This is great news. Only an arrogant American would expect a license written within a single judicial system to magically apply everywhere.
Remember that while the internet and computers cross international bounderies easily, this doesn't erase them. Local laws are in full effect, and often fraught with Byzantine clauses and stipulations. Making, essentially, a French version of the GPL, which expressly allows conversion TO the GPL, but which is fully compliant with local legislative requirements is excellent. It shows that FOSS is being taken seriously by those with the money and interest to insure their rights are protected.
Oh, regarding the French. I've traveled fairly broadly (though not to France as yet). Some cultures differ markedly from the US, and to the extent they differ misunderstandings can easily arise. Thus the phrase "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." It seems that SOME people assume their native culture is inherently superior, and set out to "enlighten the foreign savages" when they travel. Hint: not a winning strategy. Check you ego at the door, and try to learn the native culture -- you'll be surprised and what you can learn and how eager most people are to share the richness of their culture with an eager student.
Frankly, I have no quarrel with people who have made significant, non-intuitive advancements in technology (usually requiring them to invest time and effort), patenting their work and deriving a profit therefrom. That's what patents are designed to do.
I don't know enough about Intermec, but it sounds like you folks are playing the game correctly. Kudos!
The reason many people are rabid about patent enforcement is that the USPTO has been rubberstamping patents on everything from "the wheel" to "breathing", and every two-bit carpetbagger in the world is trying to get rich by patenting some trivial process and suing the world. Software patents, which have tended to be overly broad, are particularly vile. While the courts have proven reasonably sage in deciding the deluge of lawsuits, this remedy requires huge investments of time and money on the part of the accused.
Like so many other areas, you are paying for the sins of those who have come before you. Guilty by association. If you have patented a valid technology, and your licensing fees are lower than the cost of developing an alternative, you deserver to enjoy the fruits of your labor, for 17 years, so don't mind the trolls!
The answer to this question depends on what your database looks like. For most small, general purpose databases the RAID approach is great. Fast, simple and not much planning required.
However, for larger or more complex systems there are some advantages to splitting tables over multiple disk systems. For example, tables with lots of little niggling disk writes (access tables, change logs, temp tables) can go on a fast (possibly striped) disk system. You don't have to waste high-priced, high performance RAID on archived data (if it crashes, restore from tape), or on large media files etc stored as blobs or clobs.
These are just examples, but on a large server with several different disk sytems available, this technology lets the database designer match storage system performance characteristics much more accurately than a simple raid.
Dang, Slashdot needs a spell-check button. I usually post when something just chaps my hide, and I tend to type rather more quickly than I can think. Especially since my spelling is detestable at best (*SIGH*).
Frankly, I'm sick of the rampant hypocracy of the "United Corporate States of America" and our war on freedom. Worse, the battle's already lost.
I've written enough letters to my congresscritters that the probably have me filed under "wacko" in several different categories. Their replies show a polite distain for my pitiful rights and nearly-useless vote.
Knowledge is power, and those in power are determined that we lemmings be kept ignorant of the the deeds done in our name for our own good. The only thing more dependable than finding our representatives have sold us down the river for personal profit, is that keeping such dealings quiet is a matter of national security. After all, if all the little lemmings figured out they were being cheerfully led over a cliff they might not follow so blindly. Computer malfunction my arse. I work as an Oracle DBA -- if I EVER responded to a request for data this way I'd be canned on the spot, and rightly so. Somehow, I doubt anyone is suddenly unemployed at the justice department.
Personally, I'm beyond disgusted. I'm voting again EVERY encumbent, since I don't think there's a human being in office worth the air they breath. Maybe if everyone voted against all incumbents for a decade or so we'd flush the professional policiticians out and take back our country.
On the other hand, I'm seriously considering emigration to a land where freedom means something, like Russia!
Re:Depends on the kind of graffiti
on
Reverse Graffiti
·
· Score: 1
For the record, it was in Kennewick, WA. There wasn't a local home owner's association that I'm aware of. I asked the police about damages, and they said it was between me an my homeowner's insurance. It didn't seem like it was worth filing a claim for a $15 bucket of exterior latex!
