I work at a public library, and part of my job is teaching
introductory computer classes. Our most common _request_ is for
"Basic Computer", but the people requesting this have no clue what
they want to learn how to do, so you have to probe them a bit
to see what they really want. Usually if you offer them some
options ("Do you want to learn to type letters and papers and
print them? Learn to surf the internet? Learn about email?")
they'll be able to make a selection (or else they'll sign up
for all of them, which is okay too). Once in a while you'll
get somebody who insists those things are all too advanced, and
they just want basic computer. This is a symptom that what they
really want is help solving a specific problem or question they
have and are embarrassed to ask about, because they don't know
how to explain it.
Our most popular class is Introduction to the Internet, which
mostly covers the www. My
course
materiels are here (though the materiel there is intended
mainly as handouts, and since I try to make the classes at least
somewhat interactive, so not everything can be covered in the
handouts). These materiels won't be directly usable for your
purposes, but you can use them as examples. I get positive
comments from our patrons, and this is a fairly technophobic
community. The Windows Basics and Introduction to Word
Processing courses are also very popular. Surprisingly, the
Searching the Internet class is much less popular; either my
Introduction to the Internet gives them all they need in that
direction, or else they're just scared off by the idea that
it has a prerequisite and therefore must be advanced. (NOTE:
under no circumstances offer a computer course with the word
"Advanced" in the title, unless your target market consists of
computer geeks. If you want to establish a series, go with
Part A and Part B, or something like that.)
On a side note, you can win MAJOR brownie points with users by
treating them as if they were intelligent, but maybe just
computers aren't they're field of expertise. They're so
accustomed to computer people treating them like dirt,
they will almost worship you if you treat them well.
You'll get free word-of-mouth advertising this way. We
put announcements in several local papers, signs all over
the library, and advertise on the radio, but over half of
the people taking my courses were encouraged to do so by
someone else who did previously.
One more piece of advice: Make a survey that fits easily
on a single half-page, with multiple choice questions about
what other courses people would be interested in taking if
you offered them. Also have an "Other" choice where they
can write something in (but most people won't). Encourage
everyone who takes any of your courses to fill one out.
This will help you know if there's a demand for something.
We added the email class due to write-in votes on our eval
forms, and it's been more popular than we otherwise would
have imagined.
If you're going to go down that path, what about the guy who uses X11 forwarding or VNC or what-have-you to access his home system and run the IM on that, displaying it on his desktop at work?
>... then you don't put your frigging toaster on the internet!
Ah, but then I wouldn't be able to download cinnamon toast recipes from Google Groups, have my toaster look at my schedule calendar at work to see when to make me breakfast, and other nifty stuff.
Much better to just have the toaster only listen for connections via ssh and only accept a connection with the correct username and password combination.
Okay, so the toaster isn't the best example, but it's the example the other poster used, so I stuck with it. A household security system would be a much better example.
> ConnectediToaster000034433003482774464 is just as bad as > 3ffe:ffff:0100:f101:0210:a4ff:fee3:9566
That's why you use a heirarchical scheme. If my connectivity provider is bright.net and my username there is jonadab, my first iToaster device could be iToaster1.jonadab.bright.net. Of course, bright.net currently doesn't do automatic domain subletting like that, but currently they don't give me unlimited static IPs either. ISPs _could_ do that. Just delegate your subdomain to your gateway (whatever system connects directly to them), which would be responsible for port-forwarding DNS traffic to your personal primary domain name server.
Now, if you want the iToaster when it first plugs in to talk to your domain server and negotiate for the first available name in your domain starting with iToaster, that requires an additional protocol if I'm not mistaken. But assuming you don't want random people to be able to remotely control your iToaster, you'll have to assign a password or somesuch anyway, so assigning a name also might not be that big a deal.
I've thought about something along these lines. CallerID hooked up to the computer and a database of numbers. Recognised numbers get treated one of several ways depending on a field in the database; unrecognised numbers get treated another way (which results in some data being entered into the database; then the computer makes a sound (quieter than a regular phone ring) and a dialog box pops up showing the info they entered; if they were dishonest, the user can blacklist with one click), and anonymous calls get a third treatment. Magic extensions or passcodes can be given to trusted persons that will change the way the call is handled. Anonymous callers can be required to categorise their call. ("Press 1 if you are calling on behalf of a business. Press 2 if you are calling on behalf of a nonprofit organisation. Press 3 if the call is personal...") and in the 1 and 2 cases your relationship to the business. ("Press 1 if I receive a monthly bill from your business. Press 2 if I have done business with your organisation many times. Press 3 if I have done business with you occasionally. Press 4 if I have requested information from your business...) Callers from unrecognised numbers can be asked to categorise the location they're calling from. ("Press 1 if you are calling from home...")
All this data can be retained in the database. For non-anonymous numbers, it can be used to decide how to handle future calls. For anonymous calls, the data entered determines whether the automated system asks you to place me on your do-not-call list, or whether you're asked to leave a message so I can get back to you. (The only way you'd get better than that from an anon call would be with a magic code.)
