I am willing to improve my skills (I thought that's why I went to college, to get a head start), but it's tough to do with NO MONEY and no opportunity for ON THE JOB experience.
Well, if you have NO MONEY and no opportunity for ON THE JOB experience, how are you going to seriously study anything anyway?
Might as well give up and sit around watching TV and reading Slashdot all day. It's hopeless.
Why the hell didn't I think of that?! 8 months of unemployment and the answer is that simple!
Studying what you like doesn't work unless what you like is a current "hot trend".
This is simply not true. Being into something that's a "hot trend" will find you with a lot of others. If you don't like it, you won't stand out.
There is always work for people who are good at what they do. An important ingredient in being good at what you do is enjoying what you do.
It's just that simple.
Now, if you can find something that's hot and that you know you really enjoy, then throw yourself into it. Seems like that's going about it backwards, though.
If you still need direction on what to study, all jobs require good communications skills and good organizational skill. You could work on those areas, if you really want to focus on things that will help.
Slashdot is rapidly becoming useless with the constant derision it heaps on Microsoft. Let's have more computer news and stuff about FreeBSD and Linux and less "make fun of" news about Microsoft. As if Linux doesn't have it's problems. You might end up like Larry Ellison and his ridiculous "Unbreakable" claims.
Of course, that's a problem with the Linux crowd. Feer of being, and being seen as, professional.
Reproduction is not essential to survival. Again, it is a luxury.
Actually, reproduction is essential for the survival of a species or even a culture, but this is besides the point...
So what if better housing, children and travel are luxuries. Luxuries can make your life better.
Utter luxury. I wonder how long you would last if dropped randomly in the middle of Africa.
Wake up geeks: statistics show we live in the richest of the rich countries and get paid relatively exorbitant wads of cash to sit on our asses and press buttons, and waste our time reading Slashdot. We are rank bourgeoisie.
What does it matter that we're better off than those in Africa? We know that, for the most part, they are not happy. Is spreading all of life's miseries the only way to be "truly" happy? If so, why don't you move to Africa or China and lead by example?
The poster was pointing out how money can improve your life and you just called all of the examples "luxuries". Yeah, so what? Since when do luxuries NOT improve your life?
That is what switches are for. You don't need to share bandwidth with other computers on the LAN.
To prevent your having to share bandwidth with no other computers on a LAN, you'd have to have switches at every point in the LAN. Ultimately, in such a configuration, you still have the potential for contention. Sure, switch all the 10Gig/sec lines so that they essentially talk to each other with no interference locally. What if those same two machines decide to talk to a third machine somewhere else on your network. You're bandwidth limited.
If you have too much traffic between two computers, and are saturating the link to either of them, then you have a network design issue.
Sure, but I was pointing out that it won't be too long before two computers talking to each other could potentially swamp a 10Gig/sec Ethernet.
Now, I agree that it's highly unlikely that two computers will be swamping a 10Gig/sec Ethernet in a well designed network anytime soon, but the possibility of it leads one to believe that 10Gig/sec just isn't the infinite room for growth that we assume it is today.
I'm I the only one that thinks the only efficent 10GigE NICs are going to be PCI-X cards with an onboard 2.6 GHz P4 co-processor and 512 MB of buffer?
Sure, today. I'm still glad to see that networking standards are being pushed far forward in advance of computing equipment. 10MB/sec Ethernet was hard for computers to keep up with when it first came out, but I'm glad they didn't wait for the computers to catch up before establishing the standard.
New low-end desktops today can comfortably handle 100mb/sec no problem. High end handles 1Gig/sec. In about 5 years, by Moore's law, the new high end machines point to point will be able to use up all of that 10Gig/sec Ethernet. Ethernet is supposed to support all the machines on a LAN.
The fact that we can bearly support 10Gig/sec Ethernet now seems pretty irrelevant to me.
No one else owns the GPLed version, but they are free to modify and distribute it under the terms of the GPL.
This really isn't accurate. The authors still have IP ownership over the code as long as their copyrights hold out. In fact, public domain (no copyright) is incompatible with the GPL because you don't need a license to use public domain works.
If you are the only author over a GPLed version, then you own it and can relicense it however you see fit. The recipients of the GPLed version are free to modify and distribute what they originally received under the terms of the GPL, however.
