I am reminded of a wonderful saying: Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.
Since our wonderful Supreme Court seems to think this is a justifiable thing, why not exercise it.
I hear that the neighborhoods where the SCOTUS justices live each needs a new playground for the children in the area. And while we are at it, why not throw in a McDonalds with a playground.
It would be absolutely fitting and wonderful to subject each justice who voted for this to the wonderfully fair process of eminent domain and land use condemnation. Last I heard, their property was only worth about $30,000 in the first place. Surely, our children need places to play (public good). Surely, we need more employment for the people (public good).
Too bad I don't live near DC, I would probably get into some real trouble over things like this!
If IBM were so concerned about the number of IT workers, maybe it should become a better employer first.
You see, IBM for the past several years has been on a hiring binge, but with very rare exception, every new hire is brought in as a "supplemental". A supplemental, by IBM's definition, is a temporary position that CAN NOT continue past 18 months. Once your supplemental service is over, you are blacklisted by IBM for another 6 months - no rehire possible.
When I left IBM (near the end of my supplemental "tour of duty"), IBM was in a hiring freeze, there was no way to become a full-time employee, regardless of demand. Oh, and as a supplemental for IBM, the ONLY benefit you are eligible for is the employee stock purchase plan. That's right, no insurance, no 401k or pension, no education assistance, nothing else!
If IBM needs more employees, then they need to stop chewing through their existing stock (and spitting them out) so rapidly.
Since you can find bulk keyboards for cheap ($5.00 or less in quantity), why not just go through once a week and replace all the keyboards. The 10-20 seconds it takes to replace a keyboard has to be MUCH less expensive than the 15-30 minutes it takes to clean them out (properly). Of course, this doesn't even count the amount of time recovered from people not getting sick from the keyboards.
Here is something that I haven't seen anyone here suggest to help counter this problem of "unresponsive blacklist maintainers".
Sue them for libel. That's right - libel. Think about it - they are providing (writing) their advice to others and causing damage to someone's reputation. If this isn't a clear case of libel, I don't know what would be.
Dude, the writing is on the walls as plain as day:...profitable company...wants to cut costs...
Some bean counter is trying to squeeze as much efficiency out of you folks as possible. If I had to guess, the company is going up for sale soon and they need to make the place look as good as possible for the sale.
Is there any real, actual reason why you (Microsoft) feel a need to use less than independant reviews and tests to attempt to establish Windows superiority? Would it really be so bad for you to let your products stand (or fall) on their own?
Printing - more specifically, Postscript Printing.
This sillyness of having to generate postscript so Ghostscript can generate PCL so you can print is just wrong - empty brained, someone forgot to wake up wrong.
PCL is available on every major printer on the market today - it IS the standard. PostScript is a has-been. Dump it today.
That is what is wrong with *nix and what I would do to fix it is require all software to support PCL printing directly.
My current employer has a very strict password policy in place - minimum 8 characters long, numbers in the middle, no numbers at the beginning or end. Password aging is set for 180 days. At least on their main systems, you get to pick your own password. This is all well and good until...
On their wireless devices, we aren't so lucky. The passwords are system generated and change every 30 days. Yes, of course the passwords here are complete random and are always 6 characters long. When the password changes, you get a total of 60 seconds to memorize it. As with any other security aware company, you are not supposed to write your passwords down anywhere.
Let's see, random non-user generated password, 30 day password life, 60 seconds to commit to memory, can't write it down. I wonder how well this works in real life (wish I had access to the number of password reset calls this policy generates).
Hmm, isn't there some sort of ICANN rule or regulation requiring accurate information in the domain registration records????
Registrant: Domains by Proxy, Inc. 15111 N Hayden Rd., Suite 160 PMB353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com Domain Name: ANNUALCREDITREPORT.COM Created on: 25-Jun-04 Expires on: 25-Jun-05 Last Updated on: 28-Oct-04
Administrative Contact: Private, Registration ANNUALCREDITREPORT.COM@domainsbyproxy.com Domains by Proxy, Inc. 15111 N Hayden Rd., Suite 160 PMB353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States (480) 624-2599 Fax -- Technical Contact: Private, Registration ANNUALCREDITREPORT.COM@domainsbyproxy.com Domains by Proxy, Inc. 15111 N Hayden Rd., Suite 160 PMB353 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States (480) 624-2599 Fax --
Domain servers in listed order: INS1.WESTINTERACTIVE.COM INS2.WESTINTERACTIVE.COM
While obviously technically accurate, doesn't this intentionally skirt the spirit of the rule?
