Sure. Set that threshold way up, and you'll be treated to the same old pablum dished out constantly by the same small group of users who are automatically modded +5 for every comment. (I tried it once for a few days.) That's way more boring than reading at 1 or 0.
If nothing else you can watch all those cool compiler messages fly by enhancing your innner sense of 1337ness:)
Okay, you need to turn in your Linux Geek membership card. Exactly how long has it been since you compiled a kernel? The build routine for 2.6 (and 2.5 I assume) doesn't show the compiler messages.
You need to subtract the number of people who retired, which given that baby boomers are retiring in huge numbers will decrease that number significantly.
What "huge numbers" would that be since the retirement age is a moving target constantly being bumped up by Congress? BTW, the leading edge of the boomer population is just getting ready to retire.
As it should be. You can't say they can't find a job if they're not looking.
Being rejected over and over again while looking for a job can have an effect on a person. I had a relative who looked for a job for many months with no result. Eventually, the unemployment benefits ran out, and some time later he stopped looking. Then one day he wrote a note, got into the bathtub, put the business end of a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. One less person on the dole and included in the statistics, right?
Ok and what has SS turned into? A pyramid scheme that is looted by Congress. It's dying and needs to be replaced. Support Bush's plan for SS reform.
And what about the people who couldn't afford to save for retirement for the past 40 or 50 years because they were forced to pay into Social Security? Bush says, "Ha ha, we were only kidding!" Sounds like Soylent Green to me. Euthanasia for boomers - beef steaks for CEOs and politicians.
Didn't they tigten up H1B visas during the last couple of years? Why? Because with the reduction in the number of jobs, there is no longer a justification to import as much labor. The government responded. Many businesses screamed about this, but they did it anyway.
No, Congress did not tighten up on H-1B visas. They let a temporary increase in the number of visas expire. They also removed any provisions that required (very few) companies to seek Americans first for employment. American companies did not "scream" about it because it was too farcical while laying off hundreds of thousands of IT workers.
Congress is entertaining new measures to expand the H-1B visa program even though engineering/IT unemployment remains at all-time highs. So, no, aside from small efforts by a few thinkers in Congress, the government hasn't really done anything to help American workers.
That said, I'm in a decent job now and I'm assuming that this will still be the case in December, so economy isn't a hot topic with me.
That is insightful? What do you think will happen to your job if millions of others are unemployed and unable to afford your company's product(s)? With short-sighted vision like that you should apply for the CEO position.
Nah, the moderators following the rules will skip over your comment since you're pointing out the obvious. The other moderators will suffer such cognitive dissonance that they won't be able to make a decision and also pass on.
Even if that's not the case, I get the feeling that far too many shops just decide "Oh well, the patch broke it and we don't feel like putting forth the effort to find a fix for it." Check with the vendor of the broken application, have your in-house staff look at the custom app, don't just about the boys from Redmond breaking your toys. I guess it's just easier to blame Microsoft and be done with it.
A lot of companies have multi-million dollar so-called ERP sytems that are a snakes-nest of marginal software kludged together by resellers. Taking your timesheet, payroll, or billing programs down with a patch known to break them is not an option. It is far better to hope for the best, and as you say, blame Microsoft - which ultimately bears the blame anyway.
Buyer beware. You know the mess you're getting into when you decide to run Microsoft products. sort of a "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime" situation.
I'm in agreement, but no PHB is going to take any blame in these situations. Either heads will roll in ITS (for following the PHB's orders) or there will be loud wailing and demands for new laws to stop (ha ha) malware.
Hey, thanks man. I was wondering about the phenomenon and was pretty sure I was wrong about it being the underrated thing. Hence why I put it in my sig...it was sure to attract one of Slashdot's many archivists to answer my question sans effort.
So you weren't wasting any of your valuable posting time by doing any basic research while you were trolling. I'm not an "archivist", just some slashbot who knows how to click a link and read text. I've even read some of the Slashcode to see if some posted claims were true or not - some are. Slashdot seems to be all downhill lately, nothing but trolls and mod-bombers any more. Very sad.
Odds are their network is firewalled, probably quite well. And that's *why* they are down now. It's the "our powerful lord and master the firewall will protect the whole network, so we don't need to patch!" line of thinking that may have landed them in this mess. That line of thinking was semi-validated when sasser made it's last run around. "We didn't get hit, we must be safe."
If you've been reading the IT trade rags, you know there are a lot of companies running unpatched because the MS patches break their systems. A lot of companies are between a rock and a hard spot: Patch and stop working or don't patch and hope for the best. Obviously, the second choice wins. I can't say I'm too sympathetic with the PHBs that made the OS choice, but I can understand why many systems aren't patched.
f you don't like what I say, mark it overrated. This removes my Karma bonus. -2 for the price of -1, and no metamod!
