BTW, the response-to-date has been underwhelming â" 101 video responses and counting â" and is certainly a mixed-bag, including a one-finger salute, a talking butt, a woman "Showing my Apples", and other off-topic rants
Yes but at least the Republican senators were willing to voice their opinions in the most eloquent manner they could.
Your assertion that CDMA phones are unlockable is outright wrong. People have already unlocked the Pre for compatibility with Verizon.
The issue about no SIM card is a bigger one, however, because once you do unlock the device, you still have to get someone on a competing network to register and activate your device to their network which Verizon has a policy specifically not to do with devices they don't sell you. There are workarounds such as knowing someone, but it's never going to be as trivial as sliding in your SIM.
I haven't read the article, but, to me it seems the takeaway here is pretty obvious: Your users are content and they are providing themselves. The question becomes "Are the users that never pay anything valuable enough to the users that may pay something to convince them to continue paying and participating at that paying level, or would those same paying users pay as much without the addition free users as human content?" And I think that's a tough question to ask which can only be answered through actual testing.
The resulting possibilities are 1) You get no money because now hardly any players join the game world and thus it is not as fun and thus people who are willing to pay, aren't willing to pay for very long. or 2) The game is equally as fun with a smaller user base, the paying base actually grows because their friends hear it's fun and put up cash before they even try it, and you end up with more revenue even though you have a much smaller total playerbase.
Big gambles because to me it seems like you have to try pay-to-play first before moving to free-to-play. And moving to a microtransaction model might alienate the small userbase you already accrued in the first situation. And switch it around? You'll lose all the free players who never would've paid and if they were required for paying players' enjoyment... yeah, I think I'll stay out of this market.
Actually what is being offered is a compromise. The full retail value of the 32 GB model is $699 not $499. AT&T is offering those iPhone owners who purchased their 3G upgrade last year, under the terms of a 2 year subsidization contract, the opportunity for a special upgrade at half the subsidization cost. So, for example, when I bought my iPhone 3G last year on day 1, even though I promised to complete an entire two year contract to cover the major discount offered at the time, I will still be able to restart a new two year contract and be rewarded with a $200 discount.
So even though those with no further contract obligations (actually, in many cases you can upgrade at full discount after only 18 months of your 24 month contract) and those new purchasers will get a nice $400 discount, I think I'm getting a pretty honest deal with a half discount halfway through the obligation.
However, many people are clearly confused for various reasons. One cause is likely that many of these iPhone customers were never smartphone customers before. These people had no idea just how much money smartphones cost MSRP. The other part of it is original iPhone (Edge) buyers were not subsidized at all, and when the 3G came around, the offer was presented as though it was a special situation allowing for an early upgrade. Well that is partly factual, if you wanted to upgrade to any other phone you would not have been able to at only one year. I find this aspect to be particularly disgusting on AT&T's part, but it's all part of the contract... At any rate, since there was no subsidization in the original two year contracts for AT&T to cover, it was a no-brainer for them to offer full subsidization to 3G purchasers.
So ultimately, many people are expecting to get exactly the same full subsidization "special" offer they got with the 3G but there has never once been any promise that they would.
So I say: If you're not happy with the pricing, don't buy the new phone. If you feel bad about the whole situation, at least try to fully comprehend what happened and why the 3G's subsidization was not nearly as special as it seemed (AT&T sacrificed zero subsidization from your original contract whereas now they are offering to sacrifice half of the one from the 3G). It's understandable to be dissatisfied with an offer regardless of the terms, but not understandable for people to go all emo over the terms as though they were somehow owed or promised something else when they obviously weren't.
For the record, I intend to pick up a 32gb upgrade for $500 because frankly, I was happy to buy the original 8gb for the full original price. To me it's valuable for the added space alone. Everyone has to make this decision for themselves obviously but at least have the character to realize you are not being ripped off, and you are not somehow owed a better offer just because you really want the phone.
Granted, the damages do seem high, but these are only applied where the conclusion has already been made that a proper case was brought about and the crime proven without a reasonable doubt.
Why focus on this after-the-fact nonsense? In a perfect judicial world where only copyright violators were convicted, I would whole-heartedly support brutal monetary punishments to these self-entitled jackasses.
But in reality, shouldn't this crowd-sourced angst be directed at the flawed proceedings and discovery that is the real issue here? Please, for everyone who cares about "justice" and fair use and other copyright issues, let's focus the energy, however fickle it is, on what really matters here.
This whole "browser war" nonsense has gone on long enough. Back when a browser was a novelty, perhaps even sold on the shelf at the store, maybe it made sense to worry about competition. However, now that the browser is essential to everyday computing and part of the platform, the demands being made entirely idiotic. It should not matter if people are given IE8 out of the gate or not. I do agree that they should be able to disable or uninstall it if they feel it's a security problem. However, forcing vendors to include other browsers is only slightly widening the selective controlled distribution and does not address any of the problems IE's dominance has caused in the first place.
