Oh come on Just declare in a newspaper somewhere that we are certain that there is gold on Mars and humans will be over there in any which way possible.
If that means that some government on the planet who does not have an aversion to strapping a nuclear reactor to several thousand tonnes of fuel and launching it into space to become the core energy generation system for our planet's interplanetary bus.. then it will happen.
Gold, I tell you, gold. Trust human nature to bypass all problems and concentrate on getting there and back. Greed and stupidity can solve just about any problem, in the same way that a hammer can solve just about any problem..
Worst comes to worst it is quite likely that the spacecraft will be packed with computer equipment and will have several TB of data containing books, games, videos and for the worst case scenario where someone is BORED there most likely will be a facility where he can go code or do actual work like scientific experiments.
My first thought was 'So thankful that humans and trees don't produce viable offspring' which lead to 'I wonder if referencing humans who mate with vegetables is appropriate here'.. leading to..well.. 'anything'.
I am currently halfway through Secret of Mana It's quite relaxing to play through taking advantage of game mechanics to avoid unessential or boring grinding and enjoy the game play
For smart phones you can just install another keyboard and use it, and switch keyboards easily. If this entrepreneurial jacky wants to put his hand in then by all means. The market will decide..
Google for Configuration Management Database software / solutions. Most corporate tools come with a sniffer / loader utiliy to scan the network, hook in or plug into servers and devices and update the CMDB in relative real time.
A configuration management database (CMDB) is a repository of information related to all the components of an information system. It contains the details of the configuration items (CI) in the IT infrastructure. Although repositories similar to CMDBs have been used by IT departments for many years, the term CMDB stems from ITIL. In the ITIL context, a CMDB represents the authorized configuration of the significant components of the IT environment. A CMDB helps an organization understand the relationships between these components and track their configuration. The CMDB is a fundamental component of the ITIL framework's Configuration Management process. CMDB implementations often involve federation, the inclusion of data into the CMDB from other sources, such as Asset Management, in such a way that the source of the data retains control of the data. Federation is usually distinguished from Extract, transform, load (ETL) solutions in which data is copied into the CMDB.
Have a play around with a free CMDB product if you like. OneCMDB is easy to get, setup and experiment with - http://www.onecmdb.org/
Major IT software vendors sell CMDB software, in the case of CA and HP it is part for their ITIL / ITSM tool - eg, http://www.ca.com/in/cmdb.aspx
With CMDB software I look for the following features: 1) Web interface, 2) Ability to easily load / unload / update data to the CMDB, 3) Ability to grant different levels of user admin, update and read access to the CMDB (preferably via web interface), 4) Tool to scan the network, determine or extract information, and upload the CMDB CIs (server names, server IP, hard drive space, physical ram, etc etc), 5) Ability to define users as CIs
A CMDB can relate configuration items in terms of how they relate to each other. Very useful in problem and incident management.
Places like http://cmtf.com/ offer formal training and certification for Configuration Management. Does not cover specific product, but the theory of CM.
Another Zombie FPS? Whyyyy. Just grab Lonesurvivor and try a new take on surviving a zombie apocalypse. Was part of the recent HumbleBundle and is well worth a play. Now, I just have a niggling problem to deal with involving what looks like an oversized velociraptor..
One thing I've noticed during our Windows 7 migration is that our staff do not use the start menu at all.
Okay. We are looking at a medium sized (50K) W7 rollout here. How did you capture this information?
I am very interested in what program or utility was used, what configuration of user's machines was required, where the data captured is stored, and specifically how you know that The other 115 don't use it..
I have about 10 items pinned.. I tend to a pin the game shortcuts for what I am currently playing so the number of items pinned changes.. it is a nice idea and works well.. but I've found that the task bar gets quite crowded after a while.
I am really wondering what is the next level of advancement for task bars is. With my laptop's wide screen I could easily afford a few pixels up the left or right hand side.. how about a task bar just for pinned items which uses the vertical space available?
