"...in the hopes of making it the defacto choice of search technologiesused by companies within their products. 'The Lucene search library ranks amongst the top 5 Apache projects... According to Lucid Imagination officials, the Solr search server, which transforms the Lucene search library into a ready-to-use search platform for building applications...
I agree, it could have been more explicit in giving a brief description, but was it really that difficult to glean what it does from the summary?
Is there some reason the version under Linux would be so comparatively fragile?
My understanding is that Silicon Graphics (now SGI) wrote XFS specifically for their hardware which was designed to handle power failures, and would maintain enough power to finish it's current I/O operations. Since almost none (if any) x86 hardware has this built-in feature, XFS isn't as robust as it was on native SGI hardware. I can't find the references for this tibit, though. So take it with a grain of salt. It's just what I remember being told when XFS was first appearing on the Linux scene.
Although, some of the issues that people see on XFS may be due to modified files that haven't been flushed to disk before the system loses power. XFS intentially zeros any unwritten data blocks to avoid possible security issues arising from residual data [1]. I believe XFS also uses out-of-order writes for both meta-data and data so a loss of power could mangle some data.
There are a couple of slightly older, but still well-written, roundups about file system comparions. One here and one here.
I was wondering why it was omitted from this article as well. I believe that it's because JFS just doesn't seem to have the mindshare of ext3, XFS, or even ReiserFS. After reading various filesystem comparisons, I chose it as my FS and I have been using it for over a year without a single issue. I don't have to worry about long fsck times at reboot, my CPU has less load when deleting or copying a large volume of files (virtual machines or CD/DVD isos usually), never had any file loss or corruption, and it seems to complete large file operations quicker than ext3 (what I used previously). There are some things that ext3 does better than JFS, but overall I prefer the advantages of JFS over the advantages of ext3.
I know that if I were to rebuild an older computer that had lower specs, or perhaps a set-top box like MythTV that I wanted to be more power effecient then JFS is going to be my choice for the filesystem.
Do you know exactly which schools they were because, well, it kind of makes a big difference. If they visited private schools (which is most likely), your tax dollars aren't being wasted. And I'm sure that those "Richie Rich" kids probably are paying through the nose in tuition, housing, fees (etc) which is what is covering the costs the lavish (and ludicrous) treatment.
You are not going to find a publicly funded (paid by your tax dollars) school that is that outlandish and extravagant.
Yeah, but if you used 250 gallons of water a month your water bill would be $1000.
Uh... no. You are sorely, sorely mistaken. Most older toilets use about 3 1/2 to 7 gallons per flush. The "Ultra low flush" toilets, the water savers, use 1.6 gallons per flush. The "low-flow" shower heads use 2.5 gallons per minute (or less). And those are the ones that conserve water. IIRC, older ones use about 3.5 gallons per minute. Take a 10 minute shower? That's 20 to 35 gallons of water.
It's been a couple of years since I bought my house, but when I hooked up my city utilities (water, sewage, trash removal) I believe the cap that was quoted to me was 19,000 gallons per month. That amount is included in my monthly fee that totals less than $40. And this is a part of the country where droughts are common. You are really very naive or were actually trolling and successfully baited me.:)
But as for the 250GB a month cap, I do agree that it's more than reasonable. Even if they did advertise "unlimited" before, only a naive or diluted individual would think that there wouldn't be an actual limit where they eventually cut you off. Even the "all you can eat" restaurants will ask you to leave if you really can pack food away. Heck, I just checked my DSL account and I only have a 100GB a month limit and I've never even come close to hitting it. Although, I don't download movies typically.
If you are an individual who uses more than 250GB a month regularly, YOU are the reason the caps are there. You are no longer an "average user" and are no longer subject to "average prices" or "standard service". If you download tons of HD movies, netflix movies, Linux isos, warez, share tons of torrents, etc than you shouldn't complain if an ISP moves you to a higher priced service or you have to find another service that will allow you to use that much bandwidth.
You need to know Java...Corporate IT are basically only interested in hiring Java developers.
