From their website: "You’re a developer. You know applications. Building apps is what you do. But when you need to turn your app into an appliance, you come see us. That’s what we do. Using Workbench, our easy-to-use online configuration and build system, you can be ready to deploy in under an hour, completely free.... Our open-source software platform is a great fit for all kinds of devices: digital signage, kiosks, point-of-sale/point-of-service devices; So let us handle your OS. And you can get back to what you do best—making great apps."
A lot of people have recommended visiting cathedrals, especially St. Paul's. And St. Paul's is extremely cool -- the Whispering Gallery really is amazing. Whichever you visit, though -- and I'd recommend Salisbury Cathedral, if you're going to get out into the country and see, say, Stonehenge -- see if you can find any of the literature (usually in the gift shop) about how people built such goram huge stuff nearly eight hundred years ago. The contraptions they built to haul huge blocks of stone high into the air are to die for, when it comes to "old-school tech".
Oh, yeah: If you're at all a music (or physics) geek, I think Salisbury has a 64' rank on its pipe organ. I might be making that up, though. Have a great trip.
Worse, yet: will hard-up DNA farmers now begin selling their crops at a premium to industry, diverting crucial DNA from where it's needed most: the third world?
The guts and display, I'll grant are nice. Too bad, though, they have to have that blight of a keyboard: IBM's (and Lenovo's) laptop keys have the worst touch ever, IMPO.
The included tablet, on the other hand, is a nice idea: what else would you do with the hectare of "wrist rest" you get with a 17" screen? My only caveat, there, is that it appears to be on the WRONG SIDE. Silly right-handers. When will y'all learn?;-)
The moronic IT persons are already saying crap like "the email belongs to the company, not you". Perhaps the computer on which I wrote them does, but *I* have written those emails, therefore they belong to me also.
That depends entirely upon the terms of your employment: sad but true (note: IANAL). If you have a contract governing your employment, I'd suggest you look at it and get legal help interpreting it, if need be.
Oh, and f^@k the IT people.
You're perfectly welcome to return to your previous life of using pen and paper, the (POTS) telephone, postal mail, and trying to get a date in person. Let me know how that all works out for you.
When I first saw this headline, I thought the implication was that Storm was growing so quickly due to its use of performance-enhancing drugs. I was all ready to blame superstar baseball players for setting a poor example...
The only mission the people I worked for were invested in was their personal gain at any means, ranging from outright theft (of donations to charity - how low can you get ?) to lying about their working hours, to using said working hours for personal business.
Then your experiences and mine differ significantly. Sorry you've had to deal with the seamier side of the NPO/NGO world.
So, were you particularly motivated to do a good job at it ?
Sure: my (fairly adequate) severance pay depended on it.;-)
However realistic your observations might be in light of modern corporate "greed culture" (which is different how, from 19th-century "greed culture"?), your pessimistic attitude and lack of treatment of a core criterion betrays the fact that you've never worked for a non-profit.
I own an IT consultancy that has worked for somewhere between 40 and 60 NPOs in the last several years, among other clients. Call it our "social mission". In contrast to the fundamental jadedness of your diatribe*, people working (not volunteering: working) for NPOs are typically 1) invested in the mission, 2) invested in the mission, and 3) invested in the mission. There's not too much ego going on, there...at least not below the Executive Director level. These people are, by and large, dedicated to the organization and, I suspect, would be more than willing to participate in a documentation initiative. Of the few NPOs we've kept on as clients -- WE have to make a profit, even if they don't -- most don't seem to experience resistance to process documentation. And it's especially crucial in the case of an NPO, where they can't necessarily afford to send more than one person to project management training, or pay for more than one "basic bookkeeping" course at the local community college. We've traditionally worked mostly with domestic violence/sexual abuse organizations, and the brave souls who work at them burn out like crazy. You wouldn't believe the turnover. Whatever knowledge or competencies the organization acquires over time must survive the coming and going of staff, and luckily, the staff generally knows this.
I guess it comes down to this, really:
1) process documentation is a necessity of business continuity (I'd be remiss as a consultant if it weren't included in my operational continuity plans for clients);
2) don't put the original poster off what it a worthy and crucial cause (especially since s/he works in IT at an NPO -- there will be enough challenges coming up, thank you very much);
3) start your own damned business, if you don't like how you've been treated by your employers.
* Dude: I've been laid-off, too, by the Big National ISP That Ate the Little Hometown ISP Where I Worked(tm), so I know what it's like to write "thanatopsis documentation".
> And you really cant compare enigma to current technology.
Um, why not? It could be argued that failure of obscurity to maintain the cipher's integrity is one of the reasons we're not encrypting all our bank communications with Enigma today. It's the failure of a given security technique in context that matters. A hundred years from now, if people using fourth generation quantum computers (or whatever) say, "Well, you can't compare AES256 to current technology," they'll be missing the point in exactly the same way.
