The managment is still learning. 5 years ago, the USAF had no centralized IT. We still deal with supporting legacy communications over 75 baud connections. You ever try to troubleshoot 75 frickin' baud? My o-scope won't even resolve low enough to display 75 baud.
Tomorrow, I might be required to install Solaris 9 on an old SPARC-5 over a remore NFS mount.
Saturday, I get to come in and find drivers for brand new, mt-rj, fiber NICs.
We are very flexible. That is what managment pushes for. My training program on 80% of the platforms I support is based on reading the frickin manual. And some of these manuals were printed "back in the day". A few days ago, I ran across a manual that refered to the RS-232 interface as "awaiting EIA aproval".
Insane, yes. But you have to be a little crazy to run CAT-V cable while carying a loaded weapon.:)
Wasteful, yes. Waste is controlled, but you can't revamp your work processes when one day's worth of down time would deny someone the information they need to make a life-or-death decision. I'm not kidding about this, people die when we have outages.
Dysfunctional, probably. We are trying to get upper managment to understand the need for information technology. It's kinda hard to get them to see it. Most of them were interning when you were lucky to have a typewriter and a telephone. IT in those days was the dude that went to supply to pick up a new ribbon.
Our successes aren't measured in dollars, they are measured in lives. Because of that, it's hard to show a General how 100 Base FX is better than 100 Base TX. There is no cost/profit margin for him to compare.
I don't trust the political system. I don't trust it because no one uses it. The American people have allowed the system to become broken. Eventually, it will degrade to the point that it will need to be dessolved and replaced.
The Government is not broken because of Disney or MGM or MP/RI-AA. It is broken because of the apathy of the American people. I have said before that I don't like criticism without a suggestion.
Here is mine:
Everyone should be required to vote at least every other year. If you don't vote, then you are automatically de-registered for the next voting cycle. If it isn't important to you to vote, then your right to vote should be removed.
Likewise, everyone should be required to write a letter to their congresscritter at least once a year. If you can't find something interesting to say, then talk about the frickin' hay fields.
My duty to our country is to defend it from all enemies. Your duty to our country is to vote. I promise to keep doing my job as long as you keep doing yours.
We do hire someone off the street and put them in IT with minimum training. However, everyone has a supervisor. It's not like we have 30 people cooking White Castles (Krystals for those in the south) one day and managing the rollout of Active Directory across multiple domains the next.
We are always looking for good people. In this economy, we have no excuse for not picking up some GOOD people. Don't feel like an ass for steering people our way. You can bet that when I get out, I'll be coming your way.
Marines are cool...Right up to the point where you have a critical system down and they have to go run. I swear, at like 3'o frickin clock every day, those guys just close the frickin base to go run.
Not even minimum manning, they just all up and leave.
In all fairness, I'm writing this from my nice comfy office chair where my 20 lbs overweight ass is sipping cofee and seriously thinking that it needs a doughnut:)
Har, har, har...OK, you've had your laugh... Didja make yourself smile?
Most of the exploits we see are because admins are too lazy to patch a known hole. Having an external auditor come in and look at your systems is a great wat to ensure that you have a reasonable policy in place.
With any large network, there will be unpatched systems out there. I can't tell you the number of times a user has pulled out an old computer from his broom closet and connected it to a LAN drop. They usually do it to accomidate some newly arrived guy. Usually, they just crash some machine on their subnet. Occasionally, they go "scanning" for IP addresses until they hit one that works. Then we have a frickin' Win98 box on the back side of our network that no one knows about.
Two months later, ISS (Internetwork Security Scanner) reports the box and we have to hunt it down. This probably happens in any large network. It doesn't suprise me.
The guys who come to see us are very smart. They understand networking and provide insight well beyond the "click, type, apply" stuff that most MCSEs preach. Some of the guys even work to intergrate MS systems with our few nescessary linux boxen.
Once you truly understand the underlying technology, knowing where to click or what init.d script to modify isn't important. I wouldn't give a RHCE any more or less respect than an MCSE until he proves his worth.
