I am. Only one thing on your list (a Wii that my daughter and stepdaughter bought just last night with their own money so they could play Wii Fit) is in my house and yet I've got a ton of electronics.
No XBox, no PS3.
4 Macs. 1 a year old. The other 3 are all at least 2.5 years old.
5 Linux boxes; 1 64 bit desktop, 2 32 bit desktops, a 2 year old Dell Laptop, and an eee 901. 2 32 bit XP Pro systems.
4 TVs, none newer than 5 years old.
2 Dish Network satellite receivers, both 6 years old.
A Series One Tivo.
My stereo system has no piece that's less than 6 years old. Heck, my amplifier is about 25 years old!
I've got a ton of electronic gear that could conceivably be replaced soon. I've made no move to replace any of it primarily _because_ of DRM. I'm waiting for some sanity to return to the marketplace before I spend any money.
Really? I found that I almost never cracked a textbook after I left school. OTOH, my copy of CRC's "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" that I bought through a deal my freshman and sophomore physics professor arranged became dogeared beyond belief. It's the only book that I used regularly after I left.
of a used textbook! When I was in school lo, these many years ago, I _always_ bought the most marked up books that I could find. I found the additional emphasis on material and margin notes invaluable. Keeping your books in pristine condition actually detracts from their value as far as I'm concerned.:)
The future is now, and the only thing holding us back is the stranglehold that the teachers unions and teaching 'authorities' have on the system.
From what many of the teachers and professors have posted here, I think it's probably more accurate to say that the publishing companies are the ones with the stranglehold. The good news is that we're beginning to see that stranglehold loosen with the adoption of MIT's Open Coursework initiative, California's move to online texts, etc.
Here's a report released on November 2006. Quoting from the executive summary:
Direct economic impact of FLOSS
The existing base of quality FLOSS applications with reasonable quality control and
distribution would cost firms almost Euro 12 billion to reproduce internally. This code
base has been doubling every 18-24 months over the past eight years, and this growth is
projected to continue for several more years.
This existing base of FLOSS software represents a lower bound of about 131 000 real
person-years of effort that has been devoted exclusively by programmers. As this is
mostly by individuals not directly paid for development, it represents a significant gap in national accounts of productivity. Annualised and adjusted for growth this represents at least Euro 800 million in voluntary contribution from programmers alone each year, of which nearly half are based in Europe.
Firms have invested an estimated Euro 1.2 billion in developing FLOSS software that is made freely available. Such firms represent in total at least 565 000 jobs and Euro 263 billion in annual revenue. Contributing firms are from several non-IT (but often ICT intensive) sectors, and tend to have much higher revenues than non-contributing firms.
Defined broadly, FLOSS-related services could reach a 32% share of all IT services by 2010, and the FLOSS-related share of the economy could reach 4% of European GDP by
2010. FLOSS directly supports the 29% share of software that is developed in-house in
the EU (43% in the U.S.), and provides the natural model for software development for
the secondary software sector.
Sigh. My late great-uncle might disagree with you about that. He taught the subject for nearly 40 years at the Univ. of Minnesota. I think he was dean of the law school before he retired.
I will say that it is accurate to say that there is very little in the way of international law that developed out of the efforts of a parliamentary like body. Instead, virtually all of it is defined by treaty.
Back on topic. I'm not aware of any treaty that defines a common definition of the term "common carrier." Nor am I aware of any UN resolution to that effect. That pretty much covers the usual options, doesn't it?:)
However, another thing to consider is the European attitude to emergencies. I got to see the operators of the facility during an SF6 leak. Those guys weren't casual by any means but they kept their cool better than most refrigerators. Working their way through the emergency drills methodically and and calmly. And that was a potentially life-threatening emergency.
Just wanted to point out that's not solely a European only attitude. That's a "first responder" attitude. I've had the opportunity to see American cops, firemen, and sailors* in action on several occasions. In each case, they all calmly followed their training, dealt with the situation at hand, then went on about their business.
