Well, there is this one other tool that the FBI has to detect if you are lying or not, but it only works on people with pacemakers. However, if you actually are lying... well, you can imagine the consequences. Grandpa will be truthfully protected at the bottom of the stairs.
Do you value your organs?
on
Does IT Matter?
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Asking if IT matters is kind of like asking if your pancreas matters. Most people aren't even aware of the function of the pancreas, aside from it being an internal organ that somehow helps the body, like the spleen. But take that pancreas away and boy, do you get someone's attention quickly.
"And yea, the Lord spake unto the Israelites saying unto them, 'Lo, go forth and build unto me a nation worthy of praise and power. Build thy nation upon the backbones of small bird that are black and white, that stay where the cold winds blow. And when thine enemy arrives in the night, thou shalt see him wearing portholes like unto windows, bearing wares which thou shalt not take, for I have set the aside to be a land free of gates and minions who roam everywhere in thy houses.' And the Israelites did so, smiting the foes who doth galavant in the street like large apes with too much wine, shouting that their ways are superior. And so it was good, for they did not bow down before the false idols of the Mik-roh-softi."
According to BabelFish, the phrase would be "ZR--re". However, when I translate it back the phrase becomes "The goat sits one". Guess we know where the Chinese now stand.
Then again, translating the phrase "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" into Chinese and back yields, "One half step manner, one giant leap is the humanity." Just remember that.
Can someone place some sort of explanation here about why the electrons in an atom do not spiral into the nucleus? Classical grade school education states that protons are positively charged and electrons are negatively charged, so what prevents some level of attraction between the two? This would especially be relevant to elements like Ds where the nucleus is so huge.
I know that the mass of electrons are also many times smaller than that of protons or neutrons and that they whizz about the nucleus, but no one has bothered explaining what keeps then apart in any of my old science classes. I turn to the particle physicists, chemists, and other -ists in the world for help.
I had a neighbor in my apartment complex who had a PhD in physics, which interested me. I asked her what she specialized in, and her reply was lasers. Even more intrigued, I asked what type of lasers and how they were used. She told me she worked in femtosecond lasers that operated at a certain wavelength invisible to the human eye. "Oh," I replied. "So you're a con artist. 'My laser is working fine. What? You didn't see anything? That's the way it's supposed to work.'" Luckily, she found that funny and explained that her lasers were actually used for some specialized chromotography. I still think she's a well-paid liar.
Once upon a time I was a member of Club Blue, and I can say that their level of privacy was pretty good overall. Employee details such as SSNs were kept confidential, what you did on the web was ignored unless you did something completely dumb, and management tended to trust you so long as your job got done.
But the levels of privacy made many things difficult and ultimately proved a factor in why I left. Information on salaries, expectations, and how you compared to others were confidential to the point where it was hard to tell where you were. The Personal Business Commitments (PBCs) program that would determine your variable pay (Read: bonus counted as your salary) was obfuscated and it was impossible to see the metrics behind the scores. Pay levels were discussed in closed rooms in whispered voices and it was verboten to speak of possible career advancing points. The thing that pushed me over the edge was learning that a college hire made more money than me even though my experienced dwarfed him (and I had graduated with a similar major).
Ultimately yes, privacy at IBM was a good thing, but brought with it just as many evils.
Thank you for your submission to our new recording system for filesharing anmesty system. Judging from your picture, it appears that you enjoy Britney Spears' music very much. We will add you to any relevant mailing lists that may interest you.
Sorry, but are the German Babelfish translations just getting funnier or what?
c't: In addition, her lawyer, David Boies, is no IP specialist.
Sontag: Is correct, but its special field is treaty right and that the crucial weapon will be.
c't: They did not select it really because of its public-effective role during the Microsoft process?
Sontag: We, the aspect say us at least will not harm.
So, Sontag and SCO have a "special field"? Is this because once upon a time they were "special kids"? This would answer much. But for some real fun with Babelfish, type in the American Pledge of Allegiance, translate it into Spanish and back, and then into Korean and back. You'll never look at the speed of light again quite the same.
