Hunh? $35 for a DVD? Outrageous. I'm hoping you live somewhere outside the US cuz if not, you seriously need to try a different store. I usually buy DVD's right when they come out, and they're discounted in the $15-$18 range. I almost never spend more than $20 on a movie, even if it's a huge hit and I buy it just after release day. The most expensive movies I can think of are Disney films, and even those typically sell for just under $30 each even at normal retailers like Best Buy and Walmart. I typically buy three or four movies a month, and I rarely spend more than $100 - it's usually around $70. I couldn't tell you the last time I bought a CD - it's been years. Those things are way too expensive (roughly $1.50 per track), but I think they're still in the $15-$18 range.
I'm not the original poster, but three examples of programs that come immediately to mind are winzip, getright, and winamp. All three of these programs can be downloaded for free and used forever. Winzip and getright do nag you trying to get you to buy them, but all you have to do is click on ok and the window goes away and you go about your business. As far as I know, neither one has ever had a version that actually disabled itself after a certain amount of time (I've run them for years). Winamp has certain extended features that are not available in the free version such as faster cd ripping and burning, but all the core features are available for free. I believe the gp post was referring to programs like these which are exceedingly popular, and completely usable in their free download state. Yet the first thing many people do when they install one of these is go and download the crack to make it registered.
Yeah, I agree. I knew it was a joke, but I was actually really hoping to buy some plastic crappy 1up mushroom in a flowerpot for my desk. Sadly they don't even have a fake one for sale.
Interesting. I didn't know that. That actually changes my view of it a bit - but only partly. According to
National Conference of State Legislators 29 states have laws binding the rep's to vote the way they stated they would. My state (IL) does not. The states that do have laws account for 300 electoral votes, which is more than enough to have a fully legal election. However, some of those states have wussy laws, like New Mexico where apparently it is a misdemeanor and they can be charged up to $1000 which would be more than paid for by whomever bought you off for your vote anyway. This page with more Electoral info lists three elections where a single person did not vote the way they were supposed to, including one that was supposed to vote for Gore in 2000 (not that it would have mattered). Doing a bit of research I found that of the big states with 10 or more electoral votes, ten of them do not have laws governing their electoral college votes. Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. These account for 179 electoral college votes, and you need 270 votes to win the election. Apparently there's a new district system where the state can have electoral college rep's from both sides as decided by voting districts, but none of the states actually passed the law in yet. That sounds much better than our current system to me. Bush only had 271 electoral college votes in 2000. Imagine if the rep who put in a blank ballot when they were supposed to be voting for Gore had been a Bush rep, and they had gotten one other person to do it as well. I'm not saying it's likely, but the way our laws are written now it is entirely possible, and I find that to be a huge problem.
You're kind of skipping over the most controversial problem with our presidential voting system. I don't know if that was intentional or not. The popular vote determines what representatives will be sent to the electoral college. The electoral college then votes to determine the president. At no time does the popular vote determine which way an electoral representative will vote. The way I understand it, they can vote either way (or independent if they really wanted to). Sure, they would get ostracized and never allowed to go to the electoral college again if they voted against their state, but the point is that by that time they could have already done the damage. I despise politics, so it's possible that I might be wrong about this, but this is what I learned way back in high school. Basically the popular vote is just for show - to make the little ants happy. At no time do we actually elect our president because of the abomination that is the electoral college.
I have no problem with the states maintaining some power in almost all other areas, but the president should be decided by the popular vote. Maybe then I would actually vote.
I agree. I'm really not seeing the problem with not giving every FBI person an email address. I hope that the CIA doesn't simply give everyone an email address (unless the address itself is encrypted). For example, I hope that it's supposed to be very difficult for someone not in upper management to get a list of employees. But any technical contractor hired to support the email system would all of a sudden have a list of firstname.lastname@fbi.gov, whatever. Except of course if they used random number/letters to assign to a person's email address. But then that wouldn't be user friendly. I sure wouldn't want someone who needed a list of all active agents to simply get an email account list from the mail server. Kinda defeats the whole purpose of the secrecy.
Ebooks simply don't have enough to offer me. The only advantage to me is for a technical manual that since you have a digital form, you can simply do a search in the ebook to find a keyword, instead of having to go through an index of general concepts and hope the term you are looking for is listed.
The disadvantages are many:
A paper book is just so much nicer than an electronic one.
