Well, just to prove that not all learning occurs in school:
My vote for best teacher has to go to Ken McVay, (now well known for the Nizkor Archives, which became his passion after I was his student.
When I first ran into him he was running the local FidoNet BBS system. I was about 12 at the time. Ken was locally famous for his lack of patience with anyone under 30. I was the sole exception to this rule in the time I knew him. I was running a local Commadore 64 standalone BBS system, and Ken felt that I should move up and become part of FidoNet, and helped, through his part pile and the part piles of people he knew, me put together a pile of parts that it was possible to assemble into a 4.77MHz IBM compat. I was in 7th heaven. Over the years, Ken was responsible for my first exposure to multiuser systems (QNX), unix (Xenix), and became my first employer at his local computer store.
So here's a toast to the Crumudgeon, the most influencial teacher in my life!
Tis a pity that after having spent all that energy pushing that much metal out of ye old Terran Gravity Well, that we cannot find a way to use it, rather then let it fall back down the well. I mean why not give it to the ISS for furture in-orbit construction, ie: for a Mars craft. We're only going to have to shove it back up again. Different set of atoms, same stuff.
s/tries/trees/ sheesh, I should be sleeping, but I have promies to keep and compiles and compiles to go before I sleep... with appologies to Robert Frost:) --
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Read the article, the airforce 'bought' (I forget the legalize term) a chunk of land 200' around the crash site on the farmer's field. They then told the farmer he could grow stuff, plant tries on it, but is not permitted to dig (forget the exact depth, but it's a couple of feet.)
I strongly suspect that if you went onto that chunk of field with a pick axe, Serious People would make an appearance in short order. I have to imagine someone has a camera/telescope/sat watching that chunk of land pretty carefully.
First: Ya, that could be the show stopper, though I'm not sure that if Russia builds it and offers the US cheap oil the politicals won't find some way to push it through. Esp given the reps won your last election.
Second: Looking at ye olde map the US has this chunk of land, Alaska... it's a decent sized chunk of land... BUT Russia has Siberia. I think they probably have some small idea of what they are getting into in building in Alaska, and probably more experience. Muskag is a bastard to run rails over, agreed (I did a 5 yr stint in the Yukon) but it's doable, just look at the Whitepass Railway, and that was done with much more primitive technology then we have to work with now.
Third: See second (oops, I rambled:))
Fourth: Oil, coal (remember much of the US's power is coal and oil produced, and the US certinally doesn't produce enough to meet its domestic needs, neither does Canada, nor much of North/Middle/South America. The other direction you can send American consumer items, etc that are always popular in Russia. Russia sells the oil at a cut rate price and gets hard US currency for their economy. Ya I can see how this would pay. And as a bonus environmentalists have less supertankers sailing the ocean which are harder to clean up after then derailments.
Fifth: *laughs* yes that should be fun:)... Having worked with the Yukon Territoral Govt, I'll be interested to watch the fireworks:).
here is a link to a fairly insightful Y2K post mortem. It addresses several of the arguments being made by media about why it was all unneeded.
I wonder why the media pundants didn't make a huge amount of money selling Y2K insurance if it was so obvious that there was no problem? That's what insurance companies do, they make money by performing risk assesments and setting a price that covers the risk. Noone was selling Y2K insurance (unless you could pretty much prove you'd fixed all your y2k probs:)).
Noone knew how the book was gonna end till it ended. Anyone who tells you otherwise was selling something:). Like I told my clients pre-98, 'If I told you that on Jan 1, 2000 there was a 1 in 100 chance of an earthquake, would you stake your company on the other 99 chances, or would you do some disaster prep?'
I know I solved a couple of handfuls of show stoppers for clients.
What do these things have in common? They're all things noone appreciates until something goes wrong.
No one surviving a shipwreck appreciates that all the life jackets were there and in good order. They noticed when they weren't there when the Titanic sunk.
You do a good job and everyone and their dog says, "Well I guess you don't need as much funding next time". You botch a job and everyone screams and hollars that you botched it.
