Is it just me, or does that article sound eerily 1984ish?
It's not just China.
Have you been paying attention to the US gov's perpetual war/state of public paranoia? The US gov has actually been pretty explicit lately about how their "war" has no end in sight, and claim this "war" justifies any sort of repression they can dream up. So keep listening to NPR, VOA, nytimes, etc., if you want -- just realize that it is the Ministry of Truth talking. And look out for "terrorists"! They could be anywhere! Orange alert!
Exactly what are you and your republican friends trying to conservate? Wouldn't you guys be better off out in some remote Colorado mountains, or in the safe haven of an amish congregation?
I think the word is "conserve" -- but it's a good question nonetheless. The only things I see "conservatives" conserving are their piles of property.
Re:Have the init scripts been fixed yet?
on
NetBSD 1.6 Released
·
· Score: 1
Um, NetBSD has had nice init scripts at least since 1.5 (almost two years ago). When was the last time you used it?
I do so love trying to figure out exactly which version of which compiler I have to compile Apache with to link it to the proprietary modules we, unfortunately, have.
Collective civilizations won't work as long as there are people who need to reinforce a power hierarchy. As long as Alpha-male syndrome exists, it'll never happen.
Unless, of course, everyone else refuses to do what they say. Power is a social construction.
The most common reason is that some manager in your group decided that you NEED to run exchange for some reason X.
Certainly matches my experience. Add to that: "and resolutely ignored valid objections from vastly more knowledgeable employees, who are powerless because of how the organization is structured." What makes this even more egregious that this experience is at a *proprietary software* company -- you'd think that management would know all about vendor lock-in!
I recently had a long debate with the rest of my management team about firing the guys in our office after they suggested we switch to Win 2k for our file servers.
Are these people unwilling or unable to learn? If they're willing and able, it seems to me that a more constructive approach would be to allow them to attend unix traning classes and encourage them to use unix desktops.
You might want to consider fetchmail/procmail/filesystem for mail access, as this allows for procmail filtering, and prevents Exchange hosages from destroying your old mail. My whole chain looks like:
fetchmail-procmail-filesystem-mutt-vim-sendmail
with fetchmail configured to use NTLM authentication.
The corporation at which I have a job has already had instances of mail lossage, and Exchange has been up for only a few months.
The only drawback I have found so far is the lack of a Calendar compliant client.
Why is this a drawback? It makes it harder for people to rope you into meetings.:)
Seriously, I'm in the same boat, running NetBSD/fetchmail/procmail/mutt/vim/sendmail locally, talking to an MS mail server. It works just fine, and I don't miss the calendaring!
Of course, I'd prefer if the mail servers didn't require huge hardware and human babysitters, but as has been brought up many times, those of us who know what we're doing have no power in these organizations.
Sysadmins have no power if the boss says "We are an Outlook shop and nothing else". My boss actually said that to me. He could care less about the black magic behind the scenes, but he wanted a unified client interface.
Doesn't it strike you as strange that your boss (who doesn't know or care about how the system works) is dictating how it should be costructed? That the people who know how to do things have no power within corporate organizations? Many people come to accept these things as inevitable, but I don't know very many people (aside from said bosses) who think this arrangement is good idea.
Perhaps if production organizations were actually controlled by the people doing the work, we wouldn't encounter the situation you describe.
Personal hypocrisy disclaimer: I do have a job at a company that is run in the nonsensical way you describe . . . but hopefully I won't be doing this for the rest of my life.
Hmmm, on these topics I can't tell the trolls from the serious posters . . ..
No, what frustrates me greatly is that some people steadfastly refuse to connect themselves to reality. I suppose you could call me a "whacko irrational devotee" of careful, rational thought. But I really don't think it's that crazy to think that:
1) There is a real external world
2) What happens there is interesting, because all of us interact with this real external world
3) We cannot shape reality by simply believing one thing or another
Time to burn some karma. I've heard this so many times, and it always frustrates me greatly!
Creationism, Evolution... They're both theories.
Um... The first is based on faith, the second on careful observation of the natural world. Hardly equal terms, I'd say.
Alternatively, taking your argument further:
You may have a theory that the earth will continue to rotate for another 24 hours. Of course, it's just a theory, and all theories are equivalent. So I should not feel obligated to come up with ones that match reality. I have a new theory, that the earth will stop rotating in eight hours. Just try and prove me wrong *right* *now*!
Why isn't there a fast (non blocking) web server that supports fast dynamic content such as PHP, either built in (yuck) or through an API like FastCGI, available for UNIX platforms?
Many programs have yet to be written. Perhaps this is one of them. Maybe you'd like to write it? I think you'll be much happier if you stop expecting people to do things for you.
The chances of getting a large group of perl developers to code a large enterprise E-Comerce website and not take shortcuts nor kludges, and not to just fall away from good design and architecture is very rare.
The freedom to take shortcuts is *really valuable* when writing software. It enables you to:
1. Get the overall design done carefully
2. Implement various components quickly, if not perfectly
3. If it turns out that you wrote the wrong thing, go back to #1
4. Several people in parallel can now work on things that interface with the system, now that it's up and running, while you:
5. Go back and reimplement whatever components need polishing
In practice, this lets you write good software much faster than a straight design-implement model.