I can highlight it.
I can photocopy pages to keep myself or give to other people.
I can put sticky notes, fold over corners, etc to mark a page that I will need to refer back to.
I can lend it to a friend, and they can lend it to another friend.
I can sell it to a friend.
They are much easier to read, since it is the originally intended medium and not transposed/transcoded.
I can refer to the book while configuring a system (two different physical devices, I don't have to switch between screens to get the exact config command).
I don't have to buy anything extra in order to use it, or I don't have to use my laptop to read a book.
Zero chance of a harddrive failure wiping out my costly book collection.
In short, I prefer my books to be paper for the same reason why I do not print out my email. The information is supposed to be delivered a specific way, and it works much better in it's original medium.
I'm surprised most of the replies actually are from people who's companies set a limit. These must be pretty small companies. I work for a relatively large health care provider. By the time an email hits our inbox, there are already three copies of it (the main email system, a backup, and a SAN). Then we do offsite storage later. The last time I knew actual numbers we had a dozen or so TB's total, just for email. We are talking Lotus Notes, with a system of somewhere around 30000 employees. There are no limits on mailbox size, and there never have been. They do chastise you once every year or so if your mailbox is over some arbitrary number (last time their pseudo-limit was 1GB). But even if we delete our email, it is never really deleted, and we have an online search utility to get our deleted email back, so we don't even have to go to an admin for a restore. Basically any email ever sent or received is saved forever, and there are at least three copies of it. This is due to various compliancy and regulatory laws (HIPPA, PHI related stuff, lawyers recommendation, etc). The sheer size of the individual mailboxes is due in part to executable files being sent around, but mainly due to a meeting prone company with large documents such as visio's, project files, spreadsheets, etc. Our original installation of lotus notes did not index an attachment as a link to each inbox that received it (so every individual would receive their own individual copy of that attachment). Feel luck that you have such a small problem to deal with. Our Notes support team adds additional disk to the environment almost quaterly.
Actually, I agree with you on the uselessness of requiring a specific laptop. But considering my massively low Slashdot user ID (comparing only to yours of course, I have a friend with a three digit user ID who basically yelled across the hall to us to say that slashdot was starting to allow accounts and in the ten minutes or so before I bothered to go to slashdot 8000 other people with nothing better to do that day had created accounts) I had to harass you.
Here, here. What exactly do they count? Here at my company we buy tons of blade servers which are destined to be Windows based, which I assume are somewhere in the $5k range. But our main Unix platform is the IBM Squadron boxen which are close to $1M and can be carved up into dozens of machines. So is that a single $1M server, or is it 32 servers? The cost of the boxes doesn't give any useful statistical data. It's the usefullness of the boxes that matters, and this study doesn't even touch on that. I'm also sure that we don't tell our vendors what OS is going to be installed on it because it's non of their business what we do with it.
Your IP address has scored: -1. This is ranked #15126 of the 15126 IP's spotted so far
+1 for being part of the USA, and -2 for cheating at poker by having two identical cards in my hand, thus a net score of -1 making me currently listed as dead last.
I like how most of the postings have little to do with racism specific to IT practices. So I'll post my own annecdote.
I am a lead network engineer for a large company based in Chicago. Chicago has a huge minority population of blacks and hispanics, and we have thousands of minorities working for us (of every race, creed, and religion). However, there are relatively few blacks in the IT departments. I believe we have at least twice as many asian descendants as blacks. I have personally sat in on quite a few interviews for open positions, and none of those interviewees was black. We do have three blacks in my department, and they are all extremely competent in their areas. Many incompetent white people have applied and it took us months to fill our open positions because we couldn't find competent people period. We don't have any quotas that I know of, I believe the managers are free to hire anyone they see fit as long as they completely document why that person is qualified above the others as we have been sued multiple times in the past.
How much did it cost? The poster said it was a state school. That means that as long as you live in the state of the school you are going to, it is almost without a doubt your cheapest option for higher education without getting a scholarship. The cost of college is highly irrelevant to most people of any race, as long as the most important thing to them is that they truly want to graduate from college. I know very few people who graduated without having large student loans to pay off. I have plenty of friends who put themselves through college without a dime from their parents who couldn't or wouldn't pay for them. I find it extremely outrageous that people still complain about the cost of state schools as a basis for them not getting into the job filed that they would like to be in.