I have been working in the USAF for about 8 years. 6 of that in WAN (longhaul voice and data), and 2 in Infrastructure and security. I'd like to offer another side to your story:
>but it needed to be done before the end of the fiscal year
This is how it works: The USAF has a budget. Each area gets a small slice. If filters down to each office having about $10k ~ $30k for operations that year. That money has to last all year. About 20% of that is kept in reserve funds. If that money is not needed by August, we are free to spend it. At that point, we develop a wish list and try to get that aproved. By time all this happens, we have about 5 weeks to spend the reserve money.
No one in the military likes it. All our contractors hate it. If you want it changed, write your congressperson and have them change 50+ years of bad management practices...
>The quality of code would've been greately improved if we coded, say 40 hrs/week instead of pulling all-nighters.
I have spent countless days and nights working overtime. So have a lot of my coworkers. In times of exercise or, God forbid, a war, we go to 12+ hour days. 6 days on and 1 day off are common during exercises.
Contractors always make fun of us for sloppy wiring, half-assed installs, unpatched servers, etc... When new equipment arrive, we usually have a few hours to determine where it will go and when. We are usually told that the old equipment stays in place until the new stuff is operational. This leads to massive misuse of rack space. and cluttered wiring.
Also, just like your code suffers from 40+ hours, my wiring suffers when I have to spend my Saturday morning connecting a new router.
No one likes to work overtime. Your work suffers just like mine. You may lose a contract because of your bad code. People could lose lives because of my bad wiring. Let's both work harder to keep our shit straight, regardless of hours worked.
>They insisted on.NET 2003 server with M$ SQL, etc., etc.
This is becuase we have a very nice license with MS for their stuff. We get good support, including semi-annual "Best Practices" reviews by MS inspectors. The US Gov paid for MS tools, we should use them. If you don't like it, write your congressperson. Personally, I'd love to be able to use Squid on Red Hat. Unfortunately, we don't have the money to spend on more software licenses after we bought MS stuff.
>asked if it would work with a win2003 server as opposed to a win2k
Our upgrade paths are fixed by MS. This absolutely sucks. Our systems require specific patch releases from MS. Once they stop supporting those patch paths, we have to upgrade. Agian, if you don't like it, write your congresscritter.
>but they didn't even know how to install windows
I'm throwing a bullshit flag on this play. I find it difficult to belive that no one knew how to install Windows. In the USAF, we have a NCC department that does nothing but install, configure, and maintain Win2k servers.
There may have been an internal power play based on getting Win2k3 server training. That is an ongoing military issue. Your boss tells you to do something. If you do it and screw it up, they ask if you were trained to do that thing. If you were not trained, then you go to federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison for working on something without proper training. If you were trained and you screw it up, then you get in trouble for not folowing the training guidelines for whatever it was you broke.
Everyone working in a military NCC can install Win2k Workstation and Server. Many of them are MSCEs or higher. They could probably install Win2k3. They just wanted official training on that product before they tried something and broke it.
>Installing a a windows server is a mountain of a task for them.
No it isn't.
>Installing.NET is something that, as they say, they 'have been working on for
The problem with doing it via a HOSTS file is that it doesn't understand sub-domains. You have to block www.gator.com, www1.gator.com, www2.gator.com... I think you get the point.
I have heard talk of a peer-2-peer application that would allow me to click on an ad and then select "block" from a list. Every hour, my block list gets circulated around the internet. Eventualy, a master list evolves that effectively blocks every advertisement from every page on the internet.
There are 2 problems I can see with this. First, sites will evolve to not load until you view an ad. If you go to www.slashdot.org, you'd be redirected to adserver.slashdot.org for 60 seconds. Then you'd be redirected back to slashdot.org with a cookie saying you'd viewed the ads.
The second is that you couldn't make money off your app. You might be able to blackmail people into paying for not being blocked, but more likely then not, you'd just be sued once or twice. Without money, you'd lose. In any event, this application would have to be free, GPLed software. That way, when you dropped off the face of the earth, people would be able to take the code and run with it.
In fact, the best thing to do would to have a page on sourceforge that, literally, listed the code to your app. People could copy-and-paste that code into a *.c file and then compile it. If anyone sued, you could claim code-as-speech protection.
