If you look at the history of the American democracy, there have been hyjinx in literally EVERY election since the start. There are stories of candidates sending wagons to the barrooms, and giving whisky to anyone who would vote for him. Registration is meant to curb the old "wheel them across town to vote again" trick. The problem isn't registration, it's general voter apathy. The thing about democracy is that the system only works if everyone votes. Luckly, we have layered upon the democracy a representative government, wherein you pick a good guy from your local area to represent you. The problem of course is that the good guy is most likely going to be more than 50% financed by corporations rather than individuals. Not always the case but often. Such is the state of affairs. 99% of the money in the hands of 1% of the population does that. The Republicans have moved from favoring the representatives to blantant corporatism--making corporations the government. It has been pointed out that this is exactly what happened in the 30's in Italy. It's affected the balance of America, because previously the subjugation of democracy has led to smaller government. Now, with democracy down AND a larger government (specifically homoland security), the political stability of the country is much lower. Now, we still have the 3 tiers, and not everyone in congress and senate has been bought by the immortality lobby yet. And really, the most important thing to you should be your local area. So, if you're going to worry about it, worry about local issues first, and move up as you go. Local can also mean on the internet, in your local network area (IE, your regular habitat). Be a leader and see the world change around you. Be a follower, and you'll see it change, but probably not to your liking.
There's a pass there also. If you were going to cross the Sierras in a small plane, you would definitely go down to Mammoth, especially if you were going to L.A. And you never cross mountains perpendicularly, you always approach at an angle.
So, either he's dead in the mountain somewhere and his stuff was carried there by a bear or something OR it's a treasure hunt or something. And he's out of the country with a new name, new face, and no mortgage backed security holdings.;)
That's actually not totally funny. With compcache you can actually turn your spare cpu cycles INTO RAM (well, a ram disk) by utilizing compression on swapped pages.
The problem with swap is that the system will always use all available RAM for system cache. And once it has it it will not give it up and will swap stuff out. There are people using RAM disks for swap on mysql servers which makes some sense, and gives you some control over stuff. I mean, if you can fit your entire table space into RAM, you don't want linux messing it up by swapping out some lesser used tables just to get system cache.
It's always a good idea to get a lot of RAM and less swap. Having a big swap file is not going to be a benefit. If you have 8GB of RAM and you are swapping 8GB your system is going to be so slow you won't be able to move. Swap is for emergencies, and if you want to move some less used processes there it's ok for that also.
From what I've seen, the only people using Google are kids who don't know that it is not the email service but rather they, the email user, that is the product. A product Google sells to advertisters, marketers, etc.
Hey, it's fine for your personal email, and they have an $$ Enterprise edition that just barely doesn't suck compared to their competitors, and they are fighting the good fight against wireless so maybe thank god we can get stuff the Japanese and Europeans have had for years.
RMS is right, with the cloud it's just like any other hosted service. You are at the mercy of the provider. Personally, I like having my server with me and decide what it can or can't do. I can decide how vigorously I want to enforce the SLA, I can decide what type of processor, cooling, hard drive, etc. for my purposes. With the cloud, you are dependent on unreliable hardware that's supposedly magically made reliable because of redundancy. But guess what, if I drop a connection I drop a connection, regardless of how many servers I have waiting for me to reconnect to.
It's not paranoia driving this. RMS was around in the mainframe days when all computers were, you guessed it, a service. It sucked. IBM and Ma Bell ruled the world, and the only time you could play with a computer was at a university, and only for few minutes. Nowadays we depend on computers a lot more for our daily lives, banking, shopping, communications, etc. And to make the single point of failure AGAIN back to the network, which is and always will be the weakest link, is a bad idea. Better to write better standalone software that can tap in and extend itself. Why does everyone want everything controlled for them anyway? Isn't there any DIY spirit anymore? Beyond that it doesn't make sense to ride everything on your network connection, the one thing you will never have any control over.
Yeah, why not just lie? If you really think they care to check out the references of some 30-40K a year beginner, you're fooling yourself. They don't give a shit. So, what they're really looking for is how well you sell yourself? Oh, you sat and answered phones doing tech support? "Developed solutions for clients." You had to fill out an end of shift report? "Documented solutions accurately" You came to work on time "Demonstrated reliability and punctuality".
