This was the first organization that popped into mind.
Sure they have lax rules surrounding them in the countries that they are based but it's only a matter of time before it goes beyond "making an example" and they are made "a precedent".
After them, the next on the chopping block would be Mininova.
If it takes me half a page for me to feel that I have adequately explained my point then so be it. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.
I don't recall stating that anything in Europe was better than the United States. The price of fuel is rising there also. Just as the price of a barrel of oil is rising there also. They are no less sensitive than we are. Canada has always had high taxes on fuel which made costs high. They are also experiencing similar increases in fuel costs as the United States. The difference between Europe and North America is that Europe moves goods in different manners. The U.S. and Canada have vast expanses on the interior of the country that are relatively sparsely populated. Moving goods across the country and those vast expanses is expensive and not a simple task to accomplish. Europe does not necessarily lack that problem but they are far less commercialized. They don't have nearly as many big box stores as we do and shopping is also relatively decentralized unlike the U.S. In addition, you can live a long, fulfilling life of activity and travel in Europe and never own a car. They have an extensive and efficient public transportation system. The U.S. is a joke in comparison. The same goes for Japan. They are sensitive to fuel costs because everything rises in price because delivery to market costs more and the cost has to be offset to maintain profit margins. Europeans do not rely on their personal vehicle nearly as much as Americans do.
It is not semantics. You are now back peddling. If value and worth have different meanings to you aside from the accepted definitions then I'd really like to know what they are. Or rather what language you actually speak. I even looked them up in a dictionary to make sure I wasn't missing something. I have a pretty firm grasp of the English language and would have been surprised if there was a new definition of value or worth. If value means anything other than a relative worth, merit or importance to you then I'd like to know what. Conversely, worth has a definition in a basic form of "good or important enough to justify". In that sense saying that $4 gas is worth it to those who are paying it is an accurate term. Solely from the importance that most people put on it in an effort to maintain a certain quality of life. But is it really deemed worthy by people or are they paying the price because they have no other choice? In a sense, fuel is invaluable if it supports every other aspect of your life. But how many people have a car that can burn other types of fuel? Gasoline is the single choice for most people. So the "worth" seems false if proverbial gun is being held to your head by way of a lack of alternatives.
Evidence of this is the fact that many people have switched to ethanol based fuels or bought diesel vehicles and converted them to run on bio-diesel and other bio-fuels. Why? Because they are cheaper. Obviously this shows an artificial demand for gas in the market if there are alternatives out there that are suitable for use in a vehicle that are much cheaper. People pay the $4 a gallon because they have no choice. The people using bio-fuels show that if there was a choice, the $4 a gallon gas is not "worth it" and there is a false worth due to a lack of alternatives.
But again, I'd really like to know how you define value and worth. If it is anything other than what I just described, your whole argument is bogus.
Commodity: a class of economic goods; especially : an item of merchandise whose price is the basis of futures trading
An important corollary to commodity trading is a futures contract: an agreement to buy or sell a specific amount of a commodity or financial instrument at a particular price on a stipulated future date; the contract can be sold before the settlement date
Given that, a commodity's price is not determined purely by market value and the people buying the final products. Typically, the retail customer does not buy the raw product but what is manufactured from it. But if
It precisely means that they think it is worth it. If they didn't think it was worth it, they would quit their jobs or whatever. That's a nasty thing to say, but that doesn't make it untrue.
That is false logic. The point of a job is financial gain. The point of financial gain is to have something to exchange for resources. Fuel for the car is only one resource of many that the financial gain needs to support. If the fuel takes up increasingly larger amounts of that financial gain, other areas will suffer more. Quitting a job eliminates that financial gain until another source of financial gain can be acquired.
Quitting a job is not the answer. Since it is likely that your thought is unfinished and you think that people should quit their jobs and find a job closer to home I'll expand on that too. It's wrong also. If you have a job as, say, a nuclear technician and you get paid $20K a year, you are limited in where you can live. If the nuke plant you work at is in East Jabip and the property values are high, you may not be able to afford to live in East Jabip. But say the property values are dirt cheap in East Bumblecluck. But East Bumblecluck is on the western side of West Jabip, 30 miles from East Jabip where you work. West Jabip, now that is a high falutin' place! Big money lives there and they certain make much more than $20K a year. So what do you do? Well, simple, you live in East Bumblecluck because that is where your income level lets you live. Since your job market is small, the East Jabip Nuclear Power Company is the only game in town and they can't pay you more. So you commute 30+ miles a day through East and West Jabip and East Bumblecluck to get to work.
Your logic says to either quit your job or move closer to work. The nuke plant is the only game in town. Can't quit, need money to survive. Dang. What now? Oh, move closer to work! Got a house worth $200K. Houses for sale in East Jabip where I work are $500K to start. Even if I sell my house for more value, I still have to pay off my mortgage on it with the proceeds from the sales and I still won't make enough money to even get approved for the loan to finance a run down pile of crap house for $500K. Forget about West Jabip, housing is twice as much there.
So what do I do? Gas is high, oil is high but demand hasn't warranted the prices. I hate paying it but I have no choice. My hands are tied because the options you gave me are not viable. Does that mean I must think it is worth it? No, I don't. The added cost has blown out my budget and I'm in the red every week because of it. But I don't have the financial resources to compensate well enough let alone change my situation. I can't quit my job or my family starves and gets put out on the street. This doesn't even take into account that my high risk loan matured last year and I'm facing foreclosure. Besides, it's not just my gas prices that went up. Food costs more now too. So does electricity. Oh yeah, gas for my heater and stove does too. I'm fucked every way from Sunday! All those people providing those resources I need to have my family have passed their added costs on to me. Know why? They got a family to feed too and they can't afford to feed theirs and mine and my neighbor's and my other neighbor's and so on.
No, gas isn't worth it. I have no choice but to find a way to deal with it.
I'm not happy that the economy in the US is currently built around an unsustainable rate of consumption, or that we are exporting almost 5% of our productivity simply for transportation fuels, but since you understand that fuel is a commodity, I probably don't need to go on.
I don't think you really understand fully how this economy thing works. Our consumption rate is not sustainable because it is wasteful. But it has grown steadily, not rapidly. We are not the reason for high costs. There is a global market for all things, not just oil. We aren't the ones driving up cost. We are the largest consumer though and a reduction in total usage of
Maybe you can stop buying so much stuff. I believe the "three R's" are reduce, reuse, recycle.
What a noble idea! Not to burst your bubble but you're not the only one. Most states make it illegal to dispose of recyclable materials in regular trash collection. I recycle much more than that too. Motor oils, lubricants, hydraulic fluids, old tires, etc,... all of that stuff I recycle. Even batteries can be recycled. I don't even buy newspapers and magazines anymore. I can't speak for others in the reuse and reduce but simple living generally keeps those two ideas in focus.
Eliminate consumption of disposable and one-use products (instead of using paper cups and plastic utensils, buy a nice set of tableware and wash it after every use, instead of disposable wipes, paper towels, or even napkins, just use cloth and periodically wash them), and when that's not possible, reuse as often as possible before disposing.
I honestly don't use disposable dishes and silverware unless it's a party.
Instead of patronizing fast foods, processed foods, and junk foods and drinks, buy the ingredients and make yourself something. Better yet, buy from local merchants, farmers markets, etc. when possible instead of from walmart.
You do realize that even the raw materials are processed to some extent and still require the similar levels of transport to market? Sure these ideas work great for those within easy distance of such markets but what if you live in a large city? There are farm markets and such but they still need goods shipped in from outside the city. They also require refrigerated storage just like a supermarket would. The only thing you are doing in that respect is transferring the cost of the final product to the consumer instead of the vendor. While it is a nice idea, it seems to me that the vendor can do the same job in a much more efficient and cost effective way than I can in my kitchen. Besides, I don't know the recipe for Dr. Pepper and I think it would be difficult to make in my kitchen. The amount of effort and resources I would need to expend to create Oreos in my kitchen are pretty great compared to how well Nabisco can do it. I also don't own a cow. Or pasteurizing equipment for that matter. So getting that milk is difficult too. Hey, I can buy the milk in a cardboard container but, you know what? The ink used to print the label with a picture of little Jimmy who went missing uses oil. So does the plastic inside the carton that keeps my milk from occupying the same floorspace as my feet. So what do I do? I buy my Oreos and milk from the store. When I am done with the packaging, I recycle what I can and dispose of the rest.
Your logic says that I should forgo the purchase of my Oreos because they are processed. I should also forgo the purchase of my milk because it is processed. The same with the Dr. Pepper. But you know what? The problem isn't so much the product I am buying but rather the packaging. Unless I can come up with a cheaper way of packaging that doesn't use as much oil, I'm not going to change how these companies package their goods for sale. The plastics are cheap and easy to make. They do not require the vast amount of resources that paper and glass need and they are readily recyclable. They help preserve the goods too so I don't have waste and loss from decomposition of those products. I can buy a large amount without worrying about it going bad and I don't have to drive to a store every other day to buy the raw materials to make myself a glass of Dr. Pepper and a tray of Oreos. Your logic says that I should forgo these much more efficient and less wasteful processes and products in favor of my less forgiving and much resource intensive processes at home in the name of a reduction oil use.
You know what? I can be just as effective and still continue to have the Oreos and Dr. Pepper that I enjoy by being responsible and practicing resource conservation by eliminating waste and increasing recycling habits. While your
Thanks there sport! What would we do without you? I'm looking at the original post I responded to and no where does the poster mention anything about reduction in any way except running an oil refinery at a massive financial loss.