I'm tired of seeing this BS sig. As someone who has been modded overrated on too many occasions, I know it's not true. Read the FAQ.
Any two down-mods will remove the karma bonus, but it doesn't remove karma.
More importantly, it's not like we have to use Diebold's crap if we don't use an OSS system. I am happy with written paper votes. They're fairly secure, proven technology with a good audit trail. I don't see any point in thinking of switching from written paper ballots til a better solution is made, and then thouroughly tested.
Then you should complain to the feds, who mandated the new voting systems following the 2000 elections and provided several billion dollars in funding. Diebold is raking it in along with Sequoia Systems. Many districts won't give voters a paper ballot option. Some will only offer paper ballots if you use an absentee ballot. If your district gives you the option of a paper ballot, you're lucky.
I'd think with that in mind that little scripts are the lease of their worries. If someone compromises their network and server enough to install and run a script, they've got considerably more at their fingertips.
This story isn't news, it was linked from a Slashdot article weeks ago. Of course, you have to click through to part three to get to the part about the VB script, so I shouldn't be surprised if no one here acutally read it.
Apparently the script has already been refined in preparation for the upcoming election, since it's gone from six to five lines.
While being compromised is certainly a risk, the big problem is someone with access to the district-level tallying computer. One politically motivated person involved in an election with physical access and a simple script or a two-digit code. That is not the "least" of my worries, it's the biggest one. Like most security hacks, it's the inside job that does the most damage and is hardest to defend against.
Maybe we should throw some blame to the PHB who ordered the switch. Purhaps there was no hard sell from MS, and a PHB saw a product brochure and got a hard on to switch.
I doubt that it was a hard sell from MS, but it could have been another company. The typical sales job is from an integrator/reseller who provides the final product. There is usually a slick marketeer with a young, curvy, female partner to provide a distraction for any male techies present. The power-point says it all: Lowest total project cost, lowest time-to-completion, scalable, innovative, rich features (that one always seems to be present, whatever it means), easy administration, state-of-the-art, enterprise-class, lowest TCO. What more could a PHB ask for? (Well, yeah, there's the truth, but we're talking business here.:)
Personally, if I were that technician you can bet I'd have made sure to reboot at the scheduled time. It's just that simple. Has this guy ever heard of a Post-It Note?
Perhaps the machine had never made it to 30 days uptime before, so the task became a non-issue? I've had a Post-it that says "Timesheet!" on my monitor for two years, and it doesn't do any good. You stop noticing those things after a few days.
But most off the shelf software have disclaimers expressly stating they are not to be used in mission critical situations.
Most of the government's sotware is contracted out, and many of the low-bid *enterprise solution providers* that provide the software are just integrators of COTS. Even in situations where a gov't agency is paying for custom software, there are still gov't project managers complaining about the cost and how COTS would save money because they read it in some magazine. (Been there, still doing that.) Common sense is not necessarily a requirement for a federal management position.
There's so much junk on traditional media, too. Isn't that pretty obvious by now?
Absolutely not. As long as the news is reported by a major traditional outlet like CBS and a veteran reporter like Dan Rather (or the rest of the crew on 60 Minutes) with decades of experience *interpreting* the news for us news *consumers*, I'll continue to believe it all.
Is it because the the younger ones aren't as bright and therefor don't cover their tracks as well? Or is it because as you get older, the appeal of these kind of things drops? A combination of both? Something else? I would have to assume it's a combination of both, but I have no idea.
I doubt that it has to do with intelligence. I'm living proof you don't get any brighter as you get older.:) Why is it usually the younger ones who vandalize cars and graveyards and toilet-paper houses? I'd guess it's a combination of that teenage rebellion thing, a need to mark territory, and way too much time on their hands. Once you have a life and you're doing something constructive, there's little drive, interest, or time for being destructive.
The responsibility of SCO's management is to maximize long-term share value for their shareholders.
At least that is slightly better than the usual slashbot claim that company management is required to make a profit. Company officers have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the company, which includes shareholders as well as employees, and by extension, its customers. If SCO management were acting in the best interests of the company, they would be avoiding expensive fights with IBM while doing everything they could to modernize their legacy products and maintain their market position in POS (yeah, I know what you're thinking - it's Point Of Sale) systems. What they are doing is disasterous for long-term shareholders.
Slashdot Mirror
Err, try browsing at a different threashold :D
Sure. Set that threshold way up, and you'll be treated to the same old pablum dished out constantly by the same small group of users who are automatically modded +5 for every comment. (I tried it once for a few days.) That's way more boring than reading at 1 or 0.
If nothing else you can watch all those cool compiler messages fly by enhancing your innner sense of 1337ness :)
Okay, you need to turn in your Linux Geek membership card. Exactly how long has it been since you compiled a kernel? The build routine for 2.6 (and 2.5 I assume) doesn't show the compiler messages.
