I thought it was funny that no matter how much worse off they were, they could always seems to find just a little bit from somewhere deep inside to keep doing what they thought was right.
I don't think he hates all of his characters, per se, but his style is for realistic characters.
The most disturbing thing about his books is the little bit of ourselves we see in the characters. I identify rather closely with Thomas Covenant and reading the two Unbeliever series was, at times, very painful.
The prime reason I enjoy Donaldson so much is the good-to-bad ratio he uses in the writing. His heroes are never bright and shiny Mother Theresa types; they all have faults, some of them overwhelming.
Thomas Covenant was a leper who's wife left him when his leprosy was discovered, taking his only child. His town hates him, and he hates them back; he hates himself because of what he's become (Leper outcast unclean!) and he can't seem to find beauty or peace anywhere in the world. Yet, when confronted with an overwhelming challenge he doesn't even acknowledge as real, he rises to the occasion and learns to live with his faults rather than hide them behind anger.
His characters always seem to be more human than most books -- and sometimes more human than real life.
Anybody else read The Gap Cycle of books from Stephen R. Donaldson?
If I remember correctly, all of the "datacores" used to log events in the ships were made of SOD (Silicon on Diamond) chips. The datacores could not change state, but add it.
Being a keyboardist myself, I understand the problems with finding computer cases for my gig kit.
After searching in vain, I finally gave up and bought a rack mount case. Supermicro has a nice 2u case that has 6 (six!!!) spaces on the front for removable HD chassis.
There are pleanty of SCSI removable chassis for $25 or less, and a couple of solutions for ATA drives. I'm using a SCSI system myself, but the new ABIT board with the over abundance of ATA interfaces (something on the order of 14 devices IIRC) would probably be a good match.
The only drawback is the lack of ports on the front. I fixed this by making a 1u plate out of annodized aluminum with all of the jacks that I'd need on the front.
This all sits in a nice anvil-like case that I built out of MDF and carpeted. There's a trunk-like spot in the top that holds my 15" LCD, keyboard and trackball.
I don't use the computer too much for gigging, but when I'm recording with the band, it comes in handy.
Looking at the copy on the front page, I caught the following:
...that directly [a]ffected the learning...
Before going off on a rant about a "county director" of education not proofreading a press release, I checked the original press release on RedHat's site.
Perhaps RedHat could trade some licenses for proofreading?
Don't you love it when people say: I don't care how [Insert Your Favorite Standard Here] works, can't you make it work this way instead?
Long (read: expensive) answer:
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any COTS solutions to do what you need.
However, you could put some sort of NAT box with DHCP on every ethernet jack. Assign the "outside" jack of the NAT box to a static IP and NAT that again at a central place to get it out of the building.
Of course, just providing a computer in every room would be as simple.
Heh. I just checked over at Netcraft and it seems that the servers are running Linux with Apache and mod_perl.
As we all know, Linux makes extensive use of daemons for running background processes, something the True Path "gentleman" was critical of OSX and BSD for. And, these daemons will fork off and reproduce in a rather Darwinesque way.
Shouldn't we let this person know that his Christian site is infested by foul, evolutionary daemons?
I disagree. We do. We need a little better equipment (larger monitors, more RAM, X server software to connect to the boxen, etc.) than your average secretary or PHB.
First, We want more money. It's a damn lie when people say we just love what we do and we don't do it for money. Real geeks do love what we do, and we don't do it only for money. But by God we know when we are being taken advantage of!
Yes and no. I'm currently working in a job making 25% of what I'm used to making. I'm willing to do it because the environment rocks. If I (honestly) need new hardware, I get it. If there's a feature that I can (honestly) justify, I get to impliment it. The working hours are whatever I want to do.
What I've found is that the more you can insulate us from the daily political bullshit, three hour status meetings that force us to put in the fabled 16 hour days and the "you must be here at 8 a.m. no matter how many hours you're puting in" attitude, the more we appreciate those things as benefits of working under you. If I can get a feel for the company, each of those things are easily worth between 10 and 20 thousand dollars each for me.
Second, we enjoy having constructive and intelligent conversation with people. Most of the good programmers I know are warm, outgoing people. It's a myth that we hide in the basement.
I couldn't agree more. The antisocial types who like to sit in the server room and emerge only for payday and runs to the soda machines are a detriment to the company. You can't ever be sure what they're working on, nor can you be sure that they're not pissed off.
Third, we want respect, acknowledgement, blah, blah, blah. Basically the same kind of things a postman would like to have.
Again, very well put. There's nothing that will nudge me towards the 80 hour week (when it's necessary) than a boss who respects my abilities and my dedication.
Just because most people didn't work hard enough in their high school maths class to understand what we do, it doens't mean it's harder to understand us as individuals.
I'm one of those developers who's fought tooth and nail to get where I am. I have never taken a programming class, nor do I want to. I have no degrees and barely graduated highschool. I've quit jobs because managers treat me as an ignorant child because I didn't take Psychology-101 and Underwater Basketweaving-202 in college. It's a definate plus when somebody recognizes your demonstrated ability and intelligence rather than the piece of paper tacked to your wall.
I've seen similar problems in our office with a few of our K6-II desktop machines running FreeBSD; I can't recall the motherboard, but I seem to remember them all being VIA chipsets.
