Hmm...wonder what the RC5-72 stats on this device would be. Given the ports and taking into account space...
Have a portmaster or other multi-serial-port box handle a serial-PPP connection with each mini-server. That way, you bypass the need for a bulky USB->ETHERNET adapter.
They can all crack code, each as individual clients or started and maintained via PVM...
*DROOL*....
I could line my whole computer room wall with these. *_* Wonder how many would be needed to get an equivelant score of 2.5MKeys/sec though...
I believe shortly after this aspect of replication was discovered, another article noted that the "aging" factor in DNA can be reversed by re-lengthening the tail in DNA which has not been too severely aged.
If this was performed on a relatively stable cell of a moderately aged person, the clone would be, in theory, have much lower chances of suffering defects.
Lots of if's.
The question begs to be asked: If what they do succeeds, how will people who are desperate to bear children view this?
Most likely, you will have a job. The problem is that that job will most likely not be the one you though it would be.
Seriously. Is there a reason why you can't stay in school and pick up new skills while the economy is bad? Then, when it improves, come out of school and start picking up jobs.
I'm currently employed. I've thankfully managed to survive layoffs and bankruptcies. And I've only been at it for just under 3 years. I went to school for 6 years.
The consolation I can offer is that when you graduate, there will be jobs. It will not be easy to find the jobs, but there will be jobs.
The advice I can offer is to cross-train and have a wide range of skills that you are good at.
If you can hack electronics, great. Maybe you should add OS's and some application code to that as well.
Seriously, the future is bleak. But then again, that would be true no matter which career you've chosen. I have friends who are lawyers, doctors, psychologists, construction workers, cooks, dentists, etc. It is bad across the board out there and all you can do in a storm like this is weather it out.
Your best bet is to be emotionally and intellectually prepared. And that is something you can get only through actual part-time working to build up experience.
I think the details of scientific studies comparing programmer job life spans to that of professional atheletes should be looked into.
Several posts already posted touch on the topic, but it basically comes down to this: You will lose your job eventually. Perhaps not now. Perhaps you already have. Perhaps you will years from now. But you will. And quite likely, soon.
And what happens? Is your career over when you lose your job? Do you suddenly find yourself unable to do what you've been training and gearing up to do all these years? What you HAVE been doing all these years?
Most likely not. Unless you've had a lobotomy, been drugging up, or had a recent accident depriving you of long/short term memory.
Seriously, losing one job is not the end of the career. The two are seperate entities.
Say you were coding one day and they say "time to go. We're closing shop". What's your first response? To curl up into the corner and die? Hell no!
You first response as a professional is to start typing up that resume, getting it to the head hunters or businesses, and at the same time, finding some temp work to do on the side... or collect unemployment.
The jobs are out there. Either as a vacancy or through your own will to create a job for yourself.
No openings at companies? What about freelancing? What about self-employment? What about different types of companies offering similar kinds of jobs?
It is ridiculous to think that just because we're in hard times that people are going to suddenly lose their skills and their career will wither up and die.
No. What normally happens is that people tighten their belts. They assess what they have and work from there. Be it to acquire more skills to get a job or to adjust for slightly different jobs. But that core of who you are and what your career is doesn't change because of losing one job.
With professional atheletes, it's a messed up knee or spine. With programmers and tech related careers, its your brain.
So unless you've recently suffered massive brain trauma, it is unlikely that your career is over.
Just look at America itself. We are "one nation", but we are "seperate states". That is what a world nation would become. One big "governing body" with continent based "sub governing bodies".
How is that different from what we have right now? There would still be border disputes. There would still be trade wars and heavy competition.
Nothing would change by shifting borders.
The thing is, we are talking about a world economy here, not just America's. America is making use of off short workers which results in their own workers seeking different employment. At the same time, American companies feel they are driven to this need to use off-shore workers because the competition is steep and any advantage would help their business stay afloat or move forward.
We as consumers demand lower prices for everything and we demand more for our money.
In short, we create our own spiral of economic decline. We are stuck in a catch-22.
To improve, people must be willing to buy more expensive items and pay more for less.
Companies must be willing to shoulder the costs and overhead and hire locals as opposed to off-shore workers.
