I build this HTPC system last year and loaded it with XBMC Live running on Ubuntu (now 11.04) that can do full 1080p hardware accelerated decoding of complex scenes without dropping a single frame (I do my own encodings). Because the Intel Atom is a dual-core at 1.8 GHz along with nVidia Ion Next Generation which is equivalent to a GT210 video card it can shred on graphics.
MOB: ASUS AT5IONT-I Intel Atom D525 (1.8GHz, dual-core) BGA559 Intel NM10 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo MEM: G.SKILL 2GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model F3-10600CL9S-2GBSQ TVC: AVerMedia AVerTVHD Duet - PCTV Tuner (A188 - White Box) MTVHDDUWB PCI-Express x1 Interface SSD: Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CT040G310 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive DVD: LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Disc Reader SATA Model iHOS104-08 CAS: APEX MI-008 Black Steel Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case 250W Power Supply FAN: GELID Solutions FN-SX12-10 120mm Silent Case Fan REM: AVS Gear GP-IR02BK Vista 2 channel IR Remote Control
Temperature Sensors
This thing is completely silent when watching TV and it doesn't overheat or suffer from any thermal problems, even in super hot temps outside and a warm house at 80 F.
user@XBMCLive:~$ sensors atk0110-acpi-0 Adapter: ACPI interface Vcore Voltage: +1.12 V (min = +0.85 V, max = +1.60 V)
+3.3 Voltage: +3.33 V (min = +2.97 V, max = +3.63 V)
+5 Voltage: +5.05 V (min = +4.50 V, max = +5.50 V)
+12 Voltage: +12.10 V (min = +10.20 V, max = +13.80 V) CPU FAN Speed: 989 RPM (min = 600 RPM) CHASSIS FAN Speed: 0 RPM (min = 600 RPM) CPU Temperature: +50.0C (high = +60.0C, crit = +95.0C) GPU Temperature: +52.0C (high = +60.0C, crit = +95.0C)
user@XBMCLive:~$ sensors -f atk0110-acpi-0 Adapter: ACPI interface Vcore Voltage: +1.12 V (min = +0.85 V, max = +1.60 V)
+3.3 Voltage: +3.35 V (min = +2.97 V, max = +3.63 V)
+5 Voltage: +5.05 V (min = +4.50 V, max = +5.50 V)
+12 Voltage: +12.10 V (min = +10.20 V, max = +13.80 V) CPU FAN Speed: 983 RPM (min = 600 RPM) CHASSIS FAN Speed: 0 RPM (min = 600 RPM) CPU Temperature: +122.0F (high = +140.0F, crit = +203.0F) GPU Temperature: +125.6F (high = +140.0F, crit = +203.0F)
I thought that the original leak by Bradley Manning was a brave thing that he did, especially since the information he chose to leak was only low-level classified and unclassified information. He should be given a humanitarian award for his role in this.
Then I thought that WikiLeaks sharing the diplomatic cables with select journalists at respected organizations so that they can review the material, redact and sensitive personal information, and then publish a well written analysis of the most interesting cables was also a good and respectable thing.
However now that I find out from the Spiegel article that the shared file to the Guardian was just left on the file server after the confirmed that they got it is just such a stupid mistake. Encryption is not the be-all-end-all answer to security and WikiLeaks failed to understand that. Also the password was long and complex but the phrase shares the context of the data it encrypts and also could have been guessed eventually since it had so little entropy and difficulty.
Then to hear about pool record and file keeping, copying files to another server, hiding in subfolders, then copying them back and sharing them out on BitTorrent, what a cock-up that was! It's like the story of so many people on older P2P platforms sharing out their entire hard drives without realizing that people were download their application password files, personal documents, tax returns, pictures, and other stuff that should never be shared. It makes me think that WikiLeaks lacks some common computer sense and good server administrators who maintain and clean-up crap after their users.
This is one of those Epic Fails that will affect many people now and later, and will ripple down in history as a lesson of the reprecautions of good leaks going bad due to negligence and ignorance.
What version of Google Maps and Gmail are you using right now? How about Google Calendar and Picasa? What do you mean you don't know? Can't you tell?
No you can't. All you know it's there, it works, it's the "newest" version you know off because of the new stuff showing up since the last update day.
Experiment Freely Developers
Firefox is following the same ideology here due to Google developer's influence. Let the developers strip the version numbers from the user experience part and us geeks will know how to tell in the about:support pages.
Let them mold and reshape our browser, hold the GUI and switch it up as much as they want. Remove the buttons, change the address bar, remove the protocol and domain suffix, strip the status bar, remove the menus, do whatever they want to experiment on trying to find the best user interface out there. Use us users as your test subjects and experiment to find out what works and what doesn't. Let the browser evolve forcefully because the users won't let new things to be tried on them peacefully without complaints.
Nobody is forcing anyone using Firefox to upgrade, stay at the latest 3.6.x release or 5.0.1 release or whatever if you don't want to participate. Let you organization standardize on a release. Nobody from Mozilla is forcing you to upgrade due to licenses, registrations, expiration, or mandatory upgrades, use whatever you want.
Microsoft Office Ribbons vs Toolbars
I heard all the moaning and groaning about Microsoft Office Ribbons versus Toolbars and I reserved my judgment until I tried them. Now that I use them and learned where all the options are I see them as a great and welcomed improvement and I'm looking toward the new Windows 8 having the Ribbon interface instead of toolbar icons. The ideaology of the Ribbon removing the duplication of the menus and toolbar icons is a logical one and add that the context sensitive color highlighted ribbons that appear when editing different elements such as tables, pivots, images, etc. just makes so much sense to me and makes my editing a breeze.
Weak up people, embrace the future and leave the old interfaces behind. Firefox developers, thread on and try new things!
You don't need guns to defend yourself, you American twatburger, you just need community spirit, as happened in many areas of London last night. If you come across a couple of hundred Sikhs ready to fight back, you'd have to be fucking stupid to try any looting in their area.
Good will, kind wishes, and a friendly cooperating community is not enough when you are all alone and there is nobody holding the front or protecting your back. In London the police were out in force and each community came out to protect their neighborhoods because they had the backing of police. Remove the police from the picture and see how brave those community members get when even a single rioters pulls out a firearm of any kind and opens fire. Unless you can return in-kind you'll see a quick disappearance of "the community" from the streets. Good thing that there are some people in some communities that think ahead and become the sheepherders for the sheeple that live there when the shit hits the fan.
The Koreans did good because they and their parents remember their own country's war. The Philippinos also do the same here also because they remember. How quickly the others forget and then try to bury the painful history.
There was a more detailed article that I was referring to, but I guess WikiPedia summary will have to be good enough to let you start digging into the official news report and video recordings.
Koreatown experienced the hardest crime and destruction of the ordeal. Hundreds of Korean owned businesses were looted, damaged or burnt down and an unknown number of Koreans physically attacked. By the second day of rioting, the LAPD and County Sheriff had been overpowered by the number of rioters forcing the departments to pull all units from patrol. As violent rioters next turned its attention to firefighters, the LAFD also recalled their teams. This left unchecked crime and fires which quickly expanded. The Korean American community, seeing the police force's abandonment of Koreatown, organized gun-wielding groups to protect businesses and area residents. Open gun battles were televised live as shopkeepers defended their business from the crowds of violent looters.
All this talk and nobody posted a site up yet with all the perps identified and tagged? Sounds like design by committee, where there's only one real developer who understands and can do the work and a bunch of yakkers just chatting it up because they can't do it but want to be important or included.
C'mon, website up in T-minus how many hours?
PS: On a side note. Hearing the word Riot brings back the memories of the LA Riots and the one story that I remember is the guy with a hunting rifle living across the street from his friend's electronics store and keeping it looter free and allowing it to survive in tact while everything else got robbed or burned. When the shit hits the fan and the police aren't there to help you, just be prepared to help yourself and you'll do well! Too bad about London, as to quote FPS Russia, "One of those Beech countries, where you can't have guns!"
Lived in NYC, worked there in Fortune 10 (yes ten) companies as a Sys Admin, got out when I got a chance and a nice offer far-far away in a land of sanity, relaxation, no state taxes, affordable housing, and am never coming back to NYC. The quality of life anywhere else is so much better in all the ways than the daily grind in NYC no matter how much they pay you. The disgusting NYC subway system shows the true underbelly of the city.
NYC financial recruiters (aka head hunters) and companies always get their talent (aka willing slaves) on short term 6-12 month contracts and never or hardly ever as employees unless they are doing a direct transfer from another financial company and want to retain their corporate title and position Associate, AVP, VP, Director, Managing Director, etc. Their favorite ploy is to dangle conversion to full-time employment and eligibility for bonuses as a way to whip the consultants and contractors to work long overtime hours on straight-time (aka no overtime pay).
After years of being away from NYC these recruiters still contact me with contract offers for NYC and I just keep telling them to take a flying fuck off a bridge and remove me from their contacts database.
Been there, done that, never again, it isn't worth any kind of money to live in the technology ghetto that is NYC.
