'This whole idea of "cyber-terrorism" is a big joke perpetuated by the ignorant.'
I disagree with this. On the whole, the idea of cyber-terrorism is a carefully laid plan perpetuated by those who stand to gain from having a paranoid populace. Count how many times the US uses "terr'rists" to justify overreaching legislation.
Ah well. I guess I beat the terrorists then. I was a bit sad to hear this story, because I know that it'll be another hoax like always, and I could use the time at work that would be afforded by having the network guys scrambling for a while.
Believe me, I know a tiny bit about ergonomics. My wife is a certified ergonomicist, and her degree is in Industrial Design which is HEAVILY related to 'human factors' stuff.
The angle of my fingertips is a bit larger than usual. When I drop my hands on the keyboard, they rest at quite a natural angle to each other (about 50 degrees), but my fingertips fall naturally on the home row in this position!
When I use a sloped keyboard, I find myself holding my wrists and elbows out unnaturally, which tightens up my arms right to the shoulder. Voila, almost instant discomfort.
If you study ergonomics, you quickly find that everyone is an exception to some degree, and the standard deviation for any given posture is quite wide. Worse, the 'ideal' posture range for any one person gets smaller as they spend longer at a task. Trying to come up with a single solution that will work for even 70% of the population over eight hours a day is impossible.
There are a few reasons why people use flat keyboards. They're cheap, ubiquitous, and familiar. It doesn't take any mental effort to keep using the same damned thing all the time. (the biggest reason, by the way, for not using the Dvorak keyboard everywhere)
But at the same time, you have to remember that people are different, and one solution won't work for everyone. Sloped keyboards are horrible to me! After five minutes, I'm in more pain than hours of flat keyboard typing causes. Clearly, they're not a solution for me (and in fact, flat keybaords aren't a problem for me).
The threat here isn't that MS will sue the sudo authors--they can't without invalidating their patent. However, they CAN potentially sue anyone who updates sudo or moves the concept into a new program. That's when the prior art police will have to get busy.
I think it's fairly easy to push humans into the "us vs. them" mindset, although it's not there by default.
In the modern world, the USA more than any country except Israel needs to have a THEM to rail against--not only is the mindset of the country geared that way, but the economy is as well. Thus, the government and the media implicitly collude to constantly create such a 'them.' In the government's case, it's a combination of paranoia and a superlative mentality: "Who is our BIGGEST threat? What is the MOST DANGEROUS long-term enemy? We'd better watch them!!!" On the media side, it's much more cynical and deliberate: "Who can we focus on as a competitor to drum up the most money?"
The problems with this attitude are that it continues to breed paranoia, and it makes the populace less critical towards further 'proclamations.' Also, it dehumanises the competition. No longer is it "Jones vs. Dmitrioff," it's "our nation vs. their nation" and the athletes are just pawns.
This is nothing new. What's new is that the USA has never had to scramble so hard to find an opponent. They've been building up China in that role for nearly ten years now, but at the same time are more than a little nervous about actively engaging (or even offending) a country that's roughly their equal.
I think you're right--come 2008, the USA will HATE the Chinese team, because the media and government will spend four years creating that attitude.
Well in most cases, the reason that wood dust is more hazardous is simply that it gets into your system more effectively. Ebony, for instance, is nasty whether you breathe in the sawdust, or get a sliver under your skin. Surface contact is fairly benign in almost all cases, because our skin is relatively protective.
Purpleheart (and yellowheart, and a few others) are a _bit_ different in that their chemically unstable after being cut, but the end result isn't much different. Getting 'em into your system is a bad idea.
Welcome to the supersized nation. It doesn't matter if it's bad service, just as long as it's BIG!
Hotmail went steeply downhill after MS bought them, and has never recovered. There are better and more respected services out there. Who CARES how much storage they'll give you?
It will be pretty easy to determine if someone is spamming to bring down a competitor/enemy. Likewise, it will be QUITE easy to tell if a spamvertised site is the result of 'legitimate' advertising (not unchecking boxes) vs. fullscale massive spamming.
