The ethics problem is represented by an experience I had while at an American research university. A Chinese faculty member met with the Chinese students in order to tell them in America, cheating and other ethical breaches are not considered a good way to get ahead. This suggested certain cultural differences which should not be used to discriminate, but need to be recognized because of the risks involved.
In my junior high and high school (John F. Kennedy Jr. and North Miami Beach Sr.) there was rampant cheating. There was note passing, stolen test copies, students writing down questions to pass to others in the next class. This didn't affect me so much as the attitude among the students that the classes really didn't matter and they were in fact being smarter for having cheated the system.
Ethical breaches are everywhere and that's what kids do here to get ahead.
And I can say proudly that I never cheated. I worked my ass off to get my grades and took the bad grades with the good.
Dell is trying to push the netbooks as an accessory for their larger models when it does fine on its own. I think their and other vendors' fear is that netbooks will continue to replace high-margin notebooks for many customers. I have several laptops (a couple Studio XPS systems, several Inspirons) but recently have been using my Samsung N120 netbook almost exclusively when outside the house.
This particular model is almost identical to any of the others (160G HD, 1.6GhZ Atom, 1G RAM upgradeable to 2G, 3 USB ports, MiniSD slot, 7-8hr battery life). I chose mine based on the color and the slightly larger keyboard.
It is running XP only because I couldn't find a Linux version with the same specs. I'll likely either reinstall or even get a pure Linux one. Both OSes work absolutely fine with my AT&T USB 3G card, both run the Netbeans IDE, OpenOffice, Firefox and the VPN software that I need for work.
So far the only issue I've had was a failure during the Windows update. It apparently wiped out my Samsung WiFi/Ethernet drivers because the binaries weren't signed. I re-downloaded the drivers via the 3G connection and was able to get it going without too much trouble.
So yeah, when I do my next purchase it will definitely replace a traditional laptop because *it's better*.
An amusing suggestion, yes, but far from practical. Humorous as an absurd suggestion at best.:)
I posted it somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but don't knock it as absurd because there are quite a few instances where using a raw volume is more portable. In some cases, for example, the OS may not have drivers for some types of filesystems. Many embedded systems don't understand EXT3 or NTFS.
A few years ago I had to move some files to an embedded system that had only a floppy. The kernel couldn't quite grok the floppy filesystem so I did end up tar'ing from the raw floppy device. And it worked.
Another reason to do so is overhead. Filesystem meta information can chew up your space. If you have a file that's just a fraction too large for a filesystem, dd'ing it may give you just enough extra room to transport the file.
And as you indicate, without an MBR or a part table, it's tough to read that information back.. Think about this for a moment when you want a way to store your correspondence from your girlfriend or that super-secret manuscript that will make you millions once someone picks up the film rights. I.e., run it through encryption then dump it to the raw device. Someone picks it up and it looks like an unformatted disk.
(oh yeah..the correspondence comment is of course purely hypothetical, this being Slashdot and all).
I prefer to just dd my data to the raw device. If there's more than one file, I might pipe it through tar first. This process makes it much more portable and universal.
Yah, I do that too. I have AARP invitations on my wall because they mined some database that shows I'm in my 70s. I also have lots of high school age directed mail because other databases show me as a teenager. Oh, and Medicaid and insurance scams and political propaganda targeted at seniors -- I get literally dozens of those a week.
Interesting... My 7 year old's computer is a dual core with hyperthreading. The OS sees 4 cores. It was a $500 system including monitor. My desktop is a quad-core with hyperthreading, so it sees 8 cores. I run some moderately intensive workloads on it (lots of financial analysis, daily re-compiling of 120M worth of source code, sometimes a VMWare session to access my work VPN which is Windows only), but perhaps all this is not as intense as a hardcore gamer. I could easily see them using a dual-quad core system which would show 16 cores. The system is not pegged even during the most intense sessions, but the cost for quad-core versus the dual-core was so minimal that I went ahead and paid the extra $90. Heck, the low-end system I'm building out for my employer has 8 real, 16 virtual cores.
So I think 16 cores is a very real possibility for a home power-user system.
Indeed. Every developing country goes through a period of resource exploitation -- that's how countries develop. The same was true for the US which was once much like South America with vast expanses of forest.
As I said, that would work for some things. Add multiple servers with multiple dependencies and the occasional need to stop/restart jobs on an ad hoc basis, ability to reschedule entire job sequences without rewriting code, and you'll quickly come to the limits of cron. But if it works you, awesome. Your environment is obviously quite different from mine.
