I've had good luck with Plextors, and god knows I abuse them. I smoke, and am always at the PC, and spilled a Guinness down the front of a server case. That glued the door shut, which stripped the gears out the next time I tried to open it. I replaced the broken gear with one from a lite-on, and it still works perfectly. 3 years, hundreds of CDs burned, and no problems that I didn't cause. I'd say it was worth the money.
I've been dealing with a LOT of consultants/VAR programmers for the past year, and just want to throw this out there... you're average consultant CANNOT code an acceptable solution to a given problem, because they don't know enough about how the company works internally. Language barriers have also been a problem for me/them. Management wants to buy a "complete solution", if the problem is complex enough that won't happen. You'll spend more time fixing someone elses code while they are contract in France. And it's usually not worth fixing anyway, since they didn't understand the problem in the first place. THAT is the reason so much code is written in house. If you have a heavily customized enterprize system, a mix of *nix, Windows, and Mac servers, and need to tie all of that data together, only a manager could think that a vendor can send a guy in who doesn't speak english and code a custom app for us. Aarrgh! Of course, the vendor pleads ignorance and claims that when the app returns "hello honey" instead of an XML file that "it worked when I left". And we still support a few old fortran apps... god knows what would happen if the French contracters got there hands on those. I, for one, am not looking forward to the rollout of SP2.
My company has switched to rack-mount Macs running OS X for all the real-time stuff tied into the manufacturing line. It's saved time and money, and they don't just randomly lock up every so often. We use linux apps recompiled (if need be) for OS X, and have been very pleased with the results. Of course, office staff need Office, but the mission-critical stuff got ported a couple years ago. Not all corporate computers are desktops.
Ok, I call bullshit on this. I've had 6 people attempt to assault/rob me on the street in the last 5 years. The only time I got hurt (badly cut) was the one time I didn't have a gun. The other five times I drew a pistol, made sure the bad guys saw it, and they ran away. Also, I'm pretty damn good with a gun. Certainly better than most cops I know. 1000 rounds a week will tend to have that effect. Criminals aren't all stupid, most will run once they see the.45 come out.
Ok, I'm going to reply to this since I haven't seen one post get it right. The M16 fires.223 caliber bullets. That's a small, light (62 grain),.223" diameter bullet (5.56 mm) going fairly fast. It is NOT a powerful round. In many states it is illegal to hunt deer or other large game with this caliber of weapon because it lacks the power to ensure a clean kill. That said, the military stuff has a hardened steel penetrator core that is really good at penetrating things, even if it does leave a tiny little hole. The bullets are designed to tumble in flesh to cause more damage. They would almost certainly leave holes in these hut things. An AK-47, on the other hand, fires a much more powerful round. 7.62x39 mm, usually with ~125 grain bullets. That's.308 caliber, with about the same power as a 30-30. They also use steel penetrator cores, and would certainly make swiss cheese out of one of these concrete huts. The U.S. didn't switch to.223 because of power, they did it because it's wimpy ammo doesn't weigh much. That lets a soldier carry more of it. And since the average soldier can't hit anything by aiming anyway (the Army doesn't have the money to let them fire real bullets in training all that often) that gives them more chances to hit something when they are spraying ammo at the bad guys. On a side note, soldiers don't like the M16 much. They are flimsy, jam a lot, and generally stop working when you get sand in them. I know a lot of guys who used AK-47s in Vietnam for that reason. My dad got rid of his M16 as soon as he got his hands on an M14 (.308, much more power).
My windows box IS my gaming box! I also use it for... hmm... not much anymore, now that I think about it. Ok, I use it for MS Office too. Maybe I'll do some more tinkering with Wine and fix that this weekend.
Damn, and I was thinking about moving there... the most expensive real estate in the country and I can't carry a gun. Real attractive. Time for the bay area to go pop.
Yeah, I know. I'm just trying to exit gracefully without screwing over people who have come to be friends. It'll suck if I can't do that and have to just leave, though. I wasn't saying that it was anyone else's fault I stayed too long.
