I didn't know they had "unskippable" commercials. Can someone confirm this is true with most or all Blu-Ray movies !?
I have not bought a blu-ray player yet. But if this is true, then I'm surely not going to buy one anytime soon.
What irks me is the "nearly-forced" commercials in kids DVDs that I buy for my daughter. When I want to put in a movie for her, I have to stand in from of the DVD player and hit "skip" about 6-10 times so she doesn't get bombarded with commercials, copyright warnings, and other nonsense that's not helpful or interesting to her.
I remember the first DVD movies, 9-10 years ago hardly had any of these commercials at the beginning.
Then you can share a small piece of the profits that offsets the amount I pay to each of these industries as a consumer. Plus, I collect a little bit of the profit that these companies make on each of the other consumers. I then end up with a net gain in my finances when oil prices go up, either through dividends or market value of the stock.
Of course, if I successfully convince you of this idea, then hopefully you'll go out and buy some stock in my oil company, and send the market value higher.:-)
I bought the Treo 650 about 3 years ago, along with a case, made by Palm. The case had a little snap to keep the phone in, vertically, but the whole case rotated on its clip.
So the phone could be right-side up, but unintentionally rotates itself upside-down, holding on for dear-life by a single button. The button came undone about 2 or 3 times within a month, dumping the phone on the floor each time. Finally, I'm out for a walk outside, and the phone must have rotated without me knowing, button comes undone, and the phone splatters on the pavement, battery goes flying, pen goes one way, battery cover goes another, and the screen gets scarred.
PALM - SELL QUALITY ACCESSORIES !!! Don't Cheap out the accessories to the lowest-bidding subcontractor!!! I paid $40 for a piece of crap Palm-branded case.
Now I have a permanently upright case that doesn't rotate, but the size of the phone plus the case is huge !
Re:Use Norton Ghost
on
Backups to CD-R?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Incremental backups with RAR are easy. Use the command line version of RAR with:
-ao Add files with Archive attribute set
-ac Clear Archive attribute after compression or extraction
In fact, here's the contents of my "incremental" batch file:
You expect the prospective employee to believe you when you tell him about the benefits, his opportunities for advancement, what kind of work he will do, etc., don't you? How would you feel if he demanded that you prove all of those things before continuing with the interview?
Usually those things are all in writing, in the offer letter.
Agreed. What? 15 minutes to find a single freakin' file on my hard drive? Are you kidding me?
That's why I use PowerDesk, a free program (trial version with no expiry), available for download here.
Among with all kinds of file-management tools (which I never use), it has an amazingly FAST and VERSATILE right-click file-finding utility (i.e. right-click a folder or drive to find within). FAST, find by attribute, by date, by size, containing text. After you've found matching files, you can double-click them, right-click them, etc...
I'd have to disagree. From experience, I've noticed that my URL listing at the top of my comments (line immediately above this) allows people to search for my online resume. This URL above in Slashdot is the only place I've ever advertised my online resume.
See for yourself, do a search for "vancouver electrical engineer wireless hardware". The second item there will be me (as of today, anyways). Higher pagerank than the IEEE Communications Society in Vancouver, even.
Solution: Don't use Adobe Reader 6.x. Stick with Adobe Reader 5.x.
If you already have 6.x installed and you're pissed off with the startup time and resources used (I was), uninstall it and reinstall 5.x
To download 5.x, go to the Adobe site, and pick Windows 98 as your platform, regardless if you actually have WinXP, 2k or whatever. If you REALLY want a small Adobe Reader, pick the Win 3.1 platform, to give you Adobe Reader 3.x.
If you're using Linux, you're in luck, Adobe won't try to forcefeed you with 6.x... yet.
Re:More information -err, no way on those salaries
on
Google Files for IPO
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Look at their balance sheet, p.3, on the SEC link in the article.
Take the 2003 column, add up the Costs and Expenses section, minus the Cost of Revenues, then divide by the number of employees (1907).
This gives $261k per employee.
