I forgot to mention that this handles dual monitors without issue, and goes from docked w/two monitors to undocked with one monitor seamlessly. If you decide to exit it, all applications collapse to your single desktop.
The one issue I have noticed is that if you have an open dialogue box it will likely die on desktop switching. This is a minor annoyance, but not one that has caused me much heartburn (and believe me, I have lots open, two and three copies of visual studio, and similar instances of SSMS running at a given time).
Sorry, should have thought all that through in my first post.
I too am using mDesktop. It has proven easy to use and configure. I particularly like that I can set windows with certain title text as visible in all desktops, so Trillian is always around but my various tasks can be separated. I recommend it and have gotten a bunch of guys at the office using it too.
I can summarize in one word why I like the idea of an eBook: "Light." Reading lights suck. They are awkward, easily broken, and provide inconsistent light over even a single page. I like the ideal of eBooks because they provide a means of reading with a backlight. In cars, airplanes, trains, buses, or even movie theaters during the previews (yes, I read there) it is nice to not worry about bad lighting, and the 100 or so books I have in pdf would be hard to carry around in these places. I can lose a book
What prevents me from using ebooks? Largely the formatting/drm. I like pdf. I have a very workable system by which I read pdf content, but when last I checked, the adobe eBook format required a special reader that, while trying to make life easier, imposed artificial restrictions on the control I was given over the content. I can even read a large text file, but the MS and Adobe ebook readers are terrible. Next in line is selection, but that should improve once it comes out in a useable format.
My first thought when I saw this was "Damn, the perfect treadmill." If I could play UT like that I'd be in awesome shape...granted, my kill count would go down and I'd have to turn off low gravity, but that would be sweet.
I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
I think this is a bad approach. If someone has a certification while it does not guarentee skill or knowledge in an area, it may well be exactly that. It is one thing for me to put "Networking" on a resume, but if I put CCNA that damned well means something. Granted, one time I had a guy whose resume said "Completed CCNA boot camp", and 3 questions later it was very apparent that he hadn't the slightest idea or understanding of the basics.
I would recommend certifications. A) They get you past the HR droid B) they give the interviewer areas to grill you on (and therefore you can expect to be grilled in those areas) and C) certifications can show the applicant has made effort to gain the knowledged needed. That last point is especially valid if you are lacking a degree.
No employer is willing to pay me to get a certification in something I already know
So...don't get certified in something you already know...find something you don't know and get certified in that. Your attitude here strikes me as complacent.
I do not agree that ideas like that are what keep government messed up. The problem is ideas that are concieved, approved and executed without concern for the reality of the situation. I was putting an idea on the table. I would never implement a plan such as that without considering whether or not they would be used as intended. As someone else posted later, such projects are plagued by the same problem you mentioned (namely that they will be sold, not kept and used properly).
It may be that the idea of distributing those computers to those unable to afford them was considered, studied, and discarded for that very reason. I doubt it. I see it as being too beneficial a PR move for a little thing like 'not working' to get in the way.
It just seemed to me like an education system should be able to find a better and educational use for those systems. I would not object to them all going to eBay provided the money were put back into IT funding.
I could not agree more. My question (though overly vague) was aimed at addressing exactly this. I suppose the better question would be what social means can be used to get people to honestly desire and work for that change?
If I were going to get bent out of shape about tax payer fund usage here, I'd have started with the fact that it was limited to Henrico County residents despite the fact that that county's IT budget is funded by the state, not the county. I believe that to be the case, others are free to research the matter more and correct me.
The comment is appreciated. Anyone have any thoughts on how to avoid this? It seems to me that this is sabotaging long term gains for short term ones, but let us leave that open to discussion.
Agreed, it was definitely a good deal, but due to the publicity I expect most people went there expecting a far more powerful machine than was available. Until they restricted it to Henrico County residents only, I had planned on going.
As geeks living in the area my friends and I were interested in getting some cheap computers to set up as servers and various low intensity jobs. The local papers and Henrico County made such a huge deal over this that I am really not that surprised by the turnout. They were selling off used and discarded low end macs, and making it sound like the deal of a lifetime.
I personally think the county would have been better off finding a way to distribute them to low income families and possibly offering classes in their use, but what do I know.
