There are frequently posts about happenings in NASA posted on Slashdot - ie - Mars, asteroid sitings, etc. If this story isn't "stuff that matters", I don't know what is.
You're probably right, although I doubt it will be 20 years. But, if it upsets you that it won't be useful to today's cancer patients, maybe they should just stop their work and give up? After all, nothing good can come from research.
Honestly, what is the deal with the extreme negativity and cynicism from the Slashdot crowd?
I worked in a city government with the exact same arrangement. We used ethernet - yup -ethernet at 100Mbps over the single mode fiber with a copper to single mode converter at each end.
With some of the long haul gigabit stuff, it seems like this shouldn't be that hard as long as the distance limitations are reasonable and the fiber is point to point.
I grew up on reruns of the original series. Love it! However, my favorite series is DS9 with TNG right behind it. Good acting, awesome story lines, excellent character development, a lot of action and overarching themes on religion, politics, etc.
The lava creature was a horta - a silicone based life form...
Truly not 100% a geek - married to a non-geek but just remember these little tid bits.
I went through something similar. I took the plunge and bought a Lindows 3.0 CD to play around with. Much to my surprise, I now have a Lindows PC at home running MS Office 2000 and able to get files from my Windows XP Pro machine and able to print to the shared printer on my XP box. And I had all of this up in less than 45 minutes. The hardest part was the file sharing thing. The printer set up uses an excellent wizard and the Office 2K install went without a hitch.
I've used a little bit of everything (Windows, NetWare, Linux, Unix) and am more than a little impressed with the ease of use in Lindows.
I'm not a contractor, but am an IT Director for a small association.
Recently, our director mentioned that she expected at least 50-60 hours per week, every week from all professional, salaried staff (we have about 20-25 people in that category. Our "official" workday is 7.5 hours. In essence, we're being told that we have to work a minimum of 10-12 hour days every week of the year and more when we have critical needs.
As you might imagine, people are somewhat displeased by this and, unfortunately, many of the employable ones are beginning to look elsewhere. Life's too short to be dragged into a situation like this bad economy or not.
Re:I just got back from seeing it... possible spoi
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 1
I wish I had mod points today to mod this up. I'v been a long time fan of Star Trek -- which almost didn't happen since my first experience was "Spock's Brain". I've enjoyed TNG and the orginal series, LOVED DS9, and think that Voyager and Enterprise are OK. Overall, I've liked most of the movies with the exception of 5.
While I will likely be flamed for this, I also enjoyed Insurrection. After seeing Nemesis tonight, I have changed my choice of top TNG movie which used to be First Contact -- in my opinion, Nemesis is even better than FC -- there's decent character development, great action, a believeable villain, a decent story and just enough comedy that it didn't go overboard. I really felt like we *knew* the characters.
My wife, a casual watcher of the series, also enjoyed it very much just for the "movie" quality and when not being held against other Star Trek movies.
I read a number of extremely negative reviews before I saw the movie as well as a few positive ones. I didn't see a lot of what the negative reviewers were complaining about. In my opinion, the movie was well worth my $8 and I would gladly fork over another 8 to see it again.
I have to agree with this guy. He has an RIGHT to want only articles that he feels are well within the realms of only *his* views and interests. After all, look at what he pays in his Slashdot subscription fees... oh, wait...
I see a lot of MCSE bashing on Slashdot. Some it is warranted as evidenced by the number of MCSE boot camps, but that is no reason to throw a resume into the "do not call" pile. If you wear those kinds of blinders, you may not see that the person really DOES know what they are doing and that they may have a wealth of other experience besides MS stuff. Personally, I do have an MCSE, but I didn't get it at a boot camp or in classes. I bought books, set up servers at home and actually worked with the stuff at work -- the same stuff at work that sat beside by dozens of NetWare, UNIX and Linux servers all of my network gear.
While other areas may be able to justify the need for faster processors, moer RAM, bigger hard drives and the like, 90% of the people buying this high end equipment can make do with a reasonably priced video card or with the one built into the motherboard. Gamers are well known to want to push the envelope, and while the rest of their components might somewhat resemble a business system, their video card will not. So, NVidia will likely not sell as many GeForce8MXRX32 with 1 Gig of RAM, but they still need to make up the R&D money and let's face it -- you just said yourself that you pay for it.
The Navy also needs to function like a business. While using WordStar and typewriters may work, keep in mind that it's tough to make corrections to a typewritten document and that sharing documents with other folks not using WordStar is likely quite difficult. Not to mention what these people do when a Word 2002 doc comes to them from someone else. I doubt Word Star has a filter for it. In the long run, the $6B investment may end up saving the Navy money when considering these scenarios.
"Hi there, Mr. Walmart employee. I'll take a toaster, a microwave, some razors, 'Donald Duck's Christmas movie', new ink for my printer and 'cum-crazed coeds take it in every hole'".
