Back in 1986 the first router company sent a vice president to California to check out some companies there as canidates for a buy out. After much thought the executive decided that Cisco was going nowhere, and they bought a slightly larger router company down the street from Cisco.
Long timers at Network System belive that if the executive had decided to buy Cisco instead of the other company, you wouldn't have heard of Cisco today, instead that other company would have been dominate. How things change, Network Systems no longer makes routers, having realised that Cisco won the market long ago.
I live in Minnesota, about 3.5 million people, and about twice as much land as Norway. And MN is fairly heavily populated compared to many nearby states. (which also happen to be larger) covering a valley isn't that difficult from an engeering standpoint, just put a tower there. Covering a flat field of 100 miles profitably is extreamly diffiult if the entire population of the field is less then 75. I happen to know someone who lives in that exact situation.
Hmm, my current cell phone is in fact GSM, and every US city I've been to has had good coverage. Oh I agree that GSM doen'st have the best coverage, but it is there. GSM is not very common in the US, and there is still a lot of coverage.
And remember to differenciate between coverage in sparesly populated areas with densely populated areas. (NYC I know is dense, but I wouldn't want to visit there so you point is lost to me...)
Europe is ahead of the Us because they have a standard system. However the US has several systems which have features that are better than what Europe has. CDMA is a better standard than GMS overall, and there are others, which gives each a trial by fire. The best can then be combined into something that works. Generation 3 cell phones (if they ever make it) have been heavially influenced by what worked and didn't work in the US. If everyone was GSM like Europe is, then generation 3 would not be as good as it is.
Remember standardise early, but not too early.
I won't argue when you say it is convient to have one standard, but in real life most of the US has just as good of coverage as Europe. Sure there is only one provider, but who cares if the phone works? Get out from the major cities and there is no service, but a single GSM standard would't help much. Population densities are very low in the US, to there day there are many miles where there is no coverage on any system. (Unless there is a satalite system now)
Call your local utility. Often at least one of them will have a program where they do an "energy audit" on your house for cheap or free.
If that doesn't work, attics, windows, walls, floors, in that order.
Start with the attic, it is normally cheap and easy to add more, though there is a point of diminishign returns. If you have more than 12 inches up there, you are probably just fine.
Then windows. Low-e windows really make a difference. Unfortunatly low-e windows are expensive. If you need to replace your windows anyway, then get low-e glass. Otherwise window insulator shrink-wrap kits are cheap and work well.
Walls are harder. I you need to tear off the covering anyway, then add something, other wise it is really hard to do something. A professional can pump foam into walls, but this leaves holes all over the house, so I don't know if I would recomend it. Get a bid and decide if it is worth it. Often walls are best ignored until you build new.
floors are almost a non-issue. Still an uninsulated floor will get cold. carpet is about all you really need though.
There is very little that linux runs that won't run on *BSD. Those that won't run are most likely baddly written programs that you don't want on your comptuer anyway, if you need those features write a new program without all the bugs. The exceptions are there might be a few closed soruce apps which don't work right in linux emulation (most of them work), programs which deal directly with the kernel on a low level (which should not be portable, though there should be an equivelent for your OS), and programs that reqire hardware or hardware access. (Wine for instance requires user access to LDT, whatever that is, which isn't enabled, in this case easy to enable, though there might be others)
By and large though a program that runs on linux that won't compile and run for *bsd is not a program you should allow on linux. Any programer who can't write portable code, has probably made a lot of other stupid errors what will bite you. Be careful to seperate unportable code from portable code that hasn't been ported yet. A program that only runs on one OS is likely the former and you shouldn't touch it, while a program that runs on several OSes but hasn't been ported to yours could be well written and just in need of minor adjustments to work right.
No you can't learn the language well enough to function in Japan, unless you are already at that point (in which case why as this question). You should spend as much time as you can learning their language anway. Check out the tapes from the library, and listen to them. Buy books, and read them - do the exercises. You need to learn as much as you can. Eventially you will need to face someone who doesn't speak good english. If you show an ability to understand only the very simplest language spken very slow, most people can slow down enough that you can understand them.
