These software programs are called packet sniffers and many can be downloaded free online. They are typically set up to capture passwords, credit card numbers and bank account information...
Sounds scary. Maybe there oughta be a law. On the other hand, since when did a tool like, say, tcpdump, typically used for networking troubleshooting, monitoring and analysis, become a tool that's "typically" used for something else?
I have to wonder. The quality of writing in a publication like The New York Times is above and beyond what one would expect from a local rag. Everybody reads it. The worlds movers and shakers read it, and contribute to it. It's for the elite, by the elite, but this is lowest common denominator stuff.
... which is why Mr. Vamosi says shopping on the Web is not a great way to kill time during a flight delay.
If not a non sequitur, at least on par with what passes for news coverage and/or editorials on Fox News. The only thing missing is a discussion of social networking and sexual predators.
At this rate, I expect the Leo Laporte to win a Pulitzer.
I saw on Lou Dobbs yesterday a piece that showed election officials rushing out to hire grad students to help out with the coming election. The reasoning was that widespread failures (mechanical, networking, software, etc.) were expected and election officials and staffers unanimously considered themselves as both unprepared and unable to deal with anticipated problems. A quick search for election jobs seems to validate the story.
When looking for technical information, my experience has been that searches on Google will typically yield mailing list emails harvested by any number of websites. Similarly, Google Groups searches mostly yield usenet posts harvested by Google. To save myself the grief, I just subscribe to the mailing list (or newsgroup) in question and find the information myself. Faster, cleaner (regex searches) and easier. If I haven't yet subscribed to the mailing list in question, I'll just suck down as much history as I need from gmane, or simply browse through past posts directly on their server. I think the same can be said for a large portion of other types of searches (porn included). YMMV.
Wikipedia is a different animal, I think. The articles are extensively cross-referenced, so searching (past getting to the first article) is mostly peripheral.
FWIW, reading the content of mail archives (as well as usenet archives) is a delight using mutt. Similarly, using a text-based interface (lynx, elinks, w3m, etc) when reading through Wikipedia (and/or saving articles to disk) can also be ideal.
Having been on Usenet for some time, finding one episode out of the many legit postings, spam, incomplete files, bad encodings, etc... is a real hassle and PITA. Try finding a posting that was left say... 58 days ago, when dealing with large files (like a 4.6 GB movie in multiple parts) and the number of headers you have to download and sort becomes quite a time consuming chore. In my experience, I have only found 2 *good* ways of finding content easily on Usenet. 1 is a serach engine in the.info realm, and (when I used windows) a program called "grabit" which offered integrated search that apparently is maintained by the software creators (i.e. no header download), but is only functional for a subscription fee.
Without checking, I doubt that even if you subscribe to Giganews (and not with an ISP that partners with Giganews or any other usenet provider), you'll get anything close to a 58 days retention. I think 30 days is a more accurate average of the retention you'll get for most binary groups.
As for search, there are a few "warez" oriented websites (a quick Google search should find all of them) that provide a search service. They're amateurish, not always accurate or timely, and geared to people looking for torrents, but they'll point you to the time and place a post occurred which is enough information to get you started.
On the other hand, Easynews (there may be others) provides a web front end to their usenet feed with fairly good search abilities. My own quick-and-dirty approach to find something (that I wouldn't normal come across regardless) is to use their website to perform the search, and then simply filter out the desired URLs into one or more files. Using wget (over HTTP) takes care of the rest; throw cron into the mix and it's maintenance free. Also useful in the event your ISP throttles nntp traffic.
Get rid of the lawns. Lawn grass required over two inches of rain per week (or the equavalent in sprinklers) and does nothing. Plant native grasses, put in rocks, put in bark, or better yet plant some vegetables and feed yourself too.
A good idea where possible, and definitely something to strive towards, but not realistic. First good luck on finding native grasses; at best maybe you may find an Indian who remembers them being mentioned in the stories his or her great grandfather told. Second, rocks, bark, etc. may be appropriate or desirable as a decorative element, but you can't expect entire neighbourhoods to be designed (or redesigned) using that approach. Do that for a house in a typical subdivision, and you can expect complaints from neighbours about lowered property values, not to mention complaints about the bark that winds up all over the sidewalk. And lastly, grass does have benefits: it lowers the ambient temperature in the summertime, increases humidity levels (a big plus in semi-arid areas), generally looks and smells nice, keeps down the dirt and dust, and kids have been known to have fun playing on the stuff. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's not unlike planting a tree; you get lots of intangible benefits for a minimal investment. The birds, insects, and local wildlife will thank you, and your dog will be just as grateful.