Sligtly OT, I know, but Roujin Z was actually a witty social commentary on several factors in Japan. First, it criticized the social atmosphere in Japan where the elderly are increasingly being dumped by their families to caretakers and set aside to die slowly. However, compared to the number of convalescent homes in the US, the Japanese are still far more respective to their elderly than Americans overall. Think Grandpa Simpson.
Second, it criticized the government and its lackluster attitude. This is an increasingly common theme in Anime and Japanese movies as people are becoming more irritated at their government, also illustrated in other well-known shows like Akira and Bubblegum Crisis. Wouldn't you be upset if your government had several trillion dollars in debt and an interest rate less than two percent? Oh, wait...
Lastly, it also showed the gregarious overuse of technology as a means to solve all social ills. The bed that houses the "test" elderly man is designed to cater to his every need and technically keep him going without human interaction (though it is mentioned that he could communicate with other elderly via the bed's comm system). And, in case of nuclear attack, the bed will seal itself in concrete permanently.
Altogether, Roujin Z was a funny film and a good satire. My favorite part is when the bed assimilates the Daibutsu (Giant Buddha) and goes for a walk to the hospital.
With pictures and title music from James bond films the manager sought itself to join in the faithful ones of the former cult company from Santa Cruz for fight for property.
Sorry, but Darl is no 007. If I had to cast him in a James Bond movie he would be something like "henchman #7 who gets shot by his own soldiers and falls off a banister to hang by his neck in front of James Bond." If he were even able to be given a name such as "Odd Job" or "Goldfinger", Darl's name would be "Ass Hat" or something like that.
At my company we had been using IBM's advanced AIX support for our 60+ RS/6000 and pSeries server environment. The cost? Roughly $10K per month. We were typically calling them once or twice a month and there would be two or three instances during the year when we would ask questions to which they had no answer. Needless to say, we are no longer using them. I mean, would you spend $120K/year for someone to sit on your staff doing nothing aside from answering two questions a month, even if he couldn't answer the questions? Be real.
I'd consider this when getting the level of support you have priced from RH. Think about it: will there be many questions for which you are willing to pay $1000 a pop? Are there many questions to which you couldn't find an answer by Googling? Or is it more of a CYA action in case your team fouls up? I'd hate to think you'd be wasting over a quarter million dollars for an inept admin.
I work for one of the largest beef and pork producers in America. We have a large number of feedlots and facilities (slaughterhouses) across the states. I can confirm that as of right now all we use for identification is the standard issue ear tags. We have been exploring the use of RFID for animals, but until the prices drop to the point where ear tags and RFID cost the same it doesn't make sense for us to alter our business plan and invest in a whole new set of materials, equipment, and training costs.
While the retinal scanning does sound promising, that also only helps while the animal is alive. Plus, it requires a certain degree of "cooperation" with the cows. The tags are also more efficient for identifying members of a pen at a distance by tag color alone. Once they come into our facilites, too, retinal scanning does us no good as they get knocked and killed pretty quick. Unless you wanted to track the offal by retinal scans, that's about all it would be good for. You'd be surprised at the way in which our livestock is inventoried and moved around these plants; it is quite scientific, humane, and sterile.
Back when I worked at IBM the quintessential messaging tool was (go figure) Sametime. While the program was nice and simple for communication, the issues I had were mainly because of the way in which it was used.
First, similar to other posters on here, a person was not deemed "at work" unless he was on Sametime by my PHB. There were times when I wanted to get work done but instant messages kept popping up, but I know I couldn't kill the program. So I would put myself on "do not disturb" mode so no messages would get through. That was one nice feature of the client.
Second, I found that instant messaging just became another way for people to ask you about your TPS reports. Something goes wrong-a server's down, for instance. Previously you would receive an e-mail, a page, a phone call from someone, and perhaps someone would come by your desk to watch over your shoulder. All participants want info NOW. But wait! Now a shining message also pops up on your screen. It's just another piece in the machine designed to wear people down.
But, there were some good things about the use of IM technology. It made entering in code and commands quick in simple when working with someone. I remember times when I would explain to someone how to do something over the phone only to find that he would kill the network due to a typo. With a simple cut and paste the problems were quickly solved. It also provided for an excellent audit trail when someone would bungle a project-a big CYA tool. And when telecommuting it was a good tool for keeping in touch.
