Having administered computer labs running both Linux and Solaris, I think you'll find that software is less important than hardware. PC hardware tends to be cheap and inconsistent - I have not encountered any PC hardware that gives the day-to-day reliability of even a crappy Sun like an Ultra 5. In terms of Software, you just get a lot more out of the box with Linux that you will spend weeks downloading and compiling on Solaris. For example, KDE, GNOME, a modern version of perl, StarOffice, etc. all come stock with a Linux distro, but have to be added to Solaris.
On the other hand, there's no reason you have to run Linux on Intel. You could get Macs, as one person suggested, or even load Linux on Solaris. Of course, if you get Macs, why not run OSX? Frankly, I think OSX is the nicest UNIX variant out at the moment, it runs everything you'd expect UNIX to run, AND it has two important bonuses for your purposes: (1) Microsoft Office available and (2) the NextStep programming environment (Cocoa), which is widely regarded as one of the finest ever made. It is also very managable, includes good and robust Java support, and Apple does a good job with updates and the like.
There are two basic elements of touch typing. One is to learn where all the keys are - you already have this. The second is to learn to use all your fingers to type - this you lack. Just spend a few days typing, consciously focusing on keeping your pointer fingers on f & j, and you will pretty soon be touch typing.
Both GTA and LOTR are equally valid works of art that utilize violence to tell a story. You just don't like GTA.
I wouldn't particularly say that GTA is not "art" of a sort. But it is certainly not what I consider to be "good art" - nor do I think many with very finely developed sensibilities would consider GTA to be good art. The thing is that I'm willing to sacrifice something - i.e. exposing my kids to violence - for good art. But why should I sacrifice anything to perpetuate bad art? Why should I even bother exposing myself to bad art?
Look - you can look at whatever you want, and I won't try to stop you. And I think that the writers of GTA have the right to splatter as much gore across the screen as they like. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to expose my kids to it, and I frankly see no harm in "labeling" this kind of banal shock art to make it easier for parents to make decisions. I would be more troubled if such labeling were extended to works with genuine artistic value. E.g. I think that Ginsburg's howl is a great piece of art, and it would be entirely inappropriate to try to prevent one's older chidlren from reading it. OTOH, I see no need to extend myself to protect bawdy limericks such as "there once was a man from nantucket."
Ultimately, The responsibility is with the parents - however, while you have the freedom to publish crap, I don't think there is any corresponding freedom to publish crap without having it labeled as such. It is adequately demonstrated that excessive violence can have a deleterious effect on children. So, Gov't has a legitimate and compelling need to help parents protect their children from it so long as that does not establish a real and established chilling effect.
Personally, I would not even extend any effort to get government to label video games, since I don't think government is the solution to much of anything. However, in the same breath, I frankly don't care if they do label videogames, "gangsta rap", or TV shows. The case that the labels are substantively equivalent to censorship has simply not been made.
I usually select a random/24 in the 10.0 range. I've found that things sometimes get weird when using vpn tunnels between networks with identical net numbers (i.e. 192.168.1.x), and I often use pptp tunnels to get access to various networks. By using the 10.0 range, and setting a different subnet number for each network I use, I avoid this problem. There's no reason you couldn't do the same on 172.16.
humans are a violent species -- we're wired for physical violence from head to toes. one would think that we would rather kids excercise their violence through video games than through other people.
You know, you seem to have absorbed the pop psychology attitude that all represion is bad. Therefore, you assume that the way to get kids to be less violent is to give them an "outlet" - i.e. video games. Unfortunately, the facts aren't with you. The exercise of violence begets more violence, the restraint of violence begets peace. A kid who plays a violent video game doesn't "let it out of his system." He develops an addiction to the adrenalin rush of aggression.
Excessively violent games make kid's violent, so should be banned.
Excessively violent kids play excessively violent games, so those who play such games obsessively should be watched.
Somehow, I suspect you would not be comfortable with either conclusion.
Let me put it to you another way: I have four kids under six. Recently, they discovered Tom and Jerry. Since they discovered Tom and Jerry, I've noticed a distinctive change in their play - they've become more aggressive, they've started smacking each other with blunt objects and laughing, etc. Now, there are two possibilities: either Tom and Jerry unmasked latent violent issues already present in my kids, or Tom and Jerry caused them to be violent.
