I live around three or four major reservations and have visited others. Poverty among the people governed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs is far, far worse than the poverty of just about any other group, and in part it stems from the policies of the BIA.
There's a little known fact that if land granted to individuals is not worked, lived on, or otherwise improved by those individuals, being effectively unclaimed the BIA auctions it off, and anyone, not just Indians, can bid. The buyer can't necessarily open-sell that land, but given that it's rural farming or ranching land they can profit through its use, and it can be inherited. Worse, the BIA doesn't assign contiguous chunks to family groups, The father's land may be one area, the mother's another, and the childrens' bits spread out. The land not-worked eventually becomes a patchwork of non-native land among the native land in the reservation.
So, first we take away their use of their original lands so we can have them. Then we slaughter large numbers of them them and confine them to 'reservations', then we start taking away the reservations. Yeah, they're so getting special treatment and benefits...
Honestly, I don't think that the power consumption is a big deal compared to what the purchase price at the time would have been for that LCD I was looking at, and given the strengths tend to balance each other out (both are 1080, tube is interlaced, LCD isn't, tube has better contrast and refresh rate, LCD would have been slightly larger picture in the same space with a smaller border, tube has better sound, LCD has slightly better fine quality) so the price and long-term durability won out. Certainly over the course of many years I may spend more in electricity for the tube than for an LCD, but at the time the tube was almost free, and will outlast the LCD, so I would have to replace that LCD with another TV when it gives out.
I'm a big fan of things that were quality when they were new, as used things later. A TV that was close to $2000 might just beat the pants off of a TV that's $500 now, even after the paradigm shift.
There are two problems with even the S-VHS VCR... First, there's no digital tuner, so I can't watch one thing while recording another thing like I used to, and second, even the S-VHS format isn't nearly as good as more modern stuff. AT BEST I'll get 480i out of it.
You know, you an upgrade from that Western Electric model 500 (the ubiquitous rotary) to a Model 1500, or if you want * and # the Model 2500, for basically free...
All but two landline phones in the house are from Western Electric. The 900MHz cordless Uniden with the overized buttons and red LED blinking call indicator and the alarmclock phone in the bedroom are the only outliers.
Back when they expected to lease the phone to you for 50 years, they built a phone that would last for 50 years.
Yep. I've had too many providers go away on me with little or no notice that I don't consider storage on someone else's equipment viable. I see it as a great way to end up screwed, and with a "free" service, absolutely no recourse.
I still have Western Electric trimlines, Model 2500s, and Model 2554 phones in-service on our landline. Never had caller ID, call waiting, or voicemail, still have an answering machine. Never saw a reason to pay monthly for services that I could supply for myself.
We're there too, with 800 titles on tape. Unfortunately the new projector doesn't display analog sources very well compared to the old one, so tapes and laserdiscs look like crap compared to DVDs and Blu-Ray players.
since both projectors can shine off-center and make the image look right I'm tempted to hang the old projector too, and to use it for LD and VHS.
I find it rather difficult to take notes on my phone when I'm talking on my phone. I tend to switch around between sticky notes, notepads, and the blank sides of printouts, depending on what I've got handy.
When classic goes away, so do I. Copy this if you want them to get the idea.
I was thinking about that today, and yeah, I agree. When Classic is gone then I don't expect to continue using Slashdot anymore. When they just become every other discussion forum site then why would I need to limit myself to this one?
At one point I wanted to set up a gopher juarez server. I wanted it to reject web browsers emulating a gopher client too... I figured that something like three people would be left that would appreciate it though.
If it's any consolation, I didn't use vi for close to 20 years, using pico/nano instead. It wasn't until I started working with huge flatfiles that needed hundreds of lines of regular expression parsing that I learned how to use vi effectively.
I'd say that if you really need those advanced features that vi is the way to go, but admittedly pico/nano is a lot easier to use otherwise.
As for what I use that's old, I have a Dolby-AC3-capable laserdisc player and more than 500 titles and an S-VHS VCR with about 850 titles on tape, I'm hesitant to buy a laptop lacking an optical drive (though my pickings are quite slim these days), I'm still using a Gateway 2000 "Anykey" PS/2 124-key macro-programmable keyboard manufactured by Maxiswitch, the vast majority of my computer monitors are 4:3 ratio, I still have my SCSI Jaz2 drive, my SCSI Zip drive, a couple of 3.5" floppy drive, and one 5.25" floppy drive laying around, and my daily-use TV is a widescreen, high-definition tube. It works great! Cost me only $40! And at 126lb, no one is going to steal it. In fairness, it fits the built-in TV cabinet perfectly and at the time a similarly-sized LCD model was close to $600, so it made sense to go with the tube.
