Sony is now a bipolar company and should just split itself into two halves (content and electronics) so it can move on. If Sony take any longer to make decisions, the next wave of technology will come on go before the Bipolar Sony can make a decision on what technology to release. I divested myself of all Sony components quite awhile ago and have since stopped having flexibility problems with how I view/use my electroncs.
No matter what DRM, watermark, or token system they release will do nothing more than frustrate their consumer base. Many consumers are now feeling for burned by Sony that they will wait until the mid to trailing edge of the technology cycle to adopt it.
People are still using tape for backups? Tape is evil. Get yourself a nice pile of hotswapabble drive cages and instead of buying tapes, buy disks. 200GB disks are cheaper (and faster) than 200GB tapes. Then get a nice padded box and send the backup disks offsite just like you would tapes.
I am waiting for someone to build a diskjukebox that has a robotic arm that moves disks into hotswap cages.
You don't even have to call users, just look at the sticky note on their monitor. Until IT can integrate all it's systems into a single login for the users, the 'ol sticky note stuck to the front of the monitor with all the workers usernames/passwords for the 20 systems they use each day is going to be the biggest risk. One time an employee left and an replacement was hired. They never called IT for a new username/password, they just gave the new employee the sticky note.
It's safe to assume that when they say it generated more energy than input to the system, they're right
Actually, mass = energy, thus if the iron mass is being converted into energy then it isn't a perpetual motion machine. To solve this problem, we would have to standarize all units to eV (electron volts), then measure the input energy (mass of wires + power in eV), perform the experiment and measure the energy released (in eV), then subtract the two to determine the efficiency of the conversion process.
It's definately interesting and I can't wait see the math on how they achieved this. Also, I wonder if they attempted to detect gamma rays. If gamma rays were detected, that would make this process even more interesting (and dangerous) since some sort of nuclear transition would have occured. All they have to do now it figure out how to control this process and get it to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine and make electricity, then we are all set.
That little thing called the "transistor" was invented in Bell Labs. It would be great if Bell Labs made a comeback as well and rocked the world with the next disruptive technology.
It seems like every generation comes up with a sign for the mark. Here is my brief history of the mark of the beast. Feel free to add yours.
Social Security Numbers
Punchcards (They used to be included with your utility bills)
Drivers License Numbers
Credit Card Numbers
Bar Codes
IP Addressess
Bill Gates full name converted to ASCII and summed.
CPU IDs
and now.... RFID (Which is really just a modern bar code.)
I think the "mark of the beast" might be figurative language in the book of Revelation, but talking about apocalytic literature can be like running the Boston marathon is quicksand. It is amazing how a 10 page book of the Bible could be expanded into a 2000+ page box set and miniseries. Maybe 666 is just a number that represents imperfection three times over.... What? I pity the fool that says the mark of the beast isn't a literal number stamped on the forehead... Ow, don't hurt me Mr. T....
President Eisenhower warned us the industrial military complex back in the 60's when technology started to take off. It is staggering how much of our annual budget that we spend on the military, even in so called peace time. It is even scarier how much of this budget is used for spying and profiling American citizens. To this day, we aren't even sure how people get on the "No Fly List". There must be a saner solution to this problem, other than report everything to the government and wait for some algorithm to report you match a specific profile and then send the black helicopters to come get you.
I leave you with the wisdom of Mr. Eisenhower from 1961.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
* and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
I watched the moon landing video from the link and it looked horrible. It was blocky, grainy, low-res and filled with compression artifacts. Does anyone know if Google plans on making higher quality video available in the future? I Google is archiving this stuff at a higher resolution and a much higher optical density, especially when doing high contrast space films.
Is it me or is this a strangle place for this advertisement, err I mean article. I'm thinking that the target audience for this post is all the slashdotter's who are forced to support family members and friends that use AOL dialup. I'm sure glad I'm clued into the $18/mo. plan:)
Actually, I got dear old Dad off of dialup and onto the low-end broadband years ago, but it makes support much easier now that I can share his screen.
