You sir are on crack, do you seriously believe what you're saying? Are possibly comparing the ease of Active Directory with OpenLdap? Sorry but you're attacking Windows at almost all the wrong angles.
Naturally Windows is far more complex and yes, that means bugs, but its all for ease of use. I'm sorry but you cannot create a directory service enabled network with anything even close to the ease of Windows with Active Directory. Now add in SMS and MOM for management and monitoring and you've got yourself an environment capable of servicing hundreds or more workstations. It's too easy for your arguments to work.
Now that that horse plop is out of the way let's address your thinking that Vista is for servers or will be anything like the server product. The server product is still called Longhorn and does not contain any of the "pretty" effects of which you complain. You're right, servers don't need that stuff and guess what? Microsoft agrees. You seem to just want to spread fud all over the place. Despite what you seem to think Microsoft does listen to its business customers and add features accordingly which is why you see 2200 registry entries now built into the group policy and a management snapin that is much more capable of organizing said rediculous amount of remote customization. Yes all these features exist for linux environments but I'm sorry, they are not easier to deploy, at least not for larger organizations. Smaller shops can probably get away with it better. In a world where I'm buying quad processor dual core servers using virtual machines to run additional operating systems with 64gigs of ram I can afford the 512megs of overhead which may or may not be required. I'll add that AD on Win2k3 requires 168megs of ram and longhorn won't be all that different especially considering management and monitoring services can be control via domain policy.
I'll also add that Microsoft has not delayed Vista, Gartner doesn't think they can do it. Considering the latest build I work with I'm inclined to agree with Microsoft. I don't understand the animosity. My linux boxes are right along side my Windows boxes and I reboot every few months as part of regular system maintenance, thats why I cluster so I can take nodes down. It's smart for both linux and windows.
Last I checked there were kernel updates for SUSE Enterprise linux about once a week just like Windows so regular maintenance is just good practice.
Ever applied ACLs to applications? Ever worked with metadata in files? All of the filesystems would store the information differently. Do you see the overhead problem now?
You'd have to create a seperate db to keep track of all the info and let the db handle all the writes to the file system. Sounds like a huge pain to me. I'm sure there are more elegant ways to do it but there are definitely dependencies especially in a file server world. or a properly secured workstation.
Don't know where you're shopping but Microsoft does indeed offer volume licensing. We bought a 10 user VOL for Office 2003 for a bunch of laptops we just purchased. One key and a license that let's us have ten copies. I can move them wherever I want too, not bound to the hardware which is why both the Office and Windows VOL versions don't require activation.
I will agree that XP Pro is more expensive, can't really contest that but that is Microsoft's decision and obviously the marketing is paying it.
As for Windows installs, you're just showing ignorance since all new media of Windows comes with SP2 already installed. Now its install, patch, done. Just like the Mac. Of course if you're a geek you can always use nLite and create a custom install cd with all hotfixes and drives pre-installed. Something I do quite often with servers that have just enough hardware different that a disc image won't suffice.
Tis what I miss about Audiogalaxy, I don't know how much music I got from it before it was shut down. Seems a shame. I'll check out Pandora though, thanks.
Couldn't agree more, but I know I just came off an extended project for the last 6 months where I was working 14-18 hours a day. The rest of the year things will be quiet and I'll have time to get back in shape.
Change is a necessity to every business. The company I'm currently with has been around for 35 years now. Things are done a lot different here than even 5 years ago. You may be right about change addiction but I don't see it as a bad thing.
I was stating the direction the RIAA can go to maintain their relevance which they seem to have no interest in doing. The record labels themselves aren't in any danger. You would think with the ultimate distribution system within reach they would grab it. I know gas and refinary companies would jump at the chance to easily transfer their products across the world. Think of all the overhead they save. I don't believe there is any economics theory that would say a poor distribution system will bring in the most money.
I agree with you that the RIAA will die, but the music industry will endure.
Yeah, that doesn't work so well here in Phoenix, in the summer its way too hot to bike anywhere unless you're leaving at 4am. Of course here a pool and a gym is always a few blocks away. All about motivation I guess, people that care about their health will take the necessary steps to maintain it.