Pity you can't have multiple windows task bars, and then use a taskbar set to the side for item pinning.. anyone know if this is possible to do in XP / W7?
A friend of mine grew up in some NZ town out back in the middle of nowhere. Spent half his day in "class" (home school) and the other half fishing, wandering the country side and a host of other activities young boys would love to spend their life doing when stuck in the middle of nowhere.
His opinion of TV advertising is that because he was not exposed to it when he was young he is offended by it now and automatically filters out the crap. He sees the ads, but they have no meaning for him, and his brain has switched his eyes off and his brain on.. more than likely to have a good think about his current website work (this is a decade ago).
Having seen various kids of my relatives and friends I think that the less expose the better. Another of my friend has educated his kids to mute the ads:-) No mute = no show. Amazing the difference it makes once they learn the hard way that the TV will be turned off and stay off for one hour after if any ad is allowed to have sound.
Meanwhile, I am more concerned that ads in Australia are blasted at the loudest volume.. which is really disturbing at night. I am waiting for a TV system for which I can set the TV at say 65db and no sound from the TV will exceed that.
Still waiting for these wonderful services you get in America to arrive in Australia..
I doubt that a house cat will live to a million years old..
but the real question should be: If it does turn out that a sentient being capable of teaching mathematics at college level does exist in a million years time will it look anything like us.. and why?
Therein lies the answer to many questions.
Meanwhile, the answer is probably 'no'. There is no reason for your average cat, of any size or breed, to need to use tools other than the tools they are naturally equipped with for any purpose. Cats, of all sizes and generally, have a good set of teeth and claws, are fast, agile, can see in the dark, have a fur coat which keeps their personal climate adjusted, have a specific diet which can keep them occupied for a good deal of their time, sleep the rest of the time outside of mating... and where or what in this do you see as the evolutionary nudge for cats to start using tools, needing to start planning and calculating (more than 'where is my next meal coming from') or indeed any other activity required for evolution?
Unless some quite cruel and nasty person builds a very crafty D&D maze with lots of traps, catches, levers, spikes, pits, and other nastiness to similar what humans like to do when they play RPG / FPS games and quite a few cats in the maze to live, learn, breed and die at a high succession rate so that the cats are forced to learn and evolve to survive.. I can't see it happening.
About the only outcome which may have some basis in certainty, outside of the crafty D&D maze, is that the cats you start off with will get bigger, smaller and possibly change coat colour (assuming either humans destroy the environment and the earth or the next iceage comes and goes but either way this planet may boil or freeze..).
I can see where you are coming from, and have great sympathy. It is the whole 'sanitation engineer' joke over again.
Around here we have 'technical specialists' 'senior technical specialists' 'analyst programmers' 'coders' 'business analysts' 'policy analysts'. You get the idea.
If your role is 'coder' then you take documented IT Requirements and turn them into code, unit test, code review, and hand it off to Functional Test. This role may need to write or update Technical Specifications based on the IT Requirements.
Here, if your role is 'analyst programmer' then you take Business Requirements, undertake analysis (of varying types and situations) of existing or new systems and produce IT Requirements and Technical Specifications. You are also expected to be able to be a coder as required and do systems support and other technical work; coding takes a lot of time but is only part of the whole. Some BA and PA skills are also useful, as is database design.
By your response, our 'analyst programmer' role is a 'software engineer'. No, it isn't working with physical objects but is is 'engineering'.
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, safety and cost.
So far as I can see, most of the time when I see this type of argument it usually comes down to 'does everyone involved in this argument understand the difference between *analysis and design* and *coding* and 'is this a coder vs analyst role' argument.
