You're still waiting for the ship to turn after 3 years? Big egos eh?
HUGE egos. And remember, we're talking about a multi-national company with over 37,000 employees. There's a lot of Kool-Aid (getting sick of that term yet?) to dilute.
I am hopeful, though. I'll be hopeful until I'm successful in effecting changes, or until I give up.
Hey, I didn't say that I believe in this nonsense...:) But apparently there's enough ambiguity that someone deep in the bowels of Corporate HQ feels it's worth covering our asses on.
Like I said... Annoyed (non-)customers vs. angry/schizophrenic US Gov't withholding wads of cash; guess who wins?
The thing is, Andy's back, and as far as I can tell, he doesn't give a rat's ass about Solaris. He just wants to make interesting hardware. That's where the money is, after all. Software is a pathetic fraction of corporate revenues here. All the more reason to be mystified about the internal hostility toward Linux.
So, for example, the Thumper is one of Andy's creations. It's pretty hard to beat the storage density you get for the price. Put a mess of those under a Lustre filesystem, and people start to take notice of Sun as a player in HPC. The recent TACC Ranger system is all Sun gear: storage, compute, and network (with sun-built Magnum switches). The OS? Linux.
There's more interesting stuff coming down the pike, and from my perspective, it seems that there's a shift toward making money on volume rather than margins. In other words, somewhat less awesome, but more of it.
I dunno. I don't profess to have much more special knowledge than anyone outside of the upper echelons. I'm hopeful, though. I read somewhere that many of the big Solaris egos were hired away by teh google. Hopefully they keep going. They can have our kool-aid-drunk sales and marketing people too.:P
Sun does a huge amount of business with the US Gov't. Sun would rather annoy users than risk its lucrative government relationships. Ergo, stupid download portals that make you verify that you're not from the axis-of-can't-get-strong-crypto.
Speaking as someone on the inside -- you're right. There are a lot of big egos here.
I didn't come to Sun because I like the Kool-Aid, I came by acquisition. I haven't decided yet whether or not this whole "we love Open Source" thing Jonathan keeps plugging is real or a charade. I'm optimistic, but we'll see.
On better days, I like to think that the people way up at the helm really "get it" and are just waiting for the rest of the ship to slowly (slowly!) turn. On not-so-good days, I start to wonder if maybe someone's trying to pull a fast one.
There are lots and lots of people here who really and truly believe that Linux is just an upgrade path to Solaris. In other words... Once people start running Linux on Sun hardware, they'll "want more", and "step into the big league" with Solaris. It's kind of sad, when it's not irritating.
In the end it won't matter what either of us believes, it will just be what it is.
Yes, you're right about that. The problem, though, is that far too many people use their belief of an afterlife to justify doing awful things in this life. That's really what it all boils down to... Without that carrot of Heaven and the stick of Hell, why would anyone adhere to a particular religion?
Some religions believe heaven is being reincarnated in progressively "better" forms, and hell is reincarnation as a worm or whatever. The details don't matter -- the problem is that religion is mostly a crutch that is used to enable racism, xenophobia, and general bad behavior.
Religion (and by extension, belief in the supernatural) is an outdated social construct. It needs to fade away and make room for social systems based on rational thought and respect for the fact that we all only get one life. Call me an idealist who denies human nature if you will... It's still better than encouraging people to believe in a sky-god who actually cares about minutiae like what kind of fabric is in the clothes we wear, whether or not we cook our meat in milk, or whether or not Joe can marry Steve.
I think the quoted line is similar to invoking Hitler in a conversation, but I just have to be that one guy who responds...
So, you believe in microevolution, but can't see how it might be applicable on a geologic timescale (i.e. billions of years). Oh, right. You don't believe that the earth has been around for billions of years. OK, well, I guess if you don't believe that there has been enough time for microevolution (which you believe in) to build up to macroevolutionary effects, then there's no reasoning with you.
Do you find it at all curious that humans share ~98.5% of our DNA with chimps? Why do you think that is? What do you make of the fact that chimps (and other great apes) are able to learn and use rudimentary (human and/or chimp) language? How is it that they are able to pass down troop-specific (i.e. different troops use different tools), inter-generational knowledge about tool creation and use? Parlor tricks? It SURELY can not be because those "animals" are in any way similar to those of us created in "God's image."
Why would a god bother to create these animals that are so closely related to us, but deny them a chance at salvation (completely begging the question of why a god who has enough power to create a whole universe would bother to care what a bunch of backwater apes think about he/she/it - and furthermore, why said god would choose to torture most of said creatures for an eternity because they hadn't even HEARD of he/she/it)?
None of that is proof, but to me, it's a lot more interesting than the god of the gaps (we can't explain it right now, so god did it!)... I will agree with you that no one can PROVE how life was created. The difference between us is that I believe that we can construct testable theories and attempt to replicate early conditions, and you have some magical thinking process by which you close your eyes and claim that nothing is true unless it's written in your holy book.
If a god or gods showed up tomorrow, then as a rational person I would expect proof of their deity status. That means testable hypotheses, and rigorous independent research. If the research held up, well, I guess I'd start praying to mecca or whatever. THAT is the difference between science and magical thinking.
Creationists get all bent out of shape because they're excluded from the club... It's not just because we think your beliefs are ridiculous, it's because you can't play by the rules of science. Wanting something to be true is not the same as demonstrating solid evidence (i.e. stands up to SCATHING peer review) of truth.
in the hope that he would offer some kind of evolutionary account of the rise of religious belief, but instead it's just slagging off the most benighted of fundies. He mentions, at one point, theists with a more subtle understanding of the world, but then rants that they just give credibility to the loonies.
