But time = money. If you have to fulfill a commitment (watching ads) to get the songs, they're not free. They're also not free in that it appears that the DRM on them will be particularly onerous. If reports hold true, you'll have to log into the service monthly (to watch more ads) to keep the WMA-crippled media playable.
In a word, "Yes." Well, that and the guy who wants to Squeakify everything. I found him engaging in meetings and an enthusiastic evangelist but, as with all of the Disney fellows (Hillis, Ferren, et al), the company weighed his contribution versus the marquee value and decided against the program. He was cut and the few projects he was pushing disintegrated.
Microsoft doesn't always follow its own conventions within the registry, and anyone who's ever worked with real-world MS registries knows that plenty of vendors - big and small - don't either.
At least/etc is file-based and human-readable. I can manipulate it myself, and I can clean it up as I see fit. I can also do cool things like move code around and know where config updates need to happen or even copy a piece of software wholesale to another box and be pretty sure that I've gotten all of the bits in the process.
PCs (client/server computing) are very good at certain things, yes. Large groups of them acting in concert are getting pretty good at doing what mainframes do. Still, for a bunch of tasks, mainframes kick all kinds of ass. They are yet "integral to the world" - if you get a utility bill, or have insurance, or fly commercially, or buy Post-Its.
I want to live in a world where the best tools win and people get trained to run them. The notion that we should choose our technologies based on the available talent pool bugs the hell out of me.
If you don't think the current users of mainframes are concerned about TCO (real TCO, like budgets-bigger-than-God's TCO), you've never spent time with their CFOs or CIOs. The iron is still at the center of the shop for a reason.
That's a good one for general use. Don't be fooled by the name - it's got quite a bit about policy and practice, and topics like ethics, customer care, budgeting and hiring (and firing) systems administrators.
One outcome of such a mission might be the reclassification of Pluto as a Kuiper Belt Object or asteroid. If it had been discovered today, it probably wouldn't have been classified as a planet in the first place based on its size and composition.
Maybe this is only significant because we all grew up believing there were nine.
A network managed by software is, in theory, a great measure more secure than one run by humans. Software implies rules - rules mean the right stuff gets done and holes don't exist. Where do most companies get *killed* on security audits? Manual builds of systems, inconsistency in application of policy, etc. Humans are bad at consistency.
In practice, a man/machine team effort is probably the best way to do this. Script what you can, audit often to tune policy and manage exceptions *very* carefully.
Already posted my own thoughts on the topic (go to college), but I *had* to respond to this one.
> NO degree + No experience = NO job
True.
> 3. Will have an uphill battle being taken seriously.
Possibly. Depends on the company and the situation.
>An undergrad degree is a MUST if you plan to work for someone else. Getting a master's is almost a requirement at this point too. It doesn't matter as much where you go or what degree you get as the fact that you have one.
and
>1. Won't even be considered at any corporation. 2. Will not be able to get jobs that give you any experience that counts.
False. Sorry, but totally false. Companies big and small want good people with good experience. A lot of them will take a chance on an eager person with obvious skill.
I'm pretty realistic about SA work and its relative importance. A Master's-level candidate for one of my spots is either overqualified for the position (and won't be happy with it for long) or hopelessly confused about their direction in life (and won't be happy with it for very long).
>Usually it's management or HR does the hiring. They look for just keywords when sorting though the stacks of resumes they get. It's only after they bring you in for the interview that IT gets a chance you look you over.
Probably, but in *my* Fortune 500 company, I get to pick the keywords. I also get to write the job descriptions. Mine typically state things like:
"o Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in appropriate Computer Science discipline.
o a minimum of 2 years of experience in a medium-to-large shop, with Unix (preferably Solaris) and NT systems support, development, and administration."
Lastly:
>I don't know any SA's without a degree.
In what kind of egg-head land do you live? I know a *lot* of SAs - many of them have little or no higher education and very few of them have a Master's.
