The fact that your coworker is British will work to his advantage. As you know, India lived under British rule for a couple hundred years and there are many remnants of the British rule still current.
Many of the Indians sort of look up to the Brits, and their school system definitely has a 'British' flavor to it. I visited a school there and the minute I walked in the door all the kids stood up, saluted with their right hand, and in unison "Good Morning, Sir!"
I just returned from vacation in India, and I stayed in Bangalore for a week.
Americans are mostly used to a much higher standard of living that what you'll experience in Bangalore. As mentioned above, the average IT guy will make less than 18000 rupees a month, which roughly equates to about $400USD. It's true the cost of living is less, but you'll have to get used to: frequent power outages, lack of clean, potable water, extremely crowded city with often unsanitary conditions, etc. Bangalore has awful air quality. Although it is the "garden city", they have no emissions controls, and practically anything with wheels and a motor is allowed on the roads. I think just being on the street there must be equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes everyday!
There are ZILLIONS of Indian computer programmers who are vying for that job. Why would they give it to an American citizen? These guys are goofy to think they can try to relocate to India.
Instead of whining about it they should get some new skills and make themselves more valuable in the marketplace. You have to be flexible and change with the times, not just complain when your job skills become outdated.
The merchant pays the merchant fees, not the consumer. That is part of the cost of doing business - if they are not willing to pay that cost then they have no business accepting credit cards.
I still consider myself somewhat of a linux newbie, but I've learned as much as I need to manage a few small servers.
My day job is selling medical equipment on the internet but I'm also the "computer guy" for the company I work at. Which btw has the added benefit of some extra job security, because no one else knows how to fix the network when it breaks.
I started tinkering with RedHat and Mandrake about 3 years ago, and have recently installed Debian on a little backup server we have here at work. What a breath of fresh air! I am so glad to be out of RPM hell - those of you who have tried it know how frustrating it is to try and install an RPM, only to find out that you need files A, B, and C to make it work. Then you find out A, B, and C need X, Y, and Z, etc. etc. and that eventually you need an entirely new kernel. You can spend hours trying to fuss with those dependencies. Ugh.
Now with debian it's as simple as:
apt-get install whatever
and bam, you're done! It's awesome! I had a backup server with trouble ticket system up and running in my office here within a few hours (and probably would have been faster if I was more expert).
The Debian apt system is simply awesome, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a stable, easy to maintain linux box.
Don't believe all the hype. Who do you think is behind all these "identity theft" articles and statistics.
You are not liable for more than fifty bucks or something like that if someone steals your credit card. Big banks and credit card companies know this so they try to scare you with the boogeyman "identity theft" stories.
One time someone stole my credit card to go bar hopping and buy a bunch of stuff he could trade for drugs. I never had to pay a dime, and nothing went on my credit report. I just told the CC company and they wrote it off.
It's the Cruzer Mini, and is USB 2.0 compatible.
Some great deals at costco, I just picked up a new Xbox, which came with two controllers, a DVD remote control, and two games for $219.00.
And they have a lifetime return policy on everything they sell (except desktop and laptop computers).
Costco has got a 256mb Sandisk pen drive for $49.00.
I just bought one, and have loaded it with:
* MAME32 and a bunch of arcade classics * Ad-Aware, regclean & Zone alarm (for when people ask me to "fix" their windoze computer * Bunch of tools and other handy programs * Knoppix image so I can boot from the knoppix cd and have all my settings and files saved
At work today our warehouse manager brought one of his kids in. This kid is about 12 years old.
I asked him if he knew what Pac-Man was and his eyes lit up. "You have Pac-Man? Can I play it?" He had played all the old-school games I mentioned, Joust, Spy Hunter, etc.
The staying power of the 80's arcade games is incredible. Being constrained by such small amounts of memory and processor power forced the programmers to innovate and squeeze every bit of playability out of the limited resources they had.
Modern game designers should take note. You can learn a lot about PLAYABILITY from the 80's arcade games.
