...seemed to have the same problem until I discovered that you can change the default resolution for the print out. I had it set to the highest quality because I usually print out photos. But, whenever I wanted to print out a document from OpenOffice or Mozilla that was just text, it was ungodly slow. I experimented a bit and found that if I set my default resolution to something more suitable for text, the printing was considerably faster. (ie. It worked normally) The only drawback is that I need to change my default printer settings every time I want to flip between text and photo print outs as the apps don't seem to have a way of doing that. Just for reference, I'm printing from a P II 266.
Here are some of the problems I see with this environment. Much like any other advanced technology, this may be a little too early to actually debut to the so-called "unwashed". The main reason being that there aren't any applications (other than their neat little CD player/db thingie and that's really a stretch since it could be pulled off in 2D) that will take advantage of a real 3D desktop. Until those applications are out there and do things that you CAN'T do on a 2D desktop, this is just going to be a neato-cool factor kind of thing. But the hubbub will die down quickly.
The other problem is that input devices aren't there yet. Using a mouse and kb for a 3D desktop is going to be a pain in the ass. How often do you do things in real life that you could do with a 2D controller? Think about how much of a pain in the ass it would be to pick up a glass of water if your only interface was a 2D mouse and a kb. The 3D desktop is going to need a new kind of interface.
Back in the 80s I was working on the design of a personal project that was meant to take advantage of 3D space for clay modeling. The basic idea was to have a table with an LCD embedded in it's surface for display. This was to be a 3D display that could display paralax images to the viewer at a range of about 1-3 feet. Under the table there would be three planes that form half of a gapped cube (vertices of each plane don't meet) and would contain grids of lasers in a 256x256 matrix. (these days lser LEDs are cheap) Directly opposite of each of those laser grid planes would be three more 256x256 receiver planes also spaced so that there is a pretty good gap between each plane. This would have been the 3D controller for the virtual clay modeling environment. Finally, within in the software, tools could be created virtually that would take away any need for any other controller. The only think missing in the system was tactile feedback.
Once input devices, displays and applications come to parity with this kind of environment, then and only then will you see a mass shift to 3D desktops. For now, it's still a fun toy that adds only a little extra functionality (and probably a lot more confusion) to the desktop. It's a good thing it's released under the GPL because anyone worth their salt will take the code and begin figuring out how to start designing these new input devices. As I've said in the past to my followers (hehehe), never forget the input devices when designing a new desktop environment otherwise you will have a non-starter.
Moore himself has expressed that the film is a satire and not all of it is true, but he has not told us which parts are and are not meant to be taken seriously.
As you seem so sure of yourself, why don't you provide us with a link from a non-right-wing source? How's that for a challenge?
Re:Sports writer says: ... most powerful movie ...
on
Fahrenheit 9/11 Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
We'd drive around looking for this so-called "propaganda" because we're sick and tired of the heavy dose of propaganda from your side that we've been subjected to for four years. Good God! It's 110 minutes man! Do you really think 110 minutes of anti-Bush info is that damning compared to the ultra-right-wing, propaganda as news, mega-machine? If you're so sure of your side's stance, then you really don't have anything to worry about when you consider how long Farenheit 9/11 is. Especially if your side is good, honest and truthful. But... if it isn't... well that's a different story.
...in many of the Slashdotian's JEs. Check my coments out at the link below. Slashdot JEs seem to be where this kind of discussion happens more and more these days. However, I will say; Thank you CmdrTaco for submitting this on the front page. While it might be a little "preaching to the choir", I'm sure there are people on the fence about the movie and Bush. Let's make sure that they know that their friends are on the Michael Moore side of the fence and not the O'Reilly, Coulter, Fox News side. The American public has been lied to long enough.
Tinfoil hat time: The policitians behind the DNC are friends of the telemarketers. Since the bottom feeders that do this sort of thing have moved onto spam, they offered this to their politico friends to make them look good. In return, you won't see ANY anti-spam legislation with teeth until some other way of "marketing" comes along. These assholes have been around forever. They used to go from town to town selling bogus tonics. Now they use technology to do EXACTLY the same thing. And many times they even offer the same cure. (Note to people who watch the SciFi channe, you know what I'm talkinga bout: Dr.Greg Cyanumon my ass.)
Hey Mr. Patriot! Great idea! In fact, I'm going to run down my street and torch all the flags on the moron-mobiles (ie. SUVs) in protest of the war. I call on others across America who agree with me to do the same. Thanks for the suggestion Mr. Patriot!:)
Not that I'm an Adam Sandler fan... but regarding Punch Drunk Love, what movies would you recommend that fall into the "quirky love story about two weirdos meeting and falling in love complete with psychedlic visuals, uncomfortable visuals, a sense of possible dark and violent doom and tense sound and music work" genre that DOES have good acting in it? Seriously?
