At the time that the modems came out, they didn't have anything else to compare them to. Hell, it would be almost another year before we had x2 and kFlex [okay, both kFlexes, if you want to get picky about it], and then almost another year after that before v.90.
So first off, they weren't significantly slower than a standard modem (28.8kbps vs. 33.6kbps). Second, they were only $30/month if you bought the insurance on 'em. [well, I did, so let's forget that other option]. For $30/month, you were getting a dedicated connection.... in 1996. For any of you other folks out there who tried pricing out something similar, you'd be looking at $150+ for port, and the $20 or so for line. [Hell, you still are these days for dedicated dialup in many areas].
Yes, they had a limited area (I got coverage at my apartment, school, National Airport, and my dad's house, but not my mom's.). For those people that fit their demographic, however, it was a godsend. I could get in an hour of mudding while between classes, without having to go down to a crowded computer lab, or trek back home.
I could get online while sitting at my mom's car in the middle of the Pentagon parking lot, waiting for her to get off work. And hell, as it was the earlier model, with the seperate battery pack, I could use it on my desktop machine, too. [Although a foot or two of contract gives you some damned crappy latency, as the repeater was on the dead other side of the building].
The page you linked to reminded me of the people who bitched about CueCat. Yes, the companies are dumbasses for selling the product without forcing you to get the service, too, however, you're thinking rather highly of yourself if you think everyone should just bow down to you and give you stuff for free. If you don't register your shareware programs, the odds are, that people won't continue releasing stuff as shareware, as it's not worth it to them.
If there's a product that you like, that you use, you have to support them. If you don't, they fold, and everyone's screwed in the long run.
Now, is Metricom a good product? Before, yes. Right now, I don't know their pricing model, or their level of service, so I can't make that call. If they're still in the $30/month range, I'd say definately, if you're presently using dialup. If you're in an area that's widely covered, or go through airports that are, it might also be a godsend. Is it competative with DSL / Cable Modems? As strange as this sounds, I'd say yes, but it depends on the pricing model. There's a good market for those people who want to pay a little more for the always-on connection, but can't justify spending $50-$100/month.
PS. not everything's good about metricom. I had bit of a problem returning the modem after I moved out of a service area, and they tried charging me for another year, and I went through a few phone calls to 'em to get it cleared up, and then realized I had the insurance on it, so I could have just told them I lost it, and to eat the cost, rather than me returning it
Back in ?1995? or so, the university that I was going to/working at (whose name I'd publish, if it weren't for the fact that I'm working there again, and our webserver already took one tanking this week, but I will say that the VP of the USA is very familiar with our hospital) wanted to try to get a grant to put together an achive of World World II related data.
I was told that it was just for a presentation, and someone else filled in a crapload of extraneous text later, but the supposed selling point of the project would be some big search engine. We spent the better part of a week trying to figure out the real media encoder, running on a Mac Centris 650, to get just one item of data for the 'archive'.
In the end, the search engine was a complete hack that worked fine, although it always assumed that you searched for 'hitler', and returned a static page of results. The file in the end was pre-loaded onto the machine they'd be using for the presentation, so that it didn't have to stream.
In the end, they never got the grant, three of us wasted a week or more on the whole damned thing, and 6 years later, the mock web site's still up. (I only know that, because someone mailed me last year, asking if it was okay to copy a picture.)
I think you're indirectly stating one of my big pet peeves in interviews -- don't waste anyone's time.
If you're going to ask all 'opt out' questions, don't call them in front of a panel of 12 people, and have them drive 20miles there through rush hour for the meeting. Yes, sometimes, you do need to ask those questions, but they can be done easily and diplomaticly, so that you don't piss off the person. [As well, they may not have the talents for the job they're interviewing for, but there may be some other position that you know about that they'd be ideal for...if you piss them off, there's no way they're going to come to your company]
What I've found that has worked in the past for hiring.
Look through all of the resumes. Toss out those that really bother you. [You know, the ones with e-mail addresses like 'k3w1hax0r@aol.com'... if they don't understand about first impressions, and that they could get a few dozen hotmail accounts, then they're mostly worthless anyway'. The ones that list 'HTML' right under '35wpm typing speed' on a resume to replace the main 'webmaster' [I hate that term] at the company, or the one with the coverletter that says 'how much does this pay?' and not much else]
Sort the resumes by how many of the requirements you're looking for that they have. (Keep a quick reference list, so that if they call you, you have some idea who they are, and how interested you are in them)
Give them a 5-10 minute phone interview. Call them up, and ask them about their past work, and explain to them the responsibilities of the job they're applying for.
Then give them a quick quiz to make sure that they're legit with what they said on their resume. If they say they know PL/SQL, ask them a few set questions, etc. You want this to be relatively simple questions, that someone can answer quickly, without much thought. Ideally, they'll give the right answer. Sometimes, you'll get response like 'I'm not sure off the top of my head but it's in [some book]'. Hell, even admitting that they don't know [so long as they don't fail every question] is better than giving a wrong answer...
If they gave you answers that didn't make you feel like they had no potential [sometimes, they may not completely fit the job, but they might be trainable in the parts they're lacking], then set them up for a more detailed interview. If they're not, thank them for their time, and explain that they don't quite seem to be what you're looking for.
After that round, you'll want to re-organize your list of candidates, as you'll realize that some of them went to the 'no way in hell' category.
In the more detailed interview, you'll want to make sure that they understand the organization, the goals of the department, etc, and you'll want to make sure that the various people they'll be dealing with are involved. [Hell, I've sat in on interviews for my boss's replacement before, as I was the best person to judge their competance... of course, they then went against my recomendations.] Depending on the size of the organization, this would normally be whom they're reporting to, and who they're going to be working with, although if they're going to have to deal with multiple departments, this might get to be a 6-8 people.
You need to make sure that the person feels comfortable before going in and being grilled by the half dozen people, so it's good to get them to meet with one or two people to give them the quick tour, (so they see all of the people whom haven't slept in 4 days, as you're behind schedule...erm..okay, maybe skip introducing them to the other programmers) before you start asking them deep questions.
Then you come to the actual questions. The best ones aren't so much just about technical skills, but more about their personality. It doesn't matter how good the person is, if he's going to piss off 3 other programmers at the same time. If they can, ask them to describe some of their past projects, what part they played in the project, how many people were involved, how long it took, what sort of problems they ran into, how the fixed them, etc. This is also a good time to try to find out why they want to leave (or have already left) their old job.
This last part is the hardest part, as it's the real 'get to know you' type thing. The questions that you ask, and how much you tell them are going to directly impact the future. I prefer letting people know about quirks to the job before they take it [well, we're not so busy right now, but our crunch months tend to be (x,y,z), when we all tend to pull some overtime.]
If you don't let people know about the potential problems to the job, you risk a good chance of employee rollover, and then you've got to go through the hiring process all over again, and you've just lost whatever time you're spent in training. Hiring isn't just about getting the person to come to work for you, but it's about making sure that they stay working for you, too. [Unless you're filling a contractor slot, of course]
Unless there have been some massive changes in solar array technology, the average solar car's pulling about as much power as standard hair dryer, as that's about all they have to work with.
The speed differences come from motor technology (axial flux motors, developed by um....can't remember his name...a guy from NTU, in australia), which eleminates transmission losses, and from better weight reduction, and more importantly, aerodynamics.
And well, as we all know, SUVs are lacking a bit in that whole 'aerodynamics' area.
What you want isn't a solar car, but another one of GM's little competitions --
I know I've already seen links to Jakob Nielson's site in this thread so far, but his Feb 4th Alertbox 'Are Users Stupid?' article really hits exactly what you're saying:
Anyone who's involved with a unversity has been dealing with this sort of thing for years.
Enyclopedia Britanica and many other research sites restrict by IP address, so universities have had to set up authenticating reverse proxies, so that some faculty member/student who's dialing up from home can still access the information.
The fact that this is moving to places other than the education front might be interesting, but I'm guessing that as it's been done on the education front for 6+ years, that the only real news is that someone's willing to set themselves up as mediators.
For more information about reverse proxying, take a look at
Goddamn 'return' doing a submit instead of a preview. Here's the whole of what I was attempting to post.
