How do you choose a car? You look for the seller who has what you want and for the lowest market price. The same thing applies to business contracts and now it applies to nurses as well. Big deal....
I am more troubled by the fact that these for-profit hospitals provide worse service than not-for-profit ones; that is fucking scary. I lost the link somewhere, but an extensive study done in Boston area provided very interesting information: for profit hospitals had more deaths per number of patients and more complains per number of patients than not-for-profit hospitals.
Linux is great. No, it seriously is. It is an absolute a must if you are a geek or a techie who likes to run servers and do all other funky stuff with low cost hardware. It is also great for production servers that need high uptime, education purposes, research, and other purposes that focus on performance, reliability and cost. However, Linux does fail when it comes to desktop and that is where MS and Apple may kick butt in the future.
My aunt does not care if she has to reboot a computer or if her e-mail client fails to get that e-mail. She does not care if a box running Linux can be untouched for days. She is not making money by using her Dell, she does not care if Linux can transfer file faster or if it is cheap. The same goes for millions users who just want something that works without having to hire a guru. Tell me what you want, Linux is still piss poor in that aspect.
I speak from experience. I have a Mac and Linux box setup at my house. The linux box is a web server/development box, the Mac is our office computer. The latter is being used by everybody, because people do not want to deal with buggy interfaces, additional configuration or unexpected results that are rather frequent if you use GNOME or KDE. Again, I am not talking about myself. I understand how the system works and it takes me a couple of seconds to fix most common problems; however, my girlfriend freaks out whenever she sees a strange error message or something screwy. She prefers Macs because "they are just nice, neat and they work without you having to do anything." Once Linux gets to that point, we'll talk about world domination.
Yep. That is exactly what my friends tell me. In my example these two guys did not have any tech degrees or training specific for public schools. However, they had bad attitudes, some ceritifications and lack of interest, which is reasonable if you are underpaid.
The key is to get people that are right for the job. Unfortunately, this will never happen because our government does not give a damn about our kids, our future.
My girlfriend is an occupational therapist; she was hired to provide assistance to 20 kids. By the end of the year she had to see 48 kids and (!) take crap from their parents for what the school was not doing according to the book. She has a complicated schedule and all sorts of activities that can benefit from IT; however, the school cannot provide anything. Some of her co-workers bought PDAs with their money for school use. Printers do not work. Macs are old and can't be used with Mac OS X. Instead of using a normal webmail, they use a prehistoric application that is just for the school use.
Staff that travels a lot (from school to school, like my gf) does not have laptops but all the reports must be typed. People have to write things out first and then re-type them at home. Also, it takes forever to solve problems, get new e-mail accounts, etc. At some point of time I wanted to go there and work for free because I was sick of all the complains.
Public schools should not rely on volunteers that might want to help out. Public schools should employ pretty much the best of the best they can find because kids are our future, you can't bail out on them. Unfortunately, that is not what I see nowadays.
I am thinking about it. However, I am just out of college and I need to work a lot (for money) because student loans are bitches to pay off.
I totally agree with you. I think that our government should find qualified people who are right for the job. Voluntering is good, but some of us do not have enough free time and can't have regular schedules (for example, I do travel a lot). My biggest concern is people who work for public schools but do not give a damn about what goes on there. I've seen so much money go to waste because people were not qualified enough. That and parents who sue school distrincts... but that is totally another topic.
I was a high school student several years ago; most of my family works for public schools and I have heard a lot of great stories about how IT works or does not work for teachers and students. Here is the summary.
As far as I remember, IT was a total disaster in my school. We were able to get computers and get them setup; however there was no qualified support. There was no single person responsible for providing user assistance and doing system administration! When computers crashed, students were not really allowed to repair them, instead our librarians tried to come to the rescue; it took them hours and hours to fix a simple problem. Go figure.
When it came to security of networks and school computers, it was even worse. First of all, every damn computer had some sort of "cop" software installed that prevented access to "bad" sites. As a result, students were not research about breast cancer or human sexuality eventhough the pages came from dot GOV. The best part about it was the fact that students usually knew more than teachers and staff; boy, it was fun seeing old ladies trying to remove a picture of a naked chick from the background.
Then there were students who did not know what to do with computers due to the lack of knowledge. I went to a good school that was required to bus certain number of students from the inner city and other "problematic" areas in order to meet some sort of a standard. Some of these kids knew zero about computers and there was nobody in school who could teach them. At least several computers had to be replaced every year because a frustrated student's actions.
My girlfriend work for public schools in MA. The state of IT in her schools is simply pitiful. They have the oldest technology, and virtually no help. Two guys who are in charge of the system have no interest in making things work. When the schools receive new computers or software, there is not enough training provided; therefore, nobody can use them efficiently!
So what's the point? Well, the point is that you can waste government's money in many ways. Direct stealing is just one of them.
Interesting response. Please re-read my post again. I said that our Constitution was NOT perfect. I did not claim that our laws are the best laws in the world.
The thing is that our Constitution cannot cover everybody in the whole goddamn world. There are exceptions to laws all around the world and if you take a look at some other countries, you'll realize that their judicial and executive systems of governments are not perfect as well.
