I recently (two months ago) bought myself a Athlon 1.4 Ghz CPU and because the fan that was supplied with it was so noisly, I switched it for another fan. However, I was careless and didn't mount the heatsink/fan properly onto the CPU (basically they weren't touching).
Let me assure you that the Athlon 1.4 Ghz is more than capable of destroying itself within 5 seconds if it doesn't have adequate cooling.
I am now Aus$400 poorer and a little more careful.
Not trying to troll, but Scripting.com is a lot better now that Dave has moved on from Sept 11 and the one-eyed 'US is Great rah rah' comments he interspersed in his blog.
Dave is best when he sticks to his technical comments, but hey, it's his site so I guess he can do what he likes.
I think it's a bad idea to start them off on Quake, Diablo or any other 'real-time' game. For someone who is intimidated by computers, just using the computer is scary enough, let alone working out 20 key controls and definitely let alone trying to think and respond in real-time.
I think you should start on multiplayer non-confrontational games like those found on Yahoo Games (several people have already mentioned this).
I also highly recommend the Shockwave mini-golf games that can be found around the web (sorry, I'm at work otherwise I would provide a link). These are great because they are familiar, there is minimal time pressures, and the key controls are very simple.
Once they become comfortable with PCs, then you can move them onto more 'action' games.
I agree that some of the responsibility lies with the sysadmin, but then again, the OS should be designed well enough that the patches are minimal.
I work in an enterprise unix environment and getting time for outages to apply patches is incredibly tough when you are running 24x7 systems that are critical to the operation of the customer.
Sure, we try to patch systems when we find out about security holes, but there comes a time when you cannot simply afford to take your systems down every week to apply new patches. Now I don't deal with MS stuff so I can't comment authoritively, but it seems that the number of patches with MS products is never ending. This stops being a sysadmin problem and becomes a vendor (ie Microsoft) issue. Ultimately, it's a sloppy coding issue that lies with Microsoft.
Assuming that you read the material and, most importantly, actually understand it and can utilise the knowledge, then I don't see why it can't count.
When I interview people, I certainly look to see if they have a degree, but frankly, as long as they have the right attitude (the dominating factor really), and can answer the majority of my technical questions, then they have an excellent chance of getting employed.
If reading the online material from MIT lets you answer my technical questions, well then that's good enough for me.
I'd run extra cable while you're doing it because it's a lot easier running a bundle of cables along a narrow conduit than it is to feed an individual cable through a narror conduit already filled with other cables.
There has been a lot of talk that PGP is the only unbreakable encryption method out there, but doesn't one find it interesting that the US government would hound Zimmerman mercilessly for years and then all of a sudden stop.
Now why would they suddenly stop harrassing him... maybe because the RSA has finally found a way to break the PGP encryption? It's standard practice that once you know how to break someone's code, you don't ever let them know which guarantees that you can keep on reading all their transmissions.
I only ever felt secure *while* the US Government kept hounding Zimmerman. Now that they have stopped, I would assume that no email can be secured.
First off, 100 users really isn't what I would call 'vast'. Try 6000 users spread around the nation - that is vast (yes, I personally look after such a system.
Anyway, some tips:
map our uid ranges for specific functions. eg for the users who only have email access, let them have a uid ranging from 1000-2000 etc. This isn't always possible, but if it can be done, it does help keep things neat and in order
have a variety of scripts (be it command line or gui driven) to help you automate and simplify user administration. eg you might have a script to bulk create users who only need web access
work out, document and follow standards - eg passwords must be changed every 90 days, 3 unsuccessful login attempts will disable your account, full name in the comment field. Make sure these are adhered to these rules.
make sure you have monitoring scripts to make sure that your system isn't buckling under the load if all the users decide to log on at once
if you can, put CPU utilisation caps on each user - this will stop one user from having a runaway process that chews 100% of your CPU slowing the system down for the other 5999 users
setup your system so that you can control the number of sessions that each user can have. This will prevent someone sharing their account, or loggin in multiple times consuming resources. Of course, if you got ample resources, then this won't be a problem... but it's something to check.
Periodically check for duplicate uids or null passwords etc - these can be big security holes and they are easy to miss when you have a lot of users.
After reading Timothy's comment, I realised that he has no idea why Elz is detested by people who need to register or transfer.org.au domains.
Let's face reality, the Internet is no longer a simple little network which is a curiosity. For many business/organisations/people, it is an essential part of their operations.
The problem with Elz is not so much his policies, but his attitude and response times. It often took a couple of weeks for a.org.au transfer to occur... if Elz felt like it... sometimes it could take months. And if you got into an argument with Elz, you could forget about anything happening to your domain request for months and months.
