It is widely documented that during natural disasters people organize themselves and help each other.
Some people in the US have an irrational love of guns, violence and oppression as a way to confront any major crisis.
In most situations what is required is human kindness and good organizational skills.
The brutes that will try to go hunting and make themselves strong, will not be allowed back in the village and will be left to rot psychologically by being ignored by the rest of the new community. Or will be organized by the clever people (i.e. politicians) as they had always been.
People with a gun just become the tool of somebody else's bidding.
A bad technical solution does not become a good one just because your problem is smaller.
It is a false economy to bank in lock in. The day your MS database no longer is enough you will literally hit the wall with your head hopping you can find an easy way to migrate to a proper DB.
I have worked or know people that have worked for most of the big banks and insurance companies in the world.
UNIX+Oracle. That is the name of the game.
Anybody suggesting otherwise is considered unprofessional, because MSSQL does not scale (as doesn't do Exchange), I personally witnessed an Exchange based solution written off as security problems where exposed one by one by a security experts.
Lets put it this way: you don't want to know what is going on in your registry.
People want MSSQL & Exchange because it is the same brand they have on user's desks.
It is a death spiral, once both technologies are entrenched there is no easy way out: the company lock in is complete and you have become dependant on Microsoft to access your own data.
Good musicians will practice several hours a day, for several years, before they even have a sniff to some degree of success.
The problem with the systems is with the record labels and the current politicians, the labels have lobbied for the laws they need and the politicians have had no qualms to legislate against of the best interests of the people they are supposed to be serving.
As long as people like you and me, that "get it", don't get our hands dirty in the realm of politics, not much will change in how a few companies are always abusing the weaknesses democratic system.
Politics is not done in the streets, that is a nice way to let off steam, but politics, real politics, are done in the parliaments of this world.
Don't write a letter to your MP. GO, visit him and make it clear in no uncertain terms that if he persists with his support for the scheme you will do all what is in your power to see that he loses his job. And then follow through with the necessary action (work for another party or candidate, spend some of your money informing the people about this guy, work with other people having a beef with the MP).
Writing fucking letters and then patting you in the back is a cop out.
Time to get involved in real politics, before it is too late....
Living a life of servitude while pretending you are rebelling (by doing nothing! what a fucking cop out) is a life not worth living.
And before you say what I have done, let me put it this way, I am sure I have a record somewhere in a government office where my political activities some way back were recorded. That is what dictatorial governments do.
To read that people in democracies just cop out and try to "live their lives" just makes my blood boil.
Normally the people that have "given up" what they really mean is that they can't be bothered, they just rephrase things in a way that presents themselves as freedom martyrs instead of what they really are: lazy bummers.
More relevant issues nowadays are decided by a handful of people, a few dozen of them at most. If you want to influence an issue you care about then you have to make sure you are one of those people taking decisions, by doing nothing you become part of the problem.
Our of knowledge and physics has a foundation in mathematics, mathematics concepts do not change just because you relocate to other parts of the Universe.
As for the second, I don't know what you are smoking, but seems to be very good.
If you drive a car at 60km/h it has a certain momentum, and that momentum will affect in certain very specific ways most people that are unfortunate to be hit by it.
Do you remember those documentaries about dummies in cars, where they crash the cars to see the effects on humans involved in such crashes? Well , say hello to speed limits derived from this information, information that says at which point your car becomes a mortal artefact.
Add to this the response times measured from most people while driving, and this will relate to the max speeds in highways.
Endangering people in public places has always been a crime, if you want to drive without worrying about organized society then rent a racetrack and close it for your personal driving pleasure.
The idea to elect clever people is a sound one, the problem is that democracy as we practice it is too blunt an instrument and it creates disenfranchisement.
When we vote for a government we normally vote for a very reduced number of issues (in the last US elections was the economy) but then you get all kind of nasties riding that (in the current UK government we have got a run of puritanical, authoritarian Home Secretaries that are ruining the freedoms of people in the UK).
