It's quite easy to get the situation where, say, the H-1 quota for IT is filled but there are still IT workers out of work. IT is incredibly diverse. There may be a lack of web/HTML coder jobs and a surfeit of people to fill those jobs - but there may be a lack of people in $SKILL, for example, working with propreitory products such as Navision, or maybe traditional skills like C.
There may also be a lack of properly-qualified candidates in particular sections of the industry.
On a related note, I used to be an H-1 person (I've since returned home). I was paid more than my co-workers because my company, IBM, paid a handsome international service allowance, and I also got more vacation than US workers - so I would say IBM at least do not abuse the H-1 system (my manager told me I was actually twice as expensive as a regular employee, but I had in-depth knowledge of a particular IBM system which only 30 people had deep experience of in the entire planet). The other funny thing I noted about the resentment of H-1 types on Slashdot is that if I met one of these people, they didn't seem to have that resentment. But then again, I'm white and don't speak with a heavy Indian accent. I think quite a bit of the H-1 hatred is just thinly veiled racism.
I still haven't found an LCD to beat my Sun-badged 21in Trinitron monitor at 1600x1200.
The viewing angle is better (the picture doesn't change colour if you look at it from the side or top), if I change the resolution, it still looks sharp, and the refresh rate is high enough that there is no perceptible flicker. The colours look better than any LCD monitor that I've used. It works great with games.
The drawback is that it's an enormous beast that weighs a lot. But I don't tend to carry it around with me.
LCDs will eventually outclass my monitor - but it will be a while, and yet longer still before they can get even as low as double the price.
One thing I find interesting - in the SunOS 4 days, the login banner when telneting to the machine was "SunOS UNIX".
Telnet to a Solaris box, and note the UNIX moniker has been dropped (and this was the case at least as far back as Solaris 8)
Re:What day of the week is it?
on
Sun-isms Debunked
·
· Score: 3, Informative
But Sun's stock also steadily fell by nearly that amount from June to August. It's hardly a long term trend. They haven't even got back to the level they were at 6 months ago.
Compare Sun (a company with an open source strategy that changes every week, it seems) with Apple (a company with a strategy and sticking to it) and the picture is far more telling.
Re:What day of the week is it?
on
Sun-isms Debunked
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
It's attitudes like this that make me want to see SCO sue the crap out of the Linux community, and win, one machine at a time. Mandatory $500 license fees, where advocacy constitutes as probable cause and results in automatic warrants for the cops to come in and search your residence and business.
I think you're wrong - I think the original poster was just voicing his frustration with Sun.
I started my long love of all things Unix with IBM's AIX and Sun's SunOS 4. I even *own* a Sun machine at home. I also started with Linux when there were no distros - just the 0.12 kernel and a root floppy image which you used 'cp' to install on the hard drive.
But Sun is an incredibly frustrating company. Unlike Apple or IBM, they just don't seem to have any kind of strategy - they thrash and twist - one day they love RedHat, the next day they are telling us that RedHat are the spawn of Satan. One day they love Linux, the next day they hate it (despite it being a component of their Java desktop). Sun just seems to lack direction - and it's hardly surprising that Apple, despite competing directly with the commodity PC - now has a larger market cap than Sun.
I hate watching Sun destroy itself like it's doing. At least it looks like McNealy is coming out of his period of denial - his last statement in the article indicating that perhaps he realises that they have been alienating their developers.
The trouble is at the moment, with regards to a strategy: IBM gets it, Apple gets it, the Linux distro makers get it - but Sun doesn't get it (and neither does Microsoft). But unlike Microsoft which can continue through sheer inertia, Sun can't and they have to formulate some kind of useful strategy and stick to it - or they are gonna be toast. If they continue as they are, in 10 years time there will be no more Sun.
The thing is, much of the (widespread, zombie style) hax0ring hasn't involved passwords at all - but exploiting vulnerabilities.
Having said that, we demonstrated a smart-card based authentication system using biometrics to the UK Government in 1994. So what Gates is on about is hardly new (ours included a smart card reader - and they are cheap - a serial read/writer cost £35 in 1994) based on a smartcard. The biometrics we encoded was a photograph and a fingerprint. We also demonstrated automatic signature recognition (which was VERY accurate). All of these things could be kept on the smart cards of the day.
