your life.
Just 'cuz there are a lot of long-haired, wild-eyed geeky types on Slashdot, doesn't mean you have to fill the stereotype. The more they can see that opposition to CBDTPA isn't just a "long-haired freak" position, but a rational response on the part of consumers and businesses alike to a poor law, the better for our side.
> This reference was the
best I could find -- A comparison of interest in science [nsf.gov]:
In the United States, Europe, and Canada, approximately 1 in 10 adults can be classified as attentive to science and
technology policy; the proportion is smaller-about 7 percent-in Japan. The percentage classified as the "interested"
public (for science and technology policy) is higher in the United States than it is in the other three sociopolitical
systems. In 1995, it was 47 percent, compared with 33 percent in Europe (for 1992), 40 percent in Canada (1989), and
12 percent in Japan (1991). For all countries, there is a positive relationship between level of education and level of
attentiveness (Miller, Pardo, and Niwa 1997).
*sigh*. Sobering reading, but thanks for finding it. Guess there's really nowhere to run.
(Back to watching SETI@Home so I know where to point the radio transmitter to send my resume.:-)
> But a lack of knowledge doesn't necessairly mean an inability to reason.
Good point - given Imperial powers, I'd probably still choose to avoid questions of theological import on whatever test I'd administer to determine who's fit to vote.
That still leaves plenty of options.
"Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal. Therefore, (a) Socrates drank hemlock, (b) Socrates is mortal, (c) all of the above."
Any answer other than (b) - no vote. He may have drunk hemlock, but he didn't do it as a result of his mortality.
I would, however, like some general-knowledge questions on the test, though.
With regard to the test I'd propose for legislative office, there'd be a lot more general knowledge though. I beleive
most politicians are quite capable of rational thought -- they're just unwilling to use it, because it's much easier say things like "...for the children!" or "...or the terrorists win!" or "...what are you, anti-environmentalist?"
So the pols would have to demonstrate they at least knew, for instance, what DNA was, or where the nucleus of the cell was, before passing laws on bioengineering. Or the difference between the various types of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation before passing laws on cell phones or nuclear waste storage. Or the difference between medicine and quackery before telling the FDA to hold back real drugs while letting the homeopathic whackjobs make billions.
Since none of this will happen (because the politicians will say "How dare those brainy science types take away your right to your opinions! If you say the earth is flat, then by God, the earth's flat! I may not be no scientist with no fancy degree, but by gum, I'm with you, the people!"), how about an interim step:
Require a passing grade in a basic "rhetoric and reasoning" course (covering the basic types of logical fallacies - e.g. ad hominem / post hoc ergo propter hoc / complex question / begging the question / by authority / straw man), taught at every year in school, up to and including through high school.
Grade 1-3 could cover things like "because I'm the priest, and you have to do what I say".
Grades 4-6 could cover things like "he said I'm a fag because I can read books and that only fags read books!"
Grades 7-8 could start to talk about politics. Start with the bad and obvious examples. Hitler, Stalin, Mao.
Grades 9-12 could finish the process - political speeches, or bills from last year's Congressional sessions, could be introduced into the classroom, and picked apart.
There's one thing the religion folks got right - to paraphrase from Proverbs: "raise a child up in the way in which he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
It might take 12 years, but we could grow an enclued electorate and skilled work force. We merely choose not to.
> Only 50% of people surveyed knew that the Earth revolves around the Sun once a year. I am absolutley gob smacked. Is this really a cross section of American society!?
Yes.
Good thing they can vote and write letters to their congressmen, though. Otherwise our politicians might do something stupid, like ban new areas of medical research or make it hard to approve new reactor designs because "nukular" power is "like, totally scary and dangerous", especially when compared to buying oil from nations whose populations only want to kill us.
I'd go off here on a tangent about how we should have a Constitutional amendment requiring prospective voters to demonstrate at least third-grade science and literacy skills before you get to vote, and maybe, I dunno, maybe an eighth-grade science education before you can run for elected office.
But since that would require a vote... and since more than 50% of the people aren't even up to Copernicus and Galileo yet, oh, never mind...
The more I think of it, a "democracy" in which 50% of potential voters are unaware that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but they choose the leaders who control what research can and cannot be done... well, it just doesn't sound like that great a deal. (Neither does a "democracy" where 50% of the population pays 4% of the taxes and votes for the leaders who charge the other 50% of the population the other 96% of the taxes, for that matter.)
Bottom line, I think it's over for us. We jumped the shark in 1969 with the moon landings, and it's all been downhill from here. Maybe it's time we realized that for the US, democracy has finally become a bug, not a feature. A hobble against our progress, rather than our guarantor of freedom. (And a pretty lousy guarantor at that, if the Slashdot crowd's rantings about recent antiterrorism legislation is to be believed.)