Here is California, like other places, it's a real issue. The trend is to use reclaimed (read sewer) water for municipal landscaping, and municipally provided compost (read sterilised human waste) on large lawns. Admittedly, those two approach only mitigate the problems, but there's no way I'd want to live surrounded by plain or decorated dirt. That's not to say building subdivisions in Las Vegas where every house has a big lawn is the way to go. Put another way, here in California the hillsides are nice to look at, are great for hikers, but no one aside from coyotes wants to live there. And I'm not even sure about the coyotes.
If I use my affinity card, then I get 2% cash back on my porn and sex toy purchases *and* 10 cents per gallon off gasoline for that month!
Reminds me of a Dr. Phil episode I saw a months back. The couple were having problems, and the wife felt that the husband was addicted to porn. Dr. Phil is trying to get the guy to consider his wife's feelings, and asks him whether he would spend time looking at his porn if his wife was sitting next to him while he was doing it. The husband thought for a second and mumbled no, while his wife looked on approvingly, and the rest of the audience did the same.
I wanted to say, "Hey, Dr. Phil! When you're home alone, have you ever scratched yourself, picked your nose, paused to look at the girls in beer commercials, or done anything similar you wouldn't be caught dead doing in public, or in front of someone?" but I was too caught up in the feel-good moment to contemplate the finer points of this concept called privacy.
My guess is that privacy won't be important for the average person until they discover it's missing. Having someone point out your zipper is undone, discovering you're the victim of identity theft, or having an ex post compromising pictures of you on a website all help, but by then, it's a bit late, isn't it?
Or maybe it doesn't matter. I hear tell-all Barbara Walters style of interviews are popular, as are reality shows and entertainment gossip programming. If you can trade privacy for 15 minutes of fame, or passively enjoy the guilty indulgence of seeing other people's private lives exposed, why get worked up about abstract notions?
I meant what I said: I _could_ care less about him. I'm more or less neutral as to his presence on the service. Thanks for playing!
I'll play the role of grammar nazi here. I seriously doubt anyone who is "more or less neutral" on a given subject would use either of the expressions "I could care less" or alternatively,"I couldn't care less." Both those expressions are meant to imply complete disinterest. One is correct and meaningful; the other, if not nonsensical, is awkward at best.
What I find funny (and, at times, appalling) is how often the expression "I could care less" appears in common usage in recent years. My theory is that it's a variation on the "between you and I" construction, a choice of words whose dismal lack of comprehending simple subject/object relationships is matched only by the embarrassing failure by the speaker to sound important.
That is, assuming you know better. And can tell the difference.
As I mentioned on an earlier Google Office thread, the word processor doesn't permit the kind of page formatting options that are an absolute necessity for a professional writer. Specifically, you can't define front-page headers, subsequent headers, or 8.5x11 inch page sizes with 1 inch margins.
I'm really not sure what you mean by a "professional writer," but in the publishing industry, a professional wouldn't use a word processor. Second, he most definitely wouldn't use 1" margins on 8-1/2x11 paper!
Yeah, I know those are probably default settings for most wordprocessor users. Doesn't mean they're correct, appropriate or much more than ugly.
Maybe you mean someone who does a lot of writing and does it using a wordprocessor before submitting his draft to a professional to redo? Or maybe something that will never get published?
How many of you computer Dads have also gone through divorce and have retained either half or full custody of your children?
Not me. The woman "typically" and "traditionally" (euphemisms for reverse sexism) gets custody. If she doesn't agree to share, you get to litigate the arrangement. On your dime, of course. I've known a dozen or so fathers who spent years doing just that, and ended up with an acrimonious state of affairs and token visitation rights the nature and timing of which were repeatedly subject to the varying whims of the mother), and incurred debt in the low to mid six figures.
I opted to pass on the custody fight as I had lost the child support battle and already owed an amount in the low six figures that I couldn't afford. I wasn't about to put the kids through a custody fight.
Do you think your job had something to do with it?
It usually does, but the nature of the job is irrelevant. I'm a guy. Most any guy (unless he's a florist) is susceptible to the notion that his job (obligation) is to work hard and provide for the wifey and kids. That single minded devotion applies to someone trying to write the next best seller, a business man trying to make money or gain power, or a lowly programmer. I was brought up that way, but the instinct goes deeper than one's culture or upbringing.