First of all they have a built-in protection from piracy in the HUGE file sizes that have to be downloaded. Any dialup user can grab a few albums worth of MP3s if they leave their connection on all night. It can take DAYS to download half a movie on Kazaa, even on a broadband connection.
Secondly, most of the releases that come out on IRC, newsgroups, bittorrent or whatever are crappy cam recordings that people don't like anyway. Who wants to watch some washed-out version of a movie with bad sound anyway? If it's any good you'll go see it in the theater to get the real experience.
Third, most of the movies you find on the internet are in divx or some other format that generally only plays on a computer. Most people are not savvy enough even to burn a VCD to play in their DVD player, what to speak of building a dedicated home theater pc to play the divx movies. Most people do not want to sit in their computer room in front of a 17" monitor to watch movies. They would rather see it on the 42" widescreen in the living room, or in the theater.
Finally, movies is a social thing. People take dates to movies, they take their kids to movies. They like to eat the candy and sit in the theater with the big screen and surround sound.
So MPAA, take a chill pill. We're not going to drive your poor key grip and dolly boys into homelessness. WTF is a 'key grip' anyway???
try searching for _vti_pvt and service.pwd on Google.
There are lots of people still using frontpage 4.0 or whatever, with their frontpage password file in plain view.
I won't tell you what to do with that file, if you don't know already.
I think Lemonade Tycoon is a great mini-course in how to run your small business. There's more practical knowledge in there than a lot of people get with a business degree!
Nothing like feeling the pain of not selling a single cup of lemonade all day, because the temperature dropped below 50 degrees and you forgot to lower your price to accomodate for it!
Road Runner internet connection coming into the home office. There is a wireless firewall/router to share the Internet connection and files across the home network.
I've got two computers plugged directly into the router in the home office and the one in the living room is SUPPOSED to connect via wireless but the signal is too weak all the way across the house. Also wireless has limited bandwidth, so if at all possible you want to have everything wired. It's a pain in the ass to have your shoutcast signal drop out on you due to poor network signals.
The nice thing about owning your own home is that you may be able to get up in the attic and drop a cat5 cable into your living room. At least that is what I plan to do soon. Home Depot and Lowes will sell you a big huge roll of cable, along with the crimper, etc. and wall plates. That way you can plug right into the wall behind your stereo, and it looks nice.
I have a home-built HTPC in the living room connected to the TV and speakers and it works GREAT for DVD, VCD, divx, xvid or whatever. I download movies and TV shows, and then watch them in the living room. It's awesome. Also having commercial free radio via internet is sooooooo much better than the crap they play on the local Clear Channel stations.
If you're going to make one of these HTPC things I woulc recommend getting a little mini-ITX motherboard with one of the cases that you can get at www.mini-itx.com. Or get one of the new fanless hush PCs.
I'm a Quicken and Quickbooks user and to be quite honest I'm fed up with both (especially quickbooks). The other night I tried to reinstall it on a computer I use for my business and it said I only have 15 more uses before I have to 'register'. I called the registration phone number and waited 15 minutes before they disconnected me. I was so frustrated not to be able to use the software I paid for the way I want while people who pirate the same software use it with no problems for free! These stupid anti-piracy measures only make it harder for legitimate users to use what they paid for.
I would love to have a good alternative, and have even tried gnucash but nothing else I've found is as easy to use as Quicken. The main feature that I like is the ability to instantly download transactions from the bank, and pay my bills from right within the register just by typing 'send' where the check number goes. I don't mind paying six bucks a month to my bank for this convenience, as I save at least that much in postage, and much more in time.
Anyone know if gnucash or MoneyDance can interface with the bank to download transactions. And yes, I know that you can download from the bank's website, then import into the program but it's inconvenient.
. . . is one that you build yourself from off-the-shelf computer parts. I put together a home entertainment type computer system for under $500, here are the features:
* Black case fits nicely under the TV along with the VCR
* Great for games - right now it can play Nintendo, SNES, N64, Playstation and MAME roms.
