1. Most Americans never travel outside of North America and have no desire to do so.
As a naturalized citizen of the U.S., and having traveled the world when I was younger, I can tell you that this country is big enough for anyone to travel, with enough really wonderful places to visit and not have to visit anywhere else in the world. My father has traveled much more extensively than me, and he agrees that it is absolutely not necessary to visit other countries if you don't want to. We have variation in topography (mountains, plains), beaches, lakes, oceans, mountains... you name it. You can spend a lifetime, and certainly a retirement visiting the sights and never visit a place twice or run out of things to do... hence the popularity of Recreational Vehicles (RVs) here.
What is missing is history. With the exception of some native settlements in the West, everything here is less than a few hundred years old. Our "oldest" places are those dedicated to our revolutionary and civil war periods. When going to Europe one is struck immediately by the history - that certain buildings have been standing for centuries, even things as mundane as apartments. In NY City, if you have an old Brownstone built in the 1890s you have an old building. If you don't have a desire to relive old history, for most people that seems to be visiting the countries where their ancestors lived, then . I would say that most people here are quite satisfied to stay here... plus it is really expensive to leave, having to fly 3,000 miles to get to Europe, whereas if you live in Europe you can visit 20 countries in 10 days and get a different cultural experience at each one.
Ok, time to cue the "I'm not going to the U.S. now" comments... this should be predictable.
The thing is, besides the inevitable furor from the tin-foil hatted crowd, is this policy a step in the wrong direction, or just a return to slightly stricter times? When I came to this country in the early 1970s it was required that we get visa's and passports, present them at the U.S. border, fill out extensive forms documenting our stay etc. And yet we were still thrilled to come here, despite some pretty awful things that had happened in the 60s. We had no doubt that our information was kept on file, and yet it was definitely worth it to come here.
So I am not sure if this policy is just a return to slightly stricter immigration control. If it is, can the policy work and is it necessary? Let's have some constructive discussion instead of whining please.
Does this article help explain how those little lightbulb things with the rotating black/white cards work? I always loved those as a kid... in fact I was shocked to find them at Home Depot the other day in a demonstration of why LowE glass can be a good thing. They had two of them, but the one behind the low E glass was barely rotating when exposed to a lightbulb while the other behind regular glass was whizzing around.
Who knows what Microsoft, Google and others have in mind. You can be sure, however, that employer interest in Personal Health Records (PHR) is going to encourage the transition to whatever universal format eventually arrives. Also, Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault are already in place for millions of subscribers. They recognized a long time ago that there was value in providing portable storage for personal health information, as well as easy access to that information from providers. They are already quite secure, though the federal government (big brother) does not yet have access to those records. Providers are slowly coming on board with recognizing the value of these records, though they currently prefer their own most due to trust - it isn't that they don't trust MS or Google, it is that they don't trust what the patient might have modified on their health record, either deleting or adding data that can misdirect care. In this age of litigiousness, that is not a risk any provider wants to take.
For someone who can afford one of these flying cars, it is likely the cost barrier for a pilot's license does not exist. What is likely to exist, however, is the time barrier. Typically, unless cashed out, retired or otherwise not working, people that can afford this kind of luxury are working their asses of with very little free time.
With that said, in the U.S. I there are new Sport Pilot licenses that might fit this usage perfectly. The licenses are much easier to obtain, with the associated training centers springing up, where a person can pay $X thousand and learn to fly in two weeks. For example, http://sportplanesflorida.com/learntofly.htm?gclid=CIeL79WHiZgCFSUqHgodKRniDg is what came up on my first google search.
I read the new licenses only require 20 hours of flight time versus the current Solo rating 40 hours. If you fly 2 hours per day, which is a *lot*, then in 10 days you are done.
Too bad you posted AC. That was a very interesting read. I'm not sure I believe everything in that article, but the point about the U.S. economy being a giant pyramid scheme, built currently on the foriegn economic investment, seems right on.
WTF, why the hell would websense block your site? It's not like learning a little about Python might not be helpful to me at my job, either current or future. Stupid asses. I'll have to check out your link when I get home. Dagnabit!
