Secondly, YOU belittled me by basically calling me a racist and THEN calling me ignorant. You only deserve what you get.
Thirdly, I'm not denying ANY American History, however the point is YOU have been categorizing ALL americans as responsible for slavery, and then went on to "clarify" yourself by saying ALL ancestors of today's "white america" are responsible.
You are typical of today's America in which no one wants to take responsibility for your own life, and you look for excuses everywhere you can. The responsibility of the African American community to persue a better life for themselves and their children is SOLELY in their own hands and not in mine or anyone elses. In fact, we (the United States) offers the option of leaving the country if you don't like it. In my opinion, if you do not like it, GET OUT!
Of course there was inner struggle between African peoples. But to turn it into an argument like you've done is similar to saying the Native Americans were savage because their own inner conflict.
Sorry, but I did NOT in ANYWAY demean the African people for their inner struggles. I simply stated historical fact.
It's a tired, misplaced argument used to justify a racist belief.
The FACT that African kings are queens sold their own people to Europeans is not a BELIEF, it is fact. You can not argue this did not happen.
To condone the institution of slavery for any reason is wrong[, duh].
I wasn't condoning anything, I simply stated a fact of history. If you think I'm condoning slavery, then you need to have your head checked.
I don't blame today's "white america" for things that happened so many years ago. But I blame those who lived at that time. To go back to your first point, the people who decided to enslave those Africans were colonialists - people who thought they had rule over any place they landed a boat.
So, if I have an ancestor who came across in the early 1600s, they are responsible for the fact of the slave trade despite the fact they were poor and couldn't afford food let alone a slave? Are you saying that MY ancestors are responsible for the actions of OTHER people?
Europeans DID NOT decide to enslave africans, their king and queens chose to enslave them! As far as any of us know, the European traders looked upon the slaves as grain or rice. Was this correct? No! But this does not mean they are RESPONSIBLE!
The same is true over the slavery that still exists today. Except now the slave traders are Moslem "warlords" who also don't value the life of those people whom they capture.
So now you blame the Muslims for enslavement of africans? God, stop categorizing people! First it was the "Big Bad Americans" and now it's the "Big Bad Muslims". The fact is, slavery exists... it does not matter WHO does it, it's still wrong and you should not categorize a group of people by the actions of a FEW.... A VERY FEW... which you have now done.
I suspect you know very little about history because what happened to those "freed" slaves was sometimes almost as bad as their situation just years before when they weren't free.
Things do not change overnight. You cannot expect people to all of a sudden change their views. Remember, the Civil War was about many things, but one was slavery. Most of the people in the Southern U.S. still felt after the Civil War that blacks deserved to be slaves, while in the Northern U.S. blacks were more widely accepted in society. The "feelings" involved took 2-3 generations to die out, and in some cases have not completely gone away. Look at the Palestinians and Isrealites. They have been fighting for over 1500 years out of pure ignorance! (on both sides). The fact that it's 150 years later and we are a lot better off than Isreal is now proves that progress has been made.
I can't believe you haven't seen video tape of people being sprayed with fire-hoses, don't you remember that we didn't let people into schools based on their "shade"?
And today in Zimbabwe, 100+ white (the minority) farmers sit in jail for not forfeiting their land to the government to be redistributed to the black community (the majority). Why was this done? Simply because the Whites are the minorities and the Zimbabwe government hasn't learned anything from history, including the history they created last year when they first initiated this program. Today, thousands of Acres of farm land in Zimbabwe are not farmed because there is no one to farm them, and Zimbabwe is going through a famine. Guess what, this is racism too! The white farmers are being discriminated against... so they do MEAN stuff to them!
My point is not to illustrate the problems between blacks and whites, but between people of ANY difference. And no, it's not right, but it happens. You, however, can not single out white america for committing this crime
Everyone oppresses everyone? So it makes it okay? We should turn our heads and forget the fact that millions don't have a chance? You likely think that you running to another place was right but it's not. It is your job to help out your fellow man and even yourself if you're being discriminated against.
Yes, everyone oppresses everyone. No, it's not okay, but you are not going to change someone's opinion or racist views. Again, going back to my example of the 1500+ years the Isrealis and Palestinians have been fighting.
I live in a Black neighborhood by choice, I work (socially) with those people and let them know every chance I get I value them as neighbors and friends.
With "those people"??? Well, excuse me! I didn't know that African Americans were referred to as "those people". Heck, that makes you sound... almost racist. The fact is, I do not discriminate. Black, white, Indian, whatever. It makes no difference to me. You have obviously proven you DO make a distinction between yourself and "those people".
Our city is in a time of racial healing, and I am out there working together with my fellow citizens telling them what rights they have under the Constitution. Many reporting that since then they've not been the subject of police harassment because knowledge is power. They backed off.
No, sorry, I've never driven with an expired driver's license, however if I did, I would expect to be held accountable for my actions.
