but we like getting the big honkin' checks when we file.
So you like giving the government an interest free loan? You do realize you could be getting interest (albeit small) on the money which could then be used to pay for that expensive gadget.
It's one thing to game the system by using the one-month float on a credit card. It's quite another to float the government a nearly year-long, interest-free loan.
Their decision to not allow Flash or Silverlight on their products is a good thing. As I've said in other threads on this same subject, Flash must die!
Flash is a horrid item with huge security holes. Apple is right to not allow it to be installed.
It's amazing how utterly disgusting office workers can be.
Absolutely. As one who has had the "pleasure" of moving/removing equipment, it is amazing at how disgusting some people are. I distinctly remember one case where I had to go to some machines and do a manual update. As I leaned over to put my fingers on the keys of a keyboard, I paused as I looked down and saw, as Tyr is my witness, that there was fungus or something growing from between the keys.
If you saw the movie Apollo 13 as they were preparing to fire up the command module for reentry and Kevin Bacon paused before asking about what the effect of the condensation would be on the electronics, yeah, that was me too when I saw this keyboard.
There are several people in the building where I work where I swear they eat their crackers directly over the keyboard. How they can possibly think that is hygienic or that the keyboard will function properly is beyond me.
And let's not forget the people who have to stack twenty pounds of pictures, in frames, Beanie Babies (remember those?), lotion bottles and other goodies all over their desks.
If a fire were to break out and clear out a few of these rooms, that would only be a good thing.
If, as the article relates, Jennifer Hoffman had to call the data center and walk them through the process of manually restarting the one, single, solitary payroll server, a few items come to mind:
1) The people doing the upgrades without considering their impact should be shot on sight. Anyone who has worked more than a week in a network environment knows, or should know, that when you are considering an upgrade to anything, you have to find out who else is impacted by the upgrade.
2) Relying on said single, solitary server for payroll is just begging for disaster. For a highly critical task such as payroll, having one point of failure is beyond stupid. One deserves what one gets if the server dies.
3) The person who was fired but was still able to log time so they got paid was smart, the people who administered user accounts and security were not. Basic rule when someone is fired/let go/whatever is you disable their account. Immediately. Whomever in IT let this little gem get by should also be shot.
4) Having only one person who knew how to run the payroll software was, like issue 2 above, beyond stupid. Does no one use the bus principle any more? For the uninitiated, if someone gets run over by a bus, can they be replaced by someone else with minimal downtime? Are their tasks documented? What about quirky procedures that need to be done?
These are just basic questions I had when I read that job. My other question was, what company did she work for so I can introduce myself to them as a "Risk Mitigation Specialist"?
that people still use VCRs, which seems implausible,
I still use a VCR (as do others who have already posted). I do it because it's quick and easy and not subject to bit flags or any other nonsense. When I'm done with the show, I record over it. And tapes are much cheaper than getting a DVR and either renting it from Comcast or trying to make one on your own.
Don't comcast subscribers have high speed internet?
Yes, if you don't mind paying almost $120/month for tv, phone and internet. You can get just internet for roughly $50-$60 month if you don't mind the yearly rate increases. (Side note: as I tried to confirm this, Comcast's site kept timing out on me when it was asking for my address and ZIP. That tells you the quality of their service)
at your convenience on Hulu,
Because not everyone has the technical know-how or desire to hook up their PC to their tv and all that it requires. Nor do they want to watch a tv show on a small screen (compared to a tv). They want to be able to sit down and use that big honkin flat screen they purchased without having to fuss around with making connections and encoding and everything else that goes along with it.
What amazes me about tech people (and I'm technically one of them) are the contortions they will go through to solve the simplest problem. It's like when folks talk about how "easy" linux is. "Oh sure, just do grep and when you find the file, sysconfig in the.etc directory you just have to do a chmod and change the -s parameter to -p. When you're done, you'll have to check the usr directory so that the pagint file didn't change with the update. If that doesn't work, you may have to apt get from the server to force the change and revert back to the old config because the newest files don't play well with older versions."
