In some remote youth, I've been teaching automation course. One of our main topic was the study of feedback loops. The fact is that the/. moderation system with its MII system is a truly a multi-level feedback loop.
I've already be thinking for a while about whether some theoretical study of such system can be done, or as already been done. There must be some crossover between system and automation theory where that kind of niche might be found.
We are already trying to simulate peoples within games, why shouldn't we be able to simulate the/. system ?
From another point of view, the karma is praised on the article, in a misleading parallel to some previous authoring web site. As pointed into/. own FAQ, kharma is not that important (unless you make it so). Because it does NOT make you stand out upon the masses, just merely makes you a bit more visible.
And despite what they promise in the article, it really doesn't stop the bunch of troll/fp/goats@#! to post, even if they won't be archived in the end.
So, whether those pesky monster are remaining because of/. sucess, or because the moderation system is bad remains to be seen.
Another good question : does the/. moderation system remains the same because/code people are lazy, are because it reaches their goal, whatever they are ?
Actually, studying comets 'queue' spectrographic data is already beeing done from earth or some satellites.
So I'd bet that a lots of eyes are going to look at the poor comet when they are going to give it it's copper penny.
OTOH having a closer witness is a good idea, since you have to haul all that copper, a few more silicon should make that much of a difference.
As for the hardness of the comet, believe me, at such speed snow or granit won't make such a difference, unless you are measuring at a really high frequency, wich is unlikely with such a far-travelling device. It is merely going to help you measure the nearby gravity fields, or if some comet gases are slowing you approach.
Well, I grew up in city where the tramway was never given up. And your point about the density of population is good : for example, in europe the problem is totally different.
Go look into a history of rebirth of the tramway in france (babelfish required).
To summarize up : the tramway and related transport died in the 50th because the personnal cars and other related transport where more politically correct, and because the public network was old (pre WW-II).
But at the end of the "glorious 30th", the oil crisis triggered a new interest for electric public transports. Since 1974 the number of electric streecars has been growing.
Nowadays, the number of towns equipped with electric ground transport is around 10, counting major players like Paris, Lyon, Strazbourg, etc.
The number of people deserved by those transport by well account for half of the french population.
So, the electric car is dead ? Surely not, even in the US.
For those of you interested here is a list of links to rail transportation-related museums, in various languages (keep that slippery fish handy !)
Actually, you are right : but I enjoyed the reading the article anyway.
What is interesting here (and I think the writer knew that) is actually the way she reacted to the 'bots, not the way a kind of 'advanced' electronic gadget is avoiding grape.
My wife just called me because the 8mm video recorder "does not want to give back the tape".
But the technically, she is wrong : a video recorder has no will, just extremely mundane electro-mechanicals reasons. And that's the same thing with this article : the author is obviously making fun (reading Asimov...) but, from lack or disinterst into technical matters, is also wondering what are those machines really capables of ?
With apparition of pet'bot's and walking prototypes, the age-old sci-fi dream of domestics robots is maybe a lot closer than we think. And the designers of those robots might have ot read more that asimov to forecast the way people are going to react.
After all, I already met someone that tought is computer despised him because some 'essential' icon vanished from its desktop !
Massive overclocker migration : the U.S. immigration department flooded with request to move the the south pole and some to the recently established mars colonies.
"Alaska ain't cold enough" says a disappointed overclocker, who burned is 5th Josephson CPU last week.
Greenpeace trying to warn the government about environmentals risks :
"The cooling fluids used by those geeks might be dangerous for the ozone layers ands penguins".
I know it's a bit offtopic, but I cannot resist jumping that bandwagon.
Well, I have both side represented in my resume, and since I did spend a lot of time on the programming side, I'm now looking the other one.
Enough with my personnal story.
If you want to venture in analogies, I will try to take more close examples, even the mechanic one is very good. If you leave the programmer alone, I think that the people doing whole system/integration test are close to sysadmins :
They know the system on the whole, with a more a global point of view than of any particular areas.
The same way, they learn to look at the system in a more organic fashion : a programmer will go for the log files, a tester will know right way something is wrong because that operation is taking too long...
they have to go deeper into details (code) when something is wrong, so they might end up criticizing/commenting on the design
they have to be anal-retentive, to make sure that every dark corner is covered
even if this is less obvious for tester, since they have some good troubleshooting knowledge on the system, they well might end up answering customer questions, even if that's not their daily job.
This is obviously looking at the same system from a different point of view : the builder and the maintainer.
