The Constitution governs the federal government's powers not necessarily private individuals. Otherwise privacy violations would be covered under a civil rights status and a denial of consitutional rights, until I see telemarkets going to federal prison for denying my right to privacy, the laws are rather thin don't you think?
"... earth's desire for peace and the right to privacy."
Last time I checked, and I could be wrong, but so far I have yet to find any contract or constitution of a nation that secures Privacy as a right. Here in the USA there is no Federal right to privacy, several states have privacy mesaures but those laws are about securing information gathered more then preventing it from being gathered.
Well it's good to see yet another spot for a crappy movie. I am glad to see that while there is so much going on in the world in technology and geekdom in general we need to beat a 4 times already dead horse. Wow this is almost as bad as the last Batman commercial... speaking of which....
I AM GETTING REAL FUCKING SICK OF THE FUCKING COMMERICALS ON SLASHDOT THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DISGUISED AS ARTICLES!! FIX THIS SHIT TACO YOUR SMARTER THEN THIS CRAP!
Scientists found that the 2000 year old date tree had an enzyme that causes HIV to mutate and become airborne with a 72 hour, open-air survival. Humanity soon to be wiped out because of digging up ancient plants and reviving old things that probably should be left buried in history. THE END IS NEAR!!!... put the card board sign away sir and back away from the message thread...
Linux usage is certainly up, the ROLE of the server needs to be discussed. I have 24 linux machines at one client's location, too bad most of them are just proxy servers running squid with an LAMP for configuring them. While all the chatter about Linux making progress into corporate IT the role of the machine needs to be involved in the discussion?
How many corporations have Linux-run PDCs? Email? File Respositories? Backup? All this talk about sales figures means little when you take out the role of the server out of the discussion. Without a breakdown along the Lines of X Windows 2003 Email Servers vs. Y Linux Email Servers the discussion really has little value besides a vague sales figure. The discussion of Linux, BSD, Windows, BEOS, Tiger, whatever is is lacking any real worth. Going on 11 years here soon and corporations are not cut and dry. What does this follow fact tell you (taken from one of my clients):
# of Linux Machines 3 # Of Windows 2003 Servers 24 # Of Windows 2000 Professional Machines 8
What do they use more? Windows? Not really. The 24 2003 Servers are used to simulate web traffic and other customized in-house traffic. Not one of those Windows servers is mission critical. The 8 2000 machines are the staff's workstations. The core critical machine that run's their entire manufacturing system is a linux machine. 1 Linux email server, and 1 linux firewall. Now looking at that figure you couldn't determine how important any of those servers are, we need more data in these discussions, it's incomplete.
Purchasing numbers mean little. Even across a broad scope there is no direct correlation between number of copies of X and their level of importance in a company, if you think that probaility shows that given there are 2 milion copies of A and only 1 million copies B that A is used more in mission critical services I would recomend you avoid gambling. The Christian Bible is in over 50% of homes yet less then 10% of people can repeat the opening of Genesis. ("In the Beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" I believe.)
I'll summarize with a classic Ken-ism: OWNERSHIP OF SOMETHING DOES NOT GARUNTEE THE UTILIZATION OF SOMETHING.
Take a typical computer, slap some SNMP on it and grab CACTI and monitor the staff in a building. I bet you the average work-hour utilization of the processors will never exceed 50%. 10 years is hasn't. Just because you have a 3.4 GHz processor doesn't mean you'll use all that CPU power.
For you drivers out there your speedometer can post 125 MPH... doesn't mean your gonna ever go that fast right?
I would expect that as the Game industry moves toward being more like teh movie industry that a new DIRECTOR will pick up the franchise and remake all the games with a different slant on the story. Perhaps darker or more developed in story. Perhaps a new fresh take on the series will be a refreshing trend in gaming. Mods are popular as you can take an existing game engine and modify it, why not take the game as a whole and remake it? I'll be more then happy to take wither Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy and remake em, it's would be fun as a fan to take his childhood games and apply his adult life to it and re-introduce it to the fans geared towards their current age.
Perhaps "Final Fantasy: 2nd Generation" is due. It's been done for He-man, Transformers, and countless franchises to re-introduce the series to a new generation of fans, why not re-introduce it in a updated format to the orginal generation.
Current Remakes of movies off the top of my head (not measuring quality here)
The Avengers Incredible Hulk Zorro (Too many to count) Robin Hood Oceans 11 Batman The Manchurian Canidate
Just off the top of my head.
Why not pass the torch to a new "Director" and take the franchise and re-do it with a new vision and style.
