If you want to stay in programming you need to know current tools. Converting your last project to a current Perl Toolset would be a resume selling point. Right now there is a high demand for Perl Programmers, there's even been an uptick in new Perl Projects (and if Mojolicious keeps gaining converts its going to be in a lot of job reqs). A project lead looking at you for a Perl job would be concerned about the need to re-teach you Perl and probably prefer a Ruby programmer who was willing to learn Perl over you. On the other hand there is still tons of gnarly ancient Perl code out there that needs to be maintained, and you're well qualified.
The thing I always hated about LaGuardia is that it is Taxi accessible only, I could never fathom why the N didn't get extended to resolve that. Other than doing that I think investing in LaGuardia is a mis-allocation of resources.
Several Million People live in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, but to catch an airplane they need to drive past MacArthur/Islip Airport on their way to JFK or LaGuardia through rather intense traffic or take the Long Island Railroad (which may depending on when they're travelling and which line still be slower than sitting in traffic). Spending the money expanding Islip would both add significant capacity for the region and provide a lot of convenience.
Considering New York-Princeton-Philadelphia as a single very large market, Trenton is the most interesting of the Auxilliary Airports. It is not only the shortest drive airport for Central New Jersey (Princeton and New Brunswick), but it is also the shortest drive for airport for the Northern Philadelphia Suburbs including the Northeastern corner of Philadelphia itself and King of Prussia (which is the economic centre of the Philadelphia Market, not downtown). Right now the transit connections to Trenton are awful, but with about 6 miles of track to build there could be direct service from Trenton Airport on three lines to Center City Philadelphia, Camden NJ and New York City. Politically the region either needs to either be taken over by a state or regional authority or get an exemption from the outdated federal restrictions on commercial flights at private airports and be privatized because the Municipal authority that owns it changes their mind every few years as to whether they want to expand it or shut it down entirely.
Because of the tangled politics the money will probably be wasted on a renovation of LaGuardia (probably without the subway extension its always needed and no added capacity or other benefits to travellers than a shiny terminal), rather than on ISP or TNN expansion which would provide much greater benefit to travellers.
If the self appointed RealNamePolice hadn't made such a stink, ello wouldn't have gone viral. Suddenly facebook, a company I loathe and despise and use only with fake names, has competition. I haven't seen their service, but ello have a good manifesto, and plan to use a business model where their end-users are customers rather than assets. Facebook has achieved a degree of critical mass they've been using to revert the internet to AOL. Unless an open distributed social networking protocol emerges (unforunately, Diaspora wasn't able to make it happen), someone has to run the backbone of social networking, and I'd rather it wasn't Facebook.
So thank you RealNamePolice, not for being a dork harrassing Drag Queens, but for stirring up 30,000 Facebook users an hour to go somewhere else.
On the other side I've seen artists complaining that when they do get a lot of play on streaming services they still don't get much in royalties. I would venture (meaning I have better things to do this afternoon than research the real numbers) that in terms of revenue to the independent artist that sells their own music, one customer who purchases a download or buys physical product is equivalent to a much larger number (10? 100?) who play them repeatedly on streaming services. From a label or self marketed artist standpoint the streaming services are successors to the record clubs, what makes them more complex is that they also function as radio stations. From the standpoint of an independent artist getting on the streaming services is important promotion, but then every time someone saves them to their streaming service library instead of going to Itunes or Amazon they are getting a tiny fraction of the income. No surprise that established artists who have control over these things aren't available on these services. Further given that the labels probably also believe they should charge a lot more, I'm surprised that there aren't complaints that the agreements call for forced exposure of their developing artists.
An example that most people miss about the record companies not adjusting to technology is that the record companies aren't shifting to DVD Audio. I still buy most of my music in physical format, in large part because of MP3 quality (unreliable). For customers like me who pay a premium for quality there is no excuse with today's technology to deliver less than 48kbps 20bit. DVD Audio can deliver lossless 96x24 when CD is still limited to 44x16. (As for the alternative SACD format, only about 1% of all CD capable devices can decode SACD as compared to about 50% that are DVD players or ROMs).
Getting back to the main point, the Legacy Recording Conglomerates don't know to deal with anything in the new landscape, historically they've had difficulty with change. In the 1940s a startup called Capital Records changed the rules by sending free copies of records by their big signing (Frank Sinatra) to radio stations, eventually the 2 conglomerates of the time (RCA and Columbia) had to do the same to remain competitive. It is the up and coming independents who will figure out how to navigate the new landscape, all the big labels want is a return to the way it used to be.