System administration, as a discipline, is best learned by watching experienced people and by doing. It's one one those things that cry out for a guild and apprenticeship system. Since that isn't there for you, pick a mentor or two and pay close attention. Ally with somebody methodical and careful, somebody who is comfortable with documenting what he/she does - tagging along with a cowboy will only teach you bad habits that will get you fired later in life.
If you have the wherewithal, choose college. Do it while you're young and have no commitments - it can be hell to go back later. The best thing it can do for you is teach you to learn, if that makes any sense.
I honestly don't think that the degree will go that far in becoming a System Administrator, and I don't pay much attention to it when hiring one (I've hired quite a few). I'll choose real-world experience any day. College will give you four years to play around in labs and other sandboxes, and maybe you'll even snag an official gig running one.
In this context, the kid's wrong. LSU has rights on this one.
If the body of the content on the site made it clear that "LSU" was a reference to something like "Last Seen Unicycling", there would be no grounds for action. The site is, however, riddled with explicit references to Louisiana State University, and includes direct links to the official Web site of the university. Language on the official site regularly references "LSU Law Center" and "LSU Law".
He may not have gone about this with intent to confuse, but that doesn't carry much weight.
Since its inception, advertising has been a game of speculation. The advertisers make a bet that a particular medium (TV, radio, print, Web) can get their message across. They then contract with the purveyor of that medium (NBC, AOL/Time-Warner, CNET) who promises to reach the demographic and numerical maximums that justify the spend of their advertising budget.
That's where it ends. The contract is solely between the advertiser and the carrier of that advertising. The public reaps the benefits as the advertiser hopes to reel in enough of that public mindshare to cover their bets.
I hate showing up after the party is already winding down.
Ow. The thought that someone could even conceive of this principle hurts my brain. Why do you think so many law firms still use WorPerfect 5.1? It's fast, the cost has been amortized, the templates have been in place for years and the thing just works. If there is no impetus for upgrade, why bother?
This is a lot like term limits for getting rid of politicians. Doesn't matter how they're doing - we don't have time to figure that out and use our vote to replace them - just boot them out before they exercise that stored potential to screw up.
Some time ago, Eric Schmidt (pre-Google, still at Novell) did a bit with Fast Company:
(from Fast Company, issue 25, page 174)
How to Manage Geeks
by Russ Mitchell
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell, believes that "geek" is a badge of honor.
(After all, he is one!) But how do you manage these geek gods? Just
follow his nine-point techie tutorial.
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/25/geeks.html
Some of the concepts and references are a bit dated, but it's still a pretty good take on what we need as geeks to get by (flexibility, projects we can sink our teeth into, peer review, etc.). I share it with all of my bosses, technical and otherwise.
Re:Stopping fires leads to more destructive fires
on
Fighting Fire From the Sky
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Try checking out what the scientific community has to say before spouting the federal government's opinions.
The poster is dead on. Under George W. policy's gotten goofier, primarily due to his administration's catering to logging concerns.
For a great book on the subject, see Year of the Fires : The Story of the Great Fires of 1910 by Stephen J. Pyne. He's a professor at ASU and was a firefighter on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for 15 years. Pyne's written a whole series of books on wildland fire, its behavior and its management.
Sorry. Wrong. For some reason I thought I read "OS X Server". Still holds for that, but not for the desktop version.
Also, non-Apple tools are available as a fix.
One of the best technical bookstores in Los Angeles. It's a lot of fun to browse the store, and now they're on the Web. They claim to beat Amazon's prices, too.
That's a little elitist, isn't it? So who determines what's appropriate for discussion on Slashdot?
"News for nerds." Has anybody determined just what a "nerd" is in this context? Are A/V geeks embraced here? As a community of essentially like-minded individuals, this is a perfectly acceptable forum for this discussion. Frankly, I think ol' Slashdot would be pretty dull if we kept it too narrow.
Evolution is a process of iterative adaptation toward perfection - perfection within one's biological niche, anyway. There have got to be plateaus, right? Maybe Bacillus was pretty close to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
But time = money. If you have to fulfill a commitment (watching ads) to get the songs, they're not free. They're also not free in that it appears that the DRM on them will be particularly onerous. If reports hold true, you'll have to log into the service monthly (to watch more ads) to keep the WMA-crippled media playable.