Joke? Here is a joke for you: "What are the countries where monarchy still matters?" How about this one: "What country has a movement for re-establishing its monarchy?" Oh, here is another one: "What is the name of the country that has recently buried a heart of its king?" Our constitution is not perfect, but at least we are not trying to shove ourselves back into the 18th century.
Look, I might not agree with what my administration has done to people in Guantanamo Bay; but I believe that some of them were prisoners of war. Foreign prisoners of war are not usually treated under the civilian law; therefore, the U.S. Constitution does not apply to them. On the other hand, I've heard about a nice French law that prohibits Muslims from wearing head covers in public schools...
There is no confusion; however, there is American Constitution. Like it or not, free speech is to stay in the United States because this is one of the foundations of this country. There is no way you can censor it because tastes are subjective: hate is the the eye of the beholder. Our founding fathers have embedded the notion of freedom into the Constition; I do not see it being changed any time soon. Remember: as long as we have a right to bare arms, we have freedom of speech.
Look, I know what is the best way to implement a RAID setup. However, you have to ask yourself another question: what is the best bang for a dollar? I assume that you're just a geek(ette) that needs a safe form of backup without too much concern about performance issues. If so, go RAID 1.
RAID 1 is cheap, it is easy to implement. That is all you need if you are afraid of losing your MP3 collection and other crapt that you have managed to gather. You can also have a small backup server where your workstations rsync important data on a nightly basis. That is exactly what I do.
Tar, gzip, encrypt, rsync. A simple Perl (fuck perl, shell!) script can do it for you and then you run it from crontab. I find that having an independent backup solution is the best way to store all my important data that is nicely spread around several workstations and two laptops. Currently, I have only one drive, but I rotate my images and that is why nothing fills up. I will get RAID 1 setup as soon as get extra loot.
I work for a small non-profit and we use Open Source stuff for all of our core production environments. We haven't paid a dime for what we have, well except for hardware. And we are not in hardware business! IBM and Novell will rip themselves second assholes trying to promote Linux because it makes their solutions cheaper! When I worked for IBM, Linux was the word of the year. I bet it still is.
See, IBM is desperately trying to become the big blue of the 80s. They will explore and do anything to regain their status and Linux is a good answer, because customers can pay the same amount of money for much better systems if they do not have to shell out for the OS and other software.
Hey there. I graduated form the University of Vermont last year. My school was somewhat good about it but also, I could choose from different options.
First, I could use my school's account. If I did not like that, I could use my college's account (College of Engineering within UVM), finally if I did not like that, I could switch to my work account at school.
You have several options that may require some decision making. If you decide to battle your school and get more / better email space / service, they will either increase the tuition rate or tell you to fuck off; also, you're likely to make some enemies among the administration and IT people. The second option is to play a long with them.
They are going to delete a message that is older than 180 days. So what? They are not going to come to your dorm room and delete it from your workstation/laptop! Make sure that you retreive all the e-mail from the server and save it on your computer. I have tons of folders that store some important e-mail sorted by different categories. As a sys. admin, I am used to backing things up and therefore I do not lose any info. If you want to do it my way, here is what to do.
Get an old PC. Put Linux/*BSD on it and get some serious space. You can get 250GB without spending a lot of money nowadays. Use it as your backup server for important e-mail, documents, and the rest of the stuff that you do not want to lose. I learned how to use rsync and that is how I syncronize all my stuff on a nightly basis. Why do that? Well, for one thing, I do not want to run a mail server because I do not want to bother with spam filtering; some schools and ISPs seem to be much better at it. Secondly, read your IT agreement that you had to sign when you agreed to the school's services. Chances are that there is some bullshit in it. I prefer to keep my confidential info closer ot me; therefore, I delete messages from the server as soon as I retreive them.
The bottom line is that you have to realize: your college is not in business of IT or providing large e-mail accounts. They are there to educate you. Of course there are exceptions to the issue. I haven't discovered why my school decided to install flat screen TVs in dining halls....
PC mods remind me of souped up Honda Civics or as I call them "all show and no go." I am just curious why people waste so much money on something that can be quite expensive and so useless.
I haven't had a PC mod in my life. If I end up with extra money, I usually spend it on hardware or something that can increase my productivity, something that is useful. I do admire the fact that people are dedicated to making their boxes look good, but gee.... a computer is just a tool.
That is what I think. I would not touch Hotmail and Yahoo with a ten foot pole simply because they use their damn free services to market things. I do not take any address that ends with @hotmail or @yahoo as a serious address.
I do not get it... Has everybody stopped using the e-mail accounts that come with the Internet service?
I have been using my ISPs e-mail without problems for several years. They are good at dealing with spam, they provide webmail and they support SSL. Am I being pre-historic here?
If you asked me whether it was a good idea to use FreeBSD on a desktop, I'd say "no." Any Linux distribution would get the same answer as well. However, for the production environment I highly recommend either Free or Open BSDs. as somebody who works on Linux and BSD servers, I prefer BSD.
The weird thing about BSD is that it does not want to dominate the market. It does work well and for some reason there is no hype associate with it. Linux, on the other hand, is overhyped in my opinion. IBM and Novell have been running an avid ad compaign in order to push their Linux solutions, Linux has a somewhat odd *fellowship* among its users and it seems that there are several distros that receive a good amount of support. Still, I prefer FreeBSD.