Catalyst is one of the oldest MVC frameworks and very actively developed. Catalyst is also very stable, a few years ago the Catalyst team implemented the new Moose Object system for Perl and older Catalyst code still generally works. When I upgrade a system running Catalyst or redeploy my applications to a new system the major headache is from missed dependencies, but once I sort them out it is unusual to have to change code, and deprecations are infrequent and get long notice periods. When the new MOP object system (it is based on the Moose Object extension Catalyst already uses) ships in an upcoming Perl release your old Catalyst Code is still going to work, and as each release of Ruby and the path from Python 2 to 3 show, those other languages don't maintain the stability that Perl does.
The mechanical typewriter manufacturing lobby will back the move to force vi on the population at large, as 98% of the population will be unable to type anything as soon as the mandate was extended to all wordprocessing (which would be inevitable). The American Psychiatric Association would support an Emacs mandate instead as long as their members didn't have to use it. A truly beneficial mandate would be to require all Text Editing and Wordprocessing software to implement a wordstar compatible control set instead. For those of us who can touch-type the WordStar interface remains the only choice, and JOE is the one true editor!
The overall quality of instruction and graduates in many of these tech schools is often pretty low. Technical College not only costs more than Community College, but is an indication that you didn't have the academic chops to get through Community College. I can tell you how I would stack my resume pile if I was hiring and all that hr was providing was a brief summary: Experience+College, Experience (no degree), Self-taught limited experience, College Grad (no experience), Technical Trade School, No apparent Qualifications. Self study, some certifications, and anything you can do to demonstrate competency will put you ahead of the Trade School Graduate and at least equal to the no-experience college grad. Do it on your own or go to a legitimate college that fits your budget.
Gary Johnson is even better than Ron Paul. Former Governor, many similar views -- low spending, anti-war, consistent over time and a two term Governor to boot. He will be the Libertarian Party Nominee this year. Maybe the Republicans have finally marginalized themselves to the point where people are ready to pay attention to the Libertarian Party.
All of the copy protection nonsense the industry was doing with blu-ray really sours the customer experience. When a movie comes in from netflix I want it to just play. I don't want to perform a firmware or software update, I don't want to have to rip it to break the encryption (which most consumers aren't tech savvy enough to do anyway). Meanwhile I have a cheap multiregion DVD player and on my computer I have about 10 different programs that play DVDs pretty reliably.
A well mastered DVD looks pretty spectacular on my 27" 720P device, and while some BluRays do look even better, you need a larger 1080 device to really see a benefit from the higher resolutions.
I have 6 computers, and a dvd player that can play DVDs, but only 1 computer than can play BluRay, so there is a big convenience factor,
When I first bought my BluRay player I signed up for Netflix BluRay. Over time I realized that most of my titles were DVD only, and I was watching a lot on streaming, so I cancelled the BluRay option.
Several of the USB sticks I've purchased came with pre-installed malware which Windows dutifully executes when the stick is inserted. A few months ago I made a presentation and stuck one of these in someone else's machine, and their anti-virus actually detected the stick as containing a trojan, about effing time. Given that MS continues to support vendors including viruses (claiming them to be drivers or other necessary software) and executing them, I'm really surprised that a lot more malware hasn't spread this way. I'm also a little surprised that more malware authors have not broken MS Code Signing. As for the target systems it looks like they are living with their heads in the sand, it was just a matter of time for them to be targeted.
If you have another job lined up and haven't been at this job long, resign your position and drop a dime to the BSA for the reward. Even if you don't have a job lined up, you can resign a job because you've been asked to perform illegal activities and still be eligible for unemployment, but you'll need to document it, so you'll need to tactfully put your concerns in writing and maintain a file before dropping the dime. Leaving a job on bad terms can have repercussions for your career, so if not having this job on your resume leaves a big hole, you need to figure out how you'll compensate, one tactic is maintaining ties to other employees you can use as a reference -- most HR departments will only confirm employment and as soon as your gone you can have a friend at another company send a reference check to see what HR says. Even if you can leave this job off your resume, be prepared to answer questions about the job if you are subject to a background investigation for a future job.