That's exactly what I thought 3 years ago when I applied for my current job. I had studied up on my java, bought various books to hone my skills (java is one of my weaker languages), tested my knowledge with free online tests, considered becoming a "Sun Certified Java Developer", etc, etc.
Then I interviewed.
They hired me with a salary that was 27% more than what I had been asking. But not to program in Java. They hired me because I was very strong in C and Perl of which they had a very large code base and fewer developers to maintain (and expand) it. We process credit card transactions and all of our backend code is in C, with the less critical stuff in Perl. Java runs a lot of the web services and a number of front-ends for customers, but it isn't difficult to find a good Java developer. Finding a knowledgeable C developer is becoming harder and harder.
I don't mean to say everyone should rush out and (re)learn C and try to find a job using it, but you can make just as good of a living not programming in Java as you can programming in it. Java is definitely a good tool to have on your belt, but don't confuse it with being the tool.
Maybe they could get this processor could scale down small enough to fit into the Apple iPod Nano. Then Apple could get Robin Williams to be the spokesperson for it and they could advertise it as the "Nano Nano". Or maybe the "Apple Mork". They could even wrap it in a loud looking blue, orange, and yellow protective jacket.
"Mormons" (more correctly Latter-day Saints, at times abbreviated "LDS") practiced polygamy in the 1800's. The practice was outlawed by the LDS church in order for Utah to achieve statehood, which it did some years later in 1896. There are no Mormon polygamists anymore because any practicing polygamists are excommunicated. The nutjobs in Arizona / Texas are Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints (or "FLDS") church members.
FLDS != LDS
It is similar in name only, because given this free country, the founders of the FLDS church were free to do so when naming it. Which just leads to a common source of confusion. It's very likely you were just trolling, but it's worth pointing out for those who genuinely confuse FLDS with LDS.
I work at neither a high school nor a prison, but at a multi-billion dollar company. My wife and I work in the same building, she on one side and me on the other. At my cubicle I often leave my MP3 player or USB drive on my desk for days at a time, sometimes even over the weekends. If I think about it I'll usually stick them in a drawer of my desk, but even then I rarely lock it. But I work with all salaried professionals like other programmers, system administrators, project managers, and management.
My wife on the other hand works right next to our call center that's mainly staffed with high-school and college age kids who couldn't get a better job other than answering phones. Many of them are honest, but you get enough with low morals that she has to keep her desk locked anytime she's away for an extended period of time. Even stupid crap like boxes of Kleenexes, pens, pencils, notepads, and the occasional personal items disappear off her desk.
There has even been people who have walked into the office off the street and walked off with laptops (yes, security was increased). And a few years ago there was a rash of stolen money out of peoples desks on my side of the office. A few of the programmers put up a hidden camera and caught one of the janitorial staff in the act.
I don't think that office theft is all that uncommon. For me in my current situation, I wouldn't feel the need to lock down my laptop like the original question asked about. But if it was the other side of the building where my wife works, I'd be taking my laptop with me or locking it away.
You know, having good hobbies has a lot of merit. It's can be a huge boon to someone who feels like life has lost (or perhaps never had) meaning. Although I personally would have a depressed loved one evaluate other aspects of their life first. When I have suffered from depression "doing nothing" did always seem to make it worse. Just vegging in front of the TV or mindlessly surfing the internet only made me feel like my life had become pointless. What helped me the most was paying very close attention to my moods and recognizing when I was feeling depressed. Being the detail oriented person I am I was able to evaluate what sent me spiraling down and what helped me come out of it, something I'd recommend to anyone who may be struggling with it.
For me, there were three big things that I'd reflect on first if I felt depressed: 1) Was I getting enough sleep or was I intentionally staying up late to watch movies, play video games, etc? Making sure I was at least attempting to get to bed at a decent hour (10-10:30) even if I couldn't fall asleep immediately made the single biggest difference for me. 2) Was I eating healthy or was I consuming lots of burgers and fries, pizza, soda, and general junk food? One big help was when I largely cut caffeine out of my diet, although once in a blue moon I'd have a Mt. Dew with lunch. Eating healthier, limiting junk food and soda (particularly caffinated sodas) helped me naturally feel better and helped me sleep better (see #1) as well. 3) Was I getting good and regular exercise? Going on walks, playing raquetball, playing ultimate frisbee, playing basketball, lifting weights and whatever else got the pulse going really helped to naturally melt away stress.