My response was to the original poster's claims of stopping oil usage or stop bitching about cost. My post was intended to illustrate that the idea that stopping the use of oil did not just include the reduction or even total stoppage of purchasing $4 gas. Oil is a bigger picture and while you can reduce oil usage, there is more to it than just gas. Oil holds up out economy in every way. From the power we generate to build the products we sell to produce revenue to the computer systems we use to track all that revenue we just made. Oil packages our goods to keep them safe during transit and then fuels the vehicles used to transport those goods that are in transit.
The only stopping the use of $4 gas will do is to reduce the price of gas by artificially inflating supplies and reducing demand. As soon as the price goes down far enough, the demand will go back up again and the cycle starts over. But $4 gas does not affect the cost of the polyethylene used to package the food your buy or the polystyrene used to keep the TV you buy safe from damage or the polyurethane used to finish the entertainment center you bought to put that nice new TV on while you eat that food you bought too.
That current $130+ value of a barrel of oil isn't even driven by the demand for the oil as much as it is driven by futures speculation and commodity pricing.
Yeah, you can reduce your use but until a revolution is made in how we do business, reduction efforts are not enough. Are they worth doing? With out a doubt, yes they are. But just reducing the amount of gas you buy isn't going to make a dent at all in the need for oil in this country.
Not once did I dissuade anyone from practicing conservation and recycling techniques. My response was solely on the economical feasibility of stopping the use of oil products.
I'm sure all of those technologies you listed are quite impressive. I'll add a few more to the pot.
There is a man, from Duke University I believe it was, I could be mistaken. He has a machine and process for taking virtually any organic waste from turkey renderings to grass clipping and creating a high quality crude useful for many purposes out of such organic waste. Best part is that once the system is up and running with a stead flow of waste, the natural gas it produces is enough to power electrical generators and make the system self-sufficient.
There is another professor who has been able to ignite sea water with sound waves. The water molecules are vibrated along with the minerals in the water. The vibrations break the molecular bonds and the water burns. Violently at that.
Never was my intent to say "why bother". You obviously missed the entire point of my post judging from your pious lecture. I stated that stopping the use of oil is difficult at best because the products we get from oil permeate our lives at every extent. Hell, if it wasn't for oil, I couldn't be posting on Slashdot right now. I wouldn't have the plastics for the keyboard, case and screen for my computer nor the solvents to manufacture the computing pieces and least of all the power to run my system.
There is not "why bother" attitude here at all, champ. Just a realistic assessment or current predicaments. Weaning ourselves off of oil is not as simple as not buying $4 gas.
Fuel is a commodity. For many people it is a necessity. Whether it is worth $4 or not is not the issue. The fact that most people need it to either get to work to do their job or to actually do their job with is the deciding factor. $4 a gallon gas just becomes a cost of business or life and they have to find a way to make it work. Where the real issue lies is in the fact that many families are strapped for cash because income has not kept up with cost of living increases, finances are a shambles because of the current housing problem and the cut backs that sting a little have already been made. Add to that the gross devaluation of the dollar and continually climbing inflation. When a family has to decide whether to forgo another necessity like food or clothing or even slip a month on a housing payment to pay for gas, the "$4 a gallon is worth it" argument starts leaking like a sieve. It's not worth it at all especially since supply and demand models show that oil is inflated in price and should honestly be down around $70-$75 a barrel. The reason prices are so high is speculation which is how commodity pricing works.
Gas is not "worth" $4 a gallon but it is necessary for life to continue long enough for a change to be made. When you have a gas budget of $300 a month, that's more than most peoples' cable bills. Sure, I know, cut the cable bill out. Throw the Internet out too. Get rid of the cellphone. Maybe drop a land line phone line also? That could make up for the gas prices. But what happens when the monthly bill for gas tops $450? What do you cut out after all the ancillary stuff goes? Sure, you can stop driving so much but if you have a long commute to work, that's difficult. If you already have financial problems, moving closer to work is not feasible without causing further financial distress to your family. Then again, your car isn't the only place where you need fuel. If you have a gas or oil fired heater, should you have to freeze in the winter because you can't afford a $1200 a month heating bill? How about your gas stove and oven? Are you going to burn trees in your back yard to cook your dinner to avoid jacking up the already $1200 a month heating bill?
The ramifications of your statement, even if they were intended to illustrate a point serve nothing more that to illustrate that you really haven't thought this through. Just because people pay $4 a gallon doesn't mean they are happy about it or think it is worth it.
I can understand why people get upset about the level of the profits, but don't bitch and complain, stop buying oil products. If you buy anything that has any amount of plastics in it, you just likely bought an oil product. Even if it's something as simple as the plastic used to shrink wrap the pre-split logs you use in your wood burning stove, the plastic is still an oil-based product. Then again, those logs were like split by a machine that used either a diesel-powered, hydraulic log splitter or an electrically powered hydraulic splitter. The diesel comes from an oil product and the electricity may have likely come from coal or natural gas which are both oil products. Oh and can't forget that hydraulic fluid which is also an oil product as well as the lubricants used in the machines that processed those logs for your convenience.
Yeah, see, when you say "stop buying oil products" you have no idea how a statement like that can be so naive and obtuse at the same time.
This country runs on money but the currency that money uses is oil. It is intertwined in everything we have and do. You can't just stop using it no matter how hard you try.
The platform is not really abundant nor is it say a Windows or UNIX base. It's kinda hand built by me. I used a MegaSquirt system. It comes in a kit which is basically some directions, a schematic, a PCB and a bucket full of parts. They supply software but you can also access the source code for ALL the software including the tuning programs and even get the assembly language code for the hardware itself. We looked at source code and used some difference sensors so we have to recompile to use what isn't in the standard definitions, libraries and tables that are supplied. But then again, we are running much more boost than the 2 BAR or so that the supplied system handles.
We only do firmware updates and software updates when a new version of the software comes out that has some functionality that might help us. Like, for instance, very soon they will be coming out with a "MegaSequencer" to control true sequential multi-point fuel injection. We will have to get that, see how it fits in and then adjust and recompile the source code to fit our needs. They make it quite easy to do so and the MegaSquirt is loaded with an immense amount of info and help.
They are about as good as can be expected for the price and getting better. IMO, they rival the DFI systems from Accel and BigStuff and trounce the systems from Edelbrock and Holley. Only one system I have seen allows the same level of tunability but its from Puerto Rico and the guys are trying to keep some kind of competitive advantage so the whole website is in Spanish. IIRC, it's called Sakura. You have to go to training, which is also entirely in Spanish, to be able to use it. I know a guy who was showing me his system. But I think the MegaSquirt is better because it allows me to mess with everything, including source code.
It's impressive stuff and it costs me a fraction of what a DFI box would have run and I can get much more in depth with tuning and functionality.
Check the out if you want. You can find them here: MegaSquirt EFI.
2.) No, it has no logos at all. We're rollin' like Obama and fightin' the power! No sponsorship.
What did I do to get out of the rut?
on
Disillusioned With IT?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I built a race car.
Seriously. I got together with a friend of mine who is a mechanic and put together a race car to go drag racing. We've won events with national sponsorship, got on TV and even have magazines asking for photoshoots.
I was able to learn alot and I even applied my IT skills in tuning fuel injection and ignition control systems. Now there are people begging me to tune their cars for them and I might actually have a side business that is quite lucrative for not alot of effort given my extensive computer based background. If I play those cards right, I could end up being a legitimate chassis builder and tuner. Kinda cool when you think about how something that was just intended to get my mind off my problems turned into something like that.
The problem with hitting a satellite is velocity. Specifically closing velocity. With the kinetic warhead traveling at the speeds that it is capable of and the satellite orbiting around 17,000 mph, closing velocity was up around 22,000 mph. Altitude can always be achieved just by changing the booster series and fuels. Having a guided warhead being able to adapt to and intercept a target moving that fast is the real problem.
I think the capability was soundly demonstrated and while some may think it was a mistake, the BMD system has roots in a previous system that dates back to 1995-96. This capability has been in the hands of the Navy for a while now just no reason to use it or give away what cards were being held in our hand. It was also being developed at that time when we signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which not only said we wouldn't develop any new ballistic missiles but we also wouldn't develop a defensive system against ballistic missiles. As far as I know, that treaty is still in place and this is a direct violation of that treaty. Just goes to show how much the Navy cares about foreign policy. Especially since it can park "90,000 tons of diplomacy" off of any shore and have it accompanied by a battle group with enough firepower to put any country that opposes the U.S. back into the stone age.
The author of the article describes the "smell" and relates it to certain kinds of welding.
Most of the welding I have done that has a "sweet, metallic smell" has been done with a gas welder. Flux welding stinks something awful! But the gases, depending on what gases are used, can have a very pleasant smell. You have to watch it though 'cause as nice as it might smell, it'll still make you woozie and probably causes dain bramage.
But the smell comes from the oxidation of the metal used in the welder and the super heated gases used to insulate the welding from the atmosphere. Most of the gases used in welding are found in space in very minute amounts but they are there. The Sun is also made up of a portion of various minerals and metals used in welding like iron, carbon, chromium, nickel, oxygen and silicon. If the sun is pumping out all kinds of stuff like that at extreme heat levels, it makes sense that it would cause space to have a "smell" similar to gas welding fumes.
I can remember a time when I could actually load a page that was nothing but actual content that was relevant to what I was looking for. No one was trying to sell me anything or profit from my experience. Nor was there any kind of extortion being propagated on the pages I was viewing just because someone thought it was "ethical" for them to gain profit from information that they willingly published on a website and I needed and asked for and was provided.
See, the Internet was conceived as the most powerful tool in the world. It is a medium for a FREE exchange of information. How this bastardized commercialization of a tool so powerful it can harness the entirety of human knowledge and make it so readily available you don't even have to get out of bed to use it has demonized and raped the collective knowledge of the human race for profit is where the real crime is.