Yeah. One of the first things he attacks is this idea that religion should hold some special status in society -- e.g. that churches should be tax-exempt, etc. and in particular, that questioning someone's religious beliefs should somehow be off-limits to "polite" society.
I tend to agree with him.
In one of the chapters toward the middle of the book, he enters a fascinating discussion about the potential origins of religious behavior in humans. One of the most interesting ones (to me), is the idea that it is a mis-firing of evolutionarily advantageous behavior -- that children (and child-like minds) are primed to believe what is told to them by someone perceived to be in authority. The premise is that children who believe unquestioningly held an evolutionary advantage over those who didn't. For example, if a parent tells its child, "don't eat these green berries" (because they're poisonous), obviously the child that follows what it has been told is less likely to die of poisoning. Note that this behavior doesn't have to have arisen recently in Homo Sapiens... There is plenty of well-documented "instruction" that occurs between parent and child in many species. Nowadays, when we are told at a young age that there is an angry old man up in the clouds who watches our every move and knows when we pick our noses or think "impure" thoughts about that girl in the pew over there, we believe it, because we've been wired to.
No, it's not a firm conclusion, just an interesting idea. I am solidly in the camp of people who feel that if adults choose to believe in nonsense, it's their right. However, please leave the children alone until they've gotten to an age where most are likely to have developed some critical thinking skills. This is, in large part, why there is so much hue and cry about the proposals to each ID in schools (aside from the wasted time and money). Teach science in schools -- let people learn nonsense somewhere else, as they choose.
-- Speaking as someone who was thoroughly brainwashed at an early age, and who has been thinking for himself for 15 years and counting. Also, I've reproduced (nyah! take that, fundie rabbits), and will be raising my children to think for themselves.
Which makes it all the more unfortunate that juries are usually very deliberately filtered down to the lowest common denominator of intelligence available in the juror selection pool.
Does that mean I can sue the state for selecting me twice for jury duty and use my IQ test results as evidence that they were guilty of defamation of character? Please provide evidence of your claims with full citations that would hold up in court.
What he means is that the lawyers attempt to whittle the jury down to the lowest common denominator, through the process of voir dire. It's a battle between the prosecution and the defense, in which both sides attempt to reject potential jurors who are seen as unsuitable to hear the case. In other words, they try to chuck out jurors who are obviously opinionated and/or informed about current events. Unfortunately, this often results in the aforementioned "dumb juror" effect.
The thing about supercomputers these days is that they aren't a single node. You don't boot them up and run a "program". Typically, what happens is that you've got a whole bunch of folks who want to run their codes on a distinct set of processor cores, and the more total processing power a supercomputer has, the more individual codes can be run simultaneously. At least, this is how it works on massively-parallel supercomputers like BG/L, Cray XT, etc. The vector-based machines and NUMA systems may do resource allocation differently.
I am not really all that familiar with the details of the codes themselves (I'm a storage guy), but some of what I've seen has been for modeling nuclear fusion reactions, nuclear decay simulations (will our warheads still work if we need to use them next year?), weather modeling, genetic sequencing, etc. One can only guess what runs on the classified side of things at places like Sandia and No Such Agency.
It's true that sometimes there will be codes that want to use the entire computing capacity of a cluster, but those are rare due to the cost involved. I can't speak for what happens on the classified side of things, but in academic settings, researchers are actually charged for the computing capacity they use.
... spoken as someone who's had root (legitimately!) on one of the 11/07 top 10 supercomputers.:)
If it's something you run yourself, say a website, I don't think you have to distribute the source.
This is absolutely correct, and is the perfect response to the OP's tired old FUD-y question. If you don't distribute GPL "encumbered" software, you don't have to release source.
... a company or other organization can develop a modified version and install that version through its own facilities, without giving the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders.
However, when the organization transfers copies to other organizations or individuals, that is distribution. In particular, providing copies to contractors for use off-site is distribution.
A company is running a modified version of a GPL'ed program on a web site. Does the GPL say they must release their modified sources?
The GPL permits anyone to make a modified version and use it without ever distributing it to others. What this company is doing is a special case of that. Therefore, the company does not have to release the modified sources.
For the umpteenth time: the GPL is a distribution license, not a use license. It was designed to enforce the ideal that anyone who gets binaries should be able to also get the source to those binaries, so that they're not beholden to e.g. one manufacturer's shitty implementation of a printer driver. It also protects that original software distributor from someone downstream taking their work, modifying it (e.g. to remove/change attribution, or simply improving it) and re-distributing binaries without sharing the changes.
Sounds like you should have demanded some equity up front. But the technology guys always get screwed by the business guys, it's just the way of the world.
Well, I learned two things from that experience: 1. Don't go into business with your friends. 2. If you ignore 1, make sure you have a good lawyer to read your contract, and make sure that _everything_ is spelled out, in writing, up-front.
In the end, though... I made a nice chunk of change for a couple of years, and the company is still around, but not flourishing. So any equity I would have gotten wouldn't be worth much anyhow.
Unfortunately, product development is also a cost center. If you don't want to be in a cost center, you have to be in sales.
If you're going to go by that definition, then EVERYTHING is a cost center (including sales)! Maybe I'm not using the term in the strictest sense, but my interpretation of the concept is that a cost center is an area of the business that is not directly involved with creating something for the company to sell. It's a fuzzy line, to be sure. From my own personal experiences, though, I can see that in technology companies, at least, the people who make products are much higher on the scrotum pole than the folks who merely support the producers. Things may be different in more "traditional" companies, but I've spent my whole career (over a decade now) in companies that make their money from technology (i.e. Software, ISPs, etc.), so it's all I know.
