Ahh the TI calculators were great. I remember it taking hours and hours to plot out a mandelbrot set. Of course I don't think my code was very optimized, and the main image was pretty blocky. But that was way better than paying attention in class!
But for learning C style languages playing muds in college was a fun step. You could go from the basics of functions to the advanced with lambda closures. Shame that people all want graphics so the days of the text muds are decades past. Although a friend's son started only a few years back at 12 and picked things up pretty quickly. Of course you need a test mud for the kiddies since ever kid wants to build a lightsaber right away but it's a start...
Wow I just felt old reading a fellow/.er that wasn't around for the 56K modem format wars. Of course back then having clean enough lines that 56K would actually work was rare enough. Or not having concentrated lines. I still have one of the Livingston / Lucent 56KFlex saint bernard surfing dog tshirts somewhere. A 'free' gift from buying a pile of portmasters.
Although every ISP has always stretched the truth. 'unlimited' connections always had a fine print of 'this is not a dedicated service line for an always on connection'. In fact even today the nationwide ISP wholesalers sell connections in 200 hour maximums for each login name. Overages can be pricey or a pain to bounce them to a different network. Far better than the 100 or 150 hours that most nationwide plans were at before. Boy am I glad to be out of that game.
http://nerdsinc.com/ has a few nice bottle rocket launchers. They take a 20 oz or 2 liter plastic bottle, add an air compressor, and away you go. The basic kit is pretty basic but I can say it holds up well to a few 8 year olds launching rockets for hours. Nice, simple, and it works great. Also a fun way to teach aerodynamics by designing fins and nose cones for the bottles.
I live in an area with a lot of lakes on top of each other. Lots of primary and second homes on the lakes. Over the years I've been in hundreds of these homes for work. It is amazing how many telescopes there are. Oddly most of them are pointing across the lake towards a pier or house window instead of towards the sky. I've looked through enough of them to find that they're focused very nicely on piers, windows and sunbathers.
And I'll note that a freckle on the inner thigh can look mighty big!
A person recently built a second home on a local lake. A nice 3 story McMansion. His company supplies steel to Ford Motor for their cars. Ford moved a plant to Mexico, so his company moved a facility near the Ford plant. They had thousands of people line up for hiring. The mexican workers knew that the US had nice unions so they held out for negotiating a good wage. They demanded 15 cents an hour. The local person was glad they didn't conceed to the union demands as that would show weakness, they settled for 11.5 centers an hour. Yeah, about 1/10 of a dollar an hour. With total costs of labor it comes to about $1 an hour.
Now business is business but having went to college in Flint I've seen what the collapse of the auto Industry is like first hand. I don't see how moving our manufacturing entirely out of the country actually ends up helping the average worker. Sure the US is becoming more service oriented but when it's more walmart greeters and less higher paying manufacturing jobs it becomes a problem.
I agree that a home owner and business owner should be able to control what they do or don't allow. I usually vote libertarian but I'd be all for banning smoking in public. Private property go ahead and do what you want, bars should do what they want, but in public I expect my rights to clean air to be respected. Same reason why pollution controls should be enforced. No different than I hate people that walk their dogs in public without carrying bags to pick up their messes, it's defiling the public space. If someone's eating McDonalds in public that's fine, if they toss the wrapper that's wrong.
The US spends more on military spending than almost the entire rest of the world combined. (41% of 1.5 trillion for 2008) The 300 million a pop F22 is pretty cool, but really, 300 million each? I'm all for a strong military but as Eisenhower said "beware the military industrial complex".
I'm in Michigan. Due to a budget crunch every non-critical state employee (Not the police, toll bridge operators, etc) was warned of immanent layoffs. All 40 some thousand of them. That works out to over 700 people employed by the state for each county. This doesn't take into account the county or township / city level people. If that isn't bloat I don't know how else to classify it.
After a few hour shutdown the budget was passed. Of course this upcoming go around there won't be $1 billion from the stimulus to help the budget so talk is already about raising taxes, in the state with the highest unemployment in the nation...
There is a current case before the supreme court along this line. The argument is there is no constitutional right not to be framed. Oh and the Obama admin backs this stance, along with 28 states.
Reframe traffic is down 14% over the past 3 months according to alexa. Sure I know alexa isn't an exact science but it's a decent ranking system. So if you're dropping to the 234,292 rank it's time to explore every option to make money, including a lawsuit and hope that google buys you to shut you up.
I do wonder what part of the constitution is going to be used to force people to buy health insurance. This question was asked to Peloski but brushed aside. Further emails from her office say it's part of Interstate Commerce and the general welfare clause. How long before it's challenged in court?
