I don't see any link. But that's because of some strange server error (claims my cookies are not on, but they are, and I know they are because I use cookies at other sites just fine) where I can't even get logged in. And yes, I was trying to close my account after getting spammed by them. And I didn't want their spam anymore because I quit using Paypal due to not being able to login and not being able to get any response from support at all, and not getting any live people on the phone.
I understand the legal and financial conditions they have to operate under, and I'm not opposed to them (or anyone else providing this service) from taking a cut, and having to freeze accounts when something goes wrong... PROVIDED... you can actually communicate with someone there who can comprehend what is going on and help solve the problem. The reason I quit Paypal is the lack of support. And my servers are now rejecting all mail from Paypal, so if you decide to bribe me, I'll never even know about it.
What is needed is a better way to transact safely over the net.
A mechanism where a buyer can confirm his identity to his payment source (credit card company or bank) would help eliminate fraud on the part of buyers (e.g. stolen cards and such). When the buyer goes to some shopping site, and checks out with their full shopping cart, they get a transaction code with a link to a central clearing house. That clearing house then lets them select their financial institution and passes the (possible remapped) transaction code to their site via another link. Now at the site of their financial institution, the buyer provides his identity and confirms request to pay the transaction. Actual payment goes behind the scenes, but can be tracked using those URLs and transaction code. When the seller gets the code on his server, the transaction (shopping cart) is updated to reflect payment and the order can be shipped.
Now this does protect the merchant against fraud on the part of buyers... to a certain extent. If the buyer has a legitimate account, and made an actual payment, and then uses the complaint process to claim they never received the goods, or received the wrong goods, or broken goods, the merchant can still be screwed. That is, unless it was the merchant doing the nasty and actually not sending the goods.
A truly secure, both-ways verified, transaction system perhaps could be done, but it would cost a lot of money. Still, a stronly verified payment system could be useful when the parties do trust one another already. But then, if a merchant trusts a buyer, they can ship now and get a check later. The problem is, establishing such trust is uncommon.
I tried to call Paypal several times. It seems they have let go most of the staff. You get an automated machine that suggested using their web site. In my case, the issue was a problem with their web site server giving a stupid error message, so I could not use the web site. And these guys dared to spam me because there's an account I could not close?
They may appear to be a dot.com success, but in my mind they are a failure. And I do expect to see them go bust at some point, given the degrading quality going on there. As you may see below, my/. signature tells more.
And there's a reason it's so hard to fine someone who can run an E15K with a good level of competence. There's no way to get the experience without working for a place that has one (it's not like you can buy yourself one of these and stick it in your bedroom). Businesses have to hire some of their staff as inexperienced and train them if they are going to expect the experienced pool to grow. But businesses don't want to train anyone, so they just sit around whining about why there are so few people experienced in high-end enterprise class machines. And on top of that, they add on a bunch of other demands to help narrow the pool to the one guy who won't jump ship until he gets $25K more than the $100K he makes now. And businesses whine that the cost of good people is so high. Who the hell would want to go work for a business that wants them to already have experience in everything? Where's the challenge in learning something new in that? If some guy comes in, has the degree, is smart, can do the job... but just doesn't have EMC experience (because his previous employer used something else), you turn him away and leave the job vacant until you find someone that's an exact fit?
BTW, there are plenty of people out there that lack one skill or another, and can still do the job. Too bad bureaucracy requires techies to be English majors just to get the job. Oh wait, xylix really is an English teacher. So he probably can do the job, with all it's paperwork.
Los Angeles? Is that's what's under that big brown cloud? I thought I was missing something. But it wasn't anything really important so I wasn't worrying about it.
In some companies, unless you were told to write that automation software, you could be reprimanded, maybe even fired, for writing that. That's not to say that it isn't a good idea. I'm just saying that way too often, company management, bureaucracy, and politics have the effect of making an otherwise good job become a lousy one.
Perhaps the best career move for many is to start their own business, even if it is a one-man consultancy. Certainly after 10 years experience, you can do this. I've heard of people going straight into it right out of college.
They want you to leave your laptop in your hotel room, too!
Woohoo! Free laptops!
Seriously, the hotel room is THE WORST place to leave valuables, when you are not there. While most hotel cleaning staff are very honest people, the low wages do tend to push a lot of people over the edge into crime. Many of my friends have been victims of this.
This tells me the policy makers for Comdex are idiots.
The problem which NineNine referred to I believe is how to reconcile a large scale project using XP methodology with the MBA types who want one big estimate for when the whole damn project will be complete and how many dollars it will cost just from the original specifications (e.g. the job order the sales people already signed on to). If your management (and marketing, etc) are not in line with extreme programming methods, it's not going to work there.
It would seem to me that the fixed-cost would be subject to unfixing every time any specification would be subject to unfixing. Unfortunately one of the bad things about XP is that it does increase the variabiity of cost.
