I started building out computers 20 years ago when components were so #$%ing huge and cast-iron that you'd have to be a total idiot to accidentally destroy anything. By the time a faulty heat-sink could destroy a system, I had built about a hundred of them, so I've yet to destroy a single machine by my own stupidity. Knock on wood, but there is something to be said for tinkering with something you don't mind losing before dropping $2k on a soon-to-be door-stop.
Definitely, though, the huge case advice should be heeded. Sooooo many problems can arise from that, not the least of which is, ta-dah, heat dissipation. To say nothing of proper (and improper) grounding. Finally, DON'T SKIMP! You're saving money on the labor, put it into quality parts -- especially cables (power/hdd/cat5 etc). There's no sense shorting out a $200 HD or $95 power supply, and potentially a $200 MB and $400 CPU, all over a 39-cent cable that you should have spent a buck on -- (or for that matter, the $20 power supply you should have spent $50 on)... and for the love of god, don't build this thing on the floor of your shag-carpeted living room walking around in new trainers, OKAY!??!
IIRC (IANA[A|L]), you _can_ deduct any and all expenses that are required by your job but which are not reimbursed. This is a ciritical finepoint, though, because if you are doing it out of the goodness of your heart, the implication they are giving, it may not be allowed and if significant enough, might land you with a disallowance and penalty by the IRS.
However, if you would have a cellphone and/or broadband anyway (generally, a safe assumption), it's a bit silly to start playing politics over the money. If your point is that you don't want to be on call, just say it and be prepared to compromise to the effect of "I can be available on Saturday afternoons if anyone needs me, but you will _not_ be calling me at church on Sunday or when I'm bathing/feeding/tutoring my kids on Tuesday nights, thankyouverymuch." They simply do not have the right to limitlessly disrupt your life just because they're understaffed and they need to know that. If they can't grasp that, it's time to polish the resume.
Bottom line, be honest with both your employer and the IRS. Of course, if you don't want to be interrupted getting smashed at the bar after work, you might want to fib a little. But then, if the job sucks so badly that you're at the bar getting smashed on a regular basis, you might want to rethink the 'ol career-path anyway.
No it IS the richest nation on the continent, but this is still a good idea because it is not a very rich country outside of Africa with roughly 1/3 the GDP per capita of most Norther/Western countries.
By the way, I have nothing but loathing for the likes of Newt Gingrich, but the content of my previous statement remains factual, no matter how much you or I would wish a different person was responsible.
The satellite is used to study hydrology and desertification, which has a direct result on the quality of life of the poorest people on the continent.
South Africa is a developed country for godssake. It is not some primitive collection of mud huts. Go live there for awhile before you jump to such ridiculous conclusions.
You've obviously never studied at a southern African univeristy (FYI: the largest library in the entire southern hemisphere is outside of Capetown). They don't need computers? Hello, U. Stellenbosch has a freaking an orbiting satellite, buddy! That's right, THE UNIVERSITY has its own satellite, not the government, not TelKom or Vodafone, but the university. It took a computer or two for that to happen.
Still, this makes sense and is a great idea regarless, but come on, can we get past the Sally Struthers starving-children-in-Africa motif?
They already do and Newt Gingrich spearheaded the legislation to make it possible to write-off 100% of the purchase price of 2yo machines when donated.
In many places where "security" actually matters in a "Senators and Generals will come calling" sort of way, clearly places you have not worked, it is explicitly IT's job to make sure that the information systems not only work but are as secure as possible and that includes saying "no, you can't plug in an insecure WiFi AP, a 100GB+ portable drive, a DVD burner, or install all manner of SpyWare or your teledildonics rig no matter how happy a worker you would be if we let you."
Oh, touche, except for the fact that the IT department is charged with ensuring the reliability and security of the network. Who the hell else do you think would be charged with writing the relevant corporate policies? Facilities?
It's pretty clear some people have no clue whatsoever how corporate decisions are made if they think the CIO is not responsible for drafting and ensuring the proper execution of information management policies.
How the hell is having an iPod _necessary_ to get your job done? How is taking anything off a corporate network and out the front door _necessary_ to get your job done?
"this may not be 'my network,' but it sure as shit isn't yours, either."
