Your critique of the show turning winning contestants into losers is dead on. Kamerion Wimbley took and completed the preliminary course. Watching a man of his size complete the course was amazing to see. Then we got to see him get knocked out due to other contestants coming in with faster times. And then watched an added insult in the finals when they bring in 'wild card' contestants--many of whom did not even complete the preliminary course. And of course all the wildcards were turned into 'human interest' stories. Thankfully the grandfather wildcard actually did complete the course.
My biggest issue with the show was that they end up giving only summaries of the runs to half of the contestants--even after having 2/3rds of the contestants competing on the G4 show. The original show packed the same amount of content into 30 minutes that NBC is trying to stretch to 2 hours.
This is exactly where they get the long term payoff! And parking everything in orbit around the moon is even smarter. The absolute worst thing they could do is bring resources down into our gravity well just so they can take them out at a later date.
The way they handled the first job (that required the move) was totally fishy - they wanted me to agree that I'd accept the job and move IF there was a job offer, while I pushed back I can't pre-accept what doesn't exist especially without even meeting or talking to the group first. They wouldn't even set the interview up so I had more info for the decision. I figure there must have been something weird about their finder's fee and what sequence of steps or how far along things were before payments were exchanged or refunds made, etc. I think they were afraid if the company and I contacted each other (i.e. I interviewed) without an agreement in place for the recruiter, the company would somehow be able to duck their fee.
It's more likely that they didn't even have a contract with the hiring company and needed a few more candidates before they got everything signed. Having just recently finished a job search, I can attest to this being this being a common occurrence. I had two different recruiters phrase things in a similar manner, just without the relocation. Most reputable recruiters will court the hiring company first, then court candidates. You can easily use that to your advantage.
Unless a recruiter is contacting you for a specific opportunity or company, it is very likely that they will just waste your time. Shady recruiters will use your resume to court companies with little or no notification/permission and they will do just about anything they can to find out where else you have applied--typically under the guise of not wanting to send in a duplicate copy of your resume. Combine that with the fun hard-sell techniques and it is very hard to feel anything but dirty and used.
Worthwhile recruiters will have an opportunity in-hand when they call you and want to find out if you a good fit for that opportunity. You shouldn't even have to ask about this...it should be a part of their introduction for contacting you.
Some developers are quirky because they do someone no one else understand and think they are better than everyone else they work. They go out of their way to be a pain in the ass to work with, and I really don't understand why any manager puts up with it.
Others, like myself, are quirky because...we just are. No amount of trying to fit in with office life is going to be considered a success. No one minds if I'm quirky so long as I work hard at being a member of the team.
A liquor store clerk is not authorized in most states to confiscate anyone's ID under any circumstances. However, they are allowed to retain possession of the ID until law enforcement can be reached to ensure that the ID is indeed valid. As a former liquor store clerk (booze paid for college!), I've been asked this by many a patron. After I inform them of the law, I ask them if they would like to wait for law enforcement to verify the ID, or they can just leave it with me. In 5 years of work on a college campus, not a single patron ever volunteered to stay.
What isn't pointed out by this review is that Slackware version the reviewer installed is still a 32bit version. The computer he installed it on is an AMD64. Personally, I would have found the review much more helpful if it had addressed the 64bit issues that Slackware has#151;which is what most new workstations and servers have under the hood.
There is an 64bit port of Slackware out there, Slamd64. Unfortunately, it has no where near the stability of Slackware current. Just keeping the installer from crashing can be a huge headache. I ran into this first hand after purchasing an AMD64 server. It's hard to give Slackware a glowing review until the 64bit port is up to par.
I've found the exact opposite to be true. I went to college in rural Indiana, and live in Chicago now. I _still_ wish I had my old rural cable internet connection. The density and age of the telecom infrastructure in Chicago has shocked me. Even with Speakeasy's customer service, I still have three or four major problems a year. Even new construction isn't immune, because it still connects into an old system. Your IW may be new and solid, but that doesn't mean anything when the lines are rotting on the poles. I found out that the hard way--imagine having to make five service calls and visits in a single month. The cable infrastructure is no different. I still don't know when our local cable monopoly is going to roll out digital cable.
Telco:
3-4 weeks a year of tech-support hell. (older urban phone systems)
$60 a month price tag.
Voip:
1-2 dropped phone calls a month--with calls routed to my cell when it's down.
$25.00
My installer even set me up with my DSL on it's own NID, after which I plugged the voip adapter back into the wall socket. Now all my wall phone adapters work just fine.
As to power outages, it can be hard to find the non-wireless phone in the dark. Go ahead, tell me you have a cheap ten dollar phone hooked up. Where is it if the power goes out? Of course, since all my computer equipment is plugged into UPS's, I only worry about prolonged power outages.
