1. Being able to get the TiVo data through my IP connection instead of through the phone line.
I see this request a lot, but I seriously doubt it'll ever happen.. How long would it take for someone to stiff the packets in between the Tivo unit and the server and figure out the protocol? This paves the way for a "tivo proxy" which could conceivably hide 2 or more units behind it and act as 1 unit to Tivo's servers. Also in the integrated DirecTV units, pay per view purchases are reported via the phone line... A "tivo proxy" could conceivably strip pay per view purchase info out which would have DirecTV all in an uproar..
For the DirecTV integrated units you get most of your guide data, showcase info, and even software upgrades over the satellite now with 2.5.. The only purpose the phone call serves is to upload pay per view purchases and your viewing habits (Tivo has stated they capture anonymous data on the viewing habits of their subscribers).
Asside from the annoyance of having to run a phone line over to the Tivo, I really don't see what all of the complaining is about. The call takes like 10 minutes max and it does it between 2 and 5am.
2. 30-second commercial skip (or just skip the commercials all together, but I suspect the advertisers wouldn't go for that).
As others have pointed out, it's there in 2.5.. Look on the list of codes at tivocommunity.com for the code to enable it.
3. Better control over my VCR so that I can build my own personal archives of my favorite shows
Supposedly the Sony DirecTivo unit integrates well with Sony VCR's, but I haven't had any experience with this myself.
It's the sound of my mouse clicking maniacally as I order enough pillows to cover my house from Yahoo! Shopping. Hey, it works on TV so it MUST be true.
My first response to this was "WTF? Komodo is build on Mozilla, how are they selling it as a commercial app?".. I did some digging, and here are the relative parts of the MPL (available here ):
3.2. Availability of Source Code.
Any Modification which You create or to which You contribute must be made available in Source Code form under the terms of this License either on the same media as an Executable version or via an accepted Electronic Distribution Mechanism to anyone to whom you made an Executable version available; and if made available via Electronic Distribution Mechanism, must remain available for at least twelve (12) months after the date it initially became available, or at least six (6) months after a subsequent version of that particular Modification has been made available to such recipients. You are responsible for ensuring that the Source Code version remains available even if the Electronic Distribution Mechanism is maintained by a third party.
If you look at the very bottom of this page you'll find the link to download their patches against Mozilla 0.9.5. Good luck integrating them yourself with no documentation though.
Disclaimer: INABICTAAC (I'm no astronomer, but I'm currently taking an astronomy course).. I'm thinking if you were able to see SOME meteors during the leonids, you'll be able to see SOME this time, but obviously a lot less since there won't be as many. Unless the debris which causes the geminids is much smaller, the magnitutes of the individual meteors should be similar to the leonids.
Just chill, man...we both know this guy is an idiot...he's claiming to be a "linux admin" and yet doesn't know the first thing about nsswitch.conf? He's a moron, he's just never had anyone call him on it before.
It's not even a particularly good troll, but eh, I'm bored.. I'll bite.....
Yeah, you called me out. I haven't taken the time to sit down with a cup of coffee and a printout of man pages for every file in/etc so I can prove myself worthy to you as a "Unix admin"... Guess I've been too busy doing actual work on the systems I administer than cuddled up with manpages by the fire.
BTW, I never claimed to be a "linux administrator". Administering linux systems is one hat of many I wear.
In my experience, there's a wide, yawning gulf between "Unix admins" and "linux admins". Don't trust the latter, they don't think doing a thorough job is required.
Haha, oh man, stop, my sides are hurting.. I seem to remember reading about statements like that somewhere.. What were they called? Oh yeah, TROLLS.
Yeah, admittedly I generalized network admin to include unix admin, cause for me it does.. You seem to think it's a prerequisite to be a "real" unix administrator one must be able to explain the purpose of every since file in/etc off the top of his head. Uhh, a quick "ls -l | wc -l" of/etc on my redhat system counts 143 files and directories. You REALLY expect everyone you interview to be familiar with ALL of them? Why? If I was an administrator for one of your unix systems and you asked me to implement NIS, any book, man page, howto, or web page that explained setting up NIS would explain the appropriate/etc files which must be touched. Methinks you have unrealistic expectations of unix administrators.
