although instead of 'stick', its 'the helmet' (its an old department in-joke... don't ask.)
Haha, that's like how we named it the stick. We needed something visually to use to show who was the stick each week. The first thing that we used was a plunger. Although I think the stick name came first. POC wasn't really a commonly used term until later I think.
When I worked at Kiva Networking, one of the great things that really worked for us was to have a person who was on call, got paged and took care of daytime requests. Each week, that person would change. We wrote programs to manage who was the POC (we called it the stick). When you were not the stick, you were not to be bothered and thus you had more focus and energy to complete your other projects. Another thing that we did was strongly encourage people to email their requests instead of come over and ask directly. This is probably essential. You have to speak louder than the people who want to resist communicating more through email. Trust me when I say that you will win in the end, if you don't, then you haven't been given the authority that you should be as a system administrator.
Honestly, I think a lot of places do this now. At the time, it seemed new and it worked and continues to work well. It will even work when you have 2 sysadmins, probably the optimum is to have about 4 because if you have any more than that, you lose your rhythm with what is going on with the company a bit.
and don't call atheism a religion; atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby
Heh, that's pretty funny. What is kinda ironic about your comment on all religions thinking that theirs is the only right one is that probably a lot of atheists think that they way is the only right way. So it shares that tenet.
How about going one step further than just blogging about it and actually submitting a documentation update to the ps man page. That way future confusion of the ps output could be avoided. Of course I guess people have to actually read the man page (In honor of slashdot, I didn't read it before posting this comment;-)
Friday is also the 30th anniversary of the "Homebrew Letter" that Gates wrote complaining about copying basic on the altair. And also my 30th birthday.
I remember seeing the first consumer 4GB drive by IBM listed in Computer Shopper for a whopping $20,000. Looking back, its amazing they didn't list the price as "Call".
Actually, I would feel stupid if I accepted anything less than $200 for the source code. I would look for someone who was willing to pay at least $20,000 if not more.
Actually, I saw it and I'd say its more like a bulge. The difference being that there is a firm foundation and it ends up with a messy splatter in the end.
At the ISP I used to work for, I always made it a habit to never stop anywhere or to talk to anyone on the walk to the bank. This helps ensure that you don't wind up with the "Its a Wonderful Life" accident and misplace $8000.
Of course, it doesn't help when the bank that your manager has forced you to use has really poor security of their safety deposit box. Banks are unbelieveable. Unbelieveably stupid that is.
Actually, to be fair, he answered my question better than I expected. Of course I had low expectations to begin with. But I can see that he was trying and gave some examples of things that are changing internally like SDL. Still, to say that Microsoft has been focused on security since Windows NT wasn't a good way to start out his answer.:-(
The only reason for all the fancy artwork is to make it hard to duplicate the bills - if everyone could print their own money, they would and eventually it wouldn't be worth anything.
Thanks for clearing that up. I've been wondering about that for a long time. Now I'll have to find another life long question to answer.
Ok, I can see why you might think that and I'm sure that's what the popular media like to jump all over that (when someone is weak).
But now look at it from a diplomatic perspective:
To earn the trust and respect of others you have to acknowledge their ways, beliefs while at the same time, respectfully criticizing them while still being open to their rebuttals. Its based on building trust with your opponent
I think that you are far more likely to be successful with your arguments if you use the diplomatic approach rather than the game theory one. But of course if people don't understand the diplomatic approach then maybe you won't win because they won't respect you. Maybe that's the problem.
You're correct;-). I am making a generalization about "most people" and that's not a good thing to do. The problem is that its difficult to form opinions about people that you don't know and the only impression you get of them is when you see them stating an opinion that is different than your own. Where do you draw the line between knowing people and making a generalization about them. I used to work on a military base only 45 minutes away and there I actually got into a few discussions where people stated what their opinions are and acted exactly as I explained in my original post. Now I'm working much closer to home and find that most people around here are open minded and not as I described. But Bloomington is kinda a unique place in my experience. Much more liberal than the rest of Indiana. My friends tend to be open minded people and that's probably because we have simular interests.