WTF? People want simplicity. They don't want to have to jump through hoops for something as simple as watching a tv show. I set my vcr to the time I want to record and walk away. No extra charge from Comcast, no drm to work around. It just works.
Had the editors chosen the story I submitted, a link to the legal opinion was included. However, as they chose the first story submitted, the following link will have to do:
As anyone who has heard the broadcast knows, the show was frequently interrupted by voice overs telling you that you were listening to a dramatisation.
Not quite. Up until last year, my parents had a record (33) of the entire broadcast. There were only three times the announcement was made that this was a dramatisation(sic) and not real. Had someone come in at any other time, they would not have known it wasn't real.
I should have saved the record from the yard sale, but I debated what I would do with it in the ensuing decades other than holding on to it as a curious memento of the broadcast.
Correction. That should be (thank you Sideshow Bob) and not Krusty, though one could argue that it was because of Krusty that Sideshow Bob was the way he was.
As long as your wages increase faster than inflation, then your purchasing power is going up.
Not quite. While your salary might beat out the rate of inflation, other things need to be considered. For example, I was notified my rent is going up starting next month by 9.8%. The actual amount happens to coincide with the exact amount of my monthly pay increase. In other words, I'm treading water because my pay increase will now go towards my rent increase.
On top of this, mother nature decided to force my decision on replacing my 12-year old car, I'm taking classes to (hopefully) get out of this urine-soaked hell hole (thank you Krusty) which are costing me over $1,400 per class and whose prices are also going up in the coming semester and my electric rate just rose by 30%.
So, while my pay increase was higher than inflation, it is completely overwhelmed by everything else that is going on.
How about we get ArcGIS to install correctly instead of having to try 4-6 times for each component. Also, having to install everything under a user's profile who will not be admin on their machine is asinine. Add in that on four identical, freshly imaged machines you get a myriad of different errors and one has to wonder if the cost of the software is warranted.
ArcGIS might be decent software, but they need to get their act together when it comes to installing the stuff in the first place.
I'd love to see more or less comprehensive statistics on the part in bold.
Let's start with this article which references several different studies over the years which have shown that abstinence-only programs fail at their message when compared to a comprehensive sex education program.
The reports do not say that these were in fundamentally religious communities, but the results would probably be similar in those communities.
However, there is this report (pdf) which discusses abstinence-only vs. a comprehensive sex education program.
Finally, there is this report (pdf) from the Journal of Adolescent Health which reviews current (2005) U.S. policy of abstinence and abstinence-only programs.
Here is the link (pdf) to the report mentioned from the Guttmacher Institute. They also produced this report (pdf) which does talk about a somewhat successful abstinence-only program for young African-Americans, but notes this was not the normal abstinence-only type program.
All these folks had to do was walk around where I work. If you look at those who are obese, you will also find their drawers stuffed with all kinds of boxed goodies, usually chips and the like.
These are the same people who also refuse to walk up one flight of stairs so the two go hand-in-hand.
Why yes, yes I did. And unintentionally I might add.
For whatever reason, I missed that entire paragraph in the original article but found the quote on The American Conservative web site.
Regardless, I'm certain there is documented evidence for some conservatives wanting to round up Arabs after 9/11. I'm figuring Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would have been the first ones to make such comments.
Such information could have made it far easier to carry out the type of mass roundup that some conservatives advocated.
And while we're on the subject of rounding up people, here's a neat goodie to show the mindset of at least one "conservative" and how they value American freedoms.
Complaining about smoking and beer is far closer to your "socialistic/marxist ideals" than universal healthcare is. We end up paying for emergency healthcare for the uninsured anyway.
No, it's not. I'm merely pointing out that some people have chosen to live their lives a certain way. Hooray! That's what freedom's about.
However, the way they chose to live their lives does not obligate me to take care of them because of the way they lead their lives. If they want to engage in reckless behavior, that's their business. What you're saying is these people should be rewarded for their behaviors. That's not freedom.
