This isn't just about brand brandishing. (Which is something many companies put too much faith in, but isn't totally useless.) It's about Sun's perception of itself in the marketplace, and in relation to Linux. They think of themselves as the network server vendor. And upper management took a long time to take Linux seriously. Is it any wonder that when they finally started selling Linux, they thought they'd have to put their own brand on it for their customers to accept it. As often happens, their customers were way ahead of them.
As I mentioned, SGI made exactly the same mistake.
This problem may occur if the programs you run frequently allocate and deallocate large blocks of memory. Changes in Windows XP SP1 in the memory management system have caused this operation to take significantly longer than with pre-SP1 Windows XP.
It's "frequently allocate and deallocate large blocks of" not just "allocate". This is not a small nit to pick, especially for Linux people. For years, GNU libc had a memory leak bug that was triggered by frequent allococation and deallocation of small blocks of memory. It only became an issue back in 2000, when Borland ported their component libraries to Linux.
Except that they never really had their own distro. Sun Linux was just Red Hat "with a few tweaks". It's the old rebranding game. You buy somebody else's technology and sell it under your own name, on the assumption that your name makes the product more sellable. Small problem: companies like Sun and SGI (which also used to rebrand Red Hat) are known for their hardware, not their software. The brands that have established reputations in the Linux world are the well known distros, not the big iron johnny-come-latelies.
So people who order Sun (or is it Sun Cobalt?) boxes with Red Hat preinstalled will probably get exactly the same software that the would have had with Sun Linux -- tweaks and all. The only difference will be the brand.
Here we go again. I hear this argument at least once a week. People are trained to treat dictionaries as the ultimate authority on language. I call this the Dictionary Fallacy. Dictionaries are not issued by the Language Gods. They're just somebody's attempt to describe the way words are used. Referring to a dictionary to the exclusion of what people actually say is absurd. That's especially true for slang!
As with all slang, "headhunter" is used informally by loosely affiliated groups of people. Different groups of people use slang in different ways. Very likely there are people who only use "headhunter" the way you used it, and people who only use "headhunter" the way I used it. Probably many other ways as well. None of them is more "correct".
Maybe this Holocaust Denial thing originates as somebody's deliberate lie. Personally, I think that's a too-convenient cop out. But even if it's true, the law against "lying about history" is stupid. It doesn't change anybody's beliefs. It just drives them underground. Worst of all, it feeds the very attitude you're trying to stamp out! The whole Nazi/Fascist ideology is built around an irrational sense of persecution and marginalization. Telling such people that they can't express their opinions openly can only cause them to become even more vehement -- and violent.
If you want to debunk bad history, you have to be able to discuss it openly, with no penalties for people who believe that Hitler got a bum rap, or that the world is flat, or other bonehead ideas. That can be hard to live with, but nobody said that living in a free society was easy.
You know, I have a lot of respect for what Germany has accomplished since Der Führer thew his final tantrum. I know damned well most Germans are painfully aware of their past, and determined not to repeat it. So who damns them or doesn't damn them does really matter. What matters is how to deal with that past.
Everybody's favorite strategy seems to be, "we passed a law against it, that solves that problem". Does work in the U.S., doesn't work in Germany.
it's also forbidden to misrepresent germanys past.
So it's illegal to claim that the death camps are a myth. Which lots of people believe. Doesn't say much about their intelligence, but it's an honestly-held belief.
Contemplate the absurdity of trying to regulate what people believe.
If you think Germany deporting American Nazis is a good thing, you missed my point completely.
Actually, we've been half-assing it for 50 years. Before that we Jim Crowed it for about 60 years, which is less ambiguous. And of course the 300 years before that were even less ambiguous.
I'm not saying the U.S. is particularly better than Germany. But we never had their incentives. Like losing a vicious war and getting caught indulging in racial extermination. (Of course, we did it too, but never really got called on it.)
Where I live, you can walk down the street with a black person. Doesn't mean black people are treated fairly. LeVar Burton was pulled over on a DWB only a few miles from here.
Naturally there are more neo Nazis in the east -- such movements always appeal to those who feel they've been shortchanged. But they are quite visible in the west as well. They were making news long before
You might ask your African friend how it feels to be a person of color in Germany. Assuming he gives you an honest answer. Black people often assume that white people don't really want to know what it's like to be black, even when they say they do. I think they're probably right.
What bugs me is how easy it is to get away with this. Knew a guy who got a Director-level job based partly on a bogus PhD. When his company folded, he asked me to hand his resume around. He misspelled the name of the University he was supposed to have graduated from! The mind boggles.
