There are a lot of degrees between "Don't trust the US" and "Disconnect, entirely." Especially considering that data which is disconnected, but still in the US, is still a problem.
given the vast amount of digital leakage and other human errors, who are you really putting trust in? Well, if the servers are in Canada, it's still going to be a very long list.
If the servers are in the US, it's pretty much going to be the same very long list, plus the US government.
My guess here is that it's mostly going to be either the NVidia Linux drivers, or the DirectX-in-OpenGL implementation.
The only games I've tried to get working under Wine lately are a small 2D MMO called Nexus TK, for which performance hardly matters (but it's nice to be able to force it into a window), and Warcraft III, which has some hidden OpenGL mode, and works flawlessly once you put it in that mode.
For the most part, though, I have a few games that are worth booting into Windows for, and which I'll be playing for large amounts of time. And then I have a few games that work well enough under Wine. But most of the games I play have native Linux versions -- most recently, Penny Arcade's Rainslick Precipice of Darkness.
- can you run a windows installer and then run the installed program ? Integration is fairly good, for a single user. With the standard Ubuntu Wine package, you can double-click on EXEs to run them. Installers work fine, and at least on Kubuntu, they can install working shortcuts to your desktop, and the Windows start menu is under the K-menu, under "Wine" (so I can go K->Wine->Programs->Accessories->Notepad, for example).
- can you do this also if the installer puts some dlls in the windows system directory ? Wine lives in ~/.wine, with a fake C drive at ~/.wine/drive_c (by default). So I don't really see any reason this wouldn't work -- the DLL would go in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/wherever.
However, drivers won't work, for obvious reasons. In very few instances, there will be a separate project to wrap a DLL for Linux -- captive ntfs, ndiswrapper, etc -- but these are considered workarounds until a native, open Linux version can be written.
- what kind of programs won't work ?.NET ? ActiveX ? DirectX ? DirectX works fine, but won't be as fast as OpenGL. Don't know about ActiveX, but you can run up to IE6 under Wine, and (last I checked) you can use the IE7 engine in IE6 -- and, going the other way, Wine can embed a Gecko engine for when an app requests a web browser via ActiveX (for example, the MOTD on Counter-Strike servers is HTML).
Haven't looked into.NET in awhile. If it's a pure.NET project, there's a separate project for that: Mono. Because.NET is compile-once, run anywhere, like Java, a.NET app running under Mono should do about as well as it does under Windows. Because.NET on Windows is so tightly integrated, and makes it so easy to call out to native DLLs, many.NET apps don't work under Mono, and never will.
I believe there are voodoo ways of combining Mono and Wine, but I don't know how to do that. I don't know if Microsoft's own.NET runtime works under Wine.
- Photophop ? What's Photophop?
Seriously, look it up yourself: Most apps are listed at AppDB, and PhotoShop CS2 is listed as Platinum, which is the highest possible rating.
- How much of a performance hit do you take ? Again, look at AppDB. It depends on the app whether it will run at all, and how fast it will run. Some apps -- even some games -- run faster under Wine than under Windows. Some run slower. Most, especially office apps, have no perceptible difference, so I don't usually care to benchmark it.
For me, by now, the procedure for testing a Wine app is to first, try it on a clean ~/.wine (or set WINEPREFIX -- I actually regularly keep multiple Wine directories around) -- if it works in the simplest way possible, I'll do that. Otherwise, especially if it's a game (and especially if it's a Blizzard game, which defaults to DirectX but can be coerced into OpenGL mode), Google for that app under Wine, and check AppDB.
If I find a workable solution, I use it. Otherwise, I boot a real Windows, either natively or in a VM. I'm not a Wine developer, and I don't want to be.
I'm going to guess that most of the performance hit here is in the DirectX implementation, though I'm not sure. Are recent OpenGL games slower under Wine?
To take a much older example, Quake 3 Arena ran faster under Wine/Linux than it did under Windows 2000 (on the same machine), and the native Linux version was even faster than that. So any performance hit is really a particular implementation of Wine, combined with a particular app -- sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower, just like sometimes it works, and sometimes not.
I think its mostly because of some "hacks" used by lazy/clever/performance programmer, but therefore very intolerant to a "windows-like" environment. Do you have anything to back this up?
Because Windows itself is incredibly hackish, especially when it comes to backwards compatibility. If Wine was simply striving to be a good Win32 implementation, they'd be pretty much done already -- someone developing an app, from the ground up, to be able to run on Windows and Wine shouldn't have too much more trouble than someone designing a web app, from the ground up, to run in IE and Firefox.
