Absolutely true, if you happen to be able to say what you're going to be passionate about for the rest of your working life when you start school then the resources that are provided may be helpful.
However, the only things taught in school that matter are conceptual frameworks, politics, and bureaucracy. All the rest is details that you'll forget days after the final and have to look up in reference material for the rest of its valid lifetime.
My English degree helped me become more articulate in speech and writing and provided a firm foundation of critical thinking skills. It was worth a lot more than the alternatives to me.
"University politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." -- Henry Kissinger
"In fact, most people I see in this business fell into it from other fields entirely. I've only met a few out here in the real world that actually went to school specifically for programming. Most got degrees in other fields."
I've been in the industry since I graduated... with an English degree. Most of the EECS graduates I've worked with were... salespeople. Most of the admins, programmers, engineers, and trouble techs have been liberal arts types, chefs, and general knock-abouts who get involved because there's no jobs in the field they came from and this stuff is fun.
There's a basic dichotomy in mindset here: those who think that school is for education and those who think that school is for socialization. If you think of school as a factory which is churning out skilled individuals, you're a) probably disappointed with the American school system and b) probably going to be on the dustheap in ten to twenty years, whether through personal burnout or skill rust.
School to me was a piece of paper that I knew would open doors with people who think papers are important; but I did enough research ahead of time to see that few of the people I respected had studied what they were doing for a living. So I took a degree that I cared about and that I thought would be fun. I had a great time, I learned interesting stuff, I met cool people, and when I was done the BA degree opened doors just like a BS degree would have done.
Fair number of XFce recommendations, and it's fairly obvious why, so I'll spend more time talking about Mandrake: the urpmi tool makes finding and installing software dirt simple. Easier to use than Debian in my opinion. The msec tool and shorewall integration keeps the adventurous kiddies from borking security up too badly, and Mandrake has pretty good out-of-box support for weird hardware and multimedia.
I've gotten to the point where I absolutely hate talking about DR though; every one I meet wants synchronous transfers and hot GSLB failover to a 100% capacity site on the other side of the country. It takes weeks to design, the price tag comes in at 150% of what they're paying now, they choke and disappear. It's been like this for years.
Expensive things are expensive. Don't know why people keep thinking that an MSP/VAR/consultant is able to buy them for less money than an end-user.
Your solution brings up the other two components to consider when looking at backup though:
1) Data loss window: How much data can you lose if your system fails right before the backup starts? Sounds like you're initiating nightly, so you can lose twenty-four hours of data. Rsync would support reducing that (in fact, I've seen rsync solutions with three minute windows; just gotta make sure your script detects presence of active rsync's and alerts someone that the window's gotten too narrow). However, reduce it too much and you've created a new dependency on that T1; if it is down when your backup wants to fire, you've just doubled the time that the next rsync will take. I'm sure you can guess where that's going if the network is problematic for some time...
2) Time to recovery: It's fast to rsync a single file back to the original copy; it's not fast to restore the file if it was lost. It's extremely slow to rebuild an entire server over a 512K line. Mitigation of these factors is going to cost; spool on this side of the circuit? get a bigger circuit?
I suspect there's some truth to this. I'm left handed, and was using a left-handed mouse set up for a while; it led to RSI problems within six months. I switched back to using my right, non-dominant hand for mousing/touchpading/pointsticking and have had no problems after years of heavy use.
Random and capricious firings, demotions, reorganizations, and project cancellations help. So do bamboo canes. I would also look into 50% pay cuts for anyone who isn't management. Keep the staff isolated from each other and the outside world, make sure no one knows how the company is really doing in presales negotiation or postsales execution, and then you'll have a really tight rein on them.
Oh yeah, mustn't forget Gestapo-like surveillance techniques and frequent reminders that you don't trust your employees not to squander company time and resources! Crack down hard on anyone who likes to mail jokes around, block access to humor sites and job-boards, and occassionally reject or alter outbound mails "by accident". Finish this off by identifying your employees by number first, name second -- a login and email address like jc7385@company.com really lets them know how much you care.