Sorry about mixing up my "fucking facts", I was thinking about Luima (spelling?) at the time. In the same light, however, You're right. The actions of the police are not justified, and of course I would not want to be killed for driving with an expired driver's license. However, at the same time... I wouldn't turn to run from the cops and then reach into my pocket to pull out a shiney object which could be conceived as a weapon. Heck, if a cop came up to me and yelled "freeze", I'd put my hand up and not reach into my pocket. Did he do this? No, he reached into his pocket and this made the officers afraid for their lives.
Now you can judge the judgement of these officers once you have taken a job at which anytime during your daily job activities, you can be shot and killed. Don't you think that is stressful? Don't think you that dealing with criminals is not just stressful but also gets one's adrenaline pumping? What happens when you mix the two? Well, you get the case of Mr. Diallo and company. Like I said, it isn't right that it happened, however I can not necessarily be one to judge men who put their life at risk every single day to protect me... especially when that is WHAT they were doing at the time, protecting ME and YOU.
Hate to tell you, but African Americans have been enslaved long before any European set foot on African soil. In fact, black slaves were sold to European traders by African Kings and Queens in exchange for guns for their inter-tribal wars.
In fact, slavery in Africa STILL EXISTS TODAY! You can not BLAME "white america" for the fact that blacks were slaves, or that their ancestors were slaves. Slavery ended in the U.S. 150 years ago! It's time to get over it and move on.
You can say all you want that the "white man oppresses the blacks", but the fact is, everyone oppresses everyone! I was once NOT hired by a 7-11 because I wasn't Indian. So does that make me run and try racism? No! It makes me go get a job where I'm appreciated as a person. Instead of complaining about the problem, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Since you decide to take a personal shot at my ethnicity, which you do not even know, you deserve to be taught a lesson. Learn it well. (I'll refrain some calling you a racial slur, as you have done me)
What did Amadou Diallo do when the cops approached him? Did he run? Yes! Did he answer questions? No! Why? Because he was an illegal citizen. Did he commit a crime? Yes! Did he deserve what he got? NO! Was it a mistake? YES! Do the individuals involved deserve to be punished? YES! Do ALL officers deserve to be punished? NO!
African Americans use the same strategies that some cops use on the job, this is called stereotyping.... or PROFILING. Some cops may go after a guy because he's black, but some black guys may attack a cop because he wears a badge? Is that fair? NO!
Have all African Americans committed crimes? Of course, the answer is NO. So, is it right to stereotype? No, it's not. So then WHY do you stereotype against cops? Has ever cop beaten an african american without provocation? No! Does that mean cops deserve that stereotype? I'll let you answer that one.....
If you do not say 'NO' to that last question, I'd suggest you have some serious personality issues that have to do primarily with self esteem. I suggest you get counseling.
And guess what, African Americans are not the victims of the white bigots. African Americans are victims of their own culture, and until you realize that, you will never progress in society as a culture. The perfect example of this is Tupac Shakur who wanted everyone to believe he was a "thug" growing up on the streets, when he really was a middle-class kid living in a gated community in the middle of Virginia.
I invite you to read a book written by the Author John H. McWhorter called "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America" This book can be found on Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com). The author, an African American liguistics professor at a university, talks about his experiences as an african american growing up in this "racist" country and how he dealt with it. He also states how he deals with African American children who attend his class. You should seriously read this book as it illustrates that ONLY African Americans are responsible for the way they feel in the American Society, and how views like your own not only stop the movement towards racial equality, but actually move it backwards.
The real purpose of this kind of database is NOT to incriminate the not guilty, or to place random people into the database just for the hell of it. The point is to decrease the amount of time spent investigating crimes.
I'm sure law enforcement has a better reason than "he's black!" to put these people into a database. They have most likely done research, gathered the names and faces of people who are running with gangs or others who have committed crimes. If you put *everyone* into the database, you lose the effectiveness of the database, and therefore it's worthless to the investigators. This is specifically designed to save money by cutting the time it takes to investigate crimes.
This was done against the mafia years ago. Not only do you watch the criminals, but you have to watch who the criminals are close to. If you do not, you will effectively lose the battle.
Then Dresdner discovered a bonus: Linux, the upstart open-source operating system, was not only cheaper -- but also faster. The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.
Come on! They must be leaving out ALL kinds of information here! What kind of machines were they running before? SparcStation 2's? These machines must have been 10 years old! There is no way just simply switching from SOME-OLD-UNIX(R) to Linux is going to improve the performance this much. I'm sure they would have seen a similar performance increase if they upgraded to Sun Fire V120's too.
In fact, there MUST have been some porting of the algorithms used to calculate this data. I'm sure some programmer looked at it, realized it was poor, 10 year old code, and modified it to run faster.
This isn't a valid one-to-one testiment to how Linux is faster than any other UNIX system out there and really shouldn't be in the THIRD paragraph of the article! (if at all!)
Look, my mom has trouble with Excel. You think she'd be able to run Linux? You think she'd be able to build a kernel module? Even install an RPM package?
C'mon, give me a break.