But Wine strives for bug-for-bug compatibility. There are a lot of bugs in Windows, and a lot of apps depend on those bugs.
I hope Wine will get to the point, where it's influence will force programmers to stick to the specifications, as his/her boss is asking:" but will it also run under Wine???". That assumes something else -- that Windows sticks to the specs. On top of all of the above, Windows doesn't stick to the specs.
Also, chances are, QoSing BitTorrent down in that house will probably still let it run close to full speed, as there probably aren't another few hundred people trying to look at YouTube at the same time. Web browsing really dosen't take that much bandwidth.
Technically, _anything_ I programmed during work hours belonged to the company. So F/OSS was not an option. Well, you'd have to get it signed off on by the company in order to submit it back, but I don't see why they wouldn't. Short of that, technically, you are allowed to make a patch and sit on it, and have modified versions used internally -- I believe it doesn't count as distribution as long as it's within the same company.
Also, I'd check the language of that agreement. Could it have mentioned, specifically, programming done during work hours at the request of the company? Or something to that effect? Or does it specifically mention all "work" done during work hours -- thus implying that they own your Slashdot comments as well?
files leaving a personal workstation, etc. What about personal laptops? If not on the company network, what about disconnected, so
Never played WoW, though I doubt it would run through our locked-down firewall. If you can run your own proxy, you can probably setup a VPN, too.
IMO, most that are saying that have never done that for 12+ weeks. I've done it for at least 8 or so, but without the restriction you have that slacking is allowed, but programming isn't. If nothing else, an MMO is a decent time sink.
If the Angry Maintainer doesn't make you decide it's easier to fork than deal with him, then the Maintainer isn't Angry enough yet. Or the project isn't good enough yet, which is why all my new projects use things like Postfix and PowerDNS.
I was going nuts. I personally don't know how anyone can be at work for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and just "browse the web". As for things you may not have tried: Games that you won't run out of (World of Warcraft), TV shows (by the season), webcomics (with archives), The Daily WTF (with archives), some good books (or write some)...
As a programmer I actually want and need to... Program! It engages my brain and makes me feel warm and cozy. Open source projects. Or fun programming challenges, like the Perl Quiz or Ruby Quiz. Or your own one-man killer app.
I know the feeling, exactly. I rarely have a problem finding some programming project that'll take at least five or six hours. The thing is, most of them aren't actually things I'm likely to get paid for. So if you got paid to sit in an office all day, you had an opportunity to program anything you want, and that's the real shame of looking for another job.
After all -- do they give you notice when your going to be let go? Depends. Sometimes, yes.
My family owns a couple of businesses, when an employee gives notice -- we say -- thanks, the good news is you can start your new job early. Security escorts them out... Ok, stop right there.
Do you really want to leave that impression? You've trusted this person forhowever many years, and now you don't even trust them to find their own way out of the building?
Remember, employees can give references too. First day at the new job, if people start asking about my old one, I'd say "You know, it was great for awhile, but when I gave notice, they fired me. Can't really recommend them."
It also means that you're encouraging exactly the behavior you suggested -- no matter how high up or how important a particular employee is, they're much more likely to just quit than to give notice, even when you'd like a bit of notice, for a smooth transition -- close projects, etc.
It's a waste of money to pay someone who doesn't even want to be working for you. Maybe something better came along? I don't know about you, but while most jobs I've been at have been pretty good, if Google made me an offer, I'd be gone. That doesn't mean I have any beef with wherever I'm working at the time -- it just means I found somewhere better.
If your management is piss poor and you don't have proper documentation and SOPs then you place yourself at the mercy of your employees -- which is a very bad place to be. And if you do have proper documentation and SOPs, constantly enforced, then you place yourself at the mercy of your managers and process -- which is an equally bad place to be.
Find a balance. And remember, even if I am keeping documentation up to date, that doesn't mean spending a week or two reviewing it, or compiling a little handbook of unorthodox tips and tricks, is wasted.
If you don't trust your employees, don't hire them. Hire employees you can trust.
They're not screwing you, just protecting their interests because they do not know your intentions. Given that he's been working there for fifteen years, I kind of doubt his intentions would be anything but what he just described. Otherwise, why give so much notice?
You are leaving. The company is far less interested in what you can do for them in your last few weeks than they are in learning how to live without you. The two are related. From the original question:
I have a number of projects to complete, and had planned to document some of the obscure bits of knowledge I've gleaned over the past nine years for the benefit of my peers, so I figured that would give me plenty of time. That seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and much more useful than simply pulling the plug to see what breaks.
