As an employer, I am definitely going to be assuming that this person is going to be even less careful with money that isn't is then he is with money that is. I would likely let him give an explanation, but I'm only going to take so much of a risk.
Really? And which company do you run where employee's are free to spend company money as THEY see fit? Now if it were a position of accountancy, then sure. Or CEO, CIO, COO, CTO, CFO, etc. You'd be in direct management of the company's funds, but if you are the other 96% of the company, anything that has to be purchased goes THROUGH purchasing/management, and in this case, it that's ~4% where the actual decisions are going to be made to where the money will be spent.
Personally, I put in requests for funds, but if my budget isn't going to allow it, then the money isn't going to get spent. I'm decent with personal funds, but frankly whereas you may have done well with your personal finances, others may not have been as fortunate. There are conditions WAY beyond a person's control that will force them into a financial position where they wouldn't be able to help but become endebted to someone. Examples? Get laid off, have stroke. Severance/unemployment may have been enough to cover things like mortgage, car note, and electric, but very likely would not cover the over-excessive costs of COBRA to cover medical. Now you're insurance-less and looking at a $50-100k bill. Lucky you, you're credit is slowly getting ripped apart now.
Another example? How about you're a one vehicle family and that vehicle gives up the ghost and has to be replaced? Well, if you're income is tight to begin with (and you'd be amazed how far 23k won't go), are you to suffer because your field of work doesn't provide a 60k/yr salary?
Overall, I get really irritated with credit reports in general. It usually shows that someone had financial hard-knocks at some point.
If you've got perfect credit (and there's a LOT that is required to have such, not solely on-time bill payments), then kudos for you. But if you're going to get elitest about it (one of the parent comments to the one I'm replying), then piss-the-hell off. You don't know what it's like to be forced paycheck to paycheck, and as karma goes, you'll get your lesson in it a lot sooner than later, most likely.
Dang George.. he's trying to build a monopoly and destroy other movie businesses! Darn him!
We must now start an open-movie force! We'll build movies for free, and all the scripts will be written (and sanity-checked) by students. We can include a free sound-crunching system and rendering farm. We'll call it ShowForge.. and we can have a solid business.. let's see.. Movix.. then we can have some of the Movix people drop out and call themselves the FMF (Free Movie Foundation).
Oo oo... and then we'll need a mascot. We'll take a Red Rhone Cow... (So no infriging on any possible movie system that Gateway could come up with), and we'll call 'em Mux!! Yeah.. that's the ticket. Then we'll make movies for free, with volunteer actors, and make movies a-plenty. Taco and Hemos in Rob & Jeff's Excellent Adventure!
Then we could make a Star Wars movie.. maybe call it Distro Wars! YEAH!
Ok.. now, I'll bet that 3rd Star Wars movie is sounding not-so-bad, eh? Hehehehe...
I am not a lawyer-monkey, so I'm not terribly sure about something here.
I can definately see where GPL allows you to sell your own software, and via the provided link, means I must provide a means for people to get the source to the package. But my question is, doesn't the GPL license grant the right for re-distribution by any party? IE. one person gets the source and distributes source only so everyone else can compile it? Or am I thinking WAY too far outside the box?
Closed software (and national copyright terms dictated by a mouse) instead seeks to keep obsolete software copyrights in the hands of corporations for 1.5 human lifetimes. In terms of the lifetime of a computer, that's like 1500 years!
Lifetime of a computer being 1500 years? Bah.. More like 1500 hours. Ok, yeah.. that's the obsolete marker, but still.. I mean, do you wait a lifetime before someone can leave their job? Nope! 30 years and they're obsolete. Kick 'em out the door! At least with a computer you don't have to pay a pension, bloody leeches!
You'll work for pennies to allow me to afford another plane! The 747 is just too small! Bonus? INGRATES! You work for the privilege of entering this building lackies! *whip crack* Row faster!!
Oh.. sorry.. Been going through job-withdrawal lately.
Well, though you posted AC (and I dunno why), this is a darn fine point. I mean, RH is a business, and they do have to turn a dollar or else even more geeks will be released back out into the wild.
I don't look at purchasing distro's as a method of soley keeping the company alive, but as keeping more peeps such as myself in a job just that much longer.
Gosh! Aren't people just so damn helpful? Feel ya pain. Fact is, that up until recently (say what you want, but XFSetup or whatever that evil POS is, is a piece in a big way! It's FAR too easy to botch the whole setup, and the mouse handling has always been less-than-adequate, especially with Intellimice.
But to give ya a solution rather than more griping, RH 8.0 has a utility in the menu:
System Settings->Display
It's pretty good, though it does require the user to have the root password. Realistically, this should be modifyable in dropping a dot file in the home directory for user-specific setings. Probably not too difficult, but RH's utility is pretty straight forward. I've been told there is something very similar in Mandrake 9, but I don't have experience with it.