HELLO?!?!?! Linux is **not** the end all, be all operating system! It is FAR from it! Stop thinking it! Mom won't use Linux because Linux is **not** user friendly. Linux is not a desktop operating system. Linux is an EDUCATIONAL and EXPERIMENTAL operating system used by people with a bigger understanding of how computers work and want to expand their knowledge even more. Most people don't want to get "in deep" into the system, they just want to use their word, excel, solitaire. They could care less that the vm of Linux is more computationally inexpensive than that in Windows.
As I type this, Warcraft III is installing on my OSX box. In fact, it came on the EXACT same CD as the Windows version, so I won't need to buy 2 copies if I want to play on my x86 laptop, too.
I went through the Linux desktop thing a couple years ago, and switched back to Windows 2000 as my primary desktop after some time. While I know the Linux desktop has improved (and I have dabbled in trying Linux as a desktop since then for a month or so), I still thought 2000 and eventually XP was just a better platform with Linux on another box or in a VMware window....
I recently had grown tired of XP, and Linux still wasn't cutting it, so I bought a PowerMAC G4 and love it. OSX offers the best of both worlds. While it still does not have all the programs XP does, it still has more than Linux. On top of that, all the hardware I was running on XP run under OSX, I can easily and seemlessly run X applications using XFree's rootless X server, and ALSO there is a VMware like program called VirtualPC which allows me to run x86 OS's in VM windows (right now, running XP, OpenBSD and Linux in the VM's).
Also, since the mac processors are just a tad better, I get better performance and my machine never bogs down. (Yes, look for me doing those Mac "switch" commercials in the near future!;).
Having the 5 9's of reliability is NOT foolish. It is a reality of life. My particular organization services 40 million web customers, so we can not afford to be down at any time of the day because of the type of service we provide. In fact, last year we made our goal of having the 5-9's, and we did it without needing our disaster recovery (DR) site.
Having a DR plan and being reliable go hand in hand for the most part, however under normal day-to-day business conditions, servers need to be upgraded and things unplugged. You don't switch your entire infrastructure over to a DR site to upgrade your apache web server!! It is for this reason you have redundancy on the network and server level leading out to the Internet (or wherever your customer base resides).
Disasters, on the other hand, do not happen everyday. They happen once a year, maybe.... sometimes once every 2 years. If you live in an area more prone to disasters (like southern California), you may need an alternate site located on the east coast.... but, that is the cost of doing business.
Also, having 5-9's on uptime does NOT mean being accessible to everyone in the world at any time no matter what. Having 5-9's of uptime means that your organization has successfully kept it's applications and services available to the Internet. How is it my company's fault if you don't plug your modem into the wall? It's not, so to say that our "reliability" decreases because of an end user being a moron is a stupid statement.
The "five-nines" of reliability has nothing to do with an individual server being available, but with a n individual application. This means, you can have 2-3 servers running the same load-balanced application. This way, you can take 1 down every hour if you want, as long as the other one or two are still working. This way, the application is still working. If you're REALLLLLLLLY lucky, you will meet the "five-nines" and if you're EXTREEEEEMELY lucky, you'll get 100% on that application.
THAT is the goal. It's called redundancy. You will *not* meet any reliability milestones on a single server or network link. It's an obtainable goal, but it does cost money depending on your architecture.
I didn't like Sirius... for whatever reason I don't remember.
The stake of Clear Channel in XM has very little to do with it. XM is mostly managed by GM and subsidiaries (like Hughes, aka DirecTV). The reason Clear Channel is involved is provide some of their local stations (like LA Kiss FM) onto the XM radio waves, however there are only 4-5 of these out of 100 channels.
There are also about 30 different "talk", but not your normal talk. You can get CNN, MSNBC, Weather channel, ESPN, CNN-SI, and various other "news" stations and the such. Basically, CNN Is just a stream of CNN Headline News, but it's nice to keep up on the news if need be.
Heck, XM even has Bluegrass if yer into it;)
And to be honest, XM does cut out like if you get stopped under a bridge, it takes a second to find it's way around or if you pass in between a couple big trucks. Basically, if your antenna gets blocked by any metal objects, it'll go out for a couple seconds until it switches to the other satelite.
I work for another industry... health care... while with credit cards you can deal with various situation with hashes and the such, in the health care industry, and within our website, patients need access to their PRIVATE information 24/7. This leads to a very interesting dilemna.
First, all private and highly sensitive information needs to be available 24/7, so moving it off to another secure server is not an option since it may be needed within the next 5 minutes. This includes patient records, prescription history, etc (and even credit card information).
This is basically that 'chicken and the egg' problem. You have encrypted data, but how do you encrypt and keep it secure while the data remains on the server with the passphrase for the private key.
While there is really no way for us to solve the problem, the hope is to make it EXTREMELY difficult for a hacker to break into the boxes and if they DO break into the boxes, to find out before they actually reach confidential data.