You have to respect Germany's desire to break away from its past. But censorship is not the way to do it. You can't simply outlaw philosphies you don't like. Germany has tried to ban anything resembling a Nazi party for over 50 years. It's illegal (or was the last time I looked -- been a few years) in that country even to display a swastika. (Except in a "historical context", which I find disturbingly vague.) Does that prevent the spread of neo-Nazism and racism in Germany? Not at all, there's still a lot of it. All the censorship does is give Nazism, racisim, and militarism an underground glamour.
The only way to change is to bring all the ideas out into the open, even the evil ones. Especially them.
It is common practice among recruiters to post ficticious jobs just to harvest resumes.
Actually it doesn't matter if the job exists. The big danger with most recruiting firms is that they spam every company with every resume they can get their hands on. Which means you're likely to get multiple submission to a given company, ruining your chances for any job with that company.
Of course. an obviously fictitious job is a strong indicator that the headhunter pulls crap like that. But it can happen even if the job looks real. Probably it can happen even if the job is real. Bottom line: you should always ask a placement agency about their distribution policies before letting them have your resume.
Headhunter generally means someone who recruits executives who are currently employed at a competitor or at least in a similar position and who isn't even looking for another job.
News to me. I've been in the industry for longer than I care to think about, and everyone I've known has used "headhunter" just to mean "recruiter". I've even heard it used that way in other industries.
Some recruiters find the term offensive. Perhaps they think it conjurs up the sort of predatory job-churning you just described. Well, if the shoe fits... But I've never heard the term restricted to executives.
This job was submitted by Excell Data, which describes itself as providing "information technology consulting and systems integration services providing a broad portfolio of service offerings to Global 1000, high velocity middle market and dot-com startups." In other words, they're headhunters. The person who wrote this listing probably knows jack about what the job actually involves, and is just trying to get in as many resumes as possible. So they wrote the sexiest blub they could think of.
Sounds to me like they're trying to fill a QA slot at a game design company. Now, if this company is serious about QA, you need a strong background in Software Testing. This is not an area I know a lot about, but I have a strong respect for the better QA types. They're good at thinking things through, and establishing procedures, and thwarting Murphy's Law. But even if the QA operation in this company is mediocre, they will still want some basic testing skills. Which is not something you pick up just by playing computer games.
Sorry to get picky, but sometimes sloppy diction gets my hackles up...
Your choice of words is ironic. My first thought was that you were being sloppy yourself. I've never heard "diction" used to mean "choice of words". I can only recall it being used to mean "clarity or correctness of vocalization." But a little browsing convinces me that your usage is better established. Still, I don't intend to say "diction" instead of "choice of words" because people who share my former ignorance might misunderstand me. Since I write technical documents for a living, such misunderstandings an ongoing issue with me.
Anyway, "litmus test" versus "stress test". These are both metaphors. To someone with a scientific or engineering background, "stress test" might seem a better metaphor. Personally, I don't agree. But that's all beside the point.
No metaphor is perfect -- if it were, it wouldn't be a metaphor. So there's always going to be some sloppiness. The degree of sloppiness matters, but not as much as the usefulness of the metaphor in communicating ideas. By that measure, "litmus test" wins, because anybody who owns a fish tank or a swimming pool knows about litmus tests. Stress tests are something relatively few people do.
Bottom line: language is for communication: your choice of words should be motivated by a desire to get your idea across, not by some abstract notion of "correctness".
Or it could just be that whoever reported this doesn't know that the US has possessions in the Caribbean. That sort of geographic ignorance is rampant in the U.S. Ever wonder why New Mexico issues license plates that say, "New Mexico USA"? So New Mexicans can drive outside their state without being asked for their passports! No, I'm not making that up.
Hey, no fair! Every category has a Soulless Corporate Zombie entry!
In a sense, you're right, though. Spirited Away is one of the best movies I've ever seen in any category. Not something you can compete with. I haven't seen Chicago yet, but I think it might not have won if Spirited Away weren't in the Kiddie Movie ghetto.
One associates Franz Kafka with fantasy/satire (kind of inevitable when a guy writes stories about people turning into giant bugs). But the fact is that stories like The Trial were not that far away from reality as Kafka knew it. For most of his life, his home province of Bohemia was part of the Hapsburg empire -- and the Austrian secret police indulged in exactly that kind of weird, unaccountable antics.
Gawd, this is why I follow Slashdot, more technical trivia than any place on the planet.
Of course, fiddling with the service mode is not risk free.
What I don't understand is why cheap TVs have this. Nobody tries to fix them. If you pay $100 for a TV set, and it breaks after the warantee expires, even a simple repair would cost you more than the set's worth. Even if it is under warantee, most places will just give you a new set rather than mess with it.
