This used to be my problem... for the DST change, we have thousands of servers and workstations to deal with. I was getting worried, but instead of taking it on, we found a PM and now it's their problem.
I ran one monitor at work for a long time (17" - the head IT guy keeps rejecting my request for a 19"). They won't let me put a second video card in my computer, so I threw up a linux box and use X2VNC between them and now I have twice the usable space and I am much more productive, especially when coding or doing trouble tickets. I spend way less time alt-tabbing around looking for my terminal sessions - they're all on one monitor, as well as my browser, etc, leaving my 'work' tools on the other so I can move between easily.
The downsides I see are a) cost and b) people getting a 30" monitor, complaining they can't see anything, and running 800x600. I think that would break my heart and mind a little, but it wouldn't suprise me. People around here still run 800x600 on their 17" monitors, and complain that 1280x1024 is too small.
But, now that I think about it, having a 30" monitor wouldn't necessarily help - when you maximize a window, it fills the whole screen, which still puts you back to alt-tabbing. Maybe a better window manager/gui that you could break the screen in to regions, so that when you maximize a window, it would only fill the top 40% or something. Or the ability to pin windows to a location, os you don't have to maximize them.
I think my point is that more screen real-estate, be it one huge monitor, or 2 (or 3 as I sometimes setup) is very much more useful.
When I got my new car last year, I wanted to be able to do mp3s. I went out and got an iPod and an iTrip. That was thrown away as soon as I got in the car. I live in Toronto, and there is approximately 1 free spot on the FM dial that you can get FM on for the iTrip, and even it gets overrun sometimes. I found the quality horrible, so blah. Next was a tape adapter.. that worked great, but was messy (cables for audio and charging). VW didn't offer an iPod integration kit at that time, and 3rd party kits were like $500. So I started looking at VW options and found this:
I got a Phatbox. It plugs right in to the the desk, through the CD Changer control cable already in the trunk. It's fully accessable through the deck (And steering wheel contols). The cartridge comes out of the player (it's just a laptop HD in a fancy case) and you plug it in to a cradle to load music on it. When you change songs/cds/artists, depending on what mode you're in, it reads you the title, so you don't have to look at anything. It's completely simple to use, and I never have to take my hands off the wheel, or eyes off the road.
The point of this is - while the iPod is a good device for mobile use, if you want something in your car, it's probably not the best solution. There are many solutions out there that are sound better, work better, and are cheaper (The phatbox was a whole $300 installed).
plus, for the Phatbox, the hacking community is alive and well, because the Phatnoise player actually runs Linux. And now that they've figured out how to upgrade the drive sizes, you can buy the 20gig DMS and drop whatever size laptop HDD in there you want.
Now, I know this goes against the prevailing wisdumb, but...
Whats wrong with this? If the person decides to enter this contest, they do so knowing that Apple will be taking their app and 'taking it and running with it'... so whats bad about this?
I know we're supposed to be against anyone doing anything thats not open around here - fine and dandy, but I'm sure there are some people out there that would love the
a) exposure (great resume fodder) b) prize c) coolness of having their app included in MacOS
So whats so bad about this? It's not like Apple is saying 'hey, you give us this idea, and we'll give it to the community' then turning around and taking it and not giving back. They're doing exactly what they say they will.
There is nothing wrong with a company wanting to make money, and make it off good ideas. To me, thats much better than making money off of bad ideas.
But hey, I don't toe the party line that well, so I could be completly wrong here.
So really, the countries who didn't sign are the ones who really need to sign (US, Iran, Koreas, China), and some countries that aren't likely to matter anyways (Finland?).
Really? I didn't realize that, since I have not heard of one terrorist activity being prevented by the NSA. After all, what are wiretapped grandmas going to do?
I'm not a fan of the NSA, or any agency that listens to my phone calls etc, but in their defense... do you think if they caught someone, they'd have a big news paper article about it and have interviews on CNN? I suspect they'll be really quiet about it, so people don't know just how much they listen to, how they do it, etc.
I suspect they've heard a lot of things that has led to many investigations/arrests etc... but we'll never hear about it.
I agree - I don't know if it's the font, but I'm having a really hard time reading the page. My eyes don't seem to like moving from the end of one line to the next - theres too much white space or something. I really can't place it, but looking at the screen is giving me a headache.
Hopefully things will be better when it's released or I'm going to have to find another way to read slashdot cuz that font/style/spacing just isn't working for me.
I also was/am a trombonist who has picked up various other brass instruments. I can play taps on any of them. If you can play it on one brass, you can pretty much play it on any. You can play it without touching any valves (or slide). It just takes a little bit to get your lips used to the new mouthpiece, and remembering where the notes are.
It might look difficult, and it's hard to explain positioning your lips and stuff in a tiny mouthpiece, but it's actually quite simple once you've been playing for a bit.
