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User: 1lus10n

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Comments · 1,065

  1. Re:Is it just me.. on Interview with Jeff Bezos of Amazon · · Score: 1

    I had a similar issue with both fedex and ups when I lived downtown. Now that I reside in the burbs they leave everything without any problems.

    I think this guy was just bitching because he works for USPS or something. Reality is that amazon uses the cheapest shipping method, for small packages over short distances that is always the USPS. The farther away you get the slower and more expensive usps becomes. J & R is one of the third party retailers who sells through amazon. I have ordered from them many times, they actually have faster shipping than amazon in many cases. Better prices to boot.

    Next time you order from a third party merchant (which has always been listed on the sale page, and your reciept during checkout) either check their "shipping rates & policies" or email them and ask.

  2. Re:How much will downtime cost? Support? on Where Do You Shop for Server Components? · · Score: 1

    In my experience (I have now worked for both a small time consulting company and a large server company) if you are a small company who is in need of high availibility then you need to do two things:
    1. Minimize cost. The reason for doing this is so that you can setup redundancy.
    2. Get a contract. Obviously you wont be able to afford the expensive major vendor contracts. There are usually a good deal of smaller firms that can serve your business very well.

    All that being said if you can afford a 24x7 onsite contract with the big boys you have to go for it. In my experience the 2-4hr response time and gauranteed repair time is something no small time consulting firm can provide.

    In my experience the cost difference between a high quality whitebox server and a similar system from a major vender is not much considering the extra features (LOM, hardware failure detection etc) and support that comes bundled.

  3. Re:Slashdot anti-intellectualism on Joel Gives College Advice For Programmers · · Score: 1

    "However, where else are you going to be surrounded by so many people who have insight into so many different things?"

    Just so I am clear, was that the professors ? Of which you might have a handful per semester. No exactly what I would call "surrounded" ? Or the greedy students ?

  4. Re:Slashdot anti-intellectualism on Joel Gives College Advice For Programmers · · Score: 1

    "School is what you make of it."

    So is life. All of the information your school has is available for far less money, you want to go off on your own and learn, thats basically what people in the computer industry have been doing for years. You dont need a school or a grossly over-priced piece of paper for that. You need a brain and access to a library or the internet.

    At 10k/year school better be something weather I make it or not.

    "It is there to provide you with information you might not otherwise be exposed to."
    OR
    "Negative. This is not the same as guided education."

    Well which is it ? They do not have information that is "hidden" from the public. Anybody who is worth their salt can guide themselves just as well as a professor with 200+ students to deal with. If you are positive you want to do something for a long time (ie a career) then you should have the ability to learn about that career at your own pace given the materials available.

    The only value that the average university presents to the average student is information that is given on a personal basis. If you are going to a school that has Bill Joy (or the like) lecturing or teaching a class you are probably getting your monies worth from that class alone. If you are going to a liberal arts school then you are probably taking generic classes that teach you very little about how computers work. They teach you how to work with the computer. There is a monumental difference.

  5. Re:Only 79 /.ers in six weeks. What does that say? on IBM Grid Near 50,000 machines - Slashdot Users #13 · · Score: 1

    You got it pal.

    Everyone I know only browses /. when they are at work. I only hit /. once every few days when I am bored at home.

    I would bet this is more common than windows people would like to admit.

  6. Re:Ken is smart on Ken Jennings Gets a New Challenge · · Score: 1

    as the AC below states: there was a 5 win cap. IIRC the five game cap was lifted months before he came along. The show has been on the air decades, there have been more than 100 capped winners. Out of all of them why do people think he is the best. The other players weren't allowed to keep going.

    I'm going to laugh if he gets his ass beaten. Although he does have one major advantage: he has been playing more recently and more often than everyone else.

  7. Re:Soooo... on The Super Superhighway · · Score: 1

    This is one of the major reasons that I prefer the eastern US and most of europe. The sprawl in the western US is horrible.

  8. Re:Why would you want it to end? on Ken Jennings Gets a New Challenge · · Score: 1

    I for one am getting sick of him because he isnt as special as his fanboys like to think. He got lucky quite a few times during the streak. He also got lucky with regards to when he was on the show. He would have been capped at 5 days if he was on the show a few months (?) prior.

