Reliability - until your network connection goes down. Then it's pack up your computer and track down another connection.
True, but for more and more people, if their Internet connection is down, you might as well throw the machine away. Other than typing papers for school, what non-Net things do people do anymore other than play games (which are now network-dependent such as WoW)? There are still the Quicken hold-outs, but now that all banks offer online service and everyone takes debit cards, what's the point of balancing a checkbook on the PC?
At work, if the LAN goes down, again, the PC is basically a paperweight. No email, no CVS/Subversion/etc, no server shares, Windows freaks out with pauses here and there. A LAN outage usually causes such a fuss down the hall that even if you happen to have the necessary files open for local editing, you can't concentrate.
Now fast forward (n) years when Net reliability is as good as/better than telco service, and you're getting 10Mbit speeds regularly with low ping times. At that point, RDP or NX services are really nice to use, assuming AJAX doesn't continue to expand. No spam in your web or remote email client. No viruses in your word documents. Gigs of storage available from anywhere, and easily shared with others. I think once that type of computing becomes normal, it will be hard to imagine going back to a world where all your data was "trapped" in a box in your house, and you couldn't just log in anywhere in the world and work with your stuff or share/edit/view it with others.
What if someone sent your information to him as a "prank"? Are you on this list? Have you checked to make sure? How many lists per day will you have to check to make sure your information isn't being published by the latest pundit-of-the-week trying to get some publicity? How can he prove that any of these people sent this information with their consent and didn't have their craiglist credentials stolen? He will probably get sued into the stone age, and I believe that he should.
There will always be some dishonest people who see democracy as a game they can "cheat" at to win. But if a voting machine doesn't produce a solid meat-space record that can be guarded, stored, and re-examined, the effects of those cheaters on the outcome is greater by orders of magnitude.
Not to mention that fact that these electronic systems are so expensive compared to the best voting method I've used, that is the "connect the arrow with a sharpie pen". No chads or punch systems, just thick paper and markers. If you can't connect a line with a marker, have someone assist you. If you can't do that, you probably don't need to vote.
I would prefer all states go to the marker system. It's easy to count electronically, super cheap, and everyone understands how it works. They can even add photos to the cards if need be. These complex, expensive, and opaque electronic systems are a solution looking for a problem, IMO.
You mentioned Apple's prices... what I found recently when purchasing an iMac for a relative is that Apple's hardware is pretty competitive, price-wise (except perhaps the mini). I built a near-equivalent dual-core Dell on their website with the teacher's discount and it was about $1130 USD. The iMac was $1299 with teacher's discount, and had a much faster/cooler dual core cpu (Core Duo vs Pentium D 805 heater) and it wasn't a collection of commodity boxes, also a big factor in this purchase (not for me, I like commodity beige boxes so I can gut/recycle the hardware). The discounts were pretty minimal on both sites, so that wasn't a big factor. The days of 2x over-priced macs appear to be over, especially considering the suite of software that comes preinstalled (no AppleWorks, though, so AbiWord will be installed on it soon).
My point was not to necessarily compare Iraq and Japan other than the high-level similarity that both were occupations and nation-building excercises by the US. I was simply trying to illustrate with searchable sources that in 'The Good Old Days' the boys didn't just march into Japan and rebuild it without trouble. There was resistance at home and in Japan, albeit less violent than seen in Iraq. In the sixty years since, it has been forgotten that many questioned the operation publicly and the history-book summaries do not explain this, so it now looks much easier and simpler than it really was. Because those details have been forgotten by most people, the current floundering is possibly amplified in comparison. I could have probably used any similar exercise that ultimately succeeded as an example of this effect. Interestingly, those that failed (Vietnam) are remembered in crucial detail.
There were pockets of resistance, much smaller than those in Iraq. Remember that there was attempted coup just before the Emperor surrendered; a number of Japanese did not want to surrender, A-bombs be damned. My point in my post was that even without the extra difficulties of Iraq, the outlook was not completely positive or undisputed year or even two years later, as this NYTimes headline from August 1946 reads:
"Japan a Year After: still a 'Gamble'; Two stages of the occupation have succeeded beyond hopes; the third is in the lap of the gods."