Nope. Not even close. But that is the difference between what my job duties entail and what the admin assistant down the hall has for responsibilities. My jobs calls for a higher level of customization as I need to have the ability to test different software and recreate problems that other users might be having. The admin assistant does not have this need. My service to the company requires that my system not be locked down, so it isn't.
He might own the computer, but the access to the network is not necessarily a "right" if there is a user that is abusing access. A college network is a shared service of which students pay to use *their share* of said service within acceptable limits as set by the college network folks. It's the rules -- he has to live with them even if he does pay to have access to the network through his tuition. Too many college students have this theory of entitlement. They don't own the equipment -- the college does. When you rent an apartment, you follow certain rules. Just because you pay them rent doesn't mean you break them. The same goes for college.
The users in a company that has "locked down desktops" needs to keep in mind that the computer on their desk is not theirs to do with as they please. The computer is a company asset; the network bandwidth is paid for by the company, etc. I don't mind people using the Internet and so forth for *some* personal activities, but locking down the desktop -- they don't get a choice there.
Keeping consistency (within reason) across an enterprise is both extremely difficult, but also has the potential to save an organization a whole lot of money. In my organization, we do enforce certain standards to make it possible for our business to be conducted efficiently. We do not allow users to install their own software, for example. Why, you ask? It's certainly not because we're "Nazis". We want to avoid potential legal (licensing) problems, potential security problems and want to keep as much stability as we can so that business can be conducted.
This isn't completely about control -- this is about providing users with the tools that they need to do their jobs while at the same time protecting the company from legal liability and providing adequate security.
This should be a part of an TCO (TOTAL cost of ownership) calculation. Without these essential components, the resulting calculations would be missing key ingredients that go into what it actual takes to operate.
Believe it or not, I actually heard these words come out of my boss's mouth at a previous job (note: previous job).
The job kinda sucked to begin with, but then I was asked to set up an operation that was available 12-15 hours a day with support on weekends with about 2.5 people total -- and we all had to continue to work the 9-5 hours as well.
When I mentioned that this was not possible and that I didn't really want to be called in at 3AM all the time, my boss actually said "You work for the city (local gov job) and since you're salaried, you have to come to work any time we tell you to come in no matter what." He basically said that they owned me and I had to do whatever they asked.
Needless to say, my work performance drastically slowed at that job and I left about 2 months later and took a job where they really cared about their people and with a 25% salary increase.
A guy that I used to work with and that I have enormous respect for used to say -- "as long as body parts aren't involved, it's really not as important as people try to say."
We're here for a finite amount of time. I used to work crazy hours until I started thinking about it. Yeah -- I might get a little recognition, but what is that going to do for me when I die from stress or don't have time to do the things that really matter?
Here's one reason that I like and use Red Hat's distro: They're gonna be around tomorrow. If I plan to pin my fortune's on one company/distro, they need to have the finances and the market to stick around. I doubt many corporations will decide to pick up the newest perfect-linux distro because it might be a little better than Red Hat. Companies want stable partners and that is one of the things that Red Hat provides them with.
As for their business practices/ethics, I haven;t seen them do much of anything wrong or unethical. Sure, people will point to the gcc 2.96 snafu, but there was nothing unethical about that and the company definitely gives back to the community.
Want Linux to be successful -- this is good
on
KDE Gets The Hat
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm mostly a Windows guy by background and have been supporting it for years. I would love to be able to roll Linux out to my users, but I need a clean, easy to use interface. I don't give a damn what it is -- I just want it to work consistently and with ease -- like Windows. Yeah -- like Windows. Every single one of my users, no matter their skill level can very easily do things like change their background, resolution, create Word documents, print files, email said files, etc -- on Windows. Before Linux can truly move ahead, some serious integration issues need to be addressed. All I want is a desktop that does its job -- who cares what it is? A user in an office should never have to care. They should simply be able to use it.
I see Red Hat's move as a step in this direction and although some folks do not like Red Hat, I think we are going to begin to see them make major inroads at the desktop, which is good for all of us.
This argument is getting tiring. So many other activities are so much more dangerous than talking on the phone. When people are fighting or something n the phone where it is emotional and definitely distracting then yeah -- pull over. People eat, drink, freakin' READ, smoke, change CDs, put down windows, write notes, put on make up, change radio stations, change gears, adjust their seats and a whole host of other things in their cars. All of it is potentially distracting, but no one is calling for it to be outlawed. I don't do it often and NEVER in heavy traffic (nor do I change stations, CDs, etc in heavy traffic), but I do chat on my cell phone when on long stretches of highway to help keep me alert. Oxymoron? No -- just a fact.
