A few years ago, I had an internship at the Air Traffic Control lab at Ames Research Center in Mountain View (technically Moffet Field is its own city, but whatever), California. The people were nice and pretty good at what they did, and the desktops were mostly Red Hat, but the IT system there was pretty weird. I sat in a cubicle next to a one filled with unused desktop machines and monitors. Pentium 2/3, G3/G4 Macs, 17" CRTs, all kinda of stuff that was just 1.5-3 years old. Even so, people who were coming in would get new computers. Why? Because you can't just take one of the computers from the storage cubicle; you have to fill out forms and it needs to go through a bunch of processes to make sure that it works, that the hard drive is wiped, and a clean install of the OS is performed.
Obviously, the IT department would rather just open up a new machine than spend a bunch of effort refurbishing an old one, so they made the paperwork to have an old machine put back into service much more complicated than the paperwork to order a new machine. Furthermore, there was a tactical element involved: I ended up with a brand new, top of the line machine because my boss wanted one, but wasn't due for a new computer for a couple of years. If I remember correctly, because I was an intern, he was able to justify the purchase for 'a new employee' on the accounting side, while keeping the ownership rights from IT's perspective - so when I went back to school, he took the machine I'd been using and - you guessed it - dumped his old one in The Cubicle.
No kidding. The sadism angle is the strangest thing in this whole thread. I think the potential mouse-strangler would just buy feeder mice at a pet store, take them home, and strangle them. Why all the work and publicity?
... which the AC is apparently more familiar with than you are. When 1955 Doc learns that the time machine is powered by plutonium and requires 1.21 jigawatts of electricity to engage the flux capacitor, he goes into a frenzied diatribe, exclaiming that generating that much electricity is impossible with the availible technology and berating his future self for being so careless and irresponsible as to build a device with such outrageous requirements. Marty interjects (excitedly/confusedly/despairingly), "What the hell is a jigawatt?!"
Didn't you see the post upthread? The man plays FLIGHT SIMULATORS, for godsakes. Why are you even questioning his god-like conditioning and reflexes? Can anyone else on Slashdot claim to have experienced such a unique and powerful method of training?
We need to get to the source of the problem and fix it. Let us return to the days when the law was simple to read, and simple to enforce. Let us return to the days when we could walk up to a court clerk, file a grievance and sue the people who violated the contract, just them and us.
Please tell me the procedure by which it is a reasonably efficient use of public resources to have five million people each file an individual suit with Sony over a fifteen-dollar CD. I'm dying to hear it.
My father is an IIT graduate who worked on (among other things) Project MAC at MIT in the 70's. He ended up becoming an executive by the 80's but quit so he could go back to being a developer. And, like you said, it's hard for people his age to find work in the private sector. He eventually settled in as a systems architect for Apple, of all places. I guess they realize (unlike most companies, which, as you said, dump their old hands in favor of cheap noobs) that it doesn't matter that he costs twice as much, because he's ten times the programmer they'll get by recruiting straight out of schools.
Indeed, the games were a slightly stripped-down version of 3rd edition, and the character sheets they provided literally told you what you needed to roll for pretty much everything. That is to say, it didn't just list all the various modifiers, it had entries like "Shortbow: Attack Roll d20+3, Damage 1d6-1", with a little note saying something like "The attack roll succeeds if you score higher than the opponent's armor class. The Dungeon Master will tell you if you hit or not."
Can someone explain to me how this is vaguely funny? Please, draw some analogy, any analogy, I dare you, showing that Ghengis Khan (in Mandarian-speaking culture) is at all equivalent to Beowulf (in English-speaking culture).
Re:What was David Zampino known for?
on
RIP: Leonard Zubkoff
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I wrote about David Zampino in another comment. I neglected to mention in that post that, in addition to being a chip designer, programmer, and IT manager, David Zampino was also known as 'Bat Dave' in my corner of the office because of his ability to fly small planes and helicopters.
