I've read it, and it's OK if you have statistics-phobia. There are lots of great books that cover software performance, how to measure it and describe the results. For any relational database, I recommend "Forecasting Oracle Performance". Covers Oracle, but you could use the theory on other brands as well. For statistics in general (and with less cartoons), "Statistics Without Tears" is a classic - a gentle introduction to the subject.
When you deal with intense multi-user such as web applications and relational databases, I feel just like Zed Shaw sometimes... People seriously need to grasp basic statistics.
When your local phone switch upgraded to DTMF, you could usually open the phone and jumper it from pulse to tone. Cradle dialling was fun for me too, and probably still works most places, but I ended up with lots of misdialled numbers.
To me, the important advantage of Open Source on the server side is that my data is in an Open Format - because I have the source. I can clean up corruptions or load old backups because I know exactly how the server reads the data.
Also, I can use the same database version forever. I have to get someone to patch the code to run on Vista or Windows Server 2025 or whatever in the future, but the core of the database server remains the same. Database servers just keep running on some server and are forgotten until suddenly someone makes the decision to upgrade those old NT 3.51 servers ASAP. If you run an ancient version of Oracle, you are stuffed. No support for the old version, your proprietary front end application doesn't support the Oracle versions that run on Win2003 - so what do you do? Run your business critical RDBMS at an unsupported version on NT on VMWare on Win2003? With Open Source, you can patch the layer that needs fixing, without changing the rest of the product or include the feature bloat the Oracle Sales keep getting added into their products.
If you start using it for yourself and incorporate stuff that your cow-orkers need, it will soon become an indispensible tool. If you really made the right choice to begin with, you will get the credit (sprinkle your name throughout the app and label yourself sysadmin, support etc so they remember who did it). If it sucks, they will hate you for turning it into the corporate standard.
I'll buy one for $200-300 and they can give 1-2 for free to kids in developing countries. I can afford paying more than them if I want a fun little gadget terminal to play around with. A school in a third world country probably needs pencils, paper, crayons, chalk and books instead of this. Set up a webshop where we geeks can buy these and use the income to donate computers to those who can't afford them. It won't finance the entire project, but it could help?
I am in my last few weeks at an IT company. They have been going downhill for a while, and there are no incentives to do any work. Not money ($0 raise for all yet another yeat, yay) nor any "fun" doing work. Really outdated management that just count manhours of work done, not looking for quality or reusable skills. We are basically doing sales, making appointments, going out to customers, working with software that even the developers don't know how to get working, having to reimburse invoices because S/W sucks so bad, employee turnover will probably end up at 25% this year.
I was planning to talk to my bosses about my motivation, but I realized they don't give a shit. They hire new people and tell them they will make tons of money in a year or two. So everybody accept the shitty starting salary until they realize they are screwed.
So, what do I want? A manager who doesn't spend all day in his office doing Excel sheets and never talk to us. Some understanding that I want fun challenges, not this assembly line rubbish work. A few external courses, perhaps they could bring it up with me instead of me always having to ask - and get a refusal. The opportunity to have meetings during office hours and brainstorm suggestions for more effective work without having to estimate earnings and create a project to get approval. Cooperation with other departments without us invoicing each other. And money? Sure, money's nice, but there is more in life.
And I don't want pizza and paintball or go-carting as a substitute for doing real work. I can install and configure servers or whatever with my colleagues and have a great time with lots of fun.
I want to have fun and always learn more! And possibly take certifications, because together with real life experience colleagues and future employees can tell that you know your stuff.
Nice. I am eagerly awaiting the same updates from CentOS soon. Meanwhile, I can get SuSE 10.0 as a free (and Free) download to play with on my other box. When a retail version has stabilized, I expect to pick it up as 10.1 or 10.2 in the store - including Java and Flash and all the other stuff the OSS version is missing. I don't care about support, but I hope the OSS community version will further improve and speed up handling of bugs, feature requests and removal of bloat.
Right now, I am extremely satisifed with SuSE 9.3 on my desktop and CentOS 4.0.1 on my server. For real work with a supported distro I would definitely call up Novell and see if a sales rep could come over and talk about SLES!
