Hey there, I'm an undegreed kid. No green hair or tongue stud, but I don't have a degree. I've got 30 credits at RPI, and I have 25 at Penn (not Penn State). I've worked a couple years in the real world with amazing programmers. You know the reason I don't have my degree? it'd waste my time. No, this isn't my arrogance. I arranged for tuition reimbursement and sat down with two coworkers who had spent a lot of time teaching me advanced programming topics and they determined that I already knew and was practicing the things I'd learn in further undergrad education. So yes, I could get a degree, and have the highest credentials. I could buy a suit and pretend to be well groomed. But would it make me a better asset to a company? not really, no. ----------------------------
While that's nice, an Athlon 700 it's not. The fact of the matter is that the Celerons have puny caches, and thus have a large number of faults, and they share a bus for hitting external cache so they often lock each other out. Thus when running anything that doesn't fit in cache, they spend most of their time locked and idle. I have a dual celery system, for fun, but the performance is barely equivalent to an Athlon of the same clock, let alone one of higher clock. ----------------------------
I'm all for the sports cars. My current cars are a Chrysler LHS for day to day driving and a Carrera 4 when I want to burn fuel needlessly in the pursuit of fast turning, quickly accelerating pleasure.
For a PDA though, I own a Palm Vx. Why on earth should my PDA play mp3s? It only holds 16 or 32 megs total anyway, and the sound quality is something slightly worse than the stereo in the POS Mercury Grand Marquis I drove in high school.
I know lots of people with Palms and lots of people with Wince devices. The people with Palms never seem upset that they can't play mp3s and the only time I've ever seen a Wince device used to play an mp3 was one of my friends who had a humorous little mp3 he played for me while we were waiting to get admitted to the Bowery. While it was funny, I don't think that mp3 was worth carrying extra size/weight or paying more money than I did for my Palm. ----------------------------
and then use the super-secret _( macro. How it works is this. Lets say you have a function foo that's defined to be called foo (string baz, int bar) instead of calling foo('title', 3) you'd call foo(_('title'), 3). and echo "foo"; changes accordingly to echo _("foo");
Now you just need to follow the instructions to setup your strings files, but you now know how to do the php specific gettext wrapping.
You'll have to have the standard files containing language specific msgid->msgstr mappings, and it's helpful if you cook up a little script to grab every string and create a base msgid file if you're managing a large source tree. It's not the most intuitive or well documented procuedure unfortunately. At some point I'll have to write good documentation on how it all works, but hopefully this is at least somewhat useful.
because perl gives you more than one way to do it. and they're both wrong. (hey, you flamed first)
PHP isn't the root of all evil, and I've actually seen quite a bit of really elegantly written large php sites (500K+ codebases) that were maintainable and easily understandable. ----------------------------
It's worth doing some research, the account I have refunds any other banks ATM fees so I truly do get free ATM usage, no matter what the ATM machine claims. (I don't know if there's a limit, I've gotten up to $20-some USD refunded fees in a month though).
Really, really useful for those of us who travel a lot or who don't want to go with one of the gigantibanks. ----------------------------
QNX is designed for embedded systems, and its' big selling point is that it's a true real-time operating system. We actually use it at my office for a variety of purposes where we have to guarantee that a procedure runs, for example, 1500 times per second, no matter what. ----------------------------
I think I made my point, $15 is pretty much nothing unless you're a starving college student, and even then, it's just two cases of horridly cheap beer, or one mag of really bad vodka.