Except that in Linux, you need to be root to do any real damage. Just like in Windows XP (if people used it properly), you have to be Administrator to do any real damage. Of course for both OSes, you also have to be Administrator or root to do things that users consider to be "normal" tasks. Installing software for every user, for example.
1. Keep Linux as it is in terms of security. This will guarantee that no worms or viruses can ever infect it no matter how stupid a user is. 2. Change Linux security so it's more Windows like. Then, yes, stupid users will do the same thing they've done in Windows and spread all sorts of nasties. And those nasties will probably more efficient and perform better than their Windows counterparts too.
The problem is you go with the first option is that the OS will be "hard to use" and have a reputation for not being "user friendly". One good example is the need to be the root user to do things that most users consider to be normal things: install software for all users in/usr or/opt, run services below port 1024, make configuration changes, etc... Then you also have to remember the root password as well as your own and your wife or kid's password, or you create a family login. Uggh. Someone like me can deal with this, but not everyone has someone like me to help them.
The second option would just put so many holes in that kind of Linux distro, that it would be used as an argument to avoid Linux. I can see the headlines now, "Are you using 'Easy to Use Linux'? You might not be as safe as you think! Read our report about the Tux worm".
The bottom line: Technology Stupid People + Computers = Disaster. What's even worse is that not a lot of people are even aware of how bad the problem actually is. All those trojaned and wormed boxes on the net are a major problem, but their users don't even realize they're involved. They probably complain about spam and worms and viruses, all the while their "awesome" boxes are r0x0ring the j0x0rz of 1000 machines a minute. To get even more depressing than that, we also have to realize and accept that it's not their fault. As much as they annoy the hell out of us, it's not their fault that they can't or don't want to understand their machines. They AREN'T like us. Just like a lot of people can't drive stick shift, a lot of people really can't use computers.
Do I have a solution? No. It's a big problem. Maybe some kind of "Administration Wizard" would help. Something where it asks for the root password on Linux or the Administrator's password on Windows and present the user with a very nice but comprehensive list of questions asking them how they intend to use ther machine. With plenty of explanations and metaphors to simplify the process. Who knows? I'm sure it's been tried already, or at least someone thinks they've tried.
Spoken with a lot of wisdom. I to am a multi-OS user with my preferences leaning 99.999% towards Linux for my everyday work. But, one thing that Microsoft has consistently done wrong for decades is backwards compatibility. Apple goes too far in the other direction making it impossible to run certain apps or versions of the OS after only a year or two of ownership. (I speak from experience with an Apple Powermac that couldn't go any higher than Mac OS 9 and was only three years old) Somewhere right in the middle would be perfect. And considering the MS has not, to date, made sweeping changes to the OS that screw backwards compatibility (other than killing off most of DOS in Win98SE), I think they got it right this time. I can't tell you how much that irks me. In my opinion MS has "gotten it right" twice now:
This is all very reminiscent of the early days of radio before the FRC (later to become the FCC). There were companies manufacturing radios with incompatible modulation schemes. These companies were in bed with broadcasters. Add to that the free-for-all that was unregulated radio spectrum and you had a mess of interference. Someone in town A wanted to have their program on 1260 kHz and someone in town B (only 20 miles away wanted 1260 kHz as well. With no one telling them what frequency to use or what modulation scheme, they completely stompped over each other. The end result: an audience that couldn't hear their broadcasts. The root cause: the desire to smother competition. The fix came along when the FRC was founded and they assigned portions of spectrum to broadcasters paying careful attention to the overlap of signals. The end result: the golden age of wireless. So here we are almost 100 years later, and businesses are being stupid, as always. Instead of beating their competition through REALLY being competitive in the e-mail business, they are playing all these silly games to try and damage each other. End result: unhappy users. I say that if you're a real geek worth your salt, fuck them and run your own goddamned mail server. That's what I did and I never looked back. Courier + ASSP + 1 TB data store (for mail AND file serving) = pure e-mail heaven.:) You won't see me using Notmail or Yoohoo ever.
...certs are likely to be a liability. When we interview a candidate, the things we look at are practical experience, apparent knowledge, attitude and the most important factor; passion. If the person has his own network at home, or maintains her own website with custom code, or got fed up with a commercial app and wrote their own replacement, then they are likely to get hired. Nine times out of ten, those folks don't have any certs.
