I first got "net access" in 1989 when I got a university account as a undergrad CS student. I don't think I even really knew about the Internet until 1990 or so. Of course back then, not many people had PC's (at least not many students), so the only real access to computers was in the campus computer labs on terminals connected to a VAX. Email was used for class assignments, though, but I didn't know I could email somebody across the world. I "discovered" the Internet quite by accident, playing around with the rn program and started reading USENET. But the Internet back then was still pretty cool, I thought. I was possible to actually connect to computers all over the world. Archie was kind of like a search engine, and ftp was used to grab stuff pretty much. Newsgroups were actually relevant with a much higher S/N ratio. I think I first heard about "hypertext" in 1991 or so, and WWW around 1992. I took a computer networks class around then, and http was just another protocol mentioned, like ftp, wais, or gopher, nothing really special about it at the time. I have a copy of UNIX System Administration Handbook, second edition published in 1995, and the world wide web is barely a footnote towards the end of the chapter on the Internet. No mention of spam either on the chapter on electronic email. Yeah, just another geek approaching middle age now, I guess.
OK, but if they can't even use proper grammar, or spell it properly (yeah I know "v1agra" or whatever are usually intentional mispellings to try to bypass simple spam filters), why would someone possibly trust them to sell something that is most likely fake, and probably illegal as well? A second grader writes better than most spam emails I get. Maybe that's the point. The written "quality" of the spam is probably indicative of the intelligence level of the average person responding to it. Want to sell to idiots? Write like one.
Fortran, though archaic, isn't really like assembly at all, even the older versions, f77 and earlier. There aren't even pointers in Fortran. It is really more like the old batch/card reader systems, 80 columns, statements begin after column 7, no lower case letters, etc.
Since I started out as an engineer in college, I learned Fortran 77 as my first language, and it really wasn't that bad. It's still good for scientific computing, especially vectorizing code.
Of high level languages, I would have to say C is the closest to assembly language. It is also the language I prefer most, it's small, concise, and allows you to do what you want, which can also mean shooting yourself in the foot, of course.
When I did my BS in CS, we did have a course in computing systems, or something like that, of which assembly was also a part (Motorola 68000). The prerequisite was an EE course in digital circuits. Most respected CS curricula do require courses in the lower levels, and I do think it is useful to gain a fuller understanding. But in most real world applications, with cheap hardware and CPU cycles, a high level language works just fine for most things.
Personally, I find watches in general to be outdated. I quit wearing a watch 10 years ago, and I really don't see the point of one. Everywhere I look there is a clock, in my car, on my cell phone, my computer desktop, my microwave, etc. I recently tried wearing a watch again (analog), and didn't care for it. Having something strapped to my wrist just didn't feel right or comfortable. If I need to know what time it is, it is rare that a clock isn't within view somewhere.
It isn't that surprising, really. They only say they reserve the right to terminate the contract, not that they will actually do so. It's more like saying, "Now, Bob, you know you're not supposed to send spam, right?" *wink wink*. So really what it means to me is don't get caught. From their AUP:
...that Optin determines in its sole discretion is harmful to its servers, systems, network, reputation, good will, other Optin customers, or any third party.
Basically, it doesn't outright prohibit any of these things, but they can void the contract if you make them look bad. This is just standard CYA legalese.
Oftentimes, (but not always, of course) just having disclaimers is a clue of what the real intentions are. It's like the wording on a porno tape that says it has "redeeming social value". I am not against porn, but most porn isn't exactly Shakespeare.
that you'll die sooner or later, and then you won't get any more spam.
I don't know about that. I get a lot of spam that tells me I can be younger and reverse the aging process. Man, imagine that. Now I'll never stop getting spammed!
In some ways, we (meaning Americans) may actually have some responsibility in this. Creating the Internet, and more importantly, making it cheap and easy to get connected, makes anything that can be done at a distance, such as writing software, economically viable. In some sense, we may have done things too well and put ourselves out of a job.
I do programming for a living, and quite honestly, most anyone with the proper training can do most common programming tasks. There certainly are those gifted, top 10 percent programmers (which I am not one, I freely admit), but most programming is not the glamour projects, and is often tedious and boring. It seems that a lot of the jobs that are being outsourced are of this type. Programming has become a commodity in a lot of respects, and is awarded to the lowest bidder.
This is not something new. Many other industries that were American dominated at one time, such as steel, have had similar things happen. Software is just the latest. And why should the rest of the world be excluded if they can do the job more economically? Being an American doesn't make me any better a programmer, or any more deserving than anyone else.