Those three things, in that order, made the largest difference by far. I know it may seem basic and trivial, but you'll find your physical and mental state are more closely tied than a lot of people realize. And if you are not taking proper care of yourself, you may end up suffering for it in many different ways, depression just being one of them. After that, the following things help a lot too.
4) Provide service to others. This one can be big. A large part of depression is focusing on yourself all the time and every little problem you might have. If you have an elderly neighbor, shovel snow from their driveway or mow their lawn. Volunteer an hour of your time in a local soup kitchen. Join the big brother, big sister program. Find something that you can do for someone else. When you do something for someone else especially something that may be difficult for them to do for themselves, you would not believe how much better you may feel about yourself afterwards. Half of your problems feel like they just fell from your shoulders. 5) As the parent said above, find yourself some hobbies (note, hobbies, plural). A hobby that gets you out of your regular routine is best. If you find yourself stuck inside your house all the time find a hobby that gets you out. Play a sport, lift weights with a friend, join a hobby club (LUG, model airplane building, whatever), learn to play a musical instrument, go on nature walks, read a book (preferably one that isn't depressing), etc. 6) Make sure you are getting out and interacting with people. Get to know your neighbors, go to dinner with friends, if you are religious go to church and interact with your fellow churchgoers, say "Hi" to random strangers. Do what you need to come out of your shell and stop thinking about every little problem you might have.
I'm not saying that each of these six things will help everyone equally but they can definitely help. There is probably at least one thing on the list that someone suffering from depression is not doing, although I'd wager it's likely more than just one.
It snowed 5 inches this morning. So while on my way to work, I was towing a huge load behind my Chevy King-Cab and I was steering with my left hand while hacking the Linux kernel in Vi on my AMD-based laptop with my right. I passed some wussy Ford truck that had spun out while hauling a load 1/2 the size of mine! The poor guy had gotten distracted trying to do an Ctrl-Meta-s for a regular expression search on his Intel-based laptop to find the syntax error in his garbage collection call. I had to hook a tow rope up from my truck to his. So I just towed my huge load, his truck, and his load all throw 5 inches of snow.
Well, no, that's not where it all started. Perhaps you are too young to remember but there was something known as the Iran-Iraq War in which the US (among others) supported Iraq against Iran (with Hussein in power) largely to end the conflict and to attempt to bring stability to the region. But our interest in Iraq probably dates back even further to 1958 when the Iraqi army performed a coup d'etat of the government and became friendly with the Soviet Union.
But if you're talking about modern events only, Hussein invading Kuwait played a major role.
At my last job I was hired to assist in development of a custom application for the company. It was a smaller company which wasn't focused on the IT industry and hence had a very small IT department. Although I was a developer, occasionally I was needed to assist those with computer and software issues. The single biggest culprit and overall royal pain-in-the-butt was ACT. I hate that software. By even mentioning it's name you have re-awoken nightmares in my mind.
I'm not sure there is any software out there that has survived for so long and garnered so many uses and yet is such utter crap as is ACT. Their competitors must be royal screw ups if THEY are the market leaders.
I feel your pain, brother. Weep. It's okay. It doesn't make you less of a man. Well, maybe it does... but at least you'll feel better.
At my last job my company needed to reorganize some of the walls of it's cubicle farm. It was a pretty common occurrence as the company was experiencing a lot of growth in a short period of time. The cubicles were the pretty standard reconfigurable gray walls and could be rearranged to however you needed, but the end of it still needed to be anchored to the wall.
I believe the company always contracted out to the same people to make the needed changes. Well, on one of the days the contractor had sent some people to rearrange the cubicles and among them was a guy who was new on the job. He needed to anchor one of the cubicle walls to a spot on the wall and began drilling. The drilling was really rough going and he was having a time of it (should have been his first and biggest clue). By the time he drilled through there was a nice "psssshhhhh" sound coming from the wall. The genius had just drilled through a gas main and was lucky he hadn't killed us all with a spark from the metal on metal drilling.