Right around 4 years ago, I made a decision to get out of IT. Not because I didn't like it (I've spent most of the past decade since school making six figures or close to it), but because I had a very hard time imagining a good life after ten more years of being in IT. Sure, I could move up into management (but I'd decided that managing more than 3-4 people is a drag, and/or I'm just not good at it -- recognizing one's level of incompetence is important), or I could keep on at the level I was at. I was married, though, starting a family, etc. Being on-call 24/7 sucks. Not being able to take a vacation without worrying about things falling apart sucks. Being tied to the local economy sucks when you've decided to move out a big metro area. Etc. etc.
There were two events that finally crystallized things for me:
1. I worked myself out of a job -- I partnered with a friend who needed someone to run the technology for a company he'd bought. I did such a good job of improving the infrastructure and training the junior sysadmin that we got to a point where we agreed that my six-figure salary did not make sense anymore. We parted ways, mostly amicably. Unfortunately, I had relocated to a part of the country that has a feeble economy, and the local IT jobs paid half what I was making, at best.
2. After spending time looking around locally and nationally for another lead sysadmin job, it finally dawned on me that I was screwed. My most enjoyable times as a sysadmin were when I was younger, single, and working for startups with more money than they knew what to do with. I had lots of responsibility and cash, and used both to make my job what I wanted it to be. Nowadays, I can't afford (literally!) that kind of job, and besides, I'm overqualified to be the young go-getter in a startup. The alternative is to go and work for an "established" IT department, which would give me the salary, benefits, and (most of) the stability I need now. Bleah.
Ultimately, I realized that the problem with IT is that it is a cost center. Those with a business background will be familiar with this concept, but it was an epiphany for me. Just like admin assistants, HR, janitorial staff, and facilities folks, IT are leeches on the company's resources. In a startup, the IT folks can play a role in creation of product, but in big, established companies, IT is there simply to maintain competitive parity with other companies. If executives could get rid of all those stupid servers, printers, desktops, whatever and simply focus on creating profits, they would. And so, when crunch time hits, IT gets hurt along with all the other cost centers.
With that realization in hand, I started re-shaping my career to get into product development. It's taken me a few years of scut work (having to start over again was something of a shock), but now I'm well on my way along a new career path in the world of HPC. It's a pretty narrow niche, but it's exciting and lucrative (for now). I create product now, and so I am directly responsible for increasing the corporate profits (hopefully!). I'm out of cost centers. I expect that I'll probably have to reinvent myself again at least once before I'm ready to hit the beach, but I've discovered that it's not so bad.
I guess the point of this rambling post is to encourage others in my previous situation to embrace change. Don't be afraid of the transition period. Accept that things will probably change anyhow, so it's best to be the one driving the change, rather than feeling victimized. Finally, make sure that you're still having fun. My father-in-law is in his mid-70s, and he still wakes up feeling excited about work every day. That's how I want to be.
In the US, is it required to take a slippery driving course to get a drivers' license? Or is it up to the individual states? Anyway, it is mandatory here (in Sweden)since some time ago, and it was quite interesting. You learned what to do and what to not do, as well as what happens if you do the wrong thing (such as turning and braking at the same time).
Sadly, no. That would be a really great idea, but here in the States, driving is seen as a right, not a privilege. Any monkey can take the written part of a driving exam, and the road portion simply requires basic driving skills (i.e. don't drive off the road; don't run red lights; try to remember to signal before turning; demonstrate marginal ability to parallel park).
Personally, I have been messing around in the snow for years, and have learned the hard way a few times what can and can't be done. Driving a 20-year-old beater for my first few winters helped. But I suspect that most people don't bother to try and push the snow-performance envelope of their vehicles. So, they don't understand what happens when they take a turn too fast, or try to stop on ice, etc.
I live in Maine now (as far Northeast as one can get in the States), but I grew up in central Pennsylvania (mid-Atlantic state). It still amuses and amazes me that the kind of snow we get here on a routine basis would be cause for emergency (literally) and panic in PA. Here, they don't even bother shutting the schools down unless it looks like there's going to be at least half a foot. In PA, a light dusting of snow results in car accidents and other hilarity.
Nice ad hominem, dickface dillweed. Poo-poo pee-pee. Nyah! There, that should lower my response to match the level of your post.
The US did not "stay out of the war".
I think, generally speaking, that most people would agree with the assertion that "staying out of a war" is functionally equivalent to "our people not shooting at anyone." Yes, one can be a goddamned pedant and point out that there are methods of aggression that don't involve the military, but the common understanding of state-based aggression is "sending in the cruise missiles/troops."
We fired the first "shot" at Japan, when we took sides, and embargoed their oil supply.
They were busy building an empire, and having no domestic oil supply of their own, got kind of pissed when we cut them off. Do you blame them for attacking us?
No, I don't. Nor did I deny this precipitating factor in my original post. In fact, I never mentioned it, because it was beside the point. What I was getting at was that the US entry into WWII was not initiated for humanitarian reasons.
Since you brought it up, though, I think it's incorrect to assert that our embargo was an act of aggression. It was a response to the growing Japanese empire that was getting uncomfortably close to the Philippines and Singapore. We (meaning the US and its allies) tried negotiating with them to pull out of China and to stop invading their neighbors, but their terms were ludicrous. They wanted a staged withdrawal over 20 years or something nutty. We didn't want to send in our military (nor were we in much of a position to do anything with our military at the time anyhow), and so Roosevelt mandated the embargo.