Well, I don't have as many races under my belt, as I was only involved in Sunrayce '95 and the World Solar Rallye in '96? before I was kicked off of the team. (Improper use of a computer system. See answer to #7)
The routes are supposed to be planned, however, I seriously question the planning of the alternate routes. A typical race day for Sunrayce is about 200 miles. The typical day for us pulling the trailers [I was supposed to be one of the drivers for the car, as I'm just under 5'8", but never got fitted to the car after I built the roll bar, and the staff advisor and other driver were in the 5'4" height range, so it wasn't discovered 'till qualifyings that I didn't fit, so I got trailer duty, as I was one of the people normally talking back to the staff advisor]. One day in particular, I went through 4 states. The main race route only crossed one border. Another day, I found that there was a ferry along the alternate route. As for the hills, they try to avoid them up to a point.... unless some major landmark is involved. Things such as a day's end point [normally schools, which they like to build on hills], and the particularly lame ending of the race at the top of a hill outside of Denver, Co, [which after 2 days of clouds, I think only 4-8 cars actually made it to the finish line before the race was called early, as 20+ cars were on the Denver beltway at rush hour]
Uphill/downhill matters more than full sun/no sun. In the case of GW in 1995, we actually got more power on cloudy days than full sun, because of a problem with the manufacture of our solar panels. [don't use conductive epoxy on solar cells. It creates oxidation when in contact with aluminum, so we were running at 1/3 the power of other schools]
The batteries are there for multiple reasons. Basically, they take the excess power from the panels, and store it for later use (going up hill, cloudy conditions, etc.) Also, most of the races have 'charge times' where the car isn't running, but you have the array up to collect light in the early morning/later afternoon.
As was already said, it's dependant upon the types of batteries. The GM SunRayce limits cars to using lead-acid to help even the playing field. Some races have more than one class, so that cars are ranked against similar cars. [Although, our team was in the lowest class, and won overall in Akita, Japan in '96]
During the road race, the cars are normally part of a convoy. (lead vehicle, solar car, chase vehicle). I assure you that if someone pulled something like that, the folks from the chase vehicle would beat the crap out of the person.
No clue, as we kept our GPS (and backup) in the chase vehicle. We were running Lynx (real time operating system) with a radio modem in the car. I didn't worry about that power, as it was running on a seperate bus (the motor was running at 60-72V, depending on the race)
Well, I don't have as many races under my belt, as I was only involved in Sunrayce '95 and the World Solar Rallye in '96? before I was kicked off of the team. (Improper use of a computer system. See answer to #7)
The routes are supposed to be planned, however, I seriously question the planning of the alternate routes. A typical race day for Sunrayce is about 200 miles. The typical day for us pulling the trailers [I was supposed to be one of the drivers for the car, as I'm just under 5'8", but never got fitted to the car after I built the roll bar, and the staff advisor and other driver were in the 5'4" height range, so it wasn't discovered 'till qualifyings that I didn't fit, so I got trailer duty, as I was one of the people normally talking back to the staff advisor]. One day in particular, I went through 4 states. The main race route only crossed one border. Another day, I found that there was a ferry along the alternate route. As for the hills, they try to avoid them up to a point.... unless some major landmark is involved. Things such as a day's end point [normally schools, which they like to build on hills], and the particularly lame ending of the race at the top of a hill outside of Denver, Co, [which after 2 days of clouds, I think only 4-8 cars actually made it to the finish line before the race was called early, as 20+ cars were on the Denver beltway at rush hour]
Uphill/downhill matters more than full sun/no sun. In the case of GW in 1995, we actually got more power on cloudy days than full sun, because of a problem with the manufacture of our solar panels. [don't use conductive epoxy on solar cells. It creates oxidation when in contact with aluminum, so we were running at 1/3 the power of other schools]
The batteries are there for multiple reasons. Basically, they take the excess power from the panels, and store it for later use (going up hill, cloudy conditions, etc.) Also, most of the races have 'charge times' where the car isn't running, but you have the array up to collect light in the early morning/later afternoon.
As was already said, it's dependant upon the types of batteries. The GM SunRayce limits cars to using lead-acid to help even the playing field. Some races have more than one class, so that cars are ranked against similar cars. [Although, our team was in the lowest class, and won overall in Akita, Japan in '96]
I did some printing in high school, so when a friend was looking at getting a book printed, I called about and got the details.
In about 1995 or so, when I was doing this, not many places could print straight to plates for offset printing. I tracked down one place in the DC Metro area that could, and could do perfect binding [as most places wanted to do crappy plastic combs or wire bound] I think in the end, for a press run of 500 copies, 200 pages, it was about $3k. [20lb offset]. [It might have been 1000 copies, can't remember].
Anyway, we _specifically_ went this route, as it was printed, not copied. From the sounds of this machine, for the speeds it's doing, there's a good chance that it's doing copying. Copying uses toner, which flakes with use, and makes the books slowly become useless.
Ink, however, from offset printing, penetrates the paper, and is good for many, many readings. [Anyone who's had that grad class with the teacher who's too cheap to get their book printed knows these problems....as the letters slowly start disappearing from the pages].
This may be a great invention, and I'm sure that this has its uses, especially for vanity press, but I'm reluctant to say that this is the greatest invention 'till I've seen some samples so I can guage the quality of the printing. [Hell, this might not even support multiple color prints]
Oh...and for manuals, I prefer wire binding, as as I can open up the books flat, or fold them back on themselves.
First off, what are the reasons for changing systems? Are there particular features that you're missing, is it so that you can get a support contract, is it just a buzzword issue?
If it's just that the management's going for the latest buzzword, try to get the management one on one, and tell them what a mistake they're making. [For some reason, they don't like us techies telling 'em their plans are crap in meetings]
If it's a features issue, well, you'd have to look at each product, and see which ones supports what you're looking for.
For the support contract, I don't know about DB2 licensing, but Oracle's rather strange -- although the cost model for the server goes in 2/5/infinate year blocks, the support's the same either way. You may save in the long run by buying a larger contract.
Also, platform is important. I was in a class once where someone recommended not running Oracle on NT, and using MS-SQL server, just for the fact that the limitations of an Oracle/NT combination were on the NT side, so you might as well take the cheap way out.
Now, given that all of the above things are equal, you need to first look at maintenance issues -- how often do they recommend cold backups, hot backups, rolling the transaction logs, etc. You also need to look at how easy it's going to be to transition to the new server. [Do you have more than just tables -- views, indexes, constraints, etc, that are going to need to come over?]
Moving data of a significant size is a pain in the ass. If it's s speed issue that you have, unless something's completely built wrong on your current system, or there's some major feature that you need, you'll almost always be better fixing your current problem than moving to a new system. (eg, Oracle doesn't have an 'autonumber' field type. You'll need to set up a sequence, and then either make sure that all inserts read from the sequence, or take a (worthwhile) performance hit, and set up a trigger for inserts)
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that your question is vague enough that either one may be the answer, or you may really want to stick with what you have. As I don't know your situation, I can't give any solid recommendations, other than to do your research, as this is something that you might have to live with for a long time.
If you need some stalling time to get all of the information you need, so you can get things done right, and not rush something through, give your management this article from C|Net:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-201-6375299-0.htm l?tag=arcv
As I work for a university, I automatically get tuition credits (work related or not), but I don't get allocated any extra time for those classes.
I automatically get 75% off any certificate class offered by the university, 100% if it's work related, but for those, I'm pushed out if a full paying student comes along.
Depending on what we need, as we're in Washington, DC, which has various classes going on all the time, I've gotten approval with two week's notice to go to off-site training, on the company's money, on the company's time. They don't pay me for the travel or lodging [it's all fairly local, even if I have to go up to Baltimore], but they'll cover the classes.
As we do have a fairly high turnover rate, they do wait 'till you've been there a while before they'll fork over the cash for the off-site training, however.
As for the book stuff, it all depends on what you're wanting. If we can directly relate it to a project that we're working on, then they'll pay for it, and we can read it during work hours. [However, with the amount of work that we do after hours, it doesn't even come close to making up for it]. Book reading is one of the main uses for public transportation.... If I were more sure about when I'd be going home at night, I'd take the metro every day, so I could get a little research done.
