Some mornings I like to go for a walk. I would rather go to work, but I don't have a full time job. I feel very lucky to have a part time some time job teaching at the local community college.
On my walk I see the same faces most mornings. Four of those faces belong to people like me. All of us are over 50 years old. All of us have graduate degrees. (Some CS, some EE, all technical graduate degrees.) None of us has a full time job. In fact, I am the only one who even has a part time job. We were all working for different companies. All of us were laid off when the companies out sourced our jobs. (In my case the company headquarters moved to Sinapore and their development to India.) Those are just the guys who live within a few blocks of me. I know a *lot* more over 50 out sourced engineers and programmers. I know a few who are just barely over 40.
One fellow has been out of work for 6 years, the rest for less than 4 years. All of us are very glad our wives have good jobs and that we saved a large portion of our incomes while we had work.
It looks like companies are using out sourcing as a way to lay off all their older workers and replace them with folks in India.
I'm pretty lucky. One of the fellows I used to work with, a damn good programmer, now delivers pizzas. A couple of others work for Starbucks. A few are at Walmart now. I've been applying at book stores. I love books and stocking shelves would be a relief from reading/.
Companies have always tried to get rid of older workers. We raise their health insurance costs and if we stay around they would actually have to pay those underfunded pensions we were supposed to get. They used to be subtle about it, now they just have to out source.
Twice this year, for the first time ever, my classes were canceled because no one signed up for them. Students no longer see any value in learning to program. At least not in the US.
There are several problems with the educational system in the US. To many for me to try to address all of them here. They range from incompetent parents, to unreasonable expectations, to the perpetuation of every kind of "ism" known to the human species. But, there is one key problem that can be addressed.
The simple fact is that our k-12 educators are by and large incompetent. As an early poster pointed out, the bell curve has a left end. If you look at SAT and ACT scores you find that the majority of education majors have the lowest scores of any group that manages to graduate from college. Of course, they all graduate with very high GPAs due to grade inflation. (The university I went to, the University of Utah, changed the way they grant honors. It is not based on raw GPA, but on on the difference between your grade in a class and the average grade in the class. The did this because of the rampant grade inflation in the college of education. )
There is a simple way to solve this problem. Double the salaries of everyone working in education. That's correct. Double the salaries of the incompetents. Why? If you double their salaries then the best (or at least not the worst) students will go into education. Over 5 to 10 years the good will push out the bad and our education system will have a chance to begin to work properly.
Oh yeah, one other thing that could help right now, don't let the coaches of the schools competitive sports teams teach real students. The real students don't deserve to be abused that way. It is bad enough to have to take classes from incompetents. It is cruel to subject students to people who are not only incompetent, but stupid, arrogant, and really don't care at all about anything but their teams.
I've never said anything like that on Slashdot before... But, the simple truth is that anyone who believes what you just said is my enemy and the enemy of every human that lives now or ever will live.
Thank the powers that be that they are *FINALLY* going back to trying to design a reasonable space suit. For those of you have have never heard of the 1968 (to long...) experiments in designing a flexible reasonable suit should look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_activity_suit
Some info on the relationship between the old and the new is given here:
http://chapters.marssociety.org/winnipeg/sas.htm l
The basic concept seems to go back to the '50s and maybe even the 40s.
At least they are looking at it again.
On a slightly different topic: The pictures are very interesting. But, there is a problem in that *all* the holes in the human body have to be covered. So, the pictures showing a helmet over the head and a nice smooth body everywhere else are a bit misleading. At the very least you need a "helmet" that cover the anus and urogenital region. So, you wind up with a hard helmet around the head and a hard diaper around the pelvis. At the very least you wind up with a kind of back to front cod piece.
Seriously, the pictures from NASA allways portray the astronauts as being built like Barbie and Ken.
The IEEE has good stats on the average working life of a programmer. IIRC, by those stats you are near the end of your programming career.
I managed to stay a programmer until my 49th birthday. Yep, I was laid off on my 49th birthday. The company bought an Indian software development house and fired all the technical staff in the US.
It was hard to stay a programmer for that long. And, the truth is that I had to move into management a few times and in my last job I was listed as some sort of researcher, visionary, or what not. The only one in the company. But, I still was able to do some programming that went into products.
Since then, well, I was able to get a few software testing jobs and now I live off of my wife and write open source software.
In the few job interviews I have had in the last 3 years the interview ends as soon as they see the gray hair and wrinkles. No one is interested in hiring someone over 50 for any job, technical or managerial. It isn't salary expectations either, I have offered to work for minimum wage for the first 6 months and then to work for a junior engineers salary. No takers.