True, but the cell non-ionizing radiation denatured all the proteins in their brain cells making them too stupid to figure out the Bluetooth pairing process.
I'm amazed at the sheer number of people down here in the south who drive their expensive luxury cars and trucks with the mobile phone glued to their ear by their hand, oblivious to the situation and other drivers around them.
You'd think that if they can spend $30-60K they could buy a $40 Bluetooth speakerphone or ear piece?
I read the article and the biggest and most fearful thing that many people who were affected by this was that all of their Google services, including Gmail were affected and disabled.
I only use Gmail for e-mail functionality because it is free and convenient and it is my primary e-mail address that has stayed universal through ISP changes and moves. I was quite well aware of Google's privacy policy and advertisement angle along with the fact that all of them will be available forever to Google, before I signed up to Gmail and have been weary every since. The offer of convenient, free, reliable, spam-free, managed by someone else, and universally accepted Gmail account had a lot of benefits since I didn't have to buy my own domain, maintain my own e-mail server, and deal with spam filtering
I still haven't been burned by Gmail but I'm now wondering that since Google has become such a large entity it is surely going to suffer the fate of a behemoth afflicted by blind bureaucracy and the e-mails that they have forever will somehow get out to agencies, companies, or people who I don't want them to see.
I'm going to seriously look into the technical and logical feasibility of install a mail server on my Linux box in my house which is going to require that I manage my own services and spam filtering along with dealing with the hoops of trying to run a mail server behind an ISP with my own domain name.
I use the keyboard which is always on sitting under my coffee table to occasionally type into XBMC Media Center running on Ubuntu 11.04 and my wife user the mouse with her laptop. The Bluetooth keyboard and the class 1 dongle work so well that I can type into the media center box from 20-feet and two rooms away with 4 walls in between. I also occasionally link my Motorola Bluetooth S9 headphones to listen to the audio in my desktop or laptop and haven't tried it yet with Ubuntu 11.04 and XBMC.
Biggest hurdle in Linux was learning to install the bluez-utils packages so that I can use the bluez- scripts to pair the devices since the straight Bluetooth hcitool connect commands wouldn't successfully pair the devices even though they would discover the devices, interrogate them, and go into discover mode on the dongle and start the pair mode. Just use bluez-* scripts to pair your Bluetooth and it works like a charm.
Buy good hardware from Microsoft or Logitech and use good OSes like Windows 7 or Linux with bluez Bluetooth stack and scripts to get your stuff working and you'll have universal Bluetooth hardware that won't become obsolete or be tied down to proprietary wireless standards and drivers from vendor who will abandon you on the next OS release (e.g. Logitech).
This is for all the people who never figured out how to manage their e-mail.
- Disable the automatic deletion of e-mail from the Deleted Items folder and do not use manual deletion. - Delete any read items from the Inbox that you read and do not need to act on. - Leave any items in the Inbox that you need to act on (e.g. reply, perform a task, etc.) - Once you acted on that e-mail delete it from your Inbox. - Setup Auto Archiving on your Deleted Items folder to move the items from there to a separate Archive folder to keep your read e-mails there.
Just do these simple steps and your Inbox will be clean and your mail administrators will thank you and your mailbox won't explode or fill-up.
If you want to get more out of your e-mail then start setting up rules, folders, tags, searching, etc. to really get as much out of it as you can and make your online life easier.
My manager and I working in a top 5 financial investment bank actively interviewed and hired ~5 interns at $14/hour in 2000 from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, US for positions on the Windows Server Administration team during the school's summer time break. The internship was fully sponsored and encouraged by the company and paid very well for basically a very light work load 20-30 hours a week with a fully flexible schedule (come as you please). Other departments such as Desktop Support, Network, and Telecom also got candidates for internships but from different schools.
Interviewing Interns
We interviewed the students at their university during an open internship session where there were representatives from all the other major corporations there looking for young talent. We would read each candidate's resume, check their chosen course of study, skim the clubs that they were part of, but really focus on their technical hobbies to have them talk to us about their experiences with technical equipment and/or using and fixing their laptop and computer systems. We would ask them open ended questions such as if you had a project to build a powerful workstation computer for a high-up executive what would you need, which components would you choose, how would you build and configure it. Some interns did not have extensive technical or computer experience but we would still give them a chance to show us that they had the interest and ability to learn something new for them, such as building new servers, clusters, and storage systems in the data center then troubleshooting them.
The interns that showed interest in hardware would become apprentices to one of the Core team members and would focus on new server hardware, cabling, clusters, storage, and rack builds in our data centers and would shadow to learn the procedures then actually perform all of them under supervision.
The interns that showed interest in the operating system and active directory would work on the Infrastructure team to maintain and deploy new file servers, domain controllers, name servers, etc.
The interns that showed interest in software would work with the Application Support team members to learn the various business and back-end packages, databases, web servers, etc.
The interns that would spend a lot of time chatting and talking on their phones would be put in the Rapid Response team and deal with incoming trouble tickets, phone calls, and general issues and would learn proper communication, diagnostic procedures, and how to put their yappers to good use.
We would then rotate the interns half-way through their internship so that they could learn the work of another team and we would give them a choice where they would want to work. They got about 4-weeks of time in each team and learned the work pretty well.
The interns would also be given special projects to work on that were ideas that we had for improving our work such as consolidated information web sites and portals, documentation, organization, and other things that required fresh thinking and ideas in a rigid work flow. We listened to their ideas and also used some of the web sites and automation tools that they produced for us so that was a great help.
Internship Impressions
The interns all got a pretty good and realistic view of what it is to work as a Windows Server Administrator and do the normal blue-collar work that we do as admins. A few of them expressed interest in working as an admin doing real (often boring) work as administrators and we expressed interest in hiring them for our department, desktop, or network departments after they graduate. A handful did get hired in various departments.
Many interns did not have the knack nor the interest for server administration and had dreams of higher goals for their life and some were honest enough to tell us this at the end of their internships. I hope that their experience showed them what real
If I won the lottery or had a windfall one day I'd quit my job to free up my time and go to school just for the fun of it, especially for the General Education and other courses so that I could expand my view of the world and the knowledge acquired in all the time we've been here. Learning is fun especially if you pursue what you like and sometimes stumble into the unknown but interesting things. Don't skip the general studies if you can, enjoy them and broaden your horizons.
I have a semi-successful career in server administration in finance sector and now a different industry and am able to live very comfortable in minor luxury right now without a high school diploma. If you are truly a good programmer then you will be able to make a name for yourself and have a successful career in development and technology, if not then a degree won't help you.
I have seen my friends go off to college and return no different than they were before and no smarter or more enlightened. I have always eyed universities with watchful disdain because of what I saw happening there through my experiences with my friends at their schools. I am weary of them now and question their value for the general populous. Many young people are forced into studies there where they could save time and money and get vocational school training instead. Many of my co-workers throughout the years in the top financial institutions working on the technology side had degrees but not quite enough experience and technological geekness to progress them past the mid level admins and operator type work.
Now that I am a bit older with 10+ years in the industry with a lot of time at different top level firms I can say that at this point in time where my career and life are pretty stable I would understand and enjoy university studies more then when I was younger. I feel that I am now past the time wasting aspects of my life, girls, games, parties, that I now appreciate the greater things in a geek's life like deeper understanding and further search for knowledge. I have this feeling that I will try and enroll in some classes just to see what I can learn.
Unknown Unknowns
I read most of the score 2 and above threads and the one that really stands out is the one below and cetialphav is absolutely correct about the unknown unknowns being the greatest level of ignorance that a person can experience.
In almost every project that people do in life, the biggest risk of failure comes from the unknown unknowns. These are the things that you didn't know, but that you didn't even realize that you didn't know. The known unknowns are straightforward to deal with. If I decide to start a business, I know that I know nothing about business tax issues, but since I am aware of that I can consult experts and educate myself. One of the benefits of general education is that you make your set of unknown unknowns smaller and the space of known unknowns bigger.
I would welcome if the EPA implemented and slowly phased in the ENERGY STAR program for all electronics sold with their very nice Watt-Hours (US) yellow stickers since this would start to bring the issue of power efficiency in appliances forward and allow the general populous see the actual numbers behind their products.
Solution 1 - Cancel your Cable or Satellite
I cancelled my DirecTV satellite subscription a few years back and don't miss it yet still get all my TV entertainment from the Internet and the Web without having to fork over $100+ to the cable company to subsidize their QVC shopping channel and the other 299-channels that I will never tune to or ever watch. My television viewing habits are now focused only on the very few shows that I do watch and my enjoyment of television has increased as I no longer waste any time on the increasingly annoying and idiotic product advertisements.