Oh, and if there are anonymous callers with a legitimate need to call me repeatedly, they can be assigned a code that puts them into the "recognised number" handling routine. (Each such code would be unique and key into the database.) That way they don't have to enter their information every time.
> Maybe it's just that Sprint sucks. But a huge number of calls > show no data on the caller ID.
To filter out telemarketers, you also have to get the additional feature known as Anonymous Call Block, wherein if the caller is blocking caller ID he gets a message saying you don't receive anon calls, and your phone doesn't ring. A legit caller who blocks caller ID normally (for other reasons than you, presumably) can still call you by using star-something to enable caller ID just for the one call.
> Heck, I can't figure out *why* we have to pay extra to have > an unlisted number.
You do? I don't.
I've got an _unpublished_ number, and the rates are the same as for a regular number. Of course, I told them flat out I wasn't connecting a voice phone to the line, just a modem. (This is true. I've connected a voice phone a couple of times to test new jacks for dialtone, but that's it.) I don't know whether that has any impact on the rate, but I don't see why it would.
> A key problem area was interacting with the corporate Windows network.
Indeed. The problem is, which version of Windows do you want
to interact with? Actually, I think Samba does a pretty decent
job of faking it, provided the Windows network is all TCP/IP[1].
The problem with interoperating with Windows is, Windows is not
designed for a heterogenous network. Linux will happily get
along on a network with Solaris, Netware, and BeOS. The problem
is Windows. At work, we've got about twelve different Windows
systems, with various versions of Windows. Just about every
time we add a new one, I have problems getting it to get along
with at least one of the others. If it's hard for Linux to get
along with some versions of Windows, it's little wonder. I've
had considerable pains trying to get WinXP to
play nicely on a Win98 network.
That said, there are areas where Samba and other *nix-based
interoperability-with-Windows technologies could improve.
At this point, the easiest way to configure Samba is still
editing the conf file. That's fine for powerusers, but
end users will need to have an admin do it for them. (Yes,
I've seen graphical config utils for Samba, but the ones I've
seen aren't up to usability standards IMO.) It's arguable
that end users really ought to have admins set things up for
them anyway, but still, I'd like to see a better GUI conf
tool for Samba.
Also, smbmount doesn't deal as gracefully as I'd like when
the Windows system crashes or is turned off or disconnected.
At home, when I'm editing a file that's on the Windows box
upstairs (that my family uses), I find myself glancing at
the lights on the switch before saving. (Granted, Windows
Explorer isn't perfect on this point either.) I'd like to
see a configurable option to cache the write to disk locally
(in a designated place like ~/.smbmount-cache or whatever) so
the app can go about its business, and smbmount can retry
silently in the background every (n*=1.5)||=10 seconds until
the remote system is back up.
[1] Why Samba can't function over IPX/SPX is an interesting
question, though... I do understand why they didn't implement
NetBEUI, but IPX/SPX seems like it would be useful -- especially
for stuff you want to keep on the local network, when TCP/IP is
routed over the internet.
Microsoft may not be talking about reverse engineering. I don't think they're talking about code being copied either. Most likely they mean artwork. A lot of OSS projects to try to mimic the look and feel of MS stuff. That in itself is fine, but if graphics and icons are copied... there is a potential issue there. For example, Mozilla.org dare not accept an MSIE theme with MSIE-like toolbar buttons for inclusion in their tree, because it would open them up for potential action from MS. (They have not done this, of course. But if they had, it could have been trouble.)
I can't cite specific examples, but I haven't paid close attention. I suspect there are OSS projects (albeit perhaps not major ones) that are treading that dangerous ground, using images derived from screen shots or similar.
If Microsoft _is_ talking about mere workalike software, then of course they're full of it. And I don't think they can really protect things like where menu items are placed, either. But anything that they've drawn, like toolbar button images, _can_ be protected under copyright law. If you're inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, they could be talking about that.
The other outfit mentioned, on the other hand... I doubt they have ny such valid claims, just a bunch of baseless FUD, so it seems to me.
Get yourself a little timer. Set it for fifteen minutes and discipline yourself to work the entire fifteen minutes. You can take a short break then, but after a few moments you have to make yourself set the timer and work again. If your short breaks get to be too long, time them too.
Trying to work hour after hour on something that doesn't really capture your mind is very hard work. It can be done, but it requires a great deal of mental discipline. Most people won't do it. But if you can get five fifteen-minute sessions every two hours, that will add up to something. Most people can make themselves work for fifteen minutes at a time on something if they have a motivation to accomplish it, even if it isn't fun.
> > his extremist "no features" jihad > > This is about to drive me away from GNOME
Where else could I go, though?
I've tried other things than Gnome (KDE, Enlightenment, Win32, WindowMaker, icewm, and numerous others...) but I can't find any with an equivalent for the panel drawers in Gnome, which are IMO an essential can't-live-without feature. So I use Gnome for the panel, which I prefer for one feature, drawers. Most of the rest of Gnome I don't use anymore either. Metacity is the only window manager I ever really truly hated, and I've used a number of them. (So I switched back to sawfish; why sawfish isn't still the default I'll never understand; it's a billion times better than metacity.) I removed Nautilus from my Gnome session. I user the calculator from KDE, the samba browser from KDE, the web browser from Mozilla.org, the office suite from OO.o, and so forth. I do use the Gimp, but is that part of Gnome per se? Oh, there's one other major Gnome thing I really like: the terminal app. gnome-terminal absolutely rocks; its terminal classes are useful in the uttermost.
