It's terminally out of print, but it's worth checking out Level Seven by Mordecai Roshwald. It's set in an underground government base. The missiles fly, everything is shut down - and slowly, the top levels of the base stop responding, one by one. A downer, but one of the great classics of cold-war era nuclear apocalypse sci-fi.
On a lighter note, check out the novels of Karel apek, particularly The War of the Newts and The Absolute at Large. They're both humorous apocalypse stories - apek wrote largely between WW1 and WW2, and he has a really interesting take on the industrial acceleration of the time.
The Absolute at Large is back in print now, but a version based on the out of copyright first edition is available at http://davemayo.is-a-geek.org/projects.php#literary . Link is to my personal website - I'm the one who put together the edition. It's available in ePub (ASCII and Unicode) and mobi, although the mobi is just a conversion through Calibre. The text should be fairly good - I've gone through it several times, correcting it against the physical copy.
You're not worth arguing with. I hope you have a nice day, and stop defending misogyny, but you're not very effective at it, so it's not a terribly large concern to me.
I've certainly seen other things on slashdot - but what the poster above was discussing, and what you were defending, was the "The frat club atmosphere." If you go even farther up the chain, you can see that that poster was responding to the problem of anything said by an acknowledged woman immediately turning into demeaning sexual comments.
If the behavior you're defending is sexually harassing women on forums, damn right I demand you change. Because that's not acceptable behavior - and yes, it is misogyny. Nowhere is anyone suggesting special treatment or ass kissing; no one is mad at the people who said "You're asking how to undercut something I worked a long time to do, with no work, STFU." People are pissed off at the douchebags who think that someone being a woman is an excuse to dismiss her with "Go do porn, sex is what women are for."
Also, last I checked, Slashdot wasn't an exclusive community. High UID doesn't actually make you special, any more than being a woman or a man does. It's supposed to be "news for nerds" and discussion thereof - if there's some "Women must agree to take any and all sexual comments without offense, people who aren't misogynist fuckwits can't comment on the misogyny" rule, I missed it in the TOS.
Well, perhaps because being a douche to women because they're women is terrible behavior, and is extremely repetitive and boring in addition. I mean, if the "offerings of current users" that you're referring to is the ridiculous anti-woman drivel that passes for wit around here, I think the answer to what female geeks have that is better is pretty obvious - anything else. I mean, even if they uniformly produce stupid, vacuous jokes that are gross and terrible, they still win on novelty points over your precious "offerings."
TL;DR version - You're a dimwit and a jerk for trying to justify misogyny. Women are people, treat them like fucking people already.
Weird - while I was briefly on AOL in the 90s, I always associate it with current LJ. That's probably where I picked it up.
And I certainly wasn't saying that Access wasn't adequate - it has enough functionality, sure. It's just significantly worse than free tools available, including some with similar learning curve. It also requires a lot of extra work to get to the functionality mentioned in the OP.
Corrected version: late hours occasionally make for poor proofreading.
The single data point of one master's degree doesn't actually give you anywhere near enough information to make a judgement on someone's technical competence. For instance, one classmate of mine worked previously as a database programmer for Amazon, and another classmate developed software for a living in the medical sector. I'm currently making a living doing web development, which I don't mention as any sort of credential; I merely want to point out that technical people do, in fact, go into library school on occasion. And before you pull some "Only the mediocre/lame ones" bullshit, well, how much technical excellence do you think is required to make judgements about Access versus other tools for managing data? You don't have to be Donald Knuth to have opinions about Microsoft Access.
Additionally, it doesn't actually require in depth knowledge of programming and computer science to make judgements on the suitability of tools for maintaining particular collections of data. It requires a certain amount of technical aptitude, and a knowledge of the capabilities and features of the respective tools. And it's far from worthless to have seen the tools being considered in action in the context being discussed, and having a solid understandings of the "business requirements" of the environment at hand.
TL;DR version - stop trying to use your unproven status as a computer scientist to prevent people from talking about any aspect of computers or computation. It's childish, rude, and it makes you look like a jackass.
The single data point of one master's degree doesn't actually give you anywhere near enough information as to whether someone has the technical wherewithal to make a judgement. For instance, a classmate of mine was previously a database programmer for Amazon, and another classmate developed software for a living in the medical sector. I'm currently making a living doing web development, which I don't mention as any sort of credential, but merely to point out that, the library field being not particularly fond of hiring.
Additionally, it doesn't actually require in depth knowledge of programming and computer science to make judgements on the suitability of tools for maintaining particular collections of data. It requires a certain amount of technical aptitude, and a knowledge of the capabilities and features of the respective tools. And it's far from worthless to have seen the tools being considered in action in the context being discussed, and having a solid understandings of the "business requirements" of the environment at hand.
