One of my former employers actually sent a six-figure (in price) minicomputer to a customer that hadn't ordered it, to count it as a 'sale' just before they were acquired by another company. They were doing a lot of other shady crap too. After the merger went through, all the dirty deeds came to light, and the stock price of the new combined company dropped from around $80 to about $12.
Needless to say, those guys are facing stockholder lawsuits and possible jail time.
The mutations of at least Professor X and the Beast were caused by their parents' exposure to radiation. Maybe some of the others also, but I distinctly remember those two.
X's parents were scientists working on the first A-bomb tests; Hank McCoy's dad was a nuclear power plant operator who got exposed while stopping a runaway chain reaction.
(Just a couple of the billions of useless facts running around my brain...)
I was the biggest guy in my high school (OK, it was a small school, a little over 50 people in my graduating class IIRC). When I was a sophomore a wise-ass upperclassman started calling me "Gargy Gantua". Since it was so close to my real name (Greg), everybody started calling me Garg.
To this day, hardly anybody in my home town (immediate family excepted) calls me anything else.
... believe it or not, was the best teacher I've had for any subject.
I was taking night classes at a tech school. By day he was the DP manager (what would be a CIO these days) for US Pipe in Chattanooga, TN. Why he chose to teach night classes I don't know... maybe just for the love of teaching. Whatever the reason was, he was damn good at it.
He told one story that still makes me laugh. This was 1979, when most of the smaller shops were just weaning themselves from the old punch cards. US Pipe was made the leap, and he was trying to find someone who wanted his old card punch. Not only would no one buy it, but the only people who had any interest wanted to be paid for carting it away. So he got some of his workers to help him load it in the back of his truck, and he used it to anchor his floating dock at his lake house.
... I've got a question. We've all heard the story that if a space vehicle doesn't enter the atmosphere at precisely the right angle, it'll bounce off like a stone skipping over water and fly off into the endless void of space. Why don't they do that with Mir (or any other spacecraft that have outlived their usefulness)? Seems a lot safer than trying to do a controlled crash.
I'm sure there's a reason, just want to know what it is...
Background: I've worked for two hospitals, a healthcare software vendor, and now a healtcare IT consulting firm.
I see the benfits of open source for a lot of projects, but I'm really wondering if medical systems is a good fit. The main reason for this is the extraordinary amount of regulation over healthcare. Two things come immediately to mind:
The old "who do I sue" argument.In most cases I consider this a specious argument (who could really sue Microsoft with their legal resources?), but it's true here. If you do not receive a software update in a timely manner and it causes your hospital to be fined, you will sue the software provider... and you will likely win. So the question is... what is the legal culpability of open-source medical software providers, and how do they plan to ensure regulatory compliance?
International concerns.Open source usually consists of teams without respect to national borders. But since regualtions will be different for each country, how will this work? Will there be a different 'flavor' of each project for each country, or will there end up being separate projects?
I'm interested in hearing from people on these projects, if they're reading...
As a former employee (a little over a year ago) of (McKesson)HBOC, I can tell you that if he wants to avoid Windows, HBOC is not going to help. They became a Microsoft Business Partner during my tenure there and began recoding all their Unix software to run on NT. They may be rethinking things due to Linux's popularity, but I doubt it; I'm sure MS would not be pleased...
Last week egghead was auctioning off a group of IBM AS400's. Okay, it's not in the same league with a Cray, but still... when I looked in on it, they were going for $9. For a moment, I toyed with the idea of getting one, but then I saw 2 gotchas...
1. Shipping was $185.
2. Operating system NOT included.
Since they're weird RISC boxen, God knows if they'd run anything but OS400, which would probably cost several thousand dollars.
This wasn't a marketing ploy anyway; just a tech guy who installed Linux on S390 and wanted to see how many copies he could run before things got unacceptably slow. Just like most of us geeks... he got a new toy and wanted to push it to its limits...:-)
...now when I use my.sig, people wll 'get it' instead of saying "Quit bragging" or "How can I get my son/daughter into that school?"
Garg
Re:Do you really mean WAP?
on
WAP Under Fire
·
· Score: 1
That's what I'm wondering too.
Even if GPRS replaces WAP (the LEAP pages appear to be slashdotted, so I can't comment there), you still need WML or something like it to do presentation to a 16x12 character screen.
(And no, you can't just convert the HTML in a gateway... you've got to make sure the important stuff appears first, got to reformat tables, etc.) I've been playing with WML for a couple of weeks and yes, it is a pain in the ass. But's it's more because of trying to rearrange stuff to be somewhat usable on such a tiny screen than the markup language itself.