More importantly, my garage is full of everything EXCEPT my car. I had a choice of leaving the door up, and advertising several thousand dollars worth of woodworking equipment and some high-end bicycles to the world, or closing it and exposing some well-done but sexually explicit artwork to a pretty conservative neighborhood. I didn't want to take the time to fight the insurance company to hire somebody to do the work (which they probably would have done), so I just took the day off and did it myself.
I mentioned the expense in the original post not because it was a terrible hardship, but because ultimately the cost of the artist's effort was passed on to me, which I thought was a bit unfair (a bit like SPAM).
Anyway, no real damage done.;-)
Re:Depends on the kind of graffiti
on
Reverse Graffiti
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm. Years ago I heard a noise outside my house. Being a displaced Montanan, and not as thoroughly 'civilized' as some others, I quietly loadad a rather large caliber rifle and walked around my property.
Imagine my suprise when I found some twit in the process of painting my garage doors. Previously a boring shade of forest green, they bore a partailly complete image of an improbably-proportioned couple. The artist was not happy to see me. Surprisingly, when I asked him to come in and sit down while we waited for the police I was treated to a most interesting lecture.
It turns out that I was oppressing him, and infringing on his first-ammendment rights to free speech. By having a large, blandly-colored panel on my property, I was advocating complacency and submission to the polical authorities (or something like that). It turns out, he was a freedom fighter, a true patriot, striving to liberate the world. I was the brain-dead corporate slave. The fact that I didn't like his art work was irrelevant.
Anyway, officer friendly arrived, and scolded me for toting a gun (I'd never actually pointed it at the artist, nor did he have any extra holes in his caracass), and escorted him off to whatever minor hand-slap awaited him. Too bad -- he was really a good artist, if he'd have let me have some say in the subject matter, I'd have hired him to paint my garage door.
I think graffers need to be aware that not EVERYONE shares their sense of aesthetics, and that painting other people's property, even if you ARE talented, requires their permission.
P.S. Neither the graffer, nor the police offered to repaint my garage door. Since the image was not suitable for children I got to take the day off work and repaint, at my expense.
OK, I'm putting on my asbestos underwear, but just exactly SHOULD Microsoft do? They've admitted they have security problems, and had their noses rubbed in their failures. They tried to be easy to use by enabling EVERYTHING out of the box . . . bad idea. On the other hand, did anyone here ever install their beloved Red Hat 8.0 taking defaults for everything (like a dumb user) -- it installs services I've never heard of running on ports 1 through infinity. Sure, you can prune it back, but the same argument holds for Microsoft.
I've written a lot of code, including my share of system libraries. However, there comes a time when you just need to say "Enough. I've changed my mind, that didn't work as well as this will". Particularly with security issues, you sometimes need to just drop the old stuff to move forward, and if it breaks old software, too bad -- that's the POINT of removing insecure library functions.
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but I use it at work. The latest versions are no more bloated, clunky and unstable than the latest bloated Linux versions with KDE or Gnome in eye-candy mode. They acknowledged their security faults, and are dropping the old baggage required to address the problem. I fail to see what they've done wrong here. I seem to remember a number of open-source project that have mad API changes over the years to improve security, and we hail that as progressive, proactive, and intelligent design. Where's the foul?
I think you've hit the nail on the head. I just hate seeing the "Grand Behemoth Mark III" rolling down the road with only a 120 pound soccor-mom occupant. Unfortunately, car rentals are TOO expensive.
So, either you choose the lowest common denominator, or you maintain a fleet. We've chosen the latter path, and keep four different rigs road-ready. What a waste of resources, the only one who benefits is the insurance company (and they must love us).
We keep a Eurovan on the road for our (roughly) twice-yearly family trips, and a pickup running to haul yard debris to the dump (probably three trips a year). This is NOT efficient, financially or environmentally.
This is, unfortunately, symptomatic of a larger problem in America. I could make the same argument for most other items. Why does every homeowner in my neighborhood need their own mower for their postage-stamp size yards? Why are there probably 5 table-saws taking up space on my block? Self sufficiency becomes an expensive obsession when we've lost our sense of community. Every man is an island, there are no shared resources, and the merchants are laughing all the way to the bank.