Based on most of our interviews (not all), we've seen that the people with certs are probably the worst candidates. They are usually arrogant pricks who think they should run the department, or they are clueless dorks who can't find the on switch. One of our tests that we give a candidate is presenting them with a PC that has it's cover off. We ask the person to identify as many components as possible. Without fail, most (again, not all) of the people with certs do miserably on this part of the interview. They can't tell you what kinds of slots are on the motherboard, or what kind of ports are on the back of the system. They can't tell you what expansion cards (if any) are in the system, or even identify the CPU. Some of them even make the egregious mistake of calling the box itself a CPU. But the people without certs usually have a pretty good idea of what a PC is made of.
Where passion is concerned, we usually ask our candidates to tell us about their pet projects at home. It's rare, but occasionally we'll find someone who is just as into computers as we (managment) are. This one guy had fourteen servers at home, including one Sun SPARC box and a DEC Alpha box. When asked to name file systems for OSes, not only did he mention Unix file systems before Windows file systems, but he actually knew VMS' file system as well. Now THAT'S passion.
Attitude will get you far, if it's right for the job you're applying for. We look for people who know computers well, but are confident enough to keep quiet about it. Hotdogging will get you nowhere, except maybe a pink slip. Claiming that you know more than you do will make you look foolish. Keeping your nose to the grindstone will get you advancement. And IF you decide to go get a certification of some kind, we'll applaude that, but don't expect to be treated any differently. Arrogance is always an unpleasant trait and is the number one reason we DON'T hire, certification or not.
We had some idiot with a ton of Microsoft certifications come in. To begin with, he completely failed the PC test. He couldn't tell if the system had ISA or PCI slots. He only knew NTFS and FAT as file systems. He still had the attitude that he could "whip this place into shape" even after flunking the PC test! He only had certs and no practical experience. This is your typical candidate with certs, especially MS certs. Needless to say, he didn't get the job. I imagine he probably conned someone else into hiring him. More than likely for some "suit" position that pretends to be a technical position.
Which leads me to one of my last points: Where I work, EVERYONE (managment included) has to be able to operate our systems. This goes all the way from our department head to the lowest grunt on the totem pole. This includes, not just Windows servers, but OpenVMS servers, Cisco network devices, Sun servers, Tru64 servers, HP-UX servers and Linux servers. No one is exempt from crawling under a desk to troubleshoot a PC problem. We maintain a network of thousands of people, millions of users and millions of items to track in inventory with only three main admins and six technicians and we do it pretty well.
I'm not saying that certs are bad, per se. But if you are going out to interview, put them on the resume, but downplay their significance and emphasize the knowledge you acquired outside of your cert studies. If you didn't learn anything outside of cert classes or books and you don't play with this stuff in your spare time, consider looking in a different field. If your primary goal is to make lots
Hmmm... IMHO, DVDs are a pain in the ass, just like CDs before them. If I have to manually intervene in the real world to access my data, it's just a waste of time.
What I currently have is made up of what was available to me at the time:/mnt/mainstore: 100G + 200G in an LVM configuration (no striping)/mnt/mainstore_backup: 100G + 200G in an LVM configuration (no striping)
I chose to avoid RAID 1 because I didn't want to risk data loss from accidental deletion (which has happened to me a few times).
I use/mnt/mainstore_backup as a tape device in that I format it once every night using mkreiserfs and then use a command to copy all data from the/mnt/mainstore to it. Something like:
tar -c/mnt/mainstore/* | (cd/mnt/mainstore_backup ; tar -xvf -)
So far it's worked for me. Sure there is the slight possibility that something might fail on/mnt/mainstore and my nightly backup will run and erase/mnt/mainstore_backup, but I haven't worked on that part yet... Probably just need to add a filesystem check to the backup routine for/mnt/mainstore and make sure it exits with no errors before doing the copy with tar. Hmmm...
Doesn't ANYONE remember that Microsoft used to package an Antivirus program with the OS back in the Win 3.1 days? It lived in C:\Windows\System and was called something like VSCAN.EXE or something like that. I think it was made by Norton and was kind of a stripped down util. The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Where I work, we've been using a Barracuda Networks Spam Firewall. Just out of the box it worked pretty well, but I've been very busy with other projects and never bothered to train it. So... within the past two or three months, more spam has been slipping through. Last week, I finally got a small break from the other projects and decided to spend the week training the system. The first thing I learned was that you want to have at least twice the number of messages marked "not spam" as you do the messages marked "spam". Right about now, I have 3000 marked as "not spam" and about 1400 marked as "spam". The change in the amount of messages being blocked increased dramatically after just a few days of training the system. The system provides a graph displaying the number of messages allowed, blocked, tagged (as possible bulkmail), infected, containing an invalid recipient, or just a high rate of messages from one host. Just looking at the blocked portion of the graph, it appears that training the unit has given me almost a multiple of ten times the number of messages blocked. Add to that, the fact that it appears to be very accurate, and I am one happy camper.