The female of the species, on the other hand, may be impressed by ambition, money or success during the courtship ritual, but soon dismisses such attributes in her mate. She expects and demands his time and his attention. If he's killing himself to make lots of money to buy the big house, build for the future, yada yada, he shouldn't expect thanks, gratitude or even recognition, but should instead expect a growing resentment over time and effort spent elsewhere.
You can't have it both ways. That's one fact of life that applies equally to both sexes. Once upon a time it was possible, perhaps, but today people divorce readily.
What were some of your hardest challenges and are your kids happy?
The hardest challenge for me was regaining my faith in humankind. Women have an amazing talent for evil behaviour. And the kids? They resent me. I wasn't there for them, was I?
I have some old Apple CRT monitors that are exceptionally good, but for every one of those, there were probably a thousand ghastly low end monitors with 60Hz refresh rate, greenish tint, and a convex surface guaranteed to turn any light source into glare no matter how you position them.
Then, of course, there's all those top quality CRT monitors with a 85+ Hz refresh rate, reasonably accurate colors (but not necessarily between identical models from the same manufacturer), and a surface so flat that straight lines at the edges are impossible, and everything in the middle requires hours of endless futzing.
I agree that both LCDs and plasma tend to be consistent and don't suffer from weird CRT problems. It's the LCD and plasma problems that I now worry about. And, as usual, the choices suck except at the very high end, where the prices suck.
For a typical non-geek, "learning Linux" is a lousy idea. So is "learning Windows". That's because they don't want to use an operating system. They want to send email, work with their digital pictures, write a novel, or whatever.
I have to question whether "learning Windows" means very much past familiarity with the GUI, basic system startup, and the registry. That said, it's inevitable that anyone using a computer (with the possible exception of Mac users) will come up against the reality that knowing how to send email or work with digital pictures isn't enough, and that he or she responsible for the care and feeding of their operating system. And given that they probably use a computer at home, at work, and at play, it strikes me as a bit bizarre not to invest the time to learn something of the technology they'll be face to face with it for the rest of their lives. The alternatives are pretending otherwise, or paying someone else to play the admin role in each of the cases.
So should people buy this book? Microsoft is notorious for reinventing itself every few years, so I'd suggest that any amount of time learning anything about any *nix-based system is a good investment. The knowledge will hold them in good stead for years to come, and at every step they'll have the opportunity to build on it.
I wager more people are using Win2K now than in the days right before WinXP came out...
It's funny, but I've made that exact observation. Typically, it's from people who were sold the upgrade at a computer shop or by an at-home tech and were upgrading from Win9x but were keeping their old hardware.
The problem with Win2K, however, is that it's lack of "cleartype" make it pretty awful to use on a notebook or an LCD screen. In larger corporate environments moving to LCD monitors to save electricity makes good sense, but that would require a move to XP in tandem.
Rather than assuming a cult of Napoleon and the Revolution, I would say they just are better bureaucrats. A lot of US political culture assumes the market "takes care of itself", and is almost ideologically against state intervention, to the point the US are the last country still using medieval units of measure because no one enforces the metric system.
Nicely summarised. I'd add that there's a corollory inherent in the above which can be expressed as "You get what you deserve." In the US, we have lousy bureaucrats, so people expect lousy results. People get lousy results, so they demand lousy bureaucrats, hence the right-wing mantra of reducing government size.
It's a shame really. Government does have an important role to play, and irrespective of political ideologies or utopian visions, governments have played and will continue to play a role. And that role includes just about everything.
As for ODF, such things belong in the hands of governments and academics, not in the pockets of large corporations. The trouble is that in the US, with its tradition of lousy bureaucrats and a populace with low expectations, governments, academia and corporations are often one and the same.
When MNG (animated PNG) is supported by all major browsers, I probably won't use GIF for anything anymore.
Not being a web developer, I'm not familiar with the features and benefits of MNGs, but if they're at all similar to animated GIFs, I hope Firefox's image.animation_mode=none setting will apply when visiting the web sites you design.
Failure to parent and seek help cannot be blamed on Sony, Take-Two, Rockstar or anyone else. However, the direct consequences of allowing the child to continue to act in an obsessive manner can be blamed directly on parental negligence.
I agree, but that kind of reasoning slipped from our collective consciousness a generation or two ago. Today, in a typical family both parents work. When everyone is too tired, too over-worked, or too short of time, who's left to take responsibility? No one.
