I posted the question as a 1 (ie without the +1 bonus). All I wanted was a simple answer:)
I too fail to see how my question is insightful- *shrug*
At this rate I could be a real karma whore if I post more insightful questions such as... Can someone please explain (in plain English) what the whole meaning behind the Natalie Portman and hot grits posts are about?;-)
I suggest that the Mir astronauts hunt around their station and look for a plate of rotting meat. That's probably the source of the virulent fungi! The StinkMeat Project goes where no man has gone before...
Ok, may be I mis-interpreted what Sharzilla is ...
on
Gnutella Vs. SPAM
·
· Score: 2
My understanding on visiting the site was that it would modify the title that you got when you searched for a particular file so that it could display advertisements. This would be in addition to whatever binary you were transmitting.
Of course, not that the site is semi-/.'ed, I'm having trouble re-reading that page to check... sigh.
Wonder if this could be dangerous?
on
Gnutella Vs. SPAM
·
· Score: 4
In addition, ShareZilla can transmit an MP3 file (if that's what the user is requesting), or it can transmit a Movie, Text, HTML, VS, etc.
Hmmmm, is anyone else seeing the possibility to transmit macroes or virues this way?
And why shouldn't I get credit, or a share of the profits? If I devote my personal resources to a project and end up contributing something of massive value, why is it unfair to expect a massive return? It's not like the company will go bankrupt if they offer a small percentage, and even a small percentage of a major drug's sales is a huge sum of money (for most of us).
The point is you haven't contributed something of massive value. Your computer is only one unit of a massive number cruncher. If your computer didn't do the work, the packet would be sent to the next computer in the line and they would crack the final code. That's not a massive contribution - it's nothing.
Let me put it this way. Say I own a theme park and to break even I need 1000 visitors to go through the turnstiles. When Visitor 1000 walks through my gates, I will have broken even and paid for my theme park. That is a significant visitor that has stepped through - it marks a momentous occassion - but did that visitor contribute anything? No way! If Visitor 1000 had died just before they paid for their entry ticket, I wouldn't give two hoots about it. Visitor 1001 would be the one to make be break even.
For the same reason, your 'effort' in helping to find the cure for cancer is no more important than Visitor 1000 - that is, not important at all.
You are the selfish person the article refers to.
on
Selfish Society
·
· Score: 5
Sorry about the inflamatory subject line:-)
One of the reasons that tech culture seems "selfish" and "arrogant" to others is that the people that run it and work in it have worked HARD to get what they have
While I'd be the last person to disagree that IT people generally work very hard, I think you are missing the point of the article. I used to have the exact same attitude that you expressed in your post. Here is the line of thinking that I had:
Goddamn, I have been installing/compiling/scripting etc for years in my own time to learn everything I know and that's why I got a kickarse job earning decent amounts of cash - dammit - I worked hard to get the money that I do. And besides, I work real long hours etc etc
And you know what? I was exactly right - I had worked harder than most people and so in that respect I deserved the money that I was getting.
But, I was still selfish and arogant. I only found out after a friend pointed out the reason why. The reason is:
I have been lucky because my situation/family/background/financial situation enabled me to have the opportunity to use computers. Some people aren't so lucky. Some people may have been able to afford a computer but without having any guidance or inspiration, they have been shown what their potential could have achieved using computers. I originally trained to be an engineer but switched to computer science after I realised that this is what I truly liked. Some people can't afford to do this.
There are a lot of reasons why people never find out about their options when it comes to IT.
For you and me, we were fortunate that we found out or were shown these opportunities. It has nothing to do with how smart we are - sure we get brownie points for seizing the opportunity when it came by - but for a twist of fate, we could have been an unlucky one who didn't get a chance at that opportunity.
If we don't recognise this, then we deserve to be labelled selfish and arogant... because that is what we will be
I think Borsook hits close to the mark... but not quite. On the *surface* I would say that it is very easy for the IT community to be perceived as selfish and arogant. Just looking at some of the posts that have already been posted since this article went up is indication of that.