I'm not entirely convinced. I'm sure there is a lot of validity to what you're saying, but from my experience that doesn't hold true 100% of the time. I have many friends who changed their majors 2, sometimes 3 times to the dismay of their parents while they were at college. The specific major is often regarded as a way to be accepted into the college/university, but not necessarily what you're interested in. While I didn't change my major, I did change my area from computer science to Telecommunications Management (I can't stand programming). But I know people who have gone from art to psychology to teacher, etc. Anyone who lets social pressure influence them on what they personally want to learn about needs to take a class on self image. Granted, when your parents say you have to take a specific major, you're pretty much stuck with it, but if it's just outside social pressure I don't buy that as an excuse.
I agree. I don't know about a specific bias towards minorities, but I went to Illinois State University. Say for example that their stated minimum ACT score for consideration of acceptance at the school was 16. I don't remember exactly, but it was somewhere around there. My freshman year roommate scored an 11. He was told that he was allowed in regardless of his score because the University had an affirmative action policy that allowed a certain number of openings for inner-city students as they typically had less than stellar educations. He flunked all but a couple of his classes and dropped out (kicked out?) after three semesters.
I agree. Anyone who points out his/her IQ score without being directly asked is almost always full of themselves and has some sort of social skill problem that at the very least makes them believe they are better than everyone else. It was a very interesting rant, and I can completely see why some of his coworkers have a problem with him. He is right so many times, and always makes sure to shove it in their face by proving to them why he is right, instead of showing them where they went wrong and trying to teach them something. Nobody learns by having their ideas shot down time and time again. So all they want to do is prove him wrong, even once, and they will continue to be pissed at him until he learns not to treat them this way, or he gets his come-uppance. I worked with someone like this, and he had such a big problem when someone smarter than him actually proved him wrong on a conference call with the department that he physically threatened the person and was fired. All because he can't take criticism and didn't have good social skills for knowing how to work with people.
As for the IQ score thing, I was once tested by a psychologist working on her graduate degree. I was also around 12 at the time. She told me that to obtain a true IQ score, you would never rely on a single result, so in order to claim that you have an IQ of 190 you would have to be tested by at least 2 different people at two different times, preferably with multiple methods. She also told me that they were taught never to tell a child their IQ score as it can adversely affect them whether it is good or bad. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about that.
It's often not that simple. I doubt that the secureid system is the only one he worked on at the company. Take my job for example. I have worked for my company in my current position longer than half the department. I am a network engineer. I administer all LAN and WAN network equipment, sniffers, tacacs, etc. I love my job, and I love the people I work with, but what's to say that I have not install a dialup modem on a POTS line connected to a forgotten/hidden pc that nobody knows about, or better yet is used all the time for a second legitimate purpose? That would allow me access into the network after I leave. Now, with my knowledge of sniffers and how to access them and use them to get passwords, plus my knowledge of all the tacacs userid's that belong to a group and not an individual (for instance Cisco TAC when they.remotely connect to our network), I could easily do whatever I please without being tracked. Now, I would never do that, but should my company completely trust that I won't? They'd be stupid to trust an ex-employee. Granted, not many people at my job have access to as many environments as I do, but I believe that there are many people out in the Slashdot world who have been fired from a job, and although they are ethical and have never tried, they just 'know' that there's at least one way they can still get access to that network if they ever really felt like it. Once you become a network administrator at a large corporation, there is no way to completely lock that person out if they are determined to get back in. Most hacks do come from employees. I could probably still get back into the University network that I worked on years ago if I could remember the IP addresses.
Okay, new poll. Who here pays more than $75/month for their internet connection? Most of us have cable or DSL. Cable is probably averaging $55-60/month for residential customers, and DSL is probably about $10-15 cheaper on average (my guesses, but based on some knowledge). The highest end plans cost more obviously, and Slashdot probably has a much higher percentage of high-end plans than the normal population. I simply cannot believe that $100-$150 is around 40% of the US population. Maybe these people are still using dialup, and their ISP is out of their area code so they have to pay per minute long distance charges and they took that into account when computing the cost. My T1 to my house only cost just a bit over $200, and that's definitely not a common option for people. Now I have business class cable instead of the T1 and it only costs $150, so what services are these people getting that they pay this much? I really want to know, because maybe there's better/faster options out there that I just don't know about.