I'll jump in here on that one. A local barber shop hired my father's company to make their bathroom ADA compliant. They'd been there forever but the city, as part of a downtown development, was going through renovating the entire area. It's one of those little hole in the wall barber shops, two chairs, a few other for waiting room - small town sort of places. To stay in business it was done.
The barber said that over the decades he's only had one wheelchair client, who used the bathroom once. That's a lot of haircuts for redoing the bathroom.
Also I'll note that having been in numerous homes with handicapped people over the years there are a surprising number that have no grab rails, no handicapped fixtures, no tempering valves on all hot water, none of the ADA measures. It is expensive to retrofit any existing place. Just replacing a tub shower so you don't need to step over a threshhold can mean a whole bathroom redone. So while I'm all for new places needing ADA, or even a change of business, but existing is a royal bitch for a small business.
Also I ahve to wonder if this wins against Sony how long before every 1 developer Apple app, facebook app, etc is hit with the same lawsuits.
Do we need an exact single reason? Just making billions and billions from the industrial military complex is enough reason for some to keep wanting war.
The Feds did this to bypass PGP on a mobster's computer almost a decade ago. Well not exactly a bootloader, they put in a keylogger. Gee, if a Gman thought of this back in double ought, why is this making news for nerds today?
There's a vast difference between the skilled tradesman and what you call morons. Give me a licensed master plumber, master electrician, mechanical contractor, etc and I'll show you someone that truly understands their field and has years of experience under their belt. Sure the variety of assistants range in ability like any job, but to label the actual skilled person as a moron shows you don't understand the field. That'd be like comparing someone who flips burgers to a skilled chef. Also the skilled trades are very strongly union in every major city, unions being one of the strongest backers of the Democrats.
As for continuing education much of the green movement is powered by installation of ultra high efficiency equipments. Pull up a wiring schematic for a 96% boiler and the various pumps and zone valves - it's anything but moronic work.
So what's up with the trades bashing? Watch a few episodes of Dirty Jobs and you'll see some examples of problem solving at the finest.
A recent Time article about the virus and vaccination said that the 2 billion for this round of H1N1 vaccines may very well have saved the vaccination companies. The big drug companies don't usually want to make vaccines, not sexy enough or profitable enough. The few small players in it do a steady business but don't get big chunks of money for R+D. This vaccination for everyone changes this a bit. It also may encourage the big pharm companies to get back into the game, I heard a recent radio news bit about that happening.
In a way I can see encouraging companies that can help combat a pandemic to stay in business. But really this H1N1 strikes me as a 2 billion bailout for the vaccine makers.
Except the telcom monopolies are legal under the existing regulations. ILECs rule their territory and anyone else wanting to offer service within their area has to end up using them in some fashion. That's where the government needs to step in and force the FCC to open competition.This happened in 1996 with the telco reform act. It was full of crap when it passed but it still managed to help for awhile, spawning CLECs that with ISPs helped bring affordable Internet access to the masses. The Bush era FCC with Powel's kid in charge rolled back the good parts of the act and effectively killed it. Now we're back to a few major media companies, a few major telco monopolies, and less competition all the time.
Also the US wanted the war stopped fast. It wasn't only about our troops, we wanted to put the Soviets in their place. The soviets were pushing south and would have taken Korea for their launching point to go against Japan. The US didn't want that, as the Korean war later showed.
Another tried and true way to get rich - or richer - is to gather up a handful of war mongering CEOs of military industrial companies and get your bunch elected president. No bid contracts, that's the way to go!
Another way Unemployment screws business owners. I agree that there should be some method to help a person between jobs. But unemployment as it exists is so wrong it should be scrapped and started fresh. Everytime an employee draws it hits the company. I agree with this if it's a fire, if it's a voluntary quit we're paying for someone not wanting to work. Things I have personally seen from the business employer side in the last few years:
Employee doesn't show up one morning, can't be reached, doesn't even tell the live in girlfriend he apparently quit - he still 'goes to work' every morning. After girlfriend stops in the office a week later she discovers he must have quit. A year later he files to draw unemployment. We notify them there is a job waiting for him. Told that since he has moved to another state he couldn't work, he still receives unemployment.
Employee quits a full time, year around job, and goes to work for a seasonal job. End of the season comes and he files and receives unemployment.
People wonder why jobs are outsourced? I hire a contract overseas and I don't have to worry about staffing issues or ex employees costing the company when they quit and don't want to work. Or why small businesses are dying. Oftentimes the small business owner stops paying themselves first to keep things going. Once things get really slow they're really out of luck.