On the *surface*, the 'public' sees rants and raves from IT people on newgroups and places like Slashdot. The 'public' see IT people, many of them very young, making relatively huge salaries with apparently little effort (how hard is it to sit in a chair all day typing:-).
From this perspective, the IT community can appear to be selfish and spoilt. And when exposed to this attitude, the IT community feels hard done by and bites back often with rants and raves (as we have seen in the postings) which only fuels the public perception again.
However, being part of the IT community I would have to say that the majority of IT people that I know aren't like this at all. Sure they are quite a few IT people who are arogant and selfish and I would go as far as to say that perhaps there is *slighty* more of this type of people than normalin the IT area, but not to the point where I would tar and feather the whole community with that tag.
I think a lot of people fail to see the hidden aspects of IT. That being:
many IT people do a lot of self-education in their own time that the public never sees. For those that state that IT people have cushy jobs with high pay for so little effort don't know what it is like to self-educate yourself perpetually. Yes we have been lucky to exist in a period of high growth, but at the same time we have put in a lot of unseen effort to be skilled enough to take advantage of the oportunities and this has nothing to do with being arrogant or narcissistic .
the general anonymity of newsgroups and discussion sites tend to bring out the more extreme points of view (who wants to elaborate a point if it involves spending 30 minutes typing out the explanation - just get straight to the point) which the public sees as the IT community in general.
From my experience, these are two points which have a heavy influence on what the public think of IT people and are two of the reasons why the public may have misconceptions of what we are like as a group.
as I imagine other big companies would as well (although since I only work for IBM, I can't comment on the others).
I work for IBM (full disclosure:) supporting a major telco. This telco has Sun, HP and IBM servers with the whole lot supported by IBM. I personally support the HP servers and know next to nothing about IBM servers (ironic I think).
So referring back to your question, simply select the bits and pieces that you want to run with and then get a major service supplier to bid on supporting the lot. You'll find that all of them will be more than happy to support whatever you have.
Just choose IBM since they are the best! (wearing my big blue IBM underwear on the outside:-)
Seriously, the only advantage I can think of to get rid of the keyboard in favour of pen-based entry is space.
But if you do that, you lose the advantages of a keyboard:
you can enter data faster
easier to enter data if you don't have a stable surface - ie. you only have to concentrate pressing a key as opposed to forming a stroke
you can look at the screen while you type on a keyboard as opposed to looking at a small section on your screen where you are scribbing a letter, then checking the main screen to make sure that it correctly identified what you typed.
you can't lose your keyboard like you can lose your pen:)
This is why I have nothing but respect and admiration for Linus Torvald and people like him. Your attitude it contemptible and fills me with disgust.
Spoken like someone who is truly ignorant of how the world works. Sorry to be so blunt, but I cannot understand how you could even come to your conclusions if you weren't clueless.
I honestly believe that people would spend billions of dollars to help other people
Okay, name how many people you know who have billions and billions of dollars? Bill Gates, Larry Elison, Steve Jobs... there are probably quite a few. But you know what, even if they gave up all their money to help other people, they would not be able to come up with a fraction of the drugs that have been produced by 'greedy corporations'.
People don't have billions to spend. Corporations don't have billions to freely spend. The only reason corporations can afford to spend the money on research, to spend years throwing money down the tube hoping for a breakthrough, is because that when they do make a breakthrough, they can recoup their costs through IP.
Chuck out IP, and you can kiss goodbye to any research. Kiss goodbye to reseach, and you can kiss goodbye to drugs.
I've read many posts now which crow about how Steven Kings test is a huge success, it's going to change the world of publishing yada yada yada. Now I'm personally (and pleasantly) very surpised at the 78% payment rate.
