Off-topic, but joking aside, I'm sorry to hear that much time is spent on such tasks. If I paid $20M to get to space, I wouldn't want to spend 30 minutes futzing with an email account; time is money, and not at an inexpensive rate.
Why don't they use simpler systems that are less prone to issues than WinXP?
Although space is a pretty complicated affair, and I can understand having complicated systems to support it, an email configuration doesn't seem to be something is interacts enough with the limitations of that environment that it should be complicated by it.
It says the president is in charge of national defense
Where does it say that? Article II Section 2: "The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States".
I think there's a pretty wide divide between being put in charge of the military, and being unilaterally in charge of national defense, but I guess I can follow that reasoning. Even if it's self-serving.
and the Congress has no right to usurp that power
Oh, I see. Baloney. If that was actually true, military actions wouldn't be constrained to budgetary limitations imposed by Congress. Nor would the War Powers Act of 1973 have passed constitutional muster.
I have talked to several people at companies that make software we DO like, and they say they will never port over to Linux. Ever.
To be clear, I'm not going to argue with you. But that's a tremendously frustrating thing to say. What happened to "the customer is always right"? More importantly, from where do they derive this arrogance? There are four likely outcomes to this:
1) Windows continues to own the market until we no longer use computers as we know them.
2) Linux market share grows to the point that they realize the error of their ways, and port, at first reluntantly; but then with growing earnestness.
3) Linux market share grows, and they maintain their steadfastness; but their competitors realize an opportunity and so eat their lunch.
4) Microsoft becomes aware that a market in their product line exists, and so eats their lunch themselves. If they're lucky, Microsoft buys their IP; if they're not, they are pwned. And since they foreclosed any other option, they have nowhere else to go: witness the screaming the third party security comppanies now. This has exactly happened before with other markets.
While route #1 may seem likely now, how many tech gorillas have lasted more than 20 years in a dominant position? IBM? Wang? DEC? Apple?
While it may well not be Linux, or Apple, or even Google, that trumps Microsoft, I can well believe that nobody will be using Windows in 30 years. And hopefully the morons that have based their business on the exclusivity of the Windows platform go down with it.
One has to wonder if this Monday-morning quarterbacking will ever end.
No. No, it won't.
And I'd maintain that if you, or your leader, can't stand being second guessed, you shouldn't live in a democracy, where that's our birthright. You can safely expect the wisdom of this endeavor to be questioned for as long as the records of it are extant: we still take lesson from the military expeditions of Rome, for example.
While very complete, I believe you forgot The Fantasy Trip, which according to wiki, came out in 1980. IIRC, TFT featured classes and skills, with skills available to all classes but more expensive if you purchased a skill outside of your class core competency. Useful for mages to have a hold out weapon, or for warriors (or thieves) to have a one-trick spell. Also notable for it's influence on GURPS, and does much to prevent accusations of SJGames having ripped off the Hero System (it's more likely Hero borrowed ideas from TFT if anything.)
Is Microsoft defending against this notion through it's stock buy back plan? I would presume that would give more voting shares to the current Board of Directors, who could then vote against new management; but perhaps that is an oversimplification.
What other reasons does MS have to repurchase it's stock? I don't understand the benefit that this gives to a company.
Do they feel that their stock is undervalued now, so by repurchasing it they can sell it later at a better price, and thereby acquire more financial resources?
Calling that a "Child porn investigation case" is one of the most misleading statements I've ever heard. It was a "porn on the 'net fishing expedition."
Ok, can you elaborate on that? Normally, the cases where the prosecutors ask Google for Orkut user info normally involve child porn or drug distribution, and at least one case involved "virginity auctions" of ten-year-olds.
FAQ: What does the Google subpoena mean? The GP is right--the DOJ was fishing, and expected search engines to assist in their witchhunt to support their tenous position.
People on Google Brasil have access to the data just like people from the Google US. That doesn't mean that they have the right, or can be compelled, to divulge that information.
And even if nobody in Google Brasil has access to such data, they can ask Google US for the data. Which is what was suggested that they do.