American soldiers in World War II did not haul off captured Japanese POWs and claim they were not to be accorded the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
Again, not even just a lack of historical book-knowledge, but I've even seen brown Interstate highway signs marking the presence of old Japanese Internment camps throughout the US. These people were not even combattants, but immigrants living here. What is old, is new again. I'm not making excuses for these actions, just making sure you realize that Bush did not invent these concepts.
The simple fact is that we all have little historical perspective, and political parties are using this ignorance to paint the worst possible picture of each other outside of historical perspective.
Agreed, the situation is far different with Iraq than Japan; in the case of Japan, as you said, in many ways it was an 'easier' or at least more straight-forward solution, probably assisted by the fact that outright war (and two atomic bombs) had probably beaten down the population to the point where they just wanted peace and normality, no matter whose flag is flying on public buildings they never see. I really don't have enough historical knowledge to think of a closer successful example of Iraq. It may not exist. If Iraqi rebuilding fails, then all the gory details will be remembered as a cautionary example. If it succeeds, it will be (like Japan) pointed to in the future as a shining example of how we can't seem to do it as easily as we did in the 'old days'.
However, take a look at those NYTimes archives, and even in the 'easier' case of Japan, it's clear from the headlines and articles that success was not assured even a year or two after occupation, and there apparently were many differing viewpoints on how to stabilize Japan. I would love have a google images-like repository of these newspapers so I could sit down and 'live through' a month of the forties. Microfiche would probably take two months to do the same...
Think about it for a moment. During any time in U.S. history can you think of any other president about which such comments have been raised?
Yes, on multiple occassions, during wars, the Great Depression, during the civil rights movements, etc. I'm not saying Bush hasn't made mistakes, but remember that we as people (I'm included) are pretty narrow-scoped in our knowledge of history, and we forget the details of history all too quickly, or we are never taught the details. By details, I mean the day-to-day outlook, not the two line summary in the history book 100 years later.
Switching topics but not the principle, take Iraq as an example: many think 3 years is too long to stabilize a country. Go search the NY Times archives from 1945 until about 1947 with the key words "Japan" and "violence" or "unrest". You can only see the headlines and a small bit of text unless you pay for them, but it should be enought text to get the meaning. Article after artcle questions the stabilization of post-war Japan, when will it ever end, what about Korea now, etc, etc. Iraq is taking much longer, but fifty years from now none of the difficulties will be remembered, assuming the effort is successful. It's scary to think about how much history is forgotten.
Sorry, but this is simply oversimplifying the situation to the extreme.;-) First off, you have no idea what the situation is like there.
I grew up very near Slidell, where the parent poster is going, and I have been to Picayune, Ocean Springs, and north Gulfport in the past several weeks (how long ago was the storm? I've lost track). I have family members literally from one end of the coast to another in MS, in N.O., Baton Rouge, and friends in Lafayette. I have a good idea of the situation from first-hand eyesight as well as through contact with family members. I spent the whole weekend immediately after Katrina shoveling the foulest-smelling carpet and furniture out of my brother's house which had received 7 feet of salt water. Had we waited for authorities or experts to do this, the house would probably be unsalvageable by now. As it stands, the house is dried, mold-free, and the studs are almost down to the magic 12-14% moisture requirement to receive new sheetrock. He already has all the contractors lined up to get the house ready to live. All we had were our tools, hands, brains, and plenty of handkerchiefs and water.
I think the problem is that the media has focused on N.O. so much that people forget the situation is totally different for most of the coast. The parent poster will be able to help many people a few miles inland who still have trees down, debris, roof damage, etc. They are not sitting in toxic wastelands as shown on TV in N.O. They don't need experts or miracles, just some good backs and willing attitudes to pitch in.
Is your yard covered in a toxic waste sludge, along with sewage and rotting animal corpses? "Cuts and bruises" aren't all that minor when there are deadly organisms having spring break like in N.O. right now.
The parent poster is going to Slidell and the Gulf Coast, which have not been underwater to the extent of N.O (parts of Slidell were flooded for days, but Slidell is not levee-bound like the Crescent City). The coast mostly suffered from the tremendous storm surge, which receded rapidly. So most of the toxicity has been cleared from those areas by now. N.O. is a different story, however; I think only fleets of D-12 bulldozers are needed for much of that city.