WTF? No, an internal network and everything on it quite certainly IS the company's property in so much as they are liable in many senses of the term for whatever happens on it and they have every right to determine everything that can and cannot be done with it. If that includes saying "no, you cannot pack in the ability to suck down 100GB of our data every day" then so be it. Really, in two weeks, an employee could rip down a terabyte of data through a USB drive. That amount of data being would require the burning of 1,538 cdroms -- 154 per day, which would be just a tad easier to spot than someone coming in, plugging in a USB hard drive and going about their work and casually unplugging it at the end of the day. Not good.
Actually, the US requires a constant inventory of about 30 kilos of the stuff, which must be completely recycled roughly every decade, to maintain the nuclear arsenal. Over forty years, the cost is between $1B-6B depending on how it is produced. So say 120kilos for $3B, or about $25M per kilo, which is still pretty freaking expensive, but nothing that couldn't be attributed to a rounding error in the $2 Trillion federal budget.
That, and they also don't correlate the likelihood of the exploit to be running on any machine. The vast majority of the Windows advisories I've seen coming through CERT are for services that are on by default or outright integral to the OS. With Linux that isn't so. For instance, the only exploits my linux machines are vulnerable to are those related to SSH, so if it isn't knocking on port 22, it's not getting in. Okay, one machine also is vulnerable to attack on 25 and 110. That puts me at risk about every 18 months as opposed to every ten days. The primary point is that even if my most vulnerable Linux machine was compromised, it would most likely be contained and not spread to the rest of my network. Not so on a default Windows network.
The only way I trust my Windows machines to be even relatively safe from outside attack is if they are on the opposite side of a Linux machine and even then only because I'm using non-MS-Standard Apps (OpenOffice, Mozilla, GAIM etc.). That's not a very likely configuration, though, and it is that likelihood that this article needs to address. That choice is based on a very simple analysis. I rarely if ever see an exploit on my Linux services (running or not). I get a DELUGE of attacks on my Windows services. I need little more information than that to determine that my Windows machines should be as far from my network perimeter as possible and that they should be as isolated as possible.
I was thinking much the same thing. However, if they also made these diskless thin-clients (why not?), they could save an additional $25 per seat. Remember, this is a school in Brazil, which is not exactly the wealthiest country. Sure, you're only saving about $150 per seat, but by 60 seats, that's $9,000, which ain't chump change in a country where the per capita GNP is $7,600.
In effect, imagine if you were building out a computer lab in the United States and doing this would save $44,763 or $746 per seat. In that context, this is a brilliantly effective idea.
You realize that without the people behind ICANN, IANA and IETF, you wouldn't have the protocols that make the internet possible and would still be dialing into BBS's, right?
Allllll those problems. Like, what, that the system was able to scale from 250 hosts in 1982 to 1,000,000 in 1992 to 171,000,000 in 2002 -- and it WORKED? Oh man, these guys were IDIOTS!
Perhaps because you could have it secured on a remote server that you could access from any other computer without having to install software or suck up limmited bandwidth with X-forwarding?
I like having my tools available wherever I am, not just on machines that I have control over. A JavaSSH applet in a private web directory makes it possible to get in and do anything from almost anywhere -- provided I can do it without X. The more console apps the better, IMHO.
Even if you essentially expect people work in the office, giving the option to work remotely will cut down on lost productivity due to sickness and absenteeism. Letting people get out of the office environment and still work will keep morale up and also help attract and retain good people. When a minor cold keeps someone out of the office, you won't have to lose that day of work. Also, if your personnel needs start to exceed your square footage, people can start working off-site entirely, coming in only for meetings.
I work for one company now that is entirely 'virtual.' Teams occasionally meet in person to stay on track, but then retreat to opposite corners of the country. The amazing thing is the office politics are essentially non-existent.
...because it is VERY standard practice these days to make it policy to give ZERO information on former employees except when requested in writing and returned in writing and limited to hire date, term date, title and salary. The larger the organization, the more likely it is to have strict information release policies.
Why people think the words of a complete stranger are of any value in establishing the worth of a potential employee says volumes about the logical faculties of hiring managers. If you check references, do you ask that reference for a reference? I doubt it. Hell, a good reference even from a CEO could mean someone was a hopeless sycophant and golf buddy. A bad reference could mean an incompetent manager or executive covered their ass by either driving off or firing a valuable employee. How do you know the difference? You make a character judgment based on YOUR experience with the person. Why not just run with it in the first place rather than muck it up with the opinions of faceless people you've never met?
