If you do test positive for swine flu then proper public health measures can be taken.
It's the fucking flu! Have you never had the flu before?
WTF do you think "proper public health measures" are for a highly infectious, incurable disease that in normal situations runs its course in under a week? CLUE: It does NOT involve going into a hospital where you can infect other especially vulnerable people only to have a doctor tell you what you SHOULD already know, which is that he can't do anything for you!
Depends on what "Proper public health measures entails." If it means "Getting an excuse from a doctor so you can at home instead of coming to infect me at work" I think it is very reasonable. I know a lot of people whose employers simply refuse to believe them if they need to call in sick for 3 days because they are, well, sick. They need some sort of written slip from a doctor indicating that they are ill. If it means "Going to the doctor and demanding Vancomycin or other hard hitting, last resort type of Antibiotic. If I don't get it, I'll sue you for malpractice"....that I obviously won't agree with.
Basically I don't care what the mortality rates say, I still really don't want to get the flu. 3-7 days of feeling like complete hell and a 0.01% chance of death is something I'd rather avoid. If you have the flu, stay the fuck home.
You know, it is hard to say. I am having a hard time finding old market share data but consider this. Windows XP was released in October 2001 and XP Service Pack 2 was released in August(?) 2004. That is a 2 year, 10 month gap from Release to the Service Pack that made it a decent operating system. Most people I knew were afraid of XP before SP2 came out and were not budging from the (By that point) rock solid Windows 2000. Vista was released when? January 2007 or something like that? Here we are 1 year and 8 months into the Vista experiment (With a successor on the horizon...when XP SP2 was released I don't even think there was any information on the next windows version being bandied about). Yet, Vista still has achieved a 30% market share, apparently.
I'd have to guess that pre-SP2 XP would not have been much higher than 30% despite an additional year of availability...and that is with the absolutely horrendous publicity that Windows Vista got. I would think that the numbers would suggest to Microsoft that it did pretty well.
Oddly, I can't think of any specific examples now but the knowledge base stuff is just completely awful most of the time. At times I have went to Microsoft.com to look up an Event Log Error. Most of the time they have a single solution that is something along the lines of "Make sure your network cable is plugged in." or "Obviously you have IIS turned off. Turn it on." I don't expect to have every single answer laid out for me and it probably is difficult but give me some idea past "Troubleshooting 101 for complete morons". I'll accept that many operating system problems are actually due to third party software that is being installed and Microsoft is not really expected to support it but if this problem is seen a lot with Symantec Backup Exec installed on the server, tell me that so I have another lead to follow.
That said, I rarely use any part of the Microsoft site (Knowledge base, Blogs, or Forums) and rely on Google to get me in touch with information that is almost certainly outside of any Microsoft Support channels.
I worked at a large company where my input was limited to some very minor details about how the IT department was run (I'm talking..."What naming scheme should we use for the servers" type decisions). In general, the IT department was managed so poorly that it was bordering on embaressing to be part of the group and the company at large was having so many problems that they were losing business and facing heavy rounds of layoffs. My boss was sticky sweet nice but incompetent as heck despite having titles such as "MSCE" and "CNA/CNE". I hated it. I felt like (And more or less was) a meaningless cog for a sinking department in a sinking ship. I was putting serious thought into dumping IT as a field completely.
Instead, I ended up doing consulting gigs for really small companies and ended up working for a slightly bigger (~100 users + ~200 non computer users) company. The difference is night and day. It is only me and my semi-technical boss running the show (He spends a good deal of his time doing Engineering stuff) and he trusts my judgement most of the time and has given me really good ideas how to do some technical things. At one point, the Accounting group noticed that we were losing money on RMA and Return and Repair stuff but nobody could figure out a better way to do it. My boss told me about it and the answer was one of those plain as day things that they were over looking. He immediately went and told the President about my thoughts and I was eventually given a big part to play on the team that redid the RMA system. Before that, the higher ups barely tolerated my existence and saw me as a somewhat necessary evil. Since then, they let me participate in some business related meetings here and there and are all quite willing to listen to my suggestions. Most of the time my idea is not workable but instead of getting a "No" and no further explanation they tell me what the kinks in my idea are.
In the end, I love the job because I get to look outside of the Server room and learn about the company at times. Even when I don't contribute I get to spend some time seeing firsthand what the users actually need and where I can improve things for them. I highly recommend getting more involved if you have that opportunity.
Seriously though, can we really be sure of containing waste for 100 years? A lot can happen over that period of time. I admit I don't know anything about these containment facilities but the threat of natural disasters as well as man made disasters that might occur in the future are a pretty big unknown.
Not saying we shouldn't try but finding out 30 years into it that our facilities probably won't last 35, much less 100 could have some very serious repurcussions.
I cannot join in with the Linux community because of you people. You're just *too awful*.Instead of accepting that this stuff happens and it's bad, you childishly nerdsnort and start writing Microsoft with a dollar sign instead of an S, acting as if this stuff is some amazing manifestation of idiocy rather than a likely consequence of using a mainstream OS developed with time and budgetary constraints. It's going to have stupid bugs. Get the fuck over it.
I would like to join in with the Linux community, but all I ever hear is this pathetic nyerr-nyerr-nyerr garbage.
