Uhm....aren't subscribers supposed to help catch these things? I mean, after all, you get to see the damned article BEFORE it's published and if you see problems, email daddypants@slashdot.org. Or are there just not enough people awake when the stories are previewed to catch them? Just a thought. No, it's not our responsibility to be editors, but a little help couldn't hurt anything.
Folks, the word that drives me nuts in computer technology is the word, "Overkill". Let me clue all you in -- there is NO such thing as 'overkill'!
You will use it. You will be glad you did it. 640K is enough for anybody. 2GB of RAM is a lot...no, you'll use it. 20GB drive? How will I ever fill it? Trust me, you'll use it.
So, from my experiences in networking my house, I offer these tips:
The proper number of drops to install in a room is How Many You Think You Need times 2.
When pulling cable, the number of cables to pull is How Many Ports You Have times 2.
The number of ports on your hub and patch panel is How Many Ports You Have times 2. (seeing a pattern?)
YES use a patch panel. It makes life SO much easier later on.
YES use a punchdown block for incoming telco. That way you can wire to your patch panel and use patch cables to change phone locations. Very, very slick.
Make sure you pull a string with each cable run, too. Beats the hell out of smashing up a wall.
Pull other cords while you're at it. I pulled speaker wire to every port (almost) and now I have a house-wide music system.
If you're installing in old walls (not new construction), find the "old work" electrical boxes and put them in the wall. They have screwdown clamps that hold onto the lathe/sheetrock and enable you to have a box without a lot of work and mess.
Get yourself a mess of cable coax one-nail staples. They're meant for holding 75ohm coax but work just as slick as nipples for CATX. Invaluable when you have a lot of rafters/joists to hook cable to.
If you have a workbench in another building (garage) or such, wire it up to the network. I have my garage online now and can do all my major computer work/assembly out there and still be online and have my network resources.
Racks can be bought, or you can just make one out of wood, like I did. It works well, you can screw into it, and it's stable enough to hold my stuff. No, it doesn't look as cool, but if you're on a budget, well...
Tools Absolutely Needed: RJ-45 crimper, RJ-45 tester, wire stripper, needlenose pliers, fish tape and reel, pinchers or snips, screwdriver, punch tool. These you'll need over and over, just get them now, save yourself much forehead smackage.
Installation suggestion: Have a wiring party. I did my house like this, 13 people on a Saturday, beer, pop, and lunch provided. It was great. The organization took awhile, people were milling around for awhile, but once we started making holes and pulling, things got together. Send groups of two or three off to do a room or a drop or two together, it's better to work in teams. Makes for a very fun and productive day.
A home network, when running, kicks ass. There's nothing like having friends over and just handing them a patch cable and telling them to reach behind their chair and plug in. Do it right, spend some time on it, and it'll work out well.
Dropping support for OSes that are clearly out of their useful lifespan is good and all, but we're going to eventually hit a wall here. Hardware is becoming fast enough that most users could really give a bean's ass whether they have the latest and greatest, their machine(s) are running fine where they are. I work in an industry (long-term health care) where the processing requirements for workstations just aren't that impressive. Win95 and 98 are just fine and will be for probably a few years, if not more.
This dropping of OSes is just going to cause a pain for support techs and admins dealing with these systems. You can't run anything newer on them without a hardware upgrade, but you can't get anything updated for the old OS, either. Software vendors drop their support as soon as M$ does, not because they are sheeple, but because they know it'll just cause problems. Want to install IE 5.5 on Win95? Good luck finding it. (you can, but not at M$) Want to install the latest Adobe, or MSN, or etc? Nope. And it'll just get worse.
I realize the push to deprecate OSes is for good reasons. They want to get rid of OSes that are buggy and insecure (ok, good call) and they want to push for new hardware in the market and keep sales running. Good ideas in the long run, but there has to be someplace where people just stop buying because it doesn't make sense to keep upgrading. (which I think we're starting to see now)
Interstates that are toll roads were roads before the Interstate Highway Act 1952. In the provisions of the act, these roads can be toll-roads if the state chooses, and whatever toll system the state wants. Roads built under the Act (with Federal monies) cannot be toll roads. Hence the mix.
Lots of good posts here already, so I'll try not to duplicate. This is a list of my caveats and suggestions, having done 4 years already.
