And in a related story, there have been rumors of a spike in insurgent activity on the US/Canadian border and the latest NIE contains information suggesting the native population's efforts to enrich uranium. Vice President Cheney is reportedly sending executive sales forces to the area but declined to comment citing national security concerns.
Back to you, Lasko.
You have a good point, the rest of the world is very fucked up. But that doesn't make it RIGHT. The whole argument about how bad Mogadishu is and how bad that guy get his head pounded is only solidifies a single point in the end:
that here in the U.S., "good enough" is having to face this kind of thing every day anyway.
What the hell happened to progress?
Just because other countries have a shitty way of life, you are saying we should sit down and take this kind of crap because we have it "the best"?
This kind of thinking is wrong, completely and utterly retroactive (or is it proactive?) to everything that has made this country what it is today: a nation of beer swilling SUV driving ass kicking meat eating gun toting nut bags that can do whatever the hell they want. To that effect the only way to move forward is to raise the bar, not accept the norm, if you get my drift.
We have put 16 T1s in 4u boxes that handle hundreds of thousands of incoming calls daily, each. Asterisk is beautiful and yes, ubiquitous enough to staff IT for it, but we are talking about the Sendmail + BIND of IP-PBX, not to mention the newly released database back end capabilities. The systems are not cheap, nor are the support contracts, but this is a relatively new technology and outsourcing is really the best way to go when you get a bunch of figureheads involved. If you want to pay a couple of internal lackeys to do the job then you will get that kind of liablity and reliability. Better for the market and the open technology to have VoIP specialized in the short term than to try to push the evolving needs of a given phone system on to a newcomer with a very steep learning curve.
Steadily we contribute to a massive knowledge base revising RFC's, protocols, interoperability standards, and marketability premise while walking the big line under fire from bigger iron and governmental agencies, threats of greasy palmed regulation, and the balance of overall OSS zen. With over fourty config files and an entire platform depenedent scalability, having someone come to your place and show you how its done is worth the money especially in this uncertain interim. I hate to sound like that but I'm in the fire day in and day out and I can tell you from experience that we put together some of the most heavily customized communication systems in Texas and are fast growing enough to realize that we do have a product to sell that is worth the cost of replacing million dollar PBX's, and then some. I was all for asterisk falling onto my desk where I used to work because I was going to be given the task of managing the CLI, but now that I have real time under my belt I don't know how the system administration could have made daylight for it without re-allocating allready precious and specialized resources, even in a multi-million dollar Open Source based operation. Seriously, my comment might wreak of FUD but geez man I'm allready preaching to the choir about it. To make a long story short, unless you got some guys that can really handle it just call us. Yesterday I had to tell some guy that didn't speak English that his Windows 2000 DHCP server went down and it wasn't because of Asterisk, the phones were fine, his XP desktops were just knocked offline, and I'm talking about a guy with a distribution warehouse full of Cisco refurbs.
This is ok if you don't mind not being able to cut and paste from the output. I just use a script with fluxbox that places these logs around the screen, removes the borders, etc., that way I can move them or resize them or whatever. root-tail is nice if you have 16 colors and no RAM.
K & R, Andy, the "Great Architect and Philosopher", and mostly, my nuts for making this happen. Only in the small universe that Google has become is this kind of thing possible. All companies started with a couple of guys who knew how to build something AND sell it, and, well, it has to become a pyramid at some point.
I always hated selling stuff because more often than not one must compromise moral standing to have the product appeal to and compensate for the insecurities and needs of the potential buyer. That is not to say that we are not good at selling things, or even being "face", it just goes to show that some of us perfer to sleep at night and look at ourselves in the mirror without disgust; hence the nature of Open Source. I know, I know, without salesmen we wouldn't be the great company we are. Blah blah.
It has to kick ass working there with that kind of weight. If I had a dollar for every time I had to live up to the mouth of some lying sales rep I'd have enough to buy myself one of those impossible systems I've built, and I only put up with that shit for a few months. But in the end it all boils down to me staring the salesman in the face saying, "If you are so fucking smart why don't you do it yourself?". I never got an answer back when I would ask. In fact, I usually got to take the rest of the day off.