Sure the new laptops are thinner, lighter, and use less power but there is a drawback. PERFORMANCE SUCKETH! The powersavers are especially slow and underperforming. The only decent laptops are the battery draining monsters with the full size heatsinks, real video cards, and faster harddrives.
I am not entirely sure why people even keep buying laptops with hotels now offering Internet kiosks. Why lug a laptop, have to show it to homeland security at the airport, then worry about it getting broken, damaged or destroyed just so you can run e-mail, excel, and word?
Incidentally, I think a laptop is one of the few purchases in which the value of the item depreciates faster than of a new car. That's impressive.
Gateway has been dead for awhile now as evidenced by the $2/share stock price. Remember the local Gateway store where you could go to the factory showroom and order a custom computer? The main problem that Gateway had was inferior parts and poor after-the-sale customer service, which resulted in customers not returning again and again for upgrades and second time PC purchases.
An ancedotal story. My mother-in-law wanted a new computer and I offered to build her one. She insisted that she wanted a large company like Gateway standing behind her in case of a problem. I groaned and let her buy from Gateway. The PC had problems out of the box, most noticably skipping when playing audio CD's. Grinning, I told my mother-in-law just to call gateway and they would take care of it. She called and they ran her through the reboot your computer, click this irrelevant non-related thing, then that irrelevant thing. To make a long story short, the CD-ROM drive was defective and Gateway refused to replace it, but gave her a code and 1-800 number to call periodically for more information regarding a fix.
I just laughed, and laughed and laughed. Yep, the big company was standing behind (sic) it's brand new defective product. Soon after than the video card died, but Gateway did replace that after 2 agonizing calls, and then close to the end of the warranty period the monitor died, which was also replaced.
So when it came time to upgrade to a better PC? Did my mother-in-law go back to Gateway? Nope, she called me to come and take care of it.
Gateway had a strong lead and should have spun itself off into a world-class service and support organization. They could have been the first "Geek Squad", but they chose substandard customer service coupled with the cheapest parts available to make margins. Shipping defective monitors around has got to cut into profit margins.
Because of this, everyone has already bought a Gateway and isn't going back for another. I wonder if I could sell a T-Shirt, which read: "Been there, bought that, Got the Cow-Box.":)
I get sick and tired of everyone blaming everything on the database. It's not the databases fault people! The programmers that wrote the front end should have done better checking on the data entry. Something like,
if (home=single_family_dwelling AND new_appraisal >= current_appraisal *1.30) then ' Don't UPDATE THE DATABASE and contact data entry employee manager ' Send warning message to data entry operator else ' Update the Database endif
This county should spend some time and money looking for other data entry holes. Also, exception and audit reports should probably be implemented as a stop gap. Maybe report on parcels that have appreciated more than 30% and do a manual double check before publishing the tax revenue numbers to the budget office.
And at the risk of repeating myself, "This problem was not caused by the Database! Call it "human error", "programmer error", or "lazy auditors" but calling it a "database entry error" implicates an innocent database doing it's job properly. Thank you, you may now return to Slashdot and STOP BLAMING THE DATABASE!
This is a well crafted scam to get Department of Homeland money. Just look at the data! Our GPS satellite network is suffering from a sawtooth anomaly! The only way to fix this and restore security to our country is to give this guy DoH grant money!:)
The Bureacracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding Bureacracy.....
All I can say is give me a break. A mountain of paperwork to get RAM added to a non-production server? If this were an efficienct company, wouldn't all of this be online? I can't think of a large company that doesn't have online change control these days.
My first step would be to implement online change control and then see how much is getting done and how long it takes. Too much of your story is ancedotal and you and your managers sound like a bunch of whiners. If you were doing anything remotely important, I am sure that your IT department would take care of you immediately. If I had to guess, you work in the department responsible to archiving old reports that only Bob in accounting still cares about.