As someone marginally capable of touch typing (and old enough to remember), WordStar had the best interface of a Word Processing Program. I find Word 2007's Ribbon bar absolutely perplexing. Wordstar had home row key-bindings. OpenOffice is a GPL project, so hopefully as a backlash some outraged developers will build a version that supports WordStar keybindings.
The core of the problem with the U.S. Healthcare System is that we Americans don't purchase our own Health Care and Coverage, someone else does, and costs are then heavily shifted to those who cannot get someone else to cover them. The U.S. is already subsidizing Healthcare, besides Medicare and Medicaid, there is a huge tax break to affluent and middle class Americans derived from Employer Provided Healthcare. The very structure of this subsidy is sick, the affluent are subsidized while working people who don't have good employers pay through the nose.
I do not believe that either Barrack Obama or John McCain is going to do a good job, other than that the system is so screwed right now (by the Government, not just in its crazy subsidy schemes but by the imposition of the Medicare reimbursement system and the requirement that the lowest rates go to Medicare instead of Payment at Time of Service Customers) that it is nearly impossible to make it worse.
The best choice for fixing Healthcare is Bob Barr. He will push for a return to a real Free Market System which will improve choice and efficiency. The Democratic Congress will insist on a subsidy for the poor. You'll choose your own Health Insurance and your own Providers. If your response is Bob Barr can't win, well neither can John McCain at this point. I've never considered McCain or Obama an option. The Libertarian Party Candidate (Barr) getting %5 of the popular vote is the best option we have.
The Republicans and Democrats have already rigged the election to exclude any opposition. I don't care what tricks they use on each other; after the Bailout and Telecom Immunity votes it should be obvious that it makes little difference which one wins, voting for either of them is the greater evil. First of all it is nearly impossible for anyone else to get on all 51 ballots. When Obama and McCain failed to qualify in Texas, the Texas courts refused to even hear the case to remove them. Yet a court in Louisiana removed Bob Barr arbitrarily from that state's ballot, Oklahoma Courts refused to hear his challenge to their requirements, Maine and West Virginia have removed Barr for the exact same reason that Texas should have removed McCain and Obama. Bob Barr may have no chance of winning, but his supporters have already been denied their voting rights in four states. Then look at the Debates Commission, the Republicans and Democrats have agreed that only a Republican or Democrat will ever participate. If you want to hear some real alternatives, support the efforts to create a debate with all of the candidates who are on a majority of ballots at thirdpartyticket.com.
The election and the debate are a sham the media and the two controlling parties have rigged the election so that one of the two parties that created our current crisis will be the winner. I will not be voting for Obama or McCain.
With all of this hoopla over the Demopublican conventions the Media is completely abrogating its responsibility. During the Primaries we got daily delegate counts, why aren't we seeing daily States on Ballot counts for Barr and Nader?, they're both going to be on the ballot in about 45 States, if Barr and the Libertarian Party win every court case they have, he will be on in 50 States. McKinney and Baldwin will be on the ballot in over 30 states each. Why isn't that newsworthy? I am running Linux, but I won't be bothered about missing the Democratic or Republican convention at all. I think I'll finally watch Borat instead (Bob Barr has a cameo).
The critical concept in both these ideas is to create an automatic encapsulation for IPv6 over IPv4, so that if I'm on 6 and trying to reach someone else on also on a 6 network, but our ISPs aren't all up to speed on IPv6, the routers can automatically encapsulate the IPv6 traffic over IPv4 routes and then once the IPv4 segments are traversed finish the journey as an IPv6 packet. As more of the internet is on IPv6 people will stop caring as much about the v4 only parts of the internet and will start accepting cheaper v6 IP addresses.
I also agree that with those who say the crisis isn't quite as looming because there are still huge untapped reserves of Class A networks, that once those addresses become valuable will get sold, and more rationing of ip addresses. I would sooner see a move to a permanent solution rather than this continual stretching of the lifespan of IPv4, to make this a reality we need a better transition strategy. I would be very happy to replace my cheap home routers in a year or two because IPv6 was beginning to matter. For that matter I've been turning the IPv6 off on all of my computers, because right now it truly doesn't matter.
First, I only know a little bit about IPV6, but the important thing is that at an IPV6 address 32 bytes instead of 8, and I can conceptually view it as a string of 4 IPV4 addresses.