The answer must be clear. Code monkeys are just that, but salesmen are a true phenomenon. I can only surmise that liars are very hard to come by these days and those who actually make the world go 'round are a dime a dozen. A true testament as to why we as a civilization are still around.
Ok so who's credit do you buy your house with? Do you have a new car? How did you get your electricity turned on? Have you opened a bank account recently? Have you applied for a credit card in the last 10 years? How about your driver's license and auto insurance, propert taxes and simple shit like getting diapers at wal-mart when you are out of cash. What are you going to do with bogus info to further yourself? This is the topic of the article. This post is fucking retarded. Im going to post "HOW CAN I HACK HOTMAIL" next and see what kind of responses I get.
...we need to extend the Bill of Rights to explicitly state that your personal information is part of your property and should be protected from search or seizure without probable cause.
The burden of proof falls between the consumer and the financial instituion, which is little more than literally something like IOS with its holes or the older kernels, or even Windows machines in the less responsible circuits. I can speak from experience when I say that the proliferation of spyware and the ease of setting up a dot-com over the net with stolen credit card numbers makes it all too easy to maintain and even automate systems of identity theft. It is not an individual 'someone is stalking me' type thing, there is no specific target; but thanks to operating systems like Windows it is all too easy to gain access to more than just your name, address, and ssn. This is just the little finger of organized crime and is such because it is considered petty and easily obtainable. The real money is in hiding it all.
Recent efforts to place authentication responsibility on the financial institution will, at any end, come back to the consumer. It will be up to the consumer to provide enough secret information about themselves in order to verify their identity which in turn relys on the security of the entire channel of communication. All of this from the microphone on the computer to the guy who sweeps the floor at some phone company, to the cable guy outside your house, and to the honesty of the police tapping your lines without a warrant these day. You could fall victim to this by running any kind of 802.11x, encrypted or not. Id like to say I am paranoid, but Ive had the displeasure of being the recipient of abuse@ for a large AS with more than a quarter of a million IP's. It gets pretty ugle and honestly folks, there is no end is sight as long as we cant fix the bugs in our own machines.
Oh shut up Andy. Insightful enough for this site, but what else are 'they' gonna do? Quit buying music? Good one Sony... just one more reason not to use Windows. I bet the BSA is REAL happy about THIS little debacle. Chalk up another one for OSS!
Seriously, if some yo-yo wearing a "Go Microsoft!" shirt approached me extolling the virtues of closed source and costly maintainability, all in the name of selling me software, I would probably be the last person they accosted with their moronic and highly unintelligent slant on how great Bill Gates is.
Now you might say that I am biased against Microsoft (where you would get this idea I don't know), but hey, consider that I have had to put up with wormy networks and teach people how to configure 14 different versions of Outlook for years. "Daaahhh.. I can't print!...". When I made my switch (mid 90's, thanks) I had to learn a little more (how inconvenient), but at least I have a lot of free time and cash now. You have to really admire an Operating System which you can set up and forget about for months if not years at a time. I know, very inconvenient.
The idea of sending out armies of college students to market their product is of course what one can expect from such an unscrupulous company. I wouldn't be suprised if Microsoft made these people tattoo the butterfly on their asses as a marketing ploy. At least the butterfly would get maximum exposure given the type of people who it would sport it... I know this one guy who uses his free time to write code to send to Microsoft as if anyone there likes him or even knows him. "Camel Balls" we call him, he walks around shoving his nuts out wearing pants that are too tight, ranting about how my firewall is pushing traffic out the wrong interface because someone told him how to use 'iptraf' and now he is a UNIX Expert. What a douche bag. Like alot of MCSEs he tries to tell me things about Linux and computers in general that have no basis in reality whatsoever. Incidentally he was incorrect about the firewall - he had no idea what he was looking at anyway.
The point is, whoever comes up to me better have a nice rack or I'll ruin their day. I'm just being honest. I don't like greedy companies and I can't stand people who support them for free. WTF is that??? Just give up your free time to work for Microsoft so they can make more money off of your dumb, broke ass. Give ME a break! At least OSS is given to the WORLD, not directly to some prick's pocketbook.
