What about when you have told your boss several times that it's not well tested and the message they've already communicated is "it's done" which means "you're done"? The "it's done" message is pre-communicated in the form of project plans that are based on the least information that will ever be available about the project - what is available before the project gets justified and any time is allocated to it.
For the majority of the time I've been working for my current employer, I've been saying " doesn't have any technical problems. All of our problems are people." This article is articulating the same thing with better examples than I have.
Our next big project is a prime example of how people problems create what look like software problems. Our last solution came in on time with an extremely agressive schedule. We have a reputation now for being able to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Our next project is several times more complex. We have a general idea of what needs to be done, but no written or solid requirements at this point. We put together some really vague estimates of what needs to be done, which came out to over a year for our group of five specific people and two additional people. Management turned that into four months for three people. We've pointed out until we're blue in the face that this is completely irrational.
Many large companies foster this kind of environment where the people who can actually do the job have the least input on the job to be done. The reason the problem is poor management isn't because the little people never speak up, but because management doesn't value the input of their people.
Our next project's funding will come from next year's budget, which is being justified by all the different levels of management right now. However, the project was killed last month by decisions that ensure that the result does not meet the needs of the business. If it were even remotely possible to do what middle management wants done in the time frame given, the end result would appear to be poorly implemented software. Of course, it has to appear that the problem is bad software, because the only other conclusion on the table is the one that can never be spoken. Bad management.
Of course they tell you that they believe in an invisible man in the sky on faith alone. There are a lot more people who can accept that without question than people who can fathom the truth.
Do you really think the church is going to come out and say "we know that intelligent design is how we got here because we actually met the space aliens who put us here"? It's much easier to claim some individual omnipotent being is responsible for everything. Do you realize what it would do to society if people knew we were a science experiment by a bunch of deviant aliens? How else do you explain the anal probes?
They didn't imprison Galileo for his ideas. They imprisoned him because the church is a cash cow and Galileo met the aliens and was trying to set up a competing company. The church is the original big-faceless-corporation.
This conspiracy has been brought to you by the fine people at Halliburton and the letter W.
Looking at processors like these, they're aimed at the server market. The people who can buy this hardware can afford the licenses. If one of these processors can compete with a 32 processor Sun Fire 12K in a functional sense, do you think Oracle is going to want less money? A count of "processors" presented to the system is as good a way of scaling licenses as any other in the server market.
Licensing probably won't change until everyone has multi core processors. Even then, licensing per "computer" without counting processors is still viable for desktop applications. Licensing is just income. Nobody cares how they do it, they just want to make sure they get as much of it as they can.
Linux is commercially viable to support on servers.
Where is the money in a Linux desktop? IBM wants to sell fewer, more expensive machines. Anything they could do to promote the desktop would be done cheaper by competetors.
For those that don't know the answer, it's because a firearm is used to inflict deadly force.
The goal is to wait as long as possible before shooting. Try to resolve the situation by ANY OTHER MEANS. Only when that has clearly failed, and there is a grave, immediate threat, do you fire upon another person. If you have enough time to make a leg shot, or are not determined to kill the person, you have no right to pull the trigger. The goal is to immediately neutralize the threat. If the person falls to the ground and the threat ceases, only then do you have the ability to summon medical help to determine if the person has a chance to live.
The goal of training in the use of deadly force is to allow someone the confidence and composure to avoid using it.
A camera only records events passively. This is only going to work against someone who is afraid of being caught or going to jail. Some criminals, especially drug addicts are not affected by passive threats. Active threats don't even register in their minds sometimes.
Dogs are an active deterrent. I have two St. Bernards and an Austrailian Shepherd. They're very friendly dogs, but they know when people don't belong. If someone broke into my house, I doubt the dogs would do more than make noise to let me know something was wrong, and where. However, anyone who would continue through the house, going past 300lbs of dogs is clearly a threat to my family.
Living in a good neighborhood is the first line of defense. Locking your doors and closing your windows is the second. Dogs can serve as the third. Deadly force is always the last option, but it's an important fallback plan.
And you've entirely missed the point as well. Linux comes from a long line of server operating systems. It wasn't intended to be the one size fits all desktop that some people would like to turn it into.
Then again, Windows only holds that role because people don't have a choice. Do you really think the average user thinks Windows is truly easy? It's easy for people who have understood the microsoft mentality in desktops over the last decade or two. New users still are confused by everything, regardless of the platform. If you're comfortable with the Windows way of doing things, that's based on your experience. Don't believe that everyone else has the same experiences you do.