But yeah, a lot of Gnome2 is worse than the Gnome1 equivalent. If you're using Gnome1 and thinking about upgrading to Gnome2, don't bother, unless you've got good reasons. It's not an upgrade.
> Actually, at couldn't you just disconnect the reset switch > and hook the power button such that it runs proper shutdown..
You could, but that doesn't stop users from unplugging the AC power cord and plugging it back in, which is what they'll do if the reset switch doesn't work. You want things set up so that if they do that once, they have no motivation to do it again next time (because it didn't accomplish what they want, just like you said it wouldn't).
The problem is, common but unreliable operating systems have people conditioned to solve problems by power cycling, because that's often the only way and even more often will work. If you want them to not do it, it has to not work.
Another way to accomplish this is to set things up so that fsck will require significant (and, to a user, scary) user interaction if the filesystem was not cleanly unmounted. That used to be the default, but these days the default is probably journaling and no fsck at all, or at least for fsck to run with no user interaction. For a system end users don't have physical access to, that's good, but if end users are present, it tends to give them the wrong idea (namely, that unclean shutdowns are no problem).
This is an axiom every IT person should learn well: what's good for a system end users touch directly and what's good for a system whose users are powerusers or admins or developers are two different things. A server can be in the latter category, but only if end users can't walk up to it and use it directly. Lock it in a server room and change the lock so that only the IT staff can get in (no janitors, no non-IT managers, nobody but IT staff), or colocate it in a datacenter, and you can treat it as an admin-type system. Set it on a desk in the open office area where Joe Secretary can touch it, and you have to treat it differently.
Though, I have a cgi server in an open office area... but I've evaluated the risk. The power switches and stuff are toward a wall (and it can't be slid out without being lifted, I'm the one all my coworkers call to lift things), and it's headless, and it's not the least bit mission-critical, and it backs up everything that matters at all over the network daily on a cron job, and even so I know what fire I'm playing with, having it where it is. I've considered the possibilities, and the most worrisome one is the power bar it's plugged into (under the credenza) getting bumped inadvertently by someone reaching for a trashcan. I'm prepared for the possibility that could happen at any time. The fact that it's not the least bit mission-critical is significant to my decision to leave it there, rather than trying to make space for it in the closet with the T1 router.
> As for the reasons why it is the default in Gnome
Presumably same reason metacity is default in Gnome: the defaults in Gnome are being deliberately shoved toward featureless, on the theory that it's somehow cleaner, or something like that.
*shrug* People who care about features don't have to live with the defaults, though. It's not to hard to install whatever browser you want, whatever wm you want (I like sawfish...), and so forth. Defaults are just that: what happens to you if you default on your options. So, if you don't want that to happen to you, don't default: when you install, set up all the options however you want them and be happy.
Hey, when it really comes down to it, the default computer setup is currently Windows XP. Feel free to live with the default if you want, but don't complain when it sucks, because you had your choice.
use Pavlovian Conditioning
on
Reiser4 Benchmarks
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
> > they would just hit the reset button > > I've found users doing that to my servers before now. I find > that hitting them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and > shouting "No! Bad monkey!" in a stern voice tends to stop this > behaviour...
Even better: configure the services that the users use so that they don't start up at system start. Write a short script that starts them all, and whenever you restart the server ssh in and run it. That way, if users cold-reset the server, nothing will work until you fix it anyway, so you might be able to break them of that habbit then. (Otherwise, they'll just do it behind your back and not tell you; this way, they HAVE to come to you.) The only internet service that needs to start at system start in such a setup is sshd, and with that you can start up everything else from anywhere easily.
If you have any coworkers (or underlings) clueful enough to handle a shell prompt, you can train them to ssh in and do a _proper_ restart, and tell them how to start up all the services by running your start-services script.
One more option: you can disconnect the reset switch. However, that won't stop them from just unplugging it, which I've found myself doing to Win9x systems when the reset switch does nothing, or on some Linux systems when shutdown -h doesn't turn off the power when it's finished, if there's no real power switch other than the on-only kind a lot of newer cases sport.
So, just fix it so that doing Bad Things (like power-cycling) doesn't achieve perceived positive results.
> The cost of living in Tokyo is a bit more than NY City Manhattan
Yes, and... Manhattan is fairly extreme, for the US. My sister lived in northern New Jersey for a few months, and she was positively astonished at the costs of living there, even after we warned her. Everything's at least double what it is here, most things are triple, and real estate is of course many times worse than that.
> Now of course I'm comparing things to living in SF/Bay Area, > LA, Manhattan.
All of which are infamous for very high cost of living. Move to the midwest. Our trees aren't planted in pots, six bucks will get you a generous bushel of apples and change, and even the poor people can afford to spray water on their lawns daily.