Check out the Ghetto UPS which I believe has been discussed here before. Warning: building something like will probably kill you and others through electrocution, fire, or something completely unexpected.
And to add insult to injury, I found an additional problem when Windows Update asked me if I wanted the ActiveX installed. It was absolutely impossible for me to find a signature checksum for the certificate they signed it with! I looked at the Microsoft website, but the only thing I found was a warning about the fake Microsoft certs that someone tricked Verisign into signing some time back. MS01-017: Erroneous VeriSign-Issued Digital Certificates Pose Spoofing Hazard
So they confirmed that there are fake signed certificates that could be used for making trojaned ActiveX components, but no way of checking that Windows Update components really come from them! The certs in question have been revoked, but don't say it couldn't happen again.
If you buy a computer at a flea market, it better well come with Linux! Resale of the Windows license is NOT allowed, so it is by definition using a pirated Windows version even if the original owner has given away his perfectly legal license.
Every time you pick up an old P3 for your parents, sister or whatever so they can use Internet banking and chat with you, you are required to buy a new OS license for it!
Re:FreeBSD is so unknown to Taco
on
Why FreeBSD
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think the answer is that the GPL code has benefited from the "fair play" users of the code for so long that it has improved a lot and even become the defacto standard. So these companies prefer to use this code and still screw the GPL license rather than legally use BSD-style code. It just shows the success of the GPL license - companies like Cisco, Linksys etc just have to be educated.
A quantum computer was recently built. Quantum computers are known to be incredily fast, so the scientists decided to benchmark it. Now they know exactly how fast the quantum computer is, but they don't know exactly where it is anymore...
Q: How many Support technicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None - we have an identical light bulb in our test lab and it works fine. Please contact your lamp manufacturer and electrical power provider for further assistance. Thank you.
I have considered setting up a VPN for my home net so I can forget about WEP. Use L2TP or even PPTP so the Windows machines can have a simple way to connect, Linux is handled by myself.
However, what about the risk that a laptop may not have a decent personal firewall? It gets cracked (or runs malware in the first place), it connects over the VPN since I trusted the user the last time he visited - suddenly the malware has a route to my servers. Or theoretically a cracker could attack the client machine through the WiFi link, right? Then it doesn't help much that the AP is secured and only allows a VPN client to connect, if my neigbor cracks someones laptop while they are connected through the VPN.
How about if I don't make a single copy of a file available? How about if I place a chunk of data that matches a certain offset within a file with a certain MD5 value? And what if I surround it with random junk? Then someone else can puzzle together a number of such blocks from various places and create their own illegal copy - if they like.
One really cool thing (IMHO) about the French/Italian "air car" is the electrical system:
Technical details Using a radio transmission system, each electrical component receives signals with a microcontroller. Thus only one cable is needed for the whole car. So, instead of wiring each component (headlights, dashboard lights, lights inside the car, etc), one cable connects all electrical parts in the car. The most obvious advantages are the ease of installation and repair and the removal of the approximately 22 kg of wires no longer necessary. Whats more, the entire system becomes an anti-theft alarm as soon as the key is removed from the car.
I have had similar problems, I find that wireless is getting so common that laptops and desktops ship with preinstalled cards and I got a router from work as part of the home broadband deal.
I haven't started to use it yet, due to paranoia. I have several Linux boxen that are on my inside net and I don't want to compromise them.
Fortunately, one box has an unused NIC that I can use for the 802.x router. I plan to use L2TP and IPSec on this, but the instructions are rather intimidating and the protocol compatibility across platforms may cause issues. I have to use Win XP for work, I use Win2K and Linux myself.
Check out this set of detailed instructions:
Using a Linux L2TP/IPsec VPN server. I am hoping that this is sufficient to keep everything up and running for a few years without my neighbours cracking it. That is probably the main obstacle with these home networks, the smartest users just enable WEP and leave it running forever.
I think they may stay away from TCP/IP, after all it's in M$. They can't afford to go at M$ now. If they sabotage TCP/IP the entire world will just sink them quickly - perhaps even finally someone will buy them just to make them shut up.