Makes you understand why govt works the way it does. If you're efficient this year and get a bit lucky and nothing unforseen goes horridly wrong, next year they give you less money to do your job... then next year Murphy clocks in early and works overtime and you get called out because you're over budget. So what do you do? When you're a month shy of the end of year you look at the money you've got and find something to spend it on. I've seen the most STUPID things bought in the last month of a budget cycle, just so that the money is all gone so they can ask for the same number of buckets next year.
Tape backups, same thing. You keep backups running perfectly for years. Data gets restored off a well organized tape library, and hopefully you can continue to run a GFS rotation because noone cuts your tape replacement budget. However, the moment something goes wrong (because the beancounters cut your tape budget most likely), WELL! everyone from the top rung down to the janitor is looking for your head on a platter.
Emergancy Measures Org (Canada's cival disaster group, largely volenteer) goes the same way... money is often hard to find, but when something goes down the tubes (they were on standby for Y2K too I believe) they are Johny on the spot.
What worries me with the Y2K thing is the next technodisaster (and there will be one, I don't know what it will be yet, but in an infinate universe I'm sure it'll suprise me:)) to come along and we'll get hit with the crying wolf stuff. Well we didn't cry wolf. We stopped the traffic before it drove into the river under the broken bridge. It irritates me that not only Peter, but all the rest of us, the technically literate of society are being tarred with this brush. He just got an extra large helping of tar.
He's one of societies unsung heros. Too bad, society needs heros.
I know the last thing you probably wanna hear is yet another email expressing pity after that National Post article. So this isn't one:). Just wanted to let you know that a heck of a lot of us in the IT trenches were grateful to you for giving us the clues to hit our bosses over the head with. So tally me with the 'you got a bad break' group in your mental tally. And you might wanna follow this URL and hear what more of your peers have to say about you.
People who make a real difference in the world unfortunately are seldom recognized for their efforts. *smiles* at least you got off better then some other examples from history, no one has burned you like Joan of Arc, or had to recant your statements like Galileo. So at least you keep good company.
I did a beta test on the software portion of this product this summer, so I can verify that it's not all vapor anyways, and putting it on a card should be straighforward enough.
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Florida's new voting software
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 2
In an effort to keep government costs down, I volenteer to write FL's new voting software:
#/usr/bin/perl
print "Please enter 1 for Bush, 2 for Buchanian, or 3 for Gore:";
$vote=;
if ($vote=="1") {$bushvotes=$bushvotes+1;}
else
{$buchanianvotes=$buchanianvotes+1;}
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Re:The Change is here...
on
eLection '04
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· Score: 2
*grins* well I scrolled through the messages and found yours so I didn't have to post.
Apparently noone from/. was watching on CNN because they were showing off the javabooths before the election (and all the attendant ecitment (how CAN a polling org loose track of the fact that FL has two timezones anyways?!)). One thing about this sort of tech, is it's much more idiot (yes folks, even your elected officials can now cast a vote without selecting 4 choices for president) proof. Presumably it won't let you punch options 1, 2, and 3 for president.
I'm not a citizen of the US, I'm a canuck, but due to some travel plans during our upcoming election, which I home will be less exciting, I needed to vote in a special ballot. Folks, there's no way I could design an UI more complex then casting a special ballot in a Canadian election.
Go in, sign a long form that the elections Canada official fills out, (after consulting with her supervisor weather my elections canada card constitutes proof of address of residence), write the name of my chosen candidate on a pice of paper, which goes in an unidentified envelope, which goes inside another envelope which I sign and date.
Lordy. Just the shere thought of all the things that could go wrong with that boggles the mind. I hope that if my vote is the deciding one they can read my handwriting.:)
Minupla
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OSS brats, hippies & Microsoft, oh my!
on
Microsoft Cracked
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· Score: 2
I've always considered the majority of Slashdot readers to be brats, but this goes to show that whatever Microsoft may do to fight the open-source movement, they'll probably win. Why? Because for the most part, it's people like you who make up and support that movement, people lacking any amount of maturity and decency, and for movements to succeed, they must at least be honorable in the face of their enemy.
