Slashdot has a *lot* more users than either though. Although some times it can seem otherwise, the good comments can show though... you just need to browse at +4 and ignore anything posted = 25 minutes after a story is posted.:)
Hey, I browse at +4 already. 90% of my foes are those MMLM people with "free" iPods in their sigs. That has gotten rid of most of the college kids. I'm a subscriber and give bonus points to friends, friend of friends, interesting, informative, yada yada. I've been reading slashdot before it was slashdot, AKA chips and dips. I really like slashdot for the discussions. I wish that there was a more professional side to it. Personally, this topic about nice is way too low for me. I would love to see discussions about software trends, especially things like learning software, cool new APIs or libraries or things like memcached which drives slashdot and other high volume DB based sites. I've used memcached successfully and really like it. I would like to see Linux topics like about the preemptive kernel patches. I like the MySQL/PostgreSQL/Oracle debates, but even those are not lead by very informed people. Basically, I would like a more experienced, professional twist to the discussions. I guess the saying that "Knowledge shared is power lost" is true. The people that know keep it to themselves, while the people that know next to nothing will tell you all about it, with confidence and conviction, yet no working experience is behind the wisdom.
Tanks! Now I'll need to do all that calculation again...
You must be one of my users:)
No, you need to fix the application because if its burning up the filesystem and CPU unnecessarily, I will kill the process until its fixed.
Running a calculation is not something you do on a multi-user system. I can point you to 500+ dedicated processors for that. A simple perl script that is running as a daemon that is written so poorly that it opens and closes files without reading any data from them in an endless or almost endless for loop is ridiculous. I've done a trace on the script before and in about 1 minutes time it opened over 450,000 files, only about 1,000 were unique. The program was buggy, and after killing it multiple times and emailing the user to fix it, he eventually did. Next year, I'll teach the guy that sleep is a native perl function and you do not need to call system("sleep blah"). pkill -u bad_user is a godsend:)
Yeah, and if the game developers are so stressed out, maybe they should write a stress relieving game to enjoy after work.
I envision a game where you can do whatever you want. I mean anything. Kill a cop. Its possible. Rape and/or kill a hooker. Its possible. Steal a car. Its possible. Run people over in your stolen car. Its possible. Shoot people, beat them up, Its possible.
Man, a game like that would sell! I bet they could even make 3 or 4 sequels out of it.
I believe "Open" in the sense of hardware means that you know how it works because its documented. NVidia graphics cards are NOT open. One of my microphone preamps is open. It has a pseudo-schematic that shows the signal flow through the device, so I know what control does what and where it is in the signal path. Without the schematic, I would still be under the assumption that the output knob adjusts the output on both the digital and analog outputs, but the schematic clearly shows me that its only on the analog outputs.
Oh, and those hippie Linux people have opinions regarding open hardware. Its located here: http://www.open-hardware.org/ The site seems slow to me, so you may not be able to view it for long.
I consider myself pretty "new" to the UNIX/Linux world, too, and I've been using some variation since 1993. I'll stop considering myself new when I can remember every command;)
While we are on the topic, is there a market for a slashdot style site that is more geared for computer professionals?
Slashdot has a very smart userbase, and I would not abandon slashdot, but I would like to get away from the highschool and undergrad "know it all" people. Articles like this one are way below anyone who does Linux or UNIX professionally, and when I mention things like this the/. moderators slap me with an overrated moderation.
I'm serious, would there be a target audience of professionals that would like a website geared for them? Does one already exist that I don't know about that has active readers and interactive discussions?
I don't mind refresher stuff either, but UNIX was designed from the beginning to be multi-user and multi-tasking. The top command has a nice column. The manpage for top says:
The nice value of the task. A negative nice value means higher priority, whereas a positive nice value means lower priority. Zero in this field simply means priority will not be adjusted in determining a task's dispatchability.
nice, and renice are common commands for dealing with running processes. top can renice a process as well, which is very handy being that its usually the top process displayed in top that you want to increase or decrease its priority.
If any of this is new to anybody, then they cannot put UNIX or Linux on their resume. BTW, I'm looking for a job. Anybody want a BOFH that knows his stuff?