Oh, and the name is stupid.
To clarify, the Disney Fellows program was essentially cut and Kay left the company.
Has his job been to be "Alan Kay"?
In a word, "Yes." Well, that and the guy who wants to Squeakify everything. I found him engaging in meetings and an enthusiastic evangelist but, as with all of the Disney fellows (Hillis, Ferren, et al), the company weighed his contribution versus the marquee value and decided against the program. He was cut and the few projects he was pushing disintegrated.
Microsoft doesn't always follow its own conventions within the registry, and anyone who's ever worked with real-world MS registries knows that plenty of vendors - big and small - don't either.
/etc is file-based and human-readable. I can manipulate it myself, and I can clean it up as I see fit. I can also do cool things like move code around and know where config updates need to happen or even copy a piece of software wholesale to another box and be pretty sure that I've gotten all of the bits in the process.
At least
I want to live in a world where the best tools win and people get trained to run them. The notion that we should choose our technologies based on the available talent pool bugs the hell out of me.
If you don't think the current users of mainframes are concerned about TCO (real TCO, like budgets-bigger-than-God's TCO), you've never spent time with their CFOs or CIOs. The iron is still at the center of the shop for a reason.
Yeah, yeah - missed it below. Sorry. Take it as a doubly strong recommendation.
by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Christine Hogan
That's a good one for general use. Don't be fooled by the name - it's got quite a bit about policy and practice, and topics like ethics, customer care, budgeting and hiring (and firing) systems administrators.
Maybe this is only significant because we all grew up believing there were nine.
A network managed by software is, in theory, a great measure more secure than one run by humans. Software implies rules - rules mean the right stuff gets done and holes don't exist. Where do most companies get *killed* on security audits? Manual builds of systems, inconsistency in application of policy, etc. Humans are bad at consistency.
In practice, a man/machine team effort is probably the best way to do this. Script what you can, audit often to tune policy and manage exceptions *very* carefully.
Right on.
Already posted my own thoughts on the topic (go to college), but I *had* to respond to this one.
> NO degree + No experience = NO job
True.
> 3. Will have an uphill battle being taken seriously.
Possibly. Depends on the company and the situation.
>An undergrad degree is a MUST if you plan to work for someone else. Getting a master's is almost a requirement at this point too. It doesn't matter as much where you go or what degree you get as the fact that you have one.
and
>1. Won't even be considered at any corporation.
2. Will not be able to get jobs that give you any experience that counts.
False. Sorry, but totally false. Companies big and small want good people with good experience. A lot of them will take a chance on an eager person with obvious skill.
I'm pretty realistic about SA work and its relative importance. A Master's-level candidate for one of my spots is either overqualified for the position (and won't be happy with it for long) or hopelessly confused about their direction in life (and won't be happy with it for very long).
>Usually it's management or HR does the hiring. They look for just keywords when sorting though the stacks of resumes they get. It's only after they bring you in for the interview that IT gets a chance you look you over.
Probably, but in *my* Fortune 500 company, I get to pick the keywords. I also get to write the job descriptions. Mine typically state things like:
"o Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in appropriate Computer Science discipline.
o a minimum of 2 years of experience in a medium-to-large shop, with Unix (preferably Solaris) and NT systems support, development, and administration."
Lastly:
>I don't know any SA's without a degree.
In what kind of egg-head land do you live? I know a *lot* of SAs - many of them have little or no higher education and very few of them have a Master's.
System administration, as a discipline, is best learned by watching experienced people and by doing. It's one one those things that cry out for a guild and apprenticeship system. Since that isn't there for you, pick a mentor or two and pay close attention. Ally with somebody methodical and careful, somebody who is comfortable with documenting what he/she does - tagging along with a cowboy will only teach you bad habits that will get you fired later in life.