Sorry, but that is simply wrong. It takes little training to clear debris, cut trees and limbs, rip out sheetrock, etc. Yes, you could get hurt, probably just minor cuts and bruises, but it's not much different then cleaning your yard, just on a larger scale. Just don't crawl under downed trees or get near power lines.
I'm not pointing you out with this statement, but the notion that it takes an "expert" to help people is a bad one, IMO. The American way (at least down South, still, and probably in the Mid-West) is to roll up one's sleeves and get to work without waiting for the "authorities" or Uncle Government to arrive.
The original poster will do fine; he will help several families, learn about an area of the country he may never have seen before, learn new skills, and gain a lot of intangibles from the experience. But be a hindrance or liability? Nah...
I was down there helping my brother and family, and here's some things I would suggest:
Many handkerchiefs. Use them to cover your face when you're shoveling foul water/mud/spoiled food, although bad food is probably largely gone by now. Also good as do-rags and sweat rags.
Plain water will get boring quickly, so bring some gatorade mix and mix it half-strength.
A small (2-3ft) crowbar
A utility knife and blades
A hammer, philips, and flathead screwdriver
Pliers
Get a cheap leather tool belt from Harbor Freight, Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. so you're not always looking for the above tools
Several pairs of gloves, including at least one pair of heavy latex/rubber gloves.
Of course, remind your planners to bring plenty of fuel, food, and water. And chainsaws.:)
Those are the things I used the most often when I was down there. Most of all, don't approach the coast with a feeling of dread. Unlike what the media has portrayed and focused upon in a few areas in New Orleans, the attitudes of the people there are upbeat and industrious, if a little haggard. The physical destruction is as bad or worse than portrayed on TV, but the "people" situation is much more positive. Mississippi Coast'ians (I'm one of them) are survivors.
BTW, thanks for the help on behalf of those directly affected (I live several hundred miles inland and so wasn't affected). FEMA is doing a fantastic job, but the job is so large that churches and other volunteer groups are needed to fill in the gaps. For instance, my grandmother had an Indiana church group clean out several pecan trees that were down in her front yard last week. We couldn't find an available crew to hire for it, and they just showed up out of the blue and did it for her! It really makes a difference.
BTW, parts of Slidell should have power now, and I know Picayune has full power (15 mins. from Slidell on the MS border). If you need accomodations, check with First Baptist of Picayune, and they may be helpful. I noticed from their website that Beatrice in Nebraska is the adopted "sister city" of Picayune for the disaster, so you may can use resources from both those cities if you need it. Beatrice Link
You're not only doing God's work, but that of a fine American. Thanks.
I can't believe this license agreement is still legal after all these years. Here is a big reason why schools can't switch, from Microsoft's website (now 'hidden' in a word doc, and they misspelled Athlon, ugh):
Counting Eligible PCs
School Agreement requires an institution-wide commitment for any application, system, and Client Access License (CAL) products selected. To that end, you must include all of the eligible PCs in the participating school(s) or district. Eligible PCs include all of the Pentium machines*, Power Macs, iMacs, equivalent or better. You must also include any number of 486 machines or below and any Apple, UNIX, or Windows Terminals on which any of the software will be run.
*Includes machines with similar processors, such as Intel Celeron and AMD Athalon.
So, your school system will pay something like $30 per 'eligible' PC per year even if you bought it clean and installed Debian on it, and MSFT software never touched it. I thought there were laws against charging for services/goods not rendered to another entity.
True, but when my retired mother wants a new PC and also wants to get one of those digital cameras everyone is buying, guess which one I'm going to suggest? I'm going to suggest the $600 box that won't require me to sit in front of it removing spyware and viruses for an hour every time I visit (which I do now for my in-laws, which has decreased since I put Mozilla on that machine). I look at the mac as a Linux for the rest of them, and if it costs a few hundred more up front, so be it.
I sure as hell hope litigation and royalty fees aren't going to be the "new" new economy.
I dunno, after about five years or so when the new bubble bursts you'll see headlines about lawyers getting laid off by the droves. That might just be worth living through the bubble...
Linux (Slackware in this case) goes a long way to make this kind of strategy a reality.
I've discovered that X-terms can also stretch hardware performance, as long as you're not gaming. Not only can the terminals be very modest, but the server is spared a lot of cycles because it doesn't have to push pixels around directly, so it gets a boost, too; sort of like the old multiprocessor systems of yesteryear. Generally a fast H/D and adequate RAM does the most for general performance.