As far as I know the designers of IPV6 didn't have the forethought to make IPV6 readily encapsulateable over IPV4. There are proprietary methods. But what we need is a universal method that requires minimal change and doesn't require touching the IPV4 standard at all.
IPV6 moves away from the notion of private address blocks to something called link local, but the idea I'm expressing could co-exist with or become a revision of it. So here is my idea and apologies if I'm reinventing a wheel.
The IP address of slashdot is 66.35.250.150. Conceptualize assigning anything beginning with a bunch of zeros 0:0:0:xx.xx.xx.xx as a private network (using colons to represent a string of 4.0 octets). Now conceptualize 0:0:66.35.250.150:0.0.0.1. During the transition the third octet preceded by zeros is reserved for the special network of legacy IPV4 addresses. 0:0:66.35.250.150:0.0.0.0 is the IPV6 version of slashdot's address. Note that the last 4 octets are normally a network address. Imagine that later in the transition you're not so worried about IPV4 hosts, but intermediate ISPs that haven't upgraded those four zeros can be replaced by numbers effectively allowing one IPV4 address to NAT billions of hosts.
IPV6R2 obviously would need to be standardized and the router companies have time to get updates out, but once it starts to roll it can coexist in a fashion where if I'm IP6 and you're IP6 its no longer a problem that the route between us is still IP4.
Cell phones, bleepers (passe now), Wireless Everywhere. Always in touch. Frantic, frantic, frantic, but we can't give it up.
Half of me says my ideal house doesn't have a thing in it that was invented after, say August 6, 1945 -- an arbitrary day, the day Hiroshima ceased to exist and the Atomic Age began. Maybe a Butler, Maid and Chauffeur. I'd tear down several houses from a city block for my Mansion. The only high tech thing I would install would be signal interference so cell phones and wireless wouldn't work. Rotary phones and no microwave (if you like cooking a good pre-war stove is much better than anything made today short of the very high end).
The more practical half of me wants a unique and large space with private courtyards (just like the other place) hidden in the midst of a city. But with technology discreetly all over the place. With robotic servants. If computers must be ubiquitous in my life (I'm severely addicted) let them hide in the furniture. Let all the multimedia be centrally integrated. If I'm listening to music let it follow me around the house. I'd like the lights to turn themselves out when no-one is in the room (but more sophisticated than simple motion sensors that think no one is in the room when you're sitting still).
I'm an IT Consultant and actually certified in and experienced with LANDesk.
I need more information to comment on your situation, but what would be the typical almost universal impetus for an initiative like this is that:
The University is looking to cut IT costs in the long run. The IT Depertment is looking to have more uniform standards and faster deployment of security fixes. The IT Department is concerned with damage caused by various kinds of malware and by locking down administrative control to a smaller group of people hope to help slow it down. The IT Department is concerned with illegal P2P networking hogging bandwidth and wants to prevent their installation, while the administration is concerned with the legal liability if the IT depertment isn't effective. The IT Department and Administration are concerned about the huge legal liability from pirated software being installed on university computers.
Whether the University plan is overall good or bad I can't tell from your post. The impact of the plan on your department may be significant or it may be very much a territorial issue. Another complication is if a lot of the computers belong to students and faculty rather than the university.
I've actually had to deal with this in corporate situations where employees had to provide a computer that they would use for the job. Then the IT department was essentially treating it like a corporate owned computer. My recommendation, always overruled, in these situations has been suggesting that they restructure the contract so that they were paying for the computers on the backend (out of commissions) rather than on the front end (out of pocket), and create a clear point that these were work computers and belonged to the company.
I was tempted to close the account and tell them the reason was getting blasted when trying to check my balance. But the credit card's been open over 7 years, since I don't carry balances on it, closing the account would lower my credit scores. The idiocy of Credit Scoring is worth another RANT or more but not in this reply.
While I agree with Mandrake for not spending a lot of Euros on a fat pipe for downloads, I was also getting terrible performance 8 to 12 kbps down and putting out about 20-30, about 2 days to get the whole set.
Now I did find the faq from bittorent for which ports (6881 to 6889) to open for bit torrent, my download has since peaked at about 46kps and then fallen back into the 30s since I made this change.
