but Valenti refers to the internet as a "Legerdemain"
Hey, I really can't fault him for that.. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.. And we _are_ wizards;)
And the Internet _is_ magical: it can make monopolies and corporate oppresion vanish into thin air! But only if we stay alert, involved, and focused.. And coding.. Always coding...
Lessig was biased in that case because Bill Gates turned his back on the academic world before graduating and became a tremendous success--thus invalidating the idea that smart young men need professors like Lessig in order to become successful. Worse yet, BG turned his back on the very same institution on which Lessig relies for his livelihood.
This is the funniest thing I've read this morning.
Please, like Harvard's going to suffer for applications because of Bill Gate$' example. It hasn't yet, and he's been the prodigal dropout for like 25 years now!
Mr. Lessig's pretty sharp, or at least he came off that way in my limited correspondence with him (about some Linux software IIRC).
I'm as big a fan of wacky conspiracy theory as anyone (fnord), but this is even sillier than the theory that was on the grassy knoll with a gray impersonating Castro..
It is stuck at a 32 Meg limit. If you check the BeOS developer websites you will see that there is no workaround short of fixing the flaw in the BeOS kernel. Sadly, this has been ignored by Be Inc. They are completely unwilling to fix this flaw.
Well, how many handhelds/Internet appliances need more than that?
You see, the problem with closed-source software is that when product planning directions change, _your_ feature may be dropped or your needs may be ignored.. If BeOS was OSS, this would have been fixed by now...
(The irony is, some ex-cow-orker would always feed us this line about how commercial software had a requirement to satisfy its customers, while OSS was planned on the 'whim' of its developers, without customer regard.. Sucka! He called himself a Solaris sysadmin, but the fucker never installed tcpd and left vanilla inetd.confs wherever I cleaned up after him.. Shit, he never even rem'd out a single init script.. At least he was too incompetent to leave a backdoor;)
In the same way Highlander II destroyed the whole film series for me, Episode I has put me off off any new Episodes. I will only go see E2/E3 if they involve the slow, painful, delicious torture of Jar Jar and the genocide of his race, one gungan at a time..
But IBM looks a lot like Cisco - sure, they've got patents coming out of their wazoo, but they don't use their strength to control the market(so it seems. One can't be too sure).
The Justice department already called Big Blue on that tactic..:p
Your Working Boy,
JFS is nice, but I'm concerned...
on
XFS Beta
·
· Score: 2
... I perused the XFS for Linux site, but could not find any information regarding LVM or SGI's toolset (revolving around xlv).
Are they only porting the XFS and none of the LVM support? My memory may be slipping, but I don't recall any mention of LVM (for or against porting to Linux) in any of their online documentation (except for some manpages, which are taken from IRIX)..
to 'managing' a fire team of 4 sysadmins (love that term, 'fire team';) about 4 months ago, things have gotten interesting... here's a few notes:
I've taken to a kind of 'primus inter pares' or 'president pro temp' role when it comes to tech stuff. The guys know what they're doing, I trust their judgement when it comes to tech, I just keep a handle on what they're doing and try to provide some 'direction' (as in, here's where we want to be in 1 month, 3 months, etc..)
I don't really monitor the outstanding task list or the nittiest of gritty, I end up relying on feedback from outside the group, which is probably the right way of doing it.
The key thing I offer my superiors in the management arena is the ability to deconstruct technical concepts, using metaphor and ample explanation, and make legitimate arguments for or against technologies/processes. This is often not what they want to hear (for example: they wanted to consider rewiring our floors 'wirelessly'. There's between 60 and 120 people per floor. "We're supposed to be a wireless broadband company!" Took quite an effort to disabuse them of the practicality of a 802.11 NIC for each CPU and hubs for every 10 users)
Our communication is IMHO excellent, because I try to foster an atmosphere where people can discuss things without worrying about offending anyone or saying the wrong thing. As a great American philosopher once said, "there are no stupid questions, only stupid people";)
People liken managing tech groups to herding cats. Wrong. Herding cats is easier: at least they're lazy enough to head towards a single food source.. Tech guys (myself included) can easily hop from raise to raise. I personally believe that fostering the kind of environment/culture that keeps people happy and wanting to come to work is my key function. When we've got too much to do, there's no time to think about leaving. When we're on downtime, there's Quake3/Homeworld/Age of Empires at 5:31pm.. Basically, I'm trying to have the group dynamic I've always want to work in. Now's my chance.
