I say the same thing... IT IS ALL ABOUT PREFERENCE AND COST.
Not all people can afford two cars, one as the daily commuter, and one for the weekends. Thus they have to combine them into one car. This means people have to prefer to put their utility to meet 100% of their needs with the most limited cost available.
A buddy of mine is a great example. He and his wife have 4 kids (2 each from previous marriage). Due to car seat regulations, seat belt laws, etc. you cannot put 4 kids in the same back seat even though they would fit. You MUST have 3 rows of seats. They have a Hyundai Sonata, and a Chevy Traverse. Now the guy drives the Traverse since his commute is shorter, but he would still love to buy a prius, but he cannot afford to have 3 cars just to make gas mileage better, when he HAS to take the family out places.
It is all about regulation, legislation (thus the preference that is applied to you), and limiting your own costs.
I am sorry - but this is not true. Why is it that if I want to purchase a diesel from VW, Mercedes, or BMW, and do the European pickup (where you pay $3k, they fly you to the factory, you drive the car for a week, and then they ship it to the US for you), you have to SPECIFICALLY get the US emissions, which is $3-5k more than the European standards? You have to have all the specifics in documentation. I know the NO2 is like one tenth the US level which requires the Urea and regenerative particulate filters (thus eating about 3-5 US MPG). Many of the European car companies are implementing these on their Euro models now so that they are "greener" and that they can lower costs to not have to build two lines.
Try to Buy a European Diesel engine. So for example, I want to buy a VW engine so I can put that in a Jeep Wrangler. Great, I have to buy the US model, and all the extras for it just to make it US EPA compliant, while already by default Euro compliant.
Morality is a choice, and as such, part of the list of requirements when they purchase a vehicle. If someone makes a lifestyle choice that they are going to buy a prius and rent a pickup truck when they need it, that is a choice. If they choose to live someplace with good public transportation and not even own a car? That is a choice. The reason behind a choice is almost irrelevant as it is still with my greater point of requirements and finances.
But yes, if you look at the stats, 65% of all people buying a new car their top rated reason for purchasing it (after price, since the question was asked "that you can afford") was gas mileage. I would venture that 1/2 of all people want to spend less on gas, the other 1/2 want less pollution. That is a good thing, I agree with you.
I think it is funny reading all of these posts as it comes down to two issues. People have list of requirements (A) over here, and then they have finances (B) over here. They need to make the best cost benefit analysis to their existing lifestyle. If you go off roading every weekend in a raised Chevy truck with 50 inch tires and then drive that to work every day, a hybrid (no matter what type) is not for you. If you frequently make 100 mile round trips with your spouse and 5 kids, then a small hybrid will not be for you. If you cannot afford one as a primary or secondary car, then it is not for you. If you live in a city (or suburb) and can afford the expense of the vehicle, and can charge it, don't have 2.5 kids and don't haul a boat every weekend, then it is for you.
Americans typically have a "I want it all" mentality and wont compromise on anything. This is the reason why diesel's wont take off here, why we have such stringent standards for car safety, why the environment is such a big thing when dealing with cars. We had cheap cars that got 60 mpg but congress deemed them too dangerous and made us add air bags, 200 pounds of steel to re-enforce the interiors, anti-lock brakes, etc. to add 500 pounds of weight in all to them. Now the car that got 60 MPG gets 40 with the same engine. All this in the name of safety. Now add a highly efficient catalytic converter to minimize the bad gasses, now it chokes the engine and that same car with the same engine gets 32 MPG. Now they have spent the last 15 years trying to figure out how to squeeze more MPG out of engines with all these restrictions.
Again - you have to look in a mirror. If you can only afford one car, which has to do 100 things, then you have to buy a car which can do the 100 things. If you can afford two cars, and one does 95% and the other does the other 5%.. what is the issue there? Again this comes down to a lifestyle choice, and cost.
Actually most CVTs get better gas mileage than manual transmissions. Every Nissan, VW, BMW, and Mercedes does that I have looked at. The reason the manual transmission is there is so people who "like to drive car the natural way" can.
There was a company that came into my former company which preached this. They had a training called "How to optimize outlook to get stuff done" or some such. We used to get between 200-300 emails a day, most were FYI stuff.
* Basically they said, don't check your email but a couple times a day. Typically when you first get in, right after lunch, and right before you leave at night. Allocate a certain amount of time to it and block your calendar (such as the first 30 minutes of the day, last 30 minutes of the day, 30 minutes after lunch) depending on how much email you get in a day.
* Change your email signature to say something like "Emails will be responded to in a 24 hours period. Anything with more urgency please call or drop by my office." And have your number and office number in your signature.
* Spend no more than 3 minutes on an email. If you have to, push that out until you start over your next "email time". You can come back to it if you have time left in your xx minute slot in your calendar and need to answer it. You just want to make sure that you get done with all the emails in your inbox before the time is up.
* Move FYI emails to a "Read Later" folder where you can read them later if you have time.
