Nelson happens to be the name of my file/print server at home. I think I named it Nelson cause if it ever decided to stop working, I'd hear an obnoxious "HA HA!" in the back of my head.
I decided that all my home systems would be minor Simpsons characters. Virtual machines commonly get names of the adults. The truly epic minor characters are saved for the physical boxes.
Since the home is obviously not in need of proper documentation, tracking and scheduling, the lame naming scheme works pretty darn well for me. But when I worked in environments where there was an odd naming scheme, I found that I already knew if a system was important or not. Webserver1 may have an SLA that requires scheduling downtime, whereas Webserver2 may not. It's not a problem with the naming scheme, it's a problem with the admins knowing their equipment and having the proper inventory. If the environment is truly complex (where I work now) the naming scheme is downright useless... as in there's a method to break down what sort of hardware it is, and what OS runs on it, but that's it. What we've got is a list of the primary functions of each system.
I guess my point is, no naming scheme is useful. Knowing what system is which, and what each does and having some sort of record is.
I was more disappointed in Chuck though... When he went to a conference and setup a network for them... Uttering, "OK, I've set you up with a 10 Base-T Ethernet."
I cried. BuyMoria would've declared war on him had that been the case. Dude was my hero... Thing is, it happens all the freaking time. The Chuck producers need a geek editor... Not even really that... Just someone who knows enough about Geek Squad level tech...
To an Apple user: After actually RTFM, do you see the new taskbar as a ripoff of the Apple taskbar?
When I saw the screenshots, the first thing I thought was, "Wow, how OS X, like 5 years ago." Now, that might not be totally fair, I'm not sure what OS X has with it's features in the taskbar... but it seems kinda... blatant. That's why I'm asking Apple users. I've never owned a Mac, so I don't know.
It's not exactly like MS has never taken another entity's idea and put it into their own product, and this one may be perfectly legal/ethical and it seems to be a good idea. I'm just cynical since I'm not to fond of Microsoft's history of innovation though other folk's ideas.
If you don't trust him, you can trust me. I happen to have a very rich friend in a country that is certainly not Nigeria. But he needs to escape some political uprising, and needs to store his millions in someone's bank account. He'll be more than glad to pay you a sum of *1 million* dollars for your assistance. Everything's taken care of and you don't have to show me a line of code!
This was the comment I was looking for. The policy at my university (IIRC) was that any work you did on university property (as in their systems) belonged to the university. Also - Anything I did for homework, or as part of a class project also belonged to the university.
If I developed something on a computer in my dorm (even using the university internet access) it was considered mine. Which I thought was completely fair.
1) Anything I'm doing for homework isn't valuable beyond that class, or the curriculum. It WAS valuable to other students who looked to take those classes later. The university claimed it was their property so they could store it and compare it to future homework submissions. they certainly didn't plan on selling my "Hello World!" renditions, nor were they interested in a Java socket that simulated interference to demonstrate the ability of connection based protocols to slow a connection and error correct. 2) If I developed something using their resources, I was free to walk away with my code (which I did, I still have some of it). But I wasn't going to make anything there that was worth selling anyway. I understood that. The real value was in figuring out how to make something useful to me first, and then useful to others later.
But - You could see Vista as MS finally paying the piper for the insecurity that was MS-DOS, Windows 3, 95, 98, ME... And then still not enforcing any sort of security in 2000 and XP.
It all depends on what your angle is I guess. Vista finally made people annoyed enough that software writers had to actually think about running software in a moderately secure context... In that regard, it was a good thing. I might not particularly love the way MS handled it (say, compared to Mac OS), but it was still a step in the right direction.
If the Windows user base can finally be trained to run in a standard user mode, with proper mechanisms to perform administrative tasks, we'll all be better for it... and I'll give a lot of credit to the *nix communities for really pushing this need for all those years. A lot of us might hate MS for various reasons, but if they really can put out a better product, good for them.
1) It won't be named Vista. 2) Supposedly, UAC is much more configurable, especially from the group policy angle. 3) Not as much bloat is supposed to be bundled. If you want all the default MS software, you'll go to Windows Live to grab it. Bloat being: Media Player, the Movie Maker, Picture Gallery, etc. You'll get IE (cause you'll need something provided to go grab the stuff) and you'll get a pretty plain OS otherwise. I'm a huge fan of that. Other than that, I'm not sure if anything else has changed... But I expect that they've also worked on handling "very large files" and other stability stuff.
There was one thing in that slideshow that caught my attention: Sprint losing customers.
Now, that's not a shocker here. I've certainly suffered through some poor phone customer service with them, and some poor coverage problems. They've seemed to embarked on a company wide effort to change that, but I can only hope for their sake that it's not too late.