Slashdot Mirror
There are frequently posts about happenings in NASA posted on Slashdot - ie - Mars, asteroid sitings, etc. If this story isn't "stuff that matters", I don't know what is.
I hadn't considered that :-)
You're probably right, although I doubt it will be 20 years. But, if it upsets you that it won't be useful to today's cancer patients, maybe they should just stop their work and give up? After all, nothing good can come from research.
Honestly, what is the deal with the extreme negativity and cynicism from the Slashdot crowd?
I worked in a city government with the exact same arrangement. We used ethernet - yup -ethernet at 100Mbps over the single mode fiber with a copper to single mode converter at each end.
With some of the long haul gigabit stuff, it seems like this shouldn't be that hard as long as the distance limitations are reasonable and the fiber is point to point.
Unfortunately, the data file goes with the program version. If you're using the 2002 product, you can't load and print a 2001 return.
Are you talking about the difference between TCP and UDP? It sounds like it. But - maybe I'm wrong. :-)
Scott
I grew up on reruns of the original series. Love it! However, my favorite series is DS9 with TNG right behind it. Good acting, awesome story lines, excellent character development, a lot of action and overarching themes on religion, politics, etc.
The lava creature was a horta - a silicone based life form...
Truly not 100% a geek - married to a non-geek but just remember these little tid bits.
I went through something similar. I took the plunge and bought a Lindows 3.0 CD to play around with. Much to my surprise, I now have a Lindows PC at home running MS Office 2000 and able to get files from my Windows XP Pro machine and able to print to the shared printer on my XP box. And I had all of this up in less than 45 minutes. The hardest part was the file sharing thing. The printer set up uses an excellent wizard and the Office 2K install went without a hitch.
I've used a little bit of everything (Windows, NetWare, Linux, Unix) and am more than a little impressed with the ease of use in Lindows.
I'm not a contractor, but am an IT Director for a small association.
Recently, our director mentioned that she expected at least 50-60 hours per week, every week from all professional, salaried staff (we have about 20-25 people in that category. Our "official" workday is 7.5 hours. In essence, we're being told that we have to work a minimum of 10-12 hour days every week of the year and more when we have critical needs.
As you might imagine, people are somewhat displeased by this and, unfortunately, many of the employable ones are beginning to look elsewhere. Life's too short to be dragged into a situation like this bad economy or not.
I wish I had mod points today to mod this up. I'v been a long time fan of Star Trek -- which almost didn't happen since my first experience was "Spock's Brain". I've enjoyed TNG and the orginal series, LOVED DS9, and think that Voyager and Enterprise are OK. Overall, I've liked most of the movies with the exception of 5.
While I will likely be flamed for this, I also enjoyed Insurrection. After seeing Nemesis tonight, I have changed my choice of top TNG movie which used to be First Contact -- in my opinion, Nemesis is even better than FC -- there's decent character development, great action, a believeable villain, a decent story and just enough comedy that it didn't go overboard. I really felt like we *knew* the characters.
My wife, a casual watcher of the series, also enjoyed it very much just for the "movie" quality and when not being held against other Star Trek movies.
I read a number of extremely negative reviews before I saw the movie as well as a few positive ones. I didn't see a lot of what the negative reviewers were complaining about. In my opinion, the movie was well worth my $8 and I would gladly fork over another 8 to see it again.
I have to agree with this guy. He has an RIGHT to want only articles that he feels are well within the realms of only *his* views and interests. After all, look at what he pays in his Slashdot subscription fees... oh, wait...
I see a lot of MCSE bashing on Slashdot. Some it is warranted as evidenced by the number of MCSE boot camps, but that is no reason to throw a resume into the "do not call" pile. If you wear those kinds of blinders, you may not see that the person really DOES know what they are doing and that they may have a wealth of other experience besides MS stuff. Personally, I do have an MCSE, but I didn't get it at a boot camp or in classes. I bought books, set up servers at home and actually worked with the stuff at work -- the same stuff at work that sat beside by dozens of NetWare, UNIX and Linux servers all of my network gear.
While other areas may be able to justify the need for faster processors, moer RAM, bigger hard drives and the like, 90% of the people buying this high end equipment can make do with a reasonably priced video card or with the one built into the motherboard. Gamers are well known to want to push the envelope, and while the rest of their components might somewhat resemble a business system, their video card will not. So, NVidia will likely not sell as many GeForce8MXRX32 with 1 Gig of RAM, but they still need to make up the R&D money and let's face it -- you just said yourself that you pay for it.
The Navy also needs to function like a business. While using WordStar and typewriters may work, keep in mind that it's tough to make corrections to a typewritten document and that sharing documents with other folks not using WordStar is likely quite difficult. Not to mention what these people do when a Word 2002 doc comes to them from someone else. I doubt Word Star has a filter for it. In the long run, the $6B investment may end up saving the Navy money when considering these scenarios.
