What about remote GUI login? Unix had it, and Windows never caught up (no, pc anywhere doesn't count). People still don't know that they should be able to log into their home computers wherever they are.
Windows 2000 Server now comes with Terminal Server which allows multiple users to log in remotely (with GUI) to that server. It's been around for about 3 years now as Winframe and just recently was included in NT directly.
Have any of you actually seen or worked in a War Room? 99% of the time what a War Room is is an ex-conference room with 20 programmers shoved in there each with 3 feet of desk space and enough room to push their chairback and shove by their co-workers to go to the bathroom. (Obviously that's the bad end of the spectrum:) Your productivity may be higher but at what price? You have no privacy, you have to deal constantly with the personal (eating, hygene, social) issues of your fellow employees and the lack of your own space lowers your sense of value to the company.
Higher productivity in the shortrun doesn't make up for the higher stress and loss of company loyalty in the long run.
-Zane
Breaking news on CNN!!
on
IBMs CMOS 9S
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· Score: 2
Nothing I can say would be any funnier than that headline.:)
Re:Now give DC a keyboard, mouse, X & a browser!
on
Dreamcast Runs Linux
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· Score: 1
You can buy both a keyboard and mouse for the Dreamcast. They've been around for quite some time. Unfortunately they're proprietary because DC doesn't have USB or Firewire.
Probably because "little death" is a synonym for orgasm.
Sci-Fi channel also produces Lexx. They have no fear of discussing (or acting out) orgasms.:) Although I believe in this context little death is obviously referring to death and not an orgasm.
The meeting with Gurney (ignoring the huge mischaracterization of Gurney in the mini-series:) I hated how they mangled the "You did seem, finally, to get in the mood." along with the whole lead in scene to that being slaughtered.
Oh yes, I forgot, they did put it partially in there but had Paul saying it to Gurney. Then he treated Gurney as if he were just some bufoon merely taking Idaho's place while he was out. Grr.
I couldn't finish watching the show last night. I loved both the book and the movie (probably because I saw the movie first:) but this was just garbage. Several major quotes (IMO) from the book were severly mangaled. Such as:
The litany of fear - Left out "Fear is the little death." Nothing huge but still annoying.
The meeting with Gurney (ignoring the huge mischaracterization of Gurney in the mini-series:) I hated how they mangled the "You did seem, finally, to get in the mood." along with the whole lead in scene to that being slaughtered.
Then there were also several other missing items. Most notably the Glow-globes, the Mentat's stained lips (in the mini-series they just look like every other costumed idiot) and the bushy eyebrows of Thufir.
And of course I hated the portrayal of Paul and the evidentally early entry of Chani as the maid. (Though the Chani portion hasn't been proven yet but that seems to be the only explenation of their focus on the maid).
All in all it seemed like there was MUCH less information in the mini-series than there was in the original movie (or the book of course) yet it's going to be an hour and a half longer (or so). Seems like instead of making the book clearer they've just used it as a general guideline and added a bunch of useless (and poorly written) footage.
Argh.
-Zane
Re:No physical ballots = No meaningful recount
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 1
Look at the mess in Florida, and imagine that the voting there had been done 100% by electronic means. How would you deal with people who claim to have voted for the wrong candidate because the ballot was confusing?
The same way you deal with it if counting by hand. They CHOSE the wrong candidate, recounting is just going to count the wrong candidate again.
Even worse, how would you deal with a hacked voting station? Security only goes so far; eventually a precinct would be hacked.
Little pieces of paper you can color in with pencil is so much more hack-proof than a computer? The real issue here would be good technological security (not perfect of course but better than a piece of paper) and good physical security. Don't you think it'd be easy to detect someone tampering with a machine when they should only be making three button presses? Typing makes noise and takes time. If you setup a touchscreen system and lock away the keyboard/CPU (or better yet store them in another secured room) then any simple, well-written program is simple enough to protect against any malicious touch-screen entries.
With e-voting, there'd be no way to recount the ballots, no way to sort "good" ballots from "bad" ones, no way to identify which votes were bogus
With e-voting there would be no "bad" ballots per-say, they system would only allow one choice (not none and not two or more). The only "bad" ballot there would be would be making the wrong choice. Ballots with the wrong selection can't be weeded out with the current system (wich is part of the problem we're having now).
-- because there wouldn't be votes, just data.
Votes are data. Wether on paper or in the computer. It's easier to loose that data in a computer than on paper but it's just as easy to setup a technological solution that immediately prints out your vote (as well as stores it electronically) in an easy to count/read format in case a recount is needed.