And if it was a once off case, people could turn a blind eye to the problem - but it wasn't a once off case. Ask anyone who actively has to deal with Elz on a regular basis and you will most likely hear a story of frustration and irritation.
So, ignore the high moral ground that Elz has staked out by refusing to profit from the IPO of MelbourneIT - frankly I couldn't care if he did or not - the real reason Elz is detested is because as the domain administrator for.org.au, it is his responsibility to provide a certain level of service - he didn't do this and is therefore a hinderance to the further development of the Internet industry in Australia - good riddance Elz.
I've talked to several web hosting companies in Australia who have hosted various websites that I have designed and which have involved.org.au domain name transfers or creations and none of them have ever had anything nice to say about Elz.
The words: obstructionist, rude, arrogant, overbearing (and others that are unprintable) have all been used to describe Elz.
Whatever people may like to think about Elz and his policies (some of which were good), the fact of the matter is that the Internet is not (and hasn't been for several years) a private little network which can be run by an academic with no connection to the real world.
Whether we like it or not, the Internet is an essential tool for many businesses, organisations and people - it is completely unacceptable that it could take months for register a.org.au.
As far as I am concerned, and I'm pretty sure anyone who has had to liase with Elz would agree - it's a case of good riddance.
you can apply the monopoly test (something I made up):
If all MS produced was the OS, would they be upset by people bundling their icons (or software) on the desktop?
I would say the answer is 'no'. Why would they? If they were only producing an OS, it would be in their best interests to be as open (as in well documented and with known standards) as possible, to allow as many people to hook into their OS as possible and to allow people the flexability to do as they please with their OS.
The more people that can utilise the OS and the more they find the OS useful, the more OS product they sell.
However, MS doesn't think like that because it has an agenda - ie to sell it's other products. And as we all know, it does this by locking out other competitors. That is an abuse of your monopoly powers.
So in this situation, I would argue that MS should have no say as to what people want to install as icons on their desktop - to do so is to once again abuse their monopolistic position.
Yes, unfortunately I have to be juvenille, but if you fart in the space station, the air just gets circulated around doesn't it... not a very pleasant experience for the other astronauts.
Now that they have the airlock, at least they can have a designated fart zone which they can later vent to outer space - problem solved!!
Well I work for IBM as well, and I have never seen Linux used anywhere within the company. I'm not saying that it's not used, but where ever it is being used it is obviously of very minimal impact.
Second, I wouldn't have said that Solaris is a desktop option either.... but Sun utilises it for that purpose.
Sun puts it's money where it's mouth is by ensuring that everyone from CEO to secretary uses a Sun box running Solaris as their workstation. They don't use Microsoft Office, they use Sun Star Office instead.
So if IBM has such faith in Linux, why aren't they using Linux on their workstation internally. Even if that is too big a step for the entire company, the tech staff would be able to cope if you made the move.
it's only those who have no real IT skills that are getting shaken out of the market.
I attend job interviews (as an interviewer) on a semi-regular basis where my role is to ask the technical questions. Out of 10 people I may interview, only 2 or 3 will have any decent knowledge in therr area - the rest really struggle with even basic concepts/situations.
I find it really depressing that there are so many people in the IT industry with useless skill sets or with no in-depth knowledge. And to make it worse, most times they don't even realise (or want to accept) that their skill base is so poor.
From what I have seen, skilled IT people have no problems getting jobs - it's (generally) the unskilled ones who do.
The 'IT industy' isn't just about commercial people. 'IT industry' can refer to volunteer IT people who help out charities etc 'IT industry' really refers to anyone who is involved in IT (at least that is the way I take it):-)
Are you kidding me? I'd rather the Government look after domain names if it means that they get allocated faster.
Previously Elz handled all.au domain names and it took around 9 months (yes nine months) to get a domain name. Then Melbourne IT took over and the wait time dropped to 24 hours (premium service) or a couple of days (standard service).
Meanwhile, Elz still looks after the.org.au service and you can still expect months of delays before you get (if you get) allocated a.org.au.
So frankly, while Elz admirably served a purpose at the start, he is well past his use-by date and the sooner he is ditched (since he doesn't seem to want to go voluntarily) the better for the Australian IT industry.
When Elz controlled all the.au domain names, it took 3 months (if you were lucky) to get a domain name!!
When Internet Names Australia took control of the.com.au domain, that time shrank to 24 hours (premium service) or a couple of days (standard service).