You've focused so strongly on your compiling-is-bad-mkay tirade that you failed to recognize that it DOES NOT MATTER. If there is a common-user-friendly installation process, the common-user does not care if the software is delivered as an executable, is compiled, or what not. Ever seen documentation for Windows programs that require the end user to go in and edit the registry? Most programs do it for you, because the author of the program is better equipped to know what needs to be done than the end user. The ones that expect the user to do it also tend to have more serious fundamental problems, because the author Does Not Get It. Windows is not immune to the exact same criticisms people have with Linux. The common user just wants something that works. When the solution fails on this point, people will complain.
The valid criticism about so many Linux systems is that they don't have a user friendly enough installation process. This means a common approach to installing software, regardless of where it came from. That's the whole idea of having a common installer framework under windows. The problem that is faced on Linux is that it's used as a cutesy desktop environment by some people, and a serious server platform environment by others. Those two groups have very different goals and those with the technical expertise to help the desktop users are the ones with a vested interest in not losing the functionality they currently have by taking a one size fits all approach.
Those are some good examples of how DOS and Windows are just as bad as *nix when it comes to user interaction.
The problem with the one size fits all approach is that it has to be tailored to the lowest common denomenator.
Since you used Apache installation as an example, I will provide an example based on the most recent software installation I did under *nix. I just installed PostgreSQL 7.4.5 at work with the./configure ; make; make install that is so familiar to Unix sysadmins and many users../configure told me that I wouldn't be able to do certain things because some things were missing on my server. I promptly ignored those because this is work, where those features were of no interest to me. Now, on my home machine I perform the same steps to install the same software. At work, I installed it on a Sun V480 running Solaris 8, at home it's a Celeron 300A running FreeBSD. Those warnings about what I couldn't do on the work server didn't come up, because the extra stuff is installed at home. In the end, I ended up with everything set up correctly for the environment it's in, with capabilities based on the system I was installing it on. It didn't need to install a bunch of stuff I didn't need at work and it doesn't lack functionality at home. To me, this is the pinnacle of technical-user-friendliness.
I'm not a rabid supporter of all things Linux, but I know from experience that I can do the same thing on Linux I can do on every other *nix platform with a reasonable expectation that it will work.
The problem you cite isn't one of the system, but one of familiarity with the system.
Hourly contractors get paid for all the hours they work. If you're willing to work hard and are really good at what you do, it may be worth considering.
I've been a contractor for almost a year and a half now. The company doesn't have to pay benefits, vacation, etc for me. On the other hand, I get paid for all the hours worked. This is truly the only way to go in the current corporate environment. They want to create death marches piled one after another, fine, I'll bill for all the early mornings, late nights and weekends I work. Over 4800 hours in 1.5 years is a significant imposition into my personal time, but in this job market, it's a great position to be in financially.
Salaried positions have their benefits as well. In a salaried position, I want the 60 hour weeks to be offset by the 30 hour weeks. Contractors don't get paid for the time they don't work. Both approaches have their pros and cons. You just need to figure out what you're willing to live with.
I see a lot of people who are nonessential in large companies. They fill a role that could be automated in under a week. When the role doesn't need to be done by a person for any reason other than to keep headcount up, any headcount is just as good as any other headcount. This is the core philosophy behind many outsourcing movements.
That's not uncommon, but it is illegal. You're either exempt or you're not. Many companies also classify employees as exempt when they really do not fit the qualifications. Anyone who is in that situation and would like to do something about it should contact a lawyer.
I agree entirely on the drinking. I can't stand the taste of alcohol. The effect of it isn't too interesting either. Everyone insists there are drinks where you can't taste it. I always offer to give them a drink with only a little turpentine.
Social events can't be forced. Our team has gone to irish pub's for all but one of our events. No variety, and only the manager goes to them in his free time. That should say something.
If it weren't obvious what the problem would be, I'd suggest going to a shooting range as a team building event. What would tell you more about your team dynamic than everyone knowing who can rapid fire center of mass at 50' with a pistol?
Our xmas party was bowling. You had to take time off in the middle of the day to go. Everyone's an hourly contractor and you couldn't bill for that time. You also had to pay your own way. The manager and director decided that this was a compromise to include all the little people. If it weren't for that thoughtfulness, we would have been expected to go golfing.
