I'm using a Dell Inspiron 7000 which I've set up to triple boot NT Server, Win 98 and RH 5.2 at the moment. It works pretty well. However I despaired of getting LILO or NT Boot Manager to work correctly with all three, so I got a copy of PowerQuest's BootMagic. BootMagic is a truly cool program and supports just about any OS you want. I haven't had a problem since. You can also use it to dynamically hide/unhide partitions from particular OSes.
I definitely agree with you on this one. I've just completed a 9 month contract redesigning and rebuilding a company network from the ground-up. All it requires now is an admin for the day-to-day boring work. They asked me to stay permanently, but quite frankly my brain would turn to mush. Contracting often gives you the opportunity to do the interesting work, and leave the general admin work to the permanents.
...We're here to stay. I work as a contracting Systems Engineer. I worked full-time permanent positions for 5 years, then decided to take the plunge as a contractor. And yes, it was primarily a financial motivation. I would like to be able to buy a house in the next two years. The basic fact is that as a permanent employee I would not be able to do so for the next five.
I'm proud of my work and I think I give 110% to a contract. Some other posts have complained that 80% of contractors are a waste of space. In my experience, 80% of all employees (contract or permanent) are a waste of time. Permanents just tend to get carried more. Bad contractors normally get weeded out pretty quickly. Most of the contracting agencies I have dealt with are quick to blacklist any contractors with bad reps.
Sure you don't get the "benefits" of permanent employees, but I love contracting and I wish I had started it earlier.
The one major thing I have found with contracting has been the experience of working for companies that I would not have liked to have been a permanent employee of. Contracting gives you an inside view of some companies and how badly they are treating their permanent staffers. When you take a permanent position you are making a blind leap of faith regarding the company. As a contractor, you know that you are there for a finite period, and if the company is a good one, there is always the option of taking permanency. You can usually negotiate a permanent slot with a good company if you have been doing good work for them.
Besides in the IT industry "permanency" is an illusion. How many permanent employees stay at the one place for more than 2 years? Not many! As one employment agency stated in a recent interview "If I read a CV where an IT person has been in the same position for 3 or more years, I ask myself - WHY?".
Colossus came quite a long time before ENIAC
on
ENIAC Story on NPR
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· Score: 1
The reason why no-one knew about Colossus being the first "modern" electrical computer until recently is due to the fact that it was still classified by the British Ministry of Defence. Details of the machine were only released a couple of years ago. It had been developed as a faster method to crack the German Enigma and Shark codes during WWII than the mechanical codebreakers they had used previously. Some interesting books on the subject include "Station X: The codebreakers of Bletchley Park" by Michael Smith, and a fictionalised murder mystery set in and around Bletchley Park: "Enigma" by Robert Harris. The actual codebreaking details described in the Harris book are accurate. The "Station X" book is a companion to a series they showed on Channel 4 in the UK earlier this year.
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I'm using a Dell Inspiron 7000 which I've set up to triple boot NT Server, Win 98 and RH 5.2 at the moment. It works pretty well. However I despaired of getting LILO or NT Boot Manager to work correctly with all three, so I got a copy of PowerQuest's BootMagic. BootMagic is a truly cool program and supports just about any OS you want. I haven't had a problem since. You can also use it to dynamically hide/unhide partitions from particular OSes.
I thoroughly recommend it over the alternatives.
Mikester.
Can we banish anonymous cowards leaving irrelevant posts that are off-topic?
No, probably not.
I definitely agree with you on this one. I've just completed a 9 month contract redesigning and rebuilding a company network from the ground-up. All it requires now is an admin for the day-to-day boring work. They asked me to stay permanently, but quite frankly my brain would turn to mush. Contracting often gives you the opportunity to do the interesting work, and leave the general admin work to the permanents.
...We're here to stay. I work as a contracting Systems Engineer. I worked full-time permanent positions for 5 years, then decided to take the plunge as a contractor. And yes, it was primarily a financial motivation. I would like to be able to buy a house in the next two years. The basic fact is that as a permanent employee I would not be able to do so for the next five.
I'm proud of my work and I think I give 110% to a contract. Some other posts have complained that 80% of contractors are a waste of space. In my experience, 80% of all employees (contract or permanent) are a waste of time. Permanents just tend to get carried more. Bad contractors normally get weeded out pretty quickly. Most of the contracting agencies I have dealt with are quick to blacklist any contractors with bad reps.
Sure you don't get the "benefits" of permanent employees, but I love contracting and I wish I had started it earlier.
The one major thing I have found with contracting has been the experience of working for companies that I would not have liked to have been a permanent employee of. Contracting gives you an inside view of some companies and how badly they are treating their permanent staffers. When you take a permanent position you are making a blind leap of faith regarding the company. As a contractor, you know that you are there for a finite period, and if the company is a good one, there is always the option of taking permanency. You can usually negotiate a permanent slot with a good company if you have been doing good work for them.
Besides in the IT industry "permanency" is an illusion. How many permanent employees stay at the one place for more than 2 years? Not many! As one employment agency stated in a recent interview "If I read a CV where an IT person has been in the same position for 3 or more years, I ask myself - WHY?".
The reason why no-one knew about Colossus being the first "modern" electrical computer until recently is due to the fact that it was still classified by the British Ministry of Defence. Details of the machine were only released a couple of years ago. It had been developed as a faster method to crack the German Enigma and Shark codes during WWII than the mechanical codebreakers they had used previously. Some interesting books on the subject include "Station X: The codebreakers of Bletchley Park" by Michael Smith, and a fictionalised murder mystery set in and around Bletchley Park: "Enigma" by Robert Harris. The actual codebreaking details described in the Harris book are accurate. The "Station X" book is a companion to a series they showed on Channel 4 in the UK earlier this year.