I have had some serious problems with coders who don't understand the difference between their job to code and the job of analyst programmer (analysis and design and code). History repeats itself. My experience is that coders throw their code in, make quick and often rash judgements and decisions, don't take the time to understand the system or apply basic rules and just whack in whatever works, tend to get quite upset at the mere thought of a code review or formal testing and really really don't see the point of or want to have anything to do with business or technical specifications (generalising here from experience with quite a few coders as compared to working with quite a lot of analyst programmers).
Do you agree that there are at least two types of programmer. One which codes (no or minimal system analysis / design - build and test only) and one which engineers (analysis, design, build and test)?
I have hooked a flatmate into Futurama (he really wanted to know what the intro song was that kept playing - I was watching all seasons back to back) as it was on every day. Eventually he got over his sick "but it LOOKS like the Simpsons but it ISN'T the Simpsons!" and was hooked.
My other half was hooked on Survivor the same way. I used to watch it on my computer as I coded, and her computer was next to mine.. eventually she demanded that I didn't watch new episodes without her.
So, my suggestion is: Put it on in the background when you are doing stuff in the house and see what happens.
That all said, my first girlfriend hated Stargate with a vengeance to the point of starting a fight about me watching it *the day before*. If you are thinking that I let her go when she said she wanted to leave.. you would be right.
Same. Although, I soon found out how to make a very very small amount of money stretch really far.
I used to catch the bus. Instead of buying bus tickets I would ride my bike to school and spend 30c? something like that at a fish&chips shop on the way which would usually get me one big or two or three small potato cakes. I realise now that the shop guy was being very nice.
This went on for some time. I never did find out if my mother knew I was riding my bike to school.. in any case, for three years (most of the time) I collected the bus money, caught the bus sometimes, always had a spare book of tickets, and rode or walked whenever I could.
I applaud the girl in TFA. always good to shine a light on the parts of our society the rest of us don't see. Am sure Jamie Oliver is loving this.
I haven't heard of that one. post a link if you find it..
TrackMeNot is configurable to read in keywords from set sites and launch x searches per hour. Most excellent for cases where there is a concern about your online activities being monitored.
I started looking into an auto-web-crawler. My idea was that it starts from a google search from a random dictionary word, builds a list of sites, and randomly visits a site every x minutes. It keeps a list of y domains in history and does not go to the same domain twice (FIFO for domain history).
Then, you could have this running in the background, loading pages, perhaps at a random interval, to really confuse those who like to track users across the web. Imagine a few million users running this.
And yes, it would only download HTML or text files; no images or other files over 25K in size. This means lots of web bugs and cookies for those lovely companies to chew on:-)
"Protects privacy in web-search. By issuing randomized queries to popular search-engines, including Google, Bing, and Baidu, TrackMeNot obfuscates users' search data profiles"
If everyone used this we all would have a lot less to worry about it.
Even better, have two instances of web browser installed on your PC: FF installed locally with your usual configuration and trackmenot.. and FF Portable run from a mounted encrypted drive share.. so if the computer is taken or powered off they can't get anything and the 'local' install looks like your 'normal' web activities
I had the same quandary not too long ago. In the end, I decided to start small and work up. On ebay you can find cheap 60x and 100x pocket scopes which are a good starting point. The resolution and quality sucks, most come with led lights, some come with UV lights, however it is a very good starting point being portable and cheap.
Ok. Before anyone else points this out: Yes, this type of service and programs ARE being used to create 'child porn' right now. Lots of teenagers running around recording themselves and friends creating x rated material and sharing it.
As soon as I submitted that I had a "Duh!" moment where I realised that not only is this kind of thing happening right now, it could very well be cooking in lawmakers books to create laws to try and stop it.
I considered that he was going for humour, but then saw the sarcastic angle. There is a very good point here - that if those we pay to uphold the law are breaking it then how can they expect citizens to respect the law?
Next thing you know, they will outlaw live recording and uploading in public.. 'think of the children! it could be used for child porn!'
Slashdot Mirror
Oh come on
Just declare in a newspaper somewhere that we are certain that there is gold on Mars and humans will be over there in any which way possible.