Good enough for some things. For other things, relying on cron means you need to get more complex with your scripting. Complexity can translate to fragility. For example, with one server it's no big deal to schedule a job to run then when it's done backup the system. You want the job to complete and then run the backup. You could schedule the jobs sufficiently far apart that one will complete in time, but then you have an issue if the initial job runs late. So maybe you set a sentinel file on completion. Then you need to schedule the second job at intervals to check the sentinel.
But what happens if the job is on another machine? Do you use a shared mount for the sentinel? scp the sentinel to the second host? What is one job runs on Unix and the other on Windows? Sure, you can solve it with scripting, but it gets more and more complex.
The role of sysadmin has changed. In some places a sysadmin would build out PCs, help users with opening Word docs, fix network issues. This still happens, but in a lot of places, the sysadmin role is much more specialized and broader in others. We have to work with the business users, manage budgets, act as vendor liasons, architect solutions.
Whereas cron may have been good enough a few years ago, we now have beefed-up schedulers. SANs, geographically disperesed DR sites, 24-hour operations, etc.. A while back a sysadmin could also be the web developer. Now the web content is done by one person, the code by a java developer, the app server is managed by another, the OS by another. At the same time the sysadmins need to understand all the systems so that we can tune and troubleshoot.
I'm not saying it's a harder job than any of the others, but IT has grown up and the level of professionalism required has grown with it.
Good lord, you don't see the problem with Scientific Linux? They started naming their releases after elements. Sure, it seems like a lot now, but unless we discover some new elements, the PROJECT WILL END once they exhaust the Periodic Table!
That's a pretty ridiculous comment you made there yourself.
This was at Haulover Beach in South Florida. It's not the worst of places, but bad enough that yes, they have a guard. There have been a couple rapes there, lots of vandalism, lots of theft. I go there because it's relatively quiet. Now you may be trusting enough that you will feel at home with six or seven rough looking 17 and 18 year old kids riding around you when there's hundreds of yards of other places nearby, but I'm not that trusting.
You are more than welcome to go there and see for yourself.
Working from the road is fun, but it really depends on what you're doing. When I'm doing any sort of code I need to be at my house with my 24" monitors and reference library (not all my books are electronic). Other times though it makes the time pass faster to work from a coffee shop (in particular, the one across from the college at around noon ).
Anyhoo, some of the things I found I needed to work completely remotely include: 1) 300W inverter 2) USB hub 3) 3G card 4) Skype (actually now a Google voice node:D )
For the really remote days I picked up a Duracell power supply. It's large (has a fullsize car battery inside) and *heavy*, but lets me work for 8 hours completely away from mains power. I can get by with the laptop and the 3G card, but the power runs out after a couple hours. It seems like a lot of stuff, but it lets me work from the beach or a park.
BTW, I was near the beach once and in the middle of typing when a bunch of really rough looking teenagers started milling around. That was a tense moment until a guard came along to check around. Won't go there again, but it's something to keep in mind if you want to get far away.
I'm of two minds about this.. Sure, it will probably be reverse engineered in a matter of weeks so no big deal. On the other hand, why should it be up to the community to do this? I think it's better overall that not a single iPhone, Mac, Linux or other device works on their network. That way they will ship a proper client and support it. If it's reverse engineered they can easily say, "We don't support that," and still get the benefit of subscriptions.
Electronic media could be such a boon for millions of students. Imagine doing away with all the production costs and generating texts with new methods. I support electronic readers for mainly this reason, but each time I hear about something like this, or some DRM issue, it makes me doubtful.
I know.. there are lots of downsides to using bash or korn as a first languag, but there are quite a few upsides. For one, it's easy to get started showing what a script/batch file does. You can start with the absolute basics such as putting a few print statements in a file. Then show how scrip programming is not just about putting commands in a file.. Show conditionals, strings, file manipulation, etc.. Then start with functions, parameters. After that, show some of the external tools and then automate something such as sending an email or organizing an mp3 directory.
Indian workers can be as hard working or as lazy as their American counterparts, but to claim that it's more than about money is bull. It's all about the money.
I've been in IT for close to 20 years, and remember when the first outsourced workers started appearing as developers. They were very smart -- generally the top of their class -- and it showed in their work ethic and their ability to get the job done. Then it changed. Outsourcing companies exhausted the top workers in their field and started accepting the next tier. After those were exhausted, they started bringing in the next tier. Sound familiar? It's what happened with the certification craze that went on for a while.
There is absolutely no doubt that outsourced employees are initially less expensive than local workers. For certain types of jobs it's much cheaper to shop the requirements out and then get bids. There is also no doubt that many of the current group of workers suck.