* Turn off all notifications except meeting notices. This way you will not get distracted and be tempted to check when you are not in your allocated time.
There was a bunch more, but at the end of the day, this was all I did. It was a wonder for my productivity, when I was not reading a manual and every 3 mintues got an email and I would check it out based on the preview. The only people that complained were people like my old boss would would send out 30 page documents and expect the team to read it and give detailed analysis in less than 30 minutes before he would run to a meeting about that topic. I told him he had to plan ahead as giving me 30 minutes to read a 30 page document isn't going to get a good response from me.
It is not just that, What does Onstar or similar service do? They have 100% full access to the vehicle. They can start it, they can monitor your fluid levels, tell you how to get someplace, etc. This mean you are GPS tracked, and they have full access to shutdown or start your car at all times. I never wanted that system in my cars and I typically find the fuse for the onstar circuit in my car and pull it once the free year (or 3 months) is out. They cannot tell me where I am if they cannot work. All these systems are is basically a cell phone (which is why you have a cell number with their service) and they can communicate at all times with whoever is monitoring it, even when you are not paying for their service. Since Car companies want to provide this service to nervous betty who cannot find the local wal-mart, and needs help at all times, and pays for the service, all of us are exposed to the gaping security hole that is these services.
While I agree 100% with you, read the title of the paper. "Politeness and not being honest." So it is that people are being too polite and not being honest and telling the truth. That is the crux of the issue. That whole concept "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything." If people are "sparing the rod" then you end up with spoiling the child.
I am not trying to be a cliche machine, but at the end of the day, all of this is known. The problem is society and political correctness want people to not tell people the "uncomfortable truth".
While you say you don't have irrational fear of dying by a gun, but also say 100% certain that you won't die by a gun. While I applaud your thought process, I disagree with your premise. You are telling me the police, military, border patrol do not have guns? You are telling me that there has not been a single armed robbery in your country since you put those restrictions in place? There has never been a police standoff where criminals had guns and shot at police? Your argument is flawed in the fact that you are stating you wont be killed by a gunman who is not a criminal, or government official who has access to guns. That you can be almost 100% assured of.
Also, I would like to point out the other thing. In this country, we have one of the most corrupt governments on the planet. The fear of a well armed citizenry has been one of the things that keeps the government at bay. We had a revolution once, and one day, that might occur again. I would rather be well armed, than sitting back and taking what those fat cats and slime balls in Washington DC dish out. And before you say vote them out, guess what, I cannot vote them out as I am one of 200 million votes, and the systems are rigged so that only people who are "desired" by the parties can run. Thus those people have to be part of the government establishment prior to even being allowed to run. To quote Futurama "You can either vote for Jack Johnson, or his clone, John Jackson."
To follow up on that, you state those with guns are more likely to die by gun fire and commit suicide as to those that done. Fine. But there are also statistics out there that people with concealed carry permits (which means they actually carry guns most the time, and are not felons, and passed a background check) die at a 1/5 to higher rate than those that do not have a permit. Please read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott for more stats.
The issue is more that people who are licensed, and pass background checks (not just carry guns) are less likely to get killed by gun fire. Plus other crime rates go down as well.
Reading all these comments about DBAN and wiping and everything is just paranoia. If the company is any sort of competence in any way, all of your web history is already been parsed at the proxy, all of your emails have gone through mail filters, and your network traffic has been snorted and sniffed by IDS/IPS systems.
If you don't want the next guy seeing your stuff, or they do backups of your PC, here is all you have to do in the two scenarios that might occur.
In both scenarios, do the following days and weeks before you leave. Let your team/boss know so they can use files from that location if you are doing a "knowledge transfer": 1) Move all of the files you want to a personal thumb drive or some other media. This means you are moving all the files in your my documents, and desktop or where ever else you stash files to the thumb drive. Be thorough not to leave anything behind. 2) Copy all work information to a shared drive (Team drive, personal home folder on the network, etc.). Again be thorough and find all the crevasses of your computer. 3) Continue to use your flash drive for all personal stuff instead of storing it on the local hard drive and bring it home every day.
If you have local admin rights, then do the following on your last day: 1) Create a new local admin user on the system at like 2pm before you leave that last day (assuming you leave at 5pm). 2) Login as that user, and remove the profile of your account by right clicking on "my computer" and selecting "properties", "advanced system properties", "advanced", "user profiles", and selecting your account - and "delete". 3) Defrag the hard drive by opening up "my computer", right clicking on c:\ drive and selecting "properties", selecting "tools", and clicking defrag now. 4) Get some coffee. When you are done, log out and leave.
