This is certainly a useful feature for sysadmins, but could be painful for home users. Home PCs are notorious for a lack of current anti-virus protection. The first virus that infects them and enables the setting that prohibits removable media/drives (and monitors that setting so if it's changed it gets changed back automatically) will mean users are forced to re-install Windows, which 90%+ of home users cannot manage by themselves.
As a regular user, getting SYSTEM priviledges without exploiting a vulnerability in a process with SYSTEM priviledges is not possible. FYI, SYSTEM is much more analogous to root under Windows than an Administrator is.
Of course, since most Windows users run as Admins, it's a moot point.
So it appears you're saying that if your business is producing software but you aren't going to sell it, you don't have to give anything back. So what kind of software business doesn't sell software?
The overwhelming majority of software is written for in-house use by companies who have absolutely no interest in selling it to anyone. Furthermore, this kind of bespoke software is largely useless to anyone but the direct competition of the company who wrote it. A prime example is that of a telecommunications company in a competitive, deregulated environment, who live and die by the qualities of their ratings and billing systems, spend obscene amounts on software development, and yet have absolutely no interest in making that work available to anyone else. Financial institutions, utility companies, and multitudes of other companies (the bulk of non-software Fortune 500 companies) fall into this space, as do the hundreds of thousands of small businesses in every developed country.
The GPL definitely has a place in such companies, as it can save them having to re-invent the wheel when it comes to common software like encryption and compression libraries, webservers, etc.
The GPL makes life harder for commercial, closed-source software houses. It makes life much easier for the rest of the world.
I've been a purchaser of Creative Labs sound cards since the SoundBlaster16, with the exception of a foray into Diamond's Monster Sound 3D II MX300 due to A3D 2.0 and it's support in Half-Life.
I admire the folks at id Software, for all the usual reasons. I have no problem with any company contacting id Software and requesting that their proprietary technology is supported to improve a game. What I thoroughly dislike is the concept of software patents. What I dislike even more is the use of software patents as leverage. What frankly pisses me off is someone using software patents to threaten a company like id Software, who selflessly contribute a ridiculous amount to the development of computing, both directly in releasing unpatented software and indirectly by driving the take-up of new hardware and software technologies in their games. Doubly so when it's a distinctly uninnovative company like Creative Labs.
The only way a regular gamer like myself can punish a company is by refusing to buy it's products.
Are there any credible gamer-centric alternatives to Creative Labs' products?
I will be doing some research now, and if there are, CL will have just lost a customer. I have no problem with throwing a few hundred dollars in a different direction every year or three. Hell, I'd even be willing to donate money to id to have them say "see you in court" to the spineless worms.
I'm tired, and may be missing something here, but it appears to me you misunderstood what I wrote, or don't know how one-way hashing algorithms work.
The whole point of my proposed solution is that if you change the biometric/flight data on your smartcard, the airport database's hash will no longer match, and you will be given much closer scrutiny.
To potentially improve on my initial design, I'd store two hashes: one of just the biometric details, and one of both the biometric details and flight data combined, with these two hashes as fields in one record. Further, the system would keep the 3-5 most recent records for each individual, and if the current hash didn't match the combined biometric/flight data from the smartcard, the reader would ignore the most recent flight's data, create a new hash and compare against these recent records -- repeat until there are no more recent records. This way, as long as the biometrics didn't change, even if there was a slight propagation delay with the most recent record, the system would still allow frequent flyers with a good record to mosey along unimpeded.
1. your biometric details are stored on the smart card 2. your flight history is also stored on the smart card 3. each time you use the card, it reads biometric data on the card, checking it against that read from you by fingerprint/iris sensors 4. then, it reads all information on the card and MD5/SHA1 hashes it. If it matches the hash stored in the database, and if biometric data checks out, it adds current flight information/status to the card, calculates an updated hash (including the new information), and stores this hash (which is propagated to other airports)
This way, your biometric data and flight history is never stored by the system, maintaining your privacy, but is available from your card as necessary. Your card cannot be forged as the hash will be different if any bit of data on your card is changed, and will not match that on record.