Before the Internet, you'd ask your local book dealer to find a book. He'd look at the ads in bookstore trade publications or he'd place an ad. Then he'd negotiate with the bookstores which have the book and negotiate a price with you. Eventually you'd have your copy of "From Link Lake / Canadian Stories".
Yes, that's a mechanism that was developed before the Internet. Note that it's not as efficient, it involves more work on your part, several intermediaries and it doesn't have nearly the effectiveness that the Internet sales sites provide.
Also, it doesn't allow for browsing from collections very effectively.
In general, sites like Amazon, eBay, and half.com should be driving used book prices down.
Not necessarily...
Also, if some item becomes a hot commodity the prices will rise quickly, but this is all the law of supply and demand and these online markets/auctions all put more sellers in touch with more buyers.
And you state why yourself. In many cases, pre-internet, a lot of good stuff would languish in little shops. Sure, there were a lot of buyers out there in the world who would pay a lot for them, but among the shoppers who might find it in the given shop, you couldn't get as much. The shops only had limited floor space and would ultimately have to part with the item before the "right" buyer wondered by.
Markets that are more accessible help both buyers and sellers, but in different ways. Before, serious collectors had to travel extensively or have networks to help them find obscure items. Now, they can just login to the Internet, but they have to compete with a lot of other people.
The benefit to sellers is obvious. To buyers, you are more likely to find that item you are looking for, which ultimately is the best kind of affordability. Before, you often couldn't get things without extensive and expensive travel.
Don't get upset at the copyrights, get upset at the contracts these corporations impose on the artists, and the monopolies they have with major distribution chains.
You can get upset about the copyright law that extends copyrights for 20 extra years if held by a corporation vs. an individual.
That's kind of getting upset at the copyrights and the corporations.
The suit began in 1974 and was settled in January 1982 when AT&T agreed to divest itself of the wholly owned Bell operating companies that provided local exchange service. This would, the government believed, separate those parts of AT&T (the local exchanges) where the natural monopoly argument was still seen as valid from those parts (long distance, manufacturing, research and development), where competition was appropriate.
Clearly the suit in 1974 precipitated the breakup.
Or, you can read here where Joel Klein, head of Antitrust litigation for the DOJ talks about the 1974 suit:
"While the Justice Department can't promise any consumer benefits that might result from its suit to break up [the company], it is sure of one thing: This is the largest antitrust action ever filed. So much for the mentality of modern-day trustbusters. As long as they can tackle the biggest of all 'big businesses,' what is the difference whether the massive expenditure of federal money and effort is likely to cut anyone's . . . bills?"
"Where is the problem that justifies risking possible damage to the efficiency of a vital part of the U.S. infrastructure; damage to the investments of innumerable small investors and pension fund beneficiaries; possible damage to an important research and development enterprise? If there is a problem that justifies all this we can't find it. Maybe it is because we prefer to deal in economics, rather than politics in such matters."
By now, you may have guessed that this is an editorial about the Department's monopoly maintenance case against AT&T, a 1974 editorial as a matter of fact;...
So, clearly the 1974 suit was aimed at a breakup of the AT&T monopoly.
Which is the whole point. The Government, through the anti-trust suit, intiated the breakup of AT&T. Not some libertarian fantasy where monopolies voluntarily disperse under the control of the unseen hand.
Now you are changing your stand. I myself pointed out that they asked to be broken up, but only in the face of the Anti-trust action.
Do you dispute that the anti-trust action was brought in 1974 and that they broke up in 1984?
When, exactly, are you saying AT&T asked to be broken up? 1973? When? Where's your sources?
Re:An even better solution...
on
DRM Helmet
·
· Score: 2
The fact that this scenario is so ludicrous demonstrates that even if all music and literature can be the "property" of a single corporate entity or trust which I doubt then society has every right to claim access to that "property" as a central part of its culture.
A clear case of eminent domain!
Society already has every right to claim access to Intellectual Property. Unlike other property, Intellectual property is granted by the Government "To promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts" (Article 1, section 8, clause 8 of the US Constitution).
If we think that the present Copyright law doesn't promote the useful Arts, we have every reason to change it as we see fit.