Solution 2 - Build your own Digital Video Recorder computer
I build my own HTPC using Intel Atom and nVidia Ion 2 running XBMC front-end on Ubuntu Linux with a 40 GB SSD, 1.5 TB HDD, 2 GB RAM, and AverMedia Digital Capture card for Over The Air TV (that I never setup with MythTV and don't watch anyway). This little box has HDMI direct connection to my 50-inch TV so I get full video output and also fully accelerated MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (ASP, and AVC H.264) decoding at 1080p without dropping any frames thanks to nVidia Ion 2 (aka Ion Next Generation) all on the low-power 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel Atom processors while only utilizing 5-7% CPU when doing playback. It is also dead quiet due to the SSD, WD Green HDD, quiet liquid 120mm ball-bearing fan, and fan-less motherboard cooling.
The whole box uses 45 Watts while idle, 50 Watts while watching a show, and 55 Watts when I do a full load test on all the components at once. I leave this box on permanently and it serves as my server for SSH, FTP, DDNS, Wake-On-LAN, BitTorrent, etc. It is a lot more energy friendly than any other desktop or server I ran previously in my house for same Linux server duties and I can use it to watch TV while it does all those other things in the background.
Solution 3 - Do Not Use Your Desktop as Media Box
For heavy processing or encoding, I use the desktop computer but keep it on only while I'm sitting down at it and that beast with the two monitors eats 465 Watts of power idle and will hit ~550 Watts if I hit the video card hard. That's a 10-fold increase in power utilization so I always turn my desktop off when I'm done with it and boot it back up in just a few seconds thanks to the new Intel 320 160GB SSD (upgraded from Intel 80GB G1 SSD). The two 3-second pauses during boot-up to go into the Silicon Image and Intel RAID menus take longer than load Windows 7 entirely otherwise my computer would be up in under 10-seconds.
Learn the difference between Support (Administration) and Development (Programming). The best you can do in Administration is put things back they way there were before they all broke so the users stop complaining or at best make small and slight improvements to a screwed up systm. Your job as administrator is to deal always with problems and very little time is devoted to improvements. In Programming you fix or improve applications or build fresh new ones. Go back to Develpment if you still have a choice.
Study
Otherwise if this is a bottom-up approach to learning networking and server administration without any previous hands-on experience with servers and managed switches then start with the certification tracks and books because they are well planned out, have plenty of books available, have training classes or web instructions. Get books and materials for CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Inet+, Security+, Linux+ since you can learn these generalized topics quickly and easily and at least be introduced to very basic ideas and terms that you never had to deal with such as RAID, iSCSI, LUN, VLANs, trunks, aggregated links, routing, CIDR, OSPF, core, edge, etc. You can skip the CompTIA tests for those since they are not really worth the money anymore with expiration dates.
Move onto Cisco CCNA for more in-depth networking and one of the CCNP specialties for advanced topics. Touch some Microsoft and Linux server admin certs because you'll need to understand the servers and how they actually function and comminicate on the network to plan out your setup.
If you have a chance look into SANs (storage area networks) and expecially iSCSI (i.e. Storage over Ethernet) because you will have to support it now or very shortly. Fibre Channel also while you're at it, learn zoning, provisioning, find out who Brocade, Qlogic, and EMC are.
Also be sure to learn about Wireless networking using Enterprise level products and access points because that can get difficult quickly when it comes to proper setup, authentication, RADIUS, encryption, WPA2, TKIP/AES, certificates and auto-enrollment.
Vendors
Blades - HP, Dell, IBM, Cisco Switches - HP ProCurve, Juniper, Cisco, Netgear, Alcatel Servers - HP, Dell, IBM
Recommendations
Network - 10.A.B.C/8 for your network. A=site or core segments, B.=floor or edge, C=each subnet. Use/24 as default mask for 254 hosts and/22 for larger special subnets for terminal servers, virtual guest farms. DMZ - NAT your public IPs to a dedicated DMZ VLAN, firewall it from inside with static explicit per IP and Port rules. Vendor Systems - Segregate on seperate VLANs or subnets since you don't own or control these devices. Firewall from Production.
Production Network - Keep small/24 subnets, edge to core (i.e. like a pointed star with center as core or multipe stars joined at core) Workstation Network - VLAN and keep subnets small and logically devided by physical barriers, floor, building, site, etc. Server Network - Try to keep server types separated on their own VLANs and subnets and concentrate them physically and by switch/card. Separate unlike and strage servers, applicances, vendor boxes away from regulat servers. Backup Network - Physicially separate the cables, switches/cards for workstation and server centralized backups, (Symantec/Veritas NetBackup). Wireless Network - Firewall and separate on VLAN Virtual Server Network - Dedicated VLAN and get 10Gb cards for switches and servers/blades. Storage Network (iSCSI) - Dedicated cables, switches/cards. VoIP Network - Separate VLANs & inter-switch trunks to keep away from all other traffic, separate switches/cards for sure.
There are many more suggestions but at this point I'd have to start charging consulting fees. Find people to help you and pay them well.
In this case, Tallman ruled that such transportation is justified because the forensic tools need to adequately search the computers were located at another facility.
"The border search doctrine is not so rigid as to require the United States to equip every entry point -- no matter how desolate or infrequently traveled -- with inspectors and sophisticated forensic equipment," Tallman said in his ruling.
In situations where "logic and practicality" may require equipment presented at the border to be transported to another location, the government needs to show no "heightened suspicion" to justify it, the court ruled.
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The part about searching for obvious contraband is understandable when crossing a border before entry is granted but it appears that all the legal headedness in these district courts suffer from selective ignorance since they ignore the plain language of the Fourth Amendment, especially the "unreasonable" working that is specifically included in it.
Also the key paragraphs of this article and decision deal with the transportation of equipment away from the border. This requires the taking of this equipment away from the person, which steps all over the seizure part since the equipment is taken away from the person.
On top of this "probable cause" is required for search and seizure so that little bit about "no heightened suspicion" is pure bullshit.
I think these Federal Judges need remedial education to go back and re-read the constitution in plain English.
I still have an acquaintance, a friend of a friend, who still works at GS after getting into the company during a college internship and just staying around after 10-years. He has turned from behind a shy and friendly guy who would hang out with us and be generally cool and enjoyable to an absolutely unreliable and lying prick who never talk to us or calls us even though we knew him since elementary school. He has developed a slew of personality problems and his personal life is a swish cheese of shambles, failures, neuroses, and personal obsessions. This definitely had a personality change at this company after all these years even though he lived for much of that time in the same place and spent time with the same people as he did in elementary, high school, and college. There was a definite but slow and gradual personality shift over the years.
I worked for this company as a contractor trying to do Windows Server administration but I was so disgusted by the work ethic, environment, co-workers, corporate ideology, and managers that I flat out gave up on this contract and walked off after 3-months of working there to go to another finance firm only to be refreshed with a sane and enjoyable working environment that paid even more money.
There is something seriously wrong at Goldman Sachs and many of the people who work there are either complete asses or are slowly having their personalities changed to become asses before they graduate to pricks, assholes, and further on.
Honest Hope for Assholes
If you're an asshole and have finance, computer, math, or engineering skills but are having a hard time finding or keeping a job because of your asshole personality, then you should definitely go and work for Goldman Sachs because you'll be right at home.
Interview Process
The interview process was long since it required 7-separate one-on-one individual interviews which included hour long technical quizzing by all these people. I should have realized that something is wrong when I learned that the last person on the interview list was a technical director who had no knowledge or background of technology what so ever and who was only appointed to the position 6-months ago. (Ding!)
The HR hiring process was unusually long with a thick book of paperwork to sign including a lot more legal documents than any other financial firms. I retained a copy of all the documents and I'm amazed at the layers and layers of legalese in these documents. Of course it took the department a month and a half to actually complete the whole process, which is insanely long when it comes to contractors in NYC, and I was about to take another job because of the long wait. (Ding!)
Turn Over Rate High
The department that I joined had only 8-people, 2 of them were there for a few years, 1 for half a year, and the other 5 joined within the last few months. They obviously had problems retaining employees since only two guys were employees and the rest were contractors. The two guys who were there for a while were completely unhelpful, uninterested, unmotivated and generally behaved as pricks to the rest of the new guys. (Ding!)
Management
The manager was an Indian guy who's only management motto was "just get it done" without telling you anything useful or trying to connect you with the people from other departments who you needed to get things done or even tell you who they are (corporate address book was too much for him). (Ding!)
Help Desk, Desktop Support for Server Administrators
I didn't get to start right away in my role doing Windows Server administration but instead had to go through a useless initiation process of working 1-week in the desktop support department literally carting monitors and PCs to people's desk to set up new users and then perform desktop application installations and troubleshooting people's dirty mouse ball problems. (Ding!)
When I finally finished the week and was shown my cubicle in the server admin department I was happy to start real work, only to be told that in Goldman Sachs the server administrators duties included directly supporting the users and desktop computers as a first-line of help desk for the 300-servers that I was personally supporting for all issues, alerts, upgrades, and hardware replacements. I also supported the developer department because of some of these servers were development boxes and this included development application installations and repairs on these desktop, including Microsoft Visual Studio troubleshooting. The users of those desktops and servers would call me the admin supporting them and I would have to contact the other departments on behalf of the users if I couldn't resolve the issues on their desktops. This is an unheard off work assig
Downloaded it, ran it, tiny screen. Tried it again with the "-scaleup" option only to witness the bloodbath and gore of a full computer crash! The horror!