Furthermore, the current US practice of importing skilled workers because the majority of its own citizens are, to put it gently, a bunch of drooling fucknozzles, is clearly only a stopgap measure. Maybe it'll keep the patient alive for another decade or two, but it's not going to solve the underlying problem.
Are there any Asia-Pacific nations that need high-tech folks with English skills, and have sane immigration policies that will give Westerners with the requisite skills and/or clue a shot at doing something useful with our lives?
Democracy is not a requirement. Just give me a functioning capitalist economy (sorry, Japan, not until you get your banking system in order) and a high level (hell, even a basic level) of literacy.
Someone's scientists are gonna start the nanotech industrial revelotion, or get heavy into bioengineering, or lob some stuff up there and make a self-sustaining lunar colony, or something even cooler that none of us have imagined yet, and I don't want to miss out on either the excitement or the financial rewards.
> Had a lot of what we like, references to things outside the show that is only funny for thow "who knows".
"Church of Star Trek: The Sci-Fi Religion that doesn't take all your money!"
Thanks for the reminder of why I keep watching Futurama. It's a cartoon for adults who actually keep track of what's going on in the world beyond what's reported on the lamestream news.
(I probably shouldn't have said that - it's such a small demographic as to assure Futurama gets canned:)
I comfort myself by thinking that for every "in-joke" I spot on Futurama, there are probably a dozen that I miss.
I think what it comes down to is that GtB is a great sendup of what life is like in Hollyweird. It's a great, biting satire about the kinds of things that TV executives can relate to.
Greg the Bunny is TV executives what Dilbert is to the IT worker.
Family Guy (the episode where the Grim Reaper took a holiday was sheer brilliance) and most Futurama episodes are just as biting as Greg the Bunny -- but most of the jokes probably have no real meaning for a TV executive; they're aimed pretty squarely at what life's like for Joe and Jane Sixpack. (Incompetent managers, bad investments, the Internet, Star Trek geeks:)
Trouble is, most Joe and Jane Sixpacks don't like to see themselves made fun of. It reminds them of how lame they are. Hence the fact that most Simpsons episodes have their funny moments, but they've lost (if indeed, they ever had it) that acerbic, biting cynicism that the original "Life in Hell" comics had.
That leaves the Slashdot crowd - most of whom loves satire as an art form - for stuff like The Tick, Family Guy, and Futurama. I mean, c'mon, how could we not laugh at the "Napster" episode of Futurama? Or the AOL episode ("My god... it's full of spam!"). We love satire, even when it's directed at us.
(And yes, I also lament the loss of the Dilbert series, but that was a UPN thing, not a FOX thing, so it's not really on topic here:)
Bottom line: GtB is being given a chance because TV executives probably think it's riotously funny. I think the gags are "kinda funny", but I can't even tell you when the show airs.
In contrast, I tuned in to Dilbert (and tune in to Futurama) religiously - the jokes that TV executives think of as "kinda funny" are the ones I find riotous.
I don't think I've regularly watched the Simpsons in years, though. Yeah, Life in Hell had to be toned down for TV, but that's probably why I never got hooked on the Simpsons.
> He also accuses the channel of meddling with
[Futurama], making complaints that the characters were "too mean"
Fuck, that's the reason I gave up on the Simpsons years ago, and love Futurama!
Hey, FOX, why don't you bite my shiny metal ass? I'm an adult. Now that Bugs Bunny's been censored to hell, I'm left craving cartoons I can enjoy as an adult. If there's a demographic that leaves room in the lineup for Greg The Bunny (who's funny, but is hardly broadly-based social satire), there's gotta be room for Bender and the baby in "Family Guy".
> Ever heard of Nerve.com? Janesguide.com? Suicidegirls.com? (I'm not affiliated with any of those)
Janesguide.com? (OK, I admit it, I looked.)
But for a few shining moments, I had visions of the pr0n vesrion of Jane's Information Group. I mean, imagine naked chicks posing beside every entry in something like All The World's Aircraft.
(Yeah... hot chix, and the state-of-the-art weapons systems they use to defend their land, sea, air, and space. Rock on. What, your army doesn't have hot chicks? Doesn't even allow your civvie chicks to do air traffic control? Gets cheezed off at us when they find out that our civvy and military chicks not only can, but do? Geez, bub, I dunno what to say, other than it must suck to be in your . Bet they don't even have beer in your officer's mess, either.:-)
> If I understand the parent poster correctly, the case of beer is for after the upgrades are finished... or at
least after the boxes are back together. Hardware issues aside, the effects of alcohol impairment couldn't
be much worse than the effects of a bunch of stupid users...
ROFLMAO, yes, precisely.