The point was that the average incomes in some countries is such that two dollars an hour sounds like good money. Exchange rates can help here too. If you hire someone in the Cameroun, you can pay him 500 francs an hour, because that's only about a dollar. But 500 francs an hour times 40 hours is twenty thousand francs a week, which is an above-average wage there. You've got a combination of two factors in your advantage here: the exchange rate is such that 20000 francs will buy more there than 40 bucks will buy here, and additionally it seems like even more because they all have friends and neighbors who make less than that amount.
Consequently, if you want to telecommute and work for the kinds of wages those people make, you'll need to live outside the US. You can't support a family on 40 bucks a week here. Even just supporting yourself on that amount here would be a very very serious strain, and could only be done if you already owned your home outright (in a location where heating is not needed in the winter), had no need of a vehicle, and had very inexpensive tastes in food (think in terms of gardening and buying rice in bulk...) and clothing. (Think: Goodwill.) Even at that, with no significant other expenses, you'd have VERY little discretionary money. The company would have to pay your internet bill, and I'm not sure you'd be able to afford the electric bill. It'd be very tight, if you could even do it at all.
As you point out, the US is _not_, contrary to popular opinion, the richest country per capita. It's (quite easily) the country with the single largest total amount of wealth, but that's a combination of not only affluence but also size. (There are larger countries, but not very many.) There are a number of somewhat smaller countries that are also quite wealthy per capita.
Nevertheless, there are quite a few countries that are a lot LESS wealthy per capita than the US. If you pick a country in that category that also happens to have the right kind of exchange rate, the result (from the perspective of a US country) is cheap labor.
Indeed. I've estimated my average health care costs over the last three years, and it's _nothing_ like the cost of a medical plan. When I get insurance (any year now... because, I wouldn't want to procrastinate or anything...) I want the kind with a deductible in the thousands-of-dollars range. I don't want a medical _plan_, just _insurance_, in the same spirit as fire insurance or similar, only for medical things.
> I'm working on getting a master's in accounting
You're obviously a different sort of geek from me. I'd rather chew tinfoil for a living than do accounting work.
It took them a whole quarter to turn over 110% of the working force?
A whole quarter? Sheesh, one fast food place where I used to work
consistently turns over about that percentage every couple of months.
I worked there for five years... I pretty frequently meet people
who tell me they used to work with me there, but I don't remember
them at all. We generally had twelve or fifteen on my shift at any
given time, but in five years I must have worked with half a thousand
people. Two weeks was a noteworthy watershed point: if somebody
stuck around that long, you started actually training him, because
at that point you figured he might be one of the rare few who lasted
long enough to be _useful_. There was _always_ somebody new (first
two weeks), and often they came in batches of five or six at a time.
Heck, new _managers_ sometimes came in batches of up to three.
Thing is, the work wasn't that bad. It wasn't great, and it was hot
in the summer, and the coworkers left something to be desired, and
it didn't pay that well, but it wasn't hard or terribly unpleasant
work, nothing like installing fiberglass insulation in attics in
August (Note: do NOT wear shorts...) or being a taste-tester at
an envelope factory. I never understood why the turnover was so high.
Disposal laws impact businesses; home users mostly ignore them. We have comprehensive disposal laws for things like used motor oil and leftover paint, but you don't see home users paying fees to dispose of _them_. Nope. Pour it into a used milk jug, bag it up with the rest of the trash, and leave it for the garbage truck; that's the only approach I've seen home users take.
This is of course illegal and morally questionable at best, but it's nevertheless what people do. They'll do the same thing with anything else there are disposal laws for.
Then there are the people who just _keep_ things. I've still got my ITT XTRA (an 8086), if you must know... haven't turned it on in a good long while, but I have it. We also still have my dad's 286, my sister's 386, and my other sister's 486. My Pentium II got parted out to build two other systems, but I've got the CPU sitting around...
What happened to "Internet Time" is that there already _was_ a universal time system in widespread use on the internet at the time, known as GMT. The only purpose for the existence of a new system was... hmmm.... remind me what it was again?
You can go to the library and dig up (on microfische) newspapers
from the time of the industrial revolution and read political
cartoons depicting people whose jobs have been reduced to pulling
levers, being informed by their bosses that they're now being
replaced by lever-pulling machines. When computers came around
a fresh wave of this thinking hit, only instead of a lever-pulling
machine now it was a button-pushing robot. Then the fear started
to hit the white collar world, as accountants worried that they
would all be replaced by computers.
Why did none of this ever materialise? Well, in a way, it did.
Today factory workers don't get paid to do the same type of work
they got paid to do in the 1700s, and accountants don't get paid
to work out all the columns of figures by hand. So yeah, those
old jobs people used to do are gone, if you think in terms of
specific job duties. It doesn't mean everyone's out of work.
Anything we can automate frees up a worker to do something else.
Yeah, you might have to learn new job skills. Deal with it.
If it helps, you can consider learning new job skills to be a
type of work in itself.
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I work at a public library, and part of my job is teaching introductory computer classes. Our most common _request_ is for "Basic Computer", but the people requesting this have no clue what they want to learn how to do, so you have to probe them a bit to see what they really want. Usually if you offer them some options ("Do you want to learn to type letters and papers and print them? Learn to surf the internet? Learn about email?") they'll be able to make a selection (or else they'll sign up for all of them, which is okay too). Once in a while you'll get somebody who insists those things are all too advanced, and they just want basic computer. This is a symptom that what they really want is help solving a specific problem or question they have and are embarrassed to ask about, because they don't know how to explain it.