With all of that said, I will also say that from what I've seen of the Barracuda, it's probably about 80% customized Linux and other OSS projects and 20% proprietary code. So, I think you can probably achieve this level of accuracy in your own custom built system using Linux and OSS. The main reason we went with the Barracuda is that I've just been too busy to research building our own custom solution. But... if you have the time, inclination and knowledge, it shouldn't be too hard.
The greatest benefit of bayesian filtering combined with whitelists, RBLs and antivirus (as in the Barracuda) at the network level is that you don't have to worry much about your user's PCs. That, and forcing them to use a web based client make for a pretty decent mail environment.
"some experts warn that China risks isolating itself if it creates standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world."
Hmmm... sounds like these "experts" are a bit suspect. If the Chinese develop their own standards, but make them freely available to everyone, then this just simply indicates that China is new competition. After all, wouldn't this be all about "free market"?;P The idea of a global set of standards for technology is nice, but has been so far unattainable outside of the computer industry. With video we have NTSC, SECAM and PAL. Why should the computer industry be any different? I think the warnings given by these "experts" is nothing more than either chicken little thinking, or American neocons who are afraid of real competition.
1. The Blade Runner (Yes, some people think it's slow) 2. Wings of Desire 3. Far Away, So Close 4. The Cremaster Cycle (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) 5. Koyaanisqatsi 6. Baraka 7. Until the End of the World 8. Any of the Michael Apted "Up" series 9. Wax (or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees) 10.The Andromeda Strain 11.Tales from Gimli Hospital 12. The Dead Father 13. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs 14. Mystery Train 15. Stranger than Paradise (Features my "home town") 16. Down By Law
That's about all I can rattle off the top of my head right now.
Actually, Solaris is one of my favorites. I watched it back in high school (80s) and thought it was a masterpiece. I haven't bothered to see the new one as I fear it may be just an overview rather than recreating the original environment. The original Solaris was creepy and romantic in the most intense way.
It's one of those 70s dytopian scifi films with that really weird clinical view of the terrible future. However, I have a little story about actually watching it. I admit it. I'm one of those people that likes long and slow movies that require lots of concentration. I only know a few people like me. When I decided to rent this one, I was with my girlfriend and a couple of her friends (male and female). There were about eight of us and we popped the tape in on a Friday night at about 7:30PM. As I was watching it, I was engrossed in the film. I hadn't noticed until I heard some snoring that my girlfriend had fallen asleep! Going beyond that I looked around the room and realized I was the ONLY person awake. I have to say, that's when I realized that I have a very different perspective on moveis from most people. Since then, I'm less likely to ask people to watch something I'm interested in because it's likely going to bore them. So... it makes me feel good to know I'm not completely alone in my love for THX1138.
There is some truth to this approach. I experienced some very significant problems that were partially related to food and partially related to antibiotics. I've been able to overcome those problems by changing my diet. The diet change turned out to be the solution to a chronic problem that required antibiotics to solve. Since I haven't needed the antibiotics for clse to a year now, the more severe mental issues they were causing have gone away. I can't promise that a diet change will cure a mental problem, but it could if that problem is induced by other health problems or their medications. As I learn more, I trust medicine less and less. I'm not saying that medicine is evil, but I think we are too quick to jump on them as a cure. Diet is certainly a major factor in our well-being. Just in case it may help, I will say that I experienced severe depression and an odd out of control psychotic episode that was induced by the antibiotic Levaquin (a quinolone family drug). It was quite scary. Now I am reading that a related drug that the military has been using, Lariam, is being connected by some people to murder/suicides occuring in military personel. The only reason I was on Levaquin was to cure some really severe sinus infections. And, at this point, it looks like those sever sinus infections were caused by my diet. So don't rule diet out, but don't count on it being the only cause. Sometimes we also just drwa the short straw genetically. The main key to a good diet is to avoid as much processed food as possible. Up your vegetable intake. Cut out white processed sugar, honey, nutrasweet or basically any simple carbs. Increase fiber. Avoid white flour and products made with it. Hope this helps someone. It certainly worked for me in a BIG way.