I think bit-torrent is a cool idea but it needs more work, there should definitely be a tool to help you optimize throughput, which will remind you what ports you need to open and anything else you can do to speed up the process.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to stay in programming you need to know current tools. Converting your last project to a current Perl Toolset would be a resume selling point. Right now there is a high demand for Perl Programmers, there's even been an uptick in new Perl Projects (and if Mojolicious keeps gaining converts its going to be in a lot of job reqs). A project lead looking at you for a Perl job would be concerned about the need to re-teach you Perl and probably prefer a Ruby programmer who was willing to learn Perl over you. On the other hand there is still tons of gnarly ancient Perl code out there that needs to be maintained, and you're well qualified.
The thing I always hated about LaGuardia is that it is Taxi accessible only, I could never fathom why the N didn't get extended to resolve that. Other than doing that I think investing in LaGuardia is a mis-allocation of resources.
Several Million People live in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, but to catch an airplane they need to drive past MacArthur/Islip Airport on their way to JFK or LaGuardia through rather intense traffic or take the Long Island Railroad (which may depending on when they're travelling and which line still be slower than sitting in traffic). Spending the money expanding Islip would both add significant capacity for the region and provide a lot of convenience.
Considering New York-Princeton-Philadelphia as a single very large market, Trenton is the most interesting of the Auxilliary Airports. It is not only the shortest drive airport for Central New Jersey (Princeton and New Brunswick), but it is also the shortest drive for airport for the Northern Philadelphia Suburbs including the Northeastern corner of Philadelphia itself and King of Prussia (which is the economic centre of the Philadelphia Market, not downtown). Right now the transit connections to Trenton are awful, but with about 6 miles of track to build there could be direct service from Trenton Airport on three lines to Center City Philadelphia, Camden NJ and New York City. Politically the region either needs to either be taken over by a state or regional authority or get an exemption from the outdated federal restrictions on commercial flights at private airports and be privatized because the Municipal authority that owns it changes their mind every few years as to whether they want to expand it or shut it down entirely.
Because of the tangled politics the money will probably be wasted on a renovation of LaGuardia (probably without the subway extension its always needed and no added capacity or other benefits to travellers than a shiny terminal), rather than on ISP or TNN expansion which would provide much greater benefit to travellers.
If the self appointed RealNamePolice hadn't made such a stink, ello wouldn't have gone viral. Suddenly facebook, a company I loathe and despise and use only with fake names, has competition. I haven't seen their service, but ello have a good manifesto, and plan to use a business model where their end-users are customers rather than assets. Facebook has achieved a degree of critical mass they've been using to revert the internet to AOL. Unless an open distributed social networking protocol emerges (unforunately, Diaspora wasn't able to make it happen), someone has to run the backbone of social networking, and I'd rather it wasn't Facebook.
So thank you RealNamePolice, not for being a dork harrassing Drag Queens, but for stirring up 30,000 Facebook users an hour to go somewhere else.
On the other side I've seen artists complaining that when they do get a lot of play on streaming services they still don't get much in royalties. I would venture (meaning I have better things to do this afternoon than research the real numbers) that in terms of revenue to the independent artist that sells their own music, one customer who purchases a download or buys physical product is equivalent to a much larger number (10? 100?) who play them repeatedly on streaming services. From a label or self marketed artist standpoint the streaming services are successors to the record clubs, what makes them more complex is that they also function as radio stations. From the standpoint of an independent artist getting on the streaming services is important promotion, but then every time someone saves them to their streaming service library instead of going to Itunes or Amazon they are getting a tiny fraction of the income. No surprise that established artists who have control over these things aren't available on these services. Further given that the labels probably also believe they should charge a lot more, I'm surprised that there aren't complaints that the agreements call for forced exposure of their developing artists.
An example that most people miss about the record companies not adjusting to technology is that the record companies aren't shifting to DVD Audio. I still buy most of my music in physical format, in large part because of MP3 quality (unreliable). For customers like me who pay a premium for quality there is no excuse with today's technology to deliver less than 48kbps 20bit. DVD Audio can deliver lossless 96x24 when CD is still limited to 44x16. (As for the alternative SACD format, only about 1% of all CD capable devices can decode SACD as compared to about 50% that are DVD players or ROMs).
Getting back to the main point, the Legacy Recording Conglomerates don't know to deal with anything in the new landscape, historically they've had difficulty with change. In the 1940s a startup called Capital Records changed the rules by sending free copies of records by their big signing (Frank Sinatra) to radio stations, eventually the 2 conglomerates of the time (RCA and Columbia) had to do the same to remain competitive. It is the up and coming independents who will figure out how to navigate the new landscape, all the big labels want is a return to the way it used to be.
