Mmost programmers don't have any source of pride to recheck their work. They just write the crap and assume it will work. A long time back I needed to write a machine language checkerboard memory test for a Honeywell H316 minicomputer. I revised the program several times after inspecting my code and managed to get it to run perfect the first time in only 23 lines of code. Check your code many times and your software won't have problems.
I supervised 36 people in an Air Force computer shop that maintained about 12 different mainframe systems. My techs knew more than I did about those systems. My job as I saw it was to find ways to achieve the best performance from those 36 people. It didn't mean diddly if I didn't know those systems. What mattered is how well I could get the overall picture from those people to derive a good plan. You don't have to be "the expert in everything" to be a good IT manager. You just have to know who the experts are and to rely on their input.
The usual problem with NIX distributions is the driver support. The hardware manufacturers have to develop drivers for many platforms, and as a result, do not write drivers for "non mainstream" OSs.
The hardware manufacturers need to tell the OS companies "Enough is enough! Instead of us writing drivers your way, you need to utilize a standard that is cross platform!"
Driver files should be something like a simple CSV file that describes the attributes of the device and how it can be utilized.
For example, the first field would be for Firewire capability. 0 would indicate it's not firewire capable. 1 would indicate firewire 400 capability, 2 would indicate firewire 800 capability, and you could add other values for future firewire speed bumps. Same thing goes for the various USB speeds out there. Need to specify the maximum display size or refresh rate of a display? Simple, have fields for those attributes with numbers indicating the capability.
That way the manufacturers only have to write ONE driver that will work on any OS.
The hardware manufacturers need to force the OS companies to come up with a standard. Only upon having a standard will you see less OS crashes and hardware no longer functioning after you upgrade.
I don't worry about cookies. Almost 100% of the sites I visit use them to indicate which forum posts I have read or to identify myself so I don't have to repeatedly provide my credentials.
I've been surfing the net since 1994 and have not had my identity stolen or seen adverse affects due to accepting cookies. Those who worry so much about cookies are wearing tin foil hats. If you are so worried about cookies use an anomymozing service. Myself, I'll let the cookies continue to help my surfing experience and leave the tin foil hats to the nervous virgins.
If you are visiting porn sites and are worried about your privacy, well by all means block cookies. But when you visit legitimate sites you visits on a daily basis accept the cookies that are designed to help you. I use a different browser for those Pr0n sites and I do block cookies on those. For the sites I visit daily, I use my normal browser and accept cookies.
Most technical writers do not write as they speak, and they do not write in simple step 1,2,3 steps.
I wrote many maintenance manuals in the Air Force and my coworkers never had any problems following the procedures in my manuals. The secret to authoring an effective technical manual is not rocket science. Write as you would speak, and have simple 1,2,3, etc steps. The average reader will not have any problem understanding your writing. And yes, I did not run this through a grammar or spelling checker. I write as I speak.
MS flew me to Redmond for tech support lead for MS press. I thought the interview went great. The questions that they threw at me did not throw me off at all. I was very relaxed in the interviews and was positive I had the job.
I was told later that "My management style did not fit them." I think it was because I was asked "If there was an error in a MS press book, would you recall the book?" I said, "If it would cause a catastrophic loss of the customer's data I would."
I think my honesty in admitting my integrity versus corporate profits cost me the job. Oh well, I'm happy in my current job (doing OSX server and client admin)
I don't think so, I'm on a Mac. If the advertisers weren't so darned persistant on putting out ads whose visual frequency caused health problems (my heart races at the fast refreshes) I would put up with them. Until then, screw you, you created your own problem. I'll continue to use ad blocker.
I was having symptons (tingling in wring). What I have found is that once you have your monitor and keyboard on the desk, there is little room for your arms. That results in your wrist being bent, and that is what causes the problem.
A computer desk with a surface deep enough to provide adequate space is hard to find. I solved that by C clamping a large (3' x 3') piece of wood to the computer desk. Now my arms are flat on the table when I use the mouse and I don't have problems anymore.
In your utility closet, have central surge protection for your phone and cable. It's far cheaper to buy industrial strength suppressors for your phone and cable modem than to have individual suppressors. If this will also house your server, put in a good UPS.
I've running web and FTP services from a 600Mhz G3 iBook with only 384MB of memory on OS 10.3 server. True, I'm not running something along the lines of./, but for the infrequently hit web server you really don't need a lot of hardware.
