They held up progress in aviation for almost 10 years in the US by making their plans secret and suing anybody who made planes. Their big patent fight was against Curtis Aircraft who invented ailerons, whereas the Wright's used wing-warping. During that time up till the early 20's, France took the lead in aviation, hence all the French sounding parts: fuselage, aileron, empenage, etc.
Of course they contributed the most out of anyone in the old days but after the first few flyers there wasn't nearly as much innovation coming out of Wright Airplanes. The last truly succesful product they made, please correct me if I'm wrong, was the Wright Cyclone, a large radial engine used in WWII aircraft.
Honestly I didn't catch where the FUD was at. The article did not demonize the internet in any way. It seemed to be more about the current treatment and common characteristics of people who have committed these acts.
It really comes down to how these companies makes money. Unlike many foreign cell services, our companies make their money on the add ons to cell phone plans. They charge $30 for a phone that costs $250 to make but at the same time charge extra for a feature that the phone was designed for.
Contrast this to the Japanese way of selling the phone for a profit and charging a sane amount for the service. Our companies need to realize that not everyone needs or even wants a freakin camera phone and that the ones that do will pay the extra money for the phone. At the same time please give us the full capabilities of the network if we wish to pay for the equipment (phone) to use it.
The same thing is happening in the American auto industry where the Big Two (Chrysler doesn't count anymore) make all their profits from financing whereas the foreign manufacturers make their money from selling the car. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this will stop soon.
It's sort of wierd since I've only just now gotten back into using Unix, but my first experiences with computing were with Unix. My father had a medical practice which my mother ran and still does. They were one of the first offices in the area to use a computer for scheduling. They needed multiple terminals, so the only OS available at the time (mid 80's) was Unix. Since both my parents worked, I was brought into the office a lot and was supposedly overjoyed when allowed to bang away in the text editor part of PCN (a physician's office software, I don't know what it does).
The family has always picked up the newest popular computer technology from the time the Apple IIGS came out and I got to play with it constantly. Lego LOGO was my first introduction to programming during elementary school. The Boston Museum of Science offered classes on it and since I played with Legos at home, it made sense to learn LOGO for them. Apparently these courses aren't offered any more, especially since Legos use some graphical programming interface now. Text is easier.
To start out kids, my recommendation would be to start with programming basic or maybe a really easy web language. This way they can see the results immediately, kids love instant gratification. Lego LOGO was a great language because you could program it with simple commands and see the result NOW. I wish it were still around.
SabreTech was considered qualified before the accident. As a maintenance shop, they had to be certified the FAA as well as approved to do the maintenance for ValuJet by ValuJet's POI (an FAA employee in charge of making sure the airline complies with regulation).
While ValuJet is responsible for making sure SabreTech does it's job, they can not check every maintenance item, nor are they supposed to. This is like the FAA making sure the airline complies with it's operating specifications but the FAA doesn't watch every single thing going on. It's impossible.
The crash was caused by oxygen generators placed onboard without notice to the crew, which was an illegal action by the single employee of SabreTech who packed the container. There was also some fault placed with the airplane manufacturer for not having any way to detect a fire in that part of the cargo hold.
In any case, according to the NTSB all parties involved, SabreTech, ValuJet, and the FAA were faulted. I worded my statement badly and you are right about it also being ValuJet's fault. This accident is why AirTran and many other airlines now do all their maintenance in house.
NTSB report
True, the cost of a crash is also associated with what the cause was. Accidents in which it looks like negligence cause a lot more damage to the airline than a crash caused by some crazy circumstance (like the United Souix City crash).
Some airlines also manage to weather crashes better than others. Somehow American has managed to not get hurt by their accidents whereas other airlines such as ValuJet are destroyed because of just one accident that wasn't even their fault.
I'm just trying to think about it in the way the airline bean counters will about this.
I'd say the computer crash is worse for the airline. It gives the passengers the feeling that Comair doesn't know what they're doing. Passengers will avoid flying on them (Delta) because of the inconvenience they have caused. Besides this, a physical crash may cost less money than grounding all flights for a day. Since the cancelations were due to something within the airline's control, the Federal Aviation Regs say that the airline must compensate each and every passenger accordingly, such as a free flight somewhere, money, and at least room and board for the night.