So, what does he do? He stands up, slowly walks down the hall, and out the front door. He doesn't tell a soul. He doesn't warn people, he just... leaves.
One of the other employees notices the sound, the smell, and the headache she is getting and runs and tells the secretary who has everyone evacuate the building and and who calls the fire department.
I don't know what happened to the schmuck, or to our companies relationship with the contractor, but I did get to go home at lunch that day. So for me it all worked out in the end.:-) But up to that point we had had no issue with the contractor.
All it takes is one lazy or incompetent employee to make a company look bad.
Well, Slackware jumped from 4 to 7 because Pat got sick and tired of people asking him why Slackware wasn't using "Linux 6.0".
I think it's clear that some other distributions inflated their version numbers for marketing purposes, and I've had to field (way too many times) the question "why isn't yours 6.x" or worse "when will you upgrade to Linux 6.0" which really drives home the effectiveness of this simple trick. With the move to glibc and nearly everyone else using 6.x now, it made sense to go to at least 6.0, just to make it clear to people who don't know anything about Linux that Slackware's libraries, compilers, and other stuff are not 3 major versions behind...I promise I won't inflate the version number again (unless everyone else does again;)
Basically, yes. Public domain means "zero restrictions". You can take code available as public domain, make no changes, market it, sell it, redistribute it as if it was your own code. Of course, the coder next door can do the exact same thing. Very few people release code under this "license", although there are examples.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't need no stinkin' badgers. (UHF)
Just like Linus said "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow", the same holds true here.
Ummm, it wasn't Linus that said that, it was Eric S. Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar
But hey, this kind of proves your point!
The term Crap came from John Crapper the inventor of the Toilet.
The mans name was Thomas Crapper and he didn't invent the toilet. No did the term "crap" come from his last name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Crapper
"...in the hopes of making it the defacto choice of search technologies used by companies within their products. 'The Lucene search library ranks amongst the top 5 Apache projects... According to Lucid Imagination officials, the Solr search server, which transforms the Lucene search library into a ready-to-use search platform for building applications...
I agree, it could have been more explicit in giving a brief description, but was it really that difficult to glean what it does from the summary?
Is there some reason the version under Linux would be so comparatively fragile?
My understanding is that Silicon Graphics (now SGI) wrote XFS specifically for their hardware which was designed to handle power failures, and would maintain enough power to finish it's current I/O operations. Since almost none (if any) x86 hardware has this built-in feature, XFS isn't as robust as it was on native SGI hardware. I can't find the references for this tibit, though. So take it with a grain of salt. It's just what I remember being told when XFS was first appearing on the Linux scene.
Although, some of the issues that people see on XFS may be due to modified files that haven't been flushed to disk before the system loses power. XFS intentially zeros any unwritten data blocks to avoid possible security issues arising from residual data [1]. I believe XFS also uses out-of-order writes for both meta-data and data so a loss of power could mangle some data.
There are a couple of slightly older, but still well-written, roundups about file system comparions. One here and one here.
I was wondering why it was omitted from this article as well. I believe that it's because JFS just doesn't seem to have the mindshare of ext3, XFS, or even ReiserFS. After reading various filesystem comparisons, I chose it as my FS and I have been using it for over a year without a single issue. I don't have to worry about long fsck times at reboot, my CPU has less load when deleting or copying a large volume of files (virtual machines or CD/DVD isos usually), never had any file loss or corruption, and it seems to complete large file operations quicker than ext3 (what I used previously). There are some things that ext3 does better than JFS, but overall I prefer the advantages of JFS over the advantages of ext3.
I know that if I were to rebuild an older computer that had lower specs, or perhaps a set-top box like MythTV that I wanted to be more power effecient then JFS is going to be my choice for the filesystem.
