IMHO you have got to be a first class moron if you determine whom you hire based on their previous workplace.
While that statement could be seen as inflammatory, perhaps I should share two examples to clarify my strong feelings on the subject...
I was team leader for a computing help desk when we needed more staff. Our two candidates were a computer guy and a girl who had never touched computers, but had worked in bars, managed horses, run her own horse training company, and decided she wanted a change. She did a three month computer training course and applied for the job. I hired her because of her people skills, not her computing skills or her past employment record. With all her horse and bar skills, she was the best helpdesk operator we ever had.
These days I run my own company and I needed a graphic designer. The one I now have is a professional industrial fisherman but has great design skills. As a fisherman, his past employment was irrelevant.
My point is this: If someone comes from SCO with a skill set that I need, they'll get the gig. If they prove to fail at their skill, they're likely to loose their job.
As an employer I care about results, not politics.
Will I hire Daryl? If I need a scum-sucking-bottom-feeder - or was that a fish?
When I first started buying DVDs I noticed that you were often limited to "waiting until it's done" trailers and menu options.
Another "feature" was that you got to see the same trailer every time you watched the disk, weither or not you wanted to.
This reminded me so much of early 1990's Interactive Multimeda development that I wondered if the authors of DVDs had actually learnt from that experience.
It seems that the larger production houses have not and that the studios are no better.
I always said that Multimedia development is a skill. The deliverable is almost immaterial, CD ROM, web-site, DVD menu, whatever.
Seems we are yet again doomed to repeat history...
I didn't dream up the system, the first poster did, I just attempted to clarify...
It gets better: Here is a list of acronyms starting with 'm'. With that system mb is already taken for millibar and Megabits are Mb...
As I said, it will be some time before this gets sorted out properly. I have no illusion that my post on/. will change the scientific community one iota, but perhaps people will stop stomping on someone else for getting confused - let alone start a flamewar (ala vi vs. emacs or PC vs. Mac, or Microsoft vs. Linux) about being ripped off if their hard-drive is smaller than they think it should be:-)
Hmm, looking at the original post again, it is all over the shop with upper- and lower-case letters. I agree that I should have said: 40gB, thus the following nomenclature:
This of course going to confuse the hell out of everyone, so until someone figures out a way to make everyone speak the same language, we're going to have to deal with this for some time to come...
[Note: I'm pretty sure I finally got the caPiTilIsation rIGht, but who knows:-]
Why does my mother keep giving me Microsoft Games no matter how many times I tell her I don't use Windows!!! She just doesn't get it, "My son's a computer guy so I get him computer games".
Instead of seeing this as a negative experience, your mother knows that you are into computers and she is attempting to communicate with you that she relates to you - by acknowledging this. She likely knows nothing about computers, but she wants to try to connect to her son.
In return you should not be bitter, but give your mom a big hug, that's all she's really asking for...
it's the voltage conversion that thakes up all the space.
As I said, my memory is hazy on the subject, but I'm pretty sure that the voltage conversion was also included in that cable. That's what made it so sexy...
When I visited IBM's Almadden Research Centre in 1997 I recall seeing a cable that looked just like a power lead, but it had the power supply built into the cable. You plugged it into AC power at one end and DC came out the other.
They were having problems getting aproval from the power company as I recall...
My memory is getting poor at my old age, so perhaps I'm retelling a story of a friend-of-a-friend who thought about this idea, but I'm pretty sure I saw it - lots of geek magic happened on that trip in 1997.
Their free library has a large range of complete books online. While they are not being distributed via piracy, they increase the sale of books. Eric Flint setup the library with the consent of Jim Baen and in his Palaver corner, shows the impact of such free distribution.
I use the library because I'm travelling around the globe and I can afford to store 40 electronic books - they all fit on one memory stick in my Clie, but I cannot afford to carry my complete paper based Sci/Fi library around the place.
The saying goes: There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old and bold pilots.
If you are using more fuel than you anticipate, you turn around. This guy knew where he was - it is extremely unlikely that he just happened to stumble McMurdo in the middle of Antarctica.
For comparison, I know a mate of mine who came across bad weather and was forced to land on a military base. He was required to leave his plane there, come back a week later with heaps of paper-work completed and his own fuel to fly out.
I think the USA and New Zealand bases are being more than hospitable in offering him food and shelter as well as transport for him and his aircraft.
Yay, another phone number to call and wait in line for - I'm sure that MSO users will relish the benefits of installing OOo and waiting in the phone queue to Sun for support - can we look forward to extra fees too?