First, let me say that this is the first example of an ageist question I have ever seen on slashdot. The assumption that computers existed in a form that you could hold in your hands as a child... well you have to be pretty young for that to be the case.
My first experince with computers involved taking a college course in COBOL programming. The first thing I learned was how to use a key punch. The computer was something you could see through a glass wall. It was *not* something you could touch.
So, why would I, a happy hippy history major on the road to being a lawyer decide to take a class on computers? And why COBOL?
The simple answer is science fiction. Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy and "Simulacron Three" the basis of the movie "The 13th Floor" made the potential power of computers seem almost magical even though they were both written when computers were more science fiction than science fact.
The introduction to the *idea* of the power of computation forced me to believe that computers were going to be important to my future life.
Why COBOL? It was the lowest numbered non-major course in the catalog. It had to be the easiest, right? What did I know. I got a B in the class even though I never understood a single assignment. So, I took the lowest numbered course for CS majors. Eventually my advisor noticed I wasn't taking any history classes.
In the end I wound up with a masters degree in CS and now can't give away my programming skills. If only I had stuck with the goal of becoming a civil rights lawyer.... Nah:-)
I know that nobody remembers what happened the last time SBC and MS tried to do this. It was 8 or 9 years ago... SBC and MS teamed up to build an "on demand" network in Richardson, Texas. They worked on it for a long time, spent lots of money, and failed.
So what, that was a long time ago and technology has advanced. Yep, but it wasn't the technology that failed. MS simply decided to take their marbles and go home. Called it a "change of strategy" and quit. Bill Gates stopped taking Ed Whitacre's phone calls. MS left SBC on the hook for about $100 million. They also left SBC in the position of having to publicly apologize to Richardson, Texas.
So, now they are doing it again. Only this time they are doing it with IPTV. Did you notice how many TVs you can have on at once with their planned network? Two (2), no more than *TWO*. Even the satelite folks have learned that lesson.
People have more than 2 TVs. They like to have them on watching different TV shows. Supporting only 2 TVs means they can reach only a limited percentage of potential customers. Too bad they don't want to spend the money to build a real network.
These *are* the same folks that randomly disconnect all their business DSL customers. No notice. No schedule. Just force every customer to reset their routers when they notice they are no longer connected. Nice folks. They treat business customers that way, you know how they treat regular customers.
Then there is MS to think about. Why haven't they been able to get into the TV business? Why isn't there a version of Windows running every set top box in the world? Why have they spent $20 billion on the market and have nothing to show for it?
Simple really, the cable companies are too smart to let MS get control of their business. They have refused to use MS in set tops because they don't want MS dictating terms to them the way MS dictates to the PC manufacturers. They don't need to give MS their money so they don't. I'm sure MS resents that a great deal.
So, why SBC and MS? SBC is now losing 6 to 8 percent of their customers per year. That's down from 2 percent per quarter. They have lost about half their customers over the last few years. SBC is desperate. SBC is in danger of going out of business. (Not that Ed Witacre and the rest of the executives give a damn, SBC owns most of Cingular.) MS desperately wants into the TV market. MS is desperate enough to go into business with a loser like SBC and SBC is desperate enough to go into business with MS.
Desperate companies take desperate actions. To bad SBC is only taking half steps toward reality. They need to do what Verizon is doing and build out fiber everywhere. Then they can compete with the cable companies. Until then, SBC is, and will remain, the incredible shrinking telecommunication giant.
I am such a satisfied SBC customer that I have considered moving out of Texas just to get away from them.
The claim is that these documents were the result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The question to ask is whether the news media, and the Pentagon, can prove that these documents were, in fact, sent out in response to a FOIA request.
That should be pretty simple to do. There is a ream of documentation generated for every one of those requests.
If they can prove these documents are the result of an FOIA request then we have two possibilities. 1) the documents are genuine no matter how weird they look, or 2) they were forged by someone in the US military.
If someone in the US military is forging documents to discredit the President, then Bush, and all the rest of the citizens of the US have a whole lot more to worry about than just who wins the election.
On the other hand, Bush's white house aids are handing out these doucments. That certainly implies that Bush knows they are true. That is a public admission that Bush knows he is a deserter.
The number one thing holding back Linux on the desktop. The number one person doing something about that is Sam Lantinga. Aside from creating LibSDL, he has helped create a huge, growing, active community that has grown up around LibSDL. They are developing games with LibSDL on pretty much anything that can run a program and porting it to everything else.