If you want proof that I added the correct numbers, look at the filing, p.42-46, and you'll see that those items are primarily the employee salaries and other employee costs. There are other non-employee costs in the Sales and marketing section, such as advertising and promotional expenditures, but they are not listed as primary items. A portion of the Cost of Revenues could be arguably included as well, but I wasn't sure of the split between the cost of their data centers, and the labor associated with their operation. Therefore, I did not include them. The non-inclusion of the labor costs here would help offset the inclusion of the non-primary items in the Sales and marketing category above.
You can also do the same thing for the first quarter of 2004 (see balance sheet), extrapolating to $380k per employee for the year. Note that on p.39, the headcount is 1907 as of March 31, 2004.
Therefore, $380,000 per employee is a more accurate figure.
Google is not likely the type of company where clerical and data-entry people outnumber the engineers / computer scientists.
Oh yeah, add in the full Cost of Revenues number and you'll get the "total cost of business" you were talking about.
Dave
Re:More information -err, no way on those salaries
on
Google Files for IPO
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Did I say a salary of $200k?
No... I said "cost of $100-200k per employee (salary + rent + computer + etc...)"
That's salary + office rent + computer hardware + computer software + health benefits + taxes + stock plan + 401k / RRSP + relocation + training + desk + chair + office supplies + phone bill + internet cost + everything else.
I was using a rough employee cost of 2x a typical salary of $50-100k. That 2x comes from what I understand from management at a large company at which I worked. If you want a web link to some other references, here ya go:
They have over 1900 employees. Assuming a typical high-tech business cost of $100-200k per employee (salary + rent + computer + etc...), that's at least $190-380 million in revenue. Then you throw in their big-ass computer farms, their funky colorful office spheres, and their Grateful Dead chef... then $980 million sounds reasonable.
He's talking about sticking a separate tape recorder next to an independant radio, and recording the output of the speaker. What it sounds like you did, and which I did as well, was use an integrated radio/tape recorder.
And yes, I have a cassette deck next to my computer, hooked up to my sound card's line out. My car is getting kinda older, so it doesn't have a CD player - never bothered to get one. I record MP3s from the computer onto the cassette deck, so I can use it in the car. I use Type II cassettes - I was too cheap to buy the Type IV 10-15 years ago, whenever it was that I last bought one. I've just reused them over the years, taping over old radio songs, and tossing them when they wear out.
Type I and Type II have a drastically different frequency response. Type IV is only slightly better than the Type II, in my opinion.
Hmmmm... maybe I should consider building a Line In for my car cassette deck, so I can hook my portable MP3 player directly into it.
Paid vacation time is definately a consideration. I've worked for companies in Canada with 3 weeks, and 3 weeks plus a week at Christmas.
Hey Nano, Is that EA in Vancouver? (dunno if there's another Canadian EA location, excuse the question there's only one.) Peanuts, hey? What kind of hours are we talking about? 10-11 / day? No overtime pay, I assume?
What city are you talking about? Company size? Degree or Diploma? Canadian dollars, I assume?
Just looking for clarification, but that seems a little low for a mid+ sized city, mid+ size company, and a degree. It was $40k ish in the mid 90s when I graduated.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see you ride your unicycle in this picture, while shooting flames.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Everett.Bradford/Prometheus#5399717924470820610
I didn't know they had "unskippable" commercials. Can someone confirm this is true with most or all Blu-Ray movies !?
I have not bought a blu-ray player yet. But if this is true, then I'm surely not going to buy one anytime soon.
What irks me is the "nearly-forced" commercials in kids DVDs that I buy for my daughter. When I want to put in a movie for her, I have to stand in from of the DVD player and hit "skip" about 6-10 times so she doesn't get bombarded with commercials, copyright warnings, and other nonsense that's not helpful or interesting to her.
I remember the first DVD movies, 9-10 years ago hardly had any of these commercials at the beginning.
I used to fret about:
:-)
- gas prices
- cell phone system access fees
- bank ATM & monthly service fees
Each of these industries have been increasing their profit margins over the past 5-10 years. So, what's the solution?
Buy stocks in:
- oil companies
- cell phone providers
- banks
Then you can share a small piece of the profits that offsets the amount I pay to each of these industries as a consumer. Plus, I collect a little bit of the profit that these companies make on each of the other consumers. I then end up with a net gain in my finances when oil prices go up, either through dividends or market value of the stock.
