There's tons of apps that do this already - WebTrends being an example, for instance. Probably shareware apps too. It's just basically a spidering thang.
Paying a service to do it when I can buy an app, schedule it to run overnight, and have reports generated in the morning, strikes me as silly.
If a parent or teacher behaves unethically and excuses that behavior on the basis of "it's for your own good," the behavior remains unethical. I'm a mother and find your idea abhorrent as hell - like reading my daughter's diary or something. It's not "OK" to do things to kids that are inappropriate to do to adults JUST because they're kids. You don't suddenl;y become a real person when you hit the age of majority; kids are people too, you know.
Your distinction between hypothesis and theory is correct, though I don't know enough about string "theory" to comment on which it qualifies as. However, it is incorrect to state that a law is something which is guaranteed to work in all situations. The universe does not come with guarantees. A scientific law is an "upgraded" theory, as it is considered more likely to be accurate than a theory. However, the accuracy is not guaranteed to be 100%, scientific law is defined as a rule for which no one has ever observed an exception, leaving open the possibility that an exception may be observed as science expands. There is no place in the scientific method for proclaiming something to be absolutely "true." Science seeks to improve the accuracy of models of reality, not to pronounce on what is really real.
No. In a well-designed science experiment, one attempts to prove the null hypothesis, i.e., the *opposite* of the proposed hypothesis. Only if one fails to so do many times does one begin to consider that there is a body of experimental data supporting the theory. One *never* "proves" a hypothesis or a theory. It becomes acceptable due to an inability to disprove it. This is the scientific method.
I agree 110%, I'd rather hire someone with a clue than someone with a particular list of skills. If they've got half a brain, they'll learn whatever skills they ened as they go along.
But... I have no idea how to tell. I have been involved with hiring 3 times, and twice I hired complete idjits. The third time I hired someone I knew from another job - whom did not have the skills I wanted, but she's smart and will have them in no time. But I only knew she'd work out because I spent months and months and months working with her previously.
How do you tell via a resume and interview if the person has a useful brain? You can ask questions about specific skillsets they claim, but the best you can find out doing that is what they know... you can't tell if it they learned it in a half hour from a web page or from being spoon-fed for 6 months.
It doesn't MATTER what they know today. Within the year, there'll be new versions of everything out, and if they can't learn the new stuff without me spoon-feeding them, they're no use to me. If they can't think when they have a problem they never saw before and have to ask me for the answer, then they will take up more of my time than they save doing their job. If I can't hand over a project to them and have them take responsibility for it, they're no use to me.
Sure, you hand-hold someone a bit for a month or two, let them figure out how the company works and stuff. But it shouldn't continue unabated over time, eventually they should actually do their job.
If you're getting the impression that I don't want to "manage" people, you're absolutely correct. I intend to remain a geek myself, not turn into a full-time manager.
But how do you tell the difference during an interview between someone whom can genuinely solve problems versus someone you'll need to babysit?
It's not true that when they call or mail you that they are paying the costs themselves.
The post office charges much lower postage for bulk mailers. This has always struck me as completely ass-backwards, they ought to charge them MORE to discourage the crap. That these folks get a rate cut means that the rest of us are subsidising the cost of their garbage.
Even so, junk mail is nowhere near as obnoxious as the phone telemarketers.
The guy calling my house to sell me stuff is sure as heck NOT paying the full cost of the call - he has not paid for my time nor for the meal that burns when I run to get the phone. Further, it's MY phone line use he is tying up with his obnoxious spiel. This one is a tad easier to deal with though - have your phone listed under an incorrect name - you can identify them in the first 2 seconds of the call and hang up.
Never, ever, ever buy anything from these folks, even if they offer to sell you something you were looking to buy anyways at half the price you could find on your own. It only encourages them.
I did this just today, stopped to buy a pre-paid phone card from a place that only sold MCI calls. MCI obnoxiously calls me again and again even though I have asked them not to. They will never, ever, ever, until hell freezes over, get a nickel of my money.
And play with them if you're in the mood... try to sign them up with Amway or convert them to the Lord or get them to enageg in phone sex as long as they're on the phone anyways.;)
I don't think my email, phone or snail mail address ought to be used by marketers... unless I have asked for a catalog. All personalized, intrusive marketing ought to be opt-in only.