Re:Simple shit you didn't know existed
on
Ubuntu Kung Fu
·
· Score: 1
Everything you want to know about Ubuntu is thoroughly covered by a Google search. Invariably the Ubuntu forums comes up, since it seems that any question that ever existed has been asked before... and gets asked repeatedly there anyway! Seriously, I had been away from Linux for a few years and after installing Ubuntu in 2007 I have learned just about anything needed.
The thing is, I cannot fathom what is really necessary in a hard-copy book for administering a typical user box. Right off the download page, it is locked down well enough (easy there BSD guys), contains most of the software needed for getting started, and any applications are a Google search for recommendations & Synaptic/apt-get step away. It couldn't be easier!
Re:Nah, everybody knows how this one goes.
on
Ubuntu Kung Fu
·
· Score: 5, Funny
And I was sitting here with 15 moderator points, thinking "should I throw him a bone for offering the obligatory XKCD, but in an incomplete fashion", or "should I reward you for giving the link and completing the joke", or even "should I mod you down for being a karma whore". In the end I decided to let my mod points vanish into oblivion due to my indecisiveness over my quandry. I feel better now.
Just remember that Blizzak's actually wear rather quickly and turn into "all-season" tires after about a season's use of driving on mixed surfaces (e.g. snow and pavement). On the other hand, standard modern snow tires like the Nokian, still wear quickly due to their soft compound however they tend to last longer than a season or two simply because they have so much tread.
I have to tell you that techies often get the "no I don't" kind of response because of all the wrong diagnoses that have been given in the past. I can count many times when I have instructed a technician on what to do, what I have tried, and then get some half-assed "please reboot", or "check the ethernet cable" or whatever. The thing is, it is impossible to tell the smart, slashdot reading help desk personnel from the just-graduated-from-college-and-trying-to-find-a-real-IT-job person.
Let's see... last week I actually noticed my mouse wandering around on the screen where it wasn't supposed to go. Then the computer opened up a Windows Explorer on its own. No shit. So I opened up Notepad, in between wrestling control over my mouse, and wrote "This is my computer, what the heck are you doing on it?"
The response was "Are you employee #XXXXXXXXXX with the email problem?" My response: "No, I am working at home and wondering why you took control of my computer." Him: "Sorry, I am trying to help another user." Me: "Please give me your name, phone number and department so I can check who you are." Him: "Sorry, Matt Smith, XXX-XXX-XXXX, Support Desk" Me: "No worries, don't let it happen again."
I let him drop after that. And here I was freaking out that during my "work" from home, at the exact point I happened to be browsing Slashdot on the company laptop, that they were on to me and I was busted. I am probably busted anyway based on the logs...
My son has Lego Indiana Jones and I installed it on my computer this week just for something to do. #1, you are right that there are no consequences for dying other than a loss of Lego bits (and progress toward 100% completion). It really is a brute force children's game. What is completely frustrating to me is the lack of save points. You have to complete a whole section at a time in order to save. When we needed to leave on Christmas eve I was 3/4 of the way through a section with no way to save, so just had to abandon where I was. Very poor design that again rewards just plowing through a level.
I am not sure what to think about Assassin's Creed yet since that doesn't seem too difficult so far, but has some oddness with scattered save points. (memories)
I got sucked in today by the "free shipping over $25" thing. It really is a well designed incentive for suckers like me.
I ordered a book on Google SketchUp that came to $16 and got the notice that for only another $9 I could have free shipping (shipping was $4). So what did I do? Not the smart thing of either just paying the $3.95 or finding some items that up to the $9 gap. Nope, not me. Ordered $50 of memory, and a $6 phone charger with the justification that I needed them anyway. (want!=need) I have sucker written all over my forehead, and I always prefer newegg.com - though in this case Amazon and NewEgg were the same price.
That feels better. I like Amazon for anything over $25. I don't trust their affiliates in the marketplace though.
I really like the notifications I get under my Windows system. Seriously. When I get an IM, it pops up in a box with a hyperlink showing the first few words of the message. The same, if a bit longer, happens with emails. Both notifcations show who it came from, gives me an opportunity to interact, and if I choose to ignore it they dissolve into the background never to be seen again. I like it.
