preconcieved ideas of what will succeed and what will fail are NOT good things.
Yes, they are. That's what keeps older, experienced engineers from creating the fiascos that plague the dot-com and gaming industries. One of my 40-something friends is regularly called in to bail out the "fresh new talent" to which you refer. I've had to clean up after them. So has just about every engineer over 35.
Running a business is not about taking wild risks because some junior-level software engineer like you thinks he has a "brilliant idea." You want to play? Do it on your own time with your own money.
Experience in technology is only as good as the knowledge you've gained from it.
And much of what you learn in technology has nothing to do with technology itself but is far more valuable. Knowing how to estimate manpower and schedules. Recognizing when a coworker needs assistance -- even when they don't say anything. Knowing how to get a team member back on track without embarassing him/her. Recognizing how much documentation is needed. Being able to predict how many original team members will be left by the end of the project. Knowing how to architect a large software project. These are all things that your typical, self-impressed twenty-something software engineer has learned.
And the most important thing of all: recognizing that youth and cockiness is no substitute for experience. I'd much rather have someone with proven success than someone who tells me how brilliant he is.
By the way, I was once a twenty-something software engineer. Like you, I thought that I was superior to the older, more experienced engineers. I thought that my enthusiasm, energy, and state-of-the-art skills made me invaluable. Guess what. I was as wrong then as you are now and, looking back, I am embarassed by some of the things I did and said back then. Let's hope you live to regret your smug attitude of superiority.
If you find those 55-60yr old software engineers, tell me how adaptable they are. How quickly they are willing to change, how original their ideas are? Can they learn something new as quickly as that 20yr old who is ready to replace them?
Who cares? We can't have every over-50 software engineer unemployed. Don't companies feel any sense of loyalty to their employees? Remember when people used to retire with gold watches after decades of service? It really used to happen. Hollywood didn't make it up. Another damned good argument for a union.
Besides, this is an old argument used to get rid of older workers before they are entitled to pension benefits.
Experience is good, but anything more than 5yrs old is obsolete in IT, so regardless of how much experience you have, if it's more than 5yrs it still only counts for 5.
Spoken like a true twenty-something. Some of the most spectacular failures in the tech sector have been created by buildings full of guys who commute to work on Razor scooters. Five years of experience might teach you what can work, but a couple of decades worth of experience will enable you to see what will probably fail. There is more to IT than knowing how to use the latest C# libraries.
I seriously doubt that anyone is using X86 Solaris in a production environment.
It depends on what you mean by "production environment." If you are referring to massive database servers, then you are probably right. But I have seen it used on development machines and in labs. There is no magic in a Sun box and a decent Dell or Compaq server offers a wonderfully stable platform on which to host Solaris.
I'm not blaming you for anything. I don't blame you for taking advantage of a situation where the U.S. government allows large companies to employ foreign nationals to keep down costs. I blame the U.S. government.
It took me a week to find a new job, and I even got a signing bonus. Hmmmmm, why would they do this, since they can so nicely underpay me?
Because they can afford to.
Could it be that a degree and experience matters again all of a sudden?
Probably not as much as you would like to believe. I know plenty of people with one, two, or more decades of experience that are looking for work while newbies and H1-B workers are being hired much more quickly. Look around your workplace and see how many 55-60 year old software engineers you see and then tell me about how valuable experience is.
It was foolish to release it for free the first time:
They paid for the massive bandwidth used by those that downloaded it.
It ran on hardware that they did not sell, so they made no money there.
Sun probably cannibalized sales of lower-end (e.g. Sun Blade 100) systems. Those who wanted to run Solaris could do so without having to buy anything from Sun.
All of the risks and no profits. Sun had no quality control over the hardware, so if Joe Blow had a system with flaky RAM that crashed all of the time, he'd probably blame Solaris.
It took a tremendous investment on Sun's part to make a version of Solaris that worked on such a large subsection of x86 boxes. This probably took money and time away from profit-making ventures.
Solaris clearly will not be a serious competitor to Windows or Linux in the x86 market. Sun should never have released it in the first place and charging for it is the only rational compromise between doing the smart thing -- discontinuing it -- and appeasing the masses by giving it away for free.'
But since we (most of the Slashdot readership) do not drive trucks for a living this argument is a moot point.
No, it is not a moot point. It is an analogy. It shows what happens when a union is there to protect employees from unfair hiring practices.
Part of falling being a professional is negotiating your contract with your employer.
You don't get to. Employers aren't going to have staffs of tech people, each of whom bargained for different compensation related to overtime, office accomodations, hours, signing bonuses, severence packages, etc.
If you want overtime, ask for it.
I want a Mercedes Benz company car. I'll ask for that, too. That's the point of collective bargaining. The compensation is not set by the most desperate worker.
If they won't give you the hourly wage requested for overtime, you can always work your required 40 hours and be done with it.
And they can fire you and replace you with someone willing to work 80 hours per week.