Oddly enough, you sound very much like me. Only I never suffered from such a high opinion of my self. It took me a long time to find out why I was as odd as you say you are. And yes, you are odd. Not gifted. No, not at all. Odd.
Turns out I am a serious INTP, pegged all most all the way over on the scale on everything except the P part. Plus, I have an attentional disorder, a near genius (but, NOT, genius) IQ, and a serious overdose of creativity. You could be completely different, but you need to find out while it is still easy to adapt. Consult a shrink.
With help you can learn to live in the real world. As it is, you sound like you are on your way off the deep end. The most dangerous part of this whole deal is that by belonging to a very small population you may go your entire life without ever meeting anyone else like you. You may never meet anyone you can relate to. That loneliness leads to depression, which leads to suicide.
And 98 and a few others and the first thing everyone did on a new Windows install was go in and reconfiger Windows explorer to work like a browser. No one I ever met liked the, click a folder, get a window, behavior. No one.
What can I say, I was a KDE fanboy until GNOME 2 came out. Maybe GNOME 2.6 is the time when I go back to using KDE.
I know that sounds like I am over reacting, but the file browser is the most used application on the box. If they have messed it up as badly as it seems they have, then I will be buried in unneeded windows. The whole point of adding tabs to web browsers is to reduce the number of windows on the screen. If they want a window for every directory that has been passed through (why would you want that?) then why not just put them in tabs?
I know, this it about isomers, not isotopes. But, think about it. Isn't this the first evidence that we can speed up the decay rate of *any* radioactive nucleus?
What if this leads to learning how to speed up the decay of other radioactive nuclei? Say good by to nuclear waste and hello to useful power.
I remember learning to play D&D starting about the fall of '74 or the winter of '75.
The coolest part was that the original manuals were printed on 8.5x11 paper that was folded and stapled in the middle to make these neat little pamphlets. I don't think I ever saw the original pamphlets. Everyone just took out the staples, ran them through a copying machine, folded them and stapled them.
I wrote a program on our Univac 1108 to roll characters according to the D&D rules and made my self popular by showing up at games with stacks of 2 or 3 hundred character sheets all ready rolled and printed on fan folded green bar paper.
I stopped playing about the time I graduated from college and got married. Now, my son (who is 20) plays D&D. Several of the people he plays with are 2nd generation gamers. At this rate the 3rd D&D generation should be showing up pretty soon now.
That this silly little game would develop into a family activity and a cross generational bond in families is amazing.
This was first done in the 1800s. I read about it in a book when I was a little kid. The guy used three suasage shaped baloons tied side by side. I built a model of it when I was in jr high school. It works great.
Jeez I hope they don't get a patent on a hundred year old idea.
With AV software built into the OS the black hats will only need to crack 1 (one) AV layer to get into 90% (or more) of computers. We go from an OS + Office monoculture to a an OS + Office + AV monoculture.
All in all it makes the problem of breaking into a random Windows box much easier.
Your suggestion is very good. It is the way it should be done.
The trouble with it is that the CIO has already decided to talk to everyone. At this point it is very hard to change the form of the forum.
The one time I saw this approach tried it was actually the division president who had "chats" with 5 techies at a time. We were selected based on our technical ratings on our yearly reviews. He wanted to hear the truth from the "best and the brightest". He also wanted to tell us his plans so that we would use our influence to spread the word to the rest of the crew...
Bottom line, 4 out 5 of each group who attended a "chat" fled the company during the next 3 months. Over the next 6 months 50% of the techies at one site and 30% at another site left the company over the next 6 months. The president of the division was fired about a year later.:-)
Why is your upper management talking directly to the IT staff instead of to the IT management?
How many reasons can there be? Maybe they don't trust IT management. Maybe they are looking for dirt to undermine IT management. Maybe they are looking for dirt to undermine the IT staff.
If they like and trust the IT management they would ask them what is wrong in IT.
My suggestion would be ask one question at the start of the meeting; What should IT be doing *for the company* that it is not currently doing? Then take careful notes about the answer.
When upper management asks questions answer them truthfully, do not give excuses, do not place blame, state only facts, and give the shortest accurate anwser you can give.
If the truth is that it is in you plan for next year, say that. If the truth is that you don't have the budget to do what is asked, say that. If the truth is that what they want is not possible, say that too.
No bullshit, no personalities, no hedging, no technobabble.
I have SBC DSL. They used to suck. But, they are getting steadily better. The contract I have with them says my usage is unlimited up to the cap on the line. If I want more bandwidth, I have to pay for a faster line.