Quite simply put, the reason IE is popular is because people do not care about which browser they use. A small percentage does, and it seem this site is popular with that group but at this point, a browser is part of a platform as a steering wheel is part of a car. Occasionally an enthusiast replaces his steering wheel but most people don't care about it.
But what does a steering wheel have in common with browsers besides being a platform staple? They support standards. The steering wheel is a standard interface, and while they do vary from car to car, they all support a common baseline of functionality and features.
So the real solution to this IE problem is not to force a company to support their competition. No I vehemently disagree with that, it's simply wrong to force a company to collude with their competition. Instead, the solution is to enforce IE's support of recognized standards. If you truly wish to neuter Microsoft's control of the WWW, then limit them to implementing standards compliant browsing only, let the community and the market decide what that means, and then let people continue to make their own choices about browsers.
Frankly if you look at all platforms, not just personal computer platforms, you will see that they all include their own browser choice, whether it be a Linux based OS that includes firefox, or a smartphone that includes a webkit based browser like Nokia's S60 platform. Macs include Safari, my Wii came with a free Opera download, my DSi came with a free opera download, and my PS3 includes a browser based on the same tech they use for their feature cell phones.
So targeting microsoft just because this mattered 10 years ago is pretty ridiculous, especially when you're failing to target the real problem in the first place.
Where I live, I can take two buses and a light rail trip either way to commute, that's approximately 45 minutes to an hour to travel what amounts to 5 miles driving.
It costs $75 for one month's unlimited pass, and if I wanted to park my car at any of these train stations, there is no fee (however, there are no guards on duty so crime is very high there.)
To contrast this, my driving commute takes approximately 20 minutes, and is 5 miles each way, as mentioned. I spend, as a total since I don't keep track of miles driven for commuting vs. otherwise, $60 average per month on gasoline for all driving.
On top of this I can't go everywhere on pubtrans, it's just too poorly implemented here, especially at night. It practically shuts down entirely after 6pm in my area.
My car does cost money outside of the travel itself, though. I no longer have a payment but I did have a $14k loan that I paid in full at 3% interest (yay interest wars in 2003.) On top of that I have maintenance, approximately a minimum of $90 every 3 months for oil, tire rotation, etc. Occasionally, maybe once every two years, there is more advanced maintenance and since the car is now 6 years old I imagine I'll hit some expensive maintenance costs for things like clutch replacement (manual trans) and another set of new tires.
I drive a Subaru so the lifetime is expected to be long, I am nearing 100k miles, and as the car performs, I expect another 100k before it goes to scrap (or is banned from the road due to draconian EPA restrictions...)
So as a lifetime estimate of the car's costs, I'd say conservatively over the course of a 10 year lifespan, I'll have paid $30,000 to own and operate this car. That's fairly conservative, as I'm not including registration fees or unforseens or even accounting for the high fuel costs over the last few years. That gives my car an average per-year cost of $3000 over its anticipated lifespan.
Now for the public transportation, I don't have to buy this, though one could argue I do through taxes. The fact is, my tax costs have changed insignificantly in my entire life and the amounts for pubtrans are highly variable (a matching strategy) year to year so, as I did not include taxes in my car cost estimate I'll leave them out of this. The cost of a monthly pass has risen $10 every two years that I've used public transportation. Furthermore this does not include express buses or commuter rail. But otherwise, this is an easy estimate to make for that same 10 years, it comes to $7200 for all 10 years, $720 per year average. However, that's not quite as accurate as the vehicle cost per-year in the near term. The first year of this estimate is $480, while, this year, it will be $840, and probably more in another 2 years.
Even if you pad and make excuses, $840 vs. $3000 is a no-brainer in costs from a statistical standpoint. But how can you really compare things this way? I think this is where the real contention comes in, especially for people like myself who have horrid public transportation options. I could go boost the pubtrans numbers vastly if I considered that any non-route travel would have to be done via taxi! But still, I could triple the public transportation costs and still not meet the car costs and the car could die on me entirely, or be wrecked and cost me far more to replace it. There are many aspects to this argument.
There's the emotional one too. In a car you can drive where you want when you want, you can always go alone, you can keep things in it like tools or equipment. You can drive to the store and bring home a plasma tv in the back seats. If you have the right car, you can even move with it, or go camping.
You can do zero of these things using public transportation.
That said, on public transportation I can *SLEEP* on my way to work. I can read a book or watch a movie, or play a video game. I have no worries about traffic with assholes cutting me off, morons uselessly tailgating me, idiots running red lights to shave 2 s
Available in a linux flavor, I ripped 462 movies for my private use (streaming from my 1tb hdd to an apple tv) from DVD last fall. At the time Handbrake used its own decoder which didn't always work for certain types of highly standard breaking locking schemes (read: broken dvd's). However the recent version, at least for my mac, has no troubles as it is using VLC player for the dvd decoding engine.