This doesn't take into account that some of those relays may be there on purpose, as in ISPs possibly colluding with, and also possibly profiting from, spam.
Just a minor nit. There probably still are ISP's that profit from so called pink contracts, but I don't see a spammer purposely running an open relay. Spammers are more interested in finding open relays and servers than running them. Operating an open relay serves no purpose to a spammer, and would likely draw attention. One of the reasons (aside from free bandwidth) of using an open relay is to hide your identity.
Which year do you think Microsoft will open the Linux Business Unit?
That will happen if they ever figure out a way they can buy Linux. Short of Linus and a bunch of other copyright holders losing their minds, I don't see that happening.
Seriously, why would they even attempt to write software for Linux? Most Linux users (at least on/. anyway) are pretty hostile to Microsoft. It would be kind of like trying to sell cigarettes to the American Cancer Society.
Same here. The only books that I ended up keeping were K & R "C Programming language", the Stroustrup C++ reference, and a Fortran book. I did keep my old calc and physics books, though. I do scientific programming, and these can be useful at times. It does seem that the weight and price of a book is often inversely proportional to it's usefulness. My 13 year old tattered paperback copy of K & R weighs maybe a pound, but I use it the time.
In all fairness, though, just because the reference books are the only ones we may tend to use after graduation, CS (as opposed to CIS, or whatever) does teach the theory and science behind computing, which one needs to really have true understanding of what's going on. Whether a textbook is necessary, I don't know.
Textbooks are in most cases an outdated scam. But the universities, professors, and publishers make too much money off of it, so it won't change anytime soon.
I have had Comcast Internet service for a couple of months now. I regularly download Linux ISO's, and have seen no problems, and regularly get 375 KB/s. VPN works fine, and port 80 and 25 are unblocked, and my IP address has remained static during this time. Of course, I use my work SMTP server (through SMTP AUTH) to send mail, as Comcast's IP's are in a lot of black hole lists (which is fine, a lot of spam does come from zombie boxes hooked up to cable modems).
For me, Comcast was a last resort. I have had 2 DSL connections, and Comcast is much better. When I moved, I got DSL from Qwest. It was a very unreliable service, and eventually it was determined that my line had a problem between me and the CO, and Qwest was unwilling to do anything, except disqualify me for service.
I pay less now for higher bandwidth, $42 a month, than 384K/128K ADSL for $55 a month, with ISP fees. Plus, the service is month to month, not like my first DSL connection, where I had to sign a 1 year contract. The service is reliable, and I will probably end up dropping my land phone line, as I only really kept it for dialup and DSL (I use my cell phone for about everything else) I just hope that I get the speeds I do because there are not too many subscribers in my area. I am pretty sure I am under 100 GB a month. Not to sound like a shill, but so far, I have no reason to complain about the service.
I often wonder if some of these worms haven't come from some AV company employee. Obviously, if virii/worms were eliminated, Norton and friends would be out of business. Their bottom line depends on the continuing spread of these worms.
It's kind of like organized crime extorting people for "protection" money. Use our software or get infected. But gangsters at least don't hammer you with spam constantly, unlike the AV companies.
I don't see "training" doing a whole lot. How many high profile email virii have there been now? Someone would have to be living a cave not to have heard of an email virus. But they still open unknown attachments. My boss, no less opened an attachment and got infected.
But seriously, this whole thing only took about 2 hours or so of my time. Blackhole the infected machine at the firewall, check mail logs, remove the virus, update AV pattern file, about an hour. Of course, another hour is wasted responding to the "you sent me a virus" emails.
One other person, who was absent yesterday, opened an attachment and became infected. Clean up time, about 30 minutes.
After this, I said semi tongue in cheek, "If anybody opens another attachment, I'll shoot them". No more infections after that! How's that for education?:)
The media portray these things (like everything else), much bigger than they really are. But don't tell management, every time something like this happens, handling the situation makes me look like like some super admin. Not bad for the job security.:)
This is due to the fact that many of those places software jobs are being sent to are culturally incompatible with the games we play.
The defense industry is pretty safe from this too, for obvious reasons. I work in this industry as a progammer. Budget cuts are another matter, however.
I also have experience doing system adminstration, and could fall back on that if the need arises. Scripting and programming could be outsourced, sure, but it's hard to diagnose a hardware error from India.
