I'm not any fan of Steve Jobs (trust me), but I don't think you can call him an asshole for that email exchange. Besides, what you do you really expect when you email the CEO of one of the most successful companies in the world and complain to him that Apple should fix your laptop for free because you yourself admitted to dropping it in water? That's just beyond stupidity. Jobs' response was actually rather calm. If I were in his place, my response would have been incendiary enough to make national headlines.
Maybe Apple fans are just getting too spoiled? My friend works in an Apple store and says that every single day he sees at least one person walk out with a free new computer or iPhone, because they walked in and raised enough of a ruckus about their 10-year-old iMac dying. That would drive me nuts if I had to work there, because I have no problem telling a truly unreasonable customer where they go and how to get there.
I solve the problem by leaving my computer on with the timeclock webpage up when I walk out the door. When I sit down in the morning, first thing I do is click that "Punch In" button.
However, there are plenty of women in the military. These women face an almost institutionalized form of sexual harassment.
Citation needed.
I was in the military for eight years and can't even begin to imagine where you got that impression. I can't speak for the other services, but in the Air Force they're actually rather strict about sexism, harassment, and all the rest. Sure, you get the occasional dickwad who says or does something stupid (and is henceforth reprimanded for it) but it's always a product of his upbringing rather than military culture. Everybody wears the same uniform, everybody gets the same training, everybody is promoted the same.
In the civilian world, the same is just not true. Gender typing (which is sexism) is rampant in pop culture, media, family life, and of course the business world.
If you don't believe me, take a peek at any military history book. The military was promoting women and minorities into the upper ranks well before it became "acceptable" in the business world and, to a lesser degree, academia.
It should prove interesting to see how Abrams' writing staff (Cloverfield, Lost, Alias) tackles the Star Trek universe and all the continuity and baggage that comes with it."
Poorly, I'll bet.
Also, that shitty site hijacks your browser window. You've been warned.
Applet's JVM is buggy, poorly maintained and totally out of date. Sun plans on putting out Java 1.7 in a few months and Applet has yet to even release Java 1.6.
I'm rather surprised to hear that Apple even releases a version of Java. The Apple Tradition is to give you one way to do something and that's it. I can see Apple looking at Java and asking, "what does this have to do with us?" It's not a key part of their system and in fact probably competes to a certain degree with their official Jobs-sanctioned One True Development Platform.
And another thing: What's preventing Sun (or an interested third party, now that Java is open source) from releasing an up-to-date version of Java on Mac?
and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default.
While Adobe's statement was in general quite positive, this little bit translates roughly to, "We're entirely confused and a bit offended that you Linux folks won't ship your distributions will all manner of legacy middleware and glue libraries for eternal backward compatibility like some other OS we could mention."
If by accessible, you mean dumbing down the work of government to cartoon-form, with nothing more than a series of 5-second sound-bites, then good luck. But that's not government in action, it's CNN.
Well I can sympathize with your niece, as probably many here can. In high school and college, I did extremely well in writing and English classes. More than one teacher suggested that I take up journalism or some other form of writing as a career. But the truth is that I hate writing. I mean, I have no problem with the occasional Slashdot post, email, or blog entry. But to sit down and plan out a structured approach to a written piece or spend a few hours bashing out a draft... yuck. I can do it, it comes naturally, but almost wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Thankfully, I was good at something else as well and it happened to be something I enjoyed: information technology.
Unless they're top-ranking geniuses, most smart people are good at more than one thing. I'm betting your niece is as well. What else does she like besides math and science? There's probably something (possibly something she already told you but you aren't telling us) but you're just trying to lure her into the geek trades because that's where you want her to be. That's just not the way it works.
It's also possible that she really doesn't know what she wants to do. It's common (and often a good thing) for pre-college individuals to have no idea what to make of their future. One great thing about college is that it exposes much more of the world to people which helps them make up their minds about what to do. And of course there are people who are 40 and still aren't sure what to do with their life. Everybody's different.
Although much about a person can change after the age of 18, almost all of it is self-change. Even if you were in her immediate family, you're exceedingly unlikely to influence your niece's decisions about her future.
I was quite a fan of Monty Python in my teen years. I could recite all the famous sketches line-for-line and always made a point to watch the Python movies when they aired on TV.