Unfortunately, for us, as we're short staffed to handle all of the emergencies that come up, there's no definate line between work time and home time, so that we can make deadlines and move machines around when we inconvenience the fewest people. We've got people who sit at home all night checking machines to make sure they're staying up, but still put in 6-8 hrs in the office on weekdays.
So well, it's a big tradeoff. You might want the education benefits, but what are you willing to give in return?
There's a great magazine printed in Australia (Design Graphics -- http://www.designgraphics.com.au/) that give both tips for artists using computers, info about new programs and hardware coming out [stuff like monitor reviews, high end digital camera comparisons, etc], but they also have occasional interviews with artists, and some samples.
There have been some phenomenal pieces of art in there, and not all of them are done completely on computers. [Just go to their web site, and look at the covers of the recent issues]. An exceptional artist isn't bound to any one media. Some may shun computers as they don't know how to use them, but that doesn't mean that it's not an art form. Yes, it may all be represented by a series of numbers, but that doesn't mean that we can't scan one of van Gogh's works at a high resolution, and accurately reproduce almost pixelated quality of his works. [yes, we won't have the full texture, but the average person wouldn't notice].
There is a learning curve associated with computer art. A great painter may not be able to immediately produce with the same quality as with a brush. But they'd have the same issues when they're working with a chisel and block of marble. An artist, however, knows what looks good, and what they need to do to bring out emotions in the viewer. The method that they use to create the art that evokes the emotion is insignificant. I don't see how anyone can take a look at Toy Story and tell me that it's not an art form to get the computer generated models to behave to realisticly.
Lack of change makes a stagnant company. A company which can't change to deal with changes will ultimately fail.
If compaq can't make money on a division, and has no visions in the forseeable future of making a profit on that division, it has an obligation to its shareholders to get rid of it.
Yes, that may mean that many people lose their jobs in the short term, but if it weren't for that happening, the company may go under, and everyone loses their job. [well, probably not with bankruptcy protection and the like, but you get the idea] If an entire company the size of Compaq goes under, this would have a dramatic effect on other sectors, too.
They may be taking a risk in this untested market, but if they don't get into it quickly, they might be too far behind to make it. They may fail in their endevor, but they definately would not have succeeded if they hadn't tried.
[goddamn it...I sound like a damned optimist or something today.... what the hell is up with this? Luckily, knowing their tech support, they're going to have to make some major changes to succeed in a service based model...]
The thing that you're forgetting that there are issues with flow in fiber that's not the same as with a highway.
There just aren't that many things that you can compare dark fiber to. Highways are dramtically different from fiber, as to lay dark fiber is like you're building the roads without putting in any entrance/exit ramps. The roads are there, but without spending more money, no one can use it. Even more unlike roads is that the cost of the fiber for the most part is in labor and permits. [permission to dig, then the number of union people, and the machinery needed to put the stuff into the ground]. Now, sure, as we all know, when digging a 6' deep pit to hide the bodies, as you've already dug the hole, it's just as easy to get rid of two bod...
um....anyway, the reason that your analogy fails is that cars have stayed relatively the same. Through the use of additional wavelengths, and different switching technologies, we can now get significantly more data through a single strand than we could have when the fiber was laid. If anything with cars the people driving them have gotten dumber, and cause more accidents it seems, as everyone's in a rush, and doesn't know how to drive, and in the end, if you pack too many cars on the roads, you actually slow down traffic.
You don't have these issues with fiber. [You can, however, have some of these issues with copper, which is why there's a maximum transmit power allowed by the FCC, which is what keeps v.90 modems from ever getting to 56kbps in the US, to eliminate cross talk between lines...which does work on the highway analogy, as they're the dumbasses driving erraticly and changing lanes, causing accidents]
So anyway, as traffic grows to fill the fiber, fiber technology will improve, allowing us to get more data on the line [imagine if everyone had to ride the bus, so there was overall less congestion on the road]. For the companies, as they've got fewer strands connected, they have less equiptment, which takes fewer people to maintain, and uses less power, and takes up less space, generates less heat, etc.
So, although I agree that traffic will increase, I don't see us filling the lines anytime soon. I'm guessing that lines will be sold for private networks, rather than just being used by the people who laid them.
Normally, you just need to wrap the CGI files, as they contain the nasty code, although, you need to insure that things that might contain executable are disabled [ie, no SSIs, as that'd allow someone to read something, or run something as root.]
For the CGI problem, there's suexec or cgiwrap. [The security reports on cgiwrap are due to the hack job on the Cobolt RAQs. A default install is safe]
Now, for the group thing, you're almost on the right track -- what you can do is to give each user their own group, and put the web server into that group. [You'll need to restart the web server after adding each user if you're using Netscape/iPlanet...I don't know if it's a problem with apache]. You then want to set the permissions such that the group has read access to the files, but that they're not world readable.
[0640 for those of you who like bitmasks] For the CGIs, as they're wrapped, only need to be run as yourself [0700].
I've done both of these before, and I can tell you that they work just fine, however, you have to be careful then about anything that is running as the same user as the webserver. [typically, textpreprocessors, such as PHP or ColdFusion, or any CGIs that are running unwrapped]. ColdFusion is a security nightmare on a multi-user system, as it becomes quickly realized that it was never intended for that sort of use. [Hell, all I need to know is someone's datasource name, and I can do anything to their database that they can...and I can get their datasource name by reading their files...which of course, ColdFusion can do, as it runs as the webserver.]
As for PHP, I have no experience with it, but I'm guessing there's a good chance that it has the same issues as ColdFusion.
If you're going to claim something as being false, just remember that everything can be faked, so fo everything that you can prove, someone else can disprove it.
The great flood? Real. Was it world wide? No. Was it everything in the scope of the writer's known world? Most likely.
[Imagine if in 1993 that we didn't have today's communication network, and we lived in the Mississippi flood plain.... if you weren't in a boat, everything you've ever seen in your life might have easily been wiped off the earth].
Moses may not have parted the tides, but based on data to estimate the time [when there's a total solar eclipse over the area which coincides with a major locust year], there were abnormalities, combined with low tide, which could have resulted in the river being significantly low.
Science has proved that almost every item _could_ have happened. That does not mean that these things were an act of a higher power [unless you consider physics to be a higher power], but it strongly suggests that these things happened, as it's just a freaky coincidence otherwise.
People who are can't figure out why something happened tend to make up something. That's how almost all religions start. When people can't explain a 'miracle' that they've obviously seen with their own eyes, they're willing to believe in higher powers.
That's not to say that there aren't things that have gotten blown out of proportion over the years. [Is the 'loaves and fishes' story about a guy who took a knife and cut everything into smaller pieces, only people doubled the number of servings with each retelling?]
Now, that's not to say that there isn't use for religion. Personally, I'm going to go with what Rufus said in Dogma, that it's better to have ideas that beliefs, as you can change ideas. However, religion can have a major calming effect on populations where there would be no reason to go on living otherwise. [The whole 'God works in mysterious ways' argument] Religion is infinately more effective in controling a population than government is, as to someone who believes, hell is a much scarier place than prison will ever be, even if they take the TVs away.
Religion seems to be one of the few institutions that still instills a sense of morality on people these days, and it's a major thing which many people are simply not being taught these days, as their parents divorced, and they're both working to make ends meet, and so no one's home to watch the kids, so they decide to take a few guns and shoot up their school....
Every Union's different. Personally, rather than a Union, I'd prefer to see a Board of Licensure such as there is for Engineers, to ensure that people truly are qualified to do their jobs.
[This is most important with contractors, as you'd have a place to check with to see if there were complaints against someone].
I do, however, take offense to a few of your comments:
What will your union provide you with? Medical benefits? Job security? Work safety regulations? Don't make me laugh. You have all that and more, and it's NOT worth giving up a meritocratic system of advancement, peace of mind and your political views over.
Unions tend to be for hourly employees, and not salaried. You claim that we make 2-3 times the gross national average, but there's a cost to that. How many hours a week do you work?