Ok, I'd suggest you ask your woman to give your testicles back. They are probably in here purse next to the tissues and breath mints. Then put the women and children to bed and go looking for conduit.
If my woman doesn't like my computer shrine (currently 2 laptops, three desktops, 500ft of BRIGHT RED cat-v, and a WAP) then she knows where the door is. I just hope it doesn't hit her in the ass on her way out.
Seriously, the only thing keeping me from being ubergeek is my wife spending money on German Smoking Men, Italian dishes, and flannel sheets. Don't get me wrong, I love all those things, but when I say $Computer_Thing is needed in my house, money is allocated.
And an even better case for waiting outside the guy's office with a baseball bat and a ski mask.
Sure, MS can deny you a future contract, but one linux zealot (and belive me, there are tons) can deny you a working set of knees.
If you haven't yet, I'd suggest reading up on "Assasination Politics". Basiclly, a group places bets on how someone will die. Once enough bets are placed, the pot grows to be huge. Then one of the betters (that word seems right, but feels wrong) decides to take matters into his own hands and make his bet come true. Very clever stuff.
Lawyers aren't stupid. If your car was going 40kph and suddenly peaked at 100kph, anyone could see that something must have happened to cause that spike. If you had a halfway decent lawyer, he would argue that your car couldn't have accelerated that quickly.
Eventually, we will see a better system for data aquisition. Imagine being able to get statistics on weight shifts to specific wheels during acceleration or breaking. Imagine being able to see the effect on gas mileage from all those Mountian Dew (God's own caffene source!) cans in your floorboard.
As a geek, I love charts and graphs and numbers. I'd love to be able to do "snmpwalk" on my car and get detailed statistics from my trips. Yes, it could be used agianst me, it could also be used to show that I am a good driver. If a kid runs in front of you and you hit him, the proper numbers could show that there was no way you were violating the law and you couldn't stop in time.
Numbers could be used both ways. Do you really want to hide numbers that could be used to prove your innocence? Do you want to hide numbers that could prove my guilt?
What makes you think that what you do on a public road should be private?
I don't claim to have all the answers to unemployment, but I do know that you should stop whining about outsourcing.
How many people still paint cars for Ford or GM? Very few. Robots do most of that now. How many "human computers" do financial institutions hire today? Very few. Computers have taken it over. It is a natural progression from an old paridigm to a new one.
I once worked for a company that made athletic clothing. When I started, there were 6 teams of ladies that sewed shirts. There were about 50 people per team and they worked in 8 hour shifts 24/7. My team of about 4 people took shit out of big boxes and put it in smaller boxes. These smaller boxes went to Mexico to be put together there for about a quarter of the cost of doing it here. Before I left, my team had grown to 12 people and all the teams of sewing ladies had been moved somewhere else. Many had been laid off.
Their children learned an important lesson. Learn a new skill, the old ones are being outsourced.
I feel sorry for you programmers. I really do. But programming is bitchwork. The hours are long and the ammount of crap you put up with is unbearable. Why do you insist on learning a skill that has no real future? If Asians have placed themselves into the position of doing our bitchwork for less than us, we should be happy. Go find something else to do.
There will always be a job for sewers, painters, and programmers in this country. But not many. If you love programming, then contribute to a GPL project or become a program manager. You guys always bitch that managment doesn't undrestand you, so replace them. Look for smaller jobs like code auditing or consulting. Basicly, find something else to love.
My point is, there has to be a progression from a country of people doing bitchwork to some kind of golden age. Think about everyone in america still working in factories or mines or docks. There is going to be a progression with or without your help. Eventually, I'd like to see some new industry for us to perfet. Then we can outsource that and find another.
The TCP sliding window protocol does this. When you request a page, some data is sent to you. You send an ACK. the server then sends that same ammount of data, plus some more. Then you send an ACK. This continues until you stop sending ACKs. Then the server knows that it needs to back off a bit.
