Apple iBook G3/500 with Airport, OS X.3, writing anywhere (e.g. on the front porch earlier today)
Gateway PentiumII/200 laptop, Mandrake 9.2, permanently placed on the couch for casual surfing while watching TV
Toshiba Satellite PentiumIII/900 laptop, hooked up to external LCD because the built-on one died, Win98SE, for old Win apps I haven't yet weaned myself from and (because it has one of those analog "modem" thingies in it) emergency dial-up when Speakeasy goes offline (several hours earlier this week, the longest outage in years)
Compaq Presario with Cyrix/266, Win98SE, for backing up my trusty old Psion Revo (because this dinosaur actually has an RS232 port)
Off for a while now, because life's too busy to play or to relive old memories:
Apple All-In-One G3/233, OS X.3, my Mac before I could afford the iBook and the G5
Mac Quadra/25, System 7.5, my Mac before the G3 AIO
Gateway Celeron/333, BeOS 5 (probably Zeta eventually), just because
PC's Limited Turbo XT upgraded to Pentium/150, RH7 Linux, former web and mail server
Compaq Contura 486/25 laptop (mono LCD), Win31, toy web server (ZBServer)
Compaq Presario 386/25, Coyote Linux, toy web server (thttpd)
You either need to trade the classic in for a SE/30 with ethernet card, or get a cheap ethernet/localtalk bridge.
My Mac SE (68000) with its Asante SCSI-to-10BT adapter works well enough as a toy web server. Don't everybody visit just now (it's quite vulnerable to/.ing) but take a look sometime tomorrow or whenever at: oldmac.toddverbeek.com:8012
No extra cert is ever worth nothing . It always looks good to the PHBs.
Which is what I consider "worth nothing".
Sure, having some certs on your resume can help you get it past the resume-shredder in the HR dept at some places. But frankly, I wouldn't want to work for a PHB who insisted that I have a cert of some kind, when it's obvious from the rest of my resume and a reference check or two that I'm qualified. That kind of rigid bureaucracy or myopia is a warning sign that I'd be miserable there.
I have no certs to my name (except for a few free online tests), I've gotten by in this industry for over 20 years without any, and I can't think of what value they could possibly have to me. So, for me at least, they're "worthless".
Well, anecdotal as this is, I'll simply offer this: I dropped out of the 9th grade and have been pulling down close to six figures since I came of drinking age.
OK, but although also anecdotally, I suspect this is far more typical: I graduated from an excellent high school with fine grades, but not knowing a damn thing about how to do the kinds of things a network admin needs to know how to do. I'm not talking about knowing how to use the tools of the trade, but knowing what do do with them. Anyone who might've hired me at that point would have been an idiot.
Fortunately I had just enough sense to see that, and instead went on to a 4-year degree in Comp Sci, where they taught me a bunch of tools that were of some use at the time, but are now entirely obsolete... and also some problem-solving skills that remain absolutely essential and invaluable to me to this day. That's where I learned how to think. And that's the kind of program I'd suggest looking for, whether it's offered by a 2-year school, 4-year university, or whatever.
So you think there is a legitimate need to distribute movies before they are released?
Of course there isn't. And the people who do it are assholes catering to pathetic little losers with no patience and/or willingness to pay people for what they create.
But you shouldn't go to jail for being an asshole.
To me this is ironic, because AOL is currently refusing e-mail from my server, due to unspecified (and assuredly inaccurate) allegations of spam coming from it.
Using Google as a spell-checker is dangerous, because if you type in one of the common misspellings of a word, it will blithely show you search results for all the web pages containing that same mistake. See, for example, how perfectly "correct" amature pron is.
It may not be a Linux issue per se (more of a distro issue, I think), and it's purely anecodatal, but I've been seeing some QA problems lately in the mainstream distro I use. They include a bug that requires me to hand-edit the X11 config file to get my mouse to work, having to manually rebuild the routing table after every boot, and a so-far baffling total freeze of the system after rand() hours, only when it's serving web pages. I've been using Linux to do this job for six years, and never had these kinds of problems before.
