Yeah I was going to say, there's someone that didn't RTFA.
"We won an award? Cool! Let's say it's nice to be recognized!
"Wait... what are we being recognized for?"
Re:Headphones are an even better solution....
on
A Silent PC Solution?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Mine are always turned off at night. I consider it a security move.;)
Also, I don't mind having *some* kind of noise giving me a sign that the thing is actually powered on. Sometimes on really old machines, particularly rebuilds, not all of the LED's work or are hooked up! Besides, sometimes it's nice to know something without actually having to look at something.
I had this conversation with a fellow sysadmin, about the time that RAM was fairly cheap and we had a budget.
She had just procured a new Sun machine with 2 GB of RAM. Mind you, disk space hadn't grown all that significantly and you could still get machines with 9 GB drives.
The original practice was to make swap 2xRAM. So when the student she had putting the machine came to her and said, "What do I make swap?" she responded "Twice the RAM."
He said, "Are you sure? That's like almost half the boot drive."
She thought about it for a second and said, "Oh, yeah. I guess just make it the same as the RAM."
So this begs the questions: What do you make your swap now? When does your rule of thumb change? And remember when you could run a "fast" linux box on a P100 with 64MB of RAM and 128MB of swap?
We haven't eliminated the fiction section, but we did replace the Reference Desk with a salad bar.
I must say I start laughing louder than ever these days when the "Lisa's Future Love" episode airs and they get to the section just before the Librarian's face melts. And I keep laughing for a good 20 minutes.
I'd rather avoid the "following a mailing list is not research" debate. We do understand that students sometimes need to mail articles or other items they locate to professors, or access materials mailed to them. That's not a problem; this is why now it's a concern versus a problem. It was a problem when every joe shmoe off the street was getting their hotmail through us.
Also, there are other facilities on campus that are used for writing papers or checking email. We have a secondary lab in our building just for that purpose, no less.
Working as a tech in a university library, I can tell you that we developed a budget to provide a large number of computers with internet access. An over the shoulder glance of those using it (as well as a proxy log) showed an abundance of porn and webmail usage - somewhere in the region of 75% - and very little usage for actual research purposes. This decreased significantly after we required a logon for access to certain sites (mainly webmail).
Our goal is to provide access to research materials that are either freely available or that we've paid for. It is not meant for email, and the problem at one time was so bad that there were lines of people, some of which who wanted to do actual research, waiting to use computers.
It's no longer a problematic issue, but it's still an issue.
No logs are actively kept at this time, but there are certain requirements built in (that I'm sure someone with enough time could circumvent) for accessing anything resembling webmail. Also, most ports (including 25) are blocked at the gateway for the publicly accessable machines.
Oh, and we've had the occasional call from the university police about someone sending nastygrams via a web submission form to certain locations. Not sure how it was resolved but I know the UP were not happy about our inability to identify someone who had used the computer at a given time.
Obligatory Lame Simpsons reference
on
A New Ice Age?
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· Score: 1
I for one welcome our new phytoplankton masters.
Bah, it's probably redundant but I'm too lazy to check.
"We're #1, and normally we'd be interested in working with #2 except in this case #2 is crap software."
A bit off topic maybe but I'm working on an article for an Independent Study course that I have - I finish it, I graduate MS/MIS - and one of the companies profiled is DEC. I came across this interesting tidbit:
"In late June" of 1991 ",John Sculley, then Apple's CEO, inveited Kenneth H. Olsen, Digital's founder and president, to dinner. Sculley had a proposition: Apple's Macintosh computers were starting to run out of gas, and he wanted to do a complete redesign with Alpha at the heart of the new Macs.
"But Olsen had doubts about Alpha. His unshakable faith in the VAX computer, which had turned Digital into IBM's most formidable competitor in the 1980's, made him reluctant to phase it out too soon in favor of Alpha. Olsen asked a team of Digital's top engineers to extend the computer's design for another generation -- and he rejected Sculley's proposal." (Judge, Paul and Reinhardt, Andy. "Why the fastest chip didn't win", Business Week. April 28, 1997. Pg. 92.
For those that don't remember, the Alpha was a 64 bit processor that had clock speeds doubling those of Intel's 32-bit offerings at the time. Imagine what life would be like for both companies now if Olsen had gone the other way.
Not saying DEC would still be around - they had a lot of problems. But who knows?
By the way, for those of you who saw the movie PCU, these paragraphs were my "Bridge Too Far."
Once you've coated all of your equipment with this goop to make sure the small fire that's developed doesn't burn anything else, and you've put out said fire, how do you clean it all up?
(Of course I didn't RTFA)
I guess some kind of wetvac would work, but since this stuff isn't supposed to get anything wet, could you call it a wetvac?
You can't simply sponge it up... again, I'm guessing that whatever it is, it won't be absorbed by the sponge!
