Thankfully, open source has lots of balls, and you can always clone someone else's balls and use them if you don't like the way that someone is playing with their balls.
But what is critical is that you don't neglect the balls.
Can you imagine what would happen if this guy was black?
We don't have to imagine, his name was OJ.
I feel for the children in the situation. What a horrible thing to go through at that age, and the impact it will have on the rest of their lives.
From the article, it sounds like Reiser is a stereo-typical geek, smart in one area and rather clueless in others. His reason for reading up on police investigations because he was being investigated by them made perfect sense to me. It does at the same time seem a bit incriminating, and would depend on if he had the books BEFORE his wife was killed. And I thought 1st degree had to be pre-meditated... from the article, it seemed like at best it would have been a 'crime of passion'. I'm sure there are mountains of details we aren't seeing though.
And yet another reason for OSS, if the main developer of the software goes to prison, the project can continue.
To err is human. If they've seen the error of their ways, then I would reconsider them.
They would have to apologize AND make music that doesn't suck. Personally, I don't think that they are capable of either.
I bought their St. Anger CD... that was their last chance at redemption for me. I listened to it twice, and threw it in the garbage. I still listen to pre-Black Metallica, but it would take something pretty extraordinary for me to even listen to anything they put out.
Metallica can't re-capture their glory days, they are too far gone. Just go listen to Clutch and remember Metallica for the awesome band they used to be.
I think I'd have to say the best game was either Pitfall or Yars Revenge.
When I think Atari 2600, I immediately get angry thinking about those damn plastic joystick pieces that would eventually break. (the ring around the base, that would push the movement buttons) I actually took apart the joysticks, and would play them like a nintendo-style controller. It was really hard, because the buttons were so far apart, but I have to wonder if that is how that type of controller evolved.
...Genesis describes the evolutionary process pretty well.
I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school for 8 years.. nuns, daily prayer, weekly mass, etc etc. They didn't teach us anything about evolution. But I remember the first time I heard of it, I thought "oh, that is what the Bible was talking about". But nobody ever TAUGHT that, because to refer to anything existing outside the Church's teachings must have been forbidden. We were only taught what was in the Bible, no other explanation was given. That's just the way it was, no questions. I mean, real-world science that backs up the fanciful book that we are just supposed to believe - why wouldn't they embrace it? Well, probably because that might lead to actual free thinking, and they couldn't have that now, could they?
Intelligent Design didn't exist when I was growing up, it was just called "Don't ask any questions or you're going to Hell" I went to my friend's kids Confirmation party this weekend. They are 11 and 9. He went to the same school I did, but neither of us believe in any of that anymore. (his wife wanted his kids to do it) I told him "You know, it's funny they confirm kids so early these days. I guess they want to get them while they still believe in Santa Claus." We had a good laugh while eating a piece of cross-shaped cake.
Good to know... like I said, I was in the CS program back in the late 80s/early 90s, which in internet time is ancient. And it was at a relatively small University. I certainly would have hoped that the program in general would have progressed by now. Of course, I took Assembler, Fortran, LISP, C, Pascal, hardware design, OS design, etc. I am sure it's a different world today, although I hope some of the basics would still be taught. I took C and Pascal at the same time, which was a BAD idea because they're similar but opposite in many ways.
To give you an idea of how far we've come since I was in the CS program, I wrote a paper for my HW Design class on the Pentium processor - which wasn't even OUT yet. Few people had their own computers and had to do their work in the labs on campus...my PC was a 386DX-33, with 2MB RAM and an 80MB HDD, and had BOTH kinds of floppy drives. We frequented BBSes, gopher and ftp were popular. And one of my classmates did a project on the future of technology called the World Wide Web.
Not everyone who goes into computer science wants to be a programmer.
THANK YOU! This is a very very important point, because there is much more to software development. I got my CS degree in 1993, and back then it was either hardware or programming. I took the one available "software engineering" course my senior year. That course is what got me my first job. My final project was to work in a team of 4, come up with an idea, present it to the prof, come up with requirements, design, screen mockups, budget, test plans, etc. We didn't write a single line of code. It was about working on a project in a team, and doing everything BUT programming.