Pen, not pencil. Pencil is for people who aren't confident. J/k. You'll be grateful for the scribbles, trust me. More than once a mis-written scribble saved my ass. Write lots of stuff in the margins, even if it's completely offtopic. You'll laugh about them later when you read them.
Capabilities. Make sure you know what your campus network will allow. The college that I attended has its residential network completely separated from the labs -- you can't connect from one to the other. I had to send emails to myself if I wanted to move information. A pain in the ass...be prepared for such things being implemented.
Fun and Games. One of the best uses computers had in college was fun. And I'm not talking about Quake. This is different fun -- webcams, mp3 jukeboxes, IM'ing your roommate from a different room to go get you a beer, computing on the shitter. Things like that. Make sure your system is flexible. Linux helps.
Portable Storage - I never really had this other than zipdisks. A thumbdrive would have been great...moving files around, since networks weren't hooked together, was a real bitch. Much easier to take some sort of media around.
Cheap Laptop w/Wireless. - I would recommend in addition to a nice desktop to buy a cheap, used, low-power laptop. Battery complete, wireless if you can afford it, 100' long cable if you can't. You know NOT the true pleasures in life until you can drag your laptop out onto the lawn on a bright sunny spring day, write a term paper, chat online, surf the web, ask your roommate back inside on the couch to bring you another beer, and watch damn cute girls play sand volleyball in bikinis at the same time. TRUST ME on this one.
Power Button - For the monitor or the box, I don't care. College is one of (if not the) best times of your life. I miss it horribly. Be sure to shut off that box or monitor and get your ass outside, to parties, on a bench with a girl late at night, doing crazy, half-illegal shit with your friends and roommates. You won't wish you had more screen time, but you'll wish you had more of the other things.
Re:It's time to drink.
on
PeltierBeer
·
· Score: 1
Good sir, if you're drinking 13 Guinesses in one sitting, I'd like to shake your hand. You're either really plastered or have an iron liver, and you'll be on the porcelain throne for a solid week after with the sh*ts.
Why hasn't IPv6 been adopted yet? Because it's expensive to switch, or a pain in the ass, or both, or people are stubborn, or....There's a million reasons, some better than others.
However, this is the sort of thing that you will see and will enable IPv6 to come into use. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well, we have the invention, now we just need the necessity. Running out of IP space? Sounds like a good necessity to me!
I'm not really worried about it. They'll either NAT it or they'll switch. If they switch (which I hope they do), it'll just encourage more of the world to do so. The market embraces the greater of a) what makes sense or b) what people are using. Evolution in action.
This is really neat, but will only be useful to me if it has adjustable opacity. I would want to have this in a flatpanel screen sitting on my coffeetable. I could have it actually blocking my TV screen. When I'm watching TV and want to view the chat on my talker superimposed on the screen, I could adjust the transparency to do so, and when I wanted to browse the web, I could make it opaque to do that. Otherwise, this will only find decent use in such things as HUDs and the like -- some things in computing can only be done well with opaque backgrounds for clarity sake, like gfx editing.
However, I like the idea. I use transparent Konsoles a lot and would enjoy having other things with an option to be transparent, including the monitor itself.
Make my vote count for something, then I'll give more of a damn. With the electoral college in place, my vote counts less than a pimple on an elephant's ass. I can vote whatever I want in Iowa and it'll always get the Democratic electral points, because the majority is Democratic. So my vote was rendered instantly useless, because it's never counted in the total.
Online voting? Good deal. I like and support the idea, I think the security concerns are real, but can be addressed. But it still won't make my vote count any more.
When I recently (within the last year) upgraded to a nice Samsung PerfectFlat 19"er, I went to several large discount stores to try to buy a good chunk of illuminated glass. Although I had read that buying a monitor is best in person, I have to offer this one caution -- know the limitations of the store's displays.
Why in the hades must stores insist on hooking up 55 monitors to the same damn video signal? The guy even admitted it was awful...static, etc. STATIC?!?!? On a monitor!? Incredible. Yet I picked my monitor out from all those and got lucky. I asked if I could pull some off the shelf and have them hooked up independently, but the guy conveniently pointed out the 20lb. log chain attached to each, and I gave up on it.