Put another way, the reason why Think of The Children! works so well is that parents and society in general have agreed that parents can't possibly be responsible any more, so "everyone else" has to shoulder that responsibility for them. When I was growing up, if I wandered off into a bad neighbourhood (assuming my mum let me out of her sight), my dad would beat me. Today, they'd probably sue the bad neighbourhood.
Where's the study/chart contrasting VMWare with Xen virtualization?
Probably in the section that's prominently labelled "RELATED CONTENT" that directly follows the article? A virtual representation of the relevant link:
At any rate, I'm sure everyone would agree that the vwmare Wikipedia Article is probably the most comprehensive source for information. Comparisons with other technologies are included.
What's this common dread of "bacteria"? You have to look at the big picture. 97% of bacterial species have not the slightest ability to harm us. A typical surface has millions of these critters. Most of them are your friends, as they help crowd out the really bad varieties.
Agreed, but it's the 3% (often from other people) that can get you sick. During flu season, people generally pick up the bug from hand contact. You touch something that someone else has touched, or you shake hands, your own hands end up touching your nose, mouth, eyes, etc. Washing your hands regularly is the best approach, but if it's inevitable that we touch other people or their stuff, it can help to keep our surfaces clean. If you can stay home and sit in your underwear all day long, then no problem.
If you "disinfect" a surface, it's like clear-cutting a rain-forest. You've upset the balance, making a fresh new playground where the really baad and hardy weeds might take hold.
But sometimes waiting for the process of a natural selection isn't possible or desirable so cutting down diseased trees to limit the spread of a disesase can sometimes be the best approach. Doesn't work with co-workers, of course.
It would be nice to have such a list for that type of usage. I want to run X with the usual apps, and to play video. At HD resolution. I think many "typical Linux users" are in the same boat: not too interested in playing games, want good performance for normal 2D and video.
This reads almost like an afterthought, but I think it deserves a +5 INSIGHTFUL. I can't count how many times I've read posts or articles on Slashdot concerning video cards and performance and wonder why I'm bothering to read any of it. Not to sound trollish, but c'mon people, some of us don't play games, have no interest in games, but do need or want a capable video card. For any number of reasons. Granted that gamers demand top notch performance, and they may or may not represent the market for the better cards, but if the discussion is going to be so narrowly focused, then maybe all such articles should be subjected to a Real Time with Bill Maher NEW RULES moment and relegated to the Games section. Moreover, this being Slashdot and C-Colon-Backlash, I'd like think that anyone submitting articles concerning video cards would be cognisant of who their audience really is.
Ultimate digital reading experience? I thought that was braille.
Well, at least the sight-impaired won't be distracted by the two logos and all the buttons. Last I checked, books didn't have logos or big buttons on every page, so my guess is that the sight-impaired will be at an advantage in that they'll less distracted than everyone else using this device.
On the plus side, the device offers a list of features that include 7,500 page turns per charge, readability in sunlight, 180 degree viewing, and support for reasonably standard formats (despite their hawking some CONNECT(TM) format). Sounds great, I suppose, but I'll wait for next year.
Sigh.
I expect when someone does come up with an ideal device, I'll be the first in line. Hell, I'll probably buy a half-dozen the first day. I read more than most people (for pleasure), so I agree that using an "ebook" (whatever that is) will never replace the experience of holding a book and flipping pages, but for everyone else, such a product is long overdue. Students at all levels require text books, for example. Myself, I have to slog through technical documentation all day long, so being able to store a few hundred PDFs on a usable portable device rather than printing them or devoting bookshelf real estate would be the cat's meow. Or at least a big start.
As it is now, we're still mostly stuck sitting at a desk, reaching for a mouse, and playing with scrollbars. It works, I guess, but imagine having the contents of something like Wikipedia on such a device? Years ago there was a huge flurry of activity (both technical and artistic) in developing an alternative format to web and print. Most of it disappeared not because of a lack of interest, but because there didn't exist a device that was good enough. Well, that and the dot com bubble bursting. Maybe this will help resurrect some of that effort and we can move closer to replacing what has worked so well for so many hundreds of years: the book. The iPod revolutionised our approach to music, so maybe it'll be Apple that figures it out.
Slashdot Mirror
Just be like most people and don't bother voting.
The other side will be happy to steal it for you. And they can do it the old fashioned way.
These software programs are called packet sniffers and many can be downloaded free online. They are typically set up to capture passwords, credit card numbers and bank account information...
Sounds scary. Maybe there oughta be a law. On the other hand, since when did a tool like, say, tcpdump, typically used for networking troubleshooting, monitoring and analysis, become a tool that's "typically" used for something else?