There is also the culture to learn. In fact your reasons for learning the language isn't so much to be able to communicate with people as to not make a mistake with this culture. (In Spain you have to ask for the check after the meal, while in the US they bring it. In China a tip is considered an insult, while in America it is expected. In germany you find an empty seat and sit at a strangers table. I don't know what Japan does different, you need to learn as much as you can. I may have even gotten something of the above wrong)
I vistied a customer site a few months ago, and the reps pointed to a tape drive and said "This is the first product we sold." Probably serial number 20 or something like that. Been in production longer then I've been alive by a few years. I know it is still in production because some "little old lady" went up to it not long after to load a new tape.
Seriously. 2.0.x lacks some features, and is a little slower in some areas, but it came from the day when 386s were not uncommon, so compromises were made to make them work better.
How much I can't say, I just remember that when 2.2 first went stable I was told my 386 is better off staying with 2.0. It still is today, as my mail spool, though I keep it behind a firewall due to age.
This is excellent for those highly trained people needed to keep those things running. Even if someone invented a valve that was 100% reliable, tax laws change often enough that many operators will be needed to keep this computer up to date.
There are already NAT boxes out there. I don't know what thair CAT thing will do, but essenailly my comptuer connects to it, and... oh, guess what, I have the old NAT program installed, and my old program claims just one computers.
sharing 802.11b with neighbors who don't pay for their own service is immoral, but the proper way to charge is by bandwidth. Sharing wireless hubs is nice though, joggers can (in theory, I don't think anyone has done it) connect to various neighbor's wireless hubs as they walk down the street for continious music from the net. When in the backyard you can connect to the net from your laptop and compare those directions on pruning with what your trees look like, and who cares if it is your hub or the neighbor's?
there cannot be what you ask for. You might or might not need help, but metrics like lines of code have nothing to do with it.
Remember, when you have just a few programs (less than 10 in general) you all know each other, talk to each other, and know each others code, so you can modify anything. this makes you more productive. Eventially you reach the point where you can't keep track of what everyone does, so you specialize. This greatly cuts productivity over one programer working alone, but because of the number of specialists work gets done faster.
Adding programs makes a late project latter. However if the project is not late you should take the time to hire a backup who knows the code, just in case.
Once you have backup programers it is a management decision. Adding programers cuts producity, but if done right doesn't cut it by as much as the new person adds. However when you add a programer beware that you have to push out deadlines while you train the new guy.
this is computer programing. I know people who tought themselves Basic in a morning. I belive that I can learn any computer language you wish me to program in, in under a week. I can read well written programs in most lanuages without any learning time. I'm not special, any compitent programer can do it.
However after attempting to teach myself Spanish for 6 months I still couldn't hold even a basic conversation (and I had a year of spanish a few years back). Once I learn spanish I won't have much a head start should I need to learn Russian or Chinese. Learning those two wouldn't give me much advantage if I need Hebrew.
People think of programing languages as if it is something special to know a lot. Really you know zero (most people), one (a lot of people, normally basic), or all of them, including ones that have not been invented yet, though you will need a refresher before you would use one.
Mastering a programing language takes expirence, and that only comes with time, but a good programer in his first week with a new language can already prove that good programers are 10 times as productive as bad programers, even if the bad programer has been using that language for 10 years.
I know people who know 20 programing languages, I'm not impressed. I know people who are fluent in 17 human languages, and I'm impressed. In school I was once given the task of learning 12 languages in 10 weeks, and I had 2 other classes besides. It was no big deal, in fact learning 3 languages was trivial compared to using one language (C) to write a program in anouther class, even though I knew that language very well.
Use the language that is right for the job. TCL is designed to make your programs scriptable. Perl is great for string manipulation. There is no reason you can't combine both, someone who needs to maintain you code will not find it difficult to learn the ones needed.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make sure that you write nice, well commented code. As an example of the above, monday I was digging into someone else's C++ code. Even though I haven't done C++ is years, it was no problem reading C++. However the lack of comments was a problem. I can make changes, but I can't be sure I make the right ones without knowing what the programer was thinking. this is far more important than what language it is written in.
