I've been Reading A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin, about the fall of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is T.E. Lawrence's account of the same events, but from quite a different perspective. Anyone know of good books about the Middle East from 1920 until the present?
I'm also reading Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. I plan to read Naomi Klein's No Logo, and Everything You Know is Wrong by the good people at Disinfomation.
I'm going to see Gary Snyder & Tom Killion read from The High Sierra of California tonight in Santa Cruz; I'll read that.
Maybe I'll finish Snow Crash by Stephenson, and get on to The Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD.
Round the Bend -- Nevile Shute
Hard to find tale of a Modern day messiah/airplane mechanic
All of Nevil Shute's stuff is brilliantly told. His writing style is a bit dry, and the people sometimes feel unreal, but the stories come alive.
My own particular favorites: Trustee from the Toolroom; A Town Like Alice (aka The Legacy); Pastoral. On the Beach is a "must-read" book, but it's quite depressing.
look around for a used Lear Siglear ADM3a terminal. These things are fun-ky. They support upper & lower case, maximum speed of 9600 baud, are packaged in a case that was the inspiration for the orinal iMac.
do you reckon that writing Photoshop is harder than say writting an entire OS, including a kernel that is portable to almost any architecture known to man as well as a compiler that works along the same lines?http://www.netbsd.org. Making a portable OS is much easier than a well integrated app like photoshop. When creating a Unix-based operating system, you can take advantage of design idioms that have evolved over thirty years.
and there aren't similarly evolved idioms for desktop applications.
For some of these questions, "I would read the manpage, or the manual, or the (gasp) dead trees on the bookshelf" is an acceptable answer.
But for example, I'd expect someone to know basic stuff like what's the nsswitch.conf,/etc/netmasks, how to configure NIS.
Troubleshooting/real world scenarios are the best interview questions. And I agree that quickly learning things you don't immediately know is the most key ability.
In my book, very very very important: communicate with your clients, particularly if they are technical-- scientists, engineers. Tell them when the server is going down & why, tell them what the right network settings are, and why he/she can't have a switch with 20 boxes in the cube.
less solid contenders ... more killer apps
on
Looking At Gobe
·
· Score: 1
We have too many solid contenders today. All of which are just not quite solid enough for daily use.
Register my plea for a kickass application that people will want to migrate to, away from Office.
This article is really poorly written, without a coherent thesis, or indeed anything to back up its incoherent thesis. And I think Katz missed the more interesting issue.
Who are these modern "wannabe anti-technology intellectuals"? What do they believe? These "modern-day Luddites invoke morality as a shield to mask zealotry and ignorance", but what makes them Luddites? Isn't possible they're only zealots & ignoramuses?
Having said that, I sympathized strongly with the Unabomber Manifesto. I love my fast AlphaStation, my compact ThinkPad, and my PalmPilot. To call blindly for technology, without thought for the social consequences of that technology, in the modern world, is wrong. That approach brought us the Son of Star Wars, the Auburn Dam, the Y2K problem... And this, I think, is the interesting bit that Katz missed -- I'm far from the only geek I know who thinks this way. How do we resolve the contradiction? How do you?
Appropriate technology is the antidote to these concerns about social consequences. When you drive down the freeways in California, what do you see? Emergency call boxes, powered by tiny solar panels -- how elegant to power these geographically dispersed devices by the sun! Consider the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight -- there's innovation & a technologically elegant solution to today's problems of air pollution & high gas prices, and people are responding with their dollars.
People like technology, but nobody wants to be a gull for the big tech companies, or for the government.
It's a brand name for the Tandem NSK hardware, acquired by the Q about three years ago.
Tandem hardware based on the MIPS R4x000 were called Himalayas, hardware based on the MIPS R1x000 are called Sierras, and Yosemite will be Alpha based hardware.
(I used to work for Tandem)
if it works for you, use it. I personally have been burned in the past by poor support by vendors for binary releases.
In the ideal world, you'd contribute effort to the open source component, to make it work as well as Xaccel, instead of paying money to a bunch of greedy capitalists.
There's essentially nothing worth doing that can be done with the Posix.1 subsystem.
And anyway, it's a stupid way to design an operating system, having posix compliance comparmentalized into a subsystem. You can't manipulate the windows environment unless you use a ($$) X-server, can't utilize the native NT functionality (which is the reason ppl deploy NT in the first place). It's an orphan.
Why aren't these hardware companies doing more to support drivers for cool hardware, like mpeg decoders, dvd drives,...? And what about the BSDs?
For the Free Software community, that's the really key thing they could contribute -- drivers for otherwise closed & proprietary technology.
I'd like to see more valueadd before I'd plunk down the big bucks for a linux hardware solution. (Penguin's going the right way by bundling LCDproc devices)
Compare these two writers, both in a similar situation, having left the warm fuzzy confines of major magazines.
Mr. Katz, in writing on slashdot, becomes a part of the Internet community. He explores exciting new technologies like Linux. Showing himself to be openminded and excited about the things he writes about.
While Mr. Pournelle retreats to Chaos Manor, anticipates people will pay to read his column, in which he revisits all those IRQ clashes, OS crashes -- the reasons most of us left the windows world -- and then has the gall to reiterate tired rhetoric about the Reagan era!
Thinking about the comparison, I don't feel half bad about Katz writing on slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
who can pass that up?
Potato Expo.
I've been Reading A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin, about the fall of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is T.E. Lawrence's account of the same events, but from quite a different perspective. Anyone know of good books about the Middle East from 1920 until the present?
I'm also reading Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. I plan to read Naomi Klein's No Logo, and Everything You Know is Wrong by the good people at Disinfomation.