You can try and find another position that doesn't require as much overtime (although in this economy it might be damn near impossible)
That's another argument in favor of union contracts. They prevent companies from taking advantage of workers during a bad job market.
If you can't tak ethe heat get out of the kitchen.
And here's the bravado I predicted. So, if I can't deal with excessive overtime, I should just drop out of the tech industry and work at McDonalds? Just give up 20+ years of experience and apply to be laborer on a construction site?
I'll fight you to the bitter end before I let you destroy my profession by unioniziing it.
I would not try to unionize something to destroy it. I would unionize it to improve conditions for the members.
If you want a bigger office go ask for it. Asking for a Union to step in and negotiate office space for you is pretty needless. If you can't have a talk with your boss in a constructive way about your needs then I feel sorry for you. It seems like alot of nerdy types lack the people skills required to carry on normal human conversation.
I am probably both more eloquent and convincing a speaker than are you, so don't talk down to me. You just don't get it. Companies are not going to give you a bigger/nicer office just because you want it. They are not going to piss off 40 of your coworkers by leaving them in cubicles while giving you a corner office from which you will do the same type of work. Have you ever managed professionals before? I have and I can tell you from experience that people will get jealous when a coworker's monitor is 1" larger. If something that petty upsets them, how do you think they would react to one of their own being moved out of a cubicle and into a windowed office?
But then again, it is easy for an Ivy Leaguer to come off as a pompous jackass.
so now that the union may serve your interests, you are for them? how convenient.
It's not convenience. It's being rational. Of course I am in favor of things that serve my interests. Duh!
Plus, I never said I was anti-union. I said that I initially (and incorrectly) viewed them as blue-collar organizations.
But ask yourself, at the end of the day, how much did the unions really help the steel industry or the coal miners?
Okay, let's look at the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and how they helped the coal miners. They got them the eight-hour day in 1898, collective bargaining rights in 1933, health and retirement benefits in 1946, and health and safety protections in 1969. They have fought for compensation for coal miners with black lung disease and for changes to the work environment (ventilation, scrbbers, water infusion, respirators, etc.) to protect today's miners. They have been at the forefront in pushing for mine safety reforms and rescue equipment.
Then take a look at how the union leaders and their families live.
Of course they live better than the average member. You don't get effective, well-spoken lobbyists, attorneys, and leaders by paying them what the average coal miner earns.
I used to feel the same way. I viewed unions as a blue-collar tool to protect people in low-skill jobs. Then I recognized that skilled professionals like airline pilots were unionized. I have started to realize that it would not be such a bad thing to have a tech workers union.
Can you imagine what the Teamsters would do if companies started bringing in the equivalent of H1-B visa workers to drive trucks at below-normal wages?
If we had a union, do you think that Congress would have been able to pass legislation that specifically exempted hourly computer professionals from receiving 1.5x overtime pay?
Do you think that a union would stand by idly while temp agencies regularly skimmed 30% and more off of the pay earned by immigrants and recent grads in the tech sector?
Do you believe that our industry would consistently lay off older, better-compensated workers only to replace them with recent grads if we had a union?
I know that there is going to a lot of macho posturing on here with people boasting that they are so good that they can set their own terms. But posturing is all that it is. For every 100 people that claim to be in the driver's seat in such contract negotiations, maybe one really is. The majority of companies have standard terms and don't deviate from them except for the most highly compensated corporate officers. Tell them you won't work for them unless they agree to include a buyout clause on your contract and they will tell you to take a hike. Just take a look at the average software engineer's office and compare it to the offices of people in other jobs that require similar quantities of skill and education. Do you think that corporate attorneys regularly sit in cramped cubicles?
The longer I am in this field (now more than 20 years), the more I start to believe a union would be a good thing.
Every programmer who implemented an SMTP server because it was the way things were done, without ever giving a moment's thought to the fact that the design had a barndoor-sized authentication hole in it and needed to be reworked was asking for it.
E-mail is about interoperability. It would do no good to have a proprietary mail server to which no other e-mail provider could communicate. Everyone in the world has thought about this but the e-mail protocols were created at a time when people on the net could be trusted. Now that they no longer can, we need legislation to enforce moral behavior -- just like we have laws in meatspace making it illegal to steal cars, mug people, or pick pockets.
No one was "asking for it" (in regards to spam) any more than a woman in a short skirt is asking to be raped.
There wouldn't even be a place for spam in the world if PKI-based whitelists (just digital signing, not even encryption) were an integral part of the design from the beginning.
So after I advertise my motorcycle for sale on Usenet, who will be replying? I need to know so that I can put them on my whitelist.
When hunting lions it is unwise to dress as a gazelle because the chance you are going to get eaten is a lot greater. And the chance people will give you sympathy is a lot less.
I have sympathy for rape victims, regardless of how they dress. With that kind of caveman view of the world, it's no wonder you post anonymously.
That's why you shouldn't post with your private address, but with an address that you don't care much about.
So I should post my resumé with an e-mail address that I won't check because it will be spammed? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?
