Without getting into economic theory and mumbo-jumbo - answer this question. Why can't it the norm?
Is it a fundamental "truth" that anything approaching full-employment is bound to fail miserably or is it only our lack of imagination/willpower/motivation?
Personally I do not know the answer, I just felt the question needed to be asked.
Hmm actually I upgraded for the roaming WiFi support which works a hell of a lot better than any of my Linux distros. But that was a company laptop, and I had to have Windows on it anyway. My Mac's do roaming wireless just fine too.
Hey fair enough -- your original posts kept using theoretical physics examples and said nothing of the practical applications that are obviously being studied in your list. And the term "NASA" elicits thoughts of deep-space study, not the more practical applications of the cluster you linked to. When you sent the link and it said "Cornell" the lightbulb came on.
Perhaps the real issue is that the deep-space threoretical calculations you mentioned are the ones that are a waste of time on the cluster -- while most of the projects listed on the web link do seem to have a practical "here on Earth" application.
Thanks for taking your time to post a link. You never said WHICH cluster you worked on, that I saw -- so it was a little difficult for me to "use some of my precious time".
I appreciate the response you sent. Thanks. (And yes, I do vote -- and if I saw a cluster being used for ONLY theoretical calculations of things that had no practical value I would probably write a few letters asking why to Congressional folks and include examples of publically-funded clusters that were NOT doing so. No need to kill the funding, just re-allocate the resources to things that have a reasonable application.)
In so far as your comments about the WWW - CERN didn't really come out of my tax dollars anyway, did it? Wrong country?
And HTTP was a huge idea, but the add-ons to HTTP since it was created are mostly an abomination, seeking to turn HTTP into a page-layout language instead of an information-transfer and referral language... the original scientist had a practical solution to a documentation problem.
Using todays Web as an example of how his work "created" that is very incorrect and assumes he wrote furture versions -- the VAST majority of the work on web standards wasn't done by that one person nor was tax money used to fund it. He had the "brilliant" idea, the rest of the world developed it at zero cost out of my pocket to him. His original research was CHEAP and his application was PRACTICAL. Both are good to strive for when using taxpayer/society's resources.
Yadda yadda yadda, big numbers, yadda yadda yadda, floatin-point rocks!, yadda yadda yadda, NASA, yadda yadda yadda, neutron star.
Translation: Tax dollars being pissed away on the 50th largest supercomputer and a bunch of theoretical math.
Nice work if you can get it. Some of us have had a few rough years of just trying to get by out here in that "real world" that gives you all that entropy. Sorry if we're bothering you.
Good lord, who are you people and why is 40% of my paycheck being ripped out of my pocket in order to pay your salaries again, please? (Yes I know that NASA's budget is a drop in the bucket in the overall Federal budget, but as you said, it doesn't make Mars any closer to know that Alpha Centauri is so far away! Money wasted is money lost, and if time = money the converse must be true. Great minds wasting time is more of a tradegy than me doing it, for certain.)
Could someone explain in layman's terms the real scientific gains that studying neutron stars at great expense to taxpayers brings that will affect "life on planet Earth" significantly -- in my lifetime or the next two to three generations?
Feel free to throw in any information you might have about why we all pay for Shuttle to be re-flown and ISS to produce virtually zero real science. (The real-world answer to that is probably "Public Relations", I know. And lotteries are taxes for people who are bad at math too.)
Nevermind, that's a topic change. Forget it. In all seriousness, your posts were an interesting read, but I find theoretical studies of things like this a giant waste of resources and so-called brainpower.
The dude at MIT who just created the liquid lens thing -- now that's an engineer I'd like to meet. His creation will directly affect people's quality of living.
Somehow I doubt your 50th largest supercomputer cluster will ever create enough value returned to society to pay for the electricity it uses, let alone the costs of building it, maintaining it, or coding for it. What a waste.
Feel free to educate me -- I'd love to know what I'm truly paying for other than someone who has enough math skills to argue about floating-point calculations on useless data that doesn't lead to any more useful information than to prop up a self-perpetuating PhD paper mill.
Bring it on -- tell me how your supercomputer I paid for is changing my life for the better. Bottom line.
LOL... I'm having visions of three dudes standing on stage playing "Hollywood Nights" on three guitars tuned this way -- each assigned a single long-ringing chord.
If that was serious -- you guys obviously don't know how to hire people.