Now, forget the jobs, forget the education. Those are your smallest sections. Create a section called "skills" and list your skills (literally every piece of software/language/technique) you've touched and how many years you've done it. You've surfed the web? "HTTP" You've chatted before? "Realtime Communications" You've used MySpace "Content Management Systems" And since you are a "computer engineer" (which hopefully means 4 year degree and not some devry bullshit [in that case, leave it off entirely]).
If you can't get a job with a computer engineering degree you must not
A. Have a decent suit B. Know how to shave ALL the hairs off your face C. Take a shower D. Be personable at ALL.
So, basically, you need to lie, list ALL your skills, and stop being such a jerk in the interview.
Talking about the invention of 4chan is like talking about the invention of masturbation: It was bound to happen, we all do it from time to time, and it won't ever be discussed on CNet.
It's a well known fact that the imagery providers have to obscure certain things. Just because a few of the images mentioned in the story turned out to be unobscured later doesn't mean they weren't at the time of the writing. The images are updated quite regularly, and once Google's satalites start working it'll be even more freqent.
Yes, it's censorship to obscure the imagery, but it's a tough balance to strike. Yes, information wants to be free. And as a taxpayer, it could be argued that you have a right to see whatever your government has been spending your money on. But people in other countries do not. Furthermore, the plans and everything for most of these buildings are located in the bottom of a filing cabinet in a dark basement room with a sign on the door that says "Beware of Leopard". That said, it sure is cool to look at government stuff, and the imagery being available makes it real easy.
For me, it's fun to find black helicopers and such, but that's basically it. It's just fun to look at stuff. I like those 'eyeball' things over at cryptome.org also. The risk is pretty low that someone would be able to plan an operation or something with just the image data. So they take away the fun to hopefully mitigate a small amount of risk.
On the flip side (again), there seems to be so many secrets these days. Too many, if you ask me. But, hopefully they know what they're doing.
Soon people will be able to upload their own photos to the view, like in that Microsoft thing, but on a 3d globe like Google Earth. People taking photos from passenger airplanes and such. More private aerial photos and satellites with small resolution and lower latency. It will happen. Google is on the right track with GIS, I think it'll be the killer app of the 2010's. Google has the power to pull everything together, it might take a while but soon there will be a nice parallel universe inside their datacentres. Unfortunately in that world, it makes extreme paranoia as actionable as extreme information gathering.
What you have here is a bunch of broadcasters trying to turn the internet into the same one-way, one-sided medium they've always enjoyed. Guess what, they did it to radio, they did it to TV, they did it to publishing. But the thing is, the internet is CHEAP. Digital bits of data are extremely cheap to move around. So there's no arguement like there was with the airwaves that we might "run out of space". So, naturally, the new villian is "illegal" activites. They could care less about the illegality of it, I'm sure, and are more interested in exploiting the public's (and the media's) (and congress's) ignorance and using that to further their own agenda, which is turning the internet into a private cable broadcast system. With providers at the top and us at the bottom. As long as data can move from my computer to another computer on the internet, there will be P2P. But if all of that data has to go through their servers (which it kindof does already, their switches and routers) then they can control everything on the wire. The internet is the best thing that's ever happened to this country and this world. Money is about ideas, not about control. The internet provides the means for ideas. They need to tune in and realize that the world has changed and will no longer tolerate their attempts at control of ideas. We, the people, do not want that anymore and this is our country, and those are our wires (paid for with our money). Well, not so fast! Ma Bell paid good money 12301 years ago to put that copper in and we're not just going to let anyone use it. Thus you see the desire to open the airwaves now.
Start a business incubator. Help tech students learn the basics of accounting, business law, incorporation, etc. and hopefully have some good ideas come to fruition. Provide hosting and support for student businesses. Provide CRM instances for students to track their contacts.
They will pay it back big time if they make it big.
And it's a known fact that there were/are rooms in other COs around the country.
I want to know if they've caught foreign terrorists with it or not so far. And I want to know if they've used it for political purposes, as was reported a long time ago. If that's the case, hang 'em.
Everyone knows about the rooms now, and therefore can take measures to avoid them. This includes terrorists probably. So they are probably not useful for their original purpose any more. At this point they are increasingly likely to be used for new purposes, as their controllers see fit (in order to justify continued funding).