Personally, I thought it was the VLB was the predicessor (sp?) to PCI. I believe VLB was the competitor to EISA. Lord knows, I've been wrong before, though.
Agreed about OS X (though forever? hehehe).. I think Apple needs to take a step back and open up driver info for their older NuBus machines, though, so some of us who have that legacy stuff could use another OS (ie Linux) on it instead of having OS9 as our last bastion of hope. (There has been a long going project for NuBus machines, however, the 1400cs has one-shot components that just haven't been able to work like PCMCIA, floppy, and GOOD working external SCSI.)
However, I do believe that if M$ would open up, say Direct X, THEN you'd have me starting to turn my head. I like my games far too much, but having them crash under the various Win versions, I now pay my cash to Transgaming in hopes that WineX will get to the point of running them so I don't have to deal with winblowz.
M$ wouldn't lose much revenue for opening the Windows source up. They would still get plenty from the support lines. But it might present the opportunity to FIX a lot of issues with the code.
Heck, I'd just like to play with the actual compiler they use for the OS, since it's reported that they can't use VC++ for it.
I've only read about 3 reviews on SATA so far, and I think it's the next most logical step. However, something that I've noticed missing from comments thus far is that even though they're adding things into the IDE world that SCSI/FC have had for a while (hot-swap, bus-speed).
Number of heads.
This is probably the largest reason I don't use IDE in production outside of workstations. SCSI drives normally have 128-256 heads (unless something has drastically changed, in which case I'll no doubt be corrected), where IDE in any flavor has 16. For a home system, it's fine, but for server environments, that's just not gonna fly. Especially where you're constantly accessing numerous files (db, email, 10k virtual site webserver) more heads improve the access rate and help on the ol' wear and tear as well.
Also, the power couplers kinda freak me out. Tho the molex connectors that we are used to SUCK to remove, they don't come off real easy due to any sort of bumping (ie, sliding the case into the rack or accidentally kicking the tower when sitting down.)
I do think getting the drive bus the heck off the PCI bus will be a huge benefit down the road, but currently it'll just take traffic off the PCI controller and over to the Northbridge. Might help in ethernet (gigabit) communications not having to share.
All said and done, I think there is too much hype about SATA. It comes with some good ideas, but things like hot-swap for your average user (floppies are hot-swap, but how many peeps you know STILL pull the bloody floppy out with the light still on..) are not the answer. For myself (and other power-junkies) it'd be kinda cool provided I could purchase a nice backplane or cage for my tower.
Small gripe on the incredibly shoddy review, though. There's a HUGE difference between 150mb and 150MB. (one is milli-bit, the other megabytes) Normally I won't get onto folks for grammar/spelling, but in this case, it does make some of the graphs, etc. rather confusing.
Schools and business are 2 totally different institutions. Not trying to down you, Woogie, but computers used in a school system and a business are not the same. Give ya a good example:
Computers go down at the Board of Education. People can't access budget, students grades, or profile records. Wait until the system comes back up or is restored from backup. It's just annoying since there are no REALLY necessary deadlines outside of payroll.
Computers go down at the office. Sales can't work on/give presentations to clients, customer information can't be retrieved (think ISP or Credit card processor), or quarterly reports can't be completed for stockholders/banks. This can cost a company a TON of money, clients could leave to find another place of business, etc. (Imagine needing the IRS to look up your information to make sure your extension was filed lest you be fined/go to jail.)
Keep in mind, swapping an office or group of offices takes a TON of time. Normally there are a number of in-house applications that would have to be re-written AND heavily tested before they could be implemented (think of the MEGS of VB source that would have to be ported to perl/php/java). In the gov't, MOST applications are custom-written, many by contracted companies, so the gov't doesn't necessarily have the source to it. Then there is retraining of employees to use the new office/email applications, and the meer re-install of EVERYone's machines from Win to Linux where you hope that all the needed hardware is supported (which has gotten SO much better in the past 3 years.)
It's a daunting task, and can be VERY costly in man-hours to do such a task. If nothing else, the down-time upon switching over and the performance curve while everyone learns the new applications.
I agree in the sense that I'd LOVE to see M$ no longer in the gov't offices, but I also realize what it would entail to switch everything over.
Outlook, I'm definately in agreement on. That is one piece of definate anti-productivity. Evolution was kind in giving a very similar look and feel, but truth be told, it's still not the definative answer. It copies something that many of us remember being a HUGE pita when it came out, and only got worse (migration from Outlook 2k -> Outlook XP was a miserable experience due to bugs galore.)