Second, if you senior management can't get IT to do work for you then you have serious trouble. This means that your senior managers no longer have control of expenditures. Senior managers that don't have power over purse strings are NOT senior managers and are more likely team leaders, who report to a manger, who reports to a manager, who reports to the senior manager that attends the meeting with the VP and the CIO (Head IT dude).
Just take a chill pill. If your work is important to the company, then IT will get it done.
So it's not just a moving target, it's FIVE moving targets. (or three, or however many flavors of Linux you want to support.)
WTF?!! It's all the same kernel and the same kernel means the same device drivers. A flavor contains different software applications and configurations, but the kernel is still at the heart of it all. For example, Knoppix, Redhat and Suse all use the same kernel and same device drivers and modules. If you want 4 moving targets consider writing a driver for Win98, Win2K, WinXP and Win3k.
Your assignment for tonight is to build a Linux device driver module so you have a clue what you are talking about. Next, take that same exact driver source code and try it on another flavor with the same kernel and it will amazingly work. Note: Do not try this with Windows. Installing a Win98 driver under WinXP can be disastrous.
Good point, but the employees are the ones that create "shareholder value." My gripe is that life was good before the IPO. Maybe the owner knew he had to attract and retain talent to look good for the IPO. Keep in mind that a corporate owner who has a bunch of knuckle-heads working for him probably won't generate much revenue.
Ah, Going public. The excitement of Stock Options and being traded on the stock exchange. Everyone thinks paydays will get bigger and the company with thrive and grow.
In reality, what happens is that you are know answerable to the will of mysterious stock holders. You start learning a new phrases and vocabularly like, "shareholder equity", "IPO", "Sarbanes-Oxley", "vesting period", "we must make decisions that increase shareholder value", and "the purpose of stock isn't to make employees rich."
Soon after the IPO, raises and bonuses shrink. Healthcare gets slashed and perks vanish away. Why? Because executives who are now accountable to shareholders rank their company vs. competitors and create a scorecard. Suppose the shareholders were to find out that your CEO was paying better bonuses to employees than the industry standard. He might have to answer for that on an earnings conference call or meeting with the mysterious shareholders. Executives however always want raises, bonuses, perks, and cheap stock no matter what kind of job they do. Just ask the idiot running GM into the ground. He should be well compensated no matter how poorly the company performs.
I think Google thought they could go public and still maintain control of the company, but it looks like they are careening out of control. The absolute best thing that could happen is for Google's stock to crash, then have Google buy all the outstanding shares and convert back to a private company.
There are still some really great privately held technology companies like SAS where life is good for employees. Am I bitter? Sure, I went through the whole IPO process and watched as executives were rolling in cash while they sold stock for which they had paid a mere $.01 per/share. Meanwhile, I had to hang onto my stock and stock options for a vesting period while the price plummeted and they all left to go find another company to rape and pillage. Does anyone know of a situation where going public was actually good for a company and it's employees?
When I took my programming classes, I rocked and wrote good code. I found that some other students were stealing my discarded code printouts from the garabage can in front of the printer. I eventually figured out they were stealing my work and left them a present:)
At the end of the semester, our lasy TA left our graded final project folders and CD's in a box in the hall outside his office and mine was stolen before I could collect it. No matter what you do, the slackers of the world are going to find the path of least resistance whether they beg, bribe, borrow, or steal to get it done.
The good news is that these losers won't last long when they are actually forced to do some work on their own and end up dropping out of IT or shifting to the call center or PC support. Academic dishonestly is a huge problem through all degree programs. I put the blame squarely on beer, women, Microsoft (Xbox), pool tables, bars, casinos, money, cars, P2P applications, sporting events, and general lack of caring. If we could just get rid of all these useless distractions and make academic dishonesty punishable by death, I think students could focus better.
Here is my recipie for eye-strain ELIMINATION:
1. Goto a good eye doctor and get a complete eye exam. Note: A good eye doctor is one capable of performing eye surgery.
2. Get your prescription PERFECT. When they are playing the "which looks better game" ask to see everything over and over until you are sure.
