Article 1, Section 9: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
If you're using this for justifying a detailed accounting of expenditures, I'd rather see it applied to how public money given to banks for "troubled asset relief" was spent. Banks are apparently threatening to appeal to the Supreme Court to keep this info under wraps. The amount wasted on whatever system the NSA was upgrading is complete round-off compared to TARP money.
This is a rough job market to be graduating into... that being said, these dips occur all the time so you have to be prepared for them. But the job market itself has changed. I graduated with a B.S.E.E. in 1990, and had some software development experience from a summer internship. However, I decided to attend grad school (personal goal to get a Masters), but kept an eye out for more summer work. By the time I got my Masters, I had a second internship as a software developer with another company, and also had networked and worked a contract position doing some PERL scripting for a local ISP.
Not that you have a time machine or anything, but you should have been trying to find a position getting any kind of software development experience, while you were still a student. Perhaps working for a professor as a research software developer, or in your college's IT bureaucracy somewhere. Do co-op positions still exist? My current employer has a summer program, but obviously that isn't something you can look into late March before a May graduation date. If none of that works out, improve some open-source software and at least be able to show something, as a leg up on the competition. Not to be an old fart talking about a bygone era, but back when I was entry level, getting experience on real software wasn't as easy (open source wasn't as visible) so companies didn't look for it to the extent they might these days.
Now I realize it just isn't always that simple... software dev positions are hyper-specialized these days. Companies wanted web programmers with years of experience on specific frameworks, C#/.NET positions with years of UI experience, Java with domain specific experience (simulation/modeling as it turned out) and preferably with a security clearance, C++ experience with X years doing Y, even companies wanting candidates with experience at working at other companies of the same size (startup to startup, small to small), etc. That second summer internship I had was at computer company needing a combo of Windows developer AND Novell Netware developer (this was back in the early-mid 90's). Not many (any?) people had that combo so they were willing to take on a generalist who they thought was fairly sharp and could learn. I really didn't have either coming out of school in that era. These days, I'm not sure many places do that anymore, which I think is really unfortunate. Especially now, with high unemployment, companies can filter for their exact requirements and still have too many resumes to sift through.
Lastly, I would say be realistic, you might have to take some other position just to have a job. That doesn't have to be the end of your career before it even starts, a lot of getting to where you want to go involves getting your foot in the door in order to prove yourself. Where I work now has a mix of software dev and systems engineering, along with the usual IT stuff anywhere - look for companies like that. It isn't perfect, but always think of the other side of the coin - a company isn't psychic and can't predict you might be a great developer, it is a rough call for them to stack you up against anybody else who does have some experience. Be willing to work near software development and the chance to transfer may come up. Work on something at home on your own time (balance that so you aren't totally burned out for your day job) so you keep learning and keep your skills up. This probably isn't what you want to hear but that's the reality of the current situation. If you go this route, be patient, and keep searching job openings to stay up on what is in demand. I was pigeon-holed a bit at my previous job and found out the hard way all about what skills were marketable in the previous geographic region.
Adding random comments - some of those OSes (NT 3.1 through NT 4) released on multiple architectures: alpha, x86, powerpc, mips. Win2000 added Itanium but dropped alpha, powerpc, mips. I'm not sure if Itanium is a supported architecture for Win7; x64 took over basically.
Brute forcing may be infeasible, but if you're talking about encrypting a disk drive... I don't know if you can be so sure. Between all the metadata about the particular file system and disk format, plus stuff about known files and/or directory layout, I'm sure "the pros" can reduce the number of possibilities significantly.
These aren't the same order of magnitude, but the Rubik's cube is 10^19 states, yet solvable in 30 seconds by the knowledgeable. The Enigma was 10^23 states, yet also breakable given some other info and genius level insight. So algorithms exist for those problems that seriously prune the states the solver needs to work through. And in a similar way, handing somebody a 256 bit key may mean 10^77 states to start with, but adding info like "this is an encrypted ntfs/ext2/hpfs/whatever drive" supplies a huge amount of extra info that might prune things down quite a bit.
