In the apartment buildings I lived in (not in the US) there was usually a shared room in the basement where everybody could dry his clothes on lines.
And for the moisture in the air: That depends on the kind of dryer you use, traditional dryer or condenser dryer and the like that don't let the humid air outside.
Exactly what my company did with all the old workstation. We are a software development department and a few years back the main issues with laptops have been the slow hard drives. Now they are fast enough (of course we still have our build servers) and all the desktops have been replaced with laptops and docking stations connected to large TFT displays.
Great for working, because you can set up dual-view, do the coding on the large TFT and have your documentation, specification, whatever (/.;)) on the laptop screen.
And I think the gambling argument doesn't hold for most of the games, either. But I only play occassionally and have maybe different requirements and don't play games like Crysis.
I am also from Europe and did a 6-month internship in California. But for the J1 visa, insurances etc. I happily paid for the services of CIEE e.V. (Council for International Educational Exchange). I'm not sure if this agency still exists, the internship was in 2000/2001, but there are similar agencies around. I had to fill out some forms and have the professor at my university and the manager of the company write some statements about what my job will be and why I am adequate for an internship in the US. But overall the application went pretty smooth for me.
The company I worked for is a global player and has a branch in my home country. But it wasn't possible to apply for an internship in the US through the local subsidiary, so I applied directly at the US branch.
A big advantage has been that a fellow student of my university was doing an internship at that same company the semester before I started my internship and recommended me to his manager. I applied for an internship at other companies via E-Mail or Web, but never heard from them.
The preparation for the intership took about three month with all the sending and receiving of forms and getting all the papers needed, like a clearance certificate (this was pre 9/11!), English language certificate, etc. pp.
Without the help of an agency I'm pretty sure it would have taken me a year of preparation, too. I also agree that the internship should last 6 months minimum to be of benefit for both sides, the company and the student.
But it has been totally worth the money and effort, one of the greatest experiences I made in my life - professionally and otherwise.
Again, it isn't a backup solution by any means, but does offer high availability.
I use the DNS-323 as my network drive and as step 1 of my overall backup strategy. You can add several services like SSH to the device by applying the funplug-tools http://www.inreto.de/dns323/fun-plug/.
Now you can use rsync for your backups, write a small bash script like this one and write a cronjob entry which calls this script:
#!/bin/bash LIST="Documents src bin public_html"
for d in $LIST; do
echo "rsyncing directory $d"
rsync -ax --delete/home/tedric/$d -e ssh \
tedric@nas:/mnt/HD_b2/backup/tedric/ done
The second step of my backup strategy is a similar rsync script which doesn't delete files and creates directories for each day. This script is running on the NAS and rsyncing my data to a server at my university.
So, my point is: the NAS is only a media. Saying the NAS is not a means of backup is correct, but the same applies for tapes, CDs, DVDs, flash drives etc. Using the right tools to store data on the NAS however can provide for a good backup solution.
Neelie Kroes rules. She makes me proud to be Dutch. That does not happen too often. Soccer be damned. Football be damned? I wanted to order Pizza yesterday, the usual, peperoni, olives, but this time with an extra gouda cheese topping. The Italian guy on the phone was like "!%"&/"%!&/%"!/" and hang up.
What do you mean by crappy D-Link NAS? I bought a D-Link DNS 323 (Gigabit Ethernet, 2*400GB SATA-HDDs) and am pretty happy with it. It also runs Linux and then you can of course install NFS etc. on it. Before that I was playing around with some USB-HDDs attached to my (also Linux based) router and a Trekstore NDAS device. Those two "solutions" were really crappy compared with the D-Link NAS. And that for a price of ~200 (without drives).
Personally, I like US-International layout and that should simply be standard everywhere instead of all those stupid different keyboard layouts. I exchanged my german laptop keyboard with a US variant. I liked it much better and assigning umlauts ä,ö,ü to Alt-a, Alt-o, Alt-u even makes more sense than having a special key for it. It's also better for programming, because you don't need to press AltGr-8 for [ etc.
On the other hand it's really annoying because all other keyboards I type on (job, friends, etc.) have a german layout and therefor I miss-type on these keyboards a lot. So my new laptop has a german layout again...
with some friends in Germany when a functionary in uniform knocked on the door, and proceeded to start poking around the house That was probably an observer for the GEZ. They are in no way permitted to search your house and you don't have to let them in. Of course some (all?) of them try to appear as if they are in a somehow state official position.
