I don't think it's fair to dismiss the decline in worker productivity as being solely attributal to a lack of prioritization. Even if you *know* which task is the most important you still have to context switch to process and prioritize incoming information.
Phone rings -- "yes, hello?.. no.. sorry.. yes.. i understand.. no i can't help you with that right now... ok.. i promise i'll look at it in a second."
[back to task]
Instant message -- "Dude!!! HRPROD22-NA01 is down, WTF?" "I know, I know, but I'm working on something else right now, it's next in the queue, i promise you."
and so on and so on, ad nauseum. Context switching causes a performance hit for computers and humans. Gone are the days when shutting your office door gave you a semblance of privacy.
In a grander sense, many conjecture that we're no longer producing works of genius with the same frequency as was the case pre-Internet / telephone for the very reason that the finite capacity of our brains is now being pulled in ever more directions. From a simple neurological perspective, the melody processing part of your cranium will not become as prominent if you're constantly engaging other aspects of your mind -- buying coffee from starbucks instead of having it brought to your room, talking on the phone with your agent instead of being left alone to compose, conducting interviews instead of simply focusing on getting the next piece perfected. Bad examples perhaps but I think the idea is right on.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't AMD now account for > 50% of new desktop sales? Perhaps business sales are metered separately, but I rather doubt that many business PCs run Skype. It seems like this is a bad move for Skype on many levels.. Not only do they look crooked but they now have alienated greater than half of new PC owners from making full use of their service.
The distance thing, as far as minimizing radiation, is tricky. There's a study cited in Kurzweil's "Fantastic Voyage" that said the cord used for headsets for mobiles actually acts as a transmitter of its own and can increase the amount of radiation exposure...
so what's the best option? bluetooth it and hope the milliwatt hop from headset to phone is an order of magnitude less dangerous than the kick coming out of the phone itself?
No doubt the term "geek" has been coopted by the media to describe, basically, the digerati generation. But I have to agree with my fellow/.ers... using your ipod and knowing how to upload photos from your cell phone does not make you a geek.
Geek's don't just use technology, they understand how it is put together and desire to change or "hack" it for their own purposes. A geek molds technology to suit him, a regular schmoe makes do with what has been handed his way by 3com, intel, microsoft, etc, etc. That is the difference.
I'll admit there are temperature changes- the Earth is a dynamic system with lots of history that it changes all the time (See: the 1700s mini-ice age, for example). But to think humans are the cause of it, or have the slightest chance of changing it, is just silly.
Your post is mind-bogglingly facile.
You imply that because past predictions have been wrong that all scientific advancement can be discredited as mere conjecture. Keep that in mind next time you go for a checkup.. 60 years ago your doctor would have been smoking a cigarette with you. Now he can explain with painful detail what you're doing to your body. But hell, since they haven't figured everthing out, screw him! Keep smoking, buddy.
And that little bit about "SCALE" is useless. The EVIDENCE and the MODELS indicate that we in fact ARE causing the planet to heat up. The scientific community is not some POLITICAL body with an AGENDA. There is now almost ZERO dissent in the scientific community as to why the world is heating so RAPIDLY.
Re:regardless of whether this is crap or not...
on
Forecasting Doomsday
·
· Score: 1
I feel comfy with some flashlights, matches, my revolver, 2 boxes ammo, my pocket knife, and some warm clothes. I have all that stuff easily accessible in my apartment, so what ever may come, stuff it in a back pack and head for the mountains.
News flash, if there aren't already homes on big estates in the mountains then you'll be fighting over a 1/4 acre to call your own when everybody else heads for the hills. And you won't be the only kid with a gun.
Which means, maybe, just maybe, you'd be better served by trying to fix the problem in the first place instead of running when it hits.
that god, if he exists, does not particularly favour us over, say cockroaches, or rats.
One of my favorite sayings is "god helps those who help themselves." As a sentient being, I desire that I stay alive and will work to see that I do. You, on the other hand, don't seem to care. As someone who will need some of the same resources as you, I ask that you do the polite thing and step aside (read: die). Thanks.
