Sure sure. And as long as you play along, you'll probably be just fine. Of course, don't be fooled into thinking that there's no poverty and there's no upper class in China.
But they don't "yearn to be free." I've known several Chinese nationals at various jobs and generally speaking they don't mind their government.
The problem is, as long as you play along, you're all good in China. If you decide you don't want to play along, you'll find no recourse.
The Chinese government is BAD, but because they have the control they do, they are able to make sweeping changes in their economy that takes "western" cultures a lot longer to accomplish. If China wants to clean up a city, they'll force relocate everyone, build a bunch of new buildings, and they're done. You can't do that here.
You speak of chains and restrictions and what-not, and make it sound as if "all that's needed is a simple uprising." In this day and age, more than any time in history, this is a very deadly proposition. And, things just aren't that easy. It's the same type of sentiment shared by people that say "you vote with your wallets." Sure, people can decide that a product sucks and not buy it, but there's also a lot of products that are hard NOT to buy. We simply can't stop buying gasoline. Boycotts don't work.
"The Left" as you put it has a lot less to do with censorship and freedom of speech than "The Right" does. Liberalism is the idea that everyone should be free to do what they want to do. Some politically correct police out there might get all pissy if you call someone "oriental" but there's been no laws added to the books to prevent it.
One also has to remember that free speech doesn't protect you from incriminating yourself and people aren't required to "free listen" to your free speech.
I've worked consulting for at least a dozen school systems. The Internet can be used by pretty much anyone FOR anything. Sure, there's a line - like don't download torrents at school and no watching online pornography in elementary school. But personal use is what most people actually use the Internet for at work - most work stuff is local - local file servers, local intranet, etc, and schools are no different than any business.
Jesus, I just don't think people GET IT. Has 911 fucked with everyone's sense of privacy and freedom?
If it says ANONYMOUS, it should be fucking ANONYMOUS. No tracking, no "but only when xyz happens.." because any exception means every post will be logged and tracked with some sort of unique piece of information.
How malicious can something be if it's posted by an anonymous source? How seriously do you take AC comments?
Death threats? I could fucking kill you for saying that! There's one. Where do we draw the line? Really man, there's a trade-off for freedom and that's to introduce a little risk into our lives. We can't be free and also be shielded from any possible, however small it might be, threat. Nor would I want to be.
While I hate spam as much as the next guy, again, it's just bits and bytes.. Spam filters are pretty good these days, and they will continue to improve. Besides a forum or e-mail admin, is anyone really complaining about SPAM anymore?
Sounds like he only posted a couple of times. Big fucking deal.
I've run forums, and I've run game servers, and I've dealt with pretty much anything you can think of when it comes to net fucksticks and kiddies having fun.
I've banned people, banned whole subnets of IP addresses, and posted nastygrams back to people.
But, I've never, ever considered, not even once, to take things past the venue and start making phone calls and trying to get people into real trouble. It's a real asshole move and then to brag about it on their web site all happy as a pig in shit is offensive.
They say "He wasn't fired. He "resigned."" Right. Because people ever "Resign" these days? What was he, a CEO making 7.34 million a year "stepping down?" No, he was told "You either quit now or we'll call the police and file charges." People don't "Resign" with 10.5% unemployment in this country.
You're joking, right? There's absolutely no way the Chinese government is going to stop controlling information and oppressing its' people any time soon, and definitely not within 10 years.
Yea, it's true. Use them all, it really doesn't matter. But, generally speaking a VM is not going to get the same level of attention as your primary OS does. I've been running Ubuntu on my work notebook now for several months and it's really been a lot of fun to use. I run Windows 7 in a VM to do things like run the VI client and windows server admin tools, but it's an afterthought OS that runs only when I need it.
Of course, I run Windows primarily on my workstation at home because I use a lot of apps there that only run on Windows (audio apps, etc) and all but one of my servers at home runs Server 2008 (one runs Linux, my spam filter.)
Use what works for you in that particular instance. That's what I do.
No, you missed the point. What I said was that it got you to start your coding to make sure your concepts will actually work - BEFORE you blow your budget out because it turns out you can't do something as originally intended. Traditionally you'd write up the whole project plan, budget time, resources, money, etc - before writing a line of code. In the Rational way, you do have to do some of that, but you can avoid the major pitfalls of budget (be it time, money, resources, whatever) under and overruns by proving the code very early on.
