qmail has native tools (users/assign) for having virtual usernames with one system account.
True... I prefer qmailadmin and vpopmail, both by inter7.com. They use the standard qmail configuration files and provide a very nice interface. Throw in Courier-IMAP and Squirrelmail and you have one kick ass mail server. Fast, configurable and reliable, and all with about 7 user accounts used (qmail uses about 4 or 5 and vpopmail uses 1 or 2) irregardless of how many virtual domains or mail users you have.
Okay you work at an ISP... but you have over 65k users who log in and use the system??
If not, use something like vpopmail so you don't need an actual unix account for each mail user. Proftpd will let you disentangle the FTP system from the unix accounts as well.
If you actually have that many people using shell accounts you should look into recompiling a lot of yoru standard utility packages: Util-linux, net-tools (I think), etc. Simply recompiling will probably solve your problems since they will be linked in with 32-bit UID support (I don't know of any distros which use 2.4.x as standard yet).
Re:Unions are such parasites
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The Jungle
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· Score: 1
So, what do you do with the "lazy... and stupid worker"?
The best answer in my opinion is to give them enough money to live decently on. That causes the least amount of strain on society (less crime, fear, etc.). If the wherewhithal to support them comes from my (and my employers') taxes, so be it. It's worth it.
I really hope you're trolling.
If you give the stupid and lazy enough to decently live on, what's the appeal to work for something?
A database backend is incredible overkill for something like this.
I'd generally agree with you on this, but then I look at my own system and disagree.
I run PostgreSQL which is neither here nor there in this discussion, but the point I am trying to get back to making is that yes it's silly to use a fancy DB system for something like this but when you then also realize that I use the same DB to store more than that. I store info from my knowledgebase, vehicle maintenance log, family journals, MP3 database and a variety of other small projects within various tables on the same database system. The advantage starts to become clear when you realize that a single perl module (DBI::Pg) gets me access to any of this data and it's all (hopefully) stored in an efficent manner. I don't have to worry about parsing the text files differently or doing anything special to back them up. When you start to use the same DB system for more than one project the benefits of storing even silly little things in a DB start to show.
It's late, but I think it's kind of like realizing that 16k cluster sizes on the old FAT16 systems becomes much less hassle than when you partition and format to keep nice 4k or smaller clusters but then need 400M of room only to find that you ahve 50 here, 100 there, 75 somewhere else, etc... I long ago became bored of that and now use a nice LVM. I don't ever have to worry about running out of room or having to make a/usr1,/usr2,/usr3, etc. Same kind of thing with the database way of storing things that really don't need it.
Re:Unions are such parasites
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The Jungle
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· Score: 2
The ignorance and bigotry around slashdot about unions is really astounding. For a place that otherwise seems to celebrate the cause of the "little guy" against the corporation, an awful lot of people around here, I think, just don't get it.
Don't you dare tell me I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I've worked in several union shops and trust me, the idyllic "unions help us all" tripe you spew is just so much shit.
That the union represents lazy or unskilled workers is exactly what the PR firms of corporations want you to believe. You want to believe that Amazon.com is a different kind of company that doesn't need unions? If it's a different kind of company, why is it hiring corporate execs from some of the largest companies in America?
Have you ever worked in a union shop in any capacity at all? Ever see 50 guys drop whatever the fuck it was they were doing when the clock struck 12:00:00 excatly to leave for lunch? And robotically refuse to answer even the most passing of question regarding work? Ever see 50 guys sneer and verbally/physically abuse people who walk past the picket lines because those going to work are thinking for themselves insead of blindly towing the line? Have you ever seen unions completely price a company out of the marketplace because the union members (or rather union heads) demanded wages or benefits completely out of the company's ability? Ever see a company try to downsize to stay alive and have the union end up shutting them down because they refuse to allow the company to remain competitive? Ever see some 20-year-seniority welder get a raise even though he's an alcoholic and does shit work even though some new guy is busting his ass and can't move ahead because raises are based solely on seniority?
Personally I don't give a shit about Amazon.com. I care about the companies I work for (actually the people) and my coworkers and their families. If a company is being bad/treating its workers badly/etc. that company should be spanked. Hard. Unions don't seem to achieve this, though. Maybe they try but I really haven't seen anything but striking and bitching and moaning. After all is said and done there really isn't anything to show for it. You maybe get some more cake or a few more benefits but usually your dues go up when they're next due. I see union reps teaming together in completely unrelated sectors (medical and eudcation) and "joint-strike" in order to put more pressure on a company. Is this right? I see union reps teaming up with Friends of the Environment or Baby Ducks for Jesus and wasting my dues on things I don't even get to vote for. Unions are the equivalent to a kind of legal organized crime. In fact there are often strong ties to between the two.
Technical and other skilled workers all over the country are unionizing and looking to collective action to improve their conditions.
I believe that technical workers are too valuable to fuck off. I know that personally I am worth quite a bit and the company I work for keeps me relatively happy. If I'm unhappy do I try and bring in a union? Fuck no, I leave. If you're worth anything there is no need to have a band of thugs represent you. If I were an unskilled laborer who could be replaced by the WhizBang2000 then yeah I might be in for tough times. The tech sector seems like one of the silliest places to try to unionize. Skilled staff are expensive. They're expensive to train and the knowlege they bring to a company is expensive to replace. It's not my fault you want to work 90 hour weeks. If you haven't got the balls to say no then that's your own problem.
Note that saying no isn't enough. You've got to have the balls to follow-through if you need to. A single person leaving won't have much impact unless they were important, like most skilled labour is. Even three people leaving key areas over voiced concerns will wake up someone, though.