Office has become some severe bloatware, but in it's younger years (office 95 std), it wasn't too shabby at all. Gave all the functionality that you needed plus the macro abilities which were strong enough to do things like importing an address book from excel/access and producing mass-mailers for churches and businesses alike (put anti-church sentiment elsewhere, not the topic of this thread.) I firmly believe that if you were to model an office suite from 95 and make different improvements like easier wizards and such, that would be the killer app. Word has become more of a page-layout software than the word processor it began as.
Also, far too many people rely on Access instead of a relational db, but there must be some merit there that could be improved upon for a x-platform solution. I mean, we have db4 databases, why not slap an easy to use gui on the front? (If there's such a system that exists, I'm unaware of it so please list it in a reply.)
OpenOffice is a pretty great piece of work, and hopefully it can be tweaked to fix that niche that is the business desktop. I believe that another type of Email client, however, is really going to be necessary before the masses will accept it.
Many people still say that Linux can never fill the desktop market.
I don't believe that at all, but the large-profile companies (RH, Mandrake, Caldera) need to stop stripping the common desktop tools and include a distribution that gives the user the power that they have on current Windows boxen. Aside from not having a true DirectX equiv. (would be a HUGE bonus), they need to include packages like a video media player that covers ALL formats (including QT/Real/DivX) instead of having to download 10 different packages and compile them all (IN order, otherwise you lack features.. bloody mess), and provide a viewer that is intuitive enough for "Joe Bob" to use. He can already use Win Media, so make something as easy, but can play more formats (insert obligatory mpeg-2 + ogg plug here). Also, put the mp3 libs back in! XMMS is nice, but dangit, I wanna play both mp3's AND ogg's.
Businesses are slowly accepting Linux, but it's my belief that still some things must be changed before it can hit mainstream. The power is there and the apps are coming close. We just need to tighten the reigns and pull it all together.
[NOTE] I have tried multiple times to build a new email client, but to no avail. I've never been any good at layout and past attempts prove it. However, I'm gonna still plug at it until I or someone else gets it right.
Agreed. Especially for "Bragging rights" as the case may be. Code is like art, and the artists like to be able to show off their stuff!
Re:I always just "look" busy
on
The New IT Crisis
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· Score: 4, Interesting
God.. I pity you peeps..
Seriously, any time I go to work for a new company, the first 2 months are spent automating everything across the board. I'll generally get no sleep quite a few nights writing software, and when I'm done, I just tell management that because of errors in the past, all work orders will be processed through this new interface. I give 'em an internal web addy and then go play Quake/EQ/etc. for the rest of my time there (which has never been less than 1 1/2 years which I get vested options from). The websites handle all the dummy checking, logs all processes to another system to check periodically to make sure all works well, and performs whatever request they want.
I order spares for about every piece of equipment in the building including spare switches and 1-2 spare servers for the occassional *frying* motherboard. If the servers are set up in non-redundant fashion, I make sure load balancers (or happy cisco 6500) are ordered, every server has a backup, all backups are automated and working properly, and put in the DR (Disaster Recovery) report JUST incase they want to go that route.
Frankly, I have MAYBE 1 hour of downtime a year, and that's usually attributed to my tripping over a cable that some numb-nutz (who's gonna get chewed out for an hour) layed outside of the wire maintenance tray. Only reason I move jobs is because I just get WAY too bored. Admining is easy for those who aren't inept.
Why does everyone always talk about this "Mule" crap when this subject is brought up? I've been into RPGs off and on since '81, and I can't remember a long running campaign EVER where I just used a single character. Why? I would periodically feel like PLAYING a different ROLE. That is, after all, the entire purpose of a ROLE PLAYING game....
Well, first of all, computer/online stuff is never going to take the place of pen -n- paper. GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! Go visit real, living friends. Sit around with no computer, tv, radio, etc. and enjoy having company!
Secondly, I've been playing EQ pretty hot-n-heavy for the past 2 1/2 years. Good game, has it problems, enjoy the playstyle. My issue is I get board playing my main (cleric), and sometimes I just go hack-n-slash with a tank, or play background boy with my 'chanter. Or feel like grouping with newer, younger players (something that won't be able to be done with only one character per server) so I fire up a lowbie and head out with 'em.
See, everyone isn't going to get into the game at once, and the biggest problem will be when your friend, a year down the road, breaks down and buys the game and wants to go out with ya. Well, you're going to be stuck for a long time running lower missions to attempt to get him up to speed. Even skill based, there's a level aspect involved. If there weren't, you'd have no character development to speak of since there is no advantage to higher "levels" or skill branches.
