As a network administrator who configures routers, switches, and firewalls on a regular basis, I don't give a flying flip about what's commonly thought of as "good UX design" on IT appliances. The best UX for me is the one that's the fastest. Which means SSH, CLI, and text editors over anything graphical. As examples: A router's web interface requires clicking through multiple pages to find the right box to check or fill in to add a new subnet to a BGP session (if it's even possible at all). Via CLI, I can do this with one config stanza. I'd rather edit a config file (preferably one that's well-commented) in a text editor than wade through the web interface on any appliance. I'll ALWAYS open up PuTTY instead of ASDM when I need to modify a firewall rule on a Cisco ASA.
But it's not content theft; the volunteers who are forking via Wikitravel via CC-sa are obeying the license that the source site uses; it's even on the original site right now: "Wikitravel uses a copyleft license for all text, images, and other content on the Web site. Anyone can use Wikitravel content according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license." via: http://wikitravel.org/shared/Copyleft
What amazes me is that people actually buy duck-tape wallets. Especially since they're so easy to make; The one currently in the back pocket of my jeans has lasted about 6 months so far, and aside from a little color loss on the outside corners (it's black duct tape, not the silver kind), it's just as good as the day I put it together.
I'm not kidding about how easy they are to make, either. All it takes is duct tape and time, although a ruler and either an Exacto knife or a box cutter (or utility knife, nomenclatural differences aside) certainly helps to ensure clean edges. I've never really timed myself, but I'm relatively sure it takes between 20 and 30 minutes to make one. The directions I originally used were a couple of webcomics at life's so rad, but I've since adapted the steps to fit my own style; I had to make a few before I was satisfied with the results.
That's weird; I can only see what I typed up there when replying to it. I think slashdot may still be a little sick.
22 comments on the story, and the site is already experiencing the full force of the/. effect. I wonder what OS that server's running?
Oh. Well, that blows my theory out of the water.
You know, this was a lot funnier BEFORE I went to netcraft.
22 comments on the story, and the site is already experiencing the full force of the/. effect. I wonder what OS that server's running? Oh. Well, that blows my theory out of the water.
You know, this was a lot funnier BEFORE I went to netcraft.
Of course, you realize that the glob in "rm -rf/home/guest/.*" will match "/home/guest/..", right?
While this may not really be an issue since (1) there shouldn't be any other users on the system anyway, and (2) that tar file almost certainly has full paths in it, it's something to look out for, should you decide to use this script for other purposes.
Example: Someone I was working with a few years ago noticed that the dot-files in his home directory weren't owned by him. So he did a "chown -R username:group.*" from his home directory. He didn't notice that he was logged in as root, though. Made quite a mess for him to clean up over the next few days.
-- It may not be on-topic to the article, but it's probably on-topic to the parent.
I guess it's a good thing I have credit so bad I can't get a credit card... I tend to pay cash for everything, with the added bonus that it's harder to trace.
Except for those metal strips in $20 bills... but I don't go through metal detectors, so I can't be tracked that way.
What're those helecopters doing outside my apartment?
I'll probably get modded down for this, but does modifying your User-Agent string in your browser constitute "circumventing an access method" (a familiar phrase from the DMCA)?
55 On Jan. 12, 2001, MGM releases AntiTrust, a movie about the high-stakes world of the software industry, starring Ryan Phillippe as a computer-programming genius.
To tell the truth, I don't see how this is a dumb moment in e-business. Ignoring the fact that I really liked the movie (I thought the acting was pretty god, and the plot, while unlikely, was mostly believable), it didn't have anything at all to do with ebusiness. It was more along the lines of an inside joke about the open source movement, with a little BillGatus bashing on the side.
Methinks whoever writes this list/e-zine/magazine needs to actually do research before throwing non-sequiturs on the pile...
on a similar note, when I was managing a helpdesk (about a year ago), we managed to get ahold of ICQ Groupware. We got everyone connected with it, then specified paging groups (Tier 1, Tier 2, admins, managers)... It worked pretty well, and the techs didn't have to keep track of (or learn to use) an entire IRC window; just about everyone knows how to use ICQ these days...
>by looking at a 3rd party GUI tool running on linux and immediately identified it as unix
Actually, if I remember correctly, the system was running IRIX (a UNIX that runs on SGI systems), not linux (which was still in relative infancy in 1993, when Jurassic Park came out).
Still, it probably confused a heck of a lot of people who DID know UNIX, and didn't recognize the gui.
You know, I can really relate. I was a tech support guy for nearly three years at an outsource tech-support place in Austin, TX. I was even a manager there for a while. And just about everything in this article has the ring of truth and experience to it.