Reasons I'd love supermassive, small capacity drives. Imagine buying books, and having them all available on your palm pilot (every o'reilly, right there at your fingertips, with of course every RFC, the entire acm digital library and a few others). Imagine having every movie you own in your pocket, also on your palm pilot, with an adapter so you could watch any movie you already own while you're travelling. Every movie, every cd, uncompressed, full quality. No need for the distortion of mp3 when you have a terabyte in compactflash format:-) The reasons why there isn't any current applications like this, is because it isn't currently feasible. At home I have around 150gigs of storage on my network, most of which is in one RAID cluster. Useless? it seemed so but I keep on finding handy ways to use it. My latest project is storing all my live concert recordings (dat and cd) (yes they're legal), to.shn files so that I can easily spin off copies of them on demand. If you use your imagination, you'll realie that the number of people who keep legal video on their machines is small because it's not generally practical. Consumer-ized special-purpose computers such as the TiVo are changing this. A super-high capacity TiVo like device combined with broadband access and you could start selling movies legally, on-line. ----------------------------
You're right, but 3 orders of magnitude still isn't worth dismissing. Hell, I'll always take even a single order of magnitude of performance improvement if it's available. ----------------------------
I'll gladly pay reasonable net taxes, if they'll be used to fund public net access, net infrastructure, and to help in closing the digital divide. Somehow, I don't think that's the plan though. I think it's more like the plan of a policeman who sets up a speed trap at the bottom of a hill that never has any accidents. No, he's not saving lives or helping people, but he's certainly making quite a bit of money. ----------------------------
I don't understand your comparison at all. Levittown is filled with inexpensive, mass-produced homes. No easier or harder to use than any other home. The differential is that they're very inexpensive for the area. An online service that is like Levittown would be something that offers similar service as other ISPs but at a significant discount.
Now stop insulting Levittown, some of my friends live there:-) ----------------------------
you're right, all those words were improperly spelled. No reason to say you're srry, after all, that's not spelled correctly either:-) ----------------------------
I didn't mean that one should copy my letter, word for word and idea for idea. I meant that if one was attempting to write a letter regarding this situation, that they could feel free to use mine as a bit of inspiration, or to ignore it, or whatever.
I agree, 100000 letters with the same content are almost useless. A variety of content will make these letters an order of magnitude more effective. I apologize for my lack of clarity, I guess I should have opened with 'this was the letter i sent, please feel free to borrow any of my ideas while composing an original letter of your own.'
To anybody reading this who believes a wrong is being committed, please write a letter. It doesn't take very long and you could help, just a little, to protect the freedoms we so often take for granted. ----------------------------
A most grievious situation has recently come to my attention, through an article on slashdot.org. The situation, as it has been related to me, is that the Pink Paper has engaged in a most disreputable and plainly assinine attempt to have outcast effectively shutdown by filing a preemptive complaint.
The absurdity of the situation boggles my mind in all directions. To the ISP who was hosting outcast, shame on you. I know you're simply making a business of providing web access and it's 'cheaper and easier' to do it this way, but the proper response to the Pink Paper request was to, after research to determine if any wrong-doing had occured or was likely to occur, send a reply to their lawyers politely stating that they are abusing laws, and that they can bugger off until they have a leg to stand on.
To the Pink Paper. I'm appalled, astounded and just... confused. What's wrong with competition? What did they do to hurt you? What reasonable justification is there for this action other than a lawyer noting in the middle of a business meeting 'i know how to get their website shut down.' I hope that this is a case of a lawyer acting without proper authority, or of a manager who acted against the will of the company as a whole. If this is the type of action which you propose is appropriate for them, perhaps you should stop claiming to be a voice for the gay community as your actions demonstrate that you don't believe in equal rights, fairness or good faith, even within the gay community.
To the parties who believe that the law is being used in it's proper sense, allow me to state that abuses like this can end in only one inevitable conclusion. Websites will no longer exist in Britain. If you believe that this law makes sense, and that it's being used reasonably, then allow me to note that the sun now sets on the British Empire. When a situation is made rediculous, a solution is always found. Perhaps the most logical solution is to decide that no websites should be hosted in Britain as they might be subject to costly, illogical and frivolous abuse.
So you know, QNX is not a cheap OS. How licensing works is every utility has points associated with it. You want grep? that's 10 points or whatever. They then add up the points multiply by some magic numbers and that's the price. Unless you need real-time capability, QNX is ludicrously expensive as you end up paying for a lot of things which are basically standard BSD utilities.
