I actually think (and hope) this kid's imagination and curiosity somehow gets channeled rather than squashed. He actually sounds like he could be a contributor.
That can actually said about almost any adolescent. The same qualities that make them hard for adults to live with are the ones that they use to create their own adulthood. The trick is to allow them to go through this stage without hurting anybody.
You're right on most points (including the negative impact on productivity), but you're misinformed about help-desk outsourcing. These are still Sun employees, they're just located on Sun's campus in Bangalore.
When people have problems with an inept help desk in India, they tend to blame the language gap. But that's just a symptom. English is a standard language in India, and anybody who has a serious education can speak it well enough to communicate easily with a westerner. So if your Indian help desk person is hard to understand, you can infer that they are not the cream of the labor pool. And that's the real reason they're a pain to deal with, especially when you need help with a thorny technical issue: no analytical skills, no problem solving ability, no initiative.
These are issues we've all seen with on-the-cheap help desks on call centers, long before they started moving them overseas.
It doesn't matter if you plug it in the wrong way around... you can't do it, and you won't damage it if you try
You can't damage the plug. Your knuckles (from poking around behind your desk) and your sanity are another matter.
I've managed to accidentally plug in DB-9, DB-25, DB-15, and mini-DB-15 connectors the wrong way around... Good lord! Now that is a unique accomplishment. What did you use, a hammer?
Having an asymmetric that can't be plugged in the wrong way (except by fearsomely strong persons such as yourself) is not that hard. Nor is making a plug hard to damage. (Though I'm not that impressed with the damage-proofness of the flat USB-A plugs.) It's not even hard to design a plug so it's obvious which way it goes. So I ask again (not you, I'm tired of you): why didn't they do that with the USB-A plug
If you're thrifty, you don't buy brand new stuff. (I've never owned a new car, being temperamentally incapable of buying an item that loses thousands of dollars in value the moment you start using it.) You can get a decent used laptop for about $200 off eBay. Not as powerful as the latest models, but more than powerful enough for 90% of what people use home computers for.
That's not what the Linux-bundled PCs are about. They're about people being just plain tired of fighting with Windows. God knows I am — and I'm a bloody ubergeek, somebody who's been fiddling with computers since before most of you were born! I continue to use Windows because I have a lot of intellectual capital invested in it, and because too much software that I need is difficult/impossible to run without it. But if anybody showed me a good alternative that met my needs, I'd drop Windows in a heartbeat. Never mind saving money, I'd pay extra.
I actually should have read further and replied to something else you said, about bank fraud happening despite regulation. Strictly true, but as my Critical Thinking prof used to say, "strictly true" is just another name for false.
The implication is that regulation doesn't have any effect on bank fraud. But that's nonsense. Ask anybody who was alive during the 20s and 30s, and lost all their savings when their bank simply closed shop. And ask yourself why you've never seen people lined up for blocks, trying to get their money out of dying bank — a sight which used to be pretty damn common in this country.
No system is perfect. People speed, despite traffic tickets, and banks fail, despite regulation. But neither problem is as common as it would be without those Evil Government Regulations.
Say what? Firewire connectors are not flat. I don't believe gamelink connectors are either. Perhaps you're thinking of the USB B connector. I'm talking about USB A.
I'm also a little skeptical about that funny-shaped plug being invented specifically for the Gameboy. Typically manufacturers use something off the shelf for a consumer item. It's possible that nobody in the U.S. saw these connectors before the Gameboy, just as nobody in the U.S. (except a few audio enthusiasts) ever saw a DIN connector before IBM started using them on PCs.
Firewire is hardly dead. (firewire stuff.) I know people who rely on it for serious media work. But for most consumer applications, where you don't need a lot of sustained throughput, USB is just as fast, a lot cheaper, and easier to integrate into things like cameras and MP3 players.
Did somebody say "DVRs"? Those work best with eSATA.
