Consider that/. is largely populated by analytical thinkers (computer people tend to be that way or else they'd do something else for a living) and that religion, regardless of what flavor, is predicated on the abandonment of analytical thought at least where one particular idea is concerned.
Just like the guy this article is about, in a group of analytical thinkers, anti-analytical thinking is bound to be suspect.
The dude was pushing his BS on unwilling subordinates and they (rightfully) complained. Then he was demoted. Then, when layoff came, he looked like a weak performer due to his weak performance and made the cut list.
Good riddance to him. He's was working in a scientific institution pushing anti-scientific snake oil and I can't imagine that did good things for workplace morale.
Perhaps, although the number of (non-Ubuntu) Linux machines deployed outside of people's parent's basements exceeds fBSD and Ubuntu combined, which is kind of a built-in interest base. My expectation is that most smart people try to stay abreast of trends in the industry they work in;)
Hours old post, other posts after attracting normal comment volume, this has eleven (11) posts as of this moment. If an update to a shitty, feeble, archaic operating system that only the most devoted antisocial fanbois give a flying fuck about doesn't deserve the "whocares" tag, nothing does.
As anyone who has ever used an online translation engine can tell you, going between English and either Chinese or Japanese leads to a stream of gibberish which at best gives the wily reader a hint of what the original topic might have been about.
I foresee a few tourists on both sides of the pond having some epic adventures as a result of relying upon this app:)
Really? I mean, I'm not saying you are wrong, but I am saying you've just made a direct statement of fact with no justification whatsoever. It's not even an argument.
Fuck it, and fuck them. This sort of thing leads direct to "Idiocracy" becoming reality. So this bit is borrowed from Melbel, who posted it in the hopes that the information gets spread far and wide. If you are looking for a job that uses this exam, I'm sorry for you, but here's at least a glimpse into how the faragin bastidges want you to conform:
SA = Strongly Agree A = Agree D = Disagree SD = Strongly Disagree
You expect to succeed in whatever you do SA You are good at taking charge of a group A You keep calm when under stress SA You are somewhat of a thrill-seeker SD You like to be alone SD You are well aware of your inner feelings SA People are often mean to you SD You get angry more often than nervous SD You know when someone is in a bad mood, even if they donâ(TM)t show it SA
You would like a job that is quiet and predictable SD You work hard at what you do SA You keep your promises, no matter what SA You work better with your hands than your mind A You donâ(TM)t work too hard because it doesnâ(TM)t pay off anyway SD You love to be with people SA You love to listen to people talk about themselves SA You hate to give up if you canâ(TM)t solve a hard problem SA You prefer to do things alone SD When under pressure, you think about all that can go wrong SD It is easy for you to ignore small problems SD You feel lively and energetic at parties SA You are a quiet person SD You donâ(TM)t like to be interrupted when you are doing something SD
When someone is rude to you, you get over it quickly SA You do not always feel hopeful about your future SD When you need to, you take it easy at work SD You attract attention to yourself SD You believe that you would be very successful at a sales job SA You finish the work you have to do, even when youâ(TM)re tired or bored SA You are proud of the work you do at school or on a job SA You look forward to going to work (or school) SA You quickly see the solutions to new problems SA You have no big regrets about your past SA In school, you were one of the best students SA It bothers you when something unexpected disrupts your day SD When someone treats you badly, you ignore it SA You like people to notice you A
Slow-moving people make you impatient A You often feel nervous about something SD You got mostly good grades in high school SA Many people cannot be trusted D You rarely act without thinking SA You have friends, but donâ(TM)t like them to be too close SD You could describe yourself as âtidyâ(TM) SA In your free time, you go out more than stay home SA Your stuff is often kind of messy SD People have a lot of arguments with you SD You have a lot of different abilities SA Your moods are steady from day to day SA You are lively and talkative SA There are some people you really canâ(TM)t stand SD You do not fake being polite SD You show it when you are in a bad mood SD When things go wrong, itâ(TM)s hard to control your temper SD
It bothers you when you have to obey a lot of rules SD You can argue hard but still keep it friendly SA You would rather not get involved in other peopleâ(TM)s problems D It is not easy for you to put your ideas in writing SD When you are annoyed with something, you say so SD You were absent very few days from high school SA Youâ(TM)ve had some disappointments that youâ(TM)ll never get over SD You follow through on everything that you start SA You feel nervous when there are demands you canâ(TM)t meet A You think a lot about the worries and stresses you have D Peopleâ(TM)s feelings are sometimes hurt by what you say SD You make more sensible choices than careless ones SA It bothers you a long time when someone is unfair to you SD You change from feeling happy to sad without any reason SD You like to try things that are new and different SA
Exactly! "Less than two hundred bucks" isn't cheap when you can get a reasonably decent DVD player for $30-$40. And who gives a rip about 1080p when all one has to watch on is a 19-inch CRT screen.