I, too, have had the experience of leaning over to the tech in the next cube and saying, "Hey, Gus... You wanna be a supervisor today?". I have the (quite painful) experience of working a graveyard shift by myself, and watching those call queue times creep up and up, until they finally hit the 15-minute mark and start flashing, the timing just right that if you glance quickly at the screen, then blink at exactly the right second, you can't see any calls in queue. Then time keeps going, and all the flashing red things start populating the call monitor again.
I even have the truly distasteful memories of actually being a supervisor, and having one of the new tier-one techs coming up to me, so that I can talk to a user who thinks a supervisor can solve the problem better than any tier-two technician. Granted, I was one of the best upper-tier technicians before I got promoted to "management" (if you can really call that place managed), so nine times out of ten, I could solve the user's problem faster and/or better than the tier-two (or even tier-three) technicians. But most of the time, I really just wanted to stop talking to the user, who was wasting my time with a problem that even a semi-literate chimpanzee could read about online and fix, and get back to my actual duties (being the Network and System Administrator).
But, alas, I was "forced" to leave that job and get one where I didn't have to talk to screaming users 200 or more times a day, didn't have to keep track of my call times (3-minute averages aren't good enough for you?), and could even wear a suit to work (on the weird off-days where I just wanted to) without every single upper-management type person panicking because I looked like I was on my way to an interview.
So remember, some of the best, some of the most mediocre, and even some of the worst people in "the world" have been through that hell that is internet tech support, and having lived through it, have vowed to never again inflict our own painful memories on those unlucky enough to still be answering the phones, "Thank you for calling tech support, how can I solve your problem?"
Weekend activities, among others
on
RMS On eBooks
·
· Score: 1
This kinda disturbs me. I completely enjoy the concept of e-books, and I'm in fact reading Dracula on my Palm IIIx right now. But one of my favorite activities for, say, a Sunday afternoon, is to go down the block to the used book store & see what other people have read & decided to pass along. If schemes such as this get popular, who knows how "Half-Price Books" or any other used book store will fare?
/dev/logic -- Jedi Knights don't like being arrested.
Actually, it might be easier than you think. If you use the XInput extensions to XFree86, you can probably set up both the keyboard-touchpad and the mouse as core pointers. I've got a Wacom art tablet, and it works simultaneously with my Logitech Marble Mouse (if I use both hands, but that's another story). Check out http://www.delix.de/Linux/Support/Info/wacom.html ; I found it when I first started working with the tablet & X. It'll take a bit of hacking to get it to work right with two mice, but I'm sure it can be done. The man page for XInput (if you can find it; it may be a part of XFree86(1)) will undoubtedly also help.
Slashdot Mirror
As a network administrator who configures routers, switches, and firewalls on a regular basis, I don't give a flying flip about what's commonly thought of as "good UX design" on IT appliances. The best UX for me is the one that's the fastest. Which means SSH, CLI, and text editors over anything graphical. As examples:
A router's web interface requires clicking through multiple pages to find the right box to check or fill in to add a new subnet to a BGP session (if it's even possible at all). Via CLI, I can do this with one config stanza.
I'd rather edit a config file (preferably one that's well-commented) in a text editor than wade through the web interface on any appliance.
I'll ALWAYS open up PuTTY instead of ASDM when I need to modify a firewall rule on a Cisco ASA.
But it's not content theft; the volunteers who are forking via Wikitravel via CC-sa are obeying the license that the source site uses; it's even on the original site right now:
"Wikitravel uses a copyleft license for all text, images, and other content on the Web site. Anyone can use Wikitravel content according to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license."
via: http://wikitravel.org/shared/Copyleft
What amazes me is that people actually buy duck-tape wallets. Especially since they're so easy to make; The one currently in the back pocket of my jeans has lasted about 6 months so far, and aside from a little color loss on the outside corners (it's black duct tape, not the silver kind), it's just as good as the day I put it together.
I'm not kidding about how easy they are to make, either. All it takes is duct tape and time, although a ruler and either an Exacto knife or a box cutter (or utility knife, nomenclatural differences aside) certainly helps to ensure clean edges. I've never really timed myself, but I'm relatively sure it takes between 20 and 30 minutes to make one. The directions I originally used were a couple of webcomics at life's so rad, but I've since adapted the steps to fit my own style; I had to make a few before I was satisfied with the results.
22 comments on the story, and the site is already experiencing the full force of the /. effect. I wonder what OS that server's running? Oh. Well, that blows my theory out of the water.
You know, this was a lot funnier BEFORE I went to netcraft.
Of course, you realize that the glob in "rm -rf /home/guest/.*" will match "/home/guest/..", right?
.*" from his home directory. He didn't notice that he was logged in as root, though. Made quite a mess for him to clean up over the next few days.