3. When you are measured for glasses the assistant has to find the sweet spot in the lens for your eye. Make sure they get it exactly right. I've had this done incorrectly and had to have a lens redone.
4. I wear titanium frame glasses with carbon anti-glare lenses. Light glasses stay in place, unlike heavy glasses which slide down your nose. Additionally, light frames and lenses reduce and pain on your nose and ears.
5. Get the anti-glare coating on the lenses. Yes it is expensive, but worth it.
Remove any flourescent light source in your environment and/or reduce their intensity (turn half of them off). Floursecent lights are obnoxious and have a 60Hz flicker to them which can cause an interference pattern (jiggle) with some monitors depending on the refresh rate, which can really cause eye strain.
Set your screen far enough away so whe you are looking at it your eyes are naturally relaxed. I sit about 2.5 feet away and find that my eyes are quite comfortable. If I move in closer my eyes dart around the LCD panel and this causes eye strain.
Lastly, I have found the higher intensity LCD panels like 500:1 contrast rations and above, I have experienced some eye pain. On very bright LCD panels I often adjust the brightness downward and then adjust the room light so the screen is still bright.
Good luck! Getting old stinks:)
It's the same everywhere. Contractors are second class citizens in terms of culture. Whether you are working at Microsoft, IBM, Ford, VW, GM, EDS or where-ever. However, if you are a smart contractor, you will do a good job, learn as much as you can, and moving for more money. The contractors I pity are the H1-B guys and gals since they are totally stuck.
Contracting can be fun. I highly recommend it to all recent grads. Get out there and see the world, get good at what you do, and change jobs every 4-6 months for more money! Eventually, someone will realize your talent and pay a premium to keep you. The big secret is that the contractors do ALL the work while the full-time employees go to endless meetings and lunch.
I was wondering if anyone knows how much money it costs to buy a piece of legislation. It is a well established fact that our elected officials are addicted to contributions, gifts, and other quid pro quo from special interest groups. I suspect it only costs around $5,000 to $10,000 to get a piece of legislation introduced.
If that is the case, we could start the Slashdot Political Action Committee and bury the RIAA/MPAA with some really interesting legislation. Just a thought.
Of course! LUGs serve to reinforce the geek ethos.
on
Do LUGs Still Matter?
·
· Score: 1
Without LUGs where would middle aged computer geeks get to escape and show off all their new gadgets and toys? At my LUG we usually have a presenter which demonstrates an opensource application like Apahce, Xen, OpenLDAP etc... Everyone sits in a circle around the presenter, sporting a wireless laptop, half listening to the presenter and half trying to get their latest gizmo/gadget working.
After the LUG meetings people usually head out for a burger/pizza and socialize a bit. It's good for geeks to get out and share with other geeks in the community. We share tips, tricks, knowledge, and jokes. Also, it gives people who are curious about Linux a chance to learn more as well.
Is my local LUG spearheading the Linux movement like Perens or Raymond? Ummm.... not so much, but the community needs users/bug testers as well as creators.
Wow... digital to analog conversion at the top of the national agenda. Correct me if I am wrong, but don't we have bigger problems? Here is a small list in case you need to pull your head out of your arse and get busy.
Oil Prices
Natural Gas Prices
Citizes without health care
The loss of the American Middle Class
The war in Iraq and against Islamic radicals
The giant national debt, which is now mostly owned by China
Cleaning up the South before the next hurricane season
Alternative Fuel Research
Pourous Borders
Executive abuse by King George Bush
Lobbyists hijacking our leaders... oh wait, now this legistlation makes sense.
The barriers to breaking into IT are going to get higher and higher due to the ever increasing complexity of the IT field. If your only experience is college, you are a danger not only to yourself but to those around you, unless you came from MIT or UofM.
Colleges and Universities may need to start teaching an more integrated technology curriculum, instead of programming in a vacuum. In the modern world it is rare to create a standalone application. Most applications require connections to databases and websites over a variety of links which range from T1's to VPNs connected through firewalls.