I'm not concerned about the legislation at all. Any wireless network will not be operated by the City. It will go to a city contractor--like everything else here in Chicago. You have to remember that Chicago is a city where you have contractors that do nothing but sit in trucks.
I am also not worried about the telco's blocking a city-wide network. If Daley can completely ignore the FAA, I think he can handle the telco's and the FCC.
They aren't shipping new copies of the game until they've solved quite a few stability issues on the servers. If he didn't get an initial copy when the game was released, he has no other alternative.
It sounds like you've been ripped off in more than one way.
First, you aparently don't own the code that was developed. Even if someone does give you the source code, you need to make sure that you are able to modify it as you please. Quite a few contractors have pulled this over the years. They will deliver a product cheaply, then charge much higher rates for upgrades and fixes. Beware of a bargain price on software you won't own.
Second, you issued payment without verifying the completeness of the deliverable. If there are problems with the install script itself, how many other problems will you find once it is installed correctly? Just because a product has been delivered, does not mean that the contract has been fulfilled. Once the money is out the door, it almost never comes back. When a contract goes bad, would you rather pay for the product as well as legal fees to get that money back? Or would you rather pay the legal fees instead?
I know quite a few test engineers that enjoy making things break, explode, collapse, etc. Ask one about their favorite catastrophic failure. They will often brighten up and become quite animated as they relate their story.
It really wouldn't surprise me if these guys simply wanted to make their enterprise model explode when they subjected it to the airflow. They may have tossed in the "space junk" to produce the effect that they initially hoped to see.
If each unit of a given product does not have a unique RFID, this still gives out significantly more information than you might realize. Consider the amount of statistical information that would be available. It could allow retailers to gather a much clearer profile of their customer base: Customers that wear A are more likely to buy product B.
Now, ask yourself just how many people dress exactly alike? Even if the individual pieces of clothing do not have distinct RFID, your outfit would most likely produce a fairly unique composit RFID identity.
This is absolutely wonderful for Linux 3D graphics. Depending on how well these drivers perform, gamers and graphics developers alike will have an alternative to NVidia.
The ATI drivers don't even need to outperform NVidia's. An ATI graphics card is almost always cheaper than the corresponding NVidia card. Some of us don't like spending any more of our own money on a computer than we have to.
Spaf is simply trying to drive a point home that he teaches constantly at Purdue--and yes, I had the privelage of taking his class. When it comes to computer security, you should never blindly trust anything! Why is he saying that we should be cautious? Simple... Too many people have the impression that open source == security. And we've all heard it: "It's open source, it must be secure..."
Why is that a bad thing? Risk Analysis... You can never achieve 100% security. At best, you can develop a plan that takes into account most anything that can go wrong: Fire, Burglary, Natural Disaster, Hacking, etc. If you blindly trust a component, then your risk analysis isn't worth anything.
Come one... We know the FBI isn't only concernced about convicting hackers in court when companies come forward. They want companies to responsibly help the FBI find hackers. Sure, the hackers won't be prosecuted for that individual crime. Instead, they'll have the FBI looking into every aspect of their lives. Let's face it. Most individuals that hack into company systems do it more than once.
What a Great Idea (tm)! Now my broadband will screw me just like my cell phone provider does. Once you step outside you "plan", your ass is theirs.
All it took for me was a family emergency that required me to keep in touch during the trip home. I got the bill, and nearly had a heart attack.
But here's the kicker... You can refuse to answer cell phone calls. You can't refuse incoming data! Even if you have a firewalled setup that drops the packets, they still come through your pipe!
That will be the next attack I'm sure... Don't like someone? Find out their address and packet flood them.
Who cares what the news reporters are saying! Go visit your favorite webcasters, and see what they have to say. I guarantee that they have been crunching the numbers on this bill--they don't want to go bankrupt.
Most important, these modifications raise a question: In the digital age, is the customer always right?
Not only does action against modification enforce that the customer isn't always right, it enforces that the customer doesn't actual own something he purchases.
A customer purchases a product. By modifying said product, a customer has actually increased the value of a product. They have used it to do something additional. When this information is distributed to the public, it potential increases the value of the entire product base. Just how many people purchased an XBox only after they found out how to run Linux on it?
Hopefully more companies will wake up to the economic reality that they can employ a bunch of slashdotters for free!
Slashdot Mirror
Your critique of the show turning winning contestants into losers is dead on. Kamerion Wimbley took and completed the preliminary course. Watching a man of his size complete the course was amazing to see. Then we got to see him get knocked out due to other contestants coming in with faster times. And then watched an added insult in the finals when they bring in 'wild card' contestants--many of whom did not even complete the preliminary course. And of course all the wildcards were turned into 'human interest' stories. Thankfully the grandfather wildcard actually did complete the course.