I found the best success using constant quality, around 59% plus a bunch of other handy settings I found under the "best settings and why" section in the forums for handbrake.
I strongly recommend this avenue as the results are magnificent AVC encodes in iTunes, iPod, iPhone, PS3, etc. compatible container and they are literally indistinguishable from their DVD counterpart (save a few exceptionally difficult to rip movies like Pi). Good software, and free too.
In my software engineering department, every new hire of the last 2 years, save one, was over 35. One is over 50.
Maybe ageism occurs but it's the kind of ism that tends to rely on majority and since most of the employees in my department are middle-aged, I'm the recipient of the small amount of ageism that goes on... at 27.
This just in, nVidia announces world's first netbook to require not one but two separate AC adapters at all times. Other features include built-in vacuum cleaner noise generator, and thermal pubic hair remover.
I never had that strangely placed sentimentality for boxes and manuals with games. With complex technical gadgetry sure, or things with beautiful designs, etc. But with games? The manuals are 9/10 times total crap, black and white and minimally useful.
I am much happier when I can hit pause and pull up a manual, well organized by important topics like controls etc. without having to flip through pages of tiny text. Furthermore, that online manual's pages will never tear:)
I've been a big fan of digital distribute for quite a while. Yes, I have minor concerns about DRM. Yes it's nice to be able to sell things you own. However, I am of the opinion that so long as you go into it knowing what you're getting (basically an indefinite rental) then you can properly evaluate the worth. I think this is partly why I feel much lower prices are acceptable for DRM encumbered products.
Maybe it seems like $4.99 for an iPhone game that was just as good if not better than the $29.99 Nintendo DS equivalent is too little to sustain an industry. However, as soon as you think a little deeper you see that nobody can buy those games used, eliminating physical game sales largest competitor: its own afterlife.
So as long as these publishers put up their games at a lower price point to reflect these harsher realities, or, alternatively, remove restrictions (at least re-enable these basic tenants of ownership and use, one way or another) then I'll be happy with digital distribution.
Maybe this made sense in 1997, back when the internet was fledgling. It makes no sense whatsoever to demand MS include other browsers. The choice of browsers they make will be equally as unfair an influence as only including their own.
Every major operating system, distribution of linux, phone, netbook, or whatever comes with a default browser often even specific to the device or brand.
The particular browser that is in use is not what is important anyway. What matters is that the company in question, Microsoft, is able to skew the idiot lazy web designers and corporations away from proper standards because their browser is so prominent.
So, I think a far more logical demand would be to enforce IE pass some kind of standards test like the acid test or similar, and eliminate proprietary javascript calls as much as is practical (set a baseline, like... a fuzzy venn diagram of what the top 5 browsers other than IE are already supporting, and allow them to include any open board ratified standard API set as well).
So to sum up, it's a decade late for this action. What's done is done. Choosing a browser besides what comes with your OS/Computer/Phone is like getting new furniture for your house. Demanding an OS maker to include other browsers is like demanding any realtor selling furnished homes include 7 types of furniture post-sale. Let's focus on what matters, web standards and real life web development influence. Require Microsoft obey web standards compliance with their browser so that they aren't damaging the ability for other browsers, on both Windows and other platforms, to enjoy compatibility with the same sites.
I boycotted DRM encumbered music over a year ago for practical reasons. I suddenly had a few devices I wanted to use my music on besides my apple devices. Otherwise I don't care. Honestly, I don't care even in the slightest about the DRM. I don't have the false notion that I own any of this content, maybe it's the "Defective by Design" people who are wrong.
Historically speaking, nobody has ever owned any music or video by buying it, so let's look away from the faulty technology and look at the terms that actually matter and will actually capture the attention of paying users.
All that matters to most people is that they can use the things how they want to. Most people buy DVD's and never ever care about the DRM on there because they just stick it in whatever dvd player and it works great. If a person has nothing but apple products to play their DRM'd videos, why should they care about it?
Personally I buy TV shows on iTunes but I never even considered it anything more than the kind of fee I pay for cable tv, simply less over the course of a year because I only have to pay for what I want to see. If I want something less restricted I buy the dvd set when it comes out. You might comment about how I'm paying twice but frankly, so is every idiot out there paying for cable tv or satellite or whatever subscription service delivering you 25 times as many programs per hour as you'll ever be able to store.
And as a final comment, while you're boycotting companies for pushing these annoying technologies, remember who is really at fault for their very existence: big content. If you are going to boycott the cause for DRM's proliference then you have to boycott even NON DRM CONTENT if it comes from any company that promotes the use of DRM on any of their content anywhere, that means every single movie company since they all use DVD, etc. Let's get it right, if people are going to try and make a stand against nonsensical broken tech, let's at least focus the efforts where they actually matter.