The saddest thing about opinions like yours, IMHO, is that it reflects a man born with no aesthetic sense, no spiritual core whatsoever. You would look at the awesome complexity of our planet's biology, the beautiful and infinitely intricate workings of what we call "nature," and give an apathetic shrug when some decide that profit now is worth what took billions of years to produce... even when you know full well that this apathy will be your own destruction.
Some of us actually marvel at this planet and would like to see its majesty (a word you have no license to use) preserved. If you're so sure that there's no difference between what we are losing now and a world of cement then why not just go die? It'll only be a rearrangement of a molecular construct... you shouldn't care.
I appreciate your argument and agree that there's too much animosity on both sides of the debate.. but I do take some small issue with your position:
Why is it so hard for non religious scientists to acknowledge that we've not discovered all the answers, and indeed, may never do so?
Nobody doubts that we still have a lot to learn. But what is it that you suggest is firmly beyond science's ability to study and eventually understand? What the known universe looked like when it got started? When "time" will end? We are getting closer to such answers but one component will always be left out: meaning. Waving at the great voids in our knowledge as being indicators of some higher being with some purpose for humanity is, if you'll forgive me, immature.
Freud, the self proclaimed godless Jew, suggested that God was the projection of our parents -- someone who could, if only in our minds, make order out of the world; someone we could cry to (no atheists in foxholes). To look around and realize that, in the words of Conrad (i'm not trying to sound smrt), "we live as we dream -- alone" is to be bare and vulnerable.
I respect and almost envy the religious but I think I will always be shackled a little too closely to logic to "believe the believers." And with that quote I refer you to and highly recommend Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal."
Ok, fair enough... but by your very admission that you're only "in the system" for as long as it takes to have the skills to get out, then a smart company ought to realize, "gee, this guy is now much more valuable to us than when we first hired him -- he knows our network like the back of his hand and now has 2+ years experience in the field. Maybe we ought to give him more than 3% (which, let's admit, is just a cost of living adjustment) to keep him around."
If they don't recognize that and think they can just swap you out with some newb well, then... they're never going to retain decent talent. And yeah, you're probably right.. most large corps lose many of their brighter minds IMHO.
When someone is "doing their job" in IT they are, in my experience, doing a lot more than just pushing a red button every ten to fifteen minutes as you imply. Over the course of a year a semi-decent admin will figure out the kinks in a network, smooth them out, learn and implement new technologies, so on and so forth. Not to mention you acquire a vague wisdom of sorts as the years go by that is arguably invaluable. That's why folks with 5+ years experience are considered for position that those with 1 are not -- even though it all might be about doing "managing server space, making backups, handling software licensing schemes."
If you really think you need to patent some new technologies or come up with a new routine to "save millions" in order to get a better than 3% raise then you are the dream employee -- a corporate bitch.
I'm still content with SHA-1 and DES
on
SHA-1 Broken
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Realistically, if I gave any of you people a.txt file encrypted with DES and said that if you can crack it in 3 months I'll give you $15k.. would you be able to? I rather doubt it.
2^69 is still a plenty big number for me. I'll worry in a few years when CPUs are faster
It never fails to crack me up how people freak out about theoretical weaknesses in cryptography but have $25 locks on their homes that any crook with a fork and a nail could open.... and steal your computer if not axe you to bits. but, but.. SHA-2 will save me!!
Stock prices hardly reflectt his
on
Linux, Inc.
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It kinda makes me scratch my flea-ridden head...
There's an endless stream of articles heralding linux as enterprise ready, Msft's achille's heal, etc.
Yet when you look at novell and redhat's stock you see something much like this: \
What gives?
I like your attitude, but I think you're wrong.
Us grunts will always have a job regardless of how efficient things get. So long as the software giants keep churning out buggy code, so long as virii are written at the rate they are today, so long as companies will require anything but cookie-cutter IT infrastcture, so long as users break their machines every day.. I will have a job.