Now, Elz only controls the.org.au domain and surprise surprise, you have to wait at least 3 months to get a.org.au domain.
Meanwhile, all us Aussies who would like personal domain names or would like to register a domain name for our local organistation or club are forced to sit around and twiddle our thumbs waiting for Elz to get off his arse and do something about our request. Either that, or go for a.com or.org.
Elz is your typical academic - disconected from the real world. He is well past his use-by date and the sooner he is replaced by an organistation whose task it is to handle domain name requests the better.
For the record and to his credit, Elz has been handling the.org.au requests by himself as a 'second job'. I believe he isn't paid directly by the University of Melbourne for this work and for this I salute him. However, he should have voluntarily given up control of the.au domain names a long time ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure not quite what you were after, but you would get a large picture at a relatively low cost.
http://www.electrotank.com/games/playGames.cfm?gam eID=31
Excellent mini-golf game!
I recently (two months ago) bought myself a Athlon 1.4 Ghz CPU and because the fan that was supplied with it was so noisly, I switched it for another fan. However, I was careless and didn't mount the heatsink/fan properly onto the CPU (basically they weren't touching).
Let me assure you that the Athlon 1.4 Ghz is more than capable of destroying itself within 5 seconds if it doesn't have adequate cooling.
I am now Aus$400 poorer and a little more careful.
I'll second those comments :-)
Not trying to troll, but Scripting.com is a lot better now that Dave has moved on from Sept 11 and the one-eyed 'US is Great rah rah' comments he interspersed in his blog.
Dave is best when he sticks to his technical comments, but hey, it's his site so I guess he can do what he likes.
I think it's a bad idea to start them off on Quake, Diablo or any other 'real-time' game. For someone who is intimidated by computers, just using the computer is scary enough, let alone working out 20 key controls and definitely let alone trying to think and respond in real-time.
I think you should start on multiplayer non-confrontational games like those found on Yahoo Games (several people have already mentioned this).
I also highly recommend the Shockwave mini-golf games that can be found around the web (sorry, I'm at work otherwise I would provide a link). These are great because they are familiar, there is minimal time pressures, and the key controls are very simple.
Once they become comfortable with PCs, then you can move them onto more 'action' games.
I agree that some of the responsibility lies with the sysadmin, but then again, the OS should be designed well enough that the patches are minimal.
I work in an enterprise unix environment and getting time for outages to apply patches is incredibly tough when you are running 24x7 systems that are critical to the operation of the customer.
Sure, we try to patch systems when we find out about security holes, but there comes a time when you cannot simply afford to take your systems down every week to apply new patches. Now I don't deal with MS stuff so I can't comment authoritively, but it seems that the number of patches with MS products is never ending. This stops being a sysadmin problem and becomes a vendor (ie Microsoft) issue. Ultimately, it's a sloppy coding issue that lies with Microsoft.
Assuming that you read the material and, most importantly, actually understand it and can utilise the knowledge, then I don't see why it can't count.
When I interview people, I certainly look to see if they have a degree, but frankly, as long as they have the right attitude (the dominating factor really), and can answer the majority of my technical questions, then they have an excellent chance of getting employed.
If reading the online material from MIT lets you answer my technical questions, well then that's good enough for me.
I'd run extra cable while you're doing it because it's a lot easier running a bundle of cables along a narrow conduit than it is to feed an individual cable through a narror conduit already filled with other cables.
There has been a lot of talk that PGP is the only unbreakable encryption method out there, but doesn't one find it interesting that the US government would hound Zimmerman mercilessly for years and then all of a sudden stop.
... maybe because the RSA has finally found a way to break the PGP encryption? It's standard practice that once you know how to break someone's code, you don't ever let them know which guarantees that you can keep on reading all their transmissions.
Now why would they suddenly stop harrassing him
I only ever felt secure *while* the US Government kept hounding Zimmerman. Now that they have stopped, I would assume that no email can be secured.
Not disagreeing with you, but why the emphasis on Perl?
....
I've found PHP to a lot easier to learn and understand and have not found a time (yet) when it couldn't meet my needs as a web developer.
Just seeking examples why Perl is better to learn
Anyway, some tips:
After reading Timothy's comment, I realised that he has no idea why Elz is detested by people who need to register or transfer .org.au domains.
.org.au transfer to occur ... if Elz felt like it ... sometimes it could take months. And if you got into an argument with Elz, you could forget about anything happening to your domain request for months and months.
.org.au, it is his responsibility to provide a certain level of service - he didn't do this and is therefore a hinderance to the further development of the Internet industry in Australia - good riddance Elz.
