How long did it take you to learn in gravity?
on
Playing Ball in Space
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
How long did it take you to learn to catch a ball on Earth?
My father was never one who was into sports until one day when he felt guilty I guess and bought me a mitt when I was 8 and took me out back to play catch.
Guess what, I sucked. I don't know how long it took me to learn but I tell you what, once in a while someone tosses a set of keys to me across the room and I still can't catch em half the time.
So I don't see why this is a big deal. Now if it was a story about the difficulties of re-learning how to have sex in space, then I'd be interested! (No, my dad didn't teach me that either, thank god)
Is there a reason you don't just get the legal portion of your company to sue them?
Our legal department would be the state attorney general's office. Yeah, I'm considering that. It's just a very time consuming affair, time that I don't have. I've threatened them with it recently and hope they agree that for all parties, it's best for all parties to get this matter resolved quickly...
Who purchases a high end Disk Solution only to run it on lunix boxes?
Who said only on Linux? The reason for the SAN is to plug a bunch of different boxen with different OSes into it. I have several NT 4 and w2k server boxes attached as well...
Well, I know no one reads/. stories when they are 24 hours old, but I thought I'd add some followup comments to my rant above.
First, my memory is a bit off, the sg version mentioned that EMC used was 3.0.10, not 3.0.16 as stated above. The fact about it being a development version and that EMC should never have used it was stated by the modules author, Douglas Gilbert, in a private e-mail to me (I did ask him later if I could disclose this publically and he said yes.)
A portion of his message I dug up...
Ken,
Ouch, the sg version 3 interface was under development then.
From my archives:
-rw-r--r-- 1 dougg dougg 25035 Jan 25 2000 sg3010.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 dougg dougg 25603 Mar 11 2000 sg3012.tgz
This driver was targeted at lk 2.4 which was released
in January this year. The lk 2.2 port was to allow
people to test it on production OSes.
The defining property of version 3 of the sg driver is
an additional interface. It is used by the SG_IO ioctl()
[0x2285]. I changed the interface between those 2 versions.
If memory serves, someone complained. It was on the
sg website so people could test it (not hardcode it into
a proprietary solution). DG/EMC have never contacted me
about this.
I just looked at your ask slashdot. I also got the pitch for EMC's mirroring product for Symmetrix. Very expensive, yes.
I guess it all depends on what you are protecting. You should be able to replicate database transactions to a backup server as they happen so that is covered. For normal file system files, I use rsync. Works well but isn't immediate. Still, it's an easier off-site backup strategy than carting tapes back and forth, as long as you have the WAN bandwidth, and it's a tad bit cheaper than doing mirrored SANs.
We had Data General Clariion drives here since about 1993 and were very happy with the drives and DG service. EMC bought DG around two years ago and have raped the company. They were mainly interested in removing a cheaper SAN competitor in my opinion. They've kept the Clariion, but latest I've heard, are enlisting Dell to sell and service the things and told us we are being pawned off on them. So much for the premier EMC service I bought into at the time...
At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. I kinda now wish I went with Compaq Storageworks, but they were non-committal about Linux support at the time where EMC promised full support (read my parent article about how THAT turned out).
This new iMac shortage is utter bullshit. I want one, I can't seem to buy one. Yeah, I should have ordered one from their web site in January, but I thought I'd support a local Apple-only computer store in this area. Put my name on a huge list, and I'm still waiting. Now I get to pay an extra $100 for my patience.
Then I noticed CompUSA got a boatload of them in about three weeks ago. I saw an entire pallet of the things, but was told I couldn't have one because they were all pre-sold.
Methinks Apple is screwing over their loyal computer retail specialists, the ones who sell only Apples. Makes no sense.
Seems like everytime Apple comes out with something great, you can't buy it for months and months. Then by the time it's available, the impulse/geewhiz factor has worn off.
So whenever this store calls me up to tell me my new iMac is here, I'll probably tell them to keep it...:-(
The nightmare I have had with this company after buying two of their SANs knows no bounds. After almost a year of begging and pleading, I still don't have a valid service contract with them. The sales rep promised me 3 years hardware 7x24 service on both systems and I still don't have anything in writing on this. I've bitched to all levels of the company as well. I get promises that this issue is getting attention from high levels of the company, and then silence.
Then there's the software support service contract. It took me months to get them to bill us, then they send a bill for $16K, we send it in, then when it's time to place a service call it's "who are you again?". Our $16,000 is missing, no one knows where it is, even though I have a copy of the canceled check they cashed. We are now getting dunning letters demanding payment at the same time getting a cancellation notice on another contract we had with them along with a credit invoice. So now THAT system is up-in-the-air.