I went through several programming job interviews, and I was pretty much like every other programmer out looking for a job at that time. (except I was a mid to low B student, thank you very much required-for-the-major-graduate-level-probability-course course-that-I-failed) Then I interviewed at Motorola. During my interview with the first of 6 people, I happened to show him the final project for that SE class. He looked through it, and said "show this to each person you interview with today". I got the job, and later found out that it was that project that really impressed them. While programming is key, you really need to understand how software development works as a whole. I started out doing shell programming and build/configuration management. After about a year, I got promoted and could choose to move into programming or test. Test just fit me better, and I've been doing test/QA ever since.
I don't know what they teach these days in college CS programs, but I sure hope that it's more than just programming courses. Over the years I've met lots of good programmers, but not as many who understand the whole concept of software engineering. Hey, we need those people who are focused on doing one thing, and doing it well. But we also need people who know and understand the big picture.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Slashdot summary seems to be missing an obvious connection: The top institutions also have the most customers. Simply getting the number of incidents isn't enough; what would be far more interesting is the rate of identity theft (incidences per 1000 customers or such).
That was the first thing I thought of, since Bank of America is the largest bank in the country. Another thing that they must be struggling with is their growth. They've grown by acquiring other banks. Those events could offer lots of opportunities for identity theft, since it would mean information gets moved around. And getting acquired banks all working under the same process and procedures isn't a small effort.
I've been working in the banking industry for the last couple of years, and it's a very complicated one. You want to satisfy the customer, while safeguarding their money at the same time... and as a business, you need to make money in the process. It's also hard to be as agile and nimble as the thieves when you are as large as a Bank of America or Chase.
When he says that companies like Red Hat are in the minority, well he's right on technical grounds, but one of the biggest hardware developers in history, IBM, has done all that R&D and sales for the past half century because the real value isn't in selling the mainframe or supercomputer, but rather in the deliciously monsterous support contracts.
And Microsoft, one of the biggest software producers, doesn't make it's money on software. It makes it on controlling and selling compatibility.
There are obviously various dimensions to "going green": 1) Not buying. Reuse instead. 2) Buying as little as possible. 3) When buying, buy environmentally friendly.
I am sure some people here would be shocked, but I run a Duron 1.3 processor, with a Zalman fanless heatsink, and 768 MB of PC-133 memory. I run dual displays (CRTs) but they shut off after 5 minutes of inactivity. The machine is up all the time (current uptime is 70 days), so I am sure I am pulling some power. I live in AZ, and in the summer it get HOT in my office... so I rigged dryer hose to pipe the PS air out into my garage. (luckily, right next to my office) I installed a low-speed fan on the garage side to help pull the air. It made a very noticeable difference in the temperature in my office. My buddy was having issues with his P4 3.2 machine, and he just bought a new Dell. So he gave the old one to me. It turned out the video card was fried, and one of the PSU fans was dead. Instead of buying a new PSU, I just hard-wired the fan on the PSU to run off of one of the 5v connections. In my area, you can put out your bulk trash once a month. I saw one of my neighbors put out a PC... I thought I could scavenge it for parts. Upon getting it home, I found out it was a fully working Sempron 3200 system! It only had a 30GB HDD and 256 RAM, but was fully working. So now I have two fully working PCs sitting here. I'll probably replace my Linux machine (Duron) with the P4, and my dusty Windows machine (Athlon 900 slot!) with the Sempron, after buying a memory upgrade.
It just amazes me what people are willing to just throw away. Both of those computers were only 3-4 years old. While anything remotely new would blow it away in performance, they are completely usable for daily use.
Intel is smoking the rest of the industry with 45nm high-k/metal gate in therms of process technology. Compared to what has been published by IBM about their hkmg technology IBM/AMD has a long way to go to catch up.