Germany is not the USA, and the differences are not just the language and currency. I hear in the US you are allowed to shoot trespassers. As much as I'm against your lax weapon laws, those GEZ observers deserve a warning shot between they eyes.
Either way, I wouldn't want to keep anything unique on a laptop. Just on a laptop? When I wrote my thesis, my laptop hard drive crashed. Good thing I synchronized the data every evening, so I only lost one day of work - of course it has been one of the more busy days, so Murphy's law applied perfectly.
I have a little file server at home and everything important is at least stored in two places. Same with the work related stuff of my wife (she's a teacher).
If you don't want to run an extra "file server" (it's an old desktop with a few hard drives in it) buy one of these really affordable external USB hard drives.
You can listen to all the music you want for free on the radio even. Not entirely true. At least in some countries. I have to pay EUR 5.52 basic charge and an extra EUR 16.56 (with TV EUR 51.09) every three months to the GEZ in Germany in order to listen to the radio and watch TV.
I don't even need to listen to public radio or watch public TV. It's sufficient to own a radio or TV.
But your other points are valid. And there are lots of artists worthy to be supported. I own a lot of CDs produced by "the music industry" (> 1000), but also a lot of CDs I bought at open air concerts, in pubs where the musicians where playing etc. The nice thing about those CDs is that there's always a story attached to them. And some of these bands became famous years later and got a contract at a big label.
I think you are both wrong with your analogies. The metric system, French and English are all "open standards". There are pros and cons for all of them, but you can more or less easily translate from one language to another, compute from one system to another.
With closed document formats it's like if you are an American visiting France and you're not allowed to talk French.
Drinking is not a bad thing, getting drunk is a bad thing. Teachers are no saints. I agree teachers are role models, but there is no harm done going to a costume party, having fun and a drink or two.
Pretending not to do something which could, if exaggerated, be hazardous for your health, is a bad thing. Drinking and partying responsibly is the better role model.
Well, Germany may be famous for beer, but the history of beer dates back to ancient Egypt. We aren't even world champions in drinking beer any more. The Czech Republic has a higher per capita consumption than Germany.
Beeing a contractor at two different companies for the past five years my experience is that the "us vs. them" issue is not specific to Intel. Worst thing I was told from an internal employee: "You are below the cleaning staff in the hierarchy here!". Well, I'm young and need the money...
I drive a VW Touran 1.9 TDI (77kw/105hp) which uses 5.6l/100km Diesel combined (data from my car computer, 5.9l/100km according to the data sheet).
'units' says:
You have: 5.6l/100km You want: mpg
reciprocal conversion
* 42.002604
/ 0.023808048
From www.vw.com I understand this model isn't sold in the US (I'm from Germany) and be aware that it's a Diesel engine. The (not really) equivalent with a 75kw/102hp Otto engine gets only 29mpg (8.1l/100km).
Same here. My minivan gets 42 MPG. The main reason for us to buy it (we don't have kids yet) was to use it as an SUV (_Sports_ _Utility_ vehicle), because I have enough room inside for 2-3 mountainbikes, camping gear etc. Putting your bikes on top of your car or mount it on the back gets up your gas usage by 50%-100%. Plus, we don't have to worry if everything fits into the trunk. Ok, it might have more space than we actually need, but the van doesn't need more gas than a sedan would, so it's a good compromise for us.
Hmmm, I would pay for it because I think some of the program is nice to watch, like the daily Tagesschau, the daily Tagesthemen, the weekly Tatort.
Public TV is not all bad in Germany, the news programs are much better and less biased as channels I watched abroad. Of course a single TV channel should not be the only source for news you get.
And that's where I strongly disagree with your point "make what people want to see". There has to be room for other opinions dispite mainstream. If you want to, you can find that in public TV shows, like "report" etc. They even criticize their own channel.
I'm on your side when you say, you don't want to pay for something you don't support, you don't consume. You shouldn't pay for it, but you shouldn't be able to receive it. If you want to receive it, pay for it. It's like ordering a newspaper - it's not free as in beer.
For my GEZ money, I get a few poor TV channels (with ads), a few (mostly poor) radio channels (with ads) and little original programme-making of any consequence. Were I still in England, I'd be getting from the BBC (at the last count) eight TV channels [...]
Well, you should try getting digital TV. If you have cable TV, you probably already have it, you just need a DVB-C card or a receiver (like a d-box).