If that means that some government on the planet who does not have an aversion to strapping a nuclear reactor to several thousand tonnes of fuel and launching it into space to become the core energy generation system for our planet's interplanetary bus.. then it will happen.
Gold, I tell you, gold. Trust human nature to bypass all problems and concentrate on getting there and back. Greed and stupidity can solve just about any problem, in the same way that a hammer can solve just about any problem..
He has his hand.
If he gets bored, he has his other hand.
Worst comes to worst it is quite likely that the spacecraft will be packed with computer equipment and will have several TB of data containing books, games, videos and for the worst case scenario where someone is BORED there most likely will be a facility where he can go code or do actual work like scientific experiments.
Bored? No.
Go completely nuts? Sure
Where do I sign up?
Thanks for the imagery.
My first thought was 'So thankful that humans and trees don't produce viable offspring' which lead to 'I wonder if referencing humans who mate with vegetables is appropriate here'.. leading to ..well.. 'anything'.
... that humans will have sex with anything..
I am currently halfway through Secret of Mana
It's quite relaxing to play through taking advantage of game mechanics to avoid unessential or boring grinding and enjoy the game play
It's still on.. and has been for over 4 decades.. do try to keep up ..
For smart phones you can just install another keyboard and use it, and switch keyboards easily. If this entrepreneurial jacky wants to put his hand in then by all means. The market will decide..
Good luck taking on Swype though..
Google for Configuration Management Database software / solutions. Most corporate tools come with a sniffer / loader utiliy to scan the network, hook in or plug into servers and devices and update the CMDB in relative real time.
If you have no idea, start with the wikipedia article on CMDB: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMDB
Also have a look at what a configuration item is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_item
Have a play around with a free CMDB product if you like. OneCMDB is easy to get, setup and experiment with - http://www.onecmdb.org/
Major IT software vendors sell CMDB software, in the case of CA and HP it is part for their ITIL / ITSM tool - eg, http://www.ca.com/in/cmdb.aspx
With CMDB software I look for the following features: 1) Web interface, 2) Ability to easily load / unload / update data to the CMDB, 3) Ability to grant different levels of user admin, update and read access to the CMDB (preferably via web interface), 4) Tool to scan the network, determine or extract information, and upload the CMDB CIs (server names, server IP, hard drive space, physical ram, etc etc), 5) Ability to define users as CIs
A CMDB can relate configuration items in terms of how they relate to each other. Very useful in problem and incident management.
Quick overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL#Service_asset_and_configuration_management
Places like http://cmtf.com/ offer formal training and certification for Configuration Management. Does not cover specific product, but the theory of CM.
Another Zombie FPS? Whyyyy.
Just grab Lonesurvivor and try a new take on surviving a zombie apocalypse.
Was part of the recent HumbleBundle and is well worth a play. Now, I just have a niggling problem to deal with involving what looks like an oversized velociraptor..
Never!
Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it
Me either.. I think he's just jealous. Probably just another one of those WoW players without a life being blamed for the rise of pira^Wbittorrenting
Okay. We are looking at a medium sized (50K) W7 rollout here. How did you capture this information?
I am very interested in what program or utility was used, what configuration of user's machines was required, where the data captured is stored, and specifically how you know that The other 115 don't use it. .
I have about 10 items pinned.. I tend to a pin the game shortcuts for what I am currently playing so the number of items pinned changes.. it is a nice idea and works well.. but I've found that the task bar gets quite crowded after a while.
I am really wondering what is the next level of advancement for task bars is. With my laptop's wide screen I could easily afford a few pixels up the left or right hand side.. how about a task bar just for pinned items which uses the vertical space available?
Pity you can't have multiple windows task bars, and then use a taskbar set to the side for item pinning.. anyone know if this is possible to do in XP / W7?