Some joker writes the world most inefficient Perl script, and then, because it takes forever to run, uses nice to give it a higher priority than it deserves, thus cutting it's runtime down to an acceptable time, rather than just fixing the damn code.
Well, this joker has root access, because only root can increase a priority of a process.
No system I run with multiple users would have such an incompetent person that is allowed to have root access. In fact, when a user writes some broken perl script that burns a processor for days, I do a trace on the procesws to see what it is doing, kill the process and email the user to fix the code.
On a related note, I installed Ubuntu yesterday, and I wanted to use it as a headless box, so I monkeyed with/etc/inittab to try and put it in a runlevel that only provided getty logins and remote logins.
After monkeying with it, I did the standard telinit q to make init reread its config file. Well, telinit q told init to just kill all running processes. Nice feature.
Ubuntu might be OK for a novice who wants to say that they run Linux, but it is not a distro geared for professional use.
Set 'em all to -19, and let the best program win! If they don't have to fight each other for CPU cycles they will grow up weak and feeble.
Very funny. Its like when I'm talking to people that believe in heaven and hell, I just say "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out!"
But back on the topic. Err, I'm new to UNIX/Linux, I've only been using it since 1993, but nice and getpriority() setpriority() and scheduling have been around for a _long_ time.
Debian launches services via the start-stop-daemon program that has the -N|--nicelevel option. RedHat has a function called daemon() in/etc/init.d/functions that takes a nice argument.
In other words, I'm not impressed with the IBM article or with slashdot for printing this. Oh, and the slocate cron job in most Linux distros has been niced to -19 for years. I guess copying and pasting the contents of the cron script is helpful for people that don't have access to a Linux box. Next week, they are going to HTMLize the kernel source for those that can't download that either.
I hate being negative here, but what is the target audience for the IBM article and this slashdot reprinting of it?
I can still grab the text via the source, so here's the gem:
If you click that "accept" button on the routine user's agreement, the proposed law would allow any company from whom you bought upgradable software the freedom to come onto your computer for "detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of or fraudulent or other illegal activities in connection with a network, service, or computer software, including scanning for and removing computer software prescribed under this act."
So, all you have to do is ask the user to install spyware. Shouldn't be too tough.
That is why you pay for 911 service on every single phone, whether you want to or not--if calling 911 is even a consideration, it's probably a damn good idea to just do it.
I am responsible for my health and well being, not the government.
Interesting. I work with computers for a living, which too might be a niche or minority on Slashdot as well.
I'm not a big TV buff, but its nice sometimes to zone and do mindless stuff in front of my 46" TV that is a little ways across the room, so my eyes can focus on something at a different range of distance that I'm accustomed to from working 8+ hours a day in front of a computer.
I'm probably a minority or singularity here on Slashdot because I have friends that come over to my house. They like watching commercial free HD broadcasts on a larger screen vs crowding around a small computer monitor.
Here are some data regarding American TV usage: link.
When 99% of the population owns a TV and on average camps out 4 hours a day in front of it, well the data is probably out of date like I am. I also don't live in my mother's basement. Wow, I'm really starting to feel old:)
After one grand jury failed to indict Goetz, a white, middle-class victim of a previous armed robbery, for shooting and critically wounding several African-American teenagers whom Goetz said had threatened him with a sharpened screwdriver on a subway car, the New York prosecutor submitted the case to a second grand jury, which did indict Goetz. Goetz was acquitted of all charges except illegally carrying the handgun he had used to defend himself, and served jail time on those gun charges.
The bar has been raised. You now have to kill all involved, including witnesses, and either do it in a place without surveillance or you have to destroy the surveillance data, and then kill anyone who could attest to the destruction of the surveillance data.
Granted, Goetz did not follow the laws for carrying a handgun, and I don't know what those are. I would guess that they vary from state to state, and are very complicated, and even if you legally shoot someone, a) its not an easy task. Some people never get used to killing other people, despite the practice. b) Its not a cut and dry thing, and the odds are much greater that you will have legal problems being the victim vs being the criminal.
As laptops get cheaper, there are more people with them...ergo greater likelyhood for theft.