Hmm, when I was in high school they made a big deal about beingup to date with the latest software used in industry. I remember clearly writing all my reports in WordPerfect 5.1 for Dos, just like industry. Didn't help me any though, by the time I got out of college MsWord was the standard (word95 I think). Not that it matters, the company I work for uses FrameMaker when we need formated text, and otherwise emacs, or vi depending on your religion.
I also remember watching the transisition from Word*Star, but I was a kid so that was on the sidelines.
With that history it seems to me that computers change too quick for it to matter what you learn on in high school, it will be obsolete before long anyway.
One guy I worked with was considering branches, so he went into several recruters. One asked him to sign a health release form so they could do a background check to see if he would be elligable. He did without reading it. Turns out that wasn't a release form is was an agreement to enter the service, and there was no way out.
I don't know if there is any accualy health release forms, but make sure you don't sign anything without understanding it.
Oh really? You boomers might have a better survival rate, but it won't do you much good.
Already most of you expect socal security and investments to provide a lot of your retirement. Any accountent can tell you that it can't work as is, and when you knock off a lot of the produces (the yougner generation that is still working) you make it worse.
Lindsay has republished this wonderful book. Some of the info is dated, but it is all interesting. (And an electric engine was never pratical, but it is still fun to build)
Accually he can be fired, but there are a lot of rules designed to make it difficult to fire someone tenured. Normally they will only go through with those in cases of sexual harrassment, extreem lazyness (don't publish for too long), or other serious crime.
I'm surprized the university didn't fire him when they found out about this. It is certinaly a case where they should do that. Of cousre I don't have the whole story so maybe they did.
I desagree about never giving a user root. Here users are allowed root on the machine on their desktop. however IS does not maintain those machines. Screw up baddly and you re-instlal. Oh, and if you want to run any non-free programs (say that OOA toolkit that your programs are designed in, or framemaker) you have to log into one of our machines and open an xterm back to your machine.
The main reason for this is there are a lot of laptops out there, and we travel once in a while. You need root when you are at a customer site and they tell you "Your ip address is x.x.x.x, router is..." Which happened to me once when I had to connect to their secure network. (No, not goverment, so I could move my machine back and forth, but the machine I needed was only on the secure network)
Here are the stories of three people I know who got admin jobs. they are all true, though I don't think they read/. (hence I'm posting...)
guy A. Programer at some company when the system administrator quit. Only one person thought to ask for the root password as the old guy left. "He was leaving so he didn't care, I staying so I did care." The only person with root is by default the administrator. There were no added monitary benifits, and his other responsibilities didn't decrease, but he had the power to make sure the comptuers worked and they did. (they way he wanted them to, so a lot of uptime)
Guy b: At 65 he retired from his job as a security gaurd from a goverment job. He had good benifits, but after sitting around for a few months he realised that was boring. He Basicly started knocking on doors looking for tech jobs for someone with no expirence. The company I work for has a few well paid admins, and a lot of poor paying admin positions. Our well paid admins are very good at teaching untrained intelligent people about comptuers. (it is a matter of pride that most baddly paid admins move onto a good job after a few years. So they guy found a job as level 1 tech support. However he had access to a lab filled with all kinds of equipment he could do whatever he wanted with, a computer on his desk to play with, and most days he didnt get that many calls. Soon he was changing network cards. (after all if level 1 script determins it is a network card, level 1 tech can replace it) there was plenty of time to play with things. When windows 95 came out all the admins put it in
the lab to see what it could do.
Guy c: Came from a technical family. He at one time had in his bedroom comptuers running MacOs, windows 95, linux, and freeBSD. All connected to the family network (though a 28.8 modem and nat) to the internet. After playing with these comptuers for a while he went to coledge, droped out, got a retail management job... Hanging out on #distributed one day he discovered someone in the area who was hiring technical people. Went to the interview and he was the only one who didn't screw up baddly. when asked to solve a MacOS problem. (They are a graphics arts company so they are an apple shop).
