Check what out? There is nothing to see unless you sign up. So you are basically saying: "Go join facebook to decide whether you want to join facebook."??
You are right, I am surprised. Surprised by the level of idiocy.
Why exactly should I have to join facebook to see the information facebook users have made 'public', anyway?
Virtually everyone I know with a computer uses Facebook
Of course they do. Because its like a contagious disease. If one friend starts putting crap on a website (remember geocities or angelfire or even myspace?) it was fine, because anyone he wanted could see it. They didn't ALL need to go get geocities accounts first?
But with facebook you DO. If you don't sign up, they can't see what the pictures or whatever that their friends/family actually want them to see. My father has a facebook account simply because my sister was too stupid to understand that everyone she wanted to see them would need a facebook account. And it was simpler for my father to join facebook, than to successfully explain to her why it was stupid. Once half your friends on the thing it becomes hard to communicate with them off of it... they keep droning on about how they've put such and such on facebook... the address to the party, the schedule for the soccer league, their baby pics... you get excluded... its like being the only person without an email address.
Except with email you can pick your provider. So you can find one with Terms of Service you actually agree to... or even run your own.
So far I don't have a facebook account, and I have no desire to get one. I don't remotely agree to their terms of service. I'm sure sooner or later some fucktard is going to put something up on facebook that I truly do need to see, and getting them to publish the information in an actually appropriate manner will be futile, and at that point facebook will get me too... but I've got my fingers crossed they'll die off and be replaced by the next social-idiots-fad before it happens.
"Don't do that" will only work after "that" has been done. People aren't going to be careful about not doing something which will only result in a "Don't do that, pretty please?" response. "Don't do that or you will be fired!" makes people WANT to actively avoid doing whatever "that" is.
Do you fire your top salesman because he forgot to lock his office door before he went home?
A few months of a policy like that and you'll have a bunch of mediocre salesmen with excellent adherence to a door locking policy. At least when your business folds, you'll know it wasn't due to a loss incurred as a result of an unlocked door.
Now lets rejoin the real world.
"Don't do that or you will be fired" only works against employees low on the totem pole with unspecialized skillsets -- people who are very easily replaced. To everyone else it ranges from hollow threat to a joke.
Anyone with a specialized skillset, who is difficult to replace, or otherwise has real value to the company isn't going to be fired over violating some dippy IT policy, especially if there was no actual harm. e.g. the salesman might be fired if his office is robbed, the company lost important data, and needs to make an example of someone to show that they are doing something, and appease the shareholders. But failing an actual catastrophe, the WORST they will ever do is say 'Don't do that, pretty please?'
It sounds like all they did was allow you to store a Hibernate to Disk snapshot of your system at startup before anything else gets done- which is technically cheating. ANYTHING can boot up in about 4 or seconds that way.:-D
Strange... my system takes MUCH LONGER to wake from hibernate than it does from a cold boot. I get some black/green screen that says 'resuming windows' for a few seconds, and then black for up to a minute, then the login screen where I enter my password, then my desktop comes up but the hard drive is working so hard that the system is basically unusable for another minute or two.
On the upside all my programs and windows and documents are right where I left them... but its not faster.
And worst of all about half the time when it gets to the login screen, it hasn't bothered to turn on power to the usb ports or something, because the keyboard and mouse are dead. So I have to power it off via the switch, and then power it back on -- it still ultimately resumes correctly, but it adds another minute or so.
I'd be much happier if I could resolve that issue though.
And further more this jump to wide screen really irks me, as my 19" CRT 1280x1024 (1310720) has more pixels then my 19" LCD wide screen 1440x900 (1296000).
Agreed.
19" widescreens are just stupid, especialy if you've already had 19" 4:3 unit. When my 19" Viewsonic VP930b (1280x124 4:3 PVA panel) died last week, after considerable research, I replaced it with a 24", the new HP LP2475w (1920x1200, 16:10, IPS panel). I am entirely impressed with it.
One thing I do find rather amusing is that it supports the new "DisplayPort" input type. The new Apple laptops feature it as well, albeit with a mini-DisplayPort.
Interestingly, there currently appears to be no adapter available to go from mini-DisplayPort to a fullsize DisplayPort. Hopefully, when Apple refreshes their Cinema displays with a DisplayPort, they'll release an adapter.
While it's highly likely that a Vista install is larger than an XP install, it's unlikely that it's nearly 10GB larger.