Do you know exactly which schools they were because, well, it kind of makes a big difference. If they visited private schools (which is most likely), your tax dollars aren't being wasted. And I'm sure that those "Richie Rich" kids probably are paying through the nose in tuition, housing, fees (etc) which is what is covering the costs the lavish (and ludicrous) treatment.
You are not going to find a publicly funded (paid by your tax dollars) school that is that outlandish and extravagant.
For crying out loud, we took Celine Dion off your hands for FOUR YEARS. Now you're just asking too much.
Yeah, but if you used 250 gallons of water a month your water bill would be $1000.
Uh... no. You are sorely, sorely mistaken. Most older toilets use about 3 1/2 to 7 gallons per flush. The "Ultra low flush" toilets, the water savers, use 1.6 gallons per flush. The "low-flow" shower heads use 2.5 gallons per minute (or less). And those are the ones that conserve water. IIRC, older ones use about 3.5 gallons per minute. Take a 10 minute shower? That's 20 to 35 gallons of water.
It's been a couple of years since I bought my house, but when I hooked up my city utilities (water, sewage, trash removal) I believe the cap that was quoted to me was 19,000 gallons per month. That amount is included in my monthly fee that totals less than $40. And this is a part of the country where droughts are common. You are really very naive or were actually trolling and successfully baited me. :)
But as for the 250GB a month cap, I do agree that it's more than reasonable. Even if they did advertise "unlimited" before, only a naive or diluted individual would think that there wouldn't be an actual limit where they eventually cut you off. Even the "all you can eat" restaurants will ask you to leave if you really can pack food away. Heck, I just checked my DSL account and I only have a 100GB a month limit and I've never even come close to hitting it. Although, I don't download movies typically.
If you are an individual who uses more than 250GB a month regularly, YOU are the reason the caps are there. You are no longer an "average user" and are no longer subject to "average prices" or "standard service". If you download tons of HD movies, netflix movies, Linux isos, warez, share tons of torrents, etc than you shouldn't complain if an ISP moves you to a higher priced service or you have to find another service that will allow you to use that much bandwidth.
The cheap toilet paper my company buys already has some type of hurtz in it. Like sandpaper hurtz.
You need to know Java...Corporate IT are basically only interested in hiring Java developers.
That's exactly what I thought 3 years ago when I applied for my current job. I had studied up on my java, bought various books to hone my skills (java is one of my weaker languages), tested my knowledge with free online tests, considered becoming a "Sun Certified Java Developer", etc, etc.
Then I interviewed.
They hired me with a salary that was 27% more than what I had been asking. But not to program in Java. They hired me because I was very strong in C and Perl of which they had a very large code base and fewer developers to maintain (and expand) it. We process credit card transactions and all of our backend code is in C, with the less critical stuff in Perl. Java runs a lot of the web services and a number of front-ends for customers, but it isn't difficult to find a good Java developer. Finding a knowledgeable C developer is becoming harder and harder.
I don't mean to say everyone should rush out and (re)learn C and try to find a job using it, but you can make just as good of a living not programming in Java as you can programming in it. Java is definitely a good tool to have on your belt, but don't confuse it with being the tool.
Maybe they could get this processor could scale down small enough to fit into the Apple iPod Nano. Then Apple could get Robin Williams to be the spokesperson for it and they could advertise it as the "Nano Nano". Or maybe the "Apple Mork". They could even wrap it in a loud looking blue, orange, and yellow protective jacket.
Apple fans would still buy it.
"Mormons" (more correctly Latter-day Saints, at times abbreviated "LDS") practiced polygamy in the 1800's. The practice was outlawed by the LDS church in order for Utah to achieve statehood, which it did some years later in 1896. There are no Mormon polygamists anymore because any practicing polygamists are excommunicated. The nutjobs in Arizona / Texas are Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints (or "FLDS") church members.
FLDS != LDS
It is similar in name only, because given this free country, the founders of the FLDS church were free to do so when naming it. Which just leads to a common source of confusion. It's very likely you were just trolling, but it's worth pointing out for those who genuinely confuse FLDS with LDS.