It says that someone realized VNC/rdesktop style screenscraping is easier to implement, and wrote a GUI to control it.
In other news, it's also easier to write a note with a pencil on a piece of paper than it is to log into a computer, log into a discussion site, and type the note in. There are times when each is the more appropriate choice, depending on the task at hand.
If it didn't have X, I wouldn't run Linux -- I'd go find another Unix system where I could have X. There is no way to replace X without becoming X, so why bother?
Of course, I've also sat through about three different pitches from companies rewriting the Win32 GUI to act like X so that it can be a decent terminal server, so maybe I'm biased:-)
I used Acme for some time, it was quite a nice system as webmail goes. Of course I hate webmail, but Acme was certainly a lot better as a simple mail client than TWIG (though much harder to install). Squirrel and IMP are both alright, except of course for that whole being webmail problem.
Win2K Pro is exactly that -- slow as mud, but just as stable as Linux in my experience. I prefer not to use it for freedom and licensing reasons, but I can't knock it as a capable OS the way that I've knocked all their desktop products.
In my experience VMWare is a much better interoperability solution than Crossover Office -- The only app I need at this point that I haven't replaced with a Linux alternative is Visio. OpenOffice is excellent at Word and Excel files and acceptable with PowerPoint, but nothing can touch Visio 2000 for usability (2002/XP is nasty and I had to downgrade back to 2000).
I'm a satisfied Plugin customer, so I tried Crossover Office when they announced Visio capability. I had to ask for my money back, as it was only able to install Visio after several manual steps and an unofficial upgrade, and then was unable to display complex diagrams properly or edit simple diagrams without crashing.
VMWare with Win98 and Visio2000 as the only apps in it is fast, responsive, and troublefree. I mount my home directory via a private samba server and use host-only networking so Windows can't see the Internet -- so no patching, no worries, no problems. It may cost more in terms of licensing and RAM than Crossover, but the value is there.
thanks for the direct link, but man -- this sucks. Bummer, first two were pretty good. Arnold's pancake makeup is more intimidating than chicky-babe plays robot.
> Something like apache, should go into/opt/apache. It's a damn shame most distros miss this.
well, most distros would say that their version of apache is part of their distribution, which is why it goes in/usr. I'm inclined to agree -- my opinion is that stuff handled by the distribution's package manager should go in/usr, stuff I compile should go in/usr/local, and closed-source tarball installers like CPFW for instance should go in/opt (just like on Solaris).
I have a thirty year old Marantz tuner/amplifier combo that I bought from a stereo repair shop (http://www.thesoundwell.com/) six years ago for about $150. It continues to sound excellent after a few moves and with no maintenance whatsoever. In the same time I've gone through probably ten computers at $1000 a piece, but that's another matter. The hilarious thing is that I looked up my stereo on a antique audiophile site the other day, and it's looked down upon as being one of the inferior post-sellout Marantz models. If this is the cheap knock-off, the good ones must be able to break crystal wineglasses when playing Maria Callas:-)
Meanwhile, my friends have all gone through at least one modern stereo component.
That means you aren't operating on the same scale -- the people who have "made it" in modern corporate terms don't exactly have any personal information. They're lifers.
1) Get the big one, the little ones that look like pagers SUCK BIG TIME and by that I mean that they really really suck because they use an AA battery, the screen is too small, and their reliability is about 1/3 that of the big ones (speaking from my experience in a multinational corporation where everyone had and used a crackberry).
2) The PalmOS device is a close second, but only as an agenda, phone book, and _maybe_ reference material source with a media slot. But Graffiti really really sucks next to one of those little thumb keyboards, so if you get a palm make sure you get one of those too on the aftermarket. Even if your Graffiti is pretty good, as mine is, heavy use of it scratches the input area and decreases accuracy.