It's not the fact that some slobbering idiot of a spammer wants to flood my Inbox with emails that never even get opened. It's not the fact that some moron Russian scripter in Europe constantly registers bogus accounts on my Internet based forums that I pay for and are not supported by one red cent of ad revenue just so he/she can profit from my use of my private sites paid for by my private, hard earned money. It's not the constant barrage of ads on sites where the whole goal was to gain insane levels of readership and now they cannot support the financial demand that those insane levels require to support so they had to turn to ad revenue.
No, it's none of that that is the issue. The issue is that while TV and Radio are consumer products intended that way from the start, they cannot be compared to the Internet. The only resources my TV and radio use are my actual, physical TV and radio and the electricity I use to power them. I give no resources to the companies broadcasting on the airwaves. If I want to partake in those activities, I need the hardware to listen in. The advertisers have to pay for usage of the broadcaster's equipment to get their message to me so I will listen to it and buy whatever half-assed crap they are peddling. Why do the brroadcasters get to profit from others using their equipment to get their ads out to me? Why is it ok for the ad people to not be able to exploit the broadcasters but it's just fine and dandy for them to exploit me and my personal hardware for their gains? When do I see a profit for their financial gains from using my hardware to broadcast their content? I mean, you wouldn't think of going to work for free so your boss can make millions off of your knowledge and abilities while you struggle to eat in abject poverty, right? You work for a piece of that pie 'cause you have an advantage they need. Well, I have an advantage in my computer systems that they need and if they are going to profit from it I sure as hell want a cut of the pie too. If you don't pay your electric bill, what happens? If you don't pay your phone bill, what happens? If you don't pay your rent, what happens? If you don't pay your service provider bill, what happens? You lose access to those goods or services until reasonable financial arrangements can be made, then access is restored. Well I have goods and services that they want access to and until I see a check for my rendered goods and services, they will not be allowed access to those goods and services until reasonable financial arrangements can be made. Preferably in the form of a blank check.
The Internet though? No, not the same deal. I need to be much more committed to use it. I have to buy my own computer and the associated resources that go with it including my operating system, my storage space, my memory and even my CPU cycles. I own them and bought them for my use as I see fit and where my needs arise. Now I have to deal with some weaselly little scourge of an ad company telling me I'm stealing from them? Who the hell are you!? I PAID for my system! I USE my system for what I want. I DON'T want your ads! So I install software that shuts yo
A movie will not scare me at all. Most horror movies that get pawned off as horror use simple parlor tricks like flashing lights, loud sounds, loud music and fast movement to give the audience a thrill. There is no real horror in a movie anymore. There is no sense of impending doom that keeps you on your toes and the hair on the back of your neck standing up. Even with surround sound and a complete multi-channel soundtrack, the movies just don't do it anymore. The mystique is gone.
Now a video game, think about it. They have the same surrounding, multi-channel soundtrack and you are usually sitting within inches of a screen that will fill your entire field of vision and unlike the movies, you have to make decisions that directly impact the outcome of the game. In a movie theater, you are sitting on your butt stuffing your face with popcorn and candy in a cushy chair, usually with a person next to you and thinking about how much you have to pee because you polished off that $16 64 oz soda. The video game, you are usually not eating anything because it requires both hands and you need to concentrate because you are looking for clues to attain your next goal in the game. In a movie all you have to focus on is what alien or monster or whatever is gonna jump out next. If you are concentrating of accomplishing a task in a game, a monster jumping out and trying to cause you harm is unnerving. Add to that the music and sound effects and the fact that your monitor is filling your entire field of vision and you get buried in the game and you become part of it.
It amounts to sensory overload and your brain gets into fight or flight mode when it's trying to process all that information. Consequently when a flaming skull comes flying at you out of the fog, you bug out because it's just doubled the amount of sensory input you received and your brain is in self-preservation mode. your adrenalin spikes, your heart rate goes up and if you are like me, you yell profanities at the game and start pushing mouse and keyboard buttons harder than you need to. I don't ever recall getting those sensations in a movie theater. There is just too much information not related to the topic of the movie to distract you. A video game gives you the ability minimize those distractions by shrinking the environment in which you are interacting with the video game. It's hard to be scared in a movie theater full of silly, screaming teenage girls jumping and holding on to equally silly, laughing teenage boys. Now, in your home, in a dark room with nothing but your and your glowing box of a monitor, yeah, that'll spook you out.
It's not really the consumer market that drives new hardware development. I mean, yes, we would all like to believe that in some way, our own geeky little world has a greater impact than Step number 5: Profit but it doesn't. Look at the latest and greatest technology out there. It is insanely fast but also insanely expensive and often, financially out of reach of the average consumer.
So who buys that new hardware? Well, no one specifically buys individual processors or memory chips or graphics cards or what have you. Alot of the new technology gets integrated into large scale computer systems at giant corporations that have IT budgets the rival most 3rd world GDP's. They can afford the technology and often times, they are working with cutting edge equipment because the computing demands they have are much greater than that of your average gamer.
Another place that faster, bigger, badder technology gets employed is by the companies that make those large scale computer systems. Many companies now are getting into the clustered server and blade server markets and driving technology there. Then there are the companies offering specific solutions like Sun Microsystems that build their own hardware to a certain extend and they are driving development also. Everybody jokes about Beowulf clusters, mainframes and so on. You know what though? At several hundred grand for a Beowulf cluster with only 250 nodes but technology out the wazoo, there is a market driven aspect there that dwarfs what Joe Blow in his basement LAN-party server has. Many companies are utilizing these new, managed and multi-threaded ideas to make mainframes that are faster and more capable than anyone could have imagined back in the days of Big Blue and WANG.
Yeah, a $100 laptop is not going kill Moore's Law, it's going to fuel the fire behind it. The laptops may be barely adequate but they will fuel progress in those 3rd world countries. It won't be long before someone figures out how cluster a pile of those laptops and build themselves a pretty bad-ass computer system.
That paper does nothing, as others have already said, but tell us there there are social classes among people. It's a typical high school social experiment with the different cliques. The paper does nothing of any value beyond giving a short and over-simplifying explanation/history of MySpace and Facebook.
For real social commentary and study, I would have been more interested to see a multi-year study that showed a group of high school students from all social cliques that tracked usage and content of the personal sites over say 6-8 years to see how far in to life those social cliques extend.
All this article has done is reinforce the fact that people congregate with other people with like interests. So naturally, if I'm a "freak/geek" and all of my friends are "freaks" and "geeks" and they hang out on MySpace then why would I want to hang out on Facebook with a bunch of "jocks" who have dissimilar interests and little in common with me? This is common sense, not a ground breaking social study.
Furthermore, the author continues on to use this "disparity" in common use between several sites to show demographic trends which really don't correlate at all. Especially since the author is trying to use the information and "collected data" to show how different social classes use different websites. This is not really shown at all. There is no basis of evidence that the "freaks and geeks" that use MySpace are in a lower societal class. Nor do they show that Facebook has provided a higher earning and networking potential for uses to validate the claim that they are from a higher social class. The author is using inference falsely to show a class separation with no factual support other than essentially "The people on MySpace are weird and not as "beautiful" as the people on Facebook so they must be poor." It's an asinine argument and if that paper was written for course credit, I hope they didn't get a decent grade. If it was written as a professional document for a publication then "ethnographic research " is either a joke science or someone needs to read articles submitted for publication more carefully.
I feel dumber for wading through that article and I honestly want those 10 minutes of my life back.
It doesn't get much easier because everyone is different and different people interpret things differently. What does get easier is how you react to those interpretations. That takes practice and experience. That only comes with time. Many posters have already stated that.
Things I have taken away from my similar experiences might be of some help. I have three major things to look at that will make my presentation of my idea more efficient in a sense.
First off, since all non-technical people are different, you have to know how to read people. This is not easy. I've spent a good deal of time just sitting back and listening to people, watching mannerisms and interactions. You start to pick up on behavioral patterns. This isn't always an easy thing to do for many people. However, people fascinate me and I can watch people for hours. One of the best places to do it is a bar. Sit in a corner where you can see most of the bar and just watch people. A bar is where people will be the most deceitful about who they are to gain...well, you know what they are looking for, it doesn't have to be spelled out. Anyhow, you can learn to pick up just from body language who is uncomfortable, nervous, speculative, wary and of course deceitful. It actually transfers to a work environment because picking up a date in a bar is just like trying to wrestle office politics and gain favor from the higher-ups. The same body language, facial expressions and vocal cues are there. You just have to know how to look for them. If you see people are confused, bored or put off by your presentation, change it up right then and there. Don't keep going to the end. At that point, they will feel like they already wasted enough time and they want out of the uncomfortable conference room chair ASAP. Not good for your presentation and not good for you!
Make your presentation interesting. Engage your audience. This is not easy to do and you have to keep it professional. The easiest way to do this is to play to their sensibilities. They don't understand processors and materials and graphical displays and such. They understand money, personnel concerns, the bottom line and just general business health. They pay you to understand the technical stuff for them so they don't have to worry about it. Do you homework before your presentation. Look past the technical stuff and show them where the savings will be and what the benefits will be. Give them an idea of how long it will take for positive results to be noticeable. You don't need to have a detailed technical view. Your job is to understand that and then tell them what they need to do and why they should do it. They don't want to know how they should do it, that's why they hired you. Tell them why they should do it. If they want to know what they will have to do to do it, give them a high level view and answer questions. If you can speak to them about what needs to be done in a language they can understand, they will be much more trusting to let you do your thing because it will be obvious to them that you know your job and understand the business. That's all they want. A kick-ass team player.