Warning: Do not mod me down or I will find you and hide a Windows ME box in the false ceiling on your network!
It isn't like Linux got to where it is today through tied selling (bundling), being subsidized by other business units, government mandates, being sold below the cost of production or anything else which might conceivably be called a flawed business model.
All the major distributions "bundle" software in one way or the other. Look at SuSE, you can install 20 GB of software by default. While this isnt "bundling" in typical context it still has the same taste coming out of your mouth.
As for corporate support, etc., SuSE is owned by Novell and in the future I wouldn't be a bit suprised to find more and more big companies doing what Novell has done. IBM is no stranger to the community as a whole, but the point is that Linux is just so much bigger than Microsoft from my perspective.
I am in no way arguing with you, I just wanted to back up what you said about the whole "business model" Linux has. Linux doesn't have one - its very hard to compare this to anything out there because at this point "business models" are independent of what software platform they use until you can crunch the numbers enough to calculate TCO on a per-endeavor basis. Until then, free is free, and the people who can implement free software are peering with those who write closed source in financial terms, the only difference is that companies like Microsoft profit from closed source coders and everyone else profits from shelling out a few bucks to pay someone to implement open source. This just goes back to the nature of Open Source - if you are implementing and need more features just get on IRC and add them like everyone else. If you are implementing closed source software good luck getting Microsoft to add a feature for you since it is illegal to alter their software.
If you can't make a living or profit from something, then find a new line of work or business.
The "software" I write is more of a system level interface to various services and how they interact. Managing things like group activity and payroll are done by taking bits and pieces of existing tools and cobbling together what I need along with substantial code of my own to make them interoperate. This is the beauty of OSS development and is something very painful on a closed source platform. The "business model" that is so "flawed" is the people who focus their efforts on large scale one-size fits all application suites like Microsoft.
That said I just want to point out we have two sides of this coin: application development and implementation. Its always going to take some smart people to implement the application, just as it takes smart people to write them - the difference is on Open Source platforms you have the ability to add as much functionality you need in order to completely change the software to suit your needs. Software developers who do nothing but write code are at the mercy of this kind of organization because eventually someone is going to pick up where they left off and improve upon it, having no more need for the developer.
In the same sense the implementer or sysadmin IS the developer. This is the way it should be, and this is the kind of "other job" people should be looking for. IMO. Sitting around in a think tank storming up code and features for something someone might need is just asking for it. Welcome to Microsoft.
Instead, a better approach overall might be to focus on the small tools and modular nature of the systems people need and provide interoperability between those tools. This is how UNIX was proliferant in the beginning and is the key to its success. I like the C language and all but even Torvalds himself once said his favorite "programming" language was bash of all things, and its easy to understand what he meant.
When you bring a Microsoft rep into your business for consultation and demonstration they eventually tell you how to mold your business to their software. This is counterproductive in many ways, some of which are regarding basic reliability of those individual applications, subsequent support, extensibility, and especially the life expectency of the system. All of these things are dependent on one point of potential failure: Microsoft.
By much contrast an OSS system provides the business with a completely different albiet more chaotic IT presence, but your well being is not left to that single point of failure. Moreover the bigger picture shows us that your business does not conform to the software, the software conforms to your business. It takes talented individuals to engineer this kind of system. This is the direction I foresee business software systems and job markets moving, and this article and the fact that I have a great job that I love are nothing but direct evidence.
I have a similar outlook. Our small TV is used only when hurricanes are in The Gulf, and I am one of those people who gets irritated easily when someone starts talking about some bullshit show they saw on prime time last night, and how oh-so-funny "that one part" was. It makes me nauseous, and I have an especially difficult time being nice to their dumb ass afterward knowing what species of moron I am dealing with. Fortunatly I don't have to work directly with customers any more (for obvious reasons).
Congress should spend all our money on whatever the hell they want since we are too lazy to do anything about it anyway.