My grandfather was recently diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. Since there is no cure the only treatment that is worth endeavouring at this juncture is resistance. The basic idea is that you take certain measures to stimulate new growth in the brain and it helps you remember new things as well as helping you recall things you already know.
Some simple methods are really effective, for example, write down everything you want to remember. Write a mnemonic if possible but ultimately just writing the whole thing down is the most effective.
Some methods are a little more self-manpiulative. For example, write yourself reminders of important info and place them in places where you will encounter them later rather than explicitly seeking them out. The interesting thing here is that you will begin to notice you remember the thing before you encounter it due to a minor anxiety induced alertness related to predicting your encounters. The effect is similar to setting an alarm and then subconsciously thinking about that alarm every time you see a clock til the alarm goes off.
You probably don't have this problem, but, reading literature is generally helpful in stimulating your memory. Read new things though. Don't read the same old moldy space alience bug fighting sci-fi! Read some poetry or a mainstream mystery novel.
Another aspect of this problem to give some attention to is information overload. Take yourself away from it all. Get rid of your habitual slashdot refreshing, get yourself an RSS aggregator that can filter everything from zonk, and so forth. Open up your time for focusing on memorization and learning of what really matters and try to take a more curricular approach to new learning with self testing and note taking. Basically, all the same habits from school so many years ago...
And personally I find it useful to avoid too many memory crutches. I used to memorize phone numbers implicitly upon hearing them and over time I started writing them down because I feared I would forget between hearing and then needing to use it. For example, if I asked my wife for a number and then I needed to dial it, out of fear I would write it down. That kind of complacency in memory usage just leads to a poor memory. Remember the phone number, use it, and if yous crewed up the negative reinforcement will have an effect of memory improvement in the end.
Let's pretend for a moment that we aren't all assuming CS is a wise decision.
I personally know at least 3 CS majors. None of them make over $50k/yr. salaries. None of them are very good programmers and none of them deserve more than they make. Now, it's fair to consider them poor for reasons outside of their schooling but let's just take it at face value for now: CS degrees did not result in valuable careers.
Maybe women are just being smart and avoiding CS because you're not likely to make any money in that field. Every year it becomes easier for less educated people to perform the jobs in this field and the market becomes more and more dilluted while the valiant goals of those highly talented in the field is directly counterproductive to producing a market for workers in the field.
That was a little confusing, let me sum that up: The best programmers are working to make programming unnecessary. Computer Science degrees offer very little career choice besides programming. Why would you enter this field with even the slightest inclination of this opinion? Maybe women are just picking better careers and therefore different schooling programs?
So the answer is pretty simple. Apply for the jobs that match your skillset even if you lack the experience. What you will see, if you're lucky, is a company looking to hire someone they can offer a relatively low payrate compared to what they posted but will do nearly as good of a job minus the expected failings of a newbie.
Essentially they get a good deal and you get some experience.
Secondly, make friends who have jobs at programming companies, and make those friends impressed with your skills. Networking is the #1 best way to get a good long lasting job.
I'm speaking from my own experience here. To top it all off, I have no schooling at all. I taught myself. I proved myself to future employers by proving myself to my friends who had friends, etc. I'm promoted every year due to my merits now and couldn't be happier with the way this all worked out.
I firmly believe that this type of event is in the long term best interest of all parties.
Even before the proliferation of untrusted individual reporting becoming trusted (read: blogs) the large news agencies have been blindly trusted by nearly everyone. Everyone is shocked when it's revealed that the reports they read in their papers were outright wrong, or even lies.
Everything we can do to impact every day Joe in a way that gets them thinking critically about news reports will benefit us in the long run. We will, hopefully, become less impacted by propaganda compaigns, as well as less likely to react to news/media reports irrationally and impulsively.
Of course, I admit that this is some kind of massive wishful thinking but, man... wouldn't it be nice to see some random jerk on the street see a newspaper and murmer "I wonder if that's true." instead of "OMG PONIES!?"
"[The] increasingly blurred line between journalism and rumor is a serious concern for Al Tompkins, the broadcast/online group leader at The Poynter Institute â" a specialized school for journalists of all media forms. 'How could you possibly allow just anybody to post just anything under your [CNN] label unless you have blazing billboards that say, "None of this has been verified, we've not looked at any of this, we have no idea if this is true?"' he asks."
Probably because they would have to show that same billboard wrapped around 75% of what they report.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes but at least the Republican senators were willing to voice their opinions in the most eloquent manner they could.
It's funny how often an errant knob slipping between some unsuspecting crevice so often leads to thoughts of early termination.
It's like taking a shower with a raincoat on.
I'd rather not have sex than have it with a condom eliminating the thrill.