Modern book burning has evolved into a more sophistcated system of thought policing. The schools have been reduced to prisons with faculty attempting to influcence students with their political idelogy. Rather then empowering students and faculty to make a fair fight of ideas in schools the administrations just tend to censor what ever they feel is contrary to their own personal beliefs.
The world is going to hell on an express train and it's lawyers driving the train.
THE LAW SERVES THE PEOPLE! THE PEOPLE DO NO SERVE THE LAW!
Wow, for a university these people are pretty damn fucking stupid. Why would you go to college for CS when you can't get a job in the US in CS? What a PHD not enough to figure this shit out?
I taught at a technical college and was close to my students (I only taught 1 year) and many of them I still correspond with. 2 of them have jobs after graduating. The other 60+ are in non-CS related fields. I'm lucky that I have a niche but out of my friends I've met contracting, I'm the only one working.
Good to see out major universities still can't put 1 and 1 together...
Quit bitching and do something about it. Send $1 every time you post on slashdot to the EFF and other organizations are start patenting EVERYTHING you can think of from breathing to wetting yourself. Innindate (sp) the patent office with millions, perhaps billions of patents a year. Fight fire with fire people, it's not hard. It's so easy, go to your own profile here on/. and each month count up the number of posts you've done. Send it in to the EFF. In the US it's a charitable donation! DO IT! DO IT! I owe the EFF $13 as of this post.
Better yet, Slashdot should hook up with several charities and give "donating posters" a little avatar or something to compliment the subscribers system. So via a paypal system or some system you can pledge a given amount per post to your charity of choice. Get a nice end of year statement. It would be great!
What is it with 80% of Slashdot readers? A person asks a question, "What other colors can I paint my bathroom besides white." 80% of the responses run along the lines, "There's nothing wrong with the color white, you just need to coordinate better with the color white." Do recent Slashdot readers and posters not understand how to answer a question?
For Gods sake the guy asks for alternatives to Cron, not a fucking explanation on how Cron can be used to fulfill the criteria. It never ceases to amaze me on the behavior of Slashdot posters.
"I am looking for an open source job scheduler that is better than cron." You'll note it doesn't read, "How do I use Cron to do X." First we had to blast people with RTFA, RTFP, RTFM, RTSYW (Read the shit you write) and any other obscure reference we can invent. This is clearly a case of RTFP.
Honestly who here would be happy walking into a restaurant and ordering a steak only to get a piece of chicken and an 8 minute lecture by the waitress explaining that you just need to season the chicken properly rather then eating steak. When I order a steak I don't want a dissertation by the obviously vegan-hippie waitress on the horrors of animal slaughtering and the need to release cattle into the wild because they're the "Whales of the Great Plains." I want the bitch to ask me if I want it burnt, tough like leather, or crawling away to escape!
How about going to an auto dealership and asking to look at trucks only to be lead to a compact 2 door Yugo with a trailer attached with bungie cords and masking tape! Fuck just answer the poor guy's question.
--- / END RANT ---
Here at my current client's location we built a home-brewed scheduler using PERL and POSTGRES. Jobs can be scheduled with a full range of options including every X minutes, hours, and so on along with LAST DAY OF MONTH. The development time was only about 3 weeks if you can devote that kind of time otherwise several people (Who apparently do know how to answer a question) have posted some great links on some alternatives.
The simplest truth is that every year we disprove a limitation that stood in the past. Next year I suspect the same.
All our science is realtive to our observations up to this point. I would assume that until we find the grand unifcation equation, or the Hitchihikers Guide to the Galaxy, that it's more likely that the fact that we can imagine it, implies (or is it infers in this context)that there is some possibility of it just based on the fact that we can conceptualize it.
Remeber that within some of the readers lifetimes space travel was sciene fiction and impossible. There was such impossibilities as Nukes came to be. Who would, 80 years ago fathomed that 2 softball sized chunks of material could in fact blow a city away? And long before those, the world was flat, the sky a dome, and the stars in the sky jewels set in the dome of heaven by Gods who had nothing better to do then turn into swans and have sex with hotties.
"With one language (math) that which man could imagine was..."
I have found a way to crack any code in a matter of minutes. It's simple!!! It works plenty of times!!
Find out where the subject lives that encrypted the data. (1-3 days)
Break into their home. (10 minutes)
Look under their keyboard (1 minute)
Read their private and public key off the notecard taped under the keyboard. (2 minutes.) Optionally: Steal the notecard and leave a fake one with the wrong key written down. Laugh maniacally... Done!!!
