Because the US is democratic in name only. It is clearly a Plutocracy. Every day I see new examples of gross abuse of power. I fear soon speaking out here will result in being labeled as terrorist and be secretly punished without trial.
This has to be an April fools joke. (I checked snopes.com, but it did not return a result.) There is no way we could hope to maintain any shred of respect from other nations with a plan like this. We (the U.S.) would no doubt have a fit if some other nation pulled this kind of stunt.
1. You can "miss an emergency call" in many places that have poor reception.
2. You can "miss an emergency call" if your battery goes dead. Who will you sue then?
3. If you are think you may receive an emergency call, such as might be expected by an on-call physician, then don't go anywhere that does not have a land-line phone, or good cell reception etc, or suffer for your choice.
4. Cell phones are simply not designed for emergency use. Can you imagine if Fire, Police, or the Military used cell phones as there primary means of commuication?
(Sounds like this paint could be good fool repellant.)
You imply that making the form perform well for non-IE6 web browsers would have required more resources than making it perform well for only IE6. A multi-browser interface requires a different design, not necessarily a more expensive one. It was likely more a case of FEMA doing a poor job of anticipating the needs of their customers. If it was important enough for FEMA to spend resources to create an online form, it should have been important enough to take into account how people would likely access the form.
None of the behaviors you describe are unique to technical workers. I think you had it right when you said
managers need to know how to manage them properly
Management is truly an important skill for a manager. The skill transcends the type of employee. Management, like leadership, is a skill where it is important to be able to adapt to the given situation. A manager may be presented with a team that has particularly poor communication and personal skills, but again that situation would not be unique to technical teams.
talk about how managers should respect the abilities of their subordinates
A good manager should respect the abilities of their subordinates, after all those abilities are part of what the employer is paying for.
every other person out there who agrees with those sentiments secretly suspects that they're smarter than their manager BY DEFAULT.
I do not agree. Perhaps there are people out there that feel that managers should respect the abilities of their subordinates, in the same way that they respect the abilities of their manager. I am sure there are folks out there that have made a recommendation that was not implemented by the manager and then feel that the manager did not take their recommendation into account. It is possible that the subordinate did not have the communication skills to make a good case for their recommendation. Decisions must be made with the information available at the time a decision is required.
That's a tough situation to manage.
Sure it is, if not up to the task, then it is time to improve ones skills or find another line of work.
So, if you're going to be a manager and keep your subordinates happy, notice that you'll need to do a lot of ego-management.
First, one not only needs to keep subordinates happy, but needs to keep them effective. That can mean that communication and personal skills are important, and problems like you describe would likely need to be addressed. Second, ego-management is simply a part of dealing with humans. Third you posted Anonymous so I think you may simply be attempting get a rise out of people.
Correct. That is the whole point of the name Biosphere II.
It is a replica for the original biosphere, our planet. The name could have been better. Biodome or Biosphere come to mind as better names.
It is not like people would look at it and say, "Hmmm. It is named 'Biosphere' so it must be our entire planet. Strange that it looks man made. Hmmm, if that is our entire planet, where am I standing?"
Be sure to check out piclist at http://www.piclist.com
This is a really nice resouce for microcontrollers. (Folks ask questions about electronics, non-pic controllers, etc.) Great place to start your search.
The following is from the article you reference:
District attorney Mike Shrunk is the one city leader who seems amused by having his trash stolen but he maintains that police have a legitimate reason to take trash, whereas the media does not.
"If I'm engaged in criminal conduct, perhaps I give up some of those privacy rights. And this is what's it's all about, and it's a legitimate place for the courts to weigh in," said Shrunk.
The whole issue here and in this referenced article is that the police, under existing law, could, for example go through people's trash, if they first obtain a warrant. If for example, Mr. Shrunk were, as he says, engaged in criminal conduct, it should be simple for the police to obtain a warrant, and then search his trash.
It seems that none of these officials have common sense... Do not waste my tax money on new laws or organizations when we have what we need already. Lets let the existing organizations perform their duties using existing laws.
Now I am simply waiting to here a break-in announcement from Bill Gates that he has declared himself the world's emperor.
Steve Ballmer at Internal M$ meeting:
"The US Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the government permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."
Employee: "But that's impossible. How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?"
Ballmer: "The regional sales managers now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of our software."
>Furthermore, the temperature gradients here are pretty low (boiling point of methanol vs. room temp), so there's not a whole >lot of ooomph to drive your generator.