Whoever came up with this hasn't really done much long-distance driving. When you pull over at a rest area, you generally fall into one of three categories:
1. You're tired, and want to nap. Computers -- and the web/Internet specifically -- are great ways to kill time, but mean you don't sleep because there's just one more thing you wanted to do, so having WiFi is useless, or counter-productive at worst.
2. You are stiff, losing concentration, and generally fatigued but don't feel like sleeping. What you need to do is stretch your legs, move around a bit, breathe some fresh air, allow your eyes to roam and relax rather than focusing on the road and speedo, maybe have something to eat/drink, maybe visit a toilet. Sitting down and surfing the web or reading your email won't help you here, except maybe on the can.
3. You're a tourist or simply enjoying the scenic aspects of the trip, and stop to look around or maybe even have a picnic. People who simply cannot get away from the Internet are precisely those who will benefit the most from it's absence, whether they realise it or not.
Sure, there are emergency stops, but unless there are lots of these rest areas, emergency stops are at least as likely to occur elsewhere, and in any case, emergency services are all contactable by phone, not Internet.
There are other possibilities, of course, but they're so marginal that it's not worth wasting money on them.
The Windows "community", if you can call it that, is extremely diverse and disparate. The Microsoft-related communities are regionally- and/or technology-oriented. For example, the various VB forums on the web don't interact much with the COM/DCOM mailing lists, nor with the Host Integration Server 2000 newsgroup. The developer groups are very different to the admin groups, too. That's not to say there are no individuals that participate in multiple groups, but rather that the focus is different.
Also, on the various technical forums on the web, you will have "experts" of various grades proficient in Windows who help out people and each other, but this association is more to the goal at hand (eg. gaming, graphic arts, overclocking) or the community itself (eg. motoring enthusiasts, people living in a certain state) than the technology in use.
You may think this is somehow unusual, but since MS customers are interested in the products and what they can do with these products more than the philosophy of the company, it's not so hard to understand. Application developers will be interested in.NET, VB, SQL Server while sysadmins will look into Windows, Exchange, ISA. Sometimes there's cross-over, but even then the focus of developers looking into Windows internals will be different to that of the admins, and admins looking into SQL Server will not be looking into the aspects of SQL Server that most interest developers.
Professionals who work with Microsoft's technologies are simply interested in how it works, and what useful things they can do with it. Compared to the OSS community, there's little interest in non-technical discussion, and certainly a lot less interest in the individuals who head up technology groups. It's a more commercial association oriented around technologies than a technology association oriented about ideals.
These people are not anti-OSS any more than they are pro-Microsoft. They simply have had many different goals over the years, and Windows has enabled them to meet those goals -- often after a rocky road involving much learning. Some of these take to OSS solutions if given the occasion, and others are not interested in investing more time learning about technology, as they have higher priorities, or think the costs outweigh the potential benefits.
We call Galileo's observations of gravity insightful, because they were made at a time when the prevailing wisdom did not account for his theories.
If today you were to tell educated people that gravity is fairly constant, you'd get funny looks and comments along the lines of "yeah, and your point is...?".
The first was Insightful. The second was potentially Informative, but hardly insightful.
The original comment in question would have been insightful in the mid 90s, but ten years later is simply historically informative. Furthermore, the comment's implied comparison between technological conditions in the mid 90s vs now are inaccurate, making the comment uninsightful.
Nothing, save that the DVD I need to take with me to do the other things I wanted to do with my time is sitting in the drive being prepared.
To compound this, the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc, are all waiting to be fed in, and I will be interrupted from whatever else I am doing that does not involve the DVD every 30 minutes until all of them are done.
If I burn even 1 DVD, the 20 minutes I save by cutting my burning time from 30 minutes to 10 is 20 minutes I can do something else -- like not waste time in front of my PC making backups.
Even if I only burn, say, 30 DVDs a year, that's 10 hours of my spare or working time that pay for the US$30 price difference.
Note to mods: the above should have been moderated Interesting, not Insightful.
