It's exactly this. Anybody above the level of "unconscious incompetence" will sometimes feel like a fraud.
Conscious incompetent: "I don't know what I'm doing. Why did they hire me?" Conscious competent: "I sometimes know what I'm doing, but there's so much I don't know. Why haven't they fired me yet?" Unconscious competent: "All this shit is so easy. Why are they paying me so much to do this high school stuff?"
Unconscious incompetent: "I'm fantastic! I'm the best ever! Why aren't they paying me more?"
I've stuck with firefox for a long time, but they've finally removed the last few things that were better than chrome, so it's time to give in and switch to the path of least resistance.
Congrats Firefox dev team! You've made it so much like chrome that there's no longer any reason to use it!
I have both the Nook Simple Touch Glow and the Kindle Paperwhite. As far as I can tell they are exactly equivalent in terms of the competitive niche. I much prefer reading on the Kindle. It's smaller, litter, slimmer, and the lighting is more agreeable. The nook is oddly thick and the buttons are all much too hard to push, at least when it's new (as mine is).
The nook's lighting is more uniform but the light sources are too close to the edge of the screen, which means the glare from the source bugs me while reading. The brightness controls on the kindle allow for finer adjustment and the minimum light level is lower.
The kindle's almost complete lack of buttons appeals to me, since I'm already used to reading on tablet and phone touch screens. Nook's two different power/home buttons make no real sense to me, and the page turn buttons go ignored in favor of swiping or tapping on the touch screen.
Both screens are very pleasant to look at when the light is enabled, but kind of oddly colored when it's off. The kindle's higher pixel count is noticeable, but not so much better that I'd ignore the nook. Neither screen is very quick to respond to touches or page turns. The kindle is a bit faster than the nook, most of the time.
Shopping, buying, downloading, etc is a bit easier on the nook, in my opinion. Both interfaces are more than good enough though.
The really big differences show up in the infrastructure surrounding the gadgets.
B&N's web site is, in my opinion, horrifically bad. I hate everything about it. Buying items fails frequently, for no apparent reason. I never even look at their site anymore. If I want to buy a B&N ebook, I find it via http://www.goodreads.com/, http://inkmesh.com/, or by showrooming on Amazon's site, then buy it on the nook itself.
Amazon's site is better. Searching is limited and imprecise, compared to real search engines like Google. The number of items on screen is fixed and too few, but I can live with that.
The deciding factor, for me, is how many restriction Amazon puts on the kindle. Their format is a proprietary version of the old Mobipocket "standard" with their own layer of DRM. Nook uses ePub with Adobe DRM. Both DRM schemes are easily removed, but after removal, Nook books leave you with a wonderfully useful ePub, where kindle books are still in a (somewhat) proprietary format. If I want to load an ePub on my kindle, I have to convert it first. If I want to load a kindle book on almost any other reader, I have to convert it first. Conversion isn't hard, using Calibre, but I have noticed that layout and formatting is never quite right after conversion.
I'd love to read more in the Kindle Paperwhite, but Amazon has crippled it too much to be of use to me. I don't like the physical experience of reading on the Nook Simple Touch Glow... it's just too chunky and clunky. Ultimately, I choose to keep reading mostly on my Android tablets. I buy my ebooks from places that sell them in ePub and read them on devices that support ePub.
Speaking as somebody who does a lot of interviewing and recommending for or against hiring, a CS degree is completely unimpressive to me, at least at the bachelor's level. If you don't have experience, I won't hire you for anything but the most menial technical position. At 35, experience is even more important. If you want a degree that matters, pick something more specialized. Health Informatics is pretty hot right now, for instance.
Let me be blunt: using ethanol as a gasoline replacement/supplement is moronic. The energy it takes to make ethanol, combined with the fact that it contains less energy (when burned) per gallon than gasoline, shows pretty solidly what a pathetic idea it is. As others have pointed out in this thread, the energy needed to create the stuff is probably going to come from burning something. Add that to the fact that people will burn more ethanol per mile, what's the net effect, both in money and CO2 emitted?
The people hawking ethanol are pretty much the same ones that were pissing themselves with excitement over hydrogen a few years ago. The ones most excited about it are the politicians and the big oil companies -- or I suppose I could just say the big oil companies, since the excited politicians are mostly a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil. Who do you think is going to own the distribution and sales infrastructure for ethanol? It's not going to get BP's hand out of your pocket, I can assure you of that. The same would've been true for hydrogen, which is an even sillier thing to think of using as a combustion fuel.