3) One reason my Clie 610C is no longer with me is the beautiful color screen -- same as in an Ipaq or Zaurus, and quite gorgeous, it drains power like you wouldn't believe and makes the PDA so thick and fragile that you get nervous about it. My Palm V had (has, it's still alive in a drawer) a form-fitting hard plastic clamshell case. I carried it in my back pocket and frequently sat on it, dropped it, or sent it flying across a parking lot when it would hook on my pants if I took it out too carelessly. Zero breakage, though the case looks sand-blasted:-) My Clie fell three feet off a table onto a hardwood floor while in its leather case, the screen cracked. $150 to fix plus shipping plus loss of the PDA for two weeks (two trips to Sony as they screwed up the first go).
Sorry, but the first thing that pops to mind is: Well, duh.
If you don't storm castles, a catapult is of no use. If you don't need to build something out of steel, you probably don't have an arc welder. If you don't have to juggle too many pieces of information while driving/flying hither and yon, then you don't need a PDA.
I didn't have one when I was a student. I did have one when I was an SE. I don't have one now that I'm on a long-term contract with a single company, but when the contract is over and I need to have my calendar and more phone numbers than my cell can handle in my pocket beeping to remind me what I'm doing now, then I'll get another one.
my cubemate has one of those Dells, it's a good keyboard. The roll-up ones are also uber-cool, but I think insufficient for fast typers. However, when my kids successfully kill the current $5 PoS unit, a roll-up is gonna be their next keyboard.
what's the point of the doors? A true geek never leaves the room any way:-)
And what did Sikorsky do for a living?
on
The Coming Air Age
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
When a man who makes helicopters tells you everyone needs a helicopter, doesn't it sound a lot like a man who makes computers telling you that everyone needs a computer?
because everyone uses it and anyone they ask will be able to help them at least a little bit. If they get really stuck, they might hire a smart kid to come fix it.
A different product that no one in their immediate circle has ever heard of? Much tougher sell.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely true, if you happen to be able to say what you're going to be passionate about for the rest of your working life when you start school then the resources that are provided may be helpful.
However, the only things taught in school that matter are conceptual frameworks, politics, and bureaucracy. All the rest is details that you'll forget days after the final and have to look up in reference material for the rest of its valid lifetime.
My English degree helped me become more articulate in speech and writing and provided a firm foundation of critical thinking skills. It was worth a lot more than the alternatives to me.
"University politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." -- Henry Kissinger
"In fact, most people I see in this business fell into it from other fields entirely. I've only met a few out here in the real world that actually went to school specifically for programming. Most got degrees in other fields."
I've been in the industry since I graduated... with an English degree. Most of the EECS graduates I've worked with were... salespeople. Most of the admins, programmers, engineers, and trouble techs have been liberal arts types, chefs, and general knock-abouts who get involved because there's no jobs in the field they came from and this stuff is fun.
There's a basic dichotomy in mindset here: those who think that school is for education and those who think that school is for socialization. If you think of school as a factory which is churning out skilled individuals, you're a) probably disappointed with the American school system and b) probably going to be on the dustheap in ten to twenty years, whether through personal burnout or skill rust.
School to me was a piece of paper that I knew would open doors with people who think papers are important; but I did enough research ahead of time to see that few of the people I respected had studied what they were doing for a living. So I took a degree that I cared about and that I thought would be fun. I had a great time, I learned interesting stuff, I met cool people, and when I was done the BA degree opened doors just like a BS degree would have done.
YMMV.
Fair number of XFce recommendations, and it's fairly obvious why, so I'll spend more time talking about Mandrake: the urpmi tool makes finding and installing software dirt simple. Easier to use than Debian in my opinion. The msec tool and shorewall integration keeps the adventurous kiddies from borking security up too badly, and Mandrake has pretty good out-of-box support for weird hardware and multimedia.
That's pretty much how I'd do it too :-)
I've gotten to the point where I absolutely hate talking about DR though; every one I meet wants synchronous transfers and hot GSLB failover to a 100% capacity site on the other side of the country. It takes weeks to design, the price tag comes in at 150% of what they're paying now, they choke and disappear. It's been like this for years.
Expensive things are expensive. Don't know why people keep thinking that an MSP/VAR/consultant is able to buy them for less money than an end-user.
