You must not have used Dreamweaver in this century. Dreamweaver MX and above, by default, do not even SHOW the ability to have font tags. They use CSS stylings by default. In fact, in MX 2004 and above, there is no available option in the UI for font tags, period.
Try using a later version of Dreamweaver. Macromedia/Adobe have kept up with the times.
I own a small business that calls downtown San Jose its home. We lease office space that is about 1300 square feet and split it with another small company. Rent is $1.26 a square foot (but the landlord is now offering the office space above us for $1.15...bastard!):(
We have 4 people in the office currently, plus a nice-sized workbench space to build servers and a conference table area. We could easily fit 5 people in the same space.
Rent, plus electricity, water cooler, phone, and 6Mbit DSL connection, costs around $1300 a month. $1300 divided by 5 people is $260/month per person. That, on a yearly basis, is $3120 per employee.
Yes, I suppose we could all work from home and save the money, but productivity would be dramatically decreased. For one thing, we do a lot of datacenter work, and we need quick and easy access to the datacenter during business hours (and space to build servers!) Plus, I like the "office environment" where we can easily chat with each other. A lot of ideas come out just from us talking. Plus, there is a comfy couch where anyone in the company can crash out or just sit and think, and some snacky things to chew on while pondering problems. These are fun amenities that I couldn't justify the cost for as easily if they were at my house.;)
Also worth mentioning is the comfort our customers derive from us having an office. It's a lot easier to sell customers on our dedicated servers and colocation services if they know they can come knock on the door whenever they have a problem. For whatever reason, the "everyone works at home" thing is not considered a professional way to run a small business, and having an office is seen as a must-have for customers to take us seriously.
Oh, sigh. I see the flame war erupting already, since Slashdot is primarily male. But this needs to be said anyway.
"My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc."
WHY are you doing all of this grunt work IN ADDITION TO being the primary breadwinner of your household?
What is your husband doing?
Now, if your husband is doing 50%+ of the household work (I say plus, since you're the primary income), that's one thing, and I would argue that a housekeeper/cleaning service would save a lot of your sanity. That's a given. I hire a cleaning service to clean my house. I need to keep myself focused on work that benefits my career instead of busywork.
However, if your husband is not doing at least 50% of the job, that's a whole other can of worms, but one that I'm willing to open because I think it's an important point of discussion.
I read a great article about this the other day. It's called My Radical Married Feminist Manifesto, and it's a must-read for most women who are primary breadwinners and who are or plan to be married. It's in response to America's Stay-At-Home Feminists, which is in itself an important article to read.
One of the most important points of the article is as follows:
"The home-economics trap involves superior female knowledge and superior female sanitation. The solutions are ignorance and dust. Never figure out where the butter is. "Where's the butter?" Nora Ephron's legendary riff on marriage begins. In it, a man asks the question when looking directly at the butter container in the refrigerator. "Where's the butter?" actually means butter my toast, buy the butter, remember when we're out of butter. Next thing you know you're quitting your job at the law firm because you're so busy managing the butter. If women never start playing the household-manager role, the house will be dirty, but the realities of the physical world will trump the pull of gender ideology. Either the other adult in the family will take a hand or the children will grow up with robust immune systems."
Sounds like a trap that you might have fallen into, and even if you haven't, it's important to be aware of "the butter question" in case you get into this situation in the future.
In case you plan on having kids, I also want to quote this stunning piece (from the same article):
"Bad deals come in two forms: economics and home economics. The economic temptation is to assign the cost of child care to the woman's income. If a woman making $50,000 per year whose husband makes $100,000 decides to have a baby, and the cost of a full-time nanny is $30,000, the couple reason that, after paying 40 percent in taxes, she makes $30,000, just enough to pay the nanny. So she might as well stay home. This totally ignores that both adults are in the enterprise together and the demonstrable future loss of income, power, and security for the woman who quits. Instead, calculate that all parents make a total of $150,000 and take home $90,000. After paying a full-time nanny, they have $60,000 left to live on."
...which is so incredibly true that I'm amazed it's even looked at any other way. Remember that if you stay home to take care of the kid, this calculation assumes that your salary would have remained the same indefinitely -- an invalid assumption for a career-oriented woman.
I sincerely hope you haven't fallen prey to the butter question. However, if you have, now is the time to reassess who does the work in your marriage. Do it like you would any other job -- figure out which parts you can outsource (grocery shopping? You can shop online and get groceries delivered. Cleaning the house? You can hire someone) for very lit
But does it benefit the company more, or does it benefit the employee more? If she gets training, she'll be better able to demand a higher salary from the company he's working for now, or a higher salary in his next job.