This is key. I have a friend who has worked at Intel almost 10 years now. He said when AMD burst onto the scene and started taking a chunk out of Intel's market share, they took it VERY seriously. In fact, he admits they were stagnant because.. well, they had no competition. AMD was the best thing to happen to Intel. Things around there were a little tense for a while, but they had confidence in their abilities (and cash reserves). He said they were all in a meeting discussing AMD, and one of the very-high-up engineers gave a presentation about the 45nm capabilities. After that, the tenseness was gone. They knew that by going to 45nm, although it would take a lot to get there, they would leapfrog AMD. They also knew that AMD wasn't thinking that far ahead, they were rolling in their success and driving fancy new cars and being the darlings of the tech media. So even though Intel jumped ahead, you can bet that they aren't resting on their laurels... they are hard at work on the next generation as well.
So AMD is not dead, but they are in a very tough spot. They'll have to come up with something creative to remain viable, because Intel is years ahead of them in the fab, and you can't close that gap very easily or quickly.
Well, actually you can. It's just a bit different since in mechanical engineering, you will have one that will specialize in bridges, and another in autos, etc;
I'll take my bridges desinged by civil engineers, thanks. But I get what you meant.:)
I've been in software quality and testing for 14 years. I've worked at very large corporations as well as startups. There is a WIDE gap in software development process in our industry. Many people like to call themselves software engineers when they are developers. There is a huge difference. Engineering is a discipline that follows well-defined rules, and it usually takes time. But I think the very important thing to point out is that some software requires engineering - other software does not. If I go into a startup company that is trying to develop a blog/wiki site and try to implement a NASA-like software development methodology, they will fail. Likewise, software to control a heart monitor should be engineered and closely controlled. Sometimes quality and perfection is the goal, other times it might be time-to-market that is critical. You have to fit the process to your business. A bridge is a bridge, and they should all be engineered pretty much in the same way. You can't say the same thing about software.
I think that this is a very key point to software development. I have seen companies who spent entirely too much time and money trying to eliminate all defects from their software when it wasn't the critical part of their business. Yes, we should always strive to eliminate defects, but you can't get them all. You have to know when to pick your battles, and when to accept the risks. If we're talking about life-or-death software, or security, or other very critical things - you need to focus on those.
There's a grid I have seen used that is a great tool when doing projects. Schedule, Cost, Quality, Scope. 1 can be optimized, 1 is a constraint, and the other 2 you have to accept. Period. It is a more useful version of the "fast, good, cheap - pick two"
Most mega-billionaires give away their money in hopes of achieving immortality.
Exactly. The argument of "But they're giving away millions upon millions of dollars! How much do you donate?" doesn't hold water. If you look at the percentages, I give away more to charities each year than Bill Gates. Giving away 10% of billions isn't putting him in the poor house. I once calculated it, and if I gave away $2 it was the equivalent percentage of Bill Gates giving away a million. Will his million do more good than my 2? Sure. But he could give away 90% of what he's worth and still be very very wealthy. If I gave away 10% of my net worth, I would be struggling.
You can't deny the good that the amounts of money he's donated will do. But the term "generous" is not correct. He's buying a positive legacy, hence the name of his foundation. How can giving away millions of dollars not generous? When you have thousands of times that amount and giving it away has zero impact on your ability to live. I am not knocking him for starting the foundation, because he certainly didn't have to do it... but let's look at what it is in a realistic light.
I think itwould be kind of tragic if did come out, actually. We'd need to find a new persistent vaporware joke.:(
3D Realms is more famous for NOT releasing it. How do they get their name on the blogs yet again? Fire up some Duke Nukem Forever rumor. Seriously, it is PR for them, even though it is a vaporware joke. It is still the most famous vaporware joke, and by perpetuating it, they keep their name in the news.
It isn't illegal to download movies and songs. It might be a civil crime to download copyrighted songs and movies, and though even that varies country to country, it is still a civil, non-penal issue.