Spammers won't go away, so you better start adapting your life on the net to avoid them.
Start? I run my own mail server and do blacklist lookups against about a dozen spammer and country blacklists. I have sophisticated rule-based processing to find spam that makes its way through. I have autoresponders on retired addresses. I create new addresses for each firm with which I do business online. On web pages I create, I use javascript to disguise the e-mail link. That I should have to do that is absurd. And most people don't have the ability to do that.
Sometimes you have to blame yourself, because after all... you put yourself in that situation.
Bullshit! Some scumball spammer just tried to send e-mail to service@, sale@, tech@, faq@, webmaster@, hr@, sales@, and root@ my domain -- despite the fact that none of those addresses was ever published -- and most were not valid.
You are back to the same old blame-the-victim approach. If someone posts a for-sale ad on Usenet or posts a resumé using their own e-mail address, the person should not blame themselves when some scumball spams them. They should blame the spammer.
You said "spammers won't go away." Yes, they will, once there is effective legislation against spam. Do you get advertisements offering kiddie porn or heroin for sale? Probably not. The reason you don't is because selling those things is illegal. Make spam illegal and the problem will largely go away.
Well, some people ask for it by using their personal email account for signing up on sites, posting on usenet etc.
Yeah, like those rape victims that were asking for it by wearing short skirts.
Nobody 'asked for it'. Don't you even resent the fact that spammers have made it impossible to post on Usenet with a legitimate e-mail address? Doesn't it piss you off that you have to be paranoid if some less-computer-savvy friend tells some web site to mail an article to you or sends you an online greeting card? Don't you get annoyed that every e-mail address that you post, no matter for what reason, get spammed?
You can charge more for a product with included source code, with no extra effort on your part.
And Mrs. Fields could give charge extra for cookies that include the recipe. And then she could wonder why a competitor's cookies started looking and tasting so much like hers.
The cost of software production does not go up, and the price goes up, when the source is included, increasing your profit margin.
And what do you do when you find your source code posted on a warez site or a Usenet newsgroup? What's your course of action when you suspect that your competitors have started to look at your code for "inspiration"?
A license isn't worth squat if you don't have a way to audit it and enforce the terms. And that's the problem with selling source code. It's like letting your customers hold a gun to your head so long as they promise not to pull the trigger. It only takes one dishonest customer to ruin everything.
This way you can save it to your hard disk (41MB) and not needlessly waste bandwidth (yours, your ISP's, or the host's) every time you want to see it. You can also share it with your friends that don't have broadband by cutting it to a CD. Enjoy.
Let me tell you as someone who knows quite a bit about heating and cooling -- that's not entirely true.
I know a *lot* about heating and cooling of electronics. I just spent the better part of a day modifying the cooling of my system. I have reduced the CPU temperature by approximately 20F relative to the original setup while keeping noise about the same.
Because the inside of a computer is generating heat, that generated heat has to go somewhere in order for the system to stay cool.
[sarcasm]Whoa! That's way too advanced for me to comprehend. Could you simplify it for me?[/sarcasm]
Nothing you have written is a new concept to me. I have probably spent more time reading heatsink/fan reviews and comparisons than I'd care to remember. I suggest that you check out this paper to get a better understanding of heatsink efficiency calculations.
The difference between a 72 degree room and a 75 degree room can be enough to take an otherwise rock solid system and turn it into something that crashes non-stop.
If you have a system going unstable when the ambient temperature goes up by 3F, then the system is inadequately cooled. It doesn't mean that there is an insurmountable problem, though. Larger heatsinks with better thermal efficiency, fans that move more CFM, and the use of quality heatsink grease (rather than thermal pads) can all work to make systems much more thermally efficient. Often case modifications are in order since many case manufacturers have no clue about cooling and think that vent holes are to be placed in a decorative manner. The secret is to move air through the case efficiently, not just to stir it around.
I moved a couple of months ago, and they don't have AC here. Guess what? I've had to take my computer down a couple of times because the CPU overheated. Your 'so what?' means I don't have a reliable machine until I find a way to make it run cooler.
Unless the temperature in your house is regularly exceeding 100F, you should have no trouble adequately cooling the CPU. Something like a good Thermalright copper heatsink with a Delta fan should have your system plenty cool.
Too bad that's not what the article says in any way, shape, or form.
Too bad that you don't understand CD player technology in any way, shape, or form.
Many high-end audio CD players use CD-ROM drive mechanisms which will be confused by the new formats such that they won't read the audio tracks. The same is true of many in-dash card CD players, which are often based on laptop CD-ROM mechanisms. Consider the JVC that I have in my car. It plays audio CDs, MP3 CD-ROMs, and will read CD-R and R/W discs. It will, almost certainly, not be able to play the new copy protected discs that Sony is releasing.
Thank you so much for that! I've downloaded everything and it looks like it's time for me to start learning perl. Your good commenting practice will make it a lot easier. Perl seems both very powerful and somewhat cryptic at the same time.;-)
And other modifications include...