A program to address the insurance problem is better and cheaper in the long run.
No it's not. If they can afford to smoke or drink a case of beer a week, they can afford to pay for their insurance and medical bills. Just like people who complain they're always broke but they have no problem finding money to pay for cell phones for everyone in the family or have all the premium cable channels. It's called priorities.
Do you object to paying for the fire service because your house hasn't yet caught fire?
False dichotomy. If my neighbor's house or the apartment above/below/beside you catches fire, that does affect me. If you break your arm or get cancer, that doesn't affect me. That's the difference.
And you're correct. Not getting sick or injured does come down to luck. You have to live with the genes you've been given and the life you lead. That's life. Just as we can't all be millionaires, not all of us can be healthy for our entire lives.
If we're going to say that everyone must be forced to pay for everyone else's insurance, then we should also dictate what life they can lead. No more skydiving, except for the military, no base jumping, no skateboarding, no driving faster than 40 mph, we'll ban all guns like England does, all knives should have dull edges, no more baseball bats. See where I'm going?
For a bunch of people who talk about how much government intrusion in their lives there is and ways to get around it, it's amazing how much government intrusion you folks want. You sound just like AIG, Goldman Sachs, BoA and the rest of the Wall Street incompetents. Free market! Free market! Until their failures show then they want all the government intrusion they can get.
If you want to help someone pay their medical bills, then great. Go right ahead. But forcing me to pay for someone else's health bill smacks full face of socialism (mingled with fascism).
if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down.
Hogwash. If I'm forced to pay for something and I don't use it, that's a cost to me. My health costs have not gone down, they've gone up. Unless you're saying I should intentionally get sick so I can use the money I've put into the system.
Which comes back to another point I didn't address. We're going on the presumption that people who are forced to pay for this will actually use it. What if a person pays for a decade then suddenly dies. All that money they've put into the system has been a cost to them for which they received no benefit. The only ones receiving a benefit are those still living.
Further, just because people pay for something does not mean they'll use it. People who are healthy don't use health care on any regular basis. The amount they will now be forced to pay, one way or the other, will far outweigh the amount they would pay out of their pocket visiting the doctor once a year.
The only reason insurance exists is in case something major happens. It's a suckers bet because in th end, the only ones who get any benefit from the premiums are the insurance companies.
People like to harp on Massachusetts as Taxachusetts, especially after Mitt Romney(R) forced the people of his state to buy insurance whether they wanted it or not, thus creating a new expense people had to pay, but now the federal government has seen fit to follow the Republicans down the social/fascist rabbit hole.
The biggest problem is no one has ever given me an answer as to why my money has to go to pay the medical bills of my neighbor who smokes half a pack a day, or my neighbor on the other side who thinks it's funny to drink a case of beer each weekend by themselves.
What about my coworkers who refuse to walk up one flight of stairs or drink a liter of Pepsi every day? Why should I have to pay for their medical expenses when they can't be bothered to take care of themselves?
Further, why should I have to buy something I don't want? Are you next going to force me to go to a store and buy something to keep the store alive?
The ONLY winners in this whole fiasco are the insurance companies who will reap huge profits from the influx of money and still, despite the wording of the bill, will not cover everyone or every procedure.
While the Republicans can try to claim they stood their ground on this bill, they shouldn't be too smug as their party started this nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
but we like getting the big honkin' checks when we file.
So you like giving the government an interest free loan? You do realize you could be getting interest (albeit small) on the money which could then be used to pay for that expensive gadget.
It's one thing to game the system by using the one-month float on a credit card. It's quite another to float the government a nearly year-long, interest-free loan.
but I don't think many of us would consider "Draconic Studies" a worth academic pursuit.
And why not? I think the class would be a good one as it discusses the differences between red, blue, green, yellow, white, etc dragons.
One has to know ones enemy before they can defeat the enemy.
Their decision to not allow Flash or Silverlight on their products is a good thing. As I've said in other threads on this same subject, Flash must die!