I do agree with a lot of things that you said, except for the main point. If you are truly the mature adult here you should be able to use the best tool for the job even if others who use it act like complete idiots. Most of the people you speak of aren't the ones doing hard core Linux development. There are some very brilliant, mature, and overall decent individuals in the Open Source Community. Heck if you really want to help, bring your Software Engineering skills and your open mindedness to the community. You'll help it grow in two ways!
It's one thing when you're talking about using other's computers (like at the office, or at school), but when it's your own computer, there's definitely grounds to be concerned about it.
It is your computer, yes, but their Network and Educational System. You can still run whatever the hell you want be it Windows 7, Snow Leopard, Ubuntu 9, Windows ME, DOS 6.0 but you better make sure you can run their "Exam4" software. Somewhere down the line they probably spent a good deal of time researching/comparing software packages, putting together a project plan, and rolling it out. I can't see it being reasonable to expect them to change everything to make sure that it can run on an OS with a 1% desktop market share (I'd imagine Linux does have a greater share in academic environments though). If you are the type of person that it is so important to you that you get to run Linux, you probably spend enough time messing with your computer to get "Exam4" running with WiNE or something, anyway.
If my job required me to run Linux at home, I'd be deleriously happy!;) I've fallen into supporting a shop that is almost exclusively Microsoft due to the job market in my area. Hypothetically, if I knew nothing about Linux, had no desire to learn, and went to a job interview that told me I had to.....it probably wouldn't be a good fit for my skill set. Same goes for Colleges, probably even more so because you can always find another College but can't always find a different job. If you are tech orientated and the College is narrow minded in its approach to IT issues to the point of forcing Windows, perhaps this school isn't right for you. If it isn't high on your list of priorities, suck it up and run their software.
I find it hard to believe that you can't check Exchange Web Mail without Internet Explorer. The IT department would have to intentionally disallow other browsers which seems like madness. I have used OWA (Outlook Web Access) at various times running Exchange 5.5 (Actually, I am not 100% sure about this. It has been awhile), Exchange 2000, Exchange 2003, and Exchange 2007 with Firefox. Some features are not present if you do not use IE (Exchange 2007 has a feature that allows you to connect to network shares through web mail which is actually kind of cool. That does not work with Firefox) but by and large OWA with Firefox is a viable setup. Exchange 2010 supposedly is doing away with crippled web mail for other browsers, but we will see if that is actually true or not.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know what most Educational institutions use for E-Mail these days? I would think that Exchange would be out of the question in part because of the high cost of CALS. An Exchange CAL MSRPs at around $70. A school with 10,000 Faculty/Staff would be shelling out $700,000! I think Exchange has special "Unlimited CALS" packages for this type of environment but I am sure that is also quite pricy.
Since we are talking about sane people here, I think that said people decide for themselves what is a parable and what probably happened. Maybe they join an Organized Religion but keep private opinions, maybe they remain outside the Organized Religions but still consider themselves Christians...mostly to distance themselves from some of the less sane aspects of Christianity. MOST of the Christians I know fall into one of the two categories I listed above. If they choose faith to explain the parts of universe/life that science has not explained (And maybe never will) who I am to judge? Provided that their ideas do not lead them to want to undermine scientific progress.
Of course, some are really into all aspects, give 1/5th of their income to the Church, and believe in Burning Bushes, Boats with 2 of every Animal, and all sorts of crazy stuff. They are usually the ones who flip when science seeks to find answers and are dangerous to progress in general.
Just for the hell of it, what would you say is your typical Demographic in this instance?
Note: I'm not talking about corporate users, these are from side jobs that I pick up. I actually do a fair amount of work this way (I do a good job so I get recommended a lot by word of mouth. I actually like working with reasonable residential people.;) ) I am from Milwaukee and most of the people that I do stuff for are suburban Blue Collar workers who do not use computers extensively at work and are between the ages of 35-55. They are generally pretty bright and are willing to try to learn/understand some technical stuff. I am willing to spend time explaining things to them and while I could probably make more money, it is pretty satisfying when they call me and want to try installing RAM or a second internal hard drive on their own and just want a bit of advice.
Perhaps one of the strangest things I have noted is that over half of them know the term "Linux" and have a vague notion that it is something that can be used as a replacement for "Microsoft Windows" and ask questions about it. I lay out what it is and there have been a few who have considered it but quite often obscure pieces of software (Fishing Map software being a big one) make it not really an option.
Most of the consumers you dealt with trust Microsoft? I'm actually kind of shocked. Most of the people I knew that asked me what was going on with the WGA popups were frightened that they were doing something illegal (Ones who are not) and were going to get a fine or something. It seemed to give them the feeling that they specifically were being targeted and watched by this huge corporation. The corporation doesn't really have any Stores or anything like that so they can't really imagine what Microsoft is. It is Bill Gates and a bunch of faceless geeks and lawyers at some undisclosed location.
I think the worst part is when WGA updates itself or whatever happens. After not hearing from it for several months suddenly it starts nagging at you for some reason. When people are repeatedly asked "Are you stealing this software" they start to wonder what the heck is going on.