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Fanwing Planes?
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· Score: 5, Funny
Ironically, the first thing that they'll do is put a big wing on the back of it.
Re:Some corrections and arguments.
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As the Spam Turns
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· Score: 2
Let me start off by saying that you have one very nice piece of software. Kudos.
Then it reduces the DNS address it got to something 'reasonable' and uses that for a message through abuse.net.
While your efforts are admirable, abuse.net is less than universally used -- especially by many foreign domains through which spam is relayed. Many of their postmasters have such a rudimentary command of English that they would probably not even understand a messages that tried to explain something as complicated as their servers being listed on a DNS-based blacklist for spam blocking.
That said, you really should really consider creating a version that:
1. Parses e-mail headers (of spam) to find the correct party to whom complaints should be sent. 2. Sends the complaint. 3. Runs under Windows.
Number 3 is the critical one. What will make companies crack down on spammers is when the complaint rate gets high enough. If one in 10,000 people complain, it's hardly a problem. But if one in 50 complain, then the complaints have to be addressed. Like it or not, Windows is practically universal and that's what would get the complaint rate up.
Looking back on your career, what would you have done differently? Do you have regrets for things you said, things you wrote, or decisions that you made? Are there people that you believe you wronged and, if so, what would you say to them now?
WRONG!!! Alan Brown aka ORBS blocked commerical competition or ISPs that just pissed him off.
WRONG!!! Alan Brown did not block anything. He simply maintained a list. If your ISP used ORBS, then your ISP was blocking the e-mail because it came from a server listed in ORBS. That was the point.
Re:Some corrections and arguments.
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As the Spam Turns
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· Score: 2
After having problems with our firewall blocking incoming emails we got it reconfigured (i.e. someone outside the company). Except once reconfigured it left port 25 wide open, so anyone could connect to our Exchange 5.5 (not my choice) server. Great.
I'm confused. If port 25 was closed, of course it blocked e-mails. That's the port used for SMTP (the protocol used between mail servers). You could not receive normal Internet e-mail if that port was blocked.
Of course no ones configured the server to not accept relays. Why would they? Its blocked by the firewall....
Actualy, almost everyone configures their mail server to not be an open relay. If you block port 25 at the firewall, you get no e-mail (see above). For example, my mail server requires a password on SMTP if the destination address is not local.
My only beef is we didn't get informed that we were being listed. Was only by sheer chance that I found out. Grrrr
Look at the number of systems in those lists. There is simply no feasible way to track down and notify everyone that gets listed. Besides, probably better than half of those listed don't even speak English. Every try to tell someone who only speaks Chinese that their mail server needs reconfiguration? I have and it's not easy.
Some corrections and arguments.
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As the Spam Turns
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· Score: 4, Insightful
We were blocked (wrongly) a while back by some cowboy with a list.
No you were not. As you yourself later point out, people who compile lists don't block anyone.
Practically everyone listed claims that they were "wrongly" listed (and maybe you were). And you will find an astonishing number of "innocent" people in jail if you do a survey of the incarcerated. I have heard proclamations of innocence from multiple people running open relays and from those who claim to have purchased "opt-in" lists of e-mail addresses. In many other cases, these "wrongful" accusations are because some firm had a registration form with some tiny checkbox hidden below the bottom of the screen that, by default, gave them and/or their "business partners" permission to spam. Frankly, if a company tries to deceive its customers that way, then they deserve to be blocked.
The goal of the blockers is to eliminate commercial use of the Internet.
Spoken like a true spammer*. The goal of the blockers is to eliminate theft of bandwidth, storage, and time via spam. They want to make spam unprofitable both for those who send it and those who enable them. In short, they want to stop people from being bombarded with unwanted bulk e-mail delivered at the recipient's expense. What you said is analogous to saying that the goal of store security is to eliminate commercial transactions in stores.
I have a domain on which I employ aggressive anti-spam filtering, based on IP addresses, addressee, content, and header criteria. In the last couple of weeks, I have received commercial e-mail directly related to purchases from Gateway, TigerDirect, MCM Electronics, HP, and Directron. I do a lot of business on the net and rely on e-mail for everything from order confirmations to customer service inquiries. So please don't tell me that my goal is "to eliminate commercial use of the Internet."
We have to move away from relying on an unreliable communication media (email) just to stay in any form of business at all.
All of the firms that I mentioned above rely on e-mail. Dell never seems to get blacklisted. Neither does HP, Directron, Amazon.com, ebay, General Motors, etc. Just what was your firm doing with e-mail? Were you using it to send advertising? If so, how did you compile the list of recipients? Was it from a link that said 'click here to get our advertisements' or was it via some registration form that purported to be for some other purpose (e.g., order placement, tracking, customer survey, contest, etc.)? I just have trouble believing that some blacklist maintainer blocked you because you sent an order confirmation to someone.
* Note that I said "like" -- I'm not accusing you of anything
Slashdot Mirror
preconcieved ideas of what will succeed and what will fail are NOT good things.