I played on a PvP server for several months, recently, and the bottom line is world pvp just sucks. It may have been envisioned as both sides battling it out over quest hubs, and that did occur, but in my experience (anecdotal, yes I know) > 80% of world pvp consisted of a highly unfair situation: either it was two or more vs one, one on one with a large level discrepancy, or a combo of both. And that just isn't fun for the outnumber and outleveled person. The final straw for me was getting one-shotted by a stealthed rogue. So I quit and when I came back, I did a realm transfer to a PvE realm.
As others have noted, you're watching the equivalent of aircraft carriers fighting each other - those don't dodge or pivot much.
More exciting action is much scale, 5 on 5 or fewer. In those type fights, one person will try to slow a ship (web stasis field), prevent it from escaping (warp disruptor), make it more visible electonically (target painting), scramble it (electronic scrambling), drain its energy (nosferatu modules), etc. Though set in a sci-fi game, smaller scale battles play out reasonably realistically.
Granted, it still isn't X-wing space fighter style combat. If you want that you would look for a different game.
My favorite spoof was of a VW commercial (I think?) where two guys are drove around, goofed off, picked up a couch that smelled funny, leave it by the side of the road, etc. In the spoof, Gates and Ballmer and driving around, goofing off (Gates plays with a bobblehead doll and shakes his head in the same fashion). They pick up a Sun server, thinks it smells funny, and leave it in the trash.
Hm.. guess I can see why they wouldn't want that leaked, they'd get sued.
I remember many videos that were tie-ins to movies: dance videos (Men in Black, but with different lyrics), a funny one spoofing Austin Powers with Ballmer as Dr. Evil.
Some of the fake ad/morale event/company meeting videos were really funny!
I am worried about the economy as a whole if we tie both our hands behind our collective backs. Particularly when we can't promise that the nations that compete with us on the global stage (*cough* China *cough*) will do the same.
What good does gutting our economy do when China continues to bring a new coal fired power plant online every week? What will that accomplish in the long run other than to disadvantage the next generation of Americans and reduce our standard of living?
This is the core of the real issue behind AGW... how to diplomatically ask/beg/tell/force developing nations to put the brakes on their growth, since consumption/pollution in the first world is at various higher levels already. It's hard to tell China (or any other nation) to adopt various restrictions when on a per capita basis, they are under-consuming resources and under-polluting in comparison. Hard to do it without appearing as huge hypocrites.
Fine, then continue reading past what you quoted... glad you're so concerned over proper protocol, while misdirection attention from the main point. Which is: doesn't matter if you believe in global warming or not, we're headed for economic problems that will likely be far more severe.
Yes... but the larger point is that IF 2 BILLION more people start demanding oil at the rate the U.S. does (or whatever country of choice that currently consumes a lot), the economic changes and market warping that will occur will cause some major issues around the world. Prices will skyrocket, entire industry segments will face shortages, etc.
It really does weaken the position of those who support the AGW theory...
The thing is, most anti-AGW proponents come off as people not wanting to change anything because it isn't convenient for them. So naturally, denying everything allows things to proceed as they are now, along the current status quo.
Even if you don't believe AGW, how about some related topics:
1) The U.S. currently consumes 25% of the world oil. China and India each have about 3 times the population. If China and India scale up and consume oil at the same per-capita rate as the U.S., then they will use 150% of the world's oil. That's probably not going to sit well with the rest of the world, besides being impossible and causing serious economic problems.
2) The U.S. currently produces around 20 metric tons of CO2 per capita. This is inline with other first world nations and/or oil rich nations. China and India are around 4 and 1 metric tons per capita. Once again, if they scale up to match their first world peers, that's a lot more CO2 pouring into the world's atmosphere.
So deny global warming all you want... that isn't going to solve the actual problems we're headed towards. Some models indicate temperatures will rise between 1 and 6 degrees C over the next century, and we can probably get along fine at the lower end. But it is more likely that economic distortions and/or all out energy wars will wreak havoc, before the oceans flood have a chance to drown us all.
I remember a few times the "low UID" issue came up (for no other reason than asking who's got a low uid??)