Must be some cracker to guess some of those security answers. *I* can't remember my own answers. "What was your favorite food (when you created this account 5 years ago)?" Ugh. For trivial accounts I started typing "IHateYou" as the response for all of them. (Yeah, I told my big secret. Now you can go try to crack my Adobe.Com account so you can download Adobe Acrobat 1000 times or something.)
I agree that most people are probably not simply reading and converting without outside influence....even if that influence is say....remember your Grandfather who had a huge influence on you as a child being a devout Christian. I don't agree with the part about believing a burning bush, flying horse, or whatever else. Most Christians who have been so since they were young do believe the literal interpretations of the Bible but an adult coming late to the party may very well just look at the Apple, the Burning Bush, the turning of water into wine as parables. "They aren't talking about an apple, they are talking about sex!" "Jesus didn't turn the water into wine, he just taught people to share!" or something similar. If they join an Organized Religion and see people spouting off "NO! It really happened like that!" they may be turned off to Organized Christianity but may maintain they faith in God.
Although for myself, I fall into your second category. Since I was raised Catholic I was told repeatedly that all of this stuff really happened as written. When I got to the age where I actually thought the tales over, I realized that I couldn't follow any form of Christianity because yes....the literal interpretation is too ludicrous to deal with.
That is a good idea. Private companies are NEVER corrupt. If the government would have kept that money given to the Telcos we would NEVER have gotten the communications infrastructure upgraded.
Wait, that's right. We DIDN'T get it upgraded. The Telcos pocketed the money.
Companies could say "Sure, we've got a great plan to launch men to Mars by 2018!" When 2018 comes around, they could say "uhhhh, we tried but it's really hard to do" (which is totally believable in this instance) "if you gave us the same amount of money, we'll have a man on Mars by 2028!"
I'm not a fan of big government either, but I also am not big on trusting huge corporations working with any sort of "public interest" in mind...which is what the space program is because the odds of any real financial gain from space exploration in the next 50 years are very low.
I know this has more to do with kids and the lash back from the Columbine thing, but even toy guns have gotten people in trouble at some points in time. Here is one and and this one more extreme that ended up with a child getting shot by police. (I don't really know about these news sources, but I seem to remember stories like these and I didn't want to spend too much time looking.
I think there are a good deal of cases like this. The second story is tragic but sadly, I can see where the police were coming from. If you tell someone to drop something you believe is a gun and they point it at you...well...you don't have much time to make a decision.
My point is, the treat of a gun will probably be treated as a gun even if there was not one present.
That and....won't they have the serial numbers for those iPhones? For those most part it seems Law Enforcement Officials can tell AT&T and other GSM carriers to report once these phones are registered and see who is using them. They may provide a lead back to the criminals (if the criminals are dumb THEY may be the ones registering.)
The Laptops and iTouches are a different story, but needless to say they are out of warranty. If someone in the area starts dumping them on Craigs List there may be a lead, otherwise it will be back of the truck selling which will probably net them 20% of the price at best. That is still decent money but seems like a lot of risk for $10,000.
On another note, I have a good story about a "Fell off the back of the truck" vendor. My friend ran into some who were clearly thieves about 8 years ago and agreed to buy a $6000 TV and Stereo system for $900. He told the guy to load the stuff in his truck and they would drive to the bank together. So they loaded it up and they both walked to my friend's truck. The merchant tried to get in but the door was locked. My buddy rolled his window down, yelled "Here is my business card. Call the cops on me for theft if you want!" and drove away. I know this is still morally questionable but we were basically just kids back then and it is pretty darn funny.
Ok, let me start by saying that I think these people are actually quacks and AM Radio, according to all studies, does not put us at any greater risk for cancer. If you plan on going to do extreme things like destroy radio towers one would think that you would do some homework on the issue, first.
That said, looking at the rate of death from certain types of cancer could lead to some people seeking (or making up) answers. Lung Cancer has gone from 20 deaths per 100,000 people in the United States to about 80 per 100,000 today. That is a pretty sharp increase. I am pretty sure that the main cause, smoking tobacco has declined since that time. As the US moves away from manufacturing jobs the liklihood that your work environment is causing lung cancer drops as workplaces are "safer". That means you have to attack something in the general environment, which leaves you a lot of different factors. Chemicals in the air from power plants, cars, and whatever else seems like the first place to look but if you drive a car like many of these people probably do it would be hypocritical to scream about pollution. If you do not look into it much, various types of "Radiation" floating through the air at an increasing rate has to be a very easy thing to point a finger at.
Promoting (even embellishment) is one thing...and none of the screen shots showed up when I looked at the article so I don't know how extreme this "course" is....telling outright lies about product is another. Some people who are less technically apt will actually trust Best Buy Employees to give them proper information so they can make an informed purchase.
Reminds me of a company I worked for. They were trying to work with their accounting system and did a bunch of time studies and such. In the end, the President looked at the ACTUAL NUMBERS, decided he didn't like them, and changed them. Which of course, made me wonder why people spent a bunch of time and money doing the studies in the first place.
I think a lot of times, people have an idea of what types of numbers they want and do a study to try to validate them. If they numbers match or exceed their expectations, great! If the numbers don't quite come out how they wanted, they'll push in both directions (their idea of what it should be and the actual) to meet in the middle. If someone asks them about the numbers, they can say a study was done. Slightly "Adjusted" numbers sound a lot better than "I just made this up."