I think a patent will cost you about $20K, if you hire patent attorneys, and take 3-5 years. It's not like you just mail off an application and you have a patent, especially if you might be stepping on some companies toes.
No, you invent something cool and they try to change your contract. Say they hire you with generous IP rights, never expecting you to do anything cool, so patent rights are fair. Do something cool, and they'll change the contract, and/or force you out of your job. Welcome to big business.
Ha Ha. You must be kidding, right? I get daily assignments like this: "Ok, we have a contract with company x to do y. Now we want z too, but they say it's not in the scope of work. They want $20,000 and three weeks. Can you have that for me in the morning?" Happens all the time; that kind of bullshit takes up about a quarter of my workweek. Another quarter is spent cleaning up/testing/cleaning up some more code a contractor wrote. And, on paper, I'm not a programmer. I didn't go to school for it, and I'm supposed to be an R&D engineer. Now, 10-30K saved per problem adds up over the course of a year. Did I get a raise when I asked for one? No. Will they let me train a backup/helper? No. (They let me hire one, but I'm not allowed to train him out of fear, apparently, that I'd quit for greener and less stressful pastures as soon as someone was there to take over. To all of you in college out there: attaboys don't pay your bills, you will NEVER see them on paper, and you're better off working for yourself and charging that 30K on your own. I learned that one the hard way.
Most modern airliners are CAPABLE of landing on autopilot. However, every pilot I knows turns the autopilot off before landing, since landing is one thing they don't trust the computer to do.
I wouldn't rate doctors on their bedside manner. Ever. I had to have reconstructive surgery on my face some years ago, and that docter still has my respect. Told me the real odds of success, and said he was better than average so trust him. When I woke up he was pressing on the places he'd worked on, wanting to know if it hurt. The answer, of course, was "Hell yes that hurts". The reply was "good, that means I didn't cut any nerves". That's the kind of answer I like.
If you're really a doctor, I humbly submit that you are full of shit. Or you're just a bad doctor. I've had one doctor tell me "you strained your back" and the next one tell me "you need emergency surgery on your kidneys". The problem was a stab wound to the back. I knew that, and I know where my fucking kidneys are. I actually used the Encyclopedia Brittanica with it's "see through person" pages to find what I thought was damaged. The first doctor thought that was really funny. The second doctor, who did figure out that there was a fucking problem, told me that I would be dead or on a machine by 25 if I didn't let him remove the damaged kidney. He also gave me 25% odds for recovery after surgery, and 50% for survival (lots of blood loss after you cut a kidney out, apparently). I just ticked over 30, and I'm still here. Yeah, it hurts, but I've gotten used to that. They had me on so many painkillers that I felt irresponsible even thinking about driving. These were military doctors, mind you, so they give out painkillers by the buttload if they think that they are in over their head. You get a prescription for tylenol3, with six refills. Except it's really unlimited. You just go back for another six. If you're fucked up all the time, you won't come back and bother them, will you? But you really can't drive like that, at least I couldn't. I gave up on hospitals, and doctors I don't know, trying to follow some girls a friend knew to a restaurant in Jacksonville FL on I95. I was on a sportbike, they were in a Honda, and were going about 110. They were driving like idiots. I had a sportbike, but didn't know where I was going, and had an epiphany: I'm not cured. I am impaired, though, and I'm going to pull over and find a hotel. I flushed all the codiene down the hotel toliet and now I just live with the pain. Of course, the army destroyed my medical records, so none of this comes up when my company changes PPOs. I don't like pain, and I know that the medical problems will get me in the end, but I would rather know that then deal with an MD who really doesn't give a shit. Oh yeah, I got my own doctor... out of system or whatever, but someone I know.
