Hmm. I'm more interested in the "Stranger yet, Voyager 1 detected an increase in galactic cosmic rays — but found that at times they were moving in parallel instead of traveling randomly." comment. Moving in parallel to what, exactly? Voyager?
Still, sounds pretty fricking awesome. Damn shame we can't be out there ourselves.
Why bother? It's not like the education types give a damn what happens to IT. We've been their 'enemy' for years.
You want to tell them the truth? Fine, tell them to sit down and shutup. IT, aka the people who actually went the extra mile for other people and gave a damn about the hardware / software that people were running has been officially taken around to the rear of the building, and double-tapped to the back of the end. Yeah, they cost money, they didn't always do things the way you wanted, or let you sync your iPad with the network, but it worked, and it worked well. And the money that was spent on them was nothing compared to what many of the supervisors & friends have been implicated in skimming off the others.
This all happened years ago. You can't go back and change it, and sorry won't fix it. Those people aren't coming back to the IT field. Now onto your current problem: the cloud. The cloud, if you were not aware, is marketing-speak for paying a monthly bill for something you probably already have, with the positives being that it's now managed by someone else, and the negatives being the same. Perhaps you don't understand why IT despises this thing in general: imagine having all accounting at your school outsourced to another company...in Nebraska. Now, your school will get some freaking awesome cost savings for doing something like this...but every minor issue means making a round-trip phone call to a place that you cannot visit, save by plane ticket, if a major 'inconvenience' arises.
Wait, that reminds me...do schools do accounting in-house? Probably not most of it, but they might have one secretary or accountant who handles issues that are of immediate importance...like reimbursals or pay-check discrepancies. Now imagine that person disappears...isn't replaced....and all problems are now handled via phone call. That's why IT despises it....it's a 'problem' that, thank whoever you like, they typically no longer have to deal with, since the same stupidity that tells people to cloud everything is the same one that tells them to layoff the entire IT department (they're spared the suffering). IT is just used to heading off problems at the pass...and this one is a problem, contrary to popular politi-think which has it that they care only for their own jobs.
Cloud = FAIL. You've already seen what the NSA is doing...imagine them rifling through your gradebook...because they will. "There's nothing to hide / nothing of value in there though!" -> Come on guys, you've seen how this play ends. It's creepy that a government agency is going to be pulling down data on Little Suzie's finger paintings, and using it to construct a psychological profile of her family. Must we always be confronted with exacting proof that it was a bad idea, before realizing that it was a bad idea? Keep the data at home, keep an eye on who is accessing it, and realize that as a tool, like any tool, it can be used for good or for evil...it matters only that the mind behind it makes the right choice.
Nonsense. It's part of the latest attempts at group psychology / social control -> after years of being bombarded by television, film, and even literature that, surprisingly, all follows the same damn patterns, the hope is that any potential troublemakers will 'announce' themselves before they commit a crime, and be picked up / jailed before any real damage is done. Granted, the minds behind this little experiment are about as bright as a burnt out 10-watt bulb, but there you go; I'll tell you why right here, since they will no doubt read this and feel insulted -> they believe in the bell curve / normal model like religion; and you may not understand what I mean when I say those words, unless you have spent some quiet time contemplating the full ramifications and exceptions (the little gotchas) to the theories based off of this thing.
Their hope is that you will announce yourself before you commit a crime; the sad reality is that their methods of ensuring this also, unfortunately, ensure that crimes will occur. The human mind is not a blank slate, ready to be programmed after it leaves the factory; rather it is already preprogrammed, and has some adaptation built into it, but it's somewhere between software and hardware. Their 'tampering' with it is the equivalent of wiping Windows 7 (or Linux 2.6, or what have you) off the disk, installing Windows 3.1, then down-clocking the processor from an 8-core 4.0 Ghz CPU to a single-core 3.3 Mhz CPU...with the side effect that the old operating system is still somewhat there, and that the CPU doesn't understand some of the instructions being sent to it since those instructions were deprecated ages ago (and removed from the architecture). The constant conflict between the error'ed state that society is trying to introduce, and the more up to date state that the human mind is trying to keep creates a constant schism, and generates recursive errors.