I'm still trying to figure out what the obsession with QNX is. It's just another OS, occasionally useful, occasionally useless. ----------------------------
Document it. What company? When did this happen? Who added it? Evidence, dear watson. Every entry in the RBL is documented from their side. I tend to trust that unless presented with facts, not a vague story. Are you *sure* you're even referring to the RBL? after all, that's offtopic, we're talking about ORBS. ----------------------------
Actually it's a great setup for trapping somebody else. Just spoof your MAC address, go to a public network tap and do something flagrantly and stupidly illegal. Now just sit back and watch the innocent get in trouble. ----------------------------
I'd evaluate the obvious O'Reilly titles, Running Linux, Learning RH Linux... Essential System Administration is a great text and covers a lot of unix concepts and such quite clearly. Perhaps it would be good if you just find the local quality technical bookstore (you *do* still have one right, they're not *all* B&N or Borders... at least I hope not) and just start reading Table of Contents... when you find a few that seem appropriate, go buy yourself a cup of coffee, sit down and read them until you decide which you like best. ----------------------------
I recently read of an incident on the OSU grounds, where students were arrested for 'theft of ethernet'. As a concerned outsider, I must say that this decision makes OSU appear foolish and frighteningly overreactionary.
I fully understand that there are rules which always must be followed, however I am quoting from your own 'Appropriate Computer Usage' guidelines Section 1.02 paragraph A when I note that:
Access to the networks and to the information technology resources at Oklahoma State University is a privilege granted to University students, faculty, staff, and third parties who have been granted special permission to use such facilities.
This sentence strongly implies that all students are granted access to the networks at OSU.
The sentence after this notes a requirement to take into account various obligations before allowing access to 'University information resources', and it would seem that you are defining this rule to have been infringed upon. It is unlikely that this is true, as in the previous sentence you have used the terms 'networks' and 'information technology resources' as seperate entities. Seeing as your policy does not clearly define any of these terms, it seems clear that all students are allowed unconditional access of the OSU network, so long as they are not allowing improper access to OSU servers.
Section 1.02 Paragraph D states the possible repercussions for breaking the OSU Appropriate Computer Usage agreement. It notes:
users are personally responsible for all activities on their userid or computer system and may be subjected to disciplinary action and/or loss of privileges for misuse of computers or computing systems under their control even if not personally engaged in by the person controlling the computer or system.
This sentence mentions nowhere the possibility of punishment outside of University channels, even assuming that what these students had done was truly a punishable crime.
Section 1.03 Paragraph C states that users may use only their own computer accounts, however it makes no rule against the sharing of network access.
Section 2.01 Paragraph C Sub-Paragraph 9 has a statement regarding unauthorized access of networks. This paragraph which reads:
Accessing computers, computer software, computer data or information, or networks without proper authorization, or intentionally allowing others to do so, regardless of whether the computer, software, data, information, or network in question is owned by the University. For example, abuse of the networks to which the University belongs or the computers at other sites connected to those networks will be treated as an abuse of Oklahoma State University computing privileges.
This paragraph does not apply to the students in question as Section 1.02 Paragraph A clearly states they had the right to access the network. Beyond that, the proposed penalty for this infraction would seem to be a possible revocation of OSU computing privileges, not arrest.
Section 4.01 of the Appropriate Computer Usage agreement states the Consequences of Misuse of Computing Privileges. There is no privision in this agreement for external law enforcement. none.I hope the attention which this case has attracted will make school administrative officials take notice of this obvious massive oversight on their part. The only crime which is clear to me is a case of wrongful arrest.
I hope that the school will realize that any legal action against these students will produce only two things, a student who will face unjust future bias in their career, and a university which shows that it is willing to not only discipline it's students unjustly, but to do it in a manner which leaves legal questions for future employers.
In my opinion, even if these students have done something which is against the spirit of the school's usage agreement, is to clear all charges against the students and have any record of the occurances expunged from their records. Additionally, the University should reconsider the ability of whomever decided that arrests were warranted to competently perform their job function.
This is a matter which should've been handled internally, and without fuss.