His historical anecdote about problems with CD-R devices at a time when there was little mainstream laser-recording manufacturing has little relevance today. In those days, a CD-R drive cost US$1,000, attempted to write at 150KB/s and burned coasters if you sneezed, the wind changed, or the CD fairy decided to have fun.
Today, DVD+/-R/RW drives have been around for years, and you can get a top-of-the-line drive for US$80 that writes to quality media of all four major formats reliably at 10,400KB/s.
Dual-layer burning may yet only be on the horizon, but that's not necessarily any reason to say that existing single-layer 4.7GB media aren't great value for money.
... or a box with either a SCSI drive or dual CPUs... or one of the upcoming dual-core CPUs and/or the next generation of SATA which should support command queueing and re-ordering.
The name Anonymous Coward has additional meaning in this particular case:p
The stories above are all true. In the grandfather's case, he was a tough old guy who with one twist broke one of the assailant's arms. The three homeboys were simply talking tough, and were facing someone who wasn't fooled. Resolute people and stubborn bastards alike can do amazing (sometimes stupid) things.:)
... and I personally know several times that number of people who have refused to hand the goods over to a mugger, not resulting in their deaths or significant injury.
One of these people, a legally blind martial arts instructor, outfought someone 6 inches taller and 100 pounds heavier than himself.
Another one of these people, my then 84-year-old grandfather, physically beat off three 20-something year old males who tried to rob him.
Another one of these people -- me -- simply told the three homeboys who threatened my four friends (two of them girls) that if they touched just one person, all three would end up in hospital, courtesy of yours truly.
Maybe you should take that as a hint, and move to a more effective martial art?
Note I don't suggest taking on an overwhelming, resolute force. The difference is knowing when and where to take a stand.
I may fail and fall one day, but will do so knowing I have averted my good share of wrongdoing.
I may have missed something, but from what I gathered, a concrete building with no significant wood or plastic exterior components should provide the occupants.
The article stated that ground-level temperatures were only ~10K higher than just prior to the event. That's no big deal, save maybe during summer in parts of the world.
Any building that didn't itself burn due to the IR radiation would shield it's occupants quite well. Concrete/Brick's transmission of IR radiation wouldn't be much more than that of soil.
Of course, you wouldn't want to venture near any windows or skylights:)
The "waste of money" argument does not hold water. Instead of the government earning X% on the profits of closed-source companies, every dollar spent by anyone on OSS development is potentially a dollar the government doesn't need to spend, and that the community does not need to duplicate by spending said dollar.
From the government's point of view, the ROI on OSS is orders of magnitude greater than that of closed-source software.
It's a vastly more efficient utilisation of resources.
This practice is becoming less common, and will soon be entirely obsolete. Not because it is inherently wrong per se, but because the market simply desires a different attitude.
The only reason the market desires a different attitude is that countless amateurs have convinced them that IT is a fool's game, where deadlines are meaningless, and budgets simply milestones to meet and exceed.
Any monkey can do a job like that.
What a true professional will do is, through proven performance, inspire confidence in their management. Confidence that this wild, previously untamed and unknown quantity labelled "IT" can be managed, planned and made to work reliably, both from an operational perspective as well in it's development.
You may be very good, but are you really that much better than a team of similarly-educated Indian engineers who will cheerfully do most of your job for dramatically less money?
Who will manage those outsourced teams? Who will ensure that the solutions they present are in line with business needs? Will these outsourced teams win over the trust and respect of the various business units whose requirements they must meet? Are they available immediately at the need of the management, and able to field complex technical questions without first having to source some difficult-to-access guru whose time is shared among the outsourcer's clients?
Yes, the bottom line is important, but at the end of the day the thing CIOs need the most is people answering to them that they can trust at a professional level, whose personal goals are in line with the company's. An outsourcer, by definition, cannot achieve this, as their goals are well and truly their own, even to the point of contention over issues.
You said "you may be good". Putting aside whether I personally am, if you're not good, then you have no right to expect to be treated as if you are. If you're not good, you're essentially a labourer for hire, and will be treated as such.
As far as I can tell, these are just the growing pains of an industry badly in need of a shake-up, and welcome it.
Your point was well taken: with your approach, you're always going to have a job in which you're a miserable shit-kicker.