But, if they drop the program publically, the terrorists will move back to the Internet and operate freely. And that means they can organize faster and without, you know, complicated craft and stuff.
The scary part is that the records can't be made public because there's ongoing operations. So, they can't be reviewed by a trusted third party who can determine if they are legit or not (IE: terrorist planning an attack vs. political campaign strategist for the other side).
It all comes down to the brass tacks of risk management. We all need to realize there's a risk to living in this world. We should focus on the positive risks--IE taking chances in the hope/faith that things will be better--rather than the negative risks--IE we're going to die oh noes. So, the idea that we can't go back is false. We can. But we have to be prepared for things that might happen.
But definitely this is a time for science and mathematics and not religion and emotion (as it was around 2001).
Well, ERP solutions try to assign other units to "resources" (not just money) and store them in a subledger somewhere. And BPM systems are trying to do that with everything else.
Uh, well, her mistake was conducting Alaska state business as a public official on the account, effectively making it ALASKA'S email account, not hers. 100% could, and should, be argued. Except that she runs Alaska, so it would have to be a judge or something that says it.
She's not a private citizen, she's a public person in a public position. By conducting work business on the Yahoo account, it basically became the State of Alaska's email address, NOT Sarah Palin's. So, while it's illegal to break into email, that information should be considered public records anyway. It was her mistake, and someone busted her. Maybe they "hacked" or whatever, but who cares? It was a good hack because it broke hidden public records out. Justice is served. Information wants to be free. This is way bigger than the individual now. He may perish for hacking, but the information will live on forever, and Justice will be served to Palin for breaking the Public Records laws.
Physically, maybe, but mentally--not so much. If you find your porn habits are getting in the way of class, job, personal relationships, etc. than it could be a real problem. Are you constantly having images pop into your head? Is porn gradually changing your respect for human life for the worse? No, porn is not a harmless pastime. Masturbation is probably good, but porn is not. Try to do what they tell alcoholics to do and go without for two weeks.
That's the nice thing about the star wars universe though. I mean, it fits RPG, first person, pilot, even maybe educational/fitness orientated (like on the Wii, and you have to hold the dohicky out at arm's length for 5 minutes without moving to raise the ship). I mean, it's like life itself. What's gone is the youth interest. I mean, there are rare kids who like it. But really, the generation of young people we see today is really obsessed with Japan and less so with Lucas' repackaging of Kaballah adventure stories. I dunno, it's time was here, and then it past. What ever happened to the Matrix? Was that just a fad? I just watched them and it was really quite good. But the thing about the Star Wars (original 3 movies) is that they had slow parts back in the 70's and 80's. You have to be bored during points in the movie to experience excitement during the other parts. Somehow that has been forgotten.
It used to be 3, 8-hour shifts of "operators" who would sit at the consoles and respond to messages. It still is that way at big AS/400 shops, which still exist.
The real problem with the people you are talking about is that they are not willing to ask for help. They will try to do everything, even if it is above their ability or takes more than their allotted workday. They are afraid that if they ask for more help, they will get fired.
Things are different today, mainly because of the expensive benefits proposition for companies. That can add 5-10% to the cost of the 50K/year employee. Most companies do not have career paths for IT people, and most IT people are happy being outsiders.
If you want a career with a company, you have to expand your reach far beyond IT and computers. It may seem like you're doing everything already, but learn some accounting, or HR or other information-based skills. A good CIO (the highest job in IT) will know everything about accounting, HR/business services, Disaster Recovery, compliance, etc. but probably will not know the latest patch for MS Office.
And of course, you can further your education. But for most small businesses, there is a small limited path "in IT" because it is considered ancilary. If you work in a small business, you need to get involved beyond IT.
At the government level they have lots of IT career paths, especially for developers. But it's not easy to get one of these jobs, you have to be good, but you will not work more than 8 hours and you will get benefits and comp days if you're called in afterhours.