I couldn't stand the animation style. I didn't get very far in without giving up. Plus the irritant that the "episodes" were like 5 minutes long. I actually liked the animation style, but the episodes do assemble into something like an hour or so, which you can get via DVD (or Torrent).
In Mos Eisley, Amidala makes a huge deal that it's one of the last remaining planets where slavery is legal, the Republic banned it everywhere under its control. So were droids excepted from this law? It seems reasonable that droids might not be considered sentient life forms. Or rather, the attitude might not be reasonable, but it's plausible that Star Wars society might take that attitude.
From what I understood of that:
gentoo is the least geekiest source distro A source distro is geeky, full stop.
fact is, configurable doesent mean unusable for joe 6pack No, the two are orthogonal. Ubuntu is highly configurable, and usable for Joe 6-pack. I used Gentoo for at least a year or two before switching, so I know a bit about configuration.
this one sysadmin installed gentoo on the wifes laptop, and she aint complainin Wow, one anecdote. I totally believe you now!
For the record, some women -- wives, even -- are very technologically savvy. Also, once installed, anyone can use a Linux distro in the simplest sense (browse the web, etc) -- but was she updating properly, for one thing? Ubuntu will actually pop up a message to tell you about updates.
And you still haven't given me a particular reason I should want to use Gentoo.
There are actually more features in KDE4 than in KDE3 From a user perspective, no there weren't. There were no docs pointing me to config files, and there were pretty close to zero options for configuring things.
I realize there were some new features in 4 that weren't in 3, but you also managed to drop a lot of pretty basic features from 3.
what there wasn't in 4.0 were some highly visible features or GUI configuration for them in *plasma*. Oh, where do I start...
I ran a Wine app at some point -- possibly long gone now -- it installed icons for itself on the "desktop". On every boot, Plasma creates those icons. I can click the red X to remove them, but they'll only be back at the next login.
I did find an option to shrink the panel. Problem is, once it gets small enough, the K menu button actually wraps around and appears at the top of the screen. This causes a few other interesting problems.
Where's my keystroke to open the K menu? I like the new K menu as, say, an alternative to Katapult, along with alt+F2. But without a keyboard shortcut to open it (which even Windows has), it's useless. There was a similar lack of keyboard shortcuts elsewhere in KDE4, leading me to use the mouse far more than I should.
I could go on...
In short, it wasn't ready. Calling it a dot-0 release, and then telling us things will be ready in 4.1 or 4.2, is a very Microsoft thing to do, and is an insult to other projects which actually have all the functionality ready by the beta.
And calling me ignorant for not knowing things that only a developer could know doesn't help.
As I move from left to right, at about the middle of a character that character will invert. But, if I let off the left button at that point it loses the invert and that character is not among the highlighted. Either I'm not understanding you, or I don't see the same behavior. Letting off the left mouse button, while highlighting, leaves the highlight exactly as it was when I had it held down.
The Shift and Ctrl keys already have standard meanings for text mode and terminals (e.g. Ctrl-C and such). So that leaves the Alt key as a means to use other keys to jump to sessions. You've also got the Win/Super key, which is usually unmapped in GUIs.
A lot of those keys have various special meanings in the window manager. I guess what I need is a window manager that will let me bind every one of them to a different desktop, and let me do 63 or 64 desktops. I'm pretty confident something like that exists, or could be built reasonably quickly.
I guess the question here is whether you'd be able to deal with one giant tabbed terminal on one desktop, and a few others for X things -- it would mean two keystrokes to flip from X to a given terminal (one to go to the terminal desktop, another to select a session).
When I change desktops now in X, things get blanked out and redrawn. First, this isn't true of tabs in a Konsole -- those are instantaneous.
Second, I'm guessing Compiz would help with this, if you have enough machine to handle that many desktops. I don't ever remember anything being redrawn in Compiz.
It would be nice if X knew how to take advantage of large RAM video cards and cache all the various sessions in different parts of that memory. I'm fairly sure that's what Compiz and friends do. It uses more RAM (probably both video and system), and I'm guessing slightly more CPU (programs can never stop drawing the GUI, as they can't ever assume they're hidden), but it's pretty seamless.
But again, that's at the desktop level. Tabs at the application level can be faster. Even switching tabs in Konqueror seems much faster... But that's compared to KDE3's Kwin, which isn't as accelerated as KDE4 or Compiz.
And then I'd have to educate everyone in the lab about sftp. The horror!
Click here, click here, and done. Even easier on Linux -- type a fish URL into Konqueror, and done.