But I seem to run out Thursday afternoon or Friday morning.
Seriously, yes, corporations *do* need to take better care of their systems, but I'd hazard a from-the-hip guess that the biggest problem these days as far as worm spreading is concerned is home machines and those in lesser "net developed" countries. In other words, ISP's need to become a little more responsible, and go about figuring out how/who/when to block certain ports from leaving their domain (like, say, 25).
Though they suggest unfamilliarity, one might wonder if it's more of a frequency/pitch or timbre issue.
The sound of a regular train (been a while since I've heard one) is rythmic, higher pitch clicking. I would guess that the maglev might be more lower frequency. Also, one might wonder if there's a sound beyond the range of human awareness that might be contributing to the feeling that the maglevs are "louder" or more annoying.
I dunno... you tend to feel louder high pitched sounds in your ears, whereas the lower ones you might feel more in your body.
The author of this post would like to point out that unlike other posts, this one was more stream of thought, and less composed than his previous ones. In other words, he's talking out of his ass.
The boys buy Ninja weapons, end up doing serious damage to Butters, and somewhere along the line Cartman has a wardrobe malfunction at the county fair.
During the ensuing uproar, which the boys assume will be about the injured Butters, it turns out people are more bothered by seeing an eight year old boy naked.
Yeah - I don't completely live under a rock... which might actually be pretty cool but is a topic for another time.
That makes more sense anyway. No medals for fourth place.;)
This is what I get for not having the most recent Nintendo gamebox. That, and decent grades in my MS/MIS classes as well as a decent job. Oh, and the occasionally scuba trip out of the country...
The thing I have a problem with is that in my time as a Unix Systems Admin, I've heard so much from Sun about how "Things will be different."
Here's an example of an actual sequence of conversations I've had:
"We really care about our relationship with your school and will go out of our way to solidify our reputation with you."
Yeah, but what's this about you changing the support structure for our yearly support contract?
"Oh, well, we found that most schools weren't using the contract to the fullest, ending up with blank software entitlements instead of using them all, and so we changed it. We now no longer cover things like backup software and directory services as part of your contract. Oh, and it costs more now too."
Sun lost out to Redhat because Sun (and their authorized reseller) could never get their act together, and their treatment of us bordered on abuse. When you'd pay $15K for a Sun and end up with yearly fees approaching $1K for the warranty period (since we'd have to cover OS upgrades) and then $3K for continuing maintenance, yet you could get a more powerful Dell server with better maintenance coverage and Redhat, in the long run, it was cheaper.
In other words, the TCO bug didn't just hit Microsoft - it hit Sun pretty hard, too.
Slashdot Mirror
"We won an award? Cool! Let's say it's nice to be recognized!
"Wait ... what are we being recognized for?"
Also, I don't mind having *some* kind of noise giving me a sign that the thing is actually powered on. Sometimes on really old machines, particularly rebuilds, not all of the LED's work or are hooked up! Besides, sometimes it's nice to know something without actually having to look at something.
She had just procured a new Sun machine with 2 GB of RAM. Mind you, disk space hadn't grown all that significantly and you could still get machines with 9 GB drives.
The original practice was to make swap 2xRAM. So when the student she had putting the machine came to her and said, "What do I make swap?" she responded "Twice the RAM."
He said, "Are you sure? That's like almost half the boot drive."
She thought about it for a second and said, "Oh, yeah. I guess just make it the same as the RAM."
So this begs the questions: What do you make your swap now? When does your rule of thumb change? And remember when you could run a "fast" linux box on a P100 with 64MB of RAM and 128MB of swap?
Guess I'm not allowed to surf through Lycos for porn. Oh me oh my, whatever will I do?
Oh yeah, I can type the URL in directly.
Also, they'd air the first runs but would never show the reruns in the same time slot; they'd always switch to a different show.
I must say I start laughing louder than ever these days when the "Lisa's Future Love" episode airs and they get to the section just before the Librarian's face melts. And I keep laughing for a good 20 minutes.
It's something I've always wanted to see IRL.
Also, there are other facilities on campus that are used for writing papers or checking email. We have a secondary lab in our building just for that purpose, no less.
Working as a tech in a university library, I can tell you that we developed a budget to provide a large number of computers with internet access. An over the shoulder glance of those using it (as well as a proxy log) showed an abundance of porn and webmail usage - somewhere in the region of 75% - and very little usage for actual research purposes. This decreased significantly after we required a logon for access to certain sites (mainly webmail).
Our goal is to provide access to research materials that are either freely available or that we've paid for. It is not meant for email, and the problem at one time was so bad that there were lines of people, some of which who wanted to do actual research, waiting to use computers.
It's no longer a problematic issue, but it's still an issue.
