The problem with "doing the "boring work" is that the boring work IS NEVER FINISHED. Look at all the stalled projects on sourceforge that are at version 0.4 or 0.5. The programmer scratched his itch, and his desire to finish the project with all the neat features dwindled, and it is now abandoned. This is why free software is doomed.
Every hear of an ecology of ideas? All those failed projects are just compost.
Being on the hiring end, it sounds like you have an attitude problem.
Maybe not. I never see good candidates from HR.
Of the 20 or so interviews I've been involved with
in the last 2 years I've been excited about hiring
1 person.
I could rant for hours about the wild claims
people make on their resumes. Some in honest
ignorance, they think they know more than they do,
but most because they know that they have a chance
of getting hired through a breakdown in the
screening process. Happens often enough to pay
off.
I'll take a cocky bastard with ability over
a nice person with "potential" any day.
"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a SysAdmin; but I repeat myself."
Now I disagree with old Mark that all system
administrators are idiots. Its just that those
who are worth anything tend to move on fairly
quickly these days.
This kind of legal stupidity has much to do with
that.
Remember that there are viruses that spread
by sharing dirty software, something College
students are know to do in the name of Freedom
and being broke.
Think T.V. couldn't possibly get any worse? We
already have tabloid news, cop/rescue/emergency
shows, reality series, soap operas, gameshows,
party shows, court shows, you name it.
Why not animatronic RealDolls being tortured,
raped, or murdered?
Hidden camera sex scavenger hunts?
Propaganda "news" programs whitewashing or
glorifying hate crimes?
Plenty of other possibilities to make a buck
pandering to those who can't get enough misery
and degradation. The site mentioned that programs
involving human suffering are extremely popular in
Japan. I bet US producers are not far behind on
this.
--
How much good fantasy is out there?
on
Lord of the Geeks
·
· Score: 1
Not much.
Tolkien (LOTR)
Donaldson (the Unbeliever)
Jordan (Wheel of Time)
Adams (Watership Down)
Zelazny (Amber)
Pratchett(Discworld)
C.S. Lewis belongs in my list too, but I have not
been able to re-read those books since I was 12.
As a general rule I dislike fantasy. Some of the
"D&D" stuff like Dragonlance and Death's Gate are
not as awful as most, but I almost never bother to
re-read such stuff after reading it the first
time. Terry Brooks, Eddings, etc. make me ill -
a regurgitation of Tolkien without the scale
or ability.
Give me SF any day - mostly crap as well, but much
more good stuff to be found.
In the Hobbit they are always called goblins, except
for the mention of the "big ones (goblins), the orcs
of the mountains" having the ability to run through
their tunnels at great speed.
In the introduction to LOTR those exact goblins
are refered to as orcs, never as goblins. The place
were Bilbo gets the ring as the "black orc-mines
deep under the mountains".
--
Re:Creating a World vs. Literature
on
Lord of the Geeks
·
· Score: 2
However, obvious ones like Frodo's struggle with the ring meaning "power is corrupting" I'm OK with.
Why is this obvious? LOTR is filled with power
that does not corrupt - the Elven Rings that were
never touched by Sauron, Tom Bombadil, the Ents,
Gandalf, and so on.
Some of my favorite scenes are characters coming
into power of some sort - Gandalf's
transformation to White, Aragorn's crowning,
Samwise vs. Shelob, Merry vs. the captain of the
Nazgul, the liberation of the Shire.
Frodo himself is given a task that is too much for
anyone and he falls in the end, but his earlier
good (vs. expedient) decision to let Smeagol live
is rewarded with the destruction of the Ring.
About the only valid allegory I get out of LOTR
is Sauron as Satan. Also, "Expediency is bad", but
that is more an object lesson.
I'd like examples, because my spidey-sense is
calling bullshit. I'd like to think that there
are Sales and Marketing people who are worth a
shit, but I just do not believe it.
Marketing makes unreasonable requests, tries to
sneak in late requirements, gives beta customers
assurances that any little thing they want they
will be in the next drop, never worry about
fucking the engineering or operational groups, and
whine about teamwork and other groups failing to
produce.
Sales lies. To the customers, to Marketing, to
Sales, to Engineering, to anyone. It's their job
to lie. I refuse to believe that any sales
department that has not seen wholesale execution
of its staff has suffered unfairly. Gawd I hate
Sales.
As for your claim that the engineers who fail
to produce are promoted - you are correct. They
become engineering management.
I have looked through the supposedly "stable"
Linux code base several times. I have found
malloc() statements that do not check for NULL!
This is not stable. It is a toy OS. A mere trinket
for hobbyists to use.
memory leaks here we come!
Failing to check the value returned by malloc is
a bad idea. A very common bit of bad judgement
that always irritates me, but how on earth would
it create a memory leak? In C - probably not, in
C++ - more likely (if exceptions and the
pre-standard style of new are mixed)
If you are going to troll here, (and who doesn't these days?) please try to give those reading at
0 and -1 something interesting to read.
