a couple years ago some morons broke into my car and stole all my stereo equipment, AND MY HP-48GX CALCULATOR! (a reverse polish notation calculator for those that dont know)
Years later, I still laugh when I think about the morons trying to use such a calculator, since entering something as simple as "2 + 2" yields an error for invalid syntax (again, for those who dont know RPN, you would have to enter "2 ENTER 2 ENTER +" to get the result.
they probably thought it was broken and ditched it.
On one hand, if black box data is used against you, you could claim discrimination since not all cars have the boxes and therefore you are being punished to a greater extent as a direct result of the car you chose to purchase.
On the other hand, I think it would be a good idea (Big Brother paranoia aside) for the industry to create a standard for what kind of dasta is collected and mandate the use of these devices on all new cars. Unbiased witnesses in courtrooms is badly needed these days due to blatant disregard for truth and justice.
Now how do you stop Big Brother from tapping this info? You KNOW they're gonna wanna give this thing an IP address that maps to your Social Security Number and is able to broadcast on wireless networks...
I have to agree, and further wonder why in the world people are still so obsessed with the IT industry. if you havent been in the field 5+ years, stay out unless you are truly gifted.
I have been in for 10 years doing UNIX admin/architecting and feel my job is semi-stable for the time being. but who knows.
I cant imagine who would hire a fresh grad when there are plenty of experienced people out there without jobs, and many have degrees, so it's not just education vs. experience.
I feel that IT is my calling, but I would hesitate to enter the field right now knowing what I know. if you have other viable opportunities, take them.
with the audigy platinum and the right cd player, it never has to go analog. just use the SPDIF fiber cables.
the record companies dont stand a chance in this fight. the only way they can win now is if they go to a new format, and they tightly control the manufacture of the player itself (and still someone will reverse engineer it -- think console modchips)
if you can see it, you can copy it. if you can hear it, you can copy it. welcome to the digital age RIAA, enjoy your stay.
I reply with a post that gives genuine insight into the mind of someone who cheats along with a thorough explanation and some moron moderates me as a TROLL???
moderators, get a clue and mod me at least back to "1"
see, the problem can also be viewed as "why are gamers turning to cheating?"
I was a totally legit CounterStrike player until I figured out that the people that were constantly fragging the daylights out of me were not doing so unaided.
so now I sparingly use an aimbot. sparingly, meaning I turn it on when up against major cheaters so I can at least play on even ground with them, and leave it off at times when it appears that all/most opponents are playing un-aided.
I personally wish the CounterStrike world would just bite the bullet and segregate into cheating and non-cheating servers. THEN aggressively kick and ban cheaters on non-cheating servers.
and I'm glad we still have H1B's galore
on
U.S. Jobs Jumping Ship
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
gosh, in hindsight, I cant believe I could have ever doubted the government's plan to increase the number of H1B's to such a ridiculously high number.
now I see that they truly did have our best interests in mind. Employers say "the industry no longer pays salaries like that" when they mean "there are hungry immigrants that are willing to do your job for half your salary"
they claim Linux is a combination of the word UNIX and the name Linus.
I think Linus should stand up and tell them that he just replaced the "s" at the end of his name with an "x" and tell them they can keep their crappy trademark <g>
I'm not one of these extremists who will advocate free software for everything in the world, even if it doesnt fit a given situation, but this is a case in point for free software like MySQL et al.
Re:it is VERY trollish
on
The Faded Sun
·
· Score: 1
you can say that again! I certainly won't argue with you there, but with IBM hardware you get the tough choice of a few bad operating systems: AIX, and whatever the name-du-jour is for their S390 OS.
While I find it absurd for Sun to embrace Linux because of the quality of Solaris, I find it amazingly intelligent for IBM to embrace Linux because Linux is far better from an Admin standpoint than AIX.
>> IBMs top end gear is a fuckload more reliable than Sun's.
Re:it is VERY trollish
on
The Faded Sun
·
· Score: 1
of COURSE he is pushing this, because he is offering AN ORACLE PRODUCT as the alternative.
here is what he is proposing:
NOW: -you pay big bucks for hardware -you pay big bucks for support -you pay big bucks for Oracle licenses
WHAT HE WANTS YOU TO DO: -pay small bucks for hardware -pay nothing for hardware support -pay big bucks for Oracle licenses -pay big bucks for RAC option
more money goes to him and his dream house on the west coast! if you were him, would you recommend anything different? of course not!
why dont you go ask Larry Ellison what he thinks of running MySQL (which now has transaction support) on a shitload of Linux x86 boxes clustered with Veritas Cluster (the best cluster software out there, and they now support linux).