I'm no expert, but the only thing I can see that makes sense in the near future, in terms of net energy used, is electricity. The main problem that I can see with using electricity is that it puts huge swaths of people out of work, since the gasoline distribution infrastructure would pretty much disappear, top to bottom. I know electric cars aren't really practical just yet, but neither are hydrogen-burning or fuel cell-using ones. Ethanol-powered cars are as "practical" right now as they ever will be, but that's a fool's paradise.
Every time a politician opens his mouth about energy policy, think about where the money is coming from and where it's going. You'll almost never see any of them tout nuclear power generation, both because of the enviro-nazis and because it knocks money out of the hands of coal and oil companies. Even fewer politicos will talk about electric cars, again because switching every car in America to electricity would destroy the said oil companies.
We need to stop being dependent on oil. The Middle East needs to return to being the impoverished backwater it so richly deserves to be. In that bargain, we also need to stop pumping CO2 into the air just so all the small-dicked rednecks and big-assed soccer moms can drive their humongous Ford Expletive SUVs across the street for a cheeseburger.
I get really tired of hearing this story. There are some of us in the world who don't get *any* buzz from any amount of exercise. Unsurprisingly, we tend to have depressive tendencies. I spoke with my doctor about it, and she believes it has something to do with serotonin re-uptake mechanisms not working the same in everybody. I exercise quite a bit. I average well over a hundred miles a week on the bike. I never get a mood lift from exercise. If I miss a week or two, then go back to it, there's no change.
The problem with psycho-chemistry is that it's not a machine. You can't say "input X will garner output Y." It just doesn't work that way. When I get a headache, I take one single aspirin, and it goes away. A friend of mine can take prescription painkillers, and still have a skull-splitter. You exercise and get happy. I exercise and get tired. As much as all the geeks in the world (myself included) would like to make it so, humans aren't rude mechanicals to be manipulated with predictable inputs and outputs.
That link should be to http://pckeyboard.com/. The plural version will get you what you want, but the site sucks and I think you might have to customer order via a sales-drone. The singular version will let you like to a yahoo store and will happily sell you a somewhat ugly keyboard with awesome but noisy mechanical switches and a nice trackpoint mouse pointer.
Most RSIs aren't caused by the device being used. They're caused by poor workstation ergonomics in general. Start with her posture. Is she sitting with her feet flat on the floor, knees bent at about 90 degrees? Are her chair arms removed or set as low as possible? Ideally, she shouldn't rest her elbows, wrists, or the heels of her hands on anything while typing. When typing, her elbows should be close to her body and bent at about 90 degrees also. Given the posture constraints, her keyboard and mouse height will likely have to be adjusted. It's important to adjust the height of the equipment, not the height of the chair. Raising the chair will raise her legs, causing her to adjust her posture away from the optimum. For sensitive users, such as this person seems to be, you need to throw away all those wrist rests, pads, and other items that may put pressure on or near the carpal tunnel area. Even those swoopy microsoft keyboard, with the huge, non-removable wrist rest aren't very good for truly sensitive types. Correct posture of the legs, back, arms, and wrists is the real solution.
I had huge problems with my wrists, for years. I finally went to work for a company big enough to have an ergonomics specialist. When I mentioned it to my boss, he immediately called her, and she came to my office to assess the situation. After a *long* lecture about posture, she took away all my so-called ergonomic gear. She then had the facilities guys come install a height-adjustable keyboard tray and bring me a new chair (Aeron, w00t!). Once everything was adjusted, the problem pretty quickly went away on its own. The only thing that I do now that's exceptional is that I use a trackpoint keyboard at home (from http://pckeyboards.com/).
Re:slightly different paradigm
on
Vim 7 Released
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· Score: 1
I will block any ad that moves, flashes, blinks, or is otherwise animated, unless it does its thing, then becomes static. Ads that delay page loads will also get blocked. I fairly frequently click through on relevant ads, if they don't get blocked. I even occasionally buy stuff, based on ads. If they make it hard for me to read the site I'm trying to read, they go bye-bye.
I look at web ads more or less the same way I look at TV and print ads: as long as they're not obnoxious, or completely unrelated to the content that got me there, I'm all in favor of them. TV ads are a virtual wasteland, and there are too many of them. The fact that TV ads can't really be targeted to individuals is one of the reasons that I think TV will die relatively quickly. Print ads are more self-targeting, since most magazines are fairly subject-specific.