Now, no one wants to believe they are affected by film, literature, etc., while at the same time, they spout phrases like man is a social creature. Well, you can't have it both ways. Face it: the design is flawed, it cannot be fixed, it should be trashed. The group psychology / social control stuff only works when you 'load' the experiment with values to give you the results you want; at it's heart, it's dishonest science.
This is what happens when you raise kids to believe that authority figures have the right to punish others for what they say.
Starts in school, continues for a life-time. Oh, but the second-class citizen status assigned to young ones, and tattle-tailing / obedience training more appropriate to pets could never leave a permanent mark on someone, oh no!
Indeed. Simplicity is but an ingredient to the main dish that is perfection...it is not the sole ingredient; too much, and the flavor is ruined; too little, and the inner ideal is never glimpsed.
Lol. To a businessman's ears, it means "no" security issue; to a network admin's ears, it means "they're already in your database, copying your tables, and leaving lewd comments about your tastes in desktop managers."
As do many programmers, usually when they're in the bath tub, just for fun. Now, whether those techniques stand up to the scrutiny of a major dedicated code-breaker is a different discussion.
And I've had the reverse experience. I've had an Nvidia (XFX?) board, not even an expensive one, blow its capacitors...something of a first for me with regards to video cards. Drivers have been...well, drivers...nothing to phone home about, they work...but the hardware has kind of left me wanting more.
Hmm. I have a HP Envy 17 with an AMD/ATI 7670 (or something to that effect) in it...and it does have an option to use the built in (Intel) GPU, or use the discrete (ATI) GPU, or have them automatically switch when you're on battery power. Granted, you do need to install both ATI packages from HP to get the full monty (the later package is just an update, not a full set), but still...
Indeed. As a tech / geek / nerd / whatever (whenever the labels apply), anime / manga love is something of a given. And yet my local B&N decided that rearranging the bookshelves (shrinking the sections) to make space for the giant plastic toys for kids was somehow a better idea; I had the good fortune to speak with some of the staff that work there, and they say that the manga they stock sells like hot-cakes (bit of a money-maker) and doesn't take up any real space for the return on investment. I visit them yesterday to start a new series, find out they have books 2 & 3 (many copies of them, at that), but not book 1. Now how am I supposed to begin what may be a 20 or 40 book experience if you don't have the first book in the series? Just start with book two? How would the LOTR fans feel if you told them that sorry, book one was not available at that location, but book two and three were in stock?
But this doesn't even touch the computing / programming stuff that is continually in flux...it was nice when B&N had some of the more exotic / relevant stuff in stock, so I could stop by and pick it up immediately. This is usually because when a project needed something, it NEEDED something. Now, I grant you, eBooks have destroyed that need to great degree, but it has been largely helped by B&N's approach to stocking whatever they thought was popular, as opposed to what was popular + needed at 3 AM. Popular sells after the person is in the store, needed gets the person to the store.
Finally, B&N doesn't use nearly all the space they could use. They could easily fit double-sized book cases inside those stores, but opt for the single-sized ones instead.
Well, there are two ways to 'insure domestic tranquility': by promoting a peaceful environment / laws such that it occurs naturally, or by 'manual' pacification through artifice. Guess which one we're opting for?
Indeed. I thought that was one of the perks of being elected to higher office...not having to lie / cover up as much of the crime you commit as you normally do, because you're now immune to prosecution. ^_^
His / her inability to understand that the power grid in the US is a total mess (just...wow), and that there's no one with any reason (financially, politically, etc.) to get involved in upgrading it...because it's a huge job that will likely fail, and fail hard. The whole thing is, if rumors are to be believed, shoestring and bubblegum. If it ever goes down, totally, there is some cult-like belief they won't be able to get it started again. That doesn't inspire confidence.
