I was an administrator for a medium size tech company in the early nineties, and we got this all the time. The problem was not with the technically inept, but with the engineers, who would commonly send emails with:
mail -s "some subject line text" user_name (left_arrow) textfile
...and leave off the double quotes, so that each word in the subject line was treated as a recipient. If one of those words was the name of the company or the name of any of several cities, or any one of a number of other common key words, (like "engineering") the mail would be propagated to an audience much larger than intended. You haven't lived until you've been directed to scrub several thousand copies of someone's negative performance review from a number of servers at 11:00 at night.
This was the same company that had a homegrown script to delete a user from the system. (Not written, maintained or owned by my team, I hasten to say.) The script had inadequate error checking, and if an operator hit carriage return without entering a user name, the script would delete the entire home directory structure on several machines. It kept us busy.
I'm wondering if she has any plans on how she's going to defend her crops. Or if people like my survivalist friend would just move in and take her harvest at the appropriate time.
That's one of the more concise and coherent arguments in favour of monarchy that I've heard.
Oh, hang on - were you arguing FOR the establishment of a monarchy, or describing the origin OF monarchy in general?
I think I was arguing that the only way an unarmed commune can possibly work, barring being too remote or too poor to bother with, is in the context of a larger defense infrastructure, whether they are paying for it directly or not.
For instance, a small group of people near Boydton, Virginia might create a working commune with no defensive resources, but this only works because they are protected by community law enforcement. And that the prosperity of the rest of the community makes what they have not worth taking. Once the system breaks down, the game is played by different rules.
I think what I'm arguing is that the 99% agrarian fantasy of "occupying" a state park and farming peacefully after the economic infrastructure crashes will work just exactly as long as better armed individuals don't need anything they have.
I am not arguing the morality of the situation, simply pointing out that without the framework of society protecting you, you're not going to be able to argue away intruders with "mic check". "Occupy" only works for as long as the rest of society, which far FAR outnumbers them, remains reluctant, for legal and perhaps moral reasons, to put them down hard. The very society they disparage is all that prevents them from coming to a bad end.
And when less scrupulous refugees are raiding your camp, you can stand there and call them fascist and feel all self-righteous about it, but the feeling doesn't keep you warm and fed.
There's no way to tell at this point whether it's practical or not. First you have to make it possible. Practical comes later, if ever. As to fuel consumption of the Concorde, it's worth noting that the Concorde is a 1960's design.
There's a sweet spot in every technology -- most value for the buck, or "good enough" but not so good you'll never use it to it's full potential, or in some cases, better than you need at the moment but the potential to stay in service far longer than the cheaper choice. (Then you have to be regimented enough to stick with your choice through it's natural life in the face of shiny new choices.) The trick isn't to always buy the best, or even always buy the cheapest, but to make the most intelligent choices possible the most times possible.
I have a friend who longs for the absolute best of everything, to the point of absurdity. He has some nice things, but is in massive debt. I'd rather have useful things that I actually use and live within my means.
There was a time when people were asking if we could handle the forces needed to go 25 mph. I suppose there must eventually be a limit, but so far the answer has always been "under the right circumstances, yes."
Terry Pratchett stipulates that it is belief that creates the god being believed in, and the strength of the god correlates directly to the strength of the belief. (See most of his discworld novels, especially "Small Gods".) Therefore, a god would naturally want to increase the number of believers. It's as good an explanation as any.
I was going to mod that funny, but I see it's already 5 informative. Ok...
The trivial rebuttal is that people get robbed by baggage handlers (or baggage inspectors -- it's hard for us victims to tell) all the time -- test by, personal experience, (electronics don't make it to destination) and by noting news reports of same.
I keep my camera on me through TSA touchy-feely, even though it sometimes makes the process take longer. I will never again trust an expensive object that I own to baggage. (Company electronics are a different matter.)
I mean, so you're an honest, hard working baggage handler. I believe you. They must exist. But are you really speaking for every single one of your compatriots?
Understood. To that point, I asked him specifically about people who had stockpiled supplies *and* weapons, and he said he would leave them alone. But, he says, there are enough people in his area who's politics or personal beliefs wouldn't allow them to arm themselves (well, he said it differently but that's the gist) that at least on the short term he'd have easy pickings.
And then, about a month later, I saw this, which is a fairly good summary of his position.
Incidentally, I have 3 months of supplies, medical gear, seeds, solar power, *and* defensive weaponry, and he knows it. (Which is a good thing, I guess...)