Our most popular class is Introduction to the Internet, which mostly covers the www. My course materiels are here (though the materiel there is intended mainly as handouts, and since I try to make the classes at least somewhat interactive, so not everything can be covered in the handouts). These materiels won't be directly usable for your purposes, but you can use them as examples. I get positive comments from our patrons, and this is a fairly technophobic community. The Windows Basics and Introduction to Word Processing courses are also very popular. Surprisingly, the Searching the Internet class is much less popular; either my Introduction to the Internet gives them all they need in that direction, or else they're just scared off by the idea that it has a prerequisite and therefore must be advanced. (NOTE: under no circumstances offer a computer course with the word "Advanced" in the title, unless your target market consists of computer geeks. If you want to establish a series, go with Part A and Part B, or something like that.)
On a side note, you can win MAJOR brownie points with users by treating them as if they were intelligent, but maybe just computers aren't they're field of expertise. They're so accustomed to computer people treating them like dirt, they will almost worship you if you treat them well. You'll get free word-of-mouth advertising this way. We put announcements in several local papers, signs all over the library, and advertise on the radio, but over half of the people taking my courses were encouraged to do so by someone else who did previously.
One more piece of advice: Make a survey that fits easily on a single half-page, with multiple choice questions about what other courses people would be interested in taking if you offered them. Also have an "Other" choice where they can write something in (but most people won't). Encourage everyone who takes any of your courses to fill one out. This will help you know if there's a demand for something. We added the email class due to write-in votes on our eval forms, and it's been more popular than we otherwise would have imagined.
If you're going to go down that path, what about the guy who uses
X11 forwarding or VNC or what-have-you to access his home system
and run the IM on that, displaying it on his desktop at work?
> ... then you don't put your frigging toaster on the internet!
Ah, but then I wouldn't be able to download cinnamon toast recipes
from Google Groups, have my toaster look at my schedule calendar at
work to see when to make me breakfast, and other nifty stuff.
Much better to just have the toaster only listen for connections
via ssh and only accept a connection with the correct username and
password combination.
Okay, so the toaster isn't the best example, but it's the example
the other poster used, so I stuck with it. A household security
system would be a much better example.
> ConnectediToaster000034433003482774464 is just as bad as
> 3ffe:ffff:0100:f101:0210:a4ff:fee3:9566
That's why you use a heirarchical scheme. If my connectivity
provider is bright.net and my username there is jonadab, my first
iToaster device could be iToaster1.jonadab.bright.net. Of course,
bright.net currently doesn't do automatic domain subletting like
that, but currently they don't give me unlimited static IPs either.
ISPs _could_ do that. Just delegate your subdomain to your gateway
(whatever system connects directly to them), which would be
responsible for port-forwarding DNS traffic to your personal primary
domain name server.
Now, if you want the iToaster when it first plugs in to talk to
your domain server and negotiate for the first available name
in your domain starting with iToaster, that requires an additional
protocol if I'm not mistaken. But assuming you don't want random
people to be able to remotely control your iToaster, you'll have
to assign a password or somesuch anyway, so assigning a name also
might not be that big a deal.
I've thought about something along these lines. CallerID hooked up
to the computer and a database of numbers. Recognised numbers get
treated one of several ways depending on a field in the database;
unrecognised numbers get treated another way (which results in some
data being entered into the database; then the computer makes a
sound (quieter than a regular phone ring) and a dialog box pops up
showing the info they entered; if they were dishonest, the user can
blacklist with one click), and anonymous calls get a third treatment.
Magic extensions or passcodes can be given to trusted persons that
will change the way the call is handled. Anonymous callers can be
required to categorise their call. ("Press 1 if you are calling on
behalf of a business. Press 2 if you are calling on behalf of a
nonprofit organisation. Press 3 if the call is personal...") and
in the 1 and 2 cases your relationship to the business. ("Press 1
if I receive a monthly bill from your business. Press 2 if I have
done business with your organisation many times. Press 3 if I have
done business with you occasionally. Press 4 if I have requested
information from your business...) Callers from unrecognised
numbers can be asked to categorise the location they're calling
from. ("Press 1 if you are calling from home...")
All this data can be retained in the database. For non-anonymous
numbers, it can be used to decide how to handle future calls.
For anonymous calls, the data entered determines whether the
automated system asks you to place me on your do-not-call list,
or whether you're asked to leave a message so I can get back to
you. (The only way you'd get better than that from an anon call
would be with a magic code.)
Oh, and if there are anonymous callers with a legitimate need to
call me repeatedly, they can be assigned a code that puts them into
the "recognised number" handling routine. (Each such code would be
unique and key into the database.) That way they don't have to
enter their information every time.
But all that's fairly complicated...
> Maybe it's just that Sprint sucks. But a huge number of calls
> show no data on the caller ID.