There's another other side to that: personal matters are none of their business.
Asking personal questions in a professional interview is unprofessional and, depending on the content (and location), can be illegal. You're not hiring a best buddie or a whore. Whether or not you would "hang out" together should not be part of the equation. You want the person who can best do the job and do it with a professional attitude -- which means a neutrality and distance that makes YOUR personal attributes as irrelevant to them as theirs should be to you.
By opening the pandoras box of private minutiae, you run the risk of bringing information to the table that identifies a person as a member of a protected class. For instance, where I live, in addition to the normal bits outlined by the US-EEOC, political affiliation and sexual orientation are protected. Asking "so, what do you do on the weekends" might result in "I go to Log Cabin Republican meetings after Temple." Great, now if you pass that person up, you've got a discrimination trifecta. A company I work for was very happy to find out my political affiliation. Fortunately for me, it's the same as 100% of the company. Unfortunately for them, they're RIPE for a lawsuit as a result. Even if you don't care, you don't want to know because once you know, you're open to accusations of bias.
But, legal risk-aversion shouldn't be your primary reason for keeping your nose out of the personal details of a potential co-worker. It's just basic professional etiquette. If it's not business, it's none of yours, capisce?
Bull. Although pixels are in a uniform matrix and film grain is randomly distributed, thus it takes a lower density of grain in the emulsion to achieve a particular level of visual quality than uniform pixels, that density still matters no matter how it is arranged. If it didn't, professionals would be using KodakDisc film instead of 120.
Yeah, there are many, many factors that go into making a good image, the greatest of which is the quality of the optics, but to say that the number of pixels doesn't matter is a load of crap.
This is about as much an advance of science as the "Peppers Ghost" illusion. It's pretty ballsy for an academic researcher to pretend that something that has been around since the invention of Scotch-Lite is a scientific achievement. This guy is laughing his ass off about as much as whoever came up with the Dihydrogen-oxide joke...
...just about any accredited university in the United States. The two years of liberal arts are required for federal funding. This is largely why American degrees take four years when the equivalent elsewhere is done in three. In the remaining two years, there just isn't much time to do anything substantial. It's the same for any bachelor's degree, from any university, in any country. It's just not as extensive as people like to believe and it is a self-reinforcing delusion. You want your degree to be worth something, so you're not going to go into an interview and say "boy, was that education worthless." Get a couple Yalies in the room and you'd think their liberal arts bachelor's degrees were a stack of PhDs and a a Nobel Prize for each.
It's called chance and a good gambler knows his odds. In the United States (by FAR the most violent northern/western country), robberies occur at a rate of 145.9:100000/year. Of those, 42.1% involve firearms and only 42.8% are street-crime. So, your chances of being mugged at gunpoint sometime this year are about 262:1,000,000. On any given day, that's 1:1,403,846. Now, murder at the hands of a stranger account for only 42% of all murders at a rate of 230:1,000,000 in any given year. Thus, on any given day, your chances of being mugged -- AND KILLED -- are 1:15,869,565. Basically one person in the combined populations of Los Angeles county and Manhattan is murdered every day. So, of the eleven people that are mugged at gunpoint out of those 15,869,565 people, one dies. If you happen to hit that 1:1,403,846 jackpot, you are still 1,100% more likely to come out alive than dead. That's how you "know what is going to happen." It's called probability. If you're basing your judgement on anything else, you are by definition being irrational.
France is one of the most prominent nuclear proponents on the planet, or haven't you been to the South Pacific lately? Their nuclear testing habits make the United States blush for godssake... to say nothing of their proliferation habits (Israel anyone? No, they didn't get 'em from US first, contrary to popular opinion).
Geezuz... Oppenheimer was more anti-nuke than France -- by a long shot.
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I started building out computers 20 years ago when components were so #$%ing huge and cast-iron that you'd have to be a total idiot to accidentally destroy anything. By the time a faulty heat-sink could destroy a system, I had built about a hundred of them, so I've yet to destroy a single machine by my own stupidity. Knock on wood, but there is something to be said for tinkering with something you don't mind losing before dropping $2k on a soon-to-be door-stop.