If you don't have local admin access do the following: 1) Validate the path to your files. For example your "documents" directory should be something like c:\users\"username"\documents. Validate the "username" piece of it and use that in step 4. 2) Close all programs and make sure that your computer does not startup programs by default (ie. starting up outlook, mozilla, etc.) reboot the computer. 3) Login as yourself and do not start any programs. Just go start --> run --> and cmd.exe. 4) From the root directory run the following four commands. Replace "username" with your username. del/s/f/q/a:h/a:s/a:r c:\users\"username"\appdata\* del/s/f/q/a:h/a:s/a:r c:\users\"username"\appdata\*.* del/s/f/q/a:h/a:s/a:r c:\windows\temp\* del/s/f/q/a:h/a:s/a:r c:\windows\temp\*.* 5) At this point you have cleared off all the temp data, cookies, all personal files, all work files, and your computer looks like it is intact, which won't get cyber or the desktop team looking closer at what you did (like command history).
Yes there are more paranoid ways of cleaning everything off, but it is a work machine, and they have a right to what you produced, and already know where you were going and doing based on the corporate network software. This just will protect you a little.
I doubt I will say that unless it is that bad as well as I doubt I will move on. I moved to windows 7 because I got free keys. I like it. I never have not liked it. Windows 8 is currently running in a VM on my third monitor along with my linux box - so saying I never have run it is not correct. I find no compelling reason to switch boxes and my statement stands. Unless I get free keys, I wont switch willingly. I did not switch to Vista when it came out (or ever) just because it was new. I went from XP to 7.
The reason why I don't pin stuff is want the real estate for the other icons I am utilizing currently, which take up the entire bottom row of my machine, without the pinned ones (which there is none). So depending on the day, the client, the tasks, my "favorite" or "most used" apps change and there is no reason to keep pinning and un-pinning because I go to a new client site.
Yes I have a rotary phone, that I converted over to tone. I think it looks cool.
PS I am talking about my home machine - my work machine I have to been on Windows 8, which I really wish I did not have to do, for several months now.
There is a bigger point that I don't think the government should be messing with something that is subject to the free market. So telling us the individual mandate is something they overstepped their bounds. Little things like "pre-existing conditions" and other things like that, I am fine with. With your car analogy you are assuming that we want a car. I am saying what most Americans are for is the color or the trim, not the whole thing.
Besides the 8 pages of boiler plate on any law... it could be simple. "No insurance provider shall deny a person entry into a program based on pre-existing condition." No exceptions, easy to read, etc. that is what I am looking for in a law.
But I don't like it not because it is different, because it does not help me in what I do. I don't pin stuff since I just load windows with the 4 apps I run all the time in the startup script. I Run VMWare Player, Firefox, Task Manager, and Ram Monitor. I start up those programs and then go as I need fit. When I run other things, I CLICK to them, I don't use shortcuts as that is how 90% of my navigation is done in a UI. I associate my files to some program. I want to open an excel file, I click it and it opens. The only time I ever go to start, I use my recent apps and usually it is there. If not, I know how to find it quickly (even though I hate the reverse listing in Windows7, I want folders first, then individual apps.
My keyboard does not have a windows key (It is an old IBM model 80) which I have had for 20 years and love since I can type accurately on it since you have to push hard enough to click the keys, and cannot sloppily hit other keys accidentally. If I cannot click on start, I use control+escape. Same thing.
If this is the direction MS wants to go, then I will leave them like I left Ubuntu when Unity was forced (Or stay on Windows 7 unless I get a FREE copy of windows 8. I won't pay for it). The UI is the most important aspect of an OS, and if it is shit, then I am gone. Hiding things, and making it "easier" or "cleaner" is not what I care about, I want it functional and able to be catered to what I know and like to do. This is not an "get off my lawn" rant, just a simple you are misjudging your target audience rant. Yes the dumb 13 year old kid who knows nothing better does not use the start bar, because they don't know how to crap on a computer, and are taught just to click the pinned app and have never begun to explore what a truly powerful OS can do. And that is what Windows was. A truly powerful OS. Neuter the UI, and it becomes shit that mystics and old wizards like me are the only ones that know how to do anything because we are the only ones who remember all the command codes to do anything powerful.
Typically bland response about stereotypes. As an American, I know what full well was happening with this bill. I wanted certain parts of it. (The pre-existing condition clause, and some other things), but I did not want the other 50% of it and barely any American did. What happened was they wrote a 2700 page monstrosity law, and jammed it through congress with less that 24 hours to even read the thing, and passed it.
I am tired of people thinking this is the way things should be done. A law should be simple, a couple of lines, and be done with it. It should not delve into 1000 different lines of thinking and try to get them all together in one law. This is what happened in the 80's when they would tie social security increases with something no one wanted so that if any legislator voted it down, they were against helping the old get more social security money.
It is not an All or Nothing affair. Pass what people want, and strip out what people don't want. That was what most people are saying.
While I agree with almost everything you state, the switching over to exclusively atomic would be crazy difficult. Atomic energy is great for base loads (if the load curve were flat, which it is by far not). Right now, at 5pm is peak load time, and that is usually 3-4 times the amount of power used than the load at night. Since it takes DAYS to ramp up a nuclear plant, you cannot just flip a switch and say "ramp up to triple load" and it will just respond. That is why there are a varying supply of power plants out there. Coal, while "dirty" ramps rather quickly and is CHEAP to operate. NG ramps a little slower but would be able to handle ramp times but is typically double the cost of a coal plant.