First let me say I agree the message was in very bad taste. I don't think M$ will win in the long run. Why? History repeats itself. Causes that are championed by the youth of today inevitably win tommorow when the youth of today becomes the decision makers of tommorow (scary, I know).
Historic examples: green movement, peace movement, and probably a lot of other movements I'm forgetting about.
M$ might win the day, but I seriously doubt they'll win the war.
Actually, logitech has a nice full sized, full featcured wireless (RF, not IR so no line of sight probs) keyboard that I use at home. Just like a "real" keybord, only no cord.
What bull. If this were true, then Nurses would get paid more than Doctors, Bank Tellers more than Loan Officers, the Military would be a well paid job and Firefighters would get more than almost anyone
*grins* well I won't answer for ills of other segments of society, as I personally have no control over them, and in fact, agree with you.
Now, I can easily understand where a worker is not worth more than he can bring in in revenue to the company, input from your Finance person is important, that's a reasonable way to set the upper limit on what you'll pay
This is in essence what I was driving at, but I should have typed it after sleep instead of before sleep:). The price we put on a position more relates to how important that position is to the company. This is sometimes hard to quantify though. If it's sales, that would be easier, but how do you determine how much money a NOC tech brings into a company? On one hand it's 0, seeing as how he is a net consumer of resources. On other hand it's infinate, since if we have NOC staff we have no stability, and no customers. Oops. But what it comes down to is I have a budget for staffing, and have to make my salaries fit inside that mark.
Also, my view of candidates is circumscribed. I get a stack of resumes, generally with a number written on it, that comes from my HR dept usually obtained through a pre-screen telephone call, representing the opening salary offer from the candidate. Looking at these I put together a subset for interviews and toss em back at HR. If they are immigrants (to Canada in my case, btw) I don't know.
Minupla
*shrugs* that's how it looks from my side of the argument anyways. ----
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One thing I think is a problem is that people see the prices being offered in Silicon Valley and apply accross the country. However living in Silicon Valley requires 100k just to have the same cost of living as most other parts of North America get for 50k. So you start comparing apples and oranges and as always when making fruit salad, you get yourself into trouble.
On the other hand, in my experience there is work out there on the sysadmin side (can't speak to softeng, since I'm not one) of the fence. Even at high profile firms.
And I'm one of those people that even if IT workers got paid the same as window washers at traffic lights, I'd be doing it. No choice, it's how I'm wired. I ran a fidonet node when I was 13. Such is life:)
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You see, this is the attitude that I don't understand. Why is it that hiring manager's think there is some arbitrary amount of money after which they'll pay no more?
Becasue there is. As an IT hiring manager (techie who's risen to his level of imcompedance:)) I'm here to tell you that every position I've hired for started off with HR, me and someone from Finance sitting down and deciding how much this position is worth to us. We set a number that we won't go over. There are very very few key positions in an organization that you _MUST_ have the very best person avail, regardless of cost. The other positions (NOC techie for example) are commodity positions. I mean really, how much knowlege does it take to watch for the flashing red icon on HP openview and follow a list of resolution procedures (reboot the machine, if that doesn't work, call this list of ppl in accending order?
Pay is consumerate with difficulty of position, as it should be.
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OK, so the UK govt says, "you don't have to disclose your genetic screening to insurance companies.
So, if you *don't* agree to a genetic marker screening, what do you think the insurance companies are most likely to assume?
a) you are a privacy advocate willing to pay higher premiums to make an intelectual point (much like some of us who encrypt data communications just so there will be more encrypted info for the NSA to sift through)
or b) you are aware of a genetic marker that would disqualify you for low rates?
Bonus points if you can figure out what's likely to happen to your insurance rates.:)
Volentarily is just another word here for guilty till proven innocent.