Somebody was bragging about their low UID (2 digits) and Taco responded "pwned". Another time the discussion was about if people with low UID's posted useful info, and user #11 (I think) said "nope just pointless comments really".;)
I see Palpatine posted below, #94 that's pretty low!
It means that some interesting gameplay aspects that can normally be found in MMORPGs (such as open world pvp)
I think open world pvp is the great myth of the genre - so many people claim they want it, yet subscription numbers and $$$ say otherwise.
I VASTLY prefer the battleground system for pvp. At least that way you get level throttled and relatively balanced numbers on opposing teams. Open world pvp was 95% ganking by either more numbers, or higher levels.
So, you don't want to change, you just want to do things your way and force others to change. The provider also doesn't want to change. They want to do things their way and force you to change.
This is a bit of a false dichotomy... another solution you overlooked is: 3rd party comes along with some better alternative than the existing provider.
This is what I did concerning my cable subscription, as of a few months ago. I don't have a problem with cable TV - I paid for it and enjoyed it, for years. It's just that the cost increases finally "broke the camels back" for me, and made me take a hard look at what I was consuming, what alternatives there were, all weighed against how necessary their product was (i.e. it is really just entertainment, not some utility like electricity or water/gas).
I found that most shows I watched, I actually watched via Netflix! Even for shows currently running. This is primarily because I hate coming into a series midway through - I always want to start at season 1 episode 1, and watch in order. Cable fails to deliver that. Netflix has several other advantages for me: convenient scheduling, access to premium channel shows, etc. All for lagging a few months behind what is currently on - a fine tradeoff for me.
I also looked into good old OTA reception with an antenna... and now for no monthly fee, I get most of the broadcast channels, for current viewing. But I watch about 2 shows a week there, all recorded on my DVR.
Lastly, for a few shows I just have to watch as soon as the episodes are out (don't want to wait until the season comes out on DVD), there is iTunes. I am willing to subscribe/buy a few shows this way. Actually right now, I am just doing it for one show.
So basically, cable at $80 a month - that's what the monthly charges and taxes are in my area, for the typical cable channels (no premium or further subscription ones) in HD. Versus Netflix at $20 a month, OTA with HD (when available) for free, plus iTunes at $30 to $40 a show for a very limited number (so far just one but I'm considering another). No comparison for me. I do miss a few cable channels (NatGeo, History, SciFi oops I mean SyFy) and am looking for workarounds. But what I am doing now is all legal, if I were willing to violate copyright and torrent a bit, the gap would dry up.
This is what I think cable is facing... challenges to their "all you can view" high priced packages that include a bunch of channels/options I don't care about and never watch. I know they hate to offer al a carte channel packages, but perhaps over time they'll warm up to it. It's the only way I'd go back, if I could cut the bill in half by getting fewer channels, the ones I really want.
2) Creation of flimsy plastic bags that fucking fall apart so that you need twice as many to carry the same groceries followed by the removal of plastic bags with studier but still flawed and breakable "green" "enviro" bags which are now sold at large profit instead of being given away. Lets nickel and dime our customers to death in the name of the environment - but we couldn't possibly stop filling their mailboxes with dead tree junk mail. Fucking hypocrites!
My local grocery store charges $0.99 for a reusable shopping bag, and also deducts $0.05 from the bill for everyone you use. Thus, after only 20 uses, the bag pays for itself and you start to make a small amount of money off it. So not every store is out to nickel/dime you and rip you off at every turn.
4) Water conservation and rationing. What a fucking joke. It's got nothing to do with environmental impact of building more dams and desalination plants and everything to do with the dollars it takes to do so. Water is not scarce on this planet. It recycles well if you don't abuse it badly with extremely noxious chemicals. The system is build to deal with the shit and piss of every creature on the planet. Anything short of sewage and noxious chemicals often can be reused if we weren't so skitish about grey water. Water as a scarce resource, and kids no longer being able to play in their back yards with a hose has nothing to do with environment and everything to do with politicians lining their pockets with taxes that should be spent on infrastructure.
