However, I like the Zaurus for religious reasons, plus I've got an appointment with a MS rep down from Redmond at a conference next month, and I can't wait to pull out my Zaurus in front of him.:)
One plus for the Z is that (unless I read the specs on the 3870 wrong) while it doesn't come with bluetooth, it does have the CF slot without having to add the bulky expansion case.
Besides, I'd rather give my cash to a company that is actively selling linux handhelds than a company that won't actively promote linux solutions.
I know Compaq has some, but they don't seem to be pushing them as solutions hard. I wish they would. I'd vote for them with my pocketbook, because I *really* like the ipaq hardware.
Or perhaps I'm just self-justifying my investment.
Or alternatively, try the Sharp Zaurus. It's more politically correct, more easily hackable (as it has linux already on it) and you don't have to pay the BillG tax.
Battery life isn't great, but its a *way* fun toy. Not a lot of pretty graphical programs yet either, so it's not an end-user device yet, but if you like to hack, this is an even better toy than a tivo.
Works with just about any prism2 cf wireless card, with pretty graphical setup. I've got the D-Link CF card, and it works fine with my linksys WAP11 AP. Completely plug and play. Once I downloaded and installed a terminal client, I could NFS mount my linux box and transfer files to it over the network.
sshd? Got it. Samba? Got it.
What a cool toy.
Oh yeah, and it syncs stuff with windows boxes like outlook an whatnot. Or... it says it does anyway. I guess that's important for some.:)
I read "linux/bsd imho are perfectly good replacements..." rather then "even if they don't go linux/bsd, iMacs are perfectly..." Oops! Brain damage strikes again!
My bad. My point is the same though. Linux, BSD, Mac, whatever. The schools shouldn't be teaching MS Office, they should be teaching problem solving skills using computers.
*That* was my point.
Maybe it was modded because the concept was right, just in the wrong context.:)
We need to teach students to use the tools that they will be using in the industry. The industry is using Microsoft Office, therefore, we must teach Microsoft Office.
To their credit, this means that schools are hard at work trying to integrate technology even from the lowest grades in elementary school. This is kinda cool, watching the little 9 year-olds with a better grasp on computers than the teacher.
As an aside, a couple days ago I was trying to show a teacher how to map a printer, and I realized from the glassy stare that she wasn't getting it. I turned to the 9 year-old shoulder-surfing me and asked him if he knew how to do it. He looked right at me and said: "I didn't before, but I just watched you do it". The teacher asked the kid to show others how to do it, which he proceeded to do. Too funny.
Anyway, the argument is flawed. You all realize this already. The argument should be that schools should be teaching how to solve problems using computers, and the tools that they use to solve them are inconsequential. It doesn't matter whether you use a Bic pen or a Pilot pen... they are both just tools. So with software. But schools don't get it.
The only way they *will* get it is for parents to ask difficult questions of the school board. Don't sit back and mutter about the great conspiracy, go to a school board meeting and ask them why the district isn't considering open source software.
Those of us in the VAR channel are trying as hard as we can to get rid of MS products in schools. (Some of us, anyway:) Those of you with children, or an interest in education can help too.
How is the laserdisk an example of a closed system in the same way that Divx was?
I hate to speak for someone else, but from my perspective, the laserdisk is closed because it wasn't recordable. You paid through the nose for a movie that you couldn't do anything with.
Contrast that to the DVD, which is easy to rip off the disc, manipulate, record to VCD/SVCD. Heck, for maybe 1500 bucks, I can record digital video, edit on my PC and master it onto DVD+RW that will play on any DVD player. That's a flexible format. Much more so than laserdisc.
LD I think got crushed not so much by VCRs -- they weren't a competitor -- but by the advent of DVD. At some of the video stores I went to in the early-mid 90s there were actually a good selection of LDs available for rent, and I knew a couple of people who owned LD players.
LaserDisc and VCR were certainly competitors! They were both for watching movies. Difference was, the VCR was open -- I could record my own content.
As far as LD ever being anything but a niche market: that's funny! LD was first released in the late 70's. In twenty years, you knew "a couple people" that had them. Hmm... Now try and think of a "couple people" with VCRs. Probably a bit easier.
No danger of LD taking over the world, clearly.
