Go to Ancestry.com, or any of the genealogy web sites, and you can find all of my relatives. My friends, well, there are over 200 of them listed...have fun figuring out which are close and which are not. But I doubt any of them are concerned about being my friend, or being known as my friend.
Look, most of that info is available already. Use a credit card? debit card? store affinity card (ie one of those discount or collect points cards)...use any of those, and they already have that information.
Besides, how do you know my name is really Farrell McGovern? Forums like this one allow you to choose and enter anything you like. For all you know, I could be Elvis Presley, or Barack Obama posting from this Blackberry!
There are many ways of keeping your privacy level high...complaining on Slashdot is not one of them.:)
No, I *don't* post things that I want to keep private on Facebook.
But things that I have no chance of keeping private, or don't care if they become public, I have no problem posting there.
For example, you might be able to find my cell phone number there, but my carrier allows me to change that number any time I want for free. What you won't find there or anywhere on the Internet is my home number.
Manage your own information flow, don't let the flow manage you!
You are more of a fool than most then. When it is a choice between shareholder profits and your privacy, you privacy looses every time. And that is by LAW. If a company doesn't do every thing in it's power to make money, the shareholders can sue the people running the company. Until *that* is changed, any amount of privacy you may think you have is an illusion.
First of all, security is not a destination, it's a process. You can never reach a destination called "security". Privacy is the same type of thing. You can never achieve privacy, only increase it, or decrease it. It's always a multi-point balancing system where things like ease of access, functionality, and popularity, among others, are balanced in regards to how they increase or decrease privacy.
Sure, I might be loosing a bit of privacy using Facebook, but really, none of the information that I post there is anything I would be afraid or ashamed of handing out flyers containing that same info on a street corner. If you are putting your phone number up on it, it is just like having a listed phone number in the phone book. Same goes for your address. Ever posted a resume to a job listing site? All of your employment history is there.
This is not to say that Facebook is blameless, but like any public forum, treat the information you post there as if you were putting it up on a clear and open page on the internet that anyone can read or find in a simple Google search, and you will preserve an important amount of privacy.
The other thing to think about it security. I used to support a medium sized school district years ago running Novell Netware and IBM's AN/ICLASS software. It was the most challenging environment because Murphy LOVES high school computer systems! Things will break if they can, and students will break them if it's possible. Viruses were rampant, and more often than not, the students knew more than the teachers. Now, I know that the last one has gotten somewhat better, but it still is a problem.
Just from the virus problem alone, I would recommend that people use Linux because it takes a lot more to crack a well secured Linux system(s) than a Windows or Mac...as various security competitions have shown. Another good one to consider is that you don't have to worry about people stealing licensed software, or the licensing information to run the softwares at home, there by eliminating a possible legal liability.
But I am not talking about flavours of *nix, but Distributions built up Linux. Remember, Linux is *only* the kernel, everything beyond that is a Distribution. So Distros all have the same low level interfaces and system calls, assuming they are using a similar vintage of kernel.
But the same kernel you run on a nPar or vPar of a Superdome is the same kernel you run on a Palm Pre, just with different options enabled.
The real story about HP's purchase of of Palm is that now they have access to versions of Linux that run on everything from their SuperDome Supercomputer all the way down to cell phones. It's been the dream of HP for a long time to have one operating system that runs across the whole range of hardware that HP sells.
So I can see they would cancel the Windows 7 based Slate, and will probably replace it with a WebOS based Slate. Contrary to the obviously less than clued in article says, it's all Linux, be it Android, Chrome or WebOS.
A totally free system is like perfection...nice idea, but you never quite can reach it. Just like your communism. Nice idea on paper, doesn't work in practice.
Like it or not, until we all become Angels, we are going to need government to mediate commerce, medical care, and just about everything else in life. When most of America gets it through their thick heads that you can't have 0% Taxation, and still provide roads, schools, a military to defend us, health care for all of us and all of the wonderful things that only work as Government, but not as a Corporation, will we stop idolizing airheads like Bush and Palin.
I'm all for Free Markets and Capitalism, but the US doesn't have that. It has a system where those who have the most amount of money seek to make even more money, and those who are not in that financial class get screwed. That would not happen in a truly free market. All the potential employees would not work for that company. But as I said, the US doesn't have a free market...so unless we totally change the society, the government has to create laws to make it the system work fairly for everyone.