They are the most screwed up company I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with. I won't even go into the crap software they use. Their linux fiber HBA drivers use sg version 3.0.16 for lk 2.2. When I tried to update it, everything broke. Turns out, and this was told to me from the driver's author no less, that sg version 3.0 was a development branch only, and that every minor release changed the interface and that EMC had *NO* business putting this crap into production. I ended up getting EMC code out of it (thank god I had source) and folding it into sg rev 3.1x under lk 2.4.
The site engineer I have is the only bright spot in the entire company. He's trying to get my contract issues resolved. It's time critical, because I've heard they are farming out their higher ed contracts to Dell (which actually may be a good thing).
EMC may be good to megacorps that spend 10s of millions a year on their "frames", but if you only spend a half a mil (which we did), from my perspective at least, it seems like they could care less about you...
Yeah, I've seen the same thing. Xnews started supporting it almost right away and hence I started to use it (or basically, not care about it since Xnews handled it transparently).
I too have noticed a large number of corrupted files in downloads from giganews, something I never saw before yEnc. (giganews has large retention and excellent completion rates. It wasn't lack of completion that caused it...)
At this rate, I'm paying more (by the gig) because I am throwing out so many corrupted downloads..:-(
I talked my boss into paying a few grand a year to redhat for their workgroup Redhat Network to 1) make my life easier and 2) to support the company and 3) priority download and ISO image downloads to paying customers.
So I gleefully logon to grab a set of beta ISOs and get some real value out of this subscription and what do I find as far as 7.3 beta goes? Jack.:-(
Come on Redhat...
When 7.3 final comes out, will it show up on rhn at the same time it goes on the public ftp site at least?
...NanoGator Animation, Inc.'. I know where they got this info. When I registerred my domain, I sarcastially put that as the billing info. That is the only time I have ever used that name.
I did something similar. Unfortunately, if you ever want to sell or transfer your domain to someone else, you're going to have to have a legal officer of NanoGator Animation sign something on official NanoGator Animation letterhead. (At least that is the rules for NetSol...)
Dell never made it easy to find how to buy a computer with linux preloaded. Right now, for example, you pretty much have to know to go to www.dell.com/linux first.
The way it *should* have been done was to put Linux into the OS choice drop down list with something like * Red Hat Linux (-$100).
Even now, if you go configure a Precision 340 workstation, you can't do this. You have to go to a start page like www.dell.com/linux and choose from the initial menu you want Linux. I have never seen a order page that gives a choice between Linux and Windows on the configuration screen. I'd love for someone to show me a URL to prove me wrong...
Pretty good, but a few points. The original PS/2 line included some models with 80386 processors in them. I'm sure there has to be a PS/2 history web site out there...
In 1987, IBM came out with five PS/2 models, model 30 (8086), model 50 and 60 (286s) and models 70 and 80 (386s). The 60s and 80s were tower units.
The Model 50 was a dog. Had wait states and a slow-ass (80ms) hard drive. They later came out with a model 50Z where Z meant zero wait states.
God, we're so much better off now. Look at the prices those things were. Imagine where we can be 15 years from now if we don't destroy each other first...
Yeah, I remember old vinyl records being a part of Quisp and Quake cereal box packages. You could cut it out and play it on your Speed Racer record player. It was cool!
Who is celebrating? The judge just said it was a possibility. I'm just enjoying the sound of someone in the northwest of the country yelling out "holy shit, imagine if..." and having to beef up the legal defense fund line some more...
It always annoyed me that they used generic words to describe things. I have no problem with "Microsoft Word" being trademarked, or "Microsoft Windows", but trademarking "Word" or "Windows" is silly, and even sillier is going after some alteration of it. It's not "Licrosoft Lindows" for pete's sake...
The irony is quite rich. They try to smack down some small company naming a product called Lindows and end up losing the much bigger prize, the exclusive use of the word Windows.
Someone in Redmond is kicking themselves in the ass right now...
It has nothing to do with it, of course. Sorry, subtle joke on my part. The best way to manipulate the weak is to claim them liberals are out to get you, control you, and ruin your life.
It just gets my knickers in a twist when conservatives blame everything on liberals, and then make excuses for republicans. Truth be, they are all (both Republicans and Democrats) big-spending ready-bought politicians. The only difference is who they take money from and where they like to spend it.
There's an old addage from the newspaper business which is very applicable here: Only a fool would start a publicity fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.
Ironic, considering the source...
If you want the media companies back in line, unplug your television and start talking to people about something other than SouthPark for a change.
.... and start downloading your episodes from alt.binaries.southpark instead. That'll show em!:)
Our problem, is that we need to hype up our side like the other side does. We need to convince Joe Public that eventually they will no longer be able to "tape" their favorite shows. And that may not be that far off, when VCRs switch to digital from analog.