I'm going to see Gary Snyder & Tom Killion read from The High Sierra of California tonight in Santa Cruz; I'll read that.
Maybe I'll finish Snow Crash by Stephenson, and get on to The Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD.
Round the Bend -- Nevile Shute
Hard to find tale of a Modern day messiah/airplane mechanic
All of Nevil Shute's stuff is brilliantly told. His writing style is a bit dry, and the people sometimes feel unreal, but the stories come alive.
My own particular favorites: Trustee from the Toolroom; A Town Like Alice (aka The Legacy); Pastoral. On the Beach is a "must-read" book, but it's quite depressing.
because, ummm... linux sucks?
look around for a used Lear Siglear ADM3a terminal. These things are fun-ky. They support upper & lower case, maximum speed of 9600 baud, are packaged in a case that was the inspiration for the orinal iMac.
perfect!
do you reckon that writing Photoshop is harder than say writting an entire OS, including a kernel that is portable to almost any architecture known to man as well as a compiler that works along the same lines? http://www.netbsd.org. Making a portable OS is much easier than a well integrated app like photoshop. When creating a Unix-based operating system, you can take advantage of design idioms that have evolved over thirty years.
and there aren't similarly evolved idioms for desktop applications.
how much do we care what that one dude wrote? I could have written the same piece myself, but it isn't really "news for nerds"
why not sell some? less is more: you don't need to listen to Britney Spears more than once.
For some of these questions, "I would read the manpage, or the manual, or the (gasp) dead trees on the bookshelf" is an acceptable answer.
But for example, I'd expect someone to know basic stuff like what's the nsswitch.conf, /etc/netmasks, how to configure NIS.
Troubleshooting/real world scenarios are the best interview questions. And I agree that quickly learning things you don't immediately know is the most key ability.
In my book, very very very important: communicate with your clients, particularly if they are technical-- scientists, engineers. Tell them when the server is going down & why, tell them what the right network settings are, and why he/she can't have a switch with 20 boxes in the cube.
We have too many solid contenders today. All of which are just not quite solid enough for daily use.
Register my plea for a kickass application that people will want to migrate to, away from Office.
Brian Herbert and Anderson obviously spent a lot of time studying Frank's style
but they didn't succeed worth shit.
I'm still trying to get the taste of that 1st book out of my mouth.
This article is really poorly written, without a coherent thesis, or indeed anything to back up its incoherent thesis. And I think Katz missed the more interesting issue.
Who are these modern "wannabe anti-technology intellectuals"? What do they believe? These "modern-day Luddites invoke morality as a shield to mask zealotry and ignorance", but what makes them Luddites? Isn't possible they're only zealots & ignoramuses?
Having said that, I sympathized strongly with the Unabomber Manifesto. I love my fast AlphaStation, my compact ThinkPad, and my PalmPilot. To call blindly for technology, without thought for the social consequences of that technology, in the modern world, is wrong. That approach brought us the Son of Star Wars, the Auburn Dam, the Y2K problem... And this, I think, is the interesting bit that Katz missed -- I'm far from the only geek I know who thinks this way. How do we resolve the contradiction? How do you?
Appropriate technology is the antidote to these concerns about social consequences. When you drive down the freeways in California, what do you see? Emergency call boxes, powered by tiny solar panels -- how elegant to power these geographically dispersed devices by the sun! Consider the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight -- there's innovation & a technologically elegant solution to today's problems of air pollution & high gas prices, and people are responding with their dollars.
People like technology, but nobody wants to be a gull for the big tech companies, or for the government.
It's a brand name for the Tandem NSK hardware, acquired by the Q about three years ago. Tandem hardware based on the MIPS R4x000 were called Himalayas, hardware based on the MIPS R1x000 are called Sierras, and Yosemite will be Alpha based hardware. (I used to work for Tandem)
if it works for you, use it. I personally have been burned in the past by poor support by vendors for binary releases.
In the ideal world, you'd contribute effort to the open source component, to make it work as well as Xaccel, instead of paying money to a bunch of greedy capitalists.
Since the Xserver is a critical piece of the operating system, who in their right mind would trust a closed source component?
all this makes me think about xig is what a slimy company
actually most of them are correct.
There's essentially nothing worth doing that can be done with the Posix.1 subsystem.
And anyway, it's a stupid way to design an operating system, having posix compliance comparmentalized into a subsystem. You can't manipulate the windows environment unless you use a ($$) X-server, can't utilize the native NT functionality (which is the reason ppl deploy NT in the first place). It's an orphan.
Why aren't these hardware companies doing more to support drivers for cool hardware, like mpeg decoders, dvd drives, ...? And what about the BSDs?
For the Free Software community, that's the really key thing they could contribute -- drivers for otherwise closed & proprietary technology.
I'd like to see more valueadd before I'd plunk down the big bucks for a linux hardware solution. (Penguin's going the right way by bundling LCDproc devices)
all y'all alarmists should take an interest in the world around you. Compaq seems to have done more with Alpha than Digital ever did.
They're even porting their high performance Fortran compilers & math libraries to AlphaLinux.
Compare these two writers, both in a similar situation, having left the warm fuzzy confines of major magazines.
Mr. Katz, in writing on slashdot, becomes a part of the Internet community. He explores exciting new technologies like Linux. Showing himself to be openminded and excited about the things he writes about.
While Mr. Pournelle retreats to Chaos Manor, anticipates people will pay to read his column, in which he revisits all those IRQ clashes, OS crashes -- the reasons most of us left the windows world -- and then has the gall to reiterate tired rhetoric about the Reagan era!
Thinking about the comparison, I don't feel half bad about Katz writing on slashdot.