Pretty much everything else in tech can be outsourced. Learning a well paying trade, like plumber, electrician, auto mechanic might be useful too, I suppose.
AOL didn't create SPF. It is just one of the proposed anti-spoof techniques out there. I am not a big fan of AOL/Time Warner, but I am glad to see them trying this out. Many Internet "standards" are de facto standards, which are later adopted as official, because they work the best. If committee designed standards were always adopted, the "Internet" may have used the OSI (very bad) protocols instead of the cleanly designed TCP/IP, since that at one time was the official standard of the US government, IIRC. Of course it wouldn't be the Internet, as IP stands for Internet Protocol. Like it or not, AOL is a large company that has a big subscriber base. In today's world, in order for any of these standards to take hold, I feel there needs to be prominent early adopters to create the necessary momentum. This is just a test, after all. AOL is not forcing anybody to do anything. AOL is trying this for their self interest, but if SPF works, then that is a good thing, and it benefits everybody who uses it.
The key difference between telephone/snail mail spam is that the cost is bourne by the sender, while email spam is practically free. Phone solicitaion must make money, but it is hard for me to see how. Even if you're only paying some poor slob $7 an hour to cold call, there has to be some non trivial return to make it worthwhile, certainly more than the 0.001 response rate or whatever that spam needs to turn a profit. I think most people who get called by a telemarketer are much less likely to buy something, even if it is a decent product, simply because they are being harrassed. Just look at the response to the DNC list to see how much people like telemarketers. But somebody must be buying.
Most spam is really just a MLM. The spammer is the only one making money on it. I doubt many of the low lifes who hire spammers make any money from it. They may be marginally less dumb but contribute just as much to the problem as the miniscule portion of gullible people who respond to it.
Sure, they can buy a cert, but the email can be traced directly to them. This eliminates the forged address problem and makes the spammer easy to track/sanction/block, etc.
Second is that if you can't trust the ISP to do the MX right, then this breaks.
If all their mail is bouncing because they can't get their MX right, they will get it fixed or lose customers. It's like an RBL with teeth. If you want to be able to send mail on the Internet, you have to be responsible and play by the rules. If you can't get your server set up properly, you probably shouldn't be on the Internet anyway.
I had a similar experience with alcohol. Back in college, I did the whole drinking thing, and drank a few beers most days. I think I drank mostly out of boredom, really. Then I just quit for a month without really thinking about it. When I tried drinking again, any amount of alcohol would make me sick and bloated, and I still can't drink alcohol 10 years later, which really sucks, because I really did enjoy a beer or glass of wine at the end of the day. I thought it might be something else (hops, whatever), but I can drink non alcoholic beer just fine, but what is the point? So in my case, I seemed to develop the allergy after abstaining. Very strange. I wish there was some way to "train" or desensitize my body to tolerate alcohol like I used to. Sort of like a reverse withdrawl process.
I wonder how much of the actual IPv4 address space is actually used? There is a tremendous amount of wasted space in the current IPv4 allocation Check out this and look at class A assignments. Intelligent allocation and renumbering along with NAT could put off this "crisis" for another 20 years I bet. But as long as you have to renumber, you might as well just switch to IPv6 anyway.
Binge eating can also be a sign of stress and/or depresssion. The solution to that is far more complex.
This is definitely true. I would add boredom to causes of binge eating. Since I started getting regular strenuous exercise, I find that my mood is improved, and I don't seem to eat crap just for the hell of it. In fact, junk food is actually unappetizing to me now. I eat when I am hungry, and I sometimes even have to remind myself to eat. I guess I am lucky too that it is hard for me to gain weight. My first year working as a programmer, I put on bunch of weight (for me) 20 lbs, to 180. Since I now have a desk job, I have to make an effort to exercise, but most of the time I actually look forward to it. Finding the time is the hardest problem. Exercise can really work wonders in a lot of areas of health, not just weight.
Unsolicited email is annoying, but I guess what really angers me about the majority of the spam I get is:
Sleaziness. Penis enlargers, teen sluts, and porn of questionable legality. If I had young kids, this would really piss me off if they got sent this crap.
Fraud. This is somewhat related to the above. Most of these products are most likely frauds, or of questionable value. Masking your identity through forging headers, using open relays and the like. If your product is so great, you shouldn't have to hide yourself. Spam is the snake oil of the new century.