I don't know about the whole creation thing, as I'm not a teacher, but schools in south Georgia (if you live in a city, or even medium sized town) are just holding pens for juvenile criminals. Before I tell this story,let me just say that my teachers were good. I was also AP, in other words taking classes for college credits in high school, so my experience with teachers might not be representative. Anyway, school here is not intended to teach anyone anything, it just keeps the thugs off the street during the day, and that's all. And no, I'm not an old geezer here. But I did wind up in the hospital with a homicide detective busy taking polaroids when I woke up courtesy of those thugs that need an education (they thought I had lost too much blood to make it, so they called homicide to the hospital). The school told the news media that there had been "a minor scuffle between students", and that no one had been seriously injured. The news corrected the story about a week later when my family got pissed about the coverage, but all the school wanted to do was cover it up. Three surgeries later, I disagree on the amount of injury. 7 or 8 on one, you don't win, even if you're Bruce Lee, which I'm not. The thugs involved just wanted to beat someone down to intimidate everyone else, and I looked like an easy target. When it went to court their lawyers tried to claim that their clients should be let off because I had martial arts training and had mananged to break a few bones (ribs, that's all you can really kick for when you have a number of people pounding on you) before the aforementioned thugs ALL piled on top of me. That defense didn't work, a couple (who dindn't get charged as adults) got convicted and expelled, but... Fuck public schools in Georgia. If I ever have kids, I'll do whatever it takes to put them in private school. I'll live on Ramen when I'm 40 if that's what it takes to keep them out of the public school system. Oh yeah, since it was a race crime (I'm white, by the way... who cares as I've already probably already said enough to Google for) the only black detective in the city was given the case. Everyone involved who could be charged as adult, nothing. The detective told the judge in court, with a straight face, that the "records had been lost". The judge wasn't happy, but there wasn't much he could do either. Why do we keep people like this in school? Down south, you have to, or someone will pull the race card (happened in my case with the school board). I personally think that some problems are more associated to income and social status than race, and that some races in this area are lower income, if you look at the statistics. I will note, however, that the school board member who claimed racism was investigated a few years later for letting a crack dealer live with her (I think she got off). I'll also note that all of my attackers managed to get themselves killed in gang-related incidents, except the two that jumped me in the first place. They are in the Federal pen for dealing crack out of a housing project in Atlanta. Is that what you want your kids going to school with? In the same town, they found a 6th grader selling coke. I'll cough up the money for private school if I ever have to, even it means living in a duplex somewhere. I don't want my kids having a cop tell them when they are 15 (my father was military and deployed) "Have a gun? Let me see it. Ok, know how to use it? Good, it's loaded. Ignore Detective so-and-so. Don't worry too much about those death threats to your mother on the answering machine, you need to rest, but sleep with the gun. I'll be back tomorrow when the rest of the pictures get developed". If you can afford to send your kids to something other than the public meat grinder, and you live in south Georgia, none of this is exaggerated or made up. This shit happens, you just don't hear about it.
No, the problem was crappy vacuum plumbing. The dumbasses at Bosch used molded, snap-together vaccuum lines. A leak at the wrong joint, and the throttle diaphram gets sucked to full throttle. I've fixed a couple of those crap cars. It is a real problem.
What do you do with someone with no real job description? Someone who you can't function without? Because there is no position because of "politics"? That's what I thought. You, with your annoying MBA, don't do anything. And people leave. Then when the one guy does leave who really matters, what are you going to do? Whine to the VP's that "this is how I was taught to do it" and "I just need to fill seats"? It don't work that way, man.
You might want to consider a different line of work... Ever done consulting? All you have to do is live within driving range of an airport. Not a bad deal at all.
You're never done... think "feature creep". Most requests (99%) are asinine, but the other one percent are brilliant and give you new ideas. Maybe they are'nt good ideas, and maybe the don't get rolled into the next release, but they make you think. Google isn't "done". They can't rest on their laurels and just rake in money, especially since they are public now. Think, man, think.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had good luck with Plextors, and god knows I abuse them. I smoke, and am always at the PC, and spilled a Guinness down the front of a server case. That glued the door shut, which stripped the gears out the next time I tried to open it. I replaced the broken gear with one from a lite-on, and it still works perfectly. 3 years, hundreds of CDs burned, and no problems that I didn't cause. I'd say it was worth the money.