Frankly, the only reason I still buy newspapers at all is that you can't get local ads any other way. That's right I buy newspapers FOR the ads. The content is largely irrelevant, especially when you consider the pathetic quality of reportage in the local rag.
It's a shame that Tenet left. He obviously is of a compatible mindset to the rest of the people in the Bush IIb cabinet.
The national press, including United Press International (UPI), were excluded from yesterday's event, at Mr. Tenet's request, organizers said.
See? He's *so* security-conscious that he doesn't invite the real press to his press events. Alternatively, maybe he knows that his wacko, paranoid statements won't hold up to even the moderately intelligent level of scrutiny that AP & Reuters can bring to bear, so he only wants the lunatic fringe (I know you're out there) to hear what he has to say.
He definitely fits with the current gang in power. Of course, it's too bad F.P. Nixon died because he would be an absolute PERFECT fit.
Note that "F.P." stands for former president, not first post.
1. How much redundancy is available
a. Are there multiple fans or fan trays?
b. Are there multiple power supplies?
i. How many are needed to power the system?
ii. Can they be powered on and off individually?
b. Are there multiple CPUs?
i. Can they fail independantly, without outage?
ii. Can they be partitioned or dedicated?
c. How about multiple storage controllers? 2. How maintainable is it?
a. Hot-swapability
i. CPUs?
ii. Fans?
iii. Power supplies?
b. Manufacturer longevity
c. Product line stability
d. Off-the-shelf parts? 3. Physical specs
a. It's gotta be rack-mountable, right?
b. How many U high?
c. How deep?
d. Are there pluggy bits on the front, back, both?
e. How much does it weigh?
f. How bloody annoying are the rack rails?
g. Can you open and close it with things mounted directly above and below?
h. Can you swap out any and all parts without unracking?
i. How much heat does it generate?
j. How much power does it require?
k. Is there a maximum rack density specified?
l. Is it loud enough for OSHA to require ear plugs? 4. Expandability
a. How many net ports minimum/maximum?
b. What kind of net ports can it have?
c. How many storage thingies (hard drives, etc)?
d. Is there an upgrade path for the CPU(s)? 5. Servicability?
a. Is there a "lights out" managment board available?
b. Does it require dedicated management software?
c. Does it support SNMP?
i. Standard MIBs?
ii. Custom MIB(s)?
iii. Can it send traps?
d. Are you forced to connect a monitor/keyboard?
e. Is it supported by the obnoxious management/monitoring software of my choice? F. Miscellaneous
a. Can it run Linux?
b. Does it force me to run Microsoft software?
c. Ok then, what the hell O/S does it run?
d. Can I have the source?
e. Please?
f. There's no SCO crap in there, right?
g. If I fill a whole rack with them, will it impress the chicks?
h. Ok, then how do I impress chicks?
i. What the hell's a chick, anyway?
I'm sure I've left out a ton of stuff, but those are some quick thoughts.
I wish I had mod points today, to mod this post up even more.
This exactly describes what Oracle's doing with their "Grid" computing. They want you to shaft Sun, HP, etc., by buying super-cheap white box computers, and putting Linux on them. What they never seem to mention is that their SOFTWARE doesn't get any damned cheaper, even if the hardware is free, relatively speaking.
Hmmmm, let's see how this works. If I buy two 4 CPU Sun Fire 480 systems at $35k each, plus a couple of smallish NetApp Filers at $30k each, then I've spent $130k on hardware. Just to be fair, add $20k of infrastructure cash to that, and call it $150k. Licensing Oracle on those two boxes, with the clustering option, will run in the neighborhood of $144k per server, assuming you can negotiate a 40% discount. That means $150k for hardware, and $288k for *just* the database software.
In the new "grid" world, you'd buy at least four boxes, with two processors each. As an example, a decently configured Dell PE1750 runs about $4500, with no operating system. You could buy five of those for $22.5k. Add the same $60k for filers, and go cheap on the infrastructure for $10k. You'd spend $92.5k on hardware. Since Oracle doesn't give a significant price break for smaller computers, you can license the cluster-capable version of their database for somewhere around $72k per server, again assuming a 40% discount. With five servers, that's $360k for software and $92.5k for hardware. Going with smaller servers saves you a grand total of $17k, but a much larger share of it goes in good ol' Larry's pocket, rather than begin given to those bastards named Scott, Carly, or Bill.