However, every each roles have to deals with the innards of the system at differents phases of its life.
However, one of the great advantage of having sysadmin do developpment and developper doing sysadmin is on the requirements gathering. Since getting relevants requirements is one of the thorniest problems into software developpment, having both roles allow to much more communication.
A sysadmin doing/having done developpment will quickly assess the technical feasibility of some tasks, whether an programmer will try to deal with system ressources in a more knowedgeable way.
Some examples (out of experience) :
troubleshooting/sysadmin people are complaining because soft X has no log files to troubleshoot
the design team create log files
after a panic caused by a full disk, the troubleshooting/sysadmin people are complaining again
th desing team add circular logging.
This is a typical examples where overlapping is not only desirable, but should be required, because a lot of reverse story exists as well.
[warma_khoring] Perl is a good example of a language for sysadmin/developper : it allows you to write short shell chirurgical shell scripts as well as huge frameworks.[/warma_khoring]
Wait a minute : do someone know anything about the order of magnitude it takes for an object to curve photon trajectory like this ?
I know that the trajectory must only be slighlty bended to do what you're meaning here, but earth or even sol are nowhere near to have the gravity field of a neutron star.
And if space is bent, should the cristal be bent as well, so you problem is moot ?
As well, since we are nearing science-fiction : what about micro-optical fibers ?
Too much idea for a saturday morning anyway...
...And they did make it : (speak of free software magic !)
The RFB server .
Now, you have the virtues of having both an X and VNC server at the same time. Port it to windows, get rid of that stupid explorer shell (is that possible ?), put gnome there...
And you end up with a big mess. That is, a ***ix UI on a M$ operating system.
At least, it's going to give you a good april fish : tricking you friend into believe you'r runnig linux, but having windows instead (look at them jumpin' when they ain't no root). Moreover, with vnc, you will be able to screw up a lot more behind their back.
More seriously anyway : one of the big advantage of that port is that you get an unified M$/Linux GUI, so you get GNOME applications across both OSes. IS that better that VMware ? I'm not so sure !
Another question : is that porting of gnome something more to credit to their U/WIN POSIX infrastructure than the GNOME code itself ?
Granted, GNOME is clearly written in a well-portable way, but what else ?
As I understand it, it's not much a matter of particle propagation speed that a matter of wave frequencies, as pointed out in previous comment. (please forget still pending debate of particle vs wave behaviour).
The problem with electrical wave is that the higher the frequency, the less they tend to stay in the wire you're using to transmit them. Stating it otherwise : the higher the frequency is, the more likely you wire is turning into an antenna. And the signal carrying your bits vanishes into the air.
With light, the problem is totally different, because once you get it into a optical fiber, it does not try to get out ( into normal conditions).
As for frequencies, here is an example : a typical visible wavelenght is around 300nm, which gives you about 100000Gz. Even if that signal is modulated a 1/1000 of the main frequency, you have a frequency 100 time greater than the current 1.5 gz boasted by who you know.
The only problem left to solve is to make diodes, transistor, that work with light...
Ok, deregulation this, deregulation that, but anybody with a little electrical engineering practice knows that any electrical network need power regulation to work. Deregulation it on purpose is just commiting suicide : down with to fsking bureaucrates !
Quebec Gov. is nice.
Last year, I dared to submit my tax return form both for Canada and Quebec over the web, and when my software crashed (@#$@#%^!!), the site was extremely usefull to
find the site where my (@#$@#$^%) software was going
submit the data myself
have the submission tracked
have everything clearly explained
Even with the widely advertised langage bigotism of Quebec people, their site is in English, French and Spanish (Tough not everything is translated...). I think this is mandatory for any country aware of the rest of the world.
And like pointed by other comments, it is mean primarily as a directory toward what might be interestring you, and the search facility is really working.
... And I did not manage to find the other links.
It sadly reminds me of what they said on PC world.
According to those numbers, roughly 22 percent of computers break down each year. That makes them significantly worse on average than VCRs (9 percent), big-screen TVs (7 percent), clothes dryers (7 percent), and refrigerators (8 percent), but about as problematic as vacuum cleaners (22 percent). The only product we found with a problem rate higher than a computer's is the riding lawn mower and lawn tractor, which showed an average problem rate of about 25 percent.
First, it was the software industry, then Intel showed the way with their infamous pentium bug, now, even NASA is whoring like the least.com before an IPO.
Everyone motto is now : "ship it and wait for the calls".
So, i guess if my life depended from the "quality of service", I would be swearing too. A lot.