For example, the small biotech I was working at as a sysadmin folded in June. I got two offers within a month. Meanwhile, lots of other guys with PhDs, Drs, etc, in bioinformatics are still hanging around waiting for an interview. They're either too specialized, not specialized enough or are competing against some firm in India.. That's right, India. When we were under a big crunch to find an extra hundred novel human genes we outsourced the work to an Indian firm. They have PhDs too. In fact, I would say the PhDs and missile guidance people are probably under more danger than the guys in the pit. Design and higher-ed work is much more portable than mine. In other words, no dude in China is going to be able to identify a faulty CAT5 cable.
Yeah, being a sysadmin is trench work but it's necessary. All the inventions in the world have yet to reduce the need for or number of janitors and plumbers.
Every time I hear about a groovy new technology like this I get excited... until I remember the enormous societal baggage we are forced to lug around in the form of the immature and the criminal. Without a conductor or a sufficient quantity of people to maintain some sort of norm, how long until kids see if they can have a quick screw between stops? Used condoms, cigarettes, urine, etc. I don't imagine it would be long until all the cars are disgusting. Perhaps this would work in China.
My home ISP, speakeasy, announced the other day that they are offering VOIP. Considering that they also have a no-telco-service-required DSL package, one can pretty much drop off the grid.
http://www.speakeasy.net/press/pr/pr092104.php
Seriously, how many of you would end up increasing your productivity enormously if you were able to take a half hour nap at work every now and then? Sometimes you just need to quick-charge the batteries.
Pity our corporate overlords would rather have zombies at their desks for a full 8 hours than surrender a few minutes for a nap.
Really, who breaks into systems anymore by brute forcing passwords? In the pre-shadow days it was easy to attack all of/etc/passwd with thousands of tries a second but now with/etc/shadow you're relegated to tapping at the the ssh socket or the like. And with a three-try lockout, that's not really much of an option either.
Personally I don't like sunlight, plants, or flowers, so look forward to a perpetually twilight world.
What's the poem the android recites at the end when he's dying after trying to kill Logan? Something about tears and rain.
Not that I like it, especially as an IT worker, but, hell, that's the nature of the beast. Our dirt cheap goods are possible because we "allowed" loads of manufacturing jobs to go to China. In the end all it really means is that we can't rest on our laurels. And that's probably a good thing.
And exactly how does that help the FBI? Are they going to seize everyone's laptop in a block radius of an unsecured WAP and dig out their MAC addresses? Nevermind that MACs can be easily changed.
In the same way that the freedom movements in South Africa were rebelling against the arrogant tyrany of the white government, who considered its world-view to be normative, there are nations out there who see the USA's attitude in much the same light.
I hate to turn a technical topic political but since you make the analogy, let's analyze it. The situation in SA was one of overt racism where two cultures/races were pitted against eachother in the same country. The fight for the blacks was for some very basic equality and was undoubtedly fueled by generations of colonial brutality. I don't think it takes much imagination to see why the poor blacks took the fight to the white government.
Now let's look at the pretexts for 9-11. The vast majority of the hijackers were SAUDI, a country that the US has done little to but make fabulously rich through oil trade. Our troops were stationed there with the APPROVAL of the Saudi government.
No doubt the US has blundered heavily in the past and it certainly can have an arrogant tone at times but it is, by far, a peaceful mercantile country that continues to be #1 in providing assistance during famines, for refugees, etc.
I think your argument is convenient and fallacious in claiming US arrogance was the grounds for 9-11. Have you looked at the other side? The fundamentalist religious radicals comprised mainly of brainwashed adventurists who seek a clash of civilizations and martyrdom through suicide missions? Do you REALLY think their rage is based on anything more than the self-satisfying religious zealotry fostered by their society?
If anyone should have a grudge against the US it should be South East Asia, parts of Africa or even certain South American countries./rant
Am I missing something obvious or shouldn't all these computer criminal masterminds be taking advantage of the countless unsecured WAPs in every city? The bottom line is that every connection you make via wire from your home can plausibly be traced so why not get a laptop, wander around the city and send out your demands from the comfort of a park bench. Let the FBI send every tracer they can think of, they'll always end up with nothing. Seems kind of worth it if you're trying to lift $2.5 million.
