Just got the word that the desktop team is pushing out Window 7. Unfortunately, there are "a couple" of printers that they couldn't get working 64b drivers for. So they are pushing the 32b version out to everyone...
Blows my mind... It would cost at most a $5000 to replace those printers, compared to the cost of 600+ copies of Windows 7. Crazy.
I had 4 guys from my ASCS degree get booted from the school after an accusation of plagarism and hacking. 15k in debt and they didn't even have a piece of paper to show for it.
1.45 billion is a LOAN. If the Spanish company takes the money and runs, the feds are on the hook for it. If they take the money and default after they complete the project, the feds are on the hook for the money, but we get the project. If they don't default, the feds are on the hook for $0.
The 1.45 billion is not part of the budget, it is not being paid by tax payers at this point, it is a loan from a bank (not the feds) that the feds are insuring.
Increased power consumption is a fact of life in the US today. You can either invest in Nuclear (assuming you could get it okayed) for $3-5 billion; a coal solar park for $1.45 billion; or a coal plant for about $1 billion even. In any case, the feds are going to have their ass on the line for the project, and IMO, increasing the risk by 450 million is well worth it for not having to deal with the ramifications of yet more coal plants.
Last I heard, the USMC had disbanded the 4067 field, and has since moved all programming requirements to out sourcing companies like MCI and other major military contract players.
The USMC's Comp Sci training was a 8+ hour/day 8+ week crash course. Everyone in the room was a GT110 or better, so the pace was decently fast, but I wouldn't have claimed it to be anything like a university experience. It was effectively like cramming 2-3 tech college style CS course classes into every single day.
After high school (with AP Comp Sci classes) I joined the military. I became a 4067 (computer programmer) in the USMC. I did my tour and got a good conduct discharge (ie: Good citizen). I joined the ranks of software developer consultants and did pretty well for myself until the market went to complete crap after the.Com blow out. I figured I'd use the down turn in the economy along with my GI Bill and veterans benefits to go get a degree and make myself more marketable.
Picked up a Comp Sci Assoc first and followed it up with a double load BSIT and BSTM program.
All in all, I learned virtually nothing about writing code in college. I learned a lot about working with other people and many of the soft skills that go along with coding. But at that point, even the highest level programming classes at the school were child's play.
Point being, you can get excellent programmers from high school graduates, but their soft skills are likely going to be horrendous. If that's fine for your environment, then go for it. But realize that what you are getting is a junior coder, not a senior developer.
Then again, most high school kids picking up high tech jobs (in my experience) are freaking sponges. They suck up every bit of knowledge they get exposed too. College grads, especially the ones from more prestigious institutions, constantly rebut and argue against the tried and true. Any time I hear, "My professor said..." it makes me want to vomit.
It's not that contacting a lobbyist, or the child/relative/friend of a lobbyist is bad. It's that contacting a lobbyist and discussing action/inaction items with out the interaction being recorded, transparent, and reviewable is bad.
Heck, not all lobbyist are bad. I work full time, I barely have the chance to keep on top of local politics, let alone national and international issues. I don't have time to organize meetings with my representatives and administrators in the federal government. So I find other like minded individuals and we come up with enough cash to send a representative to Washington to make sure our views are known to the folks in power. That person is a lobbyist. Even if it's Grandpa Joe who is going because he is retired and has the time to wait around for some under secretary to get out of a meeting.
[quote]or anything ever aired on "Air America" before it went bankrupt.[/quote]
I actually liked Rachel Meadow on Air America. Every night she would give the daily death tolls from Iraq and Afghanistan. Something that no other news/talking head program that I have been able to find on my radio dial does. The rest of the line up was pretty 'meh' though.
The SCOTUS pointed out that there are exceptions, and the lawyer for the petitioners stated that he believes their case falls in the realm of those exceptions. So it'll go back to a lower court to determine if it within them.
