The reason women do not have as many of the 'top jobs' in this world is economics. If you hire a woman and she has a kid, then she will be gone for several months and you will have to pay her maternity leave even though she isn't there. Economically speaking, it's better to hire the man.
Actually, this argument was demolished when employers were claiming that women
should not be given sick leave and health insurance
benefits to give birth, back in the '80's.
It was the insurers -- the actuaries -- who blew this argument out of the water.
It turned out that their own statistics showed that men, being more likely to be alcoholics, have
a far higher rate of heart disease, smoke more, commit more crimes, have more motorcycle and car accidents --
were a far greater risk to ballooning insurance
costs (and the cost of long-term disability leave) than if those men were replaced by women
covered by mere maternity benefits.
The insurers wound up lobbying for providing maternity benefits to
women, because it would save them money, due to the lower-risk behavior of mothers.
Now insurance is a business, and even for normal businesses economic argument turned out to be on the side
of having women in top jobs, even if they had to take a few weeks off to give birth -- far cheaper than
taking a risk on some (more likely alcoholic) MAN who's also more
likely to deprive the company of his services because he cracked up his car, his yamaha, got picked
up in a barroom brawl and had to be bailed out of jail or had a heart attack.
Giving a woman a few weeks off (and paid health benefits) to give birth is certainly less embarrassing
to the company than a man who does the above. If you don't agree that men are far more likely to cost
the company money due to their ratassed behaviour, go argue with the actuaries. They have the facts and
figures to back up their argument -- you DON'T.
Has computing gone forwards or backwards when it takes thousands of times the compute power to support fewer users, doing dumber things.
We used to run whole research departments developing mathematical modelling, computational physics programmes on a single DEC VAX 11/750
with 8 MB of main memory and like 80 MB of hard disk space. It was so underutilised that astrophysics would rent out time on the darn thing to
geophysics and chemistry.
This was on 4.2 BSD, the mother of all open source operating systems. And we had access to supercomputers at Argonne, NCAR, LANL, LBL and Cornell over the ARPAnet. in the freaking early 1980's.
AND we produced beautifully typeset scholarly papers and theses, full of equations using TeX. Try doing that with Office. Hnf.
Personally, I used to use maple to do the algebraic manipulations, and export to either fortran (to run a numerical simulation to get the results that formed my thesis) or to TeX (in order to publish it). Sure as hell can't do that with the stupid Office (open or MS) programmes you need 15 64MB computers to support only 60 users on in this model. Even if you insist on running a pointy-clicky GUI, with X10 we used to run dozens of graphics terminals off of one VAX
This article just proves that the net progress of computing is actually backwards because the computers certainly are getting bigger/faster/better more slowly than the intelligence and creativity of the users -- now they all need a GUI just to edit text and compile programs. To the point that it's a miracle when you can have more than one person using a computer at a time now. Sheesh!
...in favor of an APT and RPM installer. One that checks the dependencies
and what you've got installed before charging on ahead and then crapping out
halfway through, forcing you to go back to the beginning again.
Oh, and fact that having a GUI-only installer forces
you have to either have an X windows client + server
or rig up a GUI server to talk to the client libraries
on a server in your DMZ is just plain stupid.
The place where you have (often by company policy) text-only
Linux installs.
Price considerations aside, PostGreSQL is better just because
you don't need to fiddle around with special install and maintenance
procedures that are contrary to most companies' security policies for
servers.
Oh, and they should keep up with the GLIBC versions, too.
For a company going "linux first" they're doing a pretty piss-poor job of it.
During the reign of Pinochet, writer Ariel Dorfman used to convey the extent of the official censorship of
his articles by incorporating the censored sections as blacked-out text and photos, with the understanding
that people could fill in the blanks for themselves based on the surrounding text, knowing where the
blanks were.
What's left out is as significant
as what is included.
The NZOSS
has put together
this summary of the issues and is requesting a copy of the license, but not telegraphing its plans so
blatantly (ya gotta love Kiwis).
I wrote a recursive Bourne shell script in 1983 -- it called itself, twice,
before exiting. Blew out the 4.2 process table and crashed the VAX.
Luckily it was an academic system, not a business production system.
The way I see it, this is just a symptom of the larger problem: that of non-programmers who literally do not
know ANYTHING about computers per se defining "computer literacy" as being able to run a few M$
pointy-clicky apps--because that's all they know how to do.
Now it's not a problem if these people stay in the f-ing typing pool, graphic arts sweatshops,
stupid little bookkeeping jobs, or teaching history where they bleeding well belong. It
does
become a problem
when the Beverly Sweeneys of this world
get positions of authority which they're fundamentally unqualified to fill, and find
themselves feeling threatened by anyone who knows more than themselves--and acting on
their feelings of inadequacy with high-handedness.