Method: A 3 tier architecture. This includes 2-3firewalls depending on how you implement it. Basically, your network will look like this:
Due to ACLs on the firewalls, Internet users can only access the WWW servers in the Front DMZ. Those WWW servers can only access the APP servers in the second DMZ. Then, those app servers (which use an authentication and authorization technique like netegrity) access the DATABASE servers. However, since the DATABASE servers actually do the authentication, anyone not already authorized can access the data without breaking into the DATABASE servers (which probably sit on the Internal network of your business).
How you protect data: Since in order for an attacker to actually get your data, they would have to crack 3 different servers. First, your web servers, then your application servers and finally your database servers. This makes it EXTREMELY difficult to get data. With firewall restrictions, you can specify only certain protocols and ports are allowed through. This way, the cracker would need to be good enough to break through 3 different communications protocols (this would require hours and hours of studying the protocols). Not only that, but since the protocols are typically encrypted with SSL, they'd have a VERY hard time doing this.
Hopefully, with the right Network IDS system (e.g. snort) and right host IDS (e.g. tripwire) you can find a hacker once they get onto your web server... and most likely by the time they reach your application servers.
Actually, the biggest polluters are third world nations. The biggest polluters are nations like China and India who cannot afford to put in the more advanced technology of various industries to cut down on waste.
Also, while the U.S. hasn't agreed to the Kyoto Treaty, the U.S. still participates in cutting all forms of pollution, most of which is done volunteeringly by various corporations. The problem in cutting such pollutants is that it costs money, and the industries which create the most pollutants (e.g. steel) are already hurting due to steel imports from Europe (hence the recent increase in import taxes on steel).
Another factor is that there will be some corporations, with already minimal profit margins, who will simply be unable to make such changes to their systems and would be forced out of business therefore possibly putting thousands of people out of work at a time. This will immediately effect the U.S.'s economy, and inevitably the economy of both Europe and East Asian producing nations.
If you can afford a $3.4mill machine like a Sun Fire 15k, you can afford another $400,000 for the O/S to run on it's 106 processors...
But the price isn't that bad for their lower end things. Compare the price of the 2 processor server license compared to that for Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Or compare the price of the 4 processor desktop version to a copy of Windows XP Professional (retail, not upgrade). The prices are relatively comparable.
Sun spent a lot of time on development of the Solaris 9 platform, and they want to make money off of the development. That is why they are in business, to make money. They are not one of those dot-coms that was selling stock at $100/share and was still in the *coughred(hat)cough*.
While I do not necessarily recommend this for anyone else, this is what happened to me and what I know.
I started off going to college, but because my parents couldn't afford much of a school, I was stuck going to a small liberal arts school in southern NJ majoring in Computer Science. By the middle of the second semester, I was bored and decided to drop out.
About 1 year later (after I had time to rethink my life), I went and got the "hottest" certification at the time which was an MCSE. Although I already knew I was a UNIX guy and preferred to work on UNIX systems, the MCSE was a stepping stone to better things. And honestly, this path worked for me. A few months after finishing my final exam followed by some teaching in the same disciplines, I found a job working as a System Administrator. The salary was about $43,000/yr. For someone with no experience and no college degree, I thought this was a great start. Keep in mind, I was also offered a supervisor's job which I personally did not feel I was ready for. Also, of all the people who applied for the same job (there were 20+ positions available) and got it, my salary was the second highest while most of the other individuals did have previous experience and did have a college degree.
College degree didn't seem to be an issue.
After about a year I went on looking for other jobs. While I think about 2 of the 40 some opprotunities gave me a "ick" look when I said I didn't have a college degree, I still found the lack of college degree to be a moot point. It was how I sold myself. I received several offers from various companies, but I held out and found a job doing something I've always wanted to do which was internet security.
So, I find a job about 18 months after I started my first job doing Internet security work. My current salary is +50% of what I started at on my first job, and I've been here 1 year (so a total of about 30 months in the industry). While I know some may say I don't make all that much money, I'm pretty happy, and I could leave making +$20-25k (already been offered), but besides the point...
I think you need to consider several things. 1) Can you afford college? do your parents have the financial resources without putting a 3rd mortgage on the house to get you through 4 (maybe 5) years? If so, go to college. 2) How well can you sell yourself? Are you really as good as you think you are? Can you show what you know while standing in front of a whiteboard? If you're in doubt, go to college. 3) How far do you plan to go in life? Do you want to sysadmin all your life, or do you want to be a manager? Director? VP? If you do, I suggest college. 4) Do you work well with others? If not, the personal skills you develope in college could help.
Anyway, just a few things to think about. I don't think the answer is the same for everybody.
Over the past year more than previous, more and more organizations have switched to Linux, however some companies (such as the Fortune 100 I work for) still struggle to get Linux in house. The question is, what technological advantage does Linux have over commercial UNIX systems? (aside from the multiple-platform idea)... and of course, what technological advancements will Linux have in the next 2-3 years that will truelly give Linux the advantage over traditional commercial UNIX systems in Fortune 100 companies where money really is not the issue?
Where would you put your apps?
on
Paintable LCDs
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· Score: 5, Funny
Just a general rule, I would recommend not placing any M$ product near your anus.