OK... let's be correct here. It is perfectly legal to download copyrighted works if you have the copyright holder's consent. Copyrighted does NOT mean you can't download it. I downloaded Saul Williams' album "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!" from the internet, and there was absolutely nothing illegal about it.
Let's be correct folks. It does make a difference. It's a nit-picky thing, because the majority of downloaders don't have the copyright holder's consent - but we have to remember that as long as downloading and copyright are seen as always illegal, things aren't going to change.
The quick and dirty way is to move SSH to a non-standard port.
I had done this in the past on my home server, but then ran into firewall issues where I worked - I couldn't get out on the port that I set it up on. I know there are ways around that, but I was looking for some kind of cleaner solution. Also, I have found that FTP gets hammered too sometimes, so I think that some of the IPTABLES solutions others have provided will fit more nicely with what I was looking to do.
Slashdot Mirror
But what is critical is that you don't neglect the balls.
We don't have to imagine, his name was OJ.
I feel for the children in the situation. What a horrible thing to go through at that age, and the impact it will have on the rest of their lives.
From the article, it sounds like Reiser is a stereo-typical geek, smart in one area and rather clueless in others. His reason for reading up on police investigations because he was being investigated by them made perfect sense to me. It does at the same time seem a bit incriminating, and would depend on if he had the books BEFORE his wife was killed. And I thought 1st degree had to be pre-meditated... from the article, it seemed like at best it would have been a 'crime of passion'. I'm sure there are mountains of details we aren't seeing though.
And yet another reason for OSS, if the main developer of the software goes to prison, the project can continue.
They would have to apologize AND make music that doesn't suck. Personally, I don't think that they are capable of either.
I bought their St. Anger CD... that was their last chance at redemption for me. I listened to it twice, and threw it in the garbage. I still listen to pre-Black Metallica, but it would take something pretty extraordinary for me to even listen to anything they put out.
Metallica can't re-capture their glory days, they are too far gone. Just go listen to Clutch and remember Metallica for the awesome band they used to be.
Well, air getting into it wouldn't really be the problem in that scenario, now would it?
I think I'd have to say the best game was either Pitfall or Yars Revenge.
When I think Atari 2600, I immediately get angry thinking about those damn plastic joystick pieces that would eventually break. (the ring around the base, that would push the movement buttons) I actually took apart the joysticks, and would play them like a nintendo-style controller. It was really hard, because the buttons were so far apart, but I have to wonder if that is how that type of controller evolved.
I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school for 8 years.. nuns, daily prayer, weekly mass, etc etc. They didn't teach us anything about evolution. But I remember the first time I heard of it, I thought "oh, that is what the Bible was talking about". But nobody ever TAUGHT that, because to refer to anything existing outside the Church's teachings must have been forbidden. We were only taught what was in the Bible, no other explanation was given. That's just the way it was, no questions. I mean, real-world science that backs up the fanciful book that we are just supposed to believe - why wouldn't they embrace it? Well, probably because that might lead to actual free thinking, and they couldn't have that now, could they?
Intelligent Design didn't exist when I was growing up, it was just called "Don't ask any questions or you're going to Hell" I went to my friend's kids Confirmation party this weekend. They are 11 and 9. He went to the same school I did, but neither of us believe in any of that anymore. (his wife wanted his kids to do it) I told him "You know, it's funny they confirm kids so early these days. I guess they want to get them while they still believe in Santa Claus." We had a good laugh while eating a piece of cross-shaped cake.
Good to know... like I said, I was in the CS program back in the late 80s/early 90s, which in internet time is ancient. And it was at a relatively small University. I certainly would have hoped that the program in general would have progressed by now. Of course, I took Assembler, Fortran, LISP, C, Pascal, hardware design, OS design, etc. I am sure it's a different world today, although I hope some of the basics would still be taught. I took C and Pascal at the same time, which was a BAD idea because they're similar but opposite in many ways.