Seriously, this is excellent news IMHO, given that Sun already has the infrastructure to support SO, they can leverage the same for OOo.
As others have (or will) point(ed) out, this is no guarantee for more market penetration, but I'm sure that small business users will be able to at least feel more comfortable with the concept of a central support point.
Of course, it will take some time until end-users will leverage the Internet for support. To this day it still amazes me that users will phone me to solve their IT problem - generally in the form of: "I'm getting 'error 43b: The widget cannot be broken.' errors, how do I fix it?" - my response is to uhm and ah for as long as it takes to type the error into Google and hit return.
The user is continually flabbergasted that I know the answer. I then tell them that I just used Google, how I used it and that they could too - for some reason they still call me... go figure.
After finding yet again a story in the NY-Times that requires me to log-in (which I point blank refuse), I did want to comment, so after finding a link to the article in Google News, I actually read it before I comment:
After reading page one, I got bored - and you are entitled to the same feeling - but you may alternatively choose to hear me out...
Is it just me, or does this sound like Telegram Delivery Boys crying out for loss of work when Telephones were used, or Gas Lighters when Electric lights came in, or closer to home, Printers when DTP arrived, or Secretaries when Word Processors were invented?
All I'm saying is that while some - if not many jobs will be "outsourced", other jobs will replace them - this in my view is the nature of things.
If someone can code better and cheaper than I, and can offer the same quality of service to the client, who am I to tell the client not to go down that path - it just means I can get on with doing something else.
It's no-one's given right to be the primary choice as an employee, it's your own responsibility to aim for that.
An interesting idea, but I don't think we're there yet.
Thanks for your comment. It al started when I read the article about how IIS was more popular than Apache, then it went from there...
Warning: Half-assed Idea Follows Suppose you ran a win4lin process that ran the file-server, which then got exposed to the outside world via linux - would that solve the NTFS.SYS wrapper problem?
In Australia many of the Free to Air broadcasts originate from the highest population centers, eg. Sydney and Melbourne - generally due to cost cutting exercises over the past years.
Signal is transmitted across the country by cable, then rebroadcast as an analogue signal to the local transmitter where a TV receiver displays the picture.
Over the past 12 months or so, many stations have moved from transmitting analogue TV across the country to sending an MPEG stream down the wire for rebroadcast.
When packets get lost, the picture breaks up and the picture can at times appear to freeze until the next key-frame comes along.
Just to clarify here, the signal is sent digitally down the wire from Sydney to Perth, then rebroadcast via an analogue transmitter on a hill across the metro area.
So, just like a GSM phone, MP3's, VoIP, and any other digital signal, no packet - no information.
So while you say:
Digital TV is a wonderful idea, crystal clear picture and all, but the real question is, will anyone really notice a difference.
The answer will have to be:
Yes, if the reception quality is above a certain level, otherwise you'll get SFA.
As some of you know I'm travelling around Australia at the moment and I've now stayed in places, less than 10km (as the crow flies) from the analogue transmitter and have been able to just make out the sound without ever getting anything more than snow for a picture - in a digital world, I'd get nothing.
I now resort to downloading and/or streaming the news if I'm in such a fringe area - until such time as I've gotten around to getting another satellite dish...
As I said, IMO he needs to pull his head from his ass.
My point being - not made very well I suppose - that in order to preserve the Tolkien legacy, things like films, museums and statues are a pretty good way.
I suppose you could argue that the profits from the movie, rather than spent on a museum should instead be spent on an endowment fund to benefit budding writers, or something.
The way I see it, Peter Jackson wants to preserve the effort put into the movie, thank New Zealand and promote Tolkiens' work.
AFAIC, standing in the way of his proposals is just plain silly.
But, if someone can point out the flaw(s) in my comment(s), I'd be happy to listen.
Other reports also show that there was an attempt to create a museum as a thank you to New Zealand, but that the estate holder is refusing to allow it.
Also, there is talk of putting a statue somewhere in the country to say thanks for the tax break the film-makers got.
All in all, while I understand the need to protect the name and heritage of Tolkien, this to my mind is absurd.
Anyway, I don't know the estate holder, nor do I know what their objection specifically is, so perhaps I'll get back in my box now...
When I read this headline, I had visions of a couple of geeks sitting in a dorm room with a big coffee pot, some crates of beer, some pizza's sitting around listening to ABBA - talking (as geeks do) when one of them pipes up and says: "You know, when you say that, this makes me think of that maths problem in class yesterday." another pipes up: "You know, I just think we solved it."