Office 2000 has been widely touted as using XML. Having dealt with converting personally, I can say it "sort of" does. It does use a lot of XML, but it also inserts various proprietary codes of some kind. I managed to kluge up some ways of inserting the codes, just so we could export XML data from a mainframe directly into Excel, but it's definitely not standard. And right now I don't see that MS has any incentive to make it standard. I'm betting BizTalk, that they've been promoting as open, understands (and possibly uses) this crap.
True, security by obscurity is bad if it's your only defense (and in this case it definitely isn't). But as any general will tell you, trying to fight off a hundred people is a lot easier than fighting off a hundred thousand.
Actually, if I wanted to make an incredibly powerful and secure Web server, I'd run it on regular OS390, not Linux/390. Here's why:
The latest OS390 versions come with their own Web server, which is a variant of Apache (the variant part comes because of a difference in the way mainframes handle processes). So that part is already there.
Now, if you run the real Apache on Linux on your S390, by their nature you have thousands and thousands of people who know the strengths and weaknesses of those packages. Only a relative handful of people in world could hack an OS390 system.
How many of you, if you discovered a buffer overflow situation that would let you enter a command string on such a system, would know what to do?
Exactly what I was thinking. The local and state governments would never let this happen (at least here in the U.S.) 'cause it would be too much of a hit on their revenue streams. In most cities, some if not all streets have speed limits set artificially low, so whenever they need extra money they just initiate a 'crackdown'.
Slashdot Mirror
One of my former employers actually sent a six-figure (in price) minicomputer to a customer that hadn't ordered it, to count it as a 'sale' just before they were acquired by another company. They were doing a lot of other shady crap too. After the merger went through, all the dirty deeds came to light, and the stock price of the new combined company dropped from around $80 to about $12.
Needless to say, those guys are facing stockholder lawsuits and possible jail time.
Garg
I know what you mean! I thought I was reading a sixties comic book!!
Or another THRILLING episode of ZIPPY the PINHEAD!!
Garg
The mutations of at least Professor X and the Beast were caused by their parents' exposure to radiation. Maybe some of the others also, but I distinctly remember those two.
X's parents were scientists working on the first A-bomb tests; Hank McCoy's dad was a nuclear power plant operator who got exposed while stopping a runaway chain reaction.
(Just a couple of the billions of useless facts running around my brain...)
GargI was the biggest guy in my high school (OK, it was a small school, a little over 50 people in my graduating class IIRC). When I was a sophomore a wise-ass upperclassman started calling me "Gargy Gantua". Since it was so close to my real name (Greg), everybody started calling me Garg.
To this day, hardly anybody in my home town (immediate family excepted) calls me anything else.
It's even been my license plate in two states.
Garg
... believe it or not, was the best teacher I've had for any subject.
I was taking night classes at a tech school. By day he was the DP manager (what would be a CIO these days) for US Pipe in Chattanooga, TN. Why he chose to teach night classes I don't know... maybe just for the love of teaching. Whatever the reason was, he was damn good at it.
He told one story that still makes me laugh. This was 1979, when most of the smaller shops were just weaning themselves from the old punch cards. US Pipe was made the leap, and he was trying to find someone who wanted his old card punch. Not only would no one buy it, but the only people who had any interest wanted to be paid for carting it away. So he got some of his workers to help him load it in the back of his truck, and he used it to anchor his floating dock at his lake house.
Garg
Isn't that a server in a small cabin in Montana that sends logic bombs to more technologically advanced servers?
No wait, that's the Un<b>a</b>Server...
Garg
Doesn't this sound like a Geek Public Service Announcement?
'CmdrTaco sez, "DoS attacks just aren't cool ever!"'
Look for the poster in your school cafeteria soon..
Garg
Wow... somebody hacked Slashdot again!
Next story... "Stallman linked to Communist party"
Garg
... I've got a question. We've all heard the story that if a space vehicle doesn't enter the atmosphere at precisely the right angle, it'll bounce off like a stone skipping over water and fly off into the endless void of space. Why don't they do that with Mir (or any other spacecraft that have outlived their usefulness)? Seems a lot safer than trying to do a controlled crash.
I'm sure there's a reason, just want to know what it is...