I'd actually assume that proper "Unschooling" would be even more work. If you are just following a general syllabus or something you just grab some books, tell them what to read by a given day and check out their work. Unschooling seems to involve a lot of allowing the child to veer off towards what they find interesting. This may easy if you are very familiar with the material that they want to study but if they suddenly decide that they want to study Japanese Language, you are going to have to sit down and hammer through it as well.
I understand that you won't be holding their hands every step of the way, but not having the time to provide the proper guidance/help for an area they are interested in seems like a step towards a disaster.
Yeah, that can be the problem with Home/Unschooled children. I have only two cases of "Home Schooling" where I know the parties involved well enough to have an opinion. The first one I knew was a Single Mom who was probably about the least suitable teacher for her child. The girl was knocked up and working at Wendy's by age 16. She had absolutely no knowledge of anything by that point and probably read at a 5th grade level....and that might be a generous assessment.
The other case is a guy I work with. He and his Sister were unschooled as children. They are both bright but not overwhelmingly brilliant. They went to college and both ended up with decent jobs in fields they are interested in. What struck me the most is how personable the guy is. I once assumed home/unschooled kids would grow up stunted socially but they are both interesting, funny, tactful, and compassionate. I guess as it turns out, their parents sent them to some classes somewhere (not quite sure how it works) where the parents felt they could not do an adequate job or lacked the resources. Chemistry would be a good example of one, as they lacked the ability the go out and buy a fume hood, chemicals, glassware, etc....and Physical Education as they lacked people and equipment to introduce the children to Team Sports properly (Note that some may disagree but I think team sports can be very positive to learn as a way to entertain yourself, interact with others, and keep in good physical condition.
My wife and I intend to have children in the next 3 years and we have put some thought into a home/unschooling possibility. Between us we have a pretty good knowledge base....I have a Biochemistry Degree (But I work in IT now) so I have a good Math/Science/Technology background and have studied Philosophy on my own quite a bit. I know this is Slashdot but I also love sports and was a pretty good athlete growing up so I could guide them that way. She does the Social Studies thing...very strong in History and Civics/Poli Science and also speaks decent Spanish. We are both very avid readers so have a great deal of experience in the Literature world. The problem areas would probably be Grammatical English (Neither one of us remember half the parts of speech that get taught), Music (My wife does play the Piano), and Art (As far as DOING art. My wife knows a lot about art in the historical sense.)
The problem? We are both going to have to work. No doubt. Her work consists of teaching in a Public School. Will she have enough left in her after teaching a full day of classes to come home and teach another half days worth of lessons? My work is in the IT field so those occasional stretches of 60+ hours for a few weeks would likely render me pretty useless. Unless enough money to raise a family on one income falls on our laps, there is no way we could do this. It is probably for the best though. We can try to find the best school we can to send them to and be sure to supplement their education with "Lessons" of our own.
My wife (finally) finished up her degree for secondary school Social Studies teaching and I started helping her browse through the job postings when she told me she was having a hard time finding anywhere to apply to. I hit a few sites and was absolutely astounded at the number of "Special Education" teacher positions that were open. They represented at least 50% of all available positions at all levels (Grade/Middle/High School).
That is frightening. I Graduated from High School only a decade ago and in my day, only the least capable of children was placed in a Special Education program. I'm talking about Down's Syndrome and other cases where the child had some severe cognitive disabilities. Either these disabilities have increased in frequency by several orders of magnitude or they are tracking faaaar too many ADD and similar cases into Special Ed. This disturbs me as I had always exhibited signs of ADHD and have been diagnosed as a mild case as an adult. If my children exhibit such signs, will they be categorized as Special Ed?
I got a little off the point I originally wanted to make, but if they can have this many Special Education programs, why not do the same in the other direction for intelligent/advanced students? I have a friend who teaches math for Milwaukee Public Schools and in the last few years they have been cutting Calculus from the cirriculum. The seven or so kids a year that used to make it to that level now wouldn't get a chance at it. That is truly a tragedy.
Don't just about all cable packages come with a DVR? I understand you'd probably rather use your Mythbox but if they give you a way to achieve the same result (Watching shows when you want...with the ability to skip commercials) why wouldn't you just do that?
That's an actual question. I have not paid for cable in about a decade so I truly don't know.
If the movie sucked anyway, why are you downloading it? Obviously it was worth something to you as you took the time to seek it out and then to watch it....likely 2-3 hours of your life. There are options other than shelling out $20 for a DVD to see content.
This isn't just an issue of you not paying some faceless Movie Studio execs/lawyers, and Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt....there are thousands of working class individuals in the industry that need to get paid too. If profits are down, guess who is out of a job first? A lot of people depend on that money people shell out to see movies and not all of them are super wealthy or complete bastards.
I myself just use the Netflix thing. For $15 a month I get to cycle through 3 DVD's at a time and watch the streaming content they put up. If I really really like one of the movies I do go purchase it, although this is very rare. For the cost of 12 movies a year I can watch as many as I want. Not a bad deal.