The neat part about the tech sector (or any skilled labour) is that, being skilled, you usually have the knowledge, experience and/or smarts to get yourself another job without a problem. It makes me laugh to see people bitch and whine about working conditions when they're doing something like software development in Silicon Valley. They could literally walk next door and get a job but instead of standing up and being heard, they quietly bitch and moan and pen documents about organizing a union.
Remember a year or so ago when Boeing's entire cadre of engineers went on strike?
Actually I don't remember it but I would guess that Boeing either told them to go fuck themselves and hired in new staff (which would leave if the conditions were really that bad) or gave them what they wanted. Which is my whole point: Skilled labour is insanely expensive to replace and if you're worth something you automatically have a voice of your own. You don't need hired goons.
How about research and teaching assistants at large universities. Where I'm in grad school, RA/TAs work lots of hours for a wage that is publically accepted by the school as being sub-par for both our peer institutions and for the community in which we live; they acknowledge that they don't pay us enough to live here.
Good example; I have several friends who are TAs. They echo this exact sentiment: they are paid below what they're worth. Guess what the problem is though: some money is better than none, and they accept these positions instead of refusing to be paid chicken feed and flipping burgers for more money. They're making their situation worse by giving in. You don't need a union to do this for you: ad-hoc "gangs" of students refusing to take the jobs and making known what they're doing and why would be far more effective than a formal union, IMO.
Please keep in mind (I know I'm coming off really anti-union here) that I'm not 100% against unions. My post here should hint at that. What I am really against is the large unions like the auto workers, teacher's unions and social workers. Too much power in the hands of too few and the all-too-true adage which states "Power Corrupts." -- When you have 100k union members the leaders are just so out of touch and have so much money and pull that they're no longer representing the people; they're representing themselves with the money of the masses and that is dangerous.
The hackneyed anti-union argument regarding skilled workers is to say "they're skilled; they must be dumbasses if they just don't leave their jobs and go somewhere else." Well I'd propose two things: That works great when the economy is booming, but that won't always be the case;
I am married with three kids. I own a mortgage and two car loans. I also own a line of credit and a credit card. My income is fairly high for my locality but then again my cash flow is right up there too. My wife buys the odd lottery ticket because hell even a chance in a gazillion is still better than no chance at all and even $50k will help out more than you may believe.
I know that getting up and leaving for greener pastures is scary as hell, especially if your savings aren't up there because of the high cashflow problem. I am, however, quite skilled and know that even in a recession my skills are valuable and can keep my family fed, if maybe on a lesser scale. I work damn hard to keep my skills up and keep myself in enough of a niche to make me stand out from the crowd but also general enough to apply my skills in a variety of situations and job markets. I'm not afraid to voice my opinion, popular or not. I'm not afraid to back my opinion with action, either. If you're being treated unfairly, you have the option to leave. As far as I'm concerned you do not have the option to drag me into your dispute and disrupt my way of life.
second, why do so many slashdotters think there's something wrong with wanting to be treated fairly by your employer, whoever that is?
What's wrong with standing up for yourself? Do you stay in a relationship if the other person is treating you badly and talk about forming some kind of troubled spouse union or do you get out?
Re:Unions are such parasites
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The Jungle
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· Score: 1
Amazon could indeed pack up the books and head for Mexico, but they'd still have to hire their programmers from the good old U S of A. With all the hype surrounding overseas programming outfits, there's still plenty of problems: bad communication skills, horrible user interfaces, lack of team development, and more.
None of these problems are only seen outside the U.S. I've seen plenty of poor communicating, shit-spewing software houses right here in North America. Get off your "Good ole Ewe Ess of Eh" horse and smell the shit in your own backyard.
There are plenty of good programmers and excellent software houses all over the planet. Amazon could move their shop anywhere and get the technical staffing it needs.
If it wasn't for unions, tons of Americans would be just plain out of jobs, and I can respect that.
Why can you respect that? If you're unskilled you can get a job pretty much anywhere sweeping floors, turning wrenches, packing boxes, whatever... you just have to accept what they offer because you have nothing to offer in return. Unions don't protect the unskilled labourer, they protect the lazy worker and the stupid worker. They protect the ones who want to do the least amount of work and complain the loudest. If I'm working my ass off, unions don't do shit for me. I dare you to prove otherwise. And let's keep this in the present time and tech industry, not in the coal mines of the early twentieth.
Hah! Name one major company using PostgreSQL for a mission-critical database.
Mine. I'm declining to post a link to the site (no it's not my email addy, that's my toy site) because frankly I don't need a thousand script kiddies and curious people from the/. readership poking at my server. The DB is on the internal network anyway.
Postgres is used for customer service (call tracking, etc.), shipping and SourceForge-like stuff. I'm also working on bigger and badder things. Not a single hiccup and it seems to be working fast enough for us (33 people with some very heavy DB traffic at times)
NO we're not huge and NO we're not DB experts but Postgres seems to be doing well as our "mission critical database".
Just to give you an idea about that T1, I work for a ISP, and we have a single T1 connected to 150 modems, with a 10-1 modem/user ratio. That is 1500+- users on one 1.544Mbps line. That's a LOT of sharing.