It strikes me as odd though. I thought the whole point of signing a petition was to publicly announce your support for the petition. I mean, if you don't feel strongly enough to write your name publicly, why not just write Mickey Mouse? And hell, if there is going to be no public scrutiny of who is brave enough to actually back the petition, what's to keep the petitioner from just writing Mickey Mouse 120,000 times.
There SHOULD be an element of risk to signing a petition. You have to be willing to put your name on the line, literally. That includes showing support for the issue, and dealing with people who may disagree with you.
This guy had a theory, that a person acting very suspiciously may not be noticed by government intelligence agencies in a timely manner during an international gathering of heads.
To test his theory, he began taking suspicious actions in an attempt to get noticed. One would assume that the longer his suspicious acts went unnoticed, the more suspicious acts he partook in.
Eventually, his actions were noticed and he was detained.
The conclusion of his test will be in the summary of what suspicious actions he managed to take BEFORE he was detained.
It sure seems like the goal all along was to get caught. The question was to determine the amount of suspicious actions he could take prior to being caught.
Adding a random 1-10 second delay to each trade request would destroy the short term game. I had originally thought of making each buy/sell order require a hand written signature, but that would probably just result in a whole lot of folks changing their name to Lilli Ill.
Uh, no. That would be illegal. Unless they are offering an accounting service opt in where by employees could choose to donate some portion of their pay.
In any case, we're not talking about "millions" here. We're talking about less than $80,000. None of which came from PACs. $80k out of the $800,000,000 that Obama raised for his election campaign. From BP alone, the amount it's employees donated to Obama was more than the amount that it's employees and PAC donated to McCain, but for the oil industry as a whole, McCain pulled in over 3 times as much as Obama.
If it had been an Exxon or Trans-Ocean rig that had blown out, the numbers would have strongly favored McCain.
Saying that Bill Gates is one of the greatest philanthropists alive today is an opinion that is shared by many individuals. For 16 years now he and his wife have worked hard and funded significant projects in health, human services, and education across the globe.
When you are one of the richest men in the world, money is no longer a driving concern, Legacy is. Do you think Bill Gates wants to be remembered as "A rich man who's corporate leadership drove Microsoft to become a household name", or as "A philanthropist who helped to usher in an age of carbon free power generation". 70 years from now, will we think of him as a visionary who paved the way for vast technological advances, or will he be relegated to history as just another rich guy?
I would hazard a guess that he would blow his savings, sell his mansions, and unload the stocks if it meant he could have the kind of name recognition and positive connotation that Einstein has now, half a century after his death. And in order to achieve that state, he's going to have to do some extremely impressive and good things.
Lets hope that his work in alternative energy is one of them.
Is it just me, or is having your language based on a character set that requires computer rendering for most people to be able to communicate clearly somewhat asinine?
No disrespect to those that practice the art of cartography, but for day to day communication... wow.
Pepsi is working on this very issue. They are changing the shape/size of salt crystals so that they are more easily absorbed by the tongue.
I can't remember the exact numbers, but almost 80% of the salt on an average potato chip will never come in contact with your tongue. You'll never taste it. It just goes straight to your digestive track to piss off your kidneys. These new smaller crystals though are more readily snagged by your tongue. Again, I'm not sure on the exact number, but IIRC, their testing was showing that they could use something like 30% (or was it 30% less?) of the volume of salt to get the same flavoring with the smaller crystals.
A potato chip might not ever be considered health food, but if you cut the sodium content back that significantly, it'd be a huge step in the right direction.
-Rick
Re:Please get rid of this.
on
Iron Baby
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Build a tablet that can run.Net and Java apps native, can render CSS3 (gotta get at least 80% on Acid3), and can run both Flash and Silverlight in the browser. I'd be willing to part with some hard earned cash for it.
But for now, if my choices are between "be a tool, buy an Apple" iPad and a "more bloated than 3 day old roadkill" Windows 7, I think I'll wait.