Please don't blame technology for your lack of innovation.
You're assuming average programmer == competent programmer. In my experience that is completely wrong. Of the 20 or so programmers I've worked with only 3 have been competent. So even well written, well documented, simple code can seem obtuse to the average programmer.
Back in highschool we were setting up a weak neon laser and trying to bounce it all the way around one of the blocks of hallways using mirrors. By the time it got to the second mirror the beam was over 2" in diameter due to distance and a dirty mirror so I was looking at the mirror while aiming it. Our physics "teacher" then got upset and told me to go back into the classroom. I said there was no possible way I could damage my eyes with the beam that diffused but that just pissed him off.
Oh well, that's what I get for having gym coach as my Physics 2 teacher. God our (American) schools suck.
When I was somewhere between 6 or 8 (back in 81-83) we actually had a table pong game in the basement. We didn't have any money at the time so I have no freaking idea how we got something like that but we had it.:) I can't tell you how many minutes we wasted playing that game! It had to be something like 20 or 30 minutes! Woo!:)
The better I do my job, the fewer pages I get. When systems I'm responsible for break, it is my responsibility to fix them. Period. If I'm doing my job right, my after-hours calls are few and far between.
That's a very niave view. You're assuming that 1) the person on call is responsible for the failing systems (generally not the case in my experience) and 2) the systems are the problem and not the user. You try telling the VP of such and such that you're not going to spend any more time trying to explain how to get to work e-mail from home during the evening. I don't do support anymore but I've actually had secretaries look up my home phone number and call untill they got through. One of them even said if she hadn't gotten through she was going to drive to my apartment because her boss needed me.
I'd say a good 50%+ of ALL support calls are user issues, not system issues.
On the other hand, if you're in charge of a service and that service sucks, it's you're responsibility to fix it.
It's not as noticable to you but it's still there. I've worked with many high end TFT displays and they still have some ghosting, just not nearly as much as dual scan displays. It is especially noticable on full-screen high-spped animations (such as playing an FPS). You may not notice it but the type of people that can tell the difference between 40 and 60fps can.
How about you take the cobalt out of that silly cube and put it in some stylish short, flat, elongated biege rectangle with grey highlights. Then you could get rid of that silly mips chip and throw in a nice hefty sun chip. Replace Linux with Solaris and there you go!
IMHO Pi was *terrible*. I couldn't finish watching it. It drove me crazy watching bad mathmatics combined with mysticism combined with bad technology combined with pure bullshit. I'm sorry but 99% of the time I see science and mysticism mixed it's done horribly. I'm a fan of both Sci-Fi and fantasy but when they're mixed poorly it stands out quite obviously.
For those of you who didn't pick up on the "mysticism" I'm referring to I'm talking about that special "magic number" that kept popping up and that handy geometric shape (the spiral) that had amazing results when plotted on a page of stock market listings. The easiest and most glaring error in all that is that each paper prints the stocks a little differently (position, layout, etc..) so there's no mathmetical reason why plotting some shape against the paper would have any special result. In my view that's mysticism and they never really bothered to explain it, just tried to hide it in fake mathematics.
Yes, you too can put those pesky "ping" and "e-mail" users where they belong - behind bars! Simply install our new in.felonyd and viola! In.felonyd listens on all ports and traces any incoming packets. It then automatically e-mails your local law enforcement, the secret service and the offender's mother with details of the violation.
[fineprint]Problems may arise if the offender is also running in.felonyd.[/fineprint]
Well I started thinking I might've gotten some Gibson mixed in there and it turns out 'The Difference Engine' was Gibson not Stephenson. Just thought they were the same because of the similar styles and the Victorian obsession those two seem to have. Oh well. My point about Stephenson's mysticism and 'The Difference Engine's suck still stands.:)
Did you ever read "The Difference Engine" (I believe that was the title)? I can't believe I actually finished that book. It rambled on and on and went NOWHERE. There was NO plot and hardly any real character development. I felt like I was trapped is some very odd, very boring dream that made no sense. Another piece of my life I will never get back.
I did, however, like 'The Diamond Age' and 'Cryptonomicron'. Despite the fact that I liked it 'Cryptonomicron' suffered from some of the rambling and lack of plot that 'The Difference Engine' had. I especially despised the end of 'Cryptonomicron' and really hate it when he tries to mix mysticism in with his Sci-Fi. He's not good at it and it degrades his work. The arguments (or reasons) he use are usually very flimsy and try to hide a lack of purpose behind layers and layers of nonsensical philosophy.