TL;DR version - stop trying to use your unproven status as a computer scientist to prevent people from talking about any aspect of computers or computation. It's childish, rude, and it makes you look like a jackass.
You only need to look at a vast stretch of it if anything goes wrong. And I'm not sure how low-rez you're planning on making the video, while having full coverage of the store AND being able to make out faces AND the titles of books.
I'm sorry, but this isn't a workable plan. It also doesn't take any of the OP's requirements into account; does this sound like "a complete solution for both administration and self-checkout; label printing, checkout receipts, and so on" to you?
It's been posted elsewhere, but the correct website for Koha is http://koha-community.org/ - Koha.org was snatched up by the LibLime people, who are currently trying to steal the trademark from the people who developed Koha.
No, but they might have one person putting entries in, and one person checking out books. I've seen that workflow at very small (single room) libraries.
And even if they never have more than one person working on it, Access is just kind of terrible. It also would require a lot of custom work to provide "a complete solution for both administration and self-checkout; label printing, checkout receipts, and so on" on top of it, especially in a way that was convenient to the librarians and patrons.
Basically, I separately think that Access is a poor solution to this problem AND a poor solution to any problem. Honestly, just about anything is better - they'd basically be just as well off using a spreadsheet, for all the value Access has.
And you're going to store these vast amounts of low-rate video where? How long are you going to keep them? Who is going to review the vast amounts of video, keeping copious notes on everyone who takes a book...
Koha is a little bit of a bear compared to "drop and serve" php apps, but it's not "days of work for a unix guru." I'm a web developer, and with hobbyist level sysadmin skills, and I got it done in a couple of hours, most of which was working on my first-ever Apache virtualhost setup because I was already running my website on the same host.
Can't comment on the community, but the docs are pretty useful.
Except that people use electronic catalogs all the time. The reason people don't use card catalogs anymore is that they're used to having search functionality.
Also, Access is a terrible solution - it scales so poorly that it will become felt the minute you need TWO (2, one plus one) people to have simultaneous access to the records. It doesn't even support per-entry locks. Terrible.
This may be a bit naive, but maybe the fact that you're searching for justifications is a sign that you're not quite approaching this the right way. Maybe look at it this way - what is the need that this is addressing, the problem it would solve, the advantage it would give. You say that you believe that there's a need for IT to be its own department - why? Define that need clearly, then start working on the proposal from that.
Also, I'd give a strong thought to the relative advantages and disadvantages of the current system - it's easy to just disregard "the way things have always been done" as valueless, but processes evolve for reasons, and to at least a minimum level of functionality. Any change you propose needs to have clear, concrete, and valuable advantages over the existing process.
Ok, you're not from America. Well, if you're going to comment on what statements mean in a foreign culture, maybe you ought to, you know, have some sort of understanding of the cultural baggage attached to the terms at hand?
I'll take you at your word, and assume that you're not actually intending to support bad behavior here. But your position is completely indefensible, and you really, really need to stop, read some relevant material or talk with people actually conversant with the topic, and reexamine your statements.
The difference in context is that "chimp" has been a coded term for suggesting mental inferiority and animalism in black people for at least a century in American English, heavily used in both generic racist circles and specifically in white supremacist circles, while calling a white guy a monkey is a generic insult, because there isn't a similar "all white people are mentally inferior animals" meme in American English.
It's not a different standard - it's a different meaning, attached to the same word by the surrounding culture and history.
Awwwww.... does the concept of context escape you? Pobrecito...
Let me lay it out for you - chimp is both an English language word describing a type of monkey, AND a racial slur. Which is implied is determined by the situation and surrounding language, a process known as "context."
An extremely simple example - If I were to say "Your mom," the meaning would be radically different if you had said "Who do you think should make the cake for my birthday," or "Man, I'd like to bang-"
Ha!
The spaces are actually somewhat negotiable–it differs between British, American, and Australian usage over various time periods. But you're right–it should by all accounts be an em-dash. I personally find it more legible to put a space after the em-dash, but not before, but I've bowed to your stated preference here.
They also make it trivial to correctly re-indent code to the proper depth when you copy and paste. They also let you combine short, hyper-simplistic statements on one line, saving screen space. Speaking of which, they also let you know whether or not you've left a block in situations where one or more blank lines are at the bottom of the viewport.
Slashdot Mirror
It's terminally out of print, but it's worth checking out Level Seven by Mordecai Roshwald. It's set in an underground government base. The missiles fly, everything is shut down - and slowly, the top levels of the base stop responding, one by one. A downer, but one of the great classics of cold-war era nuclear apocalypse sci-fi.