How'd you educate them about FTP in the first place, then?
Samba could work I guess, but I'm not sure if we're on the same domain, or if that even matters. Depends how secure you want to make it. Given that you're using FTP now, it would be pretty trivial -- just setup anonymous access with a password (a few clicks on any Windows server, and Samba is about as easy). It doesn't even need to be on the same subnet, just type \\1.2.3.4 into your file browser on Windows, and you'll connect.
And sometimes, the security of the host system is a lot more important than the security of the data. Setting up a read-only chrooted anonymous ftp server, something that's well audited like vsftpd or openbsd's ftpd, really can't be beaten. Given that any Samba server is going to support dropping to a user anyway, I think the only thing you've got on that is chrooting. Then there's scp/sftp, which is at least as audited, I would think.
FTP can be way better than SMB if say, the link dies at 699MB of a 700MB file. So can decent file utilities. SMB will let you seek, so, long story short, I can do this on Linux:
That assumes, of course, that the file is actually copied to the destination, and not to some temporary file which is nuked in the event of failure. But you could easily have the same problems with FTP.
Obviously it all depends on the platforms in use, the links' reliabilities, the links' speeds, the criticality of time, one's patience, one's pain threshold, etc. YMMV. much better ways of managing websites, I think SMB (or anything similar) is a lot more convenient than FTP.
That's not the point. I realize that your VPN may require per-user authentication to connect.
But what happens once you're connected? Anything on your machine can FTP to 10.1.2.3 or whatever. That's why you need a password on the FTP.
It means that you can actually use FTP, or Samba, or any other unencrypted protocol you like -- transmissions won't be intercepted, which is nice. But you still need per-user authentication for any protocol used on top of the VPN.
The "new" trilogy doesn't have a consistent villain, unless you count Palpatine. It does, however, have Palpatine as a hooded hologram, which works rather well, I think.
I don't know who invented Grievious, but I really really liked that character in Episode III and I think it would have been great if he was *the* villain throughout the trilogy. You'll like the Clone Wars cartoons, then. He was even more badass then -- by Ep III, he'd been severely injured.
Mitichlorians. Everybody's talked about this, but if your movie has magic (and, yes, the Force is magic), MAKE IT BE MAGIC! Don't try to explain it with science, or just looks stupid. Actually, I don't mind that. Given who knows how many thousands of years to experiment, I'd be disappointed if no one had ever found any kind of science related to the Force.
No, the problem I had with it is more the specific explanation of it, and the fact that it takes away a lot of the mystery of who gets to be a Jedi. Force sensitivity is no longer just a skill that some people might have a "knack" for, and others might train for. No, it's something predetermined at birth, and quite possibly hereditary.
That, and the Jedi Council, did a lot to completely switch the position of the Jedi -- in the original trilogy, they were a mystical, forgotten order, outcasts and completely unexpected. In the new trilogy, they're basically a branch of the Republic's military, and they're almost dogmatic.
It would have been nice if one of these movies explained some things. How come Gungans have no representation in the Senate? Simple: Planets are represented, not races.
Are droids slaves? Some appear to be free-willed, at least. Could be both.
Where does R2 keep the 24 new gadgets he seems to have every movie, and who refills his rocket-fuel? And more importantly, why does he never use any of them, except in the old ones?
That was one of the larger problems I had with it -- unavoidable, but still. The prequels had absurdly more advanced tech than the original series. There's an explanation for this, but it's still weird. I could accept it, almost... Except for the part where R2, who is in all of them, actually has fewer gadgets later on.
Oh, and the 'blasters'. So much better than the usual 'long beam of light' variety used in almost all other movies up to that time. I was with you up till this, but come on -- a laser pistol that shoots slowly enough to see it? And to deflect it with a laser sword?
Makes sense if you don't assume they were lasers, but it's pretty obvious that "laser" was the intended effect. And lasers would be a long beam of light, or more likely, a long invisible beam of light (in space).
Can't ask much, though, for a movie with sound in space.
I'd say you have an incredibly juvenile understanding of religion. Please, enlighten me.
We've had the Bible considerable longer than a couple of millennium, in one form or another. Estimates are between 6 and 10 millenium. Which supports my point, anyway, although I don't think you can be counting the whole thing, given Jesus wasn't even born that long ago.
Star Wars shaped the course of movie making history, but I think that the context being proposed is rather more broad than that...and considerably more ludicrous. See Scientology. That it sounds ludicrous (Xenu!) doesn't make it any less relevant.