I also think it should be the company's responsibility (in general, and in this case) to provide work-related training. However, I don't agree with your assertion that it only benefits the company involved.
I figured someone would say this. I don't think it's that dire, though. I'm the CEO of the company and my salary is less than $60K/year. My techs are paid hourly -- sometimes, during rough periods, they get paid more than I do. I maanage to live just fine here in San Jose on a $50K/year salary.
The highest salary I've ever had here in the Bay Area working for another company was $49,500. It wasn't easy to live on, but I did it. I'm a little bit better off now that I have my own business, but the fact is that most of my business's revenue gets reinvested into the business. That's what we have to work with. Sorry, folks.:)
By the way, I am not expecting to hire anyone who has a family to feed (though I have in the past.) These are really entry-level Linux systems administrator positions (and yes, we train, and offer RHCE certification to all of our employees.) But you have to be able to pass the questions I listed in my original post to work here -- that is, you have to have some experience with Linux, even if it's just at home, before we will hire you. Show the first bit of initiative and we'll take it from there.
I hate to break it to you, but if you want to be a Linux admin, you need to be able to answer entry-level questions like the ones I listed in my previous post. Yes, we are willing to train, but the people we hire need to show the motivation to at least get those basic skills themselves. Maintaining a Linux dedicated server or a box at home gets you 90% of the way there, but very few people actually do this.
I've met 18-year-olds who were geniuses and who knew way more than the above. We can and do hire them. The training they require is more along the lines of "Call when you're going to be late" and "How to deal with customers without sounding like an arrogant kid." That's stuff I'm happy to teach, and they enjoy getting real-world experience and having an office to work in.
But I'm not going to train someone to be a Linux admin when they didn't have the initiative to go out on their own and learn the first, basic set of skills required. It works both ways. I'm perfectly happy to train you on our specific systems and best practices, but only if you're motivated enough to learn how to use SSH, what the 'df' command does, and how to boot into single user mode. If you think you can just walk in with a basic set of PC skills and get a Linux system administrator job, forget it.
Unfortunately, those who know SSH and port 25 are demanding salaries of at least $60K/year. I have managed to find 3 good employees so far who understand that my company will not be able to pay outrageous salaries until we are consistently profitable (next year), but the 4th is proving tricky.
I own a web hosting company, and we've been going through major hiring woes lately. It's not that we can't find people to hire. Oh, there are plenty of people out there. It's just that we can't find qualified people.
It's unbelievable how little Linux system administration experience some candidates have. We're paying a low-to-mid-level salary, so I don't expect to hire a UNIX guru. But these people are failing even the most basic tests. One claimed "Senior UNIX systems administrator" on his resume, but when asked to SSH into a server from a Linux workstation, typed "telnet [server] 25".
Some of the questions we ask in an interview: "Why would you use SSH instead of telnet?" "What is port 25?" "How do you reset the root password on a server when you don't know the current root password?" These are really basic questions, and yet the majority of candidates have no clue how to answer them.
I have a feeling this is only going to get worse as fewer and fewer people enter the IT field. There seems to be a large gap between the entry level, where candidates know little or nothing (or they only know point-and-drool generic PC troubleshooting skills), and the upper end, which demands (but probably deserves) outrageous salaries for knowing how to set up routers and SANs. We're looking for the people fiddling around with Linux servers and setting them up in their spare time who want some on-the-job experience administering and maintaining Linux servers. However, even here in Silicon Valley, that's proven remarkably hard to find. We also keep having to increase our workers' salaries to find even moderately qualified people, which means our costs go up and we can't hire as many people as we need to.
My advice to college students: Go out there and get yourself some experience. There are plenty of jobs out there that you can get right out of college in IT. Sure, they may not pay 6 figures a year, but if you enjoy computers, they're fun jobs. As far as recruiting students into IT, it will probably take a few years before it becomes a popular field again, due to the fact that so many people entered it expecting high salaries several years back. My advice: Set realistic expectations of those entering IT (6 figures right out of college? No. A job right out of college? Probably), and convince those not in a CS/IT major to take elective computer classes in case they want to be in a computer-related field later.
"Jack Messman, chief executive of networking software vendor Novell says that 2006 will see widespread adoption of Linux on the corporate desktop."
Just like 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001...