As far as mules go, I have 1 mule and 7 PC's. The mule is just to throw various equipment on since I do a LOT of tradeskills and don't have enough room for all the components I collect AND the gear I use based on certain situations.
So, all being said, I can understand their decision (yes, money has much to do with it, but trying to make a game non-EQ like also does as well.) I don't like it, but I'll play the game and see how it goes. I agree that having 2 characters per server is a much better idea to begin with, but hey. If I'm that into the game and have the extra cash, I'll buy an additional account. Why not?
Ok.. I ran BBS's for about 12 years... Totally love this. Now, I've got a quest for some of you "so 'leet" peeps out there. Been trying to find an OLD BBS Door/p-file that I loved and played for a long time. Problem is, I can't remember whether it was C=64 or x86 game. I believe it was called "The Seven Seas", though it MIGHT have been something different.
You'd buy a ship, food, arms, etc. and run around making deliveries. On occassion you'd get attacked by pirates. If you destroyed the ships, you'd get some extra booty to buy more guns/bigger ship with. You could also choose to attack one person per day. I loved the game, but can't find it anywhere. Anyone got a link?
My god.. WHAT do you think makes a good book? How about people ACTUALLY enjoy reading it? After 18 years of creative writing, I have to admit that I've gotten completely and utterly worn out with people saying that one book or series of books is "not good writing" when SO many others enjoy them. You know, a good book is a matter of opinion.
If you don't like them for one reason or another, say so along with WHY you don't like it. (And for the love of Christ, don't use the "That could never happen" line when discussing ANY fiction, sci-fi included.)
The Harry Potter series was written for children to read. It has enough appeal to adults that many of them enjoy the stories as well. I do. If you're looking for all those little buzzwords you heard in college (fore-shadowing, imagery, etc), then that's your thing. Go read Poe, Shakespeare, Joyce, et al. Don't try to take away from others what they enjoy. It only makes you look like a damn fool.
I have to admit, I have absolutely NO problem what-so-ever about regulating porn to it's own domain. I mean, geez people. They can already track your sessions via proxy, so it's not like theres any additional security problems there. You could (heaven forbid) start blocking.porn sites at the firewall level to keep even more of those damnable pop-ups from flying all over the place when you're making a legitimate lookup! I'm sorry if I don't see a "Freedom of Speech" restriction here by ANY stretch of the imagination.
And are you REALLY believing that your ISP will choose simply not to resolve those type addresses? Sure they will. Same reason why stuff like alt.binaries.erotica.teen exists still.
I say let's do it. As for the video taping, that was bound to happen. Good thing, too! If it's not for security, it's mounted (wireless connected) to a remote-control car to run around the office and annoy people.:) It's fun, yet creative! Put a small transiever on it, and join the meeting from the privacy of your cubicle. No more interrupted Tribes 2 matchs!
Personally, I don't mind waiting on the Apache project to take their time and do it right. I believe 2.0 isn't bloatware, but a far more modular and extensible version of the worlds fav. web server. Personally I've been waiting for a WHILE to start using it. I'm not sure if PHP4 will compile against it yet. Maybe out of CVS it will.
With the new threading, it should manage to push out pages a lot faster under load, and make better use of the processors. Might have to go download today. Here's a project for those of you bleeding edgers out there. I've yet to manage this one myself:
Apache 2.0 + mod_perl + php4 (with support for MySQL 4.x) + mod_ssl.
I don't think non-CVS PHP4 will handle MySQL 4.x, but perhaps there are others that know how.
Unix admin/Programmer/networks here with boatloads of experience, and I've been out of work for over 3 months now. West TN has NO jobs around currently. We had a job fair here last week and about 60% of the people there were IT. Honestly there were people there in the booth's that were straining to run off IT's since so many had come by to talk to 'em. It's getting WAY too rough out there. I'm really beginning to think I'm going to have to work on my fry-handling techniques or something. Geez, give me a dang palette to load!
Didn't really mean it as a right, just it'd be a cool click. I don't break the rules simply cause I don't ever want my account banned. Things like Showeq, eqannounce, and selling of accounts/loot on auctions just isn't gonna happen from me since I'd probably get caught in the process.
Yeah.. and you wouldn't enjoy making money at playing a game? Hmmm? I'm a programmer and admin, so I appreciate all the hard work that goes into creating and running this game. Not trying to devalue that at all. I'm just asking you if you think it'd be so wrong to make a few extra bucks doing something recreational?
Ick! Another addiction I had. Finally dumped that one since it just cost WAY too much money to continue playing. EQ is reasonably priced and is pretty fun still. You know, I'm surprised why there haven't been more studies on the types of people that these games appeal to.