I don't know about the rest of you, but it's not unheard of for us to work 100 hr weeks when deadlines come near. I made the mistake of only getting a verbal commitment to being given compensory time for my overtime. After 2 weeks of working through 2 weekends and a holiday, for 12-16hrs a day [12 hrs on Saturdays, so I could catch my cartoons], going home every other day to keep from losing the 2hrs in commute, my boss told me that I got 5 days of comp time.
I asked him how he came up with 5 days. He said it was from the 5 extra days I worked, the two weekends, and the holiday. Naturally, I was pissed. In the end, I did the math, and found that at a bare minumum, I had worked 120hrs overtime. My boss agreed to give me 10 days in comp time.
Had this been a union, I most likely would have gotten time and half for the time. My brother gets that, and 2x when he passes 80hrs for a week. He gets an additional amount for working holidays. Even assuming time and a half, I'd have gotten 180hrs [4.5 weeks] off for the work I did. I was asking for 3 [even hours for the work I did], and I got 2.
Chances are, a union would have protected me from that. It would have protected me from the time when I was planning on going to the PA Renaisance Festival with friends one weekend, but was told on Friday morning, that there had been an oversight by the contractors and I wasn't told that I could have started my part of the project 3 weeks before. As such, it had to be done by monday, so I was going to have to work the weekend, and come in on Monday [a day I had off for my DSL install].
In the end, I worked a 70hrs by Wednesday [as well, I had to get info back from the contractors, which I didn't have for the meeting on Monday, and I didn't get 'till Tuesday, and it took 'till Wednesday for me to figure out what had gone wrong, and that it was the contractors who had lied to me about the last upgrade we had done, which resulted in my doing all this work.] At that point, late wednesday night/thursday morning, I went home, as I didn't care what the project wasn't finished.
While I understand there being a need to protect employees from exploitation, do you think a programmer earning at least 2-3 times the gross national average needs protection?
You said it, but you glazed over it. I had to make sure that I included it, so I'm not taking your other comment completely out of context.
You have all that and more, and it's NOT worth giving up a meritocratic system of advancement, peace of mind and your political views over
I do NOT have peace of mind when I'm driving home at 4am, thinking 'I can end it all if I cross over the median right now'. Medical benefits are useless after a few marathon weeks when I'm so sick I can't get out of bed, and have such a headache, I can't see straight, as my body tries to recover from it.
That's not to say that I'd like a corrupt union, like so many are, but my roomie's union [local 602 -- pipefitters] is good to him -- in exchange for his money, he gets guaranteed raises, training, overtime pay, etc. Yes, I get benefits that he doesn't get, but he's not expected to work 12 hr days s a daily thing and not get compensated for it.
One of the scripts that I saw I don't think was ever shot --
After crossing the Bridge of Fate, Arthur and Bedevere come across a boat on the edge of a late. And the old man appears again, and says something to the effect of:
'Those who wish to cross the sea of fate must answer me these questions twenty eight'
The knights grab the old man, throw him in the water, and take his boat.
[But the news article made it sound like the a Holy Grail DVD is new...it was among the first four I ever bought -- Holy Grail; Labyrinth; Dark Crystal; Army of Darkness]
Strangely enough, I actually found the house on the net, but I had my realtor do all of the dealings with the seller [who was a realtor themself].
The first realtor I had [or thought I had, as the case may be] was a complete asshole. I had just moved into the area, and was taking a new job, which I was supposed to get the formal acceptance call that week. [I had already gotten an informal acceptance]. My mother, however, had recommended him as someone who had experience with HUD homes, as she had used him for a VA home.
Being 24 and just starting a new job, he wanted nothing to do with me. I'm guessing that my asking him about what would happen if I significantly underbid the asking price didn't help, of course. Unfortunately, there was a limited bidding window, and he wouldn't return my calls, therefore, I missed the window. [And the house went for $85k, $30k under the asking price].
I found another realtor, and went did the whole house hunting thing. There were a few decent homes, but nothing anywhere near a nice [nice being relative, as it was a definate fixer-uper] as the house I had lost. As I was also looking on the internet myself, I found out a house on the internet that sounded remarkably like the one I had lost out on. [right street, number of bedrooms, size, detached garage, etc] Unfortunately, there was no picture or street number.
My realtor managed to look the house up on her system, and we found out that it was in fact the same house that had been up for sale by HUD the month before. After my realtor went through a lot of crap in trying to get to view the house [I found out later that they actually buy the house from HUD 'till a couple of days before they turned it around to me, even though the whole process took a few months].
Over those months, however, my realtor did all of the harrassment work. We made them do some repairs before I took possession. Although I did something rather abnormal [I had about $5k of work done _before_ I owned the house, so I could get the loan approved, which is another story].
I got them down to $105k, with them giving $5k in closing assistance, and they had to do a few assorted repairs [electrical, plumbing, heating] before I'd take posession.
In all, it was many months of headaches, and I spent more than I would have if I didn't have the original asshole realtor, but in the end, I did get the house that I wanted, and I would have gone crazy if it hadn't been for my second realtor. There is no doubt in my mind that if it hadn't been for her and my checking various web sites on my own that I wouldn't have gotten the house. [And technically, her cut got paid by the seller, not by me]
In all, I spent about $113k [with closing costs, etc.] and the house appraises for $148k, less than a year later.
Get a realtor. I'm gussing most of you, even if you change your own oil don't lube the transmission yourself. [a car being the second most expensive purchase you'll own] And you wouldn't let someone who's never used a computer upgrade yours [third most expensive]. So why would you risk messing up the most expensive single item purchase you'll make to someone who doesn't know what they're doing? [that being yourself]. Get someone who's a liscensed realtor in your state, and let them work for you, even if you are looking for possible options on your own.
In that case, as it's mostly banner ads sized images and 1x1s, then iCab strips them out, along with known banner ad sites, images that are located in/ads/ directories, etc.
[And it only took a few mouse clicks to turn on the filtering settings]
What the difference between these so called 'web bugs' and 'cookies'?
Hell, if you link to an image off-site, someone can get your IP address, etc. [With a little bit of javascript and a redirect, you can get a whole crapload of information about the person that you're not supposed to]
Personally, I refuse to download any software, not only because it's for IE, but because then the people I'm downloading from would know my IP address. [Can someone please tell me how people are supposed to send you content if you don't give them an IP address?]
The problem out there isn't just one issue. It's many, many layers, of varying degrees.
For instance -- Customers are clueless. It's more than just cluelessness. To be even more acurate, the average consumer is lazy. They don't want to learn. [As I'm sure, any of you whom have worked some sort of technical support have come to realize.] Although I may have broadly sweeping stereotypes about people, in marketing, it's just called a 'target audience demographics'.
I work for an organization that has a person with Oracle DBA certfication who can't figure out how to shut down her application, and has the system administration folks reboot the entire machine when it locks up. For her, it's easier than fixing the problem with why it locked up, and a phone call's easier than her typing in the commands to shut down and restart the database.
In the rest of the world, the majority of the population is just as lazy. Sure, you'd get better selection of video games if I went to a real computer store, but I could get most of the 'big name' games if I went to Walmart or Target. Sure, some people will give you the excuse of 'I'm being more environmentally responsible by not driving to three different places, as I had other things to get, too', but that's what most malls are for, but with those, you actually have to walk from store to store.
You'll get people who are in it for the lower price, which I admit, is a valid reason, but well, with most of the discount stores, you pay more in sales tax than you get a discount, so that's not nearly as significant as people claim it to be.
Most people, knowingly or not, take the easy route to most things. (I mean, hell, why make things tougher on yourself than you have to?) They don't like making choices. If I went to Circuit City or Best Buy, I'd have to decide between 3 dozen models of VCRS. There are only 4 models available at Walmart.