Yeah, there are some theories that Roosevelt deliberately provoked Japan because he'd pledged earlier that he wouldn't get involved in any foreign wars unless we were attacked. Frankly, I give that stuff about as much credence as the Vast (Right-Wing|Liberal) Conspiracy junk.
If Saudi Arabia said to us tomorrow; "Hey, America, we don't like what you're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, so we're cutting you off until you get out - " how long do you think it would take for the order to go from the White House to a Submarine in the Persian Gulf to fire a barrage of SLCM's at Ryadh? All of 5 minutes?
Remember 1973? Probably not. Yeah, that's exactly what they did because of our support of Israel. I don't remember any US missile attacks on any middle eastern countries at the time.
You finished waving your dick around? We can all read history books and sound smart. Nothing that I wrote was factually incorrect. I would admit to oversimplification for the sake of brevity, and because my point was, and is, that the US did not enter WWII for humanitarian reasons.
I'm sick and tired of people justifying the Iraq boondoggle by clinging to the notion of it being a humanitarian mission. Even that clusterfuck in Somalia was more of a humanitarian mission. I'm even more irritated by anyone who tries to equate the GWOT with WWII.
Right, because ignoring "other people's problems" worked so well for us in World War 2.
We didn't enter WWII for humanitarian reasons. We entered the war because Japan drew us in with a massive attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor.
Up until that day in December 1941, there was a strong sense that the US should stay out of the war, because we remembered what happened in WWI. We were sending supplies to Britain, and providing other resources to our allies, but there was no support for declaring war on anyone.
When Japan made it clear that they intended to work with the other Axis powers to rule all of the world, there was no question that we needed to fight back, and so we did. The difference between WWII and all other conflicts since is huge. The Axis powers were clearly an existential threat to the continental US (Hawaii first, lower 48 next); unlike the theoretical threats embodied in "domino theory" and "global war on terror".
Sure, Al Qaeda did attack us, and we attacked back -- in Afghanistan. We were making some good progress there, too... Until the majority of our resources and attention were refocused on the Iraq boondoggle. Now look what's happening in Afghanistan: the Taliban is coming back, poppy/cannabis harvests are booming, and Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan is having major problems due in no small part to the increasing influence of radical islamists who operate from the safety of the afghanistan/pakistan border.
The only entities that are benefitting from this Iraq shitstorm are Al Qaeda (it's a fucking recruiting wet dream) and the guys like Halliburton, Blackwater, and all the other Military-Industrial Complex hangers-on.
When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
I guess, given the content of this thread, it's not entirely off-topic... Anyhow. I just wanted to say that your sig is one of the most succinct explanations of Atheism that I've ever seen.
... I was just going to congratulate you, but then I did some googling and found that the author is Stephen F. Roberts. An attribution might be nice, but it's easy enough to google.
I mean, yes, I do my job, and more than satisfying according to my superiors, but still, it's kinda odd that nobody ever wants anything from me than my final reports.
Still, a bit more salary would be nice.
I'm going to guess that you are relatively junior, at least in status, if not age. Not saying it to be deprecating, just making a point. The way to make money in IT is to become "senior"... Either as a guru of some sort, or by managing something (e.g. projects, people, etc.)
You'll find that your freedom starts to evaporate as you make more money (and are therefore more of a liability if you are a screwoff). Unsolicited advice to "juniors" everwhere: Don't be in a huge rush to make money. That will come. Just enjoy your unaccounted "play" time now, and use it to find the area you want to become a "senior" in.
Of the major users I've encountered with heavy-duty networked filesystem arrangements, they use Lustre or Polyserve. That is the the entire list of what they are willing to stomach. The alternatives aren't even close. Both have been bought out by companies with histories of ditching those product lines that were any good, making it frighteningly likely that neither alternative will survive for much longer.
The nice thing about Lustre, though, is that it's Open Source. True, Sun may decide to start offering non-OSS features to paying customers, or even conceivably take the whole thing closed-license. But, they can't take back what's already out there, and what's out there is a kickass DFS with awful management tools.
Given that many of the world's top supercomputers use Lustre, I am sure that at the very least a community will form to maintain the current code base. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the non-Sun players started trying to poach Lustre talent (I'm looking at you, Cray) so that they are not completely beholden to Sun for Lustre support and new features.
Interesting times in the HPC world, for sure. As for Winderz on Sun hardware? Puh-leez. The whole reason people buy Sun hardware is because it's what Solaris runs best on. Love it or hate it, Solaris is one of the best unices out there for certain applications (think telecoms, banking, etc.).
The Staties usually just tell me "Next time, I'll write you up for everything" and let me go with a verbal warning while the Townies seem to have something to prove and write a pretty big ticket.
I think it's because the staties see all kinds of real crap, and so as long as you're not a douche to them, they tend to be easy-going. Local Officer Clampett, on the other hand, is bored, frustrated, and behind in quotas, so he's just itching for action.
I got pulled over by a Statie while doing 70 in a 35 (it was that stupid section right before the Allston/Brighton tolls where they drop the speed down a whole mile before the tolls). He was in an unmarked car, not even a crown vic... What's even better is that I had out-of-state plates and no license on me (was wearing a suit to a wedding). He let me go with a warning, and even told us to have fun. "Just take it easy on the speed, OK?"
I have a lot of respect for state cops. Local yokels, on the other hand... Screw 'em.
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You're still waiting for the ship to turn after 3 years? Big egos eh?
HUGE egos. And remember, we're talking about a multi-national company with over 37,000 employees. There's a lot of Kool-Aid (getting sick of that term yet?) to dilute.