Anyway, their next move is probably going to send lawnmowers over there, since they are so cheap and even more unreliable than computers !
[end of rant mode]
The right to keep and bear arms is the ultimate check and balance on government.
Wow, is this a flamebait or some sort of second-level joke ?
Anyway, it's very funny. Just imagine that you just voted for the guys that that aked your comm. to be logged. After all, you'll deserve some part of the lead-load just because you are partly responsible. Thats'why all those sawed guns are so usefull : aim is poor, but distribution is good...
Anyway, the English government is probably thinking like M$ : don't worry guys, in a few year, that disk space gonna be very cheap. For now, we'll pass the law...
ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF
Never says : death for morons !!! That could be calling for suicide...
The province has no jurisdiction on immigration. If you go to an immigration or an employment office in Quebec, or any other province, it will be run by the goverment of Canada and you'll get to see canadian flags everywhere.
TRUE and FALSE at the same time. Any canadian province is in charge of selecting the people that they are going to accept.
All provinces are using the same laws as basis, but this leaves amples room for other criterias. For example, the Quebec tends to favor french-speaking people emigration, and that's perfectly lawfull. However, like mentionned 1e1000 time, the IT shortage is going to favor you, whitout problem.
Anyway, as an American people, I will choose Montreal : this is a city where you can perfectly live/work in English, but with full french exposure. Once you get to decide if that's something you like, then there will be plenty of canadian company willing to send you to France, if you do not manage to do it yourself.
Moreover there is always things happening in Montreal, wich is far less that any of its counterpart in Canada
There you are going to learn french, because working in english might be an option, but leaving in english there won't.
A french citizen working in quebec - drop me an anonymous note and we will continue that conversation by e-mail the address advertised on/. is a fake.
Adults still insist they have lessons to teach the next generation. But the young have come to believe, with increasing justification, that their elders know much less than they do, and have little worth passing along. All they have to offer are boring and outmoded educational systems, political structures that no longer work, and exhausted forms of fading, sacrosanct, heavily subsidized "culture."
Ok "mono*" and "narrow *" are the actual words that sprang to my mind when reading this latest YARJK, FIAS & co.(tm) (Yet Another Rant from Jon Katz, First In A Serie & co. (tm)).
I have to admit that I like the YARJK, at least because he have that way to draw your nose to areas when you don't want to stick it.
I also am a parent. No old enough that my own father still think I'm not a small boy anymore, but old enough to have childrens anyway. And yes I discovered around 12 years old that my father was knowing less that me when he failed to manage the heavily hacked version of apples dos I adapted for my pleasure.
And that's exactly my point : young people grow with even more technology exposure than there parents ever dreamed of, but they just know more on technology that's it. Playing won't teach them how to deal with womens, how to raise childrens, how to simply manage an happy life. Thas't were Jon miss the point. Yes, the common cultures have yet to adapt to the too-fast-paced word of thechnologies. No, gaming and other techies-related cultures won't explain everything, because once you step out of their relatively closed environnment, the rules disappears.
Yes, but you have to assume that the universe is FINITE to be able to compute its size. By finite, I mean not bounded, ie it's not a 4-or-more dimension hypersphere or torus or some mutant Leyde bottle : you can walk in the same direction without ever reaching a boundary or crossing your path .
AFAIK, we are not even sure of that, are we ?
Even if some crazy math-addicts fine a way to describe the size of our supposedly infinite universe, there is still to prove that it's infinite.
We already new a few ways to have a piece of software tested for free :
Write some (more or less) cool stuff, make it free for everybody, and (but you already know that one)...
Write some very unfriendly piece of softcrap, and threaten to make it a standard if none of you bastard hackers does not crack it.
NEW ONE : write a even more unfriendly free-*-threatening soft (or at least advertise it as such). Since everyone is complaining about it, make your favorite government organisation hire a team of fat brains to say it is OK, it will be tested in the process.
Assessment :
The first one is not really cool, because everyone has access to the source code, and your reputation is ruined beyond repair because you widely advertised your unability to code and design.
The second one is a bit more cool, since at least nobody will mess with your code. The only problem is it does not work. But at least you go some testing for free... Better chance next time.
The last one is definitely the better. Only a few dim-witted people have access to you DLL (Don't Load it, Lad !) source code, and they might even find some bugs for free. Please don't forget to include a special non-disclosure agreement about visual basic code unless you don't mind looking ridiculous.
We do not need any show-business to laugh and cry : we already have politicians.
