I've seen a couple of references to this "/b/"....what is this?
Sir, believe me, if you do not know, you are a lucky man. You would not need to start dirty your eyes and mind, just out of curiosity. It is usually called "the sewage of the Internet", which is an insult to all sewages on the world...
But current versions of Firefox are fine - at least on Linux, Mac and BSD. I have no information on how it works on that other operating system, but I don't believe anyone really uses that, since it's not ready for the desktop yet.;-) And I have never (ever) had any problems with the browser's stability.
It all boils down to plug-ins. I personally use firefox mainly for the plug-ins (Greasemonkey and friends), however one option that is available to each and every browser (well almost) is causing nearly half of my Linux crashes. Some flash applets that is in frequent use amongst Turkish newspapers are leaking like a river.So it depends on which content you are pushing to the browser, not on which platform you are running it. I am gradually switching to the Chrome in these days...
On the other hand Thunderbird works almost perfectly, only with some minor code page problems if the sender of mail/meeting invitation used some arcane Outlook options...
In Turkey, University owns anything and everything developed in campus, either for academic work and/or R&D projects. Usually developers are paid by companies established in University, for loyalty management porposes, if the product has a kind of commercial nature. In the commercial sense it is usually fair enough, assuming that professors really adds more value to the project than assistants. A similar assumption exists in RL companies, that Manager's added value is more important than engineer's...Unfortunately there are only a few academic instutions here that really understands FOSS concepts, a far as an instution can understand anything at all, given that there is no brain attached...
Who did not see it nowadays. Interestingly Idiocracy is a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. Naturally it is easy to see oneself in shoes of Joe Bauers or Rita (although I liked that Guitar band in the arena so much, and it would be interesting to have Sara Rue as Attorney General if I were the President), and most people says that it is hopeless anyway, thus there is no need to breed:) after seeing the movie.
I hate 1st of April, I was going to have a seizure....
Anyway, I know that SQL is not the best query language around. I mean it is even open to debate if it is a language. But there are two features make it vital; It does the job and, there is a strong installed base, which provides enough programmer work force with experience...
An analogy is just this, an analogy. If you do not want somebody you do not know to use your wireless connection, you need to secure it. At least you need to prove in the court that you tried to secure it. If the network does not have any protection _/AND/_ the SSID is being broadcast, this is simply an invitation for anonymous utilization. Yes there are lousy APs that do not not offer any protection and broadcast SSID by default, but this does not mean the owner has no liability. S/he should have RFTM before plugging it in... Coming to your analogy, yes not using (at least) WEP is putting the animal out of your property, but if you do not announce its existence, there is a small chance an ordinary passerby would notice the fact. As wireless access is not a horse, and without a SSID broadcast, you would need to look harder to see the network. Admittedly a semi-professional attacker would see the network and utilize it for whatever purposes he wants. However a semi-professional attacker should be -by definition- able to penetrate any wireless network. Also when in the court of law, you can say "yes your honor, I am stupid and misinformed _by the producer of this gadget_, however I at least _tried to secure_ my network".
Please keep in mind that IANAL and the legal system I live in is not based on Common Law, but in several occasions I needed to act as an advisor/consultant to our legal system, I saw that trying to do something -albeit stupidly- is better than being a completely ignorant fool.
Calling a genius, who almost single handedly destroyed some dogmas in science, "idiot" is not how "fun" can be defined . OTOH why a (semi-)scientific magazine is trying to be funny and Christmas aware? Their reader profile should not be that much "socially adept"...
You will start with resetting tripped fuses. If you are lucky they will permit you to refill paper trays in printers.... 5 years after... you will switch from OSPF configuration to BGP, you will have a cubicle that is closer to younger generation of engineers, who are members of your preferred opposite gender... another five years after that... you will switch to marketing or sales, probably under the pretense of a technical advisor, than it would stuck....
my suggestions:
1) read some a.s.r. (unfortunately google does not explain what the a.s.r. is, thus please search for alt.sysadmin.recovery)
2) start looking for ways of converting your degree to a soft skill, business management, social anthropology etc.
