Perhaps it is time for Digital Toilets. But, I don't want to know what happens during extended blackouts (which I have been in) or dead batteries.
Hey, no reason that it has to use an external power supply. A micro hydroelectric generator isn't a large thing, and the water pressure in an average American household has enough energy to produce several hundred watts.
My problem with these cameras is not that they prevent red light runners; Yellow means stop. If you're still not stopped when the light turns read then you were doing something wrong.
My problem is how the contracts with the providers of these systems (Siemens, most notably, because the provide the initial equipment for free) include payments for all tickets issued by the systems-- regardless of whether the ticket was accurate or not.
This creates a situation where it's to the company's advantage to have a high "false positive" rate, rather than to produce the most accurate system possible.
Now, if they were _fined_ for false positives an amount larger than they would get for the ticket in the first place, then viva la automatic ticketing system!
Larry Ellison started a company called "Netledger", an online competitor of QuickBooks. Their datacenter has dozens of Linux boxes running Oracle storing terabytes of data on Network Appliance filers. Netledger is now called "Oracle Small Business". As Larry Ellison chose to store mission critical financial data in databases on Linux and Netapp, I think that's a pretty substantial endorsement of both.
While not specifically databases on Linux, another of his companies is "ThinkNic", manufacturer of $200 Linux-based internet terminal for home users.
Back in the consulting days..
on
All Hallow's Eve
·
· Score: 1, Funny
Back when I was a consultant-for-hire, I worked service contracts for about a couple dozen different companies in Oregon City, Oregon. It's one of the oldest cities in Oregon, and one of the poorest, which meant crawling around attics, pulling cable, and doing other miscellaneous grunt work (SGI support:) in some VERY old buildings.
Well, we had one particularly nasty company under contract in one of the older buildings("The Historic Myers Building", used to be a hospital), built in the 1890s. Plaster walls (that are a BITCH to cut through), pneumatic mail tubes, etc.
This customer was a structural engineering house, and had folks working in there at all hours of the day and night. As such, we tended to get calls in the wee hours of the morning. It was okay.. I was typically up pretty early in the morning myself. I grumbled about it to my boss, but didn't care much..
..Until one night in 1994 that SCARED THE HELL out of me.
I got a support call at about 3 in the morning from one of the engineers. They were having network trouble, and none of their machines were actually on the network and functional. So I hopped in the car and drove down to take a look..
We had just recently upgraded their network from crappy 10Base2 to super-cool 10BaseT in a pretty big contract for us at the time, and which involved wiring the whole building, using the pneumatic tube system as wiring tunnels, and using the diverter room as a wiring closet.
So after talking with the engineer who placed the call, and seeing that his office switch didn't even have network link, I headed to the diverter room, a dank, poorly lit little room in the basement.
It was pretty obvious just from the smell that something was wrong in there. STRONG ozone odor. Crap. There had been a fiasco only a couple of months previous where something similar had happened because of condensation on the network cables dripping into the network ports. We'd rearranged the wires a bit to make that less likely, but I'd figured that's what had happened again. So I unplugged the (dead) equipment, took note of the model numbers, and turned around to head home, where I'd order new ones in the morning.
Well, as I turned around to leave, I saw (and this is where it gets freaky, kids), this guy standing a few feet from the door, facing the wall.
Not PARTICULARLY scary, but a little unsettling. So I laugh nervously, and ask the guy if I can help him. He jumped at the sound of my voice and slowly turned around. There was something seriously messed up about this guy. His eyes were a jet black (like, no whites), and his skin was seriously mottled, like he had bad acne scars or something. He tilted his head slightly to the side and, well, I can only describe it as UNHINGED his jaw, and made this horrible, TERRIBLE scratchy gurgling hissing sound. Shit.
Now it's 4 in the morning, I'm heavily sleep deprived, in an enclosed space, and someone I don't recognize is acting strange in ways I didn't think were humanly possible is standing VERY near to the door.
So I basically freaked out. I bolted through the doorway and at the stairs. As I rounded the first corner, I saw him chasing after me, his jacket spread out from the wind in a truely frightening pose, all the while making that horrible hissing/gurgling sound. When I reached the stairs, I was running so fast I missed the first step and hit my shin pretty badly on the next one. He was a lot closer than I thought because that's all the delay it took for him to grab hold of my leg.