He would look at you like you were smoking crack! what, you're going to sell all your existing Sun hardware for pennies on the dollar, invest in Intel hardware and a Linux solution, and pay big bucks to Veritas on top of all this? For WHAT? The privilege of proclaiming that your company has embraced Linux???
Re:it is VERY trollish
on
The Faded Sun
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Sure, oracle isn't dumb. They are pushing Oracle on Linux because they realize that Linux is a segment they cannot afford to ignore at this point.
You are certainly correct that Sun needs to change, I wasn't even trying to argue that. Linux is undeniably poised to overtake much of the UNIX market share in the next 5 years.
My point about big applications on cheap hardware may have been too vague.
Any application that can be easily spread across lots of machines without the use of expensive options or 3rd party software (oracle parallel server, veritas cluster, etc) is a good candidate for linux on cheap hardware.
The weblayer at my company is a perfect example. I can buy 10+ of my 2-way Intel machines for the price of one big Sun box. So we buy more than we need, and toss em into the spare parts bin when they fail. sit those puppies behind a load director and you're set.
The database layer is another story entirely. They require a large amount of horsepower, and the whole operation dies if they go down. This means it *must* sit on big, reliable hardware with a support contract
it is VERY trollish
on
The Faded Sun
·
· Score: 5, Informative
let's start with the facts.
He says the battle will be lost to cheap stations that use AMD and Intel hardware.
No sane company at this point is going to put mission critical applications on Intel hardware unless it scales horizontally amazingly well. weblayers - yes. application servers - yes. big databases that are read-write? NO.
And who is going to provide the 1-hour onsite response time that comes with Sun's Platinum service for those flocking to cheap hardware?
Sun's legacy servers (4500, 6500, e10k) were pretty amazing, but had some faults (Ecache failures, lack of true power redundancy, etc). But Sun's new line of servers is truly amazing. The 4800, 6800, and e15k all support true partitioning, including FULL separation of power circuitry between partitions! as with the last line, they are very interchangeable with each other. now add solaris, an OS that is stable, and scales extremely well up to 106 processors and 512 GB of RAM in one machine (read again, that is 512 GIGS of RAM). did I mention hot-swappable CPUs? did I mention that Sun's partnership with Hitachi lead to Sun's offering of 75 Terabyte SAN-attached arrays?
So, Mr. Cringely, who exactly is going to fill this gap for Enterprise servers for mission critical apps if Sun tanks?
But yet he claims that Sun has "no real technical leadership". how about that. so they dont. most companies with "real technical leadership" sit on the sidelines and daydream about marketing products with this kind of quality.
I guess if Sun tanked, people could still buy IBM or HP hardware and run (gasp) AIX or HPUX. I've been responsible for AIX in my life, and it's not really pretty. And IBM's linux offering on mainframes seems as absurd to me as spending the money for a twin-turbo porsche and then asking for vinyl seats because you don't like the feel of real leather.
In a sense, I'm biased because I have built my career around being an expert in Sun hardware, Solaris, Veritas tools, and Perl. But then, this is exactly why I am able to know how big corporations think. CTO's aren't wandering from big UNIX machines for awhile when it comes to anything important...
why should an employer be allowed to do something to me that will decrease my credit score???
maybe to discourage jumping around to various jobs too often? lemme tell ya, get 10 inquiries on your credit check and you will NOT be happy with your FICO score...
I think the key to this is maintaining a motivation level that will allow you to keep up with emerging trends, but not so high that you burn out.
I have been a unix admin for 10 years, but have been playing with perl, cgi, apache, mysql, and linux for most of that time also, knowing that someday I may have to rely on one or more of them.
keeping a broad scope is absolutely necessary, but not so broad that you master nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
there's metal in VAIOs??
well I'm glad he thinks browser innovation is dead. now how about they start working on properly supporting things like CSS!
So incredibly annoying building a page to perfect standards and having a browser munge it anyways!
I hate to break it to SCO, but Linux had SMP support LOOOOOONG before IBM got into the open source game. Idiots.
I hope SCO execs have to sell their kidneys to pay for the lawsuit filed by IBM when courts figure out how unsubstantiated these claims truly are!
Nobody forced these people to move to a shack in Montana. Why are we now stuck paying their telephone bill???
