A "locked" state would prvent accidental removal of dock icons. It would not be possible for ignorant friends using your laptop without your permission/cats/etc to accidently remove icons.
I think the average Mac user on Slashdot ought to be able to back up their Dock, so they wouldn't have to worry about "ignorant friends" or "cats."
Follow this mini-tutorial (using Terminal.app):
cd ~/Library/Preferences
cp com.apple.dock.plist ~/Desktop/
Now, move your backup of the plist file to a convenient location.
Should your dock ever get fsck'ed up, do the following:
I remember seeing on TV a while ago a story about Etch-A-Sketch. Talk about the "tried and true." Apparently, the company has stuck with this sole product forever and makes a boat load of money with it.
That's not to say, though, that I wouldn't buy a Python programmable version of the toy;-)
There's an insidious trap to student loans, and it's easy to fall into it.
If you were to get a regular loan from a bank, to start a business let's say, there would be certain criteria to meet before the bank would let you go into debt: ie, get a loan. None of these criteria is considered when it comes to student loans. Basically, the banks will lend to anybody -- and believe me, danger lurks here for the student borrower.
A student loan is basically a business loan. You're investing in your productive capacity, the same way you might invest in buying new computers or machinery for a business. Bear with me now though, because here is where the similarities stop.
Normally, a bank makes a loan taking into account the borrower's credit worthiness: meaning, has the borrower a demonstrated track record for being able to invest borrowed funds in such a way that he is likely to be able to profit and pay them off. In other words, has he demonstrated business savvy in the past. If he has, he's a better risk now: he's more likely to be able to pay.
Is the business for which the loan is to be used in a growing or shrinking industry? If it's conventional wisdom that there's room for more tanning salons, or whatever, a bank is far more likely to feel that the loan is a good risk. If businesses fail regularly in a particular market (restaurants for instance), a bank may be a bit more leery -- they may require collateral to guarantee the loan.
See, banks worry the borrower may make a bad investment, be unable to pay the loan, and ultimately declare bankruptcy. A bankrupt is discharged of any legal obligation to repay a loan. Banks realize that this is their ultimate risk (when they don't have a guarantee), and so it limits to whom they are willing to lend money. If it turns out that a bank has rejected you, you'll think think that sucks. According to the odds, however, they likely did you a favor.
Now, student loans are completely different! With student loans, the banks have their guarantee: namely, the government's committment to chase you to the ends of the earth (or at least the borders of the U.S.) for the rest of your life to get that money back. The banks no longer worry about bankruptcy; and so they no longer about making bad loans. From their perspective, there are no bad loans. From the perspective of the student borrower, however, there certainly are.
There is no doing you a favor here.
What happens if you educate yourself using student loans for an industry that basically dies (moves off-shore or whatever)? What if you're encouraged by a booming economy to take on debt, only the economy goes bust by the time you get out of school? With a normal loan, a bank would share that risk with you; with a student loan, it's all you, pal.
The parent poster made a very good point about going to medical school or law school instead. Basically, don't go throwing yourself headlong into inescapable hock for some mecurial industry like I.T. You'll spend a fortune, and you might find out that $8 an hour is the going rate for recent grads in bad times.
If you can't get by using small loans as a supplement, join the army, or go to community college and join every developer-user group in the area. Start your networking early. It's cheaper and more effective than college anyway. Or, go to work for a company that will reimburse your tuition, partly or fully. (You could become a bank teller, for instance. When you're done with school, the bank or another bank may hire you for their in-house programming department.)
There are tons of non-traditional ways to become college educated -- they just take longer to accomplish and don't make as good conversation for the family come the holidays. In the long run, you'll be better off.
These manufacturers, no doubt, build products for a niche market -- high-end audio equipment -- and are not in competition with the Chinese, et al. It's not that America can't build a DVD player for less than $8000.
It is far more likely that Americans, Scots, and Japanese can't build one for less than $100-$200, and entrepreneurs in these countries reason that they can't compete in the low-end market.
If consumers really wanted to "buy American," American companies would produce DVD players at the low-end, though there would likely be a small premium attached to the price. People buying low-end DVD players simply don't care where they come from, obviously.