Never ask someone to do something above-and-beyond if you aren't willing to do it yourself. If someone needs to come in on a weekend for something you can't do (NT stuff in my case), be there. Bring coffee, go out for lunch, cheerlead but don't be underfoot. Push for as much remote admin as possible, as much reduction of drudgery as possible. Call it 'reducing downtime' or 'reducing opportunity for human error' to sell it to your boss. Even better: simply allude to the job market and the need to retain good people (they're hard enough to find).. Luckily, one of the key criteria in analyzing my corp's industry is employee retension, and we're currently one of the best if not the best in our group.. With the stock being what it is, we really don't need one of our key indicators going south...
Humor, keep 'em laughing while they're toiling, if you can. Joking at best, Gallows humor at worst.
I'm not sure which is better: being in the same room/area with your team or not. I think being in the same room is better, but you have to keep the concept of 'going native' in mind, and remember what's practical for the company may not make your roomates happy. The best fix for this would probably be to have fairly consistent and well-known ways of thinking of things, so that the team (and those above/around you) have a good idea of where you're coming from.
Thank goodness I only have to evaluate, not decide on raises. Still, when evaluation time comes, if you don't already know how you feel about your guys you aren't doing your job. Have an informal chat or two before formal evaluations, if you (and (s|)he) are comfortable (which you should be if you're doing your job) so that you both know how they'll go down.
Proper spelling and grammar help when corresponding with non-techies. I should take some time to improve mine!;)
I'm sure it'll get more fun.. I get to build out like 50-60kft^2 of user space with a nice server room. Mmmm.. Diesel generators...
Non intrusive surgery from a laser equipped nanite ? Be wonderful for clearing arterial blockages, etc...
Did anyone else think of MST3k's nanites when they read this? The little buggers'd probably be consulting their union shop steward before agreeing to embark on such a large-scale industrial project.. Probably involves overtime, particularly on an American...
it makes things less contrasty for reading in extreme lighting situations, and if it's anything like the Palm 3c's color, it's quite painful to look at for more than, say, 3 seconds.
That's funny, I have nothing but raves regarding the paperwhite screen, high brightness, and non-gimmicky addition of color to OS widgets. Plus, AvantGo works well with TheRegister, though I'd like to figure a way to point AG thru my junkbuster proxy..
Integrating it with the cell phone would be bad.
Definitely. I want a 3G/4G unit with a little video camera and 2-10mbps wireless so I can have a handheld videophone. Anything less than that is a waste of time.. Though integrated wireless IP that is _useful_ (that is, allows me to buy movie tickets in the USA, which no US (W|CR)AP site has been able to do on my SPCS) would be nice, it's not enough to get me to buy a new phone/PDA..
And what a lot of people are after is not the 18000th live rendition of "Brian Wilson," but the improv bits and between-song banter the band does on the live shows (a lot of fans, myself included, think it was criminal that these were left off their official live CD).
... A savvy response to something which shows their collective cleverness (is 'smartassness' a word?). Too bad they've been suppressing that cleverness over the last 2 albums.. I really miss the guys who made 'Gordon' and 'Maybe You Should Drive'..
The live shows are some of the best you'll ever see, but it's still sad that they're trying to get more 'serious', and losing their jazz/rap influences to stay on MTV.. Stephen Page is cool but he should _not_ be driving the songwriting:p
Also, we haven't made a new nuclear power plant in around 15 years or so.
... And the ones we do have keep getting shut down.
Can't blame populist feelings totally though: Atomic Energy govdroids have screwed themselves quite a bit. Remember Shoreham? Planting a fission reactor smack dab in the middle of one of the most densely populated sections of the US? McFly???