Plenty of well-dressed, hygenic, Linux folk out of work these days... no need to put up with smelly-boy.
Oh wait this is/. -- I was supposed to say:
"I know how to bathe you insensitive clod!!!"
Or...
"Imagine a beowulf cluster of smelly Linux admins."
Or maybe...
"In soviet Russia, the system admins smell neat and clean."
Heh.
Re:However, your rights end. . .
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 1
I still contend 1500 minutes a month is NOT the "occasional" outage you claim to have. You left that part out of the reply.
Try to get it down to an hour or two of your time a week outside of business hours. I'm sure you don't put in an eight hour day... right?
Two hours a week would be 1/3 (!!!!!) of the minutes you have on the cell phone... you're putting in almost another complete workday of work on your cellphone every week, my friend, at 1500 minutes.
C'mon... I've seen it before... you're NOT that important to them. They CAN learn to staff appropriately. You do NOT have to put in six hours a week of on-call unpaid... and think anyone there will care at all when your gone.
I'm not telling you to be lazy -- I'm just saying -- it catches up with you. Health-wise, relationship-wise, a whole lot of ways. I found myself laid out on a CAT-Scan machine last year from medical problems that stemmed from what I now know was nothing more than overwork, and it's retarded. Life is to live... not to work. Enjoy your work, but live your life too.
Just tryin' to help man... don't shoot the messenger. Been there, done that, had the fun in the CAT-Scan machine that talked... "Breathe in, hold your breath." Made by GE... quite fascinating machine, but the reason for being in it was downright frightening. Never again.
As far as the jamming, see my other posts -- I agree with you that it's a bad solution. Technical solutions to human problems rarely work, and vice-versa.
Just take care of yourself, big guy... having beer with the boss is great, but the right people above him push his buttons (or if there's no one above him, a buy-out or other power struggle starts) and he'll be looking out for number one, and I doubt number one is you... seen it happen more than three times now, been in the tech industry since 1991.
Not look like Outlook. For starters. A nice UI goes a long way to getting me to use my calendar app...
Handle multiple calendars (home, work, whatever you want to name them) and have different to-do lists for each, colorized. In the same instance/interface.
Synch EASILY with my Palm device(s) (yes, it'll do it, but it's not the brain-dead simple plug-in-USB-cradle-and-hit-button-uggh-me-caveman- stupid operation it is on my Mac).
WebDAV integration - direct to a calendar server. (maybe someone's hacked this in now, don't know)
Calendar sharing to other iCal machines via the above-mentioned WebDAV server including keeping all the various calendar names straight and being able to only export those you want exported..Mac web integration (not that anyone would really want it, but I'll throw it in here)
Re:However, your rights end. . .
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 1
If your company's using you for an additional 1500 minutes of unpaid business a month AND the systems are so critical that someone needs to be available 24/7 -- they're completely mismanaged.
They need a 24/7 NOC or someone to fill that role for them. No company that operates business 24/7 should rely on a single sysadmin. It gives you great power over them, but is just plain stupid business on their part.
Of course I understand that they'll just outsource the whole shebang to India if you complain, but... hey... it's just true.
Any place that 100% relies on a pager or cell phone to avert what you described as "MAJOR" financial damage... needs better designed systems that can't go down without at least three failures.
(Because designing systems that are more foolproof than 1500 minutes of downtime a month is dirt-simple with even commodity hardware, but most managers don't realize that and don't require it of their IT staff. Ask anyone to do it and it'd be a piece of cake... and the difference in cost between stupid "island" servers and highly-redundant "farms" is not that much when the system MUST be up to make money.)
Trust me on this one... turn the cell phone off randomly and regularly when you're doing personal things if you're not paid for on-call support.
I've been in two jobs where I felt the same way you do... "They HAVE to be able to reach me!"
Put your hand in a bucket of water... now pull it out. That hole where you hand was? That's the hole I left behind when I left both companies... I killed my personal time for years and years for two different organizations and ultimately -- I was (and everyone always will be) 100% replaceable.
The lights didn't flicker, the machines didn't stop running, and the world kept turning on the days I left both organizations.
Good luck with finding some balance. Seriously. I've been where you are and I know you will think my attitude is "poor" or that I'm "insane" from your vantage point... but no one will miss you or even care when a machine crashes when you're gone. Do a good job, but don't give up your life and have a phone glued to your ear 24/7 because of a poor design/management decision in NOT specifying systems capable of running with at least three levels of failed hardware/software.