Your assertion that CDMA phones are unlockable is outright wrong. People have already unlocked the Pre for compatibility with Verizon.
The issue about no SIM card is a bigger one, however, because once you do unlock the device, you still have to get someone on a competing network to register and activate your device to their network which Verizon has a policy specifically not to do with devices they don't sell you. There are workarounds such as knowing someone, but it's never going to be as trivial as sliding in your SIM.
Well at least it is hidden, that's what the privacy advocates wanted right?
I haven't read the article, but, to me it seems the takeaway here is pretty obvious: Your users are content and they are providing themselves. The question becomes "Are the users that never pay anything valuable enough to the users that may pay something to convince them to continue paying and participating at that paying level, or would those same paying users pay as much without the addition free users as human content?" And I think that's a tough question to ask which can only be answered through actual testing.
The resulting possibilities are 1) You get no money because now hardly any players join the game world and thus it is not as fun and thus people who are willing to pay, aren't willing to pay for very long. or 2) The game is equally as fun with a smaller user base, the paying base actually grows because their friends hear it's fun and put up cash before they even try it, and you end up with more revenue even though you have a much smaller total playerbase.
Big gambles because to me it seems like you have to try pay-to-play first before moving to free-to-play. And moving to a microtransaction model might alienate the small userbase you already accrued in the first situation. And switch it around? You'll lose all the free players who never would've paid and if they were required for paying players' enjoyment... yeah, I think I'll stay out of this market.
Actually what is being offered is a compromise. The full retail value of the 32 GB model is $699 not $499. AT&T is offering those iPhone owners who purchased their 3G upgrade last year, under the terms of a 2 year subsidization contract, the opportunity for a special upgrade at half the subsidization cost. So, for example, when I bought my iPhone 3G last year on day 1, even though I promised to complete an entire two year contract to cover the major discount offered at the time, I will still be able to restart a new two year contract and be rewarded with a $200 discount.
So even though those with no further contract obligations (actually, in many cases you can upgrade at full discount after only 18 months of your 24 month contract) and those new purchasers will get a nice $400 discount, I think I'm getting a pretty honest deal with a half discount halfway through the obligation.
However, many people are clearly confused for various reasons. One cause is likely that many of these iPhone customers were never smartphone customers before. These people had no idea just how much money smartphones cost MSRP. The other part of it is original iPhone (Edge) buyers were not subsidized at all, and when the 3G came around, the offer was presented as though it was a special situation allowing for an early upgrade. Well that is partly factual, if you wanted to upgrade to any other phone you would not have been able to at only one year. I find this aspect to be particularly disgusting on AT&T's part, but it's all part of the contract... At any rate, since there was no subsidization in the original two year contracts for AT&T to cover, it was a no-brainer for them to offer full subsidization to 3G purchasers.
So ultimately, many people are expecting to get exactly the same full subsidization "special" offer they got with the 3G but there has never once been any promise that they would.
So I say: If you're not happy with the pricing, don't buy the new phone. If you feel bad about the whole situation, at least try to fully comprehend what happened and why the 3G's subsidization was not nearly as special as it seemed (AT&T sacrificed zero subsidization from your original contract whereas now they are offering to sacrifice half of the one from the 3G). It's understandable to be dissatisfied with an offer regardless of the terms, but not understandable for people to go all emo over the terms as though they were somehow owed or promised something else when they obviously weren't.
For the record, I intend to pick up a 32gb upgrade for $500 because frankly, I was happy to buy the original 8gb for the full original price. To me it's valuable for the added space alone. Everyone has to make this decision for themselves obviously but at least have the character to realize you are not being ripped off, and you are not somehow owed a better offer just because you really want the phone.
Fandom does not make you special.
Granted, the damages do seem high, but these are only applied where the conclusion has already been made that a proper case was brought about and the crime proven without a reasonable doubt.
Why focus on this after-the-fact nonsense? In a perfect judicial world where only copyright violators were convicted, I would whole-heartedly support brutal monetary punishments to these self-entitled jackasses.
But in reality, shouldn't this crowd-sourced angst be directed at the flawed proceedings and discovery that is the real issue here? Please, for everyone who cares about "justice" and fair use and other copyright issues, let's focus the energy, however fickle it is, on what really matters here.
This whole "browser war" nonsense has gone on long enough. Back when a browser was a novelty, perhaps even sold on the shelf at the store, maybe it made sense to worry about competition. However, now that the browser is essential to everyday computing and part of the platform, the demands being made entirely idiotic. It should not matter if people are given IE8 out of the gate or not. I do agree that they should be able to disable or uninstall it if they feel it's a security problem. However, forcing vendors to include other browsers is only slightly widening the selective controlled distribution and does not address any of the problems IE's dominance has caused in the first place.
