Yeah, the one that sticks out in my mind is "Hi, I work for a government contractor and want root access to our new cluster. Can Slashdot help me justify this to my company as somehow necessary?"
2.2lbs? I don't know. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth? Certainly. You have to remember, this thing has a cheap processor, hardly any ram, and practically no hard disk space.
If I got a notebook that is an equivalent performer, I could afford those things easily.
Eh, I don't know. I use my laptop pretty much 24/7, except periods when I have a book in front of me or when I'm camping or being sociable. I only find it uncomfy on airplanes, which I accept as an excuse to catch up on leisure reading.
Oh, well, certainly it could be useful for such things. I'd want the size to be knocked down to about half of what it is, but then you run into issues with the size of the display and such.
I tend to think that successful incarnations of such an item, in a ubiquitous computing environment, would almost by necessity be integrated into a wearable form-factor device.
The thing is marketted as, essentially, the hardware incarnation of a web browser. I think you're thinking more with your enthusiasm to hack the device than any packaged functionality.
For instance, your application would require a fridge equipped with an RFID reader, and all of the food to be tagged, or some other mechanism for determining its contents... perhaps a visual scan with a camera, and software for determining what the items are. After all of that's been done, a PDA could handle the rest nicely.
At $800, you get 20 Gigs of HD, 802.11-B, and an X-Scale processor (and I think 256M of RAM). In other words, a crippled machine by todays standards. On Ebay, I could probably pick up 3 laptops with these specs for that, all of which would have real keyboards and large screens.
I wouldn't worry about it. If these folks are to be competitive, they will manage to learn the material themselves, or find education in it.
What I WOULD worry about is management cracking out on every new buzzword that comes along. Perhaps you can't get a project done using only "buzzword X." That I worry about, but, interestingly, introducing new buzzwords really doesn't change the situation.
Relax. Why do you care what a bunch of web developers are doing anyway? If they have their fun with whatever tool it is that they are using, then they have their fun. The people who are going to introduce the next disruptive technology aren't going to get caught up in all of the hype anyway.
Eh, that claim is ok. They're not saying that the life forms could survive the journey through space... just a landing. They aren't even making claims that they could survive re-entry.
Yes, however, if you take it as justification of theories regarding panspermia, you would need much more evidence to back other claims.
You are so correct. Tracking down MPPE patches, and getting everything patched up was just a pain. Linux finally got to the point where I didn't have to do much patching to get everything running, and then I needed to VPN into my campus network. I've been waiting for this patch to be merged into the kernel since I started using it.
Actually, to me, it sounded like a collaboration between several employees.
The answers of the "single" employee being intereviewed are interesting in that their English is significantly better in the first few answers.
Then, look at how they address a few of the questions. The questioner obviously had better contact with some of management than the interviewee. I don't care how many online forums you post in... it sounded to me like the questioner knew way too much about the situation to not have been an insider... IE, and employee at the company. I'd say that at least 3 people inside the company were involved in that interview.
As for motives... we're talking about employees who now need to find other jobs. They wouldn't want to be tied to a company that 1, bombed and 2, has a nasty scandal tied to it. I'm sure that few Enron employees are highlighting their managerial experience there. Most probably, these folks are looking for some damage control. Their story sounds fairly credible, and far from an isolated experience in this industry. I only worked as a software developer a short time (I'm doing the graduate school thing now... well, research at the moment, until I start my PhD), but I was at a contract house, so I met a lot of people.
Well, sacrificing a few moderations, I'd also have to point out that having managment with no respect for their employees also dooms a project to failure. An incompetent, insulting boss absolutely dooms your team.
If your boss can't treat you with respect, it's an indicator of other issues that they have that are likley to destroy any chances you have of successful completion of any project. If you ever have the opportunity to see a company with a design team run like this side by side with one where the boss respects their employees, you can see that the difference is night and day.
Actually, I gain a LOT of knowledge from the questions I ask
Be careful on that one. Most of the posters on/. aren't exactly specialists on what they're discussing. When a field that I am knowledgeable in has an article posted, I often notice that it is the folks who know the least are the ones modded the highest.
The Internet still seems to be running, so I guess that shutting down the Internet didn't pan out for the EU.
Anyway, I understand that people want to take a whack at the US for their role in that debacle, but, would the UN have done differently? I don't know that they would have.
I don't necessarily think that the US should have done what they did, but bouncing out to say that somehow international control would have resulted in a different outcome seems a bit incorrect. Am I wrong?
If you're at a defense contractor, they're probably following the DoD Guidelines of least privelege, logging, stuff of that nature.
What you're asking is, essentially, to establish yourself as a certain class of user under whatever scheme you're using, or for some kind of "well, Slashdot agrees" circumvention of guidelines.
It reminds me of a time that I was working on such a machine, and I sat in a conference room where people were trying to bargain with me as if I represent the STIG. The simple fact of the matter is, the STIG is a set of guidelines, and nobody's opinion will change the contents of the document.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, the one that sticks out in my mind is "Hi, I work for a government contractor and want root access to our new cluster. Can Slashdot help me justify this to my company as somehow necessary?"
2.2lbs? I don't know. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth? Certainly. You have to remember, this thing has a cheap processor, hardly any ram, and practically no hard disk space.
If I got a notebook that is an equivalent performer, I could afford those things easily.
The Pepper Pad. We're talking about the Pepper Pad.