Of course, the real answer is probably to start out with the second scenario, but tell Larry and his minions to piss off, and using some sort of proper free database software.;)
Back in the old days, when computers were enormous and water-cooled, instead of small and water-cooled, I worked with a guy who never bathed. He stank, something awful. From what I've told, nobody would really have been surprised or even bothered in a Unix shop, but I worked in an IBM shop, and everybody (but me) wore a jacket and tie to work, and everybody (but him) bathed regularly. One day, his personal odor field was so bad that his boss finally got fed up with the situation. He told this guy, in no uncertain terms, that he was to go home and bathe, and that he wouldn't be allowed back into the building until his stench was removed. The poor, smelly man got very offended over this obviously unfair situation and stormed out of the computer room, slamming the door as hard as he could on the way out. The door was in one of those lovely little non-load bearing walls that exist in many commercial buildings...a wall so insubstantial that you could see it wiggle a bit, every time the door was opened or closed. Right next to the door, affixed to the aforementioned flimsy wall, was the EMERGENCY POWER OFF switch. The slamming door somehow tripped the emergency off button, immediately removing power from every piece of equipment in the room, and from the coolant pumps in the basement below. In the completely dark and mostly silent room, you could hear the disk heads smashing down into the platters, and the gurgle of water draining down into the basement.
To make things even more fun, something went wrong, down there in the basement. One of the coolant reservoirs was apparently not up to snuff, and it leaked. There was chemically treated coolant water all over the floor, to a depth of two or three inches. On the floor, surrounding the pumps, we had just started storing the toner for our brand new laser printer, the size of a small city bus (the printer, not the toner). We didn't have all that much toner, and we hadn't stacked it all that high, so at least a third of it was ruined by the water.
It took over 24 hours to get everything back online, and about a week to replace the laser toner. Surprisingly, nobody got fired.
American Airlines uses a VRS for reservation confirmation, and it's SPOOKY accurate.:) I called to check a reservation last September,and never had to touch the keypad at all. It even had me say my name (not spell it), then it repeated it back to me in its own voice and spelled it to me, to make sure it had it right. My last name is very uncommon in the US and has a non-americanized spelling, and it still got it right. I even tried to trip up the system, just for fun, by saying "two two forty-five", instead of "two two four five" or "twenty-two forty-five" for my flight number. When it asked me for a yes/no response, I said "yup" and "nope", and it still got it. The only thing it couldn't handle were uh-huh and uh-uh. I was flabbergasted.:)
Who told you that crap? It was pronounced "sequel" long before Microsoft bought the right to use (and further fsck up) Sybase's already fscked up source code.
You're incorrect in your assumptions, I think. Just because I'm copying more doesn't mean I'm buying less. That's the kind of thinking that the record companies are using, and it's never been proven true. I have friends who copy musice and/or DVDs. At the same time, those same people continue spending just as much per month on the real deal. Frequently, they'll even go buy a "real" copy of a movie they've ripped, when it becomes available to them, or when their budget allows.
You can assume all day long, but I still see no proof, and my anecdotal evidence is all to the contrary.
Here's another point to muse: think of The Tragedy of the Commons, and how infinitely copiable information changes that situation.
Admittedly, the media by which the information is sent and received is still a commons in the old sense of the word, but the information itself represents a limitless resource. In the not-too-distant future, even the transmission medium could become essentially limitless. The mind truly boggles.
The information economy is dead. Long live the information economy!
"When their cost to produce the CD dropped drastically to the point where consumers could create their own music CD for less than 50 cents, warning bells should have rung out loudly. Perhaps they did, but obviously nobody paid attention until the consequences began to nibble away at their profits."
It's been demonstrated, time and again, that there are many causes for the drop in record company profits. It's never, to my knowledge, been demonstrated through any honest research that the record companies have actually lost a significant amount of money to casual piracy. The only statistics I've seen that supposedly "prove" such a thing are from RIAA sock puppets.
I want to scream every time I see this kind of parrotry in the news media. Whatever happened to research, fact-checking, confirmation, and all those other supposed mainstays of the serious news organization?
The RIAA and MPAA will sue you for infringing on their process. Your only defense will be that you're using it to show a fictitious DECLINE in the pertinent nefarious activity, rather than an increase.
There have been several instances where the courts have refused to enforce a contract because the user was unable to read or to understand the entirety of it. IANAL, and I do remember that there were very specific circumstances, but it has happened. Cases like that are one of the reasons that your Mortgage agent has to go through the whole bloody mortage agreement with you, clause by clause, before they'll even let you sign it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's exactly this. Anybody above the level of "unconscious incompetence" will sometimes feel like a fraud.