Quite simply put, the reason IE is popular is because people do not care about which browser they use. A small percentage does, and it seem this site is popular with that group but at this point, a browser is part of a platform as a steering wheel is part of a car. Occasionally an enthusiast replaces his steering wheel but most people don't care about it.
But what does a steering wheel have in common with browsers besides being a platform staple? They support standards. The steering wheel is a standard interface, and while they do vary from car to car, they all support a common baseline of functionality and features.
So the real solution to this IE problem is not to force a company to support their competition. No I vehemently disagree with that, it's simply wrong to force a company to collude with their competition. Instead, the solution is to enforce IE's support of recognized standards. If you truly wish to neuter Microsoft's control of the WWW, then limit them to implementing standards compliant browsing only, let the community and the market decide what that means, and then let people continue to make their own choices about browsers.
Frankly if you look at all platforms, not just personal computer platforms, you will see that they all include their own browser choice, whether it be a Linux based OS that includes firefox, or a smartphone that includes a webkit based browser like Nokia's S60 platform. Macs include Safari, my Wii came with a free Opera download, my DSi came with a free opera download, and my PS3 includes a browser based on the same tech they use for their feature cell phones.
So targeting microsoft just because this mattered 10 years ago is pretty ridiculous, especially when you're failing to target the real problem in the first place.
65 year old feet used to walk!
10 year old bicycle used to ride!
Wait, what's the significance of a modem, modulating and demodulating as it was originally intended?
Where I live, I can take two buses and a light rail trip either way to commute, that's approximately 45 minutes to an hour to travel what amounts to 5 miles driving.
It costs $75 for one month's unlimited pass, and if I wanted to park my car at any of these train stations, there is no fee (however, there are no guards on duty so crime is very high there.)
To contrast this, my driving commute takes approximately 20 minutes, and is 5 miles each way, as mentioned. I spend, as a total since I don't keep track of miles driven for commuting vs. otherwise, $60 average per month on gasoline for all driving.
On top of this I can't go everywhere on pubtrans, it's just too poorly implemented here, especially at night. It practically shuts down entirely after 6pm in my area.
My car does cost money outside of the travel itself, though. I no longer have a payment but I did have a $14k loan that I paid in full at 3% interest (yay interest wars in 2003.) On top of that I have maintenance, approximately a minimum of $90 every 3 months for oil, tire rotation, etc. Occasionally, maybe once every two years, there is more advanced maintenance and since the car is now 6 years old I imagine I'll hit some expensive maintenance costs for things like clutch replacement (manual trans) and another set of new tires.
I drive a Subaru so the lifetime is expected to be long, I am nearing 100k miles, and as the car performs, I expect another 100k before it goes to scrap (or is banned from the road due to draconian EPA restrictions...)
So as a lifetime estimate of the car's costs, I'd say conservatively over the course of a 10 year lifespan, I'll have paid $30,000 to own and operate this car. That's fairly conservative, as I'm not including registration fees or unforseens or even accounting for the high fuel costs over the last few years. That gives my car an average per-year cost of $3000 over its anticipated lifespan.
Now for the public transportation, I don't have to buy this, though one could argue I do through taxes. The fact is, my tax costs have changed insignificantly in my entire life and the amounts for pubtrans are highly variable (a matching strategy) year to year so, as I did not include taxes in my car cost estimate I'll leave them out of this. The cost of a monthly pass has risen $10 every two years that I've used public transportation. Furthermore this does not include express buses or commuter rail. But otherwise, this is an easy estimate to make for that same 10 years, it comes to $7200 for all 10 years, $720 per year average. However, that's not quite as accurate as the vehicle cost per-year in the near term. The first year of this estimate is $480, while, this year, it will be $840, and probably more in another 2 years.
Even if you pad and make excuses, $840 vs. $3000 is a no-brainer in costs from a statistical standpoint. But how can you really compare things this way? I think this is where the real contention comes in, especially for people like myself who have horrid public transportation options. I could go boost the pubtrans numbers vastly if I considered that any non-route travel would have to be done via taxi! But still, I could triple the public transportation costs and still not meet the car costs and the car could die on me entirely, or be wrecked and cost me far more to replace it. There are many aspects to this argument.
There's the emotional one too. In a car you can drive where you want when you want, you can always go alone, you can keep things in it like tools or equipment. You can drive to the store and bring home a plasma tv in the back seats. If you have the right car, you can even move with it, or go camping.
You can do zero of these things using public transportation.
That said, on public transportation I can *SLEEP* on my way to work. I can read a book or watch a movie, or play a video game. I have no worries about traffic with assholes cutting me off, morons uselessly tailgating me, idiots running red lights to shave 2 s
So someone decided to run a code tidying tool and dared to check in the results I guess?