Another issue... Isn't iBCS related to.Net? And didn't OldSCO pick up the remains of iBCS? As you understand, I have only vague recollections about this but I recall some sort of trace iBCS -> SCO ->.Net...?
...for Slashdotting the servers. In true/.-spirit, I'll comment without having RTFA!
I have received a quite a few of these like most people, and after what - 10 to 15 years on the 'net - I'm still not sure what to think when VISA tells me my card is revoked due to fraudulent use and I have to go to a web site to check it. If the mail is sufficiently advanced, I write my bank with a copy to phishing@visa.com to avoid any financial losses in case there is any truth in it. I never, ever, go to the URL.
It's just plain ol' fun to get messages that my mail account at my personal domain is revoked (and I know who has root 'xcept me), or that I am apparently sending Windows virii to some guy in Australia (no, Sir, I do not run Wine that frequently).
Are you really sure it's impossible to mix scents to produce a certain experience of smell? Like synthetic flavours/smells, very different compounds create a similar perception of smell. I believe vanilla is more or less impossible to create synthetic, but many compounds have a "vanilla-like" smell. Just like we trick our visual perception by mixing colours or quickly displaying a series of stills - creating an illusion like what you are watching on your screen right now.
I would not be surprised if a limited set of smells (such as wine) can be synthezised.
I have previously seen kits with essential oils etc. that are sold as "wine taster games", I think you are supposed to reckognize certain base smells and score points. Smell characteristics such as blackcurrant, wood, smokey, leather etc.
Who would want it? Well, I would love to buy such a gadget and accompanying software to train myself into a wine connoisseaur - without having to open a single bottle of wine. I could "open" and test smell a $300 bottle of virtual vintage wine at work and drive home afterwards, no problem. Then I could buy a real bottle and drink it with some friends at a later occasion, knowing in advance I would probably find it suitable for my taste.
Slashdot Mirror
I've read it, and it's OK if you have statistics-phobia. There are lots of great books that cover software performance, how to measure it and describe the results. For any relational database, I recommend "Forecasting Oracle Performance". Covers Oracle, but you could use the theory on other brands as well. For statistics in general (and with less cartoons), "Statistics Without Tears" is a classic - a gentle introduction to the subject.
When you deal with intense multi-user such as web applications and relational databases, I feel just like Zed Shaw sometimes... People seriously need to grasp basic statistics.
Strange nobody mentioned this service:
http://www.xp-dev.com/
Subversion repository, 200MB free (should be enough for a few personal files) and lots more if you pay.
HTTPS support for SVN for paying customers.
Lots of extra stuff (bug tracking, wiki etc) if you are a developer.
No affilitation, just a happy customer!
When your local phone switch upgraded to DTMF, you could usually open the phone and jumper it from pulse to tone. Cradle dialling was fun for me too, and probably still works most places, but I ended up with lots of misdialled numbers.
To me, the important advantage of Open Source on the server side is that my data is in an Open Format - because I have the source. I can clean up corruptions or load old backups because I know exactly how the server reads the data.
Also, I can use the same database version forever. I have to get someone to patch the code to run on Vista or Windows Server 2025 or whatever in the future, but the core of the database server remains the same. Database servers just keep running on some server and are forgotten until suddenly someone makes the decision to upgrade those old NT 3.51 servers ASAP. If you run an ancient version of Oracle, you are stuffed. No support for the old version, your proprietary front end application doesn't support the Oracle versions that run on Win2003 - so what do you do? Run your business critical RDBMS at an unsupported version on NT on VMWare on Win2003? With Open Source, you can patch the layer that needs fixing, without changing the rest of the product or include the feature bloat the Oracle Sales keep getting added into their products.
If you start using it for yourself and incorporate stuff that your cow-orkers need, it will soon become an indispensible tool. If you really made the right choice to begin with, you will get the credit (sprinkle your name throughout the app and label yourself sysadmin, support etc so they remember who did it). If it sucks, they will hate you for turning it into the corporate standard.
I'll buy one for $200-300 and they can give 1-2 for free to kids in developing countries. I can afford paying more than them if I want a fun little gadget terminal to play around with. A school in a third world country probably needs pencils, paper, crayons, chalk and books instead of this. Set up a webshop where we geeks can buy these and use the income to donate computers to those who can't afford them. It won't finance the entire project, but it could help?