The images of my corrupted desktop and gadgets all flailing there on a broken black background and the eerie monotonous looping screech of a stuck audio buffer will haunt me forever. Off to see the psychiatrist and hit the liquor store on the way back.
I absolutely agree that there is a very real loss of the fidelity of life when you are stuck behind the viewfinder trying to capture the moment instead of just living through it.
I read your post and found it very true from my personal experience trying to take pictures and document events of my life, what a loss that was. The other people who disagree with you, defend their tedium of work, joined like Siamese-twins grafted at the face to a camera device that is blocking and shielding the moments of life happening right in front of them.
The thing to do is to free yourself from the task of trying to document the precious moments of life and setup a free-running recording system so that you can participate and experience everything without having to worry or concentrate on the meta-task of capturing the moments.
Maybe soon we'll get stimsim technology to record our own experience in life without having to consciously do it.
It is unfortunate that you got your misinformation from the mass media about the source of weapons used in the Mexican drug war, most of that misinformation comes from the anti-gun campaigns who spread it through our mass media networks and which then are repeated by the politicians. The weapons used in the drug war are military type weapons that are fully-automatic rifles and carbines along with some grenades and grenade launcher attachments. These weapons are smuggled into Mexico from other Latin American countries left over after their civil wars or sold by corrupt government officials, from overseas by gun dealers from Asia, Middle East, or Eastern Europe, and captured or taken from willing and unwilling Mexican authorities themselves. A small amount of the weapons do come from the United States because it is the largest producer of modern weapons but very few if any weapons come from the ordinary citizens themselves due to the restrictions and sheer prices that I outline below.
In the United States the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934, amended in 1968, and updated in 1986 controls the purchase and ownership of grenades (aka destructive devices), sound suppressors and parts (aka silencers), short-barreled rifles and shotguns (aka SBRs), fully-automatic guns (aka machine guns). There is a prohibition in effect since May 19, 1986 that prevents the possession and purchase of fully-automatic rifles and carbines (aka "machine guns") by non-government entities (i.e. ordinary citizens) so any machine guns owned by ordinary citizens are usually old guns manufactured and imported before then. There are State laws that also govern the ownership of such weapons that must be followed but most of states in the union do not put any restrictions on the right of ordinary citizens to possess such firearms.
How To Purchase a Machine Gun, Silencer, or Short-Barreled Rifle/Shotgun Legally!
The NFA allows for the purchase and possession of such devices by ordinary citizens by the completion of ATF Form 1 (5320.1) and the payment of a $200 fee for a tax stamp (a fee that has not changed since 1934!). However, the completion line 13. Law Enforcement Certification on the form requires the signature of the Chief Law Enforcement Officer that is neigh impossible in many urban or even rural locations, but that can be bypassed by the creation of a Living Trust and assigning the NFA regulated weapon to the Trust and making yourself a trustee and giving yourself the power to possess and use the weapon on behalf of the Trust that can be accomplished for as little as $100 online or a bit more if done by an actual lawyer.
So it is possible for an ordinary citizen to purchase such a weapon but this requires a little bit of paperwork, fingerprinting, a $200 fee for the tax stamp, and $100 or more for the creation of a Trust.
Expensive Prices for Pre-1986 Machine Guns - $6K, $13K, $18K
The 1986 restriction on machine guns prevents the sale of modern manufactured machine guns so the prices on pre-1986 guns follow economic market scarcity rules since no more can be made available and their prices are highly inflated due to this restriction well above the actual value of the firearm. The most desirab
It is too early to start blaming or trying to figure out why this happened and at our end of the information chain we should be the ones who withhold judgment until more information is known and presented. Speculation and guessing will only form the wrong ideas in our minds as to why this happened and our own thinking will be clouded with judgment and bias instead of facts. We will become swayed by our own personal prejudices and when the facts finally come out we'll be skeptical of them if they don't form up to our own derived conclusions.
"Why did he do this?"
The assailant who's in custody should be asked the most important question of all so that we can figure out his method of thinking and have a clearer understanding of the purpose behind his actions.
Like the posters above have mentioned, some attacks and assassinations are clearly politically motivated while others are just done by mentally ill people, or some are even perpetrated due to secret personal vendettas or retributions.
"What college did you go to? It's not listed on your resume."
In my life I've found that the question and statement "What college did you go to? It's not listed on your resume." was only asked or me less than two times during all the interviews that I went through to score full-time and consulting gigs for investment banks on Wall Street. The interviewers were always interested in "tech-ing" me out with complex problem solving questions and then listening to my detailed explanations of the projects that I was involved in that they forgot, didn't bother, or just didn't care about what sheep-skin university I went to.
I still think that IT is the current Wild West where it's your skills that make you the man you are and not some diploma and unfocused education. The hiring managers want someone who has proven himself in technology, even if it is help desk, desktop, or some junior position than a fresh faced kid with no notches on his pocket protector who knows nothing. In IT experience and skills matter more than diplomas and certificates.
We see this all the time on Slashdot as some snot-nosed kid comes out of nowhere and kicks some company and their security department in the balls or develops a fix or a workaround for a problem that companies full of college folks can't.
My original story up there in the thread is not a usual one and I do not advocate to anyone to repeat it. I often think that I should have went back to finish at least high-school to pick-up physics, the only science course and field that I failed to learn completely. I gave the thought of trying to finish it myself even 13-years after I left but I never got back around to it and these days I'm more focused on scripting work that I just prefer learning.
PS: I think that the original story of this thread was not meant for me since I could not get into an ivy league school coming from a very bad NYC education experience being taught by rote scoring perfect 100's in state wide mathematics tests but completely unable to understand the purpose of quadratic equations then or now or how to derive trigonometric functions until a friend at work explained them all to me in 5-minutes on a white-board.
At the same time I am a first-generation immigrant of a single-mother working as a house keeper unable to pay or contribute for my higher level education yet making just enough for us to enjoy a decent life but at the same time putting us above the poverty line preventing me from taking advantage of very affordable school scholarships and grants. That famous NYC financial Catch-22, if you make enough to pay the high rents in the ass-crack parts of industrial Queens/Brooklyn neighborhoods you are no longer eligible for financial support because your net income is just too high per federal and state standards.
On top of that I was not smart enough in 7th grade to get into the three top high-schools in NYC such as Brooklyn Tech or Stuyvesant after failing to make the grade by a decent margin on their entrance exams since I was put one grade ahead after coming to the states from Europe but with poorer English skills and already equalized Mathematics skills with the kids here. There were no MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, BBS, Network (10Base-2), or Internet (SLIP) questions on those tests so my self-taught home computer skills were well missed in these exams only to be delegated to attend my local high-school sporting well aged Apple II computers with rotting 5.25" floppies.
But this is not a sob story since I am now in Houston, enjoying my life away from finance and Wall Street, living in a more normal city and enjoying life. Overall I am happy how it turned out, things could have been better and they still can be, but since I have this job and I am working doing what I like to do, I can't complain compared to my friends who are struggling after their college education left them high-and-dry with debts and no real-world work experience.
Funny that you said that because I sometimes think that if I could solve the "money problem" through my own business, a piece of software I wrote that would sell itself, or a windfall from a lottery then I've always imagined that I would go attend a university full-time. I'd like to spend a few years focusing on and taking some courses that I would be interested in the field of computer science, such as calculus mathematics, algorithms, data structures, systems design, high-level programming and development.
I was a computer geek from elementary school and knew where my career was heading. After an addiction to Ultima Online that resulted in too many absences I was given a choice of retaking a whole 6-month semester of high-school and being separated from my peers or dropping out of school. After a few months lounging around and playing the game some more I went to work in a large computer chain doing desktop and printer repairs, then worked as a junior server & desktop admin at an account firm trying to become a Dot-com, then started as a Wintel Server Admin (Systems Analyst) in a major Wall Street investment bank, and after 9/11 I worked for most of Wall Street firms as a contractor doing essentially the same thing making well over 6-figures.
When the last economic slump hit even New York I took a position last year to move to Houston Texas to work for a major health care/hospital organization and I've been working as a Senior Windows Server Admin. I'm much happier now in this new city and the quality of life here is much better than what I had in NYC, even though I took a 20% pay cut but still remained in the 6-figure range with a higher or equal pay rate than some who have gone to universities.
That's my story and I sometimes wonder how it would have turned out if I did go to a university? Would I have been working at a more difficult and prestigious job than a server admin making more money? Would I be happier? Or would I have turned out like some of my friends who went to college and came back no smarter or more educated but with a large financial debt making half as much money as I am?
Slashdot Mirror
I build this HTPC system last year and loaded it with XBMC Live running on Ubuntu (now 11.04) that can do full 1080p hardware accelerated decoding of complex scenes without dropping a single frame (I do my own encodings). Because the Intel Atom is a dual-core at 1.8 GHz along with nVidia Ion Next Generation which is equivalent to a GT210 video card it can shred on graphics.