I am hopeful, though. I'll be hopeful until I'm successful in effecting changes, or until I give up.
Hey, I didn't say that I believe in this nonsense... :) But apparently there's enough ambiguity that someone deep in the bowels of Corporate HQ feels it's worth covering our asses on.
Like I said... Annoyed (non-)customers vs. angry/schizophrenic US Gov't withholding wads of cash; guess who wins?
The thing is, Andy's back, and as far as I can tell, he doesn't give a rat's ass about Solaris. He just wants to make interesting hardware. That's where the money is, after all. Software is a pathetic fraction of corporate revenues here. All the more reason to be mystified about the internal hostility toward Linux.
:P
So, for example, the Thumper is one of Andy's creations. It's pretty hard to beat the storage density you get for the price. Put a mess of those under a Lustre filesystem, and people start to take notice of Sun as a player in HPC. The recent TACC Ranger system is all Sun gear: storage, compute, and network (with sun-built Magnum switches). The OS? Linux.
There's more interesting stuff coming down the pike, and from my perspective, it seems that there's a shift toward making money on volume rather than margins. In other words, somewhat less awesome, but more of it.
I dunno. I don't profess to have much more special knowledge than anyone outside of the upper echelons. I'm hopeful, though. I read somewhere that many of the big Solaris egos were hired away by teh google. Hopefully they keep going. They can have our kool-aid-drunk sales and marketing people too.
The reason downloading ANYTHING from Sun is such a PITA is because of US crypto export restrictions.
Can't have those pesky Iranians downloading munitions, you know.
You think I'm joking? Go read about it.
Sun does a huge amount of business with the US Gov't. Sun would rather annoy users than risk its lucrative government relationships. Ergo, stupid download portals that make you verify that you're not from the axis-of-can't-get-strong-crypto.
Speaking as someone on the inside -- you're right. There are a lot of big egos here.
I didn't come to Sun because I like the Kool-Aid, I came by acquisition. I haven't decided yet whether or not this whole "we love Open Source" thing Jonathan keeps plugging is real or a charade. I'm optimistic, but we'll see.
On better days, I like to think that the people way up at the helm really "get it" and are just waiting for the rest of the ship to slowly (slowly!) turn. On not-so-good days, I start to wonder if maybe someone's trying to pull a fast one.
There are lots and lots of people here who really and truly believe that Linux is just an upgrade path to Solaris. In other words... Once people start running Linux on Sun hardware, they'll "want more", and "step into the big league" with Solaris. It's kind of sad, when it's not irritating.
Anyhow... I could bitch for a while, but I won't.
In the end it won't matter what either of us believes, it will just be what it is.
Yes, you're right about that. The problem, though, is that far too many people use their belief of an afterlife to justify doing awful things in this life. That's really what it all boils down to... Without that carrot of Heaven and the stick of Hell, why would anyone adhere to a particular religion?
Some religions believe heaven is being reincarnated in progressively "better" forms, and hell is reincarnation as a worm or whatever. The details don't matter -- the problem is that religion is mostly a crutch that is used to enable racism, xenophobia, and general bad behavior.
Religion (and by extension, belief in the supernatural) is an outdated social construct. It needs to fade away and make room for social systems based on rational thought and respect for the fact that we all only get one life. Call me an idealist who denies human nature if you will... It's still better than encouraging people to believe in a sky-god who actually cares about minutiae like what kind of fabric is in the clothes we wear, whether or not we cook our meat in milk, or whether or not Joe can marry Steve.
I also do not think of human beings as animals.
I think the quoted line is similar to invoking Hitler in a conversation, but I just have to be that one guy who responds...
So, you believe in microevolution, but can't see how it might be applicable on a geologic timescale (i.e. billions of years). Oh, right. You don't believe that the earth has been around for billions of years. OK, well, I guess if you don't believe that there has been enough time for microevolution (which you believe in) to build up to macroevolutionary effects, then there's no reasoning with you.
Do you find it at all curious that humans share ~98.5% of our DNA with chimps? Why do you think that is? What do you make of the fact that chimps (and other great apes) are able to learn and use rudimentary (human and/or chimp) language? How is it that they are able to pass down troop-specific (i.e. different troops use different tools), inter-generational knowledge about tool creation and use? Parlor tricks? It SURELY can not be because those "animals" are in any way similar to those of us created in "God's image."
Why would a god bother to create these animals that are so closely related to us, but deny them a chance at salvation (completely begging the question of why a god who has enough power to create a whole universe would bother to care what a bunch of backwater apes think about he/she/it - and furthermore, why said god would choose to torture most of said creatures for an eternity because they hadn't even HEARD of he/she/it)?
None of that is proof, but to me, it's a lot more interesting than the god of the gaps (we can't explain it right now, so god did it!)... I will agree with you that no one can PROVE how life was created. The difference between us is that I believe that we can construct testable theories and attempt to replicate early conditions, and you have some magical thinking process by which you close your eyes and claim that nothing is true unless it's written in your holy book.
If a god or gods showed up tomorrow, then as a rational person I would expect proof of their deity status. That means testable hypotheses, and rigorous independent research. If the research held up, well, I guess I'd start praying to mecca or whatever. THAT is the difference between science and magical thinking.
Creationists get all bent out of shape because they're excluded from the club... It's not just because we think your beliefs are ridiculous, it's because you can't play by the rules of science. Wanting something to be true is not the same as demonstrating solid evidence (i.e. stands up to SCATHING peer review) of truth.
I bought _The God Delusion_
Did you read it? Every page? Or did you skim it?
in the hope that he would offer some kind of evolutionary account of the rise of religious belief, but instead it's just slagging off the most benighted of fundies. He mentions, at one point, theists with a more subtle understanding of the world, but then rants that they just give credibility to the loonies.