And yes, I already explained earlier I wasn't familiar with nsswitch.conf. I hardly think that makes me not a "real" unix administrator. That's sort of like saying someone is not a "real" mechanic if he can't name every vacuum hose and its function on a 1981 Dodge Diplomat.
Shayne - no flamage intended, just offering a different viewpoint
I wish I had more advice for ya, but I don't. Actually, I'm in a similar boat; I want a position as a UNIX admin, and don't know how to translate from a Network Support guy with part-time admin duties to a full time junior admin.
Well, my $.02 as someone who successfully made that move, is to be patient and look for opportunities. I basically happened to be in the right place at the right time. I was working support for an ISP and the administrator was training me to be a backup/assistant to him to help offload some of the admin tasks so that he could concentrate more on programming. He left the state to go back to school and because I was used to working support for $8.50/hr, they gave me a $2/hr raise and put me in his spot and I was happy as a clam. They were happy too because they only had to hire an $8/hr support guy to replace me and not a more expensive admin. I stayed there for a couple of years and got plenty of experience then changed jobs and made a LOT more money.
I'd imagine as long as your try to learn as much as you can on your own, are upfront with the company(ies) you interview with about your limited experience, and are willing to work for less $$ than someone with a BA in CS and ten years experience, you've got a good shot of getting in. Maybe not in TODAY'S environment, but certainly in a year or so when things pick up again.
Dude, shame on you for being so narrowminded that you think every network administrator alive should be able to extol the virtues of nsswitch.conf or be relegated to a life of ditch digging and petty thievery.
I've always thought that sort of interview process is just stupid. Your job as an administrator (or mine, for that matter) is to be able to ADMINISTER a system. This means setting up, expanding, securing, and troubleshooting a system.. System could mean a single server, a group of servers or an entire network. Your job is NOT to be a walking encyclopedia of terms, facts, and knowledge. Being a successful system administrator (or network admin) means when someone comes to you with a problem you know how to effectively use all reasources available to you to solve it. I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I've been an administrator for over 5 years now, and didn't know off the top of my head what nsswitch.conf was when I read your post. A simple "man nsswitch.conf" explains it's a config file for system databases. I've never admnistered an NIS environment, so I've never had a need to touch it. Does that mean I don't get hired at company X?
This is why MCSE's are generally useless.. Just because they've read a book or braindump and can explain that DNS stands for Domain Name Service, or that IP connectivity operates at Layer 3 of the OSI model, doesn't mean they'll know jack when your lusers come to them and say "when I type in www.childporn.com in my browser I get a 'server not found' error".
Yeah, I'm straying off topic, but if you want to successfully test a (potential) sysadmin, give him a real world scenario and let him use the resources available to him (his brain, books, the web, coworkers, etc) to solve the problem.
In the interest of getting this back on topic, if you want to be a sysadmin, concentrate less on memorizing facts and how many bits are used in a class C netmask and more on how to quickly learn things you don't immediately know.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (reuters) - Despite a sagging U.S. economy and a war in progress overseas, the Internet Porn Industry is going strong says Mark Johnson, spokesperson for Web Association of Nude Knowledge (WANK). Johnson cites Americans' commitment to supporting U.S. companies in this time of need as the primary drive behind this continued popularity.
"People simply want to fulfill their duty as citizens", says Johnson.
Since the Sept 11th attacks the porn industry has faced increasing pressure as more companies have continue to lay off employees. With less disposable income, analysts feared citizens would direct their money towards drugs, or hookers rather than the traditional staples of booze and porn - but so far those fears have prooved groundless.
"Like, I was so scared, I called my coke-dealer and told him I may have to cut back my habit", says Misty Rayne, actress for Vivid Productions, Inc, known for her gang-bang of 500 tri-sexual midgets in 1999. Fortunately Mrs. Rayne has not been forced to reduce her 5 grams a day coke habit.
In this time of need, Americans have answered the call to arms. God bless America.
The title of the article asks "What do you do when CS isn't fun any more?".. From reading the poster's story it sounds more like he's asking "What do you do when you're 90% of the way to your degree and realized you chose the wrong major?"..
