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Comment Re:USB 3.0? (Score 1) 80

No thanks, I prefer to have less latency. Also, no word on resolution, but unless it uses HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort, it's not going to be HiDPI. Who would want a non-HiDPI, 30Hz screen these days?

Maybe I'm up in the night about this, but USB seems to be the least-common denominator on a laptop. If this devices requires HDMI or DP, then a portion of the target audience would be cut right out.

Comment Re:Bankrupty doesn't discharge them (Score 1) 1032

Unlike most loans which have assets (home, car, etc) that can be confiscated a student loan doesn't result in a physical resource but in knowledge held in the students mind which cannot be taken.

Bullshit. You keep posting this tired incorrect argument all over this thread. Most debt discharged in bankruptcy is unsecured. (In fact, if people didn't have unsecured debt, they wouldn't even qualify for bankruptcy.)

How exactly do credit card companies confiscate "assets" from vacations taken and meals eaten out? How exactly do drs and hospitals confiscate medical care previously provided? (Which is one the biggest causes of bankruptcy in this country.) Well of course they can't.

You're right about the credit cards, but the inability to discharge a federally-guaranteed student loan is a large part of why the loans are issued at 4-8% instead of the 17-30% that you see on credit cards.

Comment Re:Call me old-fashioned .. but you took out the l (Score 1) 1032

It's easy to say "grow up" when the biggest loan you had to take out was for a motorcycle. An education in the US can cost 10s-100s of thousands of dollars not including living expenses. Couple this with low earnings coming out of college and interest rates that capitalize (interest is added to principle) which occurs during forbearance, deferment, or even while you're still in school. For the vast majority of people, repayment is not so simple when the average wage for a US employee is $45,327 as of 2012 according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. This doesn't take into account the costs of living, healthcare, health insurance, transportation, or god-forbid entertainment.

Yes, tuition in the U.S. can cost 100s of thousands of dollars, but it need not.
If you're borrowing "100s of thousands of dollars" to earn a degree to qualify you for a job earning $45,327, you're doing it wrong.

There are two things people keep teaching their children about college (by their words or actions) that are flat-out wrong:
    1. Always go to whichever college you want, no matter the cost. Any degree is guaranteed to be worth any price paid.
    2. In college, always pursue your dreams. It doesn't matter what you can get paid for it, because then you'll be a well-rounded individual and society will value you.

We are seriously short-changing our children by not teaching basic financial skills like loan repayment, ROI, and critical thinking about this while they are in high school. Signing up an 18 year old for $100k worth of student loans without requiring some sort of competency exam seems borderline criminal, to me.

Comment Re:One word summary. (Score 1) 1032

So is a Master of Philosophy now only available to the wealthy? SO what if people go to school and study art history or whatever 'useless' degree they want? Is education so frowned upon that it is considered a waste of time unless you are already wealthy and have nothing better to do than study art?

Yes, I'll say it: if you are not wealthy and have to worry about making a living in this world, it is a waste of your time and money to study art as your profession.

We really need to reset our public priorities in regards to education. I don't have a problem with the fact that you might have to work at Starbucks after getting an art history degree. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with having an educated populace, even amongst the working class. Would it be so bad to be able to have that person handing you your coffee to actually be well-educated? Or would that threaten your worldview that they are greedy and useless?

I have no problem with people studying whatever they want, and society does benefit from having an educated populace. That's why we have K-12 programs in this country. But the idea that "a degree" is of such value to society that taxpayers should be on the hook to allow anyone to study anything they want, for as long as it takes, is where I have to disagree.

Comment Re:The author went to college in the 80's (Score 1) 1032

You know it was a lot cheaper in the '80s, right?

Salaries were lower too. If he had gotten a more lucrative degree or went to a less expensive school, and/or (I imagine) had a job while going to school, he'd probably be fine, or at least better off, too.

I'm roughly the same age as Lee and went to school at roughly the same time. I had 2 Pell grants, 2 student loans, 2 at-school jobs (1 in the CS dept office and 1 as a research assistant doing LISP/Prolog programming) and a summer job at Pizza Hut. I managed work my way through school, get a job and pay off my debts. What's his problem?

Well, see, there's your problem: you wasted your life working in Pizza Hut instead of spending your summers pondering the greatness that someday you would bestow on humanity through your writing.

Comment Re:1 thing, among others (Score 1) 583

Also, it would have been great to know what 'stock options' were.

...snip...

* In extremely rare cases both the lottery aspect and the fine art aspect will conspire. The company succeeds in the lottery of business, and you will have kept them long enough for them to achieve some value and not sold them for a nice dinner or entertaining night. These extremely rare and extremely lucky individuals discover unexpectedly they can buy a mansion and retire early.

Also, you can fall victim to having lots and lots of pre-IPO or pre-investment-round options which can be diluted to the point of worthlessness. If you are not a founder of the company and driving the ship when the options are massaged through the funding rounds, do not consider any options as future earnings. Consider them as worthless trinkets, then you can only be pleasantly surprised when they will, hopefully, be worth enough for a night on the town 5 years down the road.