John Peel
on
The Music Man
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think John Peel (now sadly deceased, a couple of weeks ago) has had him beat long ago - and legitimately too. And not just top-40 stuff - John Peel was a great force in bringing many new artists into the public consiousness.
Then again - have you seen a spam recently that wasn't fraudulent in some way? All the recent spam I've seen have been for pirated copies of software and counterfeit watches. Much of it relayed through pwned zombie systems. There's plenty of crimes being committed by these spammers before even considering anti-spam laws.
Also-- to the people who are pointing out (and/or will point out) that this sounds like Apple's "Spotlight" tech... I personally loathe Microsoft, but I DO recall them speaking about making the entire filesystem one big relational database [...] Of course, this being Microsoft, they probably took the idea from someone else first;)
Indeed they did. The IBM AS/400 minicomputer has had a database filesystem years before even a usable version of Windows existed (let alone NT).
Well, actually it IS a big deal when they are saying "Use our stuff, not that opensource rabble's stuff, because our stuff is free of copyright and other IP violations, but you can't be too sure with open source". Plus their argument that open source has a dodgy pedigree, but closed source does not.
...is this book goes into quite some detail (like the method of magnetic polarity changes on a tape). Now you might not think that particularly remarkable - but the book was published by Ladybird - i.e. it was a children's book published in Britain, aimed at children between 8 and 10 years old!
I remember Ladybird books from my childhood - starting with "Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries." That book had the advice to test a battery, stick the terminals on your tongue (but it admonished you to never do it with a large battery). Just imagine trying to publish that advice now:-) I still test 9v PP9 batteries on my tongue!
Ironic that you talk about the Mac and Elite in the same posting - there's a great new open source Elite-clone for OS X called oolite. It's got some of the best features of the 'classic' Elites including coming up on fleets of ships with escorts and police patrols. See http://frontiernews.alioth.net/ for news on this.
As for OS X, I've only recently got a Mac (a PowerBook) after buying my Dad a replacement for his machine at home (an eMac). I found it to be quite a bit snappier to use than an equivalent priced Windows system (and it comes with a built in display which the HP system doesn't), and the GUI actually makes use of the 3D hardware.
The best one I saw recently (admittedly analogue, not digital) was a set of friggin speaker cables that went for well over a grand on ebay!
Who BUYS this stuff? Do they listen in perfectly sound deadened anechoic chambers so they can notice the difference between a piece of Cat5 as speaker cable and what looked like some ribbon cable with spade connectors on the end?
But it will - because it will be the default search in the default web browser of the default desktop OS on over 90% of the world's personal computers.
Unless Google can do something really special (which it looks like they are trying to do - they can see the handwriting on the wall after seeing what Microsoft did to Netscape, Real et al. when they bundled their browser/media player as an inseparable piece of the OS) Google will fall just like Netscape and just like Real.
Microsoft don't innovate in user interfaces, either. The first usable version of Windows lagged the Macintosh by 6 years. "Innovative" features that will come in Longhorn are things that OS X will have already had for years. I'm not sure what Microsoft's malaise is in not making any real innovation (instead, buying or copying innovative ideas from others) - MS have a huge R&D budget, but nothing ever seems to come out of the truly innovative stuff their R&D department thinks up.
But people like Rutan build airframes because they are passionate about flying. Wind turbines (short of dynamic disassembly) don't fly - therfore it's not something Rutan will be terribly interested in. Rutan building a wind turbine would be about as likely as Microsoft releasing a Linux distro.
The thing is Burt Rutan isn't into designing wind turbines - he's into designing airframes. If there had been a $10M wind turbine prize, Burt Rutan wouldn't have been a competitor - it's not one of his interests.
I've used FIC motherboards twice (I think they were a VA503 and an SD11 - can't remember which order I had them in) and both ended up being 'problem computers' (hardware wise) so I'm a bit wary of FIC now.
Touchpads are hopeless for all gaming. The solution: USB mice are dirt cheap. I have a USB mouse and keyboard (+ big CRT monitor) I plug the PowerBook into when I'm at home.
Slashdot Mirror
It's quite easy to get the situation where, say, the H-1 quota for IT is filled but there are still IT workers out of work. IT is incredibly diverse. There may be a lack of web/HTML coder jobs and a surfeit of people to fill those jobs - but there may be a lack of people in $SKILL, for example, working with propreitory products such as Navision, or maybe traditional skills like C.