But who's being obnoxious here? You want to disconnect thousands? of people from the Internet by downing their router, when they probably have no idea what NTP is, or that their router even uses it.
Sure, D-Link was wrong by using it, but punishing their customers is the obnoxious thing. Blocking the time is one thing, but maliciously trying to crash their router?
I've got one, and I do the headphone thing a lot - it works great. You get used to including it in your peripheral vision and soon you notice people before they knock and you can suprise them.
Otherwise, do what I did for a while - I had a big set of sony studio monitor headphones - they're impossible to miss. people would come in to my cube and see them on and just make some noise. it removes the 'are they ignoring me' factor and lets them know they should be loud.
easy. or you could just stick a post it note to the back of your head.
If they gave me the choice, I'd obviously take the $1000.
But if I was a manager trying to figure out how best to motivate my team, I'd probably give iPods. Frankly, at the pay level we're at, the gov't takes 50% of any money we make. That leaves me with $500. I make more than that on a pay in overtime/pager. To me, an iPod would be much more appreciated, espeically if came with some free iTunes or something - it's something tangible, in my hands, not just another number on my paycheck that the government takes part of.
But then, around here, I'm happy if I get a thanks for my work - an iPod is a pipe dream.
I kind of wonder if/. gets paid per story about google - without any imperical data to back me up, it sure seems like there are a hell of a lot more google stories here than anything else (followed by the 360). I'm a big google fan, so it's not a huge deal, but still. Maybe Google should have their own section.
I think it's great that they're defending the 'net and trying to convince people that it shouldn't be under American control, don't get me wrong. I'm just sayin this is like watching CNN sometimes. Instead of 'if it bleeds it leads' we've got 'If it has a G, approved submission for me!'/not in marketing.
Slashdot Mirror
"newbie"?
thats so oldschool now, it's noob or newb now
y'old fart.
This used to be my problem ... for the DST change, we have thousands of servers and workstations to deal with. I was getting worried, but instead of taking it on, we found a PM and now it's their problem.
The moral of the story: never try.
it's funny .. we're in the middle of replacing a thousand or so SCO Unixware servers with SLES9
... it takes a long time to get rid of a 1000 servers from production ... but still!
Sadly, we're two years from completion
where does one go to notice such things on this vast collection tubes, knobs and buttons?
I wasn't planning on buying a ps3, but I could use a little more respect, just in case.
I accept your challnge, sur!
I ran one monitor at work for a long time (17" - the head IT guy keeps rejecting my request for a 19"). They won't let me put a second video card in my computer, so I threw up a linux box and use X2VNC between them and now I have twice the usable space and I am much more productive, especially when coding or doing trouble tickets. I spend way less time alt-tabbing around looking for my terminal sessions - they're all on one monitor, as well as my browser, etc, leaving my 'work' tools on the other so I can move between easily.
The downsides I see are a) cost and b) people getting a 30" monitor, complaining they can't see anything, and running 800x600. I think that would break my heart and mind a little, but it wouldn't suprise me. People around here still run 800x600 on their 17" monitors, and complain that 1280x1024 is too small.
But, now that I think about it, having a 30" monitor wouldn't necessarily help - when you maximize a window, it fills the whole screen, which still puts you back to alt-tabbing. Maybe a better window manager/gui that you could break the screen in to regions, so that when you maximize a window, it would only fill the top 40% or something. Or the ability to pin windows to a location, os you don't have to maximize them.
I think my point is that more screen real-estate, be it one huge monitor, or 2 (or 3 as I sometimes setup) is very much more useful.
God, I babble a lot.
I think they call that 'communism' ... thus far all attempts to make it work haven't gone so well, which I think speaks to your ironic point.
When I got my new car last year, I wanted to be able to do mp3s. I went out and got an iPod and an iTrip. That was thrown away as soon as I got in the car. I live in Toronto, and there is approximately 1 free spot on the FM dial that you can get FM on for the iTrip, and even it gets overrun sometimes. I found the quality horrible, so blah. Next was a tape adapter .. that worked great, but was messy (cables for audio and charging). VW didn't offer an iPod integration kit at that time, and 3rd party kits were like $500. So I started looking at VW options and found this:
http://www.phatnoise.com/
I got a Phatbox. It plugs right in to the the desk, through the CD Changer control cable already in the trunk. It's fully accessable through the deck (And steering wheel contols). The cartridge comes out of the player (it's just a laptop HD in a fancy case) and you plug it in to a cradle to load music on it. When you change songs/cds/artists, depending on what mode you're in, it reads you the title, so you don't have to look at anything. It's completely simple to use, and I never have to take my hands off the wheel, or eyes off the road.