Once you've gotten some new product, it's easy to stick with similar stuff, as you don't have to learn as much. (okay, the VCR example doesn't stick as well, as it seems manufacturers take an evil delight in changing where the hell the 'set time' menu option's hidden). But well, if you've gotten a copy of MS Works with your Compaq/HP/whatever computer, it's not that much of a jump up to MS Word. I mean, sure Word Perfect has less bloat, and actually handles Tables of Contents well, and has that really nifty 'Reveal Codes' option, but well, it's more of an effort to switch from one program to another. [Although, Macs tend to make it less difficult, as the UI's fairly standard between programs]
How many of you, if some new spread sheet product came out, would be willing to convert every one of your existing documents over, or just stick with what you've been using for years? I'm guessing significantly less than 5%. [And most of that 5% are the ones who don't use spreadsheets]
What MS did, do, however, is do this nasty little 'site liscense' thing. So, suddenly, companies decide, 'Well, even though Bob's needs are different from Dave's and John's, we're going to make them all use the same program.' So now, Bob's torn, as he normally uses Lotus 123 at home, and Excel at work. So well, he caves, and pirates a copy of Excel for home use, so he doesn't have to keep switching his files back and forth, etc. After some time, he forgets all about how much better Lotus 123 was for his needs.
Had Bob not been lazy, he could have fought for his Lotus 123, and stayed happy. However, that would have required more of an effort than just being herded like a sheep, as the rest of the company's doing.
[Okay, so I'm bitter that someone from management went against all of the technical folk's recommendations for a new mail server last year, and we told 'em we wanted to switch user naming schemes, and they whined that everyone was going to have to switch all of their settings, so we were going to have to stick with the old stuff, so we didn't have to let people know how to change everything, and now I have to do 3-5 times as much work as all of the names are tied to another system, rather than making a clean break.]
um....I think I went off on a tangent, and didn't quite reinforce the lazy thing as well as I could, however, being a lazy person myself, I don't feel like fixing this comment itself, damnit.
And either get rid of the icon, or photoshop it to show locercase 'spam'.
Just making something lowercase does not make it no longer trademarked.
Photoshop is a rather nice program out there to edit pixelated images. It is not a generic verb which describes editing pixelated images.
Yes, the 'spam' image used by slashdot should be edited so that it does not show an image of SPAM canned luncheon meat. However, whomever wishes to edit the image should use whatever pixel editing program they may wish to use, such as gimp or any one of the other fine image editing programs out there.
Think about it for a second -- if _every_ copier out there was called 'Xerox', then xerox no longer holds a brand name. Where's the name recognition and the benefit for publicity when anyone can use the name?
If the companies don't fight for their names, then not only can the general public use them to refer to all similar products, but their competitors can also.
For those that are from the south, I know you've seen this discussion:
I'd like a coke.
What type?
Sprite.
Although the 'Coke' name means 'Coca-Cola brand cola soft drink' in many areas, in some areas, it's used interchangably with 'soda'. (And I think it's still more normal than calling it a 'pop', which is the name I use to refer to my grandfather.)
And for those that believe that any publicity is good-- imagine that there's a scare due to some sort of tainting in the factory, and the headline reads
CONTAMINATED COKE BOTTLES KILL 4
But then the article says that it's some mom and pop soda company, and not Coca-Cola brand. If companies do not protect their trademarks, this is something that has the potential of happening. (The misleading articles, not the death of people by contaminated coke bottles)
I wish. Unfortunately, each of the massagers is independant, and requires a seperate power connection. [Of course, it's useful to keep harassing people whenever they try to use the massager, and just their side dies, and they keep insisting on switching sides with you, and you convince them that the couch doesn't like them]
Slashdot Mirror
At the time that the modems came out, they didn't have anything else to compare them to. Hell, it would be almost another year before we had x2 and kFlex [okay, both kFlexes, if you want to get picky about it], and then almost another year after that before v.90.
So first off, they weren't significantly slower than a standard modem (28.8kbps vs. 33.6kbps). Second, they were only $30/month if you bought the insurance on 'em. [well, I did, so let's forget that other option]. For $30/month, you were getting a dedicated connection.... in 1996. For any of you other folks out there who tried pricing out something similar, you'd be looking at $150+ for port, and the $20 or so for line. [Hell, you still are these days for dedicated dialup in many areas].
Yes, they had a limited area (I got coverage at my apartment, school, National Airport, and my dad's house, but not my mom's.). For those people that fit their demographic, however, it was a godsend. I could get in an hour of mudding while between classes, without having to go down to a crowded computer lab, or trek back home.
I could get online while sitting at my mom's car in the middle of the Pentagon parking lot, waiting for her to get off work. And hell, as it was the earlier model, with the seperate battery pack, I could use it on my desktop machine, too. [Although a foot or two of contract gives you some damned crappy latency, as the repeater was on the dead other side of the building].
The page you linked to reminded me of the people who bitched about CueCat. Yes, the companies are dumbasses for selling the product without forcing you to get the service, too, however, you're thinking rather highly of yourself if you think everyone should just bow down to you and give you stuff for free. If you don't register your shareware programs, the odds are, that people won't continue releasing stuff as shareware, as it's not worth it to them.
If there's a product that you like, that you use, you have to support them. If you don't, they fold, and everyone's screwed in the long run.
Now, is Metricom a good product? Before, yes. Right now, I don't know their pricing model, or their level of service, so I can't make that call. If they're still in the $30/month range, I'd say definately, if you're presently using dialup. If you're in an area that's widely covered, or go through airports that are, it might also be a godsend. Is it competative with DSL / Cable Modems? As strange as this sounds, I'd say yes, but it depends on the pricing model. There's a good market for those people who want to pay a little more for the always-on connection, but can't justify spending $50-$100/month.
PS. not everything's good about metricom. I had bit of a problem returning the modem after I moved out of a service area, and they tried charging me for another year, and I went through a few phone calls to 'em to get it cleared up, and then realized I had the insurance on it, so I could have just told them I lost it, and to eat the cost, rather than me returning it
Back in ?1995? or so, the university that I was going to/working at (whose name I'd publish, if it weren't for the fact that I'm working there again, and our webserver already took one tanking this week, but I will say that the VP of the USA is very familiar with our hospital) wanted to try to get a grant to put together an achive of World World II related data.
I was told that it was just for a presentation, and someone else filled in a crapload of extraneous text later, but the supposed selling point of the project would be some big search engine. We spent the better part of a week trying to figure out the real media encoder, running on a Mac Centris 650, to get just one item of data for the 'archive'.
In the end, the search engine was a complete hack that worked fine, although it always assumed that you searched for 'hitler', and returned a static page of results. The file in the end was pre-loaded onto the machine they'd be using for the presentation, so that it didn't have to stream.
In the end, they never got the grant, three of us wasted a week or more on the whole damned thing, and 6 years later, the mock web site's still up. (I only know that, because someone mailed me last year, asking if it was okay to copy a picture.)
If you're going to ask all 'opt out' questions, don't call them in front of a panel of 12 people, and have them drive 20miles there through rush hour for the meeting. Yes, sometimes, you do need to ask those questions, but they can be done easily and diplomaticly, so that you don't piss off the person. [As well, they may not have the talents for the job they're interviewing for, but there may be some other position that you know about that they'd be ideal for...if you piss them off, there's no way they're going to come to your company]
What I've found that has worked in the past for hiring.
Then give them a quick quiz to make sure that they're legit with what they said on their resume. If they say they know PL/SQL, ask them a few set questions, etc. You want this to be relatively simple questions, that someone can answer quickly, without much thought. Ideally, they'll give the right answer. Sometimes, you'll get response like 'I'm not sure off the top of my head but it's in [some book]'. Hell, even admitting that they don't know [so long as they don't fail every question] is better than giving a wrong answer...
You need to make sure that the person feels comfortable before going in and being grilled by the half dozen people, so it's good to get them to meet with one or two people to give them the quick tour, (so they see all of the people whom haven't slept in 4 days, as you're behind schedule...erm..okay, maybe skip introducing them to the other programmers) before you start asking them deep questions.
This last part is the hardest part, as it's the real 'get to know you' type thing. The questions that you ask, and how much you tell them are going to directly impact the future. I prefer letting people know about quirks to the job before they take it [well, we're not so busy right now, but our crunch months tend to be (x,y,z), when we all tend to pull some overtime.]
If you don't let people know about the potential problems to the job, you risk a good chance of employee rollover, and then you've got to go through the hiring process all over again, and you've just lost whatever time you're spent in training. Hiring isn't just about getting the person to come to work for you, but it's about making sure that they stay working for you, too. [Unless you're filling a contractor slot, of course]
Unless there have been some massive changes in solar array technology, the average solar car's pulling about as much power as standard hair dryer, as that's about all they have to work with.