I digress in only that this is a minor untruth. At any given moment there are hordes of people outside the Whitehouse protesting something or other, just not enough of them to do any good apparently - and I've seen a lot of people out there. Has anyone here heard of protesters actually getting their way? Shit no. Outright armed revolt is the only thing greedy politicians seem to understand because it is the one thing that can adversely affect their well being in the short term (no pun intended).
For all I care lawmakers can cross out the amendments of the constitution and articles of the bill of rights once a day starting tomorrow. Then in a couple weeks this bullshit will get old to make a difference in EVERYONE's life and we will all be motivated to perform our duty as citizens of this country: protect it. Until this happens the erosion of basic human rights will be a sad fact of life as newer and more obscene laws are passed leaving generations behind who remember what it was like to protect yourself from a coked-up cop and live to tell about it. This, only to bring forth generations who know nothing of the sort and are taught to behave like livestock even more so.
Beer Swilling, Big Mac Eating, Violence Glorifying Pigs. Is this what we really want our country to be full of? I dont know about you but Id like to see more people interested in the advancement of our race and society as a whole. Fat-asses...
So I just tell them to wallow in it while they can because sooner or later Uncle Scam is going to knock down THEIR door, not just those devil worshiping Marylin Manson fans or those Taliban Trainees with their skateboards and hats on backwards. Sure we need protection from Bad People, especialy those crazy enough to fly planes into buildings, but we need more protection from what could be called a "Corruption epidemic", and it all starts by putting an axe through the fucking thing.
I'll volunteer to set up a Mosix root server. Accepting donation via pay-pal ( 216.113.188.64 and 216.113.188.34, just in case;) immediatly... I'll need at least 1 OC48 to hold East Texas together. What WOULD it take to do that????
If this idea has a place in any shop its the big ones, and I would be willing to bet that is what the product is aimed at. Think about those crappy web hosting outfits that will slap whatever the hell they can find into a server. This would be great for those kinds of places because it might cut down on them having to buy newer shit. I worked at one where having boards like these would have been NICE considering how under-staffed we were - I would have drank alot less back then if I had the convenience of replacing just the board, or the chip, with whatever I could find in the mess. Man I hated covering for NOC duty... anyway, any bigger organization with a puckered asshole for management will find this useful in giving themself a raise. Just a shitty company making a shitty product for other shitty companies. Nothing to see here folks, move along...
As a side note I found a great place to work where things like this are out of the question. We buy top of the line parts for our devices and compromise nothing but our own effort to further the business.
"...if you're a contractor then your employer is not allowed to define the hours of when you work or don't work..."
Depends on the what the contract says, dude. I signed one for data cabling saying I'd be at work at 8 AM until the last light on the switch was lit - or until the boss gave in. Thats just the deal, and the money was almost worth getting home at 3 AM only to wake up at 7 to do it all over again. In the environment I work in now, which is VoIP Administration (Go Gentoo!), a contract would fit me very well but the people doing the hiring are smart enough to give me salary and expect me to get to work on time and leave when it is appropriate, which is usually up to me. I can almost schedule the time that I leave by adjusting the pace at which I operate and plan things throughout the day; something you might expect from a contractor;)
Its just been my experience that it depends on what kind of person you are and what kind of deal you are willing to sign. If the money is good and you can rock and roll with a keyboard and some crimpers, stay awake late and get up early, then a contract is the way to go if you can get it. In my case, personally, I grew a little tired of 80 hour weeks and kind of enjoy my desk job. It's about half the pay but it is far less than half the work.
Ask yourself this: What do you want and how bad do you want it?
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Why doesn't SCO just have the Federal Reserve bail them out. Dumbasses.
And in a related story, there have been rumors of a spike in insurgent activity on the US/Canadian border and the latest NIE contains information suggesting the native population's efforts to enrich uranium. Vice President Cheney is reportedly sending executive sales forces to the area but declined to comment citing national security concerns. Back to you, Lasko.
Amen, Brother.
What the hell happened to progress?
Just because other countries have a shitty way of life, you are saying we should sit down and take this kind of crap because we have it "the best"?