He's a cookie-cutter con-that's-not-as-bad-as-everyone-tries-to-make-him-out-as. Those are all over the place in movies. Ok, first question: Which movies, before Pitch Black? I'm not sure one way or the other, but could he have created that genre?
He's a completely stock character that does more to reveal his not-so-badness, as opposed to a personal journey that marks a strong character development. I thought the "not for me" at the end was pretty compelling development. Maybe the character doesn't change, but we learn a bit more about him.
In fact, the people he beats consider themselves gods and he kicks their asses. Nothing in Pitch Black that happens, other than his sight, is anything that couldn't be done by a similar regular human. The same is pretty much true of all versions of Riddick -- in Chronicles, and in Butcher Bay.
Chronicles has human-like aliens dominating the universe with their superior technology and such, ghost-gods (Judy Dench), and all that, and an invading army of gods is stopped by one man with a dagger. First, I'd call those humans, not "human-like aliens"...
But if you'd care to point out any specific point at which it's implausible that one man with a knife (or a dagger) couldn't do that...
"He's the last of his race" explanation for his special powers just doesn't fly. If there was a planet filled with people like him Missing the point. He's the last of his race, but his only really supernatural powers come from the combined rage of the rest of that race. None of them (including him) would have had that if they'd survived.
and it only takes one to destroy an army of gods Except he didn't. He killed their leader, and by their law, became that leader. Most of the army is still alive, and is his to command. Which is actually a pretty nice place to leave the movie, especially if there's going to be a sequel.
Is it any less plausible than the story of Dune?
what would a small village of them have done? I got the impression that it was a whole planet. And we know what the Necromongers do to planets when they leave. Riddick is badass, but I doubt he can survive a nuke.
And no one changes. There is no development. Kyra, at the very least. Starts out cold-blooded hero, hating Riddick for what he's done, but she can't entirely let him go -- and either she's faking being brainwashed, or she finds a way to overcome that.
Too big a movie to allow a lot to happen to any one character, but it does seem like everything that could happen, did.
Riddick is about Richard B. Riddick, last of the Furyons, whose planet was destroyed by the Necromongers, a brutal group of crusaders who worship death and will either kill you or brainwash you as a method of "conversion". Riddick is hunted by a bounty hunter, escapes from a prison on a planet with extreme temperature differences (freezing nights and 700 degree days), and finally kills the leader of the Necromongers, thus taking their empire.
And I haven't even mentioned the Elementals, or Jack/Kyra, or the Necromonger ghost things (whatever they were called?)...
Pitch Black is about a bunch of guys, including convict Richard B. Riddick, who crash on an alien planet in which there's a bunch of monsters who can be hurt by light. The planet is in sunlight (multiple suns) all the time, except one day every 22 years, when it's dark (total eclipse). Today's the day, so our heroes run from the monsters, carry a lot of lights, and mostly get killed.
And I'm really not leaving much out there, I think.
I'll give you "better character development", partly because none of the characters existed before Pitch Black. But the plot doesn't even compare. Pitch Black is pretty much just a cheap thriller. A really well done cheap thriller, but still, at the end of the day, it's a bunch of guys stranded on a planet running from aliens.
I'm not sure I can summarize Riddick in one sentence like that. It's an epic story, set in a much larger world, with a lot more going on.
Still, the best was Butcher Bay. And it was a damned good videogame, too.
I want to see a big budget Joss Whedon franchise, starring Vin Diesel, with a game by Tigron... But hey, as long as I'm dreaming, I also demand a native Linux port! With source code! And 64-bit clean! And I want a pony!
It also is part of why I tend to ignore stuff like this. That page has fifteen different marks which could be used to indicate sarcasm. It's a bit early to pick one.
I'm usually competent at detecting sarcasm from context. The trick is to actually make it exaggerated enough that it can't be anything but sarcasm. This becomes a problem when a zealot might make the same statement seriously -- it is plausible that someone would have a spare Windows Server license to use for something like this, or that they would use their company's work servers to collaborate with their wife.
Slashdot Mirror
If the servers are in the US, it's pretty much going to be the same very long list, plus the US government.
Which is more secure?
My guess here is that it's mostly going to be either the NVidia Linux drivers, or the DirectX-in-OpenGL implementation.
The only games I've tried to get working under Wine lately are a small 2D MMO called Nexus TK, for which performance hardly matters (but it's nice to be able to force it into a window), and Warcraft III, which has some hidden OpenGL mode, and works flawlessly once you put it in that mode.