Maybe the CIA has no business to exist. Maybe they shouldn't be messing with everyone else's affairs.
If we take the high road and get rid of all the cloak and dagger BS, what will change? The public will have more of an opportunity to be informed? The public doesn't seem to give a crap right now. People are happy knowing what little TV tells them they need to know.
What's the flip side of that same coin? Other countries will still play the cloak and dagger game. Just because we stop playing that game doesn't mean that everyone else pulling that crap here will pack up and leave.
And in the end, where does that leave us? If people were better informed, do you think they would take a more active role in making our government one that is of the people, by the people, and for the people?
The people you're trying to help are the same ones who are so happy to act on insufficient information that they *know* that encryption is for drug dealers, pedophiles and terrorists.
Maybe organizations like the CIA are doing good things that I don't know about or understand. I don't want to presume I know everything about what they do any more than I want them to tell me how to write programs.
I haven't seen f911. However, I don't buy into the other side's argument that it's all BS either. I've just seen too much of Moore's other work to bother watching f911. My comments are about his work in general and him as a messenger.
I saw Roger and Me a long time ago and couldn't help but think that Moore was a psychotic stalker. The thing that was really apparent with that movie is that he could seamlessly transition from confirmable facts to irrational conclusions.
When Bowling for Columbine came out, I was tempted to see what it had going for it. Everything I found on it pointed to it being riddled with misleading "facts" and obvious omissions. When it came out, a guy I worked with saw it and said it was really thought provoking. He gave some examples of what was said and I was surprised that he believed it. Everyone has propaganda on both sides of any argument, so there's always two ways to interpret the same information. We went and looked up statistics from a number of sources (to not build any bias into the process) and my coworker was surprised how badly many statistics were misrepresented.
Maybe he's actually gotten better and I'm letting past experience suggest too strongly that he's got an agenda to push at any cost. I've read a fair amount and talked to a few people about the movie, pro and con. None of those things seem to suggest this is any higher quality than his past work.
Yes, it was certainly illegal. They had many employment law violations going on. However, in the grand scheme of things, their employement law violations were the least of their legal liabilities.
My personal favorite policy was that to avoid paying for vacations, they required people to quit before going on vacation and they would be rehired when they came back. I was looking for another job while working there. If I had found one, I would have scheduled "vacation" just so everything would show that I quit that job, and they would be left high and dry when I never came back.
All documentaries are likely to reflect the biases of those putting the documentary together, even if they're trying to be fair. The problem with Moore's work is that it has the same relationship to a documentary that "reality TV" has with real life. He knowingly makes false statements and claims them to be fact. He also distorts what others say by making up invalid contexts for actual statements people make.
I'm all for people questioning the official version of events, but he is the wrong messenger. He is a real life troll. He has no higher purpose to inciting people.
In many cases, people can set up a relatively simple sudoers file and have it fit their needs.
Have you ever seen a single sudoers file for a large company which can be distributed to hundreds of hosts with different purposes and give the right people the right access across the entire network?
Having seen one of these, it gave me a newfound appreciation for how powerful of a tool sudo is in the right hands. I had been a system administrator using sudo for over a decade before I saw that. How much you know about any utility is often driven by what you need out of it.
From a manager's standpoint, it would be good to know that it's possible to get help if the resident expert left. It may seem like a relatively minor thing, but from a business standpoint, it makes sense to look for available support. You can replace a good sysadmin with another good sysadmin, but it doesn't mean they both have the same depth of experience in all areas.
It may feel good to go out with a bang, but other than that, what's the point? Anything dramatic that you do will just reflect negatively on you. Not only with management, the people who are the butt of the joke, but with other coworkers that you have nothing against, some who you may even get along with.
If those people who respect you know that you're leaving because of the BS environment, but you're still professional, give two weeks notice, etc, they may look you up in the future when they need someone with your skillset.
I once worked for a company where management would throw temper tantrums and threaten to fire everyone. That's how hostile they were. For my review, my performance and productivity was praised, and I was offerred a "promotion" from hourly to salaried at the same rate. Since this company actual docked people's pay for showing up late and/or leaving early, and required salaried people to work unpaid overtime, I recognized this as the paycut it was. While it may have been fun to screw over the company, I did something much worse. I left, giving about 10 minutes notice. The people I worked with knew it was because of the hostile and dishonest management. Apparently they had some serious problems after that.