I saw it, and wrote about it...maybe even here on Slashdot...I have been around here a while...considering I am user number 563....so I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
Very true! I remember this one job posting asking for 10 years experience with JAVA, when it had only existed as a product for 5 years! I think part of the problem is that IT people don't hire IT people in large companies, its the HR people. And HR people game the system to make themselves look the best, not hire the best people for the job.
I think they should investigate the sending of IT jobs off-shore...It should be considered unethical if a company lays off an IT person, then ship their job to China, for example. Nothing against China, or any other country, but when you ship all of that expertise elsewhere, you handicap innovation in your country. That's stupid.
Agreed, it could be MFM,or RLL, but come on, a 10 Meg drive being a RLL drive? If it was a 25 Meg, or some other odd number like that, sure. But it's almost certainly an MFM drive. Yes, you can fiddle with the cluster size, and 10 meg drives had a problem with their default cluster size being huge. I remember using a debug call to go in and low-level reformat to cut down the size of the clusters since Fido BBSs originally stored ever message as it's own file...so the overhead (ie, unused part of a cluster) was obscene! Later on, Spin-Rite came along, and would adjust the cluster size, and interleave of the drive to best optimize for speed. But this is before Spin-Rite. Actually, thinking about it, the WD8002 was the MFM controller, and the WD8006 was the RLL version of the controller...both used 16 Bit slots.
Geepers, people...a non-Compaq 8086 system from that era would almost certainly have an ST-506 interface hard drive, not IDE! Those old hard drives were built like tanks, and tend to keep their data. If you can't get the system running, you can probably dig up some old 286 system, or even a *Pentium* system, and plug an 8 or 16 ST506 hard drive card, like the old Western Digital W8006, and access the data that way. A ST-506 drive will have three cables connecting it...one for power, one (the fat ribbon cable) for control, and the last one (skinny ribbon cable) for data. JUST MAKE SURE THAT THE PIN 1s LINED UP OTHERWISE YOU CAN BLOW THE DRIVE, CONTROLLER, AND MAYBE EVEN THE COMPUTER. If the cable is not "keyed", that is, has a vertical piece of plastic to make sure pin 1 connects to pin 1 on the edge connector, you have to figure out which is pin 1 on the cable...If it is a grey cable with a red strip on one side, that is pin 1, which should connect to the edge connector side that has the notch in it. If you have a braided, multi-color cable...sorry, you will have to figure it out yourself.
Of course, if you really want to be paranoid, and have the money, contact an old hard drive recovery company like On-Track, and they should be able to hoover all of the data off for you, and give it to you in an easy to read format.
Actually, the flying disk goes way back to before the 16th century...it is called a Chakram, and we have seen it recently in popular culture as Xena's weapon of choice, that flying disk of hers is a real, ancient and deadly weapon. The Sikhs of India used it to great effect against their enemies, it being deadly at great distances, as well as very accurate. This page has a good write up of the objects: http://www.flight-toys.com/rings/chackrum.html
Like too many things, an MBA simply means you know how to study and pass tests, not that you learned anything. Ask an MBA what ITIL is a year after their degree, and half of them probably won't remember what it is!
Look you don't need an engineering degree to write code that follows the best practicess in the industry. And I certainly wrote my stuff to the standards of the day, complete with 3rd party code reviews. That code that I wrote was used all over the world in Kiosks at all of the major computer trade shows. A modified version was also used to sell films and TV series in the North American markets. I may not be the worlds greated programmer, but I wrote solid code!
Most managers do not realize that writing code is a *CREATIVE* endeavour...it's not an matter of simply putting parts together like a worker on an assembly line! Some of my best coding was done at 3 am, all the lights out except for my monitor, stereo blasting Ministry's Psalm 69 at just under ear-bleed levels. Most people couldn't code in that environment, in fact, most people would have a hard time even *thinking* in that environment...but for me, it was pure code heaven.
Yes, actually. For those who still have jobs. Remember, those workers were not the ones designing crap quality cars, and paying hundreds of millions of dollars of bonuses to execs who basically did nothing but not do badly that year. One year's worth of exec bonuses at the Big 3 would pay for all of the benefits of the UAW workers for the next 10 years.
Back in the olden days of Computers...like 10 years ago...I was one of the many who was against unionization of IT workers. Now, having been badly treated by both small companies, and one of the largest single-digit level manufacturers of computers, I see that I was wrong. Today's 'sweatshops' are in computer assembly factories, and in call centers. They both use Skinner like systems with seemingly random rewards and punishments to keep people in line.