I have to wonder. The quality of writing in a publication like The New York Times is above and beyond what one would expect from a local rag. Everybody reads it. The worlds movers and shakers read it, and contribute to it. It's for the elite, by the elite, but this is lowest common denominator stuff.
If not a non sequitur, at least on par with what passes for news coverage and/or editorials on Fox News. The only thing missing is a discussion of social networking and sexual predators.
At this rate, I expect the Leo Laporte to win a Pulitzer.
Obscure. Nah ...
Then again, they may be right-clicking for some time ...
I saw on Lou Dobbs yesterday a piece that showed election officials rushing out to hire grad students to help out with the coming election. The reasoning was that widespread failures (mechanical, networking, software, etc.) were expected and election officials and staffers unanimously considered themselves as both unprepared and unable to deal with anticipated problems. A quick search for election jobs seems to validate the story.
When looking for technical information, my experience has been that searches on Google will typically yield mailing list emails harvested by any number of websites. Similarly, Google Groups searches mostly yield usenet posts harvested by Google. To save myself the grief, I just subscribe to the mailing list (or newsgroup) in question and find the information myself. Faster, cleaner (regex searches) and easier. If I haven't yet subscribed to the mailing list in question, I'll just suck down as much history as I need from gmane, or simply browse through past posts directly on their server. I think the same can be said for a large portion of other types of searches (porn included). YMMV.
Wikipedia is a different animal, I think. The articles are extensively cross-referenced, so searching (past getting to the first article) is mostly peripheral.
FWIW, reading the content of mail archives (as well as usenet archives) is a delight using mutt. Similarly, using a text-based interface (lynx, elinks, w3m, etc) when reading through Wikipedia (and/or saving articles to disk) can also be ideal.
Having been on Usenet for some time, finding one episode out of the many legit postings, spam, incomplete files, bad encodings, etc... is a real hassle and PITA. Try finding a posting that was left say... 58 days ago, when dealing with large files (like a 4.6 GB movie in multiple parts) and the number of headers you have to download and sort becomes quite a time consuming chore. In my experience, I have only found 2 *good* ways of finding content easily on Usenet. 1 is a serach engine in the .info realm, and (when I used windows) a program called "grabit" which offered integrated search that apparently is maintained by the software creators (i.e. no header download), but is only functional for a subscription fee.
Without checking, I doubt that even if you subscribe to Giganews (and not with an ISP that partners with Giganews or any other usenet provider), you'll get anything close to a 58 days retention. I think 30 days is a more accurate average of the retention you'll get for most binary groups.
As for search, there are a few "warez" oriented websites (a quick Google search should find all of them) that provide a search service. They're amateurish, not always accurate or timely, and geared to people looking for torrents, but they'll point you to the time and place a post occurred which is enough information to get you started.
On the other hand, Easynews (there may be others) provides a web front end to their usenet feed with fairly good search abilities. My own quick-and-dirty approach to find something (that I wouldn't normal come across regardless) is to use their website to perform the search, and then simply filter out the desired URLs into one or more files. Using wget (over HTTP) takes care of the rest; throw cron into the mix and it's maintenance free. Also useful in the event your ISP throttles nntp traffic.
Get rid of the lawns. Lawn grass required over two inches of rain per week (or the equavalent in sprinklers) and does nothing. Plant native grasses, put in rocks, put in bark, or better yet plant some vegetables and feed yourself too.
A good idea where possible, and definitely something to strive towards, but not realistic. First good luck on finding native grasses; at best maybe you may find an Indian who remembers them being mentioned in the stories his or her great grandfather told. Second, rocks, bark, etc. may be appropriate or desirable as a decorative element, but you can't expect entire neighbourhoods to be designed (or redesigned) using that approach. Do that for a house in a typical subdivision, and you can expect complaints from neighbours about lowered property values, not to mention complaints about the bark that winds up all over the sidewalk. And lastly, grass does have benefits: it lowers the ambient temperature in the summertime, increases humidity levels (a big plus in semi-arid areas), generally looks and smells nice, keeps down the dirt and dust, and kids have been known to have fun playing on the stuff. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's not unlike planting a tree; you get lots of intangible benefits for a minimal investment. The birds, insects, and local wildlife will thank you, and your dog will be just as grateful.