Main Entry: 1illegal
Pronunciation: (")i(l)-'lE-g&l Function: adjective Etymology: Middle French or Medieval Latin; Middle French illegal, from Medieval Latin illegalis, from Latin in- + legalis legal Date: 1538 : not according to or authorized by law : UNLAWFUL, ILLICIT; also : not sanctioned by official rules (as of a game)
Specifically, we're interested in:
not sanctioned by official rules
In which case, the License Agreement are the "rules" as defined by the contract. Violating the "rules of the contract" is therefore illegal in the definition of the word, although not in the definition of the law.
Most broadband providers (cable, dsl...) have license agreements forbidding the reselling of bandwidth to people other than in the household for which the line was subscribed. Therefore, this would be illegal.
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Molsems ARE Muslims! So what's your point?
Secondly, YOU belittled me by basically calling me a racist and THEN calling me ignorant. You only deserve what you get.
Thirdly, I'm not denying ANY American History, however the point is YOU have been categorizing ALL americans as responsible for slavery, and then went on to "clarify" yourself by saying ALL ancestors of today's "white america" are responsible.
You are typical of today's America in which no one wants to take responsibility for your own life, and you look for excuses everywhere you can. The responsibility of the African American community to persue a better life for themselves and their children is SOLELY in their own hands and not in mine or anyone elses. In fact, we (the United States) offers the option of leaving the country if you don't like it. In my opinion, if you do not like it, GET OUT!
Sorry, but I did NOT in ANYWAY demean the African people for their inner struggles. I simply stated historical fact.
The FACT that African kings are queens sold their own people to Europeans is not a BELIEF, it is fact. You can not argue this did not happen.
I wasn't condoning anything, I simply stated a fact of history. If you think I'm condoning slavery, then you need to have your head checked.
So, if I have an ancestor who came across in the early 1600s, they are responsible for the fact of the slave trade despite the fact they were poor and couldn't afford food let alone a slave? Are you saying that MY ancestors are responsible for the actions of OTHER people?
Europeans DID NOT decide to enslave africans, their king and queens chose to enslave them! As far as any of us know, the European traders looked upon the slaves as grain or rice. Was this correct? No! But this does not mean they are RESPONSIBLE!
So now you blame the Muslims for enslavement of africans? God, stop categorizing people! First it was the "Big Bad Americans" and now it's the "Big Bad Muslims". The fact is, slavery exists... it does not matter WHO does it, it's still wrong and you should not categorize a group of people by the actions of a FEW.... A VERY FEW... which you have now done.
Things do not change overnight. You cannot expect people to all of a sudden change their views. Remember, the Civil War was about many things, but one was slavery. Most of the people in the Southern U.S. still felt after the Civil War that blacks deserved to be slaves, while in the Northern U.S. blacks were more widely accepted in society. The "feelings" involved took 2-3 generations to die out, and in some cases have not completely gone away. Look at the Palestinians and Isrealites. They have been fighting for over 1500 years out of pure ignorance! (on both sides). The fact that it's 150 years later and we are a lot better off than Isreal is now proves that progress has been made.
And today in Zimbabwe, 100+ white (the minority) farmers sit in jail for not forfeiting their land to the government to be redistributed to the black community (the majority). Why was this done? Simply because the Whites are the minorities and the Zimbabwe government hasn't learned anything from history, including the history they created last year when they first initiated this program. Today, thousands of Acres of farm land in Zimbabwe are not farmed because there is no one to farm them, and Zimbabwe is going through a famine. Guess what, this is racism too! The white farmers are being discriminated against... so they do MEAN stuff to them!
My point is not to illustrate the problems between blacks and whites, but between people of ANY difference. And no, it's not right, but it happens. You, however, can not single out white america for committing this crime
Yes, everyone oppresses everyone. No, it's not okay, but you are not going to change someone's opinion or racist views. Again, going back to my example of the 1500+ years the Isrealis and Palestinians have been fighting.
With "those people"??? Well, excuse me! I didn't know that African Americans were referred to as "those people". Heck, that makes you sound... almost racist. The fact is, I do not discriminate. Black, white, Indian, whatever. It makes no difference to me. You have obviously proven you DO make a distinction between yourself and "those people".
Lee,
You are correct. The correct terminology should have been young adults. Or simply 'students'.
No, sorry, I've never driven with an expired driver's license, however if I did, I would expect to be held accountable for my actions.
Sorry about mixing up my "fucking facts", I was thinking about Luima (spelling?) at the time. In the same light, however, You're right. The actions of the police are not justified, and of course I would not want to be killed for driving with an expired driver's license. However, at the same time... I wouldn't turn to run from the cops and then reach into my pocket to pull out a shiney object which could be conceived as a weapon. Heck, if a cop came up to me and yelled "freeze", I'd put my hand up and not reach into my pocket. Did he do this? No, he reached into his pocket and this made the officers afraid for their lives.