    I personally think this will be interesting, seeing how he fares against other winners. Winners who were capped at 5 victories.

    Of course all of the publicity and money would be better spent on people who actually create things and make important discoveries. Him getting the attention is better than scott peterson, apple, madonna and all the other crap that the mainstream media covers.

  9. Re:He's The Man on Ken Jennings Gets a New Challenge · · Score: 1

    Do you actually know him ? (like in the real physical "hand shake" world)

  10. Re:Ken is smart on Ken Jennings Gets a New Challenge · · Score: 1

    Welcome to 2004 (soon to be 2005) we dont aspire to create or discover. Only repeat what has already been created or discovered.

  11. Re:Ken is smart on Ken Jennings Gets a New Challenge · · Score: 1

    How do you know he is the best. As the article states there have been 150 five time winners. All of whom were prevented from going until they were beaten.

    I am going to laugh my ass off if he gets crushed in this thing.

  12. Re:Good suggestion on Realtime Audio Conversion And Serving · · Score: 1

    Boss is that you ?

  13. Re:New year new kernel on Stable Linux Kernel 2.6.10 Released · · Score: 1

    2005 ? eh ? Last I heard it was 2006. I don't think they are going to bump up to 2.8 that quick since it took them 3 years to go from 2.4 to 2.6 and from what I have heard they are planning some major subsystem re-writes.

    Of course I admitedly dont follow the LKML like religion so I might be a little behind on info. (still dont think a 1.5 year turnaround is the target ....)

  14. Re:License issues? on SCO Shares Plunge, Canopy Management Change · · Score: 1

    The only flaw with that is that no sysadmin I know has enough money to do anything in the bahamas.

  15. Re:Good news on SCO Shares Plunge, Canopy Management Change · · Score: 1

    No No No you need the scenes from the movie that got cut. Apparently with full frontal.

    Now if we could only find the assmonger who cut those scenes .....

  16. Re:Not the worst, but cmon... on ASUS Barebones: Multimedia Even Sans Hard Drive · · Score: 1

    http://www.bordergatewayprotocol.net/jon/humor/vid eo/

    Grab the video labeled mac.wmv .... Yes they can take a beating.

  17. Re:Chris is wrong. on Open Letter to a Digital World · · Score: 1

    Bullshit.

    Microsoft on several occasions has stated (during the anti-trust trial for one) that IE has/had proprietary hooks into the kernel and that they had not published the API for those hooks. It was a fairly major deal at the time.

    GTKHTML or KHTML do not have hooks directly into the kernel. They interface with the libraries and occasionally a driver they do not have direct hooks, hence they do not have access directly to the kernel itself and cannot do damage (ie force the kernel to run modified code or load a module) by themselves when run as a normal user. IE has long been known to have these problems because it interfaces directly with the kernel. This is how microsoft gained its advantages over competitors. Its also one of the major problems with the design of their OS. There should always be as much seperation as possible between userland and kernel space.

  18. Re:Chris is wrong. on Open Letter to a Digital World · · Score: 1

    "if Linux hits critical mass on the desktop (yeah Im not holding my breath either, OSX has a much beter chance of toppling Windows) then spyware developers will target it also. Grandma will still get emails like "Funnyshit.rpm" and the browser will ask if you want to install "super-search.xpi." These apps will hide themselves anywhere they can, just like they do in windows."

    Wild guess here ... you dont know anything about linux or OSS do you ? Linux does not have browsers with hooks into the kernel, it doesnt have anything like activeX and properly designed userland software wont let you run it as root. The reason these dinks havn't targeted linux has nothing to do with marketshare (they have already targeted firefox and its still less than 8% of the market) and everything to do with the ease of attacking windows vs the difficulty of attacking a nix.

    A system shouldnt have to be "properly secured" it should come that way. Microsoft has been paying lip service to security for years now and it has accomplished exactly less than nothing. Some linux distro's are more secure than others by default, some are just as bad as windows. Point is that there is a choice.

    Linux will never suffer from the myriad of problems that windows does because windows isnt run by a mega-corp. Its run by the people. The people who are involved would never allow half the crap that gets put into windows (which is what leads to these problems and this discussion).