Sometimes you can't get around technical stuff and they need to know about it and understand it without a shadow of a doubt. I find that in instances like this, demonstrations work best. Demonstrations give visual representation of what is going on and how things work. People tend to understand a complex idea better if they can see it in action. It may take a bit more preparation but the warm-fuzzy it can give will shave tons of time off of your project time and even your development cycle. It also helps because a demonstration is entirely engaging. Something is happening to keep attention and they will look at what you are doing. They will ask questions and the best thing you can do is answer as many question as you can as they come up. If you know the question will be answered later in the presentation, tell them something like "Hey now, don't jump ahead to the good parts!" or something equally witt
Several others have already said that SysAdmins are only as good as the rules and management that constrains them. Then again, there is the personality issue.
I am a SysAdmin myself like many on Slashdot. However, I do SysAdmin work on two different levels. At my day job, I manage gigantic enterprise class data systems with clustered servers for everything from distributed processing to my Oracle 10g RAC cluster. However, I also do work on the side in my spare time for small businesses and friends in the area. I do everything from some simple web development to distributed networks for file and application sharing. I've been given compliments and complaints but the compliments far outweigh the complains.
What I have heard most and that I like to hear is that people like to deal with me. They like to have me answer thier help desk calls because they know it will get fixed correctly and as fast as humanly possible. I like having that reputation and professional respect. Because of that, I don't have to fight with a user or management when I say I need time to figure out an issue or stand up a system. Does that make me a good SysAdmin? I dunno. I think it makes me a good employee. Then again, I get the same compliments from my small business customers and friends who would rather call me for help with their DSL account or a piece of troublesome software than any help line.
Given that, I think that a SysAdmin is an employee just like everyone else. Because of that, we shouldn't be venerated above others even though we are an employee with a special job. A SysAdmin allows other employees to be productive. If the SysAdmin isn't doing the job they have to do, then the company as a whole suffers. I suppose this is where the 'root is god' can get out of hand. When an entire company's infrastructure depends on the work of a few people, that's a high stress deal. Sometimes it gets to people. Bottom line though, we are all employees and just like the loud guy at the water cooler that nobody wants to hang around with, if we aren't profession and approachable like other employees, we are hurting ourselves. SysAdmins have to be computer geniuses, we have to be business oriented, we have to be people people and we have to be avaialable and approachable. It is not an easy task, believe me, I know! However, we all need to have a certain degree of professionalism when dealing with our customer base (users). We SysAdmins are our own downfall. The poor perception by the slobbering masses of users is our own fault. We can change it. While we do understand that our companies would not survive without us, it is not our place to make it so painfully obvious. The users don't care how great we think we are or even how great we are. They just want thier problems fixed quickly so they can get back to being how great they are. If we can just appease that desire from the users, I think that's what would make a good SysAdmin.
You don't need to learn to seperate your hobbies from your skills. I would venture to say that that is the worst thing you can do. A hobby is work that you don't get paid to do. If you enjoy your hobby and you are passionate about it, why can't you make a living at it too and then be passionate about your job? Employers want employees that enjoy coming to work. That's why they offer so many incentives like day-care, flexible schedules, cafeterias, company transportation, discount programs, recreational activities and so on and so forth. They WANT you to LIKE to come to work. They don't want it to be difficult for you to come to work. Why do they want all that? Because a happy employee is a productive employee that contributes to the good of the compnay which benefits everyone, including the employee.
If you chose to seperate your hobbies from your skills, that's up to you. However, if you have developed skills then it's obvious that maybe, at one point, enjoyed those skills enough to focus on them. So if you are artificailly limiting yourself by confining your skills to work, you must find your hobbies just as dreadful. Mainly because you aren't as skilled at your hobbies as you are at your work which is based on skills you likely enjoy more.
IT is a hobby and a job for me. I didn't get into it because it was something that I could stand doing for decades. I got into it because I really enjoyed working with the computers. I also saw a good deal of earning potential that could support my other expensive hobbies and the skill sets I could pick up were also transferrable to my other hobbies. Also, no matter how much I know, no matter how much experience I have, there is ALWAYS something new around the corner to discover and learn about.
There is a tremendous potential for growth in any profession as long as you are willing to look past your nose that you are seemingly keeping on the grind stone. You should take it off every once in a while. You might see things for what they really are. Afterall, if you keep your head down and grinding away, how are you ever going to take a look and see all the opportunities around you? Don't go through life with such large, self-induced blinders on. You are missing way too much!
Your only limitations on what you can do is what kind of effort and time you are willing to invest. Someone already mentioned hobbies. That is a great place to start. It's probably what got you into IT in the first place anyway. 20 years ago, IT was an unheard of term and computers were still a new fangled thingamabob that nobody really had a good clue on what to do with them. Well, from a business application standpoint. Most of the people that were getting in to them were either college graduates or hobbyists. Most college kids got into computers because they were fun.
So what I would do is look for something you enjoy doing that is completely NOT like IT work. Someone mentioned fixing cars. That can be a good application of troubleshooting skills. If you are good at repairing computers then you would likely be good at some sort of detail work also. My father plans to build furniture when he retires in a couple of years. He's a woodworker as a hobbyist and enjoys it. So rather than fill his house with furniture, he's going to build pieces and sell them either online or at local craft fairs/flea markets.
Personally, I have quite a few hobbys that would work out for me. I already work part time doing diesel mechanics and fleet maintenance. It's good money and where the IT level of money is in automotive/mechanical repair. However, what I would enjoy doing more is working for a friend of mine fabricating body panels for race cars and custom work. It's very enjoyable and people are less sensitive and not easily offended by guys being guys. I wouldn't mind doing something with audio/video equipment installation either in cars or homes/professional offices. I have skills that I can apply to all these areas.
Another option is to do something outside. Landscaping, unless you are doing the design, is fairly simple work, just tedious and back-breaking. However, a person with professional experience and/or a degree will usually be a manager or supervisor who has peons to do the work for him. If you are up for it, the Parks Service in many states and even at the federal level is always looking for people. There are plenty of other outside jobs to do.
But me, I like my IT work. I enjoy the challenges that it brings and I actually enjoy troubleshooting. It pays well enough and some days I can't believe I get paid to do the work I do. I hope you find that place for you again. A wise man once said to me "If you can't have fun at what you are doing, go the hell home, we don't want you here." He was a mere furniture mover for a moving company. He loved his job and he did it the best he could every day. I asked him if had a choice, would he do it again and his response was "Without a doubt, yes!" Basically, it's not what you do for a living that makes the difference, it's how you do it. I've always told everyone I know, "The measure of a man is not in his paycheck. A job is a job, it doesn't matter what you do, as long as it pays the bills, it's all good. Some jobs just pay more bills than others." Just be glad you have luxury of a job to consider leaving. I have had many friends and colleagues who were forced out of thier employment and into a different field of work due to down-sizing and layoffs.
Granted, it's not the ever popular strategy or multi-player online game that Slashdotters like so much. However, there is an economy and while with unlimited time, the game could be beaten fairly quickly, it does have merits. For one thing, the game does not stop being fun after it has been beaten. There are plenty of challenges and cars to choose from and if you happen to be stranded with Player 2, you would have a good deal of options there too.
The other options I would take are Civilization II or even SimCity. I have a game called Cossacks that is immensely fun and no matter how many times I play it, it doesn't get old. It ends up eating away hours of my life and usually makes me late for work the next day due to lack of sleep. First person shooters and multi-player games though, I don't think they would cut it. AI is only so good and without the online links, those games get old, quick.
The logic is not fatally flawed and you are committing a straw man.
My point was, the laws of this country state that the infingement of copyright laws is a deprivation of freedoms and rights afforded to the owner of the copyright. The argument concerning mom and her statement about bridges and jumping illustrates the point very well. It essentially states that just because the majority violates the law, that does not make it acceptable to violate the law. Whether you look at it from a moral/ethical standpoint or a legal standpoint, a law is put there to maintain an assemblance of order. If the law is broken, there is no order.
You state that the reasons the law should be taken off the books is because it is not enforcable and thusly unjust. Yet you have not given any point or proof that shows that the law is unjust. The only thing you have stated so far is that you don't get to have free access to the results of somebody else's hard work, therefore it is an unjust law. You neglect to consider who the laws were made for, the intellectual property holder.
Just because the law is not enforcable does not mean it is not useful. It is very difficult to enforce the law. Enforcing the law should not include crippling electronics in homes and businesses. That is a deprivation of freedom. The actions being taken by the RIAA are bastardizing the law in an effort to increase/protect profits. The laws still have merit because it provides recourse for an intellectual property holder to prosecute someone who has violated their rights to their work. Without that avenue for justice, what should an artist do if someone obtains a copy of their work and starts selling it on the street outside of a concert venue? What recourse would the artist have when someone copies his hard work and profits from it without paying royalties? There is no easy answer. Without the copyright laws, there is no basis for a case. Sure, the artist could sue but without laws, it is open to interpretation of a judge/jury. He could attack the man but then, there are laws in place to deter that. Then again, there are also laws in place concerning theft of property.
So the copyright laws are just and it is difficult to prosecute a person who has copied media as a criminal for theft of intellectual property. It is difficult to prosecute because guilt needs to be proven and there is very little concrete evidence to put someone away for stealing intellectual propety. There are also too many legal loopholes to show reasonable doubt and that's all that is needed for someone to get away with a crime. With the copyright law in place, there is legal recourse because the only concrete evidence needed is the actual copies of the work. If that exists and they are not authorized copies, the law is violated and a criminal proceeding can ensue.
I'm sorry but in this case, Mom's logic does apply because the needs of the majority do not outweigh the needs of the one. Afterall, when you go to work, you use your knowledge and skills to provide solutions to your company so that they can be profitable. You in turn get paid for your hard work. You chose your profession. So did the copyright holders. Are they not entitled to see gains for thier hardwork also? Do they have to live in a box on the street corner just because you didn't want to buy a CD or a piece of software? Your whole argument is based on fainess and justice. How is that situation fair or just?