From my point of view, it is really easy to manage BSDs. Ports collection makes it possible for me to tweak out installs for my system before they even happen. If I want to use binaries, I can do "pkg_add -r" as well. Generally, I find FreeBSD to be a more polished operating system. The installation process seems to be very straightforward and I simply love updating the source and the ports tree from CVS.
Kernel security levels is the other thing that I like about FreeBSD. Also, I do like that it comes with its own compiler and that I can do a lot of stuff w/o installing tons of GNU libraries. But then again, this is just my opinion. Yours might be different.
It seems to me that BSDs are better prepared for production environments by default. What do you think?
I've had various PDAs; none of them helped me to achieve anything. Most of them were presents that I used for roughly 2-4 weeks after receiving them. Most of the time I used the because I either had nothing to do or during boring lectures when I enterntained myself with some stupid games. With this in mind, I declared PDAs absolutely useless and decided to sell all of them. I have been PDA free for over a year and it feels good.
First of all, PDA means having one more thing that I need to use. If I want to use my cell phone, I need to get the numbers from PDA into the cell phone, if I get a new phone number via a phone call (caller ID), it means that I have to put it into my PDA. Then there is Address Book and iCal that sit on my Application folder on my Mac. I need to syncronize them with my PDA and the phone that has been out of sync with my PDA. The fun never stops. The best part of having a PDA or a cell phone that remembers numbers for you is the fact that you do not know any of the phone numbers!
I decided to cut back on automation once my mom moved into a new house. She had a new phone number that I stored in PDA. I was too freaky lazy to put it into my phone and when I lost the PDA I realized that I did not know my moms phone number. It was the first time in my life when I understood that without that damn PDA I could not call any of my friends. Fuck, that totally sucked!
I sold all my PDAs, got rid of the cell phone (the landline works just as well, thank you very much!) and decided to keep all my information on my computer via Address Book and iCal. My computer is backuped on a regular basis, therefore I am not afraid of losing important information. Moreover, now I am actually forced to memorize phone numbers and it feels great. I can call almost everybody I know without checking some freaking device. I have less things to carry in my pockets and if I am bored while riding a bus, I read.
I do not think that any of PDAs that are currently out on the market can justify their costs. The built-in cameras suck, most of the features are designed either to drain the battery or to purchase more accessories from that specific vendor. Going back to paper organizers was not for me; therefore, I decided to settle for the solution that came with my G4. It is not the best option, but it was there already. I am sure that there are certain products for Windows and *Nix that can do the same thing.
Offshoring creates opportunities for millions of otherwise disadvantaged individuals in countries where incomes are lower than they are in the US. Offshoring boosts their incomes and helps these poor countries become rich countries by funding improvements in their infrastructure and allowing them to access external resources through increased foreign currency reserves.
Puh-fucking-lease. We, Americans, do not owe jobs to third-world countries just as much as businesses do not owe jobs to us. However, if you choose to sell your damn goods and products in this country, please at least follow its rules and respect the opportunities.
American companies enjoy a well-established infrastructure that helps them to do business here. American government seems to rip itself a second asshole in order to please every fucking corporation by providing excessive tax breaks and letting things slide. Roads, police, emergency services, laws and other things make The United States a good country for both businesses and customers. This country seems to battler counter-theft goods and enforce laws on intellectual property unlike many other countries in the world. Guess who pays for all of this shit? People do. Our taxes pay for certain services and goods that make successful business possible!
Am I wrong to demand a certain degree of social and environmental repsonsibility from corporations that do their business with help of my tax money? Absolutely NOT. If corporate world does not want to show at least some socio-economic responsibility, it can kiss its ass good bye because businesses, just like their employees, can be replaced by better businesses.
FYI, I am not really concerned with outsourcing. I am troubled by the fact that my personal information is processed in third world countries where certain crimes are not even mentioned in the laws. I am pissed at the fact that the state of Massachusetts has decided to employ Indian people to solve its employment problems. Yep, currently all welfare support is done from India. Would not it make more sense to employ our own unemployed and inject their tax money back into the economy? You tell me. To be honest with you, I am really sick of Americans being world-wide cops and 911 services. If I start a company, I'll make sure that my fellow Americans are the first to benefit from it BECAUSE I AM NOTHING WITHOUT THIER SUPPORT.
From you resume it looks like you are working on starting your own business. Well, good luck to you. Just remember: your neighbors and fellow citizens pay taxes that bring essential services to where your business is going to be. Without other people's money you'd pay quite a lot for *protection* services provided to you by your next-door mobster and you would have no infrastructure to work with. I know it from the first hand experience that my dad and his friends had to undergo while trying to establish a company in Russia.
I am a recent graduate who found himself in a toilet when it came to getting a job. I have been working in the industry since my freshman year in college. By the time I graduated I had experiences with almost everything: from kernel development, to Java to PHP and system administration. Yet it took me forever to find a job. Now that I am gainfully employed I constantly wach out and see how I remain employed in the coastal United States. Here are my survival tips.