We need to find a way to fine tune policies in accordance to what people, or I would argue, informed individuals, think is best for society.
Buying wholesale to all the ideas of a group of people in a party is not working, we need to change that somehow (perhaps we should have elections for 10 or 12 different executive posts, each one in charge for different parts of the government, I see how that could be chaotic, but maybe certain overriding authority could be given to a head of government or state).
I have worked in several countries, different cultures, and I never did more than 40 hours a week.
The key is drawing the line clearly and firmly from the start.
At some point one of my bosses began to pester me with working extra hours with no pay (hint: that does not mean there is work to be done, it means your employer can't be bothered to plan and allocate resources accordingly), I politely but firmly refused. Then I was told I will not get a bonus.
The irony was that she was later made redundant, and my boss gave me a bonus anyway.
If you are exploited don't blame others but yourself, you are not as powerless as you think.
In quite a few years of working on IT, in quite pressurized environments, I have rarely done it.
Lets be honest, employers in general have got absolutely no chance to make you past your stated working hours, unless you agree to be mistreated in such way in your contract of employment, or if you allow the interpretation of such contract to be always done by your employer to their own benefit.
If you interpret your contract properly very often it does not say what you think it says and you can, very successfully, remain working only the core hours you agreed originally because your interpretation may be as valid as theirs.
The top command in Linux is compiled very inefficiently, it doesn't make proper use of local name services like NIS+ or LDAP, in some conditions it could bring your network to its knees by the equivalent of a denial of service attack on your name servers.
Sun employees carry with them and intelligent card that they use to login to their account in any machine in their campus.
The point I am trying to make is that Solaris will be more integrated with big enterprises where Solaris is the norm already.
As for Linux having more application written for it, you are one compiling away for getting more applications working in Solaris. Some companies actually pick up the Linux code, clean it and deploy it for their own need in Solaris (note they don't need to redistribute anything ).
The onslaught of jobs being outsourced (or as I have commented previously, assigned to remote workers) is of epic proportions.
I know of companies that have moved full teams to cheaper locations, first in Eastern Europe, and when even their salaries probed too expensive, to India, Singapore and other localities in Asia and Latin America.
The workers replaced include programmers, System Administrators (Solaris and other flavours of UNIX, Windows, Linux, you name it), Network Administrators, CISCO certification and all. Some companies are even moving Engineering positions (the people that design the guts of companies' IT) to cheaper locations.
Anybody in the IT industry thinking that is irreplaceable is *fooling* himself.
Here in London certainly you can get a job, the rub is that the downward pressure in salaries is tremendous and most people are settling for much lower wages (those are the lucky ones).
So allow me to opt out of your rosy view of our irrepleceability in the industry.
The people that can set conditions in a job negotiation are perhaps only the top 1%, for the rest it is a game of big fish eats small fish, people not unionised are the smallest fish of them all, specially now.
It is historically documented that unions brought these changes into place.
The laws were not born in a vacuum, it was pressure by unions what brought them to be (in the UK and Mexico, the two countries I am most familiar with, unions were key in bringing these changes. For bunnies sakes, the name of the current party in government, Labour, should give you a clue).
The problem is that techies don't want to organize themselves.
Unions in other industries are a political force that influence decisions and have real political power.
Techies still think that are primadona artists and that they are above all the rest.
The current situation should be a rude awakening, specially for those foolish enough to have put years of unsocial hours and weekend work without getting proper compensation for it.
Slashdot Mirror
It is widely documented that during natural disasters people organize themselves and help each other.
Some people in the US have an irrational love of guns, violence and oppression as a way to confront any major crisis.
In most situations what is required is human kindness and good organizational skills.
The brutes that will try to go hunting and make themselves strong, will not be allowed back in the village and will be left to rot psychologically by being ignored by the rest of the new community. Or will be organized by the clever people (i.e. politicians) as they had always been.
People with a gun just become the tool of somebody else's bidding.
