But then your slashdot preference might accidentally be cross connected to your Tivo, watching several programs at once. The Tivo doesn't care, it just watches the TV, it doesn't actually have to believe what it's watching.
So after a frantic day of your SlashDot preferences simultaneously believing the Good is Bad, Black is White, and that God needs a lot of money sent to a certain PO Box, it will develop a fault.
Judging by the dessicated remains of the software industry, I would like to pose the question back: Where is the money? The money is in licenses, exclusive arrangements, and monopolistic tendencies. I am a big fan of Fractal Poser. Only, Fractal was bought out by Metacreations, who spun the product off to... who is it this week... Curious Labs. Look at the canibalization of the game industry.
Hell Evian sells water in bottles. We all know the flipping chemical formula. Hell, it comes out of the taps in most of the industrialized world. What they are actually selling is the packaging.
This sort of stuff makes sense to you and me. Unfortunately there is no column on a manager's spreadsheet for safety. Hell safety for the place I'm working at now is a cell phone strapped to my waist at all times.
One time I was in the next state visiting the wife's inlaws when I had to talk a layman through going to my office for the server room key, going to the right machine on the KVM switch, and rebooting it.
Lets see, scratch out Software Engineering. Some other careers that came up on my personality assesment: Tavern Owner, Military...
I really miss the days when you could set up a box with no moving parts. I have 2 applications for computer where a cooling fan is inneffective, or where a cooling fan in completely undesired.
I run the network at a science museum. We have kiosks (Linux of course) that sit and run all day, every day, unattended. Every so often a power fan starts making noise and vistors complain, or it quietly quits and the processor french fries either itself or surrounding electronics.
My second appliction is running a server for volunteer checkin at a folk festival. We set it up at the begining of the week in a dusty, damp, humid shed that serves as the office. It has to run, hot or cold, dry or damp, all weekend. A fan sucks (literally and figuratively) because it draw in dust when the weather is dry, and spins to almost no avail if the weather is too humid. I presently use a clocked down K6 that doesn't need a fan.
I realize I am starting to wander into the realms of embedded devices, is it so much to ask that my next computer be quieter than the diswasher?
Unless you are running some kind of supercomputing app, your bottleneck is the network card. I laugh when someone drops in a Dual 2Ghz rackmount to act as a file server.
Not too hard of course, I am one of those momos during the day. On the side I do a lot of volunteer work with Linux. You have never seen the light in a peron's eyes like when you tell them the only thing they need for their server is a bigger hard drive.
2 Laptops from Ebay: $120
New Hard drive and case, and a pair of PCMCIA network cards: $200
Old motherboard, CPU and RAM: Free
Being able to tell your wife that you DO actually use those old parts you keep in the basement: Priceless
I managed to get RedHat 6.2 on a pair of 486 thinkpads with 12MB of ram. They just boot X and act as terminals for my server. Handy for running a network in a hay field like I do every year at the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
The real trick was hacking the PCMCIA configuration and fooling it into treating my new DLINK PCMCIA cards like it would an older model. Not normally a problem, except you have to do it on the compressed block device on the install floppy.
Well hey, that means my mom gets credit for recognizing that all of the contenants fit together like a gigsaw puzzle. She noticed that the first time she saw a globe at the age of 6 or so, predating plate techtonics by about 10 years!
Did I mention my Grandfather was the first person to be hit in the head by a really big laser?
I did a cursory check of the patent, and it patents the concept of a central authenticating mechanism for a web portal.
The style (of writing) is so DotComeeses its hard to say what the hell they are actually patenting. At first its a portal, than an administrative interface, the claims are circuler and deliberately vague.
I keep thinking of the tool Hari Seldon used in the Foundation Series to analyze the information content of what people actually said. One politician's visit in the story yielded no information, despite several speeches.
Simple: You can retrofit state into the system by using Kerberos-style cookies. I have an RPC system used internally on our network that has an extra argument for the SOAP session id. The server checks to see if that session id is still valid and presto.
You have to figure Slashdot has been running since 1994. If they moved servers from an area that observed Daylight savings time to one that did not they would have to adjust their clock to make up for all of the springing forward and falling back they missed out on. By my calculation this equates to roughly the 14hours your posting was in Limbo.
</sarcasm>
(interupting the other panelist mid word)
The real point is that these Dash Slot people are the same ones who have ties to the Linux people the NSA has supported for years. Here our tax money is going to some cult from Finland. If you ask me them and the CIA are the real source of this trouble.
...(interupting the other panelist mid word) Jane you ignorant slut.
Ah hell, this certifation expires with Windows 2000 service pack 4. The Certification is only valid on the product as installed, configured, and tested.
Actually the CC certifaation will take every bit as long as the certification for 2k. That's the whole point, they test it from head to foot, balls to bone.
I too do a bit of consulting for small businesses. The ones I generally deal with want absolutely NOTHING to do with the technology. They just want the damn thing to work.
My clients are generally sole proprieterships who are getting on the web. Very few have the $60k to dump into "An Exchange Server, a MSSQL server, and a Dell Rack Mount running Win 2k." Their budget is a white-box athlon running RedHat and MySQL.