Anyway, the point (My point anyway... I'm not sure about the original poster) is that with LD, the movie company dictated to me what I would see. I saw nothing more, nothing less, and could use it only in the manner they allowed. I couldn't modify the data, or play with it, or record my own.
Granted, it had a nice picture. But it wasn't as "open" as the VCR.
If it was a full retail version of Win2K, it can be transferred. But nobody has full retail -- everyone has the OEM version. That's part of the lock-in of preloads.
OEM versions can't be moved from one machine to another. Also, Microsoft has strict rules about what constitutes an "upgrade". I don't have them here, but "upgrading everything around the W2K license" is not an upgrade, it requires the purchase of a new license.
Don't take my word for it, though, or anyone on slashdot. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/licensing, and see how Microsoft is making it so much easier for the consumer, by not having so many confusing programs designed to save the customer money.
By gouging the crap out of everyone, you now don't even have to go to the bother of trying to save money. You can just assume you are going to get poked, and sure enough, you are! Don't even *need* to read those agreements anymore.:)
If you've looked at the most recent MS licencing documentation, the invoice isn't good enough any more either. It used to be that all someone had to do was show an invoice and that proved they had a license. No longer.
Now, they not only have to have an invoice, but they have to have the CD-ROM, the Certificate of Authenticity, the invoice, the sticker (in the case of OEM copies of the OS itself), and all manuals and documentation.
The way I read it, if you throw away the "Getting Started" guide that you got with your OS, you no longer have a legally licenced copy.
You know, it used to be that Microsoft concentrated on making a better product, and helping VARs sell it by providing them with the tools they needed to sell.
Now, they concentrate on screwing the VAR channel and screwing the customer. I don't know who's driving Microsoft any more, but it's not anyone with a clue, that's for sure.
I work at a mom & pop computer place (one of the few left alive!) that sell PCs mostly to K12 education. Unfortunately, there isn't really a Linux market in k12. We are offering training on Linux, and are preloading OpenOffice with the machines we ship out, but we don't have demand for Linux preloaded.
There is hope, though. We are installing Linux on a lab of donated machines after a district found out that it would be cost prohibitive to install windows on them. We've got several as proxies or routers at districts that couldn't afford ISA server. I think we'll be slipping a bunch more in as intrusion detection and monitoring stations. It's happening, but slowly.
What Microsoft forgets though, is that its the VAR channel that got rid of Netware and put NT in business and education. It may take time, but we'll get NT out and Linux in. Just keep screwing the VAR channel (and customers!) and they'll be hurting yet. In the mean time, I'll keep badmouthing W2K server and XP to anyone who will listen. That's how we got rid of netware. Thats how we got rid of wordperfect. That's how we'll get rid of NT.
Yeah, but your comment was about not having to want to learn another config file format. My point was that it doesn't matter if its all in the same format, you still have to go to the manuals to find out what all the options *do*. It doesn't matter if its in xml format or whatever, if you don't know what a particular option does, you are baked either way... it doesn't matter if its xml with great help, it's still no more helpful that the nicely commented smb.conf.
And okay... you are right... the "config" and the "meta config" data will likely be stored in two differnent files... my bad.
But I stand by the assertion that these good ideas are worthless unless someone comes up with an EASY-TO-USE (developer-wise) configuration parser/validator. Sorry, but dot-conf isn't it. Neither is GConf.
And that's the starting point -- a common.conf file LIBRARY like getopt is to command line args.
Once that's done, the drop-in backend storage modules and the editor modules are the easy part.
ps. I've used your site for several months now. Thanks.
I'd greatly prefer a system that didn't require me to learn diffrent config file formats for each service I want to have running.
Thats fine, but I don't see how having these in an XML file will help any. What's the difference between this:
# run a specific logon batch file per username
; logon script = %U.bat
and this:
<option>
<name>logon script</name>
<shorthelp>
run a specific logon batch file per username
</shorthelp>
</option>
My argument is that if you don't understand what the first one is, the second isn't any easier. In fact, it's less human editable than the first (imho).
As far as a GUI goes.. sure.. there would be some great advantages to having a standard config system. But you don't get there by saying "we need a standard config system". You get there by making a library that has kick-ass features for developers. Integrates easily, has tons of features, etc, etc.