I wouldn't be surprised if within 5 years the gov't makes a law holding all WAP owners accountable for the security of their system.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it's fair to dismiss the decline in worker productivity as being solely attributal to a lack of prioritization. Even if you *know* which task is the most important you still have to context switch to process and prioritize incoming information.
.. no.. sorry.. yes.. i understand.. no i can't help you with that right now... ok.. i promise i'll look at it in a second."
Phone rings -- "yes, hello?
[back to task]
Instant message -- "Dude!!! HRPROD22-NA01 is down, WTF?"
"I know, I know, but I'm working on something else right now, it's next in the queue, i promise you."
and so on and so on, ad nauseum. Context switching causes a performance hit for computers and humans. Gone are the days when shutting your office door gave you a semblance of privacy.
In a grander sense, many conjecture that we're no longer producing works of genius with the same frequency as was the case pre-Internet / telephone for the very reason that the finite capacity of our brains is now being pulled in ever more directions. From a simple neurological perspective, the melody processing part of your cranium will not become as prominent if you're constantly engaging other aspects of your mind -- buying coffee from starbucks instead of having it brought to your room, talking on the phone with your agent instead of being left alone to compose, conducting interviews instead of simply focusing on getting the next piece perfected. Bad examples perhaps but I think the idea is right on.
Too much fuzz.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't AMD now account for > 50% of new desktop sales? Perhaps business sales are metered separately, but I rather doubt that many business PCs run Skype. It seems like this is a bad move for Skype on many levels.. Not only do they look crooked but they now have alienated greater than half of new PC owners from making full use of their service.
Also, feel free to give Skype a piece of your mind. They deserve it. http://www.skype.com/feedback/contact/
The distance thing, as far as minimizing radiation, is tricky. There's a study cited in Kurzweil's "Fantastic Voyage" that said the cord used for headsets for mobiles actually acts as a transmitter of its own and can increase the amount of radiation exposure...
so what's the best option? bluetooth it and hope the milliwatt hop from headset to phone is an order of magnitude less dangerous than the kick coming out of the phone itself?
No doubt the term "geek" has been coopted by the media to describe, basically, the digerati generation. But I have to agree with my fellow /.ers... using your ipod and knowing how to upload photos from your cell phone does not make you a geek.
Geek's don't just use technology, they understand how it is put together and desire to change or "hack" it for their own purposes. A geek molds technology to suit him, a regular schmoe makes do with what has been handed his way by 3com, intel, microsoft, etc, etc.
That is the difference.
I'll admit there are temperature changes- the Earth is a dynamic system with lots of history that it changes all the time (See: the 1700s mini-ice age, for example). But to think humans are the cause of it, or have the slightest chance of changing it, is just silly.
Your post is mind-bogglingly facile.
You imply that because past predictions have been wrong that all scientific advancement can be discredited as mere conjecture. Keep that in mind next time you go for a checkup.. 60 years ago your doctor would have been smoking a cigarette with you. Now he can explain with painful detail what you're doing to your body. But hell, since they haven't figured everthing out, screw him! Keep smoking, buddy.
And that little bit about "SCALE" is useless. The EVIDENCE and the MODELS indicate that we in fact ARE causing the planet to heat up. The scientific community is not some POLITICAL body with an AGENDA. There is now almost ZERO dissent in the scientific community as to why the world is heating so RAPIDLY.
I feel comfy with some flashlights, matches, my revolver, 2 boxes ammo, my pocket knife, and some warm clothes. I have all that stuff easily accessible in my apartment, so what ever may come, stuff it in a back pack and head for the mountains.
News flash, if there aren't already homes on big estates in the mountains then you'll be fighting over a 1/4 acre to call your own when everybody else heads for the hills. And you won't be the only kid with a gun.
Which means, maybe, just maybe, you'd be better served by trying to fix the problem in the first place instead of running when it hits.
that god, if he exists, does not particularly favour us over, say cockroaches, or rats.
One of my favorite sayings is "god helps those who help themselves." As a sentient being, I desire that I stay alive and will work to see that I do. You, on the other hand, don't seem to care. As someone who will need some of the same resources as you, I ask that you do the polite thing and step aside (read: die). Thanks.