The ideal plan is that you throw the beer in the fridge at 5pm and start upgrading. You order the pizza later on at night when you're partway through. (Or when you've "got the easy ones working, but have to remove the dead fan because there's half a pound of dust in the case.") Ideally, you finish the last PC when the 'za arrives, and the brewskis are nicely-chilled.
Worst case, you take a break, eat some of the 'za (the key here is to order more than the three of you could possibly eat in a single sitting), finish the remaining upgrades, then drink the now-very beer and reheat the now-cold pizza.
(Do not, under any circumstances, chill the pizza and reheat the beer. That would be bad. Once you're sufficiently drunk, you can always reheat the pizza, bite-by-bite, on the old CPUs by using the pepperoni slices as heatsinks, and the pepperoni grease as transfer paste. Just make sure you clean the CPU off verrrrrrrrrry thoroughly first.
(Fun beer + upgrade story -- I've seen someone build up a "wall" of hot-glue around the edges of an Athlon chip whose die got chipped during a botched heatsink installation. You really can fry an egg on one... *burp*)
> You might want to consider what a local computer assembler would charge you for a generic PC with equivalent specs. Around here, at least (SF Bay Area) there are a number of mom-and-pop shops that consistently beat the large manufacturers on price. It's helpful to have someone local to call for repairs, too.
My preference would still be to upgrade just RAM and CPU. $100/unit, no heavy stuff to ship, doable overnight by three geeks and a couple of pizzas and a case of beer.
But if he's gonna go with a new bunch of systems, this would be the way to go. Many whitebox builders also offer cheap/reasonable shipping. Most will do a 48-hour burn-in before shipping.
Almost all will give you a real "original CD" with the O/S, as opposed to the BIOS-locked "restore CDs" (that only "re-image" the drive from a hidden partition, which is useless if the drive dies) from the big brand names.
Order 62 boxes from a quality manufacturer, and you've got 60 working desktops and two spares for parts. Maybe order an extra hard drive or two, a couple of heatsink fans, and a spare PSU, and you're done. Order a sufficiently current motherboard (maybe something that's about 6 months old and "widely available" - ah, the good old days of the Asus TX-97 series, or the ABIT BX2:-), and you're probably fine for at least 3-4 years' worth of hardware failures.
> The warranty thing is an issue, make sure you are covered under warranty for every part - there is somethign to be said for having an entire machine under warranty and being able to call dell and say I have a bad drive, I need a new one by tommorow morning
This is something I've never understood.
I'll give Dell the benefit of the doubt on pricing here and guesstimate that you're paying a $100 premium over "do-it-yourself" for the Dell brand.
Does that brand give you anything? Really? $100 times 60 users = $6000 premium for a warranty.
If you're talking disaster recovery, then maybe there's value to saying "Mr. Dell, a fire wiped out my shop. All my PCs are belong to burnt toast. Give me 60 PCs tomorrow."
Of course, in the event of that kind of a disaster, the 60 PCs won't do you much good.
Will your much-vaunted Dell warranty restore the data on a dead drive? No. So it can't be for that, either.
Given the probability of an individual component failing among 60 PCs on any given day, I'd just buy two spare machines and sit 'em on a shelf, "just in case". I'd then buy one replacement hard drive for every hard drive that failed. And I'd have a stock of two or three heat-sink fans.
Barring a lightning strike that took out 10 PCs at once, I think I could offer my 60 employees better (as in "in 5 minutes, just by walking down the hall") onsite replacement service than Dell, and I could do it for $1000, not $100 * 60 = $6000.
> Consider first the labor costs. Even assuming you can ghost your software and buy exact matching hardware, you're still looking at 2-3 hours per machine in the actual hardware construction/testing phase. Depending on what you could be making billing out to clients (again, depends on what kind of business your in, and your position in the company), you may loose your cost savings.
Fair enough -- so why not just dump in more CPU and RAM?
$15 for an FCPGA slotket (if the P2-400s are Slot-1 based) + $40ish for a CPU that'll go up to 1GHz (depending on BIOS support for higher multipliers and lower voltages). $20 worth of cheap-azz PC100 or PC133 RAM.
That solves the "ghost the software" problem - the faster CPU and more RAM don't require new drivers. No Ghosting required.
That solves the EULA issue - it's "just an upgrade". I can't imagine even WinXP whining about this. All the other hardware remains unchanged.
That solves the time problem. 15 minutes to yank the old CPU/HSF, apply heatsink gunk, blow dust out of old fan, and re-mount. Maybe another 15 minutes fiddling in BIOS or checking motherboard or slotket jumpers to confirm that the mobo supports the proper voltages on the chip.
What you said, except I'd be an even bigger cheapskate.