Just consider the much money American Airlines loses when they crash an airplane and then consider how much they lost during the flight attendant strike. The strike almost killed the airline but the crash merely lost a plane.
I'd assume that the university has an IT department and often uses students to help administrate the network. See if you can get a job there. The pay will most likely suck but the location is hard to beat in terms of distance. Also look at small companies in the area and instead of offering yourself as an IT security person, offer to do the WHOLE IT thing. Another option would be non-profits. A lot of Boys and Girls Clubs have computer networks that were donated in the late 90's that are in desperate need of help. They don't pay too bad and while it will be mostly grunt IT work you will have to deal with security too. Good luck and keep your options open.
I don't really know if this is a good or bad thing. I like the idea of having people caught quickly but at the same time I feel that law enforcement agencies would quickly find a way to constantly monitor the cameras, cutting into our privacy even more. Since these cameras are in public it doesn't bother me as much.
Over all I think it's a good idea but it will be exploited so I can't support it fully, even though I'd like to.
I think the interview is by far the most important part about getting the job. You wouldn't want to hire someone who has a degree from a great university but has a bad attitude and work ethic. Likewise you would want to hire someone from a decent but not great school if they show initiative, a desire to learn, and above almost everything else can work with others. I've found the things that help me get into jobs the most are jobs in which I've made a significant difference at the company.
Here at Purdue we use acmaint to syncronize accounts and passwords between many different systems, including unix accounts, Active Directory accounts, email accounts, and any departmental accounts that you may have. For instance, I have accounts for the Unix computers, Macintosh labs (auths against Unix I believe), the main Purdue.edu Active Directory structure, Department of Statistics, email services, School of Technology, and the Computer Science department. My password is synced among all of them by this service. Check out http://directory.purdue.edu/MAIL-HUB/ed/fields/acm aint_explain.html for a little more info on it.
I'm on the flight team at purdue university and this would be unbelievably useful for competition. We have an event called nav where a navigator plots a flight course given lats/longs and a hint on what they're looking for. They must plan times to the second and fuel burn to the tenth of a gallon. Not too hard until you realize your only items are a map, calculator, plotter (ruler with protractor), and a stopwatch. Combine this and a plane with no avionics it gets mighty hard to stay right on course.
Before the competition, we scout the event area (100mi x 100mi) for prominent landmarks that can be used for navigation. Normally we fly and take a photo and write down the photo number and lat/long of the point. With this sort of device, we could cover a hell of a lot more area.
USB keys are awesome, especially since they get fairly large, such as 512mb (big for flash storage). We use them at work as boot floppies to install Ghost images instead of the usual floppies. The main advantage for this is that they boot faster. Of course, if you want something huge, external hard drives kick ass. Plus, they sometimes support multiple connections (wrong word?) such as USB 1.1/2.0 and Firewire on the same drive. They're a lot bigger than usb keys though. The iPod's a good compromise if you want to spend the money. AND you've got an MP3 player, what more could you want?
I doubt the 80%, but it would help quite a bit. Currently, weather related accidents account for only 2.6% of accidents in General Aviation according to the AOPA's Air Safety Foundation's Nall report from last year (http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/03nall.pdf). This may not seem like much until one realizes that these accidents comprise 12.6% of all FATAL accidents. The vast majority of these accidents are not people flying purposely in IMC, but VFR only pilots flying into weather.
Although all pilots are trained a little on how to fly on instruments alone, the minimum number of hours to get your license is only 3, and a short 10 minutes test on the checkride. To top this off, most recreational pilots rarely practice this sort of training. So say a recreational pilot flies into IMC on accident, he/she may/probably not have the nececary training to safely maneuver their vay out of the clouds solely by reference to antiquated instruments where you must form an image of your attitude based on the readings of 6 basic instruments and your position based on another 2. And they better hope that no instrument fails since the vacuum pump which powers your primary instrument (attitude indicator, especially for those not trained in partial panel flying) has a meam time between failure of only about 2000 hrs.
