but once you move to the better product, you'll never want to go back.
Actually, the reason that I like the cheaper stuff is exactly because I've dealt with the higher end equipment and had really bad experiences. You're at the mercy of the vendor as far as parts availability goes, and they often have special drivers that have to be loaded to make their stuff work. If you want to spend lots of extra $$$ to buy IBM then go ahead, but my racks will always be loaded with commodity parts, and I'll never have to worry about whether I can get another replacement part from IBM.
This is why we buy commodity rather than brand name. I can buy everything I need plus spares for what I can buy a brand name box for. For what it's worth, the commodity stuff is usually better quality anyway, so I'm money ahead all the way around.
So, here I am without a database (I should have backed up!), and without several files I was working on.
I'd argue that you're never going to have a good experience if you don't take reasonable care to protect your work. You should never trust an ISP with anything that's important to you. We colo our own stuff, and even though we own our own equipment and trust our ISP, we still assume that the box could at some point in the future become unavailable (stolen, buried under tons of rubble in an earthquake, etc.) Don't blame your hosting service for your own lack of preparation.
I was in a start-up that used loads of 486s (and low-end pentiums) for systems.
I run postfix/spamassassin, cvs, apache, and MySQL on a dual-266 with 256MB of memory. I actually upgraded the memory and put in new fans a while back because it was worth making a smaller investment upgrading an old piece of hardware than purchasing something new. I routinely scavange my friend's "throw away" Windows boxes and put them in my server farm.
i have a copy of win95 on a p1 with 8mb ram and it actually is usable, explorer works well and so does IE, good to have a usable gui with such a weak PC
So when was the last time Microsoft released a security patch for your OS? In my (admittedly small) world, the lack of patch support prohibits the use of any OS.
It's really no secret that newer distros have become pretty "full featured". I really don't know why anyone should get defensive about this, but I guess there is no stopping it.
Which is why, looking at the list, they picked the distros that they did. I'd be curious to know if they turned off all the extras that come turned on in most distros. It's not a fair comparison, for example, to install a stock Mandrake that comes with OpenOffice turned on when Windows doesn't ship with Office installed.
if someone steals your gun and kills someone, are you liable? It's unlikely that you'd be liable, but it's really up to the people doing the decision making. Always make sure you have a good lawyer, just in case.
Just taking my turn with picking nits. No harmfull/mean intent here.
I knew that I was going to screw something up. No offense taken.:-)
His 'creation' was named Adam and is sometimes called "Frankenstiens monster".
Interesting. I have to admit that I never saw the movie or read the book. So maybe you can explain something to me then. Wouldn't the "Bride of Frankenstein" be the woman who married Frankenstein rather than one who would marry Frankenstein's monster?
But of course leave it to someone on Slashdot to nit pick my comments.
So then would it be wrong of me to point out that you spelled Richard Feynman's name incorrectly for a second time, even after I oh so subtly pointed out that fact in my last response? Or perhaps you were speaking of an alternate reality in which a low level government official inadvertently dropped the "n" when transcribing Feynman's last name on his birth certificate?:-)
Quick ask someone to name as many scientists as they can.
I really doubt that your average Joe could come up with these guys. You'd be more likely to hear Bill Nye, or Dr. Jekyll, or that dude who created Frankenstein. Seriously, when we live in an era when fewer than 1/2 the people in this country can name the sitting VP, do you really expect them to come up with either of these guys? I'd be really surprised if 1 in 10 could even name a real scientist. In my unscientific poll of our household, everyone came up with Einstein. For a second scientist, I got Edison, Galileo, and Bill Nye.
Anyway, here's how you beat Einstein: come up with a Theory of Everything (without strings/branes please!), make a prediction that violates general relativity, and have that prediction be confirmed and GR falsified in a big public spectacle of an experiment. Got it? OK, off you go!
Next week. I'm busy this week watching the boxed set of "The Dukes of Hazzard" that I got for Christmas.:-)
Actually, I think that the first part of your comment is total BS, but you nailed it with the last part. Einstein thought big. He didn't get approval from anyone for his thought experiments, and as far as I know he never spent any large sums of cash to do his work. What he did do was to get other people to spend large sums of cash to prove his theories right. He convinced others to think about the problem before running off and spending money. Sadly, many theorists these days want it the other way around. They seem to need big research grants before they can make any new discoveries. Perhaps this is how incremental physics works, but revolutionary physics is usually done on a shoestring budget.