I'm a good nerd, but I would doubtless flunk woodshop. A few years ago a plumber friend of mine wanted to build a small web-based business. I wrote a bunch of code for him, and got a little system off and running. During the years following dot-bomb crash it died a slow and painful death. I continued to update the code base, tweak the servers etc. until the end. Several times he surprised me by making small payments, usually expressing frustration that he couldn't do more. No biggie, he's a great guy, and my time is cheap.
Fast forward to last year, when I bought a home. It's old, but in a great location. Like most homes, it needed some work. Every time I start some stupid project, I've had help, expertise and materials quietly appear. We were going to add windows to the basement, and suddently some beautiful windows were "left over" from a project across town. My bathroom blew a pipe, ruining the exterior wall. A crew of guys comes over, tears the wall down, re-plumbs the entire bathroom, and rebuilds the wall. Currently, he's running fresh plumbing all over the house, 'just because'.
Although I initially intended to do a favor the guy, I've come out WAY ahead on this deal. I don't have the skills/tools/expertise to do a tenth of this work, and contractors are expensive!
Kudos to Alaa for a very thought-provoking and interesting interview. I was extremely impressed with his answers, and really enjoyed the sharp but gentle wit he used to show the ignorance/cultural bias iherent in some of the questions.
I look forward to more interviews with Linux users around the world in the future. What's the point of having global communications and and robust protocols if we never peer out past localhost int the USA?
The feedback should be the proper tool for this, but as another poster mentioned, it's broken because the sellers DON'T leave feedback until the buyers do, and if a buyer leaves negative feedback the seller can retaliate. Timing is also important -- slow buyers and sellers need to be identified.
I think a system should be implemented which requires the seller to post feedback on receipt of payment. After all, the buyer's only obligation is to send payment promptly. The buyer can then post feedback after receiving the item without fear of retalitory actions. If the seller has not posted feedback before the buyer posts feedback, prohibit the seller from posting
feedback at all.
Amen. I worked at a small shop with a half-dozen code wizards. Very loose, and VERY productive. Many fair-sized products had a "spec-sheet" consisting of a handful of screen mock-ups doodled in pencil (with margin notes), and a few notations on specific business rules that needed to be implemented. Fun, fast, pure adreneline rush.
Now I work at a govt. shop -- it's like the unions. Every change to a program (even obvious bug-fixes) requires effectivly a constituional ammendment! A staff of 200 programmers, and "Hello World" can be yours in six months for an estimated cost of $500,000 - but the documentation will be impeccable!
This is great. Now the blond bimbo driving 80 mph next to on the instertate will not only be trying to sip her diet coke and apply makeup, but will be watching the Bon-Marche's sale scroller instead of the road. I can't wait!
Editor Wars . . .
on
JOE Hits 3.0
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· Score: 3, Interesting
There have been a number of excellent comments regarding ubiquity, use or screen space, and ease of use. Like most holy wars, there is some truth on all sides. I've used Joe -- it saved my butt several times years ago when vi was a strange and foreign demon-tool to me.
Having worked for companies that preferred both emacs and vi, I've learned both reasonably well.
The best editor is the one that meets your needs. I consider all of these as terminal editors, good for quick and dirty edits of small scripts or config files. I'm personally partial to vi, and use it frequently for such tasks.
The best GUI editor I've ever found is JEdit.
It's fat, written in Java (not universially installed by any means), and likes to take up screen real estate. But it has so many features to make text-editing painless! My goodness, it's like the good-parts of every other text editor I've ever worked with, and it's got syntax higlighting etc. for every language I've ever heard of. No offense to the GUI versions of VI and emacs, but they've been roundly beaten.
Personally, if I'm going to get serious about editing code, it's almost always better to either transfer the files to my local box or install JEdit on the remote system. I lose a little time in setup, but I can work much more quickly and efficiently.
Naturally, if all I want to do is add a hosts entry or change a firewall rule, I'll use a console editor. Big job = big tool, little job=little tool. It's a simple concept.