And I will also say that many of the current crop of outsourced workers really and truly suck. I've had to deal with supposed Perl-developers that don't know how to use a hash table. One Java "pro" couldn't figure out how to launch Eclipse and another tried to vi a jar file. This wouldn't have happed 5 years ago, but that's how bad they are now.
And for the record my wife is Indian and I'm Asian.
It's almost like the diamond manufacturers telling you that diamonds bought in some places are better than others... Or telling me that mined diamonds are somehow better than perfect manufactured diamonds. They say it's all about the pedigree. I saw BS; it's all about the marketing.
Actually there is a series of Google videos that say exactly that. Search on "Don't talk to cops" and you'll get an extremely interesting video (well, at least the one from James Duane). It tells how even the simplest statement can work against you.
With a couple junk telephones you can build a radio. There are even some guides here and there that show you how to make a variable potentiometer, switches, batteries, etc., from tin and aluminum cans and a few sheets of acetate (such as in a clear plastic report cover).
Old remote controls, busted transistor radios, old calculators are a goldmine. With them you can make some very simple circuits. For example, with a few transistors and diodes you can make a binary adding machine. It can demonstrate how a computer does a shift or an add, AND, ORs, etc..
There's a page online somewhere with instructions on how to build a car that drives around. When it approaches a wall it will turn around. It uses pieces scrounged from motherboards and CDROM drives.
That was uncalled for. A Linux user will ask you very politely if the package bar code was code128 or some other zebra coding technology. Someone will pipe in that back in his day, there were no barcoded ZIPs, just hand written numbers written in brown crayon on a cardboard box. Someone else will chime in that back in his day, you were lucky if it had the country on it, much less a ZIP code. Someone else will tell you that UPS uses a system called PLD and you need to look at the 1Z label code and direct you to ups.com. Someone will call that person an idiot and say that USPS is not UPS. Someone else will ask, "Why are you trying to track your package? Tell us what you really want to accomplish."
(I kid, I kid. I'm a Linux user through and through.)
Slashdot Mirror
This truly is ridiculous.
The ethics problem is represented by an experience I had while at an American research university. A Chinese faculty member met with the Chinese students in order to tell them in America, cheating and other ethical breaches are not considered a good way to get ahead. This suggested certain cultural differences which should not be used to discriminate, but need to be recognized because of the risks involved.
In my junior high and high school (John F. Kennedy Jr. and North Miami Beach Sr.) there was rampant cheating. There was note passing, stolen test copies, students writing down questions to pass to others in the next class. This didn't affect me so much as the attitude among the students that the classes really didn't matter and they were in fact being smarter for having cheated the system.
Ethical breaches are everywhere and that's what kids do here to get ahead.
And I can say proudly that I never cheated. I worked my ass off to get my grades and took the bad grades with the good.
KLL
Dell is trying to push the netbooks as an accessory for their larger models when it does fine on its own. I think their and other vendors' fear is that netbooks will continue to replace high-margin notebooks for many customers. I have several laptops (a couple Studio XPS systems, several Inspirons) but recently have been using my Samsung N120 netbook almost exclusively when outside the house.
This particular model is almost identical to any of the others (160G HD, 1.6GhZ Atom, 1G RAM upgradeable to 2G, 3 USB ports, MiniSD slot, 7-8hr battery life). I chose mine based on the color and the slightly larger keyboard.
It is running XP only because I couldn't find a Linux version with the same specs. I'll likely either reinstall or even get a pure Linux one. Both OSes work absolutely fine with my AT&T USB 3G card, both run the Netbeans IDE, OpenOffice, Firefox and the VPN software that I need for work.
So far the only issue I've had was a failure during the Windows update. It apparently wiped out my Samsung WiFi/Ethernet drivers because the binaries weren't signed. I re-downloaded the drivers via the 3G connection and was able to get it going without too much trouble.
So yeah, when I do my next purchase it will definitely replace a traditional laptop because *it's better*.
An amusing suggestion, yes, but far from practical. Humorous as an absurd suggestion at best. :)
I posted it somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but don't knock it as absurd because there are quite a few instances where using a raw volume is more portable. In some cases, for example, the OS may not have drivers for some types of filesystems. Many embedded systems don't understand EXT3 or NTFS.
A few years ago I had to move some files to an embedded system that had only a floppy. The kernel couldn't quite grok the floppy filesystem so I did end up tar'ing from the raw floppy device. And it worked.
Another reason to do so is overhead. Filesystem meta information can chew up your space. If you have a file that's just a fraction too large for a filesystem, dd'ing it may give you just enough extra room to transport the file.
And as you indicate, without an MBR or a part table, it's tough to read that information back.. Think about this for a moment when you want a way to store your correspondence from your girlfriend or that super-secret manuscript that will make you millions once someone picks up the film rights. I.e., run it through encryption then dump it to the raw device. Someone picks it up and it looks like an unformatted disk.