Looking JUST at "c:\windows": Vista Ultimate x64 weighs in on my system at 20.5GB. My XP Pro install weighs in at 2.2GB.
Looking just at "c:\windows\system32": Vista Ultimate x64 weighs in at 3.24GB, XP Pro weighs in at 650MB.
The bulk of the space is in the c:\windows\winsxs folder, which in my case is 12.5GB; but I've seen reports that even on a fresh install of Vista Home x32 + windows updates that this folder crosses 7GB.
I fully admit =my= windows folder sizes and these anecdotes aren't the last word on the subject, but trust me, Vista is easily 10GB larger than XP.
My kids have been playing with Mega Bloks for years. When you can buy big buckets of them for $20 when Lego costs $100 or more for the bigger sets, well, the choice is obvious.
Cheap = Good for parents
More != Better
Why do you hate your children? Megabloks don't hold together at all. You turn something upside down, or try and actually play with it, and it just falls apart. When I was a child I'd rather receive a small set of Lego than a big bucket of megabloks.
Yeah, because the first thing I am gonna think while running from a horde of zombies is, "Damn, I should go write a Slashdot journal entry about this".
Good point. But you can bet your ass that the twits on twitter will be tweeting...
"Zombies in the street. Gonna stay in tonight."... "Garbage stinks... better take it out."... "it bit me. Hertz pretty bad."... "Man TV sucks on Monday night. Watching Simpons reruns."... "Seems cold in here. Crankin the heat."... "I'm so hungry...lets see whats in the kitchen...!" "Hand ii coodaafination fafading.. fafegae"... "need bwrainsss brAaainzzs...."
I wouldn't use anything less than a 500GB drive for a machine today, whether laptop OR desktop, and the largest commercial SSD currently is a mere 128 GB.
The 'work' related documents section of my unit, including email comes in well under 30GB. And that includes a selection of ISOs, installers, and other 'large' files I keep around related to work.
So for me, a 32GB SSD is too small. A 64GB SSD is adequate. And a 128GB SSD will easily last me the life cycle of the laptop, for work. For personal use, yeah, I have music, movies, games, etc, and 500GB is probably the minimum I'd consider on my 'primary personal computer'. (As it is I have 2TB (4x 500GB drives, 2 internal, and 2 external esata (and usually powered off).
But a laptop that's mostly for work? Anything over 64GB is fine.
Additionally, on our office PCs the average hard drive use (thanks to being heavily into things like citrix etc) is less than 10GB. A sales rep with a 32GB SSD laptop would be just fine, as would nearly all office admin staff and most execs. The price of SSD only has to come down a bit more for it to be worth it for us to start using them... HD fails are easily the biggest issue with have with laptops, and among the biggest issues we have with the desktops too.
I call shenanigans on this. I'm running on a 32Gb SSD using XP pro with all the trimmings...
You call shenanigans on his assessment of Vista (on a unit that you can't install XP Pro on because the drivers aren't available) by giving a counter example that uses XP?
The US Military couldn't find that lost nuke because I already salvaged it and will use the components to build something far more dangerous than a conventional nuclear bomb.
With this device I will have leaders the world over cower in abject terror as I take command of the world throgh them.
Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?
At the end of the day, it's a piece of paper, that everyone is expected to have. A college degree used to be something prestigious that few people achieved, now they crank them out by tens of thousands....
Don't fool yourself, unless you're going for a post-graduate program, you're not getting anything better (and often much worse) than you would from the college in your home town.
You seem to have completely missed the point of my post.
I agree. As someone deals with viruses on an almost daily basis I suggest avast and spybot to detect (if not remove) viruses. These two don't catch them all, but they usually make the system usable enough to remove the rest (the pre-boot avast check is especially useful). Also from my own experience: beware kaspersky! While it is good at preventing infections, my experience with virus ridden systems is that it makes them unbootable. Various other anti-malware/virus tools are hit and miss, and while detection has improved in programs like mcafee, I have found they still require manual removal.
Installing and performing multiple scans in multiple AV products takes longer than just reinstalling windows on MOST PCs. And reinstalling windows misses less and cleans out general windows rot too. If you're a large enough company that you have recovery images, it takes even less time.