Conscious incompetent: "I don't know what I'm doing. Why did they hire me?"
Conscious competent: "I sometimes know what I'm doing, but there's so much I don't know. Why haven't they fired me yet?"
Unconscious competent: "All this shit is so easy. Why are they paying me so much to do this high school stuff?"
Unconscious incompetent: "I'm fantastic! I'm the best ever! Why aren't they paying me more?"
I've stuck with firefox for a long time, but they've finally removed the last few things that were better than chrome, so it's time to give in and switch to the path of least resistance.
Congrats Firefox dev team! You've made it so much like chrome that there's no longer any reason to use it!
IT, however bad it is, is a bed of roses compared to driving a truck.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/truck-stop/481926/
"...he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse."
So you're saying he has what it takes to be a Fortune 100 CEO?
I have both the Nook Simple Touch Glow and the Kindle Paperwhite. As far as I can tell they are exactly equivalent in terms of the competitive niche. I much prefer reading on the Kindle. It's smaller, litter, slimmer, and the lighting is more agreeable. The nook is oddly thick and the buttons are all much too hard to push, at least when it's new (as mine is).
The nook's lighting is more uniform but the light sources are too close to the edge of the screen, which means the glare from the source bugs me while reading. The brightness controls on the kindle allow for finer adjustment and the minimum light level is lower.
The kindle's almost complete lack of buttons appeals to me, since I'm already used to reading on tablet and phone touch screens. Nook's two different power/home buttons make no real sense to me, and the page turn buttons go ignored in favor of swiping or tapping on the touch screen.
Both screens are very pleasant to look at when the light is enabled, but kind of oddly colored when it's off. The kindle's higher pixel count is noticeable, but not so much better that I'd ignore the nook. Neither screen is very quick to respond to touches or page turns. The kindle is a bit faster than the nook, most of the time.
Shopping, buying, downloading, etc is a bit easier on the nook, in my opinion. Both interfaces are more than good enough though.
The really big differences show up in the infrastructure surrounding the gadgets.
B&N's web site is, in my opinion, horrifically bad. I hate everything about it. Buying items fails frequently, for no apparent reason. I never even look at their site anymore. If I want to buy a B&N ebook, I find it via http://www.goodreads.com/, http://inkmesh.com/, or by showrooming on Amazon's site, then buy it on the nook itself.
Amazon's site is better. Searching is limited and imprecise, compared to real search engines like Google. The number of items on screen is fixed and too few, but I can live with that.
The deciding factor, for me, is how many restriction Amazon puts on the kindle. Their format is a proprietary version of the old Mobipocket "standard" with their own layer of DRM. Nook uses ePub with Adobe DRM. Both DRM schemes are easily removed, but after removal, Nook books leave you with a wonderfully useful ePub, where kindle books are still in a (somewhat) proprietary format. If I want to load an ePub on my kindle, I have to convert it first. If I want to load a kindle book on almost any other reader, I have to convert it first. Conversion isn't hard, using Calibre, but I have noticed that layout and formatting is never quite right after conversion.
I'd love to read more in the Kindle Paperwhite, but Amazon has crippled it too much to be of use to me. I don't like the physical experience of reading on the Nook Simple Touch Glow... it's just too chunky and clunky. Ultimately, I choose to keep reading mostly on my Android tablets. I buy my ebooks from places that sell them in ePub and read them on devices that support ePub.
Speaking as somebody who does a lot of interviewing and recommending for or against hiring, a CS degree is completely unimpressive to me, at least at the bachelor's level. If you don't have experience, I won't hire you for anything but the most menial technical position. At 35, experience is even more important. If you want a degree that matters, pick something more specialized. Health Informatics is pretty hot right now, for instance.
Let me be blunt: using ethanol as a gasoline replacement/supplement is moronic. The energy it takes to make ethanol, combined with the fact that it contains less energy (when burned) per gallon than gasoline, shows pretty solidly what a pathetic idea it is. As others have pointed out in this thread, the energy needed to create the stuff is probably going to come from burning something. Add that to the fact that people will burn more ethanol per mile, what's the net effect, both in money and CO2 emitted?
The people hawking ethanol are pretty much the same ones that were pissing themselves with excitement over hydrogen a few years ago. The ones most excited about it are the politicians and the big oil companies -- or I suppose I could just say the big oil companies, since the excited politicians are mostly a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil. Who do you think is going to own the distribution and sales infrastructure for ethanol? It's not going to get BP's hand out of your pocket, I can assure you of that. The same would've been true for hydrogen, which is an even sillier thing to think of using as a combustion fuel.
