...from the same great folks that brought you "Muzak". Step into the elevator and the smell of fresh cinnamon rolls is chemically synthesized and fed into the vents. By the time you arrive in the department store you'll already be reaching for your wallet!
I don't think technology is harmful to adolescents. Quite the contrary, technology as a tool can be extraordinarily helpful to the developing mind.
What is poisonous is obsession. If a child is allowed to focus too much on one thing, be it computers, games, sports, pr0n, or whatever, that's very unhealthy. It leads to a closed mind. Children need to be exposed to lots of different things, have multiple interests, and be encouraged to think about life from many angles.
Think about all the evils in this world. Almost all of them are due, in one form or another, to obsession. Obsession with religion (Islamic terrorists, right-wing nut-jobs), guns (Columbine), video games (ditto), obsession with obtaining great money and/or power (most of the people in government). If someone loves you, well that's nice. If they're obsessed with you, that's creepy.
Obsession is the root of all evil. The antidote is balance and variety.
As far as notation software goes, there's Lilypond. It's a pain to learn and takes a while to set a piece of music (it took me about 40-50 hours to do Chopin's 4th Ballade), but the results look really nice.
This article is pretty good, though a few months old now. I bought an Areca ARC-1120 based on this review, and have been very happy with it. 100% GPLed driver. Wish they were a little easier to find in online stores though.
I, too, have an Areca. I've had it about 8 months now, and it's been a good performer so far.
I recently installed Ubuntu Dapper Drake onto it with no problems. The supplied kernel had the driver already, so no need to fiddle about patching kernel source and building the driver.
I'm not a fan of questions like "Tell me about a time when you were challeneged and overcame it", or "Where do you plan to be in five years?" I don't think they tell you all that much about a candidate, and what you do learn can be misleading.
For starters, those questions are very common in interviews. People that answer them well have either prepared and rehearsed stock answers for them, or they've had a lot of practice being interviewed.
If they're the well-prepared type, well that's not bad in itself of course, but their answers don't tell you much about how they would handle a spontaneous, real-world situation.
If they're the well-practiced type, of course you have to ask yourself why they've been interviewed so much. Either they job-hop a lot, or they don't get many offers, and you tell which by looking at their resume.
Personally, for a coding position, I'd rather sit down with them, put some code on the screen, explain what needs to be done to it and see how they go about it. We pair-program at my company, so seeing how people fare in a pair-programming role is exactly what we need to know.
It's pure politics. Ethanol is heavily subsidised, and the farm states are politically powerful. Iowa, in particular, has an early presidential primary, and presidential hopefuls are pretty much blackmailed into supporting the subsidies if they want to get those key early votes. The farm-state congress-critters are likewise beholden.
The 1st amendment gives you the right to say what you want (within certain limits) without being arrested, imprisoned or, indeed, shot. However, privileges given to you by others may be withdrawn, you may be fired, and so on.
Others have noted that schools that receive federal funding have a more complicated position, and not being a lawyer I'm not really qualified to comment. But from a common sense perspective, if you told your grade school principal to fuck himself, what would you expect to happen? Is it that much different if you do so in a blog instead of to his face? Older students at university can expect more latitude than 1st graders, but still within limits.
School uniforms are a similar issue; the local ACLUs love to get all riled up over such things. In the end, schools need to be able to enforce a certain level of discipline, or chaos would ensue. Placing common sense limits on free expression is a facet of that.
Just because you have the constitutional right to free speech doesn't mean you can say what you like with no repurcussions. If you tell your boss to go fuck himself, the 1st amendment doesn't protect you from being fired. School is no different.
I normally hesitate to outright plug specific services on/., but in this case I'm just a 100% happy customer.
I personally use Cognidial when I call my mother in England. It's not VoIP or anything sexy - just an 800 number dialaround - but it's cheap. 4.4 cents per minute to the UK. I can't call anywhere in the U.S. for that cheap. Best of all, they don't charge any monthly fees or anything, so you only pay for actual usage.
It's a nice looking ad. When I heard about it listing all those names, I imagined that it would be just a huge mess.
One thing though: Couldn't they have copy-edited the darned quotes? "Everyday" doesn't mean the same as "every day". It may seem like a minor nit to pick, but prominent quotes with bad grammar stand out like a huge sore thumb in a newspaper.
I've been playing online for a few months now, with mixed success. I wanted to touch on something I've not seen mentioned here yet, which is this: Playing poker can have real-life benefits for the typical geek.