With mine, I've always retained my job, even through the various IT downturns, economic pressures, etc, as even in downturns they need people who can guide IT policy and keep things running -- and when they can't due to the entire company going under, they're more than willing to recommend you to friends in high places, as well as look for you specifically when filling new places in new companies.
If you're happy with working as you've chosen, then great. However, I sense in your posts a self-imposed cynicism that suggests otherwise. Only you have the power to change that.
So the question now is, are you a selfish and lazy shirker, or a team player willing to share the load?
No more lazy and selfish than the [incompetent manager|greedy salesman|bonus-oriented project manager] who for their personal benefit decided to undertake a course of action that now results in someone asking me to work ridiculous hours.
On rare occasions (think no more than once every year or two) this may be acceptable.
Anything else, and I'd like you working for/with me, so I can walk all over you like the rug you allow yourself to be.
I deliver on time and on budget -- but I have considerable input into both. People respect my work, amongst other things, as they know that my estimates are realistic and my performance is consistently better than what they're used to from others who run around like headless chickens all the time, stressing out, while stupidly saying "Yes, Sir" to everything.
I am a professional, and as a result of my taking responsibility for my actions, while being willing and able to say what needs saying in tough situations, I am recognised as a professional.
Doctors, lawyers and engineers have had the foresight and backbone to thoroughly educate themselves, and (forearmed) stand up for what they know truly works well. Until this becomes common practice in IT, ours will remain a fledgling profession, full of unnecessary stress.
Chances are if they ceased manufacturing them 5 years ago, then the car went out of production over 10 years ago (or more).
Cars are constantly improving, particularly in terms of emissions, fuel efficiency, handling, braking and safety. As a result, I'm glad that 15-30 years after manufacture the (relative) shitbox will eventually be unrepairable.
Here in Australia, one of the major preventable problems with motoring is that there are lots of rust-buckets on the road (unlike most of western europe, and particularly germany, where the entire system is geared to keeping the population of vehicles relatively new). This problem results in ridiculously low speed limits, simply because they have to cater for the lowest common denominator: that 70-year-old with failing vision & reflexes who's both in denial and driving a clapped-out 35-year-old bomb; or, that 17-year-old with no idea of how to drive, with 4 of his friends jammed into an old, thrashed econo-performance car designed to go fast in a straight line, but with shocking handling characteristics, brakes, no safety technology and badly modified to boot.
if you're mostly into grand sweeping epic storylines, or intricate political manipulative shenannigans... then the computer version is very, very tame
I've been a PnP DM and player for well over a decade, and have to say that while the above is generally correct, there are exemplary exceptions. Take PlaneScape: Torment, for example. This is easily the best CRPG made in the last 15 years of computer gaming, and has a plotline so deep it's humbling.
There are also many action games masquerading as RPGs, and these cast a dark shadow on the rest of the market (Diablo springs to mind here).
Finally, there is NWN. In and of itself, it's rather lame. However, the cream of the user-made content freely available is amazing.
Governments the world over can do something about Microsoft, if they so choose to. It's quite simple, and some have already taken the first steps: adopt Open Source software built to open standards.
Microsoft is only as powerful as it is because it's software is ubiquitous. Governments are probably the only entities in the world capable of mandating the necessary changes to:
a) require the use of open-source software that implements open standards unencumbered by patents and proprietary technologies
b) force other entities it deals with to ensure electronic interactions are compatible with the open standards this requires
Of course, it takes decidedly forward-thinking and egalitarian politicians to venture down this road. However, the benefits to their nation(s) would be significant, including higher Balance of Trade (no MS tax to pay), bolstering the local IT industry, and simultaneously reducing the influence of Microsoft nationally and internationally. It's also a self-fulfilling prophecy, insofar as the first governments to do this can find themselves in a position where they literally lead the world in terms of IT years down the track.
Notice this is a possibility, but there's no kidding myself here that this would be easy to achieve.
Slashdot Mirror
Just don't overlook that this story is just that... fiction.