Having a Beverly Sweeney teaching Integrated Technology Applications because she got
a cert or two in running a few pointy-clicky M$ Applications is like hiring someone as a
music teacher because they know how to play CDs on their stereo, who then busts students
who play an actual musical instrument in class -- because it's not "an approved application". Sheesh!
"France Telecom uses Oracle Corp. as its DBMS, Hewlett-Packard Co. as its storage and system vendor, and employs an SMP (symbol manipulation program) architecture."
The author of this article just failed my bullshit filter. SMP in this context is "symmetric multiple processors" -- yes, SMP "Symbolic Manipulation Programme" was the name of what Stephen Wolfram wrote back in the early 80's while a grad student at Caltech, and open-sourced, and got heaps of shit for,
because of a nasty copyright battle with Caltech over it. He was a student, and felt he owned the code he wrote while a student.
Caltech felt differently when it started giving MacSyma a heck of a run for its money -- and Maple started raising their prices.
But this has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with database architecture. What "geek dictionary" did this writer look up
this acronym in? Doesn't know what he's writing about. At all.
MS' agenda is to dominate markets by locking customers into an asymmetric "tech providor vs tech consumer" relationship.
In short, technological hegemony -- much like the hegemonistic agenda certain elements in the US military-industrial
complex are often accused of.
OSS' agenda, on the other hand, is to empower individuals, and individual nations,
to make their own technological choices. So the UN advocates OSS in its WSIS, a move that is
vigorously opposed by only one nation: the US.
The pattern is pretty clear.
Now if the DOD could only ban OSS in its own organisations. But they can't.
The MITRE study demonstrated that the DOD and associated organisations' research,
infrastructure and security efforts would themselves grind to a halt if they banned OSS
from their own operations.
Technological knowledge due to the proliferation of OSS is, increasingly, the key to
both autonomy and power for a nation, and an individual.
So, the efforts of the US to deny OSS to the rest of the world, and (outside
of it's engines of power) to it's own people are in line with the agenda of hegemony the
US is are often accused of. It's similar to the consolidation of land and informational
assets in the hands of a small group of increasingly powerful people in developing
nations, whose actions result in the people not being able to grow their own food
or publish their own views and information--just look at what the US did to Latin
America throughout the 20th century.
I predict that the export of US-sanctioned "democracy" will be accompanied
by the export of US-developed MS-based easily-hacked voting systems which will
only result in the fraudulent election of officials (e.g. GWB) who will promote the same kind of economic and
technological dependency on the US, while real technological democracy,
in the form of publicly validated, secure and properly audited OSS voter registration systems, voter information systems, and
the voting systems themselves will be denigrated as "substandard and not valid"
by the same people that brought you the massacre at el Mozotol (and fired Ray
Bonnert, the correspondent to the NY Times who reported it).
I wonder if the
School of the Americas has a new course, "Skewing Election Results
Without Getting Caught (much) 101:
Diebolt Systems Under The Hood."
MS' agenda is to dominate markets by locking customers into an asymmetric "tech providor vs tech consumer" relationship.
In short, technological hegemony -- much like the hegemonistic agenda certain elements in the US military-industrial
complex are often accused of.
OSS' agenda, on the other hand, is to empower individuals, and individual nations,
to make their own technological choices. So the UN advocates OSS in its WSIS, a move that is
vigorously opposed by only one nation: the US.
The pattern is pretty clear.
Now if the DOD could only ban OSS in its own organisations. But they can't.
The MITRE study demonstrated that the DOD and associated organisations' research,
infrastructure and security efforts would themselves grind to a halt if they banned OSS
from their own operations.
Technological knowledge due to the proliferation of OSS is, increasingly, the key to
both autonomy and power for a nation, and an individual.
So, the efforts of the US to deny OSS to the rest of the world, and (outside
of it's engines of power) to it's own people are in line with the agenda of hegemony the
US is are often accused of. It's similar to the consolidation of land and informational
assets in the hands of a small group of increasingly powerful people in developing
nations, whose actions result in the people not being able to grow their own food
or publish their own views and information--just look at what the US did to Latin
America throughout the 20th century.
I predict that the export of US-sanctioned "democracy" will be accompanied
by the export of US-developed MS-based easily-hacked voting systems which will
only result in the fraudulent election of officials (e.g. GWB) who will promote the same kind of economic and
technological dependency on the US, while real technological democracy,
in the form of publicly validated, secure and properly audited OSS voter registration systems, voter information systems, and
the voting systems themselves will be denigrated as "substandard and not valid"
by the same people that brought you the massacre at el Mozotol (and fired Ray
Bonnert, the correspondent to the NY Times who reported it).