As laptops get cheaper, there are more people with them, thus there is little demand for a laptop when a) they are cheap and b) everybody has one pretty much goes down.
One thing that gets me about the stolen goods market, is that the stuff that is paid for outright, has a stolen goods market value of anywhere between 1/10th to 1/4 the price that honest people pay for the stuff. I would estimate that my $2500 laptop would have a crackhead value of at most $100 to $250.
On a similar note, I have read that the hurricane in New Orleans has pretty much eliminated common crime and theft. Everybody had to move away, and now there are no social welfare programs so people have to work for a living if you want to live there. Never heard of such a thing before.
We are not living in an impoverished country, and jobs (not necessarily six-figure, but jobs nonetheless), government aid, and private help systems (think food drives and charity locations) are readily available.
The unfortunate thing is that a 40 hr/wk job paying $300-$400, or waiting in line all day long or days or weeks for government aid, does not seem like something a smart person would do vs spending 5 to 30 minutes a week scoping out an easy target and make between $200 and $500 by performing a simple theft where the odds of any negative consequences are about 0. An overachiever could work 30 minutes to 2 hours a week and could come out with $2k/wk in high demand stolen goods.
Needless to say, they're now locked into a 5 year multi-million dollar contract, AND have hired back new system admins to replace the layoffs. I'm not bitter... But it still makes me smile anyway... =)
I knew the moral of the story after reading the line I was laid off in the fall of 2004 because it was determined that the company could outsource our System Admins and Database Admins to a domestic contractor and co-locate to save a couple bucks in the long run.
I've heard this story over and over again, and I'm sure it won't be the last time either.
So, to all those CIOs, MBAs, and suits out there, listen up.
Running customized and complex computer systems and networks takes expertise and man hours. At this time, it is not something that can be easily outsourced. I've never known computer systems to go down in size or complexity, but rather the inverse seems to always be the case. Sure, when your systems are running perfectly, and there are no issues, that is because your admins are doing a good job.
Entropy happens, bugs get fixed in software, only to introduce new bugs. Security is a moving target, and requires updates or some other kind of fix to get around new problems. The day you can just buy a system, hire some installers, and lock the server room. My job will be obsolete. But I know of nowhere where you can up and buy such a thing beyond something like a simple POS system, or some other closed/embedded system that has a single purpose. And if you did, its not going to be cheap, and odds are it will not work as advertised either.
I guess I'm not smart like the all of the EFF people.
If someone can demonstrate even a simple example where a patent benefitted someone, feel free to give that single example. In my experience with patents, there are only higher prices and fewer opportunities to obtain the patented item. Take something as simple as the patent that Symbol has on a bar scan reader with a finger operated trigger.
Bar codes are old technology, basically a commodity item. They started in the mid to late 70s by IBM. Quickly they have become standardized across almost all industries, at least at the consumer retail level. Mainstream adoption of barcodes took until the mid to late 80s, and now almost every retail outlet from a gas station, clothing store, grocery store, hardware store, just about everything uses bar codes.
If you want to have the convenience of a bar code reader that is more flexible for things like large items which cannot easily be lifted onto a stationary scanner, or if you are doing mobile bar code reading with a battery operated device like for inventory and warehouse use, the battery will go quickly go dead and inadverantly scan things the user does not want scanned, etc. Not to mention that laser light is not good for human eyes. So, its a requirement for the user to be able to turn the laser on and off. Well, to do that you have 2 choices.
1) Pay more for such a simple technology and buy it directly from Symbol, which most people do. I estimate that over 90% of all triggered bar code readers are sold by Symbol.
2) Pay more for such a simple technology and buy it from another company that must charge more for the item to cover the licensing of the patented technology from Symbol.
Symbol "wins" only in that they make more money by having a government sanctioned monopoly on the technology. Every user of bar code reader with a trigger and other companies that are in a similar business loses. The real cost for the electronics for such a device is less than $25. There are additional costs for the quality of the electronics and housing in terms of environmental extremes, g forces from being dropped, etc. The cheapest that these things sell for is about $200, and they can go up to well over $2k. Much of that cost is due to licensing of the completely obvious and necessary component for proper operation of the device, a finger operated trigger.
Offtopic, but its sunday and not much action is going on here.