The speed differences come from motor technology (axial flux motors, developed by um....can't remember his name...a guy from NTU, in australia), which eleminates transmission losses, and from better weight reduction, and more importantly, aerodynamics.
And well, as we all know, SUVs are lacking a bit in that whole 'aerodynamics' area.
What you want isn't a solar car, but another one of GM's little competitions --
http://www.futuretruck.org/
Enyclopedia Britanica and many other research sites restrict by IP address, so universities have had to set up authenticating reverse proxies, so that some faculty member/student who's dialing up from home can still access the information.
The fact that this is moving to places other than the education front might be interesting, but I'm guessing that as it's been done on the education front for 6+ years, that the only real news is that someone's willing to set themselves up as mediators.
For more information about reverse proxying, take a look at
Well, I don't have as many races under my belt, as I was only involved in Sunrayce '95 and the World Solar Rallye in '96? before I was kicked off of the team. (Improper use of a computer system. See answer to #7)
As for the hills, they try to avoid them up to a point.... unless some major landmark is involved. Things such as a day's end point [normally schools, which they like to build on hills], and the particularly lame ending of the race at the top of a hill outside of Denver, Co, [which after 2 days of clouds, I think only 4-8 cars actually made it to the finish line before the race was called early, as 20+ cars were on the Denver beltway at rush hour]
As for the hills, they try to avoid them up to a point.... unless some major landmark is involved. Things such as a day's end point [normally schools, which they like to build on hills], and the particularly lame ending of the race at the top of a hill outside of Denver, Co, [which after 2 days of clouds, I think only 4-8 cars actually made it to the finish line before the race was called early, as 20+ cars were on the Denver beltway at rush hour]
I did some printing in high school, so when a friend was looking at getting a book printed, I called about and got the details.
In about 1995 or so, when I was doing this, not many places could print straight to plates for offset printing. I tracked down one place in the DC Metro area that could, and could do perfect binding [as most places wanted to do crappy plastic combs or wire bound] I think in the end, for a press run of 500 copies, 200 pages, it was about $3k. [20lb offset]. [It might have been 1000 copies, can't remember].
Anyway, we _specifically_ went this route, as it was printed, not copied. From the sounds of this machine, for the speeds it's doing, there's a good chance that it's doing copying. Copying uses toner, which flakes with use, and makes the books slowly become useless.
Ink, however, from offset printing, penetrates the paper, and is good for many, many readings. [Anyone who's had that grad class with the teacher who's too cheap to get their book printed knows these problems....as the letters slowly start disappearing from the pages].
This may be a great invention, and I'm sure that this has its uses, especially for vanity press, but I'm reluctant to say that this is the greatest invention 'till I've seen some samples so I can guage the quality of the printing. [Hell, this might not even support multiple color prints]
Oh...and for manuals, I prefer wire binding, as as I can open up the books flat, or fold them back on themselves.
You have quite a few things to consider in this.
m l?tag=arcv
First off, what are the reasons for changing systems? Are there particular features that you're missing, is it so that you can get a support contract, is it just a buzzword issue?
If it's just that the management's going for the latest buzzword, try to get the management one on one, and tell them what a mistake they're making. [For some reason, they don't like us techies telling 'em their plans are crap in meetings]
If it's a features issue, well, you'd have to look at each product, and see which ones supports what you're looking for.
For the support contract, I don't know about DB2 licensing, but Oracle's rather strange -- although the cost model for the server goes in 2/5/infinate year blocks, the support's the same either way. You may save in the long run by buying a larger contract.
Also, platform is important. I was in a class once where someone recommended not running Oracle on NT, and using MS-SQL server, just for the fact that the limitations of an Oracle/NT combination were on the NT side, so you might as well take the cheap way out.
Now, given that all of the above things are equal, you need to first look at maintenance issues -- how often do they recommend cold backups, hot backups, rolling the transaction logs, etc. You also need to look at how easy it's going to be to transition to the new server. [Do you have more than just tables -- views, indexes, constraints, etc, that are going to need to come over?]
Moving data of a significant size is a pain in the ass. If it's s speed issue that you have, unless something's completely built wrong on your current system, or there's some major feature that you need, you'll almost always be better fixing your current problem than moving to a new system. (eg, Oracle doesn't have an 'autonumber' field type. You'll need to set up a sequence, and then either make sure that all inserts read from the sequence, or take a (worthwhile) performance hit, and set up a trigger for inserts)
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that your question is vague enough that either one may be the answer, or you may really want to stick with what you have. As I don't know your situation, I can't give any solid recommendations, other than to do your research, as this is something that you might have to live with for a long time.
If you need some stalling time to get all of the information you need, so you can get things done right, and not rush something through, give your management this article from C|Net:
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-201-6375299-0.ht
And what field of industry you're in.
As I work for a university, I automatically get tuition credits (work related or not), but I don't get allocated any extra time for those classes.
I automatically get 75% off any certificate class offered by the university, 100% if it's work related, but for those, I'm pushed out if a full paying student comes along.
Depending on what we need, as we're in Washington, DC, which has various classes going on all the time, I've gotten approval with two week's notice to go to off-site training, on the company's money, on the company's time. They don't pay me for the travel or lodging [it's all fairly local, even if I have to go up to Baltimore], but they'll cover the classes.
As we do have a fairly high turnover rate, they do wait 'till you've been there a while before they'll fork over the cash for the off-site training, however.
As for the book stuff, it all depends on what you're wanting. If we can directly relate it to a project that we're working on, then they'll pay for it, and we can read it during work hours. [However, with the amount of work that we do after hours, it doesn't even come close to making up for it]. Book reading is one of the main uses for public transportation.... If I were more sure about when I'd be going home at night, I'd take the metro every day, so I could get a little research done.
Unfortunately, for us, as we're short staffed to handle all of the emergencies that come up, there's no definate line between work time and home time, so that we can make deadlines and move machines around when we inconvenience the fewest people. We've got people who sit at home all night checking machines to make sure they're staying up, but still put in 6-8 hrs in the office on weekdays.
So well, it's a big tradeoff. You might want the education benefits, but what are you willing to give in return?
There's a great magazine printed in Australia (Design Graphics -- http://www.designgraphics.com.au/) that give both tips for artists using computers, info about new programs and hardware coming out [stuff like monitor reviews, high end digital camera comparisons, etc], but they also have occasional interviews with artists, and some samples.
There have been some phenomenal pieces of art in there, and not all of them are done completely on computers. [Just go to their web site, and look at the covers of the recent issues]. An exceptional artist isn't bound to any one media. Some may shun computers as they don't know how to use them, but that doesn't mean that it's not an art form. Yes, it may all be represented by a series of numbers, but that doesn't mean that we can't scan one of van Gogh's works at a high resolution, and accurately reproduce almost pixelated quality of his works. [yes, we won't have the full texture, but the average person wouldn't notice].
There is a learning curve associated with computer art. A great painter may not be able to immediately produce with the same quality as with a brush. But they'd have the same issues when they're working with a chisel and block of marble. An artist, however, knows what looks good, and what they need to do to bring out emotions in the viewer. The method that they use to create the art that evokes the emotion is insignificant. I don't see how anyone can take a look at Toy Story and tell me that it's not an art form to get the computer generated models to behave to realisticly.
Lack of change makes a stagnant company. A company which can't change to deal with changes will ultimately fail.
If compaq can't make money on a division, and has no visions in the forseeable future of making a profit on that division, it has an obligation to its shareholders to get rid of it.
Yes, that may mean that many people lose their jobs in the short term, but if it weren't for that happening, the company may go under, and everyone loses their job. [well, probably not with bankruptcy protection and the like, but you get the idea] If an entire company the size of Compaq goes under, this would have a dramatic effect on other sectors, too.
They may be taking a risk in this untested market, but if they don't get into it quickly, they might be too far behind to make it. They may fail in their endevor, but they definately would not have succeeded if they hadn't tried.