The point is: Put the displays through the best you can give them at the store. Ask if you can control the signalling computer. (I was able to do *anything* in one store, and I amused the staff and customers for awhile with my antics as a 10x10 monitor wall started doing my bidding. Most entertaining.) Give them the best shot, try to burn them out on site...give them refresh rates that would make your mother scream in pain.
But at the end of the day, it's a lot of luck. Good luck!
I agree with you on this one. SF at the moment is *worthless* for finding anything useful in amongst the cruft. Its interface in general is shitty -- there's nothing direct, I have to click 4 links to download anything, and my mother would get lost in an instant.
Just because I'm a developer and a geek doesn't mean that it should take a manual to navigate a website. SF needs some serious direction in terms of usability.
It's begun again. The annual April Fool's Day flogging of loyal/. readers. Not only are we subjected to a day of really nasty jokes and heartattacks (Damn you, Timothy, for not waiting till midnight!), but we have to go a whole day without decent news.
Clever would be to insert joke stories in between real stories. Interesting and amusing would be to sneak in things where you don't expect them, in the middle of normality. No one does something all out for AprFoo like declaring themselves gay for a day. They'll do it for a bit, then quit, because it's purile otherwise.
I'm a computer professional. I'm a loyal/. reader. And I WANT MY DAMN NEWS! Get a life, boyz....let's try being more clever about it, hrm?
</RANT>
I can't imagine that this will take off very fast. Here's my thinking on this one:
If you are a normal user, you could give a crap. No upgrade.
If you are a developer, you might upgrade if you can afford it/justify it/take the time to stress it out. But I can't see much development moving to 2003 anytime soon, other than just testing on it.
Most companies are in a bind, they've just figured out how to work 2K or XP upgades into their budgets/plans. 2003 is NOT going to be appealing for awhile.
If they've already upgraded to 2K, they're not going anywhere. 2K's been solid for me, and it seems like the rest of the world generally agrees. (YMMV) At least we know of a lot of the problems with 2K and (if you've kept up with it) the patches are applied. No surprises. 2003? It's like opening a present from your grandmother. You have no idea what's inside, but you're pretty sure you're not going to like it.
If you are using NT, you are either a) an NT zealot/whore and you wouldn't switch if God himself upgraded, b)you have so many scars from NT that you now feel obligated to your tormentor *crack!* Yes, Mistress!, or c) you are on NT for a reason...you have a 56 day uptime, the box sits in the corner under the donut rack, and has survived 3 major floods. You can't justify getting rid of it.
So. Microsoft releases yet another product to mediocre reviews and sluggish market response. Next.
It seems to me that if p2p software allowed people from a specific school to look for files on each other's computers first, and to go outside of the campus only when necessary, a lot of bandwidth would be saved.
Interestingly enough, Iowa State University has implemented something of the sort...or rather, the students have implemented it as a matter of necessity.
At ISU they have a search engine called StrangeSearch that searches the local network for files shared on other people's boxes. The intranet at ISU isn't throttled, but if you go over a certain amount of bandwidth per day, you get moved to a shaped line that severely limits your throughput from the Internet. Thus, very few people doing actual downloading from the Internet and massive sharing of the files once they get inside. Which, to me, seems reasonable.
There's detail and then there's detail. Detailing how a function works is one thing. Detailing what a function is is another. Or what a class is. It's simply incredible.
Oh, I absolutely agree. And I've tried explaining this to them. The problem, they tell me (in their oh-so-knowing way), is that to hire a competant programmer here in small-town Iowa (right in the middle of fuck-nowhere, I assure you) is no small potatoes, so they're just covering their asses.
First, I think they're full of it (we have two other programmers here, there's gotta be more out there) and we have a level of paranoia that does not equal the level of productivity.
Concern, good. Paranoia, bad. Where's the line? Right through my ass.:)
The problem I run into with scripting (and indeed, other languages) is that I am one of three programmers at my business and the most experienced in a diverse number of languages, both programming and scripting. I try to use the right tool for the job....Perl for quick string manipulation, handling webpages, PowerScript to ease the pain of banal Windows programming, Visual C++ to handle the lower-level, API-humping apps, and pure C to do fast work when I need speed.
