Actually, before Carly (known internally as the Wicked Witch of the West) HP had never laid anyone off, in 40 years of operation.
Incoming Compaq employees missed the environment we had grown to love in pre-Witch days.
I bought 300 shares of HP stock at $82 a share on the employee purchase program, just before Carly took over.
The stocks vested 6 months later at $12 a share. Yea, she was good for the stockholders.
My uncle had a bad spyware problem, and likely viral infestation. I told him to ship me the computer and I'd get it back within a week clean, protected, and better than ever.
He decided to take it to Geek Squad instead, to be faster.
The kept it 2 weeks, replaced EVERYTHING but the hard disk, and handed it back $500 upgraded and still as infested as the day he sent it. It just had enough horsepower now to run the spyware better....
It took me three days, admittedly, to clean out the spyware and minor viruses and install good protection (AVG,AVGAS, Ad-Aware, and Spybot). He got it back in the promised week with some expedited shipping, and it ran better than ever. And the upgrades they had sold him were crappy el-cheapo parts. I replaced the Celeron they put in with a P4, and the 256M memory stick with a nice DDR2 1G module. Total cost to him: about $30 for shipping.
I also created a nice graphical "click here, run this, then that, do what it says" glossy sheets to tack on his wall and perform weekly. He does not understand that he is updating and running the spyware scans, only that he is now much safer than he was. And he is happy with that.
I had a business called Geek On Call. It was me and another techno-buddy, doing on call home or office geekwork.
Oddly, the Wayback Machine only shows a short period of it's placeholder after the domain expired. It was 1998-2004 that I ran the business. It was very popular in the area, and we found our demand exceeded our man-hours. At $50 an hour residential and $75 and hour commercial, we wanted all we can get.
Things fell apart when we hired some more. We added a third buddy for easier stuff. He was good at home systems, but no good for a business systems. A different mentality for each, and he could not grasp the "move with caution" when dealing with business data.
Then we hired an applicant. He sucked badly. He was pretty good technically, but his solution to any hard problem was throw parts at it rather than troubleshoot it. This, needless to say, caused customers to get upset. We fired him, but the damage was done, word spread, and business dropped off sharply. Eventually, we closed down and went back to contracting for companies.
Ironically, once I folded up, Geek Squad moved in, did all the things we were accused of, but since they were flashy about it no one seemed to care./shrug
I'll never understand people.
I suspect the Google Desktop app. It is installed in the default build on Dells, HP's, and more, and pushed out by everyone and their dog, like Sun Java patches FFS.
This app does many useful things, but I suspect that an HTML spam gets "indexed" along with every other http document you view, and makes it's way in to Google's databases. Witht eh sheer volume of spam, the number of clueless users getting new machines or allowing the app to be forced (along with every piece of popup malware that asks) it is polluting their database.
That has been my opinion since I looked at the app the first time.
I tremendously disagree on Big Bang.
The dialog is excellent and hilarious! And those guys are definitely Nerds. If they can keep up the writing, I will definitely watch it.
Agreed. Upon winning a lottery, do nothing drastic for a while.
Go on an extended vacation, yes. Buy a new car to replace the 73 pinto that only fires on 2 cylindars and won't go in reverse, yes.
Don't move, don't buy vacation property. Nothing. Hand the wad to an investment firm and let them work out a life plan with it.
Your resulting income will be very very nice, and will last the rest of your life, and your children's lives.
Now, find and buy that dream house in the perfect location... within your new budget.
I have a Cingular (now AT&T) Wireless G3 card. It nets me 128k on a bad day, and in excess of 1M on a good signal. If you have a new tower in range, chances are you can net 1M easily.
Mine is an unlimited access plan for $59 a month, the same cost as cable internet. I use it for travel work, but there is no reason you can't use it at home. You do need to change to a laptop, as the only option I have seen is PCMCIA. I heard rumors of a USB option, but haven't seen one, so I cannot verify the existance of such a beast.
Special effects don't have to be "realistic" - movie makers learned long ago that what it is "real" is often not what is believable and dramatically effective.