In either case the answer is the same: do something else. The only way to be happy in the IT field is to LOVE what you do. All of those people who started CS degree programs in school 3 years ago just for the money are pissed now that they can't come out of school with a 2 or 4 year degree and move immediately to a six-figure salary. Any job in IT means long hours, often tedious work, and dealing with people who generally resent you for your intellect. If you're not in it because you love technology you won't last long, IMO.
On the plus side, a job in IT can be VERY rewarding if you love technology. It's *always* challenging, you get to be around the latest technology (usually), and there's always something new to learn. Also, if you start in the programming (software) side of it and burn out, you can always move to the hardware/networking side, or vice-versa. Or do like a lot of people (myself included) and do a little of both. The people who thrive in the IT field are people who get bored easily and are always up for a new challenge. Sounds like this guy is either lazy, or his school isn't challenging him enough.
The media that something resides on does not change the identity of what it is.
Exactly.. DVD is simply a specification, Digital Versatile Disc.. Not "Digital Video Disc" as people commonly assume. A DVD can contain music, software, video, pictures and anything else that can be distributed on digital medium.
We need the coordination ability of Outlook. I haven't seen anything for UNIX that compares.
Okay, this doesn't completely compare to Outlook (yet), but keep an eye on the Horde Project. We've used IMP as our primary email system at my company for two years now. The horde project provides the framework for a system with integrated e-mail, a calendar, contacts management, and much more. Only a couple of modules are in active development, but the framework is pretty nice.. Should you want to lend a hand it's pretty easy to get involved.
I'm not affiliated with them in anyway, I just enjoy the fruits of their labor.
I think they're going for the business market. I.e. they'll certifiy certain business apps to work with it and license it to companies at a rate less than M$ would charge. IF (and its a mighty big if) they can pull a distro off that runs a pretty good chunck of mainstream biz apps then they may be on to something. I wouldn't expect a mad rush over to them, but they might be able to carve a nice, niche biz out of it.
This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Assuming you're correct and they are going after the business market, what incentive would a company have to go this route? Let's say they certify Office 2000 to run under their distro.. The company still has to pay Office 2000 licensing, plus most OEMs are still going to charge them for the Windows license anyway (due to their terms with microsoft). So now in addition to still having to buy windows and office, they have to pay a license to Lindows for the linux distro (assuming they use a per-copy licensing scheme), plus pay someone to format Windows off the PC and setup Lindows and office 2k. After all of this, they must retrain users, and hire admins competent enough to secure and administer the linux boxes. I'd argue that would be TWICE as expensive as going with an all win2k/xp solution. In addition to all of this, unless you go hacking SMB functionality in the boxes you loose the ability to login to any windows domains/file shares the company may have.
The only market I could see (which the article hints at) is the home market which wants to run linux but needs Quicken, or wants to play The Sims or whatever. You still have the drawbacks of HAVING to pay for windows on any OEM's PC (unless MS has relaxed their terms since the whole DOJ trial thing), or building your own pc and using the Lindows distro. I'd argue anyone savvy enough to build their own PC would also be savvy enough to pop in a redhat CD and download and install the WINE RPM if it didn't come on the CD.
Yeah, this'll be marked as a troll, but I REALLY don't see the point of trying to shoehorn Linux into the desktop market. Yeah, I agree that we need something other than windows, but Linux just isn't it. It's strengths lie in stability and power as a SERVER. IMHO it makes a substandard workstation, especially for Joe HomeUser. Hey, I *love* Linux. I've convinced my company to switch all of our non-file servers over (web, email, dns, dhcp, etc).. But there's no WAY I'd try to force it on our users.
I think this is Yet Another Company trying to capitalize on the Linux name.
Nononono, that's GNU/Earth Standard Time.. We don't want Stallman upset..
It's a bit much for us to presume that we can set the standard time conventions for the entire Universe.