Technology is a fun, yet at times frustrating career. We have come a long way since Kernighan and Ritche wrote "The C Programming Language." Education may need to evolve to help Computer Science grads be more marketable and useful.
Newspaper? Aren't newspapers dead already? I thought that with inventions of Slashdot, Fark, and The Daily Show that everyone born after 1970 gets all the daily information they can use. Even old-school broadcast television is moving to the web. As of yesterday, you can now download NBC nightly news on the web.
For those of you still reading newspapers, STOP KILLING THE TREES already. We need the wood to rebuild Florida, Texas, and Lousiana before next hurricane season.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony is now a bipolar company and should just split itself into two halves (content and electronics) so it can move on. If Sony take any longer to make decisions, the next wave of technology will come on go before the Bipolar Sony can make a decision on what technology to release. I divested myself of all Sony components quite awhile ago and have since stopped having flexibility problems with how I view/use my electroncs.
No matter what DRM, watermark, or token system they release will do nothing more than frustrate their consumer base. Many consumers are now feeling for burned by Sony that they will wait until the mid to trailing edge of the technology cycle to adopt it.
costs of tape
People are still using tape for backups? Tape is evil. Get yourself a nice pile of hotswapabble drive cages and instead of buying tapes, buy disks. 200GB disks are cheaper (and faster) than 200GB tapes. Then get a nice padded box and send the backup disks offsite just like you would tapes.
I am waiting for someone to build a diskjukebox that has a robotic arm that moves disks into hotswap cages.
You don't even have to call users, just look at the sticky note on their monitor. Until IT can integrate all it's systems into a single login for the users, the 'ol sticky note stuck to the front of the monitor with all the workers usernames/passwords for the 20 systems they use each day is going to be the biggest risk. One time an employee left and an replacement was hired. They never called IT for a new username/password, they just gave the new employee the sticky note.
It's safe to assume that when they say it generated more energy than input to the system, they're right
Actually, mass = energy, thus if the iron mass is being converted into energy then it isn't a perpetual motion machine. To solve this problem, we would have to standarize all units to eV (electron volts), then measure the input energy (mass of wires + power in eV), perform the experiment and measure the energy released (in eV), then subtract the two to determine the efficiency of the conversion process.
It's definately interesting and I can't wait see the math on how they achieved this. Also, I wonder if they attempted to detect gamma rays. If gamma rays were detected, that would make this process even more interesting (and dangerous) since some sort of nuclear transition would have occured. All they have to do now it figure out how to control this process and get it to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine and make electricity, then we are all set.
That little thing called the "transistor" was invented in Bell Labs. It would be great if Bell Labs made a comeback as well and rocked the world with the next disruptive technology.
It seems like every generation comes up with a sign for the mark. Here is my brief history of the mark of the beast. Feel free to add yours.
Social Security Numbers
Punchcards (They used to be included with your utility bills)
Drivers License Numbers
Credit Card Numbers
Bar Codes
IP Addressess
Bill Gates full name converted to ASCII and summed.
CPU IDs
and now.... RFID (Which is really just a modern bar code.)
I think the "mark of the beast" might be figurative language in the book of Revelation, but talking about apocalytic literature can be like running the Boston marathon is quicksand. It is amazing how a 10 page book of the Bible could be expanded into a 2000+ page box set and miniseries. Maybe 666 is just a number that represents imperfection three times over.... What? I pity the fool that says the mark of the beast isn't a literal number stamped on the forehead... Ow, don't hurt me Mr. T....
I leave you with the wisdom of Mr. Eisenhower from 1961.
I watched the moon landing video from the link and it looked horrible. It was blocky, grainy, low-res and filled with compression artifacts. Does anyone know if Google plans on making higher quality video available in the future? I Google is archiving this stuff at a higher resolution and a much higher optical density, especially when doing high contrast space films.
Is it me or is this a strangle place for this advertisement, err I mean article. I'm thinking that the target audience for this post is all the slashdotter's who are forced to support family members and friends that use AOL dialup. I'm sure glad I'm clued into the $18/mo. plan :)
Actually, I got dear old Dad off of dialup and onto the low-end broadband years ago, but it makes support much easier now that I can share his screen.