You really think if you tie up an athletic person for 12 hours a day learning java that they would have the same energy to exercise at the end of the day?
Yes they would still exercise but I would bet the longer they are tied up the less exercise they will do until eventually they are doing none at all. I've seen this happen many times. It happened to me. I used to play soccer and basketball. Believe it or not it takes a lot of energy to devote yourself to any task. I have a lot of friends in med-school, they are busy studying. Yes they still get some exercise in but it is a lot less than they used to.
Geeks are not lazy, they are willing to work as much as anyone else. I think you mean geeks don't have a lot of energy. You don't see too many people in IT blabbering away at 50,000 words a minute with enough energy to party it up for 4 days. Yes there are exceptions but, well, they are exceptions.
Way I see it maxing sales will maximize their profit. They aren't even working for it. Its not costing them a dime having these people distribute their music. Instead people are downloading, liking what they hear, and buying from it.
You're right their goal though, they want to control everything you hear and see but that will not maximize profit. If everyone is downloading Ayumi then they would be wise to pursue a contract. Its free market research! Seems like they see this new technology as a threat to their old business which it is, except instead of adapting and using it to their advantage they'd rather squash it. The Microsoft embrase and extend strategy works. They would be wise to take a look at how other software makers deal with the issue. They seem to make money much more efficiently although thats not universal by any means.
Its a free market, at some point they are going to need to change how they do business. Look at SGI and Novell, both shadows of their former selves trying to remake their image to turn a profit. Novell went into services much like IBM has and they are working out nicely. So while the RIAA is suing their own customers iTMS is making money, other services are emerging. They could bring them all together and sweep up enormous profits. With distribution costs near zero its mostly profit for them. It's a no brainer at least in my mind. I'm sure there are factors I'm overlooking. Just seems like an organization responsible for distribution would want to embrase a new distribution medium.
There are people in every country which do not care about the laws that govern them. Of course that all changes when it directly affects them but thats another story.
The problem here is that there is too much product on the market to support a cd distribution system. P2P and iTunes services provide a fast and convenient way to both find and listen to new music. Every spent an hour and a half at a record store looking for a particular album? Lord knows I have and its annoying as hell. Of course the only reason I was willing to spend that time to find it was because I had listened to a few songs I downloaded. It is a weak justification but I am provided no alternative. The one exception is of course satellite radio; the last place I can listen to new music without being inundated with advertising.
FM Radio wouldn't be so bad if they broke up their advertising so it wouldn't make it sometimes more than a minute between songs. There is nothing worse than enjoying a song, having it come to the end, and then hearing a loud ad pushing a product you couldn't care less about. You want more music, not just one song at a time.
Back to the issue at hand, the RIAA has criminalized the issue and in the process alienated a lot of their customers. One need only to look at the top selling software to see that pirating does not hurt sales but in fact helps it. Think how much Windows was pirated in the past and how much other software has profited from having a computer that can run it. Music is obviously different since it only has one step, nothing to build off past works.
The RIAA needs to stop wasting time and money on this and start working on an online distribution system that works without killing their customers. They want format change after format change, the only problem is existing formats are digital. My father repurchased a lot of his LPs on CD and has since converted almost all of his cds to MP3s which he will always be able to listen to. Why would he want to repurchase it ever again?
If they was a subscription based revenue stream then they should provide one, not force people to spuradically rebuy the stuff they've been enjoying for years. Until they realize this people will download illegal software. Might add downloading is in no way criminal, its the uploading part that is in question. Downloading is fair use, just like I can copy a tape and give it to a friend perfectly legally.
Yep, we definitely agree there. Of course there is an amount of violence in the real world so I'm not sure that is a bad thing.
As I said, there will always be violence in schools. Which is why its not a simple problem with a simple solution. Students need to be allowed to defend themselves with measured force. Obviously if they go too far then there are consequences.
At any rate, I think we can both agree that a computer game isn't going to change any of this.
Sounds to me like you went to school in a "big" city. In the rural farmland of Vermont where I grew up you better believe it was family/village model. Of course my mother was a teacher in the same school I attended. Thankfully I did not have her for a teacher. This naturally exposes a bias I have.