To date when doing security sweeps at my various clients sites, 80% of staff have their password somewhere in their cube. 50% had their PGP keys under the keyboard, 10% had pen drives marked "Passwords" handing off a thumb tack on their cube wall. Who cares about better encyption, physical security (or perhaps mental security is a better choice) is where we need to focus.
And remember network admins! Have you users spade or neutered:)
I've been automating things for over 10 years. I've used QA testing packages, Winbatch, repackaging tools, ghost, all of it. My portfoli now stands at over a billion labor hours saved over 10 years. I've also been responsible for the layoff of over a thousand obsolete staff over 10 years.
The most crucial thing to automate is tasks that tie up staff, something as simple as adding an automatic email at the end of a process can free up a tech from having to sit and watch "The Paint Dry".
You can automate for speed but that is minor in the business world. A 5% saving in speed is easily eclipsed by increasing the install time by 10% but not having a tech needed (A 110% increase in 0% [the required tech time] is still 0%)
Case Scenario from 2002: Small helpdesk of 6 members (at 40 hours a week so a total 240 labor hours a week).
Target Activity: Image building. Requiring 80 labor hours for imaging and testing. (33% of available labor time)
Subordinate Tasks: Staff also answer help desk calls.
Current Work Load: 4 images over a month. Average 1 image a week.
Reductions: Implemented several steps including using winbatch, msi, qa scripting, and prism to reduce imaging time to 30 minutes + 30 minutes of QA script validation.. Savings: 79 hours.
Development Time: 1 month @ 40 hours a week.
ROI: (Pay undisclosed) 5 months. And to this day they're still using the system. Recent tweaks allow for easier bulk re-imaging in the middle of the night and thanks to linux managing the boot process Windows XP machines can be queried to re-image themselves via a web page.
Some solutions doesn't really speed anything up but just removes the need for a tech to be involved. That allows for those techs to be doing other activites. Over a year this type of labor savings doesn't usually result in a reduction in staff but does prevent staff growth. Other common tasks that can be report generation, patch and virus distrubtion, audit log collection, and file distribution. Currently the project I am working on is a weekly system-wide workstation re-imaging process to automatically re-image machines after 7 days for security and system maintenance. Expected labor savings are huge and will eliminate staff needing to come in on weekends.
The most common starting point is asking the staff, "Do you ever get bored doing something?" That's where I start when looking for things to automate. Boring tasks usually take little in the way of brain power and are easy targets for automation. Not all redundant tasks can be automated but many can be. I found one location that had a staffer who's whole existence was to copy and past a value from an AS/400 screen to an excel spreadsheet. 15 minutes later and he was out of a job. The amount of waste in some companies is staggering. Good luck on the automation work, loads of fun.
Excellent Toosl for Automation Winbatch (Pay close attention to the roboscript tool to speed things along) Winrunner or QA Wizard Perl (VERY POWERFUL TOOL, A MUST KNOW) Wise Package Studio Prism and Prism Deploy Know your MSI inside and out (Software installs are a massive waste of tech time.) PHP (for writing easy web pages to run everything. No process should be too complicated for a 10 year old child. You are after all automating things to make it easier, not harder.)
Have Fun! Expect angry staffers though. Automation Enginneers (mechanical, procedural, or software) aren't the most well liked people. So far I've been lucky with only 14 death threats. I can't imagine how the mechanical engineers cope with it.
As I near the big 30 I look back at Star Wars with embarrasment. Somewhere along the line I learned about life and that silly things like "What was the 4th stormtroopers middle inital" were in fact trivial. I also look back at Motley Crue, Poison, and most of the 80s with a sense of distrurbed horror.
I realize that movies I liked as a child suck. I had emotion attached to the older shows but if a new one came out in a similar fashion, without the emotional attachment, I would say that the new one sucks. I loved Looney Toons, I loved Spiderman and Friends, but I sure as hell don't like the new stuff. But when I see an old one that I liked as a kid the nostalgic attachment alters how I see it. I can watch an old re-run and not gasp at how horrible the animtion is because the old emotion and perception of the show softens the blow. Come on, watch a few episodes of Thundercats and you'll know what I mean....