Sure the new laptops are thinner, lighter, and use less power but there is a drawback. PERFORMANCE SUCKETH! The powersavers are especially slow and underperforming. The only decent laptops are the battery draining monsters with the full size heatsinks, real video cards, and faster harddrives.
I am not entirely sure why people even keep buying laptops with hotels now offering Internet kiosks. Why lug a laptop, have to show it to homeland security at the airport, then worry about it getting broken, damaged or destroyed just so you can run e-mail, excel, and word?
Incidentally, I think a laptop is one of the few purchases in which the value of the item depreciates faster than of a new car. That's impressive.
Gateway has been dead for awhile now as evidenced by the $2/share stock price. Remember the local Gateway store where you could go to the factory showroom and order a custom computer? The main problem that Gateway had was inferior parts and poor after-the-sale customer service, which resulted in customers not returning again and again for upgrades and second time PC purchases.
:)
An ancedotal story. My mother-in-law wanted a new computer and I offered to build her one. She insisted that she wanted a large company like Gateway standing behind her in case of a problem. I groaned and let her buy from Gateway. The PC had problems out of the box, most noticably skipping when playing audio CD's. Grinning, I told my mother-in-law just to call gateway and they would take care of it. She called and they ran her through the reboot your computer, click this irrelevant non-related thing, then that irrelevant thing. To make a long story short, the CD-ROM drive was defective and Gateway refused to replace it, but gave her a code and 1-800 number to call periodically for more information regarding a fix.
I just laughed, and laughed and laughed. Yep, the big company was standing behind (sic) it's brand new defective product. Soon after than the video card died, but Gateway did replace that after 2 agonizing calls, and then close to the end of the warranty period the monitor died, which was also replaced.
So when it came time to upgrade to a better PC? Did my mother-in-law go back to Gateway? Nope, she called me to come and take care of it.
Gateway had a strong lead and should have spun itself off into a world-class service and support organization. They could have been the first "Geek Squad", but they chose substandard customer service coupled with the cheapest parts available to make margins. Shipping defective monitors around has got to cut into profit margins.
Because of this, everyone has already bought a Gateway and isn't going back for another. I wonder if I could sell a T-Shirt, which read: "Been there, bought that, Got the Cow-Box."
This county should spend some time and money looking for other data entry holes. Also, exception and audit reports should probably be implemented as a stop gap. Maybe report on parcels that have appreciated more than 30% and do a manual double check before publishing the tax revenue numbers to the budget office.
And at the risk of repeating myself, "This problem was not caused by the Database! Call it "human error", "programmer error", or "lazy auditors" but calling it a "database entry error" implicates an innocent database doing it's job properly. Thank you, you may now return to Slashdot and STOP BLAMING THE DATABASE!
This is a well crafted scam to get Department of Homeland money. Just look at the data! Our GPS satellite network is suffering from a sawtooth anomaly! The only way to fix this and restore security to our country is to give this guy DoH grant money! :)
The Bureacracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding Bureacracy.....
All I can say is give me a break. A mountain of paperwork to get RAM added to a non-production server? If this were an efficienct company, wouldn't all of this be online? I can't think of a large company that doesn't have online change control these days.
My first step would be to implement online change control and then see how much is getting done and how long it takes. Too much of your story is ancedotal and you and your managers sound like a bunch of whiners. If you were doing anything remotely important, I am sure that your IT department would take care of you immediately. If I had to guess, you work in the department responsible to archiving old reports that only Bob in accounting still cares about.
Second, if you senior management can't get IT to do work for you then you have serious trouble. This means that your senior managers no longer have control of expenditures. Senior managers that don't have power over purse strings are NOT senior managers and are more likely team leaders, who report to a manger, who reports to a manager, who reports to the senior manager that attends the meeting with the VP and the CIO (Head IT dude).
Just take a chill pill. If your work is important to the company, then IT will get it done.