Right now I am watching my parents floundering, they funded college for me and my sister with our help of course. Now I'm helping them out of debt because I am fairly well off but they are but a few years away from retirement. I can tell you after 30 years of teaching my mothers makes less than I do only 2 years in network engineering. She is also now one of the best paid teachers are her school. I personally know a lot of teachers that teach social studies during the day and aerobics at night because they don't make enough money to pay off their education. A masters degree costs an awful lot of money. Most teachers start at roughly 20k. How are they supposed to support themselves and pay off their college debt?
I should point out that my statements were by no means the same everywhere. There are schools with administrators that have lost sight of their purpose, but in general when parents are involved they are forced to regain their site.
Casting violent people out of schools will only make the problem worse. In schools they can be directed. Its difficult to punish students especially with all the lawsuit happy people about. In the end, I'm gonna have to say the oldest solution is the best. Schoolyard justice!
Got news for you, it is about the students but guess what? The system only works as well as the people involved. The kid is acting up in school? The teachers or the counselors needs to bring the parents in, keep everyone actively involved.
There will always be school violence, kids do it, at the youngest of ages they don't even realize they're doing it. You ever seen a 2 year old pull ont he hair of another kid? It just happens. As kids get older things obviously change. Usually kids with parents actively enganged in their education are well behaved. There are situations such as with sports where parents are actively involved in one aspect and completely negligent in others.
You say there are easy answers? Do you really think this would still be a problem if it were near as simple as you say? A lot of people have proposed this "simple" solution without realizing the consequences. Another idea was to link salary with student success. Another stupid idea which can't have been thought through. It implies that teachers aren't teaching and worst of all, it implies that teachers are the only ones that need to be teaching. This creates the overgrown daycare scenario that a lot of schools have now. This issue isn't simple, punish parents for not being actively involved in their child's education? What if the single parent is working two jobs just to keep food on their kid's table?
Whenever you try to do anything that effects this many people you will invariably alienate people from the system. Would you rather cast our some rich kid who will just soak money from daddy or expel some low income kid that will be reduced to selling drugs on the streets. Naturally this is an overgeneralization, plenty of low income kids strive for success and actually achieve it. I am an example of that. I wouldn't count on every child knowing what they want to do at the age of 6 though.
What average users are you looking at? Last I checked tv tuners and especially webcams were commonplace hardware. Scanning and printing is still a huge pain in the ass as well under many circumstances. Granted the current linux drivers out there are a hell of a lot better than the drivers HP ships for Windows.
The fact is, Linux isn't for the average person yet, nothing saying it can't be, just that it isn't right now. It is a valid gripe that hardware cannot be used on linux that is brand new. At least under most circumstances. Of course I have a now older Osprey-230 card which is just now getting linux drivers that work with kernel 2.6. Its all the fault of the hardware vendors but that doesn't change the reality.
For the record I still can't get any kind of 64 bit Osprey drivers for either linux or Windows. One would think video hardware vendors would be on top of this considering it is a way to make their products perform a lot better. I know my tv tuner works a lot better in a 64bit environment. I can encode tv to mpeg2 without even harming the cpu. Something that is quite hard on the system in a 32bit OS.
Subscriber Stats Roughly 120 million americans have phones. Sounds like that number has got to be way out of date. I know I personally send over 200 messages a month. Routinely 300 and I'm not considered a heavy texter. Think of all those blackberry users out there.
I could be way off and this week may have fried my brain but I'm pretty sure the USA isn't THAT far behind the UK although I would believe they use it more heavily since it has been reliable for longer than in the U.S. I remember texting as soon as 3 years ago. It was a best guess as to whether or not my message would be received by someone with another provider. Annoyed the hell out of me being in the southwest and northeast of the U.S.
If I listened to everything I learned in drivers ed I probably would have been in a lot more collisions. I went to the Bondurant School of driving (Company sponsored) Was both good fun and great education learning how to handle your car sliding on the road because conditions change rapidly. Managing a collision is just as important as avoiding it.