Please also don't forget that in a majority of any states, any changes to the electric rates has to be approved by the states local power consumer protection department. This department has to approve typically 10 years in advance so a power company can get enough money to start purchasing and get the financing to start building a 1/2 billion dollar plant (over a billion if nuclear) and the subsequent transmission lines, etc.
You want to know why? The vast majority of states still have a 65 mph speed limit. Driving over 65 mph is against the law and a ticket-able offense. Secondly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) only recently (5 years ago) acknowledged that cars could go faster than 55 mph in their fuel estimates (MPG ratings). And even with that, they only go up to 65 mph for a matter of a 180 seconds and go down to 55 mph to get the "highway" rating. Want to know why many American cars have such crappy performance. Because Betty car buyer looks at four things when she buys a car. Is it safe (Insurance Institutes crash ratings)? What is the MPG? How much does it cost? Does it look pretty/come in my color?
If you work in IT, you know this simple paradigm: You can have it cheap, You can have it fast, or You can have it built well. Pick two.
The same thing applies to cars.
I agree completely with you. I hate when I get a dog of an engine/gearing. Once the EPA pushed their new standards, we in America FINALLY got 6 speed transmissions that were not installed in $100k cars. What paradigm are the car makers under? Cheap, Quality. Guess you cannot have it fast.
Ummm... Where on the site does it say that the Model X will be around $30k? I looked all over it and read all the press releases... Nothing about price. I am asking more from a person who is interested than asking for facts.
Technically speaking, it would not be the radio. Back in the 80's and 90's all GM cars that came with CD players came with a CD of random "classic rock" songs like Bryan Adams and the Bangles.
What this situation is like, would be if you put in your own CD of (sticking to the 80's here) Poison and the engine blew up. It has nothing to do with the system, or how it runs, but it was not delivered and stock from the manufacturer.
Your example of replacing/taking out the radio would be like taking off the bevel strip along the monitor exposing the wires. Or taking off a key or two off the keyboard. It would still be functional, but not stock.
You must be young to the IT field. MS fought claw tooth and nail to keep it so they could ship a pristine OEM copy of the OS with any device sold. It was the manufacturers who wanted to ship it with all the crapware and make it their own. They took MS to court and MS lost. Now all PCs could ship exactly as any manufacturer wanted to (with what ever software they wanted to install and what every licensing/ad revenue/back ally deals they could create). What happened next is MS decided NOT to license copies of the OS bits so a manufacturer could make the crapware infested copy of Windows OEM disks on their own, thus they started using the recovery partition method. This way the manufacturer can have a specific build, with specific drivers, and when they got them back, they could just boot the recovery and see if it works. This limited support costs.
I remember reading on slashdot all the geeks/nerds spouting how MS was killing the freedom of software by not letting their "pristine OEM" windows disks be bastardized by hardware vendors. Funny how we have gone full circle as I would love to get a copy (not via torrent) of windows 7 or what every I purchased, and be able to do with it with my licenses as I see fit.
and the answer is "It Depends". The traffic, the routing, the overall bandwidth (you never get 100% usage) all have factors. The easiest way is to look at your pipes (each segment is separate) and see the error rates, back pressure (QOS, Ethernet, etc.), average throughput breakdown (types of traffic), and usage percentage. This will give you a clear picture. Take those numbers and watch them over time, and you will get a clear picture of your network.
You cannot answer a question such as this truthfully if you take one sample size, and assume that is fact. Many sample sizes make the true picture, and then you can also see trends to determine if things are getting out of control.
Simple. You see it first. Even if you knew you were going, and seeing it in the theater, the anticipation overwhelms you that you cannot wait. It is like opening your presents Christmas Eve because you cannot wait until Christmas Morning. You know you want it, and you don't have to wait, so why wait?
I read these religious wars about Linux on the desktop and every time think it comes down to a couple things. 1) The Server world is not the Desktop world. In the server world, you have a only 4 main types of services (DB, Web, App, Middle tier) which all run on common frameworks, and can be ported across any OS type. 2) In the Desktop world, where are the big corporate supported, applications? Where is the Intuit Quicken? Turbo Tax? Adobe Photoshop? The apps have to be there, not some clone (which might be better) but no supported by a big corporation with no support but angry geeks when something goes wrong. Corporations need a neck to squeeze when the fit hits the shan and upper management pounces on IT because stuff broke. 3) People apply Server Logic to the Desktop world. The Desktop world needs thousands of apps, and needs 1000 ways to manage 1000 different situations. The server world can just run without doing anything different once you set it up. This is the difference.
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I say the same thing ... IT IS ALL ABOUT PREFERENCE AND COST.