[N]umbers dweebs, people who have no understanding of the industries and businesses they're investing in, and have an idiotic obssession with the bottom line. They hate costs more than anything. Even if you're turning a profit, they'll give you a hard time until you crack down on all the employees wasting paper clips.
That's a very insightful comment, and I'm not just saying that because it's something I've been thinking about for a while;-)
There's a real big difference between entrepreneurial talent and bean-counting. I remember hearing someone on television talking about Las Vegas (in the "good old days") and comparing it to Atlantic City. He said the old time Vegas casino owners would charge you for a top-quality steak a price at which they would actually lose money. Hotel rooms and such were also very cheap. The idea was the gamblers would lose money at your casino, but feel better about it because they were "being taken care of" and having a great time. That's what would keep them and their money coming back. His words on the subject, near as I can remember, were "but at Atlantic City the accounts came in and would have none of that."
To take another example, a guy could own a book store or whatever and put in a coffee shop. He might not make any real money at the coffee shop, but he would understand, as an entrepreneur, that the shop drives more traffic into the store, and this in turn drives up book sales.
That, and the example above it, are diametrically opposite mentalities.
These kinds business practices are no big secret, but there are just some people who just don't get it. Accountants provide indispensible information, but it's just one piece of the puzzle to use in decision making -- it's not gospel.
Give the number dweebs a well lit office with plenty of sharp pencils and read their reports carefully; but for God's sake don't put them in charge of anything. They will run a business right into the ground and never understand what happened.
Take a picture of an empty booth in a bar or other public place where anti-nudity laws exist
Take a nude picture of yourself
Using Photoshop, doctor up a picture of nude you sitting in the booth
Important: Save all original photos and intermediate steps to disk
Publish it on the Internet
Publicize its existence, keeping quiet about Photoshop
Wait for the cops
Now, the trick would be to encourage pretty girls to do this. I think if local geeks were generous enough to offer their help with Photoshop, more girls would be encouraged.
If enough people do this, it will clog up the court systems and put an end to these public nudity laws. Best of all, the public nudity law was never broken!
Agreed! It takes infinate patience to deal with this bunch.
Re:The battles would have been a lot better
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 1
Exactly! In the book, FOTR, Legolas walks atop snow -- that's how lightfooted elves are. I thought the scene with him "surfing" down the stairs was brilliant and exciting.
Had Tony Hawk done it, I'll bet half the/. crew would've shouted, "AWESOME, DUDE!"
Yeah, poor Xerox! They were really on their way to shipping the "computer for the rest of us" when those guys from Apple busted into the ivory tower at the Palo Alto campus and convinced the researchers that they'd be much happier publishing papers and pursuing cutting edge technology free from market concerns than they would trying to deliver next big thing.
If only they had stuck to their gut instinct for consumer products.
From my understanding, a judge can only reverse a decision of guilty. The system is set up -- theoretically -- to protect the innocent at all costs. To allow a judge to reverse a decision of not guilty undermines the jury system.
I've seen this before, and the most horrifying thing is that it is held up as an example that's supposed to get you excited about PowerPoint. Okay, I know the link that you gave holds it up as an object of ridicule, but I swear I saw it on a site once where someone obviously did not get the joke.
Several members of the jury approached this boys' mother after the trial and apologized. The remainder could not look her in the face. [...] This would have never gone anywhere...
...if the average American knew about the concept of "jury nullification." No matter what "evidence of a crime" is presented, and no matter how a judge intstructs a jury, a jury can find a defendent not guilty and that's the end of that.
The reason we have juries and the reason their not guilty verdict is final is to undermine such ridiculous laws and abuses of over-zealous government through the veto of common sense.
15 mph over the limit is fast, but not unusual in some areas. Wait until a whole slew of people are mailed tickets, when all they were doing was "keeping up with the flow of traffic." This will be a windfall for the state, unless a someone gets wise to this and it makes the news.
My signal can't even make it from downstairs in the living room to upstairs in the bedroom without a repeater, and yet you guys are picking up signal from 1400 feet in the air!