That's how we get there from here, not by whining about the need for standard configuration. Someone's got the cart before the horse...
I think that the database approach is not the solution to the problem. The better approach may be to define a mail header that compliant webservers may attach saying that the mail was sent using open relay. This could then be blocked by destination servers using their own rules.
Hey... this is a good idea. So if I've got the concept right, then those people that set the mail server up the wrong way to begin with would just adjust the configuration of their mail server. Not to stop acting as a spam relay, but to add a header saying that any mail going through might be spam?
Uh... riiiight...
While we're at it... here's another idea from the same well:
There are still a couple bits unused in the IP header aren't there? One flags bit and one service bit or something? We could just appropriate those. We could set up encodings to mean that a particular packet was part of a data stream that was:
Attempting to hack or probe the destination system
Attempting to steal computing time or other resources (spam)
A general waste of resources (d/l pr0n, mp3, slashdot, etc)
Hacking tools could be written to set those bits, mail sent from spam servers could be configured to set the appropriate bits. DDoS bots, news clients downloading from the alt.binaries.* newsgroups, browsers to the slashdot.org domain, etc, etc. Or perhaps there could be an interface on the user's side... so that when the user was doing something that was wasteful of their employer's time or bandwidth, they could just check the "I'm wasting bandwidth" checkbox, and then the network administrator could decide whether or not to pass the traffic.
And its a good flip answer to just about any question regarding algorithms (I use it a lot too: "I dunno, ask Knuth"), but thats not what this person is looking for, I don't think. Heck, it's not what I'm looking for.
Firstly, (not to bash Knuth... far from it), but having example in mix might be a great idea from a "teach the concept, not boilerplate code". But having to translate from mix to a real language to understand the abstract idea illustrated is painful. It would sure be a lot easier to see those examples in C.
Also, I don't think this poster was looking for example algorithms that have firm mathematical proofs... Knuth is great for that, but it makes it a bit... well... hard to read.
I think the best book would be as authoritative as Knuth, but without all the dang math in the way, and written in C (or even pseudocode!) rather than mix.
Thats how *I* feel about it... I don't know about the poster.
As far as they other poster begrudging the $150 for a 3 volume Knuth... don't! Its a valuable reference!
I coded in a cube at an insurance company for some time, then I coded in a cube for a phone company for some time, then I said screw it, decided I was done programming and started working for a consulting company.
Now I work for a company that does infrastructure work and remote admin for K-12s. It involves a little bit of everything, including coding, and the business is good enough that we can turn down customers and pick the jobs we want... those that are interesting to us.
Its fun... I get to play with new stuff, learn new things, and what coding I do, I do because I want to, not because someone told me I have to.
We eschew job descriptions, but if I had one, it would probably be what other companies call "Systems Engineer", or "Network Engineer". I think "Jack of all Trades" is closer.:)
But the point is I make less than I could, but I have plenty of nice hardware, a fridge full of food and cold ones, and when you come right down to it, what else is there?
A long time ago I learned that its better to get less money doing a job that you love than to get lots of money doing a job that you hate.
The whole reason to get a degree, IMHO, is to widen the possible jobs that you are employable in. You should pick a field that you enjoy, then pick from the choices you have in that field based on money or job satisfaction.
If the only thing you are in the field for is money, then you will be stuck with a job you hate, and money is no compensation. I guarantee you will be going back to school for another degree, or working in a different field without a degree.
Life is *way* too short to do something for a living that you don't want to do. Figure out what it is you *want* to do, and get the degree that fits into that.
For me, I like coding. But only on my own terms. I don't like working in a cube, I don't like hunting for bugs in someone elses code. So I won't do it. I code for myself, on my own time, and use my CS background to get me a job in a field tangential to CS.
This works for me. It might work for you, too. Course, the job I have (and enjoy) pays me less than I could make, but I never wake up wishing I didn't have to go to work.
If anything, they are closer to airplanes. Huge and complex, with lots of interactions and dependancies. There is a panel at the front to try and consolidate everything, and it works well... so well, that when everything works even a monkey could fly. But if the shit hits the fan, you have to understand what the buttons and lights represent... and what the ramifications of flipping this switch or that switch is. You have to understand the system, or you are going to crash in a big fireball.