Anyway bit of a let down when it was part*l*y, rather than party!
Slashdot Mirror
While that statement could be seen as inflammatory, perhaps I should share two examples to clarify my strong feelings on the subject...
My point is this: If someone comes from SCO with a skill set that I need, they'll get the gig. If they prove to fail at their skill, they're likely to loose their job.
As an employer I care about results, not politics.
Will I hire Daryl? If I need a scum-sucking-bottom-feeder - or was that a fish?
When I first started buying DVDs I noticed that you were often limited to "waiting until it's done" trailers and menu options.
Another "feature" was that you got to see the same trailer every time you watched the disk, weither or not you wanted to.
This reminded me so much of early 1990's Interactive Multimeda development that I wondered if the authors of DVDs had actually learnt from that experience.
It seems that the larger production houses have not and that the studios are no better.
I always said that Multimedia development is a skill. The deliverable is almost immaterial, CD ROM, web-site, DVD menu, whatever.
Seems we are yet again doomed to repeat history...
I didn't dream up the system, the first poster did, I just attempted to clarify...
/. will change the scientific community one iota, but perhaps people will stop stomping on someone else for getting confused - let alone start a flamewar (ala vi vs. emacs or PC vs. Mac, or Microsoft vs. Linux) about being ripped off if their hard-drive is smaller than they think it should be :-)
It gets better: Here is a list of acronyms starting with 'm'. With that system mb is already taken for millibar and Megabits are Mb...
As I said, it will be some time before this gets sorted out properly. I have no illusion that my post on
Hmm, looking at the original post again, it is all over the shop with upper- and lower-case letters. I agree that I should have said: 40gB, thus the following nomenclature:
:-]
1b = 1 bit
1B = 1 byte
1kb = 1000 bits
1Kb = 1024 bits
1kB = 1000 bytes
1KB = 1024 bytes
This of course going to confuse the hell out of everyone, so until someone figures out a way to make everyone speak the same language, we're going to have to deal with this for some time to come...
[Note: I'm pretty sure I finally got the caPiTilIsation rIGht, but who knows
Uhm, should that then not read:
Instead of seeing this as a negative experience, your mother knows that you are into computers and she is attempting to communicate with you that she relates to you - by acknowledging this. She likely knows nothing about computers, but she wants to try to connect to her son.
In return you should not be bitter, but give your mom a big hug, that's all she's really asking for...
As I said, my memory is hazy on the subject, but I'm pretty sure that the voltage conversion was also included in that cable. That's what made it so sexy...
When I visited IBM's Almadden Research Centre in 1997 I recall seeing a cable that looked just like a power lead, but it had the power supply built into the cable. You plugged it into AC power at one end and DC came out the other.
They were having problems getting aproval from the power company as I recall...
My memory is getting poor at my old age, so perhaps I'm retelling a story of a friend-of-a-friend who thought about this idea, but I'm pretty sure I saw it - lots of geek magic happened on that trip in 1997.
I use the library because I'm travelling around the globe and I can afford to store 40 electronic books - they all fit on one memory stick in my Clie, but I cannot afford to carry my complete paper based Sci/Fi library around the place.
...if you don't have anything to say.
Why? Because it sells.
The guy is doing just that. Selling. Not to Macintosh users, but PC users.
The saying goes: There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old and bold pilots.
If you are using more fuel than you anticipate, you turn around. This guy knew where he was - it is extremely unlikely that he just happened to stumble McMurdo in the middle of Antarctica.
For comparison, I know a mate of mine who came across bad weather and was forced to land on a military base. He was required to leave his plane there, come back a week later with heaps of paper-work completed and his own fuel to fly out.
I think the USA and New Zealand bases are being more than hospitable in offering him food and shelter as well as transport for him and his aircraft.
In other words, the guy is a dick-head.
Yay, another phone number to call and wait in line for - I'm sure that MSO users will relish the benefits of installing OOo and waiting in the phone queue to Sun for support - can we look forward to extra fees too?
Seriously, this is excellent news IMHO, given that Sun already has the infrastructure to support SO, they can leverage the same for OOo.
As others have (or will) point(ed) out, this is no guarantee for more market penetration, but I'm sure that small business users will be able to at least feel more comfortable with the concept of a central support point.
Of course, it will take some time until end-users will leverage the Internet for support. To this day it still amazes me that users will phone me to solve their IT problem - generally in the form of: "I'm getting 'error 43b: The widget cannot be broken.' errors, how do I fix it?" - my response is to uhm and ah for as long as it takes to type the error into Google and hit return.