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Ahh the TI calculators were great. I remember it taking hours and hours to plot out a mandelbrot set. Of course I don't think my code was very optimized, and the main image was pretty blocky. But that was way better than paying attention in class!
But for learning C style languages playing muds in college was a fun step. You could go from the basics of functions to the advanced with lambda closures. Shame that people all want graphics so the days of the text muds are decades past. Although a friend's son started only a few years back at 12 and picked things up pretty quickly. Of course you need a test mud for the kiddies since ever kid wants to build a lightsaber right away but it's a start...
Wow I just felt old reading a fellow /.er that wasn't around for the 56K modem format wars. Of course back then having clean enough lines that 56K would actually work was rare enough. Or not having concentrated lines. I still have one of the Livingston / Lucent 56KFlex saint bernard surfing dog tshirts somewhere. A 'free' gift from buying a pile of portmasters.
Although every ISP has always stretched the truth. 'unlimited' connections always had a fine print of 'this is not a dedicated service line for an always on connection'. In fact even today the nationwide ISP wholesalers sell connections in 200 hour maximums for each login name. Overages can be pricey or a pain to bounce them to a different network. Far better than the 100 or 150 hours that most nationwide plans were at before. Boy am I glad to be out of that game.
Since when has congress cared about that old thing called the constitution? It sure hasn't stopped them with health care "reform".
http://nerdsinc.com/ has a few nice bottle rocket launchers. They take a 20 oz or 2 liter plastic bottle, add an air compressor, and away you go. The basic kit is pretty basic but I can say it holds up well to a few 8 year olds launching rockets for hours. Nice, simple, and it works great. Also a fun way to teach aerodynamics by designing fins and nose cones for the bottles.
Just the other day the gov't held a Closed meeting on openness. Now that's change I can believe in
Not just /.ers.
I live in an area with a lot of lakes on top of each other. Lots of primary and second homes on the lakes. Over the years I've been in hundreds of these homes for work. It is amazing how many telescopes there are. Oddly most of them are pointing across the lake towards a pier or house window instead of towards the sky. I've looked through enough of them to find that they're focused very nicely on piers, windows and sunbathers.
And I'll note that a freckle on the inner thigh can look mighty big!
Yeah, it teaches kids that getting drunk, wasted, and trashing the universe is alright.
A person recently built a second home on a local lake. A nice 3 story McMansion. His company supplies steel to Ford Motor for their cars. Ford moved a plant to Mexico, so his company moved a facility near the Ford plant. They had thousands of people line up for hiring. The mexican workers knew that the US had nice unions so they held out for negotiating a good wage. They demanded 15 cents an hour. The local person was glad they didn't conceed to the union demands as that would show weakness, they settled for 11.5 centers an hour. Yeah, about 1/10 of a dollar an hour. With total costs of labor it comes to about $1 an hour.
Now business is business but having went to college in Flint I've seen what the collapse of the auto Industry is like first hand. I don't see how moving our manufacturing entirely out of the country actually ends up helping the average worker. Sure the US is becoming more service oriented but when it's more walmart greeters and less higher paying manufacturing jobs it becomes a problem.
This is slashdot so we have plenty of hackers. Now we just need a hitter, grifter, thief and mastermind so we can start dealing out justice.
I agree that a home owner and business owner should be able to control what they do or don't allow. I usually vote libertarian but I'd be all for banning smoking in public. Private property go ahead and do what you want, bars should do what they want, but in public I expect my rights to clean air to be respected. Same reason why pollution controls should be enforced. No different than I hate people that walk their dogs in public without carrying bags to pick up their messes, it's defiling the public space. If someone's eating McDonalds in public that's fine, if they toss the wrapper that's wrong.
The US spends more on military spending than almost the entire rest of the world combined. (41% of 1.5 trillion for 2008) The 300 million a pop F22 is pretty cool, but really, 300 million each? I'm all for a strong military but as Eisenhower said "beware the military industrial complex".
I'm in Michigan. Due to a budget crunch every non-critical state employee (Not the police, toll bridge operators, etc) was warned of immanent layoffs. All 40 some thousand of them. That works out to over 700 people employed by the state for each county. This doesn't take into account the county or township / city level people. If that isn't bloat I don't know how else to classify it.
After a few hour shutdown the budget was passed. Of course this upcoming go around there won't be $1 billion from the stimulus to help the budget so talk is already about raising taxes, in the state with the highest unemployment in the nation...
The problem with BlueHippo was they thought small. If they got too big to fail then everything would have been alright.
I'm not sure of the logistics but when that happened back in '84 we had Patrick Swayze around to save us.
There is a current case before the supreme court along this line. The argument is there is no constitutional right not to be framed. Oh and the Obama admin backs this stance, along with 28 states.
