You do pay a plumber to do plumbing, or an electrician to setup electricity, or a mechanic to service your car, don't you?
How is this different? Don't come with the "I can do this myself". Sure you can because you learned something about it. I can't do plumbing, I can't install electricity and I can't service my car, but I damn well can maintain my own Unix servers.
A plumber probably does his own plumbing, but pays a mechanic to service his car....
We have less vacation here because it's required by law in Europe. We don't want that. Your house payment due next week? Too bad, buddy. It's vacation time.
European here... That's not how it works. We have *paid* vacation. So, that payment due will be paid in time since I get paid regardless if I'm in vacation or at work. Once per month I get my paycheck and it doesn't vary, every month the same amount. It's very easy to budget things that way.
As far as I know Americans do have paid vacations, only less days....
Many Europeans go for years without a job.
Not in all countries. In my country, when you are out of a job for 1 year, you lose all benefits. Besides, you are mandated to register at the employment office and they will send you to potential employers. If you refuse job offers three times in a row (or you don't even present yourself), no welfare that month.
The long time unemployed you think about are those that either don't want to work, or where the work that is offered pays less than welfare (!)... Even then, in Germany some people take on so called "one-euro-jobs", which means they are paid 1€/hour for the job, which is way below welfare. Why do they do this? Because they think it's better to work than to decay sitting in front of your TV at home.
I'm not saying that everything is rosy, and I have seen the downsides of the systems above...
Since, I use Debian, I simply picked the SMP packages and it works. I don't know how the package manager is supposed to detect what CPU you have in order for a generic package to work. So, I really doubt it. Bite the bullet and install it yourself.
I know there is no fundamental difference between a dual-processor SMP and a dual-core SMP system, but I simply have never had hands on a dual-core system. I simply have no first hand experience on a dual-core SMP machine, but I do on a dual-processor machine. That was the origin of my statement.
Now if I can just figure out how to get both cores working (I tried installing the linux-686 package but it didn't help, maybe I need to remove some other package) I'll be in there.
Look for a package containing the abbreviation SMP, that matches your CPU architecture (k7 for AMD Athlon, k8 for AMD Athon64, i686 for Intel) . Granted, I never tried on a Dual Core system, but I know it works on a real SMP machine. That should do the trick... It's bit annyoing though. FreeBSD 6.1 doesn't flinch and detects two cpus at once.
If you want to check if two cpus are detected do the following at the command line: "grep 'processor'/proc/cpuinfo". If the output is:
processor : 0 processor : 1
You have a working SMP system.
I always kill the recovery partitions after backing them up with g4l
True, but notice the wording of the entry: it says "A worthless applet, esp. a Java widget. Last time that I checked "esp." means "especially". So, yes, it was mostly used for what you describe but it doesn't need to be. Any applet that is crap can apply. Ever had a Control Panel Applet that was badly behaved? Like those installed along with Creative Drivers? That are crapplets too, even though they are not written in Java.
It's not as if those "trial software" that is installed on consumer-end PC's does enhance the XP experience. Frankly, if my machine boots, the only thing that should show up is the "speaker" icon in the taskbar. All the other stuff needs to be activated by me and me alone. Same thing for non-necessary service. If I need it, I'll activate it.
Of course, OEMs (and Microsoft themselves) find it necessary to activate everything "for my convenience". No thank you...
Well, I used to have a coworker that did this to me. He lived in Germany and simply took the stuff with him. This is how I go ta digital camera for my wife. Alas, right now, I know nobody (well enough) to ask such a service. I know this trick, but I actually have not much of a life outside my work and my wife;-) -- What do you expect, I post on slashdot after all;-))
The most beneficial "friend" would be one in Germany which seems to have the biggest market for electronic devices. Of course, making friends is not easy...
So when I learn that a significant number of ancestors on one branch of my family died of pernicious anemia
Yes, so what? How does this have an effect on your life? Only thing I can think about is that you're more susceptible get pernicious anemia. There is a treatment for that now. (Did quick check on wikipedia, because I had no idea what that thing was) Sure, you can tell a doctor this so that diagnosis is easier. I might give you this one...