10:1 modem:user? I think you mean 10:1 user:line ratio. If I'm right, I'd hate to be a user on your network. Even if I'm wrong and you really do have 10 modems available for every user you have, I'd hate to be the business owner.:-)
I do network admin for a small ISP: 120 lines, 850+- customers. I've found that even with a pretty intelligent kickoff script running you simply can't push more than an 8.0 user/line ratio without busies getting out of hand. 10:1 is unbelievably busy. We usually try for 7:1 but it took us a while to get an extra T1 in for dialup so we found out that 8.0:1 is the limit for bearable tech support.:-)
As far as the 150 line-to-T1 bandwidth allocation: that sounds about right... We have a 10mbit link to UUNet's backbone and even when we're totally filled up (120 lines in use) we have seen bandwidth peaking out at around 2.8-3.0Mbps (basically a 2:1 bandwidth overcommit at the worst of times). Rough calculations (120 lines at 53000 theoretical maximum send speed (from our POV)) show they could hit just over 4 T1's worth of bandwidth but that is a theoretical maximum. Most people are dicking around with ICQ or email and interactive web browsing which is MUCH more bursty and MUCH easier to overcommit.
I'd be interested in hearing what kind of overcommits there are on DSL/cable... Those little fuckers can use a LOT of bandwidth in a hurry and supplying that even at a 10:1 overcommit is too pricey.
Let me get this straight. You're going to charge me for an ISDN connection, and NOT expect that I'll be leaving it connected 24/7 ??
ISDN isn't an "always-on" tech. It takes up space on the ISP's PRIs (23 of your B channels go into one of their PRIs) which others would use if you weren't on. It's not like DSL or cable. It is just an "all-digital" phone call.
Crowded? If you put every human on the planet in Texas, everyone would have more square feet of space than you have in your dorm room. Don't get out much, do you?
I don't believe you, not even a tiny bit. According to Britannica, Texas is 266,807 square miles. That's 1,408,740,960 square feet. According to Ask Jeeves, the world's population is currently at 6,127,565,379 people. Dorm rooms are usually about 10 feet by 12 feet and are designed for two people, which works out to about 60 square feet per person. Without going into exact calculations we can immediately see that there would be under a square foot per person which directly contradicts your statement that each person would have more room than he does in his dorm.
Now if you take everyone on the planet and cram them into Ontario, Canada... There is signficantly more breathing room! Ontario occupies 412,581 square miles, or 2,178,427,680 square feet. That's almost twice the square footage per person. Ontario is only the second biggest province in Canada... Kinda puts Texas to shame considering it's twice as large!
Let's expand to the entire U.S. If you were to cram every person on the planet into the United States (3,679,192 square miles, or 19,426,133,760 square feet) you end up with a mere 3.17 square feet per person, or about 1/20 the room you'd have if you were in his dorm (assuming he has an average dorm room as given above).
Texas is the biggest state, sure... That don't mean shit when you're talking about six billion people though.
Yes very helpful of the person asking wasn't it? I use some OS, not unix, not windows, but a PC? This guy isn't looking for help, he is trolling.
I don't think you know what trolling means if you think that either the article writer or the person I responded to were trolling. I don't see much of an emotional response anywhere, just the typical knee-jerk "use VMware" which doesn't even fit the criteria of the question.
The article author may not have been very clear, but I seriously doubt it's a troll.
just use vmware or wine or freemware. bleh. thats easy.
Maybe if you're a moron. I don't recall vmware running on anything but Linux or Windows. WINE and Freemware are Linux (and BSD?)-only. This guy specifically said his OS was not-unix and ran on PC architecture. So much for easy.
I have no idea what my social security number, blood type or insurer is.
That's weird. I know my SSN, Credit card #, driver's license/plates and insurance policy number even though I rarely use them. I don't know how they got memorized, but they're stuck in my head for one reason or another.
OTOH, (back before I was married) I could NOT remember for the life of me my ex-girlfriend's birthday. (This was back when she was my gf). Drove her nuts but it was just one of those things I could not remember.
I agree wholeheartedly. If you don't use your brain, it's going to rot. That's why sex, television, music, video games, etc. cause so much brain damage.
I don't know about you, but I feel inspired after a good romp in the sack. Drives my wife nuts, but I get some of my best thinking done after about a half hour of rest/afterglow.
Einstein said that you should never memorize what you can look up.
Exactly. I have better things to do with my brain than remember most of the things I'm asked to remember. To me a PDA is an extension of my memory; kind of like an memory with an alarm. I spend my gray matter designing and creating. I tend to find that things I have to continue to look up eventually become memorized. i.e. I look it up two or three times and after that I tend to have it "stuck" in my short term memory. Later on it becomes forgotten again and something else is in its place.
I find this actually an optimal way to use my head. Why should I remember something unless I am using it every day? The phone number for the head office of the company I work for is in my head. It's also on my speed dial somewhere but to tell you the truth, I've forgotten which number it's under. I call head office from home, car and work and it's just easier for me to remember the 11 digits than try to remember that it's speed dial x at work, y on the cell and that I don't have it on speed dial at home.
Keeping things you use every day/often in your head and discarding the lesser-used information is just optimal, IMO.
Get a grip man!!! If you are so cheap that you feel your OS MUST be free, perhaps you should get a decent paying job. $100 for an OS is well worth the money.
You're missing the point. That $100 OS does not come with source code that I can tinker with and either expand upon (witness the dozens of IP Masquerade modules which help many-to-one NAT actually work) or fix bugs on without having to wait for someone else to fix for me. Now I realize that not many people fall into the second category but those who do (like me) appreciate it and it is worth a lot.
If you want to go design your own, fine, but it will have to be for a hobby, because the financial costs of doing so will be more than $100.
The current trend seems to disagree with you here. Very strongly so.
Any smart person will tell you if you spend more than $100 on your efforts for a free OS, then you may want to have someone manage your money for you. You are obviously not good at weighing cost/benefit ratios.
Obviously you don't know many smart people, nor do you have a solid grasp on the meaning of "value".
