Lawyers use Word Perfect because it counts words properly, unlike Word which excludes footnotes etc. When a judge says he wants a 2000 word brief he does not mean 2000 words plus 500 words of footnotes. Word can be configured to do this properly but by default it does not.
See here for full details.
April Fools jokes work wonderfully when the people reading them assume they are jokes when the whole joke is that they're all real. Go search Amazon, trust me on this. As far as I can tell not one story on slashdot today has been fake.
And yet still, every piece of the puzzle is simple as can be. Google realizes that each piece is its own piece and should be used independantly of the others without sucking the user to a page he didn't intend to visit.
A perfect example of Unix design methodology as applied to a website:)
Linus Torvalds set out simply to add functionality to his own version of Minix (the copyright allows use to do so for your own personal use, but you cannot sell or distibute it).
Untrue, Linus originally wrote a terminal emulator to access the university Unix box, it was after expanding this that he realised he had effectively started his own OS. It was driven by the limited nature of Minix but was not an expansion of Minix in any way, originally it was just meant to be a terminal emulator.
Torvalds had originally called it freax, for "`free' + `freak' + the obligatory `-x'. The operator of the FTP server where Linus' new kernel made its debut didn't like the name and simply called it Linux (Linus + Unix). People seemed to like the name so it stuck.
Close, Linus originally called it Linux on his own system but decided to rename it for release. Ari Lemmke decided the new name sucked and kept the directory on ftp.funet.fi as linux
Intel's "wireless everywhere" ads don't mention the need for a base station, not the likelyhood that such a station won't be found on a freaking mountain for that matter, despite what some of the ads imply.
Depends if the mountain in question is Everest or not;)
I think Yahoo! would object to being described as a small site. Devshed network runs on a slightly customised version of the Mambo Open Source CMS (PHP/MySQL).
Never mind Joe Random User, I run Gentoo and know my way round a C compiler and I want a graphical interface too! Just because I can use the command line doesn't mean I don't want to be able to clickety click and have it happen.
My IT department doesn't work like that. They either quote a ridiculous level of effort or just say no. On some projects I waste more time working around IT than I do on getting actual work done.
This is where I hate some IT departments:(. In some cases it may take a ridiculous amout of effort to implement a request but in the end, that's what we get paid for. We are there to balance the needs of users with the integrity of the system. We are not there to things hard, we are there to make IT users as productive as possible without compromising system integrity.
My job is front line support, unlike most departments we work completely unscripted. Training consists of about 2 days learning how things work in our company and how to use the call logging software then you're live. If you can't deal with that then you aren't going to get the job anyway, we employ people who can deal with problems by thinking, not by stepping through a preset fault resolution script. Of course this means we pay well above the industry average (about 40-50% above) for tech support staff (admittedly this still doesn't make a stunning wage but the average is dragged down by the call centres staffed by trained monkeys) but we believe the level of support we can provide means it's worth it.
A good sysadmin... one would never know he/she exists. She/he would not be in the way in the first place.
A good sysadmin would have documented the decision not to grant root access along with the reasons and can expect backup all the way. Not being able to find them is not an issue in our company, you can always find at least one of the systems team and any idiot can look up the support ticket (note: this may not apply to smaller companies, the one I work for provides desktop support to around 7000 users and maintains a global network so it's not like there's a lone systems person who can just vanish).
Allah forfend that anyone actually use a system in a way not forseen by the all knowing IT dept.
If we don't have a policy on your unforseen use I can guarantee we will by tomorrow, we have procedures to deal with that. Admittedly sometimes the answer will be along the lines of "No, we won't open port 6667 outgoing so you can use IRC. Not even from just your MAC address." but we attempt to accommodate and reasonable request. In the IRC case the potential security implications outweigh the need of a developer to access an IRC channel. Use Google and deal with it.
In the case of new software it must be tested, authorised for use on the network, a diff of the system pre/post install made (for asset management) and instructions on default configuration for our network issued to the engineers nationwide. This will take a day or two so you can't have your new software right now but the SLA on software installs is 5 days so we'll still get it there on time.
We can't forsee every possibility but we can have procedures in place for dealing with requests that fall outside the spec. The minor inconvenience caused by working within these procedures is more than made up for by having a network that we know works reliably and the response time of our engineers to real problems is faster because we aren't dealing with machines that the user has managed to make a mess of by tinkering or installing potentially dodgy software.
This was in response to an earlier statement that this effort/system was like leaving a comment card at restaurants. Well, it's not.
Yes it is. Even writing a comment card at a restaurant has certain minimum requirements (basic literacy for one), in the case of KQT the base level for being able to contribute intelligently (as opposed to "This sucks, you guys are crap") are just a little higher but still fall far short of the knowledge required for code contributions to (for example) the KDE core.
As someone who is very in tune with Gentoo and KDE, I can safely say you have no idea what you're talking about.
As someone who installed Gentoo from scratch two weeks ago I can assure you there most definitely is (was?) a problem with libfam-2.7.0 (most ran into this while emerging KDE 3.2) and the OP was correct. See the Gentoo forum thread.