Would I recommend IM technology in the workplace? It depends on the implementation and use, really. A PHB can screw it up by making it a mandate, but it can save your butt in a pinch.
I know this is kind of OT, but does anyone remember an episode of the classic TV show "That's Incredible" that showed a segment on 3-D television? Some inventors came up with a box that would put images in 3-D format without glasses. Not only that, but the effect persisted even if you closed one eye. I thought that it would be promising technology to use with interactive terminals such as this holography equipment where "buttons" are pressed by passing a finger through an IR field. Anyone have any info on that invention?
The truth of the matter is that SCO isn't even sure itself as to why they should sue IBM. Originally it was a matter of OPIP (Other Peoples' Intellectual Property). But, in this article with Mozilla Quest, Blake Stowell, Director of Corporate Communications for SCO indicated that the IP rights of things such as AIX, Linux, NUMA, and JFS belong to IBM. Apparently all of these problems are due to contract issues. I just can't believe how much crap this dumb Utah-based company has been dumping and how much trouble they have been causing.
In the Unix environments in which I've worked (predominantly AIX and Lnux), large disk/file system management comes down to two things: granularity and documentation. First, you have to consider how specific you want to be when laying out your data.
For example, on one recent project on which I worked, a PeopleSoft/Oracle environment was built on a pSeries system. There were instances for every conceivable piece of architecture which led to 50+ file systems. And we're not talking about 50+ file systems off of/, but file systems within file systems within file systems. This was good for separating data but made df an ugly mess.
Conversely, I worked on another project for with a homebrew app designed to track tickets. Rather than using a database the genius who designed the methodology stored every ticket as a 1024-byte file. This caused the system to eat up inodes even though the NBPI was set to 1024, and it caused an additional fun feature: the ls command could not work. With over 200,000 files per file system (all in one directory), ls could not parse in all of the files. The homebrew guy actually had to write an app to crack open the inode table to list the files. When you set up your environment, first consider what degree of granularity you need.
Next, document everything. Consider this situation: an HP Virtual Array with 100 LUNs each cabled to two brocade switches for redundancy going to ten different systems. Would you know just by popping a cable what effects would happen? Documentation is key for managing large disk/file system environments. This also applies to naming file systems, logical volumes, volume groups, and any other pat of your system.
I propose that the EFF makes their own commerical in the vein of the 1984 Macintosh commercal where a runner comes blazing down the aisle of a movie theatre with a sledgehammer and throws it at a giant visage of Hillary Rosen. And play it during the Superbowl. And let the background music be an "illegally" modified copy of Metallica. Better yet, let the runner be Tux. So there.
The argument has been made time after time that when web face defacements occur it costs people extravagant amounts of money. There are several things wrong with this mentality.
First, these activities do not cost people money, they cost corporations money. I know, I know, this is supposed to trickle down to the individual level to where it hurts consumers. I think that the statement should be that "hacked web sites costs people time". Face it, who wants to come in on a Sunday to fix a hacked web page? Most salaried people receive no overtime for this type of work, so it costs them time. If there is any expense here, it is corporations who foot the bill, which relates to the next point...
Fixing web pages does not cost tens of thousands of dollars. A simple restore of an html page should not be perceived as an activity that puts a company into the red on a balance sheet. I still do not understand how corporations say that a cracker cost them $250,000 when someone replaces their corporate logo with Domokun. Perhaps it is because in reality this money is being spent to patch the holes they should have taken care of months ago? The headlines shouldn't say, "Hacker costs company $50,000 for hacked website!" The headline should say, "Company fails to follow basic security guidelines in patching their servers, costing their mismanaged budget $50,000."
Would I be pissed if my company's website was hacked? Yes. Would I be pissed if I had to take care of massive security holes on my Sabbath day? Yes. But would I accept the idea that it monetarily hurt my employer? No. This way of thinking needs to go.
reconciling this ruling with anti-spam rules may be tricky since this gives spammers a defence...
I disagree. In the ruling the statement was made that the e-mails were, "an electronic communication that neither damages the recipient computer system nor impairs its functioning." The quantity of e-mail sent by spammers can definitely slow down networks, gum up hard disks, and in general cost companies money. This guy was not spamming in the modern sense of the word, and the California court was very choosy with their decision. Spammers will have no luck using this to defend their actions in lawsuits.