On the other hand the UK has good universal medical coverage last time I checked, so it's probably not such a big deal as it would be in the states. ----
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First off, the longest time to break something broken from the get-go award goes to CERT:)
But glad to see they fixed it, maybe it'll make CERT something more then amusing now. Eg: "You just got that fixed? I mean CERT will be releasing an advisory any day now!"
Second, for those who don't understand the role of exploits... I worked for a software house as a sysadmin/manager at one point. It took the IIS valnerability and the speed of a working exploit coming out on BUGTRAQ to prove to our head developer that he needed to check for buffer overflows in code, as he previously felt that creating an exploit would be impossibly hard.
Once again, thanks CERT! ----
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"Kids these days, have no resepct and it's because of (rock&roll, drugs, lack of parental supervision, video games, D&D, TV)."
How often have you heard it? You think it's new with your generation (and I don't care what generation you are, I'm sure Fred Flinstone muttered it at some point. First falicy: You may have had the perfect upbringing, your parents were strong but firm, etc.
But:
a) When my father disiplined us... well let's say that dad got hauled away by the cops one night when he met them at the door with a 12" kitchen knife that he had been chasing mom around the house with.
So we see that not all people are capible of handling the intense responsibility of administering corpal punishment. If they recognize this and choose not to they should be congradulated not shamed for it.
b) Not all children are the same. Myself I was hyper sensitive. A light talking to was all that was required to set me back on the straight and narrow. Mom realized this and got much better reactions then my father who just aleniated me.
Again, parents who realize the sort of children they have and how to deal with them are to be comended.
c) We all have a tendancy to see our own pasts with rose colored shades. I remember a particular 5 yr old who would stand out on a corner and tell everyone to F-off, and tried to run people down on his bike. This would be a generation ago now. Therfore this is not a problem confined to the current generation. To be clear, I grew up in an upper-middle-class area, doctors, lawyers, teachers that sort of job.
Just to try and bring a bit of perspective.
The world's not going to hell in a handbasket, we're just becoming our parents:)
I was not implying that 'fragmentation' is a bad thing. Exactly the inverse. I feel that having specific distributions for specific portions of the user community is the only way to keep things remotely sane.
The concept of different distributions targeted at different types of users is very commonplace in this industry, why would Linux be any different?
To look at M$, we currently have Win98, W2K, Win Millenium, NT4, and even NT 3.51 still in use in a lot of places for different sorts of users and applications. Mac is going the same way. BSD has more distros then you can shake Tiamat at. Solaris has workstation and server distributions too.
One distro is never going to be everything to everyone. So what? I've never understood distro wars myself. I think each distro offers something to a certin group of users.
*grins* I thought about adding the disclaimer, but figured it aside the point. I needed someone to attribute it to, and since it is commonly attributed to him, although was never in his writings (who knows, he could have *said* it to someone sometime), I gave the guy credit for it.:)
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* Pornography of any kind (need I provide examples ?)
Has banning it ever stopped it? Some pornography actualy I believe provides a societal release valve, child pornography is obviously wrong, but again have we stopped it by saying it's evil and should be banned?
* Revisionism (The holocaust is a bunch of lies) Sure, I also support Ken McVay's efforts to put together the largest collection of pro holocaust data in the world. The solution to problems involving freedom of speech is usually more freedom of speech, not less.
* Hate speech (Homosexuals should die) See revisionist, often the same thing anyways
* Pro drugs speech (Drugging yourself is good ) have you turned on your TV lately? That's what 99% of TV seems to say.
* Blackmailing (If you don't do what I want I will tell about that interesting thing that happened in your company the other day)
Freedom of speech ends where it impacts on someone else's freedom. I wouldn't advocate freedom to yell fire in a crowded room, same reasons.
* Sexual harassment (need I provide examples ?)
See above. Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins:)
A note to bring this into prospective:
ISOnews has done none of the above. ISOnews simply said, "This stuff exists" and I'm willing to bet has been used by the BSA and law enforcment to gather evidence.
Similarly the CIL explosives handbook documents how to make a bomb. I've never seen it pulled from a libary cuz a mad bomber might use it.