Or when I notice that those who stayed in certain Eastern European countries all died young due to murderous neighboring communities, while those who fled to places like the US lived into their 90s
This only means that you are most probably offspring of those that fled to the US. You are most probably Jewish, because they have been persecuted pretty much everywhere with more or less brutality. (WWII being the most notable, but don't underestimate pogroms, etc...) You knew that already by just checking where you live. Those that died did not matter to your life in the first place.
only the genetic component matters at all, this is still relevant (as theory indicates that genetics and health are tightly coupled
Sure, but you'll find that out from your parents or grandparents. The people that did matter to you in the first place (I never said that no ancestor matterd, just those that you know personally). Genetic diseases that are so rare that they only pop up every 5 generations or so are neglibile... unless you are a doctor and research these things.
A name and a birth date can tell you a great deal. It can sometimes tell you regions of origin or religion.
Sure, a name can tell you this... but the origin nor the religion of your ancestor matters. It might be interesting to you, but if I'd find out that one of my ancestors was from India and a Hindi, what changes for me? Absolutely nothing.
Stories have more immediacy when you can say "this happened to me" or "this happened to my grandfather." The richness of the story comes from the detail, and the detail can come from familiarity.
Ah, but you only went back to your grandfather. Tell me a story about that ancestor in 1572 who lived in Prague (just inventing things here, pick one of your favourite distant ancestors) and I'll give you this point. Your grandfather doesn't matter in this context because most probably you knew the guy and he could tell you his stories personally. I know pretty much nothing about the lives of my great-grand-parents. Sure, I heard some stories which were mostly of the entertaining kind and I know about two catchphrases that one of my great-grand-mothers used. Those are still in wide use in the family, though in my line of the family those will die out: they are untranslatable to the language I use daily. From another great-grand-father, I know that he used to make country wine which he called "ambrasco". Of course, this is again such an untranslatable (but funny) name. I can tell these stories to my kids, but due to translation, it will neither be funny nor memorable. So, the only two that I never knew personally and only through stories will die with me.
It is true, it is becoming more frequent for each person in a house to have a compute
True and each of these computers has a a scanner and an ink jet printer. (Came with the bundle) This is what I have seen at my wifes place before I intervened, and it still is that way at many places where I offered my help.
I've been a geek for my whole like and my father was a proto-geek. A network was one of the first things we did when we had two computers (his and mine), and then file sharing and printer sharing was a top priority. Okay, that was back when a ink jet printer cost 500€, but still. Sharing resources is the biggest reason for a network.
Sure, those that have two computers might have a network, but they share exactly one resource: the "Internet" over (most of the time these days) wireless. The printers are still locally attached, so are the scanners. Sending a file from one computer to another (if they even think of this) involves a hotmail account (sometimes even two hotmail accounts, because I have seen people that didn't know that they could email themselves.) Strange idea to us, normal for the basic user.
My network has a real network printer (my fathers has a Laserjet on a printserver) and my wife didn't understand that setup at all. After all "the printer was not connected to her computer". She also has huge problems with understanding samba shares, even though we only have two on our network: P: for public and U: for user.... She now starts to use the public share from time to time, but it's going to be a long process.
My wife is a smart person, but she doesn't like tech... (Nor maths or physics or all this stuff we geeks get hard ons from)
Well, good luck having any advantage when you discover you're King. It's not as if they'll welcome you and hand the keys of the country to you on a silver platter;-)
I don't know if you read all my posts in this thread, but I assure you that I am a family man. I love my family and would go through fire for them... *but* I'm talking about my living "close" relatives: my brother, my sister, my parents. I also care about those I "legally joined", meaning my wife (Amazing: A married slashdotter) and her family.
That said: I am realistic: those before me only matter because they gave me their genes. Their names are of no importance, nor where they lived, nor anything that they did (except conceive their kids) during their lifetimes. I very well know that those after me, will not care about who I was and that I posted on slashdot. Within two generations, my name will be forgotten. That's reality. A name on a genealogy list does not make "remembering".
As for where do I come from? Does that really even matter? I know where my parents come from, I know I took another nationality: apart from my passport, I had no connection at all to the country of origin of my parents. That's why I had not much problems dropping it. My children won't even talk my mother tongue, because it would hinder their evolution within the local school system.
In order to get into history books, you have to do something for (or against) humanity. Even then, you might be forgotten within a few 100 years.
The quote doesn't matter in this context. Genealogy is just lists (well, actually trees) of names dates (birth, marriages, divorces, deaths) and that's it. There is nothing to be remembered at all. No lesson, just names....