[goddamn it...I sound like a damned optimist or something today.... what the hell is up with this? Luckily, knowing their tech support, they're going to have to make some major changes to succeed in a service based model...]
The thing that you're forgetting that there are issues with flow in fiber that's not the same as with a highway.
There just aren't that many things that you can compare dark fiber to. Highways are dramtically different from fiber, as to lay dark fiber is like you're building the roads without putting in any entrance/exit ramps. The roads are there, but without spending more money, no one can use it. Even more unlike roads is that the cost of the fiber for the most part is in labor and permits. [permission to dig, then the number of union people, and the machinery needed to put the stuff into the ground]. Now, sure, as we all know, when digging a 6' deep pit to hide the bodies, as you've already dug the hole, it's just as easy to get rid of two bod...
um....anyway, the reason that your analogy fails is that cars have stayed relatively the same. Through the use of additional wavelengths, and different switching technologies, we can now get significantly more data through a single strand than we could have when the fiber was laid. If anything with cars the people driving them have gotten dumber, and cause more accidents it seems, as everyone's in a rush, and doesn't know how to drive, and in the end, if you pack too many cars on the roads, you actually slow down traffic.
You don't have these issues with fiber. [You can, however, have some of these issues with copper, which is why there's a maximum transmit power allowed by the FCC, which is what keeps v.90 modems from ever getting to 56kbps in the US, to eliminate cross talk between lines...which does work on the highway analogy, as they're the dumbasses driving erraticly and changing lanes, causing accidents]
So anyway, as traffic grows to fill the fiber, fiber technology will improve, allowing us to get more data on the line [imagine if everyone had to ride the bus, so there was overall less congestion on the road]. For the companies, as they've got fewer strands connected, they have less equiptment, which takes fewer people to maintain, and uses less power, and takes up less space, generates less heat, etc.
So, although I agree that traffic will increase, I don't see us filling the lines anytime soon. I'm guessing that lines will be sold for private networks, rather than just being used by the people who laid them.
Normally, you just need to wrap the CGI files, as they contain the nasty code, although, you need to insure that things that might contain executable are disabled [ie, no SSIs, as that'd allow someone to read something, or run something as root.]
For the CGI problem, there's suexec or cgiwrap. [The security reports on cgiwrap are due to the hack job on the Cobolt RAQs. A default install is safe]
Now, for the group thing, you're almost on the right track -- what you can do is to give each user their own group, and put the web server into that group. [You'll need to restart the web server after adding each user if you're using Netscape/iPlanet...I don't know if it's a problem with apache]. You then want to set the permissions such that the group has read access to the files, but that they're not world readable.
[0640 for those of you who like bitmasks] For the CGIs, as they're wrapped, only need to be run as yourself [0700].
I've done both of these before, and I can tell you that they work just fine, however, you have to be careful then about anything that is running as the same user as the webserver. [typically, textpreprocessors, such as PHP or ColdFusion, or any CGIs that are running unwrapped]. ColdFusion is a security nightmare on a multi-user system, as it becomes quickly realized that it was never intended for that sort of use. [Hell, all I need to know is someone's datasource name, and I can do anything to their database that they can...and I can get their datasource name by reading their files...which of course, ColdFusion can do, as it runs as the webserver.]
As for PHP, I have no experience with it, but I'm guessing there's a good chance that it has the same issues as ColdFusion.
If you're going to claim something as being false, just remember that everything can be faked, so fo everything that you can prove, someone else can disprove it.
The great flood? Real. Was it world wide? No. Was it everything in the scope of the writer's known world? Most likely.
[Imagine if in 1993 that we didn't have today's communication network, and we lived in the Mississippi flood plain.... if you weren't in a boat, everything you've ever seen in your life might have easily been wiped off the earth].
Moses may not have parted the tides, but based on data to estimate the time [when there's a total solar eclipse over the area which coincides with a major locust year], there were abnormalities, combined with low tide, which could have resulted in the river being significantly low.
Science has proved that almost every item _could_ have happened. That does not mean that these things were an act of a higher power [unless you consider physics to be a higher power], but it strongly suggests that these things happened, as it's just a freaky coincidence otherwise.
People who are can't figure out why something happened tend to make up something. That's how almost all religions start. When people can't explain a 'miracle' that they've obviously seen with their own eyes, they're willing to believe in higher powers.
That's not to say that there aren't things that have gotten blown out of proportion over the years. [Is the 'loaves and fishes' story about a guy who took a knife and cut everything into smaller pieces, only people doubled the number of servings with each retelling?]
Now, that's not to say that there isn't use for religion. Personally, I'm going to go with what Rufus said in Dogma, that it's better to have ideas that beliefs, as you can change ideas. However, religion can have a major calming effect on populations where there would be no reason to go on living otherwise. [The whole 'God works in mysterious ways' argument] Religion is infinately more effective in controling a population than government is, as to someone who believes, hell is a much scarier place than prison will ever be, even if they take the TVs away.
Religion seems to be one of the few institutions that still instills a sense of morality on people these days, and it's a major thing which many people are simply not being taught these days, as their parents divorced, and they're both working to make ends meet, and so no one's home to watch the kids, so they decide to take a few guns and shoot up their school....
[This is most important with contractors, as you'd have a place to check with to see if there were complaints against someone].
I do, however, take offense to a few of your comments:
Unions tend to be for hourly employees, and not salaried. You claim that we make 2-3 times the gross national average, but there's a cost to that. How many hours a week do you work?
I don't know about the rest of you, but it's not unheard of for us to work 100 hr weeks when deadlines come near. I made the mistake of only getting a verbal commitment to being given compensory time for my overtime. After 2 weeks of working through 2 weekends and a holiday, for 12-16hrs a day [12 hrs on Saturdays, so I could catch my cartoons], going home every other day to keep from losing the 2hrs in commute, my boss told me that I got 5 days of comp time.
I asked him how he came up with 5 days. He said it was from the 5 extra days I worked, the two weekends, and the holiday. Naturally, I was pissed. In the end, I did the math, and found that at a bare minumum, I had worked 120hrs overtime. My boss agreed to give me 10 days in comp time.
Had this been a union, I most likely would have gotten time and half for the time. My brother gets that, and 2x when he passes 80hrs for a week. He gets an additional amount for working holidays. Even assuming time and a half, I'd have gotten 180hrs [4.5 weeks] off for the work I did. I was asking for 3 [even hours for the work I did], and I got 2.
Chances are, a union would have protected me from that. It would have protected me from the time when I was planning on going to the PA Renaisance Festival with friends one weekend, but was told on Friday morning, that there had been an oversight by the contractors and I wasn't told that I could have started my part of the project 3 weeks before. As such, it had to be done by monday, so I was going to have to work the weekend, and come in on Monday [a day I had off for my DSL install].
In the end, I worked a 70hrs by Wednesday [as well, I had to get info back from the contractors, which I didn't have for the meeting on Monday, and I didn't get 'till Tuesday, and it took 'till Wednesday for me to figure out what had gone wrong, and that it was the contractors who had lied to me about the last upgrade we had done, which resulted in my doing all this work.] At that point, late wednesday night/thursday morning, I went home, as I didn't care what the project wasn't finished.
You said it, but you glazed over it. I had to make sure that I included it, so I'm not taking your other comment completely out of context.I do NOT have peace of mind when I'm driving home at 4am, thinking 'I can end it all if I cross over the median right now'. Medical benefits are useless after a few marathon weeks when I'm so sick I can't get out of bed, and have such a headache, I can't see straight, as my body tries to recover from it.
That's not to say that I'd like a corrupt union, like so many are, but my roomie's union [local 602 -- pipefitters] is good to him -- in exchange for his money, he gets guaranteed raises, training, overtime pay, etc. Yes, I get benefits that he doesn't get, but he's not expected to work 12 hr days s a daily thing and not get compensated for it.
One of the scripts that I saw I don't think was ever shot --
After crossing the Bridge of Fate, Arthur and Bedevere come across a boat on the edge of a late. And the old man appears again, and says something to the effect of:
'Those who wish to cross the sea of fate must answer me these questions twenty eight'
The knights grab the old man, throw him in the water, and take his boat.