As I recall, the ownership of these patents has never been revealed. For all we know, these patents could be owned by IBM. I know of one offhand - the RCU patent. IBM has publically stated that this patent is freely available for use within Linux (since they contributed it). Who knows how many other "friendly" patents are in there...
Since I strongly doubt there are many people in here who are using any of the software packages I have wrote, I am going to toot my own horn here. Don't like it - sorry about that!
Granted, I am what you would call a niche developer. The software packages that I have wrote mostly deal with communicating with Allen Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers like the ControlLogix and the PLC-5. I prefer to look at it this way: if you have bought powdered baby formula, wondered about the safety of the Air Force's Airborne Laser program, or bought a set of tires for your car, my software helped bring those products about.
Now if only I could get some help with the tape backup software I am writing...
OK - What I want to know is if anyone out there has been successful in getting MythTV (or FreeVo) working successfully under Slackware.
I've tried (and I am certainly no Linux newbie) and could not get all the dependancies to work/compile/install. I spent the better part of 3 days working on it when I gave up.
Heck, getting Gnome recompiled is worlds easier than getting either Myth of Freevo to work under Slackware 9.1.
Normally, if the work isn't too involved (fixing a broken config, repairing windows, etc...), then I charge 2 12-packs of Coca-Cola.
However, my accountant and I have a deal where he does my taxes for free and I keep his computers running for free. And let me tell you, he is quite good at keeping my money in my hands!:)
By far, the worst development job I worked on was a machine tool job.
The job sounded simple enough - take an existing line running on a fully maxed out Allen Bradley Pyramid Integrator, transition the entire production line (all 116 operator stations, plus automated part routing and testing) over to the new Allen Bradley ControlLogix. Now the kink - we had to do the transition while the plant was running and we could not shut down the line for any reason!
Did I mention that we also were expanding the data tracking for each part in the schedule system by 40% and were also adding 40% new I/O at the same time?
The project was slated to run for 6 weeks in the field. After 9 months - when I finally had enough and basically told the project manager to go get screwed - the project was probably half done.
It's pretty bad when you spend so much time on-site that the entire hotel staff is on a first name basis with you.
IF I knew that Comcast wouldn't shut it down on me, I would set up a stream server, fed by aFestival server, constantly repeating the same stream over and over and over.
This is a message from the general population of the United States to Michael Powell, chairman of the F C C. FUCK YOU. Thank you.
OK, so I am about to say something that will probably be unpopular, but it needs to be said. This is intended for those department manager types who like to use buzzwords in their job descriptions...
XML's one and only strength lies in the fact that it is designed to facilitate data exchange between two hosts when the underlying data format is unknown or incompatible.
ANYONE who suggests that XML needs to be used for INTERNAL projects where you already have absolute knowledge of the underlying data formats should be taken out back and shot.
I'll go one step further - using XML for an internal project is a BAD DESIGN DECISION. XML is WAY too resource heavy. There is just no justification to using XML on internal projects.
I'll say it again - XML is ONLY useful for data interchange when the data hosts do no know the underlying format of the data. When the format of the underlying is known by both of the hosts exchanging the data, XML sucks!
End point: XML is a kludge, designed to work around not knowing the underlying data layout. Please only require us to use XML for it's intended purpose. General data storage is NOT it's intended purpose.
I have done a few "less interesting" hacks - back in the day...
* Hacked into the school PA system on the last day of my senior yearof high school. Took an old Peavey 400 amplifier, tied it directly into the 70v speaker line for the schools PA system (having unquestioned access to the theatre at school really helped). 5 minutes before the end of first period, weird noises start coming out the school PA system. Best part was the school principal approaching me later that day and asking HOW I did it, not IF I did it! THAT was fun!