However, before we pronounce that it just shows that the 'Stree Performer Model' really works, let us not forget the following facts:
there is a significant novelty factor attached to this test - this will skew results
the website cannnot determine how many copies of the novel have been distributed with payment - ie pirate copies of the novel may be exchanging hands through email which can't be tracked and therefore the payment ratio is much lower.. possibly
the payment was only for $1 which you can take two ways:
it doesn't represent the real price of a book and if you charged more, you would get less people paying, or
the amount is to low to cover the overhead associated with handling credit cards
All of these factors will skew the results. Now I'm not saying that the results themselves aren't worthy, just that the hype proclaiming that the results are revolutionary, extraordinary, amazing, change the world etc etc is a little over the top.
Looking at the Russian names, it always makes me think that you have to unscramble the letters to form new words - maybe that's how the cosmonauts keep themselves entertained during the journey:-)
At nights, I work as a residential tutor at a univerity hall of residence. Part of my job description is that I provide pastoral care for the students - that is, besides providing academic tutition, the tutors are there to provide comfort and guidance on a personal and non-academic level.
One of the things that I have learnt in this role is the power of aspiration.
Most of the students at the hall of residence are from the country. They are from a lower socio-economic background and many are here on scholarships and bursaries. For the most part, they are all very smart and talented - but many have no goals or idea where they want to be.
As a tutor, I have the pleasure of telling these students about myself (it's always fun to talk about yourself:-). I've told them how I started like them with no money and bogged down in my university degree. I have also told them how I found something I loved doing (IT obviously) and how that motivated me. I have also told them how I fought to get into the industry that I wanted to be in (eg changed degrees, moved interstate, did work experience for free) because I believed in my goal.
And you know what, I know that several of the students that I have tutored have started to aspire to bigger things. These students aren't accepting that they are at the bottom of the heap, but that they too can have a goal and control where they go.
So like Seumas said, find a person who is desperate to learn, show them what they can do, encourage them, support them and most of all, show them what they talents could produce and where it could take them.
The reward for them is a whole new way to look at life.
Your reward is to know that you have made a difference to a person - which I think is one of the highest rewards on this planet.
Could someone explain the benefits of WAP?!?
on
WAP Under Fire
·
· Score: 2
Now I will be the first to confess that I am no expert on WAP. From my limited consumer knowledge of WAP, it is some sort of protocol that lets you surf the web from your PDA or mobile phone (amongst other things I am sure, but I couldn't tell you what).
Now if the main benefit of WAP is surfing the web from a PDA or phone, could someone tell me why this is so great like all the marketings makes out it is?!?
I mean geez, in todays wired world, you are literally no more than 5 minutes from a computer anyway. If you want to surf the web, use the tool that is designed to surf the web... a computer, or even a console... anything with a decent sized screen. Why oh why would you want to use a mobile phone with it's postage stamp sized screen to surf the web is beyond me.
I think people forget that not every tool that we have needs to be able to do everything under the sun. But maybe that's just me...
Someone please help me understand what all the fuss is all about? I want to jump on the bandwagon as well:-)
It seems to me that it is in the interests of the major Linux vendors to form a joint business which will provide Linux certification.
That way they share the cost between them (minimising individual cost), there is inherent value in the certification because of the vendor reputations and market share, and it would promote greater consumer confidence in using Linux, and in the vendor specific distributions of Linux in particular.
It seems to me that it is in the interests of the major Linux vendors to form a joint business which will provide Linux certification.
That way they share the cost between them (minimising individual cost), there is inherent value in the certification because of the vendor reputations and market share, and it would promote greater consumer confidence in using Linux, and in the vendor specific distributions of Linux in particular.
Novell and MS have their certification logos and they can be trusted. Why? Because there is a controlling entity (ie MS or Novell). If a vendor misuses the logo, then bang, there goes the certification logo.
But with Linux, there is no real controlling entity - Linux's strength is in it's diversity and dispersed control. But this also makes it difficult to have any sort of certification that can be enforced. If there is no one entity saying what constitutes certification (and no entity to revoke certification), then all we can rely on is the reputation of the vendor.
The only way to fix it (as far as I can see) is that we need a single entity to test and validate Linux certification. It think that something like this will start eventually.