But also dealing with children I realize that they "get" that emotional attachment to the prequals because they're new to them. The fact is that all these Star Wars dorks (75.43% of/. readers it seems) dislike of the new movies is simply the lack of that nostalgic attachment because of an unatainable yearning to live in that nostaligic "moment" before the mortgage, car insurance, diaper changing, my boss is an evil demon, life set in. My 9 year old nephew loves episode 1, and 2, and is frantically waiting for 3 (He hasn't seen the original 3 yet.) In fact he loves it just like I loved watching the first 3. That is the reality. You've grown up, you tastes have changed, and there will never be another "Star Wars" like the one you remember because you will never be that child (teen) seeing that for the first time. Nostalgia is a lie, there never was the good-old-days, they're lies that you memory tells you. The lie tells you that seen a movie based on something you've seen before will give you that emotion and feel again. It won't, it's a lie.
Think I'm wrong? Put in that Whinnie the Pooh tape you used to watch as a kid 50 times a day and see if you can watch it twice in a row... didn't think so...
Quote: So much for distribution of television shows online. Almost all of them will eventually release a DVD of the series (commercial distribution) therefore anyone posting last nights tv show as a torrent will be a criminal.
A: They were already, that would be considered a re-broadcast of the transmission which is already covered. The whole law just clarifies existing laws. People with Tivo can still Tivo, and people can still record TV to their computers. They just can distribute it. Nothings changed, just clarified.
Isn't it about time that Slashdot gets a 'Canada' Topic Icon? We have a USA one.
I mean, how many YRO stories involve Canada doing something we wish was happening here? Don't we get more 'Canada' stories than, say, 'Transmeta' stories or 'Geeks in Space' stories?
You hockey mongers!!!;) !!! How dare you belittle all the other countries with such a selfish demand!!! What about:
Afghanistan
Akrotiri
Albania
Algeria
American Samoa
Andorra
Angola
Anguilla
Antarctica
Antigua and Barbuda
Arctic Ocean
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba
Ashmore and Cartier Islands
Atlantic Ocean
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas, The
Bahrain
Baker Island
Bangladesh
Barbados
Bassas da India
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Bouvet Island
Brazil
British Indian Ocean Territory
British Virgin Islands
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burma
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Christmas Island
Clipperton Island
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Colombia
Comoros
Congo, Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Republic of the
Cook Islands
Coral Sea Islands
Costa Rica
Cote d'Ivoire
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dhekelia
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Europa Island
Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)
Faroe Islands
Fiji
Finland
France
French Guiana
French Polynesia
French Southern and Antarctic Lands
Gabon
Gambia, The
Gaza Strip
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Gibraltar
Glorioso Islands
Greece
Greenland
Grenada
Guadeloupe
Guam
Guatemala
Guernsey
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Heard Island and McDonald Islands
Holy See (Vatican City)
Honduras
Hong Kong
Howland Island
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indian Ocean
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Jan Mayen
Japan
Jarvis Island
Jersey
Johnston Atoll
Jordan
Juan de Nova Island
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kingman Reef
Kiribati
Korea, North
Korea, South
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macau
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Man, Isle of
Marshall Islands
Martinique
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mayotte
Mexico
Micronesia, Federated States of
Midway Islands
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montserrat
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Nauru
Navassa Island
Nepal
Netherlands
Netherlands Antilles
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Niue
Norfolk Island
Northern Mariana Islands
Norway
Oman
Pacific Ocean
Pakistan
Palau
Palmyra Atoll
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paracel Islands
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Pitcairn Islands
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Reunion
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Saint Helena
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia and Montenegro
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
Southern Ocean
Spain
Spratly Islands
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Svalbard
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan entry follows Zimbabwe
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tokelau
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tromelin Island
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Turks and Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Virgin Islands
Wake Island
Wallis and Futuna
West Bank
Western Sahara
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe
Taiwan
European Union
How can you be sooooo selfish in demanding you own flag and ignoring all those other countries!!! EQUALITY FOR ALL!!!! ALL FLAGS OR NO FLAGS!!!
Let The Beating of the Dead Horse Begin! Soon tactical games like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear will join the ranks of other great dead horses like:
Casualties: Mortal Kombat Street Fighter Tekken Romance of the Three Kingdoms Final Fantasy Sonic Mario Zelda Kirby G.I. Joe Heman Jason Freddie Pinhead Transformers "The First Person Shooter Game" "The Real Time Strategy Game"
Can some soul out there actually make game that is fun to play rather then fun to watch?
They don't get access to the zone as far as I heard (but I stopped playing my 50 Valewalker when Trials of Atlantis came out and haven't followed Mythic much after that), only the updated graphics engine. They use NDL's (Numeric Designs) rendering engine (same one used for Elder Scroll Morrowind.) Their "expansions" tend to fall along NDL's updates to their engine. Hmmm....