No logs are actively kept at this time, but there are certain requirements built in (that I'm sure someone with enough time could circumvent) for accessing anything resembling webmail. Also, most ports (including 25) are blocked at the gateway for the publicly accessable machines.
Oh, and we've had the occasional call from the university police about someone sending nastygrams via a web submission form to certain locations. Not sure how it was resolved but I know the UP were not happy about our inability to identify someone who had used the computer at a given time.
Bah, it's probably redundant but I'm too lazy to check.
A bit off topic maybe but I'm working on an article for an Independent Study course that I have - I finish it, I graduate MS/MIS - and one of the companies profiled is DEC. I came across this interesting tidbit:
"In late June" of 1991 ",John Sculley, then Apple's CEO, inveited Kenneth H. Olsen, Digital's founder and president, to dinner. Sculley had a proposition: Apple's Macintosh computers were starting to run out of gas, and he wanted to do a complete redesign with Alpha at the heart of the new Macs.
"But Olsen had doubts about Alpha. His unshakable faith in the VAX computer, which had turned Digital into IBM's most formidable competitor in the 1980's, made him reluctant to phase it out too soon in favor of Alpha. Olsen asked a team of Digital's top engineers to extend the computer's design for another generation -- and he rejected Sculley's proposal." (Judge, Paul and Reinhardt, Andy. "Why the fastest chip didn't win", Business Week. April 28, 1997. Pg. 92.
For those that don't remember, the Alpha was a 64 bit processor that had clock speeds doubling those of Intel's 32-bit offerings at the time. Imagine what life would be like for both companies now if Olsen had gone the other way.
Not saying DEC would still be around - they had a lot of problems. But who knows?
By the way, for those of you who saw the movie PCU, these paragraphs were my "Bridge Too Far."
Once you've coated all of your equipment with this goop to make sure the small fire that's developed doesn't burn anything else, and you've put out said fire, how do you clean it all up?
(Of course I didn't RTFA)
I guess some kind of wetvac would work, but since this stuff isn't supposed to get anything wet, could you call it a wetvac?
You can't simply sponge it up ... again, I'm guessing that whatever it is, it won't be absorbed by the sponge!
GET OFF THE PHONE AND DRIVE!
It's an Easter Egg. Though I thought it was DVD 2 and not 1. There's also an EEgg on the FotR Extended Edition in the same place.
Seriously, yes, corporations *do* need to take better care of their systems, but I'd hazard a from-the-hip guess that the biggest problem these days as far as worm spreading is concerned is home machines and those in lesser "net developed" countries. In other words, ISP's need to become a little more responsible, and go about figuring out how/who/when to block certain ports from leaving their domain (like, say, 25).
Is my GPS enabled, 802.11b/g capable, PDA cell phone. Is that too much to ask?
It certainly is of a higher frequency.
The sound of a regular train (been a while since I've heard one) is rythmic, higher pitch clicking. I would guess that the maglev might be more lower frequency. Also, one might wonder if there's a sound beyond the range of human awareness that might be contributing to the feeling that the maglevs are "louder" or more annoying.
I dunno ... you tend to feel louder high pitched sounds in your ears, whereas the lower ones you might feel more in your body.
The author of this post would like to point out that unlike other posts, this one was more stream of thought, and less composed than his previous ones. In other words, he's talking out of his ass.
During the ensuing uproar, which the boys assume will be about the injured Butters, it turns out people are more bothered by seeing an eight year old boy naked.
A DVD player that shows all the characters without clothes.
"tombs"? Is that what the kids are calling them these days?
With the sound muted.
That makes more sense anyway. No medals for fourth place. ;)
This is what I get for not having the most recent Nintendo gamebox. That, and decent grades in my MS/MIS classes as well as a decent job. Oh, and the occasionally scuba trip out of the country ...
Besides that's what symbolic links are for - just link /usr/X11R6 or whatever to /usr/X11, set your path vars up appropriately, and be done with it.
Here's an example of an actual sequence of conversations I've had:
"We really care about our relationship with your school and will go out of our way to solidify our reputation with you."
Yeah, but what's this about you changing the support structure for our yearly support contract?
"Oh, well, we found that most schools weren't using the contract to the fullest, ending up with blank software entitlements instead of using them all, and so we changed it. We now no longer cover things like backup software and directory services as part of your contract. Oh, and it costs more now too."
Sun lost out to Redhat because Sun (and their authorized reseller) could never get their act together, and their treatment of us bordered on abuse. When you'd pay $15K for a Sun and end up with yearly fees approaching $1K for the warranty period (since we'd have to cover OS upgrades) and then $3K for continuing maintenance, yet you could get a more powerful Dell server with better maintenance coverage and Redhat, in the long run, it was cheaper.
In other words, the TCO bug didn't just hit Microsoft - it hit Sun pretty hard, too.