I've never heard anyone look back on what they've done in the past and say "I wish I had been less professional at that job". On the other hand, I've heard of things that people have done in the past that I would hold against them if I were doing the hiring.
Revenge is fun and intensely satisfying. However, it's a tool that can only be used for evil, never for good. What goes around, comes around. Those who treat people poorly will get theirs. Do you really want to get yours?
Exactly. The costs of law enforcement with so many crimes are enormous. The benefit of vigilante justice is that you get privately funded law enforcement. There are a lot of people who are opposed to laws against victimless crimes. If no one cares enough about a law to use it as a justification to commit a violent crime against that person, it may as well not be a law.
After a few generations of brutal repression, there will be so few people left that the opportunity to commit a crime against someone would be rare.
Of course, this would justify making these all into web cams so anyone looking for an excuse to go enforce some laws can pitch in.
It's not just the aerodynamics that matter. 150mph winds hitting the shuttle directly from the side wouldn't be a problem directly, but if it causes the shuttle to flip over onto the concrete, or causes a VW to fly into the side of the shuttle, that's where the damage would occur. Aircraft in the air are working with the forces they're designed to handle. On the ground, there are a lot of additional problems.
I'd think it would be easier to argue anti-vegitarian on this point. For example, take the position that intelligence is more likely to develop in carnivores.
Carnivores have to chase down and kill animals that either do not want to be killed and eaten, or in some cases are looking to eat you first. This requires the ability to develop weapons, work cooperatively with others, and create strategies for ambushing animals. Failure to execute the kill correctly results in removing members of the species from the reproductive pool.
How hard is it to pick food off trees and bushes that have no active defenses? Once you figure out which plants are food and which are poisons, you're pretty much set as a herbivore.
Of course, the same type of argument could be made in favor of the complexities of farming on a scale to create an agricultural society.
They use their own computers for forensics, allowing them to mount the drive as read only. That way they can look all they want, copy data, etc without risking changing the contents.
MD5 is likely to be safe in general, but it depends on your security needs. However, it's good that this information is readily available with detailed analysis for those who are in a position to evaluate their risk potential.
For those who are handling financial transactions, the potential threat justifies the added effort in changing to SHA-1.
If you're using MD5's to make sure your executables on servers aren't tampered with, it's probably safe. What are the chances that someone is going to come across a collision with a very specific subset of commands that would be worth replacing on a compromised host?
Using multiple hashes is still a good general approach. If you have both MD5 and SHA-1, what are the chances of a compromise of one being critical? Nothing can be made totally secure, but buying time between discovery and exploitability is worthwhile.
Why would silver be such a bad currency? Silver has industrial uses and is often consumed(rendered into objects where reclamation of the silver is not cost effective), unlike gold which changes forms, but is cost effective to reclaim. That practical properties of silver seems to be a good reason for it to retain value as a medium of trade.
Products that use silver would be impacted by higher prices, but in general silver is used in very small amounts. The manufacture of the products constitutes the value, not the silver content.
I think the real problem of a precious metal based currency is the inconsistency with other currencies. When the silver was removed from US coins in 1965, some people knew they were being ripped off and values canadian coins with silver content higher. Bad (fiat) money always forces good money out of circulation because there are some people who will hold onto the good money.
A 40% silver US half dollar costs about $2.05 right now. While the value of that silver in US dollars can go up as far as people are willing to pay, the value of the coin can't go below $0.50.
I believe Nevada was one state considering minting a $20 1oz silver coin that would be currency. The silver right now would be worth $6.75, and the rest of the $20 is the value the state of Nevada asserts. I would be in favor of a fractional backing like this because the money supply cannot be inflated just by pushing a button - resources would be needed and abuse of the system would result in higher silver prices anyway.
I can relate to the randomness of mangement you make in point 4. When our manager was out, we would flip a coin to make management decisions. Heads is inefficient solution, tails is approach that cannot possibly work, edge was the solution we were supporting, and dangling in the air indefinitely was no decision. Aside from aversion to decision, which was 80% of what our manager would do, the heads/tails/edge options approximated the 20% of decisions actually made.
Maybe there is something to golf in management. They choose a sport where they are solely responsible for their own outcome for their free time and choose to take no responsibility for their own actions professionally. Perhaps geeks are not as "complex" as PHB's - we have a hard time doing the constant context switching between the double standards.
