This moment of lost productivity is brought to you by...
JAVA...
It's what makes you wait!
(/voice)
Boosting Java performance is #1, but boosting compatibility would be even better. Nothing is worse than having to maintain multiple tens of thousands of desktops to run various versions of Java, depending on which application one wishs to run, and figuring out which version is better supported and making that all happen without the user being involved.
1. If you've made no configuration changes or patches in the past week, that pretty much lets out program error.
2. If your ISP is saying they don't do spam filtering, then that pretty much lets that out too, unless your ISP is given to lying to you.
3. Others point to the cyber war between Georga and Russia. I'd think that those folks would have their own bots not associated with spamming, but I can't prove that.
4. It surpasses hope that all the sudden people cleaned up their pwon3d systems.
5. My spam levels have not dropped appreciably, and I not only have my own domain, but allocations as well.
6. I have noticed at times in the past that my spam levels do drop by 60, 70, even 80%. They always pick back up before too long. Enjoy a breif respite.
Especially if you own stock in hard drive and tape OEMs!
Kind of sucks if you think the government ought to be something other than responsible, restrained, and democratic. Or harbor any terrorist ideas like, maybe a government ought to be required to have proof or at least strong suspician you're planning something Really Bad before they can monitor your every breath and step.
As an systems administrator, you bet your life I'll look at anything when I have reason to. You call with a problem, it's reasonable to look where I reasonably (even if wrongly) think the problem might be. (It's not required, but I do say "I'll need to look at X. OK?")
I won't go repeating any of that, nor make copies of it (other than backups you are entitled to), or use it in any way - UNLESS you are violating TOS/AUP/or as required by Law Enforcement. It's NOT my data.
If that bothers you, what would YOU do in the same situation, had you misunderstood your customer's problem? Ask first? Not ask?
Anyway, unless you don't want to get up at 4am and go find a problem, then you're pretty much limited to this sort of thing. Otherwise, drink some coffee or something before you hit the road at 4am.
Less of a blindspot due to roof supports on Chevy's (I drive an Impala LT), less haze caused by scratches in the windshield, about 10 MPG better milage, and directional spotlights tied in to the blinkers so I can see where I WANT to go. It's nice to hit the remote start system, but it would be better to be able to choose between remote start and "roll down all the windows". I live where it's VERY hot. Rolling down the windows would work much better than to run the A/C for a few minutes before I enter the car.
I've Cisco routers that have never been rebooted except to load up patches. At the moment, I've a 63xx router that's been up for the last two years.
I also have an AIX system that hasn't been patched or rebooted in the last 4 years. (an internal system. Yeah, it should be updated, but as of now, nothing that is horrible and accesable via the firewall rules.)
There was a story going around about a netware system that got walled up behind sheet rock and ran for years and years without anyone being able to even touch the server. I doubt it on a personal level just on power alone (where can you find power that NEVER drops over many years? I'd sure like to know...) I could see that a system wouldn't have a critical hardware failure over 6+ years, I just don't see that same system being able to stay up without power problems.
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You're not married, are you. (note that wasn't a question.)
If you are married, I WANT her sister's name. (grin!)
If you really want to know, send an email. I'll 'splain it to you. Allow me two weeks to check the account, as it's not normally scanned. (6,000 spams per week will do that.) Be sure to put SLASHDOT in the subject line.
OK, so you have two routes to the internet. One packet departs, but is returned by the other route. How to glue those together is a very non-trivial problem.
Sprint tried that in 1997-2001 time frame with bonded T1 & T3 services. The bonding never worked for persistant connections, and only slightly better for transiant connections. UDP worked best. And that was using a routing system that understood it was bonded, not one completely unaware of another route.
These days $DAYJOB uses OC3's and SONET rings for Internet, so there may have been advances I'm unaware of, but back then, it really, really sucked. Off the cuff, I'd say use Linux and the Zebra package on a old computer, and try that, but no promises. Personally, I don't think it will work well.
Many [porn] "moves" that are great IRL are too subtle to show up in porn and many porn "moves" aren't that great IRL. Not that most/.ers ever experience the difference;)
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Oh, I don't think that all that many/.'ers are married...
There's nothing really wrong with respectfully pointing out in a pleading that the court you're before doesn't have the discretion to do something.
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Absolutely correct. The way it should have been handled was with a respectful motion citing the rules of the court, the law, and or case law as to why this court lacked jurisdiction/descretion. Not "You don't have the authority!", likely flung over an indignant shoulder while stomping out of court like a spoiled little brat who didn't get his play-pretty at the store.
While the law may be an ass, it's an ass that uses resoned arguements, precident, rules, and the law to come to (sometimes) assine conclusions. But in the US, most of the time for most of the people, it works well enough. Only God can acheive perfect justice, so mankind should be pretty proud to be able to (mostly) produce adequate justice, most times, most places, for most people. Not that we (nor We) shouldn't try for better.
"Thompson's disciplinary hearing apparently ended in the attorney walking out of the courtroom after saying the judge did not have the authority to hear his case."
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No matter how badly things go for you in court, no matter how much you dislike the ruling, no matter how unjust you feel you've been treated... NEVER insult a judge or be less than totally respectful for the process.
And don't ever tell a judge they "don't have the authority". You'll be in a higher court soon. Judges don't like people being disrepectful of other judges, not even when the judge in question is wrong. Especailly when your own motives and reasons are (properly) called into question.
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Provide (supposedly) an unbiased opinion on your home as to the proper selling price, what must be done before placing it on the market, what should be done to bring the highest selling price at the least cost, and showing the property for you. Why would I want to use a realtor to sell a home rather than listing the home myself
Because real estate law is complex, varies from state to state, and without an agent (absent this ruling) you had no access to MLS services.
and what is the benefit of using a realtor to find a home rather than just looking through the listings myself?