I support over 400 Macs at my college. In any given year I have to get warranty repair (we purchase the 3-year warranties) done for less than 8 Macs. We're talking 4% or less failure rate. I don't think you will find comcrap, mini-itx, or hell computer suppliers with a lesser failure rate.
If you are an authorized apple service provider like we are, you can get the apple partscare agreement (APA). It's like the 3-year Apple Protection Plan (APP) warranty, but we do the warranty labor and they provide the parts, and the APA cost is significantly less than the APP
Uninen is right. But what he forgot to mention is the support issues.
My windows counterpart on campus supports somewhere between 150 and 200 PCs and he is swamped with work.
I support over 400 Macs and most days I am bored because my customers don't need my help. Hell, if I have three support calls in one day it is a busy day for me.
It's not just the hardware folks. It's the OS, well-written apps, and lack of a need for tech support that spell out the true story. And this is coming from a former MCSE who though Win2K was the hottest stuff since sliced bread. Mod parent up.
Several reasons 1. It "just works". I had never seen one before and within 5 minutes I had the iPod figured out. I had played with other MP3 players friends had and they were too confusing. 2. It synced beautifully with my existing music collection. 3. Small enough to fit into my pocket. 4. As a Mac support tech, I can boot Macs off of it and copy over the user's data when there OS is messed up. I don't see any other MP3 players that will let me do that. 5. A small 30GB external drive for storing large files!
As I mentioned in a previous reply, we are 75% Macs at Alma College. Yes, Macs cost more initially, so why do we use them? Return on investment (ROI). I maintain 400 Macs and rarely have any work to do and my customers are happy. My windows counterpart (whose customers are mostly administrative staff running windows apps) maintains 150 PCs, is swamped with work, and the customers are disgruntled.
That $500 difference between a PC and a Mac is quickly reduced when you take into account reduced productivity, OS crashes, spyware, viruses, and the other multiplitude of crap when dealing with windows.
Yes, I must confess. I was a windows fanatic before I started this job supporting the Macs. Some windows people may see me as "a wierdo", but I consider myself to have become "enlightened."
My customers have almost no problems and they're happy campers. There are some things money just can't buy when you try to skimp by buying a cheap PC.
At Alma College most of the computers (75%) are Macs running OSX. Most of the windows users are the administrative staff.
The professors would fight like hell if the labs went to windows. They love how easy it is for student to create multimedia and seamlessly create that content on the students' web sites.
What does Gentoo do? I saw some posts where they say DTP (desktop publishing?) and other google searches hint that it is a file management system. What is this beast and might it help me boost my productivity on OSX?
Yes, but you must realize that most of the iTunes store is U.S. (read English language) music. As iTunes gets more foreign language music online the purchases will probably increase overseas.
Don't confuse download ratios with what is available and what the customer wants.
If I ever get my hands on the little teenage script kiddy bastards who created these bots I will personally strangle their damned windpipes!
I was in the process yesterday of trying to upgrade 300 OSX clients and this little shithead wasted several hours of my time. and also time for my customers.
If I catch one of these little teenage assholes responsible I will rip their testicles off with a pair of wire cutters and feed what was left to the damned possums and racoons in this area.
I just want to see these assholes killed! I'm tired of these little bastards creating hours of work for IT dealing with their childish pranks. You hear me script kiddies reading this? No jury for you! I will provide judicial punshment myself if I find you!
In 10.3 the device appears in your finder (equivalent to windows explorer) with an eject icon next to it. Click on the icon and the device is removed and you can unplug it. It's that simple.
All my mac lab machines are partitioned into two drives. The "temporary storage" partition can be read and wrote to by anyone. This is critical is you will have video or audio editing apps. You do not want them fill up the boot drive under the student account.
The students are warned that anyone can delete files on the 2nd partition and they have a 200MB quota on their network share, However, more and more they require large scratch disk places for their college projects. The 2nd partition is critical to allow flexibility for the students who are working on large files.
Having had to fix several relatives' PCs that were infected with viruses, I say that judicial procedures are too lenient on these bastards.
Just announce on a website that virus authors frequent to watch a particular webcam broadcast.
In that the virus writer is led into a room followed by many computer support techs, and the viewers get to see the writer beaten to death for the thousands of hours he caused them due to his viruws/worm.
A jail sentence is too lenient for these little shitheads. Beat them to death. I'm tired of dealing with the after affects of their irresponsibility. Now to get all my relatives switched over to macs and OSX....
