"The trouble with 'AUG' or 'SEP' is that these make no sense in many languages..."
That would be the "who speak the same language" part of my post.;-)
A bit more seriously (but only a bit): There are many cultures who don't use the Gregorian system of months and years, although most do tie into our host planet's orbit and the phase of the moon in some way. Reconciling their calendars to "ours" is even trickier. And then there is the Maya calendar, which does things like incorporate the orbit of the planet Venus.
"That's what the military and most "with it" government organization use. I've also adopted myself because (a) it is completely unambiguous and (b) I'm an asshole."
You don't say whose military or government. The US DoD, at least, is large enough that there are multiple "standards". I've seen MM/DD/YY (08/02/06) and YYYY-MMM-DD (2006-AUG-02) most often, I think. The ISO date form is YYYY-MM-DD (2006-08-02) or YYYYMMDD (20060802).
Personally, I find the mixed number/letter forms like "2006 AUG 2" and "2 Aug 2006" work best when dealing with other humans who speak the same language. It's unambiguous -- there's only one sane way to interpret it -- and the letter/number distinction stands out more than dashes. For computers and other kinds of filing, though, the ISO form definately wins. It makes sorting so much easier.
"The savings of having 'one' image really didn't outweigh the impracticality of it taking 2-3 hours per workstation per lab."
Um, I use RIS at work, and it doesn't take 2-3 hours per station. Heck, I did an install yesterday, and it took less than 30 minutes between hitting F12 during POST and logging in to Windows XP for the first time.
My specs: 100 megabit switched Ethernet. Client is a Dell OptiPlex 210L, 2.6 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HDD. Server is some Gateway big black box, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB IDE HDD, Windows Server 2000. I suppose if you're running on a 10 megabit repeater or a 386SX for a server or something like that, your time figure might make sense....
Now, it is very true that RIS lacks multicast, and multicast makes a huge difference when imaging more than one client at a time. But you specifically stated "per workstation per lab", which would mean one at a time, right?
Nitpickers, take note: RIS isn't Ghost. They're totally different in how they work. They have different pros and cons. I'm just disputing the parent's performance figures.
Note also that TFA is really describing something totally different from RIS. RIS is basically just the same old Windows unattended install, just adapted so it can be started from PXE and run entirelly over the network. TFA describes something more along the lines of OS installation by just unpacking an archive file (ZIP, TAR, WIM, whatever you want to call it).
"why the hell is the author under any obligation to you to release the code before he's ready to"
Well, "obligation" may be a loaded word, but from what little I know of this situation, the code is supposed to be Free Software, sooner or later, right? The fundamental principle behind Free Software is that everyone owns the code. We may dress that concept up in fancy wording for legal or poltical reasons, but that's what it comes down to. If so, and the author really does want it to be Free Software, he or she will need to accept that it is not their code. It would belong to everyone. So if the author really believes in that ideal, he's not withholding his code -- he's withholding our code.
Note that I'm not disputing an author's right to license his code any way he pleases (including not at all).
"this is basic data security 101 - never trust inputs without validation"
Of course, one problem is that it looks like most programmers never took Data Security 101.
This isn't a problem with RFID tags, per se, of course. But it does bring up an interesting point: Even if somebigcompany intends to be completely nice about their RFID tag usage (and that is far from a given), some bad guy might be able to subvert the system to do bad things. The more data big companies have on you, the worse those bad things might be.
This is all pure speculation, of course, but history is full of examples where good ideas backfired when abused.
"Gravitrons are actually more forceful than Rotors or Round-Ups."
That's an interesting claim. On what do you base it?
I only have my own personal experience to go on. I've ridden the Turkish Twist (Rotor) at Canobie, and maybe two or three Gravitrons. The Gravitrons were all much milder. Now, both rides have a manual speed control for the operator, so personal experience may not reflect the actual maximums the rides are capable of. However, I also note that Twist stuck you to a vertical wall, while the Gravitron used an inclined bench on rails. That would seem to imply the Gravitron is weaker (needing more "help" to overcome gravity).
