The BUD era is much like the streaming era now. Initially most of the feeds were free. Then they started encrypting. HBO started the trend of allowing end users to decrypt the channel. This led to others doing the same.
At one point it was common to have a dozen annual bills.
As BUDS got more popular and out of the hobbiest stage, package companies came into existence that sold packages of channels ( Dish network got started this way.) This got you better prices and one bill.
The led to the consumer small dish systems that we have today.
Back in the day when you had an 8 foot dish in your backyard, you had to buy your TV from each individual producer ( HBO, Viacom, WGN, etc.) Eventually companies started up which negociated deals and provided packages.
The hilton condo was $130 a night for a one bedroom, full kitchen, and washer/dryer.
The one I stayed at this time was a block north of the Westgate.
The other one I stay at from time to time is behind planet hollywood with simular arrangments but higher end and is usually $180 a night.
You can always stay in the Siegel Slums for $50 a night, but would you trust leaving anything valuable there while you are out on the strip?
The problem with AirBnB in vegas is that the ones in decent areas, are too far from the strip and cost as much a decent accomidations close to the strip.
I have a netgear nighthawk LTE hotspot that I use since I never use someone else's wifi (Thany you AT&T for the mobley plan.) It works very well as an Arlo controller. I keep an arlo by the hotel TV pointed at the door.
I am a CCW holder from Oklahoma and a roadwarrior who carries in all but what the gun community calls the commie states.
Nevada is an 2A - open carry state and reconizes my CCW.
You can carry just about everywhere including casinos. If a property owner does not want you to carry, they have to post an obvious sign at each entrance AND ask you to leave. If you choose to not leave after they request, you are now trespassing and committing a misdemeanor.
Nevada is so lax on their carry laws that you can drink and carry as long as you stay under 0.10%. I prefer icetea when carrying, but that is another story.
Personally, I prefer OpenCarry and did almost the whole time I was in Vegas. When I was in the casinos, I CCW (including the Cons.)
I usually go to the Defcon Shoot and on their webpage they instruct people to either avoid the casino hotels if possible. If you have to stay at one, then call ahead to see what their procedure is for firearms for a show.
I am a Hilton Diamond member and never have had a problem with legal carry ( usually open) and according to my Arlo camera in my room, no one has ever been in my room unless I let them in to clean. I have been going to Defcon since the Alexis days and years back I learned that the experience is much more enjoyable ( and cheaper) if you book a condo at one of the hilton vacation or other simular offerings.
If you are independant contractor and in YOUR own office, then the client can not dictate how you perform the job. In the long run I see the rideshare companies loosing on this one.
If they want the cars to be gun free and meet their california standards, then they have to acknowledge that their worker is an employee and have all of the responsibilities as such.
I have been using macs since 1999 or so. I got my hands on a beta for OSX and realized that it was OpenStep that can run mac apps. Sweet.
Every three years or so I would buy a mbp with the highest cpu but lowest ram and drive. I would then go to crucial and start to upgrade what I can afford. About a year later the machine would be maxed. I would get another 2-3 years of daily driver out of it.
Then the 15"rMBP came along. I had to buy it at max cpu and max ram. I soon swapped the drive for a 960GB OWC drive. Then I started to have the dreaded wifi display flicker.
apple was a PITA to fix it under apple care. I eventually got it replaced and about a year later it started to do it again. I switched my house to 5g.
Another six months later the lamination on the monitor started to come off. Apple would not fix it. Resigned to this I found a display and fixed it myself
Come mid 2016 - Time to consider replacing the machine. I looked at the current offering and was disgusted. Old CPUS, still only 16 gigs ram, etc. So I bought a surface book and quickly returned it since VMware sucks on it.
I then decided to wait for apple to release something new.
When they did, I decided to buy a Dell E5470 from their outlet store with 32 gigs of ram and an i7 with touch screen. Added a 2tb Samsung SSD, and a Cell modem. Total cost once done was around $1500. It took a little to get used to Windows 10, but with the linux enviroment, ubuntu, and OSX running in vmware, the machine is actually nice.
I am a road warrior and need a high end laptop for personal use while in a hotel somewhere.
Since Apple is supposed to update in Q4, I really do not want to buy a new maxed out macbook. So I opted for a surfacebook. First windoze machine in years
Nightmare, sleep of death - fixed, 2 hour battery life and crazy sleep fixed - come one microsoft a corrupted install image?.