All levels need to be addressed. Simply cutting corners at one level or asking people pay more without all sides doing their parts only speeds up the spiral.
It is hard to do and with the way businesses are leaning these days, it will be a long few years, if not decades, before we're "really" out of it.
It is debatable whether it is art or not. While it is a creative endeaver(the linux source/kernel), and is thus copyrightable, it is not one created with the intention or result of something which is considered aesthetically pleasing, so may be considered lacking in artistic content, though not creative content. The output of the creative work, on the otherhand, is another matter.
Take with a big non-cubic component of sodium chloride rendered in a post-impressionistic form, for IANAA.
Heh. I tend to agree with you. Most "pda" ROMs really aren't designed for flexibilty. I mean, don't get me wrong. My intent IS to install linux on the PDAs that I get. So I'm in favour of the OZ installation. My point was that manufacturers aren't taking the more technically minded into consideration as much as we would like them to.
I think I mentioned it in another post, but I think the OZ installation is great. Though stopping by the local Frys, the keypad is a bit small for me, which is why I opted for the Psion 5. ^_^;;
Out of curiosity, is this on the "stock" zaurus or is this on a OZ installed Zaurus?
I realise that SSH/terminal isn't a functionality which the masses are interested in and that it puts a burden on the system. Still, it can be a deciding factor for the people who are actually buying it if it can communicate on more protocols.
Btw, I've visited the OZ site and the package is really sweet. Unfortunately, given the change in economy, I can't justify buying a new piece of gear.:| Kinda stuck with my Psion 5. ^_^;
Yes, I've been to the OZ site. But that is OpenZaurus. That's a non-standard configuration of the Zaurus. The standard one(5500 or 5600) doesn't have SSH installed.
I'm thinking back a few years... actually, quite a few. There was a game called "CoreWars". Bell labs , I think.
It was one of the first, if not the first, kind of game where software was programmed to attack each other and basically be "kind of the hill".
Anyways, I'm thinking that the only real way to make a "hack" session interesting is to have a visual aspect, which is what corewars had. You both wrote your code. Put it into the system's core memory, then let them rip. You'd actually be able to see the memory map being consumed by the programs.
Too bad the same can't be said of people breaking into systems, that is... unless you have a massive network of say... 5000 systems and they have a "flag" system so as they are taken over and used, their "allegiance" color changes.
But do these people actually have any idea how long that takes or how numbingly boring it is?
Start script to scan
Wait for scan.
Wait for it...
Still waiting...
Got hit and adding to list.
Going back to waiting...
It would be interesting to see what they come up with, but I think maintaining systems and fending off network abusers is "interesting" enough without turning it into a sport.
Especially true people make some associations between your particular "style" and some criminal files which are still open on a detective's desk. Yes, that can become quite interesting in a spectator kind of way real fast.
Designed by various anime artists. There are supposed to be three models. One is designed by the artist behind "Ghost in the shell". There are two more, but they don't immediately come to mind. It was covered on slashdot a few months back though, so it might be worthwhile to do a search.:)
Why is it that when companies make these devices, they never consider the posibility that someone might actually want to use these things as portable terminals?
And that perhaps, just perhaps, that person will want to do it securely via SSH?
I'm glad it runs linux. It means that it is only a hop/skip/jump away from recompiling ssh to run on the device.
I just wish that SSH should be a defacto and not a "special" package you add on for a large sum of cash.
Re:IT Crisis... maybe in your company, not mine.
on
The New IT Crisis
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· Score: 1
I personally am getting very tired of seeing IBM, CA and Microsoft commercials suggesting to the corporate world that: "Your internal I.T. department is incompetent and we can provide you with software so simple a monkey could operate it and save you money."
If you write software so simple that a monkey can operate it, you'll find that only monkeys will be able to operate it.
Seriously though, I find MS's ad about their servers not having been booted for "days" totally hilarious. With or without admins, if the longest a server, under your care, can run stably is for a few days, you are either doing something very wrong... or you are using the wrong software.
I definitely agree with this description. It is usually the SA who appears to not be doing anything who is really getting things done. Whereas the ones with the hand waving and the panic attacks are usually the ones putting out fires. Continually.
Don't ever see a day when a script will be able to replace the SA.