I pay 10 times the amount as them for a house in the first place (average house in this area is now around $500,000).
I don't feel sorry for them at all. Let them move to the city if they want cheaper phone bills!
a couple years ago some morons broke into my car and stole all my stereo equipment, AND MY HP-48GX CALCULATOR! (a reverse polish notation calculator for those that dont know)
Years later, I still laugh when I think about the morons trying to use such a calculator, since entering something as simple as "2 + 2" yields an error for invalid syntax (again, for those who dont know RPN, you would have to enter "2 ENTER 2 ENTER +" to get the result.
they probably thought it was broken and ditched it.
I guess I am torn on this issue.
On one hand, if black box data is used against you, you could claim discrimination since not all cars have the boxes and therefore you are being punished to a greater extent as a direct result of the car you chose to purchase.
On the other hand, I think it would be a good idea (Big Brother paranoia aside) for the industry to create a standard for what kind of dasta is collected and mandate the use of these devices on all new cars. Unbiased witnesses in courtrooms is badly needed these days due to blatant disregard for truth and justice.
Now how do you stop Big Brother from tapping this info? You KNOW they're gonna wanna give this thing an IP address that maps to your Social Security Number and is able to broadcast on wireless networks...
why do I get the feeling that Microsoft money is somehow behind this effort???
I have to agree, and further wonder why in the world people are still so obsessed with the IT industry. if you havent been in the field 5+ years, stay out unless you are truly gifted.
I have been in for 10 years doing UNIX admin/architecting and feel my job is semi-stable for the time being. but who knows.
I cant imagine who would hire a fresh grad when there are plenty of experienced people out there without jobs, and many have degrees, so it's not just education vs. experience.
I feel that IT is my calling, but I would hesitate to enter the field right now knowing what I know. if you have other viable opportunities, take them.
is THAT what that button does??
I will laugh my ass off when the first MPAA affiliated person is fined/imprisoned for violation of their own BS laws!
that will be a day to be remembered
with the audigy platinum and the right cd player, it never has to go analog. just use the SPDIF fiber cables.
the record companies dont stand a chance in this fight. the only way they can win now is if they go to a new format, and they tightly control the manufacture of the player itself (and still someone will reverse engineer it -- think console modchips)
if you can see it, you can copy it. if you can hear it, you can copy it. welcome to the digital age RIAA, enjoy your stay.
George Carlin needs a new routine to complement his "7 words you cannot say on TV and Radio" act.
I have the Viewsonic vx900 that uses MVA technology (as opposed to the generally slower TFT) and it is awesome for gaming and DVD playback.
and it's a 19-inch LCD for $750, not bad!
only on slashdot!
I reply with a post that gives genuine insight into the mind of someone who cheats along with a thorough explanation and some moron moderates me as a TROLL???
moderators, get a clue and mod me at least back to "1"
see, the problem can also be viewed as "why are gamers turning to cheating?"
I was a totally legit CounterStrike player until I figured out that the people that were constantly fragging the daylights out of me were not doing so unaided.
so now I sparingly use an aimbot. sparingly, meaning I turn it on when up against major cheaters so I can at least play on even ground with them, and leave it off at times when it appears that all/most opponents are playing un-aided.
I personally wish the CounterStrike world would just bite the bullet and segregate into cheating and non-cheating servers. THEN aggressively kick and ban cheaters on non-cheating servers.
gosh, in hindsight, I cant believe I could have ever doubted the government's plan to increase the number of H1B's to such a ridiculously high number.
now I see that they truly did have our best interests in mind. Employers say "the industry no longer pays salaries like that" when they mean "there are hungry immigrants that are willing to do your job for half your salary"
a big "cheers" to the US government.
they claim Linux is a combination of the word UNIX and the name Linus.
I think Linus should stand up and tell them that he just replaced the "s" at the end of his name with an "x" and tell them they can keep their crappy trademark <g>
s#s#x#
I'm not one of these extremists who will advocate free software for everything in the world, even if it doesnt fit a given situation, but this is a case in point for free software like MySQL et al.
you can say that again! I certainly won't argue with you there, but with IBM hardware you get the tough choice of a few bad operating systems: AIX, and whatever the name-du-jour is for their S390 OS.
While I find it absurd for Sun to embrace Linux because of the quality of Solaris, I find it amazingly intelligent for IBM to embrace Linux because Linux is far better from an Admin standpoint than AIX.
