But the point is: most people do not want to download source, compile it, and install/configure it.
Therefore, it has to be on the distro that you got from the installfest, or from a friend.
The vast majority there are people with dialup connections, and are billed per minute! Downloading large apps (or even ISOs) is very tedious and expensive (not to mention it ties up the phone line too).
So, the question is which distro works out of the box in Arabic with the most apps working in Arabic, and with the least problems?
One thing I noticed in Egypt, as opposed to other countries in the West: the lack of good used computers.
Here, you have companies leasing things for 2 or 3 years and then selling it. You can get good usable Pentium III computers for a very good price, and they make very nice servers or second machines. Almost every computer shop here (Ontario) has some stock of these.
In Egypt, leasing is not a common business practice. Also, companies (and individuals) hold on to the PC until it is virtually unusable, this could mean 6 or 7 years or even more.
Of course the economice factor is there, but it is also the culture of holding on to things one own (as opposed to the culture of disposable things in the West).
how many females are involved with the open source crowd, and in the IT industry in general, in Egypt?
I can answer that paritally at least.
There are as many women as men (if not more) in Egypt in the IT industry.
I know, because when I worked in Egypt back in the 80s, the IT department I was in had more females than males, from data entry to programming to management. About the only place that did not have females was the mainframe operations (requiring late shifts and such).
This was a governmental organization, and they had more perks for women than men (nice vacation on giving birth, right to go back to same or similar position, leave early to nurse the baby, take unpaid leave to care for kids,...etc.)
Even in the private software development sector, their seem to be more women than men (I know because my wife worked at such a place, and that is again back in the 80s).
In university, you see about a 50/50 gender split in computer science, if not more women.
Yeah, this info is a bit dated, but at least provides some historical data. Don't think it has changed much since.
I know you are joking, but here are some answers anyway.
What do Egyptian nerds wear? Black horn-rimmed kaffiyehs?
Most Egyptians wear western style clothes. Hollywood's stereotype of pyramids, desert, turbans, and camels not withstanding.
What's the ancient heiroglyph for "FR15T P05T!?"
By taking the English geekspeak letters FR15T P05T!? and translating them into the hieroglyph equivalent. We got a French guy called Champollion to help us there.
Seriously, Egypt now speaks Arabic. Hieroglyphs have been out of general use for about 22 centuries or so.
Do Egyptian nerds survive off of Cheetos and Mountain Dew, or is it more like big mouthfuls of qat and Pyramid Dew?
Qat is not consumed in Egypt. It is almost exclusively a Yemeni thing. Confused Geography again?
Is Pyramid Dew a new thing there that I missed?
What kind of beer do Egyptian nerds drink?
Most would not drink beer, because most do not consume alcohol. However, there is Fayrouz and all its flavors (non alcoholic beer like beverage, with many flavors).
How do you keep all the fucking sand out of your case mods?
By not living in the desert to begin with. That is why we have cities!
Do you have "Type-R" camels? Do you have low-rider camels with neon on their nuts?
Repeat after me: Camels are there only for retired American tourists who visit the Pyramids. Oh, and they are made into shish kebab as well!Not very common, but those who tried it say it is good.
Is anyone in Egypt using Linux mainly for Arbaic stuff? Which distro do they use.
I mean, programmers and techies will be fiddling with English apps most of the time, and only use arabic for the odd letter, or web site. What I mean is someone who does most of his work in Arabic (document editing, browsing, spreadsheets,...etc.)
I have tried Red Hat some time back (I think 7.2?) and Konquerer would work well displaying Arabic web pages correctly, but no other apps would work well.
My current Mandrake 9.1 is a pain to setup Arabic to work (in KDE control panel), and even then, it does not work in all apps.
Knoppix from Sept 2003 is far far better. You can switch to arabic by clicking the little flag icon on the bottom right of the screen, and many apps (cant remember which, probably Open Office?) can accept Arabic letters.
Any one used Mandrake 10 CE or Final with Arabic? How is it?
Can the non-CD distros emulate Knoppix in this regard?
Here is some background, based on experience of relatives living in Egypt. I am Egyptian myself, but have not been living there for 15+ years.
In the 90s, Microsoft turned a blind eye to piracy. They simply did not care what happens in the Arab world (software wise). They ignored that market. Arabization of products normally followed a delayed schedule, with the latest product being not in Arabic. When Windows 3.x came out, there was a competing Arabization by Al Alamiah, a Kuwaiti company. The lead architect (cant' remember his name, but either Lebanese or Syrian) there was enticed into leaving Al Alamiah and join Microsoft. There was a brief law suit then. In the end Microsoft was dominant in the Arabization area. Product release in Arabic still lagged behind English and other Western languages.