GargI see the benfits of open source for a lot of projects, but I'm really wondering if medical systems is a good fit. The main reason for this is the extraordinary amount of regulation over healthcare. Two things come immediately to mind:
- The old "who do I sue" argument.In most cases I consider this a specious argument (who could really sue Microsoft with their legal resources?), but it's true here. If you do not receive a software update in a timely manner and it causes your hospital to be fined, you will sue the software provider... and you will likely win. So the question is... what is the legal culpability of open-source medical software providers, and how do they plan to ensure regulatory compliance?
- International concerns.Open source usually consists of teams without respect to national borders. But since regualtions will be different for each country, how will this work? Will there be a different 'flavor' of each project for each country, or will there end up being separate projects?
I'm interested in hearing from people on these projects, if they're reading...Garg
As a former employee (a little over a year ago) of (McKesson)HBOC, I can tell you that if he wants to avoid Windows, HBOC is not going to help. They became a Microsoft Business Partner during my tenure there and began recoding all their Unix software to run on NT. They may be rethinking things due to Linux's popularity, but I doubt it; I'm sure MS would not be pleased...
Garg
Last week egghead was auctioning off a group of IBM AS400's. Okay, it's not in the same league with a Cray, but still... when I looked in on it, they were going for $9. For a moment, I toyed with the idea of getting one, but then I saw 2 gotchas...
1. Shipping was $185.
2. Operating system NOT included.
Since they're weird RISC boxen, God knows if they'd run anything but OS400, which would probably cost several thousand dollars.
Garg
Hey, I've been telecommuting for five years... if somebody offers me one of these, I'm changing jobs!
Bennies: three weeks paid vacation, 401K, company 'copter...
Garg
I just got back from the IBM Tech Conference in Vegas... I wondered why they weren't giving away Monterey T-shirts this year.
I guess the one I have from last year is now an official Collector's Item....
Garg
According to the Andrej Bauer SOMAD (regarding the spelling mistakes):
"Hello? What part of trained on Usenet don't you understand?"
That said, it was, of course. a hoax... though an extemely entertaining one.
Garg
Kiss cookies goodbye, gullible Slashdot freak! ARRR UMMM NUMM NUMM...
Garg
This wasn't a marketing ploy anyway; just a tech guy who installed Linux on S390 and wanted to see how many copies he could run before things got unacceptably slow. Just like most of us geeks... he got a new toy and wanted to push it to its limits... :-)
Garg
...now when I use my .sig, people wll 'get it' instead of saying "Quit bragging" or "How can I get my son/daughter into that school?"
Garg
That's what I'm wondering too.
Even if GPRS replaces WAP (the LEAP pages appear to be slashdotted, so I can't comment there), you still need WML or something like it to do presentation to a 16x12 character screen.
(And no, you can't just convert the HTML in a gateway... you've got to make sure the important stuff appears first, got to reformat tables, etc.) I've been playing with WML for a couple of weeks and yes, it is a pain in the ass. But's it's more because of trying to rearrange stuff to be somewhat usable on such a tiny screen than the markup language itself.
Garg
Office 2000 has been widely touted as using XML. Having dealt with converting personally, I can say it "sort of" does. It does use a lot of XML, but it also inserts various proprietary codes of some kind. I managed to kluge up some ways of inserting the codes, just so we could export XML data from a mainframe directly into Excel, but it's definitely not standard. And right now I don't see that MS has any incentive to make it standard. I'm betting BizTalk, that they've been promoting as open, understands (and possibly uses) this crap.
Garg
True, security by obscurity is bad if it's your only defense (and in this case it definitely isn't). But as any general will tell you, trying to fight off a hundred people is a lot easier than fighting off a hundred thousand.
Garg
Actually, if I wanted to make an incredibly powerful and secure Web server, I'd run it on regular OS390, not Linux/390. Here's why:
The latest OS390 versions come with their own Web server, which is a variant of Apache (the variant part comes because of a difference in the way mainframes handle processes). So that part is already there.
Now, if you run the real Apache on Linux on your S390, by their nature you have thousands and thousands of people who know the strengths and weaknesses of those packages. Only a relative handful of people in world could hack an OS390 system.
How many of you, if you discovered a buffer overflow situation that would let you enter a command string on such a system, would know what to do?
Garg
Exactly what I was thinking. The local and state governments would never let this happen (at least here in the U.S.) 'cause it would be too much of a hit on their revenue streams. In most cities, some if not all streets have speed limits set artificially low, so whenever they need extra money they just initiate a 'crackdown'.
... the Maginot Line?
My mistake. I've worked on IBM mainframes since '80 and never heard of AIX running on 'em. I guess that shows how popular it was... :-)
Garg