The saddest thing about opinions like yours, IMHO, is that it reflects a man born with no aesthetic sense, no spiritual core whatsoever. You would look at the awesome complexity of our planet's biology, the beautiful and infinitely intricate workings of what we call "nature," and give an apathetic shrug when some decide that profit now is worth what took billions of years to produce... even when you know full well that this apathy will be your own destruction.
Some of us actually marvel at this planet and would like to see its majesty (a word you have no license to use) preserved. If you're so sure that there's no difference between what we are losing now and a world of cement then why not just go die? It'll only be a rearrangement of a molecular construct... you shouldn't care.
I appreciate your argument and agree that there's too much animosity on both sides of the debate.. but I do take some small issue with your position:
Why is it so hard for non religious scientists to acknowledge that we've not discovered all the answers, and indeed, may never do so?
Nobody doubts that we still have a lot to learn. But what is it that you suggest is firmly beyond science's ability to study and eventually understand? What the known universe looked like when it got started? When "time" will end? We are getting closer to such answers but one component will always be left out: meaning. Waving at the great voids in our knowledge as being indicators of some higher being with some purpose for humanity is, if you'll forgive me, immature.
Freud, the self proclaimed godless Jew, suggested that God was the projection of our parents -- someone who could, if only in our minds, make order out of the world; someone we could cry to (no atheists in foxholes). To look around and realize that, in the words of Conrad (i'm not trying to sound smrt), "we live as we dream -- alone" is to be bare and vulnerable.
I respect and almost envy the religious but I think I will always be shackled a little too closely to logic to "believe the believers." And with that quote I refer you to and highly recommend Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal."
Ok, fair enough... but by your very admission that you're only "in the system" for as long as it takes to have the skills to get out, then a smart company ought to realize, "gee, this guy is now much more valuable to us than when we first hired him -- he knows our network like the back of his hand and now has 2+ years experience in the field. Maybe we ought to give him more than 3% (which, let's admit, is just a cost of living adjustment) to keep him around."
If they don't recognize that and think they can just swap you out with some newb well, then... they're never going to retain decent talent. And yeah, you're probably right.. most large corps lose many of their brighter minds IMHO.
When someone is "doing their job" in IT they are, in my experience, doing a lot more than just pushing a red button every ten to fifteen minutes as you imply. Over the course of a year a semi-decent admin will figure out the kinks in a network, smooth them out, learn and implement new technologies, so on and so forth. Not to mention you acquire a vague wisdom of sorts as the years go by that is arguably invaluable. That's why folks with 5+ years experience are considered for position that those with 1 are not -- even though it all might be about doing "managing server space, making backups, handling software licensing schemes." If you really think you need to patent some new technologies or come up with a new routine to "save millions" in order to get a better than 3% raise then you are the dream employee -- a corporate bitch.
Go look up "professionalism"
Realistically, if I gave any of you people a .txt file encrypted with DES and said that if you can crack it in 3 months I'll give you $15k.. would you be able to? I rather doubt it.
2^69 is still a plenty big number for me. I'll worry in a few years when CPUs are faster
It never fails to crack me up how people freak out about theoretical weaknesses in cryptography but have $25 locks on their homes that any crook with a fork and a nail could open.... and steal your computer if not axe you to bits.
but, but.. SHA-2 will save me!!
It kinda makes me scratch my flea-ridden head... There's an endless stream of articles heralding linux as enterprise ready, Msft's achille's heal, etc. Yet when you look at novell and redhat's stock you see something much like this: \ What gives?
I like your attitude, but I think you're wrong. Us grunts will always have a job regardless of how efficient things get. So long as the software giants keep churning out buggy code, so long as virii are written at the rate they are today, so long as companies will require anything but cookie-cutter IT infrastcture, so long as users break their machines every day.. I will have a job. For example, the small biotech I was working at as a sysadmin folded in June. I got two offers within a month. Meanwhile, lots of other guys with PhDs, Drs, etc, in bioinformatics are still hanging around waiting for an interview. They're either too specialized, not specialized enough or are competing against some firm in India.. That's right, India. When we were under a big crunch to find an extra hundred novel human genes we outsourced the work to an Indian firm. They have PhDs too. In fact, I would say the PhDs and missile guidance people are probably under more danger than the guys in the pit. Design and higher-ed work is much more portable than mine. In other words, no dude in China is going to be able to identify a faulty CAT5 cable. Yeah, being a sysadmin is trench work but it's necessary. All the inventions in the world have yet to reduce the need for or number of janitors and plumbers.