To filter out telemarketers, you also have to get the additional
feature known as Anonymous Call Block, wherein if the caller is
blocking caller ID he gets a message saying you don't receive
anon calls, and your phone doesn't ring. A legit caller who blocks
caller ID normally (for other reasons than you, presumably) can still
call you by using star-something to enable caller ID just for the
one call.
> Heck, I can't figure out *why* we have to pay extra to have
> an unlisted number.
You do? I don't.
I've got an _unpublished_ number, and the rates are the same as
for a regular number. Of course, I told them flat out I wasn't
connecting a voice phone to the line, just a modem. (This is
true. I've connected a voice phone a couple of times to test
new jacks for dialtone, but that's it.) I don't know whether
that has any impact on the rate, but I don't see why it would.
Indeed. The problem is, which version of Windows do you want to interact with? Actually, I think Samba does a pretty decent job of faking it, provided the Windows network is all TCP/IP[1]. The problem with interoperating with Windows is, Windows is not designed for a heterogenous network. Linux will happily get along on a network with Solaris, Netware, and BeOS. The problem is Windows. At work, we've got about twelve different Windows systems, with various versions of Windows. Just about every time we add a new one, I have problems getting it to get along with at least one of the others. If it's hard for Linux to get along with some versions of Windows, it's little wonder. I've had considerable pains trying to get WinXP to play nicely on a Win98 network.
That said, there are areas where Samba and other *nix-based interoperability-with-Windows technologies could improve. At this point, the easiest way to configure Samba is still editing the conf file. That's fine for powerusers, but end users will need to have an admin do it for them. (Yes, I've seen graphical config utils for Samba, but the ones I've seen aren't up to usability standards IMO.) It's arguable that end users really ought to have admins set things up for them anyway, but still, I'd like to see a better GUI conf tool for Samba.
Also, smbmount doesn't deal as gracefully as I'd like when the Windows system crashes or is turned off or disconnected. At home, when I'm editing a file that's on the Windows box upstairs (that my family uses), I find myself glancing at the lights on the switch before saving. (Granted, Windows Explorer isn't perfect on this point either.) I'd like to see a configurable option to cache the write to disk locally (in a designated place like ~/.smbmount-cache or whatever) so the app can go about its business, and smbmount can retry silently in the background every (n*=1.5)||=10 seconds until the remote system is back up.
[1] Why Samba can't function over IPX/SPX is an interesting question, though... I do understand why they didn't implement NetBEUI, but IPX/SPX seems like it would be useful -- especially for stuff you want to keep on the local network, when TCP/IP is routed over the internet.
Microsoft may not be talking about reverse engineering. I don't
think they're talking about code being copied either. Most likely
they mean artwork. A lot of OSS projects to try to mimic the look
and feel of MS stuff. That in itself is fine, but if graphics and
icons are copied... there is a potential issue there. For example,
Mozilla.org dare not accept an MSIE theme with MSIE-like toolbar
buttons for inclusion in their tree, because it would open them up
for potential action from MS. (They have not done this, of course.
But if they had, it could have been trouble.)
I can't cite specific examples, but I haven't paid close attention.
I suspect there are OSS projects (albeit perhaps not major ones) that
are treading that dangerous ground, using images derived from screen
shots or similar.
If Microsoft _is_ talking about mere workalike software, then of
course they're full of it. And I don't think they can really protect
things like where menu items are placed, either. But anything that
they've drawn, like toolbar button images, _can_ be protected under
copyright law. If you're inclined to give them the benefit of the
doubt, they could be talking about that.
The other outfit mentioned, on the other hand... I doubt they have
ny such valid claims, just a bunch of baseless FUD, so it seems to me.
Get yourself a little timer. Set it for fifteen minutes and
discipline yourself to work the entire fifteen minutes. You
can take a short break then, but after a few moments you have
to make yourself set the timer and work again. If your short
breaks get to be too long, time them too.
Trying to work hour after hour on something that doesn't really
capture your mind is very hard work. It can be done, but it
requires a great deal of mental discipline. Most people won't
do it. But if you can get five fifteen-minute sessions every
two hours, that will add up to something. Most people can make
themselves work for fifteen minutes at a time on something if
they have a motivation to accomplish it, even if it isn't fun.
> > his extremist "no features" jihad
>
> This is about to drive me away from GNOME
Where else could I go, though?
I've tried other things than Gnome (KDE, Enlightenment, Win32,
WindowMaker, icewm, and numerous others...) but I can't find any
with an equivalent for the panel drawers in Gnome, which are IMO
an essential can't-live-without feature. So I use Gnome for the
panel, which I prefer for one feature, drawers. Most of the rest
of Gnome I don't use anymore either. Metacity is the only window
manager I ever really truly hated, and I've used a number of them.
(So I switched back to sawfish; why sawfish isn't still the default
I'll never understand; it's a billion times better than metacity.)
I removed Nautilus from my Gnome session. I user the calculator
from KDE, the samba browser from KDE, the web browser from
Mozilla.org, the office suite from OO.o, and so forth. I do use
the Gimp, but is that part of Gnome per se? Oh, there's one other
major Gnome thing I really like: the terminal app. gnome-terminal
absolutely rocks; its terminal classes are useful in the uttermost.