I grew up near an ammusement park that had a ride call the "Turkish Twist". Apparently, that was their own name for what the manufactuer calls "The Rotor". It was much like a Gravitron, but more powerful. It was kind of like being on the inside of a giant washing machine tub. The walls were completely vertical, and padded with a thin layer of rubber. You stood against, and got stuck to, the wall. Once up to speed, the floor dropped down, but you stayed stuck to the wall.
One of the weird things (aside from being stuck to a wall in mid-air) was that, once up to speed, my perception was that the whole world had turned sideways. I didn't feel like I was spinning at all. I guess that rotation really messes with one's inner ear.
All the Gravitrons I've been on were tame in comparison.
The warning about metal and lightning has nothing particularly to do with cell phones
No kidding. Even the metal objects just act to focus the lighting at that point (increasing the chance of burns, reptures, etc., at that point). There's still the general risk of being struck. I think the overriding message here should really be: Don't be outside in a freaking lightning storm!
I also chuckle at people who think rubber or plastic or some other insulator is somehow going to protect you. Lightning is pushed by millions of volts. At that kind of potential, everything is a conductor. I've actually had lightning travel down a fiber optic line, leaving melted and burned parts.
Lightning does weird shit. The best defense is to not be there.
The thing I don't get is why everyone is pointing directly at Apple/Dell/HP/etc. Lately, it seems like a month can't go by without a news story about some manufacturer having trouble with either their laptop power adapters or their laptop batteries overheating. I'm thinking the problem isn't Dell/Apple/HP/etc per se, but the el cheapo batteries and power electronics they all must be buying. It's not like the big OEMs actually make this stuff themselves these days. So it's just like the capacitor plague of a few years ago -- cheap but faulty parts flood the market, all the OEMs buy them up, excrement his the air circulator.
Of course, the manufacturers do bear some responsibility for this, since it's ultimately their product. Yet this appears to be an industry-wide problem. Why no flames against the battery suppliers? Why no flames against *consumers*, for favoring lower prices instead of better quality control?
I think it's a safe bet that pretty much everyone except the big telcos doesn't want the big telcos running the show. But I'm a little concerned about the unintended consequences this bill might have, if put into law.
The bill says QoS has to be applied equally, regardless of source or destination. I can envision a national company who subscribes to FooCo's Internet service and pays extra to get their packets delivered at a higher priority, to speed up their VPN, VoIP, web conferencing, etc. Would this bill make that unlawful?
The bill says providers cannot block customers from sending content. Wouldn't that mean blocking a spammer from sending spam would be unlawful? Sure, you (and I) might call that "security", but I doubt the spammers will agree. Does it then get get tied up in courts or committees? You can just *bet* the spammers will use this law to their advantage if they possibly can.
And who knows what next neat idea might actually become unlawful this way.
I worry about unintended consequences almost as much as I worry about the big telcos trying to screw everyone.
"You can't do just one thing." -- Campbell's Law of Everything
That's awesome. You said exactly what I was thinking. I even took the time to work out all the clauses in your setence to make sure it was right. Thanks for the support! -- Dh
"But you have taken it to a whole new level by not reading an article you are telling us about "
*Ahem*. As guygee already pointed out, they were storing the AP in aluminum shipping containers as well as plastic drums and open bins. And not only have I read the WP article, I've read a couple of reports on the PEPCON distaster. This one is from the United States Fire Administration, and covers the fire and emergency response in detail. This one is mainly concerned with how the blast wave and projectiles, and the resulting damage, progressed.
No discussion of engineering disasters is complete without mention of PEPCON. First, build a factory 10 miles from Las Vegas. Use it to manufacture ammonium perchlorate -- a component of rocket fuel. Store the stuff in aluminum containers. BTW, aluminum is the other component for the rocket fuel. Then start welding nearby. Oh, and make sure you put the factory on top of a gas main.
You'll never see a better demonstration of speed-of-sound vs speed-of-light. You see massive explosions and shockwaves (taking out trees and cars) several seconds before you hear them.
"http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/ and search tables (the search isn't working atm, so I can't link you directly). That has several posts on tables."
Cool. Thanks for the link. A quick glance seems to indicate tables aren't anything new from a structural point of view, but rather, a lot of smaller features that make using a speadsheet a lot easier. Which is all to the good.