On a lighter note, check out the novels of Karel apek, particularly The War of the Newts and The Absolute at Large. They're both humorous apocalypse stories - apek wrote largely between WW1 and WW2, and he has a really interesting take on the industrial acceleration of the time.
The Absolute at Large is back in print now, but a version based on the out of copyright first edition is available at http://davemayo.is-a-geek.org/projects.php#literary . Link is to my personal website - I'm the one who put together the edition. It's available in ePub (ASCII and Unicode) and mobi, although the mobi is just a conversion through Calibre. The text should be fairly good - I've gone through it several times, correcting it against the physical copy.
You're not worth arguing with. I hope you have a nice day, and stop defending misogyny, but you're not very effective at it, so it's not a terribly large concern to me.
I've certainly seen other things on slashdot - but what the poster above was discussing, and what you were defending, was the "The frat club atmosphere." If you go even farther up the chain, you can see that that poster was responding to the problem of anything said by an acknowledged woman immediately turning into demeaning sexual comments.
If the behavior you're defending is sexually harassing women on forums, damn right I demand you change. Because that's not acceptable behavior - and yes, it is misogyny. Nowhere is anyone suggesting special treatment or ass kissing; no one is mad at the people who said "You're asking how to undercut something I worked a long time to do, with no work, STFU." People are pissed off at the douchebags who think that someone being a woman is an excuse to dismiss her with "Go do porn, sex is what women are for."
Also, last I checked, Slashdot wasn't an exclusive community. High UID doesn't actually make you special, any more than being a woman or a man does. It's supposed to be "news for nerds" and discussion thereof - if there's some "Women must agree to take any and all sexual comments without offense, people who aren't misogynist fuckwits can't comment on the misogyny" rule, I missed it in the TOS.
Well, perhaps because being a douche to women because they're women is terrible behavior, and is extremely repetitive and boring in addition. I mean, if the "offerings of current users" that you're referring to is the ridiculous anti-woman drivel that passes for wit around here, I think the answer to what female geeks have that is better is pretty obvious - anything else. I mean, even if they uniformly produce stupid, vacuous jokes that are gross and terrible, they still win on novelty points over your precious "offerings."
TL;DR version - You're a dimwit and a jerk for trying to justify misogyny. Women are people, treat them like fucking people already.
Weird - while I was briefly on AOL in the 90s, I always associate it with current LJ. That's probably where I picked it up.
And I certainly wasn't saying that Access wasn't adequate - it has enough functionality, sure. It's just significantly worse than free tools available, including some with similar learning curve. It also requires a lot of extra work to get to the functionality mentioned in the OP.
Corrected version: late hours occasionally make for poor proofreading.
The single data point of one master's degree doesn't actually give you anywhere near enough information to make a judgement on someone's technical competence. For instance, one classmate of mine worked previously as a database programmer for Amazon, and another classmate developed software for a living in the medical sector. I'm currently making a living doing web development, which I don't mention as any sort of credential; I merely want to point out that technical people do, in fact, go into library school on occasion. And before you pull some "Only the mediocre/lame ones" bullshit, well, how much technical excellence do you think is required to make judgements about Access versus other tools for managing data? You don't have to be Donald Knuth to have opinions about Microsoft Access.
Additionally, it doesn't actually require in depth knowledge of programming and computer science to make judgements on the suitability of tools for maintaining particular collections of data. It requires a certain amount of technical aptitude, and a knowledge of the capabilities and features of the respective tools. And it's far from worthless to have seen the tools being considered in action in the context being discussed, and having a solid understandings of the "business requirements" of the environment at hand.
TL;DR version - stop trying to use your unproven status as a computer scientist to prevent people from talking about any aspect of computers or computation. It's childish, rude, and it makes you look like a jackass.
The single data point of one master's degree doesn't actually give you anywhere near enough information as to whether someone has the technical wherewithal to make a judgement. For instance, a classmate of mine was previously a database programmer for Amazon, and another classmate developed software for a living in the medical sector. I'm currently making a living doing web development, which I don't mention as any sort of credential, but merely to point out that, the library field being not particularly fond of hiring.
Additionally, it doesn't actually require in depth knowledge of programming and computer science to make judgements on the suitability of tools for maintaining particular collections of data. It requires a certain amount of technical aptitude, and a knowledge of the capabilities and features of the respective tools. And it's far from worthless to have seen the tools being considered in action in the context being discussed, and having a solid understandings of the "business requirements" of the environment at hand.