Imagine this situation with one of these. The pilot flies into the clouds and instead of having to rely on their possibly rusty knowledge of instrument flying, they look down and there's a nice picture of world that you can't see.
Besides this benefit, the workload on pilots in IMC would decrease since the picture they have on the panel is the picture they used to have to form in their heads. Another added benefit is that the mean time between failures for solid state gyros is about 10000hrs, why do you think the airlines use them? Of course, you are certainly right about the information overload, but usually this is a case of the pilot not knowing how to manipulate the system to his/her desires, much like a n00b on a computer. Check out some CRM articles on this for more information on the whole glass cockpit dilemna. Flight Deck Automation Issues is an excellent website for studies on this. I could go on, but I really don't feel like typing anymore.
It's really just a case of wanting to learn something. My major at school has absolutely nothing to do with CS, but I'm employed in the IT department. The only reason I've kept working in computers for the past 8 years is because I enjoy learning about them; and I would bet that almost anybody that's good in IT or CS has the same desire to learn all they can about computers.
The local municipality for me, Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant, started laying a bunch of fiber to businesses and the home, just like yours did and offer the fiber at a much better price than say Comcast cable or Verizon DSL, the two other service providers in the area. Unfortunately, companies such as the aforementioned Comcast and Verizon didn't like this competition from local municipal owned/run ISP's and succesfully lobbied our state (MA, I still can't spell it) to ban this practice. A grandfather clause was included so TMLP is still expanding their fiber, but because of these anti-competitive laws no other cities can do this themselves.
So the lesson is, even if you can increase bandwidth and make jobs in your town while offering better service and prices, it doesn't matter because the companies have the legislation by the balls.
This, in a round about way, reminds me of something I learned in class the over day (the part about losing the dog). In the 727 there's a switch affectionately refered to as "the puppy snuffer". It closes a valve in the cargo hold the allows air out of the plane. If it's closed, no fresh air can get down there, nor can the area be heated since no air is circulating.
On a side note about the RFID tags. Purdue's Aviation Technology department has been doing research into this with United Airlines at their Denver base to help prevent theft of the luggage, it's apparently a huge problem there. Most of the RFID work is being done in the baggage sorting facility, not actually getting the baggage to the passengers. The airlines can save a huge amount of money by speeding up the movement of baggage through the terminal since less bags misrouted means less money spent on fixing the problem. The tags also speed up an airplane's turnaround time by getting the luggage to and from it faster.
I hate to say it, especially since Slashdot will rip me a new one, but I really like Exchange / Outlook for this. Covers everything I want, and syncs with my Palm. Granted it's expensive if you buy it outright, but I recieved it in small business server 2003 as a consultant thingie at work and use it for my own information. I have been looking for something with this functionality on Linux but haven't found it yet. And don't say "it's too slow for large servers", I know it is, but there's only one user on it. And when you block EVERY port except 80, 443, and 25, it's secure enough (port 80/443 for webmail and RPC and duh on the 25). Haven't had one problem with it. I look forward to the flames, it just isn't quite hot enough in here.
Definitely right on the money. Although I'm not out of school yet (1 more year if I don't take a semester off:)), I would definitely say it's worth it, and certainly not for the classes. I'm an aviation major, so most of my classes are very specialized, unlike many other majors (I fly planes, weee!), but I've taken enough bullshit classes such as English 101 and CS 110 (welcome to Word, ick) already to know these won't help too much in the real world.
The real benefit to school so far has been the extra-curricular stuff, including the parties. Make friends with as many people as you can, including the professors, students, and anyone else you might meet. Join clubs, take extra classes, do research, or get a job, just DON'T HOLE YOURSELF UP! I've known student graduating whom virtually nobody knows because they don't get out there. They certainly won't be getting a job anytime soon. I also know students who have already as juniors worked internships at a few different major airlines who are almost garunteed a job after school because of this.