Unless they can get the original voice actors from the game, I'll pass. I didn't like the cartoon due to the voice changes, I doubts I'll be coming back to the franchise (how can it be a franchise really with only 1 game.... ok ok they made a cartoon but seriously...) wiht new voice actors.
And yes I am going to fry you like a pork sausage!
Slashdot Mirror
The Constitution governs the federal government's powers not necessarily private individuals. Otherwise privacy violations would be covered under a civil rights status and a denial of consitutional rights, until I see telemarkets going to federal prison for denying my right to privacy, the laws are rather thin don't you think?
"... earth's desire for peace and the right to privacy."
Last time I checked, and I could be wrong, but so far I have yet to find any contract or constitution of a nation that secures Privacy as a right. Here in the USA there is no Federal right to privacy, several states have privacy mesaures but those laws are about securing information gathered more then preventing it from being gathered.
Well it's good to see yet another spot for a crappy movie. I am glad to see that while there is so much going on in the world in technology and geekdom in general we need to beat a 4 times already dead horse. Wow this is almost as bad as the last Batman commercial... speaking of which....
I AM GETTING REAL FUCKING SICK OF THE FUCKING COMMERICALS ON SLASHDOT THAT ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DISGUISED AS ARTICLES!! FIX THIS SHIT TACO YOUR SMARTER THEN THIS CRAP!
Scientists found that the 2000 year old date tree had an enzyme that causes HIV to mutate and become airborne with a 72 hour, open-air survival. Humanity soon to be wiped out because of digging up ancient plants and reviving old things that probably should be left buried in history. THE END IS NEAR!!! ... put the card board sign away sir and back away from the message thread ...
Linux usage is certainly up, the ROLE of the server needs to be discussed. I have 24 linux machines at one client's location, too bad most of them are just proxy servers running squid with an LAMP for configuring them. While all the chatter about Linux making progress into corporate IT the role of the machine needs to be involved in the discussion?
How many corporations have Linux-run PDCs? Email? File Respositories? Backup? All this talk about sales figures means little when you take out the role of the server out of the discussion. Without a breakdown along the Lines of X Windows 2003 Email Servers vs. Y Linux Email Servers the discussion really has little value besides a vague sales figure. The discussion of Linux, BSD, Windows, BEOS, Tiger, whatever is is lacking any real worth. Going on 11 years here soon and corporations are not cut and dry. What does this follow fact tell you (taken from one of my clients):
# of Linux Machines 3
# Of Windows 2003 Servers 24
# Of Windows 2000 Professional Machines 8
What do they use more? Windows? Not really. The 24 2003 Servers are used to simulate web traffic and other customized in-house traffic. Not one of those Windows servers is mission critical. The 8 2000 machines are the staff's workstations. The core critical machine that run's their entire manufacturing system is a linux machine. 1 Linux email server, and 1 linux firewall. Now looking at that figure you couldn't determine how important any of those servers are, we need more data in these discussions, it's incomplete.
Purchasing numbers mean little. Even across a broad scope there is no direct correlation between number of copies of X and their level of importance in a company, if you think that probaility shows that given there are 2 milion copies of A and only 1 million copies B that A is used more in mission critical services I would recomend you avoid gambling. The Christian Bible is in over 50% of homes yet less then 10% of people can repeat the opening of Genesis. ("In the Beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" I believe.)
I'll summarize with a classic Ken-ism:
OWNERSHIP OF SOMETHING DOES NOT GARUNTEE THE UTILIZATION OF SOMETHING.
Take a typical computer, slap some SNMP on it and grab CACTI and monitor the staff in a building. I bet you the average work-hour utilization of the processors will never exceed 50%. 10 years is hasn't. Just because you have a 3.4 GHz processor doesn't mean you'll use all that CPU power.
For you drivers out there your speedometer can post 125 MPH... doesn't mean your gonna ever go that fast right?
--END RANT + LUV--
I would expect that as the Game industry moves toward being more like teh movie industry that a new DIRECTOR will pick up the franchise and remake all the games with a different slant on the story. Perhaps darker or more developed in story. Perhaps a new fresh take on the series will be a refreshing trend in gaming. Mods are popular as you can take an existing game engine and modify it, why not take the game as a whole and remake it? I'll be more then happy to take wither Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy and remake em, it's would be fun as a fan to take his childhood games and apply his adult life to it and re-introduce it to the fans geared towards their current age.
Perhaps "Final Fantasy: 2nd Generation" is due. It's been done for He-man, Transformers, and countless franchises to re-introduce the series to a new generation of fans, why not re-introduce it in a updated format to the orginal generation.