Perhaps Richard Feyman [sic] or Carl Sagan came close, but of course neither of them don't have an opera with their name in it (AFAIK).
Explain to me how a guy running around talking about "billions and billions" of galaxies even begins to come close to what Einstein contributed to physics. At least Feynman made some significant contributions to quantum physics. Putting Carl Sagan in the same class as Einstein is like putting Ashley Simpson in the same class as Einstein.
Actually, they do. If you think about it for a minute, quantum mechanics predicts that there are an infinite number of universes that represent all the possible outcomes of any event, so there are lots of possible universes in which Einstein wasn't born and therefore relativity was discovered by someone else. So somewhere, in some universe, I'm discovering relativity right now.
That, but also, he was an interesting character. He's got a catchy tagline (E=MC2). He had funny hair.
Chuck Norris is an interesting character. Chuck Norris has got a catchy tagline ("Guns don't kill people. Chuck Norris kills people."). Chuck Norris had funny hair. Yet Chuck Norris will never be as famous as Albert Einstein. (I've heard it rumored that Chuck Norris even discovered a new theory of relativity involving multiple universes in which Chuck Norris is even more badass than in this one, but he chose not to reveal it so that Einstein would not be overshadowed by the greatness of Chuck Norris.)
If there weren't OTHER physicists publishing similar papers first, perhaps some physicists would. That's the point.
So is your argument that publishing quality work is a zero sum game? I bet our good friend Einstein would have loved the Internet. Then he'd have blogged about ten good papers per year.
I think that the same holds true of virtually any public figure, whether it's a singer, actor, or politician. How many times to we hear the media speak of a President of the US (past and present) working to build his legacy? I don't think that Churchill or FDR spent much time worrying about legacy, yet history counts them as great men. The more you try to secure your place in history, the more elusive it becomes.
Quite simply, credit reporting companies need to be 100% liable for reporting false information, and credit vendors (including banks and mortgage companies) need to be 100% liable for offering credit to and identity thief.
I'm not sure how you make credit reporting agencies liable for false information since they're just reporting what other people tell them. As for making the credit vendors liable for granting credit to identity thieves, I think that you can only do this in a world where the credit vendor has the ability to get an independent review of the information that's presented to them at the time they make the decision to grant credit. For example, if I'm a bank and someone comes in with a bunch of information as well as something that looks like a valid driver's license, should I be liable for granting credit to them if they're committing fraud? I think that you can only hold them accountable if they have a back channel for verifying that the person who is sitting in front of them is actually who they say they are. And I also think that those committing fraud would be less likely to do so knowing that additional information other than that which they presented would be used in conducting the transaction. (As an interesting side note, I think that if you simply took a picture of every one asking for credit before you granted it that it would be a step in the right direction. Currently, a fraudster can easily get away with a crime because a loan officer can't give a description of a person who applied for credit just a few months earlier.)
For what it's worth, the other reason that I'm against just putting the burden on the credit issuers without fixing the system is that the only way that they'll stay in business is to pass the charges back on to the consumer. We'd likely see a system like the credit card companies have to insure against such loss, but we'll also see interest rates that mirror credit card rates for homes and cars. That would be very, very bad for everyone.
Can anyone tell me why Marriot has the SSNs of Customers?
I think that you're asking the wrong question here. Shouldn't you be asking "why does it matter if they keep your SSN?" Our whole system of using SSNs to identify people is broken, and if Congress would get off their lazy duffs and fix the problem then maybe it wouldn't matter if someone had my SSN number or not. A simple change to credit reporting laws that would require a second level of verification of the identity of a consumer before granting credit, like what happens when you put a fraud alert on your credit report, would go a long way toward fixing this problem. But those who issue credit are afraid that if you got rid of easy credit then their market would collapse. I'll agree that some people would be inconvenienced by such a system (like those who move around a lot), but it sure would reduce fraud. At the very least, I should have the option of making a fraud alert permanent, and to have complete control over who can view my credit history. Then maybe it wouldn't make such a difference if someone got my personal information.