The key difference between DSL and cable is what part of the network is shared by mulitple users.
In a DSL network sharing starts at the DSLAM which is usually served by an OC3. Because of the difference between up line and down line speed the out bound part of the OC3 is under utilized and the limit on up line speed tends to regulate down line speed. The result is that a single customer can't have that much effect on other customers.
In a cable network sharing starts in the local connection. Each user on the local leg of the network takes bandwidth away from other users. So, a heavy user can have a serious effect on other users on the same leg of the network. That means that they have to limit some customers to keep them from ruining the experience for everyone else.
Stonewolf.
P.S.
I used to have a job doing network architecture work. I'd like to have another job someday. But, I read in the paper today that a graduate degree in computer science and 30 years experience is $5.15/hour. Maybe its time to explore other career options.
I have one kid in college and another who will be in college soon. I also paid 90% of the cost of my own college and graduate school education and half of the cost of my wifes college education.
I say all that to point out that I know what it costs to become highly educated in the US. It is ****FUCKING**** expensive.
No sane person will pay the price for an advanced education if the result of that advanced education is an income that is the same as what they can get from a MacJob. Therefore, no sane American student has *any* reason to *ever* study any technical field.
Anyone know how or if Bob Scheifler has reacted to this. I remember the rants he would deliver anytime I suggested things like adding sound support into X11 or using the X protocol for printer control.
He created X11, but he also hobbled it and through the attitudes he fostered in his followers he held back X development by at least 10 years.
Sound server support should have been in X11 12 or 13 years ago.
Ever noticed that all chips are essentially 2 dimensional? That is the ratio of the depth of the features to the length of the sides is a very small number?
All that is needed to keep Moore's law going for a loooong time is to learn how to build 3 dimensional "chips". Adding a single extra layer of circuitry to a chip gives you a Moore's law like doubling of transistor density. You can double the number of layers in an integrated circuit for a long time before it becomes a cube.
Going into the 3rd dimension will require new materials, diamond looks good because of the heating problems. You also need to use reversible computing to reduce total energy consumption. New fabrication techniques are required. Nothing impossible, just difficult.
imagine a system in a solid cube of semiconductor. Processor planes laid out between memory planes and communications planes. each layer only a few microns thick. A cubic centimeter of computing could out perform the largest super computers of today. And fit in a key chain fob.
According to my Popfile email filter 87.26% of all the email I get is spam.
I am very thankful for popfile.
Is there any possible form of active counter measures that can be incorporated into spam filters? I like the idea of having a spam filter down load and ignore the contents of every URL listed in every spam I recieve. *BUT* that would allow someone to ddos anyone by just sending an obvious spam with a bogus URL in it to a few million of us.
The Austin area, of which Round Rock is a part, was fairly expensive compared to the rest of Texas. I don't think we were ever as expensive as, say, Dallas, but pretty expensive. Of course, the cost of living here has dropped significantly with the loss of so many jobs. On the up side the foreclosure rate seems to have peaked.:-)
The thing is that Austin has a huge number of highly educted people. According to the 2000 census 47% of the adults in Travis county (which contains Austin) have college degrees, or better. In Williamson county, where Dell is, it is more like 33%. The average for the whole US is about 24%. So, there is a large concentration of educated people here. (stats from http://txsdc.tamu.edu/subjindex/)
All those eductated people used to attract a lot of businesses, especially start ups. The huge nubmer of college students (last I heard it was over 100,000) supplied educated people who were willing to work in call centers.
Now days you have to know somebody to get a job at McDonalds...
I live just a few miles from Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas (just north of Austin) and know many people who work there. Several people I know have been called back for call center customer support jobs. Considering they have been out of work for 6 months or more they are very pleased to be going back to work.
*BUT* they have been told these are temporary jobs and will only last until they can get call centers in (IIRC) Tennessee up and running. Seems it is a lot cheaper to live in Tennesee than in the Austin area so they can pay less. These folks are facing the choice of being unemployeed again or moving to Tennessee at a lower hourly rate.
The race to the bottom for technical salaries has not slowed a bit. Dell just found that there are other factors that affect the total cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Some mornings I like to go for a walk. I would rather go to work, but I don't have a full time job. I feel very lucky to have a part time some time job teaching at the local community college.
/.
On my walk I see the same faces most mornings. Four of those faces belong to people like me. All of us are over 50 years old. All of us have graduate degrees. (Some CS, some EE, all technical graduate degrees.) None of us has a full time job. In fact, I am the only one who even has a part time job. We were all working for different companies. All of us were laid off when the companies out sourced our jobs. (In my case the company headquarters moved to Sinapore and their development to India.) Those are just the guys who live within a few blocks of me. I know a *lot* more over 50 out sourced engineers and programmers. I know a few who are just barely over 40.