Time syncing. I'd love it if every single clock in my house could sync to an in-house NTP server. As for anything else, my oven should cook, it should not hold recipes. I *can* see some useful uses for these things, especially for bad cooks, but really, I'd rather use an outhouse than wonder if there's a giant marketing database somewhere containing my fecal life history. ----------------------------
Slashdot Mirror
Hey there, I'm an undegreed kid. No green hair or tongue stud, but I don't have a degree. I've got 30 credits at RPI, and I have 25 at Penn (not Penn State). I've worked a couple years in the real world with amazing programmers. You know the reason I don't have my degree? it'd waste my time. No, this isn't my arrogance. I arranged for tuition reimbursement and sat down with two coworkers who had spent a lot of time teaching me advanced programming topics and they determined that I already knew and was practicing the things I'd learn in further undergrad education. So yes, I could get a degree, and have the highest credentials. I could buy a suit and pretend to be well groomed. But would it make me a better asset to a company? not really, no.
----------------------------
While that's nice, an Athlon 700 it's not. The fact of the matter is that the Celerons have puny caches, and thus have a large number of faults, and they share a bus for hitting external cache so they often lock each other out. Thus when running anything that doesn't fit in cache, they spend most of their time locked and idle. I have a dual celery system, for fun, but the performance is barely equivalent to an Athlon of the same clock, let alone one of higher clock.
----------------------------
I'm all for the sports cars. My current cars are a Chrysler LHS for day to day driving and a Carrera 4 when I want to burn fuel needlessly in the pursuit of fast turning, quickly accelerating pleasure.
For a PDA though, I own a Palm Vx. Why on earth should my PDA play mp3s? It only holds 16 or 32 megs total anyway, and the sound quality is something slightly worse than the stereo in the POS Mercury Grand Marquis I drove in high school.
I know lots of people with Palms and lots of people with Wince devices. The people with Palms never seem upset that they can't play mp3s and the only time I've ever seen a Wince device used to play an mp3 was one of my friends who had a humorous little mp3 he played for me while we were waiting to get admitted to the Bowery. While it was funny, I don't think that mp3 was worth carrying extra size/weight or paying more money than I did for my Palm.
----------------------------
At the top of the page call the secret function:
init_i18n();
and then use the super-secret _( macro. How it works is this. Lets say you have a function foo that's defined to be called foo (string baz, int bar) instead of calling foo('title', 3) you'd call foo(_('title'), 3). and echo "foo"; changes accordingly to echo _("foo");
Now you just need to follow the instructions to setup your strings files, but you now know how to do the php specific gettext wrapping.
You'll have to have the standard files containing language specific msgid->msgstr mappings, and it's helpful if you cook up a little script to grab every string and create a base msgid file if you're managing a large source tree. It's not the most intuitive or well documented procuedure unfortunately. At some point I'll have to write good documentation on how it all works, but hopefully this is at least somewhat useful.
----------------------------
because perl gives you more than one way to do it. and they're both wrong. (hey, you flamed first)
PHP isn't the root of all evil, and I've actually seen quite a bit of really elegantly written large php sites (500K+ codebases) that were maintainable and easily understandable.
----------------------------
It's worth doing some research, the account I have refunds any other banks ATM fees so I truly do get free ATM usage, no matter what the ATM machine claims. (I don't know if there's a limit, I've gotten up to $20-some USD refunded fees in a month though).
Really, really useful for those of us who travel a lot or who don't want to go with one of the gigantibanks.
----------------------------
QNX is designed for embedded systems, and its' big selling point is that it's a true real-time operating system. We actually use it at my office for a variety of purposes where we have to guarantee that a procedure runs, for example, 1500 times per second, no matter what.
----------------------------
I think I made my point, $15 is pretty much nothing unless you're a starving college student, and even then, it's just two cases of horridly cheap beer, or one mag of really bad vodka.
----------------------------
Reasons I'd love supermassive, small capacity drives. Imagine buying books, and having them all available on your palm pilot (every o'reilly, right there at your fingertips, with of course every RFC, the entire acm digital library and a few others). Imagine having every movie you own in your pocket, also on your palm pilot, with an adapter so you could watch any movie you already own while you're travelling. Every movie, every cd, uncompressed, full quality. No need for the distortion of mp3 when you have a terabyte in compactflash format :-) The reasons why there isn't any current applications like this, is because it isn't currently feasible. At home I have around 150gigs of storage on my network, most of which is in one RAID cluster. Useless? it seemed so but I keep on finding handy ways to use it. My latest project is storing all my live concert recordings (dat and cd) (yes they're legal), to .shn files so that I can easily spin off copies of them on demand. If you use your imagination, you'll realie that the number of people who keep legal video on their machines is small because it's not generally practical. Consumer-ized special-purpose computers such as the TiVo are changing this. A super-high capacity TiVo like device combined with broadband access and you could start selling movies legally, on-line.