Don't confuse first responders with FUD merchants. Or have you not read the Globe or Daily Mail lately?:)
*(Sailors deal with emergencies a fair amount because a ship is inherently a dangerous place. Murphy gleefully makes sure that emergencies have a way of popping up when the ship is literally thousands of miles from the nearest help.
However, it doesn't help when a CO pushes his ship too hard to score brownie points with a commodore. In the year I was on board a destroyer, we dealt with an engine dropping offline while underway and two fires. The two fires both occurred while we were in the yards for overhaul. One was a welding accident. A fire started on the far side of a bulkhead from an arc welder. I never heard what the cause of the other one was.)
Can't be anywhere near as dangerous as snow snakes. Poisonous little buggers are attracted to body heat, y'know. Worse, they're almost impossible to see in their natural environment during the winter unless you happen to notice their black eyes.
Their reversal of the normal reptilian cycle of hibernate during the winter and active during the summer means that they're only dangerous for about 8 months a year. They're also pretty sluggish until the temp drops to about minus 20 degrees C. They're only really dangerous when it drops below minus 40 C. Fortunately, that only lasts for about six weeks or so here in Minnesota.
They breed like crazy, too. It's a good thing that our fleets of swamp mosquitoes like to dig them out of their nests to feed on them during the summer or we'd be overrun.
Re:They also apply different standards
on
Tech Vs. Business?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I just had to revisit this one:
The ID manager suggested that we could query the database and find out how many people were given a rate inappropriate for the risk - and maybe flag the accounts for quick follow up if they had arrears. Almost unbelievably we were told that on "under no circumstances were we to query the database for this information, as the results could be seen as unfair to the business unit concerned". This came from a board level director so we really had to comply.
Umm, excuse me? This is a financial institution director making a statement like this? I work in the financial industry, too. Ever heard of GLBA? SarBox? Does does this sitting member of the board realize he just put himself in line to be fitted for an orange jumpsuit?
There's an important constitutional theory (decried by some conservatives) that says the Bill of Rights isn't just about what it says, that we have to reinterpret it as circumstances. Certain right fall into the so-called "penumbra" of the Bill; they aren't right in the shadow, but they're close to the edge. This view stems from the Ninth, which says we aren't allowed to treat the Bill of Rights as a bill -- an exhaustive list.
The problem with that theory is that it isn't even wrong because it takes the Ninth out of context. This is especially obvious when considering the Ninth and Tenth together. Quoting from Cornell's Law College site:
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
(emphasis added, obviously)
The Tenth is definitely my personal favorite.:) Too bad nobody else ever remembers it.:(
Note: I'm not saying that's your personal position. Only commenting on the ability of some people to read just what they want to.
The problem that I think you're overlooking is that this guy was stuck in a siege mentality. For years he'd been asking for help and his management chose to ignore him and apparently, in some cases, actively blocked his requests from going further up the chain to someone who'd listen.
Now consider the fact that he was working 50-60 hour weeks and was on call 24/7/365. I've been there, done that, hated the T shirt. Believe me, after a few years of that (and he had apparently been suffering with those kinds of working conditions for 5 or 6), you'd be a little nuts, too.
Did he make an error in judgment? Yes. Was it egregious and irresponsible? Not under the circumstances. In my view, quite the opposite. Was it criminal? Maybe. But since when is the law necessarily about common sense?:(
Then you've never worked for the kind of clueless idiots this guy was working for. Supervisors do NOT need access. Any competent manager knows that's the case. What's needed is more than one competent individual to have access, with backup keys kept in sealed envelopes that are kept in a safe with only logged access to it in case both are hit by a bus on the same day.
BTW, did you miss the part of the case where for _years_ the admin in question begged, _BEGGED_ for someone else who was competent to be hired so he wasn't a single point of failure? That he continually pointed out that there was no DR plan whatsoever?
Nope, this guy made a serious error in judgment in not making sure that the mayor's office had the access information ahead of time. His supervisors are clearly incapable of administering that network and shouldn't be let anywhere near a console.
