That if Ben Stein had posted that rant here on slashdot, he probably would have been modded -1 troll:)
Don't rock the boat baby. Everything is ok. The US rocks! We will win the war on ______!
Re:The problem with the hacker ethos
on
The New IT Crisis
·
· Score: 2
With that clarification, I agree with you. It's a whole different ballgame though when the person you are attempting to communicate with is the everpresent company line manager who won't listen to you no matter what numbers and figures you throw their way. Even with my highly technical and managerial background I've run into a type of manager that lives to say "no". At that point you have to come up with something cheaper, or go over their head which is never a good idea. I do like the idea that if something is truly important to you, and you really need it, to go ahead and knock yourself out to make the case right the first time instead of going back 3 or 4 times after you retool your argument. A cost analysis would be very useful in that situation.
Vantec stealth 80x25 fans. They are cheap as sin, and really quiet. Also, I don't pull air out of the case at all, other than what the powersupply fans do. I push air into the case, and mount filters in front of all my fans. You can usually fit two fans in the front of the case pulling air in, and wedge a 1 dollar air conditioning filter in between the front fascade and the front of the case. If I need more cooling, I'll do a side or top fan with an aluminum mesh screen and trimmed air conditioner filter over the mesh blowing in as well. If all the air is blowing into the case, and it's all filtered, you have a lot less dust. You can get 60mm to 80mm fan adapter kits for your processors and use the same vantec stealth fans to keep them cool. Piggy back all this with a thermaltake silent 360w, remove your rear fan that pulls air out of the case, and you have very quiet system that blows air out the back like a hair dryer.
Ummm... Mr.-Most-Important-Person-in-the-World, just because YOU don't understand it doesn't make it invalid, or useless.
How incredibly blind or drunk are you to take my words and turn them into me calling anything invalid or useless? What makes you think I don't understand quantum physics? Having a bad day? Need some midol?
Without quantum physics (which IS incidentally the topic of discussion), you wouldn't have transistors and their elk, culminating in the computer with which you posted this backwoods tin-foil-hat-wearing drivel.
NO KIDDING!! exactly what part of my problem with bullshit science that seems to have to reinvent itself every 50 years because OOPS! WE MISSED SUMPIN! BUT WE GOT IT THIS TIME HONEST!!! don't you understand?
The tornado-in-a-can doesn't look too impressive compared to a 1/4 inch square chip that can simulate the folding of protein, or powers a Korg Triton.
That's a matter of perspective. Imagine, if you CAN, an advanced vortex based processor with perfectly timed speed, pressure, and velocity to keep 1 billion particles in motion, and powered by static charge, while each particle retains a trackable id of some sort, and can rapidly change between 10 different states enabling a fast efficient base 10 computational platform. You invent the wheel before you invent the space shuttle. Don't be so narrow in your thinking.
An academic in his free time using a computer figured out why the shower curtain in a shower gets sucked in with a few days of his spare time. The guy who invented the tornado in a can took 15 years of on/off effort.
You don't have to player hate. You don't have to feel so threatened because someone outside the comfort of academia did something nobody else can understand. It happens all the time. There isn't one true way to learn or do anything.
As for warp drive, sure. Why not. Why wouldn't I want that. Hopefully we are mature enough at that point that someone doesn't make it a weapon. Chances are that weapon research will create the first warp drive. You can't think of things as "simple stuff" or "hard stuff". It's just stuff. How you look at it. Pick a better target for your childish flames next time you feel like stomping your feet.
I think I incorporated too many cohesive integral slices of pizza in my gut. It's a fairly comprehensive theory, with tangible links to the Grand Lack of Excersize theory. But seriously....
My feeling is that we try to look way too far ahead instead of just saying "we don't know". It amazes me that we'll occasionally overlook something so incredibly useful like the "tornado in a can" but have the nerve to propose increasingly bizarre shit based on a foundation of bizarre shit. I'm sure that if we live long enough, we'll get our Grand Unification, and that it's probably our purpose for existing in the first place. I'm just an advocate for not blatantly charging forward and basing new things on old things that aren't much better than voodoo. It's ok to say "We don't really know".