Slashdot Mirror
What about remote GUI login? Unix had it, and Windows never caught up (no, pc anywhere doesn't count). People still don't know that they should be able to log into their home computers wherever they are.
Windows 2000 Server now comes with Terminal Server which allows multiple users to log in remotely (with GUI) to that server. It's been around for about 3 years now as Winframe and just recently was included in NT directly.
-Zane
Have any of you actually seen or worked in a War Room? 99% of the time what a War Room is is an ex-conference room with 20 programmers shoved in there each with 3 feet of desk space and enough room to push their chairback and shove by their co-workers to go to the bathroom. (Obviously that's the bad end of the spectrum :) Your productivity may be higher but at what price? You have no privacy, you have to deal constantly with the personal (eating, hygene, social) issues of your fellow employees and the lack of your own space lowers your sense of value to the company.
Higher productivity in the shortrun doesn't make up for the higher stress and loss of company loyalty in the long run.
-Zane
IBM working on faster chips, Intel reported doing same
:)
Nothing I can say would be any funnier than that headline.
You can buy both a keyboard and mouse for the Dreamcast. They've been around for quite some time. Unfortunately they're proprietary because DC doesn't have USB or Firewire.
-Zane
Just because he's been using and programming Macs for ten years doesn't mean he's not an idiot.
-Zane
Probably because "little death" is a synonym for orgasm.
:) Although I believe in this context little death is obviously referring to death and not an orgasm.
Sci-Fi channel also produces Lexx. They have no fear of discussing (or acting out) orgasms.
-Zane
If there are girls at the lan party either you've been slipped some acid or one of your friends has had an operation.
-Zane
The meeting with Gurney (ignoring the huge mischaracterization of Gurney in the mini-series :) I hated how they mangled the "You did seem, finally, to get in the mood." along with the whole lead in scene to that being slaughtered.
Oh yes, I forgot, they did put it partially in there but had Paul saying it to Gurney. Then he treated Gurney as if he were just some bufoon merely taking Idaho's place while he was out. Grr.
-Zane
I couldn't finish watching the show last night. I loved both the book and the movie (probably because I saw the movie first
The litany of fear - Left out "Fear is the little death." Nothing huge but still annoying.
The meeting with Gurney (ignoring the huge mischaracterization of Gurney in the mini-series
Then there were also several other missing items. Most notably the Glow-globes, the Mentat's stained lips (in the mini-series they just look like every other costumed idiot) and the bushy eyebrows of Thufir.
And of course I hated the portrayal of Paul and the evidentally early entry of Chani as the maid. (Though the Chani portion hasn't been proven yet but that seems to be the only explenation of their focus on the maid).
All in all it seemed like there was MUCH less information in the mini-series than there was in the original movie (or the book of course) yet it's going to be an hour and a half longer (or so). Seems like instead of making the book clearer they've just used it as a general guideline and added a bunch of useless (and poorly written) footage.
Argh.
-Zane
The same way you deal with it if counting by hand. They CHOSE the wrong candidate, recounting is just going to count the wrong candidate again.
Even worse, how would you deal with a hacked voting station? Security only goes so far; eventually a precinct would be hacked.
Little pieces of paper you can color in with pencil is so much more hack-proof than a computer? The real issue here would be good technological security (not perfect of course but better than a piece of paper) and good physical security. Don't you think it'd be easy to detect someone tampering with a machine when they should only be making three button presses? Typing makes noise and takes time. If you setup a touchscreen system and lock away the keyboard/CPU (or better yet store them in another secured room) then any simple, well-written program is simple enough to protect against any malicious touch-screen entries.
With e-voting, there'd be no way to recount the ballots, no way to sort "good" ballots from "bad" ones, no way to identify which votes were bogus
With e-voting there would be no "bad" ballots per-say, they system would only allow one choice (not none and not two or more). The only "bad" ballot there would be would be making the wrong choice. Ballots with the wrong selection can't be weeded out with the current system (wich is part of the problem we're having now).
-- because there wouldn't be votes, just data.
Votes are data. Wether on paper or in the computer. It's easier to loose that data in a computer than on paper but it's just as easy to setup a technological solution that immediately prints out your vote (as well as stores it electronically) in an easy to count/read format in case a recount is needed.
Please don't blame technology for your lack of innovation.
-Zane
You're assuming average programmer == competent programmer. In my experience that is completely wrong. Of the 20 or so programmers I've worked with only 3 have been competent. So even well written, well documented, simple code can seem obtuse to the average programmer.