Here is California, like other places, it's a real issue. The trend is to use reclaimed (read sewer) water for municipal landscaping, and municipally provided compost (read sterilised human waste) on large lawns. Admittedly, those two approach only mitigate the problems, but there's no way I'd want to live surrounded by plain or decorated dirt. That's not to say building subdivisions in Las Vegas where every house has a big lawn is the way to go. Put another way, here in California the hillsides are nice to look at, are great for hikers, but no one aside from coyotes wants to live there. And I'm not even sure about the coyotes.
If I use my affinity card, then I get 2% cash back on my porn and sex toy purchases *and* 10 cents per gallon off gasoline for that month!
Reminds me of a Dr. Phil episode I saw a months back. The couple were having problems, and the wife felt that the husband was addicted to porn. Dr. Phil is trying to get the guy to consider his wife's feelings, and asks him whether he would spend time looking at his porn if his wife was sitting next to him while he was doing it. The husband thought for a second and mumbled no, while his wife looked on approvingly, and the rest of the audience did the same.
I wanted to say, "Hey, Dr. Phil! When you're home alone, have you ever scratched yourself, picked your nose, paused to look at the girls in beer commercials, or done anything similar you wouldn't be caught dead doing in public, or in front of someone?" but I was too caught up in the feel-good moment to contemplate the finer points of this concept called privacy.
My guess is that privacy won't be important for the average person until they discover it's missing. Having someone point out your zipper is undone, discovering you're the victim of identity theft, or having an ex post compromising pictures of you on a website all help, but by then, it's a bit late, isn't it?
Or maybe it doesn't matter. I hear tell-all Barbara Walters style of interviews are popular, as are reality shows and entertainment gossip programming. If you can trade privacy for 15 minutes of fame, or passively enjoy the guilty indulgence of seeing other people's private lives exposed, why get worked up about abstract notions?
I meant what I said: I _could_ care less about him. I'm more or less neutral as to his presence on the service. Thanks for playing!
I'll play the role of grammar nazi here. I seriously doubt anyone who is "more or less neutral" on a given subject would use either of the expressions "I could care less" or alternatively,"I couldn't care less." Both those expressions are meant to imply complete disinterest. One is correct and meaningful; the other, if not nonsensical, is awkward at best.
What I find funny (and, at times, appalling) is how often the expression "I could care less" appears in common usage in recent years. My theory is that it's a variation on the "between you and I" construction, a choice of words whose dismal lack of comprehending simple subject/object relationships is matched only by the embarrassing failure by the speaker to sound important.
That is, assuming you know better. And can tell the difference.
Sorry, I'll take my Linksys WRT54GS (v3) running OpenWRT or dd-wrt. Small, quiet, and wireless!
And this isn't?
Works much better, too, to say nothing of the other advantages.
As I mentioned on an earlier Google Office thread, the word processor doesn't permit the kind of page formatting options that are an absolute necessity for a professional writer. Specifically, you can't define front-page headers, subsequent headers, or 8.5x11 inch page sizes with 1 inch margins.
I'm really not sure what you mean by a "professional writer," but in the publishing industry, a professional wouldn't use a word processor. Second, he most definitely wouldn't use 1" margins on 8-1/2x11 paper!
Yeah, I know those are probably default settings for most wordprocessor users. Doesn't mean they're correct, appropriate or much more than ugly.
Maybe you mean someone who does a lot of writing and does it using a wordprocessor before submitting his draft to a professional to redo? Or maybe something that will never get published?
How many of you computer Dads have also gone through divorce and have retained either half or full custody of your children?
Not me. The woman "typically" and "traditionally" (euphemisms for reverse sexism) gets custody. If she doesn't agree to share, you get to litigate the arrangement. On your dime, of course. I've known a dozen or so fathers who spent years doing just that, and ended up with an acrimonious state of affairs and token visitation rights the nature and timing of which were repeatedly subject to the varying whims of the mother), and incurred debt in the low to mid six figures.
I opted to pass on the custody fight as I had lost the child support battle and already owed an amount in the low six figures that I couldn't afford. I wasn't about to put the kids through a custody fight.
Do you think your job had something to do with it?
It usually does, but the nature of the job is irrelevant. I'm a guy. Most any guy (unless he's a florist) is susceptible to the notion that his job (obligation) is to work hard and provide for the wifey and kids. That single minded devotion applies to someone trying to write the next best seller, a business man trying to make money or gain power, or a lowly programmer. I was brought up that way, but the instinct goes deeper than one's culture or upbringing.