Intrusiveness. Embedding images in HTML email that the client fetches and confirms your email is "live", so it can be sold and put on more spam lists. I am still in the stone age and use pine and never HTML mail, but most non tech people use Outlook, which has this as default behavior. Also, claiming that I opted in and now I need to specifically opt out, with some form that probably just confirms my address is pretty low.
Volume. When I get 50 spam mail messages a day, and 10 or so legitimate messages, email as a communications medium is seriously flawed in it's present form. Many get hundreds of spams a day. Blacklists and Spam Assassin help some, but there are too many false positives.
Commercial email is OK, provided that I signed up for it and the company doesn't try to hide their identity. Some of this is actually useful at times. It would be nice if there could be an analog of a do not call list for email, but that is not technically feasible at present with the current protocol. A new protocol needs to be implemented. As much as I hate spam, I prefer technical solutions rather than handing control to the government. Even if there were spam laws (I know some states have them), they are ineffectual.
Actually I thought more of the Crichton book and movie The Andromeda Strain. That was a space capsule returning from the upper atmosphere over Arizona after collecting all sorts of nice extraterrestrial germs. In the novel the capsule wasn't manned, but it was interesting to see that government concerns over biological weapons are nothing new. I just read this book a month ago, so it came to mind. Off topic, but this was one of Crichton's better novels, narrated in a documentary, straight forward style, written before he became well known.
but my experiences at a state college, and others' at "normal" colleges I have heard, are exactly what I described. Professors who couldn't do jack if presented with a real problem in the business world.
I know it's fashionable to bash academia, but that wasn't my experience. I graduated in the mid 90's (just prior to the boom) from a state university, which wasn't MIT or Stanford, of course, but it was a challenging program. I know of at least one AI professor I had who is now running his own successful business, which he started on the side while still on the faculty. Granted, that may atypical, but not all professors are stuck in their ivory towers.
I've observed that degreed CS people don't often know what they're doing and don't "get it.
Hmm, that has not been my experience. Of the people in my small firm, which does mostly scientific programming, the ones that don't have degrees are mostly technicians. All our developers have at least a BS.
While we are talking about sysadmin here and not programming, I still think a CS degree has value. In my role as a sysadmin, just about all my knowledge has come on the job. But as a programmer, the CS degree had some value. CS gives you a better understanding of computing problems, algorithms, data strucures, etc. Anybody monkey can do programming, but I think it is useful to have a CS background. You don't know how many pieces of crap programs I have had to maintain, and in some cases rewrite, that better design and better use of data structures would have avoided. Of course some CS people don't "get it", but how many MBA's are worthless also? There are lot's of mediocre people with all kinds of degrees. It may be different now, but when I was in school in the early pre boom 90's, most of the people went into this field because they liked it, not because it would make them a ton of money. With the boom, I think perhaps the quality of the degree programs, and certainly of the students declined. These people just wanted to make a bunch of cash, computers were secondary.
As for sysadmin, I mostly agree. Degrees are useful (I wouldn't have been able to land my present job without one), but most of the learning is on the job. The ones who "have it" are the ones who can problem solve and pick up new things easily.
This is a good quality to have for any job. A college degree is certainly not mandatory for sysadmin, but it sure helps to get you started.
I am not sure if this is the peak or not. Certainly it is at best at a state of diminishing returns right now. I think this is just part of the shakedown that was inevitable after the boom of the 90's. The day of the HTML "developer" making 100k a year are long past. The overall quality of the tech sector will be better but smaller in size. Those of us are competant will still be able to find work, although some concessions may be necessary, such as relocating.
At least with sysadmin, I would think the chances of having your job outsourced to India or somewhere else are less, at least some on site presence is still required. With a smaller tech sector, I think a diverse skill set will be mandatory. I myself am a part time admin, part time developer, and am always looking to expand my skill set. Browsing employment ads recently, employers seem to want an ever expanding set of skills and experience. I have BS in CS, and 6 years experience, but I may end up doing some of the (mostly meaningless) certs that HR drones seem to like.
