Where I work (computer support division at a large university) we use Service Desk from Computer Associates. For all we make fun of it, it's actually quite a useful tool. You can track requests, log comments, arrange callbacks, schedule stuff, escalate calls, and tons of other Really Neat Stuff if we only took the time to learn it. Affected customers can reopen requests if things haven't been resolved to their liking.
It's not just for service requests, I guess people manage "change orders" and can manage projects like, say, rolling out servers with it.
It's a Java tool and it also has a Web interface when you're away from a machine with it installed.
Often times, truck stops and campgrounds will have book swapping racks. It's not quite as high tech as you have in mind, but the next time you're out driving around, drop off a few and pick up a few.
A bit of a sidenote, but here at Syracuse University, the engineering college has a partnership with Microsoft's "Academic Alliance". Comp engineering, electrical engineering, and comp sci kids sign up and get an account where they can download 2000, XP, Visio, Project, all the.NET stuff, J++, and Visual Studio 6.
All for free.
And the college apparently gets a pretty darn good deal too, considering how strapped for money it is.
So, they might not be filling up their quota downloading Linux ISOs, but if Cornell/other unis with caps have this available (as I'm sure they do), they'll be filling it downloading 8.NET CDs.
A few weeks ago I stumbled across this great site. Lego Bible stories! Even for non-religious types, the cool photography and often hilarious captions make for hours of entertainment.
What I would really like to see is rather than have these super-rich CEOs spend a little bit in a taxpayer-supported minimum security prison....
Make them refund every penny that they embezzeled/whatever, and THEN fine them on top of that. Make them restart from having nothing, just like all the employees that got royally screwed by these guys in the first place are having to do right now. The worst part is, not only do the employees have to restart, they have to pay even MORE to support the executives in PRISON!
Prison sounds nice at first, but remember that without taking away all their money, a short stay in prison means absolutely nothing to a CEO who's worth billions.
A little more checking reveals that you can easily burn a bootable CD with Tom's Root Boot. check it out. It's a great emergency "distro" and has saved me numerous times.
You mention Trinux in the article, which by default requires extra floppies or a network connection to work, it seems. Another great floppy-based "distro" is Tom's Root Boot. It's saved me several times. It has support for almost any device you could imagine, all packed on one floppy. Not quite a CD-based distro, but still very cool.
Sprint PCS has a similar feature. When you call customer services (pound-something), you get greeted by your "digital assistant!". She says to "interrupt me at any time." Still, it feels weird cutting off a very human-sounding voice with an authoritative, "tell me how many minutes I have left!". It's actually a high-quality and accurate system, in my experience.
You might want to check out Digidesign's Digi 001. For $1000, you get Pro Tools LE (essentially equivalent to the full Pro Tools version with some limitations that you will probably not run into anyways) and a nice offboard unit for connecting equipment. Of course, you do need mics and whatnot, but this is a very nice start with (almost) all the power of Pro Tools.
It seems rather odd that this unit, directed towards professional DJs, is lacking a digital input. Surely these professionals will have digital boards with digital outputs perfect for recording on this neat little unit. Even middle-of-the-road MiniDisc recorders often have digital input.
If you haven't already, try reading The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
It is (as far as I know) the book on project management. It's over 20 years old and it's certainly stood the test of time. It's written in a nice, readable form... and it's an interesting read to boot.
Sure, there are lots of laptop programs at various schools, but none to my knowledge of a scale as large as this.
I live in Maine and graduated from high school two years ago. We've been hearing about this for a long time... Governor Angus King proposed this a few years ago, I think when I was a junior, or even earlier.
Let me tell you that it was not all hurrahs in the community. Teachers, parents, members of the community, and to a great extent students were thinking the same thing lots of Slashdotters are: "the kids will break the damn things! they'll sell them! they'll hack them! they'll play games on them during class!"
Back then we had no idea they'd be iBooks.
I think for all the worries, it is a pretty good idea, and various assurances have been coming from Augusta (the capitol) that it (kids hacking/breaking/gaming) won't happen. Here's hoping those kids at least are running Mac OSX! =)
unixpunx.org - punks, computers, intelligence
Re:It's world-changing!
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 0
Well, it did, to some extent.