The webmaster@motosoto.org mailbox isn't just not answered, it's rejected as non-existant. The main page loads up blank. Whatever this motosoto thing is, it sure impresses me as worthless.
Using memory slots for devices is a bad idea. The interface is not designed for devices. There are no IRQ lines. The address space can be configured by the chipset to fall anywhere in the address space of the whole machine (your device may end up starting at 0). The address space may even be interleaved with other memory devices in other slots. And the next generation of memory will use a whole different interface, and most new motherboards will soon migrate to it with little concern for backward compatibility.
It also shows one of the weaknesses of a programming language which is based on collections of things (in this case token words on a command) or data structures which can be changed merely by the value of some part of it (e.g. a variable with spaces).
Really, though, nothing wrong with that. If you want to spend your time doing other things, like playing games, coding projects, boinking your SO, then of course you're wise to choose a distribution that saves you that time. The whole idea here is that different people want to do different things. Viva la difference! And Slackware is one of those choices for the people who do enjoy working with the way the computer works, or wanting to make sure they have control over every little detail (the category I'm in). In fact, if the package tools that Slackware does have disappeared, I'd probably not even notice, since I install everything I need at the start, and add anything else by compiling source (except certain things are compiled from source anyway, like the principle services such as Apache, Postfix, SSH, and so on). My guess is that the Slackware people are just giving the RPM/DEB people a hard time for being "lazy" to counteract all the assertions that RPM/DEB makes life "easy".
It's not losing steam. It's just changing the structure of the vent pipes. As more and more people come into the Linux community, they may well be the ones who shouldn't be using Slackware. But just because it's not the preferred distribution for the masses doesn't mean it's losing steam. For those of us into working with how our systems are put together, even Slackware sometimes is too much. I've even been tempted to go the other way to one of the minimalist Linux distributions, or build it myself. But Slackware is pliable, so I really don't need to. I've replaced the entire init/rc script startup system with my own design built from scratch, and Slackware didn't even blink.
I remember when the book Linux for Dummies came out. My first thought was "well, now I have to make the switch to BSD". While that may not have been bad in and of itself, I did then come to my senses and realized "Oh wait, I use Slackware, never mind".
Uh Oh! There's a Slackware for Dummies now, too. Maybe I'll have to switch to BSD afterall? Well, as long as Patrick doesn't try to make Slackware be the replacement for Microsoft Windows, then it will remain my choice.
The sad part of this is that now when manufacturers make drivers, they will work with Redhat (because thats the distribution the suits tend to choose... Redhat is sort of the "Windows" of the open source OS world given its market aims and its somewhat lower-tech orientation) but NOT with Linux.
I find the tags are a major hindrance proper editing tekniq. If the tool is vi, I have to deal with the tags manually. If the tool hides the tags, then it has to be interpreting them and presenting some logical construct. But I've yet to see any tool that can let me do all I want with config files. How would/etc/rc look in XML?
It doesn't need to be XML to be standard. Part of the problem I see is that XML (with DTDs) is trying to make it possible to have "standards" without a standardizing process. I see many pitfalls in that. But even a DTD doesn't really attach semantics to names. We're going to end up with a huge mess of DTDs all over the place. We'll be swimming in DTDs.
My email list format is RFC822 addresses separated by newline characters. When you get the first copy you can look at that and see what it is. No DTD lookup needed.
Who decides what DTD will be used as an interchange between businesses anyway? A committee? Why not just have a standards group decide these things?
So Verisign, Thwate, and the other CAs, are deciding not just who is who, but who's code I should allow to run on my computer without a dialog? The sad part about all this is that so many people have blind trust in the system. If a cert was issued to someone, they must have good intentions, right? The problem is too many people assume this. The "scary dialog" should always be present for the first time for every identity. Once the user states his trust in that certificate, then no more "scary dialog" for that one until it expires, unless it is re-issued with the same identity (what is stored in the user trust DB is the identity itself).
If Usama bin Laden were to apply for a certificate, and proved he was who he said he was, would they issue one? Remember, this is all about identity, which is trusting the CA. It's not about making judgements about sexual prowess, or whatever else the person may represent. As for whether this enables Usama bin Laden to engage in cryptographic traffic, I can assure you that the lack of a certificate is not going to prevent him from hiding messages from authorities.
With compressed XML, you have to use some tool like "zcat" to read it. Isn't the whole idea of XML to make it with with "cat"?:-)
Seriously, what is the readability issue all about, anyway? What's so wrong with using a tool to read a format that happens to be in a binary form? I personally find XML is harder to read than HTML and HTML is not that easy to read. And XML is only getting worse.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see any link. But that's because of some strange server error (claims my cookies are not on, but they are, and I know they are because I use cookies at other sites just fine) where I can't even get logged in. And yes, I was trying to close my account after getting spammed by them. And I didn't want their spam anymore because I quit using Paypal due to not being able to login and not being able to get any response from support at all, and not getting any live people on the phone.