Water may not be scarce, but drinking water is. Most of the people in the world don't have access to clean, safe, drinking water. Granted, my conservation of said safe drinking water doesn't fill the cup of some kid in Cairo or Kolkata, but it still doesn't help to waste it needlessly. I lived in central FL for a while, and water rationing is in effect to limit how much people can water their lawns, or otherwise you know some boneheads would water it for hours every day. And no, very few homes have separate "non potable - safe but not for drinking" water lines run to homes for lawns usage (although many business parks or commercial districts did), so those thousands of gallons of water dumped on lawns were the same stuff coming out of the faucet.
I haven't had a headhunter/recruiter alter my resume, but to echo some of the other comments here, I've dealt with a few that I thought were shady - mostly by submitting me to their first two clients, then disappearing (probably decided I was taking too many "resources" to place).
One in particular submitted me to two small companies (basically startups) that were looking for gui/web programmers with C# experience, meanwhile the bulk of my background is systems level programming in C++. While I think I could get by in C#, I don't have the guil/web piece which surely was the main focus of the job. So I asked the recruiter what he was thinking... I got an answer that kinda sounded like "I'm just throwing rice against a barn and seeing what sticks". It just highlighted to me he's there to try to move product (me, and other clients) along expending as little effort as possible.
So in your case I'd move on, this guy certainly isn't going to suddenly behave ethically.
I bought a MacBook Pro recently, and am one of those people with a PC (desktop running Windows XP Media Center). I also have a Dell netbook running Ubuntu.
Anyway, why do I have a Mac and a PC? Well, the obvious answer is that I already had the PC and didn't throw it away when I got the Mac. The other reason is I still do use the PC sometimes - for playing games. It's a hobby of mine, although I find I'm putting a lot less time into it now as compared to the past. I've migrated pretty much everything else I do from the PC to my Mac. For professionally related hobby/tinkering purposes, the Mac suits me just fine as I'm getting back into Java programming, and down the road I'd like to dabble in Cocoa and Obj-C. So I don't have as much need to fiddle with C++ or C#/.NET at home (new job was partial impetus, as I had been looking to get away from an all-Windows work environment and it finally happened) but if I really had to on my Mac I could go with Windows in a virtual machine.
When Windows 7 releases, I'll have a choice to make: buy a copy and set my Mac up for dual boot (for games and occasional hobby coding projects) and redo my current 3.5 year old desktop with Ubuntu Linux, or upgrade my desktop XP system to Windows 7. If I go with dual boot and redo desktop, then I'll be able to say I'm a Mac owner without a PC.
No, they aren't. The Information Assurance and other Information Technology positions in the Federal Government are usually grade GS-13. A GS-13 Step 1 in the Metro DC Area makes $70,615, Step 10 makes $91,801. This is competitive with most commercial salaries. Factor in the generous benefits (retirement, commute cost compensation, flextime, etc.) and the Civil Service positions are lucrative.
Always? Do you seriously think that average people throughout history have been wealthy enough to afford diamonds? Before lets say the 1920's, they were in demand, as gifts from royalty to each other. The notion that diamonds are a requirement for true love, marriage, an engagement, especially among regular ordinary people, is a marketing coup pulled off by De Beers.
I'd like to add to this. I worked there for 5 years and left a burned-out husk;) but the company did offer huge variety. Think about it - where else would you be able to work on databases, consumer internet apps, graphics device drivers, compilers, console games, etc. All in the same company. Any area you are interested in, Microsoft has a group doing it. Plus they have a fair amount of financial stability, which does count when you have dependents.
Anyway, I'm no Microsoft apologist but if you want to work on technology, they can offer that. As for endless meetings without getting much done. Here's some news - LOTS of places are like that. My first job at a government contractor, I think I wrote one PERL script of about 20 lines in a year. There are pros and cons, you career shouldn't just be a "Microsoft sucks" knee-jerk reaction.
I would do this: rename Pluto and Charon to be Xena and Gabrielle. Then 2003UB313 could be called Pluto. He's the Roman God of the dead and mining, I'm sure he won't mind moving way out into the Kupier Belt.