If there are borderline cases, then ignore them for the time being--there are SO many UTTERLY contemptible spamvertised sites that should be shut down that it'll be a long while before getting to the borderline cases.
Funny how unvarnished, unglued wood is wonderful and safe. Most people in the woodworking industry (especially the fine work stuff, heavy hardwoods, etc.) feel somewhat differently. Check out this table of wood toxicities for some properly backed data.
Furthermore, treating the (psychosomatic) symptoms rather than the underlying problem gives false credibility to the false disease, and that leads to people rallying for the pointless elimination of (x) from everyone's life, wasting time and money.
Are you suggesting that Unisys is a dinosaur, or that any company writing not writing open source software is a dinosaur? The former I might agree with but the latter is just nonsense.
On the other hand, you shouldn't be an ass while you're doing it.
This is a major issue.
I just got a disciplinary phone call from my manager (who lives half a continent away) to belittle me for not having my timesheets for last week done by noon. (it was 1:00pm when the phone rang.) Amongst other insulting comments was the fact that my manager "has better things to do with his time than phone us (money-making) staff every Monday afternoon." Maybe he should fucking well do it then.
The problem with slacking is that for the most part, slacking worker bees make life harder for the other worker bees; and slacking management makes life harder for...the other worker bees. Worse, they seem to mistake their salary for a measure of their relative worth.
Don't get me wrong--I've liked Anand and company since they first hit the internet. They don't generally have an axe to grind or an ego to boost (both of which TomsHardware suffers from terribly), but they don't have the slightest bloody clue about statistics, or significance.
Fun to read, and not consistently biased, but not a great source of actual benchmarking or review information. (techreport.com is better for that)
As another person with a chemistry degree, I have to mostly agree.:-)
It may be different where you live, but around here some of the community colleges have two-year diplomas in chemical technology, or the like. For analytical production jobs (i.e. QA/QC testing), a diploma like this is generally quite acceptable.
A similar two-year diploma in programming would be ideal. For cranking out code, that should be more than sufficient. A bachelor's degree (or Masters or PhD) should be geared towards research and theory, like a chemistry degree (supposedly) is.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard. In addition to our 50+TB of fibrechannel disk, we have another 24TB of ATA100 storage. Go on though--tell me how a multi-billion dollar company of 2400 employees is sad, pathetic, and second rate.
RAID has its purposes, which are completely independent of whether your needs require IDE, SCSI, or FCAL disk. Real men and women make decisions on criteria other than jingoism.
I work for an EXTREMELY large company. For the last four years, our perks have been cut and cut and cut again. Our salary increases have been typically half of cost of living in the years we actually get them. Annual bonuses are gone for good. Training has been cut back to less than acceptable.
Hearing that some companies are starting to give perks again means that the cycle is turning back. I will be so glad to see employers like mine losing all of their best employees next year, because they'll be playing catch-up -- and it will be 'too little, too late' for most of us.
There are cases where people need Sun, and Sun apps. Lots of Geophysical apps run only on Solaris/Sparc right now. However, people might also want Linux apps, so making them available on the already mandatory Sun gear will keep some people gruntled.
Ultimately, you're right--if Linux compatibility is wanted, Linux is generally going to be the best solution in a vacuum. However if Linux compatibility is wanted on top of other requirements, then a compromise like this is better than having two machines on your desk.
Well actually, reverse engineering is explicitly illegal in the USA--that's what part of the fuss over the DMCA is. Secondly, if Apple can claim either trade secret or copyright, then Real is in the wrong even without the benefit of bad law.
Slashdot Mirror
First thing that comes to mind is booting from CD. That should be doable. So, for that matter, should booting off of a DOS partition.
"If a wannabe programmer isn't already reading code for ideas then he's wasting your time asking how to be a programmer."
I agree, except that roughly 80% of the young programmers I know can't read code passably. Maybe more--maybe as high as 95%.
'This whole idea of "cyber-terrorism" is a big joke perpetuated by the ignorant.'
