Whether you want to believe it or not, programmers are a highly optimistic bunch. This is especially true WRT any technological issue, where you almost never see actual analysis of possible problems with a system. Most of the time, this is a good thing, as most systems are relatively benign (actually, most are banal, but that's another issue) and developers need their optimism to face ever more complex code and systems. However it does make them tend to underestimate the time that development will take.
Another reason that developers tend to underestimate development time is that they tend to have very healthy egos when it comes to technological issues. Again, when facing the complexity of modern code and systems, this is probably a healthy defense mechanism.
But when you couple all of this with a management that wants to believe deflated time estimates, it's no wonder that most project end up taking more time than initially thought.
HP of today reminds me of DEC and Lucent. None of these companies seem to be able to market and profit from the fruits of their massive engineering talent.
This is The HP Way...
It's really not surprising. This is a company that was built by geeks. They built products for geeks. Then they expanded outside their core geek area (test and measurements) into computers and were OK as long as geeks were making the purchasing decisions. But as truly geek-run departments wither in most companies and purchasing decisions (d)evolve to purchasing agents who look more at the bottom line than at feature set or reliability, geek-affinity gear no longer sells.
They'll need a whole new paradigm at HP before they regain growth. One that will prove painful to both Marketing and Engineering alike. Too bad Carly's not the one to do it. You need more than a number-chrunching, defensive player like her. They'll need to find someone with a real vision of what they want HP to look like - a vision that looks not to the past, but to a new future and new markets.
They worked on maby things, from the Pixar Image Computer, film scanning, the beginnings of RenderMan and shading languages and digital compositing, among many things. They produced the Death Star hologram for Return of the Jedi. One of the last few things they did was the Andre and Wally B. short, that's why you'll see Lucasfilm credits in there.
Although many folks are not aware of it, most of this was done in custom hardware. They needed framebuffers and the like that were unavailable commercially at that time. They also had an interal Computer-Aided Engineering department that rolled their own design automation system.
How do I know this? They were at the 1984 design Automation Conference, trying to sell their design automation system as a sifeline. We were competitors who had a suite down the hall from them. They came to see our demo and we went to see theirs. I got a nice T-shirt from them and next year, they weren't back. It's OK, we weren't either, having been acquired by HP.
It was still a nice T-shirt though. I wore it for many years...
Nike "sweatshops"...comparable to...factories in America...during the late 19th [century]... Crushed by a coal machine vs. having to hold it too long: you decide.
But why does one have to decide on either of your alternatives? The problem with your viewpoint of comparing 19'th century American factories with today's workshop, is that we (or, at least a few of us) have decided that safe and humane working conditions should be a right. This was not true in the 19'th century. We have also shown that it is possible to build a prosperous economy that upholds these values (vis. 1950-60 America, most of Europe today). The fact that you make this a choice between two abhorrent conditions says more about you than the economic situation. The fact that this was modded to +3 insightful demonstrates the paucity of morality of the average Slashdot reader quite handsomely.
Submitted for your approval... Eddie Smith, an altogether unimpressive specimen of manhood and of mankind. Never one to broaden his own horizons, Eddie will take a trip tonight; A trip that will find his world expanded beyond anything that he has known before; A trip into... The Geek Zone."
Eddie worked at Fry's. It was an OK job he guessed, except when people asked him tough questions. Questions like, "Where are the car stereo?" and "Do you think this 2 GHz P4 is fast enough to run Microsoft Word?" Some days he found himself wishing to return to his old job at Burger King.
One day while trying to avoid customers back in the storage area of the warehouse, Eddie found himself lost in a maze of cartons. Upon turning a corner, he found himself faced by a monitor having a window holding the message:
Free P0rn!!!! Click here for a good time!
Underneath this was a button that said only, "Enter".
"All right!" thought Eddie, "Free p0rn!"
He grabbed the mouse sitting beside the monitor and clicked...