The real problem is (still) lack of applications and games. My home PC can't switch until Dreamweaver and Photoshop run on Linux. My office PC can't switch until Quickbooks and VersaCheck run on Linux. Honestly, I've seen more Windows->Mac and Linux->Mac migrations than anything else these past few years... and little to no evidence that shows that Linux is gaining popularity on desktop PCs, other than these "wishful thinking" articles from Linux company CEOs.
Something else to think about: The upgrade cost to Vista, for most companies, is effectively $0 because it comes with new PCs. Contrast this with yearly application updates for Photoshop, Quickbooks, anti-virus, anti-spyware, et al. which can run thousands of dollars. Microsoft isn't the only cost center on a typical PC; in fact, I'd say they're one of the smallest costs involved with a typical office PC.
"That means that, on average, each of those 70 million look at more than 170 pages per month?!"
Not surprising, considering the typical game review on their sites looks like:
[AD|AD|AD|AD] [company] has released a very cool new game called [title]. [token screenshot of box cover] [AD|AD|AD|AD] [NEXT] Page: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Click Next and be directed to an interstitial ad, then click through 12 more pages just to find out whether the game is actually worth playing or not. I've long since given up on IGN for having much actual content on their pages.
"Also here is a games section story from this morning."
Congratulations to TACO for figuring out how to find a dupe! Now perhaps next time we can go to the second stage of this (admittedly tough) game and actually not post the article twice???:P
Check out Commands -> Clean Up Word HTML in Dreamweaver. it does a nice job of getting rid of extraneous tags. While you're at it, take a look at Commands -> Apply Source Formatting as well. This can be customized to your specifications in the preferences section, and automatically tabs out, adds newlines, and converts tags to lowercase where appropriate in the HTML document. Dreamweaver is the closest thing I know of to a program that "automatically" cleans up Word HTML.
I offered them a free Dual Xeon 2.8GHz server, 1GB RAM, 1x80GB hard drive with 500GB transfer a month, hosted at Simpli (my hosting company). We host several Drupal sites and I'd be happy to have them on board. I asked for a text link back to Simpli. I haven't heard back from them, so I guess they'd rather beg their users for money than take a free dedicated server. I have to say I'm a bit disappointed, but it's their money and their choice.
I am sure there will be a lot of comments on this article like "Yay! I can get a hottie!" now. However, speaking as a woman who has dated several geeks, I thought I would share a woman's perspective.
1) I can't tell you how many geek guys I know who can't even take care of their most basic personal hygiene needs. You need to shower at least once a day and use deodorant to become reasonably attractive to any woman. No woman is turned on by stinky body odor.
2) Self-confidence is attractive. Unfortunately, many geeks think self-confidence is something for guys who brag about every "conquest" they have. It's not. Self-confidence is simply respect and love for who you are. Love yourself first and good relationships will follow. This is difficult, but it's the key ingredient to any successful relationship. If you know who you are and you love who you are, people will love and respect you that much more.
3) Complaining/whining is not attractive. Some geeks have very bitter personalities and spend a lot of time whining about how the world would be a better place if only this or that. (The most common one I hear is whining about a job they're in.) If you complain, do something about it! Start your own business. Program something better on the side and sell it. Take control of the situation and create something better instead of griping.
4) Being a slave isn't attractive. If you make it clear that you'll do anything for a woman, and grovel for her affection, you're going to end up attracting the wrong type of woman. Any successful relationship is a two-way street. While there's nothing wrong with showing your love and affection, groveling only means you'll get taken advantage of and perhaps become bitter about (see #3.)
5) Lead a balanced life. No one is less attractive than someone who sits on a computer all day and never gets out of the house. Plus, it doesn't make for a healthy life of your own (I should know; I work from home and often spend 12-16 hours a day in front of the computer.) Get out there, meet people, and have fun. It will make you feel better about yourself to have a good group of friends around, as well.
I have been in several great relationships with geeky guys. I find the most successful relationships I have are with guys who already have a decent level of self-confidence and several friends who respect and love them. They may be interested in computers, but they are also interested in having fun and getting out of the house on a regular basis. Take this guide to heart and you can have a good relationship with the right woman as well.
Let's see. A test commissioned by Microsoft says IIS is faster than Apache. The link for more information goes to microsoft.com. Is this really "news"? Seems more like a thinly-disguised press release...