Because your realitor is supposed to "know what you'd like", ferret that out within your price range, and get you the best deal possible.
Does this happen?
Not so much, in my experiance. I bought a home that violated my three showstoppers. Those were:
It must not be a Rayco home.
It must not be two story.
It absolutely, positively, no way, could be in a home owners assocation.
I should have fired her. I got a house with all three things I didn't want, and was talked out of my objections. That held for about two weeks. The third week I suspected I made a mistake, by the end of the first month (and two notices of HOA violations) I knew I had. It hasn't gotten any better in the ensuing 36 months (8 of which this house has been on the market for 10% less than I paid for it.)
Ultimately I have no one to blame but myself. I will say that when first told of this house, I said (sputtered morelike) "But it has all three things I DON'T WANT!".
So, was I stupid? You bet. Was I helped to be stupid? Only in the sense that a bull, led by a ring in his nose to slaugher...
That said, the ultimate responsibily was mine. I messed up.
Final advice, don't forget to file "Form D" with the IRS when you sell a house. And NEVER forget what you don't want in a house.
What I really want to know is if it's really Stephen Hawking in this ad or if it's someone else. (near the end, a quick camio, right after Adam sets Jamie's arm on fire with a blow torch.)
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I can see Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman doing this ad, and I can see where having Stephen Hawking would totally rock, but I can't quite wrap my mind around Dr. Hawking having such a... flexable sense of humor. One doesn't expect to see someone with that amount of sheer brain power to have feet of clay... or even a sense of humor that I could understand.
First, use "smart" greylisting. That will temp fail (4xx) messages from domains/ip allocation combinations you do not know to be "good". After that, use the other kind of grey listing that rejects messages if there are any pre-chat commands from the sending system. That stops an incredible amount of viruses without having to virus scan. (But not all!)
Second, use TLS with important/large customers. These emails should completely bypass any spam filtering, but never virus filtering.
Third, insted of hard bounces (5xx), accept the message but quarantine it. Allow the end users to see their quarantine queue and review the message, and gate it in if good. I'm not aware of any open source that does that for you, we hacked up our own using MailScanner.info as a base (and it is pretty ugly, otherwise I'd submit it). Many commercial products have that built in. MXLogic for one. There are lots of others.
Lastly, it shouldn't be just one person on the spam queue.
Just wondering... did your program interface a database at all? You should see the regressions with DAO/ADO/ODBC/JET/Etc. Now all you've got is ADO.NET, and from what I've seen the calls aren't the same as the calls for the pre-.net APIs.
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All my programs interfaced with databases, from Oracle to MSSQL. (My programs were ERP, accounting, logging, device control for the most part. Databases were always a very large part of that.) I used a data abstraction layer made by a company whose name I cannot now recall, but they charged as much for their ODBC connectors as MS did for VB, and Crystal Reports was always a factor in the price. While I could have forked the source to use native DB calls for MS products, I'm a pretty big beleiver in "single source tree" development, so I used the abstraction layer to make calls to MS products even though the direct call was available.
At this late date, I think that may have been my single largest error. Trying to allow the customer to run whatever database they were most comfortable with. I could have forced them to MSSQL or other, but I didn't.
I don't recall ever getting something called "Visual Basic 6". What I got was "Visual Studio 6", but then again, we are talking a period of 3 days almost 10 years ago. I guess I could be mistaken about the name. Not about the 80% code loss though. Like I say, filtering out the users, other developers, there is only one idiot left in the mix; me.
My programming maxims: 1. The brightest person in the room is sometimes not in the room.
2. #1 is true 90% of the time.
3. Keep it stupid, simple.
4. Keep it maintainable, bone head.
5. Having to resort to cleaver and intricate programming is a sign of:
a. Not understading the problem.
b. Not asking the right questions.
c. Getting too impressed with how smart you are.
d. Getting too impressed with how dumb others are.
e. All, some, or a superset of the above.
6. Designing an application that does not take into consideration the life cycle of data is like designing a life form with a very large mouth and no anus. Pretty soon it's going to be filled with shit. That, or a program that doesn't really do much.
7. Designing an application that requires the application to be shut down in order to get a good, consistant (datawise speaking) backup is like having to fill your car at the pump one drop at a time. Sure, some will be able to live with it, but most won't put up with it.
8. If your data schema has more tables with a primary key and one data field than indexes, you are over normalizing your data. That's OK, but be sure to do it in private and wash your hands afterward. You might need glasses after a while.
9. When giving an estimate of how long it will take to code something, double it. Then double it again. Then divide it by the hours spent in meetings discussing what the project is supposed to do multiplied by the numbers of end users present in those discussions, raised by the power of how many mangers are present. Then raise by the power the number of minutes in those meetings you spent going to your "happy place" or desperately trying to keep from rolling your eyes, then raised by the cube of the number of minutes spent reminding yourself that while "Yer Honner, he needed killin'!" isn't really a valid defense. Bottom line, It's always better to overstate up front how long something will take than to establish an expecation that you can write a program to solve the world's problems in thirty minutes or less. When you come in under time, people are happy. When you extend testing or development, people wonder why you couldn't figure that out to begin with.
10. In the final analysis, programming ought to be a process of bringing order to chaos.
And finally, if one has to have a 10 point list of programming maxims, you've spent too long coding. Switch to systems administration in an shop with a director that is a slave to ITIL principals to the point that it requires a change log entry to submit a request for vacation, or to reboot a server that is not in the production window. (I got that covered.)