Reason: Someone needs to maintain the script. Especially when the OS needs to be patched/updated/replaced/etc. >:)
# admin.ksh Scripted Admin Version 0.1a beta - Loading modules... - Scanning system... - Downloading porn(this may take a while)......
Microsoft refuses to recite their code on the basis of it being a major security issue. They will show that attempts to recite the code would result in radios recieving the broadcast to spontaneously crash and require a power-cycle. They will also discover that after power-cycle'ing, they will not be able to recieve any stations except a brand new, previously unknown, MS branded station.
More likely than not, you will be required to upgrade your radios if you listen to the MS radio broadcast. Definitely a bad thing.
I'm just picturing it. The broadcast is picked up by some intelligence people who are not in the know and they start recording it. The staff will start working on "breaking the code" and there will be a general alert about how the radio station could be broadcasting top secret information to "the enemy".
I'm thinking something along the lines of Orsen Wells in terms of reaction.
Of course, there is the flip side: You might end up putting people in a coma from the sheer boredom of listening to source code being recited for hours on end. By a synthetic voice, no less!
I'm all for Linux. I use it on all of my system s at home. But having the source code read aloud on the radio just seems like a major waste of time, resources, and opens up a whole can of worms...
Some examples:
Military gets the wrong idea.
Smashes into the radio station expecting to discover a "cell".
People start arguing about which branch of the source tree is the one which should get airtime.
*BSD deciding to join the fray with their own branches of source being recited.
People wanting this to be broadcast in all languages(no idea why, but there will be those who will want it in their native tongue)
Microsoft trying to recite their sourcecode, resulting in a general dumbing down of the American public.
Apple joins in after being asked by their Mac user following to recite the code to Aqua/Carbon/Cocoa/OSX.x, but with style, flair, and a lively wind and string section.
It's just not something that would be good to do. (With the exception of the lively wind and string section, that is.)
Regarding that TV ratio, just last week, I was timing the "breaks" to see just how much commercial there was. It came out to be somewhere around 40% commercial and 60% cut content.:| Quite bad...
I definitely agree with you on the topic of not intentionally looking at pop-ups. It's one of the major reasons why I'm using mozilla with the pop-up and pop-under abilities disabled. Makes life on the web much saner.
Heh. At least they haven't started putting voice-overs in their pop-up ads. I can just imagine the responses people would have for an audio pop-up.
This works for spammers because they're not going to be around (in that guise) long enough for reputation to be a factor. For well-known companies with a reputation to defend, irritating the heck out of a customer who might otherwise have considered buying from them at a more opportune time is not good business practice.
Hmm... I would tend to agree with you there about the business needing to look out for the long-term and business image. Still, from they way they act, it doesn't really seem to be high on their list of concerns.
Flyers...cleanup...
Most of the time, when people do take the flyers, they toss them away just a block or so down the road. Other times and places, they get dropped onto the street and the city/taxpayers end up footing the bill for cleaning the streets. The flyers that get "placed" on peoples' windshields is annoying...
Door to door... getting off of asses...
*LOL*.... Seriously, they take up precious TV watching time with their "special" announcements. Granted, they paid for that through their funds, but it still has the "barges in" feeling.
While the space storage/payment idea might be feasible and work with email where the company or individual is forcibly sending you stuff, when it comes to webpages, it's voluntary on your part to go to the source page. If from that page it kicks you through to other pages, they would argue it was a feature of the site and that you don't need to be a visitor of their site.
Calling their number and telling them you will do business elsewhere might work. But if the business is playing the numbers game, they might not care. What does it matter if a few thousand people call in to complain when compared to the millions who will flow through the site, they will get a similar number in sales/business?
The example of the telemarketers and charging them for calling them is in the same boat as email/spam, but not in the same boat as a kick-through or pop-up ad. The primary difference is that with the phone call or the email, it arrives and uses your resources without effort or voice desire from your part.
With a web page, you are making a request to the site for document information as well as programming information. It is assumed that short of being malicious in intent, the code coming from the site is legitimate "information", even if it kicks you through to another site.
The most one would be able to get across is that the kick-throughs, like many pop-up ads, are misleading.
Convincing people to turn off the features which allows these "actions" on web pages seems like a better way.