This is certainly a useful feature for sysadmins, but could be painful for home users. Home PCs are notorious for a lack of current anti-virus protection. The first virus that infects them and enables the setting that prohibits removable media/drives (and monitors that setting so if it's changed it gets changed back automatically) will mean users are forced to re-install Windows, which 90%+ of home users cannot manage by themselves.
As a regular user, getting SYSTEM priviledges without exploiting a vulnerability in a process with SYSTEM priviledges is not possible. FYI, SYSTEM is much more analogous to root under Windows than an Administrator is.
Of course, since most Windows users run as Admins, it's a moot point.
So it appears you're saying that if your business is producing software but you aren't going to sell it, you don't have to give anything back. So what kind of software business doesn't sell software?
The overwhelming majority of software is written for in-house use by companies who have absolutely no interest in selling it to anyone. Furthermore, this kind of bespoke software is largely useless to anyone but the direct competition of the company who wrote it. A prime example is that of a telecommunications company in a competitive, deregulated environment, who live and die by the qualities of their ratings and billing systems, spend obscene amounts on software development, and yet have absolutely no interest in making that work available to anyone else. Financial institutions, utility companies, and multitudes of other companies (the bulk of non-software Fortune 500 companies) fall into this space, as do the hundreds of thousands of small businesses in every developed country.
The GPL definitely has a place in such companies, as it can save them having to re-invent the wheel when it comes to common software like encryption and compression libraries, webservers, etc.
The GPL makes life harder for commercial, closed-source software houses. It makes life much easier for the rest of the world.
That makes sense to a programmer like myself.
I've been a purchaser of Creative Labs sound cards since the SoundBlaster16, with the exception of a foray into Diamond's Monster Sound 3D II MX300 due to A3D 2.0 and it's support in Half-Life.
I admire the folks at id Software, for all the usual reasons. I have no problem with any company contacting id Software and requesting that their proprietary technology is supported to improve a game. What I thoroughly dislike is the concept of software patents. What I dislike even more is the use of software patents as leverage. What frankly pisses me off is someone using software patents to threaten a company like id Software, who selflessly contribute a ridiculous amount to the development of computing, both directly in releasing unpatented software and indirectly by driving the take-up of new hardware and software technologies in their games. Doubly so when it's a distinctly uninnovative company like Creative Labs.
The only way a regular gamer like myself can punish a company is by refusing to buy it's products.
Are there any credible gamer-centric alternatives to Creative Labs' products?
I will be doing some research now, and if there are, CL will have just lost a customer. I have no problem with throwing a few hundred dollars in a different direction every year or three. Hell, I'd even be willing to donate money to id to have them say "see you in court" to the spineless worms.
I'm tired, and may be missing something here, but it appears to me you misunderstood what I wrote, or don't know how one-way hashing algorithms work.
The whole point of my proposed solution is that if you change the biometric/flight data on your smartcard, the airport database's hash will no longer match, and you will be given much closer scrutiny.
To potentially improve on my initial design, I'd store two hashes: one of just the biometric details, and one of both the biometric details and flight data combined, with these two hashes as fields in one record. Further, the system would keep the 3-5 most recent records for each individual, and if the current hash didn't match the combined biometric/flight data from the smartcard, the reader would ignore the most recent flight's data, create a new hash and compare against these recent records -- repeat until there are no more recent records. This way, as long as the biometrics didn't change, even if there was a slight propagation delay with the most recent record, the system would still allow frequent flyers with a good record to mosey along unimpeded.
This is how I'd envision it working:
1. your biometric details are stored on the smart card
2. your flight history is also stored on the smart card
3. each time you use the card, it reads biometric data on the card, checking it against that read from you by fingerprint/iris sensors
4. then, it reads all information on the card and MD5/SHA1 hashes it. If it matches the hash stored in the database, and if biometric data checks out, it adds current flight information/status to the card, calculates an updated hash (including the new information), and stores this hash (which is propagated to other airports)
This way, your biometric data and flight history is never stored by the system, maintaining your privacy, but is available from your card as necessary. Your card cannot be forged as the hash will be different if any bit of data on your card is changed, and will not match that on record.