But yeah, a lot of Gnome2 is worse than the Gnome1 equivalent. If
you're using Gnome1 and thinking about upgrading to Gnome2, don't
bother, unless you've got good reasons. It's not an upgrade.
> Actually, at couldn't you just disconnect the reset switch
> and hook the power button such that it runs proper shutdown..
You could, but that doesn't stop users from unplugging the AC power
cord and plugging it back in, which is what they'll do if the reset
switch doesn't work. You want things set up so that if they do that
once, they have no motivation to do it again next time (because it
didn't accomplish what they want, just like you said it wouldn't).
The problem is, common but unreliable operating systems have people
conditioned to solve problems by power cycling, because that's often
the only way and even more often will work. If you want them to not
do it, it has to not work.
Another way to accomplish this is to set things up so that fsck will
require significant (and, to a user, scary) user interaction if the
filesystem was not cleanly unmounted. That used to be the default,
but these days the default is probably journaling and no fsck at
all, or at least for fsck to run with no user interaction. For a
system end users don't have physical access to, that's good, but if
end users are present, it tends to give them the wrong idea (namely,
that unclean shutdowns are no problem).
This is an axiom every IT person should learn well: what's good for
a system end users touch directly and what's good for a system whose
users are powerusers or admins or developers are two different
things. A server can be in the latter category, but only if end
users can't walk up to it and use it directly. Lock it in a server
room and change the lock so that only the IT staff can get in (no
janitors, no non-IT managers, nobody but IT staff), or colocate it
in a datacenter, and you can treat it as an admin-type system.
Set it on a desk in the open office area where Joe Secretary can
touch it, and you have to treat it differently.
Though, I have a cgi server in an open office area... but I've
evaluated the risk. The power switches and stuff are toward a
wall (and it can't be slid out without being lifted, I'm the one
all my coworkers call to lift things), and it's headless, and it's
not the least bit mission-critical, and it backs up everything
that matters at all over the network daily on a cron job, and even
so I know what fire I'm playing with, having it where it is. I've
considered the possibilities, and the most worrisome one is the
power bar it's plugged into (under the credenza) getting bumped
inadvertently by someone reaching for a trashcan. I'm prepared
for the possibility that could happen at any time. The fact that
it's not the least bit mission-critical is significant to my
decision to leave it there, rather than trying to make space for
it in the closet with the T1 router.
> As for the reasons why it is the default in Gnome
Presumably same reason metacity is default in Gnome: the defaults
in Gnome are being deliberately shoved toward featureless, on the
theory that it's somehow cleaner, or something like that.
*shrug* People who care about features don't have to live with the
defaults, though. It's not to hard to install whatever browser you
want, whatever wm you want (I like sawfish...), and so forth.
Defaults are just that: what happens to you if you default on your
options. So, if you don't want that to happen to you, don't default:
when you install, set up all the options however you want them and
be happy.
Hey, when it really comes down to it, the default computer setup is
currently Windows XP. Feel free to live with the default if you
want, but don't complain when it sucks, because you had your choice.
> > they would just hit the reset button
>
> I've found users doing that to my servers before now. I find
> that hitting them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and
> shouting "No! Bad monkey!" in a stern voice tends to stop this
> behaviour...
Even better: configure the services that the users use so that
they don't start up at system start. Write a short script that
starts them all, and whenever you restart the server ssh in and
run it. That way, if users cold-reset the server, nothing will
work until you fix it anyway, so you might be able to break them
of that habbit then. (Otherwise, they'll just do it behind your
back and not tell you; this way, they HAVE to come to you.) The
only internet service that needs to start at system start in such
a setup is sshd, and with that you can start up everything else
from anywhere easily.
If you have any coworkers (or underlings) clueful enough to handle
a shell prompt, you can train them to ssh in and do a _proper_
restart, and tell them how to start up all the services by running
your start-services script.
One more option: you can disconnect the reset switch. However,
that won't stop them from just unplugging it, which I've found
myself doing to Win9x systems when the reset switch does nothing,
or on some Linux systems when shutdown -h doesn't turn off the
power when it's finished, if there's no real power switch other
than the on-only kind a lot of newer cases sport.
So, just fix it so that doing Bad Things (like power-cycling)
doesn't achieve perceived positive results.
> The cost of living in Tokyo is a bit more than NY City Manhattan
Yes, and... Manhattan is fairly extreme, for the US. My sister
lived in northern New Jersey for a few months, and she was
positively astonished at the costs of living there, even after
we warned her. Everything's at least double what it is here,
most things are triple, and real estate is of course many times
worse than that.
> Now of course I'm comparing things to living in SF/Bay Area,
> LA, Manhattan.
All of which are infamous for very high cost of living. Move to
the midwest. Our trees aren't planted in pots, six bucks will
get you a generous bushel of apples and change, and even the poor
people can afford to spray water on their lawns daily.
> (from the perspective of a US country)
Aack. I meant a US company, of course. That'll teach me to preview.
Yes, Japan is even worse.