TL;DR version - stop trying to use your unproven status as a computer scientist to prevent people from talking about any aspect of computers or computation. It's childish, rude, and it makes you look like a jackass.
By store I mean library.
You only need to look at a vast stretch of it if anything goes wrong. And I'm not sure how low-rez you're planning on making the video, while having full coverage of the store AND being able to make out faces AND the titles of books.
I'm sorry, but this isn't a workable plan. It also doesn't take any of the OP's requirements into account; does this sound like "a complete solution for both administration and self-checkout; label printing, checkout receipts, and so on" to you?
It's been posted elsewhere, but the correct website for Koha is http://koha-community.org/ - Koha.org was snatched up by the LibLime people, who are currently trying to steal the trademark from the people who developed Koha.
No, but they might have one person putting entries in, and one person checking out books. I've seen that workflow at very small (single room) libraries.
And even if they never have more than one person working on it, Access is just kind of terrible. It also would require a lot of custom work to provide "a complete solution for both administration and self-checkout; label printing, checkout receipts, and so on" on top of it, especially in a way that was convenient to the librarians and patrons.
Basically, I separately think that Access is a poor solution to this problem AND a poor solution to any problem. Honestly, just about anything is better - they'd basically be just as well off using a spreadsheet, for all the value Access has.
And you're going to store these vast amounts of low-rate video where? How long are you going to keep them? Who is going to review the vast amounts of video, keeping copious notes on everyone who takes a book...
Koha is a little bit of a bear compared to "drop and serve" php apps, but it's not "days of work for a unix guru." I'm a web developer, and with hobbyist level sysadmin skills, and I got it done in a couple of hours, most of which was working on my first-ever Apache virtualhost setup because I was already running my website on the same host.
Can't comment on the community, but the docs are pretty useful.
Except that people use electronic catalogs all the time. The reason people don't use card catalogs anymore is that they're used to having search functionality.
This.
Also, Access is a terrible solution - it scales so poorly that it will become felt the minute you need TWO (2, one plus one) people to have simultaneous access to the records. It doesn't even support per-entry locks. Terrible.
- A Library Sciences Grad
They do have legal obligations, actually. Most sites that handle financial transactions do.
This may be a bit naive, but maybe the fact that you're searching for justifications is a sign that you're not quite approaching this the right way. Maybe look at it this way - what is the need that this is addressing, the problem it would solve, the advantage it would give. You say that you believe that there's a need for IT to be its own department - why? Define that need clearly, then start working on the proposal from that.
Also, I'd give a strong thought to the relative advantages and disadvantages of the current system - it's easy to just disregard "the way things have always been done" as valueless, but processes evolve for reasons, and to at least a minimum level of functionality. Any change you propose needs to have clear, concrete, and valuable advantages over the existing process.
Ok, you're not from America. Well, if you're going to comment on what statements mean in a foreign culture, maybe you ought to, you know, have some sort of understanding of the cultural baggage attached to the terms at hand?
I'll take you at your word, and assume that you're not actually intending to support bad behavior here. But your position is completely indefensible, and you really, really need to stop, read some relevant material or talk with people actually conversant with the topic, and reexamine your statements.
The difference in context is that "chimp" has been a coded term for suggesting mental inferiority and animalism in black people for at least a century in American English, heavily used in both generic racist circles and specifically in white supremacist circles, while calling a white guy a monkey is a generic insult, because there isn't a similar "all white people are mentally inferior animals" meme in American English.
It's not a different standard - it's a different meaning, attached to the same word by the surrounding culture and history.
Awwwww.... does the concept of context escape you? Pobrecito... Let me lay it out for you - chimp is both an English language word describing a type of monkey, AND a racial slur. Which is implied is determined by the situation and surrounding language, a process known as "context." An extremely simple example - If I were to say "Your mom," the meaning would be radically different if you had said "Who do you think should make the cake for my birthday," or "Man, I'd like to bang-"
Who told you about King Fire-in-me-bottom? His secret majesty will be most displAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH that's good leaderhip.
Ha! The spaces are actually somewhat negotiable–it differs between British, American, and Australian usage over various time periods. But you're right–it should by all accounts be an em-dash. I personally find it more legible to put a space after the em-dash, but not before, but I've bowed to your stated preference here.
The other problem being that half the symbols used aren't on any modern keyboard ;-)
They also make it trivial to correctly re-indent code to the proper depth when you copy and paste. They also let you combine short, hyper-simplistic statements on one line, saving screen space. Speaking of which, they also let you know whether or not you've left a block in situations where one or more blank lines are at the bottom of the viewport.
Yeah - in Perl6 sigils are invariant by context, although contexts still exist.