Re:However, your rights end. . .
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Do you really think business owners will take the time to research the "jamming gear" they purchase to make sure it operates on the "correct" bands? Or will they purchase the biggest broadband noise generators they can get their hands on that costs $50 at a flea market?
Jamming is not the answer. Technical problems require technical solutions. Human problems require human solutions.
This is a human problem. Policy: "No Cell Phones Allowed, No Exceptions" and PEOPLE willing to enforce policy and throw out paying customers -- and the problem will stop. Or all their customers will go somewhere else, either way -- problem solved.
Jammers are a bad answer to the problem of people not willing to confront others in their own place of business and to require their staff to do the same.
Set rules. Enforce them.
Jamming is analagous to the Cold War... it'll just escalate the situation, not fix it. The cell phone user will just find a way around the jammer... just like the script kiddies on the Net.
"Hey man look, that jammer must be in the back far corner of the building, because if I stand over here I get cell signal!"
See?
I doubt many business owners are going to employ people to do proper RF surveys of their jamming systems -- thus under the law they're going to be unlicensed transmitter operators who've taken no reasonable action to limit their actions to only their place of business, and therefore... very very likely to pay $10-$15K fines to the FCC.
Maybe the FCC will start up a program where someone who hunts down an illegal jammer can pocket a portion of their fine... hey, there's an idea... sign me up!
Have spectrum analyser and directional antennas, will travel! RF Bounty Hunters! Fun!
Don't you mean "Whistles Wickedly"? You're far from innocent, you're the scourge of humanity. An shining example of something our society loves... the guy who's only out for himself. Shame on you.
Sorry man, but you have to realize that his hobby (Ham Radio) means he has an antenna or three in HIS yard (not yours) and the fact the he hates cell phones really are not related. You just want to make that illogical statement and hope others are moved by emotion (not reason) to agree with you.
You do realize that there are huge numbers of Ham Radio operators who do things like provide emergency communications for the Red Cross, assist in tracking down interference to things like aeronautical frequencies (for the safety of anyone flying), and experiment in high-tech fields while getting kids involved too, and countless other good works with their radio skills? There are others who just enjoy their hobby and ask nothing more than to be left alone in peace to enjoy it. They're not hurting you. But you lump your neighbor's "40 foot antenna" into some kind of evil cabal that just doesn't exist. Wow. Get some formal training in logical reasoning, sir.
Guess what. His "ham equipment" is no more illegal, useless, or stupid as you posting to slashdot with your computer. It's a hobby. Just like yours. Oh my goodness, you can SEE his antenna! Oh no. The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Give me a break. It's not hurting you.
If the guy really *is* just a jerk, lumping those other good people who are Ham Operators in with one old curmudgeon who doesn't like cellular telephones because he has an antenna in his yard is about as dumb as thinking that he won't be there if a disaster strikes your area and you'd like to get a message out to your family to let them know you're alright -- he will be. And he'll be HAPPY to help you in that scenario. Nice of you to hate him for his hobby. Talk about intolerant!
It takes ALL kinds of people to make a REAL (non-slashdot non-computer-geek-only) community. Some people play golf, some people go to church six times a week, some people post to Slashdot at every opportunity, and some people... (OH MY GOODNESS NOOOOO!) use Amateur Radios for their fun.
Grow up. Your cowardly "anonymous" tip is just the same plain backstabbing, mean, unbecoming behaviour that we're all learning to come to expect in society these days -- and you've taken a problem and made it worse.
Could you have talked to this person directly instead of having to leverage a third party government agency paid by taxpayer dollars to harass him? You are not a good citizen if you didn't take your concerns to him first. Building inspector?? How long has the antenna been there? Is it falling down? You're just wasting public resources and helping government bureaucracy have more power and control of someone else's life -- don't complain when they come regulate your favorite hobby too. You're just helping it along... because you're too scared, stupid, or morally weak to just talk to this person.
Why not just walk over with a beer on a hot Saturday, and ask the guy why he has all those big antennas, and explain that you're somehow distressed by them -- and have a REAL LIVE HUMAN TO HUMAN DISCUSSION about it.