I once had a boss that micromanaged me and it drove me nuts. At the end of the day, if your boss doesn't trust you to do the right thing then you need to find new work. A boss who doesn't know enough to know that he doesn't know everything is not the kind of guy you want to work for. A good boss will always grant enough trust to their employees to let them get the job done the way that they think is right.
Unfortunately the majority of people using computers are barely computer literate and just want to plug something in and do what they want without fuss.
I call this job security.:-)
I think the thing that Bill Gates fears has come true but in a way that he hasn't quite expected, others are more innovative then he is and MS is loosing the race, but it isn't from one competitor but from the community itself (Open Source).
Microsoft's strength has always been integration rather than innovation. In a pre-email, pre-web world, communication between companies and individuals was difficult, but that's not the way it is any more. The biggest limiting factor to Microsoft totally losing the war is the hardware vendors, many of whom have become dependent on a single, predictable model for delivering drivers. As the *nix market grows, however, this will change, and they'll be forced to fix the problem.
Nobody is has to live by your rules just because they happen to take a class from you. Teaching doesn't (that is both "can't" and "shouldn't") make you a dictator.
Like I said before, you're entitled to your opinions and I can't really change them. I will agree with you on two points:
In a public university where taxpayer dollars are spent to subsidize an education, students do have more of a voice in how the classroom is controlled. I taught at a private university, so other than following the laws on the books I had a lot more latitude in what I could do in the classroom. As I said before, it was the student's choice whether to take my class or attend our university, and the laws of the marketplace dicated what I taught and how I taught it. If all my students quit, or if no one signed up for my class because they felt that my policies were unfair, then I'd be out of a job. This is why I think the tenure system in most schools is broken and should be replaced, because it artificially influences that marketplace.
I would also agree that scoring blondes lower would be wrong. As would scoring someone because of their skin color or religious beliefs. Factors that aren't under your control shouldn't preclude you from scoring well on a test, but that's not what we were talking about here. I made my comments in the context of the rules for the test, so you shouldn't extrapolate them beyond that.
You can make rules as you fit, as long as they are pertinent to course material. Beyond that, you have no right.
If you don't believe that our entire higher education system does this then you're sadly mistaken. And it starts early. For example, your admission to any univerisity (with the exception of some really low end places) is predicated on your SAT scores. The SAT test includes questions from many disciplines that probably aren't related to your course of study. Should you be denied entrance to a computer science program because you don't know much about history? Regardless of how you might feel about this question, it's very likely that you won't be admitted if your SAT test scores are low regardless of your level of genius in a certain area.
You mention in a follow up comment below that you'd be happy to contact my former employer. I'd suggest that if you want to wipe out this "problem" then you focus your energies on bigger targets for maximum effectiveness. Start with the Catholic school system first, since those pesky little rules like sitting up straight in class and paying attention really have very little to do with learning. Once you've cleaned up that system, purge the entire admissions system for any and all universities as they take into account not only your SAT scores but your high school grades as well. The next step after that is to eliminate grading altogether, since grades can never really truly reflect what we really know about a subject.
Consumer sales are nice, but it's IT sales that drive the industry.
Well, depends on how you look at it. Microsoft displaced IBM in corporate American because it had broad consumer appeal. Some of those consumers are IT people, and they in turn help drive the decision making process for their companies. So you need broad consumer appeal.
Personally, I think Microsoft has fallen down by focusing too much on corporate America. Don't get me wrong - I'm not an anti-corporate guy and this isn't a corporate bashing session. It's just that if you look at Microsoft's early history, it was all about "sticking it to the man". Word processors, once the domain of large systems, was pushed to the desktop, along with spreadsheets and other corporate applications. I worked in a company where we effectively neutralized our big iron with a single desktop application. So for Microsoft to now ignore the average Joe and focus exclusively on what large companies need is totally stupid. What Microsoft needs to do is return to its roots and continue to focus on what the consumer really needs - a machine that just works. No more reboots, spyware, rootkits, or spam. Plug it in and it runs. If Microsoft could build a PC that's as reliable as my refrigerator then they would once again be in a dominate industry position.
Every video rental store charges late fees, hell even libraries charge late fees.