Yes, Americans do pay less for gas than probably anywhere else in the world, but like everything else, things are relative. Here are the differences between your gas price and ours:
1) We use more, we get volume discount.
2) We essentially own much of the oil in either owning companies like Exxon, and we do produce 40% of our own oil.
3) We drive more. Its a cultural thing. Public transportation is almost taboo here.
4) Another cultural thing, senior citizens "need" a 4x4 to drive to the grocery store, Wal-Mart, and church. No, I'm not making that up.
I'm sure there are other things as well, but that should be a good start.
Very idealistic. However, few organizations have a purpose of putting themselves out of business.
I'm not sure how many people know what goes on at NASA, but they have already put themselves out of business.
NASA is now more or less a mismanagement organization. Give me a second before you stop reading and hit the flamebait button. NASA for the most part is old. Very old in terms of technology. Most of the equipment they have is 20 to 40 years old. Because of the 8-10 year budget threats, they don't have many direct employees anymore, but instead they pay more for outside contractors to do their work for them, and the NASA people manages them. There is tension between the two camps. The "real" NASA people are paid less than the contractors, but they have chips on their shoulder, because they are "real" NASA people. The contractors have a psychological disadvantage because the reason they are contractors is so that NASA can get rid of them at any time. Its difficult to get rid of a government job once its formed, so they have renewable contracts that can be terminated at the end of any given contract. The "real" NASA employees pretty much stay at NASA. There are not a bunch of fresh minds and ideas that come into the agency, and it shows because they don't do much new stuff anymore. They used to do space stuff, and had a number of new programs. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, then Space Shuttle, then ???? OK, there is/was the International Space Station and Hubble. ISS is/was a flop. Hubble is supposed to be decommissioned. The Space Shuttle keeps blowing up, and its 1960s and 1970s technology. Its currently 2006.
Some of my views are a little skewed because my local NASA center is the ghetto of centers. It used to be important back in the days of the Mercury and other programs, but Johnson moved most of their responsibilities to, hmm, the Johnson NASA center in Texas. Gotta love those arrogant Texans.
Personally, I believe that NASA should focus on the first A in their name. Aeronautics. Humans are worse off hanging around in space than they are here on earth underwater. People don't have too much interest in exploring and living underwater despite the fact that most of the planet is covered in the stuff, and people even like water. Waterfront property is about the most expensive that there is. Why people are interested in living in space, which is similar but worse than living underwater is beyond me. Just ask Kevin Cosner:)
So, aside from satellites and telescopes and things like that in space, I don't see to much interest for us land people to go out there much anymore. Aeronautics too is pretty much done. I mean, we can fly pretty fucking fast. The SR71, which is 1970s technology hauls ass.
So, I guess that like land travel, the only thing is in more efficient or better energy requirements. We can already haul ass on land too, but its not cost effective.
Slashdot Mirror
I know it's asinine, but I don't think you're actually raping a hooker if you're paying for it =p
No. Rape is a heinous crime that is typically defined something like unconsented sex that is obtained via force, threat, or intimidation.
Prostitution is roughly defined as consented sex with a specific location and dollar amount for a specific act of sex.
immoral about it, apart from the murdering and stealing and stuff
Since when is it now immoral to kill and steal?
At worst, they are a PITA if you get caught doing these acts by the wrong people.
as a great public work, that would help accrue, consolidate, and maintain power for the ruling classes thru the use of "surplus" labor.
So, what are you saying? Homeland Security is a social welfare program for the overpopulation of incompetent MCSEs?
Slashdot has a *lot* more users than either though. Although some times it can seem otherwise, the good comments can show though... you just need to browse at +4 and ignore anything posted = 25 minutes after a story is posted. :)
Hey, I browse at +4 already. 90% of my foes are those MMLM people with "free" iPods in their sigs. That has gotten rid of most of the college kids. I'm a subscriber and give bonus points to friends, friend of friends, interesting, informative, yada yada. I've been reading slashdot before it was slashdot, AKA chips and dips. I really like slashdot for the discussions. I wish that there was a more professional side to it. Personally, this topic about nice is way too low for me. I would love to see discussions about software trends, especially things like learning software, cool new APIs or libraries or things like memcached which drives slashdot and other high volume DB based sites. I've used memcached successfully and really like it. I would like to see Linux topics like about the preemptive kernel patches. I like the MySQL/PostgreSQL/Oracle debates, but even those are not lead by very informed people. Basically, I would like a more experienced, professional twist to the discussions. I guess the saying that "Knowledge shared is power lost" is true. The people that know keep it to themselves, while the people that know next to nothing will tell you all about it, with confidence and conviction, yet no working experience is behind the wisdom.