I work at neither a high school nor a prison, but at a multi-billion dollar company. My wife and I work in the same building, she on one side and me on the other. At my cubicle I often leave my MP3 player or USB drive on my desk for days at a time, sometimes even over the weekends. If I think about it I'll usually stick them in a drawer of my desk, but even then I rarely lock it. But I work with all salaried professionals like other programmers, system administrators, project managers, and management.
My wife on the other hand works right next to our call center that's mainly staffed with high-school and college age kids who couldn't get a better job other than answering phones. Many of them are honest, but you get enough with low morals that she has to keep her desk locked anytime she's away for an extended period of time. Even stupid crap like boxes of Kleenexes, pens, pencils, notepads, and the occasional personal items disappear off her desk.
There has even been people who have walked into the office off the street and walked off with laptops (yes, security was increased). And a few years ago there was a rash of stolen money out of peoples desks on my side of the office. A few of the programmers put up a hidden camera and caught one of the janitorial staff in the act.
I don't think that office theft is all that uncommon. For me in my current situation, I wouldn't feel the need to lock down my laptop like the original question asked about. But if it was the other side of the building where my wife works, I'd be taking my laptop with me or locking it away.
You know, having good hobbies has a lot of merit. It's can be a huge boon to someone who feels like life has lost (or perhaps never had) meaning. Although I personally would have a depressed loved one evaluate other aspects of their life first. When I have suffered from depression "doing nothing" did always seem to make it worse. Just vegging in front of the TV or mindlessly surfing the internet only made me feel like my life had become pointless. What helped me the most was paying very close attention to my moods and recognizing when I was feeling depressed. Being the detail oriented person I am I was able to evaluate what sent me spiraling down and what helped me come out of it, something I'd recommend to anyone who may be struggling with it.
For me, there were three big things that I'd reflect on first if I felt depressed:
1) Was I getting enough sleep or was I intentionally staying up late to watch movies, play video games, etc? Making sure I was at least attempting to get to bed at a decent hour (10-10:30) even if I couldn't fall asleep immediately made the single biggest difference for me.
2) Was I eating healthy or was I consuming lots of burgers and fries, pizza, soda, and general junk food? One big help was when I largely cut caffeine out of my diet, although once in a blue moon I'd have a Mt. Dew with lunch. Eating healthier, limiting junk food and soda (particularly caffinated sodas) helped me naturally feel better and helped me sleep better (see #1) as well.
3) Was I getting good and regular exercise? Going on walks, playing raquetball, playing ultimate frisbee, playing basketball, lifting weights and whatever else got the pulse going really helped to naturally melt away stress.
Those three things, in that order, made the largest difference by far. I know it may seem basic and trivial, but you'll find your physical and mental state are more closely tied than a lot of people realize. And if you are not taking proper care of yourself, you may end up suffering for it in many different ways, depression just being one of them. After that, the following things help a lot too.
4) Provide service to others. This one can be big. A large part of depression is focusing on yourself all the time and every little problem you might have. If you have an elderly neighbor, shovel snow from their driveway or mow their lawn. Volunteer an hour of your time in a local soup kitchen. Join the big brother, big sister program. Find something that you can do for someone else. When you do something for someone else especially something that may be difficult for them to do for themselves, you would not believe how much better you may feel about yourself afterwards. Half of your problems feel like they just fell from your shoulders.
5) As the parent said above, find yourself some hobbies (note, hobbies, plural). A hobby that gets you out of your regular routine is best. If you find yourself stuck inside your house all the time find a hobby that gets you out. Play a sport, lift weights with a friend, join a hobby club (LUG, model airplane building, whatever), learn to play a musical instrument, go on nature walks, read a book (preferably one that isn't depressing), etc.
6) Make sure you are getting out and interacting with people. Get to know your neighbors, go to dinner with friends, if you are religious go to church and interact with your fellow churchgoers, say "Hi" to random strangers. Do what you need to come out of your shell and stop thinking about every little problem you might have.
I'm not saying that each of these six things will help everyone equally but they can definitely help. There is probably at least one thing on the list that someone suffering from depression is not doing, although I'd wager it's likely more than just one.