Eddie found himself standing in a room with hundres of monitors. In the one directly in front of him he saw the monitor where he had stood only a moment ago. "Oh fuck," thought Eddie, "this must be the security area."
Suddenly a voice boomed behind him, "I am the Great SysMin."
"Huh?" said Eddie, turning around.
"I said, I am the Great SysMin!" said a tall man in a turban, "Your not very quick, are you?"
"Then this isn't security?" asked Eddie.
"No, not very quick at all," said the SysMin, rolling his eyes, "Look kid, this is where I live. I am the Great SysMin. I used to be a genie until they got rid of the lamp schtick. But we got a good union. the had management retrain us on this new equipment and... Well, we're back."
"A genie?" asked Eddie, "Like Aladdin and shit?"
That's SysMin to you, boy -- Great SysMin. Now I got a meeting to get to in twenty minutes, solet's cut to the chase."
Eddie interjected, "I know! I know! I get three wishes!"
"Can you just shut up?" asked the SysMin, "first of all, you don't get three wishes any more. Management said it was costing too much. What you get now is one click."
"One click?, asked Eddie, "What the hell is that?"
The Great Gen^H^H^HSysMin pointed to a gold encased monitor. Sitting in front of it were a keyboard and mouse whose buttons were jewels. "Here's the scoop," said the SysMin, "You get to use the mouse to select a web site. The left one goes forward, the right one goes back, and the middle button puts you into the site,"
"Puts you into the site?" questioned Eddie.
"Yes," said the SysMin, "Puts you into the site. You get to live there forever."
"Wow!" thought Eddie, "This could be great!
The Sysmin said, "In order to facilitate your search, may I help you select a site?"
"Huh?"
"No, not very quick at all," muttered the SysMin as he added, "What kind of sites do you want to look at"
"P0rn!" yelled Eddie, "The hottest, nastiest p0rn out there!"
The Sysmin sighed, "They always want p0rn. Just once I wish one of them would choose Congress. But...".
The SysMin led Eddie to the machine and set him in front of it. Eddie clicked the forward button time and time again. A plethora of beautiful young ladies flashed before his eyes. Blonde, brunette, redheads; old and young; partially or totally unclothed; many performing acts that... well, acts that would make Eddie's mother blush.
And suddenly, Eddie stopped, staring transfixed at the screen. Displayed there was the most beautiful woman that Eddie had ever seen. Flame red hair and liquid green eyes shone out at him. Her lips were ruby and perfectly formed. Clothed in only her own glory, her legs didn't seem to stop until they reached the most magnificent chest Eddie had ever seen.
"That's the one!" exclaimed Eddie, "She's it!"
"Amanda, " sighed the SysMin, "They all choose Amanda.
"Are you sure you have chosen wisely?" asked the SysMin, "What is done will never be undone."
"Yes, I'm sure! I'm sure!" shouted Eddie, "Send me there!"
The Sysmin said, "Then click the middle button and your dream will come true."
Maybe it was the fatigue from clicking the mouse so many times, and maybe it was the tension of anticipation that caused it. Eddie had just a moment to see that his finger had glanced the left mouse button before it finally landed on the middle one. With a quick glance at the screen, Eddie screamed in horror as he realized that he would not be with his beautiful Amanda throughout all eternity, but instead would be here.
His screams echoed and died away, mixed with the SysMin's chuckled voice, "Oh, yes. They always pick Amanda..."
It is said that one should never accept gifts from SysMins, for there is always a high price to be paid. A price that Eddie Smith would be tightly stretched to pay. His price? A one-way ticket to his own hellish corner of "The Geek Zone..."
When is someone going to build a new type of machine architecture... that is optimized for absolute reliability... and then use Linux?
It's been done. Look at the IBM iSeries and zSeries, both of which are able to run Linux. Best reliability in the world, too. Plus better scalability than any crappy PC boxen.
I see this also as a serious threat to the development of new Internet services. If you look at most of the existing Internet technologies (http, nntp, smtp, bind...), they were all created in universities as "gray research", often by students. In a tightly firewalled Internet, they might never have made it out.