I just thank goodness noone pushing opensource is working for my company - I would fire them on the spot because the whole notion of open source/free os, etc... is, well, stupid and begs an attitude that things of value should be free. They should not be free, they should cost you something and that cost should be commesurate with the value it provides.
Thank God I don't work for your company. I've worked as a contractor at other offices with management as braindead and clueless as yourself. I would also think that firing someone for a suggestion would be grounds for wrongful dismissal.
Sometimes giving something away for free brings in much more business in other avenues. Cellphones are a prime example of this. Give away the hardware and charge for the service. Hmmm... kind of sounds like what the whole Open Source / Free Software movement is about.
I make quite a bit of money from free software. Some I develop, some I use and sell services based on the free software. Either way, money is made. And either way, your trite little rant gets you nowhere. Just because you don't see value somewhere doesn't mean that the value isn't there.
Not being a very prolific linux programmer, take what I have to say with a grain of salt.
From what I understand, Linux context switch time is very short. It can switch between processes faster than many operating systems can switch between threads. What exactly is it that you are looking for in Linux's thread implementation that it lacks?
A search for "linux windows nt thread clone fork context" should turn up some good discussions.
Just a question here... how can the average be $x when over half are making less? Wouldn't that bring the average down?
Seeing as how I got flamed here (and rightly so) I'll post my "smack my forehead" response here.:-)
As far as "Overrated" goes though I would tend to disagree. -1 (Stupid Comment) perhaps.:-)
Re:Finally no more battles with these php freaks
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Mason 1.0 Released
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· Score: 2
"You can emmbed php in html but not perl"
I would call that a strike against PHP. I thought the whole concept of clean design was to separate content and presentation. It's difficult to do that if you're constantly embedding <? some php code ?> and then the site designers want the look to include mauve tilebars or something.
Isn't it sad that, in our "enlightened" day and age, we're still objectifying and degrading women in order to sell products?
Judging from your slashdot username and the text of your comment, I would have to guess that to you, everything is wrong. Sex sells. Get over it. If we were a truly enlightened species it wouldn't matter but it does.
you've just gotta hate a format where the common English word "From" at the beginning of a line is used as a delimiter.
I may be smoking crack here but I believe the delimeter is a blank line followed by "From:"...
Even if you had a message which had "{cr}From:" it would be stored as "{space}{cr}From:" and would not be taken as the start of a message. It's been a while since I've looked at the RFC but I believe this is how it's done. It's no harder to scan for than \x6e\x1e\x77\x0a\x5f or some other "pulled out of the air" delimeter.
Exchange has its good points, this is true, but the biggest problem I have with it is that it holds my data hostage. I can't get at the mail spools if something dies and, if it does, you're fucked unless you also bought support contracts.
We've been running qmail + vpopmail for over 1500 people with Maildir formatted message stores without a problem for over two years now. When something breaks, I can fix it. Data is stored either in the database or in regular old files. It seems to work very well on a mediocre P2 and has all the good stuff: (A)POP, IMAP (courier-IMAP), selective relaying (relaying is allowed after a successful POP or IMAP authentication), user-run mailing lists (ezmlm) and web configuration (vpopmail has a web client). Oh yes and Squirrelmail for the web based mail reading folk.
There's one thing I learned early on and that's that I don't like having my data held hostage. The software I reccomend for the companies I advise for is pretty much any software is alright so long as either a) it's open-API b) opensource or c) I get copies (and updates) of the data formats. Surprisingly few companies balk at this.
Please note I haven't read the comment which YOU are responding to; I'm just responding to your comment on its own.
If I wanted a full-blown computer to carry around I would have a laptop. In fact I do have one. Cel300, 256M RAM, 14.4" TFT XGA display, PCMCIA/USB/DVD with video in and out. Runs Linux or Windows with ease. Firewire if I really wanted it. 3H battery time when playing DVDs. 100WPM data entry rate. Kinda blows the Newton or any PocketPC out of the water when you look at a PDA as a replacement for a computer.
Now to my point: I don't want to carry around a full computer. I want a Palm (and I do have one) which acts as a portal. It isn't MEANT to do large amounts of text entry. It isn't MEANT to be a MP3 Jukebox or an electronic picturebook. It's meant to give you quick access to data and be able to modify/add to it as needed. It does this remarkably well and the battery life is incredible, even with the 8M versions.
I don't have to go around stuffing cards into it or changing batteries or scrawling across its surface because I know what it's supposed to be used for and I don't try to make it into something it's not. Yes I have the keyboard and modem attachements but that is because they're required Sometimes. I don't bulk up my PDA with these options.
Then the economy slowed some, and changed some. Suddenly people who were able to write their own tickets had to scramble for jobs, or even take low-paying jobs in different fields.
Okay I thought you talking about letting yourself slip and not being able to find a good paying job in your field. But tell me this: How do unions protect against your job going tits-up? They can't keep ALL their tech workers in jobs with great pay if the economy just won't support it...
With regard to the economy taking a shit and the tech market shrinking: That's why you try to keep diverse. I do electronics design and write code, but I am good enough to be a decent network admin and with a bit of help could design networks (LAN *and* WAN) because I have the basics down, I've done some (small) setups and know about a lot of the mistakes which are made. I subscribe to trade mags outside my immediate knowledge so if need be, I could get into another market with a little bit of bullshit and kick into high gear and learn what needs to be done. Hell, I can do household rennovations and fix cars, too. Diversity is the only way to keep yourself from getting trapped in a market which may not be there tomorrow. I really would like to hear how a union would help you here.