* Winamp for MP3 playback and internet radio.
* Plays VCD, DVD, DivX or any other type of video you can imagine.
* All controllable with a cheapo $9.00 remote I bought at Wal-Mart. Winamp works especially well with the remote - you can go through all your playlists and change volume, shuffle, etc. without touching the computer.
The nice thing about a box like this is it's so easy to upgrade. I don't need to run out and buy a new DVD player every couple years. And with the right sound, video card, speakers, and TV you have a kick-ass home entertainment system.
I should have put up a how-to site with pictures. Maybe I'll do that next time.
Where Matthew Broderick uses his Apple II (or whatever it was) to break into the NORAD server called WOPR? And the backdoor password is the name of the guy's son who programmed the thing?
OpenOffice can be had for free and is equal to if not better than StarOffice. I think GIMP will do everything that Photogenics does.
Why pay for Lindows when you can get RedHat 8.0 or Mandrake 9.0 for free? The bluecurve desktop on RH is pretty and easy to use. And you can use RPM or apt to download any software that you need - it's really not that hard to learn.
I'm a newbie too, so no need to have a hissy fit because there are some things you don't understand. You're the rookie, so eat some humble pie and you might learn a few things.
And if you need to open.doc or.xls files on your Windows box you can use OpenOffice or the following program, PC Suite:
http://www.software602.com/products/pcs/tour.htm l
It's only about a 16MB download but will do most everything that MS office does. AND IT's FREE! (as in beer)
and what's even more retarded is that they are charging for people to be able to use their 'Click-N-Run' service which is basically a glorified RPM-like installer.
With Click-N-Run you can open MS word files! Play Mr. Potato Head! Listen to Realplayer music! Only $99.00 - act now!
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that your coworker is British will work to his advantage. As you know, India lived under British rule for a couple hundred years and there are many remnants of the British rule still current.
Many of the Indians sort of look up to the Brits, and their school system definitely has a 'British' flavor to it. I visited a school there and the minute I walked in the door all the kids stood up, saluted with their right hand, and in unison "Good Morning, Sir!"
I just returned from vacation in India, and I stayed in Bangalore for a week.
Americans are mostly used to a much higher standard of living that what you'll experience in Bangalore. As mentioned above, the average IT guy will make less than 18000 rupees a month, which roughly equates to about $400USD. It's true the cost of living is less, but you'll have to get used to: frequent power outages, lack of clean, potable water, extremely crowded city with often unsanitary conditions, etc. Bangalore has awful air quality. Although it is the "garden city", they have no emissions controls, and practically anything with wheels and a motor is allowed on the roads. I think just being on the street there must be equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes everyday!
There are ZILLIONS of Indian computer programmers who are vying for that job. Why would they give it to an American citizen? These guys are goofy to think they can try to relocate to India.
Instead of whining about it they should get some new skills and make themselves more valuable in the marketplace. You have to be flexible and change with the times, not just complain when your job skills become outdated.
Actually the original joke was an oblique reference to Orwell's 1984, eg Big Brother is watching:
"In Soviet Russia, TV watches you!"
The merchant pays the merchant fees, not the consumer. That is part of the cost of doing business - if they are not willing to pay that cost then they have no business accepting credit cards.
Go crawl back in your cave, Mr. Troll.
I still consider myself somewhat of a linux newbie, but I've learned as much as I need to manage a few small servers.
My day job is selling medical equipment on the internet but I'm also the "computer guy" for the company I work at. Which btw has the added benefit of some extra job security, because no one else knows how to fix the network when it breaks.
I started tinkering with RedHat and Mandrake about 3 years ago, and have recently installed Debian on a little backup server we have here at work. What a breath of fresh air! I am so glad to be out of RPM hell - those of you who have tried it know how frustrating it is to try and install an RPM, only to find out that you need files A, B, and C to make it work. Then you find out A, B, and C need X, Y, and Z, etc. etc. and that eventually you need an entirely new kernel. You can spend hours trying to fuss with those dependencies. Ugh.