Furthermore, pro-guns activists are often disgusting peoples, see, the milician kind. Faschists, dangerous, often close to the Ku Klux Klan. I don't like them. If a gun ban will annoy them, it will also be useful.
This is obvious flamebait and stereotypical crapola.
I do not and have never owned a gun and have never allowed one in my house. I am scared of guns, personally. I am a senior systems analyst (though was originally educated and worked as a biochemist), the mother of a teenaged daughter, and an extremely liberal person by most standards. The only real difference between myself and most liberals is on the gun control issue.
I understand completly that the basis of ANY human rights is the ability of humans to enforce their rights. That's it... period. While I don't personally wish to own a gun right now, I also feel very strongly that I do not wish to live in a country in which it is forbidden - and certainly don't wish my child to grow up in one.
The American revolution could not have occured without private ownership of guns - something well understood by the founders of our country when they included the Second Amendmnet in the Bill of Rights. This is not a "bug" in the Constitution, but an absolutely necessary part of the program. .
Errr... if your users only know FrontPage, ChiliSoft is not going to help much.
FrontPage isn't actually compatible with ASP. If you open an ASP page in FrontPage, it deletes everything it doesn't like.
You can develop in one direction only... marketing folks do design and layout in FP, then someone programs the scripts in VI or in a text editor or whatever. But if you go back and open the finished product in FP, it ruins it.
Most of what end users are going to make with FrontPage use the FrontPage server extensions (MS calls them "web bots"), not the ASP dll (or any other IIS bits). Heck, even doing include files in FrontPage uses a "web bot" as opposed to the standard server side include processor of the web server software.
The FrontPage server extensions are a buggy piece of crap. However, they've been around for Apache since back when FrontPage was in beta, back before there WAS any such thing as IIS or ASP. You absolutely can offer full FrontPage functionality on an Apache server - always could.
So you CAN offer FrontPage functionality on Linux without ChiliSoft or PHP or whatever. It is just the ASP-specific stuff you can't offer.
And let me offer this... I can not imagine WHY I'd want to let someone who needs FrontPage to write a frigging web page write server-side scripts! I mean, REALLY! It's like giving a loaded gun to a child.
I disagree that ASP is not useful. But then I'm an ASP developer, so what would you expect me to say? Hey, ASP pays the bills!;)
IMO, ASP is most useful, for allowing you to write all your dynamic-type code server-side so you can have your web server spit out nothing but browser-neutral HTML to your users. I write everything out to the HTML 3.2 standard which lets you completly ignore browser issues as long as you have alt tags for your images and such.
Ironically enough, ASP - a technology developed by the Evil Empire, is useful for specifically avoiding the browser wars as much as possible. I don't WANT my users downloading dynamic recordsets they can manipulate on the client - cause I don't know what browser they're using... ASP is the glue that lets me do everything server-side and ignore the browser wars.
Course, the downside is that I use server resources where I could use client resources, that things that could be done locally require additional trips to the server. But the payout at not having to build and maintain multiple coppies of the site seems worth it to me unless you have major bandwidth issues.
What I don't get is why ChiliSoft for Linux would be a good thing. I looked at the product (not for Linux) a couple years ago when management at my old job was making threattening noises about changing our web server software from IIS (and it wasn't like they wanted a GOOD web server like Apache either, they were looking at crap like Domino - which would mean still running on the blue-screen-of-death OS).
ChiliSoft appears to be a cool little product if you have a bunch of functionality dependent on ASP that you want to hang on to - install their little app and your ASP's run fine on platforms other than NT/IIS.
BUT... that was before I heard of PHP. I haven't used it just yet, but I read the HOWTO docs a while back and the thing is cool and does way more than ASP. And while PHP does run on various platforms, far as I can tell, it was built mostly as a Linux answer to ASP.
And while it wouldn't run your ASP's correctly, there's a conversion programs that converts your ASP pages to PHP easily enough.
Is there anyone here who has actually used both products as opposed to just reviewing them like I have?
Is there a reason to prefer the Chili! product over PHP? What are they actually like to implement and use?
Has anyone actually converted current NT/IIS/ASP web sites to either PHP or ChiliSoft?
How do you send the document to the ASP parser directly?
A while back, I was trying to generate ASP dynamically, but never could figure out how to get the resulting string handed back to the ASP parser. I ended up writing the things to files instead, and "publishing" these files periodically, rather than able to generate the aSP on the fly as I wanted.
