My experiance has been simular to yours, (although my age has a factor in that.) When I was in High School the teachers had alot to say, and alot of good information, but I wasn't interested in what they wanted to teach. I'd ask them questions about what I wanted to know and dumb stares were all I got. The WWW was just being born at the time (mostly text posted by universities at the time.) But I still found all kinds of information. BBS's were my main source of knowledge.... many good conversations chatting on IRC (this was before bots were prevelent) and on the BBS's of the day.
Then came college, the true corruptor. I remeber talking via unix talk to my friends freshman year, then ICQ, and it was all downhill from there. The web began to mature, the world truely opened up to me. I'd spend days looking up everything and anything.... I'd look it up if I was even the least bit curious. Current news and TV was barely a glimmer in my mind.... and If I wanted that information.... BAMM! there it was.
Today I am an information junky.... I never wonder about anything for long... google helps that. (Learning how to talk google is important.) I love books! But there's a problem, I can't search them. I can't pick out that one paragraph that I need to know in seconds, it may take minutes and I'm just not that patient. Books I read are for pleasure... And yes I do read Non-fiction for pleasure at times.... Books are a nessicity for referance materal in my mind.... however those books are well worn and marked up... I have personal notes in them that websites don't provide.... That accumulation of notes and references just doesn't seem to be on the websites that I use (I've never seen a website that accepts personal postit's on it's pages.... maybe someday.)
So maybe I'm a techo-geek, or an information junkie, so what... I'm happy about it, And my life is made alot easier by it. Will I look for information in books if I can't find it online... YES! but that is rare... knowing where to look on the web is sometimes harder than knowing where to look in the library. But normally it just comes down to knowing where to look.
Wow, it awazes me at the anti-firewall sentiment I feel here. I have been using firewalls since nat came to linux. it's amazing how many attacks I see on a daily basis on the walls. I get maybe one a month that's actually interesting.... I've never seen a reason for app level firewalls myself... I've used vpn, it has it's place..... And btw, there are many services that you would want to run but only restrict to a certain set of computers... e.g. localhost anyone? ahhh well, Firewalls have served me very well, but then again, I actually know how to use them. And I do admit writing a complex iptables configuration is not for the faint of heart... but then that's what they pay us for I guess.... and I'm glad everything has a firewall on it.... maybe a few less worms will spread like the plague through your systems....
Re:It's about the tools
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 1
Wow, then I guess I'm not simple.... personally I tend to use a text editor (with text highlighting) to write my code. I started coding like this and still do? Maybe I'm in the minority, but I still tend to outproduce many of my fellow men. my ide is ultraedit and vi (they integrate nicely... they both edit text, highlight in purty colors, and don't fsck the file up with ^M 's all the time.)
I think that there's a few programmers out there that still feel this way. Ex those that use many languages and don't like to have to learn a new gui every time they want to edit text.
I think that the issue is the Signal To Noise Ratio. On TV your guarenteed a specific Signal to Noise ratio by the TV exec's and the idea behind marketing. (If the noise is too high (i.e. too many commercials.) You will not watch that channel, and then you won't see their ads.) I think on tv our threashold is somewhere around %50. once it's at about %50 commercials we change the channel.
Here's the problem with E-mail, The snr has no method of balance. The snr in e-mail (exp. in hotmail accounts not set to exclusive.) is WAY over %50.
I have been able to keep the snr on my accounts pretty high, but it takes quite a bit of work to keep them that way.
I've been working on a redistro of ClusterKnoppix designed for video encoding... and it's comming along.... Just a few more deps to rebuild. It Makes DIVX encoding bearable.
I was building my own setup simular to knoppix until I discovered ClusterKnoppix.... I love when someone else does my work for me:)
I'll state my position straight out by saying that I would love to have fiber to my house. There are a few reasons for and against it.
I know that unless the phone company can charge you alot more they won't run it to your house. And deregulation.... blah blah.... bells.... blah blah.....
But there are some advantages. The first is that some phone company should hook up with a cable company. This would give the phone company that owned the lines the ability to have a new market (cable tv.) Not only that, but they can offer the high res stuff on their fiber network only (and only have the lower res stuff on the legacy network of the cable company they bought.)