Computers are the same way. Most users are monkeys. They have been trained by rote, and can't do more that that. This might be fine in some cases, but as soon as *anything* changes... big fireball.
I don't think its the users fault though. I think that it's ITs fault. Those people shouldn't have computers on their desks. They should have dumbterminals. Wordprocessing/Email stations. Not a computer. That's like commuting 30 miles in a 737.
It rocks. The screen is smaller than my old PalmV, but the integration is excellent. Since I've gotten it, I've replaced my phone, my pager, and my PalmV with this single device.
Now my pants stay on!
I recommend it highly. Not an employee, just a satisfied customer.
I have to disagree. I think the unstated goal of the original poster was to become The Best Programmer Ever (tm).
I know that's my goal. And my method to achieve that, just as the original poster, is to better express myself and the problem set through code. Things like "a linux desktop" and "an application suite" are things that may or may not drop out of that, but they certainly aren't the goal.
That would be like setting daily goals to "put on my shoes", or "brush my teeth". That's silly.
And just like golf, the purpose of my goal is self fullfillment. I could care less whether there is a working desktop. Neither to the people working on Gnome, I suspect... I think they are all just working toward being the Best Programmer Ever, and Gnome is just fallout from that.
I'm not a crypto-head by any means, and I don't really follow IPSec stuff or anything. But, I'm gonna offer my completely uninformed opinion anyway.:)
Seems to me like this would be good hardware to put in a bridgehead router... particularly with software/drivers to opportunistically encrypt IP traffic between routers that support it. I don't know how far away we are from this, but I think this is the goal. Transparent end-to-end opportunistic encryption. Yee ha.
Its really not a matter of having anything secret to protect, either, it's more a matter of wheat and chaff... as much encrypted traffic the better. And besides, it helps to obfuscate brain damaged plain-text password protocols.
They have already kicked it into high gear. In addition to some new "help us lobby" links on the www.microsoft.com front page, they also have some new, shiny commercials out. Anyone else seen them yet?
They feature Bill looking sad and long-suffering while he talks about how Microsoft is going to keep innovating despite the attempts of the government to stop them from innovating. The problem is, it comes off something like this:
Hi. I'm Bill Gates, president of Microsoft. At Microsoft, we're running scared. The revolving doors just don't stop spinning anymore, what with developers leaving in droves in anticpation of no more insta-stock millionaires. Not only that, but the shadow of Sun's boot poised above our heads is slowly driving us all insane. Frankly, we just hope we can get Windows ME out before we get disemboweled by class action suits filed by ravenous consumers.
We'll keep innovating, though. Why, just the other day, we came up with the concept of symbolic links, so you see... we'll be fine. Really. Buy Win2K! Please!
---
Its kinda sad, in a way. You know they are sucking when they have to trot Bill out on parade.
I'm not sure this is a myth. Seems like there are those that do computers for money, and those that do computers as a way of life. Or more. For some people, computers are more important than life. Or air. Or food. Or anything.
I'll submit to you that the 20-odd grad students you know that don't go home and immediately fire up a computer are not serious hackers.
They are the "for the money" type, not the "way of life" type.
The simple fact that the current distribution is the way it is would be sufficient proof of a general difference in aptitude by gender.
You are right. This is patently false, for the reasons you discussed. There are too many other variables having to do with upbringing, encouragement by public school instructors, things like 'girl scouts' which do little (if my wife's experiences are typical) other than preparing girls to be housewives.
Sure, environment has a lot (if not most) to do with the scarcity of females in technical fields. But do also remember that there is a grain of truth to the statement above. Men and women are different in the way we think, our capacity for linear thought, etc. Seems to me, for example, that I read of an Air Force study that shows that women would be superior air-combat pilots because of faster reaction times and quicker decision making.
I guess that might mean that all things being equal, there might be more women than men in technical fields. Who knows. My point is that you can't just scream sexism and ignore the differences between the sexes.
Paul Allen probably doesn't have enough money and needs to invent a strange and convoluted conspiracy to make more. And Linus et. al. don't mind a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
All true.
:)
However, I like the Zaurus for religious reasons, plus I've got an appointment with a MS rep down from Redmond at a conference next month, and I can't wait to pull out my Zaurus in front of him.