Re:The problem with the hacker ethos
on
The New IT Crisis
·
· Score: 2
Hmmm, not wrong per sey. He's trained in cost analysis. The problem is most trained professionals don't have the luxury of having the kind of time he's talking about to sit down and do a full cost analysis for something they need. Technically, that's not their job either. They know what they need to get a job done, and they explain that they need it. Why should I have to sit down and prepare a 15 page briefing on why my company should buy something? Isn't that my bosses job after I tell him I need something? Why should I spend untold hours learning about the inner-workings of the finantial end of my company if my boss isn't willing to spend 10 minutes understanding the technical side of things? Doesn't it seem reasonable that since the person positioned above me IS INDEED above me, earning a higher salary, that THEY should be doing their job and not me? If I had a manager so lazy that I had to prepare a cost analysis for them, I'd probably go ahead and look for another job. It's not my job as an Admin, Developer, or Coder to justify the costs of things. However, it would look good to do such a thing from an ass-kissing standpoint. And, like in many situations, ass-kissing will indeed pay off in the long run.
Re:The problem with the hacker ethos
on
The New IT Crisis
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There is a problem with this mentality. It's kinda once sided.
"If these damn smelly hippy UNIX admins could learn to act more like good corporate lapdogs, we'd make a bundle"
Not to say there isn't some validity in there. But the other side of that coin is:
"If these retarded, non-tech savvy idiots gave me a boss that understands technology, didn't let the morons in marketing make promises they didn't check if we could keep. If HR didn't have so much power they effectively ruin the company..." and so on adnauseum.
The real problem stems from the "us" versus "them" philosophy. "Gotta have a strong manager watch over them there technogeeks or they'll walk all over us". And the "You don't need a technical person to manage technical people" mentality also. It has to do with the level of fear a non-technical person has about technical people. Because technical people "know things". And they are probably "trying to trick you". So the ball starts in their court. Most of the time upper managment fumbles that ball all the hell, and deserves the treatment they get from their overworked, underpaid wage slaves that they don't listen too or appreciate. That's just my opinion after 14 years in the business from both sides of the fence.
Have nothing to do with this. At Adelphia, like most companies, the UNIX admin types and the Network admin types are constantly at odds with each other. Finger pointing, etc. This is a great example of attempting to deflect the blame onto those UNIX admin types that admin the actual modems and their boot files, instead of blaming Sam, your network overlord.:) You should be ashamed. The UNIX admins that admin the services have nothing to do with the network hardware they are connecting to, or how they are configured as they don't own the network or it's hardware.
One of the things I really hated about Adelphia when I was there. In contrast, at MindSpring, the network and UNIX admin type guys all worked on the same floor together on peachtree street and were treated as equals, and encouraged to work together.
But yeah. Plenty of them out there. The reason I like them is that there is no time commitment. You are in and out and it's over. No need to find the mystic jewel of donut or anything like that. What I'd REALLY like to see is a kickass multiplayer online racing game. Something that's as good as a playstation2 racing game. Need For Speed 8, where you race against online players through super realistic maps of real life cities. Twould (yeah, invented a word) rule to blow by other online players in a ferrari spyder with the top down on lakeshore drive, or US 1, or route 66.
As an esteemed predictionaire of sorts, with full backing of the predictionationization society, here are my predictions for the next decade:
#1 Algebra won't be hard someday
#2 Grass will mow itself
#3 The Aliens people have encountered will be revealed to be the "geek" or "dork" aliens. The Jock aliens stay back on marklar and get laid and drink. They are much bigger and stronger.
#4 Trendy computer users will start doing "case piercing" and the truly EXTREME will try out hard drive piercings. They will be made of steel at first, but aluminum will become the rage.
#5 Wireless wires will be invented to replace the wired wires.
#6 The "tornado in a can" will become "the can" in your bathroom. Flushing dead goldfish will never be boring again.
#7 Top ten lists will transmogrifimorphicate into top 7 lists.
Things will get more modular, kinda like the handspring. People are slowly getting more tech savvy. That will lend itself to people wanting to upgrade their machines more easily. I can see video cards, drives, memory, etc, all being in cartridge format and snapped into your caselike box thing from the outside with no need to open anything up.
Soylent Green is a reality now I suppose
on
Tornado in a Can
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I'm thoroughly convinced the entire nielsen system needs scrapped. It's outdated, and not representative anymore. How hard would it be to come up with a better system? How inexpensive would it be to poll directv customers to see if they'd be cool with having their viewing habits monitored? Or cable customer for that matter? In this age of computers, how hard would it be to compile data if every single viewer ELECTED to participate in this type of monitoring? Not very hard me thinks. Those nielsen ratings are why morons like Barry Diller decides he doesn't like "space shows" and why they do dumb shit like show freaking Braveheart on SciFi now.
Actually, Robert was the CTO at the time. He's famous for his part in creating dos emulation for unix. You'd be lucky to hire him, assuming you could afford him. I'm just lowly sawilson famous for nothing that important.
There's also a website with all the code available at javaalmanac.com, so you don't have to type in every example you want to use in your code.