These days, digging ditches is a more profitable and satisfying job...fully unionized, with guaranteed vacation and benefits, and a grievance system that actually works!
Actually, that is not true. Canada has some of the most advanced, and ancient Nuclear Reactors in the World...The Montreal and later Chalk River labs contributed significantly to the Manhattan Project. So Canada is really one of the top pioneering countries in the World in atomic energy. But Canada never built a bomb. What bombs Canada did have were American bombs, and have been given back to the US by the 1980s. Canada doesn't want the bomb.
Well, the number I usually hear in the industry is 1 SysAdmin per:
10 Windows Servers 100 Unix/Linux servers
I think that the numbers are little low, and maybe too idealistic...Depending on the application, I could *easily* see one competent SysAdmin managing at least three times those numbers. Of Course, that is the rub, a competent SysAdmin. A *good* SysAdmin could probably increase the original numbers by a factor of ten. But then you start running into the "run over by a bus" syndrome...if a *good* SysAdmin can do that, what happens if they get run over by a bus? Many times companies take too much advantage of a *good* SysAdmin, and then when they leave/burnout/get hit by a bus, they spend months (years?) trying to replace that person with just one body, when the reality is that they may need two, three or more people to replace a *good* SysAdmin. I watched it happen at a company I worked for...when I left, they kept on burning out SysAdmins, and every two or three months, they would be advertising for a replacement SysAdmin. Oh, yes, I was also doing development work in addition to my SysAdmin duties. A Co-work's opinion was that it would take at least 3 people to replace me.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you, that is a fantastic link!
ttyl
Farrell
Go to Ancestry.com, or any of the genealogy web sites, and you can find all of my relatives. My friends, well, there are over 200 of them listed...have fun figuring out which are close and which are not. But I doubt any of them are concerned about being my friend, or being known as my friend.
Look, most of that info is available already. Use a credit card? debit card? store affinity card (ie one of those discount or collect points cards)...use any of those, and they already have that information.
Besides, how do you know my name is really Farrell McGovern? Forums like this one allow you to choose and enter anything you like. For all you know, I could be Elvis Presley, or Barack Obama posting from this Blackberry!
There are many ways of keeping your privacy level high...complaining on Slashdot is not one of them. :)
ttyl
B/a/r/a/c/k/ Farrell
No, I *don't* post things that I want to keep private on Facebook.
But things that I have no chance of keeping private, or don't care if they become public, I have no problem posting there.
For example, you might be able to find my cell phone number there, but my carrier allows me to change that number any time I want for free. What you won't find there or anywhere on the Internet is my home number.
Manage your own information flow, don't let the flow manage you!
That's why I am a cyberpunk.
ttyl
Farrell
You are more of a fool than most then. When it is a choice between shareholder profits and your privacy, you privacy looses every time. And that is by LAW. If a company doesn't do every thing in it's power to make money, the shareholders can sue the people running the company. Until *that* is changed, any amount of privacy you may think you have is an illusion.
ttyl
Farrell
First of all, security is not a destination, it's a process. You can never reach a destination called "security". Privacy is the same type of thing. You can never achieve privacy, only increase it, or decrease it. It's always a multi-point balancing system where things like ease of access, functionality, and popularity, among others, are balanced in regards to how they increase or decrease privacy.
Sure, I might be loosing a bit of privacy using Facebook, but really, none of the information that I post there is anything I would be afraid or ashamed of handing out flyers containing that same info on a street corner. If you are putting your phone number up on it, it is just like having a listed phone number in the phone book. Same goes for your address. Ever posted a resume to a job listing site? All of your employment history is there.
This is not to say that Facebook is blameless, but like any public forum, treat the information you post there as if you were putting it up on a clear and open page on the internet that anyone can read or find in a simple Google search, and you will preserve an important amount of privacy.
ttyl
Farrell
The other thing to think about it security. I used to support a medium sized school district years ago running Novell Netware and IBM's AN/ICLASS software. It was the most challenging environment because Murphy LOVES high school computer systems! Things will break if they can, and students will break them if it's possible. Viruses were rampant, and more often than not, the students knew more than the teachers. Now, I know that the last one has gotten somewhat better, but it still is a problem.
