Viewing profile — duffbeer703

I had an in-person old fogey moment when we were going down geek memory lane talking about modem banks and rotary dial phone. The intern didn't know what a telephone modem was and …

I'm not surprised at all. The average staff programmer at a big corp isn't making much more than $50/hr. Programmers at small companies are usually making much less.

Have you ever been to Denmark or Canada? If so, were you tripping on something? I have never been to Denmark, but I have been to several places in Canada, and there are plenty of p…

You're looking at this and seeing the wrong problem. You have a family that is doing well enough that they can save sufficient money to retire at a similar level and put their kids…

Or can't. It's hard to make an argument that you are not a monopoly when you put Demand Media out of business in 30 days by blacklisting them.

I think this article really captured why it is so important to be honest with yourself. Instead of making work your life, you found a way to make life your work. How many people ar…

That sounds like a rich travel budget.

Bankers rarely want a "free market". They do want to be free of restrictions to their potential to make money. Here's an example: In a "free market" the government wouldn't mandate…

Seriously, a big issue that the article missed is the obvious safety issue associated with having a bunch of kids on a bus with metal latches attached to 3 ft long strips of canvas…

I used to sympathize with your position, (esp. re Facebook, which is just a creepy company to me) but do you really want to setup yet another account with some random website? A we…

I think this is a great article as it touches on a perspective on how the world works that is often ignored. Its also great in the sense that the article itself is an example of th…

IMO, a big issue is that many PhDs are simply not doing research that is actually useful to the real world... many of these folks are hyper-specializing in some arcane subject. Toi…

You don't have the context to understand the anger held by many of Columbia University's neighbors towards the university. Columbia U has a long history of being a bad neighbor and…

The article is dressed up a bit because Kunstler (the author) is someone who seems to exclusively write and speak on this topic. (And by "topic", I mean says the same thing over an…

I laughed out loud when I read this, and taken at face value it is certainly not the best advice for most people. But, asserting yourself and calling people on BS is generally a sm…

How do you calculate the DES hash of a password on the Linux or Mac command line so I can match common passwords to the compromised passwords? I use a password manager for newer ac…

At first glance, yes. But consider that datacenter floor space can cost $300/sqft or more. And you need people to negotiate with landlord, process utility bills and manage vendor r…

I know several folks who have done it, and 75% are really, really happy with it. I know of 4 who have side effects (night glare, starbursts, etc) that they complain about, and 2 wh…

That CEO guy looks as douche-y as the Facebook guy.

These sorts of unauthorized flights, combined with model rockets from hobby stores and household cleaners could have created a terrorist nightmare. Where are the feds?

Being treated like a human being is "above and beyond" with respect to airlines.

All of this crap is just that... crap. "Teaching for the test/compliance" is the big whine today. 15 years ago, the trend was to give everyone an A so their feelings wouldn't be hu…

There are actually some proposals out there to build extra-national trade cities in Africa to encourage Western-style development, minus the intense corruption of African governmen…

If the Congress is corrupt, than the state legislatures are a corpulent sewer of corruption and graft. Anything that takes power from them is generally a good thing. The upside of …

I'm pretty sure that if you get a data logger like this ( http://www.microdaq.com/lascar/temperature/usb-thermocouple-... ) and combine it with a good thermocouple probe and you sh…