Here is an example of a sterling engine that runs from the thermal gradient of room temp vs. warmth of one's hand.
I have been wanting to create a small sterling engine to capture the heat from my pc and use it to power a fan to cool the pc. It seems simple enough, but so far the cost of even a small sterling engine is too high.
> "I work for a company that for the past four years has restricted > individual e-mail messages to 5 meg each.
To me this should be more that enough room. A user could attach a
large document etc and still have room for their message.
> We now have users suggesting that this limit is to small and hinders > them in performing their job.
They likely have a legitimate need that they currently resolve through
email. Provide them with an alternate means to address this same
need. Explain that email is a tool designed for written
communication not a tool for graphic design, or file transfer.
>I would like to know how others are using size limits, and if not how > they deal with large e-mails." As human communication over the net > becomes more and more complex, the "acceptable size" of an > email message will increase. 10 years ago, if you got an email over > 10k, something was seriously amiss; but these days, that is just a > flash in the pan.
This is not because users need larger size limits it is because there
are more users, and many of those users are using email improperly.
There may be many different reasons why users are using email
improperly. In your company you may find that users are sending
large emails because they need a file server, or web server, or some
other collaboration tool.
>Many people rely on email, not FTP to transfer files, and things like > a few family portraits can easily exceed several megs in size, so > drawing the line for all users may not be as easy as you think, > depending on your users and your network.
People do this using their ISP accounts because this is often the only
way available to them to share files. In a business, you should be
able to provide your users with a file server, and or web server or
some other mechanism to share files. Sharing files over email is
simple but an unfair burden to your network and DASD.
>Put simply, if you were the administrator of an e-mail server, what > would you set the maximum size of an incoming email message to be, > and what would be the reasoning behind said limit?
I would consider setting it to 100k, but would set it to 3MB knowing
that people will still want to send spreadsheets and other
documents.
I would provide a file server, web server, or some other collaboration
tool to allow users to share documents in a far more efficient way.
I would also train users that attaching a word processor document to
an email provides no advantages to their message, it only burns disk
space and network bandwidth. I would also explain that by sending
this document to many people they have burdened every recipient of
the email with unnecessary disk use, and in some cases an unnecessary
requirement for a software package license just to read the document.
I would further explain that sending files in email can cause an
unreasonable burden on the email administration to ensure that the
files are free of viruses and that it can cause and exponential
increase in both the processing time of each email, and email server
disk space requirements. (Some of this depends on your email
implementation. You did not describe that in your question.)
>Although having used Linux and FreeBSD for many years, I have yet to >come across anyone seriously questioning the traditional UNIX style >file system name paradigm.
>With an Amiga background (It should be the same for people growing up >with Windows, or those growing up with no computer at all (God >forbid!).) it took me quite a while to get used to 'A' and 'a' being >treated as different characters. This is of course fairly easy to >accept and to understand if you have a technical background. >I do however have a hard time to see how aunt Ginny will >ever be able to distinguish between her 'Letter.txt', 'LETTER.TXT' and >'letter.txt' files.
Just like how aunt Ginny was likely somehow able to grasp that her name is written aunt Ginny and not aunt gInNy, aunt gINNy, or other combination. Give her a little credit. Simply explain that the case is part of the file name. Your example Letter.txt file names would be a perfect way to show her the difference. Just make each contain different information, and open each one to show her they are different.
File systems should be case sensitive. An upper case 'A' is a different character than a lower case 'a'. We should not confuse people by tricking them when the create file names.
>In real life, upper and lower case letters represents almost identical >information to most people.
Almost, but not identical.
>Has any thoughts been spent on this issue, now that our favorite OS is >becoming increasingly mainstream? > >Does it need to be addressed?
No.
>Have any attempts been done?
I hope not. Mount a case insensitive file system if you want one. Leave existing file systems alone.
>What are the implications to parts >outside the file systems?" This is an interesting point.
>As Unix >grows more and more popular, the simple things we've taken for granted >about the filesystem may stand in the way of general users adopting >it.
The sooner people accept that 'Ginny' and 'gInNy' are not the same the sooner they will understand how to interact with a computer.
>What ways can you think of that will mitigate this problem for new >Linux users without actually affecting too much? Special shells for >novice users, that can simplify much of the complexity may be the way >to go, here.
How about a mouse-click'n GUI like GNOME, KDE, etc.
> a lot of parts of our site are un-duplicatable (cool, new word) in a Unix environment.