"Surely the most significant new feature in Excel are the tables? You can now turn sections of your spreadsheets into tables, which allow you to manipulate them as tables."
Okay, that sounds interesting, I think, but isn't a spreadsheet already a table? Do you have a more in-depth explanation, or maybe a link to one?
rosewood: "Also, multiple calendars have been available in Outlook for ages. Multiple calendar viewing has been available since 2003 as well. Not the best summary in the world."
Yah. I also noticed this:
TFA: "Among the more significant new features: Excel 2007's new ways of visualizing data. For example, you can use conditional formatting to color the background of cells based on their value..."
That's present at least in Excel 2003, and I think maybe as far back as 2000.
How can someone review Office 2007 for what's new if they don't even know what's in the older versions?
"An unusual practice? Where? Most places I know have their users running as admin..."
Personal experience is not a statisical sample. This applies both to the parent and the grandparent. I have no idea which approach is more common in the Fortune 500, but the exereriences of a couple of random Slashdot people, no matter how smart they may be, isn't going to tell us. I've met companies in the Fortune 1000 that do it both ways, FWIW (i.e., nothing).
Now, as far as my current employer goes... I'm the IT Manager for a small manufacturing company. Almost everybody (including IT staff, including myself) use an unprivilaged user account for day-to-day operations. This works reasonably well, all though there are plenty of programs that need a little persaution (sometimes with a large hammer) to be made to work. REGMON and FILEMON from http://www.sysinternals.com/ are great for debugging problems that arise from Windows Programmer Brain Damage. I've only got one program that couldn't be made to work this way, and it's limited to two computers.
I'm fortunate in that management recognizes computer security as important, and backs me up on this.
I have to say that restricting user rights this way (along with a few other things, like WSUS and roaming profiles) go a long way towards making Windows a usable platform. All the support calls from malware/badware vanish. Support calls from things "I installed Napster and now AutoCAD won't work" vanish. People can't tinker with stuff and break it. It's a Good Thing.
I still vastly prefer Linux for any number of reasons (not all of them technical), but if I have to support Windows, I will at least do it right.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember the gorilla arm!
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.htm
That would be the "who speak the same language" part of my post.
A bit more seriously (but only a bit): There are many cultures who don't use the Gregorian system of months and years, although most do tie into our host planet's orbit and the phase of the moon in some way. Reconciling their calendars to "ours" is even trickier. And then there is the Maya calendar, which does things like incorporate the orbit of the planet Venus.
"My car gets fifty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it."
-- Abe Simpson
You don't say whose military or government. The US DoD, at least, is large enough that there are multiple "standards". I've seen MM/DD/YY (08/02/06) and YYYY-MMM-DD (2006-AUG-02) most often, I think. The ISO date form is YYYY-MM-DD (2006-08-02) or YYYYMMDD (20060802).
Personally, I find the mixed number/letter forms like "2006 AUG 2" and "2 Aug 2006" work best when dealing with other humans who speak the same language. It's unambiguous -- there's only one sane way to interpret it -- and the letter/number distinction stands out more than dashes. For computers and other kinds of filing, though, the ISO form definately wins. It makes sorting so much easier.
Um, I use RIS at work, and it doesn't take 2-3 hours per station. Heck, I did an install yesterday, and it took less than 30 minutes between hitting F12 during POST and logging in to Windows XP for the first time.
My specs: 100 megabit switched Ethernet. Client is a Dell OptiPlex 210L, 2.6 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HDD. Server is some Gateway big black box, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB IDE HDD, Windows Server 2000. I suppose if you're running on a 10 megabit repeater or a 386SX for a server or something like that, your time figure might make sense....
Now, it is very true that RIS lacks multicast, and multicast makes a huge difference when imaging more than one client at a time. But you specifically stated "per workstation per lab", which would mean one at a time, right?
Nitpickers, take note: RIS isn't Ghost. They're totally different in how they work. They have different pros and cons. I'm just disputing the parent's performance figures.
Note also that TFA is really describing something totally different from RIS. RIS is basically just the same old Windows unattended install, just adapted so it can be started from PXE and run entirelly over the network. TFA describes something more along the lines of OS installation by just unpacking an archive file (ZIP, TAR, WIM, whatever you want to call it).