So you can break into admin at any age, including afer retirement. It helps a lot to play with computers. Get as many cheap comptuers as you can, and start playing. Break things and fix them. Then look for a job. (Accually guy b jsut decided he wanted to work with something different and found a job that would train which is just as good.
They have them at the University of Minnesota. At least one person was discovered to have found a [simple] way to re-charge his card for no money. I don't think it even involved a card writer, just some trickery of the vending machines. With a writer you can do more I'm sure. (assuming you can discover the algorythm and key)
What should we do about state mandated car insurance
Complain, insurance should be optional. Good luck convincing anyone of that in todays controll your every step goverments, but that is the theory I belive in.
Even though insurance is a suckers bet, that doesn't mean you dare go without. Odds are I will never have an accident serious enough that I will have to replace my car. (Based on all my accidents in 10 years have been very miner) Doesn't matter, all it takes is one mistake. Paying a couple hundred dollars a year is cheap compared to buying a car worth what my current one is. I can't afford to replace my current car at the same level. So I pay insurance on it. Remember risk always enters in. For me the risk of needing insurance is low, other then what the law mandates since police will stop for something eventially (a broken headlight or something). However the downside of not having insurance and needing it is greater than the loss of paying for insurance.
True. However pure water picks up impuritieds. Take some 18 megaohm water (the purest we can achive) pour it into a clean glass, and just from the air it will have picked up a lot of impurities. (I've been told how much, but can't recall. puts the water way out of spec though)
Drain your car's radiator, then fill it up with pure
Doesn't matter. Either pure water or pure anti-freeze will give worse cooling than a proper mixture of anti-freeze and water. the mixture resutls in higher boiling points than either alone, and lower freezing points than either alone. Note that for each of the above you need a different mixture. 50/50 tends to be optimal for most people. In Minnesota we lean closer to 70/30, and in the desert (I think) they lean a little the other way. It turns out that 70/30 is close to the lowest freezing point you can achive with anti-freeze/water mistures. However the boiling point and heat capacity is changed.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in 1986 the first router company sent a vice president to California to check out some companies there as canidates for a buy out. After much thought the executive decided that Cisco was going nowhere, and they bought a slightly larger router company down the street from Cisco.
Long timers at Network System belive that if the executive had decided to buy Cisco instead of the other company, you wouldn't have heard of Cisco today, instead that other company would have been dominate. How things change, Network Systems no longer makes routers, having realised that Cisco won the market long ago.
I live in Minnesota, about 3.5 million people, and about twice as much land as Norway. And MN is fairly heavily populated compared to many nearby states. (which also happen to be larger) covering a valley isn't that difficult from an engeering standpoint, just put a tower there. Covering a flat field of 100 miles profitably is extreamly diffiult if the entire population of the field is less then 75. I happen to know someone who lives in that exact situation.
Hmm, my current cell phone is in fact GSM, and every US city I've been to has had good coverage. Oh I agree that GSM doen'st have the best coverage, but it is there. GSM is not very common in the US, and there is still a lot of coverage.
And remember to differenciate between coverage in sparesly populated areas with densely populated areas. (NYC I know is dense, but I wouldn't want to visit there so you point is lost to me...)
Europe is ahead of the Us because they have a standard system. However the US has several systems which have features that are better than what Europe has. CDMA is a better standard than GMS overall, and there are others, which gives each a trial by fire. The best can then be combined into something that works. Generation 3 cell phones (if they ever make it) have been heavially influenced by what worked and didn't work in the US. If everyone was GSM like Europe is, then generation 3 would not be as good as it is.
Remember standardise early, but not too early.
I won't argue when you say it is convient to have one standard, but in real life most of the US has just as good of coverage as Europe. Sure there is only one provider, but who cares if the phone works? Get out from the major cities and there is no service, but a single GSM standard would't help much. Population densities are very low in the US, to there day there are many miles where there is no coverage on any system. (Unless there is a satalite system now)
Call your local utility. Often at least one of them will have a program where they do an "energy audit" on your house for cheap or free.
If that doesn't work, attics, windows, walls, floors, in that order.