What on earth is an office PC doing that needs an AthlonXP 1600+? (OK, the sysadmins need that to play Quake after-hours, but what about the guy who only uses Excel and Powerpoint?:-)
For that matter - sure, the WD 5400RPM 40G drives are down to $52 - but what are office PCs doing that requires 40G?
This may depend on what he's already got -- if these PCs have only 100M of space left on ancient 2G drives, then fine, upgrade the drives to 40G. But if they've already got 6-8G drives (which probably have 4-5G free), and all the "real stuff" is stored on a central server, and all the user machines have several gigs free, isn't that enough space for your employees to store their downloaded MP3z and pr0n?;-)
What does he need a newer video card for? Are his users likely to run 1600x1280 on their 17" monitors?
For office computing, you can often KIWI - Kill It With Iron. Add more RAM, swap the CPU for a P3 at either 133 MHz FSB or 100 MHz FSB, and see if it still sucks. If it ceases to suck, the problem's solved, probably for less than $100 per desktop.
> well.. if the CASE is the same, but you swap out the motherboard, you can argue that it was a computer UPGRADE, not a new computer.
Waaaaaaaaaaait a minute. (Not you, the original questioner).
What's really wrong with these systems in the first place?
He's got an assload of 400 MHz P2s, probably Slot-1-based, and each box has either 64 or 128M of PC100 SDRAM.
Why not buy a bunch of Celeron or P3-800ish chips and FCPGA (new-sk00l slotket), and another 128M of RAM for each of them?
I think you could get a decent CPU and RAM upgrade for less than $100 per box.
Moreover, you wouldn't have to reimage any drives - it'd be a straight hardware swap, with maybe 15 minutes to figure out what voltages the motherboard supported, and to configure the slotket or motherboard correctly. (If you had quality components to begin with, this might even be automatic).
Add onto that maybe 15 minutes per desktop to properly apply thermal transfer paste.
No EULA concerns, no hardware/driver concerns, and it's dirt cheap.
I'd bet that you, plus one or two of the "hardware geeks" (you know who they are:-) in the office could do this overnight for $100 per desktop, plus the price of a case of beer and a couple of large pizzas with all the trimmings.
Slashdot Mirror
Solution obvious: Set up a huge coal-fired generator immediately to the east of Hawaii, and remove the scrubbers from the smokestacks!
It's arguably less-wasteful than having three tons of powdered caffeine sitting idle in a warehouse. If it ain't being used for the frogs, let me have some!.
(My only complaint with three tons of powdered caffeine in Hawaii is that it probably means there was an awful lot of good Hawaiian coffee that's been ruined by decaffeination.)
Funny, I thought the poster who said "I'll believe it when I see it" was talking about the salary cuts, not the recovery. I just got a nice bonus and another raise. (Of course, my company's profitable, which may have something to do with it. We're hiring judiciously, but having a hard time finding qualified folks because of the flood of dot-com refugees.)
The old adage is still true: A slowdown's when you hear about job losses. A recession's when you know someone who lost their job. A depression is when you lose your own job.
Whether you're in slowdown or recovery depends on who you ask, and where you're looking, and if you got hit, you certainly have my condolences. It's certainly sux0r3d to be in the dot-com and networking/telco world over the past couple of years, and it'll probably continue to sux0r for at least another year or two as the big telcos continue to implode beneath the crushing depths of their of their debt.
It's the spam capital because it's the fraud capital.
It's the fraud capital because of liberal bankruptcy laws. You go belly-up, creditors can't really seize anything.
By removing the risk (consequences) of bad business decisions, Florida encourages scams/frauds.
"Doesn't matter if you go into debt to the tune of $10000 on your credit card to play the latest MLM, the creditors'll eat the loss, but hey, that's their problem.
Doesn't matter if Grandma goes $10000 into debt playing your MLM scam, she doesn't lose her house either. Of course, she eats dog food, but hey, that's her problem."
I believe the preceding two sentences adequately summarize the state of "bidnizz ethiks" in Florida.
No wonder there are so many $cientologists in Hollywood!
I'd agree - but we're going for "most beautiful". While I'd agree that Trinity has its own sort of beauty, I'd say it falls down on two points:
> > must not be too complicated or expensive, and, most importantly, be within the reach of students
Even if it's within the reach of your students, it's disqualified on the grounds that it's (a) very complicated, and (b) even more expensive. Not just to build it, but to clean up after it. Building a new city to house the rebuilt university to house the rebuilt lab can get pricy, y'know.