Slashdot Mirror
...seemed to have the same problem until I discovered that you can change the default resolution for the print out. I had it set to the highest quality because I usually print out photos. But, whenever I wanted to print out a document from OpenOffice or Mozilla that was just text, it was ungodly slow. I experimented a bit and found that if I set my default resolution to something more suitable for text, the printing was considerably faster. (ie. It worked normally) The only drawback is that I need to change my default printer settings every time I want to flip between text and photo print outs as the apps don't seem to have a way of doing that. Just for reference, I'm printing from a P II 266.
Here are some of the problems I see with this environment. Much like any other advanced technology, this may be a little too early to actually debut to the so-called "unwashed". The main reason being that there aren't any applications (other than their neat little CD player/db thingie and that's really a stretch since it could be pulled off in 2D) that will take advantage of a real 3D desktop. Until those applications are out there and do things that you CAN'T do on a 2D desktop, this is just going to be a neato-cool factor kind of thing. But the hubbub will die down quickly.
The other problem is that input devices aren't there yet. Using a mouse and kb for a 3D desktop is going to be a pain in the ass. How often do you do things in real life that you could do with a 2D controller? Think about how much of a pain in the ass it would be to pick up a glass of water if your only interface was a 2D mouse and a kb. The 3D desktop is going to need a new kind of interface.
Back in the 80s I was working on the design of a personal project that was meant to take advantage of 3D space for clay modeling. The basic idea was to have a table with an LCD embedded in it's surface for display. This was to be a 3D display that could display paralax images to the viewer at a range of about 1-3 feet. Under the table there would be three planes that form half of a gapped cube (vertices of each plane don't meet) and would contain grids of lasers in a 256x256 matrix. (these days lser LEDs are cheap) Directly opposite of each of those laser grid planes would be three more 256x256 receiver planes also spaced so that there is a pretty good gap between each plane. This would have been the 3D controller for the virtual clay modeling environment. Finally, within in the software, tools could be created virtually that would take away any need for any other controller. The only think missing in the system was tactile feedback.
Once input devices, displays and applications come to parity with this kind of environment, then and only then will you see a mass shift to 3D desktops. For now, it's still a fun toy that adds only a little extra functionality (and probably a lot more confusion) to the desktop. It's a good thing it's released under the GPL because anyone worth their salt will take the code and begin figuring out how to start designing these new input devices. As I've said in the past to my followers (hehehe), never forget the input devices when designing a new desktop environment otherwise you will have a non-starter.
Moore himself has expressed that the film is a satire and not all of it is true, but he has not told us which parts are and are not meant to be taken seriously.
As you seem so sure of yourself, why don't you provide us with a link from a non-right-wing source? How's that for a challenge?
We'd drive around looking for this so-called "propaganda" because we're sick and tired of the heavy dose of propaganda from your side that we've been subjected to for four years. Good God! It's 110 minutes man! Do you really think 110 minutes of anti-Bush info is that damning compared to the ultra-right-wing, propaganda as news, mega-machine? If you're so sure of your side's stance, then you really don't have anything to worry about when you consider how long Farenheit 9/11 is. Especially if your side is good, honest and truthful. But... if it isn't... well that's a different story.
Should add you to the list as well. BTW. Where do you buy your crack. It's apparently extremely potent. ;P
...in many of the Slashdotian's JEs. Check my coments out at the link below. Slashdot JEs seem to be where this kind of discussion happens more and more these days. However, I will say; Thank you CmdrTaco for submitting this on the front page. While it might be a little "preaching to the choir", I'm sure there are people on the fence about the movie and Bush. Let's make sure that they know that their friends are on the Michael Moore side of the fence and not the O'Reilly, Coulter, Fox News side. The American public has been lied to long enough.
Tinfoil hat time: The policitians behind the DNC are friends of the telemarketers. Since the bottom feeders that do this sort of thing have moved onto spam, they offered this to their politico friends to make them look good. In return, you won't see ANY anti-spam legislation with teeth until some other way of "marketing" comes along. These assholes have been around forever. They used to go from town to town selling bogus tonics. Now they use technology to do EXACTLY the same thing. And many times they even offer the same cure. (Note to people who watch the SciFi channe, you know what I'm talkinga bout: Dr.Greg Cyanumon my ass.)
Hey Mr. Patriot! Great idea! In fact, I'm going to run down my street and torch all the flags on the moron-mobiles (ie. SUVs) in protest of the war. I call on others across America who agree with me to do the same. Thanks for the suggestion Mr. Patriot! :)
Not that I'm an Adam Sandler fan... but regarding Punch Drunk Love, what movies would you recommend that fall into the "quirky love story about two weirdos meeting and falling in love complete with psychedlic visuals, uncomfortable visuals, a sense of possible dark and violent doom and tense sound and music work" genre that DOES have good acting in it? Seriously?