I also use AirH. 128k is definately their "ideal" speed, but I average more like 80k~90k with peaks into the 120k range. It is nice to be able to surf from anywhere, but paying 9000 yen/month hurts. The service also suffers from serious lag. there is no reason that a wireless service should have 500ms of lag between me and my default gateway.
I wonder how long till the new service is rolled out in Tokyo?
If he was a friend, then punching him would've been acceptable.
In any event, I'd prefer a theatre full of geeks to a theatre full of 16-year-old highschool lettermen trying to cop a feel from their cheerleading girlfriend while talking on their cellphones.
I think that's a little high, but I have no problem with a theatre charging $50 or $100 for an opening weekend. If a movie sells out at $7 a seat, then you'd be a nut if you didn't start charging $10.
Wouldn't it be nice to get in to see LOTR part 3 on opening weekend without having to deal with people who weren't really dedicated to seeing the movie? I stood in line behind two 13-year-olds who spend like 3 hours tryiong to explain the first movie to their grandpa. The whole time i was thinking "what a waste". Some geek isn't going to get in at all just because these wankers conned their grandpa into going to see it with them. If the price had been $20/seat, then I bet there'd be 3 more geeks in there that night.
On the other hand, it'd also be nice to be able to go see the movie a few weeks after release and only pay $2/seat. Keep the theatre crowded. As the seats start to empty, lower the price and keep it packed. I hate a crowded theatre, but from a profit standpoint, all those people are buying popcorn and cokes. It only makes sense to keep it packed by dropping the price.
Re:making it *slower* than (upgraded) 802.11b
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802.11g Slows Down
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· Score: 1
First off: Do these cards run under Linux?
Second: After this upgrade do the cards still run under Linux?
OK, I'd like to make a comment about how "corporations" are buying politicians. Yes, Microsoft and Disney gave money to a politician in exchange for "better" IP laws. We see that as a perversion of our political system.
I have a slightly different view.
MS and Disney represent a large body of people. These people depend on Office and Mickey to provide them with a paycheck. These people then spend their money in Florida and Washington which creates jobs for other prople. MS and Disney hope these laws will boost their profit. That, in turn, will keep the economy in their areas firm.
You may or may not like IP for philosophical reasons. You may not like MS or Disney for philosophical reasons. You may belive that these laws will be ineffective and, therefore, a waste of time. But you cannot blame these companies for trying to keep their source of income strong.
There is no way you can say that MS and Disney giving money to a politician in not in the best interests of the companies, it's employees, or the surronding economical region.
Re:Probably it will always stay...
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BitTorrent Guide
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This is exactly WHY bittorent is so useful. While the typical home pipe is huge compared to a few years ago, the SOURCE system pipe hasn't grown much. You now have 500 people trying to get an ISO from a single computer sitting on a dual-homed OC-3. The mirrors these days are swamped with too many requests for the same data.
BitTorrent allows all of us to share the burden. In the process, the system as a whole gets much faster. We could be seeing an end to the typical mirror system. A new paridigm, possibly based on freenet and/or bittorrent, is long overdue.
Do you honestly think you could win agianst them? Do you even think it would get to trial before you were bankrupted? Do you really have the time to fight that battle?
<EFF HINT>Of course, winning one time would easily bankroll all the other cases:) </EFF HINT>
Yes, it looks cool. It also runs cool. That means that it wastes less energy. Check out the power requirements. I bet you'll find that it is cheaper to run a 17" LCD (about $450 right now) than to run a 17" CRT (about $70). If you go into the TCO, it also means less energy spent on cooling your workplace, and more efective work area per desk.
The down side is eye strain. A cheap LCD can be a real killer on the eyes.
Our Net Ops Center used to have a projector displaying OpenView. After a while, we were replacing a $200 bulb every week. We finally went out and bought two BIG flat panel LCD monitors. These things can only do 800x600, but they are like 52" or better.
Now the LCD is only used on weekends to display the most important thing in a NOC...movies!
Slashdot Mirror
True that...
The managment is still learning. 5 years ago, the USAF had no centralized IT. We still deal with supporting legacy communications over 75 baud connections. You ever try to troubleshoot 75 frickin' baud? My o-scope won't even resolve low enough to display 75 baud.