I disagree with this. On the whole, the idea of cyber-terrorism is a carefully laid plan perpetuated by those who stand to gain from having a paranoid populace. Count how many times the US uses "terr'rists" to justify overreaching legislation.
Ah well. I guess I beat the terrorists then. I was a bit sad to hear this story, because I know that it'll be another hoax like always, and I could use the time at work that would be afforded by having the network guys scrambling for a while.
Believe me, I know a tiny bit about ergonomics. My wife is a certified ergonomicist, and her degree is in Industrial Design which is HEAVILY related to 'human factors' stuff.
The angle of my fingertips is a bit larger than usual. When I drop my hands on the keyboard, they rest at quite a natural angle to each other (about 50 degrees), but my fingertips fall naturally on the home row in this position!
When I use a sloped keyboard, I find myself holding my wrists and elbows out unnaturally, which tightens up my arms right to the shoulder. Voila, almost instant discomfort.
If you study ergonomics, you quickly find that everyone is an exception to some degree, and the standard deviation for any given posture is quite wide. Worse, the 'ideal' posture range for any one person gets smaller as they spend longer at a task. Trying to come up with a single solution that will work for even 70% of the population over eight hours a day is impossible.
So yes, I understand.
There are a few reasons why people use flat keyboards. They're cheap, ubiquitous, and familiar. It doesn't take any mental effort to keep using the same damned thing all the time. (the biggest reason, by the way, for not using the Dvorak keyboard everywhere)
But at the same time, you have to remember that people are different, and one solution won't work for everyone. Sloped keyboards are horrible to me! After five minutes, I'm in more pain than hours of flat keyboard typing causes. Clearly, they're not a solution for me (and in fact, flat keybaords aren't a problem for me).
But if it works for you, then keep it up!
The threat here isn't that MS will sue the sudo authors--they can't without invalidating their patent. However, they CAN potentially sue anyone who updates sudo or moves the concept into a new program. That's when the prior art police will have to get busy.
I think it's fairly easy to push humans into the "us vs. them" mindset, although it's not there by default.
In the modern world, the USA more than any country except Israel needs to have a THEM to rail against--not only is the mindset of the country geared that way, but the economy is as well. Thus, the government and the media implicitly collude to constantly create such a 'them.' In the government's case, it's a combination of paranoia and a superlative mentality: "Who is our BIGGEST threat? What is the MOST DANGEROUS long-term enemy? We'd better watch them!!!" On the media side, it's much more cynical and deliberate: "Who can we focus on as a competitor to drum up the most money?"
The problems with this attitude are that it continues to breed paranoia, and it makes the populace less critical towards further 'proclamations.' Also, it dehumanises the competition. No longer is it "Jones vs. Dmitrioff," it's "our nation vs. their nation" and the athletes are just pawns.
This is nothing new. What's new is that the USA has never had to scramble so hard to find an opponent. They've been building up China in that role for nearly ten years now, but at the same time are more than a little nervous about actively engaging (or even offending) a country that's roughly their equal.
I think you're right--come 2008, the USA will HATE the Chinese team, because the media and government will spend four years creating that attitude.
"...so a good bottle of olive oil sounds nice."
Nice to see SOMEONE has their priorities straight!
Well in most cases, the reason that wood dust is more hazardous is simply that it gets into your system more effectively. Ebony, for instance, is nasty whether you breathe in the sawdust, or get a sliver under your skin. Surface contact is fairly benign in almost all cases, because our skin is relatively protective.
Purpleheart (and yellowheart, and a few others) are a _bit_ different in that their chemically unstable after being cut, but the end result isn't much different. Getting 'em into your system is a bad idea.
Welcome to the supersized nation. It doesn't matter if it's bad service, just as long as it's BIG!
Hotmail went steeply downhill after MS bought them, and has never recovered. There are better and more respected services out there. Who CARES how much storage they'll give you?
It will be pretty easy to determine if someone is spamming to bring down a competitor/enemy. Likewise, it will be QUITE easy to tell if a spamvertised site is the result of 'legitimate' advertising (not unchecking boxes) vs. fullscale massive spamming.