You just might find he has some interesting things to say about how he's SAVED LIVES with his radio gear, or that he was a WWII vet and Navy radio operator, or that he got into Ham Radio to talk to an elderly relative in another state back when long distance phone calls cost a lot of money, or maybe he talks to his favorite church's missionaries in far-flung places to keep them from feeling homesick, or maybe he is an old salt who monitors the Maritime Mobile Net on 20 meters and has dispatched Coast Guard rescue personnel to people in trouble on the high seas... MOST Hams have a lifesaving story to tell, and once your hobby has helped you save someone's life or seriously affected the welfare of someone for the better -- no neighbor with a whi
Logically the two arguments don't go together very well. You can hire professionals (who act like professionals) for either OS. My comments were more towards those who don't admin in a professional manner.
You obviously didn't have anything set up in Apache (upgraded to Apache2 with no clear indication that it would barf miserably on the old config file nor an.rpmnew config file to use for sanity), nor anything that used a bunch of perl modules that have disappeared from RPM packages, or anything that relied on mod_perl, or....
Have had ex-Army, ex-Navy, and ex-Air Force managers in a number of jobs at a number of companies.
Army & Navy -- good folks. Totally agree with your sentiments about how well they handle staff. Best manager I ever had was an ex-submarine XO. Also Navy Chiefs are the guys you want around if you just want shit to get done.
Army guys bark a little more/louder/longer when they're upset, but they are always there to cover your back as long as the work's getting done.
Air Force -- never had an Air Force manager that backed his/her employees up at all. Always convinced they're better than most people, and always willing to stab the nearest employee in the back for a few brownie points with their boss. Have had both Academy grads and line officers. No difference other than the Academy grads REALLY think they're better than everyone else.
Never had a Marine manager. (Note: I never call a Marine an ex-Marine.)
Slashdot Mirror
Without getting into economic theory and mumbo-jumbo - answer this question. Why can't it the norm?
Is it a fundamental "truth" that anything approaching full-employment is bound to fail miserably or is it only our lack of imagination/willpower/motivation?
Personally I do not know the answer, I just felt the question needed to be asked.
Can you imagine what a Beowulf cluster of naked gold men could do?
(Uh... on second thought, please don't.)
Hmm actually I upgraded for the roaming WiFi support which works a hell of a lot better than any of my Linux distros. But that was a company laptop, and I had to have Windows on it anyway. My Mac's do roaming wireless just fine too.
He could just find another test like that which shows M$ to be faster and then go to work in their Marketing department. :-)
Hey fair enough -- your original posts kept using theoretical physics examples and said nothing of the practical applications that are obviously being studied in your list. And the term "NASA" elicits thoughts of deep-space study, not the more practical applications of the cluster you linked to. When you sent the link and it said "Cornell" the lightbulb came on.
Perhaps the real issue is that the deep-space threoretical calculations you mentioned are the ones that are a waste of time on the cluster -- while most of the projects listed on the web link do seem to have a practical "here on Earth" application.
Thanks for taking your time to post a link. You never said WHICH cluster you worked on, that I saw -- so it was a little difficult for me to "use some of my precious time".
I appreciate the response you sent. Thanks. (And yes, I do vote -- and if I saw a cluster being used for ONLY theoretical calculations of things that had no practical value I would probably write a few letters asking why to Congressional folks and include examples of publically-funded clusters that were NOT doing so. No need to kill the funding, just re-allocate the resources to things that have a reasonable application.)
In so far as your comments about the WWW - CERN didn't really come out of my tax dollars anyway, did it? Wrong country?
And HTTP was a huge idea, but the add-ons to HTTP since it was created are mostly an abomination, seeking to turn HTTP into a page-layout language instead of an information-transfer and referral language... the original scientist had a practical solution to a documentation problem.
Using todays Web as an example of how his work "created" that is very incorrect and assumes he wrote furture versions -- the VAST majority of the work on web standards wasn't done by that one person nor was tax money used to fund it. He had the "brilliant" idea, the rest of the world developed it at zero cost out of my pocket to him. His original research was CHEAP and his application was PRACTICAL. Both are good to strive for when using taxpayer/society's resources.
Hmm... yeah I read it...
Yadda yadda yadda, big numbers, yadda yadda yadda, floatin-point rocks!, yadda yadda yadda, NASA, yadda yadda yadda, neutron star.
Translation: Tax dollars being pissed away on the 50th largest supercomputer and a bunch of theoretical math.
Nice work if you can get it. Some of us have had a few rough years of just trying to get by out here in that "real world" that gives you all that entropy. Sorry if we're bothering you.