Really, how so? Specifically what parts can not be duplicated?
>I see an Anti-MS admin view as short sighted and trollish.
I do not. I expect a good administrator to form opinions about software and to communicate them to their employer.
If one is not the decision maker, and admins are often not the decision makers for what software is used in a company, one can not simply say they will not support a particular application, they need to explain their concerns, and describe the risks to the decision maker(s). Let the decision maker understand the risks and costs, once that is done, the decision maker must deal with the consequences.
It seems to me, part of the difference between an operator and an administrator, is understanding and communicating risks to their employer.
>Take the long view of network security and you can make any OS >reasonably secure.
Perhaps that is true, but we are talking about one server, a web server, not an operating system. It is fair to replace one server in an environment with a better alternative.
Hmmm. As a consumer, the only power I have that the corporations care about is my power of choice. If these become available in the U.S. then I wonder which product I will purchase:
A. A product specifically designed to violate my fair use rights.
or
B. A cheaper, better product that does not violate my fair use rights.
To me a remedy would only correct for past abuses by Microsoft. It seems to me that they also need a penalty to change their future behavior. Without a penalty Microsoft may see anti-competitive "remedies" as the cost of doing business.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the US is democratic in name only. It is clearly a Plutocracy. Every day I see new examples of gross abuse of power. I fear soon speaking out here will result in being labeled as terrorist and be secretly punished without trial.
Please.
This has to be an April fools joke. (I checked snopes.com, but it did not return a result.)
There is no way we could hope to maintain any shred of respect from other nations with a plan like this. We (the U.S.) would no doubt have a fit if some other nation pulled this kind of stunt.
Please, tell me this is an April fools joke.
1. You can "miss an emergency call" in many places that have poor reception.
2. You can "miss an emergency call" if your battery goes dead. Who will you sue then?
3. If you are think you may receive an emergency call, such as might be expected by an on-call physician, then don't go anywhere that does not have a land-line phone, or good cell reception etc, or suffer for your choice.
4. Cell phones are simply not designed for emergency use. Can you imagine if Fire, Police, or the Military used cell phones as there primary means of commuication?
(Sounds like this paint could be good fool repellant.)
You imply that making the form perform well for non-IE6 web browsers would have required more resources than making it perform well for only IE6.
A multi-browser interface requires a different design, not necessarily a more expensive one.
It was likely more a case of FEMA doing a poor job of anticipating the needs of their customers.
If it was important enough for FEMA to spend resources to create an online form, it should have been important enough to take into account how people would likely access the form.
None of the behaviors you describe are unique to technical workers. I think you had it right when you said
managers need to know how to manage them properly
Management is truly an important skill for a manager. The skill transcends the type of employee. Management, like leadership, is a skill where it is important to be able to adapt to the given situation. A manager may be presented with a team that has particularly poor communication and personal skills, but again that situation would not be unique to technical teams.
talk about how managers should respect the abilities of their subordinates
A good manager should respect the abilities of their subordinates, after all those abilities are part of what the employer is paying for.
every other person out there who agrees with those sentiments secretly suspects that they're smarter than their manager BY DEFAULT.
I do not agree. Perhaps there are people out there that feel that managers should respect the abilities of their subordinates, in the same way that they respect the abilities of their manager. I am sure there are folks out there that have made a recommendation that was not implemented by the manager and then feel that the manager did not take their recommendation into account. It is possible that the subordinate did not have the communication skills to make a good case for their recommendation. Decisions must be made with the information available at the time a decision is required.
That's a tough situation to manage.
Sure it is, if not up to the task, then it is time to improve ones skills or find another line of work.
So, if you're going to be a manager and keep your subordinates happy, notice that you'll need to do a lot of ego-management.
First, one not only needs to keep subordinates happy, but needs to keep them effective. That can mean that communication and personal skills are important, and problems like you describe would likely need to be addressed.
Second, ego-management is simply a part of dealing with humans.
Third you posted Anonymous so I think you may simply be attempting get a rise out of people.
Use iBackup, http://freshmeat.net/projects/ibackup/
Then save to media as needed. Run iBackup using cron or fcron, http://freshmeat.net/projects/fcron/
as you wish.
Correct. That is the whole point of the name Biosphere II.
It is a replica for the original biosphere, our planet. The name could have been better. Biodome or Biosphere come to mind as better names.
It is not like people would look at it and say, "Hmmm. It is named 'Biosphere' so it must be our entire planet. Strange that it looks man made. Hmmm, if that is our entire planet, where am I standing?"
