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Comment The distinction is 'Licensing' Vs. 'Buying' (Score 2) 51

Admittedly, I haven't looked into this specific case, but nowadays you don't actually buy anything anymore, you just license it. Digital 'purchases' aren't a purchase of a product, they are a purchase of a license to use a specified item as per the terms of the license provider. More often than not, these terms are subject to change at any time without recourse of any kind.

Comment Re: This Rule Was Bullshit (Score 1) 125

I really, really hate when the ultra wealthy use that excuse and think that it's actually a good argument to appease the lower classes. It's the same as letting the fox make all the laws that govern the hen house; "Hey, killing all of the chickens is legal, don't blame me."

Unfortunately, most people don't have the privilege of buying laws that benefit them like the ultra wealthy do.

Comment Re:OTA pay tv channels may come back with this! (Score 2) 135

Not at all true actually. Cable uses RF just like Airwaves use RF; there is just as much bandwidth over the air as there is over cable, it's just with over the air you are limited by the FCC to the frequencies you are allowed to use. With cable you are allowed to use much more of the spectrum with the understanding that it is not allowed to leak from the system. The FCC routinely flies over areas to measure cable leakage and the cable provider is required to correct any issues found. If you are receiving on your end at the perfect 0 dBmV, you will have the same bandwidth available regardless of OTA Vs. over coaxial cable.

A 6Mhz 'channel' using 256 QAM is able to transfer almost 43Mbps. Now divide up, say, 50Mhz to 800Mhz into 6Mhz channels and that is a whole lot you can transmit, regardless if it is over the air or over a cable, it's all RF. You can also bond multiple channels with the newer DOCSIS specs to allow for much more bandwidth at the cable modem. Admittedly, I got out of the industry just as DOCSIS 2.0 was rolling out, so most of my experience is on single channel DOCSIS 1.0 systems and even older QPSK modems.

Comment Re:Glass (Score 1) 207

A federal government mandated deposit on aluminum cans would probably go a long way towards increasing the recycling rate. I would almost guarantee that a .25 or .50 cent deposit per can would greatly improve the recycling participation rate. When I was a kid, almost all of my free spending money for candy and pinball machines came from the deposit on glass cola bottles I collected.

There is absolutely no reason for general consumers to have soda in plastic bottles, nor is there any reason for plastic straws; use paper straws or learn to drink from the edge of a cup.

This whole thing is also massively exacerbated by the bottled water marketing industry. Tap water in most countries has a standard that the municipal water supply must meet. Most bottled water is nothing more than the municipal tap water run through a large, industrial sized 'Britta'. A friend of mine has an RO unit installed that is connected to a small spigot on the sink as well as his refrigerator ice and water dispensers; his four kids won't even think about drinking it, they MUST have bottled water.

Comment My company is increasing its remote workforce (Score 1) 254

In my company, IT workers have been remote since the middle of the pandemic and have yet to be called back into the office. In fact, the remote work initiative has been so successful that they do not plan on ever having us return to the office.

The only downside I see is that the experiment actually worked too well and they are rapidly outsourcing everything to India. The first to go was our in-house team of around 30 Help Desk employees that supported our employees at our 800 or so remote office locations. After that, our in-house development team went away; the next on the chopping block to India was our in-house database admin team. All that remains now is the main infrastructure team, but thanks to a huge, currently in progress transition into The Cloud, I'm sure we're next.

Though I've been with this company for over 8 years, and as such get paid way, way, way below industry standard salary for my position; my own fault for being lazy and not job hopping, I cannot survive, let alone compete in my country for pay that qualifies as middle class in a 'developing' nation.

First they came for the Help Desk, but I said nothing as I was not a Help Desk employee; then they came for the developers, but again I said nothing as I was not a developer.....

Comment Why not ban single use plastics for all beverages? (Score 2) 242

Is there any reason why we can't just ban single use plastics for things like bottled water, sodas, etc?

'Boomer' here, but in my day beverages were in glass bottles with a deposit or aluminum cans. I understand the expense in transporting heavy bottles back and forth, as well as cleaning and sanitizing them, but why not aluminum cans?

I'm by no means up to date on the aluminum recycling process, but from what I understand it is far cheaper to recycle aluminum than to manufacture new aluminum. What is the real sticking point in going all aluminum for beverages currently in plastic bottles and also putting a deposit on them to encourage their return? I know this doesn't solve the problem with all other plastics, but wouldn't this simple measure at least control what may be one of the largest sources we have of plastic waste?

Again, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but this just seems like a very simple solution to at least one plastic waste source.

Comment Tell them it's MS '2009' and they'll never know (Score 1) 503

My real world experience with this very thing: I was the IT guy at a company that had a LOT of outside sales reps. on laptops. On occasion I would get the word from the sales managers that I needed to buy and prepare new laptops for sales reps that had just been hired on. I would also sometimes have a deadline of just a few days to have these laptops all prepared. Needless to say, there were times when I didn't yet get approval from my boss to purchase more Office licenses. So, I installed Open Office on several of these new sales reps laptops and set the default file formats to the typical MS ones. I also renamed the icons for launching the applications to the MS equivalent. The end result was that I had older sales reps asking me why the 'new guy' got the new version of Office and he was stuck on the 'old' version. These sales reps happily used Open Office sometimes for months at a time and simply thought that they had the new '2008' version or something. For the simple tasks they performed Open Office worked perfectly. Then, a big problem arose. One of the 'new' sales reps discovered that his Office was a 'counterfeit cheapo free program'. He then proceeded to tell all of the other Open Office sales reps that they too had a 'fake' MS Office. Once word of this spread the whiny brat sales reps all demanded that they have the 'real' Office. The company president....being ignorant as well also demanded that I spend $20K of the IT department budget to now buy Office licenses for the whiny, crybaby sales reps. Mind you, they had been unwittingly using Open Office for MONTHS with no complaints and in some cases thought they were special because they had the 'new' version of Office. For most office people, Open Office would work perfectly. Your biggest hurdle is in telling the whiners to shut up and use what's given to them.....or you could tell them it's the '2009' version and they will happily use Open Office without a complaint.

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