Anyone else smell a Summer Blockbuster Extravaganza(tm) coming? Humanity destroys itself, but this simulation keeps running, with its inhabitants evolving into a harmonious world of peaceniks. The aliens finally arrive, 5,000 years after we off ourselves, and say ZOMG: WTF?. Then they discover our digital progeny "trapped" inside this computer. High-speed (alien) chases/hilarious (alien) gags/heartwarming (alien) moments ensue as they try to liberate "us" from the World That Never Was(tm).
Guess I just figured out how I'm finally going to make my millions and get out of IT... (I'm trademarking that right now, you flesh-eatin', zombie bastards!)
I would second that: my company builds firewalls exclusively on CentOS using Shorewall. Shorewall...
...is a great abstraction layer for iptables, so writing your firewall policies and rules is more like writing them in English* than straight iptables (although you'll still want to understand iptables enough to debug problems);
...uses a modular config, including "macros" for commonly-used rulesets;
...allows you to set arbitrary variables, like $WEBSERVER or $ALL_PRIVATE_NETWORKS, which make your rules all the more natural-language-like;
...gives you an elegant "did I just compose a firewall that's going to lock me out of the box?" sanity check ('shorewall safe-start' or 'shorewall safe-restart');
...offers excellent advanced features like multi-ISP use and integration of bandwidth shaping (using 'tc') in a satisfyingly-straightforward way;
...and manages to put firewall admins "on rails" without sacrificing advanced capabilities (see above).
* I have no experience with its internationalization.
No, I'm not on the Shorewall devel team.;-)
It's just a set of scripts, so it should run on any system that offers iptables and an sh-compatible shell. There are prebuilt packages ("noarch" RPMs, for instance) maintained for most major distros.
Coupled with Webmin (for which there is a Shorewall module available) and add-ons like OpenVPN, Squid, and DansGuardian, this makes for a pretty capable "edge box" that even "non-Unixy types" can manage, provided they understand the OS-independent aspects of firewall management...
(No, I'm not on any of those devel teams, either.)
On a related note, and setting aside the security implications for a moment, this could make for pretty interesting live documents if capable of AJAX-grade JavaScript.
I dunno: I think the forty or so attempts it took me to successfully type my (sysadmin-grade) password on that Icelandic keyboard probably obfuscated the secret data well enough...;-p
If you're talking about the 500MHz "ice" iBook (circa late 2001), I'd have to temper my agreement with this: it is slow at DRAWING 10(.2.4), even with the maximum RAM (640MB) installed. It's only got an 8MB video card, and the all the antialiasing and transparency that OS X wants to do by default makes it appear really slow. I love my little iBook: take it everywhere (I'm a consultant administering four heterogeneous networks and two small Linux server farms) and do everything with it (snapshot whole PC HDs via FireWire -- raise your hand if your PC can reciprocate). My G4/867 certainly runs proc-intensive tasks faster, but also draws everything more snappily. Try turning off window transparency (app-by-app, I'm afraid) on your iBook and see if that doesn't make it a little more responsive -- did for me.
Slashdot Mirror
From their website: "You’re a developer. You know applications. Building apps is what you do. But when you need to turn your app into an appliance, you come see us. That’s what we do. Using Workbench, our easy-to-use online configuration and build system, you can be ready to deploy in under an hour, completely free. ... Our open-source software platform is a great fit for all kinds of devices: digital signage, kiosks, point-of-sale/point-of-service devices; So let us handle your OS. And you can get back to what you do best—making great apps."
Ah: Apparently, that's a 32' rank. I must've been much smaller when visiting Salisbury. ;-)
Oh, yeah: If you're at all a music (or physics) geek, I think Salisbury has a 64' rank on its pipe organ. I might be making that up, though. Have a great trip.
And I noticed his vampirism on the product page graphic. Apparently, most of his relations are vampires. Why do you suppose that is?
*der* Stupid tabs. This was meant for one of the referred threads. :-p
...of my speech, which starts, "I am not the real Dread Pirate Roberts...
Worse, yet: will hard-up DNA farmers now begin selling their crops at a premium to industry, diverting crucial DNA from where it's needed most: the third world?
The included tablet, on the other hand, is a nice idea: what else would you do with the hectare of "wrist rest" you get with a 17" screen? My only caveat, there, is that it appears to be on the WRONG SIDE. Silly right-handers. When will y'all learn? ;-)
*duh*
The moronic IT persons are already saying crap like "the email belongs to the company, not you". Perhaps the computer on which I wrote them does, but *I* have written those emails, therefore they belong to me also.
That depends entirely upon the terms of your employment: sad but true (note: IANAL). If you have a contract governing your employment, I'd suggest you look at it and get legal help interpreting it, if need be.
Oh, and f^@k the IT people.
You're perfectly welcome to return to your previous life of using pen and paper, the (POTS) telephone, postal mail, and trying to get a date in person. Let me know how that all works out for you.