I had heard somewhere that as an Amublance driver you must have a spotless driving record, and that if you get even a single speeding ticket you could risk losing your job (or at least not be able to drive the ambulance anymore). Is that actually true? Seems pretty draconian to me. Probably different states have different rules. New York sounds overly harsh to me. I'm just outside Chicago.
Yeah, right. Many reasons for that. Ambulance drivers typically have no personal ties to the person in the back who just had a massive coronary. They also know they have highly trained coworkers in the back who's primary job is to keep the patient alive until they get to the hospital. Ambulances are built for internal space, stability, and 4 wheel drive capabilities, not for cornering, acceleration, and handling. There's a reason why it is built on a truck chassis, and it's not for maneuverability. Also, although I am loath to say this because I personally don't feel any human would ever think this way, they are paid by the hour, and as soon as they get to the hospital they just have to turn around and go get somebody else.
If you want to compare speeds of a medical professional to that of a person trying to get a buddy or family member to the hospital, it's probably much more fair to gauge the speed of the couriers who deliver organs between hospitals. I'm pretty sure they're not really watching the speed limits closely when the heart they just took out of a dead person only has another 53 minutes to be placed inside a waiting recipient or the person will absolutely die with no chance of survival.
I am often amused at overly cautious drivers. Those drivers can be just as dangerous as the ones who driver overly fast and/or aggressive. People that accelerate slowly on onramps to the expressway force drivers already on the highway to swerve out of the way or slam on their brakes. People who slow down to three miles an hour while going over train tracks risk getting hit from behind because the person behind them had no intention of slowing down that much. People who think that if the speed limit is 55mph, it is their god given right to drive next to a semi in the left hand lane matching the speed if it is somewhere around the speed limit. It's people like that that make people like me get antsy and start doing (admittedly) stupid stuff in the car.
There are many, possibly hundreds of legitimate reasons to drive fast. Say for example you're from the burbs like me, and you took a wrong turn in the middle of the night in the city and ended up in the ghetto with some people looking at you from a nearby corner. I wouldn't be stopping at the red lights, and I sure wouldn't be driving 25mph. While my reasons are almost always petty (late for work, dinner is on the table, etc), I am sure that many others have had reasons that were legitimate enough to them at the time to warrant the extra speed. For example, I am expecting a baby any day now. If something bad happens and we get worried, you better get out of my way if you're between me and the nearest hopsital. Just because you personally do not drive fast does not mean that you can't understand or accept someone else's decision to drive fast. Many of us have driven fast our entire lives and are not comfortable driving the speed limit.
So, say for example my hypothetical friend lives in Chicago. All the highways leading into and out of Chicago are posted at 55mph (until you go a minimum of around 40 miles out, and then it's 65mph). To keep up with traffic you pretty much have to drive about 75mph during rush hour (if there are no traffic jams). Now, my hypothetical friend just plain likes to drive faster than most other people and is perfectly comfortable doing it, and it is actually fairly rare that he gets passed on the highway. What if he actually sets his cruise control at 90mph (not that uncommon a speed in Chicago), and has this system that makes it harder to depress the gas pedal. Does the cruise control system make the car keep going the same speed, thereby red-lining the car and potentially blowing out the engine? Or does the cruise system work by keeping a certain amount of pressure on the pedal, which would result in a drastically reduced speed?
I actually am curious. I don't know which of these methods is used by cruise control systems.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of that before. I wouldn't know how to set that up myself, but if it could be gotten working, then it would be a really nice GPS alternative. Most likely much, much cheaper, too.
Yeah, the GSM towers may not move, but if you RTFA, it mentions 2.2 million beacons, made up mostly by 802.11 AP's. However, take the example of only using immobile devices. What about catastrophe, and simple upgrades that are not in precisely the same location (ie, the opposite side of the same farmer's field). I did rtfa, and it didn't seem clear what the system would do in the case that a known mapped beacon changed location. In a largely populated city it would probably throw out the erroneous data because it does not match what is expected. But what does it do in a less dense area that only recieves a few beacons? In that scenario, I don't see how it could know that the data is erroneous, so I would assume it gives incorrect location information. It's still better than nothing, and it's great that people are trying to solve the problem. But from what I just read about this, I don't think it's ready for commercial use yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Hunh? $35 for a DVD? Outrageous. I'm hoping you live somewhere outside the US cuz if not, you seriously need to try a different store. I usually buy DVD's right when they come out, and they're discounted in the $15-$18 range. I almost never spend more than $20 on a movie, even if it's a huge hit and I buy it just after release day. The most expensive movies I can think of are Disney films, and even those typically sell for just under $30 each even at normal retailers like Best Buy and Walmart. I typically buy three or four movies a month, and I rarely spend more than $100 - it's usually around $70. I couldn't tell you the last time I bought a CD - it's been years. Those things are way too expensive (roughly $1.50 per track), but I think they're still in the $15-$18 range.