Personally I like going to bars, clubs, sports events, etc. But I really do prefer to spend a lot of my time online. And I save money, too:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'll give ya that :)
As an employer, I am definitely going to be assuming that this person is going to be even less careful with money that isn't is then he is with money that is. I would likely let him give an explanation, but I'm only going to take so much of a risk.
Really? And which company do you run where employee's are free to spend company money as THEY see fit? Now if it were a position of accountancy, then sure. Or CEO, CIO, COO, CTO, CFO, etc. You'd be in direct management of the company's funds, but if you are the other 96% of the company, anything that has to be purchased goes THROUGH purchasing/management, and in this case, it that's ~4% where the actual decisions are going to be made to where the money will be spent.
Personally, I put in requests for funds, but if my budget isn't going to allow it, then the money isn't going to get spent. I'm decent with personal funds, but frankly whereas you may have done well with your personal finances, others may not have been as fortunate. There are conditions WAY beyond a person's control that will force them into a financial position where they wouldn't be able to help but become endebted to someone. Examples? Get laid off, have stroke. Severance/unemployment may have been enough to cover things like mortgage, car note, and electric, but very likely would not cover the over-excessive costs of COBRA to cover medical. Now you're insurance-less and looking at a $50-100k bill. Lucky you, you're credit is slowly getting ripped apart now.
Another example? How about you're a one vehicle family and that vehicle gives up the ghost and has to be replaced? Well, if you're income is tight to begin with (and you'd be amazed how far 23k won't go), are you to suffer because your field of work doesn't provide a 60k/yr salary?
Overall, I get really irritated with credit reports in general. It usually shows that someone had financial hard-knocks at some point.
If you've got perfect credit (and there's a LOT that is required to have such, not solely on-time bill payments), then kudos for you. But if you're going to get elitest about it (one of the parent comments to the one I'm replying), then piss-the-hell off. You don't know what it's like to be forced paycheck to paycheck, and as karma goes, you'll get your lesson in it a lot sooner than later, most likely.
1 million times the data, 1 millionth of a calorie?
Dang George.. he's trying to build a monopoly and destroy other movie businesses! Darn him!
We must now start an open-movie force! We'll build movies for free, and all the scripts will be written (and sanity-checked) by students. We can include a free sound-crunching system and rendering farm. We'll call it ShowForge.. and we can have a solid business.. let's see.. Movix.. then we can have some of the Movix people drop out and call themselves the FMF (Free Movie Foundation).
Oo oo... and then we'll need a mascot. We'll take a Red Rhone Cow... (So no infriging on any possible movie system that Gateway could come up with), and we'll call 'em Mux!! Yeah.. that's the ticket. Then we'll make movies for free, with volunteer actors, and make movies a-plenty. Taco and Hemos in Rob & Jeff's Excellent Adventure!
Then we could make a Star Wars movie.. maybe call it Distro Wars! YEAH!
Ok.. now, I'll bet that 3rd Star Wars movie is sounding not-so-bad, eh? Hehehehe...
I am not a lawyer-monkey, so I'm not terribly sure about something here.
I can definately see where GPL allows you to sell your own software, and via the provided link, means I must provide a means for people to get the source to the package. But my question is, doesn't the GPL license grant the right for re-distribution by any party? IE. one person gets the source and distributes source only so everyone else can compile it? Or am I thinking WAY too far outside the box?
Lifetime of a computer being 1500 years? Bah.. More like 1500 hours. Ok, yeah.. that's the obsolete marker, but still.. I mean, do you wait a lifetime before someone can leave their job? Nope! 30 years and they're obsolete. Kick 'em out the door! At least with a computer you don't have to pay a pension, bloody leeches!
You'll work for pennies to allow me to afford another plane! The 747 is just too small! Bonus? INGRATES! You work for the privilege of entering this building lackies! *whip crack* Row faster!!
Oh.. sorry.. Been going through job-withdrawal lately.
Well, though you posted AC (and I dunno why), this is a darn fine point. I mean, RH is a business, and they do have to turn a dollar or else even more geeks will be released back out into the wild.
I don't look at purchasing distro's as a method of soley keeping the company alive, but as keeping more peeps such as myself in a job just that much longer.
Gosh! Aren't people just so damn helpful? Feel ya pain. Fact is, that up until recently (say what you want, but XFSetup or whatever that evil POS is, is a piece in a big way! It's FAR too easy to botch the whole setup, and the mouse handling has always been less-than-adequate, especially with Intellimice.
But to give ya a solution rather than more griping, RH 8.0 has a utility in the menu:
System Settings->Display
It's pretty good, though it does require the user to have the root password. Realistically, this should be modifyable in dropping a dot file in the home directory for user-specific setings. Probably not too difficult, but RH's utility is pretty straight forward. I've been told there is something very similar in Mandrake 9, but I don't have experience with it.
