I write JCL every day! Mainframes are still around, and so are batch jobs!
Punchcards are long gone though. The JCL is on disk now. But as much as I hated it when I started doing this, it served (and still serves) a purpose in the mainframe environment.
When I first started doing mainframe stuff about 20 years ago, punchcards were still around, but were on their way out. The company I was working for was putting in a new datacenter, and of course they got a card reader/punch. Why? Because we had batch streams that punched cards from one job to be read into the next, and then thrown away! Why did we do that? Because the service bureau we used before we got our own datacenter charged for disk and tape space, but the cards were our own, and therefore free. When we suggested changing to disk or tape for the staging files, management fought us! The PHB's, ex-techs all, LOVED those punchcards!
We got rid of them anyway and the card reader collected dust for a couple of years till we dumped it.
The service plan I have on my VIIx gives me 150kb for $24.95/month. The new pricing gives me a choice of downgrading to 100kb for $20, (20% reduction in price for a 33% reduction in service), or upgrading to unlimited for $39. The old unlimited plan was $45. $39 is still more than I want to spend for this service, especially with the limited function on my VIIx, but I'm stuck for another few months to qualify for the rebate I got when I bought the thing last year.
Sigh. I think I'll just wait till my year is up, and get a Visor Prism, like I wanted in the first place. I don't see much benefit to the i705 over my VIIx that I can't get with a wireless modem in a Visor, especially since the palm.net coverage is pretty spotty (or nonexistent) where I live.
Known but badly documented problem. NT installs into a FAT partition, then converts it to NTFS later. If the FAT partition is too large, the install fails with a bogus error message.
Install in a smaller partition, then use Partition Magic to enlarge it. That's what I ended up doing.
A friend of mine tried this for a customer that needed a connection between buildings about a mile apart. It's called a "fire alarm circuit", and it's straight copper point to point. At first TPC promised they could do it, then reneged, then agreed, then reneged AGAIN. It seems they're wise to this trick and now won't do a circuit that doesn't go through the CO. It may still be possible to get in some areas though. Last I spoke to hime he was trying to get the local electric company to let him use their pole space to run his own fiber without much luck.
I've had it through my local TPC for a few weeks now. The installer took one look at my setup and let me do most of the installation myself. All he did was put a splitter box outside the house, and swap my single RJ11 for a double one. No PPPoE, no DHCP, just a Fujitsu modem and a piece of paper with IP addresses on it. Couldn't have been better, as far as I'm concerned. Took me a few hours to get the Linux firewall configured, but now it's great.
If you want a pretty good (if a bit outdated) overview of NASA and the shuttle program (warts and all), see if you can find a copy of "Why do you care what other people think?" by Richard Feynman. The second half of the book is about his involvement with the Challenger Accident Investigation. He also had very high praise for the shuttle software group, and adds a few comments/items that weren't covered in this article. Highly recommended!
I spent a week in the UK recently, most of the time in northern Scotland, and I was amazed at how much better their system was than what we have in the States. All of the phones have really cool musical rings, Just about EVERYONE has one, and the coverage was amazing, even out in the middle of Nowhere in the Highlands of Scotland. I asked our bus driver about it, and he was surprised our coverage was so much worse!
Check out here. You have to be registered as a reseller with them, but that was pretty simple. They send you free course material, logos, marketing stuff, and when you "certify", you get a free copy of everything. They have a "free UNIX" promotion, but it's a limited license. What I got was a full-blown demo package containing a license for every piece of Open Server software.
I'm surprised no one has commented on the SCO certification. I'm SCO Open Server Certified. I took a 50-question multiple-choice test on their web site, for FREE, and they sent me a bunch of marketing stuff and one free copy of everything they sell. Do I KNOW anything about Open Server? Yeah, some. But I know Linux a LOT better. I can't get Linux certified though because I just can't justify the cost until I have some paying customers using it.
After reading the comments, I have to come in on the pro side. If the disks are cheap, this is a great way to see movies you KNOW you're never going to watch more than once or twice. It also makes those "rent from the web" schemes a little more sensible, since the disks don't have to be returned, and the renters don't have to worry about the disk getting damaged in transit or by the renter.
My major objection to DIVX, not that I ever had it, was that it seemed to be poorly thought out, poorly implemented, and abuse-prone, with the phone line and everything.
I agree with the piracy argument, but if the studios are willing to take the chance, why should we argue? They're taking all the risk. Besides, for the time being at least, DVD-R blanks are still going to be more expensive than buying the "real" DVD.
