We try to blame everyone- bad parents, bad teachers, bad coaches, bad dirty ole men on the internet, bad ole technology, etc, ad nauseum.
BUT WE FAIL TO >>BLAME THE BRATS
Our society has the idea that anyone under 18 is pure and innocent until something corrupts them and that is pure and simple HORSE CRAP.
Teens have been and always will be 1) sexual beings AND 2) immature. The combination of both is a recipe for trouble.
Modern society thinks that teen pregnancy, teen sex and teen crime is all some shocking, new phenemenon unique to our times. Nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps the technologies have changed but the people using them have not.
People are essentially the same dumb animals that have made the same dumb mistakes for the past 5 millinia of recorded history. All signs show that they will continue to do so.
The model for Michangelo's [i]David[/i] was a teen prostitute that was one of Michangelo's personal favorites. What does this have to do with this subject?
It proves rather elegently that this teen drama crap has been going on a long time before MySpace ever reared its ugly head.
there is a disgusting little trailer park called AOL.
I avoid AOL domain names like the plague because they are usually either a smart ass kid or one of the many nere-do-wells that have hacked AOL idenities.
Screw fads. They are for Lemmings that chase the heard.
Learn how to program. Lot's of people can code. Real programmers are rare.
Become intimately familiar with the language that you are programming in. Learn to think in that language and you'll stand out.
We could doubtless have hours of debate on the virtues (and follies) of structured design and programming, object-oriented design and programming, etc. We might even have a few devinely inspired programmers who will tell you that is how Jesus told me to do it.
I'll make it real simple: If you write good, solid code then you'll be miles ahead of the rest of the crowd.
Nukes are not going away, we have more nuclear actors today than we did 20 years ago and no sign that the trend is changing. We had best plan on nuclear war, practice for it, and become as capable as possible of surviving it for time will deaden the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and someone will eventually decide to try it again.
I have to agree with you there.
It's very sad and quite frightening but many people who know what they are talking about believe that a nuclear conflict is more likely today than it was during the Cold War.
There are too many weapons in too many hands. Many of those hands are not known for stability or responsible actions.
The technology to build nukes is 60 years old. We're very foolish if we think that the expertise, wealth and political will to build nukes doesn't exist in places that would like to burn the Western democracies to the ground.
The last serious redesign of the atomic bomb produced the fusion bomb, which gave off less radiation for the same bang.
Ummm, no. A fusion bomb is called a staged thermonuclear weapon. It uses a plutonium trigger to ignite a fusion reaction. The yield of the weapon is adjusted by manipulating the amount of deuterium injected into the weapons core milliseconds before the trigger is set off. It is in reality a fission bomb augmented with fusible hydrogen.
Fission bombs typically yield in the kilo-ton range. They produce fallout of radioactive decay products (radioactive strontium, iodine, etc) and unspent plutonium. They also create what is known as an electro-magnetic pulse which is deadly to computers and electronics.
H-bombs are every bit as dirty as fission bombs. They yield in the mega-ton range. As they are souped-up fission bombs, they have similar fall-out. As the fusion reaction is much more energetic than a fission reaction, there are even worse effects. If the H-bomb hits the ground, ordinary materials- dirt, bricks, motor, etc- is irradiated causing even more problems. The gamma-flash of an h-bomb will kill any exposed persons for a radius of many miles. The optical flash will blind anyone looking in its direction for 10s of miles. EMP effects from H-bombs are equally impressive creating massive power, electronic and computer disruptions.
The biggest h-bomb ever set off was ~50 megatons by the Russians on a small island off Kamchatka. That particular bomb could theoretically yield as much as 100 megatons. They toned it down for testing purposes.
There was a big difference in the design philosophy between nukes of the US and USSR. American missile technology was much more precise than the Soviets with the early ICBMs so the US made smaller, cleaner warheads. The Soviets on the other hand designed their nukes for the biggest possible bang. Although Soviet missile accuracy improved in the late 70s and 80s, their warheads were essentially the same- big, honking H-bombs.