As the owner of a web hosting company for several years now (and one that stays away from Windows as much as possible), we've noticed a dramatic spike in attempted attacks on our servers in the past 12 months. If you put an unprotected/tmp directory (i.e. one that allows executable files) in a server that's connected directly to the Internet, you're asking for trouble. We've seen these boxes sending out spam or DOS'ing other servers (mostly targeting IRC servers) in a matter of hours from when we put them online. The hackers find some exploit like an old version of phpBB, insecure PHP code, etc. It's really not that hard; if you have several sites on a server, chances are that one of them has something vulnerable in a web-accessible directory. It's gotten so bad that we've devoted part of our standard CentOS install to locking down the/tmp directory so no files can be executed (and explaining this change to our customers.)
Worse yet, the hacks have now turned to running perl or php from the command line on things in/tmp to get around the noexec mount option. The hack works like this:
1) Find exploitable site. (Again, with the number of insecurities in commonly-used programs like phpBB, or god forbid, the *Nuke series, this isn't hard.) 2) Upload perl script to/tmp. 3) Run "perl [script name]" repeatedly to accomplish your goal.
We've again locked down our servers to prevent this, but unfortunately, we can't make this part of our default install because our customers like to run perl and php from/tmp! (Argh.) So we simply educate them and tell them how to lock the servers down themselves, and why putting any scripts in/tmp is a Bad Idea.
It's not just us, either... go to any forum where webmasters or hosting company owners congregate and you'll see this is one of the most common problems out there. Linux is no longer more secure as a web server... not when you factor in most of the PHP programs out there that people love, at least.
I'm rather surprised that the "living room palmtop" idea hasn't taken off yet. Here's what I'd buy for sure:
Price range: ~$400 Slate-like Tablet PC (pen-driven) interface 1280x1024 or 1400x1050 resolution (1600x1200 would really be ideal) 802.11b/g wireless networking Has Windows Pocket PC or similar small OS installed, with some games, etc. Set up so that I can Remote Desktop into my Windows PC upstairs
This would be a godsend. I'd set the thing on my coffee table and use it to just check my email without having to run upstairs to my desktop.
I know Microsoft had this with Mira a while ago, but Mira devices were costly ($900-$1200) and mostly ran at 800x600 or 1024x768. Now that LCDs have dropped so far in price, I really feel this is a good marketing opportunity. Also, put Pocket PC on it and the thing can play games, etc. without having to be connected to the PC upstairs. Marketed properly and with the right price point, I bet we'd see these in most geek living rooms. It could even double as an interactive photo album with a stand and SD card slots, or a DVD player with a USB hookup. I'd welcome a device like this at $400 or less.
Waiting patiently for the manufacturers to catch up to my imagination...:)
I am a current Thinkpad X31 owner, and I've been considering Tablet PCs for a while. The thing that has consistently held me back is the XGA (1024x768) screen. I have XGA on my current Thinkpad and it's just too small for Photoshop or some of the other programs I use on a daily basis. I've been taking a serious look at the Toshiba Portege M200, which uses 1400x1050 (SXGA+) resolution instead. While I'm excited that IBM, which is by far my favorite laptop brand (Toshiba being a close second), is coming out with a Tablet PC, I'm disappointed in the screen resolution. What really makes this Tablet PC unique? It's just like most of the other ones. I'd still rather have the Toshiba.
Yes, they went after DeCSS because it broke the encryption on DVDs. Audio CDs (normally) do not have any encryption, so it is legal to rip them. Obviously, the record companies are trying to prevent this by putting encryption on audio CDs, but so far those efforts have been unsuccessful. This isn't really similar to the DeCSS case -- there's no law that makes ripping unprotected/unencrypted audio CDs illegal.
AFAIK, all of the lawsuits thus far were from people sharing large volumes of MP3s on P2P networks. Have the record companies have ever even threatened to prosecute people who rip music from CDs and put it on their portable MP3 players? I highly doubt that this really the big concession that the ZDNet blog says it is.
We have over 100 Linux servers, but we chose CentOS as our default OS. We could have chosen Debian instead. In fact, the control panel we use for our customers (DirectAdmin) runs on Debian. But here's the #1 reason I didn't choose Debian:
[hypothetical scenario] Customer: "What operating system version do you use?" Us: "Debian unstable." Customer: "...unstable??"
The close-behind #2 reason is the installer, but I understand that's getting fixed. IMHO, Debian should strive to release a new stable version every 6 months, with 12 months being the maximum time between new stable releases. As it is, I cannot justify using Debian for business purposes when their offering that coincides with what we need is labeled "unstable".
"So what do you say to all the people concerned about privacy as a close personal friend of this guy?"
Well, first, IMSmarter allows you to turn logging off by sending the proxy a message. That's the first thing.
