Having worked for a major ISP for the past few years, and seen more than one RIF in that time, I'm just glad to HAVE a job here still. I think I'd rather take half a paycheck home for one month that to be out of a job for 6. Missing/being late on one months rent/mortgage is MUCH more appealing to me than having to miss several, and go job hunting in this market at the same time.
I can't agree with this enough. Dell is my friend's friend. And when they bitch it's too slow, Crucial sells memory for it dirt cheap, and good quality... that usually keeps them quiet for another year. Just enough time that I can almost keep my boxes up to yesterday's date.
Since you have no email that I can easily find as I sit in this rather boring class I'm taking today, I'm forced to post this slightly off-topic reply. At least it's now here for all to (potentially) benefit from.
You may wish to try searching for some HAM radio websites. Many HAM operators are very friendly, and run radios out of their vehicles. In fact, a large majority of HAM equipment is designed around +12VDC power supplies... Once you get +12VDC regulated and stable, -12VDC, +/-5VDC and 3.3VDC is relatively easy (espicially for the relativly low amperage requirements for these voltage levels).
Occasionally I check up on my karma, when bored, or while waiting for scripts to do my work for me. And occasionally I actually read the replies to my posts. It just so happens that this reply begs ME to reply. Perhaps the Anonymous Coward will never read it. Perhaps no one will. But just for the chance it will make someone else thing, I will post it anyway.
Why would I want to run linux, when I can run Solaris? Maybe this kind of thinking is why your reply leads one to believe you may be eternally stuck on Solaris. Now, I'm not opposed to Solaris. On the contrary, I spend most of my time on Solaris systems. But, there are places where Linux stands out. There are places where BSD stands out. There are places where Microsoft operating systems stand out. Have you ever tried to help your mom use pine to check her mail? Would you even want to? Probably not (unless your mother is like some of ours, and has been writing Cobol and ASM for since you were young... but then, she'd likely be teaching YOU). Regardless, by now I'm sure you can see my point that each o/s has it's place.
Looking at it from another angle, how much smarter do you look when you always seem to know what to do? Or, maybe you're not yet lucky enough to have everyone asking you for the answer. Or, maybe you don't have any genius to look up to... when you find some, you'll find you have a greater desire to learn, in a feeble attempt to impress. There are many who desire to be elite, few who come close to attaining it.
On a final note, have you ever shared a perl script you wrote for a Solaris system? Better yet, have you ever used someone else's perl? I hope not, if you don't support the ideals of linux.
Who says linunx can't run on Sun systems? I've had a production sparc linux distro running successfully for over a year now. I'm not sure I'd want to pay for Oracle, as MySQL is still happy with life, but I doubt that my Sparc servers will be EOL'd any time soon.
Paralasis and (Computers or Walking)
on
Think And Click
·
· Score: 1
So, with this technology, someone who is paralyzed could theoretically use a computer. What about allowing the parapalegic to walk again? Gyroscopes to measure balance (this technology exists well in IT, as we have seen recently), and thought to say, "Hmmm.. I think I'd like to walk forward. Now backwards. Now left."
I'd love to see my parapalegic friend be able to ride his motorcycle with me without a side car some day.
neat, but...
on
SNES Portable
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
We can play games on our cell phones now.. and have been able to for some time. With games on our PDA's, GameBoy Color... Why would someone want this? I guess if SNES is more addictive for you than heroin, maybe this'd be up your alley.
Now, PS2, XBox, those are at least current. I wouldn't mind seeing one of THEM in a portable model.
What ever happened to the idea that one day broadband was going to come to us across our power lines? Last I heard on it, things were working pretty well. The technology is there. The infrastructure is mostly there. The speed is high. The cost of implementation sounded like it would be low.
Why would a local municipality push for this when the local power company can accomplish similar goals, seemingly with more ease? Maybe there's some underlying reason I don't know about, which is why it isn't here yet...
If it's true why do you get offended at the messenger? If it's not why do you care?
While I completely agree with you on this subject, I think I need to pose an answer to this question you posed.
To start, I can only justify being offended by the truth with low self esteem. If my esteem were higher, I would easily be able to take it.
