"If you use AutoCAD and decide to move to another software, you either have to redraw all of your current drawings or do without them."
No, you don't. Most major CAD systems will import DWG files since they have paid the licensing fees to AutoDesk to include a utility to perform the import. It isn't always pretty, but the functionality exists.
If you were concerned about Just Works, you'd be happy with RedHat and Yum. You can't have it both ways.
I've done it both ways, and each has it's merit. Following the dependencies keeps you from screwing up your system by installing something you didn't expect. Package managers make it almost "click to install" easy.
Package managers are great for desktops. On critical servers, I'd rather do it by hand.
"If your machines basically sit idle most of the time with an occasional spike for a few seconds when it actually does something, the AMD would save you more on electricity."
More importantly, I think, is that power consumption translates to heat output. If you have mostly idle servers with occasional spikes, you can either cool them for less or put more in the same space depending on what you need. And don't forget that you actually save money twice with the AMD since you have to pay to power and cool the Xeons.
Virtualization, if done correctly, should save you more money on hardware than anything else. You load up a Xeon machine with 6 virtual servers and keep it humming at 70% load. Then you're probably putting out less heat than 5 lightly loaded AMD processors. You've saved the money on the extra hardware, and gained a lot of good things about machine portability in the future.
I'm not a developer, but would it be too much of a stretch to think that PS3 Linux will eventually expose all of the graphics and audio hardware? XNA seems to be limited to what Microsoft wants you to see, as far as I understand it (and I'm not a developer).
I would also think that PS3 Linux will be a lot better for general purpose computing, maybe clusters for parallel computations (fluid flow, CAD/CAE analysis). Can you build a $700 computer now that out-performs a PS3 computationally? (I'm really asking, I don't know what the Cell processors can do)
At least Sony isn't stopping you from trying things with the PS3 that you bought. I don't like them so much as a company, but they definitely seem to be the lesser of the two evils in this case (which is why the story wasn't posted by Zonk).
If you think RPM (the package manager) sucks, it's pretty obvious that you have never had to deal with anything other than Windows. Try resolving dependencies on HP-UX with swinstall, or Solaris with pkgadd. They do exactly the same thing that RPM does. Read a package, check dependencies, install if dependencies are satisfied, exit if they are unresolved. It's _your job_ to resolve the dependencies, not the software's job to go out and download and install random packages that you may not want.
Yum is 1000x better than just plain RPM, and I have no idea why it is slow. Maybe it has something to do with the repository structure, but at least it works. Maybe cleaning up the RPM code will allow Yum to work faster.
A lot of people bash RedHat for the same kinds of reasons they bash Windows. RedHat has a large market share and is the name that most people associate with Linux. This puts them under extra scrutiny for things that they do, as well as garnering a decent amount of animosity from the people who are too elite to use a popular distro that generally just works.
OK, but if the author is dead and their heirs don't care about their code, would the GPL still be enforceable by other people?
I know that the original author can re-release his own code under multiple licenses. But under the GPL, would it be 70 years until the code can pass into the "public domain"? Or is that only if the coder's heirs want to enforce it?
Sounds like. for us, the chain of command was a cell phone call away and then a face-to-face talk about whatever the issue was. If it was important enough to hunt somebody down, it was generally something (it was felt) should be talked about in person. IM is OK for that, but building rooms to have more than 2 people chatting seems to be a pain in the ass (but I've never really looked into it).
What part of "some other animal" was unclear? If the trees exist and continue to provide a food source for insects, some insect will adapt to use that food source. I was considering the future of the trees and what insects may arrive to pollinate them.
You are worried about yourself, not the bees, the nut trees, or the extinction of other species (which is where this thread started). You want cheap and plentiful food, and you get worried when your food supply is threatened.
We really are just animals at the root, and I thank you for proving my point so well.
Exactly. Even the "coming into the office" part means that you are willing to put forth effort that other people are not. If you have some skill on top of that, you should be considered for a promotion before somebody who doesn't maintain physical presence. Not because it means your better, but a large part of managing effectively means that people are able to find you when they need you.
And often that is horribly inefficient. Unclear instructions left for you in the morning (your time) may have to wait until the next day to be clarified. Unless it is standard practice to drag people out of bed at all hours of the night.