Debt is bad; avoid it at all costs, sans emergencies.
Debt is not always bad. Handled carefully (like fire), it can really be your friend. BTW, I don't consider a reasonably-priced house debt, since it can appreciate and build equity, especially if you pay it off in less than 30 years. I'm talking about consumer debt.
Anyway, as far as consumer spending goes, I've lived successfully by some basic principles:
Everything you buy and bring into your home must be stored, cleaned, repaired, guarded from theft, and otherwise becomes a nuisance/distraction in your life. As you're holding the item in the store, think about the item in those terms, and you'll probably put it down.
If you really want something, put it off for two or three weeks. If you still want it after that, you'll probably use it forever; go for it.
Don't buy cheap crappy stuff, but don't buy the over-priced premium items, either. The middle-upper range is usually the best buy and will bring most satisfaction.
For big, important items that you don't want to deplete your cash for, save up and put half down in cash, and use credit to match the other half. This is especially good for things like electronics, furniture, and other stuff that lasts for years; you'll pay it off a lot quicker, but you don't have to save up forever, either. (this is where debt can be your friend, just make sure you pay it off at the rate you saved the other half)
FHA loans are not a panacea, although it's great for first time buyers like I was when I bought my first house. You don't have a down payment, but you do pay a fee (mine was about $1200) and other fees, so really what it amounts to is that you have a small down payment that is applied to the loan. When I bought my first house it tacked on about $3000 onto a $57K house (don't laugh, it was a really nice 2BR/2BTH in a private gated community, and it was a very cool bachelor pad. It seems funny now to think about getting a house for so cheap, but I was scared as hell at the time), so the loan was $60K. The fees are probably fixed, although in my case a conventional loan's percentages would have worked out about the same because the home price was so low. It was on 1/3 acre lot, so there are no lot size restrictions on FHA loans AFAIK.
Your banker probably didn't mention FHA because you probably were approved for a conventional loan, and the paperwork is a good bit less, I believe. I know my current home had a lot less stuff to sign at closing, and I suppose it was because I used a conventional loan this time.
You're blaming the guy because he chose to rent? Contrary to what many people seem to believe, buying a house is not always a smart financial move.
While I certainly agree that buying a house is not always a smart move, and I wouldn't suggest it (for instance) to a 22-year-old guy who's still sowing his wild oats, it's still one of the best foundations for wealth-building for the average family, especially if you can build equity by paying a little extra and pay it off earlier than 30 years (~25% extra will pay it off in 15 years. ~10% (one payment per year) will knock it down to 22 years.)
Second, if you're not going to be able to stay in a house for a period of several years before you try to sell it, you can wind up losing quite a bit of money.
Usually just a couple of years is all it will take in a moderately growing housing market to get close to break-even. If you buy a fairly new house for $200K, and you sell it two years later for $205K, minus the realtor and closing costs (192K), that means you only paid $8,000 to live for two years = $333/mth, not counting the (small) equity you built into the house, probably about $200/mth. A comparable rental house would run you about $1500/mth, and a good family-sized apt. would run around $1100/mth. These are all Southeast or Midwest US prices mind you, but the concept remains the same except for really high-pitched markets like SF or Boston.
The biggest draw for rentals is often not the prospect of losing money on a resell, but often families get into a bad credit situation and they can't qualify for a home loan and can't buy, which is unfortunate (I think the credit system makes little to no logical sense, personally).
The only drawback is that I need to change my default printer settings every time I want to flip between text and photo print outs as the apps don't seem to have a way of doing that.
What I do is use kprinter to spool all my print jobs (in kcontrol make sure that your printing system is set to CUPS at the lower right). I made a wrapper script that just has two lines and replaced my/usr/bin/lpr command :
#!/bin/bash
kprinter $* 2>/dev/null
Keep your old lpr executable around (lpr.old) so you can still print without a GUI. Now, no matter what app you print from, you will get the KDE print dialog where you can choose printers, set resolution, print to PDF, etc.
<word-blocks>// paragraphs <heavy-text>// bold text <slanted-text>// italics
and your wordprocessor has import code like:
if (tag == "bold") then // create bold text block here
Just having it as xml is no more useful than saying it should be in ASCII. If a standard format is not agreed upon, along with all the nuances of semantics (e.g. when a table is inserted inside a text box, something special happens with the rendering), xml will do nothing more than let techies view the document as a generic tree widget.