Look for a job where you can get into business-to-business relationships. When you deal with large companies, your job has a higher chance of staying in the States because companies like quality service. Dell was forced to bring its business customer support because managers did not enjoy talking to people who could not assit them in a reasonable manner. Moreover, once you get into B2B, you get to meet a lot of people; if you leave a good impression, some of them could help you out in the future.
If you are stuck with a job that involves receiving specifications over e-mail and then sending the code somewhere else, RUN. Unless you code something that is used for military of the government (meaning you have at least one level of clearance), you job is done. You must get out and do more things. I do not know what things you should do, but you must do something besides being a code monkey.
Learn how to do business; learn how to benefit your current employer or start your own shop. People do not create companies in order to employ more people. Businesses are here to make money. If you show your employers that you can benefit the company, they are likely to keep you closer.
Learn languages, cultures, and traditions. Improve your communication skills and presentability. Being flexible in the global economy is very important. I got my first job only becuase I was the only applicant who spoke fluent foreign language. I could talk and relate to our development team, something that other candidates could not offer. Based on my previous experience, I am going for one more foreign language, my fourth. Staying neatly groomed and socializing with your co-workers helps as well. I would not want to employ a person who is not welcome by the rest of my crew.
I followed these rules and, fortunately, I was able to find different jobs even during the recession. Also, remember whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger. Learn from other peoples' mistakes and do not forget to do so from yours.
I do not understand why people use shitty cell phone services. If you do not like what they offer you, why do not you cancel?
I had only one cell phone contract. It was the biggest mistake in my life (well, not counting that sorority girl). As soon as they started to show me shady charges, I told the CSR that she was a cunt, then I told the manager to fuck off and then I put my phone through the wall. Of course, this happened only because my contract was about to expire within a month, but it left a good impression.
Be your boss. Always tell people to fuck off whenever you feel that they need to fuck off; otherwise, everybody is going to ride your ass. I explicitly told the manager of my cell phone service that I wanted to pay $35USD per month for national-wide service. He laughed. I told him that he was a fat asshole and let the store. Did this improve my situation? Absolutely. I feel that whenever I tell people what I really think, I do not have to have excuses in the long run. I bet if some nut heads who bring AKs to their work places did what I do, we would not have freaking office shootouts. Anger relief stops people like me from doing things that I will regret in the future. If you are angry, do not keep your emotions inside, let them know what is going on. If you sit and bitch and post your shitty messages on slashdot, nobody is going to get the fucking point. What you really should do is take all your complains, roll them up in a tight roll and shove it down managers' throats. If you a person gets 10,000 phone calls a day that say "Your service suck, we cancel!" what do you think is going to happen? What if all Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-mobile and other customers decided to send their companies down the drain?
Do not like Verizon? Call them. Tell CSRs and their managers that you fucking hate their service more than your in-laws. Complain. Bitch. Get other people to do the same and you'll make Sprint, Verizon and T-mobile better companies. Remember, all of those cocksucking bastards are after YOUR wallet. Vote with your money.
As somebody who lived on the territory of the former USSR, I am not surprised that the majority of spam arrives from Russia and that kiddie pr0n sex rings are linked to companies in Belarus. Why does that happen? Well, compared to the United States those countries have virtually zero law enforcement and high levels of corruption.
Even with Vladimir Putin, Russia still lags behind in terms of law enforcement when it comes to protecting human rights, technology, women, children, etc. When I traveled across the republicts of the former USSR I was surprised by the amount of counter-theft goods that one could get through local flea markets. You can get CDs full of the latest software, like 3D Studio Max, for $2-3USD. If you get a several CDs, you get a discount. When you pop one of those puppies in your drive and read the instructions, they'll say "Please run a program called crack.exe in order to activate the product." Activation my ass. The same applies to DVDs, and brand-name products.
According to my friend who travelled to China, that country is pretty much in the same spot. Yes, they are good at banning people from accessing forbidden sites. Yet at the same time you can to to a street market and purchase a fake "NorthFace" jacket for $20USD or less; In the states you'd pay up to ten times as much. Then there are corrupt politicians and cops who can close their eyes provided that you pay them a certain amount of money. With that in mind, it is not a surprise that China and Russia lead in spam.
There is a lack of sync between technology and the laws that govern it in the countries that are not, well, *that developed* yet.
Panther, Mac OS 10.3, has a nifty tool that encrypts your user directory on a hard drive every time you log out; then it decrypts it when you login. Although I am not paranoid, I will use it in case my laptop has to go for repairs because I simply do not trust technicians.
Good point. However, nothing prevents me from taking images and scanning them for digital use.
One more thing: once in a while I do develop my pictures at Wal-Mart, CVS, etc. The quality is not bad at all! Most of the pictures are sent out to Kodak anyway. I have tried to do CVS One Hour development once and it was miserable. You do not have to spend a fortune to get good prints from film nowadays.
I am not trying to make freaking art myself. I take shots while I travel. Still, I do not find point-and-shoot digital cameras as useful because I cannot change the lens (the same goes for film point-and-shoot). I do not mean to argue that all digital cameras are bad. I've seen some wicked goods ones; they, alas, had price tags over $1,000. With point-and-shoot digital cameras I feel that I get very little value for my money. That is my own opinion.