Yes I was kidding : the UETF is one of the student organisation well known to pertain to the "sue-all-those-non-kosher-bastards" dept.
But I read the/. posts again, and the points I was trying to make just did not make it to North-American ears. So let me rephrase the serious part of my e-mail.
About the french government making some move to censorship. One of the most promeniment part of the 5th french republic constitution is the separation of powers . The various chambers (deputy and senate) are making and changing the laws. The government is responsible to decide how and when the laws are going to be applied. The judge are their to see that the law are enforced properly.
This means that the french governement has (theoretically at least) no influence on the judgement.
Another really important thing is that the french system is relying far less on precedent (jurisprudence) that the US one . This means that this technically clueless judgment his going to have far less importance if the appeals fails that I would have had into the US.
That would be the first such case, granted, but that would not establish a precedent, jurisdictionally speaking.
A sad note now : I did not realize that, on/. so much people had such basic anti-french attitude, and that so much french had so anti-american attitude. I just want to remember anybody that despising someone because he was born (and could not help it) somewhere is just the beginning of nazism.
I will now browse/. at a +1 treshold, thus missing the numerous interesting anonymous posts.
But at least some crap will be filetred out. I think we really need to do something about the moderation system.
First : I'm a french citizen.
(OOoops : am I going to be modded down because this is a flamebait ???)
Anyway, just to put that into perspective.
I agree that technically this decision is stupid. But as someone said before, NO, it's not a governmental move : the french government has no saying in any judgment, and the independance between justice and government is trigerring at least an important fight each years in France.
But the judge is applying the french law, and specially the one that prohibits you to promote anything that will talk in favor of racism.
Moreover, the plaintiff in this case is a Student Jewish organisation. So no, guys this is not a government trying to blindly apply censorship to a medium they do not understand and control. Rather, this is an open-minded young people organisation (UEJF) that's trying to defend its interests. And the french justice is trying to do something about it, with unadapted weapons.
In fact, all really burns down to : is selling nazy items nazi propaganda or not ?
It's you to answer : the french judge has his own opinion. Remember as well that the french justice is relying far less on precedents that the american system, so the next case might have a totally different outcome.
And for armpits and other spicy details on french people, I'm now leaving outside the french territory, so any joke is going to be wasted on me : I already heard it !
...Then the poor guy will complain that linux on Mac does not support color calibration...
Why in the hell linux should not be supporting stuff that those hard-core linux bigots are looking their nose down to ?
I'm sure that in a few years, the same bigots will brag around the fact that linux IS the OS of choice for desktops : and that will be because color calibration and other so-called "useless" features are going to be available.
The real reason why MacOS and Win* are more appealing to graphists are marketing ones. They did every effort to please their customers, including aestethic ones : why not linux ?
I'm sure that having a free/stable/etc OS is something appealing to them too ?
On the other hand, why could not those graphic-oriented guys teach something to us ? Because you know root password and how to hack the kernel does not means you have nothing to learn from those guys ?
It's like we are back into the middle-age revival, when people at least realized that beautifull != useless.
I won't work for that guy.
Why ?
Because there is at least three things at home he will _fail_ to bring at work :
- my wife (she's allergic to work)
- my childs (just give them a try)
- my cat (there's too much dogs into his offices).
Hey Philip, work and life just don't mix...
Unless you do things like redhat does : instead on bringing home to work, you bring work to home - now that's better !
I cannot help but to react there. I do really thinks life's not that simple.
Let's forget the debate : 'you are young but wait till you'll get a life...' Though I think it does apply here, there are other arguments.
The situation :
I'm working (in canada) for one of those big telecom companies that were startup a few tenth (maybe more) years ago.
Since our client are cell phone operator, there is no discussion on the need for on-call people. And since our 'application' is made by more that 100 developpers, it's not only one pager/cell that are needed, but dozen of thems.
The policy here is simple : competent people take the pager/phones in turn, and are paid for that. Usually 'competent' means anybody not too new, and without a very good excuse not to be on call.
Being first line get you 50 CA$ a day, secund line (backup) 25CA$ a day.
And since our overtime is paid, if you are called off-hours, then you charge overtime (ie 1.5x).
Of course, when you are on call, you're suppose to be at your desk within 20 minutes if needed, and you're not leaving the town. So much for leisure, and enough of the company policy.
Now to answer mangino : YES I want to be paid for that. Because your software is maybe small enough that you feel confident to support it. But believe me, with more complicated stuff, you get called around 60% of the time for something the tiny part you did design did NOT cause. The problem is anywhere else, but you are going to troubleshoot it.