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What about when you have told your boss several times that it's not well tested and the message they've already communicated is "it's done" which means "you're done"? The "it's done" message is pre-communicated in the form of project plans that are based on the least information that will ever be available about the project - what is available before the project gets justified and any time is allocated to it.
For the majority of the time I've been working for my current employer, I've been saying " doesn't have any technical problems. All of our problems are people." This article is articulating the same thing with better examples than I have.
Our next big project is a prime example of how people problems create what look like software problems. Our last solution came in on time with an extremely agressive schedule. We have a reputation now for being able to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Our next project is several times more complex. We have a general idea of what needs to be done, but no written or solid requirements at this point. We put together some really vague estimates of what needs to be done, which came out to over a year for our group of five specific people and two additional people. Management turned that into four months for three people. We've pointed out until we're blue in the face that this is completely irrational.
Many large companies foster this kind of environment where the people who can actually do the job have the least input on the job to be done. The reason the problem is poor management isn't because the little people never speak up, but because management doesn't value the input of their people.
Our next project's funding will come from next year's budget, which is being justified by all the different levels of management right now. However, the project was killed last month by decisions that ensure that the result does not meet the needs of the business. If it were even remotely possible to do what middle management wants done in the time frame given, the end result would appear to be poorly implemented software. Of course, it has to appear that the problem is bad software, because the only other conclusion on the table is the one that can never be spoken. Bad management.
Of course they tell you that they believe in an invisible man in the sky on faith alone. There are a lot more people who can accept that without question than people who can fathom the truth.
Do you really think the church is going to come out and say "we know that intelligent design is how we got here because we actually met the space aliens who put us here"? It's much easier to claim some individual omnipotent being is responsible for everything. Do you realize what it would do to society if people knew we were a science experiment by a bunch of deviant aliens? How else do you explain the anal probes?
They didn't imprison Galileo for his ideas. They imprisoned him because the church is a cash cow and Galileo met the aliens and was trying to set up a competing company. The church is the original big-faceless-corporation.
This conspiracy has been brought to you by the fine people at Halliburton and the letter W.
Looking at processors like these, they're aimed at the server market. The people who can buy this hardware can afford the licenses. If one of these processors can compete with a 32 processor Sun Fire 12K in a functional sense, do you think Oracle is going to want less money? A count of "processors" presented to the system is as good a way of scaling licenses as any other in the server market.
Licensing probably won't change until everyone has multi core processors. Even then, licensing per "computer" without counting processors is still viable for desktop applications. Licensing is just income. Nobody cares how they do it, they just want to make sure they get as much of it as they can.
Linux is commercially viable to support on servers.
Where is the money in a Linux desktop? IBM wants to sell fewer, more expensive machines. Anything they could do to promote the desktop would be done cheaper by competetors.
For those that don't know the answer, it's because a firearm is used to inflict deadly force.
The goal is to wait as long as possible before shooting. Try to resolve the situation by ANY OTHER MEANS. Only when that has clearly failed, and there is a grave, immediate threat, do you fire upon another person. If you have enough time to make a leg shot, or are not determined to kill the person, you have no right to pull the trigger. The goal is to immediately neutralize the threat. If the person falls to the ground and the threat ceases, only then do you have the ability to summon medical help to determine if the person has a chance to live.
The goal of training in the use of deadly force is to allow someone the confidence and composure to avoid using it.
A camera only records events passively. This is only going to work against someone who is afraid of being caught or going to jail. Some criminals, especially drug addicts are not affected by passive threats. Active threats don't even register in their minds sometimes.
Dogs are an active deterrent. I have two St. Bernards and an Austrailian Shepherd. They're very friendly dogs, but they know when people don't belong. If someone broke into my house, I doubt the dogs would do more than make noise to let me know something was wrong, and where. However, anyone who would continue through the house, going past 300lbs of dogs is clearly a threat to my family.
Living in a good neighborhood is the first line of defense. Locking your doors and closing your windows is the second. Dogs can serve as the third. Deadly force is always the last option, but it's an important fallback plan.
And you've entirely missed the point as well. Linux comes from a long line of server operating systems. It wasn't intended to be the one size fits all desktop that some people would like to turn it into.
Then again, Windows only holds that role because people don't have a choice. Do you really think the average user thinks Windows is truly easy? It's easy for people who have understood the microsoft mentality in desktops over the last decade or two. New users still are confused by everything, regardless of the platform. If you're comfortable with the Windows way of doing things, that's based on your experience. Don't believe that everyone else has the same experiences you do.