Agreed. many "underwater" scenes in movies like "The Abyss" were just smoke filled sets or models. The smoke looked like water to the camera, and that is all that matters!
The best water sim I have seen was simple: particles that repulse each other but are effected by gravity. The same applies to air, if you want to do a real atmosphere, say for flight surfaces.
Now, it was pretty intensive, but it also used a LOT of particles. If you scaled their repulsive properties, you can greatly reduce the number while maintaining the effect. A good example is the "invisible water" effect shown in many a junior high science class. A heavy gas (sulfur dioxide?) is "poured" in to an aquarium, and a foil boat is set on it to float. Water-like effect, from a much less dense particle spread... and we don't have to follow the laws of physics! Our foil boat could hold a fully loaded mech if we want it to.
Please note you keep mistakenly using "Dr." in reference to Mr Hovind. He has no PhD. He has no degree whatsoever. He did 'award' himself a 'degree' in 'Christian Education' from Patriot University.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Bible_University
No training in biology, archeology, geology, or any pertinent science that he attacks, he has a religious 'degree' from an unaccredited degree mill. ANd his attakcs show it, like the 2nd Law of thermodynamics one... he is apparently too stupid to notice the sun hanging above his head!
Yet this guy is the person you see as an authority on biology? How sad is that?
Tell me someone didn't seriously try the 2nd law canard.
Are there seriously that many people out there that haven't noticed the sun yet? I mean, sheesh, I noticed that puppy years ago.
At 135MPH, you can go feet first and you will still shater your melon when you hit something. The only difference is you get to feel everything else break up to that point.
I elect head first, thank you.
The main reason I installed adblock was page load times.
Many sites I visit use ad servers of some sort. They WAY overload those servers, making the ad loads VERY VERY slow.
I noticed when I was waiting on a page that was slow, it was invariably an ad.
So I installed Adblock. Lo and behold, all those slow pages load quite fast fron the hosting servers. I did a test of a couple of key sites, and page load without adblock was from 12-30 seconds. With adblock, 2-3 seconds.
You do the math. If you aren't running adblock, you have plenty of spare time to work it out.
I invite you to go find a country where failure to produce papers is reason for arrest, where you would be happier. We don't need your kind in a free country.
I agree, it is sad that it had to come to this. The cop could have simply complied with the law and let him be when he verbally identified himself. It was readily evident no crime had occurred, but because he felt that the slimy civilian hadn't properly bowed and scraped to his mighty authority, he felt the need to arrest him.
And because of his little case of little man's disease, the city will lose a chunk of money.
And I'll see your 12 years Navy and raise you 10 years of USMC. Thanks for all the rides, though. It was nice to know you would carry us to combat whenever we needed it.
Your own argument bolsters a general social morality with the rare exceptions, while denigrating your claim of a universal morality from an invisible sky pixie.
You just did your opponent's work for them, and demolished your own position.
Well, Tool, it is idiotic Fascists like you that make living in a free country so restrictive. Anyone who would fight to take the rights of the average citizen away should be required to rescind their own in entirety.
And the McD's suit is a REALLY bad example here, and shows you don't research your topics at all.
McDonalds was clearly in the wrong in that case, had been cited for dangerously hot coffee many many times, and the superheated coffee caused the cup and lid to become soft, spilling liquid hot enough to melt a cup in to her lap. She asked ONLY for MD's to cover medical costs, and they refused. The jury awarded the huge sum, as she still only sued for medical costs, and McD put up such a hissy about it that the jury penalized them for being such peckerheads.
But, don;t let the facts get in the way of a good ignorant tirade, eh?
2 years ago I ran wireless 60 miles out to a dude ranch via solar powered relay towers, and a high power Wi-Fi AP in the middle of the compound, also solar. (A drilling company is leasing bandwidth off those towers too for their rigs to communicate over as well, but that's another story.)
Tell me I ain't the first to think of letting the sun power remote devices? Please? It's so obvious I weep for the intelligence of mankind if this is so.
Slashdot Mirror
It was a free mod, and still is. HalfLife, required to play, has never been free.
Actually, before Carly (known internally as the Wicked Witch of the West) HP had never laid anyone off, in 40 years of operation. Incoming Compaq employees missed the environment we had grown to love in pre-Witch days.
