Electronics 101: when you connect 2 circuits in series each sees half the total voltage. Connect 24 LEDs in series to a 120 volt line and each sees 5 volts! By definition there is no need to transform the AC into DC - the D in LED stands for diode, which is what you use to turn AC into DC! In the real world you are likely to use 48 LEDs, in two different strings, so that you get light from both sides of the wave.
Why does this surprize you? I walk up to a drive though ATM. (My car window doesn't work right) Works just fine, not ideal from an ergonomic view, but it works. Drive up just means you can get you car close to it.
Local drive up ATMs are starting to have ear phone jacks. There are also instructions in brail that I assume tell the user how to use the machine. (since I don't know brail I wouldn't know if it was anti-American propaganda)
Historicly the US banking industry has been heavily regularted, to prevent mergers. The great depression scared us, and the solution was seen to be having many small banks, since a small bank failure is easy to recover from. (don't know if this worked in practice, banks don't fail often, and when they do it tends to be many at once)
That means that there are more banks in the US to choose from, and thus more comptition. However smaller banks can't always provide the servies that a big bank can. (this works both ways, a small bank is more likely to recognize you on sight and let you talk to someone right away who can make the decisions)
Depends on the store. At home depot the clerk is faster, so I wait in line even when the machine is free. I have never done a self checkout at home depot and not needed help (the items at home depot are often hard to scan). In addition the machine limits you to 1 scan every few seconds, which is annoying when you physically work faster.
At wal-mart there was no such limitation. scan-scan-scan, and everything worked. I only wait in line at wal-mart if the checkout girl is cute enough that I want her to talk to me. (if only the standard "how are you today", and "your total comes to".
True, but the people that pay at the pump are generally the people who don't give in to impulse purchases anyway. So the store can save paying a clerk to take your little profit transaction, all the while annoying those profitable people in line behind you.
There is money in gas, ~30% of the profits at a gas station are from gas. (read the annual reports, this varies greatly from station to station) Pay at the pump allows them to get it without the cost of a clerk. It also allows them to get that 4am traffic that otherwise would go elsewhere.
Bahh. Sure a dentist cannot do all the cleaning on his own teeth. However brushing and flossing regularly, and not drinking (much) soda (most of which are fairly strong acids) does a lot more to keep your teeth healthy and nice than a good dentist. Remember, the shoe makers kid goes barefoot sometimes.
This story is normally applied to barbers, but you still can't know. I cut my own hair, (I'd probably qualify as a military haircut though I don't know those standards) it isn't hard so long as you don't want something complex. I suspect a dentist who was unhappy with the other dentists in town could rig up a few mirrors and do his own work. Or he could fly to a different country on his vacation days. (as could anyone else in town if both dentists were bad)
Never take a simple judgment of something. Get the facts. The first fact you need is which ones too look for.
Some of them have a good job. Most people I know are not willing to pick up their family and move to washington when they already have a job that pays enough. Remember, that means the wife (sadly female programmers are rare enough that I don't count them) needs to quit her job too. that means leaving the grand parents, and friends behind.
If MS had offered me a job 6 months ago when I was looking I would have been forced to re-consider. Now however I'm making enough money. I'll take a new job around home for little more than I'm making, if it is otherwise good. Even around home though I'm making enough that I can afford to tell MS I don't want your job. Course if they offered me a couple million a year I'd work for them, but 3 years latter I'd be retired, and working on KDE again for the fun of it, so MS wouldn't gain anything. (actually they'd loose, right now I don't have the energy to program after work....)
My experiences are not the same as everyone else, but some of the above applies to most people.
Slight correction. The CLAIMED reason for the 55mph speed limit was gas milage, something that allowed an ignorant congress to appear to do something about the "gas shortages". (I'm not old enough to remember them, but as I understand they didn't really exist, except as some manipulators caused them)
Most cars get better gas milage at 65 mpg than 55. The best milage varies from car to car. The more wind resistance the slower that speed is, the heavier the car the higher the speed. The bigger the engine the higher the speed. Somehow gearing and engine design factors into it too, but there is no general statement to make. Even many big trucks get better milage at 65 than 55.
I'm not making the above up. I keep track of each tank, and 55 vs 65 amounts to several mpg difference, even when I compare towing the boat at 65 to unloaded at 55. However I can only speak specificly for the two autos I own.