Slashdot Mirror
I first got "net access" in 1989 when I got a university account as a undergrad CS student. I don't think I even really knew about the Internet until 1990 or so. Of course back then, not many people had PC's (at least not many students), so the only real access to computers was in the campus computer labs on terminals connected to a VAX. Email was used for class assignments, though, but I didn't know I could email somebody across the world. I "discovered" the Internet quite by accident, playing around with the rn program and started reading USENET. But the Internet back then was still pretty cool, I thought. I was possible to actually connect to computers all over the world. Archie was kind of like a search engine, and ftp was used to grab stuff pretty much. Newsgroups were actually relevant with a much higher S/N ratio. I think I first heard about "hypertext" in 1991 or so, and WWW around 1992. I took a computer networks class around then, and http was just another protocol mentioned, like ftp, wais, or gopher, nothing really special about it at the time. I have a copy of UNIX System Administration Handbook, second edition published in 1995, and the world wide web is barely a footnote towards the end of the chapter on the Internet. No mention of spam either on the chapter on electronic email. Yeah, just another geek approaching middle age now, I guess.
OK, but if they can't even use proper grammar, or spell it properly (yeah I know "v1agra" or whatever are usually intentional mispellings to try to bypass simple spam filters), why would someone possibly trust them to sell something that is most likely fake, and probably illegal as well? A second grader writes better than most spam emails I get. Maybe that's the point. The written "quality" of the spam is probably indicative of the intelligence level of the average person responding to it. Want to sell to idiots? Write like one.
Since I started out as an engineer in college, I learned Fortran 77 as my first language, and it really wasn't that bad. It's still good for scientific computing, especially vectorizing code.
Of high level languages, I would have to say C is the closest to assembly language. It is also the language I prefer most, it's small, concise, and allows you to do what you want, which can also mean shooting yourself in the foot, of course.
When I did my BS in CS, we did have a course in computing systems, or something like that, of which assembly was also a part (Motorola 68000). The prerequisite was an EE course in digital circuits. Most respected CS curricula do require courses in the lower levels, and I do think it is useful to gain a fuller understanding. But in most real world applications, with cheap hardware and CPU cycles, a high level language works just fine for most things.
Personally, I find watches in general to be outdated. I quit wearing a watch 10 years ago, and I really don't see the point of one. Everywhere I look there is a clock, in my car, on my cell phone, my computer desktop, my microwave, etc. I recently tried wearing a watch again (analog), and didn't care for it. Having something strapped to my wrist just didn't feel right or comfortable. If I need to know what time it is, it is rare that a clock isn't within view somewhere.
Basically, it doesn't outright prohibit any of these things, but they can void the contract if you make them look bad. This is just standard CYA legalese.
Oftentimes, (but not always, of course) just having disclaimers is a clue of what the real intentions are. It's like the wording on a porno tape that says it has "redeeming social value". I am not against porn, but most porn isn't exactly Shakespeare.
I don't know about that. I get a lot of spam that tells me I can be younger and reverse the aging process. Man, imagine that. Now I'll never stop getting spammed!
I do programming for a living, and quite honestly, most anyone with the proper training can do most common programming tasks. There certainly are those gifted, top 10 percent programmers (which I am not one, I freely admit), but most programming is not the glamour projects, and is often tedious and boring. It seems that a lot of the jobs that are being outsourced are of this type. Programming has become a commodity in a lot of respects, and is awarded to the lowest bidder.
This is not something new. Many other industries that were American dominated at one time, such as steel, have had similar things happen. Software is just the latest. And why should the rest of the world be excluded if they can do the job more economically? Being an American doesn't make me any better a programmer, or any more deserving than anyone else.
Just a minor nit. There probably still are ISP's that profit from so called pink contracts, but I don't see a spammer purposely running an open relay. Spammers are more interested in finding open relays and servers than running them. Operating an open relay serves no purpose to a spammer, and would likely draw attention. One of the reasons (aside from free bandwidth) of using an open relay is to hide your identity.
That will happen if they ever figure out a way they can buy Linux. Short of Linus and a bunch of other copyright holders losing their minds, I don't see that happening.
Seriously, why would they even attempt to write software for Linux? Most Linux users (at least on /. anyway) are pretty hostile to Microsoft. It would be kind of like trying to sell cigarettes to the American Cancer Society.
In all fairness, though, just because the reference books are the only ones we may tend to use after graduation, CS (as opposed to CIS, or whatever) does teach the theory and science behind computing, which one needs to really have true understanding of what's going on. Whether a textbook is necessary, I don't know.
Textbooks are in most cases an outdated scam. But the universities, professors, and publishers make too much money off of it, so it won't change anytime soon.
For me, Comcast was a last resort. I have had 2 DSL connections, and Comcast is much better. When I moved, I got DSL from Qwest. It was a very unreliable service, and eventually it was determined that my line had a problem between me and the CO, and Qwest was unwilling to do anything, except disqualify me for service.