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Article 1, Section 9: No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
If you're using this for justifying a detailed accounting of expenditures, I'd rather see it applied to how public money given to banks for "troubled asset relief" was spent. Banks are apparently threatening to appeal to the Supreme Court to keep this info under wraps. The amount wasted on whatever system the NSA was upgrading is complete round-off compared to TARP money.
This is a rough job market to be graduating into... that being said, these dips occur all the time so you have to be prepared for them. But the job market itself has changed. I graduated with a B.S.E.E. in 1990, and had some software development experience from a summer internship. However, I decided to attend grad school (personal goal to get a Masters), but kept an eye out for more summer work. By the time I got my Masters, I had a second internship as a software developer with another company, and also had networked and worked a contract position doing some PERL scripting for a local ISP.
Not that you have a time machine or anything, but you should have been trying to find a position getting any kind of software development experience, while you were still a student. Perhaps working for a professor as a research software developer, or in your college's IT bureaucracy somewhere. Do co-op positions still exist? My current employer has a summer program, but obviously that isn't something you can look into late March before a May graduation date. If none of that works out, improve some open-source software and at least be able to show something, as a leg up on the competition. Not to be an old fart talking about a bygone era, but back when I was entry level, getting experience on real software wasn't as easy (open source wasn't as visible) so companies didn't look for it to the extent they might these days.
Now I realize it just isn't always that simple... software dev positions are hyper-specialized these days. Companies wanted web programmers with years of experience on specific frameworks, C#/.NET positions with years of UI experience, Java with domain specific experience (simulation/modeling as it turned out) and preferably with a security clearance, C++ experience with X years doing Y, even companies wanting candidates with experience at working at other companies of the same size (startup to startup, small to small), etc. That second summer internship I had was at computer company needing a combo of Windows developer AND Novell Netware developer (this was back in the early-mid 90's). Not many (any?) people had that combo so they were willing to take on a generalist who they thought was fairly sharp and could learn. I really didn't have either coming out of school in that era. These days, I'm not sure many places do that anymore, which I think is really unfortunate. Especially now, with high unemployment, companies can filter for their exact requirements and still have too many resumes to sift through.
Lastly, I would say be realistic, you might have to take some other position just to have a job. That doesn't have to be the end of your career before it even starts, a lot of getting to where you want to go involves getting your foot in the door in order to prove yourself. Where I work now has a mix of software dev and systems engineering, along with the usual IT stuff anywhere - look for companies like that. It isn't perfect, but always think of the other side of the coin - a company isn't psychic and can't predict you might be a great developer, it is a rough call for them to stack you up against anybody else who does have some experience. Be willing to work near software development and the chance to transfer may come up. Work on something at home on your own time (balance that so you aren't totally burned out for your day job) so you keep learning and keep your skills up. This probably isn't what you want to hear but that's the reality of the current situation. If you go this route, be patient, and keep searching job openings to stay up on what is in demand. I was pigeon-holed a bit at my previous job and found out the hard way all about what skills were marketable in the previous geographic region.
Adding random comments - some of those OSes (NT 3.1 through NT 4) released on multiple architectures: alpha, x86, powerpc, mips. Win2000 added Itanium but dropped alpha, powerpc, mips. I'm not sure if Itanium is a supported architecture for Win7; x64 took over basically.
Brute forcing may be infeasible, but if you're talking about encrypting a disk drive... I don't know if you can be so sure. Between all the metadata about the particular file system and disk format, plus stuff about known files and/or directory layout, I'm sure "the pros" can reduce the number of possibilities significantly.
These aren't the same order of magnitude, but the Rubik's cube is 10^19 states, yet solvable in 30 seconds by the knowledgeable. The Enigma was 10^23 states, yet also breakable given some other info and genius level insight. So algorithms exist for those problems that seriously prune the states the solver needs to work through. And in a similar way, handing somebody a 256 bit key may mean 10^77 states to start with, but adding info like "this is an encrypted ntfs/ext2/hpfs/whatever drive" supplies a huge amount of extra info that might prune things down quite a bit.