The other advantage of have just fiber is you reduce the # of lines to a house to 1 and always 1. (most houses nowadays have 6-pair ran to them with at least 1 pair bad.) Which means that your not maintaining multiple lines. (And you don't have to train your people on line shares and simular tech.)
But here's the problem: you only have 1 line, when it goes out everythings gone. Which means that they'd probally need to guarentee 1 day turn around for everyone. (which SBC does for businesses right now from what I understand.)
The other advantage is extreamly high speed I-net access, which can now be billed per GB transfered at a standard utility rate like your gas or electric. Or pay some ungodly unlimited fee or choke it back to what bandwidth the person pays for. But the first option seems the best for speeds like this.
Wait, You mean I can't install my 48 disk set of Orcad with Xilinx!?!?!?! And I (errr my company) paid good money for that!!!!
But seriously I have been in it from the changeover to 3 1/2 from 5 1/4... So I guess I trust my 3 1/2 a bit more (having used it so much.)
I agree that progress should be made, but I have yet to find a stable drag and Drop to CD-RW piece of software. Yes, I run Win2k and linux (still trying to get my favorite games to run on linux.) USB drives eh? Last time I looked they were ALOT more expensive then CD-RW disks. And I haven't heard about booting off of them.
I've also supported many different computers running a general computer fix it shop. And I can tell you, the worst day is when you go to a persons house and find that they have a usb keyboard that uses nonstandard drivers. Thank god there's a ps/2 port to plug in the old standby.
Someone talked about getting rid of the parrell port and serial port, well I'm all for getting rid of the parrell port as I don't use it. (my printer uses usb.... which does flake out every so often, but I just fix it and hit print again.) but I am one of those few people that uses a dumb terminal.... it's rather nice in the kitchen to look up recipies and phone numbers.... (since I got it for $0 anyway)
In my opinion it seems to be a good thing... On the net, you can only view and digest so much mental fluf untill you begin happening upon news and intelligent articles... Does anybody remember when we were warned because our kids were not reading enough? what is it now? reading too much? I think that it's about time we focus on learning, and the net has a profound effect on that.
Slashdot Mirror
My experiance has been simular to yours, (although my age has a factor in that.) When I was in High School the teachers had alot to say, and alot of good information, but I wasn't interested in what they wanted to teach. I'd ask them questions about what I wanted to know and dumb stares were all I got. The WWW was just being born at the time (mostly text posted by universities at the time.) But I still found all kinds of information. BBS's were my main source of knowledge.... many good conversations chatting on IRC (this was before bots were prevelent) and on the BBS's of the day.
Then came college, the true corruptor. I remeber talking via unix talk to my friends freshman year, then ICQ, and it was all downhill from there. The web began to mature, the world truely opened up to me. I'd spend days looking up everything and anything.... I'd look it up if I was even the least bit curious. Current news and TV was barely a glimmer in my mind.... and If I wanted that information.... BAMM! there it was.
Today I am an information junky.... I never wonder about anything for long... google helps that. (Learning how to talk google is important.) I love books! But there's a problem, I can't search them. I can't pick out that one paragraph that I need to know in seconds, it may take minutes and I'm just not that patient. Books I read are for pleasure... And yes I do read Non-fiction for pleasure at times.... Books are a nessicity for referance materal in my mind.... however those books are well worn and marked up... I have personal notes in them that websites don't provide.... That accumulation of notes and references just doesn't seem to be on the websites that I use (I've never seen a website that accepts personal postit's on it's pages.... maybe someday.)
So maybe I'm a techo-geek, or an information junkie, so what... I'm happy about it, And my life is made alot easier by it. Will I look for information in books if I can't find it online... YES! but that is rare... knowing where to look on the web is sometimes harder than knowing where to look in the library. But normally it just comes down to knowing where to look.
Wow, it awazes me at the anti-firewall sentiment I feel here. I have been using firewalls since nat came to linux. it's amazing how many attacks I see on a daily basis on the walls. I get maybe one a month that's actually interesting.... I've never seen a reason for app level firewalls myself... I've used vpn, it has it's place.....
And btw, there are many services that you would want to run but only restrict to a certain set of computers... e.g. localhost anyone? ahhh well, Firewalls have served me very well, but then again, I actually know how to use them. And I do admit writing a complex iptables configuration is not for the faint of heart... but then that's what they pay us for I guess.... and I'm glad everything has a firewall on it.... maybe a few less worms will spread like the plague through your systems....