You've focused so strongly on your compiling-is-bad-mkay tirade that you failed to recognize that it DOES NOT MATTER. If there is a common-user-friendly installation process, the common-user does not care if the software is delivered as an executable, is compiled, or what not. Ever seen documentation for Windows programs that require the end user to go in and edit the registry? Most programs do it for you, because the author of the program is better equipped to know what needs to be done than the end user. The ones that expect the user to do it also tend to have more serious fundamental problems, because the author Does Not Get It. Windows is not immune to the exact same criticisms people have with Linux. The common user just wants something that works. When the solution fails on this point, people will complain.
The valid criticism about so many Linux systems is that they don't have a user friendly enough installation process. This means a common approach to installing software, regardless of where it came from. That's the whole idea of having a common installer framework under windows. The problem that is faced on Linux is that it's used as a cutesy desktop environment by some people, and a serious server platform environment by others. Those two groups have very different goals and those with the technical expertise to help the desktop users are the ones with a vested interest in not losing the functionality they currently have by taking a one size fits all approach.
Those are some good examples of how DOS and Windows are just as bad as *nix when it comes to user interaction.
./configure ; make; make install that is so familiar to Unix sysadmins and many users. ./configure told me that I wouldn't be able to do certain things because some things were missing on my server. I promptly ignored those because this is work, where those features were of no interest to me. Now, on my home machine I perform the same steps to install the same software. At work, I installed it on a Sun V480 running Solaris 8, at home it's a Celeron 300A running FreeBSD. Those warnings about what I couldn't do on the work server didn't come up, because the extra stuff is installed at home. In the end, I ended up with everything set up correctly for the environment it's in, with capabilities based on the system I was installing it on. It didn't need to install a bunch of stuff I didn't need at work and it doesn't lack functionality at home. To me, this is the pinnacle of technical-user-friendliness.
The problem with the one size fits all approach is that it has to be tailored to the lowest common denomenator.
Since you used Apache installation as an example, I will provide an example based on the most recent software installation I did under *nix. I just installed PostgreSQL 7.4.5 at work with the
I'm not a rabid supporter of all things Linux, but I know from experience that I can do the same thing on Linux I can do on every other *nix platform with a reasonable expectation that it will work.
The problem you cite isn't one of the system, but one of familiarity with the system.
Hourly contractors get paid for all the hours they work. If you're willing to work hard and are really good at what you do, it may be worth considering.
I've been a contractor for almost a year and a half now. The company doesn't have to pay benefits, vacation, etc for me. On the other hand, I get paid for all the hours worked. This is truly the only way to go in the current corporate environment. They want to create death marches piled one after another, fine, I'll bill for all the early mornings, late nights and weekends I work. Over 4800 hours in 1.5 years is a significant imposition into my personal time, but in this job market, it's a great position to be in financially.
Salaried positions have their benefits as well. In a salaried position, I want the 60 hour weeks to be offset by the 30 hour weeks. Contractors don't get paid for the time they don't work. Both approaches have their pros and cons. You just need to figure out what you're willing to live with.
I see a lot of people who are nonessential in large companies. They fill a role that could be automated in under a week. When the role doesn't need to be done by a person for any reason other than to keep headcount up, any headcount is just as good as any other headcount. This is the core philosophy behind many outsourcing movements.
That's not uncommon, but it is illegal. You're either exempt or you're not. Many companies also classify employees as exempt when they really do not fit the qualifications. Anyone who is in that situation and would like to do something about it should contact a lawyer.
I agree entirely on the drinking. I can't stand the taste of alcohol. The effect of it isn't too interesting either. Everyone insists there are drinks where you can't taste it. I always offer to give them a drink with only a little turpentine.
Social events can't be forced. Our team has gone to irish pub's for all but one of our events. No variety, and only the manager goes to them in his free time. That should say something.
If it weren't obvious what the problem would be, I'd suggest going to a shooting range as a team building event. What would tell you more about your team dynamic than everyone knowing who can rapid fire center of mass at 50' with a pistol?
Our xmas party was bowling. You had to take time off in the middle of the day to go. Everyone's an hourly contractor and you couldn't bill for that time. You also had to pay your own way. The manager and director decided that this was a compromise to include all the little people. If it weren't for that thoughtfulness, we would have been expected to go golfing.