A few years ago, I decided to watch every episode of Flying Circus and... it was actually rather disappointing. Not because the troupe weren't fine actors with witty dialogue or even that too much of the material was related to current events and English politics, but rather two things that were ultimately beyond the Pythons to control:
1) I, like many others, grew up on the more polished versions of their popular sketches. The original sketches were necessarily performed in front of a live audience with little rehearsal so many of the minor details of the sketch that would be perfected later (especially timing) are missing. Although there are a few sketches that they never could reproduce as well as the originals.
2) Monty Python's brand of humor was something new and unusual when Flying Circus originally aired. It was so successful that it was heavily borrowed-from and copied in the 80's and 90's by many comedians and comedy writers. So when someone like me who grew up in the 80's and 90's watches it, it doesn't seem all that original.
When I hear about these RIAA letters-of-doom-death I always wondered, are the Universities even legally required to forward them to students? Why don't the Universities say, "no way, you deliver your own threat letters to people."
Interesting... I typo'd the first sentence. I actually own an N800 per the subject. I assumed that since the hardware was nearly identical that the battery life was similar. I stand corrected, though.
By leveraging thousands of processing cores on a graphics card for general computing calculations, tasks such as scientific simulations or geographic modelling, which are traditionally the realm of supercomputers, can be performed on smaller, more affordable systems.
So if I understand this right, they're adding transistors to the graphics card that would normally be added to the CPU. How exactly does that help? It's not really a graphics cards anymore if you're doing general processing on it. Why not just put that horsepower on the CPU?
Have AMD forgotten that they're still a CPU business? I used to like AMD but now that they're having to compete with two industry powerhouses who have held the lead for a long time (Intel and nVidia) they seem to be getting a little schizophrenic.
OP should be shot; N800 idle time
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Ubuntu Ports To ARM
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· Score: 3, Informative
Nokia's N810 tablets can standby for several weeks, just like a cell phone, keeping you 'present' on IM, behind IPv4 NAT the whole time.
I own an N810 and this is such an exaggeration as to be patently false. Not even Nokia claims you can get that kind of battery life out of these.
An N810 can only go about 48 hours between each charge. And that's if the bluetooth and wifi radios are turned off and all programs are exited. If the battery is new, you might get up to three days.
If you have the wifi radio on and are idling on IM, I'd expect that you could maybe get 12 hours of infrequent use and even that might be pushing it.
When actively using the device (browsing the web, listening to a stream, etc), the CPU kicks in and you'll get between 4 and 6 hours of use depending on what you're doing.
There is a view with OSS that "you should be greatful with what others have done otherwise code it yourself" Which to some extent is true. You should be thankful that these hubs and support sites are provided or supported by the authors.
This isn't "to some extent true," it's all the way true. This is the problem I have with people bashing Linux distributions and other open source software because they contain some bugs or don't have some ability that they think they need. I've said it before and I'll say it again:
The defining difference between open source and commercial software is that you pay for it with effort rather than money. There are lots of open source programs out there that you can install on your computer for free and they just work and that's the end of the story. But this doesn't mean you're entitled to perfect support or a bug-free experience every time. If you run across a bug or a problem somewhere, you're expected to help fix the problem even if it means submitting a bug report or simply asking for help on a mailing list or forum. And that's just the minimum requirement. A thriving OSS project also needs people to contribute new features, non-critical bugfixes, and documentation so that others can have an even better experience with the software.
Unfortunately as OSS creeps further into the mainstream there seem to be an increasing number of users who expect everything for free. If the open source community should be doing anything differently, it's communicating the message to the public that yes, the software you are getting is free of charge but if you encounter a problem, you need to help us help you solve it, not write some whiny post on your blog (or a Slashdot story submission like this one) bashing the project publicly to gain attention.
Unfortunately this can only run so far. If you're a business and you've spent 100 hours installing a piece of software across a network only to find updates and support drops a week later, that can work out to be very expensive.
There are a number of things wrong with this example. The first is that you have to carefully evaluate the software you use as the base of your system regardless of whether it's OSS or proprietary. The second is that an OSS project gives you or anyone else the ability to pick up where the original developers left off because the code is open and free. With a proprietary vendor, you don't get this option and I've seen plenty of businesses left in the lurch because the vendor decided to suddenly stop supporting a piece of very expensive proprietary software that the company had formed their entire business around. Third, no software that I'm aware of requires weekly updates in order to run correctly.