But it takes me maybe 3.5 hours to backup key data, then repartition, reformat, install XPSP3, drivers, configure the network identification, printers, and install Office, filemaker, citrix xenapp client, java runtime, flash, acrobat reader, firefox, our remote support software, configure email, and perform updates (including ie7), restore data, configure email, etc on one of our office PCs. On machines where we have a good restore image, we can wipe and image in an hour-ish, including data backup and restore.
It easily takes 8+ hours to run an AVG scan, avast scan, spybot scans, and then manually troubleshoot and remove the stuff that's left, and takes a miniumum of 3-4 hours.
Things like credit card loans or car loans can actually be better when consolidated because they could be just as variable.
Consolidating credit card debt is nearly always a good idea, given those things usually just skirt the legal limits, and often run 18%+. Truly, the key is not to go into credit card debt in the first place... but once that ship has sailed and you are in debt, consolidating to a loan with a better interest rate should be a no-brainer.
If you want to pay for a brand name college, I'm not going to stop you. Their are plenty of schools like the University of Minnesota that have great engineering programs and although I can't walk into an interview and drop a name like MIT, I don't mind proving I'm worth what you want to pay.
The advantages of a brand name school have almost -nothing- to do with the quality of the education itself.
The advantages are simply:
1) It may get you interviews over someone else, due to brand name recognition, for example he might shortlist the one from MIT over a similar candidate from from U. of Minnesota. If he finds a satisfactory canditate from that short-list, you might never get the interview.
2) The more prestigious the school, the more prestigious the -other- students tend to be. And who you met there that you might not otherwise have met is usually far more valuable than what you learned there that you might not otherwise have learned.
IT isn't quite as 'who you know not what you know' as politics or law, but IT has its celebrities and movers and shakers too, and knowing someone high in the ranks at Google or Sun or Apple or IBM or wherever still opens a lot of doors. Your choice of school impacts your odds of knowing the next generation of these people, or meeting these people's kids (although again, unlike politics etc IT isn't nearly as dynastic...)
But then not everyone on slashdot is in IT either, not by a longshot.
I wonder how many Circuit Cities are not basically next door to Best Buy. This seems to be the strategy of expansion Circuit City used. Best Buy has a store, circuit city builds across the street. I guess this is good if one can compete on this basis, but really. How many appliances and stereos does a city really need? And might a better strategy for Circuit City be services a part of the City not served by Best Buy?
Perhaps surprisingly, this is a good strategy. Often both stores next to each other actually do better than they would have without the competition next door.
On the one hand, yes, they obviously are losing customers to the 'neighbor', but on the other hand far more people drive and come from much further away to shop there. On balance, though, it tends to work out to be a net win. The total extra traffic overshadows what they lose to the competition, and both do better.
Its the same reason many major cities have 'auto-malls' or all the wedding dress shops are on the same street, etc. Consumers head over to do all their comparison shopping in one localized area, preferring that to driving halfway across town to comparison shop, and then potentially having to drive back again if they decide to buy what they saw at the first place.
Electronics are the same. Put a best buy up, and it will do well... put a circuit city up next to it, and you have electronics store mecca that will attract buyers from much further away.
I just did. I differentiate between the two uses of time.
You can argue that there is no real difference all you like, but a) I'll still differentiate. b) I'll still think its sad and pathetic you don't/won't.
Sex is NEVER free. One way or another, men pay for sex, cash, gifts or time, ultimately there is no such thing a free fuck. One way or another, we are all "dirty assholes," even you.
If you are seriously going to equate the time and effort spent investing in a relationship with putting in some OT so you can nail someone at a brothel, then... well.. I feel sorry for you.
That changes color over time so you know when its time to replace, with a microchip that modifies its performance based on the age of the blades... don't get me started.
m not really very knowledgeable about every-day shaving (I have a beard, and I'm ashamed to say I've only ever shaved with a single-blade razor...), but are these surreal straight-out-of-the-onion razors actually any good?
The single blade bic razors that come in a bag and cost 50 cents each or something are utter and complete garbage. Gillete razors ARE infinitely superior...but it could be just the quality of the the blade, rather than the quantity. In any case I honestly don't think the new 5 blade system is any better than mach3. (I don't know if i ever tried the 2-blade.) And I recall that even with the mach3 it was a pain shaving around things like beards because of all the blades... so the new razors 6th blade, the single 'precision' blade on the back is actually a welcome addition.
I haven't bothered with the vibrating systems myself, yet.