We submitted a problem report to the BSD guys and after a little bit, they confirmed that it was an APM problem. We recompiled the kernels without APM support and it disappeared.
Slashdot Mirror
No criticism intended, by the way. I agree.
I thought it was funny that no matter how much worse off they were, they could always seems to find just a little bit from somewhere deep inside to keep doing what they thought was right.
That's funny in an inspiring kind of way.
The most disturbing thing about his books is the little bit of ourselves we see in the characters. I identify rather closely with Thomas Covenant and reading the two Unbeliever series was, at times, very painful.
The prime reason I enjoy Donaldson so much is the good-to-bad ratio he uses in the writing. His heroes are never bright and shiny Mother Theresa types; they all have faults, some of them overwhelming.
Thomas Covenant was a leper who's wife left him when his leprosy was discovered, taking his only child. His town hates him, and he hates them back; he hates himself because of what he's become (Leper outcast unclean!) and he can't seem to find beauty or peace anywhere in the world. Yet, when confronted with an overwhelming challenge he doesn't even acknowledge as real, he rises to the occasion and learns to live with his faults rather than hide them behind anger.
His characters always seem to be more human than most books -- and sometimes more human than real life.
If I remember correctly, all of the "datacores" used to log events in the ships were made of SOD (Silicon on Diamond) chips. The datacores could not change state, but add it.
Really interesting read if you like Sci-Fi.
I forgot to mention that little fact. I use a Yamaha SY77 as the main MIDI controller and a couple of rackmount tone modules for the rest of the rig.
Add in some rackmount effects and everything's complete.
After searching in vain, I finally gave up and bought a rack mount case. Supermicro has a nice 2u case that has 6 (six!!!) spaces on the front for removable HD chassis.
There are pleanty of SCSI removable chassis for $25 or less, and a couple of solutions for ATA drives. I'm using a SCSI system myself, but the new ABIT board with the over abundance of ATA interfaces (something on the order of 14 devices IIRC) would probably be a good match.
The only drawback is the lack of ports on the front. I fixed this by making a 1u plate out of annodized aluminum with all of the jacks that I'd need on the front.
This all sits in a nice anvil-like case that I built out of MDF and carpeted. There's a trunk-like spot in the top that holds my 15" LCD, keyboard and trackball.
I don't use the computer too much for gigging, but when I'm recording with the band, it comes in handy.
Good luck!
The first five letters of your last name followed by the first two of the first name was your login.
A guy who used to work there by the name of Les Hedrington had "hedrile" as his.
It was confusing, at first, but they had a suprisingly low number of duplicates.
Not only did I mix the words around in my head, I transposed them across sites.
I really meant to harp on the [a]ffected rather than the effected...
I guess I wasn't very effective. Or is that affective....
Whatever.
Looking at the copy on the front page, I caught the following:
Before going off on a rant about a "county director" of education not proofreading a press release, I checked the original press release on RedHat's site.
Perhaps RedHat could trade some licenses for proofreading?
Chilling idea, actually...
Don't you love it when people say: I don't care how [Insert Your Favorite Standard Here] works, can't you make it work this way instead?
Long (read: expensive) answer:
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any COTS solutions to do what you need.
However, you could put some sort of NAT box with DHCP on every ethernet jack. Assign the "outside" jack of the NAT box to a static IP and NAT that again at a central place to get it out of the building.
Of course, just providing a computer in every room would be as simple.
As we all know, Linux makes extensive use of daemons for running background processes, something the True Path "gentleman" was critical of OSX and BSD for. And, these daemons will fork off and reproduce in a rather Darwinesque way.
Shouldn't we let this person know that his Christian site is infested by foul, evolutionary daemons?
I disagree. We do. We need a little better equipment (larger monitors, more RAM, X server software to connect to the boxen, etc.) than your average secretary or PHB.
Yes and no. I'm currently working in a job making 25% of what I'm used to making. I'm willing to do it because the environment rocks. If I (honestly) need new hardware, I get it. If there's a feature that I can (honestly) justify, I get to impliment it. The working hours are whatever I want to do.
What I've found is that the more you can insulate us from the daily political bullshit, three hour status meetings that force us to put in the fabled 16 hour days and the "you must be here at 8 a.m. no matter how many hours you're puting in" attitude, the more we appreciate those things as benefits of working under you. If I can get a feel for the company, each of those things are easily worth between 10 and 20 thousand dollars each for me.
I couldn't agree more. The antisocial types who like to sit in the server room and emerge only for payday and runs to the soda machines are a detriment to the company. You can't ever be sure what they're working on, nor can you be sure that they're not pissed off.
Again, very well put. There's nothing that will nudge me towards the 80 hour week (when it's necessary) than a boss who respects my abilities and my dedication.
I'm one of those developers who's fought tooth and nail to get where I am. I have never taken a programming class, nor do I want to. I have no degrees and barely graduated highschool. I've quit jobs because managers treat me as an ignorant child because I didn't take Psychology-101 and Underwater Basketweaving-202 in college. It's a definate plus when somebody recognizes your demonstrated ability and intelligence rather than the piece of paper tacked to your wall.
We submitted a problem report to the BSD guys and after a little bit, they confirmed that it was an APM problem. We recompiled the kernels without APM support and it disappeared.
... when we /. Google?
Where do we find links to the cached copies?
Facetiously yours....