I can live with late fees. What I can't live with is late fees that are charged when the movie isn't late. My local library seems to be able to check in a book the same day I drop it off. The same could not be said of Blockbuster. And then, when you inquired about the timing, you were always referred to a manager who seemed to be out for the day. At least with the mom & pop store, you could talk to mom or pop who were always around and would work with you to settle the issue.
As long as they do demonstrate they know the stuff, you can't punish them for not doing things the way you want them to.
Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. For anyone who didn't like my methods, nobody was forcing them to take the course from me. There are lots of options in education. Other instructors at the same school, or other schools. If you take a class from me then you live by my rules.
Nice but Blockbuster does not charge for late returns anymore.
But how much damage did they do to their reputation when they did charge late fees? I will never deal with Blockbuster again because of their policies. I can't trust them to do the right thing. Let's face it - they drove the mom & pop stores out of business but never established themselves as a member of my community. They were stupid not to build loyalty, and eventually they'll go out of business or get snapped up. The only thing is that Netflix could be undermined by the download market when it becomes legal and widespread, so they have to have something more than the "red envelope".
I used and loved KMail, but I had to give it up because I use too many computers:
Interesting. I tried KMail just now because of this thread and found that it wants to store lots of stuff locally. You can tell it where your Trash folder is, but I didn't see a place to tell it where to store sent items. Storing anything locally doesn't work for me since I have lots of machines that I check email from.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the reason that I like the cheaper stuff is exactly because I've dealt with the higher end equipment and had really bad experiences. You're at the mercy of the vendor as far as parts availability goes, and they often have special drivers that have to be loaded to make their stuff work. If you want to spend lots of extra $$$ to buy IBM then go ahead, but my racks will always be loaded with commodity parts, and I'll never have to worry about whether I can get another replacement part from IBM.
This is why we buy commodity rather than brand name. I can buy everything I need plus spares for what I can buy a brand name box for. For what it's worth, the commodity stuff is usually better quality anyway, so I'm money ahead all the way around.
I'd argue that you're never going to have a good experience if you don't take reasonable care to protect your work. You should never trust an ISP with anything that's important to you. We colo our own stuff, and even though we own our own equipment and trust our ISP, we still assume that the box could at some point in the future become unavailable (stolen, buried under tons of rubble in an earthquake, etc.) Don't blame your hosting service for your own lack of preparation.
I run postfix/spamassassin, cvs, apache, and MySQL on a dual-266 with 256MB of memory. I actually upgraded the memory and put in new fans a while back because it was worth making a smaller investment upgrading an old piece of hardware than purchasing something new. I routinely scavange my friend's "throw away" Windows boxes and put them in my server farm.
So when was the last time Microsoft released a security patch for your OS? In my (admittedly small) world, the lack of patch support prohibits the use of any OS.
Which is why, looking at the list, they picked the distros that they did. I'd be curious to know if they turned off all the extras that come turned on in most distros. It's not a fair comparison, for example, to install a stock Mandrake that comes with OpenOffice turned on when Windows doesn't ship with Office installed.
if someone steals your gun and kills someone, are you liable? It's unlikely that you'd be liable, but it's really up to the people doing the decision making. Always make sure you have a good lawyer, just in case.
I knew that I was going to screw something up. No offense taken. :-)
His 'creation' was named Adam and is sometimes called "Frankenstiens monster".
Interesting. I have to admit that I never saw the movie or read the book. So maybe you can explain something to me then. Wouldn't the "Bride of Frankenstein" be the woman who married Frankenstein rather than one who would marry Frankenstein's monster?
So then would it be wrong of me to point out that you spelled Richard Feynman's name incorrectly for a second time, even after I oh so subtly pointed out that fact in my last response? Or perhaps you were speaking of an alternate reality in which a low level government official inadvertently dropped the "n" when transcribing Feynman's last name on his birth certificate? :-)
Quick ask someone to name as many scientists as they can.
I really doubt that your average Joe could come up with these guys. You'd be more likely to hear Bill Nye, or Dr. Jekyll, or that dude who created Frankenstein. Seriously, when we live in an era when fewer than 1/2 the people in this country can name the sitting VP, do you really expect them to come up with either of these guys? I'd be really surprised if 1 in 10 could even name a real scientist. In my unscientific poll of our household, everyone came up with Einstein. For a second scientist, I got Edison, Galileo, and Bill Nye.