But... Why do I care if it's not true? It goes back to the old adage that a lie travels half way around the world while the truth is putting it's shoes on.
Now, what am I going to do about these lies? One of two things. Either shrug it off, because my image is good enough that everyone will know that they are lies. Or, fight back on some level playing ground. I can code HTML well enough to fight back against some website which has blasted me. And if I can't code HTML, I've always got FrontPage or Composer to help me out.
>Does Lucas know how to make money or what? Seriously, this guy is starting to make Bill >Gates look like a kid with a cheap lemonade stand.
Yes, but Lucas is like a father to us. Look at how well he has entertained us, and how long he's been doing it for. Why not reward him for his work? It's only $15. Go to the theatre and you're likely to spend more than that, and you only get to watch it once there.
I'll be impressed if it's able to heat it EVENLY. I've given up on the whole microwave dinner thing due to the fact that it's more work than cooking a real meal to get the whole thing hot, and not burned. Ugh. Half burnt, half cold microwave lasagna. Ugh.
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to make it harder for people to access information like this. We just shouldn't be surprised when they do it. Hopefully, each time it happens, we'll tighten things down more, and it will take longer for them to get in. But eventually, it'll happen again.
or, in my case, engineers, bongs and a welder... wouldn't it be worth the adventure? I mean, I don't think I'd be spending $25mil for a trip yet, but I've got myself a a bunch of friends with technical backgrounds, and I can weld... why not? would be a fun weekend project, I think. This all needs to get happening sometime, why not start now? First of all, where better to learn what we really need to do to build a reliable space station than in the environment itself? Yes, we can design and build great things here on earth, but this is not where they are going to be implemented. Why not work on the thing in/its/ working environment. Yeah, the mir will probably end up killing a few people, and it might not last very long, but it's the kind of grassroots thing we need to get a bigger, better, faster, whatever we want space thing sometime down the road. And the Mir is probably the best thing to start with. American sense of adventure, "We'll do anything, as long as we have a security rope." Russian sense of adventure, "We'll do anything, as long as there's vodka." Rock on russia.
Okay, but why not just up your bus speed on your PII board? I've never been an intel fan by any means, but I needed a new box, and the pII's were fairly cheap... bought a pair of 350's, and they run just fine at 466, so, I'm still competing with the pIII 500's (since my bus speed is 33% up on them, as well as my L1, L2, etc). So, in reality here, why should I mess with dismembering my prosc, and soldering stuffs onto it when I can move a jumper, or change my bios settings? Athalon speed is nice, and I'd overclock the snot out of one if I had the extra $$. But ya can't go saying that AMD provides ways to overclock while Intel doesn't.
/*I found that with a geek-geek relationship at least the some of the communication could go via email or mud so even though we were apart we could keep in touch. so I think the big problem is the shortage of geek girls.*/ okay, so were do we find a list of the few geek girls that do exist? I don't have the time to go out searching RL for the 1 in 10,000.... I'd rather have a database to search.... oh, an entry for which muds they frequent would be nice as well
/Prevention starts at the end-user, Janet!/ Yes, this is true. Talk to the NRA about it. How long have they been around, and pushing so we can keep our right to bear arms?? They keep saying education reduces the number of firearm related injuries than anything else (see the section called "Education Is The Key"). But still the laws get more restrictive. OTOH, I almost welcome the LawNet or whatever it is. Looking back, these types of things have always made us smarter. One quick example, when all the parents seemed real hot on restricting what their kids could see on the internet. The kids said, "Okay, NP, I'll be a good boy/girl." Then they go installed another browser and go exploring with no restricions. LawNet (or something like it) may be coming. Oh well.... I don't think it will be so terrible... hell, it might even give us something exciting to play with.
computers, and all things related, have birthdays all the time, and all good geeks should recognize this. where would we be without the altair? without (sadly) the 8086/88? without the commodore64/128? these systems gave birth to our world, and, in a sense, gave birth to many of us, and what we are/represent today. Plus, HAL is not JUST a computer (well, in reality, HAL is/just/ fiction), but part of a novel which has been influencing minds for decades now. Celebrate on, have one for ALL the great machines! Happy bday HAL... may you live on in our minds forever.