I agree to your point. As I eventually got to, I think the biggest problem is lack of parents excerising control. My father (and mother for that matter) worked largely as you describe. In the grocery store we knew that it was permissible to ask for one item per aisle. Asking for more, or doing so in an annoying manner defaulted to no chance of any such recommendations bearing fruit on that trip. Punishments did happen. They were the swift and immediate consequences of bad actions. There was, for the most part, a formula. Lying was dinner of two pieces of bread, a slice of cheese, and a glass of water. Poor grades resulted in lost privileges, and other actions had similarly predictable responses. There was no negotiation. There were no exceptions. If you didn't like it, you knew how to avoid it in the future. We were rewarded when our behavior was good (report card dinners, etc) and most importantly on that point, we were told that we were "good kids". That was burned into us, and we knew when we were not being good that we were breaking trust with our parents who said that we were. Parents have a lot of power, one key (of many) is to not be one sided about it.
I think the last sentence there is key. There is a lot of touchy-feely fluff out there today in the world of parenting. I am the oldest of my grandparents' grandchildren. I see the behavior my cousins are allowed to get away with, and the see the 'punishments' that are given, and I cringe to think of how long it would have been before I could sit down were I to have behaved similarly (sorry for all the passive voice).
I don't even object to time out and other such punishments, but they MUST be applied. Threats must be acted on and it must be consistent. The problem I see with most parents who are anti-spanking is that they tend infact to be anti-punishment.
Several of my cousins are hitting their upper teens and are just now starting to become managable. Moral of the story: Parents control what the kids eat. Parents control what the kids do. Parents control what the kids watch. Allowing for unknown activities at friends homes, etc, the power is there, parents today are afraid to excercise it for fear of being at odds with the trendy and soft parenting techniques that are making it so hard to raise kids.
To be honest I would stick with C++. You get much of the memory manipulation of C with the OO principles. Once you understand HOW memory works, and have a grasp of the fact that memory is really whatever I feel like calling it, then you can move into languages where more of the work is done for you. Until you have written your own classes, managed the core dumps and have had to track down where you failed to check the amount of memory allocated I do not think you should work in a language that hides these processes from you. It is one thing to get lazy, it is another to start off that way.
I don't know why you object to the idea of metaphorical content in the Bible. Parables are certainly metaphors. Those concepts which can be most easily conveyed are done as literally as possible through all the various translations, and those which cannot be easily explained are done in metaphor. Creation is no small issue to tackle, and the tradition explaining something that happened 40,000 years before it was put in text can hardly be held to the same standard as what amount to historical records of specific people in specific places at specific times.
In reading the link referred to as the Cardinal reversing Pope John Paul II's statement on evolution I must disagree. It was a clarification, a statement that the Catholic Church is not and has never embraced the notion of the creation of Man without the guiding hand of God. When the original statement was made in 1996 it never occurred to me that people would interpret his words as such an endorsement.
more emphasis on (mathematics) basics. Get rid of the calculators, at least until after the fundamentals are assuredly learned. Make students learn how to use slide rules, for the sake and feel of what is really happening during calculations (addition of log tables... illustrates nice short cuts for coming up with fast and accurate estimates for seemingly complex "problems")
One thing I would especially like to see is SET THEORY. I hadn't heard the word 'set' in that context until my 11th grade year, and it is an incredibly useful way to look at things. You don't need to go insane on it, there is a lot of material so you could easily work it in year by year and not overwhelm the kids.
Amen. I am against the death penalty entirely, but even going on the assumption that it is justified I do not see where a crime could warrant the death penalty without having caused death.
I confess though that I am not sure what hypocrisy the above post is referencing. It is a matter of the value placed on human life, and if a lesser value is being assumed, there is no hypocrisy. Tragedy, yes.
The issue should be judged on the same standard as any other crime. I am not sure why the matter was even brought up. It is a crime, you judge the effects, you consider the intent, and you work out the penalty no differently than any other violation of the law.
I couldn't agree more. What I'd really find useful is a HUD. My complete geek fantasy right now is a fusion of the subvocal pickup and a HUD. You combine this with a persistant mobile internet connection and you have one hell of a tool.
I agree. For the most part the music trading that I see involves one person purchasing a CD/Song (as often as not on iTunes) and then ripping it and distributing among friends. The greatest bandwidth hog is the Babylon 5 Season 5 part one torrent, or simpsons, south park , family guy, whatever.