We've spent a hideous amount of money chasing stupid schemes that haven't panned out. We're being asked to add electric vehicles to an already crippled infrastructure...it's just crazy. I don't even know where I would begin to upgrade this thing; I look around at the sheer amount of ridiculous....I don't even have a word for it, to be honest, there simply isn't a strong enough one in the English language. Chain gangs, working 24 / 7 for over a decade, using every electrician and engineer available for the next 7 years possibly wouldn't be enough to upgrade it. The cost overruns and corruption would be stupendous. And the designs...well, who knows if they will actually be that much better. I'd recommend something upgradeable next time, and buried. And that's all so the next five generations of Americans don't have to deal with this bullshit.
Yes, over the course of a full day, it averages out that a Raspberry Pi or TI Graphing calculator has enough power to do all the work an end user is doing. However, end users hate watching the hour-glass spin for several minutes while Excel crunches some data, or Word reindexes a document, or Windows applies some needed updates. As the BOFH has tried to explain to the management in his stories, 100% utilization is 100% utilization; when some financial trader for the company needs to dial into a company modem, they need to dial in right then and now; they cannot wait until a modem frees up, or be placed in a queue because that would be a more conservative use of resources. Same idea here -> people aren't going to wait 15 minutes for Windows to boot up in the morning, not when they have better options.
We must save the wild animals. We must save the ozone layer. We must save the whales. But God help you if you try to take away anymore of their lives than you already do because you're trying to save a few bucks / watts. Cities will burn, and when there are no more cities to burn, the country side will burn.
Not quite. Lamb of God != a lamb, in the same sense that 'Little Boy' != a little boy. Anyone stupid enough to think that he's supposed to represent a free meal will probably die in a difficult, painful, yet strangely hilarious fashion.
Slashdot Mirror
Hehe, yes, let us remove minds from the areas closest to where they might do good, and keep them further and further away.
Nonsense. You are suspended in air by those wings, which, in the event of engine failure, are still typically operational.
Now remove those wings, strap on a pair of more powerful engines, and ask pilots how they would feel about an engine failure.
Hmm. I'm more interested in the "Stranger yet, Voyager 1 detected an increase in galactic cosmic rays — but found that at times they were moving in parallel instead of traveling randomly." comment. Moving in parallel to what, exactly? Voyager?
Still, sounds pretty fricking awesome. Damn shame we can't be out there ourselves.
Hmm, fairly certain there was an article earlier about European countries handing data over en mass to the US.
So, safer overseas perhaps not.
Why bother? It's not like the education types give a damn what happens to IT. We've been their 'enemy' for years.
You want to tell them the truth? Fine, tell them to sit down and shutup. IT, aka the people who actually went the extra mile for other people and gave a damn about the hardware / software that people were running has been officially taken around to the rear of the building, and double-tapped to the back of the end. Yeah, they cost money, they didn't always do things the way you wanted, or let you sync your iPad with the network, but it worked, and it worked well. And the money that was spent on them was nothing compared to what many of the supervisors & friends have been implicated in skimming off the others.
This all happened years ago. You can't go back and change it, and sorry won't fix it. Those people aren't coming back to the IT field. Now onto your current problem: the cloud. The cloud, if you were not aware, is marketing-speak for paying a monthly bill for something you probably already have, with the positives being that it's now managed by someone else, and the negatives being the same. Perhaps you don't understand why IT despises this thing in general: imagine having all accounting at your school outsourced to another company...in Nebraska. Now, your school will get some freaking awesome cost savings for doing something like this...but every minor issue means making a round-trip phone call to a place that you cannot visit, save by plane ticket, if a major 'inconvenience' arises.
Wait, that reminds me...do schools do accounting in-house? Probably not most of it, but they might have one secretary or accountant who handles issues that are of immediate importance...like reimbursals or pay-check discrepancies. Now imagine that person disappears...isn't replaced....and all problems are now handled via phone call. That's why IT despises it....it's a 'problem' that, thank whoever you like, they typically no longer have to deal with, since the same stupidity that tells people to cloud everything is the same one that tells them to layoff the entire IT department (they're spared the suffering). IT is just used to heading off problems at the pass...and this one is a problem, contrary to popular politi-think which has it that they care only for their own jobs.