Spirited Away is couched pretty heavily in Japanese mythology and the like, but has pretty universal themes. Its less approachable on one level (the world's culture), but more understandable in tone and story.
Very true. All the time I was watching it, I was aware that I was missing a ton of cultural references. But that still left a lot of movie to enjoy. And hey, nothing wrong with a story you have to make several passes at before you can fully appreciate it. More fun that way!
Spirited Away was more lyrical, painterly, and for all that, its the more approchable and appreciated one.
I've seen this same phenomenon many times with Windows 2000. It's obviously a design flaw in Windows itself, not any particular driver. Probably didn't occur to anybody in Redmond that USB devices would shift from port to port more often then previous technologies. How often do you move an RS232 or Centronics device (a modem or a printer) from one port to another?
Sure, this is lame, but what's the big deal about installing the driver more than once? Doesn't take that long. It's a silly thing to have to do, but if that were the silliest thing in Windows, Valium sales would be much lower!
As I recall, Osborne first came to public attention by starting a software company that gave away its product. Income was supposed to be derived from selling manuals. The software side of this company didn't work out, but the publishing side found a niche -- which is why there's still an imprint called McGraw-Hill/Osborne.
No, that kind of story requires that you use your brain. My definition of the GWF excludes any higher mental processes. Which is consistent with Hollywood's assumption that its audience consists entirely of morons.
Yeah, Stephenson like silly names, but most of the stuff in Snowcrash is very serious indeed. Including the bit about Cosa Nostra Pizza. Which only sounds silly if you pick nits with Stephenson's anarchic "Franchulate" future. I find this premise to be dumb, but a lot of fans of the book take it seriously, as does Stephenson himself. In such a future, the Mafia is just another business conglomerate. If you assume that this business is into co-branding (another silly concept, but one which real-world businesses are unfortunately in love with) then products like Cosa Nostra Pizza are the inevitable result.
Stephenson's books are as much about ideas as about telling a story. It's more obvious in The Diamond Age, where the ideas are less silly. But even though books like "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon" have lots of silly ideas, they're not meant to be silly books. Because to Stephenson, the ideas are not silly.
You mention Neuromancer. I would argue that this is actually less "hard" SF than anything Stevenson has written. In Gibson's books, technology is just part of the setting. He never brainstorms about strange ways in which technology might be used. He simply takes established ideas and build stories around them. Maybe this is just his preference or interest, but I suspect that Gibson believes that tech has to be kept in the background or it overwealms the story. "Hard" SF writers (such as Stephenson) just don't care if that happens.
I love that sort of thing. There's a station in San Francisco that shows a lot of Asian movies and shows. Sometimes they have English subs, a lot of which are obviously done by somebody who only knows the language from studying it in secondary school. I actually like these translations better than the more professional jobs. How else are you going to discover cultural tidbits, such as the fact that Japanese refer to all big American cars as "Cadillacs" regardless of make?
Slashdot Mirror
As I mentioned, SGI made exactly the same mistake.
So people who order Sun (or is it Sun Cobalt?) boxes with Red Hat preinstalled will probably get exactly the same software that the would have had with Sun Linux -- tweaks and all. The only difference will be the brand.
As with all slang, "headhunter" is used informally by loosely affiliated groups of people. Different groups of people use slang in different ways. Very likely there are people who only use "headhunter" the way you used it, and people who only use "headhunter" the way I used it. Probably many other ways as well. None of them is more "correct".
If you want to debunk bad history, you have to be able to discuss it openly, with no penalties for people who believe that Hitler got a bum rap, or that the world is flat, or other bonehead ideas. That can be hard to live with, but nobody said that living in a free society was easy.
Everybody's favorite strategy seems to be, "we passed a law against it, that solves that problem". Does work in the U.S., doesn't work in Germany.
Contemplate the absurdity of trying to regulate what people believe.
Actually, we've been half-assing it for 50 years. Before that we Jim Crowed it for about 60 years, which is less ambiguous. And of course the 300 years before that were even less ambiguous.
I'm not saying the U.S. is particularly better than Germany. But we never had their incentives. Like losing a vicious war and getting caught indulging in racial extermination. (Of course, we did it too, but never really got called on it.)
Where I live, you can walk down the street with a black person. Doesn't mean black people are treated fairly. LeVar Burton was pulled over on a DWB only a few miles from here.
Naturally there are more neo Nazis in the east -- such movements always appeal to those who feel they've been shortchanged. But they are quite visible in the west as well. They were making news long before
You might ask your African friend how it feels to be a person of color in Germany. Assuming he gives you an honest answer. Black people often assume that white people don't really want to know what it's like to be black, even when they say they do. I think they're probably right.