Next week. I'm busy this week watching the boxed set of "The Dukes of Hazzard" that I got for Christmas. :-)
Actually, I think that the first part of your comment is total BS, but you nailed it with the last part. Einstein thought big. He didn't get approval from anyone for his thought experiments, and as far as I know he never spent any large sums of cash to do his work. What he did do was to get other people to spend large sums of cash to prove his theories right. He convinced others to think about the problem before running off and spending money. Sadly, many theorists these days want it the other way around. They seem to need big research grants before they can make any new discoveries. Perhaps this is how incremental physics works, but revolutionary physics is usually done on a shoestring budget.
Explain to me how a guy running around talking about "billions and billions" of galaxies even begins to come close to what Einstein contributed to physics. At least Feynman made some significant contributions to quantum physics. Putting Carl Sagan in the same class as Einstein is like putting Ashley Simpson in the same class as Einstein.
Actually, they do. If you think about it for a minute, quantum mechanics predicts that there are an infinite number of universes that represent all the possible outcomes of any event, so there are lots of possible universes in which Einstein wasn't born and therefore relativity was discovered by someone else. So somewhere, in some universe, I'm discovering relativity right now.
Chuck Norris is an interesting character. Chuck Norris has got a catchy tagline ("Guns don't kill people. Chuck Norris kills people."). Chuck Norris had funny hair. Yet Chuck Norris will never be as famous as Albert Einstein. (I've heard it rumored that Chuck Norris even discovered a new theory of relativity involving multiple universes in which Chuck Norris is even more badass than in this one, but he chose not to reveal it so that Einstein would not be overshadowed by the greatness of Chuck Norris.)
So is your argument that publishing quality work is a zero sum game? I bet our good friend Einstein would have loved the Internet. Then he'd have blogged about ten good papers per year.
I think that the same holds true of virtually any public figure, whether it's a singer, actor, or politician. How many times to we hear the media speak of a President of the US (past and present) working to build his legacy? I don't think that Churchill or FDR spent much time worrying about legacy, yet history counts them as great men. The more you try to secure your place in history, the more elusive it becomes.
I'm not sure how you make credit reporting agencies liable for false information since they're just reporting what other people tell them. As for making the credit vendors liable for granting credit to identity thieves, I think that you can only do this in a world where the credit vendor has the ability to get an independent review of the information that's presented to them at the time they make the decision to grant credit. For example, if I'm a bank and someone comes in with a bunch of information as well as something that looks like a valid driver's license, should I be liable for granting credit to them if they're committing fraud? I think that you can only hold them accountable if they have a back channel for verifying that the person who is sitting in front of them is actually who they say they are. And I also think that those committing fraud would be less likely to do so knowing that additional information other than that which they presented would be used in conducting the transaction. (As an interesting side note, I think that if you simply took a picture of every one asking for credit before you granted it that it would be a step in the right direction. Currently, a fraudster can easily get away with a crime because a loan officer can't give a description of a person who applied for credit just a few months earlier.)
For what it's worth, the other reason that I'm against just putting the burden on the credit issuers without fixing the system is that the only way that they'll stay in business is to pass the charges back on to the consumer. We'd likely see a system like the credit card companies have to insure against such loss, but we'll also see interest rates that mirror credit card rates for homes and cars. That would be very, very bad for everyone.
I think that you're asking the wrong question here. Shouldn't you be asking "why does it matter if they keep your SSN?" Our whole system of using SSNs to identify people is broken, and if Congress would get off their lazy duffs and fix the problem then maybe it wouldn't matter if someone had my SSN number or not. A simple change to credit reporting laws that would require a second level of verification of the identity of a consumer before granting credit, like what happens when you put a fraud alert on your credit report, would go a long way toward fixing this problem. But those who issue credit are afraid that if you got rid of easy credit then their market would collapse. I'll agree that some people would be inconvenienced by such a system (like those who move around a lot), but it sure would reduce fraud. At the very least, I should have the option of making a fraud alert permanent, and to have complete control over who can view my credit history. Then maybe it wouldn't make such a difference if someone got my personal information.