The point was that the average incomes in some countries is such that
two dollars an hour sounds like good money. Exchange rates can help
here too. If you hire someone in the Cameroun, you can pay him
500 francs an hour, because that's only about a dollar. But 500
francs an hour times 40 hours is twenty thousand francs a week,
which is an above-average wage there. You've got a combination of
two factors in your advantage here: the exchange rate is such that
20000 francs will buy more there than 40 bucks will buy here, and
additionally it seems like even more because they all have friends
and neighbors who make less than that amount.
Consequently, if you want to telecommute and work for the kinds of
wages those people make, you'll need to live outside the US. You
can't support a family on 40 bucks a week here. Even just supporting
yourself on that amount here would be a very very serious strain,
and could only be done if you already owned your home outright
(in a location where heating is not needed in the winter), had no
need of a vehicle, and had very inexpensive tastes in food (think
in terms of gardening and buying rice in bulk...) and clothing.
(Think: Goodwill.) Even at that, with no significant other
expenses, you'd have VERY little discretionary money. The
company would have to pay your internet bill, and I'm not sure
you'd be able to afford the electric bill. It'd be very tight,
if you could even do it at all.
As you point out, the US is _not_, contrary to popular opinion, the
richest country per capita. It's (quite easily) the country with the
single largest total amount of wealth, but that's a combination of
not only affluence but also size. (There are larger countries, but
not very many.) There are a number of somewhat smaller countries
that are also quite wealthy per capita.
Nevertheless, there are quite a few countries that are a lot LESS
wealthy per capita than the US. If you pick a country in that
category that also happens to have the right kind of exchange rate,
the result (from the perspective of a US country) is cheap labor.
> Get catastrophic health insurance.
Indeed. I've estimated my average health care costs over the last
three years, and it's _nothing_ like the cost of a medical plan.
When I get insurance (any year now... because, I wouldn't want to
procrastinate or anything...) I want the kind with a deductible in
the thousands-of-dollars range. I don't want a medical _plan_, just
_insurance_, in the same spirit as fire insurance or similar, only
for medical things.
> I'm working on getting a master's in accounting
You're obviously a different sort of geek from me. I'd rather chew
tinfoil for a living than do accounting work.
It took them a whole quarter to turn over 110% of the working force? A whole quarter? Sheesh, one fast food place where I used to work consistently turns over about that percentage every couple of months. I worked there for five years... I pretty frequently meet people who tell me they used to work with me there, but I don't remember them at all. We generally had twelve or fifteen on my shift at any given time, but in five years I must have worked with half a thousand people. Two weeks was a noteworthy watershed point: if somebody stuck around that long, you started actually training him, because at that point you figured he might be one of the rare few who lasted long enough to be _useful_. There was _always_ somebody new (first two weeks), and often they came in batches of five or six at a time. Heck, new _managers_ sometimes came in batches of up to three.
Thing is, the work wasn't that bad. It wasn't great, and it was hot in the summer, and the coworkers left something to be desired, and it didn't pay that well, but it wasn't hard or terribly unpleasant work, nothing like installing fiberglass insulation in attics in August (Note: do NOT wear shorts...) or being a taste-tester at an envelope factory. I never understood why the turnover was so high.
Disposal laws impact businesses; home users mostly ignore them. We
have comprehensive disposal laws for things like used motor oil and
leftover paint, but you don't see home users paying fees to dispose
of _them_. Nope. Pour it into a used milk jug, bag it up with the
rest of the trash, and leave it for the garbage truck; that's the
only approach I've seen home users take.
This is of course illegal and morally questionable at best, but it's
nevertheless what people do. They'll do the same thing with anything
else there are disposal laws for.
Then there are the people who just _keep_ things. I've still got my
ITT XTRA (an 8086), if you must know... haven't turned it on in a
good long while, but I have it. We also still have my dad's 286,
my sister's 386, and my other sister's 486. My Pentium II got parted
out to build two other systems, but I've got the CPU sitting around...
What happened to "Internet Time" is that there already _was_ a
universal time system in widespread use on the internet at the
time, known as GMT. The only purpose for the existence of a new
system was... hmmm.... remind me what it was again?
You can go to the library and dig up (on microfische) newspapers from the time of the industrial revolution and read political cartoons depicting people whose jobs have been reduced to pulling levers, being informed by their bosses that they're now being replaced by lever-pulling machines. When computers came around a fresh wave of this thinking hit, only instead of a lever-pulling machine now it was a button-pushing robot. Then the fear started to hit the white collar world, as accountants worried that they would all be replaced by computers.
Why did none of this ever materialise? Well, in a way, it did. Today factory workers don't get paid to do the same type of work they got paid to do in the 1700s, and accountants don't get paid to work out all the columns of figures by hand. So yeah, those old jobs people used to do are gone, if you think in terms of specific job duties. It doesn't mean everyone's out of work.
Anything we can automate frees up a worker to do something else. Yeah, you might have to learn new job skills. Deal with it. If it helps, you can consider learning new job skills to be a type of work in itself.
Klippy ist en das vigor rpm. HTH.HAND.
In soviet Russia, all your Beowulf cluster imagine 3) profit!!!
> Doesn't "???? = #2" follow from "#2 = ????"?
Depends whether you've proven that the operation = is symetric
in the group containing ???? and #2