I don't necessarily equate old with obsolete. Obsolete is when it doesn't do the job that you need done satisfactorily. In that sense my 20 year old beater $700 pickup truck with no straight sheet metal and worn-out steering is fine, as I generally only drive it when either I need a truck specifically, or when one of the cars is out of commission and I need basic transportation in the interim. I'm typing this on a five-year-old netbook with an Atom processor, and I only recently replaced my Xeon-Gallatin-based dual processor workstation from a decade ago because the thing croaked after a power outage and doesn't want to come back up. It was a great box for a long time, even with only two cores. It's been replaced with a newer-used dual-quad Xeon workstation that I expect to use for another decade as my workstation and the whole-house server.
Unless you're now the second-or-third-generation of enlistee that's been given the task, where the previous "generations" now assume that it's normal to do that to someone instead of using it as a character test.
IE, by failing the character test and still managing to become sergeants, they pass the trait on in a natural-selection sort of way.
Yeah. I now do have a component of labor in my job from time to time, and it's actually interesting, invigorating, and helps to workday to pass more quickly. Plus I don't often have to revisit the exact same problem at the exact same place, so there's variety.
As far as sonar is concerned, I meant for the coast guard or the navy or other law enforcement and import/customs people to find the contraband-carrying torpedoes, not for the torpedoes to use sonar. I don't know what the surface conditions will do to attempting to find a torpedo-shaped metal tube close to the surface.
When they send most of us to go form a bucket-brigade to empty computers out of various storage places, it's kind of hard to not let-on.
Possibly the biggest insult was when we lost some permanent storage, and they decided to rent a couple of mobile-mini ex-shipping-containers. I suggested that as we unload the permanent storage we use the opportunity to palletize (and inventory) stuff that needs to be kept (putting that inventory control sheet wrapped in with the contents on the pallet that it describes) and that we also make an effort to discard that which we didn't need to keep. We have mild winters here, and it was in late fall or early winter when this was to happen.
The response I got was, "pallets are hard to come by", which is crap, as I could have gotten all I wanted from Receiving. They might have been older, dirty, and splintery, but they'd have worked well enough for long term storage that doesn't get moved around much. Instead they bucket-brigaded everything to cargo vans, drove them to the containers, bucket-brigaded everything into the containers, then six months later in the heat of summer bucket-brigaded everything back out, then went through it to get rid of most of it.
No. If anything I left out a few steps, like going through and reimaging the same enqueued loaner stock two or three times over the course of six months, even though the new image being put down was the same as the old one, and a few instances where cannibalized machines were un-cannibalized before sitting a few months and being re-cannibalized again.
I made that argument more times than I could keep track of.
Part of the problem was that immediate supervisory-types could only barely do their own jobs, and saw just about everyone underneath that was more capable as a threat, so they actively discouraged us to play and learn.
They even got mad when I took an ancient box and loaded Linux on it to play. It was a friggin' Microchannel box it was so old, and they still panicked because it wasn't 'standard'. Nevermind that the IT department should be the one place in the entire organization that isn't standard, since it should be testing-out new devices to determine if they'll be widely deployed.
Sad thing is, no one at that employer in a position of management had ever been in the military, so it wasn't like they learned to do that in the service.
I expect it's just what bureaucratic organizations end up doing.
HOW they fight is very different. More passive-aggressive, backbiting, alliance building, etc. It's like watching some crappy reality vote-the-other-guy-off-the-island show. In some ways women's conflict tactics are even nastier than the ones men typically employ. Guys might actually try to beat the crap out of each other (physically or verbally) but women will try to exile each other from social groups.
Heh. What's funny about that is that those "womens' techniques" are the techniques that men usually use to be successful in modern society, where violence and even the threat of violence aren't acceptable behaviors or responses, and those are also the techniques of people on the Internet simply because of the lack of possibility of physical interaction.
I can attest to this. When I was hourly at a place where they weren't allowed to send us home early, they would find all manner of useless busywork for us to do if they caught us done without more work to do. It became an arms race, between trying to not get caught and trying to catch those not working.
And for those that want to argue that it's the employer's time, to use the employees how they see fit, one of the fastest ways to demoralize a technical worker is to make him do manual labor that doesn't even serve a purpose; most of us got into technical fields to avoid doing manual labor in the first place, let alone that which doesn't make a positive contribution.
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I live around three or four major reservations and have visited others. Poverty among the people governed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs is far, far worse than the poverty of just about any other group, and in part it stems from the policies of the BIA.