Additionally, saying classical music is a niche is incredibly ridicules considering the amount of radio stations, television channels etc. that exist for it.
Classical music accounts for about 3% of all music sales. Its a niche market. Deal with it.
Music as a whole is a big market, so even 3% is enough to support radio, etc, but its still a tiny niche.
Interestingly, classic music is experiencing a bit of a comeback with digital downloads, forming almost 12% of iTunes music digital downloads (which is itself still a small piece of the whole pie, but still classical is doing well here, well above the 3% it manages overall.)
Except it doesn't belong to religion either. It belongs to whoever wants it.
Whatever. So then the state should give to them. ALL of them. By saying it doesn't give a SHIT who calls themselves married. All that matters as far as the state is concerned is who is registered for various partner status benefits.
The State's needs are not entirely satisfied by "separate but equal". There's plenty of precedent for that. Creating a class of second class citizens in un American. Sorry, but we really can't have that.
What is this all about? The state doesn't recognize 'separate but equal' because the state won't recognize marriage AT ALL. EVERYBODY is either has a registered partner or they don't, and that is the ONLY status the state recognizes. Being 'married' will be exactly as relevant to the state as being a 'catholic' or being a 'boy scout' or a 'bff - best friend forever' -- absolutely nothing.
Yes there is. Because making up a different word to keep some nutty kooks happy puts gay people in a lower class.
No. It puts EVERYONE in the same class. And if a gay couple wants to be 'married' then all they have to do is find a church or other group willing to marry them. Or they can start their own gay group and then get married within THAT. The state has no say or interest in the matter. It doesn't define 'married' or confer any rights or priviledges to 'married' people, any more than it does 'best friends'.
Creating second class citizens as you are supporting *is* the state deciding that. The state saying, "fuck all you loons, everyone can get married" would actually accomplish what you claim to want.
The state WOULD BE saying everyone can get married, indirectly. By not recognizing 'marriage' at all at the state level then there would be nothing stopping anyone from getting "married".
The state banning some people from getting married based on the ignorant hatred of religious loons does the opposite to the extreme.
Who exactly do you think is banned from getting married if the state decides not to recognize marriage at all, and leaves the rites and ceremony up to the people to decide for and amongst themselves. Think about it... if the state didn't recognize marriage at all then the word would have no "legal" meaning. The only meaning left would be that conferred on it by non-state entitites.
A congregation of any sort (christian, gay hippy, mormon whatever...) wanted to marry people and provide marriage certificates they could without restraint or interference from the state. Two people could draw a marriage certificate and hang it on the wall if they wanted to for all the state cared. Of course the local church might not recognize it... but if they don't belong to that church then so what? And in any case, what does the state care?
If you re-read my post, you'll see that I was essentially asked what the difference between:
"writing software to pay the rent" and being "coerced into the sex trade, and 'consenting' to sex to survive"
He argued they were the same thing, since in both cases they were doing the something they didn't much care for, for the money they needed.
And my response was that they were the same thing the way a slap and a rape are the same thing. Sure they are BOTH an assault on someone, so they are the same right? Of course not, there is a huge disparity.
Same level of disparity is present in his example.
I never actually said anything like having sex with someone in the sex trade amounted to rape.
However, upon reflection, I don't think someone in a position where they are only consenting to sex to survive amounts to real consent. Which makes taking advantage of someone in that situation, at least morally, equivalent to rape.
Once upon a time we saw that laborers had to choose between working in coal mines 20 hours a day for starvation wages without safety equipment or starve to death. We don't have that situation anymore. No one is allowed to employ you under those conditions. Its blatant exploitation and its illega.
The same sort of thinking should be applied to the sex trade. I already conceded in my original post that I could envision situations where the sex trade should not be criminalized. However, 'survival sex' should illegal, without question.
Surely you're not a Feminazi who calls *all* sex between a man and a woman rape?
Slashdot Mirror
Go check out Facebook. You might be surprised.
Check what out? There is nothing to see unless you sign up. So you are basically saying: "Go join facebook to decide whether you want to join facebook."??
You are right, I am surprised. Surprised by the level of idiocy.
Why exactly should I have to join facebook to see the information facebook users have made 'public', anyway?
Virtually everyone I know with a computer uses Facebook
Of course they do. Because its like a contagious disease. If one friend starts putting crap on a website (remember geocities or angelfire or even myspace?) it was fine, because anyone he wanted could see it. They didn't ALL need to go get geocities accounts first?