Back before my current gig, I was a software developer for companies that hired me to do their work and for several packages I wrote for my own profit. This story comes from the programs I developed for my own profit.
Because the software I wrote was also licensed for source code if the user wanted it, I picked Visual Basic as the platform to use. I wanted to use Visual C, but you could more easly find programmers that could get by in Visual Basic than VC. I should have picked VC rather than VB for a lot of reasons, the main one being that if you had experience in VC, you were at least likely not to be a total idiot. Not so with VB. I found that VB programmers were idiots at the approximate rate of 7:10, while VC programmers were likely to be idiots at an estimated 1:10 ratio... which isn't to say that all VB programmers were idiots, only that they were cheaper labor, and therefore less likely to have a solid background in programming logic.
That said, we'll focus only on my own development problems, just so we are dealing with only one (possible) idiot... me. I started out with VB 2.x. The upgrade to 3.x went fine, with very few problems. When 4.0 came out, I found I had to rewrite about 20% of my code. Sure, there were conversion programs, but they didn't quite fit in with exactly what I wanted the program to do. It'd get it about 90% right, but then I'd have to slog through the rest of the automated code to correct that last 10%. It was faster to discard that code and re-write it.
Then 5.x came out. Only about 50% of my code still worked. And again, the automated process to "ease" transisition left something to be desired. When Visual Studio 6.0 came out, it was a nightmare. only 20% of the code ported. At that point, I sent the 5.x code out to all the people that bought the program (with source or not), and told them that the code was now moribund, I would not be maintaining it, and that I was releaseing the source code to the public domain (5 floppies included). As I recall, that was about 1998-1999 or so.
As late as March 2008, I've been contacted about the code. Of course, it's morphed far past anything I'd written, and I could only help with the general business case logic involved, not the actual code. But having to deal once again with Microsoft development tools, one would have to offer me far, far more money than it would be worth. No, I'm done with Microsoft "development" games. I'm done with school yard bullies trying to take my lunch money. I'm done, PERIOD, with closed source, whenever I have a choice.
And pinball died because 1) greedheads reduced the number of balls from 5 to 3;
Yes, that happend about the mid '70s or so, up to '80, depending on where you were. They also increased the "cant", the angle between the top and bottom from 5 degrees to 10 degrees or more. My boss had a rule: The site could select between two plans: 3 balls at 25 cents, or 5. If you wanted 3 balls, you got tech support 8 hours per day by six days per week. If you selected 5 balls, you got 24x7 support.
and, most importantly, THE GAME OWNERS WOULDN'T CLEAN AND POLISH THE FSCKING PLAYFIELDS. There's nothing quite as demoralizing as attempting to play a pin with a dirty playfield.
ABSOLUTELY, or with "dead rubber", and in fact, the boss was death on any tech that didn't keep his assinged
sites playfields not just pit free, but glass smooth. One of the jobs given to techs with
a atirtistic flair was to sand down the ruined tables, repaint the playfield, re-varnish them
and return them to service. Normally it took a week to get a ruined playfield back into
service, but considering that at that time, a new machine cost about 1,600 or so, it would
pay to do it. It also looked like what it was: a machine that was restored, not original. Also, due to the sanding to take out the pits, the playfield had a lip between where it was sanded and were it wasn't. That led to playing problems in that the ball would suddenly change direction in those areas. Mostly that was minor, but it was noticable. I don't think we ever had more than a couple dozen of those in play, largely because the boss fired anyone that didn't keep the tables clean enough to keep them from pitting in the first place.
If I recall correctly, playfields for mechanical (vs. electronic) machnes needed to be
cleaned and waxed about every 30-45 days (or less if it had a lot of plays on it). Electronic games needed to be cleaned less
frequently (60-90 days), because there wern't so many mechanical contacts making and breaking signifigant currnet, which led to arcing, which led to dirt. Or so I think. I've no proof. When we cleaned a table, we replaced any rubber with discoloration, cracks, or "didn't feel right", meaning that it wasn't "springy" enough.
Add in that we were expected to set and pick up "bar tables" (pool tables that are about
3/4th's regulation size) by ourselves (except snooker tables, we used a two man team), bring them back in for recovering when they had wear or rips, and renew the rubbers, things got interesting. We used what we called a "T" bar to move the tables. It was an inverted "T" with
wheels long the top (bottom) so that we could slap it on top of the table, use our hip to
flip the able until it rode on it's side, and roll it out to the truck with a Tommy Lift
to take it back to the shop.
I remember going into one bar to switch out tables, and there
was a mouthy drunk there that called out all kinds of insults. (Our boss also stressed
that we were to NEVER, EVER be a problem for the places we serviced.) So, instead of
going over to the drunk and politely suggesting he kept his comments behind his teeth
or find them (his teeth) pushed in by my fist, I simply went about my business completely ignoring him. About the time I went to slap a "T" dolly on the pool table, the drunk
turned to order another round for himself, and didn't see me use the dolly. By the time
he turned back around to heap more abuse on me, I had the table on it's side, rolling
it toward the door, the dolly side away from the drunk where he couldn't see it.
Drunk: "HOLY F---!!!! HE'S CARRYING A POOL TABLE UNDER HIS ARM!!!" It's been more than twenty years ago that happened, but I still remember the look on the drunk's face, and the comments the barkeep told me he told the drunk after I left. All true, but lacking critical details.
The drunk never bothered me again.
Yep, ran across that before, but it looks nothing like what I used to clean glass in the late '70s early 80's. I suppose the packaging could have changed, and the now plastic bottle does have what I remember as the "right" shade of pink, so I'll take a chance and order a bottle. If it's the same as what I used to use, THANK YOU for the link!