Then, in the mid 90s, Microsoft started to enforce licenses on businesses. In Egypt, a newly formed Shortet El Mosanafat El Faneyya (literally: Artistic Products Police, more like: "Intellectual Property Police") started raiding large, medium and small businesses to check if their software was licensed. They specifically looked for certain products and ignored others (e.g. Microsoft stuff, AutoCAD in Engineering firms, Oracle, but not Novel [if I remember correctly], nor Apple).
Rumor at the time had it that some rich and powerful people (ruling elite) made a cut with Microsoft in all this.
Remember that the US Dollar was around 3.4 Egyptian pound at the time. Making legal software very costly for the small business.
This scared small businesses, and some relatives I know migrated from Microsoft Windows and Fox Pro applications to Linux and SQL-Ledger for example. There was so much resentment for Microsoft at the time for doing this, and the powers who enforced it.
Now, the exchange rate is about 6.5 Egyptian Pounds to 1 US Dollar, so it has gotten even worse (more prohibitive cost of Microsoft software).
However, in the internet land, another development was taking place around the turn of the Millenium. Many developers for the internet knew nothing but Microsoft, so they used its technologies to develop web sites (ASP, MS SQL, NT/2000/XP,...etc.) More importantly, this led to many web sites showing correctly in Arabic ONLY when used Internet Explorer.
This means that people at home or in offices who do not have Windows and IE will not be able to interact properly with web sites. Al Jazeera web site for example shows only the middle pane in FireFox, and the side menus are only visible under IE.
Arabs are around 300 million, is supposed to be the 5th most widely spoken language in the world. For a company to gain a monopoly on an entire culture is simply wrong and unacceptable, but it did happen.
the bright side is that Linux is making some inroads. But there are obstacles (e.g. Arabic web sites which are IE centric, as above).
Yes, boycott of American products may have played a role since 2000 (with the Palestinian uprising, then the post-Sept 11 events). But more pragmatic factors were there far before any of this came into play, and Microsoft was (and still is) not liked by many (just like the rest of us Open Source advocates in the West do not like thm either).
Most posts discuss what happens to the data, and most mention porn, others mention software,...etc.
All that is good and all, but there is more than that. Think about your accounting records for example (Quicken, GnuCash,...etc.). What about your emails that you meticulously kept for 10 or 15 years.
That is the stuff on your computer. What about the stuff you put on the net in one form or another? For example that blog you setup? Or that web site?
Once you die, the PC eventually becomes obsolete or unusable. Chances are, your spouse of kids are not interested in what is the computer, and it is gone. Your web hosting account will probably be terminated due to non-payment.
Before archeology, our only sources of data on past civilizations was from historians. These were often porfessional people writing for posterity, and had some bias or other.
After archeology came into play in the 19th century, our knowledge of past civilization had a quantum leap, after we found fragments of daily life from average people (like you and me and him). Whether it was Greek ostraca, or baked clay tablets with list of goods, or pottery shards with writing practice in hieroglyphs.
Which brings me to the point of this post: the bigger picture, not individuals, or families, but societies and civilizations.
All this meta data about humanity in the last 2 decades of the 20th century, and the 21st century is on perishable and fragile media. It is even volatile (web hosting account?)
How would people several centuries from now view this entire civilization? How would they guage the reaction to say Sept 11, or invasion of Iraq? Would they see the US population as pro or anti war, or divided evenly? How would Bin Laden and Bush be assessed? Blair? Aznar? How would they get a glimpse into people's daily life.
Remember that as things are happening, it is easy to think that the information you gather on the event/person/concept are always clear and available. However, if you give it a decade or two, you yourself will not remember much details. How about people from a different culture/mindset/civilization/society? What would they think and how would they perceive you from the little they manage to recover?
The only hope here is the wayback machine at http://www.archive.org But will it endure? Is it enough?
About umpteen years ago, the customer services division of the company that I worked for was instructed that they MUST purchase a Network General Sniffer device.
Network General later merged with McAfee Associates to become Network Associates, by the way.
Anyway, this Sniffer device was just a Compaq luggable thing (not a laptop, a luggable), with a special NIC with a BNC sticking out of it. That NIC was supposed not to drop any packets no matter how much traffic is on the LAN. The software that came with was DOS based, and did all sorts of nifty things with protocol analysis and stuff.
How much did that baby cost? 30,000$ US Dollars. Yes! That much.
Later, Network General started selling a PCMCIA card with software to do the same on any laptop for much less money. And yet later they sold only the software and recommended NICs.
Talk about milking the cow to the last drop!
Last year, I was experimenting with a Knoppix CD, and then ran into Ethereal, and then I immediately remembered the 30,000$ paid for that sucker, and said Oh My God....