I'm no expert, but the only thing I can see that makes sense in the near future, in terms of net energy used, is electricity. The main problem that I can see with using electricity is that it puts huge swaths of people out of work, since the gasoline distribution infrastructure would pretty much disappear, top to bottom. I know electric cars aren't really practical just yet, but neither are hydrogen-burning or fuel cell-using ones. Ethanol-powered cars are as "practical" right now as they ever will be, but that's a fool's paradise.
Every time a politician opens his mouth about energy policy, think about where the money is coming from and where it's going. You'll almost never see any of them tout nuclear power generation, both because of the enviro-nazis and because it knocks money out of the hands of coal and oil companies. Even fewer politicos will talk about electric cars, again because switching every car in America to electricity would destroy the said oil companies.
We need to stop being dependent on oil. The Middle East needs to return to being the impoverished backwater it so richly deserves to be. In that bargain, we also need to stop pumping CO2 into the air just so all the small-dicked rednecks and big-assed soccer moms can drive their humongous Ford Expletive SUVs across the street for a cheeseburger.
I get really tired of hearing this story. There are some of us in the world who don't get *any* buzz from any amount of exercise. Unsurprisingly, we tend to have depressive tendencies. I spoke with my doctor about it, and she believes it has something to do with serotonin re-uptake mechanisms not working the same in everybody. I exercise quite a bit. I average well over a hundred miles a week on the bike. I never get a mood lift from exercise. If I miss a week or two, then go back to it, there's no change.
The problem with psycho-chemistry is that it's not a machine. You can't say "input X will garner output Y." It just doesn't work that way. When I get a headache, I take one single aspirin, and it goes away. A friend of mine can take prescription painkillers, and still have a skull-splitter. You exercise and get happy. I exercise and get tired. As much as all the geeks in the world (myself included) would like to make it so, humans aren't rude mechanicals to be manipulated with predictable inputs and outputs.
That link should be to http://pckeyboard.com/. The plural version will get you what you want, but the site sucks and I think you might have to customer order via a sales-drone. The singular version will let you like to a yahoo store and will happily sell you a somewhat ugly keyboard with awesome but noisy mechanical switches and a nice trackpoint mouse pointer.
Most RSIs aren't caused by the device being used. They're caused by poor workstation ergonomics in general. Start with her posture. Is she sitting with her feet flat on the floor, knees bent at about 90 degrees? Are her chair arms removed or set as low as possible? Ideally, she shouldn't rest her elbows, wrists, or the heels of her hands on anything while typing. When typing, her elbows should be close to her body and bent at about 90 degrees also. Given the posture constraints, her keyboard and mouse height will likely have to be adjusted. It's important to adjust the height of the equipment, not the height of the chair. Raising the chair will raise her legs, causing her to adjust her posture away from the optimum. For sensitive users, such as this person seems to be, you need to throw away all those wrist rests, pads, and other items that may put pressure on or near the carpal tunnel area. Even those swoopy microsoft keyboard, with the huge, non-removable wrist rest aren't very good for truly sensitive types. Correct posture of the legs, back, arms, and wrists is the real solution.
I had huge problems with my wrists, for years. I finally went to work for a company big enough to have an ergonomics specialist. When I mentioned it to my boss, he immediately called her, and she came to my office to assess the situation. After a *long* lecture about posture, she took away all my so-called ergonomic gear. She then had the facilities guys come install a height-adjustable keyboard tray and bring me a new chair (Aeron, w00t!). Once everything was adjusted, the problem pretty quickly went away on its own. The only thing that I do now that's exceptional is that I use a trackpoint keyboard at home (from http://pckeyboards.com/).
Remember: you can't spell evil without vi!
I will block any ad that moves, flashes, blinks, or is otherwise animated, unless it does its thing, then becomes static. Ads that delay page loads will also get blocked. I fairly frequently click through on relevant ads, if they don't get blocked. I even occasionally buy stuff, based on ads. If they make it hard for me to read the site I'm trying to read, they go bye-bye.
I look at web ads more or less the same way I look at TV and print ads: as long as they're not obnoxious, or completely unrelated to the content that got me there, I'm all in favor of them. TV ads are a virtual wasteland, and there are too many of them. The fact that TV ads can't really be targeted to individuals is one of the reasons that I think TV will die relatively quickly. Print ads are more self-targeting, since most magazines are fairly subject-specific.