Ask yourself "what if I'm right?".
Maybe the CIA has no business to exist. Maybe they shouldn't be messing with everyone else's affairs.
If we take the high road and get rid of all the cloak and dagger BS, what will change? The public will have more of an opportunity to be informed? The public doesn't seem to give a crap right now. People are happy knowing what little TV tells them they need to know.
What's the flip side of that same coin? Other countries will still play the cloak and dagger game. Just because we stop playing that game doesn't mean that everyone else pulling that crap here will pack up and leave.
And in the end, where does that leave us? If people were better informed, do you think they would take a more active role in making our government one that is of the people, by the people, and for the people?
The people you're trying to help are the same ones who are so happy to act on insufficient information that they *know* that encryption is for drug dealers, pedophiles and terrorists.
Maybe organizations like the CIA are doing good things that I don't know about or understand. I don't want to presume I know everything about what they do any more than I want them to tell me how to write programs.
I haven't seen f911. However, I don't buy into the other side's argument that it's all BS either. I've just seen too much of Moore's other work to bother watching f911. My comments are about his work in general and him as a messenger.
I saw Roger and Me a long time ago and couldn't help but think that Moore was a psychotic stalker. The thing that was really apparent with that movie is that he could seamlessly transition from confirmable facts to irrational conclusions.
When Bowling for Columbine came out, I was tempted to see what it had going for it. Everything I found on it pointed to it being riddled with misleading "facts" and obvious omissions. When it came out, a guy I worked with saw it and said it was really thought provoking. He gave some examples of what was said and I was surprised that he believed it. Everyone has propaganda on both sides of any argument, so there's always two ways to interpret the same information. We went and looked up statistics from a number of sources (to not build any bias into the process) and my coworker was surprised how badly many statistics were misrepresented.
Maybe he's actually gotten better and I'm letting past experience suggest too strongly that he's got an agenda to push at any cost. I've read a fair amount and talked to a few people about the movie, pro and con. None of those things seem to suggest this is any higher quality than his past work.
Yes, it was certainly illegal. They had many employment law violations going on. However, in the grand scheme of things, their employement law violations were the least of their legal liabilities.
My personal favorite policy was that to avoid paying for vacations, they required people to quit before going on vacation and they would be rehired when they came back. I was looking for another job while working there. If I had found one, I would have scheduled "vacation" just so everything would show that I quit that job, and they would be left high and dry when I never came back.
All documentaries are likely to reflect the biases of those putting the documentary together, even if they're trying to be fair. The problem with Moore's work is that it has the same relationship to a documentary that "reality TV" has with real life. He knowingly makes false statements and claims them to be fact. He also distorts what others say by making up invalid contexts for actual statements people make.
I'm all for people questioning the official version of events, but he is the wrong messenger. He is a real life troll. He has no higher purpose to inciting people.
In many cases, people can set up a relatively simple sudoers file and have it fit their needs.
Have you ever seen a single sudoers file for a large company which can be distributed to hundreds of hosts with different purposes and give the right people the right access across the entire network?
Having seen one of these, it gave me a newfound appreciation for how powerful of a tool sudo is in the right hands. I had been a system administrator using sudo for over a decade before I saw that. How much you know about any utility is often driven by what you need out of it.
From a manager's standpoint, it would be good to know that it's possible to get help if the resident expert left. It may seem like a relatively minor thing, but from a business standpoint, it makes sense to look for available support. You can replace a good sysadmin with another good sysadmin, but it doesn't mean they both have the same depth of experience in all areas.
It may feel good to go out with a bang, but other than that, what's the point? Anything dramatic that you do will just reflect negatively on you. Not only with management, the people who are the butt of the joke, but with other coworkers that you have nothing against, some who you may even get along with.
If those people who respect you know that you're leaving because of the BS environment, but you're still professional, give two weeks notice, etc, they may look you up in the future when they need someone with your skillset.
I once worked for a company where management would throw temper tantrums and threaten to fire everyone. That's how hostile they were. For my review, my performance and productivity was praised, and I was offerred a "promotion" from hourly to salaried at the same rate. Since this company actual docked people's pay for showing up late and/or leaving early, and required salaried people to work unpaid overtime, I recognized this as the paycut it was. While it may have been fun to screw over the company, I did something much worse. I left, giving about 10 minutes notice. The people I worked with knew it was because of the hostile and dishonest management. Apparently they had some serious problems after that.