I own 1 acre of land, and I have 300 feet that I could turn into a runway. Not enough, but with 8 acres I think that guy would have a shot at a nice runway. He is in Texas, which is relativly flat. (most parts, I don't know his exact situation) Depending on his land, he might not have room for more than one, which means some crosswind landings, but that isn't too big a deal.
It would be stupid for him to buy a plane without making sure he can land it of course. (and his runway influences his choice of planes)
Considering his commute is 1 hour in perfect conditions, a plane sounds like a good time saver. (though someone else suggested his prefered airport isn't too good, something to check out)
True airplanes are expensive, and need a lot of maintance. However 30 year old planes are common and still considered flyable. Where I live 10 year old cars are beaters that you don't expect to have much more life. Compare the cost of one plane you buy and maintain to all the cars you would buy (and maintain) and things don't look so bad.
The downside: what are you going to do when the weather is bad? How do you get from the airport to work, and work to lunch? You end up having that second car at the airport. I've considered this, and it ends up being a lot more expensive any way you look at it.
A large part of the reason SMS is so popular on your side of the pond is your voice charges are so expensive. Here nobody thinks twice about calling anyone locally. Last time I was in Europe people had to think about making a call to decide if it was worth the cost. SMS is cheaper so you do it.
I have SMS on my phone, and I do use it. However the difficulty of entering text on a phone makes it a bad idea for most things. (however when I need to send something like a IP address it works good because the other guy can see it, not hope he heard me right) When I have someone to tell someone it is normally easier to just call them. The costs in the US is such that I don't think twice about doing so.
The US is a large country, and I can call anyone in the US at no extra change (from my cell phone). Think of it as if the US and Europe were the same size. (though Europe is bigger, it isn't an order of magnitude) Our phone plans are different. (not better or worse, different!) You can cite advantages to yours, though I'm not sure if they all hold up.
I can just see the next version: small enough to fit in a delivery truck. Click order on amazon.com, and suddenly the UPS guy in my neighborhood gets a new stop: my house, with the book fresh from the machine. 5 minutes from order to delivery at my doorstep. What service
Of course knowing UPS they will screw that up anyway. At least one person in the world will have the above happen though and it will be in advertisements everywhere.
This was a problem with the linux implimentation of a.out, and not a.out itself. When Linux (all contributers) decided it was time to change, everyone recognized elf as the future, so they combined fixing a.out with jumping to elf.
Freebsd stuck with a.out for several years longer, until the pain of being different exceeding the pain of changing. Other than being easier to keep in sync with the tool chain (GUN stuff) there was no read gain. (though of course elf is the standard and that is a gain in itself)
I'm not aware of any cases, but what the judge orders is what goes. (Unless an appeal reverses) So there is no way to be sure.
OTOH, the FSF can only be ordered to turn over code they own. They own parts of linux, which they could (in theory) be ordered to turn over, but that still leaves large parts of linux not under their control.
I would place the risks of this very low though. Judges don't like to do this sort of thing, and judges are rarely bribed. They might agree that the FSF doesn't have rights to some part of one project, but that leaves the rest of the project, and all other projects free. This could happen if something is found in violation of a patent for instance. Once the patent is worked around you can use that product again.
All that "dark fiber" was never intended to be lit up. The cost to lay 1000 fiber lines is nearly the same as the cost to lay 1. Only a fool would not put in 1000 (exact amounts depending on what your supplier will give you) while they are at it. No extra cost (significant), and your odds are much higher that at least 1 line will survive the process if you have that many.
Alright Mr GUI bigot, here is a command line I typed last time I was at work:
grep StrangClass_name::open *.cppThe above was done on a MS windows machine! Tell me what the windows way of doing that is. And don't point me at a different IDE because that only solves the problem when I'm programming. (Not to mention I happen to like vim) Try this one
grep phil jan_sales*
where (for whatever reason) there is more than one file. Pipe that into another file so you can figure out what phil did. Oh sure, a good order tool will do that, but that is a completley different tool from the IDE you just made me learn above. Suddenly you have given me two tools to learn where one worked before. (granted I could, and GUI tools are quicker to learn if done right, but order tools rarely are done right) Once I take the time to learn grep I can do a lot of complex things in the unix model. I can do even more if I learn regular expressoins.
Apparently we are not in the same country... Sorry, I forgot the disclaimer that not all countries work the same way as the US.
The US can take anyone's property for the public good, if they pay for it. Often a lawsuit results when they try, for any reason more than a road. I'm pretty sure all other governments in the world have the same right. This is not the same as mineral rights, which are the right to mine the minerals under the land.