I am in my last few weeks at an IT company. They have been going downhill for a while, and there are no incentives to do any work. Not money ($0 raise for all yet another yeat, yay) nor any "fun" doing work. Really outdated management that just count manhours of work done, not looking for quality or reusable skills. We are basically doing sales, making appointments, going out to customers, working with software that even the developers don't know how to get working, having to reimburse invoices because S/W sucks so bad, employee turnover will probably end up at 25% this year.
I was planning to talk to my bosses about my motivation, but I realized they don't give a shit. They hire new people and tell them they will make tons of money in a year or two. So everybody accept the shitty starting salary until they realize they are screwed.
So, what do I want? A manager who doesn't spend all day in his office doing Excel sheets and never talk to us. Some understanding that I want fun challenges, not this assembly line rubbish work. A few external courses, perhaps they could bring it up with me instead of me always having to ask - and get a refusal. The opportunity to have meetings during office hours and brainstorm suggestions for more effective work without having to estimate earnings and create a project to get approval. Cooperation with other departments without us invoicing each other. And money? Sure, money's nice, but there is more in life.
And I don't want pizza and paintball or go-carting as a substitute for doing real work. I can install and configure servers or whatever with my colleagues and have a great time with lots of fun.
I want to have fun and always learn more! And possibly take certifications, because together with real life experience colleagues and future employees can tell that you know your stuff.
Nice. I am eagerly awaiting the same updates from CentOS soon. Meanwhile, I can get SuSE 10.0 as a free (and Free) download to play with on my other box. When a retail version has stabilized, I expect to pick it up as 10.1 or 10.2 in the store - including Java and Flash and all the other stuff the OSS version is missing. I don't care about support, but I hope the OSS community version will further improve and speed up handling of bugs, feature requests and removal of bloat.
Right now, I am extremely satisifed with SuSE 9.3 on my desktop and CentOS 4.0.1 on my server. For real work with a supported distro I would definitely call up Novell and see if a sales rep could come over and talk about SLES!
Check out the Ghetto UPS which I believe has been discussed here before.
Warning: building something like will probably kill you and others through electrocution, fire, or something completely unexpected.
And while you're at it, a really large Klein bottle for your tech bench drinks.
And to add insult to injury, I found an additional problem when Windows Update asked me if I wanted the ActiveX installed. It was absolutely impossible for me to find a signature checksum for the certificate they signed it with! I looked at the Microsoft website, but the only thing I found was a warning about the fake Microsoft certs that someone tricked Verisign into signing some time back. MS01-017: Erroneous VeriSign-Issued Digital Certificates Pose Spoofing Hazard
So they confirmed that there are fake signed certificates that could be used for making trojaned ActiveX components, but no way of checking that Windows Update components really come from them! The certs in question have been revoked, but don't say it couldn't happen again.
If you buy a computer at a flea market, it better well come with Linux! Resale of the Windows license is NOT allowed, so it is by definition using a pirated Windows version even if the original owner has given away his perfectly legal license.
Every time you pick up an old P3 for your parents, sister or whatever so they can use Internet banking and chat with you, you are required to buy a new OS license for it!
I think the answer is that the GPL code has benefited from the "fair play" users of the code for so long that it has improved a lot and even become the defacto standard. So these companies prefer to use this code and still screw the GPL license rather than legally use BSD-style code. It just shows the success of the GPL license - companies like Cisco, Linksys etc just have to be educated.
A quantum computer was recently built. Quantum computers are known to be incredily fast, so the scientists decided to benchmark it. Now they know exactly how fast the quantum computer is, but they don't know exactly where it is anymore...
...and a follow-up:
Q: How many Support technicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None - we have an identical light bulb in our test lab and it works fine. Please contact your lamp manufacturer and electrical power provider for further assistance. Thank you.
I have considered setting up a VPN for my home net so I can forget about WEP. Use L2TP or even PPTP so the Windows machines can have a simple way to connect, Linux is handled by myself.