One plus for the Z is that (unless I read the specs on the 3870 wrong) while it doesn't come with bluetooth, it does have the CF slot without having to add the bulky expansion case.
Besides, I'd rather give my cash to a company that is actively selling linux handhelds than a company that won't actively promote linux solutions.
I know Compaq has some, but they don't seem to be pushing them as solutions hard. I wish they would. I'd vote for them with my pocketbook, because I *really* like the ipaq hardware.
Or perhaps I'm just self-justifying my investment.
Cheers.
Or alternatively, try the Sharp Zaurus. It's more politically correct, more easily hackable (as it has linux already on it) and you don't have to pay the BillG tax.
:)
Battery life isn't great, but its a *way* fun toy. Not a lot of pretty graphical programs yet either, so it's not an end-user device yet, but if you like to hack, this is an even better toy than a tivo.
Works with just about any prism2 cf wireless card, with pretty graphical setup. I've got the D-Link CF card, and it works fine with my linksys WAP11 AP. Completely plug and play. Once I downloaded and installed a terminal client, I could NFS mount my linux box and transfer files to it over the network.
sshd? Got it. Samba? Got it.
What a cool toy.
Oh yeah, and it syncs stuff with windows boxes like outlook an whatnot. Or... it says it does anyway. I guess that's important for some.
Doh!
:)
I read "linux/bsd imho are perfectly good replacements..." rather then "even if they don't go linux/bsd, iMacs are perfectly..." Oops! Brain damage strikes again!
My bad. My point is the same though. Linux, BSD, Mac, whatever. The schools shouldn't be teaching MS Office, they should be teaching problem solving skills using computers.
*That* was my point.
Maybe it was modded because the concept was right, just in the wrong context.
Nope. What it won't do is run office.
:) Those of you with children, or an interest in education can help too.
See, the schools push this argument:
We need to teach students to use the tools that they will be using in the industry. The industry is using Microsoft Office, therefore, we must teach Microsoft Office.
To their credit, this means that schools are hard at work trying to integrate technology even from the lowest grades in elementary school. This is kinda cool, watching the little 9 year-olds with a better grasp on computers than the teacher.
As an aside, a couple days ago I was trying to show a teacher how to map a printer, and I realized from the glassy stare that she wasn't getting it. I turned to the 9 year-old shoulder-surfing me and asked him if he knew how to do it. He looked right at me and said: "I didn't before, but I just watched you do it". The teacher asked the kid to show others how to do it, which he proceeded to do. Too funny.
Anyway, the argument is flawed. You all realize this already. The argument should be that schools should be teaching how to solve problems using computers, and the tools that they use to solve them are inconsequential. It doesn't matter whether you use a Bic pen or a Pilot pen... they are both just tools. So with software. But schools don't get it.
The only way they *will* get it is for parents to ask difficult questions of the school board. Don't sit back and mutter about the great conspiracy, go to a school board meeting and ask them why the district isn't considering open source software.
Those of us in the VAR channel are trying as hard as we can to get rid of MS products in schools. (Some of us, anyway
Obviously. This is a *district wide* commitment... even on the part of the fish.
Besides, what other word processor would the fish use?
I hate to speak for someone else, but from my perspective, the laserdisk is closed because it wasn't recordable. You paid through the nose for a movie that you couldn't do anything with.
Contrast that to the DVD, which is easy to rip off the disc, manipulate, record to VCD/SVCD. Heck, for maybe 1500 bucks, I can record digital video, edit on my PC and master it onto DVD+RW that will play on any DVD player. That's a flexible format. Much more so than laserdisc.
LD I think got crushed not so much by VCRs -- they weren't a competitor -- but by the advent of DVD. At some of the video stores I went to in the early-mid 90s there were actually a good selection of LDs available for rent, and I knew a couple of people who owned LD players.
LaserDisc and VCR were certainly competitors! They were both for watching movies. Difference was, the VCR was open -- I could record my own content.
As far as LD ever being anything but a niche market: that's funny! LD was first released in the late 70's. In twenty years, you knew "a couple people" that had them. Hmm... Now try and think of a "couple people" with VCRs. Probably a bit easier.
No danger of LD taking over the world, clearly.