Of course, AT&T with the iPhone is probably quite a draw.
I will say this for Sprint: The biggest difference I noticed between them was that Verizon phones were ridiculously more expensive if you had to replace one in the middle of a contract.... Other than that, one's a sweet potato, and the other's a yam.*
*To those of us who aren't US Americans,** sweet potatoes are commonly called yams. Yes, I know there's a difference, but our grocers don't seem to.
In my case, I was first taught functional programming, even though it was in C++. It appeared that this was to get us used to taking a problem, and finding a way to solve it using a series of commands (and for getting us to rely on certain basic libraries and where to find them). This was very helpful in figuring out how to read and get a feel for what code was doing, oh and yelling at us constantly to comment our code.
The second course took that functional programming and applied it to OOP. What is each method? It's a function that applies to a specific object. You have an object that you need to work with, and you need it to do certain things, so make a function for each of them and call them methods. This was also in C++.
Later, we delved into C, assembler, and Java. But the emphasis was thinking in terms of problem analysis, design of a solution, and attacking it appropriately in later years. I found it to be very good in my case since OO vs functional is really a matter of what you do.
You don't need a calculator object to write a basic calculator program... But you can write one if you plan on doing things with that calculator object like interact with multiple instances of them.
Finally! I'm so sad that I had to go halfway down the page to get at this one...
Working with FOSS isn't going to lead you into a business hole. Businesses still need someone who can monitor, upkeep, fix, and add to the machines that power their business. If you happen to write FOSS to do those things, you can make money by still doing work for said customer. If you merely use tools that are out there done by other coders, then you are still providing a service for the business/customer.
The break in this article (and many like it) happens when said supporting company goes "public." Suddenly, profit margins must be maintained, P/E ratio enters the equation... Quarterly performance is the measurement of your business, not "am I doing a good job?" FOSS has its place in business, and in business models. You can make it your job to contribute to the community, or to utilize it, to help generate cash for the business that runs on it... Just don't expect your stock to split anytime soon.
Something that I've learned: The business always has needs. They might not know what they are, and they will be different in 6-12 months. The needs will always exist, they will always require someone to implement them, and then maintain them... FOSS often provides a solution to those needs... Even if the code could be perfect, and you could, theoretically, never have to maintain that FOSS solution, you'll be needed to implement someone else that the business now needs.
Is that why that Video Professor guy never sells a CD "How to use Windows XP/Vista/Excel/Word/PowerPoint/Internet Explorer/on and on?"
For most home users, i.e. those who don't want to play WoW or other games, Linux certainly provides the services that are expected... It all comes back to that games issue.
Actually, MS's anticompetitive^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H incentive based pricing for Windows makes it so the OEM cost for Windows goes through the roof if they implement that. So, HP would take a nasty hit on Windows sales since their pre-installed Windows systems would go up by $100 or more.
Then the competition says "Save $100 over HP!"
That's an enormous risk to take for an open source vendor. Yes, it might be a great thing for the consumer to have a choice, but the provider can't put themselves that far out on the limb.
This is a sticky situation with patents. Patents are really only relevant if you are intending to profit from your invention...
True - in the sense that the patent is protecting an inventor from some scammer who tried to rip them off and make caesh on the inventor's work.
But in the cases here - These are a bunch of asshats that are trying to think up ways that something *could* be done. Alone, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. But to then turn around and patent it with no intention of creating a product would seemingly make the patent irrelevant... BUT..
Suppose you have this patent, and someone does some valuable research, and testing (not knowing of the existence of this patent), and comes up with a cure to a very serious disease. That's great news! Especially for the patent holder if the method happens to match (with some degree of closeness) the method stated in the patent.
Now the patent is quite relevant. The holder is not an inventor, but merely some asshat that's planning on caeshing in on someone else's work cause they happened to think up a possible method before the inventor could.
Of course, I could just follow through on your point and say, call the EFF... It sounds to me, the way these IP firms get away with everything, that the real inventor is still screwed.
Simplification of the legal code is a temporary fix. The code, by nature, will become more complex again because there will always be people who will find a way to abuse anything they can understand. Also - the legal codes will just go and get messy again unless there's a process in place to clean it up every so often, akin to garbage collection.
Drug laws are one small part of the legal process. Look at estate law and the process a family goes through when a family member passes away. Look at employment cases, like wrongful termination. Look at (this is a big one) liability cases between whoever you want. Having few *important* laws is subjective and varies greatly depending on who you talk to.