Available in a linux flavor, I ripped 462 movies for my private use (streaming from my 1tb hdd to an apple tv) from DVD last fall. At the time Handbrake used its own decoder which didn't always work for certain types of highly standard breaking locking schemes (read: broken dvd's). However the recent version, at least for my mac, has no troubles as it is using VLC player for the dvd decoding engine.
I found the best success using constant quality, around 59% plus a bunch of other handy settings I found under the "best settings and why" section in the forums for handbrake.
I strongly recommend this avenue as the results are magnificent AVC encodes in iTunes, iPod, iPhone, PS3, etc. compatible container and they are literally indistinguishable from their DVD counterpart (save a few exceptionally difficult to rip movies like Pi). Good software, and free too.
Clearly, this works because you're selling your eternal soul to satan by ritualistic virtual murder in return for slightly better eye sight!
In my software engineering department, every new hire of the last 2 years, save one, was over 35. One is over 50.
Maybe ageism occurs but it's the kind of ism that tends to rely on majority and since most of the employees in my department are middle-aged, I'm the recipient of the small amount of ageism that goes on... at 27.
This just in, nVidia announces world's first netbook to require not one but two separate AC adapters at all times. Other features include built-in vacuum cleaner noise generator, and thermal pubic hair remover.
I never had that strangely placed sentimentality for boxes and manuals with games. With complex technical gadgetry sure, or things with beautiful designs, etc. But with games? The manuals are 9/10 times total crap, black and white and minimally useful.
I am much happier when I can hit pause and pull up a manual, well organized by important topics like controls etc. without having to flip through pages of tiny text. Furthermore, that online manual's pages will never tear :)
I've been a big fan of digital distribute for quite a while. Yes, I have minor concerns about DRM. Yes it's nice to be able to sell things you own. However, I am of the opinion that so long as you go into it knowing what you're getting (basically an indefinite rental) then you can properly evaluate the worth. I think this is partly why I feel much lower prices are acceptable for DRM encumbered products.
Maybe it seems like $4.99 for an iPhone game that was just as good if not better than the $29.99 Nintendo DS equivalent is too little to sustain an industry. However, as soon as you think a little deeper you see that nobody can buy those games used, eliminating physical game sales largest competitor: its own afterlife.
So as long as these publishers put up their games at a lower price point to reflect these harsher realities, or, alternatively, remove restrictions (at least re-enable these basic tenants of ownership and use, one way or another) then I'll be happy with digital distribution.
Maybe this made sense in 1997, back when the internet was fledgling. It makes no sense whatsoever to demand MS include other browsers. The choice of browsers they make will be equally as unfair an influence as only including their own.
Every major operating system, distribution of linux, phone, netbook, or whatever comes with a default browser often even specific to the device or brand.
The particular browser that is in use is not what is important anyway. What matters is that the company in question, Microsoft, is able to skew the idiot lazy web designers and corporations away from proper standards because their browser is so prominent.
So, I think a far more logical demand would be to enforce IE pass some kind of standards test like the acid test or similar, and eliminate proprietary javascript calls as much as is practical (set a baseline, like... a fuzzy venn diagram of what the top 5 browsers other than IE are already supporting, and allow them to include any open board ratified standard API set as well).
So to sum up, it's a decade late for this action. What's done is done. Choosing a browser besides what comes with your OS/Computer/Phone is like getting new furniture for your house. Demanding an OS maker to include other browsers is like demanding any realtor selling furnished homes include 7 types of furniture post-sale. Let's focus on what matters, web standards and real life web development influence. Require Microsoft obey web standards compliance with their browser so that they aren't damaging the ability for other browsers, on both Windows and other platforms, to enjoy compatibility with the same sites.
I boycotted DRM encumbered music over a year ago for practical reasons. I suddenly had a few devices I wanted to use my music on besides my apple devices. Otherwise I don't care. Honestly, I don't care even in the slightest about the DRM. I don't have the false notion that I own any of this content, maybe it's the "Defective by Design" people who are wrong.
Historically speaking, nobody has ever owned any music or video by buying it, so let's look away from the faulty technology and look at the terms that actually matter and will actually capture the attention of paying users.
All that matters to most people is that they can use the things how they want to. Most people buy DVD's and never ever care about the DRM on there because they just stick it in whatever dvd player and it works great. If a person has nothing but apple products to play their DRM'd videos, why should they care about it?
Personally I buy TV shows on iTunes but I never even considered it anything more than the kind of fee I pay for cable tv, simply less over the course of a year because I only have to pay for what I want to see. If I want something less restricted I buy the dvd set when it comes out. You might comment about how I'm paying twice but frankly, so is every idiot out there paying for cable tv or satellite or whatever subscription service delivering you 25 times as many programs per hour as you'll ever be able to store.