I do not know if the guy is guilty or not. A trial will tell us, in due time.
However, the media coverage of the whole thing sucks.
His father, Mahboob A. Khawaja, has been detained in Saudi Arabia, where he is a professor at some university. The media reports that the father wrote articles critical of the West's meddling with the Muslim World's affairs. He wrote a book called Muslims and the West.
How is that relevant to anything? Is it an attempt to tie genuine legitimate criticism to terrorism somehow?
I did some searching on the father, and found quite a few articles, most of it critical to the Arab rulers than anything else. Seems he places blame where it belongs, whether in the West or in the Arab world.
This reminds me of the terms "terrorism", "anti-Americanism",...etc. all these are misused terms in these confusing times.
This whole thing about "guilt by association" got to stop.
OLAP is not a new concept. I evaluated OLAP products back in 1996 as part of a project for a customer's data warehouse.
As you say, there is no standard, and different vendors advocate different solutions.
The main issue is that the Cube (as OLAP databases are often called) has to be refreshed every day from the data source (the main system). It becomes a nightmare to sync the data, specially when the OLAP was started by departments, without IT involvement in the first place.
ROLAP, the relational version has some merit here, but performance can be a problem. Many databases cannot cope with such a load of ad hoc queries, and therefore the database vendors advocate a separate OLAP server.
Some data warehousing specific databases (e.g. NCR's Teradata [Disclaimer: I work for NCR, but not in the Teradata division. I did consulting on data warehousing with NCR for customers a few years back]) can handle such a load and a relational OLAP or departmental systems that feed from the main store is a good solution, since you get one version of the truth, data cleansing and scrubbing is done once, and the data goes in one direction only (from source system(s) to data warehouse, to OLAP servers).
Here are some products that were not mentioned:
- Microstrategy DSS Agent, DSS Architect,...etc. These fall under the Relational OLAP category. Setting it up is tricky, but gives you OLAP functionality without a separate data store (if the database can handle the load, Oracle often cannot with large databases).
- Red Brick is a company that makes an OLAP specific database (or used to).
- Business Objects used to have a product too, can't remember its name.
Others have mentioned Cognos Powerplay and Impromptu, and ESS Base already.
It has been quite a few years since I did data warehousing, so the above may be a bit dated.
User denzo above pointed to many points that were inaccurate in Animats' post.
Here are more:
- "He married an older women for money." Nope. Khadija, Muhammad's first wife, was the one who sought him out after she found him an honest manager of her caravans in trade.
- "He became a used camel dealer". Nope again. He never dealt in camels, neither "new" nor "used":-). He was a sheep herder as a young boy though. In his youth, he was a trader, going to Syria with caravans of goods trading on behalf of others.
-"he and his followers managed to take over Medina". They did not take it over. The tribes of Medina invited him over. You maybe be confusing Mecca with Medina.
- "he started invading and conquering neighboring countries". True, but he was not left alone in Medina, and the old foes (the established polity and wealthy of Mecca) kept trying to suppress the new religion.
As of the movie, it was not shown in Egypt either. Religious authorities there approved the script, but when the movie came out, they wear perhaps weary of people's reaction.
I can tell you because I switched from Pharmacy, after getting a Bachelor degree in it, and practicing for a mere 3 months. I went to IT around 19 years ago.
This was another country, another continent, but on my first visit to the USA, I met a pharmacist and he was complaining about his job too! The same complaints I found back home (physicians get all the credit, too little say).
Up until that outsourcing thing, it was a good decision.
I can tell you that pharmacy is a really really boring job. It is not a desk job, you are standing for 8 hours a day. You decipher bad handwriting by physicians, and it is almost mechanical, counting pills and putting labels, and perhaps checking drug interactions. Definitely not worth it after 5 years of hard and deep study.
You are also a retail outlet of sorts, and you have to deal with people just like a grocer or a convenient store. You are subject to various regulators, more than a normal retailers (at least in some countries). You have more liability than them too.
In may cases, you have to be open beyond 8 hours a day, and sometimes on weekends and holidays too!
At least in North America, the pharmacist does not have to man the counter for cosmetics, makeup, feminine hygiene, kids accessories, and diapers too! They have to do so in other places, since they could well be the only person in the shop!
So, I understand fully, and was happier with IT over the last 19 years. At least it challenged your brain, not moronic like the reality of being a retail pharmacist.
Now, research pharmacist is different, but how many are there?
King of Spam (retired!)
on
Spam Bits
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Hey.
I submitted the story about the Canadian spammer trio yesterday and it got rejected.
I also submitted an article from The Ottawa Citizen. Interesting bits in it. He claims to be retired, and used to make 140,000$ a week. He sent 30 million messages a day.
