Because my local cable company did a poor hack at installing the wire from the road (used the poles that the power company put in, at longer than normal distances, with a tension wire), the cable stretches , and about every 6 months I have to call them up and report that my connection is not working because a high wind basically caused the wires to break... again... and suggest that they might want to install 2 more poles... Looking out my window, I see 7 different wires that they have installed, and couldn't be bothered to rip down then they broke...
My local post office gave me a free P.O. box, and stores my mail there, and delivers once a week because I'm living off in the middle of nowhere. Prety much everyone in my area is set up that way. We still have rural delivery, but once a week, with the ability to get our mail ourselves if we are in a hurry for something. This works well, and saves the post office a LOT of money.
I couldn't care less who know how much I spend at the strip club. Hell, if the bar took debit or credit cards, I would rather pay electronically. I am lucky to have a 5 in my wallet. Gee, my car broke down, and I needed it have it towed? the garage will pay the driver, and then bill me... The strippers want cash? there's a bank machine right in the bar. MasterCard wants a payment? my pay gets deposited electonically, and is automatically transfered to my line of credit every week. Client wants to pay in dimes? Fark I have to go to the store, get paper to roll them in, then go to the bank because no one else wants change!
I hear you. I've worked in a cubical farm for 10 years, as a programmer, and it's usually OK, but it seems that every time I have a critical piece of code that needs concentration, and has a tight deadline, I'm stuck with 3 people around me talking loudly, the phone ringing constantly, and people walking up and staring over my shoulder until I acknwledge them, and deal with whatever minor emergency they created. In the end, a 2 hour job can easily take 2 days in the cube farm, yet I can not work from home, even though I have VPN, and RDP access to the office, and could actually accomplish a LOT more in a day by working on a project, and checking email and dealing with other jobs at convenient times.
>cubicles have shrunk from an average of 64 feet to 49 feet in recent years
Ok, where do I apply to get a 49' cubical? if that's square feet, I'm severly lacking! I estimate my square footage to be around 25 sq ft, if you count half the isle! if that's cubic feet, the I guess I should be releaved, since I have a whopping 200 cubic feet of space to call my own, while I'm at work.
When I leave the office, anyone else can use the desk, so my personal space is reduced to a small drawer, that doesn't lock.
On the plus side, I do hold a key to the server room, that has about 200 square feet of open space.
Yep, some places really don't give a damn. Unfortionatly, there are too far away from me for it to be profitable to take my scrap there. The big centers that are actually responable (and there are a couple within a half hour drive from me) refuse wire unless it's delivered by an electrician, or contractor. I have a shed packed with old wire from the last major change on my farm, where we stripped out several lines running between buildings. I also have coax from the last 2 times the cable comany changed the line from the road to my house, and couldn't be bothered taking away the old broken wires.
When spring rolls around again, I'm going to have to get a building permint, hire my neighbour (a certified electrician) to change a light bulb or something, the ride with me to the scrap yard so they'll take all this junk that is worth a small fortune,
Hey, better idea. Don't just pull the plug on the connection, but throw them onto a seperate network segment, which uses a proxy for web traffic, and blocks all other ports, have the proxy display an virus alert for every page request (including VERY CLEAR AND SIMPLY WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS), execpt a list of approved antivirus and anti-malware sites. Perhaps list some phone numbers for computer shops in the region as well.
hrm, Dell and HP are the manufactureres, wouldn't that make the ISPs the gas stations? They provide the go-juice for the computer to travel the information superhighway... Why would a gas station be responsable for bad drivers? Hell my 10 year old often goes to the gas station to get a can of fuel for the lawn mower! Should he not be allowed to buy gas, because he's too young to drive, doesn't have any training yet, and doesn't have the paperwork to drive on public roads?
Even better id, why not have the charging stations contain their own storage system, and use smart meters. Trickle charge if the station is low, and energy prices are high, and then ramp up the charging ourside peak hours. That would put an available supply on hand when needed, not depending on the utility to be able to meet the demand at that moment.
or be curios, download the file into a virtual machine, then kill off all network access for the VM, and try out the file. when done, destroy the VM (or revert to a prior snapshot), and continue life knowing your machine is safe. I run a minimal UBUNTU install, with virtualbox, then a windows VM on top of that. Every time I reboot, the VM returns to is original configuration. If I need to install something, then I reboot, install, save the VM, and am good to go. I've also used blackice for several work computers that didin't have the CPU and memory to run VMs for day to day work.