2G + 2G = 5G
for large values of 2G
sorry, had to be said.
Wow, then I guess I'm not simple.... personally I tend to use a text editor (with text highlighting) to write my code. I started coding like this and still do? Maybe I'm in the minority, but I still tend to outproduce many of my fellow men. my ide is ultraedit and vi (they integrate nicely... they both edit text, highlight in purty colors, and don't fsck the file up with ^M 's all the time.)
I think that there's a few programmers out there that still feel this way. Ex those that use many languages and don't like to have to learn a new gui every time they want to edit text.
I'm just waiting for mister SEC to intervene.... It's looking like just a matter of time.
It seems noone has heard of batteries.....
I think that the issue is the Signal To Noise Ratio. On TV your guarenteed a specific Signal to Noise ratio by the TV exec's and the idea behind marketing. (If the noise is too high (i.e. too many commercials.) You will not watch that channel, and then you won't see their ads.) I think on tv our threashold is somewhere around %50. once it's at about %50 commercials we change the channel.
Here's the problem with E-mail, The snr has no method of balance. The snr in e-mail (exp. in hotmail accounts not set to exclusive.) is WAY over %50.
I have been able to keep the snr on my accounts pretty high, but it takes quite a bit of work to keep them that way.
I've been working on a redistro of ClusterKnoppix designed for video encoding... and it's comming along.... Just a few more deps to rebuild. It Makes DIVX encoding bearable.
:)
I was building my own setup simular to knoppix until I discovered ClusterKnoppix.... I love when someone else does my work for me
I'll state my position straight out by saying that I would love to have fiber to my house. There are a few reasons for and against it.
I know that unless the phone company can charge you alot more they won't run it to your house. And deregulation.... blah blah.... bells.... blah blah.....
But there are some advantages. The first is that some phone company should hook up with a cable company. This would give the phone company that owned the lines the ability to have a new market (cable tv.) Not only that, but they can offer the high res stuff on their fiber network only (and only have the lower res stuff on the legacy network of the cable company they bought.)
The other advantage of have just fiber is you reduce the # of lines to a house to 1 and always 1. (most houses nowadays have 6-pair ran to them with at least 1 pair bad.) Which means that your not maintaining multiple lines. (And you don't have to train your people on line shares and simular tech.)
But here's the problem: you only have 1 line, when it goes out everythings gone. Which means that they'd probally need to guarentee 1 day turn around for everyone. (which SBC does for businesses right now from what I understand.)
The other advantage is extreamly high speed I-net access, which can now be billed per GB transfered at a standard utility rate like your gas or electric. Or pay some ungodly unlimited fee or choke it back to what bandwidth the person pays for. But the first option seems the best for speeds like this.
Wait, You mean I can't install my 48 disk set of Orcad with Xilinx!?!?!?! And I (errr my company) paid good money for that!!!!
But seriously I have been in it from the changeover to 3 1/2 from 5 1/4... So I guess I trust my 3 1/2 a bit more (having used it so much.)
I agree that progress should be made, but I have yet to find a stable drag and Drop to CD-RW piece of software. Yes, I run Win2k and linux (still trying to get my favorite games to run on linux.) USB drives eh? Last time I looked they were ALOT more expensive then CD-RW disks. And I haven't heard about booting off of them.
I've also supported many different computers running a general computer fix it shop. And I can tell you, the worst day is when you go to a persons house and find that they have a usb keyboard that uses nonstandard drivers. Thank god there's a ps/2 port to plug in the old standby.
Someone talked about getting rid of the parrell port and serial port, well I'm all for getting rid of the parrell port as I don't use it. (my printer uses usb.... which does flake out every so often, but I just fix it and hit print again.) but I am one of those few people that uses a dumb terminal.... it's rather nice in the kitchen to look up recipies and phone numbers.... (since I got it for $0 anyway)
just my 2 cents.
In my opinion it seems to be a good thing... On the net, you can only view and digest so much mental fluf untill you begin happening upon news and intelligent articles... Does anybody remember when we were warned because our kids were not reading enough? what is it now? reading too much? I think that it's about time we focus on learning, and the net has a profound effect on that.