Your solution brings up the other two components to consider when looking at backup though:
1) Data loss window: How much data can you lose if your system fails right before the backup starts? Sounds like you're initiating nightly, so you can lose twenty-four hours of data. Rsync would support reducing that (in fact, I've seen rsync solutions with three minute windows; just gotta make sure your script detects presence of active rsync's and alerts someone that the window's gotten too narrow). However, reduce it too much and you've created a new dependency on that T1; if it is down when your backup wants to fire, you've just doubled the time that the next rsync will take. I'm sure you can guess where that's going if the network is problematic for some time...
2) Time to recovery: It's fast to rsync a single file back to the original copy; it's not fast to restore the file if it was lost. It's extremely slow to rebuild an entire server over a 512K line. Mitigation of these factors is going to cost; spool on this side of the circuit? get a bigger circuit?
I suspect there's some truth to this. I'm left handed, and was using a left-handed mouse set up for a while; it led to RSI problems within six months. I switched back to using my right, non-dominant hand for mousing/touchpading/pointsticking and have had no problems after years of heavy use.
Random and capricious firings, demotions, reorganizations, and project cancellations help. So do bamboo canes. I would also look into 50% pay cuts for anyone who isn't management. Keep the staff isolated from each other and the outside world, make sure no one knows how the company is really doing in presales negotiation or postsales execution, and then you'll have a really tight rein on them.
Oh yeah, mustn't forget Gestapo-like surveillance techniques and frequent reminders that you don't trust your employees not to squander company time and resources! Crack down hard on anyone who likes to mail jokes around, block access to humor sites and job-boards, and occassionally reject or alter outbound mails "by accident". Finish this off by identifying your employees by number first, name second -- a login and email address like jc7385@company.com really lets them know how much you care.
It says that someone realized VNC/rdesktop style screenscraping is easier to implement, and wrote a GUI to control it.
In other news, it's also easier to write a note with a pencil on a piece of paper than it is to log into a computer, log into a discussion site, and type the note in. There are times when each is the more appropriate choice, depending on the task at hand.
If it didn't have X, I wouldn't run Linux -- I'd go find another Unix system where I could have X. There is no way to replace X without becoming X, so why bother?
:-)
Of course, I've also sat through about three different pitches from companies rewriting the Win32 GUI to act like X so that it can be a decent terminal server, so maybe I'm biased
Just don't ridicule him too loudly, because that's Joe Sixpack-Abs and he'll kick your butt right good geekboy.
I used Acme for some time, it was quite a nice system as webmail goes. Of course I hate webmail, but Acme was certainly a lot better as a simple mail client than TWIG (though much harder to install). Squirrel and IMP are both alright, except of course for that whole being webmail problem.
by Dave_bsr (520621) on 03:56 PM January 10th, 2003 (#5059625) ...
(http://slashdot.org/)
And besides, Solaris is a nice OS...
wow, you really are slaphappy! I mean, it is Unix and ergo doesn't completely suck, but Solaris is a real pain next to Linux.
Win2K Pro is exactly that -- slow as mud, but just as stable as Linux in my experience. I prefer not to use it for freedom and licensing reasons, but I can't knock it as a capable OS the way that I've knocked all their desktop products.
In my experience VMWare is a much better interoperability solution than Crossover Office -- The only app I need at this point that I haven't replaced with a Linux alternative is Visio. OpenOffice is excellent at Word and Excel files and acceptable with PowerPoint, but nothing can touch Visio 2000 for usability (2002/XP is nasty and I had to downgrade back to 2000).
I'm a satisfied Plugin customer, so I tried Crossover Office when they announced Visio capability. I had to ask for my money back, as it was only able to install Visio after several manual steps and an unofficial upgrade, and then was unable to display complex diagrams properly or edit simple diagrams without crashing.