On the other hand, some notifications I can do without like "Rebooting your system in 5 minutes" without an opportunity to decline.
There has been a huge communication effort at my company, training videos, websites, emails, the works. We will be going to Vista throughout 2009 into early 2010 with something like 20,000+ machines will be affected. As a strategic customer of MS (I think, I haven't worked in procurement) I doubt that this will affect their ability to sell us on the next generation.
Or like going into a bar in San Francisco and saying that being homosexual is an affront to God, a huge sin, and everyone is going to burn in hell. Except instead of fists of rage or guns drawn, you get "you big meanie, come on over here so we can sssspank you!"
No you are not. That title belongs to Canada, who have been our minions for quite a bit longer. You blokes only came around since we bailed you out in WWII. So maybe you can be the 52nd state!
How many times do you go through a 60 litre tank in one go? I live in the suburbs, which means driving to practically everything, and in both of my current cars there may be one or two times per year that we go on a road trip and have to refill along the way or at our turnaround point. That means the 95% of the rest of the time we do small trips where the capacity of this capacitor would be fine.
So to say there is *no* market simply because it doesn't have a 250 mile range is stupid. To say the market is somewhat more limited, and might require different purchase requirements is fine. For example, in my family we might keep one petrol car for the occasional road trips, and then buy one capacitor car for sporty/commuting/grocery-getting etc.
Ok, if you confine your Mom to installing new software Synaptic on the Ubuntu installation, I highly doubt she will have any problems. I have been a Linux user for a while, and I forget more and more about command lines every day now that I have been using Ubuntu for the last year. Honestly there is extraordinarily little that any user needs to use a command line for. In fact, except when putzing around trying to muck with my user files and tweak my system *just so*, I haven't needed to.
So as long as you don't tell your Mom about Apt-Get, or for that matter that she can search on.deb and.rpm to find new files, I expect she would be able to run a completely stable system for years without manual intervention. That is much better than Windows (I currently run XP on my desktop) where I can't find new software in one place but have to browse various web repositories in various unknown states of trustworthiness. Besides, once your Mom has a working desktop, which probably includes web access, email, office documents and maybe a finance program, what else might she need? In addition, since you are more compfortable than she, you could always SSH onto her machine and fix it for her.
No excuses. Ubuntu makes Linux dead easy. My kids, ages 10 and 13, are learning that it is much easier and even more fun than Windows... since Webkinz.com, kongregate.com work fine and a whole host of free games are out there for their enjoyment that they no longer need XP. (that is, until Xmas when my son gets an iPod Touch)
Hey, Ubuntu, you haven't quite figured out a way sensibly handle legacy software that requires root permissions. Your "Cancel or Allow"esque abomination works ok for GUI stuff that is built to incorperate it, but it breaks so many apps that I have already learned to hate it.
This handling of "legacy" applications is exactly what has both a) held Windows back to 1990 and b) enabled Windows to retain its hold on the large corporate radar. Here's a clue - not everything you can get off the 'Net is valuable, maintained or needs to run on a modern system. Typically if you find a piece of software that breaks on Ubuntu, you can find a replacement with a quick google search that will work properly.
BTW, I have been working on my current Ubuntu laptop for 12 months. I have yet to encounter a single piece of software that has asked me to "Cancel, Allow". For those applications that I prefer to run as root, like Gediting a system file, I simply run them from a terminal window as "sudo applicationexec &" and it runs fine.
What applications are you running that "so many" of them are broken to be pissing you off this much?
My father just kicked off a flurry of spam from his inbox, and I have been helping him to reach out to his entire address book to stop it from spreading any further. According to him:
"I receieved an email from my dearest friend from England, who I have not spoken to in some time, asking me to join Reunion.com. I clicked on the button in the email and sent me to a site giving me the option to sign up for the service. Until I got your call, I had no idea that it sent out emails to everyone in my address book. It was a nicely worded email and didn't seem like spam at all.
Now that they have his email address, one that he does not want to give up, I am afraid he, and everyone on his address list, will now be the target of even more personalized spam. I hope my gmail filter catches most of everything, but I have no doubt in a few months I'll be looking for pen!s enlargement devices, v!agr@ etc.