As far as speed goes its a tough concept because all drivers are not equal. A 16 year old goin 130mph is inherently more dangerous than a 32 year old race car driver. Granted, a 32 year old mother of three is probably not the best person to be going 130 either. Education and reflexes are two important factors. I don't see a way to fairly apply these skills to the road so for the most part I'll drive 10 - 15 over when traffic allows and more on the highway again when traffic allows. Traffics cops here in AZ are generally pretty reasonable. I've seen then pull up next to a girl goin 90, they point to her motioning at her dash and she realizes what she's been doing. In my mind that should generally be the goal rather than ticketing. Have the cop turn on the lights to let you know you're screwing up. Correct your speed at that point. If you don't then they further and ticket you. Can't take away that power otherwise they don't have any effect when they turn their lights on.
That said I've had issues with traffic cops before. When I was 16 in my Probe GT that I bought with money I earned from being a net admin I'd get pulled over once a week for no reason. Once it was a dark and stormy night, so I was driving a little slow and hugging the white line cause I couldn't see very well. Yep, cop pulled me over wondering if I'd been drinking. Naturally I was coming home from work, the only thought in my mind was my bed so it pissed me off to no end. I also had a situation of entrapment. Was driving at 3am again coming home from work not a car around. In my rear view mirror I see a car two miles back. Few minutes later is on my bumper driving erratically like they want to pass, so I slow down to allow them to pass legally but they stay on my bumper. So I speed up a little but still he stays on my bumper. Then I downshift and take off, he wait untils I'm going 85 in a 45 to turn on his lights.
A week later all of the cops in the city were taken off of traffic duty for about 3 months. Apparently I'm not the only one they did that too. I don't like the idea of hard speed limits. I think if you give drivers more responsibility they will drive more responsibly. There are always people that are the exception but I think the majority would be reasonable.
I too smile all the time, and indeed, my friend in San Diego does the same, yep, she smiles all the time too. She moved to San Diego cause most of the people there smile all the time. Its quite a lot like Tempe, AZ as well. We're a happy bunch in the southwest.
Might add I'm from VT where they are also a happy bunch. I guess you make your environment what you want it to be.
Sorry, but one Dell model doesn't cost more because another Dell model didn't sell well. That doesn't hold water at all.
You're right about it not necessarily costing 50 cents to make the cd. However, consider how much it costs to produce a blockbuster movie. We'll see its 150 million to make the movie, then 20 million or more to market it. The end DVD is sold for rough $20 bucks. Contrast that with a cd. It costs maybe a few hundred thousand to produce it. Maybe if its an extravagent music video another million. Then who knows how much money marketing. I'll say that there is a still an order of magnitude difference and the only difference we see at the end is $5 less.
Something isn't right there. I would tend to think that $5/cd times 20 million cds more than makes up for the cost of production and provides a nice profit. That excludes concert profits.
It all gets harder as artists get closer and closer to being able to get the same level of exposure as the RIAA can grant them. Basically they are operating as normal pretending the world isn't evolving and as a result they are slowly being pushed into irrelevance. There are lots of industry this is occurring in right now. Artificial scarcity only works for so long.
I was in this boat too, but I did find middle ground. Its Vertical's Televantage. Its a real easy soft PBX system to both setup and use. Typically it runs on Intel Dialogic cards which are okay I guess. Intel has some interesting ideas on how to make drivers for those cards.
At any rate, Cisco, NEC, Toshiba, and Nortel VOIP stuff prices themselves out of any shop where you are hosting your own equipment. The only times I see people useing such systems are either in large corporations or when they are in a hosted situation. We used to have Cisco POE VOIP phones in here but the flexiblity of the system wasn't as we desired so we moved on to Televantage and life is easy now. We can setup shop anywhere with a PRI T1 and we're good to go. We have two servers one stays put the other travels. Its kind of nice because no matter where we go we don't have to place long distance calls to our HQ. Just call over the VPN by dialing 7. Good stuff
From what I hear of Asterisk I'm happy we went with Televantage. We had very few launch headaches which were mostly caused by unfamiliarity with the interface. Its fairly intuitive but as with all GUIs, it has its faults.
Last I checked it was almost as laughable as the dual core Xeon.
Naturally things change so my info could be out of date. Basically as I recall it was so slow it was like running 32bit code an the original Itanium.
I recently upgraded one my Opteron web servers to the 64bit version and I'll tell you, there is a dramatic increase in system throughput which is good since there will be a giant traffic spike coming up when we're on TV Dec. 1st.
