Hell, when I incorporated a business, I started getting all kinds of subscriptions from different business mags. While they're neat to read, I didn't ask for a single one. After looking it all up, I'm getting about $120 worth of mags a year...
Shade is one factor, but in the long run, the panels will need to be cleaned. The ones that I've seen have been really bad eye soars to the houses they're put on. I mentioned getting an array when my wife and I buy a house and she shot it down just due to the curb appeal it doesn't cause.
The other thing is that there are newer solar panels that just came out that actually work 100% better than the panels currently on the market. Unfortunately, its too early for me to think of the right name and google just isn't helping right now.
This comment makes me think you've never touched or seen Satellite in action.
Having supported it, I wouldn't even use a dish for a bird feeder - thats how far away from it I'm staying.
Re:If you don't like the story, why comment? Neweg
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HA! You should try TigerDirect's shipping prices...
I recently found a case from there that I liked, had a power supply and was discounted. I figured what the hell - splurge a little from my normal stomping grounds. After $56 for the case, they wanted $53 to ship the sucker to me! I've decided that no matter how nice something is, I'm joining the ranks of not buying from them anymore...
Well, I was hanging in there, but now I've managed to make matters worse...
I'm now an Army Spouse living in Germany and now about all I can do is telecomute. Unfortunately for me, about all I can do is continue working for a shitty German contractor. I haven't found many corps willing to hire someone like me, even with all my experience.The fact that I don't have a degree is whats causing all my problems... Oh well, another 2 years left here...
If anyones willing to hire a 3rd shift TS or CS person, I'm ready and willing...;-)
I worked for an ISP doing TS work before the bubble and we always had problems with the idiots that would state at the beginning of the phone call "I'm an MCSE, don't talk to me like a baby". After a few of these, we learned that we would just run them over in Technical jargon and get them to admit they didn't know what they where doing. Something as simple as "Ok, then I need you to edit your DUN connection and alter the DNS - let me know when you're there...." 4 minutes later... "Whats DUN?"
Now, on the other side of the spectrum, I remember getting a guy who didn't know his ass from a windows login. He was a Unix guy and just wanted a simple connection. Well, he didn't have TCP/IP installed and needed to restart and he basically freaked on me "Why in the world do I need to restart after adding TCP/IP - thats just nuts! It doesn't need to restart!" 20 minutes of arguing, he was finally connected and swearing he'd never touch Windows again.
It was during this time, I decided that certs where out of the question. I figured that businesses would be looking more for people with hard core experience instead of some piece of paper they could just study for. By the time I was downsized, I had turned out to be wrong (at least in my area). Businesses required certs and wanted degrees instead of real world experience. I had also leaned towards PHP instead of ASP due to security issues and thinking MicroSoft would eventually be looked on as bad by businesses... again, wrong. When will I ever learn?
Don't have mod points to mod you up, so I'll agree.
ISS was a great victory for the nations that signed up, but as you said, budget restraints have all but killed the program. It honestly would not surprise me if it was abandoned or sold to 1 country in the long run due to the problems (why do we always have to trust the Russian Equipment?)...
To reply to someon else, a while back, NASA thought of a plan to use the external fuel tanks (not the solid rockets) as livable space on a space station. Supposedly, NASA has stated that they will deliver the tanks for free to any entity that can properly convert them, but I haven't been able to verify this past a few hobby sites. Would be interesting to see, but would take a heck of a lot of money to get a business venture going to convert the tanks safely and properly.
Not true - I did the same thing when I thought of getting a tattoo... Theres no way in hell I want a wrinkly tattoo that is faded and blotched. These where things I thought of when I was 16 going on 30. I didn't need elders to talk to me, all I had to do was visualize grandpa's arm being mine in 50 years.
I can pretty much agree with the above. When I was in your shoes, I thought I was the shiznit since I was a geek and could fix any computer handed to me and could code with my eyes closed. I got bored in school since it wasn't challenging enough and didn't like my low-end, burger flippin' job. I couldn't find a part time job doing what I wanted and my school didn't offer internships. I dropped out with the guidance councilors telling me a GED was the same as a high-school diploma and went to work for a national ISP since I could hand write an autoexec.bat file from memory and could tell them what error 666 was. While there, I managed to work my way up to 32k on a "high school equiv" and no college - then I got laid off...