I bought 300 shares of HP stock at $82 a share on the employee purchase program, just before Carly took over. The stocks vested 6 months later at $12 a share. Yea, she was good for the stockholders.
He decided to take it to Geek Squad instead, to be faster.
The kept it 2 weeks, replaced EVERYTHING but the hard disk, and handed it back $500 upgraded and still as infested as the day he sent it. It just had enough horsepower now to run the spyware better....
It took me three days, admittedly, to clean out the spyware and minor viruses and install good protection (AVG,AVGAS, Ad-Aware, and Spybot). He got it back in the promised week with some expedited shipping, and it ran better than ever. And the upgrades they had sold him were crappy el-cheapo parts. I replaced the Celeron they put in with a P4, and the 256M memory stick with a nice DDR2 1G module. Total cost to him: about $30 for shipping.
I also created a nice graphical "click here, run this, then that, do what it says" glossy sheets to tack on his wall and perform weekly. He does not understand that he is updating and running the spyware scans, only that he is now much safer than he was. And he is happy with that.
I had a business called Geek On Call. It was me and another techno-buddy, doing on call home or office geekwork. Oddly, the Wayback Machine only shows a short period of it's placeholder after the domain expired. It was 1998-2004 that I ran the business. It was very popular in the area, and we found our demand exceeded our man-hours. At $50 an hour residential and $75 and hour commercial, we wanted all we can get. Things fell apart when we hired some more. We added a third buddy for easier stuff. He was good at home systems, but no good for a business systems. A different mentality for each, and he could not grasp the "move with caution" when dealing with business data. Then we hired an applicant. He sucked badly. He was pretty good technically, but his solution to any hard problem was throw parts at it rather than troubleshoot it. This, needless to say, caused customers to get upset. We fired him, but the damage was done, word spread, and business dropped off sharply. Eventually, we closed down and went back to contracting for companies. Ironically, once I folded up, Geek Squad moved in, did all the things we were accused of, but since they were flashy about it no one seemed to care. /shrug
I'll never understand people.
I suspect the Google Desktop app. It is installed in the default build on Dells, HP's, and more, and pushed out by everyone and their dog, like Sun Java patches FFS. This app does many useful things, but I suspect that an HTML spam gets "indexed" along with every other http document you view, and makes it's way in to Google's databases. Witht eh sheer volume of spam, the number of clueless users getting new machines or allowing the app to be forced (along with every piece of popup malware that asks) it is polluting their database. That has been my opinion since I looked at the app the first time.
I tremendously disagree on Big Bang. The dialog is excellent and hilarious! And those guys are definitely Nerds. If they can keep up the writing, I will definitely watch it.
Agreed. Upon winning a lottery, do nothing drastic for a while. Go on an extended vacation, yes. Buy a new car to replace the 73 pinto that only fires on 2 cylindars and won't go in reverse, yes. Don't move, don't buy vacation property. Nothing. Hand the wad to an investment firm and let them work out a life plan with it. Your resulting income will be very very nice, and will last the rest of your life, and your children's lives. Now, find and buy that dream house in the perfect location... within your new budget.
Nah, I'm too nice to aspire to such evil as Mother Theresa. I'd have to settle for a lesser evil, like Jeffrey Dahmer or Hannibal Lecter. http://www.population-security.org/swom-96-09.htm
I have a Cingular (now AT&T) Wireless G3 card. It nets me 128k on a bad day, and in excess of 1M on a good signal. If you have a new tower in range, chances are you can net 1M easily. Mine is an unlimited access plan for $59 a month, the same cost as cable internet. I use it for travel work, but there is no reason you can't use it at home. You do need to change to a laptop, as the only option I have seen is PCMCIA. I heard rumors of a USB option, but haven't seen one, so I cannot verify the existance of such a beast.
Special effects don't have to be "realistic" - movie makers learned long ago that what it is "real" is often not what is believable and dramatically effective.