This kind of thinking is wrong, completely and utterly retroactive (or is it proactive?) to everything that has made this country what it is today: a nation of beer swilling SUV driving ass kicking meat eating gun toting nut bags that can do whatever the hell they want. To that effect the only way to move forward is to raise the bar, not accept the norm, if you get my drift.
No. The fact that he put Windows on it indicates a certain level of impairment. There should be a law against this kind of thing! The humanity!
Steadily we contribute to a massive knowledge base revising RFC's, protocols, interoperability standards, and marketability premise while walking the big line under fire from bigger iron and governmental agencies, threats of greasy palmed regulation, and the balance of overall OSS zen. With over fourty config files and an entire platform depenedent scalability, having someone come to your place and show you how its done is worth the money especially in this uncertain interim. I hate to sound like that but I'm in the fire day in and day out and I can tell you from experience that we put together some of the most heavily customized communication systems in Texas and are fast growing enough to realize that we do have a product to sell that is worth the cost of replacing million dollar PBX's, and then some. I was all for asterisk falling onto my desk where I used to work because I was going to be given the task of managing the CLI, but now that I have real time under my belt I don't know how the system administration could have made daylight for it without re-allocating allready precious and specialized resources, even in a multi-million dollar Open Source based operation. Seriously, my comment might wreak of FUD but geez man I'm allready preaching to the choir about it. To make a long story short, unless you got some guys that can really handle it just call us. Yesterday I had to tell some guy that didn't speak English that his Windows 2000 DHCP server went down and it wasn't because of Asterisk, the phones were fine, his XP desktops were just knocked offline, and I'm talking about a guy with a distribution warehouse full of Cisco refurbs.
This is ok if you don't mind not being able to cut and paste from the output. I just use a script with fluxbox that places these logs around the screen, removes the borders, etc., that way I can move them or resize them or whatever. root-tail is nice if you have 16 colors and no RAM.
This is about as cut and dried as it gets.
I always hated selling stuff because more often than not one must compromise moral standing to have the product appeal to and compensate for the insecurities and needs of the potential buyer. That is not to say that we are not good at selling things, or even being "face", it just goes to show that some of us perfer to sleep at night and look at ourselves in the mirror without disgust; hence the nature of Open Source. I know, I know, without salesmen we wouldn't be the great company we are. Blah blah.
It has to kick ass working there with that kind of weight. If I had a dollar for every time I had to live up to the mouth of some lying sales rep I'd have enough to buy myself one of those impossible systems I've built, and I only put up with that shit for a few months. But in the end it all boils down to me staring the salesman in the face saying, "If you are so fucking smart why don't you do it yourself?". I never got an answer back when I would ask. In fact, I usually got to take the rest of the day off.
The answer must be clear. Code monkeys are just that, but salesmen are a true phenomenon. I can only surmise that liars are very hard to come by these days and those who actually make the world go 'round are a dime a dozen. A true testament as to why we as a civilization are still around.
Why don't you spend 35K on someone to implement all the OOo you can stand.
The WWW per se was 'inveneted' at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee. Details here.
Ok so who's credit do you buy your house with? Do you have a new car? How did you get your electricity turned on? Have you opened a bank account recently? Have you applied for a credit card in the last 10 years? How about your driver's license and auto insurance, propert taxes and simple shit like getting diapers at wal-mart when you are out of cash. What are you going to do with bogus info to further yourself? This is the topic of the article. This post is fucking retarded. Im going to post "HOW CAN I HACK HOTMAIL" next and see what kind of responses I get.
Recent efforts to place authentication responsibility on the financial institution will, at any end, come back to the consumer. It will be up to the consumer to provide enough secret information about themselves in order to verify their identity which in turn relys on the security of the entire channel of communication. All of this from the microphone on the computer to the guy who sweeps the floor at some phone company, to the cable guy outside your house, and to the honesty of the police tapping your lines without a warrant these day. You could fall victim to this by running any kind of 802.11x, encrypted or not. Id like to say I am paranoid, but Ive had the displeasure of being the recipient of abuse@ for a large AS with more than a quarter of a million IP's. It gets pretty ugle and honestly folks, there is no end is sight as long as we cant fix the bugs in our own machines.