For those playing at home: we just learned why Google is hesitant to build data centers in countries that have weaker protection for freedomes than does the US.
Seriously--if you just insulated the case with a blanket of something, closing off the air vents, might the natural processes of the computer keep the internals warm enough on their own?
I think you chose an interesting example of the reasonableness of science wrt to changing it's hypothesis.
Discover Magazine currently has a cover article that suggests that a change to that exact formula is required: "a change to F = ma/a0 when accelerations fall below one 10-billionth of a meter per second every second".
Not surprisingly, the physicist is facing a lot of resistance to the change, a good deal of it just due to the fact that F=ma has lots of historical precedent, not strictly becuase of the merits of the theory. Even scientists, it appears, are resistant to changing their assumptions.
I'm sure the existing SGI management would like to believe that, not least because it'll help to retain their current employees until they themselves are able to find new work somewhere else.
The fact is, that even with a series a innovative ideas, at this point they don't have, and can't get, the financial resources to execute them. Let alone hire the talent needed to make it work.
So they're screwed. The only questions that remain are: who's going to buy the IP that they haven't already sold off; and what are the current customers going to do for support contracts. If I'm not mistaken, SGI has recently sold some multi-million systems to the government. If the government was smart, they included an "in case of bankruptcy" proviso for hardware and software support. Knowing the government, they probably didn't--and are going to shortly find that they have an unmaintable albatross.
Most employers don't hire by searching resumes on the web anyway. They post a listing and wait for the applicants to come to them.
I respectfully disagree. If you send your resume and application to a job posting, you are competing with the 100 other applicants that did the same. Whereas, if a recruiter finds your resume online and likes you enough to contact you, they are already sold enough to initiate the human level of contact.
I have always gotten much further in the interview process when it was initiated by the recruiter instead of the other way around.
And to that end, I almost always keep my resume online--I just only update it when I'm more actively looking. If an employer found that offensive, they should sign a contract with me that binds me for life. Until I get that, I'm going to more or less continue looking, or considering offers, perpetually.
They're charging no more than people appear to be willing to pay. The problem?People wouldn't be willing to pay that amount if they had viable, competitive alternatives. Which they don't, because of Microsoft's illegal use of monopoly.
So would 40,000 others, apparently. Which may be a factor in Sun's recent losses; I wonder if your sentiment will still hold true after Sun has had to 25% of their current workforce. Sometimes technologists don't make the best buisnessmen, and "letting them drive" could be precisely why Sun is in the position it now is in.
If you change that setting, and you cook your machine, it's your own fault.
Happen to know, say empirically, if is in fact will happen? Did Apple just underclock the card to save battery life/fan noise (in which case it'd be nice if they ramped it up when it's plugged in, vs. on battery) or is the fan and friends not able to dissipate the heat from an upclocked video card?
All that work, and Microsoft Office: Mac with network homes still sucks shit. I could also complain about the Office Installer that is a "drag" installer, but then on first use it just runs a script to install crap everywhere. Yeah, that doesn't count--for it to be real drag installer, it has to be a drag uninstaller, too.
I would be willing to give MS a pass on network homes, as maybe it's a little exotic; but it's not that bad of an idea, and no other application seems to be as confused by it as Office.
What does my personality have to do with my ability to perform in a job?
Pretty much everything. Most employers take the position that they can train any reasonably skilled person to do the task at hand, as long as they can work with the existing team. OTOH, disruption to the work/team environment, no matter your skill level, can cause real target-missing problems and be fatal to a company if it's small or bad for the department if you're looking at a larger place.
Most HR-conducted interviews are 100% personality tests, since they pretty much don't have the knowledge to quiz you on technical matters. And most employers, even technical ones, don't bother to give you a technical interview. IME. That alone tells you the value that employers put on personality above technical ability.
I guess I've just never seen a need for such a product; I didn't know there was a market for it.