Now that I have the machine stable, I was going to keep it until all of the bugs are worked out of the new macs.
Now that I am reading more on how the update is going to give me a migraine.. screw that, I am going to return it and trade it in for the appropriate macbook retina..... this sucks
I fly multiple times a week. As a professional traveler, I usually fly on sunday afternoon, 5-7 am on monday, and return on thursday afternoons/evenings.
I noticed several weeks ago that the precheck lines were packed several deep. This usually never happens at these times.
What makes this really strange is that there are even more people working at the checkpoint than before.
I got to enjoy the phoenix mess the other day. Even though I was precheck, they has issues with my cane, yes a walking cane. This is the same checkpoint, I have gone through and the same people I have encounter at the same time for the last three weeks.
This week will be East Coast cities for a change.
Most of the slowdowns like what happened at phoenix are aimed at the occasional traveler. If you have pre-check, and do not check your bags, then you just had to enjoy an extra 30 minutes of loading time on the plane since people had to argue with the flight attendants when they had to gate check their bag.
In my area, OKC, there are only two choices for residential consumer Internet (Cox and AT&T.) As a business customer, I have dozens of options ranging from dsl to ethernet. Of course it costs, but you get what you pay for.
I do think that it is BS and US people are screwed over, but until something like the 90s come back and the telcos are forced to allow other parties on the public supported last mile, nothing is going to change.
I would not say that this is hard to do. Anyone who is serious about this field should have a side business. All you need to do is set up a LLC, get a tax ID and a couple of clients. As long as you show some kind of profitability over time, you get to write off your computer computer equipment and services.
If you do not want to have a dedicated family/personal service or computer, then sell yourself internet service@ the local rate for basic internet ( @20 a month.) Then you still write off the cost of the ISP service and supporting equipment, you will also show $240 as income.
The problem with a technical solution is that if the ISP wants to be pissy, they will say that you have violated the SLA and cut service.
A easy solution is to clone the mac address but if they are collecting snmp or doing any kind of management they will discover that you are running unauthorized equipment.
I decided a long time ago that my time is much more valuable than money. So I formed a small LLC, keep enough side business to keep the IRS from claming that it is a hobby, and am able to write off all business expenses like ISP, Cell Phone, and computers.
This way I have options for ISPs, and do not have to deal with stupid policies like this.
I have learned a long time ago that I must have a well working unrestricted and reliable internet connection. To get that you must pay for a business level account. This will usually mean that you talk to more qualified help desk members and even the engineers. Side benefits include static ips, no caps, Higher service priority, etc.
It costs more, but as an IT pro, I consider it a fact of life.
Currently I have a business level account account that I write off 100%. This is the middle tier that runs around 90 a month for 25 down and 5 up. I then have a second consumer grade line @ 120 down and 10 up ( with restricted ports) @ 75 a month. The access point and family crap is connected to that. I then have the consumer connection set up as a second wan on my pfsense firewall.
Expensive, sure until I deduct the business connection as a business expense. This setup also allows me to test things like vpns,etc. This also means that I can experiment with stuff and do not hear the family complain because Netflix is not working.
Agreed. The tablet computer are personal computers. Simple to use devices with a long battery life, excellent connectivity, and just enough computing power to be useful.
My old iPad 1 is still in use as a netflix gadget and music machine for the kids.
The iPad 2 is the kids gaming machine.
After that I purchased a couple of nexus 7s and one is now a diagnosic computer for my vehicles via an obd2 dongle.
The other nexus 7 has LTE and is my Carputer for Waze.
Currently I just bought an ipad mini + keyboard for the wife to carry around and I use an air2 with a keyboard. Both machines have LTE and a couple of weeks ago I set up a couple of windoze 7 machines on my esxi machine at home for VDI.
I stopped bringing my personal laptop to work. Now if Apple would get off of their arse and allow bluetooth mice to connect for the 1% of users who would actually use it, I would have no logical reason at all to use a laptop anymore. When I need serious computing power, I just log into my home network and use the multiple xeons at my disposal.
The way to get around that is to get a LLC that lists your address as the corp address.
From a zoning viewpoint, you should be able to have a consulting business running out of any kind of R zoned property as long as you never have customers come there.
When contacting the business department of the ISP do not even mention that it is a residential address until they make a point of it, at that point you say it is for SOHO use and here is my EIN, bank account, and any needed business licenses.