Maybe the disease should kill off the bees. That would be evolution in action. You can have no idea of what other species may rise up to fill that gap, but since it's inconvenient to not have nuts you'd rather think that it's a "problem".
Other, better adapted species will move in and pollinate the trees as they consume the nectar that the blossoms produce. Either disease immune bees or something else (butterflies, etc, etc, etc).
The diversity exists, but is does not exist for our benefit. I'm sure the trees will get pollinated, but it won't happen when it's convenient for *us*. If it happens in 50 or 100 years, it still happens. It sucks for humans who want nuts, but that's not the way it works.
It seems that you're thinking that we're farmers and have a responsibility towards our "livestock", but that isn't the way it is. We have the intellect to take advantage of pre-existing relationships that we recognize, but we shouldn't mistake that for being in control.
Humans are part of the environment for better or worse. We are something that animals have to adapt to. Animals that can't adapt will become extinct until we create an environment that we ourselves can't adapt to. And then the cockroaches will take over and the smartest cockroaches will start to rebuild civilization in their own way.
Your attitude shows that although you think you're an environmentalist you have lost sight of the fact that humans are nothing more than the most highly adapted _animals_ on the planet right now. Still animals. Life was here before humans, and it's virtually certain that it will still be here after we're gone.
Yeah, but you would be in IT, not finance. You may have access to the physical systems and be able to mess with stuff, but it isn't likely that you will also have sufficient knowledge of the applications to be able to steal the money in a relatively undetectable way. Certainly not as easily as somebody in Accounts Payable.
The amount of reward you could get out of it vs. the amount of effort you put into it balances out on the wrong side IMO. People don't steal because they like hard work. They do it because they see an easy opportunity.
Your IS/IT people are less likely to do Bad Things(tm) since there is little or no reward in it for them. Upper levels of managment can embezzel funds, so can lowly finance interns. For them, there is the possibility of stealing millons of dollars over time.
For IS/IT people, what have you really done? It's a larger scale equivalent of breaking a window. You've caused trouble for other people, but there is no benefit to you.
Besides, IS/IT people are easy to keep happy for the most part. Let them have ownership of the network, don't micro-manage them, and buy them the occasional cool gadget. Want a 20" LCD? If the $300 is costs keeps you happy for 6 months, you can have 4. Want the most kick-ass computer in the company? For the $1000 difference it would take, no problem.
IS/IT people are important. They are the ones who know where your data is, how it's organized, and where it's backed up. Their needs are simple too. They mostly do IS/IT work because they like new stuff and gadgets. Throw them a new piece of tech every other month and keep their salaries at least comparable and you won't have to worry.
Disclaimer: I say these things about IS/IT people because I was one, then I managed them, and now I'm happy to just be one again.
"Members of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee, a group created by Congress to advise the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, deadlocked 6 to 6 on the proposal at a meeting held at the NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg. Eight votes are needed to pass a measure on the 15-member committee."
How do you deadlock 6 to 6 on a 15 person committee? Were the other 3 votes just not counted?
No, misguided administrators fucked up the educational process to the point where it is nearly impossible to succeed.
Children need to be shown that learning is fun, and the best way to do that is to let them run with it (in a somewhat guided fashion). If they're interested in something, teach them about it. Whether it's magnetism or insects, help them explore on their own. Don't slow everybody down for the one kid who doesn't get it. Help him/her later or find something else they have an aptitude for. Stop wasting all of our time beating a dead horse and trying to "teach to the test".
The fact that you assumed that I was lamenting my own situation it interesting. I think it's much more of a problem now than anything that effected me. I have kids now, and they're the ones I'm worried about.
I thought it was pretty clear when I said the process started (for me) in the 80s. It's called "No Child Left Behind" now, but the mentality has been in place for decades. If you were in Kindergarten in the 80s and can't figure out what I meant, then you're proof that I was right.
This has nothing to do with slashing budgets. It has to do with the overall dumbing down of American school children.
The entire "No Child Left Behind" initiative would be more accurately called "Let's Weigh Down Our Brightest Kids With Some Fucking Morons".