Slashdot Mirror
My vote for best teacher has to go to Ken McVay, (now well known for the Nizkor Archives, which became his passion after I was his student.
When I first ran into him he was running the local FidoNet BBS system. I was about 12 at the time. Ken was locally famous for his lack of patience with anyone under 30. I was the sole exception to this rule in the time I knew him. I was running a local Commadore 64 standalone BBS system, and Ken felt that I should move up and become part of FidoNet, and helped, through his part pile and the part piles of people he knew, me put together a pile of parts that it was possible to assemble into a 4.77MHz IBM compat. I was in 7th heaven. Over the years, Ken was responsible for my first exposure to multiuser systems (QNX), unix (Xenix), and became my first employer at his local computer store.
So here's a toast to the Crumudgeon, the most influencial teacher in my life!
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Tis a pity that after having spent all that energy pushing that much metal out of ye old Terran Gravity Well, that we cannot find a way to use it, rather then let it fall back down the well. I mean why not give it to the ISS for furture in-orbit construction, ie: for a Mars craft. We're only going to have to shove it back up again. Different set of atoms, same stuff.
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s/tries/trees/ sheesh, I should be sleeping, but I have promies to keep and compiles and compiles to go before I sleep... with appologies to Robert Frost :)
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No you can't :)
Read the article, the airforce 'bought' (I forget the legalize term) a chunk of land 200' around the crash site on the farmer's field. They then told the farmer he could grow stuff, plant tries on it, but is not permitted to dig (forget the exact depth, but it's a couple of feet.)
I strongly suspect that if you went onto that chunk of field with a pick axe, Serious People would make an appearance in short order. I have to imagine someone has a camera/telescope/sat watching that chunk of land pretty carefully.
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For a different view, how about taking a look through the Amnesty International 2000 report?
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First: Ya, that could be the show stopper, though I'm not sure that if Russia builds it and offers the US cheap oil the politicals won't find some way to push it through. Esp given the reps won your last election.
:))
:)... Having worked with the Yukon Territoral Govt, I'll be interested to watch the fireworks :).
Second: Looking at ye olde map the US has this chunk of land, Alaska... it's a decent sized chunk of land... BUT Russia has Siberia. I think they probably have some small idea of what they are getting into in building in Alaska, and probably more experience. Muskag is a bastard to run rails over, agreed (I did a 5 yr stint in the Yukon) but it's doable, just look at the Whitepass Railway, and that was done with much more primitive technology then we have to work with now.
Third: See second (oops, I rambled
Fourth: Oil, coal (remember much of the US's power is coal and oil produced, and the US certinally doesn't produce enough to meet its domestic needs, neither does Canada, nor much of North/Middle/South America. The other direction you can send American consumer items, etc that are always popular in Russia. Russia sells the oil at a cut rate price and gets hard US currency for their economy. Ya I can see how this would pay. And as a bonus environmentalists have less supertankers sailing the ocean which are harder to clean up after then derailments.
Fifth: *laughs* yes that should be fun
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Gee, now just need a laser turret and I'm ready for my next budget meeting ;)
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I wonder why the media pundants didn't make a huge amount of money selling Y2K insurance if it was so obvious that there was no problem? That's what insurance companies do, they make money by performing risk assesments and setting a price that covers the risk. Noone was selling Y2K insurance (unless you could pretty much prove you'd fixed all your y2k probs :)).
Noone knew how the book was gonna end till it ended. Anyone who tells you otherwise was selling something :). Like I told my clients pre-98, 'If I told you that on Jan 1, 2000 there was a 1 in 100 chance of an earthquake, would you stake your company on the other 99 chances, or would you do some disaster prep?'
I know I solved a couple of handfuls of show stoppers for clients.
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What do these things have in common? They're all things noone appreciates until something goes wrong.
:)) to come along and we'll get hit with the crying wolf stuff. Well we didn't cry wolf. We stopped the traffic before it drove into the river under the broken bridge. It irritates me that not only Peter, but all the rest of us, the technically literate of society are being tarred with this brush. He just got an extra large helping of tar.