My dead grandpa had much more value "for history" while alive and telling me about his experiences (WWII comes to mind, where one of my grandpas was in a concentration camp.) That's history, and interesting, but it is not interesting that he had 3 sisters and 1 brother and whom they married and how many children they had.
That was the whole point of my post... Genealogy is a nice hobby but it has no use at all...
My connection to my great-grand-father (which I have never known) is only genetical. He is as much of a stranger to me than the guy that posts to slashdot. Heck, about many slashdotters I know more than about my own great-grand-father. For my dad, his grand-father (and thus my great-grand-father) has more importance because he knew the guy and has heard stories from him. I am fully aware that for my children (I don't have any yet), my own father grand-father will have pretty much next to no importance. Heck, with the health of my father, I'm pretty sure my own father will have no importance to my children.
You know that thing they say at funerals: "He will always be in our hearts". It's bollocks, when the hearts that knew the deceased have stopped beating, he will be forgotten too... and perhaps just remain a name on a genealogy list that has no meaning.
My great grandparents both wrote letters to the family describing our family history going back to roughly 1550-1600.. Instead of sending them to us and us inevitably losing them, they wrote them to their estate lawyer, who held them until they both passed on.
Okay, it had great value to them... Obviously it also was to you, but if I'd get such a letter it would end up in a drawer somewhere never to be taken out. Somewhere down the line, I die and the things get burned together with the stuff that the guys from the cleanup-service take away to vacate my apartment.
I have still not understood why it matters that in 1600 some slob married another slob and have gotten 13 kids, of which 5 died of the plague, 6 of tuberculosis and only two survived, one of which went into the orders and never had any kids of their own and the other finally married a next slob and repeated the circle.
Yeah, my nice little German car easily does 10MPG too when, ehm, "having fun".... Your nice little German car most wasn't a new one. Those cars from Stuttgart aren't exactly known for fuel efficiency... They are known for "other things". Mine is not from Stuttgart though:-(
Well, first I want to say that I've never seen non-standard chips (for example Via C3) in any computer store. Not in Luxemburg nor in neighbouring countries. These things have to be ordered online to get them, and that is something that often doesn't work because of the unwillingness of online-shops to ship here.
Sure, a train ticket to Metz is 15€, which is insanely cheaper than going there by car... Same thing for Saarbrücken, where a train ticket only costs 13€. (I really don't know for buses) So, sure I can get there cheap, but I don't know those cities very well. Finding a retailer that actually has Via C3 (or ARM, or whatever low-power) is not going to be easy, because they don't tend to be Fnac or Mediamarkt. That, and of course, I need to take a day off to get there or do it on saturday...
The whole point of ordering online is to make it easier...
I live in continental Europe and was just being a nice netizen. I converted most stuff (except €) to US units... Using Google. Apart from that, I knew there was a difference but assumed that Google would default to US gallons. (Which it does!)
I'd go the saboteur route.... As most of my countrymen, I guess. In WWII, the Germans weren't exactly popular. Funny fact: the Germans opened a pub in the "palace" of the Grand Duke. (I still think that's insanely funny, but that's probably disrespectful to my own country)
As for getting passport of other countries: only just recently Luxembourg allows double nationality. I lost my original nationality when I became a Luxembourger a few years ago. (Mainly because of trying to enhancing my chance to get a state job, which I then dropped because I hated it)
Except (and I am a Luxembourger) that in terms of military power, it's usually the army that is in absolute terms bigger that wins... Our army is a joke, and we know it. From what I'm concerned, they can downsize it all they want.
Also, it used to be that you needed a military training to get access to certain well paid jobs. I think you still do, but not anymore for the most famous one: Postman... Government jobs (or para-government jobs like Postman) here are much better paid than jobs in the private sector. I used to be a teacher (and hated it) and now earn a good 12K€ less per year because I went back to IT in the private sector.
Slashdot Mirror
You do pay a plumber to do plumbing, or an electrician to setup electricity, or a mechanic to service your car, don't you? How is this different? Don't come with the "I can do this myself". Sure you can because you learned something about it. I can't do plumbing, I can't install electricity and I can't service my car, but I damn well can maintain my own Unix servers.
A plumber probably does his own plumbing, but pays a mechanic to service his car....