And in cases where at least seventy two hours has passed from the time that any but the most well disclosed, simple, single issue, and independently adopted amendments are made to a bill and its final passage, then I have no complaint.
HR3950 (I think I mistyped it at 3590 earlier, my bad) was introduced September 17th, 2009. It was voted on and passed by the house on October 8th, 2009. The senate amended it and passed it on December 24th, 2009. The house reviewed those amendments and made no further changes to the bill. Since the house had already passed the bill, it only took a reconciliation vote (simple majority) to ratify the Senate's changes. And that vote took place on March 21rd, 2010.
From December 24th, 2009 to March 23rd, 2010 when the President signed it into law, there were no changes to the bill.
I agree with your stance wholeheartedly. Sneaking in amendments and earmarks is a dirty act IMO. But in this case, the bill was laying on the table for anyone and everyone to read for months before it became law.
I think EVERYONE, myself included, should take civics classes. It's been a few years since my last one and I'm sure I could use a refresher.
My goal here isn't to say "You are a moron for not understanding the political process in the US". The process in this country is insanely bureaucratic, we would all have to be geniuses to understand it in full. My goal here is to say "Learn more about the political process before making accusations."
The process isn't perfect, and I'd gladly listen to your complaints about it. Just make sure your arguments are against how the system works, not based on talking points.
HR 3200 didn't pass, but it presented much of the basis for the bill that did pass. It effectively allowed people to debate the merits of each element of the plan well before anything was voted on.
HR3950 Did pass. It passed in the Senate on December 24th, 2009. It then went to the house. The house could make amendments, but if they did, the bill would have to get passed by the Senate again. And since Kennedy had died and his seat flipped to a rather liberal Republican, they couldn't get the filibuster override anymore.
So in March the House passed HR3950, with the exact same text as it had been passed in December. All of the amendments they wanted were put into the reconciliation bill HR4872. The reconciliation bill can't be filibustered, so a simple majority can pass it in both the House and Senate.
Now the reconciliation bill passed only a week later. But at a light 55 pages, I'd be hard pressed to find a legislator who couldn't read it before it was voted on. I mean, we're talking about 55 pages of large font and short columns. It averages like 8 words per line and 60 lines per page.
Please, take a civics class, you'll be a better citizen for it. Many community colleges offer adult education programs, see if your local institute has a civics class or program to take part in.
I'm sure many foreigners might jump on in disagreement if they look at how it was passed. There wasn't enough time to read and comprehend the bill before the vote.
HR 3200 was introduced OVER A YEAR before the final bill passed. HR3950 was passed in December of '09, over 4 MONTHS before the final vote. To claim that there "wasn't enough time to read" the bill is complete horse shit.
A lot of the rejection of the health care bill has to do with how it was created and passed. The current administration ran on being open but this thing was created in some back room deal and all members of his party was expected to bless it without even knowing what was in it.
And the only reason for all that backroom debating crap was because of people, on both sides, toeing the party line and the Republican threats of filibuster. If it hadn't required 60 votes to override the Republican filibuster, a lot of those back room deals wouldn't have been necesary. But since the Dems had to effectively buy off a hand full of legislatures who were all "the 60th vote", we wound up with a worse bill.
That the Republican party been willing to take part in the democratic process, the health insurance reform bill would have been significantly better.
Hell, one of the main claims about covering children with preexisting conditions wasn't even going to take effect until 2014
Which was due to the REPUBLICAN introduction of the mandate. The purpose of the mandate is to keep people from abuisng the preexisting condition rule, and so the two were linked. And since the mandate doesn't kick in till 2014, neither does the preexisting coverage rule.
Slashdot Mirror
Just got the word that the desktop team is pushing out Window 7. Unfortunately, there are "a couple" of printers that they couldn't get working 64b drivers for. So they are pushing the 32b version out to everyone...
Blows my mind... It would cost at most a $5000 to replace those printers, compared to the cost of 600+ copies of Windows 7. Crazy.