If they steal my credit card (pick one, any one) they would be lucky to have enough left on it to buy a.com from godaddy. Some people call credit card debt a problem, I call it a safety feature.
In my region (southern Quebec), I can see one easy solution that would limit population growth in a hurry. CUT SOCIAL ASSISTANCE! I know a lot of people who are under 30 and have 4-5 children, and are still going at it like there is no tomorrow. why? because they are on social assistance, and the more children they have, the more the government gives them. 1 single person on welfare can hardly survive, but a couple, with 3 children have a decent income, better than a lot of working couples with no kids. One single mother, with 5 kids, that I know actually has a better income than I do, and does nothing. sure, she watches the kids, but they are in daycare during the day so she can shop, and whatever, and her mother watches them in the evenings so she can go out. I work to pay my bills, support my parents, and barly have enough to get by!
I agree completely. I raise cattle and hogs in good living conditions. Hogs have a huge pen, with room to run, fresh water, clean bedding, and good feed (no commercial chemical concoctions), the cattle spend the summer in a large pasture with room to roam around, and select the grass they eat, in the winter, the have a good barn to live in, and are let outside for excercise daily (as weather allows). Most sales are private, but the occasional surplus animal goes to market. Last month, I shipped a 3yr cow to auction, and actually lost $10 because of the transport fees.
The giant feedlots, and factory farms are also doing serious harm to the economy. The small family farm is disappearing rapidly because we cannot remain competitive to these corporations. Farming is labor intensive, and more so if done with care. The big boys can manipulate the markets so they still make money based on volumne, but the little guys end up loosing money year after year trying to find a way to survive, or have to work a second job. My farm basically pays for itself (taxes, maintenance, fuel, power), but I have to work off the farm to buy the things I can't produce.
I've personally wondered how the average middle or lower class family can afford groceries. My family tends to spend about $100/week on groceries, and we produce a lot of our food (beef, chicken, pork), we grow most of the fruit and vegetables that we need, and produce our own milk, butter, yogart. in my area, a family with a $600/week income would typically spend $100 on rent, 75 on utilities, $150 on gas and car payment, $200 in taxes and dedeductions, leaving $75 left over for things like food and clothing. No wonder the population is in serious debt!
Or better yet, ban using low-dosage drugs as a preventative, keep animals in smaller, seperated living areas, and quaranteen/treat only animals with problems, and treat with a dosage that will kill the infection.
I have a small farm, and have always taken pride in the treatement of animals. I have an ox team that I show at several fairs, so they get regular vaccinations, and are treated with expensive drugs when they have a serious problem. Animals that bring in roughtly $2000/year are worth $200 in vet bills and medication on occasion.
The think that should really be banned is the huge factory farms where a feedlot has 2000 head of cattle with about 4 square meters or less per animal, and hog barns that cram 10,000 hogs into one building. That's where bacteria and viruses will evolve rapidly due to poor treatment standards, low dosage preventive medicine, and just poor living conditions.
And yet on farms that have a lot of metal debris in the fields, cattle are fed magnets to collect the metal scraps, and prevent damage to the cows innards... I guess cattle just have a better digestive tract design.
WHen I was in school, taking chemistry, the only person in the class that ever manage to make a good explosion, serious toxic fume, or cause damage and chaos in any other way seemed to be the teacher.
CFL bulbs are great if you simply want to dimly light a small room,, but when lighting a large barn, or a yard, you want something like a 100W, unless you want to use tube lights, or halogen flood lights...
The closest convienience store to me has a self-checkout option for us regulars who shop up just as the owner is trying to open the store. THere are 5 of us that shop up just about every morning minutes after he's opened the door, and we simply get what we need (I've also notices that every one of us purchases that same items every morning... coffee and cigarettes), even though the cigarettes are behind the cash, he tells us to just go and get them while he's busy getting the place ready for the day. Since we all know what our purchase costs, we just leave the money on the counter for him, and head out. Once he told me that cigarettes had gone up $0.25 a pack the week before, so I settled up with him, and continued on with the new prices. Of course, a system like this only works when you know the prices, and can avoid scanning each item individually. THe owner does scan the items through when he gets around to it, just to make then inventory and cash balance.