I wonder if the
School of the Americas has a new course, "Skewing Election Results
Without Getting Caught (much) 101:
Diebolt Systems Under The Hood."
Many teachers, like most people in our society, do not entirely realize that computer programs are mathematical functions, nor that they are something that ordinary human beings can learn to write.
(Yes, you read correctly: "ordinary human beings." The cult of the "computer nerd" or "wizard" -- the idea that only a tiny few exceptionally intelligent people are capable of understanding computers -- has existed for only a short time. The vast majority of computer programmers have never been computer fanatics. In science and industry, most still are not. Microsoft and the computer game business are exceptions which deliberately cultivate the "nerd" or "wizard" attitude -- regardless of whether the code or the games are any better!)
When I was a teenager,
"Be a Computer Programmer" was something you'd read on matchbook covers
for shitty fly-by-night tech schools hot to grab newly-created education funding in the
form of grants, scholarships and loans being made available by the state and fed. govt.
You know, along with "Be a Hairdresser" or "Learn To Drive A Truck." Same type
of schools, same type of advertising.
I put myself through engineering school programming for
much for the same reasons I took piano lessons--so I'd have "something to fall back on,"
you know if I failed become a Nobel Prizewinning Physicist, I could still pay the bills.
I still don't know why people make such a big deal out of it.
Sorry, but these guys try to pull that "I Am The Microsoft Nerd-Priest In The One True Church of
Computers" shit with me, and I just have to laugh and tell them to go advertise it on
a matchbook cover.
How have MS got so many people so totally fooled? I dunno,
how did Bush win the last presidential election? Why do people buy Coke and not
Pepsi?
Now that most teachers don't even have the ability to think critically or logically or even practically,
soon the whole country will just believe what they're told. So much easier to manufacture consent
that way.
Get a used Model M Keyboard .
They're built like tanks, and make an extremely satisfying "clickity clackity clackity clickity"
sound thanks to those spring-loaded keys. Yowseh. Mine's nearly 10 years old, continuous
service. You can program the LEDs if the spirit moves you.
Everything is where it is supposed to be, and no annoying "Windows" or "Apple" key.
Being mostly metal, the model M is also satisfyingly HEAVY which means they don't scootch around the desk
every time the cat cuddles up around one of the cables, pulling the keyboard off the desk and knocking over your coffee cup.
Here are the terms under which you can swap Grateful Dead MP3's
It's very similar to the Creative Commons license -- makes sense, since
they pretty much pioneered and popularised the concept. So...if it were
formalised under Creative Commons licensing, then the whole Grateful Dead catalog
could go into the CC-registered database--for your furthur fair use and enjoyment.
They're protecting an archaic industry," said the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir. "They should turn their attention to new models."
The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records. Letting fans record concerts and swap tapes created a lot of good will and good publicity.
...and now have an enormous variety of "tracks" to select from when releasing "official bootlegs" of
portions of live shows, Dick's Picks. Which is a real boon to those of us who were too busy studying
and working to go on tour in the 70's, 80's and early 90's. (The best show I went to was
Holleder Stadium, Rochester, NY, 1979. Best
Fire on the Mountain ever. Second best was a Red Rocks
show I went to while on a supercomputing assignment at NCAR in 84. My code was running in the
batch queue, and fresh results waiting the next morning....aaaah.
Gone are the days... Not to mention the legendary Barton Hall shows at Cornell...)
One of the quirks of the RIAA/ASCAP/BMI "system" however, is that while swapping tapes is considered
fair use by the Dead-- swapping MP3's of the same music will get you busted by the RIAA even if the artists
themselves would prefer to "look the other way" -- the Dead were able to "look the other way" at
their own concerts, but, basically, the RIAA has a chance to stick their big ugly noses into it when
it's online.
So, it would be really neat to see at least a portion of the Dead's catalogue
released under a Creative Commons license, so those of us who play music
on actual musical instruments might have the chance to release our interpretations--
"Sugaree" deadicated
to Mr. Darl McBride, for example, or a version of
"Ship of Fools" deadicated to the Microsoft Corporation.
For a more positive example which has a more realistic chance of
being released under a Creative Commons license, John Perry Barlow
could CC "The Music Never Stopped" to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his
publication of
The Economy of Ideas and the inception of the the EFF .
Yah. And if you're female, it's a chance for the faculty to see whether you'll "put out" in exchange for giving them the chance to get more grants based on YOUR research results and proposals. Fat farking chance.
I'll bet you didn't realize when you posted this that in order for a woman to get modded up on slashdot, she has to give it up. That's why you were modded as flamebait.
I, on the other hand, have just written a genuine piece of flamebait. But since I'm a man, I won't be expected to put out for this to be modded up.