While it may be true that to a man with a hammer, all problems resemble nails, at least we can employ a variety of hammers!
Sounds like fun . . .
on
Paid To Spam
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· Score: 2, Funny
OK, lets all sell them time on our computers. I've got seven CPU's running in my basement, most of which are idle far too often. If they can get 70% CPU utilization I'll make $4.90 an hour, which ought to offset the electrical bill.
However, since that $4.90/hour won't even come close to covering the potential bandwidth charges they'd accumulate, it seems only prudent that I configure a mail filter to route outbound messages to/dev/null . ..
A few years ago I was lusting after rack-mount servers for much the same reason. I found several excellent deals on ebay in the aftermath of the dot-bombs, but didn't want the "early industrial" look of the rack-mount cabinet.
So, I built a nice oak cabinet. It looks much like a tall hutch. The hutch doors look like standard flat-panel doors, but the center panel is acually a large air-filter (black foam pressed between wood lattice on the front and a screen in back). The back is mostly open for ventillation.
The final cabinet ended up costing about $250 in materials, and looks lovely in my office. My only complaint is that, when the machines are on, it's not as quiet as I would like -- too many tiny fans spinning at high rpm. I'm not sure how to do sound deadening that won't interfere with the ventillation.
Personnally, I like to quickly puff a bit of extra air into my BC, then barf into fill hose. The air in my BC insures that I can inhale after barfing, and the chunks all stay nicely contained within the air-bladder. After a few days in the Carribian sun, it also makes it much less likely that anyone will steal my BC!
Note - I'm joking! Another poster gives the correct method for handling this problem. Please don't try this for real.
"So far, no one has found a road-and wheel combination in which the road has the same shape as the wheel."
How about a unicycle riding around the inside of a circle. I saw something like this once at a circus. Some guy was suspend in a giant rotating hamster-wheel 50 feet or so in the air, riding a unicycle around inside. The road and the wheel where the same shape, so there!
There's a number of posts regarding the requirements for operating future transportation, which raise the unavoidable truth that our quest for faster, lighter, more nible is at an impasse. We are limited not by our cars/planes/hoverboards but by our own skill and mental accuity.
I suspect many of us at slashdot are not possessed of fighter-pilot reflexes coupled with the attention span of a Tibetan monk. In fact, several studies have shown that a high percentage of intellectually-inclined people have a very limited ability to focus their attention on mundane tasks like driving. High GRE scores and advanced degress may be inversely correlated with driving abilty.
For my part, I am well-educated and working as a senior-level geek. My abilty to control a car is quite good, perhaps better than average. However, I am easily distracted, borderline ADD, and have had several accidents (none serious) due essentially to daydreaming/not paying sufficient attention. Fine, mea culpa. However, I strongly suspect that many of my fellow nerds, in an honest evaluation, would be found guilty of similar traits.
So, I'll pass on flying cars and hypersonic velocity in favor of moderate speeds and air-bags!
Hah. Saturday night I bought three used CD's from a band I heard about via the internet. I'd have purchased them new if they hadn't been RIAA lackeys. Since I refuse to support the RIAA, I had to drive acrooss town to find the albums, and only the admittedly sleazy used-cd store made any money. I wish I could have supported the band - the music's quite good.
So, even if file-sharing isn't hurting the RIAA, suing their customer's is -- because a growing number of us won't buy from them.
Again, my couple of lousy CD's doens't make a trend, but it's a valid datum I wish the RIAA would pay more attention to. For the record, I purchase 5-10 albums a month. For the past 18 months the RIAA hasn't made a nickle of it.
Hey Taco,
We smoked their server today, but it seems to be shut down rather than struggling valiently to service the onslaught. Cowards! I can't smell the smoke or hear the platters whine as they overload swap. More importantly, I suspect we're not really racking up the bandwidth charges I'd like for them -- can you please schedule this article for duplication several times over the next month or two?
Thanks in advance,
Java Ape
OK, I'll bite. I'm reasonably good with shell, but this is too cryptic for me -- what's it do?
By the way -- you get brownie points for writing obfuscated shell, your job should be very secure!