They will pay for hardware, because you generally purchase it once and it has a clear ROI. Most small business owners I deal with are delighted to find they don't have to pay for the software, beyond my time to customize it. Very few if any actually have any IT staff, so training is less of an issue than "can this machine run unattended for months at a time?"
Slashdot Mirror
But then your slashdot preference might accidentally be cross connected to your Tivo, watching several programs at once. The Tivo doesn't care, it just watches the TV, it doesn't actually have to believe what it's watching.
So after a frantic day of your SlashDot preferences simultaneously believing the Good is Bad, Black is White, and that God needs a lot of money sent to a certain PO Box, it will develop a fault.
(With apologies to Douglas Adams)
Hell Evian sells water in bottles. We all know the flipping chemical formula. Hell, it comes out of the taps in most of the industrialized world. What they are actually selling is the packaging.
THAT is where the money is.
Coincidence? Well not really, Wordperfect 6.0 had been out for much longer...
Doh!
One time I was in the next state visiting the wife's inlaws when I had to talk a layman through going to my office for the server room key, going to the right machine on the KVM switch, and rebooting it.
Lets see, scratch out Software Engineering. Some other careers that came up on my personality assesment: Tavern Owner, Military...
Isn't it nice to see that computer technology has finally evolved into a service industry.
I run the network at a science museum. We have kiosks (Linux of course) that sit and run all day, every day, unattended. Every so often a power fan starts making noise and vistors complain, or it quietly quits and the processor french fries either itself or surrounding electronics.
My second appliction is running a server for volunteer checkin at a folk festival. We set it up at the begining of the week in a dusty, damp, humid shed that serves as the office. It has to run, hot or cold, dry or damp, all weekend. A fan sucks (literally and figuratively) because it draw in dust when the weather is dry, and spins to almost no avail if the weather is too humid. I presently use a clocked down K6 that doesn't need a fan.
I realize I am starting to wander into the realms of embedded devices, is it so much to ask that my next computer be quieter than the diswasher?
- The Little Endian Instruction Set
- The 386, no wait, the 386SX, no wait, the 386DX
- The 486 with the coprocessor cut out with a Laser
- The Indivisible Pentium
- The Celeron that outruns the PIII
The worlds fastest... okay, highest clock speed, chip.Never be afraid to say: Damn this is perfect for my situation.
Too Late
Not too hard of course, I am one of those momos during the day. On the side I do a lot of volunteer work with Linux. You have never seen the light in a peron's eyes like when you tell them the only thing they need for their server is a bigger hard drive.
2 Laptops from Ebay: $120
New Hard drive and case, and a pair of PCMCIA network cards: $200
Old motherboard, CPU and RAM: Free
Being able to tell your wife that you DO actually use those old parts you keep in the basement: Priceless
The real trick was hacking the PCMCIA configuration and fooling it into treating my new DLINK PCMCIA cards like it would an older model. Not normally a problem, except you have to do it on the compressed block device on the install floppy.
Did I mention my Grandfather was the first person to be hit in the head by a really big laser?
Now Mark's time (At $80/hour) * (rounding up) 1 hour: $80
Divide 80 by the number of copies. Not much for one copy. Better for 2 copies. When you get up to 200 copies, it really starts to pay off.
I keep thinking of the tool Hari Seldon used in the Foundation Series to analyze the information content of what people actually said. One politician's visit in the story yielded no information, despite several speeches.
Given the tentative nature of these patents trying to apply to openly developed protocols, I think that we definitely have a case for prior art.
Think of it like Soapy cookies.
You have to figure Slashdot has been running since 1994. If they moved servers from an area that observed Daylight savings time to one that did not they would have to adjust their clock to make up for all of the springing forward and falling back they missed out on. By my calculation this equates to roughly the 14hours your posting was in Limbo.
</sarcasm>
You have to wonder what would come up with an hourglass shape, or a pair of circles...
It's been 45 minutes. Out with it then!
Oh wait, not everybody has 2 T1 lines sucking down bandwidth LIKE A DWARF ON A FIREHOSE
But I digress.
(interupting the other panelist mid word) The real point is that these Dash Slot people are the same ones who have ties to the Linux people the NSA has supported for years. Here our tax money is going to some cult from Finland. If you ask me them and the CIA are the real source of this trouble.
...(interupting the other panelist mid word) Jane you ignorant slut.
Ah hell, this certifation expires with Windows 2000 service pack 4. The Certification is only valid on the product as installed, configured, and tested.
Actually the CC certifaation will take every bit as long as the certification for 2k. That's the whole point, they test it from head to foot, balls to bone.
Did I mention Cats is his press Secretary?
My clients are generally sole proprieterships who are getting on the web. Very few have the $60k to dump into "An Exchange Server, a MSSQL server, and a Dell Rack Mount running Win 2k." Their budget is a white-box athlon running RedHat and MySQL.
They will pay for hardware, because you generally purchase it once and it has a clear ROI. Most small business owners I deal with are delighted to find they don't have to pay for the software, beyond my time to customize it. Very few if any actually have any IT staff, so training is less of an issue than "can this machine run unattended for months at a time?"