(Yeah, my point? I was originally going to respond with something cheeky like "Hey babe, let's go fuck" until I noticed the post had been modded flamebait. Then I asked why it had been modded such, and posted to answer my own question. Slashdot is apparently not immune to the other social diseases running rampant)
Ha ha ha ha ha! That's really funny! The funniest part is the fact that, on my display, you'd gotten +2 for
Friend-of-a-friend and +1 for Karma--so it looked as though you actually had been modded up!
But you know, there's a way to test part of your theory -- post exactly the same comments under a male
nym and a female nym, and see how each set of comments are posted. To test the other part of your
theory...well, bend over baby! Oooh, see you already have done that, by your current nym.
Post-doc'ing has devolved from a training ground for future tenure-track academics to being slave labor with a possible carrot dangled years in your future.
Yah. And if you're female, it's a chance for the faculty to see whether you'll "put out" in exchange for giving them the
chance to get more grants based on YOUR research results and proposals. Fat farking chance.
Worse than the groping pathetic preening faculty are the super-bitch pseudo-intellectual prowling faculty wives
who'll have it in for you, because you're obviously too stupid to prostitute yourself (literally)
like they did, and find a "wonderful man" to "fall in love" with your "science" together -- you know, someone who
can protect you in the silly little political status game called "University".
I don't know why they didn't have, amongst their "worst jobs in science" #22 The Lab Slut, #23 The Fieldwork Ball-licker,
#24 The Research Vessel Crew-Pleaser and #25 Bitchy Faculty-wife Administrator.
I've sure had to work with enough of all four "types"
And no, they didn't "inspire" me as "role models." Not in the least. They think you're supposed to admire them
or something out of "sisterhood." If *my* sister was screwing her boss like some pathetic low-class little tart who
didn't know how to do anything else to support herself, she'd *hear* about it. You can't tell anything to the whores
of the high table, though, they're just sitting on top of the world. Until the next little bit of posh totty comes along, that is.
I actually had one of these stupid so-called "role models" (funded by the NSF *as* *such* )
actually explain to me that "morals was for the great unwashed" and how
working at an important research institute puts you "above all of that." She actually counselled me to "use what I
had to get ahead." Gross me out. I asked her, sarcastically, if I should do them
standing up in the broom closet, or would a quick blow-job in the stairwell be enough to "get ahead."
Amit Yoran is of course, a VP at Symantec. That would be the same company whose COO, John Schwartz, recently caused a storm by calling for laws to make it a criminal offence to share information and tools online which could be used by malicious hackers and virus writers.
Am I alone in putting two and two together and becoming alarmed at the implication?
The more worrying thing (IMHO) was that "The BSA Lauded his Selection." -- so it will it be a criminal offence to
"share information and tools online which could be used by..." Open Source Programmers.
I'm tellin' ya, they're
trying to make Linux illegal.
I agree, but the point I'm trying make is that the developers should be abstracted from the DBs all together, the only thing worse than developers acting as DBAs is DBAs acting as developers.
In a perfect world, both would understand the requirements of the system and work together.
But not more reliable. What happens when hundreds of connections are being made to a transactional database, where updates are being made that need to cascade down several tables in order to ensure referential integrity. You really want to do that without triggers? With your "portable" apps, either you'll have to lock *all* the tables (if the database does not support row locking) involved in an update until *all* of the updates associated with a single transaction, or you'll just have to tolerate concurrent updates destroying your referential integrity.
If you are developing a "real" app you should be using a database that supports row level locking. What is less reliable is when the app doesn't work as the code shows because activities are going on behind the scenes.
You mean like when several different apps are all doing transactions at once, and one app has just done
a query and is getting ready to lock a row in response to it -- and another app has already gone and changed it?
Because the updates were implemented with query-lock-update-query-lock-update rather than all in one go
with um, you know those
overrated things called triggers and stored procedures ?
I've seen programmers do the latter, and then refuse to disclose their source code on the basis that they're the big expert. What a larf.
I've seen DBA explain that it must be the code causing the problem only to have write a very simple app (so the DBA can understand) to prove that the problem is on the DB side. What a larf.
Sound like both sides have to stop larfing at each other and start cooperating . A J2EE update that does query-lock-update-query-lock-update and hence gets trod on by other concurrent J2EE apps, and hence falls over is
not the DBA's arrogance getting in the way, it's the developer's lack of database development experience. Java is
a wonderful language, and does wonderful things for portability -- but certain transactions do have to be
executed all in one go, and without triggers and stored procedures, the system will not scale nearly as far, so
a balance needs to be struck between portability and specificity to that database, if it's going to work --and scale.