I played on a PvP server for several months, recently, and the bottom line is world pvp just sucks. It may have been envisioned as both sides battling it out over quest hubs, and that did occur, but in my experience (anecdotal, yes I know) > 80% of world pvp consisted of a highly unfair situation: either it was two or more vs one, one on one with a large level discrepancy, or a combo of both. And that just isn't fun for the outnumber and outleveled person. The final straw for me was getting one-shotted by a stealthed rogue. So I quit and when I came back, I did a realm transfer to a PvE realm.
Yes they do. Others have put up various links; here is one from Microsoft's website about their dividends:
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/FAQ/dividend.mspx
As others have noted, you're watching the equivalent of aircraft carriers fighting each other - those don't dodge or pivot much.
More exciting action is much scale, 5 on 5 or fewer. In those type fights, one person will try to slow a ship (web stasis field), prevent it from escaping (warp disruptor), make it more visible electonically (target painting), scramble it (electronic scrambling), drain its energy (nosferatu modules), etc. Though set in a sci-fi game, smaller scale battles play out reasonably realistically.
Granted, it still isn't X-wing space fighter style combat. If you want that you would look for a different game.
My favorite spoof was of a VW commercial (I think?) where two guys are drove around, goofed off, picked up a couch that smelled funny, leave it by the side of the road, etc. In the spoof, Gates and Ballmer and driving around, goofing off (Gates plays with a bobblehead doll and shakes his head in the same fashion). They pick up a Sun server, thinks it smells funny, and leave it in the trash.
Hm.. guess I can see why they wouldn't want that leaked, they'd get sued.
I remember many videos that were tie-ins to movies: dance videos (Men in Black, but with different lyrics), a funny one spoofing Austin Powers with Ballmer as Dr. Evil.
Some of the fake ad/morale event/company meeting videos were really funny!
I am worried about the economy as a whole if we tie both our hands behind our collective backs. Particularly when we can't promise that the nations that compete with us on the global stage (*cough* China *cough*) will do the same.
What good does gutting our economy do when China continues to bring a new coal fired power plant online every week? What will that accomplish in the long run other than to disadvantage the next generation of Americans and reduce our standard of living?
This is the core of the real issue behind AGW... how to diplomatically ask/beg/tell/force developing nations to put the brakes on their growth, since consumption/pollution in the first world is at various higher levels already. It's hard to tell China (or any other nation) to adopt various restrictions when on a per capita basis, they are under-consuming resources and under-polluting in comparison. Hard to do it without appearing as huge hypocrites.
Fine, then continue reading past what you quoted... glad you're so concerned over proper protocol, while misdirection attention from the main point. Which is: doesn't matter if you believe in global warming or not, we're headed for economic problems that will likely be far more severe.
Yes... but the larger point is that IF 2 BILLION more people start demanding oil at the rate the U.S. does (or whatever country of choice that currently consumes a lot), the economic changes and market warping that will occur will cause some major issues around the world. Prices will skyrocket, entire industry segments will face shortages, etc.
It really does weaken the position of those who support the AGW theory...
The thing is, most anti-AGW proponents come off as people not wanting to change anything because it isn't convenient for them. So naturally, denying everything allows things to proceed as they are now, along the current status quo.
Even if you don't believe AGW, how about some related topics:
1) The U.S. currently consumes 25% of the world oil. China and India each have about 3 times the population. If China and India scale up and consume oil at the same per-capita rate as the U.S., then they will use 150% of the world's oil. That's probably not going to sit well with the rest of the world, besides being impossible and causing serious economic problems.
2) The U.S. currently produces around 20 metric tons of CO2 per capita. This is inline with other first world nations and/or oil rich nations. China and India are around 4 and 1 metric tons per capita. Once again, if they scale up to match their first world peers, that's a lot more CO2 pouring into the world's atmosphere.
So deny global warming all you want... that isn't going to solve the actual problems we're headed towards. Some models indicate temperatures will rise between 1 and 6 degrees C over the next century, and we can probably get along fine at the lower end. But it is more likely that economic distortions and/or all out energy wars will wreak havoc, before the oceans flood have a chance to drown us all.
I remember a few times the "low UID" issue came up (for no other reason than asking who's got a low uid??)
Somebody was bragging about their low UID (2 digits) and Taco responded "pwned". ;)
Another time the discussion was about if people with low UID's posted useful info, and user #11 (I think) said "nope just pointless comments really".