[checking calendar] ...it's not April 1.
[pause]
!!!!
Oh my god!!! What will the booth babes do now?!!
Anyone who doesn't know the difference between MB/s and Mb/s shouldn't be reading Slashdot. I kid. I kid!!
Except that in Linux, you need to be root to do any real damage. Just like in Windows XP (if people used it properly), you have to be Administrator to do any real damage. Of course for both OSes, you also have to be Administrator or root to do things that users consider to be "normal" tasks. Installing software for every user, for example.
You have two choices here:
/usr or /opt, run services below port 1024, make configuration changes, etc... Then you also have to remember the root password as well as your own and your wife or kid's password, or you create a family login. Uggh. Someone like me can deal with this, but not everyone has someone like me to help them.
1. Keep Linux as it is in terms of security. This will guarantee that no worms or viruses can ever infect it no matter how stupid a user is.
2. Change Linux security so it's more Windows like. Then, yes, stupid users will do the same thing they've done in Windows and spread all sorts of nasties. And those nasties will probably more efficient and perform better than their Windows counterparts too.
The problem is you go with the first option is that the OS will be "hard to use" and have a reputation for not being "user friendly". One good example is the need to be the root user to do things that most users consider to be normal things: install software for all users in
The second option would just put so many holes in that kind of Linux distro, that it would be used as an argument to avoid Linux. I can see the headlines now, "Are you using 'Easy to Use Linux'? You might not be as safe as you think! Read our report about the Tux worm".
The bottom line: Technology Stupid People + Computers = Disaster. What's even worse is that not a lot of people are even aware of how bad the problem actually is. All those trojaned and wormed boxes on the net are a major problem, but their users don't even realize they're involved. They probably complain about spam and worms and viruses, all the while their "awesome" boxes are r0x0ring the j0x0rz of 1000 machines a minute. To get even more depressing than that, we also have to realize and accept that it's not their fault. As much as they annoy the hell out of us, it's not their fault that they can't or don't want to understand their machines. They AREN'T like us. Just like a lot of people can't drive stick shift, a lot of people really can't use computers.
Do I have a solution? No. It's a big problem. Maybe some kind of "Administration Wizard" would help. Something where it asks for the root password on Linux or the Administrator's password on Windows and present the user with a very nice but comprehensive list of questions asking them how they intend to use ther machine. With plenty of explanations and metaphors to simplify the process. Who knows? I'm sure it's been tried already, or at least someone thinks they've tried.
Spoken with a lot of wisdom. I to am a multi-OS user with my preferences leaning 99.999% towards Linux for my everyday work. But, one thing that Microsoft has consistently done wrong for decades is backwards compatibility. Apple goes too far in the other direction making it impossible to run certain apps or versions of the OS after only a year or two of ownership. (I speak from experience with an Apple Powermac that couldn't go any higher than Mac OS 9 and was only three years old) Somewhere right in the middle would be perfect. And considering the MS has not, to date, made sweeping changes to the OS that screw backwards compatibility (other than killing off most of DOS in Win98SE), I think they got it right this time. I can't tell you how much that irks me. In my opinion MS has "gotten it right" twice now:
1. Windows XP
2. Windows XP SP2
Scary to even hear myself say it.
This is all very reminiscent of the early days of radio before the FRC (later to become the FCC). There were companies manufacturing radios with incompatible modulation schemes. These companies were in bed with broadcasters. Add to that the free-for-all that was unregulated radio spectrum and you had a mess of interference. Someone in town A wanted to have their program on 1260 kHz and someone in town B (only 20 miles away wanted 1260 kHz as well. With no one telling them what frequency to use or what modulation scheme, they completely stompped over each other. The end result: an audience that couldn't hear their broadcasts. The root cause: the desire to smother competition. The fix came along when the FRC was founded and they assigned portions of spectrum to broadcasters paying careful attention to the overlap of signals. The end result: the golden age of wireless. So here we are almost 100 years later, and businesses are being stupid, as always. Instead of beating their competition through REALLY being competitive in the e-mail business, they are playing all these silly games to try and damage each other. End result: unhappy users. I say that if you're a real geek worth your salt, fuck them and run your own goddamned mail server. That's what I did and I never looked back. Courier + ASSP + 1 TB data store (for mail AND file serving) = pure e-mail heaven. :) You won't see me using Notmail or Yoohoo ever.
...certs are likely to be a liability. When we interview a candidate, the things we look at are practical experience, apparent knowledge, attitude and the most important factor; passion. If the person has his own network at home, or maintains her own website with custom code, or got fed up with a commercial app and wrote their own replacement, then they are likely to get hired. Nine times out of ten, those folks don't have any certs.