One fellow has been out of work for 6 years, the rest for less than 4 years. All of us are very glad our wives have good jobs and that we saved a large portion of our incomes while we had work.
It looks like companies are using out sourcing as a way to lay off all their older workers and replace them with folks in India.
I'm pretty lucky. One of the fellows I used to work with, a damn good programmer, now delivers pizzas. A couple of others work for Starbucks. A few are at Walmart now. I've been applying at book stores. I love books and stocking shelves would be a relief from reading
Companies have always tried to get rid of older workers. We raise their health insurance costs and if we stay around they would actually have to pay those underfunded pensions we were supposed to get. They used to be subtle about it, now they just have to out source.
Twice this year, for the first time ever, my classes were canceled because no one signed up for them. Students no longer see any value in learning to program. At least not in the US.
Stonewolf
There are several problems with the educational system in the US. To many for me to try to address all of them here. They range from incompetent parents, to unreasonable expectations, to the perpetuation of every kind of "ism" known to the human species. But, there is one key problem that can be addressed.
The simple fact is that our k-12 educators are by and large incompetent. As an early poster pointed out, the bell curve has a left end. If you look at SAT and ACT scores you find that the majority of education majors have the lowest scores of any group that manages to graduate from college. Of course, they all graduate with very high GPAs due to grade inflation. (The university I went to, the University of Utah, changed the way they grant honors. It is not based on raw GPA, but on on the difference between your grade in a class and the average grade in the class. The did this because of the rampant grade inflation in the college of education. )
There is a simple way to solve this problem. Double the salaries of everyone working in education. That's correct. Double the salaries of the incompetents. Why? If you double their salaries then the best (or at least not the worst) students will go into education. Over 5 to 10 years the good will push out the bad and our education system will have a chance to begin to work properly.
Oh yeah, one other thing that could help right now, don't let the coaches of the schools competitive sports teams teach real students. The real students don't deserve to be abused that way. It is bad enough to have to take classes from incompetents. It is cruel to subject students to people who are not only incompetent, but stupid, arrogant, and really don't care at all about anything but their teams.
I have noticed that the respect I get has decreased in direct proportion to the amount of gray hair I have. The older I get, the less respect I get.
Which translates as, the more experience I have the less respect I get for the knowledge I have accumulated.
Stonewolf
And put the world out of your misery.
I've never said anything like that on Slashdot before... But, the simple truth is that anyone who believes what you just said is my enemy and the enemy of every human that lives now or ever will live.
Stonewolf
Thank the powers that be that they are *FINALLY* going back to trying to design a reasonable space suit. For those of you have have never heard of the 1968 (to long...) experiments in designing a flexible reasonable suit should look here:
t
m l
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_activity_sui
Some info on the relationship between the old and the new is given here:
http://chapters.marssociety.org/winnipeg/sas.ht
The basic concept seems to go back to the '50s and maybe even the 40s.
At least they are looking at it again.
On a slightly different topic: The pictures are very interesting. But, there is a problem in that *all* the holes in the human body have to be covered. So, the pictures showing a helmet over the head and a nice smooth body everywhere else are a bit misleading. At the very least you need a "helmet" that cover the anus and urogenital region. So, you wind up with a hard helmet around the head and a hard diaper around the pelvis. At the very least you wind up with a kind of back to front cod piece.
Seriously, the pictures from NASA allways portray the astronauts as being built like Barbie and Ken.
Stonewolf
The IEEE has good stats on the average working life of a programmer. IIRC, by those stats you are near the end of your programming career.
I managed to stay a programmer until my 49th birthday. Yep, I was laid off on my 49th birthday. The company bought an Indian software development house and fired all the technical staff in the US.
It was hard to stay a programmer for that long. And, the truth is that I had to move into management a few times and in my last job I was listed as some sort of researcher, visionary, or what not. The only one in the company. But, I still was able to do some programming that went into products.
Since then, well, I was able to get a few software testing jobs and now I live off of my wife and write open source software.
In the few job interviews I have had in the last 3 years the interview ends as soon as they see the gray hair and wrinkles. No one is interested in hiring someone over 50 for any job, technical or managerial. It isn't salary expectations either, I have offered to work for minimum wage for the first 6 months and then to work for a junior engineers salary. No takers.