Well, as far as we know we ARE the entire universe. By your logic it's presumptuous for us to name stars, but hey, we have to call them SOMETHING. I think Universal time merely indicates that it's standard for anywhere WE go in the universe. I don't think it's a conspiracy for us to push our time system on alien microbes, assuming there are any.
and frankly I do't understand why people would continue to use a product so limited as MySQL
I'm not arguing FOR MySQL here, but I just wanted to point out I think the main reason people use it is accessibility. I started out programming CGI apps with perl using MySQL databases about 5 years ago with no prior database or programming experience. Over those years I've written tons of code and designed hundreds of databases. All of my current knowledge has come from books, MySQL documentation, and real world experience. Coming from this background, I started with MySQL because it was highly recommended as an easy to use database, and at the time was considered to be much faster that Postgres.
MySQL is very easy for the newbie to get up and running. You don't have to understand views, foreign keys, transactions, etc. All you have to understand is "put data in with insert, pull data out with select"... Well, maybe more than that but you get the idea.
That said, I've recently switched one of my major production databases over to postgres. I finally "graduated" to the point where I needed views, row-level locking, and some other things that I couldn't get with MySQL. I'm finally comfortable with postgres but it took some time. Postgres requires a bit more of it's users. For example, queries are case sensitive. If you have a web form that says "enter name of user to lookup" and feed that form to a query, "where user = 'bob'", you have to have extra code to convert 'bob' to 'Bob', 'BOB', or whatever. Either that or train your users better (yeah, right). You could argue that this is the "correct" behavior and I'd agree with you, but still, it's a PITA to rework already working programs to account for this.
All of that said, I still use MySQL for some things.. I have several databases that get updated once daily via a cron job from a production database and are searched hundreds of times per minute by a mod_perl-enabled web site. Why bother with the complexities of having to explicitly set up keys and indexes, worry about case-sensitive matching, vacuum analyzing, etc, for such a simple database? In my mind this only requires more work and introduces more chances for errors.
It all boils down to the right tool for the job. Writing a complete accounting package? Use postgres (or something commercial). Writing a simple interface to query a list of students in a classrom? Use MySQL.
I have to agree.. I really wanted to like Transmeta. Admittedly at first I fell into the "hey, Linus is behind it so it must be good mindset". Then once they unveiled the code-morphing (or whatever it's called) technology I was really impressed. Wow, what a great idea, I thought - virtualizing the core of the processor and doing optimizations of the x86 instructions on the fly.. Not only should this be faster, but would theoretically allow the chip to run on many different architectures simply by updating the emulation/optimization layer. I thought it was one of the most innovative things I've seen in a while. Somehow they've managed to screw it all up.
First of all, performance has never been there.. They can't even seem to get close to mid-range AMD and intel chips, so they changed position to "well, it's a LOW POWER consumption chip for laptops". Like the previous poster said, even if you half the consumption of the CPU unless you work on the LCD and other components you'll only increase battery life by a few percent. To the average user that's just not worth having to buy a more expensive and unproven chip.
The only other market I could see for them would be in an embedded pc market where a company sold hardware products spanning several architectures and wanted one a single processor they could work with intimately rather than having to learn the quirks of different processors on each architecture they have. Honestly I've racked my brain and can't even think of an example of such a company.. Maybe Cisco? I'm not THAT familiar with their hardware but maybe it spans more than one architecture.
Moral of the story: Just because someone puts out something you enjoy doesn't mean you'll enjoy everything they put out. That's the flawed logic that caused me to actually sit through an entire episode of That's my Bush! (shudder) What a stinking pile of horse-dung that was.
I had this thought too, it could be especially fun if you mixed in random phrases like "my poo smells funny" or whatever.. You'd have to be careful though with too many "yeah"'s or "okay"'s cause a few years back I worked telemarketing (it was only for two weeks and I was in high school at the time) the first thing we were instructed was that once we got the calling party on the line not to ask them questions or give them an opportunity to take over the conversation. Usually after reading the script one of the first question we'd ask is "ok, mr. smith, given everything that you've heard here, it is okay if I go ahead and send you out xyz promotional materials which are yours to try for 30 days, after which time you will be billed for $999.95, blah, blah, blah". If you had recorded a "yeah" there I would imagine they company could use a recording of the conversation to prove to verbally agreed to their terms. Doubt it would hold up in court, but it would be a major hassle to work around.