Why is it that USB A connectors are designed so you can't easily tell which side is "up"? With plugs you can at least look for the USB symbol, but jacks are often embedded in a computer or hub, and you end up having to memorize the upness of every one you own. Either that or do the this-way-or-that maneuver every time you plug something in. That gets old fast, especially for a clumsy person like me, who often doesn't get the connection right on the first try.
I agree, prisons are an expensive waste of human potential. But whether you punish someone like Keeting with a prison stay, or find some way for him to "assume responsibility" (whatever that means), these are things that you do after the crime is committed. It would nice if we could do something to prevent the crime. Prevention is less politically popular than punishment, but it's a hell of a lot more cost-effective. And in the case of dishonest banking, "prevention" means tons of laws, regulations, and bureaucrats. In this Reaganomic era, it's fashionable to see lr&b as the Roots of All Evils. They certainly can be a pain, but the fact remains that lr&b is the only thing that differentiates the a modern prosperous country from, say, Somalia.
Even without banking laws and WITH a simple "responsibility" law you'd still be stuck paying back the money or working it off.
"A simple responsibility law"? What, you're going to make Charles Keeting wash dishes until he pays back the $4 billion he misplaced? Let's see, at $10 an hour, that'd only take him 50K years!
t's probably not widely available yet, but it's no vaporware either.
How is the Volt not vaporware? They don't even have the necessary batteries developed. These are in "real soon now" mode, but unless their scientists are way smarter than all the other people who have been working on improved batteries for decades, that's hard to believe.
The Volt does serve one important purpose: it allows GM argue that they shouldn't be required to meet mileage standards because they're "still working on it".
It isn't the clusterfuck they're in right now. It's the cyclical clusterfuck that makes me skeptical.
I'm glad to hear that the magazines give them lots of awards and that the Holden Commodore is doing so very well. None of this changes the fact that their business is badly run and that their brand loyalty sucks. Being ahead of Toyota (for now) is less important than losing ground to Toyota every year since OPEC was founded.
Still, I think Volt has a pretty good chance of being the real thing, since it's not that far fetched.
The idea isn't far-fetched. If Toyota said that they were working on a plugin version of the Prius, I'd take it at face value. But the Volt is a "concept" car, coming from a manufacturer with no successful electric or hybrid product, with a laundry list of "green" (Plugin! Biodiesel! E85!) and geeky (StabilTrak! Wireless Device Charging!) technologies.
But that's all details. What really kills it for me is that all the published photos are of a James Bond fantasy car that will obviously never even reach prototype stage. The whole thing reeks of PR gimmickry.
BTW, you might want to check out Green Car of the Year, you'll be surprised by the winner. I'm sorry. Whatever "Green Car Magazine" says, "green" and "SUV" are mutually exclusive concepts.
Somehow, I get the impression you read a lot of car magazines. Nothing wrong with that, but do remember that car magazines are sustained by ads purchased by Guess Who. Kind of affects their tendency to spout gushing praise.
Like all American car companies, GM has earned a reputation for technical incompetence, building cars that are unreliable, unsafe, and behind the curve. Rather than actually fix what's wrong, they think the solution is to change their image. So they keep coming up with fancy projects that are supposed to make us think they're looking to the future. Fuel cell cars, plug-in hybrids (this from a company that can't even do an ordinary hybrid!) and now driverless cars. Does anybody really think these will ever be more than "concepts"?
Suppose you have a system to needs to go from standby to fully functional as quickly as possible. I've heard that oil exploration companies like SSD-based systems for just that reason. Don't know why they can't just leave the system on all the time.
High-end servers designed to operate on a battlefield, or anywhere else where the system is likely to get knocked around. You can ruggedize a hard drive, but a component without moving parts will always be tougher than one with.
Media is one industry where I don't see a big market for SSDs. Sure, they're faster than HDs — but HDs are fast enough.
overly complex swiss army knife when all that is needed is a scalpel
Gee, I dunno. Performing an appendectomy is a lot more interesting with a Swiss Army knife. Changing blades while your hands are all covered with blood is a pain, though.