Likewise if you're a student and a paper is due but you can't complete it due to a bug/error and the support section for the program you've used no longer exists, it's a big issue.
Again it comes down to choosing the right software for the job. Any worthwhile piece of open source software has a community around it that takes over if the main developer decides to move on to something else or lock up the code. Open source software support almost never vanishes into thin air. Proprietary software support often does.
This is even more of a problem if there is a leading OSS solution that is so well known, no one wants to write competing software for it so when development and support stops, there's a gaping vaccuum in that area.
Yet again, support doesn't stop for an OSS project as long as there's a community around it. This goes double if it's a "leading" OSS solution. You're manufacturing doomsday scenarios where none are even remotely likely to occur.
Open Source has to compete with commercial software and usually commercial companies will give you support for the lifespan of a product or until it becomes obsole
And why have a Korean play a Japanese character (Sulu)? WTF? I guess they are depending on the old cracker saying "what's the difference?"
In effect, he did. I can't find the reference now, but George Takei has gone on record saying that he sees no problem with the new Sulu actor being Korean because Sulu was meant to symbolize all Asian cultures.
Unfortunately, the person who's opinion matters the most died midway through The Next Generation series. This is the one casting and plot decision in the new film that Gene Roddenberry probably would have agreed with.
The company was started as Radio Shack in 1921 in Boston, Massachusetts, by two brothers, Theodore and Milton Deutschmann who wanted to provide equipment for the cutting-edge field of amateur, or ham, radio. Theodore and Milton Deutschmann opened a one-store retail and mail-order operation in the heart of downtown Boston on Brattle Street, near the site of the Boston Massacre. They chose the name "Radio Shack," which was a term for the small, wooden structure that housed a ship's radio equipment. The Deutschmanns thought the name was appropriate for a store that would supply the needs of radio officers aboard ships, as well as "ham" radio operators.
Radio Shack started out as a store specifically catering to electronics enthusiasts, especially those of the radio persuasion. (It's fair to say that radio was the primary driving force of most electronic inventions and discoveries in the early 1900's due to its incredible potential and utility.) Then in the 50's they started the gradual slide towards selling consumer electronics, especially things like home stereo systems, televisions, and telephones. It's not hard to see why: consumer electronics are a far wider market and the product margins are much larger.
If you flip through old Radio Shack catalogs, you can see the gradual shift over the decades from a hobbyist store to a consumer electronics store. One the popularity of ham radio died down, Radio Shack became of little use to the amateur hobbyist except as an emergency source for a small selection of very common electronics components and equipment (like 1K resistors or breadboards).
Frankly, I'm amazed that Radio Shack is even still around, let alone having at least one location in most towns where I'm at. Their consumer electronics offerings have never been competitive with big-box stores and any loyal customer base that would have been loyal repeat customers at Radio Shack in the 50's through 70's has mostly (or significantly) passed away. And when you consider for how long they held onto selling their own brands to the exclusion of giants like RCA and Sony, it's even the more remarkable.
Lately, there has been a small but growing resurgence of electronics hobbyists who are empowered by the knowledge-sharing and communication capabilities of the Internet, the ability to have cheap components shipped to you from large warehouses, and of course the hacker spirit. Unfortunately, Radio Shack is too old a company to position itself for any kind of useful presence in this new hobbyist community.
I believe that all of what you said applies to intelligent people versus those in power as well.
It's no accident that most U.S. public schools are a complete disgrace in terms of education quality. (And also happens to be the biggest customer of net filter software.)
Hell, that kind of shit would have been a nightmare for me at that age when I had massive social anxiety and was extremely uncomfortable in such situations.
To me, it sounds like it would have done you a world of good.
I'm as much of an introvert as the next Slashdotter, but it wasn't until I was about 22 before I learned that I had to leave my comfort zone in order to get anywhere in life. If you aren't constantly pushing yourself to do things you normally wouldn't do, you'll never get a truly worthwhile education, make interesting friends, or have those priceless once-in-a-lifetime experiences that you'll tell your grandchildren about some day. Make up your mind to do something, if for no other reason than to say you've been there, done that, and got the T-shirt. Do a panel at a convention, take a road trip somewhere, volunteer your time for something. Anything that's a departure from your normal routine.