But with facebook you DO. If you don't sign up, they can't see what the pictures or whatever that their friends/family actually want them to see. My father has a facebook account simply because my sister was too stupid to understand that everyone she wanted to see them would need a facebook account. And it was simpler for my father to join facebook, than to successfully explain to her why it was stupid. Once half your friends on the thing it becomes hard to communicate with them off of it... they keep droning on about how they've put such and such on facebook... the address to the party, the schedule for the soccer league, their baby pics... you get excluded... its like being the only person without an email address.
Except with email you can pick your provider. So you can find one with Terms of Service you actually agree to... or even run your own.
So far I don't have a facebook account, and I have no desire to get one. I don't remotely agree to their terms of service. I'm sure sooner or later some fucktard is going to put something up on facebook that I truly do need to see, and getting them to publish the information in an actually appropriate manner will be futile, and at that point facebook will get me too... but I've got my fingers crossed they'll die off and be replaced by the next social-idiots-fad before it happens.
"Don't do that" will only work after "that" has been done. People aren't going to be careful about not doing something which will only result in a "Don't do that, pretty please?" response. "Don't do that or you will be fired!" makes people WANT to actively avoid doing whatever "that" is.
Do you fire your top salesman because he forgot to lock his office door before he went home?
A few months of a policy like that and you'll have a bunch of mediocre salesmen with excellent adherence to a door locking policy. At least when your business folds, you'll know it wasn't due to a loss incurred as a result of an unlocked door.
Now lets rejoin the real world.
"Don't do that or you will be fired" only works against employees low on the totem pole with unspecialized skillsets -- people who are very easily replaced. To everyone else it ranges from hollow threat to a joke.
Anyone with a specialized skillset, who is difficult to replace, or otherwise has real value to the company isn't going to be fired over violating some dippy IT policy, especially if there was no actual harm. e.g. the salesman might be fired if his office is robbed, the company lost important data, and needs to make an example of someone to show that they are doing something, and appease the shareholders. But failing an actual catastrophe, the WORST they will ever do is say 'Don't do that, pretty please?'
It sounds like all they did was allow you to store a Hibernate to Disk snapshot of your system at startup before anything else gets done- which is technically cheating. ANYTHING can boot up in about 4 or seconds that way. :-D
Strange... my system takes MUCH LONGER to wake from hibernate than it does from a cold boot. I get some black/green screen that says 'resuming windows' for a few seconds, and then black for up to a minute, then the login screen where I enter my password, then my desktop comes up but the hard drive is working so hard that the system is basically unusable for another minute or two.
On the upside all my programs and windows and documents are right where I left them... but its not faster.
And worst of all about half the time when it gets to the login screen, it hasn't bothered to turn on power to the usb ports or something, because the keyboard and mouse are dead. So I have to power it off via the switch, and then power it back on -- it still ultimately resumes correctly, but it adds another minute or so.
I'd be much happier if I could resolve that issue though.
And further more this jump to wide screen really irks me, as my 19" CRT 1280x1024 (1310720) has more pixels then my 19" LCD wide screen 1440x900 (1296000).
Agreed.
19" widescreens are just stupid, especialy if you've already had 19" 4:3 unit. When my 19" Viewsonic VP930b (1280x124 4:3 PVA panel) died last week, after considerable research, I replaced it with a 24", the new HP LP2475w (1920x1200, 16:10, IPS panel). I am entirely impressed with it.
One thing I do find rather amusing is that it supports the new "DisplayPort" input type. The new Apple laptops feature it as well, albeit with a mini-DisplayPort.
Interestingly, there currently appears to be no adapter available to go from mini-DisplayPort to a fullsize DisplayPort. Hopefully, when Apple refreshes their Cinema displays with a DisplayPort, they'll release an adapter.
While it's highly likely that a Vista install is larger than an XP install, it's unlikely that it's nearly 10GB larger.
Looking JUST at "c:\windows":
Vista Ultimate x64 weighs in on my system at 20.5GB. My XP Pro install weighs in at 2.2GB.
Looking just at "c:\windows\system32":
Vista Ultimate x64 weighs in at 3.24GB, XP Pro weighs in at 650MB.
The bulk of the space is in the c:\windows\winsxs folder, which in my case is 12.5GB; but I've seen reports that even on a fresh install of Vista Home x32 + windows updates that this folder crosses 7GB.