Yeah. One of the first things he attacks is this idea that religion should hold some special status in society -- e.g. that churches should be tax-exempt, etc. and in particular, that questioning someone's religious beliefs should somehow be off-limits to "polite" society.
I tend to agree with him.
In one of the chapters toward the middle of the book, he enters a fascinating discussion about the potential origins of religious behavior in humans. One of the most interesting ones (to me), is the idea that it is a mis-firing of evolutionarily advantageous behavior -- that children (and child-like minds) are primed to believe what is told to them by someone perceived to be in authority. The premise is that children who believe unquestioningly held an evolutionary advantage over those who didn't. For example, if a parent tells its child, "don't eat these green berries" (because they're poisonous), obviously the child that follows what it has been told is less likely to die of poisoning. Note that this behavior doesn't have to have arisen recently in Homo Sapiens... There is plenty of well-documented "instruction" that occurs between parent and child in many species. Nowadays, when we are told at a young age that there is an angry old man up in the clouds who watches our every move and knows when we pick our noses or think "impure" thoughts about that girl in the pew over there, we believe it, because we've been wired to.
No, it's not a firm conclusion, just an interesting idea. I am solidly in the camp of people who feel that if adults choose to believe in nonsense, it's their right. However, please leave the children alone until they've gotten to an age where most are likely to have developed some critical thinking skills. This is, in large part, why there is so much hue and cry about the proposals to each ID in schools (aside from the wasted time and money). Teach science in schools -- let people learn nonsense somewhere else, as they choose.
-- Speaking as someone who was thoroughly brainwashed at an early age, and who has been thinking for himself for 15 years and counting. Also, I've reproduced (nyah! take that, fundie rabbits), and will be raising my children to think for themselves.
What he means is that the lawyers attempt to whittle the jury down to the lowest common denominator, through the process of voir dire. It's a battle between the prosecution and the defense, in which both sides attempt to reject potential jurors who are seen as unsuitable to hear the case. In other words, they try to chuck out jurors who are obviously opinionated and/or informed about current events. Unfortunately, this often results in the aforementioned "dumb juror" effect.
What program would you run on this?
... spoken as someone who's had root (legitimately!) on one of the 11/07 top 10 supercomputers. :)
The thing about supercomputers these days is that they aren't a single node. You don't boot them up and run a "program". Typically, what happens is that you've got a whole bunch of folks who want to run their codes on a distinct set of processor cores, and the more total processing power a supercomputer has, the more individual codes can be run simultaneously. At least, this is how it works on massively-parallel supercomputers like BG/L, Cray XT, etc. The vector-based machines and NUMA systems may do resource allocation differently.
I am not really all that familiar with the details of the codes themselves (I'm a storage guy), but some of what I've seen has been for modeling nuclear fusion reactions, nuclear decay simulations (will our warheads still work if we need to use them next year?), weather modeling, genetic sequencing, etc. One can only guess what runs on the classified side of things at places like Sandia and No Such Agency.
It's true that sometimes there will be codes that want to use the entire computing capacity of a cluster, but those are rare due to the cost involved. I can't speak for what happens on the classified side of things, but in academic settings, researchers are actually charged for the computing capacity they use.
This is absolutely correct, and is the perfect response to the OP's tired old FUD-y question. If you don't distribute GPL "encumbered" software, you don't have to release source.
From the GPL FAQ:
Even more to the point:
For the umpteenth time: the GPL is a distribution license, not a use license. It was designed to enforce the ideal that anyone who gets binaries should be able to also get the source to those binaries, so that they're not beholden to e.g. one manufacturer's shitty implementation of a printer driver. It also protects that original software distributor from someone downstream taking their work, modifying it (e.g. to remove/change attribution, or simply improving it) and re-distributing binaries without sharing the changes.
Bleah. Why can't people read?
Also, it's spelled "Foozball."
Fooseball. From Fußball, which is a shortening of Tischfußball.
Fuß == foot. ball == ball. Football (soccer, for us yanks).
Nyah.
Sounds like you should have demanded some equity up front. But the technology guys always get screwed by the business guys, it's just the way of the world.
Well, I learned two things from that experience: 1. Don't go into business with your friends. 2. If you ignore 1, make sure you have a good lawyer to read your contract, and make sure that _everything_ is spelled out, in writing, up-front.
In the end, though... I made a nice chunk of change for a couple of years, and the company is still around, but not flourishing. So any equity I would have gotten wouldn't be worth much anyhow.
Unfortunately, product development is also a cost center. If you don't want to be in a cost center, you have to be in sales.
If you're going to go by that definition, then EVERYTHING is a cost center (including sales)! Maybe I'm not using the term in the strictest sense, but my interpretation of the concept is that a cost center is an area of the business that is not directly involved with creating something for the company to sell. It's a fuzzy line, to be sure. From my own personal experiences, though, I can see that in technology companies, at least, the people who make products are much higher on the scrotum pole than the folks who merely support the producers. Things may be different in more "traditional" companies, but I've spent my whole career (over a decade now) in companies that make their money from technology (i.e. Software, ISPs, etc.), so it's all I know.
Right around 4 years ago, I made a decision to get out of IT. Not because I didn't like it (I've spent most of the past decade since school making six figures or close to it), but because I had a very hard time imagining a good life after ten more years of being in IT. Sure, I could move up into management (but I'd decided that managing more than 3-4 people is a drag, and/or I'm just not good at it -- recognizing one's level of incompetence is important), or I could keep on at the level I was at. I was married, though, starting a family, etc. Being on-call 24/7 sucks. Not being able to take a vacation without worrying about things falling apart sucks. Being tied to the local economy sucks when you've decided to move out a big metro area. Etc. etc.