And if it doesn't sell, so what? At least this time no one is stuck with orphan equipment.
Now all we need is a recycling policy for old CDs and DVDs. Maybe we can glue a whole bunch of them together around a core and make light-poles out of them.
I have a house full of X10 stuff, some going back to the mid 70's when it first came out. Being a sucker for anything free, I snapped up the Firecracker deal when I first heard about it.
So far I haven't been able to make it work at all, which isn't surprising because there are a number of things that can interfere with X10 signals, especially PC power supplies.
Their "Active Home" system is a lot better, and there's Linux software that will work with it. I especially like the Web based interface. Maybe one day I'll even get it to work!
A lot of this is covered in other postings, but I'll summarize what I've found out looking into this over the past few weeks:
1) You probably won't pay any less for programming on satellite than would for cable if you have only one TV and one decoder box. You will probably get more channels.
2) Dish Network is better for Movies, etc. DirectTV is better for sports. Most of the below applies to Dish Network, but Direct TV has similar deals.
3) You can get "local" stations (meaning networks and regional broadcast channels) if you live on either coast and don't get good broadcast reception. (I live in a rural area of NJ, in a valley.) You're supposed to have no cable for 90 days to qualify, but in practice they don't follow that very closely. The add-on package costs extra, and (for now) requires a second dish. If you let them install the whole works for $99, they throw in the second dish free.
4) If you only get 1 receiver, and sign up for the full boat programming package, you get the first receiver and dish "free" (via rebate).
5) If you have multiple TV's (or VCR) each needs it's own receiver to pick up different channels concurrently. You can get a "dual LNB" dish and hang up to 3 receivers on it. To add more receivers, you need a "matrix switch". Each receiver adds $4.99 to the programming bill, but you get all programming on all receivers. A basic model receiver costs $99. Fancier ones are more.
I started this because my wife wanted to watch HBO in the bedroom. The cable company told us we'd have to get a second box and pay for HBO a SECOND TIME, a policy I found "objectionable". During my research process, I got a good deal on a big (54") TV that made DSS look even more appealing, but lately I've been having second thoughts because I have kids, multiple TV's, and other complications. I might just stick with the cable and get a DVD player. It depends on how the cable reception looks on the new TV. They're delivering it tomorrow, so I'll find out pretty quick.
Of course a lot depends on how they define "PC". (I didn't read the offer.) If you're talking IBM/Intel, a perpetually impoverished lawyer friend of mine (he wasn't a very good lawyer) got a stack of old IBM PC's as payment for some services. The stack included an original PC with the 63-watt power supply and CASSETTE port. I think that's about as old as they come.
More generically, I think I still have an M68000-based UNIX box and a CP/M machine laying around someplace.
My son is 16 and not really a nerd, but he is a little odd by the standards of the general population where we live. He has a few friends, some of whom are nerds of varying degrees. They all love roleplaying games like Vampire, computers, Doom, and a lot of other stuff that's being associated with this incident. Generally speaking, they don't have much use for jocks.
Last winter, my son wanted a trenchcoat. He wanted a tan one but he's big, so the only thing we could find in his size was a black one. He's worn it nearly every day all winter.
My son is the sweetest kid you'd ever want to meet once you get to know him. If he doesn't know you he can be a little intimidating, but real violence of any kind makes him physically ill.
When I first read the details of this incident, I printed out the article and gave it to my son. It upset him a great deal. I suggested he avoid wearing his trench coat to school for a while, if for no other reason than to show some sensitivity, and that he be prepared to be hauled into the guidance office for a little conversation. So far nothing has happened because he got sick yesterday and has been home. I can't tell whether or not it's related to this issue, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Think I'm over reacting? My 14 year old daughter has some friends in the high school, and others who have friends/siblings there. Yesterday she was asked by one of them if my son was in the "Trenchcoat Mafia".
It's very easy to have a kneejerk reaction to incidents like this. Administrators and politicians who are sensitive to public opinion have to be seen to be doing SOMETHING about what happened. Unfortunately they often latch onto the obvious visible characteristics and ignore the underlying problems. So I'm prepared for my son to be singled out solely based on superficial similarities.
If anyone is interested, I'll let you know if anything comes of this.
Slashdot Mirror
BIZARRE?? BIZARRE???
I write JCL every day! Mainframes are still around, and so are batch jobs!
Punchcards are long gone though. The JCL is on disk now. But as much as I hated it when I started doing this, it served (and still serves) a purpose in the mainframe environment.
