I just used a 10 mhz 286 last week for analysis in a lab experiment. I go to a small state school in Denver and we get shit for funding because it's not a research school. (they only grant Bachelor's degrees, hence no grad students, hence no free slave labor for professors, hence no research)
So, last week's experiment in physical chemistry was a measurement of the change in temperature in the adiabatic compression of various gasses. The PC hooked up to the compression chamber is an archaic 10 mhz 286 with a whopping 8MB of ram running MS-DOS 6.1. They continue to use this machine because an upgrade in hardware would require a software (Vernier MPLI) update as well, and the software costs about $1000 per machine.
My TI-83 has more horsepower than this PC does.
We share a campus with a larger, better funded school. (CU Denver) The equipment in their labs, PCs and analytic equipment alike, is replaced with brand new stuff every few years. They have gear we can only dream about. (ICP, GC/MS, IR, and NMR that were made within the last 20 years, TEM and SEM...spoiled bastages)
I think the vitriol that most/. ers have against execs is not that they don't know much about technology, but that the ones that make the major decisions regarding technology SHOULD know what the hell they are talking about, but often don't.
You certainly wouldn't put a network engineer in charge of making major financial or strategic business decisions. By the same token, you're just as foolish if you put a Harvard MBA in charge of network infrastructure decisions.
A good executive doesn't need to know everything there is about current technology, but he definately needs to know enough to understand a) when to listen to his IT department and implement the changes they recommend and b) know when his IT people are full of shit. There is no way you can tell what an IT person or programmer needs and doesn't need if you can't understand what he just said.
Because free or discounted phones are only offered to new customers. I've broken 2 phones (both nokias) and lost another. I don't want to change my cell number, but having to fork out $200 for a new phone every time I destroy one freakin sucks. My current phone is 2 years old and is really lacking in features...I can get a brand new one with twice the features and battery life for free if I switch to someone else.
The temptation to ditch AT&T grows greater with every new offer from competing companies. Maybe if this goes through, they'll offer new or discounted phones on contract renewal dates rather than just for new customers. If not, I'm gone.
The energy delivered by electromagnetic waves that are involved in cellular communication is not sufficient to ionize molecules. I assure you that you won't get cancer from this. Radiation-induced mutations are strictly due to ions and free radicals that are created by bond breakage interaction with free electrons on DNA molecules. (specifically the nitrogen atoms in the peptide bonds in the amino acids that make up the protein strands) If you're not forming electron deficient ions and radicals, you're not mutating your DNA. Sorry.
The energy is, however, sufficient to cause slight vibrations in the chemical bonds in your cells, causing the increase in perceived temperature. This probably will not hurt you any more than touching a warm piece of metal to your skin will.
On the down side, some studies are showing that RF energy can cause certain chemicals to cross the blood-brain barrier when they shouldn't be, but that's not necessarily carcingenic, just (possibly) neurotoxic. These are new studies, though, and it's not conclusive yet.
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but you must realize that in the UK, a football is the same thing as our soccer ball. Pretty much the rest of the world outside the US calls soccer "football"
If you were just being a smart-ass, well, congratulations, ya got me.
Funny how you make an incorrect comparsion of file sharing to stealing then say "please no comments on stealing vs infringing"
Is that because you know your analogy is tragically flawed? Opinioned idiots, indeed.
Were you inclinced to think about what you were reading, you would have noticed that the comparison was between changes in public opinion before and after the conglomerate in each case's horribly distasteful litigation. In the Ford case, no one gave a shit until the "car"-tel started suing his customers. In the RIAA case, again, no one really have a shit until they started suing college kids, children, and old women. Public opinion turned around in both cases, hence the point of the article.
I think that's a little different now that they started suing children and old women. Hell, even my mom now thinks they're a bunch of evil bastards and she doesn't know shit about shit.
Hence the Ford analogy of how no one cared about his legal troubles until his opponents sued his customers.
You know what they're doing, don't you? They're surveying prospective customers for a home mailing campaign. Now you get to have just as many interruptions over the phone AND get more junk mail, too!
So much for the spirit of the DNC list, which should more accurately be called a "do not fucking bother me, you underpaid annoying barely literate suckwad who is too stupid to get a job in a real office and/or too lazy to work in retail or fast food." But I guess that's bulky, even as an acronym.
They need to rework the wording of the law so that only non-profit and government entities can make these calls. Or just ban them altogether. Tele-market research and charity begging are 10 times as annoying because the calls take longer and have more of a guilt trip factor.