Flash is a horrid item with huge security holes. Apple is right to not allow it to be installed.
It's amazing how utterly disgusting office workers can be.
Absolutely. As one who has had the "pleasure" of moving/removing equipment, it is amazing at how disgusting some people are. I distinctly remember one case where I had to go to some machines and do a manual update. As I leaned over to put my fingers on the keys of a keyboard, I paused as I looked down and saw, as Tyr is my witness, that there was fungus or something growing from between the keys.
If you saw the movie Apollo 13 as they were preparing to fire up the command module for reentry and Kevin Bacon paused before asking about what the effect of the condensation would be on the electronics, yeah, that was me too when I saw this keyboard.
There are several people in the building where I work where I swear they eat their crackers directly over the keyboard. How they can possibly think that is hygienic or that the keyboard will function properly is beyond me.
And let's not forget the people who have to stack twenty pounds of pictures, in frames, Beanie Babies (remember those?), lotion bottles and other goodies all over their desks.
If a fire were to break out and clear out a few of these rooms, that would only be a good thing.
If, as the article relates, Jennifer Hoffman had to call the data center and walk them through the process of manually restarting the one, single, solitary payroll server, a few items come to mind:
1) The people doing the upgrades without considering their impact should be shot on sight. Anyone who has worked more than a week in a network environment knows, or should know, that when you are considering an upgrade to anything, you have to find out who else is impacted by the upgrade.
2) Relying on said single, solitary server for payroll is just begging for disaster. For a highly critical task such as payroll, having one point of failure is beyond stupid. One deserves what one gets if the server dies.
3) The person who was fired but was still able to log time so they got paid was smart, the people who administered user accounts and security were not. Basic rule when someone is fired/let go/whatever is you disable their account. Immediately. Whomever in IT let this little gem get by should also be shot.
4) Having only one person who knew how to run the payroll software was, like issue 2 above, beyond stupid. Does no one use the bus principle any more? For the uninitiated, if someone gets run over by a bus, can they be replaced by someone else with minimal downtime? Are their tasks documented? What about quirky procedures that need to be done?
These are just basic questions I had when I read that job. My other question was, what company did she work for so I can introduce myself to them as a "Risk Mitigation Specialist"?
that people still use VCRs, which seems implausible,
.etc directory you just have to do a chmod and change the -s parameter to -p. When you're done, you'll have to check the usr directory so that the pagint file didn't change with the update. If that doesn't work, you may have to apt get from the server to force the change and revert back to the old config because the newest files don't play well with older versions."
I still use a VCR (as do others who have already posted). I do it because it's quick and easy and not subject to bit flags or any other nonsense. When I'm done with the show, I record over it. And tapes are much cheaper than getting a DVR and either renting it from Comcast or trying to make one on your own.
Don't comcast subscribers have high speed internet?
Yes, if you don't mind paying almost $120/month for tv, phone and internet. You can get just internet for roughly $50-$60 month if you don't mind the yearly rate increases. (Side note: as I tried to confirm this, Comcast's site kept timing out on me when it was asking for my address and ZIP. That tells you the quality of their service)
at your convenience on Hulu,
Because not everyone has the technical know-how or desire to hook up their PC to their tv and all that it requires. Nor do they want to watch a tv show on a small screen (compared to a tv). They want to be able to sit down and use that big honkin flat screen they purchased without having to fuss around with making connections and encoding and everything else that goes along with it.
What amazes me about tech people (and I'm technically one of them) are the contortions they will go through to solve the simplest problem. It's like when folks talk about how "easy" linux is. "Oh sure, just do grep and when you find the file, sysconfig in the
WTF? People want simplicity. They don't want to have to jump through hoops for something as simple as watching a tv show. I set my vcr to the time I want to record and walk away. No extra charge from Comcast, no drm to work around. It just works.
Had the editors chosen the story I submitted, a link to the legal opinion was included. However, as they chose the first story submitted, the following link will have to do:
Legal opinion.