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How do you choose a car? You look for the seller who has what you want and for the lowest market price. The same thing applies to business contracts and now it applies to nurses as well. Big deal....
I am more troubled by the fact that these for-profit hospitals provide worse service than not-for-profit ones; that is fucking scary. I lost the link somewhere, but an extensive study done in Boston area provided very interesting information: for profit hospitals had more deaths per number of patients and more complains per number of patients than not-for-profit hospitals.
Linux is great. No, it seriously is. It is an absolute a must if you are a geek or a techie who likes to run servers and do all other funky stuff with low cost hardware. It is also great for production servers that need high uptime, education purposes, research, and other purposes that focus on performance, reliability and cost. However, Linux does fail when it comes to desktop and that is where MS and Apple may kick butt in the future.
My aunt does not care if she has to reboot a computer or if her e-mail client fails to get that e-mail. She does not care if a box running Linux can be untouched for days. She is not making money by using her Dell, she does not care if Linux can transfer file faster or if it is cheap. The same goes for millions users who just want something that works without having to hire a guru. Tell me what you want, Linux is still piss poor in that aspect.
I speak from experience. I have a Mac and Linux box setup at my house. The linux box is a web server/development box, the Mac is our office computer. The latter is being used by everybody, because people do not want to deal with buggy interfaces, additional configuration or unexpected results that are rather frequent if you use GNOME or KDE. Again, I am not talking about myself. I understand how the system works and it takes me a couple of seconds to fix most common problems; however, my girlfriend freaks out whenever she sees a strange error message or something screwy. She prefers Macs because "they are just nice, neat and they work without you having to do anything." Once Linux gets to that point, we'll talk about world domination.
Dude, he's a Mormon. He does not believe in Physics, Science and Evolution :)
Yep. That is exactly what my friends tell me. In my example these two guys did not have any tech degrees or training specific for public schools. However, they had bad attitudes, some ceritifications and lack of interest, which is reasonable if you are underpaid.
The key is to get people that are right for the job. Unfortunately, this will never happen because our government does not give a damn about our kids, our future.
My girlfriend is an occupational therapist; she was hired to provide assistance to 20 kids. By the end of the year she had to see 48 kids and (!) take crap from their parents for what the school was not doing according to the book. She has a complicated schedule and all sorts of activities that can benefit from IT; however, the school cannot provide anything. Some of her co-workers bought PDAs with their money for school use. Printers do not work. Macs are old and can't be used with Mac OS X. Instead of using a normal webmail, they use a prehistoric application that is just for the school use.
Staff that travels a lot (from school to school, like my gf) does not have laptops but all the reports must be typed. People have to write things out first and then re-type them at home. Also, it takes forever to solve problems, get new e-mail accounts, etc. At some point of time I wanted to go there and work for free because I was sick of all the complains.
Public schools should not rely on volunteers that might want to help out. Public schools should employ pretty much the best of the best they can find because kids are our future, you can't bail out on them. Unfortunately, that is not what I see nowadays.
I am thinking about it. However, I am just out of college and I need to work a lot (for money) because student loans are bitches to pay off.
I totally agree with you. I think that our government should find qualified people who are right for the job. Voluntering is good, but some of us do not have enough free time and can't have regular schedules (for example, I do travel a lot). My biggest concern is people who work for public schools but do not give a damn about what goes on there. I've seen so much money go to waste because people were not qualified enough. That and parents who sue school distrincts... but that is totally another topic.
I was a high school student several years ago; most of my family works for public schools and I have heard a lot of great stories about how IT works or does not work for teachers and students. Here is the summary.
As far as I remember, IT was a total disaster in my school. We were able to get computers and get them setup; however there was no qualified support. There was no single person responsible for providing user assistance and doing system administration! When computers crashed, students were not really allowed to repair them, instead our librarians tried to come to the rescue; it took them hours and hours to fix a simple problem. Go figure.
When it came to security of networks and school computers, it was even worse. First of all, every damn computer had some sort of "cop" software installed that prevented access to "bad" sites. As a result, students were not research about breast cancer or human sexuality eventhough the pages came from dot GOV. The best part about it was the fact that students usually knew more than teachers and staff; boy, it was fun seeing old ladies trying to remove a picture of a naked chick from the background.
Then there were students who did not know what to do with computers due to the lack of knowledge. I went to a good school that was required to bus certain number of students from the inner city and other "problematic" areas in order to meet some sort of a standard. Some of these kids knew zero about computers and there was nobody in school who could teach them. At least several computers had to be replaced every year because a frustrated student's actions.
My girlfriend work for public schools in MA. The state of IT in her schools is simply pitiful. They have the oldest technology, and virtually no help. Two guys who are in charge of the system have no interest in making things work. When the schools receive new computers or software, there is not enough training provided; therefore, nobody can use them efficiently!
So what's the point? Well, the point is that you can waste government's money in many ways. Direct stealing is just one of them.
Interesting response. Please re-read my post again. I said that our Constitution was NOT perfect. I did not claim that our laws are the best laws in the world.
The thing is that our Constitution cannot cover everybody in the whole goddamn world. There are exceptions to laws all around the world and if you take a look at some other countries, you'll realize that their judicial and executive systems of governments are not perfect as well.