  19. Re:Thanks for the lecture on Debugging Indian Computer Programmers · · Score: 1

    "I have no problem with immigration, but I do have problem when companies use these visas for temporary work that could be done here. H1-B's are not generating many US citizens, which if they did, they'd be great. I'm all for brain draining other countries."

    Instead we are allowing other countries to brain drain the US. So many people are in favor of h1-b visas but they dont know why. Back when this program was started there was a severe shortage of tech workers in the US, now there is a severe shortage of tech jobs in the US and yet they continue to endorse the program and some advocate expanding it. The problem is two fold:

    1. Governement programs move to slow to keep up with the times, something like this should be dynamic.

    2. Nothing is ever "best case" and when jobs and peoples lives are at stake things must be done to protect the citizens of THIS country. I am not against immigration, but this government is supposed to protect me not IBM, not some foriegn worker. I have read dozens of ads for jobs in the past week alone that have requirements that cannot be met by 99% of the worlds tech labor force. Why are they listing unrealistic requirements ? So that they get it both ways: IF they can find a qualified person then they will be getting someone who is beyond qualified at a decent price. If they cannot find someone who meets the god like requirements then they can apply for a visa and hire a less qualified (and cheaper) foriegner. Or just outsource the job.

    Welcome to America. We like you if your not American, or if your a corporation, just dont be an American and your all set.

  20. Re:Since when on Le Guin Peeved About Earthsea Miniseries · · Score: 1

    LOTR: One of the most expansive productions in history and one of (the ?) most expensive movies ever made. Rabid fan base unlike anything else, who would have CRUSHED the films and put newline out of bussiness if they had screwed up.

    Earthsea: A mini-series on a second rate cable channel KNOWN for fucking up material to suit their "target audience"

    See the problem ? Apparently the check blinded her, if she was so concerned she would have done more research and found out how crappy sci-fi is to work with.

    "Ethnicity matters and to not recognize it is as insulting as to mischaracterize it as deviant or inferior or to make it out to be some kind of strait jacket the way stereotypes do."

    That works both ways. Being labeled "white" or "black" when your German or South African is an annoying thing when cultures can be so far apart. In many cases the only thing that cultures have in common are skin color. It gets a lot more time contraining and annoying (though most "high horse" types would never admit it) to break everything down to a granular level, so we simplify it. Once the simplification is done we assume that everyone is fairly similar to ourselves. Nobody is exempt. Black people and Yellow people are every bit as racist as white people. Here in the US white people are the majority, so most things are catered to them. If I move to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Mecca, or Capetown I dont expect to see a whole lot of white people on TV or in the Movies. Someone who claims that race is important should understand that its also important to the people who are watching the show not just important in the way the original creator wants it to be.

    I wonder if she gets ticked off when stories written by white people are modified and cast with asians, south americans, mid-easterners or any other race ? I doubt it, it doesnt get her off the hook for selling her shit to a known crap network.

  21. Re:Privacy is assured. on Feds Propose National Database of College Students · · Score: 1

    Lets start with the obvious: Do you know for a fact that the person in question was an NCAA rep ? Or were you just told that they were ? You take this so seriously you should have contacted the NCAA directly. You still should.

    One school is not the rule. For every Texas there is an MIT, Cal Berkeley, Oxford, Stanford. The average is a perfectly happy balance. It might only exist at a select few schools but thats the average. I played sports in high school and I was into tech stuff, the reason the academic achievers are treated like second rate students is because they are. Being a student in high school goes beyond the books, its about your social abilities, you choose to study on friday night instead of going to someplace social thats a choice. It has nothing to do with anything or anybody except yourself.

    This society doesnt hold education has a priority at all. Mostly because right now the vast majority of people dont have a good education and they have never seen the impact of a great invention. The last time this country accomplished something great was back in the 30's or 40's. Since then we have done very little besides improve existing things and "manage".

    You want to prioritize education. Lobby. Get social adept people on the side of education. Make it a forefront issue over things like gay marriage.

    "The same superstars that are involved in an avalanche of paternity suits and scandals."