(oh yeah..the correspondence comment is of course purely hypothetical, this being Slashdot and all).
"Heeere I come to save the daaaayy.. Mighty Mouse is on his waaaay!!"
Flying mice. Sheesh.
I prefer to just dd my data to the raw device. If there's more than one file, I might pipe it through tar first. This process makes it much more portable and universal.
Yah, I do that too. I have AARP invitations on my wall because they mined some database that shows I'm in my 70s. I also have lots of high school age directed mail because other databases show me as a teenager. Oh, and Medicaid and insurance scams and political propaganda targeted at seniors -- I get literally dozens of those a week.
Interesting... My 7 year old's computer is a dual core with hyperthreading. The OS sees 4 cores. It was a $500 system including monitor. My desktop is a quad-core with hyperthreading, so it sees 8 cores. I run some moderately intensive workloads on it (lots of financial analysis, daily re-compiling of 120M worth of source code, sometimes a VMWare session to access my work VPN which is Windows only), but perhaps all this is not as intense as a hardcore gamer. I could easily see them using a dual-quad core system which would show 16 cores. The system is not pegged even during the most intense sessions, but the cost for quad-core versus the dual-core was so minimal that I went ahead and paid the extra $90. Heck, the low-end system I'm building out for my employer has 8 real, 16 virtual cores.
So I think 16 cores is a very real possibility for a home power-user system.
Indeed. Every developing country goes through a period of resource exploitation -- that's how countries develop. The same was true for the US which was once much like South America with vast expanses of forest.
As I said, that would work for some things. Add multiple servers with multiple dependencies and the occasional need to stop/restart jobs on an ad hoc basis, ability to reschedule entire job sequences without rewriting code, and you'll quickly come to the limits of cron. But if it works you, awesome. Your environment is obviously quite different from mine.
Good enough for some things. For other things, relying on cron means you need to get more complex with your scripting. Complexity can translate to fragility. For example, with one server it's no big deal to schedule a job to run then when it's done backup the system. You want the job to complete and then run the backup. You could schedule the jobs sufficiently far apart that one will complete in time, but then you have an issue if the initial job runs late. So maybe you set a sentinel file on completion. Then you need to schedule the second job at intervals to check the sentinel.
But what happens if the job is on another machine? Do you use a shared mount for the sentinel? scp the sentinel to the second host? What is one job runs on Unix and the other on Windows? Sure, you can solve it with scripting, but it gets more and more complex.
The role of sysadmin has changed. In some places a sysadmin would build out PCs, help users with opening Word docs, fix network issues. This still happens, but in a lot of places, the sysadmin role is much more specialized and broader in others. We have to work with the business users, manage budgets, act as vendor liasons, architect solutions.
Whereas cron may have been good enough a few years ago, we now have beefed-up schedulers. SANs, geographically disperesed DR sites, 24-hour operations, etc.. A while back a sysadmin could also be the web developer. Now the web content is done by one person, the code by a java developer, the app server is managed by another, the OS by another. At the same time the sysadmins need to understand all the systems so that we can tune and troubleshoot.
I'm not saying it's a harder job than any of the others, but IT has grown up and the level of professionalism required has grown with it.
Hehe.. .bis at some point.. Also remember upgrading TOS ROMs on my ST :D..
I remember updating my modem to support the
I think your post highlights the main difference between vi and emacs users. Not saying either is better...
^X
^F /help
^X^S :wq
oh hell.
Good lord, you don't see the problem with Scientific Linux? They started naming their releases after elements. Sure, it seems like a lot now, but unless we discover some new elements, the PROJECT WILL END once they exhaust the Periodic Table!
That's a pretty ridiculous comment you made there yourself.
This was at Haulover Beach in South Florida. It's not the worst of places, but bad enough that yes, they have a guard. There have been a couple rapes there, lots of vandalism, lots of theft. I go there because it's relatively quiet. Now you may be trusting enough that you will feel at home with six or seven rough looking 17 and 18 year old kids riding around you when there's hundreds of yards of other places nearby, but I'm not that trusting.
You are more than welcome to go there and see for yourself.
Something like this? :
http://store.l-f-l.com/cgi-bin/cp-app.cgi?pg=prod&ref=DC-DC-90W
Don't know the site, but it was the first hit on Google.
BTW, this is the power supply I have:
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-kAhdhm8hxvW/p_539PP600/Duracell-Powerpack-600.html
It has a cigarette lighter port so may work.. Will try.. thanks..