There were two events that finally crystallized things for me:
1. I worked myself out of a job -- I partnered with a friend who needed someone to run the technology for a company he'd bought. I did such a good job of improving the infrastructure and training the junior sysadmin that we got to a point where we agreed that my six-figure salary did not make sense anymore. We parted ways, mostly amicably. Unfortunately, I had relocated to a part of the country that has a feeble economy, and the local IT jobs paid half what I was making, at best.
2. After spending time looking around locally and nationally for another lead sysadmin job, it finally dawned on me that I was screwed. My most enjoyable times as a sysadmin were when I was younger, single, and working for startups with more money than they knew what to do with. I had lots of responsibility and cash, and used both to make my job what I wanted it to be. Nowadays, I can't afford (literally!) that kind of job, and besides, I'm overqualified to be the young go-getter in a startup. The alternative is to go and work for an "established" IT department, which would give me the salary, benefits, and (most of) the stability I need now. Bleah.
Ultimately, I realized that the problem with IT is that it is a cost center. Those with a business background will be familiar with this concept, but it was an epiphany for me. Just like admin assistants, HR, janitorial staff, and facilities folks, IT are leeches on the company's resources. In a startup, the IT folks can play a role in creation of product, but in big, established companies, IT is there simply to maintain competitive parity with other companies. If executives could get rid of all those stupid servers, printers, desktops, whatever and simply focus on creating profits, they would. And so, when crunch time hits, IT gets hurt along with all the other cost centers.
With that realization in hand, I started re-shaping my career to get into product development. It's taken me a few years of scut work (having to start over again was something of a shock), but now I'm well on my way along a new career path in the world of HPC. It's a pretty narrow niche, but it's exciting and lucrative (for now). I create product now, and so I am directly responsible for increasing the corporate profits (hopefully!). I'm out of cost centers. I expect that I'll probably have to reinvent myself again at least once before I'm ready to hit the beach, but I've discovered that it's not so bad.
I guess the point of this rambling post is to encourage others in my previous situation to embrace change. Don't be afraid of the transition period. Accept that things will probably change anyhow, so it's best to be the one driving the change, rather than feeling victimized. Finally, make sure that you're still having fun. My father-in-law is in his mid-70s, and he still wakes up feeling excited about work every day. That's how I want to be.
In the US, is it required to take a slippery driving course to get a drivers' license? Or is it up to the individual states? Anyway, it is mandatory here (in Sweden)since some time ago, and it was quite interesting. You learned what to do and what to not do, as well as what happens if you do the wrong thing (such as turning and braking at the same time).
Sadly, no. That would be a really great idea, but here in the States, driving is seen as a right, not a privilege. Any monkey can take the written part of a driving exam, and the road portion simply requires basic driving skills (i.e. don't drive off the road; don't run red lights; try to remember to signal before turning; demonstrate marginal ability to parallel park).
Personally, I have been messing around in the snow for years, and have learned the hard way a few times what can and can't be done. Driving a 20-year-old beater for my first few winters helped. But I suspect that most people don't bother to try and push the snow-performance envelope of their vehicles. So, they don't understand what happens when they take a turn too fast, or try to stop on ice, etc.
I live in Maine now (as far Northeast as one can get in the States), but I grew up in central Pennsylvania (mid-Atlantic state). It still amuses and amazes me that the kind of snow we get here on a routine basis would be cause for emergency (literally) and panic in PA. Here, they don't even bother shutting the schools down unless it looks like there's going to be at least half a foot. In PA, a light dusting of snow results in car accidents and other hilarity.
Idiot!
Nice ad hominem, dickface dillweed. Poo-poo pee-pee. Nyah! There, that should lower my response to match the level of your post.
The US did not "stay out of the war".
I think, generally speaking, that most people would agree with the assertion that "staying out of a war" is functionally equivalent to "our people not shooting at anyone." Yes, one can be a goddamned pedant and point out that there are methods of aggression that don't involve the military, but the common understanding of state-based aggression is "sending in the cruise missiles/troops."
We fired the first "shot" at Japan, when we took sides, and embargoed their oil supply.
They were busy building an empire, and having no domestic oil supply of their own, got kind of pissed when we cut them off. Do you blame them for attacking us?
No, I don't. Nor did I deny this precipitating factor in my original post. In fact, I never mentioned it, because it was beside the point. What I was getting at was that the US entry into WWII was not initiated for humanitarian reasons.
Since you brought it up, though, I think it's incorrect to assert that our embargo was an act of aggression. It was a response to the growing Japanese empire that was getting uncomfortably close to the Philippines and Singapore. We (meaning the US and its allies) tried negotiating with them to pull out of China and to stop invading their neighbors, but their terms were ludicrous. They wanted a staged withdrawal over 20 years or something nutty. We didn't want to send in our military (nor were we in much of a position to do anything with our military at the time anyhow), and so Roosevelt mandated the embargo.
Yeah, there are some theories that Roosevelt deliberately provoked Japan because he'd pledged earlier that he wouldn't get involved in any foreign wars unless we were attacked. Frankly, I give that stuff about as much credence as the Vast (Right-Wing|Liberal) Conspiracy junk.
If Saudi Arabia said to us tomorrow; "Hey, America, we don't like what you're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, so we're cutting you off until you get out - " how long do you think it would take for the order to go from the White House to a Submarine in the Persian Gulf to fire a barrage of SLCM's at Ryadh? All of 5 minutes?