The female of the species, on the other hand, may be impressed by ambition, money or success during the courtship ritual, but soon dismisses such attributes in her mate. She expects and demands his time and his attention. If he's killing himself to make lots of money to buy the big house, build for the future, yada yada, he shouldn't expect thanks, gratitude or even recognition, but should instead expect a growing resentment over time and effort spent elsewhere.
You can't have it both ways. That's one fact of life that applies equally to both sexes. Once upon a time it was possible, perhaps, but today people divorce readily.
What were some of your hardest challenges and are your kids happy?
The hardest challenge for me was regaining my faith in humankind. Women have an amazing talent for evil behaviour. And the kids? They resent me. I wasn't there for them, was I?
I tried importing a simple excel spreadsheet, and it didn't work :-(
...
That happens to me, too. What version of Office were you using to import the Excel spreadsheet?
Oh wait
I have some old Apple CRT monitors that are exceptionally good, but for every one of those, there were probably a thousand ghastly low end monitors with 60Hz refresh rate, greenish tint, and a convex surface guaranteed to turn any light source into glare no matter how you position them.
Then, of course, there's all those top quality CRT monitors with a 85+ Hz refresh rate, reasonably accurate colors (but not necessarily between identical models from the same manufacturer), and a surface so flat that straight lines at the edges are impossible, and everything in the middle requires hours of endless futzing.
I agree that both LCDs and plasma tend to be consistent and don't suffer from weird CRT problems. It's the LCD and plasma problems that I now worry about. And, as usual, the choices suck except at the very high end, where the prices suck.
For a typical non-geek, "learning Linux" is a lousy idea. So is "learning Windows". That's because they don't want to use an operating system. They want to send email, work with their digital pictures, write a novel, or whatever.
I have to question whether "learning Windows" means very much past familiarity with the GUI, basic system startup, and the registry. That said, it's inevitable that anyone using a computer (with the possible exception of Mac users) will come up against the reality that knowing how to send email or work with digital pictures isn't enough, and that he or she responsible for the care and feeding of their operating system. And given that they probably use a computer at home, at work, and at play, it strikes me as a bit bizarre not to invest the time to learn something of the technology they'll be face to face with it for the rest of their lives. The alternatives are pretending otherwise, or paying someone else to play the admin role in each of the cases.
So should people buy this book? Microsoft is notorious for reinventing itself every few years, so I'd suggest that any amount of time learning anything about any *nix-based system is a good investment. The knowledge will hold them in good stead for years to come, and at every step they'll have the opportunity to build on it.
I wager more people are using Win2K now than in the days right before WinXP came out...
It's funny, but I've made that exact observation. Typically, it's from people who were sold the upgrade at a computer shop or by an at-home tech and were upgrading from Win9x but were keeping their old hardware.
The problem with Win2K, however, is that it's lack of "cleartype" make it pretty awful to use on a notebook or an LCD screen. In larger corporate environments moving to LCD monitors to save electricity makes good sense, but that would require a move to XP in tandem.
Rather than assuming a cult of Napoleon and the Revolution, I would say they just are better bureaucrats. A lot of US political culture assumes the market "takes care of itself", and is almost ideologically against state intervention, to the point the US are the last country still using medieval units of measure because no one enforces the metric system.
Nicely summarised. I'd add that there's a corollory inherent in the above which can be expressed as "You get what you deserve." In the US, we have lousy bureaucrats, so people expect lousy results. People get lousy results, so they demand lousy bureaucrats, hence the right-wing mantra of reducing government size.
It's a shame really. Government does have an important role to play, and irrespective of political ideologies or utopian visions, governments have played and will continue to play a role. And that role includes just about everything.
As for ODF, such things belong in the hands of governments and academics, not in the pockets of large corporations. The trouble is that in the US, with its tradition of lousy bureaucrats and a populace with low expectations, governments, academia and corporations are often one and the same.
When MNG (animated PNG) is supported by all major browsers, I probably won't use GIF for anything anymore.
Not being a web developer, I'm not familiar with the features and benefits of MNGs, but if they're at all similar to animated GIFs, I hope Firefox's image.animation_mode=none setting will apply when visiting the web sites you design.
Failure to parent and seek help cannot be blamed on Sony, Take-Two, Rockstar or anyone else. However, the direct consequences of allowing the child to continue to act in an obsessive manner can be blamed directly on parental negligence.
I agree, but that kind of reasoning slipped from our collective consciousness a generation or two ago. Today, in a typical family both parents work. When everyone is too tired, too over-worked, or too short of time, who's left to take responsibility? No one.