Slashdot Mirror
If you look at the history of the American democracy, there have been hyjinx in literally EVERY election since the start. There are stories of candidates sending wagons to the barrooms, and giving whisky to anyone who would vote for him. Registration is meant to curb the old "wheel them across town to vote again" trick. The problem isn't registration, it's general voter apathy. The thing about democracy is that the system only works if everyone votes. Luckly, we have layered upon the democracy a representative government, wherein you pick a good guy from your local area to represent you. The problem of course is that the good guy is most likely going to be more than 50% financed by corporations rather than individuals. Not always the case but often. Such is the state of affairs. 99% of the money in the hands of 1% of the population does that. The Republicans have moved from favoring the representatives to blantant corporatism--making corporations the government. It has been pointed out that this is exactly what happened in the 30's in Italy. It's affected the balance of America, because previously the subjugation of democracy has led to smaller government. Now, with democracy down AND a larger government (specifically homoland security), the political stability of the country is much lower. Now, we still have the 3 tiers, and not everyone in congress and senate has been bought by the immortality lobby yet. And really, the most important thing to you should be your local area. So, if you're going to worry about it, worry about local issues first, and move up as you go. Local can also mean on the internet, in your local network area (IE, your regular habitat). Be a leader and see the world change around you. Be a follower, and you'll see it change, but probably not to your liking.
Talk about getting caught with your dick in your hand...
There's a pass there also. If you were going to cross the Sierras in a small plane, you would definitely go down to Mammoth, especially if you were going to L.A. And you never cross mountains perpendicularly, you always approach at an angle.
So, either he's dead in the mountain somewhere and his stuff was carried there by a bear or something OR it's a treasure hunt or something. And he's out of the country with a new name, new face, and no mortgage backed security holdings. ;)
That's actually not totally funny. With compcache you can actually turn your spare cpu cycles INTO RAM (well, a ram disk) by utilizing compression on swapped pages.
You can use your VRAM for swap..
The problem with swap is that the system will always use all available RAM for system cache. And once it has it it will not give it up and will swap stuff out. There are people using RAM disks for swap on mysql servers which makes some sense, and gives you some control over stuff. I mean, if you can fit your entire table space into RAM, you don't want linux messing it up by swapping out some lesser used tables just to get system cache.
It's always a good idea to get a lot of RAM and less swap. Having a big swap file is not going to be a benefit. If you have 8GB of RAM and you are swapping 8GB your system is going to be so slow you won't be able to move. Swap is for emergencies, and if you want to move some less used processes there it's ok for that also.
From what I've seen, the only people using Google are kids who don't know that it is not the email service but rather they, the email user, that is the product. A product Google sells to advertisters, marketers, etc.
Hey, it's fine for your personal email, and they have an $$ Enterprise edition that just barely doesn't suck compared to their competitors, and they are fighting the good fight against wireless so maybe thank god we can get stuff the Japanese and Europeans have had for years.
RMS is right, with the cloud it's just like any other hosted service. You are at the mercy of the provider. Personally, I like having my server with me and decide what it can or can't do. I can decide how vigorously I want to enforce the SLA, I can decide what type of processor, cooling, hard drive, etc. for my purposes. With the cloud, you are dependent on unreliable hardware that's supposedly magically made reliable because of redundancy. But guess what, if I drop a connection I drop a connection, regardless of how many servers I have waiting for me to reconnect to.
It's not paranoia driving this. RMS was around in the mainframe days when all computers were, you guessed it, a service. It sucked. IBM and Ma Bell ruled the world, and the only time you could play with a computer was at a university, and only for few minutes. Nowadays we depend on computers a lot more for our daily lives, banking, shopping, communications, etc. And to make the single point of failure AGAIN back to the network, which is and always will be the weakest link, is a bad idea. Better to write better standalone software that can tap in and extend itself. Why does everyone want everything controlled for them anyway? Isn't there any DIY spirit anymore? Beyond that it doesn't make sense to ride everything on your network connection, the one thing you will never have any control over.
Yeah, why not just lie? If you really think they care to check out the references of some 30-40K a year beginner, you're fooling yourself. They don't give a shit. So, what they're really looking for is how well you sell yourself? Oh, you sat and answered phones doing tech support? "Developed solutions for clients." You had to fill out an end of shift report? "Documented solutions accurately" You came to work on time "Demonstrated reliability and punctuality".
Now, forget the jobs, forget the education. Those are your smallest sections. Create a section called "skills" and list your skills (literally every piece of software/language/technique) you've touched and how many years you've done it. You've surfed the web? "HTTP" You've chatted before? "Realtime Communications" You've used MySpace "Content Management Systems" And since you are a "computer engineer" (which hopefully means 4 year degree and not some devry bullshit [in that case, leave it off entirely]).