But then there are people like my Aunt and her daughter that are about as far right as you can go and whenever I get into a discussion with them about this, it doesn't matter how logical or based on fact my arguments are, they don't acknowledge them. I give them some credit for their opinions where it is due, but they don't budge one bit.
The key problem with this argument is that our society has roughly split down the middle on some pretty key issues. The things that are makeing Republicans hate Democrats and vice-versa just aren't going to see one side acknowledging the other as right.
But that's exactly what I'm talking about. People have polarized themselves so much that when an opposing opinion to their viewpoints comes along, they hit it like a wack-a-mole instead of considering it for a moment and trying to understand it.
Take me for example, for the longest time I was opposed to the idea of money and wealth in society, but I finally opened up to it (with some helpful influence of a book and my wife) and realized that if I'm going to accomplish some of the things I want to do in my life, I'm going to need money to do it. I have to play the game first before I can start changing it.
To use your example of anti-abortion activists, if you try to sit down with most extreme anti-abortion activist and discuss the issue, they will probably not ever listen to the reason of what you might have to say. They will only agree with you if you agree with them. This is not healthy for them (or you) because they just lead themselves further down the road to delusion.
I think one of the biggest problems facing our society is not being willing to acknowledge when the other group is correct or when we are wrong. Everyone is too convinced that they are correct that they are blind to the other person's point of view and opinions. This is spread all across the spectrum, not just in politics. Acknowledging when someone else is correct is good for you and good for relations. The person that you are discussing with will acknowledge that you are seeing their side and can listen to what they consider to be "reason" and they are more likely to listen to your point of view. Its just like here on Slashdot. Often times I get replies to my comments from people who have a different opinion or just have some smart ass remark. I understand, people have different opinions, and they are just as human as I am.
You can still acknowledge the other side and remain strong.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this the first time civilians have been required to do thing type of thing? I guess its no longer science fiction.
although instead of 'stick', its 'the helmet' (its an old department in-joke... don't ask.)
Haha, that's like how we named it the stick. We needed something visually to use to show who was the stick each week. The first thing that we used was a plunger. Although I think the stick name came first. POC wasn't really a commonly used term until later I think.
When I worked at Kiva Networking, one of the great things that really worked for us was to have a person who was on call, got paged and took care of daytime requests. Each week, that person would change. We wrote programs to manage who was the POC (we called it the stick). When you were not the stick, you were not to be bothered and thus you had more focus and energy to complete your other projects. Another thing that we did was strongly encourage people to email their requests instead of come over and ask directly. This is probably essential. You have to speak louder than the people who want to resist communicating more through email. Trust me when I say that you will win in the end, if you don't, then you haven't been given the authority that you should be as a system administrator.
Honestly, I think a lot of places do this now. At the time, it seemed new and it worked and continues to work well. It will even work when you have 2 sysadmins, probably the optimum is to have about 4 because if you have any more than that, you lose your rhythm with what is going on with the company a bit.
and don't call atheism a religion; atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby
Heh, that's pretty funny. What is kinda ironic about your comment on all religions thinking that theirs is the only right one is that probably a lot of atheists think that they way is the only right way. So it shares that tenet.
Anyone here remember the game "Heart of Africa" from the 80s? I thought it was a pretty good game for learning the physical geography of Africa.
How about going one step further than just blogging about it and actually submitting a documentation update to the ps man page. That way future confusion of the ps output could be avoided. Of course I guess people have to actually read the man page (In honor of slashdot, I didn't read it before posting this comment ;-)
In my defense, the slashdot editors extended what I wrote and took out some things. Half of what appeared is not stuff that I wrote.
Would that make me the Anti-Gates? How fitting.
Friday is also the 30th anniversary of the "Homebrew Letter" that Gates wrote complaining about copying basic on the altair. And also my 30th birthday.
They need a Linux computer
Is it just me or does the Nintendo Revolution controller kinda resemble the Atari 5200 controller, at least in concept. We've come a long way indeed.
I remember seeing the first consumer 4GB drive by IBM listed in Computer Shopper for a whopping $20,000. Looking back, its amazing they didn't list the price as "Call".
Actually, I would feel stupid if I accepted anything less than $200 for the source code. I would look for someone who was willing to pay at least $20,000 if not more.