As much as I agree that universities should keep their networks open, I have to disagree with this point. Why? Because initial "gray" work can (and probably should) still be done on an isolated network. Not only does it make sure that projects don't accidently kill the campus or departmental network, it also makes debugging a heck of a lot easier. And, once the prototypical work is done, you can usually convince some professor to beat IT into submission for you. Most departments have a couple of spare boxes lying about (heck, back at my school twenty years ago, there were usually anywhere from 2-3 midicomputers lying about totally unutilized at any time). Hubs are cheap. Linux makes a relatively stable development platform for gray work. So, in the end, I don't see "sealed tight" campus networks as a huge impediment to self-motivated research (unless it's cultural research into the latest works of Limp Bizkit).
Globalisation vs. Fundamentalism
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Globalization
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This is not a new viewpoint. In his book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Huntington makes a similar point, but enlarges it to include differences of viewpoints between the Western, modernist traditions and even more cultures. This, of course, is part of a whole cannon of works of that period attempting to debunk Fukuyama's viewpoint, espoused in his book The End of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama still believes that the whole Middle East dustup is the exception that proves the rule to his theory.
My opinion? Fukuyama would be correct if people actually did act rationally. But, having grown up among many fundamentalists (of the good, Christian variety:-), I know that people will often do things against their own best interests in the name of their religions, their cultures, and their personal identities. It's not even clear that there is any apparent march toward traditional, western rationality - look at how quickly things devolved in Yugoslavia.
Today, there are enough cultural (Notice how that word starts with "cult"? Same Greek root!) differences and irrationality about to make Huntington's thesis look more believable at this time.
me no think fans of original be liking dumbed down sequels...
OK, I have to say that Lucas IS a marketing genius. Has anyone considered the possibility that he's just cutting down expectations in the second trilogy so that he can really wow the audience for the third? If this is his plan, you can count on this one being a bit better than Episode 1, and E3 being a bit of a downer again. After that, expect a crash-bang ending in E7-9.
Of course, the other possibility is that he's just a cynical old hack turning out crap because he knows that no matter how bad the movies are, a bunch of kids and loser geeks are going to go see them, buy the crappy toys that go with them, and make him a ton of bucks:-). Time will tell...
Get a second machine and tell them it will be for your personal use and never on the network. Set its IP address to be the same as the SOE machine. In the morning when you come in, unplug the SOE machine from the network and plug in your personal machine. When you leave in the evening, make sure that the SOE machine is pluged in for back up, nazification, etc.
Just make sure to keep your ear to the rail to hear the approaching hoards of IT folk around upgrade time so you can swith fast...
Having the consumer electronics folks against this is good, since they have a well-funded lobby (though it may not be as influential as the MPAA). That's what will slow down this kind of bad legislation.
Unless they cut a deal with the MPAA, getting other concessions for their lack of opposition. Just think, the MPAA could ban all of those BAD foreign components that didn't have the joint CEIA/MPAA seal of approval, which takes many years of verification to receive due to its rigorous nature. Of course, American manufacturers (and their South Asian partners) get first crack at being tested.
Don't think something like this can happen? This is business. The electronics industry isn't in this for free speech or any other such ideological crap. As long as they can keep making a buck, they're happy.
So we get a visit from a suit: "Get Norton by Friday or your being disconnected"
Sounds more like it's time to get a new landlord or go external for connection. But, bottom line, it IS his network. He has a right to do what he thinks is best to supply the service for ALL his customers. He is obviously doing his best to deal with the situation (hiring consultants, etc.) in a situation that he didn't start, he doesn't want, and, quite frankly, doesn't understand. There could be worse things -like the landlord who is just as clueless and says "I don't care". Yes, it's sad that the particular consultants he's hiring doesn't say "Use any AV system you want as long as the defs are up to date", but HE doesn't want to become an expert in this. Nor should he need to be.