Anyway, the point (My point anyway... I'm not sure about the original poster) is that with LD, the movie company dictated to me what I would see. I saw nothing more, nothing less, and could use it only in the manner they allowed. I couldn't modify the data, or play with it, or record my own.
Granted, it had a nice picture. But it wasn't as "open" as the VCR.
That's my take, anyway.
Nope.
:)
If it was a full retail version of Win2K, it can be transferred. But nobody has full retail -- everyone has the OEM version. That's part of the lock-in of preloads.
OEM versions can't be moved from one machine to another. Also, Microsoft has strict rules about what constitutes an "upgrade". I don't have them here, but "upgrading everything around the W2K license" is not an upgrade, it requires the purchase of a new license.
Don't take my word for it, though, or anyone on slashdot. Check out http://www.microsoft.com/licensing, and see how Microsoft is making it so much easier for the consumer, by not having so many confusing programs designed to save the customer money.
By gouging the crap out of everyone, you now don't even have to go to the bother of trying to save money. You can just assume you are going to get poked, and sure enough, you are! Don't even *need* to read those agreements anymore.
Boy, that *is* easier. Thanks Bill!
Now, they not only have to have an invoice, but they have to have the CD-ROM, the Certificate of Authenticity, the invoice, the sticker (in the case of OEM copies of the OS itself), and all manuals and documentation.
The way I read it, if you throw away the "Getting Started" guide that you got with your OS, you no longer have a legally licenced copy.
Don't believe me though, check the licencing FAQ's at MS's licensing site
You know, it used to be that Microsoft concentrated on making a better product, and helping VARs sell it by providing them with the tools they needed to sell.
Now, they concentrate on screwing the VAR channel and screwing the customer. I don't know who's driving Microsoft any more, but it's not anyone with a clue, that's for sure.
I work at a mom & pop computer place (one of the few left alive!) that sell PCs mostly to K12 education. Unfortunately, there isn't really a Linux market in k12. We are offering training on Linux, and are preloading OpenOffice with the machines we ship out, but we don't have demand for Linux preloaded.
There is hope, though. We are installing Linux on a lab of donated machines after a district found out that it would be cost prohibitive to install windows on them. We've got several as proxies or routers at districts that couldn't afford ISA server. I think we'll be slipping a bunch more in as intrusion detection and monitoring stations. It's happening, but slowly.
What Microsoft forgets though, is that its the VAR channel that got rid of Netware and put NT in business and education. It may take time, but we'll get NT out and Linux in. Just keep screwing the VAR channel (and customers!) and they'll be hurting yet. In the mean time, I'll keep badmouthing W2K server and XP to anyone who will listen. That's how we got rid of netware. Thats how we got rid of wordperfect. That's how we'll get rid of NT.
Yeah, but your comment was about not having to want to learn another config file format. My point was that it doesn't matter if its all in the same format, you still have to go to the manuals to find out what all the options *do*. It doesn't matter if its in xml format or whatever, if you don't know what a particular option does, you are baked either way... it doesn't matter if its xml with great help, it's still no more helpful that the nicely commented smb.conf.
.conf file LIBRARY like getopt is to command line args.
And okay... you are right... the "config" and the "meta config" data will likely be stored in two differnent files... my bad.
But I stand by the assertion that these good ideas are worthless unless someone comes up with an EASY-TO-USE (developer-wise) configuration parser/validator. Sorry, but dot-conf isn't it. Neither is GConf.
And that's the starting point -- a common
Once that's done, the drop-in backend storage modules and the editor modules are the easy part.
ps. I've used your site for several months now. Thanks.
A couple comments:
I'd greatly prefer a system that didn't require me to learn diffrent config file formats for each service I want to have running.
Thats fine, but I don't see how having these in an XML file will help any. What's the difference between this:
# run a specific logon batch file per username
; logon script = %U.bat
and this:
<option>
<name>logon script</name>
<shorthelp>
run a specific logon batch file per username
</shorthelp>
</option>
My argument is that if you don't understand what the first one is, the second isn't any easier. In fact, it's less human editable than the first (imho).
As far as a GUI goes.. sure.. there would be some great advantages to having a standard config system. But you don't get there by saying "we need a standard config system". You get there by making a library that has kick-ass features for developers. Integrates easily, has tons of features, etc, etc.