Of course, if I successfully convince you of this idea, then hopefully you'll go out and buy some stock in my oil company, and send the market value higher.
I bought the Treo 650 about 3 years ago, along with a case, made by Palm. The case had a little snap to keep the phone in, vertically, but the whole case rotated on its clip.
So the phone could be right-side up, but unintentionally rotates itself upside-down, holding on for dear-life by a single button. The button came undone about 2 or 3 times within a month, dumping the phone on the floor each time. Finally, I'm out for a walk outside, and the phone must have rotated without me knowing, button comes undone, and the phone splatters on the pavement, battery goes flying, pen goes one way, battery cover goes another, and the screen gets scarred.
PALM - SELL QUALITY ACCESSORIES !!! Don't Cheap out the accessories to the lowest-bidding subcontractor!!! I paid $40 for a piece of crap Palm-branded case.
Now I have a permanently upright case that doesn't rotate, but the size of the phone plus the case is huge !
Telus in Canada still offers this Palm clamshell:
s html
http://www.telusmobility.com/bc/pcs/kyocera_7135.
A friend of mine bought one, used it for a couple of years, then bought the Treo 650. The Kyocera is a little bulky, even for a Palm-based device.
I had a rock collection set that I received as a gift - complete with a nice specimen of asbestos.
LOAD "$",8,1 would load your directory as a into a predetermined section of memory which is not useful for viewing.
What you probably meant was LOAD "$",8 to load the directory into the BASIC section of RAM so that you can view it with LIST
Space Taxi was lots of fun... ahh the memories !
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." - Popular Mechanics, 1949
From my experience, the formatting in a Slashdot page only gets messed up maybe 1 in 10 times. Then I just hit Reload (F5) and it's fine.
My favorite googlebomb is a search for a "miserable failure".
Incremental backups with RAR are easy. Use the command line version of RAR with:
-ao Add files with Archive attribute set
-ac Clear Archive attribute after compression or extraction
In fact, here's the contents of my "incremental" batch file:
rar a -agYYYY-MM-DD -u -ao -ac -as -ep2 -m2 -os -ow -r -ri3 -rr2p -ds -x@IgnoreList_Docs.txt D:\Backups\Weekly\Files_Docs_.rar @BackupList_Docs.txt
I run that once a week, PGP-encrypt the file, burn to CD or DVD, and store off-site. I include an ignore list, and a list of files to backup.
For a "full" backup, I use a batch file with this in it (same as above without the -ao):
rar a -agYYYY-MM-DD -u -ac -as -ep2 -m2 -os -ow -r -ri3 -rr2p -ds -x@IgnoreList_Docs.txt D:\Backups\Weekly\Files_Docs_.rar @BackupList_Docs.txt
If your directories to backup are large, you can use the option -v[k|b|f|m|M] to pick the volume size.
Try using your postal code in the location box, instead of the word Toronto. That's where Google Local becomes really amazing.
Hey CmdrTaco,
How many page views & unique users does Slashdot get in a typical day or hour, anyways? I've always wondered that but never knew.
Dave
You expect the prospective employee to believe you when you tell him about the benefits, his opportunities for advancement, what kind of work he will do, etc., don't you? How would you feel if he demanded that you prove all of those things before continuing with the interview?
Usually those things are all in writing, in the offer letter.
Agreed. What? 15 minutes to find a single freakin' file on my hard drive? Are you kidding me?
That's why I use PowerDesk, a free program (trial version with no expiry), available for download here.
Among with all kinds of file-management tools (which I never use), it has an amazingly FAST and VERSATILE right-click file-finding utility (i.e. right-click a folder or drive to find within). FAST, find by attribute, by date, by size, containing text. After you've found matching files, you can double-click them, right-click them, etc...
Dave
It moved. Here's the new site: ... bananaphone!
Ring, ring, ring,
This is absolutely hilarious, folks. If you haven't seen it before, it's well worth your time.
I'd have to disagree. From experience, I've noticed that my URL listing at the top of my comments (line immediately above this) allows people to search for my online resume. This URL above in Slashdot is the only place I've ever advertised my online resume.
See for yourself, do a search for "vancouver electrical engineer wireless hardware". The second item there will be me (as of today, anyways). Higher pagerank than the IEEE Communications Society in Vancouver, even.