My biggest issue with the show was that they end up giving only summaries of the runs to half of the contestants--even after having 2/3rds of the contestants competing on the G4 show. The original show packed the same amount of content into 30 minutes that NBC is trying to stretch to 2 hours.
THIS!
This is exactly where they get the long term payoff! And parking everything in orbit around the moon is even smarter. The absolute worst thing they could do is bring resources down into our gravity well just so they can take them out at a later date.
The study answers one of my favorite questions:
"Do I use my powers for good or for awesome?"
Awesome it is...
The way they handled the first job (that required the move) was totally fishy - they wanted me to agree that I'd accept the job and move IF there was a job offer, while I pushed back I can't pre-accept what doesn't exist especially without even meeting or talking to the group first. They wouldn't even set the interview up so I had more info for the decision. I figure there must have been something weird about their finder's fee and what sequence of steps or how far along things were before payments were exchanged or refunds made, etc. I think they were afraid if the company and I contacted each other (i.e. I interviewed) without an agreement in place for the recruiter, the company would somehow be able to duck their fee.
It's more likely that they didn't even have a contract with the hiring company and needed a few more candidates before they got everything signed. Having just recently finished a job search, I can attest to this being this being a common occurrence. I had two different recruiters phrase things in a similar manner, just without the relocation. Most reputable recruiters will court the hiring company first, then court candidates. You can easily use that to your advantage.
Unless a recruiter is contacting you for a specific opportunity or company, it is very likely that they will just waste your time. Shady recruiters will use your resume to court companies with little or no notification/permission and they will do just about anything they can to find out where else you have applied--typically under the guise of not wanting to send in a duplicate copy of your resume. Combine that with the fun hard-sell techniques and it is very hard to feel anything but dirty and used.
Worthwhile recruiters will have an opportunity in-hand when they call you and want to find out if you a good fit for that opportunity. You shouldn't even have to ask about this...it should be a part of their introduction for contacting you.
Some developers are quirky because they do someone no one else understand and think they are better than everyone else they work. They go out of their way to be a pain in the ass to work with, and I really don't understand why any manager puts up with it.
Others, like myself, are quirky because...we just are. No amount of trying to fit in with office life is going to be considered a success. No one minds if I'm quirky so long as I work hard at being a member of the team.
A liquor store clerk is not authorized in most states to confiscate anyone's ID under any circumstances. However, they are allowed to retain possession of the ID until law enforcement can be reached to ensure that the ID is indeed valid. As a former liquor store clerk (booze paid for college!), I've been asked this by many a patron. After I inform them of the law, I ask them if they would like to wait for law enforcement to verify the ID, or they can just leave it with me. In 5 years of work on a college campus, not a single patron ever volunteered to stay.
What isn't pointed out by this review is that Slackware version the reviewer installed is still a 32bit version. The computer he installed it on is an AMD64. Personally, I would have found the review much more helpful if it had addressed the 64bit issues that Slackware has#151;which is what most new workstations and servers have under the hood.
There is an 64bit port of Slackware out there, Slamd64. Unfortunately, it has no where near the stability of Slackware current. Just keeping the installer from crashing can be a huge headache. I ran into this first hand after purchasing an AMD64 server. It's hard to give Slackware a glowing review until the 64bit port is up to par.
I've found the exact opposite to be true. I went to college in rural Indiana, and live in Chicago now. I _still_ wish I had my old rural cable internet connection. The density and age of the telecom infrastructure in Chicago has shocked me. Even with Speakeasy's customer service, I still have three or four major problems a year. Even new construction isn't immune, because it still connects into an old system. Your IW may be new and solid, but that doesn't mean anything when the lines are rotting on the poles. I found out that the hard way--imagine having to make five service calls and visits in a single month. The cable infrastructure is no different. I still don't know when our local cable monopoly is going to roll out digital cable.
For me it has been pretty simple...
Telco:
3-4 weeks a year of tech-support hell. (older urban phone systems)
$60 a month price tag.
Voip:
1-2 dropped phone calls a month--with calls routed to my cell when it's down.
$25.00
My installer even set me up with my DSL on it's own NID, after which I plugged the voip adapter back into the wall socket. Now all my wall phone adapters work just fine.
As to power outages, it can be hard to find the non-wireless phone in the dark. Go ahead, tell me you have a cheap ten dollar phone hooked up. Where is it if the power goes out? Of course, since all my computer equipment is plugged into UPS's, I only worry about prolonged power outages.
I'm not concerned about the legislation at all. Any wireless network will not be operated by the City. It will go to a city contractor--like everything else here in Chicago. You have to remember that Chicago is a city where you have contractors that do nothing but sit in trucks.