I welcome mandatory community service for youngsters. Now only would it help most of them get away from their video games and TV for awhile, but it might truly inspire a few. That's good enough for me.
If this still seems like a hideous to some, consider that many countries have mandatory military service. Now a little bit of community service (where you're making an active effort to improve your own community and gaining an education at the same time) doesn't sound quite so bad, does it?
It seems most of the stuff I do is preventative, IE care and feeding of servers and network infrastructure in addition to all the break fix stuff I do for the user base with their desktops. When in this position what do you folks usually do?"
I take a nice long vacation every year or so.
If your workplace is anything like the ones I've been in, nobody truly values your efforts until their machine dies and suddenly nobody's there to fix it on the spot. Annual vacations are that reminder of just how large a portion of the company the I.T. person single-handedly keeps up-and-running on a daily basis.
Cutting in line is easier than most people think. As long as you act normal and confident, virtually no one in our docile society will want to start an almost assuredly unpleasant confrontation.
First, don't get the impression that I'm someone who normally cuts in line. I'm the kind of person who, unless instructed otherwise, would probably wait patiently in an emergency room holding my own freshly-severed leg until called upon by a nurse or doctor. Now with that pleasant qualification out of the way...
The only time in my life I've ever intentionally cut in line was when I went with a group of four people to a night club. It was the only time I've ever been to a night club, in fact, and it must have been a pretty popular one because there were people lined up for about two blocks waiting to get in. But the guy who brought us there took one look at the line and said, "follow me." I knew what he was about to do, but I didn't feel it was right and was skeptical we'd get away with it anyhow. With all the people and the bouncers and probably even video cameras, we'd not simply be able to cut in line and not have anyone notice.
But cut we did. And we didn't just skip half the line or 3/4 of it, we went all the way to the front. I was waiting for one of the bouncers to say, "hey, you guys weren't here a second ago," but they never said anything. Waved their metal detectors around, stamped us all on the hand and let us in. After we were apparently in, I started wondering how the @#$% we just pulled that off. I can only imagine that it's because we didn't draw attention to ourselves and we didn't look suspicious whilst executing the cut. Perhaps because we acted like we were supposed to be cutting in line, everyone else assumed that we were entitled to. Like VIPs or something. Who knows.
By the time we were ready to leave, the line had moved forward enough that we would have been about 10 feet from the entrance had we stayed in line.
Unless you're getting paid to manage all those CDs, bothering with optical media just isn't worth your time. I would never use optical media to back up something that couldn't fit on one disc and only needed to be backed up a maximum of once a week.
My archive solution is a low-end server connected to a gigantic RAID. If a disk dies (as they all do), you swap out the disk and keep moving. Backing up is completely automated and restoring is a snap. If the data is truly mission-critical, then you need a second server in a different geographical location that automatically mirrors the first over a high-speed link.
Yes, it costs more but it's a bullet-proof system and it scales easily. When you figure in all the time wasted handling and managing the optical media, it might actually come out cheaper.
somewhat like Ham radio, where people needed to aquire a license to transmit, and take classes, and have an ID associated with transmissions, and a regulatory body to monitor specious transmissions and revoke licenses or shut down non-compliant equipment as necessary.
Um, if those are the qualifications, I think you meant "exactly like ham radio."
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not any fan of Steve Jobs (trust me), but I don't think you can call him an asshole for that email exchange. Besides, what you do you really expect when you email the CEO of one of the most successful companies in the world and complain to him that Apple should fix your laptop for free because you yourself admitted to dropping it in water? That's just beyond stupidity. Jobs' response was actually rather calm. If I were in his place, my response would have been incendiary enough to make national headlines.
Maybe Apple fans are just getting too spoiled? My friend works in an Apple store and says that every single day he sees at least one person walk out with a free new computer or iPhone, because they walked in and raised enough of a ruckus about their 10-year-old iMac dying. That would drive me nuts if I had to work there, because I have no problem telling a truly unreasonable customer where they go and how to get there.
Actually, the NCC-1701-D was built at Utopia Planitia, the Starfleet shipyard orbiting Mars.
I'll forgive the slip-up this time.