There is a great demand for law, and consequently, law services. I agree that we have too many pointless laws, but I understand that the ones that are important to me aren't important to others. When you try to setup a system that serves all people, it's going to be complex, nasty and all the above complaints. You can simplify, but then there'll be that group that wants those laws put back cause they were *good to them.*
I totally understand wanting to toss the war on drugs. It's a potential industry that would allow people to engage in activities that wouldn't make them criminals. I can totally understand believing that the basis for such laws is flawed. But, once those laws are lifted, how do you handle that industry? It'll need regulation... More lawyers there. Standards would need enforcement, quality control, taxation, and even liability for workers and customers. Then there'd be the people who would want the drugs locked down like alcohol in some locations... preventing sale to minors, not selling at certain hours... The infrastructure demands are still all there.
Yet another high profile law school turning the tables perhaps?
I'm no Mich fan (go Spartans!), but I'm going to be a real fan of Michigan Law if they are willing to jump on this.
The fact of the matter is that MediaSentinel knows that the rope they walk to prosecute end users isn't stable. They have to constantly make up new excuses for everything they do, because they know it's wrong. If, at any point, the RIAA believed that what they did was right (and not a cash grab at the expense of people in vulnerable positions), they would've established good solid reasoning to their actions long ago.
Yes - pirating music, software, games, etc isn't legal. But, if you are planning on going after people who break the law, follow it yourself.
That depends on a couple factors: 1) How long until McCain kicks the bucket. Yes, that's morbid, but I think he's losing his grip on reality. IANAD, but I've heard people mention that he's getting the first signs of dimensia. Granted, that seems to only help in getting party nominations... So, who's the VP candidate? 2) Also - Do you think that Obama's a higher risk candidate for something particularly bad to happen? Since Hillary isn't the VP candidate, I don't think that she'll put a hit out on him, so that probably helped. But that doesn't stop some wacko from going after him for whatever reason.
Of course, the risks above are worst case, and I wish neither on the candidates. What's better is entirely up to what you... Good luck.
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Nelson happens to be the name of my file/print server at home. I think I named it Nelson cause if it ever decided to stop working, I'd hear an obnoxious "HA HA!" in the back of my head.
I decided that all my home systems would be minor Simpsons characters. Virtual machines commonly get names of the adults. The truly epic minor characters are saved for the physical boxes.
Since the home is obviously not in need of proper documentation, tracking and scheduling, the lame naming scheme works pretty darn well for me. But when I worked in environments where there was an odd naming scheme, I found that I already knew if a system was important or not. Webserver1 may have an SLA that requires scheduling downtime, whereas Webserver2 may not. It's not a problem with the naming scheme, it's a problem with the admins knowing their equipment and having the proper inventory. If the environment is truly complex (where I work now) the naming scheme is downright useless... as in there's a method to break down what sort of hardware it is, and what OS runs on it, but that's it. What we've got is a list of the primary functions of each system.
I guess my point is, no naming scheme is useful. Knowing what system is which, and what each does and having some sort of record is.
I was more disappointed in Chuck though... When he went to a conference and setup a network for them... Uttering, "OK, I've set you up with a 10 Base-T Ethernet."
I cried. BuyMoria would've declared war on him had that been the case. Dude was my hero... Thing is, it happens all the freaking time. The Chuck producers need a geek editor... Not even really that... Just someone who knows enough about Geek Squad level tech...
What about those of us who are left handed you insensitive clod!
I figure, all that time out at sea? He's got to be able to get a nap in there once in a while.
Why did you put laid in italics?
To an Apple user: After actually RTFM, do you see the new taskbar as a ripoff of the Apple taskbar?
When I saw the screenshots, the first thing I thought was, "Wow, how OS X, like 5 years ago." Now, that might not be totally fair, I'm not sure what OS X has with it's features in the taskbar... but it seems kinda... blatant. That's why I'm asking Apple users. I've never owned a Mac, so I don't know.
It's not exactly like MS has never taken another entity's idea and put it into their own product, and this one may be perfectly legal/ethical and it seems to be a good idea. I'm just cynical since I'm not to fond of Microsoft's history of innovation though other folk's ideas.
If you don't trust him, you can trust me. I happen to have a very rich friend in a country that is certainly not Nigeria. But he needs to escape some political uprising, and needs to store his millions in someone's bank account. He'll be more than glad to pay you a sum of *1 million* dollars for your assistance. Everything's taken care of and you don't have to show me a line of code!
This was the comment I was looking for. The policy at my university (IIRC) was that any work you did on university property (as in their systems) belonged to the university. Also - Anything I did for homework, or as part of a class project also belonged to the university.
If I developed something on a computer in my dorm (even using the university internet access) it was considered mine. Which I thought was completely fair.