In the US the government does not own the minerals under your land in general. They could buy the rights, but AFAIK that has never been done. However where there is reason to expect land to have minerals worth something sometimes the owners will sell mineral rights today for a sum of cash. Eventually the buyer will move in and take them.
When the buyer takes the minerals, it can be as simple as a oil well where they force you to lease 100 square feet of land for the well. It can be as big as an open pit mine, where one day bulldozers are on "your land", and you are given a check for the value and told to leave. This normally means the value of the house, but does not include include other improvements. (I'm thinking of a particular case where the guy planted an orchard was was drawing his income from it, and wasn't compensated for the loss of the business)
In the US water rights are not part of land rights, and generally you don't have them.
You completely miss my point. An artist who isn't making money from is work needs some other source of income. If they cannot earn money from their work, that means they need to create after work. I find after 8 hours a day at work there isn't time for to do all the other things I'd like to do. Like it or not I need 8 hours of sleep a day. Toss in 2 hours for meals, an hour of general housework commute time, and there are perhaps 4 hours left in the day. 4 hours to spend with family, go out drinking, or whatever it is you do with your time. And it gets worse if you work overtime. (that leave weekends, though some work them too)
I'm not suggesting an author would write 120 hours a week, I'm suggesting they would write 40 hours a week if only those 40 hours were not filled with all the other things they need to do. (writing 120 hours/week tends to produce quantity, but not quality, IMHO)
A few authors can get sponsored by some rich person, but not all that society would like to see.
No, but the beatles were thinking after the first album "Is it worth the time and effort to record a good album in a good studio (as opposed to some garrage) with good producers..." Now as musicians they would produce anyway, but it would be in concerts more because they were fun, and if you screwed up everyone lived with it instead of expecting another retake.
Lets take the simpler case: authors would write if there was a market or not. However by allowing the author to quit their day job and write full time, we allow authors that people like to write more books. As a reader I consider that a good compromise, therefore copyright benefits me - but only so long as the author is writing good books. (too many don't, but that is a different rant)
I own the mineral rights to my land, as do the majority of people I know. I live in an area where greedy people have not sold the rights out from under me. (course they aren't worth anything because nobody belives it will ever be worthwile to extract the minerals under my land. (there is a lot of iron on my land, I'd expect to find lots of other things like gold, but not in significant amounts) Hint to those of you living somewhere that mineral rights do not normally go with property: your property value had better go down by more than the value of those rights. Down more because someone has the rights to kick you off "your" land and you need compensation for that potential loss.
So long as the US is seen as the most successful country in the world the US will be a draw terrorist who hate anyone more successful, or hate the way of life the US represents. If Canada was in our place, without changing anything else they would have drawing the terrorists on 9/11.
Hate is not rational. (including your hate of the US, though yours is a little milder)
This doesn't apply to all situations, but are you sure replace is the right option? If all the public machines are busy most of the time (or you have no public machines) perhaps you are better off getting some more tables and adding computers.
Depending on who has what needs, you might replace a staff machine and put it in the public areas. If people start looking for fast machines you might need to start asking why they need speed and give those who really need speed the faster machines, but this is complex and hopefully unneeded.
A AC posted more or less this, but my
+2 bonus make this easier to find...
Do you have any friends? A local linux (or BSD) computer club? Start asking the geeks you know. I personally would be happy to give friends a shell account on my personal machine. I don't have much disk space or CPU power, but it is always on, and I have a static IP.
I'm not going to do this for someone who doesn't talk to me in person though. I want a personal promise that you won't abuse the account. That is you will keep your password safe, won't spam, won't try to crack root, or any of the other evil things that could be done. Oh, and I want to make sure I won't have to support you, I've got better things to do with my life than upgrade gcc just because 3.4 is out and 3.3 is soo outdated... (though if you ask nicely I might do it)
Harddrives are made of metal. Metal melts. Find a machinest hobbiest around you who is looking for material, and donate the harddrive to him. You can watch it melt, and then get turned into something else.
Seriously, harddrives are made from some nice alloys for melting into something else. The right machinest would love to have it.
plan better? How about think a little. I once worked in a place where all the engineers had unix (solaris) workstations on their desk. About 1/4th had a windows machine. A new engineering app was built from the ground up that only ran with IE on windows! (I tried it with the solaris version of IE, didn't work)
When IT learns to think let me know. Until then planing won't help.