Reframe traffic is down 14% over the past 3 months according to alexa. Sure I know alexa isn't an exact science but it's a decent ranking system. So if you're dropping to the 234,292 rank it's time to explore every option to make money, including a lawsuit and hope that google buys you to shut you up.
I do wonder what part of the constitution is going to be used to force people to buy health insurance. This question was asked to Peloski but brushed aside. Further emails from her office say it's part of Interstate Commerce and the general welfare clause. How long before it's challenged in court?
I'll jump in here on that one. A local barber shop hired my father's company to make their bathroom ADA compliant. They'd been there forever but the city, as part of a downtown development, was going through renovating the entire area. It's one of those little hole in the wall barber shops, two chairs, a few other for waiting room - small town sort of places. To stay in business it was done.
The barber said that over the decades he's only had one wheelchair client, who used the bathroom once. That's a lot of haircuts for redoing the bathroom.
Also I'll note that having been in numerous homes with handicapped people over the years there are a surprising number that have no grab rails, no handicapped fixtures, no tempering valves on all hot water, none of the ADA measures. It is expensive to retrofit any existing place. Just replacing a tub shower so you don't need to step over a threshhold can mean a whole bathroom redone. So while I'm all for new places needing ADA, or even a change of business, but existing is a royal bitch for a small business.
Also I ahve to wonder if this wins against Sony how long before every 1 developer Apple app, facebook app, etc is hit with the same lawsuits.
Do we need an exact single reason? Just making billions and billions from the industrial military complex is enough reason for some to keep wanting war.
The Feds did this to bypass PGP on a mobster's computer almost a decade ago. Well not exactly a bootloader, they put in a keylogger. Gee, if a Gman thought of this back in double ought, why is this making news for nerds today?
There's a vast difference between the skilled tradesman and what you call morons. Give me a licensed master plumber, master electrician, mechanical contractor, etc and I'll show you someone that truly understands their field and has years of experience under their belt. Sure the variety of assistants range in ability like any job, but to label the actual skilled person as a moron shows you don't understand the field. That'd be like comparing someone who flips burgers to a skilled chef. Also the skilled trades are very strongly union in every major city, unions being one of the strongest backers of the Democrats.
As for continuing education much of the green movement is powered by installation of ultra high efficiency equipments. Pull up a wiring schematic for a 96% boiler and the various pumps and zone valves - it's anything but moronic work.
So what's up with the trades bashing? Watch a few episodes of Dirty Jobs and you'll see some examples of problem solving at the finest.
A recent Time article about the virus and vaccination said that the 2 billion for this round of H1N1 vaccines may very well have saved the vaccination companies. The big drug companies don't usually want to make vaccines, not sexy enough or profitable enough. The few small players in it do a steady business but don't get big chunks of money for R+D. This vaccination for everyone changes this a bit. It also may encourage the big pharm companies to get back into the game, I heard a recent radio news bit about that happening.
In a way I can see encouraging companies that can help combat a pandemic to stay in business. But really this H1N1 strikes me as a 2 billion bailout for the vaccine makers.
Except the telcom monopolies are legal under the existing regulations. ILECs rule their territory and anyone else wanting to offer service within their area has to end up using them in some fashion. That's where the government needs to step in and force the FCC to open competition.This happened in 1996 with the telco reform act. It was full of crap when it passed but it still managed to help for awhile, spawning CLECs that with ISPs helped bring affordable Internet access to the masses. The Bush era FCC with Powel's kid in charge rolled back the good parts of the act and effectively killed it. Now we're back to a few major media companies, a few major telco monopolies, and less competition all the time.
Also the US wanted the war stopped fast. It wasn't only about our troops, we wanted to put the Soviets in their place. The soviets were pushing south and would have taken Korea for their launching point to go against Japan. The US didn't want that, as the Korean war later showed.
Another tried and true way to get rich - or richer - is to gather up a handful of war mongering CEOs of military industrial companies and get your bunch elected president. No bid contracts, that's the way to go!
Another way Unemployment screws business owners. I agree that there should be some method to help a person between jobs. But unemployment as it exists is so wrong it should be scrapped and started fresh. Everytime an employee draws it hits the company. I agree with this if it's a fire, if it's a voluntary quit we're paying for someone not wanting to work. Things I have personally seen from the business employer side in the last few years :
People wonder why jobs are outsourced? I hire a contract overseas and I don't have to worry about staffing issues or ex employees costing the company when they quit and don't want to work. Or why small businesses are dying. Oftentimes the small business owner stops paying themselves first to keep things going. Once things get really slow they're really out of luck.