3) Do not let anybody and/or yourself to place more than one computer and/or monitor on your desk.
That is interesting. I did not look at the issue from this point of view. However, you are right, given the current MS penetration (any kind of misunderstanding caused here is intentional) in OS and browser market, that is not reflected on search engine share...
It is slightly more userfriendlier(ish) than Google. And more importantly, MS pushing it as the default search engine in recent incarnations of IE, thus (l)users might start to think Bing=search engine, like they do in IE=Internet equation (Postel is turning in his grave). But the answer to your main question is "No it is not useful". Also I might add that, I would prefer Google to have my search patterns stored. At least they (seemingly) are not going to need to sell their shares to MS, with the current financial position.
Some states use their population, and some populations use their state...
I personally would like to see 3G operators to suffer, while making their service universal, even -as you rightly mention- if at the end customers pay the bill. Because otherwise some smart ass business school graduate would end up designing coverage maps, and those maps would somehow be identical to GNP share maps of the area...
The point is (my God, I am writing something positive about Microsoft...) Symantec and similar "security tool" class software producers are in deep debt to MS. OS sold by MS is under quality, under maintained and somehow getting worse and inefficient than previous incarnations in each release (this is not the positive part, obviously). Thus, people are paying for third parties because of MS's fault. Now MS seems to be acting in order to provide some measure of security for free, and given the regular user profile for low end and home users, they are more likely to use a free, and provided by MS software, especially if it would be preinstalled and/or easy to install than some 3rd party programs. (that was the positive part...) I guess this would help overall security level, by rising the base line...
I fortunately do not live near to that flood area but the place was on my way from home to work. I was lucky that my car was diesel during the event, otherwise it was very possible to stuck in sub floods feeding the main "river" that materialized. Aside from political bickering between municipality officers and all related offices, that area IS IN a valley. Albeit it is not a deep one and it is higher than most of surrounding area, valleys are by definition prune to be flooded. That is why river deltas are very favorable agricultural areas. Rain was incredible, water stıorage in local dams in Istanbul increased more than 10% overnight, something like 80 million cubic meters or so, some near areas to the flood saw rain close to 200 kg/m^2 in 12 hours etc. There were deaths as well, like 20+ people. So it was a disaster and infrastructure could not handle it.
My point is that, these are what you need to take into consideration when you are building a datacenter. Thus it is not important if it is an event that is not likely to happen again in my life time -ignoring climate changes we all see around...-. The important thing is that if they had their MAIN PHONE EXCHANGE for the whole country on a properly prepared building they would not cut the GSM service for thousands of people during a natural catastrophe for half a day or more. Some people lost their portable phone service, when they need it most. What should be taken into consideration is that Vodafone acquired the building, when they bought Telsim, which was a small GSM operator here. They did not choose the location. But what they did have was some four years after acquisition, that can be used for improvements, redundant communication links etc...
It all depends on whether Jobs and/or Woz are Trekkies themselves or not. The fact that the thing carries a serial number like #F4200NUM0001 tells something...
In one of my previous incarnations as a system manager, it was like this:
"If you are buying IBM we do not care how much over budget you are..."
BTW, it was a governmental institution... The point was, you would not put IBM on your yard sale list when it is projected/legal life time (5 years) is over. And as far as I know, they are still using IBM PPC 604 based servers I installed in 1995 (14 years and counting...). Of course they are not on the same spot, performing same duties, but they are still useful, as a server class hardware... Given the fact that IBM after sales support in my country sucks (sorry guys), it is a formidable performance...
OK, now it is five minutes that I cannot stop swearing. Do they realized, only now, that it is necessary to apologize when you did something bad, like first breaking, then killing somebody innocent, and happens to be one of the greatest minds of our era...:( I really cannot stop swearing, oh shit...If I was in UK, I would be on a train now, in order to throw some eggs...
This is my last post for this issue, it is getting boring and probably our TZs do not match. You can go on as you like.