I'm a fairly introverted person, and I don't usually do well in confrontational situations. I once bought a car from a dealership and ended up paying full sticker price for it. Not because I don't intellectually understand the haggling process. I had read a book on how to buy cars, and went in armed with all the facts and figures I would need, fully prepared to bargain until I got a good deal. Or so I thought. When the time came, I just couldn't summon the necessary guts to confront the salesman.
Since I started playing poker, however, I feel I've grown as a person. Poker is not just about odds, it's also about guts and aggression. This personal growth culminated a few weeks ago, when I landed a contract and actually haggled (Previously, I'd always just accepted what I was offered). I ended up settling for $20/hour more than I was originally offered. Not too shabby. That's made a difference of $1000 so far, with more to come. Compare that to the $100 or so I've won at the poker table.
So I definitly recommend poker as therapy for introverted geeks!
I'm a Perl geek, and I've had the most luck with postings to the perl-jobs mailing list (http://jobs.perl.org/), and networking through the local perl-mongers chapter. The large sites are pretty much worthless.
Also, if you're running Debian and 2.6.x, don't forget to set your X server "nice" value to 0 instead of the Debian default -10. You can change this in/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config.
Forgot the most important things
on
Build Your Own NOC
·
· Score: 4, Funny
An array of 24-hour clocks displaying the local time in places the company doesn't even do business, and
A huge red button on the wall labelled "Emergency Network Shutdown". When the boss is showing the big-wigs around you leap up from your chair, shout "OH MY GOD!" and hit the button.
Since the proposed law does provide for recovery of attorney's fees as part of the damages (most laws don't provide that), hiring a high-cost lawyer is not completely out of the question.
I think he's got a point. He uses "Zealot" to mean "Extremist". Extremists are bad for two main reasons.
First is their utter inability to compromise. So much so that they cannot even agree amongst themselves, and start splitting into factions, fighting each other instead of their main enemy. A perfect satirical example of this is to be found in Monty Python's Life of Brian, where the People's Front of Judea say to Brian upon recruiting him, "Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front."
The second problem with extremists is that they have a tendency to get wrapped up in winning at all costs. "The ends justify the means" is a phrase often heard in such circles.
Thankfully most extremists end up wasting so much resources on factional infighting that they render themselves impotent to do much real damage beyond discrediting everything they stand for.
The prices of computer parts fluctuate very wildly, and almost always in a downward direction. If you have an inventory of computers or computer parts, you are losing money, and fast. This is why Dell's strategy is so successful. It's not so much the customizability - that's a side benefit for the customer - it's the depreciation risk management.
There are downsides to this business model however. Dell do not have sufficient production capacity to meet peak demand. Say you order a computer today and they tell you it will be shipped in two days. But then right after you place your order, a Fortune 500 customer puts in an order for 1000 new desktop machines. Guess who gets priority? That's right - you get bumped and end up waiting a couple of weeks or more, and get pissed off at them.
Cars don't have the depreciation problem. A new car will pretty much hold its value while it sits on the lot. The exception is the time around summer when the new model-years come out. That's predictable though, and the industry knows how to handle it.
Here is the appropriate section from the Code of Federal Regulations, title 14 Chapter 1, Part 121.306: Portable electronic devices:
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate, nor may any operator or pilot in command of an aircraft allow the operation of, any portable electronic device on any U.S.-registered civil aircraft operating under this part.
(b) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to --
(1) Portable voice recorders;
(2) Hearing aids;
(3) Heart pacemakers;
(4) Electric shavers; or
(5) Any other portable electronic device that the part 119 certificate holder has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used.
(c) The determination required by paragraph (b)(5) of this section shall be made by that part 119 certificate holder operating the particular device to be used.
Notice that (b)(5) allows the operator to exempt any device if they can determine that it won't interfere with the avionics. They may certainly exempt wireless ethernet if they so choose.
The only devices they cannot exempt are cellphones, as the FCC regulations prohibit using them while airborne. The FCC reason for this is that an airborne cellphone can communicate with a vast number of cells and clog up the network. The consipiracy theorists contend that the providers of the rather expensive sky-phone services lobbied the FCC to ban cellphones thus removing competition.
I wonder what volume of broadband calls the cell airwaves can actually handle? How many of these 2.4Mb connections can be going all at once? The image presented of teenagers listening to streaming MP3s on their cellphones while hanging out at the mall sounds neat, but I bet (no data to back up this assumption, mind you) that there won't be enough bandwidth available for that sort of thing.