The college degree seems to be more of a formality now than a deal maker, and as most people will tell you, it's not what you know, it's who you know. All in all, college is just a really fun time if you make it a point to do so. Just don't be a joyless anal retentive tool:) HAVE FUN!
Note: if this post doesn't make sense, it's cause I'm lazy and drinking. Gotta love college
I gave the current version of the treaty a cursory look through and notice much of it has been crossed out, including the offending part about a device that decrypts signals. In fact the whole article (16) has been struck from the treaty. Here is their reason for killing this article:
Secondly, these provisions have imposed collateral costs on important public policy priorities that far outweigh any benefit to rights holders in countries which have implemented the similar provisions in the WCT and WPPT in the copyright and related rights context. For example, copyright owner technological measures in national legislation have caused significant harm to competition, technological innovation, scientific research and freedom of expression, but have not had any appreciable effect in preventing or slowing widespread copyright infringement in the digital context. Given this, we believe that it is premature to grant legal protection for a further and broader layer of technological measures for broadcast signals and cable transmissions.
You'll also notice that with this the part requiring a "broadcast flag" has been removed. Now if only it would have been easy to figure this out from reading it (friggin' lawyers).
On another note, why don't us geeks write (or call it's even more effective) our Congressmen to bitch about this. AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) does this whenever a new rule comes out limiting flying and usually succeeds in getting it reversed or simply thrown out. Considering how few pilots there are (1% of people in the US), I'm sure this would work with the number of people on just Slashdot. Just my 2c
While these paths are longer, I certainly find them easier to read. I personally hate the POSIX structure that Linux uses. Whereas most people who are experienced find navigating it second nature, I find it extremely difficult. For instance, where am I going to find a program's executables? Is it going to be in/usr/bin/bin or/sbin? Or maybe some other place. This new system is miles better for user friendliness, the single biggest problem (in my opinion) facing major Linux adoption on the desktop. While I may not like the POSIX way, I do not like Windows either, mainly because at first glance it looks simple (Program Files, Documents and Settings, etc.), but when you dive deeper, the file system gets pretty complicated quickly, although it is more intuitive to a new user than the Linux file system. I really hope that this new file system idea catches on.
How many of these people actually WANT Gator on their computer? About 90% of the bitching I hear from friends with computer problems has to do with adware, so I'm guessing that they didn't want it there in the first place. I'm not saying that LL Bean is right in suing, I can see their point though.
Slashdot Mirror
They held up progress in aviation for almost 10 years in the US by making their plans secret and suing anybody who made planes. Their big patent fight was against Curtis Aircraft who invented ailerons, whereas the Wright's used wing-warping. During that time up till the early 20's, France took the lead in aviation, hence all the French sounding parts: fuselage, aileron, empenage, etc. Of course they contributed the most out of anyone in the old days but after the first few flyers there wasn't nearly as much innovation coming out of Wright Airplanes. The last truly succesful product they made, please correct me if I'm wrong, was the Wright Cyclone, a large radial engine used in WWII aircraft.
Sorry to say this, but you've been beaten to it by DSN
Honestly I didn't catch where the FUD was at. The article did not demonize the internet in any way. It seemed to be more about the current treatment and common characteristics of people who have committed these acts.
I'd still take the Mac though.
It really comes down to how these companies makes money. Unlike many foreign cell services, our companies make their money on the add ons to cell phone plans. They charge $30 for a phone that costs $250 to make but at the same time charge extra for a feature that the phone was designed for. Contrast this to the Japanese way of selling the phone for a profit and charging a sane amount for the service. Our companies need to realize that not everyone needs or even wants a freakin camera phone and that the ones that do will pay the extra money for the phone. At the same time please give us the full capabilities of the network if we wish to pay for the equipment (phone) to use it. The same thing is happening in the American auto industry where the Big Two (Chrysler doesn't count anymore) make all their profits from financing whereas the foreign manufacturers make their money from selling the car. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this will stop soon.