I think it would be pretty useful just to have it repeat "no" in a human's voice at every pause.
Telemarketer: Hi, is this Mr. Smith
Recording: No
TM: Oh, can I speak to Mr. Smith?
Recording: No
TM: Okay, can I speak to whoever manages the long distance service in your household?
Recording: No
[Paraphrasing]
"The media has now been directed to edit or not air tapes from bin-Laden for fear they may contain dangerous coded messages. What could possibly be dangerous about my people, now is the time to rise up and destroy the americans and everything they stand for ?"
Just to be pedantic, asking to be "taken off the list" could be implied as "take me off of your active calling list for this cycle". To be effective you should ask to be put on the do not call list.
Yes, but no one says it has to be your local number. If you don't want to have a land line just give out any random local number. Come to think of it, it's too bad the phone company doesn't have the equivilent of a/dev/null phone number in each calling area. Of course, if they did I'm sure places that ask for a number would keep a database of them and flag them as invalid if you try to use one.
Also, you can do what I do. About two years ago I had my home phone number changed and all of the call features + long distance removed from the line. So for $25/mo it's used as a data/fax line shared by my computers and several satellite receivers in the house. It has a $19 k-mart answering machine on it that says "hi you've reached 205-xxx-xxxx, leave a message" just in case someone looks my number up in the phone book or whatever and really needs to reach me. Other than that, I never hear it ring and never answer it. Friends and family all have my cellphone number.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Being able to get the TiVo data through my IP connection instead of through the phone line.
I see this request a lot, but I seriously doubt it'll ever happen.. How long would it take for someone to stiff the packets in between the Tivo unit and the server and figure out the protocol? This paves the way for a "tivo proxy" which could conceivably hide 2 or more units behind it and act as 1 unit to Tivo's servers. Also in the integrated DirecTV units, pay per view purchases are reported via the phone line... A "tivo proxy" could conceivably strip pay per view purchase info out which would have DirecTV all in an uproar..
For the DirecTV integrated units you get most of your guide data, showcase info, and even software upgrades over the satellite now with 2.5.. The only purpose the phone call serves is to upload pay per view purchases and your viewing habits (Tivo has stated they capture anonymous data on the viewing habits of their subscribers).
Asside from the annoyance of having to run a phone line over to the Tivo, I really don't see what all of the complaining is about. The call takes like 10 minutes max and it does it between 2 and 5am.
2. 30-second commercial skip (or just skip the commercials all together, but I suspect the advertisers wouldn't go for that).
As others have pointed out, it's there in 2.5.. Look on the list of codes at tivocommunity.com for the code to enable it.
3. Better control over my VCR so that I can build my own personal archives of my favorite shows
Supposedly the Sony DirecTivo unit integrates well with Sony VCR's, but I haven't had any experience with this myself.
Shayne
Shayne
My first response to this was "WTF? Komodo is build on Mozilla, how are they selling it as a commercial app?".. I did some digging, and here are the relative parts of the MPL (available here ):
If you look at the very bottom of this page you'll find the link to download their patches against Mozilla 0.9.5. Good luck integrating them yourself with no documentation though.
Shayne
Err, two words: Organized Religion
If someone has been making money for thousands of years, I'd say their claims are pretty well-founded
Well, that's debatable.. I'm not going there, though.. :)
Shayne
Shayne
Just chill, man...we both know this guy is an idiot...he's claiming to be a "linux admin" and yet doesn't know the first thing about nsswitch.conf? He's a moron, he's just never had anyone call him on it before.
It's not even a particularly good troll, but eh, I'm bored.. I'll bite.....
Yeah, you called me out. I haven't taken the time to sit down with a cup of coffee and a printout of man pages for every file in /etc so I can prove myself worthy to you as a "Unix admin"... Guess I've been too busy doing actual work on the systems I administer than cuddled up with manpages by the fire.
BTW, I never claimed to be a "linux administrator". Administering linux systems is one hat of many I wear.
In my experience, there's a wide, yawning gulf between "Unix admins" and "linux admins". Don't trust the latter, they don't think doing a thorough job is required.