THen again, I live in the back country, where we also have a general store that supplies everything needed to survive. I actually just fax them a grocery list every other week, and when the delivery truck is in my area, they drop off what I ordered, and send me a bill.
Agreed. The online store I buy from is shipping out a large stack of orders every day. The courrier service doesn't send a truck to pick up each package as soon as you order it, all orders for the day (or X time period) go out at once. Then the packages move through distribution points along with X billion other packages, so even if there is only my 1 box coming to my area from the supplier, there is probably a truck full of other packages from other suppliers shipping to other people in my area. I have an added bonus that I work directly across from the main shipping company's regional office, so they just hold my packages, and call me to let me know they are there (which with internet tracking, I usually know before they call), then I pick up whatever when I'm on my way home from work, so I burn no extra fuel, the transport company only burns the fuel to move the product around, which is marginal considering the bulk nature of transport. Food is the one thing I don't understand. Why would I want to purchase all sorts of stuff from the opposite corner of the continant, when the food is also grown locally. California blue berries on the shelf when Lac Saint-jean is only a few hours away, and the quality of their berries is much better?
When I was in school, the cafeteria have a very small selection of choices each day. It pretty much ensured that everyone would save their cash and buy a few chocolate bars and a coke. I mena, we have the choice of yesterdays moldy pizza, todays mystery meat covered in a brown glue that was supposed to be gravy, or a charred black grilled yellow paste sandwich, server with some cardboard shaped as fries, cardboard shaped as chips, or a white mash called potatoe, and some vegetables that were steamed to the point that they formed a technicolor goup that disintegrated when you tried to touch it. THis was followed up by jello that moved in unnatural ways (Even for jello), and had absolutly no taste. College was much better. Hello pasta bar, and deli line! Of course, they still offered the mystery meat covered in grey glue, but there were actually options available for those that didn't appreciate taking a risk at meal time.
Wouldn't make much difference if you own a paint shop. I'm always looking for good deals, and often get a 2nd hand truck that someone is selling for next to nothing because they had a fender bender, and no one wants to buy a damaged vehicule. Often, I just have to bang on a panel a few times, pull in to my shop, tape it up, and hit it with the spray gun, and I can easily get 2x what I paid for it, My local DMV clerks know me by name.
Well, maybe then these so called web developers will start optimising sites again, instead of using 4 meg SWF in places where a 60K animated GIF would serve the exact same purpose, and cleaning up stylesheets so that you only pull the 2K of necessary info to display a page, instead of 200K of classes that are not even used on the site. I have cable internet at home, but many of my clients are in areas where dialup is still the only option.
Cost is not a linear function. Buying for 10,000 employees would be a hell of a lot cheaper per employee than buying for 20. A little careful shopping, and you could have a good supplier delivering the supplies for the coffee maker, and offering a huge discount for the volume you are purchasing.
I've worked as a purcahsing co-ordincator for a few companys, one that had a total of 4 employees. For them, the caffeteria shopping involved one employee stopping at the convenience store once a week, and getting 2 bottles of water for the water cooler, one tin of coffee, and one carton of milk, then handing in the receipt. Another company had 180 employees in 3 locations, working 3 shifts. I got deals with both a major coffee distributer and a water distributer, where they delivered right into the caffeteria at each site, sent a bill the the head office every month, and thanked us regularly for our loyalty. That company was paying about 1/3 the cost per employee for stocking the caffeterias as the small one. Another site I worked at had vending machines on site, and after checking, I found I was spending close to $5 a day on coffee, where the company would have been paying closer to $1.50 for me to have consumed the same.
I'm set. I survived 3 weeks during the quebec ice storm of '98 with only minor annoyance. I have a disel generator, 500 gal of disel on hand, a freezer full of food, and about 50 cords of wood on hand... then again, this is just general supplies since I heat with wood, and have a farm, so I need the disel, anyway, and the generator is needed for anything more than a 2 hour power failure to ventelate the barn., If I run out of food, I can always butcher a cow or hog...