1) Anything I'm doing for homework isn't valuable beyond that class, or the curriculum. It WAS valuable to other students who looked to take those classes later. The university claimed it was their property so they could store it and compare it to future homework submissions. they certainly didn't plan on selling my "Hello World!" renditions, nor were they interested in a Java socket that simulated interference to demonstrate the ability of connection based protocols to slow a connection and error correct.
2) If I developed something using their resources, I was free to walk away with my code (which I did, I still have some of it). But I wasn't going to make anything there that was worth selling anyway. I understood that. The real value was in figuring out how to make something useful to me first, and then useful to others later.
Well done.
But - You could see Vista as MS finally paying the piper for the insecurity that was MS-DOS, Windows 3, 95, 98, ME... And then still not enforcing any sort of security in 2000 and XP.
It all depends on what your angle is I guess. Vista finally made people annoyed enough that software writers had to actually think about running software in a moderately secure context... In that regard, it was a good thing. I might not particularly love the way MS handled it (say, compared to Mac OS), but it was still a step in the right direction.
If the Windows user base can finally be trained to run in a standard user mode, with proper mechanisms to perform administrative tasks, we'll all be better for it... and I'll give a lot of credit to the *nix communities for really pushing this need for all those years. A lot of us might hate MS for various reasons, but if they really can put out a better product, good for them.
1) It won't be named Vista.
2) Supposedly, UAC is much more configurable, especially from the group policy angle.
3) Not as much bloat is supposed to be bundled. If you want all the default MS software, you'll go to Windows Live to grab it. Bloat being: Media Player, the Movie Maker, Picture Gallery, etc. You'll get IE (cause you'll need something provided to go grab the stuff) and you'll get a pretty plain OS otherwise. I'm a huge fan of that.
Other than that, I'm not sure if anything else has changed... But I expect that they've also worked on handling "very large files" and other stability stuff.
There was one thing in that slideshow that caught my attention: Sprint losing customers.
Now, that's not a shocker here. I've certainly suffered through some poor phone customer service with them, and some poor coverage problems. They've seemed to embarked on a company wide effort to change that, but I can only hope for their sake that it's not too late.
Of course, AT&T with the iPhone is probably quite a draw.
I will say this for Sprint: The biggest difference I noticed between them was that Verizon phones were ridiculously more expensive if you had to replace one in the middle of a contract.... Other than that, one's a sweet potato, and the other's a yam.*
*To those of us who aren't US Americans,** sweet potatoes are commonly called yams. Yes, I know there's a difference, but our grocers don't seem to.
**See Ms. Teen South Carolina for that reference.
In my case, I was first taught functional programming, even though it was in C++. It appeared that this was to get us used to taking a problem, and finding a way to solve it using a series of commands (and for getting us to rely on certain basic libraries and where to find them). This was very helpful in figuring out how to read and get a feel for what code was doing, oh and yelling at us constantly to comment our code.
The second course took that functional programming and applied it to OOP. What is each method? It's a function that applies to a specific object. You have an object that you need to work with, and you need it to do certain things, so make a function for each of them and call them methods. This was also in C++.
Later, we delved into C, assembler, and Java. But the emphasis was thinking in terms of problem analysis, design of a solution, and attacking it appropriately in later years. I found it to be very good in my case since OO vs functional is really a matter of what you do.
You don't need a calculator object to write a basic calculator program... But you can write one if you plan on doing things with that calculator object like interact with multiple instances of them.
Finally! I'm so sad that I had to go halfway down the page to get at this one...
Working with FOSS isn't going to lead you into a business hole. Businesses still need someone who can monitor, upkeep, fix, and add to the machines that power their business. If you happen to write FOSS to do those things, you can make money by still doing work for said customer. If you merely use tools that are out there done by other coders, then you are still providing a service for the business/customer.
The break in this article (and many like it) happens when said supporting company goes "public." Suddenly, profit margins must be maintained, P/E ratio enters the equation... Quarterly performance is the measurement of your business, not "am I doing a good job?" FOSS has its place in business, and in business models. You can make it your job to contribute to the community, or to utilize it, to help generate cash for the business that runs on it... Just don't expect your stock to split anytime soon.
Something that I've learned: The business always has needs. They might not know what they are, and they will be different in 6-12 months. The needs will always exist, they will always require someone to implement them, and then maintain them... FOSS often provides a solution to those needs... Even if the code could be perfect, and you could, theoretically, never have to maintain that FOSS solution, you'll be needed to implement someone else that the business now needs.
Is that why that Video Professor guy never sells a CD "How to use Windows XP/Vista/Excel/Word/PowerPoint/Internet Explorer/on and on?"