While this may not really be an issue since (1) there shouldn't be any other users on the system anyway, and (2) that tar file almost certainly has full paths in it, it's something to look out for, should you decide to use this script for other purposes.
Example: Someone I was working with a few years ago noticed that the dot-files in his home directory weren't owned by him. So he did a "chown -R username:group
--
It may not be on-topic to the article, but it's probably on-topic to the parent.
I guess it's a good thing I have credit so bad I can't get a credit card... I tend to pay cash for everything, with the added bonus that it's harder to trace.
Except for those metal strips in $20 bills... but I don't go through metal detectors, so I can't be tracked that way.
What're those helecopters doing outside my apartment?
I'll probably get modded down for this, but does modifying your User-Agent string in your browser constitute "circumventing an access method" (a familiar phrase from the DMCA)?
Something to think about...
Actually, I saw a solution to this earlier this week (at least, it's a solution if you're using a recent build of Mozilla)...
in prefs.js (in the linux version, it's in ~/.mozilla), add this line:
user_pref("dom.disable_open_during_load", true);
it kills popus that ocur during page loading, but still allows other popups on the page to work properly (like on my bank's web page)...
To tell the truth, I don't see how this is a dumb moment in e-business. Ignoring the fact that I really liked the movie (I thought the acting was pretty god, and the plot, while unlikely, was mostly believable), it didn't have anything at all to do with ebusiness. It was more along the lines of an inside joke about the open source movement, with a little BillGatus bashing on the side.
Methinks whoever writes this list/e-zine/magazine needs to actually do research before throwing non-sequiturs on the pile...
on a similar note, when I was managing a helpdesk (about a year ago), we managed to get ahold of ICQ Groupware. We got everyone connected with it, then specified paging groups (Tier 1, Tier 2, admins, managers)... It worked pretty well, and the techs didn't have to keep track of (or learn to use) an entire IRC window; just about everyone knows how to use ICQ these days...
>by looking at a 3rd party GUI tool running on linux and immediately identified it as unix
Actually, if I remember correctly, the system was running IRIX (a UNIX that runs on SGI systems), not linux (which was still in relative infancy in 1993, when Jurassic Park came out).
Still, it probably confused a heck of a lot of people who DID know UNIX, and didn't recognize the gui.
I, too, have had the experience of leaning over to the tech in the next cube and saying, "Hey, Gus... You wanna be a supervisor today?". I have the (quite painful) experience of working a graveyard shift by myself, and watching those call queue times creep up and up, until they finally hit the 15-minute mark and start flashing, the timing just right that if you glance quickly at the screen, then blink at exactly the right second, you can't see any calls in queue. Then time keeps going, and all the flashing red things start populating the call monitor again.
I even have the truly distasteful memories of actually being a supervisor, and having one of the new tier-one techs coming up to me, so that I can talk to a user who thinks a supervisor can solve the problem better than any tier-two technician. Granted, I was one of the best upper-tier technicians before I got promoted to "management" (if you can really call that place managed), so nine times out of ten, I could solve the user's problem faster and/or better than the tier-two (or even tier-three) technicians. But most of the time, I really just wanted to stop talking to the user, who was wasting my time with a problem that even a semi-literate chimpanzee could read about online and fix, and get back to my actual duties (being the Network and System Administrator).
But, alas, I was "forced" to leave that job and get one where I didn't have to talk to screaming users 200 or more times a day, didn't have to keep track of my call times (3-minute averages aren't good enough for you?), and could even wear a suit to work (on the weird off-days where I just wanted to) without every single upper-management type person panicking because I looked like I was on my way to an interview.
So remember, some of the best, some of the most mediocre, and even some of the worst people in "the world" have been through that hell that is internet tech support, and having lived through it, have vowed to never again inflict our own painful memories on those unlucky enough to still be answering the phones, "Thank you for calling tech support, how can I solve your problem?"
This kinda disturbs me. I completely enjoy the concept of e-books, and I'm in fact reading Dracula on my Palm IIIx right now. But one of my favorite activities for, say, a Sunday afternoon, is to go down the block to the used book store & see what other people have read & decided to pass along. If schemes such as this get popular, who knows how "Half-Price Books" or any other used book store will fare?
/dev/logic
--
Jedi Knights don't like being arrested.
Actually, it might be easier than you think.
If you use the XInput extensions to XFree86, you can probably set up both the keyboard-touchpad and the mouse as core pointers. I've got a Wacom art tablet, and it works simultaneously with my Logitech Marble Mouse (if I use both hands, but that's another story).
Check out http://www.delix.de/Linux/Support/Info/wacom.html ; I found it when I first started working with the tablet & X. It'll take a bit of hacking to get it to work right with two mice, but I'm sure it can be done. The man page for XInput (if you can find it; it may be a part of XFree86(1)) will undoubtedly also help.