I solve the problem by leaving my computer on with the timeclock webpage up when I walk out the door. When I sit down in the morning, first thing I do is click that "Punch In" button.
Citation needed.
I was in the military for eight years and can't even begin to imagine where you got that impression. I can't speak for the other services, but in the Air Force they're actually rather strict about sexism, harassment, and all the rest. Sure, you get the occasional dickwad who says or does something stupid (and is henceforth reprimanded for it) but it's always a product of his upbringing rather than military culture. Everybody wears the same uniform, everybody gets the same training, everybody is promoted the same.
In the civilian world, the same is just not true. Gender typing (which is sexism) is rampant in pop culture, media, family life, and of course the business world.
If you don't believe me, take a peek at any military history book. The military was promoting women and minorities into the upper ranks well before it became "acceptable" in the business world and, to a lesser degree, academia.
Poorly, I'll bet.
Also, that shitty site hijacks your browser window. You've been warned.
I'm rather surprised to hear that Apple even releases a version of Java. The Apple Tradition is to give you one way to do something and that's it. I can see Apple looking at Java and asking, "what does this have to do with us?" It's not a key part of their system and in fact probably competes to a certain degree with their official Jobs-sanctioned One True Development Platform.
And another thing: What's preventing Sun (or an interested third party, now that Java is open source) from releasing an up-to-date version of Java on Mac?
He's a venture capitalist who puts up a lot of money for technology, products, and companies that make Slashdot headlines.
But you snipped off this part, which said:
While Adobe's statement was in general quite positive, this little bit translates roughly to, "We're entirely confused and a bit offended that you Linux folks won't ship your distributions will all manner of legacy middleware and glue libraries for eternal backward compatibility like some other OS we could mention."
Well then who conceived of this inconceivable multiverse then, eh? Bet you smart science types didn't see *that* coming!
Fixed that for ya.
Well I can sympathize with your niece, as probably many here can. In high school and college, I did extremely well in writing and English classes. More than one teacher suggested that I take up journalism or some other form of writing as a career. But the truth is that I hate writing. I mean, I have no problem with the occasional Slashdot post, email, or blog entry. But to sit down and plan out a structured approach to a written piece or spend a few hours bashing out a draft... yuck. I can do it, it comes naturally, but almost wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Thankfully, I was good at something else as well and it happened to be something I enjoyed: information technology.
Unless they're top-ranking geniuses, most smart people are good at more than one thing. I'm betting your niece is as well. What else does she like besides math and science? There's probably something (possibly something she already told you but you aren't telling us) but you're just trying to lure her into the geek trades because that's where you want her to be. That's just not the way it works.
It's also possible that she really doesn't know what she wants to do. It's common (and often a good thing) for pre-college individuals to have no idea what to make of their future. One great thing about college is that it exposes much more of the world to people which helps them make up their minds about what to do. And of course there are people who are 40 and still aren't sure what to do with their life. Everybody's different.
Although much about a person can change after the age of 18, almost all of it is self-change. Even if you were in her immediate family, you're exceedingly unlikely to influence your niece's decisions about her future.
I was quite a fan of Monty Python in my teen years. I could recite all the famous sketches line-for-line and always made a point to watch the Python movies when they aired on TV.
A few years ago, I decided to watch every episode of Flying Circus and... it was actually rather disappointing. Not because the troupe weren't fine actors with witty dialogue or even that too much of the material was related to current events and English politics, but rather two things that were ultimately beyond the Pythons to control:
1) I, like many others, grew up on the more polished versions of their popular sketches. The original sketches were necessarily performed in front of a live audience with little rehearsal so many of the minor details of the sketch that would be perfected later (especially timing) are missing. Although there are a few sketches that they never could reproduce as well as the originals.
2) Monty Python's brand of humor was something new and unusual when Flying Circus originally aired. It was so successful that it was heavily borrowed-from and copied in the 80's and 90's by many comedians and comedy writers. So when someone like me who grew up in the 80's and 90's watches it, it doesn't seem all that original.
When I hear about these RIAA letters-of-doom-death I always wondered, are the Universities even legally required to forward them to students? Why don't the Universities say, "no way, you deliver your own threat letters to people."
Interesting... I typo'd the first sentence. I actually own an N800 per the subject. I assumed that since the hardware was nearly identical that the battery life was similar. I stand corrected, though.