Definitely, though, the huge case advice should be heeded. Sooooo many problems can arise from that, not the least of which is, ta-dah, heat dissipation. To say nothing of proper (and improper) grounding. Finally, DON'T SKIMP! You're saving money on the labor, put it into quality parts -- especially cables (power/hdd/cat5 etc). There's no sense shorting out a $200 HD or $95 power supply, and potentially a $200 MB and $400 CPU, all over a 39-cent cable that you should have spent a buck on -- (or for that matter, the $20 power supply you should have spent $50 on)... and for the love of god, don't build this thing on the floor of your shag-carpeted living room walking around in new trainers, OKAY!??!
IIRC (IANA[A|L]), you _can_ deduct any and all expenses that are required by your job but which are not reimbursed. This is a ciritical finepoint, though, because if you are doing it out of the goodness of your heart, the implication they are giving, it may not be allowed and if significant enough, might land you with a disallowance and penalty by the IRS.
However, if you would have a cellphone and/or broadband anyway (generally, a safe assumption), it's a bit silly to start playing politics over the money. If your point is that you don't want to be on call, just say it and be prepared to compromise to the effect of "I can be available on Saturday afternoons if anyone needs me, but you will _not_ be calling me at church on Sunday or when I'm bathing/feeding/tutoring my kids on Tuesday nights, thankyouverymuch." They simply do not have the right to limitlessly disrupt your life just because they're understaffed and they need to know that. If they can't grasp that, it's time to polish the resume.
Bottom line, be honest with both your employer and the IRS. Of course, if you don't want to be interrupted getting smashed at the bar after work, you might want to fib a little. But then, if the job sucks so badly that you're at the bar getting smashed on a regular basis, you might want to rethink the 'ol career-path anyway.
No it IS the richest nation on the continent, but this is still a good idea because it is not a very rich country outside of Africa with roughly 1/3 the GDP per capita of most Norther/Western countries.
By the way, I have nothing but loathing for the likes of Newt Gingrich, but the content of my previous statement remains factual, no matter how much you or I would wish a different person was responsible.
Go click your own ideology, pal.
The satellite is used to study hydrology and desertification, which has a direct result on the quality of life of the poorest people on the continent.
South Africa is a developed country for godssake. It is not some primitive collection of mud huts. Go live there for awhile before you jump to such ridiculous conclusions.
You've obviously never studied at a southern African univeristy (FYI: the largest library in the entire southern hemisphere is outside of Capetown). They don't need computers? Hello, U. Stellenbosch has a freaking an orbiting satellite, buddy! That's right, THE UNIVERSITY has its own satellite, not the government, not TelKom or Vodafone, but the university. It took a computer or two for that to happen. Still, this makes sense and is a great idea regarless, but come on, can we get past the Sally Struthers starving-children-in-Africa motif?
They already do and Newt Gingrich spearheaded the legislation to make it possible to write-off 100% of the purchase price of 2yo machines when donated.
This is what we call a tautology.
In many places where "security" actually matters in a "Senators and Generals will come calling" sort of way, clearly places you have not worked, it is explicitly IT's job to make sure that the information systems not only work but are as secure as possible and that includes saying "no, you can't plug in an insecure WiFi AP, a 100GB+ portable drive, a DVD burner, or install all manner of SpyWare or your teledildonics rig no matter how happy a worker you would be if we let you."
Oh, touche, except for the fact that the IT department is charged with ensuring the reliability and security of the network. Who the hell else do you think would be charged with writing the relevant corporate policies? Facilities?
It's pretty clear some people have no clue whatsoever how corporate decisions are made if they think the CIO is not responsible for drafting and ensuring the proper execution of information management policies.
DUH.
How the hell is having an iPod _necessary_ to get your job done? How is taking anything off a corporate network and out the front door _necessary_ to get your job done?
"this may not be 'my network,' but it sure as shit isn't yours, either."