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This was the first organization that popped into mind.
Sure they have lax rules surrounding them in the countries that they are based but it's only a matter of time before it goes beyond "making an example" and they are made "a precedent".
After them, the next on the chopping block would be Mininova.
If it takes me half a page for me to feel that I have adequately explained my point then so be it. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it.
I don't recall stating that anything in Europe was better than the United States. The price of fuel is rising there also. Just as the price of a barrel of oil is rising there also. They are no less sensitive than we are. Canada has always had high taxes on fuel which made costs high. They are also experiencing similar increases in fuel costs as the United States. The difference between Europe and North America is that Europe moves goods in different manners. The U.S. and Canada have vast expanses on the interior of the country that are relatively sparsely populated. Moving goods across the country and those vast expanses is expensive and not a simple task to accomplish. Europe does not necessarily lack that problem but they are far less commercialized. They don't have nearly as many big box stores as we do and shopping is also relatively decentralized unlike the U.S. In addition, you can live a long, fulfilling life of activity and travel in Europe and never own a car. They have an extensive and efficient public transportation system. The U.S. is a joke in comparison. The same goes for Japan. They are sensitive to fuel costs because everything rises in price because delivery to market costs more and the cost has to be offset to maintain profit margins. Europeans do not rely on their personal vehicle nearly as much as Americans do.
It is not semantics. You are now back peddling. If value and worth have different meanings to you aside from the accepted definitions then I'd really like to know what they are. Or rather what language you actually speak. I even looked them up in a dictionary to make sure I wasn't missing something. I have a pretty firm grasp of the English language and would have been surprised if there was a new definition of value or worth. If value means anything other than a relative worth, merit or importance to you then I'd like to know what. Conversely, worth has a definition in a basic form of "good or important enough to justify". In that sense saying that $4 gas is worth it to those who are paying it is an accurate term. Solely from the importance that most people put on it in an effort to maintain a certain quality of life. But is it really deemed worthy by people or are they paying the price because they have no other choice? In a sense, fuel is invaluable if it supports every other aspect of your life. But how many people have a car that can burn other types of fuel? Gasoline is the single choice for most people. So the "worth" seems false if proverbial gun is being held to your head by way of a lack of alternatives.
Evidence of this is the fact that many people have switched to ethanol based fuels or bought diesel vehicles and converted them to run on bio-diesel and other bio-fuels. Why? Because they are cheaper. Obviously this shows an artificial demand for gas in the market if there are alternatives out there that are suitable for use in a vehicle that are much cheaper. People pay the $4 a gallon because they have no choice. The people using bio-fuels show that if there was a choice, the $4 a gallon gas is not "worth it" and there is a false worth due to a lack of alternatives.
But again, I'd really like to know how you define value and worth. If it is anything other than what I just described, your whole argument is bogus.
Commodity: a class of economic goods; especially : an item of merchandise whose price is the basis of futures trading
An important corollary to commodity trading is a futures contract: an agreement to buy or sell a specific amount of a commodity or financial instrument at a particular price on a stipulated future date; the contract can be sold before the settlement date
Given that, a commodity's price is not determined purely by market value and the people buying the final products. Typically, the retail customer does not buy the raw product but what is manufactured from it. But if
Ask him where the gas comes from. If it's a hyrdo-carbon based gas, it is likely a product of oil refining.
It precisely means that they think it is worth it. If they didn't think it was worth it, they would quit their jobs or whatever. That's a nasty thing to say, but that doesn't make it untrue.
That is false logic. The point of a job is financial gain. The point of financial gain is to have something to exchange for resources. Fuel for the car is only one resource of many that the financial gain needs to support. If the fuel takes up increasingly larger amounts of that financial gain, other areas will suffer more. Quitting a job eliminates that financial gain until another source of financial gain can be acquired.
Quitting a job is not the answer. Since it is likely that your thought is unfinished and you think that people should quit their jobs and find a job closer to home I'll expand on that too. It's wrong also. If you have a job as, say, a nuclear technician and you get paid $20K a year, you are limited in where you can live. If the nuke plant you work at is in East Jabip and the property values are high, you may not be able to afford to live in East Jabip. But say the property values are dirt cheap in East Bumblecluck. But East Bumblecluck is on the western side of West Jabip, 30 miles from East Jabip where you work. West Jabip, now that is a high falutin' place! Big money lives there and they certain make much more than $20K a year. So what do you do? Well, simple, you live in East Bumblecluck because that is where your income level lets you live. Since your job market is small, the East Jabip Nuclear Power Company is the only game in town and they can't pay you more. So you commute 30+ miles a day through East and West Jabip and East Bumblecluck to get to work.
Your logic says to either quit your job or move closer to work. The nuke plant is the only game in town. Can't quit, need money to survive. Dang. What now? Oh, move closer to work! Got a house worth $200K. Houses for sale in East Jabip where I work are $500K to start. Even if I sell my house for more value, I still have to pay off my mortgage on it with the proceeds from the sales and I still won't make enough money to even get approved for the loan to finance a run down pile of crap house for $500K. Forget about West Jabip, housing is twice as much there.
So what do I do? Gas is high, oil is high but demand hasn't warranted the prices. I hate paying it but I have no choice. My hands are tied because the options you gave me are not viable. Does that mean I must think it is worth it? No, I don't. The added cost has blown out my budget and I'm in the red every week because of it. But I don't have the financial resources to compensate well enough let alone change my situation. I can't quit my job or my family starves and gets put out on the street. This doesn't even take into account that my high risk loan matured last year and I'm facing foreclosure. Besides, it's not just my gas prices that went up. Food costs more now too. So does electricity. Oh yeah, gas for my heater and stove does too. I'm fucked every way from Sunday! All those people providing those resources I need to have my family have passed their added costs on to me. Know why? They got a family to feed too and they can't afford to feed theirs and mine and my neighbor's and my other neighbor's and so on.
No, gas isn't worth it. I have no choice but to find a way to deal with it.
I'm not happy that the economy in the US is currently built around an unsustainable rate of consumption, or that we are exporting almost 5% of our productivity simply for transportation fuels, but since you understand that fuel is a commodity, I probably don't need to go on.
I don't think you really understand fully how this economy thing works. Our consumption rate is not sustainable because it is wasteful. But it has grown steadily, not rapidly. We are not the reason for high costs. There is a global market for all things, not just oil. We aren't the ones driving up cost. We are the largest consumer though and a reduction in total usage of
Maybe you can stop buying so much stuff. I believe the "three R's" are reduce, reuse, recycle.
What a noble idea! Not to burst your bubble but you're not the only one. Most states make it illegal to dispose of recyclable materials in regular trash collection. I recycle much more than that too. Motor oils, lubricants, hydraulic fluids, old tires, etc,... all of that stuff I recycle. Even batteries can be recycled. I don't even buy newspapers and magazines anymore. I can't speak for others in the reuse and reduce but simple living generally keeps those two ideas in focus.
Eliminate consumption of disposable and one-use products (instead of using paper cups and plastic utensils, buy a nice set of tableware and wash it after every use, instead of disposable wipes, paper towels, or even napkins, just use cloth and periodically wash them), and when that's not possible, reuse as often as possible before disposing.
I honestly don't use disposable dishes and silverware unless it's a party.
Instead of patronizing fast foods, processed foods, and junk foods and drinks, buy the ingredients and make yourself something. Better yet, buy from local merchants, farmers markets, etc. when possible instead of from walmart.
You do realize that even the raw materials are processed to some extent and still require the similar levels of transport to market? Sure these ideas work great for those within easy distance of such markets but what if you live in a large city? There are farm markets and such but they still need goods shipped in from outside the city. They also require refrigerated storage just like a supermarket would. The only thing you are doing in that respect is transferring the cost of the final product to the consumer instead of the vendor. While it is a nice idea, it seems to me that the vendor can do the same job in a much more efficient and cost effective way than I can in my kitchen. Besides, I don't know the recipe for Dr. Pepper and I think it would be difficult to make in my kitchen. The amount of effort and resources I would need to expend to create Oreos in my kitchen are pretty great compared to how well Nabisco can do it. I also don't own a cow. Or pasteurizing equipment for that matter. So getting that milk is difficult too. Hey, I can buy the milk in a cardboard container but, you know what? The ink used to print the label with a picture of little Jimmy who went missing uses oil. So does the plastic inside the carton that keeps my milk from occupying the same floorspace as my feet. So what do I do? I buy my Oreos and milk from the store. When I am done with the packaging, I recycle what I can and dispose of the rest.
Your logic says that I should forgo the purchase of my Oreos because they are processed. I should also forgo the purchase of my milk because it is processed. The same with the Dr. Pepper. But you know what? The problem isn't so much the product I am buying but rather the packaging. Unless I can come up with a cheaper way of packaging that doesn't use as much oil, I'm not going to change how these companies package their goods for sale. The plastics are cheap and easy to make. They do not require the vast amount of resources that paper and glass need and they are readily recyclable. They help preserve the goods too so I don't have waste and loss from decomposition of those products. I can buy a large amount without worrying about it going bad and I don't have to drive to a store every other day to buy the raw materials to make myself a glass of Dr. Pepper and a tray of Oreos. Your logic says that I should forgo these much more efficient and less wasteful processes and products in favor of my less forgiving and much resource intensive processes at home in the name of a reduction oil use.
You know what? I can be just as effective and still continue to have the Oreos and Dr. Pepper that I enjoy by being responsible and practicing resource conservation by eliminating waste and increasing recycling habits. While your
Thanks there sport! What would we do without you? I'm looking at the original post I responded to and no where does the poster mention anything about reduction in any way except running an oil refinery at a massive financial loss.