Yes, they are. That's what keeps older, experienced engineers from creating the fiascos that plague the dot-com and gaming industries. One of my 40-something friends is regularly called in to bail out the "fresh new talent" to which you refer. I've had to clean up after them. So has just about every engineer over 35.
Running a business is not about taking wild risks because some junior-level software engineer like you thinks he has a "brilliant idea." You want to play? Do it on your own time with your own money.
Experience in technology is only as good as the knowledge you've gained from it.
And much of what you learn in technology has nothing to do with technology itself but is far more valuable. Knowing how to estimate manpower and schedules. Recognizing when a coworker needs assistance -- even when they don't say anything. Knowing how to get a team member back on track without embarassing him/her. Recognizing how much documentation is needed. Being able to predict how many original team members will be left by the end of the project. Knowing how to architect a large software project. These are all things that your typical, self-impressed twenty-something software engineer has learned.
And the most important thing of all: recognizing that youth and cockiness is no substitute for experience. I'd much rather have someone with proven success than someone who tells me how brilliant he is.
By the way, I was once a twenty-something software engineer. Like you, I thought that I was superior to the older, more experienced engineers. I thought that my enthusiasm, energy, and state-of-the-art skills made me invaluable. Guess what. I was as wrong then as you are now and, looking back, I am embarassed by some of the things I did and said back then. Let's hope you live to regret your smug attitude of superiority.
If you find those 55-60yr old software engineers, tell me how adaptable they are. How quickly they are willing to change, how original their ideas are? Can they learn something new as quickly as that 20yr old who is ready to replace them?
Who cares? We can't have every over-50 software engineer unemployed. Don't companies feel any sense of loyalty to their employees? Remember when people used to retire with gold watches after decades of service? It really used to happen. Hollywood didn't make it up. Another damned good argument for a union.
Besides, this is an old argument used to get rid of older workers before they are entitled to pension benefits.
Experience is good, but anything more than 5yrs old is obsolete in IT, so regardless of how much experience you have, if it's more than 5yrs it still only counts for 5.
Spoken like a true twenty-something. Some of the most spectacular failures in the tech sector have been created by buildings full of guys who commute to work on Razor scooters. Five years of experience might teach you what can work, but a couple of decades worth of experience will enable you to see what will probably fail. There is more to IT than knowing how to use the latest C# libraries.
I seriously doubt that anyone is using X86 Solaris in a production environment.
It depends on what you mean by "production environment." If you are referring to massive database servers, then you are probably right. But I have seen it used on development machines and in labs. There is no magic in a Sun box and a decent Dell or Compaq server offers a wonderfully stable platform on which to host Solaris.
Let's blame H1-B because they are all underpaid.
I'm not blaming you for anything. I don't blame you for taking advantage of a situation where the U.S. government allows large companies to employ foreign nationals to keep down costs. I blame the U.S. government.
It took me a week to find a new job, and I even got a signing bonus. Hmmmmm, why would they do this, since they can so nicely underpay me?
Because they can afford to.
Could it be that a degree and experience matters again all of a sudden?
Probably not as much as you would like to believe. I know plenty of people with one, two, or more decades of experience that are looking for work while newbies and H1-B workers are being hired much more quickly. Look around your workplace and see how many 55-60 year old software engineers you see and then tell me about how valuable experience is.
They paid for the massive bandwidth used by those that downloaded it.
It ran on hardware that they did not sell, so they made no money there.
Sun probably cannibalized sales of lower-end (e.g. Sun Blade 100) systems. Those who wanted to run Solaris could do so without having to buy anything from Sun.
All of the risks and no profits. Sun had no quality control over the hardware, so if Joe Blow had a system with flaky RAM that crashed all of the time, he'd probably blame Solaris.
It took a tremendous investment on Sun's part to make a version of Solaris that worked on such a large subsection of x86 boxes. This probably took money and time away from profit-making ventures.
Solaris clearly will not be a serious competitor to Windows or Linux in the x86 market. Sun should never have released it in the first place and charging for it is the only rational compromise between doing the smart thing -- discontinuing it -- and appeasing the masses by giving it away for free.'
But since we (most of the Slashdot readership) do not drive trucks for a living this argument is a moot point.
No, it is not a moot point. It is an analogy. It shows what happens when a union is there to protect employees from unfair hiring practices.
Part of falling being a professional is negotiating your contract with your employer.
You don't get to. Employers aren't going to have staffs of tech people, each of whom bargained for different compensation related to overtime, office accomodations, hours, signing bonuses, severence packages, etc.
If you want overtime, ask for it.
I want a Mercedes Benz company car. I'll ask for that, too. That's the point of collective bargaining. The compensation is not set by the most desperate worker.
If they won't give you the hourly wage requested for overtime, you can always work your required 40 hours and be done with it.
And they can fire you and replace you with someone willing to work 80 hours per week.