And as others have pointed out, you apparently don't know about the twenty million different template-driven-webpage toolkits out there for free software systems.
All in all, having a perfectly designed J2EE website (built with experienced J2EE developers) vs a perfectly designed Perl/CGI website....
If you had read the EToys article carefully at all, you would have noticed that they weren't advocating the use of CGI at all!
So, why is it that (with only one exception) everytime I mention that in my "I use your software. Thanks for your effort, anything I can do to help?" email, I get a deafening silence?
I have seen posts like this on lots of lists; usually the poster ends up not having time after all.
In any case, it takes effort to bring someone new up to speed and give them enough direction to be productive (reference Brooks "Adding people to a late project makes it later"). What with having a day job, doing laundry, etc., the hackers currently involved may not volunteer to take on the additional task of organizing new folks.
I'm not saying that this is a good thing; just that the silence doesn't necessarily mean that no help is needed or wanted.
Some day, free software will be the primary work of most programmers. We are in an awkward transition phase at the moment.
What we need is for the telecom workers to run the organizations themselves, so they can actually solve people's problems, rather than try to increase the profit margin.
On second thought, I guess that's the sort of thing you had in mind when you were complaining about the local telecom suppressing coops.
That's what a telecommunications monopoly will do for you
Lots of infrastructures don't make sense to run competitively -- who wants dueling water or sewer systems? The trouble with local telecoms is that they are run as for-profit, top-down nasties. Having two competing for-profit, top-down nasty organizations would not necessarily be much better than an for-profit monopoly. In practice, two-corp situations often result in the companies partitioning the market between them, and keeping prices high for both companies.
What we need is for the telecom workers to run the organizations themselves, so they can actually solve people's problems, rather than try to increase the profit margin.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me, or does that article sound eerily 1984ish?
It's not just China.
Have you been paying attention to the US gov's perpetual war/state of public paranoia? The US gov has actually been pretty explicit lately about how their "war" has no end in sight, and claim this "war" justifies any sort of repression they can dream up. So keep listening to NPR, VOA, nytimes, etc., if you want -- just realize that it is the Ministry of Truth talking. And look out for "terrorists"! They could be anywhere! Orange alert!
And your gardener, and your wife, and your manservant . . . .
What gave you the right to hoard property, and use it to force others to do your bidding?
Exactly what are you and your republican friends trying to conservate? Wouldn't you guys be better off out in some remote Colorado mountains, or in the safe haven of an amish congregation?
I think the word is "conserve" -- but it's a good question nonetheless. The only things I see "conservatives" conserving are their piles of property.
Um, NetBSD has had nice init scripts at least since 1.5 (almost two years ago). When was the last time you used it?
/etc/rc.d/postfix reload
e.g.
I believe you have been trolled . . . .
It is time to take a deep breath, relax, and install NetBSD.
You have my deepest sympathies.
Just curious, why is the organization at which you have a job using Vignette? Any good reason, or stupid dictate from on high?
I do so love trying to figure out exactly which version of which compiler I have to compile Apache with to link it to the proprietary modules we, unfortunately, have.
Curiousity: which modules are those?
Gosh, and I thought NetBSD was supposed to be harder to use. It's been in pkgsrc for a good long time.
Collective civilizations won't work as long as there are people who need to reinforce a power hierarchy. As long as Alpha-male syndrome exists, it'll never happen.
Unless, of course, everyone else refuses to do what they say. Power is a social construction.
The most common reason is that some manager in your group decided that you NEED to run exchange for some reason X.
Certainly matches my experience. Add to that: "and resolutely ignored valid objections from vastly more knowledgeable employees, who are powerless because of how the organization is structured." What makes this even more egregious that this experience is at a *proprietary software* company -- you'd think that management would know all about vendor lock-in!
I recently had a long debate with the rest of my management team about firing the guys in our office after they suggested we switch to Win 2k for our file servers.
Are these people unwilling or unable to learn? If they're willing and able, it seems to me that a more constructive approach would be to allow them to attend unix traning classes and encourage them to use unix desktops.
You might want to consider fetchmail/procmail/filesystem for mail access, as this allows for procmail filtering, and prevents Exchange hosages from destroying your old mail. My whole chain looks like:
fetchmail-procmail-filesystem-mutt-vim-sendmail
with fetchmail configured to use NTLM authentication.
The corporation at which I have a job has already had instances of mail lossage, and Exchange has been up for only a few months.
The only drawback I have found so far is the lack of a Calendar compliant client.
:)
Why is this a drawback? It makes it harder for people to rope you into meetings.
Seriously, I'm in the same boat, running NetBSD/fetchmail/procmail/mutt/vim/sendmail locally, talking to an MS mail server. It works just fine, and I don't miss the calendaring!
Of course, I'd prefer if the mail servers didn't require huge hardware and human babysitters, but as has been brought up many times, those of us who know what we're doing have no power in these organizations.