[But the news article made it sound like the a Holy Grail DVD is new...it was among the first four I ever bought -- Holy Grail; Labyrinth; Dark Crystal; Army of Darkness]
Strangely enough, I actually found the house on the net, but I had my realtor do all of the dealings with the seller [who was a realtor themself].
The first realtor I had [or thought I had, as the case may be] was a complete asshole. I had just moved into the area, and was taking a new job, which I was supposed to get the formal acceptance call that week. [I had already gotten an informal acceptance]. My mother, however, had recommended him as someone who had experience with HUD homes, as she had used him for a VA home.
Being 24 and just starting a new job, he wanted nothing to do with me. I'm guessing that my asking him about what would happen if I significantly underbid the asking price didn't help, of course. Unfortunately, there was a limited bidding window, and he wouldn't return my calls, therefore, I missed the window. [And the house went for $85k, $30k under the asking price].
I found another realtor, and went did the whole house hunting thing. There were a few decent homes, but nothing anywhere near a nice [nice being relative, as it was a definate fixer-uper] as the house I had lost. As I was also looking on the internet myself, I found out a house on the internet that sounded remarkably like the one I had lost out on. [right street, number of bedrooms, size, detached garage, etc] Unfortunately, there was no picture or street number.
My realtor managed to look the house up on her system, and we found out that it was in fact the same house that had been up for sale by HUD the month before. After my realtor went through a lot of crap in trying to get to view the house [I found out later that they actually buy the house from HUD 'till a couple of days before they turned it around to me, even though the whole process took a few months].
Over those months, however, my realtor did all of the harrassment work. We made them do some repairs before I took possession. Although I did something rather abnormal [I had about $5k of work done _before_ I owned the house, so I could get the loan approved, which is another story].
I got them down to $105k, with them giving $5k in closing assistance, and they had to do a few assorted repairs [electrical, plumbing, heating] before I'd take posession.
In all, it was many months of headaches, and I spent more than I would have if I didn't have the original asshole realtor, but in the end, I did get the house that I wanted, and I would have gone crazy if it hadn't been for my second realtor. There is no doubt in my mind that if it hadn't been for her and my checking various web sites on my own that I wouldn't have gotten the house. [And technically, her cut got paid by the seller, not by me]
In all, I spent about $113k [with closing costs, etc.] and the house appraises for $148k, less than a year later.
Get a realtor. I'm gussing most of you, even if you change your own oil don't lube the transmission yourself. [a car being the second most expensive purchase you'll own] And you wouldn't let someone who's never used a computer upgrade yours [third most expensive]. So why would you risk messing up the most expensive single item purchase you'll make to someone who doesn't know what they're doing? [that being yourself]. Get someone who's a liscensed realtor in your state, and let them work for you, even if you are looking for possible options on your own.
Ahh.... no wonder...
/ads/ directories, etc.
In that case, as it's mostly banner ads sized images and 1x1s, then iCab strips them out, along with known banner ad sites, images that are located in
[And it only took a few mouse clicks to turn on the filtering settings]
What the difference between these so called 'web bugs' and 'cookies'?
Hell, if you link to an image off-site, someone can get your IP address, etc. [With a little bit of javascript and a redirect, you can get a whole crapload of information about the person that you're not supposed to]
Personally, I refuse to download any software, not only because it's for IE, but because then the people I'm downloading from would know my IP address. [Can someone please tell me how people are supposed to send you content if you don't give them an IP address?]
The problem out there isn't just one issue. It's many, many layers, of varying degrees.
For instance -- Customers are clueless. It's more than just cluelessness. To be even more acurate, the average consumer is lazy. They don't want to learn. [As I'm sure, any of you whom have worked some sort of technical support have come to realize.] Although I may have broadly sweeping stereotypes about people, in marketing, it's just called a 'target audience demographics'.
I work for an organization that has a person with Oracle DBA certfication who can't figure out how to shut down her application, and has the system administration folks reboot the entire machine when it locks up. For her, it's easier than fixing the problem with why it locked up, and a phone call's easier than her typing in the commands to shut down and restart the database.
In the rest of the world, the majority of the population is just as lazy. Sure, you'd get better selection of video games if I went to a real computer store, but I could get most of the 'big name' games if I went to Walmart or Target. Sure, some people will give you the excuse of 'I'm being more environmentally responsible by not driving to three different places, as I had other things to get, too', but that's what most malls are for, but with those, you actually have to walk from store to store.
You'll get people who are in it for the lower price, which I admit, is a valid reason, but well, with most of the discount stores, you pay more in sales tax than you get a discount, so that's not nearly as significant as people claim it to be.
Most people, knowingly or not, take the easy route to most things. (I mean, hell, why make things tougher on yourself than you have to?) They don't like making choices. If I went to Circuit City or Best Buy, I'd have to decide between 3 dozen models of VCRS. There are only 4 models available at Walmart.
Once you've gotten some new product, it's easy to stick with similar stuff, as you don't have to learn as much. (okay, the VCR example doesn't stick as well, as it seems manufacturers take an evil delight in changing where the hell the 'set time' menu option's hidden). But well, if you've gotten a copy of MS Works with your Compaq/HP/whatever computer, it's not that much of a jump up to MS Word. I mean, sure Word Perfect has less bloat, and actually handles Tables of Contents well, and has that really nifty 'Reveal Codes' option, but well, it's more of an effort to switch from one program to another. [Although, Macs tend to make it less difficult, as the UI's fairly standard between programs]
How many of you, if some new spread sheet product came out, would be willing to convert every one of your existing documents over, or just stick with what you've been using for years? I'm guessing significantly less than 5%. [And most of that 5% are the ones who don't use spreadsheets]
What MS did, do, however, is do this nasty little 'site liscense' thing. So, suddenly, companies decide, 'Well, even though Bob's needs are different from Dave's and John's, we're going to make them all use the same program.' So now, Bob's torn, as he normally uses Lotus 123 at home, and Excel at work. So well, he caves, and pirates a copy of Excel for home use, so he doesn't have to keep switching his files back and forth, etc. After some time, he forgets all about how much better Lotus 123 was for his needs.
Had Bob not been lazy, he could have fought for his Lotus 123, and stayed happy. However, that would have required more of an effort than just being herded like a sheep, as the rest of the company's doing.
[Okay, so I'm bitter that someone from management went against all of the technical folk's recommendations for a new mail server last year, and we told 'em we wanted to switch user naming schemes, and they whined that everyone was going to have to switch all of their settings, so we were going to have to stick with the old stuff, so we didn't have to let people know how to change everything, and now I have to do 3-5 times as much work as all of the names are tied to another system, rather than making a clean break.]
um....I think I went off on a tangent, and didn't quite reinforce the lazy thing as well as I could, however, being a lazy person myself, I don't feel like fixing this comment itself, damnit.
And either get rid of the icon, or photoshop it to show locercase 'spam'.
Just making something lowercase does not make it no longer trademarked.
Photoshop is a rather nice program out there to edit pixelated images. It is not a generic verb which describes editing pixelated images.
Yes, the 'spam' image used by slashdot should be edited so that it does not show an image of SPAM canned luncheon meat. However, whomever wishes to edit the image should use whatever pixel editing program they may wish to use, such as gimp or any one of the other fine image editing programs out there.
If the companies don't fight for their names, then not only can the general public use them to refer to all similar products, but their competitors can also.
For those that are from the south, I know you've seen this discussion:
Although the 'Coke' name means 'Coca-Cola brand cola soft drink' in many areas, in some areas, it's used interchangably with 'soda'. (And I think it's still more normal than calling it a 'pop', which is the name I use to refer to my grandfather.)
And for those that believe that any publicity is good-- imagine that there's a scare due to some sort of tainting in the factory, and the headline reads
But then the article says that it's some mom and pop soda company, and not Coca-Cola brand. If companies do not protect their trademarks, this is something that has the potential of happening. (The misleading articles, not the death of people by contaminated coke bottles)I wish. Unfortunately, each of the massagers is independant, and requires a seperate power connection. [Of course, it's useful to keep harassing people whenever they try to use the massager, and just their side dies, and they keep insisting on switching sides with you, and you convince them that the couch doesn't like them]