:)
Tomorrow, I might be required to install Solaris 9 on an old SPARC-5 over a remore NFS mount.
Saturday, I get to come in and find drivers for brand new, mt-rj, fiber NICs.
We are very flexible. That is what managment pushes for. My training program on 80% of the platforms I support is based on reading the frickin manual. And some of these manuals were printed "back in the day". A few days ago, I ran across a manual that refered to the RS-232 interface as "awaiting EIA aproval".
Insane, yes. But you have to be a little crazy to run CAT-V cable while carying a loaded weapon.
Wasteful, yes. Waste is controlled, but you can't revamp your work processes when one day's worth of down time would deny someone the information they need to make a life-or-death decision. I'm not kidding about this, people die when we have outages.
Dysfunctional, probably. We are trying to get upper managment to understand the need for information technology. It's kinda hard to get them to see it. Most of them were interning when you were lucky to have a typewriter and a telephone. IT in those days was the dude that went to supply to pick up a new ribbon.
Our successes aren't measured in dollars, they are measured in lives. Because of that, it's hard to show a General how 100 Base FX is better than 100 Base TX. There is no cost/profit margin for him to compare.
I don't trust the political system. I don't trust it because no one uses it. The American people have allowed the system to become broken. Eventually, it will degrade to the point that it will need to be dessolved and replaced.
The Government is not broken because of Disney or MGM or MP/RI-AA. It is broken because of the apathy of the American people. I have said before that I don't like criticism without a suggestion.
Here is mine:
Everyone should be required to vote at least every other year. If you don't vote, then you are automatically de-registered for the next voting cycle. If it isn't important to you to vote, then your right to vote should be removed.
Likewise, everyone should be required to write a letter to their congresscritter at least once a year. If you can't find something interesting to say, then talk about the frickin' hay fields.
My duty to our country is to defend it from all enemies. Your duty to our country is to vote. I promise to keep doing my job as long as you keep doing yours.
Wow, and they said /. discussion was dead...
We do hire someone off the street and put them in IT with minimum training. However, everyone has a supervisor. It's not like we have 30 people cooking White Castles (Krystals for those in the south) one day and managing the rollout of Active Directory across multiple domains the next.
We are always looking for good people. In this economy, we have no excuse for not picking up some GOOD people. Don't feel like an ass for steering people our way. You can bet that when I get out, I'll be coming your way.
Marines are cool...Right up to the point where you have a critical system down and they have to go run. I swear, at like 3'o frickin clock every day, those guys just close the frickin base to go run.
:)
Not even minimum manning, they just all up and leave.
In all fairness, I'm writing this from my nice comfy office chair where my 20 lbs overweight ass is sipping cofee and seriously thinking that it needs a doughnut
Har, har, har...OK, you've had your laugh... Didja make yourself smile?
Most of the exploits we see are because admins are too lazy to patch a known hole. Having an external auditor come in and look at your systems is a great wat to ensure that you have a reasonable policy in place.
With any large network, there will be unpatched systems out there. I can't tell you the number of times a user has pulled out an old computer from his broom closet and connected it to a LAN drop. They usually do it to accomidate some newly arrived guy. Usually, they just crash some machine on their subnet. Occasionally, they go "scanning" for IP addresses until they hit one that works. Then we have a frickin' Win98 box on the back side of our network that no one knows about.
Two months later, ISS (Internetwork Security Scanner) reports the box and we have to hunt it down. This probably happens in any large network. It doesn't suprise me.
The guys who come to see us are very smart. They understand networking and provide insight well beyond the "click, type, apply" stuff that most MCSEs preach. Some of the guys even work to intergrate MS systems with our few nescessary linux boxen.
Once you truly understand the underlying technology, knowing where to click or what init.d script to modify isn't important. I wouldn't give a RHCE any more or less respect than an MCSE until he proves his worth.
Thanks for backing me up. Sometimes, it seems like I am the only voice of reason...
I have been working in the USAF for about 8 years. 6 of that in WAN (longhaul voice and data), and 2 in Infrastructure and security. I'd like to offer another side to your story:
.NET 2003 server with M$ SQL, etc., etc.