When I first started doing mainframe stuff about 20 years ago, punchcards were still around, but were on their way out. The company I was working for was putting in a new datacenter, and of course they got a card reader/punch. Why? Because we had batch streams that punched cards from one job to be read into the next, and then thrown away! Why did we do that? Because the service bureau we used before we got our own datacenter charged for disk and tape space, but the cards were our own, and therefore free. When we suggested changing to disk or tape for the staging files, management fought us! The PHB's, ex-techs all, LOVED those punchcards!
We got rid of them anyway and the card reader collected dust for a couple of years till we dumped it.
The service plan I have on my VIIx gives me 150kb for $24.95/month. The new pricing gives me a choice of downgrading to 100kb for $20, (20% reduction in price for a 33% reduction in service), or upgrading to unlimited for $39. The old unlimited plan was $45. $39 is still more than I want to spend for this service, especially with the limited function on my VIIx, but I'm stuck for another few months to qualify for the rebate I got when I bought the thing last year.
Sigh. I think I'll just wait till my year is up, and get a Visor Prism, like I wanted in the first place. I don't see much benefit to the i705 over my VIIx that I can't get with a wireless modem in a Visor, especially since the palm.net coverage is pretty spotty (or nonexistent) where I live.
Let's see, we have:
1) Dynamic man-of-action Captain
2) Young, hot, female communications officer
3) Young African American Helmsman
4) Enigmatic alien doctor (all right, 2 of them)
5) Generic action-figure lieutenant (or 2)
Is it just me, or does anyone else see "Galaxy Quest" here?
All we need is Tech Sergeant Chen, but they didn't announce a Chief Engineer yet...
Known but badly documented problem. NT installs into a FAT partition, then converts it to NTFS later. If the FAT partition is too large, the install fails with a bogus error message.
Install in a smaller partition, then use Partition Magic to enlarge it. That's what I ended up doing.
A friend of mine tried this for a customer that needed a connection between buildings about a mile apart. It's called a "fire alarm circuit", and it's straight copper point to point. At first TPC promised they could do it, then reneged, then agreed, then reneged AGAIN. It seems they're wise to this trick and now won't do a circuit that doesn't go through the CO. It may still be possible to get in some areas though. Last I spoke to hime he was trying to get the local electric company to let him use their pole space to run his own fiber without much luck.
I've had it through my local TPC for a few weeks now. The installer took one look at my setup and let me do most of the installation myself. All he did was put a splitter box outside the house, and swap my single RJ11 for a double one. No PPPoE, no DHCP, just a Fujitsu modem and a piece of paper with IP addresses on it. Couldn't have been better, as far as I'm concerned. Took me a few hours to get the Linux firewall configured, but now it's great.
If you want a pretty good (if a bit outdated) overview of NASA and the shuttle program (warts and all), see if you can find a copy of "Why do you care what other people think?" by Richard Feynman. The second half of the book is about his involvement with the Challenger Accident Investigation. He also had very high praise for the shuttle software group, and adds a few comments/items that weren't covered in this article. Highly recommended!
I spent a week in the UK recently, most of the time in northern Scotland, and I was amazed at how much better their system was than what we have in the States. All of the phones have really cool musical rings, Just about EVERYONE has one, and the coverage was amazing, even out in the middle of Nowhere in the Highlands of Scotland. I asked our bus driver about it, and he was surprised our coverage was so much worse!
Check out here. You have to be registered as a reseller with them, but that was pretty simple. They send you free course material, logos, marketing stuff, and when you "certify", you get a free copy of everything. They have a "free UNIX" promotion, but it's a limited license. What I got was a full-blown demo package containing a license for every piece of Open Server software.
I'm surprised no one has commented on the SCO certification. I'm SCO Open Server Certified. I took a 50-question multiple-choice test on their web site, for FREE, and they sent me a bunch of marketing stuff and one free copy of everything they sell. Do I KNOW anything about Open Server? Yeah, some. But I know Linux a LOT better. I can't get Linux certified though because I just can't justify the cost until I have some paying customers using it.
After reading the comments, I have to come in on the pro side. If the disks are cheap, this is a great way to see movies you KNOW you're never going to watch more than once or twice. It also makes those "rent from the web" schemes a little more sensible, since the disks don't have to be returned, and the renters don't have to worry about the disk getting damaged in transit or by the renter.
My major objection to DIVX, not that I ever had it, was that it seemed to be poorly thought out, poorly implemented, and abuse-prone, with the phone line and everything.