I am also not worried about the telco's blocking a city-wide network. If Daley can completely ignore the FAA, I think he can handle the telco's and the FCC.
They aren't shipping new copies of the game until they've solved quite a few stability issues on the servers. If he didn't get an initial copy when the game was released, he has no other alternative.
It sounds like you've been ripped off in more than one way.
First, you aparently don't own the code that was developed. Even if someone does give you the source code, you need to make sure that you are able to modify it as you please. Quite a few contractors have pulled this over the years. They will deliver a product cheaply, then charge much higher rates for upgrades and fixes. Beware of a bargain price on software you won't own.
Second, you issued payment without verifying the completeness of the deliverable. If there are problems with the install script itself, how many other problems will you find once it is installed correctly? Just because a product has been delivered, does not mean that the contract has been fulfilled. Once the money is out the door, it almost never comes back. When a contract goes bad, would you rather pay for the product as well as legal fees to get that money back? Or would you rather pay the legal fees instead?
"Fair is all my boys come home alive. Fuck the rest."
I know quite a few test engineers that enjoy making things break, explode, collapse, etc. Ask one about their favorite catastrophic failure. They will often brighten up and become quite animated as they relate their story.
It really wouldn't surprise me if these guys simply wanted to make their enterprise model explode when they subjected it to the airflow. They may have tossed in the "space junk" to produce the effect that they initially hoped to see.
Now my boss will know how burned-out and disgruntled I have become... I'm so screwed...
If each unit of a given product does not have a unique RFID, this still gives out significantly more information than you might realize. Consider the amount of statistical information that would be available. It could allow retailers to gather a much clearer profile of their customer base: Customers that wear A are more likely to buy product B.
Now, ask yourself just how many people dress exactly alike? Even if the individual pieces of clothing do not have distinct RFID, your outfit would most likely produce a fairly unique composit RFID identity.
This is absolutely wonderful for Linux 3D graphics. Depending on how well these drivers perform, gamers and graphics developers alike will have an alternative to NVidia.
The ATI drivers don't even need to outperform NVidia's. An ATI graphics card is almost always cheaper than the corresponding NVidia card. Some of us don't like spending any more of our own money on a computer than we have to.
Spaf is simply trying to drive a point home that he teaches constantly at Purdue--and yes, I had the privelage of taking his class. When it comes to computer security, you should never blindly trust anything! Why is he saying that we should be cautious? Simple... Too many people have the impression that open source == security. And we've all heard it: "It's open source, it must be secure..."
Why is that a bad thing? Risk Analysis... You can never achieve 100% security. At best, you can develop a plan that takes into account most anything that can go wrong: Fire, Burglary, Natural Disaster, Hacking, etc. If you blindly trust a component, then your risk analysis isn't worth anything.
PS: Spaf... See... I wasn't asleep in class.
Here's what you need, straight from the source:
* 386 processor
* 16MB RAM
* 50 megabytes of hard disk space
* 3.5" floppy drive
By the way, that's not the requirements for an old version... That's for version 8.1 with the 2.4.18 kernel... Have fun.
Come one... We know the FBI isn't only concernced about convicting hackers in court when companies come forward. They want companies to responsibly help the FBI find hackers. Sure, the hackers won't be prosecuted for that individual crime. Instead, they'll have the FBI looking into every aspect of their lives. Let's face it. Most individuals that hack into company systems do it more than once.
What a Great Idea (tm)! Now my broadband will screw me just like my cell phone provider does. Once you step outside you "plan", your ass is theirs.
All it took for me was a family emergency that required me to keep in touch during the trip home. I got the bill, and nearly had a heart attack.
But here's the kicker... You can refuse to answer cell phone calls. You can't refuse incoming data! Even if you have a firewalled setup that drops the packets, they still come through your pipe!
That will be the next attack I'm sure... Don't like someone? Find out their address and packet flood them.
Wouldn't the fact that women's cells have been duplicating those genes for thousands of years count as previous art?
Aparently not...
At last I'll be able to prove to my friends that I saw Siegfried and Roy at the Quickie-Mart!!!
Who cares what the news reporters are saying! Go visit your favorite webcasters, and see what they have to say. I guarantee that they have been crunching the numbers on this bill--they don't want to go bankrupt.
My favorite webcaster, Digitally Imported, fully supports the bill.
Again...before you start ranting away and listening to the FUD, check what your local webcaster has to say!
A customer purchases a product. By modifying said product, a customer has actually increased the value of a product. They have used it to do something additional. When this information is distributed to the public, it potential increases the value of the entire product base. Just how many people purchased an XBox only after they found out how to run Linux on it?
Hopefully more companies will wake up to the economic reality that they can employ a bunch of slashdotters for free!