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Electronics 101: when you connect 2 circuits in series each sees half the total voltage. Connect 24 LEDs in series to a 120 volt line and each sees 5 volts! By definition there is no need to transform the AC into DC - the D in LED stands for diode, which is what you use to turn AC into DC! In the real world you are likely to use 48 LEDs, in two different strings, so that you get light from both sides of the wave.
Do you have any idea what the cost of an overpass is? Millions of dollars. A road is expensive to build, but cheap compared to a bridge.
Why does this surprize you? I walk up to a drive though ATM. (My car window doesn't work right) Works just fine, not ideal from an ergonomic view, but it works. Drive up just means you can get you car close to it.
Local drive up ATMs are starting to have ear phone jacks. There are also instructions in brail that I assume tell the user how to use the machine. (since I don't know brail I wouldn't know if it was anti-American propaganda)
Historicly the US banking industry has been heavily regularted, to prevent mergers. The great depression scared us, and the solution was seen to be having many small banks, since a small bank failure is easy to recover from. (don't know if this worked in practice, banks don't fail often, and when they do it tends to be many at once)
That means that there are more banks in the US to choose from, and thus more comptition. However smaller banks can't always provide the servies that a big bank can. (this works both ways, a small bank is more likely to recognize you on sight and let you talk to someone right away who can make the decisions)
Depends on the store. At home depot the clerk is faster, so I wait in line even when the machine is free. I have never done a self checkout at home depot and not needed help (the items at home depot are often hard to scan). In addition the machine limits you to 1 scan every few seconds, which is annoying when you physically work faster.
At wal-mart there was no such limitation. scan-scan-scan, and everything worked. I only wait in line at wal-mart if the checkout girl is cute enough that I want her to talk to me. (if only the standard "how are you today", and "your total comes to".
True, but the people that pay at the pump are generally the people who don't give in to impulse purchases anyway. So the store can save paying a clerk to take your little profit transaction, all the while annoying those profitable people in line behind you.
There is money in gas, ~30% of the profits at a gas station are from gas. (read the annual reports, this varies greatly from station to station) Pay at the pump allows them to get it without the cost of a clerk. It also allows them to get that 4am traffic that otherwise would go elsewhere.
Bahh. Sure a dentist cannot do all the cleaning on his own teeth. However brushing and flossing regularly, and not drinking (much) soda (most of which are fairly strong acids) does a lot more to keep your teeth healthy and nice than a good dentist. Remember, the shoe makers kid goes barefoot sometimes.
This story is normally applied to barbers, but you still can't know. I cut my own hair, (I'd probably qualify as a military haircut though I don't know those standards) it isn't hard so long as you don't want something complex. I suspect a dentist who was unhappy with the other dentists in town could rig up a few mirrors and do his own work. Or he could fly to a different country on his vacation days. (as could anyone else in town if both dentists were bad)
Never take a simple judgment of something. Get the facts. The first fact you need is which ones too look for.
Some of them have a good job. Most people I know are not willing to pick up their family and move to washington when they already have a job that pays enough. Remember, that means the wife (sadly female programmers are rare enough that I don't count them) needs to quit her job too. that means leaving the grand parents, and friends behind.
If MS had offered me a job 6 months ago when I was looking I would have been forced to re-consider. Now however I'm making enough money. I'll take a new job around home for little more than I'm making, if it is otherwise good. Even around home though I'm making enough that I can afford to tell MS I don't want your job. Course if they offered me a couple million a year I'd work for them, but 3 years latter I'd be retired, and working on KDE again for the fun of it, so MS wouldn't gain anything. (actually they'd loose, right now I don't have the energy to program after work....)
My experiences are not the same as everyone else, but some of the above applies to most people.
Slight correction. The CLAIMED reason for the 55mph speed limit was gas milage, something that allowed an ignorant congress to appear to do something about the "gas shortages". (I'm not old enough to remember them, but as I understand they didn't really exist, except as some manipulators caused them)
Most cars get better gas milage at 65 mpg than 55. The best milage varies from car to car. The more wind resistance the slower that speed is, the heavier the car the higher the speed. The bigger the engine the higher the speed. Somehow gearing and engine design factors into it too, but there is no general statement to make. Even many big trucks get better milage at 65 than 55.
I'm not making the above up. I keep track of each tank, and 55 vs 65 amounts to several mpg difference, even when I compare towing the boat at 65 to unloaded at 55. However I can only speak specificly for the two autos I own.