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Mmost programmers don't have any source of pride to recheck their work. They just write the crap and assume it will work. A long time back I needed to write a machine language checkerboard memory test for a Honeywell H316 minicomputer. I revised the program several times after inspecting my code and managed to get it to run perfect the first time in only 23 lines of code. Check your code many times and your software won't have problems.
Accept it for inner peace.......
I supervised 36 people in an Air Force computer shop that maintained about 12 different mainframe systems. My techs knew more than I did about those systems. My job as I saw it was to find ways to achieve the best performance from those 36 people. It didn't mean diddly if I didn't know those systems. What mattered is how well I could get the overall picture from those people to derive a good plan. You don't have to be "the expert in everything" to be a good IT manager. You just have to know who the experts are and to rely on their input.
The usual problem with NIX distributions is the driver support. The hardware manufacturers have to develop drivers for many platforms, and as a result, do not write drivers for "non mainstream" OSs.
The hardware manufacturers need to tell the OS companies "Enough is enough! Instead of us writing drivers your way, you need to utilize a standard that is cross platform!"
Driver files should be something like a simple CSV file that describes the attributes of the device and how it can be utilized.
For example, the first field would be for Firewire capability. 0 would indicate it's not firewire capable. 1 would indicate firewire 400 capability, 2 would indicate firewire 800 capability, and you could add other values for future firewire speed bumps. Same thing goes for the various USB speeds out there. Need to specify the maximum display size or refresh rate of a display? Simple, have fields for those attributes with numbers indicating the capability.
That way the manufacturers only have to write ONE driver that will work on any OS.
The hardware manufacturers need to force the OS companies to come up with a standard. Only upon having a standard will you see less OS crashes and hardware no longer functioning after you upgrade.
I don't worry about cookies. Almost 100% of the sites I visit use them to indicate which forum posts I have read or to identify myself so I don't have to repeatedly provide my credentials.
I've been surfing the net since 1994 and have not had my identity stolen or seen adverse affects due to accepting cookies. Those who worry so much about cookies are wearing tin foil hats. If you are so worried about cookies use an anomymozing service. Myself, I'll let the cookies continue to help my surfing experience and leave the tin foil hats to the nervous virgins.
If you are visiting porn sites and are worried about your privacy, well by all means block cookies. But when you visit legitimate sites you visits on a daily basis accept the cookies that are designed to help you. I use a different browser for those Pr0n sites and I do block cookies on those. For the sites I visit daily, I use my normal browser and accept cookies.
Most technical writers do not write as they speak, and they do not write in simple step 1,2,3 steps.
I wrote many maintenance manuals in the Air Force and my coworkers never had any problems following the procedures in my manuals. The secret to authoring an effective technical manual is not rocket science. Write as you would speak, and have simple 1,2,3, etc steps. The average reader will not have any problem understanding your writing. And yes, I did not run this through a grammar or spelling checker. I write as I speak.
MS flew me to Redmond for tech support lead for MS press. I thought the interview went great. The questions that they threw at me did not throw me off at all. I was very relaxed in the interviews and was positive I had the job.
I was told later that "My management style did not fit them." I think it was because I was asked "If there was an error in a MS press book, would you recall the book?" I said, "If it would cause a catastrophic loss of the customer's data I would."
I think my honesty in admitting my integrity versus corporate profits cost me the job. Oh well, I'm happy in my current job (doing OSX server and client admin)
I don't think so, I'm on a Mac. If the advertisers weren't so darned persistant on putting out ads whose visual frequency caused health problems (my heart races at the fast refreshes) I would put up with them. Until then, screw you, you created your own problem. I'll continue to use ad blocker.
I was having symptons (tingling in wring). What I have found is that once you have your monitor and keyboard on the desk, there is little room for your arms. That results in your wrist being bent, and that is what causes the problem.
A computer desk with a surface deep enough to provide adequate space is hard to find. I solved that by C clamping a large (3' x 3') piece of wood to the computer desk. Now my arms are flat on the table when I use the mouse and I don't have problems anymore.
In your utility closet, have central surge protection for your phone and cable. It's far cheaper to buy industrial strength suppressors for your phone and cable modem than to have individual suppressors. If this will also house your server, put in a good UPS.
I've running web and FTP services from a 600Mhz G3 iBook with only 384MB of memory on OS 10.3 server. True, I'm not running something along the lines of ./, but for the infrequently hit web server you really don't need a lot of hardware.
I support over 400 Macs at my college. In any given year I have to get warranty repair (we purchase the 3-year warranties) done for less than 8 Macs. We're talking 4% or less failure rate. I don't think you will find comcrap, mini-itx, or hell computer suppliers with a lesser failure rate.