Slashdot Mirror
qmail has native tools (users/assign) for having virtual usernames with one system account.
True... I prefer qmailadmin and vpopmail, both by inter7.com. They use the standard qmail configuration files and provide a very nice interface. Throw in Courier-IMAP and Squirrelmail and you have one kick ass mail server. Fast, configurable and reliable, and all with about 7 user accounts used (qmail uses about 4 or 5 and vpopmail uses 1 or 2) irregardless of how many virtual domains or mail users you have.
Okay you work at an ISP... but you have over 65k users who log in and use the system??
If not, use something like vpopmail so you don't need an actual unix account for each mail user. Proftpd will let you disentangle the FTP system from the unix accounts as well.
If you actually have that many people using shell accounts you should look into recompiling a lot of yoru standard utility packages: Util-linux, net-tools (I think), etc. Simply recompiling will probably solve your problems since they will be linked in with 32-bit UID support (I don't know of any distros which use 2.4.x as standard yet).
So, what do you do with the "lazy ... and stupid worker"?
The best answer in my opinion is to give them enough money to live decently on. That causes the least amount of strain on society (less crime, fear, etc.). If the wherewhithal to support them comes from my (and my employers') taxes, so be it. It's worth it.
I really hope you're trolling.
If you give the stupid and lazy enough to decently live on, what's the appeal to work for something?
A database backend is incredible overkill for something like this.
I'd generally agree with you on this, but then I look at my own system and disagree.
I run PostgreSQL which is neither here nor there in this discussion, but the point I am trying to get back to making is that yes it's silly to use a fancy DB system for something like this but when you then also realize that I use the same DB to store more than that. I store info from my knowledgebase, vehicle maintenance log, family journals, MP3 database and a variety of other small projects within various tables on the same database system. The advantage starts to become clear when you realize that a single perl module (DBI::Pg) gets me access to any of this data and it's all (hopefully) stored in an efficent manner. I don't have to worry about parsing the text files differently or doing anything special to back them up. When you start to use the same DB system for more than one project the benefits of storing even silly little things in a DB start to show.
It's late, but I think it's kind of like realizing that 16k cluster sizes on the old FAT16 systems becomes much less hassle than when you partition and format to keep nice 4k or smaller clusters but then need 400M of room only to find that you ahve 50 here, 100 there, 75 somewhere else, etc... I long ago became bored of that and now use a nice LVM. I don't ever have to worry about running out of room or having to make a /usr1, /usr2, /usr3, etc. Same kind of thing with the database way of storing things that really don't need it.
The ignorance and bigotry around slashdot about unions is really astounding. For a place that otherwise seems to celebrate the cause of the "little guy" against the corporation, an awful lot of people around here, I think, just don't get it.
Don't you dare tell me I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I've worked in several union shops and trust me, the idyllic "unions help us all" tripe you spew is just so much shit.
That the union represents lazy or unskilled workers is exactly what the PR firms of corporations want you to believe. You want to believe that Amazon.com is a different kind of company that doesn't need unions? If it's a different kind of company, why is it hiring corporate execs from some of the largest companies in America?
Have you ever worked in a union shop in any capacity at all? Ever see 50 guys drop whatever the fuck it was they were doing when the clock struck 12:00:00 excatly to leave for lunch? And robotically refuse to answer even the most passing of question regarding work? Ever see 50 guys sneer and verbally/physically abuse people who walk past the picket lines because those going to work are thinking for themselves insead of blindly towing the line? Have you ever seen unions completely price a company out of the marketplace because the union members (or rather union heads) demanded wages or benefits completely out of the company's ability? Ever see a company try to downsize to stay alive and have the union end up shutting them down because they refuse to allow the company to remain competitive? Ever see some 20-year-seniority welder get a raise even though he's an alcoholic and does shit work even though some new guy is busting his ass and can't move ahead because raises are based solely on seniority?
Personally I don't give a shit about Amazon.com. I care about the companies I work for (actually the people) and my coworkers and their families. If a company is being bad/treating its workers badly/etc. that company should be spanked. Hard. Unions don't seem to achieve this, though. Maybe they try but I really haven't seen anything but striking and bitching and moaning. After all is said and done there really isn't anything to show for it. You maybe get some more cake or a few more benefits but usually your dues go up when they're next due. I see union reps teaming together in completely unrelated sectors (medical and eudcation) and "joint-strike" in order to put more pressure on a company. Is this right? I see union reps teaming up with Friends of the Environment or Baby Ducks for Jesus and wasting my dues on things I don't even get to vote for. Unions are the equivalent to a kind of legal organized crime. In fact there are often strong ties to between the two.
Technical and other skilled workers all over the country are unionizing and looking to collective action to improve their conditions.
I believe that technical workers are too valuable to fuck off. I know that personally I am worth quite a bit and the company I work for keeps me relatively happy. If I'm unhappy do I try and bring in a union? Fuck no, I leave. If you're worth anything there is no need to have a band of thugs represent you. If I were an unskilled laborer who could be replaced by the WhizBang2000 then yeah I might be in for tough times. The tech sector seems like one of the silliest places to try to unionize. Skilled staff are expensive. They're expensive to train and the knowlege they bring to a company is expensive to replace. It's not my fault you want to work 90 hour weeks. If you haven't got the balls to say no then that's your own problem.
Note that saying no isn't enough. You've got to have the balls to follow-through if you need to. A single person leaving won't have much impact unless they were important, like most skilled labour is. Even three people leaving key areas over voiced concerns will wake up someone, though.