Just consider yourself lucky that he doesn't also force you to allow your system to be monitored so that he can make sure your security is up to date. There's a big market for managed security out there and, for guys like your landlord, it can lead to substantially lower TCO than allowing everyone on his network to "do his own thing". Most of them require access to your system to make sure that defs are up to date, patches installed, etc.
Again, it's HIS network. Although we sympathise, you need to look at stuff like this more carefully before you sign your multi-year lease. We can only hope this has been a learning experience for you.
I fail to see why we have movie reviews by anyone on slashdot.
Well, I fail to see why ANY particular article shows up on Slashdot other than the editors select articles that they think will be interesting and comment-provoking. Obviously, from the 242 comments about the article (as of Sunday evening), they did something right here. For comparison, the article on the launch of the Zodiac Star (which most would say belongs here) has only 71 responses at this time. In short, whatever the hell else you want to think about him, Katz draws audience and participation, so I wish people would stop bashing the guy and his articles. If you took time to read them, you'd find they are pretty damn well written and are at least absent the grammar and spelling errors attendant with other Slashdot contributors.
Also nobody has said anything yet about TCO - how much regular maintenance will this require, what about consumables, what's the duty cycle and what's the lifetime.
At the peak of the CA energy crisis, I looked at a (overly) simple version of TCO, assuming only gas costs and replacement of fuel cells every five years (what GE was shooting for when I took a look at their proposed home generation solution). The cost per generated KWH was a bit more then just being on the grid (at least up here in Oregon).
Ballard may have reduced cost or I may have left out some expenses, but it's not quite ready for prime-time yet...
Remember when Copy II Plus came out for the Apple II and it could break every single media-based copyprotect scheme that existed at the time?
There was also no DMCA at the time. Current purveyors of such technologies will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This means that the only tools like this will be underground and Open Source. And, of course, this means that all Open Source people are pirates and possibly terrorists. And so we should just put 'em all away.
This is just fscking depressing...
Re:what's the difference?
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VIM 6.0 is Out
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Well, one can be used to write text to a file and one can be used to write text to a file. Does this start making sense yet? I hope so because here's the really neat thing - one can be used to search for and replace text in a file and the other one can be used to search for and replace text in a file.
I hope this clears up any confusion in your mind...
People need to be responsible for their actions and their words.
This coming from a man who hides behind an acronym and obfuscated E-mail address?
Ya know, son, the only reason I put stupid numbers after my name here on Slashdot is that my name without the numbers was taken (and to all of the other Frank Adrians in the world, "Hi!"). I also don't obfuscate my E-mail address. I know it seems quaint to not hide one's ID in these days, but I started using the net 20+ years ago and haven't seen the need for either of these things yet. I don't get inundated with spam and, in fact, the relatively light smattering of hate mail just adds a bit of spice to my day.
In fact, back in the old days, we tended to ignore things said by "Anonymous Cowards" who hid behind nicks and handles, these being the signs of clueless AOL'ers (or their equivalent - Compuserve or Prodigy users) and BB'ers - PC kiddies who didn't know how to handle a UNIX system. The fact that a majority of/.'ers use these now is a sad reflection of how low the online community has sunk.
Now it sounds like I abhore this practice - I do. But I would also defend any stupid loser's right to do so. And your hiding behind a nick while spouting crap like the above is simple hypocracy. Sheesh...
They need the money, advertisers think it's a good idea, and students won't notice it after a week or two...
Except that during the next budget cycle, the Universities will have to figure in this revenue and the government will likely give them less in the same kind. Net gain to University in the long term: 0. We won't even mention what might happen to academic freedom if this takes off. How about the Glaxo-Welcome College of Pharmacy at Oxford where students aren't even allowed to be taught about drugs made by other manufacturers?
Think it can't happen? Colleges in the US are already suppressing some research because of patent entanglements with corporations. My advice to the British is not to let this camel's nose into the tent without a lot of hard glances.