VMWare with Win98 and Visio2000 as the only apps in it is fast, responsive, and troublefree. I mount my home directory via a private samba server and use host-only networking so Windows can't see the Internet -- so no patching, no worries, no problems. It may cost more in terms of licensing and RAM than Crossover, but the value is there.
thanks for the direct link, but man -- this sucks. Bummer, first two were pretty good. Arnold's pancake makeup is more intimidating than chicky-babe plays robot.
Man, I sure hope it's two thousand years -- at this rate, I'm just hoping we make it a few more decades.
> Something like apache, should go into /opt/apache. It's a damn shame most distros miss this.
/usr. I'm inclined to agree -- my opinion is that stuff handled by the distribution's package manager should go in /usr, stuff I compile should go in /usr/local, and closed-source tarball installers like CPFW for instance should go in /opt (just like on Solaris).
well, most distros would say that their version of apache is part of their distribution, which is why it goes in
I have a thirty year old Marantz tuner/amplifier combo that I bought from a stereo repair shop (http://www.thesoundwell.com/) six years ago for about $150. It continues to sound excellent after a few moves and with no maintenance whatsoever. In the same time I've gone through probably ten computers at $1000 a piece, but that's another matter. The hilarious thing is that I looked up my stereo on a antique audiophile site the other day, and it's looked down upon as being one of the inferior post-sellout Marantz models. If this is the cheap knock-off, the good ones must be able to break crystal wineglasses when playing Maria Callas :-)
Meanwhile, my friends have all gone through at least one modern stereo component.
That means you aren't operating on the same scale -- the people who have "made it" in modern corporate terms don't exactly have any personal information. They're lifers.
hear hear, with a few other thoughts.
:-) My Clie fell three feet off a table onto a hardwood floor while in its leather case, the screen cracked. $150 to fix plus shipping plus loss of the PDA for two weeks (two trips to Sony as they screwed up the first go).
1) Get the big one, the little ones that look like pagers SUCK BIG TIME and by that I mean that they really really suck because they use an AA battery, the screen is too small, and their reliability is about 1/3 that of the big ones (speaking from my experience in a multinational corporation where everyone had and used a crackberry).
2) The PalmOS device is a close second, but only as an agenda, phone book, and _maybe_ reference material source with a media slot. But Graffiti really really sucks next to one of those little thumb keyboards, so if you get a palm make sure you get one of those too on the aftermarket. Even if your Graffiti is pretty good, as mine is, heavy use of it scratches the input area and decreases accuracy.
3) One reason my Clie 610C is no longer with me is the beautiful color screen -- same as in an Ipaq or Zaurus, and quite gorgeous, it drains power like you wouldn't believe and makes the PDA so thick and fragile that you get nervous about it. My Palm V had (has, it's still alive in a drawer) a form-fitting hard plastic clamshell case. I carried it in my back pocket and frequently sat on it, dropped it, or sent it flying across a parking lot when it would hook on my pants if I took it out too carelessly. Zero breakage, though the case looks sand-blasted
Sorry, but the first thing that pops to mind is: Well, duh.
If you don't storm castles, a catapult is of no use.
If you don't need to build something out of steel, you probably don't have an arc welder.
If you don't have to juggle too many pieces of information while driving/flying hither and yon, then you don't need a PDA.
I didn't have one when I was a student. I did have one when I was an SE. I don't have one now that I'm on a long-term contract with a single company, but when the contract is over and I need to have my calendar and more phone numbers than my cell can handle in my pocket beeping to remind me what I'm doing now, then I'll get another one.
my cubemate has one of those Dells, it's a good keyboard. The roll-up ones are also uber-cool, but I think insufficient for fast typers. However, when my kids successfully kill the current $5 PoS unit, a roll-up is gonna be their next keyboard.
what's the point of the doors? A true geek never leaves the room any way :-)
When a man who makes helicopters tells you everyone needs a helicopter, doesn't it sound a lot like a man who makes computers telling you that everyone needs a computer?
Or an Internet connection for that matter...
because everyone uses it and anyone they ask will be able to help them at least a little bit. If they get really stuck, they might hire a smart kid to come fix it.
A different product that no one in their immediate circle has ever heard of? Much tougher sell.