I have since learned that: 1. I was an idiot and shouldn't have listened to the councilors - they lied. 2. I wasn't the shiznit and had very little _real_ world skills 3. Due to my dumb ass decision, I'm 25, digging out of debt and can't really afford to go to college like I want and I'm stuck in a high stress, low paying job. 4. I actually just figured out what I really wanted to do in life about a year ago and while it has a little to do with coding, it relies more on engineering. Back in school, I wanted to be a code monkey (god, I could shoot myself...)
My advice to the story "parent" - relax, keep learning code and get a little spending money doing something that is very low stress. Keep your grades up as high as you can and then go to college and worry about interning. If you really want to say you did something to help in the coding community and make it good enough to put on a resume, pick one of the forty-million OSS packages out there and help them for a decent amount of time - thats good enough to put on a resume.
When I was a student, most adults would look at me and always say "I wish I was a student again." and I always thought they where crazy. Now, I have learned the ways of the wise ones and can completely agree. Enjoy your low stress world while you can. When you're older and juggling all your debt, more education, a job and possibly a family - you will probably look back and wish you would have taken it a little slower.
I know the topic is mostly about hardware, this is actually a pretty big thing that can get you in trouble.
If you're serving out static content, you need to make sure that your graphics are low in size whenever possible. For instance, you don't need a full page graphic like the top of the reply area here on slashdot, just the 1 corner graphic and the rest is a table color.
Going past the basics and assuming its dynamic content, you'll need to make sure your code is optimized (ie: not the type of code someone just slapped together). I can't tell you how big of a difference it can make when I take a page written when I started programming in PHP and adjusting it now that I now a heck of a lot more. Also, if you find that certain pages are more popular and your data isn't changing hour by hour, just cache the results of the page into static content. Every hour or so your cache can be dumped and setup again if needed. This stops a lot of reads off the server for the same exact data.
You'll also need to optimize the database as much as possible.
General things that can help with dynamic pages are simple things like timedate calls for pages - let javascript do that (although i don't like to use it, it takes a very, very, slight load off the server), etc...
I have seen a lot of people say that they need better hardware when they just need to optimize their software and/or increase the pipesize. I even ran into one person that refused to use a specific database because it was killing his site (he forgot to change the max connections...).
My wife and I do this once every few months. I personally have 6 computers and all the crap that goes with them. PDA, Cell, etc..yup, got them.
We go out for a 4 day holiday weekend with just the car (which we don't touch once we get there) our analog watches and flashlights - thats it. We pitch a tent, make a fire and just enjoy life. Oddly enough, when we come back, we're more relaxed than normal, even if I have to dig through 200 email a day to catch up.
Worked in HBG too and was all for the Merger in the beginning but soon discovered it wasn't what it seemed. In the end, it became a game to see who they had walked out...until I was the one.
Its ok, the ex-employees are (finally) revolting and starting a company to directly compete with them.
I don't see why people are having a hard time with this...
He's talking about using the cooling towers to collect (read: Condense) the water and pump it into the soil. Not only will it be fresh, but since it condensed, it will be cool as well.
I completely agree. My sisters are handycapped and have the same issue with their computers. They'll agree to anything. My mom, thats a different story but she's starting to learn.
Microsoft should be part of this issue. With the ability to add plugins automatically, users should be able to remove those and turn off the autoinstall feature. I doubt this will be in the next release of windows and it sure as hell won't be in any upgrades to IE anytime soon - too much money to gain by having people buy the new OS that lets people actually control their software.
I can agree with this - I don't even use Outlook and I have to deal with the crap of this problem. Guess its a good thing I'll be switching from Eudora (with the OE viewer off) to Thunderbird. Like the grandparent, I'm really tired of the broken HTML and popups complaining about links. Now...I just need to transfer my 800mb of email into Thunderbird...gag
Way back when, razor companies had similar issues. They all produced razors that would last forever and you could resharpen them before every use. The problem was that the profit margins on razors where almost nothing (attempting to avoid a pun). I believe it was Gillete (the man, not the company) that came along and decided to help consumers get around the sharpening bit by allowing people to buy disposable razors. Quality wasn't as good and in the long run, you had to pay much more, but hey, you didn't have to sharpen them!