Either way, the cause is "Tom and Jerry" and the solution is to turn off the damn TV. The hell of it is, in my belief system, everyone has violent tendencies to be unmasked. (This belief would also tend to be confirmed by most psychological findings I've seen.) They may be close to the surface, on the surface, or deeply buried, but they're there. Whether this is because we're all neurotic or because we're all victims of sin I'll leave up to you. In either case, anything that brings that latent violence closer to the surface is potentially a bad thing. And, like it or not, violent TV and games seem to unmask latent violence.
Is Tom and Jerry or Grand Theft Auto really too much to give up so my two year old doesn't smack my five year old with a broom? I don't think so. Is Lord of the Rings too much to give up? Hell yes. The difference is that, in one case, violence is put out in a very unrealistic way - no consequences, no real victims. In the other, violence is associated with suffering. In one case, we have art, and in the other we have a kind of macabre, violent masturbation trying to ride on the coat-tails of art. It's like the difference between a great nude photograph and porn - one revels in the beauty of the human body, the other just seeks to possess it.
And, No, I don't have any problem making that judgment. If you do, maybe your palate has been burned off by constant exposure to the esthetic equivalent of MD20/20, and you should try to clear it a bit?
As an observation, it seems to me that many on Slashdot are in flat-out denial of the effects of playing video games on children. Again and again, Slashdot has posted results showing that video games do predispose kids to violent behavior. Yet, when these stories are posted, they are always accompanied with faint hints that they are not to be believed. In this case, it is only "claimed" that video games dispose kids to violence - not "shown" or "suggested".
It's time to wake up and smell the gore, folks. You can't divide your personality between unpent aggresion in the electronic world and turn around and be a nice, happy guy the rest of the time. And, in years and years of reading Slashdot, I have yet to see a *single* study that suggested otherwise.
The word "militia" in 18th century english referred to all the able-bodied men of the state who could be called upon to defend her in the event of attack. The debate of the first ammendment and the Virginia bill of rights (upon which the 1st ammendment is based) make this clear.
The intent of this ammendment was not to place power in the hands of state governments, but to ensure that congress could not do what had been done in e.g. Ireland, and forbid ordinary citizens from bearing arms, thereby eliminating the "right" of the people to rebel against the government in the event it became oppressive. When you think "Militia", you need to think "minute-men", not "national guard."
Regarding the more important question here, viz. "What do I say about THIS in an interview?", the key question is were you officially terminated, was your contract canceled, or were you asked to quit? It makes an enormous difference. If you were officially terminated, and your next employer asks, you will have to tell them the truth. If your contract was "canceled", you should just say that you "came to the end of the contract." Most interviewers will leave it there, especially in this economy. If you were asked to quit, say "I quit, for reasons I must keep confidential." If they press in either of the latter cases, you can stick to confidentiality, and maybe mention that the contract was terminated through no fault of your own.
It is *highly* unlikely that this company will reveal anything regarding the nature of the incident to any other company. Most companies of any size have a "neutral reference policy" that allows them only to say "yes, he worked here from date x to date y." I would suggest not using your manager as a reference, but I would not suggest saying that your new employer may not contact them, since they probably won't tell anything damaging and to refuse the right to contact will damage you.
As far as getting your job back, forget it. That's the problem with being a contractor - it's easier to get rid of you than deal with you.
(p.s. Don't tell anybody, but I have a degree in HR -- easiest B.S. to get in a hurry -- so I'm not totally blowing smoke here, although I've never worked in the field.)
Robert Heinlein (the greatest SF writer of all time, so PFFFT!) made this a major theme of many of his later works -- most likely, he was worried about his own impending death. The first in this series was of course the Novella Methuselah's Children. The theme was dealt with most explicitly in "Time Enough for Love", and to a lesser extent in "I Will Fear No Evil." Heinlein (as a result of impending dementia I think) spent many of his later books tying everything together, so the subject is touched on in The Cat Who Could Walk Through Walls, Number of the Beast, etc.
How 'bout a "fix" that changes a random semicolon (";") to a colon (":") every ten thousand lines or so? Perhaps we could also change the right brace ("}") to a paren (")"). Once upon a time, in my mispent college computer lab days, I had such a thing.
I've decided to file a patent for "using a numeric error code to indicate a failed transaction in the HTTP protocol." That way, I can nail every web server in the world for a $10 licensing fee and get outrageously rich!
Muahahahah!