It started when I was in school (80s) when people got their asses all in a twist about "tracking" students. If you're not familiar with that term, it basically means separating out the idiots and the trouble makers from the kids who actually have a chance. Of course, the slightly brighter parents of these sub-par offspring raised a huge stink about how it was damaging to their idiots to be segregated from the other children. The solution, of course, was to integrate them into all the classes. So, instead of a class full of bright kids doing something like dissecting frogs or building circuits you have 29 kids bored out of their fucking minds while the teacher tries relentlessly to impart Ohm's Law into some mouth-breathing fucktard.
My younger brother was in a "gifted and talented" class for all of 6 months (the entire length of the program) before somebody decided that he should be hobbled by other people's stupidity as well.
Also related to this entire fucking mess is the "why don't women do as well in science" question. The correct answer is "who gives a fuck", not "lets screw up the educational system to the point that NOBODY does well in science". Equality is not a fact of life, period. Some women are brilliant and excellent scientists, but they seem to be the exception in scientific fields. Respect them for their abilities, but don't turn all your resources towards teaching Sally _instead_ of Billy.
Things like that are why home schooled kids often seem so much brighter than public school ones these days. Not because of incapable public school teachers (although they exist), but more because of anti-educational policies that don't let them teach the ones who are willing and able to learn.
Harrison Bergeron was prophesy, and we're paying for it now.
I used to play advent on an Osbourne "portable" that a friend of my dad's owned. It has two 5-1/4", a tiny b/w screen (maybe 6" diagonal) and a keyboard that you could beat a door down with.
Rogue was on an AT&T 7300 machine (20 MB Miniscribe hard drive, 68020 processor I think, monochrome green screen). I actually hacked on that enough to create my own unique monsters and artifacts in that. It helped a lot that the code was beautifully structured, well commented, and just easy to read.
I also remember "Space Taxi" from the TRS-80 days, and another Adventure-like game on a Sinclair Z80. Good times.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you use AutoCAD and decide to move to another software, you either have to redraw all of your current drawings or do without them."
No, you don't. Most major CAD systems will import DWG files since they have paid the licensing fees to AutoDesk to include a utility to perform the import. It isn't always pretty, but the functionality exists.
but that's just a blacklist.... Which blacklists and why was the server on the blacklist? Was it a known source of spam and not an open relay?
If you were concerned about Just Works, you'd be happy with RedHat and Yum. You can't have it both ways.
I've done it both ways, and each has it's merit. Following the dependencies keeps you from screwing up your system by installing something you didn't expect. Package managers make it almost "click to install" easy.
Package managers are great for desktops. On critical servers, I'd rather do it by hand.
"If your machines basically sit idle most of the time with an occasional spike for a few seconds when it actually does something, the AMD would save you more on electricity."
More importantly, I think, is that power consumption translates to heat output. If you have mostly idle servers with occasional spikes, you can either cool them for less or put more in the same space depending on what you need. And don't forget that you actually save money twice with the AMD since you have to pay to power and cool the Xeons.
Virtualization, if done correctly, should save you more money on hardware than anything else. You load up a Xeon machine with 6 virtual servers and keep it humming at 70% load. Then you're probably putting out less heat than 5 lightly loaded AMD processors. You've saved the money on the extra hardware, and gained a lot of good things about machine portability in the future.
I'm not a developer, but would it be too much of a stretch to think that PS3 Linux will eventually expose all of the graphics and audio hardware? XNA seems to be limited to what Microsoft wants you to see, as far as I understand it (and I'm not a developer).
I would also think that PS3 Linux will be a lot better for general purpose computing, maybe clusters for parallel computations (fluid flow, CAD/CAE analysis). Can you build a $700 computer now that out-performs a PS3 computationally? (I'm really asking, I don't know what the Cell processors can do)
At least Sony isn't stopping you from trying things with the PS3 that you bought. I don't like them so much as a company, but they definitely seem to be the lesser of the two evils in this case (which is why the story wasn't posted by Zonk).
If you think RPM (the package manager) sucks, it's pretty obvious that you have never had to deal with anything other than Windows. Try resolving dependencies on HP-UX with swinstall, or Solaris with pkgadd. They do exactly the same thing that RPM does. Read a package, check dependencies, install if dependencies are satisfied, exit if they are unresolved. It's _your job_ to resolve the dependencies, not the software's job to go out and download and install random packages that you may not want.