No one surviving a shipwreck appreciates that all the life jackets were there and in good order. They noticed when they weren't there when the Titanic sunk.
You do a good job and everyone and their dog says, "Well I guess you don't need as much funding next time". You botch a job and everyone screams and hollars that you botched it.
Makes you understand why govt works the way it does. If you're efficient this year and get a bit lucky and nothing unforseen goes horridly wrong, next year they give you less money to do your job... then next year Murphy clocks in early and works overtime and you get called out because you're over budget. So what do you do? When you're a month shy of the end of year you look at the money you've got and find something to spend it on. I've seen the most STUPID things bought in the last month of a budget cycle, just so that the money is all gone so they can ask for the same number of buckets next year.
Tape backups, same thing. You keep backups running perfectly for years. Data gets restored off a well organized tape library, and hopefully you can continue to run a GFS rotation because noone cuts your tape replacement budget. However, the moment something goes wrong (because the beancounters cut your tape budget most likely), WELL! everyone from the top rung down to the janitor is looking for your head on a platter.
Emergancy Measures Org (Canada's cival disaster group, largely volenteer) goes the same way... money is often hard to find, but when something goes down the tubes (they were on standby for Y2K too I believe) they are Johny on the spot.
What worries me with the Y2K thing is the next technodisaster (and there will be one, I don't know what it will be yet, but in an infinate universe I'm sure it'll suprise me
He's one of societies unsung heros. Too bad, society needs heros.
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((CC'd to his email address))
:). Just wanted to let you know that a heck of a lot of us in the IT trenches were grateful to you for giving us the clues to hit our bosses over the head with. So tally me with the 'you got a bad break' group in your mental tally. And you might wanna follow this URL and hear what more of your peers have to say about you.
I know the last thing you probably wanna hear is yet another email expressing pity after that National Post article. So this isn't one
People who make a real difference in the world unfortunately are seldom recognized for their efforts. *smiles* at least you got off better then some other examples from history, no one has burned you like Joan of Arc, or had to recant your statements like Galileo. So at least you keep good company.
I salute you,
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I did a beta test on the software portion of this product this summer, so I can verify that it's not all vapor anyways, and putting it on a card should be straighforward enough.
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In an effort to keep government costs down, I volenteer to write FL's new voting software:
#/usr/bin/perl
print "Please enter 1 for Bush, 2 for Buchanian, or 3 for Gore:";
$vote=;
if ($vote=="1") {$bushvotes=$bushvotes+1;}
else
{$buchanianvotes=$buchanianvotes+1;}
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*grins* well I scrolled through the messages and found yours so I didn't have to post.
/. was watching on CNN because they were showing off the javabooths before the election (and all the attendant ecitment (how CAN a polling org loose track of the fact that FL has two timezones anyways?!)). One thing about this sort of tech, is it's much more idiot (yes folks, even your elected officials can now cast a vote without selecting 4 choices for president) proof. Presumably it won't let you punch options 1, 2, and 3 for president.
:)
Apparently noone from
I'm not a citizen of the US, I'm a canuck, but due to some travel plans during our upcoming election, which I home will be less exciting, I needed to vote in a special ballot. Folks, there's no way I could design an UI more complex then casting a special ballot in a Canadian election.
Go in, sign a long form that the elections Canada official fills out, (after consulting with her supervisor weather my elections canada card constitutes proof of address of residence), write the name of my chosen candidate on a pice of paper, which goes in an unidentified envelope, which goes inside another envelope which I sign and date.
Lordy. Just the shere thought of all the things that could go wrong with that boggles the mind. I hope that if my vote is the deciding one they can read my handwriting.
Minupla
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I've always considered the majority of Slashdot readers to be brats, but this goes to show that whatever Microsoft may do to fight the open-source movement, they'll probably win. Why? Because for the most part, it's people like you who make up and support that movement, people lacking any amount of maturity and decency, and for movements to succeed, they must at least be honorable in the face of their enemy.