However, it has come around to bite me on the ass. For instance, I am the only programmer that knows Perl. As good as the tool may be, the company now regards me as an enigma -- something to be dealt with by procedure, policy, and backups. I am now being forced to document my code to a level at which a non-programmer could figure out what's going on and stumble through it. The same with the IDEs (if applicable). My code was well-documented and written before, any competant programmer should be able to pick it up. I am not being forced to do this for languages for which we have other people that know them...just the ones I am the sole intellect on.
So, as a warning to all of you trying to use your scripting or programming abilities for the good of your job. Good idea. But watch your ass or you'll end up writing n00b manuals for the rest of your days.
Uh....it was pointed out by some gutless cowards that my stats are off. Well, they weren't MEANT to be accurate, and if you feel content to pick on that and miss my point, knock yourself out.
If Symantec had a moral/ethical obligation to warn the rest of the world about Slammer before it was released, don't they also have an obligation to warn the rest of the world that if you're using a POS, buggy, perpetually frought with nastiness operating system that you're bending over and just asking for it anyway?
Fact is, even if they had said something, 50% of the world would have laughed because they're not running Windows, 5% of Windows sysadmins would have been at the consoles sweating it, and the rest of the world would have stayed in the recliner because they don't keep up with security updates anyway OR they have their heads so far up Gates' ass that they couldn't possibly believe it.
Personally, I sat back and laughed. How about you?
Re:Do they have an installer yet?
on
KDE 3.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
For you Slackware people out there, if you're already running 3.0 under Slack 8.1, the contributed packages work marvelously.
Steps:
Shutdown X.
Backup your current KDE install just in case. tar zcvf/kde3old.tar.gz/opt
cd to the directory where you downloaded the files.
su to root.
Start pkgtool
Install from current directory.
Install everything. (except if you only deal with English you'll want to skip the multilanguage pack - kde-i18n-3.1-noarch-1.tgz)
startx as root, make sure things work.
Log in as your favorite user, startx.
That's it! How much easier could that be? And it's beautiful...I haven't cracked half the features of this yet (didn't test any of the RCs) but it's looking great so far. Excellent job, KDE Team!
And for all you other suckers out there, how about contributing something to the effort? Dropping some green in the direction of KDE's team ensures a great desktop -- surely something this nice is worth something to ya.
Pr0nQuest is a game centered on rewarding you for how much spunk you put into it. This is the core design philosophy behind the game, since they charge you by the month and make more money the longer you drool at the screen. What they don't tell you is that taking your money is about all they're interested in. They care little for player complaints ("No, not Grandma again!"), and less about player suggestions and requests (More cheerleaders, less NYC hookers.) They're in this to milk you for all you're worth, and that's the first thing you have to know.
The second thing you have to know is that the pr0n stops being fun. By that time though, you're so "addicted" to the pr0n, you don't realize it. The pr0n becomes a source of frustration and release instead of a source of entertainment and fun. It becomes a whacking chore. It becomes a hand job. You pull away at the joystick, obsessed and consumed with getting that new DIVX rip, or finding that last photo series, and while so consumed you begin to hate the pr0n. Vehemently. It's a desire that goes on forever, and one that you can never get to the ultimate climax.
...
These situations are 'lovingly' referred to by the ooglers as dicksinks; pr0ntease traps intended to waste your spunk and keep you whacking longer. There are hundreds of them; others incredibly hotter than simply getting to a orgy. Several series required to complete your collection require you to spend 100+ hours sitting in single chairs, killing hundreds of sperm in 12-hour stretches for a "rare drop", such as a nipple shot of Britney Spears; or the latest Pamela video; with which to excite the little boss. Unlike the other parts of the pr0n, these dicksinks are required for excitement, and there is no getting around them unless you wish to stop playing with yourself. This is of course not fun at all, but as said above, by this time you'll have long stopped having fun with pr0n. You'll do it anyway though, as thousands of others have, because you, like them, are addicted. The quest to find the cherry popping video of Natalie Portman is one of the most vicious dicksinks in the entire world, but it is merely one example among dozens. To even reach this area of the game requires months of non-stop whacking with your "sword"; sometimes up to a year of panting heavily. Only then will you be powerful enough to enter her.
...