-Rick
I had 4 guys from my ASCS degree get booted from the school after an accusation of plagarism and hacking. 15k in debt and they didn't even have a piece of paper to show for it.
-Rick
1.45 billion is a LOAN. If the Spanish company takes the money and runs, the feds are on the hook for it. If they take the money and default after they complete the project, the feds are on the hook for the money, but we get the project. If they don't default, the feds are on the hook for $0.
The 1.45 billion is not part of the budget, it is not being paid by tax payers at this point, it is a loan from a bank (not the feds) that the feds are insuring.
Increased power consumption is a fact of life in the US today. You can either invest in Nuclear (assuming you could get it okayed) for $3-5 billion; a coal solar park for $1.45 billion; or a coal plant for about $1 billion even. In any case, the feds are going to have their ass on the line for the project, and IMO, increasing the risk by 450 million is well worth it for not having to deal with the ramifications of yet more coal plants.
-Rick
Last I heard, the USMC had disbanded the 4067 field, and has since moved all programming requirements to out sourcing companies like MCI and other major military contract players.
The USMC's Comp Sci training was a 8+ hour/day 8+ week crash course. Everyone in the room was a GT110 or better, so the pace was decently fast, but I wouldn't have claimed it to be anything like a university experience. It was effectively like cramming 2-3 tech college style CS course classes into every single day.
-Rick
After high school (with AP Comp Sci classes) I joined the military. I became a 4067 (computer programmer) in the USMC. I did my tour and got a good conduct discharge (ie: Good citizen). I joined the ranks of software developer consultants and did pretty well for myself until the market went to complete crap after the .Com blow out. I figured I'd use the down turn in the economy along with my GI Bill and veterans benefits to go get a degree and make myself more marketable.
Picked up a Comp Sci Assoc first and followed it up with a double load BSIT and BSTM program.
All in all, I learned virtually nothing about writing code in college. I learned a lot about working with other people and many of the soft skills that go along with coding. But at that point, even the highest level programming classes at the school were child's play.
Point being, you can get excellent programmers from high school graduates, but their soft skills are likely going to be horrendous. If that's fine for your environment, then go for it. But realize that what you are getting is a junior coder, not a senior developer.
Then again, most high school kids picking up high tech jobs (in my experience) are freaking sponges. They suck up every bit of knowledge they get exposed too. College grads, especially the ones from more prestigious institutions, constantly rebut and argue against the tried and true. Any time I hear, "My professor said..." it makes me want to vomit.
-Rick
It's not that contacting a lobbyist, or the child/relative/friend of a lobbyist is bad. It's that contacting a lobbyist and discussing action/inaction items with out the interaction being recorded, transparent, and reviewable is bad.
Heck, not all lobbyist are bad. I work full time, I barely have the chance to keep on top of local politics, let alone national and international issues. I don't have time to organize meetings with my representatives and administrators in the federal government. So I find other like minded individuals and we come up with enough cash to send a representative to Washington to make sure our views are known to the folks in power. That person is a lobbyist. Even if it's Grandpa Joe who is going because he is retired and has the time to wait around for some under secretary to get out of a meeting.
-Rick
[quote]or anything ever aired on "Air America" before it went bankrupt.[/quote]
I actually liked Rachel Meadow on Air America. Every night she would give the daily death tolls from Iraq and Afghanistan. Something that no other news/talking head program that I have been able to find on my radio dial does. The rest of the line up was pretty 'meh' though.
-Rick
Uhh, that's not a Dell issue.
I'll give you a hint, hit up Google for: Windows 32bit 4GB memory
Should get you on the right track.
-Rick
I was going to recommend a 'Pigeon flying over a Volcanic Island' tattoo.
-Rick
I hear ya. The one that gets me is "Begs the question" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
-Rick
The SCOTUS pointed out that there are exceptions, and the lawyer for the petitioners stated that he believes their case falls in the realm of those exceptions. So it'll go back to a lower court to determine if it within them.