... is here. Sadly, just as you need a subscription to read the Nature article, you need a membership here, as well (or be willing to pay $15.00 via CC for an immediate download). You can't even get a preprint or tech report at Aarhus. Is it just me or are others starting to feel as if technical information, which was once disseminated for little or no cost, is now becoming increasingly expensive?
His version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" leaves me speechless.
Actually, the passionate ending of his unique performance of "Mr. Tambourine Man" will be etched into my mind for ever... Will I ever be able to listen to other music again?
If you want a REALLY secure system, try WebSphere on an IBM AS/400... uh... IBM iSeries box or run Apache under their PASE subsystem. Most secure system in the world (perhaps even more secure than the S/390... uh... zSeries) and can even be auto-configured to a C2-secure level out of the box - just set your QSECLVL system variable to 50 (I think, it's been a while).
There are actually two non-religious, non-commercial station here in Portland, Oregon. KPBS is licensed by the Portland Public Schools (of all things) and has both an AM and FM service with the FM being a classical music service and the AM being a alternative music service. KBOO is the other FM service with repeaters in Hood River. It's a community radio station with everything from Hip-Hop to Jazz to Klezmer to Bluegrass and a lot of radical politics thrown in. Both of these have NOTHING to do with NPR and after the lovely NPP/NAB backed micro-powered radio FCC ruling, these are the types of (really) public supported stations that get my dollars.
... is if the RIAA really, really, REALLY hates this kind of system, why don't they just kill 'em by setting up a bunch of servers to send out a bunch of misidentified items. For instance, make available for download porn audio tapes misidentified as gospel tunes, avant garde jazz misidentified as Britney, classical music mislabeled as Radiohead, and sermons on the evil of music piracy as all of the above. If the user only had a one in twenty chance in actually downloading what they wanted, the services would dry up really quick. It's Gresham's law applied to downloading - bad content drives out good.
On second thought, if any of you folks in the RIAA are reading this, I will be filing a patent on this "process", so don't try it without paying me royalties.
Slashdot Mirror
Another reason that developers tend to underestimate development time is that they tend to have very healthy egos when it comes to technological issues. Again, when facing the complexity of modern code and systems, this is probably a healthy defense mechanism.
But when you couple all of this with a management that wants to believe deflated time estimates, it's no wonder that most project end up taking more time than initially thought.
This is The HP Way...
It's really not surprising. This is a company that was built by geeks. They built products for geeks. Then they expanded outside their core geek area (test and measurements) into computers and were OK as long as geeks were making the purchasing decisions. But as truly geek-run departments wither in most companies and purchasing decisions (d)evolve to purchasing agents who look more at the bottom line than at feature set or reliability, geek-affinity gear no longer sells.
They'll need a whole new paradigm at HP before they regain growth. One that will prove painful to both Marketing and Engineering alike. Too bad Carly's not the one to do it. You need more than a number-chrunching, defensive player like her. They'll need to find someone with a real vision of what they want HP to look like - a vision that looks not to the past, but to a new future and new markets.
Although many folks are not aware of it, most of this was done in custom hardware. They needed framebuffers and the like that were unavailable commercially at that time. They also had an interal Computer-Aided Engineering department that rolled their own design automation system.
How do I know this? They were at the 1984 design Automation Conference, trying to sell their design automation system as a sifeline. We were competitors who had a suite down the hall from them. They came to see our demo and we went to see theirs. I got a nice T-shirt from them and next year, they weren't back. It's OK, we weren't either, having been acquired by HP.
It was still a nice T-shirt though. I wore it for many years...
But why does one have to decide on either of your alternatives? The problem with your viewpoint of comparing 19'th century American factories with today's workshop, is that we (or, at least a few of us) have decided that safe and humane working conditions should be a right. This was not true in the 19'th century. We have also shown that it is possible to build a prosperous economy that upholds these values (vis. 1950-60 America, most of Europe today). The fact that you make this a choice between two abhorrent conditions says more about you than the economic situation. The fact that this was modded to +3 insightful demonstrates the paucity of morality of the average Slashdot reader quite handsomely.