Notice how he calls anti SPAM activists "terrorists". Nice moniker there, just like Commie was in the 1950s/1960s.
Perhaps my joking remark about US invading Canada because of all that put off the editors?;-). I knew that CAN-SPAM had a Canadian sounding name!
We have seen dictators calling opposition "terrorists" in the wake of the changes in the USA after 9/11. For example Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has labeled his political opponents as such.
Worse, we saw Middle East despots trying to vindicate themselves, and saying that all the oppressive measures that they took against political dissidents were right, and "See! The USA is doing it now! We were criticized by the world when we did the same things! Now everyone knows we are right".
They were out of business from 14 to 23 February. When they are back, they are only providing web hosting and not IRC. So the warrant was definitely related to IRC and they decided not to be in the business again?
http://www.cithosting.com/news.htm
02/14/2004 FBI Confiscates all servers
Dear Customers of FOONET/CIT:
We regret to inform you that on Saturday February 14, 2004 at approximately 8:35 am EST, FOONET/CIT's data center in Columbus, Ohio temporarily ceased operations.
Here are the facts of what occurred:
The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host. According to the warrant, it appears that the Bureau is investigating whether someone hosted on our network hacked and attacked someone else.
After several hours of attempting to track down, inspect and audit the terabytes of data that we host, the FBI determined that it was more efficient (from their point of view) to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection. This was completed at 7:00 pm EST same day.
The FBI has assured us that as soon as the data has been safely copied and inspected, the equipment will be promptly returned. Unfortunately, the FBI has not been able to tell us when they will be completed with their inspection.
We have been told by the Special Agent in charge of the investigation that If you need access to your data you are asked to please contact the Bureau via email to rwhite3@leo.gov. Make sure to include in your email your name, mailing address, and telephone number with area code.
Since we wish to focus 100% of our efforts on restoring services, we would appreciate it very much if you do not attempt to contact us directly. Please rest assured that we are doing everything possible to restore service to you as quickly as possible. To the many who have inquired, Paul and family are OK, although shaken by these events. They are at home and awaiting the blessed event of their new child's birth. We thank you for your good wishes and prayers.
Please check back here often. Through this site, we will keep you informed of ongoing developments as we know them.
Thanks again for your understanding.
02/23/2004 CIT re-establishes service.
We have restored service at Equinix's Chicago Data Centers. We are in the same facilities as MSN and many fortune 500 companies. The facility has multi OC192 connections to the backbone.
The FBI has begun retuning equipment to CIT which is being shipped to our new facilities in Chicago. At this time CIT will continue to provide dedicated DDOS Protected web hosting only.
CIT provides reliable and scalable solutions for customers of all sizes and services. Located in Equinix's Chicago Data Centers , CIT has access to all the major carriers without the need for local loop circuits.
Our Chicago staff is focused first and foremost on customer satisfaction, and will take every action necessary to accommodate each customer. Unlike many large ISPs, CIT prides itself in its ability to provide personalized service to each customer - if a customer calls twice for assistance, they can usually speak to the same representative. Our sales and support teams are allowed a great deal of flexibility to work together to resolve each customer's needs on an individual basis. Our success and rapid growth can be attributed to the satisfaction of our customers - word-of-mouth referrals account for a large portion of the new business we receive each month.
The IRC Network will remain down until further notice.
These skimming devices were commonly detected in Canada (Ontario) during the last year or so.
They are becoming more and more sophisticated, and the police busted several people for it, and issued precautions for the public:
- Try to use machines in the bank branch you deal with - Try to avoid machines in public places (malls, convenience stores,...etc) - Report anything that looks suspicious on a machine
I have a friend who lives in Saudi Arabia, but is not a citizen (so he does not have free health insurance there). His employer only covers local health for a certain number of dependants (and the guy's father is not among them)
His father needed heart surgery, so they went to India (Madras, now Chennai), and had the surgery done for a fraction of the cost of what it have been if they did it in Saudi Arabia, even after you factor in the air fare and the hotel costs.
He praises the Indian doctors for being knowledgable.
As a side note, in third world countries, it is not a bad doctor that would you in trouble, it is often the post operative care, infection,...etc. that can be fatal.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree.
But the point is: most people do not want to download source, compile it, and install/configure it.
Therefore, it has to be on the distro that you got from the installfest, or from a friend.
The vast majority there are people with dialup connections, and are billed per minute! Downloading large apps (or even ISOs) is very tedious and expensive (not to mention it ties up the phone line too).
So, the question is which distro works out of the box in Arabic with the most apps working in Arabic, and with the least problems?
One thing I noticed in Egypt, as opposed to other countries in the West: the lack of good used computers.
Here, you have companies leasing things for 2 or 3 years and then selling it. You can get good usable Pentium III computers for a very good price, and they make very nice servers or second machines. Almost every computer shop here (Ontario) has some stock of these.