I understand the legal and financial conditions they have to operate under, and I'm not opposed to them (or anyone else providing this service) from taking a cut, and having to freeze accounts when something goes wrong ... PROVIDED ... you can actually communicate with someone there who can comprehend what is going on and help solve the problem. The reason I quit Paypal is the lack of support. And my servers are now rejecting all mail from Paypal, so if you decide to bribe me, I'll never even know about it.
What is needed is a better way to transact safely over the net.
A mechanism where a buyer can confirm his identity to his payment source (credit card company or bank) would help eliminate fraud on the part of buyers (e.g. stolen cards and such). When the buyer goes to some shopping site, and checks out with their full shopping cart, they get a transaction code with a link to a central clearing house. That clearing house then lets them select their financial institution and passes the (possible remapped) transaction code to their site via another link. Now at the site of their financial institution, the buyer provides his identity and confirms request to pay the transaction. Actual payment goes behind the scenes, but can be tracked using those URLs and transaction code. When the seller gets the code on his server, the transaction (shopping cart) is updated to reflect payment and the order can be shipped.
Now this does protect the merchant against fraud on the part of buyers ... to a certain extent. If the buyer has a legitimate account, and made an actual payment, and then uses the complaint process to claim they never received the goods, or received the wrong goods, or broken goods, the merchant can still be screwed. That is, unless it was the merchant doing the nasty and actually not sending the goods.
A truly secure, both-ways verified, transaction system perhaps could be done, but it would cost a lot of money. Still, a stronly verified payment system could be useful when the parties do trust one another already. But then, if a merchant trusts a buyer, they can ship now and get a check later. The problem is, establishing such trust is uncommon.
I tried to call Paypal several times. It seems they have let go most of the staff. You get an automated machine that suggested using their web site. In my case, the issue was a problem with their web site server giving a stupid error message, so I could not use the web site. And these guys dared to spam me because there's an account I could not close?
They may appear to be a dot.com success, but in my mind they are a failure. And I do expect to see them go bust at some point, given the degrading quality going on there. As you may see below, my /. signature tells more.
And there's a reason it's so hard to fine someone who can run an E15K with a good level of competence. There's no way to get the experience without working for a place that has one (it's not like you can buy yourself one of these and stick it in your bedroom). Businesses have to hire some of their staff as inexperienced and train them if they are going to expect the experienced pool to grow. But businesses don't want to train anyone, so they just sit around whining about why there are so few people experienced in high-end enterprise class machines. And on top of that, they add on a bunch of other demands to help narrow the pool to the one guy who won't jump ship until he gets $25K more than the $100K he makes now. And businesses whine that the cost of good people is so high. Who the hell would want to go work for a business that wants them to already have experience in everything? Where's the challenge in learning something new in that? If some guy comes in, has the degree, is smart, can do the job ... but just doesn't have EMC experience (because his previous employer used something else), you turn him away and leave the job vacant until you find someone that's an exact fit?
BTW, there are plenty of people out there that lack one skill or another, and can still do the job. Too bad bureaucracy requires techies to be English majors just to get the job. Oh wait, xylix really is an English teacher. So he probably can do the job, with all it's paperwork.
Los Angeles? Is that's what's under that big brown cloud? I thought I was missing something. But it wasn't anything really important so I wasn't worrying about it.
The LSD is for decoration, right?
In some companies, unless you were told to write that automation software, you could be reprimanded, maybe even fired, for writing that. That's not to say that it isn't a good idea. I'm just saying that way too often, company management, bureaucracy, and politics have the effect of making an otherwise good job become a lousy one.
Perhaps the best career move for many is to start their own business, even if it is a one-man consultancy. Certainly after 10 years experience, you can do this. I've heard of people going straight into it right out of college.
If they wanted to promote their project, they'd have a web site. And in fact they do. But it just loads blank.
And look whose really hiding their AOL origins behind A/C.
Woohoo! Free laptops!
Seriously, the hotel room is THE WORST place to leave valuables, when you are not there. While most hotel cleaning staff are very honest people, the low wages do tend to push a lot of people over the edge into crime. Many of my friends have been victims of this.
This tells me the policy makers for Comdex are idiots.
The problem which NineNine referred to I believe is how to reconcile a large scale project using XP methodology with the MBA types who want one big estimate for when the whole damn project will be complete and how many dollars it will cost just from the original specifications (e.g. the job order the sales people already signed on to). If your management (and marketing, etc) are not in line with extreme programming methods, it's not going to work there.
It would seem to me that the fixed-cost would be subject to unfixing every time any specification would be subject to unfixing. Unfortunately one of the bad things about XP is that it does increase the variabiity of cost.