This is a big challenge, and I wish you well. Good
luck getting your DBAs with the program. Involving them in the requirements review, development cycle and
conformance testing might be a big help here, as well as asking them to give you some advice on DB specific
trigger and stored procedure implementation -- particularly if you want to avoid things "going on behind the scenes"
foiling your beautiful portable code. Java is more readable, and IMHO, because Java developers have
typically a much more intensive training in how to program, typically much better designed than some of the
piles of triggers, queries, snippets and pl/sql I've seen out there. But some of the database functionality you
can get virtually for free with those big expensive RDBMS engines are just...merely necessary, if you don't like them,
wonderful if you need the thing to be scalable on the same hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, this argument was demolished when employers were claiming that women should not be given sick leave and health insurance benefits to give birth, back in the '80's.
It was the insurers -- the actuaries -- who blew this argument out of the water.
It turned out that their own statistics showed that men, being more likely to be alcoholics, have a far higher rate of heart disease, smoke more, commit more crimes, have more motorcycle and car accidents -- were a far greater risk to ballooning insurance costs (and the cost of long-term disability leave) than if those men were replaced by women covered by mere maternity benefits.
The insurers wound up lobbying for providing maternity benefits to women, because it would save them money, due to the lower-risk behavior of mothers.
Now insurance is a business, and even for normal businesses economic argument turned out to be on the side of having women in top jobs, even if they had to take a few weeks off to give birth -- far cheaper than taking a risk on some (more likely alcoholic) MAN who's also more likely to deprive the company of his services because he cracked up his car, his yamaha, got picked up in a barroom brawl and had to be bailed out of jail or had a heart attack.
Giving a woman a few weeks off (and paid health benefits) to give birth is certainly less embarrassing to the company than a man who does the above. If you don't agree that men are far more likely to cost the company money due to their ratassed behaviour, go argue with the actuaries. They have the facts and figures to back up their argument -- you DON'T.
Has computing gone forwards or backwards when it takes thousands of times the compute power to support fewer users, doing dumber things. We used to run whole research departments developing mathematical modelling, computational physics programmes on a single DEC VAX 11/750 with 8 MB of main memory and like 80 MB of hard disk space. It was so underutilised that astrophysics would rent out time on the darn thing to geophysics and chemistry.
This was on 4.2 BSD, the mother of all open source operating systems. And we had access to supercomputers at Argonne, NCAR, LANL, LBL and Cornell over the ARPAnet. in the freaking early 1980's.
AND we produced beautifully typeset scholarly papers and theses, full of equations using TeX. Try doing that with Office. Hnf.
Personally, I used to use maple to do the algebraic manipulations, and export to either fortran (to run a numerical simulation to get the results that formed my thesis) or to TeX (in order to publish it). Sure as hell can't do that with the stupid Office (open or MS) programmes you need 15 64MB computers to support only 60 users on in this model. Even if you insist on running a pointy-clicky GUI, with X10 we used to run dozens of graphics terminals off of one VAX
This article just proves that the net progress of computing is actually backwards because the computers certainly are getting bigger/faster/better more slowly than the intelligence and creativity of the users -- now they all need a GUI just to edit text and compile programs. To the point that it's a miracle when you can have more than one person using a computer at a time now. Sheesh!
It would have been a more interesting article if he'd compared SQL and XQuery to some more positive examples. eg RPG.
Contrary to popular belief, mal_vu didn't really pass a Turing test -- she would have had to fool real people as well as FBI agents.
Oh, and fact that having a GUI-only installer forces you have to either have an X windows client + server or rig up a GUI server to talk to the client libraries on a server in your DMZ is just plain stupid. The place where you have (often by company policy) text-only Linux installs.
Price considerations aside, PostGreSQL is better just because you don't need to fiddle around with special install and maintenance procedures that are contrary to most companies' security policies for servers.
Oh, and they should keep up with the GLIBC versions, too.
For a company going "linux first" they're doing a pretty piss-poor job of it.
Cocacolazoic
During the reign of Pinochet, writer Ariel Dorfman used to convey the extent of the official censorship of his articles by incorporating the censored sections as blacked-out text and photos, with the understanding that people could fill in the blanks for themselves based on the surrounding text, knowing where the blanks were.
What's left out is as significant as what is included.
Not only has this already been done, but it was done 10 years ago in New Zealand
But doesn't this thread belong under the "Stand Alone Calendar App" topic?
"...students are asked to write an essay 'to get the word out that downloading copyrighted entertainment is illegal and unethical,'"
It kind of reminds me of Ronnie and Nancita's "Just say no to drugs" campaign. "No...not unless you've got something real good!"
They're trying it on in NZ, too.
The NZOSS has put together this summary of the issues and is requesting a copy of the license, but not telegraphing its plans so blatantly (ya gotta love Kiwis).
Check out http://WWW.SCO.CO.NZ for a larf.