Eddie worked at Fry's. It was an OK job he guessed, except when people asked him tough questions. Questions like, "Where are the car stereo?" and "Do you think this 2 GHz P4 is fast enough to run Microsoft Word?" Some days he found himself wishing to return to his old job at Burger King.
One day while trying to avoid customers back in the storage area of the warehouse, Eddie found himself lost in a maze of cartons. Upon turning a corner, he found himself faced by a monitor having a window holding the message:
Free P0rn!!!!
Click here for a good time!
Underneath this was a button that said only, "Enter".
"All right!" thought Eddie, "Free p0rn!"
He grabbed the mouse sitting beside the monitor and clicked...
Eddie found himself standing in a room with hundres of monitors. In the one directly in front of him he saw the monitor where he had stood only a moment ago. "Oh fuck," thought Eddie, "this must be the security area."
Suddenly a voice boomed behind him, "I am the Great SysMin."
"Huh?" said Eddie, turning around.
"I said, I am the Great SysMin!" said a tall man in a turban, "Your not very quick, are you?"
"Then this isn't security?" asked Eddie.
"No, not very quick at all," said the SysMin, rolling his eyes, "Look kid, this is where I live. I am the Great SysMin. I used to be a genie until they got rid of the lamp schtick. But we got a good union. the had management retrain us on this new equipment and... Well, we're back."
"A genie?" asked Eddie, "Like Aladdin and shit?"
That's SysMin to you, boy -- Great SysMin. Now I got a meeting to get to in twenty minutes, solet's cut to the chase."
Eddie interjected, "I know! I know! I get three wishes!"
"Can you just shut up?" asked the SysMin, "first of all, you don't get three wishes any more. Management said it was costing too much. What you get now is one click."
"One click?, asked Eddie, "What the hell is that?"
The Great Gen^H^H^HSysMin pointed to a gold encased monitor. Sitting in front of it were a keyboard and mouse whose buttons were jewels. "Here's the scoop," said the SysMin, "You get to use the mouse to select a web site. The left one goes forward, the right one goes back, and the middle button puts you into the site,"
"Puts you into the site?" questioned Eddie.
"Yes," said the SysMin, "Puts you into the site. You get to live there forever."
"Wow!" thought Eddie, "This could be great!
The Sysmin said, "In order to facilitate your search, may I help you select a site?"
"Huh?"
"No, not very quick at all," muttered the SysMin as he added, "What kind of sites do you want to look at"
"P0rn!" yelled Eddie, "The hottest, nastiest p0rn out there!"
The Sysmin sighed, "They always want p0rn. Just once I wish one of them would choose Congress. But...".
The SysMin led Eddie to the machine and set him in front of it. Eddie clicked the forward button time and time again. A plethora of beautiful young ladies flashed before his eyes. Blonde, brunette, redheads; old and young; partially or totally unclothed; many performing acts that... well, acts that would make Eddie's mother blush.
And suddenly, Eddie stopped, staring transfixed at the screen. Displayed there was the most beautiful woman that Eddie had ever seen. Flame red hair and liquid green eyes shone out at him. Her lips were ruby and perfectly formed. Clothed in only her own glory, her legs didn't seem to stop until they reached the most magnificent chest Eddie had ever seen.
"That's the one!" exclaimed Eddie, "She's it!"
"Amanda, " sighed the SysMin, "They all choose Amanda.
"Are you sure you have chosen wisely?" asked the SysMin, "What is done will never be undone."
"Yes, I'm sure! I'm sure!" shouted Eddie, "Send me there!"
The Sysmin said, "Then click the middle button and your dream will come true."
Maybe it was the fatigue from clicking the mouse so many times, and maybe it was the tension of anticipation that caused it. Eddie had just a moment to see that his finger had glanced the left mouse button before it finally landed on the middle one. With a quick glance at the screen, Eddie screamed in horror as he realized that he would not be with his beautiful Amanda throughout all eternity, but instead would be here.