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If you do test positive for swine flu then proper public health measures can be taken.
It's the fucking flu! Have you never had the flu before?
WTF do you think "proper public health measures" are for a highly infectious, incurable disease that in normal situations runs its course in under a week? CLUE: It does NOT involve going into a hospital where you can infect other especially vulnerable people only to have a doctor tell you what you SHOULD already know, which is that he can't do anything for you!
Depends on what "Proper public health measures entails." If it means "Getting an excuse from a doctor so you can at home instead of coming to infect me at work" I think it is very reasonable. I know a lot of people whose employers simply refuse to believe them if they need to call in sick for 3 days because they are, well, sick. They need some sort of written slip from a doctor indicating that they are ill. If it means "Going to the doctor and demanding Vancomycin or other hard hitting, last resort type of Antibiotic. If I don't get it, I'll sue you for malpractice"....that I obviously won't agree with.
Basically I don't care what the mortality rates say, I still really don't want to get the flu. 3-7 days of feeling like complete hell and a 0.01% chance of death is something I'd rather avoid. If you have the flu, stay the fuck home.
You know, it is hard to say. I am having a hard time finding old market share data but consider this. Windows XP was released in October 2001 and XP Service Pack 2 was released in August(?) 2004. That is a 2 year, 10 month gap from Release to the Service Pack that made it a decent operating system. Most people I knew were afraid of XP before SP2 came out and were not budging from the (By that point) rock solid Windows 2000. Vista was released when? January 2007 or something like that? Here we are 1 year and 8 months into the Vista experiment (With a successor on the horizon...when XP SP2 was released I don't even think there was any information on the next windows version being bandied about). Yet, Vista still has achieved a 30% market share, apparently.
I'd have to guess that pre-SP2 XP would not have been much higher than 30% despite an additional year of availability...and that is with the absolutely horrendous publicity that Windows Vista got. I would think that the numbers would suggest to Microsoft that it did pretty well.
Oddly, I can't think of any specific examples now but the knowledge base stuff is just completely awful most of the time. At times I have went to Microsoft.com to look up an Event Log Error. Most of the time they have a single solution that is something along the lines of "Make sure your network cable is plugged in." or "Obviously you have IIS turned off. Turn it on." I don't expect to have every single answer laid out for me and it probably is difficult but give me some idea past "Troubleshooting 101 for complete morons". I'll accept that many operating system problems are actually due to third party software that is being installed and Microsoft is not really expected to support it but if this problem is seen a lot with Symantec Backup Exec installed on the server, tell me that so I have another lead to follow.
That said, I rarely use any part of the Microsoft site (Knowledge base, Blogs, or Forums) and rely on Google to get me in touch with information that is almost certainly outside of any Microsoft Support channels.
I worked at a large company where my input was limited to some very minor details about how the IT department was run (I'm talking..."What naming scheme should we use for the servers" type decisions). In general, the IT department was managed so poorly that it was bordering on embaressing to be part of the group and the company at large was having so many problems that they were losing business and facing heavy rounds of layoffs. My boss was sticky sweet nice but incompetent as heck despite having titles such as "MSCE" and "CNA/CNE". I hated it. I felt like (And more or less was) a meaningless cog for a sinking department in a sinking ship. I was putting serious thought into dumping IT as a field completely.
Instead, I ended up doing consulting gigs for really small companies and ended up working for a slightly bigger (~100 users + ~200 non computer users) company. The difference is night and day. It is only me and my semi-technical boss running the show (He spends a good deal of his time doing Engineering stuff) and he trusts my judgement most of the time and has given me really good ideas how to do some technical things. At one point, the Accounting group noticed that we were losing money on RMA and Return and Repair stuff but nobody could figure out a better way to do it. My boss told me about it and the answer was one of those plain as day things that they were over looking. He immediately went and told the President about my thoughts and I was eventually given a big part to play on the team that redid the RMA system. Before that, the higher ups barely tolerated my existence and saw me as a somewhat necessary evil. Since then, they let me participate in some business related meetings here and there and are all quite willing to listen to my suggestions. Most of the time my idea is not workable but instead of getting a "No" and no further explanation they tell me what the kinks in my idea are.
In the end, I love the job because I get to look outside of the Server room and learn about the company at times. Even when I don't contribute I get to spend some time seeing firsthand what the users actually need and where I can improve things for them. I highly recommend getting more involved if you have that opportunity.
Seriously though, can we really be sure of containing waste for 100 years? A lot can happen over that period of time. I admit I don't know anything about these containment facilities but the threat of natural disasters as well as man made disasters that might occur in the future are a pretty big unknown.
Not saying we shouldn't try but finding out 30 years into it that our facilities probably won't last 35, much less 100 could have some very serious repurcussions.
I cannot join in with the Linux community because of you people. You're just *too awful*.Instead of accepting that this stuff happens and it's bad, you childishly nerdsnort and start writing Microsoft with a dollar sign instead of an S, acting as if this stuff is some amazing manifestation of idiocy rather than a likely consequence of using a mainstream OS developed with time and budgetary constraints. It's going to have stupid bugs. Get the fuck over it.
I would like to join in with the Linux community, but all I ever hear is this pathetic nyerr-nyerr-nyerr garbage.