My last 2 years of college those around me had basically stopped using p2p for music. Most illegal music downloads started because there was no legal way to do it, and downloading was far more convenient than going to a store to buy a full album so you could hear a single song. iTunes (and I suppose other services, though I don't use any of those) has basically filled that need. TV and movies are the next content types that will need to move to legally downloadable media, and once that happens much of the illegal traffic will stop (note that legal traffic would still be a bandwidth concern).
I do think this model is a wise one. With the advent of legal movie/TV downloads this strategy will work quite well to help relieve bandwidth problems, though I would contest the blatant sponsorship of one service over another that is implied by using school resources to play host. So, in summary, I think they have a decent idea (though off target) that needs a good deal of development, and I think the entertainment industry as a whole needs to realize that much of the illegal traffic over the internet is because people want to use the internet to get their content of choice, and when it is not available legitimately they will turn to illegitimate means. Here ends my rather lengthy babbling.
Seems like if the cable modem has a firewall on it, then there is no problem. If I implied that the firewall needed to be external to the modem then I stand corrected. As for the built in firewall, if it does what you need it to, then by all means use it. I try to filter as much traffic as far from my computers as possible, letting the hardware firewall kill general unwanted traffic, and the software firewall do the filtering specific to that machine.
The main point of my advice is that I would ensure a firewall is in place between the box in question and the internet.
My apologies. I took the question out of context and was refering to general practice. When working in linux, I typically avoid making assumptions about what security measures have or have not been taken.
As I understand it, a port is 'open' by default, and it takes something like a firewall to 'close' it. If there is a service waiting to respond on a given port, it will do so unless the port is closed. I'd do an audit of the services running on your fedora box and make sure there isn't anything you don't want others running (sendmail, telnet server, etc) accessible. Fedora may have the firewall enabled by default (I don't know) and it may have a high security profile running, but I'd check it out myself before exposing the box to the internet without a hardware firewall in place.
Slashdot Mirror
I forgot to mention that this handles dual monitors without issue, and goes from docked w/two monitors to undocked with one monitor seamlessly. If you decide to exit it, all applications collapse to your single desktop.
The one issue I have noticed is that if you have an open dialogue box it will likely die on desktop switching. This is a minor annoyance, but not one that has caused me much heartburn (and believe me, I have lots open, two and three copies of visual studio, and similar instances of SSMS running at a given time).
Sorry, should have thought all that through in my first post.
I too am using mDesktop. It has proven easy to use and configure. I particularly like that I can set windows with certain title text as visible in all desktops, so Trillian is always around but my various tasks can be separated. I recommend it and have gotten a bunch of guys at the office using it too.
I can summarize in one word why I like the idea of an eBook: "Light." Reading lights suck. They are awkward, easily broken, and provide inconsistent light over even a single page. I like the ideal of eBooks because they provide a means of reading with a backlight. In cars, airplanes, trains, buses, or even movie theaters during the previews (yes, I read there) it is nice to not worry about bad lighting, and the 100 or so books I have in pdf would be hard to carry around in these places. I can lose a book
What prevents me from using ebooks? Largely the formatting/drm. I like pdf. I have a very workable system by which I read pdf content, but when last I checked, the adobe eBook format required a special reader that, while trying to make life easier, imposed artificial restrictions on the control I was given over the content. I can even read a large text file, but the MS and Adobe ebook readers are terrible. Next in line is selection, but that should improve once it comes out in a useable format.
...Momma's got a Squeezebox, Daddy doesn't sleep at night...
My first thought when I saw this was "Damn, the perfect treadmill." If I could play UT like that I'd be in awesome shape...granted, my kill count would go down and I'd have to turn off low gravity, but that would be sweet.
I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
I think this is a bad approach. If someone has a certification while it does not guarentee skill or knowledge in an area, it may well be exactly that. It is one thing for me to put "Networking" on a resume, but if I put CCNA that damned well means something. Granted, one time I had a guy whose resume said "Completed CCNA boot camp", and 3 questions later it was very apparent that he hadn't the slightest idea or understanding of the basics.
I would recommend certifications. A) They get you past the HR droid B) they give the interviewer areas to grill you on (and therefore you can expect to be grilled in those areas) and C) certifications can show the applicant has made effort to gain the knowledged needed. That last point is especially valid if you are lacking a degree.