Every time I hear about a groovy new technology like this I get excited... until I remember the enormous societal baggage we are forced to lug around in the form of the immature and the criminal. Without a conductor or a sufficient quantity of people to maintain some sort of norm, how long until kids see if they can have a quick screw between stops? Used condoms, cigarettes, urine, etc. I don't imagine it would be long until all the cars are disgusting. Perhaps this would work in China.
My home ISP, speakeasy, announced the other day that they are offering VOIP. Considering that they also have a no-telco-service-required DSL package, one can pretty much drop off the grid. http://www.speakeasy.net/press/pr/pr092104.php
Seriously, how many of you would end up increasing your productivity enormously if you were able to take a half hour nap at work every now and then? Sometimes you just need to quick-charge the batteries.
Pity our corporate overlords would rather have zombies at their desks for a full 8 hours than surrender a few minutes for a nap.
Really, who breaks into systems anymore by brute forcing passwords? In the pre-shadow days it was easy to attack all of /etc/passwd with thousands of tries a second but now with /etc/shadow you're relegated to tapping at the the ssh socket or the like. And with a three-try lockout, that's not really much of an option either.
Damnit, Blade Runner! I knew that... /hangs head in shame
Personally I don't like sunlight, plants, or flowers, so look forward to a perpetually twilight world. What's the poem the android recites at the end when he's dying after trying to kill Logan? Something about tears and rain.
Not that I like it, especially as an IT worker, but, hell, that's the nature of the beast. Our dirt cheap goods are possible because we "allowed" loads of manufacturing jobs to go to China. In the end all it really means is that we can't rest on our laurels. And that's probably a good thing.
And exactly how does that help the FBI? Are they going to seize everyone's laptop in a block radius of an unsecured WAP and dig out their MAC addresses? Nevermind that MACs can be easily changed.
In the same way that the freedom movements in South Africa were rebelling against the arrogant tyrany of the white government, who considered its world-view to be normative, there are nations out there who see the USA's attitude in much the same light.
/rant
I hate to turn a technical topic political but since you make the analogy, let's analyze it. The situation in SA was one of overt racism where two cultures/races were pitted against eachother in the same country. The fight for the blacks was for some very basic equality and was undoubtedly fueled by generations of colonial brutality. I don't think it takes much imagination to see why the poor blacks took the fight to the white government.
Now let's look at the pretexts for 9-11. The vast majority of the hijackers were SAUDI, a country that the US has done little to but make fabulously rich through oil trade. Our troops were stationed there with the APPROVAL of the Saudi government.
No doubt the US has blundered heavily in the past and it certainly can have an arrogant tone at times but it is, by far, a peaceful mercantile country that continues to be #1 in providing assistance during famines, for refugees, etc.
I think your argument is convenient and fallacious in claiming US arrogance was the grounds for 9-11. Have you looked at the other side? The fundamentalist religious radicals comprised mainly of brainwashed adventurists who seek a clash of civilizations and martyrdom through suicide missions? Do you REALLY think their rage is based on anything more than the self-satisfying religious zealotry fostered by their society?
If anyone should have a grudge against the US it should be South East Asia, parts of Africa or even certain South American countries.
Am I missing something obvious or shouldn't all these computer criminal masterminds be taking advantage of the countless unsecured WAPs in every city? The bottom line is that every connection you make via wire from your home can plausibly be traced so why not get a laptop, wander around the city and send out your demands from the comfort of a park bench. Let the FBI send every tracer they can think of, they'll always end up with nothing. Seems kind of worth it if you're trying to lift $2.5 million. I wouldn't be surprised if within 5 years the gov't makes a law holding all WAP owners accountable for the security of their system.