I screamed and kicked and tried to pull myself away from him but he had a FIRM grip on my leg. He pulled me by the leg back down the stairs, and pulled my by the leg towards the diverter room. Just like I'm pulling your leg now.
Taken from Quakers Are Funny! by Chuck Fager, Kimo Press, 1987:
One World War II Quaker conscientious objector had been a professional wrestler. Once when he and some other inmates of the Coshocton CPS camp in Ohio made a trip into town, they were hassled about their pacifism by some local youths, who insisted that only force could change the German's views.
In response, the ex-wrestler took off his coat, challenged one of the local boys to a match, and promptly threw the townie across the room. He then asked the youth, "Now do you believe that force won't change people's views?"
"Heck no!" the local boy hollered back.
"That's exactly my point," said the Quaker, who put on his coat and left.
So does this mean that the great strength of the Palm platform-- tons and tons of free and nearly free software available-- is now going to turn into tons and tons of worthless bits ?
Most of the great palm tools in use today (Hackmaster, Beam Box, Backup Buddy, BigClock, Silver...) were written many years ago and have been pretty stable (as in no updates) ever since. I'm worried that a large number of programs will never be recompiled for the new architecture.
Waaaaay back in 1996, when the Communications Decency Act was first kicking our asses, he made a
campaign against it one of his platform issues.
I think I see the problem here.. He's consistantly FOR free and open speech, and doesn't want laws infringing on it. I just think he needs to be convinced that junk email should fall under junk fax laws-- not junk phone call laws.
As long as there are resources for everyone, human beings will continue to multiply until such a time comes that there AREN'T resources for everyone. The same is true of pretty much any creature on this planet. We expand to fill all available spaces.
Not that I'm for population controls, or intentionally limiting resources. I would just prefer it if we humans would plan to strike a balance with the resources available in order to maintain a sustainable growth.
Since most of the energy we as human expend goes towards creating materials that can't (or don't) reuse and recycle, I think the logical conclusion to our brief stay on this planet will be total depletion of usable resources.
It seems to me that if we should be looking for long term replacements for the resources we're consuming.
I believe the whole concept of gesture-based menus was first pioneered (and put into production) by Alias|Wavefront, which is designed to be used with a Wacom tablet-- pens work much better than mice for gesturing.
The idea is that the human brain isn't good at discerning differences between short distances, such as "Move the mouse pointer to the menu bar, click within a.5 inch box, scroll down 2.5 inches to the appropriate menu item and release", however it's quite good at producing and remembering changes in directions. So, for instance, File|Save would be "Up, Left".
With just two gestures, it's possible to represent over 48 different actions. Add a third gesture, and that number goes to 288. Their research showed that their average subject had no problem remembering four levels deep!
Gesture interfaces are especially useful as a user-interface for blind people, where it's just not possible to choose items from a menu visually.
The cool thing is that gesture-based menus have been part of the Alias|Wavefront products since 1996.
A guy walks into an automotive store and asks "Would you give me a rear view mirror for a yugo?" The clerk thinks about it for a minute and says "Okay, that's fair."
Actually, it's not true. If you bought a 30 hour TiVo, you'll still have a 30 hour TiVo. This is true because a 30 hour TiVo is actually a 42 hour TiVo. You still have exactly what they sold to you.
..I don't think lack of "big iron" support in the mainstream Linux kernel is due to Linus rejecting patches. I think it's more due to the lack of "big iron" hardware in the hands of the programmers who have the ability and the drive to support it.
I believe all this will change in the next few months due to the regional Open Source labs being sponsored by the computer companies who produce the big iron. These guys are hardware vendors. Not having to put R&D into their own OS makes a lot of sense to them.
According to the lab, the technology used in the compression algorithm was initially invented there for processing images from nuclear tests. A patent filed in November 2000 permits the lab to license its encoder to television broadcasters and broadcasting equipment manufacturers.
This may seem a bit naive, but what business does the government have doing research and not putting it into the public domain. This is paid for using public funds. Don't the results belong to the public?
Art is about conveying beauty and/or a message to an audience (sometimes just the artist himself).
Programming (and other mathematical/engineering disciplines) is about building useful structures. The humans doing the building may be partially guided by artistic concerns, but that doesn't make the output "art". The primary purpose is "does it work" not "is it nice to look at" or even "is it elegant."
However, a great deal of "does it work" is effected by "is it nice to look at" and "is it elegant."
Especially in an open source model, you MUST make sure your code is a joy to hack on, or any good programmer would simply decide to to throw it all away and start over. For that matter, you MUST make your user interface elegant if you want other people to use your program.