Maybe it's just me, but I force myself to type in every example by hand from a book because I find I have better comprehension of the material down the road. But then again, I'm not "one who loves code". I'm more of the writing code to automate tasks type as apposed to a hardcore, sit in front of your favorite editor for 8 hours straight making elaborate things type person. Those guys are special in a weird but positive way. A guy I used to work with named Robert Sanders was the type that just looked at code and "got it". Definitely not my thang. He'd probably benefit from going to the website for a cut and paste.
This reminds me of a startup I was involved with a while ago. The idea was that your palm VII would signal the airport billing system when you got there and automatically get you a ticket on your prefered airline. We were actually most of the way there until PSI.net starting having delusions of granduer and bought metamore out from under us. We even had a way figured out to make the three different ticketing systems work together seemlessly. I suppose someone smart could pitch something like that today, and probably pull it off in light of this slashdot story.:)
What I'm reading is that they are trying to figure out a way to stuff more features into wireless computing so they can charge more for those features. Also, (as mentioned by an earlier poster) they'll have the ability to figure out where you are at all times so they can specifically target you with information that they think you'll need. Sounds like doubleclick.net would love to get in on this. It would be the next level in geek fetish toys. The ezpass thing, (as said earlier) is cool though. Not to mention:
Ads popping up as you drive by places telling you what you should buy there. Example - You just passed Dick Monalds and our McRib is only a buck today!
Or, Playing at the theatre today, this movie, that movie. This cool one starts in 5 minutes!
As long as there are serious user controls, this could be a cool thing. The interface is going to have to be freaking stellar and unobtrusive to keep people from sending their SUV's through krogers when their cellphone, pager, and pda all go off at once.
If this research continues, it might only take 1000 genetically altered monkees 10 years to create the collective works of shakespeare. You probably wouldn't have to lock them in a room either. They'd of course be superior and have 3 asses.
Slashdot Mirror
That if Ben Stein had posted that rant here on :)
slashdot, he probably would have been modded -1
troll
Don't rock the boat baby. Everything is ok. The US
rocks! We will win the war on ______!
With that clarification, I agree with you. It's
a whole different ballgame though when the person
you are attempting to communicate with is the
everpresent company line manager who won't listen
to you no matter what numbers and figures you
throw their way. Even with my highly technical and
managerial background I've run into a type of
manager that lives to say "no". At that point you
have to come up with something cheaper, or go
over their head which is never a good idea. I do
like the idea that if something is truly
important to you, and you really need it, to go
ahead and knock yourself out to make the case
right the first time instead of going back 3 or 4
times after you retool your argument. A cost
analysis would be very useful in that situation.
My simple way of dealing with case cooling is:
Vantec stealth 80x25 fans. They are cheap as sin,
and really quiet. Also, I don't pull air out of the
case at all, other than what the powersupply fans
do. I push air into the case, and mount filters in
front of all my fans. You can usually fit two fans
in the front of the case pulling air in, and wedge
a 1 dollar air conditioning filter in between the
front fascade and the front of the case. If I need
more cooling, I'll do a side or top fan with an
aluminum mesh screen and trimmed air conditioner
filter over the mesh blowing in as well. If all
the air is blowing into the case, and it's all
filtered, you have a lot less dust. You can get
60mm to 80mm fan adapter kits for your processors
and use the same vantec stealth fans to keep them
cool. Piggy back all this with a thermaltake
silent 360w, remove your rear fan that pulls air
out of the case, and you have very quiet system
that blows air out the back like a hair dryer.
Ummm... Mr.-Most-Important-Person-in-the-World, just because YOU don't understand it doesn't make it invalid, or useless.
How incredibly blind or drunk are you to take my
words and turn them into me calling anything invalid
or useless? What makes you think I don't understand
quantum physics? Having a bad day? Need some midol?
Without quantum physics (which IS incidentally the topic of discussion), you wouldn't have transistors and their elk, culminating in the computer with which you posted this backwoods tin-foil-hat-wearing drivel.
NO KIDDING!! exactly what part of my problem with
bullshit science that seems to have to reinvent
itself every 50 years because OOPS! WE MISSED
SUMPIN! BUT WE GOT IT THIS TIME HONEST!!! don't
you understand?
The tornado-in-a-can doesn't look too impressive compared to a 1/4 inch square chip that can simulate the folding of protein, or powers a Korg Triton.
That's a matter of perspective. Imagine, if you
CAN, an advanced vortex based processor with
perfectly timed speed, pressure, and velocity to
keep 1 billion particles in motion, and powered
by static charge, while each particle retains a
trackable id of some sort, and can rapidly change
between 10 different states enabling a fast
efficient base 10 computational platform. You
invent the wheel before you invent the space
shuttle. Don't be so narrow in your thinking.