I wrote a recursive Bourne shell script in 1983 -- it called itself, twice, before exiting. Blew out the 4.2 process table and crashed the VAX. Luckily it was an academic system, not a business production system.
The way I see it, this is just a symptom of the larger problem: that of non-programmers who literally do not know ANYTHING about computers per se defining "computer literacy" as being able to run a few M$ pointy-clicky apps--because that's all they know how to do.
Now it's not a problem if these people stay in the f-ing typing pool, graphic arts sweatshops, stupid little bookkeeping jobs, or teaching history where they bleeding well belong. It does become a problem when the Beverly Sweeneys of this world get positions of authority which they're fundamentally unqualified to fill, and find themselves feeling threatened by anyone who knows more than themselves--and acting on their feelings of inadequacy with high-handedness.
Having a Beverly Sweeney teaching Integrated Technology Applications because she got a cert or two in running a few pointy-clicky M$ Applications is like hiring someone as a music teacher because they know how to play CDs on their stereo, who then busts students who play an actual musical instrument in class -- because it's not "an approved application". Sheesh!
"France Telecom uses Oracle Corp. as its DBMS, Hewlett-Packard Co. as its storage and system vendor, and employs an SMP (symbol manipulation program) architecture."
The author of this article just failed my bullshit filter. SMP in this context is "symmetric multiple processors" -- yes, SMP "Symbolic Manipulation Programme" was the name of what Stephen Wolfram wrote back in the early 80's while a grad student at Caltech, and open-sourced, and got heaps of shit for, because of a nasty copyright battle with Caltech over it. He was a student, and felt he owned the code he wrote while a student. Caltech felt differently when it started giving MacSyma a heck of a run for its money -- and Maple started raising their prices.
But this has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with database architecture. What "geek dictionary" did this writer look up this acronym in? Doesn't know what he's writing about. At all.
"Reason for leaving last employer: School stared back!"
The obligatory...(sorry I couldn't resist):
In Soviet Russia, School Stares back at YOU!
MS' agenda is to dominate markets by locking customers into an asymmetric "tech providor vs tech consumer" relationship.
In short, technological hegemony -- much like the hegemonistic agenda certain elements in the US military-industrial complex are often accused of.
OSS' agenda, on the other hand, is to empower individuals, and individual nations, to make their own technological choices. So the UN advocates OSS in its WSIS, a move that is vigorously opposed by only one nation: the US.
The pattern is pretty clear.
Now if the DOD could only ban OSS in its own organisations. But they can't. The MITRE study demonstrated that the DOD and associated organisations' research, infrastructure and security efforts would themselves grind to a halt if they banned OSS from their own operations.
Technological knowledge due to the proliferation of OSS is, increasingly, the key to both autonomy and power for a nation, and an individual.So, the efforts of the US to deny OSS to the rest of the world, and (outside of it's engines of power) to it's own people are in line with the agenda of hegemony the US is are often accused of. It's similar to the consolidation of land and informational assets in the hands of a small group of increasingly powerful people in developing nations, whose actions result in the people not being able to grow their own food or publish their own views and information--just look at what the US did to Latin America throughout the 20th century.
I predict that the export of US-sanctioned "democracy" will be accompanied by the export of US-developed MS-based easily-hacked voting systems which will only result in the fraudulent election of officials (e.g. GWB) who will promote the same kind of economic and technological dependency on the US, while real technological democracy, in the form of publicly validated, secure and properly audited OSS voter registration systems, voter information systems, and the voting systems themselves will be denigrated as "substandard and not valid" by the same people that brought you the massacre at el Mozotol (and fired Ray Bonnert, the correspondent to the NY Times who reported it).
I wonder if the School of the Americas has a new course, "Skewing Election Results Without Getting Caught (much) 101: Diebolt Systems Under The Hood."
MS' agenda is to dominate markets by locking customers into an asymmetric "tech providor vs tech consumer" relationship.
In short, technological hegemony -- much like the hegemonistic agenda certain elements in the US military-industrial complex are often accused of.
OSS' agenda, on the other hand, is to empower individuals, and individual nations, to make their own technological choices. So the UN advocates OSS in its WSIS, a move that is vigorously opposed by only one nation: the US.
The pattern is pretty clear.
Now if the DOD could only ban OSS in its own organisations. But they can't. The MITRE study demonstrated that the DOD and associated organisations' research, infrastructure and security efforts would themselves grind to a halt if they banned OSS from their own operations.
Technological knowledge due to the proliferation of OSS is, increasingly, the key to both autonomy and power for a nation, and an individual.So, the efforts of the US to deny OSS to the rest of the world, and (outside of it's engines of power) to it's own people are in line with the agenda of hegemony the US is are often accused of. It's similar to the consolidation of land and informational assets in the hands of a small group of increasingly powerful people in developing nations, whose actions result in the people not being able to grow their own food or publish their own views and information--just look at what the US did to Latin America throughout the 20th century.