.NET is something that, as they say, they 'have been working on for
>but it needed to be done before the end of the fiscal year
This is how it works: The USAF has a budget. Each area gets a small slice. If filters down to each office having about $10k ~ $30k for operations that year. That money has to last all year. About 20% of that is kept in reserve funds. If that money is not needed by August, we are free to spend it. At that point, we develop a wish list and try to get that aproved. By time all this happens, we have about 5 weeks to spend the reserve money.
No one in the military likes it. All our contractors hate it. If you want it changed, write your congressperson and have them change 50+ years of bad management practices...
>The quality of code would've been greately improved if we coded, say 40 hrs/week instead of pulling all-nighters.
I have spent countless days and nights working overtime. So have a lot of my coworkers. In times of exercise or, God forbid, a war, we go to 12+ hour days. 6 days on and 1 day off are common during exercises.
Contractors always make fun of us for sloppy wiring, half-assed installs, unpatched servers, etc... When new equipment arrive, we usually have a few hours to determine where it will go and when. We are usually told that the old equipment stays in place until the new stuff is operational. This leads to massive misuse of rack space. and cluttered wiring.
Also, just like your code suffers from 40+ hours, my wiring suffers when I have to spend my Saturday morning connecting a new router.
No one likes to work overtime. Your work suffers just like mine. You may lose a contract because of your bad code. People could lose lives because of my bad wiring. Let's both work harder to keep our shit straight, regardless of hours worked.
>They insisted on
This is becuase we have a very nice license with MS for their stuff. We get good support, including semi-annual "Best Practices" reviews by MS inspectors. The US Gov paid for MS tools, we should use them. If you don't like it, write your congressperson. Personally, I'd love to be able to use Squid on Red Hat. Unfortunately, we don't have the money to spend on more software licenses after we bought MS stuff.
>asked if it would work with a win2003 server as opposed to a win2k
Our upgrade paths are fixed by MS. This absolutely sucks. Our systems require specific patch releases from MS. Once they stop supporting those patch paths, we have to upgrade. Agian, if you don't like it, write your congresscritter.
>but they didn't even know how to install windows
I'm throwing a bullshit flag on this play. I find it difficult to belive that no one knew how to install Windows. In the USAF, we have a NCC department that does nothing but install, configure, and maintain Win2k servers.
There may have been an internal power play based on getting Win2k3 server training. That is an ongoing military issue. Your boss tells you to do something. If you do it and screw it up, they ask if you were trained to do that thing. If you were not trained, then you go to federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison for working on something without proper training. If you were trained and you screw it up, then you get in trouble for not folowing the training guidelines for whatever it was you broke.
Everyone working in a military NCC can install Win2k Workstation and Server. Many of them are MSCEs or higher. They could probably install Win2k3. They just wanted official training on that product before they tried something and broke it.
>Installing a a windows server is a mountain of a task for them.
No it isn't.
>Installing
The problem with doing it via a HOSTS file is that it doesn't understand sub-domains. You have to block www.gator.com, www1.gator.com, www2.gator.com... I think you get the point.
I have heard talk of a peer-2-peer application that would allow me to click on an ad and then select "block" from a list. Every hour, my block list gets circulated around the internet. Eventualy, a master list evolves that effectively blocks every advertisement from every page on the internet.
There are 2 problems I can see with this. First, sites will evolve to not load until you view an ad. If you go to www.slashdot.org, you'd be redirected to adserver.slashdot.org for 60 seconds. Then you'd be redirected back to slashdot.org with a cookie saying you'd viewed the ads.
The second is that you couldn't make money off your app. You might be able to blackmail people into paying for not being blocked, but more likely then not, you'd just be sued once or twice. Without money, you'd lose. In any event, this application would have to be free, GPLed software. That way, when you dropped off the face of the earth, people would be able to take the code and run with it.
In fact, the best thing to do would to have a page on sourceforge that, literally, listed the code to your app. People could copy-and-paste that code into a *.c file and then compile it. If anyone sued, you could claim code-as-speech protection.