I agree. Next he can invest 75% of his fortume into fighting the diseases his and other proprietary operating systems [IOS] induce into the Internet.
Oh shut up Andy. Insightful enough for this site, but what else are 'they' gonna do? Quit buying music? Good one Sony... just one more reason not to use Windows. I bet the BSA is REAL happy about THIS little debacle. Chalk up another one for OSS!
Give me Monolithic Kernels or give me death!!!
Now you might say that I am biased against Microsoft (where you would get this idea I don't know), but hey, consider that I have had to put up with wormy networks and teach people how to configure 14 different versions of Outlook for years. "Daaahhh.. I can't print! ...". When I made my switch (mid 90's, thanks) I had to learn a little more (how inconvenient), but at least I have a lot of free time and cash now. You have to really admire an Operating System which you can set up and forget about for months if not years at a time. I know, very inconvenient.
The idea of sending out armies of college students to market their product is of course what one can expect from such an unscrupulous company. I wouldn't be suprised if Microsoft made these people tattoo the butterfly on their asses as a marketing ploy. At least the butterfly would get maximum exposure given the type of people who it would sport it... I know this one guy who uses his free time to write code to send to Microsoft as if anyone there likes him or even knows him. "Camel Balls" we call him, he walks around shoving his nuts out wearing pants that are too tight, ranting about how my firewall is pushing traffic out the wrong interface because someone told him how to use 'iptraf' and now he is a UNIX Expert. What a douche bag. Like alot of MCSEs he tries to tell me things about Linux and computers in general that have no basis in reality whatsoever. Incidentally he was incorrect about the firewall - he had no idea what he was looking at anyway.
The point is, whoever comes up to me better have a nice rack or I'll ruin their day. I'm just being honest. I don't like greedy companies and I can't stand people who support them for free. WTF is that??? Just give up your free time to work for Microsoft so they can make more money off of your dumb, broke ass. Give ME a break! At least OSS is given to the WORLD, not directly to some prick's pocketbook.
Warning: Do not mod me down or I will find you and hide a Windows ME box in the false ceiling on your network!
All the major distributions "bundle" software in one way or the other. Look at SuSE, you can install 20 GB of software by default. While this isnt "bundling" in typical context it still has the same taste coming out of your mouth.
As for corporate support, etc., SuSE is owned by Novell and in the future I wouldn't be a bit suprised to find more and more big companies doing what Novell has done. IBM is no stranger to the community as a whole, but the point is that Linux is just so much bigger than Microsoft from my perspective.
I am in no way arguing with you, I just wanted to back up what you said about the whole "business model" Linux has. Linux doesn't have one - its very hard to compare this to anything out there because at this point "business models" are independent of what software platform they use until you can crunch the numbers enough to calculate TCO on a per-endeavor basis. Until then, free is free, and the people who can implement free software are peering with those who write closed source in financial terms, the only difference is that companies like Microsoft profit from closed source coders and everyone else profits from shelling out a few bucks to pay someone to implement open source. This just goes back to the nature of Open Source - if you are implementing and need more features just get on IRC and add them like everyone else. If you are implementing closed source software good luck getting Microsoft to add a feature for you since it is illegal to alter their software.
The "software" I write is more of a system level interface to various services and how they interact. Managing things like group activity and payroll are done by taking bits and pieces of existing tools and cobbling together what I need along with substantial code of my own to make them interoperate. This is the beauty of OSS development and is something very painful on a closed source platform. The "business model" that is so "flawed" is the people who focus their efforts on large scale one-size fits all application suites like Microsoft.
That said I just want to point out we have two sides of this coin: application development and implementation. Its always going to take some smart people to implement the application, just as it takes smart people to write them - the difference is on Open Source platforms you have the ability to add as much functionality you need in order to completely change the software to suit your needs. Software developers who do nothing but write code are at the mercy of this kind of organization because eventually someone is going to pick up where they left off and improve upon it, having no more need for the developer.
In the same sense the implementer or sysadmin IS the developer. This is the way it should be, and this is the kind of "other job" people should be looking for. IMO. Sitting around in a think tank storming up code and features for something someone might need is just asking for it. Welcome to Microsoft.