Joke? Here is a joke for you: "What are the countries where monarchy still matters?" How about this one: "What country has a movement for re-establishing its monarchy?" Oh, here is another one: "What is the name of the country that has recently buried a heart of its king?" Our constitution is not perfect, but at least we are not trying to shove ourselves back into the 18th century.
Look, I might not agree with what my administration has done to people in Guantanamo Bay; but I believe that some of them were prisoners of war. Foreign prisoners of war are not usually treated under the civilian law; therefore, the U.S. Constitution does not apply to them. On the other hand, I've heard about a nice French law that prohibits Muslims from wearing head covers in public schools...
There is no confusion; however, there is American Constitution. Like it or not, free speech is to stay in the United States because this is one of the foundations of this country. There is no way you can censor it because tastes are subjective: hate is the the eye of the beholder. Our founding fathers have embedded the notion of freedom into the Constition; I do not see it being changed any time soon. Remember: as long as we have a right to bare arms, we have freedom of speech.
Look, I know what is the best way to implement a RAID setup. However, you have to ask yourself another question: what is the best bang for a dollar? I assume that you're just a geek(ette) that needs a safe form of backup without too much concern about performance issues. If so, go RAID 1.
RAID 1 is cheap, it is easy to implement. That is all you need if you are afraid of losing your MP3 collection and other crapt that you have managed to gather. You can also have a small backup server where your workstations rsync important data on a nightly basis. That is exactly what I do.
Tar, gzip, encrypt, rsync. A simple Perl (fuck perl, shell!) script can do it for you and then you run it from crontab. I find that having an independent backup solution is the best way to store all my important data that is nicely spread around several workstations and two laptops. Currently, I have only one drive, but I rotate my images and that is why nothing fills up. I will get RAID 1 setup as soon as get extra loot.
I work for a small non-profit and we use Open Source stuff for all of our core production environments. We haven't paid a dime for what we have, well except for hardware. And we are not in hardware business! IBM and Novell will rip themselves second assholes trying to promote Linux because it makes their solutions cheaper! When I worked for IBM, Linux was the word of the year. I bet it still is.
See, IBM is desperately trying to become the big blue of the 80s. They will explore and do anything to regain their status and Linux is a good answer, because customers can pay the same amount of money for much better systems if they do not have to shell out for the OS and other software.
Hey there. I graduated form the University of Vermont last year. My school was somewhat good about it but also, I could choose from different options.
First, I could use my school's account. If I did not like that, I could use my college's account (College of Engineering within UVM), finally if I did not like that, I could switch to my work account at school.
You have several options that may require some decision making. If you decide to battle your school and get more / better email space / service, they will either increase the tuition rate or tell you to fuck off; also, you're likely to make some enemies among the administration and IT people. The second option is to play a long with them.
They are going to delete a message that is older than 180 days. So what? They are not going to come to your dorm room and delete it from your workstation/laptop! Make sure that you retreive all the e-mail from the server and save it on your computer. I have tons of folders that store some important e-mail sorted by different categories. As a sys. admin, I am used to backing things up and therefore I do not lose any info. If you want to do it my way, here is what to do.
Get an old PC. Put Linux/*BSD on it and get some serious space. You can get 250GB without spending a lot of money nowadays. Use it as your backup server for important e-mail, documents, and the rest of the stuff that you do not want to lose. I learned how to use rsync and that is how I syncronize all my stuff on a nightly basis. Why do that? Well, for one thing, I do not want to run a mail server because I do not want to bother with spam filtering; some schools and ISPs seem to be much better at it. Secondly, read your IT agreement that you had to sign when you agreed to the school's services. Chances are that there is some bullshit in it. I prefer to keep my confidential info closer ot me; therefore, I delete messages from the server as soon as I retreive them.
The bottom line is that you have to realize: your college is not in business of IT or providing large e-mail accounts. They are there to educate you. Of course there are exceptions to the issue. I haven't discovered why my school decided to install flat screen TVs in dining halls ....
PC mods remind me of souped up Honda Civics or as I call them "all show and no go." I am just curious why people waste so much money on something that can be quite expensive and so useless.
I haven't had a PC mod in my life. If I end up with extra money, I usually spend it on hardware or something that can increase my productivity, something that is useful. I do admire the fact that people are dedicated to making their boxes look good, but gee.... a computer is just a tool.
That is what I think. I would not touch Hotmail and Yahoo with a ten foot pole simply because they use their damn free services to market things. I do not take any address that ends with @hotmail or @yahoo as a serious address.
I do not get it... Has everybody stopped using the e-mail accounts that come with the Internet service?
I have been using my ISPs e-mail without problems for several years. They are good at dealing with spam, they provide webmail and they support SSL. Am I being pre-historic here?
If you asked me whether it was a good idea to use FreeBSD on a desktop, I'd say "no." Any Linux distribution would get the same answer as well. However, for the production environment I highly recommend either Free or Open BSDs. as somebody who works on Linux and BSD servers, I prefer BSD.