On the other hand, I suppose there are physics "students" working on this problem in Baghdad at the moment, and I happen to think that Baghdad is in rather desperate need of, uh, "urban renewal"... it'd look way cool on CNN if one of those were to go off in a Baghdad basement, remind the rest of the world that Some Things Are Not To Be Fucked With By People Who Don't Know What They're Doing, and simultaneously qualify as the Greatest Darwin Award in human history. I could live with that. ('Specially as I'm not downwind :)
> until a hole is successfully opened in the spacetime, splitting the atom is the greatest scientific achievement ever.
So I'll one-up your fission experiment with a (Farnsworth Fusor. It's relatively safe to build, fuses hydrogen, emits detectable neutrons to confirm that you've got real, honest-to-God fusion, and looks way cool.
(Don't expect to get breakeven with it - it's orders of magnitude too inefficient. It's just... well... kinda neat.)
For extra safety or regulatory compliance, your students can build and run it with H2 instead of deuterium and it'll look just as cool without any emissions at all. (And it'll be just about as far from breaking even either way ;-)
In short, the Farnsworth Fusor is rather like his other big invention (a little thing called "television", which you may have heard of) -- both inventions consume more energy than they produce, neither serves any useful function, and both look pretty cool anyway :)
Computer Associates' sales practices, or the State of California's budgeting? (Budget deficit of $12B six weeks ago, now $22B, and a certain Governor who wants to shift revenues and expenses to hide it. The accounting's legal, but it's still, IMHO, deceptive.)
All of which reminds me of an old joke:
Accounting Department: "It's March 31st, do we know whether we're gonna make our numbers for first quarter?"
Sales Department: "How the fsck should I know yet, I just got back from lunch! The quarter's only halfway over!"
It's called a gubernatorial election. If you're in CA and eligible to vote, you might want to participate.
Despite what you may have heard (and despite his best efforts :-), Gov. Davis isn't the only candidate running.
>
>Don't ever let them near a school! They'll go on a blood hunt for students not listening in class!
No, it'll be worse.
They'll go on a blood hunt for students who are paying attention.
Think about it. If the student's typing away on the keyboard and doing his assignment on the school computer, the computer doesn't idle out.
No idle time, no screensaver kicking in.
No screensaver, no pair of receptive eyeballs watching the happy Coke(tm) can or Pepsi(tm) can rotating on the screen, singing "Let's all go to the lobby, Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, and get ourselves a snack!"
Believe me, if the ad industry gets into your kid's school, it's the students that are paying attention to their classes (and getting minimal screensaver-ad-time) that are gonna get the detentions. (Where sitting numb and braindead at the desk, is the explicitly desired behavior, not just the convenient one :)
Yeah, but look what happens when you get it wrong.
Consider that this may well be the best explanation we will ever have Steve Ballmer and the monkeyboy video.
Technology in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing.
Huh? How so. PETA chix don't have brains to which you can attach the electrodes.
Oh, you mean attach the electrodes somewhere else on the hippiechick. Cool. Kinky, but cool. *G*
Next - what party is she?
If Republican - advocate a free-market solution, pointing out the revenues (and earnings, and by extension, taxes) from the technology industry far outweigh the income from the Content Cartel.
(If she's a Republican on the Religious Right, you may also want to point out that Hollywood hasn't been terribly friendly to her party in terms of donations, or her constituents' values, either. When was the last time Andy Grove of Intel decided to advocate sexual promiscuity and drug use? :)
Second - no matter what party she's from, avoid terms like "Content Cartel". Works great on Slashdot. Makes you sound like a tinfoil-hat-loon to a politician.
If Democrat - go for the "why subsidize Hollywood and 'big business' over the little guy selling hardware out of his storefront" angle.
Also, and most importantly, if she's a Democrat - point her to Rep. Boucher. A fellow Congressman from her side of the aisle who truly "gets it".
(For that matter, pointing a Republican Congressman to Rep. Boucher wouldn't hurt either. "Hey, man, even some of the Democrats realize that Fritz' bill is a Big Mistake, and they realize so for precisely the same reasons I do. When a Democratic Congressman can find common ground with Sen. Orrin Hatch (e.g. the DMCA has gone far beyond what its legislative proponents intended), there's probably some room for not just bipartisanship, but there's also something fundamentally wrong with the Hollings bill."
Finally - it's not just the Hollings bill. Rep. Boucher put it very well in the interview when he said there were two ways to look at it: Either all your base are belong to Hollywood, or not.
If you can educate your Congresswoman as regards to what to look for (and what to look out for - (including, but emphatically not limited to, Hollywood-mandated restrictions on hardware manufacturers and computer owners, backed up by force of criminal law) - you stand a reasonable chance of not just stopping the CBDTPA, but whatever successor bills Hollywood tries to put through if CBDTPA is defeated.
Finally-finally - and you probably shouldn't have to be told this, but just for the sake of completeness - be respectful and professional. Get a haircut. If you're male, wear a suit and tie. Dress like you're going to the most important job interview of your life.