I do not know where did you get the idea of an edit war. I keep my debates in forums and like them not so long. I do not debate in wikipedia. I have never/ever been in an edit war on wikipedia. I do not believe in discussing via wikipedia, because "anyone can edit"... So it is my guess (extrapolation if you like) that you are extrapolating something too much, but I frankly do not care what it is/was. My point is clear enough for anybody who is willing to try a little to see what I meant.
Given the fact that the academic structure of my old university, or names of Turkish ambassadors in The United States, oQPSK application fields etc. -not so open to debate and not so flame friendly- issues are favorite topics for edit wars, I was almost going to agree with you. Then I realized that you are trying to be sarcastic. Sorry I am preferring British methods, when it comes to sarcasm, which clearly is not what you are intending.
BTW, I am an extremely biased individual, I am not denying it. In fact there is nothing to be denied when it comes to be biased, as everybody has some bias towards some side of this issue and towards other sides of that one.
Your equation "American general population"="entire population of the united states", can be reduced to "general=entire", if we roughly assume "America"="the united states". This I believe, semantically is not very sound. YMMV. What I mean, if there is a need for an explanation, is this; The general public (of USA, of UK, of Turkey, of any modern country) can be manipulated easily via mass media (hence CNN, Yahoo etc.). Thus wisdom of crowds, if such a phenomenon really exists, is not neutral as assumed (as you assumed that I would claim to be un-biased). The results of this "popular culture", will be projected to wikipedia more strongly, because of new rules. However this naturally does not mean entire (which means all, with no exception, with no "other") population of USA is brain washed lemmings. There would be lots of "other"s. Good thing for USA is that non-conforming individuals can have a comparatively easier life there, easier than most other countries. Bad thing for wikipedia is that they will lose edges of averageness curve.
Wikipedia's designed intent is to accurately reflect the consensus culture's view of knowledge. Seems like it's doing that just fine. In cases where that culture itself is bitterly divided, and holders of various positions sling names at each other in the media, from governmental pulpits, and in published scientific journals, were you expecting Wikipedia to somehow magically rise above this and achieve perfect truth?
Agreed, but;
Especially in the English Wikipedia your statement is more than correct. That is, as the English language is de facto lingua franca of the global community, the "culture" you are referring to is divided. Divided by hundreds of lines, carved in stone for ages. I guess people will always agree about their disagreements, in such an environment. Assuming that English is your native language, let me tell shortly about my native language wiki, which is the Turkish version. There is a cultural division in Turkish Wikipedia that is reflecting the socio-political division (some kind of conservative left and some kind of progressive right, if you are looking for logic in politics, look at somewhere else...) of Turkey. This division exist in original articles directly written in Turkish. Most items that I am interested in are (bad) translations from en.wikipedia.org. The logical step for people like me, is to move to English wiki, and start writing there, because it is what we are reading. I guess a similar drive can be found in other languages.
Thus, the fundamental issue can be expressed in one question: Will wikipedia reflect the cultural divide that exists in its reader/contributor base? If yes, it would be very difficult to achieve, and if no, the decision would result in the loss of some (probably very big) portions of "other" people. I guess this decision is made, the answer is "no", thus no cultural fragmentation would be accepted and the chosen cultural center is American Culture (most likely American WASP as mentioned above). This, probably is a good commercial and understandable political decision.
My own position was that of a small contributor for Turkey/Turkish related items. I stopped writing some years ago, because it became more than boring to see some information you provided after some real research to be replaced by some (badly written) incorrect data. And for some months I realized that the material I read became less interesting for me, including "Today's featured article". I can see that in the future I will stop reading wikipedia. In order to see what American general population thinks (more correctly, what they are made to think) there are better sources, like CNN, Yahoo etc.
As I mentioned, the decision (which I assume will not be limited to "living persons' articles only, in the future) is a good decision that will increase the quality, and a bad one that brings in some strong borders. If I was an optimist, I would say "If they keep it balanced..." but I do not think it is possible to keep it balanced...
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen a couple of references to this "/b/"....what is this?