Whoever came up with this hasn't really done much long-distance driving. When you pull over at a rest area, you generally fall into one of three categories:
1. You're tired, and want to nap. Computers -- and the web/Internet specifically -- are great ways to kill time, but mean you don't sleep because there's just one more thing you wanted to do, so having WiFi is useless, or counter-productive at worst.
2. You are stiff, losing concentration, and generally fatigued but don't feel like sleeping. What you need to do is stretch your legs, move around a bit, breathe some fresh air, allow your eyes to roam and relax rather than focusing on the road and speedo, maybe have something to eat/drink, maybe visit a toilet. Sitting down and surfing the web or reading your email won't help you here, except maybe on the can.
3. You're a tourist or simply enjoying the scenic aspects of the trip, and stop to look around or maybe even have a picnic. People who simply cannot get away from the Internet are precisely those who will benefit the most from it's absence, whether they realise it or not.
Sure, there are emergency stops, but unless there are lots of these rest areas, emergency stops are at least as likely to occur elsewhere, and in any case, emergency services are all contactable by phone, not Internet.
There are other possibilities, of course, but they're so marginal that it's not worth wasting money on them.
The Windows "community", if you can call it that, is extremely diverse and disparate. The Microsoft-related communities are regionally- and/or technology-oriented. For example, the various VB forums on the web don't interact much with the COM/DCOM mailing lists, nor with the Host Integration Server 2000 newsgroup. The developer groups are very different to the admin groups, too. That's not to say there are no individuals that participate in multiple groups, but rather that the focus is different.
.NET, VB, SQL Server while sysadmins will look into Windows, Exchange, ISA. Sometimes there's cross-over, but even then the focus of developers looking into Windows internals will be different to that of the admins, and admins looking into SQL Server will not be looking into the aspects of SQL Server that most interest developers.
Also, on the various technical forums on the web, you will have "experts" of various grades proficient in Windows who help out people and each other, but this association is more to the goal at hand (eg. gaming, graphic arts, overclocking) or the community itself (eg. motoring enthusiasts, people living in a certain state) than the technology in use.
You may think this is somehow unusual, but since MS customers are interested in the products and what they can do with these products more than the philosophy of the company, it's not so hard to understand. Application developers will be interested in
Professionals who work with Microsoft's technologies are simply interested in how it works, and what useful things they can do with it. Compared to the OSS community, there's little interest in non-technical discussion, and certainly a lot less interest in the individuals who head up technology groups. It's a more commercial association oriented around technologies than a technology association oriented about ideals.
These people are not anti-OSS any more than they are pro-Microsoft. They simply have had many different goals over the years, and Windows has enabled them to meet those goals -- often after a rocky road involving much learning. Some of these take to OSS solutions if given the occasion, and others are not interested in investing more time learning about technology, as they have higher priorities, or think the costs outweigh the potential benefits.
We call Galileo's observations of gravity insightful, because they were made at a time when the prevailing wisdom did not account for his theories.
...?".
If today you were to tell educated people that gravity is fairly constant, you'd get funny looks and comments along the lines of "yeah, and your point is
The first was Insightful. The second was potentially Informative, but hardly insightful.
The original comment in question would have been insightful in the mid 90s, but ten years later is simply historically informative. Furthermore, the comment's implied comparison between technological conditions in the mid 90s vs now are inaccurate, making the comment uninsightful.
Nothing, save that the DVD I need to take with me to do the other things I wanted to do with my time is sitting in the drive being prepared.
To compound this, the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc, are all waiting to be fed in, and I will be interrupted from whatever else I am doing that does not involve the DVD every 30 minutes until all of them are done.
If I burn even 1 DVD, the 20 minutes I save by cutting my burning time from 30 minutes to 10 is 20 minutes I can do something else -- like not waste time in front of my PC making backups.
Even if I only burn, say, 30 DVDs a year, that's 10 hours of my spare or working time that pay for the US$30 price difference.
I'll take the spare hours, thanks.
Note to mods: the above should have been moderated Interesting, not Insightful.