More generally speaking, we just launched a new product last year, and until some support organisation was put in place, the design group was naturally responsible for support.
Not everybody liked that, to say the least, and even the relatively good compensation policy mentionned earlier did not prevent some 'near-strikes'
Because beeing on call means constant pressure, and handling a fire with a big customer is NEVER an nice experience on the moment. It takes a very special kind of individual (preferably single) to like this kind of work, wich has nothing to do with computer science and desing.
Slashdot Mirror
From the : it's-my-let's-ask-question-friday-dept
In some remote youth, I've been teaching automation course. One of our main topic was the study of feedback loops. The fact is that the /. moderation system with its MII system is a truly a multi-level feedback loop.
I've already be thinking for a while about whether some theoretical study of such system can be done, or as already been done. There must be some crossover between system and automation theory where that kind of niche might be found.
We are already trying to simulate peoples within games, why shouldn't we be able to simulate the /. system ?
From another point of view, the karma is praised on the article, in a misleading parallel to some previous authoring web site. As pointed into /. own FAQ, kharma is not that important (unless you make it so). Because it does NOT make you stand out upon the masses, just merely makes you a bit more visible.
And despite what they promise in the article, it really doesn't stop the bunch of troll/fp/goats@#! to post, even if they won't be archived in the end.
So, whether those pesky monster are remaining because ofAnother good question : does the /. moderation system remains the same because /code people are lazy, are because it reaches their goal, whatever they are ?
So I'd bet that a lots of eyes are going to look at the poor comet when they are going to give it it's copper penny.
OTOH having a closer witness is a good idea, since you have to haul all that copper, a few more silicon should make that much of a difference.
As for the hardness of the comet, believe me, at such speed snow or granit won't make such a difference, unless you are measuring at a really high frequency, wich is unlikely with such a far-travelling device. It is merely going to help you measure the nearby gravity fields, or if some comet gases are slowing you approach.
Well, I grew up in city where the tramway was never given up. And your point about the density of population is good : for example, in europe the problem is totally different.
Go look into a history of rebirth of the tramway in france (babelfish required). To summarize up : the tramway and related transport died in the 50th because the personnal cars and other related transport where more politically correct, and because the public network was old (pre WW-II).
But at the end of the "glorious 30th", the oil crisis triggered a new interest for electric public transports. Since 1974 the number of electric streecars has been growing. Nowadays, the number of towns equipped with electric ground transport is around 10, counting major players like Paris, Lyon, Strazbourg, etc. The number of people deserved by those transport by well account for half of the french population.So, the electric car is dead ? Surely not, even in the US.
For those of you interested here is a list of links to rail transportation-related museums, in various languages (keep that slippery fish handy !)
What is interesting here (and I think the writer knew that) is actually the way she reacted to the 'bots, not the way a kind of 'advanced' electronic gadget is avoiding grape.
My wife just called me because the 8mm video recorder "does not want to give back the tape".
But the technically, she is wrong : a video recorder has no will, just extremely mundane electro-mechanicals reasons. And that's the same thing with this article : the author is obviously making fun (reading Asimov...) but, from lack or disinterst into technical matters, is also wondering what are those machines really capables of ?With apparition of pet'bot's and walking prototypes, the age-old sci-fi dream of domestics robots is maybe a lot closer than we think. And the designers of those robots might have ot read more that asimov to forecast the way people are going to react.
After all, I already met someone that tought is computer despised him because some 'essential' icon vanished from its desktop !
Massive overclocker migration : the U.S. immigration department flooded with request to move the the south pole and some to the recently established mars colonies.
"Alaska ain't cold enough" says a disappointed overclocker, who burned is 5th Josephson CPU last week.Greenpeace trying to warn the government about environmentals risks :
"The cooling fluids used by those geeks might be dangerous for the ozone layers ands penguins".Well, I have both side represented in my resume, and since I did spend a lot of time on the programming side, I'm now looking the other one.
Enough with my personnal story.If you want to venture in analogies, I will try to take more close examples, even the mechanic one is very good. If you leave the programmer alone, I think that the people doing whole system/integration test are close to sysadmins :
They know the system on the whole, with a more a global point of view than of any particular areas.