I see Palpatine posted below, #94 that's pretty low!
It means that some interesting gameplay aspects that can normally be found in MMORPGs (such as open world pvp)
I think open world pvp is the great myth of the genre - so many people claim they want it, yet subscription numbers and $$$ say otherwise.
I VASTLY prefer the battleground system for pvp. At least that way you get level throttled and relatively balanced numbers on opposing teams. Open world pvp was 95% ganking by either more numbers, or higher levels.
Modded Insightful?
Doesn't anybody remember the "isn't she stoned" Apple ad this is making fun of??
So, you don't want to change, you just want to do things your way and force others to change. The provider also doesn't want to change. They want to do things their way and force you to change.
This is a bit of a false dichotomy... another solution you overlooked is: 3rd party comes along with some better alternative than the existing provider.
This is what I did concerning my cable subscription, as of a few months ago. I don't have a problem with cable TV - I paid for it and enjoyed it, for years. It's just that the cost increases finally "broke the camels back" for me, and made me take a hard look at what I was consuming, what alternatives there were, all weighed against how necessary their product was (i.e. it is really just entertainment, not some utility like electricity or water/gas).
I found that most shows I watched, I actually watched via Netflix! Even for shows currently running. This is primarily because I hate coming into a series midway through - I always want to start at season 1 episode 1, and watch in order. Cable fails to deliver that. Netflix has several other advantages for me: convenient scheduling, access to premium channel shows, etc. All for lagging a few months behind what is currently on - a fine tradeoff for me.
I also looked into good old OTA reception with an antenna... and now for no monthly fee, I get most of the broadcast channels, for current viewing. But I watch about 2 shows a week there, all recorded on my DVR.
Lastly, for a few shows I just have to watch as soon as the episodes are out (don't want to wait until the season comes out on DVD), there is iTunes. I am willing to subscribe/buy a few shows this way. Actually right now, I am just doing it for one show.
So basically, cable at $80 a month - that's what the monthly charges and taxes are in my area, for the typical cable channels (no premium or further subscription ones) in HD. Versus Netflix at $20 a month, OTA with HD (when available) for free, plus iTunes at $30 to $40 a show for a very limited number (so far just one but I'm considering another). No comparison for me. I do miss a few cable channels (NatGeo, History, SciFi oops I mean SyFy) and am looking for workarounds. But what I am doing now is all legal, if I were willing to violate copyright and torrent a bit, the gap would dry up.
This is what I think cable is facing... challenges to their "all you can view" high priced packages that include a bunch of channels/options I don't care about and never watch. I know they hate to offer al a carte channel packages, but perhaps over time they'll warm up to it. It's the only way I'd go back, if I could cut the bill in half by getting fewer channels, the ones I really want.
2) Creation of flimsy plastic bags that fucking fall apart so that you need twice as many to carry the same groceries followed by the removal of plastic bags with studier but still flawed and breakable "green" "enviro" bags which are now sold at large profit instead of being given away. Lets nickel and dime our customers to death in the name of the environment - but we couldn't possibly stop filling their mailboxes with dead tree junk mail. Fucking hypocrites!
My local grocery store charges $0.99 for a reusable shopping bag, and also deducts $0.05 from the bill for everyone you use. Thus, after only 20 uses, the bag pays for itself and you start to make a small amount of money off it. So not every store is out to nickel/dime you and rip you off at every turn.
4) Water conservation and rationing. What a fucking joke. It's got nothing to do with environmental impact of building more dams and desalination plants and everything to do with the dollars it takes to do so. Water is not scarce on this planet. It recycles well if you don't abuse it badly with extremely noxious chemicals. The system is build to deal with the shit and piss of every creature on the planet. Anything short of sewage and noxious chemicals often can be reused if we weren't so skitish about grey water. Water as a scarce resource, and kids no longer being able to play in their back yards with a hose has nothing to do with environment and everything to do with politicians lining their pockets with taxes that should be spent on infrastructure.