Its always been a practice in business to create a product, but have some aspect of keeping your money going in the long run. Offering upgrades to existing products won't really cause the public to upgrade. I still have old computers laying around left and right and honestly, I don't own a computer that is over 800MHz. My wife, on the other hand, is someone that will buy something cheap, allow it to wear down or break and buy another cheap thing to replace it. Oddly enough, she has one computer (1.6GHz) and she almost bought a new one due to the fact that it started running slowly. She refuses to think anything bad of MicroSoft and feels that the upgrades help her and that they are worth the price. I've given up trying to convince her otherwise and (mostly) refuse to work on her computer.
Until consumers start to really realize that they are getting had so corporations are more profitable, we won't see much change. Its just like the rumor that there are vehicles out there that can do over 100mpg but we still have SUVs that are getting 14mpg. While cheaper in the short term, paying the extra expense for a "green" vehicle ends up saving money in the long run. But then you have to worry about replacing your "green" car and the cycle continues.
Now, to get back on topic of the iPod, if the kid would have done his research first instead of panicing and pulling everything apart, we wouldn't be here making jokes about him. Now someone needs to send this kid a gift: http://www.expansys.com.au/product.asp?code=112993
It matters how you play your cards and network any contacts you have...
I dropped out in 10th grade due to the unchallenging environment and instantly started at 30k just for my computer knowledge in '98. I was later down sized after being forced to train my Indian replacement and now I'm in Germany looking for a GS position with the government. If I went to Iraq as a contractor I would easily pull in 100k+... My wife wants me to stay here as a spouse, so here I sit.
Now, Ive also "discovered" that I really don't like to do what I'm trained for but for that, I do need to go to school. If I would have gone to college before attempting the TS and programming industries, I'd be over 20k in debt for something I really dont want to do...
I hate to point out the obvious here, but if he's the Sys Admin, he can log into the DB with the admin password and delete any logs around. He also knows of all the loggers on the system and can remove those as well. No system security is perfect.
Now, if you're trying to point out something like multiple admins, that will help. This particular situation can be fixed by having a few people with different admin passwords for each thing ie: 1 person has admin level for the Box. 1 person has admin level for the DB, 1 person performing random audits of others - etc...
Even in this case, I wouldn't trust the HR people with the Admin password to anything. In my experience, they're more than likely to pick a bad password or write it on a sticky note somewhere.
Technically speaking, the Sun Thin Clients are cheaper than Windows based workstations. After licensing fees, admin requirements, etc - Thin Clients are SO much cheaper.
But, I can agree with you on the Thin Client software. I think they could open up a new market by selling the software. The Sun Thin clients are nice, but sometimes it feels like they are missing something.
I wasn't hired, but I went to a job interview for a collections agency. After their gastapo HR lady fnishished chewing all of our asses about how good the job was, half of us walked out.
On the other side, I was forced to attend a 5 week training class for a Verizon contractor. One of those companies that says "we only hire the top 10%!" and you can look around and see the bottom 2% and pond scum... 5 weeks plus 1 day on the phone, I walked without notice and never looked back. Went to a company that actually hired the top 2% (had the numbers to proove it). Interesting job, but I'm just not one for a banking environment - WAY too damn picky. I had flashbacks of Office Space on a normal basis. I had to fill out a request for highlighters, have that approved and delivered then I had to sign saying it would only be used for company stuff.
I've had one bridge burn me, but it worked out in the long run. Other jobs have always gotten 2 weeks notice. My current employer is one of those walk out issues though. I'm a contractor and the company is so messed up that they have it written in their contract that if you quit w/o a 2 weeks notice, they can keep your entire salary for the month. Guess I'll get paid, close that bank account and move on with my life with my own company.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, when I incorporated a business, I started getting all kinds of subscriptions from different business mags. While they're neat to read, I didn't ask for a single one. After looking it all up, I'm getting about $120 worth of mags a year...
