I'm not a slashdot link traffic whore, I promise. I've written about my experience with job recruiters on my blog.
I've generally had bad experiences with recruiters. I also would like to mention I'm new to the whole notion of recruiters, as they weren't nearly as prominent out west, where I'm from, as they are in more populated areas, like Michigan (where I'm at now).
Rather than talking about working on patents for your company, what about clauses in contract with your company that require "inventors" employed with the company must hand over the rights to their patent to the company their currently employed for, sometimes, even for patents in unrelated fields. I've never patented anything, but I've always wanted to, and that has me thinking about current contracts I have with my full-time permanent employer on whether I could get a signed contract with them allowing me to patent something in an unrelated field.
Does anybody have any experience for a situation like this?
Depending on your companies needs, could an iSCSI solution be more viable. There are some very good units out there with loads of various different RAID setups. There are some trade-offs vs. Fibre Channel, such as speed vs. cost etc. I've seen quite a bit of data being handled to/from iSCSI arrays quite nicely. However, the companies I worked for had no true need for the blindingly fast speed, and extremely high cost of FC arrays.
Nobody has mentioned SpywareBlaster. On my Windows machines, I run a combination of programs. I run AVG Anti-Virus for gernal viruses, I also run SpywareBlaster, Spybot S&D, and Ad-Aware for all of the spyware/adware etc. stuff. If there is still something going on, I'd dive into the Spybot S&D Windows startup options, and if that doesn't reveal anything, I'd head over and grab HiJackThis.
I've been wearing glasses for close to 75% of my life, I'm 24 now. I've always had borderline 20/20 vision, but my eyes have just a touch harder time focusing in on close range stuff. I recently bought a pair of glasses from your standard mall store after an eye exam. I asked them what glasses would be best for me being in front of a computer 8+ hours a day, I got a pair that have whatever protections they have for anti-glare, and also anti-scratch. They work just great, and my eyes, and my head feel a lot better by the end of the day.
*cough* Pushing a straw man into a slippery slope *cough*
Impressive, two fallacies in one swoop.
With a piece of software that is responsible for booting up and loading my OS, I deem that quite important. I do find GRUB's documentation lacking, and I feel that it is important for me to understand what I'm doing and how I'm building something as important as a boot loader.
Do you want me to compare the two in context of boot environments? Ok, GRUB offers the following advantages: A) A prettier screen to boot up with B) Offers me the ability to not have to run 'lilo' after building a new kernel.
I can hardly call this an advantage to GRUB. I'll stick with an actively developed project, whose documentation makes sense, and is quite a bit easier to install and configure.
My biggest problem, and why I stick with LILO as opposed to using GRUB, is because of the current state of the GRUB development. I'm not exactly sure what's going on with the GRUB project, I have seen their website, and read their information, but I don't understand where they are at in their development, especially with GRUB 2. GRUB has been labelled their legacy product, which does mean it has been released, and relatively stable. However, they have completely stopped work on their legacy GRUB product and began working on GRUB 2. GRUB 2 doesn't have a stable release yet (they have builds released via CVS or whatever build versioning system they use). What should we expect from GRUB 2, that GRUB or LILO doesn't offer? I don't like the setup and install process for GRUB, I find it more convoluted than the setup, install, and configuration (lilo.conf) of LILO.
Fanboy. C'mon, there are all kinds of equally, or more entertaining shows. It was that good of a show, yet all the computer nerds, and sci-fi geeks hopped on board because it was there wonderful "Joss Whedon". Hell, he did Angel and Buffy, I can obviously think of a couple better programs than those!!
Stop acting like a fanboy. . . There are plenty of other things to do.
As with all keyboard layouts that aren't QWERTY, you're going to have a rough(er) time switching back and forth layouts as you go home, go to work, and family and friends PCs. I'd stick with what is the most common, and although the layout might not be the absolute fastest around, it is the most common.
The thing about this is. . . Depending on the industry, IT workers rarely/never even see customers, or are in an area where customers can see them. Also, beyond janitorial staff, IT is probably one of the messiest jobs to be in. There isn't a day where on my hands a knees (please, no sexual innuendo implied) crawling around pulling floor tiles, cleaning server cases, lifting heavy servers into racks, etc. IT staff, in a position where they aren't ever face to face with customers should be allowed to dress slightly less than businessmen that are constantly conversing with customers.