When house-sized flat screens start to match (not come close to, but match) the cost of similar CRT or projection sets, and when Blu-Ray players drop below about 80 bucks, then the market will shift. Not before.
I work around a number of similar systems, and one trend I see as somewhat alarming is that they're increasingly showing up as Windows boxes with an ethernet port attached. I'm talking about things like industrial x-ray machines, industrial refrigerant control systems, PLC control systems for complex industrial machinery, all sorts of things that can go boom or otherwise cause death and dismemberment if they go sideways.
It's not that Windows sucks per se, but rather that many of these systems are sent out by the vendor with documentation on how to set the thing up on the LAN and connect to it remotely, and then when I look at the machine itself, it almost always turns out to be a stock, under-patched Windows XP box with no anti-virus software and the firewall turned off. The software to manage the equipment itself is usually VB.NET (and yes, I do mean usually), and appears amateurish.
So I've got this wide-open Windows XP machine that my controls engineers want put on the network so they can VPN in and talk to it remotely. Uh, let me talk to the vendor first. The vendors, if there's anyone there who actually claims to know anything about "computers," typically say don't modify the box or they won't support it, or offer dire warnings about how installing an antivirus package or enabling the firewall or patching the operating system will cause it to malfunction.
It really is a clash of cultures, but I don't exactly blame the controls software people. I think they were simply sold a bill of goods: the notion that you can take a general-purpose OS, install it in your touchscreen panel machine, and look how easy.NET is to design and deploy your application! For people used to toggling the "STOR" switch on a PDP, this has got to be a long series of wet dreams come true.
Really, the problem (in my mind) lies in the concept of putting these things on a general-purpose operating system. It's designed to be all things to all people, when what is really needed is something that's damn good at doing one thing and doing it without falling over. Sure, air-gapping it from the network is also a good plan, but controls engineers have been so thoroughly inculcated in the notion that they can remote in to their equipment now (and have made that case to the honchos for long enough) that often the idea of disconnecting these systems is a non-starter.
That leaves the systems and network people with a few options, none of which really feel sufficient.
A little ARP poisoning, and some sniffing to see what version of what your linux box is running, next time you apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, or emerge world, or whatever mechanism you use, you're pwned.
My experience is that the best method of security is a pair of eyeballs attached to a skeptical brain.
Depends. Many years ago, I was moonlighting at [insert name of big chain variety store here]. This big ol dude comes up to my lane, buys a box of condoms, which I failed to properly demagnetize. It was totally accidental, and the look on his face was one of betrayal and anger when he had to take them back to be rechecked. I felt terrible for the guy, to be honest.
While I agree with your comments re: the suckiness of English (I speak five modern languages, including a couple of the "hard" ones), my comment in this regard wasn't that English should be forced upon anyone - if that page were in Dutch, French, or German, I'd shrug and figure that's where the website is, so the choice of language makes sense. But the fact that these conferences are streamed in wmv-only format and then the entire website is in broken English - that just looks bad. Really, unprofessionally, and given the number of interpreters/translators available to the EU, inexcusably bad. Moral of the story is: if you can't find a good translator for your webpage, write it in your native tongue.
Actually, I'm talking about that entire website. It's chock full of broken English that any 12-year-old could correct. Come on - you write coherently enough, you can see what's happening there.
The service works acceptably well using the mplayer plugin. But what's up with the badly-translated English all over that webpage? It's embarrassing, frankly.
First off, they didn't hire an interpreter (come on, you going to tell me there isn't a properly-qualified English-language interpreter to fix that garbage?
Second, whichever Microsoft zealot wrote that page really needs to expatiate on his reasoning. From where I sit, it looks like a blatant lie to cover up for laziness.