As anyone who has heard the broadcast knows, the show was frequently interrupted by voice overs telling you that you were listening to a dramatisation.
Not quite. Up until last year, my parents had a record (33) of the entire broadcast. There were only three times the announcement was made that this was a dramatisation(sic) and not real. Had someone come in at any other time, they would not have known it wasn't real.
I should have saved the record from the yard sale, but I debated what I would do with it in the ensuing decades other than holding on to it as a curious memento of the broadcast.
Correction. That should be (thank you Sideshow Bob) and not Krusty, though one could argue that it was because of Krusty that Sideshow Bob was the way he was.
As long as your wages increase faster than inflation, then your purchasing power is going up.
Not quite. While your salary might beat out the rate of inflation, other things need to be considered. For example, I was notified my rent is going up starting next month by 9.8%. The actual amount happens to coincide with the exact amount of my monthly pay increase. In other words, I'm treading water because my pay increase will now go towards my rent increase.
On top of this, mother nature decided to force my decision on replacing my 12-year old car, I'm taking classes to (hopefully) get out of this urine-soaked hell hole (thank you Krusty) which are costing me over $1,400 per class and whose prices are also going up in the coming semester and my electric rate just rose by 30%.
So, while my pay increase was higher than inflation, it is completely overwhelmed by everything else that is going on.
Try running ArcGIS,...
How about we get ArcGIS to install correctly instead of having to try 4-6 times for each component. Also, having to install everything under a user's profile who will not be admin on their machine is asinine. Add in that on four identical, freshly imaged machines you get a myriad of different errors and one has to wonder if the cost of the software is warranted.
ArcGIS might be decent software, but they need to get their act together when it comes to installing the stuff in the first place.
Really? You're in such a hurry to throw up April Fools stories that you can't use spell check to be sure the words are spelled correctly?
Never mind. I just realized where I am.
I'd love to see more or less comprehensive statistics on the part in bold.
Let's start with this article which references several different studies over the years which have shown that abstinence-only programs fail at their message when compared to a comprehensive sex education program.
The reports do not say that these were in fundamentally religious communities, but the results would probably be similar in those communities.
However, there is this report (pdf) which discusses abstinence-only vs. a comprehensive sex education program.
Finally, there is this report (pdf) from the Journal of Adolescent Health which reviews current (2005) U.S. policy of abstinence and abstinence-only programs.
Here is the link (pdf) to the report mentioned from the Guttmacher Institute. They also produced this report (pdf) which does talk about a somewhat successful abstinence-only program for young African-Americans, but notes this was not the normal abstinence-only type program.
Hope this helps.
People roll their eyes when I tell them I don't buy products made in China. I refuse to support a government with such an abusive human rights record.
It's tough at times finding a product not made in China, but I use the free market to make my point.
Some people talk the talk when it comes to making a statement. Very few actually walk the walk.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy - James Madison
All these folks had to do was walk around where I work. If you look at those who are obese, you will also find their drawers stuffed with all kinds of boxed goodies, usually chips and the like.
These are the same people who also refuse to walk up one flight of stairs so the two go hand-in-hand.
I misread the first line as "Alberto Gonzalez".
One can still dream though.
Why yes, yes I did. And unintentionally I might add.
For whatever reason, I missed that entire paragraph in the original article but found the quote on The American Conservative web site.
Regardless, I'm certain there is documented evidence for some conservatives wanting to round up Arabs after 9/11. I'm figuring Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would have been the first ones to make such comments.
Do you have a single shred of proof for this or are you basically a Truther or Birther at heart, with nothing but paranoia to offer us?
I refer you to this article from, wait for it, The American Conservative. Read the last paragraph. Here is the relevant part:
Such information could have made it far easier to carry out the type of mass roundup that some conservatives advocated.
And while we're on the subject of rounding up people, here's a neat goodie to show the mindset of at least one "conservative" and how they value American freedoms.
Not necessarily, but this might be.