It almost sounds like you are doing what I wanted to do - how do you do it?
There's plenty of reasons to post anonymously that have nothing to do with sex.
I post to sexually-explicit newsgroups using my real name all the time. I made a specific decision to do so a few years back - and my writings have ended up on web pages and print publications with my real name attached.
However, I made a *decision* to be out about my interests. And it is not without risk, people have lost jobs and children and such for daring to talk or have interest in something non-mainstream.
I do not think that entrance to any community ought to cost this much. Anonymity, or deciding to be out, are personal decisions - no one else can count the cost for you.
In spite of being "out" about sexual stuff, I have posted anonymously on other topics, for other reasons at other times. Hell, when I responded to articles about IT jobs - salaries and companies and such - I did it anonymously.
Furthermore, people like the folks at ASAR do *need* anonymity to feel safe to discuss their issues. Anyone saying otherwise has no idea what theya re talking about. You can't determine what other people need for their healing and recovery, regardless of what you think they need.
Sure anonymity gets abused sometimes. It always has and always will. But that doesn't mean it's not useful and important for many folks.
My comments: This has included books that were found not to be obscene by Canadian courts. Customs continues to stop them anyway, in spite of court rulings.
To assist in the court battle in a most enjoyable manner, purchase Forbidden Passages: Writings Banned in Canada by Pat Califia. From the Amazon description: Published as a fundraiser to help Little Sisters bookstore in Vancouver, British Columbia, pay for more than $200,000 in legal costs incurred in their litigation against Canada Customs.
I'd be willing to let first-time spammers off with life in prison, presuming they didn't spam Usenet, and it wasn't a TOO grevious email offense.
But most of them ought to get the death penalty.
introverts need friends too...
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I don't deal with social groups well in person. I am fine with small interactions, 2 or 3 people, and I can do public speaking and/or teaching, but it's really not my thang to be real outgoing in meat life. What I do know how to do is stuff I specifically learned to do and isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, as I'm basically a very introverted person.
LOTS of people, geeks or not, are very introverted people. Being online is a way to begin interacting with other people in an "introverted" way. Cause hey, you're at home alone focused on this machine in front of you, so you can take the time to explore internal landscapes before responding in a way that you can't do face-to-face.
Myself... there were several major advantages to online interaction beyond the fact that I got to connect in my prefered introverted mode. First off, in my very first chat I found several other Heinlein fans - more than I'd met offline in my entire life. Online was a place where I could sort by similar itnerests much more eaisly than real life, particularly for eclectic and unusual interests.
Secondly, online I could have a public conversaiton with a group and multiple private conversations simultaneously. You can't do this offline. Even sitting in the same physical room with the same people isn't as good, because you can't participate in many threads at once offline.
Third, while I can't type as fast as I can think, I can type a LOT faster than I can talk. Online communciation allows me to increase the quantity of my communicaiton tremendously.
Connecting with people online *IS* connecting with people. As many folks do, I have many acquaintances, but only a handful of very close friends. Of my 4 most intimate relationships, 3 of them I originally met online - 9, 7 and 3 years ago, respectively. Only one was originally met in meat life, and that was through one of my online friends who worked at the same company as him.
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When I first got online many years ago (BBS's, not the net), I discovered that there was this huge proportion of deaf people online. It was actually pretty c00l - though when they came to real-time gatherings, most of the rest of us couldn't talk to them directly, but online, no interpreters were needed.
I think some of the girls are not taking the coruses simple because they'd HAVE to take the lame Word/Excel and keyboarding courses first - this whole "pre-requisite" concept.
My daughter is 16 and majorly discouraged about the classes she'd have to take to do anything with computers. She's been online since she was 11, and types faster with 3 or 4 fingers than they could teach her in the lame keyboarding class. She learned Word, Excel and Powerpoint trading documents with friends and/or helping non-geeky friends with homework. She learned HTML and JavaScript building web sites about her favorite rock bands. She learned scripting hanging out in IRC. She doesn't see any POINT in taking all those lame intro courses the middle schools and high schools require you to take before you get to anything actually interesting.