Start with the attic, it is normally cheap and easy to add more, though there is a point of diminishign returns. If you have more than 12 inches up there, you are probably just fine.
Then windows. Low-e windows really make a difference. Unfortunatly low-e windows are expensive. If you need to replace your windows anyway, then get low-e glass. Otherwise window insulator shrink-wrap kits are cheap and work well.
Walls are harder. I you need to tear off the covering anyway, then add something, other wise it is really hard to do something. A professional can pump foam into walls, but this leaves holes all over the house, so I don't know if I would recomend it. Get a bid and decide if it is worth it. Often walls are best ignored until you build new.
floors are almost a non-issue. Still an uninsulated floor will get cold. carpet is about all you really need though.
There is very little that linux runs that won't run on *BSD. Those that won't run are most likely baddly written programs that you don't want on your comptuer anyway, if you need those features write a new program without all the bugs. The exceptions are there might be a few closed soruce apps which don't work right in linux emulation (most of them work), programs which deal directly with the kernel on a low level (which should not be portable, though there should be an equivelent for your OS), and programs that reqire hardware or hardware access. (Wine for instance requires user access to LDT, whatever that is, which isn't enabled, in this case easy to enable, though there might be others)
By and large though a program that runs on linux that won't compile and run for *bsd is not a program you should allow on linux. Any programer who can't write portable code, has probably made a lot of other stupid errors what will bite you. Be careful to seperate unportable code from portable code that hasn't been ported yet. A program that only runs on one OS is likely the former and you shouldn't touch it, while a program that runs on several OSes but hasn't been ported to yours could be well written and just in need of minor adjustments to work right.
No you can't learn the language well enough to function in Japan, unless you are already at that point (in which case why as this question). You should spend as much time as you can learning their language anway. Check out the tapes from the library, and listen to them. Buy books, and read them - do the exercises. You need to learn as much as you can. Eventially you will need to face someone who doesn't speak good english. If you show an ability to understand only the very simplest language spken very slow, most people can slow down enough that you can understand them.
There is also the culture to learn. In fact your reasons for learning the language isn't so much to be able to communicate with people as to not make a mistake with this culture. (In Spain you have to ask for the check after the meal, while in the US they bring it. In China a tip is considered an insult, while in America it is expected. In germany you find an empty seat and sit at a strangers table. I don't know what Japan does different, you need to learn as much as you can. I may have even gotten something of the above wrong)
I vistied a customer site a few months ago, and the reps pointed to a tape drive and said "This is the first product we sold." Probably serial number 20 or something like that. Been in production longer then I've been alive by a few years. I know it is still in production because some "little old lady" went up to it not long after to load a new tape.
Seriously. 2.0.x lacks some features, and is a little slower in some areas, but it came from the day when 386s were not uncommon, so compromises were made to make them work better.
How much I can't say, I just remember that when 2.2 first went stable I was told my 386 is better off staying with 2.0. It still is today, as my mail spool, though I keep it behind a firewall due to age.
This is excellent for those highly trained people needed to keep those things running. Even if someone invented a valve that was 100% reliable, tax laws change often enough that many operators will be needed to keep this computer up to date.
There are already NAT boxes out there. I don't know what thair CAT thing will do, but essenailly my comptuer connects to it, and... oh, guess what, I have the old NAT program installed, and my old program claims just one computers.
sharing 802.11b with neighbors who don't pay for their own service is immoral, but the proper way to charge is by bandwidth. Sharing wireless hubs is nice though, joggers can (in theory, I don't think anyone has done it) connect to various neighbor's wireless hubs as they walk down the street for continious music from the net. When in the backyard you can connect to the net from your laptop and compare those directions on pruning with what your trees look like, and who cares if it is your hub or the neighbor's?
there cannot be what you ask for. You might or might not need help, but metrics like lines of code have nothing to do with it.
Remember, when you have just a few programs (less than 10 in general) you all know each other, talk to each other, and know each others code, so you can modify anything. this makes you more productive. Eventially you reach the point where you can't keep track of what everyone does, so you specialize. This greatly cuts productivity over one programer working alone, but because of the number of specialists work gets done faster.