Not all people can afford two cars, one as the daily commuter, and one for the weekends. Thus they have to combine them into one car. This means people have to prefer to put their utility to meet 100% of their needs with the most limited cost available.
A buddy of mine is a great example. He and his wife have 4 kids (2 each from previous marriage). Due to car seat regulations, seat belt laws, etc. you cannot put 4 kids in the same back seat even though they would fit. You MUST have 3 rows of seats. They have a Hyundai Sonata, and a Chevy Traverse. Now the guy drives the Traverse since his commute is shorter, but he would still love to buy a prius, but he cannot afford to have 3 cars just to make gas mileage better, when he HAS to take the family out places.
It is all about regulation, legislation (thus the preference that is applied to you), and limiting your own costs.
I am sorry - but this is not true. Why is it that if I want to purchase a diesel from VW, Mercedes, or BMW, and do the European pickup (where you pay $3k, they fly you to the factory, you drive the car for a week, and then they ship it to the US for you), you have to SPECIFICALLY get the US emissions, which is $3-5k more than the European standards? You have to have all the specifics in documentation. I know the NO2 is like one tenth the US level which requires the Urea and regenerative particulate filters (thus eating about 3-5 US MPG). Many of the European car companies are implementing these on their Euro models now so that they are "greener" and that they can lower costs to not have to build two lines.
Try to Buy a European Diesel engine. So for example, I want to buy a VW engine so I can put that in a Jeep Wrangler. Great, I have to buy the US model, and all the extras for it just to make it US EPA compliant, while already by default Euro compliant.
To quote a typical slashdot meme ... "Must be Russia"
Morality is a choice, and as such, part of the list of requirements when they purchase a vehicle. If someone makes a lifestyle choice that they are going to buy a prius and rent a pickup truck when they need it, that is a choice. If they choose to live someplace with good public transportation and not even own a car? That is a choice. The reason behind a choice is almost irrelevant as it is still with my greater point of requirements and finances.
But yes, if you look at the stats, 65% of all people buying a new car their top rated reason for purchasing it (after price, since the question was asked "that you can afford") was gas mileage. I would venture that 1/2 of all people want to spend less on gas, the other 1/2 want less pollution. That is a good thing, I agree with you.
I think it is funny reading all of these posts as it comes down to two issues. People have list of requirements (A) over here, and then they have finances (B) over here. They need to make the best cost benefit analysis to their existing lifestyle. If you go off roading every weekend in a raised Chevy truck with 50 inch tires and then drive that to work every day, a hybrid (no matter what type) is not for you. If you frequently make 100 mile round trips with your spouse and 5 kids, then a small hybrid will not be for you. If you cannot afford one as a primary or secondary car, then it is not for you. If you live in a city (or suburb) and can afford the expense of the vehicle, and can charge it, don't have 2.5 kids and don't haul a boat every weekend, then it is for you.
Americans typically have a "I want it all" mentality and wont compromise on anything. This is the reason why diesel's wont take off here, why we have such stringent standards for car safety, why the environment is such a big thing when dealing with cars. We had cheap cars that got 60 mpg but congress deemed them too dangerous and made us add air bags, 200 pounds of steel to re-enforce the interiors, anti-lock brakes, etc. to add 500 pounds of weight in all to them. Now the car that got 60 MPG gets 40 with the same engine. All this in the name of safety. Now add a highly efficient catalytic converter to minimize the bad gasses, now it chokes the engine and that same car with the same engine gets 32 MPG. Now they have spent the last 15 years trying to figure out how to squeeze more MPG out of engines with all these restrictions.
Again - you have to look in a mirror. If you can only afford one car, which has to do 100 things, then you have to buy a car which can do the 100 things. If you can afford two cars, and one does 95% and the other does the other 5% .. what is the issue there? Again this comes down to a lifestyle choice, and cost.
I totally agree. I was talking purely in terms of MPG.
Actually most CVTs get better gas mileage than manual transmissions. Every Nissan, VW, BMW, and Mercedes does that I have looked at. The reason the manual transmission is there is so people who "like to drive car the natural way" can.
There was a company that came into my former company which preached this. They had a training called "How to optimize outlook to get stuff done" or some such. We used to get between 200-300 emails a day, most were FYI stuff.
* Basically they said, don't check your email but a couple times a day. Typically when you first get in, right after lunch, and right before you leave at night. Allocate a certain amount of time to it and block your calendar (such as the first 30 minutes of the day, last 30 minutes of the day, 30 minutes after lunch) depending on how much email you get in a day.
* Change your email signature to say something like "Emails will be responded to in a 24 hours period. Anything with more urgency please call or drop by my office." And have your number and office number in your signature.
* Spend no more than 3 minutes on an email. If you have to, push that out until you start over your next "email time". You can come back to it if you have time left in your xx minute slot in your calendar and need to answer it. You just want to make sure that you get done with all the emails in your inbox before the time is up.