Hmm...I'm not so sure I agree with you here. I'll concede that the academic costs are far past tuition costs at state schools, but dormitory costs are most cases a profit. Tuition covers just that....tuition. Room and board are always separate expenses and for state schools far outweight the cost of tuition.
It doesn't cost the school very much to put a student (or two) up in a 10' by 20' room and give them 3 cafeteria-style meals a day. Considering even state schools get around $4000-5000 a year for dorm room and a meal plan,(ballparking this number based on a couple random state school websites) they're probably coming out ahead for your basic two-student dorm room. (Ever wonder why singles in the dorms cost more?)
Now figure in the profits from students spending money at the campus corner-store and non-mealplan eateries, you're talking even more profit. Even if the cafeterias and stores are operated by a third party, that third party still pays significant cash for the space and utilities.
The cost of internet access is paid for out of a student IT fee. At most schools, the dorms use the same connection as the rest of the campus, so that's not really a factor in the school's overhead for the dorms.
I doubt that their internet usage policies are going to cause anyone to pull funding from academic policies or sports...sure that would hurt them, but it's not going to happen. When they can't keep the dorms filled up, though, you're going to see them start changing their tune real fast...state schools are really hurting for money right now because in this wonderful country of ours, education funding is the first to go when money is tight. Once their budget gets even worse because of their gestapo monitoring policy, they'll change their minds.
They probably mean that they used the code from another open source project. Since they're keeping this program in-house, they don't need to show you the source, only if they release it for use by others.
It's a dumb idea, in the end. The student are going to quit living on campus or quit coming to that school. Either way, UF loses a ton of money. Guess they shoulda put some consideration into separate internet connections for academic and dorm users.
lab equipment and lab chemicals - being overpriced over comparable bulk or common products by order of magnitude.
What you're paying for in lab-grade materials is purity. Bulk reagents have a lot of crap in them, depending on what you're working with. Bulk organics might have significant traces of solvents or purification substrate and bulk acids/minerals will have traces of heavy metals. When you're doing sensitive, small-scale biological research, these pollutants can really screw things up.
The processes to remove these miniscule traces of pollutant are time-consuming and require expensive equipment. They have to use expensive analytic equipment to assay it initially, then purify, then assay again. (and purify again if necessary) Requirements for purity are usually on the scale of parts per billion or parts per trillion.
That is what you're paying for when you buy a $100 bottle of lab-grade acetone instead of a $20 drum of the cheap stuff. (for example)
Are anti-smokers getting so belligerent now that just SEEING someone smoke on television offends you? For fuck's sake, get over it. Get a hobby or something. People smoke. Many people smoke. Therefore, shows or movies that portray things happening that involve people are going to occasionally have smokers in it.
I promise you won't get the nasty, icky lung cancer from seeing smoke particles on a screen.
I seem to remember Ashcroft telling a skeptical Congress that the PATRIOT act would be used to allow law enforcement agencies to root out terrorist threats against US interests.
Now so far we have seen it used against domestic narcotics manufacturers/dealers and now hackers. While there is no dispute that these folks were committing crimes, law enforcement agencies are using this anti-terrorist legislation and the stiffer sentencing and looser evidenciery rules that come with it against non-terrorists. Voters in the next election need to send the message to the current administration that this sort of behavior is NOT ok and will NOT be tolerated.
DVDs can generally be found for $10-$15 For any movie that is even remotely worth seeing, try $20. Either I'm shopping in the wrong place or you're grossly misinformed on the price of new DVDs.
Buy from a someone other than a dealer. Sure, you won't get a new car that way, but many people sell their cars after having them for only a year or two. Check your local want-ads. The $100 a mechanic will charge you to look the car over is much less than the sales tax you'd pay a dealer. There are online services that run the VIN to see if the vehicle has ever been in a accident, as well.
It's a win-win situation. The dude selling the car gets a lot more than they'd get for trade-in, and you pay less than you'd pay a dealer.
I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that for you to be charged sales tax the person selling it has to have a sales tax ID...in other words, title transfer from person to person gets you around that. Most vehicle warranties cover the car, not the owner, so as long as the mileage is low, you're still cool.
Play it smart and you walk, er drive, away with a nice car and won't get screwed.
Your post reminds me of a drunken redneck game that friends of mine used to play. They'd buy various small caged pets (mice, rats, tarantulas, scorpions) and make them fight each other, taking bets on which one would win each bout.
It later became known as Animal Kingdom Kumite, after a series of strips from the late, great Space Moose comic.
Yeah, I checked on that later.....105 million is dead on. My bad, I'll take the fall on that one.
