I used to work for a University where I was a sysadmin. We had 70+ machines, and not a single one of them was the same configuration. (No exaggeration, here) We were under the same constraints budgetwise if not more so, and had some real lusers on the systems. It was totally not a problem, though. I'll grant you that we had our fair share of maintenance work to do, but when I left we were rolling our own desktop machines, and people were loving them.
We even found that the newer machines needed less upkeep than the older ones. Start upgrading and by the time you do a full cycle, I think you'll see a reduced workload.
I think that this spoiler for those on the west coast rocketed chrisd to jonkatz status. Sure this is probably redundant, but I think we can all now block stories posted by chris as well.
As the article says, he should have not turned it in and lost the 2% instead of cheating.
Or better yet, he could have done as my college always suggested. If you can't solve a certain part of the problem, code around it, document what you tried, why [you think] it didn't work, etc., and turn in what you've got.
Something, as long as it compiles (always as long as it compiles), is better than nothing.
This is all great, but let's face it. People don't leave their computers on all of the time. In fact, here in California, they run ads on television telling you to turn _off_ your computer when you're "out of the room."
Liquid cooling for PC's is still out of the reach of many, so noise is a factor. And I can only assume that this work will require your computer to be awake, so power management goes out the window.
Even if these were overcome, there's still the obstacle of just getting people to go along with this. It doesn't sound to me like these "pennies trickling into a virtual bank account" are going to pay for that broadband connection or the increased electricity bill.
Like most other things, it sounds great on paper...
They may have an argument if they contributed a idea with substantial information about how to implement it.
Even so, wouldn't you actually have to implement it in order for them to have a claim. Couldn't you implement the "fix" a different way and then not owe them anything?
You know, Cringley puts out good articles and all, but does Slashdot really need to link to every single one every time there's a new one?
This isn't really a story anymore. Slashdot should just have a permanent link or perhaps even one of those little SlashBoxes that points to recent Cringley articles.
it's not just for those with the big bucks for high-end IBM hardware
This isn't really new. Slashdot had an article about it a month or two ago. Unfortunately the link escapes me.
After seeing that article, I presented it at work. We now use it to keep the logging facility and services separate from each other, so a break in to one service doesn't compromise the others or the logs.
The university where I was forced you to bring in your MAC address so that the IS dept. had a record of all MAC addresses that were allowed to connect from the dorms. Unrecognized MAC's are ignored, so ifconfig hw wouldn't help much.
When Senators hear alot of complaints about an issue, they immediately see that their jobs are in jeopardy and act accordingly.
This is exactly my point. I don't think that there are enough of us to make a Senator fear for their job.
I don't wonder why the elderly get so many benefits for the reason above: There are plenty more elderly persons in the United States than there are people who get technology.
The EFF and others are loud and vocal in pursuit of our interests, but we're having this discussion now which would seem to suggest that I'm correct that we're not a large enough crowd to make enough noise.
Or maybe I'm completely wrong and Mr. Lessig is correct that there are plenty of us, just not enough of us are making noise.
I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.
This quote seems to contradict itself. We can bitch and moan to Congress about our disagreement with copyright, but face it, those who get it are by far in the minority. Even if a good lot of us complained, the future of creativity and innovation isstillsold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder because that bid still outweighs the voices of the few.
Meaning what? They have the resources to hire incompetent NT admins? Or that competent NT admins are cheaper than competent unix admins? Competency in systems administration has nothing to do with the systems to which you administer. You help perpetrate the myth of "Linux is hard, MS is easy" when you make this argument. Linux admin is hard to find, and so is NT admin. Thats because good administration is hard to find. NT's slick interfaces make PHB's *think* it's easy (all ya have to do is clickclickclickclick!), but that's not the same thing.
We're talking about a high school here. Most if not all of these kids have only seen Windows up to this point. I know I had when I was that age. Even if you've only used Windows at home but gotten good at it, you can do a good enough job to pass as a NT admin.
The problem here is that a lot of people haven't been exposed to Linux at this age. Given the choice, you'd probably stick to what you know, too.
If you do any kind of programming, you should have gone through that phase when stuff like that was cool. I remember a time when I thought it would be cool to write viruses or worms. Now, the reason that I thought it would be cool escapes me.