Having been the victim of Microsoft's quote, 'fantastic' enterprise-level support, unquote for many years I can tell you that you don't have a clue what that phrase really means. There is no way that any competent architect should be picking a Microsoft platform for anything where 5 nines reliability and high transactional volume are both elements of a mission critical platform. There are FAR better alternatives out there that this guy obviously never bothered to research. Tandem Nonstop is still around. Heck, for that matter just about any IBM compatible mainframe would be a much sounder choice.
Setting up NoScript really isn't all that tough. All you click the mouse button once on the NoScript icon on your status bar to open the domain served up by a Website, then once on "Allow myvisitedsite.com". Boom, 2 clicks and your site works from then on.
Many sites do pull stuff from multiple domains so you frequently have to repeat the above sequence a few times. The good news is that many of these same sites pull ad content from their vendors so all you have to do is get familiar with which sites are ad farms. The rest are probably content that you want to see. After you get this stuff done, you have all the meat of a site without annoying ads.
We have a hard enough time finding developers who are proficient in one language, much less two or more.
Then you're hiring the most junior programmers you can find and paying them peanuts. You want talented staff with a broad range of skills? You need to pay reasonably well and encourage them to continually improve their skills. Fund additional training. Encourage them to involve themselves in coding related activities outside work. Reward those who show initiative.
Otherwise, you've got nothing but baby code monkeys who will never grow up to be gorillas.
No one's mentioned this old ESR article yet?
on
Why Corporates Hate Perl
·
· Score: 2, Informative
He describes quite succinctly why he moved away from Perl back around 2000:
...Writing these programs left me progressively less satisfied with Perl. Larger project size seemed to magnify some of Perl's annoyances into serious, continuing problems. The syntax that had seemed merely eccentric at a hundred lines began to seem like a nigh-impenetrable hedge of thorns at a thousand. "More than one way to do it" lent flavor and expressiveness at a small scale, but made it significantly harder to maintain consistent style across a wider code base. And many of the features that were later patched into Perl to address the complexity-control needs of bigger programs (objects, lexical scoping, "use strict", etc.) had a fragile, jerry-rigged feel about them.
These problems combined to make large volumes of Perl code seem unreasonably difficult to read and grasp as a whole after only a few days' absence. Also, I found I was spending more and more time wrestling with artifacts of the language rather than my application problems. And, most damning of all, the resulting code was ugly--this matters. Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.
With a baseline of two dozen languages under my belt, I could detect all the telltale signs of a language design that had been pushed to the edge of its functional envelope. By mid-1997, I was thinking "there has to be a better way" and began casting about for a more elegant scripting language.
I didn't dispute the point that today, I have to keep a Windows partition around to play at least some of the games that I want to. There is a small, but growing, pool of vendors who write cross platform games. When I can, I buy the Linux versions to help encourage them. However, I'm not so fanatic to play only Linux games. If my friends want to play a game that I can't get running on Linux, I have a choice of glorying in my pure Linux fandom or... set up the game in my Windows partition. Guess which way I go.
No, the points that I was taking issue with were your math mistakes (assuming that Linux gamers were somehow a much smaller fraction of Linux users than Windows gamers were of Windows users), and the assumption that because we Linux gamers/had/ to keep a Windows partition around at the moment, we would always be willing to do so. Today, yes. In two or three years? Not so much. Given the development cycles for games, vendors need to be thinking about what we'll want for a gaming platform then, not now.
As I said; the market is shifting and all desktop software vendors should be prepared for the change. Windows is dangerously close to dropping below 90% of the market for the first time in what? 15 years? You don't think that won't have a huge psychological impact on the marketplace when it occurs next year or the year after?
It's hard to tell how close your numbers are. However, I think you're making a couple of faulty assumptions. First, I think it's reasonable to assume that the number of people who are Linux gamers when compared to the total number of Linux users is roughly equivalent to the number of Windows gamers to the total number of Windows users. Therefore, the ratio of Linux gamers to Windows gamers should be close to the ratio of Linux users to Windows users.
The other assumption that you make that Linux gamers would just as soon game on a Windows partition is very probably wrong. I can tell you that I personally would far rather game on my Linux partition than my Windows one.