Cloud = FAIL. You've already seen what the NSA is doing...imagine them rifling through your gradebook...because they will. "There's nothing to hide / nothing of value in there though!" -> Come on guys, you've seen how this play ends. It's creepy that a government agency is going to be pulling down data on Little Suzie's finger paintings, and using it to construct a psychological profile of her family. Must we always be confronted with exacting proof that it was a bad idea, before realizing that it was a bad idea? Keep the data at home, keep an eye on who is accessing it, and realize that as a tool, like any tool, it can be used for good or for evil...it matters only that the mind behind it makes the right choice.
Nonsense. It's part of the latest attempts at group psychology / social control -> after years of being bombarded by television, film, and even literature that, surprisingly, all follows the same damn patterns, the hope is that any potential troublemakers will 'announce' themselves before they commit a crime, and be picked up / jailed before any real damage is done. Granted, the minds behind this little experiment are about as bright as a burnt out 10-watt bulb, but there you go; I'll tell you why right here, since they will no doubt read this and feel insulted -> they believe in the bell curve / normal model like religion; and you may not understand what I mean when I say those words, unless you have spent some quiet time contemplating the full ramifications and exceptions (the little gotchas) to the theories based off of this thing.
Their hope is that you will announce yourself before you commit a crime; the sad reality is that their methods of ensuring this also, unfortunately, ensure that crimes will occur. The human mind is not a blank slate, ready to be programmed after it leaves the factory; rather it is already preprogrammed, and has some adaptation built into it, but it's somewhere between software and hardware. Their 'tampering' with it is the equivalent of wiping Windows 7 (or Linux 2.6, or what have you) off the disk, installing Windows 3.1, then down-clocking the processor from an 8-core 4.0 Ghz CPU to a single-core 3.3 Mhz CPU...with the side effect that the old operating system is still somewhat there, and that the CPU doesn't understand some of the instructions being sent to it since those instructions were deprecated ages ago (and removed from the architecture). The constant conflict between the error'ed state that society is trying to introduce, and the more up to date state that the human mind is trying to keep creates a constant schism, and generates recursive errors.
Now, no one wants to believe they are affected by film, literature, etc., while at the same time, they spout phrases like man is a social creature. Well, you can't have it both ways. Face it: the design is flawed, it cannot be fixed, it should be trashed. The group psychology / social control stuff only works when you 'load' the experiment with values to give you the results you want; at it's heart, it's dishonest science.
This is what happens when you raise kids to believe that authority figures have the right to punish others for what they say.
Starts in school, continues for a life-time. Oh, but the second-class citizen status assigned to young ones, and tattle-tailing / obedience training more appropriate to pets could never leave a permanent mark on someone, oh no!
"Death from above, and I have the friendly-fire codes...who wants me?"
Indeed. Simplicity is but an ingredient to the main dish that is perfection...it is not the sole ingredient; too much, and the flavor is ruined; too little, and the inner ideal is never glimpsed.
Lol. To a businessman's ears, it means "no" security issue; to a network admin's ears, it means "they're already in your database, copying your tables, and leaving lewd comments about your tastes in desktop managers."
As do many programmers, usually when they're in the bath tub, just for fun. Now, whether those techniques stand up to the scrutiny of a major dedicated code-breaker is a different discussion.
And I've had the reverse experience. I've had an Nvidia (XFX?) board, not even an expensive one, blow its capacitors...something of a first for me with regards to video cards. Drivers have been...well, drivers...nothing to phone home about, they work...but the hardware has kind of left me wanting more.
Hmm. I have a HP Envy 17 with an AMD/ATI 7670 (or something to that effect) in it...and it does have an option to use the built in (Intel) GPU, or use the discrete (ATI) GPU, or have them automatically switch when you're on battery power. Granted, you do need to install both ATI packages from HP to get the full monty (the later package is just an update, not a full set), but still...