I'm trying to get her a summer job interning in IT at my company, this will give her an actual chance to learn something interesting rather than a course in point-and-click. One of the sysadmins has already expressed interest in working with her. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I see this at work myself - when I was a chemist and first started building an error tracking system, I figured out MS Access 1.0 just fine and then realized I needed to learn the language then called Access Basic. I tried to sign up for a course through my company and was told there were these 4 other courses that came before that one. I basically had to lie and claim I'd taken the courses at a previous job to get to the course I wanted.
That was when I was a chemist. I've been working in IT for a whole bunch of years now. Still, they occassionally want me to take courses and we argue this crap - if you want me to learn something, buy me some manuals and give me a project that requires me to use it and I'll learn it. If you MUST have me take a course, at least let it be a CBT that I can do at my own pace. Spend your training dollars sending me to an expo so I can get a wide overview and figure out what is useful to learn.
This is a big problem, IMO. Sure, lots of kids in school need to be taught the lame stuff, gradually exposed to computers a little at a time - just like all the sales reps at my company had to be trained on Windows and internet connectivity and to distinguish the icon for their web browser from the icon for their email.
But kids who need those kinds of classes aren't future geeks anyways. If you really need a semester long class to learn MS Office app, you're secretary material, not geek material.
What future geeks need is unfettered access to computers as soon as possible. Basically, as soon as they can read, they ought to have little local LANs WITHOUT internet connectivity (so we don't have to worry about filtering crap) where they can build their own web sites, chat on their own irc servers, and start figuring out what they can make this thing DO. This should be started in elementary school...
Sure, you'll still need the lame courses for the future users. Whatever. But making geeky kids take those classes before they get to the "real" stuff just discourages them from doing anything at all.
And even those keyboarding classes for the non-geeks as well would go a lot faster if the school just set up an IRC server and let the kids do whatever they wanted on it - I've never seen anyone NOT learn to type fast when they started chatting.
The general meme is that women are discouraged from science and technology; your friend, if she wants to go into chemistry, is not one of these women...
These are not mutually exclusive. I did my undergrad work in chemistry, my grad work in biochemistry, and started programming while I worked for a pharmaceutical company...
This does not mean I was not discouraged from math, science and computers. It just means I'm an ornery bitch who doesn't take discouragement well... tell me I can't do something and I'm doubly motivated to do it to prove you wrong.
If females were more generally encouraged to be interested in math, science and technology, there'd likely be a lot more of them in all of these fields. But since I am ornery, I probably would've been a liberal arts major under those circumstances.;)
Geek1: Time's have changed Our software's getting worse It won't obey our line commands It just makes me want to curse!
Geek 2: Should we blame the DOJ? Geek 3: Or blame monopoly? Geek chorus: Or should we blame the pranksters on IRC?
Geek1: No, blame Microsoft Everyone: Blame Microsoft Geek1: With all their crappy G-U-Is And marketing FUD so full of lies
Everyone: Blame Microsoft Blame Microsoft Geek1: We need to form a full assault Everyone: It's Microsoft's fault!
Geek2: Don't blame me For my broken web site We ran IIS 4 on NT and man that really bites!
Geek3: And my old favorite program Was well-behaved under an old DOS But now when I load it it tells me to get lost!
Geek1: Well, blame Microsoft Everyone: Blame Microsoft It seems that everythings gone wrong Since Microsoft came along
Everyone: Blame Microsoft Blame Microsoft Some Guy: There not even real hackers anyway
Geek4: My Java app could've been the next big game it's true Instead Win95 crashed with a screen of blue
Everyone: Should we blame the hardware? Should we blame connectivity? Or the geeks who were forced to install MS Proxy as their firewall? Geek1: Heck no!
Everyone: Blame Microsoft Blame Microsoft Geek1: With all their pop-up hubbabaloo Geek3: And that bastard Bill Gates too
Everyone: Blame Microsoft Shame on Microsoft The smut we must stop The trash we must smash
Blue screens are not fun Windows must all be undone We must blame them and cause a fuss Before someone thinks of blaming uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuus
I don't fully understand how it is the Linux community in particular seems to attract so many of these people that have so much anger.
Every "alternative" culture attracts weirdo's, losers and rebels. I've been a member of many various alternative communities and every one of them had these folks involved.
The Linux community is an alternative community, so it's going to have to put up with some of this folks.