In other news, that girl at Occupy Wall Street who was in the news awhile back, who was saying we should all go back to an agrarian society despite the fact that a good portion of the population would starve to death, because "well, you know, people die"... I'm wondering if she has any plans on how she's going to defend her crops. Or if people like my survivalist friend would just move in and take her harvest at the appropriate time.
If the goal is to keep stockholders happy over a short period of time, huge layoffs work well. Unfortunately, it's an easy way to make a company irrelevant. It's usually accomplished by reorganizing sales and marketing mostly for appearance, while cutting deeply into engineering and service. This produces an agile, high performing sales force, lower operating costs, and higher profits over the short term. And then next year the company realizes they have nothing new in the pipeline, and restarting product development is prohibitively costly. Customers who observe the downward spiral start to bail, as well as customers who are tired of calling service and getting routed to a clerk in Kharsingi. And in a few years, the company exists as an answer on Jeopardy. One of the cheap ones.
Points, condenser, coil. That's it. Also my radio is a tube radio so likely somewhat resistant to EMP. I only drive vehicles '60s or older.
Who would have guessed that the survivors of the apocalypse would be.... grandpa?
Nah, that's just whose car you'll need to steal.
That may not be funny. I have an acquaintance who is a self-defined survivalist. He stockpiles weapons and ammunition. I asked him why he didn't stockpile food, fuel, communications gear or any of the other stuff survivalists usually have in their garage. He said because with weapons, he can acquire everything else he needs. I guess that includes a car old enough to have mechanical ignition.
Mistype on my part -- I didn't mean to imply Win7 was CE based. (that would be ridiculous) I use Win7, it's a reasonable OS. (As long as it's not "home edition".)
The point is, WP7 is the same old mobile kernel with a new interface, whereas WP8 is rumored to be the true rewrite. I'd still wait for 8.
...unless you'd previously suffered with a Windows Mobile (5 or 6) phone. Then you'd still maybe want Windows on your PC but you'd sooner use a pay phone that some bum had violated than buy another Windows phone. Microsoft just blew the "windows everywhere" concept clean out of users' mindshare with previous efforts at a mobile platform, I think.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing. At. All.
Absolutely correct, but building in a back door with a password easily derived is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike security.
This makes me wonder how many other OS variants used in control systems have "factory" users built in.
> don't have email aliases which are close to elements of email addresses
I was an administrator for a medium size tech company in the early nineties, and we got this all the time. The problem was not with the technically inept, but with the engineers, who would commonly send emails with:
mail -s "some subject line text" user_name (left_arrow) textfile
This was the same company that had a homegrown script to delete a user from the system. (Not written, maintained or owned by my team, I hasten to say.) The script had inadequate error checking, and if an operator hit carriage return without entering a user name, the script would delete the entire home directory structure on several machines. It kept us busy.
That's one of the more concise and coherent arguments in favour of monarchy that I've heard.
Oh, hang on - were you arguing FOR the establishment of a monarchy, or describing the origin OF monarchy in general?
I think I was arguing that the only way an unarmed commune can possibly work, barring being too remote or too poor to bother with, is in the context of a larger defense infrastructure, whether they are paying for it directly or not.
For instance, a small group of people near Boydton, Virginia might create a working commune with no defensive resources, but this only works because they are protected by community law enforcement. And that the prosperity of the rest of the community makes what they have not worth taking. Once the system breaks down, the game is played by different rules.
I think what I'm arguing is that the 99% agrarian fantasy of "occupying" a state park and farming peacefully after the economic infrastructure crashes will work just exactly as long as better armed individuals don't need anything they have.
I am not arguing the morality of the situation, simply pointing out that without the framework of society protecting you, you're not going to be able to argue away intruders with "mic check". "Occupy" only works for as long as the rest of society, which far FAR outnumbers them, remains reluctant, for legal and perhaps moral reasons, to put them down hard. The very society they disparage is all that prevents them from coming to a bad end.
And when less scrupulous refugees are raiding your camp, you can stand there and call them fascist and feel all self-righteous about it, but the feeling doesn't keep you warm and fed.
And *my* thought is: Keep careful track of that date, and plan my breakfast somewhere far away from the Starbucks next to the AT&T store.
There's no way to tell at this point whether it's practical or not. First you have to make it possible. Practical comes later, if ever. As to fuel consumption of the Concorde, it's worth noting that the Concorde is a 1960's design.