Perhaps now you've begun to see the other side of pr0n: The buggier side, the darker side; the side of despair and guilt, fear and sticky carpet. The pr0n will absorb your life if you let it, while the days and weeks melt away into oblivion. I have barely touched on the repetitive teasing you must endure to reach the top levels of the pr0n: downloading pic after pic, hundreds upon hundreds in an endless non-exciting stream to gain a collection. I have not said anything about dickdeath (losing your erection) from brain network problems, or hard drive crashes where you lose any pictures or videos recently attained (and for which you are not compensated by email spam). I have not said anything about the PlayBoy(TM) subscriptions, where you get to pay $40/month to get the pictures that you should be receiving anyway. There are many other problems with this pr0n that I did not go into here. Before you get into pr0n, realize what you're jumping into. Look before you whack.
Slashdot Mirror
Uhm....aren't subscribers supposed to help catch these things? I mean, after all, you get to see the damned article BEFORE it's published and if you see problems, email daddypants@slashdot.org. Or are there just not enough people awake when the stories are previewed to catch them? Just a thought. No, it's not our responsibility to be editors, but a little help couldn't hurt anything.
You will use it. You will be glad you did it. 640K is enough for anybody. 2GB of RAM is a lot...no, you'll use it. 20GB drive? How will I ever fill it? Trust me, you'll use it.
So, from my experiences in networking my house, I offer these tips:
- The proper number of drops to install in a room is How Many You Think You Need times 2.
- When pulling cable, the number of cables to pull is How Many Ports You Have times 2.
- The number of ports on your hub and patch panel is How Many Ports You Have times 2. (seeing a pattern?)
- YES use a patch panel. It makes life SO much easier later on.
- YES use a punchdown block for incoming telco. That way you can wire to your patch panel and use patch cables to change phone locations. Very, very slick.
- Make sure you pull a string with each cable run, too. Beats the hell out of smashing up a wall.
- Pull other cords while you're at it. I pulled speaker wire to every port (almost) and now I have a house-wide music system.
- If you're installing in old walls (not new construction), find the "old work" electrical boxes and put them in the wall. They have screwdown clamps that hold onto the lathe/sheetrock and enable you to have a box without a lot of work and mess.
- Get yourself a mess of cable coax one-nail staples. They're meant for holding 75ohm coax but work just as slick as nipples for CATX. Invaluable when you have a lot of rafters/joists to hook cable to.
- If you have a workbench in another building (garage) or such, wire it up to the network. I have my garage online now and can do all my major computer work/assembly out there and still be online and have my network resources.
- Racks can be bought, or you can just make one out of wood, like I did. It works well, you can screw into it, and it's stable enough to hold my stuff. No, it doesn't look as cool, but if you're on a budget, well...
- Tools Absolutely Needed: RJ-45 crimper, RJ-45 tester, wire stripper, needlenose pliers, fish tape and reel, pinchers or snips, screwdriver, punch tool. These you'll need over and over, just get them now, save yourself much forehead smackage.
Installation suggestion: Have a wiring party. I did my house like this, 13 people on a Saturday, beer, pop, and lunch provided. It was great. The organization took awhile, people were milling around for awhile, but once we started making holes and pulling, things got together. Send groups of two or three off to do a room or a drop or two together, it's better to work in teams. Makes for a very fun and productive day.A home network, when running, kicks ass. There's nothing like having friends over and just handing them a patch cable and telling them to reach behind their chair and plug in. Do it right, spend some time on it, and it'll work out well.
Dropping support for OSes that are clearly out of their useful lifespan is good and all, but we're going to eventually hit a wall here. Hardware is becoming fast enough that most users could really give a bean's ass whether they have the latest and greatest, their machine(s) are running fine where they are. I work in an industry (long-term health care) where the processing requirements for workstations just aren't that impressive. Win95 and 98 are just fine and will be for probably a few years, if not more.
This dropping of OSes is just going to cause a pain for support techs and admins dealing with these systems. You can't run anything newer on them without a hardware upgrade, but you can't get anything updated for the old OS, either. Software vendors drop their support as soon as M$ does, not because they are sheeple, but because they know it'll just cause problems. Want to install IE 5.5 on Win95? Good luck finding it. (you can, but not at M$) Want to install the latest Adobe, or MSN, or etc? Nope. And it'll just get worse.