* Move FYI emails to a "Read Later" folder where you can read them later if you have time.
* Turn off all notifications except meeting notices. This way you will not get distracted and be tempted to check when you are not in your allocated time.
There was a bunch more, but at the end of the day, this was all I did. It was a wonder for my productivity, when I was not reading a manual and every 3 mintues got an email and I would check it out based on the preview. The only people that complained were people like my old boss would would send out 30 page documents and expect the team to read it and give detailed analysis in less than 30 minutes before he would run to a meeting about that topic. I told him he had to plan ahead as giving me 30 minutes to read a 30 page document isn't going to get a good response from me.
It is not just that, What does Onstar or similar service do? They have 100% full access to the vehicle. They can start it, they can monitor your fluid levels, tell you how to get someplace, etc. This mean you are GPS tracked, and they have full access to shutdown or start your car at all times. I never wanted that system in my cars and I typically find the fuse for the onstar circuit in my car and pull it once the free year (or 3 months) is out. They cannot tell me where I am if they cannot work. All these systems are is basically a cell phone (which is why you have a cell number with their service) and they can communicate at all times with whoever is monitoring it, even when you are not paying for their service. Since Car companies want to provide this service to nervous betty who cannot find the local wal-mart, and needs help at all times, and pays for the service, all of us are exposed to the gaping security hole that is these services.
While I agree 100% with you, read the title of the paper. "Politeness and not being honest." So it is that people are being too polite and not being honest and telling the truth. That is the crux of the issue. That whole concept "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything." If people are "sparing the rod" then you end up with spoiling the child.
I am not trying to be a cliche machine, but at the end of the day, all of this is known. The problem is society and political correctness want people to not tell people the "uncomfortable truth".
While you say you don't have irrational fear of dying by a gun, but also say 100% certain that you won't die by a gun. While I applaud your thought process, I disagree with your premise. You are telling me the police, military, border patrol do not have guns? You are telling me that there has not been a single armed robbery in your country since you put those restrictions in place? There has never been a police standoff where criminals had guns and shot at police? Your argument is flawed in the fact that you are stating you wont be killed by a gunman who is not a criminal, or government official who has access to guns. That you can be almost 100% assured of.
Also, I would like to point out the other thing. In this country, we have one of the most corrupt governments on the planet. The fear of a well armed citizenry has been one of the things that keeps the government at bay. We had a revolution once, and one day, that might occur again. I would rather be well armed, than sitting back and taking what those fat cats and slime balls in Washington DC dish out. And before you say vote them out, guess what, I cannot vote them out as I am one of 200 million votes, and the systems are rigged so that only people who are "desired" by the parties can run. Thus those people have to be part of the government establishment prior to even being allowed to run. To quote Futurama "You can either vote for Jack Johnson, or his clone, John Jackson."
To follow up on that, you state those with guns are more likely to die by gun fire and commit suicide as to those that done. Fine. But there are also statistics out there that people with concealed carry permits (which means they actually carry guns most the time, and are not felons, and passed a background check) die at a 1/5 to higher rate than those that do not have a permit. Please read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott for more stats. The issue is more that people who are licensed, and pass background checks (not just carry guns) are less likely to get killed by gun fire. Plus other crime rates go down as well.
Reading all these comments about DBAN and wiping and everything is just paranoia. If the company is any sort of competence in any way, all of your web history is already been parsed at the proxy, all of your emails have gone through mail filters, and your network traffic has been snorted and sniffed by IDS/IPS systems.
If you don't want the next guy seeing your stuff, or they do backups of your PC, here is all you have to do in the two scenarios that might occur.
In both scenarios, do the following days and weeks before you leave. Let your team/boss know so they can use files from that location if you are doing a "knowledge transfer":
1) Move all of the files you want to a personal thumb drive or some other media. This means you are moving all the files in your my documents, and desktop or where ever else you stash files to the thumb drive. Be thorough not to leave anything behind.
2) Copy all work information to a shared drive (Team drive, personal home folder on the network, etc.). Again be thorough and find all the crevasses of your computer.
3) Continue to use your flash drive for all personal stuff instead of storing it on the local hard drive and bring it home every day.
If you have local admin rights, then do the following on your last day:
1) Create a new local admin user on the system at like 2pm before you leave that last day (assuming you leave at 5pm).
2) Login as that user, and remove the profile of your account by right clicking on "my computer" and selecting "properties", "advanced system properties", "advanced", "user profiles", and selecting your account - and "delete".
3) Defrag the hard drive by opening up "my computer", right clicking on c:\ drive and selecting "properties", selecting "tools", and clicking defrag now.
4) Get some coffee. When you are done, log out and leave.
If you don't have local admin access do the following: /s /f /q /a:h /a:s /a:r c:\users\"username"\appdata\* /s /f /q /a:h /a:s /a:r c:\users\"username"\appdata\*.* /s /f /q /a:h /a:s /a:r c:\windows\temp\* /s /f /q /a:h /a:s /a:r c:\windows\temp\*.*
1) Validate the path to your files. For example your "documents" directory should be something like c:\users\"username"\documents. Validate the "username" piece of it and use that in step 4.