I live among conservative Republicans, so I know they come in varying shades. But I also know the party well enough to confidently predict that if you went to its next convention and proposed a position statement denouncing Microsoft as an illegal monopoly, I'm pretty confident it'd be killed without mercy. "They're the crowning example of unregulated capitalism and American ingenuity... and major donors." You personally may not like them, but the economics-minded among your party leadership officially adores them.
conservative christians are the least likely to be MS customers
Is that because they're such ultratrendy Apple iBuyers, or because they're such independent-thinking open-source fantatics? Seems kinda counterintuitive to me. Or are you assuming they shun this infernal tech-knowledge-y stuff? Sorry, but we're talking about Calvinists and Baptists, not the Amish.
I'm actually wondering why a corporation is involved in a social issue to begin with....maybe they realized this and withdrew because of that.
Large corporations are always involved in social issues in one way or another, for much the same reason the government is involved in economic issues: they spend a lot of money, and how they spend it inevitably has ramifications. Whether MS offers domestic partner benefits or not, that decision affects the insurance industry, the local economy, local and state politics, etc. They have great power, and as any Spider-fan can tell you, that gives them great responsibility.
Given that fact, one of the reasons corporations actively get involved in social issues (whether it's endorsing equal rights legislation like MS has done in the past, or sponsoring displays of the Ten Commandments) is that it presents the corporation as a "good citizen", involved in the sociopolitical life of society and worthy of their position in it. Another reason (but not always the case) is that their directors sincerely believe it to be important, for their own feeling of doing the right thing.
why does a human rights bill need the financial backing of a big company to get passed?
Because there's opposition to it that has the financial backing of big companies. Money is required to accomplish anything (good or bad) in U.S. politics.
The point is that Microsoft's market share is secure enough that they can do things that their customers wouldn't necessarily approve of; the Rev. and Mrs. Goodfaith are still going to buy a PC with MS Windows and MS Office, regardless.
I can't believe MS is really afraid of a religious-right boycott, especially when they're still the darlings of the other side of the Republican party (the economic right).
For my mobile computing needs (I recognize that your's may differ from mine) The 64bit power of the G5 is way overkill and will translate nicely into poor batery life and a hot lap.
I suppose such people probably exist, but I've had the hardest time trying to figure out who really has a need for multiple GHz of processing power in a laptop. I mean, sure a dual-G5 system you can pull out of our backpack and show off to your art-geek friends sounds kewl, but does anybody really do video-editing at Starbuck's or 3D rendering at 30,000 feet?
My 500MHz G3 iBook does fine for the usual sorts of e-mail/web/word processing/presentation uses that constitute the vast majority of computer-in-the-briefcase needs. But when I want to do some serious work, I sit down at a desk with a full size keyboard, a real mouse, a 20" display, and a couple G5s in a big metal box on the floor. Try to engineer a machine that fits both of these needs, and you'll end up with something that's neither fish nor fowl and ends up meeting neither of them.
As a techie for an art-and-design school (and a former design student), I'm a bit concerned about what this will do to educational pricing on the Macromedia products. Currently you can pick up the entire Macromedia Studio package (Dreamweaver, Flash, Freehand, Fireworks) for less than Adobe charges for Photoshop alone.
Sadly, this isn't going to do anything to fix the proliferation of idiotic version "numbers", as both companies have fallen off the deep end with inscrutible nonsense like "CS 2" and "MX 04".
Yah, it isn't like you can do [tax statement... government forms] with open standards like PNG, JPEG, HTML, or even plain text.
Um, which of these provides a good way of distributing tax forms? I don't want to try filling out a 1040 that's been JPEG compressed, or wait to download a high-res PNG. And if not for PDF, the IRS would probably be using MS Word DOC format instead.
I'll grant you that PDF is used in places where it isn't needed and causes more harm than good. But it has its legitimate uses, and it's been superior at those uses than any truly open standard available over the past decade.
(Hence the Orson Wells reference in my subject.)
Oh, did Wells produce a movie version of George Orwell's Animal Farm?
Well, yeah. But most of those programs are legally available to students (including high school) at substantial discounts. Not quite what I'd call "cheap" but they're within range of a student who really wants them, and - as a creator of intellectual property himself - respects the right of developers to make a living at it. We also get a fair number of calls from parents who are outfitting young Leonardo to go to art school in the Fall, and want to know what to buy. (I usually tell them to get him a portable hard drive, then wait until mid-semester to see if he really needs anything more, because we have plenty of gear available here for students to use.)
Jeez, you don't get it. I make close to six figures. I'm on the path to be CIO of my company. A software system I built is currently deployed around the world. I've also done my fair share of travel, seen a bunch of cool places.