Another type of nuke was designed in the 70s called a neutron warhead. It was designed not for its explosive potential but the ability to cause a deadly pulse of radiation which would kill all humans (I've always wanted to work that into a conversation somehow.) who aren't in hardened shelters. This is a very "clean" but ghoulish weapon designed in anticipation of a super-power conflict in Europe. [Since Europeans were tired of being bombed flat, I suppose being zapped like a frog in a microwave was an easier sell.]
As an old Cold Warrior era fossil, I hate nukes. They suck in every conceivable way. They are NOT a warrior's weapon. They are weapons of indiscriminate murder killing warrior and innocent alike. Their cost is obscene considering all the other uses that money could be put too.
IMHO there is no such thing as a good nuke, only the ones necessary to make retaliation to an attack suicidal.
It seems reasonable that another redesign would try to produce more efficient fusion bombs
The nukes that are being considered are small: 20-60 kilotons. NOT fusion weapons. They are essentially bunker busters on steroids.
which is only a good thing.
I don't think it's a good thing at all. Creating a small, battlefield nuke makes using one more likely.
Nukes aren't battlefield weapons. They are political weapons. Using one could start a chain reaction that no one could possibly predict.
Haven't we all seen enough bad sci-fi to dread this sort of thing?
Sure- he's cute and fuzzy now. Just wait till he has kittens of his own with a Maine Coon Cat and they turn out to be hypo-allergic 4,000 pound saber-toothed Kitties. You don't DARE let them get hungry. LOL
They make a great printer but I question some of their moves.
What did acquiring DEC do for them?
I understand the Compaq acquisition but why kill off their Netserver line!? I loved those boxes. Of the dozens that I installed and years of service that I got out of them, I had >>2 a bad fan and a dead hard drive. As a SysAdmin, I like hardware that doesn't give me a lot of trouble. I learned to love HP Netservers.
Oh sure- HP is a big fish. I liked them better when they were less button downed MBA and geeky engineers.
BTW- whatever happened to the venerable HP calculators!? Not geeky enough for the new yuppie-fied HP?
The problem with eating Microsoft's lunch is that it often leads to indigestion or worse.
They have a record of buying out smaller companies that build a better mouse trap. If that doesn't work, they'll hire a bunch of programmers and grind out a product that is almost as good and then release a new operating system that excludes the competetion.
When you are competing with a large, hungry predator, then it's not a good idea to arouse their ire.
Who really reads reports by the Yankee Group? They are obliviously a shill for Bill.
Real systems people know that this is BULL.
I had an old HP Netserver LH running RedHat 4 that ran uninterupted for over two years. It was our primary web and mail server. I only had to shut it down because the UPS batteries needed changing.
Keeping Widows desktops running uninterupted for a whole day is a challenge.
-OB
There are problems with email so we should stop using it? Isn't that like saying scrap all cars because there are potholes?
I'm a SYSADMIN and I'll tell you like I tell my users. 1 more time for the retarded:
DO NOT GIVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO PORN SITES ADVERTISING FREE ACCESS FOR YOUR EMAIL. IF YOU DO, THEN DON'T YOU F-ing DARE ACT SURPRISED WHEN YOU GET SPAMMED YOU WANKER.
DO NOT DOWNLOAD "FREE" SOFTWARE! IT IS SPYWARE, IT IS ALWAYS SPYWARE AND IT WILL ALWAYS BE SPYWARE- UNLESS ITS FROM SOURCEFORGE.
DO NOT DO THESE THINGS AND CRY TO YOUR SYSADMIN! I'm SORRY BUT I JUST CAN'T FIX IDIOCY. BOTHER ME ABOUT IT ONE MORE TIME AND I'LL SEND YOUR ADULT-BABY PORNO COLLECTION TO OUR COMPANY, BOARD AND PARTNERS MAILing LISTS.