And as a final comment, while you're boycotting companies for pushing these annoying technologies, remember who is really at fault for their very existence: big content. If you are going to boycott the cause for DRM's proliference then you have to boycott even NON DRM CONTENT if it comes from any company that promotes the use of DRM on any of their content anywhere, that means every single movie company since they all use DVD, etc. Let's get it right, if people are going to try and make a stand against nonsensical broken tech, let's at least focus the efforts where they actually matter.
My grandfather was recently diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. Since there is no cure the only treatment that is worth endeavouring at this juncture is resistance. The basic idea is that you take certain measures to stimulate new growth in the brain and it helps you remember new things as well as helping you recall things you already know.
Some simple methods are really effective, for example, write down everything you want to remember. Write a mnemonic if possible but ultimately just writing the whole thing down is the most effective.
Some methods are a little more self-manpiulative. For example, write yourself reminders of important info and place them in places where you will encounter them later rather than explicitly seeking them out. The interesting thing here is that you will begin to notice you remember the thing before you encounter it due to a minor anxiety induced alertness related to predicting your encounters. The effect is similar to setting an alarm and then subconsciously thinking about that alarm every time you see a clock til the alarm goes off.
You probably don't have this problem, but, reading literature is generally helpful in stimulating your memory. Read new things though. Don't read the same old moldy space alience bug fighting sci-fi! Read some poetry or a mainstream mystery novel.
Another aspect of this problem to give some attention to is information overload. Take yourself away from it all. Get rid of your habitual slashdot refreshing, get yourself an RSS aggregator that can filter everything from zonk, and so forth. Open up your time for focusing on memorization and learning of what really matters and try to take a more curricular approach to new learning with self testing and note taking. Basically, all the same habits from school so many years ago...
And personally I find it useful to avoid too many memory crutches. I used to memorize phone numbers implicitly upon hearing them and over time I started writing them down because I feared I would forget between hearing and then needing to use it. For example, if I asked my wife for a number and then I needed to dial it, out of fear I would write it down. That kind of complacency in memory usage just leads to a poor memory. Remember the phone number, use it, and if yous crewed up the negative reinforcement will have an effect of memory improvement in the end.
That's about all I can remember for now... :-)
Wal-mart sues US DOT and all state DOTs for allowing shoplifters the use of public roads when leaving with stolen property.
Let's pretend for a moment that we aren't all assuming CS is a wise decision.
I personally know at least 3 CS majors. None of them make over $50k/yr. salaries. None of them are very good programmers and none of them deserve more than they make. Now, it's fair to consider them poor for reasons outside of their schooling but let's just take it at face value for now: CS degrees did not result in valuable careers.
Maybe women are just being smart and avoiding CS because you're not likely to make any money in that field. Every year it becomes easier for less educated people to perform the jobs in this field and the market becomes more and more dilluted while the valiant goals of those highly talented in the field is directly counterproductive to producing a market for workers in the field.
That was a little confusing, let me sum that up: The best programmers are working to make programming unnecessary. Computer Science degrees offer very little career choice besides programming. Why would you enter this field with even the slightest inclination of this opinion? Maybe women are just picking better careers and therefore different schooling programs?
So the answer is pretty simple. Apply for the jobs that match your skillset even if you lack the experience. What you will see, if you're lucky, is a company looking to hire someone they can offer a relatively low payrate compared to what they posted but will do nearly as good of a job minus the expected failings of a newbie.
Essentially they get a good deal and you get some experience.
Secondly, make friends who have jobs at programming companies, and make those friends impressed with your skills. Networking is the #1 best way to get a good long lasting job.
I'm speaking from my own experience here. To top it all off, I have no schooling at all. I taught myself. I proved myself to future employers by proving myself to my friends who had friends, etc. I'm promoted every year due to my merits now and couldn't be happier with the way this all worked out.
Good luck to you.
I firmly believe that this type of event is in the long term best interest of all parties.
Even before the proliferation of untrusted individual reporting becoming trusted (read: blogs) the large news agencies have been blindly trusted by nearly everyone. Everyone is shocked when it's revealed that the reports they read in their papers were outright wrong, or even lies.
Everything we can do to impact every day Joe in a way that gets them thinking critically about news reports will benefit us in the long run. We will, hopefully, become less impacted by propaganda compaigns, as well as less likely to react to news/media reports irrationally and impulsively.
Of course, I admit that this is some kind of massive wishful thinking but, man... wouldn't it be nice to see some random jerk on the street see a newspaper and murmer "I wonder if that's true." instead of "OMG PONIES!?"
"[The] increasingly blurred line between journalism and rumor is a serious concern for Al Tompkins, the broadcast/online group leader at The Poynter Institute â" a specialized school for journalists of all media forms. 'How could you possibly allow just anybody to post just anything under your [CNN] label unless you have blazing billboards that say, "None of this has been verified, we've not looked at any of this, we have no idea if this is true?"' he asks."
Probably because they would have to show that same billboard wrapped around 75% of what they report.