In Egypt, leasing is not a common business practice. Also, companies (and individuals) hold on to the PC until it is virtually unusable, this could mean 6 or 7 years or even more.
Of course the economice factor is there, but it is also the culture of holding on to things one own (as opposed to the culture of disposable things in the West).
You must mean the internet cafes.
Yes, they are everywhere, because many people do not have computers at home.
They are almost exclusively Windows (did anyone here about a net cafe using Linux in Egypt?)
The reason is that is what people are used to, and that is what supports Arabic the most.
If they install Linux, then Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger and ICQ will not be able to do voice and video for example.
I would like to hear the answer on what the government is doing too.
how many females are involved with the open source crowd, and in the IT industry in general, in Egypt?
I can answer that paritally at least.
There are as many women as men (if not more) in Egypt in the IT industry.
I know, because when I worked in Egypt back in the 80s, the IT department I was in had more females than males, from data entry to programming to management. About the only place that did not have females was the mainframe operations (requiring late shifts and such).
This was a governmental organization, and they had more perks for women than men (nice vacation on giving birth, right to go back to same or similar position, leave early to nurse the baby, take unpaid leave to care for kids, ...etc.)
Even in the private software development sector, their seem to be more women than men (I know because my wife worked at such a place, and that is again back in the 80s).
In university, you see about a 50/50 gender split in computer science, if not more women.
Yeah, this info is a bit dated, but at least provides some historical data. Don't think it has changed much since.
I know you are joking, but here are some answers anyway.
What do Egyptian nerds wear? Black horn-rimmed kaffiyehs?
Most Egyptians wear western style clothes. Hollywood's stereotype of pyramids, desert, turbans, and camels not withstanding.
What's the ancient heiroglyph for "FR15T P05T!?"
By taking the English geekspeak letters FR15T P05T!? and translating them into the hieroglyph equivalent. We got a French guy called Champollion to help us there.
Seriously, Egypt now speaks Arabic. Hieroglyphs have been out of general use for about 22 centuries or so.
Do Egyptian nerds survive off of Cheetos and Mountain Dew, or is it more like big mouthfuls of qat and Pyramid Dew?
Qat is not consumed in Egypt. It is almost exclusively a Yemeni thing. Confused Geography again?
Is Pyramid Dew a new thing there that I missed?
What kind of beer do Egyptian nerds drink?
Most would not drink beer, because most do not consume alcohol. However, there is Fayrouz and all its flavors (non alcoholic beer like beverage, with many flavors).
How do you keep all the fucking sand out of your case mods?
By not living in the desert to begin with. That is why we have cities!
Do you have "Type-R" camels? Do you have low-rider camels with neon on their nuts?
Repeat after me: Camels are there only for retired American tourists who visit the Pyramids. Oh, and they are made into shish kebab as well!Not very common, but those who tried it say it is good.
I made this a question on its own here.
Hope the mods make it more visible
Is anyone in Egypt using Linux mainly for Arbaic stuff? Which distro do they use.
...etc.)
I mean, programmers and techies will be fiddling with English apps most of the time, and only use arabic for the odd letter, or web site. What I mean is someone who does most of his work in Arabic (document editing, browsing, spreadsheets,
I have tried Red Hat some time back (I think 7.2?) and Konquerer would work well displaying Arabic web pages correctly, but no other apps would work well.
My current Mandrake 9.1 is a pain to setup Arabic to work (in KDE control panel), and even then, it does not work in all apps.
Knoppix from Sept 2003 is far far better. You can switch to arabic by clicking the little flag icon on the bottom right of the screen, and many apps (cant remember which, probably Open Office?) can accept Arabic letters.
Any one used Mandrake 10 CE or Final with Arabic? How is it?
Can the non-CD distros emulate Knoppix in this regard?
Use of Windows as a percentage is higher than you would expect.
For the reasons why this is so, check my earlier post here.
Here is some background, based on experience of relatives living in Egypt. I am Egyptian myself, but have not been living there for 15+ years.
...etc.) More importantly, this led to many web sites showing correctly in Arabic ONLY when used Internet Explorer.
In the 90s, Microsoft turned a blind eye to piracy. They simply did not care what happens in the Arab world (software wise). They ignored that market. Arabization of products normally followed a delayed schedule, with the latest product being not in Arabic. When Windows 3.x came out, there was a competing Arabization by Al Alamiah, a Kuwaiti company. The lead architect (cant' remember his name, but either Lebanese or Syrian) there was enticed into leaving Al Alamiah and join Microsoft. There was a brief law suit then. In the end Microsoft was dominant in the Arabization area. Product release in Arabic still lagged behind English and other Western languages.