So it's not just a moving target, it's FIVE moving targets. (or three, or however many flavors of Linux you want to support.)
WTF?!! It's all the same kernel and the same kernel means the same device drivers. A flavor contains different software applications and configurations, but the kernel is still at the heart of it all. For example, Knoppix, Redhat and Suse all use the same kernel and same device drivers and modules. If you want 4 moving targets consider writing a driver for Win98, Win2K, WinXP and Win3k.
Your assignment for tonight is to build a Linux device driver module so you have a clue what you are talking about. Next, take that same exact driver source code and try it on another flavor with the same kernel and it will amazingly work. Note: Do not try this with Windows. Installing a Win98 driver under WinXP can be disastrous.
Good point, but the employees are the ones that create "shareholder value." My gripe is that life was good before the IPO. Maybe the owner knew he had to attract and retain talent to look good for the IPO. Keep in mind that a corporate owner who has a bunch of knuckle-heads working for him probably won't generate much revenue.
Ah, Going public. The excitement of Stock Options and being traded on the stock exchange. Everyone thinks paydays will get bigger and the company with thrive and grow.
In reality, what happens is that you are know answerable to the will of mysterious stock holders. You start learning a new phrases and vocabularly like, "shareholder equity", "IPO", "Sarbanes-Oxley", "vesting period", "we must make decisions that increase shareholder value", and "the purpose of stock isn't to make employees rich."
Soon after the IPO, raises and bonuses shrink. Healthcare gets slashed and perks vanish away. Why? Because executives who are now accountable to shareholders rank their company vs. competitors and create a scorecard. Suppose the shareholders were to find out that your CEO was paying better bonuses to employees than the industry standard. He might have to answer for that on an earnings conference call or meeting with the mysterious shareholders. Executives however always want raises, bonuses, perks, and cheap stock no matter what kind of job they do. Just ask the idiot running GM into the ground. He should be well compensated no matter how poorly the company performs.
I think Google thought they could go public and still maintain control of the company, but it looks like they are careening out of control. The absolute best thing that could happen is for Google's stock to crash, then have Google buy all the outstanding shares and convert back to a private company.
There are still some really great privately held technology companies like SAS where life is good for employees. Am I bitter? Sure, I went through the whole IPO process and watched as executives were rolling in cash while they sold stock for which they had paid a mere $.01 per/share. Meanwhile, I had to hang onto my stock and stock options for a vesting period while the price plummeted and they all left to go find another company to rape and pillage. Does anyone know of a situation where going public was actually good for a company and it's employees?
When I took my programming classes, I rocked and wrote good code. I found that some other students were stealing my discarded code printouts from the garabage can in front of the printer. I eventually figured out they were stealing my work and left them a present :)
At the end of the semester, our lasy TA left our graded final project folders and CD's in a box in the hall outside his office and mine was stolen before I could collect it. No matter what you do, the slackers of the world are going to find the path of least resistance whether they beg, bribe, borrow, or steal to get it done.
The good news is that these losers won't last long when they are actually forced to do some work on their own and end up dropping out of IT or shifting to the call center or PC support. Academic dishonestly is a huge problem through all degree programs. I put the blame squarely on beer, women, Microsoft (Xbox), pool tables, bars, casinos, money, cars, P2P applications, sporting events, and general lack of caring. If we could just get rid of all these useless distractions and make academic dishonesty punishable by death, I think students could focus better.