You can try and find another position that doesn't require as much overtime (although in this economy it might be damn near impossible)
That's another argument in favor of union contracts. They prevent companies from taking advantage of workers during a bad job market.
If you can't tak ethe heat get out of the kitchen.
And here's the bravado I predicted. So, if I can't deal with excessive overtime, I should just drop out of the tech industry and work at McDonalds? Just give up 20+ years of experience and apply to be laborer on a construction site?
I'll fight you to the bitter end before I let you destroy my profession by unioniziing it.
I would not try to unionize something to destroy it. I would unionize it to improve conditions for the members.
If you want a bigger office go ask for it. Asking for a Union to step in and negotiate office space for you is pretty needless. If you can't have a talk with your boss in a constructive way about your needs then I feel sorry for you. It seems like alot of nerdy types lack the people skills required to carry on normal human conversation.
I am probably both more eloquent and convincing a speaker than are you, so don't talk down to me. You just don't get it. Companies are not going to give you a bigger/nicer office just because you want it. They are not going to piss off 40 of your coworkers by leaving them in cubicles while giving you a corner office from which you will do the same type of work. Have you ever managed professionals before? I have and I can tell you from experience that people will get jealous when a coworker's monitor is 1" larger. If something that petty upsets them, how do you think they would react to one of their own being moved out of a cubicle and into a windowed office?
But then again, it is easy for an Ivy Leaguer to come off as a pompous jackass.
Apparently so.
so now that the union may serve your interests, you are for them? how convenient.
It's not convenience. It's being rational. Of course I am in favor of things that serve my interests. Duh!
Plus, I never said I was anti-union. I said that I initially (and incorrectly) viewed them as blue-collar organizations.
But ask yourself, at the end of the day, how much did the unions really help the steel industry or the coal miners?
Okay, let's look at the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and how they helped the coal miners. They got them the eight-hour day in 1898, collective bargaining rights in 1933, health and retirement benefits in 1946, and health and safety protections in 1969. They have fought for compensation for coal miners with black lung disease and for changes to the work environment (ventilation, scrbbers, water infusion, respirators, etc.) to protect today's miners. They have been at the forefront in pushing for mine safety reforms and rescue equipment.
Then take a look at how the union leaders and their families live.
Of course they live better than the average member. You don't get effective, well-spoken lobbyists, attorneys, and leaders by paying them what the average coal miner earns.
I used to feel the same way. I viewed unions as a blue-collar tool to protect people in low-skill jobs. Then I recognized that skilled professionals like airline pilots were unionized. I have started to realize that it would not be such a bad thing to have a tech workers union.
Can you imagine what the Teamsters would do if companies started bringing in the equivalent of H1-B visa workers to drive trucks at below-normal wages?
If we had a union, do you think that Congress would have been able to pass legislation that specifically exempted hourly computer professionals from receiving 1.5x overtime pay?
Do you think that a union would stand by idly while temp agencies regularly skimmed 30% and more off of the pay earned by immigrants and recent grads in the tech sector?
Do you believe that our industry would consistently lay off older, better-compensated workers only to replace them with recent grads if we had a union?
I know that there is going to a lot of macho posturing on here with people boasting that they are so good that they can set their own terms. But posturing is all that it is. For every 100 people that claim to be in the driver's seat in such contract negotiations, maybe one really is. The majority of companies have standard terms and don't deviate from them except for the most highly compensated corporate officers. Tell them you won't work for them unless they agree to include a buyout clause on your contract and they will tell you to take a hike. Just take a look at the average software engineer's office and compare it to the offices of people in other jobs that require similar quantities of skill and education. Do you think that corporate attorneys regularly sit in cramped cubicles?
The longer I am in this field (now more than 20 years), the more I start to believe a union would be a good thing.
Every programmer who implemented an SMTP server because it was the way things were done, without ever giving a moment's thought to the fact that the design had a barndoor-sized authentication hole in it and needed to be reworked was asking for it.
E-mail is about interoperability. It would do no good to have a proprietary mail server to which no other e-mail provider could communicate. Everyone in the world has thought about this but the e-mail protocols were created at a time when people on the net could be trusted. Now that they no longer can, we need legislation to enforce moral behavior -- just like we have laws in meatspace making it illegal to steal cars, mug people, or pick pockets.
No one was "asking for it" (in regards to spam) any more than a woman in a short skirt is asking to be raped.
There wouldn't even be a place for spam in the world if PKI-based whitelists (just digital signing, not even encryption) were an integral part of the design from the beginning.
So after I advertise my motorcycle for sale on Usenet, who will be replying? I need to know so that I can put them on my whitelist.
When hunting lions it is unwise to dress as a gazelle because the chance you are going to get eaten is a lot greater. And the chance people will give you sympathy is a lot less.
I have sympathy for rape victims, regardless of how they dress. With that kind of caveman view of the world, it's no wonder you post anonymously.
That's why you shouldn't post with your private address, but with an address that you don't care much about.
So I should post my resumé with an e-mail address that I won't check because it will be spammed? Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?