Then, in the mid 90s, Microsoft started to enforce licenses on businesses. In Egypt, a newly formed Shortet El Mosanafat El Faneyya (literally: Artistic Products Police, more like: "Intellectual Property Police") started raiding large, medium and small businesses to check if their software was licensed. They specifically looked for certain products and ignored others (e.g. Microsoft stuff, AutoCAD in Engineering firms, Oracle, but not Novel [if I remember correctly], nor Apple).
Rumor at the time had it that some rich and powerful people (ruling elite) made a cut with Microsoft in all this.
Remember that the US Dollar was around 3.4 Egyptian pound at the time. Making legal software very costly for the small business.
This scared small businesses, and some relatives I know migrated from Microsoft Windows and Fox Pro applications to Linux and SQL-Ledger for example. There was so much resentment for Microsoft at the time for doing this, and the powers who enforced it.
Now, the exchange rate is about 6.5 Egyptian Pounds to 1 US Dollar, so it has gotten even worse (more prohibitive cost of Microsoft software).
However, in the internet land, another development was taking place around the turn of the Millenium. Many developers for the internet knew nothing but Microsoft, so they used its technologies to develop web sites (ASP, MS SQL, NT/2000/XP,
This means that people at home or in offices who do not have Windows and IE will not be able to interact properly with web sites. Al Jazeera web site for example shows only the middle pane in FireFox, and the side menus are only visible under IE.
Arabs are around 300 million, is supposed to be the 5th most widely spoken language in the world. For a company to gain a monopoly on an entire culture is simply wrong and unacceptable, but it did happen.
the bright side is that Linux is making some inroads. But there are obstacles (e.g. Arabic web sites which are IE centric, as above).
Yes, boycott of American products may have played a role since 2000 (with the Palestinian uprising, then the post-Sept 11 events). But more pragmatic factors were there far before any of this came into play, and Microsoft was (and still is) not liked by many (just like the rest of us Open Source advocates in the West do not like thm either).
Most posts discuss what happens to the data, and most mention porn, others mention software, ...etc.
...etc.). What about your emails that you meticulously kept for 10 or 15 years.
All that is good and all, but there is more than that. Think about your accounting records for example (Quicken, GnuCash,
That is the stuff on your computer. What about the stuff you put on the net in one form or another? For example that blog you setup? Or that web site?
Once you die, the PC eventually becomes obsolete or unusable. Chances are, your spouse of kids are not interested in what is the computer, and it is gone. Your web hosting account will probably be terminated due to non-payment.
Before archeology, our only sources of data on past civilizations was from historians. These were often porfessional people writing for posterity, and had some bias or other.
After archeology came into play in the 19th century, our knowledge of past civilization had a quantum leap, after we found fragments of daily life from average people (like you and me and him). Whether it was Greek ostraca, or baked clay tablets with list of goods, or pottery shards with writing practice in hieroglyphs.
Which brings me to the point of this post: the bigger picture, not individuals, or families, but societies and civilizations.
All this meta data about humanity in the last 2 decades of the 20th century, and the 21st century is on perishable and fragile media. It is even volatile (web hosting account?)
How would people several centuries from now view this entire civilization? How would they guage the reaction to say Sept 11, or invasion of Iraq? Would they see the US population as pro or anti war, or divided evenly? How would Bin Laden and Bush be assessed? Blair? Aznar? How would they get a glimpse into people's daily life.
Remember that as things are happening, it is easy to think that the information you gather on the event/person/concept are always clear and available. However, if you give it a decade or two, you yourself will not remember much details. How about people from a different culture/mindset/civilization/society? What would they think and how would they perceive you from the little they manage to recover?
The only hope here is the wayback machine at http://www.archive.org But will it endure? Is it enough?
It is the Greek who will inherit the Earth.
(Obligatory Brian quote)
What if I say that my software is made out of 100% recycled bits? Would that be a good selling point for it?
About umpteen years ago, the customer services division of the company that I worked for was instructed that they MUST purchase a Network General Sniffer device.
....
Network General later merged with McAfee Associates to become Network Associates, by the way.
Anyway, this Sniffer device was just a Compaq luggable thing (not a laptop, a luggable), with a special NIC with a BNC sticking out of it. That NIC was supposed not to drop any packets no matter how much traffic is on the LAN. The software that came with was DOS based, and did all sorts of nifty things with protocol analysis and stuff.
How much did that baby cost? 30,000$ US Dollars. Yes! That much.
Later, Network General started selling a PCMCIA card with software to do the same on any laptop for much less money. And yet later they sold only the software and recommended NICs.
Talk about milking the cow to the last drop!