If you think about it, normal lightning bolts would cause any excess hydrogen to release its energy and become water. The point that the CalTech crew was saying is that this reaction would cause lower levels of the stratosphere to cool, thus hindering the ozone repletion.
I don't buy it. Their model would work if everything changed overnight to a hydrogen economy, but as countries like China will inevtiably use fossil fuels to take care of their economies, it would take a revolution to match their models.
Call it a hunch, but I think that these three different space organizations have each sent separate probes so that when they all land on the Red Planet they will engage in the world's first interplanetary match of BattleBots. With those lag times it would be quite interesting. Maybe they'd use Viking as a referee bot. Who knows?
Slashdot Mirror
Amen.
Then again, translating the phrase "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" into Chinese and back yields, "One half step manner, one giant leap is the humanity." Just remember that.
Foe
Of
Retarded
Darl?
But the levels of privacy made many things difficult and ultimately proved a factor in why I left. Information on salaries, expectations, and how you compared to others were confidential to the point where it was hard to tell where you were. The Personal Business Commitments (PBCs) program that would determine your variable pay (Read: bonus counted as your salary) was obfuscated and it was impossible to see the metrics behind the scores. Pay levels were discussed in closed rooms in whispered voices and it was verboten to speak of possible career advancing points. The thing that pushed me over the edge was learning that a college hire made more money than me even though my experienced dwarfed him (and I had graduated with a similar major).
Ultimately yes, privacy at IBM was a good thing, but brought with it just as many evils.
Thank you for your submission to our new recording system for filesharing anmesty system. Judging from your picture, it appears that you enjoy Britney Spears' music very much. We will add you to any relevant mailing lists that may interest you.
Sincerely,
Your friends at the RIAA.
c't: In addition, her lawyer, David Boies, is no IP specialist.
Sontag: Is correct, but its special field is treaty right and that the crucial weapon will be.
c't: They did not select it really because of its public-effective role during the Microsoft process?
Sontag: We, the aspect say us at least will not harm.
So, Sontag and SCO have a "special field"? Is this because once upon a time they were "special kids"? This would answer much. But for some real fun with Babelfish, type in the American Pledge of Allegiance, translate it into Spanish and back, and then into Korean and back. You'll never look at the speed of light again quite the same.
Second, it criticized the government and its lackluster attitude. This is an increasingly common theme in Anime and Japanese movies as people are becoming more irritated at their government, also illustrated in other well-known shows like Akira and Bubblegum Crisis. Wouldn't you be upset if your government had several trillion dollars in debt and an interest rate less than two percent? Oh, wait...
Lastly, it also showed the gregarious overuse of technology as a means to solve all social ills. The bed that houses the "test" elderly man is designed to cater to his every need and technically keep him going without human interaction (though it is mentioned that he could communicate with other elderly via the bed's comm system). And, in case of nuclear attack, the bed will seal itself in concrete permanently.
Altogether, Roujin Z was a funny film and a good satire. My favorite part is when the bed assimilates the Daibutsu (Giant Buddha) and goes for a walk to the hospital.
With pictures and title music from James bond films the manager sought itself to join in the faithful ones of the former cult company from Santa Cruz for fight for property.
Sorry, but Darl is no 007. If I had to cast him in a James Bond movie he would be something like "henchman #7 who gets shot by his own soldiers and falls off a banister to hang by his neck in front of James Bond." If he were even able to be given a name such as "Odd Job" or "Goldfinger", Darl's name would be "Ass Hat" or something like that.
I'd consider this when getting the level of support you have priced from RH. Think about it: will there be many questions for which you are willing to pay $1000 a pop? Are there many questions to which you couldn't find an answer by Googling? Or is it more of a CYA action in case your team fouls up? I'd hate to think you'd be wasting over a quarter million dollars for an inept admin.
While the retinal scanning does sound promising, that also only helps while the animal is alive. Plus, it requires a certain degree of "cooperation" with the cows. The tags are also more efficient for identifying members of a pen at a distance by tag color alone. Once they come into our facilites, too, retinal scanning does us no good as they get knocked and killed pretty quick. Unless you wanted to track the offal by retinal scans, that's about all it would be good for. You'd be surprised at the way in which our livestock is inventoried and moved around these plants; it is quite scientific, humane, and sterile.