No, I don't think a NAT is required for a firewall. But it's the kind I prefer by a huge margin. NAT-based firewalls are more secure (much harder to penetrate a system when you can't access it) and less painful for the user. At least, I always found it less aggravating to not have to deal with proxies, often configured by someone with a very narrow notion of what kind of packets I should he sending.
(Not a youngling. Old enough to remember OS/360 and RSTS.)
Yep, that's why I stopped participating in this kind of project. It's worth mentioning that this was less of an issue back in 1999, because processors didn't have the ability to clock down when they were idle. So there were indeed cycles "going to waste" though I guess it still took some extra power to use them.
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I'll concede hindsight if you'll concede that you replied to my original post without reading it!
You're right on most points (including the negative impact on productivity), but you're misinformed about help-desk outsourcing. These are still Sun employees, they're just located on Sun's campus in Bangalore.
When people have problems with an inept help desk in India, they tend to blame the language gap. But that's just a symptom. English is a standard language in India, and anybody who has a serious education can speak it well enough to communicate easily with a westerner. So if your Indian help desk person is hard to understand, you can infer that they are not the cream of the labor pool. And that's the real reason they're a pain to deal with, especially when you need help with a thorny technical issue: no analytical skills, no problem solving ability, no initiative.
These are issues we've all seen with on-the-cheap help desks on call centers, long before they started moving them overseas.
Having an asymmetric that can't be plugged in the wrong way (except by fearsomely strong persons such as yourself) is not that hard. Nor is making a plug hard to damage. (Though I'm not that impressed with the damage-proofness of the flat USB-A plugs.) It's not even hard to design a plug so it's obvious which way it goes. So I ask again (not you, I'm tired of you): why didn't they do that with the USB-A plug
If you're thrifty, you don't buy brand new stuff. (I've never owned a new car, being temperamentally incapable of buying an item that loses thousands of dollars in value the moment you start using it.) You can get a decent used laptop for about $200 off eBay. Not as powerful as the latest models, but more than powerful enough for 90% of what people use home computers for.
That's not what the Linux-bundled PCs are about. They're about people being just plain tired of fighting with Windows. God knows I am — and I'm a bloody ubergeek, somebody who's been fiddling with computers since before most of you were born! I continue to use Windows because I have a lot of intellectual capital invested in it, and because too much software that I need is difficult/impossible to run without it. But if anybody showed me a good alternative that met my needs, I'd drop Windows in a heartbeat. Never mind saving money, I'd pay extra.
I actually should have read further and replied to something else you said, about bank fraud happening despite regulation. Strictly true, but as my Critical Thinking prof used to say, "strictly true" is just another name for false.
The implication is that regulation doesn't have any effect on bank fraud. But that's nonsense. Ask anybody who was alive during the 20s and 30s, and lost all their savings when their bank simply closed shop. And ask yourself why you've never seen people lined up for blocks, trying to get their money out of dying bank — a sight which used to be pretty damn common in this country.
No system is perfect. People speed, despite traffic tickets, and banks fail, despite regulation. But neither problem is as common as it would be without those Evil Government Regulations.
I accidentally posted the same graphic link twice above. Here's a USB A connector:
http://www.datapro.net/connectors/USB-A.gif
Say what? Firewire connectors are not flat. I don't believe gamelink connectors are either. Perhaps you're thinking of the USB B connector. I'm talking about USB A.
I'm also a little skeptical about that funny-shaped plug being invented specifically for the Gameboy. Typically manufacturers use something off the shelf for a consumer item. It's possible that nobody in the U.S. saw these connectors before the Gameboy, just as nobody in the U.S. (except a few audio enthusiasts) ever saw a DIN connector before IBM started using them on PCs.
Firewire is hardly dead. (firewire stuff.) I know people who rely on it for serious media work. But for most consumer applications, where you don't need a lot of sustained throughput, USB is just as fast, a lot cheaper, and easier to integrate into things like cameras and MP3 players.
Did somebody say "DVRs"? Those work best with eSATA.