-Zane
Back in highschool we were setting up a weak neon laser and trying to bounce it all the way around one of the blocks of hallways using mirrors. By the time it got to the second mirror the beam was over 2" in diameter due to distance and a dirty mirror so I was looking at the mirror while aiming it. Our physics "teacher" then got upset and told me to go back into the classroom. I said there was no possible way I could damage my eyes with the beam that diffused but that just pissed him off.
Oh well, that's what I get for having gym coach as my Physics 2 teacher. God our (American) schools suck.
-Zane
When I was somewhere between 6 or 8 (back in 81-83) we actually had a table pong game in the basement. We didn't have any money at the time so I have no freaking idea how we got something like that but we had it. :) I can't tell you how many minutes we wasted playing that game! It had to be something like 20 or 30 minutes! Woo! :)
-Zane
That's a very niave view. You're assuming that 1) the person on call is responsible for the failing systems (generally not the case in my experience) and 2) the systems are the problem and not the user. You try telling the VP of such and such that you're not going to spend any more time trying to explain how to get to work e-mail from home during the evening. I don't do support anymore but I've actually had secretaries look up my home phone number and call untill they got through. One of them even said if she hadn't gotten through she was going to drive to my apartment because her boss needed me.
I'd say a good 50%+ of ALL support calls are user issues, not system issues.
On the other hand, if you're in charge of a service and that service sucks, it's you're responsibility to fix it.
-Zane
...that Gore invented the Internet. :)
-Zane
You see this sentance fragment comes off as very cocky and self-assured. But with the proper smiley insertion:
So if you want to criticise us for shipping gcc 2.96, you have every right to do so - you'd be wrong :),
Your point comes across as the semi-joke you meant it to be.
-Zane
It's not as noticable to you but it's still there. I've worked with many high end TFT displays and they still have some ghosting, just not nearly as much as dual scan displays. It is especially noticable on full-screen high-spped animations (such as playing an FPS). You may not notice it but the type of people that can tell the difference between 40 and 60fps can.
-Zane
How about you take the cobalt out of that silly cube and put it in some stylish short, flat, elongated biege rectangle with grey highlights. Then you could get rid of that silly mips chip and throw in a nice hefty sun chip. Replace Linux with Solaris and there you go!
Oh yeah, that's called an UltraSparc.
Counter-suit = suit. Don't know what the hell I was thinking.
Zane
They probably did have cameras in that room and now use that film for new employee orientation.
:)
The only reason you kept your job is the Big Wigs feared a sexual orientation counter-suit. Some people prefery circuitry.
-Zane
IMHO Pi was *terrible*. I couldn't finish watching it. It drove me crazy watching bad mathmatics combined with mysticism combined with bad technology combined with pure bullshit. I'm sorry but 99% of the time I see science and mysticism mixed it's done horribly. I'm a fan of both Sci-Fi and fantasy but when they're mixed poorly it stands out quite obviously.
For those of you who didn't pick up on the "mysticism" I'm referring to I'm talking about that special "magic number" that kept popping up and that handy geometric shape (the spiral) that had amazing results when plotted on a page of stock market listings. The easiest and most glaring error in all that is that each paper prints the stocks a little differently (position, layout, etc..) so there's no mathmetical reason why plotting some shape against the paper would have any special result. In my view that's mysticism and they never really bothered to explain it, just tried to hide it in fake mathematics.
Anyway. Done ranting.
-Zane
From: M3d14 nDus7r13
To: g0v.
1 0wn j00!!
[fineprint]Problems may arise if the offender is also running in.felonyd.[/fineprint]
Well I started thinking I might've gotten some Gibson mixed in there and it turns out 'The Difference Engine' was Gibson not Stephenson. Just thought they were the same because of the similar styles and the Victorian obsession those two seem to have. Oh well. My point about Stephenson's mysticism and 'The Difference Engine's suck still stands.
-Zane
Did you ever read "The Difference Engine" (I believe that was the title)? I can't believe I actually finished that book. It rambled on and on and went NOWHERE. There was NO plot and hardly any real character development. I felt like I was trapped is some very odd, very boring dream that made no sense. Another piece of my life I will never get back.
:).
I did, however, like 'The Diamond Age' and 'Cryptonomicron'. Despite the fact that I liked it 'Cryptonomicron' suffered from some of the rambling and lack of plot that 'The Difference Engine' had. I especially despised the end of 'Cryptonomicron' and really hate it when he tries to mix mysticism in with his Sci-Fi. He's not good at it and it degrades his work. The arguments (or reasons) he use are usually very flimsy and try to hide a lack of purpose behind layers and layers of nonsensical philosophy.
I loved Snow-Crash (again, minus the mysticism
-Zane