I do agree with a lot of things that you said, except for the main point. If you are truly the mature adult here you should be able to use the best tool for the job even if others who use it act like complete idiots. Most of the people you speak of aren't the ones doing hard core Linux development. There are some very brilliant, mature, and overall decent individuals in the Open Source Community. Heck if you really want to help, bring your Software Engineering skills and your open mindedness to the community. You'll help it grow in two ways!
It's one thing when you're talking about using other's computers (like at the office, or at school), but when it's your own computer, there's definitely grounds to be concerned about it.
It is your computer, yes, but their Network and Educational System. You can still run whatever the hell you want be it Windows 7, Snow Leopard, Ubuntu 9, Windows ME, DOS 6.0 but you better make sure you can run their "Exam4" software. Somewhere down the line they probably spent a good deal of time researching/comparing software packages, putting together a project plan, and rolling it out. I can't see it being reasonable to expect them to change everything to make sure that it can run on an OS with a 1% desktop market share (I'd imagine Linux does have a greater share in academic environments though). If you are the type of person that it is so important to you that you get to run Linux, you probably spend enough time messing with your computer to get "Exam4" running with WiNE or something, anyway.
If my job required me to run Linux at home, I'd be deleriously happy! ;) I've fallen into supporting a shop that is almost exclusively Microsoft due to the job market in my area. Hypothetically, if I knew nothing about Linux, had no desire to learn, and went to a job interview that told me I had to.....it probably wouldn't be a good fit for my skill set. Same goes for Colleges, probably even more so because you can always find another College but can't always find a different job. If you are tech orientated and the College is narrow minded in its approach to IT issues to the point of forcing Windows, perhaps this school isn't right for you. If it isn't high on your list of priorities, suck it up and run their software.
I find it hard to believe that you can't check Exchange Web Mail without Internet Explorer. The IT department would have to intentionally disallow other browsers which seems like madness. I have used OWA (Outlook Web Access) at various times running Exchange 5.5 (Actually, I am not 100% sure about this. It has been awhile), Exchange 2000, Exchange 2003, and Exchange 2007 with Firefox. Some features are not present if you do not use IE (Exchange 2007 has a feature that allows you to connect to network shares through web mail which is actually kind of cool. That does not work with Firefox) but by and large OWA with Firefox is a viable setup. Exchange 2010 supposedly is doing away with crippled web mail for other browsers, but we will see if that is actually true or not.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know what most Educational institutions use for E-Mail these days? I would think that Exchange would be out of the question in part because of the high cost of CALS. An Exchange CAL MSRPs at around $70. A school with 10,000 Faculty/Staff would be shelling out $700,000! I think Exchange has special "Unlimited CALS" packages for this type of environment but I am sure that is also quite pricy.
Since we are talking about sane people here, I think that said people decide for themselves what is a parable and what probably happened. Maybe they join an Organized Religion but keep private opinions, maybe they remain outside the Organized Religions but still consider themselves Christians...mostly to distance themselves from some of the less sane aspects of Christianity. MOST of the Christians I know fall into one of the two categories I listed above. If they choose faith to explain the parts of universe/life that science has not explained (And maybe never will) who I am to judge? Provided that their ideas do not lead them to want to undermine scientific progress.
Of course, some are really into all aspects, give 1/5th of their income to the Church, and believe in Burning Bushes, Boats with 2 of every Animal, and all sorts of crazy stuff. They are usually the ones who flip when science seeks to find answers and are dangerous to progress in general.
Just for the hell of it, what would you say is your typical Demographic in this instance?
Note: I'm not talking about corporate users, these are from side jobs that I pick up. I actually do a fair amount of work this way (I do a good job so I get recommended a lot by word of mouth. I actually like working with reasonable residential people. ;) ) I am from Milwaukee and most of the people that I do stuff for are suburban Blue Collar workers who do not use computers extensively at work and are between the ages of 35-55. They are generally pretty bright and are willing to try to learn/understand some technical stuff. I am willing to spend time explaining things to them and while I could probably make more money, it is pretty satisfying when they call me and want to try installing RAM or a second internal hard drive on their own and just want a bit of advice.
Perhaps one of the strangest things I have noted is that over half of them know the term "Linux" and have a vague notion that it is something that can be used as a replacement for "Microsoft Windows" and ask questions about it. I lay out what it is and there have been a few who have considered it but quite often obscure pieces of software (Fishing Map software being a big one) make it not really an option.
Most of the consumers you dealt with trust Microsoft? I'm actually kind of shocked. Most of the people I knew that asked me what was going on with the WGA popups were frightened that they were doing something illegal (Ones who are not) and were going to get a fine or something. It seemed to give them the feeling that they specifically were being targeted and watched by this huge corporation. The corporation doesn't really have any Stores or anything like that so they can't really imagine what Microsoft is. It is Bill Gates and a bunch of faceless geeks and lawyers at some undisclosed location.
I think the worst part is when WGA updates itself or whatever happens. After not hearing from it for several months suddenly it starts nagging at you for some reason. When people are repeatedly asked "Are you stealing this software" they start to wonder what the heck is going on.