The same way, they learn to look at the system in a more organic fashion : a programmer will go for the log files, a tester will know right way something is wrong because that operation is taking too long...
they have to go deeper into details (code) when something is wrong, so they might end up criticizing/commenting on the design
they have to be anal-retentive, to make sure that every dark corner is covered
even if this is less obvious for tester, since they have some good troubleshooting knowledge on the system, they well might end up answering customer questions, even if that's not their daily job.
This is obviously looking at the same system from a different point of view : the builder and the maintainer.
However, every each roles have to deals with the innards of the system at differents phases of its life.However, one of the great advantage of having sysadmin do developpment and developper doing sysadmin is on the requirements gathering. Since getting relevants requirements is one of the thorniest problems into software developpment, having both roles allow to much more communication.
A sysadmin doing/having done developpment will quickly assess the technical feasibility of some tasks, whether an programmer will try to deal with system ressources in a more knowedgeable way. Some examples (out of experience) :troubleshooting/sysadmin people are complaining because soft X has no log files to troubleshoot
the design team create log files
after a panic caused by a full disk, the troubleshooting/sysadmin people are complaining again
th desing team add circular logging.
This is a typical examples where overlapping is not only desirable, but should be required, because a lot of reverse story exists as well.
[warma_khoring] Perl is a good example of a language for sysadmin/developper : it allows you to write short shell chirurgical shell scripts as well as huge frameworks.[/warma_khoring]Speaking of display : High-res Volumetric 3D Display Prototype
The oses are doing some progress for file systems, but what we is really improving nowadays is usability.
I really do think that real 3-D UIs, with "mouses" equivalent and voice recognition/generation will require some powerfull CPU.
Now, you have the virtues of having both an X and VNC server at the same time. Port it to windows, get rid of that stupid explorer shell (is that possible ?), put gnome there...
And you end up with a big mess. That is, a ***ix UI on a M$ operating system. At least, it's going to give you a good april fish : tricking you friend into believe you'r runnig linux, but having windows instead (look at them jumpin' when they ain't no root). Moreover, with vnc, you will be able to screw up a lot more behind their back.More seriously anyway : one of the big advantage of that port is that you get an unified M$/Linux GUI, so you get GNOME applications across both OSes. IS that better that VMware ? I'm not so sure !
Another question : is that porting of gnome something more to credit to their U/WIN POSIX infrastructure than the GNOME code itself ? Granted, GNOME is clearly written in a well-portable way, but what else ?
The problem with electrical wave is that the higher the frequency, the less they tend to stay in the wire you're using to transmit them. Stating it otherwise : the higher the frequency is, the more likely you wire is turning into an antenna. And the signal carrying your bits vanishes into the air.
With light, the problem is totally different, because once you get it into a optical fiber, it does not try to get out ( into normal conditions).
As for frequencies, here is an example : a typical visible wavelenght is around 300nm, which gives you about 100000Gz. Even if that signal is modulated a 1/1000 of the main frequency, you have a frequency 100 time greater than the current 1.5 gz boasted by who you know.
The only problem left to solve is to make diodes, transistor, that work with light...
Ok, deregulation this, deregulation that, but anybody with a little electrical engineering practice knows that any electrical network need power regulation to work. Deregulation it on purpose is just commiting suicide : down with to fsking bureaucrates !
the price of any kind of device able to product electricity is going to reach the stars
if you ever manage to afford one of these, you'd better sleep on it and shoot at first sight : because stealing them will become a national sport.
For those who can burn it, wood is suddenly going to be very, very hard to fine, and of course, expensive.
The worse : you'll notice that when a cd-rom drive is shut and there is no power to open it, an hammer is the next solution.
Last year, I dared to submit my tax return form both for Canada and Quebec over the web, and when my software crashed (@#$@#%^!!), the site was extremely usefull to
find the site where my (@#$@#$^%) software was going
submit the data myself
have the submission tracked
have everything clearly explained
Even with the widely advertised langage bigotism of Quebec people, their site is in English, French and Spanish (Tough not everything is translated...). I think this is mandatory for any country aware of the rest of the world.And like pointed by other comments, it is mean primarily as a directory toward what might be interestring you, and the search facility is really working.
Let's look back at the past Space Station stories :
sound technical base.
pristine organisation.
smart investments 1.
smart investments 2.
... And I did not manage to find the other links. It sadly reminds me of what they said on PC world.
First, it was the software industry, then Intel showed the way with their infamous pentium bug, now, even NASA is whoring like the least .com before an IPO.
Everyone motto is now : "ship it and wait for the calls". So, i guess if my life depended from the "quality of service", I would be swearing too. A lot. Anyway, their next move is probably going to send lawnmowers over there, since they are so cheap and even more unreliable than computers ! [end of rant mode]Wow, is this a flamebait or some sort of second-level joke ?