I realize the push to deprecate OSes is for good reasons. They want to get rid of OSes that are buggy and insecure (ok, good call) and they want to push for new hardware in the market and keep sales running. Good ideas in the long run, but there has to be someplace where people just stop buying because it doesn't make sense to keep upgrading. (which I think we're starting to see now)
Interstates that are toll roads were roads before the Interstate Highway Act 1952. In the provisions of the act, these roads can be toll-roads if the state chooses, and whatever toll system the state wants. Roads built under the Act (with Federal monies) cannot be toll roads. Hence the mix.
Good sir, if you're drinking 13 Guinesses in one sitting, I'd like to shake your hand. You're either really plastered or have an iron liver, and you'll be on the porcelain throne for a solid week after with the sh*ts.
I thought about that, too, but it was a can of worms that I didn't have the strength to open here on /. :)
It's just IP Evolution, folks.
Why hasn't IPv6 been adopted yet? Because it's expensive to switch, or a pain in the ass, or both, or people are stubborn, or....There's a million reasons, some better than others.
However, this is the sort of thing that you will see and will enable IPv6 to come into use. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well, we have the invention, now we just need the necessity. Running out of IP space? Sounds like a good necessity to me!
I'm not really worried about it. They'll either NAT it or they'll switch. If they switch (which I hope they do), it'll just encourage more of the world to do so. The market embraces the greater of a) what makes sense or b) what people are using. Evolution in action.
This is really neat, but will only be useful to me if it has adjustable opacity. I would want to have this in a flatpanel screen sitting on my coffeetable. I could have it actually blocking my TV screen. When I'm watching TV and want to view the chat on my talker superimposed on the screen, I could adjust the transparency to do so, and when I wanted to browse the web, I could make it opaque to do that. Otherwise, this will only find decent use in such things as HUDs and the like -- some things in computing can only be done well with opaque backgrounds for clarity sake, like gfx editing.
However, I like the idea. I use transparent Konsoles a lot and would enjoy having other things with an option to be transparent, including the monitor itself.
Something poorly-spelled on Slashdot? I can't imagine.
- How Should I Install a Harddrive, with or without a cable?
- Should I Use a CRT or a LCD?
- Can Floppy Disks be Used to Hold CDs?
- Who is this CmdrTaco, anyway?
Not to complain folks, but haven't we seen this before, or am I at the office of the Department for Redundancy Department?On Topic: Go wireless. Nothing to pull, 11Mbps transmission rate, and as secure as your grandma's dentures. Woo!
Make my vote count for something, then I'll give more of a damn. With the electoral college in place, my vote counts less than a pimple on an elephant's ass. I can vote whatever I want in Iowa and it'll always get the Democratic electral points, because the majority is Democratic. So my vote was rendered instantly useless, because it's never counted in the total.
Online voting? Good deal. I like and support the idea, I think the security concerns are real, but can be addressed. But it still won't make my vote count any more.
When I recently (within the last year) upgraded to a nice Samsung PerfectFlat 19"er, I went to several large discount stores to try to buy a good chunk of illuminated glass. Although I had read that buying a monitor is best in person, I have to offer this one caution -- know the limitations of the store's displays.
Why in the hades must stores insist on hooking up 55 monitors to the same damn video signal? The guy even admitted it was awful...static, etc. STATIC?!?!? On a monitor!? Incredible. Yet I picked my monitor out from all those and got lucky. I asked if I could pull some off the shelf and have them hooked up independently, but the guy conveniently pointed out the 20lb. log chain attached to each, and I gave up on it.
The point is: Put the displays through the best you can give them at the store. Ask if you can control the signalling computer. (I was able to do *anything* in one store, and I amused the staff and customers for awhile with my antics as a 10x10 monitor wall started doing my bidding. Most entertaining.) Give them the best shot, try to burn them out on site...give them refresh rates that would make your mother scream in pain.
But at the end of the day, it's a lot of luck. Good luck!
I agree with you on this one. SF at the moment is *worthless* for finding anything useful in amongst the cruft. Its interface in general is shitty -- there's nothing direct, I have to click 4 links to download anything, and my mother would get lost in an instant.
Just because I'm a developer and a geek doesn't mean that it should take a manual to navigate a website. SF needs some serious direction in terms of usability.