Now, that's pretty much correct... if you are female. Otherwise drop the "e" at the end of "française". I'd also substitute "d'un" with "de"...
We have less vacation here because it's required by law in Europe. We don't want that. Your house payment due next week? Too bad, buddy. It's vacation time.
European here... That's not how it works. We have *paid* vacation. So, that payment due will be paid in time since I get paid regardless if I'm in vacation or at work. Once per month I get my paycheck and it doesn't vary, every month the same amount. It's very easy to budget things that way.
As far as I know Americans do have paid vacations, only less days....
Many Europeans go for years without a job.
Not in all countries. In my country, when you are out of a job for 1 year, you lose all benefits. Besides, you are mandated to register at the employment office and they will send you to potential employers. If you refuse job offers three times in a row (or you don't even present yourself), no welfare that month.
The long time unemployed you think about are those that either don't want to work, or where the work that is offered pays less than welfare (!)... Even then, in Germany some people take on so called "one-euro-jobs", which means they are paid 1€/hour for the job, which is way below welfare. Why do they do this? Because they think it's better to work than to decay sitting in front of your TV at home.
I'm not saying that everything is rosy, and I have seen the downsides of the systems above...
Is that a KDE application?
Since, I use Debian, I simply picked the SMP packages and it works. I don't know how the package manager is supposed to detect what CPU you have in order for a generic package to work. So, I really doubt it. Bite the bullet and install it yourself.
I know there is no fundamental difference between a dual-processor SMP and a dual-core SMP system, but I simply have never had hands on a dual-core system. I simply have no first hand experience on a dual-core SMP machine, but I do on a dual-processor machine. That was the origin of my statement.
Now if I can just figure out how to get both cores working (I tried installing the linux-686 package but it didn't help, maybe I need to remove some other package) I'll be in there.
Look for a package containing the abbreviation SMP, that matches your CPU architecture (k7 for AMD Athlon, k8 for AMD Athon64, i686 for Intel) . Granted, I never tried on a Dual Core system, but I know it works on a real SMP machine. That should do the trick... It's bit annyoing though. FreeBSD 6.1 doesn't flinch and detects two cpus at once.
If you want to check if two cpus are detected do the following at the command line: "grep 'processor' /proc/cpuinfo". If the output is:
You have a working SMP system.
I always kill the recovery partitions after backing them up with g4l
True, but notice the wording of the entry: it says "A worthless applet, esp. a Java widget. Last time that I checked "esp." means "especially". So, yes, it was mostly used for what you describe but it doesn't need to be. Any applet that is crap can apply. Ever had a Control Panel Applet that was badly behaved? Like those installed along with Creative Drivers? That are crapplets too, even though they are not written in Java.
It's been in the Jagon File for ages..
It's not as if those "trial software" that is installed on consumer-end PC's does enhance the XP experience. Frankly, if my machine boots, the only thing that should show up is the "speaker" icon in the taskbar. All the other stuff needs to be activated by me and me alone. Same thing for non-necessary service. If I need it, I'll activate it.
Of course, OEMs (and Microsoft themselves) find it necessary to activate everything "for my convenience". No thank you...
The average use doesn't know better though :-/
Well, I used to have a coworker that did this to me. He lived in Germany and simply took the stuff with him. This is how I go ta digital camera for my wife. Alas, right now, I know nobody (well enough) to ask such a service. I know this trick, but I actually have not much of a life outside my work and my wife ;-) -- What do you expect, I post on slashdot after all ;-))
The most beneficial "friend" would be one in Germany which seems to have the biggest market for electronic devices. Of course, making friends is not easy...
So when I learn that a significant number of ancestors on one branch of my family died of pernicious anemia
Yes, so what? How does this have an effect on your life? Only thing I can think about is that you're more susceptible get pernicious anemia. There is a treatment for that now. (Did quick check on wikipedia, because I had no idea what that thing was) Sure, you can tell a doctor this so that diagnosis is easier. I might give you this one...