Yep, just tell them to connect to the network and download the latest service pack.
Oh, what's that? Your network card doesn't work? Well, like I said, just get on the LAN and download this pack.
Yes, I know your NIC is non functional. Like I said, just get online and download this service pack...
There's no way that shit worked afterwords...
Ok, I'd suggest you ask your woman to give your testicles back. They are probably in here purse next to the tissues and breath mints. Then put the women and children to bed and go looking for conduit.
If my woman doesn't like my computer shrine (currently 2 laptops, three desktops, 500ft of BRIGHT RED cat-v, and a WAP) then she knows where the door is. I just hope it doesn't hit her in the ass on her way out.
Seriously, the only thing keeping me from being ubergeek is my wife spending money on German Smoking Men, Italian dishes, and flannel sheets. Don't get me wrong, I love all those things, but when I say $Computer_Thing is needed in my house, money is allocated.
And an even better case for waiting outside the guy's office with a baseball bat and a ski mask.
Sure, MS can deny you a future contract, but one linux zealot (and belive me, there are tons) can deny you a working set of knees.
If you haven't yet, I'd suggest reading up on "Assasination Politics". Basiclly, a group places bets on how someone will die. Once enough bets are placed, the pot grows to be huge. Then one of the betters (that word seems right, but feels wrong) decides to take matters into his own hands and make his bet come true. Very clever stuff.
Lawyers aren't stupid. If your car was going 40kph and suddenly peaked at 100kph, anyone could see that something must have happened to cause that spike. If you had a halfway decent lawyer, he would argue that your car couldn't have accelerated that quickly.
Eventually, we will see a better system for data aquisition. Imagine being able to get statistics on weight shifts to specific wheels during acceleration or breaking. Imagine being able to see the effect on gas mileage from all those Mountian Dew (God's own caffene source!) cans in your floorboard.
As a geek, I love charts and graphs and numbers. I'd love to be able to do "snmpwalk" on my car and get detailed statistics from my trips. Yes, it could be used agianst me, it could also be used to show that I am a good driver. If a kid runs in front of you and you hit him, the proper numbers could show that there was no way you were violating the law and you couldn't stop in time.
Numbers could be used both ways. Do you really want to hide numbers that could be used to prove your innocence? Do you want to hide numbers that could prove my guilt?
What makes you think that what you do on a public road should be private?
I don't claim to have all the answers to unemployment, but I do know that you should stop whining about outsourcing.
How many people still paint cars for Ford or GM? Very few. Robots do most of that now. How many "human computers" do financial institutions hire today? Very few. Computers have taken it over. It is a natural progression from an old paridigm to a new one.
I once worked for a company that made athletic clothing. When I started, there were 6 teams of ladies that sewed shirts. There were about 50 people per team and they worked in 8 hour shifts 24/7. My team of about 4 people took shit out of big boxes and put it in smaller boxes. These smaller boxes went to Mexico to be put together there for about a quarter of the cost of doing it here. Before I left, my team had grown to 12 people and all the teams of sewing ladies had been moved somewhere else. Many had been laid off.
Their children learned an important lesson. Learn a new skill, the old ones are being outsourced.
I feel sorry for you programmers. I really do. But programming is bitchwork. The hours are long and the ammount of crap you put up with is unbearable. Why do you insist on learning a skill that has no real future? If Asians have placed themselves into the position of doing our bitchwork for less than us, we should be happy. Go find something else to do.
There will always be a job for sewers, painters, and programmers in this country. But not many. If you love programming, then contribute to a GPL project or become a program manager. You guys always bitch that managment doesn't undrestand you, so replace them. Look for smaller jobs like code auditing or consulting. Basicly, find something else to love.
My point is, there has to be a progression from a country of people doing bitchwork to some kind of golden age. Think about everyone in america still working in factories or mines or docks. There is going to be a progression with or without your help. Eventually, I'd like to see some new industry for us to perfet. Then we can outsource that and find another.
The TCP sliding window protocol does this. When you request a page, some data is sent to you. You send an ACK. the server then sends that same ammount of data, plus some more. Then you send an ACK. This continues until you stop sending ACKs. Then the server knows that it needs to back off a bit.