What bugs me is how easy it is to get away with this. Knew a guy who got a Director-level job based partly on a bogus PhD. When his company folded, he asked me to hand his resume around. He misspelled the name of the University he was supposed to have graduated from! The mind boggles.
The only way to change is to bring all the ideas out into the open, even the evil ones. Especially them.
Of course. an obviously fictitious job is a strong indicator that the headhunter pulls crap like that. But it can happen even if the job looks real. Probably it can happen even if the job is real. Bottom line: you should always ask a placement agency about their distribution policies before letting them have your resume.
News to me. I've been in the industry for longer than I care to think about, and everyone I've known has used "headhunter" just to mean "recruiter". I've even heard it used that way in other industries.Some recruiters find the term offensive. Perhaps they think it conjurs up the sort of predatory job-churning you just described. Well, if the shoe fits... But I've never heard the term restricted to executives.
Sounds to me like they're trying to fill a QA slot at a game design company. Now, if this company is serious about QA, you need a strong background in Software Testing. This is not an area I know a lot about, but I have a strong respect for the better QA types. They're good at thinking things through, and establishing procedures, and thwarting Murphy's Law. But even if the QA operation in this company is mediocre, they will still want some basic testing skills. Which is not something you pick up just by playing computer games.
Anyway, "litmus test" versus "stress test". These are both metaphors. To someone with a scientific or engineering background, "stress test" might seem a better metaphor. Personally, I don't agree. But that's all beside the point.
No metaphor is perfect -- if it were, it wouldn't be a metaphor. So there's always going to be some sloppiness. The degree of sloppiness matters, but not as much as the usefulness of the metaphor in communicating ideas. By that measure, "litmus test" wins, because anybody who owns a fish tank or a swimming pool knows about litmus tests. Stress tests are something relatively few people do.
Bottom line: language is for communication: your choice of words should be motivated by a desire to get your idea across, not by some abstract notion of "correctness".
Or it could just be that whoever reported this doesn't know that the US has possessions in the Caribbean. That sort of geographic ignorance is rampant in the U.S. Ever wonder why New Mexico issues license plates that say, "New Mexico USA"? So New Mexicans can drive outside their state without being asked for their passports! No, I'm not making that up.
In a sense, you're right, though. Spirited Away is one of the best movies I've ever seen in any category. Not something you can compete with. I haven't seen Chicago yet, but I think it might not have won if Spirited Away weren't in the Kiddie Movie ghetto.
Their counterparts in the UK are sometimes known as "The Funny People." Very apt.
Of course, fiddling with the service mode is not risk free.
What I don't understand is why cheap TVs have this. Nobody tries to fix them. If you pay $100 for a TV set, and it breaks after the warantee expires, even a simple repair would cost you more than the set's worth. Even if it is under warantee, most places will just give you a new set rather than mess with it.
How many times does somebody have to point this out: asking for legal advice from random strangers is a very bad idea!
Sure, this is lame, but what's the big deal about installing the driver more than once? Doesn't take that long. It's a silly thing to have to do, but if that were the silliest thing in Windows, Valium sales would be much lower!
As I recall, Osborne first came to public attention by starting a software company that gave away its product. Income was supposed to be derived from selling manuals. The software side of this company didn't work out, but the publishing side found a niche -- which is why there's still an imprint called McGraw-Hill/Osborne.
No, that kind of story requires that you use your brain. My definition of the GWF excludes any higher mental processes. Which is consistent with Hollywood's assumption that its audience consists entirely of morons.
Stephenson's books are as much about ideas as about telling a story. It's more obvious in The Diamond Age, where the ideas are less silly. But even though books like "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon" have lots of silly ideas, they're not meant to be silly books. Because to Stephenson, the ideas are not silly.
You mention Neuromancer. I would argue that this is actually less "hard" SF than anything Stevenson has written. In Gibson's books, technology is just part of the setting. He never brainstorms about strange ways in which technology might be used. He simply takes established ideas and build stories around them. Maybe this is just his preference or interest, but I suspect that Gibson believes that tech has to be kept in the background or it overwealms the story. "Hard" SF writers (such as Stephenson) just don't care if that happens.
I love that sort of thing. There's a station in San Francisco that shows a lot of Asian movies and shows. Sometimes they have English subs, a lot of which are obviously done by somebody who only knows the language from studying it in secondary school. I actually like these translations better than the more professional jobs. How else are you going to discover cultural tidbits, such as the fact that Japanese refer to all big American cars as "Cadillacs" regardless of make?