I once had a boss that micromanaged me and it drove me nuts. At the end of the day, if your boss doesn't trust you to do the right thing then you need to find new work. A boss who doesn't know enough to know that he doesn't know everything is not the kind of guy you want to work for. A good boss will always grant enough trust to their employees to let them get the job done the way that they think is right.
I call this job security. :-)
I think the thing that Bill Gates fears has come true but in a way that he hasn't quite expected, others are more innovative then he is and MS is loosing the race, but it isn't from one competitor but from the community itself (Open Source).
Microsoft's strength has always been integration rather than innovation. In a pre-email, pre-web world, communication between companies and individuals was difficult, but that's not the way it is any more. The biggest limiting factor to Microsoft totally losing the war is the hardware vendors, many of whom have become dependent on a single, predictable model for delivering drivers. As the *nix market grows, however, this will change, and they'll be forced to fix the problem.
Like I said before, you're entitled to your opinions and I can't really change them. I will agree with you on two points:
You can make rules as you fit, as long as they are pertinent to course material. Beyond that, you have no right.
If you don't believe that our entire higher education system does this then you're sadly mistaken. And it starts early. For example, your admission to any univerisity (with the exception of some really low end places) is predicated on your SAT scores. The SAT test includes questions from many disciplines that probably aren't related to your course of study. Should you be denied entrance to a computer science program because you don't know much about history? Regardless of how you might feel about this question, it's very likely that you won't be admitted if your SAT test scores are low regardless of your level of genius in a certain area.
You mention in a follow up comment below that you'd be happy to contact my former employer. I'd suggest that if you want to wipe out this "problem" then you focus your energies on bigger targets for maximum effectiveness. Start with the Catholic school system first, since those pesky little rules like sitting up straight in class and paying attention really have very little to do with learning. Once you've cleaned up that system, purge the entire admissions system for any and all universities as they take into account not only your SAT scores but your high school grades as well. The next step after that is to eliminate grading altogether, since grades can never really truly reflect what we really know about a subject.
Well, depends on how you look at it. Microsoft displaced IBM in corporate American because it had broad consumer appeal. Some of those consumers are IT people, and they in turn help drive the decision making process for their companies. So you need broad consumer appeal.
Personally, I think Microsoft has fallen down by focusing too much on corporate America. Don't get me wrong - I'm not an anti-corporate guy and this isn't a corporate bashing session. It's just that if you look at Microsoft's early history, it was all about "sticking it to the man". Word processors, once the domain of large systems, was pushed to the desktop, along with spreadsheets and other corporate applications. I worked in a company where we effectively neutralized our big iron with a single desktop application. So for Microsoft to now ignore the average Joe and focus exclusively on what large companies need is totally stupid. What Microsoft needs to do is return to its roots and continue to focus on what the consumer really needs - a machine that just works. No more reboots, spyware, rootkits, or spam. Plug it in and it runs. If Microsoft could build a PC that's as reliable as my refrigerator then they would once again be in a dominate industry position.
I can live with late fees. What I can't live with is late fees that are charged when the movie isn't late. My local library seems to be able to check in a book the same day I drop it off. The same could not be said of Blockbuster. And then, when you inquired about the timing, you were always referred to a manager who seemed to be out for the day. At least with the mom & pop store, you could talk to mom or pop who were always around and would work with you to settle the issue.
Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. For anyone who didn't like my methods, nobody was forcing them to take the course from me. There are lots of options in education. Other instructors at the same school, or other schools. If you take a class from me then you live by my rules.
But how much damage did they do to their reputation when they did charge late fees? I will never deal with Blockbuster again because of their policies. I can't trust them to do the right thing. Let's face it - they drove the mom & pop stores out of business but never established themselves as a member of my community. They were stupid not to build loyalty, and eventually they'll go out of business or get snapped up. The only thing is that Netflix could be undermined by the download market when it becomes legal and widespread, so they have to have something more than the "red envelope".
Interesting. I tried KMail just now because of this thread and found that it wants to store lots of stuff locally. You can tell it where your Trash folder is, but I didn't see a place to tell it where to store sent items. Storing anything locally doesn't work for me since I have lots of machines that I check email from.
I guess I'll stick with Thunderbird for now.