For the most part, though, I have a few games that are worth booting into Windows for, and which I'll be playing for large amounts of time. And then I have a few games that work well enough under Wine. But most of the games I play have native Linux versions -- most recently, Penny Arcade's Rainslick Precipice of Darkness.
However, drivers won't work, for obvious reasons. In very few instances, there will be a separate project to wrap a DLL for Linux -- captive ntfs, ndiswrapper, etc -- but these are considered workarounds until a native, open Linux version can be written. - what kind of programs won't work ?
Haven't looked into
I believe there are voodoo ways of combining Mono and Wine, but I don't know how to do that. I don't know if Microsoft's own
Seriously, look it up yourself: Most apps are listed at AppDB, and PhotoShop CS2 is listed as Platinum, which is the highest possible rating. - How much of a performance hit do you take ? Again, look at AppDB. It depends on the app whether it will run at all, and how fast it will run. Some apps -- even some games -- run faster under Wine than under Windows. Some run slower. Most, especially office apps, have no perceptible difference, so I don't usually care to benchmark it.
For me, by now, the procedure for testing a Wine app is to first, try it on a clean ~/.wine (or set WINEPREFIX -- I actually regularly keep multiple Wine directories around) -- if it works in the simplest way possible, I'll do that. Otherwise, especially if it's a game (and especially if it's a Blizzard game, which defaults to DirectX but can be coerced into OpenGL mode), Google for that app under Wine, and check AppDB.
If I find a workable solution, I use it. Otherwise, I boot a real Windows, either natively or in a VM. I'm not a Wine developer, and I don't want to be.
I'm going to guess that most of the performance hit here is in the DirectX implementation, though I'm not sure. Are recent OpenGL games slower under Wine?
To take a much older example, Quake 3 Arena ran faster under Wine/Linux than it did under Windows 2000 (on the same machine), and the native Linux version was even faster than that. So any performance hit is really a particular implementation of Wine, combined with a particular app -- sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower, just like sometimes it works, and sometimes not.
Because Windows itself is incredibly hackish, especially when it comes to backwards compatibility. If Wine was simply striving to be a good Win32 implementation, they'd be pretty much done already -- someone developing an app, from the ground up, to be able to run on Windows and Wine shouldn't have too much more trouble than someone designing a web app, from the ground up, to run in IE and Firefox.
But Wine strives for bug-for-bug compatibility. There are a lot of bugs in Windows, and a lot of apps depend on those bugs. I hope Wine will get to the point, where it's influence will force programmers to stick to the specifications, as his/her boss is asking:" but will it also run under Wine???". That assumes something else -- that Windows sticks to the specs. On top of all of the above, Windows doesn't stick to the specs.
He's not an ISP, so the same rules don't apply.
Also, chances are, QoSing BitTorrent down in that house will probably still let it run close to full speed, as there probably aren't another few hundred people trying to look at YouTube at the same time. Web browsing really dosen't take that much bandwidth.
Also, I'd check the language of that agreement. Could it have mentioned, specifically, programming done during work hours at the request of the company? Or something to that effect? Or does it specifically mention all "work" done during work hours -- thus implying that they own your Slashdot comments as well? files leaving a personal workstation, etc. What about personal laptops? If not on the company network, what about disconnected, so Never played WoW, though I doubt it would run through our locked-down firewall. If you can run your own proxy, you can probably setup a VPN, too. IMO, most that are saying that have never done that for 12+ weeks. I've done it for at least 8 or so, but without the restriction you have that slacking is allowed, but programming isn't. If nothing else, an MMO is a decent time sink.
Or educate yourself.
I know the feeling, exactly. I rarely have a problem finding some programming project that'll take at least five or six hours. The thing is, most of them aren't actually things I'm likely to get paid for. So if you got paid to sit in an office all day, you had an opportunity to program anything you want, and that's the real shame of looking for another job.
Do you really want to leave that impression? You've trusted this person forhowever many years, and now you don't even trust them to find their own way out of the building?
Remember, employees can give references too. First day at the new job, if people start asking about my old one, I'd say "You know, it was great for awhile, but when I gave notice, they fired me. Can't really recommend them."
It also means that you're encouraging exactly the behavior you suggested -- no matter how high up or how important a particular employee is, they're much more likely to just quit than to give notice, even when you'd like a bit of notice, for a smooth transition -- close projects, etc. It's a waste of money to pay someone who doesn't even want to be working for you. Maybe something better came along? I don't know about you, but while most jobs I've been at have been pretty good, if Google made me an offer, I'd be gone. That doesn't mean I have any beef with wherever I'm working at the time -- it just means I found somewhere better. If your management is piss poor and you don't have proper documentation and SOPs then you place yourself at the mercy of your employees -- which is a very bad place to be. And if you do have proper documentation and SOPs, constantly enforced, then you place yourself at the mercy of your managers and process -- which is an equally bad place to be.