2) Close all programs and make sure that your computer does not startup programs by default (ie. starting up outlook, mozilla, etc.) reboot the computer.
3) Login as yourself and do not start any programs. Just go start --> run --> and cmd.exe.
4) From the root directory run the following four commands. Replace "username" with your username.
del
del
del
del
5) At this point you have cleared off all the temp data, cookies, all personal files, all work files, and your computer looks like it is intact, which won't get cyber or the desktop team looking closer at what you did (like command history).
Yes there are more paranoid ways of cleaning everything off, but it is a work machine, and they have a right to what you produced, and already know where you were going and doing based on the corporate network software. This just will protect you a little.
Good luck on your future endeavors.
I doubt I will say that unless it is that bad as well as I doubt I will move on. I moved to windows 7 because I got free keys. I like it. I never have not liked it. Windows 8 is currently running in a VM on my third monitor along with my linux box - so saying I never have run it is not correct. I find no compelling reason to switch boxes and my statement stands. Unless I get free keys, I wont switch willingly. I did not switch to Vista when it came out (or ever) just because it was new. I went from XP to 7.
The reason why I don't pin stuff is want the real estate for the other icons I am utilizing currently, which take up the entire bottom row of my machine, without the pinned ones (which there is none). So depending on the day, the client, the tasks, my "favorite" or "most used" apps change and there is no reason to keep pinning and un-pinning because I go to a new client site.
Yes I have a rotary phone, that I converted over to tone. I think it looks cool.
PS I am talking about my home machine - my work machine I have to been on Windows 8, which I really wish I did not have to do, for several months now.
There is a bigger point that I don't think the government should be messing with something that is subject to the free market. So telling us the individual mandate is something they overstepped their bounds. Little things like "pre-existing conditions" and other things like that, I am fine with. With your car analogy you are assuming that we want a car. I am saying what most Americans are for is the color or the trim, not the whole thing.
Besides the 8 pages of boiler plate on any law ... it could be simple. "No insurance provider shall deny a person entry into a program based on pre-existing condition." No exceptions, easy to read, etc. that is what I am looking for in a law.
But I don't like it not because it is different, because it does not help me in what I do. I don't pin stuff since I just load windows with the 4 apps I run all the time in the startup script. I Run VMWare Player, Firefox, Task Manager, and Ram Monitor. I start up those programs and then go as I need fit. When I run other things, I CLICK to them, I don't use shortcuts as that is how 90% of my navigation is done in a UI. I associate my files to some program. I want to open an excel file, I click it and it opens. The only time I ever go to start, I use my recent apps and usually it is there. If not, I know how to find it quickly (even though I hate the reverse listing in Windows7, I want folders first, then individual apps.
My keyboard does not have a windows key (It is an old IBM model 80) which I have had for 20 years and love since I can type accurately on it since you have to push hard enough to click the keys, and cannot sloppily hit other keys accidentally. If I cannot click on start, I use control+escape. Same thing.
If this is the direction MS wants to go, then I will leave them like I left Ubuntu when Unity was forced (Or stay on Windows 7 unless I get a FREE copy of windows 8. I won't pay for it). The UI is the most important aspect of an OS, and if it is shit, then I am gone. Hiding things, and making it "easier" or "cleaner" is not what I care about, I want it functional and able to be catered to what I know and like to do. This is not an "get off my lawn" rant, just a simple you are misjudging your target audience rant. Yes the dumb 13 year old kid who knows nothing better does not use the start bar, because they don't know how to crap on a computer, and are taught just to click the pinned app and have never begun to explore what a truly powerful OS can do. And that is what Windows was. A truly powerful OS. Neuter the UI, and it becomes shit that mystics and old wizards like me are the only ones that know how to do anything because we are the only ones who remember all the command codes to do anything powerful.
Typically bland response about stereotypes. As an American, I know what full well was happening with this bill. I wanted certain parts of it. (The pre-existing condition clause, and some other things), but I did not want the other 50% of it and barely any American did. What happened was they wrote a 2700 page monstrosity law, and jammed it through congress with less that 24 hours to even read the thing, and passed it.
I am tired of people thinking this is the way things should be done. A law should be simple, a couple of lines, and be done with it. It should not delve into 1000 different lines of thinking and try to get them all together in one law. This is what happened in the 80's when they would tie social security increases with something no one wanted so that if any legislator voted it down, they were against helping the old get more social security money.
It is not an All or Nothing affair. Pass what people want, and strip out what people don't want. That was what most people are saying.