Now with debian it's as simple as:
apt-get install whatever
and bam, you're done! It's awesome! I had a backup server with trouble ticket system up and running in my office here within a few hours (and probably would have been faster if I was more expert).
The Debian apt system is simply awesome, and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a stable, easy to maintain linux box.
Don't believe all the hype. Who do you think is behind all these "identity theft" articles and statistics.
You are not liable for more than fifty bucks or something like that if someone steals your credit card. Big banks and credit card companies know this so they try to scare you with the boogeyman "identity theft" stories.
One time someone stole my credit card to go bar hopping and buy a bunch of stuff he could trade for drugs. I never had to pay a dime, and nothing went on my credit report. I just told the CC company and they wrote it off.
It's the Cruzer Mini, and is USB 2.0 compatible. Some great deals at costco, I just picked up a new Xbox, which came with two controllers, a DVD remote control, and two games for $219.00. And they have a lifetime return policy on everything they sell (except desktop and laptop computers).
Women of Springfield: Ooooooooohhhhhhhh!
Costco has got a 256mb Sandisk pen drive for $49.00.
I just bought one, and have loaded it with:
* MAME32 and a bunch of arcade classics
* Ad-Aware, regclean & Zone alarm (for when people ask me to "fix" their windoze computer
* Bunch of tools and other handy programs
* Knoppix image so I can boot from the knoppix cd and have all my settings and files saved
Moments later I was eaten by a grue.
I don't think so. Kids nowadays like these games too if you give them a chance to play.
I asked him if he knew what Pac-Man was and his eyes lit up. "You have Pac-Man? Can I play it?" He had played all the old-school games I mentioned, Joust, Spy Hunter, etc.
The staying power of the 80's arcade games is incredible. Being constrained by such small amounts of memory and processor power forced the programmers to innovate and squeeze every bit of playability out of the limited resources they had.
Modern game designers should take note. You can learn a lot about PLAYABILITY from the 80's arcade games.
Secondly, most of the releases that come out on IRC, newsgroups, bittorrent or whatever are crappy cam recordings that people don't like anyway. Who wants to watch some washed-out version of a movie with bad sound anyway? If it's any good you'll go see it in the theater to get the real experience.
Third, most of the movies you find on the internet are in divx or some other format that generally only plays on a computer. Most people are not savvy enough even to burn a VCD to play in their DVD player, what to speak of building a dedicated home theater pc to play the divx movies. Most people do not want to sit in their computer room in front of a 17" monitor to watch movies. They would rather see it on the 42" widescreen in the living room, or in the theater.
Finally, movies is a social thing. People take dates to movies, they take their kids to movies. They like to eat the candy and sit in the theater with the big screen and surround sound.
So MPAA, take a chill pill. We're not going to drive your poor key grip and dolly boys into homelessness. WTF is a 'key grip' anyway???
try searching for _vti_pvt and service.pwd on Google. There are lots of people still using frontpage 4.0 or whatever, with their frontpage password file in plain view. I won't tell you what to do with that file, if you don't know already.
You've got to be kidding me. How much does a steel bike weigh, 50 lbs? I'll stick with my 22 lb mountain bike thank you very much.
Did it land hundreds of miles away? Did you go chasing it across the corn fields with a four-wheeler?
Can someone who was lucky enough to download this set up a BitTorrent file?
The opengroupware server is being crushed by the weight of Slashdot.
I think Lemonade Tycoon is a great mini-course in how to run your small business. There's more practical knowledge in there than a lot of people get with a business degree!
Nothing like feeling the pain of not selling a single cup of lemonade all day, because the temperature dropped below 50 degrees and you forgot to lower your price to accomodate for it!
Here's the setup I've got, it works well for me:
Road Runner internet connection coming into the home office. There is a wireless firewall/router to share the Internet connection and files across the home network.