Sysadmins have no power if the boss says "We are an Outlook shop and nothing else". My boss actually said that to me. He could care less about the black magic behind the scenes, but he wanted a unified client interface.
Doesn't it strike you as strange that your boss (who doesn't know or care about how the system works) is dictating how it should be costructed? That the people who know how to do things have no power within corporate organizations? Many people come to accept these things as inevitable, but I don't know very many people (aside from said bosses) who think this arrangement is good idea.
Perhaps if production organizations were actually controlled by the people doing the work, we wouldn't encounter the situation you describe.
Personal hypocrisy disclaimer: I do have a job at a company that is run in the nonsensical way you describe . . . but hopefully I won't be doing this for the rest of my life.
Hmmm, on these topics I can't tell the trolls from the serious posters . . . .
No, what frustrates me greatly is that some people steadfastly refuse to connect themselves to reality. I suppose you could call me a "whacko irrational devotee" of careful, rational thought. But I really don't think it's that crazy to think that:
1) There is a real external world
2) What happens there is interesting, because all of us interact with this real external world
3) We cannot shape reality by simply believing one thing or another
Time to burn some karma. I've heard this so many times, and it always frustrates me greatly!
Creationism, Evolution... They're both theories.
Um... The first is based on faith, the second on careful observation of the natural world. Hardly equal terms, I'd say.
Alternatively, taking your argument further:
You may have a theory that the earth will continue to rotate for another 24 hours. Of course, it's just a theory, and all theories are equivalent. So I should not feel obligated to come up with ones that match reality. I have a new theory, that the earth will stop rotating in eight hours. Just try and prove me wrong *right* *now*!
Maybe they are just operating on a more subtle level. I don't know about you, but reading that arcticle really made me want to eat Chee-tos(tm).
Why isn't there a fast (non blocking) web server that supports fast dynamic content such as PHP, either built in (yuck) or through an API like FastCGI, available for UNIX platforms?
Many programs have yet to be written. Perhaps this is one of them. Maybe you'd like to write it? I think you'll be much happier if you stop expecting people to do things for you.
thats darn gross negligence at beast, villanous stupidity at slightly worse, and punishable by long term jail at worst
These folks never get long jail terms. Long jail terms are reserved for people who do things like sell grow lamps.
Notice how Neil Bush, Charles Hurwitz, etc. got away with crazy stuff in the 80s S&L scandal?
Though I suppose at this point the administration might decide to make an example out of one of the Enron or WorldCom guys.
Enjoy your free market, folks! Look how wonderfully it works!
That's principle, not principal . . . .
The chances of getting a large group of perl developers to code a large enterprise E-Comerce website and not take shortcuts nor kludges, and not to just fall away from good design and architecture is very rare.
The freedom to take shortcuts is *really valuable* when writing software. It enables you to:
1. Get the overall design done carefully
2. Implement various components quickly, if not perfectly
3. If it turns out that you wrote the wrong thing, go back to #1
4. Several people in parallel can now work on things that interface with the system, now that it's up and running, while you:
5. Go back and reimplement whatever components need polishing
In practice, this lets you write good software much faster than a straight design-implement model.
And as others have pointed out, you apparently don't know about the twenty million different template-driven-webpage toolkits out there for free software systems.
All in all, having a perfectly designed J2EE website (built with experienced J2EE developers) vs a perfectly designed Perl/CGI website....
If you had read the EToys article carefully at all, you would have noticed that they weren't advocating the use of CGI at all!
You need to read up on EToys (RIP):
http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2001/10/17/etoys.html
Java is *not the answer*! Besides, I thought discussion on Slashdot was limited to software libre . . . .
So, why is it that (with only one exception) everytime I mention that in my "I use your software. Thanks for your effort, anything I can do to help?" email, I get a deafening silence?
I have seen posts like this on lots of lists; usually the poster ends up not having time after all.
In any case, it takes effort to bring someone new up to speed and give them enough direction to be productive (reference Brooks "Adding people to a late project makes it later"). What with having a day job, doing laundry, etc., the hackers currently involved may not volunteer to take on the additional task of organizing new folks.
I'm not saying that this is a good thing; just that the silence doesn't necessarily mean that no help is needed or wanted.
Some day, free software will be the primary work of most programmers. We are in an awkward transition phase at the moment.
What we need is for the telecom workers to run the organizations themselves, so they can actually solve people's problems, rather than try to increase the profit margin.
On second thought, I guess that's the sort of thing you had in mind when you were complaining about the local telecom suppressing coops.
That's what a telecommunications monopoly will do for you
Lots of infrastructures don't make sense to run competitively -- who wants dueling water or sewer systems? The trouble with local telecoms is that they are run as for-profit, top-down nasties. Having two competing for-profit, top-down nasty organizations would not necessarily be much better than an for-profit monopoly. In practice, two-corp situations often result in the companies partitioning the market between them, and keeping prices high for both companies.
What we need is for the telecom workers to run the organizations themselves, so they can actually solve people's problems, rather than try to increase the profit margin.