I've worked on projects that ranged from the architectural equivilent of a six story house of sticks (that could be blown down if you looked at it funny) to projects that felt as through Frank Lloyd Wright was reincarnated as a programmer. Not only did the code work as it was supposed to, but you got the feeling you were getting better just by reading it. Guess which ones I put more energy towards? Guess which ones thived and which ones died months later?
Bah.. If you want to attack my argument, go ahead, but don't attack my skills. Every job I've interviewed for I've gotten an offer letter for. Of course, that could be more of a reflection of the job market.
My point is that at least every job I've taken has had pretty much the same working conditions and my friends in other parts of the state pretty much agree with me. Maybe things are different in the golden cube-seas of California; Maybe it's time I started looking for a change of scenery.
I really enjoy the work I do, otherwise I'd go do something else. What I don't enjoy is the pervasive corporate culture that seems to think our time is not a resource. I don't believe the companies I've been at are isolated examples of this.
As for your claim of union corruption, yeah it exists. But I think for the most part, unions do more good than harm.
As you'll find in the SEC filings of almost any public company, the primary goal of a public corporation is to improve the value of the company's stock for the shareholders.
My primary goal is to give myself and my family a good life.
These goals aren't always compatible. My job (sysadmining) requires that I work long (10-15 hour) days in uncomfortable working conditions. Pay isn't an issue. A senior UNIX sysadmin doesn't want for money.
As far as the hours are concerned, the only thing that can change the situation is if there are more qualified sysadmins in the market, or of my company stops growing.
As far as the uncomfortable working conditions are concerned (sitting on my butt in an over-crowded cubicle since we have no storage space), the only thing that could make my life better are improved ergonomics. Since my company isn't required by OHSA to do anything about the ergonomics of my workspace until after I'm already in pain, they're not going to do anything.
Right now, the only weapon is leaving or the threat of leaving. What kind of weapon is that? For the first three months at my next job I have to pay COBRA rates for heath insurance, I have to completely adapt a new environment to my suitings, and at the end of it all, I'm just working for another company for 10-15 hours a day, in cramped and uncomfortable work spaces, in a sea of cubicles so noisy that I can barely concentrate on my work.
I want better working conditions. I want better hours.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it is time for Digital Toilets. But, I don't want to know what happens during extended blackouts (which I have been in) or dead batteries.
Hey, no reason that it has to use an external power supply. A micro hydroelectric generator isn't a large thing, and the water pressure in an average American household has enough energy to produce several hundred watts.
-James
The filer of the patent can't complain about their information being exposed to the public, because patents are a matter of public record anyway.
An _approved_ patent is a matter of public record. If I file for a patent, and don't get it, I still have a trade secret.
My problem with these cameras is not that they prevent red light runners; Yellow means stop. If you're still not stopped when the light turns read then you were doing something wrong.
My problem is how the contracts with the providers of these systems (Siemens, most notably, because the provide the initial equipment for free) include payments for all tickets issued by the systems-- regardless of whether the ticket was accurate or not.
This creates a situation where it's to the company's advantage to have a high "false positive" rate, rather than to produce the most accurate system possible.
Now, if they were _fined_ for false positives an amount larger than they would get for the ticket in the first place, then viva la automatic ticketing system!
-James
While not specifically databases on Linux, another of his companies is "ThinkNic", manufacturer of $200 Linux-based internet terminal for home users.
Back when I was a consultant-for-hire, I worked service contracts for about a couple dozen different companies in Oregon City, Oregon. It's one of the oldest cities in Oregon, and one of the poorest, which meant crawling around attics, pulling cable, and doing other miscellaneous grunt work (SGI support :) in some VERY old buildings.
Well, we had one particularly nasty company under contract in one of the older buildings("The Historic Myers Building", used to be a hospital), built in the 1890s. Plaster walls (that are a BITCH to cut through), pneumatic mail tubes, etc.
This customer was a structural engineering house, and had folks working in there at all hours of the day and night. As such, we tended to get calls in the wee hours of the morning. It was okay.. I was typically up pretty early in the morning myself. I grumbled about it to my boss, but didn't care much..
..Until one night in 1994 that SCARED THE HELL out of me.
I got a support call at about 3 in the morning from one of the engineers. They were having network trouble, and none of their machines were actually on the network and functional. So I hopped in the car and drove down to take a look..