While I agree with almost everything you state, the switching over to exclusively atomic would be crazy difficult. Atomic energy is great for base loads (if the load curve were flat, which it is by far not). Right now, at 5pm is peak load time, and that is usually 3-4 times the amount of power used than the load at night. Since it takes DAYS to ramp up a nuclear plant, you cannot just flip a switch and say "ramp up to triple load" and it will just respond. That is why there are a varying supply of power plants out there. Coal, while "dirty" ramps rather quickly and is CHEAP to operate. NG ramps a little slower but would be able to handle ramp times but is typically double the cost of a coal plant.
Please also don't forget that in a majority of any states, any changes to the electric rates has to be approved by the states local power consumer protection department. This department has to approve typically 10 years in advance so a power company can get enough money to start purchasing and get the financing to start building a 1/2 billion dollar plant (over a billion if nuclear) and the subsequent transmission lines, etc.
You want to know why? The vast majority of states still have a 65 mph speed limit. Driving over 65 mph is against the law and a ticket-able offense. Secondly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) only recently (5 years ago) acknowledged that cars could go faster than 55 mph in their fuel estimates (MPG ratings). And even with that, they only go up to 65 mph for a matter of a 180 seconds and go down to 55 mph to get the "highway" rating. Want to know why many American cars have such crappy performance. Because Betty car buyer looks at four things when she buys a car. Is it safe (Insurance Institutes crash ratings)? What is the MPG? How much does it cost? Does it look pretty/come in my color?
If you work in IT, you know this simple paradigm: You can have it cheap, You can have it fast, or You can have it built well. Pick two.
The same thing applies to cars.
I agree completely with you. I hate when I get a dog of an engine/gearing. Once the EPA pushed their new standards, we in America FINALLY got 6 speed transmissions that were not installed in $100k cars. What paradigm are the car makers under? Cheap, Quality. Guess you cannot have it fast.
Ummm ... Where on the site does it say that the Model X will be around $30k? I looked all over it and read all the press releases ... Nothing about price. I am asking more from a person who is interested than asking for facts.
Technically speaking, it would not be the radio. Back in the 80's and 90's all GM cars that came with CD players came with a CD of random "classic rock" songs like Bryan Adams and the Bangles.
What this situation is like, would be if you put in your own CD of (sticking to the 80's here) Poison and the engine blew up. It has nothing to do with the system, or how it runs, but it was not delivered and stock from the manufacturer.
Your example of replacing/taking out the radio would be like taking off the bevel strip along the monitor exposing the wires. Or taking off a key or two off the keyboard. It would still be functional, but not stock.
You must be young to the IT field. MS fought claw tooth and nail to keep it so they could ship a pristine OEM copy of the OS with any device sold. It was the manufacturers who wanted to ship it with all the crapware and make it their own. They took MS to court and MS lost. Now all PCs could ship exactly as any manufacturer wanted to (with what ever software they wanted to install and what every licensing/ad revenue/back ally deals they could create). What happened next is MS decided NOT to license copies of the OS bits so a manufacturer could make the crapware infested copy of Windows OEM disks on their own, thus they started using the recovery partition method. This way the manufacturer can have a specific build, with specific drivers, and when they got them back, they could just boot the recovery and see if it works. This limited support costs.
I remember reading on slashdot all the geeks/nerds spouting how MS was killing the freedom of software by not letting their "pristine OEM" windows disks be bastardized by hardware vendors. Funny how we have gone full circle as I would love to get a copy (not via torrent) of windows 7 or what every I purchased, and be able to do with it with my licenses as I see fit.
and the answer is "It Depends". The traffic, the routing, the overall bandwidth (you never get 100% usage) all have factors. The easiest way is to look at your pipes (each segment is separate) and see the error rates, back pressure (QOS, Ethernet, etc.), average throughput breakdown (types of traffic), and usage percentage. This will give you a clear picture. Take those numbers and watch them over time, and you will get a clear picture of your network.
You cannot answer a question such as this truthfully if you take one sample size, and assume that is fact. Many sample sizes make the true picture, and then you can also see trends to determine if things are getting out of control.
Simple. You see it first. Even if you knew you were going, and seeing it in the theater, the anticipation overwhelms you that you cannot wait. It is like opening your presents Christmas Eve because you cannot wait until Christmas Morning. You know you want it, and you don't have to wait, so why wait?
I read these religious wars about Linux on the desktop and every time think it comes down to a couple things. 1) The Server world is not the Desktop world. In the server world, you have a only 4 main types of services (DB, Web, App, Middle tier) which all run on common frameworks, and can be ported across any OS type. 2) In the Desktop world, where are the big corporate supported, applications? Where is the Intuit Quicken? Turbo Tax? Adobe Photoshop? The apps have to be there, not some clone (which might be better) but no supported by a big corporation with no support but angry geeks when something goes wrong. Corporations need a neck to squeeze when the fit hits the shan and upper management pounces on IT because stuff broke. 3) People apply Server Logic to the Desktop world. The Desktop world needs thousands of apps, and needs 1000 ways to manage 1000 different situations. The server world can just run without doing anything different once you set it up. This is the difference.