I never said you needed to be highly literate to be successful in the terms you're talking about. Obviously you can be, and you've found some of the kinds of success where that's possible. Congrats, especially about the last two points.
But saying "you don't get it", then talking about how much money you make or how high up the corporate ladder you are... those first two points make it sound like you didn't get what I meant by "the most interesting and enriching parts". (Hint: I don't consider money or rank to be among them.)
Slashdot Mirror
- Dell Dimension Pentium4, Mandriva 2005, web server and spare mail server
- generic Athlon/700, Mandrake 10.1, mail server and spare web server
- generic AthlonXP 2000+, Mandriva 2005, general workstation
- Apple PowerMac G5/1.6GHz, OS X.3, design/art station
- TiVo series 1 stand-alone, 60GB drive, does the obvious
- Mac SE, System 7.0, toy web server
- LinkSys WRT54G, Sveasoft OS, wireless access
- Dell NetPlex 486/33, Coyote Linux, router/firewall
- JetDirect EX+3, duh... print server
- Assorted cheapo 10-100BT hubs and switches
- SDSL adapter
What's off, but has been on in the past week:- Apple iBook G3/500 with Airport, OS X.3, writing anywhere (e.g. on the front porch earlier today)
- Gateway PentiumII/200 laptop, Mandrake 9.2, permanently placed on the couch for casual surfing while watching TV
- Toshiba Satellite PentiumIII/900 laptop, hooked up to external LCD because the built-on one died, Win98SE, for old Win apps I haven't yet weaned myself from and (because it has one of those analog "modem" thingies in it) emergency dial-up when Speakeasy goes offline (several hours earlier this week, the longest outage in years)
- Compaq Presario with Cyrix/266, Win98SE, for backing up my trusty old Psion Revo (because this dinosaur actually has an RS232 port)
Off for a while now, because life's too busy to play or to relive old memories:My Mac SE (68000) with its Asante SCSI-to-10BT adapter works well enough as a toy web server. Don't everybody visit just now (it's quite vulnerable to /.ing) but take a look sometime tomorrow or whenever at: oldmac.toddverbeek.com:8012
A bugaloo is not the same thing as a boogaloo.
He's not drinking coffee. That's a jug of methanol he's taking hits from.
That's what's good about them.
Which is what I consider "worth nothing".
Sure, having some certs on your resume can help you get it past the resume-shredder in the HR dept at some places. But frankly, I wouldn't want to work for a PHB who insisted that I have a cert of some kind, when it's obvious from the rest of my resume and a reference check or two that I'm qualified. That kind of rigid bureaucracy or myopia is a warning sign that I'd be miserable there.
I have no certs to my name (except for a few free online tests), I've gotten by in this industry for over 20 years without any, and I can't think of what value they could possibly have to me. So, for me at least, they're "worthless".
OK, but although also anecdotally, I suspect this is far more typical: I graduated from an excellent high school with fine grades, but not knowing a damn thing about how to do the kinds of things a network admin needs to know how to do. I'm not talking about knowing how to use the tools of the trade, but knowing what do do with them. Anyone who might've hired me at that point would have been an idiot.
Fortunately I had just enough sense to see that, and instead went on to a 4-year degree in Comp Sci, where they taught me a bunch of tools that were of some use at the time, but are now entirely obsolete... and also some problem-solving skills that remain absolutely essential and invaluable to me to this day. That's where I learned how to think. And that's the kind of program I'd suggest looking for, whether it's offered by a 2-year school, 4-year university, or whatever.
Of course there isn't. And the people who do it are assholes catering to pathetic little losers with no patience and/or willingness to pay people for what they create.
But you shouldn't go to jail for being an asshole.
Why, it seems like only yesterday...
127.0.0.1, why?
To me this is ironic, because AOL is currently refusing e-mail from my server, due to unspecified (and assuredly inaccurate) allegations of spam coming from it.
Using Google as a spell-checker is dangerous, because if you type in one of the common misspellings of a word, it will blithely show you search results for all the web pages containing that same mistake. See, for example, how perfectly "correct" amature pron is.
Try clicking on the pulldown list next to the search box and see for yourself! This discussion is all about doing things yourself... take the hint.