My first "real" job was as a tech for a game/vending company. I was always struck that Stern was a solid money maker. Never first, never more reliable, almost never more innovative than Bally, Williams, Gottieb, Atari (when video got popular) or Capcom, but a solid money maker.
As with any first job, there Was a Mistake Made. Mine was to trouble shoot a Williams shoot 'em up game that used a rifle and a sensor board to detect where the rifle was pointed. Several wires had been cold soldered and were just hanging around without being attached. Since I don't come equipped with a third hand, I put the solder coil in my mouth so I could use my left hand to guide the wire to it's proper place, my right hand weilding the soldering iron, and by moving my head around and using my lips, guide the solder to the pad to secure wire to circuit board. (Let's leave aside for the moment the wisdom of putting 60% lead wire in one's mouth. Explains quite a bit about my later life though....)
The only problem was that I had not powered down the game to make my repairs. If you think a fresh 9 volt battery makes an impression when you lick the terminals, let me assure you that 24 volts AC leaves an even more lasting impression.
For the NEXT loose wire, I used a alagator clip. It took longer to get everything situated, but was much less painful.
A week after that, Atari came out with "Asteriods", and we put it in the current "hot spot" for pinball games. Two days later, the business where it was set called to say it was on the fritz. I went out, and found that due to the construction of the game, and the amount of quarters pumped into it, the coins had over flowed into the power supply and shorted it out.
If I remember correctly, the bucket to hold quarters was far larger and deeper than any other game to date. I don't know how much money was in the game (the techs were not permitted to empty money or to count it from the games, that was the work of the owner of the game company), but I suspect it was more than the rest of the games combined. After that, we visited the place of business daily for the next six months to empty the game.
Reliving this brings many more memories to mind, but none involve Stern games other than to note that while they were not the most trouble prone (CapCom earns that easily), nor the most money (Bally and later Atari had that tied up), Nor the most reliable (Williams had that tied up), they were like the plodders in the world. Never the best, never the worst.
One thing I remember from that time was cleaning the games. The owner of the game company was always saying "Make it shine like a diamond in a goat's a$$!". We used a glass cleaner called "Glass Wax", which went on as a pink liquid and was removed with vigerious use of a rough rag and newspaper. I can't find it now, even using Google, but it was the BEST product I ever used to clean glass and make it shine.
Creditibility vs. Virginity
on
ISO Approves OOXML
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Like virginity, credibility is only something one can perserve or loose.
Unlike Voltare, who regarded virginity as a corectable perversion, credibility is the coin of the technical trade. Lose it, and watch ALL your works fade away.
If the ISO doen't move to retract OOXML as a "standard", their other standards will only be seen as gross manipulation of the technical industry, and be discarded and ignored.
Pity. Aside from how much work has gone into other ISO standards, I can't quite see the the people who have loaned their reputation sticking by a body so obviously bribed, coorsed, and schivvied into "accepting" such a "standard" to continue to support it.
I'd think that within a very short time, those who regard their honor as something more than coin to be traded to the corporation most likely to bid high, twist arms to breaking, and cheat at every turn will start to distance themselves from the ISO because of this.
It would be one thing if the offered "standard" met some acceptable technical goal. In my estimation, what we're seeing isn't a technical goal, but a lock in to assure undeserved profit.
If one uses a block list, then one should subscribe to their email list as a minimum. Why? So that you are aware when that block list is no longer maintained...
*sigh* Sadly, too many people that think they are experts at running a mail server will fail to do this. The really, really sad part is that they will most likely escape any punishment for their hubris.
OK. You want a court to order me to pay you $MANY bucks. Fine. You say I did something that deprived you of legitimate monitary gain. Fine. You say that because I did something, that I owe you lots and lots of money. Fine.
Prove it.
Otherwise this just becomes a protection racket. "Mighty nice income stream you have there, buddy. It would be a shame of something happened to it." "Maybe you should just pay us a few thousand dollars, because, like, you never know when we might decide that downloading GPL software is really downloading our Most Holy and Precious Intellictual Property. After all, once we railroad you in a kangaroo court with 'evidence' we don't have to disclose, a few thousand dollars becomes a few hundred thousand dollars...."
If I file suit against someone, I'd better be willing to prove all elements of the loss. Else my suit should (rightfully) be thown out on it's ear, my business fined, and my attorney facing disbarment for bringing a friviolous suit.
Our courts are here to correct real injustices. They are not here to protect outmoded business models, monopoly interests, or "pie in the sky" patents.
That said, file sharing of copyrighted intellectual property whose owners do not agree to share them without fee is wrong. It's one thing for Linus et al to give away a very valuable program (the Linux Kernel), it's quite another to rip someone's music and blast it out without compensation if they did not agree to let you do so.
The real answer here is a common micropayment system (a tip jar), and to simply let RIAA and their anal retentive and grossly over exagerated 'damages' go the same way as coal oil lamps. They just aren't needed today because technology and the consumer have moved beyond their ability to provide a valued and valuable service.
As I understand it, and I am not an Attorney, it is NOT illegal to download illegally provided intellectual property. It *IS* illegal to offer it for down load. But again, I am not a legal professional.
That said, is it honest to take Intellectual Property (songs, tv shows, books, and other) that is copyrighted and not offered by the owner for free? It surely is NOT.
That Linux and other programs are offered by their owners, are valuable, and give value to the user are free, doesn't mean that we can ignore the wishes of the owners of Intellectual Property that do NOT choose to offer it without cost.
Even when IP is sent out over the airwaves without direct cost, as in television programs, it is not honest to download that IP until and unless the IP owner expressly gives permission to do so. Why? Because they did not consent, and they are the owner.