First let me say I agree the message was in very bad taste. I don't think M$ will win in the long run. Why? History repeats itself. Causes that are championed by the youth of today inevitably win tommorow when the youth of today becomes the decision makers of tommorow (scary, I know).
Historic examples: green movement, peace movement, and probably a lot of other movements I'm forgetting about.
M$ might win the day, but I seriously doubt they'll win the war.
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Actually, logitech has a nice full sized, full featcured wireless (RF, not IR so no line of sight probs) keyboard that I use at home. Just like a "real" keybord, only no cord.
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What bull. If this were true, then Nurses would get paid more than Doctors, Bank Tellers more than Loan Officers, the Military would be a well paid job and Firefighters would get more than almost anyone
:). The price we put on a position more relates to how important that position is to the company. This is sometimes hard to quantify though. If it's sales, that would be easier, but how do you determine how much money a NOC tech brings into a company? On one hand it's 0, seeing as how he is a net consumer of resources. On other hand it's infinate, since if we have NOC staff we have no stability, and no customers. Oops. But what it comes down to is I have a budget for staffing, and have to make my salaries fit inside that mark.
*grins* well I won't answer for ills of other segments of society, as I personally have no control over them, and in fact, agree with you.
Now, I can easily understand where a worker is not worth more than he can bring in in revenue to the company, input from your Finance person is important, that's a reasonable way to set the upper limit on what you'll pay
This is in essence what I was driving at, but I should have typed it after sleep instead of before sleep
Also, my view of candidates is circumscribed. I get a stack of resumes, generally with a number written on it, that comes from my HR dept usually obtained through a pre-screen telephone call, representing the opening salary offer from the candidate. Looking at these I put together a subset for interviews and toss em back at HR. If they are immigrants (to Canada in my case, btw) I don't know.
Minupla
*shrugs* that's how it looks from my side of the argument anyways.
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One thing I think is a problem is that people see the prices being offered in Silicon Valley and apply accross the country. However living in Silicon Valley requires 100k just to have the same cost of living as most other parts of North America get for 50k. So you start comparing apples and oranges and as always when making fruit salad, you get yourself into trouble.
:)
On the other hand, in my experience there is work out there on the sysadmin side (can't speak to softeng, since I'm not one) of the fence. Even at high profile firms.
And I'm one of those people that even if IT workers got paid the same as window washers at traffic lights, I'd be doing it. No choice, it's how I'm wired. I ran a fidonet node when I was 13. Such is life
Minupla
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You see, this is the attitude that I don't understand. Why is it that hiring manager's think there is some arbitrary amount of money after which they'll pay no more?
:)) I'm here to tell you that every position I've hired for started off with HR, me and someone from Finance sitting down and deciding how much this position is worth to us. We set a number that we won't go over. There are very very few key positions in an organization that you _MUST_ have the very best person avail, regardless of cost. The other positions (NOC techie for example) are commodity positions. I mean really, how much knowlege does it take to watch for the flashing red icon on HP openview and follow a list of resolution procedures (reboot the machine, if that doesn't work, call this list of ppl in accending order?
Becasue there is. As an IT hiring manager (techie who's risen to his level of imcompedance
Pay is consumerate with difficulty of position, as it should be.
Minupla
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OK, so the UK govt says, "you don't have to disclose your genetic screening to insurance companies.
:)
So, if you *don't* agree to a genetic marker screening, what do you think the insurance companies are most likely to assume?
a) you are a privacy advocate willing to pay higher premiums to make an intelectual point (much like some of us who encrypt data communications just so there will be more encrypted info for the NSA to sift through)
or b) you are aware of a genetic marker that would disqualify you for low rates?
Bonus points if you can figure out what's likely to happen to your insurance rates.
Volentarily is just another word here for guilty till proven innocent.
On the other hand the UK has good universal medical coverage last time I checked, so it's probably not such a big deal as it would be in the states.