Don't worry, we're looking at outsourcing lawyers to india to keep the programmers company. Your $350/hour job can be easily performed by a $5.00/hour lawyer who can also program his own word processer left-handed in his spare time. . . .
Slashdot Mirror
Remember that while the internet and computers cross international bounderies easily, this doesn't erase them. Local laws are in full effect, and often fraught with Byzantine clauses and stipulations. Making, essentially, a French version of the GPL, which expressly allows conversion TO the GPL, but which is fully compliant with local legislative requirements is excellent. It shows that FOSS is being taken seriously by those with the money and interest to insure their rights are protected.
Oh, regarding the French. I've traveled fairly broadly (though not to France as yet). Some cultures differ markedly from the US, and to the extent they differ misunderstandings can easily arise. Thus the phrase "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." It seems that SOME people assume their native culture is inherently superior, and set out to "enlighten the foreign savages" when they travel. Hint: not a winning strategy. Check you ego at the door, and try to learn the native culture -- you'll be surprised and what you can learn and how eager most people are to share the richness of their culture with an eager student.
I don't know enough about Intermec, but it sounds like you folks are playing the game correctly. Kudos!
The reason many people are rabid about patent enforcement is that the USPTO has been rubberstamping patents on everything from "the wheel" to "breathing", and every two-bit carpetbagger in the world is trying to get rich by patenting some trivial process and suing the world. Software patents, which have tended to be overly broad, are particularly vile. While the courts have proven reasonably sage in deciding the deluge of lawsuits, this remedy requires huge investments of time and money on the part of the accused.
Like so many other areas, you are paying for the sins of those who have come before you. Guilty by association. If you have patented a valid technology, and your licensing fees are lower than the cost of developing an alternative, you deserver to enjoy the fruits of your labor, for 17 years, so don't mind the trolls!
However, for larger or more complex systems there are some advantages to splitting tables over multiple disk systems. For example, tables with lots of little niggling disk writes (access tables, change logs, temp tables) can go on a fast (possibly striped) disk system. You don't have to waste high-priced, high performance RAID on archived data (if it crashes, restore from tape), or on large media files etc stored as blobs or clobs.
These are just examples, but on a large server with several different disk sytems available, this technology lets the database designer match storage system performance characteristics much more accurately than a simple raid.
Dang, Slashdot needs a spell-check button. I usually post when something just chaps my hide, and I tend to type rather more quickly than I can think. Especially since my spelling is detestable at best (*SIGH*).
I've written enough letters to my congresscritters that the probably have me filed under "wacko" in several different categories. Their replies show a polite distain for my pitiful rights and nearly-useless vote.
Knowledge is power, and those in power are determined that we lemmings be kept ignorant of the the deeds done in our name for our own good. The only thing more dependable than finding our representatives have sold us down the river for personal profit, is that keeping such dealings quiet is a matter of national security. After all, if all the little lemmings figured out they were being cheerfully led over a cliff they might not follow so blindly. Computer malfunction my arse. I work as an Oracle DBA -- if I EVER responded to a request for data this way I'd be canned on the spot, and rightly so. Somehow, I doubt anyone is suddenly unemployed at the justice department.
Personally, I'm beyond disgusted. I'm voting again EVERY encumbent, since I don't think there's a human being in office worth the air they breath. Maybe if everyone voted against all incumbents for a decade or so we'd flush the professional policiticians out and take back our country.
On the other hand, I'm seriously considering emigration to a land where freedom means something, like Russia!
Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick Me! ;-)
More importantly, my garage is full of everything EXCEPT my car. I had a choice of leaving the door up, and advertising several thousand dollars worth of woodworking equipment and some high-end bicycles to the world, or closing it and exposing some well-done but sexually explicit artwork to a pretty conservative neighborhood. I didn't want to take the time to fight the insurance company to hire somebody to do the work (which they probably would have done), so I just took the day off and did it myself.
I mentioned the expense in the original post not because it was a terrible hardship, but because ultimately the cost of the artist's effort was passed on to me, which I thought was a bit unfair (a bit like SPAM).