Hope this helps
Personally, I thought it was the VLB was the predicessor (sp?) to PCI. I believe VLB was the competitor to EISA. Lord knows, I've been wrong before, though.
Agreed about OS X (though forever? hehehe).. I think Apple needs to take a step back and open up driver info for their older NuBus machines, though, so some of us who have that legacy stuff could use another OS (ie Linux) on it instead of having OS9 as our last bastion of hope. (There has been a long going project for NuBus machines, however, the 1400cs has one-shot components that just haven't been able to work like PCMCIA, floppy, and GOOD working external SCSI.)
However, I do believe that if M$ would open up, say Direct X, THEN you'd have me starting to turn my head. I like my games far too much, but having them crash under the various Win versions, I now pay my cash to Transgaming in hopes that WineX will get to the point of running them so I don't have to deal with winblowz.
M$ wouldn't lose much revenue for opening the Windows source up. They would still get plenty from the support lines. But it might present the opportunity to FIX a lot of issues with the code.
Heck, I'd just like to play with the actual compiler they use for the OS, since it's reported that they can't use VC++ for it.
I've only read about 3 reviews on SATA so far, and I think it's the next most logical step. However, something that I've noticed missing from comments thus far is that even though they're adding things into the IDE world that SCSI/FC have had for a while (hot-swap, bus-speed).
Number of heads.
This is probably the largest reason I don't use IDE in production outside of workstations. SCSI drives normally have 128-256 heads (unless something has drastically changed, in which case I'll no doubt be corrected), where IDE in any flavor has 16. For a home system, it's fine, but for server environments, that's just not gonna fly. Especially where you're constantly accessing numerous files (db, email, 10k virtual site webserver) more heads improve the access rate and help on the ol' wear and tear as well.
Also, the power couplers kinda freak me out. Tho the molex connectors that we are used to SUCK to remove, they don't come off real easy due to any sort of bumping (ie, sliding the case into the rack or accidentally kicking the tower when sitting down.)
I do think getting the drive bus the heck off the PCI bus will be a huge benefit down the road, but currently it'll just take traffic off the PCI controller and over to the Northbridge. Might help in ethernet (gigabit) communications not having to share.
All said and done, I think there is too much hype about SATA. It comes with some good ideas, but things like hot-swap for your average user (floppies are hot-swap, but how many peeps you know STILL pull the bloody floppy out with the light still on..) are not the answer. For myself (and other power-junkies) it'd be kinda cool provided I could purchase a nice backplane or cage for my tower.
Small gripe on the incredibly shoddy review, though. There's a HUGE difference between 150mb and 150MB. (one is milli-bit, the other megabytes) Normally I won't get onto folks for grammar/spelling, but in this case, it does make some of the graphs, etc. rather confusing.
Schools and business are 2 totally different institutions. Not trying to down you, Woogie, but computers used in a school system and a business are not the same. Give ya a good example:
Computers go down at the Board of Education. People can't access budget, students grades, or profile records. Wait until the system comes back up or is restored from backup. It's just annoying since there are no REALLY necessary deadlines outside of payroll.
Computers go down at the office. Sales can't work on/give presentations to clients, customer information can't be retrieved (think ISP or Credit card processor), or quarterly reports can't be completed for stockholders/banks. This can cost a company a TON of money, clients could leave to find another place of business, etc. (Imagine needing the IRS to look up your information to make sure your extension was filed lest you be fined/go to jail.)
Keep in mind, swapping an office or group of offices takes a TON of time. Normally there are a number of in-house applications that would have to be re-written AND heavily tested before they could be implemented (think of the MEGS of VB source that would have to be ported to perl/php/java). In the gov't, MOST applications are custom-written, many by contracted companies, so the gov't doesn't necessarily have the source to it. Then there is retraining of employees to use the new office/email applications, and the meer re-install of EVERYone's machines from Win to Linux where you hope that all the needed hardware is supported (which has gotten SO much better in the past 3 years.)
It's a daunting task, and can be VERY costly in man-hours to do such a task. If nothing else, the down-time upon switching over and the performance curve while everyone learns the new applications.
I agree in the sense that I'd LOVE to see M$ no longer in the gov't offices, but I also realize what it would entail to switch everything over.
Outlook, I'm definately in agreement on. That is one piece of definate anti-productivity. Evolution was kind in giving a very similar look and feel, but truth be told, it's still not the definative answer. It copies something that many of us remember being a HUGE pita when it came out, and only got worse (migration from Outlook 2k -> Outlook XP was a miserable experience due to bugs galore.)