Maybe (hopefully, please, PLEASE let it be so) this means SuSE will return to its roots as a kickass KDE desktop distribution... as someone who for various reasons has preferred KDE for many years now, SuSE's looming turn toward Gnome was a real bummer for me.
Thanks for that info - I wasn't aware of dsdt until now. All I can say is:
Owch. I began using linux back when Donald Becker's tulip drivers were brand spanking new, and guess what my NIC needed? So I booted my first linux install, fought with the networking setup, then learned how to compile a kernel correctly for the NIC I had (only took four or five tries on a PII 400, you can guess how long that took).
Now it's time to fight with dsdt? Uh, no. For the time being, I'll stick with the half-broken solution I have that works for me, for now.
That's one of the things that always amazed me about OS X. You can fault it for various reasons, but by god, you shut the lid on your iBook, and five seconds later, it's in zzz mode (with a battery life of about two weeks - I tested that once). Open the lid up, go "one, one thousand..." and it's awake and ready to use. I've tried this on some of the newer Intel-based MBPs and regular MBs, and it works just as well.
So Apple has it dialed. What gives with the rest of the computing world? My stupid Latitude has such a buttfargled ACPI that windows goes "Derr, BSOD" when I try to use hibernate, and of all the Linux distros I tried on it, only Kubuntu came close to doing it right. The problems it encountered at wake-up were sufficient that I finally gave up on hibernate (as well as Kubuntu - on to a better KDE distro), and simply have it blank the screen when I flip the lid shut. It's good for about four hours that way, which is usually enough.
This cannot be allowed to happen! Tell those DARPA spooks to take their ROTM challenge elsewhere! Or at least just flat out say it'll take place in LA and if mad robots happen to knock down every building in town, so much the better. I for one will avoid any city on that date.
Slashdot Mirror
Consider that /. is largely populated by analytical thinkers (computer people tend to be that way or else they'd do something else for a living) and that religion, regardless of what flavor, is predicated on the abandonment of analytical thought at least where one particular idea is concerned.
Just like the guy this article is about, in a group of analytical thinkers, anti-analytical thinking is bound to be suspect.
The dude was pushing his BS on unwilling subordinates and they (rightfully) complained. Then he was demoted. Then, when layoff came, he looked like a weak performer due to his weak performance and made the cut list.
Good riddance to him. He's was working in a scientific institution pushing anti-scientific snake oil and I can't imagine that did good things for workplace morale.
Perhaps, although the number of (non-Ubuntu) Linux machines deployed outside of people's parent's basements exceeds fBSD and Ubuntu combined, which is kind of a built-in interest base. My expectation is that most smart people try to stay abreast of trends in the industry they work in ;)
There really are only eight of you. PS: there are enough geeks on here not using FreeBSD to suggest that your initial premise is laughably false.
Hours old post, other posts after attracting normal comment volume, this has eleven (11) posts as of this moment. If an update to a shitty, feeble, archaic operating system that only the most devoted antisocial fanbois give a flying fuck about doesn't deserve the "whocares" tag, nothing does.
As anyone who has ever used an online translation engine can tell you, going between English and either Chinese or Japanese leads to a stream of gibberish which at best gives the wily reader a hint of what the original topic might have been about.
I foresee a few tourists on both sides of the pond having some epic adventures as a result of relying upon this app :)
If you want to see a large part of the reason that this happens, look no farther than places like this:
http://oetc.org/cgi-bin/searchbytype.pl
Seriously, at $2.30 per CAL for Exchange...
Really? I mean, I'm not saying you are wrong, but I am saying you've just made a direct statement of fact with no justification whatsoever. It's not even an argument.