I NEVER download songs. I rip them, yes, because I have the legal right (despite RIIA's assertions to the contrary) to do so. (Again, that is a personal opinion, not a legal opinion.)
My rule of thumb is that if I don't have the CD for the music, I pretty much have no right to it other than listen over the radio/TV. Once I have a copy of the CD, I can pretty much move it around to suit my needs. (The home recording act).
Slashdot Mirror
(fruity announcer's voice)
This moment of lost productivity is brought to you by...
JAVA...
It's what makes you wait!
(/voice)
Boosting Java performance is #1, but boosting compatibility would be even better. Nothing is worse than having to maintain multiple tens of thousands of desktops to run various versions of Java, depending on which application one wishs to run, and figuring out which version is better supported and making that all happen without the user being involved.
Welcome to my nightmare!
1. If you've made no configuration changes or patches in the past week, that pretty much lets out program error.
2. If your ISP is saying they don't do spam filtering, then that pretty much lets that out too, unless your ISP is given to lying to you.
3. Others point to the cyber war between Georga and Russia. I'd think that those folks would have their own bots not associated with spamming, but I can't prove that.
4. It surpasses hope that all the sudden people cleaned up their pwon3d systems.
5. My spam levels have not dropped appreciably, and I not only have my own domain, but allocations as well.
6. I have noticed at times in the past that my spam levels do drop by 60, 70, even 80%. They always pick back up before too long. Enjoy a breif respite.
Especially if you own stock in hard drive and tape OEMs!
Kind of sucks if you think the government ought to be something other than responsible, restrained, and democratic. Or harbor any terrorist ideas like, maybe a government ought to be required to have proof or at least strong suspician you're planning something Really Bad before they can monitor your every breath and step.
As an systems administrator, you bet your life I'll look at anything when I have reason to. You call with a problem, it's reasonable to look where I reasonably (even if wrongly) think the problem might be. (It's not required, but I do say "I'll need to look at X. OK?")
I won't go repeating any of that, nor make copies of it (other than backups you are entitled to), or use it in any way - UNLESS you are violating TOS/AUP/or as required by Law Enforcement. It's NOT my data.
If that bothers you, what would YOU do in the same situation, had you misunderstood your customer's problem? Ask first? Not ask?
Anyway, unless you don't want to get up at 4am and go find a problem, then you're pretty much limited to this sort of thing. Otherwise, drink some coffee or something before you hit the road at 4am.
Less of a blindspot due to roof supports on Chevy's (I drive an Impala LT), less haze caused by scratches in the windshield, about 10 MPG better milage, and directional spotlights tied in to the blinkers so I can see where I WANT to go. It's nice to hit the remote start system, but it would be better to be able to choose between remote start and "roll down all the windows". I live where it's VERY hot. Rolling down the windows would work much better than to run the A/C for a few minutes before I enter the car.
I've Cisco routers that have never been rebooted except to load up patches. At the moment, I've a 63xx router that's been up for the last two years.
I also have an AIX system that hasn't been patched or rebooted in the last 4 years. (an internal system. Yeah, it should be updated, but as of now, nothing that is horrible and accesable via the firewall rules.)
There was a story going around about a netware system that got walled up behind sheet rock and ran for years and years without anyone being able to even touch the server. I doubt it on a personal level just on power alone (where can you find power that NEVER drops over many years? I'd sure like to know...) I could see that a system wouldn't have a critical hardware failure over 6+ years, I just don't see that same system being able to stay up without power problems.
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You're not married, are you. (note that wasn't a question.)
If you are married, I WANT her sister's name. (grin!)
If you really want to know, send an email. I'll 'splain it to you. Allow me two weeks to check the account, as it's not normally scanned. (6,000 spams per week will do that.) Be sure to put SLASHDOT in the subject line.
OK, so you have two routes to the internet. One packet departs, but is returned by the other route. How to glue those together is a very non-trivial problem.
Sprint tried that in 1997-2001 time frame with bonded T1 & T3 services. The bonding never worked for persistant connections, and only slightly better for transiant connections. UDP worked best. And that was using a routing system that understood it was bonded, not one completely unaware of another route.
These days $DAYJOB uses OC3's and SONET rings for Internet, so there may have been advances I'm unaware of, but back then, it really, really sucked. Off the cuff, I'd say use Linux and the Zebra package on a old computer, and try that, but no promises. Personally, I don't think it will work well.
. /.'ers are married...
Oh, I don't think that all that many
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Absolutely correct. The way it should have been handled was with a respectful motion citing the rules of the court, the law, and or case law as to why this court lacked jurisdiction/descretion. Not "You don't have the authority!", likely flung over an indignant shoulder while stomping out of court like a spoiled little brat who didn't get his play-pretty at the store.
While the law may be an ass, it's an ass that uses resoned arguements, precident, rules, and the law to come to (sometimes) assine conclusions. But in the US, most of the time for most of the people, it works well enough. Only God can acheive perfect justice, so mankind should be pretty proud to be able to (mostly) produce adequate justice, most times, most places, for most people. Not that we (nor We) shouldn't try for better.
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No matter how badly things go for you in court, no matter how much you dislike the ruling, no matter how unjust you feel you've been treated... NEVER insult a judge or be less than totally respectful for the process.
And don't ever tell a judge they "don't have the authority". You'll be in a higher court soon. Judges don't like people being disrepectful of other judges, not even when the judge in question is wrong. Especailly when your own motives and reasons are (properly) called into question.
. Provide (supposedly) an unbiased opinion on your home as to the proper selling price, what must be done before placing it on the market, what should be done to bring the highest selling price at the least cost, and showing the property for you.