Slashdot Mirror
As a naturalized citizen of the U.S., and having traveled the world when I was younger, I can tell you that this country is big enough for anyone to travel, with enough really wonderful places to visit and not have to visit anywhere else in the world. My father has traveled much more extensively than me, and he agrees that it is absolutely not necessary to visit other countries if you don't want to. We have variation in topography (mountains, plains), beaches, lakes, oceans, mountains... you name it. You can spend a lifetime, and certainly a retirement visiting the sights and never visit a place twice or run out of things to do... hence the popularity of Recreational Vehicles (RVs) here.
What is missing is history. With the exception of some native settlements in the West, everything here is less than a few hundred years old. Our "oldest" places are those dedicated to our revolutionary and civil war periods. When going to Europe one is struck immediately by the history - that certain buildings have been standing for centuries, even things as mundane as apartments. In NY City, if you have an old Brownstone built in the 1890s you have an old building. If you don't have a desire to relive old history, for most people that seems to be visiting the countries where their ancestors lived, then . I would say that most people here are quite satisfied to stay here... plus it is really expensive to leave, having to fly 3,000 miles to get to Europe, whereas if you live in Europe you can visit 20 countries in 10 days and get a different cultural experience at each one.
Ok, time to cue the "I'm not going to the U.S. now" comments... this should be predictable.
The thing is, besides the inevitable furor from the tin-foil hatted crowd, is this policy a step in the wrong direction, or just a return to slightly stricter times? When I came to this country in the early 1970s it was required that we get visa's and passports, present them at the U.S. border, fill out extensive forms documenting our stay etc. And yet we were still thrilled to come here, despite some pretty awful things that had happened in the 60s. We had no doubt that our information was kept on file, and yet it was definitely worth it to come here.
So I am not sure if this policy is just a return to slightly stricter immigration control. If it is, can the policy work and is it necessary? Let's have some constructive discussion instead of whining please.
Does this article help explain how those little lightbulb things with the rotating black/white cards work? I always loved those as a kid... in fact I was shocked to find them at Home Depot the other day in a demonstration of why LowE glass can be a good thing. They had two of them, but the one behind the low E glass was barely rotating when exposed to a lightbulb while the other behind regular glass was whizzing around.
I wonder how many people will buy the $150 Floormats? http://sportplanesflorida.com/pricelist.htm
Who knows what Microsoft, Google and others have in mind. You can be sure, however, that employer interest in Personal Health Records (PHR) is going to encourage the transition to whatever universal format eventually arrives. Also, Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault are already in place for millions of subscribers. They recognized a long time ago that there was value in providing portable storage for personal health information, as well as easy access to that information from providers. They are already quite secure, though the federal government (big brother) does not yet have access to those records. Providers are slowly coming on board with recognizing the value of these records, though they currently prefer their own most due to trust - it isn't that they don't trust MS or Google, it is that they don't trust what the patient might have modified on their health record, either deleting or adding data that can misdirect care. In this age of litigiousness, that is not a risk any provider wants to take.
For someone who can afford one of these flying cars, it is likely the cost barrier for a pilot's license does not exist. What is likely to exist, however, is the time barrier. Typically, unless cashed out, retired or otherwise not working, people that can afford this kind of luxury are working their asses of with very little free time.
With that said, in the U.S. I there are new Sport Pilot licenses that might fit this usage perfectly. The licenses are much easier to obtain, with the associated training centers springing up, where a person can pay $X thousand and learn to fly in two weeks. For example, http://sportplanesflorida.com/learntofly.htm?gclid=CIeL79WHiZgCFSUqHgodKRniDg is what came up on my first google search.
I read the new licenses only require 20 hours of flight time versus the current Solo rating 40 hours. If you fly 2 hours per day, which is a *lot*, then in 10 days you are done.
Funny, I see a red-beaked toucan. Next Kellog's is going to sue over their trademarked Fruit Loops spokescharacter.
And you're Mary Tyler Moore...
Too bad you posted AC. That was a very interesting read. I'm not sure I believe everything in that article, but the point about the U.S. economy being a giant pyramid scheme, built currently on the foriegn economic investment, seems right on.