Based on most of our interviews (not all), we've seen that the people with certs are probably the worst candidates. They are usually arrogant pricks who think they should run the department, or they are clueless dorks who can't find the on switch. One of our tests that we give a candidate is presenting them with a PC that has it's cover off. We ask the person to identify as many components as possible. Without fail, most (again, not all) of the people with certs do miserably on this part of the interview. They can't tell you what kinds of slots are on the motherboard, or what kind of ports are on the back of the system. They can't tell you what expansion cards (if any) are in the system, or even identify the CPU. Some of them even make the egregious mistake of calling the box itself a CPU. But the people without certs usually have a pretty good idea of what a PC is made of.
Where passion is concerned, we usually ask our candidates to tell us about their pet projects at home. It's rare, but occasionally we'll find someone who is just as into computers as we (managment) are. This one guy had fourteen servers at home, including one Sun SPARC box and a DEC Alpha box. When asked to name file systems for OSes, not only did he mention Unix file systems before Windows file systems, but he actually knew VMS' file system as well. Now THAT'S passion.
Attitude will get you far, if it's right for the job you're applying for. We look for people who know computers well, but are confident enough to keep quiet about it. Hotdogging will get you nowhere, except maybe a pink slip. Claiming that you know more than you do will make you look foolish. Keeping your nose to the grindstone will get you advancement. And IF you decide to go get a certification of some kind, we'll applaude that, but don't expect to be treated any differently. Arrogance is always an unpleasant trait and is the number one reason we DON'T hire, certification or not.
We had some idiot with a ton of Microsoft certifications come in. To begin with, he completely failed the PC test. He couldn't tell if the system had ISA or PCI slots. He only knew NTFS and FAT as file systems. He still had the attitude that he could "whip this place into shape" even after flunking the PC test! He only had certs and no practical experience. This is your typical candidate with certs, especially MS certs. Needless to say, he didn't get the job. I imagine he probably conned someone else into hiring him. More than likely for some "suit" position that pretends to be a technical position.
Which leads me to one of my last points: Where I work, EVERYONE (managment included) has to be able to operate our systems. This goes all the way from our department head to the lowest grunt on the totem pole. This includes, not just Windows servers, but OpenVMS servers, Cisco network devices, Sun servers, Tru64 servers, HP-UX servers and Linux servers. No one is exempt from crawling under a desk to troubleshoot a PC problem. We maintain a network of thousands of people, millions of users and millions of items to track in inventory with only three main admins and six technicians and we do it pretty well.
I'm not saying that certs are bad, per se. But if you are going out to interview, put them on the resume, but downplay their significance and emphasize the knowledge you acquired outside of your cert studies. If you didn't learn anything outside of cert classes or books and you don't play with this stuff in your spare time, consider looking in a different field. If your primary goal is to make lots
Hmmm... IMHO, DVDs are a pain in the ass, just like CDs before them. If I have to manually intervene in the real world to access my data, it's just a waste of time.
/mnt/mainstore: /mnt/mainstore_backup:
/mnt/mainstore_backup as a tape device in that I format it once every night using mkreiserfs and then use a command to copy all data from the /mnt/mainstore to it. Something like:
/mnt/mainstore/* | (cd /mnt/mainstore_backup ; tar -xvf -)
/mnt/mainstore and my nightly backup will run and erase /mnt/mainstore_backup, but I haven't worked on that part yet... Probably just need to add a filesystem check to the backup routine for /mnt/mainstore and make sure it exits with no errors before doing the copy with tar. Hmmm...
What I currently have is made up of what was available to me at the time:
100G + 200G in an LVM configuration (no striping)
100G + 200G in an LVM configuration (no striping)
I chose to avoid RAID 1 because I didn't want to risk data loss from accidental deletion (which has happened to me a few times).
I use
tar -c
So far it's worked for me. Sure there is the slight possibility that something might fail on
Doesn't ANYONE remember that Microsoft used to package an Antivirus program with the OS back in the Win 3.1 days? It lived in C:\Windows\System and was called something like VSCAN.EXE or something like that. I think it was made by Norton and was kind of a stripped down util. The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Where I work, we've been using a Barracuda Networks Spam Firewall. Just out of the box it worked pretty well, but I've been very busy with other projects and never bothered to train it. So... within the past two or three months, more spam has been slipping through. Last week, I finally got a small break from the other projects and decided to spend the week training the system. The first thing I learned was that you want to have at least twice the number of messages marked "not spam" as you do the messages marked "spam". Right about now, I have 3000 marked as "not spam" and about 1400 marked as "spam". The change in the amount of messages being blocked increased dramatically after just a few days of training the system. The system provides a graph displaying the number of messages allowed, blocked, tagged (as possible bulkmail), infected, containing an invalid recipient, or just a high rate of messages from one host. Just looking at the blocked portion of the graph, it appears that training the unit has given me almost a multiple of ten times the number of messages blocked. Add to that, the fact that it appears to be very accurate, and I am one happy camper.