Frankly, the only reason I still buy newspapers at all is that you can't get local ads any other way. That's right I buy newspapers FOR the ads. The content is largely irrelevant, especially when you consider the pathetic quality of reportage in the local rag.
See? He's *so* security-conscious that he doesn't invite the real press to his press events. Alternatively, maybe he knows that his wacko, paranoid statements won't hold up to even the moderately intelligent level of scrutiny that AP & Reuters can bring to bear, so he only wants the lunatic fringe (I know you're out there) to hear what he has to say.
He definitely fits with the current gang in power. Of course, it's too bad F.P. Nixon died because he would be an absolute PERFECT fit.
Note that "F.P." stands for former president, not first post.
1. How much redundancy is available
a. Are there multiple fans or fan trays?
b. Are there multiple power supplies?
i. How many are needed to power the system?
ii. Can they be powered on and off individually?
b. Are there multiple CPUs?
i. Can they fail independantly, without outage?
ii. Can they be partitioned or dedicated?
c. How about multiple storage controllers?
2. How maintainable is it?
a. Hot-swapability
i. CPUs?
ii. Fans?
iii. Power supplies?
b. Manufacturer longevity
c. Product line stability
d. Off-the-shelf parts?
3. Physical specs
a. It's gotta be rack-mountable, right?
b. How many U high?
c. How deep?
d. Are there pluggy bits on the front, back, both?
e. How much does it weigh?
f. How bloody annoying are the rack rails?
g. Can you open and close it with things mounted directly above and below?
h. Can you swap out any and all parts without unracking?
i. How much heat does it generate?
j. How much power does it require?
k. Is there a maximum rack density specified?
l. Is it loud enough for OSHA to require ear plugs?
4. Expandability
a. How many net ports minimum/maximum?
b. What kind of net ports can it have?
c. How many storage thingies (hard drives, etc)?
d. Is there an upgrade path for the CPU(s)?
5. Servicability?
a. Is there a "lights out" managment board available?
b. Does it require dedicated management software?
c. Does it support SNMP?
i. Standard MIBs?
ii. Custom MIB(s)?
iii. Can it send traps?
d. Are you forced to connect a monitor/keyboard?
e. Is it supported by the obnoxious management/monitoring software of my choice?
F. Miscellaneous
a. Can it run Linux?
b. Does it force me to run Microsoft software?
c. Ok then, what the hell O/S does it run?
d. Can I have the source?
e. Please?
f. There's no SCO crap in there, right?
g. If I fill a whole rack with them, will it impress the chicks?
h. Ok, then how do I impress chicks?
i. What the hell's a chick, anyway?
I'm sure I've left out a ton of stuff, but those are some quick thoughts.
Read the HTPC topic on the AVS Forum. You can learn all about this topic, in exhaustive detail.
I wish I had mod points today, to mod this post up even more.
;)
This exactly describes what Oracle's doing with their "Grid" computing. They want you to shaft Sun, HP, etc., by buying super-cheap white box computers, and putting Linux on them. What they never seem to mention is that their SOFTWARE doesn't get any damned cheaper, even if the hardware is free, relatively speaking.
Hmmmm, let's see how this works. If I buy two 4 CPU Sun Fire 480 systems at $35k each, plus a couple of smallish NetApp Filers at $30k each, then I've spent $130k on hardware. Just to be fair, add $20k of infrastructure cash to that, and call it $150k. Licensing Oracle on those two boxes, with the clustering option, will run in the neighborhood of $144k per server, assuming you can negotiate a 40% discount. That means $150k for hardware, and $288k for *just* the database software.
In the new "grid" world, you'd buy at least four boxes, with two processors each. As an example, a decently configured Dell PE1750 runs about $4500, with no operating system. You could buy five of those for $22.5k. Add the same $60k for filers, and go cheap on the infrastructure for $10k. You'd spend $92.5k on hardware. Since Oracle doesn't give a significant price break for smaller computers, you can license the cluster-capable version of their database for somewhere around $72k per server, again assuming a 40% discount. With five servers, that's $360k for software and $92.5k for hardware. Going with smaller servers saves you a grand total of $17k, but a much larger share of it goes in good ol' Larry's pocket, rather than begin given to those bastards named Scott, Carly, or Bill.
Of course, the real answer is probably to start out with the second scenario, but tell Larry and his minions to piss off, and using some sort of proper free database software.