Working from the road is fun, but it really depends on what you're doing. When I'm doing any sort of code I need to be at my house with my 24" monitors and reference library (not all my books are electronic). Other times though it makes the time pass faster to work from a coffee shop (in particular, the one across from the college at around noon ).
Anyhoo, some of the things I found I needed to work completely remotely include: :D )
1) 300W inverter
2) USB hub
3) 3G card
4) Skype (actually now a Google voice node
For the really remote days I picked up a Duracell power supply. It's large (has a fullsize car battery inside) and *heavy*, but lets me work for 8 hours completely away from mains power. I can get by with the laptop and the 3G card, but the power runs out after a couple hours. It seems like a lot of stuff, but it lets me work from the beach or a park.
BTW, I was near the beach once and in the middle of typing when a bunch of really rough looking teenagers started milling around. That was a tense moment until a guard came along to check around. Won't go there again, but it's something to keep in mind if you want to get far away.
I'm of two minds about this.. Sure, it will probably be reverse engineered in a matter of weeks so no big deal. On the other hand, why should it be up to the community to do this? I think it's better overall that not a single iPhone, Mac, Linux or other device works on their network. That way they will ship a proper client and support it. If it's reverse engineered they can easily say, "We don't support that," and still get the benefit of subscriptions.
No kidding...
Electronic media could be such a boon for millions of students. Imagine doing away with all the production costs and generating texts with new methods. I support electronic readers for mainly this reason, but each time I hear about something like this, or some DRM issue, it makes me doubtful.
I know.. there are lots of downsides to using bash or korn as a first languag, but there are quite a few upsides. For one, it's easy to get started showing what a script/batch file does. You can start with the absolute basics such as putting a few print statements in a file. Then show how scrip programming is not just about putting commands in a file.. Show conditionals, strings, file manipulation, etc.. Then start with functions, parameters. After that, show some of the external tools and then automate something such as sending an email or organizing an mp3 directory.
That's mostly a bunch of bullshit.
Indian workers can be as hard working or as lazy as their American counterparts, but to claim that it's more than about money is bull. It's all about the money.
I've been in IT for close to 20 years, and remember when the first outsourced workers started appearing as developers. They were very smart -- generally the top of their class -- and it showed in their work ethic and their ability to get the job done. Then it changed. Outsourcing companies exhausted the top workers in their field and started accepting the next tier. After those were exhausted, they started bringing in the next tier. Sound familiar? It's what happened with the certification craze that went on for a while.
There is absolutely no doubt that outsourced employees are initially less expensive than local workers. For certain types of jobs it's much cheaper to shop the requirements out and then get bids. There is also no doubt that many of the current group of workers suck.
And I will also say that many of the current crop of outsourced workers really and truly suck. I've had to deal with supposed Perl-developers that don't know how to use a hash table. One Java "pro" couldn't figure out how to launch Eclipse and another tried to vi a jar file. This wouldn't have happed 5 years ago, but that's how bad they are now.
And for the record my wife is Indian and I'm Asian.
I sort of agree..but then.. hmmm
It's almost like the diamond manufacturers telling you that diamonds bought in some places are better than others... Or telling me that mined diamonds are somehow better than perfect manufactured diamonds. They say it's all about the pedigree. I saw BS; it's all about the marketing.
Actually there is a series of Google videos that say exactly that. Search on "Don't talk to cops" and you'll get an extremely interesting video (well, at least the one from James Duane). It tells how even the simplest statement can work against you.
With a couple junk telephones you can build a radio. There are even some guides here and there that show you how to make a variable potentiometer, switches, batteries, etc., from tin and aluminum cans and a few sheets of acetate (such as in a clear plastic report cover).
Old remote controls, busted transistor radios, old calculators are a goldmine. With them you can make some very simple circuits. For example, with a few transistors and diodes you can make a binary adding machine. It can demonstrate how a computer does a shift or an add, AND, ORs, etc..
There's a page online somewhere with instructions on how to build a car that drives around. When it approaches a wall it will turn around. It uses pieces scrounged from motherboards and CDROM drives.
That was uncalled for. A Linux user will ask you very politely if the package bar code was code128 or some other zebra coding technology. Someone will pipe in that back in his day, there were no barcoded ZIPs, just hand written numbers written in brown crayon on a cardboard box. Someone else will chime in that back in his day, you were lucky if it had the country on it, much less a ZIP code. Someone else will tell you that UPS uses a system called PLD and you need to look at the 1Z label code and direct you to ups.com. Someone will call that person an idiot and say that USPS is not UPS. Someone else will ask, "Why are you trying to track your package? Tell us what you really want to accomplish."
(I kid, I kid. I'm a Linux user through and through.)