Slashdot Mirror
Paying a service to do it when I can buy an app, schedule it to run overnight, and have reports generated in the morning, strikes me as silly.
If a parent or teacher behaves unethically and excuses that behavior on the basis of "it's for your own good," the behavior remains unethical. I'm a mother and find your idea abhorrent as hell - like reading my daughter's diary or something. It's not "OK" to do things to kids that are inappropriate to do to adults JUST because they're kids. You don't suddenl;y become a real person when you hit the age of majority; kids are people too, you know.
Your distinction between hypothesis and theory is correct, though I don't know enough about string "theory" to comment on which it qualifies as. However, it is incorrect to state that a law is something which is guaranteed to work in all situations. The universe does not come with guarantees. A scientific law is an "upgraded" theory, as it is considered more likely to be accurate than a theory. However, the accuracy is not guaranteed to be 100%, scientific law is defined as a rule for which no one has ever observed an exception, leaving open the possibility that an exception may be observed as science expands. There is no place in the scientific method for proclaiming something to be absolutely "true." Science seeks to improve the accuracy of models of reality, not to pronounce on what is really real.
No. In a well-designed science experiment, one attempts to prove the null hypothesis, i.e., the *opposite* of the proposed hypothesis. Only if one fails to so do many times does one begin to consider that there is a body of experimental data supporting the theory. One *never* "proves" a hypothesis or a theory. It becomes acceptable due to an inability to disprove it. This is the scientific method.
But... I have no idea how to tell. I have been involved with hiring 3 times, and twice I hired complete idjits. The third time I hired someone I knew from another job - whom did not have the skills I wanted, but she's smart and will have them in no time. But I only knew she'd work out because I spent months and months and months working with her previously.
How do you tell via a resume and interview if the person has a useful brain? You can ask questions about specific skillsets they claim, but the best you can find out doing that is what they know... you can't tell if it they learned it in a half hour from a web page or from being spoon-fed for 6 months.
It doesn't MATTER what they know today. Within the year, there'll be new versions of everything out, and if they can't learn the new stuff without me spoon-feeding them, they're no use to me. If they can't think when they have a problem they never saw before and have to ask me for the answer, then they will take up more of my time than they save doing their job. If I can't hand over a project to them and have them take responsibility for it, they're no use to me.
Sure, you hand-hold someone a bit for a month or two, let them figure out how the company works and stuff. But it shouldn't continue unabated over time, eventually they should actually do their job.
If you're getting the impression that I don't want to "manage" people, you're absolutely correct. I intend to remain a geek myself, not turn into a full-time manager.
But how do you tell the difference during an interview between someone whom can genuinely solve problems versus someone you'll need to babysit?
It DOESN'T work - MCI calls me repeatedly in spite of repeated requests that they never call me again.
The post office charges much lower postage for bulk mailers. This has always struck me as completely ass-backwards, they ought to charge them MORE to discourage the crap. That these folks get a rate cut means that the rest of us are subsidising the cost of their garbage.
Even so, junk mail is nowhere near as obnoxious as the phone telemarketers.
The guy calling my house to sell me stuff is sure as heck NOT paying the full cost of the call - he has not paid for my time nor for the meal that burns when I run to get the phone. Further, it's MY phone line use he is tying up with his obnoxious spiel. This one is a tad easier to deal with though - have your phone listed under an incorrect name - you can identify them in the first 2 seconds of the call and hang up.
Never, ever, ever buy anything from these folks, even if they offer to sell you something you were looking to buy anyways at half the price you could find on your own. It only encourages them.
I did this just today, stopped to buy a pre-paid phone card from a place that only sold MCI calls. MCI obnoxiously calls me again and again even though I have asked them not to. They will never, ever, ever, until hell freezes over, get a nickel of my money.
And play with them if you're in the mood... try to sign them up with Amway or convert them to the Lord or get them to enageg in phone sex as long as they're on the phone anyways. ;)
I don't think my email, phone or snail mail address ought to be used by marketers... unless I have asked for a catalog. All personalized, intrusive marketing ought to be opt-in only.