HTPC - iAtom 1.8 2C, 2GB DDR3, 40GB SSD, 2TB HDD, Blu-Ray, ATSC+ClearQAM, Mini-ATX, 120mm Fan
Subtotal: $588.91
Shipping: $22.22
Total: $611.13
MOB: ASUS AT5IONT-I Intel Atom D525 (1.8GHz, dual-core) BGA559 Intel NM10 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo
MEM: G.SKILL 2GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model F3-10600CL9S-2GBSQ
TVC: AVerMedia AVerTVHD Duet - PCTV Tuner (A188 - White Box) MTVHDDUWB PCI-Express x1 Interface
SSD: Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CT040G310 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
DVD: LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Disc Reader SATA Model iHOS104-08
CAS: APEX MI-008 Black Steel Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case 250W Power Supply
FAN: GELID Solutions FN-SX12-10 120mm Silent Case Fan
REM: AVS Gear GP-IR02BK Vista 2 channel IR Remote Control
Temperature Sensors
This thing is completely silent when watching TV and it doesn't overheat or suffer from any thermal problems, even in super hot temps outside and a warm house at 80 F.
user@XBMCLive:~$ sensors
atk0110-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
Vcore Voltage: +1.12 V (min = +0.85 V, max = +1.60 V)
+3.3 Voltage: +3.33 V (min = +2.97 V, max = +3.63 V)
+5 Voltage: +5.05 V (min = +4.50 V, max = +5.50 V)
+12 Voltage: +12.10 V (min = +10.20 V, max = +13.80 V)
CPU FAN Speed: 989 RPM (min = 600 RPM)
CHASSIS FAN Speed: 0 RPM (min = 600 RPM)
CPU Temperature: +50.0C (high = +60.0C, crit = +95.0C)
GPU Temperature: +52.0C (high = +60.0C, crit = +95.0C)
user@XBMCLive:~$ sensors -f
atk0110-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
Vcore Voltage: +1.12 V (min = +0.85 V, max = +1.60 V)
+3.3 Voltage: +3.35 V (min = +2.97 V, max = +3.63 V)
+5 Voltage: +5.05 V (min = +4.50 V, max = +5.50 V)
+12 Voltage: +12.10 V (min = +10.20 V, max = +13.80 V)
CPU FAN Speed: 983 RPM (min = 600 RPM)
CHASSIS FAN Speed: 0 RPM (min = 600 RPM)
CPU Temperature: +122.0F (high = +140.0F, crit = +203.0F)
GPU Temperature: +125.6F (high = +140.0F, crit = +203.0F)
I thought that the original leak by Bradley Manning was a brave thing that he did, especially since the information he chose to leak was only low-level classified and unclassified information. He should be given a humanitarian award for his role in this.
Then I thought that WikiLeaks sharing the diplomatic cables with select journalists at respected organizations so that they can review the material, redact and sensitive personal information, and then publish a well written analysis of the most interesting cables was also a good and respectable thing.
However now that I find out from the Spiegel article that the shared file to the Guardian was just left on the file server after the confirmed that they got it is just such a stupid mistake. Encryption is not the be-all-end-all answer to security and WikiLeaks failed to understand that. Also the password was long and complex but the phrase shares the context of the data it encrypts and also could have been guessed eventually since it had so little entropy and difficulty.
Then to hear about pool record and file keeping, copying files to another server, hiding in subfolders, then copying them back and sharing them out on BitTorrent, what a cock-up that was! It's like the story of so many people on older P2P platforms sharing out their entire hard drives without realizing that people were download their application password files, personal documents, tax returns, pictures, and other stuff that should never be shared. It makes me think that WikiLeaks lacks some common computer sense and good server administrators who maintain and clean-up crap after their users.
This is one of those Epic Fails that will affect many people now and later, and will ripple down in history as a lesson of the reprecautions of good leaks going bad due to negligence and ignorance.
Software As Service, People!
What version of Google Maps and Gmail are you using right now? How about Google Calendar and Picasa? What do you mean you don't know? Can't you tell?
No you can't. All you know it's there, it works, it's the "newest" version you know off because of the new stuff showing up since the last update day.
Experiment Freely Developers
Firefox is following the same ideology here due to Google developer's influence. Let the developers strip the version numbers from the user experience part and us geeks will know how to tell in the about:support pages.
Let them mold and reshape our browser, hold the GUI and switch it up as much as they want. Remove the buttons, change the address bar, remove the protocol and domain suffix, strip the status bar, remove the menus, do whatever they want to experiment on trying to find the best user interface out there. Use us users as your test subjects and experiment to find out what works and what doesn't. Let the browser evolve forcefully because the users won't let new things to be tried on them peacefully without complaints.
Nobody is forcing anyone using Firefox to upgrade, stay at the latest 3.6.x release or 5.0.1 release or whatever if you don't want to participate. Let you organization standardize on a release. Nobody from Mozilla is forcing you to upgrade due to licenses, registrations, expiration, or mandatory upgrades, use whatever you want.
Microsoft Office Ribbons vs Toolbars
I heard all the moaning and groaning about Microsoft Office Ribbons versus Toolbars and I reserved my judgment until I tried them. Now that I use them and learned where all the options are I see them as a great and welcomed improvement and I'm looking toward the new Windows 8 having the Ribbon interface instead of toolbar icons. The ideaology of the Ribbon removing the duplication of the menus and toolbar icons is a logical one and add that the context sensitive color highlighted ribbons that appear when editing different elements such as tables, pivots, images, etc. just makes so much sense to me and makes my editing a breeze.
Weak up people, embrace the future and leave the old interfaces behind. Firefox developers, thread on and try new things!
You don't need guns to defend yourself, you American twatburger, you just need community spirit, as happened in many areas of London last night. If you come across a couple of hundred Sikhs ready to fight back, you'd have to be fucking stupid to try any looting in their area.
Good will, kind wishes, and a friendly cooperating community is not enough when you are all alone and there is nobody holding the front or protecting your back. In London the police were out in force and each community came out to protect their neighborhoods because they had the backing of police. Remove the police from the picture and see how brave those community members get when even a single rioters pulls out a firearm of any kind and opens fire. Unless you can return in-kind you'll see a quick disappearance of "the community" from the streets. Good thing that there are some people in some communities that think ahead and become the sheepherders for the sheeple that live there when the shit hits the fan.
The Koreans did good because they and their parents remember their own country's war. The Philippinos also do the same here also because they remember. How quickly the others forget and then try to bury the painful history.
There was a more detailed article that I was referring to, but I guess WikiPedia summary will have to be good enough to let you start digging into the official news report and video recordings.
Los Angeles Riots of 1992 - Koreatown
All this talk and nobody posted a site up yet with all the perps identified and tagged? Sounds like design by committee, where there's only one real developer who understands and can do the work and a bunch of yakkers just chatting it up because they can't do it but want to be important or included.
C'mon, website up in T-minus how many hours?
PS: On a side note. Hearing the word Riot brings back the memories of the LA Riots and the one story that I remember is the guy with a hunting rifle living across the street from his friend's electronics store and keeping it looter free and allowing it to survive in tact while everything else got robbed or burned. When the shit hits the fan and the police aren't there to help you, just be prepared to help yourself and you'll do well! Too bad about London, as to quote FPS Russia, "One of those Beech countries, where you can't have guns!"
Lived in NYC, worked there in Fortune 10 (yes ten) companies as a Sys Admin, got out when I got a chance and a nice offer far-far away in a land of sanity, relaxation, no state taxes, affordable housing, and am never coming back to NYC. The quality of life anywhere else is so much better in all the ways than the daily grind in NYC no matter how much they pay you. The disgusting NYC subway system shows the true underbelly of the city.
NYC financial recruiters (aka head hunters) and companies always get their talent (aka willing slaves) on short term 6-12 month contracts and never or hardly ever as employees unless they are doing a direct transfer from another financial company and want to retain their corporate title and position Associate, AVP, VP, Director, Managing Director, etc. Their favorite ploy is to dangle conversion to full-time employment and eligibility for bonuses as a way to whip the consultants and contractors to work long overtime hours on straight-time (aka no overtime pay).
After years of being away from NYC these recruiters still contact me with contract offers for NYC and I just keep telling them to take a flying fuck off a bridge and remove me from their contacts database.
Been there, done that, never again, it isn't worth any kind of money to live in the technology ghetto that is NYC.
True, but the cell non-ionizing radiation denatured all the proteins in their brain cells making them too stupid to figure out the Bluetooth pairing process.
I'm amazed at the sheer number of people down here in the south who drive their expensive luxury cars and trucks with the mobile phone glued to their ear by their hand, oblivious to the situation and other drivers around them.
You'd think that if they can spend $30-60K they could buy a $40 Bluetooth speakerphone or ear piece?
Douchebaggery on our roads!
I read the article and the biggest and most fearful thing that many people who were affected by this was that all of their Google services, including Gmail were affected and disabled.
