Am I the only one who finds it pretty funny that college students still use MS Office instead of OpenOffice? You'd think they'd enjoy the choice before they get stuck with Office 2007 at their first professional position.
It amuses me that the geek can't see the irony in admitting that the transition to gainful employment implies mastery of MS Office.
If, for example, the tech community could get a chance to watch the testimony of the RIAA's "expert" and "investigator", I think a lot of good input would be communicated to the defendant's lawyer.
Since when did a trial attorney start coming into court so unprepared that he would even consider building his case on the fly?
Since when did a civil court judge begin allowing him to re-shape his case around factual disputes or legal issues that were not introduced and explored during pre-trial proceedings?
The geek is all too easily tempted into spinning a wildly improbable sequence of events into a yarn rich in technobabble that - in his mind at least - rises to the level of "reasonable doubt."
It is rather a pity to see such creativity wasted on a jury which only needs to decide which story seems more likely to be the truth.
I live in farm country and most people I know drive a truck that gets 12 mpg all the time so they can haul stuff maybe once or twice a month.
I also live in farm country -
- our family has been in this business in upstate New York for two hundred years now - and began in Massachusetts in 1690 -
and what I see are hard-used trucks, working-class vehicles, on the road day and night.
Lot of people drive a 12 mpg vehicle all the time so they tow a boat to the lake five or six times over the summer, haul their 4 wheeler out in the woods so they can go hunting.
But while anecdotes are interesting, numbers are better.
If, in fact, the truck, boat or RV sees significant use only on weekends its fuel consumption will be an insignificant fraction of the total.
Managing digesters can be a full-time job for someone who really knows what he is doing.
You need to work with tons of this - shit - to generate a significant amount of fuel. Biogas is one of those things which have never made sense as a backyard project.
Remember boys and girls - it wasn't the market crash that caused the great depression - it was the governments reaction to it (closing borders to imports and creating make work projects with the huge public work projects of the 30's) that created the great depression.
The public works projects of thirties were essentially a long term investment in national infrastructure.
Roads and parks. Public buildings. Hydroelectric power. Flood control.
It paid off rather handsomely in the end.
"At one point, Oak Ridge plants were consuming 1/6 of the power produced in the U.S., more than New York City." Manhattan Project
Think about that for a moment. Because at the same time the TVA was feeding previously unimaginable amounts of electric power to Alcoa.
Which is of course totally different from when spock reconfigures his tricorder...
Star Trek makes three simplifying assumptions common to space opera: The FTL drive. Teleportation. Artificial Gravity.
This draws viewers into your story quickly and cheaply without distractions.
But once there reliance on technobabble is unforgivable. Firing off a gun within the tight confines of a spacecraft is lunatic.
The energy weapon that can be powered down to disable but not kill - a sophisticated alternative to a Taser - makes perfect sense. This isn't something you have to explain to your audience, they can work it out by themselves.
When did Hollywood come up with its own ideas in the past?
The short answer is "Never."
The Hollywood production represents a huge investment in time, money and talent.
It has always made sense to draw on sources where experiments are less risky.
Thorne Smith re-invents the ghost story in the twenties with sophisticated, light-as-air fantasies, like Topper.
Ten years later you have the perfect cast: Cary Grant, Roland Young, Constance Bennett and Billie Burke.
The tech is in place for the special effects you will need -
and you are off and running.
You have a hit on your hands.
You have an audience primed and ready for more.
This "script" has worked countless times for the studios.
Stage to Lordsburg appears in The Saturday Evening Post. It is strong enough to rekindle adult interest in the Western - and the production unites two veterans of the genre, the director John Ford and the actor John Wayne.
This pretty much sums up the reasons why the geek and Linux fare poorly in the mass consumer market - with the exception of the video game console or set-top box which keeps its inner geek safely out of sight.
If we define notebooks as small laptops with processors in the Atom class, then Microsoft has a very big problem with there with Vista and even with XP I would say. It is not only the fact that Vista is too slow in that hardware. It is also that it gets slower with use.
Ten of the fifteen mini-laptops sold through Walmart.com run XP on the Atom.
The XP ATOM netbook at $350 includes a 9" screen, a 120 GB HDD and 1 GB RAM.
The Ubuntu Dell with 512 MB RAM and 4 GB RAM at $350 is at least interesting. But I am beginning to suspect that 512 MB RAM and 4 GB of Flash isn't going to cut it in the netbook sector - no matter what your OS.