It's sort of wierd since I've only just now gotten back into using Unix, but my first experiences with computing were with Unix. My father had a medical practice which my mother ran and still does. They were one of the first offices in the area to use a computer for scheduling. They needed multiple terminals, so the only OS available at the time (mid 80's) was Unix. Since both my parents worked, I was brought into the office a lot and was supposedly overjoyed when allowed to bang away in the text editor part of PCN (a physician's office software, I don't know what it does).
The family has always picked up the newest popular computer technology from the time the Apple IIGS came out and I got to play with it constantly. Lego LOGO was my first introduction to programming during elementary school. The Boston Museum of Science offered classes on it and since I played with Legos at home, it made sense to learn LOGO for them. Apparently these courses aren't offered any more, especially since Legos use some graphical programming interface now. Text is easier.
To start out kids, my recommendation would be to start with programming basic or maybe a really easy web language. This way they can see the results immediately, kids love instant gratification. Lego LOGO was a great language because you could program it with simple commands and see the result NOW. I wish it were still around.
SabreTech was considered qualified before the accident. As a maintenance shop, they had to be certified the FAA as well as approved to do the maintenance for ValuJet by ValuJet's POI (an FAA employee in charge of making sure the airline complies with regulation). While ValuJet is responsible for making sure SabreTech does it's job, they can not check every maintenance item, nor are they supposed to. This is like the FAA making sure the airline complies with it's operating specifications but the FAA doesn't watch every single thing going on. It's impossible. The crash was caused by oxygen generators placed onboard without notice to the crew, which was an illegal action by the single employee of SabreTech who packed the container. There was also some fault placed with the airplane manufacturer for not having any way to detect a fire in that part of the cargo hold. In any case, according to the NTSB all parties involved, SabreTech, ValuJet, and the FAA were faulted. I worded my statement badly and you are right about it also being ValuJet's fault. This accident is why AirTran and many other airlines now do all their maintenance in house. NTSB report
True, the cost of a crash is also associated with what the cause was. Accidents in which it looks like negligence cause a lot more damage to the airline than a crash caused by some crazy circumstance (like the United Souix City crash). Some airlines also manage to weather crashes better than others. Somehow American has managed to not get hurt by their accidents whereas other airlines such as ValuJet are destroyed because of just one accident that wasn't even their fault. I'm just trying to think about it in the way the airline bean counters will about this.
I'd say the computer crash is worse for the airline. It gives the passengers the feeling that Comair doesn't know what they're doing. Passengers will avoid flying on them (Delta) because of the inconvenience they have caused. Besides this, a physical crash may cost less money than grounding all flights for a day. Since the cancelations were due to something within the airline's control, the Federal Aviation Regs say that the airline must compensate each and every passenger accordingly, such as a free flight somewhere, money, and at least room and board for the night.
Just consider the much money American Airlines loses when they crash an airplane and then consider how much they lost during the flight attendant strike. The strike almost killed the airline but the crash merely lost a plane.
I'd assume that the university has an IT department and often uses students to help administrate the network. See if you can get a job there. The pay will most likely suck but the location is hard to beat in terms of distance. Also look at small companies in the area and instead of offering yourself as an IT security person, offer to do the WHOLE IT thing. Another option would be non-profits. A lot of Boys and Girls Clubs have computer networks that were donated in the late 90's that are in desperate need of help. They don't pay too bad and while it will be mostly grunt IT work you will have to deal with security too. Good luck and keep your options open.
I don't really know if this is a good or bad thing. I like the idea of having people caught quickly but at the same time I feel that law enforcement agencies would quickly find a way to constantly monitor the cameras, cutting into our privacy even more. Since these cameras are in public it doesn't bother me as much.
Over all I think it's a good idea but it will be exploited so I can't support it fully, even though I'd like to.
I think the interview is by far the most important part about getting the job. You wouldn't want to hire someone who has a degree from a great university but has a bad attitude and work ethic. Likewise you would want to hire someone from a decent but not great school if they show initiative, a desire to learn, and above almost everything else can work with others. I've found the things that help me get into jobs the most are jobs in which I've made a significant difference at the company.