My biggest problem with the article is the claim to "predictability and consistency". They probably haven't seen any of the past 20 AD implementations. I have seen AD, Windows 2000, and Windows 2003 show extreme unpredictability and terrible consistency. I have seen some crazy GPO get applied to users out of the blue, and I've seen some of the craziest errors ever. I think linux has the predictability and consistency, however, there is a little bit of upkeep required and a little more well trained tech staff, but hey, you get what you pay for. Deal with it.
With a properly designed raised floor setup in a data center, it makes everything so much easier, easier to run cable, easier to identify power, easier to vent air where it needs to go. I never heard of raised flooring being outdated. What are the alternatives to raised floors? Ladders between sets of racks? What a mess. . .
You're not going to find a "conventional" car stereo that supports.ogg for under $500. There are a few that do, if I remember right, I think one was a Kenwood. The only way you're going to.ogg support in a car stereo other than dropping ~$500+ is to do one of the "homebrew" or "DIY" solutions that have been posted on Slashdot before. Possibly a mp3/ogg player with an FM transmitter would be the best/easiest/cheapest solution.
Let me tell you my problem with RPMs. Remember, this is coming from a Slackware nut, so take with a grain of salt, if you wish. The time it takes me to build an RPM, with several missing dependencies (aka, download all the missing dependencies and install). As opposed to choosing my custom compile options (may not need the additional modules, or addons, that require additional packages). That is my primary issue with RPMs. I'm sure you can dig into the spec file and make changes in regards to which modules or addons (or options, or whatever you want to call them) to the packages you're building, but you may as well be doing a./configure from source.
I think that there should be multiple levels of the LSB standards. I think there should be an initial LSB filesystem standard, and then above that, there should be an LSB layout standard, and then an LSB application location standard, an LSB standard for package management (rpms, ick!), and further on there should be the LSB desktop environment for X layout.
I don't think the LSB should be, or have one standards base to rule them all. They should start several layers, so a distro could claim that they meet LSB Standards 1 (we'll call this the filesystem standard), and they also meet LSB Standards 2 (which is the application layout standard), but then the distro could claim that they don't met LSB standards 3 and 4 (which are, X, and their environment layouts) so a user can decide what he/she is getting in their distro. I think its stupid for the LSB to come out with the one end all standard for all forms of Linux.
I'm brand new to the world of contract IT work (I previously lived in smaller cities). I recently moved near Detroit, and I was amazed to see the amount of contract IT work that is being done. I'm always extremely nervous when it comes to contract work, and I've only done about 3 months worth on a temporary basis. Then again, I'm quite unhappy with my current permanent job, but I'm still too scared to go hire on with a contract agency, I just don't feel it is as steady as a permanent job.
What I want to know is what is everybody's secret in keeping that steady income? Do you generally work and contract yourself out, or do you go through a contract-house? I'm extremely nervous about working for 6 months, only to have to do more searching for contract work in that 6 months, then I worry about not being able to find something that pays as well. How do you guys deal with the irregular pay?
I've never felt really comfortable NOT compiling my own kernels, I hate RH, compiling everything, and every single module. I only trust a kernel that I compile myself. I have my own revision system, I save the kernel's.config file from the past couple kernels I've used, look at the changelogs to the kernel and see if anything applies to me, if not, I throw in the old.config file, and do a quick readthrough making sure all the options are selected that I need, and it is going, the whole process of configuring a kernel for compiling takes less than 10, maybe even 5 minutes.
There isn't a complete lack of package mangement, it is the pkgtool suite (upgradepkg, installpkg, removepkg, etc.). That is one thing I like about Slackware, you should look to see what the dependencies are. The problem I've been having administrating Red Hat machines is the endless levels of dependencies that are compile against any random package. It is like a slippery slope installing a package on Red Hat, when it would be easier just to compile stuff from source, or not link it against so many things.
Such that to install package a, you need to install package b, which requires packages c and d, which also require additional packages. Compiling from source can be less time intensive if you ask me.
Too bad there isn't a "completr lack of package management". pkgtool is a package management tool, it scares me to think you admin 120 boxes, and you aren't familiar with the pkgtools suite of tools.