It strikes me as odd though. I thought the whole point of signing a petition was to publicly announce your support for the petition. I mean, if you don't feel strongly enough to write your name publicly, why not just write Mickey Mouse? And hell, if there is going to be no public scrutiny of who is brave enough to actually back the petition, what's to keep the petitioner from just writing Mickey Mouse 120,000 times.
There SHOULD be an element of risk to signing a petition. You have to be willing to put your name on the line, literally. That includes showing support for the issue, and dealing with people who may disagree with you.
-Rick
This guy had a theory, that a person acting very suspiciously may not be noticed by government intelligence agencies in a timely manner during an international gathering of heads.
To test his theory, he began taking suspicious actions in an attempt to get noticed. One would assume that the longer his suspicious acts went unnoticed, the more suspicious acts he partook in.
Eventually, his actions were noticed and he was detained.
The conclusion of his test will be in the summary of what suspicious actions he managed to take BEFORE he was detained.
It sure seems like the goal all along was to get caught. The question was to determine the amount of suspicious actions he could take prior to being caught.
-Rick
Adding a random 1-10 second delay to each trade request would destroy the short term game. I had originally thought of making each buy/sell order require a hand written signature, but that would probably just result in a whole lot of folks changing their name to Lilli Ill.
-Rick
But are we talking about 100Gb/s over copper or fiber?
-Rick
Uh, no. That would be illegal. Unless they are offering an accounting service opt in where by employees could choose to donate some portion of their pay.
In any case, we're not talking about "millions" here. We're talking about less than $80,000. None of which came from PACs. $80k out of the $800,000,000 that Obama raised for his election campaign. From BP alone, the amount it's employees donated to Obama was more than the amount that it's employees and PAC donated to McCain, but for the oil industry as a whole, McCain pulled in over 3 times as much as Obama.
If it had been an Exxon or Trans-Ocean rig that had blown out, the numbers would have strongly favored McCain.
-Rick
You do not appear to be aware of the impact of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gates_foundation
Saying that Bill Gates is one of the greatest philanthropists alive today is an opinion that is shared by many individuals. For 16 years now he and his wife have worked hard and funded significant projects in health, human services, and education across the globe.
When you are one of the richest men in the world, money is no longer a driving concern, Legacy is. Do you think Bill Gates wants to be remembered as "A rich man who's corporate leadership drove Microsoft to become a household name", or as "A philanthropist who helped to usher in an age of carbon free power generation". 70 years from now, will we think of him as a visionary who paved the way for vast technological advances, or will he be relegated to history as just another rich guy?
I would hazard a guess that he would blow his savings, sell his mansions, and unload the stocks if it meant he could have the kind of name recognition and positive connotation that Einstein has now, half a century after his death. And in order to achieve that state, he's going to have to do some extremely impressive and good things.
Lets hope that his work in alternative energy is one of them.
-Rick
I meant to write 'calligraphy' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligraphy). Brain to finger malfunction.
-Rick
Is it just me, or is having your language based on a character set that requires computer rendering for most people to be able to communicate clearly somewhat asinine?
No disrespect to those that practice the art of cartography, but for day to day communication... wow.
-Rick
Pepsi is working on this very issue. They are changing the shape/size of salt crystals so that they are more easily absorbed by the tongue.
I can't remember the exact numbers, but almost 80% of the salt on an average potato chip will never come in contact with your tongue. You'll never taste it. It just goes straight to your digestive track to piss off your kidneys. These new smaller crystals though are more readily snagged by your tongue. Again, I'm not sure on the exact number, but IIRC, their testing was showing that they could use something like 30% (or was it 30% less?) of the volume of salt to get the same flavoring with the smaller crystals.
A potato chip might not ever be considered health food, but if you cut the sodium content back that significantly, it'd be a huge step in the right direction.
-Rick
Do I now have to block kdawson as well?
You haven't already?
Build a tablet that can run .Net and Java apps native, can render CSS3 (gotta get at least 80% on Acid3), and can run both Flash and Silverlight in the browser. I'd be willing to part with some hard earned cash for it.