I've been dealing with a LOT of consultants/VAR programmers for the past year, and just want to throw this out there... you're average consultant CANNOT code an acceptable solution to a given problem, because they don't know enough about how the company works internally. Language barriers have also been a problem for me/them. Management wants to buy a "complete solution", if the problem is complex enough that won't happen. You'll spend more time fixing someone elses code while they are contract in France. And it's usually not worth fixing anyway, since they didn't understand the problem in the first place. THAT is the reason so much code is written in house. If you have a heavily customized enterprize system, a mix of *nix, Windows, and Mac servers, and need to tie all of that data together, only a manager could think that a vendor can send a guy in who doesn't speak english and code a custom app for us. Aarrgh! Of course, the vendor pleads ignorance and claims that when the app returns "hello honey" instead of an XML file that "it worked when I left". And we still support a few old fortran apps... god knows what would happen if the French contracters got there hands on those. I, for one, am not looking forward to the rollout of SP2.
My company has switched to rack-mount Macs running OS X for all the real-time stuff tied into the manufacturing line. It's saved time and money, and they don't just randomly lock up every so often. We use linux apps recompiled (if need be) for OS X, and have been very pleased with the results. Of course, office staff need Office, but the mission-critical stuff got ported a couple years ago. Not all corporate computers are desktops.
Ok, I call bullshit on this. I've had 6 people attempt to assault/rob me on the street in the last 5 years. The only time I got hurt (badly cut) was the one time I didn't have a gun. The other five times I drew a pistol, made sure the bad guys saw it, and they ran away. Also, I'm pretty damn good with a gun. Certainly better than most cops I know. 1000 rounds a week will tend to have that effect. Criminals aren't all stupid, most will run once they see the .45 come out.
Ok, I'm going to reply to this since I haven't seen one post get it right. The M16 fires .223 caliber bullets. That's a small, light (62 grain), .223" diameter bullet (5.56 mm) going fairly fast. It is NOT a powerful round. In many states it is illegal to hunt deer or other large game with this caliber of weapon because it lacks the power to ensure a clean kill. That said, the military stuff has a hardened steel penetrator core that is really good at penetrating things, even if it does leave a tiny little hole. The bullets are designed to tumble in flesh to cause more damage. They would almost certainly leave holes in these hut things. An AK-47, on the other hand, fires a much more powerful round. 7.62x39 mm, usually with ~125 grain bullets. That's .308 caliber, with about the same power as a 30-30. They also use steel penetrator cores, and would certainly make swiss cheese out of one of these concrete huts. The U.S. didn't switch to .223 because of power, they did it because it's wimpy ammo doesn't weigh much. That lets a soldier carry more of it. And since the average soldier can't hit anything by aiming anyway (the Army doesn't have the money to let them fire real bullets in training all that often) that gives them more chances to hit something when they are spraying ammo at the bad guys. On a side note, soldiers don't like the M16 much. They are flimsy, jam a lot, and generally stop working when you get sand in them. I know a lot of guys who used AK-47s in Vietnam for that reason. My dad got rid of his M16 as soon as he got his hands on an M14 (.308, much more power).
My windows box IS my gaming box! I also use it for... hmm... not much anymore, now that I think about it. Ok, I use it for MS Office too. Maybe I'll do some more tinkering with Wine and fix that this weekend.
I would not want the two to be seperated.
Damn, and I was thinking about moving there... the most expensive real estate in the country and I can't carry a gun. Real attractive. Time for the bay area to go pop.
Yeah, I know. I'm just trying to exit gracefully without screwing over people who have come to be friends. It'll suck if I can't do that and have to just leave, though. I wasn't saying that it was anyone else's fault I stayed too long.
I'd like to try it out... have an email adress to contact?
I think a patent will cost you about $20K, if you hire patent attorneys, and take 3-5 years. It's not like you just mail off an application and you have a patent, especially if you might be stepping on some companies toes.