Sir, believe me, if you do not know, you are a lucky man. You would not need to start dirty your eyes and mind, just out of curiosity. It is usually called "the sewage of the Internet", which is an insult to all sewages on the world...
My dear Sir, the correct expression should be:
"There's nothing the least bit controlled _by the user_ about Microsoft's errors."
Sincerely
But current versions of Firefox are fine - at least on Linux, Mac and BSD. I have no information on how it works on that other operating system, but I don't believe anyone really uses that, since it's not ready for the desktop yet. ;-) And I have never (ever) had any problems with the browser's stability.
It all boils down to plug-ins. I personally use firefox mainly for the plug-ins (Greasemonkey and friends), however one option that is available to each and every browser (well almost) is causing nearly half of my Linux crashes. Some flash applets that is in frequent use amongst Turkish newspapers are leaking like a river.So it depends on which content you are pushing to the browser, not on which platform you are running it. I am gradually switching to the Chrome in these days... On the other hand Thunderbird works almost perfectly, only with some minor code page problems if the sender of mail/meeting invitation used some arcane Outlook options...
In Turkey, University owns anything and everything developed in campus, either for academic work and/or R&D projects. Usually developers are paid by companies established in University, for loyalty management porposes, if the product has a kind of commercial nature. In the commercial sense it is usually fair enough, assuming that professors really adds more value to the project than assistants. A similar assumption exists in RL companies, that Manager's added value is more important than engineer's...Unfortunately there are only a few academic instutions here that really understands FOSS concepts, a far as an instution can understand anything at all, given that there is no brain attached...
Who did not see it nowadays. Interestingly Idiocracy is a kind of self fulfilling prophecy. Naturally it is easy to see oneself in shoes of Joe Bauers or Rita (although I liked that Guitar band in the arena so much, and it would be interesting to have Sara Rue as Attorney General if I were the President), and most people says that it is hopeless anyway, thus there is no need to breed :) after seeing the movie.
I hate 1st of April, I was going to have a seizure.... Anyway, I know that SQL is not the best query language around. I mean it is even open to debate if it is a language. But there are two features make it vital; It does the job and, there is a strong installed base, which provides enough programmer work force with experience...
An analogy is just this, an analogy. If you do not want somebody you do not know to use your wireless connection, you need to secure it. At least you need to prove in the court that you tried to secure it. If the network does not have any protection _/AND/_ the SSID is being broadcast, this is simply an invitation for anonymous utilization.
Yes there are lousy APs that do not not offer any protection and broadcast SSID by default, but this does not mean the owner has no liability. S/he should have RFTM before plugging it in... Coming to your analogy, yes not using (at least) WEP is putting the animal out of your property, but if you do not announce its existence, there is a small chance an ordinary passerby would notice the fact. As wireless access is not a horse, and without a SSID broadcast, you would need to look harder to see the network.
Admittedly a semi-professional attacker would see the network and utilize it for whatever purposes he wants. However a semi-professional attacker should be -by definition- able to penetrate any wireless network. Also when in the court of law, you can say "yes your honor, I am stupid and misinformed _by the producer of this gadget_, however I at least _tried to secure_ my network".
Please keep in mind that IANAL and the legal system I live in is not based on Common Law, but in several occasions I needed to act as an advisor/consultant to our legal system, I saw that trying to do something -albeit stupidly- is better than being a completely ignorant fool.
XP is the first product of MS that has computer professionals revolted when its End of Life announced, you know instead of usual celebrations...
Calling a genius, who almost single handedly destroyed some dogmas in science, "idiot" is not how "fun" can be defined . OTOH why a (semi-)scientific magazine is trying to be funny and Christmas aware? Their reader profile should not be that much "socially adept"...
You will start with resetting tripped fuses. If you are lucky they will permit you to refill paper trays in printers.... 5 years after... you will switch from OSPF configuration to BGP, you will have a cubicle that is closer to younger generation of engineers, who are members of your preferred opposite gender... another five years after that... you will switch to marketing or sales, probably under the pretense of a technical advisor, than it would stuck....
my suggestions:
1) read some a.s.r. (unfortunately google does not explain what the a.s.r. is, thus please search for alt.sysadmin.recovery)
2) start looking for ways of converting your degree to a soft skill, business management, social anthropology etc.