So if I understand this right, they're adding transistors to the graphics card that would normally be added to the CPU. How exactly does that help? It's not really a graphics cards anymore if you're doing general processing on it. Why not just put that horsepower on the CPU?
Have AMD forgotten that they're still a CPU business? I used to like AMD but now that they're having to compete with two industry powerhouses who have held the lead for a long time (Intel and nVidia) they seem to be getting a little schizophrenic.
I own an N810 and this is such an exaggeration as to be patently false. Not even Nokia claims you can get that kind of battery life out of these.
An N810 can only go about 48 hours between each charge. And that's if the bluetooth and wifi radios are turned off and all programs are exited. If the battery is new, you might get up to three days.
If you have the wifi radio on and are idling on IM, I'd expect that you could maybe get 12 hours of infrequent use and even that might be pushing it.
When actively using the device (browsing the web, listening to a stream, etc), the CPU kicks in and you'll get between 4 and 6 hours of use depending on what you're doing.
This isn't "to some extent true," it's all the way true. This is the problem I have with people bashing Linux distributions and other open source software because they contain some bugs or don't have some ability that they think they need. I've said it before and I'll say it again:
The defining difference between open source and commercial software is that you pay for it with effort rather than money. There are lots of open source programs out there that you can install on your computer for free and they just work and that's the end of the story. But this doesn't mean you're entitled to perfect support or a bug-free experience every time. If you run across a bug or a problem somewhere, you're expected to help fix the problem even if it means submitting a bug report or simply asking for help on a mailing list or forum. And that's just the minimum requirement. A thriving OSS project also needs people to contribute new features, non-critical bugfixes, and documentation so that others can have an even better experience with the software.
Unfortunately as OSS creeps further into the mainstream there seem to be an increasing number of users who expect everything for free. If the open source community should be doing anything differently, it's communicating the message to the public that yes, the software you are getting is free of charge but if you encounter a problem, you need to help us help you solve it, not write some whiny post on your blog (or a Slashdot story submission like this one) bashing the project publicly to gain attention.
There are a number of things wrong with this example. The first is that you have to carefully evaluate the software you use as the base of your system regardless of whether it's OSS or proprietary. The second is that an OSS project gives you or anyone else the ability to pick up where the original developers left off because the code is open and free. With a proprietary vendor, you don't get this option and I've seen plenty of businesses left in the lurch because the vendor decided to suddenly stop supporting a piece of very expensive proprietary software that the company had formed their entire business around. Third, no software that I'm aware of requires weekly updates in order to run correctly.
Again it comes down to choosing the right software for the job. Any worthwhile piece of open source software has a community around it that takes over if the main developer decides to move on to something else or lock up the code. Open source software support almost never vanishes into thin air. Proprietary software support often does.
Yet again, support doesn't stop for an OSS project as long as there's a community around it. This goes double if it's a "leading" OSS solution. You're manufacturing doomsday scenarios where none are even remotely likely to occur.
In effect, he did. I can't find the reference now, but George Takei has gone on record saying that he sees no problem with the new Sulu actor being Korean because Sulu was meant to symbolize all Asian cultures.
Unfortunately, the person who's opinion matters the most died midway through The Next Generation series. This is the one casting and plot decision in the new film that Gene Roddenberry probably would have agreed with.
The beginning of Radio Shack, from Wikipedia:
Radio Shack started out as a store specifically catering to electronics enthusiasts, especially those of the radio persuasion. (It's fair to say that radio was the primary driving force of most electronic inventions and discoveries in the early 1900's due to its incredible potential and utility.) Then in the 50's they started the gradual slide towards selling consumer electronics, especially things like home stereo systems, televisions, and telephones. It's not hard to see why: consumer electronics are a far wider market and the product margins are much larger.
If you flip through old Radio Shack catalogs, you can see the gradual shift over the decades from a hobbyist store to a consumer electronics store. One the popularity of ham radio died down, Radio Shack became of little use to the amateur hobbyist except as an emergency source for a small selection of very common electronics components and equipment (like 1K resistors or breadboards).