I pay less now for higher bandwidth, $42 a month, than 384K/128K ADSL for $55 a month, with ISP fees. Plus, the service is month to month, not like my first DSL connection, where I had to sign a 1 year contract. The service is reliable, and I will probably end up dropping my land phone line, as I only really kept it for dialup and DSL (I use my cell phone for about everything else) I just hope that I get the speeds I do because there are not too many subscribers in my area. I am pretty sure I am under 100 GB a month. Not to sound like a shill, but so far, I have no reason to complain about the service.
It's kind of like organized crime extorting people for "protection" money. Use our software or get infected. But gangsters at least don't hammer you with spam constantly, unlike the AV companies.
But seriously, this whole thing only took about 2 hours or so of my time. Blackhole the infected machine at the firewall, check mail logs, remove the virus, update AV pattern file, about an hour. Of course, another hour is wasted responding to the "you sent me a virus" emails.
One other person, who was absent yesterday, opened an attachment and became infected. Clean up time, about 30 minutes.
After this, I said semi tongue in cheek, "If anybody opens another attachment, I'll shoot them". No more infections after that! How's that for education? :)
The media portray these things (like everything else), much bigger than they really are. But don't tell management, every time something like this happens, handling the situation makes me look like like some super admin. Not bad for the job security. :)
The defense industry is pretty safe from this too, for obvious reasons. I work in this industry as a progammer. Budget cuts are another matter, however.
I also have experience doing system adminstration, and could fall back on that if the need arises. Scripting and programming could be outsourced, sure, but it's hard to diagnose a hardware error from India.
Pretty much everything else in tech can be outsourced. Learning a well paying trade, like plumber, electrician, auto mechanic might be useful too, I suppose.
AOL didn't create SPF. It is just one of the proposed anti-spoof techniques out there. I am not a big fan of AOL/Time Warner, but I am glad to see them trying this out. Many Internet "standards" are de facto standards, which are later adopted as official, because they work the best. If committee designed standards were always adopted, the "Internet" may have used the OSI (very bad) protocols instead of the cleanly designed TCP/IP, since that at one time was the official standard of the US government, IIRC. Of course it wouldn't be the Internet, as IP stands for Internet Protocol. Like it or not, AOL is a large company that has a big subscriber base. In today's world, in order for any of these standards to take hold, I feel there needs to be prominent early adopters to create the necessary momentum. This is just a test, after all. AOL is not forcing anybody to do anything. AOL is trying this for their self interest, but if SPF works, then that is a good thing, and it benefits everybody who uses it.
Sorry, I just saw that Seinfeld episode and laughed my ass off when I saw the story about "domains".
Most spam is really just a MLM. The spammer is the only one making money on it. I doubt many of the low lifes who hire spammers make any money from it. They may be marginally less dumb but contribute just as much to the problem as the miniscule portion of gullible people who respond to it.
Sure, they can buy a cert, but the email can be traced directly to them. This eliminates the forged address problem and makes the spammer easy to track/sanction/block, etc.
Second is that if you can't trust the ISP to do the MX right, then this breaks.
If all their mail is bouncing because they can't get their MX right, they will get it fixed or lose customers. It's like an RBL with teeth. If you want to be able to send mail on the Internet, you have to be responsible and play by the rules. If you can't get your server set up properly, you probably shouldn't be on the Internet anyway.
I had a similar experience with alcohol. Back in college, I did the whole drinking thing, and drank a few beers most days. I think I drank mostly out of boredom, really. Then I just quit for a month without really thinking about it. When I tried drinking again, any amount of alcohol would make me sick and bloated, and I still can't drink alcohol 10 years later, which really sucks, because I really did enjoy a beer or glass of wine at the end of the day. I thought it might be something else (hops, whatever), but I can drink non alcoholic beer just fine, but what is the point? So in my case, I seemed to develop the allergy after abstaining. Very strange. I wish there was some way to "train" or desensitize my body to tolerate alcohol like I used to. Sort of like a reverse withdrawl process.
I wonder how much of the actual IPv4 address space is actually used? There is a tremendous amount of wasted space in the current IPv4 allocation Check out this and look at class A assignments. Intelligent allocation and renumbering along with NAT could put off this "crisis" for another 20 years I bet. But as long as you have to renumber, you might as well just switch to IPv6 anyway.