I don't let anyone see my code unless it's for an audit, but they stopped that a while back. I create a component and it works how it's supposed to.
HOW I got it to work that way is none of anyone's business. (with the exception of my employer)
So you don't worry about namespace pollution, Thread-safety, environment integrity, memory leaks, or any of the other things that tend to
be problems in shared programming environments.
This makes me sound like an asshole - but I would
hate to work on a project with you. I've worked
with people with this attitude to a much lesser
extent, and it makes things very difficult.
Code itself can rarely be stolen by someone incapable of producing it in the first place.
I've seen a lot of cut and paste code with no
credit given to the original author, but it is
always glaringly obvious what happened.
Proprietary implementation details and IP
do not belong in most forms of Open Source - I can agree with that.
OTOH, your statement:
However, in any software
development I'm involved in, I wouldn't let
anyone know how I do what I do.
makes it sound as
if you jealously guard all your code, refuse code
walkthroughs and peer reviews, don't comment, etc.
in order to prevent others from knowing what you
know. If that is the case I'm not sure what to say, you are a lost soul.
(BTW: I still contend that Contra is impossible to beat unless you have 30 lives.:) )
I've seen plenty of posts here mentioning that
this game was impossible without the cheat.
Please hold the applause, but I beat it the week before that issue of Nintendo Power with the cheat code came out. Thats right. I am a good and valuable person.
The trick was to avoid the instant death from ofscreen fire in the elevators and to work the machine gunner right after the drop-spike traps onto screen by activating the traps and moving back. Then jump, shoot, duck, shoot. Repeat.
Pretty good memory for a geezer of twenty-::mumble::
The most frustrating thing about using a new *nix
for me has always been lackluster documentation
of admin interfaces for basic workstation needs
Examples:
useradd/adduser
pkgadd/rpm/yast/whatever
printing system oddities
startup files
window system management
I consider myself an intermediate level user of
computers, but I've stayed away from the current
distributions of Linux because of the focus on
building a better admin interface and screwing
up the basics. (I've been forced to learn to
deal with Solaris brain damage to a certain
extent, but it is certainly nothing I'd use at
home.)
It seems to me that the best way to document
this would be to teach the fundamentals and
do articles on how the interface the admin
tools provide works.
Simple example:
adding a user The fundamentals:
password, shadow password, dbm files, home
directories, shell.rc files, skel directories,
uid, and group memberships.
Interface tool details:
Is the home directory created for you and
permissions set corretly. What is the "template"
directory for.rc files? What editor is used
by default and can it be changed by ENV?
If this sort of approach is applied to managing
software packages, printing, setting up name
resolution, font management, and so on it would
go a long way to making Debian more accesible.
As several people have mentioned, the capture of RADIUS and DHCP is to allow an association of a targeted user with an ip address, but how generally useful is that? The largest ISPs that do use RADIUS do not use a Framed-IP-Address to assign an ip. Several others use proprietary or legacy protocols such as TACACS,TACACS+, or ACP.
To "prove" that the RADIUS packet is from the ISP's dial network (RADIUS is UDP and easily spoofed - requiring an authenticator) they will need to have the shared secret, so the FBI can collect passwords if they really feel like it.
Unless they believe they can trust a UDP packet claiming to be from the ISPs dial network,
in which case they have my pity.
I've never bothered to look into spoofing DHCP but I imagine most ISP dial networks are going to be configured for convience rather than security.
Does anyone have any idea how much assistance the FBI is requiring form ISPs on this?
Slashdot Mirror
Every hear of an ecology of ideas? All those failed projects are just compost.
--
Maybe not. I never see good candidates from HR. Of the 20 or so interviews I've been involved with in the last 2 years I've been excited about hiring 1 person.
I could rant for hours about the wild claims people make on their resumes. Some in honest ignorance, they think they know more than they do, but most because they know that they have a chance of getting hired through a breakdown in the screening process. Happens often enough to pay off.
I'll take a cocky bastard with ability over a nice person with "potential" any day.
--
THERE'S NO FOOD HERE! MOVE TO WHERE THE FOOD IS!"
--
Now I disagree with old Mark that all system administrators are idiots. Its just that those who are worth anything tend to move on fairly quickly these days. This kind of legal stupidity has much to do with that.
--
--
Why not animatronic RealDolls being tortured, raped, or murdered?
Hidden camera sex scavenger hunts?
Propaganda "news" programs whitewashing or glorifying hate crimes?
Plenty of other possibilities to make a buck pandering to those who can't get enough misery and degradation. The site mentioned that programs involving human suffering are extremely popular in Japan. I bet US producers are not far behind on this.
--
Tolkien (LOTR)
Donaldson (the Unbeliever)
Jordan (Wheel of Time)
Adams (Watership Down)
Zelazny (Amber)
Pratchett(Discworld)
C.S. Lewis belongs in my list too, but I have not been able to re-read those books since I was 12.