That's how we get there from here, not by whining about the need for standard configuration. Someone's got the cart before the horse...
Hey... this is a good idea. So if I've got the concept right, then those people that set the mail server up the wrong way to begin with would just adjust the configuration of their mail server. Not to stop acting as a spam relay, but to add a header saying that any mail going through might be spam?
Uh... riiiight...
While we're at it... here's another idea from the same well:
There are still a couple bits unused in the IP header aren't there? One flags bit and one service bit or something? We could just appropriate those. We could set up encodings to mean that a particular packet was part of a data stream that was:
Hacking tools could be written to set those bits, mail sent from spam servers could be configured to set the appropriate bits. DDoS bots, news clients downloading from the alt.binaries.* newsgroups, browsers to the slashdot.org domain, etc, etc. Or perhaps there could be an interface on the user's side... so that when the user was doing something that was wasteful of their employer's time or bandwidth, they could just check the "I'm wasting bandwidth" checkbox, and then the network administrator could decide whether or not to pass the traffic.
I think you are on to something here...
Knuth? Yeah... I guess.
And its a good flip answer to just about any question regarding algorithms (I use it a lot too: "I dunno, ask Knuth"), but thats not what this person is looking for, I don't think. Heck, it's not what I'm looking for.
Firstly, (not to bash Knuth... far from it), but having example in mix might be a great idea from a "teach the concept, not boilerplate code". But having to translate from mix to a real language to understand the abstract idea illustrated is painful. It would sure be a lot easier to see those examples in C.
Also, I don't think this poster was looking for example algorithms that have firm mathematical proofs... Knuth is great for that, but it makes it a bit... well... hard to read.
I think the best book would be as authoritative as Knuth, but without all the dang math in the way, and written in C (or even pseudocode!) rather than mix.
Thats how *I* feel about it... I don't know about the poster.
As far as they other poster begrudging the $150 for a 3 volume Knuth... don't! Its a valuable reference!
Except that I think most $200 external FireWire drives are just ATA-100 drives with FireWire/ATAPI bridge.
I coded in a cube at an insurance company for some time, then I coded in a cube for a phone company for some time, then I said screw it, decided I was done programming and started working for a consulting company.
:)
Now I work for a company that does infrastructure work and remote admin for K-12s. It involves a little bit of everything, including coding, and the business is good enough that we can turn down customers and pick the jobs we want... those that are interesting to us.
Its fun... I get to play with new stuff, learn new things, and what coding I do, I do because I want to, not because someone told me I have to.
We eschew job descriptions, but if I had one, it would probably be what other companies call "Systems Engineer", or "Network Engineer". I think "Jack of all Trades" is closer.
But the point is I make less than I could, but I have plenty of nice hardware, a fridge full of food and cold ones, and when you come right down to it, what else is there?
A long time ago I learned that its better to get less money doing a job that you love than to get lots of money doing a job that you hate.
The whole reason to get a degree, IMHO, is to widen the possible jobs that you are employable in. You should pick a field that you enjoy, then pick from the choices you have in that field based on money or job satisfaction.
If the only thing you are in the field for is money, then you will be stuck with a job you hate, and money is no compensation. I guarantee you will be going back to school for another degree, or working in a different field without a degree.
Life is *way* too short to do something for a living that you don't want to do. Figure out what it is you *want* to do, and get the degree that fits into that.
For me, I like coding. But only on my own terms. I don't like working in a cube, I don't like hunting for bugs in someone elses code. So I won't do it. I code for myself, on my own time, and use my CS background to get me a job in a field tangential to CS.
This works for me. It might work for you, too. Course, the job I have (and enjoy) pays me less than I could make, but I never wake up wishing I didn't have to go to work.
Thats me.
Computers aren't cars. They aren't VCRs.
If anything, they are closer to airplanes. Huge and complex, with lots of interactions and dependancies. There is a panel at the front to try and consolidate everything, and it works well... so well, that when everything works even a monkey could fly. But if the shit hits the fan, you have to understand what the buttons and lights represent... and what the ramifications of flipping this switch or that switch is. You have to understand the system, or you are going to crash in a big fireball.
Computers are the same way. Most users are monkeys. They have been trained by rote, and can't do more that that. This might be fine in some cases, but as soon as *anything* changes... big fireball.