The second thing I would mention is that, since IMSmarter isn't selling your information to advertisers (and, as far as I know, has no plans to introduce this as a revenue stream), it's far less dangerous than even your standard webmail client. (What, you think Yahoo or AOL administrators can't read your webmail or IM chats?)
David will have to introduce more fine-grained logging controls in the future (i.e. never log conversations with xyz; always log conversations with abc; delete the last hour of logs with asdf.) This is all coming. You are seeing a project that is in its very early beta stage right now, and I think this Slashdotting should jump-start some of the things that IMSmarter needs to do. You and I both know, however, that people care more about features than privacy. If we all cared about privacy first and foremost, none of us would have a Gmail account.;)
Slashdot Mirror
You must not have used Dreamweaver in this century. Dreamweaver MX and above, by default, do not even SHOW the ability to have font tags. They use CSS stylings by default. In fact, in MX 2004 and above, there is no available option in the UI for font tags, period.
Try using a later version of Dreamweaver. Macromedia/Adobe have kept up with the times.
I own a small business that calls downtown San Jose its home. We lease office space that is about 1300 square feet and split it with another small company. Rent is $1.26 a square foot (but the landlord is now offering the office space above us for $1.15...bastard!) :(
;)
We have 4 people in the office currently, plus a nice-sized workbench space to build servers and a conference table area. We could easily fit 5 people in the same space.
Rent, plus electricity, water cooler, phone, and 6Mbit DSL connection, costs around $1300 a month. $1300 divided by 5 people is $260/month per person. That, on a yearly basis, is $3120 per employee.
Yes, I suppose we could all work from home and save the money, but productivity would be dramatically decreased. For one thing, we do a lot of datacenter work, and we need quick and easy access to the datacenter during business hours (and space to build servers!) Plus, I like the "office environment" where we can easily chat with each other. A lot of ideas come out just from us talking. Plus, there is a comfy couch where anyone in the company can crash out or just sit and think, and some snacky things to chew on while pondering problems. These are fun amenities that I couldn't justify the cost for as easily if they were at my house.
Also worth mentioning is the comfort our customers derive from us having an office. It's a lot easier to sell customers on our dedicated servers and colocation services if they know they can come knock on the door whenever they have a problem. For whatever reason, the "everyone works at home" thing is not considered a professional way to run a small business, and having an office is seen as a must-have for customers to take us seriously.
"My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc."
WHY are you doing all of this grunt work IN ADDITION TO being the primary breadwinner of your household?
What is your husband doing?
Now, if your husband is doing 50%+ of the household work (I say plus, since you're the primary income), that's one thing, and I would argue that a housekeeper/cleaning service would save a lot of your sanity. That's a given. I hire a cleaning service to clean my house. I need to keep myself focused on work that benefits my career instead of busywork.
However, if your husband is not doing at least 50% of the job, that's a whole other can of worms, but one that I'm willing to open because I think it's an important point of discussion.
I read a great article about this the other day. It's called My Radical Married Feminist Manifesto, and it's a must-read for most women who are primary breadwinners and who are or plan to be married. It's in response to America's Stay-At-Home Feminists, which is in itself an important article to read.
One of the most important points of the article is as follows:
Sounds like a trap that you might have fallen into, and even if you haven't, it's important to be aware of "the butter question" in case you get into this situation in the future.
In case you plan on having kids, I also want to quote this stunning piece (from the same article):
I sincerely hope you haven't fallen prey to the butter question. However, if you have, now is the time to reassess who does the work in your marriage. Do it like you would any other job -- figure out which parts you can outsource (grocery shopping? You can shop online and get groceries delivered. Cleaning the house? You can hire someone) for very lit
Got halfway through correcting it and got distracted. My bad :)
But does it benefit the company more, or does it benefit the employee more? If she gets training, she'll be better able to demand a higher salary from the company he's working for now, or a higher salary in his next job.
I also think it should be the company's responsibility (in general, and in this case) to provide work-related training. However, I don't agree with your assertion that it only benefits the company involved.
I figured someone would say this. I don't think it's that dire, though. I'm the CEO of the company and my salary is less than $60K/year. My techs are paid hourly -- sometimes, during rough periods, they get paid more than I do. I maanage to live just fine here in San Jose on a $50K/year salary.
:)
The highest salary I've ever had here in the Bay Area working for another company was $49,500. It wasn't easy to live on, but I did it. I'm a little bit better off now that I have my own business, but the fact is that most of my business's revenue gets reinvested into the business. That's what we have to work with. Sorry, folks.