No, you invent something cool and they try to change your contract. Say they hire you with generous IP rights, never expecting you to do anything cool, so patent rights are fair. Do something cool, and they'll change the contract, and/or force you out of your job. Welcome to big business.
Ha Ha. You must be kidding, right? I get daily assignments like this: "Ok, we have a contract with company x to do y. Now we want z too, but they say it's not in the scope of work. They want $20,000 and three weeks. Can you have that for me in the morning?" Happens all the time; that kind of bullshit takes up about a quarter of my workweek. Another quarter is spent cleaning up/testing/cleaning up some more code a contractor wrote. And, on paper, I'm not a programmer. I didn't go to school for it, and I'm supposed to be an R&D engineer. Now, 10-30K saved per problem adds up over the course of a year. Did I get a raise when I asked for one? No. Will they let me train a backup/helper? No. (They let me hire one, but I'm not allowed to train him out of fear, apparently, that I'd quit for greener and less stressful pastures as soon as someone was there to take over. To all of you in college out there: attaboys don't pay your bills, you will NEVER see them on paper, and you're better off working for yourself and charging that 30K on your own. I learned that one the hard way.
Most modern airliners are CAPABLE of landing on autopilot. However, every pilot I knows turns the autopilot off before landing, since landing is one thing they don't trust the computer to do.
I wouldn't rate doctors on their bedside manner. Ever. I had to have reconstructive surgery on my face some years ago, and that docter still has my respect. Told me the real odds of success, and said he was better than average so trust him. When I woke up he was pressing on the places he'd worked on, wanting to know if it hurt. The answer, of course, was "Hell yes that hurts". The reply was "good, that means I didn't cut any nerves". That's the kind of answer I like.
No, they probably did spot it and just didn't tell you since that would have cost your employer's health care actual money. Painkillers are cheaper.
If you're really a doctor, I humbly submit that you are full of shit. Or you're just a bad doctor. I've had one doctor tell me "you strained your back" and the next one tell me "you need emergency surgery on your kidneys". The problem was a stab wound to the back. I knew that, and I know where my fucking kidneys are. I actually used the Encyclopedia Brittanica with it's "see through person" pages to find what I thought was damaged. The first doctor thought that was really funny. The second doctor, who did figure out that there was a fucking problem, told me that I would be dead or on a machine by 25 if I didn't let him remove the damaged kidney. He also gave me 25% odds for recovery after surgery, and 50% for survival (lots of blood loss after you cut a kidney out, apparently). I just ticked over 30, and I'm still here. Yeah, it hurts, but I've gotten used to that. They had me on so many painkillers that I felt irresponsible even thinking about driving. These were military doctors, mind you, so they give out painkillers by the buttload if they think that they are in over their head. You get a prescription for tylenol3, with six refills. Except it's really unlimited. You just go back for another six. If you're fucked up all the time, you won't come back and bother them, will you? But you really can't drive like that, at least I couldn't. I gave up on hospitals, and doctors I don't know, trying to follow some girls a friend knew to a restaurant in Jacksonville FL on I95. I was on a sportbike, they were in a Honda, and were going about 110. They were driving like idiots. I had a sportbike, but didn't know where I was going, and had an epiphany: I'm not cured. I am impaired, though, and I'm going to pull over and find a hotel. I flushed all the codiene down the hotel toliet and now I just live with the pain. Of course, the army destroyed my medical records, so none of this comes up when my company changes PPOs. I don't like pain, and I know that the medical problems will get me in the end, but I would rather know that then deal with an MD who really doesn't give a shit. Oh yeah, I got my own doctor... out of system or whatever, but someone I know.