Sincerely, anybody knows what's the advantage of Netscape over Mozilla?? I'm confused...
Netscape is to Mozilla as StarOffice is to OpenOffice.org. Basically, Netscape is a branch off the "development tree" with branding and plugins. It includes commercial plugins such as flash, and it used to include a Java runtime.
I just burn Java, Flash, Realplayer, Acrobat Reader, and Mozilla on a CD and install all of those on my relatives' machines when spyware kills IE for the 5th time and I'm tired of fixing it for them. Even my father-in-law has gotten hooked on tabbed browsing, which is really good when you have a dialup connection and can open pages in the background.
Slashdot Mirror
Reliability - until your network connection goes down. Then it's pack up your computer and track down another connection.
True, but for more and more people, if their Internet connection is down, you might as well throw the machine away. Other than typing papers for school, what non-Net things do people do anymore other than play games (which are now network-dependent such as WoW)? There are still the Quicken hold-outs, but now that all banks offer online service and everyone takes debit cards, what's the point of balancing a checkbook on the PC?
At work, if the LAN goes down, again, the PC is basically a paperweight. No email, no CVS/Subversion/etc, no server shares, Windows freaks out with pauses here and there. A LAN outage usually causes such a fuss down the hall that even if you happen to have the necessary files open for local editing, you can't concentrate.
Now fast forward (n) years when Net reliability is as good as/better than telco service, and you're getting 10Mbit speeds regularly with low ping times. At that point, RDP or NX services are really nice to use, assuming AJAX doesn't continue to expand. No spam in your web or remote email client. No viruses in your word documents. Gigs of storage available from anywhere, and easily shared with others. I think once that type of computing becomes normal, it will be hard to imagine going back to a world where all your data was "trapped" in a box in your house, and you couldn't just log in anywhere in the world and work with your stuff or share/edit/view it with others.
What if someone sent your information to him as a "prank"? Are you on this list? Have you checked to make sure? How many lists per day will you have to check to make sure your information isn't being published by the latest pundit-of-the-week trying to get some publicity? How can he prove that any of these people sent this information with their consent and didn't have their craiglist credentials stolen? He will probably get sued into the stone age, and I believe that he should.
There will always be some dishonest people who see democracy as a game they can "cheat" at to win. But if a voting machine doesn't produce a solid meat-space record that can be guarded, stored, and re-examined, the effects of those cheaters on the outcome is greater by orders of magnitude.
Not to mention that fact that these electronic systems are so expensive compared to the best voting method I've used, that is the "connect the arrow with a sharpie pen". No chads or punch systems, just thick paper and markers. If you can't connect a line with a marker, have someone assist you. If you can't do that, you probably don't need to vote.
I would prefer all states go to the marker system. It's easy to count electronically, super cheap, and everyone understands how it works. They can even add photos to the cards if need be. These complex, expensive, and opaque electronic systems are a solution looking for a problem, IMO.
You mentioned Apple's prices... what I found recently when purchasing an iMac for a relative is that Apple's hardware is pretty competitive, price-wise (except perhaps the mini). I built a near-equivalent dual-core Dell on their website with the teacher's discount and it was about $1130 USD. The iMac was $1299 with teacher's discount, and had a much faster/cooler dual core cpu (Core Duo vs Pentium D 805 heater) and it wasn't a collection of commodity boxes, also a big factor in this purchase (not for me, I like commodity beige boxes so I can gut/recycle the hardware). The discounts were pretty minimal on both sites, so that wasn't a big factor. The days of 2x over-priced macs appear to be over, especially considering the suite of software that comes preinstalled (no AppleWorks, though, so AbiWord will be installed on it soon).
My point was not to necessarily compare Iraq and Japan other than the high-level similarity that both were occupations and nation-building excercises by the US. I was simply trying to illustrate with searchable sources that in 'The Good Old Days' the boys didn't just march into Japan and rebuild it without trouble. There was resistance at home and in Japan, albeit less violent than seen in Iraq. In the sixty years since, it has been forgotten that many questioned the operation publicly and the history-book summaries do not explain this, so it now looks much easier and simpler than it really was. Because those details have been forgotten by most people, the current floundering is possibly amplified in comparison. I could have probably used any similar exercise that ultimately succeeded as an example of this effect. Interestingly, those that failed (Vietnam) are remembered in crucial detail.