It already happens -- even today you sometimes spend more time in the airport at each end than you spent in the air.
I wonder if a hypersonic passenger craft would have to be cleared for landing before they even took off?
There's a sweet spot in every technology -- most value for the buck, or "good enough" but not so good you'll never use it to it's full potential, or in some cases, better than you need at the moment but the potential to stay in service far longer than the cheaper choice. (Then you have to be regimented enough to stick with your choice through it's natural life in the face of shiny new choices.) The trick isn't to always buy the best, or even always buy the cheapest, but to make the most intelligent choices possible the most times possible.
I have a friend who longs for the absolute best of everything, to the point of absurdity. He has some nice things, but is in massive debt. I'd rather have useful things that I actually use and live within my means.
And get there in 42 minutes!
There was a time when people were asking if we could handle the forces needed to go 25 mph. I suppose there must eventually be a limit, but so far the answer has always been "under the right circumstances, yes."
What I really want is a bicycle powered, mach 20 vehicle. And a unicorn. And some waffles.
I think his idea was to acquire supplies from people who had stockpiled but were against owning firearms.
Terry Pratchett stipulates that it is belief that creates the god being believed in, and the strength of the god correlates directly to the strength of the belief. (See most of his discworld novels, especially "Small Gods".) Therefore, a god would naturally want to increase the number of believers. It's as good an explanation as any.
I was going to mod that funny, but I see it's already 5 informative. Ok...
The trivial rebuttal is that people get robbed by baggage handlers (or baggage inspectors -- it's hard for us victims to tell) all the time -- test by, personal experience, (electronics don't make it to destination) and by noting news reports of same.
I keep my camera on me through TSA touchy-feely, even though it sometimes makes the process take longer. I will never again trust an expensive object that I own to baggage. (Company electronics are a different matter.)
I mean, so you're an honest, hard working baggage handler. I believe you. They must exist. But are you really speaking for every single one of your compatriots?
Understood. To that point, I asked him specifically about people who had stockpiled supplies *and* weapons, and he said he would leave them alone. But, he says, there are enough people in his area who's politics or personal beliefs wouldn't allow them to arm themselves (well, he said it differently but that's the gist) that at least on the short term he'd have easy pickings.
And then, about a month later, I saw this, which is a fairly good summary of his position.
Incidentally, I have 3 months of supplies, medical gear, seeds, solar power, *and* defensive weaponry, and he knows it. (Which is a good thing, I guess...)
In other news, that girl at Occupy Wall Street who was in the news awhile back, who was saying we should all go back to an agrarian society despite the fact that a good portion of the population would starve to death, because "well, you know, people die"... I'm wondering if she has any plans on how she's going to defend her crops. Or if people like my survivalist friend would just move in and take her harvest at the appropriate time.
If the goal is to keep stockholders happy over a short period of time, huge layoffs work well. Unfortunately, it's an easy way to make a company irrelevant. It's usually accomplished by reorganizing sales and marketing mostly for appearance, while cutting deeply into engineering and service. This produces an agile, high performing sales force, lower operating costs, and higher profits over the short term. And then next year the company realizes they have nothing new in the pipeline, and restarting product development is prohibitively costly. Customers who observe the downward spiral start to bail, as well as customers who are tired of calling service and getting routed to a clerk in Kharsingi. And in a few years, the company exists as an answer on Jeopardy. One of the cheap ones.
"IBM" disappeared off a building near here recently.
Please post the pattern here. It might be popular with this crowd.
Points, condenser, coil. That's it. Also my radio is a tube radio so likely somewhat resistant to EMP. I only drive vehicles '60s or older.
Who would have guessed that the survivors of the apocalypse would be .... grandpa?
Nah, that's just whose car you'll need to steal.
That may not be funny. I have an acquaintance who is a self-defined survivalist. He stockpiles weapons and ammunition. I asked him why he didn't stockpile food, fuel, communications gear or any of the other stuff survivalists usually have in their garage. He said because with weapons, he can acquire everything else he needs. I guess that includes a car old enough to have mechanical ignition.
Mistype on my part -- I didn't mean to imply Win7 was CE based. (that would be ridiculous) I use Win7, it's a reasonable OS. (As long as it's not "home edition".)
The point is, WP7 is the same old mobile kernel with a new interface, whereas WP8 is rumored to be the true rewrite. I'd still wait for 8.
Right, and I wonder where that leaves anyone who had purchased a Windows 7 phone in the meantime.