Why would I want to use a realtor to sell a home rather than listing the home myself
Because real estate law is complex, varies from state to state, and without an agent (absent this ruling) you had no access to MLS services.
and what is the benefit of using a realtor to find a home rather than just looking through the listings myself?
Because your realitor is supposed to "know what you'd like", ferret that out within your price range, and get you the best deal possible.
Does this happen?
Not so much, in my experiance. I bought a home that violated my three showstoppers. Those were:
It must not be a Rayco home.
It must not be two story.
It absolutely, positively, no way, could be in a home owners assocation.
I should have fired her. I got a house with all three things I didn't want, and was talked out of my objections. That held for about two weeks. The third week I suspected I made a mistake, by the end of the first month (and two notices of HOA violations) I knew I had. It hasn't gotten any better in the ensuing 36 months (8 of which this house has been on the market for 10% less than I paid for it.)
Ultimately I have no one to blame but myself. I will say that when first told of this house, I said (sputtered morelike) "But it has all three things I DON'T WANT!".
So, was I stupid? You bet. Was I helped to be stupid? Only in the sense that a bull, led by a ring in his nose to slaugher...
That said, the ultimate responsibily was mine. I messed up.
Final advice, don't forget to file "Form D" with the IRS when you sell a house. And NEVER forget what you don't want in a house.
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I can see Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman doing this ad, and I can see where having Stephen Hawking would totally rock, but I can't quite wrap my mind around Dr. Hawking having such a... flexable sense of humor. One doesn't expect to see someone with that amount of sheer brain power to have feet of clay... or even a sense of humor that I could understand.
Totally rocks though, if true.
First, use "smart" greylisting. That will temp fail (4xx) messages from domains/ip allocation combinations you do not know to be "good". After that, use the other kind of grey listing that rejects messages if there are any pre-chat commands from the sending system. That stops an incredible amount of viruses without having to virus scan. (But not all!)
Second, use TLS with important/large customers. These emails should completely bypass any spam filtering, but never virus filtering.
Third, insted of hard bounces (5xx), accept the message but quarantine it. Allow the end users to see their quarantine queue and review the message, and gate it in if good. I'm not aware of any open source that does that for you, we hacked up our own using MailScanner.info as a base (and it is pretty ugly, otherwise I'd submit it). Many commercial products have that built in. MXLogic for one. There are lots of others.
Lastly, it shouldn't be just one person on the spam queue.
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All my programs interfaced with databases, from Oracle to MSSQL. (My programs were ERP, accounting, logging, device control for the most part. Databases were always a very large part of that.) I used a data abstraction layer made by a company whose name I cannot now recall, but they charged as much for their ODBC connectors as MS did for VB, and Crystal Reports was always a factor in the price. While I could have forked the source to use native DB calls for MS products, I'm a pretty big beleiver in "single source tree" development, so I used the abstraction layer to make calls to MS products even though the direct call was available.
At this late date, I think that may have been my single largest error. Trying to allow the customer to run whatever database they were most comfortable with. I could have forced them to MSSQL or other, but I didn't.
I don't recall ever getting something called "Visual Basic 6". What I got was "Visual Studio 6", but then again, we are talking a period of 3 days almost 10 years ago. I guess I could be mistaken about the name. Not about the 80% code loss though. Like I say, filtering out the users, other developers, there is only one idiot left in the mix; me.
My programming maxims:
1. The brightest person in the room is sometimes not in the room.
2. #1 is true 90% of the time.
3. Keep it stupid, simple.
4. Keep it maintainable, bone head.
5. Having to resort to cleaver and intricate programming is a sign of:
a. Not understading the problem.
b. Not asking the right questions.
c. Getting too impressed with how smart you are.
d. Getting too impressed with how dumb others are.
e. All, some, or a superset of the above.
6. Designing an application that does not take into consideration the life cycle of data
is like designing a life form with a very large mouth and no anus. Pretty soon it's going to be filled with shit. That, or a program that doesn't really do much.
7. Designing an application that requires the application to be shut down in order to get a good, consistant (datawise speaking) backup is like having to fill your car at the pump one drop at a time. Sure, some will be able to live with it, but most won't put up with it.
8. If your data schema has more tables with a primary key and one data field than indexes, you are over normalizing your data. That's OK, but be sure to do it in private and wash your hands afterward. You might need glasses after a while.
9. When giving an estimate of how long it will take to code something, double it. Then double it again. Then divide it by the hours spent in meetings discussing what the project is supposed to do multiplied by the numbers of end users present in those discussions, raised by the power of how many mangers are present. Then raise by the power the number of minutes in those meetings you spent going to your "happy place" or desperately trying to keep from rolling your eyes, then raised by the cube of the number of minutes spent reminding yourself that while "Yer Honner, he needed killin'!" isn't really a valid defense. Bottom line, It's always better to overstate up front how long something will take than to establish an expecation that you can write a program to solve the world's problems in thirty minutes or less. When you come in under time, people are happy. When you extend testing or development, people wonder why you couldn't figure that out to begin with.
10. In the final analysis, programming ought to be a process of bringing order to chaos.
And finally, if one has to have a 10 point list of programming maxims, you've spent too long coding. Switch to systems administration in an shop with a director that is a slave to ITIL principals to the point that it requires a change log entry to submit a request for vacation, or to reboot a server that is not in the production window. (I got that covered.)
Back before my current gig, I was a software developer for companies that hired me to do their work and for several packages I wrote for my own profit. This story comes from the programs I developed for my own profit.