His historical anecdote about problems with CD-R devices at a time when there was little mainstream laser-recording manufacturing has little relevance today. In those days, a CD-R drive cost US$1,000, attempted to write at 150KB/s and burned coasters if you sneezed, the wind changed, or the CD fairy decided to have fun.
Today, DVD+/-R/RW drives have been around for years, and you can get a top-of-the-line drive for US$80 that writes to quality media of all four major formats reliably at 10,400KB/s.
Dual-layer burning may yet only be on the horizon, but that's not necessarily any reason to say that existing single-layer 4.7GB media aren't great value for money.
... or a box with either a SCSI drive or dual CPUs ... or one of the upcoming dual-core CPUs and/or the next generation of SATA which should support command queueing and re-ordering.
The name Anonymous Coward has additional meaning in this particular case :p
:)
The stories above are all true. In the grandfather's case, he was a tough old guy who with one twist broke one of the assailant's arms. The three homeboys were simply talking tough, and were facing someone who wasn't fooled. Resolute people and stubborn bastards alike can do amazing (sometimes stupid) things.
... and I personally know several times that number of people who have refused to hand the goods over to a mugger, not resulting in their deaths or significant injury.
One of these people, a legally blind martial arts instructor, outfought someone 6 inches taller and 100 pounds heavier than himself.
Another one of these people, my then 84-year-old grandfather, physically beat off three 20-something year old males who tried to rob him.
Another one of these people -- me -- simply told the three homeboys who threatened my four friends (two of them girls) that if they touched just one person, all three would end up in hospital, courtesy of yours truly.
Maybe you should take that as a hint, and move to a more effective martial art?
Note I don't suggest taking on an overwhelming, resolute force. The difference is knowing when and where to take a stand.
I may fail and fall one day, but will do so knowing I have averted my good share of wrongdoing.
I may have missed something, but from what I gathered, a concrete building with no significant wood or plastic exterior components should provide the occupants.
:)
The article stated that ground-level temperatures were only ~10K higher than just prior to the event. That's no big deal, save maybe during summer in parts of the world.
Any building that didn't itself burn due to the IR radiation would shield it's occupants quite well. Concrete/Brick's transmission of IR radiation wouldn't be much more than that of soil.
Of course, you wouldn't want to venture near any windows or skylights
The "waste of money" argument does not hold water. Instead of the government earning X% on the profits of closed-source companies, every dollar spent by anyone on OSS development is potentially a dollar the government doesn't need to spend, and that the community does not need to duplicate by spending said dollar.
From the government's point of view, the ROI on OSS is orders of magnitude greater than that of closed-source software.
It's a vastly more efficient utilisation of resources.
This practice is becoming less common, and will soon be entirely obsolete. Not because it is inherently wrong per se, but because the market simply desires a different attitude.
The only reason the market desires a different attitude is that countless amateurs have convinced them that IT is a fool's game, where deadlines are meaningless, and budgets simply milestones to meet and exceed.
Any monkey can do a job like that.
What a true professional will do is, through proven performance, inspire confidence in their management. Confidence that this wild, previously untamed and unknown quantity labelled "IT" can be managed, planned and made to work reliably, both from an operational perspective as well in it's development.
You may be very good, but are you really that much better than a team of similarly-educated Indian engineers who will cheerfully do most of your job for dramatically less money?
Who will manage those outsourced teams? Who will ensure that the solutions they present are in line with business needs? Will these outsourced teams win over the trust and respect of the various business units whose requirements they must meet? Are they available immediately at the need of the management, and able to field complex technical questions without first having to source some difficult-to-access guru whose time is shared among the outsourcer's clients?
Yes, the bottom line is important, but at the end of the day the thing CIOs need the most is people answering to them that they can trust at a professional level, whose personal goals are in line with the company's. An outsourcer, by definition, cannot achieve this, as their goals are well and truly their own, even to the point of contention over issues.
You said "you may be good". Putting aside whether I personally am, if you're not good, then you have no right to expect to be treated as if you are. If you're not good, you're essentially a labourer for hire, and will be treated as such.
As far as I can tell, these are just the growing pains of an industry badly in need of a shake-up, and welcome it.