Haha, oh man, stop, my sides are hurting.. I seem to remember reading about statements like that somewhere.. What were they called? Oh yeah, TROLLS.
Shayne
Yeah, admittedly I generalized network admin to include unix admin, cause for me it does.. You seem to think it's a prerequisite to be a "real" unix administrator one must be able to explain the purpose of every since file in /etc off the top of his head. Uhh, a quick "ls -l | wc -l" of /etc on my redhat system counts 143 files and directories. You REALLY expect everyone you interview to be familiar with ALL of them? Why? If I was an administrator for one of your unix systems and you asked me to implement NIS, any book, man page, howto, or web page that explained setting up NIS would explain the appropriate /etc files which must be touched. Methinks you have unrealistic expectations of unix administrators.
And yes, I already explained earlier I wasn't familiar with nsswitch.conf. I hardly think that makes me not a "real" unix administrator. That's sort of like saying someone is not a "real" mechanic if he can't name every vacuum hose and its function on a 1981 Dodge Diplomat.
Shayne - no flamage intended, just offering a different viewpoint
I wish I had more advice for ya, but I don't. Actually, I'm in a similar boat; I want a position as a UNIX admin, and don't know how to translate from a Network Support guy with part-time admin duties to a full time junior admin.
Well, my $.02 as someone who successfully made that move, is to be patient and look for opportunities. I basically happened to be in the right place at the right time. I was working support for an ISP and the administrator was training me to be a backup/assistant to him to help offload some of the admin tasks so that he could concentrate more on programming. He left the state to go back to school and because I was used to working support for $8.50/hr, they gave me a $2/hr raise and put me in his spot and I was happy as a clam. They were happy too because they only had to hire an $8/hr support guy to replace me and not a more expensive admin. I stayed there for a couple of years and got plenty of experience then changed jobs and made a LOT more money.
I'd imagine as long as your try to learn as much as you can on your own, are upfront with the company(ies) you interview with about your limited experience, and are willing to work for less $$ than someone with a BA in CS and ten years experience, you've got a good shot of getting in. Maybe not in TODAY'S environment, but certainly in a year or so when things pick up again.
Shayne
Shame on you, calling yourself a unix admin.
Dude, shame on you for being so narrowminded that you think every network administrator alive should be able to extol the virtues of nsswitch.conf or be relegated to a life of ditch digging and petty thievery.
Shayne
D'oh, brain freeze.. Domain Name System, not Service.. Must....... Have....... Caffeine....
I've always thought that sort of interview process is just stupid. Your job as an administrator (or mine, for that matter) is to be able to ADMINISTER a system. This means setting up, expanding, securing, and troubleshooting a system.. System could mean a single server, a group of servers or an entire network. Your job is NOT to be a walking encyclopedia of terms, facts, and knowledge. Being a successful system administrator (or network admin) means when someone comes to you with a problem you know how to effectively use all reasources available to you to solve it. I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I've been an administrator for over 5 years now, and didn't know off the top of my head what nsswitch.conf was when I read your post. A simple "man nsswitch.conf" explains it's a config file for system databases. I've never admnistered an NIS environment, so I've never had a need to touch it. Does that mean I don't get hired at company X?
This is why MCSE's are generally useless.. Just because they've read a book or braindump and can explain that DNS stands for Domain Name Service, or that IP connectivity operates at Layer 3 of the OSI model, doesn't mean they'll know jack when your lusers come to them and say "when I type in www.childporn.com in my browser I get a 'server not found' error".
Yeah, I'm straying off topic, but if you want to successfully test a (potential) sysadmin, give him a real world scenario and let him use the resources available to him (his brain, books, the web, coworkers, etc) to solve the problem.
In the interest of getting this back on topic, if you want to be a sysadmin, concentrate less on memorizing facts and how many bits are used in a class C netmask and more on how to quickly learn things you don't immediately know.
Shayne
INTERNET PORN REMAINS POPULAR
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (reuters) - Despite a sagging U.S. economy and a war in progress overseas, the Internet Porn Industry is going strong says Mark Johnson, spokesperson for Web Association of Nude Knowledge (WANK). Johnson cites Americans' commitment to supporting U.S. companies in this time of need as the primary drive behind this continued popularity.