Yum is 1000x better than just plain RPM, and I have no idea why it is slow. Maybe it has something to do with the repository structure, but at least it works. Maybe cleaning up the RPM code will allow Yum to work faster.
A lot of people bash RedHat for the same kinds of reasons they bash Windows. RedHat has a large market share and is the name that most people associate with Linux. This puts them under extra scrutiny for things that they do, as well as garnering a decent amount of animosity from the people who are too elite to use a popular distro that generally just works.
OK, but if the author is dead and their heirs don't care about their code, would the GPL still be enforceable by other people?
I know that the original author can re-release his own code under multiple licenses. But under the GPL, would it be 70 years until the code can pass into the "public domain"? Or is that only if the coder's heirs want to enforce it?
If they're dead, then they should have no control over what the license can be changed to.
Or is the GPL a magic copyright that should be extended indefinitely past an author's death?
Sounds like. for us, the chain of command was a cell phone call away and then a face-to-face talk about whatever the issue was. If it was important enough to hunt somebody down, it was generally something (it was felt) should be talked about in person. IM is OK for that, but building rooms to have more than 2 people chatting seems to be a pain in the ass (but I've never really looked into it).
What part of "some other animal" was unclear? If the trees exist and continue to provide a food source for insects, some insect will adapt to use that food source. I was considering the future of the trees and what insects may arrive to pollinate them.
You are worried about yourself, not the bees, the nut trees, or the extinction of other species (which is where this thread started). You want cheap and plentiful food, and you get worried when your food supply is threatened.
We really are just animals at the root, and I thank you for proving my point so well.
Exactly. Even the "coming into the office" part means that you are willing to put forth effort that other people are not. If you have some skill on top of that, you should be considered for a promotion before somebody who doesn't maintain physical presence. Not because it means your better, but a large part of managing effectively means that people are able to find you when they need you.
And often that is horribly inefficient. Unclear instructions left for you in the morning (your time) may have to wait until the next day to be clarified. Unless it is standard practice to drag people out of bed at all hours of the night.
Maybe the disease should kill off the bees. That would be evolution in action. You can have no idea of what other species may rise up to fill that gap, but since it's inconvenient to not have nuts you'd rather think that it's a "problem".
Other, better adapted species will move in and pollinate the trees as they consume the nectar that the blossoms produce. Either disease immune bees or something else (butterflies, etc, etc, etc).
The diversity exists, but is does not exist for our benefit. I'm sure the trees will get pollinated, but it won't happen when it's convenient for *us*. If it happens in 50 or 100 years, it still happens. It sucks for humans who want nuts, but that's not the way it works.
It seems that you're thinking that we're farmers and have a responsibility towards our "livestock", but that isn't the way it is. We have the intellect to take advantage of pre-existing relationships that we recognize, but we shouldn't mistake that for being in control.
That's frankly ridiculous.
Humans are part of the environment for better or worse. We are something that animals have to adapt to. Animals that can't adapt will become extinct until we create an environment that we ourselves can't adapt to. And then the cockroaches will take over and the smartest cockroaches will start to rebuild civilization in their own way.
Your attitude shows that although you think you're an environmentalist you have lost sight of the fact that humans are nothing more than the most highly adapted _animals_ on the planet right now. Still animals. Life was here before humans, and it's virtually certain that it will still be here after we're gone.
I'm definitely going to hell for laughing at that...
All the salient points answered in the first reply. Lively discussion will NOT ensue.
Yeah, but you would be in IT, not finance. You may have access to the physical systems and be able to mess with stuff, but it isn't likely that you will also have sufficient knowledge of the applications to be able to steal the money in a relatively undetectable way. Certainly not as easily as somebody in Accounts Payable.
The amount of reward you could get out of it vs. the amount of effort you put into it balances out on the wrong side IMO. People don't steal because they like hard work. They do it because they see an easy opportunity.
The way that I look at it is this:
Your IS/IT people are less likely to do Bad Things(tm) since there is little or no reward in it for them. Upper levels of managment can embezzel funds, so can lowly finance interns. For them, there is the possibility of stealing millons of dollars over time.
For IS/IT people, what have you really done? It's a larger scale equivalent of breaking a window. You've caused trouble for other people, but there is no benefit to you.