There were pockets of resistance, much smaller than those in Iraq. Remember that there was attempted coup just before the Emperor surrendered; a number of Japanese did not want to surrender, A-bombs be damned. My point in my post was that even without the extra difficulties of Iraq, the outlook was not completely positive or undisputed year or even two years later, as this NYTimes headline from August 1946 reads:
"Japan a Year After: still a 'Gamble'; Two stages of the occupation have succeeded beyond hopes; the third is in the lap of the gods."
American soldiers in World War II did not haul off captured Japanese POWs and claim they were not to be accorded the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
Again, not even just a lack of historical book-knowledge, but I've even seen brown Interstate highway signs marking the presence of old Japanese Internment camps throughout the US. These people were not even combattants, but immigrants living here. What is old, is new again. I'm not making excuses for these actions, just making sure you realize that Bush did not invent these concepts.
The simple fact is that we all have little historical perspective, and political parties are using this ignorance to paint the worst possible picture of each other outside of historical perspective.
Agreed, the situation is far different with Iraq than Japan; in the case of Japan, as you said, in many ways it was an 'easier' or at least more straight-forward solution, probably assisted by the fact that outright war (and two atomic bombs) had probably beaten down the population to the point where they just wanted peace and normality, no matter whose flag is flying on public buildings they never see. I really don't have enough historical knowledge to think of a closer successful example of Iraq. It may not exist. If Iraqi rebuilding fails, then all the gory details will be remembered as a cautionary example. If it succeeds, it will be (like Japan) pointed to in the future as a shining example of how we can't seem to do it as easily as we did in the 'old days'.
However, take a look at those NYTimes archives, and even in the 'easier' case of Japan, it's clear from the headlines and articles that success was not assured even a year or two after occupation, and there apparently were many differing viewpoints on how to stabilize Japan. I would love have a google images-like repository of these newspapers so I could sit down and 'live through' a month of the forties. Microfiche would probably take two months to do the same...
Think about it for a moment. During any time in U.S. history can you think of any other president about which such comments have been raised?
Yes, on multiple occassions, during wars, the Great Depression, during the civil rights movements, etc. I'm not saying Bush hasn't made mistakes, but remember that we as people (I'm included) are pretty narrow-scoped in our knowledge of history, and we forget the details of history all too quickly, or we are never taught the details. By details, I mean the day-to-day outlook, not the two line summary in the history book 100 years later.
Switching topics but not the principle, take Iraq as an example: many think 3 years is too long to stabilize a country. Go search the NY Times archives from 1945 until about 1947 with the key words "Japan" and "violence" or "unrest". You can only see the headlines and a small bit of text unless you pay for them, but it should be enought text to get the meaning. Article after artcle questions the stabilization of post-war Japan, when will it ever end, what about Korea now, etc, etc. Iraq is taking much longer, but fifty years from now none of the difficulties will be remembered, assuming the effort is successful. It's scary to think about how much history is forgotten.
Sorry, but this is simply oversimplifying the situation to the extreme. ;-) First off, you have no idea what the situation is like there.
I grew up very near Slidell, where the parent poster is going, and I have been to Picayune, Ocean Springs, and north Gulfport in the past several weeks (how long ago was the storm? I've lost track). I have family members literally from one end of the coast to another in MS, in N.O., Baton Rouge, and friends in Lafayette. I have a good idea of the situation from first-hand eyesight as well as through contact with family members. I spent the whole weekend immediately after Katrina shoveling the foulest-smelling carpet and furniture out of my brother's house which had received 7 feet of salt water. Had we waited for authorities or experts to do this, the house would probably be unsalvageable by now. As it stands, the house is dried, mold-free, and the studs are almost down to the magic 12-14% moisture requirement to receive new sheetrock. He already has all the contractors lined up to get the house ready to live. All we had were our tools, hands, brains, and plenty of handkerchiefs and water.