I predict that the export of US-sanctioned "democracy" will be accompanied by the export of US-developed MS-based easily-hacked voting systems which will only result in the fraudulent election of officials (e.g. GWB) who will promote the same kind of economic and technological dependency on the US, while real technological democracy, in the form of publicly validated, secure and properly audited OSS voter registration systems, voter information systems, and the voting systems themselves will be denigrated as "substandard and not valid" by the same people that brought you the massacre at el Mozotol (and fired Ray Bonnert, the correspondent to the NY Times who reported it).
I wonder if the School of the Americas has a new course, "Skewing Election Results Without Getting Caught (much) 101: Diebolt Systems Under The Hood."
When I was a teenager, "Be a Computer Programmer" was something you'd read on matchbook covers for shitty fly-by-night tech schools hot to grab newly-created education funding in the form of grants, scholarships and loans being made available by the state and fed. govt.
You know, along with "Be a Hairdresser" or "Learn To Drive A Truck." Same type of schools, same type of advertising.
I put myself through engineering school programming for much for the same reasons I took piano lessons--so I'd have "something to fall back on," you know if I failed become a Nobel Prizewinning Physicist, I could still pay the bills. I still don't know why people make such a big deal out of it.
Sorry, but these guys try to pull that "I Am The Microsoft Nerd-Priest In The One True Church of Computers" shit with me, and I just have to laugh and tell them to go advertise it on a matchbook cover.
How have MS got so many people so totally fooled? I dunno, how did Bush win the last presidential election? Why do people buy Coke and not Pepsi?
Now that most teachers don't even have the ability to think critically or logically or even practically, soon the whole country will just believe what they're told. So much easier to manufacture consent that way.
Get a used Model M Keyboard . They're built like tanks, and make an extremely satisfying "clickity clackity clackity clickity" sound thanks to those spring-loaded keys. Yowseh. Mine's nearly 10 years old, continuous service. You can program the LEDs if the spirit moves you. Everything is where it is supposed to be, and no annoying "Windows" or "Apple" key. Being mostly metal, the model M is also satisfyingly HEAVY which means they don't scootch around the desk every time the cat cuddles up around one of the cables, pulling the keyboard off the desk and knocking over your coffee cup.
Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs.
Here are the terms under which you can swap Grateful Dead MP3's It's very similar to the Creative Commons license -- makes sense, since they pretty much pioneered and popularised the concept. So...if it were formalised under Creative Commons licensing, then the whole Grateful Dead catalog could go into the CC-registered database--for your furthur fair use and enjoyment.
They're protecting an archaic industry," said the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir. "They should turn their attention to new models." The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records. Letting fans record concerts and swap tapes created a lot of good will and good publicity.
One of the quirks of the RIAA/ASCAP/BMI "system" however, is that while swapping tapes is considered fair use by the Dead-- swapping MP3's of the same music will get you busted by the RIAA even if the artists themselves would prefer to "look the other way" -- the Dead were able to "look the other way" at their own concerts, but, basically, the RIAA has a chance to stick their big ugly noses into it when it's online.
So, it would be really neat to see at least a portion of the Dead's catalogue released under a Creative Commons license, so those of us who play music on actual musical instruments might have the chance to release our interpretations-- "Sugaree" deadicated to Mr. Darl McBride, for example, or a version of "Ship of Fools" deadicated to the Microsoft Corporation.
For a more positive example which has a more realistic chance of being released under a Creative Commons license, John Perry Barlow could CC "The Music Never Stopped" to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his publication of The Economy of Ideas and the inception of the the EFF .
John? Bobby? Put your gooo--old records where your love is, baby--before that record deal goes down....goes down.
Yah. And if you're female, it's a chance for the faculty to see whether you'll "put out" in exchange for giving them the chance to get more grants based on YOUR research results and proposals. Fat farking chance.
I'll bet you didn't realize when you posted this that in order for a woman to get modded up on slashdot, she has to give it up. That's why you were modded as flamebait. I, on the other hand, have just written a genuine piece of flamebait. But since I'm a man, I won't be expected to put out for this to be modded up. (Yeah, my point? I was originally going to respond with something cheeky like "Hey babe, let's go fuck" until I noticed the post had been modded flamebait. Then I asked why it had been modded such, and posted to answer my own question. Slashdot is apparently not immune to the other social diseases running rampant)
Ha ha ha ha ha! That's really funny! The funniest part is the fact that, on my display, you'd gotten +2 for Friend-of-a-friend and +1 for Karma--so it looked as though you actually had been modded up!