Frankly, I'm amazed that Radio Shack is even still around, let alone having at least one location in most towns where I'm at. Their consumer electronics offerings have never been competitive with big-box stores and any loyal customer base that would have been loyal repeat customers at Radio Shack in the 50's through 70's has mostly (or significantly) passed away. And when you consider for how long they held onto selling their own brands to the exclusion of giants like RCA and Sony, it's even the more remarkable.
Lately, there has been a small but growing resurgence of electronics hobbyists who are empowered by the knowledge-sharing and communication capabilities of the Internet, the ability to have cheap components shipped to you from large warehouses, and of course the hacker spirit. Unfortunately, Radio Shack is too old a company to position itself for any kind of useful presence in this new hobbyist community.
I believe that all of what you said applies to intelligent people versus those in power as well.
It's no accident that most U.S. public schools are a complete disgrace in terms of education quality. (And also happens to be the biggest customer of net filter software.)
To me, it sounds like it would have done you a world of good.
I'm as much of an introvert as the next Slashdotter, but it wasn't until I was about 22 before I learned that I had to leave my comfort zone in order to get anywhere in life. If you aren't constantly pushing yourself to do things you normally wouldn't do, you'll never get a truly worthwhile education, make interesting friends, or have those priceless once-in-a-lifetime experiences that you'll tell your grandchildren about some day. Make up your mind to do something, if for no other reason than to say you've been there, done that, and got the T-shirt. Do a panel at a convention, take a road trip somewhere, volunteer your time for something. Anything that's a departure from your normal routine.
I welcome mandatory community service for youngsters. Now only would it help most of them get away from their video games and TV for awhile, but it might truly inspire a few. That's good enough for me.
If this still seems like a hideous to some, consider that many countries have mandatory military service. Now a little bit of community service (where you're making an active effort to improve your own community and gaining an education at the same time) doesn't sound quite so bad, does it?
I take a nice long vacation every year or so.
If your workplace is anything like the ones I've been in, nobody truly values your efforts until their machine dies and suddenly nobody's there to fix it on the spot. Annual vacations are that reminder of just how large a portion of the company the I.T. person single-handedly keeps up-and-running on a daily basis.
Cutting in line is easier than most people think. As long as you act normal and confident, virtually no one in our docile society will want to start an almost assuredly unpleasant confrontation.
First, don't get the impression that I'm someone who normally cuts in line. I'm the kind of person who, unless instructed otherwise, would probably wait patiently in an emergency room holding my own freshly-severed leg until called upon by a nurse or doctor. Now with that pleasant qualification out of the way...
The only time in my life I've ever intentionally cut in line was when I went with a group of four people to a night club. It was the only time I've ever been to a night club, in fact, and it must have been a pretty popular one because there were people lined up for about two blocks waiting to get in. But the guy who brought us there took one look at the line and said, "follow me." I knew what he was about to do, but I didn't feel it was right and was skeptical we'd get away with it anyhow. With all the people and the bouncers and probably even video cameras, we'd not simply be able to cut in line and not have anyone notice.
But cut we did. And we didn't just skip half the line or 3/4 of it, we went all the way to the front. I was waiting for one of the bouncers to say, "hey, you guys weren't here a second ago," but they never said anything. Waved their metal detectors around, stamped us all on the hand and let us in. After we were apparently in, I started wondering how the @#$% we just pulled that off. I can only imagine that it's because we didn't draw attention to ourselves and we didn't look suspicious whilst executing the cut. Perhaps because we acted like we were supposed to be cutting in line, everyone else assumed that we were entitled to. Like VIPs or something. Who knows.
By the time we were ready to leave, the line had moved forward enough that we would have been about 10 feet from the entrance had we stayed in line.
Unless you're getting paid to manage all those CDs, bothering with optical media just isn't worth your time. I would never use optical media to back up something that couldn't fit on one disc and only needed to be backed up a maximum of once a week.
My archive solution is a low-end server connected to a gigantic RAID. If a disk dies (as they all do), you swap out the disk and keep moving. Backing up is completely automated and restoring is a snap. If the data is truly mission-critical, then you need a second server in a different geographical location that automatically mirrors the first over a high-speed link.
Yes, it costs more but it's a bullet-proof system and it scales easily. When you figure in all the time wasted handling and managing the optical media, it might actually come out cheaper.
Um, if those are the qualifications, I think you meant "exactly like ham radio."