Current Remakes of movies off the top of my head (not measuring quality here)
The Avengers
Incredible Hulk
Zorro (Too many to count)
Robin Hood
Oceans 11
Batman
The Manchurian Canidate
Just off the top of my head.
Why not pass the torch to a new "Director" and take the franchise and re-do it with a new vision and style.
Modern book burning has evolved into a more sophistcated system of thought policing. The schools have been reduced to prisons with faculty attempting to influcence students with their political idelogy. Rather then empowering students and faculty to make a fair fight of ideas in schools the administrations just tend to censor what ever they feel is contrary to their own personal beliefs.
The world is going to hell on an express train and it's lawyers driving the train.
THE LAW SERVES THE PEOPLE! THE PEOPLE DO NO SERVE THE LAW!
Where freedom dies?
Wow, for a university these people are pretty damn fucking stupid. Why would you go to college for CS when you can't get a job in the US in CS? What a PHD not enough to figure this shit out?
I taught at a technical college and was close to my students (I only taught 1 year) and many of them I still correspond with. 2 of them have jobs after graduating. The other 60+ are in non-CS related fields. I'm lucky that I have a niche but out of my friends I've met contracting, I'm the only one working.
Good to see out major universities still can't put 1 and 1 together...
Quit bitching and do something about it. Send $1 every time you post on slashdot to the EFF and other organizations are start patenting EVERYTHING you can think of from breathing to wetting yourself. Innindate (sp) the patent office with millions, perhaps billions of patents a year. Fight fire with fire people, it's not hard. It's so easy, go to your own profile here on /. and each month count up the number of posts you've done. Send it in to the EFF. In the US it's a charitable donation! DO IT! DO IT! I owe the EFF $13 as of this post.
Better yet, Slashdot should hook up with several charities and give "donating posters" a little avatar or something to compliment the subscribers system. So via a paypal system or some system you can pledge a given amount per post to your charity of choice. Get a nice end of year statement. It would be great!
http://www.eff.org/support/
WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!
What is it with 80% of Slashdot readers? A person asks a question, "What other colors can I paint my bathroom besides white." 80% of the responses run along the lines, "There's nothing wrong with the color white, you just need to coordinate better with the color white." Do recent Slashdot readers and posters not understand how to answer a question?
For Gods sake the guy asks for alternatives to Cron, not a fucking explanation on how Cron can be used to fulfill the criteria. It never ceases to amaze me on the behavior of Slashdot posters.
"I am looking for an open source job scheduler that is better than cron." You'll note it doesn't read, "How do I use Cron to do X." First we had to blast people with RTFA, RTFP, RTFM, RTSYW (Read the shit you write) and any other obscure reference we can invent. This is clearly a case of RTFP.
Honestly who here would be happy walking into a restaurant and ordering a steak only to get a piece of chicken and an 8 minute lecture by the waitress explaining that you just need to season the chicken properly rather then eating steak. When I order a steak I don't want a dissertation by the obviously vegan-hippie waitress on the horrors of animal slaughtering and the need to release cattle into the wild because they're the "Whales of the Great Plains." I want the bitch to ask me if I want it burnt, tough like leather, or crawling away to escape!
How about going to an auto dealership and asking to look at trucks only to be lead to a compact 2 door Yugo with a trailer attached with bungie cords and masking tape! Fuck just answer the poor guy's question.
--- / END RANT ---
Here at my current client's location we built a home-brewed scheduler using PERL and POSTGRES. Jobs can be scheduled with a full range of options including every X minutes, hours, and so on along with LAST DAY OF MONTH. The development time was only about 3 weeks if you can devote that kind of time otherwise several people (Who apparently do know how to answer a question) have posted some great links on some alternatives.
The simplest truth is that every year we disprove a limitation that stood in the past. Next year I suspect the same.
All our science is realtive to our observations up to this point. I would assume that until we find the grand unifcation equation, or the Hitchihikers Guide to the Galaxy, that it's more likely that the fact that we can imagine it, implies (or is it infers in this context)that there is some possibility of it just based on the fact that we can conceptualize it.
Remeber that within some of the readers lifetimes space travel was sciene fiction and impossible. There was such impossibilities as Nukes came to be. Who would, 80 years ago fathomed that 2 softball sized chunks of material could in fact blow a city away? And long before those, the world was flat, the sky a dome, and the stars in the sky jewels set in the dome of heaven by Gods who had nothing better to do then turn into swans and have sex with hotties.
"With one language (math) that which man could imagine was..."
A: Who Cares? /. article? OH for Gos's sake...