Tanks! Now I'll need to do all that calculation again...
:)
:)
You must be one of my users
No, you need to fix the application because if its burning up the filesystem and CPU unnecessarily, I will kill the process until its fixed.
Running a calculation is not something you do on a multi-user system. I can point you to 500+ dedicated processors for that. A simple perl script that is running as a daemon that is written so poorly that it opens and closes files without reading any data from them in an endless or almost endless for loop is ridiculous. I've done a trace on the script before and in about 1 minutes time it opened over 450,000 files, only about 1,000 were unique. The program was buggy, and after killing it multiple times and emailing the user to fix it, he eventually did. Next year, I'll teach the guy that sleep is a native perl function and you do not need to call system("sleep blah"). pkill -u bad_user is a godsend
BOFH I am.
Yeah, and if the game developers are so stressed out, maybe they should write a stress relieving game to enjoy after work.
I envision a game where you can do whatever you want. I mean anything. Kill a cop. Its possible. Rape and/or kill a hooker. Its possible. Steal a car. Its possible. Run people over in your stolen car. Its possible. Shoot people, beat them up, Its possible.
Man, a game like that would sell! I bet they could even make 3 or 4 sequels out of it.
I believe "Open" in the sense of hardware means that you know how it works because its documented. NVidia graphics cards are NOT open. One of my microphone preamps is open. It has a pseudo-schematic that shows the signal flow through the device, so I know what control does what and where it is in the signal path. Without the schematic, I would still be under the assumption that the output knob adjusts the output on both the digital and analog outputs, but the schematic clearly shows me that its only on the analog outputs.
Oh, and those hippie Linux people have opinions regarding open hardware. Its located here: http://www.open-hardware.org/ The site seems slow to me, so you may not be able to view it for long.
I'm a fan of open stuff. It makes my life better.
I consider myself pretty "new" to the UNIX/Linux world, too, and I've been using some variation since 1993. I'll stop considering myself new when I can remember every command ;)
/. moderators slap me with an overrated moderation.
While we are on the topic, is there a market for a slashdot style site that is more geared for computer professionals?
Slashdot has a very smart userbase, and I would not abandon slashdot, but I would like to get away from the highschool and undergrad "know it all" people. Articles like this one are way below anyone who does Linux or UNIX professionally, and when I mention things like this the
I'm serious, would there be a target audience of professionals that would like a website geared for them? Does one already exist that I don't know about that has active readers and interactive discussions?
I don't mind refresher stuff either, but UNIX was designed from the beginning to be multi-user and multi-tasking. The top command has a nice column. The manpage for top says:
The nice value of the task. A negative nice value means higher priority, whereas a positive nice value means lower priority. Zero in this field simply means priority will not be adjusted in determining a task's dispatchability.
nice, and renice are common commands for dealing with running processes. top can renice a process as well, which is very handy being that its usually the top process displayed in top that you want to increase or decrease its priority.
If any of this is new to anybody, then they cannot put UNIX or Linux on their resume. BTW, I'm looking for a job. Anybody want a BOFH that knows his stuff?
Some joker writes the world most inefficient Perl script, and then, because it takes forever to run, uses nice to give it a higher priority than it deserves, thus cutting it's runtime down to an acceptable time, rather than just fixing the damn code.
Well, this joker has root access, because only root can increase a priority of a process.
No system I run with multiple users would have such an incompetent person that is allowed to have root access. In fact, when a user writes some broken perl script that burns a processor for days, I do a trace on the procesws to see what it is doing, kill the process and email the user to fix the code.
Yes, I'm a BOFH, and proud of it!