Or when I notice that those who stayed in certain Eastern European countries all died young due to murderous neighboring communities, while those who fled to places like the US lived into their 90s
This only means that you are most probably offspring of those that fled to the US. You are most probably Jewish, because they have been persecuted pretty much everywhere with more or less brutality. (WWII being the most notable, but don't underestimate pogroms, etc...) You knew that already by just checking where you live. Those that died did not matter to your life in the first place.
only the genetic component matters at all, this is still relevant (as theory indicates that genetics and health are tightly coupled
Sure, but you'll find that out from your parents or grandparents. The people that did matter to you in the first place (I never said that no ancestor matterd, just those that you know personally). Genetic diseases that are so rare that they only pop up every 5 generations or so are neglibile... unless you are a doctor and research these things.
A name and a birth date can tell you a great deal. It can sometimes tell you regions of origin or religion.
Sure, a name can tell you this... but the origin nor the religion of your ancestor matters. It might be interesting to you, but if I'd find out that one of my ancestors was from India and a Hindi, what changes for me? Absolutely nothing.
Stories have more immediacy when you can say "this happened to me" or "this happened to my grandfather." The richness of the story comes from the detail, and the detail can come from familiarity.
Ah, but you only went back to your grandfather. Tell me a story about that ancestor in 1572 who lived in Prague (just inventing things here, pick one of your favourite distant ancestors) and I'll give you this point. Your grandfather doesn't matter in this context because most probably you knew the guy and he could tell you his stories personally. I know pretty much nothing about the lives of my great-grand-parents. Sure, I heard some stories which were mostly of the entertaining kind and I know about two catchphrases that one of my great-grand-mothers used. Those are still in wide use in the family, though in my line of the family those will die out: they are untranslatable to the language I use daily. From another great-grand-father, I know that he used to make country wine which he called "ambrasco". Of course, this is again such an untranslatable (but funny) name. I can tell these stories to my kids, but due to translation, it will neither be funny nor memorable. So, the only two that I never knew personally and only through stories will die with me.
Explains both the nick and the sig ;-)
I ask a case of beer for the service....
Next time use the "Quick NTFS format", okay? Saves a lot of time....
It is true, it is becoming more frequent for each person in a house to have a compute
True and each of these computers has a a scanner and an ink jet printer. (Came with the bundle) This is what I have seen at my wifes place before I intervened, and it still is that way at many places where I offered my help.
I've been a geek for my whole like and my father was a proto-geek. A network was one of the first things we did when we had two computers (his and mine), and then file sharing and printer sharing was a top priority. Okay, that was back when a ink jet printer cost 500€, but still. Sharing resources is the biggest reason for a network.
Sure, those that have two computers might have a network, but they share exactly one resource: the "Internet" over (most of the time these days) wireless. The printers are still locally attached, so are the scanners. Sending a file from one computer to another (if they even think of this) involves a hotmail account (sometimes even two hotmail accounts, because I have seen people that didn't know that they could email themselves.) Strange idea to us, normal for the basic user.
My network has a real network printer (my fathers has a Laserjet on a printserver) and my wife didn't understand that setup at all. After all "the printer was not connected to her computer". She also has huge problems with understanding samba shares, even though we only have two on our network: P: for public and U: for user.... She now starts to use the public share from time to time, but it's going to be a long process.
My wife is a smart person, but she doesn't like tech... (Nor maths or physics or all this stuff we geeks get hard ons from)
Well, good luck having any advantage when you discover you're King. It's not as if they'll welcome you and hand the keys of the country to you on a silver platter ;-)
I don't know if you read all my posts in this thread, but I assure you that I am a family man. I love my family and would go through fire for them... *but* I'm talking about my living "close" relatives: my brother, my sister, my parents. I also care about those I "legally joined", meaning my wife (Amazing: A married slashdotter) and her family.
That said: I am realistic: those before me only matter because they gave me their genes. Their names are of no importance, nor where they lived, nor anything that they did (except conceive their kids) during their lifetimes. I very well know that those after me, will not care about who I was and that I posted on slashdot. Within two generations, my name will be forgotten. That's reality. A name on a genealogy list does not make "remembering".
As for where do I come from? Does that really even matter? I know where my parents come from, I know I took another nationality: apart from my passport, I had no connection at all to the country of origin of my parents. That's why I had not much problems dropping it. My children won't even talk my mother tongue, because it would hinder their evolution within the local school system.
In order to get into history books, you have to do something for (or against) humanity. Even then, you might be forgotten within a few 100 years.
Well, evidently, I didn't waste my time researching useless facts and got an education...
Evidently, but their names don't matter, their ages don't matter, nor does it matter if or when they were married or when they died.