We had just recently upgraded their network from crappy 10Base2 to super-cool 10BaseT in a pretty big contract for us at the time, and which involved wiring the whole building, using the pneumatic tube system as wiring tunnels, and using the diverter room as a wiring closet.
So after talking with the engineer who placed the call, and seeing that his office switch didn't even have network link, I headed to the diverter room, a dank, poorly lit little room in the basement.
It was pretty obvious just from the smell that something was wrong in there. STRONG ozone odor. Crap. There had been a fiasco only a couple of months previous where something similar had happened because of condensation on the network cables dripping into the network ports. We'd rearranged the wires a bit to make that less likely, but I'd figured that's what had happened again. So I unplugged the (dead) equipment, took note of the model numbers, and turned around to head home, where I'd order new ones in the morning.
Well, as I turned around to leave, I saw (and this is where it gets freaky, kids), this guy standing a few feet from the door, facing the wall.
Not PARTICULARLY scary, but a little unsettling. So I laugh nervously, and ask the guy if I can help him. He jumped at the sound of my voice and slowly turned around. There was something seriously messed up about this guy. His eyes were a jet black (like, no whites), and his skin was seriously mottled, like he had bad acne scars or something. He tilted his head slightly to the side and, well, I can only describe it as UNHINGED his jaw, and made this horrible, TERRIBLE scratchy gurgling hissing sound. Shit.
Now it's 4 in the morning, I'm heavily sleep deprived, in an enclosed space, and someone I don't recognize is acting strange in ways I didn't think were humanly possible is standing VERY near to the door.
So I basically freaked out. I bolted through the doorway and at the stairs. As I rounded the first corner, I saw him chasing after me, his jacket spread out from the wind in a truely frightening pose, all the while making that horrible hissing/gurgling sound. When I reached the stairs, I was running so fast I missed the first step and hit my shin pretty badly on the next one. He was a lot closer than I thought because that's all the delay it took for him to grab hold of my leg.
I screamed and kicked and tried to pull myself away from him but he had a FIRM grip on my leg. He pulled me by the leg back down the stairs, and pulled my by the leg towards the diverter room. Just like I'm pulling your leg now.
Thank you, thank you very much.
Taken from Quakers Are Funny! by Chuck Fager, Kimo Press, 1987:
One World War II Quaker conscientious objector had been a professional wrestler. Once when he and some other inmates of the Coshocton CPS camp in Ohio made a trip into town, they were hassled about their pacifism by some local youths, who insisted that only force could change the German's views.
In response, the ex-wrestler took off his coat, challenged one of the local boys to a match, and promptly threw the townie across the room. He then asked the youth, "Now do you believe that force won't change people's views?"
"Heck no!" the local boy hollered back.
"That's exactly my point," said the Quaker, who put on his coat and left.
Most of the great palm tools in use today (Hackmaster, Beam Box, Backup Buddy, BigClock, Silver...) were written many years ago and have been pretty stable (as in no updates) ever since. I'm worried that a large number of programs will never be recompiled for the new architecture.
As far back as 1995, he co-authored House bill HR1555, an anti censorship bill to be tacked onto the Telecom Reform Bill.
Waaaaay back in 1996, when the Communications Decency Act was first kicking our asses, he made a campaign against it one of his platform issues.
I think I see the problem here.. He's consistantly FOR free and open speech, and doesn't want laws infringing on it. I just think he needs to be convinced that junk email should fall under junk fax laws-- not junk phone call laws.
As long as there are resources for everyone, human beings will continue to multiply until such a time comes that there AREN'T resources for everyone. The same is true of pretty much any creature on this planet. We expand to fill all available spaces.
Not that I'm for population controls, or intentionally limiting resources. I would just prefer it if we humans would plan to strike a balance with the resources available in order to maintain a sustainable growth.
Since most of the energy we as human expend goes towards creating materials that can't (or don't) reuse and recycle, I think the logical conclusion to our brief stay on this planet will be total depletion of usable resources.
It seems to me that if we should be looking for long term replacements for the resources we're consuming.
The idea is that the human brain isn't good at discerning differences between short distances, such as "Move the mouse pointer to the menu bar, click within a .5 inch box, scroll down 2.5 inches to the appropriate menu item and release", however it's quite good at producing and remembering changes in directions. So, for instance, File|Save would be "Up, Left".