It snowed 5 inches this morning. So while on my way to work, I was towing a huge load behind my Chevy King-Cab and I was steering with my left hand while hacking the Linux kernel in Vi on my AMD-based laptop with my right. I passed some wussy Ford truck that had spun out while hauling a load 1/2 the size of mine! The poor guy had gotten distracted trying to do an Ctrl-Meta-s for a regular expression search on his Intel-based laptop to find the syntax error in his garbage collection call. I had to hook a tow rope up from my truck to his. So I just towed my huge load, his truck, and his load all throw 5 inches of snow.
Well, no, that's not where it all started. Perhaps you are too young to remember but there was something known as the Iran-Iraq War in which the US (among others) supported Iraq against Iran (with Hussein in power) largely to end the conflict and to attempt to bring stability to the region. But our interest in Iraq probably dates back even further to 1958 when the Iraqi army performed a coup d'etat of the government and became friendly with the Soviet Union.
But if you're talking about modern events only, Hussein invading Kuwait played a major role.
As long as Microsoft's practices are hurting distribution of Michael Bay films, I really don't see an issue.
Phasers on stun I'd imagine.
It takes a thief to spot a thief, I suppose.
At my last job I was hired to assist in development of a custom application for the company. It was a smaller company which wasn't focused on the IT industry and hence had a very small IT department. Although I was a developer, occasionally I was needed to assist those with computer and software issues. The single biggest culprit and overall royal pain-in-the-butt was ACT. I hate that software. By even mentioning it's name you have re-awoken nightmares in my mind.
I'm not sure there is any software out there that has survived for so long and garnered so many uses and yet is such utter crap as is ACT. Their competitors must be royal screw ups if THEY are the market leaders.
I feel your pain, brother. Weep. It's okay. It doesn't make you less of a man. Well, maybe it does... but at least you'll feel better.
At my last job my company needed to reorganize some of the walls of it's cubicle farm. It was a pretty common occurrence as the company was experiencing a lot of growth in a short period of time. The cubicles were the pretty standard reconfigurable gray walls and could be rearranged to however you needed, but the end of it still needed to be anchored to the wall.
:-) But up to that point we had had no issue with the contractor.
I believe the company always contracted out to the same people to make the needed changes. Well, on one of the days the contractor had sent some people to rearrange the cubicles and among them was a guy who was new on the job. He needed to anchor one of the cubicle walls to a spot on the wall and began drilling. The drilling was really rough going and he was having a time of it (should have been his first and biggest clue). By the time he drilled through there was a nice "psssshhhhh" sound coming from the wall. The genius had just drilled through a gas main and was lucky he hadn't killed us all with a spark from the metal on metal drilling.
So, what does he do? He stands up, slowly walks down the hall, and out the front door. He doesn't tell a soul. He doesn't warn people, he just... leaves.
One of the other employees notices the sound, the smell, and the headache she is getting and runs and tells the secretary who has everyone evacuate the building and and who calls the fire department.
I don't know what happened to the schmuck, or to our companies relationship with the contractor, but I did get to go home at lunch that day. So for me it all worked out in the end.
All it takes is one lazy or incompetent employee to make a company look bad.
Well, as long as they aren't using the nuclear reactor to browse warez sites, I think we will be fine.
But even with that, Slackware has had far more than 12 versions. Try 30.
12.0, 11.0, 10.2, 10.1, 10.0, 9.1, 9.0, 8.1, 8.0, 7.1, 7.0, 4.0, 3.9, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0, 2.3, 2.2.0, 2.0.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.0, 1.0.4, 1.0.3, 1.0.2, 1.0.1, 1.0
If you count the first number as "primary" releases, Slack has had 10. But there can be significant changes even in point releases.
I do love Slack, even though I'm no longer using it as my primary desktop.
Basically, yes. Public domain means "zero restrictions". You can take code available as public domain, make no changes, market it, sell it, redistribute it as if it was your own code. Of course, the coder next door can do the exact same thing. Very few people release code under this "license", although there are examples.
SQLite comes to mind.