Just 'cuz there are a lot of long-haired, wild-eyed geeky types on Slashdot, doesn't mean you have to fill the stereotype. The more they can see that opposition to CBDTPA isn't just a "long-haired freak" position, but a rational response on the part of consumers and businesses alike to a poor law, the better for our side.
*sigh*. Sobering reading, but thanks for finding it. Guess there's really nowhere to run.
(Back to watching SETI@Home so I know where to point the radio transmitter to send my resume. :-)
Good point - given Imperial powers, I'd probably still choose to avoid questions of theological import on whatever test I'd administer to determine who's fit to vote.
That still leaves plenty of options.
Any answer other than (b) - no vote. He may have drunk hemlock, but he didn't do it as a result of his mortality.
I would, however, like some general-knowledge questions on the test, though.
With regard to the test I'd propose for legislative office, there'd be a lot more general knowledge though. I beleive most politicians are quite capable of rational thought -- they're just unwilling to use it, because it's much easier say things like "...for the children!" or "...or the terrorists win!" or "...what are you, anti-environmentalist?"
So the pols would have to demonstrate they at least knew, for instance, what DNA was, or where the nucleus of the cell was, before passing laws on bioengineering. Or the difference between the various types of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation before passing laws on cell phones or nuclear waste storage. Or the difference between medicine and quackery before telling the FDA to hold back real drugs while letting the homeopathic whackjobs make billions.
Since none of this will happen (because the politicians will say "How dare those brainy science types take away your right to your opinions! If you say the earth is flat, then by God, the earth's flat! I may not be no scientist with no fancy degree, but by gum, I'm with you, the people!"), how about an interim step:
Require a passing grade in a basic "rhetoric and reasoning" course (covering the basic types of logical fallacies - e.g. ad hominem / post hoc ergo propter hoc / complex question / begging the question / by authority / straw man), taught at every year in school, up to and including through high school.
Grade 1-3 could cover things like "because I'm the priest, and you have to do what I say".
Grades 4-6 could cover things like "he said I'm a fag because I can read books and that only fags read books!"
Grades 7-8 could start to talk about politics. Start with the bad and obvious examples. Hitler, Stalin, Mao.
Grades 9-12 could finish the process - political speeches, or bills from last year's Congressional sessions, could be introduced into the classroom, and picked apart.
There's one thing the religion folks got right - to paraphrase from Proverbs: "raise a child up in the way in which he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."
It might take 12 years, but we could grow an enclued electorate and skilled work force. We merely choose not to.
Yes.
Good thing they can vote and write letters to their congressmen, though. Otherwise our politicians might do something stupid, like ban new areas of medical research or make it hard to approve new reactor designs because "nukular" power is "like, totally scary and dangerous", especially when compared to buying oil from nations whose populations only want to kill us.
I'd go off here on a tangent about how we should have a Constitutional amendment requiring prospective voters to demonstrate at least third-grade science and literacy skills before you get to vote, and maybe, I dunno, maybe an eighth-grade science education before you can run for elected office.
But since that would require a vote... and since more than 50% of the people aren't even up to Copernicus and Galileo yet, oh, never mind...
The more I think of it, a "democracy" in which 50% of potential voters are unaware that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but they choose the leaders who control what research can and cannot be done... well, it just doesn't sound like that great a deal. (Neither does a "democracy" where 50% of the population pays 4% of the taxes and votes for the leaders who charge the other 50% of the population the other 96% of the taxes, for that matter.)
Bottom line, I think it's over for us. We jumped the shark in 1969 with the moon landings, and it's all been downhill from here. Maybe it's time we realized that for the US, democracy has finally become a bug, not a feature. A hobble against our progress, rather than our guarantor of freedom. (And a pretty lousy guarantor at that, if the Slashdot crowd's rantings about recent antiterrorism legislation is to be believed.)
Furthermore, the current US practice of importing skilled workers because the majority of its own citizens are, to put it gently, a bunch of drooling fucknozzles, is clearly only a stopgap measure. Maybe it'll keep the patient alive for another decade or two, but it's not going to solve the underlying problem.
Are there any Asia-Pacific nations that need high-tech folks with English skills, and have sane immigration policies that will give Westerners with the requisite skills and/or clue a shot at doing something useful with our lives? Democracy is not a requirement. Just give me a functioning capitalist economy (sorry, Japan, not until you get your banking system in order) and a high level (hell, even a basic level) of literacy.
Someone's scientists are gonna start the nanotech industrial revelotion, or get heavy into bioengineering, or lob some stuff up there and make a self-sustaining lunar colony, or something even cooler that none of us have imagined yet, and I don't want to miss out on either the excitement or the financial rewards.