I like to think that I'm doing my little part by blocking all incoming connections from China, Taiwan, and some of Japan. I throw a big ass list of IPs to block into iptables (and give it time to parse all the IPs and such), and call it good. There are some good lists to block some of those Asian countries that do a reasonably good job: Some IP addresses.
But in all seriousness, the reason I do this, is because of the numerous attempts to brute force sshd, or to send email via my SMTP server, the vast majority of IP addresses come from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan.
Hence the post I wrote. After some research, it looks like it was mostly FUD I was reading in regards SP2 being forced upon the user. But all my points still stand in my original post.
I completely disagree with you on several points. In a comparison to your Windows operating system, every single one of these points fail.
A) Remember when SP2 got released, that broke several applications, and applications had to be rebuilt around SP2. Furthermore, Microsoft forces you to upgrade to SP2 (the only way to get around that is hacks, that John Q. Public doesn't know). In linux, you are never *forced* to upgrade your kernel, if you live in fear of it breaking an application. ( I really have nothing to say about you not wanting to compile programs, if you don't want truely optimized code for your specific machine, fine. ), there are many "binary" installers available that many companies build. For instance, I just installed QLogic's SANSurfer program from a single executable. Works great.
B) I don't care what operating system you run. Command line is *not* a bad thing. The fact that people are generally inept to do anything that requires typing is scary. Remember that device that was around long before the mouse, the keyboard? What is the big deal of using it. It may not be quite as easy, but c'mon.
C) man pages are completly acceptable, and they do cut it. As compared to Microsoft's KB, you got to give me a break. I've searched for information using a fairly accurate search string and still have found KB articles buried 3 pages deep. Furthermore, man pages give you a full description rather than KB articles that can either be good or be crap. They can give you a quick workaround, or they could give you a description on a command or a problem. This is not a linux error.
And on your last little comment you make. I'm one of those who still believe that each OS has its place. I don't think linux deserves to be on the desktop, but in that same idea, I don't think that Windows deserves to be on my server.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not a slashdot link traffic whore, I promise. I've written about my experience with job recruiters on my blog.
I've generally had bad experiences with recruiters. I also would like to mention I'm new to the whole notion of recruiters, as they weren't nearly as prominent out west, where I'm from, as they are in more populated areas, like Michigan (where I'm at now).
Rather than talking about working on patents for your company, what about clauses in contract with your company that require "inventors" employed with the company must hand over the rights to their patent to the company their currently employed for, sometimes, even for patents in unrelated fields. I've never patented anything, but I've always wanted to, and that has me thinking about current contracts I have with my full-time permanent employer on whether I could get a signed contract with them allowing me to patent something in an unrelated field.
Does anybody have any experience for a situation like this?
Depending on your companies needs, could an iSCSI solution be more viable. There are some very good units out there with loads of various different RAID setups. There are some trade-offs vs. Fibre Channel, such as speed vs. cost etc. I've seen quite a bit of data being handled to/from iSCSI arrays quite nicely. However, the companies I worked for had no true need for the blindingly fast speed, and extremely high cost of FC arrays.
Nobody has mentioned SpywareBlaster. On my Windows machines, I run a combination of programs. I run AVG Anti-Virus for gernal viruses, I also run SpywareBlaster, Spybot S&D, and Ad-Aware for all of the spyware/adware etc. stuff. If there is still something going on, I'd dive into the Spybot S&D Windows startup options, and if that doesn't reveal anything, I'd head over and grab HiJackThis.
Here is my story: Ask Slashdot article
I stated that I had an eye exam, I didn't mention it was conducted by a doctor, but I thought that was obvious.
I've been wearing glasses for close to 75% of my life, I'm 24 now. I've always had borderline 20/20 vision, but my eyes have just a touch harder time focusing in on close range stuff. I recently bought a pair of glasses from your standard mall store after an eye exam. I asked them what glasses would be best for me being in front of a computer 8+ hours a day, I got a pair that have whatever protections they have for anti-glare, and also anti-scratch. They work just great, and my eyes, and my head feel a lot better by the end of the day.
*cough* Pushing a straw man into a slippery slope *cough*
Impressive, two fallacies in one swoop.