Former perl, python, java geek gone to Ruby
on
Ruby 1.8.0 Released
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· Score: 4, Interesting
For what it's worth, I've been using ruby for about six months, and am totally hooked. It is easily the best language I've ever used. Things that are idiosyncratic and difficult in other languages just flow in ruby. There are also many features to facilitate the way you actually *use* objects (e.g. to do object attributes, all you have to do is add "attr_writer attribute1, attribute2, attribute3" and "attr_reader attribute1, attribute2, attribute3") to the class defs. No more endless get and set functions all of which are more or less identical!
This language is definitely worth a look. It's not just a python knock-off, as many have supposed -- it offers features python doesn't.
This is horseshit. First of all it is impossible, if most people in the economy were on welfare they would be no economy. Where would these companies get money to build and maintain the robots? I don't disagree that there will probably be a lot of automated systems in the near future, but this article is just stupid.
No, actually, it's been done. Starting in the first century, Rome became increasingly dependent upon incomes from the colonies. Most actual work was done by slaves from the conquests, and there was a large tenent class who were more or less depended on gov't welfare to live. They were called the mob, and most emperors more or less pandered to them with "bread and circuses" since they were seen as a crucial power base for the imperator. In fact, the "office" (not really an office, but whatever) of imperator was more or less created at the mob's demand. (This is oversimplifying, but basically true.)
Rome managed to get along for 500 years in this way before it finally fell. What held it up was the influx of tribute and slaves from the provinces. Once Rome ran out of convenient places to conquer, the system began to break down. America is very much like Rome in this respect: look at our balance of trade. The question is, how long will the world be willing to support an indolent military/economic overlord - not "how long can America's economy support an indolent class"?
Perhaps the balloon could be run teathered? If you could compress enough helium (into tanks) to give it a small negative lift, it wouldn't necessarily take an enormously strong cable to pull it back to the launch pad.
Dvorak, in addition to his two-hand keyboard, also created left and right one-hand keyboards. Most likely, you can just reset your layout in the OS. Might want some keycaps to help you learn it though.
I would gladly take a pay cut to get a 30 hour work week. Unfortunately, in any "real" job, they want to own you, which means full time, 40 hours a week. So, my choice is between forty plus hours of week for a six figure income, or McDonalds. Kind of sucks.
I used to feel that way...
on
Jaguar is Over
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· Score: 1
I used to feel this way... then, I realized something: Apple sells the hardware, and OS X only (well, almost only) runs on Apple hardware. So, if they started doing upgrade pricing, virtually *everyone* would get the upgrade. Also, bear in mind that they are developing a full-blown OS, easily comparable to MS, for a small fraction of the market that MS has. It's a wonder that it's comparable in price, much less cheaper.
Are you really sure that you want to permanently alter your body? REALLY sure? There is a *reason* they call it permanent. And, for the most part, body "adornments" are pretty stinking ugly. Especially cheek and eye-brow piercings... ugh. And tattoos are rarely very artistically executed - (there are, of course, exceptions.)
This was tried before - in the late eighties, Reagan (or was it Bush I) raised tariffs on memory in response to the lack of domestic manufacturers. At that time, memory was going for around $100/MB (if memory serves). Within a matter of weeks, memory prices were topping out at $800/mb. This probably won't be as bad (now, at least, there IS a domestic manufacturer) but get ready for prices to go through the roof.
Funny how W. keeps doing the works of his father, huh?
I could be wrong, but wasn't StarOffice at one point based on Qt? Could this be used to speed up the openoffice port? (This is such a wimpy question that I'm foregoing my +1 for it.)
I don't know, but I would guess not. More likely, Qt is ported on top of coregraphics. Qt has never used native widgets, preferring to render widgets itself.
This is great news. For some time now, I've been hungering for some kind of structured document editor that ran under OS X's GUI. Now it looks like I will be able to easily get two: KWord (not sure how structured it lets you be, but it's supposed to be like Framemaker in many respects) and LyX (which has a native QT personality of late.) I will now die happy.
One thing that bears thinking about, however, is whether this release will drive the world of free software to be more and more Mac driven, and at least somewhat less Linux driven. It's fairly apparent that Safari is the driving force behind KHTML now -- with this release, will OSX become the driving force behind other elements of KDE? What will this mean for Linux?