I fully admit =my= windows folder sizes and these anecdotes aren't the last word on the subject, but trust me, Vista is easily 10GB larger than XP.
My kids have been playing with Mega Bloks for years. When you can buy big buckets of them for $20 when Lego costs $100 or more for the bigger sets, well, the choice is obvious.
Cheap = Good for parents
More != Better
Why do you hate your children? Megabloks don't hold together at all. You turn something upside down, or try and actually play with it, and it just falls apart. When I was a child I'd rather receive a small set of Lego than a big bucket of megabloks.
Yeah, because the first thing I am gonna think while running from a horde of zombies is, "Damn, I should go write a Slashdot journal entry about this".
Good point. But you can bet your ass that the twits on twitter will be tweeting...
"Zombies in the street. Gonna stay in tonight." ... ... ...
"Garbage stinks... better take it out."...
"it bit me. Hertz pretty bad."
"Man TV sucks on Monday night. Watching Simpons reruns."
"Seems cold in here. Crankin the heat."...
"I'm so hungry...lets see whats in the kitchen...!"
"Hand ii coodaafination fafading.. fafegae"...
"need bwrainsss brAaainzzs...."
I wouldn't use anything less than a 500GB drive for a machine today, whether laptop OR desktop, and the largest commercial SSD currently is a mere 128 GB.
The 'work' related documents section of my unit, including email comes in well under 30GB. And that includes a selection of ISOs, installers, and other 'large' files I keep around related to work.
So for me, a 32GB SSD is too small. A 64GB SSD is adequate. And a 128GB SSD will easily last me the life cycle of the laptop, for work. For personal use, yeah, I have music, movies, games, etc, and 500GB is probably the minimum I'd consider on my 'primary personal computer'. (As it is I have 2TB (4x 500GB drives, 2 internal, and 2 external esata (and usually powered off).
But a laptop that's mostly for work? Anything over 64GB is fine.
Additionally, on our office PCs the average hard drive use (thanks to being heavily into things like citrix etc) is less than 10GB. A sales rep with a 32GB SSD laptop would be just fine, as would nearly all office admin staff and most execs. The price of SSD only has to come down a bit more for it to be worth it for us to start using them... HD fails are easily the biggest issue with have with laptops, and among the biggest issues we have with the desktops too.
I call shenanigans on this. I'm running on a 32Gb SSD using XP pro with all the trimmings...
You call shenanigans on his assessment of Vista (on a unit that you can't install XP Pro on because the drivers aren't available) by giving a counter example that uses XP?
Fail.
The US Military couldn't find that lost nuke because I already salvaged it and will use the components to build something far more dangerous than a conventional nuclear bomb.
With this device I will have leaders the world over cower in abject terror as I take command of the world throgh them.
Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?
At the end of the day, it's a piece of paper, that everyone is expected to have. A college degree used to be something prestigious that few people achieved, now they crank them out by tens of thousands. ...
Don't fool yourself, unless you're going for a post-graduate program, you're not getting anything better (and often much worse) than you would from the college in your home town.
You seem to have completely missed the point of my post.
I agree. As someone deals with viruses on an almost daily basis I suggest avast and spybot to detect (if not remove) viruses. These two don't catch them all, but they usually make the system usable enough to remove the rest (the pre-boot avast check is especially useful). Also from my own experience: beware kaspersky! While it is good at preventing infections, my experience with virus ridden systems is that it makes them unbootable. Various other anti-malware/virus tools are hit and miss, and while detection has improved in programs like mcafee, I have found they still require manual removal.
Installing and performing multiple scans in multiple AV products takes longer than just reinstalling windows on MOST PCs. And reinstalling windows misses less and cleans out general windows rot too. If you're a large enough company that you have recovery images, it takes even less time.
But it takes me maybe 3.5 hours to backup key data, then repartition, reformat, install XPSP3, drivers, configure the network identification, printers, and install Office, filemaker, citrix xenapp client, java runtime, flash, acrobat reader, firefox, our remote support software, configure email, and perform updates (including ie7), restore data, configure email, etc on one of our office PCs. On machines where we have a good restore image, we can wipe and image in an hour-ish, including data backup and restore.
It easily takes 8+ hours to run an AVG scan, avast scan, spybot scans, and then manually troubleshoot and remove the stuff that's left, and takes a miniumum of 3-4 hours.