What matters is that they had a nice shag in the hay and a new life was created. That's it...
The quote doesn't matter in this context. Genealogy is just lists (well, actually trees) of names dates (birth, marriages, divorces, deaths) and that's it. There is nothing to be remembered at all. No lesson, just names....
My dead grandpa had much more value "for history" while alive and telling me about his experiences (WWII comes to mind, where one of my grandpas was in a concentration camp.) That's history, and interesting, but it is not interesting that he had 3 sisters and 1 brother and whom they married and how many children they had.
That was the whole point of my post... Genealogy is a nice hobby but it has no use at all...
My connection to my great-grand-father (which I have never known) is only genetical. He is as much of a stranger to me than the guy that posts to slashdot. Heck, about many slashdotters I know more than about my own great-grand-father. For my dad, his grand-father (and thus my great-grand-father) has more importance because he knew the guy and has heard stories from him. I am fully aware that for my children (I don't have any yet), my own father grand-father will have pretty much next to no importance. Heck, with the health of my father, I'm pretty sure my own father will have no importance to my children.
You know that thing they say at funerals: "He will always be in our hearts". It's bollocks, when the hearts that knew the deceased have stopped beating, he will be forgotten too... and perhaps just remain a name on a genealogy list that has no meaning.
My great grandparents both wrote letters to the family describing our family history going back to roughly 1550-1600.. Instead of sending them to us and us inevitably losing them, they wrote them to their estate lawyer, who held them until they both passed on.
Okay, it had great value to them... Obviously it also was to you, but if I'd get such a letter it would end up in a drawer somewhere never to be taken out. Somewhere down the line, I die and the things get burned together with the stuff that the guys from the cleanup-service take away to vacate my apartment.
I have still not understood why it matters that in 1600 some slob married another slob and have gotten 13 kids, of which 5 died of the plague, 6 of tuberculosis and only two survived, one of which went into the orders and never had any kids of their own and the other finally married a next slob and repeated the circle.
It simply doesn't ever matter...
Yeah, my nice little German car easily does 10MPG too when, ehm, "having fun".... Your nice little German car most wasn't a new one. Those cars from Stuttgart aren't exactly known for fuel efficiency... They are known for "other things". Mine is not from Stuttgart though :-(
Well, first I want to say that I've never seen non-standard chips (for example Via C3) in any computer store. Not in Luxemburg nor in neighbouring countries. These things have to be ordered online to get them, and that is something that often doesn't work because of the unwillingness of online-shops to ship here.
Sure, a train ticket to Metz is 15€, which is insanely cheaper than going there by car... Same thing for Saarbrücken, where a train ticket only costs 13€. (I really don't know for buses) So, sure I can get there cheap, but I don't know those cities very well. Finding a retailer that actually has Via C3 (or ARM, or whatever low-power) is not going to be easy, because they don't tend to be Fnac or Mediamarkt. That, and of course, I need to take a day off to get there or do it on saturday...
The whole point of ordering online is to make it easier...
Sorry, I assumed you were American. Didn't want to insult you. :-)
I live in continental Europe and was just being a nice netizen. I converted most stuff (except €) to US units... Using Google. Apart from that, I knew there was a difference but assumed that Google would default to US gallons. (Which it does!)
So, no, we know exactly how bad your cars are....
I'd go the saboteur route.... As most of my countrymen, I guess. In WWII, the Germans weren't exactly popular. Funny fact: the Germans opened a pub in the "palace" of the Grand Duke. (I still think that's insanely funny, but that's probably disrespectful to my own country)
As for getting passport of other countries: only just recently Luxembourg allows double nationality. I lost my original nationality when I became a Luxembourger a few years ago. (Mainly because of trying to enhancing my chance to get a state job, which I then dropped because I hated it)
Except (and I am a Luxembourger) that in terms of military power, it's usually the army that is in absolute terms bigger that wins... Our army is a joke, and we know it. From what I'm concerned, they can downsize it all they want.
Also, it used to be that you needed a military training to get access to certain well paid jobs. I think you still do, but not anymore for the most famous one: Postman... Government jobs (or para-government jobs like Postman) here are much better paid than jobs in the private sector. I used to be a teacher (and hated it) and now earn a good 12K€ less per year because I went back to IT in the private sector.