* Probably doesn't count under the PC limitation, but I also hacked TRSDOS on an old TRS-80 Model 1. I discovered an undocumented command in the Disk Basic Interpreter (CMD"#"# if you wanted to know). Not being content with this - and TRSDOS Disk Basic had no way to pull a directory of a disk drive, I took the disk directory command from the TRSDOS system library and grafted it onto the code for the above found command. Result, I had a version of TRSDOS Disk Basic that could do something that Tandy/Radio Shack said was impossible to do - I could call a disk directory from BASIC without exiting the BASIC interpreter.
The best hack I did personally, was to recode the eprom on a Tranz-330 Credit Card terminal. Was able to get the terminal to constantly display the following lines: Answers: $1.00 Answers w/thought: $2.00 Correct Answers: $4.00 Dumb Answers still free Visa/MC Accepted...
Sold it on ebay a few months later for like $80.00.
I hope they DON'T go the "emulation" route - i.e. WINE
While WINE is a nice attempt to make a Win32 compatability layer, it is just too flakey to be used in a day-to-day business sense. IBM has used WINE before for providing Linux apps - HomePage Builder comes to mind immediately - and it was NEVER stable. Display problems, startup flakeness, and just general unstableness made the product truely painful to use.
If they want to do it right - and impress people at the same time, they should make a NATIVE APP
I personally know that the ear-wax removal can be done for $50.00 at a place about an hour away. When you consider that the proceedure consists of the doctor looking in your ear (yep, there is a lot of wax in there), dumping a few drops of a chemical into your ear canal, telling you to lay on your side for 10 minutes (doctor leaves the room at this time to do something else), doctor returns after 10 minutes and squirts a lot of very cold water in your ear canal and the wax is now gone. Total time: 20 minutes.
It's no wonder that someone would consider it reasonable to send medical work off to india. With the amount of overcharging that is "the way things are done" here, it's only a matter of time before things get shaken up...
Slashdot Mirror
I am reminded of a wonderful saying: Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.
Since our wonderful Supreme Court seems to think this is a justifiable thing, why not exercise it.
I hear that the neighborhoods where the SCOTUS justices live each needs a new playground for the children in the area. And while we are at it, why not throw in a McDonalds with a playground.
It would be absolutely fitting and wonderful to subject each justice who voted for this to the wonderfully fair process of eminent domain and land use condemnation. Last I heard, their property was only worth about $30,000 in the first place. Surely, our children need places to play (public good). Surely, we need more employment for the people (public good).
Too bad I don't live near DC, I would probably get into some real trouble over things like this!
If IBM were so concerned about the number of IT workers, maybe it should become a better employer first.
You see, IBM for the past several years has been on a hiring binge, but with very rare exception, every new hire is brought in as a "supplemental". A supplemental, by IBM's definition, is a temporary position that CAN NOT continue past 18 months. Once your supplemental service is over, you are blacklisted by IBM for another 6 months - no rehire possible.
When I left IBM (near the end of my supplemental "tour of duty"), IBM was in a hiring freeze, there was no way to become a full-time employee, regardless of demand. Oh, and as a supplemental for IBM, the ONLY benefit you are eligible for is the employee stock purchase plan. That's right, no insurance, no 401k or pension, no education assistance, nothing else!
If IBM needs more employees, then they need to stop chewing through their existing stock (and spitting them out) so rapidly.
Does this tool presume that the binary produced by gcc would be equal to the binary produced by VC6 or VC7 or Watcom or Borland Builder?
Either this "tool" is going to have an absolutely HUGE hash table in it, or it's going to presume only one or two possible compilers
Then again, if it's going ASCII compares against the source code, GREP and it's cousins is your friend.
Since you can find bulk keyboards for cheap ($5.00 or less in quantity), why not just go through once a week and replace all the keyboards. The 10-20 seconds it takes to replace a keyboard has to be MUCH less expensive than the 15-30 minutes it takes to clean them out (properly). Of course, this doesn't even count the amount of time recovered from people not getting sick from the keyboards.
Here is something that I haven't seen anyone here suggest to help counter this problem of "unresponsive blacklist maintainers".