I'm pretty sure this is a standard in TCP/IP.
DVD-R plays just fine in my XBox. I haven't tried the -RW discs yet. Overall, I'm pretty happy with my DVD-R/RW.
I also use AirH. 128k is definately their "ideal" speed, but I average more like 80k~90k with peaks into the 120k range. It is nice to be able to surf from anywhere, but paying 9000 yen/month hurts. The service also suffers from serious lag. there is no reason that a wireless service should have 500ms of lag between me and my default gateway.
I wonder how long till the new service is rolled out in Tokyo?
If he was a friend, then punching him would've been acceptable.
In any event, I'd prefer a theatre full of geeks to a theatre full of 16-year-old highschool lettermen trying to cop a feel from their cheerleading girlfriend while talking on their cellphones.
I think that's a little high, but I have no problem with a theatre charging $50 or $100 for an opening weekend. If a movie sells out at $7 a seat, then you'd be a nut if you didn't start charging $10.
Wouldn't it be nice to get in to see LOTR part 3 on opening weekend without having to deal with people who weren't really dedicated to seeing the movie? I stood in line behind two 13-year-olds who spend like 3 hours tryiong to explain the first movie to their grandpa. The whole time i was thinking "what a waste". Some geek isn't going to get in at all just because these wankers conned their grandpa into going to see it with them. If the price had been $20/seat, then I bet there'd be 3 more geeks in there that night.
On the other hand, it'd also be nice to be able to go see the movie a few weeks after release and only pay $2/seat. Keep the theatre crowded. As the seats start to empty, lower the price and keep it packed. I hate a crowded theatre, but from a profit standpoint, all those people are buying popcorn and cokes. It only makes sense to keep it packed by dropping the price.
First off: Do these cards run under Linux?
Second: After this upgrade do the cards still run under Linux?
OK, I'd like to make a comment about how "corporations" are buying politicians. Yes, Microsoft and Disney gave money to a politician in exchange for "better" IP laws. We see that as a perversion of our political system.
I have a slightly different view.
MS and Disney represent a large body of people. These people depend on Office and Mickey to provide them with a paycheck. These people then spend their money in Florida and Washington which creates jobs for other prople. MS and Disney hope these laws will boost their profit. That, in turn, will keep the economy in their areas firm.
You may or may not like IP for philosophical reasons. You may not like MS or Disney for philosophical reasons. You may belive that these laws will be ineffective and, therefore, a waste of time. But you cannot blame these companies for trying to keep their source of income strong.
There is no way you can say that MS and Disney giving money to a politician in not in the best interests of the companies, it's employees, or the surronding economical region.
This is exactly WHY bittorent is so useful. While the typical home pipe is huge compared to a few years ago, the SOURCE system pipe hasn't grown much. You now have 500 people trying to get an ISO from a single computer sitting on a dual-homed OC-3. The mirrors these days are swamped with too many requests for the same data.
BitTorrent allows all of us to share the burden. In the process, the system as a whole gets much faster. We could be seeing an end to the typical mirror system. A new paridigm, possibly based on freenet and/or bittorrent, is long overdue.
Do you honestly think you could win agianst them? Do you even think it would get to trial before you were bankrupted? Do you really have the time to fight that battle?
:) </EFF HINT>
<EFF HINT>Of course, winning one time would easily bankroll all the other cases
Yes, it looks cool. It also runs cool. That means that it wastes less energy. Check out the power requirements. I bet you'll find that it is cheaper to run a 17" LCD (about $450 right now) than to run a 17" CRT (about $70). If you go into the TCO, it also means less energy spent on cooling your workplace, and more efective work area per desk.
The down side is eye strain. A cheap LCD can be a real killer on the eyes.
Our Net Ops Center used to have a projector displaying OpenView. After a while, we were replacing a $200 bulb every week. We finally went out and bought two BIG flat panel LCD monitors. These things can only do 800x600, but they are like 52" or better.
Now the LCD is only used on weekends to display the most important thing in a NOC...movies!