All kidding aside... my father did road construction when he was in college. Apparently, the work Really Is That Hard - so Hard that you have to spend about half your time resting. (Yeah, they look lazy to me too. But apparently not.)
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, there's no reason you have to run Linux on Intel. You could get Macs, as one person suggested, or even load Linux on Solaris. Of course, if you get Macs, why not run OSX? Frankly, I think OSX is the nicest UNIX variant out at the moment, it runs everything you'd expect UNIX to run, AND it has two important bonuses for your purposes: (1) Microsoft Office available and (2) the NextStep programming environment (Cocoa), which is widely regarded as one of the finest ever made. It is also very managable, includes good and robust Java support, and Apple does a good job with updates and the like.
There are two basic elements of touch typing. One is to learn where all the keys are - you already have this. The second is to learn to use all your fingers to type - this you lack. Just spend a few days typing, consciously focusing on keeping your pointer fingers on f & j, and you will pretty soon be touch typing.
Look - you can look at whatever you want, and I won't try to stop you. And I think that the writers of GTA have the right to splatter as much gore across the screen as they like. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to expose my kids to it, and I frankly see no harm in "labeling" this kind of banal shock art to make it easier for parents to make decisions. I would be more troubled if such labeling were extended to works with genuine artistic value. E.g. I think that Ginsburg's howl is a great piece of art, and it would be entirely inappropriate to try to prevent one's older chidlren from reading it. OTOH, I see no need to extend myself to protect bawdy limericks such as "there once was a man from nantucket."
Ultimately, The responsibility is with the parents - however, while you have the freedom to publish crap, I don't think there is any corresponding freedom to publish crap without having it labeled as such. It is adequately demonstrated that excessive violence can have a deleterious effect on children. So, Gov't has a legitimate and compelling need to help parents protect their children from it so long as that does not establish a real and established chilling effect.
Personally, I would not even extend any effort to get government to label video games, since I don't think government is the solution to much of anything. However, in the same breath, I frankly don't care if they do label videogames, "gangsta rap", or TV shows. The case that the labels are substantively equivalent to censorship has simply not been made.
I usually select a random /24 in the 10.0 range. I've found that things sometimes get weird when using vpn tunnels between networks with identical net numbers (i.e. 192.168.1.x), and I often use pptp tunnels to get access to various networks. By using the 10.0 range, and setting a different subnet number for each network I use, I avoid this problem. There's no reason you couldn't do the same on 172.16.
- Excessively violent games make kid's violent, so should be banned.
- Excessively violent kids play excessively violent games, so those who play such games obsessively should be watched.
Somehow, I suspect you would not be comfortable with either conclusion.Let me put it to you another way: I have four kids under six. Recently, they discovered Tom and Jerry. Since they discovered Tom and Jerry, I've noticed a distinctive change in their play - they've become more aggressive, they've started smacking each other with blunt objects and laughing, etc. Now, there are two possibilities: either Tom and Jerry unmasked latent violent issues already present in my kids, or Tom and Jerry caused them to be violent.
Either way, the cause is "Tom and Jerry" and the solution is to turn off the damn TV. The hell of it is, in my belief system, everyone has violent tendencies to be unmasked. (This belief would also tend to be confirmed by most psychological findings I've seen.) They may be close to the surface, on the surface, or deeply buried, but they're there. Whether this is because we're all neurotic or because we're all victims of sin I'll leave up to you. In either case, anything that brings that latent violence closer to the surface is potentially a bad thing. And, like it or not, violent TV and games seem to unmask latent violence.
Is Tom and Jerry or Grand Theft Auto really too much to give up so my two year old doesn't smack my five year old with a broom? I don't think so. Is Lord of the Rings too much to give up? Hell yes. The difference is that, in one case, violence is put out in a very unrealistic way - no consequences, no real victims. In the other, violence is associated with suffering. In one case, we have art, and in the other we have a kind of macabre, violent masturbation trying to ride on the coat-tails of art. It's like the difference between a great nude photograph and porn - one revels in the beauty of the human body, the other just seeks to possess it.
And, No, I don't have any problem making that judgment. If you do, maybe your palate has been burned off by constant exposure to the esthetic equivalent of MD20/20, and you should try to clear it a bit?
It's time to wake up and smell the gore, folks. You can't divide your personality between unpent aggresion in the electronic world and turn around and be a nice, happy guy the rest of the time. And, in years and years of reading Slashdot, I have yet to see a *single* study that suggested otherwise.