Most people here probably know more about Leonard Zubkoff, so why don't I talk a little about David Zampino. Mr. Zampino ("Please, call me Dave") was my boss at the company I worked for during the summer between high school and college. At that time, he was working for RCN, a fairly large ISP. He taught me a great portion of what I know about TCP/IP and routing equipment. He was a great boss; on days with lots of customers calling, he would tell us techs (not just 'let' us; he would say, "Be sure to expense that,"!) to expense pizza delivery if we decided to work through lunch. His focus was always, always on having good customer service. He really wanted the company to have a reputation as being dependable and competent, even if it cost time and money. He also did not have much patience for office politics. One time, a customer called and complained that his Unreal server had suddenly become sluggish, and all the players' ping times had gone up 60 miliseconds. I investigated, found a problem in our routing, and sent an email to the appropriate internal mailing list. When the person in charge of the buggy area fired back a reply chastising my inexperience and ridiculous notions, Dave was on it like a hawk. In less than 15 minutes he, too, had investigated the problem, and wrote to the list both to back me up and to castigate the other manager (albeit in a very diplomatic way) for reflexively 'defending his turf' without even looking into the problem!
I don't know a whole lot about him before that time. Mr. Zampino was the founder of Brainstorm (1990-1991 ish), which started as a hardware company making accelerator cards for Macs. They ended up as a local, business-only ISP (long story) which was eventually bought by RCN, which is how he ended up there. While he may not have been a kernel hacker, he was certainly no slouch in Unix operation and programming, nor in hardware design. Although I have not worked for RCN since the summer of 2000, and I believe he left the company earlier this year, I am sure he is fondly remembered by all his co-workers.
Rest in peace, Dave. I am proud to have had the privilege of knowing you.
Slashdot Mirror
*click*
*cluck*
*cluck*
*cluck*
*cluck*
Somehow, I don't think they're going to be very afraid of the mechanical chicken you just activated.
A few years ago, I had an internship at the Air Traffic Control lab at Ames Research Center in Mountain View (technically Moffet Field is its own city, but whatever), California. The people were nice and pretty good at what they did, and the desktops were mostly Red Hat, but the IT system there was pretty weird. I sat in a cubicle next to a one filled with unused desktop machines and monitors. Pentium 2/3, G3/G4 Macs, 17" CRTs, all kinda of stuff that was just 1.5-3 years old. Even so, people who were coming in would get new computers. Why? Because you can't just take one of the computers from the storage cubicle; you have to fill out forms and it needs to go through a bunch of processes to make sure that it works, that the hard drive is wiped, and a clean install of the OS is performed.
Obviously, the IT department would rather just open up a new machine than spend a bunch of effort refurbishing an old one, so they made the paperwork to have an old machine put back into service much more complicated than the paperwork to order a new machine. Furthermore, there was a tactical element involved: I ended up with a brand new, top of the line machine because my boss wanted one, but wasn't due for a new computer for a couple of years. If I remember correctly, because I was an intern, he was able to justify the purchase for 'a new employee' on the accounting side, while keeping the ownership rights from IT's perspective - so when I went back to school, he took the machine I'd been using and - you guessed it - dumped his old one in The Cubicle.
Plus the original poster seems to have a lot of sex-related issues to deal with. But I guess that's being 12-14 also.
No kidding. The sadism angle is the strangest thing in this whole thread. I think the potential mouse-strangler would just buy feeder mice at a pet store, take them home, and strangle them. Why all the work and publicity?
It was a reference to Back to the Future
... which the AC is apparently more familiar with than you are. When 1955 Doc learns that the time machine is powered by plutonium and requires 1.21 jigawatts of electricity to engage the flux capacitor, he goes into a frenzied diatribe, exclaiming that generating that much electricity is impossible with the availible technology and berating his future self for being so careless and irresponsible as to build a device with such outrageous requirements. Marty interjects (excitedly/confusedly/despairingly), "What the hell is a jigawatt?!"
Didn't you see the post upthread? The man plays FLIGHT SIMULATORS, for godsakes. Why are you even questioning his god-like conditioning and reflexes? Can anyone else on Slashdot claim to have experienced such a unique and powerful method of training?
Entertainment? I doubt Jack will even make it to two stars.
We need to get to the source of the problem and fix it. Let us return to the days when the law was simple to read, and simple to enforce. Let us return to the days when we could walk up to a court clerk, file a grievance and sue the people who violated the contract, just them and us.
Please tell me the procedure by which it is a reasonably efficient use of public resources to have five million people each file an individual suit with Sony over a fifteen-dollar CD. I'm dying to hear it.