"Church of Star Trek: The Sci-Fi Religion that doesn't take all your money!"
Thanks for the reminder of why I keep watching Futurama. It's a cartoon for adults who actually keep track of what's going on in the world beyond what's reported on the lamestream news.
(I probably shouldn't have said that - it's such a small demographic as to assure Futurama gets canned :)
I comfort myself by thinking that for every "in-joke" I spot on Futurama, there are probably a dozen that I miss.
I've seen this comment a few times.
I think what it comes down to is that GtB is a great sendup of what life is like in Hollyweird. It's a great, biting satire about the kinds of things that TV executives can relate to.
Greg the Bunny is TV executives what Dilbert is to the IT worker.
Family Guy (the episode where the Grim Reaper took a holiday was sheer brilliance) and most Futurama episodes are just as biting as Greg the Bunny -- but most of the jokes probably have no real meaning for a TV executive; they're aimed pretty squarely at what life's like for Joe and Jane Sixpack. (Incompetent managers, bad investments, the Internet, Star Trek geeks :)
Trouble is, most Joe and Jane Sixpacks don't like to see themselves made fun of. It reminds them of how lame they are. Hence the fact that most Simpsons episodes have their funny moments, but they've lost (if indeed, they ever had it) that acerbic, biting cynicism that the original "Life in Hell" comics had.
That leaves the Slashdot crowd - most of whom loves satire as an art form - for stuff like The Tick, Family Guy, and Futurama. I mean, c'mon, how could we not laugh at the "Napster" episode of Futurama? Or the AOL episode ("My god... it's full of spam!"). We love satire, even when it's directed at us.
(And yes, I also lament the loss of the Dilbert series, but that was a UPN thing, not a FOX thing, so it's not really on topic here :)
Bottom line: GtB is being given a chance because TV executives probably think it's riotously funny. I think the gags are "kinda funny", but I can't even tell you when the show airs.
In contrast, I tuned in to Dilbert (and tune in to Futurama) religiously - the jokes that TV executives think of as "kinda funny" are the ones I find riotous.
I don't think I've regularly watched the Simpsons in years, though. Yeah, Life in Hell had to be toned down for TV, but that's probably why I never got hooked on the Simpsons.
Fuck, that's the reason I gave up on the Simpsons years ago, and love Futurama!
Hey, FOX, why don't you bite my shiny metal ass? I'm an adult. Now that Bugs Bunny's been censored to hell, I'm left craving cartoons I can enjoy as an adult. If there's a demographic that leaves room in the lineup for Greg The Bunny (who's funny, but is hardly broadly-based social satire), there's gotta be room for Bender and the baby in "Family Guy".
Janesguide.com? (OK, I admit it, I looked.)
But for a few shining moments, I had visions of the pr0n vesrion of Jane's Information Group. I mean, imagine naked chicks posing beside every entry in something like All The World's Aircraft.
(Yeah... hot chix, and the state-of-the-art weapons systems they use to defend their land, sea, air, and space. Rock on. What, your army doesn't have hot chicks? Doesn't even allow your civvie chicks to do air traffic control? Gets cheezed off at us when they find out that our civvy and military chicks not only can, but do? Geez, bub, I dunno what to say, other than it must suck to be in your . Bet they don't even have beer in your officer's mess, either. :-)
No, this is why people quit and work for a company that treats them with respect.
If all IT jobs were unionized, that option wouldn't exist. I work with my employer, not against them.
ROFLMAO, yes, precisely.
The ideal plan is that you throw the beer in the fridge at 5pm and start upgrading. You order the pizza later on at night when you're partway through. (Or when you've "got the easy ones working, but have to remove the dead fan because there's half a pound of dust in the case.") Ideally, you finish the last PC when the 'za arrives, and the brewskis are nicely-chilled.
Worst case, you take a break, eat some of the 'za (the key here is to order more than the three of you could possibly eat in a single sitting), finish the remaining upgrades, then drink the now-very beer and reheat the now-cold pizza.
(Do not, under any circumstances, chill the pizza and reheat the beer. That would be bad. Once you're sufficiently drunk, you can always reheat the pizza, bite-by-bite, on the old CPUs by using the pepperoni slices as heatsinks, and the pepperoni grease as transfer paste. Just make sure you clean the CPU off verrrrrrrrrry thoroughly first.
(Fun beer + upgrade story -- I've seen someone build up a "wall" of hot-glue around the edges of an Athlon chip whose die got chipped during a botched heatsink installation. You really can fry an egg on one... *burp*)
My preference would still be to upgrade just RAM and CPU. $100/unit, no heavy stuff to ship, doable overnight by three geeks and a couple of pizzas and a case of beer.