The real danger comes when, becuase of Linux's open source nature, we have multiple certification standards which will lead to confusion and will ultimately prove detrimental to Linux as a whole.
What happens when one shoe runs outta gas ....
on
Gas-Powered Shoes?
·
· Score: 2
I'm forseeing nasty accidents when one shoe runs out of gas and the other one keep going... maybe that's how the Tasmanian Devil (from Bugs Bunny cartoons) got his trademark whirlwind spin going?!?:-)
I realise that some guy from LinuxWorld effectively made the same comment as me and it is in the original news post - oops. I wrote this post in response to reading a few reader posts about how great Linux is cos it beat Win2k...
Casting my mind back to university days I seem to recall that SPEC benchmarks were done using very artifical tests.
I mean sure, they did throughput test, CPU tests etc etc, but they were very calculated tests designed to test one thing only at a time (or something like that) and had little bearing on how a system/subsystem/software would perform in real life situations.
So the fact that Linux outperformed Win2k by a factor of 3 is pretty much useless as a comparison of real life performance.
Of course I could be wrong. I'm at work at the moment and can't get my hands on those dusty uni notes...:-)
CPU manufacturers start taking a 'release early, release often' approach.
I'm not saying that AMB is, but i could forsee a future where under fierce competition with Intel, the two companies get into a race to be the first with the ###Ghz processor and consequently quality and testing get sidelined in favour of marketing.
In the past, I'd say that no company would want to release CPU prematurely given that bad publicity would result, but then again, it never Microsoft to take this approach. Sigh.
Those 'Intel Inside' stickers could serve as a useful warning in future;-)
Slashdot Mirror
I too fail to see how my question is insightful- *shrug*
At this rate I could be a real karma whore if I post more insightful questions such as ... Can someone please explain (in plain English) what the whole meaning behind the Natalie Portman and hot grits posts are about? ;-)
Can someone explain (in plain english) what .net is all about?
Of course, not that the site is semi-/.'ed, I'm having trouble re-reading that page to check ... sigh.
Hmmmm, is anyone else seeing the possibility to transmit macroes or virues this way?
And why shouldn't I get credit, or a share of the profits? If I devote my personal resources to a project and end up contributing something of massive value, why is it unfair to expect a massive return? It's not like the company will go bankrupt if they offer a small percentage, and even a small percentage of a major drug's sales is a huge sum of money (for most of us).
The point is you haven't contributed something of massive value. Your computer is only one unit of a massive number cruncher. If your computer didn't do the work, the packet would be sent to the next computer in the line and they would crack the final code. That's not a massive contribution - it's nothing.
Let me put it this way. Say I own a theme park and to break even I need 1000 visitors to go through the turnstiles. When Visitor 1000 walks through my gates, I will have broken even and paid for my theme park. That is a significant visitor that has stepped through - it marks a momentous occassion - but did that visitor contribute anything? No way! If Visitor 1000 had died just before they paid for their entry ticket, I wouldn't give two hoots about it. Visitor 1001 would be the one to make be break even.
For the same reason, your 'effort' in helping to find the cure for cancer is no more important than Visitor 1000 - that is, not important at all.
One of the reasons that tech culture seems "selfish" and "arrogant" to others is that the people that run it and work in it have worked HARD to get what they have
While I'd be the last person to disagree that IT people generally work very hard, I think you are missing the point of the article. I used to have the exact same attitude that you expressed in your post. Here is the line of thinking that I had:
Goddamn, I have been installing/compiling/scripting etc for years in my own time to learn everything I know and that's why I got a kickarse job earning decent amounts of cash - dammit - I worked hard to get the money that I do. And besides, I work real long hours etc etc
And you know what? I was exactly right - I had worked harder than most people and so in that respect I deserved the money that I was getting.