Remember 1973? Probably not. Yeah, that's exactly what they did because of our support of Israel. I don't remember any US missile attacks on any middle eastern countries at the time.
You finished waving your dick around? We can all read history books and sound smart. Nothing that I wrote was factually incorrect. I would admit to oversimplification for the sake of brevity, and because my point was, and is, that the US did not enter WWII for humanitarian reasons.
I'm sick and tired of people justifying the Iraq boondoggle by clinging to the notion of it being a humanitarian mission. Even that clusterfuck in Somalia was more of a humanitarian mission. I'm even more irritated by anyone who tries to equate the GWOT with WWII.
Right, because ignoring "other people's problems" worked so well for us in World War 2.
We didn't enter WWII for humanitarian reasons. We entered the war because Japan drew us in with a massive attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor.
Up until that day in December 1941, there was a strong sense that the US should stay out of the war, because we remembered what happened in WWI. We were sending supplies to Britain, and providing other resources to our allies, but there was no support for declaring war on anyone.
When Japan made it clear that they intended to work with the other Axis powers to rule all of the world, there was no question that we needed to fight back, and so we did. The difference between WWII and all other conflicts since is huge. The Axis powers were clearly an existential threat to the continental US (Hawaii first, lower 48 next); unlike the theoretical threats embodied in "domino theory" and "global war on terror".
Sure, Al Qaeda did attack us, and we attacked back -- in Afghanistan. We were making some good progress there, too... Until the majority of our resources and attention were refocused on the Iraq boondoggle. Now look what's happening in Afghanistan: the Taliban is coming back, poppy/cannabis harvests are booming, and Afghanistan's neighbor Pakistan is having major problems due in no small part to the increasing influence of radical islamists who operate from the safety of the afghanistan/pakistan border.
The only entities that are benefitting from this Iraq shitstorm are Al Qaeda (it's a fucking recruiting wet dream) and the guys like Halliburton, Blackwater, and all the other Military-Industrial Complex hangers-on.
Feh.
god damn it... where's the "fell-out-of-my-chair-and-scared-the-cat-funny" moderation option?
When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
... I was just going to congratulate you, but then I did some googling and found that the author is Stephen F. Roberts. An attribution might be nice, but it's easy enough to google.
I guess, given the content of this thread, it's not entirely off-topic... Anyhow. I just wanted to say that your sig is one of the most succinct explanations of Atheism that I've ever seen.
My only guess is that the place is designed for fundamentalist parents to take their rebellious children to in order to straighten them out.
Well, it's either that, or stone them.
Hey, thanks for the reference. Although a link might have been nice: Sea Dragon Rocket
:/
Pretty amazing, had it been built.
Damn, you guys beat me to it.
/usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
I suppose it's obvious, though...
mjmac@ganymede:~$ ps axwu | grep firefox
mjmac 13089 0.9 11.3 786244 232776 ? Sl Oct09 16:47
Isn't firefox supposed to be the lightweight alternative to Mozilla? *cough*
I mean, yes, I do my job, and more than satisfying according to my superiors, but still, it's kinda odd that nobody ever wants anything from me than my final reports.
Still, a bit more salary would be nice.
I'm going to guess that you are relatively junior, at least in status, if not age. Not saying it to be deprecating, just making a point. The way to make money in IT is to become "senior"... Either as a guru of some sort, or by managing something (e.g. projects, people, etc.)
You'll find that your freedom starts to evaporate as you make more money (and are therefore more of a liability if you are a screwoff). Unsolicited advice to "juniors" everwhere: Don't be in a huge rush to make money. That will come. Just enjoy your unaccounted "play" time now, and use it to find the area you want to become a "senior" in.
Of the major users I've encountered with heavy-duty networked filesystem arrangements, they use Lustre or Polyserve. That is the the entire list of what they are willing to stomach. The alternatives aren't even close. Both have been bought out by companies with histories of ditching those product lines that were any good, making it frighteningly likely that neither alternative will survive for much longer.
The nice thing about Lustre, though, is that it's Open Source. True, Sun may decide to start offering non-OSS features to paying customers, or even conceivably take the whole thing closed-license. But, they can't take back what's already out there, and what's out there is a kickass DFS with awful management tools.
Given that many of the world's top supercomputers use Lustre, I am sure that at the very least a community will form to maintain the current code base. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the non-Sun players started trying to poach Lustre talent (I'm looking at you, Cray) so that they are not completely beholden to Sun for Lustre support and new features.
Interesting times in the HPC world, for sure. As for Winderz on Sun hardware? Puh-leez. The whole reason people buy Sun hardware is because it's what Solaris runs best on. Love it or hate it, Solaris is one of the best unices out there for certain applications (think telecoms, banking, etc.).
The Staties usually just tell me "Next time, I'll write you up for everything" and let me go with a verbal warning while the Townies seem to have something to prove and write a pretty big ticket.
I think it's because the staties see all kinds of real crap, and so as long as you're not a douche to them, they tend to be easy-going. Local Officer Clampett, on the other hand, is bored, frustrated, and behind in quotas, so he's just itching for action.
I got pulled over by a Statie while doing 70 in a 35 (it was that stupid section right before the Allston/Brighton tolls where they drop the speed down a whole mile before the tolls). He was in an unmarked car, not even a crown vic... What's even better is that I had out-of-state plates and no license on me (was wearing a suit to a wedding). He let me go with a warning, and even told us to have fun. "Just take it easy on the speed, OK?"
I have a lot of respect for state cops. Local yokels, on the other hand... Screw 'em.