If you have the wherewithal, choose college. Do it while you're young and have no commitments - it can be hell to go back later. The best thing it can do for you is teach you to learn, if that makes any sense.
I honestly don't think that the degree will go that far in becoming a System Administrator, and I don't pay much attention to it when hiring one (I've hired quite a few). I'll choose real-world experience any day. College will give you four years to play around in labs and other sandboxes, and maybe you'll even snag an official gig running one.
In this context, the kid's wrong. LSU has rights on this one.
If the body of the content on the site made it clear that "LSU" was a reference to something like "Last Seen Unicycling", there would be no grounds for action. The site is, however, riddled with explicit references to Louisiana State University, and includes direct links to the official Web site of the university. Language on the official site regularly references "LSU Law Center" and "LSU Law".
He may not have gone about this with intent to confuse, but that doesn't carry much weight.
Kellner is an incredible dumbass.
Since its inception, advertising has been a game of speculation. The advertisers make a bet that a particular medium (TV, radio, print, Web) can get their message across. They then contract with the purveyor of that medium (NBC, AOL/Time-Warner, CNET) who promises to reach the demographic and numerical maximums that justify the spend of their advertising budget.
That's where it ends. The contract is solely between the advertiser and the carrier of that advertising. The public reaps the benefits as the advertiser hopes to reel in enough of that public mindshare to cover their bets.
I hate showing up after the party is already winding down.
Ow. The thought that someone could even conceive of this principle hurts my brain. Why do you think so many law firms still use WorPerfect 5.1? It's fast, the cost has been amortized, the templates have been in place for years and the thing just works. If there is no impetus for upgrade, why bother?
This is a lot like term limits for getting rid of politicians. Doesn't matter how they're doing - we don't have time to figure that out and use our vote to replace them - just boot them out before they exercise that stored potential to screw up.
Some time ago, Eric Schmidt (pre-Google, still at Novell) did a bit with Fast Company:
(from Fast Company, issue 25, page 174)
How to Manage Geeks
by Russ Mitchell
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell, believes that "geek" is a badge of honor.
(After all, he is one!) But how do you manage these geek gods? Just
follow his nine-point techie tutorial.
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/25/geeks.html
Some of the concepts and references are a bit dated, but it's still a pretty good take on what we need as geeks to get by (flexibility, projects we can sink our teeth into, peer review, etc.). I share it with all of my bosses, technical and otherwise.
Try checking out what the scientific community has to say before spouting the federal government's opinions.
The poster is dead on. Under George W. policy's gotten goofier, primarily due to his administration's catering to logging concerns.
For a great book on the subject, see Year of the Fires : The Story of the Great Fires of 1910 by Stephen J. Pyne. He's a professor at ASU and was a firefighter on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for 15 years. Pyne's written a whole series of books on wildland fire, its behavior and its management.
Sorry. Wrong. For some reason I thought I read "OS X Server". Still holds for that, but not for the desktop version. Also, non-Apple tools are available as a fix.
One caveat: if you need DHCP to set up IP over your connection (as you probably would), OS X doesn't support it right now. It'll do BootP, though.
http://intrastore.us.syntegra.com/
They supply if free for Linux (up to 250 users):
http://intrastore.us.syntegra.com/www/download.htm l
One of the best technical bookstores in Los Angeles. It's a lot of fun to browse the store, and now they're on the Web. They claim to beat Amazon's prices, too.
Wow. Helper apps. Strange concept.
Q: What's the difference between a used car salesman and a computer salesman?
A: The used car salesman knows when he's lying to you.
"News for nerds." Has anybody determined just what a "nerd" is in this context? Are A/V geeks embraced here? As a community of essentially like-minded individuals, this is a perfectly acceptable forum for this discussion. Frankly, I think ol' Slashdot would be pretty dull if we kept it too narrow.
Don't like the noise? Set some filters.
Evolution is a process of iterative adaptation toward perfection - perfection within one's biological niche, anyway. There have got to be plateaus, right? Maybe Bacillus was pretty close to begin with.