I'm not the original poster, but three examples of programs that come immediately to mind are winzip, getright, and winamp. All three of these programs can be downloaded for free and used forever. Winzip and getright do nag you trying to get you to buy them, but all you have to do is click on ok and the window goes away and you go about your business. As far as I know, neither one has ever had a version that actually disabled itself after a certain amount of time (I've run them for years). Winamp has certain extended features that are not available in the free version such as faster cd ripping and burning, but all the core features are available for free. I believe the gp post was referring to programs like these which are exceedingly popular, and completely usable in their free download state. Yet the first thing many people do when they install one of these is go and download the crack to make it registered.
Yeah, I agree. I knew it was a joke, but I was actually really hoping to buy some plastic crappy 1up mushroom in a flowerpot for my desk. Sadly they don't even have a fake one for sale.
Interesting. I didn't know that. That actually changes my view of it a bit - but only partly. According to National Conference of State Legislators 29 states have laws binding the rep's to vote the way they stated they would. My state (IL) does not. The states that do have laws account for 300 electoral votes, which is more than enough to have a fully legal election. However, some of those states have wussy laws, like New Mexico where apparently it is a misdemeanor and they can be charged up to $1000 which would be more than paid for by whomever bought you off for your vote anyway. This page with more Electoral info lists three elections where a single person did not vote the way they were supposed to, including one that was supposed to vote for Gore in 2000 (not that it would have mattered). Doing a bit of research I found that of the big states with 10 or more electoral votes, ten of them do not have laws governing their electoral college votes. Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. These account for 179 electoral college votes, and you need 270 votes to win the election. Apparently there's a new district system where the state can have electoral college rep's from both sides as decided by voting districts, but none of the states actually passed the law in yet. That sounds much better than our current system to me. Bush only had 271 electoral college votes in 2000. Imagine if the rep who put in a blank ballot when they were supposed to be voting for Gore had been a Bush rep, and they had gotten one other person to do it as well. I'm not saying it's likely, but the way our laws are written now it is entirely possible, and I find that to be a huge problem.
You're kind of skipping over the most controversial problem with our presidential voting system. I don't know if that was intentional or not. The popular vote determines what representatives will be sent to the electoral college. The electoral college then votes to determine the president. At no time does the popular vote determine which way an electoral representative will vote. The way I understand it, they can vote either way (or independent if they really wanted to). Sure, they would get ostracized and never allowed to go to the electoral college again if they voted against their state, but the point is that by that time they could have already done the damage. I despise politics, so it's possible that I might be wrong about this, but this is what I learned way back in high school. Basically the popular vote is just for show - to make the little ants happy. At no time do we actually elect our president because of the abomination that is the electoral college.
I have no problem with the states maintaining some power in almost all other areas, but the president should be decided by the popular vote. Maybe then I would actually vote.
I agree. I'm really not seeing the problem with not giving every FBI person an email address. I hope that the CIA doesn't simply give everyone an email address (unless the address itself is encrypted). For example, I hope that it's supposed to be very difficult for someone not in upper management to get a list of employees. But any technical contractor hired to support the email system would all of a sudden have a list of firstname.lastname@fbi.gov, whatever. Except of course if they used random number/letters to assign to a person's email address. But then that wouldn't be user friendly. I sure wouldn't want someone who needed a list of all active agents to simply get an email account list from the mail server. Kinda defeats the whole purpose of the secrecy.
Ebooks simply don't have enough to offer me. The only advantage to me is for a technical manual that since you have a digital form, you can simply do a search in the ebook to find a keyword, instead of having to go through an index of general concepts and hope the term you are looking for is listed.
The disadvantages are many:
A paper book is just so much nicer than an electronic one.
I can highlight it.
I can photocopy pages to keep myself or give to other people.