There may also be a lack of properly-qualified candidates in particular sections of the industry.
On a related note, I used to be an H-1 person (I've since returned home). I was paid more than my co-workers because my company, IBM, paid a handsome international service allowance, and I also got more vacation than US workers - so I would say IBM at least do not abuse the H-1 system (my manager told me I was actually twice as expensive as a regular employee, but I had in-depth knowledge of a particular IBM system which only 30 people had deep experience of in the entire planet).
The other funny thing I noted about the resentment of H-1 types on Slashdot is that if I met one of these people, they didn't seem to have that resentment. But then again, I'm white and don't speak with a heavy Indian accent. I think quite a bit of the H-1 hatred is just thinly veiled racism.
It's not prior art because the patent application states it should be in the BASIC language, where your example is in C.
However, having said that, the patent should not be granted because it's *obvious*.
I still haven't found an LCD to beat my Sun-badged 21in Trinitron monitor at 1600x1200.
The viewing angle is better (the picture doesn't change colour if you look at it from the side or top), if I change the resolution, it still looks sharp, and the refresh rate is high enough that there is no perceptible flicker. The colours look better than any LCD monitor that I've used. It works great with games.
The drawback is that it's an enormous beast that weighs a lot. But I don't tend to carry it around with me.
LCDs will eventually outclass my monitor - but it will be a while, and yet longer still before they can get even as low as double the price.
No, I'm trying to tell you that the login banner used to say SunOS UNIX 4.x.x, but now it just says SunOS 5.x.x.
One thing I find interesting - in the SunOS 4 days, the login banner when telneting to the machine was "SunOS UNIX".
Telnet to a Solaris box, and note the UNIX moniker has been dropped (and this was the case at least as far back as Solaris 8)
But Sun's stock also steadily fell by nearly that amount from June to August. It's hardly a long term trend. They haven't even got back to the level they were at 6 months ago.
Compare Sun (a company with an open source strategy that changes every week, it seems) with Apple (a company with a strategy and sticking to it) and the picture is far more telling.
I think you're wrong - I think the original poster was just voicing his frustration with Sun.
I started my long love of all things Unix with IBM's AIX and Sun's SunOS 4. I even *own* a Sun machine at home. I also started with Linux when there were no distros - just the 0.12 kernel and a root floppy image which you used 'cp' to install on the hard drive.
But Sun is an incredibly frustrating company. Unlike Apple or IBM, they just don't seem to have any kind of strategy - they thrash and twist - one day they love RedHat, the next day they are telling us that RedHat are the spawn of Satan. One day they love Linux, the next day they hate it (despite it being a component of their Java desktop). Sun just seems to lack direction - and it's hardly surprising that Apple, despite competing directly with the commodity PC - now has a larger market cap than Sun.
I hate watching Sun destroy itself like it's doing. At least it looks like McNealy is coming out of his period of denial - his last statement in the article indicating that perhaps he realises that they have been alienating their developers.
The trouble is at the moment, with regards to a strategy: IBM gets it, Apple gets it, the Linux distro makers get it - but Sun doesn't get it (and neither does Microsoft). But unlike Microsoft which can continue through sheer inertia, Sun can't and they have to formulate some kind of useful strategy and stick to it - or they are gonna be toast. If they continue as they are, in 10 years time there will be no more Sun.
The thing is, much of the (widespread, zombie style) hax0ring hasn't involved passwords at all - but exploiting vulnerabilities.
Having said that, we demonstrated a smart-card based authentication system using biometrics to the UK Government in 1994. So what Gates is on about is hardly new (ours included a smart card reader - and they are cheap - a serial read/writer cost £35 in 1994) based on a smartcard. The biometrics we encoded was a photograph and a fingerprint. We also demonstrated automatic signature recognition (which was VERY accurate). All of these things could be kept on the smart cards of the day.
I think John Peel (now sadly deceased, a couple of weeks ago) has had him beat long ago - and legitimately too. And not just top-40 stuff - John Peel was a great force in bringing many new artists into the public consiousness.
t ml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/johnpeel/index.sh
John Peel had many BUILDINGS filled with CDs and vinyl records and other media.