Eh, I don't know. I use my laptop pretty much 24/7, except periods when I have a book in front of me or when I'm camping or being sociable. I only find it uncomfy on airplanes, which I accept as an excuse to catch up on leisure reading.
Oh, well, certainly it could be useful for such things. I'd want the size to be knocked down to about half of what it is, but then you run into issues with the size of the display and such.
I tend to think that successful incarnations of such an item, in a ubiquitous computing environment, would almost by necessity be integrated into a wearable form-factor device.
The Pepper Pad... not the Nokia 770.
The thing is marketted as, essentially, the hardware incarnation of a web browser. I think you're thinking more with your enthusiasm to hack the device than any packaged functionality.
For instance, your application would require a fridge equipped with an RFID reader, and all of the food to be tagged, or some other mechanism for determining its contents... perhaps a visual scan with a camera, and software for determining what the items are. After all of that's been done, a PDA could handle the rest nicely.
I would also note that at 6.6"x12.1"x0.8", you are not putting this in your pack pocket.
In case you think you'll find your 2 $400 Pepper Pads, I also did a Froogle Search.
n G=Search+Froogle&lmode=unknown
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=pepper+pad&bt
The price listed on Amazon.com is $800.
At $800, you get 20 Gigs of HD, 802.11-B, and an X-Scale processor (and I think 256M of RAM). In other words, a crippled machine by todays standards. On Ebay, I could probably pick up 3 laptops with these specs for that, all of which would have real keyboards and large screens.
At $800, I could just buy a laptop. Why would I want this?
I wouldn't worry about it. If these folks are to be competitive, they will manage to learn the material themselves, or find education in it.
What I WOULD worry about is management cracking out on every new buzzword that comes along. Perhaps you can't get a project done using only "buzzword X." That I worry about, but, interestingly, introducing new buzzwords really doesn't change the situation.
Relax. Why do you care what a bunch of web developers are doing anyway? If they have their fun with whatever tool it is that they are using, then they have their fun. The people who are going to introduce the next disruptive technology aren't going to get caught up in all of the hype anyway.
Wow, starting at zero. Sorry you got the mod bitchslap dude.
You only have 5 posts on record, how did that happen?
I have $3/month, flat rate.
This includes unlimitted text messaging.
I think that I spotted a dupe
True. I know a number of professors who live off in what I would believe to be a fairly rural area.
When John Stewart came to my campus, he commented that he didn't see anything for miles that he couldn't milk.
Eh, that claim is ok. They're not saying that the life forms could survive the journey through space... just a landing. They aren't even making claims that they could survive re-entry.
Yes, however, if you take it as justification of theories regarding panspermia, you would need much more evidence to back other claims.
You are so correct. Tracking down MPPE patches, and getting everything patched up was just a pain. Linux finally got to the point where I didn't have to do much patching to get everything running, and then I needed to VPN into my campus network. I've been waiting for this patch to be merged into the kernel since I started using it.
Actually, to me, it sounded like a collaboration between several employees.
The answers of the "single" employee being intereviewed are interesting in that their English is significantly better in the first few answers.
Then, look at how they address a few of the questions. The questioner obviously had better contact with some of management than the interviewee. I don't care how many online forums you post in... it sounded to me like the questioner knew way too much about the situation to not have been an insider... IE, and employee at the company. I'd say that at least 3 people inside the company were involved in that interview.
As for motives... we're talking about employees who now need to find other jobs. They wouldn't want to be tied to a company that 1, bombed and 2, has a nasty scandal tied to it. I'm sure that few Enron employees are highlighting their managerial experience there. Most probably, these folks are looking for some damage control. Their story sounds fairly credible, and far from an isolated experience in this industry. I only worked as a software developer a short time (I'm doing the graduate school thing now... well, research at the moment, until I start my PhD), but I was at a contract house, so I met a lot of people.
Well, sacrificing a few moderations, I'd also have to point out that having managment with no respect for their employees also dooms a project to failure. An incompetent, insulting boss absolutely dooms your team.
If your boss can't treat you with respect, it's an indicator of other issues that they have that are likley to destroy any chances you have of successful completion of any project. If you ever have the opportunity to see a company with a design team run like this side by side with one where the boss respects their employees, you can see that the difference is night and day.
Nifty. I think that most of my associates have a more jaded view of Slashdot, though, they all admit to reading it.
Actually, I gain a LOT of knowledge from the questions I ask
/. aren't exactly specialists on what they're discussing. When a field that I am knowledgeable in has an article posted, I often notice that it is the folks who know the least are the ones modded the highest.
Be careful on that one. Most of the posters on
Where have you been? I've had Linux RealPlayer for... I don't know how long... a long time.
The Internet still seems to be running, so I guess that shutting down the Internet didn't pan out for the EU.
Anyway, I understand that people want to take a whack at the US for their role in that debacle, but, would the UN have done differently? I don't know that they would have.
I don't necessarily think that the US should have done what they did, but bouncing out to say that somehow international control would have resulted in a different outcome seems a bit incorrect. Am I wrong?
If you're at a defense contractor, they're probably following the DoD Guidelines of least privelege, logging, stuff of that nature.
What you're asking is, essentially, to establish yourself as a certain class of user under whatever scheme you're using, or for some kind of "well, Slashdot agrees" circumvention of guidelines.
It reminds me of a time that I was working on such a machine, and I sat in a conference room where people were trying to bargain with me as if I represent the STIG. The simple fact of the matter is, the STIG is a set of guidelines, and nobody's opinion will change the contents of the document.
Stop trying to negotiate it.