Almost every piece of consumer electronics is available in that "cute, colorful, translucent" plastic casing. Phones, Game Boys, alarm clocks, even that new harddrive based CD archive thing on here a while ago was translucent.
Not to mention all the knockoff computer cases and monitors.
So, yeah, it changed the world, if only in the stylistic department.
A word of warning -- always pack computers in TWO BOXES!
When I shipped a Sun from California to Maine, I first brought it, quite well padded in bubblewrap and packing peanuts and a very well sealed box to the local Mail Boxes Etc. When I said I wanted it insured for $1000, they asked what it was. I said "computer" and they said "that needs to be double boxed." So they did it.... for like 10 bucks or so. It was shipped and insured for under $70, cross country. It arrived in good condition, but the outer box was pretty battered... that's why you use two boxes!
Please remember to double box stuff if you're planning on shipping it!
In other news, consumer advocate Ralph Nader urged leaders in the auto safety industry to "stop finding safety problems with automobiles. We can surely trust the automakers to make their cars as safe as humanly possible, without sacrificing their profit margin, and with no need of safety crash tests."
Well, your best bet may be to simply check the mail headers of the emails your friends are receiving. Check out the Received: lines and trace it back to the originating computer. Chances are the IP he's operating from will be right there... Track down the ISP who owns the IP, and you may be on to something.
Slashdot Mirror
You may file a complaint at this address
Where I work (computer support division at a large university) we use Service Desk from Computer Associates. For all we make fun of it, it's actually quite a useful tool. You can track requests, log comments, arrange callbacks, schedule stuff, escalate calls, and tons of other Really Neat Stuff if we only took the time to learn it. Affected customers can reopen requests if things haven't been resolved to their liking.
It's not just for service requests, I guess people manage "change orders" and can manage projects like, say, rolling out servers with it.
It's a Java tool and it also has a Web interface when you're away from a machine with it installed.
I think it's a tad pricy, though.
Often times, truck stops and campgrounds will have book swapping racks. It's not quite as high tech as you have in mind, but the next time you're out driving around, drop off a few and pick up a few.
A bit of a sidenote, but here at Syracuse University, the engineering college has a partnership with Microsoft's "Academic Alliance". Comp engineering, electrical engineering, and comp sci kids sign up and get an account where they can download 2000, XP, Visio, Project, all the .NET stuff, J++, and Visual Studio 6.
.NET CDs.
All for free.
And the college apparently gets a pretty darn good deal too, considering how strapped for money it is.
So, they might not be filling up their quota downloading Linux ISOs, but if Cornell/other unis with caps have this available (as I'm sure they do), they'll be filling it downloading 8
Almost as fun as a backyard roller coaster!
-Dan
A few weeks ago I stumbled across this great site.
Lego Bible stories! Even for non-religious types, the cool photography and often hilarious captions make for hours of entertainment.
Hey, come on, give the guy a break! He is Polish, after all.
/me dodges thrown fruit. (I'm Polish too, so don't get your panties all in a knot).
What I would really like to see is rather than have these super-rich CEOs spend a little bit in a taxpayer-supported minimum security prison....
Make them refund every penny that they embezzeled/whatever, and THEN fine them on top of that. Make them restart from having nothing, just like all the employees that got royally screwed by these guys in the first place are having to do right now. The worst part is, not only do the employees have to restart, they have to pay even MORE to support the executives in PRISON!
Prison sounds nice at first, but remember that without taking away all their money, a short stay in prison means absolutely nothing to a CEO who's worth billions.
A little more checking reveals that you can easily burn a bootable CD with Tom's Root Boot. check it out. It's a great emergency "distro" and has saved me numerous times.
You mention Trinux in the article, which by default requires extra floppies or a network connection to work, it seems. Another great floppy-based "distro" is Tom's Root Boot. It's saved me several times. It has support for almost any device you could imagine, all packed on one floppy. Not quite a CD-based distro, but still very cool.
Sprint PCS has a similar feature. When you call customer services (pound-something), you get greeted by your "digital assistant!". She says to "interrupt me at any time." Still, it feels weird cutting off a very human-sounding voice with an authoritative, "tell me how many minutes I have left!". It's actually a high-quality and accurate system, in my experience.