His screams echoed and died away, mixed with the SysMin's chuckled voice, "Oh, yes. They always pick Amanda..."
It is said that one should never accept gifts from SysMins, for there is always a high price to be paid. A price that Eddie Smith would be tightly stretched to pay. His price? A one-way ticket to his own hellish corner of "The Geek Zone..."
It's been done. Look at the IBM iSeries and zSeries, both of which are able to run Linux. Best reliability in the world, too. Plus better scalability than any crappy PC boxen.
As much as I agree that universities should keep their networks open, I have to disagree with this point. Why? Because initial "gray" work can (and probably should) still be done on an isolated network. Not only does it make sure that projects don't accidently kill the campus or departmental network, it also makes debugging a heck of a lot easier. And, once the prototypical work is done, you can usually convince some professor to beat IT into submission for you. Most departments have a couple of spare boxes lying about (heck, back at my school twenty years ago, there were usually anywhere from 2-3 midicomputers lying about totally unutilized at any time). Hubs are cheap. Linux makes a relatively stable development platform for gray work. So, in the end, I don't see "sealed tight" campus networks as a huge impediment to self-motivated research (unless it's cultural research into the latest works of Limp Bizkit).
My opinion? Fukuyama would be correct if people actually did act rationally. But, having grown up among many fundamentalists (of the good, Christian variety
Today, there are enough cultural (Notice how that word starts with "cult"? Same Greek root!) differences and irrationality about to make Huntington's thesis look more believable at this time.
OK, I have to say that Lucas IS a marketing genius. Has anyone considered the possibility that he's just cutting down expectations in the second trilogy so that he can really wow the audience for the third? If this is his plan, you can count on this one being a bit better than Episode 1, and E3 being a bit of a downer again. After that, expect a crash-bang ending in E7-9.
Of course, the other possibility is that he's just a cynical old hack turning out crap because he knows that no matter how bad the movies are, a bunch of kids and loser geeks are going to go see them, buy the crappy toys that go with them, and make him a ton of bucks
Get a second machine and tell them it will be for your personal use and never on the network. Set its IP address to be the same as the SOE machine. In the morning when you come in, unplug the SOE machine from the network and plug in your personal machine. When you leave in the evening, make sure that the SOE machine is pluged in for back up, nazification, etc.
Just make sure to keep your ear to the rail to hear the approaching hoards of IT folk around upgrade time so you can swith fast...
Unless they cut a deal with the MPAA, getting other concessions for their lack of opposition. Just think, the MPAA could ban all of those BAD foreign components that didn't have the joint CEIA/MPAA seal of approval, which takes many years of verification to receive due to its rigorous nature. Of course, American manufacturers (and their South Asian partners) get first crack at being tested.
Don't think something like this can happen? This is business. The electronics industry isn't in this for free speech or any other such ideological crap. As long as they can keep making a buck, they're happy.
Sounds more like it's time to get a new landlord or go external for connection. But, bottom line, it IS his network. He has a right to do what he thinks is best to supply the service for ALL his customers. He is obviously doing his best to deal with the situation (hiring consultants, etc.) in a situation that he didn't start, he doesn't want, and, quite frankly, doesn't understand. There could be worse things -like the landlord who is just as clueless and says "I don't care". Yes, it's sad that the particular consultants he's hiring doesn't say "Use any AV system you want as long as the defs are up to date", but HE doesn't want to become an expert in this. Nor should he need to be.
Just consider yourself lucky that he doesn't also force you to allow your system to be monitored so that he can make sure your security is up to date. There's a big market for managed security out there and, for guys like your landlord, it can lead to substantially lower TCO than allowing everyone on his network to "do his own thing". Most of them require access to your system to make sure that defs are up to date, patches installed, etc.
Again, it's HIS network. Although we sympathise, you need to look at stuff like this more carefully before you sign your multi-year lease. We can only hope this has been a learning experience for you.