The neat part about the tech sector (or any skilled labour) is that, being skilled, you usually have the knowledge, experience and/or smarts to get yourself another job without a problem. It makes me laugh to see people bitch and whine about working conditions when they're doing something like software development in Silicon Valley. They could literally walk next door and get a job but instead of standing up and being heard, they quietly bitch and moan and pen documents about organizing a union.
Remember a year or so ago when Boeing's entire cadre of engineers went on strike?
Actually I don't remember it but I would guess that Boeing either told them to go fuck themselves and hired in new staff (which would leave if the conditions were really that bad) or gave them what they wanted. Which is my whole point: Skilled labour is insanely expensive to replace and if you're worth something you automatically have a voice of your own. You don't need hired goons.
How about research and teaching assistants at large universities. Where I'm in grad school, RA/TAs work lots of hours for a wage that is publically accepted by the school as being sub-par for both our peer institutions and for the community in which we live; they acknowledge that they don't pay us enough to live here.
Good example; I have several friends who are TAs. They echo this exact sentiment: they are paid below what they're worth. Guess what the problem is though: some money is better than none, and they accept these positions instead of refusing to be paid chicken feed and flipping burgers for more money. They're making their situation worse by giving in. You don't need a union to do this for you: ad-hoc "gangs" of students refusing to take the jobs and making known what they're doing and why would be far more effective than a formal union, IMO.
Please keep in mind (I know I'm coming off really anti-union here) that I'm not 100% against unions. My post here should hint at that. What I am really against is the large unions like the auto workers, teacher's unions and social workers. Too much power in the hands of too few and the all-too-true adage which states "Power Corrupts." -- When you have 100k union members the leaders are just so out of touch and have so much money and pull that they're no longer representing the people; they're representing themselves with the money of the masses and that is dangerous.
The hackneyed anti-union argument regarding skilled workers is to say "they're skilled; they must be dumbasses if they just don't leave their jobs and go somewhere else." Well I'd propose two things: That works great when the economy is booming, but that won't always be the case;
I am married with three kids. I own a mortgage and two car loans. I also own a line of credit and a credit card. My income is fairly high for my locality but then again my cash flow is right up there too. My wife buys the odd lottery ticket because hell even a chance in a gazillion is still better than no chance at all and even $50k will help out more than you may believe.
I know that getting up and leaving for greener pastures is scary as hell, especially if your savings aren't up there because of the high cashflow problem. I am, however, quite skilled and know that even in a recession my skills are valuable and can keep my family fed, if maybe on a lesser scale. I work damn hard to keep my skills up and keep myself in enough of a niche to make me stand out from the crowd but also general enough to apply my skills in a variety of situations and job markets. I'm not afraid to voice my opinion, popular or not. I'm not afraid to back my opinion with action, either. If you're being treated unfairly, you have the option to leave. As far as I'm concerned you do not have the option to drag me into your dispute and disrupt my way of life.
second, why do so many slashdotters think there's something wrong with wanting to be treated fairly by your employer, whoever that is?
What's wrong with standing up for yourself? Do you stay in a relationship if the other person is treating you badly and talk about forming some kind of troubled spouse union or do you get out?
Amazon could indeed pack up the books and head for Mexico, but they'd still have to hire their programmers from the good old U S of A. With all the hype surrounding overseas programming outfits, there's still plenty of problems: bad communication skills, horrible user interfaces, lack of team development, and more.
None of these problems are only seen outside the U.S. I've seen plenty of poor communicating, shit-spewing software houses right here in North America. Get off your "Good ole Ewe Ess of Eh" horse and smell the shit in your own backyard.
There are plenty of good programmers and excellent software houses all over the planet. Amazon could move their shop anywhere and get the technical staffing it needs.
If it wasn't for unions, tons of Americans would be just plain out of jobs, and I can respect that.
Why can you respect that? If you're unskilled you can get a job pretty much anywhere sweeping floors, turning wrenches, packing boxes, whatever... you just have to accept what they offer because you have nothing to offer in return. Unions don't protect the unskilled labourer, they protect the lazy worker and the stupid worker. They protect the ones who want to do the least amount of work and complain the loudest. If I'm working my ass off, unions don't do shit for me. I dare you to prove otherwise. And let's keep this in the present time and tech industry, not in the coal mines of the early twentieth.
Hah! Name one major company using PostgreSQL for a mission-critical database.
Mine. I'm declining to post a link to the site (no it's not my email addy, that's my toy site) because frankly I don't need a thousand script kiddies and curious people from the /. readership poking at my server. The DB is on the internal network anyway.
Postgres is used for customer service (call tracking, etc.), shipping and SourceForge-like stuff. I'm also working on bigger and badder things. Not a single hiccup and it seems to be working fast enough for us (33 people with some very heavy DB traffic at times)
NO we're not huge and NO we're not DB experts but Postgres seems to be doing well as our "mission critical database".
XF4 seems to be VERY smart when presented with a decent chipset. My ATI Rage Pro IIc AGP lets me do this:
Works like a charm. This is a 1024x768 TFT screen but I don't see how it'd be any different on bigger (and nicer, you bastard) screens. :-)
Just to give you an idea about that T1, I work for a ISP, and we have a single T1 connected to 150 modems, with a 10-1 modem/user ratio. That is 1500+- users on one 1.544Mbps line. That's a LOT of sharing.