Good lord, who are you people and why is 40% of my paycheck being ripped out of my pocket in order to pay your salaries again, please? (Yes I know that NASA's budget is a drop in the bucket in the overall Federal budget, but as you said, it doesn't make Mars any closer to know that Alpha Centauri is so far away! Money wasted is money lost, and if time = money the converse must be true. Great minds wasting time is more of a tradegy than me doing it, for certain.)
Could someone explain in layman's terms the real scientific gains that studying neutron stars at great expense to taxpayers brings that will affect "life on planet Earth" significantly -- in my lifetime or the next two to three generations?
Feel free to throw in any information you might have about why we all pay for Shuttle to be re-flown and ISS to produce virtually zero real science. (The real-world answer to that is probably "Public Relations", I know. And lotteries are taxes for people who are bad at math too.)
Nevermind, that's a topic change. Forget it. In all seriousness, your posts were an interesting read, but I find theoretical studies of things like this a giant waste of resources and so-called brainpower.
The dude at MIT who just created the liquid lens thing -- now that's an engineer I'd like to meet. His creation will directly affect people's quality of living.
Somehow I doubt your 50th largest supercomputer cluster will ever create enough value returned to society to pay for the electricity it uses, let alone the costs of building it, maintaining it, or coding for it. What a waste.
Feel free to educate me -- I'd love to know what I'm truly paying for other than someone who has enough math skills to argue about floating-point calculations on useless data that doesn't lead to any more useful information than to prop up a self-perpetuating PhD paper mill.
Bring it on -- tell me how your supercomputer I paid for is changing my life for the better. Bottom line.
And the Military.
A moment of silence for SRV...
LOL... I'm having visions of three dudes standing on stage playing "Hollywood Nights" on three guitars tuned this way -- each assigned a single long-ringing chord.
That was great for a laugh, man.
The next Slashdot story is coming but subscribers can see it now!
I can't resist...
Put a morse code key between your fingers. A simple microcontroller could translate to ASCII and store on Flash.
A little shorthand to shorten up longer words and you're set.
Not efficient, but very cool.
If that was a joke, cool.
/. -- I was supposed to say:
If that was serious -- you guys obviously don't know how to hire people.
Plenty of well-dressed, hygenic, Linux folk out of work these days... no need to put up with smelly-boy.
Oh wait this is
"I know how to bathe you insensitive clod!!!"
Or...
"Imagine a beowulf cluster of smelly Linux admins."
Or maybe...
"In soviet Russia, the system admins smell neat and clean."
Heh.
I still contend 1500 minutes a month is NOT the "occasional" outage you claim to have. You left that part out of the reply.
Try to get it down to an hour or two of your time a week outside of business hours. I'm sure you don't put in an eight hour day... right?
Two hours a week would be 1/3 (!!!!!) of the minutes you have on the cell phone... you're putting in almost another complete workday of work on your cellphone every week, my friend, at 1500 minutes.
C'mon... I've seen it before... you're NOT that important to them. They CAN learn to staff appropriately. You do NOT have to put in six hours a week of on-call unpaid... and think anyone there will care at all when your gone.
I'm not telling you to be lazy -- I'm just saying -- it catches up with you. Health-wise, relationship-wise, a whole lot of ways. I found myself laid out on a CAT-Scan machine last year from medical problems that stemmed from what I now know was nothing more than overwork, and it's retarded. Life is to live... not to work. Enjoy your work, but live your life too.
Just tryin' to help man... don't shoot the messenger. Been there, done that, had the fun in the CAT-Scan machine that talked... "Breathe in, hold your breath." Made by GE... quite fascinating machine, but the reason for being in it was downright frightening. Never again.
As far as the jamming, see my other posts -- I agree with you that it's a bad solution. Technical solutions to human problems rarely work, and vice-versa.
Just take care of yourself, big guy... having beer with the boss is great, but the right people above him push his buttons (or if there's no one above him, a buy-out or other power struggle starts) and he'll be looking out for number one, and I doubt number one is you... seen it happen more than three times now, been in the tech industry since 1991.
Uh-oh. He pulled out the "I know three languages, so your opinion doesn't count" argument... look out. ;-)
Hmm...
- stupid operation it is on my Mac).
.Mac web integration (not that anyone would really want it, but I'll throw it in here)
Not look like Outlook. For starters. A nice UI goes a long way to getting me to use my calendar app...