The webmaster@motosoto.org mailbox isn't just not answered, it's rejected as non-existant. The main page loads up blank. Whatever this motosoto thing is, it sure impresses me as worthless.
Using memory slots for devices is a bad idea. The interface is not designed for devices. There are no IRQ lines. The address space can be configured by the chipset to fall anywhere in the address space of the whole machine (your device may end up starting at 0). The address space may even be interleaved with other memory devices in other slots. And the next generation of memory will use a whole different interface, and most new motherboards will soon migrate to it with little concern for backward compatibility.
It also shows one of the weaknesses of a programming language which is based on collections of things (in this case token words on a command) or data structures which can be changed merely by the value of some part of it (e.g. a variable with spaces).
Panic!
Hopefully, something new will be out by then. Or hopefully it will be for one particular BSD like maybe FreeBSD, then I'll use NetBSD or OpenBSD.
Well, if you are paranoid, then do:
OK, I will ... lazy!
Really, though, nothing wrong with that. If you want to spend your time doing other things, like playing games, coding projects, boinking your SO, then of course you're wise to choose a distribution that saves you that time. The whole idea here is that different people want to do different things. Viva la difference! And Slackware is one of those choices for the people who do enjoy working with the way the computer works, or wanting to make sure they have control over every little detail (the category I'm in). In fact, if the package tools that Slackware does have disappeared, I'd probably not even notice, since I install everything I need at the start, and add anything else by compiling source (except certain things are compiled from source anyway, like the principle services such as Apache, Postfix, SSH, and so on). My guess is that the Slackware people are just giving the RPM/DEB people a hard time for being "lazy" to counteract all the assertions that RPM/DEB makes life "easy".
It's not losing steam. It's just changing the structure of the vent pipes. As more and more people come into the Linux community, they may well be the ones who shouldn't be using Slackware. But just because it's not the preferred distribution for the masses doesn't mean it's losing steam. For those of us into working with how our systems are put together, even Slackware sometimes is too much. I've even been tempted to go the other way to one of the minimalist Linux distributions, or build it myself. But Slackware is pliable, so I really don't need to. I've replaced the entire init/rc script startup system with my own design built from scratch, and Slackware didn't even blink.
I remember when the book Linux for Dummies came out. My first thought was "well, now I have to make the switch to BSD". While that may not have been bad in and of itself, I did then come to my senses and realized "Oh wait, I use Slackware, never mind".
Uh Oh! There's a Slackware for Dummies now, too. Maybe I'll have to switch to BSD afterall? Well, as long as Patrick doesn't try to make Slackware be the replacement for Microsoft Windows, then it will remain my choice.
The sad part of this is that now when manufacturers make drivers, they will work with Redhat (because thats the distribution the suits tend to choose ... Redhat is sort of the "Windows" of the open source OS world given its market aims and its somewhat lower-tech orientation) but NOT with Linux.
I find the tags are a major hindrance proper editing tekniq. If the tool is vi, I have to deal with the tags manually. If the tool hides the tags, then it has to be interpreting them and presenting some logical construct. But I've yet to see any tool that can let me do all I want with config files. How would /etc/rc look in XML?
It doesn't need to be XML to be standard. Part of the problem I see is that XML (with DTDs) is trying to make it possible to have "standards" without a standardizing process. I see many pitfalls in that. But even a DTD doesn't really attach semantics to names. We're going to end up with a huge mess of DTDs all over the place. We'll be swimming in DTDs.
My email list format is RFC822 addresses separated by newline characters. When you get the first copy you can look at that and see what it is. No DTD lookup needed.
Who decides what DTD will be used as an interchange between businesses anyway? A committee? Why not just have a standards group decide these things?
So Verisign, Thwate, and the other CAs, are deciding not just who is who, but who's code I should allow to run on my computer without a dialog? The sad part about all this is that so many people have blind trust in the system. If a cert was issued to someone, they must have good intentions, right? The problem is too many people assume this. The "scary dialog" should always be present for the first time for every identity. Once the user states his trust in that certificate, then no more "scary dialog" for that one until it expires, unless it is re-issued with the same identity (what is stored in the user trust DB is the identity itself).
If Usama bin Laden were to apply for a certificate, and proved he was who he said he was, would they issue one? Remember, this is all about identity, which is trusting the CA. It's not about making judgements about sexual prowess, or whatever else the person may represent. As for whether this enables Usama bin Laden to engage in cryptographic traffic, I can assure you that the lack of a certificate is not going to prevent him from hiding messages from authorities.
With compressed XML, you have to use some tool like "zcat" to read it. Isn't the whole idea of XML to make it with with "cat"? :-)
Seriously, what is the readability issue all about, anyway? What's so wrong with using a tool to read a format that happens to be in a binary form? I personally find XML is harder to read than HTML and HTML is not that easy to read. And XML is only getting worse.