Complaining about smoking and beer is far closer to your "socialistic/marxist ideals" than universal healthcare is. We end up paying for emergency healthcare for the uninsured anyway.
No, it's not. I'm merely pointing out that some people have chosen to live their lives a certain way. Hooray! That's what freedom's about.
However, the way they chose to live their lives does not obligate me to take care of them because of the way they lead their lives. If they want to engage in reckless behavior, that's their business. What you're saying is these people should be rewarded for their behaviors. That's not freedom.
A program to address the insurance problem is better and cheaper in the long run.
No it's not. If they can afford to smoke or drink a case of beer a week, they can afford to pay for their insurance and medical bills. Just like people who complain they're always broke but they have no problem finding money to pay for cell phones for everyone in the family or have all the premium cable channels. It's called priorities.
Do you object to paying for the fire service because your house hasn't yet caught fire?
False dichotomy. If my neighbor's house or the apartment above/below/beside you catches fire, that does affect me. If you break your arm or get cancer, that doesn't affect me. That's the difference.
And you're correct. Not getting sick or injured does come down to luck. You have to live with the genes you've been given and the life you lead. That's life. Just as we can't all be millionaires, not all of us can be healthy for our entire lives.
If we're going to say that everyone must be forced to pay for everyone else's insurance, then we should also dictate what life they can lead. No more skydiving, except for the military, no base jumping, no skateboarding, no driving faster than 40 mph, we'll ban all guns like England does, all knives should have dull edges, no more baseball bats. See where I'm going?
For a bunch of people who talk about how much government intrusion in their lives there is and ways to get around it, it's amazing how much government intrusion you folks want. You sound just like AIG, Goldman Sachs, BoA and the rest of the Wall Street incompetents. Free market! Free market! Until their failures show then they want all the government intrusion they can get.
If you want to help someone pay their medical bills, then great. Go right ahead. But forcing me to pay for someone else's health bill smacks full face of socialism (mingled with fascism).
if everyone jointly pays for healthcare and everybody gets treated health costs go down.
Hogwash. If I'm forced to pay for something and I don't use it, that's a cost to me. My health costs have not gone down, they've gone up. Unless you're saying I should intentionally get sick so I can use the money I've put into the system.
Which comes back to another point I didn't address. We're going on the presumption that people who are forced to pay for this will actually use it. What if a person pays for a decade then suddenly dies. All that money they've put into the system has been a cost to them for which they received no benefit. The only ones receiving a benefit are those still living.
Further, just because people pay for something does not mean they'll use it. People who are healthy don't use health care on any regular basis. The amount they will now be forced to pay, one way or the other, will far outweigh the amount they would pay out of their pocket visiting the doctor once a year.
The only reason insurance exists is in case something major happens. It's a suckers bet because in th end, the only ones who get any benefit from the premiums are the insurance companies.
People like to harp on Massachusetts as Taxachusetts, especially after Mitt Romney(R) forced the people of his state to buy insurance whether they wanted it or not, thus creating a new expense people had to pay, but now the federal government has seen fit to follow the Republicans down the social/fascist rabbit hole.
The biggest problem is no one has ever given me an answer as to why my money has to go to pay the medical bills of my neighbor who smokes half a pack a day, or my neighbor on the other side who thinks it's funny to drink a case of beer each weekend by themselves.
What about my coworkers who refuse to walk up one flight of stairs or drink a liter of Pepsi every day? Why should I have to pay for their medical expenses when they can't be bothered to take care of themselves?
Further, why should I have to buy something I don't want? Are you next going to force me to go to a store and buy something to keep the store alive?
The ONLY winners in this whole fiasco are the insurance companies who will reap huge profits from the influx of money and still, despite the wording of the bill, will not cover everyone or every procedure.
While the Republicans can try to claim they stood their ground on this bill, they shouldn't be too smug as their party started this nonsense.
Funny thing about your second pic is if you look at the label on the power supply(?) on the left side of the image, the tag reads:
Safety Test Pending