Office has become some severe bloatware, but in it's younger years (office 95 std), it wasn't too shabby at all. Gave all the functionality that you needed plus the macro abilities which were strong enough to do things like importing an address book from excel/access and producing mass-mailers for churches and businesses alike (put anti-church sentiment elsewhere, not the topic of this thread.) I firmly believe that if you were to model an office suite from 95 and make different improvements like easier wizards and such, that would be the killer app. Word has become more of a page-layout software than the word processor it began as.
Also, far too many people rely on Access instead of a relational db, but there must be some merit there that could be improved upon for a x-platform solution. I mean, we have db4 databases, why not slap an easy to use gui on the front? (If there's such a system that exists, I'm unaware of it so please list it in a reply.)
OpenOffice is a pretty great piece of work, and hopefully it can be tweaked to fix that niche that is the business desktop. I believe that another type of Email client, however, is really going to be necessary before the masses will accept it.
Many people still say that Linux can never fill the desktop market.
I don't believe that at all, but the large-profile companies (RH, Mandrake, Caldera) need to stop stripping the common desktop tools and include a distribution that gives the user the power that they have on current Windows boxen. Aside from not having a true DirectX equiv. (would be a HUGE bonus), they need to include packages like a video media player that covers ALL formats (including QT/Real/DivX) instead of having to download 10 different packages and compile them all (IN order, otherwise you lack features.. bloody mess), and provide a viewer that is intuitive enough for "Joe Bob" to use. He can already use Win Media, so make something as easy, but can play more formats (insert obligatory mpeg-2 + ogg plug here). Also, put the mp3 libs back in! XMMS is nice, but dangit, I wanna play both mp3's AND ogg's.
Businesses are slowly accepting Linux, but it's my belief that still some things must be changed before it can hit mainstream. The power is there and the apps are coming close. We just need to tighten the reigns and pull it all together.
[NOTE] I have tried multiple times to build a new email client, but to no avail. I've never been any good at layout and past attempts prove it. However, I'm gonna still plug at it until I or someone else gets it right.
Agreed. Especially for "Bragging rights" as the case may be. Code is like art, and the artists like to be able to show off their stuff!
God.. I pity you peeps..
Seriously, any time I go to work for a new company, the first 2 months are spent automating everything across the board. I'll generally get no sleep quite a few nights writing software, and when I'm done, I just tell management that because of errors in the past, all work orders will be processed through this new interface. I give 'em an internal web addy and then go play Quake/EQ/etc. for the rest of my time there (which has never been less than 1 1/2 years which I get vested options from). The websites handle all the dummy checking, logs all processes to another system to check periodically to make sure all works well, and performs whatever request they want.
I order spares for about every piece of equipment in the building including spare switches and 1-2 spare servers for the occassional *frying* motherboard. If the servers are set up in non-redundant fashion, I make sure load balancers (or happy cisco 6500) are ordered, every server has a backup, all backups are automated and working properly, and put in the DR (Disaster Recovery) report JUST incase they want to go that route.
Frankly, I have MAYBE 1 hour of downtime a year, and that's usually attributed to my tripping over a cable that some numb-nutz (who's gonna get chewed out for an hour) layed outside of the wire maintenance tray. Only reason I move jobs is because I just get WAY too bored. Admining is easy for those who aren't inept.
Why does everyone always talk about this "Mule" crap when this subject is brought up? I've been into RPGs off and on since '81, and I can't remember a long running campaign EVER where I just used a single character. Why? I would periodically feel like PLAYING a different ROLE. That is, after all, the entire purpose of a ROLE PLAYING game....
Well, first of all, computer/online stuff is never going to take the place of pen -n- paper. GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! Go visit real, living friends. Sit around with no computer, tv, radio, etc. and enjoy having company!
Secondly, I've been playing EQ pretty hot-n-heavy for the past 2 1/2 years. Good game, has it problems, enjoy the playstyle. My issue is I get board playing my main (cleric), and sometimes I just go hack-n-slash with a tank, or play background boy with my 'chanter. Or feel like grouping with newer, younger players (something that won't be able to be done with only one character per server) so I fire up a lowbie and head out with 'em.
See, everyone isn't going to get into the game at once, and the biggest problem will be when your friend, a year down the road, breaks down and buys the game and wants to go out with ya. Well, you're going to be stuck for a long time running lower missions to attempt to get him up to speed. Even skill based, there's a level aspect involved. If there weren't, you'd have no character development to speak of since there is no advantage to higher "levels" or skill branches.
As far as mules go, I have 1 mule and 7 PC's. The mule is just to throw various equipment on since I do a LOT of tradeskills and don't have enough room for all the components I collect AND the gear I use based on certain situations.