Why is it that USB A connectors are designed so you can't easily tell which side is "up"? With plugs you can at least look for the USB symbol, but jacks are often embedded in a computer or hub, and you end up having to memorize the upness of every one you own. Either that or do the this-way-or-that maneuver every time you plug something in. That gets old fast, especially for a clumsy person like me, who often doesn't get the connection right on the first try.
I agree, prisons are an expensive waste of human potential. But whether you punish someone like Keeting with a prison stay, or find some way for him to "assume responsibility" (whatever that means), these are things that you do after the crime is committed. It would nice if we could do something to prevent the crime. Prevention is less politically popular than punishment, but it's a hell of a lot more cost-effective. And in the case of dishonest banking, "prevention" means tons of laws, regulations, and bureaucrats. In this Reaganomic era, it's fashionable to see lr&b as the Roots of All Evils. They certainly can be a pain, but the fact remains that lr&b is the only thing that differentiates the a modern prosperous country from, say, Somalia.
The Volt does serve one important purpose: it allows GM argue that they shouldn't be required to meet mileage standards because they're "still working on it".
I'm glad to hear that the magazines give them lots of awards and that the Holden Commodore is doing so very well. None of this changes the fact that their business is badly run and that their brand loyalty sucks. Being ahead of Toyota (for now) is less important than losing ground to Toyota every year since OPEC was founded.The idea isn't far-fetched. If Toyota said that they were working on a plugin version of the Prius, I'd take it at face value. But the Volt is a "concept" car, coming from a manufacturer with no successful electric or hybrid product, with a laundry list of "green" (Plugin! Biodiesel! E85!) and geeky (StabilTrak! Wireless Device Charging!) technologies.
But that's all details. What really kills it for me is that all the published photos are of a James Bond fantasy car that will obviously never even reach prototype stage. The whole thing reeks of PR gimmickry. BTW, you might want to check out Green Car of the Year, you'll be surprised by the winner. I'm sorry. Whatever "Green Car Magazine" says, "green" and "SUV" are mutually exclusive concepts.
Somehow, I get the impression you read a lot of car magazines. Nothing wrong with that, but do remember that car magazines are sustained by ads purchased by Guess Who. Kind of affects their tendency to spout gushing praise.
Like all American car companies, GM has earned a reputation for technical incompetence, building cars that are unreliable, unsafe, and behind the curve. Rather than actually fix what's wrong, they think the solution is to change their image. So they keep coming up with fancy projects that are supposed to make us think they're looking to the future. Fuel cell cars, plug-in hybrids (this from a company that can't even do an ordinary hybrid!) and now driverless cars. Does anybody really think these will ever be more than "concepts"?
It certainly brings a whole new meaning to "the halting problem"!
Suppose you have a system to needs to go from standby to fully functional as quickly as possible. I've heard that oil exploration companies like SSD-based systems for just that reason. Don't know why they can't just leave the system on all the time.
High-end servers designed to operate on a battlefield, or anywhere else where the system is likely to get knocked around. You can ruggedize a hard drive, but a component without moving parts will always be tougher than one with.
Media is one industry where I don't see a big market for SSDs. Sure, they're faster than HDs — but HDs are fast enough.
So big deal. Wait 18 months, and it will cost half as much. Still can't afford it? Wait another 18 months....
Why are the only possibilities autist, troll, or jerk? Have you considered the possibility that I'm simply saying something I believe to he true?
No, I don't think a NAT is required for a firewall. But it's the kind I prefer by a huge margin. NAT-based firewalls are more secure (much harder to penetrate a system when you can't access it) and less painful for the user. At least, I always found it less aggravating to not have to deal with proxies, often configured by someone with a very narrow notion of what kind of packets I should he sending.
(Not a youngling. Old enough to remember OS/360 and RSTS.)
Yep, that's why I stopped participating in this kind of project. It's worth mentioning that this was less of an issue back in 1999, because processors didn't have the ability to clock down when they were idle. So there were indeed cycles "going to waste" though I guess it still took some extra power to use them.