A friend of mine grew up in some NZ town out back in the middle of nowhere. Spent half his day in "class" (home school) and the other half fishing, wandering the country side and a host of other activities young boys would love to spend their life doing when stuck in the middle of nowhere.
His opinion of TV advertising is that because he was not exposed to it when he was young he is offended by it now and automatically filters out the crap. He sees the ads, but they have no meaning for him, and his brain has switched his eyes off and his brain on.. more than likely to have a good think about his current website work (this is a decade ago).
Having seen various kids of my relatives and friends I think that the less expose the better. Another of my friend has educated his kids to mute the ads :-) No mute = no show. Amazing the difference it makes once they learn the hard way that the TV will be turned off and stay off for one hour after if any ad is allowed to have sound.
Meanwhile, I am more concerned that ads in Australia are blasted at the loudest volume.. which is really disturbing at night. I am waiting for a TV system for which I can set the TV at say 65db and no sound from the TV will exceed that.
Still waiting for these wonderful services you get in America to arrive in Australia..
I doubt that a house cat will live to a million years old..
but the real question should be: If it does turn out that a sentient being capable of teaching mathematics at college level does exist in a million years time will it look anything like us.. and why?
Therein lies the answer to many questions.
Meanwhile, the answer is probably 'no'. There is no reason for your average cat, of any size or breed, to need to use tools other than the tools they are naturally equipped with for any purpose. Cats, of all sizes and generally, have a good set of teeth and claws, are fast, agile, can see in the dark, have a fur coat which keeps their personal climate adjusted, have a specific diet which can keep them occupied for a good deal of their time, sleep the rest of the time outside of mating... and where or what in this do you see as the evolutionary nudge for cats to start using tools, needing to start planning and calculating (more than 'where is my next meal coming from') or indeed any other activity required for evolution?
Unless some quite cruel and nasty person builds a very crafty D&D maze with lots of traps, catches, levers, spikes, pits, and other nastiness to similar what humans like to do when they play RPG / FPS games and quite a few cats in the maze to live, learn, breed and die at a high succession rate so that the cats are forced to learn and evolve to survive.. I can't see it happening.
About the only outcome which may have some basis in certainty, outside of the crafty D&D maze, is that the cats you start off with will get bigger, smaller and possibly change coat colour (assuming either humans destroy the environment and the earth or the next iceage comes and goes but either way this planet may boil or freeze..).
I can see where you are coming from, and have great sympathy. It is the whole 'sanitation engineer' joke over again.
Around here we have 'technical specialists' 'senior technical specialists' 'analyst programmers' 'coders' 'business analysts' 'policy analysts'. You get the idea.
If your role is 'coder' then you take documented IT Requirements and turn them into code, unit test, code review, and hand it off to Functional Test. This role may need to write or update Technical Specifications based on the IT Requirements.
Here, if your role is 'analyst programmer' then you take Business Requirements, undertake analysis (of varying types and situations) of existing or new systems and produce IT Requirements and Technical Specifications. You are also expected to be able to be a coder as required and do systems support and other technical work; coding takes a lot of time but is only part of the whole. Some BA and PA skills are also useful, as is database design.
By your response, our 'analyst programmer' role is a 'software engineer'. No, it isn't working with physical objects but is is 'engineering'.
Notice that the wikipedia article references The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, p119. This page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_engineering_branches - lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering as a major speciality of Computer engineering.
So far as I can see, most of the time when I see this type of argument it usually comes down to 'does everyone involved in this argument understand the difference between *analysis and design* and *coding* and 'is this a coder vs analyst role' argument.
I have had some serious problems with coders who don't understand the difference between their job to code and the job of analyst programmer (analysis and design and code). History repeats itself. My experience is that coders throw their code in, make quick and often rash judgements and decisions, don't take the time to understand the system or apply basic rules and just whack in whatever works, tend to get quite upset at the mere thought of a code review or formal testing and really really don't see the point of or want to have anything to do with business or technical specifications (generalising here from experience with quite a few coders as compared to working with quite a lot of analyst programmers).