My response was to the original poster's claims of stopping oil usage or stop bitching about cost. My post was intended to illustrate that the idea that stopping the use of oil did not just include the reduction or even total stoppage of purchasing $4 gas. Oil is a bigger picture and while you can reduce oil usage, there is more to it than just gas. Oil holds up out economy in every way. From the power we generate to build the products we sell to produce revenue to the computer systems we use to track all that revenue we just made. Oil packages our goods to keep them safe during transit and then fuels the vehicles used to transport those goods that are in transit.
The only stopping the use of $4 gas will do is to reduce the price of gas by artificially inflating supplies and reducing demand. As soon as the price goes down far enough, the demand will go back up again and the cycle starts over. But $4 gas does not affect the cost of the polyethylene used to package the food your buy or the polystyrene used to keep the TV you buy safe from damage or the polyurethane used to finish the entertainment center you bought to put that nice new TV on while you eat that food you bought too.
That current $130+ value of a barrel of oil isn't even driven by the demand for the oil as much as it is driven by futures speculation and commodity pricing.
Yeah, you can reduce your use but until a revolution is made in how we do business, reduction efforts are not enough. Are they worth doing? With out a doubt, yes they are. But just reducing the amount of gas you buy isn't going to make a dent at all in the need for oil in this country.
What "why bother attitude"?
Not once did I dissuade anyone from practicing conservation and recycling techniques. My response was solely on the economical feasibility of stopping the use of oil products.
I'm sure all of those technologies you listed are quite impressive. I'll add a few more to the pot.
There is a man, from Duke University I believe it was, I could be mistaken. He has a machine and process for taking virtually any organic waste from turkey renderings to grass clipping and creating a high quality crude useful for many purposes out of such organic waste. Best part is that once the system is up and running with a stead flow of waste, the natural gas it produces is enough to power electrical generators and make the system self-sufficient.
There is another professor who has been able to ignite sea water with sound waves. The water molecules are vibrated along with the minerals in the water. The vibrations break the molecular bonds and the water burns. Violently at that.
Never was my intent to say "why bother". You obviously missed the entire point of my post judging from your pious lecture. I stated that stopping the use of oil is difficult at best because the products we get from oil permeate our lives at every extent. Hell, if it wasn't for oil, I couldn't be posting on Slashdot right now. I wouldn't have the plastics for the keyboard, case and screen for my computer nor the solvents to manufacture the computing pieces and least of all the power to run my system.
There is not "why bother" attitude here at all, champ. Just a realistic assessment or current predicaments. Weaning ourselves off of oil is not as simple as not buying $4 gas.
Fuel is a commodity. For many people it is a necessity. Whether it is worth $4 or not is not the issue. The fact that most people need it to either get to work to do their job or to actually do their job with is the deciding factor. $4 a gallon gas just becomes a cost of business or life and they have to find a way to make it work. Where the real issue lies is in the fact that many families are strapped for cash because income has not kept up with cost of living increases, finances are a shambles because of the current housing problem and the cut backs that sting a little have already been made. Add to that the gross devaluation of the dollar and continually climbing inflation. When a family has to decide whether to forgo another necessity like food or clothing or even slip a month on a housing payment to pay for gas, the "$4 a gallon is worth it" argument starts leaking like a sieve. It's not worth it at all especially since supply and demand models show that oil is inflated in price and should honestly be down around $70-$75 a barrel. The reason prices are so high is speculation which is how commodity pricing works.
Gas is not "worth" $4 a gallon but it is necessary for life to continue long enough for a change to be made. When you have a gas budget of $300 a month, that's more than most peoples' cable bills. Sure, I know, cut the cable bill out. Throw the Internet out too. Get rid of the cellphone. Maybe drop a land line phone line also? That could make up for the gas prices. But what happens when the monthly bill for gas tops $450? What do you cut out after all the ancillary stuff goes? Sure, you can stop driving so much but if you have a long commute to work, that's difficult. If you already have financial problems, moving closer to work is not feasible without causing further financial distress to your family. Then again, your car isn't the only place where you need fuel. If you have a gas or oil fired heater, should you have to freeze in the winter because you can't afford a $1200 a month heating bill? How about your gas stove and oven? Are you going to burn trees in your back yard to cook your dinner to avoid jacking up the already $1200 a month heating bill?
The ramifications of your statement, even if they were intended to illustrate a point serve nothing more that to illustrate that you really haven't thought this through. Just because people pay $4 a gallon doesn't mean they are happy about it or think it is worth it.
Yeah, see, when you say "stop buying oil products" you have no idea how a statement like that can be so naive and obtuse at the same time.
This country runs on money but the currency that money uses is oil. It is intertwined in everything we have and do. You can't just stop using it no matter how hard you try.
The platform is not really abundant nor is it say a Windows or UNIX base. It's kinda hand built by me. I used a MegaSquirt system. It comes in a kit which is basically some directions, a schematic, a PCB and a bucket full of parts. They supply software but you can also access the source code for ALL the software including the tuning programs and even get the assembly language code for the hardware itself. We looked at source code and used some difference sensors so we have to recompile to use what isn't in the standard definitions, libraries and tables that are supplied. But then again, we are running much more boost than the 2 BAR or so that the supplied system handles.
We only do firmware updates and software updates when a new version of the software comes out that has some functionality that might help us. Like, for instance, very soon they will be coming out with a "MegaSequencer" to control true sequential multi-point fuel injection. We will have to get that, see how it fits in and then adjust and recompile the source code to fit our needs. They make it quite easy to do so and the MegaSquirt is loaded with an immense amount of info and help.
They are about as good as can be expected for the price and getting better. IMO, they rival the DFI systems from Accel and BigStuff and trounce the systems from Edelbrock and Holley. Only one system I have seen allows the same level of tunability but its from Puerto Rico and the guys are trying to keep some kind of competitive advantage so the whole website is in Spanish. IIRC, it's called Sakura. You have to go to training, which is also entirely in Spanish, to be able to use it. I know a guy who was showing me his system. But I think the MegaSquirt is better because it allows me to mess with everything, including source code.
It's impressive stuff and it costs me a fraction of what a DFI box would have run and I can get much more in depth with tuning and functionality.
Check the out if you want. You can find them here: MegaSquirt EFI.
1.) No. But the ECM was programmed with C#!
2.) No, it has no logos at all. We're rollin' like Obama and fightin' the power! No sponsorship.
I built a race car.
Seriously. I got together with a friend of mine who is a mechanic and put together a race car to go drag racing. We've won events with national sponsorship, got on TV and even have magazines asking for photoshoots.
I was able to learn alot and I even applied my IT skills in tuning fuel injection and ignition control systems. Now there are people begging me to tune their cars for them and I might actually have a side business that is quite lucrative for not alot of effort given my extensive computer based background. If I play those cards right, I could end up being a legitimate chassis builder and tuner. Kinda cool when you think about how something that was just intended to get my mind off my problems turned into something like that.
This news story essentially amounts to the Taliban crying "C'mon guys! Play fair!"
Don't get me wrong, the news story is quite legit, it just sounds like the kids playing cowboys and indians in the playground.
Distance isn't the problem. The SM-3 is a multi-stage missile and was already above it's published service ceiling for this test.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-3
The problem with hitting a satellite is velocity. Specifically closing velocity. With the kinetic warhead traveling at the speeds that it is capable of and the satellite orbiting around 17,000 mph, closing velocity was up around 22,000 mph. Altitude can always be achieved just by changing the booster series and fuels. Having a guided warhead being able to adapt to and intercept a target moving that fast is the real problem.
I think the capability was soundly demonstrated and while some may think it was a mistake, the BMD system has roots in a previous system that dates back to 1995-96. This capability has been in the hands of the Navy for a while now just no reason to use it or give away what cards were being held in our hand. It was also being developed at that time when we signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which not only said we wouldn't develop any new ballistic missiles but we also wouldn't develop a defensive system against ballistic missiles. As far as I know, that treaty is still in place and this is a direct violation of that treaty. Just goes to show how much the Navy cares about foreign policy. Especially since it can park "90,000 tons of diplomacy" off of any shore and have it accompanied by a battle group with enough firepower to put any country that opposes the U.S. back into the stone age.
The author of the article describes the "smell" and relates it to certain kinds of welding.
Most of the welding I have done that has a "sweet, metallic smell" has been done with a gas welder. Flux welding stinks something awful! But the gases, depending on what gases are used, can have a very pleasant smell. You have to watch it though 'cause as nice as it might smell, it'll still make you woozie and probably causes dain bramage.
But the smell comes from the oxidation of the metal used in the welder and the super heated gases used to insulate the welding from the atmosphere. Most of the gases used in welding are found in space in very minute amounts but they are there. The Sun is also made up of a portion of various minerals and metals used in welding like iron, carbon, chromium, nickel, oxygen and silicon. If the sun is pumping out all kinds of stuff like that at extreme heat levels, it makes sense that it would cause space to have a "smell" similar to gas welding fumes.
I feel old.
I can remember a time when I could actually load a page that was nothing but actual content that was relevant to what I was looking for. No one was trying to sell me anything or profit from my experience. Nor was there any kind of extortion being propagated on the pages I was viewing just because someone thought it was "ethical" for them to gain profit from information that they willingly published on a website and I needed and asked for and was provided.
See, the Internet was conceived as the most powerful tool in the world. It is a medium for a FREE exchange of information. How this bastardized commercialization of a tool so powerful it can harness the entirety of human knowledge and make it so readily available you don't even have to get out of bed to use it has demonized and raped the collective knowledge of the human race for profit is where the real crime is.