Its sort of the big issue with our infrastructure now. The companies are too big to provide that kind of security because of politics involved but if they were smaller then they wouldn't have the capital to make the infrastructure what it is.
I'd say they made their point with the depeering. One disruption now is better than the company going under later.
Still, it is scary that one event can have such an impact.
rrrright, and it just so happens the hurricane happened and gasoline prices increased by more than 120% and its because of economic growth in Asia.
Oil prices are high right now indeed but gasoline prices have jumped disproportionately when compared to rising and falling crude prices. The refinary companies are taking advantage of their opportunity to increase prices. Did you notice that gas is just 20 cents less than it was right after Katrina? Pretty sure all those refinaries are repaired by now.
Of course the whole think stinks to begin with. How does a natural disaster effect the price of something that is already at the gas station. I can see prices rising when the gas stations needed to be refilled because the environment made that gasoline more expensive to produce. One of these days someone is going to have to step into the field and show the oil companies how supply and demand actually works.
Do you think all the corn and peas in the super market right now would have their prices marked up if the agriculture industry took a major hit? Don't bet on it.
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Naturally Windows is far more complex and yes, that means bugs, but its all for ease of use. I'm sorry but you cannot create a directory service enabled network with anything even close to the ease of Windows with Active Directory. Now add in SMS and MOM for management and monitoring and you've got yourself an environment capable of servicing hundreds or more workstations. It's too easy for your arguments to work.
Now that that horse plop is out of the way let's address your thinking that Vista is for servers or will be anything like the server product. The server product is still called Longhorn and does not contain any of the "pretty" effects of which you complain. You're right, servers don't need that stuff and guess what? Microsoft agrees. You seem to just want to spread fud all over the place. Despite what you seem to think Microsoft does listen to its business customers and add features accordingly which is why you see 2200 registry entries now built into the group policy and a management snapin that is much more capable of organizing said rediculous amount of remote customization. Yes all these features exist for linux environments but I'm sorry, they are not easier to deploy, at least not for larger organizations. Smaller shops can probably get away with it better. In a world where I'm buying quad processor dual core servers using virtual machines to run additional operating systems with 64gigs of ram I can afford the 512megs of overhead which may or may not be required. I'll add that AD on Win2k3 requires 168megs of ram and longhorn won't be all that different especially considering management and monitoring services can be control via domain policy.I'll also add that Microsoft has not delayed Vista, Gartner doesn't think they can do it. Considering the latest build I work with I'm inclined to agree with Microsoft. I don't understand the animosity. My linux boxes are right along side my Windows boxes and I reboot every few months as part of regular system maintenance, thats why I cluster so I can take nodes down. It's smart for both linux and windows.
Last I checked there were kernel updates for SUSE Enterprise linux about once a week just like Windows so regular maintenance is just good practice.You'd have to create a seperate db to keep track of all the info and let the db handle all the writes to the file system. Sounds like a huge pain to me. I'm sure there are more elegant ways to do it but there are definitely dependencies especially in a file server world. or a properly secured workstation.
I will agree that XP Pro is more expensive, can't really contest that but that is Microsoft's decision and obviously the marketing is paying it.
As for Windows installs, you're just showing ignorance since all new media of Windows comes with SP2 already installed. Now its install, patch, done. Just like the Mac. Of course if you're a geek you can always use nLite and create a custom install cd with all hotfixes and drives pre-installed. Something I do quite often with servers that have just enough hardware different that a disc image won't suffice.Tis what I miss about Audiogalaxy, I don't know how much music I got from it before it was shut down. Seems a shame. I'll check out Pandora though, thanks.
Couldn't agree more, but I know I just came off an extended project for the last 6 months where I was working 14-18 hours a day. The rest of the year things will be quiet and I'll have time to get back in shape.
I was stating the direction the RIAA can go to maintain their relevance which they seem to have no interest in doing. The record labels themselves aren't in any danger. You would think with the ultimate distribution system within reach they would grab it. I know gas and refinary companies would jump at the chance to easily transfer their products across the world. Think of all the overhead they save. I don't believe there is any economics theory that would say a poor distribution system will bring in the most money.