"Hi there, Mr. Walmart employee. I'll take a toaster, a microwave, some razors, 'Donald Duck's Christmas movie', new ink for my printer and 'cum-crazed coeds take it in every hole'".
Nope. Not even close. But that is the difference between what my job duties entail and what the admin assistant down the hall has for responsibilities. My jobs calls for a higher level of customization as I need to have the ability to test different software and recreate problems that other users might be having. The admin assistant does not have this need. My service to the company requires that my system not be locked down, so it isn't.
He might own the computer, but the access to the network is not necessarily a "right" if there is a user that is abusing access. A college network is a shared service of which students pay to use *their share* of said service within acceptable limits as set by the college network folks. It's the rules -- he has to live with them even if he does pay to have access to the network through his tuition. Too many college students have this theory of entitlement. They don't own the equipment -- the college does. When you rent an apartment, you follow certain rules. Just because you pay them rent doesn't mean you break them. The same goes for college.
The users in a company that has "locked down desktops" needs to keep in mind that the computer on their desk is not theirs to do with as they please. The computer is a company asset; the network bandwidth is paid for by the company, etc. I don't mind people using the Internet and so forth for *some* personal activities, but locking down the desktop -- they don't get a choice there.
Keeping consistency (within reason) across an enterprise is both extremely difficult, but also has the potential to save an organization a whole lot of money. In my organization, we do enforce certain standards to make it possible for our business to be conducted efficiently. We do not allow users to install their own software, for example. Why, you ask? It's certainly not because we're "Nazis". We want to avoid potential legal (licensing) problems, potential security problems and want to keep as much stability as we can so that business can be conducted.
This isn't completely about control -- this is about providing users with the tools that they need to do their jobs while at the same time protecting the company from legal liability and providing adequate security.
This should be a part of an TCO (TOTAL cost of ownership) calculation. Without these essential components, the resulting calculations would be missing key ingredients that go into what it actual takes to operate.
Believe it or not, I actually heard these words come out of my boss's mouth at a previous job (note: previous job).
The job kinda sucked to begin with, but then I was asked to set up an operation that was available 12-15 hours a day with support on weekends with about 2.5 people total -- and we all had to continue to work the 9-5 hours as well.
When I mentioned that this was not possible and that I didn't really want to be called in at 3AM all the time, my boss actually said "You work for the city (local gov job) and since you're salaried, you have to come to work any time we tell you to come in no matter what." He basically said that they owned me and I had to do whatever they asked.
Needless to say, my work performance drastically slowed at that job and I left about 2 months later and took a job where they really cared about their people and with a 25% salary increase.
Excellent point.
A guy that I used to work with and that I have enormous respect for used to say -- "as long as body parts aren't involved, it's really not as important as people try to say."
We're here for a finite amount of time. I used to work crazy hours until I started thinking about it. Yeah -- I might get a little recognition, but what is that going to do for me when I die from stress or don't have time to do the things that really matter?
Here's one reason that I like and use Red Hat's distro: They're gonna be around tomorrow. If I plan to pin my fortune's on one company/distro, they need to have the finances and the market to stick around. I doubt many corporations will decide to pick up the newest perfect-linux distro because it might be a little better than Red Hat. Companies want stable partners and that is one of the things that Red Hat provides them with.
As for their business practices/ethics, I haven;t seen them do much of anything wrong or unethical. Sure, people will point to the gcc 2.96 snafu, but there was nothing unethical about that and the company definitely gives back to the community.
I'm mostly a Windows guy by background and have been supporting it for years. I would love to be able to roll Linux out to my users, but I need a clean, easy to use interface. I don't give a damn what it is -- I just want it to work consistently and with ease -- like Windows. Yeah -- like Windows. Every single one of my users, no matter their skill level can very easily do things like change their background, resolution, create Word documents, print files, email said files, etc -- on Windows. Before Linux can truly move ahead, some serious integration issues need to be addressed. All I want is a desktop that does its job -- who cares what it is? A user in an office should never have to care. They should simply be able to use it.
I see Red Hat's move as a step in this direction and although some folks do not like Red Hat, I think we are going to begin to see them make major inroads at the desktop, which is good for all of us.
This argument is getting tiring. So many other activities are so much more dangerous than talking on the phone. When people are fighting or something n the phone where it is emotional and definitely distracting then yeah -- pull over. People eat, drink, freakin' READ, smoke, change CDs, put down windows, write notes, put on make up, change radio stations, change gears, adjust their seats and a whole host of other things in their cars. All of it is potentially distracting, but no one is calling for it to be outlawed. I don't do it often and NEVER in heavy traffic (nor do I change stations, CDs, etc in heavy traffic), but I do chat on my cell phone when on long stretches of highway to help keep me alert. Oxymoron? No -- just a fact.