To give you an idea of how far we've come since I was in the CS program, I wrote a paper for my HW Design class on the Pentium processor - which wasn't even OUT yet. Few people had their own computers and had to do their work in the labs on campus...my PC was a 386DX-33, with 2MB RAM and an 80MB HDD, and had BOTH kinds of floppy drives. We frequented BBSes, gopher and ftp were popular. And one of my classmates did a project on the future of technology called the World Wide Web.
THANK YOU! This is a very very important point, because there is much more to software development. I got my CS degree in 1993, and back then it was either hardware or programming. I took the one available "software engineering" course my senior year. That course is what got me my first job. My final project was to work in a team of 4, come up with an idea, present it to the prof, come up with requirements, design, screen mockups, budget, test plans, etc. We didn't write a single line of code. It was about working on a project in a team, and doing everything BUT programming.
I went through several programming job interviews, and I was pretty much like every other programmer out looking for a job at that time. (except I was a mid to low B student, thank you very much required-for-the-major-graduate-level-probability-course course-that-I-failed) Then I interviewed at Motorola. During my interview with the first of 6 people, I happened to show him the final project for that SE class. He looked through it, and said "show this to each person you interview with today". I got the job, and later found out that it was that project that really impressed them. While programming is key, you really need to understand how software development works as a whole. I started out doing shell programming and build/configuration management. After about a year, I got promoted and could choose to move into programming or test. Test just fit me better, and I've been doing test/QA ever since.
I don't know what they teach these days in college CS programs, but I sure hope that it's more than just programming courses. Over the years I've met lots of good programmers, but not as many who understand the whole concept of software engineering. Hey, we need those people who are focused on doing one thing, and doing it well. But we also need people who know and understand the big picture.
After reading that, I was completely on his side, then I thought "wait, I am taking the side of one lawyer over another" and I just felt so.... dirty.
There's no real need to say "power windows" here, because they don't have windows at all.
I don't see your point, "award-winning" and "professional" are both perfectly cromulent words.
A true visionary. Pick up his book "Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!", a great collection of essays from 1934-1998.
Would someone please quickly do this in Calc, so we can compare performance!
That was the first thing I thought of, since Bank of America is the largest bank in the country. Another thing that they must be struggling with is their growth. They've grown by acquiring other banks. Those events could offer lots of opportunities for identity theft, since it would mean information gets moved around. And getting acquired banks all working under the same process and procedures isn't a small effort.
I've been working in the banking industry for the last couple of years, and it's a very complicated one. You want to satisfy the customer, while safeguarding their money at the same time... and as a business, you need to make money in the process. It's also hard to be as agile and nimble as the thieves when you are as large as a Bank of America or Chase.
And Microsoft, one of the biggest software producers, doesn't make it's money on software. It makes it on controlling and selling compatibility.
1) Not buying. Reuse instead.
2) Buying as little as possible.
3) When buying, buy environmentally friendly.
I am sure some people here would be shocked, but I run a Duron 1.3 processor, with a Zalman fanless heatsink, and 768 MB of PC-133 memory. I run dual displays (CRTs) but they shut off after 5 minutes of inactivity. The machine is up all the time (current uptime is 70 days), so I am sure I am pulling some power. I live in AZ, and in the summer it get HOT in my office... so I rigged dryer hose to pipe the PS air out into my garage. (luckily, right next to my office) I installed a low-speed fan on the garage side to help pull the air. It made a very noticeable difference in the temperature in my office. My buddy was having issues with his P4 3.2 machine, and he just bought a new Dell. So he gave the old one to me. It turned out the video card was fried, and one of the PSU fans was dead. Instead of buying a new PSU, I just hard-wired the fan on the PSU to run off of one of the 5v connections. In my area, you can put out your bulk trash once a month. I saw one of my neighbors put out a PC... I thought I could scavenge it for parts. Upon getting it home, I found out it was a fully working Sempron 3200 system! It only had a 30GB HDD and 256 RAM, but was fully working. So now I have two fully working PCs sitting here. I'll probably replace my Linux machine (Duron) with the P4, and my dusty Windows machine (Athlon 900 slot!) with the Sempron, after buying a memory upgrade.