10:1 modem:user? I think you mean 10:1 user:line ratio. If I'm right, I'd hate to be a user on your network. Even if I'm wrong and you really do have 10 modems available for every user you have, I'd hate to be the business owner. :-)
I do network admin for a small ISP: 120 lines, 850+- customers. I've found that even with a pretty intelligent kickoff script running you simply can't push more than an 8.0 user/line ratio without busies getting out of hand. 10:1 is unbelievably busy. We usually try for 7:1 but it took us a while to get an extra T1 in for dialup so we found out that 8.0:1 is the limit for bearable tech support. :-)
As far as the 150 line-to-T1 bandwidth allocation: that sounds about right... We have a 10mbit link to UUNet's backbone and even when we're totally filled up (120 lines in use) we have seen bandwidth peaking out at around 2.8-3.0Mbps (basically a 2:1 bandwidth overcommit at the worst of times). Rough calculations (120 lines at 53000 theoretical maximum send speed (from our POV)) show they could hit just over 4 T1's worth of bandwidth but that is a theoretical maximum. Most people are dicking around with ICQ or email and interactive web browsing which is MUCH more bursty and MUCH easier to overcommit.
I'd be interested in hearing what kind of overcommits there are on DSL/cable... Those little fuckers can use a LOT of bandwidth in a hurry and supplying that even at a 10:1 overcommit is too pricey.
Let me get this straight. You're going to charge me for an ISDN connection, and NOT expect that I'll be leaving it connected 24/7 ??
ISDN isn't an "always-on" tech. It takes up space on the ISP's PRIs (23 of your B channels go into one of their PRIs) which others would use if you weren't on. It's not like DSL or cable. It is just an "all-digital" phone call.
Crowded? If you put every human on the planet in Texas, everyone would have more square feet of space than you have in your dorm room. Don't get out much, do you?
I don't believe you, not even a tiny bit. According to Britannica, Texas is 266,807 square miles. That's 1,408,740,960 square feet. According to Ask Jeeves, the world's population is currently at 6,127,565,379 people. Dorm rooms are usually about 10 feet by 12 feet and are designed for two people, which works out to about 60 square feet per person. Without going into exact calculations we can immediately see that there would be under a square foot per person which directly contradicts your statement that each person would have more room than he does in his dorm.
Now if you take everyone on the planet and cram them into Ontario, Canada... There is signficantly more breathing room! Ontario occupies 412,581 square miles, or 2,178,427,680 square feet. That's almost twice the square footage per person. Ontario is only the second biggest province in Canada... Kinda puts Texas to shame considering it's twice as large!
Let's expand to the entire U.S. If you were to cram every person on the planet into the United States (3,679,192 square miles, or 19,426,133,760 square feet) you end up with a mere 3.17 square feet per person, or about 1/20 the room you'd have if you were in his dorm (assuming he has an average dorm room as given above).
Texas is the biggest state, sure... That don't mean shit when you're talking about six billion people though.
Yes very helpful of the person asking wasn't it? I use some OS, not unix, not windows, but a PC? This guy isn't looking for help, he is trolling.
I don't think you know what trolling means if you think that either the article writer or the person I responded to were trolling. I don't see much of an emotional response anywhere, just the typical knee-jerk "use VMware" which doesn't even fit the criteria of the question.
The article author may not have been very clear, but I seriously doubt it's a troll.
just use vmware or wine or freemware. bleh. thats easy.
Maybe if you're a moron. I don't recall vmware running on anything but Linux or Windows. WINE and Freemware are Linux (and BSD?)-only. This guy specifically said his OS was not-unix and ran on PC architecture. So much for easy.
I have no idea what my social security number, blood type or insurer is.
That's weird. I know my SSN, Credit card #, driver's license/plates and insurance policy number even though I rarely use them. I don't know how they got memorized, but they're stuck in my head for one reason or another.
OTOH, (back before I was married) I could NOT remember for the life of me my ex-girlfriend's birthday. (This was back when she was my gf). Drove her nuts but it was just one of those things I could not remember.
I agree wholeheartedly. If you don't use your brain, it's going to rot. That's why sex, television, music, video games, etc. cause so much brain damage.
I don't know about you, but I feel inspired after a good romp in the sack. Drives my wife nuts, but I get some of my best thinking done after about a half hour of rest/afterglow.
Einstein said that you should never memorize what you can look up.
Exactly. I have better things to do with my brain than remember most of the things I'm asked to remember. To me a PDA is an extension of my memory; kind of like an memory with an alarm. I spend my gray matter designing and creating. I tend to find that things I have to continue to look up eventually become memorized. i.e. I look it up two or three times and after that I tend to have it "stuck" in my short term memory. Later on it becomes forgotten again and something else is in its place.
I find this actually an optimal way to use my head. Why should I remember something unless I am using it every day? The phone number for the head office of the company I work for is in my head. It's also on my speed dial somewhere but to tell you the truth, I've forgotten which number it's under. I call head office from home, car and work and it's just easier for me to remember the 11 digits than try to remember that it's speed dial x at work, y on the cell and that I don't have it on speed dial at home.
Keeping things you use every day/often in your head and discarding the lesser-used information is just optimal, IMO.
I'll take my turn at feeding the troll.
Get a grip man!!! If you are so cheap that you feel your OS MUST be free, perhaps you should get a decent paying job. $100 for an OS is well worth the money.
You're missing the point. That $100 OS does not come with source code that I can tinker with and either expand upon (witness the dozens of IP Masquerade modules which help many-to-one NAT actually work) or fix bugs on without having to wait for someone else to fix for me. Now I realize that not many people fall into the second category but those who do (like me) appreciate it and it is worth a lot.
If you want to go design your own, fine, but it will have to be for a hobby, because the financial costs of doing so will be more than $100.
The current trend seems to disagree with you here. Very strongly so.
Any smart person will tell you if you spend more than $100 on your efforts for a free OS, then you may want to have someone manage your money for you. You are obviously not good at weighing cost/benefit ratios.