Catalyst is one of the oldest MVC frameworks and very actively developed. Catalyst is also very stable, a few years ago the Catalyst team implemented the new Moose Object system for Perl and older Catalyst code still generally works. When I upgrade a system running Catalyst or redeploy my applications to a new system the major headache is from missed dependencies, but once I sort them out it is unusual to have to change code, and deprecations are infrequent and get long notice periods. When the new MOP object system (it is based on the Moose Object extension Catalyst already uses) ships in an upcoming Perl release your old Catalyst Code is still going to work, and as each release of Ruby and the path from Python 2 to 3 show, those other languages don't maintain the stability that Perl does.
The mechanical typewriter manufacturing lobby will back the move to force vi on the population at large, as 98% of the population will be unable to type anything as soon as the mandate was extended to all wordprocessing (which would be inevitable). The American Psychiatric Association would support an Emacs mandate instead as long as their members didn't have to use it. A truly beneficial mandate would be to require all Text Editing and Wordprocessing software to implement a wordstar compatible control set instead. For those of us who can touch-type the WordStar interface remains the only choice, and JOE is the one true editor!
The overall quality of instruction and graduates in many of these tech schools is often pretty low. Technical College not only costs more than Community College, but is an indication that you didn't have the academic chops to get through Community College. I can tell you how I would stack my resume pile if I was hiring and all that hr was providing was a brief summary: Experience+College, Experience (no degree), Self-taught limited experience, College Grad (no experience), Technical Trade School, No apparent Qualifications. Self study, some certifications, and anything you can do to demonstrate competency will put you ahead of the Trade School Graduate and at least equal to the no-experience college grad. Do it on your own or go to a legitimate college that fits your budget.
Gary Johnson is even better than Ron Paul.
Former Governor, many similar views -- low spending, anti-war, consistent over time and a two term Governor to boot. He will be the Libertarian Party Nominee this year. Maybe the Republicans have finally marginalized themselves to the point where people are ready to pay attention to the Libertarian Party.
All of the copy protection nonsense the industry was doing with blu-ray really sours the customer experience. When a movie comes in from netflix I want it to just play. I don't want to perform a firmware or software update, I don't want to have to rip it to break the encryption (which most consumers aren't tech savvy enough to do anyway). Meanwhile I have a cheap multiregion DVD player and on my computer I have about 10 different programs that play DVDs pretty reliably.
A well mastered DVD looks pretty spectacular on my 27" 720P device, and while some BluRays do look even better, you need a larger 1080 device to really see a benefit from the higher resolutions.
I have 6 computers, and a dvd player that can play DVDs, but only 1 computer than can play BluRay, so there is a big convenience factor,
When I first bought my BluRay player I signed up for Netflix BluRay. Over time I realized that most of my titles were DVD only, and I was watching a lot on streaming, so I cancelled the BluRay option.
Several of the USB sticks I've purchased came with pre-installed malware which Windows dutifully executes when the stick is inserted. A few months ago I made a presentation and stuck one of these in someone else's machine, and their anti-virus actually detected the stick as containing a trojan, about effing time. Given that MS continues to support vendors including viruses (claiming them to be drivers or other necessary software) and executing them, I'm really surprised that a lot more malware hasn't spread this way. I'm also a little surprised that more malware authors have not broken MS Code Signing. As for the target systems it looks like they are living with their heads in the sand, it was just a matter of time for them to be targeted.
If you have another job lined up and haven't been at this job long, resign your position and drop a dime to the BSA for the reward. Even if you don't have a job lined up, you can resign a job because you've been asked to perform illegal activities and still be eligible for unemployment, but you'll need to document it, so you'll need to tactfully put your concerns in writing and maintain a file before dropping the dime. Leaving a job on bad terms can have repercussions for your career, so if not having this job on your resume leaves a big hole, you need to figure out how you'll compensate, one tactic is maintaining ties to other employees you can use as a reference -- most HR departments will only confirm employment and as soon as your gone you can have a friend at another company send a reference check to see what HR says. Even if you can leave this job off your resume, be prepared to answer questions about the job if you are subject to a background investigation for a future job.
As someone marginally capable of touch typing (and old enough to remember), WordStar had the best interface of a Word Processing Program. I find Word 2007's Ribbon bar absolutely perplexing. Wordstar had home row key-bindings. OpenOffice is a GPL project, so hopefully as a backlash some outraged developers will build a version that supports WordStar keybindings.