*weeps*
/. readers. Not only are we subjected to a day of really nasty jokes and heartattacks (Damn you, Timothy, for not waiting till midnight!), but we have to go a whole day without decent news.
/. reader. And I WANT MY DAMN NEWS! Get a life, boyz....let's try being more clever about it, hrm?
</RANT>
It's begun again. The annual April Fool's Day flogging of loyal
Clever would be to insert joke stories in between real stories. Interesting and amusing would be to sneak in things where you don't expect them, in the middle of normality. No one does something all out for AprFoo like declaring themselves gay for a day. They'll do it for a bit, then quit, because it's purile otherwise.
I'm a computer professional. I'm a loyal
- If you are a normal user, you could give a crap. No upgrade.
- If you are a developer, you might upgrade if you can afford it/justify it/take the time to stress it out. But I can't see much development moving to 2003 anytime soon, other than just testing on it.
- Most companies are in a bind, they've just figured out how to work 2K or XP upgades into their budgets/plans. 2003 is NOT going to be appealing for awhile.
- If they've already upgraded to 2K, they're not going anywhere. 2K's been solid for me, and it seems like the rest of the world generally agrees. (YMMV) At least we know of a lot of the problems with 2K and (if you've kept up with it) the patches are applied. No surprises. 2003? It's like opening a present from your grandmother. You have no idea what's inside, but you're pretty sure you're not going to like it.
- If you are using NT, you are either a) an NT zealot/whore and you wouldn't switch if God himself upgraded, b)you have so many scars from NT that you now feel obligated to your tormentor *crack!* Yes, Mistress!, or c) you are on NT for a reason...you have a 56 day uptime, the box sits in the corner under the donut rack, and has survived 3 major floods. You can't justify getting rid of it.
So. Microsoft releases yet another product to mediocre reviews and sluggish market response. Next.It seems to me that if p2p software allowed people from a specific school to look for files on each other's computers first, and to go outside of the campus only when necessary, a lot of bandwidth would be saved.
Interestingly enough, Iowa State University has implemented something of the sort...or rather, the students have implemented it as a matter of necessity.
At ISU they have a search engine called StrangeSearch that searches the local network for files shared on other people's boxes. The intranet at ISU isn't throttled, but if you go over a certain amount of bandwidth per day, you get moved to a shaped line that severely limits your throughput from the Internet. Thus, very few people doing actual downloading from the Internet and massive sharing of the files once they get inside. Which, to me, seems reasonable.
(once during some great sex)
/. readers can appreciate!
Now that is a story I think
Atta boy! mount;fsck;more
There's detail and then there's detail. Detailing how a function works is one thing. Detailing what a function is is another. Or what a class is. It's simply incredible.
Oh, I absolutely agree. And I've tried explaining this to them. The problem, they tell me (in their oh-so-knowing way), is that to hire a competant programmer here in small-town Iowa (right in the middle of fuck-nowhere, I assure you) is no small potatoes, so they're just covering their asses.
:)
First, I think they're full of it (we have two other programmers here, there's gotta be more out there) and we have a level of paranoia that does not equal the level of productivity.
Concern, good. Paranoia, bad. Where's the line? Right through my ass.
The problem I run into with scripting (and indeed, other languages) is that I am one of three programmers at my business and the most experienced in a diverse number of languages, both programming and scripting. I try to use the right tool for the job....Perl for quick string manipulation, handling webpages, PowerScript to ease the pain of banal Windows programming, Visual C++ to handle the lower-level, API-humping apps, and pure C to do fast work when I need speed.
However, it has come around to bite me on the ass. For instance, I am the only programmer that knows Perl. As good as the tool may be, the company now regards me as an enigma -- something to be dealt with by procedure, policy, and backups. I am now being forced to document my code to a level at which a non-programmer could figure out what's going on and stumble through it. The same with the IDEs (if applicable). My code was well-documented and written before, any competant programmer should be able to pick it up. I am not being forced to do this for languages for which we have other people that know them...just the ones I am the sole intellect on.
So, as a warning to all of you trying to use your scripting or programming abilities for the good of your job. Good idea. But watch your ass or you'll end up writing n00b manuals for the rest of your days.