Find a balance. And remember, even if I am keeping documentation up to date, that doesn't mean spending a week or two reviewing it, or compiling a little handbook of unorthodox tips and tricks, is wasted.
If you don't trust your employees, don't hire them. Hire employees you can trust.
From what I understood of that: gentoo is the least geekiest source distro A source distro is geeky, full stop. fact is, configurable doesent mean unusable for joe 6pack No, the two are orthogonal. Ubuntu is highly configurable, and usable for Joe 6-pack. I used Gentoo for at least a year or two before switching, so I know a bit about configuration. this one sysadmin installed gentoo on the wifes laptop, and she aint complainin Wow, one anecdote. I totally believe you now!
For the record, some women -- wives, even -- are very technologically savvy. Also, once installed, anyone can use a Linux distro in the simplest sense (browse the web, etc) -- but was she updating properly, for one thing? Ubuntu will actually pop up a message to tell you about updates.
And you still haven't given me a particular reason I should want to use Gentoo.
I realize there were some new features in 4 that weren't in 3, but you also managed to drop a lot of pretty basic features from 3. what there wasn't in 4.0 were some highly visible features or GUI configuration for them in *plasma*. Oh, where do I start...
I ran a Wine app at some point -- possibly long gone now -- it installed icons for itself on the "desktop". On every boot, Plasma creates those icons. I can click the red X to remove them, but they'll only be back at the next login.
I did find an option to shrink the panel. Problem is, once it gets small enough, the K menu button actually wraps around and appears at the top of the screen. This causes a few other interesting problems.
Where's my keystroke to open the K menu? I like the new K menu as, say, an alternative to Katapult, along with alt+F2. But without a keyboard shortcut to open it (which even Windows has), it's useless. There was a similar lack of keyboard shortcuts elsewhere in KDE4, leading me to use the mouse far more than I should.
I could go on...
In short, it wasn't ready. Calling it a dot-0 release, and then telling us things will be ready in 4.1 or 4.2, is a very Microsoft thing to do, and is an insult to other projects which actually have all the functionality ready by the beta.
And calling me ignorant for not knowing things that only a developer could know doesn't help.
I guess the question here is whether you'd be able to deal with one giant tabbed terminal on one desktop, and a few others for X things -- it would mean two keystrokes to flip from X to a given terminal (one to go to the terminal desktop, another to select a session). When I change desktops now in X, things get blanked out and redrawn. First, this isn't true of tabs in a Konsole -- those are instantaneous.
Second, I'm guessing Compiz would help with this, if you have enough machine to handle that many desktops. I don't ever remember anything being redrawn in Compiz. It would be nice if X knew how to take advantage of large RAM video cards and cache all the various sessions in different parts of that memory. I'm fairly sure that's what Compiz and friends do. It uses more RAM (probably both video and system), and I'm guessing slightly more CPU (programs can never stop drawing the GUI, as they can't ever assume they're hidden), but it's pretty seamless.
But again, that's at the desktop level. Tabs at the application level can be faster. Even switching tabs in Konqueror seems much faster... But that's compared to KDE3's Kwin, which isn't as accelerated as KDE4 or Compiz.
Click here, click here, and done. Even easier on Linux -- type a fish URL into Konqueror, and done.
How'd you educate them about FTP in the first place, then? Samba could work I guess, but I'm not sure if we're on the same domain, or if that even matters. Depends how secure you want to make it. Given that you're using FTP now, it would be pretty trivial -- just setup anonymous access with a password (a few clicks on any Windows server, and Samba is about as easy). It doesn't even need to be on the same subnet, just type \\1.2.3.4 into your file browser on Windows, and you'll connect. And sometimes, the security of the host system is a lot more important than the security of the data. Setting up a read-only chrooted anonymous ftp server, something that's well audited like vsftpd or openbsd's ftpd, really can't be beaten. Given that any Samba server is going to support dropping to a user anyway, I think the only thing you've got on that is chrooting. Then there's scp/sftp, which is at least as audited, I would think.
That's not the point. I realize that your VPN may require per-user authentication to connect.
But what happens once you're connected? Anything on your machine can FTP to 10.1.2.3 or whatever. That's why you need a password on the FTP.
It means that you can actually use FTP, or Samba, or any other unencrypted protocol you like -- transmissions won't be intercepted, which is nice. But you still need per-user authentication for any protocol used on top of the VPN.