The news sources are apparently not entirely correct about there being a back door. Here are links from some of the folks actually investigating the problem. http://www.ntbugtraq.com/default.asp?pid=36&sid=1& A2=ind0004&L=ntbugtraq&F=&S=&P=2576 http://www.ntbugtraq.com/default.asp?pid=36&sid=1& A2=ind0004&L=ntbugtraq&F=&S=&P=3016 http://www.ntbugtraq.com/default.asp?pid=36&sid=1& A2=ind0004&L=ntbugtraq&F=&S=&P=3152 http://www.ntbugtraq.com/default.asp?pid=36&sid=1& A2=ind0004&L=ntbugtraq&F=&S=&P=3251
Both parties really oudid themselves this time, both choosing the absolute worse possible candidate.
Blech.
This is obvious flamebait and stereotypical crapola.
I do not and have never owned a gun and have never allowed one in my house. I am scared of guns, personally. I am a senior systems analyst (though was originally educated and worked as a biochemist), the mother of a teenaged daughter, and an extremely liberal person by most standards. The only real difference between myself and most liberals is on the gun control issue.
I understand completly that the basis of ANY human rights is the ability of humans to enforce their rights. That's it... period. While I don't personally wish to own a gun right now, I also feel very strongly that I do not wish to live in a country in which it is forbidden - and certainly don't wish my child to grow up in one.
The American revolution could not have occured without private ownership of guns - something well understood by the founders of our country when they included the Second Amendmnet in the Bill of Rights. This is not a "bug" in the Constitution, but an absolutely necessary part of the program. .
I can't find an address on their site to send email to, only forms requiring you to register before you use them. Anyone have contact info?
FrontPage isn't actually compatible with ASP. If you open an ASP page in FrontPage, it deletes everything it doesn't like.
You can develop in one direction only... marketing folks do design and layout in FP, then someone programs the scripts in VI or in a text editor or whatever. But if you go back and open the finished product in FP, it ruins it.
Most of what end users are going to make with FrontPage use the FrontPage server extensions (MS calls them "web bots"), not the ASP dll (or any other IIS bits). Heck, even doing include files in FrontPage uses a "web bot" as opposed to the standard server side include processor of the web server software.
The FrontPage server extensions are a buggy piece of crap. However, they've been around for Apache since back when FrontPage was in beta, back before there WAS any such thing as IIS or ASP. You absolutely can offer full FrontPage functionality on an Apache server - always could.
So you CAN offer FrontPage functionality on Linux without ChiliSoft or PHP or whatever. It is just the ASP-specific stuff you can't offer.
And let me offer this... I can not imagine WHY I'd want to let someone who needs FrontPage to write a frigging web page write server-side scripts! I mean, REALLY! It's like giving a loaded gun to a child.
IMO, ASP is most useful, for allowing you to write all your dynamic-type code server-side so you can have your web server spit out nothing but browser-neutral HTML to your users. I write everything out to the HTML 3.2 standard which lets you completly ignore browser issues as long as you have alt tags for your images and such.
Ironically enough, ASP - a technology developed by the Evil Empire, is useful for specifically avoiding the browser wars as much as possible. I don't WANT my users downloading dynamic recordsets they can manipulate on the client - cause I don't know what browser they're using... ASP is the glue that lets me do everything server-side and ignore the browser wars.
Course, the downside is that I use server resources where I could use client resources, that things that could be done locally require additional trips to the server. But the payout at not having to build and maintain multiple coppies of the site seems worth it to me unless you have major bandwidth issues.
What I don't get is why ChiliSoft for Linux would be a good thing. I looked at the product (not for Linux) a couple years ago when management at my old job was making threattening noises about changing our web server software from IIS (and it wasn't like they wanted a GOOD web server like Apache either, they were looking at crap like Domino - which would mean still running on the blue-screen-of-death OS).
ChiliSoft appears to be a cool little product if you have a bunch of functionality dependent on ASP that you want to hang on to - install their little app and your ASP's run fine on platforms other than NT/IIS.
BUT... that was before I heard of PHP. I haven't used it just yet, but I read the HOWTO docs a while back and the thing is cool and does way more than ASP. And while PHP does run on various platforms, far as I can tell, it was built mostly as a Linux answer to ASP.
And while it wouldn't run your ASP's correctly, there's a conversion programs that converts your ASP pages to PHP easily enough.
Is there anyone here who has actually used both products as opposed to just reviewing them like I have?
Is there a reason to prefer the Chili! product over PHP? What are they actually like to implement and use?
Has anyone actually converted current NT/IIS/ASP web sites to either PHP or ChiliSoft?