It just amazes me what people are willing to just throw away. Both of those computers were only 3-4 years old. While anything remotely new would blow it away in performance, they are completely usable for daily use.
This is key. I have a friend who has worked at Intel almost 10 years now. He said when AMD burst onto the scene and started taking a chunk out of Intel's market share, they took it VERY seriously. In fact, he admits they were stagnant because
So AMD is not dead, but they are in a very tough spot. They'll have to come up with something creative to remain viable, because Intel is years ahead of them in the fab, and you can't close that gap very easily or quickly.
I'll take my bridges desinged by civil engineers, thanks. But I get what you meant.
I've been in software quality and testing for 14 years. I've worked at very large corporations as well as startups. There is a WIDE gap in software development process in our industry. Many people like to call themselves software engineers when they are developers. There is a huge difference. Engineering is a discipline that follows well-defined rules, and it usually takes time. But I think the very important thing to point out is that some software requires engineering - other software does not. If I go into a startup company that is trying to develop a blog/wiki site and try to implement a NASA-like software development methodology, they will fail. Likewise, software to control a heart monitor should be engineered and closely controlled. Sometimes quality and perfection is the goal, other times it might be time-to-market that is critical. You have to fit the process to your business. A bridge is a bridge, and they should all be engineered pretty much in the same way. You can't say the same thing about software.
I think that this is a very key point to software development. I have seen companies who spent entirely too much time and money trying to eliminate all defects from their software when it wasn't the critical part of their business. Yes, we should always strive to eliminate defects, but you can't get them all. You have to know when to pick your battles, and when to accept the risks. If we're talking about life-or-death software, or security, or other very critical things - you need to focus on those.
There's a grid I have seen used that is a great tool when doing projects.
Schedule, Cost, Quality, Scope.
1 can be optimized, 1 is a constraint, and the other 2 you have to accept. Period. It is a more useful version of the "fast, good, cheap - pick two"
Exactly. The argument of "But they're giving away millions upon millions of dollars! How much do you donate?" doesn't hold water. If you look at the percentages, I give away more to charities each year than Bill Gates. Giving away 10% of billions isn't putting him in the poor house. I once calculated it, and if I gave away $2 it was the equivalent percentage of Bill Gates giving away a million. Will his million do more good than my 2? Sure. But he could give away 90% of what he's worth and still be very very wealthy. If I gave away 10% of my net worth, I would be struggling.
You can't deny the good that the amounts of money he's donated will do. But the term "generous" is not correct. He's buying a positive legacy, hence the name of his foundation. How can giving away millions of dollars not generous? When you have thousands of times that amount and giving it away has zero impact on your ability to live. I am not knocking him for starting the foundation, because he certainly didn't have to do it... but let's look at what it is in a realistic light.
In the grand scheme of things, getting an article that is 185 days old vs 182 days old isn't that big of a deal to me.
3D Realms is more famous for NOT releasing it. How do they get their name on the blogs yet again? Fire up some Duke Nukem Forever rumor. Seriously, it is PR for them, even though it is a vaporware joke. It is still the most famous vaporware joke, and by perpetuating it, they keep their name in the news.
OK... let's be correct here. It is perfectly legal to download copyrighted works if you have the copyright holder's consent. Copyrighted does NOT mean you can't download it. I downloaded Saul Williams' album "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!" from the internet, and there was absolutely nothing illegal about it.
Let's be correct folks. It does make a difference. It's a nit-picky thing, because the majority of downloaders don't have the copyright holder's consent - but we have to remember that as long as downloading and copyright are seen as always illegal, things aren't going to change.
What was the plus side again?
I had done this in the past on my home server, but then ran into firewall issues where I worked - I couldn't get out on the port that I set it up on. I know there are ways around that, but I was looking for some kind of cleaner solution. Also, I have found that FTP gets hammered too sometimes, so I think that some of the IPTABLES solutions others have provided will fit more nicely with what I was looking to do.