Dave
Very nice! You da man!
(while acknowledging the humor...)
Solution:
Don't use Adobe Reader 6.x.
Stick with Adobe Reader 5.x.
If you already have 6.x installed and you're pissed off with the startup time and resources used (I was), uninstall it and reinstall 5.x
To download 5.x, go to the Adobe site, and pick Windows 98 as your platform, regardless if you actually have WinXP, 2k or whatever. If you REALLY want a small Adobe Reader, pick the Win 3.1 platform, to give you Adobe Reader 3.x.
If you're using Linux, you're in luck, Adobe won't try to forcefeed you with 6.x... yet.
Look at their balance sheet, p.3, on the SEC link in the article.
Take the 2003 column, add up the Costs and Expenses section, minus the Cost of Revenues, then divide by the number of employees (1907).
This gives $261k per employee.
If you want proof that I added the correct numbers, look at the filing, p.42-46, and you'll see that those items are primarily the employee salaries and other employee costs. There are other non-employee costs in the Sales and marketing section, such as advertising and promotional expenditures, but they are not listed as primary items. A portion of the Cost of Revenues could be arguably included as well, but I wasn't sure of the split between the cost of their data centers, and the labor associated with their operation. Therefore, I did not include them. The non-inclusion of the labor costs here would help offset the inclusion of the non-primary items in the Sales and marketing category above.
You can also do the same thing for the first quarter of 2004 (see balance sheet), extrapolating to $380k per employee for the year. Note that on p.39, the headcount is 1907 as of March 31, 2004.
Therefore, $380,000 per employee is a more accurate figure.
Google is not likely the type of company where clerical and data-entry people outnumber the engineers / computer scientists.
Oh yeah, add in the full Cost of Revenues number and you'll get the "total cost of business" you were talking about.
Dave
Did I say a salary of $200k?
No... I said "cost of $100-200k per employee (salary + rent + computer + etc...)"
That's salary + office rent + computer hardware + computer software + health benefits + taxes + stock plan + 401k / RRSP + relocation + training + desk + chair + office supplies + phone bill + internet cost + everything else.
I was using a rough employee cost of 2x a typical salary of $50-100k. That 2x comes from what I understand from management at a large company at which I worked. If you want a web link to some other references, here ya go:
2.2x salary for a (use the 1.25x * 1.75x figures)
How much does an employee really cost?
Dave
No, of course not.
They have over 1900 employees. Assuming a typical high-tech business cost of $100-200k per employee (salary + rent + computer + etc...), that's at least $190-380 million in revenue. Then you throw in their big-ass computer farms, their funky colorful office spheres, and their Grateful Dead chef... then $980 million sounds reasonable.
Dave
He's talking about sticking a separate tape recorder next to an independant radio, and recording the output of the speaker. What it sounds like you did, and which I did as well, was use an integrated radio/tape recorder.
And yes, I have a cassette deck next to my computer, hooked up to my sound card's line out. My car is getting kinda older, so it doesn't have a CD player - never bothered to get one. I record MP3s from the computer onto the cassette deck, so I can use it in the car. I use Type II cassettes - I was too cheap to buy the Type IV 10-15 years ago, whenever it was that I last bought one. I've just reused them over the years, taping over old radio songs, and tossing them when they wear out.
Type I and Type II have a drastically different frequency response. Type IV is only slightly better than the Type II, in my opinion.
Hmmmm... maybe I should consider building a Line In for my car cassette deck, so I can hook my portable MP3 player directly into it.
Dave
Paid vacation time is definately a consideration. I've worked for companies in Canada with 3 weeks, and 3 weeks plus a week at Christmas.
Hey Nano, Is that EA in Vancouver? (dunno if there's another Canadian EA location, excuse the question there's only one.) Peanuts, hey? What kind of hours are we talking about? 10-11 / day? No overtime pay, I assume?
Dave
What city are you talking about? Company size? Degree or Diploma? Canadian dollars, I assume?
Just looking for clarification, but that seems a little low for a mid+ sized city, mid+ size company, and a degree. It was $40k ish in the mid 90s when I graduated.
Dave