Adding programs makes a late project latter. However if the project is not late you should take the time to hire a backup who knows the code, just in case.
Once you have backup programers it is a management decision. Adding programers cuts producity, but if done right doesn't cut it by as much as the new person adds. However when you add a programer beware that you have to push out deadlines while you train the new guy.
this is computer programing. I know people who tought themselves Basic in a morning. I belive that I can learn any computer language you wish me to program in, in under a week. I can read well written programs in most lanuages without any learning time. I'm not special, any compitent programer can do it.
However after attempting to teach myself Spanish for 6 months I still couldn't hold even a basic conversation (and I had a year of spanish a few years back). Once I learn spanish I won't have much a head start should I need to learn Russian or Chinese. Learning those two wouldn't give me much advantage if I need Hebrew.
People think of programing languages as if it is something special to know a lot. Really you know zero (most people), one (a lot of people, normally basic), or all of them, including ones that have not been invented yet, though you will need a refresher before you would use one.
Mastering a programing language takes expirence, and that only comes with time, but a good programer in his first week with a new language can already prove that good programers are 10 times as productive as bad programers, even if the bad programer has been using that language for 10 years.
I know people who know 20 programing languages, I'm not impressed. I know people who are fluent in 17 human languages, and I'm impressed. In school I was once given the task of learning 12 languages in 10 weeks, and I had 2 other classes besides. It was no big deal, in fact learning 3 languages was trivial compared to using one language (C) to write a program in anouther class, even though I knew that language very well.
Use the language that is right for the job. TCL is designed to make your programs scriptable. Perl is great for string manipulation. There is no reason you can't combine both, someone who needs to maintain you code will not find it difficult to learn the ones needed.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make sure that you write nice, well commented code. As an example of the above, monday I was digging into someone else's C++ code. Even though I haven't done C++ is years, it was no problem reading C++. However the lack of comments was a problem. I can make changes, but I can't be sure I make the right ones without knowing what the programer was thinking. this is far more important than what language it is written in.
Hmm, when I was in high school they made a big deal about beingup to date with the latest software used in industry. I remember clearly writing all my reports in WordPerfect 5.1 for Dos, just like industry. Didn't help me any though, by the time I got out of college MsWord was the standard (word95 I think). Not that it matters, the company I work for uses FrameMaker when we need formated text, and otherwise emacs, or vi depending on your religion.
I also remember watching the transisition from Word*Star, but I was a kid so that was on the sidelines.
With that history it seems to me that computers change too quick for it to matter what you learn on in high school, it will be obsolete before long anyway.
One guy I worked with was considering branches, so he went into several recruters. One asked him to sign a health release form so they could do a background check to see if he would be elligable. He did without reading it. Turns out that wasn't a release form is was an agreement to enter the service, and there was no way out.
I don't know if there is any accualy health release forms, but make sure you don't sign anything without understanding it.
Oh really? You boomers might have a better survival rate, but it won't do you much good.
Already most of you expect socal security and investments to provide a lot of your retirement. Any accountent can tell you that it can't work as is, and when you knock off a lot of the produces (the yougner generation that is still working) you make it worse.
Lindsay has republished this wonderful book. Some of the info is dated, but it is all interesting. (And an electric engine was never pratical, but it is still fun to build)
No, grad students already assigned patents in most cases. This will require universities to put the student on patents they worked on.
Accually he can be fired, but there are a lot of rules designed to make it difficult to fire someone tenured. Normally they will only go through with those in cases of sexual harrassment, extreem lazyness (don't publish for too long), or other serious crime.
I'm surprized the university didn't fire him when they found out about this. It is certinaly a case where they should do that. Of cousre I don't have the whole story so maybe they did.
I desagree about never giving a user root. Here users are allowed root on the machine on their desktop. however IS does not maintain those machines. Screw up baddly and you re-instlal. Oh, and if you want to run any non-free programs (say that OOA toolkit that your programs are designed in, or framemaker) you have to log into one of our machines and open an xterm back to your machine.