But you know, there's a way to test part of your theory -- post exactly the same comments under a male nym and a female nym, and see how each set of comments are posted. To test the other part of your theory...well, bend over baby! Oooh, see you already have done that, by your current nym.
Was it good for you?
Post-doc'ing has devolved from a training ground for future tenure-track academics to being slave labor with a possible carrot dangled years in your future.
Yah. And if you're female, it's a chance for the faculty to see whether you'll "put out" in exchange for giving them the chance to get more grants based on YOUR research results and proposals. Fat farking chance.
Worse than the groping pathetic preening faculty are the super-bitch pseudo-intellectual prowling faculty wives who'll have it in for you, because you're obviously too stupid to prostitute yourself (literally) like they did, and find a "wonderful man" to "fall in love" with your "science" together -- you know, someone who can protect you in the silly little political status game called "University".
I don't know why they didn't have, amongst their "worst jobs in science" #22 The Lab Slut, #23 The Fieldwork Ball-licker, #24 The Research Vessel Crew-Pleaser and #25 Bitchy Faculty-wife Administrator. I've sure had to work with enough of all four "types"
And no, they didn't "inspire" me as "role models." Not in the least. They think you're supposed to admire them or something out of "sisterhood." If *my* sister was screwing her boss like some pathetic low-class little tart who didn't know how to do anything else to support herself, she'd *hear* about it. You can't tell anything to the whores of the high table, though, they're just sitting on top of the world. Until the next little bit of posh totty comes along, that is.
I actually had one of these stupid so-called "role models" (funded by the NSF *as* *such* ) actually explain to me that "morals was for the great unwashed" and how working at an important research institute puts you "above all of that." She actually counselled me to "use what I had to get ahead." Gross me out. I asked her, sarcastically, if I should do them standing up in the broom closet, or would a quick blow-job in the stairwell be enough to "get ahead."
Am I bitter? No. I'm BETTER.
Amit Yoran is of course, a VP at Symantec. That would be the same company whose COO, John Schwartz, recently caused a storm by calling for laws to make it a criminal offence to share information and tools online which could be used by malicious hackers and virus writers. Am I alone in putting two and two together and becoming alarmed at the implication?
The more worrying thing (IMHO) was that "The BSA Lauded his Selection." -- so it will it be a criminal offence to "share information and tools online which could be used by..." Open Source Programmers.
I'm tellin' ya, they're trying to make Linux illegal.
I agree, but the point I'm trying make is that the developers should be abstracted from the DBs all together, the only thing worse than developers acting as DBAs is DBAs acting as developers.
In a perfect world, both would understand the requirements of the system and work together.
But not more reliable. What happens when hundreds of connections are being made to a transactional database, where updates are being made that need to cascade down several tables in order to ensure referential integrity. You really want to do that without triggers? With your "portable" apps, either you'll have to lock *all* the tables (if the database does not support row locking) involved in an update until *all* of the updates associated with a single transaction, or you'll just have to tolerate concurrent updates destroying your referential integrity.
If you are developing a "real" app you should be using a database that supports row level locking. What is less reliable is when the app doesn't work as the code shows because activities are going on behind the scenes.
You mean like when several different apps are all doing transactions at once, and one app has just done a query and is getting ready to lock a row in response to it -- and another app has already gone and changed it? Because the updates were implemented with query-lock-update-query-lock-update rather than all in one go with um, you know those overrated things called triggers and stored procedures ?
I've seen programmers do the latter, and then refuse to disclose their source code on the basis that they're the big expert. What a larf. I've seen DBA explain that it must be the code causing the problem only to have write a very simple app (so the DBA can understand) to prove that the problem is on the DB side. What a larf.
Sound like both sides have to stop larfing at each other and start cooperating . A J2EE update that does query-lock-update-query-lock-update and hence gets trod on by other concurrent J2EE apps, and hence falls over is not the DBA's arrogance getting in the way, it's the developer's lack of database development experience. Java is a wonderful language, and does wonderful things for portability -- but certain transactions do have to be executed all in one go, and without triggers and stored procedures, the system will not scale nearly as far, so a balance needs to be struck between portability and specificity to that database, if it's going to work --and scale.
This is a big challenge, and I wish you well. Good luck getting your DBAs with the program. Involving them in the requirements review, development cycle and conformance testing might be a big help here, as well as asking them to give you some advice on DB specific trigger and stored procedure implementation -- particularly if you want to avoid things "going on behind the scenes" foiling your beautiful portable code. Java is more readable, and IMHO, because Java developers have typically a much more intensive training in how to program, typically much better designed than some of the piles of triggers, queries, snippets and pl/sql I've seen out there. But some of the database functionality you can get virtually for free with those big expensive RDBMS engines are just...merely necessary, if you don't like them, wonderful if you need the thing to be scalable on the same hardware.