Then again - have you seen a spam recently that wasn't fraudulent in some way? All the recent spam I've seen have been for pirated copies of software and counterfeit watches. Much of it relayed through pwned zombie systems. There's plenty of crimes being committed by these spammers before even considering anti-spam laws.
I think the experts as in ex=former and spurt=drip under pressure.
Indeed they did. The IBM AS/400 minicomputer has had a database filesystem years before even a usable version of Windows existed (let alone NT).
Well, actually it IS a big deal when they are saying "Use our stuff, not that opensource rabble's stuff, because our stuff is free of copyright and other IP violations, but you can't be too sure with open source". Plus their argument that open source has a dodgy pedigree, but closed source does not.
I have to wonder why they are called "right to work" states, when being fired for any reason seems to be the total opposite of "right to work".
...is this book goes into quite some detail (like the method of magnetic polarity changes on a tape). Now you might not think that particularly remarkable - but the book was published by Ladybird - i.e. it was a children's book published in Britain, aimed at children between 8 and 10 years old!
:-) I still test 9v PP9 batteries on my tongue!
I remember Ladybird books from my childhood - starting with "Magnets, Bulbs and Batteries." That book had the advice to test a battery, stick the terminals on your tongue (but it admonished you to never do it with a large battery). Just imagine trying to publish that advice now
Ironic that you talk about the Mac and Elite in the same posting - there's a great new open source Elite-clone for OS X called oolite. It's got some of the best features of the 'classic' Elites including coming up on fleets of ships with escorts and police patrols. See http://frontiernews.alioth.net/ for news on this.
As for OS X, I've only recently got a Mac (a PowerBook) after buying my Dad a replacement for his machine at home (an eMac). I found it to be quite a bit snappier to use than an equivalent priced Windows system (and it comes with a built in display which the HP system doesn't), and the GUI actually makes use of the 3D hardware.
Elite 4. He's even got job ads out for programmers to work on it. There's some discussion on alt.fan.elite and the EBBS (http://www.alioth.net/cgi-bin/bbs.pl?siteId=1&act ion=show)
Frontier Developments now employs 60 people - it's getting to be a reasonable sized concern.
The best one I saw recently (admittedly analogue, not digital) was a set of friggin speaker cables that went for well over a grand on ebay!
Who BUYS this stuff? Do they listen in perfectly sound deadened anechoic chambers so they can notice the difference between a piece of Cat5 as speaker cable and what looked like some ribbon cable with spade connectors on the end?
But it will - because it will be the default search in the default web browser of the default desktop OS on over 90% of the world's personal computers.
Unless Google can do something really special (which it looks like they are trying to do - they can see the handwriting on the wall after seeing what Microsoft did to Netscape, Real et al. when they bundled their browser/media player as an inseparable piece of the OS) Google will fall just like Netscape and just like Real.
Microsoft don't innovate in user interfaces, either. The first usable version of Windows lagged the Macintosh by 6 years. "Innovative" features that will come in Longhorn are things that OS X will have already had for years. I'm not sure what Microsoft's malaise is in not making any real innovation (instead, buying or copying innovative ideas from others) - MS have a huge R&D budget, but nothing ever seems to come out of the truly innovative stuff their R&D department thinks up.
But people like Rutan build airframes because they are passionate about flying. Wind turbines (short of dynamic disassembly) don't fly - therfore it's not something Rutan will be terribly interested in. Rutan building a wind turbine would be about as likely as Microsoft releasing a Linux distro.
The thing is Burt Rutan isn't into designing wind turbines - he's into designing airframes. If there had been a $10M wind turbine prize, Burt Rutan wouldn't have been a competitor - it's not one of his interests.
...A wise man (I don't remember who - perhaps Mark Twain?) said once "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence"
I suspect incompetence here. However, it is important that Microsoft are corrected on this issue.
I've used FIC motherboards twice (I think they were a VA503 and an SD11 - can't remember which order I had them in) and both ended up being 'problem computers' (hardware wise) so I'm a bit wary of FIC now.
Touchpads are hopeless for all gaming. The solution: USB mice are dirt cheap. I have a USB mouse and keyboard (+ big CRT monitor) I plug the PowerBook into when I'm at home.
It's also ironic that Sinn Fein say they are driving "to reunite Ireland". The only time Ireland has ever been united was under British rule!