Unix users
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a UNIX user to show you how it's done.
---Scott Adams
Tech Support can make you cynical
Let dueling settle the congresses dead lock
robert frost
No such thing as free lunch
A federal class action claims a suburban school district has been spying on students and families through the “indiscriminant use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students,” without the knowledge or consent of students or parents. The named plaintiffs say they learned that Big Brother was in their home when an assistant principal told their son that the school district knew he “was engaged in improper behavior in his home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in minor plaintiff’s personal laptop issued by the school district.” The families say the Lower Merion School District issued Webcam-equipped personal laptop computers to each of its approximately 1,800 high school students: in Harriton High School in Rosemont, and Lower Merion High School in Ardmore.
[...]
“Additionally, by virtue of the fact that the webcam can be remotely activated at any time by the school district, the webcam will capture anything happening in the room in which the laptop computer is located, regardless of whether the student is sitting at the computer and using it.
The top 400 richest people pay less of a percentage income tax then I do
The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low, newly disclosed tax data show. In 2007 the top 400 taxpayers had an average income of $344.8 million, up 31 percent from their average $263.3 million income in 2006, according to figures in a report that the IRS posted to its Web site without announcement that were discovered February 16. The figures came at the peak of the last economic cycle and show that widely published reports in major newspapers asserting that the richest Americans are losing relative ground and “becoming poorer” are not supported by the official income data. The long-term data show that under current tax and economic rules, the incomes of the top earners rise when the economy expands and contract during recessions, only to rise again. Their effective income tax rate fell to 16.62 percent, down more than half a percentage point from 17.17 percent in 2006, the new data show. That rate is lower than the typical effective income tax rate paid by Americans with incomes in the low six figures, which is what each taxpayer in the top group earned in the first three hours of 2007.
Measure the speed of light with chocolate
How to have fun with the leftover Valentine chocolate Measure the speed of light using chocolate
The rich get richer, and everybody else can go f themselves
from the wall street journal
Key Obama economic adviser Larry Summers coined a telling way to look at the current American economic state of play. He said the U.S. is experiencing a “statistical recovery and a human recession.” It is a phrase that should resonate through much of the industrial world, where high and long-standing unemployment is increasingly becoming a huge domestic political issue. Speaking on a panel at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Summers said one in five American men aged 25 to 54 are unemployed. He said given a “reasonable recovery,” that rate could improve to one in seven or one in eight. That still contrasts with a 95% employment rate for that group in the mid-1960s. He said the U.S. can gain from increased global integration, but if it is to be politically sustainable it “has to work for people.” That means job creation in the U.S. is a crucial issue.
The iPad out in stores now
The Myth of Multitasking on Zappos Dave Crenshaw
Zappos insight talks with Dave Crenshaw the author of "The Myth of Multitasking"
GE front loading washing machine filter
Your GE front loading washing machine won't finish a cycle? Doesn't drain correctly?
This is exactly what my machine was doing, as well. I fixed it by cleaning out the filter in front of the water pump.
Searching , I found that you can remove the lower front panel (three screws along the bottom edge is all it takes) to get to the filter. With the panel removed, you'll see a round white plastic cover (about 3-4 inches diameter) that screws out. Get a bucket under the cover to catch the water that's in it (could be 2 quarts or more) and unscrew the cover. The cover pulls out, revealing that is actually a screw-in plastic strainer. I found tons of coins, broken pens, paper clips, etc. in mine when I did this. A lot will be deep inside the black rubber hose that connects this filter housing to the washer drum. You can rake the stuff out with a bent wire clothes hanger. Shaking the black hose will help hurry the junk along and out of your machine. Screw the cover back on after the clean out and your machine should go back to normal.Thinking about it, front loaders will have lots of small items flushed into the pump compared to top loaders. Coins you alway found in the bottom of the drum in a top loader, they all wind up in the filter of a front loader. And once it slow the drainage to a crawl the machine will shut down multiple times when it can't drain the water out completely, and it will never step up to it's max spin speed with all that water still in the drum.If
If If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
Why she got fired by BoA
Can't verify the truth of it but it sounds right
Remembrance day toon from Userfriendly
Remembrance day toon from Userfriendly Come the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th mouth give a veteran a hug.
Louis CK enlightened view on copywrite
Louis CK asked someone to that down a torrent of a live performance. Not because of a violation of copy write but because it's a work in progress.
HI. I'm Louis CK. Can you please take this down? This show is a work in progress and was not intended to be passed around the internet. I have absolutely no problem, personally, with file sharing, and if you take everythign I have on the market on DVD, CD, and put it up for free downloading, I don't care. But this is an artistic and personal request. Please take this torrent down. thanks.
he goes on later in the comments explaining his actions to the other commenter's to clarify his early statement
by Louis CK
I'll explain it to you. yes it's me and I am a self-googling idiot.The reason I asked this fellow to take the torrent down is because the show I performed that he recorded was material that I was developing for the eventual recording as a new DVD/special. That's how I structure my act and my year on the road. I start the year with no jokes. I start writing, doing short sets in New York. Then I do longer and longer sets until I have a solid hour. Then I go on the road, starting in clubs and building the bigger and bigger venues. Finally, in the fall, I do a theater tour, during which I perfect the material through repetition and finally I record it as a special and then I throw that material away.
Once you commit something to film, tape or whatever, once it becomes a recording and certainly once it hits the internet, there is a permanance about it that transends live performance. This is something that is very important to me. It doesn't have to be important to anyone else. But because I care very much about it, I asked this person to take down this material because it wasn't meant to be experienced as a recorded event. This doesn't even mean that the show was beneath or not as good as what will be recorded. It just wasn't meant to be that way, not by me.
So I ASKED him to take it down. I didn't demand it. I don't expect him to sympathize or care how I feel about it being out there. I only hope he does. It turns out he did, which I'm grateful for.
As I said in my post to him, I don't view this as a property issue. I don't feel that he's stealing from me by putting my material online. He's just working against what I want in terms of timing of people hearing my stuff when I want them to. whether or not that carries any weight with him is up to him. If I felt he was stealing from me. I wouldn't ask. I would sue him. I guess.
Does that make sense to you?
By the way, once the DVD comes out, if he wants to put that clip back up, that is totally fine with me. I reposted to him and indicated as much.
anyway, this was far more than I intended to write. I'm going to bed now.
Take care, all.LCK
This is a guy who gets how the world is changing and how to react to it