An academic in his free time using a computer figured out why the shower curtain in a shower gets sucked in with a few days of his spare time. The guy who invented the tornado in a can took 15 years of on/off effort.
You don't have to player hate. You don't have to
feel so threatened because someone outside the
comfort of academia did something nobody else
can understand. It happens all the time. There
isn't one true way to learn or do anything.
As for warp drive, sure. Why not. Why wouldn't I
want that. Hopefully we are mature enough at
that point that someone doesn't make it a weapon.
Chances are that weapon research will create the
first warp drive. You can't think of things as
"simple stuff" or "hard stuff". It's just stuff.
How you look at it. Pick a better target for your
childish flames next time you feel like stomping
your feet.
I think I incorporated too many cohesive integral
slices of pizza in my gut. It's a fairly
comprehensive theory, with tangible links to the
Grand Lack of Excersize theory. But seriously....
My feeling is that we try to look way too far ahead
instead of just saying "we don't know". It amazes
me that we'll occasionally overlook something so
incredibly useful like the "tornado in a can" but
have the nerve to propose increasingly bizarre shit
based on a foundation of bizarre shit. I'm sure
that if we live long enough, we'll get our Grand
Unification, and that it's probably our purpose
for existing in the first place. I'm just an
advocate for not blatantly charging forward and
basing new things on old things that aren't much
better than voodoo. It's ok to say "We don't
really know".
Hmmm, not wrong per sey. He's trained in cost
analysis. The problem is most trained professionals
don't have the luxury of having the kind of time
he's talking about to sit down and do a full cost
analysis for something they need. Technically,
that's not their job either. They know what they
need to get a job done, and they explain that they
need it. Why should I have to sit down and prepare
a 15 page briefing on why my company should buy
something? Isn't that my bosses job after I tell
him I need something? Why should I spend untold
hours learning about the inner-workings of the
finantial end of my company if my boss isn't
willing to spend 10 minutes understanding the
technical side of things? Doesn't it seem
reasonable that since the person positioned above
me IS INDEED above me, earning a higher salary,
that THEY should be doing their job and not me?
If I had a manager so lazy that I had to prepare
a cost analysis for them, I'd probably go ahead
and look for another job. It's not my job as an
Admin, Developer, or Coder to justify the costs
of things. However, it would look good to do
such a thing from an ass-kissing standpoint. And,
like in many situations, ass-kissing will indeed
pay off in the long run.
There is a problem with this mentality. It's kinda
once sided.
"If these damn smelly hippy UNIX admins could learn
to act more like good corporate lapdogs, we'd make
a bundle"
Not to say there isn't some validity in there. But
the other side of that coin is:
"If these retarded, non-tech savvy idiots gave me
a boss that understands technology, didn't let
the morons in marketing make promises they didn't
check if we could keep. If HR didn't have so much
power they effectively ruin the company..." and
so on adnauseum.
The real problem stems from the "us" versus
"them" philosophy. "Gotta have a strong manager
watch over them there technogeeks or they'll walk
all over us". And the "You don't need a technical
person to manage technical people" mentality also.
It has to do with the level of fear a
non-technical person has about technical people.
Because technical people "know things". And they
are probably "trying to trick you". So the ball
starts in their court. Most of the time upper
managment fumbles that ball all the hell, and
deserves the treatment they get from their
overworked, underpaid wage slaves that they don't
listen too or appreciate. That's just my opinion
after 14 years in the business from both sides
of the fence.
Have nothing to do with this. At Adelphia, like :) You should be ashamed. The
most companies, the UNIX admin types and the Network
admin types are constantly at odds with each other.
Finger pointing, etc. This is a great example of
attempting to deflect the blame onto those UNIX
admin types that admin the actual modems and
their boot files, instead of blaming Sam, your
network overlord.
UNIX admins that admin the services have nothing to
do with the network hardware they are connecting to,
or how they are configured as they don't own the
network or it's hardware.
One of the things I really hated about
Adelphia when I was there. In contrast, at
MindSpring, the network and UNIX admin type
guys all worked on the same floor together on
peachtree street and were treated as equals, and
encouraged to work together.
Not now that a lot of the clueful people are gone, :)
but I know who you are.
But yeah. Plenty of them out there. The reason I
like them is that there is no time commitment. You
are in and out and it's over. No need to find the
mystic jewel of donut or anything like that. What
I'd REALLY like to see is a kickass multiplayer
online racing game. Something that's as good as a
playstation2 racing game. Need For Speed 8, where
you race against online players through super
realistic maps of real life cities. Twould (yeah,
invented a word) rule to blow by other online
players in a ferrari spyder with the top down on
lakeshore drive, or US 1, or route 66.