If Bill wants a functional game machine, he can get off his butt and go to Walmart and buy one like everybody else.
I am sure that post was an attempt at humor. . . If not then I assure you "that guy" is/was full of it.
Be sure to check out piclist at http://www.piclist.com
This is a really nice resouce for microcontrollers. (Folks ask questions about electronics, non-pic controllers, etc.) Great place to start your search.
-MM
OK.
Why not contribute to the existing, GPL, OpenSource, Java Lint? Why start a new project?
http://artho.com/jlint/
--MM
The following is from the article you reference:
District attorney Mike Shrunk is the one city leader who seems amused by having his trash stolen but he maintains that police have a legitimate reason to take trash, whereas the media does not.
"If I'm engaged in criminal conduct, perhaps I give up some of those privacy rights. And this is what's it's all about, and it's a legitimate place for the courts to weigh in," said Shrunk.
The whole issue here and in this referenced article is that the police, under existing law, could, for example go through people's trash, if they first obtain a warrant. If for example, Mr. Shrunk were, as he says, engaged in criminal conduct, it should be simple for the police to obtain a warrant, and then search his trash.
It seems that none of these officials have common sense... Do not waste my tax money on new laws or organizations when we have what we need already. Lets let the existing organizations perform their duties using existing laws.
(I am not a lawer.)
Now I am simply waiting to here a break-in announcement from Bill Gates that
he has declared himself the world's emperor.
Steve Ballmer at Internal M$ meeting:
"The US Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have
just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the government
permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept
away."
Employee: "But that's impossible. How will the Emperor maintain
control without the bureaucracy?"
Ballmer: "The regional sales managers now have direct control over their
territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of our software."
>Furthermore, the temperature gradients here are pretty low (boiling point of methanol vs. room temp), so there's not a whole
. tc l?usca_p=t&product_id=31
>lot of ooomph to drive your generator.
Here is an example of a sterling engine that runs from the thermal gradient of room temp vs. warmth of one's hand.
http://www.stirlingengine.com/ecommerce/product
Most folks hands are cooler than the boiling point of methanol.
I have been wanting to create a small sterling engine to capture the heat from my pc and use it to power a fan to cool the pc. It seems simple enough, but so far the cost of even a small sterling engine is too high.
f fworks.com/stirling-engine.htm
See:
http://www.sesusa.org/
http://www.howstu
There are also solid-state thermo-electric solutions to cooling, i.e. frigistors, but they are also too expensive.
http://frigistor.co.jp/e-toppage.htm
Here is an example of a solid-state solution to capture the heat and turn it into electricity.
http://www.eneco-usa.com/technology/
Seems a fair use to use the power to:
1. Supply power to the pc.
2. Cool the pc.
3. Recharge the batt.
Try Pluker
http://www.plkr.org/index.plkr
> "I work for a company that for the past four years has restricted
> individual e-mail messages to 5 meg each.
To me this should be more that enough room. A user could attach a
large document etc and still have room for their message.
> We now have users suggesting that this limit is to small and hinders
> them in performing their job.
They likely have a legitimate need that they currently resolve through
email. Provide them with an alternate means to address this same
need. Explain that email is a tool designed for written
communication not a tool for graphic design, or file transfer.
>I would like to know how others are using size limits, and if not how
> they deal with large e-mails." As human communication over the net
> becomes more and more complex, the "acceptable size" of an
> email message will increase. 10 years ago, if you got an email over
> 10k, something was seriously amiss; but these days, that is just a
> flash in the pan.
This is not because users need larger size limits it is because there
are more users, and many of those users are using email improperly.
There may be many different reasons why users are using email
improperly. In your company you may find that users are sending
large emails because they need a file server, or web server, or some
other collaboration tool.
>Many people rely on email, not FTP to transfer files, and things like
> a few family portraits can easily exceed several megs in size, so
> drawing the line for all users may not be as easy as you think,
> depending on your users and your network.
People do this using their ISP accounts because this is often the only
way available to them to share files. In a business, you should be
able to provide your users with a file server, and or web server or
some other mechanism to share files. Sharing files over email is
simple but an unfair burden to your network and DASD.
>Put simply, if you were the administrator of an e-mail server, what
> would you set the maximum size of an incoming email message to be,
> and what would be the reasoning behind said limit?
I would consider setting it to 100k, but would set it to 3MB knowing
that people will still want to send spreadsheets and other
documents.