Now you can judge the judgement of these officers once you have taken a job at which anytime during your daily job activities, you can be shot and killed. Don't you think that is stressful? Don't think you that dealing with criminals is not just stressful but also gets one's adrenaline pumping? What happens when you mix the two? Well, you get the case of Mr. Diallo and company. Like I said, it isn't right that it happened, however I can not necessarily be one to judge men who put their life at risk every single day to protect me... especially when that is WHAT they were doing at the time, protecting ME and YOU.
Hate to tell you, but African Americans have been enslaved long before any European set foot on African soil. In fact, black slaves were sold to European traders by African Kings and Queens in exchange for guns for their inter-tribal wars.
In fact, slavery in Africa STILL EXISTS TODAY! You can not BLAME "white america" for the fact that blacks were slaves, or that their ancestors were slaves. Slavery ended in the U.S. 150 years ago! It's time to get over it and move on.
You can say all you want that the "white man oppresses the blacks", but the fact is, everyone oppresses everyone! I was once NOT hired by a 7-11 because I wasn't Indian. So does that make me run and try racism? No! It makes me go get a job where I'm appreciated as a person. Instead of complaining about the problem, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Since you decide to take a personal shot at my ethnicity, which you do not even know, you deserve to be taught a lesson. Learn it well. (I'll refrain some calling you a racial slur, as you have done me)
What did Amadou Diallo do when the cops approached him? Did he run? Yes! Did he answer questions? No! Why? Because he was an illegal citizen. Did he commit a crime? Yes! Did he deserve what he got? NO! Was it a mistake? YES! Do the individuals involved deserve to be punished? YES! Do ALL officers deserve to be punished? NO!
African Americans use the same strategies that some cops use on the job, this is called stereotyping.... or PROFILING. Some cops may go after a guy because he's black, but some black guys may attack a cop because he wears a badge? Is that fair? NO!
Have all African Americans committed crimes? Of course, the answer is NO. So, is it right to stereotype? No, it's not. So then WHY do you stereotype against cops? Has ever cop beaten an african american without provocation? No! Does that mean cops deserve that stereotype? I'll let you answer that one.....
If you do not say 'NO' to that last question, I'd suggest you have some serious personality issues that have to do primarily with self esteem. I suggest you get counseling.
And guess what, African Americans are not the victims of the white bigots. African Americans are victims of their own culture, and until you realize that, you will never progress in society as a culture. The perfect example of this is Tupac Shakur who wanted everyone to believe he was a "thug" growing up on the streets, when he really was a middle-class kid living in a gated community in the middle of Virginia.
I invite you to read a book written by the Author John H. McWhorter called "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America" This book can be found on Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com). The author, an African American liguistics professor at a university, talks about his experiences as an african american growing up in this "racist" country and how he dealt with it. He also states how he deals with African American children who attend his class. You should seriously read this book as it illustrates that ONLY African Americans are responsible for the way they feel in the American Society, and how views like your own not only stop the movement towards racial equality, but actually move it backwards.
The real purpose of this kind of database is NOT to incriminate the not guilty, or to place random people into the database just for the hell of it. The point is to decrease the amount of time spent investigating crimes.
I'm sure law enforcement has a better reason than "he's black!" to put these people into a database. They have most likely done research, gathered the names and faces of people who are running with gangs or others who have committed crimes. If you put *everyone* into the database, you lose the effectiveness of the database, and therefore it's worthless to the investigators. This is specifically designed to save money by cutting the time it takes to investigate crimes.
This was done against the mafia years ago. Not only do you watch the criminals, but you have to watch who the criminals are close to. If you do not, you will effectively lose the battle.
Come on! They must be leaving out ALL kinds of information here! What kind of machines were they running before? SparcStation 2's? These machines must have been 10 years old! There is no way just simply switching from SOME-OLD-UNIX(R) to Linux is going to improve the performance this much. I'm sure they would have seen a similar performance increase if they upgraded to Sun Fire V120's too.
In fact, there MUST have been some porting of the algorithms used to calculate this data. I'm sure some programmer looked at it, realized it was poor, 10 year old code, and modified it to run faster.
This isn't a valid one-to-one testiment to how Linux is faster than any other UNIX system out there and really shouldn't be in the THIRD paragraph of the article! (if at all!)
Look, my mom has trouble with Excel. You think she'd be able to run Linux? You think she'd be able to build a kernel module? Even install an RPM package?
C'mon, give me a break.
HELLO?!?!?! Linux is **not** the end all, be all operating system! It is FAR from it! Stop thinking it! Mom won't use Linux because Linux is **not** user friendly. Linux is not a desktop operating system. Linux is an EDUCATIONAL and EXPERIMENTAL operating system used by people with a bigger understanding of how computers work and want to expand their knowledge even more. Most people don't want to get "in deep" into the system, they just want to use their word, excel, solitaire. They could care less that the vm of Linux is more computationally inexpensive than that in Windows.
As I type this, Warcraft III is installing on my OSX box. In fact, it came on the EXACT same CD as the Windows version, so I won't need to buy 2 copies if I want to play on my x86 laptop, too.