So, the only way for them to market this thing is to make it really expensive, and target enterprise customers.
But here's the thing: Cell companies don't seem to have a frickin' clue how to sell to enterprises. Most of their marketing is geared toward consumers; most business users buy consumer plans and bill them to the company.
Case in point is WAP/HDML. The potential enterprise uses of this technology are endless. The cell companies however insist that when you turn on an HDML/WAP phone, you see their portal, complete with Yahoo! sports scores and horoscopes and such. Enterprise customers don't want that, they just want it to go straight to a page of their own design. But, for whatever reason, the carriers just won't do that.
So, I just have to wonder if this technology will ever pan out. It would certainly be cool, but I'm not holding my breath.
Slashdot Mirror
run "ethtool eth0" and have a look at the output. It's possible that it's autonegotiated a stupid setting like half-duplex or some lower speed.
Do the same with the windows box; that information is the properties dialog for the network device.
No, he wasn't. He was MIS-quoting from the skit.
...from the same great folks that brought you "Muzak". Step into the elevator and the smell of fresh cinnamon rolls is chemically synthesized and fed into the vents. By the time you arrive in the department store you'll already be reaching for your wallet!
No, not the Calvin Klein scent.
I don't think technology is harmful to adolescents. Quite the contrary, technology as a tool can be extraordinarily helpful to the developing mind.
What is poisonous is obsession. If a child is allowed to focus too much on one thing, be it computers, games, sports, pr0n, or whatever, that's very unhealthy. It leads to a closed mind. Children need to be exposed to lots of different things, have multiple interests, and be encouraged to think about life from many angles.
Think about all the evils in this world. Almost all of them are due, in one form or another, to obsession. Obsession with religion (Islamic terrorists, right-wing nut-jobs), guns (Columbine), video games (ditto), obsession with obtaining great money and/or power (most of the people in government). If someone loves you, well that's nice. If they're obsessed with you, that's creepy.
Obsession is the root of all evil. The antidote is balance and variety.
As far as notation software goes, there's Lilypond. It's a pain to learn and takes a while to set a piece of music (it took me about 40-50 hours to do Chopin's 4th Ballade), but the results look really nice.
This article is pretty good, though a few months old now. I bought an Areca ARC-1120 based on this review, and have been very happy with it. 100% GPLed driver. Wish they were a little easier to find in online stores though.
I, too, have an Areca. I've had it about 8 months now, and it's been a good performer so far.
I recently installed Ubuntu Dapper Drake onto it with no problems. The supplied kernel had the driver already, so no need to fiddle about patching kernel source and building the driver.
I'm not a fan of questions like "Tell me about a time when you were challeneged and overcame it", or "Where do you plan to be in five years?" I don't think they tell you all that much about a candidate, and what you do learn can be misleading.
For starters, those questions are very common in interviews. People that answer them well have either prepared and rehearsed stock answers for them, or they've had a lot of practice being interviewed.
If they're the well-prepared type, well that's not bad in itself of course, but their answers don't tell you much about how they would handle a spontaneous, real-world situation.
If they're the well-practiced type, of course you have to ask yourself why they've been interviewed so much. Either they job-hop a lot, or they don't get many offers, and you tell which by looking at their resume.
Personally, for a coding position, I'd rather sit down with them, put some code on the screen, explain what needs to be done to it and see how they go about it. We pair-program at my company, so seeing how people fare in a pair-programming role is exactly what we need to know.
Your perl example didn't modify @arr; in fact it did nothing at all. Try something like:
Where map really starts to shine in applications like the Schwartzian Transform.It's pure politics. Ethanol is heavily subsidised, and the farm states are politically powerful. Iowa, in particular, has an early presidential primary, and presidential hopefuls are pretty much blackmailed into supporting the subsidies if they want to get those key early votes. The farm-state congress-critters are likewise beholden.
Others have noted that schools that receive federal funding have a more complicated position, and not being a lawyer I'm not really qualified to comment. But from a common sense perspective, if you told your grade school principal to fuck himself, what would you expect to happen? Is it that much different if you do so in a blog instead of to his face? Older students at university can expect more latitude than 1st graders, but still within limits.
School uniforms are a similar issue; the local ACLUs love to get all riled up over such things. In the end, schools need to be able to enforce a certain level of discipline, or chaos would ensue. Placing common sense limits on free expression is a facet of that.