But, I was still selfish and arogant. I only found out after a friend pointed out the reason why. The reason is:
I have been lucky because my situation/family/background/financial situation enabled me to have the opportunity to use computers. Some people aren't so lucky. Some people may have been able to afford a computer but without having any guidance or inspiration, they have been shown what their potential could have achieved using computers. I originally trained to be an engineer but switched to computer science after I realised that this is what I truly liked. Some people can't afford to do this.
There are a lot of reasons why people never find out about their options when it comes to IT.
For you and me, we were fortunate that we found out or were shown these opportunities. It has nothing to do with how smart we are - sure we get brownie points for seizing the opportunity when it came by - but for a twist of fate, we could have been an unlucky one who didn't get a chance at that opportunity.
If we don't recognise this, then we deserve to be labelled selfish and arogant ... because that is what we will be
On the *surface*, the 'public' sees rants and raves from IT people on newgroups and places like Slashdot. The 'public' see IT people, many of them very young, making relatively huge salaries with apparently little effort (how hard is it to sit in a chair all day typing :-).
From this perspective, the IT community can appear to be selfish and spoilt. And when exposed to this attitude, the IT community feels hard done by and bites back often with rants and raves (as we have seen in the postings) which only fuels the public perception again.
However, being part of the IT community I would have to say that the majority of IT people that I know aren't like this at all. Sure they are quite a few IT people who are arogant and selfish and I would go as far as to say that perhaps there is *slighty* more of this type of people than normalin the IT area, but not to the point where I would tar and feather the whole community with that tag.
I think a lot of people fail to see the hidden aspects of IT. That being:
From my experience, these are two points which have a heavy influence on what the public think of IT people and are two of the reasons why the public may have misconceptions of what we are like as a group.
Subject says it all.
I work for IBM (full disclosure :) supporting a major telco. This telco has Sun, HP and IBM servers with the whole lot supported by IBM. I personally support the HP servers and know next to nothing about IBM servers (ironic I think).
So referring back to your question, simply select the bits and pieces that you want to run with and then get a major service supplier to bid on supporting the lot. You'll find that all of them will be more than happy to support whatever you have.
Just choose IBM since they are the best! (wearing my big blue IBM underwear on the outside :-)
But if you do that, you lose the advantages of a keyboard:
you can enter data faster
easier to enter data if you don't have a stable surface - ie. you only have to concentrate pressing a key as opposed to forming a stroke
you can look at the screen while you type on a keyboard as opposed to looking at a small section on your screen where you are scribbing a letter, then checking the main screen to make sure that it correctly identified what you typed.
you can't lose your keyboard like you can lose your pen :)
Spoken like someone who is truly ignorant of how the world works. Sorry to be so blunt, but I cannot understand how you could even come to your conclusions if you weren't clueless.
I honestly believe that people would spend billions of dollars to help other people
Okay, name how many people you know who have billions and billions of dollars? Bill Gates, Larry Elison, Steve Jobs ... there are probably quite a few. But you know what, even if they gave up all their money to help other people, they would not be able to come up with a fraction of the drugs that have been produced by 'greedy corporations'.
People don't have billions to spend. Corporations don't have billions to freely spend. The only reason corporations can afford to spend the money on research, to spend years throwing money down the tube hoping for a breakthrough, is because that when they do make a breakthrough, they can recoup their costs through IP.
Chuck out IP, and you can kiss goodbye to any research. Kiss goodbye to reseach, and you can kiss goodbye to drugs.
However, before we pronounce that it just shows that the 'Stree Performer Model' really works, let us not forget the following facts:
- there is a significant novelty factor attached to this test - this will skew results
- the website cannnot determine how many copies of the novel have been distributed with payment - ie pirate copies of the novel may be exchanging hands through email which can't be tracked and therefore the payment ratio is much lower
.. possibly - the payment was only for $1 which you can take two ways:
- it doesn't represent the real price of a book and if you charged more, you would get less people paying, or
- the amount is to low to cover the overhead associated with handling credit cards
All of these factors will skew the results. Now I'm not saying that the results themselves aren't worthy, just that the hype proclaiming that the results are revolutionary, extraordinary, amazing, change the world etc etc is a little over the top.One of the things that I have learnt in this role is the power of aspiration.