You need to subtract the number of people who retired, which given that baby boomers are retiring in huge numbers will decrease that number significantly.
What "huge numbers" would that be since the retirement age is a moving target constantly being bumped up by Congress? BTW, the leading edge of the boomer population is just getting ready to retire.
As it should be. You can't say they can't find a job if they're not looking.
Being rejected over and over again while looking for a job can have an effect on a person. I had a relative who looked for a job for many months with no result. Eventually, the unemployment benefits ran out, and some time later he stopped looking. Then one day he wrote a note, got into the bathtub, put the business end of a gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. One less person on the dole and included in the statistics, right?
What matters is wether or not they use the same standards for what qualifies as unemployed from year to year.
So consistently misleading and useless numbers used to calm the masses are helpful? You've got to be kidding.
Ok and what has SS turned into? A pyramid scheme that is looted by Congress. It's dying and needs to be replaced. Support Bush's plan for SS reform.
And what about the people who couldn't afford to save for retirement for the past 40 or 50 years because they were forced to pay into Social Security? Bush says, "Ha ha, we were only kidding!" Sounds like Soylent Green to me. Euthanasia for boomers - beef steaks for CEOs and politicians.
Didn't they tigten up H1B visas during the last couple of years? Why? Because with the reduction in the number of jobs, there is no longer a justification to import as much labor. The government responded. Many businesses screamed about this, but they did it anyway.
No, Congress did not tighten up on H-1B visas. They let a temporary increase in the number of visas expire. They also removed any provisions that required (very few) companies to seek Americans first for employment. American companies did not "scream" about it because it was too farcical while laying off hundreds of thousands of IT workers.
Congress is entertaining new measures to expand the H-1B visa program even though engineering/IT unemployment remains at all-time highs. So, no, aside from small efforts by a few thinkers in Congress, the government hasn't really done anything to help American workers.
That said, I'm in a decent job now and I'm assuming that this will still be the case in December, so economy isn't a hot topic with me.
That is insightful? What do you think will happen to your job if millions of others are unemployed and unable to afford your company's product(s)? With short-sighted vision like that you should apply for the CEO position.
Muahahaha... e.g. I enjoy nit-pickin'.
In that position, "e.g." should have been followed by a comma. Enjoy.
Nah, the moderators following the rules will skip over your comment since you're pointing out the obvious. The other moderators will suffer such cognitive dissonance that they won't be able to make a decision and also pass on.
JOIN THE ANTI-DASMEMBERBYTER GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGN!
Typical AC post. Where's the link? The URL? The membership rules? Oh, and it triggers the lameness filter, too.
Even if that's not the case, I get the feeling that far too many shops just decide "Oh well, the patch broke it and we don't feel like putting forth the effort to find a fix for it." Check with the vendor of the broken application, have your in-house staff look at the custom app, don't just about the boys from Redmond breaking your toys. I guess it's just easier to blame Microsoft and be done with it.
A lot of companies have multi-million dollar so-called ERP sytems that are a snakes-nest of marginal software kludged together by resellers. Taking your timesheet, payroll, or billing programs down with a patch known to break them is not an option. It is far better to hope for the best, and as you say, blame Microsoft - which ultimately bears the blame anyway.
Buyer beware. You know the mess you're getting into when you decide to run Microsoft products. sort of a "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime" situation.
I'm in agreement, but no PHB is going to take any blame in these situations. Either heads will roll in ITS (for following the PHB's orders) or there will be loud wailing and demands for new laws to stop (ha ha) malware.
Hey, thanks man. I was wondering about the phenomenon and was pretty sure I was wrong about it being the underrated thing. Hence why I put it in my sig...it was sure to attract one of Slashdot's many archivists to answer my question sans effort.
So you weren't wasting any of your valuable posting time by doing any basic research while you were trolling. I'm not an "archivist", just some slashbot who knows how to click a link and read text. I've even read some of the Slashcode to see if some posted claims were true or not - some are. Slashdot seems to be all downhill lately, nothing but trolls and mod-bombers any more. Very sad.
Odds are their network is firewalled, probably quite well. And that's *why* they are down now. It's the "our powerful lord and master the firewall will protect the whole network, so we don't need to patch!" line of thinking that may have landed them in this mess. That line of thinking was semi-validated when sasser made it's last run around. "We didn't get hit, we must be safe."
If you've been reading the IT trade rags, you know there are a lot of companies running unpatched because the MS patches break their systems. A lot of companies are between a rock and a hard spot: Patch and stop working or don't patch and hope for the best. Obviously, the second choice wins. I can't say I'm too sympathetic with the PHBs that made the OS choice, but I can understand why many systems aren't patched.
f you don't like what I say, mark it overrated. This removes my Karma bonus. -2 for the price of -1, and no metamod!