I agree with you that the RIAA will die, but the music industry will endure.Yeah, that doesn't work so well here in Phoenix, in the summer its way too hot to bike anywhere unless you're leaving at 4am. Of course here a pool and a gym is always a few blocks away. All about motivation I guess, people that care about their health will take the necessary steps to maintain it.
Yes they would still exercise but I would bet the longer they are tied up the less exercise they will do until eventually they are doing none at all. I've seen this happen many times. It happened to me. I used to play soccer and basketball. Believe it or not it takes a lot of energy to devote yourself to any task. I have a lot of friends in med-school, they are busy studying. Yes they still get some exercise in but it is a lot less than they used to.
Geeks are not lazy, they are willing to work as much as anyone else. I think you mean geeks don't have a lot of energy. You don't see too many people in IT blabbering away at 50,000 words a minute with enough energy to party it up for 4 days. Yes there are exceptions but, well, they are exceptions.You're right their goal though, they want to control everything you hear and see but that will not maximize profit. If everyone is downloading Ayumi then they would be wise to pursue a contract. Its free market research! Seems like they see this new technology as a threat to their old business which it is, except instead of adapting and using it to their advantage they'd rather squash it. The Microsoft embrase and extend strategy works. They would be wise to take a look at how other software makers deal with the issue. They seem to make money much more efficiently although thats not universal by any means.
Its a free market, at some point they are going to need to change how they do business. Look at SGI and Novell, both shadows of their former selves trying to remake their image to turn a profit. Novell went into services much like IBM has and they are working out nicely. So while the RIAA is suing their own customers iTMS is making money, other services are emerging. They could bring them all together and sweep up enormous profits. With distribution costs near zero its mostly profit for them. It's a no brainer at least in my mind. I'm sure there are factors I'm overlooking. Just seems like an organization responsible for distribution would want to embrase a new distribution medium.The person do the uploading is reproducing. The person doing the downloading in not liable unless they pass it on.
The problem here is that there is too much product on the market to support a cd distribution system. P2P and iTunes services provide a fast and convenient way to both find and listen to new music. Every spent an hour and a half at a record store looking for a particular album? Lord knows I have and its annoying as hell. Of course the only reason I was willing to spend that time to find it was because I had listened to a few songs I downloaded. It is a weak justification but I am provided no alternative. The one exception is of course satellite radio; the last place I can listen to new music without being inundated with advertising.
FM Radio wouldn't be so bad if they broke up their advertising so it wouldn't make it sometimes more than a minute between songs. There is nothing worse than enjoying a song, having it come to the end, and then hearing a loud ad pushing a product you couldn't care less about. You want more music, not just one song at a time.Back to the issue at hand, the RIAA has criminalized the issue and in the process alienated a lot of their customers. One need only to look at the top selling software to see that pirating does not hurt sales but in fact helps it. Think how much Windows was pirated in the past and how much other software has profited from having a computer that can run it. Music is obviously different since it only has one step, nothing to build off past works.
The RIAA needs to stop wasting time and money on this and start working on an online distribution system that works without killing their customers. They want format change after format change, the only problem is existing formats are digital. My father repurchased a lot of his LPs on CD and has since converted almost all of his cds to MP3s which he will always be able to listen to. Why would he want to repurchase it ever again?If they was a subscription based revenue stream then they should provide one, not force people to spuradically rebuy the stuff they've been enjoying for years. Until they realize this people will download illegal software. Might add downloading is in no way criminal, its the uploading part that is in question. Downloading is fair use, just like I can copy a tape and give it to a friend perfectly legally.
As I said, there will always be violence in schools. Which is why its not a simple problem with a simple solution. Students need to be allowed to defend themselves with measured force. Obviously if they go too far then there are consequences.
At any rate, I think we can both agree that a computer game isn't going to change any of this.Right now I am watching my parents floundering, they funded college for me and my sister with our help of course. Now I'm helping them out of debt because I am fairly well off but they are but a few years away from retirement. I can tell you after 30 years of teaching my mothers makes less than I do only 2 years in network engineering. She is also now one of the best paid teachers are her school. I personally know a lot of teachers that teach social studies during the day and aerobics at night because they don't make enough money to pay off their education. A masters degree costs an awful lot of money. Most teachers start at roughly 20k. How are they supposed to support themselves and pay off their college debt?