No, the problem I had with it is more the specific explanation of it, and the fact that it takes away a lot of the mystery of who gets to be a Jedi. Force sensitivity is no longer just a skill that some people might have a "knack" for, and others might train for. No, it's something predetermined at birth, and quite possibly hereditary.
That, and the Jedi Council, did a lot to completely switch the position of the Jedi -- in the original trilogy, they were a mystical, forgotten order, outcasts and completely unexpected. In the new trilogy, they're basically a branch of the Republic's military, and they're almost dogmatic. It would have been nice if one of these movies explained some things. How come Gungans have no representation in the Senate? Simple: Planets are represented, not races. Are droids slaves? Some appear to be free-willed, at least. Could be both. Where does R2 keep the 24 new gadgets he seems to have every movie, and who refills his rocket-fuel? And more importantly, why does he never use any of them, except in the old ones?
That was one of the larger problems I had with it -- unavoidable, but still. The prequels had absurdly more advanced tech than the original series. There's an explanation for this, but it's still weird. I could accept it, almost... Except for the part where R2, who is in all of them, actually has fewer gadgets later on.
Makes sense if you don't assume they were lasers, but it's pretty obvious that "laser" was the intended effect. And lasers would be a long beam of light, or more likely, a long invisible beam of light (in space).
Can't ask much, though, for a movie with sound in space.
But if you'd care to point out any specific point at which it's implausible that one man with a knife (or a dagger) couldn't do that... "He's the last of his race" explanation for his special powers just doesn't fly. If there was a planet filled with people like him Missing the point. He's the last of his race, but his only really supernatural powers come from the combined rage of the rest of that race. None of them (including him) would have had that if they'd survived. and it only takes one to destroy an army of gods Except he didn't. He killed their leader, and by their law, became that leader. Most of the army is still alive, and is his to command. Which is actually a pretty nice place to leave the movie, especially if there's going to be a sequel.
Is it any less plausible than the story of Dune? what would a small village of them have done? I got the impression that it was a whole planet. And we know what the Necromongers do to planets when they leave. Riddick is badass, but I doubt he can survive a nuke. And no one changes. There is no development. Kyra, at the very least. Starts out cold-blooded hero, hating Riddick for what he's done, but she can't entirely let him go -- and either she's faking being brainwashed, or she finds a way to overcome that.
Too big a movie to allow a lot to happen to any one character, but it does seem like everything that could happen, did.
The plot? Are you serious?
Let me remind you...
Riddick is about Richard B. Riddick, last of the Furyons, whose planet was destroyed by the Necromongers, a brutal group of crusaders who worship death and will either kill you or brainwash you as a method of "conversion". Riddick is hunted by a bounty hunter, escapes from a prison on a planet with extreme temperature differences (freezing nights and 700 degree days), and finally kills the leader of the Necromongers, thus taking their empire.
And I haven't even mentioned the Elementals, or Jack/Kyra, or the Necromonger ghost things (whatever they were called?)...
Pitch Black is about a bunch of guys, including convict Richard B. Riddick, who crash on an alien planet in which there's a bunch of monsters who can be hurt by light. The planet is in sunlight (multiple suns) all the time, except one day every 22 years, when it's dark (total eclipse). Today's the day, so our heroes run from the monsters, carry a lot of lights, and mostly get killed.
And I'm really not leaving much out there, I think.
I'll give you "better character development", partly because none of the characters existed before Pitch Black. But the plot doesn't even compare. Pitch Black is pretty much just a cheap thriller. A really well done cheap thriller, but still, at the end of the day, it's a bunch of guys stranded on a planet running from aliens.
I'm not sure I can summarize Riddick in one sentence like that. It's an epic story, set in a much larger world, with a lot more going on.
Still, the best was Butcher Bay. And it was a damned good videogame, too.
I want to see a big budget Joss Whedon franchise, starring Vin Diesel, with a game by Tigron... But hey, as long as I'm dreaming, I also demand a native Linux port! With source code! And 64-bit clean! And I want a pony!
It also is part of why I tend to ignore stuff like this. That page has fifteen different marks which could be used to indicate sarcasm. It's a bit early to pick one.
I'm usually competent at detecting sarcasm from context. The trick is to actually make it exaggerated enough that it can't be anything but sarcasm. This becomes a problem when a zealot might make the same statement seriously -- it is plausible that someone would have a spare Windows Server license to use for something like this, or that they would use their company's work servers to collaborate with their wife.
Not smart, but plausible.