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Because my local cable company did a poor hack at installing the wire from the road (used the poles that the power company put in, at longer than normal distances, with a tension wire), the cable stretches , and about every 6 months I have to call them up and report that my connection is not working because a high wind basically caused the wires to break... again... and suggest that they might want to install 2 more poles... Looking out my window, I see 7 different wires that they have installed, and couldn't be bothered to rip down then they broke...
My local post office gave me a free P.O. box, and stores my mail there, and delivers once a week because I'm living off in the middle of nowhere. Prety much everyone in my area is set up that way. We still have rural delivery, but once a week, with the ability to get our mail ourselves if we are in a hurry for something. This works well, and saves the post office a LOT of money.
I couldn't care less who know how much I spend at the strip club. Hell, if the bar took debit or credit cards, I would rather pay electronically. I am lucky to have a 5 in my wallet. Gee, my car broke down, and I needed it have it towed? the garage will pay the driver, and then bill me... The strippers want cash? there's a bank machine right in the bar. MasterCard wants a payment? my pay gets deposited electonically, and is automatically transfered to my line of credit every week. Client wants to pay in dimes? Fark I have to go to the store, get paper to roll them in, then go to the bank because no one else wants change!
I hear you. I've worked in a cubical farm for 10 years, as a programmer, and it's usually OK, but it seems that every time I have a critical piece of code that needs concentration, and has a tight deadline, I'm stuck with 3 people around me talking loudly, the phone ringing constantly, and people walking up and staring over my shoulder until I acknwledge them, and deal with whatever minor emergency they created. In the end, a 2 hour job can easily take 2 days in the cube farm, yet I can not work from home, even though I have VPN, and RDP access to the office, and could actually accomplish a LOT more in a day by working on a project, and checking email and dealing with other jobs at convenient times.
>cubicles have shrunk from an average of 64 feet to 49 feet in recent years Ok, where do I apply to get a 49' cubical? if that's square feet, I'm severly lacking! I estimate my square footage to be around 25 sq ft, if you count half the isle! if that's cubic feet, the I guess I should be releaved, since I have a whopping 200 cubic feet of space to call my own, while I'm at work. When I leave the office, anyone else can use the desk, so my personal space is reduced to a small drawer, that doesn't lock. On the plus side, I do hold a key to the server room, that has about 200 square feet of open space.
Yep, some places really don't give a damn. Unfortionatly, there are too far away from me for it to be profitable to take my scrap there. The big centers that are actually responable (and there are a couple within a half hour drive from me) refuse wire unless it's delivered by an electrician, or contractor. I have a shed packed with old wire from the last major change on my farm, where we stripped out several lines running between buildings. I also have coax from the last 2 times the cable comany changed the line from the road to my house, and couldn't be bothered taking away the old broken wires. When spring rolls around again, I'm going to have to get a building permint, hire my neighbour (a certified electrician) to change a light bulb or something, the ride with me to the scrap yard so they'll take all this junk that is worth a small fortune,
Hey, better idea. Don't just pull the plug on the connection, but throw them onto a seperate network segment, which uses a proxy for web traffic, and blocks all other ports, have the proxy display an virus alert for every page request (including VERY CLEAR AND SIMPLY WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS), execpt a list of approved antivirus and anti-malware sites. Perhaps list some phone numbers for computer shops in the region as well.
hrm, Dell and HP are the manufactureres, wouldn't that make the ISPs the gas stations? They provide the go-juice for the computer to travel the information superhighway... Why would a gas station be responsable for bad drivers? Hell my 10 year old often goes to the gas station to get a can of fuel for the lawn mower! Should he not be allowed to buy gas, because he's too young to drive, doesn't have any training yet, and doesn't have the paperwork to drive on public roads?
Even better id, why not have the charging stations contain their own storage system, and use smart meters. Trickle charge if the station is low, and energy prices are high, and then ramp up the charging ourside peak hours. That would put an available supply on hand when needed, not depending on the utility to be able to meet the demand at that moment.
or be curios, download the file into a virtual machine, then kill off all network access for the VM, and try out the file. when done, destroy the VM (or revert to a prior snapshot), and continue life knowing your machine is safe. I run a minimal UBUNTU install, with virtualbox, then a windows VM on top of that. Every time I reboot, the VM returns to is original configuration. If I need to install something, then I reboot, install, save the VM, and am good to go. I've also used blackice for several work computers that didin't have the CPU and memory to run VMs for day to day work.