Last year, I was experimenting with a Knoppix CD, and then ran into Ethereal, and then I immediately remembered the 30,000$ paid for that sucker, and said Oh My God
But PBS takes my Canadian dollar at par.
Can't we convince SCO to do the same and take 699$Cdn as well?
There was quite an extensive study on a high profile figure in US Politics, and the results can be viewed here
I do not know if the guy is guilty or not. A trial will tell us, in due time.
...etc. all these are misused terms in these confusing times.
However, the media coverage of the whole thing sucks.
His father, Mahboob A. Khawaja, has been detained in Saudi Arabia, where he is a professor at some university. The media reports that the father wrote articles critical of the West's meddling with the Muslim World's affairs. He wrote a book called Muslims and the West.
How is that relevant to anything? Is it an attempt to tie genuine legitimate criticism to terrorism somehow?
I did some searching on the father, and found quite a few articles, most of it critical to the Arab rulers than anything else. Seems he places blame where it belongs, whether in the West or in the Arab world.
This reminds me of the terms "terrorism", "anti-Americanism",
This whole thing about "guilt by association" got to stop.
OLAP is not a new concept. I evaluated OLAP products back in 1996 as part of a project for a customer's data warehouse.
...etc. These fall under the Relational OLAP category. Setting it up is tricky, but gives you OLAP functionality without a separate data store (if the database can handle the load, Oracle often cannot with large databases).
As you say, there is no standard, and different vendors advocate different solutions.
The main issue is that the Cube (as OLAP databases are often called) has to be refreshed every day from the data source (the main system). It becomes a nightmare to sync the data, specially when the OLAP was started by departments, without IT involvement in the first place.
ROLAP, the relational version has some merit here, but performance can be a problem. Many databases cannot cope with such a load of ad hoc queries, and therefore the database vendors advocate a separate OLAP server.
Some data warehousing specific databases (e.g. NCR's Teradata [Disclaimer: I work for NCR, but not in the Teradata division. I did consulting on data warehousing with NCR for customers a few years back]) can handle such a load and a relational OLAP or departmental systems that feed from the main store is a good solution, since you get one version of the truth, data cleansing and scrubbing is done once, and the data goes in one direction only (from source system(s) to data warehouse, to OLAP servers).
Here are some products that were not mentioned:
- Microstrategy DSS Agent, DSS Architect,
- Red Brick is a company that makes an OLAP specific database (or used to).
- Business Objects used to have a product too, can't remember its name.
Others have mentioned Cognos Powerplay and Impromptu, and ESS Base already.
It has been quite a few years since I did data warehousing, so the above may be a bit dated.
User denzo above pointed to many points that were inaccurate in Animats' post.
:-). He was a sheep herder as a young boy though. In his youth, he was a trader, going to Syria with caravans of goods trading on behalf of others.
Here are more:
- "He married an older women for money." Nope. Khadija, Muhammad's first wife, was the one who sought him out after she found him an honest manager of her caravans in trade.
- "He became a used camel dealer". Nope again. He never dealt in camels, neither "new" nor "used"
-"he and his followers managed to take over Medina". They did not take it over. The tribes of Medina invited him over. You maybe be confusing Mecca with Medina.
- "he started invading and conquering neighboring countries". True, but he was not left alone in Medina, and the old foes (the established polity and wealthy of Mecca) kept trying to suppress the new religion.
As of the movie, it was not shown in Egypt either. Religious authorities there approved the script, but when the movie came out, they wear perhaps weary of people's reaction.
I can tell you because I switched from Pharmacy, after getting a Bachelor degree in it, and practicing for a mere 3 months. I went to IT around 19 years ago.
This was another country, another continent, but on my first visit to the USA, I met a pharmacist and he was complaining about his job too! The same complaints I found back home (physicians get all the credit, too little say).
Up until that outsourcing thing, it was a good decision.
I can tell you that pharmacy is a really really boring job. It is not a desk job, you are standing for 8 hours a day. You decipher bad handwriting by physicians, and it is almost mechanical, counting pills and putting labels, and perhaps checking drug interactions. Definitely not worth it after 5 years of hard and deep study.
You are also a retail outlet of sorts, and you have to deal with people just like a grocer or a convenient store. You are subject to various regulators, more than a normal retailers (at least in some countries). You have more liability than them too.
In may cases, you have to be open beyond 8 hours a day, and sometimes on weekends and holidays too!
At least in North America, the pharmacist does not have to man the counter for cosmetics, makeup, feminine hygiene, kids accessories, and diapers too! They have to do so in other places, since they could well be the only person in the shop!
So, I understand fully, and was happier with IT over the last 19 years. At least it challenged your brain, not moronic like the reality of being a retail pharmacist.
Now, research pharmacist is different, but how many are there?
Hey.