Do you think the present law promotes the useful Arts? I don't.
Doesn't go far enough
on
DRM Helmet
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Really, we need a helmet with brain probes that detect if licensed media is being consumed and debits your account on a metered basis.
At the end of the consumption period, the probes could zap the memory of the experience from your mind to prevent illegal retention of copyrighted works.
I'm thinking, why would you lie about something that's so easily checked? Doesn't make much sense, really.
This page
has a timeline. Note that it states that the DOJ requested the breakup with the initial filing in 1974, 10 years before the actual breakup occurred.
MCI was engaged in a process of "cream skimming". It would lease ATT circuits in bulk and resell telephone services between lucritive markets. Calls between non-lucritive markets were handed over to ATT. MCI had a fine plan, all the profit with none of the obigations of providing a network with full nationwide coverage.
However, ATT mandate required they "spread the wealth" by providing things like Universial Access. ATT was required to provide everyone, everywhere, roughly equal phone service at roughly similar prices.
Net-Net ATT was facing a world where the likes of "MCI" claimed they had a "right" to engage in profitable business. Fine. But that argument was forcing ATT into a world where all the wealth it was required to spread was being skimmed away.
You just can't maintain a 10 mile rural phone circuit on $20/month, if you aren't making money to pay for it elsewhere else.
As I said, you're spinning it. To suggest that ATT "ASKED" for there to be competition in LD is bizaare. They certainly never would have gotten out of the monopoly business had it not been for the anti-trust suit.
ATT could have and were expected to argue that what they were doing to MCI was fair for years, but they folded right away and went in for the breakup plan. Everyone assumed that ATT was going after the lucrative communications/telecom/computing business that they were denied before.
So, the key issue for ATT was that MCI's theory had made the ATT business model untenable. ATT had to force the issue, or die, and precipitated the Anti-trust suit. They got exactly what they needed, and indeed asked for. Namely, an accounting seperation between Long vs. Local distance.
"precipitate the Anti-trust suit"?? MCI brought the anti-trust action. I don't know where you get your history from.
What are you, some kind of Libertarian historical revisionist, trying to prove that big monopolies will always voluntarily break up and that it's only big government that we should be afraid of?
Yep, and back in the day it was all controlled by ONE company, unntil that one company ASKED to no longer be the monopoly utility for LD service.
It was the government that made ATT a regulated monopoly and it was business that introduced competition.
Boy, isn't this some spin!
ATT agreed to divest of their LOCAL phone monopoly as part of a settlement to an anti-trust action brought against them by the DOJ. Seems a little upstart named MCI complained that ATT did anti-competitive things to prevent their entry in the long distance business.
They never ASKED to no longer be a LD monopoly. That was forced upon them by the anti-trust suit. In their defense, their settlement offer was unexpected and they could have dragged it out for years and years. But, it seems they thought that they could compete well in certain technology areas that had been denied them before.
In return for this settlement, ATT got the right to compete in other technology areas, like computers, that they had been denied due to Telecommunications and Anti-Trust law up to that time.
Their computers and software flopped completely. How you could fail at making money selling UNIX during it's growth haydays of mid-80s to early 90s is beyond me. Their computers were actually interesting, but somehow they couldn't market them.
Their telecom/networking products, now mostly Lucent Corp., did have some success awhile back, but now Lucent is doing pretty poorly.
I thought design philosophies such as the CMM [cmu.edu] level 5 (used on the space shuttle design)
CMM does not eliminate bugs, but it does aim to improve processes such that bugs could be far lessened.
In any case, CMM (at any level) did not exist when the Space Shuttle software was implemented. As far as I can tell, the CMM first came into being around 1987. There were no CMM level 5 shops existing for years after that. Note also from this link that the study referenced on page 11 does show that defects (aka bugs) do get shipped on software system developed with CMM level 5, although they are much decreased.
I believe the basic Space Shuttle software was implemented in the late 70s, independently, by groups at IBM and Rockwell. You might be referring to new software they now field for use with the Space Shuttle. I don't know.
4) It is wrong for anyone to gather or maintain any information about me, unless I explicitly tell them they can. Seems to contradict rule 1, but see next rule.
5) No rules apply to Geeks, only to other people.