The weird thing about BSD is that it does not want to dominate the market. It does work well and for some reason there is no hype associate with it. Linux, on the other hand, is overhyped in my opinion. IBM and Novell have been running an avid ad compaign in order to push their Linux solutions, Linux has a somewhat odd *fellowship* among its users and it seems that there are several distros that receive a good amount of support. Still, I prefer FreeBSD.
From my point of view, it is really easy to manage BSDs. Ports collection makes it possible for me to tweak out installs for my system before they even happen. If I want to use binaries, I can do "pkg_add -r" as well. Generally, I find FreeBSD to be a more polished operating system. The installation process seems to be very straightforward and I simply love updating the source and the ports tree from CVS.
Kernel security levels is the other thing that I like about FreeBSD. Also, I do like that it comes with its own compiler and that I can do a lot of stuff w/o installing tons of GNU libraries. But then again, this is just my opinion. Yours might be different. It seems to me that BSDs are better prepared for production environments by default. What do you think?
I've had various PDAs; none of them helped me to achieve anything. Most of them were presents that I used for roughly 2-4 weeks after receiving them. Most of the time I used the because I either had nothing to do or during boring lectures when I enterntained myself with some stupid games. With this in mind, I declared PDAs absolutely useless and decided to sell all of them. I have been PDA free for over a year and it feels good.
First of all, PDA means having one more thing that I need to use. If I want to use my cell phone, I need to get the numbers from PDA into the cell phone, if I get a new phone number via a phone call (caller ID), it means that I have to put it into my PDA. Then there is Address Book and iCal that sit on my Application folder on my Mac. I need to syncronize them with my PDA and the phone that has been out of sync with my PDA. The fun never stops. The best part of having a PDA or a cell phone that remembers numbers for you is the fact that you do not know any of the phone numbers!
I decided to cut back on automation once my mom moved into a new house. She had a new phone number that I stored in PDA. I was too freaky lazy to put it into my phone and when I lost the PDA I realized that I did not know my moms phone number. It was the first time in my life when I understood that without that damn PDA I could not call any of my friends. Fuck, that totally sucked!
I sold all my PDAs, got rid of the cell phone (the landline works just as well, thank you very much!) and decided to keep all my information on my computer via Address Book and iCal. My computer is backuped on a regular basis, therefore I am not afraid of losing important information. Moreover, now I am actually forced to memorize phone numbers and it feels great. I can call almost everybody I know without checking some freaking device. I have less things to carry in my pockets and if I am bored while riding a bus, I read.
I do not think that any of PDAs that are currently out on the market can justify their costs. The built-in cameras suck, most of the features are designed either to drain the battery or to purchase more accessories from that specific vendor. Going back to paper organizers was not for me; therefore, I decided to settle for the solution that came with my G4. It is not the best option, but it was there already. I am sure that there are certain products for Windows and *Nix that can do the same thing.
Puh-fucking-lease. We, Americans, do not owe jobs to third-world countries just as much as businesses do not owe jobs to us. However, if you choose to sell your damn goods and products in this country, please at least follow its rules and respect the opportunities.
American companies enjoy a well-established infrastructure that helps them to do business here. American government seems to rip itself a second asshole in order to please every fucking corporation by providing excessive tax breaks and letting things slide. Roads, police, emergency services, laws and other things make The United States a good country for both businesses and customers. This country seems to battler counter-theft goods and enforce laws on intellectual property unlike many other countries in the world. Guess who pays for all of this shit? People do. Our taxes pay for certain services and goods that make successful business possible!
Am I wrong to demand a certain degree of social and environmental repsonsibility from corporations that do their business with help of my tax money? Absolutely NOT. If corporate world does not want to show at least some socio-economic responsibility, it can kiss its ass good bye because businesses, just like their employees, can be replaced by better businesses.
FYI, I am not really concerned with outsourcing. I am troubled by the fact that my personal information is processed in third world countries where certain crimes are not even mentioned in the laws. I am pissed at the fact that the state of Massachusetts has decided to employ Indian people to solve its employment problems. Yep, currently all welfare support is done from India. Would not it make more sense to employ our own unemployed and inject their tax money back into the economy? You tell me. To be honest with you, I am really sick of Americans being world-wide cops and 911 services. If I start a company, I'll make sure that my fellow Americans are the first to benefit from it BECAUSE I AM NOTHING WITHOUT THIER SUPPORT.
From you resume it looks like you are working on starting your own business. Well, good luck to you. Just remember: your neighbors and fellow citizens pay taxes that bring essential services to where your business is going to be. Without other people's money you'd pay quite a lot for *protection* services provided to you by your next-door mobster and you would have no infrastructure to work with. I know it from the first hand experience that my dad and his friends had to undergo while trying to establish a company in Russia.
I am a recent graduate who found himself in a toilet when it came to getting a job. I have been working in the industry since my freshman year in college. By the time I graduated I had experiences with almost everything: from kernel development, to Java to PHP and system administration. Yet it took me forever to find a job. Now that I am gainfully employed I constantly wach out and see how I remain employed in the coastal United States. Here are my survival tips.
Look for a job where you can get into business-to-business relationships. When you deal with large companies, your job has a higher chance of staying in the States because companies like quality service. Dell was forced to bring its business customer support because managers did not enjoy talking to people who could not assit them in a reasonable manner. Moreover, once you get into B2B, you get to meet a lot of people; if you leave a good impression, some of them could help you out in the future.