----------------------------
You're right, but 3 orders of magnitude still isn't worth dismissing. Hell, I'll always take even a single order of magnitude of performance improvement if it's available.
----------------------------
I'll gladly pay reasonable net taxes, if they'll be used to fund public net access, net infrastructure, and to help in closing the digital divide. Somehow, I don't think that's the plan though. I think it's more like the plan of a policeman who sets up a speed trap at the bottom of a hill that never has any accidents. No, he's not saving lives or helping people, but he's certainly making quite a bit of money.
----------------------------
I don't understand your comparison at all. Levittown is filled with inexpensive, mass-produced homes. No easier or harder to use than any other home. The differential is that they're very inexpensive for the area. An online service that is like Levittown would be something that offers similar service as other ISPs but at a significant discount.
:-)
Now stop insulting Levittown, some of my friends live there
----------------------------
as if we don't all know the magic l/p which always works, anyway.
----------------------------
you're right, all those words were improperly spelled. No reason to say you're srry, after all, that's not spelled correctly either :-)
----------------------------
I didn't mean that one should copy my letter, word for word and idea for idea. I meant that if one was attempting to write a letter regarding this situation, that they could feel free to use mine as a bit of inspiration, or to ignore it, or whatever.
I agree, 100000 letters with the same content are almost useless. A variety of content will make these letters an order of magnitude more effective. I apologize for my lack of clarity, I guess I should have opened with 'this was the letter i sent, please feel free to borrow any of my ideas while composing an original letter of your own.'
To anybody reading this who believes a wrong is being committed, please write a letter. It doesn't take very long and you could help, just a little, to protect the freedoms we so often take for granted.
----------------------------
To Whom It May Concern:
A most grievious situation has recently come to my attention, through an article on slashdot.org. The situation, as it has been related to me, is that the Pink Paper has engaged in a most disreputable and plainly assinine attempt to have outcast effectively shutdown by filing a preemptive complaint.
The absurdity of the situation boggles my mind in all directions. To the ISP who was hosting outcast, shame on you. I know you're simply making a business of providing web access and it's 'cheaper and easier' to do it this way, but the proper response to the Pink Paper request was to, after research to determine if any wrong-doing had occured or was likely to occur, send a reply to their lawyers politely stating that they are abusing laws, and that they can bugger off until they have a leg to stand on.
To the Pink Paper. I'm appalled, astounded and just... confused. What's wrong with competition? What did they do to hurt you? What reasonable justification is there for this action other than a lawyer noting in the middle of a business meeting 'i know how to get their website shut down.' I hope that this is a case of a lawyer acting without proper authority, or of a manager who acted against the will of the company as a whole. If this is the type of action which you propose is appropriate for them, perhaps you should stop claiming to be a voice for the gay community as your actions demonstrate that you don't believe in equal rights, fairness or good faith, even within the gay community.To the parties who believe that the law is being used in it's proper sense, allow me to state that abuses like this can end in only one inevitable conclusion. Websites will no longer exist in Britain. If you believe that this law makes sense, and that it's being used reasonably, then allow me to note that the sun now sets on the British Empire. When a situation is made rediculous, a solution is always found. Perhaps the most logical solution is to decide that no websites should be hosted in Britain as they might be subject to costly, illogical and frivolous abuse.
Good luck, outcast magazine,
Good luck, Britain,
----------------------------
The NY Times has this article available at http://www.nytimes. com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/03tsc-msft.html
----------------------------
So you know, QNX is not a cheap OS. How licensing works is every utility has points associated with it. You want grep? that's 10 points or whatever. They then add up the points multiply by some magic numbers and that's the price. Unless you need real-time capability, QNX is ludicrously expensive as you end up paying for a lot of things which are basically standard BSD utilities.