Put another way, the reason why Think of The Children! works so well is that parents and society in general have agreed that parents can't possibly be responsible any more, so "everyone else" has to shoulder that responsibility for them. When I was growing up, if I wandered off into a bad neighbourhood (assuming my mum let me out of her sight), my dad would beat me. Today, they'd probably sue the bad neighbourhood.
Where's the study/chart contrasting VMWare with Xen virtualization?
Probably in the section that's prominently labelled "RELATED CONTENT" that directly follows the article? A virtual representation of the relevant link:
How does Xen stack up against Virtual Server, VMware?
Shame they require registration.
At any rate, I'm sure everyone would agree that the vwmare Wikipedia Article is probably the most comprehensive source for information. Comparisons with other technologies are included.
What's this common dread of "bacteria"? You have to look at the big picture. 97% of bacterial species have not the slightest ability to harm us. A typical surface has millions of these critters. Most of them are your friends, as they help crowd out the really bad varieties.
Agreed, but it's the 3% (often from other people) that can get you sick. During flu season, people generally pick up the bug from hand contact. You touch something that someone else has touched, or you shake hands, your own hands end up touching your nose, mouth, eyes, etc. Washing your hands regularly is the best approach, but if it's inevitable that we touch other people or their stuff, it can help to keep our surfaces clean. If you can stay home and sit in your underwear all day long, then no problem.
If you "disinfect" a surface, it's like clear-cutting a rain-forest. You've upset the balance, making a fresh new playground where the really baad and hardy weeds might take hold.
But sometimes waiting for the process of a natural selection isn't possible or desirable so cutting down diseased trees to limit the spread of a disesase can sometimes be the best approach. Doesn't work with co-workers, of course.
It would be nice to have such a list for that type of usage. I want to run X with the usual apps, and to play video. At HD resolution. I think many "typical Linux users" are in the same boat: not too interested in playing games, want good performance for normal 2D and video.
This reads almost like an afterthought, but I think it deserves a +5 INSIGHTFUL. I can't count how many times I've read posts or articles on Slashdot concerning video cards and performance and wonder why I'm bothering to read any of it. Not to sound trollish, but c'mon people, some of us don't play games, have no interest in games, but do need or want a capable video card. For any number of reasons. Granted that gamers demand top notch performance, and they may or may not represent the market for the better cards, but if the discussion is going to be so narrowly focused, then maybe all such articles should be subjected to a Real Time with Bill Maher NEW RULES moment and relegated to the Games section. Moreover, this being Slashdot and C-Colon-Backlash, I'd like think that anyone submitting articles concerning video cards would be cognisant of who their audience really is.
Ultimate digital reading experience? I thought that was braille.
Well, at least the sight-impaired won't be distracted by the two logos and all the buttons. Last I checked, books didn't have logos or big buttons on every page, so my guess is that the sight-impaired will be at an advantage in that they'll less distracted than everyone else using this device.
On the plus side, the device offers a list of features that include 7,500 page turns per charge, readability in sunlight, 180 degree viewing, and support for reasonably standard formats (despite their hawking some CONNECT(TM) format). Sounds great, I suppose, but I'll wait for next year.
Sigh.
I expect when someone does come up with an ideal device, I'll be the first in line. Hell, I'll probably buy a half-dozen the first day. I read more than most people (for pleasure), so I agree that using an "ebook" (whatever that is) will never replace the experience of holding a book and flipping pages, but for everyone else, such a product is long overdue. Students at all levels require text books, for example. Myself, I have to slog through technical documentation all day long, so being able to store a few hundred PDFs on a usable portable device rather than printing them or devoting bookshelf real estate would be the cat's meow. Or at least a big start.
As it is now, we're still mostly stuck sitting at a desk, reaching for a mouse, and playing with scrollbars. It works, I guess, but imagine having the contents of something like Wikipedia on such a device? Years ago there was a huge flurry of activity (both technical and artistic) in developing an alternative format to web and print. Most of it disappeared not because of a lack of interest, but because there didn't exist a device that was good enough. Well, that and the dot com bubble bursting. Maybe this will help resurrect some of that effort and we can move closer to replacing what has worked so well for so many hundreds of years: the book. The iPod revolutionised our approach to music, so maybe it'll be Apple that figures it out.
The fish are not fighting terrorism but protecting environment
If you were American, you would be accused of being unpatriotic for suggesting such a thing.
Real men just input the entire program at the command line using cat>myprog.c
The modern man, however, uses nc -l 1234 > myprog.c.