Most of the students at the hall of residence are from the country. They are from a lower socio-economic background and many are here on scholarships and bursaries. For the most part, they are all very smart and talented - but many have no goals or idea where they want to be.
As a tutor, I have the pleasure of telling these students about myself (it's always fun to talk about yourself :-). I've told them how I started like them with no money and bogged down in my university degree. I have also told them how I found something I loved doing (IT obviously) and how that motivated me. I have also told them how I fought to get into the industry that I wanted to be in (eg changed degrees, moved interstate, did work experience for free) because I believed in my goal.
And you know what, I know that several of the students that I have tutored have started to aspire to bigger things. These students aren't accepting that they are at the bottom of the heap, but that they too can have a goal and control where they go.
So like Seumas said, find a person who is desperate to learn, show them what they can do, encourage them, support them and most of all, show them what they talents could produce and where it could take them.
The reward for them is a whole new way to look at life.
Your reward is to know that you have made a difference to a person - which I think is one of the highest rewards on this planet.
Now if the main benefit of WAP is surfing the web from a PDA or phone, could someone tell me why this is so great like all the marketings makes out it is?!?
I mean geez, in todays wired world, you are literally no more than 5 minutes from a computer anyway. If you want to surf the web, use the tool that is designed to surf the web ... a computer, or even a console ... anything with a decent sized screen. Why oh why would you want to use a mobile phone with it's postage stamp sized screen to surf the web is beyond me.
I think people forget that not every tool that we have needs to be able to do everything under the sun. But maybe that's just me ...
Someone please help me understand what all the fuss is all about? I want to jump on the bandwagon as well :-)
That way they share the cost between them (minimising individual cost), there is inherent value in the certification because of the vendor reputations and market share, and it would promote greater consumer confidence in using Linux, and in the vendor specific distributions of Linux in particular.
As far as I can see it is a win-win situation.
That way they share the cost between them (minimising individual cost), there is inherent value in the certification because of the vendor reputations and market share, and it would promote greater consumer confidence in using Linux, and in the vendor specific distributions of Linux in particular.
As far as I can see it is a win-win situation.
But with Linux, there is no real controlling entity - Linux's strength is in it's diversity and dispersed control. But this also makes it difficult to have any sort of certification that can be enforced. If there is no one entity saying what constitutes certification (and no entity to revoke certification), then all we can rely on is the reputation of the vendor.
The only way to fix it (as far as I can see) is that we need a single entity to test and validate Linux certification. It think that something like this will start eventually.
The real danger comes when, becuase of Linux's open source nature, we have multiple certification standards which will lead to confusion and will ultimately prove detrimental to Linux as a whole.
Imagine if you printed a video screen onto those!
Collect the lot to view the entire Star Wars Episode 1 : The Phantom Menace movie or whatever ... :-)
I realise that some guy from LinuxWorld effectively made the same comment as me and it is in the original news post - oops. I wrote this post in response to reading a few reader posts about how great Linux is cos it beat Win2k...
I mean sure, they did throughput test, CPU tests etc etc, but they were very calculated tests designed to test one thing only at a time (or something like that) and had little bearing on how a system/subsystem/software would perform in real life situations.
So the fact that Linux outperformed Win2k by a factor of 3 is pretty much useless as a comparison of real life performance.
Of course I could be wrong. I'm at work at the moment and can't get my hands on those dusty uni notes ... :-)
Ha!! I told you so. I go to read the articles at playboy.com, not look at the pictures :)
I'm not saying that AMB is, but i could forsee a future where under fierce competition with Intel, the two companies get into a race to be the first with the ###Ghz processor and consequently quality and testing get sidelined in favour of marketing.
In the past, I'd say that no company would want to release CPU prematurely given that bad publicity would result, but then again, it never Microsoft to take this approach. Sigh.
Those 'Intel Inside' stickers could serve as a useful warning in future ;-)