Agreed. many "underwater" scenes in movies like "The Abyss" were just smoke filled sets or models. The smoke looked like water to the camera, and that is all that matters!The best water sim I have seen was simple: particles that repulse each other but are effected by gravity. The same applies to air, if you want to do a real atmosphere, say for flight surfaces. Now, it was pretty intensive, but it also used a LOT of particles. If you scaled their repulsive properties, you can greatly reduce the number while maintaining the effect. A good example is the "invisible water" effect shown in many a junior high science class. A heavy gas (sulfur dioxide?) is "poured" in to an aquarium, and a foil boat is set on it to float. Water-like effect, from a much less dense particle spread... and we don't have to follow the laws of physics! Our foil boat could hold a fully loaded mech if we want it to.
Please note you keep mistakenly using "Dr." in reference to Mr Hovind. He has no PhD. He has no degree whatsoever. He did 'award' himself a 'degree' in 'Christian Education' from Patriot University. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Bible_University No training in biology, archeology, geology, or any pertinent science that he attacks, he has a religious 'degree' from an unaccredited degree mill. ANd his attakcs show it, like the 2nd Law of thermodynamics one... he is apparently too stupid to notice the sun hanging above his head! Yet this guy is the person you see as an authority on biology? How sad is that?
Tell me someone didn't seriously try the 2nd law canard. Are there seriously that many people out there that haven't noticed the sun yet? I mean, sheesh, I noticed that puppy years ago.
At 135MPH, you can go feet first and you will still shater your melon when you hit something. The only difference is you get to feel everything else break up to that point. I elect head first, thank you.
The main reason I installed adblock was page load times. Many sites I visit use ad servers of some sort. They WAY overload those servers, making the ad loads VERY VERY slow. I noticed when I was waiting on a page that was slow, it was invariably an ad. So I installed Adblock. Lo and behold, all those slow pages load quite fast fron the hosting servers. I did a test of a couple of key sites, and page load without adblock was from 12-30 seconds. With adblock, 2-3 seconds. You do the math. If you aren't running adblock, you have plenty of spare time to work it out.
We'll hold you to that. ;)
I invite you to go find a country where failure to produce papers is reason for arrest, where you would be happier. We don't need your kind in a free country.
I agree, it is sad that it had to come to this. The cop could have simply complied with the law and let him be when he verbally identified himself. It was readily evident no crime had occurred, but because he felt that the slimy civilian hadn't properly bowed and scraped to his mighty authority, he felt the need to arrest him. And because of his little case of little man's disease, the city will lose a chunk of money. And I'll see your 12 years Navy and raise you 10 years of USMC. Thanks for all the rides, though. It was nice to know you would carry us to combat whenever we needed it.
This gives a whole new meaning to a save point.
two heavyweights of their genre (fantasy, magic, talking animals vs video games) stand toe to toe, and Sony pussies out instead of bringing the fight.
"Yeah, and the KKK claims they are a civil-rights group!" Yeah, most Christian organizations believe they are doing good.
Your own argument bolsters a general social morality with the rare exceptions, while denigrating your claim of a universal morality from an invisible sky pixie. You just did your opponent's work for them, and demolished your own position.
Well, Tool, it is idiotic Fascists like you that make living in a free country so restrictive. Anyone who would fight to take the rights of the average citizen away should be required to rescind their own in entirety. And the McD's suit is a REALLY bad example here, and shows you don't research your topics at all. McDonalds was clearly in the wrong in that case, had been cited for dangerously hot coffee many many times, and the superheated coffee caused the cup and lid to become soft, spilling liquid hot enough to melt a cup in to her lap. She asked ONLY for MD's to cover medical costs, and they refused. The jury awarded the huge sum, as she still only sued for medical costs, and McD put up such a hissy about it that the jury penalized them for being such peckerheads. But, don;t let the facts get in the way of a good ignorant tirade, eh?
2 years ago I ran wireless 60 miles out to a dude ranch via solar powered relay towers, and a high power Wi-Fi AP in the middle of the compound, also solar. (A drilling company is leasing bandwidth off those towers too for their rigs to communicate over as well, but that's another story.) Tell me I ain't the first to think of letting the sun power remote devices? Please? It's so obvious I weep for the intelligence of mankind if this is so.