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First off, the longest time to break something broken from the get-go award goes to CERT :)
But glad to see they fixed it, maybe it'll make CERT something more then amusing now. Eg: "You just got that fixed? I mean CERT will be releasing an advisory any day now!"
Second, for those who don't understand the role of exploits... I worked for a software house as a sysadmin/manager at one point. It took the IIS valnerability and the speed of a working exploit coming out on BUGTRAQ to prove to our head developer that he needed to check for buffer overflows in code, as he previously felt that creating an exploit would be impossibly hard.
Once again, thanks CERT!
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Wee, here we go, another iteration of the same.
:)
"Kids these days, have no resepct and it's because of (rock&roll, drugs, lack of parental supervision, video games, D&D, TV)."
How often have you heard it? You think it's new with your generation (and I don't care what generation you are, I'm sure Fred Flinstone muttered it at some point. First falicy: You may have had the perfect upbringing, your parents were strong but firm, etc.
But:
a) When my father disiplined us... well let's say that dad got hauled away by the cops one night when he met them at the door with a 12" kitchen knife that he had been chasing mom around the house with.
So we see that not all people are capible of handling the intense responsibility of administering corpal punishment. If they recognize this and choose not to they should be congradulated not shamed for it.
b) Not all children are the same. Myself I was hyper sensitive. A light talking to was all that was required to set me back on the straight and narrow. Mom realized this and got much better reactions then my father who just aleniated me.
Again, parents who realize the sort of children they have and how to deal with them are to be comended.
c) We all have a tendancy to see our own pasts with rose colored shades. I remember a particular 5 yr old who would stand out on a corner and tell everyone to F-off, and tried to run people down on his bike. This would be a generation ago now. Therfore this is not a problem confined to the current generation. To be clear, I grew up in an upper-middle-class area, doctors, lawyers, teachers that sort of job.
Just to try and bring a bit of perspective.
The world's not going to hell in a handbasket, we're just becoming our parents
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I was not implying that 'fragmentation' is a bad thing. Exactly the inverse. I feel that having specific distributions for specific portions of the user community is the only way to keep things remotely sane.
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The concept of different distributions targeted at different types of users is very commonplace in this industry, why would Linux be any different?
To look at M$, we currently have Win98, W2K, Win Millenium, NT4, and even NT 3.51 still in use in a lot of places for different sorts of users and applications. Mac is going the same way. BSD has more distros then you can shake Tiamat at. Solaris has workstation and server distributions too.
One distro is never going to be everything to everyone. So what? I've never understood distro wars myself. I think each distro offers something to a certin group of users.
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*grins* I thought about adding the disclaimer, but figured it aside the point. I needed someone to attribute it to, and since it is commonly attributed to him, although was never in his writings (who knows, he could have *said* it to someone sometime), I gave the guy credit for it. :)
Minupla
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* Pornography of any kind (need I provide examples ?)
:)
Has banning it ever stopped it? Some pornography actualy I believe provides a societal release valve, child pornography is obviously wrong, but again have we stopped it by saying it's evil and should be banned?
* Revisionism (The holocaust is a bunch of lies)
Sure, I also support Ken McVay's efforts to put together the largest collection of pro holocaust data in the world. The solution to problems involving freedom of speech is usually more freedom of speech, not less.
* Hate speech (Homosexuals should die)
See revisionist, often the same thing anyways
* Pro drugs speech (Drugging yourself is good )
have you turned on your TV lately? That's what 99% of TV seems to say.
* Blackmailing (If you don't do what I want I will tell about that interesting thing that happened in your company the other day)
Freedom of speech ends where it impacts on someone else's freedom. I wouldn't advocate freedom to yell fire in a crowded room, same reasons.
* Sexual harassment (need I provide examples ?)
See above. Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins
A note to bring this into prospective:
ISOnews has done none of the above. ISOnews simply said, "This stuff exists" and I'm willing to bet has been used by the BSA and law enforcment to gather evidence.
Similarly the CIL explosives handbook documents how to make a bomb. I've never seen it pulled from a libary cuz a mad bomber might use it.
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