3) Do not let anybody and/or yourself to place more than one computer and/or monitor on your desk.
That is interesting. I did not look at the issue from this point of view. However, you are right, given the current MS penetration (any kind of misunderstanding caused here is intentional) in OS and browser market, that is not reflected on search engine share...
It is slightly more userfriendlier(ish) than Google. And more importantly, MS pushing it as the default search engine in recent incarnations of IE, thus (l)users might start to think Bing=search engine, like they do in IE=Internet equation (Postel is turning in his grave). But the answer to your main question is "No it is not useful". Also I might add that, I would prefer Google to have my search patterns stored. At least they (seemingly) are not going to need to sell their shares to MS, with the current financial position.
Your bank wants to keep you alive, in order to receive your payment checks...
I personally would like to see 3G operators to suffer, while making their service universal, even -as you rightly mention- if at the end customers pay the bill. Because otherwise some smart ass business school graduate would end up designing coverage maps, and those maps would somehow be identical to GNP share maps of the area...
The point is (my God, I am writing something positive about Microsoft...) Symantec and similar "security tool" class software producers are in deep debt to MS. OS sold by MS is under quality, under maintained and somehow getting worse and inefficient than previous incarnations in each release (this is not the positive part, obviously). Thus, people are paying for third parties because of MS's fault. Now MS seems to be acting in order to provide some measure of security for free, and given the regular user profile for low end and home users, they are more likely to use a free, and provided by MS software, especially if it would be preinstalled and/or easy to install than some 3rd party programs. (that was the positive part...) I guess this would help overall security level, by rising the base line...
I fortunately do not live near to that flood area but the place was on my way from home to work. I was lucky that my car was diesel during the event, otherwise it was very possible to stuck in sub floods feeding the main "river" that materialized. Aside from political bickering between municipality officers and all related offices, that area IS IN a valley. Albeit it is not a deep one and it is higher than most of surrounding area, valleys are by definition prune to be flooded. That is why river deltas are very favorable agricultural areas. Rain was incredible, water stıorage in local dams in Istanbul increased more than 10% overnight, something like 80 million cubic meters or so, some near areas to the flood saw rain close to 200 kg/m^2 in 12 hours etc. There were deaths as well, like 20+ people. So it was a disaster and infrastructure could not handle it.
My point is that, these are what you need to take into consideration when you are building a datacenter. Thus it is not important if it is an event that is not likely to happen again in my life time -ignoring climate changes we all see around...-. The important thing is that if they had their MAIN PHONE EXCHANGE for the whole country on a properly prepared building they would not cut the GSM service for thousands of people during a natural catastrophe for half a day or more. Some people lost their portable phone service, when they need it most. What should be taken into consideration is that Vodafone acquired the building, when they bought Telsim, which was a small GSM operator here. They did not choose the location. But what they did have was some four years after acquisition, that can be used for improvements, redundant communication links etc...
It all depends on whether Jobs and/or Woz are Trekkies themselves or not. The fact that the thing carries a serial number like #F4200NUM0001 tells something...
"If you are buying IBM we do not care how much over budget you are..."
BTW, it was a governmental institution... The point was, you would not put IBM on your yard sale list when it is projected/legal life time (5 years) is over. And as far as I know, they are still using IBM PPC 604 based servers I installed in 1995 (14 years and counting...). Of course they are not on the same spot, performing same duties, but they are still useful, as a server class hardware... Given the fact that IBM after sales support in my country sucks (sorry guys), it is a formidable performance...
OK, now it is five minutes that I cannot stop swearing. Do they realized, only now, that it is necessary to apologize when you did something bad, like first breaking, then killing somebody innocent, and happens to be one of the greatest minds of our era... :( I really cannot stop swearing, oh shit...If I was in UK, I would be on a train now, in order to throw some eggs...
IF this is not a joke, I want one. Aside from the possible "joke" factor, I wonder what is the capacity of power supply...