Because the software I wrote was also licensed for source code if the user wanted it, I picked Visual Basic as the platform to use. I wanted to use Visual C, but you could more easly find programmers that could get by in Visual Basic than VC. I should have picked VC rather than VB for a lot of reasons, the main one being that if you had experience in VC, you were at least likely not to be a total idiot. Not so with VB. I found that VB programmers were idiots at the approximate rate of 7:10, while VC programmers were likely to be idiots at an estimated 1:10 ratio... which isn't to say that all VB programmers were idiots, only that they were cheaper labor, and therefore less likely to have a solid background in programming logic.
That said, we'll focus only on my own development problems, just so we are dealing with only one (possible) idiot... me. I started out with VB 2.x. The upgrade to 3.x went fine, with very few problems. When 4.0 came out, I found I had to rewrite about 20% of my code. Sure, there were conversion programs, but they didn't quite fit in with exactly what I wanted the program to do. It'd get it about 90% right, but then I'd have to slog through the rest of the automated code to correct that last 10%. It was faster to discard that code and re-write it.
Then 5.x came out. Only about 50% of my code still worked. And again, the automated process to "ease" transisition left something to be desired. When Visual Studio 6.0 came out, it was a nightmare. only 20% of the code ported. At that point, I sent the 5.x code out to all the people that bought the program (with source or not), and told them that the code was now moribund, I would not be maintaining it, and that I was releaseing the source code to the public domain (5 floppies included). As I recall, that was about 1998-1999 or so.
As late as March 2008, I've been contacted about the code. Of course, it's morphed far past anything I'd written, and I could only help with the general business case logic involved, not the actual code. But having to deal once again with Microsoft development tools, one would have to offer me far, far more money than it would be worth. No, I'm done with Microsoft "development" games. I'm done with school yard bullies trying to take my lunch money. I'm done, PERIOD, with closed source, whenever I have a choice.
Yes, that happend about the mid '70s or so, up to '80, depending on where you were. They also increased the "cant", the angle between the top and bottom from 5 degrees to 10 degrees or more. My boss had a rule: The site could select between two plans: 3 balls at 25 cents, or 5. If you wanted 3 balls, you got tech support 8 hours per day by six days per week. If you selected 5 balls, you got 24x7 support.
and, most importantly, THE GAME OWNERS WOULDN'T CLEAN AND POLISH THE FSCKING PLAYFIELDS. There's nothing quite as demoralizing as attempting to play a pin with a dirty playfield.
ABSOLUTELY, or with "dead rubber", and in fact, the boss was death on any tech that didn't keep his assinged sites playfields not just pit free, but glass smooth. One of the jobs given to techs with a atirtistic flair was to sand down the ruined tables, repaint the playfield, re-varnish them and return them to service. Normally it took a week to get a ruined playfield back into service, but considering that at that time, a new machine cost about 1,600 or so, it would pay to do it. It also looked like what it was: a machine that was restored, not original. Also, due to the sanding to take out the pits, the playfield had a lip between where it was sanded and were it wasn't. That led to playing problems in that the ball would suddenly change direction in those areas. Mostly that was minor, but it was noticable. I don't think we ever had more than a couple dozen of those in play, largely because the boss fired anyone that didn't keep the tables clean enough to keep them from pitting in the first place.
If I recall correctly, playfields for mechanical (vs. electronic) machnes needed to be cleaned and waxed about every 30-45 days (or less if it had a lot of plays on it). Electronic games needed to be cleaned less frequently (60-90 days), because there wern't so many mechanical contacts making and breaking signifigant currnet, which led to arcing, which led to dirt. Or so I think. I've no proof. When we cleaned a table, we replaced any rubber with discoloration, cracks, or "didn't feel right", meaning that it wasn't "springy" enough.
Add in that we were expected to set and pick up "bar tables" (pool tables that are about 3/4th's regulation size) by ourselves (except snooker tables, we used a two man team), bring them back in for recovering when they had wear or rips, and renew the rubbers, things got interesting. We used what we called a "T" bar to move the tables. It was an inverted "T" with wheels long the top (bottom) so that we could slap it on top of the table, use our hip to flip the able until it rode on it's side, and roll it out to the truck with a Tommy Lift to take it back to the shop.
I remember going into one bar to switch out tables, and there was a mouthy drunk there that called out all kinds of insults. (Our boss also stressed that we were to NEVER, EVER be a problem for the places we serviced.) So, instead of going over to the drunk and politely suggesting he kept his comments behind his teeth or find them (his teeth) pushed in by my fist, I simply went about my business completely ignoring him. About the time I went to slap a "T" dolly on the pool table, the drunk turned to order another round for himself, and didn't see me use the dolly. By the time he turned back around to heap more abuse on me, I had the table on it's side, rolling it toward the door, the dolly side away from the drunk where he couldn't see it.
Drunk: "HOLY F---!!!! HE'S CARRYING A POOL TABLE UNDER HIS ARM!!!" It's been more than twenty years ago that happened, but I still remember the look on the drunk's face, and the comments the barkeep told me he told the drunk after I left. All true, but lacking critical details. The drunk never bothered me again.
Yep, ran across that before, but it looks nothing like what I used to clean glass in the late '70s early 80's. I suppose the packaging could have changed, and the now plastic bottle does have what I remember as the "right" shade of pink, so I'll take a chance and order a bottle. If it's the same as what I used to use, THANK YOU for the link!
You're completely correct, I was unaware of that fact. I exited the amusment industry before 1985 to start my first business.
My first "real" job was as a tech for a game/vending company. I was always struck that Stern was a solid money maker. Never first, never more reliable, almost never more innovative than Bally, Williams, Gottieb, Atari (when video got popular) or Capcom, but a solid money maker.