If you are an authorized apple service provider like we are, you can get the apple partscare agreement (APA). It's like the 3-year Apple Protection Plan (APP) warranty, but we do the warranty labor and they provide the parts, and the APA cost is significantly less than the APP
Uninen is right. But what he forgot to mention is the support issues.
My windows counterpart on campus supports somewhere between 150 and 200 PCs and he is swamped with work.
I support over 400 Macs and most days I am bored because my customers don't need my help. Hell, if I have three support calls in one day it is a busy day for me.
It's not just the hardware folks. It's the OS, well-written apps, and lack of a need for tech support that spell out the true story. And this is coming from a former MCSE who though Win2K was the hottest stuff since sliced bread. Mod parent up.
Yeah, where's the Bonzai buddy on this mini? Dammit, I want my spyware!
I've never seen so many English spelling and grammatical mistakes compared to Sal's website. Is Sal really on comcast or AOL?
Several reasons
1. It "just works". I had never seen one before and within 5 minutes I had the iPod figured out. I had played with other MP3 players friends had and they were too confusing.
2. It synced beautifully with my existing music collection.
3. Small enough to fit into my pocket.
4. As a Mac support tech, I can boot Macs off of it and copy over the user's data when there OS is messed up. I don't see any other MP3 players that will let me do that.
5. A small 30GB external drive for storing large files!
As I mentioned in a previous reply, we are 75% Macs at Alma College. Yes, Macs cost more initially, so why do we use them? Return on investment (ROI). I maintain 400 Macs and rarely have any work to do and my customers are happy. My windows counterpart (whose customers are mostly administrative staff running windows apps) maintains 150 PCs, is swamped with work, and the customers are disgruntled.
That $500 difference between a PC and a Mac is quickly reduced when you take into account reduced productivity, OS crashes, spyware, viruses, and the other multiplitude of crap when dealing with windows.
Yes, I must confess. I was a windows fanatic before I started this job supporting the Macs. Some windows people may see me as "a wierdo", but I consider myself to have become "enlightened."
My customers have almost no problems and they're happy campers. There are some things money just can't buy when you try to skimp by buying a cheap PC.
At Alma College most of the computers (75%) are Macs running OSX. Most of the windows users are the administrative staff.
The professors would fight like hell if the labs went to windows. They love how easy it is for student to create multimedia and seamlessly create that content on the students' web sites.
What does Gentoo do? I saw some posts where they say DTP (desktop publishing?) and other google searches hint that it is a file management system. What is this beast and might it help me boost my productivity on OSX?
Yes, but you must realize that most of the iTunes store is U.S. (read English language) music. As iTunes gets more foreign language music online the purchases will probably increase overseas.
Don't confuse download ratios with what is available and what the customer wants.
If I ever get my hands on the little teenage script kiddy bastards who created these bots I will personally strangle their damned windpipes!
I was in the process yesterday of trying to upgrade 300 OSX clients and this little shithead wasted several hours of my time. and also time for my customers.
If I catch one of these little teenage assholes responsible I will rip their testicles off with a pair of wire cutters and feed what was left to the damned possums and racoons in this area.
I just want to see these assholes killed! I'm tired of these little bastards creating hours of work for IT dealing with their childish pranks. You hear me script kiddies reading this? No jury for you! I will provide judicial punshment myself if I find you!
In 10.3 the device appears in your finder (equivalent to windows explorer) with an eject icon next to it. Click on the icon and the device is removed and you can unplug it. It's that simple.
All my mac lab machines are partitioned into two drives. The "temporary storage" partition can be read and wrote to by anyone. This is critical is you will have video or audio editing apps. You do not want them fill up the boot drive under the student account.
The students are warned that anyone can delete files on the 2nd partition and they have a 200MB quota on their network share, However, more and more they require large scratch disk places for their college projects. The 2nd partition is critical to allow flexibility for the students who are working on large files.
Work for an authorized apple service provide and you can have access to all the service manuals you want via GSX.
Having had to fix several relatives' PCs that were infected with viruses, I say that judicial procedures are too lenient on these bastards.
Just announce on a website that virus authors frequent to watch a particular webcam broadcast.
In that the virus writer is led into a room followed by many computer support techs, and the viewers get to see the writer beaten to death for the thousands of hours he caused them due to his viruws/worm.
A jail sentence is too lenient for these little shitheads. Beat them to death. I'm tired of dealing with the after affects of their irresponsibility. Now to get all my relatives switched over to macs and OSX....