-Dan
unixpunx.org - punks, computers, technology
You might want to check out Digidesign's Digi 001. For $1000, you get Pro Tools LE (essentially equivalent to the full Pro Tools version with some limitations that you will probably not run into anyways) and a nice offboard unit for connecting equipment. Of course, you do need mics and whatnot, but this is a very nice start with (almost) all the power of Pro Tools.
-Dan
unixpunx.org - punks, computers, intelligence
It seems rather odd that this unit, directed towards professional DJs, is lacking a digital input. Surely these professionals will have digital boards with digital outputs perfect for recording on this neat little unit. Even middle-of-the-road MiniDisc recorders often have digital input.
-Dan
unixpunx.org - punks, computers, intelligence
If you haven't already, try reading The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
It is (as far as I know) the book on project management. It's over 20 years old and it's certainly stood the test of time. It's written in a nice, readable form... and it's an interesting read to boot.
-Dan
www.unixpunx.org - unix, punks, technology
Folks, the kernel mirrors are not at mirrors.kernel.org.
The proper site for mirrors of the Linux Kernel is here.
Here's a quick link to those of you looking for US-based mirrors.
-dan
into unix and punk? check out unixpunx.org
Sure, there are lots of laptop programs at various schools, but none to my knowledge of a scale as large as this.
I live in Maine and graduated from high school two years ago. We've been hearing about this for a long time... Governor Angus King proposed this a few years ago, I think when I was a junior, or even earlier.
Let me tell you that it was not all hurrahs in the community. Teachers, parents, members of the community, and to a great extent students were thinking the same thing lots of Slashdotters are: "the kids will break the damn things! they'll sell them! they'll hack them! they'll play games on them during class!"
Back then we had no idea they'd be iBooks.
I think for all the worries, it is a pretty good idea, and various assurances have been coming from Augusta (the capitol) that it (kids hacking/breaking/gaming) won't happen. Here's hoping those kids at least are running Mac OSX! =)
unixpunx.org - punks, computers, intelligence
Well, it did, to some extent.
Almost every piece of consumer electronics is available in that "cute, colorful, translucent" plastic casing. Phones, Game Boys, alarm clocks, even that new harddrive based CD archive thing on here a while ago was translucent.
Not to mention all the knockoff computer cases and monitors.
So, yeah, it changed the world, if only in the stylistic department.
unixpunx.org - punks, computers, intelligence
A word of warning -- always pack computers in TWO BOXES!
When I shipped a Sun from California to Maine, I first brought it, quite well padded in bubblewrap and packing peanuts and a very well sealed box to the local Mail Boxes Etc. When I said I wanted it insured for $1000, they asked what it was. I said "computer" and they said "that needs to be double boxed." So they did it.... for like 10 bucks or so. It was shipped and insured for under $70, cross country. It arrived in good condition, but the outer box was pretty battered... that's why you use two boxes!
Please remember to double box stuff if you're planning on shipping it!
-dan
unixpunx.org
I stayed and watched the entire credits. Near the very end, it said something like,
Final rendering services provided by:
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
So apparently they used Suns to do the rendering for Monsters, Inc.
-Dan
into unix? into punk? check out unixpunx
In other news, consumer advocate Ralph Nader urged leaders in the auto safety industry to "stop finding safety problems with automobiles. We can surely trust the automakers to make their cars as safe as humanly possible, without sacrificing their profit margin, and with no need of safety crash tests."
-dan
into unix? into punk? check out unixpunx
You could always check out the definitive guide to swapfests, linked from that page:
http://web.mit.edu/w1gsl/Public/ne-fleas
-dan
Well, your best bet may be to simply check the mail headers of the emails your friends are receiving. Check out the Received: lines and trace it back to the originating computer. Chances are the IP he's operating from will be right there... Track down the ISP who owns the IP, and you may be on to something.
-Dan
You're right about the system upgrade. From the welcome message at ftp.cdrom.com:
Welcome to ftp.cdrom.com, a service of Digital River, Inc.
There are currently 674 users out of 3000 possible.
This machine is a Xeon/500 with 4GB of memory & 1/2 terabyte of RAID 5. The operating system is FreeBSD.
-dan