Do you agree that there are at least two types of programmer. One which codes (no or minimal system analysis / design - build and test only) and one which engineers (analysis, design, build and test)?
I would like to see the compare againsr DB2. Midrange DB2 if you really want like for like, mainframe if you have guts :)
I suggest http://depressioncomix.tumblr.com/
I have hooked a flatmate into Futurama (he really wanted to know what the intro song was that kept playing - I was watching all seasons back to back) as it was on every day. Eventually he got over his sick "but it LOOKS like the Simpsons but it ISN'T the Simpsons!" and was hooked.
My other half was hooked on Survivor the same way. I used to watch it on my computer as I coded, and her computer was next to mine.. eventually she demanded that I didn't watch new episodes without her.
So, my suggestion is: Put it on in the background when you are doing stuff in the house and see what happens.
That all said, my first girlfriend hated Stargate with a vengeance to the point of starting a fight about me watching it *the day before*. If you are thinking that I let her go when she said she wanted to leave.. you would be right.
Same. Although, I soon found out how to make a very very small amount of money stretch really far.
I used to catch the bus. Instead of buying bus tickets I would ride my bike to school and spend 30c? something like that at a fish&chips shop on the way which would usually get me one big or two or three small potato cakes. I realise now that the shop guy was being very nice.
This went on for some time. I never did find out if my mother knew I was riding my bike to school.. in any case, for three years (most of the time) I collected the bus money, caught the bus sometimes, always had a spare book of tickets, and rode or walked whenever I could.
I applaud the girl in TFA. always good to shine a light on the parts of our society the rest of us don't see. Am sure Jamie Oliver is loving this.
I haven't heard of that one. post a link if you find it..
TrackMeNot is configurable to read in keywords from set sites and launch x searches per hour. Most excellent for cases where there is a concern about your online activities being monitored.
I started looking into an auto-web-crawler. My idea was that it starts from a google search from a random dictionary word, builds a list of sites, and randomly visits a site every x minutes. It keeps a list of y domains in history and does not go to the same domain twice (FIFO for domain history).
Then, you could have this running in the background, loading pages, perhaps at a random interval, to really confuse those who like to track users across the web. Imagine a few million users running this.
And yes, it would only download HTML or text files; no images or other files over 25K in size. This means lots of web bugs and cookies for those lovely companies to chew on :-)
You mean https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/trackmenot/
"Protects privacy in web-search. By issuing randomized queries to popular search-engines, including Google, Bing, and Baidu, TrackMeNot obfuscates users' search data profiles"
If everyone used this we all would have a lot less to worry about it.
Even better, have two instances of web browser installed on your PC: FF installed locally with your usual configuration and trackmenot .. and FF Portable run from a mounted encrypted drive share .. so if the computer is taken or powered off they can't get anything and the 'local' install looks like your 'normal' web activities
Also install https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/betterprivacy/ to delete flash cookies
I had the same quandary not too long ago. In the end, I decided to start small and work up. On ebay you can find cheap 60x and 100x pocket scopes which are a good starting point. The resolution and quality sucks, most come with led lights, some come with UV lights, however it is a very good starting point being portable and cheap.
*sigh*
Ok. Before anyone else points this out: Yes, this type of service and programs ARE being used to create 'child porn' right now. Lots of teenagers running around recording themselves and friends creating x rated material and sharing it.
As soon as I submitted that I had a "Duh!" moment where I realised that not only is this kind of thing happening right now, it could very well be cooking in lawmakers books to create laws to try and stop it.
Any excuse I suppose.
I considered that he was going for humour, but then saw the sarcastic angle. There is a very good point here - that if those we pay to uphold the law are breaking it then how can they expect citizens to respect the law?
Next thing you know, they will outlaw live recording and uploading in public.. 'think of the children! it could be used for child porn!'