I especially love the "Cheers!" Why not sign your posting "Cordially"?
When someone suggests Marx for philosophy and economics, I am smart enough to realize that they are espousing a philosophy that recognizes no property rights -- that everything is a "product of society" and as such belongs to "society." No idea could be more wrong; and the author of the original post that spoke of Austrian economists would agree whole heartedly.
My comment about this "smelling like a troll" I said with a wink. All I meant that it was a little off topic and sure to generate a lot of responses. I actually think the original poster was quite sincere and well meaning.
So, from a serious debate over copyright and property, we have degenerated to Marx's wrongheaded economics (popular because "eat the rich" is always popular), to your ranting and profanity.
This is smelling like a troll, and I'm just giving the reader fair warning that I'm caught;-)
Property is a creation of human beings, ultimately of the human mind. If you take someone's handiwork, you deprive them of the physical object; but even more fundamentally, you have appropriated from them the results of their productive efforts and hard-won skill. Intellectual property differs from physical property only in that there is no physical limitation -- there is no object to steal. The skill and effort that goes into the act of creation exists still, however; moreover, in most cases a substantial financial investment is made by the creator.
This is what property rights seeks to protect. The right of the creator of that property to receive full benefit from it. When you "help yourself" to the invention of another, at his expense (his skill, effort, and time), it is stealing.
Try George Reisman for your economics, and Ayn Rand for the philosophical underpinnings.
As I understand it, hospitals are reluctant to give some construction workers MRI's as the average worker is sure to have accumulated tiny metal shards in his or her eyes, shards that go unnoticed until someone turns on the juice.
I remember hearing somewhere that at one time (in the "bad old days") homosexuals were considered a security risk by various government agencies. It was the presumed fear of being found out and that fear being used by a blackmailer that was at the bottom of that policy.
The question of discrimination aside, in a homophobic society that's a legitimate security concern.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the average Mac user on Slashdot ought to be able to back up their Dock, so they wouldn't have to worry about "ignorant friends" or "cats."
Follow this mini-tutorial (using Terminal.app):
cd ~/Library/Preferences
cp com.apple.dock.plist ~/Desktop/
Now, move your backup of the plist file to a convenient location.
Should your dock ever get fsck'ed up, do the following:
cp ~/Desktop/com.apple.dock.plist ~/Library/Preferences/
ps -auwwx | grep "Dock" | grep -v grep
kill -HUP the_pid_for_the_Dock.app
With that, the Dock relaunches, and your custom setup is restored.
Sleep easy!
I remember seeing on TV a while ago a story about Etch-A-Sketch. Talk about the "tried and true." Apparently, the company has stuck with this sole product forever and makes a boat load of money with it.
That's not to say, though, that I wouldn't buy a Python programmable version of the toy ;-)
There's an insidious trap to student loans, and it's easy to fall into it.
If you were to get a regular loan from a bank, to start a business let's say, there would be certain criteria to meet before the bank would let you go into debt: ie, get a loan. None of these criteria is considered when it comes to student loans. Basically, the banks will lend to anybody -- and believe me, danger lurks here for the student borrower.
A student loan is basically a business loan. You're investing in your productive capacity, the same way you might invest in buying new computers or machinery for a business. Bear with me now though, because here is where the similarities stop.
Normally, a bank makes a loan taking into account the borrower's credit worthiness: meaning, has the borrower a demonstrated track record for being able to invest borrowed funds in such a way that he is likely to be able to profit and pay them off. In other words, has he demonstrated business savvy in the past. If he has, he's a better risk now: he's more likely to be able to pay.
Is the business for which the loan is to be used in a growing or shrinking industry? If it's conventional wisdom that there's room for more tanning salons, or whatever, a bank is far more likely to feel that the loan is a good risk. If businesses fail regularly in a particular market (restaurants for instance), a bank may be a bit more leery -- they may require collateral to guarantee the loan.