If you are stuck with a job that involves receiving specifications over e-mail and then sending the code somewhere else, RUN. Unless you code something that is used for military of the government (meaning you have at least one level of clearance), you job is done. You must get out and do more things. I do not know what things you should do, but you must do something besides being a code monkey.
Learn how to do business; learn how to benefit your current employer or start your own shop. People do not create companies in order to employ more people. Businesses are here to make money. If you show your employers that you can benefit the company, they are likely to keep you closer.
Learn languages, cultures, and traditions. Improve your communication skills and presentability. Being flexible in the global economy is very important. I got my first job only becuase I was the only applicant who spoke fluent foreign language. I could talk and relate to our development team, something that other candidates could not offer. Based on my previous experience, I am going for one more foreign language, my fourth. Staying neatly groomed and socializing with your co-workers helps as well. I would not want to employ a person who is not welcome by the rest of my crew.
I followed these rules and, fortunately, I was able to find different jobs even during the recession. Also, remember whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger. Learn from other peoples' mistakes and do not forget to do so from yours.
I do not understand why people use shitty cell phone services. If you do not like what they offer you, why do not you cancel?
I had only one cell phone contract. It was the biggest mistake in my life (well, not counting that sorority girl). As soon as they started to show me shady charges, I told the CSR that she was a cunt, then I told the manager to fuck off and then I put my phone through the wall. Of course, this happened only because my contract was about to expire within a month, but it left a good impression.
Be your boss. Always tell people to fuck off whenever you feel that they need to fuck off; otherwise, everybody is going to ride your ass. I explicitly told the manager of my cell phone service that I wanted to pay $35USD per month for national-wide service. He laughed. I told him that he was a fat asshole and let the store. Did this improve my situation? Absolutely. I feel that whenever I tell people what I really think, I do not have to have excuses in the long run. I bet if some nut heads who bring AKs to their work places did what I do, we would not have freaking office shootouts. Anger relief stops people like me from doing things that I will regret in the future. If you are angry, do not keep your emotions inside, let them know what is going on. If you sit and bitch and post your shitty messages on slashdot, nobody is going to get the fucking point. What you really should do is take all your complains, roll them up in a tight roll and shove it down managers' throats. If you a person gets 10,000 phone calls a day that say "Your service suck, we cancel!" what do you think is going to happen? What if all Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-mobile and other customers decided to send their companies down the drain?
Do not like Verizon? Call them. Tell CSRs and their managers that you fucking hate their service more than your in-laws. Complain. Bitch. Get other people to do the same and you'll make Sprint, Verizon and T-mobile better companies. Remember, all of those cocksucking bastards are after YOUR wallet. Vote with your money.
Ciao.
As somebody who lived on the territory of the former USSR, I am not surprised that the majority of spam arrives from Russia and that kiddie pr0n sex rings are linked to companies in Belarus. Why does that happen? Well, compared to the United States those countries have virtually zero law enforcement and high levels of corruption.
Even with Vladimir Putin, Russia still lags behind in terms of law enforcement when it comes to protecting human rights, technology, women, children, etc. When I traveled across the republicts of the former USSR I was surprised by the amount of counter-theft goods that one could get through local flea markets. You can get CDs full of the latest software, like 3D Studio Max, for $2-3USD. If you get a several CDs, you get a discount. When you pop one of those puppies in your drive and read the instructions, they'll say "Please run a program called crack.exe in order to activate the product." Activation my ass. The same applies to DVDs, and brand-name products.
According to my friend who travelled to China, that country is pretty much in the same spot. Yes, they are good at banning people from accessing forbidden sites. Yet at the same time you can to to a street market and purchase a fake "NorthFace" jacket for $20USD or less; In the states you'd pay up to ten times as much. Then there are corrupt politicians and cops who can close their eyes provided that you pay them a certain amount of money. With that in mind, it is not a surprise that China and Russia lead in spam.
There is a lack of sync between technology and the laws that govern it in the countries that are not, well, *that developed* yet.
Panther, Mac OS 10.3, has a nifty tool that encrypts your user directory on a hard drive every time you log out; then it decrypts it when you login. Although I am not paranoid, I will use it in case my laptop has to go for repairs because I simply do not trust technicians.
Good point. However, nothing prevents me from taking images and scanning them for digital use.
One more thing: once in a while I do develop my pictures at Wal-Mart, CVS, etc. The quality is not bad at all! Most of the pictures are sent out to Kodak anyway. I have tried to do CVS One Hour development once and it was miserable. You do not have to spend a fortune to get good prints from film nowadays.
I am not trying to make freaking art myself. I take shots while I travel. Still, I do not find point-and-shoot digital cameras as useful because I cannot change the lens (the same goes for film point-and-shoot). I do not mean to argue that all digital cameras are bad. I've seen some wicked goods ones; they, alas, had price tags over $1,000. With point-and-shoot digital cameras I feel that I get very little value for my money. That is my own opinion.
Yep, that is it. This can happen in SLRs too, but only if you use cheap lenses. In any case, once you change the lens, you're all set.