Water may not be scarce, but drinking water is. Most of the people in the world don't have access to clean, safe, drinking water. Granted, my conservation of said safe drinking water doesn't fill the cup of some kid in Cairo or Kolkata, but it still doesn't help to waste it needlessly. I lived in central FL for a while, and water rationing is in effect to limit how much people can water their lawns, or otherwise you know some boneheads would water it for hours every day. And no, very few homes have separate "non potable - safe but not for drinking" water lines run to homes for lawns usage (although many business parks or commercial districts did), so those thousands of gallons of water dumped on lawns were the same stuff coming out of the faucet.
I haven't had a headhunter/recruiter alter my resume, but to echo some of the other comments here, I've dealt with a few that I thought were shady - mostly by submitting me to their first two clients, then disappearing (probably decided I was taking too many "resources" to place).
One in particular submitted me to two small companies (basically startups) that were looking for gui/web programmers with C# experience, meanwhile the bulk of my background is systems level programming in C++. While I think I could get by in C#, I don't have the guil/web piece which surely was the main focus of the job. So I asked the recruiter what he was thinking... I got an answer that kinda sounded like "I'm just throwing rice against a barn and seeing what sticks". It just highlighted to me he's there to try to move product (me, and other clients) along expending as little effort as possible.
So in your case I'd move on, this guy certainly isn't going to suddenly behave ethically.
I bought a MacBook Pro recently, and am one of those people with a PC (desktop running Windows XP Media Center). I also have a Dell netbook running Ubuntu.
Anyway, why do I have a Mac and a PC? Well, the obvious answer is that I already had the PC and didn't throw it away when I got the Mac. The other reason is I still do use the PC sometimes - for playing games. It's a hobby of mine, although I find I'm putting a lot less time into it now as compared to the past. I've migrated pretty much everything else I do from the PC to my Mac. For professionally related hobby/tinkering purposes, the Mac suits me just fine as I'm getting back into Java programming, and down the road I'd like to dabble in Cocoa and Obj-C. So I don't have as much need to fiddle with C++ or C#/.NET at home (new job was partial impetus, as I had been looking to get away from an all-Windows work environment and it finally happened) but if I really had to on my Mac I could go with Windows in a virtual machine.
When Windows 7 releases, I'll have a choice to make: buy a copy and set my Mac up for dual boot (for games and occasional hobby coding projects) and redo my current 3.5 year old desktop with Ubuntu Linux, or upgrade my desktop XP system to Windows 7. If I go with dual boot and redo desktop, then I'll be able to say I'm a Mac owner without a PC.
You left off locality pay... a GS 13-1 in Metro DC makes $87K, step 10 makes $113K. So, even better!
http://www.fedjobs.com/pay/washington.html
Chill man, that dialogue between Blizzard execs about somebody having no life is from the SouthPark WoW episode. Which was funny as hell.
Always? Do you seriously think that average people throughout history have been wealthy enough to afford diamonds? Before lets say the 1920's, they were in demand, as gifts from royalty to each other. The notion that diamonds are a requirement for true love, marriage, an engagement, especially among regular ordinary people, is a marketing coup pulled off by De Beers.
I'd like to add to this. I worked there for 5 years and left a burned-out husk ;) but the company did offer huge variety. Think about it - where else would you be able to work on databases, consumer internet apps, graphics device drivers, compilers, console games, etc. All in the same company. Any area you are interested in, Microsoft has a group doing it. Plus they have a fair amount of financial stability, which does count when you have dependents.
Anyway, I'm no Microsoft apologist but if you want to work on technology, they can offer that. As for endless meetings without getting much done. Here's some news - LOTS of places are like that. My first job at a government contractor, I think I wrote one PERL script of about 20 lines in a year. There are pros and cons, you career shouldn't just be a "Microsoft sucks" knee-jerk reaction.
No kidding... when I was a grad student, one prof's favorite joke was:
Q: What is the difference between a piece of shit and a grad student?
A: People try to avoid stepping on a piece of shit.
I would do this: rename Pluto and Charon to be Xena and Gabrielle.
Then 2003UB313 could be called Pluto. He's the Roman God of the dead and mining, I'm sure he won't mind moving way out into the Kupier Belt.