If this abomination does grow we, the technorati, deserve all the pain and tears that such adoption will bring.
Sharepoint is collaboration the AOL way. Clunky, closed and unintuitive.
Until they do.
A bad technical solution does not become a good one just because your problem is smaller.
It is a false economy to bank in lock in. The day your MS database no longer is enough you will literally hit the wall with your head hopping you can find an easy way to migrate to a proper DB.
I have worked or know people that have worked for most of the big banks and insurance companies in the world.
UNIX+Oracle. That is the name of the game.
Anybody suggesting otherwise is considered unprofessional, because MSSQL does not scale (as doesn't do Exchange), I personally witnessed an Exchange based solution written off as security problems where exposed one by one by a security experts.
Lets put it this way: you don't want to know what is going on in your registry.
People want MSSQL & Exchange because it is the same brand they have on user's desks.
It is a death spiral, once both technologies are entrenched there is no easy way out: the company lock in is complete and you have become dependant on Microsoft to access your own data.
Good musicians will practice several hours a day, for several years, before they even have a sniff to some degree of success.
The problem with the systems is with the record labels and the current politicians, the labels have lobbied for the laws they need and the politicians have had no qualms to legislate against of the best interests of the people they are supposed to be serving.
As long as people like you and me, that "get it", don't get our hands dirty in the realm of politics, not much will change in how a few companies are always abusing the weaknesses democratic system.
Politics is not done in the streets, that is a nice way to let off steam, but politics, real politics, are done in the parliaments of this world.
Don't write a letter to your MP. GO, visit him and make it clear in no uncertain terms that if he persists with his support for the scheme you will do all what is in your power to see that he loses his job. And then follow through with the necessary action (work for another party or candidate, spend some of your money informing the people about this guy, work with other people having a beef with the MP).
Writing fucking letters and then patting you in the back is a cop out.
Time to get involved in real politics, before it is too late ....
Living a life of servitude while pretending you are rebelling (by doing nothing! what a fucking cop out) is a life not worth living.
And before you say what I have done, let me put it this way, I am sure I have a record somewhere in a government office where my political activities some way back were recorded. That is what dictatorial governments do.
To read that people in democracies just cop out and try to "live their lives" just makes my blood boil.
If people really voted like that the same party would be always in government.
Since there is alternation in power people are obviously changing their minds about the issues and voting accordingly.
If you want to affect how decisions are taken you have to be part of the system.
Being an outsider is just the easy cop out.
Normally the people that have "given up" what they really mean is that they can't be bothered, they just rephrase things in a way that presents themselves as freedom martyrs instead of what they really are: lazy bummers.
More relevant issues nowadays are decided by a handful of people, a few dozen of them at most. If you want to influence an issue you care about then you have to make sure you are one of those people taking decisions, by doing nothing you become part of the problem.
But I think sane people understand the word fiction pretty well...
Our of knowledge and physics has a foundation in mathematics, mathematics concepts do not change just because you relocate to other parts of the Universe.
As for the second, I don't know what you are smoking, but seems to be very good.
If you drive a car at 60km/h it has a certain momentum, and that momentum will affect in certain very specific ways most people that are unfortunate to be hit by it.
Do you remember those documentaries about dummies in cars, where they crash the cars to see the effects on humans involved in such crashes? Well , say hello to speed limits derived from this information, information that says at which point your car becomes a mortal artefact.
Add to this the response times measured from most people while driving, and this will relate to the max speeds in highways.
Endangering people in public places has always been a crime, if you want to drive without worrying about organized society then rent a racetrack and close it for your personal driving pleasure.
Show us some links to examples of what you claiming. I just don't believe a single thing.
I have driven in Germany extensively many times and the only time I got a fine it was my fault, no trickery required.
The idea to elect clever people is a sound one, the problem is that democracy as we practice it is too blunt an instrument and it creates disenfranchisement.