This is definitely true. I would add boredom to causes of binge eating. Since I started getting regular strenuous exercise, I find that my mood is improved, and I don't seem to eat crap just for the hell of it. In fact, junk food is actually unappetizing to me now. I eat when I am hungry, and I sometimes even have to remind myself to eat. I guess I am lucky too that it is hard for me to gain weight. My first year working as a programmer, I put on bunch of weight (for me) 20 lbs, to 180. Since I now have a desk job, I have to make an effort to exercise, but most of the time I actually look forward to it. Finding the time is the hardest problem. Exercise can really work wonders in a lot of areas of health, not just weight.
Sleaziness. Penis enlargers, teen sluts, and porn of questionable legality. If I had young kids, this would really piss me off if they got sent this crap.
Fraud. This is somewhat related to the above. Most of these products are most likely frauds, or of questionable value. Masking your identity through forging headers, using open relays and the like. If your product is so great, you shouldn't have to hide yourself. Spam is the snake oil of the new century.
Intrusiveness. Embedding images in HTML email that the client fetches and confirms your email is "live", so it can be sold and put on more spam lists. I am still in the stone age and use pine and never HTML mail, but most non tech people use Outlook, which has this as default behavior. Also, claiming that I opted in and now I need to specifically opt out, with some form that probably just confirms my address is pretty low.
Volume. When I get 50 spam mail messages a day, and 10 or so legitimate messages, email as a communications medium is seriously flawed in it's present form. Many get hundreds of spams a day. Blacklists and Spam Assassin help some, but there are too many false positives.
Commercial email is OK, provided that I signed up for it and the company doesn't try to hide their identity. Some of this is actually useful at times. It would be nice if there could be an analog of a do not call list for email, but that is not technically feasible at present with the current protocol. A new protocol needs to be implemented. As much as I hate spam, I prefer technical solutions rather than handing control to the government. Even if there were spam laws (I know some states have them), they are ineffectual.
Actually I thought more of the Crichton book and movie The Andromeda Strain. That was a space capsule returning from the upper atmosphere over Arizona after collecting all sorts of nice extraterrestrial germs. In the novel the capsule wasn't manned, but it was interesting to see that government concerns over biological weapons are nothing new. I just read this book a month ago, so it came to mind. Off topic, but this was one of Crichton's better novels, narrated in a documentary, straight forward style, written before he became well known.
I know it's fashionable to bash academia, but that wasn't my experience. I graduated in the mid 90's (just prior to the boom) from a state university, which wasn't MIT or Stanford, of course, but it was a challenging program. I know of at least one AI professor I had who is now running his own successful business, which he started on the side while still on the faculty. Granted, that may atypical, but not all professors are stuck in their ivory towers.
I've observed that degreed CS people don't often know what they're doing and don't "get it.
Hmm, that has not been my experience. Of the people in my small firm, which does mostly scientific programming, the ones that don't have degrees are mostly technicians. All our developers have at least a BS.
While we are talking about sysadmin here and not programming, I still think a CS degree has value. In my role as a sysadmin, just about all my knowledge has come on the job. But as a programmer, the CS degree had some value. CS gives you a better understanding of computing problems, algorithms, data strucures, etc. Anybody monkey can do programming, but I think it is useful to have a CS background. You don't know how many pieces of crap programs I have had to maintain, and in some cases rewrite, that better design and better use of data structures would have avoided. Of course some CS people don't "get it", but how many MBA's are worthless also? There are lot's of mediocre people with all kinds of degrees. It may be different now, but when I was in school in the early pre boom 90's, most of the people went into this field because they liked it, not because it would make them a ton of money. With the boom, I think perhaps the quality of the degree programs, and certainly of the students declined. These people just wanted to make a bunch of cash, computers were secondary.
As for sysadmin, I mostly agree. Degrees are useful (I wouldn't have been able to land my present job without one), but most of the learning is on the job. The ones who "have it" are the ones who can problem solve and pick up new things easily. This is a good quality to have for any job. A college degree is certainly not mandatory for sysadmin, but it sure helps to get you started.
At least with sysadmin, I would think the chances of having your job outsourced to India or somewhere else are less, at least some on site presence is still required. With a smaller tech sector, I think a diverse skill set will be mandatory. I myself am a part time admin, part time developer, and am always looking to expand my skill set. Browsing employment ads recently, employers seem to want an ever expanding set of skills and experience. I have BS in CS, and 6 years experience, but I may end up doing some of the (mostly meaningless) certs that HR drones seem to like.