Yes, you need requirements. But those requirements can start light. "Application to provide unified authentication between sites and directories. Must connect to Active Directory." So, your programmers can start off with methods to connect to AD and either rule-in or rule-out various ways of doing that, putting you on the right track from the start and basing the rest of your work off of a known good starting point. As more requirements come through - via Requisite Pro or another method - you can begin refining the application and expanding it through iterations.
I really don't think I'm that far off. The idea is to start writing code as soon as possible so you can encounter and address problems as soon as possible as you build your application.
The idea is to avoid the three month design phase, only to find out that 25% of the things you designed for won't end up working for some reason or another.
There's plenty of different methodologies to writing software. IBM's Rational system combines project management, a feature request system and a code management system into an iterative development structure that I found to be very robust and fun to work with.
The idea is to start writing code now. Write the code, make sure your concepts work - and before it's been written into a budget and had time allocated to it. With each iteration of the development process, you can bring together more code and more features until you reach a release state.
Some things are better done the Old Way (limited scope project, etc) but for more major development cycles there are better ways.
As far as Linux acceptance, I think many people would be pleasantly surprised how good these new distributions are now a days.
I'm a pretty hardcore Windows desktop user, although I've always been a fan of Linux and I run Linux on the server as much as I can. I recently got a job at this place where they run lots of Linux, have lots of Macs on the network, as well as Windows. I decided to run Linux on my notebook. I don't think I'd ever want to go back to Windows.
I still have to run a Windows VM in order to run some admin tools and such, and I use CrossOver to run MS Office. But this system rocks. I love the desktop cube (it's so damned useful) and I love everything else about it. I haven't encountered one thing I miss from Windows. I can do anything with my iPod, I can use XMarks and sync my bookmarks with my other machines, IBM has a native Linux Notes client.. I just love using this notebook. And whenever I think "Hmm, I wonder if there's a software that can do..." There is.
If I can use it, then any normal home user can. If a home user can switch to a Macintosh, they can switch to Linux just as easily. Either way they can't bring their apps with them; and Gnome has a lot of common UI elements as a Mac (and is often times better.)
I've been impressed as hell using this for the last few months.
Look, I have a mother and a sister with computers and neither of them are computer experts. Awhile back, spyware and junk was a big problem until I got them both to use Firefox. Ever since it has been no problem. Both of them have local admin rights and I only get called when there's a hardware problem (hard disk failure, fan loud, etc.) I don't mind that.
If you can't give them a few points of advice and have them listen, they're taking advantage of you. It's relatively easy to keep a reasonable computer system. Just don't download shit. That's all. They download shit, and they get screwed, and they don't care that you told them not to. If they learned how to make a bowl of cereal, they can NOT download something.
So, take away their admin rights. Make them normal user accounts, and when they want to install something they'll have to ask you.
I'm sure the Sonos system is nice, and from the enthusiasm here it sounds like it works. However, it's also very expensive. The starter bundle with speakers (one controller, one zone) is $1200.
The original poster was looking for something low cost.
Virtualization isn't one of those things that needs to be proven. It's extremely pervasive and it shows real benefit NOW. One of those benefits is having less people manage a shit ton more servers (virtual ones) than could ever have been done with physical ones.
There's so many more that if you're not convinced by now you're just looking for excuses.
"because virtualization only works for large companies with many, many servers, yet contractors and vendors sell it to any company with a couple of servers"
Not true, about the "Only works for large companies." Sure, I'd never sell a VM system to a company with "a couple of servers" (meaning two) but I will sell it to a small company with 10 servers.
Virtualization isn't that expensive. You can go VMware (more expensive but nice) or Xen (Much cheaper and still nice) or a turnkey solution like Virtual Iron (based on Xen.) Either way, you can consolidate a mish-mash of servers down to two new systems, get better performance, and with things like iSCSI and NFS available on very inexpensive platforms (Windows Storage Server, Linux, small appliances, etc) you can enable advanced features such as fault tolerance and load balancing with nominal costs.