See, banks worry the borrower may make a bad investment, be unable to pay the loan, and ultimately declare bankruptcy. A bankrupt is discharged of any legal obligation to repay a loan. Banks realize that this is their ultimate risk (when they don't have a guarantee), and so it limits to whom they are willing to lend money. If it turns out that a bank has rejected you, you'll think think that sucks. According to the odds, however, they likely did you a favor.
Now, student loans are completely different! With student loans, the banks have their guarantee: namely, the government's committment to chase you to the ends of the earth (or at least the borders of the U.S.) for the rest of your life to get that money back. The banks no longer worry about bankruptcy; and so they no longer about making bad loans. From their perspective, there are no bad loans. From the perspective of the student borrower, however, there certainly are.
There is no doing you a favor here.
What happens if you educate yourself using student loans for an industry that basically dies (moves off-shore or whatever)? What if you're encouraged by a booming economy to take on debt, only the economy goes bust by the time you get out of school? With a normal loan, a bank would share that risk with you; with a student loan, it's all you, pal.
The parent poster made a very good point about going to medical school or law school instead. Basically, don't go throwing yourself headlong into inescapable hock for some mecurial industry like I.T. You'll spend a fortune, and you might find out that $8 an hour is the going rate for recent grads in bad times.
If you can't get by using small loans as a supplement, join the army, or go to community college and join every developer-user group in the area. Start your networking early. It's cheaper and more effective than college anyway. Or, go to work for a company that will reimburse your tuition, partly or fully. (You could become a bank teller, for instance. When you're done with school, the bank or another bank may hire you for their in-house programming department.)
There are tons of non-traditional ways to become college educated -- they just take longer to accomplish and don't make as good conversation for the family come the holidays. In the long run, you'll be better off.
Well, regarding your wife, you should immediately chime in with, "Honey, you're not fat!"
However, if you're among a group of blacks using the word, it's best just to keep your white mouth shut ;-)
These manufacturers, no doubt, build products for a niche market -- high-end audio equipment -- and are not in competition with the Chinese, et al. It's not that America can't build a DVD player for less than $8000.
It is far more likely that Americans, Scots, and Japanese can't build one for less than $100-$200, and entrepreneurs in these countries reason that they can't compete in the low-end market.
If consumers really wanted to "buy American," American companies would produce DVD players at the low-end, though there would likely be a small premium attached to the price. People buying low-end DVD players simply don't care where they come from, obviously.
That's a very insightful comment, and I'm not just saying that because it's something I've been thinking about for a while ;-)
There's a real big difference between entrepreneurial talent and bean-counting. I remember hearing someone on television talking about Las Vegas (in the "good old days") and comparing it to Atlantic City. He said the old time Vegas casino owners would charge you for a top-quality steak a price at which they would actually lose money. Hotel rooms and such were also very cheap. The idea was the gamblers would lose money at your casino, but feel better about it because they were "being taken care of" and having a great time. That's what would keep them and their money coming back. His words on the subject, near as I can remember, were "but at Atlantic City the accounts came in and would have none of that."
To take another example, a guy could own a book store or whatever and put in a coffee shop. He might not make any real money at the coffee shop, but he would understand, as an entrepreneur, that the shop drives more traffic into the store, and this in turn drives up book sales.
That, and the example above it, are diametrically opposite mentalities.
These kinds business practices are no big secret, but there are just some people who just don't get it. Accountants provide indispensible information, but it's just one piece of the puzzle to use in decision making -- it's not gospel.
Give the number dweebs a well lit office with plenty of sharp pencils and read their reports carefully; but for God's sake don't put them in charge of anything. They will run a business right into the ground and never understand what happened.
Now, the trick would be to encourage pretty girls to do this. I think if local geeks were generous enough to offer their help with Photoshop, more girls would be encouraged.
If enough people do this, it will clog up the court systems and put an end to these public nudity laws. Best of all, the public nudity law was never broken!
It's civil disobedience for 2004! Get on board!!!
</tongue-in-cheek>Just wait 2 u c how english sgonna evolve in da next 50!
Careful now, having the Mafia come after you is one thing, the Vatican quite another!
Agreed! It takes infinate patience to deal with this bunch.