The problem isn't necessarily the safety of the fission process (we _can_ build safe packaging and processes for fuel storage, power generation, and waste storage) IMHO, but with the inability to trust the track record of the people tasked with doing this.
Their incompetence has cost us billions, but what else is new with government?
I wonder if it would make more sense in particular cities/regions? NYC residents pay on the order of $0.15/kW for power.. Has solar or fuel-cell beaten that yet?
A story I posted (and/. rejected, suh-prize suh-prize) related Marillion's decision to produce its next record exclusively thru fan support.. Preorders (and fan donations) paying for the recording, pressing, sleeve printing, etc..
(looks like theregister's broken now:p do a search on Marillion at some point..)
I am SO downloading that tomorrow I got myselfa cube with 320 MB of ram and i'm LOVING it...
Hey,
Got one myself, 500MHz/128M/40G + AirPort and the 15" flat panel (being an overpaid unix/net admin kicks @$$).. The thing is a masterpiece of physical design.. A few notes after about a week of usage:
DV support is _flawless_.. I tried NT, 2k, and Linux, and nothing comes close. Even with the bundled iMovie.
AirPort is _flawless_.. It bridges my DSL net and I get 4 of 5 signal bars (in the control tab) thru a foot thick concrete floor.
The innards of the box are really beautifully laid out. This is no hermetically-sealed box, this thing is gorgeous inside and out..
the power buttons (one on the monitor, one on the cube) are backlit electrostatic sensors that 'throb' when in suspend mode. Cool.
the hard reset button (which you need on the mac) is on the bottom of the box so you have to lift the thing, put the top on a soft surface (don't want to scratch the lucite) and pop the button. Not cool.
The reduction of cable clutter is really nice, particularly for someone as anal about them as myself. 3 cables enter the box: power, monitor megacable, and firewire. Sweet.
the HK speakers are very nice, though their cables are way too short.
lack of a built-in microphone sucks. Particularly since it could have easily been incorporated into the monitor as it has an internal USB hub.
I will definitely prefer OSX.. Lack of proper task sharing is apparent.
I need additional desktops.. I'm used to kpanel and having 6-8 virtual desktops:p
NiftyTelnet works pretty well with SSH
The video board looks swappable, at some point perhaps a GeForce2Ultra will be available, though it'll have to obey the Apple slotplate and video connector. I've had no issues with the video performance, and 16MB is fine for a 1024x768 display..
Now I just have to wait until the next KGP show to drop a 512MB DIMM in.. Apple RAM (as is most vendor RAM) is ridiculously overpriced..
Akamai is awesome, but it would be nice to have an open-source, open-network way to implement this at the ISP level. Does anyone know of any such effort underway already?
Dude, I can't believe you totally forgot the main reason to go with Mac these days: VIDEO EDITING!! Video editing using DV is CRAP on any platform besides Mac..
I've never owned a Mac before (used and admin'd but never owned), but I've got an order in for a 500MHz Cube for my bedroom.. Silent but deadly.. (plus I can drop Terminus on it)
A lot of times the entities you think are evil empires are really just collectives of nice normal people who go to their jobs everyday and come home with paychecks to feed their children.
I would make a pithy comment about nice, typical Germans working as part of the Nazi war machine, but that would invoke Godwin's law and it's too early in the AM round my way for that..
Slashdot Mirror
but Valenti refers to the internet as a "Legerdemain"
;)
Hey, I really can't fault him for that.. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.. And we _are_ wizards
And the Internet _is_ magical: it can make monopolies and corporate oppresion vanish into thin air! But only if we stay alert, involved, and focused.. And coding.. Always coding...
Your Working Boy,
Lessig was biased in that case because Bill Gates turned his back on the academic world before graduating and became a tremendous success--thus invalidating the idea that smart young men need professors like Lessig in order to become successful. Worse yet, BG turned his back on the very same institution on which Lessig relies for his livelihood.