On a related note, I installed Ubuntu yesterday, and I wanted to use it as a headless box, so I monkeyed with
After monkeying with it, I did the standard telinit q to make init reread its config file. Well, telinit q told init to just kill all running processes. Nice feature.
Ubuntu might be OK for a novice who wants to say that they run Linux, but it is not a distro geared for professional use.
Set 'em all to -19, and let the best program win! If they don't have to fight each other for CPU cycles they will grow up weak and feeble.
/etc/init.d/functions that takes a nice argument.
Very funny. Its like when I'm talking to people that believe in heaven and hell, I just say "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out!"
But back on the topic. Err, I'm new to UNIX/Linux, I've only been using it since 1993, but nice and getpriority() setpriority() and scheduling have been around for a _long_ time.
Debian launches services via the start-stop-daemon program that has the -N|--nicelevel option. RedHat has a function called daemon() in
In other words, I'm not impressed with the IBM article or with slashdot for printing this. Oh, and the slocate cron job in most Linux distros has been niced to -19 for years. I guess copying and pasting the contents of the cron script is helpful for people that don't have access to a Linux box. Next week, they are going to HTMLize the kernel source for those that can't download that either.
I hate being negative here, but what is the target audience for the IBM article and this slashdot reprinting of it?
You don't need a concealed permit to carry a gun/have one in your house. You would (In most places) need one to have it in a car (trunk aside).
This is wayy offtopic, but I'm at work, and it would probably be better to keep my gun in a bag or some kind of concealed place vs a holster.
Actually, maybe a loaded holster would facilitate coworker conflicts. Hmm...
it appears to be another fine example of an application developed for IE.
I use Safari, and that is when I noticed the DRM.
I'm awaiting the FBI to come to my work or home because I copied and pasted a paragraph of text with full attribution of the original source.
Actually, I hear them at the door now, and my gun is in the car. Why didn't I get a concealed permit?
1) What does MS know about preventing spyware aside from charging extra for it in an upcoming newly released service?
2) $1mil fine is not sufficient. Its still very profitable to break into a computer and steal over a million dollars worth of information.
From the real FA that does not allow copy and pasting from their website via a DRM like mechanism, documented here:
* Disable select-text script- © Dynamic Drive (www.dynamicdrive.com)
* This notice MUST stay intact for legal use
* Visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ for full source code
*/
I can still grab the text via the source, so here's the gem:
If you click that "accept" button on the routine user's agreement, the proposed law would allow any company from whom you bought upgradable software the freedom to come onto your computer for "detection or prevention of the unauthorized use of or fraudulent or other illegal activities in connection with a network, service, or computer software, including scanning for and removing computer software prescribed under this act."
So, all you have to do is ask the user to install spyware. Shouldn't be too tough.
Good law!
That is why you pay for 911 service on every single phone, whether you want to or not--if calling 911 is even a consideration, it's probably a damn good idea to just do it.
I am responsible for my health and well being, not the government.
Oh, and what if the 911 operator doesn't feel like helping?
No, you're only the last person on Slashdot.
:)
Interesting. I work with computers for a living, which too might be a niche or minority on Slashdot as well.
I'm not a big TV buff, but its nice sometimes to zone and do mindless stuff in front of my 46" TV that is a little ways across the room, so my eyes can focus on something at a different range of distance that I'm accustomed to from working 8+ hours a day in front of a computer.
I'm probably a minority or singularity here on Slashdot because I have friends that come over to my house. They like watching commercial free HD broadcasts on a larger screen vs crowding around a small computer monitor.
Here are some data regarding American TV usage: link.
When 99% of the population owns a TV and on average camps out 4 hours a day in front of it, well the data is probably out of date like I am. I also don't live in my mother's basement. Wow, I'm really starting to feel old
After one grand jury failed to indict Goetz, a white, middle-class victim of a previous armed robbery, for shooting and critically wounding several African-American teenagers whom Goetz said had threatened him with a sharpened screwdriver on a subway car, the New York prosecutor submitted the case to a second grand jury, which did indict Goetz. Goetz was acquitted of all charges except illegally carrying the handgun he had used to defend himself, and served jail time on those gun charges.