There are a lot of additional channels from ARD and ZDF in digital TV for documentations, theater, culture, health, etc. pp. I personally like these channels during major sports events, like the Olypmic Games, because they provide more coverage of the not-so-popular (but interesting for myself) sports like snowboarding. E.g. they broadcasted the whole half-pipe tournament at the last Winter Games, whereas there was only a 15 minute report on the other channels.
Nonetheless, GEZ sucks. I'm not affected by this new fee, because we already pay for TV and radio as a household (i.e. my wife and myself).
Maybe encrypting these channels would be a better idea - like with Premiere. This would make the GEZ and their annoying (and probably expensive) officers obsolete and clarify that so called "public TV" is in fact Pay TV.
Big Companies suck! They suck as tax payers, they suck as employers. I work for one of these "global players" as a contractor and I worked for some others in the past as employee. And it's not an obsession of Americans, it's the same in Europe and I guess in most parts of the world as well.
The company I work for right now made billions of Euros last year, but does not pay any trade income tax to the communities. On the other hand they threaten the communities to move the company somewhere else if they don't get any tax breaks or subventions.
The communities however don't have that much of a choice because they would have to pay unemployment benefits and much worse - a lot of the small businesses depend on those global players.
But: Those global players benefit from the small businesses a lot, because that is where most of the innovations comes from. Small businesses are the soil for good ideas, because they have to be. There is no other branch of the company that can compensate for any mistakes.
And for the social benefits: Shall I really mention Enron? It's a bad idea to rely on a company if you want to have social benefits. It's nice if a company takes care of its employees, but never ever lay your future into the hands of one single company. Diversify it. There are federal programs, private programs and programs from your employer.
Don't get me wrong, I think market economy is a good thing, but it should be social and there need to be regulations. Big companies, so called global players, tend to think they are above those social contracts. They build R&D facilities at places where they get well-educated engineers. But they don't pay taxes which are used for education. Without those big companies I don't know if the small- and medium-sized businesses would survive. But without those SMBs and well-educated people the big players wouldn't survive either. So it's a question of fair-play.
Well, in a perfect world. On the other hand there is corruption, eagerness for power, and all that other distraction for bored people.
Ever tried to find something in IBM WebSphere's InfoCenter with the internal search system? Good thing the InfoCenter is on the Web. The other day I spoke to an IBM engineer and he admitted, he never finds something with the InfoCenter search system and he also uses Google to search the WebSphere documentation.:)
On the other hand, it becomes a bit scary. We say, we "google" for information instead of we "search" for information. Where "to google" means you actually expect to find something useful (in the "stop searching, start finding" meaning). A bit more competition would be nice.
With nice Web frontends it's as easy to use (when successfully installed) as e.g. the Linksys Web frontend. Freifunk http://www.freifunk.net/ has a nice customized OpenWRT version (sorry, homepage is in German only).
Slashdot Mirror
In the apartment buildings I lived in (not in the US) there was usually a shared room in the basement where everybody could dry his clothes on lines.
And for the moisture in the air: That depends on the kind of dryer you use, traditional dryer or condenser dryer and the like that don't let the humid air outside.
Exactly what my company did with all the old workstation. We are a software development department and a few years back the main issues with laptops have been the slow hard drives. Now they are fast enough (of course we still have our build servers) and all the desktops have been replaced with laptops and docking stations connected to large TFT displays.
Great for working, because you can set up dual-view, do the coding on the large TFT and have your documentation, specification, whatever (/. ;)) on the laptop screen.
And I think the gambling argument doesn't hold for most of the games, either. But I only play occassionally and have maybe different requirements and don't play games like Crysis.
I am also from Europe and did a 6-month internship in California. But for the J1 visa, insurances etc. I happily paid for the services of CIEE e.V. (Council for International Educational Exchange). I'm not sure if this agency still exists, the internship was in 2000/2001, but there are similar agencies around. I had to fill out some forms and have the professor at my university and the manager of the company write some statements about what my job will be and why I am adequate for an internship in the US. But overall the application went pretty smooth for me.
The company I worked for is a global player and has a branch in my home country. But it wasn't possible to apply for an internship in the US through the local subsidiary, so I applied directly at the US branch.
A big advantage has been that a fellow student of my university was doing an internship at that same company the semester before I started my internship and recommended me to his manager. I applied for an internship at other companies via E-Mail or Web, but never heard from them.
The preparation for the intership took about three month with all the sending and receiving of forms and getting all the papers needed, like a clearance certificate (this was pre 9/11!), English language certificate, etc. pp.