My preference for gaming under Linux is a pragmatic one. At this point, I only keep the Windows partition around for gaming. All Windows does for me is take up drive space and keeps me updating two OSes instead of one. I'd love to dump it and simplify my life.:)
Another piece of evidence that I can talk about, but unfortunately can no longer cite, is the proportion of Linux gamers for America's Army when compared to Windows players. Back when the Linux client was still available, there was an official mirror site in Europe that used to display their tracking numbers for the number of downloads per OS. Just before the US Army decided to quit supporting Linux, 15% of the downloads for that game from that site were Linux.
Now, no other official mirror that I was aware of at the time listed the ratio of Linux to Windows. However, I think it's a reasonable assumption that a relatively large number of people who were playing AA were doing so on Linux.
I will concede that today, the number of Linux installations is still hovering around 1% or a little less (depending on the web tracking site you follow). However, unlike Windows XP or even Windows in general, Linux's install base is growing. It's been doing so for nearly two years with almost no marketing budget. In fact, it's been growing ever since Vista was released. (Thank you, Microsoft! lol)
Therefore, any gaming company who is watching the market should be positioning themselves to be cross platform. It's no longer a one horse race. In just a year or two, they'er going to be looking at a market that will have Windows as a dominant, but no longer overwhelming, player. Ignoring OS/X and Linux will mean ignoring a much more significant fraction of the market than in the past.
Any for-profit company is not going to spend money and time to develop software then give it away to competitors. That is not only stupid, but it's illegal, and warrants a lawsuit by the shareholders.
Oh, really? Lawsuits by shareholders, you say? My, where do I sign up for this lawsuit against Red Hat? Novell? AMD? Intel? IBM? etc. etc. etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I am. Only one thing on your list (a Wii that my daughter and stepdaughter bought just last night with their own money so they could play Wii Fit) is in my house and yet I've got a ton of electronics.
No XBox, no PS3.
4 Macs. 1 a year old. The other 3 are all at least 2.5 years old.
5 Linux boxes; 1 64 bit desktop, 2 32 bit desktops, a 2 year old Dell Laptop, and an eee 901. 2 32 bit XP Pro systems.
4 TVs, none newer than 5 years old.
2 Dish Network satellite receivers, both 6 years old.
A Series One Tivo.
My stereo system has no piece that's less than 6 years old. Heck, my amplifier is about 25 years old!
I've got a ton of electronic gear that could conceivably be replaced soon. I've made no move to replace any of it primarily _because_ of DRM. I'm waiting for some sanity to return to the marketplace before I spend any money.
Really? I found that I almost never cracked a textbook after I left school. OTOH, my copy of CRC's "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" that I bought through a deal my freshman and sophomore physics professor arranged became dogeared beyond belief. It's the only book that I used regularly after I left.
of a used textbook! When I was in school lo, these many years ago, I _always_ bought the most marked up books that I could find. I found the additional emphasis on material and margin notes invaluable. Keeping your books in pristine condition actually detracts from their value as far as I'm concerned. :)
There just a few vendors out there ya know...
From what many of the teachers and professors have posted here, I think it's probably more accurate to say that the publishing companies are the ones with the stranglehold. The good news is that we're beginning to see that stranglehold loosen with the adoption of MIT's Open Coursework initiative, California's move to online texts, etc.
Amen, hallelujah!
Sigh. My late great-uncle might disagree with you about that. He taught the subject for nearly 40 years at the Univ. of Minnesota. I think he was dean of the law school before he retired.
I will say that it is accurate to say that there is very little in the way of international law that developed out of the efforts of a parliamentary like body. Instead, virtually all of it is defined by treaty.
Back on topic. I'm not aware of any treaty that defines a common definition of the term "common carrier." Nor am I aware of any UN resolution to that effect. That pretty much covers the usual options, doesn't it? :)
She should spend some time on the phone with Neelie Kroes (sp?)
Not to mention the Chicago Exchange, the NYSE, NASDAQ, virtually all large trading companies, etc...