Here's an instance where it's super handy: Apple ships servers with no video card. To configure them, on first boot the Server will announce itself via BonJour regardless of the IP (or no IP if there is no DCHP server) that it's using. A client utility on any ol' random Mac you have (that's on the same network) will listen for those announcements, and thereby let you connect to and configure the Server.
Otherwise you'd have to know the IP address that the server had been given in order to ssh to it to configure, and if it was on a DHCP server, or worse not assigned an IP address, you'd not know how to get to it.
I use BJ with ssh all the time. I'm managing a pool of Macs, all of them assigned IPs via DHCP; they also don't have set hostnames because that's not really necessary. I want to get to one in particular and don't know at that moment what IP it has; so my terminal client can list all of the Macs broadcasting ssh-via-bj and I select the one that I want to get to from the list. Pretty slick.
I find it interesting that Symantec is hit with a $1B tax bill to defend against just as Microsoft is preparing a competitive product. Symantec is sure to be distracted at the least. Nice timing for Microsoft, coincidence?
Frankly, I'm surprised that someone who's responsible for moving around millions, or even perhaps billions, of dollars of ill-gotten gain won't spend $250K a year on a team of competent IT consultants. I wouldn't think it'd be too hard to find a bent IT guy to give advice on security, encryption, what can be recovered from a hard drive etc. Either they think they're too smart to be caught this way, or they think the cops are too dumb to break their encryption, or they just haven't modernized their business practices because they think the old ways still work.
Interestingly, by all accounts Al Queda is much more technically savvy.
Now lets come back to the real world: If you haven't dabbled in windows ever then you're either a recent jail escapee or very good at digging one's own head deeply into sand.
Sorry. I'm a professional IT support person, have been for 5 years, and only very rarely turn on the Windows PC on my desk--once every two months or so. I've never personally owned a PC. Yet I know my way around the web and RFCs.
So I think it's you, rather, that has a narrow perspective. You can get real work done on computers and yet be Windows ignorant; there are other, real, viable platforms for getting profitable work done, regardless of what Microsoft would have you believe.
While I can find the start button in Windows, I wouldn't know the top ten pieces of software to use, either. I can't tell you how long it's been since I cared about what's best Anti-Virus products, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
Try "AcidSearch". While I'm happy with Google in my search box for most default searches, Acid allows for the customizability that you desire.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 24092
Off-topic, but joking aside, I'm sorry to hear that much time is spent on such tasks. If I paid $20M to get to space, I wouldn't want to spend 30 minutes futzing with an email account; time is money, and not at an inexpensive rate.
Why don't they use simpler systems that are less prone to issues than WinXP?
Although space is a pretty complicated affair, and I can understand having complicated systems to support it, an email configuration doesn't seem to be something is interacts enough with the limitations of that environment that it should be complicated by it.
It says the president is in charge of national defense
Where does it say that? Article II Section 2: "The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States".
I think there's a pretty wide divide between being put in charge of the military, and being unilaterally in charge of national defense, but I guess I can follow that reasoning. Even if it's self-serving.
and the Congress has no right to usurp that power
Oh, I see. Baloney. If that was actually true, military actions wouldn't be constrained to budgetary limitations imposed by Congress. Nor would the War Powers Act of 1973 have passed constitutional muster.
I have talked to several people at companies that make software we DO like, and they say they will never port over to Linux. Ever.
To be clear, I'm not going to argue with you. But that's a tremendously frustrating thing to say. What happened to "the customer is always right"? More importantly, from where do they derive this arrogance? There are four likely outcomes to this:
While route #1 may seem likely now, how many tech gorillas have lasted more than 20 years in a dominant position? IBM? Wang? DEC? Apple?
While it may well not be Linux, or Apple, or even Google, that trumps Microsoft, I can well believe that nobody will be using Windows in 30 years. And hopefully the morons that have based their business on the exclusivity of the Windows platform go down with it.
One has to wonder if this Monday-morning quarterbacking will ever end.
No. No, it won't.
And I'd maintain that if you, or your leader, can't stand being second guessed, you shouldn't live in a democracy, where that's our birthright. You can safely expect the wisdom of this endeavor to be questioned for as long as the records of it are extant: we still take lesson from the military expeditions of Rome, for example.