No employer is willing to pay me to get a certification in something I already know
So...don't get certified in something you already know...find something you don't know and get certified in that. Your attitude here strikes me as complacent.
Point clarified.
I do not agree that ideas like that are what keep government messed up. The problem is ideas that are concieved, approved and executed without concern for the reality of the situation. I was putting an idea on the table. I would never implement a plan such as that without considering whether or not they would be used as intended. As someone else posted later, such projects are plagued by the same problem you mentioned (namely that they will be sold, not kept and used properly).
It may be that the idea of distributing those computers to those unable to afford them was considered, studied, and discarded for that very reason. I doubt it. I see it as being too beneficial a PR move for a little thing like 'not working' to get in the way.
It just seemed to me like an education system should be able to find a better and educational use for those systems. I would not object to them all going to eBay provided the money were put back into IT funding.
I could not agree more. My question (though overly vague) was aimed at addressing exactly this. I suppose the better question would be what social means can be used to get people to honestly desire and work for that change?
If I were going to get bent out of shape about tax payer fund usage here, I'd have started with the fact that it was limited to Henrico County residents despite the fact that that county's IT budget is funded by the state, not the county. I believe that to be the case, others are free to research the matter more and correct me.
The comment is appreciated. Anyone have any thoughts on how to avoid this? It seems to me that this is sabotaging long term gains for short term ones, but let us leave that open to discussion.
Agreed, it was definitely a good deal, but due to the publicity I expect most people went there expecting a far more powerful machine than was available. Until they restricted it to Henrico County residents only, I had planned on going.
As geeks living in the area my friends and I were interested in getting some cheap computers to set up as servers and various low intensity jobs. The local papers and Henrico County made such a huge deal over this that I am really not that surprised by the turnout. They were selling off used and discarded low end macs, and making it sound like the deal of a lifetime.
I personally think the county would have been better off finding a way to distribute them to low income families and possibly offering classes in their use, but what do I know.
I did want to thank you for actually addressing the question posted. That was quite informative and the references provided were as well.
I agree to your point. As I eventually got to, I think the biggest problem is lack of parents excerising control. My father (and mother for that matter) worked largely as you describe. In the grocery store we knew that it was permissible to ask for one item per aisle. Asking for more, or doing so in an annoying manner defaulted to no chance of any such recommendations bearing fruit on that trip. Punishments did happen. They were the swift and immediate consequences of bad actions. There was, for the most part, a formula. Lying was dinner of two pieces of bread, a slice of cheese, and a glass of water. Poor grades resulted in lost privileges, and other actions had similarly predictable responses. There was no negotiation. There were no exceptions. If you didn't like it, you knew how to avoid it in the future. We were rewarded when our behavior was good (report card dinners, etc) and most importantly on that point, we were told that we were "good kids". That was burned into us, and we knew when we were not being good that we were breaking trust with our parents who said that we were. Parents have a lot of power, one key (of many) is to not be one sided about it.
I think the last sentence there is key. There is a lot of touchy-feely fluff out there today in the world of parenting. I am the oldest of my grandparents' grandchildren. I see the behavior my cousins are allowed to get away with, and the see the 'punishments' that are given, and I cringe to think of how long it would have been before I could sit down were I to have behaved similarly (sorry for all the passive voice).
I don't even object to time out and other such punishments, but they MUST be applied. Threats must be acted on and it must be consistent. The problem I see with most parents who are anti-spanking is that they tend infact to be anti-punishment.
Several of my cousins are hitting their upper teens and are just now starting to become managable. Moral of the story: Parents control what the kids eat. Parents control what the kids do. Parents control what the kids watch. Allowing for unknown activities at friends homes, etc, the power is there, parents today are afraid to excercise it for fear of being at odds with the trendy and soft parenting techniques that are making it so hard to raise kids.
To be honest I would stick with C++. You get much of the memory manipulation of C with the OO principles. Once you understand HOW memory works, and have a grasp of the fact that memory is really whatever I feel like calling it, then you can move into languages where more of the work is done for you. Until you have written your own classes, managed the core dumps and have had to track down where you failed to check the amount of memory allocated I do not think you should work in a language that hides these processes from you. It is one thing to get lazy, it is another to start off that way.
hrm...
wouldn't that be normal justice?