Just from the virus problem alone, I would recommend that people use Linux because it takes a lot more to crack a well secured Linux system(s) than a Windows or Mac...as various security competitions have shown. Another good one to consider is that you don't have to worry about people stealing licensed software, or the licensing information to run the softwares at home, there by eliminating a possible legal liability.
ttyl
Farrell
But I am not talking about flavours of *nix, but Distributions built up Linux. Remember, Linux is *only* the kernel, everything beyond that is a Distribution. So Distros all have the same low level interfaces and system calls, assuming they are using a similar vintage of kernel.
But the same kernel you run on a nPar or vPar of a Superdome is the same kernel you run on a Palm Pre, just with different options enabled.
ttyl
Farrell
The real story about HP's purchase of of Palm is that now they have access to versions of Linux that run on everything from their SuperDome Supercomputer all the way down to cell phones. It's been the dream of HP for a long time to have one operating system that runs across the whole range of hardware that HP sells.
So I can see they would cancel the Windows 7 based Slate, and will probably replace it with a WebOS based Slate. Contrary to the obviously less than clued in article says, it's all Linux, be it Android, Chrome or WebOS.
ttyl
Farrell
A totally free system is like perfection...nice idea, but you never quite can reach it. Just like your communism. Nice idea on paper, doesn't work in practice.
Like it or not, until we all become Angels, we are going to need government to mediate commerce, medical care, and just about everything else in life. When most of America gets it through their thick heads that you can't have 0% Taxation, and still provide roads, schools, a military to defend us, health care for all of us and all of the wonderful things that only work as Government, but not as a Corporation, will we stop idolizing airheads like Bush and Palin.
I'm all for Free Markets and Capitalism, but the US doesn't have that. It has a system where those who have the most amount of money seek to make even more money, and those who are not in that financial class get screwed. That would not happen in a truly free market. All the potential employees would not work for that company. But as I said, the US doesn't have a free market...so unless we totally change the society, the government has to create laws to make it the system work fairly for everyone.
I saw it, and wrote about it...maybe even here on Slashdot...I have been around here a while...considering I am user number 563....so I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
Very true! I remember this one job posting asking for 10 years experience with JAVA, when it had only existed as a product for 5 years! I think part of the problem is that IT people don't hire IT people in large companies, its the HR people. And HR people game the system to make themselves look the best, not hire the best people for the job.
I think they should investigate the sending of IT jobs off-shore...It should be considered unethical if a company lays off an IT person, then ship their job to China, for example. Nothing against China, or any other country, but when you ship all of that expertise elsewhere, you handicap innovation in your country. That's stupid.
Agreed, it could be MFM ,or RLL, but come on, a 10 Meg drive being a RLL drive? If it was a 25 Meg, or some other odd number like that, sure. But it's almost certainly an MFM drive. Yes, you can fiddle with the cluster size, and 10 meg drives had a problem with their default cluster size being huge. I remember using a debug call to go in and low-level reformat to cut down the size of the clusters since Fido BBSs originally stored ever message as it's own file...so the overhead (ie, unused part of a cluster) was obscene! Later on, Spin-Rite came along, and would adjust the cluster size, and interleave of the drive to best optimize for speed. But this is before Spin-Rite. Actually, thinking about it, the WD8002 was the MFM controller, and the WD8006 was the RLL version of the controller...both used 16 Bit slots.
ttyl
Farrell
Geepers, people...a non-Compaq 8086 system from that era would almost certainly have an ST-506 interface hard drive, not IDE! Those old hard drives were built like tanks, and tend to keep their data. If you can't get the system running, you can probably dig up some old 286 system, or even a *Pentium* system, and plug an 8 or 16 ST506 hard drive card, like the old Western Digital W8006, and access the data that way. A ST-506 drive will have three cables connecting it...one for power, one (the fat ribbon cable) for control, and the last one (skinny ribbon cable) for data. JUST MAKE SURE THAT THE PIN 1s LINED UP OTHERWISE YOU CAN BLOW THE DRIVE, CONTROLLER, AND MAYBE EVEN THE COMPUTER. If the cable is not "keyed", that is, has a vertical piece of plastic to make sure pin 1 connects to pin 1 on the edge connector, you have to figure out which is pin 1 on the cable...If it is a grey cable with a red strip on one side, that is pin 1, which should connect to the edge connector side that has the notch in it. If you have a braided, multi-color cable...sorry, you will have to figure it out yourself.