Is they are still asses at that point, find another provider.
Lets face it, we are not the typical ISP customer anymore.
I learned a long time ago that business customers get treated much better than general consumers.
Yes business accounts cost more, but you get priority services, more technical customer service, static ips, and best of all no restrictions.
So organize an LLC, get a business bank account, and then get business internet service. Since this is probally going to be in your house, sell yourself the cost of local DSL (invoice and pay for it using personal funds) and it is an easy IRS write off.
People on here complain about caps and port blocking all of the time without realizing that everything costs money. In Oklahoma City, Business Internet is $90 a month. That gets me a static IP, 24/7 knowledgeable tech support, free equipment, truck rolls at 2am, 5up/30down ( dedicated priority service over consumer.) The closest consumer plan has the same speeds but the cable tv support department, caps, blocked ports, must supply own equipment, and the bandwidth is not dedicated. All for $59 a month.
It is worth an extra $30 a month for the access, of which I write the whole thing ($89) off at tax time as a business expense.
It appears that Dish uses a humans to proctor where the commercials are on the national feeds. As a result you are not able to skip commercials for usually 8 hours or so after the show aired. I have found that when the local station delays the feed, the hopper skips at the wrong points.
Diesel generators are great, but something like the Bloom Box is a game changer. The goal for the company is a device the size of an air conditioner that costs around $3000 to power a home. When this happens, there is no need for a centralized power grid. At that point you just need access to Natural Gas or Lpg to have electricity.
"niche fuel source?"
Natural Gas is easily found in most of the county and is delivered to most urban addresses. Propane is available just about everywhere else.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who has had the joy of having to authenticate their part via CAN BUS on a Ford ( in my case) knows exactly what I am talking about.
The BUD era is much like the streaming era now. Initially most of the feeds were free. Then they started encrypting. HBO started the trend of allowing end users to decrypt the channel. This led to others doing the same.
At one point it was common to have a dozen annual bills.
As BUDS got more popular and out of the hobbiest stage, package companies came into existence that sold packages of channels ( Dish network got started this way.) This got you better prices and one bill.
The led to the consumer small dish systems that we have today.
Back in the day when you had an 8 foot dish in your backyard, you had to buy your TV from each individual producer ( HBO, Viacom, WGN, etc.) Eventually companies started up which negociated deals and provided packages.
The hilton condo was $130 a night for a one bedroom, full kitchen, and washer/dryer.
The one I stayed at this time was a block north of the Westgate.
The other one I stay at from time to time is behind planet hollywood with simular arrangments but higher end and is usually $180 a night.
You can always stay in the Siegel Slums for $50 a night, but would you trust leaving anything valuable there while you are out on the strip?
The problem with AirBnB in vegas is that the ones in decent areas, are too far from the strip and cost as much a decent accomidations close to the strip.
I have a netgear nighthawk LTE hotspot that I use since I never use someone else's wifi (Thany you AT&T for the mobley plan.) It works very well as an Arlo controller. I keep an arlo by the hotel TV pointed at the door.
works great.
I am a CCW holder from Oklahoma and a roadwarrior who carries in all but what the gun community calls the commie states.
Nevada is an 2A - open carry state and reconizes my CCW.
You can carry just about everywhere including casinos. If a property owner does not want you to carry, they have to post an obvious sign at each entrance AND ask you to leave. If you choose to not leave after they request, you are now trespassing and committing a misdemeanor.
Nevada is so lax on their carry laws that you can drink and carry as long as you stay under 0.10%. I prefer icetea when carrying, but that is another story.
Personally, I prefer OpenCarry and did almost the whole time I was in Vegas. When I was in the casinos, I CCW (including the Cons.)
I usually go to the Defcon Shoot and on their webpage they instruct people to either avoid the casino hotels if possible. If you have to stay at one, then call ahead to see what their procedure is for firearms for a show.
I am a Hilton Diamond member and never have had a problem with legal carry ( usually open) and according to my Arlo camera in my room, no one has ever been in my room unless I let them in to clean. I have been going to Defcon since the Alexis days and years back I learned that the experience is much more enjoyable ( and cheaper) if you book a condo at one of the hilton vacation or other simular offerings.
That is my logic on it.
If you are independant contractor and in YOUR own office, then the client can not dictate how you perform the job. In the long run I see the rideshare companies loosing on this one.