Instead, a better approach overall might be to focus on the small tools and modular nature of the systems people need and provide interoperability between those tools. This is how UNIX was proliferant in the beginning and is the key to its success. I like the C language and all but even Torvalds himself once said his favorite "programming" language was bash of all things, and its easy to understand what he meant.
When you bring a Microsoft rep into your business for consultation and demonstration they eventually tell you how to mold your business to their software. This is counterproductive in many ways, some of which are regarding basic reliability of those individual applications, subsequent support, extensibility, and especially the life expectency of the system. All of these things are dependent on one point of potential failure: Microsoft.
By much contrast an OSS system provides the business with a completely different albiet more chaotic IT presence, but your well being is not left to that single point of failure. Moreover the bigger picture shows us that your business does not conform to the software, the software conforms to your business. It takes talented individuals to engineer this kind of system. This is the direction I foresee business software systems and job markets moving, and this article and the fact that I have a great job that I love are nothing but direct evidence.
Congress should spend all our money on whatever the hell they want since we are too lazy to do anything about it anyway.
I digress in only that this is a minor untruth. At any given moment there are hordes of people outside the Whitehouse protesting something or other, just not enough of them to do any good apparently - and I've seen a lot of people out there. Has anyone here heard of protesters actually getting their way? Shit no. Outright armed revolt is the only thing greedy politicians seem to understand because it is the one thing that can adversely affect their well being in the short term (no pun intended).
For all I care lawmakers can cross out the amendments of the constitution and articles of the bill of rights once a day starting tomorrow. Then in a couple weeks this bullshit will get old to make a difference in EVERYONE's life and we will all be motivated to perform our duty as citizens of this country: protect it. Until this happens the erosion of basic human rights will be a sad fact of life as newer and more obscene laws are passed leaving generations behind who remember what it was like to protect yourself from a coked-up cop and live to tell about it. This, only to bring forth generations who know nothing of the sort and are taught to behave like livestock even more so.
Beer Swilling, Big Mac Eating, Violence Glorifying Pigs. Is this what we really want our country to be full of? I dont know about you but Id like to see more people interested in the advancement of our race and society as a whole. Fat-asses...
So I just tell them to wallow in it while they can because sooner or later Uncle Scam is going to knock down THEIR door, not just those devil worshiping Marylin Manson fans or those Taliban Trainees with their skateboards and hats on backwards. Sure we need protection from Bad People, especialy those crazy enough to fly planes into buildings, but we need more protection from what could be called a "Corruption epidemic", and it all starts by putting an axe through the fucking thing.
I'll volunteer to set up a Mosix root server. Accepting donation via pay-pal ( 216.113.188.64 and 216.113.188.34, just in case ;) immediatly... I'll need at least 1 OC48 to hold East Texas together. What WOULD it take to do that????
As a side note I found a great place to work where things like this are out of the question. We buy top of the line parts for our devices and compromise nothing but our own effort to further the business.
If it is really Ramen noodles I bet they are probably still good.
Depends on the what the contract says, dude. I signed one for data cabling saying I'd be at work at 8 AM until the last light on the switch was lit - or until the boss gave in. Thats just the deal, and the money was almost worth getting home at 3 AM only to wake up at 7 to do it all over again. In the environment I work in now, which is VoIP Administration (Go Gentoo!), a contract would fit me very well but the people doing the hiring are smart enough to give me salary and expect me to get to work on time and leave when it is appropriate, which is usually up to me. I can almost schedule the time that I leave by adjusting the pace at which I operate and plan things throughout the day; something you might expect from a contractor ;)
Its just been my experience that it depends on what kind of person you are and what kind of deal you are willing to sign. If the money is good and you can rock and roll with a keyboard and some crimpers, stay awake late and get up early, then a contract is the way to go if you can get it. In my case, personally, I grew a little tired of 80 hour weeks and kind of enjoy my desk job. It's about half the pay but it is far less than half the work.
Ask yourself this: What do you want and how bad do you want it?
3 people shocked to learn of Microsoft copying other people's ideas.