The intent of this ammendment was not to place power in the hands of state governments, but to ensure that congress could not do what had been done in e.g. Ireland, and forbid ordinary citizens from bearing arms, thereby eliminating the "right" of the people to rebel against the government in the event it became oppressive. When you think "Militia", you need to think "minute-men", not "national guard."
It is *highly* unlikely that this company will reveal anything regarding the nature of the incident to any other company. Most companies of any size have a "neutral reference policy" that allows them only to say "yes, he worked here from date x to date y." I would suggest not using your manager as a reference, but I would not suggest saying that your new employer may not contact them, since they probably won't tell anything damaging and to refuse the right to contact will damage you.
As far as getting your job back, forget it. That's the problem with being a contractor - it's easier to get rid of you than deal with you.
(p.s. Don't tell anybody, but I have a degree in HR -- easiest B.S. to get in a hurry -- so I'm not totally blowing smoke here, although I've never worked in the field.)
Robert Heinlein (the greatest SF writer of all time, so PFFFT!) made this a major theme of many of his later works -- most likely, he was worried about his own impending death. The first in this series was of course the Novella Methuselah's Children. The theme was dealt with most explicitly in "Time Enough for Love", and to a lesser extent in "I Will Fear No Evil." Heinlein (as a result of impending dementia I think) spent many of his later books tying everything together, so the subject is touched on in The Cat Who Could Walk Through Walls, Number of the Beast, etc.
I never, ever, used it on anyone. Of course.
I've decided to file a patent for "using a numeric error code to indicate a failed transaction in the HTTP protocol." That way, I can nail every web server in the world for a $10 licensing fee and get outrageously rich! Muahahahah!
This language is definitely worth a look. It's not just a python knock-off, as many have supposed -- it offers features python doesn't.
Rome managed to get along for 500 years in this way before it finally fell. What held it up was the influx of tribute and slaves from the provinces. Once Rome ran out of convenient places to conquer, the system began to break down. America is very much like Rome in this respect: look at our balance of trade. The question is, how long will the world be willing to support an indolent military/economic overlord - not "how long can America's economy support an indolent class"?
Perhaps the balloon could be run teathered? If you could compress enough helium (into tanks) to give it a small negative lift, it wouldn't necessarily take an enormously strong cable to pull it back to the launch pad.
First 32 bit OS - SCO XENIX 32. 1980-something. Oh, wait, we aren't talking about SCO at the moment.
Dvorak, in addition to his two-hand keyboard, also created left and right one-hand keyboards. Most likely, you can just reset your layout in the OS. Might want some keycaps to help you learn it though.
I would gladly take a pay cut to get a 30 hour work week. Unfortunately, in any "real" job, they want to own you, which means full time, 40 hours a week. So, my choice is between forty plus hours of week for a six figure income, or McDonalds. Kind of sucks.
I used to feel this way ... then, I realized something: Apple sells the hardware, and OS X only (well, almost only) runs on Apple hardware. So, if they started doing upgrade pricing, virtually *everyone* would get the upgrade. Also, bear in mind that they are developing a full-blown OS, easily comparable to MS, for a small fraction of the market that MS has. It's a wonder that it's comparable in price, much less cheaper.
Are you really sure that you want to permanently alter your body? REALLY sure? There is a *reason* they call it permanent. And, for the most part, body "adornments" are pretty stinking ugly. Especially cheek and eye-brow piercings ... ugh. And tattoos are rarely very artistically executed - (there are, of course, exceptions.)
Funny how W. keeps doing the works of his father, huh?
I could be wrong, but wasn't StarOffice at one point based on Qt? Could this be used to speed up the openoffice port? (This is such a wimpy question that I'm foregoing my +1 for it.)
I don't know, but I would guess not. More likely, Qt is ported on top of coregraphics. Qt has never used native widgets, preferring to render widgets itself.
One thing that bears thinking about, however, is whether this release will drive the world of free software to be more and more Mac driven, and at least somewhat less Linux driven. It's fairly apparent that Safari is the driving force behind KHTML now -- with this release, will OSX become the driving force behind other elements of KDE? What will this mean for Linux?
All kidding aside ... my father did road construction when he was in college. Apparently, the work Really Is That Hard - so Hard that you have to spend about half your time resting. (Yeah, they look lazy to me too. But apparently not.)