Shade is one factor, but in the long run, the panels will need to be cleaned. The ones that I've seen have been really bad eye soars to the houses they're put on. I mentioned getting an array when my wife and I buy a house and she shot it down just due to the curb appeal it doesn't cause.
The other thing is that there are newer solar panels that just came out that actually work 100% better than the panels currently on the market. Unfortunately, its too early for me to think of the right name and google just isn't helping right now.
This comment makes me think you've never touched or seen Satellite in action.
Having supported it, I wouldn't even use a dish for a bird feeder - thats how far away from it I'm staying.
HA! You should try TigerDirect's shipping prices...
I recently found a case from there that I liked, had a power supply and was discounted. I figured what the hell - splurge a little from my normal stomping grounds. After $56 for the case, they wanted $53 to ship the sucker to me! I've decided that no matter how nice something is, I'm joining the ranks of not buying from them anymore...
Actually, it not... See previous post or you can look on google and find many more where its been used...
Well, I was hanging in there, but now I've managed to make matters worse...
;-)
I'm now an Army Spouse living in Germany and now about all I can do is telecomute. Unfortunately for me, about all I can do is continue working for a shitty German contractor. I haven't found many corps willing to hire someone like me, even with all my experience.The fact that I don't have a degree is whats causing all my problems... Oh well, another 2 years left here...
If anyones willing to hire a 3rd shift TS or CS person, I'm ready and willing...
I worked for an ISP doing TS work before the bubble and we always had problems with the idiots that would state at the beginning of the phone call "I'm an MCSE, don't talk to me like a baby". After a few of these, we learned that we would just run them over in Technical jargon and get them to admit they didn't know what they where doing. Something as simple as "Ok, then I need you to edit your DUN connection and alter the DNS - let me know when you're there...." 4 minutes later... "Whats DUN?"
Now, on the other side of the spectrum, I remember getting a guy who didn't know his ass from a windows login. He was a Unix guy and just wanted a simple connection. Well, he didn't have TCP/IP installed and needed to restart and he basically freaked on me "Why in the world do I need to restart after adding TCP/IP - thats just nuts! It doesn't need to restart!" 20 minutes of arguing, he was finally connected and swearing he'd never touch Windows again.
It was during this time, I decided that certs where out of the question. I figured that businesses would be looking more for people with hard core experience instead of some piece of paper they could just study for. By the time I was downsized, I had turned out to be wrong (at least in my area). Businesses required certs and wanted degrees instead of real world experience. I had also leaned towards PHP instead of ASP due to security issues and thinking MicroSoft would eventually be looked on as bad by businesses... again, wrong. When will I ever learn?
Don't have mod points to mod you up, so I'll agree.
ISS was a great victory for the nations that signed up, but as you said, budget restraints have all but killed the program. It honestly would not surprise me if it was abandoned or sold to 1 country in the long run due to the problems (why do we always have to trust the Russian Equipment?)...
To reply to someon else, a while back, NASA thought of a plan to use the external fuel tanks (not the solid rockets) as livable space on a space station. Supposedly, NASA has stated that they will deliver the tanks for free to any entity that can properly convert them, but I haven't been able to verify this past a few hobby sites. Would be interesting to see, but would take a heck of a lot of money to get a business venture going to convert the tanks safely and properly.
Not true - I did the same thing when I thought of getting a tattoo... Theres no way in hell I want a wrinkly tattoo that is faded and blotched. These where things I thought of when I was 16 going on 30. I didn't need elders to talk to me, all I had to do was visualize grandpa's arm being mine in 50 years.
I can pretty much agree with the above. When I was in your shoes, I thought I was the shiznit since I was a geek and could fix any computer handed to me and could code with my eyes closed. I got bored in school since it wasn't challenging enough and didn't like my low-end, burger flippin' job. I couldn't find a part time job doing what I wanted and my school didn't offer internships. I dropped out with the guidance councilors telling me a GED was the same as a high-school diploma and went to work for a national ISP since I could hand write an autoexec.bat file from memory and could tell them what error 666 was. While there, I managed to work my way up to 32k on a "high school equiv" and no college - then I got laid off...