Exactly! In the book, FOTR, Legolas walks atop snow -- that's how lightfooted elves are. I thought the scene with him "surfing" down the stairs was brilliant and exciting.
Had Tony Hawk done it, I'll bet half the /. crew would've shouted, "AWESOME, DUDE!"
Yeah, poor Xerox! They were really on their way to shipping the "computer for the rest of us" when those guys from Apple busted into the ivory tower at the Palo Alto campus and convinced the researchers that they'd be much happier publishing papers and pursuing cutting edge technology free from market concerns than they would trying to deliver next big thing.
If only they had stuck to their gut instinct for consumer products.
From my understanding, a judge can only reverse a decision of guilty. The system is set up -- theoretically -- to protect the innocent at all costs. To allow a judge to reverse a decision of not guilty undermines the jury system.
I've seen this before, and the most horrifying thing is that it is held up as an example that's supposed to get you excited about PowerPoint. Okay, I know the link that you gave holds it up as an object of ridicule, but I swear I saw it on a site once where someone obviously did not get the joke.
Can people get any more clueless?
The reason we have juries and the reason their not guilty verdict is final is to undermine such ridiculous laws and abuses of over-zealous government through the veto of common sense.
Here's a decent article on the subject.
15 mph over the limit is fast, but not unusual in some areas. Wait until a whole slew of people are mailed tickets, when all they were doing was "keeping up with the flow of traffic." This will be a windfall for the state, unless a someone gets wise to this and it makes the news.
My signal can't even make it from downstairs in the living room to upstairs in the bedroom without a repeater, and yet you guys are picking up signal from 1400 feet in the air!
What the hell am I doing wrong?
I especially love the "Cheers!" Why not sign your posting "Cordially"?
When someone suggests Marx for philosophy and economics, I am smart enough to realize that they are espousing a philosophy that recognizes no property rights -- that everything is a "product of society" and as such belongs to "society." No idea could be more wrong; and the author of the original post that spoke of Austrian economists would agree whole heartedly.
My comment about this "smelling like a troll" I said with a wink. All I meant that it was a little off topic and sure to generate a lot of responses. I actually think the original poster was quite sincere and well meaning.
So, from a serious debate over copyright and property, we have degenerated to Marx's wrongheaded economics (popular because "eat the rich" is always popular), to your ranting and profanity.
As you say, "cheers!"
Just who is entitled, if not the creator?
And keep your anonymous posting foolishness to yourself, or are you reluctant to claim ownership for your comments?
This is smelling like a troll, and I'm just giving the reader fair warning that I'm caught ;-)
Property is a creation of human beings, ultimately of the human mind. If you take someone's handiwork, you deprive them of the physical object; but even more fundamentally, you have appropriated from them the results of their productive efforts and hard-won skill. Intellectual property differs from physical property only in that there is no physical limitation -- there is no object to steal. The skill and effort that goes into the act of creation exists still, however; moreover, in most cases a substantial financial investment is made by the creator.
This is what property rights seeks to protect. The right of the creator of that property to receive full benefit from it. When you "help yourself" to the invention of another, at his expense (his skill, effort, and time), it is stealing.
Try George Reisman for your economics, and Ayn Rand for the philosophical underpinnings.
Regards!
Well, if God wanted us to have a firewall, we would've been born with them!!!
As I understand it, hospitals are reluctant to give some construction workers MRI's as the average worker is sure to have accumulated tiny metal shards in his or her eyes, shards that go unnoticed until someone turns on the juice.
The MRI question for all of this is a good one.
I remember hearing somewhere that at one time (in the "bad old days") homosexuals were considered a security risk by various government agencies. It was the presumed fear of being found out and that fear being used by a blackmailer that was at the bottom of that policy.
The question of discrimination aside, in a homophobic society that's a legitimate security concern.
Just stopping by to say that what you have is a bright solution for dealing with those bastards. Way to go!
Okay, I just checked out oldconfig, and I see what you mean. It is nice.
I'm still learning and re-tweaking my kernels as I learn more. So, menuconfig is still useful for me.
Thanks for the tip though :-)