With a piece of software that is responsible for booting up and loading my OS, I deem that quite important. I do find GRUB's documentation lacking, and I feel that it is important for me to understand what I'm doing and how I'm building something as important as a boot loader.
Do you want me to compare the two in context of boot environments? Ok, GRUB offers the following advantages: A) A prettier screen to boot up with B) Offers me the ability to not have to run 'lilo' after building a new kernel.
I can hardly call this an advantage to GRUB. I'll stick with an actively developed project, whose documentation makes sense, and is quite a bit easier to install and configure.
My biggest problem, and why I stick with LILO as opposed to using GRUB, is because of the current state of the GRUB development. I'm not exactly sure what's going on with the GRUB project, I have seen their website, and read their information, but I don't understand where they are at in their development, especially with GRUB 2. GRUB has been labelled their legacy product, which does mean it has been released, and relatively stable. However, they have completely stopped work on their legacy GRUB product and began working on GRUB 2. GRUB 2 doesn't have a stable release yet (they have builds released via CVS or whatever build versioning system they use). What should we expect from GRUB 2, that GRUB or LILO doesn't offer? I don't like the setup and install process for GRUB, I find it more convoluted than the setup, install, and configuration (lilo.conf) of LILO.
Fanboy. C'mon, there are all kinds of equally, or more entertaining shows. It was that good of a show, yet all the computer nerds, and sci-fi geeks hopped on board because it was there wonderful "Joss Whedon". Hell, he did Angel and Buffy, I can obviously think of a couple better programs than those!! Stop acting like a fanboy. . . There are plenty of other things to do.
As with all keyboard layouts that aren't QWERTY, you're going to have a rough(er) time switching back and forth layouts as you go home, go to work, and family and friends PCs. I'd stick with what is the most common, and although the layout might not be the absolute fastest around, it is the most common.
The thing about this is. . . Depending on the industry, IT workers rarely/never even see customers, or are in an area where customers can see them. Also, beyond janitorial staff, IT is probably one of the messiest jobs to be in. There isn't a day where on my hands a knees (please, no sexual innuendo implied) crawling around pulling floor tiles, cleaning server cases, lifting heavy servers into racks, etc. IT staff, in a position where they aren't ever face to face with customers should be allowed to dress slightly less than businessmen that are constantly conversing with customers.
My biggest problem with the article is the claim to "predictability and consistency". They probably haven't seen any of the past 20 AD implementations. I have seen AD, Windows 2000, and Windows 2003 show extreme unpredictability and terrible consistency. I have seen some crazy GPO get applied to users out of the blue, and I've seen some of the craziest errors ever. I think linux has the predictability and consistency, however, there is a little bit of upkeep required and a little more well trained tech staff, but hey, you get what you pay for. Deal with it.
Geezzz. . . Hasn't anyone read "Digital Fortress" by Dan Brown.
With a properly designed raised floor setup in a data center, it makes everything so much easier, easier to run cable, easier to identify power, easier to vent air where it needs to go. I never heard of raised flooring being outdated. What are the alternatives to raised floors? Ladders between sets of racks? What a mess. . .
You're not going to find a "conventional" car stereo that supports .ogg for under $500. There are a few that do, if I remember right, I think one was a Kenwood. The only way you're going to .ogg support in a car stereo other than dropping ~$500+ is to do one of the "homebrew" or "DIY" solutions that have been posted on Slashdot before. Possibly a mp3/ogg player with an FM transmitter would be the best/easiest/cheapest solution.
Let me tell you my problem with RPMs. Remember, this is coming from a Slackware nut, so take with a grain of salt, if you wish. The time it takes me to build an RPM, with several missing dependencies (aka, download all the missing dependencies and install). As opposed to choosing my custom compile options (may not need the additional modules, or addons, that require additional packages). That is my primary issue with RPMs. I'm sure you can dig into the spec file and make changes in regards to which modules or addons (or options, or whatever you want to call them) to the packages you're building, but you may as well be doing a ./configure from source.
I think that there should be multiple levels of the LSB standards. I think there should be an initial LSB filesystem standard, and then above that, there should be an LSB layout standard, and then an LSB application location standard, an LSB standard for package management (rpms, ick!), and further on there should be the LSB desktop environment for X layout.