I think the problem is that the media has focused on N.O. so much that people forget the situation is totally different for most of the coast. The parent poster will be able to help many people a few miles inland who still have trees down, debris, roof damage, etc. They are not sitting in toxic wastelands as shown on TV in N.O. They don't need experts or miracles, just some good backs and willing attitudes to pitch in.
Is your yard covered in a toxic waste sludge, along with sewage and rotting animal corpses? "Cuts and bruises" aren't all that minor when there are deadly organisms having spring break like in N.O. right now.
The parent poster is going to Slidell and the Gulf Coast, which have not been underwater to the extent of N.O (parts of Slidell were flooded for days, but Slidell is not levee-bound like the Crescent City). The coast mostly suffered from the tremendous storm surge, which receded rapidly. So most of the toxicity has been cleared from those areas by now. N.O. is a different story, however; I think only fleets of D-12 bulldozers are needed for much of that city.
Sorry, but that is simply wrong. It takes little training to clear debris, cut trees and limbs, rip out sheetrock, etc. Yes, you could get hurt, probably just minor cuts and bruises, but it's not much different then cleaning your yard, just on a larger scale. Just don't crawl under downed trees or get near power lines.
I'm not pointing you out with this statement, but the notion that it takes an "expert" to help people is a bad one, IMO. The American way (at least down South, still, and probably in the Mid-West) is to roll up one's sleeves and get to work without waiting for the "authorities" or Uncle Government to arrive.
The original poster will do fine; he will help several families, learn about an area of the country he may never have seen before, learn new skills, and gain a lot of intangibles from the experience. But be a hindrance or liability? Nah...
rice, soy sauce, ramen noodles/soup packs, pre-sweetened drink mix (Kool-Aid, Crystal Light, Gatorade, etc.), shovels, rakes, and hoes.
I was down there helping my brother and family, and here's some things I would suggest:
Those are the things I used the most often when I was down there. Most of all, don't approach the coast with a feeling of dread. Unlike what the media has portrayed and focused upon in a few areas in New Orleans, the attitudes of the people there are upbeat and industrious, if a little haggard. The physical destruction is as bad or worse than portrayed on TV, but the "people" situation is much more positive. Mississippi Coast'ians (I'm one of them) are survivors.
BTW, thanks for the help on behalf of those directly affected (I live several hundred miles inland and so wasn't affected). FEMA is doing a fantastic job, but the job is so large that churches and other volunteer groups are needed to fill in the gaps. For instance, my grandmother had an Indiana church group clean out several pecan trees that were down in her front yard last week. We couldn't find an available crew to hire for it, and they just showed up out of the blue and did it for her! It really makes a difference.
BTW, parts of Slidell should have power now, and I know Picayune has full power (15 mins. from Slidell on the MS border). If you need accomodations, check with First Baptist of Picayune, and they may be helpful. I noticed from their website that Beatrice in Nebraska is the adopted "sister city" of Picayune for the disaster, so you may can use resources from both those cities if you need it. Beatrice Link
You're not only doing God's work, but that of a fine American. Thanks.
So, your school system will pay something like $30 per 'eligible' PC per year even if you bought it clean and installed Debian on it, and MSFT software never touched it. I thought there were laws against charging for services/goods not rendered to another entity.
This $500 Apple is still insanely overpriced.
True, but when my retired mother wants a new PC and also wants to get one of those digital cameras everyone is buying, guess which one I'm going to suggest? I'm going to suggest the $600 box that won't require me to sit in front of it removing spyware and viruses for an hour every time I visit (which I do now for my in-laws, which has decreased since I put Mozilla on that machine). I look at the mac as a Linux for the rest of them, and if it costs a few hundred more up front, so be it.
ALSA+Jack is good stuff. Way better than Arts. Arts only serves to hog the ALSA output and send you to the console to killall artsd.
Is ALSA+Jack network transparent like artsd & esd? There needs to be a way to get audio when running KDE remote over a LAN.
I sure as hell hope litigation and royalty fees aren't going to be the "new" new economy.
I dunno, after about five years or so when the new bubble bursts you'll see headlines about lawyers getting laid off by the droves. That might just be worth living through the bubble...
Linux (Slackware in this case) goes a long way to make this kind of strategy a reality.
I've discovered that X-terms can also stretch hardware performance, as long as you're not gaming. Not only can the terminals be very modest, but the server is spared a lot of cycles because it doesn't have to push pixels around directly, so it gets a boost, too; sort of like the old multiprocessor systems of yesteryear. Generally a fast H/D and adequate RAM does the most for general performance.