Things like credit card loans or car loans can actually be better when consolidated because they could be just as variable.
Consolidating credit card debt is nearly always a good idea, given those things usually just skirt the legal limits, and often run 18%+. Truly, the key is not to go into credit card debt in the first place... but once that ship has sailed and you are in debt, consolidating to a loan with a better interest rate should be a no-brainer.
If you want to pay for a brand name college, I'm not going to stop you. Their are plenty of schools like the University of Minnesota that have great engineering programs and although I can't walk into an interview and drop a name like MIT, I don't mind proving I'm worth what you want to pay.
The advantages of a brand name school have almost -nothing- to do with the quality of the education itself.
The advantages are simply:
1) It may get you interviews over someone else, due to brand name recognition, for example he might shortlist the one from MIT over a similar candidate from from U. of Minnesota. If he finds a satisfactory canditate from that short-list, you might never get the interview.
2) The more prestigious the school, the more prestigious the -other- students tend to be. And who you met there that you might not otherwise have met is usually far more valuable than what you learned there that you might not otherwise have learned.
IT isn't quite as 'who you know not what you know' as politics or law, but IT has its celebrities and movers and shakers too, and knowing someone high in the ranks at Google or Sun or Apple or IBM or wherever still opens a lot of doors. Your choice of school impacts your odds of knowing the next generation of these people, or meeting these people's kids (although again, unlike politics etc IT isn't nearly as dynastic...)
But then not everyone on slashdot is in IT either, not by a longshot.
I wonder how many Circuit Cities are not basically next door to Best Buy. This seems to be the strategy of expansion Circuit City used. Best Buy has a store, circuit city builds across the street. I guess this is good if one can compete on this basis, but really. How many appliances and stereos does a city really need? And might a better strategy for Circuit City be services a part of the City not served by Best Buy?
Perhaps surprisingly, this is a good strategy. Often both stores next to each other actually do better than they would have without the competition next door.
On the one hand, yes, they obviously are losing customers to the 'neighbor', but on the other hand far more people drive and come from much further away to shop there. On balance, though, it tends to work out to be a net win. The total extra traffic overshadows what they lose to the competition, and both do better.
Its the same reason many major cities have 'auto-malls' or all the wedding dress shops are on the same street, etc. Consumers head over to do all their comparison shopping in one localized area, preferring that to driving halfway across town to comparison shop, and then potentially having to drive back again if they decide to buy what they saw at the first place.
Electronics are the same. Put a best buy up, and it will do well... put a circuit city up next to it, and you have electronics store mecca that will attract buyers from much further away.
You just can't wipe it away.
I just did. I differentiate between the two uses of time.
You can argue that there is no real difference all you like, but
a) I'll still differentiate.
b) I'll still think its sad and pathetic you don't/won't.
Look at your own word choice, it is revealing -- "investing."
That you brought it up reveals more about you than me. I distinguish between economic and other investments even if the terminology overlaps.
Lol, your bias is showing.
As is yours.
Sex is NEVER free. One way or another, men pay for sex, cash, gifts or time, ultimately there is no such thing a free fuck. One way or another, we are all "dirty assholes," even you.
If you are seriously going to equate the time and effort spent investing in a relationship with putting in some OT so you can nail someone at a brothel, then... well.. I feel sorry for you.
... and an aloe strip!
That changes color over time so you know when its time to replace, with a microchip that modifies its performance based on the age of the blades... don't get me started.
m not really very knowledgeable about every-day shaving (I have a beard, and I'm ashamed to say I've only ever shaved with a single-blade razor...), but are these surreal straight-out-of-the-onion razors actually any good?
The single blade bic razors that come in a bag and cost 50 cents each or something are utter and complete garbage. Gillete razors ARE infinitely superior...but it could be just the quality of the the blade, rather than the quantity. In any case I honestly don't think the new 5 blade system is any better than mach3. (I don't know if i ever tried the 2-blade.) And I recall that even with the mach3 it was a pain shaving around things like beards because of all the blades... so the new razors 6th blade, the single 'precision' blade on the back is actually a welcome addition.
I haven't bothered with the vibrating systems myself, yet.
Additionally, saying classical music is a niche is incredibly ridicules considering the amount of radio stations, television channels etc. that exist for it.
Classical music accounts for about 3% of all music sales. Its a niche market. Deal with it.