Anyway, no real damage done. ;-)
Imagine my suprise when I found some twit in the process of painting my garage doors. Previously a boring shade of forest green, they bore a partailly complete image of an improbably-proportioned couple. The artist was not happy to see me. Surprisingly, when I asked him to come in and sit down while we waited for the police I was treated to a most interesting lecture.
It turns out that I was oppressing him, and infringing on his first-ammendment rights to free speech. By having a large, blandly-colored panel on my property, I was advocating complacency and submission to the polical authorities (or something like that). It turns out, he was a freedom fighter, a true patriot, striving to liberate the world. I was the brain-dead corporate slave. The fact that I didn't like his art work was irrelevant.
Anyway, officer friendly arrived, and scolded me for toting a gun (I'd never actually pointed it at the artist, nor did he have any extra holes in his caracass), and escorted him off to whatever minor hand-slap awaited him. Too bad -- he was really a good artist, if he'd have let me have some say in the subject matter, I'd have hired him to paint my garage door.
I think graffers need to be aware that not EVERYONE shares their sense of aesthetics, and that painting other people's property, even if you ARE talented, requires their permission.
P.S. Neither the graffer, nor the police offered to repaint my garage door. Since the image was not suitable for children I got to take the day off work and repaint, at my expense.
I've written a lot of code, including my share of system libraries. However, there comes a time when you just need to say "Enough. I've changed my mind, that didn't work as well as this will". Particularly with security issues, you sometimes need to just drop the old stuff to move forward, and if it breaks old software, too bad -- that's the POINT of removing insecure library functions.
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but I use it at work. The latest versions are no more bloated, clunky and unstable than the latest bloated Linux versions with KDE or Gnome in eye-candy mode. They acknowledged their security faults, and are dropping the old baggage required to address the problem. I fail to see what they've done wrong here. I seem to remember a number of open-source project that have mad API changes over the years to improve security, and we hail that as progressive, proactive, and intelligent design. Where's the foul?
So, either you choose the lowest common denominator, or you maintain a fleet. We've chosen the latter path, and keep four different rigs road-ready. What a waste of resources, the only one who benefits is the insurance company (and they must love us).
We keep a Eurovan on the road for our (roughly) twice-yearly family trips, and a pickup running to haul yard debris to the dump (probably three trips a year). This is NOT efficient, financially or environmentally.
This is, unfortunately, symptomatic of a larger problem in America. I could make the same argument for most other items. Why does every homeowner in my neighborhood need their own mower for their postage-stamp size yards? Why are there probably 5 table-saws taking up space on my block? Self sufficiency becomes an expensive obsession when we've lost our sense of community. Every man is an island, there are no shared resources, and the merchants are laughing all the way to the bank.
Fast forward to last year, when I bought a home. It's old, but in a great location. Like most homes, it needed some work. Every time I start some stupid project, I've had help, expertise and materials quietly appear. We were going to add windows to the basement, and suddently some beautiful windows were "left over" from a project across town. My bathroom blew a pipe, ruining the exterior wall. A crew of guys comes over, tears the wall down, re-plumbs the entire bathroom, and rebuilds the wall. Currently, he's running fresh plumbing all over the house, 'just because'.
Although I initially intended to do a favor the guy, I've come out WAY ahead on this deal. I don't have the skills/tools/expertise to do a tenth of this work, and contractors are expensive!
I look forward to more interviews with Linux users around the world in the future. What's the point of having global communications and and robust protocols if we never peer out past localhost int the USA?
I think a system should be implemented which requires the seller to post feedback on receipt of payment. After all, the buyer's only obligation is to send payment promptly. The buyer can then post feedback after receiving the item without fear of retalitory actions. If the seller has not posted feedback before the buyer posts feedback, prohibit the seller from posting feedback at all.
Now I work at a govt. shop -- it's like the unions. Every change to a program (even obvious bug-fixes) requires effectivly a constituional ammendment! A staff of 200 programmers, and "Hello World" can be yours in six months for an estimated cost of $500,000 - but the documentation will be impeccable!