I'm tired of seeing this BS sig. As someone who has been modded overrated on too many occasions, I know it's not true. Read the FAQ. Any two down-mods will remove the karma bonus, but it doesn't remove karma.
You have my sympathy, your government seems even more dissfunctional than ours.
That is something I can't argue with. Thanks for the sympathy - it may not help the situation, but it's comforting. :)
More importantly, it's not like we have to use Diebold's crap if we don't use an OSS system. I am happy with written paper votes. They're fairly secure, proven technology with a good audit trail. I don't see any point in thinking of switching from written paper ballots til a better solution is made, and then thouroughly tested.
Then you should complain to the feds, who mandated the new voting systems following the 2000 elections and provided several billion dollars in funding. Diebold is raking it in along with Sequoia Systems. Many districts won't give voters a paper ballot option. Some will only offer paper ballots if you use an absentee ballot. If your district gives you the option of a paper ballot, you're lucky.
I'd think with that in mind that little scripts are the lease of their worries. If someone compromises their network and server enough to install and run a script, they've got considerably more at their fingertips.
This story isn't news, it was linked from a Slashdot article weeks ago. Of course, you have to click through to part three to get to the part about the VB script, so I shouldn't be surprised if no one here acutally read it. Apparently the script has already been refined in preparation for the upcoming election, since it's gone from six to five lines.
While being compromised is certainly a risk, the big problem is someone with access to the district-level tallying computer. One politically motivated person involved in an election with physical access and a simple script or a two-digit code. That is not the "least" of my worries, it's the biggest one. Like most security hacks, it's the inside job that does the most damage and is hardest to defend against.
Maybe we should throw some blame to the PHB who ordered the switch. Purhaps there was no hard sell from MS, and a PHB saw a product brochure and got a hard on to switch.
I doubt that it was a hard sell from MS, but it could have been another company. The typical sales job is from an integrator/reseller who provides the final product. There is usually a slick marketeer with a young, curvy, female partner to provide a distraction for any male techies present. The power-point says it all: Lowest total project cost, lowest time-to-completion, scalable, innovative, rich features (that one always seems to be present, whatever it means), easy administration, state-of-the-art, enterprise-class, lowest TCO. What more could a PHB ask for? (Well, yeah, there's the truth, but we're talking business here. :)
Personally, if I were that technician you can bet I'd have made sure to reboot at the scheduled time. It's just that simple. Has this guy ever heard of a Post-It Note?
Perhaps the machine had never made it to 30 days uptime before, so the task became a non-issue? I've had a Post-it that says "Timesheet!" on my monitor for two years, and it doesn't do any good. You stop noticing those things after a few days.
But most off the shelf software have disclaimers expressly stating they are not to be used in mission critical situations.
Most of the government's sotware is contracted out, and many of the low-bid *enterprise solution providers* that provide the software are just integrators of COTS. Even in situations where a gov't agency is paying for custom software, there are still gov't project managers complaining about the cost and how COTS would save money because they read it in some magazine. (Been there, still doing that.) Common sense is not necessarily a requirement for a federal management position.
There's so much junk on traditional media, too. Isn't that pretty obvious by now?
Absolutely not. As long as the news is reported by a major traditional outlet like CBS and a veteran reporter like Dan Rather (or the rest of the crew on 60 Minutes) with decades of experience *interpreting* the news for us news *consumers*, I'll continue to believe it all.
Is it because the the younger ones aren't as bright and therefor don't cover their tracks as well? Or is it because as you get older, the appeal of these kind of things drops? A combination of both? Something else? I would have to assume it's a combination of both, but I have no idea.
I doubt that it has to do with intelligence. I'm living proof you don't get any brighter as you get older. :) Why is it usually the younger ones who vandalize cars and graveyards and toilet-paper houses? I'd guess it's a combination of that teenage rebellion thing, a need to mark territory, and way too much time on their hands. Once you have a life and you're doing something constructive, there's little drive, interest, or time for being destructive.
The responsibility of SCO's management is to maximize long-term share value for their shareholders.
At least that is slightly better than the usual slashbot claim that company management is required to make a profit. Company officers have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the company, which includes shareholders as well as employees, and by extension, its customers. If SCO management were acting in the best interests of the company, they would be avoiding expensive fights with IBM while doing everything they could to modernize their legacy products and maintain their market position in POS (yeah, I know what you're thinking - it's Point Of Sale) systems. What they are doing is disasterous for long-term shareholders.
I have sympathy for them. You know the kind that one has when one puts a suffering animal out of its misery.
The problem is that SCO is the Cujo of businesses. Sympathy doesn't apply.