As an esteemed predictionaire of sorts, with full
backing of the predictionationization society, here
are my predictions for the next decade:
#1 Algebra won't be hard someday
#2 Grass will mow itself
#3 The Aliens people have encountered will be
revealed to be the "geek" or "dork" aliens. The
Jock aliens stay back on marklar and get laid and
drink. They are much bigger and stronger.
#4 Trendy computer users will start doing
"case piercing" and the truly EXTREME will try
out hard drive piercings. They will be made of
steel at first, but aluminum will become the rage.
#5 Wireless wires will be invented to replace the
wired wires.
#6 The "tornado in a can" will become "the can"
in your bathroom. Flushing dead goldfish will
never be boring again.
#7 Top ten lists will transmogrifimorphicate into
top 7 lists.
Things will get more modular, kinda like the
handspring. People are slowly getting more tech
savvy. That will lend itself to people wanting
to upgrade their machines more easily. I can see
video cards, drives, memory, etc, all being in
cartridge format and snapped into your caselike
box thing from the outside with no need to open
anything up.
What a great way to get rid of dead bodies!
I'm thoroughly convinced the entire nielsen
system needs scrapped. It's outdated, and
not representative anymore. How hard would it
be to come up with a better system? How inexpensive
would it be to poll directv customers to see if
they'd be cool with having their viewing habits
monitored? Or cable customer for that matter? In
this age of computers, how hard would it be to
compile data if every single viewer ELECTED to participate
in this type of monitoring? Not very hard me thinks.
Those nielsen ratings are why morons like Barry Diller
decides he doesn't like "space shows" and why
they do dumb shit like show freaking Braveheart
on SciFi now.
Broadband is to wife, as dialup is to girlfriend.
Think about it.
Actually, Robert was the CTO at the time. He's famous for his part in creating dos emulation for
unix. You'd be lucky to hire him, assuming you
could afford him. I'm just lowly sawilson famous
for nothing that important.
This page was generated by a barrel of Human-Mouse Hybrids for sawilson.
There's also a website with all the code available at javaalmanac.com, so you don't have to type in every example you want to use in your code.
Maybe it's just me, but I force myself to type in
every example by hand from a book because I find
I have better comprehension of the material down
the road. But then again, I'm not "one who loves
code". I'm more of the writing code to automate
tasks type as apposed to a hardcore, sit in front
of your favorite editor for 8 hours straight making
elaborate things type person. Those guys are special
in a weird but positive way. A guy I used to work
with named Robert Sanders was the type that just
looked at code and "got it". Definitely not my
thang. He'd probably benefit from going to the
website for a cut and paste.
This reminds me of a startup I was involved with :)
a while ago. The idea was that your palm VII would
signal the airport billing system when you got there and automatically
get you a ticket on your prefered airline. We were
actually most of the way there until PSI.net starting
having delusions of granduer and bought metamore out
from under us. We even had a way figured out to make
the three different ticketing systems work together
seemlessly. I suppose someone smart could pitch
something like that today, and probably pull it
off in light of this slashdot story.
What I'm reading is that they are trying to figure
out a way to stuff more features into wireless
computing so they can charge more for those features.
Also, (as mentioned by an earlier poster) they'll
have the ability to figure out where you are at
all times so they can specifically target you with
information that they think you'll need. Sounds like
doubleclick.net would love to get in on this. It would
be the next level in geek fetish toys. The ezpass
thing, (as said earlier) is cool though. Not to
mention:
Ads popping up as you drive by places telling you
what you should buy there. Example - You just passed Dick Monalds and our McRib is only a buck
today!
Or, Playing at the theatre today, this movie, that
movie. This cool one starts in 5 minutes!
As long as there are serious user controls, this
could be a cool thing. The interface is going to
have to be freaking stellar and unobtrusive to
keep people from sending their SUV's through
krogers when their cellphone, pager, and pda all
go off at once.
OH! and one more before I forget it...
I consider myself open to scientific experimentation
So, you must eat at taco bell.
I consider myself open to scientific experimentation
That's pretty brave. I'm just an organ donor myself.
He's saying that the flux capacitor needs a laser to
make super mice that can talk without using a throat
box computer diode space modulator.
If this research continues, it might only take
1000 genetically altered monkees 10 years to create
the collective works of shakespeare. You probably
wouldn't have to lock them in a room either. They'd
of course be superior and have 3 asses.
Maybe we could talk michael jackson into singing
his "Ben" them again since it calmed the killer
mice down before.