No, on the contrary. Mr. Nader does his work all the time, and not only when it looks good to potential voters.
That's why so many people like him, Jordan. He's a person and not a puppet.
You're right, I was being unfair and cynical.
I have to say that I do admire Nader for his consistency. I agree with some of his issues, on others we are very far apart.
I also believe that third party candidates and voters should not be swayed based on who will not get elected. People like Nader, Buchannon and Perot bring new voices to the debate. Even if you don't agree with them, you get a chance to confront their issues and clarify where you differ. With the two parties we have now, it's often a choice between a bad position and a worse one without any real debate on those positions.
Please file this additional document under "D" for Delusional.
Looks like Nader is starting his 2004 campaign early.
If anything, this kind of request will make certain the administration does anything but what is being asked.
Can you imagine the hue and cry of Conservative Republicans if Nader's policies were implemented, regardless of what they were?
On the other hand, Nader actually does have some leverage as a King-maker. I'm sure the Republicans would do a lot to bring him into the 2004 race and the Democrats would do a lot to keep him out. Either way, he has considerable bargaining power.
Even taking this into account, the figures do tend to tell against the claim that Taiwan is a "relatively poor country" and that this will have little affect.
This could have a tremendous positive affect on Linux and OSS for Chinese speaking/writing people. You know, like 20% of the world's population?
Along with the German initiative announced here recently, it appears that many big, new opportunities for Linux continue to arise.
Anyone could have predicted this. Think about it, had the UnitedLinux partners all insisted on per-seat licensing, then some new distro would pop up that takes the UnitedLinux base with no per-seat licensing.
I guess I'm a little surprised that it happened so fast. My guess is that SuSE was never really on board with the per-seat charge in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you have NO MONEY and no opportunity for ON THE JOB experience, how are you going to seriously study anything anyway?
Might as well give up and sit around watching TV and reading Slashdot all day. It's hopeless.
Studying what you like doesn't work unless what you like is a current "hot trend".
This is simply not true. Being into something that's a "hot trend" will find you with a lot of others. If you don't like it, you won't stand out.
There is always work for people who are good at what they do. An important ingredient in being good at what you do is enjoying what you do.
It's just that simple.
Now, if you can find something that's hot and that you know you really enjoy, then throw yourself into it. Seems like that's going about it backwards, though.
If you still need direction on what to study, all jobs require good communications skills and good organizational skill. You could work on those areas, if you really want to focus on things that will help.
Of course, that's a problem with the Linux crowd. Feer of being, and being seen as, professional.
Gee, that is an interesting perspective...
Thanks Bill!
Actually, reproduction is essential for the survival of a species or even a culture, but this is besides the point...
So what if better housing, children and travel are luxuries. Luxuries can make your life better.
Wake up geeks: statistics show we live in the richest of the rich countries and get paid relatively exorbitant wads of cash to sit on our asses and press buttons, and waste our time reading Slashdot. We are rank bourgeoisie.
What does it matter that we're better off than those in Africa? We know that, for the most part, they are not happy. Is spreading all of life's miseries the only way to be "truly" happy? If so, why don't you move to Africa or China and lead by example?
The poster was pointing out how money can improve your life and you just called all of the examples "luxuries". Yeah, so what? Since when do luxuries NOT improve your life?
To prevent your having to share bandwidth with no other computers on a LAN, you'd have to have switches at every point in the LAN. Ultimately, in such a configuration, you still have the potential for contention. Sure, switch all the 10Gig/sec lines so that they essentially talk to each other with no interference locally. What if those same two machines decide to talk to a third machine somewhere else on your network. You're bandwidth limited.
Sure, but I was pointing out that it won't be too long before two computers talking to each other could potentially swamp a 10Gig/sec Ethernet.
Now, I agree that it's highly unlikely that two computers will be swamping a 10Gig/sec Ethernet in a well designed network anytime soon, but the possibility of it leads one to believe that 10Gig/sec just isn't the infinite room for growth that we assume it is today.
Sure, today. I'm still glad to see that networking standards are being pushed far forward in advance of computing equipment. 10MB/sec Ethernet was hard for computers to keep up with when it first came out, but I'm glad they didn't wait for the computers to catch up before establishing the standard.