Spammers won't go away, so you better start adapting your life on the net to avoid them.
Start? I run my own mail server and do blacklist lookups against about a dozen spammer and country blacklists. I have sophisticated rule-based processing to find spam that makes its way through. I have autoresponders on retired addresses. I create new addresses for each firm with which I do business online. On web pages I create, I use javascript to disguise the e-mail link. That I should have to do that is absurd. And most people don't have the ability to do that.
Sometimes you have to blame yourself, because after all... you put yourself in that situation.
Bullshit! Some scumball spammer just tried to send e-mail to service@, sale@, tech@, faq@, webmaster@, hr@, sales@, and root@ my domain -- despite the fact that none of those addresses was ever published -- and most were not valid.
You are back to the same old blame-the-victim approach. If someone posts a for-sale ad on Usenet or posts a resumé using their own e-mail address, the person should not blame themselves when some scumball spams them. They should blame the spammer.
You said "spammers won't go away." Yes, they will, once there is effective legislation against spam. Do you get advertisements offering kiddie porn or heroin for sale? Probably not. The reason you don't is because selling those things is illegal. Make spam illegal and the problem will largely go away.
Well, some people ask for it by using their personal email account for signing up on sites, posting on usenet etc.
Yeah, like those rape victims that were asking for it by wearing short skirts.
Nobody 'asked for it'. Don't you even resent the fact that spammers have made it impossible to post on Usenet with a legitimate e-mail address? Doesn't it piss you off that you have to be paranoid if some less-computer-savvy friend tells some web site to mail an article to you or sends you an online greeting card? Don't you get annoyed that every e-mail address that you post, no matter for what reason, get spammed?
Blame the criminals, not the victims.
You can charge more for a product with included source code, with no extra effort on your part.
And Mrs. Fields could give charge extra for cookies that include the recipe. And then she could wonder why a competitor's cookies started looking and tasting so much like hers.
The cost of software production does not go up, and the price goes up, when the source is included, increasing your profit margin.
And what do you do when you find your source code posted on a warez site or a Usenet newsgroup? What's your course of action when you suspect that your competitors have started to look at your code for "inspiration"?
A license isn't worth squat if you don't have a way to audit it and enforce the terms. And that's the problem with selling source code. It's like letting your customers hold a gun to your head so long as they promise not to pull the trigger. It only takes one dishonest customer to ruin everything.
Here is a direct link to the movie:
i ne/lordoftherings/TheTwoTowers-tlr_fs.l.mov
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/newline/gl/newl
This way you can save it to your hard disk (41MB) and not needlessly waste bandwidth (yours, your ISP's, or the host's) every time you want to see it. You can also share it with your friends that don't have broadband by cutting it to a CD. Enjoy.
Let me tell you as someone who knows quite a bit about heating and cooling -- that's not entirely true.
I know a *lot* about heating and cooling of electronics. I just spent the better part of a day modifying the cooling of my system. I have reduced the CPU temperature by approximately 20F relative to the original setup while keeping noise about the same.
Because the inside of a computer is generating heat, that generated heat has to go somewhere in order for the system to stay cool.
[sarcasm]Whoa! That's way too advanced for me to comprehend. Could you simplify it for me?[/sarcasm]
Nothing you have written is a new concept to me. I have probably spent more time reading heatsink/fan reviews and comparisons than I'd care to remember. I suggest that you check out this paper to get a better understanding of heatsink efficiency calculations.
The difference between a 72 degree room and a 75 degree room can be enough to take an otherwise rock solid system and turn it into something that crashes non-stop.
If you have a system going unstable when the ambient temperature goes up by 3F, then the system is inadequately cooled. It doesn't mean that there is an insurmountable problem, though. Larger heatsinks with better thermal efficiency, fans that move more CFM, and the use of quality heatsink grease (rather than thermal pads) can all work to make systems much more thermally efficient. Often case modifications are in order since many case manufacturers have no clue about cooling and think that vent holes are to be placed in a decorative manner. The secret is to move air through the case efficiently, not just to stir it around.
I moved a couple of months ago, and they don't have AC here. Guess what? I've had to take my computer down a couple of times because the CPU overheated. Your 'so what?' means I don't have a reliable machine until I find a way to make it run cooler.
Unless the temperature in your house is regularly exceeding 100F, you should have no trouble adequately cooling the CPU. Something like a good Thermalright copper heatsink with a Delta fan should have your system plenty cool.
Too bad that's not what the article says in any way, shape, or form.
Too bad that you don't understand CD player technology in any way, shape, or form.
Many high-end audio CD players use CD-ROM drive mechanisms which will be confused by the new formats such that they won't read the audio tracks. The same is true of many in-dash card CD players, which are often based on laptop CD-ROM mechanisms. Consider the JVC that I have in my car. It plays audio CDs, MP3 CD-ROMs, and will read CD-R and R/W discs. It will, almost certainly, not be able to play the new copy protected discs that Sony is releasing.