Comment Re:Taking a risk (Score 1) 583

To be honest, I'd be really pissed off if I learned I had wasted my time interviewing someone who had no intention of taking the job.

If you're changing jobs every few years it stands out like a sore thumb on the resume too. It says "hey, I won't be here very long". I'm not joking, we've brought up that topic a few times when evaluating candidates.

It's a two-way street. If you can't convince me during the interview that I want to work for you, who's time has been wasted? Hiring the right person is hard work, that's just part of being a manager.

Comment Re: 1 thing (Score 1) 583

At some point your old car is worth less than the minimum trade in price they will give you. The trick is to time it just right so that you roll on to the forecourt just as the engine chokes on the last drop of gas, and conclude the sale a few minutes before the wheels fall off.

Never fool yourself into thinking a car dealership is paying more than a trade-in is worth. Dealerships are not in the charity business; they will make money off of it; either by reselling the car or rolling it into the deal on the new car.

Comment Re:It's not a networking issue. (Score 1) 384

I think what he's asking is whether or not he can network them together even though they all have the same IP address. And the answer is yes.

As a network engineer, I can think of a way with a Cisco catalyst switch, OR, a linux box with multiple ethernet ports:

Yes, there are a few possible solutions, but I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the biggest barrier to implementing any of them:

Trying to connect to 8+ pumps at the same time is going to require running 8+ ethernet cables from a central location to each pump. You're going to have cables all over the place, and unless it is done while the gas station is closed it means people driving over the cables, stepping on them, tripping on them and yanking them out of the socket, etc........

And having 8 pumps off-line at a time will probably lead to less-than-cheery looks from the station owner and his customers.

Comment Re:Pallet ecosystem (Score 1) 250

(Aside: I have been witness to what happens when a Walmart store runs out of pallet wrap. It is... awkward.)

You'd hope someone would think to just go and unpallet a pallet of plastic wrap, but this is Wal-Mart we're talking about.

Are you thinking of the food-grade plastic wrap that a Walmart might have sitting in the warehouse? That stuff is wimpy compared to the stretch wrap that is used on pallets. It would be like saying if they're all out of cardboard cartons, why not open up some Christmas wrapping paper or tissues and build a box, it's all paper, after all...

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 123

Standard resistive Touchscreen tech is dirt freaking cheap. I can get 7" resistive types for $9.00 each all day long at single quantities. If I was a car maker I could get them at less than $1.00 each in 1000+ quantities.

Honestly this IR system is a rehash of really old tech that is just not needed.

What is needed is the important buttons existing as REAL HARD BUTTONS. the systems that are 100% touch are complete crap. Yes I do want my hard buttons back on android, the on screen home button is really 100% crap.

Resistive touchscreens also don't care if the user is wearing gloves, which would be a plus for automotive use. But, they are not as durable as capacitive, which I would argue is a reason to not use them in a car.

But IR systems are also not a good choice because the sensors can be swamped by sunlight.

IR systems still find uses in industrial settings because they can be completely sealed, respond to gloved fingers, and have no flexible/moving parts like a resistive screen, but IR is hardly the new, groundbreaking technology that the sponsor of this article claim.

Comment Re:Touch screens in vechicles = bad idea (Score 1) 123

I recently test drove a Chevy Volt. I was very excited about this car and its technology. But then I tried to turn on the climate control. Way too much touch screen interaction is required to do anything. If not for the touch screen, I might have bought the car, but now I won't even consider it.

I had the exact same reaction to the 2009 Prius that I test drove a couple of years ago. If I have to look down to find a button to change the fan speed on the A/C, Toyota has failed on it's UX.

Comment Re: Marketing? (Score 1) 239

As I've said in other threads, Sony won't benefit from the publicity if it doesn't release the movie. Now I suppose you'll claim that Sony owns Anonymous too, and is having them release a torrent version of the film that secretly includes a better version of the famed Sony rootkit.

No, but The Cause* would benefit from the publicity around yet another valuable, copyrighted movie stolen by evil hackers.

-----
*The Cause being the movie studios' upward battle to convince the populous that torrented movie rips are starving children in Hollywood.

Comment Re:yea but (Score 2) 580

Keep in mind that Sony is only pulling the release after the five largest theater chains refused to show it. And the reason they refused to show it is because they could potentially be liable should anything happen anywhere in any of their theaters. Given the poor reviews the movie is getting they presumably decided that it just wasn't worth any risk as they're probably not going to make much anything off showing it anyway.

I propose a much simpler reason aside from potential liability that they are pulling it. Looking strictly at the bottom-line (and setting aside the idea that Sony might actually have a corporate conscience, somewhere..). The rule-of-thumb is that the opening weekend box office numbers are the best indicator of which movies are hot and which are stinkers. Ticket sales usually taper off week by week, and never surpass the numbers at the opening. If a movie has a weak opening weekend, everyone assumes that the movie is crap and even fewer people go to see it the next week. By not having an opening weekend in the top 5 chains, Sony would pretty much guarantee they have a flop on their hands, never mind the fact that all signs point to a crappy movie to start with.

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