Without the help of an agency I'm pretty sure it would have taken me a year of preparation, too. I also agree that the internship should last 6 months minimum to be of benefit for both sides, the company and the student.
But it has been totally worth the money and effort, one of the greatest experiences I made in my life - professionally and otherwise.
So, you don't believe in solar powered bras http://www.gadling.com/2008/05/20/big-in-japan-solar-powered-bra-can-charge-your-ipod/ for charging your iPod or cellphone either?
I use the DNS-323 as my network drive and as step 1 of my overall backup strategy. You can add several services like SSH to the device by applying the funplug-tools http://www.inreto.de/dns323/fun-plug/.
Now you can use rsync for your backups, write a small bash script like this one and write a cronjob entry which calls this script:
#!/bin/bash
LIST="Documents src bin public_html"
for d in $LIST; do /home/tedric/$d -e ssh \
echo "rsyncing directory $d"
rsync -ax --delete
tedric@nas:/mnt/HD_b2/backup/tedric/
done
The second step of my backup strategy is a similar rsync script which doesn't delete files and creates directories for each day. This script is running on the NAS and rsyncing my data to a server at my university.
So, my point is: the NAS is only a media. Saying the NAS is not a means of backup is correct, but the same applies for tapes, CDs, DVDs, flash drives etc. Using the right tools to store data on the NAS however can provide for a good backup solution.
No pizza for me.
What do you mean by crappy D-Link NAS? I bought a D-Link DNS 323 (Gigabit Ethernet, 2*400GB SATA-HDDs) and am pretty happy with it. It also runs Linux and then you can of course install NFS etc. on it. Before that I was playing around with some USB-HDDs attached to my (also Linux based) router and a Trekstore NDAS device. Those two "solutions" were really crappy compared with the D-Link NAS. And that for a price of ~200 (without drives).
On the other hand it's really annoying because all other keyboards I type on (job, friends, etc.) have a german layout and therefor I miss-type on these keyboards a lot. So my new laptop has a german layout again...
I have a little file server at home and everything important is at least stored in two places. Same with the work related stuff of my wife (she's a teacher).
If you don't want to run an extra "file server" (it's an old desktop with a few hard drives in it) buy one of these really affordable external USB hard drives.
Only if you count Russia in, which geographically may be in Europe, but politically isn't so much (we are talking EU here). So it's only France and Britain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_n uclear_weapons
GEZ made a total EUR 7,122,969,516.17 in 2005 http://www.gez.de/door/gebuehren/gebuehrenverteil
I don't even need to listen to public radio or watch public TV. It's sufficient to own a radio or TV.
But your other points are valid. And there are lots of artists worthy to be supported. I own a lot of CDs produced by "the music industry" (> 1000), but also a lot of CDs I bought at open air concerts, in pubs where the musicians where playing etc. The nice thing about those CDs is that there's always a story attached to them. And some of these bands became famous years later and got a contract at a big label.
I think you are both wrong with your analogies. The metric system, French and English are all "open standards". There are pros and cons for all of them, but you can more or less easily translate from one language to another, compute from one system to another.
With closed document formats it's like if you are an American visiting France and you're not allowed to talk French.
Drinking is not a bad thing, getting drunk is a bad thing. Teachers are no saints. I agree teachers are role models, but there is no harm done going to a costume party, having fun and a drink or two.
Pretending not to do something which could, if exaggerated, be hazardous for your health, is a bad thing. Drinking and partying responsibly is the better role model.
Well, Germany may be famous for beer, but the history of beer dates back to ancient Egypt. We aren't even world champions in drinking beer any more. The Czech Republic has a higher per capita consumption than Germany.
Technically, you are right. Obviously, you live in a parallel universe.
Beeing a contractor at two different companies for the past five years my experience is that the "us vs. them" issue is not specific to Intel. Worst thing I was told from an internal employee: "You are below the cleaning staff in the hierarchy here!". Well, I'm young and need the money...
I drive a VW Touran 1.9 TDI (77kw/105hp) which uses 5.6l/100km Diesel combined (data from my car computer, 5.9l/100km according to the data sheet).
'units' says:
You have: 5.6l/100km
You want: mpg
reciprocal conversion
* 42.002604
/ 0.023808048
From www.vw.com I understand this model isn't sold in the US (I'm from Germany) and be aware that it's a Diesel engine. The (not really) equivalent with a 75kw/102hp Otto engine gets only 29mpg (8.1l/100km).
Here you'll find some pictures and technical data (in German).