I believe that every programmer, at some point, goes through a phase when they want to try everything under the sun just to say that they can/could/did do it. I never actually wrote a virus myself, but I definitely remember wanting to just for the sake of getting into the guts of a computer and seeing what makes it tick.
Most programmers have also been/are sysadmins. I believe this along with growth/maturity eventually lead to the desire to produce something useful, not destructive, for the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, some never get past it, and some just use pre-fab virus creators. These people for whatever reason didn't move on to the next stage of evolution and probably never will, but at the same time, they keep sysadmins in business and antivirus writers employed.
When I first saw "Office for Linux," I was all for it because Office is really the only piece of software that keeps me using Windows. I've tried a few of the office suites for Linux, and none of them ever quite get it right in terms of formatting or what have you.
Opening up the file format would be a much better approach. Then I would be able to completely move to free software, and thus the world would be a better place.
Someone find me an address so that I can point this out to the state AG's before they submit their proposals.
I didn't make the statement that "old code is good code", in fact, I don't believe that code that is old is necessarily good by virtue of the fact that it is old.
My point was that as the author said, "It's harder to read code than it is to write it." As programmer's we know this and tend to write off old code as "old, not good" without looking at it.
I'm just trying to say that it's worth at least looking at the code to find out whether it's fixable/changeable/what have you before just giving up on it and starting over.
Slashdot Mirror
Except it was posted by an AC which leads me to believe that maybe it was a Troll.
I used to work for a University where I was a sysadmin. We had 70+ machines, and not a single one of them was the same configuration. (No exaggeration, here) We were under the same constraints budgetwise if not more so, and had some real lusers on the systems. It was totally not a problem, though. I'll grant you that we had our fair share of maintenance work to do, but when I left we were rolling our own desktop machines, and people were loving them.
We even found that the newer machines needed less upkeep than the older ones. Start upgrading and by the time you do a full cycle, I think you'll see a reduced workload.
Where were the few bits in the article worth a read? I sure didn't see anything in that article worth reading.
I think that this spoiler for those on the west coast rocketed chrisd to jonkatz status. Sure this is probably redundant, but I think we can all now block stories posted by chris as well.
As the article says, he should have not turned it in and lost the 2% instead of cheating.
Or better yet, he could have done as my college always suggested. If you can't solve a certain part of the problem, code around it, document what you tried, why [you think] it didn't work, etc., and turn in what you've got.
Something, as long as it compiles (always as long as it compiles), is better than nothing.
There's still time to get Apache 2.0 in there!! :)
debian packages it up for download.
that's pretty good timing considering that linus is on vaction right now.
Are people even reading stories anymore?! I'm checking out of here for the day. This has quickly become a huge waste of my time.
Does CowboyNeal do anything besides lend his name to these polls?
This is all great, but let's face it. People don't leave their computers on all of the time. In fact, here in California, they run ads on television telling you to turn _off_ your computer when you're "out of the room."
Liquid cooling for PC's is still out of the reach of many, so noise is a factor. And I can only assume that this work will require your computer to be awake, so power management goes out the window.
Even if these were overcome, there's still the obstacle of just getting people to go along with this. It doesn't sound to me like these "pennies trickling into a virtual bank account" are going to pay for that broadband connection or the increased electricity bill.
Like most other things, it sounds great on paper...
MetaModerate=Moderate a set of Moderations
Can 'Meta' prefix a Noun, rather than a Verb?
Well, you would understand what I said if I said "MetaModeration", right?
They may have an argument if they contributed a idea with substantial information about how to implement it.
Even so, wouldn't you actually have to implement it in order for them to have a claim. Couldn't you implement the "fix" a different way and then not owe them anything?
I was surprised to see Hemos posting this story. This seems more up JonKatz's alley.
You know, Cringley puts out good articles and all, but does Slashdot really need to link to every single one every time there's a new one?
This isn't really a story anymore. Slashdot should just have a permanent link or perhaps even one of those little SlashBoxes that points to recent Cringley articles.
it's not just for those with the big bucks for high-end IBM hardware
This isn't really new. Slashdot had an article about it a month or two ago. Unfortunately the link escapes me.