But when I said 200 million, I was discounting those in the under 15 demographic, as they constitute about 20% of the population, as well as the portion of the 15-65 that is 15-17. (since they can't vote or get telephone service or any of that good stuff) It's a rough approximation of people affected by this ruling.
How about the verdict? Is that a good aspect to think is incorrect?
Going through the proceedings and reading the text of his ruling is irrelevant. Even though he is a Federal judge, his ruling benefits local industry, not the will of the people of the United States.
It's not like this is a heavily polarized issue where there are million of staunch supporters of telemarketers rallying and protesting. No one likes these people and no one wants to be bothered in the sanctity of their homes. 50 million people have signed up already...that's over 25% of the adult population of this country, and doesn't include those who are not internet-saavy enough to get themselves on the list. State initiatives for DNC lists have had just as overwhelmingly popular support. What's to debate here? People do not want to be sold shit over the phone. It's rude, it's annoying, and hopefully soon, it will be against the law.
Bad argument...this issue isn't as polarized as abortion. There are not ANOTHER 50 million people on the other side of the issue who are screaming to keep all phone numbers as solicitation-bait.
These 50 million are just the people that are internet-saavy enough to sign up. That's more total people than voted in the last presidential election. You think maybe its an issue people care about? I'd be willing to bet that if you polled the other 150 million adults in this country, the vast majority of them would also not want to be called by telemarketers.
There's a difference between door to door canvassing and telemarketing...first being that if I don't like you coming to my door at 6am handing out Bibles, I can answer the door in a pair of boxers holding my Colt 1911 and a bottle of Wild Turkey, thus assuring you never ever come to my house again. You have no such recourse against cowardly telemarketers (and spammers!) who will continue to bother you even after requesting not to be contacted again.
I'm all for a capitalist society, but these people need to fucking learn to sell their product in a way that doesn't make me want to destroy all that is good in their life.
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I just used a 10 mhz 286 last week for analysis in a lab experiment. I go to a small state school in Denver and we get shit for funding because it's not a research school. (they only grant Bachelor's degrees, hence no grad students, hence no free slave labor for professors, hence no research)
So, last week's experiment in physical chemistry was a measurement of the change in temperature in the adiabatic compression of various gasses. The PC hooked up to the compression chamber is an archaic 10 mhz 286 with a whopping 8MB of ram running MS-DOS 6.1. They continue to use this machine because an upgrade in hardware would require a software (Vernier MPLI) update as well, and the software costs about $1000 per machine.
My TI-83 has more horsepower than this PC does.
We share a campus with a larger, better funded school. (CU Denver) The equipment in their labs, PCs and analytic equipment alike, is replaced with brand new stuff every few years. They have gear we can only dream about. (ICP, GC/MS, IR, and NMR that were made within the last 20 years, TEM and SEM...spoiled bastages)
Bitter? Naw, not me.
I think the vitriol that most /. ers have against execs is not that they don't know much about technology, but that the ones that make the major decisions regarding technology SHOULD know what the hell they are talking about, but often don't.
You certainly wouldn't put a network engineer in charge of making major financial or strategic business decisions. By the same token, you're just as foolish if you put a Harvard MBA in charge of network infrastructure decisions.
A good executive doesn't need to know everything there is about current technology, but he definately needs to know enough to understand a) when to listen to his IT department and implement the changes they recommend and b) know when his IT people are full of shit. There is no way you can tell what an IT person or programmer needs and doesn't need if you can't understand what he just said.
Because free or discounted phones are only offered to new customers. I've broken 2 phones (both nokias) and lost another. I don't want to change my cell number, but having to fork out $200 for a new phone every time I destroy one freakin sucks. My current phone is 2 years old and is really lacking in features...I can get a brand new one with twice the features and battery life for free if I switch to someone else.
The temptation to ditch AT&T grows greater with every new offer from competing companies. Maybe if this goes through, they'll offer new or discounted phones on contract renewal dates rather than just for new customers. If not, I'm gone.
The energy delivered by electromagnetic waves that are involved in cellular communication is not sufficient to ionize molecules. I assure you that you won't get cancer from this. Radiation-induced mutations are strictly due to ions and free radicals that are created by bond breakage interaction with free electrons on DNA molecules. (specifically the nitrogen atoms in the peptide bonds in the amino acids that make up the protein strands) If you're not forming electron deficient ions and radicals, you're not mutating your DNA. Sorry.
The energy is, however, sufficient to cause slight vibrations in the chemical bonds in your cells, causing the increase in perceived temperature. This probably will not hurt you any more than touching a warm piece of metal to your skin will.