I submitted the story about the Canadian spammer trio yesterday and it got rejected.
I also submitted an article from The Ottawa Citizen. Interesting bits in it. He claims to be retired, and used to make 140,000$ a week. He sent 30 million messages a day.
Notice how he calls anti SPAM activists "terrorists". Nice moniker there, just like Commie was in the 1950s/1960s.
Perhaps my joking remark about US invading Canada because of all that put off the editors? ;-). I knew that CAN-SPAM had a Canadian sounding name!
Some of the stuff is teenage oriented.
However, if you look at the photos from the link in the article, there is
and other goodies for those who live near La Jolla in San Diego.
Excellent point!
...
We have seen dictators calling opposition "terrorists" in the wake of the changes in the USA after 9/11. For example Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has labeled his political opponents as such.
Worse, we saw Middle East despots trying to vindicate themselves, and saying that all the oppressive measures that they took against political dissidents were right, and "See! The USA is doing it now! We were criticized by the world when we did the same things! Now everyone knows we are right".
Sad
Here are the details and a time line.
They were out of business from 14 to 23 February.
When they are back, they are only providing web hosting and not IRC. So the warrant was definitely related to IRC and they decided not to be in the business again?
http://www.cithosting.com/news.htm
02/14/2004 FBI Confiscates all servers
Dear Customers of FOONET/CIT:
We regret to inform you that on Saturday February 14, 2004 at approximately 8:35 am EST, FOONET/CIT's data center in Columbus, Ohio temporarily ceased operations.
Here are the facts of what occurred:
The FBI executed a search warrant issued by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio regarding the IRC network that we host. According to the warrant, it appears that the Bureau is investigating whether someone hosted on our network hacked and attacked someone else.
After several hours of attempting to track down, inspect and audit the terabytes of data that we host, the FBI determined that it was more efficient (from their point of view) to remove all of our servers and transport them to the FBI local laboratories for inspection. This was completed at 7:00 pm EST same day.
The FBI has assured us that as soon as the data has been safely copied and inspected, the equipment will be promptly returned. Unfortunately, the FBI has not been able to tell us when they will be completed with their inspection.
We have been told by the Special Agent in charge of the investigation that If you need access to your data you are asked to please contact the Bureau via email to rwhite3@leo.gov. Make sure to include in your email your name, mailing address, and telephone number with area code.
Since we wish to focus 100% of our efforts on restoring services, we would appreciate it very much if you do not attempt to contact us directly. Please rest assured that we are doing everything possible to restore service to you as quickly as possible.
To the many who have inquired, Paul and family are OK, although shaken by these events. They are at home and awaiting the blessed event of their new child's birth. We thank you for your good wishes and prayers.
Please check back here often. Through this site, we will keep you informed of ongoing developments as we know them.
Thanks again for your understanding.
02/23/2004 CIT re-establishes service.
We have restored service at Equinix's Chicago Data Centers. We are in the same facilities as MSN and many fortune 500 companies. The facility has multi OC192 connections to the backbone.
The FBI has begun retuning equipment to CIT which is being shipped to our new facilities in Chicago.
At this time CIT will continue to provide dedicated DDOS Protected web hosting only.
CIT provides reliable and scalable solutions for customers of all sizes and services. Located in Equinix's Chicago Data Centers , CIT has access to all the major carriers without the need for local loop circuits.
Our Chicago staff is focused first and foremost on customer satisfaction, and will take every action necessary to accommodate each customer. Unlike many large ISPs, CIT prides itself in its ability to provide personalized service to each customer - if a customer calls twice for assistance, they can usually speak to the same representative. Our sales and support teams are allowed a great deal of flexibility to work together to resolve each customer's needs on an individual basis. Our success and rapid growth can be attributed to the satisfaction of our customers - word-of-mouth referrals account for a large portion of the new business we receive each month.
The IRC Network will remain down until further notice.
These skimming devices were commonly detected in Canada (Ontario) during the last year or so.
...etc)
They are becoming more and more sophisticated, and the police busted several people for it, and issued precautions for the public:
- Try to use machines in the bank branch you deal with
- Try to avoid machines in public places (malls, convenience stores,
- Report anything that looks suspicious on a machine
I have a friend who lives in Saudi Arabia, but is not a citizen (so he does not have free health insurance there). His employer only covers local health for a certain number of dependants (and the guy's father is not among them)
...etc. that can be fatal.
His father needed heart surgery, so they went to India (Madras, now Chennai), and had the surgery done for a fraction of the cost of what it have been if they did it in Saudi Arabia, even after you factor in the air fare and the hotel costs.
He praises the Indian doctors for being knowledgable.
As a side note, in third world countries, it is not a bad doctor that would you in trouble, it is often the post operative care, infection,