I can put sticky notes, fold over corners, etc to mark a page that I will need to refer back to.
I can lend it to a friend, and they can lend it to another friend.
I can sell it to a friend.
They are much easier to read, since it is the originally intended medium and not transposed/transcoded.
I can refer to the book while configuring a system (two different physical devices, I don't have to switch between screens to get the exact config command).
I don't have to buy anything extra in order to use it, or I don't have to use my laptop to read a book.
Zero chance of a harddrive failure wiping out my costly book collection.
In short, I prefer my books to be paper for the same reason why I do not print out my email. The information is supposed to be delivered a specific way, and it works much better in it's original medium.
I'm surprised most of the replies actually are from people who's companies set a limit. These must be pretty small companies. I work for a relatively large health care provider. By the time an email hits our inbox, there are already three copies of it (the main email system, a backup, and a SAN). Then we do offsite storage later. The last time I knew actual numbers we had a dozen or so TB's total, just for email. We are talking Lotus Notes, with a system of somewhere around 30000 employees. There are no limits on mailbox size, and there never have been. They do chastise you once every year or so if your mailbox is over some arbitrary number (last time their pseudo-limit was 1GB). But even if we delete our email, it is never really deleted, and we have an online search utility to get our deleted email back, so we don't even have to go to an admin for a restore. Basically any email ever sent or received is saved forever, and there are at least three copies of it. This is due to various compliancy and regulatory laws (HIPPA, PHI related stuff, lawyers recommendation, etc). The sheer size of the individual mailboxes is due in part to executable files being sent around, but mainly due to a meeting prone company with large documents such as visio's, project files, spreadsheets, etc. Our original installation of lotus notes did not index an attachment as a link to each inbox that received it (so every individual would receive their own individual copy of that attachment). Feel luck that you have such a small problem to deal with. Our Notes support team adds additional disk to the environment almost quaterly.
Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time-a
Actually, I agree with you on the uselessness of requiring a specific laptop. But considering my massively low Slashdot user ID (comparing only to yours of course, I have a friend with a three digit user ID who basically yelled across the hall to us to say that slashdot was starting to allow accounts and in the ten minutes or so before I bothered to go to slashdot 8000 other people with nothing better to do that day had created accounts) I had to harass you.
Here, here. What exactly do they count? Here at my company we buy tons of blade servers which are destined to be Windows based, which I assume are somewhere in the $5k range. But our main Unix platform is the IBM Squadron boxen which are close to $1M and can be carved up into dozens of machines. So is that a single $1M server, or is it 32 servers? The cost of the boxes doesn't give any useful statistical data. It's the usefullness of the boxes that matters, and this study doesn't even touch on that. I'm also sure that we don't tell our vendors what OS is going to be installed on it because it's non of their business what we do with it.
Your IP address has scored: -1. This is ranked #15126 of the 15126 IP's spotted so far
+1 for being part of the USA, and -2 for cheating at poker by having two identical cards in my hand, thus a net score of -1 making me currently listed as dead last.
Go go gadget DSL address!
I like how most of the postings have little to do with racism specific to IT practices. So I'll post my own annecdote.
I am a lead network engineer for a large company based in Chicago. Chicago has a huge minority population of blacks and hispanics, and we have thousands of minorities working for us (of every race, creed, and religion). However, there are relatively few blacks in the IT departments. I believe we have at least twice as many asian descendants as blacks. I have personally sat in on quite a few interviews for open positions, and none of those interviewees was black. We do have three blacks in my department, and they are all extremely competent in their areas. Many incompetent white people have applied and it took us months to fill our open positions because we couldn't find competent people period. We don't have any quotas that I know of, I believe the managers are free to hire anyone they see fit as long as they completely document why that person is qualified above the others as we have been sued multiple times in the past.
How much did it cost? The poster said it was a state school. That means that as long as you live in the state of the school you are going to, it is almost without a doubt your cheapest option for higher education without getting a scholarship. The cost of college is highly irrelevant to most people of any race, as long as the most important thing to them is that they truly want to graduate from college. I know very few people who graduated without having large student loans to pay off. I have plenty of friends who put themselves through college without a dime from their parents who couldn't or wouldn't pay for them. I find it extremely outrageous that people still complain about the cost of state schools as a basis for them not getting into the job filed that they would like to be in.