I guess these employers wouldn't want to hire Trump then either.
How many copies of this gene did the fire-by-email Radio Shack managers have?
Google doesn't ship code to customers, so are under no obligation to release source. I don't believe the GPL v 3 would change that, either.
While very complete, I believe you forgot The Fantasy Trip, which according to wiki, came out in 1980.
IIRC, TFT featured classes and skills, with skills available to all classes but more expensive if you purchased a skill outside of your class core competency. Useful for mages to have a hold out weapon, or for warriors (or thieves) to have a one-trick spell. Also notable for it's influence on GURPS, and does much to prevent accusations of SJGames having ripped off the Hero System (it's more likely Hero borrowed ideas from TFT if anything.)
Is Microsoft defending against this notion through it's stock buy back plan? I would presume that would give more voting shares to the current Board of Directors, who could then vote against new management; but perhaps that is an oversimplification.
What other reasons does MS have to repurchase it's stock? I don't understand the benefit that this gives to a company.
Do they feel that their stock is undervalued now, so by repurchasing it they can sell it later at a better price, and thereby acquire more financial resources?
Calling that a "Child porn investigation case" is one of the most misleading statements I've ever heard. It was a "porn on the 'net fishing expedition."
Ok, can you elaborate on that? Normally, the cases where the prosecutors ask Google for Orkut user info normally involve child porn or drug distribution, and at least one case involved "virginity auctions" of ten-year-olds.
FAQ: What does the Google subpoena mean? The GP is right--the DOJ was fishing, and expected search engines to assist in their witchhunt to support their tenous position.
People on Google Brasil have access to the data just like people from the Google US.
That doesn't mean that they have the right, or can be compelled, to divulge that information.
And even if nobody in Google Brasil has access to such data, they can ask Google US for the data.
Which is what was suggested that they do.
For those playing at home: we just learned why Google is hesitant to build data centers in countries that have weaker protection for freedomes than does the US.
Seriously--if you just insulated the case with a blanket of something, closing off the air vents, might the natural processes of the computer keep the internals warm enough on their own?
I think you chose an interesting example of the reasonableness of science wrt to changing it's hypothesis.
Discover Magazine currently has a cover article that suggests that a change to that exact formula is required: "a change to F = ma/a0 when accelerations fall below one 10-billionth of a meter per second every second".
Not surprisingly, the physicist is facing a lot of resistance to the change, a good deal of it just due to the fact that F=ma has lots of historical precedent, not strictly becuase of the merits of the theory. Even scientists, it appears, are resistant to changing their assumptions.
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I'm sure the existing SGI management would like to believe that, not least because it'll help to retain their current employees until they themselves are able to find new work somewhere else.
The fact is, that even with a series a innovative ideas, at this point they don't have, and can't get, the financial resources to execute them. Let alone hire the talent needed to make it work.
So they're screwed. The only questions that remain are: who's going to buy the IP that they haven't already sold off; and what are the current customers going to do for support contracts. If I'm not mistaken, SGI has recently sold some multi-million systems to the government. If the government was smart, they included an "in case of bankruptcy" proviso for hardware and software support. Knowing the government, they probably didn't--and are going to shortly find that they have an unmaintable albatross.
Most employers don't hire by searching resumes on the web anyway. They post a listing and wait for the applicants to come to them.
I respectfully disagree. If you send your resume and application to a job posting, you are competing with the 100 other applicants that did the same. Whereas, if a recruiter finds your resume online and likes you enough to contact you, they are already sold enough to initiate the human level of contact.
I have always gotten much further in the interview process when it was initiated by the recruiter instead of the other way around.
And to that end, I almost always keep my resume online--I just only update it when I'm more actively looking. If an employer found that offensive, they should sign a contract with me that binds me for life. Until I get that, I'm going to more or less continue looking, or considering offers, perpetually.
They're charging no more than people appear to be willing to pay. The problem?People wouldn't be willing to pay that amount if they had viable, competitive alternatives. Which they don't, because of Microsoft's illegal use of monopoly.