First, similar to other posters on here, a person was not deemed "at work" unless he was on Sametime by my PHB. There were times when I wanted to get work done but instant messages kept popping up, but I know I couldn't kill the program. So I would put myself on "do not disturb" mode so no messages would get through. That was one nice feature of the client.
Second, I found that instant messaging just became another way for people to ask you about your TPS reports. Something goes wrong-a server's down, for instance. Previously you would receive an e-mail, a page, a phone call from someone, and perhaps someone would come by your desk to watch over your shoulder. All participants want info NOW. But wait! Now a shining message also pops up on your screen. It's just another piece in the machine designed to wear people down.
But, there were some good things about the use of IM technology. It made entering in code and commands quick in simple when working with someone. I remember times when I would explain to someone how to do something over the phone only to find that he would kill the network due to a typo. With a simple cut and paste the problems were quickly solved. It also provided for an excellent audit trail when someone would bungle a project-a big CYA tool. And when telecommuting it was a good tool for keeping in touch.
Would I recommend IM technology in the workplace? It depends on the implementation and use, really. A PHB can screw it up by making it a mandate, but it can save your butt in a pinch.
For example, on one recent project on which I worked, a PeopleSoft/Oracle environment was built on a pSeries system. There were instances for every conceivable piece of architecture which led to 50+ file systems. And we're not talking about 50+ file systems off of /, but file systems within file systems within file systems. This was good for separating data but made df an ugly mess.
Conversely, I worked on another project for with a homebrew app designed to track tickets. Rather than using a database the genius who designed the methodology stored every ticket as a 1024-byte file. This caused the system to eat up inodes even though the NBPI was set to 1024, and it caused an additional fun feature: the ls command could not work. With over 200,000 files per file system (all in one directory), ls could not parse in all of the files. The homebrew guy actually had to write an app to crack open the inode table to list the files. When you set up your environment, first consider what degree of granularity you need.
Next, document everything. Consider this situation: an HP Virtual Array with 100 LUNs each cabled to two brocade switches for redundancy going to ten different systems. Would you know just by popping a cable what effects would happen? Documentation is key for managing large disk/file system environments. This also applies to naming file systems, logical volumes, volume groups, and any other pat of your system.
First, these activities do not cost people money, they cost corporations money. I know, I know, this is supposed to trickle down to the individual level to where it hurts consumers. I think that the statement should be that "hacked web sites costs people time". Face it, who wants to come in on a Sunday to fix a hacked web page? Most salaried people receive no overtime for this type of work, so it costs them time. If there is any expense here, it is corporations who foot the bill, which relates to the next point...
Fixing web pages does not cost tens of thousands of dollars. A simple restore of an html page should not be perceived as an activity that puts a company into the red on a balance sheet. I still do not understand how corporations say that a cracker cost them $250,000 when someone replaces their corporate logo with Domokun. Perhaps it is because in reality this money is being spent to patch the holes they should have taken care of months ago? The headlines shouldn't say, "Hacker costs company $50,000 for hacked website!" The headline should say, "Company fails to follow basic security guidelines in patching their servers, costing their mismanaged budget $50,000."
Would I be pissed if my company's website was hacked? Yes. Would I be pissed if I had to take care of massive security holes on my Sabbath day? Yes. But would I accept the idea that it monetarily hurt my employer? No. This way of thinking needs to go.
I disagree. In the ruling the statement was made that the e-mails were, "an electronic communication that neither damages the recipient computer system nor impairs its functioning." The quantity of e-mail sent by spammers can definitely slow down networks, gum up hard disks, and in general cost companies money. This guy was not spamming in the modern sense of the word, and the California court was very choosy with their decision. Spammers will have no luck using this to defend their actions in lawsuits.
I don't buy it. Their model would work if everything changed overnight to a hydrogen economy, but as countries like China will inevtiably use fossil fuels to take care of their economies, it would take a revolution to match their models.
Apparently the learning curve for the spelling and grammar skills of managers cap out in their youth, too. Like at age 4.