The point of this is - while the iPod is a good device for mobile use, if you want something in your car, it's probably not the best solution. There are many solutions out there that are sound better, work better, and are cheaper (The phatbox was a whole $300 installed).
plus, for the Phatbox, the hacking community is alive and well, because the Phatnoise player actually runs Linux. And now that they've figured out how to upgrade the drive sizes, you can buy the 20gig DMS and drop whatever size laptop HDD in there you want.
http://www.phathack.com/
Just my $0.02 CDN
Now, I know this goes against the prevailing wisdumb, but ...
Whats wrong with this? If the person decides to enter this contest, they do so knowing that Apple will be taking their app and 'taking it and running with it'... so whats bad about this?
I know we're supposed to be against anyone doing anything thats not open around here - fine and dandy, but I'm sure there are some people out there that would love the
a) exposure (great resume fodder)
b) prize
c) coolness of having their app included in MacOS
So whats so bad about this? It's not like Apple is saying 'hey, you give us this idea, and we'll give it to the community' then turning around and taking it and not giving back. They're doing exactly what they say they will.
There is nothing wrong with a company wanting to make money, and make it off good ideas. To me, thats much better than making money off of bad ideas.
But hey, I don't toe the party line that well, so I could be completly wrong here.
as of 12:34am EST:
Steven Colbert: 117
Stephen Colbert: 1683
did someone go fishing on the weekend?
or just too much Shark Week (tm)?
yes, but 'engineerspeed' doesn't really sound as motivational. or as fast.
So really, the countries who didn't sign are the ones who really need to sign (US, Iran, Koreas, China), and some countries that aren't likely to matter anyways (Finland?).
I'm not a fan of the NSA, or any agency that listens to my phone calls etc, but in their defense
I suspect they've heard a lot of things that has led to many investigations/arrests etc
t.
they wouldn't see anything they couldn't get off google earth anyways /tongue only partly in cheek.
maybe he's a professional censor with years of education and training?
GET 'IM!!
I agree - I don't know if it's the font, but I'm having a really hard time reading the page. My eyes don't seem to like moving from the end of one line to the next - theres too much white space or something. I really can't place it, but looking at the screen is giving me a headache.
Hopefully things will be better when it's released or I'm going to have to find another way to read slashdot cuz that font/style/spacing just isn't working for me.
I concurr,
I also was/am a trombonist who has picked up various other brass instruments. I can play taps on any of them. If you can play it on one brass, you can pretty much play it on any. You can play it without touching any valves (or slide).
It just takes a little bit to get your lips used to the new mouthpiece, and remembering where the notes are.
It might look difficult, and it's hard to explain positioning your lips and stuff in a tiny mouthpiece, but it's actually quite simple once you've been playing for a bit.
Perhaps you're trolling, so I'm falling for it.
But who's being obnoxious here? You want to disconnect thousands? of people from the Internet by downing their router, when they probably have no idea what NTP is, or that their router even uses it.
Sure, D-Link was wrong by using it, but punishing their customers is the obnoxious thing. Blocking the time is one thing, but maliciously trying to crash their router?
Come on, grow up.
hey, you forgot Canada!
most people only forget Poland, but Canada?
I've got one, and I do the headphone thing a lot - it works great. You get used to including it in your peripheral vision and soon you notice people before they knock and you can suprise them.
Otherwise, do what I did for a while - I had a big set of sony studio monitor headphones - they're impossible to miss. people would come in to my cube and see them on and just make some noise. it removes the 'are they ignoring me' factor and lets them know they should be loud.
easy. or you could just stick a post it note to the back of your head.
I'm with you there - this morning FF hit 520meg before I had to kill it. Granted, I had 12 tabs open, but come on, 520meg??
If IE can do it in 70meg, I might have to switch back - my laptop only has 512meg of ram and I can't be throwing it away willy nilly for FF.
The thing I've never understood - how does shocking something and causing intense and long lasting pain and anguish make them better?
... what gains are there?
To hear that they still do it
If they gave me the choice, I'd obviously take the $1000.
But if I was a manager trying to figure out how best to motivate my team, I'd probably give iPods. Frankly, at the pay level we're at, the gov't takes 50% of any money we make. That leaves me with $500. I make more than that on a pay in overtime/pager. To me, an iPod would be much more appreciated, espeically if came with some free iTunes or something - it's something tangible, in my hands, not just another number on my paycheck that the government takes part of.
But then, around here, I'm happy if I get a thanks for my work - an iPod is a pipe dream.
I kind of wonder if /. gets paid per story about google - without any imperical data to back me up, it sure seems like there are a hell of a lot more google stories here than anything else (followed by the 360). I'm a big google fan, so it's not a huge deal, but still. Maybe Google should have their own section.
/not in marketing.
I think it's great that they're defending the 'net and trying to convince people that it shouldn't be under American control, don't get me wrong. I'm just sayin this is like watching CNN sometimes. Instead of 'if it bleeds it leads' we've got 'If it has a G, approved submission for me!'