This is the funniest thing I've read this morning.
Please, like Harvard's going to suffer for applications because of Bill Gate$' example. It hasn't yet, and he's been the prodigal dropout for like 25 years now!
Mr. Lessig's pretty sharp, or at least he came off that way in my limited correspondence with him (about some Linux software IIRC).
I'm as big a fan of wacky conspiracy theory as anyone (fnord), but this is even sillier than the theory that was on the grassy knoll with a gray impersonating Castro..
Your Working Boy,
It is stuck at a 32 Meg limit. If you check the BeOS developer websites you will see that there is no workaround short of fixing the flaw in the BeOS kernel. Sadly, this has been ignored by Be Inc. They are completely unwilling to fix this flaw.
;)
Well, how many handhelds/Internet appliances need more than that?
You see, the problem with closed-source software is that when product planning directions change, _your_ feature may be dropped or your needs may be ignored.. If BeOS was OSS, this would have been fixed by now...
(The irony is, some ex-cow-orker would always feed us this line about how commercial software had a requirement to satisfy its customers, while OSS was planned on the 'whim' of its developers, without customer regard.. Sucka! He called himself a Solaris sysadmin, but the fucker never installed tcpd and left vanilla inetd.confs wherever I cleaned up after him.. Shit, he never even rem'd out a single init script.. At least he was too incompetent to leave a backdoor
Your Working Boy,
Can we look forward to human-guided missiles now?
Aww, That's not new...
Your Working Boy,
In the same way Highlander II destroyed the whole film series for me, Episode I has put me off off any new Episodes. I will only go see E2/E3 if they involve the slow, painful, delicious torture of Jar Jar and the genocide of his race, one gungan at a time..
I'd rather see a new B5-verse movie anyway..
Your Working Boy,
But IBM looks a lot like Cisco - sure, they've got patents coming out of their wazoo, but they don't use their strength to control the market(so it seems. One can't be too sure).
:p
The Justice department already called Big Blue on that tactic..
Your Working Boy,
... I perused the XFS for Linux site, but could not find any information regarding LVM or SGI's toolset (revolving around xlv).
Are they only porting the XFS and none of the LVM support? My memory may be slipping, but I don't recall any mention of LVM (for or against porting to Linux) in any of their online documentation (except for some manpages, which are taken from IRIX)..
XFS without LVM? Disappointing...
Your Working Boy,
It's an application of IBM's Java-based Cryptolope
Hmm, that old thing? IBM's been hawking it since 1995 or so...
Your Working Boy,
I'm sure it'll get more fun.. I get to build out like 50-60kft^2 of user space with a nice server room. Mmmm.. Diesel generators...
Your Working Boy,
Non intrusive surgery from a laser equipped nanite ? Be wonderful for clearing arterial blockages, etc...
Did anyone else think of MST3k's nanites when they read this? The little buggers'd probably be consulting their union shop steward before agreeing to embark on such a large-scale industrial project.. Probably involves overtime, particularly on an American...
I miss MST..
Your Working Boy,
it makes things less contrasty for reading in extreme lighting situations, and if it's anything like the Palm 3c's color, it's quite painful to look at for more than, say, 3 seconds.
That's funny, I have nothing but raves regarding the paperwhite screen, high brightness, and non-gimmicky addition of color to OS widgets. Plus, AvantGo works well with TheRegister, though I'd like to figure a way to point AG thru my junkbuster proxy..
Integrating it with the cell phone would be bad.
Definitely. I want a 3G/4G unit with a little video camera and 2-10mbps wireless so I can have a handheld videophone. Anything less than that is a waste of time.. Though integrated wireless IP that is _useful_ (that is, allows me to buy movie tickets in the USA, which no US (W|CR)AP site has been able to do on my SPCS) would be nice, it's not enough to get me to buy a new phone/PDA..
Your Working Boy,
And what a lot of people are after is not the 18000th live rendition of "Brian Wilson," but the improv bits and between-song banter the band does on the live shows (a lot of fans, myself included, think it was criminal that these were left off their official live CD).