A while back, I was trying to generate ASP dynamically, but never could figure out how to get the resulting string handed back to the ASP parser. I ended up writing the things to files instead, and "publishing" these files periodically, rather than able to generate the aSP on the fly as I wanted.
It almost sounds like you are doing what I wanted to do - how do you do it?
I post to sexually-explicit newsgroups using my real name all the time. I made a specific decision to do so a few years back - and my writings have ended up on web pages and print publications with my real name attached.
However, I made a *decision* to be out about my interests. And it is not without risk, people have lost jobs and children and such for daring to talk or have interest in something non-mainstream.
I do not think that entrance to any community ought to cost this much. Anonymity, or deciding to be out, are personal decisions - no one else can count the cost for you.
In spite of being "out" about sexual stuff, I have posted anonymously on other topics, for other reasons at other times. Hell, when I responded to articles about IT jobs - salaries and companies and such - I did it anonymously.
Furthermore, people like the folks at ASAR do *need* anonymity to feel safe to discuss their issues. Anyone saying otherwise has no idea what theya re talking about. You can't determine what other people need for their healing and recovery, regardless of what you think they need.
Sure anonymity gets abused sometimes. It always has and always will. But that doesn't mean it's not useful and important for many folks.
My comments: This has included books that were found not to be obscene by Canadian courts. Customs continues to stop them anyway, in spite of court rulings.
For more info, see Little Sister's court case against customs
To assist in the court battle in a most enjoyable manner, purchase Forbidden Passages: Writings Banned in Canada by Pat Califia. From the Amazon description: Published as a fundraiser to help Little Sisters bookstore in Vancouver, British Columbia, pay for more than $200,000 in legal costs incurred in their litigation against Canada Customs.
I'd be willing to let first-time spammers off with life in prison, presuming they didn't spam Usenet, and it wasn't a TOO grevious email offense.
But most of them ought to get the death penalty.
I don't deal with social groups well in person. I am fine with small interactions, 2 or 3 people, and I can do public speaking and/or teaching, but it's really not my thang to be real outgoing in meat life. What I do know how to do is stuff I specifically learned to do and isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, as I'm basically a very introverted person.
LOTS of people, geeks or not, are very introverted people. Being online is a way to begin interacting with other people in an "introverted" way. Cause hey, you're at home alone focused on this machine in front of you, so you can take the time to explore internal landscapes before responding in a way that you can't do face-to-face.
Myself... there were several major advantages to online interaction beyond the fact that I got to connect in my prefered introverted mode. First off, in my very first chat I found several other Heinlein fans - more than I'd met offline in my entire life. Online was a place where I could sort by similar itnerests much more eaisly than real life, particularly for eclectic and unusual interests.
Secondly, online I could have a public conversaiton with a group and multiple private conversations simultaneously. You can't do this offline. Even sitting in the same physical room with the same people isn't as good, because you can't participate in many threads at once offline.
Third, while I can't type as fast as I can think, I can type a LOT faster than I can talk. Online communciation allows me to increase the quantity of my communicaiton tremendously.
Connecting with people online *IS* connecting with people. As many folks do, I have many acquaintances, but only a handful of very close friends. Of my 4 most intimate relationships, 3 of them I originally met online - 9, 7 and 3 years ago, respectively. Only one was originally met in meat life, and that was through one of my online friends who worked at the same company as him.
When I first got online many years ago (BBS's, not the net), I discovered that there was this huge proportion of deaf people online. It was actually pretty c00l - though when they came to real-time gatherings, most of the rest of us couldn't talk to them directly, but online, no interpreters were needed.
My daughter is 16 and majorly discouraged about the classes she'd have to take to do anything with computers. She's been online since she was 11, and types faster with 3 or 4 fingers than they could teach her in the lame keyboarding class. She learned Word, Excel and Powerpoint trading documents with friends and/or helping non-geeky friends with homework. She learned HTML and JavaScript building web sites about her favorite rock bands. She learned scripting hanging out in IRC. She doesn't see any POINT in taking all those lame intro courses the middle schools and high schools require you to take before you get to anything actually interesting.
