California Driver Education

Certainly things have changed since I was there: driver education in California now requires that you take a state approved test before you can get your learner's permit. I am glad that wasn't in place when I took my California driver's test: I would never have managed to do what I did, arrive in the country and rent a condo, buy a car, get a licence, get the house furnished and everything insured in just 8 days.

However, don't despair, there are simple ways to deal with the problem. One option is to get this program dealing with driver education in California. It's a state approved course, so it meets the rules, but the difference is that you can do most of the work at home. Once you've studied this, you can get your learner's permit. Now what is the value of being able to do this at home? Well, you can do it in your own time, at your own speed. There's no need for parents to ferry you off to classes at a particular time and that all just makes life so much easier.

The second option for California driver education is to look at that program, the virtual one. This is computer based and allows you to learn safe and effective driving techniques from your own room! You can simply log on when you want to and take parts of the course. Again, the value is that you can do this when you have time to, not working to the rigid timetable of organised classes. It's also true that we all learn more when we are the only student, not being distracted by those around us.

Either or both programs will teach you in the way the law insists you must be, so that you can complete your California driver education and get your learner's permit.

After that, it's driving on the real roads to gain experience, and no one has quite worked out yet a simpler way to do that.

New Directory

Now here's an interesting idea. We're all familiar with the process of a directory, right? Guides to what's going on out there on the net, perhaps the most well known is Dmoz, although Yahoo originally started out as just such a directory.

Well, you would think that everything had been done already but this simply isn't true. As software advances, there are still new approaches that can be tried.

As for example this new directory that's just getting up and running. They're making sure that each entry is hand reviewed, meaning that the quality of the entries will be high and $3 for inclusion in such a site seems like a very reasonable deal. They're also using the Wordpress software to do it which gives them some huge advantages, (transparency to the search engines, for example). In effect, making a Wordpress Directory.

Well worth checking out. It looks like they're also going to be aggregating the content in some manner, so that your site content will be pinged more often and thus increase your visibility to the engines. I admit that I need to look at this a little more to get it straight in my mind. Excuse me.

Dell and Intel Kickbacks

Looks like Dell is being sued for accepting kickbacks from Intel which were paid to stop it using AMD chips: 

Dell shareholders are suing the computer maker over allegations it took kickbacks from Intel to maintain an exclusive relationship with the chipmaker.

The class action suit alleges Dell's profits were inflated by as much as $800m a year by the payments. The money was paid as long as Dell rejected chips from rival supplier AMD. Dell only started offering machines with AMD processors last year.

The case, filed in Austin, Texas, alleges the computer maker failed to properly account for the money and defrauded shareholders. The filing was made Wednesday last week - the same day Dell announced Kevin Rollins would be replaced as CEO by Michael Dell.

The problem isn't the payments themselves, Intel and Dell can enter into any agreement they like. Rather, it's the way they were accounted for: you have to tell the world how you're making your profits.

 

Technorati tags: Dell, Intel, AMD