With all of that said, I will also say that from what I've seen of the Barracuda, it's probably about 80% customized Linux and other OSS projects and 20% proprietary code. So, I think you can probably achieve this level of accuracy in your own custom built system using Linux and OSS. The main reason we went with the Barracuda is that I've just been too busy to research building our own custom solution. But... if you have the time, inclination and knowledge, it shouldn't be too hard.
The greatest benefit of bayesian filtering combined with whitelists, RBLs and antivirus (as in the Barracuda) at the network level is that you don't have to worry much about your user's PCs. That, and forcing them to use a web based client make for a pretty decent mail environment.
Hmmm... sounds like these "experts" are a bit suspect. If the Chinese develop their own standards, but make them freely available to everyone, then this just simply indicates that China is new competition. After all, wouldn't this be all about "free market"? ;P The idea of a global set of standards for technology is nice, but has been so far unattainable outside of the computer industry. With video we have NTSC, SECAM and PAL. Why should the computer industry be any different? I think the warnings given by these "experts" is nothing more than either chicken little thinking, or American neocons who are afraid of real competition.
In no particular order:
1. The Blade Runner (Yes, some people think it's slow)
2. Wings of Desire
3. Far Away, So Close
4. The Cremaster Cycle (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)
5. Koyaanisqatsi
6. Baraka
7. Until the End of the World
8. Any of the Michael Apted "Up" series
9. Wax (or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees)
10.The Andromeda Strain
11.Tales from Gimli Hospital
12. The Dead Father
13. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs
14. Mystery Train
15. Stranger than Paradise (Features my "home town")
16. Down By Law
That's about all I can rattle off the top of my head right now.
Ahhh... lovely. My troll is back. Someone please mod him up as this is actually quite a funny quip.
Actually, Solaris is one of my favorites. I watched it back in high school (80s) and thought it was a masterpiece. I haven't bothered to see the new one as I fear it may be just an overview rather than recreating the original environment. The original Solaris was creepy and romantic in the most intense way.
It's one of those 70s dytopian scifi films with that really weird clinical view of the terrible future. However, I have a little story about actually watching it. I admit it. I'm one of those people that likes long and slow movies that require lots of concentration. I only know a few people like me. When I decided to rent this one, I was with my girlfriend and a couple of her friends (male and female). There were about eight of us and we popped the tape in on a Friday night at about 7:30PM. As I was watching it, I was engrossed in the film. I hadn't noticed until I heard some snoring that my girlfriend had fallen asleep! Going beyond that I looked around the room and realized I was the ONLY person awake. I have to say, that's when I realized that I have a very different perspective on moveis from most people. Since then, I'm less likely to ask people to watch something I'm interested in because it's likely going to bore them. So... it makes me feel good to know I'm not completely alone in my love for THX1138.
There is some truth to this approach. I experienced some very significant problems that were partially related to food and partially related to antibiotics. I've been able to overcome those problems by changing my diet. The diet change turned out to be the solution to a chronic problem that required antibiotics to solve. Since I haven't needed the antibiotics for clse to a year now, the more severe mental issues they were causing have gone away. I can't promise that a diet change will cure a mental problem, but it could if that problem is induced by other health problems or their medications. As I learn more, I trust medicine less and less. I'm not saying that medicine is evil, but I think we are too quick to jump on them as a cure. Diet is certainly a major factor in our well-being. Just in case it may help, I will say that I experienced severe depression and an odd out of control psychotic episode that was induced by the antibiotic Levaquin (a quinolone family drug). It was quite scary. Now I am reading that a related drug that the military has been using, Lariam, is being connected by some people to murder/suicides occuring in military personel. The only reason I was on Levaquin was to cure some really severe sinus infections. And, at this point, it looks like those sever sinus infections were caused by my diet. So don't rule diet out, but don't count on it being the only cause. Sometimes we also just drwa the short straw genetically. The main key to a good diet is to avoid as much processed food as possible. Up your vegetable intake. Cut out white processed sugar, honey, nutrasweet or basically any simple carbs. Increase fiber. Avoid white flour and products made with it. Hope this helps someone. It certainly worked for me in a BIG way.