New low-end desktops today can comfortably handle 100mb/sec no problem. High end handles 1Gig/sec. In about 5 years, by Moore's law, the new high end machines point to point will be able to use up all of that 10Gig/sec Ethernet. Ethernet is supposed to support all the machines on a LAN.
The fact that we can bearly support 10Gig/sec Ethernet now seems pretty irrelevant to me.
You're right. I didn't read carefully. I thought he'd said "no one owns..."
This really isn't accurate. The authors still have IP ownership over the code as long as their copyrights hold out. In fact, public domain (no copyright) is incompatible with the GPL because you don't need a license to use public domain works.
If you are the only author over a GPLed version, then you own it and can relicense it however you see fit. The recipients of the GPLed version are free to modify and distribute what they originally received under the terms of the GPL, however.
Yes, that's a mechanism that was developed before the Internet. Note that it's not as efficient, it involves more work on your part, several intermediaries and it doesn't have nearly the effectiveness that the Internet sales sites provide.
Also, it doesn't allow for browsing from collections very effectively.
Not necessarily...
And you state why yourself. In many cases, pre-internet, a lot of good stuff would languish in little shops. Sure, there were a lot of buyers out there in the world who would pay a lot for them, but among the shoppers who might find it in the given shop, you couldn't get as much. The shops only had limited floor space and would ultimately have to part with the item before the "right" buyer wondered by.
Markets that are more accessible help both buyers and sellers, but in different ways. Before, serious collectors had to travel extensively or have networks to help them find obscure items. Now, they can just login to the Internet, but they have to compete with a lot of other people.
The benefit to sellers is obvious. To buyers, you are more likely to find that item you are looking for, which ultimately is the best kind of affordability. Before, you often couldn't get things without extensive and expensive travel.
You can get upset about the copyright law that extends copyrights for 20 extra years if held by a corporation vs. an individual.
That's kind of getting upset at the copyrights and the corporations.
You want something more authoritative?
How about this where AT&T says:
Clearly the suit in 1974 precipitated the breakup.
Or, you can read here where Joel Klein, head of Antitrust litigation for the DOJ talks about the 1974 suit:
- "While the Justice Department can't promise any consumer benefits that might result from its suit to break up [the company], it is sure of one thing: This is the largest antitrust action ever filed. So much for the mentality of modern-day trustbusters. As long as they can tackle the biggest of all 'big businesses,' what is the difference whether the massive expenditure of federal money and effort is likely to cut anyone's . . . bills?"
By now, you may have guessed that this is an editorial about the Department's monopoly maintenance case against AT&T, a 1974 editorial as a matter of fact;"Where is the problem that justifies risking possible damage to the efficiency of a vital part of the U.S. infrastructure; damage to the investments of innumerable small investors and pension fund beneficiaries; possible damage to an important research and development enterprise? If there is a problem that justifies all this we can't find it. Maybe it is because we prefer to deal in economics, rather than politics in such matters."
So, clearly the 1974 suit was aimed at a breakup of the AT&T monopoly.
Which is the whole point. The Government, through the anti-trust suit, intiated the breakup of AT&T. Not some libertarian fantasy where monopolies voluntarily disperse under the control of the unseen hand.
Do you dispute that the anti-trust action was brought in 1974 and that they broke up in 1984?
When, exactly, are you saying AT&T asked to be broken up? 1973? When? Where's your sources?
A clear case of eminent domain!
Society already has every right to claim access to Intellectual Property. Unlike other property, Intellectual property is granted by the Government "To promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts" (Article 1, section 8, clause 8 of the US Constitution).
If we think that the present Copyright law doesn't promote the useful Arts, we have every reason to change it as we see fit.
Do you think the present law promotes the useful Arts? I don't.
At the end of the consumption period, the probes could zap the memory of the experience from your mind to prevent illegal retention of copyrighted works.
Whoops, better not give *AA any ideas.
I'm thinking, why would you lie about something that's so easily checked? Doesn't make much sense, really.
This page has a timeline. Note that it states that the DOJ requested the breakup with the initial filing in 1974, 10 years before the actual breakup occurred.
However, ATT mandate required they "spread the wealth" by providing things like Universial Access. ATT was required to provide everyone, everywhere, roughly equal phone service at roughly similar prices.