Any sites with the "McDonald's Girl" cover?
Your Working Boy,
... A savvy response to something which shows their collective cleverness (is 'smartassness' a word?). Too bad they've been suppressing that cleverness over the last 2 albums.. I really miss the guys who made 'Gordon' and 'Maybe You Should Drive'..
:p
The live shows are some of the best you'll ever see, but it's still sad that they're trying to get more 'serious', and losing their jazz/rap influences to stay on MTV.. Stephen Page is cool but he should _not_ be driving the songwriting
Or not.
Your Working Boy,
Also, we haven't made a new nuclear power plant in around 15 years or so.
... And the ones we do have keep getting shut down.
Can't blame populist feelings totally though: Atomic Energy govdroids have screwed themselves quite a bit. Remember Shoreham? Planting a fission reactor smack dab in the middle of one of the most densely populated sections of the US? McFly???
The problem isn't necessarily the safety of the fission process (we _can_ build safe packaging and processes for fuel storage, power generation, and waste storage) IMHO, but with the inability to trust the track record of the people tasked with doing this.
Their incompetence has cost us billions, but what else is new with government?
Your Working Boy,
the problem is reliance on the personal automobile in the first place.
One person's bug is another's feature...
Individual liberty uber alles...
Your Working Boy,
The economics are iffy.
I wonder if it would make more sense in particular cities/regions? NYC residents pay on the order of $0.15/kW for power.. Has solar or fuel-cell beaten that yet?
Your Working Boy,
Chemical storage will always be necessary when and where solar collection is not feasible
;)
Yeah, like for anyone living in the northeast US..
Still, to have hydrogen produced by the sunny states and shipped everywhere else.. By dirigible perhaps?
Your Working Boy,
A story I posted (and /. rejected, suh-prize suh-prize) related Marillion's decision to produce its next record exclusively thru fan support.. Preorders (and fan donations) paying for the recording, pressing, sleeve printing, etc..
:p do a search on Marillion at some point..)
(looks like theregister's broken now
Life is indeed getting interesting...
Your Working Boy,
Or they could install multiple user login on OS9 to get used to the idea...
;)
Like I did..
Though I'm already used to the idea
(btw, any chance of an X-compatibility layer or 'wrapper port'?)
Your Working Boy,
Hey,
Got one myself, 500MHz/128M/40G + AirPort and the 15" flat panel (being an overpaid unix/net admin kicks @$$).. The thing is a masterpiece of physical design.. A few notes after about a week of usage:
Now I just have to wait until the next KGP show to drop a 512MB DIMM in.. Apple RAM (as is most vendor RAM) is ridiculously overpriced..
Can't wait for a fully functional OSX release..
Your Working Boy,
Akamai is awesome, but it would be nice to have an open-source, open-network way to implement this at the ISP level. Does anyone know of any such effort underway already?
IIRC, freenet handles localized caching..
Your Working Boy,
Dude, I can't believe you totally forgot the main reason to go with Mac these days: VIDEO EDITING!! Video editing using DV is CRAP on any platform besides Mac..
I've never owned a Mac before (used and admin'd but never owned), but I've got an order in for a 500MHz Cube for my bedroom.. Silent but deadly.. (plus I can drop Terminus on it)
Your Working Boy,
... it's to get me to take akamai out of my junkbuster filters and spam me with ads...
Heh heh, maybe doubleclick will start running similar 'proxies'..
Your Working Boy,
A lot of times the entities you think are evil empires are really just collectives of nice normal people who go to their jobs everyday and come home with paychecks to feed their children.
I would make a pithy comment about nice, typical Germans working as part of the Nazi war machine, but that would invoke Godwin's law and it's too early in the AM round my way for that..
Your Working Boy,
some of the most glaring being the early nuclear-tipped (!) torpedo designs like the Mk 45.
The best nuclear weapon we ever developed, IMHO, was the Davy Crockett... Though I've a soft spot in my heart for the MADM..
Your Working Boy,