Anyway, it's very funny. Just imagine that you just voted for the guys that that aked your comm. to be logged. After all, you'll deserve some part of the lead-load just because you are partly responsible. Thats'why all those sawed guns are so usefull : aim is poor, but distribution is good...
Anyway, the English government is probably thinking like M$ : don't worry guys, in a few year, that disk space gonna be very cheap. For now, we'll pass the law...
ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF
Never says : death for morons !!! That could be calling for suicide...
TRUE and FALSE at the same time. Any canadian province is in charge of selecting the people that they are going to accept.
All provinces are using the same laws as basis, but this leaves amples room for other criterias. For example, the Quebec tends to favor french-speaking people emigration, and that's perfectly lawfull. However, like mentionned 1e1000 time, the IT shortage is going to favor you, whitout problem.
Anyway, as an American people, I will choose Montreal : this is a city where you can perfectly live/work in English, but with full french exposure. Once you get to decide if that's something you like, then there will be plenty of canadian company willing to send you to France, if you do not manage to do it yourself. Moreover there is always things happening in Montreal, wich is far less that any of its counterpart in Canada
There you are going to learn french, because working in english might be an option, but leaving in english there won't.
A french citizen working in quebec - drop me an anonymous note and we will continue that conversation by e-mail the address advertised on /. is a fake.
Ok "mono*" and "narrow *" are the actual words that sprang to my mind when reading this latest YARJK, FIAS & co.(tm) (Yet Another Rant from Jon Katz, First In A Serie & co. (tm)).
I have to admit that I like the YARJK, at least because he have that way to draw your nose to areas when you don't want to stick it.
I also am a parent. No old enough that my own father still think I'm not a small boy anymore, but old enough to have childrens anyway. And yes I discovered around 12 years old that my father was knowing less that me when he failed to manage the heavily hacked version of apples dos I adapted for my pleasure.
And that's exactly my point : young people grow with even more technology exposure than there parents ever dreamed of, but they just know more on technology that's it. Playing won't teach them how to deal with womens, how to raise childrens, how to simply manage an happy life. Thas't were Jon miss the point. Yes, the common cultures have yet to adapt to the too-fast-paced word of thechnologies. No, gaming and other techies-related cultures won't explain everything, because once you step out of their relatively closed environnment, the rules disappears.
AFAIK, we are not even sure of that, are we ?
Even if some crazy math-addicts fine a way to describe the size of our supposedly infinite universe, there is still to prove that it's infinite.
We already new a few ways to have a piece of software tested for free :
Write some (more or less) cool stuff, make it free for everybody, and (but you already know that one)...
Write some very unfriendly piece of softcrap, and threaten to make it a standard if none of you bastard hackers does not crack it.
NEW ONE : write a even more unfriendly free-*-threatening soft (or at least advertise it as such). Since everyone is complaining about it, make your favorite government organisation hire a team of fat brains to say it is OK, it will be tested in the process.
Assessment :
The first one is not really cool, because everyone has access to the source code, and your reputation is ruined beyond repair because you widely advertised your unability to code and design.
The second one is a bit more cool, since at least nobody will mess with your code. The only problem is it does not work. But at least you go some testing for free... Better chance next time.
The last one is definitely the better. Only a few dim-witted people have access to you DLL (Don't Load it, Lad !) source code, and they might even find some bugs for free. Please don't forget to include a special non-disclosure agreement about visual basic code unless you don't mind looking ridiculous.
We do not need any show-business to laugh and cry : we already have politicians.
I totally agree with you : but I think it might be the time now to give some attentions to those bells and whistles.
The real question is : should linux be a hacker-only OS, or not ? I do think not, because building your own gettho always was a way to die.
Hint : my favorite window manager is fvwm2, my favorite app is xterm.
Yes I was kidding : the UETF is one of the student organisation well known to pertain to the "sue-all-those-non-kosher-bastards" dept.
But I read the /. posts again, and the points I was trying to make just did not make it to North-American ears. So let me rephrase the serious part of my e-mail.
About the french government making some move to censorship. One of the most promeniment part of the 5th french republic constitution is the separation of powers . The various chambers (deputy and senate) are making and changing the laws. The government is responsible to decide how and when the laws are going to be applied. The judge are their to see that the law are enforced properly.
This means that the french governement has (theoretically at least) no influence on the judgement.