Must be some cracker to guess some of those security answers. *I* can't remember my own answers. "What was your favorite food (when you created this account 5 years ago)?" Ugh. For trivial accounts I started typing "IHateYou" as the response for all of them. (Yeah, I told my big secret. Now you can go try to crack my Adobe.Com account so you can download Adobe Acrobat 1000 times or something.)
I agree that most people are probably not simply reading and converting without outside influence....even if that influence is say....remember your Grandfather who had a huge influence on you as a child being a devout Christian. I don't agree with the part about believing a burning bush, flying horse, or whatever else. Most Christians who have been so since they were young do believe the literal interpretations of the Bible but an adult coming late to the party may very well just look at the Apple, the Burning Bush, the turning of water into wine as parables. "They aren't talking about an apple, they are talking about sex!" "Jesus didn't turn the water into wine, he just taught people to share!" or something similar. If they join an Organized Religion and see people spouting off "NO! It really happened like that!" they may be turned off to Organized Christianity but may maintain they faith in God.
Although for myself, I fall into your second category. Since I was raised Catholic I was told repeatedly that all of this stuff really happened as written. When I got to the age where I actually thought the tales over, I realized that I couldn't follow any form of Christianity because yes....the literal interpretation is too ludicrous to deal with.
That is a good idea. Private companies are NEVER corrupt. If the government would have kept that money given to the Telcos we would NEVER have gotten the communications infrastructure upgraded.
Wait, that's right. We DIDN'T get it upgraded. The Telcos pocketed the money.
Companies could say "Sure, we've got a great plan to launch men to Mars by 2018!" When 2018 comes around, they could say "uhhhh, we tried but it's really hard to do" (which is totally believable in this instance) "if you gave us the same amount of money, we'll have a man on Mars by 2028!"
I'm not a fan of big government either, but I also am not big on trusting huge corporations working with any sort of "public interest" in mind...which is what the space program is because the odds of any real financial gain from space exploration in the next 50 years are very low.
I know this has more to do with kids and the lash back from the Columbine thing, but even toy guns have gotten people in trouble at some points in time. Here is one and and this one more extreme that ended up with a child getting shot by police. (I don't really know about these news sources, but I seem to remember stories like these and I didn't want to spend too much time looking.
I think there are a good deal of cases like this. The second story is tragic but sadly, I can see where the police were coming from. If you tell someone to drop something you believe is a gun and they point it at you...well...you don't have much time to make a decision.
My point is, the treat of a gun will probably be treated as a gun even if there was not one present.
That and....won't they have the serial numbers for those iPhones? For those most part it seems Law Enforcement Officials can tell AT&T and other GSM carriers to report once these phones are registered and see who is using them. They may provide a lead back to the criminals (if the criminals are dumb THEY may be the ones registering.)
The Laptops and iTouches are a different story, but needless to say they are out of warranty. If someone in the area starts dumping them on Craigs List there may be a lead, otherwise it will be back of the truck selling which will probably net them 20% of the price at best. That is still decent money but seems like a lot of risk for $10,000.
On another note, I have a good story about a "Fell off the back of the truck" vendor. My friend ran into some who were clearly thieves about 8 years ago and agreed to buy a $6000 TV and Stereo system for $900. He told the guy to load the stuff in his truck and they would drive to the bank together. So they loaded it up and they both walked to my friend's truck. The merchant tried to get in but the door was locked. My buddy rolled his window down, yelled "Here is my business card. Call the cops on me for theft if you want!" and drove away. I know this is still morally questionable but we were basically just kids back then and it is pretty darn funny.
Ok, let me start by saying that I think these people are actually quacks and AM Radio, according to all studies, does not put us at any greater risk for cancer. If you plan on going to do extreme things like destroy radio towers one would think that you would do some homework on the issue, first.
That said, looking at the rate of death from certain types of cancer could lead to some people seeking (or making up) answers. Lung Cancer has gone from 20 deaths per 100,000 people in the United States to about 80 per 100,000 today. That is a pretty sharp increase. I am pretty sure that the main cause, smoking tobacco has declined since that time. As the US moves away from manufacturing jobs the liklihood that your work environment is causing lung cancer drops as workplaces are "safer". That means you have to attack something in the general environment, which leaves you a lot of different factors. Chemicals in the air from power plants, cars, and whatever else seems like the first place to look but if you drive a car like many of these people probably do it would be hypocritical to scream about pollution. If you do not look into it much, various types of "Radiation" floating through the air at an increasing rate has to be a very easy thing to point a finger at.
Promoting (even embellishment) is one thing...and none of the screen shots showed up when I looked at the article so I don't know how extreme this "course" is....telling outright lies about product is another. Some people who are less technically apt will actually trust Best Buy Employees to give them proper information so they can make an informed purchase.
Reminds me of a company I worked for. They were trying to work with their accounting system and did a bunch of time studies and such. In the end, the President looked at the ACTUAL NUMBERS, decided he didn't like them, and changed them. Which of course, made me wonder why people spent a bunch of time and money doing the studies in the first place.
I think a lot of times, people have an idea of what types of numbers they want and do a study to try to validate them. If they numbers match or exceed their expectations, great! If the numbers don't quite come out how they wanted, they'll push in both directions (their idea of what it should be and the actual) to meet in the middle. If someone asks them about the numbers, they can say a study was done. Slightly "Adjusted" numbers sound a lot better than "I just made this up."