I own 1 acre of land, and I have 300 feet that I could turn into a runway. Not enough, but with 8 acres I think that guy would have a shot at a nice runway. He is in Texas, which is relativly flat. (most parts, I don't know his exact situation) Depending on his land, he might not have room for more than one, which means some crosswind landings, but that isn't too big a deal.
It would be stupid for him to buy a plane without making sure he can land it of course. (and his runway influences his choice of planes)
Considering his commute is 1 hour in perfect conditions, a plane sounds like a good time saver. (though someone else suggested his prefered airport isn't too good, something to check out)
True airplanes are expensive, and need a lot of maintance. However 30 year old planes are common and still considered flyable. Where I live 10 year old cars are beaters that you don't expect to have much more life. Compare the cost of one plane you buy and maintain to all the cars you would buy (and maintain) and things don't look so bad.
The downside: what are you going to do when the weather is bad? How do you get from the airport to work, and work to lunch? You end up having that second car at the airport. I've considered this, and it ends up being a lot more expensive any way you look at it.
A large part of the reason SMS is so popular on your side of the pond is your voice charges are so expensive. Here nobody thinks twice about calling anyone locally. Last time I was in Europe people had to think about making a call to decide if it was worth the cost. SMS is cheaper so you do it.
I have SMS on my phone, and I do use it. However the difficulty of entering text on a phone makes it a bad idea for most things. (however when I need to send something like a IP address it works good because the other guy can see it, not hope he heard me right) When I have someone to tell someone it is normally easier to just call them. The costs in the US is such that I don't think twice about doing so.
The US is a large country, and I can call anyone in the US at no extra change (from my cell phone). Think of it as if the US and Europe were the same size. (though Europe is bigger, it isn't an order of magnitude) Our phone plans are different. (not better or worse, different!) You can cite advantages to yours, though I'm not sure if they all hold up.
I can just see the next version: small enough to fit in a delivery truck. Click order on amazon.com, and suddenly the UPS guy in my neighborhood gets a new stop: my house, with the book fresh from the machine. 5 minutes from order to delivery at my doorstep. What service
Of course knowing UPS they will screw that up anyway. At least one person in the world will have the above happen though and it will be in advertisements everywhere.
This was a problem with the linux implimentation of a.out, and not a.out itself. When Linux (all contributers) decided it was time to change, everyone recognized elf as the future, so they combined fixing a.out with jumping to elf.
Freebsd stuck with a.out for several years longer, until the pain of being different exceeding the pain of changing. Other than being easier to keep in sync with the tool chain (GUN stuff) there was no read gain. (though of course elf is the standard and that is a gain in itself)
I'm not aware of any cases, but what the judge orders is what goes. (Unless an appeal reverses) So there is no way to be sure.
OTOH, the FSF can only be ordered to turn over code they own. They own parts of linux, which they could (in theory) be ordered to turn over, but that still leaves large parts of linux not under their control.
I would place the risks of this very low though. Judges don't like to do this sort of thing, and judges are rarely bribed. They might agree that the FSF doesn't have rights to some part of one project, but that leaves the rest of the project, and all other projects free. This could happen if something is found in violation of a patent for instance. Once the patent is worked around you can use that product again.
Not this old myth again...
All that "dark fiber" was never intended to be lit up. The cost to lay 1000 fiber lines is nearly the same as the cost to lay 1. Only a fool would not put in 1000 (exact amounts depending on what your supplier will give you) while they are at it. No extra cost (significant), and your odds are much higher that at least 1 line will survive the process if you have that many.
Alright Mr GUI bigot, here is a command line I typed last time I was at work:
grep StrangClass_name::open *.cppThe above was done on a MS windows machine! Tell me what the windows way of doing that is. And don't point me at a different IDE because that only solves the problem when I'm programming. (Not to mention I happen to like vim) Try this one
grep phil jan_sales*
where (for whatever reason) there is more than one file. Pipe that into another file so you can figure out what phil did. Oh sure, a good order tool will do that, but that is a completley different tool from the IDE you just made me learn above. Suddenly you have given me two tools to learn where one worked before. (granted I could, and GUI tools are quicker to learn if done right, but order tools rarely are done right) Once I take the time to learn grep I can do a lot of complex things in the unix model. I can do even more if I learn regular expressoins.
Apparently we are not in the same country... Sorry, I forgot the disclaimer that not all countries work the same way as the US.
The US can take anyone's property for the public good, if they pay for it. Often a lawsuit results when they try, for any reason more than a road. I'm pretty sure all other governments in the world have the same right. This is not the same as mineral rights, which are the right to mine the minerals under the land.