I do not know where did you get the idea of an edit war. I keep my debates in forums and like them not so long. I do not debate in wikipedia. I have never/ever been in an edit war on wikipedia. I do not believe in discussing via wikipedia, because "anyone can edit"... So it is my guess (extrapolation if you like) that you are extrapolating something too much, but I frankly do not care what it is/was. My point is clear enough for anybody who is willing to try a little to see what I meant.
BTW, I am an extremely biased individual, I am not denying it. In fact there is nothing to be denied when it comes to be biased, as everybody has some bias towards some side of this issue and towards other sides of that one.
Your equation "American general population"="entire population of the united states", can be reduced to "general=entire", if we roughly assume "America"="the united states". This I believe, semantically is not very sound. YMMV. What I mean, if there is a need for an explanation, is this; The general public (of USA, of UK, of Turkey, of any modern country) can be manipulated easily via mass media (hence CNN, Yahoo etc.). Thus wisdom of crowds, if such a phenomenon really exists, is not neutral as assumed (as you assumed that I would claim to be un-biased). The results of this "popular culture", will be projected to wikipedia more strongly, because of new rules. However this naturally does not mean entire (which means all, with no exception, with no "other") population of USA is brain washed lemmings. There would be lots of "other"s. Good thing for USA is that non-conforming individuals can have a comparatively easier life there, easier than most other countries. Bad thing for wikipedia is that they will lose edges of averageness curve.
Wikipedia's designed intent is to accurately reflect the consensus culture's view of knowledge. Seems like it's doing that just fine. In cases where that culture itself is bitterly divided, and holders of various positions sling names at each other in the media, from governmental pulpits, and in published scientific journals, were you expecting Wikipedia to somehow magically rise above this and achieve perfect truth?
Agreed, but;
Especially in the English Wikipedia your statement is more than correct. That is, as the English language is de facto lingua franca of the global community, the "culture" you are referring to is divided. Divided by hundreds of lines, carved in stone for ages. I guess people will always agree about their disagreements, in such an environment. Assuming that English is your native language, let me tell shortly about my native language wiki, which is the Turkish version. There is a cultural division in Turkish Wikipedia that is reflecting the socio-political division (some kind of conservative left and some kind of progressive right, if you are looking for logic in politics, look at somewhere else...) of Turkey. This division exist in original articles directly written in Turkish. Most items that I am interested in are (bad) translations from en.wikipedia.org. The logical step for people like me, is to move to English wiki, and start writing there, because it is what we are reading. I guess a similar drive can be found in other languages.
Thus, the fundamental issue can be expressed in one question: Will wikipedia reflect the cultural divide that exists in its reader/contributor base? If yes, it would be very difficult to achieve, and if no, the decision would result in the loss of some (probably very big) portions of "other" people. I guess this decision is made, the answer is "no", thus no cultural fragmentation would be accepted and the chosen cultural center is American Culture (most likely American WASP as mentioned above). This, probably is a good commercial and understandable political decision.
My own position was that of a small contributor for Turkey/Turkish related items. I stopped writing some years ago, because it became more than boring to see some information you provided after some real research to be replaced by some (badly written) incorrect data. And for some months I realized that the material I read became less interesting for me, including "Today's featured article". I can see that in the future I will stop reading wikipedia. In order to see what American general population thinks (more correctly, what they are made to think) there are better sources, like CNN, Yahoo etc.
As I mentioned, the decision (which I assume will not be limited to "living persons' articles only, in the future) is a good decision that will increase the quality, and a bad one that brings in some strong borders. If I was an optimist, I would say "If they keep it balanced..." but I do not think it is possible to keep it balanced...
Well, in a Bush era, this would have been easy... 3. 2.. 1.... INVADE!
Is it that easy to joke about human life? This is unbelievable and stupid.
Invading (more likely, trying to...) China is one of the most common causes of destruction for governments and nation states in the history BTW
Maybe they should invite (=forcibly drag into the office) Woz for an overall engineering supervisory position.