But if he's gonna go with a new bunch of systems, this would be the way to go. Many whitebox builders also offer cheap/reasonable shipping. Most will do a 48-hour burn-in before shipping. Almost all will give you a real "original CD" with the O/S, as opposed to the BIOS-locked "restore CDs" (that only "re-image" the drive from a hidden partition, which is useless if the drive dies) from the big brand names.
Order 62 boxes from a quality manufacturer, and you've got 60 working desktops and two spares for parts. Maybe order an extra hard drive or two, a couple of heatsink fans, and a spare PSU, and you're done. Order a sufficiently current motherboard (maybe something that's about 6 months old and "widely available" - ah, the good old days of the Asus TX-97 series, or the ABIT BX2 :-), and you're probably fine for at least 3-4 years' worth of hardware failures.
This is something I've never understood.
I'll give Dell the benefit of the doubt on pricing here and guesstimate that you're paying a $100 premium over "do-it-yourself" for the Dell brand.
Does that brand give you anything? Really? $100 times 60 users = $6000 premium for a warranty.
If you're talking disaster recovery, then maybe there's value to saying "Mr. Dell, a fire wiped out my shop. All my PCs are belong to burnt toast. Give me 60 PCs tomorrow."
Of course, in the event of that kind of a disaster, the 60 PCs won't do you much good.
Will your much-vaunted Dell warranty restore the data on a dead drive? No. So it can't be for that, either.
Given the probability of an individual component failing among 60 PCs on any given day, I'd just buy two spare machines and sit 'em on a shelf, "just in case". I'd then buy one replacement hard drive for every hard drive that failed. And I'd have a stock of two or three heat-sink fans.
Barring a lightning strike that took out 10 PCs at once, I think I could offer my 60 employees better (as in "in 5 minutes, just by walking down the hall") onsite replacement service than Dell, and I could do it for $1000, not $100 * 60 = $6000.
Fair enough -- so why not just dump in more CPU and RAM?
$15 for an FCPGA slotket (if the P2-400s are Slot-1 based) + $40ish for a CPU that'll go up to 1GHz (depending on BIOS support for higher multipliers and lower voltages). $20 worth of cheap-azz PC100 or PC133 RAM.
That solves the "ghost the software" problem - the faster CPU and more RAM don't require new drivers. No Ghosting required.
That solves the EULA issue - it's "just an upgrade". I can't imagine even WinXP whining about this. All the other hardware remains unchanged.
That solves the time problem. 15 minutes to yank the old CPU/HSF, apply heatsink gunk, blow dust out of old fan, and re-mount. Maybe another 15 minutes fiddling in BIOS or checking motherboard or slotket jumpers to confirm that the mobo supports the proper voltages on the chip.
What on earth is an office PC doing that needs an AthlonXP 1600+? (OK, the sysadmins need that to play Quake after-hours, but what about the guy who only uses Excel and Powerpoint? :-)
For that matter - sure, the WD 5400RPM 40G drives are down to $52 - but what are office PCs doing that requires 40G?
This may depend on what he's already got -- if these PCs have only 100M of space left on ancient 2G drives, then fine, upgrade the drives to 40G. But if they've already got 6-8G drives (which probably have 4-5G free), and all the "real stuff" is stored on a central server, and all the user machines have several gigs free, isn't that enough space for your employees to store their downloaded MP3z and pr0n? ;-)
What does he need a newer video card for? Are his users likely to run 1600x1280 on their 17" monitors?
For office computing, you can often KIWI - Kill It With Iron. Add more RAM, swap the CPU for a P3 at either 133 MHz FSB or 100 MHz FSB, and see if it still sucks. If it ceases to suck, the problem's solved, probably for less than $100 per desktop.
Waaaaaaaaaaait a minute. (Not you, the original questioner).
What's really wrong with these systems in the first place?
He's got an assload of 400 MHz P2s, probably Slot-1-based, and each box has either 64 or 128M of PC100 SDRAM.
Why not buy a bunch of Celeron or P3-800ish chips and FCPGA (new-sk00l slotket), and another 128M of RAM for each of them?
I think you could get a decent CPU and RAM upgrade for less than $100 per box.
Moreover, you wouldn't have to reimage any drives - it'd be a straight hardware swap, with maybe 15 minutes to figure out what voltages the motherboard supported, and to configure the slotket or motherboard correctly. (If you had quality components to begin with, this might even be automatic).
Add onto that maybe 15 minutes per desktop to properly apply thermal transfer paste.
No EULA concerns, no hardware/driver concerns, and it's dirt cheap.
I'd bet that you, plus one or two of the "hardware geeks" (you know who they are :-) in the office could do this overnight for $100 per desktop, plus the price of a case of beer and a couple of large pizzas with all the trimmings.