If they want the cars to be gun free and meet their california standards, then they have to acknowledge that their worker is an employee and have all of the responsibilities as such.
HAHHAAHAHAHHAAAHHAHAA
What kind of crack are you on?
Wait until your IT career gets to the point you are a road warrior.
When you switch timezones every week, DST is a silly joke that is not even noticed.
I am an infosec consultant and about a year ago started to see clients as suggested friends.
I keep facebook for family stuff in a closed group and never mix work with my personal life.
I figure it is tied to the mobile app.
I have been using macs since 1999 or so. I got my hands on a beta for OSX and realized that it was OpenStep that can run mac apps. Sweet.
Every three years or so I would buy a mbp with the highest cpu but lowest ram and drive. I would then go to crucial and start to upgrade what I can afford.
About a year later the machine would be maxed. I would get another 2-3 years of daily driver out of it.
Then the 15"rMBP came along. I had to buy it at max cpu and max ram. I soon swapped the drive for a 960GB OWC drive. Then I started to have the dreaded wifi display flicker.
apple was a PITA to fix it under apple care. I eventually got it replaced and about a year later it started to do it again. I switched my house to 5g.
Another six months later the lamination on the monitor started to come off. Apple would not fix it. Resigned to this I found a display and fixed it myself
Come mid 2016 - Time to consider replacing the machine. I looked at the current offering and was disgusted. Old CPUS, still only 16 gigs ram, etc. So I bought a surface book and quickly returned it since VMware sucks on it.
I then decided to wait for apple to release something new.
When they did, I decided to buy a Dell E5470 from their outlet store with 32 gigs of ram and an i7 with touch screen. Added a 2tb Samsung SSD, and a Cell modem. Total cost once done was around $1500. It took a little to get used to Windows 10, but with the linux enviroment, ubuntu, and OSX running in vmware, the machine is actually nice.
Bye Apple.
My first gen Macbook retina died last week.
I am a road warrior and need a high end laptop for personal use while in a hotel somewhere.
Since Apple is supposed to update in Q4, I really do not want to buy a new maxed out macbook. So I opted for a surfacebook. First windoze machine in years
Nightmare, sleep of death - fixed, 2 hour battery life and crazy sleep fixed - come one microsoft a corrupted install image?.
Now that I have the machine stable, I was going to keep it until all of the bugs are worked out of the new macs.
Now that I am reading more on how the update is going to give me a migraine.. screw that, I am going to return it and trade it in for the appropriate macbook retina..... this sucks
Agreed.
I fly multiple times a week. As a professional traveler, I usually fly on sunday afternoon, 5-7 am on monday, and return on thursday afternoons/evenings.
I noticed several weeks ago that the precheck lines were packed several deep. This usually never happens at these times.
What makes this really strange is that there are even more people working at the checkpoint than before.
I got to enjoy the phoenix mess the other day. Even though I was precheck, they has issues with my cane, yes a walking cane. This is the same checkpoint, I have gone through and the same people I have encounter at the same time for the last three weeks.
This week will be East Coast cities for a change.
Most of the slowdowns like what happened at phoenix are aimed at the occasional traveler. If you have pre-check, and do not check your bags, then you just had to enjoy an extra 30 minutes of loading time on the plane since people had to argue with the flight attendants when they had to gate check their bag.
What a joke!
In my area, OKC, there are only two choices for residential consumer Internet (Cox and AT&T.) As a business customer, I have dozens of options ranging from dsl to ethernet. Of course it costs, but you get what you pay for.
I do think that it is BS and US people are screwed over, but until something like the 90s come back and the telcos are forced to allow other parties on the public supported last mile, nothing is going to change.
I would not say that this is hard to do. Anyone who is serious about this field should have a side business. All you need to do is set up a LLC, get a tax ID and a couple of clients. As long as you show some kind of profitability over time, you get to write off your computer computer equipment and services.
If you do not want to have a dedicated family/personal service or computer, then sell yourself internet service@ the local rate for basic internet ( @20 a month.) Then you still write off the cost of the ISP service and supporting equipment, you will also show $240 as income.
The problem with a technical solution is that if the ISP wants to be pissy, they will say that you have violated the SLA and cut service.
A easy solution is to clone the mac address but if they are collecting snmp or doing any kind of management they will discover that you are running unauthorized equipment.