It's not the fact that some slobbering idiot of a spammer wants to flood my Inbox with emails that never even get opened. It's not the fact that some moron Russian scripter in Europe constantly registers bogus accounts on my Internet based forums that I pay for and are not supported by one red cent of ad revenue just so he/she can profit from my use of my private sites paid for by my private, hard earned money. It's not the constant barrage of ads on sites where the whole goal was to gain insane levels of readership and now they cannot support the financial demand that those insane levels require to support so they had to turn to ad revenue.
No, it's none of that that is the issue. The issue is that while TV and Radio are consumer products intended that way from the start, they cannot be compared to the Internet. The only resources my TV and radio use are my actual, physical TV and radio and the electricity I use to power them. I give no resources to the companies broadcasting on the airwaves. If I want to partake in those activities, I need the hardware to listen in. The advertisers have to pay for usage of the broadcaster's equipment to get their message to me so I will listen to it and buy whatever half-assed crap they are peddling. Why do the brroadcasters get to profit from others using their equipment to get their ads out to me? Why is it ok for the ad people to not be able to exploit the broadcasters but it's just fine and dandy for them to exploit me and my personal hardware for their gains? When do I see a profit for their financial gains from using my hardware to broadcast their content? I mean, you wouldn't think of going to work for free so your boss can make millions off of your knowledge and abilities while you struggle to eat in abject poverty, right? You work for a piece of that pie 'cause you have an advantage they need. Well, I have an advantage in my computer systems that they need and if they are going to profit from it I sure as hell want a cut of the pie too. If you don't pay your electric bill, what happens? If you don't pay your phone bill, what happens? If you don't pay your rent, what happens? If you don't pay your service provider bill, what happens? You lose access to those goods or services until reasonable financial arrangements can be made, then access is restored. Well I have goods and services that they want access to and until I see a check for my rendered goods and services, they will not be allowed access to those goods and services until reasonable financial arrangements can be made. Preferably in the form of a blank check.
The Internet though? No, not the same deal. I need to be much more committed to use it. I have to buy my own computer and the associated resources that go with it including my operating system, my storage space, my memory and even my CPU cycles. I own them and bought them for my use as I see fit and where my needs arise. Now I have to deal with some weaselly little scourge of an ad company telling me I'm stealing from them? Who the hell are you!? I PAID for my system! I USE my system for what I want. I DON'T want your ads! So I install software that shuts yo
A movie will not scare me at all. Most horror movies that get pawned off as horror use simple parlor tricks like flashing lights, loud sounds, loud music and fast movement to give the audience a thrill. There is no real horror in a movie anymore. There is no sense of impending doom that keeps you on your toes and the hair on the back of your neck standing up. Even with surround sound and a complete multi-channel soundtrack, the movies just don't do it anymore. The mystique is gone.
Now a video game, think about it. They have the same surrounding, multi-channel soundtrack and you are usually sitting within inches of a screen that will fill your entire field of vision and unlike the movies, you have to make decisions that directly impact the outcome of the game. In a movie theater, you are sitting on your butt stuffing your face with popcorn and candy in a cushy chair, usually with a person next to you and thinking about how much you have to pee because you polished off that $16 64 oz soda. The video game, you are usually not eating anything because it requires both hands and you need to concentrate because you are looking for clues to attain your next goal in the game. In a movie all you have to focus on is what alien or monster or whatever is gonna jump out next. If you are concentrating of accomplishing a task in a game, a monster jumping out and trying to cause you harm is unnerving. Add to that the music and sound effects and the fact that your monitor is filling your entire field of vision and you get buried in the game and you become part of it.
It amounts to sensory overload and your brain gets into fight or flight mode when it's trying to process all that information. Consequently when a flaming skull comes flying at you out of the fog, you bug out because it's just doubled the amount of sensory input you received and your brain is in self-preservation mode. your adrenalin spikes, your heart rate goes up and if you are like me, you yell profanities at the game and start pushing mouse and keyboard buttons harder than you need to. I don't ever recall getting those sensations in a movie theater. There is just too much information not related to the topic of the movie to distract you. A video game gives you the ability minimize those distractions by shrinking the environment in which you are interacting with the video game. It's hard to be scared in a movie theater full of silly, screaming teenage girls jumping and holding on to equally silly, laughing teenage boys. Now, in your home, in a dark room with nothing but your and your glowing box of a monitor, yeah, that'll spook you out.
It's not really the consumer market that drives new hardware development. I mean, yes, we would all like to believe that in some way, our own geeky little world has a greater impact than Step number 5: Profit but it doesn't. Look at the latest and greatest technology out there. It is insanely fast but also insanely expensive and often, financially out of reach of the average consumer.
So who buys that new hardware? Well, no one specifically buys individual processors or memory chips or graphics cards or what have you. Alot of the new technology gets integrated into large scale computer systems at giant corporations that have IT budgets the rival most 3rd world GDP's. They can afford the technology and often times, they are working with cutting edge equipment because the computing demands they have are much greater than that of your average gamer.
Another place that faster, bigger, badder technology gets employed is by the companies that make those large scale computer systems. Many companies now are getting into the clustered server and blade server markets and driving technology there. Then there are the companies offering specific solutions like Sun Microsystems that build their own hardware to a certain extend and they are driving development also. Everybody jokes about Beowulf clusters, mainframes and so on. You know what though? At several hundred grand for a Beowulf cluster with only 250 nodes but technology out the wazoo, there is a market driven aspect there that dwarfs what Joe Blow in his basement LAN-party server has. Many companies are utilizing these new, managed and multi-threaded ideas to make mainframes that are faster and more capable than anyone could have imagined back in the days of Big Blue and WANG.
Yeah, a $100 laptop is not going kill Moore's Law, it's going to fuel the fire behind it. The laptops may be barely adequate but they will fuel progress in those 3rd world countries. It won't be long before someone figures out how cluster a pile of those laptops and build themselves a pretty bad-ass computer system.
That paper does nothing, as others have already said, but tell us there there are social classes among people. It's a typical high school social experiment with the different cliques. The paper does nothing of any value beyond giving a short and over-simplifying explanation/history of MySpace and Facebook.
For real social commentary and study, I would have been more interested to see a multi-year study that showed a group of high school students from all social cliques that tracked usage and content of the personal sites over say 6-8 years to see how far in to life those social cliques extend.
All this article has done is reinforce the fact that people congregate with other people with like interests. So naturally, if I'm a "freak/geek" and all of my friends are "freaks" and "geeks" and they hang out on MySpace then why would I want to hang out on Facebook with a bunch of "jocks" who have dissimilar interests and little in common with me? This is common sense, not a ground breaking social study.
Furthermore, the author continues on to use this "disparity" in common use between several sites to show demographic trends which really don't correlate at all. Especially since the author is trying to use the information and "collected data" to show how different social classes use different websites. This is not really shown at all. There is no basis of evidence that the "freaks and geeks" that use MySpace are in a lower societal class. Nor do they show that Facebook has provided a higher earning and networking potential for uses to validate the claim that they are from a higher social class. The author is using inference falsely to show a class separation with no factual support other than essentially "The people on MySpace are weird and not as "beautiful" as the people on Facebook so they must be poor." It's an asinine argument and if that paper was written for course credit, I hope they didn't get a decent grade. If it was written as a professional document for a publication then "ethnographic research " is either a joke science or someone needs to read articles submitted for publication more carefully.
I feel dumber for wading through that article and I honestly want those 10 minutes of my life back.
It doesn't get much easier because everyone is different and different people interpret things differently. What does get easier is how you react to those interpretations. That takes practice and experience. That only comes with time. Many posters have already stated that.
Things I have taken away from my similar experiences might be of some help. I have three major things to look at that will make my presentation of my idea more efficient in a sense.
First off, since all non-technical people are different, you have to know how to read people. This is not easy. I've spent a good deal of time just sitting back and listening to people, watching mannerisms and interactions. You start to pick up on behavioral patterns. This isn't always an easy thing to do for many people. However, people fascinate me and I can watch people for hours. One of the best places to do it is a bar. Sit in a corner where you can see most of the bar and just watch people. A bar is where people will be the most deceitful about who they are to gain...well, you know what they are looking for, it doesn't have to be spelled out. Anyhow, you can learn to pick up just from body language who is uncomfortable, nervous, speculative, wary and of course deceitful. It actually transfers to a work environment because picking up a date in a bar is just like trying to wrestle office politics and gain favor from the higher-ups. The same body language, facial expressions and vocal cues are there. You just have to know how to look for them. If you see people are confused, bored or put off by your presentation, change it up right then and there. Don't keep going to the end. At that point, they will feel like they already wasted enough time and they want out of the uncomfortable conference room chair ASAP. Not good for your presentation and not good for you!
Make your presentation interesting. Engage your audience. This is not easy to do and you have to keep it professional. The easiest way to do this is to play to their sensibilities. They don't understand processors and materials and graphical displays and such. They understand money, personnel concerns, the bottom line and just general business health. They pay you to understand the technical stuff for them so they don't have to worry about it. Do you homework before your presentation. Look past the technical stuff and show them where the savings will be and what the benefits will be. Give them an idea of how long it will take for positive results to be noticeable. You don't need to have a detailed technical view. Your job is to understand that and then tell them what they need to do and why they should do it. They don't want to know how they should do it, that's why they hired you. Tell them why they should do it. If they want to know what they will have to do to do it, give them a high level view and answer questions. If you can speak to them about what needs to be done in a language they can understand, they will be much more trusting to let you do your thing because it will be obvious to them that you know your job and understand the business. That's all they want. A kick-ass team player.