I don't know why you object to the idea of metaphorical content in the Bible. Parables are certainly metaphors. Those concepts which can be most easily conveyed are done as literally as possible through all the various translations, and those which cannot be easily explained are done in metaphor. Creation is no small issue to tackle, and the tradition explaining something that happened 40,000 years before it was put in text can hardly be held to the same standard as what amount to historical records of specific people in specific places at specific times.
In reading the link referred to as the Cardinal reversing Pope John Paul II's statement on evolution I must disagree. It was a clarification, a statement that the Catholic Church is not and has never embraced the notion of the creation of Man without the guiding hand of God. When the original statement was made in 1996 it never occurred to me that people would interpret his words as such an endorsement.
more emphasis on (mathematics) basics. Get rid of the calculators, at least until after the fundamentals are assuredly learned. Make students learn how to use slide rules, for the sake and feel of what is really happening during calculations (addition of log tables... illustrates nice short cuts for coming up with fast and accurate estimates for seemingly complex "problems")
One thing I would especially like to see is SET THEORY. I hadn't heard the word 'set' in that context until my 11th grade year, and it is an incredibly useful way to look at things. You don't need to go insane on it, there is a lot of material so you could easily work it in year by year and not overwhelm the kids.
Amen. I am against the death penalty entirely, but even going on the assumption that it is justified I do not see where a crime could warrant the death penalty without having caused death.
I confess though that I am not sure what hypocrisy the above post is referencing. It is a matter of the value placed on human life, and if a lesser value is being assumed, there is no hypocrisy. Tragedy, yes.
The issue should be judged on the same standard as any other crime. I am not sure why the matter was even brought up. It is a crime, you judge the effects, you consider the intent, and you work out the penalty no differently than any other violation of the law.
aw come on, some body really should have modded that (A.C.'s reply) as funny.
I couldn't agree more. What I'd really find useful is a HUD. My complete geek fantasy right now is a fusion of the subvocal pickup and a HUD. You combine this with a persistant mobile internet connection and you have one hell of a tool.
I agree. For the most part the music trading that I see involves one person purchasing a CD/Song (as often as not on iTunes) and then ripping it and distributing among friends. The greatest bandwidth hog is the Babylon 5 Season 5 part one torrent, or simpsons, south park , family guy, whatever.
My last 2 years of college those around me had basically stopped using p2p for music. Most illegal music downloads started because there was no legal way to do it, and downloading was far more convenient than going to a store to buy a full album so you could hear a single song. iTunes (and I suppose other services, though I don't use any of those) has basically filled that need. TV and movies are the next content types that will need to move to legally downloadable media, and once that happens much of the illegal traffic will stop (note that legal traffic would still be a bandwidth concern).
I do think this model is a wise one. With the advent of legal movie/TV downloads this strategy will work quite well to help relieve bandwidth problems, though I would contest the blatant sponsorship of one service over another that is implied by using school resources to play host. So, in summary, I think they have a decent idea (though off target) that needs a good deal of development, and I think the entertainment industry as a whole needs to realize that much of the illegal traffic over the internet is because people want to use the internet to get their content of choice, and when it is not available legitimately they will turn to illegitimate means. Here ends my rather lengthy babbling.
Seems like if the cable modem has a firewall on it, then there is no problem. If I implied that the firewall needed to be external to the modem then I stand corrected. As for the built in firewall, if it does what you need it to, then by all means use it. I try to filter as much traffic as far from my computers as possible, letting the hardware firewall kill general unwanted traffic, and the software firewall do the filtering specific to that machine.
The main point of my advice is that I would ensure a firewall is in place between the box in question and the internet.
My apologies. I took the question out of context and was refering to general practice. When working in linux, I typically avoid making assumptions about what security measures have or have not been taken.
As I understand it, a port is 'open' by default, and it takes something like a firewall to 'close' it. If there is a service waiting to respond on a given port, it will do so unless the port is closed. I'd do an audit of the services running on your fedora box and make sure there isn't anything you don't want others running (sendmail, telnet server, etc) accessible. Fedora may have the firewall enabled by default (I don't know) and it may have a high security profile running, but I'd check it out myself before exposing the box to the internet without a hardware firewall in place.