Your point was well taken: with your approach, you're always going to have a job in which you're a miserable shit-kicker.
With mine, I've always retained my job, even through the various IT downturns, economic pressures, etc, as even in downturns they need people who can guide IT policy and keep things running -- and when they can't due to the entire company going under, they're more than willing to recommend you to friends in high places, as well as look for you specifically when filling new places in new companies.
If you're happy with working as you've chosen, then great. However, I sense in your posts a self-imposed cynicism that suggests otherwise. Only you have the power to change that.
So the question now is, are you a selfish and lazy shirker, or a team player willing to share the load?
No more lazy and selfish than the [incompetent manager|greedy salesman|bonus-oriented project manager] who for their personal benefit decided to undertake a course of action that now results in someone asking me to work ridiculous hours.
On rare occasions (think no more than once every year or two) this may be acceptable.
Anything else, and I'd like you working for/with me, so I can walk all over you like the rug you allow yourself to be.
I deliver on time and on budget -- but I have considerable input into both. People respect my work, amongst other things, as they know that my estimates are realistic and my performance is consistently better than what they're used to from others who run around like headless chickens all the time, stressing out, while stupidly saying "Yes, Sir" to everything.
I am a professional, and as a result of my taking responsibility for my actions, while being willing and able to say what needs saying in tough situations, I am recognised as a professional.
Doctors, lawyers and engineers have had the foresight and backbone to thoroughly educate themselves, and (forearmed) stand up for what they know truly works well. Until this becomes common practice in IT, ours will remain a fledgling profession, full of unnecessary stress.
Chances are if they ceased manufacturing them 5 years ago, then the car went out of production over 10 years ago (or more).
Cars are constantly improving, particularly in terms of emissions, fuel efficiency, handling, braking and safety. As a result, I'm glad that 15-30 years after manufacture the (relative) shitbox will eventually be unrepairable.
Here in Australia, one of the major preventable problems with motoring is that there are lots of rust-buckets on the road (unlike most of western europe, and particularly germany, where the entire system is geared to keeping the population of vehicles relatively new). This problem results in ridiculously low speed limits, simply because they have to cater for the lowest common denominator: that 70-year-old with failing vision & reflexes who's both in denial and driving a clapped-out 35-year-old bomb; or, that 17-year-old with no idea of how to drive, with 4 of his friends jammed into an old, thrashed econo-performance car designed to go fast in a straight line, but with shocking handling characteristics, brakes, no safety technology and badly modified to boot.
if you're mostly into grand sweeping epic storylines, or intricate political manipulative shenannigans ... then the computer version is very, very tame
I've been a PnP DM and player for well over a decade, and have to say that while the above is generally correct, there are exemplary exceptions. Take PlaneScape: Torment, for example. This is easily the best CRPG made in the last 15 years of computer gaming, and has a plotline so deep it's humbling.
There are also many action games masquerading as RPGs, and these cast a dark shadow on the rest of the market (Diablo springs to mind here).
Finally, there is NWN. In and of itself, it's rather lame. However, the cream of the user-made content freely available is amazing.
Don't write CPRGs off entirely.
Governments the world over can do something about Microsoft, if they so choose to. It's quite simple, and some have already taken the first steps: adopt Open Source software built to open standards.
Microsoft is only as powerful as it is because it's software is ubiquitous. Governments are probably the only entities in the world capable of mandating the necessary changes to:
a) require the use of open-source software that implements open standards unencumbered by patents and proprietary technologies
b) force other entities it deals with to ensure electronic interactions are compatible with the open standards this requires
Of course, it takes decidedly forward-thinking and egalitarian politicians to venture down this road. However, the benefits to their nation(s) would be significant, including higher Balance of Trade (no MS tax to pay), bolstering the local IT industry, and simultaneously reducing the influence of Microsoft nationally and internationally. It's also a self-fulfilling prophecy, insofar as the first governments to do this can find themselves in a position where they literally lead the world in terms of IT years down the track.
Notice this is a possibility, but there's no kidding myself here that this would be easy to achieve.
Someone who can afford an Athlon64 notebook won't be using DodgyTek, I mean, RealTek hardware.