Sue them for libel. That's right - libel. Think about it - they are providing (writing) their advice to others and causing damage to someone's reputation. If this isn't a clear case of libel, I don't know what would be.
Yes - IANAL!
Unquestionably, the most productive OS I have ever used is TRSDOS 6.0...
If you want to save the company money, then quit!
Dude, the writing is on the walls as plain as day: ...profitable company...wants to cut costs...
Some bean counter is trying to squeeze as much efficiency out of you folks as possible. If I had to guess, the company is going up for sale soon and they need to make the place look as good as possible for the sale.
Is there any real, actual reason why you (Microsoft) feel a need to use less than independant reviews and tests to attempt to establish Windows superiority? Would it really be so bad for you to let your products stand (or fall) on their own?
ID10T
Printing - more specifically, Postscript Printing.
This sillyness of having to generate postscript so Ghostscript can generate PCL so you can print is just wrong - empty brained, someone forgot to wake up wrong.
PCL is available on every major printer on the market today - it IS the standard. PostScript is a has-been. Dump it today.
That is what is wrong with *nix and what I would do to fix it is require all software to support PCL printing directly.
My current employer has a very strict password policy in place - minimum 8 characters long, numbers in the middle, no numbers at the beginning or end. Password aging is set for 180 days. At least on their main systems, you get to pick your own password. This is all well and good until...
On their wireless devices, we aren't so lucky. The passwords are system generated and change every 30 days. Yes, of course the passwords here are complete random and are always 6 characters long. When the password changes, you get a total of 60 seconds to memorize it. As with any other security aware company, you are not supposed to write your passwords down anywhere.
Let's see, random non-user generated password, 30 day password life, 60 seconds to commit to memory, can't write it down. I wonder how well this works in real life (wish I had access to the number of password reset calls this policy generates).
Hmm, isn't there some sort of ICANN rule or regulation requiring accurate information in the domain registration records????
While obviously technically accurate, doesn't this intentionally skirt the spirit of the rule?
As I recall, the ownership of these patents has never been revealed. For all we know, these patents could be owned by IBM. I know of one offhand - the RCU patent. IBM has publically stated that this patent is freely available for use within Linux (since they contributed it). Who knows how many other "friendly" patents are in there...
Here's a brain teaser - let's see if YOU can figure it out. And yes, it is correct and provable....
29 - 1 = 30
Have fun....:)
Since I strongly doubt there are many people in here who are using any of the software packages I have wrote, I am going to toot my own horn here. Don't like it - sorry about that!
Granted, I am what you would call a niche developer. The software packages that I have wrote mostly deal with communicating with Allen Bradley Programmable Logic Controllers like the ControlLogix and the PLC-5. I prefer to look at it this way: if you have bought powdered baby formula, wondered about the safety of the Air Force's Airborne Laser program, or bought a set of tires for your car, my software helped bring those products about.
Now if only I could get some help with the tape backup software I am writing...
OK - What I want to know is if anyone out there has been successful in getting MythTV (or FreeVo) working successfully under Slackware.
I've tried (and I am certainly no Linux newbie) and could not get all the dependancies to work/compile/install. I spent the better part of 3 days working on it when I gave up.
Heck, getting Gnome recompiled is worlds easier than getting either Myth of Freevo to work under Slackware 9.1.
Normally, if the work isn't too involved (fixing a broken config, repairing windows, etc...), then I charge 2 12-packs of Coca-Cola.
:)
However, my accountant and I have a deal where he does my taxes for free and I keep his computers running for free. And let me tell you, he is quite good at keeping my money in my hands!
By far, the worst development job I worked on was a machine tool job.
The job sounded simple enough - take an existing line running on a fully maxed out Allen Bradley Pyramid Integrator, transition the entire production line (all 116 operator stations, plus automated part routing and testing) over to the new Allen Bradley ControlLogix. Now the kink - we had to do the transition while the plant was running and we could not shut down the line for any reason!
Did I mention that we also were expanding the data tracking for each part in the schedule system by 40% and were also adding 40% new I/O at the same time?
The project was slated to run for 6 weeks in the field. After 9 months - when I finally had enough and basically told the project manager to go get screwed - the project was probably half done.