I'm trying to get her a summer job interning in IT at my company, this will give her an actual chance to learn something interesting rather than a course in point-and-click. One of the sysadmins has already expressed interest in working with her. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I see this at work myself - when I was a chemist and first started building an error tracking system, I figured out MS Access 1.0 just fine and then realized I needed to learn the language then called Access Basic. I tried to sign up for a course through my company and was told there were these 4 other courses that came before that one. I basically had to lie and claim I'd taken the courses at a previous job to get to the course I wanted.
That was when I was a chemist. I've been working in IT for a whole bunch of years now. Still, they occassionally want me to take courses and we argue this crap - if you want me to learn something, buy me some manuals and give me a project that requires me to use it and I'll learn it. If you MUST have me take a course, at least let it be a CBT that I can do at my own pace. Spend your training dollars sending me to an expo so I can get a wide overview and figure out what is useful to learn.
This is a big problem, IMO. Sure, lots of kids in school need to be taught the lame stuff, gradually exposed to computers a little at a time - just like all the sales reps at my company had to be trained on Windows and internet connectivity and to distinguish the icon for their web browser from the icon for their email.
But kids who need those kinds of classes aren't future geeks anyways. If you really need a semester long class to learn MS Office app, you're secretary material, not geek material.
What future geeks need is unfettered access to computers as soon as possible. Basically, as soon as they can read, they ought to have little local LANs WITHOUT internet connectivity (so we don't have to worry about filtering crap) where they can build their own web sites, chat on their own irc servers, and start figuring out what they can make this thing DO. This should be started in elementary school...
Sure, you'll still need the lame courses for the future users. Whatever. But making geeky kids take those classes before they get to the "real" stuff just discourages them from doing anything at all.
And even those keyboarding classes for the non-geeks as well would go a lot faster if the school just set up an IRC server and let the kids do whatever they wanted on it - I've never seen anyone NOT learn to type fast when they started chatting.
These are not mutually exclusive. I did my undergrad work in chemistry, my grad work in biochemistry, and started programming while I worked for a pharmaceutical company...
This does not mean I was not discouraged from math, science and computers. It just means I'm an ornery bitch who doesn't take discouragement well... tell me I can't do something and I'm doubly motivated to do it to prove you wrong.
If females were more generally encouraged to be interested in math, science and technology, there'd likely be a lot more of them in all of these fields. But since I am ornery, I probably would've been a liberal arts major under those circumstances. ;)
An original paradoy by moi...
Geek1: Time's have changed
Our software's getting worse
It won't obey our line commands
It just makes me want to curse!
Geek 2: Should we blame the DOJ?
Geek 3: Or blame monopoly?
Geek chorus: Or should we blame the pranksters on IRC?
Geek1: No, blame Microsoft
Everyone: Blame Microsoft
Geek1: With all their crappy G-U-Is
And marketing FUD so full of lies
Everyone: Blame Microsoft
Blame Microsoft
Geek1: We need to form a full assault
Everyone: It's Microsoft's fault!
Geek2: Don't blame me
For my broken web site
We ran IIS 4 on NT and man that really bites!
Geek3: And my old favorite program
Was well-behaved under an old DOS
But now when I load it
it tells me to get lost!
Geek1: Well, blame Microsoft
Everyone: Blame Microsoft
It seems that everythings gone wrong
Since Microsoft came along
Everyone: Blame Microsoft
Blame Microsoft
Some Guy: There not even real hackers anyway
Geek4: My Java app could've been the next big game it's true
Instead Win95 crashed with a screen of blue
Everyone: Should we blame the hardware?
Should we blame connectivity?
Or the geeks who were forced to install MS Proxy as their firewall?
Geek1: Heck no!
Everyone: Blame Microsoft
Blame Microsoft
Geek1: With all their pop-up hubbabaloo
Geek3: And that bastard Bill Gates too
Everyone: Blame Microsoft
Shame on Microsoft
The smut we must stop
The trash we must smash
Blue screens are not fun
Windows must all be undone
We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before someone thinks of blaming uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuus
Every "alternative" culture attracts weirdo's, losers and rebels. I've been a member of many various alternative communities and every one of them had these folks involved.
The Linux community is an alternative community, so it's going to have to put up with some of this folks.
They sent me spam telling me to call an 888 number for my free gift and asking me to sign up for their regular weekly spam.
Unbelievable.
What big, bad result was there to this "abuse of power"?
A bunch of people were wildly entertained for a few minutes. Big furry deal.