With just two gestures, it's possible to represent over 48 different actions. Add a third gesture, and that number goes to 288. Their research showed that their average subject had no problem remembering four levels deep!
Gesture interfaces are especially useful as a user-interface for blind people, where it's just not possible to choose items from a menu visually.
The cool thing is that gesture-based menus have been part of the Alias|Wavefront products since 1996.
-James
A guy walks into an automotive store and asks "Would you give me a rear view mirror for a yugo?" The clerk thinks about it for a minute and says "Okay, that's fair."
Doesn't one of these seem a little out of place?
Mark: "We're going to need SPEED! Let's use MySQL."
Bob: "This is going to be a high transaction session database! We're going to need transactions and rollbacks! Let's use PostgreSQL."
Dennis: "We'd a crummy little dot-bomb. We don't need speed, and we don't need transactions and rollbacks. Let's use DBM files."
-James
I hope things will be okay.
The RIAA and MPAA are trying to strangle individual copyright holders by controlling content delivery methods.
I hope things will be okay.
WIPO wants control of the domain name registration process.
I hope things will be okay.
Corporations are storing huge amounts of personal data on us, and selling it to government organziations.
I hope things will be okay.
We're running out of IPv4 address space.
I hope things will be okay.
Black holes are going to swallow the universe!
I hope things will be okay.
The light is blinking! The LIGHT IS BLINKING!!!
I hope things will be okay.
.2*3600 =~ 720mph.
5000/720 = 6.9 times the speed of sound.
Seeing as the plane "will fly at speeds up to almost mach 7", I think this is a case of a confused submitter.
-James
PDX Wireless
-James
I believe all this will change in the next few months due to the regional Open Source labs being sponsored by the computer companies who produce the big iron. These guys are hardware vendors. Not having to put R&D into their own OS makes a lot of sense to them.
This may seem a bit naive, but what business does the government have doing research and not putting it into the public domain. This is paid for using public funds. Don't the results belong to the public?
Programming (and other mathematical/engineering disciplines) is about building useful structures. The humans doing the building may be partially guided by artistic concerns, but that doesn't make the output "art". The primary purpose is "does it work" not "is it nice to look at" or even "is it elegant."
However, a great deal of "does it work" is effected by "is it nice to look at" and "is it elegant."
Especially in an open source model, you MUST make sure your code is a joy to hack on, or any good programmer would simply decide to to throw it all away and start over. For that matter, you MUST make your user interface elegant if you want other people to use your program.
I've worked on projects that ranged from the architectural equivilent of a six story house of sticks (that could be blown down if you looked at it funny) to projects that felt as through Frank Lloyd Wright was reincarnated as a programmer. Not only did the code work as it was supposed to, but you got the feeling you were getting better just by reading it. Guess which ones I put more energy towards? Guess which ones thived and which ones died months later?
My point is that at least every job I've taken has had pretty much the same working conditions and my friends in other parts of the state pretty much agree with me. Maybe things are different in the golden cube-seas of California; Maybe it's time I started looking for a change of scenery.
I really enjoy the work I do, otherwise I'd go do something else. What I don't enjoy is the pervasive corporate culture that seems to think our time is not a resource. I don't believe the companies I've been at are isolated examples of this.
As for your claim of union corruption, yeah it exists. But I think for the most part, unions do more good than harm.
As you'll find in the SEC filings of almost any public company, the primary goal of a public corporation is to improve the value of the company's stock for the shareholders.
My primary goal is to give myself and my family a good life.
These goals aren't always compatible. My job (sysadmining) requires that I work long (10-15 hour) days in uncomfortable working conditions. Pay isn't an issue. A senior UNIX sysadmin doesn't want for money.
As far as the hours are concerned, the only thing that can change the situation is if there are more qualified sysadmins in the market, or of my company stops growing.
As far as the uncomfortable working conditions are concerned (sitting on my butt in an over-crowded cubicle since we have no storage space), the only thing that could make my life better are improved ergonomics. Since my company isn't required by OHSA to do anything about the ergonomics of my workspace until after I'm already in pain, they're not going to do anything.
Right now, the only weapon is leaving or the threat of leaving. What kind of weapon is that? For the first three months at my next job I have to pay COBRA rates for heath insurance, I have to completely adapt a new environment to my suitings, and at the end of it all, I'm just working for another company for 10-15 hours a day, in cramped and uncomfortable work spaces, in a sea of cubicles so noisy that I can barely concentrate on my work.
I want better working conditions. I want better hours.