It may not be a Linux issue per se (more of a distro issue, I think), and it's purely anecodatal, but I've been seeing some QA problems lately in the mainstream distro I use. They include a bug that requires me to hand-edit the X11 config file to get my mouse to work, having to manually rebuild the routing table after every boot, and a so-far baffling total freeze of the system after rand() hours, only when it's serving web pages. I've been using Linux to do this job for six years, and never had these kinds of problems before.
I live among conservative Republicans, so I know they come in varying shades. But I also know the party well enough to confidently predict that if you went to its next convention and proposed a position statement denouncing Microsoft as an illegal monopoly, I'm pretty confident it'd be killed without mercy. "They're the crowning example of unregulated capitalism and American ingenuity... and major donors." You personally may not like them, but the economics-minded among your party leadership officially adores them.
Is that because they're such ultratrendy Apple iBuyers, or because they're such independent-thinking open-source fantatics? Seems kinda counterintuitive to me. Or are you assuming they shun this infernal tech-knowledge-y stuff? Sorry, but we're talking about Calvinists and Baptists, not the Amish.
Large corporations are always involved in social issues in one way or another, for much the same reason the government is involved in economic issues: they spend a lot of money, and how they spend it inevitably has ramifications. Whether MS offers domestic partner benefits or not, that decision affects the insurance industry, the local economy, local and state politics, etc. They have great power, and as any Spider-fan can tell you, that gives them great responsibility.
Given that fact, one of the reasons corporations actively get involved in social issues (whether it's endorsing equal rights legislation like MS has done in the past, or sponsoring displays of the Ten Commandments) is that it presents the corporation as a "good citizen", involved in the sociopolitical life of society and worthy of their position in it. Another reason (but not always the case) is that their directors sincerely believe it to be important, for their own feeling of doing the right thing.
Because there's opposition to it that has the financial backing of big companies. Money is required to accomplish anything (good or bad) in U.S. politics.
I can't believe MS is really afraid of a religious-right boycott, especially when they're still the darlings of the other side of the Republican party (the economic right).
I suppose such people probably exist, but I've had the hardest time trying to figure out who really has a need for multiple GHz of processing power in a laptop. I mean, sure a dual-G5 system you can pull out of our backpack and show off to your art-geek friends sounds kewl, but does anybody really do video-editing at Starbuck's or 3D rendering at 30,000 feet?
My 500MHz G3 iBook does fine for the usual sorts of e-mail/web/word processing/presentation uses that constitute the vast majority of computer-in-the-briefcase needs. But when I want to do some serious work, I sit down at a desk with a full size keyboard, a real mouse, a 20" display, and a couple G5s in a big metal box on the floor. Try to engineer a machine that fits both of these needs, and you'll end up with something that's neither fish nor fowl and ends up meeting neither of them.
I'm sorry, but these concepts of "rights" and "writing" are over the head of too many file-sharing enthusiasts.
Sadly, this isn't going to do anything to fix the proliferation of idiotic version "numbers", as both companies have fallen off the deep end with inscrutible nonsense like "CS 2" and "MX 04".
Um, which of these provides a good way of distributing tax forms? I don't want to try filling out a 1040 that's been JPEG compressed, or wait to download a high-res PNG. And if not for PDF, the IRS would probably be using MS Word DOC format instead.
I'll grant you that PDF is used in places where it isn't needed and causes more harm than good. But it has its legitimate uses, and it's been superior at those uses than any truly open standard available over the past decade.
(Hence the Orson Wells reference in my subject.)
Oh, did Wells produce a movie version of George Orwell's Animal Farm?
Well, yeah. But most of those programs are legally available to students (including high school) at substantial discounts. Not quite what I'd call "cheap" but they're within range of a student who really wants them, and - as a creator of intellectual property himself - respects the right of developers to make a living at it. We also get a fair number of calls from parents who are outfitting young Leonardo to go to art school in the Fall, and want to know what to buy. (I usually tell them to get him a portable hard drive, then wait until mid-semester to see if he really needs anything more, because we have plenty of gear available here for students to use.)
I never said you needed to be highly literate to be successful in the terms you're talking about. Obviously you can be, and you've found some of the kinds of success where that's possible. Congrats, especially about the last two points.
But saying "you don't get it", then talking about how much money you make or how high up the corporate ladder you are... those first two points make it sound like you didn't get what I meant by "the most interesting and enriching parts". (Hint: I don't consider money or rank to be among them.)