I would provide a file server, web server, or some other collaboration
tool to allow users to share documents in a far more efficient way.
I would also train users that attaching a word processor document to
an email provides no advantages to their message, it only burns disk
space and network bandwidth. I would also explain that by sending
this document to many people they have burdened every recipient of
the email with unnecessary disk use, and in some cases an unnecessary
requirement for a software package license just to read the document.
I would further explain that sending files in email can cause an
unreasonable burden on the email administration to ensure that the
files are free of viruses and that it can cause and exponential
increase in both the processing time of each email, and email server
disk space requirements. (Some of this depends on your email
implementation. You did not describe that in your question.)
Good luck.
There are often situations where the case is important
in order to better identify a file.
Example:
A file regarding a person named Bart may be called 'Bart.txt'.
A file regarding the Bay Area Rapid Transit system may be called
'BART.txt'.
Just by looking at the file names, one can have a good idea about
their contents. The names are short, direct, and clear.
>Although having used Linux and FreeBSD for many years, I have yet to
>come across anyone seriously questioning the traditional UNIX style
>file system name paradigm.
>With an Amiga background (It should be the same for people growing up
>with Windows, or those growing up with no computer at all (God
>forbid!).) it took me quite a while to get used to 'A' and 'a' being
>treated as different characters. This is of course fairly easy to
>accept and to understand if you have a technical background.
>I do however have a hard time to see how aunt Ginny will
>ever be able to distinguish between her 'Letter.txt', 'LETTER.TXT' and
>'letter.txt' files.
Just like how aunt Ginny was likely somehow able to grasp that her
name is written aunt Ginny and not aunt gInNy, aunt gINNy, or other
combination. Give her a little credit. Simply explain that the case
is part of the file name. Your example Letter.txt file names would be
a perfect way to show her the difference. Just make each contain
different information, and open each one to show her they are
different.
File systems should be case sensitive. An upper case 'A' is a different
character than a lower case 'a'. We should not confuse people by
tricking them when the create file names.
>In real life, upper and lower case letters represents almost identical
>information to most people.
Almost, but not identical.
>Has any thoughts been spent on this issue, now that our favorite OS is
>becoming increasingly mainstream?
>
>Does it need to be addressed?
No.
>Have any attempts been done?
I hope not. Mount a case insensitive file system if you want one.
Leave existing file systems alone.
>What are the implications to parts
>outside the file systems?" This is an interesting point.
>As Unix
>grows more and more popular, the simple things we've taken for granted
>about the filesystem may stand in the way of general users adopting
>it.
The sooner people accept that 'Ginny' and 'gInNy' are not the same the
sooner they will understand how to interact with a computer.
>What ways can you think of that will mitigate this problem for new
>Linux users without actually affecting too much? Special shells for
>novice users, that can simplify much of the complexity may be the way
>to go, here.
How about a mouse-click'n GUI like GNOME, KDE, etc.
This begs the question, How may I get involved in a :-)
project to integrate this with Emacs, e.g. with
Emacs VC or some new interface?
Anybody working on this from an Emacs standpoint?
I would love to help in some capacity.
> a lot of parts of our site are un-duplicatable (cool, new word) in a Unix environment.
Really, how so? Specifically what parts can not be duplicated?
>I see an Anti-MS admin view as short sighted and trollish.
I do not. I expect a good administrator to form opinions about
software and to communicate them to their employer.
If one is not the decision maker, and admins are often not the
decision makers for what software is used in a company, one can not
simply say they will not support a particular application, they need
to explain their concerns, and describe the risks to the decision
maker(s). Let the decision maker understand the risks and costs, once
that is done, the decision maker must deal with the consequences.
It seems to me, part of the difference between an operator and an
administrator, is understanding and communicating risks to their
employer.
>Take the long view of network security and you can make any OS
>reasonably secure.
Perhaps that is true, but we are talking about one server, a web
server, not an operating system. It is fair to replace one server in
an environment with a better alternative.
Hmmm. As a consumer, the only power I have that the corporations care
about is my power of choice. If these become available in the
U.S. then I wonder which product I will purchase:
A. A product specifically designed to violate my fair use rights.
or
B. A cheaper, better product that does not violate my fair use rights.
Go EVD!
To me a remedy would only correct for past abuses by Microsoft. It seems to me that they also need a penalty to change their future behavior. Without a penalty Microsoft may see anti-competitive "remedies" as the cost of doing business.