However, what about the risk that a laptop may not have a decent personal firewall? It gets cracked (or runs malware in the first place), it connects over the VPN since I trusted the user the last time he visited - suddenly the malware has a route to my servers. Or theoretically a cracker could attack the client machine through the WiFi link, right? Then it doesn't help much that the AP is secured and only allows a VPN client to connect, if my neigbor cracks someones laptop while they are connected through the VPN.
How about if I don't make a single copy of a file available? How about if I place a chunk of data that matches a certain offset within a file with a certain MD5 value? And what if I surround it with random junk? Then someone else can puzzle together a number of such blocks from various places and create their own illegal copy - if they like.
One really cool thing (IMHO) about the French/Italian "air car" is the electrical system:
Technical details
Using a radio transmission system, each electrical component receives signals with a microcontroller. Thus only one cable is needed for the whole car. So, instead of wiring each component (headlights, dashboard lights, lights inside the car, etc), one cable connects all electrical parts in the car. The most obvious advantages are the ease of installation and repair and the removal of the approximately 22 kg of wires no longer necessary. Whats more, the entire system becomes an anti-theft alarm as soon as the key is removed from the car.
I haven't started to use it yet, due to paranoia. I have several Linux boxen that are on my inside net and I don't want to compromise them.
Fortunately, one box has an unused NIC that I can use for the 802.x router. I plan to use L2TP and IPSec on this, but the instructions are rather intimidating and the protocol compatibility across platforms may cause issues. I have to use Win XP for work, I use Win2K and Linux myself.
Check out this set of detailed instructions: Using a Linux L2TP/IPsec VPN server. I am hoping that this is sufficient to keep everything up and running for a few years without my neighbours cracking it. That is probably the main obstacle with these home networks, the smartest users just enable WEP and leave it running forever.
I have several boxes of Microdrives that I never use any more. The main reason is that they only fit in this computer!
;-)
What!!!
Are you saying you have never seen Vigor?!?
You don't need Clippy in a shell, you need him in your editor. Such as Vi...
I think they may stay away from TCP/IP, after all it's in M$. They can't afford to go at M$ now. If they sabotage TCP/IP the entire world will just sink them quickly - perhaps even finally someone will buy them just to make them shut up.
.Net? And didn't OldSCO pick up the remains of iBCS? As you understand, I have only vague recollections about this but I recall some sort of trace iBCS -> SCO -> .Net...?
Another issue... Isn't iBCS related to
...for Slashdotting the servers. /.-spirit, I'll comment without having RTFA!
In true
I have received a quite a few of these like most people, and after what - 10 to 15 years on the 'net - I'm still not sure what to think when VISA tells me my card is revoked due to fraudulent use and I have to go to a web site to check it. If the mail is sufficiently advanced, I write my bank with a copy to phishing@visa.com to avoid any financial losses in case there is any truth in it. I never, ever, go to the URL.
It's just plain ol' fun to get messages that my mail account at my personal domain is revoked (and I know who has root 'xcept me), or that I am apparently sending Windows virii to some guy in Australia (no, Sir, I do not run Wine that frequently).
And this happended just when I thought my wursts couldn't get any more spam...
Are you really sure it's impossible to mix scents to produce a certain experience of smell? Like synthetic flavours/smells, very different compounds create a similar perception of smell. I believe vanilla is more or less impossible to create synthetic, but many compounds have a "vanilla-like" smell. Just like we trick our visual perception by mixing colours or quickly displaying a series of stills - creating an illusion like what you are watching on your screen right now.
I would not be surprised if a limited set of smells (such as wine) can be synthezised.
I have previously seen kits with essential oils etc. that are sold as "wine taster games", I think you are supposed to reckognize certain base smells and score points. Smell characteristics such as blackcurrant, wood, smokey, leather etc.
Who would want it? Well, I would love to buy such a gadget and accompanying software to train myself into a wine connoisseaur - without having to open a single bottle of wine. I could "open" and test smell a $300 bottle of virtual vintage wine at work and drive home afterwards, no problem.
Then I could buy a real bottle and drink it with some friends at a later occasion, knowing in advance I would probably find it suitable for my taste.