Users really shouldn't be allowed to use my bandwidth. Hump!
Sure- a lot of code was fixed and a ton of hardware was sold but the nightmare scenario never came to pass.
IT managers from all over used the Y2K scare to modernize their systems because the bean-counters and managers were too scared of the consequences to mess with their budgets.
Cyber-terrorism is the same thing: a nebulous threat with some malcontents out there that would very much like to do some damage.
This threat, and the fear looking stupid like the post-911 FBI, is being used by empire-builders to feather their own nests.
The truth is that the vast majority of computer crime is either an inside job or the result of lame network and computer security. The only way that managers and bean-counters respond and fund a reasonable security policy is to scare the hell out of them.
Sun is a great company. I respect them a lot. They were UNIX when UNIX wasn't cool. Java, Solaris, SPARC: the list of Sun's acheivements are long and storied.
Just a few years ago, a Sun workstation of your very own was quite the status symbol in geek-dom.
Sun has a lot going for them. I sincerely hope they can turn it around.
For those who get laid off, I hope they land on their feet.
I may be Obnoxious but I'm not Obnoxious enough to revel in the pain of others.
Slashdot Mirror
We try to blame everyone- bad parents, bad teachers, bad coaches, bad dirty ole men on the internet, bad ole technology, etc, ad nauseum.
BUT WE FAIL TO >>BLAME THE BRATS
Our society has the idea that anyone under 18 is pure and innocent until something corrupts them and that is pure and simple HORSE CRAP.
Teens have been and always will be 1) sexual beings AND 2) immature. The combination of both is a recipe for trouble.
Modern society thinks that teen pregnancy, teen sex and teen crime is all some shocking, new phenemenon unique to our times. Nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps the technologies have changed but the people using them have not.
People are essentially the same dumb animals that have made the same dumb mistakes for the past 5 millinia of recorded history. All signs show that they will continue to do so.
The model for Michangelo's [i]David[/i] was a teen prostitute that was one of Michangelo's personal favorites. What does this have to do with this subject?
It proves rather elegently that this teen drama crap has been going on a long time before MySpace ever reared its ugly head.
Blame the people, not the black box.
there is a disgusting little trailer park called AOL.
I avoid AOL domain names like the plague because they are usually either a smart ass kid or one of the many nere-do-wells that have hacked AOL idenities.
Get lost you patent-whoring nobodies!
If they are using drones, one has to wonder when the smart bombs are going to start dropping.
We used to laugh and make fun of programmers that couldn't write tight, fast and efficient code.
Now they promote them.
My old boss used to call it code bloat and would heckle me mercilessly if my code modules were bigger than 32K.
Screw fads. They are for Lemmings that chase the heard.
Learn how to program. Lot's of people can code. Real programmers are rare.
Become intimately familiar with the language that you are programming in. Learn to think in that language and you'll stand out.
We could doubtless have hours of debate on the virtues (and follies) of structured design and programming, object-oriented design and programming, etc. We might even have a few devinely inspired programmers who will tell you that is how Jesus told me to do it.
I'll make it real simple: If you write good, solid code then you'll be miles ahead of the rest of the crowd.
Nukes are not going away, we have more nuclear actors today than we did 20 years ago and no sign that the trend is changing. We had best plan on nuclear war, practice for it, and become as capable as possible of surviving it for time will deaden the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and someone will eventually decide to try it again.
I have to agree with you there.
It's very sad and quite frightening but many people who know what they are talking about believe that a nuclear conflict is more likely today than it was during the Cold War.
There are too many weapons in too many hands. Many of those hands are not known for stability or responsible actions.
The technology to build nukes is 60 years old. We're very foolish if we think that the expertise, wealth and political will to build nukes doesn't exist in places that would like to burn the Western democracies to the ground.
HaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHa aHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaHaaH aaHaa
Oh stop it, you're killing me you silly bastard!