I don't think its the users fault though. I think that it's ITs fault. Those people shouldn't have computers on their desks. They should have dumbterminals. Wordprocessing/Email stations. Not a computer. That's like commuting 30 miles in a 737.
Nice nick.
It rocks. The screen is smaller than my old PalmV, but the integration is excellent. Since I've gotten it, I've replaced my phone, my pager, and my PalmV with this single device.
Now my pants stay on!
I recommend it highly. Not an employee, just a satisfied customer.
I have to disagree. I think the unstated goal of the original poster was to become The Best Programmer Ever (tm).
I know that's my goal. And my method to achieve that, just as the original poster, is to better express myself and the problem set through code. Things like "a linux desktop" and "an application suite" are things that may or may not drop out of that, but they certainly aren't the goal.
That would be like setting daily goals to "put on my shoes", or "brush my teeth". That's silly.
And just like golf, the purpose of my goal is self fullfillment. I could care less whether there is a working desktop. Neither to the people working on Gnome, I suspect... I think they are all just working toward being the Best Programmer Ever, and Gnome is just fallout from that.
Y'all are just figments of my imagination anyway.
I'm not a crypto-head by any means, and I don't really follow IPSec stuff or anything. But, I'm gonna offer my completely uninformed opinion anyway. :)
Seems to me like this would be good hardware to put in a bridgehead router... particularly with software/drivers to opportunistically encrypt IP traffic between routers that support it. I don't know how far away we are from this, but I think this is the goal. Transparent end-to-end opportunistic encryption. Yee ha.
Its really not a matter of having anything secret to protect, either, it's more a matter of wheat and chaff... as much encrypted traffic the better. And besides, it helps to obfuscate brain damaged plain-text password protocols.
I think this rocks.
They have already kicked it into high gear. In addition to some new "help us lobby" links on the www.microsoft.com front page, they also have some new, shiny commercials out. Anyone else seen them yet?
They feature Bill looking sad and long-suffering while he talks about how Microsoft is going to keep innovating despite the attempts of the government to stop them from innovating. The problem is, it comes off something like this:
Hi. I'm Bill Gates, president of Microsoft. At Microsoft, we're running scared. The revolving doors just don't stop spinning anymore, what with developers leaving in droves in anticpation of no more insta-stock millionaires. Not only that, but the shadow of Sun's boot poised above our heads is slowly driving us all insane. Frankly, we just hope we can get Windows ME out before we get disemboweled by class action suits filed by ravenous consumers.
We'll keep innovating, though. Why, just the other day, we came up with the concept of symbolic links, so you see... we'll be fine. Really. Buy Win2K! Please!
---
Its kinda sad, in a way. You know they are sucking when they have to trot Bill out on parade.
Ugh. This is how it starts...
Hmmm...
I'm not sure this is a myth. Seems like there are those that do computers for money, and those that do computers as a way of life. Or more. For some people, computers are more important than life. Or air. Or food. Or anything.
I'll submit to you that the 20-odd grad students you know that don't go home and immediately fire up a computer are not serious hackers.
They are the "for the money" type, not the "way of life" type.
Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
- Poor with no guarantee of happiness
- Rich with no guarantee of happiness
I'll have to go for rich.Just my $.02
The simple fact that the current distribution is the way it is would be sufficient proof of a general difference in aptitude by gender.
You are right. This is patently false, for the reasons you discussed. There are too many other variables having to do with upbringing, encouragement by public school instructors, things like 'girl scouts' which do little (if my wife's experiences are typical) other than preparing girls to be housewives.
Sure, environment has a lot (if not most) to do with the scarcity of females in technical fields. But do also remember that there is a grain of truth to the statement above. Men and women are different in the way we think, our capacity for linear thought, etc. Seems to me, for example, that I read of an Air Force study that shows that women would be superior air-combat pilots because of faster reaction times and quicker decision making.
I guess that might mean that all things being equal, there might be more women than men in technical fields. Who knows. My point is that you can't just scream sexism and ignore the differences between the sexes.
Good thought.
Paul Allen probably doesn't have enough money and needs to invent a strange and convoluted conspiracy to make more. And Linus et. al. don't mind a bit.
Yup. That's probably it.