Actually, I saw it and I'd say its more like a bulge. The difference being that there is a firm foundation and it ends up with a messy splatter in the end.
At the ISP I used to work for, I always made it a habit to never stop anywhere or to talk to anyone on the walk to the bank. This helps ensure that you don't wind up with the "Its a Wonderful Life" accident and misplace $8000.
Of course, it doesn't help when the bank that your manager has forced you to use has really poor security of their safety deposit box. Banks are unbelieveable. Unbelieveably stupid that is.
So is this going to be a portable version of the DS? ;-)
Actually, to be fair, he answered my question better than I expected. Of course I had low expectations to begin with. But I can see that he was trying and gave some examples of things that are changing internally like SDL. Still, to say that Microsoft has been focused on security since Windows NT wasn't a good way to start out his answer. :-(
The only reason for all the fancy artwork is to make it hard to duplicate the bills - if everyone could print their own money, they would and eventually it wouldn't be worth anything.
Thanks for clearing that up. I've been wondering about that for a long time. Now I'll have to find another life long question to answer.
the tag.
if the tag isn't on the top elements list.
Ok, I can see why you might think that and I'm sure that's what the popular media like to jump all over that (when someone is weak).
But now look at it from a diplomatic perspective:
To earn the trust and respect of others you have to acknowledge their ways, beliefs while at the same time, respectfully criticizing them while still being open to their rebuttals. Its based on building trust with your opponent
I think that you are far more likely to be successful with your arguments if you use the diplomatic approach rather than the game theory one. But of course if people don't understand the diplomatic approach then maybe you won't win because they won't respect you. Maybe that's the problem.
You're correct ;-). I am making a generalization about "most people" and that's not a good thing to do. The problem is that its difficult to form opinions about people that you don't know and the only impression you get of them is when you see them stating an opinion that is different than your own. Where do you draw the line between knowing people and making a generalization about them. I used to work on a military base only 45 minutes away and there I actually got into a few discussions where people stated what their opinions are and acted exactly as I explained in my original post. Now I'm working much closer to home and find that most people around here are open minded and not as I described. But Bloomington is kinda a unique place in my experience. Much more liberal than the rest of Indiana. My friends tend to be open minded people and that's probably because we have simular interests.
But then there are people like my Aunt and her daughter that are about as far right as you can go and whenever I get into a discussion with them about this, it doesn't matter how logical or based on fact my arguments are, they don't acknowledge them. I give them some credit for their opinions where it is due, but they don't budge one bit.
Bullshit. You couldn't be more wrong.
I'll see your sarcasm and raise you belligerence.
The key problem with this argument is that our society has roughly split down the middle on some pretty key issues. The things that are makeing Republicans hate Democrats and vice-versa just aren't going to see one side acknowledging the other as right.
But that's exactly what I'm talking about. People have polarized themselves so much that when an opposing opinion to their viewpoints comes along, they hit it like a wack-a-mole instead of considering it for a moment and trying to understand it.
Take me for example, for the longest time I was opposed to the idea of money and wealth in society, but I finally opened up to it (with some helpful influence of a book and my wife) and realized that if I'm going to accomplish some of the things I want to do in my life, I'm going to need money to do it. I have to play the game first before I can start changing it.
To use your example of anti-abortion activists, if you try to sit down with most extreme anti-abortion activist and discuss the issue, they will probably not ever listen to the reason of what you might have to say. They will only agree with you if you agree with them. This is not healthy for them (or you) because they just lead themselves further down the road to delusion.
I think one of the biggest problems facing our society is not being willing to acknowledge when the other group is correct or when we are wrong. Everyone is too convinced that they are correct that they are blind to the other person's point of view and opinions. This is spread all across the spectrum, not just in politics. Acknowledging when someone else is correct is good for you and good for relations. The person that you are discussing with will acknowledge that you are seeing their side and can listen to what they consider to be "reason" and they are more likely to listen to your point of view. Its just like here on Slashdot. Often times I get replies to my comments from people who have a different opinion or just have some smart ass remark. I understand, people have different opinions, and they are just as human as I am.
You can still acknowledge the other side and remain strong.
Enemies are people too.