The only way to secure a microsoft OS is to set the damned thing on fire and hope it doesn't get hacked before it burns up.
Vista..Microsoft...most secure OS ever...
That's F-ing rich!
This is a gag right!???
The last serious redesign of the atomic bomb produced the fusion bomb, which gave off less radiation for the same bang.
Ummm, no. A fusion bomb is called a staged thermonuclear weapon. It uses a plutonium trigger to ignite a fusion reaction. The yield of the weapon is adjusted by manipulating the amount of deuterium injected into the weapons core milliseconds before the trigger is set off. It is in reality a fission bomb augmented with fusible hydrogen.
Fission bombs typically yield in the kilo-ton range. They produce fallout of radioactive decay products (radioactive strontium, iodine, etc) and unspent plutonium. They also create what is known as an electro-magnetic pulse which is deadly to computers and electronics.
H-bombs are every bit as dirty as fission bombs. They yield in the mega-ton range. As they are souped-up fission bombs, they have similar fall-out. As the fusion reaction is much more energetic than a fission reaction, there are even worse effects. If the H-bomb hits the ground, ordinary materials- dirt, bricks, motor, etc- is irradiated causing even more problems. The gamma-flash of an h-bomb will kill any exposed persons for a radius of many miles. The optical flash will blind anyone looking in its direction for 10s of miles. EMP effects from H-bombs are equally impressive creating massive power, electronic and computer disruptions.
The biggest h-bomb ever set off was ~50 megatons by the Russians on a small island off Kamchatka. That particular bomb could theoretically yield as much as 100 megatons. They toned it down for testing purposes.
There was a big difference in the design philosophy between nukes of the US and USSR. American missile technology was much more precise than the Soviets with the early ICBMs so the US made smaller, cleaner warheads. The Soviets on the other hand designed their nukes for the biggest possible bang. Although Soviet missile accuracy improved in the late 70s and 80s, their warheads were essentially the same- big, honking H-bombs.
Another type of nuke was designed in the 70s called a neutron warhead. It was designed not for its explosive potential but the ability to cause a deadly pulse of radiation which would kill all humans (I've always wanted to work that into a conversation somehow.) who aren't in hardened shelters. This is a very "clean" but ghoulish weapon designed in anticipation of a super-power conflict in Europe. [Since Europeans were tired of being bombed flat, I suppose being zapped like a frog in a microwave was an easier sell.]
As an old Cold Warrior era fossil, I hate nukes. They suck in every conceivable way. They are NOT a warrior's weapon. They are weapons of indiscriminate murder killing warrior and innocent alike. Their cost is obscene considering all the other uses that money could be put too.
IMHO there is no such thing as a good nuke, only the ones necessary to make retaliation to an attack suicidal.
It seems reasonable that another redesign would try to produce more efficient fusion bombs
The nukes that are being considered are small: 20-60 kilotons. NOT fusion weapons. They are essentially bunker busters on steroids.
which is only a good thing.
I don't think it's a good thing at all. Creating a small, battlefield nuke makes using one more likely.
Nukes aren't battlefield weapons. They are political weapons. Using one could start a chain reaction that no one could possibly predict.
Haven't we all seen enough bad sci-fi to dread this sort of thing?
Sure- he's cute and fuzzy now. Just wait till he has kittens of his own with a Maine Coon Cat and they turn out to be hypo-allergic 4,000 pound saber-toothed Kitties. You don't DARE let them get hungry. LOL
They make a great printer but I question some of their moves.
What did acquiring DEC do for them?
I understand the Compaq acquisition but why kill off their Netserver line!? I loved those boxes. Of the dozens that I installed and years of service that I got out of them, I had >>2 a bad fan and a dead hard drive. As a SysAdmin, I like hardware that doesn't give me a lot of trouble. I learned to love HP Netservers.
Oh sure- HP is a big fish. I liked them better when they were less button downed MBA and geeky engineers.