If they steal my credit card (pick one, any one) they would be lucky to have enough left on it to buy a .com from godaddy. Some people call credit card debt a problem, I call it a safety feature.
In my region (southern Quebec), I can see one easy solution that would limit population growth in a hurry. CUT SOCIAL ASSISTANCE! I know a lot of people who are under 30 and have 4-5 children, and are still going at it like there is no tomorrow. why? because they are on social assistance, and the more children they have, the more the government gives them. 1 single person on welfare can hardly survive, but a couple, with 3 children have a decent income, better than a lot of working couples with no kids. One single mother, with 5 kids, that I know actually has a better income than I do, and does nothing. sure, she watches the kids, but they are in daycare during the day so she can shop, and whatever, and her mother watches them in the evenings so she can go out. I work to pay my bills, support my parents, and barly have enough to get by!
your welcome for the nice Jersey cattle us Canadians shipped you 8 years (or 2-3 cattle generations) ago
I agree completely. I raise cattle and hogs in good living conditions. Hogs have a huge pen, with room to run, fresh water, clean bedding, and good feed (no commercial chemical concoctions), the cattle spend the summer in a large pasture with room to roam around, and select the grass they eat, in the winter, the have a good barn to live in, and are let outside for excercise daily (as weather allows). Most sales are private, but the occasional surplus animal goes to market. Last month, I shipped a 3yr cow to auction, and actually lost $10 because of the transport fees. The giant feedlots, and factory farms are also doing serious harm to the economy. The small family farm is disappearing rapidly because we cannot remain competitive to these corporations. Farming is labor intensive, and more so if done with care. The big boys can manipulate the markets so they still make money based on volumne, but the little guys end up loosing money year after year trying to find a way to survive, or have to work a second job. My farm basically pays for itself (taxes, maintenance, fuel, power), but I have to work off the farm to buy the things I can't produce. I've personally wondered how the average middle or lower class family can afford groceries. My family tends to spend about $100/week on groceries, and we produce a lot of our food (beef, chicken, pork), we grow most of the fruit and vegetables that we need, and produce our own milk, butter, yogart. in my area, a family with a $600/week income would typically spend $100 on rent, 75 on utilities, $150 on gas and car payment, $200 in taxes and dedeductions, leaving $75 left over for things like food and clothing. No wonder the population is in serious debt!
Or better yet, ban using low-dosage drugs as a preventative, keep animals in smaller, seperated living areas, and quaranteen/treat only animals with problems, and treat with a dosage that will kill the infection. I have a small farm, and have always taken pride in the treatement of animals. I have an ox team that I show at several fairs, so they get regular vaccinations, and are treated with expensive drugs when they have a serious problem. Animals that bring in roughtly $2000/year are worth $200 in vet bills and medication on occasion. The think that should really be banned is the huge factory farms where a feedlot has 2000 head of cattle with about 4 square meters or less per animal, and hog barns that cram 10,000 hogs into one building. That's where bacteria and viruses will evolve rapidly due to poor treatment standards, low dosage preventive medicine, and just poor living conditions.
And yet on farms that have a lot of metal debris in the fields, cattle are fed magnets to collect the metal scraps, and prevent damage to the cows innards... I guess cattle just have a better digestive tract design.
WHen I was in school, taking chemistry, the only person in the class that ever manage to make a good explosion, serious toxic fume, or cause damage and chaos in any other way seemed to be the teacher.
CFL bulbs are great if you simply want to dimly light a small room,, but when lighting a large barn, or a yard, you want something like a 100W, unless you want to use tube lights, or halogen flood lights...
The closest convienience store to me has a self-checkout option for us regulars who shop up just as the owner is trying to open the store. THere are 5 of us that shop up just about every morning minutes after he's opened the door, and we simply get what we need (I've also notices that every one of us purchases that same items every morning... coffee and cigarettes), even though the cigarettes are behind the cash, he tells us to just go and get them while he's busy getting the place ready for the day. Since we all know what our purchase costs, we just leave the money on the counter for him, and head out. Once he told me that cigarettes had gone up $0.25 a pack the week before, so I settled up with him, and continued on with the new prices. Of course, a system like this only works when you know the prices, and can avoid scanning each item individually. THe owner does scan the items through when he gets around to it, just to make then inventory and cash balance. THen again, I live in the back country, where we also have a general store that supplies everything needed to survive. I actually just fax them a grocery list every other week, and when the delivery truck is in my area, they drop off what I ordered, and send me a bill.