The core of the problem with the U.S. Healthcare System is that we Americans don't purchase our own Health Care and Coverage, someone else does, and costs are then heavily shifted to those who cannot get someone else to cover them. The U.S. is already subsidizing Healthcare, besides Medicare and Medicaid, there is a huge tax break to affluent and middle class Americans derived from Employer Provided Healthcare. The very structure of this subsidy is sick, the affluent are subsidized while working people who don't have good employers pay through the nose.
I do not believe that either Barrack Obama or John McCain is going to do a good job, other than that the system is so screwed right now (by the Government, not just in its crazy subsidy schemes but by the imposition of the Medicare reimbursement system and the requirement that the lowest rates go to Medicare instead of Payment at Time of Service Customers) that it is nearly impossible to make it worse.
The best choice for fixing Healthcare is Bob Barr. He will push for a return to a real Free Market System which will improve choice and efficiency. The Democratic Congress will insist on a subsidy for the poor. You'll choose your own Health Insurance and your own Providers. If your response is Bob Barr can't win, well neither can John McCain at this point. I've never considered McCain or Obama an option. The Libertarian Party Candidate (Barr) getting %5 of the popular vote is the best option we have.
The Republicans and Democrats have already rigged the election to exclude any opposition. I don't care what tricks they use on each other; after the Bailout and Telecom Immunity votes it should be obvious that it makes little difference which one wins, voting for either of them is the greater evil.
First of all it is nearly impossible for anyone else to get on all 51 ballots. When Obama and McCain failed to qualify in Texas, the Texas courts refused to even hear the case to remove them. Yet a court in Louisiana removed Bob Barr arbitrarily from that state's ballot, Oklahoma Courts refused to hear his challenge to their requirements, Maine and West Virginia have removed Barr for the exact same reason that Texas should have removed McCain and Obama. Bob Barr may have no chance of winning, but his supporters have already been denied their voting rights in four states.
Then look at the Debates Commission, the Republicans and Democrats have agreed that only a Republican or Democrat will ever participate.
If you want to hear some real alternatives, support the efforts to create a debate with all of the candidates who are on a majority of ballots at thirdpartyticket.com.
Obama and McCain voted for this, they voted for the Telecom Bailout. Vote against both of them. I'm voting for Bob Barr!
The election and the debate are a sham the media and the two controlling parties have rigged the election so that one of the two parties that created our current crisis will be the winner. I will not be voting for Obama or McCain.
With all of this hoopla over the Demopublican conventions the Media is completely abrogating its responsibility. During the Primaries we got daily delegate counts, why aren't we seeing daily States on Ballot counts for Barr and Nader?, they're both going to be on the ballot in about 45 States, if Barr and the Libertarian Party win every court case they have, he will be on in 50 States. McKinney and Baldwin will be on the ballot in over 30 states each. Why isn't that newsworthy?
I am running Linux, but I won't be bothered about missing the Democratic or Republican convention at all. I think I'll finally watch Borat instead (Bob Barr has a cameo).
I posted a similar idea at http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=463044&cid=22523006.
The critical concept in both these ideas is to create an automatic encapsulation for IPv6 over IPv4, so that if I'm on 6 and trying to reach someone else on also on a 6 network, but our ISPs aren't all up to speed on IPv6, the routers can automatically encapsulate the IPv6 traffic over IPv4 routes and then once the IPv4 segments are traversed finish the journey as an IPv6 packet. As more of the internet is on IPv6 people will stop caring as much about the v4 only parts of the internet and will start accepting cheaper v6 IP addresses.
I also agree that with those who say the crisis isn't quite as looming because there are still huge untapped reserves of Class A networks, that once those addresses become valuable will get sold, and more rationing of ip addresses. I would sooner see a move to a permanent solution rather than this continual stretching of the lifespan of IPv4, to make this a reality we need a better transition strategy. I would be very happy to replace my cheap home routers in a year or two because IPv6 was beginning to matter. For that matter I've been turning the IPv6 off on all of my computers, because right now it truly doesn't matter.
First, I only know a little bit about IPV6, but the important thing is that at an IPV6 address 32 bytes instead of 8, and I can conceptually view it as a string of 4 IPV4 addresses.