On the down side, some studies are showing that RF energy can cause certain chemicals to cross the blood-brain barrier when they shouldn't be, but that's not necessarily carcingenic, just (possibly) neurotoxic. These are new studies, though, and it's not conclusive yet.
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but you must realize that in the UK, a football is the same thing as our soccer ball. Pretty much the rest of the world outside the US calls soccer "football"
If you were just being a smart-ass, well, congratulations, ya got me.
Funny how you make an incorrect comparsion of file sharing to stealing then say "please no comments on stealing vs infringing"
Is that because you know your analogy is tragically flawed? Opinioned idiots, indeed.
Were you inclinced to think about what you were reading, you would have noticed that the comparison was between changes in public opinion before and after the conglomerate in each case's horribly distasteful litigation. In the Ford case, no one gave a shit until the "car"-tel started suing his customers. In the RIAA case, again, no one really have a shit until they started suing college kids, children, and old women. Public opinion turned around in both cases, hence the point of the article.
I think that's a little different now that they started suing children and old women. Hell, even my mom now thinks they're a bunch of evil bastards and she doesn't know shit about shit.
Hence the Ford analogy of how no one cared about his legal troubles until his opponents sued his customers.
You know what they're doing, don't you? They're surveying prospective customers for a home mailing campaign. Now you get to have just as many interruptions over the phone AND get more junk mail, too!
So much for the spirit of the DNC list, which should more accurately be called a "do not fucking bother me, you underpaid annoying barely literate suckwad who is too stupid to get a job in a real office and/or too lazy to work in retail or fast food." But I guess that's bulky, even as an acronym.
They need to rework the wording of the law so that only non-profit and government entities can make these calls. Or just ban them altogether. Tele-market research and charity begging are 10 times as annoying because the calls take longer and have more of a guilt trip factor.
Sure, if your telco offers call forwarding service. It's probably included in your home phone service plan if you bought a package deal.
Hmm...I'm not so sure I agree with you here. I'll concede that the academic costs are far past tuition costs at state schools, but dormitory costs are most cases a profit. Tuition covers just that....tuition. Room and board are always separate expenses and for state schools far outweight the cost of tuition.
It doesn't cost the school very much to put a student (or two) up in a 10' by 20' room and give them 3 cafeteria-style meals a day. Considering even state schools get around $4000-5000 a year for dorm room and a meal plan,(ballparking this number based on a couple random state school websites) they're probably coming out ahead for your basic two-student dorm room. (Ever wonder why singles in the dorms cost more?)
Now figure in the profits from students spending money at the campus corner-store and non-mealplan eateries, you're talking even more profit. Even if the cafeterias and stores are operated by a third party, that third party still pays significant cash for the space and utilities.
The cost of internet access is paid for out of a student IT fee. At most schools, the dorms use the same connection as the rest of the campus, so that's not really a factor in the school's overhead for the dorms.
I doubt that their internet usage policies are going to cause anyone to pull funding from academic policies or sports...sure that would hurt them, but it's not going to happen. When they can't keep the dorms filled up, though, you're going to see them start changing their tune real fast...state schools are really hurting for money right now because in this wonderful country of ours, education funding is the first to go when money is tight. Once their budget gets even worse because of their gestapo monitoring policy, they'll change their minds.
They probably mean that they used the code from another open source project. Since they're keeping this program in-house, they don't need to show you the source, only if they release it for use by others.
It's a dumb idea, in the end. The student are going to quit living on campus or quit coming to that school. Either way, UF loses a ton of money. Guess they shoulda put some consideration into separate internet connections for academic and dorm users.
lab equipment and lab chemicals - being overpriced over comparable bulk or common products by order of magnitude.
What you're paying for in lab-grade materials is purity. Bulk reagents have a lot of crap in them, depending on what you're working with. Bulk organics might have significant traces of solvents or purification substrate and bulk acids/minerals will have traces of heavy metals. When you're doing sensitive, small-scale biological research, these pollutants can really screw things up.
The processes to remove these miniscule traces of pollutant are time-consuming and require expensive equipment. They have to use expensive analytic equipment to assay it initially, then purify, then assay again. (and purify again if necessary) Requirements for purity are usually on the scale of parts per billion or parts per trillion.
That is what you're paying for when you buy a $100 bottle of lab-grade acetone instead of a $20 drum of the cheap stuff. (for example)
Are anti-smokers getting so belligerent now that just SEEING someone smoke on television offends you? For fuck's sake, get over it. Get a hobby or something. People smoke. Many people smoke. Therefore, shows or movies that portray things happening that involve people are going to occasionally have smokers in it.