The movie was completely entertaining, and completely boring at the same time. I think much of it depends on what kind of movies you watch (if any), and whether you've read the book before you watch the movie. If you have ever been involved in any kind of movie production (I haven't, so I/am/ presuming some things), you would probably appreciate it more. Or, if you were a fan of soundless movies (where you have to image/read the script), you would probably appreciate it more. Otherwise, you'll be bored. When you think about it, most of the plot involves one person, who infrequently interacts with a talking ship. So, you have a movie with very little dialogue. It's all about images. When reading the book, you have to read all the descriptions. In the movie, the director has interpreted all of the settings, and created images for you to represent them. You have to think less, and end up being bored. You lose some of the omnipotence that the book gives you. You lose out in most of the character's thoughts. This is why, for most, the book is better. You have more to let you relate to the character; more to make you think.
While I do agree that AOL is presumably one of the largest perpetuators of SPAM, perhaps this is precisely the reason why they decided to take this to court. Granted it has taken them some time, but you have to look at them. They have a large operation to run. Yes, spam takes up their diskspace, takes up their bandwidth, and irritates their users. But maybe they needed to wait until they had a case that was strong enough to go to court, and one that they knew would hold up in court before they went through with it. Going through the process of tracking down these spammers, paying for lawyers, and all else that is involved in this type of case has to add up to some enourmous cost. My guess would be that AOL needed to be sure that they would win the court case before they actually went this far with it. I mean, how bad would it be, for AOL *AND* for the rest of the internet, if they were to go to court on a major case as this one, and LOSE. From their standpoint, they would be out a huge chunk of change. Looking at the view from the rest of the world, we would ALL have lost a major battle in the spam war. Think of how much more power the spammers would have gotten had they won this case. AOL itself probably would have become an even bigger spamming ground (obviously, since they lost the case, another one wouldn't hold up). And the rest of the world would be even more weary of following AOL's footprints. A precedent would have been set. The spammers would have gained a strong upper hand.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, we could probably prevent /.ing, but isn't trying to get to a /.'d site half the fun of /.? It's a whole new phenomenon we created!
Having worked for a major ISP for the past few years, and seen more than one RIF in that time, I'm just glad to HAVE a job here still. I think I'd rather take half a paycheck home for one month that to be out of a job for 6. Missing/being late on one months rent/mortgage is MUCH more appealing to me than having to miss several, and go job hunting in this market at the same time.
I can't agree with this enough. Dell is my friend's friend. And when they bitch it's too slow, Crucial sells memory for it dirt cheap, and good quality... that usually keeps them quiet for another year. Just enough time that I can almost keep my boxes up to yesterday's date.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who might have had a double take when I saw this...
Since you have no email that I can easily find as I sit in this rather boring class I'm taking today, I'm forced to post this slightly off-topic reply. At least it's now here for all to (potentially) benefit from.
You may wish to try searching for some HAM radio websites. Many HAM operators are very friendly, and run radios out of their vehicles. In fact, a large majority of HAM equipment is designed around +12VDC power supplies... Once you get +12VDC regulated and stable, -12VDC, +/-5VDC and 3.3VDC is relatively easy (espicially for the relativly low amperage requirements for these voltage levels).
this needs a slashdot.org/mirror/fent.net, no?
/. /.
mebbe we can
glad I wasn't the only one...
Occasionally I check up on my karma, when bored, or while waiting for scripts to do my work for me. And occasionally I actually read the replies to my posts. It just so happens that this reply begs ME to reply. Perhaps the Anonymous Coward will never read it. Perhaps no one will. But just for the chance it will make someone else thing, I will post it anyway.
Why would I want to run linux, when I can run Solaris? Maybe this kind of thinking is why your reply leads one to believe you may be eternally stuck on Solaris. Now, I'm not opposed to Solaris. On the contrary, I spend most of my time on Solaris systems. But, there are places where Linux stands out. There are places where BSD stands out. There are places where Microsoft operating systems stand out. Have you ever tried to help your mom use pine to check her mail? Would you even want to? Probably not (unless your mother is like some of ours, and has been writing Cobol and ASM for since you were young... but then, she'd likely be teaching YOU). Regardless, by now I'm sure you can see my point that each o/s has it's place.