I'm not entirely convinced. I'm sure there is a lot of validity to what you're saying, but from my experience that doesn't hold true 100% of the time. I have many friends who changed their majors 2, sometimes 3 times to the dismay of their parents while they were at college. The specific major is often regarded as a way to be accepted into the college/university, but not necessarily what you're interested in. While I didn't change my major, I did change my area from computer science to Telecommunications Management (I can't stand programming). But I know people who have gone from art to psychology to teacher, etc. Anyone who lets social pressure influence them on what they personally want to learn about needs to take a class on self image. Granted, when your parents say you have to take a specific major, you're pretty much stuck with it, but if it's just outside social pressure I don't buy that as an excuse.
I agree. I don't know about a specific bias towards minorities, but I went to Illinois State University. Say for example that their stated minimum ACT score for consideration of acceptance at the school was 16. I don't remember exactly, but it was somewhere around there. My freshman year roommate scored an 11. He was told that he was allowed in regardless of his score because the University had an affirmative action policy that allowed a certain number of openings for inner-city students as they typically had less than stellar educations. He flunked all but a couple of his classes and dropped out (kicked out?) after three semesters.
I agree. Anyone who points out his/her IQ score without being directly asked is almost always full of themselves and has some sort of social skill problem that at the very least makes them believe they are better than everyone else. It was a very interesting rant, and I can completely see why some of his coworkers have a problem with him. He is right so many times, and always makes sure to shove it in their face by proving to them why he is right, instead of showing them where they went wrong and trying to teach them something. Nobody learns by having their ideas shot down time and time again. So all they want to do is prove him wrong, even once, and they will continue to be pissed at him until he learns not to treat them this way, or he gets his come-uppance. I worked with someone like this, and he had such a big problem when someone smarter than him actually proved him wrong on a conference call with the department that he physically threatened the person and was fired. All because he can't take criticism and didn't have good social skills for knowing how to work with people.
As for the IQ score thing, I was once tested by a psychologist working on her graduate degree. I was also around 12 at the time. She told me that to obtain a true IQ score, you would never rely on a single result, so in order to claim that you have an IQ of 190 you would have to be tested by at least 2 different people at two different times, preferably with multiple methods. She also told me that they were taught never to tell a child their IQ score as it can adversely affect them whether it is good or bad. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about that.
It's often not that simple. I doubt that the secureid system is the only one he worked on at the company. Take my job for example. I have worked for my company in my current position longer than half the department. I am a network engineer. I administer all LAN and WAN network equipment, sniffers, tacacs, etc. I love my job, and I love the people I work with, but what's to say that I have not install a dialup modem on a POTS line connected to a forgotten/hidden pc that nobody knows about, or better yet is used all the time for a second legitimate purpose? That would allow me access into the network after I leave. Now, with my knowledge of sniffers and how to access them and use them to get passwords, plus my knowledge of all the tacacs userid's that belong to a group and not an individual (for instance Cisco TAC when they .remotely connect to our network), I could easily do whatever I please without being tracked. Now, I would never do that, but should my company completely trust that I won't? They'd be stupid to trust an ex-employee. Granted, not many people at my job have access to as many environments as I do, but I believe that there are many people out in the Slashdot world who have been fired from a job, and although they are ethical and have never tried, they just 'know' that there's at least one way they can still get access to that network if they ever really felt like it. Once you become a network administrator at a large corporation, there is no way to completely lock that person out if they are determined to get back in. Most hacks do come from employees. I could probably still get back into the University network that I worked on years ago if I could remember the IP addresses.
nevermind. RTFA before jumping to conclusions.
Okay, new poll. Who here pays more than $75/month for their internet connection?
Most of us have cable or DSL. Cable is probably averaging $55-60/month for residential customers, and DSL is probably about $10-15 cheaper on average (my guesses, but based on some knowledge). The highest end plans cost more obviously, and Slashdot probably has a much higher percentage of high-end plans than the normal population. I simply cannot believe that $100-$150 is around 40% of the US population. Maybe these people are still using dialup, and their ISP is out of their area code so they have to pay per minute long distance charges and they took that into account when computing the cost. My T1 to my house only cost just a bit over $200, and that's definitely not a common option for people. Now I have business class cable instead of the T1 and it only costs $150, so what services are these people getting that they pay this much? I really want to know, because maybe there's better/faster options out there that I just don't know about.