Same here. My minivan gets 42 MPG. The main reason for us to buy it (we don't have kids yet) was to use it as an SUV (_Sports_ _Utility_ vehicle), because I have enough room inside for 2-3 mountainbikes, camping gear etc. Putting your bikes on top of your car or mount it on the back gets up your gas usage by 50%-100%. Plus, we don't have to worry if everything fits into the trunk. Ok, it might have more space than we actually need, but the van doesn't need more gas than a sedan would, so it's a good compromise for us.
Hmmm, I would pay for it because I think some of the program is nice to watch, like the daily Tagesschau, the daily Tagesthemen, the weekly Tatort.
Public TV is not all bad in Germany, the news programs are much better and less biased as channels I watched abroad. Of course a single TV channel should not be the only source for news you get.
And that's where I strongly disagree with your point "make what people want to see". There has to be room for other opinions dispite mainstream. If you want to, you can find that in public TV shows, like "report" etc. They even criticize their own channel.
I'm on your side when you say, you don't want to pay for something you don't support, you don't consume. You shouldn't pay for it, but you shouldn't be able to receive it. If you want to receive it, pay for it. It's like ordering a newspaper - it's not free as in beer.
And that's a reasoning by the GEZ I completely don't understand. It's like
officer: you didn't pay your GEZ fee
me: but I don't even own a TV
officer: but you could go out and buy one
me: WTF?
Well, you should try getting digital TV. If you have cable TV, you probably already have it, you just need a DVB-C card or a receiver (like a d-box).
There are a lot of additional channels from ARD and ZDF in digital TV for documentations, theater, culture, health, etc. pp. I personally like these channels during major sports events, like the Olypmic Games, because they provide more coverage of the not-so-popular (but interesting for myself) sports like snowboarding. E.g. they broadcasted the whole half-pipe tournament at the last Winter Games, whereas there was only a 15 minute report on the other channels.
Nonetheless, GEZ sucks. I'm not affected by this new fee, because we already pay for TV and radio as a household (i.e. my wife and myself).
Maybe encrypting these channels would be a better idea - like with Premiere. This would make the GEZ and their annoying (and probably expensive) officers obsolete and clarify that so called "public TV" is in fact Pay TV.
Big Companies suck! They suck as tax payers, they suck as employers. I work for one of these "global players" as a contractor and I worked for some others in the past as employee. And it's not an obsession of Americans, it's the same in Europe and I guess in most parts of the world as well.
The company I work for right now made billions of Euros last year, but does not pay any trade income tax to the communities. On the other hand they threaten the communities to move the company somewhere else if they don't get any tax breaks or subventions.
The communities however don't have that much of a choice because they would have to pay unemployment benefits and much worse - a lot of the small businesses depend on those global players.
But: Those global players benefit from the small businesses a lot, because that is where most of the innovations comes from. Small businesses are the soil for good ideas, because they have to be. There is no other branch of the company that can compensate for any mistakes.
And for the social benefits: Shall I really mention Enron? It's a bad idea to rely on a company if you want to have social benefits. It's nice if a company takes care of its employees, but never ever lay your future into the hands of one single company. Diversify it. There are federal programs, private programs and programs from your employer.
Don't get me wrong, I think market economy is a good thing, but it should be social and there need to be regulations. Big companies, so called global players, tend to think they are above those social contracts. They build R&D facilities at places where they get well-educated engineers. But they don't pay taxes which are used for education. Without those big companies I don't know if the small- and medium-sized businesses would survive. But without those SMBs and well-educated people the big players wouldn't survive either. So it's a question of fair-play.
Well, in a perfect world. On the other hand there is corruption, eagerness for power, and all that other distraction for bored people.
Ever tried to find something in IBM WebSphere's InfoCenter with the internal search system? Good thing the InfoCenter is on the Web. The other day I spoke to an IBM engineer and he admitted, he never finds something with the InfoCenter search system and he also uses Google to search the WebSphere documentation. :)
On the other hand, it becomes a bit scary. We say, we "google" for information instead of we "search" for information. Where "to google" means you actually expect to find something useful (in the "stop searching, start finding" meaning). A bit more competition would be nice.
What about OpenWRT http://openwrt.org/, it runs on several consumer grade DSL routers http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware and supports IPv6 http://wiki.openwrt.org/IPv6_howto?highlight=(ipv6 )?
With nice Web frontends it's as easy to use (when successfully installed) as e.g. the Linksys Web frontend. Freifunk http://www.freifunk.net/ has a nice customized OpenWRT version (sorry, homepage is in German only).