Music as a whole is a big market, so even 3% is enough to support radio, etc, but its still a tiny niche.
Interestingly, classic music is experiencing a bit of a comeback with digital downloads, forming almost 12% of iTunes music digital downloads (which is itself still a small piece of the whole pie, but still classical is doing well here, well above the 3% it manages overall.)
Except it doesn't belong to religion either. It belongs to whoever wants it.
Whatever. So then the state should give to them. ALL of them. By saying it doesn't give a SHIT who calls themselves married. All that matters as far as the state is concerned is who is registered for various partner status benefits.
The State's needs are not entirely satisfied by "separate but equal". There's plenty of precedent for that. Creating a class of second class citizens in un American. Sorry, but we really can't have that.
What is this all about? The state doesn't recognize 'separate but equal' because the state won't recognize marriage AT ALL. EVERYBODY is either has a registered partner or they don't, and that is the ONLY status the state recognizes. Being 'married' will be exactly as relevant to the state as being a 'catholic' or being a 'boy scout' or a 'bff - best friend forever' -- absolutely nothing.
Yes there is. Because making up a different word to keep some nutty kooks happy puts gay people in a lower class.
No. It puts EVERYONE in the same class. And if a gay couple wants to be 'married' then all they have to do is find a church or other group willing to marry them. Or they can start their own gay group and then get married within THAT. The state has no say or interest in the matter. It doesn't define 'married' or confer any rights or priviledges to 'married' people, any more than it does 'best friends'.
Creating second class citizens as you are supporting *is* the state deciding that. The state saying, "fuck all you loons, everyone can get married" would actually accomplish what you claim to want.
The state WOULD BE saying everyone can get married, indirectly. By not recognizing 'marriage' at all at the state level then there would be nothing stopping anyone from getting "married".
The state banning some people from getting married based on the ignorant hatred of religious loons does the opposite to the extreme.
Who exactly do you think is banned from getting married if the state decides not to recognize marriage at all, and leaves the rites and ceremony up to the people to decide for and amongst themselves. Think about it... if the state didn't recognize marriage at all then the word would have no "legal" meaning. The only meaning left would be that conferred on it by non-state entitites.
A congregation of any sort (christian, gay hippy, mormon whatever...) wanted to marry people and provide marriage certificates they could without restraint or interference from the state. Two people could draw a marriage certificate and hang it on the wall if they wanted to for all the state cared. Of course the local church might not recognize it... but if they don't belong to that church then so what? And in any case, what does the state care?
The funny thing about that Onion piece, is the a couple years later Gillette really went and made a five-blade razor.
Even funnier, they then went on to one-upped themselves and released one with SIX.
As opposed to people who show up to work because they fear their financial desperation if they didn't make money.
How many of you are seriously going to compare being coerced into the sex trade with working a regular job? Even a shitty regular job?
Seriously. Get a sense of perspective.
*seconding the "who brought up rape?" sentiment*
If you re-read my post, you'll see that I was essentially asked what the difference between:
"writing software to pay the rent" and being "coerced into the sex trade, and 'consenting' to sex to survive"
He argued they were the same thing, since in both cases they were doing the something they didn't much care for, for the money they needed.
And my response was that they were the same thing the way a slap and a rape are the same thing. Sure they are BOTH an assault on someone, so they are the same right? Of course not, there is a huge disparity.
Same level of disparity is present in his example.
I never actually said anything like having sex with someone in the sex trade amounted to rape.
However, upon reflection, I don't think someone in a position where they are only consenting to sex to survive amounts to real consent. Which makes taking advantage of someone in that situation, at least morally, equivalent to rape.
Once upon a time we saw that laborers had to choose between working in coal mines 20 hours a day for starvation wages without safety equipment or starve to death. We don't have that situation anymore. No one is allowed to employ you under those conditions. Its blatant exploitation and its illega.
The same sort of thinking should be applied to the sex trade. I already conceded in my original post that I could envision situations where the sex trade should not be criminalized. However, 'survival sex' should illegal, without question.
Surely you're not a Feminazi who calls *all* sex between a man and a woman rape?
Obviously not.
Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades
Why stop there? The latest "Gillette Fusion Power Phenom" razor has SIX.
5 blades plus a 'precision trimmer' on back side.
Oh... and don't forget: it vibrates too!
http://www.gillette.com/en-US/#/products/phenom/en-US/index.shtml/