Another really important thing is that the french system is relying far less on precedent (jurisprudence) that the US one . This means that this technically clueless judgment his going to have far less importance if the appeals fails that I would have had into the US.
That would be the first such case, granted, but that would not establish a precedent, jurisdictionally speaking.
A sad note now : I did not realize that, on /. so much people had such basic anti-french attitude, and that so much french had so anti-american attitude. I just want to remember anybody that despising someone because he was born (and could not help it) somewhere is just the beginning of nazism.
I will now browse /. at a +1 treshold, thus missing the numerous interesting anonymous posts.
But at least some crap will be filetred out. I think we really need to do something about the moderation system.
First : I'm a french citizen.
(OOoops : am I going to be modded down because this is a flamebait ???)
Anyway, just to put that into perspective.
I agree that technically this decision is stupid. But as someone said before, NO, it's not a governmental move : the french government has no saying in any judgment, and the independance between justice and government is trigerring at least an important fight each years in France.
But the judge is applying the french law, and specially the one that prohibits you to promote anything that will talk in favor of racism.
Moreover, the plaintiff in this case is a Student Jewish organisation. So no, guys this is not a government trying to blindly apply censorship to a medium they do not understand and control. Rather, this is an open-minded young people organisation (UEJF) that's trying to defend its interests. And the french justice is trying to do something about it, with unadapted weapons.
In fact, all really burns down to : is selling nazy items nazi propaganda or not ?
It's you to answer : the french judge has his own opinion. Remember as well that the french justice is relying far less on precedents that the american system, so the next case might have a totally different outcome.
And for armpits and other spicy details on french people, I'm now leaving outside the french territory, so any joke is going to be wasted on me : I already heard it !
...Then the poor guy will complain that linux on Mac does not support color calibration...
Why in the hell linux should not be supporting stuff that those hard-core linux bigots are looking their nose down to ?
I'm sure that in a few years, the same bigots will brag around the fact that linux IS the OS of choice for desktops : and that will be because color calibration and other so-called "useless" features are going to be available.
The real reason why MacOS and Win* are more appealing to graphists are marketing ones. They did every effort to please their customers, including aestethic ones : why not linux ?
I'm sure that having a free/stable/etc OS is something appealing to them too ?
On the other hand, why could not those graphic-oriented guys teach something to us ? Because you know root password and how to hack the kernel does not means you have nothing to learn from those guys ?
It's like we are back into the middle-age revival, when people at least realized that beautifull != useless.
/Pissed of.
I won't work for that guy.
Why ?
Because there is at least three things at home he will _fail_ to bring at work :
- my wife (she's allergic to work)
- my childs (just give them a try)
- my cat (there's too much dogs into his offices).
Hey Philip, work and life just don't mix...
Unless you do things like redhat does : instead on bringing home to work, you bring work to home - now that's better !
I cannot help but to react there. I do really thinks life's not that simple.
Let's forget the debate : 'you are young but wait till you'll get a life...' Though I think it does apply here, there are other arguments.
The situation :
I'm working (in canada) for one of those big telecom companies that were startup a few tenth (maybe more) years ago.
Since our client are cell phone operator, there is no discussion on the need for on-call people. And since our 'application' is made by more that 100 developpers, it's not only one pager/cell that are needed, but dozen of thems.
The policy here is simple : competent people take the pager/phones in turn, and are paid for that. Usually 'competent' means anybody not too new, and without a very good excuse not to be on call.
Being first line get you 50 CA$ a day, secund line (backup) 25CA$ a day.
And since our overtime is paid, if you are called off-hours, then you charge overtime (ie 1.5x).
Of course, when you are on call, you're suppose to be at your desk within 20 minutes if needed, and you're not leaving the town. So much for leisure, and enough of the company policy.
Now to answer mangino : YES I want to be paid for that. Because your software is maybe small enough that you feel confident to support it. But believe me, with more complicated stuff, you get called around 60% of the time for something the tiny part you did design did NOT cause. The problem is anywhere else, but you are going to troubleshoot it.
More generally speaking, we just launched a new product last year, and until some support organisation was put in place, the design group was naturally responsible for support.
Not everybody liked that, to say the least, and even the relatively good compensation policy mentionned earlier did not prevent some 'near-strikes'
Because beeing on call means constant pressure, and handling a fire with a big customer is NEVER an nice experience on the moment. It takes a very special kind of individual (preferably single) to like this kind of work, wich has nothing to do with computer science and desing.
But some like it hot...
hope it helps,