By the way, I am not expecting to hire anyone who has a family to feed (though I have in the past.) These are really entry-level Linux systems administrator positions (and yes, we train, and offer RHCE certification to all of our employees.) But you have to be able to pass the questions I listed in my original post to work here -- that is, you have to have some experience with Linux, even if it's just at home, before we will hire you. Show the first bit of initiative and we'll take it from there.
I hate to break it to you, but if you want to be a Linux admin, you need to be able to answer entry-level questions like the ones I listed in my previous post. Yes, we are willing to train, but the people we hire need to show the motivation to at least get those basic skills themselves. Maintaining a Linux dedicated server or a box at home gets you 90% of the way there, but very few people actually do this.
I've met 18-year-olds who were geniuses and who knew way more than the above. We can and do hire them. The training they require is more along the lines of "Call when you're going to be late" and "How to deal with customers without sounding like an arrogant kid." That's stuff I'm happy to teach, and they enjoy getting real-world experience and having an office to work in.
But I'm not going to train someone to be a Linux admin when they didn't have the initiative to go out on their own and learn the first, basic set of skills required. It works both ways. I'm perfectly happy to train you on our specific systems and best practices, but only if you're motivated enough to learn how to use SSH, what the 'df' command does, and how to boot into single user mode. If you think you can just walk in with a basic set of PC skills and get a Linux system administrator job, forget it.
Unfortunately, those who know SSH and port 25 are demanding salaries of at least $60K/year. I have managed to find 3 good employees so far who understand that my company will not be able to pay outrageous salaries until we are consistently profitable (next year), but the 4th is proving tricky.
I own a web hosting company, and we've been going through major hiring woes lately. It's not that we can't find people to hire. Oh, there are plenty of people out there. It's just that we can't find qualified people.
It's unbelievable how little Linux system administration experience some candidates have. We're paying a low-to-mid-level salary, so I don't expect to hire a UNIX guru. But these people are failing even the most basic tests. One claimed "Senior UNIX systems administrator" on his resume, but when asked to SSH into a server from a Linux workstation, typed "telnet [server] 25".
Some of the questions we ask in an interview: "Why would you use SSH instead of telnet?" "What is port 25?" "How do you reset the root password on a server when you don't know the current root password?" These are really basic questions, and yet the majority of candidates have no clue how to answer them.
I have a feeling this is only going to get worse as fewer and fewer people enter the IT field. There seems to be a large gap between the entry level, where candidates know little or nothing (or they only know point-and-drool generic PC troubleshooting skills), and the upper end, which demands (but probably deserves) outrageous salaries for knowing how to set up routers and SANs. We're looking for the people fiddling around with Linux servers and setting them up in their spare time who want some on-the-job experience administering and maintaining Linux servers. However, even here in Silicon Valley, that's proven remarkably hard to find. We also keep having to increase our workers' salaries to find even moderately qualified people, which means our costs go up and we can't hire as many people as we need to.
My advice to college students: Go out there and get yourself some experience. There are plenty of jobs out there that you can get right out of college in IT. Sure, they may not pay 6 figures a year, but if you enjoy computers, they're fun jobs. As far as recruiting students into IT, it will probably take a few years before it becomes a popular field again, due to the fact that so many people entered it expecting high salaries several years back. My advice: Set realistic expectations of those entering IT (6 figures right out of college? No. A job right out of college? Probably), and convince those not in a CS/IT major to take elective computer classes in case they want to be in a computer-related field later.
"Jack Messman, chief executive of networking software vendor Novell says that 2006 will see widespread adoption of Linux on the corporate desktop."
Just like 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001...
The real problem is (still) lack of applications and games. My home PC can't switch until Dreamweaver and Photoshop run on Linux. My office PC can't switch until Quickbooks and VersaCheck run on Linux. Honestly, I've seen more Windows->Mac and Linux->Mac migrations than anything else these past few years... and little to no evidence that shows that Linux is gaining popularity on desktop PCs, other than these "wishful thinking" articles from Linux company CEOs.
Something else to think about: The upgrade cost to Vista, for most companies, is effectively $0 because it comes with new PCs. Contrast this with yearly application updates for Photoshop, Quickbooks, anti-virus, anti-spyware, et al. which can run thousands of dollars. Microsoft isn't the only cost center on a typical PC; in fact, I'd say they're one of the smallest costs involved with a typical office PC.
"That means that, on average, each of those 70 million look at more than 170 pages per month?!"