BTW- whatever happened to the venerable HP calculators!? Not geeky enough for the new yuppie-fied HP?
OB
I'm pleased. Intel's price move may not have much of an overall effect on systems prices but if it spurs competetion, then its a good thing.
The problem with eating Microsoft's lunch is that it often leads to indigestion or worse.
They have a record of buying out smaller companies that build a better mouse trap. If that doesn't work, they'll hire a bunch of programmers and grind out a product that is almost as good and then release a new operating system that excludes the competetion.
When you are competing with a large, hungry predator, then it's not a good idea to arouse their ire.
Thanks for the info Eric.
It's nice to hear from someone who has something relevant to add besides sarcasm.
Who really reads reports by the Yankee Group? They are obliviously a shill for Bill. Real systems people know that this is BULL. I had an old HP Netserver LH running RedHat 4 that ran uninterupted for over two years. It was our primary web and mail server. I only had to shut it down because the UPS batteries needed changing. Keeping Widows desktops running uninterupted for a whole day is a challenge. -OB
It's for the children don't ya know!
Now you're not against the children are you?
See ya, close the door on the way out.
unless they have enough border patrol and INS people to bounce the illegals.
Until then, the only use for the border-cams will be by the illegals families: "Hey look! It's Jose!"
I wonder if this is how the b0rg got started.
There are problems with email so we should stop using it? Isn't that like saying scrap all cars because there are potholes?
I'm a SYSADMIN and I'll tell you like I tell my users. 1 more time for the retarded:
DO NOT GIVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO PORN SITES ADVERTISING FREE ACCESS FOR YOUR EMAIL. IF YOU DO, THEN DON'T YOU F-ing DARE ACT SURPRISED WHEN YOU GET SPAMMED YOU WANKER.
DO NOT DOWNLOAD "FREE" SOFTWARE! IT IS SPYWARE, IT IS ALWAYS SPYWARE AND IT WILL ALWAYS BE SPYWARE- UNLESS ITS FROM SOURCEFORGE.
DO NOT DO THESE THINGS AND CRY TO YOUR SYSADMIN! I'm SORRY BUT I JUST CAN'T FIX IDIOCY. BOTHER ME ABOUT IT ONE MORE TIME AND I'LL SEND YOUR ADULT-BABY PORNO COLLECTION TO OUR COMPANY, BOARD AND PARTNERS MAILing LISTS.
Users really shouldn't be allowed to use my bandwidth. Hump!
Obnoxious sysadmin Bastard from hell
I stand corrected.
Exactly. Y2K was the biggest con job in history.
Sure- a lot of code was fixed and a ton of hardware was sold but the nightmare scenario never came to pass.
IT managers from all over used the Y2K scare to modernize their systems because the bean-counters and managers were too scared of the consequences to mess with their budgets.
Cyber-terrorism is the same thing: a nebulous threat with some malcontents out there that would very much like to do some damage.
This threat, and the fear looking stupid like the post-911 FBI, is being used by empire-builders to feather their own nests.
The truth is that the vast majority of computer crime is either an inside job or the result of lame network and computer security. The only way that managers and bean-counters respond and fund a reasonable security policy is to scare the hell out of them.
That's chemistry. Stupid, toxic, explosive chemistry but chemistry none the less.
Sun is a great company. I respect them a lot. They were UNIX when UNIX wasn't cool. Java, Solaris, SPARC: the list of Sun's acheivements are long and storied.
Just a few years ago, a Sun workstation of your very own was quite the status symbol in geek-dom.
Sun has a lot going for them. I sincerely hope they can turn it around.
For those who get laid off, I hope they land on their feet.
I may be Obnoxious but I'm not Obnoxious enough to revel in the pain of others.
Microsoft...selling security...BaWaaHAAAAA! That's a good one.
When the mob does this, they call it Extortion.
Maybe the Feds that they haven't paid off will wack them with RICO.