If you can't get a job with a computer engineering degree you must not
A. Have a decent suit
B. Know how to shave ALL the hairs off your face
C. Take a shower
D. Be personable at ALL.
So, basically, you need to lie, list ALL your skills, and stop being such a jerk in the interview.
Talking about the invention of 4chan is like talking about the invention of masturbation: It was bound to happen, we all do it from time to time, and it won't ever be discussed on CNet.
Pft, I would take this article with a big grain of salt... everyone knows the Internet was invented by Al Gore in the late 80's.
It's a well known fact that the imagery providers have to obscure certain things. Just because a few of the images mentioned in the story turned out to be unobscured later doesn't mean they weren't at the time of the writing. The images are updated quite regularly, and once Google's satalites start working it'll be even more freqent.
Yes, it's censorship to obscure the imagery, but it's a tough balance to strike. Yes, information wants to be free. And as a taxpayer, it could be argued that you have a right to see whatever your government has been spending your money on. But people in other countries do not. Furthermore, the plans and everything for most of these buildings are located in the bottom of a filing cabinet in a dark basement room with a sign on the door that says "Beware of Leopard". That said, it sure is cool to look at government stuff, and the imagery being available makes it real easy.
For me, it's fun to find black helicopers and such, but that's basically it. It's just fun to look at stuff. I like those 'eyeball' things over at cryptome.org also. The risk is pretty low that someone would be able to plan an operation or something with just the image data. So they take away the fun to hopefully mitigate a small amount of risk.
On the flip side (again), there seems to be so many secrets these days. Too many, if you ask me. But, hopefully they know what they're doing.
Soon people will be able to upload their own photos to the view, like in that Microsoft thing, but on a 3d globe like Google Earth. People taking photos from passenger airplanes and such. More private aerial photos and satellites with small resolution and lower latency. It will happen. Google is on the right track with GIS, I think it'll be the killer app of the 2010's. Google has the power to pull everything together, it might take a while but soon there will be a nice parallel universe inside their datacentres. Unfortunately in that world, it makes extreme paranoia as actionable as extreme information gathering.
What you have here is a bunch of broadcasters trying to turn the internet into the same one-way, one-sided medium they've always enjoyed. Guess what, they did it to radio, they did it to TV, they did it to publishing. But the thing is, the internet is CHEAP. Digital bits of data are extremely cheap to move around. So there's no arguement like there was with the airwaves that we might "run out of space". So, naturally, the new villian is "illegal" activites. They could care less about the illegality of it, I'm sure, and are more interested in exploiting the public's (and the media's) (and congress's) ignorance and using that to further their own agenda, which is turning the internet into a private cable broadcast system. With providers at the top and us at the bottom. As long as data can move from my computer to another computer on the internet, there will be P2P. But if all of that data has to go through their servers (which it kindof does already, their switches and routers) then they can control everything on the wire. The internet is the best thing that's ever happened to this country and this world. Money is about ideas, not about control. The internet provides the means for ideas. They need to tune in and realize that the world has changed and will no longer tolerate their attempts at control of ideas. We, the people, do not want that anymore and this is our country, and those are our wires (paid for with our money). Well, not so fast! Ma Bell paid good money 12301 years ago to put that copper in and we're not just going to let anyone use it. Thus you see the desire to open the airwaves now.
Start a business incubator. Help tech students learn the basics of accounting, business law, incorporation, etc. and hopefully have some good ideas come to fruition. Provide hosting and support for student businesses. Provide CRM instances for students to track their contacts.
They will pay it back big time if they make it big.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Tandy 100. There is still a lot of support out there, such as Club100, etc.
Someone should really make a new one with the same keyboard, maybe a better screen and WiFi that still runs on AA's.
There's the alphasmart, which is getting there, and runs PalmOS.
How many magnets are there? I mean, if there's 2000 of them 1 or 2 failing isn't that big of a deal
And it's a known fact that there were/are rooms in other COs around the country.
I want to know if they've caught foreign terrorists with it or not so far. And I want to know if they've used it for political purposes, as was reported a long time ago. If that's the case, hang 'em.