    You know how you were ranting about exposure ? The reason you know about athletes, actors and musicians personal lives is also because of their exposure. Smart people are doing the same things day in and day out and are committing crimes at about the same rate, thats a problem with society as a whole not just this specific sub-section.

    We are an attention challenged nation, you want commercials featuring nobel prize winners ... sensationalize them. Make what they do exciting. You might not want to admit it ... but most educational based things are goddamn boring. America (perhaps the majority of the world) wants a 30 second video highlight or soundclip.

    Another part of the problem is that we have cheapened education and forced it to mean what the middle managers of the world want. Education is not limited to a Masters or Bachelors degree. Education is not limited to a university or college. Yet thats how it is treated. Universities and College's used to pride themselves on turning out qualified individuals who were experts in their field ... or at least competent. Now they are just a degree mill that turns out people who are "well rounded" and forced into learning (and paying obscene amounts for the priviledge of doing so) things that they do not want or need.

    I'm all about changing the academic system but it has nothing to do with sports and everything to do with accountability and the people in charge. You cant have a business graduate running the comp-sci or engineering departments. It just wont work.

    Any idea's ?

  22. Re:We'll see ... on Sprint Close to Buying Nextel · · Score: 1

    This merger has been rumored for about 2 years now. The cingular&ATT merger took place because AT&T was getting its teeth kicked in and because cingular didnt want to be the small kid on the block.

    Technologies be damned they are buying into a completely seperate market and thats a smart thing to do right now. I have had sprint for 5 years and have never had a problem with the service. I have had one problem with a phone that they let me return.

  23. Re:Privacy is assured. on Feds Propose National Database of College Students · · Score: 1

    So texas liking football is the reason I got laid off and my job got sent overseas ? I think not.

    I have known quite a few big named college athletes in my life (I grew up around S.U.) and none of them got any special treatment. Quite a few of them were dirt poor while making the school millions. I do believe that in some instances at some locations players are allowed to glide but thats the exception not the rule and we most certainly shouldnt label an entire group of people or an entire "activity" based on the few.

    Academic achievement will be taking a backseat to ass kissing until the priority in this country shifts back to hard work and intelligence instead of salesmanship, managerial bullshit and fear. Gotta love fear.

    This country was founded by men who created and forged by the men who built those creations. Both of those jobs have been outsourced.

    Also just as a record of note: if you have specifically been told that athletes are getting special treatment at a school then you should notify the NCAA. If its true it will cripple their football program .... but it will somehow help the academics, and the economy. Right ?

  24. Re:Get a Gateway on Going, Going, Gone: IBM Sells PC Group To Lenovo · · Score: 1

    ibooks are not the same as powerbooks. I am looking for a quality laptop, not some crappy piece of plastic with a special color. (which white qualifies as, but not "special" in a good way.)

    I prefer 14" or 15" non-widescreen. I want a laptop not some monster desktop replacement. The apple just doesnt fit my needs .... the IBM does. Its not a knock on apple ... made my mother buy a powerbook for her new notebook .... so I am aware that they make quality products. Mini-coopers are quality cars. Doesnt mean I would pay to drive one though.

  25. Re:Privacy is assured. on Feds Propose National Database of College Students · · Score: 1

    You might want to do a little research guys. First and foremost those stadiums bring in a TON of revenue to the area during construction and provide an ongoing revenue stream for the area once they are completed. A large portion of stadiums are now privately financed. The trend to get "local" support (ie a city or state paying for it) is going by the wayside by and large because of a few owners who swindled places. Collegiate athletics are however a different story.

    Currently a team like VT who won the ACC and has a nice chunk of change coming from the ACC's TV deal and I would imagine a good deal of revenue from stadium income (ie attendance and their cut of sales) probably brings the university $4 million per year AFTER spending money on keeping the program competitive. That stadium expansion will bring in more revenue and more recruits which will in turn lead to more money for scholastic expenditures. If they spent every dime the team brought in on academics you would see millions of dollars leave the system because good coaches and players dont go to losing teams, and losing teams dont get into bowl games or TV contracts. College sports (particularly basketball and football) are beneficial to everyone involved in some way. Including the student body who should (if the school is properly run) saves a few hundred bucks on tuition and dorm costs because of the revenue generated from those teams.