9" screen. Clock speeds approaching 2 GHz. That is a credible platform for media and games.
The five netbooks available in store all run XP.Mini-Laptops
This is the Walmart Vista Premium laptop at $500: 15" screen. 2 GHz AMD Sempron. 3 GB RAM. DVD-Burner. Etc. The Acer Vista Basic laptop at $550 ships with a multifunction HP printer. The Walmart could be forgiven for not knowing that there is such a thing as a Linux printer.
I walk into a coffee shop with people using WiFi and chugging coffee. More than half of the people at these coffee shops are using Macs. I hang out with my geek friends, most of them have switched to Ubuntu, Many of us have given up Windows....
A story exiled to the Games section on Slashdot will be lucky to draw fifty posts. Unless you press one of the geek's hot buttons. Then you are golden.
People aren't moving away from gaming rigs, game companies don't cater to gamers who are on the cutting edge - i.e. ditching Microsoft!
The bleeding edge is worth 0.8% of the desktop.
OEM Vista 20% -
and this Christmas that is the 64 Bit Vista Premium HP laptop or desktop with a quad core CPU, humongous HDD, 4 GB RAM and NVIDIA DX 10 graphics you can buy at any WalMart.
If the gamer's PC is disappearing, it is only because gamer PC specs have merged with those of the mid-line media PC. You aren't pumping out video to a monitor, you are pumping out video to a WalMart Vizio or the refurbished 42" Toshiba HDTV you bought from TigerDirect.
I own a small business and have been considering hiring someone part time. Unfortunately I have no idea what paperwork needs to be filled out. What do I need to know as far as taxes, etc?
Good God.
There are high schools that teach this stuff. Community colleges. It may be called "Adult Education" or "Community Outreach." Classes are to be found everywhere, including your local Senior Center and Public Library.
Groundbreaking software can now be built quickly and cheaply by reusing a lot of existing code.
I am not quite sure how recycling lots and lots of existing code leads to "groundbreaking" software.
I am not even convinced that code is the roadblock.
Microsoft gambled on "the ribbon" and won.
But Microsoft has the money and manpower to study office work and the office worker in depth.
It can bring graphic and UI design teams into the picture. Experts in a dozen specialties. It can recruit thousands or tens of thousands of test subjects.
The developer living out his fantasies of independence on a diet of Jolt Cola and Ramen Noodles isn't going be able to do that.
It seems there's quite a few things about this wording that seem a little odd. I'm actually primarily wondering what the purpose of it really is.
It meets the nominal legal requirements for deposit without the expense of building and maintaining a new climate-controlled and fire-proofed federal archive somewhere in West Virginia.
The United States Copyright Office says otherwise.
"No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright.
If made before or within 5 years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.
If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.
If the work is an unpublished or published computer program, the deposit requirement is one visually perceptible copy in source code of the first 25 and last 25 pages of the program. For a program of fewer than 50 pages, the deposit is a copy of the entire program.
If the work is in a CD-ROM format, the deposit requirement is one complete copy of the material, that is, the CD-ROM, the operating software, and any manual(s) accompanying it. If registration is sought for the computer program on the CD-ROM, the deposit should also include a printout of the first 25 and last 25 pages of source code for the program." Copyright Office Basics
And lets see how well the SLI/Crossfire graphics cards run games while also being called by the desktop window manager and and explorer to redraw aero effects constantly.
Explain to me how the Aero GUI becomes a load on the GPU when you are running Crysis full screen and with F/X cranked up to the max --- which is, after all, the reason why you lay out the big bucks for a high performance gaming system.
STOP BUYING CRAP MUSIC. stop supporting any artist on a major label.
The masters of any significant recording produced in the last 100+ years are most likely be found in the vaults of the major labels. The artists recording for the majors remain among the best - the very best - in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
It amuses me that the geek can't see the irony in admitting that the transition to gainful employment implies mastery of MS Office.
The $60 Ultimate Steal:
Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Outlook 2007, One Note 2007, Groove 2007, Publisher 2007, Access 2007, InfoPath 2007, Accounting Express 2008.
The offer is open to part-time students, students of community colleges and business schools like Bryant and Stratton.
It's not a bad investment, if you are in the job market or very soon will be.
Since when did a trial attorney start coming into court so unprepared that he would even consider building his case on the fly?