Of course, if you really want to be paranoid, and have the money, contact an old hard drive recovery company like On-Track, and they should be able to hoover all of the data off for you, and give it to you in an easy to read format.
ttyl
Farrell
Actually, the flying disk goes way back to before the 16th century...it is called a Chakram, and we have seen it recently in popular culture as Xena's weapon of choice, that flying disk of hers is a real, ancient and deadly weapon. The Sikhs of India used it to great effect against their enemies, it being deadly at great distances, as well as very accurate. This page has a good write up of the objects: http://www.flight-toys.com/rings/chackrum.html
ttyl
Farrell
Nexus was in common usage before Mr. Dick wrote DADOES...Here's what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary says:
Main Entry: nexus
Pronunciation: \nek-ss\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural nexuses \-s-sz\ or nexus \-ss, -süs\
Etymology: Latin, from nectere to bind
Date: 1663
1 : connection, link; also : a causal link
2 : a connected group or series
3 : center, focus
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Nexus
I think that any of the three definitions can fit a cell phone.
ttyl
Farrell
Like too many things, an MBA simply means you know how to study and pass tests, not that you learned anything. Ask an MBA what ITIL is a year after their degree, and half of them probably won't remember what it is!
ttyl
Farrell
Look you don't need an engineering degree to write code that follows the best practicess in the industry. And I certainly wrote my stuff to the standards of the day, complete with 3rd party code reviews. That code that I wrote was used all over the world in Kiosks at all of the major computer trade shows. A modified version was also used to sell films and TV series in the North American markets. I may not be the worlds greated programmer, but I wrote solid code!
ttyl
Farrell
The way to Succeed, and the way to Suck Eggs...
-A. Crowley
Most managers do not realize that writing code is a *CREATIVE* endeavour...it's not an matter of simply putting parts together like a worker on an assembly line! Some of my best coding was done at 3 am, all the lights out except for my monitor, stereo blasting Ministry's Psalm 69 at just under ear-bleed levels. Most people couldn't code in that environment, in fact, most people would have a hard time even *thinking* in that environment...but for me, it was pure code heaven.
ttyl
Farrell
Yes, actually. For those who still have jobs. Remember, those workers were not the ones designing crap quality cars, and paying hundreds of millions of dollars of bonuses to execs who basically did nothing but not do badly that year. One year's worth of exec bonuses at the Big 3 would pay for all of the benefits of the UAW workers for the next 10 years.
ttyl
Farrell
Back in the olden days of Computers...like 10 years ago...I was one of the many who was against unionization of IT workers. Now, having been badly treated by both small companies, and one of the largest single-digit level manufacturers of computers, I see that I was wrong. Today's 'sweatshops' are in computer assembly factories, and in call centers. They both use Skinner like systems with seemingly random rewards and punishments to keep people in line.
These days, digging ditches is a more profitable and satisfying job...fully unionized, with guaranteed vacation and benefits, and a grievance system that actually works!
ttyl ...note, I don't dig ditches.
Farrell
Actually, that is not true. Canada has some of the most advanced, and ancient Nuclear Reactors in the World...The Montreal and later Chalk River labs contributed significantly to the Manhattan Project. So Canada is really one of the top pioneering countries in the World in atomic energy. But Canada never built a bomb. What bombs Canada did have were American bombs, and have been given back to the US by the 1980s. Canada doesn't want the bomb.
ttyl
Farrell
Well, the number I usually hear in the industry is 1 SysAdmin per:
10 Windows Servers
100 Unix/Linux servers
I think that the numbers are little low, and maybe too idealistic...Depending on the application, I could *easily* see one competent SysAdmin managing at least three times those numbers. Of Course, that is the rub, a competent SysAdmin. A *good* SysAdmin could probably increase the original numbers by a factor of ten. But then you start running into the "run over by a bus" syndrome...if a *good* SysAdmin can do that, what happens if they get run over by a bus? Many times companies take too much advantage of a *good* SysAdmin, and then when they leave/burnout/get hit by a bus, they spend months (years?) trying to replace that person with just one body, when the reality is that they may need two, three or more people to replace a *good* SysAdmin. I watched it happen at a company I worked for...when I left, they kept on burning out SysAdmins, and every two or three months, they would be advertising for a replacement SysAdmin. Oh, yes, I was also doing development work in addition to my SysAdmin duties. A Co-work's opinion was that it would take at least 3 people to replace me.
ttyl
Farrell