For the same price, or less, than replacing all of your old crap servers with new ones, you could build out a nice little VM system and gain so many advantages. Think of the single admin at a small company tasked with upgrading some shoddy (but VERY IMPORTANT) software app tailored to their specific business. Snapshot. Upgrade. Failed? Undo. Phew! No more 4AM support runs. Clone the machine, try it on a test with support on the phone during the day.
These are things any company can have, big or small.
Thanks for the feedback on the X10. I currently live in an apartment and I was hoping to acquire some X10 stuff I could use there and bring it to a house when I get one eventually.
It sounds like if you're careful setting it up (make sure the transceiver isn't too far from the devices and such) you could get away with an X10 system, barring any hardware failures with the devices themselves.
Thanks for the insight into X10. I have only read about them online and I've wanted to get some units for awhile, but now I'll think twice. I still want to get a few units for my current residence (apartment) but when I move into a house of my own I'll consider all options.
While I'm not electrical engineer I've done plenty of wiring and basic electrical work that I'm not afraid of getting into a system with wiring, but I don't know if I'd be willing to bust up TOO many walls for it. It will depend on the house that I end up with I guess.
Besides X10, there really aren't too many options for wireless control of switches, outlets, etc - unless you're aware of some?
My current home automation system consists of two HandiSwitches =)
I dunno what you're talking about. I've been running Ubuntu at work on my notebook for the past six months, and I'll tell you right now that it's ready for the Desktop. It's been a pure joy using this machine, and the Compiz stuff (notable Desktop Cube) make my life a lot easier.
Sure, I have to run some Windows software - Office specifically. But, it runs great on CrossOver, and other than that, this company uses Notes and IBM has a fully functional Notes client for Linux in a Deb/Ubuntu installable package.
It's been nothing but good news running Ubuntu on this notebook and I look forward to many more years of running Linux as my primary desktop in the years to come.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait - what are you trying to prove here?
/shock /amazement /awe
That some school somewhere has a rule on the books about private use of the Internet?
Fortunately, school systems can determine their own rules. And they do.
Let's also not forget that lots and lots of companies and institutions have these kinds of rules on the book, completely unenforced.
Maybe you replied to the wrong person. I never used the words socialist or values in my post.
Sure sure. And as long as you play along, you'll probably be just fine. Of course, don't be fooled into thinking that there's no poverty and there's no upper class in China.
But they don't "yearn to be free." I've known several Chinese nationals at various jobs and generally speaking they don't mind their government.
The problem is, as long as you play along, you're all good in China. If you decide you don't want to play along, you'll find no recourse.
The Chinese government is BAD, but because they have the control they do, they are able to make sweeping changes in their economy that takes "western" cultures a lot longer to accomplish. If China wants to clean up a city, they'll force relocate everyone, build a bunch of new buildings, and they're done. You can't do that here.
You speak of chains and restrictions and what-not, and make it sound as if "all that's needed is a simple uprising." In this day and age, more than any time in history, this is a very deadly proposition. And, things just aren't that easy. It's the same type of sentiment shared by people that say "you vote with your wallets." Sure, people can decide that a product sucks and not buy it, but there's also a lot of products that are hard NOT to buy. We simply can't stop buying gasoline. Boycotts don't work.
"The Left" as you put it has a lot less to do with censorship and freedom of speech than "The Right" does. Liberalism is the idea that everyone should be free to do what they want to do. Some politically correct police out there might get all pissy if you call someone "oriental" but there's been no laws added to the books to prevent it.
One also has to remember that free speech doesn't protect you from incriminating yourself and people aren't required to "free listen" to your free speech.
I've worked consulting for at least a dozen school systems. The Internet can be used by pretty much anyone FOR anything. Sure, there's a line - like don't download torrents at school and no watching online pornography in elementary school. But personal use is what most people actually use the Internet for at work - most work stuff is local - local file servers, local intranet, etc, and schools are no different than any business.
Jesus, I just don't think people GET IT. Has 911 fucked with everyone's sense of privacy and freedom?
If it says ANONYMOUS, it should be fucking ANONYMOUS. No tracking, no "but only when xyz happens.." because any exception means every post will be logged and tracked with some sort of unique piece of information.
How malicious can something be if it's posted by an anonymous source? How seriously do you take AC comments?