Back in the old days, when computers were enormous and water-cooled, instead of small and water-cooled, I worked with a guy who never bathed. He stank, something awful. From what I've told, nobody would really have been surprised or even bothered in a Unix shop, but I worked in an IBM shop, and everybody (but me) wore a jacket and tie to work, and everybody (but him) bathed regularly. One day, his personal odor field was so bad that his boss finally got fed up with the situation. He told this guy, in no uncertain terms, that he was to go home and bathe, and that he wouldn't be allowed back into the building until his stench was removed. The poor, smelly man got very offended over this obviously unfair situation and stormed out of the computer room, slamming the door as hard as he could on the way out. The door was in one of those lovely little non-load bearing walls that exist in many commercial buildings...a wall so insubstantial that you could see it wiggle a bit, every time the door was opened or closed. Right next to the door, affixed to the aforementioned flimsy wall, was the EMERGENCY POWER OFF switch. The slamming door somehow tripped the emergency off button, immediately removing power from every piece of equipment in the room, and from the coolant pumps in the basement below. In the completely dark and mostly silent room, you could hear the disk heads smashing down into the platters, and the gurgle of water draining down into the basement.
To make things even more fun, something went wrong, down there in the basement. One of the coolant reservoirs was apparently not up to snuff, and it leaked. There was chemically treated coolant water all over the floor, to a depth of two or three inches. On the floor, surrounding the pumps, we had just started storing the toner for our brand new laser printer, the size of a small city bus (the printer, not the toner). We didn't have all that much toner, and we hadn't stacked it all that high, so at least a third of it was ruined by the water.
It took over 24 hours to get everything back online, and about a week to replace the laser toner. Surprisingly, nobody got fired.
American Airlines uses a VRS for reservation confirmation, and it's SPOOKY accurate. :) I called to check a reservation last September,and never had to touch the keypad at all. It even had me say my name (not spell it), then it repeated it back to me in its own voice and spelled it to me, to make sure it had it right. My last name is very uncommon in the US and has a non-americanized spelling, and it still got it right. I even tried to trip up the system, just for fun, by saying "two two forty-five", instead of "two two four five" or "twenty-two forty-five" for my flight number. When it asked me for a yes/no response, I said "yup" and "nope", and it still got it. The only thing it couldn't handle were uh-huh and uh-uh. I was flabbergasted. :)
I still hate flying, though!
I use the EX51 models, and they're very comfortable. The bass is pretty weak, as you'd expect from such tiny drivers, but they sound great otherwise.
Who told you that crap? It was pronounced "sequel" long before Microsoft bought the right to use (and further fsck up) Sybase's already fscked up source code.
You're incorrect in your assumptions, I think. Just because I'm copying more doesn't mean I'm buying less. That's the kind of thinking that the record companies are using, and it's never been proven true. I have friends who copy musice and/or DVDs. At the same time, those same people continue spending just as much per month on the real deal. Frequently, they'll even go buy a "real" copy of a movie they've ripped, when it becomes available to them, or when their budget allows.
You can assume all day long, but I still see no proof, and my anecdotal evidence is all to the contrary.
Here's another point to muse: think of The Tragedy of the Commons, and how infinitely copiable information changes that situation.
Admittedly, the media by which the information is sent and received is still a commons in the old sense of the word, but the information itself represents a limitless resource. In the not-too-distant future, even the transmission medium could become essentially limitless. The mind truly boggles.
The information economy is dead. Long live the information economy!
"When their cost to produce the CD dropped drastically to the point where consumers could create their own music CD for less than 50 cents, warning bells should have rung out loudly. Perhaps they did, but obviously nobody paid attention until the consequences began to nibble away at their profits."
It's been demonstrated, time and again, that there are many causes for the drop in record company profits. It's never, to my knowledge, been demonstrated through any honest research that the record companies have actually lost a significant amount of money to casual piracy. The only statistics I've seen that supposedly "prove" such a thing are from RIAA sock puppets.
I want to scream every time I see this kind of parrotry in the news media. Whatever happened to research, fact-checking, confirmation, and all those other supposed mainstays of the serious news organization?
The RIAA and MPAA will sue you for infringing on their process. Your only defense will be that you're using it to show a fictitious DECLINE in the pertinent nefarious activity, rather than an increase.
There have been several instances where the courts have refused to enforce a contract because the user was unable to read or to understand the entirety of it. IANAL, and I do remember that there were very specific circumstances, but it has happened. Cases like that are one of the reasons that your Mortgage agent has to go through the whole bloody mortage agreement with you, clause by clause, before they'll even let you sign it.