Well, "obligation" may be a loaded word, but from what little I know of this situation, the code is supposed to be Free Software, sooner or later, right? The fundamental principle behind Free Software is that everyone owns the code. We may dress that concept up in fancy wording for legal or poltical reasons, but that's what it comes down to. If so, and the author really does want it to be Free Software, he or she will need to accept that it is not their code. It would belong to everyone. So if the author really believes in that ideal, he's not withholding his code -- he's withholding our code.
Note that I'm not disputing an author's right to license his code any way he pleases (including not at all).
Of course, one problem is that it looks like most programmers never took Data Security 101.
This isn't a problem with RFID tags, per se, of course. But it does bring up an interesting point: Even if some big company intends to be completely nice about their RFID tag usage (and that is far from a given), some bad guy might be able to subvert the system to do bad things. The more data big companies have on you, the worse those bad things might be.
This is all pure speculation, of course, but history is full of examples where good ideas backfired when abused.
That's an interesting claim. On what do you base it?
I only have my own personal experience to go on. I've ridden the Turkish Twist (Rotor) at Canobie, and maybe two or three Gravitrons. The Gravitrons were all much milder. Now, both rides have a manual speed control for the operator, so personal experience may not reflect the actual maximums the rides are capable of. However, I also note that Twist stuck you to a vertical wall, while the Gravitron used an inclined bench on rails. That would seem to imply the Gravitron is weaker (needing more "help" to overcome gravity).
I grew up near an ammusement park that had a ride call the "Turkish Twist". Apparently, that was their own name for what the manufactuer calls "The Rotor". It was much like a Gravitron, but more powerful. It was kind of like being on the inside of a giant washing machine tub. The walls were completely vertical, and padded with a thin layer of rubber. You stood against, and got stuck to, the wall. Once up to speed, the floor dropped down, but you stayed stuck to the wall.
Google found a computer model of a Rotor, too.
One of the weird things (aside from being stuck to a wall in mid-air) was that, once up to speed, my perception was that the whole world had turned sideways. I didn't feel like I was spinning at all. I guess that rotation really messes with one's inner ear.
All the Gravitrons I've been on were tame in comparison.
s/so much better/sucks less/
A lot of people are just assholes. And, as far as I know, all cops are people.
I'm not saying this makes it right (I believe police should be held to a higher standard), but it doesnt' surprise me.
No kidding. Even the metal objects just act to focus the lighting at that point (increasing the chance of burns, reptures, etc., at that point). There's still the general risk of being struck. I think the overriding message here should really be: Don't be outside in a freaking lightning storm!
I also chuckle at people who think rubber or plastic or some other insulator is somehow going to protect you. Lightning is pushed by millions of volts. At that kind of potential, everything is a conductor. I've actually had lightning travel down a fiber optic line, leaving melted and burned parts.
Lightning does weird shit. The best defense is to not be there.
The thing I don't get is why everyone is pointing directly at Apple/Dell/HP/etc. Lately, it seems like a month can't go by without a news story about some manufacturer having trouble with either their laptop power adapters or their laptop batteries overheating. I'm thinking the problem isn't Dell/Apple/HP/etc per se, but the el cheapo batteries and power electronics they all must be buying. It's not like the big OEMs actually make this stuff themselves these days. So it's just like the capacitor plague of a few years ago -- cheap but faulty parts flood the market, all the OEMs buy them up, excrement his the air circulator.
Of course, the manufacturers do bear some responsibility for this, since it's ultimately their product. Yet this appears to be an industry-wide problem. Why no flames against the battery suppliers? Why no flames against *consumers*, for favoring lower prices instead of better quality control?
You do know that jokes are meant to be funny, and don't have to be factually accurate, right?
"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program" -- Larry Niven
We're at the bottom of a hole.
I think it's a safe bet that pretty much everyone except the big telcos doesn't want the big telcos running the show. But I'm a little concerned about the unintended consequences this bill might have, if put into law.
The bill says QoS has to be applied equally, regardless of source or destination. I can envision a national company who subscribes to FooCo's Internet service and pays extra to get their packets delivered at a higher priority, to speed up their VPN, VoIP, web conferencing, etc. Would this bill make that unlawful?