Fuck it, and fuck them. This sort of thing leads direct to "Idiocracy" becoming reality. So this bit is borrowed from Melbel, who posted it in the hopes that the information gets spread far and wide. If you are looking for a job that uses this exam, I'm sorry for you, but here's at least a glimpse into how the faragin bastidges want you to conform:
SA = Strongly Agree
A = Agree
D = Disagree
SD = Strongly Disagree
You expect to succeed in whatever you do SA
You are good at taking charge of a group A
You keep calm when under stress SA
You are somewhat of a thrill-seeker SD
You like to be alone SD
You are well aware of your inner feelings SA
People are often mean to you SD
You get angry more often than nervous SD
You know when someone is in a bad mood, even if they donâ(TM)t show it SA
You would like a job that is quiet and predictable SD
You work hard at what you do SA
You keep your promises, no matter what SA
You work better with your hands than your mind A
You donâ(TM)t work too hard because it doesnâ(TM)t pay off anyway SD
You love to be with people SA
You love to listen to people talk about themselves SA
You hate to give up if you canâ(TM)t solve a hard problem SA
You prefer to do things alone SD
When under pressure, you think about all that can go wrong SD
It is easy for you to ignore small problems SD
You feel lively and energetic at parties SA
You are a quiet person SD
You donâ(TM)t like to be interrupted when you are doing something SD
When someone is rude to you, you get over it quickly SA
You do not always feel hopeful about your future SD
When you need to, you take it easy at work SD
You attract attention to yourself SD
You believe that you would be very successful at a sales job SA
You finish the work you have to do, even when youâ(TM)re tired or bored SA
You are proud of the work you do at school or on a job SA
You look forward to going to work (or school) SA
You quickly see the solutions to new problems SA
You have no big regrets about your past SA
In school, you were one of the best students SA
It bothers you when something unexpected disrupts your day SD
When someone treats you badly, you ignore it SA
You like people to notice you A
Slow-moving people make you impatient A
You often feel nervous about something SD
You got mostly good grades in high school SA
Many people cannot be trusted D
You rarely act without thinking SA
You have friends, but donâ(TM)t like them to be too close SD
You could describe yourself as âtidyâ(TM) SA
In your free time, you go out more than stay home SA
Your stuff is often kind of messy SD
People have a lot of arguments with you SD
You have a lot of different abilities SA
Your moods are steady from day to day SA
You are lively and talkative SA
There are some people you really canâ(TM)t stand SD
You do not fake being polite SD
You show it when you are in a bad mood SD
When things go wrong, itâ(TM)s hard to control your temper SD
It bothers you when you have to obey a lot of rules SD
You can argue hard but still keep it friendly SA
You would rather not get involved in other peopleâ(TM)s problems D
It is not easy for you to put your ideas in writing SD
When you are annoyed with something, you say so SD
You were absent very few days from high school SA
Youâ(TM)ve had some disappointments that youâ(TM)ll never get over SD
You follow through on everything that you start SA
You feel nervous when there are demands you canâ(TM)t meet A
You think a lot about the worries and stresses you have D
Peopleâ(TM)s feelings are sometimes hurt by what you say SD
You make more sensible choices than careless ones SA
It bothers you a long time when someone is unfair to you SD
You change from feeling happy to sad without any reason SD
You like to try things that are new and different SA
Exactly! "Less than two hundred bucks" isn't cheap when you can get a reasonably decent DVD player for $30-$40. And who gives a rip about 1080p when all one has to watch on is a 19-inch CRT screen.
When house-sized flat screens start to match (not come close to, but match) the cost of similar CRT or projection sets, and when Blu-Ray players drop below about 80 bucks, then the market will shift. Not before.
I work around a number of similar systems, and one trend I see as somewhat alarming is that they're increasingly showing up as Windows boxes with an ethernet port attached. I'm talking about things like industrial x-ray machines, industrial refrigerant control systems, PLC control systems for complex industrial machinery, all sorts of things that can go boom or otherwise cause death and dismemberment if they go sideways. It's not that Windows sucks per se, but rather that many of these systems are sent out by the vendor with documentation on how to set the thing up on the LAN and connect to it remotely, and then when I look at the machine itself, it almost always turns out to be a stock, under-patched Windows XP box with no anti-virus software and the firewall turned off. The software to manage the equipment itself is usually VB.NET (and yes, I do mean usually), and appears amateurish. So I've got this wide-open Windows XP machine that my controls engineers want put on the network so they can VPN in and talk to it remotely. Uh, let me talk to the vendor first. The vendors, if there's anyone there who actually claims to know anything about "computers," typically say don't modify the box or they won't support it, or offer dire warnings about how installing an antivirus package or enabling the firewall or patching the operating system will cause it to malfunction. It really is a clash of cultures, but I don't exactly blame the controls software people. I think they were simply sold a bill of goods: the notion that you can take a general-purpose OS, install it in your touchscreen panel machine, and look how easy .NET is to design and deploy your application! For people used to toggling the "STOR" switch on a PDP, this has got to be a long series of wet dreams come true.