Stonewolf
First, let me say that this is the first example of an ageist question I have ever seen on slashdot. The assumption that computers existed in a form that you could hold in your hands as a child... well you have to be pretty young for that to be the case.
:-)
My first experince with computers involved taking a college course in COBOL programming. The first thing I learned was how to use a key punch. The computer was something you could see through a glass wall. It was *not* something you could touch.
So, why would I, a happy hippy history major on the road to being a lawyer decide to take a class on computers? And why COBOL?
The simple answer is science fiction. Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy and "Simulacron Three" the basis of the movie "The 13th Floor" made the potential power of computers seem almost magical even though they were both written when computers were more science fiction than science fact.
The introduction to the *idea* of the power of computation forced me to believe that computers were going to be important to my future life.
Why COBOL? It was the lowest numbered non-major course in the catalog. It had to be the easiest, right? What did I know. I got a B in the class even though I never understood a single assignment. So, I took the lowest numbered course for CS majors. Eventually my advisor noticed I wasn't taking any history classes.
In the end I wound up with a masters degree in CS and now can't give away my programming skills. If only I had stuck with the goal of becoming a civil rights lawyer.... Nah
Stonewolf
I know that nobody remembers what happened the last time SBC and MS tried to do this. It was 8 or 9 years ago... SBC and MS teamed up to build an "on demand" network in Richardson, Texas. They worked on it for a long time, spent lots of money, and failed.
So what, that was a long time ago and technology has advanced. Yep, but it wasn't the technology that failed. MS simply decided to take their marbles and go home. Called it a "change of strategy" and quit. Bill Gates stopped taking Ed Whitacre's phone calls. MS left SBC on the hook for about $100 million. They also left SBC in the position of having to publicly apologize to Richardson, Texas.
So, now they are doing it again. Only this time they are doing it with IPTV. Did you notice how many TVs you can have on at once with their planned network? Two (2), no more than *TWO*. Even the satelite folks have learned that lesson.
People have more than 2 TVs. They like to have them on watching different TV shows. Supporting only 2 TVs means they can reach only a limited percentage of potential customers. Too bad they don't want to spend the money to build a real network.
These *are* the same folks that randomly disconnect all their business DSL customers. No notice. No schedule. Just force every customer to reset their routers when they notice they are no longer connected. Nice folks. They treat business customers that way, you know how they treat regular customers.
Then there is MS to think about. Why haven't they been able to get into the TV business? Why isn't there a version of Windows running every set top box in the world? Why have they spent $20 billion on the market and have nothing to show for it?
Simple really, the cable companies are too smart to let MS get control of their business. They have refused to use MS in set tops because they don't want MS dictating terms to them the way MS dictates to the PC manufacturers. They don't need to give MS their money so they don't. I'm sure MS resents that a great deal.
So, why SBC and MS? SBC is now losing 6 to 8 percent of their customers per year. That's down from 2 percent per quarter. They have lost about half their customers over the last few years. SBC is desperate. SBC is in danger of going out of business. (Not that Ed Witacre and the rest of the executives give a damn, SBC owns most of Cingular.) MS desperately wants into the TV market. MS is desperate enough to go into business with a loser like SBC and SBC is desperate enough to go into business with MS.
Desperate companies take desperate actions. To bad SBC is only taking half steps toward reality. They need to do what Verizon is doing and build out fiber everywhere. Then they can compete with the cable companies. Until then, SBC is, and will remain, the incredible shrinking telecommunication giant.
I am such a satisfied SBC customer that I have considered moving out of Texas just to get away from them.
Stonewolf
The claim is that these documents were the result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The question to ask is whether the news media, and the Pentagon, can prove that these documents were, in fact, sent out in response to a FOIA request.
That should be pretty simple to do. There is a ream of documentation generated for every one of those requests.
If they can prove these documents are the result of an FOIA request then we have two possibilities.
1) the documents are genuine no matter how weird they look, or 2) they were forged by someone in the US military.
If someone in the US military is forging documents to discredit the President, then Bush, and all the rest of the citizens of the US have a whole lot more to worry about than just who wins the election.
On the other hand, Bush's white house aids are handing out these doucments. That certainly implies that Bush knows they are true. That is a public admission that Bush knows he is a deserter.
Stonewolf
www.stonewolf.net
The number one thing holding back Linux on the desktop. The number one person doing something about that is Sam Lantinga. Aside from creating LibSDL, he has helped create a huge, growing, active community that has grown up around LibSDL. They are developing games with LibSDL on pretty much anything that can run a program and porting it to everything else.