I should point out that my statements were by no means the same everywhere. There are schools with administrators that have lost sight of their purpose, but in general when parents are involved they are forced to regain their site.Casting violent people out of schools will only make the problem worse. In schools they can be directed. Its difficult to punish students especially with all the lawsuit happy people about. In the end, I'm gonna have to say the oldest solution is the best. Schoolyard justice!
Got news for you, it is about the students but guess what? The system only works as well as the people involved. The kid is acting up in school? The teachers or the counselors needs to bring the parents in, keep everyone actively involved.
There will always be school violence, kids do it, at the youngest of ages they don't even realize they're doing it. You ever seen a 2 year old pull ont he hair of another kid? It just happens. As kids get older things obviously change. Usually kids with parents actively enganged in their education are well behaved. There are situations such as with sports where parents are actively involved in one aspect and completely negligent in others.
You say there are easy answers? Do you really think this would still be a problem if it were near as simple as you say? A lot of people have proposed this "simple" solution without realizing the consequences. Another idea was to link salary with student success. Another stupid idea which can't have been thought through. It implies that teachers aren't teaching and worst of all, it implies that teachers are the only ones that need to be teaching. This creates the overgrown daycare scenario that a lot of schools have now. This issue isn't simple, punish parents for not being actively involved in their child's education? What if the single parent is working two jobs just to keep food on their kid's table?
Whenever you try to do anything that effects this many people you will invariably alienate people from the system. Would you rather cast our some rich kid who will just soak money from daddy or expel some low income kid that will be reduced to selling drugs on the streets. Naturally this is an overgeneralization, plenty of low income kids strive for success and actually achieve it. I am an example of that. I wouldn't count on every child knowing what they want to do at the age of 6 though.I'm done ranting, thank you for playing
The fact is, Linux isn't for the average person yet, nothing saying it can't be, just that it isn't right now. It is a valid gripe that hardware cannot be used on linux that is brand new. At least under most circumstances. Of course I have a now older Osprey-230 card which is just now getting linux drivers that work with kernel 2.6. Its all the fault of the hardware vendors but that doesn't change the reality.
For the record I still can't get any kind of 64 bit Osprey drivers for either linux or Windows. One would think video hardware vendors would be on top of this considering it is a way to make their products perform a lot better. I know my tv tuner works a lot better in a 64bit environment. I can encode tv to mpeg2 without even harming the cpu. Something that is quite hard on the system in a 32bit OS.Cell Statistics for the USA
Roughly 50 messages per month on average which is a low number in my head.
Subscriber Stats
Roughly 120 million americans have phones. Sounds like that number has got to be way out of date. I know I personally send over 200 messages a month. Routinely 300 and I'm not considered a heavy texter. Think of all those blackberry users out there.
I could be way off and this week may have fried my brain but I'm pretty sure the USA isn't THAT far behind the UK although I would believe they use it more heavily since it has been reliable for longer than in the U.S. I remember texting as soon as 3 years ago. It was a best guess as to whether or not my message would be received by someone with another provider. Annoyed the hell out of me being in the southwest and northeast of the U.S.
As far as speed goes its a tough concept because all drivers are not equal. A 16 year old goin 130mph is inherently more dangerous than a 32 year old race car driver. Granted, a 32 year old mother of three is probably not the best person to be going 130 either. Education and reflexes are two important factors. I don't see a way to fairly apply these skills to the road so for the most part I'll drive 10 - 15 over when traffic allows and more on the highway again when traffic allows. Traffics cops here in AZ are generally pretty reasonable. I've seen then pull up next to a girl goin 90, they point to her motioning at her dash and she realizes what she's been doing. In my mind that should generally be the goal rather than ticketing. Have the cop turn on the lights to let you know you're screwing up. Correct your speed at that point. If you don't then they further and ticket you. Can't take away that power otherwise they don't have any effect when they turn their lights on.