The main reason for this is there are a lot of laptops out there, and we travel once in a while. You need root when you are at a customer site and they tell you "Your ip address is x.x.x.x, router is ..." Which happened to me once when I had to connect to their secure network. (No, not goverment, so I could move my machine back and forth, but the machine I needed was only on the secure network)
Here are the stories of three people I know who got admin jobs. they are all true, though I don't think they read /. (hence I'm posting...)
guy A. Programer at some company when the system administrator quit. Only one person thought to ask for the root password as the old guy left. "He was leaving so he didn't care, I staying so I did care." The only person with root is by default the administrator. There were no added monitary benifits, and his other responsibilities didn't decrease, but he had the power to make sure the comptuers worked and they did. (they way he wanted them to, so a lot of uptime)
Guy b: At 65 he retired from his job as a security gaurd from a goverment job. He had good benifits, but after sitting around for a few months he realised that was boring. He Basicly started knocking on doors looking for tech jobs for someone with no expirence. The company I work for has a few well paid admins, and a lot of poor paying admin positions. Our well paid admins are very good at teaching untrained intelligent people about comptuers. (it is a matter of pride that most baddly paid admins move onto a good job after a few years. So they guy found a job as level 1 tech support. However he had access to a lab filled with all kinds of equipment he could do whatever he wanted with, a computer on his desk to play with, and most days he didnt get that many calls. Soon he was changing network cards. (after all if level 1 script determins it is a network card, level 1 tech can replace it) there was plenty of time to play with things. When windows 95 came out all the admins put it in the lab to see what it could do.
Guy c: Came from a technical family. He at one time had in his bedroom comptuers running MacOs, windows 95, linux, and freeBSD. All connected to the family network (though a 28.8 modem and nat) to the internet. After playing with these comptuers for a while he went to coledge, droped out, got a retail management job... Hanging out on #distributed one day he discovered someone in the area who was hiring technical people. Went to the interview and he was the only one who didn't screw up baddly. when asked to solve a MacOS problem. (They are a graphics arts company so they are an apple shop).
So you can break into admin at any age, including afer retirement. It helps a lot to play with computers. Get as many cheap comptuers as you can, and start playing. Break things and fix them. Then look for a job. (Accually guy b jsut decided he wanted to work with something different and found a job that would train which is just as good.
They have them at the University of Minnesota. At least one person was discovered to have found a [simple] way to re-charge his card for no money. I don't think it even involved a card writer, just some trickery of the vending machines. With a writer you can do more I'm sure. (assuming you can discover the algorythm and key)
What should we do about state mandated car insurance
Complain, insurance should be optional. Good luck convincing anyone of that in todays controll your every step goverments, but that is the theory I belive in.
Even though insurance is a suckers bet, that doesn't mean you dare go without. Odds are I will never have an accident serious enough that I will have to replace my car. (Based on all my accidents in 10 years have been very miner) Doesn't matter, all it takes is one mistake. Paying a couple hundred dollars a year is cheap compared to buying a car worth what my current one is. I can't afford to replace my current car at the same level. So I pay insurance on it. Remember risk always enters in. For me the risk of needing insurance is low, other then what the law mandates since police will stop for something eventially (a broken headlight or something). However the downside of not having insurance and needing it is greater than the loss of paying for insurance.
True. However pure water picks up impuritieds. Take some 18 megaohm water (the purest we can achive) pour it into a clean glass, and just from the air it will have picked up a lot of impurities. (I've been told how much, but can't recall. puts the water way out of spec though)
Drain your car's radiator, then fill it up with pure
Doesn't matter. Either pure water or pure anti-freeze will give worse cooling than a proper mixture of anti-freeze and water. the mixture resutls in higher boiling points than either alone, and lower freezing points than either alone. Note that for each of the above you need a different mixture. 50/50 tends to be optimal for most people. In Minnesota we lean closer to 70/30, and in the desert (I think) they lean a little the other way. It turns out that 70/30 is close to the lowest freezing point you can achive with anti-freeze/water mistures. However the boiling point and heat capacity is changed.