"People simply want to fulfill their duty as citizens", says Johnson.
Since the Sept 11th attacks the porn industry has faced increasing pressure as more companies have continue to lay off employees. With less disposable income, analysts feared citizens would direct their money towards drugs, or hookers rather than the traditional staples of booze and porn - but so far those fears have prooved groundless.
"Like, I was so scared, I called my coke-dealer and told him I may have to cut back my habit", says Misty Rayne, actress for Vivid Productions, Inc, known for her gang-bang of 500 tri-sexual midgets in 1999. Fortunately Mrs. Rayne has not been forced to reduce her 5 grams a day coke habit.
In this time of need, Americans have answered the call to arms. God bless America.
Shayne
In either case the answer is the same: do something else. The only way to be happy in the IT field is to LOVE what you do. All of those people who started CS degree programs in school 3 years ago just for the money are pissed now that they can't come out of school with a 2 or 4 year degree and move immediately to a six-figure salary. Any job in IT means long hours, often tedious work, and dealing with people who generally resent you for your intellect. If you're not in it because you love technology you won't last long, IMO.
On the plus side, a job in IT can be VERY rewarding if you love technology. It's *always* challenging, you get to be around the latest technology (usually), and there's always something new to learn. Also, if you start in the programming (software) side of it and burn out, you can always move to the hardware/networking side, or vice-versa. Or do like a lot of people (myself included) and do a little of both. The people who thrive in the IT field are people who get bored easily and are always up for a new challenge. Sounds like this guy is either lazy, or his school isn't challenging him enough.
Shayne
The media that something resides on does not change the identity of what it is.
Exactly.. DVD is simply a specification, Digital Versatile Disc.. Not "Digital Video Disc" as people commonly assume. A DVD can contain music, software, video, pictures and anything else that can be distributed on digital medium.
Shayne
Its not just a full moon, its also a blue moon
I'm often said to only get laid one in a blue moon... Hot sex for me tonight! YAY!
Shayne
We need the coordination ability of Outlook. I haven't seen anything for UNIX that compares.
Okay, this doesn't completely compare to Outlook (yet), but keep an eye on the Horde Project. We've used IMP as our primary email system at my company for two years now. The horde project provides the framework for a system with integrated e-mail, a calendar, contacts management, and much more. Only a couple of modules are in active development, but the framework is pretty nice.. Should you want to lend a hand it's pretty easy to get involved.
I'm not affiliated with them in anyway, I just enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Shayne
This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Assuming you're correct and they are going after the business market, what incentive would a company have to go this route? Let's say they certify Office 2000 to run under their distro.. The company still has to pay Office 2000 licensing, plus most OEMs are still going to charge them for the Windows license anyway (due to their terms with microsoft). So now in addition to still having to buy windows and office, they have to pay a license to Lindows for the linux distro (assuming they use a per-copy licensing scheme), plus pay someone to format Windows off the PC and setup Lindows and office 2k. After all of this, they must retrain users, and hire admins competent enough to secure and administer the linux boxes. I'd argue that would be TWICE as expensive as going with an all win2k/xp solution. In addition to all of this, unless you go hacking SMB functionality in the boxes you loose the ability to login to any windows domains/file shares the company may have.
The only market I could see (which the article hints at) is the home market which wants to run linux but needs Quicken, or wants to play The Sims or whatever. You still have the drawbacks of HAVING to pay for windows on any OEM's PC (unless MS has relaxed their terms since the whole DOJ trial thing), or building your own pc and using the Lindows distro. I'd argue anyone savvy enough to build their own PC would also be savvy enough to pop in a redhat CD and download and install the WINE RPM if it didn't come on the CD.
Yeah, this'll be marked as a troll, but I REALLY don't see the point of trying to shoehorn Linux into the desktop market. Yeah, I agree that we need something other than windows, but Linux just isn't it. It's strengths lie in stability and power as a SERVER. IMHO it makes a substandard workstation, especially for Joe HomeUser. Hey, I *love* Linux. I've convinced my company to switch all of our non-file servers over (web, email, dns, dhcp, etc).. But there's no WAY I'd try to force it on our users.