Let's face reality, the Internet is no longer a simple little network which is a curiosity. For many business/organisations/people, it is an essential part of their operations.
The problem with Elz is not so much his policies, but his attitude and response times. It often took a couple of weeks for a
And if it was a once off case, people could turn a blind eye to the problem - but it wasn't a once off case. Ask anyone who actively has to deal with Elz on a regular basis and you will most likely hear a story of frustration and irritation.
So, ignore the high moral ground that Elz has staked out by refusing to profit from the IPO of MelbourneIT - frankly I couldn't care if he did or not - the real reason Elz is detested is because as the domain administrator for
The words: obstructionist, rude, arrogant, overbearing (and others that are unprintable) have all been used to describe Elz.
Whatever people may like to think about Elz and his policies (some of which were good), the fact of the matter is that the Internet is not (and hasn't been for several years) a private little network which can be run by an academic with no connection to the real world.
Whether we like it or not, the Internet is an essential tool for many businesses, organisations and people - it is completely unacceptable that it could take months for register a
As far as I am concerned, and I'm pretty sure anyone who has had to liase with Elz would agree - it's a case of good riddance.
If all MS produced was the OS, would they be upset by people bundling their icons (or software) on the desktop?
I would say the answer is 'no'. Why would they? If they were only producing an OS, it would be in their best interests to be as open (as in well documented and with known standards) as possible, to allow as many people to hook into their OS as possible and to allow people the flexability to do as they please with their OS.
The more people that can utilise the OS and the more they find the OS useful, the more OS product they sell.
However, MS doesn't think like that because it has an agenda - ie to sell it's other products. And as we all know, it does this by locking out other competitors. That is an abuse of your monopoly powers.
So in this situation, I would argue that MS should have no say as to what people want to install as icons on their desktop - to do so is to once again abuse their monopolistic position.
"YOU are the weakest link. Goodbye"
WHOOOOOSSSSHHHHHH!!!!!
ARGHHHHH!!!!!
Now that they have the airlock, at least they can have a designated fart zone which they can later vent to outer space - problem solved!!
Geez, NASA thinks of everything! :-)
Second, I wouldn't have said that Solaris is a desktop option either .... but Sun utilises it for that purpose.
Sun puts it's money where it's mouth is by ensuring that everyone from CEO to secretary uses a Sun box running Solaris as their workstation. They don't use Microsoft Office, they use Sun Star Office instead.
So if IBM has such faith in Linux, why aren't they using Linux on their workstation internally. Even if that is too big a step for the entire company, the tech staff would be able to cope if you made the move.
I'm guessing that you haven't had your morning cup of coffee yet .... :-)
I attend job interviews (as an interviewer) on a semi-regular basis where my role is to ask the technical questions. Out of 10 people I may interview, only 2 or 3 will have any decent knowledge in therr area - the rest really struggle with even basic concepts/situations.
I find it really depressing that there are so many people in the IT industry with useless skill sets or with no in-depth knowledge. And to make it worse, most times they don't even realise (or want to accept) that their skill base is so poor.
From what I have seen, skilled IT people have no problems getting jobs - it's (generally) the unskilled ones who do.
Previously Elz handled all .au domain names and it took around 9 months (yes nine months) to get a domain name. Then Melbourne IT took over and the wait time dropped to 24 hours (premium service) or a couple of days (standard service).
Meanwhile, Elz still looks after the .org.au service and you can still expect months of delays before you get (if you get) allocated a .org.au.
So frankly, while Elz admirably served a purpose at the start, he is well past his use-by date and the sooner he is ditched (since he doesn't seem to want to go voluntarily) the better for the Australian IT industry.
When Internet Names Australia took control of the .com.au domain, that time shrank to 24 hours (premium service) or a couple of days (standard service).
Now, Elz only controls the .org.au domain and surprise surprise, you have to wait at least 3 months to get a .org.au domain.
Meanwhile, all us Aussies who would like personal domain names or would like to register a domain name for our local organistation or club are forced to sit around and twiddle our thumbs waiting for Elz to get off his arse and do something about our request. Either that, or go for a .com or .org.
Elz is your typical academic - disconected from the real world. He is well past his use-by date and the sooner he is replaced by an organistation whose task it is to handle domain name requests the better.
For the record and to his credit, Elz has been handling the .org.au requests by himself as a 'second job'. I believe he isn't paid directly by the University of Melbourne for this work and for this I salute him. However, he should have voluntarily given up control of the .au domain names a long time ago.
Now I'm estatic when the dollar reaches US$0.52 .... sigh.