Borrowed from here: http://www.pulpless.com/jneil/indefnra.html
The bar has been raised. You now have to kill all involved, including witnesses, and either do it in a place without surveillance or you have to destroy the surveillance data, and then kill anyone who could attest to the destruction of the surveillance data.
Granted, Goetz did not follow the laws for carrying a handgun, and I don't know what those are. I would guess that they vary from state to state, and are very complicated, and even if you legally shoot someone, a) its not an easy task. Some people never get used to killing other people, despite the practice. b) Its not a cut and dry thing, and the odds are much greater that you will have legal problems being the victim vs being the criminal.
As laptops get cheaper, there are more people with them...ergo greater likelyhood for theft.
As laptops get cheaper, there are more people with them, thus there is little demand for a laptop when a) they are cheap and b) everybody has one pretty much goes down.
One thing that gets me about the stolen goods market, is that the stuff that is paid for outright, has a stolen goods market value of anywhere between 1/10th to 1/4 the price that honest people pay for the stuff. I would estimate that my $2500 laptop would have a crackhead value of at most $100 to $250.
On a similar note, I have read that the hurricane in New Orleans has pretty much eliminated common crime and theft. Everybody had to move away, and now there are no social welfare programs so people have to work for a living if you want to live there. Never heard of such a thing before.
We are not living in an impoverished country, and jobs (not necessarily six-figure, but jobs nonetheless), government aid, and private help systems (think food drives and charity locations) are readily available.
The unfortunate thing is that a 40 hr/wk job paying $300-$400, or waiting in line all day long or days or weeks for government aid, does not seem like something a smart person would do vs spending 5 to 30 minutes a week scoping out an easy target and make between $200 and $500 by performing a simple theft where the odds of any negative consequences are about 0. An overachiever could work 30 minutes to 2 hours a week and could come out with $2k/wk in high demand stolen goods.
Am I the last person on the planet that watches TV on a TV?
Am I the only person on the planet that uses a DVR on a TV?
Needless to say, they're now locked into a 5 year multi-million dollar contract, AND have hired back new system admins to replace the layoffs. I'm not bitter... But it still makes me smile anyway... =)
I knew the moral of the story after reading the line I was laid off in the fall of 2004 because it was determined that the company could outsource our System Admins and Database Admins to a domestic contractor and co-locate to save a couple bucks in the long run.
I've heard this story over and over again, and I'm sure it won't be the last time either.
So, to all those CIOs, MBAs, and suits out there, listen up.
Running customized and complex computer systems and networks takes expertise and man hours. At this time, it is not something that can be easily outsourced. I've never known computer systems to go down in size or complexity, but rather the inverse seems to always be the case. Sure, when your systems are running perfectly, and there are no issues, that is because your admins are doing a good job.
Entropy happens, bugs get fixed in software, only to introduce new bugs. Security is a moving target, and requires updates or some other kind of fix to get around new problems. The day you can just buy a system, hire some installers, and lock the server room. My job will be obsolete. But I know of nowhere where you can up and buy such a thing beyond something like a simple POS system, or some other closed/embedded system that has a single purpose. And if you did, its not going to be cheap, and odds are it will not work as advertised either.
"Are patents evil?"
EFF: "Yes."
Microsoft: "No."
Smart Person: "Depends..."
I guess I'm not smart like the all of the EFF people.
If someone can demonstrate even a simple example where a patent benefitted someone, feel free to give that single example. In my experience with patents, there are only higher prices and fewer opportunities to obtain the patented item. Take something as simple as the patent that Symbol has on a bar scan reader with a finger operated trigger.
Bar codes are old technology, basically a commodity item. They started in the mid to late 70s by IBM. Quickly they have become standardized across almost all industries, at least at the consumer retail level. Mainstream adoption of barcodes took until the mid to late 80s, and now almost every retail outlet from a gas station, clothing store, grocery store, hardware store, just about everything uses bar codes.
If you want to have the convenience of a bar code reader that is more flexible for things like large items which cannot easily be lifted onto a stationary scanner, or if you are doing mobile bar code reading with a battery operated device like for inventory and warehouse use, the battery will go quickly go dead and inadverantly scan things the user does not want scanned, etc. Not to mention that laser light is not good for human eyes. So, its a requirement for the user to be able to turn the laser on and off. Well, to do that you have 2 choices.