I'm definitely smelling a new Angelia Jolie movie in there. Hey, maybe we can dig up the Prodigy to do the soundtrack!
What's more annoying...10,000 mosquitos or Mr. Universe?
Mr. Universe keeps stealing my girlfriends, you insensitive clod!
Already exists. It's called MSN Search.
I've also found a significant difference between power and energy.
My father is an IIT graduate who worked on (among other things) Project MAC at MIT in the 70's. He ended up becoming an executive by the 80's but quit so he could go back to being a developer. And, like you said, it's hard for people his age to find work in the private sector. He eventually settled in as a systems architect for Apple, of all places. I guess they realize (unlike most companies, which, as you said, dump their old hands in favor of cheap noobs) that it doesn't matter that he costs twice as much, because he's ten times the programmer they'll get by recruiting straight out of schools.
I'm sure ... the results might be different.
Way to take a stand there, pal.
Indeed, the games were a slightly stripped-down version of 3rd edition, and the character sheets they provided literally told you what you needed to roll for pretty much everything. That is to say, it didn't just list all the various modifiers, it had entries like "Shortbow: Attack Roll d20+3, Damage 1d6-1", with a little note saying something like "The attack roll succeeds if you score higher than the opponent's armor class. The Dungeon Master will tell you if you hit or not."
The organization hemmorrhages millions of dollars and they don't know where.
Compared to the 2.3 trillion dollars that the Pentagon can't find, I'd say NASA is one of our more efficient agencies.
Can someone explain to me how this is vaguely funny? Please, draw some analogy, any analogy, I dare you, showing that Ghengis Khan (in Mandarian-speaking culture) is at all equivalent to Beowulf (in English-speaking culture).
Hear, even. Sigh.
The short short version is that, any time a corporate marketroid says 'digital rights management', you should head 'digital restrictions enforcement.'
Actally, Old Man Murray might have a heart attack - in Max Payne 2, there are crates actually sitting on pallets.
Of course, if we're all obeying an unjust law, then no one will be prosecuted and it will never be challenged.
Ahoy! 'Tis talk like a pirate day!
I wrote about David Zampino in another comment. I neglected to mention in that post that, in addition to being a chip designer, programmer, and IT manager, David Zampino was also known as 'Bat Dave' in my corner of the office because of his ability to fly small planes and helicopters.
Most people here probably know more about Leonard Zubkoff, so why don't I talk a little about David Zampino. Mr. Zampino ("Please, call me Dave") was my boss at the company I worked for during the summer between high school and college. At that time, he was working for RCN, a fairly large ISP. He taught me a great portion of what I know about TCP/IP and routing equipment. He was a great boss; on days with lots of customers calling, he would tell us techs (not just 'let' us; he would say, "Be sure to expense that,"!) to expense pizza delivery if we decided to work through lunch. His focus was always, always on having good customer service. He really wanted the company to have a reputation as being dependable and competent, even if it cost time and money. He also did not have much patience for office politics. One time, a customer called and complained that his Unreal server had suddenly become sluggish, and all the players' ping times had gone up 60 miliseconds. I investigated, found a problem in our routing, and sent an email to the appropriate internal mailing list. When the person in charge of the buggy area fired back a reply chastising my inexperience and ridiculous notions, Dave was on it like a hawk. In less than 15 minutes he, too, had investigated the problem, and wrote to the list both to back me up and to castigate the other manager (albeit in a very diplomatic way) for reflexively 'defending his turf' without even looking into the problem!
I don't know a whole lot about him before that time. Mr. Zampino was the founder of Brainstorm (1990-1991 ish), which started as a hardware company making accelerator cards for Macs. They ended up as a local, business-only ISP (long story) which was eventually bought by RCN, which is how he ended up there. While he may not have been a kernel hacker, he was certainly no slouch in Unix operation and programming, nor in hardware design. Although I have not worked for RCN since the summer of 2000, and I believe he left the company earlier this year, I am sure he is fondly remembered by all his co-workers.
Rest in peace, Dave. I am proud to have had the privilege of knowing you.
...or tehre will B lots of angary Korean DIABLO player out 2 get u! GIVE ME ITEM?!!? SOJ! ^_^