For most home users, i.e. those who don't want to play WoW or other games, Linux certainly provides the services that are expected... It all comes back to that games issue.
Actually, MS's anticompetitive^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H incentive based pricing for Windows makes it so the OEM cost for Windows goes through the roof if they implement that. So, HP would take a nasty hit on Windows sales since their pre-installed Windows systems would go up by $100 or more.
Then the competition says "Save $100 over HP!"
That's an enormous risk to take for an open source vendor. Yes, it might be a great thing for the consumer to have a choice, but the provider can't put themselves that far out on the limb.
Wasn't it 1.21?
This is a sticky situation with patents. Patents are really only relevant if you are intending to profit from your invention...
True - in the sense that the patent is protecting an inventor from some scammer who tried to rip them off and make caesh on the inventor's work.
But in the cases here - These are a bunch of asshats that are trying to think up ways that something *could* be done. Alone, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. But to then turn around and patent it with no intention of creating a product would seemingly make the patent irrelevant... BUT..
Suppose you have this patent, and someone does some valuable research, and testing (not knowing of the existence of this patent), and comes up with a cure to a very serious disease. That's great news! Especially for the patent holder if the method happens to match (with some degree of closeness) the method stated in the patent.
Now the patent is quite relevant. The holder is not an inventor, but merely some asshat that's planning on caeshing in on someone else's work cause they happened to think up a possible method before the inventor could.
Of course, I could just follow through on your point and say, call the EFF... It sounds to me, the way these IP firms get away with everything, that the real inventor is still screwed.
Simplification of the legal code is a temporary fix. The code, by nature, will become more complex again because there will always be people who will find a way to abuse anything they can understand. Also - the legal codes will just go and get messy again unless there's a process in place to clean it up every so often, akin to garbage collection.
Drug laws are one small part of the legal process. Look at estate law and the process a family goes through when a family member passes away. Look at employment cases, like wrongful termination. Look at (this is a big one) liability cases between whoever you want. Having few *important* laws is subjective and varies greatly depending on who you talk to.
There is a great demand for law, and consequently, law services. I agree that we have too many pointless laws, but I understand that the ones that are important to me aren't important to others. When you try to setup a system that serves all people, it's going to be complex, nasty and all the above complaints. You can simplify, but then there'll be that group that wants those laws put back cause they were *good to them.*
I totally understand wanting to toss the war on drugs. It's a potential industry that would allow people to engage in activities that wouldn't make them criminals. I can totally understand believing that the basis for such laws is flawed. But, once those laws are lifted, how do you handle that industry? It'll need regulation... More lawyers there. Standards would need enforcement, quality control, taxation, and even liability for workers and customers. Then there'd be the people who would want the drugs locked down like alcohol in some locations... preventing sale to minors, not selling at certain hours... The infrastructure demands are still all there.
Yet another high profile law school turning the tables perhaps?
I'm no Mich fan (go Spartans!), but I'm going to be a real fan of Michigan Law if they are willing to jump on this.
The fact of the matter is that MediaSentinel knows that the rope they walk to prosecute end users isn't stable. They have to constantly make up new excuses for everything they do, because they know it's wrong. If, at any point, the RIAA believed that what they did was right (and not a cash grab at the expense of people in vulnerable positions), they would've established good solid reasoning to their actions long ago.
Yes - pirating music, software, games, etc isn't legal. But, if you are planning on going after people who break the law, follow it yourself.
In fact, the summary isn't right. According to TFA - The dude just got hired as a consultant by Apple. Sounds to me like he's getting some credit.
It may be overdue, but it's not as bad as the article implies.
And that's assuming that you take summer off and a couple weeks in the winter!
That extra 100 days gives them enough time to finish unloading that internet dump truck...
Live FreeBSD or die!
That depends on a couple factors:
1) How long until McCain kicks the bucket. Yes, that's morbid, but I think he's losing his grip on reality. IANAD, but I've heard people mention that he's getting the first signs of dimensia. Granted, that seems to only help in getting party nominations... So, who's the VP candidate?
2) Also - Do you think that Obama's a higher risk candidate for something particularly bad to happen? Since Hillary isn't the VP candidate, I don't think that she'll put a hit out on him, so that probably helped. But that doesn't stop some wacko from going after him for whatever reason.
Of course, the risks above are worst case, and I wish neither on the candidates. What's better is entirely up to what you... Good luck.
I'll be voting Libertarian.
You must be new here.
They should get a hold of Ted Stevens. He knows alot about computers and networking stuff.
Where's the +1 (Conspiracy)?