When we vote for a government we normally vote for a very reduced number of issues (in the last US elections was the economy) but then you get all kind of nasties riding that (in the current UK government we have got a run of puritanical, authoritarian Home Secretaries that are ruining the freedoms of people in the UK).
We need to find a way to fine tune policies in accordance to what people, or I would argue, informed individuals, think is best for society.
Buying wholesale to all the ideas of a group of people in a party is not working, we need to change that somehow (perhaps we should have elections for 10 or 12 different executive posts, each one in charge for different parts of the government, I see how that could be chaotic, but maybe certain overriding authority could be given to a head of government or state).
As for editors, what do they do exactly?
I will be available for you 24x7 if needed.
But you will pay for it.
If you can't do planning that is not my problem.
I have worked in several countries, different cultures, and I never did more than 40 hours a week.
The key is drawing the line clearly and firmly from the start.
At some point one of my bosses began to pester me with working extra hours with no pay (hint: that does not mean there is work to be done, it means your employer can't be bothered to plan and allocate resources accordingly), I politely but firmly refused. Then I was told I will not get a bonus.
The irony was that she was later made redundant, and my boss gave me a bonus anyway.
If you are exploited don't blame others but yourself, you are not as powerless as you think.
That may be you, and certainly most people.
In quite a few years of working on IT, in quite pressurized environments, I have rarely done it.
Lets be honest, employers in general have got absolutely no chance to make you past your stated working hours, unless you agree to be mistreated in such way in your contract of employment, or if you allow the interpretation of such contract to be always done by your employer to their own benefit.
If you interpret your contract properly very often it does not say what you think it says and you can, very successfully, remain working only the core hours you agreed originally because your interpretation may be as valid as theirs.
The top command in Linux is compiled very inefficiently, it doesn't make proper use of local name services like NIS+ or LDAP, in some conditions it could bring your network to its knees by the equivalent of a denial of service attack on your name servers.
Gnome is being tightly integrated with ZFS, you will have functionality in OpenSolaris that you will not see for a while, if at all, in Linux.
Have you ever been to a Sun office recently?
Sun employees carry with them and intelligent card that they use to login to their account in any machine in their campus.
The point I am trying to make is that Solaris will be more integrated with big enterprises where Solaris is the norm already.
As for Linux having more application written for it, you are one compiling away for getting more applications working in Solaris. Some companies actually pick up the Linux code, clean it and deploy it for their own need in Solaris (note they don't need to redistribute anything ).
Buddy, where are you? Mumbai?
The onslaught of jobs being outsourced (or as I have commented previously, assigned to remote workers) is of epic proportions.
I know of companies that have moved full teams to cheaper locations, first in Eastern Europe, and when even their salaries probed too expensive, to India, Singapore and other localities in Asia and Latin America.
The workers replaced include programmers, System Administrators (Solaris and other flavours of UNIX, Windows, Linux, you name it), Network Administrators, CISCO certification and all. Some companies are even moving Engineering positions (the people that design the guts of companies' IT) to cheaper locations.
Anybody in the IT industry thinking that is irreplaceable is *fooling* himself.
Here in London certainly you can get a job, the rub is that the downward pressure in salaries is tremendous and most people are settling for much lower wages (those are the lucky ones).
So allow me to opt out of your rosy view of our irrepleceability in the industry.
The people that can set conditions in a job negotiation are perhaps only the top 1%, for the rest it is a game of big fish eats small fish, people not unionised are the smallest fish of them all, specially now.
It is historically documented that unions brought these changes into place.
The laws were not born in a vacuum, it was pressure by unions what brought them to be (in the UK and Mexico, the two countries I am most familiar with, unions were key in bringing these changes. For bunnies sakes, the name of the current party in government, Labour, should give you a clue).
The problem is that techies don't want to organize themselves.
Unions in other industries are a political force that influence decisions and have real political power.
Techies still think that are primadona artists and that they are above all the rest.
The current situation should be a rude awakening, specially for those foolish enough to have put years of unsocial hours and weekend work without getting proper compensation for it.