Not surprising, considering the typical game review on their sites looks like:
[AD|AD|AD|AD]
[company] has released a very cool new game called [title]. [token screenshot of box cover]
[AD|AD|AD|AD]
[NEXT] Page: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Click Next and be directed to an interstitial ad, then click through 12 more pages just to find out whether the game is actually worth playing or not. I've long since given up on IGN for having much actual content on their pages.
"Also here is a games section story from this morning."
:P
Congratulations to TACO for figuring out how to find a dupe! Now perhaps next time we can go to the second stage of this (admittedly tough) game and actually not post the article twice???
Check out Commands -> Clean Up Word HTML in Dreamweaver. it does a nice job of getting rid of extraneous tags. While you're at it, take a look at Commands -> Apply Source Formatting as well. This can be customized to your specifications in the preferences section, and automatically tabs out, adds newlines, and converts tags to lowercase where appropriate in the HTML document. Dreamweaver is the closest thing I know of to a program that "automatically" cleans up Word HTML.
Good luck!
Actually, it was just the simpli.biz website. No client websites or servers were affected.
"You should probably get on the freenode #drupal channel and make the offer."
;)
I talked directly to Dries last night on freenode, way before this hit Slashdot.
I offered them a free Dual Xeon 2.8GHz server, 1GB RAM, 1x80GB hard drive with 500GB transfer a month, hosted at Simpli (my hosting company). We host several Drupal sites and I'd be happy to have them on board. I asked for a text link back to Simpli. I haven't heard back from them, so I guess they'd rather beg their users for money than take a free dedicated server. I have to say I'm a bit disappointed, but it's their money and their choice.
I am sure there will be a lot of comments on this article like "Yay! I can get a hottie!" now. However, speaking as a woman who has dated several geeks, I thought I would share a woman's perspective.
1) I can't tell you how many geek guys I know who can't even take care of their most basic personal hygiene needs. You need to shower at least once a day and use deodorant to become reasonably attractive to any woman. No woman is turned on by stinky body odor.
2) Self-confidence is attractive. Unfortunately, many geeks think self-confidence is something for guys who brag about every "conquest" they have. It's not. Self-confidence is simply respect and love for who you are. Love yourself first and good relationships will follow. This is difficult, but it's the key ingredient to any successful relationship. If you know who you are and you love who you are, people will love and respect you that much more.
3) Complaining/whining is not attractive. Some geeks have very bitter personalities and spend a lot of time whining about how the world would be a better place if only this or that. (The most common one I hear is whining about a job they're in.) If you complain, do something about it! Start your own business. Program something better on the side and sell it. Take control of the situation and create something better instead of griping.
4) Being a slave isn't attractive. If you make it clear that you'll do anything for a woman, and grovel for her affection, you're going to end up attracting the wrong type of woman. Any successful relationship is a two-way street. While there's nothing wrong with showing your love and affection, groveling only means you'll get taken advantage of and perhaps become bitter about (see #3.)
5) Lead a balanced life. No one is less attractive than someone who sits on a computer all day and never gets out of the house. Plus, it doesn't make for a healthy life of your own (I should know; I work from home and often spend 12-16 hours a day in front of the computer.) Get out there, meet people, and have fun. It will make you feel better about yourself to have a good group of friends around, as well.
I have been in several great relationships with geeky guys. I find the most successful relationships I have are with guys who already have a decent level of self-confidence and several friends who respect and love them. They may be interested in computers, but they are also interested in having fun and getting out of the house on a regular basis. Take this guide to heart and you can have a good relationship with the right woman as well.
Let's see. A test commissioned by Microsoft says IIS is faster than Apache. The link for more information goes to microsoft.com. Is this really "news"? Seems more like a thinly-disguised press release...
As the owner of a web hosting company for several years now (and one that stays away from Windows as much as possible), we've noticed a dramatic spike in attempted attacks on our servers in the past 12 months. If you put an unprotected /tmp directory (i.e. one that allows executable files) in a server that's connected directly to the Internet, you're asking for trouble. We've seen these boxes sending out spam or DOS'ing other servers (mostly targeting IRC servers) in a matter of hours from when we put them online. The hackers find some exploit like an old version of phpBB, insecure PHP code, etc. It's really not that hard; if you have several sites on a server, chances are that one of them has something vulnerable in a web-accessible directory. It's gotten so bad that we've devoted part of our standard CentOS install to locking down the /tmp directory so no files can be executed (and explaining this change to our customers.)
/tmp to get around the noexec mount option. The hack works like this:
/tmp.
/tmp! (Argh.) So we simply educate them and tell them how to lock the servers down themselves, and why putting any scripts in /tmp is a Bad Idea.