After seeing that article, I presented it at work. We now use it to keep the logging facility and services separate from each other, so a break in to one service doesn't compromise the others or the logs.
It works pretty slick.
...Are they not familiar with ifconfig hw ?
The university where I was forced you to bring in your MAC address so that the IS dept. had a record of all MAC addresses that were allowed to connect from the dorms. Unrecognized MAC's are ignored, so ifconfig hw wouldn't help much.
When Senators hear alot of complaints about an issue, they immediately see that their jobs are in jeopardy and act accordingly.
This is exactly my point. I don't think that there are enough of us to make a Senator fear for their job.
I don't wonder why the elderly get so many benefits for the reason above: There are plenty more elderly persons in the United States than there are people who get technology.
The EFF and others are loud and vocal in pursuit of our interests, but we're having this discussion now which would seem to suggest that I'm correct that we're not a large enough crowd to make enough noise.
Or maybe I'm completely wrong and Mr. Lessig is correct that there are plenty of us, just not enough of us are making noise.
I am not optimistic, however. Those who get it (e.g., you) are pathetically apolitical. You're proud of your apathy. You're disgusted with people who try to persuade politicians. So am I. But while you do nothing, the future of creativity and innovation is sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder.
This quote seems to contradict itself. We can bitch and moan to Congress about our disagreement with copyright, but face it, those who get it are by far in the minority. Even if a good lot of us complained, the future of creativity and innovation is still sold in DC - typically to the highest, and most disgusting bidder because that bid still outweighs the voices of the few.
Meaning what? They have the resources to hire incompetent NT admins? Or that competent NT admins are cheaper than competent unix admins? Competency in systems administration has nothing to do with the systems to which you administer. You help perpetrate the myth of "Linux is hard, MS is easy" when you make this argument. Linux admin is hard to find, and so is NT admin. Thats because good administration is hard to find. NT's slick interfaces make PHB's *think* it's easy (all ya have to do is clickclickclickclick!), but that's not the same thing.
We're talking about a high school here. Most if not all of these kids have only seen Windows up to this point. I know I had when I was that age. Even if you've only used Windows at home but gotten good at it, you can do a good enough job to pass as a NT admin.
The problem here is that a lot of people haven't been exposed to Linux at this age. Given the choice, you'd probably stick to what you know, too.
Linux is not hard, it's not intuitive.
I notice that readers is misspelled 'eaders' on the front page.
I know that there is some joke about readers and eaters and consumption of material here, but I just don't know what it is.
Damn you television for rotting my brain!
If you do any kind of programming, you should have gone through that phase when stuff like that was cool. I remember a time when I thought it would be cool to write viruses or worms. Now, the reason that I thought it would be cool escapes me.
I believe that every programmer, at some point, goes through a phase when they want to try everything under the sun just to say that they can/could/did do it. I never actually wrote a virus myself, but I definitely remember wanting to just for the sake of getting into the guts of a computer and seeing what makes it tick.
Most programmers have also been/are sysadmins. I believe this along with growth/maturity eventually lead to the desire to produce something useful, not destructive, for the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, some never get past it, and some just use pre-fab virus creators. These people for whatever reason didn't move on to the next stage of evolution and probably never will, but at the same time, they keep sysadmins in business and antivirus writers employed.
When I first saw "Office for Linux," I was all for it because Office is really the only piece of software that keeps me using Windows. I've tried a few of the office suites for Linux, and none of them ever quite get it right in terms of formatting or what have you.
Opening up the file format would be a much better approach. Then I would be able to completely move to free software, and thus the world would be a better place.
Someone find me an address so that I can point this out to the state AG's before they submit their proposals.
I love the part where the guy writes back:
my own organization's Web link policy requires no such formal agreement
Way to beat 'em at their own game!
I didn't make the statement that "old code is good code", in fact, I don't believe that code that is old is necessarily good by virtue of the fact that it is old.
My point was that as the author said, "It's harder to read code than it is to write it." As programmer's we know this and tend to write off old code as "old, not good" without looking at it.
I'm just trying to say that it's worth at least looking at the code to find out whether it's fixable/changeable/what have you before just giving up on it and starting over.