Stonewolf
www.stonewolf.net
Oddly enough, you sound very much like me. Only I never suffered from such a high opinion of my self. It took me a long time to find out why I was as odd as you say you are. And yes, you are odd. Not gifted. No, not at all. Odd.
Turns out I am a serious INTP, pegged all most all the way over on the scale on everything except the P part. Plus, I have an attentional disorder, a near genius (but, NOT, genius) IQ, and a serious overdose of creativity. You could be completely different, but you need to find out while it is still easy to adapt. Consult a shrink.
With help you can learn to live in the real world. As it is, you sound like you are on your way off the deep end. The most dangerous part of this whole deal is that by belonging to a very small population you may go your entire life without ever meeting anyone else like you. You may never meet anyone you can relate to. That loneliness leads to depression, which leads to suicide.
Take Care
Stonewolf
And 98 and a few others and the first thing everyone did on a new Windows install was go in and reconfiger Windows explorer to work like a browser. No one I ever met liked the, click a folder, get a window, behavior. No one.
What can I say, I was a KDE fanboy until GNOME 2 came out. Maybe GNOME 2.6 is the time when I go back to using KDE.
I know that sounds like I am over reacting, but the file browser is the most used application on the box. If they have messed it up as badly as it seems they have, then I will be buried in unneeded windows. The whole point of adding tabs to web browsers is to reduce the number of windows on the screen. If they want a window for every directory that has been passed through (why would you want that?) then why not just put them in tabs?
Stonewolf
www.stonewolf.net
I know, this it about isomers, not isotopes. But, think about it. Isn't this the first evidence that we can speed up the decay rate of *any* radioactive nucleus?
What if this leads to learning how to speed up the decay of other radioactive nuclei? Say good by to nuclear waste and hello to useful power.
Stonewolf
www.stonewolf.net
Wow...
I remember learning to play D&D starting about the fall of '74 or the winter of '75.
The coolest part was that the original manuals were printed on 8.5x11 paper that was folded and stapled in the middle to make these neat little pamphlets. I don't think I ever saw the original pamphlets. Everyone just took out the staples, ran them through a copying machine, folded them and stapled them.
I wrote a program on our Univac 1108 to roll characters according to the D&D rules and made my self popular by showing up at games with stacks of 2 or 3 hundred character sheets all ready rolled and printed on fan folded green bar paper.
I stopped playing about the time I graduated from college and got married. Now, my son (who is 20) plays D&D. Several of the people he plays with are 2nd generation gamers. At this rate the 3rd D&D generation should be showing up pretty soon now.
That this silly little game would develop into a family activity and a cross generational bond in families is amazing.
Stonewolf
www.stonewolf.net
This was first done in the 1800s. I read about it in a book when I was a little kid. The guy used three suasage shaped baloons tied side by side. I built a model of it when I was in jr high school. It works great.
Jeez I hope they don't get a patent on a hundred year old idea.
Stonewolf
With AV software built into the OS the black hats will only need to crack 1 (one) AV layer to get into 90% (or more) of computers. We go from an OS + Office monoculture to a an OS + Office + AV monoculture.
All in all it makes the problem of breaking into a random Windows box much easier.
Stonewolf
Your suggestion is very good. It is the way it should be done.
The trouble with it is that the CIO has already decided to talk to everyone. At this point it is very hard to change the form of the forum.
The one time I saw this approach tried it was actually the division president who had "chats" with 5 techies at a time. We were selected based on our technical ratings on our yearly reviews. He wanted to hear the truth from the "best and the brightest". He also wanted to tell us his plans so that we would use our influence to spread the word to the rest of the crew...
Bottom line, 4 out 5 of each group who attended a "chat" fled the company during the next 3 months. Over the next 6 months 50% of the techies at one site and 30% at another site left the company over the next 6 months. The president of the division was fired about a year later.
Stonewolf
Why is your upper management talking directly to the IT staff instead of to the IT management?
How many reasons can there be? Maybe they don't trust IT management. Maybe they are looking for dirt to undermine IT management. Maybe they are looking for dirt to undermine the IT staff.
If they like and trust the IT management they would ask them what is wrong in IT.
My suggestion would be ask one question at the start of the meeting; What should IT be doing *for the company* that it is not currently doing?
Then take careful notes about the answer.
When upper management asks questions answer them truthfully, do not give excuses, do not place blame, state only facts, and give the shortest accurate anwser you can give.
If the truth is that it is in you plan for next year, say that. If the truth is that you don't have the budget to do what is asked, say that. If the truth is that what they want is not possible, say that too.