I have since learned that:
1. I was an idiot and shouldn't have listened to the councilors - they lied.
2. I wasn't the shiznit and had very little _real_ world skills
3. Due to my dumb ass decision, I'm 25, digging out of debt and can't really afford to go to college like I want and I'm stuck in a high stress, low paying job.
4. I actually just figured out what I really wanted to do in life about a year ago and while it has a little to do with coding, it relies more on engineering. Back in school, I wanted to be a code monkey (god, I could shoot myself...)
My advice to the story "parent" - relax, keep learning code and get a little spending money doing something that is very low stress. Keep your grades up as high as you can and then go to college and worry about interning. If you really want to say you did something to help in the coding community and make it good enough to put on a resume, pick one of the forty-million OSS packages out there and help them for a decent amount of time - thats good enough to put on a resume.
When I was a student, most adults would look at me and always say "I wish I was a student again." and I always thought they where crazy. Now, I have learned the ways of the wise ones and can completely agree. Enjoy your low stress world while you can. When you're older and juggling all your debt, more education, a job and possibly a family - you will probably look back and wish you would have taken it a little slower.
I know the topic is mostly about hardware, this is actually a pretty big thing that can get you in trouble.
If you're serving out static content, you need to make sure that your graphics are low in size whenever possible. For instance, you don't need a full page graphic like the top of the reply area here on slashdot, just the 1 corner graphic and the rest is a table color.
Going past the basics and assuming its dynamic content, you'll need to make sure your code is optimized (ie: not the type of code someone just slapped together). I can't tell you how big of a difference it can make when I take a page written when I started programming in PHP and adjusting it now that I now a heck of a lot more. Also, if you find that certain pages are more popular and your data isn't changing hour by hour, just cache the results of the page into static content. Every hour or so your cache can be dumped and setup again if needed. This stops a lot of reads off the server for the same exact data.
You'll also need to optimize the database as much as possible.
General things that can help with dynamic pages are simple things like timedate calls for pages - let javascript do that (although i don't like to use it, it takes a very, very, slight load off the server), etc...
I have seen a lot of people say that they need better hardware when they just need to optimize their software and/or increase the pipesize. I even ran into one person that refused to use a specific database because it was killing his site (he forgot to change the max connections...).
My wife and I do this once every few months. I personally have 6 computers and all the crap that goes with them. PDA, Cell, etc..yup, got them.
We go out for a 4 day holiday weekend with just the car (which we don't touch once we get there) our analog watches and flashlights - thats it. We pitch a tent, make a fire and just enjoy life. Oddly enough, when we come back, we're more relaxed than normal, even if I have to dig through 200 email a day to catch up.
Worked in HBG too and was all for the Merger in the beginning but soon discovered it wasn't what it seemed. In the end, it became a game to see who they had walked out...until I was the one.
Its ok, the ex-employees are (finally) revolting and starting a company to directly compete with them.
I had read the article and had taken that as "leaking" fresh, cold, water to the roots like the hoses that can sweating when filled up...
Its all how you read it I guess.
I don't see why people are having a hard time with this...
He's talking about using the cooling towers to collect (read: Condense) the water and pump it into the soil. Not only will it be fresh, but since it condensed, it will be cool as well.
I completely agree. My sisters are handycapped and have the same issue with their computers. They'll agree to anything. My mom, thats a different story but she's starting to learn.
Microsoft should be part of this issue. With the ability to add plugins automatically, users should be able to remove those and turn off the autoinstall feature. I doubt this will be in the next release of windows and it sure as hell won't be in any upgrades to IE anytime soon - too much money to gain by having people buy the new OS that lets people actually control their software.
Technically, this has already happened: Google
I can agree with this - I don't even use Outlook and I have to deal with the crap of this problem. Guess its a good thing I'll be switching from Eudora (with the OE viewer off) to Thunderbird. Like the grandparent, I'm really tired of the broken HTML and popups complaining about links. Now...I just need to transfer my 800mb of email into Thunderbird...gag
Way back when, razor companies had similar issues. They all produced razors that would last forever and you could resharpen them before every use. The problem was that the profit margins on razors where almost nothing (attempting to avoid a pun). I believe it was Gillete (the man, not the company) that came along and decided to help consumers get around the sharpening bit by allowing people to buy disposable razors. Quality wasn't as good and in the long run, you had to pay much more, but hey, you didn't have to sharpen them!