Death threats? I could fucking kill you for saying that! There's one. Where do we draw the line? Really man, there's a trade-off for freedom and that's to introduce a little risk into our lives. We can't be free and also be shielded from any possible, however small it might be, threat. Nor would I want to be.
While I hate spam as much as the next guy, again, it's just bits and bytes.. Spam filters are pretty good these days, and they will continue to improve. Besides a forum or e-mail admin, is anyone really complaining about SPAM anymore?
Sounds like he only posted a couple of times. Big fucking deal.
I've run forums, and I've run game servers, and I've dealt with pretty much anything you can think of when it comes to net fucksticks and kiddies having fun.
I've banned people, banned whole subnets of IP addresses, and posted nastygrams back to people.
But, I've never, ever considered, not even once, to take things past the venue and start making phone calls and trying to get people into real trouble. It's a real asshole move and then to brag about it on their web site all happy as a pig in shit is offensive.
They say "He wasn't fired. He "resigned."" Right. Because people ever "Resign" these days? What was he, a CEO making 7.34 million a year "stepping down?" No, he was told "You either quit now or we'll call the police and file charges." People don't "Resign" with 10.5% unemployment in this country.
You're joking, right? There's absolutely no way the Chinese government is going to stop controlling information and oppressing its' people any time soon, and definitely not within 10 years.
You're dreaming.
Yea but who cares?
Linux desktop continues to improve and just gets better and better and more fun to use. If people miss out on that - their bad.
Yea, it's true. Use them all, it really doesn't matter. But, generally speaking a VM is not going to get the same level of attention as your primary OS does. I've been running Ubuntu on my work notebook now for several months and it's really been a lot of fun to use. I run Windows 7 in a VM to do things like run the VI client and windows server admin tools, but it's an afterthought OS that runs only when I need it.
Of course, I run Windows primarily on my workstation at home because I use a lot of apps there that only run on Windows (audio apps, etc) and all but one of my servers at home runs Server 2008 (one runs Linux, my spam filter.)
Use what works for you in that particular instance. That's what I do.
All that being said, I see you've never worked with Rational before.
No, you missed the point. What I said was that it got you to start your coding to make sure your concepts will actually work - BEFORE you blow your budget out because it turns out you can't do something as originally intended. Traditionally you'd write up the whole project plan, budget time, resources, money, etc - before writing a line of code. In the Rational way, you do have to do some of that, but you can avoid the major pitfalls of budget (be it time, money, resources, whatever) under and overruns by proving the code very early on.
Yes, you need requirements. But those requirements can start light. "Application to provide unified authentication between sites and directories. Must connect to Active Directory." So, your programmers can start off with methods to connect to AD and either rule-in or rule-out various ways of doing that, putting you on the right track from the start and basing the rest of your work off of a known good starting point. As more requirements come through - via Requisite Pro or another method - you can begin refining the application and expanding it through iterations.
I really don't think I'm that far off. The idea is to start writing code as soon as possible so you can encounter and address problems as soon as possible as you build your application.
The idea is to avoid the three month design phase, only to find out that 25% of the things you designed for won't end up working for some reason or another.
There's plenty of different methodologies to writing software. IBM's Rational system combines project management, a feature request system and a code management system into an iterative development structure that I found to be very robust and fun to work with.
The idea is to start writing code now. Write the code, make sure your concepts work - and before it's been written into a budget and had time allocated to it. With each iteration of the development process, you can bring together more code and more features until you reach a release state.
Some things are better done the Old Way (limited scope project, etc) but for more major development cycles there are better ways.
As far as Linux acceptance, I think many people would be pleasantly surprised how good these new distributions are now a days.
I'm a pretty hardcore Windows desktop user, although I've always been a fan of Linux and I run Linux on the server as much as I can. I recently got a job at this place where they run lots of Linux, have lots of Macs on the network, as well as Windows. I decided to run Linux on my notebook. I don't think I'd ever want to go back to Windows.
I still have to run a Windows VM in order to run some admin tools and such, and I use CrossOver to run MS Office. But this system rocks. I love the desktop cube (it's so damned useful) and I love everything else about it. I haven't encountered one thing I miss from Windows. I can do anything with my iPod, I can use XMarks and sync my bookmarks with my other machines, IBM has a native Linux Notes client.. I just love using this notebook. And whenever I think "Hmm, I wonder if there's a software that can do..." There is.