Completely off topic but I'm a huge Mark Twain fan. His writings of the time he spent in Heidelberg (A Tramp Abroad) tickled my sense of humour more than a little:)
Slashdot Mirror
Lawyers use Word Perfect because it counts words properly, unlike Word which excludes footnotes etc. When a judge says he wants a 2000 word brief he does not mean 2000 words plus 500 words of footnotes. Word can be configured to do this properly but by default it does not. See here for full details.
April Fools jokes work wonderfully when the people reading them assume they are jokes when the whole joke is that they're all real. Go search Amazon, trust me on this. As far as I can tell not one story on slashdot today has been fake.
That phone would be a Siemens S55 then.
A perfect example of Unix design methodology as applied to a website :)
When you have a user ID as high as mine it gets a little difficult finding a name not taken ;)
Untrue, Linus originally wrote a terminal emulator to access the university Unix box, it was after expanding this that he realised he had effectively started his own OS. It was driven by the limited nature of Minix but was not an expansion of Minix in any way, originally it was just meant to be a terminal emulator.
Close, Linus originally called it Linux on his own system but decided to rename it for release. Ari Lemmke decided the new name sucked and kept the directory on ftp.funet.fi as linux
Depends if the mountain in question is Everest or not ;)
I thought this was funny until you posted that, then I started thinking it wasn't actually a bad idea ;)
I think Yahoo! would object to being described as a small site. Devshed network runs on a slightly customised version of the Mambo Open Source CMS (PHP/MySQL).
Speaking of SCO (and similarly off topic) Simon Travaglia has written an equally hilarious followup to the BOFH episode that had NOTHING to do with SCO, it was all coincidence! Honest!
That's trademarks, not copyright.
At this point rms would say, "I don't do open dource, I do free software". Open source is a brand, free software is the ideal.
You are completely correct but I'm still amused that it ended up at -1 Interesting, not seen one of those before.
A Red Dwarf book possibly? Certainly that was the mission of the Nova 5 (Kryten's original ship).
Never mind Joe Random User, I run Gentoo and know my way round a C compiler and I want a graphical interface too! Just because I can use the command line doesn't mean I don't want to be able to clickety click and have it happen.
This is where I hate some IT departments :(. In some cases it may take a ridiculous amout of effort to implement a request but in the end, that's what we get paid for. We are there to balance the needs of users with the integrity of the system. We are not there to things hard, we are there to make IT users as productive as possible without compromising system integrity.
My job is front line support, unlike most departments we work completely unscripted. Training consists of about 2 days learning how things work in our company and how to use the call logging software then you're live. If you can't deal with that then you aren't going to get the job anyway, we employ people who can deal with problems by thinking, not by stepping through a preset fault resolution script. Of course this means we pay well above the industry average (about 40-50% above) for tech support staff (admittedly this still doesn't make a stunning wage but the average is dragged down by the call centres staffed by trained monkeys) but we believe the level of support we can provide means it's worth it.
We are all here to help and we're good at it.
A good sysadmin would have documented the decision not to grant root access along with the reasons and can expect backup all the way. Not being able to find them is not an issue in our company, you can always find at least one of the systems team and any idiot can look up the support ticket (note: this may not apply to smaller companies, the one I work for provides desktop support to around 7000 users and maintains a global network so it's not like there's a lone systems person who can just vanish).
If we don't have a policy on your unforseen use I can guarantee we will by tomorrow, we have procedures to deal with that. Admittedly sometimes the answer will be along the lines of "No, we won't open port 6667 outgoing so you can use IRC. Not even from just your MAC address." but we attempt to accommodate and reasonable request. In the IRC case the potential security implications outweigh the need of a developer to access an IRC channel. Use Google and deal with it.
In the case of new software it must be tested, authorised for use on the network, a diff of the system pre/post install made (for asset management) and instructions on default configuration for our network issued to the engineers nationwide. This will take a day or two so you can't have your new software right now but the SLA on software installs is 5 days so we'll still get it there on time.
We can't forsee every possibility but we can have procedures in place for dealing with requests that fall outside the spec. The minor inconvenience caused by working within these procedures is more than made up for by having a network that we know works reliably and the response time of our engineers to real problems is faster because we aren't dealing with machines that the user has managed to make a mess of by tinkering or installing potentially dodgy software.
Depends if he wants to keep his job or not.
Yes it is. Even writing a comment card at a restaurant has certain minimum requirements (basic literacy for one), in the case of KQT the base level for being able to contribute intelligently (as opposed to "This sucks, you guys are crap") are just a little higher but still fall far short of the knowledge required for code contributions to (for example) the KDE core.
Completely off topic but I'm a huge Mark Twain fan. His writings of the time he spent in Heidelberg (A Tramp Abroad) tickled my sense of humour more than a little :)
This IS Steve Jobs grand vision! Original is here.
Congratulations on your +5 High Quality Flamebait :)
That may be the single funniest IRC log ever :)