WTF, why the hell would websense block your site? It's not like learning a little about Python might not be helpful to me at my job, either current or future. Stupid asses. I'll have to check out your link when I get home. Dagnabit!
Everything you want to know about Ubuntu is thoroughly covered by a Google search. Invariably the Ubuntu forums comes up, since it seems that any question that ever existed has been asked before... and gets asked repeatedly there anyway! Seriously, I had been away from Linux for a few years and after installing Ubuntu in 2007 I have learned just about anything needed.
The thing is, I cannot fathom what is really necessary in a hard-copy book for administering a typical user box. Right off the download page, it is locked down well enough (easy there BSD guys), contains most of the software needed for getting started, and any applications are a Google search for recommendations & Synaptic/apt-get step away. It couldn't be easier!
And I was sitting here with 15 moderator points, thinking "should I throw him a bone for offering the obligatory XKCD, but in an incomplete fashion", or "should I reward you for giving the link and completing the joke", or even "should I mod you down for being a karma whore". In the end I decided to let my mod points vanish into oblivion due to my indecisiveness over my quandry. I feel better now.
Just remember that Blizzak's actually wear rather quickly and turn into "all-season" tires after about a season's use of driving on mixed surfaces (e.g. snow and pavement). On the other hand, standard modern snow tires like the Nokian, still wear quickly due to their soft compound however they tend to last longer than a season or two simply because they have so much tread.
See http://www.tirerack.com/winter/wintertesting.jsp for some in-depth reviews of tires *and a comparison between all-season and proper winter tires.
Good on ya for driving with snow tires, just don't overestimate how long those Blizzak's actually last!
I have to tell you that techies often get the "no I don't" kind of response because of all the wrong diagnoses that have been given in the past. I can count many times when I have instructed a technician on what to do, what I have tried, and then get some half-assed "please reboot", or "check the ethernet cable" or whatever. The thing is, it is impossible to tell the smart, slashdot reading help desk personnel from the just-graduated-from-college-and-trying-to-find-a-real-IT-job person.
Let's see... last week I actually noticed my mouse wandering around on the screen where it wasn't supposed to go. Then the computer opened up a Windows Explorer on its own. No shit. So I opened up Notepad, in between wrestling control over my mouse, and wrote "This is my computer, what the heck are you doing on it?"
The response was "Are you employee #XXXXXXXXXX with the email problem?"
My response: "No, I am working at home and wondering why you took control of my computer."
Him: "Sorry, I am trying to help another user."
Me: "Please give me your name, phone number and department so I can check who you are."
Him: "Sorry, Matt Smith, XXX-XXX-XXXX, Support Desk"
Me: "No worries, don't let it happen again."
I let him drop after that. And here I was freaking out that during my "work" from home, at the exact point I happened to be browsing Slashdot on the company laptop, that they were on to me and I was busted. I am probably busted anyway based on the logs...
My son has Lego Indiana Jones and I installed it on my computer this week just for something to do. #1, you are right that there are no consequences for dying other than a loss of Lego bits (and progress toward 100% completion). It really is a brute force children's game. What is completely frustrating to me is the lack of save points. You have to complete a whole section at a time in order to save. When we needed to leave on Christmas eve I was 3/4 of the way through a section with no way to save, so just had to abandon where I was. Very poor design that again rewards just plowing through a level.
I am not sure what to think about Assassin's Creed yet since that doesn't seem too difficult so far, but has some oddness with scattered save points. (memories)
I got sucked in today by the "free shipping over $25" thing. It really is a well designed incentive for suckers like me.
I ordered a book on Google SketchUp that came to $16 and got the notice that for only another $9 I could have free shipping (shipping was $4). So what did I do? Not the smart thing of either just paying the $3.95 or finding some items that up to the $9 gap. Nope, not me. Ordered $50 of memory, and a $6 phone charger with the justification that I needed them anyway. (want!=need) I have sucker written all over my forehead, and I always prefer newegg.com - though in this case Amazon and NewEgg were the same price.
That feels better. I like Amazon for anything over $25. I don't trust their affiliates in the marketplace though.