1) Pay more for such a simple technology and buy it directly from Symbol, which most people do. I estimate that over 90% of all triggered bar code readers are sold by Symbol.
2) Pay more for such a simple technology and buy it from another company that must charge more for the item to cover the licensing of the patented technology from Symbol.
Symbol "wins" only in that they make more money by having a government sanctioned monopoly on the technology. Every user of bar code reader with a trigger and other companies that are in a similar business loses. The real cost for the electronics for such a device is less than $25. There are additional costs for the quality of the electronics and housing in terms of environmental extremes, g forces from being dropped, etc. The cheapest that these things sell for is about $200, and they can go up to well over $2k. Much of that cost is due to licensing of the completely obvious and necessary component for proper operation of the device, a finger operated trigger.
i'm not thinking entirely straight this morning.
See if I care: I *already* pay $5/gallon *now*...
/ gas_vs_oil_price_comparison.htm
Offtopic, but its sunday and not much action is going on here.
Yes, Americans do pay less for gas than probably anywhere else in the world, but like everything else, things are relative. Here are the differences between your gas price and ours:
1) We use more, we get volume discount.
2) We essentially own much of the oil in either owning companies like Exxon, and we do produce 40% of our own oil.
3) We drive more. Its a cultural thing. Public transportation is almost taboo here.
4) Another cultural thing, senior citizens "need" a 4x4 to drive to the grocery store, Wal-Mart, and church. No, I'm not making that up.
I'm sure there are other things as well, but that should be a good start.
Back to the relativity part, gas prices are going up here, but we don't get paid more at our job because of it. Here is a graph of historical gas prices: http://inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate
The real question, "How does this effect the price of tea in China?"
Very idealistic. However, few organizations have a purpose of putting themselves out of business.
:)
I'm not sure how many people know what goes on at NASA, but they have already put themselves out of business.
NASA is now more or less a mismanagement organization. Give me a second before you stop reading and hit the flamebait button. NASA for the most part is old. Very old in terms of technology. Most of the equipment they have is 20 to 40 years old. Because of the 8-10 year budget threats, they don't have many direct employees anymore, but instead they pay more for outside contractors to do their work for them, and the NASA people manages them. There is tension between the two camps. The "real" NASA people are paid less than the contractors, but they have chips on their shoulder, because they are "real" NASA people. The contractors have a psychological disadvantage because the reason they are contractors is so that NASA can get rid of them at any time. Its difficult to get rid of a government job once its formed, so they have renewable contracts that can be terminated at the end of any given contract. The "real" NASA employees pretty much stay at NASA. There are not a bunch of fresh minds and ideas that come into the agency, and it shows because they don't do much new stuff anymore. They used to do space stuff, and had a number of new programs. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, then Space Shuttle, then ???? OK, there is/was the International Space Station and Hubble. ISS is/was a flop. Hubble is supposed to be decommissioned. The Space Shuttle keeps blowing up, and its 1960s and 1970s technology. Its currently 2006.
Some of my views are a little skewed because my local NASA center is the ghetto of centers. It used to be important back in the days of the Mercury and other programs, but Johnson moved most of their responsibilities to, hmm, the Johnson NASA center in Texas. Gotta love those arrogant Texans.
Personally, I believe that NASA should focus on the first A in their name. Aeronautics. Humans are worse off hanging around in space than they are here on earth underwater. People don't have too much interest in exploring and living underwater despite the fact that most of the planet is covered in the stuff, and people even like water. Waterfront property is about the most expensive that there is. Why people are interested in living in space, which is similar but worse than living underwater is beyond me. Just ask Kevin Cosner
So, aside from satellites and telescopes and things like that in space, I don't see to much interest for us land people to go out there much anymore. Aeronautics too is pretty much done. I mean, we can fly pretty fucking fast. The SR71, which is 1970s technology hauls ass.
So, I guess that like land travel, the only thing is in more efficient or better energy requirements. We can already haul ass on land too, but its not cost effective.
Bah, my ramblings on a Sunday morning.