Agreed. The online store I buy from is shipping out a large stack of orders every day. The courrier service doesn't send a truck to pick up each package as soon as you order it, all orders for the day (or X time period) go out at once. Then the packages move through distribution points along with X billion other packages, so even if there is only my 1 box coming to my area from the supplier, there is probably a truck full of other packages from other suppliers shipping to other people in my area. I have an added bonus that I work directly across from the main shipping company's regional office, so they just hold my packages, and call me to let me know they are there (which with internet tracking, I usually know before they call), then I pick up whatever when I'm on my way home from work, so I burn no extra fuel, the transport company only burns the fuel to move the product around, which is marginal considering the bulk nature of transport. Food is the one thing I don't understand. Why would I want to purchase all sorts of stuff from the opposite corner of the continant, when the food is also grown locally. California blue berries on the shelf when Lac Saint-jean is only a few hours away, and the quality of their berries is much better?
When I was in school, the cafeteria have a very small selection of choices each day. It pretty much ensured that everyone would save their cash and buy a few chocolate bars and a coke. I mena, we have the choice of yesterdays moldy pizza, todays mystery meat covered in a brown glue that was supposed to be gravy, or a charred black grilled yellow paste sandwich, server with some cardboard shaped as fries, cardboard shaped as chips, or a white mash called potatoe, and some vegetables that were steamed to the point that they formed a technicolor goup that disintegrated when you tried to touch it. THis was followed up by jello that moved in unnatural ways (Even for jello), and had absolutly no taste. College was much better. Hello pasta bar, and deli line! Of course, they still offered the mystery meat covered in grey glue, but there were actually options available for those that didn't appreciate taking a risk at meal time.
Wouldn't make much difference if you own a paint shop. I'm always looking for good deals, and often get a 2nd hand truck that someone is selling for next to nothing because they had a fender bender, and no one wants to buy a damaged vehicule. Often, I just have to bang on a panel a few times, pull in to my shop, tape it up, and hit it with the spray gun, and I can easily get 2x what I paid for it, My local DMV clerks know me by name.
Well, maybe then these so called web developers will start optimising sites again, instead of using 4 meg SWF in places where a 60K animated GIF would serve the exact same purpose, and cleaning up stylesheets so that you only pull the 2K of necessary info to display a page, instead of 200K of classes that are not even used on the site. I have cable internet at home, but many of my clients are in areas where dialup is still the only option.
Cost is not a linear function. Buying for 10,000 employees would be a hell of a lot cheaper per employee than buying for 20. A little careful shopping, and you could have a good supplier delivering the supplies for the coffee maker, and offering a huge discount for the volume you are purchasing. I've worked as a purcahsing co-ordincator for a few companys, one that had a total of 4 employees. For them, the caffeteria shopping involved one employee stopping at the convenience store once a week, and getting 2 bottles of water for the water cooler, one tin of coffee, and one carton of milk, then handing in the receipt. Another company had 180 employees in 3 locations, working 3 shifts. I got deals with both a major coffee distributer and a water distributer, where they delivered right into the caffeteria at each site, sent a bill the the head office every month, and thanked us regularly for our loyalty. That company was paying about 1/3 the cost per employee for stocking the caffeterias as the small one. Another site I worked at had vending machines on site, and after checking, I found I was spending close to $5 a day on coffee, where the company would have been paying closer to $1.50 for me to have consumed the same.
I'm set. I survived 3 weeks during the quebec ice storm of '98 with only minor annoyance. I have a disel generator, 500 gal of disel on hand, a freezer full of food, and about 50 cords of wood on hand... then again, this is just general supplies since I heat with wood, and have a farm, so I need the disel, anyway, and the generator is needed for anything more than a 2 hour power failure to ventelate the barn., If I run out of food, I can always butcher a cow or hog...