Just wanted to point out that's not solely a European only attitude. That's a "first responder" attitude. I've had the opportunity to see American cops, firemen, and sailors* in action on several occasions. In each case, they all calmly followed their training, dealt with the situation at hand, then went on about their business.
Don't confuse first responders with FUD merchants. Or have you not read the Globe or Daily Mail lately? :)
*(Sailors deal with emergencies a fair amount because a ship is inherently a dangerous place. Murphy gleefully makes sure that emergencies have a way of popping up when the ship is literally thousands of miles from the nearest help.
However, it doesn't help when a CO pushes his ship too hard to score brownie points with a commodore. In the year I was on board a destroyer, we dealt with an engine dropping offline while underway and two fires. The two fires both occurred while we were in the yards for overhaul. One was a welding accident. A fire started on the far side of a bulkhead from an arc welder. I never heard what the cause of the other one was.)
Can't be anywhere near as dangerous as snow snakes. Poisonous little buggers are attracted to body heat, y'know. Worse, they're almost impossible to see in their natural environment during the winter unless you happen to notice their black eyes.
Their reversal of the normal reptilian cycle of hibernate during the winter and active during the summer means that they're only dangerous for about 8 months a year. They're also pretty sluggish until the temp drops to about minus 20 degrees C. They're only really dangerous when it drops below minus 40 C. Fortunately, that only lasts for about six weeks or so here in Minnesota.
They breed like crazy, too. It's a good thing that our fleets of swamp mosquitoes like to dig them out of their nests to feed on them during the summer or we'd be overrun.
Umm, excuse me? This is a financial institution director making a statement like this? I work in the financial industry, too. Ever heard of GLBA? SarBox? Does does this sitting member of the board realize he just put himself in line to be fitted for an orange jumpsuit?
The problem with that theory is that it isn't even wrong because it takes the Ninth out of context. This is especially obvious when considering the Ninth and Tenth together. Quoting from Cornell's Law College site:
(emphasis added, obviously)
The Tenth is definitely my personal favorite. :) Too bad nobody else ever remembers it. :(
Note: I'm not saying that's your personal position. Only commenting on the ability of some people to read just what they want to.
The problem that I think you're overlooking is that this guy was stuck in a siege mentality. For years he'd been asking for help and his management chose to ignore him and apparently, in some cases, actively blocked his requests from going further up the chain to someone who'd listen.
Now consider the fact that he was working 50-60 hour weeks and was on call 24/7/365. I've been there, done that, hated the T shirt. Believe me, after a few years of that (and he had apparently been suffering with those kinds of working conditions for 5 or 6), you'd be a little nuts, too.
Did he make an error in judgment? Yes. Was it egregious and irresponsible? Not under the circumstances. In my view, quite the opposite. Was it criminal? Maybe. But since when is the law necessarily about common sense? :(
Then you've never worked for the kind of clueless idiots this guy was working for. Supervisors do NOT need access. Any competent manager knows that's the case. What's needed is more than one competent individual to have access, with backup keys kept in sealed envelopes that are kept in a safe with only logged access to it in case both are hit by a bus on the same day.
BTW, did you miss the part of the case where for _years_ the admin in question begged, _BEGGED_ for someone else who was competent to be hired so he wasn't a single point of failure? That he continually pointed out that there was no DR plan whatsoever?
Nope, this guy made a serious error in judgment in not making sure that the mayor's office had the access information ahead of time. His supervisors are clearly incapable of administering that network and shouldn't be let anywhere near a console.
Having been the victim of Microsoft's quote, 'fantastic' enterprise-level support, unquote for many years I can tell you that you don't have a clue what that phrase really means. There is no way that any competent architect should be picking a Microsoft platform for anything where 5 nines reliability and high transactional volume are both elements of a mission critical platform. There are FAR better alternatives out there that this guy obviously never bothered to research. Tandem Nonstop is still around. Heck, for that matter just about any IBM compatible mainframe would be a much sounder choice.
Whooooosh!
Setting up NoScript really isn't all that tough. All you click the mouse button once on the NoScript icon on your status bar to open the domain served up by a Website, then once on "Allow myvisitedsite.com". Boom, 2 clicks and your site works from then on.