I only use Gmail for e-mail functionality because it is free and convenient and it is my primary e-mail address that has stayed universal through ISP changes and moves. I was quite well aware of Google's privacy policy and advertisement angle along with the fact that all of them will be available forever to Google, before I signed up to Gmail and have been weary every since. The offer of convenient, free, reliable, spam-free, managed by someone else, and universally accepted Gmail account had a lot of benefits since I didn't have to buy my own domain, maintain my own e-mail server, and deal with spam filtering
I still haven't been burned by Gmail but I'm now wondering that since Google has become such a large entity it is surely going to suffer the fate of a behemoth afflicted by blind bureaucracy and the e-mails that they have forever will somehow get out to agencies, companies, or people who I don't want them to see.
I'm going to seriously look into the technical and logical feasibility of install a mail server on my Linux box in my house which is going to require that I manage my own services and spam filtering along with dealing with the hoops of trying to run a mail server behind an ISP with my own domain name.
I had no problem pairing Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 ($42 USD) and their Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Mouse 5000 ($39 USD) with an HP Laptop with Bluetooth built in and a desktop both running Windows 7 and also with Ubuntu 10.04 and 11.04 using the default Bluetooth stacks in both OSes using a Bluetooth Class 1 (1 mW = 100-meter distance) dongle ($15 - 30 USD).
I use the keyboard which is always on sitting under my coffee table to occasionally type into XBMC Media Center running on Ubuntu 11.04 and my wife user the mouse with her laptop. The Bluetooth keyboard and the class 1 dongle work so well that I can type into the media center box from 20-feet and two rooms away with 4 walls in between. I also occasionally link my Motorola Bluetooth S9 headphones to listen to the audio in my desktop or laptop and haven't tried it yet with Ubuntu 11.04 and XBMC.
Biggest hurdle in Linux was learning to install the bluez-utils packages so that I can use the bluez- scripts to pair the devices since the straight Bluetooth hcitool connect commands wouldn't successfully pair the devices even though they would discover the devices, interrogate them, and go into discover mode on the dongle and start the pair mode. Just use bluez-* scripts to pair your Bluetooth and it works like a charm.
Buy good hardware from Microsoft or Logitech and use good OSes like Windows 7 or Linux with bluez Bluetooth stack and scripts to get your stuff working and you'll have universal Bluetooth hardware that won't become obsolete or be tied down to proprietary wireless standards and drivers from vendor who will abandon you on the next OS release (e.g. Logitech).
This is for all the people who never figured out how to manage their e-mail.
- Disable the automatic deletion of e-mail from the Deleted Items folder and do not use manual deletion.
- Delete any read items from the Inbox that you read and do not need to act on.
- Leave any items in the Inbox that you need to act on (e.g. reply, perform a task, etc.)
- Once you acted on that e-mail delete it from your Inbox.
- Setup Auto Archiving on your Deleted Items folder to move the items from there to a separate Archive folder to keep your read e-mails there.
Just do these simple steps and your Inbox will be clean and your mail administrators will thank you and your mailbox won't explode or fill-up.
If you want to get more out of your e-mail then start setting up rules, folders, tags, searching, etc. to really get as much out of it as you can and make your online life easier.
Internship Well Paid
My manager and I working in a top 5 financial investment bank actively interviewed and hired ~5 interns at $14/hour in 2000 from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ, US for positions on the Windows Server Administration team during the school's summer time break. The internship was fully sponsored and encouraged by the company and paid very well for basically a very light work load 20-30 hours a week with a fully flexible schedule (come as you please). Other departments such as Desktop Support, Network, and Telecom also got candidates for internships but from different schools.
Interviewing Interns
We interviewed the students at their university during an open internship session where there were representatives from all the other major corporations there looking for young talent. We would read each candidate's resume, check their chosen course of study, skim the clubs that they were part of, but really focus on their technical hobbies to have them talk to us about their experiences with technical equipment and/or using and fixing their laptop and computer systems. We would ask them open ended questions such as if you had a project to build a powerful workstation computer for a high-up executive what would you need, which components would you choose, how would you build and configure it. Some interns did not have extensive technical or computer experience but we would still give them a chance to show us that they had the interest and ability to learn something new for them, such as building new servers, clusters, and storage systems in the data center then troubleshooting them.
The interns that showed interest in hardware would become apprentices to one of the Core team members and would focus on new server hardware, cabling, clusters, storage, and rack builds in our data centers and would shadow to learn the procedures then actually perform all of them under supervision.
The interns that showed interest in the operating system and active directory would work on the Infrastructure team to maintain and deploy new file servers, domain controllers, name servers, etc.
The interns that showed interest in software would work with the Application Support team members to learn the various business and back-end packages, databases, web servers, etc.
The interns that would spend a lot of time chatting and talking on their phones would be put in the Rapid Response team and deal with incoming trouble tickets, phone calls, and general issues and would learn proper communication, diagnostic procedures, and how to put their yappers to good use.
We would then rotate the interns half-way through their internship so that they could learn the work of another team and we would give them a choice where they would want to work. They got about 4-weeks of time in each team and learned the work pretty well.
The interns would also be given special projects to work on that were ideas that we had for improving our work such as consolidated information web sites and portals, documentation, organization, and other things that required fresh thinking and ideas in a rigid work flow. We listened to their ideas and also used some of the web sites and automation tools that they produced for us so that was a great help.
Internship Impressions
The interns all got a pretty good and realistic view of what it is to work as a Windows Server Administrator and do the normal blue-collar work that we do as admins. A few of them expressed interest in working as an admin doing real (often boring) work as administrators and we expressed interest in hiring them for our department, desktop, or network departments after they graduate. A handful did get hired in various departments.
Many interns did not have the knack nor the interest for server administration and had dreams of higher goals for their life and some were honest enough to tell us this at the end of their internships. I hope that their experience showed them what real
If I won the lottery or had a windfall one day I'd quit my job to free up my time and go to school just for the fun of it, especially for the General Education and other courses so that I could expand my view of the world and the knowledge acquired in all the time we've been here. Learning is fun especially if you pursue what you like and sometimes stumble into the unknown but interesting things. Don't skip the general studies if you can, enjoy them and broaden your horizons.
I have a semi-successful career in server administration in finance sector and now a different industry and am able to live very comfortable in minor luxury right now without a high school diploma. If you are truly a good programmer then you will be able to make a name for yourself and have a successful career in development and technology, if not then a degree won't help you.
I have seen my friends go off to college and return no different than they were before and no smarter or more enlightened. I have always eyed universities with watchful disdain because of what I saw happening there through my experiences with my friends at their schools. I am weary of them now and question their value for the general populous. Many young people are forced into studies there where they could save time and money and get vocational school training instead. Many of my co-workers throughout the years in the top financial institutions working on the technology side had degrees but not quite enough experience and technological geekness to progress them past the mid level admins and operator type work.
Now that I am a bit older with 10+ years in the industry with a lot of time at different top level firms I can say that at this point in time where my career and life are pretty stable I would understand and enjoy university studies more then when I was younger. I feel that I am now past the time wasting aspects of my life, girls, games, parties, that I now appreciate the greater things in a geek's life like deeper understanding and further search for knowledge. I have this feeling that I will try and enroll in some classes just to see what I can learn.
Unknown Unknowns
I read most of the score 2 and above threads and the one that really stands out is the one below and cetialphav is absolutely correct about the unknown unknowns being the greatest level of ignorance that a person can experience.
by cetialphav (246516) on 2011-06-25 12:48 (#36569282)
In almost every project that people do in life, the biggest risk of failure comes from the unknown unknowns. These are the things that you didn't know, but that you didn't even realize that you didn't know. The known unknowns are straightforward to deal with. If I decide to start a business, I know that I know nothing about business tax issues, but since I am aware of that I can consult experts and educate myself. One of the benefits of general education is that you make your set of unknown unknowns smaller and the space of known unknowns bigger.
I would welcome if the EPA implemented and slowly phased in the ENERGY STAR program for all electronics sold with their very nice Watt-Hours (US) yellow stickers since this would start to bring the issue of power efficiency in appliances forward and allow the general populous see the actual numbers behind their products.
Solution 1 - Cancel your Cable or Satellite
I cancelled my DirecTV satellite subscription a few years back and don't miss it yet still get all my TV entertainment from the Internet and the Web without having to fork over $100+ to the cable company to subsidize their QVC shopping channel and the other 299-channels that I will never tune to or ever watch. My television viewing habits are now focused only on the very few shows that I do watch and my enjoyment of television has increased as I no longer waste any time on the increasingly annoying and idiotic product advertisements.