*shrugs* Then again, they'll just come out with yet another way to garner eye balls...
Same game spam emailers are playing.
on
Next-Gen Pop-up Ads
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It's the same numbers game that the SPAM mongers are playing.
Ie, if you can get even one half of one percent to buy something, with over 1 million people hitting your site, you still get 5000 customers. If each of those customers buy just one thing, the company is making money off of their "efforts".
Those who don't like it and don't buy are considered to not have wanted to buy in the first place.
The same is true of passing out flyers, sending spam emails, or going door-to-door. A numbers game.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm.. .wonder what the RC5-72 stats on this device would be. Given the ports and taking into account space...
Have a portmaster or other multi-serial-port box handle a serial-PPP connection with each mini-server. That way, you bypass the need for a bulky USB->ETHERNET adapter.
They can all crack code, each as individual clients or started and maintained via PVM...
*DROOL*....
I could line my whole computer room wall with these. *_* Wonder how many would be needed to get an equivelant score of 2.5MKeys/sec though...
I believe shortly after this aspect of replication was discovered, another article noted that the "aging" factor in DNA can be reversed by re-lengthening the tail in DNA which has not been too severely aged.
If this was performed on a relatively stable cell of a moderately aged person, the clone would be, in theory, have much lower chances of suffering defects.
Lots of if's.
The question begs to be asked: If what they do succeeds, how will people who are desperate to bear children view this?
Consolation?
Most likely, you will have a job. The problem is that that job will most likely not be the one you though it would be.
Seriously. Is there a reason why you can't stay in school and pick up new skills while the economy is bad? Then, when it improves, come out of school and start picking up jobs.
I'm currently employed. I've thankfully managed to survive layoffs and bankruptcies. And I've only been at it for just under 3 years. I went to school for 6 years.
The consolation I can offer is that when you graduate, there will be jobs. It will not be easy to find the jobs, but there will be jobs.
The advice I can offer is to cross-train and have a wide range of skills that you are good at.
If you can hack electronics, great. Maybe you should add OS's and some application code to that as well.
Seriously, the future is bleak. But then again, that would be true no matter which career you've chosen. I have friends who are lawyers, doctors, psychologists, construction workers, cooks, dentists, etc. It is bad across the board out there and all you can do in a storm like this is weather it out.
Your best bet is to be emotionally and intellectually prepared. And that is something you can get only through actual part-time working to build up experience.
I think the details of scientific studies comparing programmer job life spans to that of professional atheletes should be looked into.
Several posts already posted touch on the topic, but it basically comes down to this: You will lose your job eventually. Perhaps not now. Perhaps you already have. Perhaps you will years from now. But you will. And quite likely, soon.
And what happens? Is your career over when you lose your job? Do you suddenly find yourself unable to do what you've been training and gearing up to do all these years? What you HAVE been doing all these years?
Most likely not. Unless you've had a lobotomy, been drugging up, or had a recent accident depriving you of long/short term memory.
Seriously, losing one job is not the end of the career. The two are seperate entities.
Say you were coding one day and they say "time to go. We're closing shop". What's your first response? To curl up into the corner and die? Hell no!
You first response as a professional is to start typing up that resume, getting it to the head hunters or businesses, and at the same time, finding some temp work to do on the side... or collect unemployment.
The jobs are out there. Either as a vacancy or through your own will to create a job for yourself.
No openings at companies? What about freelancing? What about self-employment? What about different types of companies offering similar kinds of jobs?
It is ridiculous to think that just because we're in hard times that people are going to suddenly lose their skills and their career will wither up and die.
No. What normally happens is that people tighten their belts. They assess what they have and work from there. Be it to acquire more skills to get a job or to adjust for slightly different jobs. But that core of who you are and what your career is doesn't change because of losing one job.
With professional atheletes, it's a messed up knee or spine. With programmers and tech related careers, its your brain.
So unless you've recently suffered massive brain trauma, it is unlikely that your career is over.
One big nation isn't really the solution.
Just look at America itself. We are "one nation", but we are "seperate states". That is what a world nation would become. One big "governing body" with continent based "sub governing bodies".
How is that different from what we have right now? There would still be border disputes. There would still be trade wars and heavy competition.