I really like the notifications I get under my Windows system. Seriously. When I get an IM, it pops up in a box with a hyperlink showing the first few words of the message. The same, if a bit longer, happens with emails. Both notifcations show who it came from, gives me an opportunity to interact, and if I choose to ignore it they dissolve into the background never to be seen again. I like it.
On the other hand, some notifications I can do without like "Rebooting your system in 5 minutes" without an opportunity to decline.
There has been a huge communication effort at my company, training videos, websites, emails, the works. We will be going to Vista throughout 2009 into early 2010 with something like 20,000+ machines will be affected. As a strategic customer of MS (I think, I haven't worked in procurement) I doubt that this will affect their ability to sell us on the next generation.
Or like going into a bar in San Francisco and saying that being homosexual is an affront to God, a huge sin, and everyone is going to burn in hell. Except instead of fists of rage or guns drawn, you get "you big meanie, come on over here so we can sssspank you!"
No you are not. That title belongs to Canada, who have been our minions for quite a bit longer. You blokes only came around since we bailed you out in WWII. So maybe you can be the 52nd state!
p.s. Thanks for finally paying off your post WWII debt
How many times do you go through a 60 litre tank in one go? I live in the suburbs, which means driving to practically everything, and in both of my current cars there may be one or two times per year that we go on a road trip and have to refill along the way or at our turnaround point. That means the 95% of the rest of the time we do small trips where the capacity of this capacitor would be fine.
So to say there is *no* market simply because it doesn't have a 250 mile range is stupid. To say the market is somewhat more limited, and might require different purchase requirements is fine. For example, in my family we might keep one petrol car for the occasional road trips, and then buy one capacitor car for sporty/commuting/grocery-getting etc.
Ok, if you confine your Mom to installing new software Synaptic on the Ubuntu installation, I highly doubt she will have any problems. I have been a Linux user for a while, and I forget more and more about command lines every day now that I have been using Ubuntu for the last year. Honestly there is extraordinarily little that any user needs to use a command line for. In fact, except when putzing around trying to muck with my user files and tweak my system *just so*, I haven't needed to.
So as long as you don't tell your Mom about Apt-Get, or for that matter that she can search on .deb and .rpm to find new files, I expect she would be able to run a completely stable system for years without manual intervention. That is much better than Windows (I currently run XP on my desktop) where I can't find new software in one place but have to browse various web repositories in various unknown states of trustworthiness. Besides, once your Mom has a working desktop, which probably includes web access, email, office documents and maybe a finance program, what else might she need? In addition, since you are more compfortable than she, you could always SSH onto her machine and fix it for her.
No excuses. Ubuntu makes Linux dead easy. My kids, ages 10 and 13, are learning that it is much easier and even more fun than Windows... since Webkinz.com, kongregate.com work fine and a whole host of free games are out there for their enjoyment that they no longer need XP. (that is, until Xmas when my son gets an iPod Touch)
This handling of "legacy" applications is exactly what has both a) held Windows back to 1990 and b) enabled Windows to retain its hold on the large corporate radar. Here's a clue - not everything you can get off the 'Net is valuable, maintained or needs to run on a modern system. Typically if you find a piece of software that breaks on Ubuntu, you can find a replacement with a quick google search that will work properly.
BTW, I have been working on my current Ubuntu laptop for 12 months. I have yet to encounter a single piece of software that has asked me to "Cancel, Allow". For those applications that I prefer to run as root, like Gediting a system file, I simply run them from a terminal window as "sudo applicationexec &" and it runs fine.
What applications are you running that "so many" of them are broken to be pissing you off this much?
Does this account for stock splits?
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107357&p=irol-faq#split1 shows that the stock has split 3 times. If your prices do not account for splits, then you are comparing apples and oranges.
My father just kicked off a flurry of spam from his inbox, and I have been helping him to reach out to his entire address book to stop it from spreading any further. According to him:
Now that they have his email address, one that he does not want to give up, I am afraid he, and everyone on his address list, will now be the target of even more personalized spam. I hope my gmail filter catches most of everything, but I have no doubt in a few months I'll be looking for pen!s enlargement devices, v!agr@ etc.