Solution 2 - Build your own Digital Video Recorder computer
HTPC - iAtom 1.8 2C, 2GB DDR3, 40GB SSD, 2TB HDD, Blu-Ray, ATSC+ClearQAM, Mini-ATX, 120mm Fan - Subtotal: $586.91
XBMC - Media Center Front-End with (Multi-OS Windows, Linux, Apple, etc.) - Does Not Support Recording or Capture, Playback Only
MythTV - Digital Video Recorder (Linux) - Does Support Capture and Recording
I build my own HTPC using Intel Atom and nVidia Ion 2 running XBMC front-end on Ubuntu Linux with a 40 GB SSD, 1.5 TB HDD, 2 GB RAM, and AverMedia Digital Capture card for Over The Air TV (that I never setup with MythTV and don't watch anyway). This little box has HDMI direct connection to my 50-inch TV so I get full video output and also fully accelerated MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (ASP, and AVC H.264) decoding at 1080p without dropping any frames thanks to nVidia Ion 2 (aka Ion Next Generation) all on the low-power 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel Atom processors while only utilizing 5-7% CPU when doing playback. It is also dead quiet due to the SSD, WD Green HDD, quiet liquid 120mm ball-bearing fan, and fan-less motherboard cooling.
The whole box uses 45 Watts while idle, 50 Watts while watching a show, and 55 Watts when I do a full load test on all the components at once. I leave this box on permanently and it serves as my server for SSH, FTP, DDNS, Wake-On-LAN, BitTorrent, etc. It is a lot more energy friendly than any other desktop or server I ran previously in my house for same Linux server duties and I can use it to watch TV while it does all those other things in the background.
Solution 3 - Do Not Use Your Desktop as Media Box
For heavy processing or encoding, I use the desktop computer but keep it on only while I'm sitting down at it and that beast with the two monitors eats 465 Watts of power idle and will hit ~550 Watts if I hit the video card hard. That's a 10-fold increase in power utilization so I always turn my desktop off when I'm done with it and boot it back up in just a few seconds thanks to the new Intel 320 160GB SSD (upgraded from Intel 80GB G1 SSD). The two 3-second pauses during boot-up to go into the Silicon Image and Intel RAID menus take longer than load Windows 7 entirely otherwise my computer would be up in under 10-seconds.
Learn the difference between Support (Administration) and Development (Programming). The best you can do in Administration is put things back they way there were before they all broke so the users stop complaining or at best make small and slight improvements to a screwed up systm. Your job as administrator is to deal always with problems and very little time is devoted to improvements. In Programming you fix or improve applications or build fresh new ones. Go back to Develpment if you still have a choice.
Study
Otherwise if this is a bottom-up approach to learning networking and server administration without any previous hands-on experience with servers and managed switches then start with the certification tracks and books because they are well planned out, have plenty of books available, have training classes or web instructions. Get books and materials for CompTIA A+, Network+, Server+, Inet+, Security+, Linux+ since you can learn these generalized topics quickly and easily and at least be introduced to very basic ideas and terms that you never had to deal with such as RAID, iSCSI, LUN, VLANs, trunks, aggregated links, routing, CIDR, OSPF, core, edge, etc. You can skip the CompTIA tests for those since they are not really worth the money anymore with expiration dates.
Move onto Cisco CCNA for more in-depth networking and one of the CCNP specialties for advanced topics. Touch some Microsoft and Linux server admin certs because you'll need to understand the servers and how they actually function and comminicate on the network to plan out your setup.
If you have a chance look into SANs (storage area networks) and expecially iSCSI (i.e. Storage over Ethernet) because you will have to support it now or very shortly. Fibre Channel also while you're at it, learn zoning, provisioning, find out who Brocade, Qlogic, and EMC are.
Also be sure to learn about Wireless networking using Enterprise level products and access points because that can get difficult quickly when it comes to proper setup, authentication, RADIUS, encryption, WPA2, TKIP/AES, certificates and auto-enrollment.
Vendors
Blades - HP, Dell, IBM, Cisco
Switches - HP ProCurve, Juniper, Cisco, Netgear, Alcatel
Servers - HP, Dell, IBM
Recommendations
Network - 10.A.B.C/8 for your network. A=site or core segments, B.=floor or edge, C=each subnet. Use /24 as default mask for 254 hosts and /22 for larger special subnets for terminal servers, virtual guest farms.
DMZ - NAT your public IPs to a dedicated DMZ VLAN, firewall it from inside with static explicit per IP and Port rules.
Vendor Systems - Segregate on seperate VLANs or subnets since you don't own or control these devices. Firewall from Production.
Production Network - Keep small /24 subnets, edge to core (i.e. like a pointed star with center as core or multipe stars joined at core)
Workstation Network - VLAN and keep subnets small and logically devided by physical barriers, floor, building, site, etc.
Server Network - Try to keep server types separated on their own VLANs and subnets and concentrate them physically and by switch/card. Separate unlike and strage servers, applicances, vendor boxes away from regulat servers.
Backup Network - Physicially separate the cables, switches/cards for workstation and server centralized backups, (Symantec/Veritas NetBackup).
Wireless Network - Firewall and separate on VLAN
Virtual Server Network - Dedicated VLAN and get 10Gb cards for switches and servers/blades.
Storage Network (iSCSI) - Dedicated cables, switches/cards.
VoIP Network - Separate VLANs & inter-switch trunks to keep away from all other traffic, separate switches/cards for sure.
There are many more suggestions but at this point I'd have to start charging consulting fees. Find people to help you and pay them well.
Good luck!
The part about searching for obvious contraband is understandable when crossing a border before entry is granted but it appears that all the legal headedness in these district courts suffer from selective ignorance since they ignore the plain language of the Fourth Amendment, especially the "unreasonable" working that is specifically included in it.
Also the key paragraphs of this article and decision deal with the transportation of equipment away from the border. This requires the taking of this equipment away from the person, which steps all over the seizure part since the equipment is taken away from the person.
On top of this "probable cause" is required for search and seizure so that little bit about "no heightened suspicion" is pure bullshit.
I think these Federal Judges need remedial education to go back and re-read the constitution in plain English.
Acquaintance at Goldman Sachs
I still have an acquaintance, a friend of a friend, who still works at GS after getting into the company during a college internship and just staying around after 10-years. He has turned from behind a shy and friendly guy who would hang out with us and be generally cool and enjoyable to an absolutely unreliable and lying prick who never talk to us or calls us even though we knew him since elementary school. He has developed a slew of personality problems and his personal life is a swish cheese of shambles, failures, neuroses, and personal obsessions. This definitely had a personality change at this company after all these years even though he lived for much of that time in the same place and spent time with the same people as he did in elementary, high school, and college. There was a definite but slow and gradual personality shift over the years.
Personal Experience Working at Goldman Sachs
I worked for this company as a contractor trying to do Windows Server administration but I was so disgusted by the work ethic, environment, co-workers, corporate ideology, and managers that I flat out gave up on this contract and walked off after 3-months of working there to go to another finance firm only to be refreshed with a sane and enjoyable working environment that paid even more money.
There is something seriously wrong at Goldman Sachs and many of the people who work there are either complete asses or are slowly having their personalities changed to become asses before they graduate to pricks, assholes, and further on.
Honest Hope for Assholes
If you're an asshole and have finance, computer, math, or engineering skills but are having a hard time finding or keeping a job because of your asshole personality, then you should definitely go and work for Goldman Sachs because you'll be right at home.
Interview Process
The interview process was long since it required 7-separate one-on-one individual interviews which included hour long technical quizzing by all these people. I should have realized that something is wrong when I learned that the last person on the interview list was a technical director who had no knowledge or background of technology what so ever and who was only appointed to the position 6-months ago. (Ding!)
The HR hiring process was unusually long with a thick book of paperwork to sign including a lot more legal documents than any other financial firms. I retained a copy of all the documents and I'm amazed at the layers and layers of legalese in these documents. Of course it took the department a month and a half to actually complete the whole process, which is insanely long when it comes to contractors in NYC, and I was about to take another job because of the long wait. (Ding!)
Turn Over Rate High
The department that I joined had only 8-people, 2 of them were there for a few years, 1 for half a year, and the other 5 joined within the last few months. They obviously had problems retaining employees since only two guys were employees and the rest were contractors. The two guys who were there for a while were completely unhelpful, uninterested, unmotivated and generally behaved as pricks to the rest of the new guys. (Ding!)
Management
The manager was an Indian guy who's only management motto was "just get it done" without telling you anything useful or trying to connect you with the people from other departments who you needed to get things done or even tell you who they are (corporate address book was too much for him). (Ding!)
Help Desk, Desktop Support for Server Administrators
I didn't get to start right away in my role doing Windows Server administration but instead had to go through a useless initiation process of working 1-week in the desktop support department literally carting monitors and PCs to people's desk to set up new users and then perform desktop application installations and troubleshooting people's dirty mouse ball problems. (Ding!)
When I finally finished the week and was shown my cubicle in the server admin department I was happy to start real work, only to be told that in Goldman Sachs the server administrators duties included directly supporting the users and desktop computers as a first-line of help desk for the 300-servers that I was personally supporting for all issues, alerts, upgrades, and hardware replacements. I also supported the developer department because of some of these servers were development boxes and this included development application installations and repairs on these desktop, including Microsoft Visual Studio troubleshooting. The users of those desktops and servers would call me the admin supporting them and I would have to contact the other departments on behalf of the users if I couldn't resolve the issues on their desktops. This is an unheard off work assig
Downloaded it, ran it, tiny screen. Tried it again with the "-scaleup" option only to witness the bloodbath and gore of a full computer crash! The horror!