Here is my recipie for eye-strain ELIMINATION: 1. Goto a good eye doctor and get a complete eye exam. Note: A good eye doctor is one capable of performing eye surgery. 2. Get your prescription PERFECT. When they are playing the "which looks better game" ask to see everything over and over until you are sure. 3. When you are measured for glasses the assistant has to find the sweet spot in the lens for your eye. Make sure they get it exactly right. I've had this done incorrectly and had to have a lens redone. 4. I wear titanium frame glasses with carbon anti-glare lenses. Light glasses stay in place, unlike heavy glasses which slide down your nose. Additionally, light frames and lenses reduce and pain on your nose and ears. 5. Get the anti-glare coating on the lenses. Yes it is expensive, but worth it. Remove any flourescent light source in your environment and/or reduce their intensity (turn half of them off). Floursecent lights are obnoxious and have a 60Hz flicker to them which can cause an interference pattern (jiggle) with some monitors depending on the refresh rate, which can really cause eye strain. Set your screen far enough away so whe you are looking at it your eyes are naturally relaxed. I sit about 2.5 feet away and find that my eyes are quite comfortable. If I move in closer my eyes dart around the LCD panel and this causes eye strain. Lastly, I have found the higher intensity LCD panels like 500:1 contrast rations and above, I have experienced some eye pain. On very bright LCD panels I often adjust the brightness downward and then adjust the room light so the screen is still bright. Good luck! Getting old stinks :)
It's the same everywhere. Contractors are second class citizens in terms of culture. Whether you are working at Microsoft, IBM, Ford, VW, GM, EDS or where-ever. However, if you are a smart contractor, you will do a good job, learn as much as you can, and moving for more money. The contractors I pity are the H1-B guys and gals since they are totally stuck.
Contracting can be fun. I highly recommend it to all recent grads. Get out there and see the world, get good at what you do, and change jobs every 4-6 months for more money! Eventually, someone will realize your talent and pay a premium to keep you. The big secret is that the contractors do ALL the work while the full-time employees go to endless meetings and lunch.
I was wondering if anyone knows how much money it costs to buy a piece of legislation. It is a well established fact that our elected officials are addicted to contributions, gifts, and other quid pro quo from special interest groups. I suspect it only costs around $5,000 to $10,000 to get a piece of legislation introduced.
If that is the case, we could start the Slashdot Political Action Committee and bury the RIAA/MPAA with some really interesting legislation. Just a thought.
Without LUGs where would middle aged computer geeks get to escape and show off all their new gadgets and toys? At my LUG we usually have a presenter which demonstrates an opensource application like Apahce, Xen, OpenLDAP etc... Everyone sits in a circle around the presenter, sporting a wireless laptop, half listening to the presenter and half trying to get their latest gizmo/gadget working.
After the LUG meetings people usually head out for a burger/pizza and socialize a bit. It's good for geeks to get out and share with other geeks in the community. We share tips, tricks, knowledge, and jokes. Also, it gives people who are curious about Linux a chance to learn more as well.
Is my local LUG spearheading the Linux movement like Perens or Raymond? Ummm.... not so much, but the community needs users/bug testers as well as creators.
Oil Prices
Natural Gas Prices
Citizes without health care
The loss of the American Middle Class
The war in Iraq and against Islamic radicals
The giant national debt, which is now mostly owned by China
Cleaning up the South before the next hurricane season
Alternative Fuel Research
Pourous Borders
Executive abuse by King George Bush
Lobbyists hijacking our leaders... oh wait, now this legistlation makes sense.
The barriers to breaking into IT are going to get higher and higher due to the ever increasing complexity of the IT field. If your only experience is college, you are a danger not only to yourself but to those around you, unless you came from MIT or UofM.
Colleges and Universities may need to start teaching an more integrated technology curriculum, instead of programming in a vacuum. In the modern world it is rare to create a standalone application. Most applications require connections to databases and websites over a variety of links which range from T1's to VPNs connected through firewalls.
Technology is a fun, yet at times frustrating career. We have come a long way since Kernighan and Ritche wrote "The C Programming Language." Education may need to evolve to help Computer Science grads be more marketable and useful.
Newspaper? Aren't newspapers dead already? I thought that with inventions of Slashdot, Fark, and The Daily Show that everyone born after 1970 gets all the daily information they can use. Even old-school broadcast television is moving to the web. As of yesterday, you can now download NBC nightly news on the web.
For those of you still reading newspapers, STOP KILLING THE TREES already. We need the wood to rebuild Florida, Texas, and Lousiana before next hurricane season.