I've got two computers plugged directly into the router in the home office and the one in the living room is SUPPOSED to connect via wireless but the signal is too weak all the way across the house. Also wireless has limited bandwidth, so if at all possible you want to have everything wired. It's a pain in the ass to have your shoutcast signal drop out on you due to poor network signals.
The nice thing about owning your own home is that you may be able to get up in the attic and drop a cat5 cable into your living room. At least that is what I plan to do soon. Home Depot and Lowes will sell you a big huge roll of cable, along with the crimper, etc. and wall plates. That way you can plug right into the wall behind your stereo, and it looks nice.
I have a home-built HTPC in the living room connected to the TV and speakers and it works GREAT for DVD, VCD, divx, xvid or whatever. I download movies and TV shows, and then watch them in the living room. It's awesome. Also having commercial free radio via internet is sooooooo much better than the crap they play on the local Clear Channel stations.
If you're going to make one of these HTPC things I woulc recommend getting a little mini-ITX motherboard with one of the cases that you can get at www.mini-itx.com. Or get one of the new fanless hush PCs.
Just my 2 cents.
I'm a Quicken and Quickbooks user and to be quite honest I'm fed up with both (especially quickbooks). The other night I tried to reinstall it on a computer I use for my business and it said I only have 15 more uses before I have to 'register'. I called the registration phone number and waited 15 minutes before they disconnected me. I was so frustrated not to be able to use the software I paid for the way I want while people who pirate the same software use it with no problems for free! These stupid anti-piracy measures only make it harder for legitimate users to use what they paid for. I would love to have a good alternative, and have even tried gnucash but nothing else I've found is as easy to use as Quicken. The main feature that I like is the ability to instantly download transactions from the bank, and pay my bills from right within the register just by typing 'send' where the check number goes. I don't mind paying six bucks a month to my bank for this convenience, as I save at least that much in postage, and much more in time. Anyone know if gnucash or MoneyDance can interface with the bank to download transactions. And yes, I know that you can download from the bank's website, then import into the program but it's inconvenient.
. . . is one that you build yourself from off-the-shelf computer parts. I put together a home entertainment type computer system for under $500, here are the features: * Black case fits nicely under the TV along with the VCR * Great for games - right now it can play Nintendo, SNES, N64, Playstation and MAME roms. * Winamp for MP3 playback and internet radio. * Plays VCD, DVD, DivX or any other type of video you can imagine. * All controllable with a cheapo $9.00 remote I bought at Wal-Mart. Winamp works especially well with the remote - you can go through all your playlists and change volume, shuffle, etc. without touching the computer. The nice thing about a box like this is it's so easy to upgrade. I don't need to run out and buy a new DVD player every couple years. And with the right sound, video card, speakers, and TV you have a kick-ass home entertainment system. I should have put up a how-to site with pictures. Maybe I'll do that next time.
Where Matthew Broderick uses his Apple II (or whatever it was) to break into the NORAD server called WOPR? And the backdoor password is the name of the guy's son who programmed the thing?
So much for security . . .
He probably got banned from FARK and is just bitter about it. Get outta your parent's basement and get some fresh air, man.
OpenOffice can be had for free and is equal to if not better than StarOffice. I think GIMP will do everything that Photogenics does.
.doc or .xls files on your Windows box you can use OpenOffice or the following program, PC Suite:
m l
Why pay for Lindows when you can get RedHat 8.0 or Mandrake 9.0 for free? The bluecurve desktop on RH is pretty and easy to use. And you can use RPM or apt to download any software that you need - it's really not that hard to learn.
I'm a newbie too, so no need to have a hissy fit because there are some things you don't understand. You're the rookie, so eat some humble pie and you might learn a few things.
And if you need to open
http://www.software602.com/products/pcs/tour.ht
It's only about a 16MB download but will do most everything that MS office does. AND IT's FREE! (as in beer)
and what's even more retarded is that they are charging for people to be able to use their 'Click-N-Run' service which is basically a glorified RPM-like installer.
With Click-N-Run you can open MS word files! Play Mr. Potato Head! Listen to Realplayer music! Only $99.00 - act now!