As with any first job, there Was a Mistake Made. Mine was to trouble shoot a Williams shoot 'em up game that used a rifle and a sensor board to detect where the rifle was pointed. Several wires had been cold soldered and were just hanging around without being attached. Since I don't come equipped with a third hand, I put the solder coil in my mouth so I could use my left hand to guide the wire to it's proper place, my right hand weilding the soldering iron, and by moving my head around and using my lips, guide the solder to the pad to secure wire to circuit board. (Let's leave aside for the moment the wisdom of putting 60% lead wire in one's mouth. Explains quite a bit about my later life though....)
The only problem was that I had not powered down the game to make my repairs. If you think a fresh 9 volt battery makes an impression when you lick the terminals, let me assure you that 24 volts AC leaves an even more lasting impression.
For the NEXT loose wire, I used a alagator clip. It took longer to get everything situated, but was much less painful.
A week after that, Atari came out with "Asteriods", and we put it in the current "hot spot" for pinball games. Two days later, the business where it was set called to say it was on the fritz. I went out, and found that due to the construction of the game, and the amount of quarters pumped into it, the coins had over flowed into the power supply and shorted it out.
If I remember correctly, the bucket to hold quarters was far larger and deeper than any other game to date. I don't know how much money was in the game (the techs were not permitted to empty money or to count it from the games, that was the work of the owner of the game company), but I suspect it was more than the rest of the games combined. After that, we visited the place of business daily for the next six months to empty the game.
Reliving this brings many more memories to mind, but none involve Stern games other than to note that while they were not the most trouble prone (CapCom earns that easily), nor the most money (Bally and later Atari had that tied up), Nor the most reliable (Williams had that tied up), they were like the plodders in the world. Never the best, never the worst.
One thing I remember from that time was cleaning the games. The owner of the game company was always saying "Make it shine like a diamond in a goat's a$$!". We used a glass cleaner called "Glass Wax", which went on as a pink liquid and was removed with vigerious use of a rough rag and newspaper. I can't find it now, even using Google, but it was the BEST product I ever used to clean glass and make it shine.
Like virginity, credibility is only something one can perserve or loose.
Unlike Voltare, who regarded virginity as a corectable perversion, credibility is the coin of the technical trade. Lose it, and watch ALL your works fade away.
If the ISO doen't move to retract OOXML as a "standard", their other standards will only be seen as gross manipulation of the technical industry, and be discarded and ignored.
Pity. Aside from how much work has gone into other ISO standards, I can't quite see the the people who have loaned their reputation sticking by a body so obviously bribed, coorsed, and schivvied into "accepting" such a "standard" to continue to support it.
I'd think that within a very short time, those who regard their honor as something more than coin to be traded to the corporation most likely to bid high, twist arms to breaking, and cheat at every turn will start to distance themselves from the ISO because of this.
It would be one thing if the offered "standard" met some acceptable technical goal. In my estimation, what we're seeing isn't a technical goal, but a lock in to assure undeserved profit.
If one uses a block list, then one should subscribe to their email list as a minimum. Why? So that you are aware when that block list is no longer maintained... *sigh* Sadly, too many people that think they are experts at running a mail server will fail to do this. The really, really sad part is that they will most likely escape any punishment for their hubris.
OK. You want a court to order me to pay you $MANY bucks. Fine. You say I did something that deprived you of legitimate monitary gain. Fine. You say that because I did something, that I owe you lots and lots of money. Fine.
Prove it.
Otherwise this just becomes a protection racket. "Mighty nice income stream you have there, buddy. It would be a shame of something happened to it." "Maybe you should just pay us a few thousand dollars, because, like, you never know when we might decide that downloading GPL software is really downloading our Most Holy and Precious Intellictual Property. After all, once we railroad you in a kangaroo court with 'evidence' we don't have to disclose, a few thousand dollars becomes a few hundred thousand dollars...."
If I file suit against someone, I'd better be willing to prove all elements of the loss. Else my suit should (rightfully) be thown out on it's ear, my business fined, and my attorney facing disbarment for bringing a friviolous suit.
Our courts are here to correct real injustices. They are not here to protect outmoded business models, monopoly interests, or "pie in the sky" patents.
That said, file sharing of copyrighted intellectual property whose owners do not agree to share them without fee is wrong. It's one thing for Linus et al to give away a very valuable program (the Linux Kernel), it's quite another to rip someone's music and blast it out without compensation if they did not agree to let you do so.
The real answer here is a common micropayment system (a tip jar), and to simply let RIAA and their anal retentive and grossly over exagerated 'damages' go the same way as coal oil lamps. They just aren't needed today because technology and the consumer have moved beyond their ability to provide a valued and valuable service.
As I understand it, and I am not an Attorney, it is NOT illegal to download illegally provided intellectual property. It *IS* illegal to offer it for down load. But again, I am not a legal professional.
That said, is it honest to take Intellectual Property (songs, tv shows, books, and other) that is copyrighted and not offered by the owner for free? It surely is NOT.
That Linux and other programs are offered by their owners, are valuable, and give value to the user are free, doesn't mean that we can ignore the wishes of the owners of Intellectual Property that do NOT choose to offer it without cost.
Even when IP is sent out over the airwaves without direct cost, as in television programs, it is not honest to download that IP until and unless the IP owner expressly gives permission to do so. Why? Because they did not consent, and they are the owner.
I NEVER download songs. I rip them, yes, because I have the legal right (despite RIIA's assertions to the contrary) to do so. (Again, that is a personal opinion, not a legal opinion.)
My rule of thumb is that if I don't have the CD for the music, I pretty much have no right to it other than listen over the radio/TV. Once I have a copy of the CD, I can pretty much move it around to suit my needs. (The home recording act).