B: Who Cares?
C: Who Cares?
D: Who Cares?
E: A comic issuing constitutes as
Expires when the last author (if a group project) dies.
That's all.
No extensions for the company.
No extensions for the family.
5 guys develop it, last guy of the 5 dies. Public domain. Period.
I bet you company health care programs will improve.
I have found a way to crack any code in a matter of minutes. It's simple!!! It works plenty of times!!
:)
Find out where the subject lives that encrypted the data. (1-3 days)
Break into their home. (10 minutes)
Look under their keyboard (1 minute)
Read their private and public key off the notecard taped under the keyboard. (2 minutes.)
Optionally: Steal the notecard and leave a fake one with the wrong key written down.
Laugh maniacally... Done!!!
To date when doing security sweeps at my various clients sites, 80% of staff have their password somewhere in their cube. 50% had their PGP keys under the keyboard, 10% had pen drives marked "Passwords" handing off a thumb tack on their cube wall. Who cares about better encyption, physical security (or perhaps mental security is a better choice) is where we need to focus.
And remember network admins! Have you users spade or neutered
I've been automating things for over 10 years. I've used QA testing packages, Winbatch, repackaging tools, ghost, all of it. My portfoli now stands at over a billion labor hours saved over 10 years. I've also been responsible for the layoff of over a thousand obsolete staff over 10 years.
The most crucial thing to automate is tasks that tie up staff, something as simple as adding an automatic email at the end of a process can free up a tech from having to sit and watch "The Paint Dry".
You can automate for speed but that is minor in the business world. A 5% saving in speed is easily eclipsed by increasing the install time by 10% but not having a tech needed (A 110% increase in 0% [the required tech time] is still 0%)
Case Scenario from 2002:
Small helpdesk of 6 members (at 40 hours a week so a total 240 labor hours a week).
Target Activity: Image building. Requiring 80 labor hours for imaging and testing. (33% of available labor time)
Subordinate Tasks: Staff also answer help desk calls.
Current Work Load: 4 images over a month. Average 1 image a week.
Reductions: Implemented several steps including using winbatch, msi, qa scripting, and prism to reduce imaging time to 30 minutes + 30 minutes of QA script validation.. Savings: 79 hours.
Development Time: 1 month @ 40 hours a week.
ROI: (Pay undisclosed) 5 months. And to this day they're still using the system. Recent tweaks allow for easier bulk re-imaging in the middle of the night and thanks to linux managing the boot process Windows XP machines can be queried to re-image themselves via a web page.
Some solutions doesn't really speed anything up but just removes the need for a tech to be involved. That allows for those techs to be doing other activites. Over a year this type of labor savings doesn't usually result in a reduction in staff but does prevent staff growth. Other common tasks that can be report generation, patch and virus distrubtion, audit log collection, and file distribution. Currently the project I am working on is a weekly system-wide workstation re-imaging process to automatically re-image machines after 7 days for security and system maintenance. Expected labor savings are huge and will eliminate staff needing to come in on weekends.
The most common starting point is asking the staff, "Do you ever get bored doing something?" That's where I start when looking for things to automate. Boring tasks usually take little in the way of brain power and are easy targets for automation. Not all redundant tasks can be automated but many can be. I found one location that had a staffer who's whole existence was to copy and past a value from an AS/400 screen to an excel spreadsheet. 15 minutes later and he was out of a job. The amount of waste in some companies is staggering. Good luck on the automation work, loads of fun.
Excellent Toosl for Automation
Winbatch (Pay close attention to the roboscript tool to speed things along)
Winrunner or QA Wizard
Perl (VERY POWERFUL TOOL, A MUST KNOW)
Wise Package Studio
Prism and Prism Deploy
Know your MSI inside and out (Software installs are a massive waste of tech time.)
PHP (for writing easy web pages to run everything. No process should be too complicated for a 10 year old child. You are after all automating things to make it easier, not harder.)
Have Fun! Expect angry staffers though. Automation Enginneers (mechanical, procedural, or software) aren't the most well liked people. So far I've been lucky with only 14 death threats. I can't imagine how the mechanical engineers cope with it.
Dear /.
/. readers it seems) dislike of the new movies is simply the lack of that nostalgic attachment because of an unatainable yearning to live in that nostaligic "moment" before the mortgage, car insurance, diaper changing, my boss is an evil demon, life set in. My 9 year old nephew loves episode 1, and 2, and is frantically waiting for 3 (He hasn't seen the original 3 yet.) In fact he loves it just like I loved watching the first 3. That is the reality. You've grown up, you tastes have changed, and there will never be another "Star Wars" like the one you remember because you will never be that child (teen) seeing that for the first time. Nostalgia is a lie, there never was the good-old-days, they're lies that you memory tells you. The lie tells you that seen a movie based on something you've seen before will give you that emotion and feel again. It won't, it's a lie.