No bullshit, no personalities, no hedging, no technobabble.
I've been on both sides of this problem.
Stonewolf
I have SBC DSL. They used to suck. But, they are getting steadily better. The contract I have with them says my usage is unlimited up to the cap on the line. If I want more bandwidth, I have to pay for a faster line.
The key difference between DSL and cable is what part of the network is shared by mulitple users.
In a DSL network sharing starts at the DSLAM which is usually served by an OC3. Because of the difference between up line and down line speed the out bound part of the OC3 is under utilized and the limit on up line speed tends to regulate down line speed. The result is that a single customer can't have that much effect on other customers.
In a cable network sharing starts in the local connection. Each user on the local leg of the network takes bandwidth away from other users. So, a heavy user can have a serious effect on other users on the same leg of the network. That means that they have to limit some customers to keep them from ruining the experience for everyone else.
Stonewolf.
P.S.
I used to have a job doing network architecture work. I'd like to have another job someday. But, I read in the paper today that a graduate degree in computer science and 30 years experience is $5.15/hour. Maybe its time to explore other career options.
I have one kid in college and another who will be in college soon. I also paid 90% of the cost of my own college and graduate school education and half of the cost of my wifes college education.
I say all that to point out that I know what it costs to become highly educated in the US. It is ****FUCKING**** expensive.
No sane person will pay the price for an advanced education if the result of that advanced education is an income that is the same as what they can get from a MacJob. Therefore, no sane American student has *any* reason to *ever* study any technical field.
Stonewolf
Anyone know how or if Bob Scheifler has reacted to this. I remember the rants he would deliver anytime I suggested things like adding sound support into X11 or using the X protocol for printer control.
He created X11, but he also hobbled it and through the attitudes he fostered in his followers he held back X development by at least 10 years.
Sound server support should have been in X11 12 or 13 years ago.
Stonewolf
Ever noticed that all chips are essentially 2 dimensional? That is the ratio of the depth of the features to the length of the sides is a very small number?
All that is needed to keep Moore's law going for a loooong time is to learn how to build 3 dimensional "chips". Adding a single extra layer of circuitry to a chip gives you a Moore's law like doubling of transistor density. You can double the number of layers in an integrated circuit for a long time before it becomes a cube.
Going into the 3rd dimension will require new materials, diamond looks good because of the heating problems. You also need to use reversible computing to reduce total energy consumption. New fabrication techniques are required. Nothing impossible, just difficult.
imagine a system in a solid cube of semiconductor. Processor planes laid out between memory planes and communications planes. each layer only a few microns thick. A cubic centimeter of computing could out perform the largest super computers of today. And fit in a key chain fob.
Stonewolf
According to my Popfile email filter 87.26% of all the email I get is spam.
I am very thankful for popfile.
Is there any possible form of active counter measures that can be incorporated into spam filters? I like the idea of having a spam filter down load and ignore the contents of every URL listed in every spam I recieve. *BUT* that would allow someone to ddos anyone by just sending an obvious spam with a bogus URL in it to a few million of us.
Stonewolf
The Austin area, of which Round Rock is a part, was fairly expensive compared to the rest of Texas. I don't think we were ever as expensive as, say, Dallas, but pretty expensive. Of course, the cost of living here has dropped significantly with the loss of so many jobs. On the up side the foreclosure rate seems to have peaked. :-)
The thing is that Austin has a huge number of highly educted people. According to the 2000 census 47% of the adults in Travis county (which contains Austin) have college degrees, or better. In Williamson county, where Dell is, it is more like 33%. The average for the whole US is about 24%. So, there is a large concentration of educated people here. (stats from http://txsdc.tamu.edu/subjindex/)
All those eductated people used to attract a lot of businesses, especially start ups. The huge nubmer of college students (last I heard it was over 100,000) supplied educated people who were willing to work in call centers.
Now days you have to know somebody to get a job at McDonalds...
Stonewolf
I live just a few miles from Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas (just north of Austin) and know many people who work there. Several people I know have been called back for call center customer support jobs. Considering they have been out of work for 6 months or more they are very pleased to be going back to work.
*BUT* they have been told these are temporary jobs and will only last until they can get call centers in (IIRC) Tennessee up and running. Seems it is a lot cheaper to live in Tennesee than in the Austin area so they can pay less. These folks are facing the choice of being unemployeed again or moving to Tennessee at a lower hourly rate.
The race to the bottom for technical salaries has not slowed a bit. Dell just found that there are other factors that affect the total cost.
Stonewolf