I'm still trying to figure out what the obsession with QNX is. It's just another OS, occasionally useful, occasionally useless.
----------------------------
Document it. What company? When did this happen? Who added it? Evidence, dear watson. Every entry in the RBL is documented from their side. I tend to trust that unless presented with facts, not a vague story. Are you *sure* you're even referring to the RBL? after all, that's offtopic, we're talking about ORBS.
----------------------------
Actually it's a great setup for trapping somebody else. Just spoof your MAC address, go to a public network tap and do something flagrantly and stupidly illegal. Now just sit back and watch the innocent get in trouble.
----------------------------
Ah yes, I forgot, all network traffic originating from a lab gets compressed automatically, therefore saving bandwidth.
----------------------------
I'd evaluate the obvious O'Reilly titles, Running Linux, Learning RH Linux... Essential System Administration is a great text and covers a lot of unix concepts and such quite clearly. Perhaps it would be good if you just find the local quality technical bookstore (you *do* still have one right, they're not *all* B&N or Borders... at least I hope not) and just start reading Table of Contents... when you find a few that seem appropriate, go buy yourself a cup of coffee, sit down and read them until you decide which you like best.
----------------------------
To Whom It May Concern:
I recently read of an incident on the OSU grounds, where students were arrested for 'theft of ethernet'. As a concerned outsider, I must say that this decision makes OSU appear foolish and frighteningly overreactionary.
I fully understand that there are rules which always must be followed, however I am quoting from your own 'Appropriate Computer Usage' guidelines Section 1.02 paragraph A when I note that:
This sentence strongly implies that all students are granted access to the networks at OSU.
The sentence after this notes a requirement to take into account various obligations before allowing access to 'University information resources', and it would seem that you are defining this rule to have been infringed upon. It is unlikely that this is true, as in the previous sentence you have used the terms 'networks' and 'information technology resources' as seperate entities. Seeing as your policy does not clearly define any of these terms, it seems clear that all students are allowed unconditional access of the OSU network, so long as they are not allowing improper access to OSU servers.
Section 1.02 Paragraph D states the possible repercussions for breaking the OSU Appropriate Computer Usage agreement. It notes:
This sentence mentions nowhere the possibility of punishment outside of University channels, even assuming that what these students had done was truly a punishable crime.
Section 1.03 Paragraph C states that users may use only their own computer accounts, however it makes no rule against the sharing of network access.
Section 2.01 Paragraph C Sub-Paragraph 9 has a statement regarding unauthorized access of networks. This paragraph which reads:
This paragraph does not apply to the students in question as Section 1.02 Paragraph A clearly states they had the right to access the network. Beyond that, the proposed penalty for this infraction would seem to be a possible revocation of OSU computing privileges, not arrest.
Section 4.01 of the Appropriate Computer Usage agreement states the Consequences of Misuse of Computing Privileges. There is no privision in this agreement for external law enforcement. none.I hope the attention which this case has attracted will make school administrative officials take notice of this obvious massive oversight on their part. The only crime which is clear to me is a case of wrongful arrest.
I hope that the school will realize that any legal action against these students will produce only two things, a student who will face unjust future bias in their career, and a university which shows that it is willing to not only discipline it's students unjustly, but to do it in a manner which leaves legal questions for future employers.
In my opinion, even if these students have done something which is against the spirit of the school's usage agreement, is to clear all charges against the students and have any record of the occurances expunged from their records. Additionally, the University should reconsider the ability of whomever decided that arrests were warranted to competently perform their job function.
This is a matter which should've been handled internally, and without fuss.
Sincerely,
Kevin Way
----------------------------
Time syncing. I'd love it if every single clock in my house could sync to an in-house NTP server. As for anything else, my oven should cook, it should not hold recipes. I *can* see some useful uses for these things, especially for bad cooks, but really, I'd rather use an outhouse than wonder if there's a giant marketing database somewhere containing my fecal life history.
----------------------------
I just made a donation in honor of Jason and Cassie. They'll be in my dreams.
----------------------------