I went through the Linux desktop thing a couple years ago, and switched back to Windows 2000 as my primary desktop after some time. While I know the Linux desktop has improved (and I have dabbled in trying Linux as a desktop since then for a month or so), I still thought 2000 and eventually XP was just a better platform with Linux on another box or in a VMware window....
;).
I recently had grown tired of XP, and Linux still wasn't cutting it, so I bought a PowerMAC G4 and love it. OSX offers the best of both worlds. While it still does not have all the programs XP does, it still has more than Linux. On top of that, all the hardware I was running on XP run under OSX, I can easily and seemlessly run X applications using XFree's rootless X server, and ALSO there is a VMware like program called VirtualPC which allows me to run x86 OS's in VM windows (right now, running XP, OpenBSD and Linux in the VM's).
Also, since the mac processors are just a tad better, I get better performance and my machine never bogs down. (Yes, look for me doing those Mac "switch" commercials in the near future!
I just think this is the best of both worlds.
Having the 5 9's of reliability is NOT foolish. It is a reality of life. My particular organization services 40 million web customers, so we can not afford to be down at any time of the day because of the type of service we provide. In fact, last year we made our goal of having the 5-9's, and we did it without needing our disaster recovery (DR) site.
Having a DR plan and being reliable go hand in hand for the most part, however under normal day-to-day business conditions, servers need to be upgraded and things unplugged. You don't switch your entire infrastructure over to a DR site to upgrade your apache web server!! It is for this reason you have redundancy on the network and server level leading out to the Internet (or wherever your customer base resides).
Disasters, on the other hand, do not happen everyday. They happen once a year, maybe.... sometimes once every 2 years. If you live in an area more prone to disasters (like southern California), you may need an alternate site located on the east coast.... but, that is the cost of doing business.
Also, having 5-9's on uptime does NOT mean being accessible to everyone in the world at any time no matter what. Having 5-9's of uptime means that your organization has successfully kept it's applications and services available to the Internet. How is it my company's fault if you don't plug your modem into the wall? It's not, so to say that our "reliability" decreases because of an end user being a moron is a stupid statement.
The "five-nines" of reliability has nothing to do with an individual server being available, but with a n individual application. This means, you can have 2-3 servers running the same load-balanced application. This way, you can take 1 down every hour if you want, as long as the other one or two are still working. This way, the application is still working. If you're REALLLLLLLLY lucky, you will meet the "five-nines" and if you're EXTREEEEEMELY lucky, you'll get 100% on that application.
THAT is the goal. It's called redundancy. You will *not* meet any reliability milestones on a single server or network link. It's an obtainable goal, but it does cost money depending on your architecture.
I didn't like Sirius... for whatever reason I don't remember.
;)
The stake of Clear Channel in XM has very little to do with it. XM is mostly managed by GM and subsidiaries (like Hughes, aka DirecTV). The reason Clear Channel is involved is provide some of their local stations (like LA Kiss FM) onto the XM radio waves, however there are only 4-5 of these out of 100 channels.
There are also about 30 different "talk", but not your normal talk. You can get CNN, MSNBC, Weather channel, ESPN, CNN-SI, and various other "news" stations and the such. Basically, CNN Is just a stream of CNN Headline News, but it's nice to keep up on the news if need be.
Heck, XM even has Bluegrass if yer into it
And to be honest, XM does cut out like if you get stopped under a bridge, it takes a second to find it's way around or if you pass in between a couple big trucks. Basically, if your antenna gets blocked by any metal objects, it'll go out for a couple seconds until it switches to the other satelite.
"Yes, dear... I will remove the network connection in the bathroom"
-- next day --
"Honey, look at this cool thing. It's a wireless network!"
Just kidding...
Of course, this method works EXTREMELY well for us with broadband connections....
I work for another industry... health care... while with credit cards you can deal with various situation with hashes and the such, in the health care industry, and within our website, patients need access to their PRIVATE information 24/7. This leads to a very interesting dilemna.
- -- [DATABASE]
First, all private and highly sensitive information needs to be available 24/7, so moving it off to another secure server is not an option since it may be needed within the next 5 minutes. This includes patient records, prescription history, etc (and even credit card information).
This is basically that 'chicken and the egg' problem. You have encrypted data, but how do you encrypt and keep it secure while the data remains on the server with the passphrase for the private key.
While there is really no way for us to solve the problem, the hope is to make it EXTREMELY difficult for a hacker to break into the boxes and if they DO break into the boxes, to find out before they actually reach confidential data.
Method: A 3 tier architecture. This includes 2-3firewalls depending on how you implement it. Basically, your network will look like this:
{INTERNET}---[FW]---[WWW]---[FW]---[APP]---[FW]
Due to ACLs on the firewalls, Internet users can only access the WWW servers in the Front DMZ. Those WWW servers can only access the APP servers in the second DMZ. Then, those app servers (which use an authentication and authorization technique like netegrity) access the DATABASE servers. However, since the DATABASE servers actually do the authentication, anyone not already authorized can access the data without breaking into the DATABASE servers (which probably sit on the Internal network of your business).