This is great. Now the blond bimbo driving 80 mph next to on the instertate will not only be trying to sip her diet coke and apply makeup, but will be watching the Bon-Marche's sale scroller instead of the road. I can't wait!
Having worked for companies that preferred both emacs and vi, I've learned both reasonably well.
The best editor is the one that meets your needs. I consider all of these as terminal editors, good for quick and dirty edits of small scripts or config files. I'm personally partial to vi, and use it frequently for such tasks.
The best GUI editor I've ever found is JEdit. It's fat, written in Java (not universially installed by any means), and likes to take up screen real estate. But it has so many features to make text-editing painless! My goodness, it's like the good-parts of every other text editor I've ever worked with, and it's got syntax higlighting etc. for every language I've ever heard of. No offense to the GUI versions of VI and emacs, but they've been roundly beaten.
Personally, if I'm going to get serious about editing code, it's almost always better to either transfer the files to my local box or install JEdit on the remote system. I lose a little time in setup, but I can work much more quickly and efficiently.
Naturally, if all I want to do is add a hosts entry or change a firewall rule, I'll use a console editor. Big job = big tool, little job=little tool. It's a simple concept.
While it may be true that to a man with a hammer, all problems resemble nails, at least we can employ a variety of hammers!
However, since that $4.90/hour won't even come close to covering the potential bandwidth charges they'd accumulate, it seems only prudent that I configure a mail filter to route outbound messages to /dev/null . . .
So, I built a nice oak cabinet. It looks much like a tall hutch. The hutch doors look like standard flat-panel doors, but the center panel is acually a large air-filter (black foam pressed between wood lattice on the front and a screen in back). The back is mostly open for ventillation.
The final cabinet ended up costing about $250 in materials, and looks lovely in my office. My only complaint is that, when the machines are on, it's not as quiet as I would like -- too many tiny fans spinning at high rpm. I'm not sure how to do sound deadening that won't interfere with the ventillation.
Note - I'm joking! Another poster gives the correct method for handling this problem. Please don't try this for real.
"So far, no one has found a road-and wheel combination in which the road has the same shape as the wheel." How about a unicycle riding around the inside of a circle. I saw something like this once at a circus. Some guy was suspend in a giant rotating hamster-wheel 50 feet or so in the air, riding a unicycle around inside. The road and the wheel where the same shape, so there!
I suspect many of us at slashdot are not possessed of fighter-pilot reflexes coupled with the attention span of a Tibetan monk. In fact, several studies have shown that a high percentage of intellectually-inclined people have a very limited ability to focus their attention on mundane tasks like driving. High GRE scores and advanced degress may be inversely correlated with driving abilty.
For my part, I am well-educated and working as a senior-level geek. My abilty to control a car is quite good, perhaps better than average. However, I am easily distracted, borderline ADD, and have had several accidents (none serious) due essentially to daydreaming/not paying sufficient attention. Fine, mea culpa. However, I strongly suspect that many of my fellow nerds, in an honest evaluation, would be found guilty of similar traits.
So, I'll pass on flying cars and hypersonic velocity in favor of moderate speeds and air-bags!
So, even if file-sharing isn't hurting the RIAA, suing their customer's is -- because a growing number of us won't buy from them.
Again, my couple of lousy CD's doens't make a trend, but it's a valid datum I wish the RIAA would pay more attention to. For the record, I purchase 5-10 albums a month. For the past 18 months the RIAA hasn't made a nickle of it.
Hey Taco,
We smoked their server today, but it seems to be shut down rather than struggling valiently to service the onslaught. Cowards! I can't smell the smoke or hear the platters whine as they overload swap. More importantly, I suspect we're not really racking up the bandwidth charges I'd like for them -- can you please schedule this article for duplication several times over the next month or two?
Thanks in advance,
Java Ape
OK, I'll bite. I'm reasonably good with shell, but this is too cryptic for me -- what's it do? By the way -- you get brownie points for writing obfuscated shell, your job should be very secure!
Don't worry, we're looking at outsourcing lawyers to india to keep the programmers company. Your $350/hour job can be easily performed by a $5.00/hour lawyer who can also program his own word processer left-handed in his spare time. . . .