Sometimes you can't get around technical stuff and they need to know about it and understand it without a shadow of a doubt. I find that in instances like this, demonstrations work best. Demonstrations give visual representation of what is going on and how things work. People tend to understand a complex idea better if they can see it in action. It may take a bit more preparation but the warm-fuzzy it can give will shave tons of time off of your project time and even your development cycle. It also helps because a demonstration is entirely engaging. Something is happening to keep attention and they will look at what you are doing. They will ask questions and the best thing you can do is answer as many question as you can as they come up. If you know the question will be answered later in the presentation, tell them something like "Hey now, don't jump ahead to the good parts!" or something equally witt
Several others have already said that SysAdmins are only as good as the rules and management that constrains them. Then again, there is the personality issue.
I am a SysAdmin myself like many on Slashdot. However, I do SysAdmin work on two different levels. At my day job, I manage gigantic enterprise class data systems with clustered servers for everything from distributed processing to my Oracle 10g RAC cluster. However, I also do work on the side in my spare time for small businesses and friends in the area. I do everything from some simple web development to distributed networks for file and application sharing. I've been given compliments and complaints but the compliments far outweigh the complains.
What I have heard most and that I like to hear is that people like to deal with me. They like to have me answer thier help desk calls because they know it will get fixed correctly and as fast as humanly possible. I like having that reputation and professional respect. Because of that, I don't have to fight with a user or management when I say I need time to figure out an issue or stand up a system. Does that make me a good SysAdmin? I dunno. I think it makes me a good employee. Then again, I get the same compliments from my small business customers and friends who would rather call me for help with their DSL account or a piece of troublesome software than any help line.
Given that, I think that a SysAdmin is an employee just like everyone else. Because of that, we shouldn't be venerated above others even though we are an employee with a special job. A SysAdmin allows other employees to be productive. If the SysAdmin isn't doing the job they have to do, then the company as a whole suffers. I suppose this is where the 'root is god' can get out of hand. When an entire company's infrastructure depends on the work of a few people, that's a high stress deal. Sometimes it gets to people. Bottom line though, we are all employees and just like the loud guy at the water cooler that nobody wants to hang around with, if we aren't profession and approachable like other employees, we are hurting ourselves. SysAdmins have to be computer geniuses, we have to be business oriented, we have to be people people and we have to be avaialable and approachable. It is not an easy task, believe me, I know! However, we all need to have a certain degree of professionalism when dealing with our customer base (users). We SysAdmins are our own downfall. The poor perception by the slobbering masses of users is our own fault. We can change it. While we do understand that our companies would not survive without us, it is not our place to make it so painfully obvious. The users don't care how great we think we are or even how great we are. They just want thier problems fixed quickly so they can get back to being how great they are. If we can just appease that desire from the users, I think that's what would make a good SysAdmin.
I think you are missing the point.
You don't need to learn to seperate your hobbies from your skills. I would venture to say that that is the worst thing you can do. A hobby is work that you don't get paid to do. If you enjoy your hobby and you are passionate about it, why can't you make a living at it too and then be passionate about your job? Employers want employees that enjoy coming to work. That's why they offer so many incentives like day-care, flexible schedules, cafeterias, company transportation, discount programs, recreational activities and so on and so forth. They WANT you to LIKE to come to work. They don't want it to be difficult for you to come to work. Why do they want all that? Because a happy employee is a productive employee that contributes to the good of the compnay which benefits everyone, including the employee.
If you chose to seperate your hobbies from your skills, that's up to you. However, if you have developed skills then it's obvious that maybe, at one point, enjoyed those skills enough to focus on them. So if you are artificailly limiting yourself by confining your skills to work, you must find your hobbies just as dreadful. Mainly because you aren't as skilled at your hobbies as you are at your work which is based on skills you likely enjoy more.
IT is a hobby and a job for me. I didn't get into it because it was something that I could stand doing for decades. I got into it because I really enjoyed working with the computers. I also saw a good deal of earning potential that could support my other expensive hobbies and the skill sets I could pick up were also transferrable to my other hobbies. Also, no matter how much I know, no matter how much experience I have, there is ALWAYS something new around the corner to discover and learn about.
There is a tremendous potential for growth in any profession as long as you are willing to look past your nose that you are seemingly keeping on the grind stone. You should take it off every once in a while. You might see things for what they really are. Afterall, if you keep your head down and grinding away, how are you ever going to take a look and see all the opportunities around you? Don't go through life with such large, self-induced blinders on. You are missing way too much!
Your only limitations on what you can do is what kind of effort and time you are willing to invest. Someone already mentioned hobbies. That is a great place to start. It's probably what got you into IT in the first place anyway. 20 years ago, IT was an unheard of term and computers were still a new fangled thingamabob that nobody really had a good clue on what to do with them. Well, from a business application standpoint. Most of the people that were getting in to them were either college graduates or hobbyists. Most college kids got into computers because they were fun.
So what I would do is look for something you enjoy doing that is completely NOT like IT work. Someone mentioned fixing cars. That can be a good application of troubleshooting skills. If you are good at repairing computers then you would likely be good at some sort of detail work also. My father plans to build furniture when he retires in a couple of years. He's a woodworker as a hobbyist and enjoys it. So rather than fill his house with furniture, he's going to build pieces and sell them either online or at local craft fairs/flea markets.
Personally, I have quite a few hobbys that would work out for me. I already work part time doing diesel mechanics and fleet maintenance. It's good money and where the IT level of money is in automotive/mechanical repair. However, what I would enjoy doing more is working for a friend of mine fabricating body panels for race cars and custom work. It's very enjoyable and people are less sensitive and not easily offended by guys being guys. I wouldn't mind doing something with audio/video equipment installation either in cars or homes/professional offices. I have skills that I can apply to all these areas.
Another option is to do something outside. Landscaping, unless you are doing the design, is fairly simple work, just tedious and back-breaking. However, a person with professional experience and/or a degree will usually be a manager or supervisor who has peons to do the work for him. If you are up for it, the Parks Service in many states and even at the federal level is always looking for people. There are plenty of other outside jobs to do.
But me, I like my IT work. I enjoy the challenges that it brings and I actually enjoy troubleshooting. It pays well enough and some days I can't believe I get paid to do the work I do. I hope you find that place for you again. A wise man once said to me "If you can't have fun at what you are doing, go the hell home, we don't want you here." He was a mere furniture mover for a moving company. He loved his job and he did it the best he could every day. I asked him if had a choice, would he do it again and his response was "Without a doubt, yes!" Basically, it's not what you do for a living that makes the difference, it's how you do it. I've always told everyone I know, "The measure of a man is not in his paycheck. A job is a job, it doesn't matter what you do, as long as it pays the bills, it's all good. Some jobs just pay more bills than others." Just be glad you have luxury of a job to consider leaving. I have had many friends and colleagues who were forced out of thier employment and into a different field of work due to down-sizing and layoffs.
Granted, it's not the ever popular strategy or multi-player online game that Slashdotters like so much. However, there is an economy and while with unlimited time, the game could be beaten fairly quickly, it does have merits. For one thing, the game does not stop being fun after it has been beaten. There are plenty of challenges and cars to choose from and if you happen to be stranded with Player 2, you would have a good deal of options there too.
The other options I would take are Civilization II or even SimCity. I have a game called Cossacks that is immensely fun and no matter how many times I play it, it doesn't get old. It ends up eating away hours of my life and usually makes me late for work the next day due to lack of sleep. First person shooters and multi-player games though, I don't think they would cut it. AI is only so good and without the online links, those games get old, quick.
The logic is not fatally flawed and you are committing a straw man.
My point was, the laws of this country state that the infingement of copyright laws is a deprivation of freedoms and rights afforded to the owner of the copyright. The argument concerning mom and her statement about bridges and jumping illustrates the point very well. It essentially states that just because the majority violates the law, that does not make it acceptable to violate the law. Whether you look at it from a moral/ethical standpoint or a legal standpoint, a law is put there to maintain an assemblance of order. If the law is broken, there is no order.
You state that the reasons the law should be taken off the books is because it is not enforcable and thusly unjust. Yet you have not given any point or proof that shows that the law is unjust. The only thing you have stated so far is that you don't get to have free access to the results of somebody else's hard work, therefore it is an unjust law. You neglect to consider who the laws were made for, the intellectual property holder.
Just because the law is not enforcable does not mean it is not useful. It is very difficult to enforce the law. Enforcing the law should not include crippling electronics in homes and businesses. That is a deprivation of freedom. The actions being taken by the RIAA are bastardizing the law in an effort to increase/protect profits. The laws still have merit because it provides recourse for an intellectual property holder to prosecute someone who has violated their rights to their work. Without that avenue for justice, what should an artist do if someone obtains a copy of their work and starts selling it on the street outside of a concert venue? What recourse would the artist have when someone copies his hard work and profits from it without paying royalties? There is no easy answer. Without the copyright laws, there is no basis for a case. Sure, the artist could sue but without laws, it is open to interpretation of a judge/jury. He could attack the man but then, there are laws in place to deter that. Then again, there are also laws in place concerning theft of property.
So the copyright laws are just and it is difficult to prosecute a person who has copied media as a criminal for theft of intellectual property. It is difficult to prosecute because guilt needs to be proven and there is very little concrete evidence to put someone away for stealing intellectual propety. There are also too many legal loopholes to show reasonable doubt and that's all that is needed for someone to get away with a crime. With the copyright law in place, there is legal recourse because the only concrete evidence needed is the actual copies of the work. If that exists and they are not authorized copies, the law is violated and a criminal proceeding can ensue.
I'm sorry but in this case, Mom's logic does apply because the needs of the majority do not outweigh the needs of the one. Afterall, when you go to work, you use your knowledge and skills to provide solutions to your company so that they can be profitable. You in turn get paid for your hard work. You chose your profession. So did the copyright holders. Are they not entitled to see gains for thier hardwork also? Do they have to live in a box on the street corner just because you didn't want to buy a CD or a piece of software? Your whole argument is based on fainess and justice. How is that situation fair or just?