The bill says providers cannot block customers from sending content. Wouldn't that mean blocking a spammer from sending spam would be unlawful? Sure, you (and I) might call that "security", but I doubt the spammers will agree. Does it then get get tied up in courts or committees? You can just *bet* the spammers will use this law to their advantage if they possibly can.
And who knows what next neat idea might actually become unlawful this way.
I worry about unintended consequences almost as much as I worry about the big telcos trying to screw everyone.
"You can't do just one thing." -- Campbell's Law of Everything
The thing is, this is in Cardiff. London doesn't care. The South Wales coast could fall into the sea and they wouldn't notice. ;-)
That's awesome. You said exactly what I was thinking. I even took the time to work out all the clauses in your setence to make sure it was right. Thanks for the support! -- Dh
"But you have taken it to a whole new level by not reading an article you are telling us about "
*Ahem*. As guygee already pointed out, they were storing the AP in aluminum shipping containers as well as plastic drums and open bins. And not only have I read the WP article, I've read a couple of reports on the PEPCON distaster. This one is from the United States Fire Administration, and covers the fire and emergency response in detail. This one is mainly concerned with how the blast wave and projectiles, and the resulting damage, progressed.
I believe you owe me an apology.
No discussion of engineering disasters is complete without mention of PEPCON. First, build a factory 10 miles from Las Vegas. Use it to manufacture ammonium perchlorate -- a component of rocket fuel. Store the stuff in aluminum containers. BTW, aluminum is the other component for the rocket fuel. Then start welding nearby. Oh, and make sure you put the factory on top of a gas main.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEPCON_disaster
There's some great footage of it here:
http://www.apechild.com/videos/pepcon.mov
You'll never see a better demonstration of speed-of-sound vs speed-of-light. You see massive explosions and shockwaves (taking out trees and cars) several seconds before you hear them.
"http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/ and search tables (the search isn't working atm, so I can't link you directly). That has several posts on tables."
Cool. Thanks for the link. A quick glance seems to indicate tables aren't anything new from a structural point of view, but rather, a lot of smaller features that make using a speadsheet a lot easier. Which is all to the good.
"Surely the most significant new feature in Excel are the tables? You can now turn sections of your spreadsheets into tables, which allow you to manipulate them as tables."
Okay, that sounds interesting, I think, but isn't a spreadsheet already a table? Do you have a more in-depth explanation, or maybe a link to one?
Thanks...
rosewood: "Also, multiple calendars have been available in Outlook for ages. Multiple calendar viewing has been available since 2003 as well. Not the best summary in the world."
Yah. I also noticed this:
TFA: "Among the more significant new features: Excel 2007's new ways of visualizing data. For example, you can use conditional formatting to color the background of cells based on their value..."
That's present at least in Excel 2003, and I think maybe as far back as 2000.
How can someone review Office 2007 for what's new if they don't even know what's in the older versions?
"An unusual practice? Where? Most places I know have their users running as admin..."
Personal experience is not a statisical sample. This applies both to the parent and the grandparent. I have no idea which approach is more common in the Fortune 500, but the exereriences of a couple of random Slashdot people, no matter how smart they may be, isn't going to tell us. I've met companies in the Fortune 1000 that do it both ways, FWIW (i.e., nothing).
Now, as far as my current employer goes... I'm the IT Manager for a small manufacturing company. Almost everybody (including IT staff, including myself) use an unprivilaged user account for day-to-day operations. This works reasonably well, all though there are plenty of programs that need a little persaution (sometimes with a large hammer) to be made to work. REGMON and FILEMON from http://www.sysinternals.com/ are great for debugging problems that arise from Windows Programmer Brain Damage. I've only got one program that couldn't be made to work this way, and it's limited to two computers.
I'm fortunate in that management recognizes computer security as important, and backs me up on this.
I have to say that restricting user rights this way (along with a few other things, like WSUS and roaming profiles) go a long way towards making Windows a usable platform. All the support calls from malware/badware vanish. Support calls from things "I installed Napster and now AutoCAD won't work" vanish. People can't tinker with stuff and break it. It's a Good Thing.
I still vastly prefer Linux for any number of reasons (not all of them technical), but if I have to support Windows, I will at least do it right.