Looks like everything went swimmingly well.
Don't say "swimmingly" when there is a rocket flying over the ocean with a satellite payload. Swimming is the last thing we want the satellite to do.
Thank you so much for that! I've downloaded everything and it looks like it's time for me to start learning perl. Your good commenting practice will make it a lot easier. Perl seems both very powerful and somewhat cryptic at the same time. ;-)
Ironically, the first thing that they'll do is put a big wing on the back of it.
Let me start off by saying that you have one very nice piece of software. Kudos.
Then it reduces the DNS address it got to something 'reasonable' and uses that for a message through abuse.net.
While your efforts are admirable, abuse.net is less than universally used -- especially by many foreign domains through which spam is relayed. Many of their postmasters have such a rudimentary command of English that they would probably not even understand a messages that tried to explain something as complicated as their servers being listed on a DNS-based blacklist for spam blocking.
That said, you really should really consider creating a version that:
1. Parses e-mail headers (of spam) to find the correct party to whom complaints should be sent.
2. Sends the complaint.
3. Runs under Windows.
Number 3 is the critical one. What will make companies crack down on spammers is when the complaint rate gets high enough. If one in 10,000 people complain, it's hardly a problem. But if one in 50 complain, then the complaints have to be addressed. Like it or not, Windows is practically universal and that's what would get the complaint rate up.
Looking back on your career, what would you have done differently? Do you have regrets for things you said, things you wrote, or decisions that you made? Are there people that you believe you wronged and, if so, what would you say to them now?
WRONG!!! Alan Brown aka ORBS blocked commerical competition or ISPs that just pissed him off.
WRONG!!! Alan Brown did not block anything. He simply maintained a list. If your ISP used ORBS, then your ISP was blocking the e-mail because it came from a server listed in ORBS. That was the point.
After having problems with our firewall blocking incoming emails we got it reconfigured (i.e. someone outside the company). Except once reconfigured it left port 25 wide open, so anyone could connect to our Exchange 5.5 (not my choice) server. Great.
I'm confused. If port 25 was closed, of course it blocked e-mails. That's the port used for SMTP (the protocol used between mail servers). You could not receive normal Internet e-mail if that port was blocked.
Of course no ones configured the server to not accept relays. Why would they? Its blocked by the firewall....
Actualy, almost everyone configures their mail server to not be an open relay. If you block port 25 at the firewall, you get no e-mail (see above). For example, my mail server requires a password on SMTP if the destination address is not local.
My only beef is we didn't get informed that we were being listed. Was only by sheer chance that I found out. Grrrr
Look at the number of systems in those lists. There is simply no feasible way to track down and notify everyone that gets listed. Besides, probably better than half of those listed don't even speak English. Every try to tell someone who only speaks Chinese that their mail server needs reconfiguration? I have and it's not easy.
We were blocked (wrongly) a while back by some cowboy with a list.
No you were not. As you yourself later point out, people who compile lists don't block anyone.
Practically everyone listed claims that they were "wrongly" listed (and maybe you were). And you will find an astonishing number of "innocent" people in jail if you do a survey of the incarcerated. I have heard proclamations of innocence from multiple people running open relays and from those who claim to have purchased "opt-in" lists of e-mail addresses. In many other cases, these "wrongful" accusations are because some firm had a registration form with some tiny checkbox hidden below the bottom of the screen that, by default, gave them and/or their "business partners" permission to spam. Frankly, if a company tries to deceive its customers that way, then they deserve to be blocked.
The goal of the blockers is to eliminate commercial use of the Internet.
Spoken like a true spammer*. The goal of the blockers is to eliminate theft of bandwidth, storage, and time via spam. They want to make spam unprofitable both for those who send it and those who enable them. In short, they want to stop people from being bombarded with unwanted bulk e-mail delivered at the recipient's expense. What you said is analogous to saying that the goal of store security is to eliminate commercial transactions in stores.
I have a domain on which I employ aggressive anti-spam filtering, based on IP addresses, addressee, content, and header criteria. In the last couple of weeks, I have received commercial e-mail directly related to purchases from Gateway, TigerDirect, MCM Electronics, HP, and Directron. I do a lot of business on the net and rely on e-mail for everything from order confirmations to customer service inquiries. So please don't tell me that my goal is "to eliminate commercial use of the Internet."
We have to move away from relying on an unreliable communication media (email) just to stay in any form of business at all.
All of the firms that I mentioned above rely on e-mail. Dell never seems to get blacklisted. Neither does HP, Directron, Amazon.com, ebay, General Motors, etc. Just what was your firm doing with e-mail? Were you using it to send advertising? If so, how did you compile the list of recipients? Was it from a link that said 'click here to get our advertisements' or was it via some registration form that purported to be for some other purpose (e.g., order placement, tracking, customer survey, contest, etc.)? I just have trouble believing that some blacklist maintainer blocked you because you sent an order confirmation to someone.
* Note that I said "like" -- I'm not accusing you of anything