There's a little known fact that if land granted to individuals is not worked, lived on, or otherwise improved by those individuals, being effectively unclaimed the BIA auctions it off, and anyone, not just Indians, can bid. The buyer can't necessarily open-sell that land, but given that it's rural farming or ranching land they can profit through its use, and it can be inherited. Worse, the BIA doesn't assign contiguous chunks to family groups, The father's land may be one area, the mother's another, and the childrens' bits spread out. The land not-worked eventually becomes a patchwork of non-native land among the native land in the reservation.
So, first we take away their use of their original lands so we can have them. Then we slaughter large numbers of them them and confine them to 'reservations', then we start taking away the reservations. Yeah, they're so getting special treatment and benefits...
Honestly, I don't think that the power consumption is a big deal compared to what the purchase price at the time would have been for that LCD I was looking at, and given the strengths tend to balance each other out (both are 1080, tube is interlaced, LCD isn't, tube has better contrast and refresh rate, LCD would have been slightly larger picture in the same space with a smaller border, tube has better sound, LCD has slightly better fine quality) so the price and long-term durability won out. Certainly over the course of many years I may spend more in electricity for the tube than for an LCD, but at the time the tube was almost free, and will outlast the LCD, so I would have to replace that LCD with another TV when it gives out.
I'm a big fan of things that were quality when they were new, as used things later. A TV that was close to $2000 might just beat the pants off of a TV that's $500 now, even after the paradigm shift.
There are two problems with even the S-VHS VCR... First, there's no digital tuner, so I can't watch one thing while recording another thing like I used to, and second, even the S-VHS format isn't nearly as good as more modern stuff. AT BEST I'll get 480i out of it.
I've got a butter-yellow WE2554, a couple of those ubiquitous beige WE2500 models, and a black WE2500-variant with a redial button.
I'd really like a red 2554. It would look cool out in the workshop where the butter-yellow one currently hangs.
Yeah, considering the VCR and all...
You know, you an upgrade from that Western Electric model 500 (the ubiquitous rotary) to a Model 1500, or if you want * and # the Model 2500, for basically free...
All but two landline phones in the house are from Western Electric. The 900MHz cordless Uniden with the overized buttons and red LED blinking call indicator and the alarmclock phone in the bedroom are the only outliers.
Back when they expected to lease the phone to you for 50 years, they built a phone that would last for 50 years.
Yep. I've had too many providers go away on me with little or no notice that I don't consider storage on someone else's equipment viable. I see it as a great way to end up screwed, and with a "free" service, absolutely no recourse.
I'm using a Gateway 2000 124-key "Anykey" macro-programmable PS/2 keyboard still, and a Kensington ExpertMouse Pro trackball.
If I could find a cheap ADB-to-something adapter I'd use the old beige Kensington ADB trackball that I've got.
I still have Western Electric trimlines, Model 2500s, and Model 2554 phones in-service on our landline. Never had caller ID, call waiting, or voicemail, still have an answering machine. Never saw a reason to pay monthly for services that I could supply for myself.
We're there too, with 800 titles on tape. Unfortunately the new projector doesn't display analog sources very well compared to the old one, so tapes and laserdiscs look like crap compared to DVDs and Blu-Ray players.
since both projectors can shine off-center and make the image look right I'm tempted to hang the old projector too, and to use it for LD and VHS.
I find it rather difficult to take notes on my phone when I'm talking on my phone. I tend to switch around between sticky notes, notepads, and the blank sides of printouts, depending on what I've got handy.
I was thinking about that today, and yeah, I agree. When Classic is gone then I don't expect to continue using Slashdot anymore. When they just become every other discussion forum site then why would I need to limit myself to this one?
At one point I wanted to set up a gopher juarez server. I wanted it to reject web browsers emulating a gopher client too... I figured that something like three people would be left that would appreciate it though.
Heh. I used to write MS-DOS batch and config files with copy con: if the only other choice was edlin...
If it's any consolation, I didn't use vi for close to 20 years, using pico/nano instead. It wasn't until I started working with huge flatfiles that needed hundreds of lines of regular expression parsing that I learned how to use vi effectively.
I'd say that if you really need those advanced features that vi is the way to go, but admittedly pico/nano is a lot easier to use otherwise.
As for what I use that's old, I have a Dolby-AC3-capable laserdisc player and more than 500 titles and an S-VHS VCR with about 850 titles on tape, I'm hesitant to buy a laptop lacking an optical drive (though my pickings are quite slim these days), I'm still using a Gateway 2000 "Anykey" PS/2 124-key macro-programmable keyboard manufactured by Maxiswitch, the vast majority of my computer monitors are 4:3 ratio, I still have my SCSI Jaz2 drive, my SCSI Zip drive, a couple of 3.5" floppy drive, and one 5.25" floppy drive laying around, and my daily-use TV is a widescreen, high-definition tube . It works great! Cost me only $40! And at 126lb, no one is going to steal it. In fairness, it fits the built-in TV cabinet perfectly and at the time a similarly-sized LCD model was close to $600, so it made sense to go with the tube.