Many sites do pull stuff from multiple domains so you frequently have to repeat the above sequence a few times. The good news is that many of these same sites pull ad content from their vendors so all you have to do is get familiar with which sites are ad farms. The rest are probably content that you want to see. After you get this stuff done, you have all the meat of a site without annoying ads.
NoScript. Don't leave home without it. :)
Then you're hiring the most junior programmers you can find and paying them peanuts. You want talented staff with a broad range of skills? You need to pay reasonably well and encourage them to continually improve their skills. Fund additional training. Encourage them to involve themselves in coding related activities outside work. Reward those who show initiative.
Otherwise, you've got nothing but baby code monkeys who will never grow up to be gorillas.
He describes quite succinctly why he moved away from Perl back around 2000:
The rest of the essay can be found here.
So, you write all your code blocks with no indentation?
I didn't dispute the point that today, I have to keep a Windows partition around to play at least some of the games that I want to. There is a small, but growing, pool of vendors who write cross platform games. When I can, I buy the Linux versions to help encourage them. However, I'm not so fanatic to play only Linux games. If my friends want to play a game that I can't get running on Linux, I have a choice of glorying in my pure Linux fandom or... set up the game in my Windows partition. Guess which way I go.
No, the points that I was taking issue with were your math mistakes (assuming that Linux gamers were somehow a much smaller fraction of Linux users than Windows gamers were of Windows users), and the assumption that because we Linux gamers /had/ to keep a Windows partition around at the moment, we would always be willing to do so. Today, yes. In two or three years? Not so much. Given the development cycles for games, vendors need to be thinking about what we'll want for a gaming platform then, not now.
As I said; the market is shifting and all desktop software vendors should be prepared for the change. Windows is dangerously close to dropping below 90% of the market for the first time in what? 15 years? You don't think that won't have a huge psychological impact on the marketplace when it occurs next year or the year after?
It's hard to tell how close your numbers are. However, I think you're making a couple of faulty assumptions. First, I think it's reasonable to assume that the number of people who are Linux gamers when compared to the total number of Linux users is roughly equivalent to the number of Windows gamers to the total number of Windows users. Therefore, the ratio of Linux gamers to Windows gamers should be close to the ratio of Linux users to Windows users.
The other assumption that you make that Linux gamers would just as soon game on a Windows partition is very probably wrong. I can tell you that I personally would far rather game on my Linux partition than my Windows one.
My preference for gaming under Linux is a pragmatic one. At this point, I only keep the Windows partition around for gaming. All Windows does for me is take up drive space and keeps me updating two OSes instead of one. I'd love to dump it and simplify my life. :)
Another piece of evidence that I can talk about, but unfortunately can no longer cite, is the proportion of Linux gamers for America's Army when compared to Windows players. Back when the Linux client was still available, there was an official mirror site in Europe that used to display their tracking numbers for the number of downloads per OS. Just before the US Army decided to quit supporting Linux, 15% of the downloads for that game from that site were Linux.
Now, no other official mirror that I was aware of at the time listed the ratio of Linux to Windows. However, I think it's a reasonable assumption that a relatively large number of people who were playing AA were doing so on Linux.
I will concede that today, the number of Linux installations is still hovering around 1% or a little less (depending on the web tracking site you follow). However, unlike Windows XP or even Windows in general, Linux's install base is growing. It's been doing so for nearly two years with almost no marketing budget. In fact, it's been growing ever since Vista was released. (Thank you, Microsoft! lol)
Therefore, any gaming company who is watching the market should be positioning themselves to be cross platform. It's no longer a one horse race. In just a year or two, they'er going to be looking at a market that will have Windows as a dominant, but no longer overwhelming, player. Ignoring OS/X and Linux will mean ignoring a much more significant fraction of the market than in the past.
Oh, really? Lawsuits by shareholders, you say? My, where do I sign up for this lawsuit against Red Hat? Novell? AMD? Intel? IBM? etc. etc. etc.