The user is continually flabbergasted that I know the answer. I then tell them that I just used Google, how I used it and that they could too - for some reason they still call me... go figure.
Go Sun!
After finding yet again a story in the NY-Times that requires me to log-in (which I point blank refuse), I did want to comment, so after finding a link to the article in Google News, I actually read it before I comment:
After reading page one, I got bored - and you are entitled to the same feeling - but you may alternatively choose to hear me out...
Is it just me, or does this sound like Telegram Delivery Boys crying out for loss of work when Telephones were used, or Gas Lighters when Electric lights came in, or closer to home, Printers when DTP arrived, or Secretaries when Word Processors were invented?
All I'm saying is that while some - if not many jobs will be "outsourced", other jobs will replace them - this in my view is the nature of things.
If someone can code better and cheaper than I, and can offer the same quality of service to the client, who am I to tell the client not to go down that path - it just means I can get on with doing something else.
It's no-one's given right to be the primary choice as an employee, it's your own responsibility to aim for that.
Will I loose work? Perhaps. C'est La Vie.
Did anyone else read: "Cringe - E-vote" - nevermind.
Cool, given that the first language I learnt was Dutch, I'll just let that one through to the keeper...
With passwords, all they had to do is torture me, but with biometrics they just cut off my hand...
Thanks for your comment. It al started when I read the article about how IIS was more popular than Apache, then it went from there...
Warning: Half-assed Idea Follows
Suppose you ran a win4lin process that ran the file-server, which then got exposed to the outside world via linux - would that solve the NTFS.SYS wrapper problem?
I did some followup on the article and the result is in this month's linmagau:
The article "What if the CIO doesn't know if they're running Linux?" is online now.
(PS. If this is familiar, I also noted this under the article Real NTFS.SYS under Linux.)
I stand corrected.
No, that was the Commodore Vic 20.
This is funny, Serendipity is at it again. I just wrote an article on linmagau.org about the idea of introducing Samba and OSS into the Enterprise.
I suggested a Koppix-like CD and proposed a name: Sambix.
The article "What if the CIO doesn't know if they're running Linux?" is online now.
Signal is transmitted across the country by cable, then rebroadcast as an analogue signal to the local transmitter where a TV receiver displays the picture.
Over the past 12 months or so, many stations have moved from transmitting analogue TV across the country to sending an MPEG stream down the wire for rebroadcast.
When packets get lost, the picture breaks up and the picture can at times appear to freeze until the next key-frame comes along.
Just to clarify here, the signal is sent digitally down the wire from Sydney to Perth, then rebroadcast via an analogue transmitter on a hill across the metro area.
So, just like a GSM phone, MP3's, VoIP, and any other digital signal, no packet - no information.
So while you say:
The answer will have to be:
Yes, if the reception quality is above a certain level, otherwise you'll get SFA.
As some of you know I'm travelling around Australia at the moment and I've now stayed in places, less than 10km (as the crow flies) from the analogue transmitter and have been able to just make out the sound without ever getting anything more than snow for a picture - in a digital world, I'd get nothing.
I now resort to downloading and/or streaming the news if I'm in such a fringe area - until such time as I've gotten around to getting another satellite dish...
As I said, IMO he needs to pull his head from his ass.
My point being - not made very well I suppose - that in order to preserve the Tolkien legacy, things like films, museums and statues are a pretty good way.
I suppose you could argue that the profits from the movie, rather than spent on a museum should instead be spent on an endowment fund to benefit budding writers, or something.
The way I see it, Peter Jackson wants to preserve the effort put into the movie, thank New Zealand and promote Tolkiens' work.
AFAIC, standing in the way of his proposals is just plain silly.
But, if someone can point out the flaw(s) in my comment(s), I'd be happy to listen.
Other reports also show that there was an attempt to create a museum as a thank you to New Zealand, but that the estate holder is refusing to allow it.
Also, there is talk of putting a statue somewhere in the country to say thanks for the tax break the film-makers got.
All in all, while I understand the need to protect the name and heritage of Tolkien, this to my mind is absurd.
Anyway, I don't know the estate holder, nor do I know what their objection specifically is, so perhaps I'll get back in my box now...
When I read this headline, I had visions of a couple of geeks sitting in a dorm room with a big coffee pot, some crates of beer, some pizza's sitting around listening to ABBA - talking (as geeks do) when one of them pipes up and says: "You know, when you say that, this makes me think of that maths problem in class yesterday." another pipes up: "You know, I just think we solved it."
Anyway bit of a let down when it was part*l*y, rather than party!