Nothing would change by shifting borders.
The thing is, we are talking about a world economy here, not just America's. America is making use of off short workers which results in their own workers seeking different employment. At the same time, American companies feel they are driven to this need to use off-shore workers because the competition is steep and any advantage would help their business stay afloat or move forward.
We as consumers demand lower prices for everything and we demand more for our money.
In short, we create our own spiral of economic decline. We are stuck in a catch-22.
To improve, people must be willing to buy more expensive items and pay more for less.
Companies must be willing to shoulder the costs and overhead and hire locals as opposed to off-shore workers.
All levels need to be addressed. Simply cutting corners at one level or asking people pay more without all sides doing their parts only speeds up the spiral.
It is hard to do and with the way businesses are leaning these days, it will be a long few years, if not decades, before we're "really" out of it.
It is debatable whether it is art or not. While it is a creative endeaver(the linux source/kernel), and is thus copyrightable, it is not one created with the intention or result of something which is considered aesthetically pleasing, so may be considered lacking in artistic content, though not creative content. The output of the creative work, on the otherhand, is another matter.
Take with a big non-cubic component of sodium chloride rendered in a post-impressionistic form, for IANAA.
Heh. I tend to agree with you. Most "pda" ROMs really aren't designed for flexibilty. I mean, don't get me wrong. My intent IS to install linux on the PDAs that I get. So I'm in favour of the OZ installation. My point was that manufacturers aren't taking the more technically minded into consideration as much as we would like them to.
I think I mentioned it in another post, but I think the OZ installation is great. Though stopping by the local Frys, the keypad is a bit small for me, which is why I opted for the Psion 5. ^_^;;
Out of curiosity, is this on the "stock" zaurus or is this on a OZ installed Zaurus?
I realise that SSH/terminal isn't a functionality which the masses are interested in and that it puts a burden on the system. Still, it can be a deciding factor for the people who are actually buying it if it can communicate on more protocols.
Btw, I've visited the OZ site and the package is really sweet. Unfortunately, given the change in economy, I can't justify buying a new piece of gear. :| Kinda stuck with my Psion 5. ^_^;
Yes, I've been to the OZ site. But that is OpenZaurus. That's a non-standard configuration of the Zaurus. The standard one(5500 or 5600) doesn't have SSH installed.
I'm thinking back a few years... actually, quite a few. There was a game called "CoreWars". Bell labs , I think.
It was one of the first, if not the first, kind of game where software was programmed to attack each other and basically be "kind of the hill".
Anyways, I'm thinking that the only real way to make a "hack" session interesting is to have a visual aspect, which is what corewars had. You both wrote your code. Put it into the system's core memory, then let them rip. You'd actually be able to see the memory map being consumed by the programs.
Too bad the same can't be said of people breaking into systems, that is... unless you have a massive network of say... 5000 systems and they have a "flag" system so as they are taken over and used, their "allegiance" color changes.
But do these people actually have any idea how long that takes or how numbingly boring it is?
It would be interesting to see what they come up with, but I think maintaining systems and fending off network abusers is "interesting" enough without turning it into a sport.
Especially true people make some associations between your particular "style" and some criminal files which are still open on a detective's desk. Yes, that can become quite interesting in a spectator kind of way real fast.
Yeah, I've seen them.
Designed by various anime artists. There are supposed to be three models. One is designed by the artist behind "Ghost in the shell". There are two more, but they don't immediately come to mind. It was covered on slashdot a few months back though, so it might be worthwhile to do a search. :)
Why is it that when companies make these devices, they never consider the posibility that someone might actually want to use these things as portable terminals?
And that perhaps, just perhaps, that person will want to do it securely via SSH?
I'm glad it runs linux. It means that it is only a hop/skip/jump away from recompiling ssh to run on the device.
I just wish that SSH should be a defacto and not a "special" package you add on for a large sum of cash.
I personally am getting very tired of seeing IBM, CA and Microsoft commercials suggesting to the corporate world that: "Your internal I.T. department is incompetent and we can provide you with software so simple a monkey could operate it and save you money."
If you write software so simple that a monkey can operate it, you'll find that only monkeys will be able to operate it.