If I can use it, then any normal home user can. If a home user can switch to a Macintosh, they can switch to Linux just as easily. Either way they can't bring their apps with them; and Gnome has a lot of common UI elements as a Mac (and is often times better.)
I've been impressed as hell using this for the last few months.
Look, I have a mother and a sister with computers and neither of them are computer experts. Awhile back, spyware and junk was a big problem until I got them both to use Firefox. Ever since it has been no problem. Both of them have local admin rights and I only get called when there's a hardware problem (hard disk failure, fan loud, etc.) I don't mind that.
If you can't give them a few points of advice and have them listen, they're taking advantage of you. It's relatively easy to keep a reasonable computer system. Just don't download shit. That's all. They download shit, and they get screwed, and they don't care that you told them not to. If they learned how to make a bowl of cereal, they can NOT download something.
So, take away their admin rights. Make them normal user accounts, and when they want to install something they'll have to ask you.
It will solve 99% of your problems.
Ohh sure, don't buy the $350 remote, Just buy an iPhone for $100 + $70/mo..
I'm sure the Sonos system is nice, and from the enthusiasm here it sounds like it works. However, it's also very expensive. The starter bundle with speakers (one controller, one zone) is $1200.
The original poster was looking for something low cost.
Virtualization isn't one of those things that needs to be proven. It's extremely pervasive and it shows real benefit NOW. One of those benefits is having less people manage a shit ton more servers (virtual ones) than could ever have been done with physical ones.
There's so many more that if you're not convinced by now you're just looking for excuses.
"because virtualization only works for large companies with many, many servers, yet contractors and vendors sell it to any company with a couple of servers"
Not true, about the "Only works for large companies." Sure, I'd never sell a VM system to a company with "a couple of servers" (meaning two) but I will sell it to a small company with 10 servers.
Virtualization isn't that expensive. You can go VMware (more expensive but nice) or Xen (Much cheaper and still nice) or a turnkey solution like Virtual Iron (based on Xen.) Either way, you can consolidate a mish-mash of servers down to two new systems, get better performance, and with things like iSCSI and NFS available on very inexpensive platforms (Windows Storage Server, Linux, small appliances, etc) you can enable advanced features such as fault tolerance and load balancing with nominal costs.
For the same price, or less, than replacing all of your old crap servers with new ones, you could build out a nice little VM system and gain so many advantages. Think of the single admin at a small company tasked with upgrading some shoddy (but VERY IMPORTANT) software app tailored to their specific business. Snapshot. Upgrade. Failed? Undo. Phew! No more 4AM support runs. Clone the machine, try it on a test with support on the phone during the day.
These are things any company can have, big or small.
Thanks for the feedback on the X10. I currently live in an apartment and I was hoping to acquire some X10 stuff I could use there and bring it to a house when I get one eventually.
It sounds like if you're careful setting it up (make sure the transceiver isn't too far from the devices and such) you could get away with an X10 system, barring any hardware failures with the devices themselves.
Thanks for the insight into X10. I have only read about them online and I've wanted to get some units for awhile, but now I'll think twice. I still want to get a few units for my current residence (apartment) but when I move into a house of my own I'll consider all options.
While I'm not electrical engineer I've done plenty of wiring and basic electrical work that I'm not afraid of getting into a system with wiring, but I don't know if I'd be willing to bust up TOO many walls for it. It will depend on the house that I end up with I guess.
Besides X10, there really aren't too many options for wireless control of switches, outlets, etc - unless you're aware of some?
My current home automation system consists of two HandiSwitches =)
I dunno what you're talking about. I've been running Ubuntu at work on my notebook for the past six months, and I'll tell you right now that it's ready for the Desktop. It's been a pure joy using this machine, and the Compiz stuff (notable Desktop Cube) make my life a lot easier.
Sure, I have to run some Windows software - Office specifically. But, it runs great on CrossOver, and other than that, this company uses Notes and IBM has a fully functional Notes client for Linux in a Deb/Ubuntu installable package.
It's been nothing but good news running Ubuntu on this notebook and I look forward to many more years of running Linux as my primary desktop in the years to come.