Here at Purdue we use acmaint to syncronize accounts and passwords between many different systems, including unix accounts, Active Directory accounts, email accounts, and any departmental accounts that you may have. For instance, I have accounts for the Unix computers, Macintosh labs (auths against Unix I believe), the main Purdue.edu Active Directory structure, Department of Statistics, email services, School of Technology, and the Computer Science department. My password is synced among all of them by this service. Check out http://directory.purdue.edu/MAIL-HUB/ed/fields/acm aint_explain.html for a little more info on it.
I'm on the flight team at purdue university and this would be unbelievably useful for competition. We have an event called nav where a navigator plots a flight course given lats/longs and a hint on what they're looking for. They must plan times to the second and fuel burn to the tenth of a gallon. Not too hard until you realize your only items are a map, calculator, plotter (ruler with protractor), and a stopwatch. Combine this and a plane with no avionics it gets mighty hard to stay right on course. Before the competition, we scout the event area (100mi x 100mi) for prominent landmarks that can be used for navigation. Normally we fly and take a photo and write down the photo number and lat/long of the point. With this sort of device, we could cover a hell of a lot more area.
USB keys are awesome, especially since they get fairly large, such as 512mb (big for flash storage). We use them at work as boot floppies to install Ghost images instead of the usual floppies. The main advantage for this is that they boot faster. Of course, if you want something huge, external hard drives kick ass. Plus, they sometimes support multiple connections (wrong word?) such as USB 1.1/2.0 and Firewire on the same drive. They're a lot bigger than usb keys though. The iPod's a good compromise if you want to spend the money. AND you've got an MP3 player, what more could you want?
I doubt the 80%, but it would help quite a bit. Currently, weather related accidents account for only 2.6% of accidents in General Aviation according to the AOPA's Air Safety Foundation's Nall report from last year (http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/03nall.pdf). This may not seem like much until one realizes that these accidents comprise 12.6% of all FATAL accidents. The vast majority of these accidents are not people flying purposely in IMC, but VFR only pilots flying into weather.
Although all pilots are trained a little on how to fly on instruments alone, the minimum number of hours to get your license is only 3, and a short 10 minutes test on the checkride. To top this off, most recreational pilots rarely practice this sort of training. So say a recreational pilot flies into IMC on accident, he/she may/probably not have the nececary training to safely maneuver their vay out of the clouds solely by reference to antiquated instruments where you must form an image of your attitude based on the readings of 6 basic instruments and your position based on another 2. And they better hope that no instrument fails since the vacuum pump which powers your primary instrument (attitude indicator, especially for those not trained in partial panel flying) has a meam time between failure of only about 2000 hrs.
Imagine this situation with one of these. The pilot flies into the clouds and instead of having to rely on their possibly rusty knowledge of instrument flying, they look down and there's a nice picture of world that you can't see.
Besides this benefit, the workload on pilots in IMC would decrease since the picture they have on the panel is the picture they used to have to form in their heads. Another added benefit is that the mean time between failures for solid state gyros is about 10000hrs, why do you think the airlines use them? Of course, you are certainly right about the information overload, but usually this is a case of the pilot not knowing how to manipulate the system to his/her desires, much like a n00b on a computer. Check out some CRM articles on this for more information on the whole glass cockpit dilemna. Flight Deck Automation Issues is an excellent website for studies on this. I could go on, but I really don't feel like typing anymore.
It's really just a case of wanting to learn something. My major at school has absolutely nothing to do with CS, but I'm employed in the IT department. The only reason I've kept working in computers for the past 8 years is because I enjoy learning about them; and I would bet that almost anybody that's good in IT or CS has the same desire to learn all they can about computers.
The local municipality for me, Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant, started laying a bunch of fiber to businesses and the home, just like yours did and offer the fiber at a much better price than say Comcast cable or Verizon DSL, the two other service providers in the area. Unfortunately, companies such as the aforementioned Comcast and Verizon didn't like this competition from local municipal owned/run ISP's and succesfully lobbied our state (MA, I still can't spell it) to ban this practice. A grandfather clause was included so TMLP is still expanding their fiber, but because of these anti-competitive laws no other cities can do this themselves.