Looking at it from another angle, how much smarter do you look when you always seem to know what to do? Or, maybe you're not yet lucky enough to have everyone asking you for the answer. Or, maybe you don't have any genius to look up to... when you find some, you'll find you have a greater desire to learn, in a feeble attempt to impress. There are many who desire to be elite, few who come close to attaining it.
On a final note, have you ever shared a perl script you wrote for a Solaris system? Better yet, have you ever used someone else's perl? I hope not, if you don't support the ideals of linux.
Who says linunx can't run on Sun systems? I've had a production sparc linux distro running successfully for over a year now. I'm not sure I'd want to pay for Oracle, as MySQL is still happy with life, but I doubt that my Sparc servers will be EOL'd any time soon.
So, with this technology, someone who is paralyzed could theoretically use a computer. What about allowing the parapalegic to walk again? Gyroscopes to measure balance (this technology exists well in IT, as we have seen recently), and thought to say, "Hmmm.. I think I'd like to walk forward. Now backwards. Now left."
I'd love to see my parapalegic friend be able to ride his motorcycle with me without a side car some day.
We can play games on our cell phones now.. and have been able to for some time. With games on our PDA's, GameBoy Color... Why would someone want this? I guess if SNES is more addictive for you than heroin, maybe this'd be up your alley.
Now, PS2, XBox, those are at least current. I wouldn't mind seeing one of THEM in a portable model.
What ever happened to the idea that one day broadband was going to come to us across our power lines? Last I heard on it, things were working pretty well. The technology is there. The infrastructure is mostly there. The speed is high. The cost of implementation sounded like it would be low.
Why would a local municipality push for this when the local power company can accomplish similar goals, seemingly with more ease? Maybe there's some underlying reason I don't know about, which is why it isn't here yet...
If it's true why do you get offended at the messenger? If it's not why do you care?
While I completely agree with you on this subject, I think I need to pose an answer to this question you posed.
To start, I can only justify being offended by the truth with low self esteem. If my esteem were higher, I would easily be able to take it.
But... Why do I care if it's not true? It goes back to the old adage that a lie travels half way around the world while the truth is putting it's shoes on.
Now, what am I going to do about these lies? One of two things. Either shrug it off, because my image is good enough that everyone will know that they are lies. Or, fight back on some level playing ground. I can code HTML well enough to fight back against some website which has blasted me. And if I can't code HTML, I've always got FrontPage or Composer to help me out.
>Does Lucas know how to make money or what? Seriously, this guy is starting to make Bill >Gates look like a kid with a cheap lemonade stand.
Yes, but Lucas is like a father to us. Look at how well he has entertained us, and how long he's been doing it for. Why not reward him for his work? It's only $15. Go to the theatre and you're likely to spend more than that, and you only get to watch it once there.
Be a good geek now, and get your Star Wars.
I can't believe it took this long.
I'll be impressed if it's able to heat it EVENLY. I've given up on the whole microwave dinner thing due to the fact that it's more work than cooking a real meal to get the whole thing hot, and not burned. Ugh. Half burnt, half cold microwave lasagna. Ugh.
locks only keep the honest people out.
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to make it harder for people to access information like this. We just shouldn't be surprised when they do it. Hopefully, each time it happens, we'll tighten things down more, and it will take longer for them to get in. But eventually, it'll happen again.
or, in my case, engineers, bongs and a welder... wouldn't it be worth the adventure? I mean, I don't think I'd be spending $25mil for a trip yet, but I've got myself a a bunch of friends with technical backgrounds, and I can weld... why not? would be a fun weekend project, I think. This all needs to get happening sometime, why not start now? First of all, where better to learn what we really need to do to build a reliable space station than in the environment itself? Yes, we can design and build great things here on earth, but this is not where they are going to be implemented. Why not work on the thing in /its/ working environment. Yeah, the mir will probably end up killing a few people, and it might not last very long, but it's the kind of grassroots thing we need to get a bigger, better, faster, whatever we want space thing sometime down the road. And the Mir is probably the best thing to start with. American sense of adventure, "We'll do anything, as long as we have a security rope." Russian sense of adventure, "We'll do anything, as long as there's vodka." Rock on russia.