Everyone knows about the rooms now, and therefore can take measures to avoid them. This includes terrorists probably. So they are probably not useful for their original purpose any more. At this point they are increasingly likely to be used for new purposes, as their controllers see fit (in order to justify continued funding).
But, if they drop the program publically, the terrorists will move back to the Internet and operate freely. And that means they can organize faster and without, you know, complicated craft and stuff.
The scary part is that the records can't be made public because there's ongoing operations. So, they can't be reviewed by a trusted third party who can determine if they are legit or not (IE: terrorist planning an attack vs. political campaign strategist for the other side).
It all comes down to the brass tacks of risk management. We all need to realize there's a risk to living in this world. We should focus on the positive risks--IE taking chances in the hope/faith that things will be better--rather than the negative risks--IE we're going to die oh noes. So, the idea that we can't go back is false. We can. But we have to be prepared for things that might happen.
But definitely this is a time for science and mathematics and not religion and emotion (as it was around 2001).
Well, ERP solutions try to assign other units to "resources" (not just money) and store them in a subledger somewhere. And BPM systems are trying to do that with everything else.
Uh, well, her mistake was conducting Alaska state business as a public official on the account, effectively making it ALASKA'S email account, not hers. 100% could, and should, be argued. Except that she runs Alaska, so it would have to be a judge or something that says it.
So Anonymous is like Al Quaeda then? A name for a concept that's treated like a group to sell newspapers.
She's not a private citizen, she's a public person in a public position. By conducting work business on the Yahoo account, it basically became the State of Alaska's email address, NOT Sarah Palin's. So, while it's illegal to break into email, that information should be considered public records anyway. It was her mistake, and someone busted her. Maybe they "hacked" or whatever, but who cares? It was a good hack because it broke hidden public records out. Justice is served. Information wants to be free. This is way bigger than the individual now. He may perish for hacking, but the information will live on forever, and Justice will be served to Palin for breaking the Public Records laws.
Like, who gives a crap?
Physically, maybe, but mentally--not so much. If you find your porn habits are getting in the way of class, job, personal relationships, etc. than it could be a real problem. Are you constantly having images pop into your head? Is porn gradually changing your respect for human life for the worse? No, porn is not a harmless pastime. Masturbation is probably good, but porn is not. Try to do what they tell alcoholics to do and go without for two weeks.
That's the nice thing about the star wars universe though. I mean, it fits RPG, first person, pilot, even maybe educational/fitness orientated (like on the Wii, and you have to hold the dohicky out at arm's length for 5 minutes without moving to raise the ship). I mean, it's like life itself. What's gone is the youth interest. I mean, there are rare kids who like it. But really, the generation of young people we see today is really obsessed with Japan and less so with Lucas' repackaging of Kaballah adventure stories. I dunno, it's time was here, and then it past. What ever happened to the Matrix? Was that just a fad? I just watched them and it was really quite good. But the thing about the Star Wars (original 3 movies) is that they had slow parts back in the 70's and 80's. You have to be bored during points in the movie to experience excitement during the other parts. Somehow that has been forgotten.
Three words: Wookie on Ewok
It used to be 3, 8-hour shifts of "operators" who would sit at the consoles and respond to messages. It still is that way at big AS/400 shops, which still exist.
The real problem with the people you are talking about is that they are not willing to ask for help. They will try to do everything, even if it is above their ability or takes more than their allotted workday. They are afraid that if they ask for more help, they will get fired.
Things are different today, mainly because of the expensive benefits proposition for companies. That can add 5-10% to the cost of the 50K/year employee. Most companies do not have career paths for IT people, and most IT people are happy being outsiders.
If you want a career with a company, you have to expand your reach far beyond IT and computers. It may seem like you're doing everything already, but learn some accounting, or HR or other information-based skills. A good CIO (the highest job in IT) will know everything about accounting, HR/business services, Disaster Recovery, compliance, etc. but probably will not know the latest patch for MS Office.
And of course, you can further your education. But for most small businesses, there is a small limited path "in IT" because it is considered ancilary. If you work in a small business, you need to get involved beyond IT.
At the government level they have lots of IT career paths, especially for developers. But it's not easy to get one of these jobs, you have to be good, but you will not work more than 8 hours and you will get benefits and comp days if you're called in afterhours.