How you protect data: Since in order for an attacker to actually get your data, they would have to crack 3 different servers. First, your web servers, then your application servers and finally your database servers. This makes it EXTREMELY difficult to get data. With firewall restrictions, you can specify only certain protocols and ports are allowed through. This way, the cracker would need to be good enough to break through 3 different communications protocols (this would require hours and hours of studying the protocols). Not only that, but since the protocols are typically encrypted with SSL, they'd have a VERY hard time doing this.
Hopefully, with the right Network IDS system (e.g. snort) and right host IDS (e.g. tripwire) you can find a hacker once they get onto your web server... and most likely by the time they reach your application servers.
Actually, the biggest polluters are third world nations. The biggest polluters are nations like China and India who cannot afford to put in the more advanced technology of various industries to cut down on waste.
Also, while the U.S. hasn't agreed to the Kyoto Treaty, the U.S. still participates in cutting all forms of pollution, most of which is done volunteeringly by various corporations. The problem in cutting such pollutants is that it costs money, and the industries which create the most pollutants (e.g. steel) are already hurting due to steel imports from Europe (hence the recent increase in import taxes on steel).
Another factor is that there will be some corporations, with already minimal profit margins, who will simply be unable to make such changes to their systems and would be forced out of business therefore possibly putting thousands of people out of work at a time. This will immediately effect the U.S.'s economy, and inevitably the economy of both Europe and East Asian producing nations.
Look...
If you can afford a $3.4mill machine like a Sun Fire 15k, you can afford another $400,000 for the O/S to run on it's 106 processors...
But the price isn't that bad for their lower end things. Compare the price of the 2 processor server license compared to that for Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Or compare the price of the 4 processor desktop version to a copy of Windows XP Professional (retail, not upgrade). The prices are relatively comparable.
Sun spent a lot of time on development of the Solaris 9 platform, and they want to make money off of the development. That is why they are in business, to make money. They are not one of those dot-coms that was selling stock at $100/share and was still in the *coughred(hat)cough*.
While I do not necessarily recommend this for anyone else, this is what happened to me and what I know.
I started off going to college, but because my parents couldn't afford much of a school, I was stuck going to a small liberal arts school in southern NJ majoring in Computer Science. By the middle of the second semester, I was bored and decided to drop out.
About 1 year later (after I had time to rethink my life), I went and got the "hottest" certification at the time which was an MCSE. Although I already knew I was a UNIX guy and preferred to work on UNIX systems, the MCSE was a stepping stone to better things. And honestly, this path worked for me. A few months after finishing my final exam followed by some teaching in the same disciplines, I found a job working as a System Administrator. The salary was about $43,000/yr. For someone with no experience and no college degree, I thought this was a great start. Keep in mind, I was also offered a supervisor's job which I personally did not feel I was ready for. Also, of all the people who applied for the same job (there were 20+ positions available) and got it, my salary was the second highest while most of the other individuals did have previous experience and did have a college degree.
College degree didn't seem to be an issue.
After about a year I went on looking for other jobs. While I think about 2 of the 40 some opprotunities gave me a "ick" look when I said I didn't have a college degree, I still found the lack of college degree to be a moot point. It was how I sold myself. I received several offers from various companies, but I held out and found a job doing something I've always wanted to do which was internet security.
So, I find a job about 18 months after I started my first job doing Internet security work. My current salary is +50% of what I started at on my first job, and I've been here 1 year (so a total of about 30 months in the industry). While I know some may say I don't make all that much money, I'm pretty happy, and I could leave making +$20-25k (already been offered), but besides the point...
I think you need to consider several things.
1) Can you afford college? do your parents have the financial resources without putting a 3rd mortgage on the house to get you through 4 (maybe 5) years? If so, go to college.
2) How well can you sell yourself? Are you really as good as you think you are? Can you show what you know while standing in front of a whiteboard? If you're in doubt, go to college.
3) How far do you plan to go in life? Do you want to sysadmin all your life, or do you want to be a manager? Director? VP? If you do, I suggest college.
4) Do you work well with others? If not, the personal skills you develope in college could help.
Anyway, just a few things to think about. I don't think the answer is the same for everybody.
Over the past year more than previous, more and more organizations have switched to Linux, however some companies (such as the Fortune 100 I work for) still struggle to get Linux in house. The question is, what technological advantage does Linux have over commercial UNIX systems? (aside from the multiple-platform idea)... and of course, what technological advancements will Linux have in the next 2-3 years that will truelly give Linux the advantage over traditional commercial UNIX systems in Fortune 100 companies where money really is not the issue?
Just a general rule, I would recommend not placing any M$ product near your anus.
Specifically, we're interested in:
not sanctioned by official rules
In which case, the License Agreement are the "rules" as defined by the contract. Violating the "rules of the contract" is therefore illegal in the definition of the word, although not in the definition of the law.
Most broadband providers (cable, dsl...) have license agreements forbidding the reselling of bandwidth to people other than in the household for which the line was subscribed. Therefore, this would be illegal.