I agree with the piracy argument, but if the studios are willing to take the chance, why should we argue? They're taking all the risk. Besides, for the time being at least, DVD-R blanks are still going to be more expensive than buying the "real" DVD.
And if it doesn't sell, so what? At least this time no one is stuck with orphan equipment.
Now all we need is a recycling policy for old CDs and DVDs. Maybe we can glue a whole bunch of them together around a core and make light-poles out of them.
I have a house full of X10 stuff, some going back to the mid 70's when it first came out. Being a sucker for anything free, I snapped up the Firecracker deal when I first heard about it.
So far I haven't been able to make it work at all, which isn't surprising because there are a number of things that can interfere with X10 signals, especially PC power supplies.
Their "Active Home" system is a lot better, and there's Linux software that will work with it. I especially like the Web based interface. Maybe one day I'll even get it to work!
A lot of this is covered in other postings, but I'll summarize what I've found out looking into this over the past few weeks:
1) You probably won't pay any less for programming on satellite than would for cable if you have only one TV and one decoder box. You will probably get more channels.
2) Dish Network is better for Movies, etc. DirectTV is better for sports. Most of the below applies to Dish Network, but Direct TV has similar deals.
3) You can get "local" stations (meaning networks and regional broadcast channels) if you live on either coast and don't get good broadcast reception. (I live in a rural area of NJ, in a valley.) You're supposed to have no cable for 90 days to qualify, but in practice they don't follow that very closely. The add-on package costs extra, and (for now) requires a second dish. If you let them install the whole works for $99, they throw in the second dish free.
4) If you only get 1 receiver, and sign up for the full boat programming package, you get the first receiver and dish "free" (via rebate).
5) If you have multiple TV's (or VCR) each needs it's own receiver to pick up different channels concurrently. You can get a "dual LNB" dish and hang up to 3 receivers on it. To add more receivers, you need a "matrix switch". Each receiver adds $4.99 to the programming bill, but you get all programming on all receivers. A basic model receiver costs $99. Fancier ones are more.
I started this because my wife wanted to watch HBO in the bedroom. The cable company told us we'd have to get a second box and pay for HBO a SECOND TIME, a policy I found "objectionable". During my research process, I got a good deal on a big (54") TV that made DSS look even more appealing, but lately I've been having second thoughts because I have kids, multiple TV's, and other complications. I might just stick with the cable and get a DVD player. It depends on how the cable reception looks on the new TV. They're delivering it tomorrow, so I'll find out pretty quick.
Of course a lot depends on how they define "PC". (I didn't read the offer.) If you're talking IBM/Intel, a perpetually impoverished lawyer friend of mine (he wasn't a very good lawyer) got a stack of old IBM PC's as payment for some services. The stack included an original PC with the 63-watt power supply and CASSETTE port. I think that's about as old as they come.
More generically, I think I still have an M68000-based UNIX box and a CP/M machine laying around someplace.
THANKS!!! It hosed my Palm Pro (continuous resetting), and I thought I was going to have to hard-reset, but it's fine now.
My son is 16 and not really a nerd, but he is a little odd by the standards of the general population where we live. He has a few friends, some of whom are nerds of varying degrees. They all love roleplaying games like Vampire, computers, Doom, and a lot of other stuff that's being associated with this incident. Generally speaking, they don't have much use for jocks.
Last winter, my son wanted a trenchcoat. He wanted a tan one but he's big, so the only thing we could find in his size was a black one. He's worn it nearly every day all winter.
My son is the sweetest kid you'd ever want to meet once you get to know him. If he doesn't know you he can be a little intimidating, but real violence of any kind makes him physically ill.
When I first read the details of this incident, I printed out the article and gave it to my son. It upset him a great deal. I suggested he avoid wearing his trench coat to school for a while, if for no other reason than to show some sensitivity, and that he be prepared to be hauled into the guidance office for a little conversation. So far nothing has happened because he got sick yesterday and has been home. I can't tell whether or not it's related to this issue, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Think I'm over reacting? My 14 year old daughter has some friends in the high school, and others who have friends/siblings there. Yesterday she was asked by one of them if my son was in the "Trenchcoat Mafia".
It's very easy to have a kneejerk reaction to incidents like this. Administrators and politicians who are sensitive to public opinion have to be seen to be doing SOMETHING about what happened. Unfortunately they often latch onto the obvious visible characteristics and ignore the underlying problems. So I'm prepared for my son to be singled out solely based on superficial similarities.
If anyone is interested, I'll let you know if anything comes of this.