3
Its always been a practice in business to create a product, but have some aspect of keeping your money going in the long run. Offering upgrades to existing products won't really cause the public to upgrade. I still have old computers laying around left and right and honestly, I don't own a computer that is over 800MHz. My wife, on the other hand, is someone that will buy something cheap, allow it to wear down or break and buy another cheap thing to replace it. Oddly enough, she has one computer (1.6GHz) and she almost bought a new one due to the fact that it started running slowly. She refuses to think anything bad of MicroSoft and feels that the upgrades help her and that they are worth the price. I've given up trying to convince her otherwise and (mostly) refuse to work on her computer.
Until consumers start to really realize that they are getting had so corporations are more profitable, we won't see much change. Its just like the rumor that there are vehicles out there that can do over 100mpg but we still have SUVs that are getting 14mpg. While cheaper in the short term, paying the extra expense for a "green" vehicle ends up saving money in the long run. But then you have to worry about replacing your "green" car and the cycle continues.
Now, to get back on topic of the iPod, if the kid would have done his research first instead of panicing and pulling everything apart, we wouldn't be here making jokes about him. Now someone needs to send this kid a gift: http://www.expansys.com.au/product.asp?code=11299
It matters how you play your cards and network any contacts you have...
I dropped out in 10th grade due to the unchallenging environment and instantly started at 30k just for my computer knowledge in '98. I was later down sized after being forced to train my Indian replacement and now I'm in Germany looking for a GS position with the government. If I went to Iraq as a contractor I would easily pull in 100k+... My wife wants me to stay here as a spouse, so here I sit.
Now, Ive also "discovered" that I really don't like to do what I'm trained for but for that, I do need to go to school. If I would have gone to college before attempting the TS and programming industries, I'd be over 20k in debt for something I really dont want to do...
"...work for almost nothing in exchange for having no taxes, no expenses and no home to maintane."
Gee, you just described the US Military...
Tyco Electronics does this. If you call their CS/Sales center, they'll send you 1 part of anything you need for free...
I hate to point out the obvious here, but if he's the Sys Admin, he can log into the DB with the admin password and delete any logs around. He also knows of all the loggers on the system and can remove those as well. No system security is perfect.
Now, if you're trying to point out something like multiple admins, that will help. This particular situation can be fixed by having a few people with different admin passwords for each thing ie: 1 person has admin level for the Box. 1 person has admin level for the DB, 1 person performing random audits of others - etc...
Even in this case, I wouldn't trust the HR people with the Admin password to anything. In my experience, they're more than likely to pick a bad password or write it on a sticky note somewhere.
Technically speaking, the Sun Thin Clients are cheaper than Windows based workstations. After licensing fees, admin requirements, etc - Thin Clients are SO much cheaper.
But, I can agree with you on the Thin Client software. I think they could open up a new market by selling the software. The Sun Thin clients are nice, but sometimes it feels like they are missing something.
I wasn't hired, but I went to a job interview for a collections agency. After their gastapo HR lady fnishished chewing all of our asses about how good the job was, half of us walked out.
On the other side, I was forced to attend a 5 week training class for a Verizon contractor. One of those companies that says "we only hire the top 10%!" and you can look around and see the bottom 2% and pond scum... 5 weeks plus 1 day on the phone, I walked without notice and never looked back. Went to a company that actually hired the top 2% (had the numbers to proove it). Interesting job, but I'm just not one for a banking environment - WAY too damn picky. I had flashbacks of Office Space on a normal basis. I had to fill out a request for highlighters, have that approved and delivered then I had to sign saying it would only be used for company stuff.
I've had one bridge burn me, but it worked out in the long run. Other jobs have always gotten 2 weeks notice. My current employer is one of those walk out issues though. I'm a contractor and the company is so messed up that they have it written in their contract that if you quit w/o a 2 weeks notice, they can keep your entire salary for the month. Guess I'll get paid, close that bank account and move on with my life with my own company.