I think this is Yet Another Company trying to capitalize on the Linux name.
Shayne
Shouldn't that be Earth Standard Time?
Nononono, that's GNU/Earth Standard Time.. We don't want Stallman upset..
It's a bit much for us to presume that we can set the standard time conventions for the entire Universe.
Well, as far as we know we ARE the entire universe. By your logic it's presumptuous for us to name stars, but hey, we have to call them SOMETHING. I think Universal time merely indicates that it's standard for anywhere WE go in the universe. I don't think it's a conspiracy for us to push our time system on alien microbes, assuming there are any.
Shayne
Shayne
I'm not arguing FOR MySQL here, but I just wanted to point out I think the main reason people use it is accessibility. I started out programming CGI apps with perl using MySQL databases about 5 years ago with no prior database or programming experience. Over those years I've written tons of code and designed hundreds of databases. All of my current knowledge has come from books, MySQL documentation, and real world experience. Coming from this background, I started with MySQL because it was highly recommended as an easy to use database, and at the time was considered to be much faster that Postgres.
MySQL is very easy for the newbie to get up and running. You don't have to understand views, foreign keys, transactions, etc. All you have to understand is "put data in with insert, pull data out with select"... Well, maybe more than that but you get the idea.
That said, I've recently switched one of my major production databases over to postgres. I finally "graduated" to the point where I needed views, row-level locking, and some other things that I couldn't get with MySQL. I'm finally comfortable with postgres but it took some time. Postgres requires a bit more of it's users. For example, queries are case sensitive. If you have a web form that says "enter name of user to lookup" and feed that form to a query, "where user = 'bob'", you have to have extra code to convert 'bob' to 'Bob', 'BOB', or whatever. Either that or train your users better (yeah, right). You could argue that this is the "correct" behavior and I'd agree with you, but still, it's a PITA to rework already working programs to account for this.
All of that said, I still use MySQL for some things.. I have several databases that get updated once daily via a cron job from a production database and are searched hundreds of times per minute by a mod_perl-enabled web site. Why bother with the complexities of having to explicitly set up keys and indexes, worry about case-sensitive matching, vacuum analyzing, etc, for such a simple database? In my mind this only requires more work and introduces more chances for errors.
It all boils down to the right tool for the job. Writing a complete accounting package? Use postgres (or something commercial). Writing a simple interface to query a list of students in a classrom? Use MySQL.
Shayne
First of all, performance has never been there.. They can't even seem to get close to mid-range AMD and intel chips, so they changed position to "well, it's a LOW POWER consumption chip for laptops". Like the previous poster said, even if you half the consumption of the CPU unless you work on the LCD and other components you'll only increase battery life by a few percent. To the average user that's just not worth having to buy a more expensive and unproven chip.
The only other market I could see for them would be in an embedded pc market where a company sold hardware products spanning several architectures and wanted one a single processor they could work with intimately rather than having to learn the quirks of different processors on each architecture they have. Honestly I've racked my brain and can't even think of an example of such a company.. Maybe Cisco? I'm not THAT familiar with their hardware but maybe it spans more than one architecture.
Moral of the story: Just because someone puts out something you enjoy doesn't mean you'll enjoy everything they put out. That's the flawed logic that caused me to actually sit through an entire episode of That's my Bush! (shudder) What a stinking pile of horse-dung that was.
Shayne
I think it would be pretty useful just to have it repeat "no" in a human's voice at every pause.
Telemarketer: Hi, is this Mr. Smith
Recording: No
TM: Oh, can I speak to Mr. Smith?
Recording: No
TM: Okay, can I speak to whoever manages the long distance service in your household?
Recording: No
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Shayne
Shayne
Shayne
Also, you can do what I do. About two years ago I had my home phone number changed and all of the call features + long distance removed from the line. So for $25/mo it's used as a data/fax line shared by my computers and several satellite receivers in the house. It has a $19 k-mart answering machine on it that says "hi you've reached 205-xxx-xxxx, leave a message" just in case someone looks my number up in the phone book or whatever and really needs to reach me. Other than that, I never hear it ring and never answer it. Friends and family all have my cellphone number.
Shayne