Debt is not always bad. Handled carefully (like fire), it can really be your friend. BTW, I don't consider a reasonably-priced house debt, since it can appreciate and build equity, especially if you pay it off in less than 30 years. I'm talking about consumer debt.
Anyway, as far as consumer spending goes, I've lived successfully by some basic principles:
FHA loans are not a panacea, although it's great for first time buyers like I was when I bought my first house. You don't have a down payment, but you do pay a fee (mine was about $1200) and other fees, so really what it amounts to is that you have a small down payment that is applied to the loan. When I bought my first house it tacked on about $3000 onto a $57K house (don't laugh, it was a really nice 2BR/2BTH in a private gated community, and it was a very cool bachelor pad. It seems funny now to think about getting a house for so cheap, but I was scared as hell at the time), so the loan was $60K. The fees are probably fixed, although in my case a conventional loan's percentages would have worked out about the same because the home price was so low. It was on 1/3 acre lot, so there are no lot size restrictions on FHA loans AFAIK.
Your banker probably didn't mention FHA because you probably were approved for a conventional loan, and the paperwork is a good bit less, I believe. I know my current home had a lot less stuff to sign at closing, and I suppose it was because I used a conventional loan this time.
You're blaming the guy because he chose to rent? Contrary to what many people seem to believe, buying a house is not always a smart financial move.
While I certainly agree that buying a house is not always a smart move, and I wouldn't suggest it (for instance) to a 22-year-old guy who's still sowing his wild oats, it's still one of the best foundations for wealth-building for the average family, especially if you can build equity by paying a little extra and pay it off earlier than 30 years (~25% extra will pay it off in 15 years. ~10% (one payment per year) will knock it down to 22 years.)
Second, if you're not going to be able to stay in a house for a period of several years before you try to sell it, you can wind up losing quite a bit of money.
Usually just a couple of years is all it will take in a moderately growing housing market to get close to break-even. If you buy a fairly new house for $200K, and you sell it two years later for $205K, minus the realtor and closing costs (192K), that means you only paid $8,000 to live for two years = $333/mth, not counting the (small) equity you built into the house, probably about $200/mth. A comparable rental house would run you about $1500/mth, and a good family-sized apt. would run around $1100/mth. These are all Southeast or Midwest US prices mind you, but the concept remains the same except for really high-pitched markets like SF or Boston.
The biggest draw for rentals is often not the prospect of losing money on a resell, but often families get into a bad credit situation and they can't qualify for a home loan and can't buy, which is unfortunate (I think the credit system makes little to no logical sense, personally).
The only drawback is that I need to change my default printer settings every time I want to flip between text and photo print outs as the apps don't seem to have a way of doing that.
/usr/bin/lpr command :
/dev/null
What I do is use kprinter to spool all my print jobs (in kcontrol make sure that your printing system is set to CUPS at the lower right). I made a wrapper script that just has two lines and replaced my
#!/bin/bash
kprinter $* 2>
Keep your old lpr executable around (lpr.old) so you can still print without a GUI. Now, no matter what app you print from, you will get the KDE print dialog where you can choose printers, set resolution, print to PDF, etc.
...from your description, it sounds like TreeCC is the work of engineering genius, not the C# compiler.
So what happens if I decide to call my tags:and your wordprocessor has import code like:Just having it as xml is no more useful than saying it should be in ASCII. If a standard format is not agreed upon, along with all the nuances of semantics (e.g. when a table is inserted inside a text box, something special happens with the rendering), xml will do nothing more than let techies view the document as a generic tree widget.
Sincerely, anybody knows what's the advantage of Netscape over Mozilla?? I'm confused...
Netscape is to Mozilla as StarOffice is to OpenOffice.org. Basically, Netscape is a branch off the "development tree" with branding and plugins. It includes commercial plugins such as flash, and it used to include a Java runtime.
I just burn Java, Flash, Realplayer, Acrobat Reader, and Mozilla on a CD and install all of those on my relatives' machines when spyware kills IE for the 5th time and I'm tired of fixing it for them. Even my father-in-law has gotten hooked on tabbed browsing, which is really good when you have a dialup connection and can open pages in the background.