So the lesson is, even if you can increase bandwidth and make jobs in your town while offering better service and prices, it doesn't matter because the companies have the legislation by the balls.
This, in a round about way, reminds me of something I learned in class the over day (the part about losing the dog). In the 727 there's a switch affectionately refered to as "the puppy snuffer". It closes a valve in the cargo hold the allows air out of the plane. If it's closed, no fresh air can get down there, nor can the area be heated since no air is circulating.
On a side note about the RFID tags. Purdue's Aviation Technology department has been doing research into this with United Airlines at their Denver base to help prevent theft of the luggage, it's apparently a huge problem there. Most of the RFID work is being done in the baggage sorting facility, not actually getting the baggage to the passengers. The airlines can save a huge amount of money by speeding up the movement of baggage through the terminal since less bags misrouted means less money spent on fixing the problem. The tags also speed up an airplane's turnaround time by getting the luggage to and from it faster.
I hate to say it, especially since Slashdot will rip me a new one, but I really like Exchange / Outlook for this. Covers everything I want, and syncs with my Palm. Granted it's expensive if you buy it outright, but I recieved it in small business server 2003 as a consultant thingie at work and use it for my own information. I have been looking for something with this functionality on Linux but haven't found it yet. And don't say "it's too slow for large servers", I know it is, but there's only one user on it. And when you block EVERY port except 80, 443, and 25, it's secure enough (port 80/443 for webmail and RPC and duh on the 25). Haven't had one problem with it. I look forward to the flames, it just isn't quite hot enough in here.
Definitely right on the money. Although I'm not out of school yet (1 more year if I don't take a semester off:)), I would definitely say it's worth it, and certainly not for the classes. I'm an aviation major, so most of my classes are very specialized, unlike many other majors (I fly planes, weee!), but I've taken enough bullshit classes such as English 101 and CS 110 (welcome to Word, ick) already to know these won't help too much in the real world. :)
The real benefit to school so far has been the extra-curricular stuff, including the parties. Make friends with as many people as you can, including the professors, students, and anyone else you might meet. Join clubs, take extra classes, do research, or get a job, just DON'T HOLE YOURSELF UP! I've known student graduating whom virtually nobody knows because they don't get out there. They certainly won't be getting a job anytime soon. I also know students who have already as juniors worked internships at a few different major airlines who are almost garunteed a job after school because of this.
The college degree seems to be more of a formality now than a deal maker, and as most people will tell you, it's not what you know, it's who you know. All in all, college is just a really fun time if you make it a point to do so. Just don't be a joyless anal retentive tool
HAVE FUN!
Note: if this post doesn't make sense, it's cause I'm lazy and drinking. Gotta love college
You'll also notice that with this the part requiring a "broadcast flag" has been removed. Now if only it would have been easy to figure this out from reading it (friggin' lawyers).
On another note, why don't us geeks write (or call it's even more effective) our Congressmen to bitch about this. AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) does this whenever a new rule comes out limiting flying and usually succeeds in getting it reversed or simply thrown out. Considering how few pilots there are (1% of people in the US), I'm sure this would work with the number of people on just Slashdot. Just my 2c
While these paths are longer, I certainly find them easier to read. I personally hate the POSIX structure that Linux uses. Whereas most people who are experienced find navigating it second nature, I find it extremely difficult. For instance, where am I going to find a program's executables? Is it going to be in /usr/bin /bin or /sbin? Or maybe some other place. This new system is miles better for user friendliness, the single biggest problem (in my opinion) facing major Linux adoption on the desktop. While I may not like the POSIX way, I do not like Windows either, mainly because at first glance it looks simple (Program Files, Documents and Settings, etc.), but when you dive deeper, the file system gets pretty complicated quickly, although it is more intuitive to a new user than the Linux file system.
I really hope that this new file system idea catches on.
Frontpage?
How many of these people actually WANT Gator on their computer? About 90% of the bitching I hear from friends with computer problems has to do with adware, so I'm guessing that they didn't want it there in the first place. I'm not saying that LL Bean is right in suing, I can see their point though.