Obviously you don't know many smart people, nor do you have a solid grasp on the meaning of "value".
I just thank goodness noone pushing opensource is working for my company - I would fire them on the spot because the whole notion of open source/free os, etc... is, well, stupid and begs an attitude that things of value should be free. They should not be free, they should cost you something and that cost should be commesurate with the value it provides.
Thank God I don't work for your company. I've worked as a contractor at other offices with management as braindead and clueless as yourself. I would also think that firing someone for a suggestion would be grounds for wrongful dismissal.
Sometimes giving something away for free brings in much more business in other avenues. Cellphones are a prime example of this. Give away the hardware and charge for the service. Hmmm... kind of sounds like what the whole Open Source / Free Software movement is about.
I make quite a bit of money from free software. Some I develop, some I use and sell services based on the free software. Either way, money is made. And either way, your trite little rant gets you nowhere. Just because you don't see value somewhere doesn't mean that the value isn't there.
Not being a very prolific linux programmer, take what I have to say with a grain of salt.
From what I understand, Linux context switch time is very short. It can switch between processes faster than many operating systems can switch between threads. What exactly is it that you are looking for in Linux's thread implementation that it lacks?
A search for "linux windows nt thread clone fork context" should turn up some good discussions.
Just a question here... how can the average be $x when over half are making less? Wouldn't that bring the average down?
Seeing as how I got flamed here (and rightly so) I'll post my "smack my forehead" response here. :-)
As far as "Overrated" goes though I would tend to disagree. -1 (Stupid Comment) perhaps. :-)
"You can emmbed php in html but not perl"
I would call that a strike against PHP. I thought the whole concept of clean design was to separate content and presentation. It's difficult to do that if you're constantly embedding <? some php code ?> and then the site designers want the look to include mauve tilebars or something.
Isn't it sad that, in our "enlightened" day and age, we're still objectifying and degrading women in order to sell products?
Judging from your slashdot username and the text of your comment, I would have to guess that to you, everything is wrong. Sex sells. Get over it. If we were a truly enlightened species it wouldn't matter but it does.
you've just gotta hate a format where the common English word "From" at the beginning of a line is used as a delimiter.
I may be smoking crack here but I believe the delimeter is a blank line followed by "From:"...
Even if you had a message which had "{cr}From:" it would be stored as "{space}{cr}From:" and would not be taken as the start of a message. It's been a while since I've looked at the RFC but I believe this is how it's done. It's no harder to scan for than \x6e\x1e\x77\x0a\x5f or some other "pulled out of the air" delimeter.
Exchange has its good points, this is true, but the biggest problem I have with it is that it holds my data hostage. I can't get at the mail spools if something dies and, if it does, you're fucked unless you also bought support contracts.
We've been running qmail + vpopmail for over 1500 people with Maildir formatted message stores without a problem for over two years now. When something breaks, I can fix it. Data is stored either in the database or in regular old files. It seems to work very well on a mediocre P2 and has all the good stuff: (A)POP, IMAP (courier-IMAP), selective relaying (relaying is allowed after a successful POP or IMAP authentication), user-run mailing lists (ezmlm) and web configuration (vpopmail has a web client). Oh yes and Squirrelmail for the web based mail reading folk.
There's one thing I learned early on and that's that I don't like having my data held hostage. The software I reccomend for the companies I advise for is pretty much any software is alright so long as either a) it's open-API b) opensource or c) I get copies (and updates) of the data formats. Surprisingly few companies balk at this.
Please note I haven't read the comment which YOU are responding to; I'm just responding to your comment on its own.
If I wanted a full-blown computer to carry around I would have a laptop. In fact I do have one. Cel300, 256M RAM, 14.4" TFT XGA display, PCMCIA/USB/DVD with video in and out. Runs Linux or Windows with ease. Firewire if I really wanted it. 3H battery time when playing DVDs. 100WPM data entry rate. Kinda blows the Newton or any PocketPC out of the water when you look at a PDA as a replacement for a computer.
Now to my point: I don't want to carry around a full computer. I want a Palm (and I do have one) which acts as a portal. It isn't MEANT to do large amounts of text entry. It isn't MEANT to be a MP3 Jukebox or an electronic picturebook. It's meant to give you quick access to data and be able to modify/add to it as needed. It does this remarkably well and the battery life is incredible, even with the 8M versions.
I don't have to go around stuffing cards into it or changing batteries or scrawling across its surface because I know what it's supposed to be used for and I don't try to make it into something it's not. Yes I have the keyboard and modem attachements but that is because they're required Sometimes. I don't bulk up my PDA with these options.
Off my soapbox now. :-)
Then the economy slowed some, and changed some. Suddenly people who were able to write their own tickets had to scramble for jobs, or even take low-paying jobs in different fields.
Okay I thought you talking about letting yourself slip and not being able to find a good paying job in your field. But tell me this: How do unions protect against your job going tits-up? They can't keep ALL their tech workers in jobs with great pay if the economy just won't support it...
With regard to the economy taking a shit and the tech market shrinking: That's why you try to keep diverse. I do electronics design and write code, but I am good enough to be a decent network admin and with a bit of help could design networks (LAN *and* WAN) because I have the basics down, I've done some (small) setups and know about a lot of the mistakes which are made. I subscribe to trade mags outside my immediate knowledge so if need be, I could get into another market with a little bit of bullshit and kick into high gear and learn what needs to be done. Hell, I can do household rennovations and fix cars, too. Diversity is the only way to keep yourself from getting trapped in a market which may not be there tomorrow. I really would like to hear how a union would help you here.