Since when did a civil court judge begin allowing him to re-shape his case around factual disputes or legal issues that were not introduced and explored during pre-trial proceedings?
The geek is all too easily tempted into spinning a wildly improbable sequence of events into a yarn rich in technobabble that - in his mind at least - rises to the level of "reasonable doubt."
It is rather a pity to see such creativity wasted on a jury which only needs to decide which story seems more likely to be the truth.
I also live in farm country -
- our family has been in this business in upstate New York for two hundred years now - and began in Massachusetts in 1690 -
and what I see are hard-used trucks, working-class vehicles, on the road day and night.
Lot of people drive a 12 mpg vehicle all the time so they tow a boat to the lake five or six times over the summer, haul their 4 wheeler out in the woods so they can go hunting.
But while anecdotes are interesting, numbers are better.
If, in fact, the truck, boat or RV sees significant use only on weekends its fuel consumption will be an insignificant fraction of the total.
Handling manure safely is not a trivial problem. Manure Pit Gas Hazards
Managing digesters can be a full-time job for someone who really knows what he is doing.
You need to work with tons of this - shit - to generate a significant amount of fuel. Biogas is one of those things which have never made sense as a backyard project.
There is no difference - when The Force is being used - and abused - as nothing more than a Swiss Army Knife.
In the mythology of Star Wars, the Force represents all the temptations of a corrupted and undisciplined mind:
anything you can imagine -
anything you can put into words - "I want her." - lies within reach.
It is the wish fulfillment of the Krell machines in Forbidden Planet.
The Genii of the Lamp.
To use the power responsibly demands absolute mastery of self. Mastery of fear. Mastery of desire. That is the hero's true quest.
The public works projects of thirties were essentially a long term investment in national infrastructure.
Roads and parks. Public buildings. Hydroelectric power. Flood control.
It paid off rather handsomely in the end.
"At one point, Oak Ridge plants were consuming 1/6 of the power produced in the U.S., more than New York City." Manhattan Project
Think about that for a moment. Because at the same time the TVA was feeding previously unimaginable amounts of electric power to Alcoa.
Star Trek makes three simplifying assumptions common to space opera: The FTL drive. Teleportation. Artificial Gravity.
This draws viewers into your story quickly and cheaply without distractions.
But once there reliance on technobabble is unforgivable. Firing off a gun within the tight confines of a spacecraft is lunatic.
The energy weapon that can be powered down to disable but not kill - a sophisticated alternative to a Taser - makes perfect sense. This isn't something you have to explain to your audience, they can work it out by themselves.
I want to know how much oxygen is being consumed here, what toxins are being pumped out.
Carbon Monoxide comes first to mind.
I want to know what makes this unknown chemical mixture safe to use and store in the home.
I want to know about clearances, surface temperatures. I want to know how easily you can tip this thing over. The risk of accidental burns and fires.
Well, of course, no reason is given.
Luke was exiled to a world that hasn't stumbled over a new idea - or a new machine - in over 5,000 years.
That is the story point you need to get across.
You do it by showing his clapped-out car. You don't do it by talking about his clapped-out car.
Exposition is dull. Exposition take time. You only have ninety minutes or so to tell your story.
The thing is, the "everyday tech" you see in Star Wars or Star Trek does believable things in believable ways.
The sonic screwdriver is nothing more than the all-purpose tool for the writer who has painted himself into a corner.
The short answer is "Never."
The Hollywood production represents a huge investment in time, money and talent.
It has always made sense to draw on sources where experiments are less risky.
Thorne Smith re-invents the ghost story in the twenties with sophisticated, light-as-air fantasies, like Topper.
Ten years later you have the perfect cast: Cary Grant, Roland Young, Constance Bennett and Billie Burke.
The tech is in place for the special effects you will need -
and you are off and running.
You have a hit on your hands.
You have an audience primed and ready for more.
This "script" has worked countless times for the studios.
Stage to Lordsburg appears in The Saturday Evening Post. It is strong enough to rekindle adult interest in the Western - and the production unites two veterans of the genre, the director John Ford and the actor John Wayne.
He wasn't the only one.
This pretty much sums up the reasons why the geek and Linux fare poorly in the mass consumer market - with the exception of the video game console or set-top box which keeps its inner geek safely out of sight.
Ten of the fifteen mini-laptops sold through Walmart.com run XP on the Atom.