Well, I fail to see why ANY particular article shows up on Slashdot other than the editors select articles that they think will be interesting and comment-provoking. Obviously, from the 242 comments about the article (as of Sunday evening), they did something right here. For comparison, the
article on the launch of the Zodiac Star (which most would say belongs here) has only 71 responses at this time. In short, whatever the hell else you want to think about him, Katz draws audience and participation, so I wish people would stop bashing the guy and his articles. If you took time to read them, you'd find they are pretty damn well written and are at least absent the grammar and spelling errors attendant with other Slashdot contributors.
At the peak of the CA energy crisis, I looked at a (overly) simple version of TCO, assuming only gas costs and replacement of fuel cells every five years (what GE was shooting for when I took a look at their proposed home generation solution). The cost per generated KWH was a bit more then just being on the grid (at least up here in Oregon).
Ballard may have reduced cost or I may have left out some expenses, but it's not quite ready for prime-time yet...
There was also no DMCA at the time. Current purveyors of such technologies will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This means that the only tools like this will be underground and Open Source. And, of course, this means that all Open Source people are pirates and possibly terrorists. And so we should just put 'em all away.
This is just fscking depressing...
I hope this clears up any confusion in your mind...
This coming from a man who hides behind an acronym and obfuscated E-mail address?
Ya know, son, the only reason I put stupid numbers after my name here on Slashdot is that my name without the numbers was taken (and to all of the other Frank Adrians in the world, "Hi!"). I also don't obfuscate my E-mail address. I know it seems quaint to not hide one's ID in these days, but I started using the net 20+ years ago and haven't seen the need for either of these things yet. I don't get inundated with spam and, in fact, the relatively light smattering of hate mail just adds a bit of spice to my day.
In fact, back in the old days, we tended to ignore things said by "Anonymous Cowards" who hid behind nicks and handles, these being the signs of clueless AOL'ers (or their equivalent - Compuserve or Prodigy users) and BB'ers - PC kiddies who didn't know how to handle a UNIX system. The fact that a majority of
Now it sounds like I abhore this practice - I do. But I would also defend any stupid loser's right to do so. And your hiding behind a nick while spouting crap like the above is simple hypocracy. Sheesh...
"Brian and brian! What IS brian?...
You mean the CONTROLLER!"
TOS-Spock's Brian
Except that during the next budget cycle, the Universities will have to figure in this revenue and the government will likely give them less in the same kind. Net gain to University in the long term: 0. We won't even mention what might happen to academic freedom if this takes off. How about the Glaxo-Welcome College of Pharmacy at Oxford where students aren't even allowed to be taught about drugs made by other manufacturers?
Think it can't happen? Colleges in the US are already suppressing some research because of patent entanglements with corporations. My advice to the British is not to let this camel's nose into the tent without a lot of hard glances.
Oh well, welcome to the "Age of Access"...
Actually, the passionate ending of his unique performance of "Mr. Tambourine Man" will be etched into my mind for ever... Will I ever be able to listen to other music again?
I don't know about 4, but 32 is WB. 12 is UPN. At least in PDX.
If you want a REALLY secure system, try WebSphere on an IBM AS/400... uh... IBM iSeries box or run Apache under their PASE subsystem. Most secure system in the world (perhaps even more secure than the S/390... uh... zSeries) and can even be auto-configured to a C2-secure level out of the box - just set your QSECLVL system variable to 50 (I think, it's been a while).
There are actually two non-religious, non-commercial station here in Portland, Oregon. KPBS is licensed by the Portland Public Schools (of all things) and has both an AM and FM service with the FM being a classical music service and the AM being a alternative music service. KBOO is the other FM service with repeaters in Hood River. It's a community radio station with everything from Hip-Hop to Jazz to Klezmer to Bluegrass and a lot of radical politics thrown in. Both of these have NOTHING to do with NPR and after the lovely NPP/NAB backed micro-powered radio FCC ruling, these are the types of (really) public supported stations that get my dollars.
On second thought, if any of you folks in the RIAA are reading this, I will be filing a patent on this "process", so don't try it without paying me royalties.