I promise you won't get the nasty, icky lung cancer from seeing smoke particles on a screen.
Free political speech is just as offensive to some governments as child pr0n is to ours. Just some food for thought.
I seem to remember Ashcroft telling a skeptical Congress that the PATRIOT act would be used to allow law enforcement agencies to root out terrorist threats against US interests.
Now so far we have seen it used against domestic narcotics manufacturers/dealers and now hackers. While there is no dispute that these folks were committing crimes, law enforcement agencies are using this anti-terrorist legislation and the stiffer sentencing and looser evidenciery rules that come with it against non-terrorists. Voters in the next election need to send the message to the current administration that this sort of behavior is NOT ok and will NOT be tolerated.
What makes you think it's spammers? I'm sure there are a lot more system administrators who have been pissed off by these black lists than spammers.
DVDs can generally be found for $10-$15 For any movie that is even remotely worth seeing, try $20. Either I'm shopping in the wrong place or you're grossly misinformed on the price of new DVDs.
Buy from a someone other than a dealer. Sure, you won't get a new car that way, but many people sell their cars after having them for only a year or two. Check your local want-ads. The $100 a mechanic will charge you to look the car over is much less than the sales tax you'd pay a dealer. There are online services that run the VIN to see if the vehicle has ever been in a accident, as well.
It's a win-win situation. The dude selling the car gets a lot more than they'd get for trade-in, and you pay less than you'd pay a dealer.
I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that for you to be charged sales tax the person selling it has to have a sales tax ID...in other words, title transfer from person to person gets you around that. Most vehicle warranties cover the car, not the owner, so as long as the mileage is low, you're still cool.
Play it smart and you walk, er drive, away with a nice car and won't get screwed.
That's an interesting point...I'd to see if there was a large influx of new numbers to the DNC registry since this ruling hit the papers.
Then, if there was, I'd like send out a big fat
<nelson> HA HA </nelson>
to the Direct Marketing Association.
Your post reminds me of a drunken redneck game that friends of mine used to play. They'd buy various small caged pets (mice, rats, tarantulas, scorpions) and make them fight each other, taking bets on which one would win each bout.
It later became known as Animal Kingdom Kumite, after a series of strips from the late, great Space Moose comic.
Yeah, I checked on that later.....105 million is dead on. My bad, I'll take the fall on that one.
But when I said 200 million, I was discounting those in the under 15 demographic, as they constitute about 20% of the population, as well as the portion of the 15-65 that is 15-17. (since they can't vote or get telephone service or any of that good stuff) It's a rough approximation of people affected by this ruling.
I got those numbers here
How about the verdict? Is that a good aspect to think is incorrect?
Going through the proceedings and reading the text of his ruling is irrelevant. Even though he is a Federal judge, his ruling benefits local industry, not the will of the people of the United States.
It's not like this is a heavily polarized issue where there are million of staunch supporters of telemarketers rallying and protesting. No one likes these people and no one wants to be bothered in the sanctity of their homes. 50 million people have signed up already...that's over 25% of the adult population of this country, and doesn't include those who are not internet-saavy enough to get themselves on the list. State initiatives for DNC lists have had just as overwhelmingly popular support. What's to debate here? People do not want to be sold shit over the phone. It's rude, it's annoying, and hopefully soon, it will be against the law.
Bad argument...this issue isn't as polarized as abortion. There are not ANOTHER 50 million people on the other side of the issue who are screaming to keep all phone numbers as solicitation-bait.
These 50 million are just the people that are internet-saavy enough to sign up. That's more total people than voted in the last presidential election. You think maybe its an issue people care about? I'd be willing to bet that if you polled the other 150 million adults in this country, the vast majority of them would also not want to be called by telemarketers.
There's a difference between door to door canvassing and telemarketing...first being that if I don't like you coming to my door at 6am handing out Bibles, I can answer the door in a pair of boxers holding my Colt 1911 and a bottle of Wild Turkey, thus assuring you never ever come to my house again. You have no such recourse against cowardly telemarketers (and spammers!) who will continue to bother you even after requesting not to be contacted again.
I'm all for a capitalist society, but these people need to fucking learn to sell their product in a way that doesn't make me want to destroy all that is good in their life.
So are you saying judges are incapable of error because they have extensive legal training and experience? Riiight.
In the minds of the 50 million Americans on the list, there is NOTHING a judge can say to justify this horrible decision against personal privacy.