It's pretty bad when you spend so much time on-site that the entire hotel staff is on a first name basis with you.
I wonder is DT Industries ever finished that project at Caterpillar Mossville Engine Plant.
IF I knew that Comcast wouldn't shut it down on me, I would set up a stream server, fed by aFestival server, constantly repeating the same stream over and over and over.
This is a message from the general population of the United States to Michael Powell, chairman of the F C C. FUCK YOU. Thank you.
OK, so I am about to say something that will probably be unpopular, but it needs to be said. This is intended for those department manager types who like to use buzzwords in their job descriptions...
XML's one and only strength lies in the fact that it is designed to facilitate data exchange between two hosts when the underlying data format is unknown or incompatible.
ANYONE who suggests that XML needs to be used for INTERNAL projects where you already have absolute knowledge of the underlying data formats should be taken out back and shot.
I'll go one step further - using XML for an internal project is a BAD DESIGN DECISION. XML is WAY too resource heavy. There is just no justification to using XML on internal projects.
I'll say it again - XML is ONLY useful for data interchange when the data hosts do no know the underlying format of the data. When the format of the underlying is known by both of the hosts exchanging the data, XML sucks!
End point: XML is a kludge, designed to work around not knowing the underlying data layout. Please only require us to use XML for it's intended purpose. General data storage is NOT it's intended purpose.
I have done a few "less interesting" hacks - back in the day...
* Hacked into the school PA system on the last day of my senior yearof high school. Took an old Peavey 400 amplifier, tied it directly into the 70v speaker line for the schools PA system (having unquestioned access to the theatre at school really helped). 5 minutes before the end of first period, weird noises start coming out the school PA system. Best part was the school principal approaching me later that day and asking HOW I did it, not IF I did it! THAT was fun!
* Probably doesn't count under the PC limitation, but I also hacked TRSDOS on an old TRS-80 Model 1. I discovered an undocumented command in the Disk Basic Interpreter (CMD"#"# if you wanted to know). Not being content with this - and TRSDOS Disk Basic had no way to pull a directory of a disk drive, I took the disk directory command from the TRSDOS system library and grafted it onto the code for the above found command. Result, I had a version of TRSDOS Disk Basic that could do something that Tandy/Radio Shack said was impossible to do - I could call a disk directory from BASIC without exiting the BASIC interpreter.
That was back in the day - truely fun times!
The best hack I did personally, was to recode the eprom on a Tranz-330 Credit Card terminal. Was able to get the terminal to constantly display the following lines:
Answers: $1.00
Answers w/thought: $2.00
Correct Answers: $4.00
Dumb Answers still free
Visa/MC Accepted...
Sold it on ebay a few months later for like $80.00.
Come on dude, this is SOOO easy to deal with....
I hope they DON'T go the "emulation" route - i.e. WINE
While WINE is a nice attempt to make a Win32 compatability layer, it is just too flakey to be used in a day-to-day business sense. IBM has used WINE before for providing Linux apps - HomePage Builder comes to mind immediately - and it was NEVER stable. Display problems, startup flakeness, and just general unstableness made the product truely painful to use.
If they want to do it right - and impress people at the same time, they should make a NATIVE APP
The real blame if something like this REALLY happens is the doctors themselves...
Here in Detroit, the costs of medical care are completely outrageous.
I have had the "opportunity" to have some relatively benign medical proceedures done and the costs of these proceedures was astronomical
Proceedure 1: Partial removal of ingrown toenail. $778.00
Proceedure 2: earwax removal: $190.00
I personally know that the ear-wax removal can be done for $50.00 at a place about an hour away. When you consider that the proceedure consists of the doctor looking in your ear (yep, there is a lot of wax in there), dumping a few drops of a chemical into your ear canal, telling you to lay on your side for 10 minutes (doctor leaves the room at this time to do something else), doctor returns after 10 minutes and squirts a lot of very cold water in your ear canal and the wax is now gone. Total time: 20 minutes.
It's no wonder that someone would consider it reasonable to send medical work off to india. With the amount of overcharging that is "the way things are done" here, it's only a matter of time before things get shaken up...