I don't necessarily equate old with obsolete. Obsolete is when it doesn't do the job that you need done satisfactorily. In that sense my 20 year old beater $700 pickup truck with no straight sheet metal and worn-out steering is fine, as I generally only drive it when either I need a truck specifically, or when one of the cars is out of commission and I need basic transportation in the interim. I'm typing this on a five-year-old netbook with an Atom processor, and I only recently replaced my Xeon-Gallatin-based dual processor workstation from a decade ago because the thing croaked after a power outage and doesn't want to come back up. It was a great box for a long time, even with only two cores. It's been replaced with a newer-used dual-quad Xeon workstation that I expect to use for another decade as my workstation and the whole-house server.
Unless you're now the second-or-third-generation of enlistee that's been given the task, where the previous "generations" now assume that it's normal to do that to someone instead of using it as a character test.
IE, by failing the character test and still managing to become sergeants, they pass the trait on in a natural-selection sort of way.
Yeah. I now do have a component of labor in my job from time to time, and it's actually interesting, invigorating, and helps to workday to pass more quickly. Plus I don't often have to revisit the exact same problem at the exact same place, so there's variety.
As far as sonar is concerned, I meant for the coast guard or the navy or other law enforcement and import/customs people to find the contraband-carrying torpedoes, not for the torpedoes to use sonar. I don't know what the surface conditions will do to attempting to find a torpedo-shaped metal tube close to the surface.
When they send most of us to go form a bucket-brigade to empty computers out of various storage places, it's kind of hard to not let-on.
Possibly the biggest insult was when we lost some permanent storage, and they decided to rent a couple of mobile-mini ex-shipping-containers. I suggested that as we unload the permanent storage we use the opportunity to palletize (and inventory) stuff that needs to be kept (putting that inventory control sheet wrapped in with the contents on the pallet that it describes) and that we also make an effort to discard that which we didn't need to keep. We have mild winters here, and it was in late fall or early winter when this was to happen.
The response I got was, "pallets are hard to come by", which is crap, as I could have gotten all I wanted from Receiving. They might have been older, dirty, and splintery, but they'd have worked well enough for long term storage that doesn't get moved around much. Instead they bucket-brigaded everything to cargo vans, drove them to the containers, bucket-brigaded everything into the containers, then six months later in the heat of summer bucket-brigaded everything back out, then went through it to get rid of most of it.
No. If anything I left out a few steps, like going through and reimaging the same enqueued loaner stock two or three times over the course of six months, even though the new image being put down was the same as the old one, and a few instances where cannibalized machines were un-cannibalized before sitting a few months and being re-cannibalized again.
I made that argument more times than I could keep track of.
Part of the problem was that immediate supervisory-types could only barely do their own jobs, and saw just about everyone underneath that was more capable as a threat, so they actively discouraged us to play and learn.
They even got mad when I took an ancient box and loaded Linux on it to play. It was a friggin' Microchannel box it was so old, and they still panicked because it wasn't 'standard'. Nevermind that the IT department should be the one place in the entire organization that isn't standard, since it should be testing-out new devices to determine if they'll be widely deployed.
Sad thing is, no one at that employer in a position of management had ever been in the military, so it wasn't like they learned to do that in the service.
I expect it's just what bureaucratic organizations end up doing.
"Go take these old PCs we pulled from the field, upgrade the RAM, and reimage them so they could be redeployed at some point."
"Go take these old PCs that are in the redeployment pool and cannibalize them."
"Go take these cannibalized PCs and load them into this modular shipping container."
"Go unload this modular shipping container of old cannibalized PCs and load them in this trailer."
"Go unload this trailer of old cannibalized PCs and load them onto these pallets."
"Go break-down these pallets of old cannibalized PCs and load them into this modular shipping container."
It was like Cool Hand Luke without the eggs.
Heh. What's funny about that is that those "womens' techniques" are the techniques that men usually use to be successful in modern society, where violence and even the threat of violence aren't acceptable behaviors or responses, and those are also the techniques of people on the Internet simply because of the lack of possibility of physical interaction.
I can attest to this. When I was hourly at a place where they weren't allowed to send us home early, they would find all manner of useless busywork for us to do if they caught us done without more work to do. It became an arms race, between trying to not get caught and trying to catch those not working.
And for those that want to argue that it's the employer's time, to use the employees how they see fit, one of the fastest ways to demoralize a technical worker is to make him do manual labor that doesn't even serve a purpose; most of us got into technical fields to avoid doing manual labor in the first place, let alone that which doesn't make a positive contribution.