But for now, if my choices are between "be a tool, buy an Apple" iPad and a "more bloated than 3 day old roadkill" Windows 7, I think I'll wait.
-Rick
And in cases where at least seventy two hours has passed from the time that any but the most well disclosed, simple, single issue, and independently adopted amendments are made to a bill and its final passage, then I have no complaint.
HR3950 (I think I mistyped it at 3590 earlier, my bad) was introduced September 17th, 2009. It was voted on and passed by the house on October 8th, 2009. The senate amended it and passed it on December 24th, 2009. The house reviewed those amendments and made no further changes to the bill. Since the house had already passed the bill, it only took a reconciliation vote (simple majority) to ratify the Senate's changes. And that vote took place on March 21rd, 2010.
From December 24th, 2009 to March 23rd, 2010 when the President signed it into law, there were no changes to the bill.
I agree with your stance wholeheartedly. Sneaking in amendments and earmarks is a dirty act IMO. But in this case, the bill was laying on the table for anyone and everyone to read for months before it became law.
-Rick
I think EVERYONE, myself included, should take civics classes. It's been a few years since my last one and I'm sure I could use a refresher.
My goal here isn't to say "You are a moron for not understanding the political process in the US". The process in this country is insanely bureaucratic, we would all have to be geniuses to understand it in full. My goal here is to say "Learn more about the political process before making accusations."
The process isn't perfect, and I'd gladly listen to your complaints about it. Just make sure your arguments are against how the system works, not based on talking points.
-Rick
HR 3200 didn't pass, but it presented much of the basis for the bill that did pass. It effectively allowed people to debate the merits of each element of the plan well before anything was voted on.
HR3950 Did pass. It passed in the Senate on December 24th, 2009. It then went to the house. The house could make amendments, but if they did, the bill would have to get passed by the Senate again. And since Kennedy had died and his seat flipped to a rather liberal Republican, they couldn't get the filibuster override anymore.
So in March the House passed HR3950, with the exact same text as it had been passed in December. All of the amendments they wanted were put into the reconciliation bill HR4872. The reconciliation bill can't be filibustered, so a simple majority can pass it in both the House and Senate.
Now the reconciliation bill passed only a week later. But at a light 55 pages, I'd be hard pressed to find a legislator who couldn't read it before it was voted on. I mean, we're talking about 55 pages of large font and short columns. It averages like 8 words per line and 60 lines per page.
Please, take a civics class, you'll be a better citizen for it. Many community colleges offer adult education programs, see if your local institute has a civics class or program to take part in.
-Rick
I'm sure many foreigners might jump on in disagreement if they look at how it was passed. There wasn't enough time to read and comprehend the bill before the vote.
HR 3200 was introduced OVER A YEAR before the final bill passed. HR3950 was passed in December of '09, over 4 MONTHS before the final vote. To claim that there "wasn't enough time to read" the bill is complete horse shit.
A lot of the rejection of the health care bill has to do with how it was created and passed. The current administration ran on being open but this thing was created in some back room deal and all members of his party was expected to bless it without even knowing what was in it.
And the only reason for all that backroom debating crap was because of people, on both sides, toeing the party line and the Republican threats of filibuster. If it hadn't required 60 votes to override the Republican filibuster, a lot of those back room deals wouldn't have been necesary. But since the Dems had to effectively buy off a hand full of legislatures who were all "the 60th vote", we wound up with a worse bill.
That the Republican party been willing to take part in the democratic process, the health insurance reform bill would have been significantly better.
Hell, one of the main claims about covering children with preexisting conditions wasn't even going to take effect until 2014
Which was due to the REPUBLICAN introduction of the mandate. The purpose of the mandate is to keep people from abuisng the preexisting condition rule, and so the two were linked. And since the mandate doesn't kick in till 2014, neither does the preexisting coverage rule.
-Rick