Seriously though, I find MS's ad about their servers not having been booted for "days" totally hilarious. With or without admins, if the longest a server, under your care, can run stably is for a few days, you are either doing something very wrong... or you are using the wrong software.
I definitely agree with this description. It is usually the SA who appears to not be doing anything who is really getting things done. Whereas the ones with the hand waving and the panic attacks are usually the ones putting out fires. Continually.
Don't ever see a day when a script will be able to replace the SA.
Reason: Someone needs to maintain the script. Especially when the OS needs to be patched/updated/replaced/etc. >:)
Correction on the MS code recitation.
More likely than not, you will be required to upgrade your radios if you listen to the MS radio broadcast. Definitely a bad thing.
I'm just picturing it. The broadcast is picked up by some intelligence people who are not in the know and they start recording it. The staff will start working on "breaking the code" and there will be a general alert about how the radio station could be broadcasting top secret information to "the enemy".
I'm thinking something along the lines of Orsen Wells in terms of reaction.
Of course, there is the flip side: You might end up putting people in a coma from the sheer boredom of listening to source code being recited for hours on end. By a synthetic voice, no less!
I'm all for Linux. I use it on all of my system s at home. But having the source code read aloud on the radio just seems like a major waste of time, resources, and opens up a whole can of worms...
Some examples:
It's just not something that would be good to do. (With the exception of the lively wind and string section, that is.)
Regarding that TV ratio, just last week, I was timing the "breaks" to see just how much commercial there was. It came out to be somewhere around 40% commercial and 60% cut content. :| Quite bad...
I definitely agree with you on the topic of not intentionally looking at pop-ups. It's one of the major reasons why I'm using mozilla with the pop-up and pop-under abilities disabled. Makes life on the web much saner.
Heh. At least they haven't started putting voice-overs in their pop-up ads. I can just imagine the responses people would have for an audio pop-up.
This works for spammers because they're not going to be around (in that guise) long enough for reputation to be a factor. For well-known companies with a reputation to defend, irritating the heck out of a customer who might otherwise have considered buying from them at a more opportune time is not good business practice.
Hmm... I would tend to agree with you there about the business needing to look out for the long-term and business image. Still, from they way they act, it doesn't really seem to be high on their list of concerns.
Flyers...cleanup...
Most of the time, when people do take the flyers, they toss them away just a block or so down the road. Other times and places, they get dropped onto the street and the city/taxpayers end up footing the bill for cleaning the streets. The flyers that get "placed" on peoples' windshields is annoying...
Door to door... getting off of asses...
*LOL* .... Seriously, they take up precious TV watching time with their "special" announcements. Granted, they paid for that through their funds, but it still has the "barges in" feeling.
Some problems...
While the space storage/payment idea might be feasible and work with email where the company or individual is forcibly sending you stuff, when it comes to webpages, it's voluntary on your part to go to the source page. If from that page it kicks you through to other pages, they would argue it was a feature of the site and that you don't need to be a visitor of their site.
Calling their number and telling them you will do business elsewhere might work. But if the business is playing the numbers game, they might not care. What does it matter if a few thousand people call in to complain when compared to the millions who will flow through the site, they will get a similar number in sales/business?
The example of the telemarketers and charging them for calling them is in the same boat as email/spam, but not in the same boat as a kick-through or pop-up ad. The primary difference is that with the phone call or the email, it arrives and uses your resources without effort or voice desire from your part.
With a web page, you are making a request to the site for document information as well as programming information. It is assumed that short of being malicious in intent, the code coming from the site is legitimate "information", even if it kicks you through to another site.
The most one would be able to get across is that the kick-throughs, like many pop-up ads, are misleading.
Convincing people to turn off the features which allows these "actions" on web pages seems like a better way.
*shrugs* Then again, they'll just come out with yet another way to garner eye balls...
It's the same numbers game that the SPAM mongers are playing.
Ie, if you can get even one half of one percent to buy something, with over 1 million people hitting your site, you still get 5000 customers. If each of those customers buy just one thing, the company is making money off of their "efforts".
Those who don't like it and don't buy are considered to not have wanted to buy in the first place.
The same is true of passing out flyers, sending spam emails, or going door-to-door. A numbers game.