I had heard somewhere that as an Amublance driver you must have a spotless driving record, and that if you get even a single speeding ticket you could risk losing your job (or at least not be able to drive the ambulance anymore). Is that actually true? Seems pretty draconian to me. Probably different states have different rules. New York sounds overly harsh to me. I'm just outside Chicago.
Yeah, right. Many reasons for that. Ambulance drivers typically have no personal ties to the person in the back who just had a massive coronary. They also know they have highly trained coworkers in the back who's primary job is to keep the patient alive until they get to the hospital. Ambulances are built for internal space, stability, and 4 wheel drive capabilities, not for cornering, acceleration, and handling. There's a reason why it is built on a truck chassis, and it's not for maneuverability. Also, although I am loath to say this because I personally don't feel any human would ever think this way, they are paid by the hour, and as soon as they get to the hospital they just have to turn around and go get somebody else.
If you want to compare speeds of a medical professional to that of a person trying to get a buddy or family member to the hospital, it's probably much more fair to gauge the speed of the couriers who deliver organs between hospitals. I'm pretty sure they're not really watching the speed limits closely when the heart they just took out of a dead person only has another 53 minutes to be placed inside a waiting recipient or the person will absolutely die with no chance of survival.
I am often amused at overly cautious drivers. Those drivers can be just as dangerous as the ones who driver overly fast and/or aggressive. People that accelerate slowly on onramps to the expressway force drivers already on the highway to swerve out of the way or slam on their brakes. People who slow down to three miles an hour while going over train tracks risk getting hit from behind because the person behind them had no intention of slowing down that much. People who think that if the speed limit is 55mph, it is their god given right to drive next to a semi in the left hand lane matching the speed if it is somewhere around the speed limit. It's people like that that make people like me get antsy and start doing (admittedly) stupid stuff in the car.
There are many, possibly hundreds of legitimate reasons to drive fast. Say for example you're from the burbs like me, and you took a wrong turn in the middle of the night in the city and ended up in the ghetto with some people looking at you from a nearby corner. I wouldn't be stopping at the red lights, and I sure wouldn't be driving 25mph. While my reasons are almost always petty (late for work, dinner is on the table, etc), I am sure that many others have had reasons that were legitimate enough to them at the time to warrant the extra speed. For example, I am expecting a baby any day now. If something bad happens and we get worried, you better get out of my way if you're between me and the nearest hopsital. Just because you personally do not drive fast does not mean that you can't understand or accept someone else's decision to drive fast. Many of us have driven fast our entire lives and are not comfortable driving the speed limit.
So, say for example my hypothetical friend lives in Chicago. All the highways leading into and out of Chicago are posted at 55mph (until you go a minimum of around 40 miles out, and then it's 65mph). To keep up with traffic you pretty much have to drive about 75mph during rush hour (if there are no traffic jams). Now, my hypothetical friend just plain likes to drive faster than most other people and is perfectly comfortable doing it, and it is actually fairly rare that he gets passed on the highway. What if he actually sets his cruise control at 90mph (not that uncommon a speed in Chicago), and has this system that makes it harder to depress the gas pedal. Does the cruise control system make the car keep going the same speed, thereby red-lining the car and potentially blowing out the engine? Or does the cruise system work by keeping a certain amount of pressure on the pedal, which would result in a drastically reduced speed?
I actually am curious. I don't know which of these methods is used by cruise control systems.
Well, I dunno about you guys, but the Cat5 cable I use is copper. Yeah yeah, I know. It's picky.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of that before. I wouldn't know how to set that up myself, but if it could be gotten working, then it would be a really nice GPS alternative. Most likely much, much cheaper, too.
Yeah, the GSM towers may not move, but if you RTFA, it mentions 2.2 million beacons, made up mostly by 802.11 AP's. However, take the example of only using immobile devices. What about catastrophe, and simple upgrades that are not in precisely the same location (ie, the opposite side of the same farmer's field). I did rtfa, and it didn't seem clear what the system would do in the case that a known mapped beacon changed location. In a largely populated city it would probably throw out the erroneous data because it does not match what is expected. But what does it do in a less dense area that only recieves a few beacons? In that scenario, I don't see how it could know that the data is erroneous, so I would assume it gives incorrect location information. It's still better than nothing, and it's great that people are trying to solve the problem. But from what I just read about this, I don't think it's ready for commercial use yet.