Net-Net ATT was facing a world where the likes of "MCI" claimed they had a "right" to engage in profitable business. Fine. But that argument was forcing ATT into a world where all the wealth it was required to spread was being skimmed away.
You just can't maintain a 10 mile rural phone circuit on $20/month, if you aren't making money to pay for it elsewhere else.
As I said, you're spinning it. To suggest that ATT "ASKED" for there to be competition in LD is bizaare. They certainly never would have gotten out of the monopoly business had it not been for the anti-trust suit.
ATT could have and were expected to argue that what they were doing to MCI was fair for years, but they folded right away and went in for the breakup plan. Everyone assumed that ATT was going after the lucrative communications/telecom/computing business that they were denied before.
"precipitate the Anti-trust suit"?? MCI brought the anti-trust action. I don't know where you get your history from.
What are you, some kind of Libertarian historical revisionist, trying to prove that big monopolies will always voluntarily break up and that it's only big government that we should be afraid of?
Yep, and back in the day it was all controlled by ONE company, unntil that one company ASKED to no longer be the monopoly utility for LD service.
It was the government that made ATT a regulated monopoly and it was business that introduced competition.
Boy, isn't this some spin!
ATT agreed to divest of their LOCAL phone monopoly as part of a settlement to an anti-trust action brought against them by the DOJ. Seems a little upstart named MCI complained that ATT did anti-competitive things to prevent their entry in the long distance business.
They never ASKED to no longer be a LD monopoly. That was forced upon them by the anti-trust suit. In their defense, their settlement offer was unexpected and they could have dragged it out for years and years. But, it seems they thought that they could compete well in certain technology areas that had been denied them before.
In return for this settlement, ATT got the right to compete in other technology areas, like computers, that they had been denied due to Telecommunications and Anti-Trust law up to that time.
Their computers and software flopped completely. How you could fail at making money selling UNIX during it's growth haydays of mid-80s to early 90s is beyond me. Their computers were actually interesting, but somehow they couldn't market them.
Their telecom/networking products, now mostly Lucent Corp., did have some success awhile back, but now Lucent is doing pretty poorly.
CMM does not eliminate bugs, but it does aim to improve processes such that bugs could be far lessened.
In any case, CMM (at any level) did not exist when the Space Shuttle software was implemented. As far as I can tell, the CMM first came into being around 1987. There were no CMM level 5 shops existing for years after that. Note also from this link that the study referenced on page 11 does show that defects (aka bugs) do get shipped on software system developed with CMM level 5, although they are much decreased.
I believe the basic Space Shuttle software was implemented in the late 70s, independently, by groups at IBM and Rockwell. You might be referring to new software they now field for use with the Space Shuttle. I don't know.
4) It is wrong for anyone to gather or maintain any information about me, unless I explicitly tell them they can. Seems to contradict rule 1, but see next rule.
5) No rules apply to Geeks, only to other people.
That's why so many people like him, Jordan. He's a person and not a puppet.
You're right, I was being unfair and cynical.
I have to say that I do admire Nader for his consistency. I agree with some of his issues, on others we are very far apart.
I also believe that third party candidates and voters should not be swayed based on who will not get elected. People like Nader, Buchannon and Perot bring new voices to the debate. Even if you don't agree with them, you get a chance to confront their issues and clarify where you differ. With the two parties we have now, it's often a choice between a bad position and a worse one without any real debate on those positions.
Looks like Nader is starting his 2004 campaign early.
If anything, this kind of request will make certain the administration does anything but what is being asked.
Can you imagine the hue and cry of Conservative Republicans if Nader's policies were implemented, regardless of what they were?
On the other hand, Nader actually does have some leverage as a King-maker. I'm sure the Republicans would do a lot to bring him into the 2004 race and the Democrats would do a lot to keep him out. Either way, he has considerable bargaining power.
This could have a tremendous positive affect on Linux and OSS for Chinese speaking/writing people. You know, like 20% of the world's population?
Along with the German initiative announced here recently, it appears that many big, new opportunities for Linux continue to arise.
I guess I'm a little surprised that it happened so fast. My guess is that SuSE was never really on board with the per-seat charge in the first place.