Think about all the public alerts that have been passed around the net that still cause headaches for government agencies, like the "FCC banning religious programs due to Madilyn O'hare" or the infamous modem tax issue or the $2,500 area code 809 phone calls.
Someone with a lot of literary skills needs to come up with some sort of alert that claims that those bastard liberal media companies and those liberals in Congress (I said sensationalist) are trying to take a way your right to record your TV shows by mandating that all future electronic devices contain copy protections to allow people who make shows to disable your ability to record them without paying for them. Include refs to digitalconsumer.org too. Then put the ole "We need to stop this right away, send this to all of your friends" line, details about the bill, and urge people to contact their congressman.
Make this issue so poisoned that no elected official will get near it. Remember, the public are sheep and the reason corporations give so much money to candidates and the reason that is so influential is that people are elected by the strength of their campaign ads. But in the end, it's people who vote, not companies. So if enough people get up in arms about this, the elected (and elected-wannabees) will stand up and take notice.
Wow, my clients will all have to run SQL server on their desktops. Each time a file is open, the data has to be read from the database? Yeah, finding data will be faster, accessing it all?
So I guess my P4-2GHz will be obsolete RSN.:-(
* - Not my quote, wish I knew who penned it, I love it!
Slashdot Mirror
And to think they claim that the GPL is "viral."
My father was never one who was into sports until one day when he felt guilty I guess and bought me a mitt when I was 8 and took me out back to play catch.
Guess what, I sucked. I don't know how long it took me to learn but I tell you what, once in a while someone tosses a set of keys to me across the room and I still can't catch em half the time.
So I don't see why this is a big deal. Now if it was a story about the difficulties of re-learning how to have sex in space, then I'd be interested! (No, my dad didn't teach me that either, thank god)
Our legal department would be the state attorney general's office. Yeah, I'm considering that. It's just a very time consuming affair, time that I don't have. I've threatened them with it recently and hope they agree that for all parties, it's best for all parties to get this matter resolved quickly...
Who said only on Linux? The reason for the SAN is to plug a bunch of different boxen with different OSes into it. I have several NT 4 and w2k server boxes attached as well...
First, my memory is a bit off, the sg version mentioned that EMC used was 3.0.10, not 3.0.16 as stated above. The fact about it being a development version and that EMC should never have used it was stated by the modules author, Douglas Gilbert, in a private e-mail to me (I did ask him later if I could disclose this publically and he said yes.)
A portion of his message I dug up...
Ken,
Ouch, the sg version 3 interface was under development then.
From my archives:
-rw-r--r-- 1 dougg dougg 25035 Jan 25 2000 sg3010.tgz
-rw-r--r-- 1 dougg dougg 25603 Mar 11 2000 sg3012.tgz
This driver was targeted at lk 2.4 which was released in January this year. The lk 2.2 port was to allow people to test it on production OSes.
The defining property of version 3 of the sg driver is an additional interface. It is used by the SG_IO ioctl() [0x2285]. I changed the interface between those 2 versions. If memory serves, someone complained. It was on the sg website so people could test it (not hardcode it into a proprietary solution). DG/EMC have never contacted me about this.
I guess it all depends on what you are protecting. You should be able to replicate database transactions to a backup server as they happen so that is covered. For normal file system files, I use rsync. Works well but isn't immediate. Still, it's an easier off-site backup strategy than carting tapes back and forth, as long as you have the WAN bandwidth, and it's a tad bit cheaper than doing mirrored SANs.
At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. I kinda now wish I went with Compaq Storageworks, but they were non-committal about Linux support at the time where EMC promised full support (read my parent article about how THAT turned out).
Then I noticed CompUSA got a boatload of them in about three weeks ago. I saw an entire pallet of the things, but was told I couldn't have one because they were all pre-sold.
Methinks Apple is screwing over their loyal computer retail specialists, the ones who sell only Apples. Makes no sense.
Seems like everytime Apple comes out with something great, you can't buy it for months and months. Then by the time it's available, the impulse/geewhiz factor has worn off.
So whenever this store calls me up to tell me my new iMac is here, I'll probably tell them to keep it... :-(
Then there's the software support service contract. It took me months to get them to bill us, then they send a bill for $16K, we send it in, then when it's time to place a service call it's "who are you again?". Our $16,000 is missing, no one knows where it is, even though I have a copy of the canceled check they cashed. We are now getting dunning letters demanding payment at the same time getting a cancellation notice on another contract we had with them along with a credit invoice. So now THAT system is up-in-the-air.
They are the most screwed up company I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with. I won't even go into the crap software they use. Their linux fiber HBA drivers use sg version 3.0.16 for lk 2.2. When I tried to update it, everything broke. Turns out, and this was told to me from the driver's author no less, that sg version 3.0 was a development branch only, and that every minor release changed the interface and that EMC had *NO* business putting this crap into production. I ended up getting EMC code out of it (thank god I had source) and folding it into sg rev 3.1x under lk 2.4.