Indeed. As a tech / geek / nerd / whatever (whenever the labels apply), anime / manga love is something of a given. And yet my local B&N decided that rearranging the bookshelves (shrinking the sections) to make space for the giant plastic toys for kids was somehow a better idea; I had the good fortune to speak with some of the staff that work there, and they say that the manga they stock sells like hot-cakes (bit of a money-maker) and doesn't take up any real space for the return on investment. I visit them yesterday to start a new series, find out they have books 2 & 3 (many copies of them, at that), but not book 1. Now how am I supposed to begin what may be a 20 or 40 book experience if you don't have the first book in the series? Just start with book two? How would the LOTR fans feel if you told them that sorry, book one was not available at that location, but book two and three were in stock?
But this doesn't even touch the computing / programming stuff that is continually in flux...it was nice when B&N had some of the more exotic / relevant stuff in stock, so I could stop by and pick it up immediately. This is usually because when a project needed something, it NEEDED something. Now, I grant you, eBooks have destroyed that need to great degree, but it has been largely helped by B&N's approach to stocking whatever they thought was popular, as opposed to what was popular + needed at 3 AM. Popular sells after the person is in the store, needed gets the person to the store.
Finally, B&N doesn't use nearly all the space they could use. They could easily fit double-sized book cases inside those stores, but opt for the single-sized ones instead.
Old trick: stick a picture of a tiger to the center of the lenses they use to spy on people...tigers are seen everywhere.
Well, there are two ways to 'insure domestic tranquility': by promoting a peaceful environment / laws such that it occurs naturally, or by 'manual' pacification through artifice. Guess which one we're opting for?
Peanut butter tastes good on bread.
The sky tends to look blue during a clear day.
Non-sequiturs are tangential.
Indeed. I thought that was one of the perks of being elected to higher office...not having to lie / cover up as much of the crime you commit as you normally do, because you're now immune to prosecution. ^_^
"In the database, part of the database...in the database, part of the database!"
Oh, my head, stop. We've already been down this path once before.
There you go again, trying to use logic when politicians are around.
Do you know what a bond is?
His / her inability to understand that the power grid in the US is a total mess (just...wow), and that there's no one with any reason (financially, politically, etc.) to get involved in upgrading it...because it's a huge job that will likely fail, and fail hard. The whole thing is, if rumors are to be believed, shoestring and bubblegum. If it ever goes down, totally, there is some cult-like belief they won't be able to get it started again. That doesn't inspire confidence.
We've spent a hideous amount of money chasing stupid schemes that haven't panned out. We're being asked to add electric vehicles to an already crippled infrastructure...it's just crazy. I don't even know where I would begin to upgrade this thing; I look around at the sheer amount of ridiculous....I don't even have a word for it, to be honest, there simply isn't a strong enough one in the English language. Chain gangs, working 24 / 7 for over a decade, using every electrician and engineer available for the next 7 years possibly wouldn't be enough to upgrade it. The cost overruns and corruption would be stupendous. And the designs...well, who knows if they will actually be that much better. I'd recommend something upgradeable next time, and buried. And that's all so the next five generations of Americans don't have to deal with this bullshit.
Yes, over the course of a full day, it averages out that a Raspberry Pi or TI Graphing calculator has enough power to do all the work an end user is doing. However, end users hate watching the hour-glass spin for several minutes while Excel crunches some data, or Word reindexes a document, or Windows applies some needed updates. As the BOFH has tried to explain to the management in his stories, 100% utilization is 100% utilization; when some financial trader for the company needs to dial into a company modem, they need to dial in right then and now; they cannot wait until a modem frees up, or be placed in a queue because that would be a more conservative use of resources. Same idea here -> people aren't going to wait 15 minutes for Windows to boot up in the morning, not when they have better options.
We must save the wild animals. We must save the ozone layer. We must save the whales. But God help you if you try to take away anymore of their lives than you already do because you're trying to save a few bucks / watts. Cities will burn, and when there are no more cities to burn, the country side will burn.
Not quite. Lamb of God != a lamb, in the same sense that 'Little Boy' != a little boy. Anyone stupid enough to think that he's supposed to represent a free meal will probably die in a difficult, painful, yet strangely hilarious fashion.