The images of my corrupted desktop and gadgets all flailing there on a broken black background and the eerie monotonous looping screech of a stuck audio buffer will haunt me forever. Off to see the psychiatrist and hit the liquor store on the way back.
I absolutely agree that there is a very real loss of the fidelity of life when you are stuck behind the viewfinder trying to capture the moment instead of just living through it.
I read your post and found it very true from my personal experience trying to take pictures and document events of my life, what a loss that was. The other people who disagree with you, defend their tedium of work, joined like Siamese-twins grafted at the face to a camera device that is blocking and shielding the moments of life happening right in front of them.
The thing to do is to free yourself from the task of trying to document the precious moments of life and setup a free-running recording system so that you can participate and experience everything without having to worry or concentrate on the meta-task of capturing the moments.
Maybe soon we'll get stimsim technology to record our own experience in life without having to consciously do it.
@ arth1
It is unfortunate that you got your misinformation from the mass media about the source of weapons used in the Mexican drug war, most of that misinformation comes from the anti-gun campaigns who spread it through our mass media networks and which then are repeated by the politicians. The weapons used in the drug war are military type weapons that are fully-automatic rifles and carbines along with some grenades and grenade launcher attachments. These weapons are smuggled into Mexico from other Latin American countries left over after their civil wars or sold by corrupt government officials, from overseas by gun dealers from Asia, Middle East, or Eastern Europe, and captured or taken from willing and unwilling Mexican authorities themselves. A small amount of the weapons do come from the United States because it is the largest producer of modern weapons but very few if any weapons come from the ordinary citizens themselves due to the restrictions and sheer prices that I outline below.
Source: LMGTFY - Mexican Drug War Gun Seizure
National Firearms Act (NFA)
In the United States the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934, amended in 1968, and updated in 1986 controls the purchase and ownership of grenades (aka destructive devices), sound suppressors and parts (aka silencers), short-barreled rifles and shotguns (aka SBRs), fully-automatic guns (aka machine guns). There is a prohibition in effect since May 19, 1986 that prevents the possession and purchase of fully-automatic rifles and carbines (aka "machine guns") by non-government entities (i.e. ordinary citizens) so any machine guns owned by ordinary citizens are usually old guns manufactured and imported before then. There are State laws that also govern the ownership of such weapons that must be followed but most of states in the union do not put any restrictions on the right of ordinary citizens to possess such firearms.
Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tabaco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) - National Firearms Act (NFA)
How To Purchase a Machine Gun, Silencer, or Short-Barreled Rifle/Shotgun Legally!
The NFA allows for the purchase and possession of such devices by ordinary citizens by the completion of ATF Form 1 (5320.1) and the payment of a $200 fee for a tax stamp (a fee that has not changed since 1934!). However, the completion line 13. Law Enforcement Certification on the form requires the signature of the Chief Law Enforcement Officer that is neigh impossible in many urban or even rural locations, but that can be bypassed by the creation of a Living Trust and assigning the NFA regulated weapon to the Trust and making yourself a trustee and giving yourself the power to possess and use the weapon on behalf of the Trust that can be accomplished for as little as $100 online or a bit more if done by an actual lawyer.
So it is possible for an ordinary citizen to purchase such a weapon but this requires a little bit of paperwork, fingerprinting, a $200 fee for the tax stamp, and $100 or more for the creation of a Trust.
Source:
ATF Form 1 (5320.1) - Application to Make and Register a Firearm,
ATF Form 4 (5320.4) - Application for Tax paid Transfer and Registration of Firearm
Expensive Prices for Pre-1986 Machine Guns - $6K, $13K, $18K
The 1986 restriction on machine guns prevents the sale of modern manufactured machine guns so the prices on pre-1986 guns follow economic market scarcity rules since no more can be made available and their prices are highly inflated due to this restriction well above the actual value of the firearm. The most desirab
I second the parent post!
It is too early to start blaming or trying to figure out why this happened and at our end of the information chain we should be the ones who withhold judgment until more information is known and presented. Speculation and guessing will only form the wrong ideas in our minds as to why this happened and our own thinking will be clouded with judgment and bias instead of facts. We will become swayed by our own personal prejudices and when the facts finally come out we'll be skeptical of them if they don't form up to our own derived conclusions.
"Why did he do this?"
The assailant who's in custody should be asked the most important question of all so that we can figure out his method of thinking and have a clearer understanding of the purpose behind his actions.
Like the posters above have mentioned, some attacks and assassinations are clearly politically motivated while others are just done by mentally ill people, or some are even perpetrated due to secret personal vendettas or retributions.
"What college did you go to? It's not listed on your resume."
In my life I've found that the question and statement "What college did you go to? It's not listed on your resume." was only asked or me less than two times during all the interviews that I went through to score full-time and consulting gigs for investment banks on Wall Street. The interviewers were always interested in "tech-ing" me out with complex problem solving questions and then listening to my detailed explanations of the projects that I was involved in that they forgot, didn't bother, or just didn't care about what sheep-skin university I went to.
I still think that IT is the current Wild West where it's your skills that make you the man you are and not some diploma and unfocused education. The hiring managers want someone who has proven himself in technology, even if it is help desk, desktop, or some junior position than a fresh faced kid with no notches on his pocket protector who knows nothing. In IT experience and skills matter more than diplomas and certificates.
We see this all the time on Slashdot as some snot-nosed kid comes out of nowhere and kicks some company and their security department in the balls or develops a fix or a workaround for a problem that companies full of college folks can't.
My original story up there in the thread is not a usual one and I do not advocate to anyone to repeat it. I often think that I should have went back to finish at least high-school to pick-up physics, the only science course and field that I failed to learn completely. I gave the thought of trying to finish it myself even 13-years after I left but I never got back around to it and these days I'm more focused on scripting work that I just prefer learning.
PS: I think that the original story of this thread was not meant for me since I could not get into an ivy league school coming from a very bad NYC education experience being taught by rote scoring perfect 100's in state wide mathematics tests but completely unable to understand the purpose of quadratic equations then or now or how to derive trigonometric functions until a friend at work explained them all to me in 5-minutes on a white-board.
At the same time I am a first-generation immigrant of a single-mother working as a house keeper unable to pay or contribute for my higher level education yet making just enough for us to enjoy a decent life but at the same time putting us above the poverty line preventing me from taking advantage of very affordable school scholarships and grants. That famous NYC financial Catch-22, if you make enough to pay the high rents in the ass-crack parts of industrial Queens/Brooklyn neighborhoods you are no longer eligible for financial support because your net income is just too high per federal and state standards.
On top of that I was not smart enough in 7th grade to get into the three top high-schools in NYC such as Brooklyn Tech or Stuyvesant after failing to make the grade by a decent margin on their entrance exams since I was put one grade ahead after coming to the states from Europe but with poorer English skills and already equalized Mathematics skills with the kids here. There were no MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, BBS, Network (10Base-2), or Internet (SLIP) questions on those tests so my self-taught home computer skills were well missed in these exams only to be delegated to attend my local high-school sporting well aged Apple II computers with rotting 5.25" floppies.
But this is not a sob story since I am now in Houston, enjoying my life away from finance and Wall Street, living in a more normal city and enjoying life. Overall I am happy how it turned out, things could have been better and they still can be, but since I have this job and I am working doing what I like to do, I can't complain compared to my friends who are struggling after their college education left them high-and-dry with debts and no real-world work experience.
Funny that you said that because I sometimes think that if I could solve the "money problem" through my own business, a piece of software I wrote that would sell itself, or a windfall from a lottery then I've always imagined that I would go attend a university full-time. I'd like to spend a few years focusing on and taking some courses that I would be interested in the field of computer science, such as calculus mathematics, algorithms, data structures, systems design, high-level programming and development.
Is going to a University at all worth the cost?
I was a computer geek from elementary school and knew where my career was heading. After an addiction to Ultima Online that resulted in too many absences I was given a choice of retaking a whole 6-month semester of high-school and being separated from my peers or dropping out of school. After a few months lounging around and playing the game some more I went to work in a large computer chain doing desktop and printer repairs, then worked as a junior server & desktop admin at an account firm trying to become a Dot-com, then started as a Wintel Server Admin (Systems Analyst) in a major Wall Street investment bank, and after 9/11 I worked for most of Wall Street firms as a contractor doing essentially the same thing making well over 6-figures.
When the last economic slump hit even New York I took a position last year to move to Houston Texas to work for a major health care/hospital organization and I've been working as a Senior Windows Server Admin. I'm much happier now in this new city and the quality of life here is much better than what I had in NYC, even though I took a 20% pay cut but still remained in the 6-figure range with a higher or equal pay rate than some who have gone to universities.
That's my story and I sometimes wonder how it would have turned out if I did go to a university? Would I have been working at a more difficult and prestigious job than a server admin making more money? Would I be happier? Or would I have turned out like some of my friends who went to college and came back no smarter or more educated but with a large financial debt making half as much money as I am?