Handle multiple calendars (home, work, whatever you want to name them) and have different to-do lists for each, colorized. In the same instance/interface.
Synch EASILY with my Palm device(s) (yes, it'll do it, but it's not the brain-dead simple plug-in-USB-cradle-and-hit-button-uggh-me-caveman
WebDAV integration - direct to a calendar server. (maybe someone's hacked this in now, don't know)
Calendar sharing to other iCal machines via the above-mentioned WebDAV server including keeping all the various calendar names straight and being able to only export those you want exported.
If your company's using you for an additional 1500 minutes of unpaid business a month AND the systems are so critical that someone needs to be available 24/7 -- they're completely mismanaged.
They need a 24/7 NOC or someone to fill that role for them. No company that operates business 24/7 should rely on a single sysadmin. It gives you great power over them, but is just plain stupid business on their part.
Of course I understand that they'll just outsource the whole shebang to India if you complain, but... hey... it's just true.
Any place that 100% relies on a pager or cell phone to avert what you described as "MAJOR" financial damage... needs better designed systems that can't go down without at least three failures.
(Because designing systems that are more foolproof than 1500 minutes of downtime a month is dirt-simple with even commodity hardware, but most managers don't realize that and don't require it of their IT staff. Ask anyone to do it and it'd be a piece of cake... and the difference in cost between stupid "island" servers and highly-redundant "farms" is not that much when the system MUST be up to make money.)
Trust me on this one... turn the cell phone off randomly and regularly when you're doing personal things if you're not paid for on-call support.
I've been in two jobs where I felt the same way you do... "They HAVE to be able to reach me!"
Put your hand in a bucket of water... now pull it out. That hole where you hand was? That's the hole I left behind when I left both companies... I killed my personal time for years and years for two different organizations and ultimately -- I was (and everyone always will be) 100% replaceable.
The lights didn't flicker, the machines didn't stop running, and the world kept turning on the days I left both organizations.
Good luck with finding some balance. Seriously. I've been where you are and I know you will think my attitude is "poor" or that I'm "insane" from your vantage point... but no one will miss you or even care when a machine crashes when you're gone. Do a good job, but don't give up your life and have a phone glued to your ear 24/7 because of a poor design/management decision in NOT specifying systems capable of running with at least three levels of failed hardware/software.
Do you really think business owners will take the time to research the "jamming gear" they purchase to make sure it operates on the "correct" bands? Or will they purchase the biggest broadband noise generators they can get their hands on that costs $50 at a flea market?
Jamming is not the answer. Technical problems require technical solutions. Human problems require human solutions.
This is a human problem. Policy: "No Cell Phones Allowed, No Exceptions" and PEOPLE willing to enforce policy and throw out paying customers -- and the problem will stop. Or all their customers will go somewhere else, either way -- problem solved.
Jammers are a bad answer to the problem of people not willing to confront others in their own place of business and to require their staff to do the same.
Set rules. Enforce them.
Jamming is analagous to the Cold War... it'll just escalate the situation, not fix it. The cell phone user will just find a way around the jammer... just like the script kiddies on the Net.
"Hey man look, that jammer must be in the back far corner of the building, because if I stand over here I get cell signal!"
See?
I doubt many business owners are going to employ people to do proper RF surveys of their jamming systems -- thus under the law they're going to be unlicensed transmitter operators who've taken no reasonable action to limit their actions to only their place of business, and therefore... very very likely to pay $10-$15K fines to the FCC.
Maybe the FCC will start up a program where someone who hunts down an illegal jammer can pocket a portion of their fine... hey, there's an idea... sign me up!
Have spectrum analyser and directional antennas, will travel! RF Bounty Hunters! Fun!
Don't you mean "Whistles Wickedly"? You're far from innocent, you're the scourge of humanity. An shining example of something our society loves... the guy who's only out for himself. Shame on you.
Sorry man, but you have to realize that his hobby (Ham Radio) means he has an antenna or three in HIS yard (not yours) and the fact the he hates cell phones really are not related. You just want to make that illogical statement and hope others are moved by emotion (not reason) to agree with you.