I don't think the LSB should be, or have one standards base to rule them all. They should start several layers, so a distro could claim that they meet LSB Standards 1 (we'll call this the filesystem standard), and they also meet LSB Standards 2 (which is the application layout standard), but then the distro could claim that they don't met LSB standards 3 and 4 (which are, X, and their environment layouts) so a user can decide what he/she is getting in their distro. I think its stupid for the LSB to come out with the one end all standard for all forms of Linux.
I'm brand new to the world of contract IT work (I previously lived in smaller cities). I recently moved near Detroit, and I was amazed to see the amount of contract IT work that is being done. I'm always extremely nervous when it comes to contract work, and I've only done about 3 months worth on a temporary basis. Then again, I'm quite unhappy with my current permanent job, but I'm still too scared to go hire on with a contract agency, I just don't feel it is as steady as a permanent job.
What I want to know is what is everybody's secret in keeping that steady income? Do you generally work and contract yourself out, or do you go through a contract-house? I'm extremely nervous about working for 6 months, only to have to do more searching for contract work in that 6 months, then I worry about not being able to find something that pays as well. How do you guys deal with the irregular pay?
I've never felt really comfortable NOT compiling my own kernels, I hate RH, compiling everything, and every single module. I only trust a kernel that I compile myself. I have my own revision system, I save the kernel's .config file from the past couple kernels I've used, look at the changelogs to the kernel and see if anything applies to me, if not, I throw in the old .config file, and do a quick readthrough making sure all the options are selected that I need, and it is going, the whole process of configuring a kernel for compiling takes less than 10, maybe even 5 minutes.
There isn't a complete lack of package mangement, it is the pkgtool suite (upgradepkg, installpkg, removepkg, etc.). That is one thing I like about Slackware, you should look to see what the dependencies are. The problem I've been having administrating Red Hat machines is the endless levels of dependencies that are compile against any random package. It is like a slippery slope installing a package on Red Hat, when it would be easier just to compile stuff from source, or not link it against so many things.
Such that to install package a, you need to install package b, which requires packages c and d, which also require additional packages. Compiling from source can be less time intensive if you ask me.
Too bad there isn't a "completr lack of package management". pkgtool is a package management tool, it scares me to think you admin 120 boxes, and you aren't familiar with the pkgtools suite of tools.
I like to think that I'm doing my little part by blocking all incoming connections from China, Taiwan, and some of Japan. I throw a big ass list of IPs to block into iptables (and give it time to parse all the IPs and such), and call it good. There are some good lists to block some of those Asian countries that do a reasonably good job: Some IP addresses.
But in all seriousness, the reason I do this, is because of the numerous attempts to brute force sshd, or to send email via my SMTP server, the vast majority of IP addresses come from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan.
Hence the post I wrote. After some research, it looks like it was mostly FUD I was reading in regards SP2 being forced upon the user. But all my points still stand in my original post.
I completely disagree with you on several points. In a comparison to your Windows operating system, every single one of these points fail. A) Remember when SP2 got released, that broke several applications, and applications had to be rebuilt around SP2. Furthermore, Microsoft forces you to upgrade to SP2 (the only way to get around that is hacks, that John Q. Public doesn't know). In linux, you are never *forced* to upgrade your kernel, if you live in fear of it breaking an application. ( I really have nothing to say about you not wanting to compile programs, if you don't want truely optimized code for your specific machine, fine. ), there are many "binary" installers available that many companies build. For instance, I just installed QLogic's SANSurfer program from a single executable. Works great. B) I don't care what operating system you run. Command line is *not* a bad thing. The fact that people are generally inept to do anything that requires typing is scary. Remember that device that was around long before the mouse, the keyboard? What is the big deal of using it. It may not be quite as easy, but c'mon. C) man pages are completly acceptable, and they do cut it. As compared to Microsoft's KB, you got to give me a break. I've searched for information using a fairly accurate search string and still have found KB articles buried 3 pages deep. Furthermore, man pages give you a full description rather than KB articles that can either be good or be crap. They can give you a quick workaround, or they could give you a description on a command or a problem. This is not a linux error. And on your last little comment you make. I'm one of those who still believe that each OS has its place. I don't think linux deserves to be on the desktop, but in that same idea, I don't think that Windows deserves to be on my server.