I'd work for scott in a heartbeat.
So would 40,000 others, apparently. Which may be a factor in Sun's recent losses; I wonder if your sentiment will still hold true after Sun has had to 25% of their current workforce. Sometimes technologists don't make the best buisnessmen, and "letting them drive" could be precisely why Sun is in the position it now is in.
If you change that setting, and you cook your machine, it's your own fault.
Happen to know, say empirically, if is in fact will happen? Did Apple just underclock the card to save battery life/fan noise (in which case it'd be nice if they ramped it up when it's plugged in, vs. on battery) or is the fan and friends not able to dissipate the heat from an upclocked video card?
That's the funniest sig I've seen in awhile.
All that work, and Microsoft Office: Mac with network homes still sucks shit. I could also complain about the Office Installer that is a "drag" installer, but then on first use it just runs a script to install crap everywhere. Yeah, that doesn't count--for it to be real drag installer, it has to be a drag uninstaller, too.
I would be willing to give MS a pass on network homes, as maybe it's a little exotic; but it's not that bad of an idea, and no other application seems to be as confused by it as Office.
What does my personality have to do with my ability to perform in a job?
Pretty much everything. Most employers take the position that they can train any reasonably skilled person to do the task at hand, as long as they can work with the existing team. OTOH, disruption to the work/team environment, no matter your skill level, can cause real target-missing problems and be fatal to a company if it's small or bad for the department if you're looking at a larger place.
Most HR-conducted interviews are 100% personality tests, since they pretty much don't have the knowledge to quiz you on technical matters. And most employers, even technical ones, don't bother to give you a technical interview. IME. That alone tells you the value that employers put on personality above technical ability.
I guess I've just never seen a need for such a product; I didn't know there was a market for it.
Here's an instance where it's super handy: Apple ships servers with no video card. To configure them, on first boot the Server will announce itself via BonJour regardless of the IP (or no IP if there is no DCHP server) that it's using. A client utility on any ol' random Mac you have (that's on the same network) will listen for those announcements, and thereby let you connect to and configure the Server.
Otherwise you'd have to know the IP address that the server had been given in order to ssh to it to configure, and if it was on a DHCP server, or worse not assigned an IP address, you'd not know how to get to it.
I use BJ with ssh all the time. I'm managing a pool of Macs, all of them assigned IPs via DHCP; they also don't have set hostnames because that's not really necessary. I want to get to one in particular and don't know at that moment what IP it has; so my terminal client can list all of the Macs broadcasting ssh-via-bj and I select the one that I want to get to from the list. Pretty slick.
I find it interesting that Symantec is hit with a $1B tax bill to defend against just as Microsoft is preparing a competitive product. Symantec is sure to be distracted at the least. Nice timing for Microsoft, coincidence?
Frankly, I'm surprised that someone who's responsible for moving around millions, or even perhaps billions, of dollars of ill-gotten gain won't spend $250K a year on a team of competent IT consultants. I wouldn't think it'd be too hard to find a bent IT guy to give advice on security, encryption, what can be recovered from a hard drive etc. Either they think they're too smart to be caught this way, or they think the cops are too dumb to break their encryption, or they just haven't modernized their business practices because they think the old ways still work.
Interestingly, by all accounts Al Queda is much more technically savvy.
Now lets come back to the real world: If you haven't dabbled in windows ever then you're either a recent jail escapee or very good at digging one's own head deeply into sand.
Sorry. I'm a professional IT support person, have been for 5 years, and only very rarely turn on the Windows PC on my desk--once every two months or so. I've never personally owned a PC. Yet I know my way around the web and RFCs.
So I think it's you, rather, that has a narrow perspective. You can get real work done on computers and yet be Windows ignorant; there are other, real, viable platforms for getting profitable work done, regardless of what Microsoft would have you believe.
While I can find the start button in Windows, I wouldn't know the top ten pieces of software to use, either. I can't tell you how long it's been since I cared about what's best Anti-Virus products, for example.