Really, the problem (in my mind) lies in the concept of putting these things on a general-purpose operating system. It's designed to be all things to all people, when what is really needed is something that's damn good at doing one thing and doing it without falling over. Sure, air-gapping it from the network is also a good plan, but controls engineers have been so thoroughly inculcated in the notion that they can remote in to their equipment now (and have made that case to the honchos for long enough) that often the idea of disconnecting these systems is a non-starter.
That leaves the systems and network people with a few options, none of which really feel sufficient.
A little ARP poisoning, and some sniffing to see what version of what your linux box is running, next time you apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, or emerge world, or whatever mechanism you use, you're pwned. My experience is that the best method of security is a pair of eyeballs attached to a skeptical brain.
It was the nam-shub, obviously...
Depends. Many years ago, I was moonlighting at [insert name of big chain variety store here]. This big ol dude comes up to my lane, buys a box of condoms, which I failed to properly demagnetize. It was totally accidental, and the look on his face was one of betrayal and anger when he had to take them back to be rechecked. I felt terrible for the guy, to be honest.
While I agree with your comments re: the suckiness of English (I speak five modern languages, including a couple of the "hard" ones), my comment in this regard wasn't that English should be forced upon anyone - if that page were in Dutch, French, or German, I'd shrug and figure that's where the website is, so the choice of language makes sense. But the fact that these conferences are streamed in wmv-only format and then the entire website is in broken English - that just looks bad. Really, unprofessionally, and given the number of interpreters/translators available to the EU, inexcusably bad. Moral of the story is: if you can't find a good translator for your webpage, write it in your native tongue.
Actually, I'm talking about that entire website. It's chock full of broken English that any 12-year-old could correct. Come on - you write coherently enough, you can see what's happening there.
The service works acceptably well using the mplayer plugin. But what's up with the badly-translated English all over that webpage? It's embarrassing, frankly.
First off, they didn't hire an interpreter (come on, you going to tell me there isn't a properly-qualified English-language interpreter to fix that garbage? Second, whichever Microsoft zealot wrote that page really needs to expatiate on his reasoning. From where I sit, it looks like a blatant lie to cover up for laziness.
Maybe (hopefully, please, PLEASE let it be so) this means SuSE will return to its roots as a kickass KDE desktop distribution... as someone who for various reasons has preferred KDE for many years now, SuSE's looming turn toward Gnome was a real bummer for me.
What I do have doesn't work any better. I just have it blank the screen when the lid shuts.
Thanks for that info - I wasn't aware of dsdt until now. All I can say is: Owch. I began using linux back when Donald Becker's tulip drivers were brand spanking new, and guess what my NIC needed? So I booted my first linux install, fought with the networking setup, then learned how to compile a kernel correctly for the NIC I had (only took four or five tries on a PII 400, you can guess how long that took). Now it's time to fight with dsdt? Uh, no. For the time being, I'll stick with the half-broken solution I have that works for me, for now.
Argh, I'd love to reply, but dare not - this topic isn't about distro wars - I should have been more mindful when I originally posted.
That's one of the things that always amazed me about OS X. You can fault it for various reasons, but by god, you shut the lid on your iBook, and five seconds later, it's in zzz mode (with a battery life of about two weeks - I tested that once). Open the lid up, go "one, one thousand..." and it's awake and ready to use. I've tried this on some of the newer Intel-based MBPs and regular MBs, and it works just as well. So Apple has it dialed. What gives with the rest of the computing world? My stupid Latitude has such a buttfargled ACPI that windows goes "Derr, BSOD" when I try to use hibernate, and of all the Linux distros I tried on it, only Kubuntu came close to doing it right. The problems it encountered at wake-up were sufficient that I finally gave up on hibernate (as well as Kubuntu - on to a better KDE distro), and simply have it blank the screen when I flip the lid shut. It's good for about four hours that way, which is usually enough.
This cannot be allowed to happen! Tell those DARPA spooks to take their ROTM challenge elsewhere! Or at least just flat out say it'll take place in LA and if mad robots happen to knock down every building in town, so much the better. I for one will avoid any city on that date.
My condolences to his family. He worked hard for what we have, right or wrong, and we should respect that and be thankful for what he has left us.