That said I've had issues with traffic cops before. When I was 16 in my Probe GT that I bought with money I earned from being a net admin I'd get pulled over once a week for no reason. Once it was a dark and stormy night, so I was driving a little slow and hugging the white line cause I couldn't see very well. Yep, cop pulled me over wondering if I'd been drinking. Naturally I was coming home from work, the only thought in my mind was my bed so it pissed me off to no end. I also had a situation of entrapment. Was driving at 3am again coming home from work not a car around. In my rear view mirror I see a car two miles back. Few minutes later is on my bumper driving erratically like they want to pass, so I slow down to allow them to pass legally but they stay on my bumper. So I speed up a little but still he stays on my bumper. Then I downshift and take off, he wait untils I'm going 85 in a 45 to turn on his lights.A week later all of the cops in the city were taken off of traffic duty for about 3 months. Apparently I'm not the only one they did that too. I don't like the idea of hard speed limits. I think if you give drivers more responsibility they will drive more responsibly. There are always people that are the exception but I think the majority would be reasonable.
I too smile all the time, and indeed, my friend in San Diego does the same, yep, she smiles all the time too. She moved to San Diego cause most of the people there smile all the time. Its quite a lot like Tempe, AZ as well. We're a happy bunch in the southwest.
Might add I'm from VT where they are also a happy bunch. I guess you make your environment what you want it to be.You're right about it not necessarily costing 50 cents to make the cd. However, consider how much it costs to produce a blockbuster movie. We'll see its 150 million to make the movie, then 20 million or more to market it. The end DVD is sold for rough $20 bucks. Contrast that with a cd. It costs maybe a few hundred thousand to produce it. Maybe if its an extravagent music video another million. Then who knows how much money marketing. I'll say that there is a still an order of magnitude difference and the only difference we see at the end is $5 less.
Something isn't right there. I would tend to think that $5/cd times 20 million cds more than makes up for the cost of production and provides a nice profit. That excludes concert profits.It all gets harder as artists get closer and closer to being able to get the same level of exposure as the RIAA can grant them. Basically they are operating as normal pretending the world isn't evolving and as a result they are slowly being pushed into irrelevance. There are lots of industry this is occurring in right now. Artificial scarcity only works for so long.
At any rate, Cisco, NEC, Toshiba, and Nortel VOIP stuff prices themselves out of any shop where you are hosting your own equipment. The only times I see people useing such systems are either in large corporations or when they are in a hosted situation. We used to have Cisco POE VOIP phones in here but the flexiblity of the system wasn't as we desired so we moved on to Televantage and life is easy now. We can setup shop anywhere with a PRI T1 and we're good to go. We have two servers one stays put the other travels. Its kind of nice because no matter where we go we don't have to place long distance calls to our HQ. Just call over the VPN by dialing 7. Good stuff
From what I hear of Asterisk I'm happy we went with Televantage. We had very few launch headaches which were mostly caused by unfamiliarity with the interface. Its fairly intuitive but as with all GUIs, it has its faults.Last I checked it was almost as laughable as the dual core Xeon.
Naturally things change so my info could be out of date. Basically as I recall it was so slow it was like running 32bit code an the original Itanium. I recently upgraded one my Opteron web servers to the 64bit version and I'll tell you, there is a dramatic increase in system throughput which is good since there will be a giant traffic spike coming up when we're on TV Dec. 1st.Most of that was because of the fact that we had to import it though. Doesn't wreak of foul play like gas prices do.
I'd say they made their point with the depeering. One disruption now is better than the company going under later.
Still, it is scary that one event can have such an impact.Oil prices are high right now indeed but gasoline prices have jumped disproportionately when compared to rising and falling crude prices. The refinary companies are taking advantage of their opportunity to increase prices. Did you notice that gas is just 20 cents less than it was right after Katrina? Pretty sure all those refinaries are repaired by now.
Of course the whole think stinks to begin with. How does a natural disaster effect the price of something that is already at the gas station. I can see prices rising when the gas stations needed to be refilled because the environment made that gasoline more expensive to produce. One of these days someone is going to have to step into the field and show the oil companies how supply and demand actually works.Do you think all the corn and peas in the super market right now would have their prices marked up if the agriculture industry took a major hit? Don't bet on it.
I wasn't aware of any significant crude oil increases as a result of the hurricane.