As a general rule I dislike fantasy. Some of the "D&D" stuff like Dragonlance and Death's Gate are not as awful as most, but I almost never bother to re-read such stuff after reading it the first time. Terry Brooks, Eddings, etc. make me ill - a regurgitation of Tolkien without the scale or ability.
Give me SF any day - mostly crap as well, but much more good stuff to be found.
--
In the introduction to LOTR those exact goblins are refered to as orcs, never as goblins. The place were Bilbo gets the ring as the "black orc-mines deep under the mountains".
--
Why is this obvious? LOTR is filled with power that does not corrupt - the Elven Rings that were never touched by Sauron, Tom Bombadil, the Ents, Gandalf, and so on.
Some of my favorite scenes are characters coming into power of some sort - Gandalf's transformation to White, Aragorn's crowning, Samwise vs. Shelob, Merry vs. the captain of the Nazgul, the liberation of the Shire.
Frodo himself is given a task that is too much for anyone and he falls in the end, but his earlier good (vs. expedient) decision to let Smeagol live is rewarded with the destruction of the Ring.
About the only valid allegory I get out of LOTR is Sauron as Satan. Also, "Expediency is bad", but that is more an object lesson.
--
Marketing makes unreasonable requests, tries to sneak in late requirements, gives beta customers assurances that any little thing they want they will be in the next drop, never worry about fucking the engineering or operational groups, and whine about teamwork and other groups failing to produce.
Sales lies. To the customers, to Marketing, to Sales, to Engineering, to anyone. It's their job to lie. I refuse to believe that any sales department that has not seen wholesale execution of its staff has suffered unfairly. Gawd I hate Sales.
As for your claim that the engineers who fail to produce are promoted - you are correct. They become engineering management.
--
memory leaks here we come!
Failing to check the value returned by malloc is a bad idea. A very common bit of bad judgement that always irritates me, but how on earth would it create a memory leak? In C - probably not, in C++ - more likely (if exceptions and the pre-standard style of new are mixed)
If you are going to troll here, (and who doesn't these days?) please try to give those reading at 0 and -1 something interesting to read.
--
I don't see why people would be offended at the sight of Sendmail rewrite rules.
--
--
This makes me sound like an asshole - but I would hate to work on a project with you. I've worked with people with this attitude to a much lesser extent, and it makes things very difficult.
--
I've seen a lot of cut and paste code with no credit given to the original author, but it is always glaringly obvious what happened.
Proprietary implementation details and IP do not belong in most forms of Open Source - I can agree with that.
OTOH, your statement:
However, in any software development I'm involved in, I wouldn't let anyone know how I do what I do.
makes it sound as if you jealously guard all your code, refuse code walkthroughs and peer reviews, don't comment, etc. in order to prevent others from knowing what you know. If that is the case I'm not sure what to say, you are a lost soul.
--
why was I kept current?
Next time the geeks destroy the hopes and dreams of the visionaries we need to make sure that we all get our fair share of the spoils.
Also: dotcom mani ???
References
[1] Hart, Claudia, "A child's Machiavelli-a primer on power"
I've seen plenty of posts here mentioning that this game was impossible without the cheat.
Please hold the applause, but I beat it the week before that issue of Nintendo Power with the cheat code came out. Thats right. I am a good and valuable person.
The trick was to avoid the instant death from ofscreen fire in the elevators and to work the machine gunner right after the drop-spike traps onto screen by activating the traps and moving back. Then jump, shoot, duck, shoot. Repeat.
Pretty good memory for a geezer of twenty-::mumble::
Also, if you really want to see some tempers flare throw out some questions on NAT on any ietf list read by IP old timers.
Examples:
useradd/adduser
pkgadd/rpm/yast/whatever
printing system oddities
startup files
window system management
I consider myself an intermediate level user of computers, but I've stayed away from the current distributions of Linux because of the focus on building a better admin interface and screwing up the basics. (I've been forced to learn to deal with Solaris brain damage to a certain extent, but it is certainly nothing I'd use at home.)
It seems to me that the best way to document this would be to teach the fundamentals and do articles on how the interface the admin tools provide works.
Simple example:
adding a user
The fundamentals:
password, shadow password, dbm files, home directories, shell .rc files, skel directories,
uid, and group memberships.
Interface tool details: .rc files? What editor is used
by default and can it be changed by ENV?
Is the home directory created for you and permissions set corretly. What is the "template" directory for
If this sort of approach is applied to managing software packages, printing, setting up name resolution, font management, and so on it would go a long way to making Debian more accesible.
To "prove" that the RADIUS packet is from the ISP's dial network (RADIUS is UDP and easily spoofed - requiring an authenticator) they will need to have the shared secret, so the FBI can collect passwords if they really feel like it. Unless they believe they can trust a UDP packet claiming to be from the ISPs dial network, in which case they have my pity.
I've never bothered to look into spoofing DHCP but I imagine most ISP dial networks are going to be configured for convience rather than security.
Does anyone have any idea how much assistance the FBI is requiring form ISPs on this?