Worse yet, the hacks have now turned to running perl or php from the command line on things in
1) Find exploitable site. (Again, with the number of insecurities in commonly-used programs like phpBB, or god forbid, the *Nuke series, this isn't hard.)
2) Upload perl script to
3) Run "perl [script name]" repeatedly to accomplish your goal.
We've again locked down our servers to prevent this, but unfortunately, we can't make this part of our default install because our customers like to run perl and php from
It's not just us, either... go to any forum where webmasters or hosting company owners congregate and you'll see this is one of the most common problems out there. Linux is no longer more secure as a web server... not when you factor in most of the PHP programs out there that people love, at least.
I'm rather surprised that the "living room palmtop" idea hasn't taken off yet. Here's what I'd buy for sure:
:)
Price range: ~$400
Slate-like Tablet PC (pen-driven) interface
1280x1024 or 1400x1050 resolution (1600x1200 would really be ideal)
802.11b/g wireless networking
Has Windows Pocket PC or similar small OS installed, with some games, etc.
Set up so that I can Remote Desktop into my Windows PC upstairs
This would be a godsend. I'd set the thing on my coffee table and use it to just check my email without having to run upstairs to my desktop.
I know Microsoft had this with Mira a while ago, but Mira devices were costly ($900-$1200) and mostly ran at 800x600 or 1024x768. Now that LCDs have dropped so far in price, I really feel this is a good marketing opportunity. Also, put Pocket PC on it and the thing can play games, etc. without having to be connected to the PC upstairs. Marketed properly and with the right price point, I bet we'd see these in most geek living rooms. It could even double as an interactive photo album with a stand and SD card slots, or a DVD player with a USB hookup. I'd welcome a device like this at $400 or less.
Waiting patiently for the manufacturers to catch up to my imagination...
I am a current Thinkpad X31 owner, and I've been considering Tablet PCs for a while. The thing that has consistently held me back is the XGA (1024x768) screen. I have XGA on my current Thinkpad and it's just too small for Photoshop or some of the other programs I use on a daily basis. I've been taking a serious look at the Toshiba Portege M200, which uses 1400x1050 (SXGA+) resolution instead. While I'm excited that IBM, which is by far my favorite laptop brand (Toshiba being a close second), is coming out with a Tablet PC, I'm disappointed in the screen resolution. What really makes this Tablet PC unique? It's just like most of the other ones. I'd still rather have the Toshiba.
Yes, they went after DeCSS because it broke the encryption on DVDs. Audio CDs (normally) do not have any encryption, so it is legal to rip them. Obviously, the record companies are trying to prevent this by putting encryption on audio CDs, but so far those efforts have been unsuccessful. This isn't really similar to the DeCSS case -- there's no law that makes ripping unprotected/unencrypted audio CDs illegal.
AFAIK, all of the lawsuits thus far were from people sharing large volumes of MP3s on P2P networks. Have the record companies have ever even threatened to prosecute people who rip music from CDs and put it on their portable MP3 players? I highly doubt that this really the big concession that the ZDNet blog says it is.
We have over 100 Linux servers, but we chose CentOS as our default OS. We could have chosen Debian instead. In fact, the control panel we use for our customers (DirectAdmin) runs on Debian. But here's the #1 reason I didn't choose Debian:
[hypothetical scenario]
Customer: "What operating system version do you use?"
Us: "Debian unstable."
Customer: "...unstable??"
The close-behind #2 reason is the installer, but I understand that's getting fixed. IMHO, Debian should strive to release a new stable version every 6 months, with 12 months being the maximum time between new stable releases. As it is, I cannot justify using Debian for business purposes when their offering that coincides with what we need is labeled "unstable".
"So what do you say to all the people concerned about privacy as a close personal friend of this guy?"
;)
Well, first, IMSmarter allows you to turn logging off by sending the proxy a message. That's the first thing.
The second thing I would mention is that, since IMSmarter isn't selling your information to advertisers (and, as far as I know, has no plans to introduce this as a revenue stream), it's far less dangerous than even your standard webmail client. (What, you think Yahoo or AOL administrators can't read your webmail or IM chats?)
David will have to introduce more fine-grained logging controls in the future (i.e. never log conversations with xyz; always log conversations with abc; delete the last hour of logs with asdf.) This is all coming. You are seeing a project that is in its very early beta stage right now, and I think this Slashdotting should jump-start some of the things that IMSmarter needs to do. You and I both know, however, that people care more about features than privacy. If we all cared about privacy first and foremost, none of us would have a Gmail account.