You do realize that there are huge numbers of Ham Radio operators who do things like provide emergency communications for the Red Cross, assist in tracking down interference to things like aeronautical frequencies (for the safety of anyone flying), and experiment in high-tech fields while getting kids involved too, and countless other good works with their radio skills? There are others who just enjoy their hobby and ask nothing more than to be left alone in peace to enjoy it. They're not hurting you. But you lump your neighbor's "40 foot antenna" into some kind of evil cabal that just doesn't exist. Wow. Get some formal training in logical reasoning, sir.
Guess what. His "ham equipment" is no more illegal, useless, or stupid as you posting to slashdot with your computer. It's a hobby. Just like yours. Oh my goodness, you can SEE his antenna! Oh no. The sky is falling, the sky is falling. Give me a break. It's not hurting you.
If the guy really *is* just a jerk, lumping those other good people who are Ham Operators in with one old curmudgeon who doesn't like cellular telephones because he has an antenna in his yard is about as dumb as thinking that he won't be there if a disaster strikes your area and you'd like to get a message out to your family to let them know you're alright -- he will be. And he'll be HAPPY to help you in that scenario. Nice of you to hate him for his hobby. Talk about intolerant!
It takes ALL kinds of people to make a REAL (non-slashdot non-computer-geek-only) community. Some people play golf, some people go to church six times a week, some people post to Slashdot at every opportunity, and some people... (OH MY GOODNESS NOOOOO!) use Amateur Radios for their fun.
Grow up. Your cowardly "anonymous" tip is just the same plain backstabbing, mean, unbecoming behaviour that we're all learning to come to expect in society these days -- and you've taken a problem and made it worse.
Could you have talked to this person directly instead of having to leverage a third party government agency paid by taxpayer dollars to harass him? You are not a good citizen if you didn't take your concerns to him first. Building inspector?? How long has the antenna been there? Is it falling down? You're just wasting public resources and helping government bureaucracy have more power and control of someone else's life -- don't complain when they come regulate your favorite hobby too. You're just helping it along... because you're too scared, stupid, or morally weak to just talk to this person.
Why not just walk over with a beer on a hot Saturday, and ask the guy why he has all those big antennas, and explain that you're somehow distressed by them -- and have a REAL LIVE HUMAN TO HUMAN DISCUSSION about it.
You just might find he has some interesting things to say about how he's SAVED LIVES with his radio gear, or that he was a WWII vet and Navy radio operator, or that he got into Ham Radio to talk to an elderly relative in another state back when long distance phone calls cost a lot of money, or maybe he talks to his favorite church's missionaries in far-flung places to keep them from feeling homesick, or maybe he is an old salt who monitors the Maritime Mobile Net on 20 meters and has dispatched Coast Guard rescue personnel to people in trouble on the high seas... MOST Hams have a lifesaving story to tell, and once your hobby has helped you save someone's life or seriously affected the welfare of someone for the better -- no neighbor with a whi
Logically the two arguments don't go together very well. You can hire professionals (who act like professionals) for either OS. My comments were more towards those who don't admin in a professional manner.
It sounds like an excellent opportunity *if* you can see you'd clearly have support from above in reforming the other team. If not, ask why.
Not to mention keeping their ear to the ground listening for any rumblings of security issues with the software, as an active member of a community.
;-)
Professional system administrators are *engaged* and interested in the success of their employer and are paid to be so.
Send the tinkerers and the kiddies home... let's get some work done.
You obviously didn't have anything set up in Apache (upgraded to Apache2 with no clear indication that it would barf miserably on the old config file nor an .rpmnew config file to use for sanity), nor anything that used a bunch of perl modules that have disappeared from RPM packages, or anything that relied on mod_perl, or....
Who cares how fast it is... can it survive a Slashdotting?
Have had ex-Army, ex-Navy, and ex-Air Force managers in a number of jobs at a number of companies.
Army & Navy -- good folks. Totally agree with your sentiments about how well they handle staff. Best manager I ever had was an ex-submarine XO. Also Navy Chiefs are the guys you want around if you just want shit to get done.
Army guys bark a little more/louder/longer when they're upset, but they are always there to cover your back as long as the work's getting done.
Air Force -- never had an Air Force manager that backed his/her employees up at all. Always convinced they're better than most people, and always willing to stab the nearest employee in the back for a few brownie points with their boss. Have had both Academy grads and line officers. No difference other than the Academy grads REALLY think they're better than everyone else.
Never had a Marine manager. (Note: I never call a Marine an ex-Marine.)
It's being set up like a Flash Mob. You can get the flyers from your local coordinator.