I decided a long time ago that my time is much more valuable than money. So I formed a small LLC, keep enough side business to keep the IRS from claming that it is a hobby, and am able to write off all business expenses like ISP, Cell Phone, and computers.
This way I have options for ISPs, and do not have to deal with stupid policies like this.
I have learned a long time ago that I must have a well working unrestricted and reliable internet connection. To get that you must pay for a business level account. This will usually mean that you talk to more qualified help desk members and even the engineers. Side benefits include static ips, no caps, Higher service priority, etc.
It costs more, but as an IT pro, I consider it a fact of life.
Currently I have a business level account account that I write off 100%. This is the middle tier that runs around 90 a month for 25 down and 5 up. I then have a second consumer grade line @ 120 down and 10 up ( with restricted ports) @ 75 a month. The access point and family crap is connected to that. I then have the consumer connection set up as a second wan on my pfsense firewall.
Expensive, sure until I deduct the business connection as a business expense. This setup also allows me to test things like vpns,etc. This also means that I can experiment with stuff and do not hear the family complain because Netflix is not working.
Agreed. The tablet computer are personal computers. Simple to use devices with a long battery life, excellent connectivity, and just enough computing power to be useful.
My old iPad 1 is still in use as a netflix gadget and music machine for the kids.
The iPad 2 is the kids gaming machine.
After that I purchased a couple of nexus 7s and one is now a diagnosic computer for my vehicles via an obd2 dongle.
The other nexus 7 has LTE and is my Carputer for Waze.
Currently I just bought an ipad mini + keyboard for the wife to carry around and I use an air2 with a keyboard. Both machines have LTE and a couple of weeks ago I set up a couple of windoze 7 machines on my esxi machine at home for VDI.
I stopped bringing my personal laptop to work. Now if Apple would get off of their arse and allow bluetooth mice to connect for the 1% of users who would actually use it, I would have no logical reason at all to use a laptop anymore. When I need serious computing power, I just log into my home network and use the multiple xeons at my disposal.
Crap, I need more coffee, $1500. Well the $259 a drive is msrp, so $1200 for six drives is probably accurate.
Hmm, so for around $1200, I can add 32TB to my existing zpool via a six drive raidz2.
:)
I was considering another 4TB version of the above this summer, Hopefully these drives will be cheaper then.
That is cool.
It is nice to live in an age where the "I" in raid, is a realistic reality again!
Most High Schools have eliminated their manual arts classes.
The way to get around that is to get a LLC that lists your address as the corp address.
From a zoning viewpoint, you should be able to have a consulting business running out of any kind of R zoned property as long as you never have customers come there.
When contacting the business department of the ISP do not even mention that it is a residential address until they make a point of it, at that point you say it is for SOHO use and here is my EIN, bank account, and any needed business licenses.
Is they are still asses at that point, find another provider.
Lets face it, we are not the typical ISP customer anymore.
I learned a long time ago that business customers get treated much better than general consumers.
Yes business accounts cost more, but you get priority services, more technical customer service, static ips, and best of all no restrictions.
So organize an LLC, get a business bank account, and then get business internet service. Since this is probally going to be in your house, sell yourself the cost of local DSL (invoice and pay for it using personal funds) and it is an easy IRS write off.
People on here complain about caps and port blocking all of the time without realizing that everything costs money. In Oklahoma City, Business Internet is $90 a month. That gets me a static IP, 24/7 knowledgeable tech support, free equipment, truck rolls at 2am, 5up/30down ( dedicated priority service over consumer.)
The closest consumer plan has the same speeds but the cable tv support department, caps, blocked ports, must supply own equipment, and the bandwidth is not dedicated. All for $59 a month.
It is worth an extra $30 a month for the access, of which I write the whole thing ($89) off at tax time as a business expense.
It appears that Dish uses a humans to proctor where the commercials are on the national feeds. As a result you are not able to skip commercials for usually 8 hours or so after the show aired. I have found that when the local station delays the feed, the hopper skips at the wrong points.
For the most part it works well.
Diesel generators are great, but something like the Bloom Box is a game changer. The goal for the company is a device the size of an air conditioner that costs around $3000 to power a home. When this happens, there is no need for a centralized power grid. At that point you just need access to Natural Gas or Lpg to have electricity.
"niche fuel source?"
Natural Gas is easily found in most of the county and is delivered to most urban addresses. Propane is available just about everywhere else.