And he's a QA guy? Remind me not to buy a GM anytime soon. (You got modded funny for a reason, I'm thinking)
I don't know about the whole creation thing, as I'm not a teacher, but schools in south Georgia (if you live in a city, or even medium sized town) are just holding pens for juvenile criminals. Before I tell this story,let me just say that my teachers were good. I was also AP, in other words taking classes for college credits in high school, so my experience with teachers might not be representative. Anyway, school here is not intended to teach anyone anything, it just keeps the thugs off the street during the day, and that's all. And no, I'm not an old geezer here. But I did wind up in the hospital with a homicide detective busy taking polaroids when I woke up courtesy of those thugs that need an education (they thought I had lost too much blood to make it, so they called homicide to the hospital). The school told the news media that there had been "a minor scuffle between students", and that no one had been seriously injured. The news corrected the story about a week later when my family got pissed about the coverage, but all the school wanted to do was cover it up. Three surgeries later, I disagree on the amount of injury. 7 or 8 on one, you don't win, even if you're Bruce Lee, which I'm not. The thugs involved just wanted to beat someone down to intimidate everyone else, and I looked like an easy target. When it went to court their lawyers tried to claim that their clients should be let off because I had martial arts training and had mananged to break a few bones (ribs, that's all you can really kick for when you have a number of people pounding on you) before the aforementioned thugs ALL piled on top of me. That defense didn't work, a couple (who dindn't get charged as adults) got convicted and expelled, but... Fuck public schools in Georgia. If I ever have kids, I'll do whatever it takes to put them in private school. I'll live on Ramen when I'm 40 if that's what it takes to keep them out of the public school system. Oh yeah, since it was a race crime (I'm white, by the way... who cares as I've already probably already said enough to Google for) the only black detective in the city was given the case. Everyone involved who could be charged as adult, nothing. The detective told the judge in court, with a straight face, that the "records had been lost". The judge wasn't happy, but there wasn't much he could do either. Why do we keep people like this in school? Down south, you have to, or someone will pull the race card (happened in my case with the school board). I personally think that some problems are more associated to income and social status than race, and that some races in this area are lower income, if you look at the statistics. I will note, however, that the school board member who claimed racism was investigated a few years later for letting a crack dealer live with her (I think she got off). I'll also note that all of my attackers managed to get themselves killed in gang-related incidents, except the two that jumped me in the first place. They are in the Federal pen for dealing crack out of a housing project in Atlanta. Is that what you want your kids going to school with? In the same town, they found a 6th grader selling coke. I'll cough up the money for private school if I ever have to, even it means living in a duplex somewhere. I don't want my kids having a cop tell them when they are 15 (my father was military and deployed) "Have a gun? Let me see it. Ok, know how to use it? Good, it's loaded. Ignore Detective so-and-so. Don't worry too much about those death threats to your mother on the answering machine, you need to rest, but sleep with the gun. I'll be back tomorrow when the rest of the pictures get developed". If you can afford to send your kids to something other than the public meat grinder, and you live in south Georgia, none of this is exaggerated or made up. This shit happens, you just don't hear about it.
Or just try regedit... You'll find some odd keys in there on a search
No, the problem was crappy vacuum plumbing. The dumbasses at Bosch used molded, snap-together vaccuum lines. A leak at the wrong joint, and the throttle diaphram gets sucked to full throttle. I've fixed a couple of those crap cars. It is a real problem.
What do you do with someone with no real job description? Someone who you can't function without? Because there is no position because of "politics"? That's what I thought. You, with your annoying MBA, don't do anything. And people leave. Then when the one guy does leave who really matters, what are you going to do? Whine to the VP's that "this is how I was taught to do it" and "I just need to fill seats"? It don't work that way, man.
You might want to consider a different line of work... Ever done consulting? All you have to do is live within driving range of an airport. Not a bad deal at all.
You're never done... think "feature creep". Most requests (99%) are asinine, but the other one percent are brilliant and give you new ideas. Maybe they are'nt good ideas, and maybe the don't get rolled into the next release, but they make you think. Google isn't "done". They can't rest on their laurels and just rake in money, especially since they are public now. Think, man, think.
Ok, that one wasn't hard... now how did you get the answer to the second one?