Okay, but why not just up your bus speed on your PII board? I've never been an intel fan by any means, but I needed a new box, and the pII's were fairly cheap... bought a pair of 350's, and they run just fine at 466, so, I'm still competing with the pIII 500's (since my bus speed is 33% up on them, as well as my L1, L2, etc). So, in reality here, why should I mess with dismembering my prosc, and soldering stuffs onto it when I can move a jumper, or change my bios settings? Athalon speed is nice, and I'd overclock the snot out of one if I had the extra $$. But ya can't go saying that AMD provides ways to overclock while Intel doesn't.
/*I found that with a geek-geek relationship at least the some of the communication could go via email or mud so even though we were apart we could keep in touch. so I think the big problem is the shortage of geek girls.*/ okay, so were do we find a list of the few geek girls that do exist? I don't have the time to go out searching RL for the 1 in 10,000.... I'd rather have a database to search.... oh, an entry for which muds they frequent would be nice as well
/Prevention starts at the end-user, Janet!/ Yes, this is true. Talk to the NRA about it. How long have they been around, and pushing so we can keep our right to bear arms?? They keep saying education reduces the number of firearm related injuries than anything else (see the section called "Education Is The Key"). But still the laws get more restrictive. OTOH, I almost welcome the LawNet or whatever it is. Looking back, these types of things have always made us smarter. One quick example, when all the parents seemed real hot on restricting what their kids could see on the internet. The kids said, "Okay, NP, I'll be a good boy/girl." Then they go installed another browser and go exploring with no restricions. LawNet (or something like it) may be coming. Oh well.... I don't think it will be so terrible... hell, it might even give us something exciting to play with.
computers, and all things related, have birthdays all the time, and all good geeks should recognize this. where would we be without the altair? without (sadly) the 8086/88? without the commodore64/128? these systems gave birth to our world, and, in a sense, gave birth to many of us, and what we are/represent today. Plus, HAL is not JUST a computer (well, in reality, HAL is /just/ fiction), but part of a novel which has been influencing minds for decades now. Celebrate on, have one for ALL the great machines! Happy bday HAL... may you live on in our minds forever.
The movie was completely entertaining, and completely boring at the same time. I think much of it depends on what kind of movies you watch (if any), and whether you've read the book before you watch the movie. If you have ever been involved in any kind of movie production (I haven't, so I /am/ presuming some things), you would probably appreciate it more. Or, if you were a fan of soundless movies (where you have to image/read the script), you would probably appreciate it more. Otherwise, you'll be bored. When you think about it, most of the plot involves one person, who infrequently interacts with a talking ship. So, you have a movie with very little dialogue. It's all about images. When reading the book, you have to read all the descriptions. In the movie, the director has interpreted all of the settings, and created images for you to represent them. You have to think less, and end up being bored. You lose some of the omnipotence that the book gives you. You lose out in most of the character's thoughts. This is why, for most, the book is better. You have more to let you relate to the character; more to make you think.
While I do agree that AOL is presumably one of the largest perpetuators of SPAM, perhaps this is precisely the reason why they decided to take this to court. Granted it has taken them some time, but you have to look at them. They have a large operation to run. Yes, spam takes up their diskspace, takes up their bandwidth, and irritates their users. But maybe they needed to wait until they had a case that was strong enough to go to court, and one that they knew would hold up in court before they went through with it. Going through the process of tracking down these spammers, paying for lawyers, and all else that is involved in this type of case has to add up to some enourmous cost. My guess would be that AOL needed to be sure that they would win the court case before they actually went this far with it. I mean, how bad would it be, for AOL *AND* for the rest of the internet, if they were to go to court on a major case as this one, and LOSE. From their standpoint, they would be out a huge chunk of change. Looking at the view from the rest of the world, we would ALL have lost a major battle in the spam war. Think of how much more power the spammers would have gotten had they won this case. AOL itself probably would have become an even bigger spamming ground (obviously, since they lost the case, another one wouldn't hold up). And the rest of the world would be even more weary of following AOL's footprints. A precedent would have been set. The spammers would have gained a strong upper hand.