As I near the big 30 I look back at Star Wars with embarrasment. Somewhere along the line I learned about life and that silly things like "What was the 4th stormtroopers middle inital" were in fact trivial. I also look back at Motley Crue, Poison, and most of the 80s with a sense of distrurbed horror.
I realize that movies I liked as a child suck. I had emotion attached to the older shows but if a new one came out in a similar fashion, without the emotional attachment, I would say that the new one sucks. I loved Looney Toons, I loved Spiderman and Friends, but I sure as hell don't like the new stuff. But when I see an old one that I liked as a kid the nostalgic attachment alters how I see it. I can watch an old re-run and not gasp at how horrible the animtion is because the old emotion and perception of the show softens the blow. Come on, watch a few episodes of Thundercats and you'll know what I mean....
But also dealing with children I realize that they "get" that emotional attachment to the prequals because they're new to them. The fact is that all these Star Wars dorks (75.43% of
Think I'm wrong? Put in that Whinnie the Pooh tape you used to watch as a kid 50 times a day and see if you can watch it twice in a row... didn't think so...
Quote: So much for distribution of television shows online. Almost all of them will eventually release a DVD of the series (commercial distribution) therefore anyone posting last nights tv show as a torrent will be a criminal.
A: They were already, that would be considered a re-broadcast of the transmission which is already covered. The whole law just clarifies existing laws. People with Tivo can still Tivo, and people can still record TV to their computers. They just can distribute it. Nothings changed, just clarified.
AMEN!
You hockey mongers!!! ;) !!! How dare you belittle all the other countries with such a selfish demand!!! What about:
Afghanistan Akrotiri Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Arctic Ocean Argentina Armenia Aruba Ashmore and Cartier Islands Atlantic Ocean Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas, The Bahrain Baker Island Bangladesh Barbados Bassas da India Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Clipperton Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Cook Islands Coral Sea Islands Costa Rica Cote d'Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dhekelia Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Europa Island Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern and Antarctic Lands Gabon Gambia, The Gaza Strip Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Glorioso Islands Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City) Honduras Hong Kong Howland Island Hungary Iceland India Indian Ocean Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Jan Mayen Japan Jarvis Island Jersey Johnston Atoll Jordan Juan de Nova Island Kazakhstan Kenya Kingman Reef Kiribati Korea, North Korea, South Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macau Macedonia Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Man, Isle of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia, Federated States of Midway Islands Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Namibia Nauru Navassa Island Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pacific Ocean Pakistan Palau Palmyra Atoll Panama Papua New Guinea Paracel Islands Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Islands Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Reunion Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Southern Ocean Spain Spratly Islands Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan entry follows Zimbabwe Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tromelin Island Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Virgin Islands Wake Island Wallis and Futuna West Bank Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Taiwan European Union
How can you be sooooo selfish in demanding you own flag and ignoring all those other countries!!! EQUALITY FOR ALL!!!! ALL FLAGS OR NO FLAGS!!!Two Words:
Tacheyon Beam
I've said it beforem I'll be modded again but hell, it's fun!
LET THE BEATING OF THE DEAD HORSE BEGIN!!!!
Let The Beating of the Dead Horse Begin! Soon tactical games like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear will join the ranks of other great dead horses like:
Casualties:
Mortal Kombat
Street Fighter
Tekken
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Final Fantasy
Sonic
Mario
Zelda
Kirby
G.I. Joe
Heman
Jason
Freddie
Pinhead
Transformers
"The First Person Shooter Game"
"The Real Time Strategy Game"
Can some soul out there actually make game that is fun to play rather then fun to watch?
They don't get access to the zone as far as I heard (but I stopped playing my 50 Valewalker when Trials of Atlantis came out and haven't followed Mythic much after that), only the updated graphics engine. They use NDL's (Numeric Designs) rendering engine (same one used for Elder Scroll Morrowind.) Their "expansions" tend to fall along NDL's updates to their engine. Hmmm....
Unless they can get the original voice actors from the game, I'll pass. I didn't like the cartoon due to the voice changes, I doubts I'll be coming back to the franchise (how can it be a franchise really with only 1 game.... ok ok they made a cartoon but seriously...) wiht new voice actors.
And yes I am going to fry you like a pork sausage!