The site engineer I have is the only bright spot in the entire company. He's trying to get my contract issues resolved. It's time critical, because I've heard they are farming out their higher ed contracts to Dell (which actually may be a good thing).
EMC may be good to megacorps that spend 10s of millions a year on their "frames", but if you only spend a half a mil (which we did), from my perspective at least, it seems like they could care less about you...
I too have noticed a large number of corrupted files in downloads from giganews, something I never saw before yEnc. (giganews has large retention and excellent completion rates. It wasn't lack of completion that caused it...)
At this rate, I'm paying more (by the gig) because I am throwing out so many corrupted downloads.. :-(
So I gleefully logon to grab a set of beta ISOs and get some real value out of this subscription and what do I find as far as 7.3 beta goes? Jack. :-(
Come on Redhat...
When 7.3 final comes out, will it show up on rhn at the same time it goes on the public ftp site at least?
I did something similar. Unfortunately, if you ever want to sell or transfer your domain to someone else, you're going to have to have a legal officer of NanoGator Animation sign something on official NanoGator Animation letterhead. (At least that is the rules for NetSol...)
Not impossible to get around, but still a PITA. :(
Sounds like a case for procmail, some keyword scans of the body, /dev/null for delivery, and a nice EXITCODE=67 status! :-)
Nice try, I meant for desktops. I've bought many a server from Dell with Linux pre-installed on it.
I've never seen this option on desktops or workstations, however...
www.riceboypage.com
The way it *should* have been done was to put Linux into the OS choice drop down list with something like * Red Hat Linux (-$100).
Even now, if you go configure a Precision 340 workstation, you can't do this. You have to go to a start page like www.dell.com/linux and choose from the initial menu you want Linux. I have never seen a order page that gives a choice between Linux and Windows on the configuration screen. I'd love for someone to show me a URL to prove me wrong...
Ah yes, a quick google search turns up this PS/2 history page
In 1987, IBM came out with five PS/2 models, model 30 (8086), model 50 and 60 (286s) and models 70 and 80 (386s). The 60s and 80s were tower units.
The Model 50 was a dog. Had wait states and a slow-ass (80ms) hard drive. They later came out with a model 50Z where Z meant zero wait states.
God, we're so much better off now. Look at the prices those things were. Imagine where we can be 15 years from now if we don't destroy each other first...
Yeah, I remember old vinyl records being a part of Quisp and Quake cereal box packages. You could cut it out and play it on your Speed Racer record player. It was cool!
It always annoyed me that they used generic words to describe things. I have no problem with "Microsoft Word" being trademarked, or "Microsoft Windows", but trademarking "Word" or "Windows" is silly, and even sillier is going after some alteration of it. It's not "Licrosoft Lindows" for pete's sake...
Someone in Redmond is kicking themselves in the ass right now...
Seems like everytime there is ever a story about Mozilla, the "mozilla sucks" crew come out in force, no matter what the story is about. :-(
It has nothing to do with it, of course. Sorry, subtle joke on my part. The best way to manipulate the weak is to claim them liberals are out to get you, control you, and ruin your life.
It just gets my knickers in a twist when conservatives blame everything on liberals, and then make excuses for republicans. Truth be, they are all (both Republicans and Democrats) big-spending ready-bought politicians. The only difference is who they take money from and where they like to spend it.
Ironic, considering the source...
Think about all the public alerts that have been passed around the net that still cause headaches for government agencies, like the "FCC banning religious programs due to Madilyn O'hare" or the infamous modem tax issue or the $2,500 area code 809 phone calls.
Someone with a lot of literary skills needs to come up with some sort of alert that claims that those bastard liberal media companies and those liberals in Congress (I said sensationalist) are trying to take a way your right to record your TV shows by mandating that all future electronic devices contain copy protections to allow people who make shows to disable your ability to record them without paying for them. Include refs to digitalconsumer.org too. Then put the ole "We need to stop this right away, send this to all of your friends" line, details about the bill, and urge people to contact their congressman.
Make this issue so poisoned that no elected official will get near it. Remember, the public are sheep and the reason corporations give so much money to candidates and the reason that is so influential is that people are elected by the strength of their campaign ads. But in the end, it's people who vote, not companies. So if enough people get up in arms about this, the elected (and elected-wannabees) will stand up and take notice.
Wow, my clients will all have to run SQL server on their desktops. Each time a file is open, the data has to be read from the database? Yeah, finding data will be faster, accessing it all?
So I guess my P4-2GHz will be obsolete RSN. :-(
* - Not my quote, wish I knew who penned it, I love it!