So, all being said, I can understand their decision (yes, money has much to do with it, but trying to make a game non-EQ like also does as well.) I don't like it, but I'll play the game and see how it goes. I agree that having 2 characters per server is a much better idea to begin with, but hey. If I'm that into the game and have the extra cash, I'll buy an additional account. Why not?
I've got to get to that IO tower and communicate with my user.
I SO want that laser in my town, although, you've got to wonder how that would affect pilots!
Ok.. I ran BBS's for about 12 years... Totally love this. Now, I've got a quest for some of you "so 'leet" peeps out there. Been trying to find an OLD BBS Door/p-file that I loved and played for a long time. Problem is, I can't remember whether it was C=64 or x86 game. I believe it was called "The Seven Seas", though it MIGHT have been something different.
You'd buy a ship, food, arms, etc. and run around making deliveries. On occassion you'd get attacked by pirates. If you destroyed the ships, you'd get some extra booty to buy more guns/bigger ship with. You could also choose to attack one person per day. I loved the game, but can't find it anywhere. Anyone got a link?
My god.. WHAT do you think makes a good book? How about people ACTUALLY enjoy reading it? After 18 years of creative writing, I have to admit that I've gotten completely and utterly worn out with people saying that one book or series of books is "not good writing" when SO many others enjoy them. You know, a good book is a matter of opinion.
If you don't like them for one reason or another, say so along with WHY you don't like it. (And for the love of Christ, don't use the "That could never happen" line when discussing ANY fiction, sci-fi included.)
The Harry Potter series was written for children to read. It has enough appeal to adults that many of them enjoy the stories as well. I do. If you're looking for all those little buzzwords you heard in college (fore-shadowing, imagery, etc), then that's your thing. Go read Poe, Shakespeare, Joyce, et al. Don't try to take away from others what they enjoy. It only makes you look like a damn fool.
I have to admit, I have absolutely NO problem what-so-ever about regulating porn to it's own domain. I mean, geez people. They can already track your sessions via proxy, so it's not like theres any additional security problems there. You could (heaven forbid) start blocking .porn sites at the firewall level to keep even more of those damnable pop-ups from flying all over the place when you're making a legitimate lookup! I'm sorry if I don't see a "Freedom of Speech" restriction here by ANY stretch of the imagination.
:) It's fun, yet creative! Put a small transiever on it, and join the meeting from the privacy of your cubicle. No more interrupted Tribes 2 matchs!
And are you REALLY believing that your ISP will choose simply not to resolve those type addresses? Sure they will. Same reason why stuff like alt.binaries.erotica.teen exists still.
I say let's do it. As for the video taping, that was bound to happen. Good thing, too! If it's not for security, it's mounted (wireless connected) to a remote-control car to run around the office and annoy people.
Personally, I don't mind waiting on the Apache project to take their time and do it right. I believe 2.0 isn't bloatware, but a far more modular and extensible version of the worlds fav. web server. Personally I've been waiting for a WHILE to start using it. I'm not sure if PHP4 will compile against it yet. Maybe out of CVS it will.
With the new threading, it should manage to push out pages a lot faster under load, and make better use of the processors. Might have to go download today. Here's a project for those of you bleeding edgers out there. I've yet to manage this one myself:
Apache 2.0 + mod_perl + php4 (with support for MySQL 4.x) + mod_ssl.
I don't think non-CVS PHP4 will handle MySQL 4.x, but perhaps there are others that know how.
Back to topic, way to go guys!!
Unix admin/Programmer/networks here with boatloads of experience, and I've been out of work for over 3 months now. West TN has NO jobs around currently. We had a job fair here last week and about 60% of the people there were IT. Honestly there were people there in the booth's that were straining to run off IT's since so many had come by to talk to 'em. It's getting WAY too rough out there. I'm really beginning to think I'm going to have to work on my fry-handling techniques or something. Geez, give me a dang palette to load!
Didn't really mean it as a right, just it'd be a cool click. I don't break the rules simply cause I don't ever want my account banned. Things like Showeq, eqannounce, and selling of accounts/loot on auctions just isn't gonna happen from me since I'd probably get caught in the process.
:)
Anyhow, enjoy
Yeah.. and you wouldn't enjoy making money at playing a game? Hmmm? I'm a programmer and admin, so I appreciate all the hard work that goes into creating and running this game. Not trying to devalue that at all. I'm just asking you if you think it'd be so wrong to make a few extra bucks doing something recreational?
Ick! Another addiction I had. Finally dumped that one since it just cost WAY too much money to continue playing. EQ is reasonably priced and is pretty fun still. You know, I'm surprised why there haven't been more studies on the types of people that these games appeal to.
:)
Personally I like going to bars, clubs, sports events, etc. But I really do prefer to spend a lot of my time online. And I save money, too