I've never heard anyone look back on what they've done in the past and say "I wish I had been less professional at that job". On the other hand, I've heard of things that people have done in the past that I would hold against them if I were doing the hiring.
Revenge is fun and intensely satisfying. However, it's a tool that can only be used for evil, never for good. What goes around, comes around. Those who treat people poorly will get theirs. Do you really want to get yours?
Exactly. The costs of law enforcement with so many crimes are enormous. The benefit of vigilante justice is that you get privately funded law enforcement. There are a lot of people who are opposed to laws against victimless crimes. If no one cares enough about a law to use it as a justification to commit a violent crime against that person, it may as well not be a law.
After a few generations of brutal repression, there will be so few people left that the opportunity to commit a crime against someone would be rare.
Of course, this would justify making these all into web cams so anyone looking for an excuse to go enforce some laws can pitch in.
It's not just the aerodynamics that matter. 150mph winds hitting the shuttle directly from the side wouldn't be a problem directly, but if it causes the shuttle to flip over onto the concrete, or causes a VW to fly into the side of the shuttle, that's where the damage would occur. Aircraft in the air are working with the forces they're designed to handle. On the ground, there are a lot of additional problems.
I'd think it would be easier to argue anti-vegitarian on this point. For example, take the position that intelligence is more likely to develop in carnivores.
Carnivores have to chase down and kill animals that either do not want to be killed and eaten, or in some cases are looking to eat you first. This requires the ability to develop weapons, work cooperatively with others, and create strategies for ambushing animals. Failure to execute the kill correctly results in removing members of the species from the reproductive pool.
How hard is it to pick food off trees and bushes that have no active defenses? Once you figure out which plants are food and which are poisons, you're pretty much set as a herbivore.
Of course, the same type of argument could be made in favor of the complexities of farming on a scale to create an agricultural society.
They use their own computers for forensics, allowing them to mount the drive as read only. That way they can look all they want, copy data, etc without risking changing the contents.
MD5 is likely to be safe in general, but it depends on your security needs. However, it's good that this information is readily available with detailed analysis for those who are in a position to evaluate their risk potential.
For those who are handling financial transactions, the potential threat justifies the added effort in changing to SHA-1.
If you're using MD5's to make sure your executables on servers aren't tampered with, it's probably safe. What are the chances that someone is going to come across a collision with a very specific subset of commands that would be worth replacing on a compromised host?
Using multiple hashes is still a good general approach. If you have both MD5 and SHA-1, what are the chances of a compromise of one being critical? Nothing can be made totally secure, but buying time between discovery and exploitability is worthwhile.
Why would silver be such a bad currency? Silver has industrial uses and is often consumed(rendered into objects where reclamation of the silver is not cost effective), unlike gold which changes forms, but is cost effective to reclaim. That practical properties of silver seems to be a good reason for it to retain value as a medium of trade.
Products that use silver would be impacted by higher prices, but in general silver is used in very small amounts. The manufacture of the products constitutes the value, not the silver content.
I think the real problem of a precious metal based currency is the inconsistency with other currencies. When the silver was removed from US coins in 1965, some people knew they were being ripped off and values canadian coins with silver content higher. Bad (fiat) money always forces good money out of circulation because there are some people who will hold onto the good money.
A 40% silver US half dollar costs about $2.05 right now. While the value of that silver in US dollars can go up as far as people are willing to pay, the value of the coin can't go below $0.50.
I believe Nevada was one state considering minting a $20 1oz silver coin that would be currency. The silver right now would be worth $6.75, and the rest of the $20 is the value the state of Nevada asserts. I would be in favor of a fractional backing like this because the money supply cannot be inflated just by pushing a button - resources would be needed and abuse of the system would result in higher silver prices anyway.
Those are some very good observations.
I can relate to the randomness of mangement you make in point 4. When our manager was out, we would flip a coin to make management decisions. Heads is inefficient solution, tails is approach that cannot possibly work, edge was the solution we were supporting, and dangling in the air indefinitely was no decision. Aside from aversion to decision, which was 80% of what our manager would do, the heads/tails/edge options approximated the 20% of decisions actually made.
Maybe there is something to golf in management. They choose a sport where they are solely responsible for their own outcome for their free time and choose to take no responsibility for their own actions professionally. Perhaps geeks are not as "complex" as PHB's - we have a hard time doing the constant context switching between the double standards.