Besides, IS/IT people are easy to keep happy for the most part. Let them have ownership of the network, don't micro-manage them, and buy them the occasional cool gadget. Want a 20" LCD? If the $300 is costs keeps you happy for 6 months, you can have 4. Want the most kick-ass computer in the company? For the $1000 difference it would take, no problem.
IS/IT people are important. They are the ones who know where your data is, how it's organized, and where it's backed up. Their needs are simple too. They mostly do IS/IT work because they like new stuff and gadgets. Throw them a new piece of tech every other month and keep their salaries at least comparable and you won't have to worry.
Disclaimer: I say these things about IS/IT people because I was one, then I managed them, and now I'm happy to just be one again.
"Members of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee, a group created by Congress to advise the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, deadlocked 6 to 6 on the proposal at a meeting held at the NIST headquarters in Gaithersburg. Eight votes are needed to pass a measure on the 15-member committee."
How do you deadlock 6 to 6 on a 15 person committee? Were the other 3 votes just not counted?
No, misguided administrators fucked up the educational process to the point where it is nearly impossible to succeed.
Children need to be shown that learning is fun, and the best way to do that is to let them run with it (in a somewhat guided fashion). If they're interested in something, teach them about it. Whether it's magnetism or insects, help them explore on their own. Don't slow everybody down for the one kid who doesn't get it. Help him/her later or find something else they have an aptitude for. Stop wasting all of our time beating a dead horse and trying to "teach to the test".
The fact that you assumed that I was lamenting my own situation it interesting. I think it's much more of a problem now than anything that effected me. I have kids now, and they're the ones I'm worried about.
I thought it was pretty clear when I said the process started (for me) in the 80s. It's called "No Child Left Behind" now, but the mentality has been in place for decades. If you were in Kindergarten in the 80s and can't figure out what I meant, then you're proof that I was right.
This has nothing to do with slashing budgets. It has to do with the overall dumbing down of American school children.
The entire "No Child Left Behind" initiative would be more accurately called "Let's Weigh Down Our Brightest Kids With Some Fucking Morons".
It started when I was in school (80s) when people got their asses all in a twist about "tracking" students. If you're not familiar with that term, it basically means separating out the idiots and the trouble makers from the kids who actually have a chance. Of course, the slightly brighter parents of these sub-par offspring raised a huge stink about how it was damaging to their idiots to be segregated from the other children. The solution, of course, was to integrate them into all the classes. So, instead of a class full of bright kids doing something like dissecting frogs or building circuits you have 29 kids bored out of their fucking minds while the teacher tries relentlessly to impart Ohm's Law into some mouth-breathing fucktard.
My younger brother was in a "gifted and talented" class for all of 6 months (the entire length of the program) before somebody decided that he should be hobbled by other people's stupidity as well.
Also related to this entire fucking mess is the "why don't women do as well in science" question. The correct answer is "who gives a fuck", not "lets screw up the educational system to the point that NOBODY does well in science". Equality is not a fact of life, period. Some women are brilliant and excellent scientists, but they seem to be the exception in scientific fields. Respect them for their abilities, but don't turn all your resources towards teaching Sally _instead_ of Billy.
Things like that are why home schooled kids often seem so much brighter than public school ones these days. Not because of incapable public school teachers (although they exist), but more because of anti-educational policies that don't let them teach the ones who are willing and able to learn.
Harrison Bergeron was prophesy, and we're paying for it now.
I used to play advent on an Osbourne "portable" that a friend of my dad's owned. It has two 5-1/4", a tiny b/w screen (maybe 6" diagonal) and a keyboard that you could beat a door down with.
Rogue was on an AT&T 7300 machine (20 MB Miniscribe hard drive, 68020 processor I think, monochrome green screen). I actually hacked on that enough to create my own unique monsters and artifacts in that. It helped a lot that the code was beautifully structured, well commented, and just easy to read.
I also remember "Space Taxi" from the TRS-80 days, and another Adventure-like game on a Sinclair Z80. Good times.
Think again, x86 lamer. Real Man play Rogue on a VT100 terminal connected via serial to a machine running AT&T Sys-III on a 68000 series processor.
"Duplicating data is morally neutral (again, IMO)."
Of course it is, since it is more convenient for you if it works that way.
Do you find not compensating artists for their work to be morally neutral as well?