Just because you have the constitutional right to free speech doesn't mean you can say what you like with no repurcussions. If you tell your boss to go fuck himself, the 1st amendment doesn't protect you from being fired. School is no different.
And I buggered up the url. http://www.cognidial.com. Sorry about that.
I personally use Cognidial when I call my mother in England. It's not VoIP or anything sexy - just an 800 number dialaround - but it's cheap. 4.4 cents per minute to the UK. I can't call anywhere in the U.S. for that cheap. Best of all, they don't charge any monthly fees or anything, so you only pay for actual usage.
One thing though: Couldn't they have copy-edited the darned quotes? "Everyday" doesn't mean the same as "every day". It may seem like a minor nit to pick, but prominent quotes with bad grammar stand out like a huge sore thumb in a newspaper.
I'm a fairly introverted person, and I don't usually do well in confrontational situations. I once bought a car from a dealership and ended up paying full sticker price for it. Not because I don't intellectually understand the haggling process. I had read a book on how to buy cars, and went in armed with all the facts and figures I would need, fully prepared to bargain until I got a good deal. Or so I thought. When the time came, I just couldn't summon the necessary guts to confront the salesman.
Since I started playing poker, however, I feel I've grown as a person. Poker is not just about odds, it's also about guts and aggression. This personal growth culminated a few weeks ago, when I landed a contract and actually haggled (Previously, I'd always just accepted what I was offered). I ended up settling for $20/hour more than I was originally offered. Not too shabby. That's made a difference of $1000 so far, with more to come. Compare that to the $100 or so I've won at the poker table.
So I definitly recommend poker as therapy for introverted geeks!
I'm a Perl geek, and I've had the most luck with postings to the perl-jobs mailing list (http://jobs.perl.org/), and networking through the local perl-mongers chapter. The large sites are pretty much worthless.
Also, if you're running Debian and 2.6.x, don't forget to set your X server "nice" value to 0 instead of the Debian default -10. You can change this in /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config.
Since the proposed law does provide for recovery of attorney's fees as part of the damages (most laws don't provide that), hiring a high-cost lawyer is not completely out of the question.
First is their utter inability to compromise. So much so that they cannot even agree amongst themselves, and start splitting into factions, fighting each other instead of their main enemy. A perfect satirical example of this is to be found in Monty Python's Life of Brian, where the People's Front of Judea say to Brian upon recruiting him, "Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front."
The second problem with extremists is that they have a tendency to get wrapped up in winning at all costs. "The ends justify the means" is a phrase often heard in such circles.
Thankfully most extremists end up wasting so much resources on factional infighting that they render themselves impotent to do much real damage beyond discrediting everything they stand for.
Feh! I still want a Maibatsu Monstrosity. Mine's Bigger!
There are downsides to this business model however. Dell do not have sufficient production capacity to meet peak demand. Say you order a computer today and they tell you it will be shipped in two days. But then right after you place your order, a Fortune 500 customer puts in an order for 1000 new desktop machines. Guess who gets priority? That's right - you get bumped and end up waiting a couple of weeks or more, and get pissed off at them.
Cars don't have the depreciation problem. A new car will pretty much hold its value while it sits on the lot. The exception is the time around summer when the new model-years come out. That's predictable though, and the industry knows how to handle it.
Notice that (b)(5) allows the operator to exempt any device if they can determine that it won't interfere with the avionics. They may certainly exempt wireless ethernet if they so choose.
The only devices they cannot exempt are cellphones, as the FCC regulations prohibit using them while airborne. The FCC reason for this is that an airborne cellphone can communicate with a vast number of cells and clog up the network. The consipiracy theorists contend that the providers of the rather expensive sky-phone services lobbied the FCC to ban cellphones thus removing competition.
So, the only way for them to market this thing is to make it really expensive, and target enterprise customers.
But here's the thing: Cell companies don't seem to have a frickin' clue how to sell to enterprises. Most of their marketing is geared toward consumers; most business users buy consumer plans and bill them to the company.
Case in point is WAP/HDML. The potential enterprise uses of this technology are endless. The cell companies however insist that when you turn on an HDML/WAP phone, you see their portal, complete with Yahoo! sports scores and horoscopes and such. Enterprise customers don't want that, they just want it to go straight to a page of their own design. But, for whatever reason, the carriers just won't do that.
So, I just have to wonder if this technology will ever pan out. It would certainly be cool, but I'm not holding my breath.
Bruce.