In the US the government does not own the minerals under your land in general. They could buy the rights, but AFAIK that has never been done. However where there is reason to expect land to have minerals worth something sometimes the owners will sell mineral rights today for a sum of cash. Eventually the buyer will move in and take them.
When the buyer takes the minerals, it can be as simple as a oil well where they force you to lease 100 square feet of land for the well. It can be as big as an open pit mine, where one day bulldozers are on "your land", and you are given a check for the value and told to leave. This normally means the value of the house, but does not include include other improvements. (I'm thinking of a particular case where the guy planted an orchard was was drawing his income from it, and wasn't compensated for the loss of the business)
In the US water rights are not part of land rights, and generally you don't have them.
You completely miss my point. An artist who isn't making money from is work needs some other source of income. If they cannot earn money from their work, that means they need to create after work. I find after 8 hours a day at work there isn't time for to do all the other things I'd like to do. Like it or not I need 8 hours of sleep a day. Toss in 2 hours for meals, an hour of general housework commute time, and there are perhaps 4 hours left in the day. 4 hours to spend with family, go out drinking, or whatever it is you do with your time. And it gets worse if you work overtime. (that leave weekends, though some work them too)
I'm not suggesting an author would write 120 hours a week, I'm suggesting they would write 40 hours a week if only those 40 hours were not filled with all the other things they need to do. (writing 120 hours/week tends to produce quantity, but not quality, IMHO)
A few authors can get sponsored by some rich person, but not all that society would like to see.
No, but the beatles were thinking after the first album "Is it worth the time and effort to record a good album in a good studio (as opposed to some garrage) with good producers..." Now as musicians they would produce anyway, but it would be in concerts more because they were fun, and if you screwed up everyone lived with it instead of expecting another retake.
Lets take the simpler case: authors would write if there was a market or not. However by allowing the author to quit their day job and write full time, we allow authors that people like to write more books. As a reader I consider that a good compromise, therefore copyright benefits me - but only so long as the author is writing good books. (too many don't, but that is a different rant)
I own the mineral rights to my land, as do the majority of people I know. I live in an area where greedy people have not sold the rights out from under me. (course they aren't worth anything because nobody belives it will ever be worthwile to extract the minerals under my land. (there is a lot of iron on my land, I'd expect to find lots of other things like gold, but not in significant amounts) Hint to those of you living somewhere that mineral rights do not normally go with property: your property value had better go down by more than the value of those rights. Down more because someone has the rights to kick you off "your" land and you need compensation for that potential loss.
So long as the US is seen as the most successful country in the world the US will be a draw terrorist who hate anyone more successful, or hate the way of life the US represents. If Canada was in our place, without changing anything else they would have drawing the terrorists on 9/11.
Hate is not rational. (including your hate of the US, though yours is a little milder)
This doesn't apply to all situations, but are you sure replace is the right option? If all the public machines are busy most of the time (or you have no public machines) perhaps you are better off getting some more tables and adding computers.
Depending on who has what needs, you might replace a staff machine and put it in the public areas. If people start looking for fast machines you might need to start asking why they need speed and give those who really need speed the faster machines, but this is complex and hopefully unneeded.
A AC posted more or less this, but my +2 bonus make this easier to find...
Do you have any friends? A local linux (or BSD) computer club? Start asking the geeks you know. I personally would be happy to give friends a shell account on my personal machine. I don't have much disk space or CPU power, but it is always on, and I have a static IP.
I'm not going to do this for someone who doesn't talk to me in person though. I want a personal promise that you won't abuse the account. That is you will keep your password safe, won't spam, won't try to crack root, or any of the other evil things that could be done. Oh, and I want to make sure I won't have to support you, I've got better things to do with my life than upgrade gcc just because 3.4 is out and 3.3 is soo outdated... (though if you ask nicely I might do it)
Harddrives are made of metal. Metal melts. Find a machinest hobbiest around you who is looking for material, and donate the harddrive to him. You can watch it melt, and then get turned into something else.
Seriously, harddrives are made from some nice alloys for melting into something else. The right machinest would love to have it.
plan better? How about think a little. I once worked in a place where all the engineers had unix (solaris) workstations on their desk. About 1/4th had a windows machine. A new engineering app was built from the ground up that only ran with IE on windows! (I tried it with the solaris version of IE, didn't work)
When IT learns to think let me know. Until then planing won't help.