Uh....it was pointed out by some gutless cowards that my stats are off. Well, they weren't MEANT to be accurate, and if you feel content to pick on that and miss my point, knock yourself out.
root@yourcompany:$ ./karma_burner --reply=ON --moderators=ON
If Symantec had a moral/ethical obligation to warn the rest of the world about Slammer before it was released, don't they also have an obligation to warn the rest of the world that if you're using a POS, buggy, perpetually frought with nastiness operating system that you're bending over and just asking for it anyway?
Fact is, even if they had said something, 50% of the world would have laughed because they're not running Windows, 5% of Windows sysadmins would have been at the consoles sweating it, and the rest of the world would have stayed in the recliner because they don't keep up with security updates anyway OR they have their heads so far up Gates' ass that they couldn't possibly believe it.
Personally, I sat back and laughed. How about you?
Steps:
- Shutdown X.
- Backup your current KDE install just in case. tar zcvf
/kde3old.tar.gz /opt
- Download the new tgz files for 3.1.
- cd to the directory where you downloaded the files.
- su to root.
- Start pkgtool
- Install from current directory.
- Install everything. (except if you only deal with English you'll want to skip the multilanguage pack - kde-i18n-3.1-noarch-1.tgz)
- startx as root, make sure things work.
- Log in as your favorite user, startx.
That's it! How much easier could that be? And it's beautiful...I haven't cracked half the features of this yet (didn't test any of the RCs) but it's looking great so far. Excellent job, KDE Team!And for all you other suckers out there, how about contributing something to the effort? Dropping some green in the direction of KDE's team ensures a great desktop -- surely something this nice is worth something to ya.
Pr0nQuest is a game centered on rewarding you for how much spunk you put into it. This is the core design philosophy behind the game, since they charge you by the month and make more money the longer you drool at the screen. What they don't tell you is that taking your money is about all they're interested in. They care little for player complaints ("No, not Grandma again!"), and less about player suggestions and requests (More cheerleaders, less NYC hookers.) They're in this to milk you for all you're worth, and that's the first thing you have to know.
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...
The second thing you have to know is that the pr0n stops being fun. By that time though, you're so "addicted" to the pr0n, you don't realize it. The pr0n becomes a source of frustration and release instead of a source of entertainment and fun. It becomes a whacking chore. It becomes a hand job. You pull away at the joystick, obsessed and consumed with getting that new DIVX rip, or finding that last photo series, and while so consumed you begin to hate the pr0n. Vehemently. It's a desire that goes on forever, and one that you can never get to the ultimate climax.
These situations are 'lovingly' referred to by the ooglers as dicksinks; pr0ntease traps intended to waste your spunk and keep you whacking longer. There are hundreds of them; others incredibly hotter than simply getting to a orgy. Several series required to complete your collection require you to spend 100+ hours sitting in single chairs, killing hundreds of sperm in 12-hour stretches for a "rare drop", such as a nipple shot of Britney Spears; or the latest Pamela video; with which to excite the little boss. Unlike the other parts of the pr0n, these dicksinks are required for excitement, and there is no getting around them unless you wish to stop playing with yourself. This is of course not fun at all, but as said above, by this time you'll have long stopped having fun with pr0n. You'll do it anyway though, as thousands of others have, because you, like them, are addicted. The quest to find the cherry popping video of Natalie Portman is one of the most vicious dicksinks in the entire world, but it is merely one example among dozens. To even reach this area of the game requires months of non-stop whacking with your "sword"; sometimes up to a year of panting heavily. Only then will you be powerful enough to enter her.
Perhaps now you've begun to see the other side of pr0n: The buggier side, the darker side; the side of despair and guilt, fear and sticky carpet. The pr0n will absorb your life if you let it, while the days and weeks melt away into oblivion. I have barely touched on the repetitive teasing you must endure to reach the top levels of the pr0n: downloading pic after pic, hundreds upon hundreds in an endless non-exciting stream to gain a collection. I have not said anything about dickdeath (losing your erection) from brain network problems, or hard drive crashes where you lose any pictures or videos recently attained (and for which you are not compensated by email spam). I have not said anything about the PlayBoy(TM) subscriptions, where you get to pay $40/month to get the pictures that you should be receiving anyway. There are many other problems with this pr0n that I did not go into here. Before you get into pr0n, realize what you're jumping into. Look before you whack.