When I first saw this headline, I thought the implication was that Storm was growing so quickly due to its use of performance-enhancing drugs. I was all ready to blame superstar baseball players for setting a poor example...
http://ege-inc.org/ Of course, you'll have to help them finish http://giftfile.org/ first. ;-)
Note to self: do not leave diabolical plans facing upward on deck whilst sunning self...
...no fewer than one thousand times per day: "Must use powers for good, not for evil."
The only mission the people I worked for were invested in was their personal gain at any means, ranging from outright theft (of donations to charity - how low can you get ?) to lying about their working hours, to using said working hours for personal business.
Then your experiences and mine differ significantly. Sorry you've had to deal with the seamier side of the NPO/NGO world.So, were you particularly motivated to do a good job at it ?
Sure: my (fairly adequate) severance pay depended on it.However realistic your observations might be in light of modern corporate "greed culture" (which is different how, from 19th-century "greed culture"?), your pessimistic attitude and lack of treatment of a core criterion betrays the fact that you've never worked for a non-profit.
I own an IT consultancy that has worked for somewhere between 40 and 60 NPOs in the last several years, among other clients. Call it our "social mission". In contrast to the fundamental jadedness of your diatribe*, people working (not volunteering: working) for NPOs are typically 1) invested in the mission, 2) invested in the mission, and 3) invested in the mission. There's not too much ego going on, there...at least not below the Executive Director level. These people are, by and large, dedicated to the organization and, I suspect, would be more than willing to participate in a documentation initiative. Of the few NPOs we've kept on as clients -- WE have to make a profit, even if they don't -- most don't seem to experience resistance to process documentation. And it's especially crucial in the case of an NPO, where they can't necessarily afford to send more than one person to project management training, or pay for more than one "basic bookkeeping" course at the local community college. We've traditionally worked mostly with domestic violence/sexual abuse organizations, and the brave souls who work at them burn out like crazy. You wouldn't believe the turnover. Whatever knowledge or competencies the organization acquires over time must survive the coming and going of staff, and luckily, the staff generally knows this.
I guess it comes down to this, really:
1) process documentation is a necessity of business continuity (I'd be remiss as a consultant if it weren't included in my operational continuity plans for clients);
2) don't put the original poster off what it a worthy and crucial cause (especially since s/he works in IT at an NPO -- there will be enough challenges coming up, thank you very much);
3) start your own damned business, if you don't like how you've been treated by your employers.
* Dude: I've been laid-off, too, by the Big National ISP That Ate the Little Hometown ISP Where I Worked(tm), so I know what it's like to write "thanatopsis documentation".
Um, why not? It could be argued that failure of obscurity to maintain the cipher's integrity is one of the reasons we're not encrypting all our bank communications with Enigma today. It's the failure of a given security technique in context that matters. A hundred years from now, if people using fourth generation quantum computers (or whatever) say, "Well, you can't compare AES256 to current technology," they'll be missing the point in exactly the same way.
Guess I just figured out how I'm finally going to make my millions and get out of IT... (I'm trademarking that right now, you flesh-eatin', zombie bastards!)
* I have no experience with its internationalization.
No, I'm not on the Shorewall devel team. ;-)
It's just a set of scripts, so it should run on any system that offers iptables and an sh-compatible shell. There are prebuilt packages ("noarch" RPMs, for instance) maintained for most major distros.
Coupled with Webmin (for which there is a Shorewall module available) and add-ons like OpenVPN, Squid, and DansGuardian, this makes for a pretty capable "edge box" that even "non-Unixy types" can manage, provided they understand the OS-independent aspects of firewall management...
(No, I'm not on any of those devel teams, either.)
...Only Gets Up to Ankles
You don't know how to fix a station wagon, either... :-p
On a related note, and setting aside the security implications for a moment, this could make for pretty interesting live documents if capable of AJAX-grade JavaScript.
I dunno: I think the forty or so attempts it took me to successfully type my (sysadmin-grade) password on that Icelandic keyboard probably obfuscated the secret data well enough... ;-p
I was thinking the same thing, but at least they're consistent -- tigerdirect.com returned no search results for "tyan"...
If you're talking about the 500MHz "ice" iBook (circa late 2001), I'd have to temper my agreement with this: it is slow at DRAWING 10(.2.4), even with the maximum RAM (640MB) installed. It's only got an 8MB video card, and the all the antialiasing and transparency that OS X wants to do by default makes it appear really slow. I love my little iBook: take it everywhere (I'm a consultant administering four heterogeneous networks and two small Linux server farms) and do everything with it (snapshot whole PC HDs via FireWire -- raise your hand if your PC can reciprocate). My G4/867 certainly runs proc-intensive tasks faster, but also draws everything more snappily. Try turning off window transparency (app-by-app, I'm afraid) on your iBook and see if that doesn't make it a little more responsive -- did for me.