WTF? No, an internal network and everything on it quite certainly IS the company's property in so much as they are liable in many senses of the term for whatever happens on it and they have every right to determine everything that can and cannot be done with it. If that includes saying "no, you cannot pack in the ability to suck down 100GB of our data every day" then so be it. Really, in two weeks, an employee could rip down a terabyte of data through a USB drive. That amount of data being would require the burning of 1,538 cdroms -- 154 per day, which would be just a tad easier to spot than someone coming in, plugging in a USB hard drive and going about their work and casually unplugging it at the end of the day. Not good.
Deal with it.
Actually, the US requires a constant inventory of about 30 kilos of the stuff, which must be completely recycled roughly every decade, to maintain the nuclear arsenal. Over forty years, the cost is between $1B-6B depending on how it is produced. So say 120kilos for $3B, or about $25M per kilo, which is still pretty freaking expensive, but nothing that couldn't be attributed to a rounding error in the $2 Trillion federal budget.
c e= 0
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=831&sequen
That, and they also don't correlate the likelihood of the exploit to be running on any machine. The vast majority of the Windows advisories I've seen coming through CERT are for services that are on by default or outright integral to the OS. With Linux that isn't so. For instance, the only exploits my linux machines are vulnerable to are those related to SSH, so if it isn't knocking on port 22, it's not getting in. Okay, one machine also is vulnerable to attack on 25 and 110. That puts me at risk about every 18 months as opposed to every ten days. The primary point is that even if my most vulnerable Linux machine was compromised, it would most likely be contained and not spread to the rest of my network. Not so on a default Windows network.
The only way I trust my Windows machines to be even relatively safe from outside attack is if they are on the opposite side of a Linux machine and even then only because I'm using non-MS-Standard Apps (OpenOffice, Mozilla, GAIM etc.). That's not a very likely configuration, though, and it is that likelihood that this article needs to address. That choice is based on a very simple analysis. I rarely if ever see an exploit on my Linux services (running or not). I get a DELUGE of attacks on my Windows services. I need little more information than that to determine that my Windows machines should be as far from my network perimeter as possible and that they should be as isolated as possible.
Yes, for those of you who have been living without internet, television, radio or print media of any kind for the last year...
"You may have been wondering?!?!" No, no I have not, because it has been plastered across every major news outlet for at least six months.
But, erm, thanks for the "heads up." Geezuz.
I was thinking much the same thing. However, if they also made these diskless thin-clients (why not?), they could save an additional $25 per seat. Remember, this is a school in Brazil, which is not exactly the wealthiest country. Sure, you're only saving about $150 per seat, but by 60 seats, that's $9,000, which ain't chump change in a country where the per capita GNP is $7,600.
In effect, imagine if you were building out a computer lab in the United States and doing this would save $44,763 or $746 per seat. In that context, this is a brilliantly effective idea.
You realize that without the people behind ICANN, IANA and IETF, you wouldn't have the protocols that make the internet possible and would still be dialing into BBS's, right?
Allllll those problems. Like, what, that the system was able to scale from 250 hosts in 1982 to 1,000,000 in 1992 to 171,000,000 in 2002 -- and it WORKED? Oh man, these guys were IDIOTS!
Right.
Perhaps because you could have it secured on a remote server that you could access from any other computer without having to install software or suck up limmited bandwidth with X-forwarding?
I like having my tools available wherever I am, not just on machines that I have control over. A JavaSSH applet in a private web directory makes it possible to get in and do anything from almost anywhere -- provided I can do it without X. The more console apps the better, IMHO.
Provide a VPN.
Even if you essentially expect people work in the office, giving the option to work remotely will cut down on lost productivity due to sickness and absenteeism. Letting people get out of the office environment and still work will keep morale up and also help attract and retain good people. When a minor cold keeps someone out of the office, you won't have to lose that day of work. Also, if your personnel needs start to exceed your square footage, people can start working off-site entirely, coming in only for meetings.
I work for one company now that is entirely 'virtual.' Teams occasionally meet in person to stay on track, but then retreat to opposite corners of the country. The amazing thing is the office politics are essentially non-existent.
...because it is VERY standard practice these days to make it policy to give ZERO information on former employees except when requested in writing and returned in writing and limited to hire date, term date, title and salary. The larger the organization, the more likely it is to have strict information release policies.