The XP ATOM netbook at $350 includes a 9" screen, a 120 GB HDD and 1 GB RAM.
The Ubuntu Dell with 512 MB RAM and 4 GB RAM at $350 is at least interesting. But I am beginning to suspect that 512 MB RAM and 4 GB of Flash isn't going to cut it in the netbook sector - no matter what your OS.
9" screen. Clock speeds approaching 2 GHz. That is a credible platform for media and games.
The five netbooks available in store all run XP.Mini-Laptops
This is the Walmart Vista Premium laptop at $500: 15" screen. 2 GHz AMD Sempron. 3 GB RAM. DVD-Burner. Etc. The Acer Vista Basic laptop at $550 ships with a multifunction HP printer. The Walmart could be forgiven for not knowing that there is such a thing as a Linux printer.
A story exiled to the Games section on Slashdot will be lucky to draw fifty posts. Unless you press one of the geek's hot buttons. Then you are golden.
People aren't moving away from gaming rigs, game companies don't cater to gamers who are on the cutting edge - i.e. ditching Microsoft!
The bleeding edge is worth 0.8% of the desktop.
OEM Vista 20% -
and this Christmas that is the 64 Bit Vista Premium HP laptop or desktop with a quad core CPU, humongous HDD, 4 GB RAM and NVIDIA DX 10 graphics you can buy at any WalMart.
If the gamer's PC is disappearing, it is only because gamer PC specs have merged with those of the mid-line media PC. You aren't pumping out video to a monitor, you are pumping out video to a WalMart Vizio or the refurbished 42" Toshiba HDTV you bought from TigerDirect.
Good God.
There are high schools that teach this stuff. Community colleges. It may be called "Adult Education" or "Community Outreach." Classes are to be found everywhere, including your local Senior Center and Public Library.
I am not quite sure how recycling lots and lots of existing code leads to "groundbreaking" software.
I am not even convinced that code is the roadblock.
Microsoft gambled on "the ribbon" and won.
But Microsoft has the money and manpower to study office work and the office worker in depth.
It can bring graphic and UI design teams into the picture. Experts in a dozen specialties. It can recruit thousands or tens of thousands of test subjects.
The developer living out his fantasies of independence on a diet of Jolt Cola and Ramen Noodles isn't going be able to do that.
It meets the nominal legal requirements for deposit without the expense of building and maintaining a new climate-controlled and fire-proofed federal archive somewhere in West Virginia.
More than enough to matter. Why do you think Apple's PR made so much noise about Boot Camp?
"The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U.S. law." Copyright Law Basics - Notice of Copyright
"No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright.
If made before or within 5 years of publication, registration will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright and of the facts stated in the certificate.
If registration is made within 3 months after publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work, statutory damages and attorney's fees will be available to the copyright owner in court actions. Otherwise, only an award of actual damages and profits is available to the copyright owner.
If the work is an unpublished or published computer program, the deposit requirement is one visually perceptible copy in source code of the first 25 and last 25 pages of the program. For a program of fewer than 50 pages, the deposit is a copy of the entire program.
If the work is in a CD-ROM format, the deposit requirement is one complete copy of the material, that is, the CD-ROM, the operating software, and any manual(s) accompanying it. If registration is sought for the computer program on the CD-ROM, the deposit should also include a printout of the first 25 and last 25 pages of source code for the program." Copyright Office Basics
There are winners and losers in every turn of the market.
In the 1930s folks went to the movies - an evening out for 25 cents - or stayed home and listened to the radio.
Those quarters added up quickly.
So did the return on every pack of cigarettes or bar of soap sold through "our sponsor tonight, your neighborhood Rexall drugstore."
Explain to me how the Aero GUI becomes a load on the GPU when you are running Crysis full screen and with F/X cranked up to the max --- which is, after all, the reason why you lay out the big bucks for a high performance gaming system.
How Do I ... tweak Vista indexing options for better performance [Dec 15, 2008]
The Great Vista/Mac Showdown: Goodbye, WinRot [Feb 21, 2007]
Launched at the height of the Christmas shopping season.
A story that makes it to Slashdot as close to Christmas Eve as makes no difference.
The economy has been hard hit. So the Geek can claim victory without having proven a damned thing.
Does any of this sound familiar?
The masters of any significant recording produced in the last 100+ years are most likely be found in the vaults of the major labels. The artists recording for the majors remain among the best - the very best - in the world.