.0 octets). Now conceptualize 0:0:66.35.250.150:0.0.0.1. During the transition the third octet preceded by zeros is reserved for the special network of legacy IPV4 addresses. 0:0:66.35.250.150:0.0.0.0 is the IPV6 version of slashdot's address. Note that the last 4 octets are normally a network address. Imagine that later in the transition you're not so worried about IPV4 hosts, but intermediate ISPs that haven't upgraded those four zeros can be replaced by numbers effectively allowing one IPV4 address to NAT billions of hosts.
As far as I know the designers of IPV6 didn't have the forethought to make IPV6 readily encapsulateable over IPV4. There are proprietary methods. But what we need is a universal method that requires minimal change and doesn't require touching the IPV4 standard at all.
IPV6 moves away from the notion of private address blocks to something called link local, but the idea I'm expressing could co-exist with or become a revision of it. So here is my idea and apologies if I'm reinventing a wheel.
The IP address of slashdot is 66.35.250.150. Conceptualize assigning anything beginning with a bunch of zeros 0:0:0:xx.xx.xx.xx as a private network (using colons to represent a string of 4
IPV6R2 obviously would need to be standardized and the router companies have time to get updates out, but once it starts to roll it can coexist in a fashion where if I'm IP6 and you're IP6 its no longer a problem that the route between us is still IP4.
Cell phones, bleepers (passe now), Wireless Everywhere. Always in touch. Frantic, frantic, frantic, but we can't give it up.
Half of me says my ideal house doesn't have a thing in it that was invented after, say August 6, 1945 -- an arbitrary day, the day Hiroshima ceased to exist and the Atomic Age began. Maybe a Butler, Maid and Chauffeur. I'd tear down several houses from a city block for my Mansion. The only high tech thing I would install would be signal interference so cell phones and wireless wouldn't work. Rotary phones and no microwave (if you like cooking a good pre-war stove is much better than anything made today short of the very high end).
The more practical half of me wants a unique and large space with private courtyards (just like the other place) hidden in the midst of a city. But with technology discreetly all over the place. With robotic servants. If computers must be ubiquitous in my life (I'm severely addicted) let them hide in the furniture. Let all the multimedia be centrally integrated. If I'm listening to music let it follow me around the house. I'd like the lights to turn themselves out when no-one is in the room (but more sophisticated than simple motion sensors that think no one is in the room when you're sitting still).
I'm an IT Consultant and actually certified in and experienced with LANDesk.
I need more information to comment on your situation, but what would be the typical almost universal impetus for an initiative like this is that:
The University is looking to cut IT costs in the long run.
The IT Depertment is looking to have more uniform standards and faster deployment of security fixes.
The IT Department is concerned with damage caused by various kinds of malware and by locking down administrative control to a smaller group of people hope to help slow it down.
The IT Department is concerned with illegal P2P networking hogging bandwidth and wants to prevent their installation, while the administration is concerned with the legal liability if the IT depertment isn't effective.
The IT Department and Administration are concerned about the huge legal liability from pirated software being installed on university computers.
Whether the University plan is overall good or bad I can't tell from your post. The impact of the plan on your department may be significant or it may be very much a territorial issue. Another complication is if a lot of the computers belong to students and faculty rather than the university.
I've actually had to deal with this in corporate situations where employees had to provide a computer that they would use for the job. Then the IT department was essentially treating it like a corporate owned computer. My recommendation, always overruled, in these situations has been suggesting that they restructure the contract so that they were paying for the computers on the backend (out of commissions) rather than on the front end (out of pocket), and create a clear point that these were work computers and belonged to the company.
I was tempted to close the account and tell them the reason was getting blasted when trying to check my balance. But the credit card's been open over 7 years, since I don't carry balances on it, closing the account would lower my credit scores. The idiocy of Credit Scoring is worth another RANT or more but not in this reply.
While I agree with Mandrake for not spending a lot of Euros on a fat pipe for downloads, I was also getting terrible performance 8 to 12 kbps down and putting out about 20-30, about 2 days to get the whole set.
Now I did find the faq from bittorent for which ports (6881 to 6889) to open for bit torrent, my download has since peaked at about 46kps and then fallen back into the 30s since I made this change.
I think bit-torrent is a cool idea but it needs more work, there should definitely be a tool to help you optimize throughput, which will remind you what ports you need to open and anything else you can do to speed up the process.