Why people think the words of a complete stranger are of any value in establishing the worth of a potential employee says volumes about the logical faculties of hiring managers. If you check references, do you ask that reference for a reference? I doubt it. Hell, a good reference even from a CEO could mean someone was a hopeless sycophant and golf buddy. A bad reference could mean an incompetent manager or executive covered their ass by either driving off or firing a valuable employee. How do you know the difference? You make a character judgment based on YOUR experience with the person. Why not just run with it in the first place rather than muck it up with the opinions of faceless people you've never met?
There's another other side to that: personal matters are none of their business.
Asking personal questions in a professional interview is unprofessional and, depending on the content (and location), can be illegal. You're not hiring a best buddie or a whore. Whether or not you would "hang out" together should not be part of the equation. You want the person who can best do the job and do it with a professional attitude -- which means a neutrality and distance that makes YOUR personal attributes as irrelevant to them as theirs should be to you.
By opening the pandoras box of private minutiae, you run the risk of bringing information to the table that identifies a person as a member of a protected class. For instance, where I live, in addition to the normal bits outlined by the US-EEOC, political affiliation and sexual orientation are protected. Asking "so, what do you do on the weekends" might result in "I go to Log Cabin Republican meetings after Temple." Great, now if you pass that person up, you've got a discrimination trifecta. A company I work for was very happy to find out my political affiliation. Fortunately for me, it's the same as 100% of the company. Unfortunately for them, they're RIPE for a lawsuit as a result. Even if you don't care, you don't want to know because once you know, you're open to accusations of bias.
But, legal risk-aversion shouldn't be your primary reason for keeping your nose out of the personal details of a potential co-worker. It's just basic professional etiquette. If it's not business, it's none of yours, capisce?
But, the truth is, number of MP doesn't matter.
Bull. Although pixels are in a uniform matrix and film grain is randomly distributed, thus it takes a lower density of grain in the emulsion to achieve a particular level of visual quality than uniform pixels, that density still matters no matter how it is arranged. If it didn't, professionals would be using KodakDisc film instead of 120.
Yeah, there are many, many factors that go into making a good image, the greatest of which is the quality of the optics, but to say that the number of pixels doesn't matter is a load of crap.
Oh, by the way. THIS IS A DUPE, DAMN IT.
Google it
...just about any accredited university in the United States. The two years of liberal arts are required for federal funding. This is largely why American degrees take four years when the equivalent elsewhere is done in three. In the remaining two years, there just isn't much time to do anything substantial. It's the same for any bachelor's degree, from any university, in any country. It's just not as extensive as people like to believe and it is a self-reinforcing delusion. You want your degree to be worth something, so you're not going to go into an interview and say "boy, was that education worthless." Get a couple Yalies in the room and you'd think their liberal arts bachelor's degrees were a stack of PhDs and a a Nobel Prize for each.
It's called chance and a good gambler knows his odds. In the United States (by FAR the most violent northern/western country), robberies occur at a rate of 145.9:100000/year. Of those, 42.1% involve firearms and only 42.8% are street-crime. So, your chances of being mugged at gunpoint sometime this year are about 262:1,000,000. On any given day, that's 1:1,403,846. Now, murder at the hands of a stranger account for only 42% of all murders at a rate of 230:1,000,000 in any given year. Thus, on any given day, your chances of being mugged -- AND KILLED -- are 1:15,869,565. Basically one person in the combined populations of Los Angeles county and Manhattan is murdered every day. So, of the eleven people that are mugged at gunpoint out of those 15,869,565 people, one dies. If you happen to hit that 1:1,403,846 jackpot, you are still 1,100% more likely to come out alive than dead. That's how you "know what is going to happen." It's called probability. If you're basing your judgement on anything else, you are by definition being irrational.
Have a look:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr
France (nukes! bad!)
Are you HIGH?
France is one of the most prominent nuclear proponents on the planet, or haven't you been to the South Pacific lately? Their nuclear testing habits make the United States blush for godssake... to say nothing of their proliferation habits (Israel anyone? No, they didn't get 'em from US first, contrary to popular opinion).
Geezuz... Oppenheimer was more anti-nuke than France -- by a long shot.
Hahahaha, overrated before it's rated.
I LOVE THAT.
Gotta love academic egotism. Of course, if you deride academia, you've obviously never been in it... oh, so very, very to the contrary.
Bring on the scorn, babies, I'm shooting for "-5: Reality Check."