If there are borderline cases, then ignore them for the time being--there are SO many UTTERLY contemptible spamvertised sites that should be shut down that it'll be a long while before getting to the borderline cases.
Funny how unvarnished, unglued wood is wonderful and safe. Most people in the woodworking industry (especially the fine work stuff, heavy hardwoods, etc.) feel somewhat differently. Check out this table of wood toxicities for some properly backed data.
Furthermore, treating the (psychosomatic) symptoms rather than the underlying problem gives false credibility to the false disease, and that leads to people rallying for the pointless elimination of (x) from everyone's life, wasting time and money.
I disagree. MCS victims are virtually never frauds or attention whores. They're severe psychosomatic cases, and need psychiatric help.
Are you suggesting that Unisys is a dinosaur, or that any company writing not writing open source software is a dinosaur? The former I might agree with but the latter is just nonsense.
On the other hand, you shouldn't be an ass while you're doing it.
This is a major issue.
I just got a disciplinary phone call from my manager (who lives half a continent away) to belittle me for not having my timesheets for last week done by noon. (it was 1:00pm when the phone rang.) Amongst other insulting comments was the fact that my manager "has better things to do with his time than phone us (money-making) staff every Monday afternoon." Maybe he should fucking well do it then.
The problem with slacking is that for the most part, slacking worker bees make life harder for the other worker bees; and slacking management makes life harder for...the other worker bees. Worse, they seem to mistake their salary for a measure of their relative worth.
Anandtech isn't biased, it's incompetent.
Don't get me wrong--I've liked Anand and company since they first hit the internet. They don't generally have an axe to grind or an ego to boost (both of which TomsHardware suffers from terribly), but they don't have the slightest bloody clue about statistics, or significance.
Fun to read, and not consistently biased, but not a great source of actual benchmarking or review information. (techreport.com is better for that)
As another person with a chemistry degree, I have to mostly agree. :-)
It may be different where you live, but around here some of the community colleges have two-year diplomas in chemical technology, or the like. For analytical production jobs (i.e. QA/QC testing), a diploma like this is generally quite acceptable.
A similar two-year diploma in programming would be ideal. For cranking out code, that should be more than sufficient. A bachelor's degree (or Masters or PhD) should be geared towards research and theory, like a chemistry degree (supposedly) is.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard. In addition to our 50+TB of fibrechannel disk, we have another 24TB of ATA100 storage. Go on though--tell me how a multi-billion dollar company of 2400 employees is sad, pathetic, and second rate.
RAID has its purposes, which are completely independent of whether your needs require IDE, SCSI, or FCAL disk. Real men and women make decisions on criteria other than jingoism.
I work for an EXTREMELY large company. For the last four years, our perks have been cut and cut and cut again. Our salary increases have been typically half of cost of living in the years we actually get them. Annual bonuses are gone for good. Training has been cut back to less than acceptable.
Hearing that some companies are starting to give perks again means that the cycle is turning back. I will be so glad to see employers like mine losing all of their best employees next year, because they'll be playing catch-up -- and it will be 'too little, too late' for most of us.
You're missing a key point here, I believe.
There are cases where people need Sun, and Sun apps. Lots of Geophysical apps run only on Solaris/Sparc right now. However, people might also want Linux apps, so making them available on the already mandatory Sun gear will keep some people gruntled.
Ultimately, you're right--if Linux compatibility is wanted, Linux is generally going to be the best solution in a vacuum. However if Linux compatibility is wanted on top of other requirements, then a compromise like this is better than having two machines on your desk.
Well actually, reverse engineering is explicitly illegal in the USA--that's what part of the fuss over the DMCA is.
Secondly, if Apple can claim either trade secret or copyright, then Real is in the wrong even without the benefit of bad law.
Hmm. Let me rephrase myself then.
/bin/sh?
Is a bourne shell script guaranteed to run on bash 3.0? Is bash at least a true superset of
POSIX compliance is nice, but the Bourne shell itself is NOT POSIX compliant, and won't be made so.
/bin/sh?
So does bash, invoked as #!/bin/sh, actually behave like