I'd actually assume that proper "Unschooling" would be even more work. If you are just following a general syllabus or something you just grab some books, tell them what to read by a given day and check out their work. Unschooling seems to involve a lot of allowing the child to veer off towards what they find interesting. This may easy if you are very familiar with the material that they want to study but if they suddenly decide that they want to study Japanese Language, you are going to have to sit down and hammer through it as well.
I understand that you won't be holding their hands every step of the way, but not having the time to provide the proper guidance/help for an area they are interested in seems like a step towards a disaster.
Yeah, that can be the problem with Home/Unschooled children. I have only two cases of "Home Schooling" where I know the parties involved well enough to have an opinion. The first one I knew was a Single Mom who was probably about the least suitable teacher for her child. The girl was knocked up and working at Wendy's by age 16. She had absolutely no knowledge of anything by that point and probably read at a 5th grade level....and that might be a generous assessment.
The other case is a guy I work with. He and his Sister were unschooled as children. They are both bright but not overwhelmingly brilliant. They went to college and both ended up with decent jobs in fields they are interested in. What struck me the most is how personable the guy is. I once assumed home/unschooled kids would grow up stunted socially but they are both interesting, funny, tactful, and compassionate. I guess as it turns out, their parents sent them to some classes somewhere (not quite sure how it works) where the parents felt they could not do an adequate job or lacked the resources. Chemistry would be a good example of one, as they lacked the ability the go out and buy a fume hood, chemicals, glassware, etc....and Physical Education as they lacked people and equipment to introduce the children to Team Sports properly (Note that some may disagree but I think team sports can be very positive to learn as a way to entertain yourself, interact with others, and keep in good physical condition.
My wife and I intend to have children in the next 3 years and we have put some thought into a home/unschooling possibility. Between us we have a pretty good knowledge base....I have a Biochemistry Degree (But I work in IT now) so I have a good Math/Science/Technology background and have studied Philosophy on my own quite a bit. I know this is Slashdot but I also love sports and was a pretty good athlete growing up so I could guide them that way. She does the Social Studies thing...very strong in History and Civics/Poli Science and also speaks decent Spanish. We are both very avid readers so have a great deal of experience in the Literature world. The problem areas would probably be Grammatical English (Neither one of us remember half the parts of speech that get taught), Music (My wife does play the Piano), and Art (As far as DOING art. My wife knows a lot about art in the historical sense.)
The problem? We are both going to have to work. No doubt. Her work consists of teaching in a Public School. Will she have enough left in her after teaching a full day of classes to come home and teach another half days worth of lessons? My work is in the IT field so those occasional stretches of 60+ hours for a few weeks would likely render me pretty useless. Unless enough money to raise a family on one income falls on our laps, there is no way we could do this. It is probably for the best though. We can try to find the best school we can to send them to and be sure to supplement their education with "Lessons" of our own.
My wife (finally) finished up her degree for secondary school Social Studies teaching and I started helping her browse through the job postings when she told me she was having a hard time finding anywhere to apply to. I hit a few sites and was absolutely astounded at the number of "Special Education" teacher positions that were open. They represented at least 50% of all available positions at all levels (Grade/Middle/High School).
That is frightening. I Graduated from High School only a decade ago and in my day, only the least capable of children was placed in a Special Education program. I'm talking about Down's Syndrome and other cases where the child had some severe cognitive disabilities. Either these disabilities have increased in frequency by several orders of magnitude or they are tracking faaaar too many ADD and similar cases into Special Ed. This disturbs me as I had always exhibited signs of ADHD and have been diagnosed as a mild case as an adult. If my children exhibit such signs, will they be categorized as Special Ed?
I got a little off the point I originally wanted to make, but if they can have this many Special Education programs, why not do the same in the other direction for intelligent/advanced students? I have a friend who teaches math for Milwaukee Public Schools and in the last few years they have been cutting Calculus from the cirriculum. The seven or so kids a year that used to make it to that level now wouldn't get a chance at it. That is truly a tragedy.
Don't just about all cable packages come with a DVR? I understand you'd probably rather use your Mythbox but if they give you a way to achieve the same result (Watching shows when you want...with the ability to skip commercials) why wouldn't you just do that?
That's an actual question. I have not paid for cable in about a decade so I truly don't know.
If the movie sucked anyway, why are you downloading it? Obviously it was worth something to you as you took the time to seek it out and then to watch it....likely 2-3 hours of your life. There are options other than shelling out $20 for a DVD to see content.
This isn't just an issue of you not paying some faceless Movie Studio execs/lawyers, and Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt....there are thousands of working class individuals in the industry that need to get paid too. If profits are down, guess who is out of a job first? A lot of people depend on that money people shell out to see movies and not all of them are super wealthy or complete bastards.
I myself just use the Netflix thing. For $15 a month I get to cycle through 3 DVD's at a time and watch the streaming content they put up. If I really really like one of the movies I do go purchase it, although this is very rare. For the cost of 12 movies a year I can watch as many as I want. Not a bad deal.
This "Attractive Woman" device.....
Does it run Linux?