>> IBMs top end gear is a fuckload more reliable than Sun's.
of COURSE he is pushing this, because he is offering AN ORACLE PRODUCT as the alternative.
here is what he is proposing:
NOW:
-you pay big bucks for hardware
-you pay big bucks for support
-you pay big bucks for Oracle licenses
WHAT HE WANTS YOU TO DO:
-pay small bucks for hardware
-pay nothing for hardware support
-pay big bucks for Oracle licenses
-pay big bucks for RAC option
more money goes to him and his dream house on the west coast! if you were him, would you recommend anything different? of course not!
why dont you go ask Larry Ellison what he thinks of running MySQL (which now has transaction support) on a shitload of Linux x86 boxes clustered with Veritas Cluster (the best cluster software out there, and they now support linux).
He would look at you like you were smoking crack! what, you're going to sell all your existing Sun hardware for pennies on the dollar, invest in Intel hardware and a Linux solution, and pay big bucks to Veritas on top of all this? For WHAT? The privilege of proclaiming that your company has embraced Linux???
Sure, oracle isn't dumb. They are pushing Oracle on Linux because they realize that Linux is a segment they cannot afford to ignore at this point.
You are certainly correct that Sun needs to change, I wasn't even trying to argue that. Linux is undeniably poised to overtake much of the UNIX market share in the next 5 years.
My point about big applications on cheap hardware may have been too vague.
Any application that can be easily spread across lots of machines without the use of expensive options or 3rd party software (oracle parallel server, veritas cluster, etc) is a good candidate for linux on cheap hardware.
The weblayer at my company is a perfect example. I can buy 10+ of my 2-way Intel machines for the price of one big Sun box. So we buy more than we need, and toss em into the spare parts bin when they fail. sit those puppies behind a load director and you're set.
The database layer is another story entirely. They require a large amount of horsepower, and the whole operation dies if they go down. This means it *must* sit on big, reliable hardware with a support contract
let's start with the facts.
He says the battle will be lost to cheap stations that use AMD and Intel hardware.
No sane company at this point is going to put mission critical applications on Intel hardware unless it scales horizontally amazingly well. weblayers - yes. application servers - yes. big databases that are read-write? NO.
And who is going to provide the 1-hour onsite response time that comes with Sun's Platinum service for those flocking to cheap hardware?
Sun's legacy servers (4500, 6500, e10k) were pretty amazing, but had some faults (Ecache failures, lack of true power redundancy, etc). But Sun's new line of servers is truly amazing. The 4800, 6800, and e15k all support true partitioning, including FULL separation of power circuitry between partitions! as with the last line, they are very interchangeable with each other. now add solaris, an OS that is stable, and scales extremely well up to 106 processors and 512 GB of RAM in one machine (read again, that is 512 GIGS of RAM). did I mention hot-swappable CPUs? did I mention that Sun's partnership with Hitachi lead to Sun's offering of 75 Terabyte SAN-attached arrays?
So, Mr. Cringely, who exactly is going to fill this gap for Enterprise servers for mission critical apps if Sun tanks?
But yet he claims that Sun has "no real technical leadership". how about that. so they dont. most companies with "real technical leadership" sit on the sidelines and daydream about marketing products with this kind of quality.
I guess if Sun tanked, people could still buy IBM or HP hardware and run (gasp) AIX or HPUX. I've been responsible for AIX in my life, and it's not really pretty. And IBM's linux offering on mainframes seems as absurd to me as spending the money for a twin-turbo porsche and then asking for vinyl seats because you don't like the feel of real leather.
In a sense, I'm biased because I have built my career around being an expert in Sun hardware, Solaris, Veritas tools, and Perl. But then, this is exactly why I am able to know how big corporations think. CTO's aren't wandering from big UNIX machines for awhile when it comes to anything important...
no, it's called FUCKING UP YOUR CREDIT
why should an employer be allowed to do something to me that will decrease my credit score???
maybe to discourage jumping around to various jobs too often? lemme tell ya, get 10 inquiries on your credit check and you will NOT be happy with your FICO score...
I think the key to this is maintaining a motivation level that will allow you to keep up with emerging trends, but not so high that you burn out.
I have been a unix admin for 10 years, but have been playing with perl, cgi, apache, mysql, and linux for most of that time also, knowing that someday I may have to rely on one or more of them.
keeping a broad scope is absolutely necessary, but not so broad that you master nothing.
the datafile size averages 8GB in the warehouse.